Appassionata

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘Dr Mendoza says I’m not infectious any more.’ Taggie was about to suggest they popped back to the convent for half an hour when she noticed the bleak expression on Rupert’s face, and stammered that she couldn’t wait to see Bianca tomorrow morning.

  Fortunately Rupert was distracted by the telephone. It was Declan O’Hara, Taggie’s father and Rupert’s partner at Venturer Television, ringing from Gloucestershire. With his usual courtesy Declan asked after Bianca, Taggie’s chicken pox and then the hotel.

  ‘Even fleas boycott this place,’ snapped Rupert. ‘Get on with it, Declan, what d’you really want?’

  ‘As you’re in Bogotá, could you nip over to Buenos Aires tomorrow?’

  ‘It’s about two thousand miles, some nip,’ protested Rupert, taking a large glass of whisky from Taggie. ‘Didn’t they teach you any geography at school?’

  ‘I want you to go and see Abigail Rosen.’

  ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘About the greatest fiddler in the world, and the hottest property in classical music,’ said Declan reverently. ‘They call her L’Appassionata. I want to do a two-hour special on her, but her agents, Shepherd Denston, who are even greater fiddlers than she is, won’t answer my telephone calls. You’re so gifted at doing deals.’

  ‘Blarney wouldn’t get you anywhere if I wasn’t desperate to get out of this cesspit. And I don’t know anything about music.’

  ‘Bullshit your way through. I’ll fax out Abby Rosen’s cv. There’ll be tickets for you and Taggie at the box-office.’

  Rupert promptly rang and squared the trip with Mother Maria, who, delighted that someone had taken on Sister Mercedes, was more than accommodating.

  ‘It will do you good to have a break, enjoy yourselves. I would give the world to hear L’Appassionata.’

  ‘At least we can get out of this dump for twenty-four hours,’ said Rupert jubilantly. ‘Your father wants us to chat up some female Nigel Kennedy. You’ll love BA.’

  Taggie was so desperate to catch another glimpse of Bianca, Rupert agreed they could pop in to the convent on the way to the airport. Stopping off at a toyshop, waiting for Taggie, Rupert glanced at a cutting which Lysander had just faxed out from The Scorpion. This claimed that Rupert was giving sanctuary to Lysander and Kitty Rannaldini, now that she’d left her husband, and weaved in an old quote from Rupert, that Kitty was well shot of ‘an arriviste wop like Rannaldini’. Political correctness was never Rupert’s forte.

  Taggie by now had settled for a pink fluffy rabbit and a musical box.

  ‘We better move it,’ said Rupert, adding a red racing car for Xavier to the pile.

  But one look at Bianca was too much for Taggie.

  ‘Oh Rupert, d’you mind terribly if I don’t come to BA?’

  Rupert did mind – terribly, particularly when he thought of his battles with bureaucracy, and his heroic devotion to duty while she had chicken pox. The off-white suit he was wearing was the only thing in his wardrobe that didn’t reek of sick. It was also the first time in seven years of marriage that Taggie had admitted that she wanted to be with anyone else more than him. But he was not going to show it.

  ‘Why should I mind?’ he said icily. ‘Best-looking women in the world live in BA. Thanks for the pink ticket.’

  Not even caring that Sister Angelica was witnessing such a scene, not bothering to kiss a horrified mouthing Taggie, ignoring the anguished bellows of Xavier, Rupert stalked out of the convent, nearly dislodging the battered virgin from her niche as he banged the door.

  THREE

  Rupert’s mood didn’t lighten until he reached Buenos Aires, a city where he had often played polo and which he had always loved. As he joined the crazy traffic hurtling along the wide streets, elegant regal houses gazed down unperturbed over the half-moon spectacles of their balconies. Even with a chill in the air and the trees in the lush parks already turning, the merry inhabitants appeared to be holding drinks parties on the pavement outside every café. After Bogotá it felt blissfully safe. For the first time in weeks, Rupert left off his money belt.

  L’Appassionata posters were everywhere, showing off Abigail Rosen’s rippling dark curls and hypnotic eyes, like the leader of some dodgy religious sect.

