by Jilly Cooper
In the afternoon, the RSO, who were supposed to provide music for nine counties and who had at least two away fixtures a week, were due to set off to Starhampton in the West Country. Two coaches had been laid on for the hundred-mile journey. The first coach, which included non-smokers and non-drinkers, a bridge four who played regularly together and a high-minded group, headed by Hilary, who sang madrigals, was known as ‘Pond Life’. The second, which included drinkers, smokers and brass players was known as ‘Moulin Rouge’.
The Musicians’ Union is one of the few unions virtually untouched by Thatcher’s reforms. Steve Smithson set out on every trip armed with a tape measure (because any gig over seven miles away entitled the musicians to a meal allowance), a stop watch so they got sufficient breaks the other end and a thermometer to make sure the hall, cathedral or school in which they were playing reached the required seventy degrees.
Before an away fixture there was always an argy-bargy between Steve and Nicholas, the orchestra manager, who was known to the musicians as ‘Knickers’.
Orchestras are sustained by silly jokes. When poor Nicholas was unhappy and stressed out, which was most of the time, they all chorused ‘Knickers Down’, or ‘Knickers in a Twist’. Today Knickers had caught Steve trying to persuade the bus drivers to leave at one and dawdle, instead of one-thirty, so that the musicians could claim for a lunch allowance.
It was now twenty-nine minutes past one and Knickers stood beside the artists’ entrance of H.P. Hall, ticking off names in a tartan notebook as musicians clambered aboard the two coaches.
By one-thirty only Little Jenny was missing. As she played at the back of the second violins, it wouldn’t be a major crisis if she didn’t show up. So the buses set off, splashing down the High Street out into the angelic springtime, stopping to pick up Simon Painshaw from his bachelor pad in the Close and Hilary from her thatched cottage, and Barry, the Principal Bass, from his converted barn, with his beautiful new second wife running barefoot across the lawn to kiss him goodbye.
After yesterday’s downpour, cricket pitches under water glittered in the sunshine and puddles reflected thundery grey sky, pale green trees and clashing pink hawthorns.
It was an incontrovertible fact that however capable the RSO were of pulling rabbits out of hats and playing superbly when they reached their destination, many of them behaved like hyperactive children before and afterwards.
Usually Viking drove to concerts in his battered BMW, which had been fitted with a hooter that played Don Juan’s horn call. Into the car he would cram Juno, Blue, Randy, Dixie and Cherub, so they could all apply for a petrol allowance, or on occasion, a train fare.
But, at the last moment, Juno had cried off with flu. Finding a replacement at such short notice had added to Knickers’ problems.
As it was also Viking’s birthday, he and the Celtic Mafia decided to travel on Moulin Rouge. Viking, who’d been blasting his lip away moonlighting with a local jazz band, hadn’t been to bed and was drunk when he got onto the coach. Freed from Juno’s beady chaperonage, he was soon pouncing on every girl in sight.
‘That guy’s got no stop button,’ observed Candy, who was sitting beside her friend Clare, who was flipping through Hello! and Tatler recognizing all her friends.
‘When he’s plastered he’ll bonk anything,’ Clare lowered her voice, ‘Juno gave him a Black & Decker for his birthday, such an affront to his manhood. I think he’s miserable.’
‘Then why does he leap to her defence whenever Appassionata has a go at her?’
‘Must be elf-obsessed,’ giggled Candy. ‘Oh, there’s you,’ she peered at Tatler. ‘That ball gown’s great.’
From the back of the coach came shouts of laughter and the snatch of a rugger song, followed by Cherub’s high-pitched giggle which set everyone off. Blue sat slightly apart sipping malt whisky, immersed in Alan Clark’s diaries. Randy and Dixie were obviously determined to catch up with Viking, who was now snogging an overjoyed Nellie the Nympho.
In the Pond Life coach in front, as they drove through the outskirts of Bath, the madrigal group could be seen making silly faces.
‘April is in my mistress’ face and July in her eyes,’ sang Lionel in a light tenor as he gazed at a simpering Hilary.
