by Jilly Cooper
Yesterday Taggie had had a wigging from Maria Immaculata.
‘I have seen many couple here seeking babies and you have very good marriage. Your husband love you, but don’t abuse his generousness and take in every limping duck. He may be jealous of Bianca – try to put him, if not first, at least equal.’
Taggie was utterly mortified and as desperate to see Rupert as he to see her. Laying Xavier down in the armchair, she fell into his arms.
‘I’ve been so worried, I love you, I missed you so, so much,’ they cried in unison.
How could he have propositioned Abby, thought Rupert in horror, when all that was true, good and beautiful in the world was in his arms? He was murmuring endearments and was about to kiss her, when Xav woke and started to cry.
‘He missed you as much as I did,’ said Taggie in a choked voice. ‘He cried himself to sleep.’
She stepped back quickly to stop the child falling off the chair. But suddenly incredulous delight sparked in Xavier’s little face. Jibbering with joy, he slid to the floor, swayed on his feet, then, like a man in space, took the first wobbling steps of his life towards Rupert, who leapt forward to catch him just before he fell.
Appearing in the doorway a drowsy Sister Angelica crossed herself. ‘This is a miracle.’
Taggie burst into tears, she knew she shouldn’t push limping ducks on Rupert, but seeing him dropping the proudest kiss in the world on Xav’s black curls, and rubbing his face against Xav’s cheek, as he normally only did with puppies, she couldn’t stop herself.
‘I know it’s awful after you lost all that money at Lloyd’s,’ she sobbed, ‘and spent fortunes coming out here, and we couldn’t afford for him to go to Harrow, but couldn’t we possibly take Xav home as well?’ She stroked Xav’s little hand now barnacled to Rupert’s lapel.
‘I can’t bear to leave him.’
‘Are you sure you can cope with two babies?’ muttered Rupert when he could trust himself to speak at last. ‘They’ll be a hell of a lot of work, and a hell of a lot more red tape.’
Sister Angelica was tearfully crossing herself over another miracle.
‘D’you think Maria Immaculata will throw Xav in as a job-lot if I restore the chapel as well?’ asked Rupert.
‘Dar-ling,’ giggled Taggie reprovingly.
But Rupert had turned back to Xavier, tossing him screaming with delight in the air.
‘Fasten your seat-belt, Xavier Campbell-Black, you’re coming to England.’
Rupert’s euphoria was complete later in the day, when he found a fax at the Red Parrot from Abby saying she’d like to do the interview with Declan. She’d be back from her tour in three weeks. Could he write to her at her New York apartment, and not say anything to Christopher.
‘I hope you get your baby,’ she had added at the end. ‘And he or she makes you and your angelic wife really happy.’
He and she, thought Rupert, jubilantly, and two fingers to The Force of Destiny.
FIVE
Abby, whose tantrums subsided as quickly as they flared up, was woken at midday by an enraged Christopher, who, after interminable delays, had finally arrived in New York, and who immediately chewed her out for last night’s scene. He had dismissed it to Rannaldini as some schoolgirl crush. But he didn’t trust Rannaldini, and even less Rupert, not to blab about it all over New York.
‘We’ve got to cool it for Beth’s sake.’
‘But I need you,’ pleaded Abby who was still groggy from sleeping-pills. ‘At least answer my letters.’
‘They’ve got to stop, too,’ said Christopher hastily.
He couldn’t man his personal fax at all times, and five letters a week reeking of Amarige, Abby’s sweet musky very distinctive scent, and marked personal, were not easily explained away.
‘Sandra’s beginning to get suspicious.’
Sandra was Christopher’s secretary, a plump, knowing blonde, at whom Abby had shouted too often when she was desperate to get through to Christopher.
‘Why doesn’t she send on my fan mail and my clippings? I need some feedback.’
‘Because it’s all answered in the office. Sandra’s perfected your signature so she can even acknowledge favourable reviews.’
‘She’ll be forging my cheques soon.’
Christopher lost his temper.
‘I cannot understand your attitude. A complete powerhouse at Shepherd Denston is devoted to keeping your particular show on the road, so you can concentrate on music, which was what you said you always wanted, and all you do is winge.’
