by Jilly Cooper
Abby laughed. ‘He is single if his wife’s just left him.’
‘Couldn’t happen to a nastier man.’ Rupert unfolded her Union Jack napkin, casually caressing her thighs, as he laid it across them.
‘Why does Rannaldini detest you so much?’ asked Abby. ‘I’ve just heard him telling Christopher you were the beegest sheet unhung.’
‘I didn’t know one hung sheets any more,’ Rupert smiled blandly at Abby. ‘Mrs Bodkin, our ancient housekeeper, likes to hang them out in the wind, but I thought you Americans used massive tumble dryers.’
Abby burst out laughing.
‘You still haven’t explained why he hates you.’
‘His wife, whom he bullied and cuckolded shamelessly, has just run off with one of my jockeys. He thinks I orchestrated it.’
‘Did you?’
Rupert shook his head. ‘You should see my jockey, he’s so pretty everyone wants to ride him.’
‘Why d’you hate Rannaldini?’
‘He can’t stop flaunting the fact that his trainer is the little sheet who ran off with my first wife.’
‘Did she marry him?’
‘No, someone else.’
‘How very complicated,’ said Abby losing interest.
She was quite short sitting down, noticed Rupert, her great height was all in her legs. Her pale face was shiny with sweat, black circles hammocked the bags under the tigerish eyes. Beneath her chin and on her collar bone, her Strad had left red marks as though Dracula had been having a good gnaw. Nanny would have recommended a good dose, reflected Rupert. She was far coarser than Taggie, but still hellishly sexy.
The waiters were plonking down carafes of wine. Obscuring Christopher’s view with a large vase of red dahlias, Rupert filled up Abby’s glass.
‘I know you probably hate to talk about work,’ he went on, having listened carefully to two Australian pouffs in ecstasies in the gents at the Opera House, ‘but I’ve never heard the Brahms so lyrically played. I wept in the slow movement. The last movement really captured the Hungarian idiom and in the first movement, I never believed passages in tenths could be so clearly executed, but with such a beautiful sound. You must have a very big stretch,’ he picked up Abby’s rather large, stubby fingers, ‘for someone with such a little hand.’
Abby blushed with pleasure. She’d written this guy off as drop-dead handsome beefcake and he really knew about music. Flustered, she snatched her hand away and grabbed a piece of bread.
‘No bread, Abigail,’ boomed Christopher, glaring through the red dahlias like Moses on the wrong side of the Burning Bush. He knew how soloists could blow up, eating to stave off loneliness in hotel bedrooms.
Biting her huge red cushiony lower lip instead, Abby studied the menu.
‘I’ll have spaghetti carbonara,’ she told the waiter defiantly.
‘You will not,’ snapped Christopher, ordering Dover sole and radicchio salad for both of them. ‘And no sauce tartare,’ he added bossily.
‘Odd denial from such a tartar,’ said Rupert, thickly buttering a large piece of white bread, sprinkling salt on it in the Argentine fashion, and handing it to Abby. ‘Rannaldini was going so bloody fast, I nearly had a bet on the last movement. How much would he earn a night for conducting?’
‘About one hundred and fifty thousand bucks.’
Rupert was appalled.
‘That’s more than my best stallion gets for covering a mare. “Con” is the operative word.’
Remembering Abby’s c.v., Rupert gazed into her eyes. They were the same pale yellow as the winter jasmine growing round the drawing-room window at Penscombe, but the irises were ringed with black, and the brilliant whites lined with the thickest dark lashes. Rannaldini had compelling hypnotic eyes, too; perhaps it was essential for a maestro.
‘I hear you want to conduct.’
‘So I don’t have to put up with schmucks like tonight.’
‘Isn’t it enough being a genius at the violin?’
‘Genius is never enough,’ said Abby haughtily. ‘I want power.’
‘Nice scent,’ Rupert buried his nose in her wrist. ‘What’s it called – raw ambition? Your poxy agent doesn’t want you to come on Declan’s programme. You’d enjoy it. Declan’s a lovely man, and Edith Spink’s on our board. She’s a lovely man too.’
‘Spink,’ squeaked Abby in excitement, ‘I just adore her Warrior Woman Suite, a genuine talent, Spink, even if slender.’