  As her latest CD of Paganini’s Caprices had just topped the classical charts, her face also dominated the window of every record shop, and she certainly caused mayhem round the opera house. Huge crowds, frantic for returns, rioted and smashed windows. Motorists, driven frantic by traffic jams, anticipated the concert with a fortissimo tantivy on their horns.

  Rupert was delighted to flog Taggie’s ticket for nearly a grand, but was completely thrown on entering the opera house to see Rannaldini’s pale, sinister face glaring down from posters in the foyer. Declan had foxily omitted to tell Rupert that the New World Symphony Orchestra was touring South America, and Rannaldini, as their very new musical director, had flown down to BA to conduct them and Abigail Rosen in the Brahms concerto.

  Rupert felt a rare wave of shame. He and Rannaldini had last met at the Rutminster Cup when all their horses had fallen, and Rupert had been venting hysterical rage on Lysander in front of the entire jockeys’ changing-room for throwing the race: rage, which had turned out to be totally misplaced, as a post mortem had revealed Lysander’s old horse had, in fact, died of a massive heart attack. As Kitty Rannaldini and Lysander were now happily shacked up in one of Rupert’s cottages, the ‘arriviste wop’, who regarded Lysander as a complete dolt, would, no doubt, suspect Rupert of masterminding the entire coup.

  Rupert could have done without complications like this if he were going to sign up Abigail Rosen. She was probably under Rannaldini’s forked thumb by now.

  The five-minute bell put an end to his brooding. He had never seen a hall so packed. People were tumbling out of boxes, sitting in the aisles and on the edge of the stage, standing four deep along the back and virtually swinging from the chandelier which hovered overhead like some vast lurex air balloon.

  The orchestra were already on stage tuning up. The only man in the place blonder than Rupert was the leader of the orchestra, Julian Pellafacini, an albino with a deathly pale skin, almost white hair curling over his collar and bloodshot eyes hidden behind tinted spectacles. Julian was such a brilliant musician, sat so straight in his chair at the front of the first violins and had such a sweet, noble expression on his thin bony face as he smiled reassuringly round at the other musicians, that their only desire was to play their hearts out for him.

  But, beneath his air of calm as he chatted idly to the co-leader beside him, Julian was deeply apprehensive that Rannaldini would destroy his beloved orchestra. Now, for example, he was making them even more nervous by deliberately keeping them waiting.

  The merry chatter in the audience grew louder as the glamorous bejewelled women tried to identify Rupert. Rupert, however, was scowling at a tall, self-important man with a leonine head and a glossy dark beard, emphasizing firm red lips, who was thanking the row in front in a loud booming voice for letting him in.

  Rupert loathed beards and he thought the man looked like one of those ghastly Mormon fathers, photographed in colour magazines surrounded by hoards of adoring wives and children, and probably fiddling with the lot of them. He was affectedly dressed in a frock-coat with a scarf at the neck secured with a big pearl tie-pin. Rupert shuddered. By strange coincidence the man was now smugly and noisily informing the admiring redhead on his right that he was Christopher Shepherd, Abigail Rosen’s agent, and showing her a haughty, head-tossing picture of his artist on the front of Time magazine.

  Halting in mid-shudder, Rupert was about to tap Christopher Shepherd on the shoulder and make his number, when the orchestra rose to their feet and in swept Rannaldini to demented applause. For a second, he glared round at his new orchestra and raised his baton. Then the down-beat dropped like a hawk, introducing the first doom-laden octaves of the overture to Verdi’s The Force of Destiny.

  Rupert was tone-deaf
and bored to tears by music, but he’d had plenty of practice in being bored and deafened in the last fortnight, and he had to admire the way Rannaldini drew his orchestra together. He might be small but he controlled every note, every nuance, every silence. There were also some ravishingly pretty girls in the orchestra, their split black skirts showing a lot of leg, their eyes going down to their music then up to Rannaldini as they bowed and blew with all their might.

  Rannaldini, despite his icy exterior, was in a blazing temper. He had not only been vilely humiliated by Kitty leaving him, he had also been vastly inconvenienced. In one swoop, he had lost his whipping boy and his skivvy, who had tolerated his endless ex-wives, children and mistresses, run his four houses and masterminded his multifaceted career with incredible efficiency.