Howie, Howard Denston’s son, who ran the London office, Christopher continued, would meet her at Heathrow, and drive her up to Birmingham where she was playing the Brahms again with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
‘And, for God’s sake, think of the agency’s reputation and wear something long and decorous. The Symphony Hall are generously allowing you to sign CDs in the interval. And remember only sign your name, OK? All those personal inscriptions and “Love from Abigails” just hold up the queue.’
‘You want to excise love from my life. You could fly out to Tokyo. Oh hell,’ she screamed, ‘there’s someone at the door, don’t hang up, please don’t hang up.’
Outside were four smiling waiters, all avid to have a look at Abby, as they wheeled in a massive breakfast for two: champagne, grapefruit topped with strawberries, silver domes over sausages, bacon and eggs, a T-bone for Christopher, croissants and blackcherry jam, which Abby had ordered yesterday, anticipating she and Christopher would be ravenous after a long night of love.
‘I’m sorry,’ sobbed Abby, ‘you’ll have to take it away.’
Rootling around in her bag, she gave them two hundred dollars.
But when she picked up the telephone again, Christopher had gone.
Nor did her spirits rise when she found Buenos Aires Airport so upended by Rannaldini’s fury and his attempts to charter a new aeroplane that her own flight to Heathrow had been grounded by a temporary strike. Abby, who was wearing jeans and a purple T-shirt, had scraped her hair back and hidden her reddened eyes behind huge dark glasses, but she never managed to remain anonymous. A ripple of excitement went round the airport, as the Tannoy started belting out her latest hit. Next minute crowds were mobbing her, yelling ‘L’Appassionata, L’Appassionata’ and nearly starting a riot. Abby then ended up on the same flight as Hermione, who despite her big black hat and her white Chanel suit, was deeply miffed not to be mobbed as well.
Looking disapprovingly at Abby’s ripped shirt and wild hair, from which the purple ribbon had been torn, Hermione said, as they climbed the steps to the plane: ‘You come from a different generation, of course, Abigail, who are more concerned with lights and glitter and showbiz. I couldn’t bring myself to pose nearly naked on a record sleeve. Our generation were only interested in the music.’
Abby was about to snap back that nothing mattered more than the music, when she gave a gasp of joy. One of the inside first-class seats in the left-hand row had been packed with hundreds and hundreds of scented yellow roses. Christopher hadn’t forgotten. He had done this in the early days of their affaire, when he occasionally had been unable to travel with her.
Then the Furies moved in as Hermione, too, gave a gasp of joy.
‘Who put those lovely rosebuds beside my seat?’
‘They’re for me.’
‘Mais non,’ an Air France steward shimmied up. ‘Elles sont pour Madame Harefield.’
An ecstatic Hermione then asked the steward, Jean-Claude – ‘what a macho name’ – to put the roses in water so Abby could have the seat next to her. She then proceeded to read out the accompanying card from Christopher in which he said he was so jealous of anyone sitting beside Hermione that he felt compelled to fill the seat with flowers.
‘I know he’d have made an exception if he’d known you were going to be on this plane, Abigail,’ Hermione went on graciously. ‘Then he says, let’s see, oh yes, “Meeting you, Dame Hermione,�
� actually I’m not a dame yet, “was like a dream come true, I can’t wait for our next encounter.”’
A ruse is a ruse is a ruse, thought Abby bleakly.
Hermione must pay excess baggage on her hand luggage, she reflected a second later, as every steward was summoned to stow away squashy fur coats, make-up bags, endless duty-free gifts ‘for my partner Bobby and our son Cosmo – I never come home empty-handed’, into every available crevice.
‘And I expect a nice glass of bubbly and some caviar, Jean-Claude, the moment we take off.’
Abby cuddled her Strad case. It was like travelling with a Renoir. She even took it into the John on flights.
Those are exactly the words he once wrote to me, she thought numbly, as Hermione lovingly replaced Christopher’s note in its little envelope.
‘By the way I’ve got a present for you, Abigail.’
Perhaps I’ve misjudged her, thought Abby, until Hermione handed over a large signed photograph of herself and a tape of her singing Strauss’s Last Four Songs.
‘I was so touched,’ went on Hermione smugly, ‘that Rupert Campbell-Black flew all the way from Bogotá to hear me in the Mahler.’
