THE MAESTRO’S MISTRESS
ANGELA DRACUP
Digital edition first published in 2012
Published by The Electronic Book Company
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Author’s website: www.angeladracup.com
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This ebook contains detailed research material, combined with the author's own subjective opinions, which are open to debate. Any offence caused to persons either living or dead is purely unintentional. Factual references may include or present the author's own interpretation, based on research and study.
Copyright 2012 by Angela Dracup
CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION
PART ONE - 1991
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
PART TWO – A YEAR LATER
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
PART THREE - THIRTEEN YEARS LATER
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
FORTHCOMING BOOKS
INTRODUCTION
Part One – early 1990s
On his fortieth birthday international orchestra conductor Saul Xavier has a sudden fear about the future. He is wealthy and successful but his marriage is faltering, he has no children and he craves a new challenge.
Then he meets Tara Silk, a young budding violinist.
They are instantly attracted and after Tara becomes pregnant Xavier takes her to live with him in his country house in Oxfordshire where he showers her with adoration and the promise of a bright future in the world of music.
Georgiana Xavier, however, has no plans to agree to a divorce. She sets about stalking Tara. But when Tara calls her bluff an uneasy friendship develops between the two women.
Tara eventually gives birth to twins, but one of them dies at birth.
Part Two – a year later
Tara gives a public performance of Elgar’s Violin Concerto. She accepts an invitation from the Vienna Philharmonic to stand in at a concert when the soloist falls sick. But her elation vanishes when she arrives home to find that baby Alessandra has been abducted.
Xavier guesses the abductor is his wife. They set out to find her. But a car crash leaves Tara injured so that she will never again play the violin.
Part Three - thirteen years later
Xavier continues to thrive in his career, and Tara is renowned for her training videos for aspiring musicians. But Xavier is dismayed that Alessandra likes horses better than music. Tara tries to act as peacemaker but family tensions develop. Things boil up to a crisis when Xavier walks out of a concert rehearsal, leaving Tara to take his place.
Tara hopes a family holiday in Salzburg will help matters, but whilst there Xavier becomes ever more remote and wrapped up in his music. Alessandra feels rejected and angry and Tara struggles to see the way forward.
And then a figure from the past arrives and suddenly their world is in pieces. Tara finds herself staring into the abyss when Xavier goes missing. Is he dead? And if he is still alive will he ever return so they can heal the wounds which have torn them apart?
PART ONE - 1991
CHAPTER 1
Saul Xavier had not conducted in London for three years. The mere rumour of his coming to one of the city’s premier concert halls to do an all Brahms concert set the box office into a flurry of activity. Advertised prices went to an all time high and ticket touts patrolling the street outside the hall on the night were asking five times the advertised price and getting it.
Xavier lost no time in making his presence felt. Within minutes of arriving for the afternoon rehearsal the worst fears of the apprehensive manager of the hall and his staff were realized when Xavier abruptly stopped the orchestra almost as soon as they had started playing. Spinning round on his stool he peered frowning into the gloom of the almost empty hall. The manager ran forward quickly to the elevated stage. Two of his staff hurried after him. Xavier stared down at them from his eagle’s perch.
‘There is a noise,’ he said softly, sending prickles of anxiety down the manager’s neck.
Everyone fell silent, listening intently.
Xavier held up his hand. ‘There! Do you hear it?’
They all nodded. Yes, there was something in the background. It was very faint, but it was there. The manager groaned internally. What could it be? What could be done?
‘We’ll look into it, Maestro,’ he said reassuringly.
Xavier nodded, his aristocratic, remote features registering only a flicker of movement. ‘I would not complain if it were in pitch with the music,’ he commented politely. ‘But it isn’t.’
The hall staff laughed nervously.
Xavier spun back to the orchestra, dispatching the hall staff with a swift gesture of one hand.
‘So!’ he told them, raising his baton. ‘We have a problem with extraneous noise, ladies and gentlemen. But the show will go on.’
A low collective chuckle reverberated across the rows of players. A sensation of anticipation and elation was already building in each member of the orchestra. Even those who had not worked with Xavier previously recognized instantly that they were in the hands of a master of his craft. No matter that he was a stern disciplinarian, that he would not hesitate to be brutal if he thought it necessary; they sensed that he was about to put an emotional depth charge beneath them. When they played for him tonight it would be the music of angels.
Xavier looked along the rows of instrumentalists, making eye contact with each individual as he conducted, giving the slightest of nods in recognition of players he had worked with before. He gave the impression of being able to see, and more importantly hear, each player personally, of being inside each player’s mind. In front of an orchestra Xavier was the living embodiment of the law, the ruler of the world.
