Appassionata

by Jilly Cooper

  He sounded so tender and loving. Almost deranged with misery, Abby could hardly read her watch. Five-thirty. She had to leave for Heathrow in an hour, she might as well get up.

  Tottering wearily downstairs, she found it was still dark. Rain was rattling against the windows, pounding away the last patches of snow on the lawn. As she filled up the kettle, she heard piteous mewing. Frightened away earlier by Nugent, but seeing a light on, Sibelius had jumped onto the ledge and was squashing his drenched fur against the window-pane.

  ‘Oh, poor baby.’ Abby opened the window and, whipping off her towel, began to dry him, crooning how much she was going to miss him, patting his piebald face, squeezing water out of his furry tail.

  Only when he was purring and almost dry did she hear a wolf-whistle and whipped round. To her horror, lounging in the doorway, wearing only jeans and a highly amused smirk on his evil, debauched face was Viking. She had no idea how long he’d been there.

  ‘What in hell are you doing?’ she howled. ‘Ouch!’ she screamed as a terrified Sibelius dug his claws into her breasts.

  ‘I’ve just come down to make a cup of tea, Flora had a nightmare,’ said Viking.

  ‘Called Viking O’Neill,’ sobbed Abby.

  Seizing her towel, crashing against the door to avoid touching him, she fled upstairs.

  Poor Sibelius was mewing again, hoping for an early breakfast. Switching on the kettle, Viking picked him up. His face was expressionless, as burying it in the cat’s fur, he breathed in Abby’s scent.

  Depressed that Abby seemed almost suicidal when he got up to wave her off, Marcus was cheered when the post brought a Christmas card from Taggie, containing three hundred pounds, smuggled out of her private account. But it didn’t make up for not hearing from Rupert, and Marcus was so cast down by an enchanting photograph in the Daily Express of Rupert, Taggie, Xav and Bianca arriving in Monhaut for a skiing Christmas, that Flora persuaded him to come home to Paradise and stay with her parents.

  ‘I shall be playing the referee’s whistle, so you can accompany me. We must drop off a bottle of whisky on the way for poor Eldred.’

  Despite Viking ringing every day from Dublin, Flora was ashamed how thrilled she was to hear that Helen’s Christmas with Rannaldini’s ex-wives and brat-pack had been a disaster. She had never been gregarious, and Rannaldini’s endless sexual games had absolutely horrified her.

  ‘I could have told you Helen of Troilism wasn’t a viable proposition,’ quipped Flora.

  Marcus was demented.

  ‘I should have gone out there to protect her.’

  What Helen hadn’t told him was that for Christmas Rannaldini had given her a blank cheque to have her face, breasts and bottom lifted.

  ‘But you said in Prague you loved me as I am,’ sobbed Helen.

  ‘I did, and I know it will hurt dreadfully,’ purred Rannaldini, ‘but I want you to be even more beautiful.’

  Also if Helen was confined to barracks recovering from surgery, it would give him more free time.

  FORTY-FOUR

  After their fortnight off the RSO sank into deep gloom. Life seemed to be summed up by Francis’s turkey which he had forgotten to take home and which was found in the band room under Nellie’s camisole top belching forth maggots.

  Francis had other things on his mind. His house had been repossessed and he had moved into a council flat.

  ‘My children are on free dinners,’ he said wearily. ‘My milkman earns more than I do.’

  Mary-the-mother-of-justin was horrified to find she was pregnant. Her husband had lost his smart job in television, and was at home looking after Justin and giving Mary a lot of grief.

  Everyone except Carmine, Hilary and Juno had overspent at Christmas, couldn’t pay their bills and were chasing after fewer teaching jobs as the education departments slashed the music grants to colleges and schools.

  Flora was delighted to have a letter from Eldred thanking her for the Christmas bottle of whisky, but worried that she got no answer when she kept ringing to invite him to supper. Finally police broke in on 4 January and found Eldred had been dead for a week from an overdose.

  The empty bottle of whisky was at his feet, he was clutching his clarinet and the Mozart Trio, which he had obviously been planning to play with Flora and Marcus, was on the music-stand. The gramophone was still on – he had been listening to one of his old records.

  ‘If he hadn’t had his coffee black, people would have known from the milk bottles,’ sobbed Flora. ‘If I’d rung earlier I might have saved him.’

  Everyone was too stunned and ashamed to oppose Hilary when she immediately applied for Eldred’s job of First Clarinet. She was soon busy auditioning candidates for Second Clarinet.

  ‘One should intercept them at the H.P. Hall gate,’ said Viking, ‘hissing: “escape while you can, don’t work with that bitch.”’

  With her step-up to section leader, Hilary’s bossiness increased a thousand-fold. She was singing madrigals regularly with Miles, Gwynneth and Gilbert. Jogging round the Close with Miles kept her in good shape for running to him if there was any trouble.