‘He came to sign me up,’ protested Abby. Oh, what was the use? ‘I must say for an older guy he’s drop-dead gorgeous.’
‘Did you notice his beautiful hands?’ said Hermione as though it was the discovery of the century.
‘Oh, get real,’ muttered Abby. ‘He’s beautiful all over.’
‘He has the most beautiful hands.’
Thank God, the plane was taxiing along the runway.
‘What’s his wife like?’ asked Abby.
‘Not a woman of substance,’ said Hermione firmly. ‘That’s why he’s drawn to, well, more sophisticated and mature women.’
‘Like yourself,’ said Abby, looking round for her sickbag.
‘Indeed,’ Hermione bowed her head. ‘Oh splendid, here comes Jean-Claude with the bubbly.’
Just managing not to throttle her, particularly when she continued to sing The Force of Destiny, Abby pretended to sleep, brooding on the tyranny of her life, bound like Ixion on the wheel of fortune-making. She had been excruciatingly homesick when she’d been sent away to Paris and Russia. She had never had time for real friendships with other girls, or going out dancing or on dates, dickering over lipsticks, cooking disgusting dinners to impress boyfriends. The grind of touring had just been bearable when Christopher had been with her. Now she only had endless hours in bridal suites to contemplate her isolation.
The final straw, when they finally reached Heathrow, was that Howie wasn’t there to meet her. Rosalie Brandon, his deputy, was full of apologies. Benny Basanovich, the agency’s star pianist, had thumped a conductor in Frankfurt, and Howie had had to fly off and sort it out.
‘He sent you his best, Abby. There’s a car waiting to take you up to Birmingham. I promised Howie’ (Rosalie looked faintly embarrassed), ‘I’d escort Mrs Harefield home to Rutminster. We’re all frightfully excited about the possibility of having her as a new client,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll catch up with you tomorrow. You’ll love the CBSO.’
Abby slumped in the front seat of the limousine, cruising at ninety up the Ml. Outside the spring barley shivered like animal fur, cow parsley tossed on the verges, the white spikes of blossom on the hawthorn hedges rose and fell like Benny Basanovich’s fingers, lambs slept beside their mothers, cattle grazed towards the setting sun. Occasionally an adorable little village or a huge house at the end of a long, tree-lined avenue, flashed by.
All life going on without me, thought Abby despairingly.
Inside the car was as coolly air-conditioned as the bottom of the sea.
Birmingham temporarily cheered Abby up. She was deeply impressed by the orchestra and the awesome acoustics of Symphony Hall. Her hero, Simon Rattle, however, was in Vienna and the guest conductor was a charming wily old fox called Sir Rodney Macintosh. Short, balding, very rotund, with twinkling pale blue, bloodshot eyes, and a pink beaming face above a neat white beard, he wore a black smock, purple track-suit bottoms and gymshoes with holes cut out for his corns.
Normally musical director of the Rutminster Symphony Orchestra, Sir Rodney was drawing to the end of a long, distinguished career and knew everyone in the music world.
‘How did you get on with Madame Harefield?’ was his first question as he gave Abby tickling kisses on both cheeks.
‘I thought she was a cow.’
Rodney looked shocked. ‘That’s very unkind.’
Oh God, I’ve goofed, thought Abby.
‘Very unkind to cows,’ said Rodney. ‘They’re such innocent, sweet-natured animals,’ and he roared with such infectious laughter that Abby joined in.
Leading her to her dressing-room, he waddled ahead, chattering all the time.
‘Hermione didn’t go to a very good charm-school, did she, darling? If you want a laugh see her sing Leonore in plum-coloured breeches, got a bum on her bigger than Oliver Hardy.
‘I hear Rannaldini was conducting in BA’ he went on. ‘Defininitely top of the Hitler parade, darling, a cold sensualist, driven by lust that never touches the heart. Here’s your dressing-room, next to mine, which is frightfully posh and normally belongs to Simon Rattle. Like a peep?’
‘Oh yes please,’ said Abby, admiring the grand piano draped in tapestries, the sofas, the scores, the big bowl of fruit on a marble table and the photographs of beautiful children in silver frames. She would have a room just like that when she became a conductor.