‘I’d hardly call Edith slender. She weighed in at sixteen stone, all of it muscle, at our last board meeting. When she came to my stag-party, she drank everyone else under the table.’
‘You’re the dopiest guy.’ Again Abby burst out laughing, leaning back as the waiter laid a fish knife and fork on either side of her Union Jack table mat.
‘Don’t you have any control over your life?’ taunted Rupert.
Abby shrugged and drained her glass.
‘I live on a treadmill. Hotel bedroom, airport, concert hall, airport, hotel, recording studio, recital, back to the airport. I know the flight schedules better than the Brahms tonight. I’ve slept in the most beautiful suites in the world, but had no-one to share them with.’
‘Lay down your Brahms, and surrender to mine,’ said Rupert lightly.
Then he looked deep into her eyes, holding them, letting his own narrow slightly – corny old tricks he hadn’t played for years.
‘That is a terrible, terrible waste. How did you meet your gaoler?’
‘My dad died early. He didn’t make any dough, he never verbalized his feelings, but he cried when he listened to Beethoven and I loved him. Mom isn’t Jewish, right? But she became more of a Jewish Momma after she married Dad. She was the one who pushed me. She still calls after every concert trying to control my life. Christopher heard me playing and signed me up when I was twelve. He took me out of school in the States, found me a good teacher for a year, then packed me off to the Conservatoires in Paris and Russia.’
Rupert let her run on. It was quite interesting, and he liked looking at her face which had great strength and at her breasts rising out of the halter neck.
‘I never had the life of a normal child,’ she added finally, ‘music was the only thing that mattered.’
‘And Christopher,’ Rupert plunged his knife into his steak, releasing the blood, ‘how long have you been sleeping with him?’
Abby looked up in terror, eyes staring, totally thrown.
‘How’d you know? Please don’t say anything. Christopher’s phobic about scandal. His wife’s been so darling to me. Mind you, she’s a yachneh,’ then, at Rupert’s raised eyebrows, added dismissively, ‘a housewife with large boobs.’
‘I’ve got one of those,’ said Rupert approvingly. ‘Jolly nice too.’
But Abby was too distraught to laugh. Leaving three-quarters of her sole uneaten, ignoring Christopher’s and Hermione’s looks of disapproval, she lit a cigarette.
‘Christopher never sleeps with her,’ she whispered defiantly.
‘A husband,’ said Rupert idly,’ is a man who tells his wife he never sleeps with his mistress, and his mistress he never sleeps with his wife. I used to be like that. I’ve got a past longer than the Bible.’
‘What happened?’ The burning glow of Abby’s cigarette was jumping round like a firefly in her shaking hand.
‘I married an angel,’ said Rupert.
Abby’s pallor was lard-like now. Beads of sweat kept breaking out on her upper lip and her forehead.
‘Why isn’t she with you?’ she said sullenly.
‘She’s in Bogotá, we’re adopting a baby.’
‘How very caring of you,’ Hermione could no longer bear to be excluded from Rupert’s conversation, ‘to take on a disadvantaged youngster,’ she added warmly. ‘If I wasn’t concertizing all year, Bobby, my partner and I have often thought of adopting a little sibling for Cosmo.’
‘Cosmo’d probably eat it,’ muttered Rupert.
Hermione’s son cre
ated more havoc than most earthquakes.
‘Of course Cosmo is super-gifted,’ sighed Hermione. ‘He could inhibit a less bright child. He’s such a plucky little horseman, too, Rupert, I thought you might give him some riding lessons.’
Rupert laughed at a scowling Rannaldini.
‘Lysander’d better do that, he’s the brilliant rider.’
Passers-by kept peering in from the street outside, then leaping up and down in ecstasy and pointing as they recognized Abby. In the restaurant, diners kept coming over seeking her autograph, and then noticing Hermione and Rannaldini wanted theirs as well. Hermione kept singing the same doom-laden bars from The Force of Destiny.
Rannaldini sipped white wine very slowly and stared covertly at Rupert. Ironically, until Rupert had got involved with Lysander, Rannaldini had always longed to be friends with him, aware how much they had in common.
Both men were extremely successful, intensely competitive, insanely jealous, spoilt and, ultimately, insecure. Both had had mothers who hadn’t loved them, and had taken it out on women ever since. Except that Rupert had got lucky with Taggie. Deep down Rannaldini was bitterly ashamed of being unable to sustain a relationship.
