by Jilly Cooper
‘Rather like being an air hostess,’ giggled Cherub, as he slid down the gangway carrying paper refills of whisky to Blue and Nellie, who, by this time, had undone most of her buttons. In his rear mirror, the bus driver could see her splendid breasts wriggling as she writhed under Blue’s expert fingers. The bus was definitely slowing down.
May 1st was nearly over. Anxious to win his bet, Dixie was geeing up Viking.
‘Why don’t you ring Juno?’ He handed him Knickers’s mobile.
‘Hi, schweetheart,’ said Viking a couple of minutes later, after punching out three wrong numbers. ‘Howsh Nugent?’
‘The bitch hung up on me,’ he said furiously.
Abby, who had been coerced into attending some mayoral reception, caught up with the coaches, around eleven forty-five. She’d been thinking of ways to make Little Jenny happier and, looking into the coach, was horrified to see Viking, whisky bottle raised to his lips like a conch, coming down the gangway, well, like a Viking, and pulling a girl into his arms. Abby nearly ran into a stone wall, the girl had long brown Pre-Raphaelite curls.
Drawing level, Abby peered in. Definitely Jenny. She must be rescued at all costs. Crawling along behind the coach, ignoring Cherub and Lincoln, Viking’s Fifth Horn, who recognized her and started waving like children, Abby waited for the next pee break.
Spitting with righteous indignation, she fought her way into the bus, seized Jenny’s hand and catching her off balance, dragged her out into the balmy night, where huge moths were bombing the bus’s headlamps.
‘What d’you do that for?’ said an aggrieved Jenny, shoving her left breast inside her bra.
‘Viking’s a beast, an animal. I’m so sorry, Jenny, I should have insisted I drove you back home.’
‘I didn’t mean Viking,’ squeaked Jenny. ‘I’ve wanted to snog him ever since I joined the orchestra.’ And with that she shot back into the bus.
But by this time Jenny’s innings were over. Seeing Fat Isobel stampeding him like a rhino, Viking looked up the coach and saw Hilary.
‘Come here, crosspatch.’
As his beautiful mouth came down on hers, Hilary pretended to fight him off, but she was secretly delighted. Just wait until she told Juno.
Fat Isobel, however, was still bearing down.
‘Come on,’ said Viking, pulling Hilary down the steps to the vertical coffin-shaped lavatory, where he found Militant Moll on the way out.
‘Sweet Moll Malone,’ taunted Viking, pushing her back into the coffin, ‘come and be degraded.’
Although Moll fought him off, she was also delighted. Just wait till she told Juno. Then she discovered Viking had Hilary in tow and had locked the coffin door on all three of them. Furious banging followed.
‘Whatever did Viking do to you?’ said Lionel furiously when at last Hilary emerged with her feathers ruffled.
‘I’m not going to tell you, but he’s got to apologize. I can’t wait to ring Juno.’
Slightly too long afterwards, Militant Moll emerged looking equally ruffled.
‘I’ve been sexually harassed,’ she hissed at Ninion. ‘Why didn’t you come and rescue me?’
Hilary had just finished wising up Juno, when the coach doors opened to let her out at her cottage.
‘See you in about twenty minutes,’ she whispered to Lionel, who, for appearance’s sake, had parked his car at H. P. Hall.
Clarissa and Mary-the-Mother-of-Justin were so tired they had slept through the whole journey. Mary’s head was resting on Clarissa’s shoulder.
‘Pretty thing,’ murmured Viking, stopping in his tracks to admire Mary’s madonna face and bending down, kissed her on the lips. For a second, Mary smiled, then opening her eyes, and realizing it wasn’t Johnno, her husband, she clouted Viking across the face. Sliding to the floor, he passed out cold.
As Randy, Dixie, Blue and Little Cherub carried Viking, like another coffin, to the door of Juno’s converted squash court, singing the ‘Death March’ from Saul, Mr Nugent started howling, and in the darkened bedroom above, the net curtains twitched furiously.
‘Oh, how the smell of you clings,’ sang Randy.
‘Fa, la, la, la, la, la,’ sang Cherub, giggling hysterically and trampling on a lot of pink tulips.
The cathedral clock tolled the half-hour.