  Since Kitty had walked, or rather galloped, The Prince of Darkness out of his life, Rannaldini had gone through three PAs in New York. The fourth, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, had booked him into the BA Hilton, where his mâitresse en titre, the great diva, Hermione Harefield, from whom he was trying to distance himself, was staying, instead of the Plaza in the suite next to Abigail Rosen. Even worse, the new PA had failed to order a white gardenia for his buttonhole, and, worst of all, she had forgotten to pack his tail-coat. Rannaldini had been reduced to pinching one off the Hilton’s very reluctant head waiter, which was far too big, and every time he raised his arm he got a whiff of minestrone.

  Rapturous applause greeted the end of the overture, but it was nothing to the uproar of stamping, cheering and wolf-whistles that detonated the hall when Abigail Rosen erupted onto the platform. Rannaldini gave her several lengths’ start and speedily jumped onto his rostrum to disguise the fact that she topped him by at least three inches. He then waited impatiently, baton tapping, as she shook hands with the albino leader, then bowed and smiled at the orchestra before bowing and smiling at the audience.

  Her straight, thick black brows above the tigerish yellow eyes, her hooked nose, huge drooping red mouth, wide jaw, thick dark curly hair, only just restrained by a black velvet bow and marvellous sinewy body, made her look almost masculine. But Rupert had never seen such a sexy girl. Her wonderful long legs were shown off by the briefest black-velvet shorts, while a fuschia-red sleeveless body stocking, emphasized strong white arms, a broad rib cage and high, full breasts.

  Totally over the top, yet flaunting the fact that she’d earned them, were the huge diamonds that flashed on the bracelet on her left ankle, as though ice flakes had drifted down from the great chandelier overhead.

  And she certainly detonated her fiddle. The Brahms concerto is so difficult it was originally described as having been written against the violin. After a very emotional beginning with a heaving ocean of sound, the orchestra plays on for three minutes before the soloist comes in.

  During this agonizing wait, Abigail seemed to quiver like a mustang trapped in the starting gates. And when she picked up her bow, even Rupert had never heard anyone play with such raw passion and vitality, her fingers flickering like flames, her bow gouging out sound like a trowel digging for treasure. She played with total concentration and a wild threatening energy, and gave wonderful flourishes of the bow at the end of every important phrase, as she prowled around the stage, scent wafting from her hot body.

  There was also something infinitely touching, when she wasn’t playing, in the way she rested her head like a weary child on her two-million-dollar Stradavarius, and so spontaneous when she swung round and grinned at the first oboe, who’d gone quite puce in the face playing the ravishing opening to the slow movement.

  Several times, however, she turned to scowl at Rannaldini, his stillness a total contrast to her incessant movement. With his sinister pallor, midnight-black eyes and cloak-like tail-coat, he was a dead ringer for Dracula. Rupert was glad Abigail kept making a cross of bow and fiddle to ward off the bastard’s unrelenting evil.

  She had now taken up the first oboe’s luminous, hauntingly beautiful tune. Glancing sideways Rupert saw that tears were trickling down the wrinkles of the old woman beside him.

  ‘Mon dieu, oh mon dieu.’

  As Rupert passed her his handkerchief, his thoughts wandered to Xavier, poor little sod, what chance did he have? Rupert had read that lasers could cure a squint and work wonders with birthmarks. But he mustn’t think like that. Taggie couldn’t cope with two children, particularly one so retarded he couldn’t even walk.

  The orchestra were into the last movement now – a manic, joyous gypsy dance with terrifying cross-rhythms. Rupert could see the white glisten of Abigail’s armpits, the dark tendrils glued to her damp forehead. God, she was glorious. There couldn’t be a man in the audience who didn’t want to screw the ass off her.

  She was plainly into some horse race with Rannaldini, faster and faster, neither willing to give in, both her bow and his baton a blur. The faster they went the more the great chandelier trembled and shot out glittering rainbows of light.