Now he couldn’t take his eyes off Rupert, searching for grey hairs, red veins, spare tyres, some sign that the peacock feathers were beginning to moult. Maddeningly there was none. He was dying to have a go at Rupert, but didn’t want to betray his longing or the white heat of his animosity in front of Christopher.
Christopher was hopping mad. Everything had gone wrong, he loathed not being in control. He’d wanted Abby to be admiring and respectful to Rannaldini so he could do a number on Hermione, but all either woman could do was to drool over that arrogant, mischief-making Brit., who was now giving Abby his card, and writing the fax number of his hotel in Bogotá on the back.
‘I hear you’ve got Benny Basanovich on your books,’ Rannaldini interrupted his thoughts.
But Christopher didn’t want to talk about Benny. There were many instrumentalists and singers on Shepherd Denston’s books who would profit from an introduction to Rannaldini. That was another reason for signing up the great maestro but that could come later. Tonight all he wanted to talk about was Rannaldini.
As Hermione had gone off to the Ladies in a huff because more people were asking for Abby’s autograph, Christopher said softly to Rannaldini, ‘I want to put the two most explosive talents in the world together.’
Rannaldini glanced at Abby. She was a spoilt brat, and not his type. But he’d always been turned on by indifference. He’d enjoy taming her, making her jump, reducing her to crawling submission.
He also wanted that Mozart CD deal, because he suspected the New World Orchestra were not going to be the push-over he’d expected. The board had refused him the total hiring and firing rights he’d had with his last orchestra. It would be good to have a mega-record contract to bargain with.
He wanted the deal, but not Christopher as an agent. Christopher, he decided, was an avaricious thug.
‘I’ll have a dessert if you will, Christopher.’ Hermione had returned from the Ladies, face repainted, reeking of Arpège.
‘Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on desserts,’ quipped Christopher gallantly, then whispered, ‘I want to set you free from Rannaldini, I want Harefield to be an even greater name than Callas.’
Hermione bridled. ‘My voice is considered far more lovely than Maria’s.’
‘I said a greater name, Hermione.’
‘I’m not interested in money,’ lied Hermione. ‘My only desire is to bring music to the masses.’
That was a good sign, Christopher thought. She’d just put her hand on his crotch, but he removed it gently with a little squeeze and a tickle of the palm, in case it met Abby’s hand coming the other way.
‘I get as much of a charge if Solti says: “You’re wonderful, Hermione”, as to hear builders on scaffolding shouting: “‘Allo ‘Ermione, loved your last halbum, bort it for the cover, but I loiked the contents”.’ Hermione’s cockney accent was quite frightful. ‘It’s the little things that matter, like the ambassador, this evening, saying you’re even lovelier in the flesh, I hear that so often, I don’t know why.’
Abby caught Rupert’s eyes and giggled, then picked up Christopher’s hand, examining the fingernails, until Christopher snatched it away, asking sharply what she was doing.
‘Look for pastry crumbs, you’ve got fingers in so many pies.’
‘Shepherd’s pie,’ Rupert refilled her glass. Then, dropping his voice, whispered, ‘Christopher wouldn’t do business with me.’
‘He’s so grand, he only talks to God.’
‘And Rannaldini answers, I suppose.’
Abby nodded. ‘Christopher wants me to record all the Mozart concertos with Rannaldini.’
‘I wouldn’t. A beautiful pianist who was recording Beethoven with him topped herself two weeks ago.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Rachel Grant.’
‘I’ve heard her play. She was a wonderful musician.’
‘And Rannaldini was terrible to his wife Kitty.’ For a second Rupert shed his flip manner. ‘Don’t mess with him, sweetheart, he’s evil, he’ll break you.’
Hermione, in between mouthfuls of chocolate mousse, was humming The Force of Destiny again.
‘I had fifteen curtain calls, when I sang Leonora at La Scala. D’you remember, Rannaldini?’
‘We could have a ball if you did Declan,’ murmured Rupert. He’d had far too much to drink. His message was quite unequivocal.