Also in the group was Simon Painshaw, his red dreadlocks flying as he tossed his head in time to the music, and Molly Armitage, a rank-and-file viola player. Known as ‘Militant Moll’, Molly had short spiky hair, an aggrieved face, a triangular figure, with narrow, twitching shoulders falling to massive hips, and thought everything degraded women. She was having an affaire with Ninion, Second Oboe, who was half her size and normally very meek. Molly, however, had so fired him up that he had become very assertive and wanted to oust Simon as First Oboe. Militant Moll also wanted Ninion to leave his wife and take her name.
‘Fa, la, la, la, la, la,’ sang Militant Moll, gazing into Ninion’s blinking fieldmouse eyes.
‘Lardi, da, da, da, da, da,’ giggled Nellie, buttoning up her dress as she collapsed behind Candy and Clare. ‘That Hilary is such a bitch. Look at her vamping Lionel in her pie-frill collar. She gave me another bollocking about my cleavage last night. “You are not allowed to show flesh, Nell, we are all supposed to look black at distance.”’
Nellie caught Hilary’s mincing whine to perfection.
‘I’ll black her eye. You wait till she sees what I’m wearing tonight, the slit up my skirt meets my plunge head-on. I wonder how long it’ll be before L’Appassionata is shoehorned into one of Nosy Parker’s ghastly ge-owns.’
‘Wonder how long it will be before Gorgeous George shoehorns her out of the job,’ said Clare. ‘You can’t get away with V-signs on the platform, even if it’s only at Dixie.’
‘Taking my name in vain as usual. Any of you girls want a drink?’
Dixie armed with paper cups and a bottle of Southern Comfort, was swaying above them. His normally red face and neck were now as brown as a builder’s from so much free time playing golf and reading the Sun on the flat roof of H.P.Hall.
‘There you are again,’ Candy had found another picture of Clare, this time at a wedding in Hello!.
‘And there’s my wicked brother and there’s Mummy,’ cried Clare.
Dixie glanced at Hello!.
‘I wouldn’t mind getting orf with Mummah myself,’ he mocked, as he handed paper cups to both girls.
Clare giggled. Despite that gha-a-a-astly accent, she thought Dixie frightfully attractive.
Dixie also had the ‘hots’ for Clare. Despite those awful corduroy culottes and the matelot jersey tugged down to cover a big bum, and an Alice band holding her brains in, Clare was a natural blonde with lovely skin and slender ankles.
‘I’ll fix Lady Clare,’ Dixie muttered to Randy on his return. ‘I’ll wipe Daddy’s smile off his face in Hello!.’
As Candy emerged from the coach 100, which was shaped like an upended coffin, Viking, ready for new sport, called out: ‘That’s a gorgeous T-shirt.’
‘On special offer in Parker’s this week,’ said Candy.
‘All my offers are special,’ retorted Viking, pulling her onto his knee.
Abby, who still hadn’t had time to buy a car, hired one to drive to Starhampton. Popping into the hall to pick up a black satin trouser suit from the conductor’s room, she found Little Jenny in floods, her round face red from the hairdresser, her brown hair a mass of Pre-Raphaelite curls.
‘They kept me under the dryer so long I missed the bus. Knickers’ll murder me.’
‘No, he won’t, hop in,’ said Abby. ‘You can remind me to drive on the left. Have you had any lunch? There are sandwiches in the glove compartment.’
It soon became clear that Jenny was thrilled not to be going on the coaches.
‘If you ride in Pond Life, Hilary and Molly sneer at you. It’s all right going there on Moulin Rouge, at least you can smoke, but it’s terrifying coming back, all the guys pounce on you.’
‘Who does?’ asked Ab
by.
‘El Creepo and Carmine Jones,’ Jenny bit into an egg-and-cress sandwich. ‘They both told me I’d get the job if I went to bed with them,’ she shuddered.
‘That’s gross,’ said Abby in horror. ‘Who else?’
‘The Celtic Mafia. They all think they’re God’s gift. All brass players are chauvinist pigs and homophobic. They despise Simon because he’s gay and Ninion because he’s gentle. Dixie and Randy are the worst. The other day,’ Jenny went absolutely scarlet, ‘the coach was driving past a sewage farm, and Dixie looked round at me, and shouted, “Close your legs, woman.” I was so embarrassed. That’s George Hungerford’s new place.’
Up an avenue of limes, Abby could see a large red Georgian house, big enough to be a school or a mental home. No doubt George would convert it, flog it and move on.