  And at the end when the bellows of applause and the storm of bravoes nearly took off both roof and chandelier, Rupert noticed that although Abigail collapsed into the arms of the albino leader and reached out to shake hands with the principals of the various sections of the orchestra, she snatched her fingers away when Rannaldini tried to kiss them.

  This was followed by an insult more pointed, when a pretty little girl in a pink-striped party dress presented her with a bunch of red roses and she promptly handed one to the First Oboe who had played so exquisitely.

  ‘Viva L’Appassionata,’ roared the audience, until she came back and played a Paganini Caprice as an encore.

  The orchestra, who could temporarily forgive a hard time in rehearsal if the concert was a success, were looking happier and, in homage to Abby, the string players rattled their bows on the backs of the chairs in front, until Julian led them off for the interval.

  The only person, surprisingly, who seemed put out was Christopher Shepherd, who’d been making furious notes on the back of his programme, and who promptly disappeared backstage to see his illustrious client.

  Deciding also to give Mahler’s Fourth in the second half a miss, Rupert followed him, defusing the heavy security on the stage door with a good wad of the dollars he’d been paid for Taggie’s ticket. Hearing Rannaldini’s screams and seeing smoke coming out of the conductor’s room, Rupert nipped behind a double bass case and nearly bumped into Rannaldini’s mistress, Hermione Harefield, who was waiting to sing the soprano solo in the Mahler. She was wearing a white dress, which looked as though a swan had forgotten to blow dry its feathers, and was making it impossible for a make-up girl to touch up her lipstick as she screeched: ‘Abigail Rosen and I had a no-encore agreement.’

  ‘Shut up you stupeed beetch,’ snarled Rannaldini. ‘We haven’t got all night.’

  And off they went. Hermione got her revenge by making the slowest entrance in musical history, trapping Rannaldini like a car behind a hay wain on a narrow road.

  The crowd, who had turned up backstage to congratulate Abigail and get their programmes signed, were disappointed when Christopher Shepherd went grimly into her dressing-room and locked the door.

  The manager of the opera house was almost in tears over the vast fees he was having to fork out for Abby, Rannaldini and Hermione. They cost more than the box-office receipts for the whole evening, he moaned, and he hadn’t paid the orchestra yet, nor the marketing people.

  ‘Rannaldini ees impossible,’ he told Rupert bitterly. ‘He finded out how much L’Appassionata get, and refuse to come out of his room until he get more. He complain about her having too much publicity. Then when I arrange press conference he storm out, because someone ask heem if his wife is coming back. Wise lady to stay away.

  ‘Hermione is just as ’orrible,’ the manager went on, ‘she see proof of programme and posters, then wait until they are printed to complain they are not OK.’

  The poor man was only too happy to accept a further wad of green backs in return
for secreting Rupert in the dressing-room next to Abigail’s. On the adjoining balcony Rupert could hear everything that was going on between her and Christopher Shepherd.

  Howard Denston and Christopher Shepherd were the most successful agents in New York. Power brokers, they moved conductors, soloists and even entire orchestras around the world like chess pieces. Known as Pimp and Circumspect, they complemented each other perfectly. Howard Denston (also known as Shepherd’s Crook) was a beguiling wide boy from the Bronx who pulled off the shadier deals and lent on unwilling debtors. Totally amoral, he was only turned on by the big deal. Christopher Shepherd, radiating integrity and Old Testament authority, provided the agency’s respectable front.

  Christopher had orchestrated Abby’s career from the start, settling fees, monitoring her promotion, providing encouragement and advice. Abby tended to play what he told her to, because unlike most agents, he was musical, playing the piano and possessing a fine tenor voice. Having starred in many amateur productions, he saw himself very much as Rodolfo in La Bohème. Hence the frock-coat and the pearl tie-pin.

  Christopher had a parental attitude to his artists. He was aware of the insularity of soloists, the insecurity of conductors. He knew that this resulted in huge egos that needed the public far more than the public needed them, and that they responded as much to bullying as encouragement.

  The instant he locked the door of Abby’s dressing-room, she lived up to her L’Appassionata nickname. Dropping the red roses she was putting in the basin, she bounded forward, flinging her arms round his neck, writhing against him, covering his face, that wasn’t obscured by dark brown beard, with kisses.