‘Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong,’ sang the rest of the bus to wind up Knickers. They would reach H.P. Hall after twelve-thirty and get their free day.
Down below a ding-dong of a different kind was taking place. As Randy played the ‘Last Post’, waking up the entire street, and Nugent’s howls increased, a furious Juno, who’d been given a blow by blow account by Hilary, greeted Viking with a rolling pin.
Viking didn’t make it until the break the following afternoon, staggering in, looking greener than the band room, followed by an exuberant Mr Nugent.
‘Behold El Parco,’ shouted Randy.
‘There’s a special offer for rolling pins in Parker’s basement,’ yelled Dixie.
‘But all Viking’s offers are special,’ said Blue drily.
‘All right, all right.’ Wearily Viking held up a shaking hand. ‘Will anyone I’ve got to apologize to, please line up.’
‘You can start off with me,’ said an angry, north-country voice, and everyone nearly dropped their cups of tea as George Hungerford stalked in. ‘If you ever behave like that again, you’re fired.’
‘How the hell did he become a section leader?’ George asked Lord Leatherhead later.
‘Rodney thought it might make him more responsible, but I’m afraid Viking’s a lawlessness unto himself.’
TWENTY-NINE
As soon as the rehearsal was over George bore Abby off for a pep talk.
‘There’s a light bulb out there,’ he added grimly, as he frogmarched her up the aisle, ‘and this curtain was hanging off its rail the first time I came down. This is an unloved hall.’
‘It’s an unlovable hall,’ snapped Abby. ‘We need a new one or at least a couple of million to restore it, right? Not to mention the chairs that all squeak and the music-stands which clunk.’
She was still listing imperfections when they reached George’s office which had already been re-wallpapered in brushed suede in a rather startling ginger, and re-carpeted in shaggy off-white. It was also now humming with smart computers. The Stock Exchange Index on the television screen showed that George Hungerford shares were up ten pence. The news of his appointment to the RSQ couldn’t have reached the City yet, thought Abby sourly.
The three-piece suite in shabby Liberty print had gone too, replaced by squashy pale brown leather sofas and chairs. A big oak desk dominated the room and on nearby tables like doll’s houses, stood exquisitely made Perspex models of domestic properties and office blocks, which George was currently developing.
On the walls a Keith Vaughan and an Edward Burra of rugged Northern landscapes and a Lowry of a bleak school playground mingled uneasily with aerial views of buildings and a huge map of the British Isles with various property sites ringed.
George had clearly found himself a nice base in the West Country. John Drummond, washing his black fur on the window-sill as he eyed up the brushed suede as a potential scratching-board, and a green vase of Old Cyril’s lilies of the valley, beside the four telephones on the oak desk provided the only cosy note.
Having dispatched a swooning Miss Priddock to make tea and peremptorily ordering Miles’s secretary to hold all calls, George launched into a list of Abby’s imperfections.
The trumpets in the first movement of Elgar’s Second Symphony had come in two bars too early, and the whole thing had been ten minutes too long.
Immediately Abby was on the defensive.
‘Rattle and Previn have both taken longer.’
‘I don’t bluddy care. It pushed the orchestra into overtime, I want the leader’s ass off his seat by nine-thirty. Same thing this afternoon, your little masterclass on the ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ again pushed them into overtime.’
‘And I know whose head I’d like on a platter,’ muttered Abby, particularly when George said he wanted her to attend the receptions after every concert, so she could chat up sponsors and council members.
‘That’s your job,’ grumbled Abby. ‘My job is to improve the orchestra.’
‘Haven’t made a great success of it so far,’ said George bluntly. ‘And you won’t have an orchestra at all if we go on losing money like this.’
He then ordered her to turn up at tonight’s party.
‘You’re still a celeb, there’s no price put on the buzz folk get from meeting you. Sponsors need more than their names on the programme, they want their clients to meet the stars. And you can put on a dress. I gather you haven’t been out of trousers since you’ve been here. Your legs are probably the only hidden asset this orchestra possesses.’
Removing his spectacles, he made his eyes redder by rubbing them. He looked very tired, but Abby refused to be mollified.
‘I don’t have the time to socialize.’