  The only good thing about Eldred’s death was that Abby and Flora made it up, united in their distress. Abby had already brought Flora some rosin, mixed with meteor dust, back from America as a Christmas present. Flora, more generous and much more guilty, had given Abby a scarlet cashmere polo-neck. She also tried to play down her raging and continuing affaire with Viking. Viking, as part of his ‘exorcize’ campaign, had given Flora a toy black sheep for Christmas called Rannaldini.

  ‘You’ve got to meet it head on, darling.’

  Abby pretended she was no longer interested in Viking but, as a post-Christmas fitness regime, took to jogging round the lake. On her first Thursday back, her progress was impeded by the dustcart outside The Bordello. She nearly fell down a rabbit hole, as Viking hurtled out barefoot and just in jeans, his eyes swollen and practically closed with sleep, waving a twenty-pound note to persuade the dustmen to remove the battalions of empties.

  As she jogged home, Abby could see Viking, Mr Nugent and all the dustmen across the lake, still standing outside The Bordello clutching beer cans and laughing uproariously. As a result Woodbine Cottage’s dustbins weren’t emptied until midday.

  ‘Viking’s teaching my lad the ’orn,’ boasted one of the dustmen. ‘He finks the world of Viking.’

  ‘His hobby seems to be ornithology,’ said Abby sourly.

  The orchestra’s black gloom was not improved by increasingly sinister rumours of an intended merger between the CCO and the RSO flying around like seagulls above a plough. Cotchester Ballet Company, accompanied by the CCO, had been staging popular classics during the school-holidays and had pinched a large chunk of the RSO’s audience.

  One Tuesday in the middle of January, George summoned Abby to his office. He was in a bad mood anyway. An ancient sitting tenant was frustrating his attempts to convert four adjacent freeholds in Park Lane into a splendid office block which would retain the early nineteenth-century façade. When the old biddy rejected a cash offer, George moved the heavies in to frighten her, whereupon she had called up the Daily Mirror, who had chewed George out in a double-page spread that morning.

  George pulled no punches therefore when he told Abby the orchestra’s deficit was the largest ever. To win the audiences back they must ‘cross over’ which meant programming Gershwin, Rodgers and Hammerstein and other non-classical music in the second half.

  Abby was appalled.

  ‘We’re a symphony orchestra, for Chrissake.’

  ‘Not for much longer. It’s the only way we might survive. And I’m planning a huge gala centenary concert in May. I’ve already got feelers out for Dancer Maitland and Georgie Maguire.’

  ‘They’ll break the bank for starters. You know Georgie’s Flora’s mother?’

  If George didn’t, he wasn’t going to admit it.

  ‘Can’t hold that against the poor woman,’ he said nasti
ly. ‘Come in, Miles.’

  Looking sanctimonious and disapproving, Miles sat down on a high-backed chair with his knees rammed together, and handed George some faxes. The first was a blank page from the Arts Council.

  ‘Is this supposed to be our next year’s grant?’ demanded George.

  Miles smiled thinly.

  ‘The first page didn’t print out.’

  The second page did and turned out to be a furious letter from Gilbert plus a photostat of a newspaper photograph of himself, Gwynneth, Peggy Parker and Sonny as portrayed by Dixie, Viking, Flora and Abby in the Christmas cabaret. Someone had obviously leaked it to the Rutminster Echo. The urn Viking was brandishing with ‘Clara’ written clearly on the side, had particularly offended Gilbert.

  Just for a second George’s lips twitched, then he read on.

  Now we know what your musicians think both of the Arts Council and their most generous patron. And when am I going to receive compensation for my cycle?

  ‘It was a bit of harmless fun,’ protested Abby.

  ‘Not harmless with next year’s grant about to be handed out,’ snapped George.

  ‘That bitch Hilary must have leaked it; she was taking photographs the whole time.’

  ‘Hilly wouldn’t do a thing like that,’ spluttered Miles. ‘Hilly only thinks of the good of the RSO, unlike some.’

  ‘Hilly’ now, thought Abby, they are getting thick.

  Fortunately John Drummond chose that moment to seriously endanger a fifty-thousand-pound Perspex model of a neo-Tudor shopping precinct as he weaved round it. Landing with a thud on George’s knee, he started shredding Gilbert’s fax with his paws.

  Abby burst out laughing, but was brought sharply back to earth by Miles, accusing her of taking no interest in the orchestra’s educational projects.

  ‘We must make musical excellence available to the widest possible audience,’ he added pompously.

  ‘As the last major educational project the RSO got involved in,’ snapped Abby, ‘was a search for Respighi’s Birds in the Forest of Dean, and Randy and Dixie and four schoolgirls vanished for over a week, I don’t figure this is feasible in January. They’d all die of hypothermia.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said George, wincing as Druramond’s claws punctured his pin-striped thighs.