Gazing into his beautiful, predatory, unsmiling face, which for a second seemed unnervingly like Rannaldini’s, Abby thought how impossible it would be to resist him, if he really put on the pressure, and how gorgeous it would be just to take off with him into the Pampas.
Rupert heard himself saying; ‘God, I’d love to sleep with you.’
‘I don’t sleep.’ Abby tossed back her black hair.
‘Well, have insomnia with me then.’
They both jumped as Rannaldini’s mobile rang.
‘Si, si, check eet again, by that time I weel be weeth you.’
Switching it off, Rannaldini smiled round the table.
‘My Leer ees grounded, so I charter Mexican jet, one cannot be too careful. I am so relieved we all escape calamity.’
‘What d’you mean?’ snapped Rupert.
‘There is legend,’ said Rannaldini silkily, ‘that once the great chandelier fall when they perform The Force of Destiny, keeling many, many people—’
‘I can’t remember who was playing Alvaro,’ interrupted Hermione. ‘But they say the Leonora wasn’t nearly as good as me.’
‘Always eet breeng terrible luck,’ continued Rannaldini. ‘Tonight chandelier stay put, but who knows where the ill luck will fall. My orchestra were terrified,’ he nodded coldly at Abby as if to dismiss any complaints of Julian’s. ‘That why they look shell-shocked and thees is why I ’ave jet checked three times just een case.’
Rupert felt icicles dripping down his spine. How could he have left darling Taggie by herself in Bogotá? A handful of nuns was no defence, she might be kidnapped, mugged or raped by some junkie. He should have put her in the hotel safe with the adoption papers.
‘Your car is waiting, Maestro.’ It was the head waiter.
‘Are you coming?’ Rannaldini turned to Christopher, then added to Abby with a sadistic smirk, ‘Christopher hitch a lift weeth me back to New York.’
‘I don’t understand,’ stammered Abby.
Christopher got to his feet.
‘I’ve got a helluva lot on in New York and meetings first thing,’ he said placatingly. ‘I’ll get over to the UK later in the week.’
‘Red Eye flight, Shepherd’s delight,’ said Abby meditatively.
Then she went beserk.
‘You son of a bitch,’ she screamed. ‘You never intended to stop over here, or come with me to Englan
d.’ And she hurled her glass of red wine at him so it trickled like blood down his white shirt.
Hermione was suddenly looking very excited. ‘Shall we have a quiet drink in my room?’ she said, turning to Rupert. But Rupert had gone.
Cursing himself for not stopping to recharge his mobile, Rupert raced for the telephone. He was unable to get a squawk out of the Red Parrot. Terrified some ghastly fate had befallen Taggie, he urged his taxi-driver, who drove like the great Ayrton Senna anyway, to go even faster, overtaking Rannaldini deep in conversation with that smug bastard Christopher on the way.
Once at the airport Rupert managed to commandeer Rannaldini’s plane which was revving up on the runway.
Rannaldini had been so gratuitously offensive to the Mexican crew and insulted their honour by insisting on a third security-check, that their swarthy piratical captain was only too happy to accept yet another bribe. I’ll be so broke soon, thought Rupert ruefully, I’ll have to take up conducting.
Turning round, the Mexican captain alerted flight control, and flew off to Bogotá. Seeing Rannaldini and Christopher foaming on the runway, Rupert flicked them another V-sign. Declan could do his own negotiating in future.
Having fretted himself into a frazzle, Rupert reached the Red Parrot as dawn was breaking despairingly over the poverty of the city.
As Alberto, yawning and still wearing his grey greasy vest, unlocked the door, Rupert grabbed him by the shoulders.
‘Is my wife OK?’
‘Si, si.’
Relief fuelled Rupert’s rage.
‘Why the fuck doesn’t your telephone work? I suppose you haven’t paid the bill, you idle sod.’
Alberto shrugged. ‘Possibly small earthquake.’
‘Earthquake!’ Rupert’s fingers bit into Alberto’s plump shoulders until he winced.
‘Only small one, Meesis Campbell-Black want to be near Bianca, so she sleep at convent.’
Rupert was so thankful he gave the rest of his cash to the beggars already out on the streets.
He found Taggie still in yesterday’s jeans and an old black polo-neck. She had spent the night in a chair, with Xavier, still clutching his teddy bear and his racing car, in her arms.