‘Uh-uh,’ countered George. ‘You’re coming to this do, and you’ll chat up tonight’s sponsor, Dick Standish. He runs Standish Oil. He’s bringing another potential sponsor, Paul Nathan, CEO of Panacea Pharmaceuticals.’
‘We can’t be sponsored by drug companies. They do such horrific things to animals.’ Protectively Abby stroked John Drummond, who purred in loud agreement.
‘Don’t be fatuous,’ said George irritably. ‘There wouldn’t have been any Michelangelo without the Medicis.’
Swiftly changing the subject before she could argue, he added: ‘And you ought to know your orchestra by now. Americans are supposed to be good at names. First Flute, Second Trombone’s far too impersonal.’
Then, as Abby opened her mouth to protest, he continued, ‘It has far more effect when you’re bawling people out, if you use the correct name.’
‘Right, Godfrey,’ said Abby briskly, then as Miss Priddock came in with a tray weighed down by rainbow cake and daisy-patterned porcelain, ‘No, I haven’t time for a cup of tea, thanks, Miss Prism.’
The party was held in a blue-and-white striped tent outside the hall. The section leaders had been invited to mingle with the Great and the Good, but were far more interested in stuffing their faces with as much food and drink as fast as possible.
An eager-looking matron in chewstik-pink polyester immediately collared Davie Buckle, the timpanist. Davie’s face was as round and as blank as a satellite dish, and he wiled away long bars of rest playing patience on top of his kettle drums.
‘What d’you do?’ asked the matron skittishly.
‘I’m a basher.’ Davie grabbed two glasses of white and thrust one into her hand.
‘What’s a be-asher?’
‘I play the drums,’ said Davie, seizing a fistful of prawns in batter.
‘How exciting. I’d love to do that if I had the time. Percussion looks so easy.’
Accustomed to such inanities, Davie didn’t rise.
‘Why don’t you have any time?’ he asked.
‘Well, I have to look after Dick. My husband,’ she added by way of explanation, ‘he sponsored tonight’s concert, he’s in oil.’
‘What is he? A bleeding sardine?’ asked Davie and choked on his drink, because Abby had just stalked in looking absolutely sensational in a red body, no bra and the minutest wrap-over skirt.
‘I said a dress, not you oonderwear,’ said George furiously.
Peggy Parker was even crosser. She was livid about Abby’s plans to audition the choir and her suggestion that Peggy and several of her more august cronies, including Lindy Cardew, the wife of Rutminster’s planning officer, who all screeched like hungry seagulls, should stand down.
Nor had Peggy been charmed by the scrumpled-up photograph of Charlene, 44-22-35, playing the ‘Flowers of the Field’ on a slit-kilted Scotsman without the aid of bagpipes, which had landed in her lap in the middle of Mother Goose two nights ago.
She now ambushed Abby on her way to the bar.
‘Why d’you persist in rejecting my ge-owns. As musical director you should be projecting an image of femininity, graciousness and dignity.’
Abby was about to snap back that weighed down with Peggy Parker’s rhinestones, she’d hardly be able to lift her stick, but opting for tact, mumbled that she didn’t feel confident enough as a conductor to draw attention to herself so dramatically.
Mrs Parker swelled like a bullfrog.
‘You clearly feel confident enough to dispense with most of the choir.’
‘Must get a drink and circulate,’ Abby cut across her in mid-flow. ‘George only invited me this evening to brown-nose sponsors.’
And she was gone leaving Peggy Parker, furiously mouthing and appropriately pegged to the damp grass by four-inch scarlet heels.
The party was spilling out of the tent. Emerging into a starry evening lit by chestnut candles, Abby was waylaid.
‘Hi Abby, I’m Jison.’
Jison turned out to be a dodgy local car-dealer. After three-quarters of a bottle of Sancerre and a long look at Abby’s legs, he agreed to put ten thousand pounds into sponsoring Messiah, which the orchestra was performing in Cotchester Cathedral at the end of November, and which would later be transmitted on Christmas Eve.
‘Grite to drive one of the Ferraris up the aisle,’ Jason said excitedly.
‘Great,’ agreed Abby absent-mindedly because Viking had walked in.