‘The changing rooms are a nightmare,’ went on Jenny, tucking into cucumber-and-tunafish. ‘Every time you take your clothes off, you feel the scorn. I know I’m overweight, but they make you feel like an outcast. And none of them seem interested in learning to play better. They accuse me of being a creep if I take my music home, or if I practise during the break. And they’re so awful to conductors.’
‘Don’t I know it,’ sighed Abby, desperate for reassurance.
‘Oh, they don’t like you because they hate taking orders from a woman. I think it’s mean,’ said Jenny, and having finished all the sandwiches, she fell asleep.
As Abby drove towards the slowly sinking sun, the countryside changed. White houses with grey roofs replaced the thatched cottages. The verges became banks filled with anemones and violets. Fields, divided by winding streams lined by osiers, rose into rounded hills. Wild garlic was taking over from fading bluebells. She must thank Cherub for his flowers, and she must fight on and restore some idealism to the RSO and protect people like Simon, Ninion and poor Little Jenny.
She arrived at Starhampton Town Hall as the instruments were being unloaded from a huge grey van with ‘Rutminster Symphony Orchestra’ written in red letters on the side. Barry was worried about a missing double bass which had already been unloaded. Carmine Jones was having a row with Charlton Handsome, the stage manager, whom he claimed had dented his trumpet.
‘You’ll bloody well have to pay for it.’
Viking was on Knickers’s mobile calling Juno.
‘Hi Shweetheart, howsh Nugent?’
As Abby followed the winding passages backstage, she could see through a door marked ‘Ladies of the Orchestra’, musicians hanging up black dresses from Next, Monsoon and Laura Ashley, and taking instruments out of cases, which also contained dusters, Lockets for sore throats, Ibuleve for aching backs, apples, fruit drinks in oblong cartons and pictures of husbands, boyfriends and children.
Having driven here with Abby, Jenny was delighted to find herself an unaccustomed centre of attention.
‘What was she like?’
‘OK, she shared her sandwiches with me. I think she’s lonely and wanted someone to talk to.’
After a quick rehearsal and dash into Starhampton for something to eat (and in the Celtic Mafia’s case to drink), the orchestra emerged transformed and mysteriously glamorous in their tails and black dresses to face a packed hall.
Both Hilary and Peggy Parker had a fit when they saw Nellie’s slit skirt fall open to reveal a red suspender belt and black fishnet stockings. Peggy Parker’s piggy little eyes were soon distracted by Francis Fairchild who played on the second desk of the First Violins. A wonderful musician, Francis was known as the ‘Good Loser’, because he was always mislaying his possessions. Tonight he had lost his black shoes, and padded onto the platform with black socks tugged over his brown shoes.
The Magic Flute overture fizzed along. The provinces were crazy about Mozart, and the audience were looking forward to his Second Horn Concerto. But just as Abby was returning to the platform, she heard crashes and shouting coming from the Green Room.
Rushing in, she found Lionel, Nicholas, Miles, Charlton Handsome, the Pond Life driver and two stage hands in dinner-jackets trying to restrain Viking, who was plainly out of his skull. Seeing Abby, he shook them off.
‘Maestro,’ mockingly he bowed, his slitty eyes going in all directions as he swayed in front of her, ‘let me play, I know I can play the concert.’
The scores of Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto were kept stacked in the van for any emergency. The sneering bully boy, Carmine Jones, despite his dented trumpet, would be more than happy to play it. Quinton Mitchell, the Third Horn, who badly wanted Viking’s job, was equally happy to stand in for him and play the Mozart. But Abby hadn’t mugged up the Haydn, and despite his disruptive behaviour, she still carried a flickering flashlight for Viking.
‘OK, if you figure you can do it, go ahead.’
It was a terrifying gamble, drink stops tongues and fingers co-ordinating. Throughout the concerto, over her left shoulder, Abby was aware of Viking swaying like a white poplar in a high wind. But he played flawlessly as though the shade of his hero Dennis Brain was lovingly guiding his breath and his long fingers. Perhaps it was his sadness over Juno, thought Abby wistfully, which made the middle movement unbearably poignant.
Having glassily acknowledged the roars of applause, however, Viking staggered back to the band room and passed out.
Elgar’s Second Symphony was a success after the break, particularly with the orchestra, because Abby was so carried away by the melancholy nostalgic music that she slowed down again, and pushed the orchestra into overtime, which put poor Knickers in a twist once more.