In front of an orchestra Xavier was also at his happiest. His early life had been moulded round music since early childhood. At the age of six he had played a Mozart rondo in concert.
Today, on the eve of his fortieth birthday, he exuded physical fitness and well being. He was striking in looks and perhaps at the very height of his sexual potency and attractiveness. Whilst his upbringing and native language were English, an international pedigree gave him a mingling of Greek and Spanish blood. It was the Grecian influence that could most easily be traced in his carved, classical features and his smooth olive skin. His hair was a thick sable mane, greying pleasingly at the temples in a manner which nature does better than art. His eyes were clear grey, an innocent enough colour, belying his ability to hypnotize or terrify with one glance from beneath his deeply hooded eyelids.
S
tanding erect he was just over six foot, with a body tightly muscled and compact from a lifetime of skiing, fencing and tennis. His iron will with regard to the intake of food and alcohol was legendary, having been respectfully described in a number of fawning magazine articles over the years. In fact Xavier appreciated fine food and wines just like any other human being. But he was never greedy. And he never drank on the days before he planned to be at the controls of his TBM 700 turboprop aircraft.
At the break in the rehearsal the hall manager gave Xavier a report on the noise. It came from the pump powering the massive boiler in the basement of the hall. ‘I have to confess that I’ve never noticed it before,’ the manager said ruefully.
‘It will have to be turned off during the concert,’ Xavier decreed without expression. There were never any tantrums with Xavier, never any rages or storming. He kept himself in tight control. Just occasionally he would strike – with all the stealth and venom of a poisonous snake.
The manager knew better than to protest. He expressed a mild hope that the operation of the hall’s bars and cloakrooms would not be totally disrupted.
Later that evening, as the audience assembled, the air in the hall was on the chilly side but the psychological atmosphere was quietly smouldering. International celebrities were turning out in force, the men in black ties, the women in a shimmering array of peacock-bright silks.
Half-way down the auditorium a young woman dressed in black jeans and a dark blue velvet tunic curled her legs up onto her seat, hoping to make herself taller so that she could see the stage better. The gaze from her big green eyes was intense as she watched the audience assembling.
Her ears thrilled to the insistent throb of the instruments tuning up, the rich steely sound of the strings, the clarity of the notes bursting from the brass section so sparkling and bright that she could imagine the great horns had been washed to gleaming brilliance in a torrent of thunderous rain.
She closed her eyes in anticipation. Soon the orchestra would sing; the music wind itself into every crevice of the auditorium like the mist of an autumn morning.
A minute before the concert was due to start a small party processed down the auditorium causing a flurry of interested speculation amongst the already seated audience. The woman leading the group was exaggeratedly slim, her long blonde hair worn dead straight in a manner which only the very beautiful can get away with. She was dressed in a classically cut white crepe gown and wearing similarly simple diamonds. Before taking her seat she looked around her, bestowing a benevolent, slightly capricious smile on the watchful audience. By the time her party was seated and settled the starting time of the concert had been exceeded by three minutes.
There was an agitated rustling in the auditorium. A woman sitting behind the latecomers whispered to her husband that the woman in white was Xavier’s wife. ‘I suppose that bestows on her the God-given right to make all the rest of us wait,’ he whispered back with a wry smile.
Then suddenly all agitation was stilled and an electrifying hush fell on the auditorium as the tall figure of Xavier appeared on the stage, threading through the orchestra and moving to the podium. A deafening storm of applause broke out.
Ignoring the acclaim Xavier mounted the podium, planted his gleaming black shoes in line with his shoulders, raised his baton and started straight away. His gestures were those of a man of great restraint, a man who knows how to extract the maximum from his followers without any indulgence in hysterical gymnastics. Exhibiting scarcely any movement he set the orchestra off on a journey of pure musical delight.
As the sound surged from the orchestra into the auditorium, he reflected that he must have conducted the Brahms Tragic Overture more than a hundred times in his extensive career. And yet there were still things to discover in the piece. Great music was always receptive to further interpretation. It was like a great ocean: one could dive down and down and never reach the sandy bed.
In his early days as a struggling young conductor, trying to coax performances of Mozart’s
Don Giovanni, or Puccini’s Thieving Magpie from ragged local orchestras and singers in the north of England, Xavier would fantasize that when conducting he was actually composing the piece himself. A heady experience!