He had skipped the rest of the afternoon’s rehearsal. It was late-night shopping and Blue had discovered him and Nugent fast asleep in one of the four-posters in Parker and Parker’s bedding department just in time for the concert. Whiter after yesterday’s excesses than his crumpled evening shirt, he was still surrounded by admiring women. Glancing at Abby, however, he raised his glass of red and wandered over.
‘You look glorious, sweetheart.’
Totally thrown by a compliment, Abby became ungracious.
‘Can’t say the same for you. Why in hell d’you drink so much?’
Viking laughed, making his bloodshot eyes narrower than ever.
‘If you’re as charming as I am, you get your glass filled up more often.’
To prove this, as he emptied his, waitresses converged from all sides to fill it up again.
‘This is Jason,’ Abby introduced the beadily hovering car-dealer. ‘I thought you’d given up drink anyway,’ she added reprovingly.
‘Not any more, Juno’s thrown me out.’
‘How come?’ asked Abby, trying desperately not to show how thrilled she was.
‘Juno wasn’t entirely pleased with the state in which I returned. The Prima Donna had been on the mobilé to her. And I left Nugent with her.’ Glancing down, he ran his fingers through the dog’s silky fur. ‘I hoped if they spent some time together, they might make friends.
‘Alas, Nugent escaped in disgosst and rolled and in disgosst at the state in which he returned home, Juno went out and bought a kennel and chained him up in the garden. I was also in the dog house when I got home, so I crawled out and joined Nugent, but he was a bit smelly, so we decided to walk home to The Bordello.’
Abby couldn’t help laughing.
‘But aren’t you miserable it’s over?’ she asked.
‘Not at all. Thanks, sweetheart.’ Gathering up a handful of sausage rolls from yet another lingering waitress, Viking fed them to Nugent.
‘Nugent certainly looks pleased.’
‘He is. Blue gave him a bath this morning.’
In fact the only casualty, went on Viking, was his BMW which had finally packed up.
‘You should invest in one of my Ferraris,’ said Jason, patronizingly. ‘Then you could really pull the birds.’
Viking replied with considerable hauteur, that he could pull the birds when he was riding a tricycle, and threw a goat-cheese ball at Lionel, who, after a quick bonk in the leader’s room, had waited until the party filled up to smuggle in Hilary, who had not been invited.
Why is Viking’s arrogance to die for and Lionel’s so repulsive? wondered Abby as she watched Lionel licking his teeth, fluffing up his ebony locks, squaring his shoulders as, with head erect, he awaited his stampede of fans.
He was delighted at first to be clobbered by Mrs Dick Standish but less amused when she asked him what was his daytime job.
‘You may see us looking glamorous in our tails,’ he said petulantly, ‘but you don’t realize how much practising, rehearsing, travelling and admin goes into each concert.’
‘At least you have job satisfaction.’
‘Not so as you’d know it,’ said Hilary glaring over at Abby, then bristling with disapproval, as Clare, who’d been smuggled in by Dixie, bounded up to them.
‘I say, Romeo and Juno have split up.’
‘That’s very stale buns,’ said Hilary crushingly.
‘But seriously exciting. Viking seems to be getting on rather well with our musical director, perhaps she’ll be the next swastika on his fuselage.’
Abby was trying not to feel wildly elated that Viking had stayed beside her so long. He was just telling her about a cottage by the lake, when she was accosted by a little bearded man in sandals with a pasty face and a straggling pony-tail, who immediately introduced himself as Peggy Parker’s son, Roger – ‘But everyone calls me Sonny,’ – the composer of the Eternal Triangle Suite. Had Abby fixed a date for the première?
Abby said she wasn’t sure. With George’s arrival, the schedule was all up in the air.
‘Is anyone recording your stuff?’ she asked him.
As Sonny shook his head, his pony-tail flew like a horse irritably swatting at flies.
‘After all the popular, easily digested fare around, people tend to find my music gritty and complex, but I am philosophical. The Marriage of Figaro was a disaster when it was first programmed.’
‘I was so moved,’ he went on earnestly, ‘to hear the toilets flushing during the Sibelius two nights ago, particularly in the last bars, that I have commenced a new work for full orchestra. I plan to provide sound effects of a rumbling train, pneumatic drills, people coughing, rustling toffee papers, cars back-firing,’ he ticked off the list with black-nailed fingers, ‘and finally a chorus of flushing toilets.’