Her own dressing-room was full of flowers. Christopher, she thought, with a bound of hope. But they were only orange lilies from Howie, ‘Sorry babe, catch up with you later’; red roses and ‘Good Luck’ from Rupert; bluebells and freesias from Declan O’Hara, ‘When shall we two meet?’ and finally great branches of white lilac pouring forth sweet heady scent, ‘In trembling anticipation’ from Rodney.
Abby hugged him. If only she had a grandfather like him.
‘I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes, darling.’
Abby was very nervous. She’d been up since six practising in her hotel bedroom. Between them, Rannaldini and Christopher had destroyed her confidence. But Rodney was such a tonic. Although he had been known to crunch glacier mints, filched from the leader during the cadenzas of soloists he disliked, he couldn’t have been sweeter to Abby.
‘You are an artist, dear child, play at whatever tempo you feel correct and we will accompany you. Isn’t it splendid?’ he added, as he led her into the vast soaring hall. ‘Pity about the cherry-red chairs, ghastly colour, but fortunately here they’re always covered in bums.’
Unlike Rannaldini, Rodney was also adored by the musicians. Having kissed the leader on both cheeks, he clambered laboriously onto the rostrum, collapsed onto a chair, mopped his brow on a lemon-scented, blue-spotted handkerchief, and beamed round at everybody.
‘That’s the hard part over. So lovely to be back with my favourite orchestra. You all look so divine and play so wonderfully, it doesn’t matter a scrap I can’t remember any of your names.’
The orchestra giggled.
‘Now I don’t need to introduce this ravishing child, she’s had a frightful time in BA with Rannaldini so you’ve got to be particularly nice to her.’
The orchestra gave Abby a friendly round of applause. Artists in their own right, they were not overawed by soloists.
Rodney opened the score and raised his stick.
‘Now, please play together, boys and girls, or I won’t know where to put my beat.’
Abby’s knees would hardly hold her up in the long wait before she came in, but from her first note, magazines and books were put down, crosswords abandoned, tax returns set aside, and the musicians looked at each other in awe as the raw, sad sweetness pierced the tidal waves of orchestral sound.
‘Ravishing, my dear,’ Rodney called a halt, halfway through the first movement. ‘Brass dearies, it’d be nice if the diminuendo could be slightl
y more pronounced, i.e. shut up a bit.’
Then when a vital bassoon entry was missed: ‘Agonizing over ten across, dear boy, it’s Laocoon. I always have trouble spelling it, now you can concentrate on Brahms.’
Much of the rehearsal was spent telling them about Princess Diana, whom he’d sat next to last night, ‘such a charmer’, and nodding off on the rostrum while Abby and the orchestra played on regardless.
‘Which orchestra am I playing with?’ he asked, being woken by a particularly noisy tutti.
‘The CBSO, Maestro,’ said the leader grinning.
‘Ah yes. Now boys and girls, why are we so happy? Because Uncle Rodney’s in charge. Tiddle urn, tiddle urn, pom pom, it was together when I sang it.’
Rodney lifted his stick again.
He had the weirdest beat, very high and wavery like a slow drunken flash of lightning. The best maestros, like Rannaldini, had a distinct click at the bottom of the down beat, so the orchestra knew exactly when to come in. But when Rodney was on the rostrum, the leader gave a nod to start everyone off, but it was very discreet because the orchestra had such respect for him.
‘I may go to sleep in the cadenza,’ he warned Abby.
‘When shall we wake you up, Sir Rodney?’ asked the leader.
‘When you hear me snore.’
The orchestra were in stitches, but despite such jokes and the legendary blasé-ness of musicians, they all stood up and cheered Abby at the end, and they were joined by people who’d crept into the seats all over the auditorium.
Abby burst into tears and fled to her dressing-room.
‘Rannaldini should be shot,’ said the leader furiously.
Rodney mopped Abby up over a cup of Earl Grey tea, insisting she have one of the sticky cream cakes he’d bought in white cardboard boxes for the entire orchestra.
‘Don’t worry about this evening, we will get ecstatic reviews, because you are breathtakingly beautiful, and because I am old and have a beard. What an easy way to eminence – to grow a beard. If you’re free, we might have a little supper after the concert.’