But in recent years he had finally recognized that the gift of composing had not been granted to him by whatever divine force shaped the world. Accepting this, he had driven all his energies into perfecting the art of conducting. And he had not failed. Indeed one of the most influential music critics in New York had once remarked that on the podium Xavier was a true artist, one of the great baton virtuosos who could, with a flick of the wrist, do what others could not have achieved with the aid of a bulldozer. Moreover he never used a score whilst conducting: he had learned most of the major works in the great classical repertoire by heart.
Acclaim had been showered on him all over the world as he progressed from continent to continent, enticing penetrating performances from a host of great orchestras. In Germany the Chancellor summoned him to dinner. In Japan, electronic magnates became his disciples. A self- made British billionaire was regularly flown by company jet to wherever he was conducting and the United Nations Secretary General had gone so far as to create him an Ambassador of Good Will.
Conducting fees, television appearances and royalties from the many recordings in current circulation provided an annual remuneration into seven figures. Careful selection of financial advisers to help him play the world markets and navigate his way through the complexity of international tax laws meant that his overall net income was vast. He was a man of immense wealth.
There were many who envied him; who would give anything to match his musical ability, his lifestyle, his money, his seductive, absolute power over the world’s finest orchestras.
Yes – much had been achieved he thought as he stood before this magnificent London orchestra, noting the velvet timbre of the string section, sensing the slight tightness of feeling it brought to his throat.
And yet, and yet…
There was this fear growing inside him; this embryo flexing its limb buds, nodding its bulbous head, demanding to have life. At the approach of this milestone birthday Xavier was menaced by a sensation of emptiness, a terror of the future where the days collided together in frightening sameness, where there was nothing to look forward to beyond a replication of the glories of the past. He recognized that it was unrealistic to hope for anything more than the continuation of his work as a brilliant interpreter. He had brought countless great works of music to life, but he had never created anything of his own. He had never painted, sculpted or written. He had created nothing lasting.
He had no child and now it was too late.
Xavier had a sudden image of himself as an eagle caged at the peak of its strength. Panic thrust within him. The silent, unseen face of time mocked him. What should he do? Should he go back to the beginning? Look again at the great classical repertoire through the fresh eyes of a new ensemble. Maybe he could find some rag, tag and bobtail group somewhere out in the provinces, take them over and shape them into a great orchestra?
The thought kindled a frail flame of inspiration which flickered uncertainly but failed to ignite. A chill shot down his spine.
His hands moved with automatic precision but his spirit fluttered away from the music. He felt his eyes close. For a moment there was a faltering in the string section: infinitesimal, no more than a split second. Only the most sensitive of musicians would have noticed.
Xavier’s eyes snapped open with a jerk. He turned the whiplash of his iron will upon himself. Self pity played no part in his personal repertoire. And losing concentration was an unforgivable sin. That must not happen again. He might never be a composer, but he was never going to be anything less than a supreme and inspired maestro.
Next week there were to be two further concerts; an evening of Sibelius and Britten and after that a dip into the classical era with Nigel Kennedy playing the Beethoven Violin Co
ncerto. He made himself a grim promise that those performances would be nothing short of superb, they would be unsurpassable. The mealy-mouthed British critics would eat their tight-lipped words.
The applause at the end of the evening was persistent and tumultuous, electric with acclaim. The audience had loved every minute. And they had loved Xavier.
Four times they brought him back to the podium. Staring out over the feverishly applauding audience he inclined his head gravely. His austere features registered only the faintest of smiles. Whatever Xavier’s feelings were about the performance he was keeping them to himself.
Then suddenly he had had enough. Having savoured the applause, now he was sated. With an abrupt flick of his hand he dismissed the orchestra and strode off the stage, seeking the temporary solitude of his dressing room.
The audience began to sweep out, carried on a wave of dizzy excitement.
The green-eyed girl made no move. She sat motionless, curled in her seat, staring up at the empty stage.
CHAPTER 2
Georgiana Xavier watched her husband leave the platform and smiled with satisfaction. With the hurdle of the concert over she could now devote her mental energies fully to the celebrations she had planned to mark his birthday the following evening.
She had listened only half-heartedly to the music. After reviewing the menu for the party supper her mind had wandered away into the past, reflecting on her sixteen years of marriage to Xavier. She was pleased with her marriage. In the world of the performing arts there were many couples who failed to stay the course; separations and divorce were commonplace. But she and Xavier were still together, a glittering couple on a rock solid foundation.
There had been only one frightening moment, a split second of horrified panic when she feared that foundation might crumble and split.
She recalled the fateful occasion with perfect clarity, every detail intact: the sultry sky of a summer afternoon in New York, the luxurious beige and gold hotel suite filled with the scent of fresh flowers.
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