As there were some excellent chip shops and Indian restaurants in Starhampton, Knickers was also worried he might lose several musicians. But the quickest dressers in the world, within seconds, the orchestra were back in their clothes, tails back in plastic hangers, crushed velvet dresses shoved into carrier bags, and the instruments stowed away in the van.
Francis the Good Loser was chucked out of the Pond Life coach for trying to smuggle on a take-away curry.
‘Let him go and stink out Moulin Rouge,’ shouted Randy Hamilton. ‘We’ll all go and mob up Pond Life.’
So clanking bottles, carrying bags of chips and camp-followed by Clare, Candy, Nellie and Jenny and four percussion players, the Celtic Mafia changed buses.
Having had a good sleep in Elgar’s Second Symphony during which Quinton did stand in for him, Viking had woken up and was raring to go.
‘It’s my birthday, I can behave exactly as I like.’
He then remembered the birthday cake Miss Priddock had baked for him and tried to cut it on its silver cardboard disc with Blue’s penknife. As the coach moved off through the empty streets of Starhampton, however, he upended it spreading cream and chocolate butter-icing all over the floor of the bus to the noisy cheers of his supporters.
The bridge four looked on stonily, particularly when Viking bore a pretty thoroughly over-excited married piccolo player off to the back of the bus. The madrigal group decided to ignore such infantile behaviour.
Militant Moll got out her song book.
‘We better call in the pest-control officer,’ she said sourly to Hilary, who’d just given Nellie yet another lecture on being improperly dressed.
‘In the final analysis, I prefer Byrd to Gibbons,’ Ninion was telling Simon Painshaw.
‘Unfair to gibbons,’ shouted Randy, making monkey faces and scratching himself under the arms.
The Celtic Mafia corpsed again. Lionel cleared his throat.
‘Come away, come sweet love, the golden morning breaks,’ he sang to a dimpling Hilary.
‘All the earth, all the air of love and pleasure speaks,’ sang Ninion, blushing as he gazed up at Militant Moll’s granite jaw.
A rival singsong, however, was soon in full swing at the back of the bus.
‘If forty whores in purple drawers were walking down the Strand,’ bellowed Randy and Dixie. ‘Do you suppose, the walrus said, that we could raise a stand?’
Dixie had Clare on
his knee. Her big bum felt nice and warm, as he stroked her slender ankles.
‘Just ignore them and keep going,’ hissed Hilary.
‘My bonny lass she smileth
When she my heart beguileth,’ sang Simon, casting nervous glances at the back of the bus.
‘Fa, la, la, la, la, la,’ screeched Hilary.
‘Bloody sight too far, la, la, la, la, la,’ sang Dixie, chucking Clare’s velvet Alice band into the passing pale green woods.
‘I doubt it, said the carpenter, but wouldn’t it be grand,’ sang Randy, pulling Candy onto his knee.
‘That’s enough,’ snapped Lionel, but to no avail.
‘And all the time, the dirty swine was coming in his hand,’ chorused the Celtic Mafia.
‘Disgusting. Do something, Lionel.’ Hilary had gone pink with rage.
Afraid to confront the Celtic Mafia head-on, slipping on chocolate butter-icing and cream, Lionel strode down the bus to lodge a complaint with Knickers who was far too busy sitting on top of the driver, urging him on like Ben Hur. If the coach reached H.P. Hall later than twelve-thirty they would be into the next day, and by union rules, the musicians would be entitled to an extra free day later in the year.
‘You’re the leader, Lionel, you sort it out,’ said Knickers firmly, then to the driver: ‘Left here, then we can short-cut to Bath.’
Nellie the Nympho had other plans. Installing herself in the right-hand seat, just behind the driver, she un-buttoned her pink cardigan, enough for Blue still immersed in Alan Clark, to rub Ibuleve into her shoulders.
‘As it fell upon a day in the Merry Month of May,’ sang the Madrigal Group with gritted-teethed desperation.
‘The love juice running down my index finger,’ hollered back Dixie.
‘The way we used to come, and how we lingered,’ sang Randy in harmony.
‘Oh, how the smell of you clings,’ joined in Viking, finally letting go of the ecstatic piccolo player.
‘These foolish things remind me of you,’ sang Randy, smiling into Candy’s eyes.