  ‘Anyway I haven’t got the time,’ countered Abby, ‘I’ve got far too much repertoire to learn.’

  ‘If we switched to more popular fare,’ Miles cracked his fingers, ‘you’d know it already.’

  ‘And you could start,’ George added curtly, ‘by wasting less time with Flora Seymour – she’s a pernicious influence.’

  George had not forgiven Flora for Alphonso’s case, Gilbert’s bike or the musical socks which had played ‘Jingle Bells’ when he’d absent-mindedly tugged them up during a crucial meeting with the Department of the Environment.

  ‘She’s not your greatest fan either,’ said Abby disloyally.

  ‘Well, she better watch her back.’

  ‘Rather hard,’ said Miles bitchily, ‘when she Spends so much time on it. Nor did she help matters by suggesting in her letter of apology to Gilbert Greenford that he should replace Clara with a Harley Davidson.’

  Abby laughed.

  ‘It is not funny,’ said Miles primly. ‘And as Musical Director you ought to be seen to do more for charity.’

  Abby lost her temper.

  ‘All my spare cash, OK, goes to the Cats Protection League, and I don’t mean old tabby cats either,’ Abby glared pointedly at Miles. ‘Get off my back both of you.’

  All the Perspex models trembled and John Drummond shot up the brushed suede wall as she walked out slamming the door.

  Cooling down, she wandered into the general office and learnt from the notice-board that the RSO were currently doing a project at St Clement’s Primary School. As there was no rehearsal that morning she decided to pop in on the way home.

  She was not cheered, switching on the car radio, to hear Hugo playing the violin solo in Mozart’s SinJonia Concertante.

  ‘That was the CCO, one of our great little orchestras,’ said Henry Kelly.

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ said Abby.

  It had been raining for days. The River Fleet had flooded its banks, St Clement’s playing-fields were under water, inhibiting outdoor activity, which probably explained the unholy din issuing from the building.

  When the secretary directed her to a far-off classroom, however, Abby was flabbergasted to find Viking perched on the edge of a desk telling a group of enraptured eight year olds about the French horn. They were engaged in a project on Rutminster in the seventeenth century.

  ‘Charles, the King of England, spent a lot of time fighting,’ Viking was saying. ‘And in the end he had his head chopped off, probably because his hair was longer than mine.’

  The children laughed.

  ‘But, on his day off, he often enjoyed a day’s hunting in the Blackmere Woods and used a horn to sommon his hounds.’

  Picking up his horn, Viking blew pa, pa, pa, pa on it.

  ‘This was a sound that the dogs could hear all over the forest.’

  Nugent, who was sitting beside a little boy in a wheelchair, put his head on one side.

  Seeing Abby, Viking gave a brief nod.

  ‘You can play the horn on anything,’ he went on, producing a piece of hose pipe from a Gap carrier bag.

  Coiling it up, he handed one end to the little boy in the wheelchair and then played ‘God Save the Queen’ on the other.

  Finally he made the children shriek with laughter by opening the teacher’s big handbag, which she’d left on top of the piano, and magicking out a red suspender belt, a pair of black lace knickers, a banana, a fluffy toy monkey, who pretended to eat the banana, and finally a huge bag of toffees which he handed round the class.

  The teacher, who had a lot of freckles and a sweet open face, was clearly bats about him, too.

  ‘Viking’s a natural with kids,’ she told Abby. ‘Joey in the wheelchair’s really come out of himself since he’s been visiting us. These are the pictures they’ve been drawing.’ Proudly she pointed to a mural of Cavaliers, horses, jolly hounds, trees, wild flowers and a deer miles away with no chance of getting caught.

  ‘When that bully Carmine Jones came to teach an older class about the trumpet,’ the teacher lowered her voice, ‘they gave him such a rough ride, he came out nearly in tears.’

  ‘Could they give me their secret?’ sighed Abby.

  As the bell went, Viking told the children they’d all got to make a valentine for their teacher.

  ‘Bye, sweetheart,’ he added, kissing her, ‘I’ll call you.’

  Outside it was still raining and Viking tipped a black wool cap over his nose. It was a Christmas present from Rodney, who knew how Viking hated getting his hair wet because it kinked so unbecomingly. There had been rows in the past because Viking kept pinching Miss Priddock’s flowered sou’wester to go to the pub.

  ‘Let’s go and have a drink,’ he said, putting his arm through Abby’s.

  The pub garden was filled with aconites and snowdrops. A hazel tree draping its sulphur-yellow catkins over the gate, like Zeus in a shower of gold waiting for Danaë, reminded Abby of Viking.

  The pub was warm and dark. As she took refuge on a corner seat, she was glad she was wearing her new red cashmere polo-neck, but she was determined not in any way to betray to Viking how desperately she fancied him.

  ‘Thanks,’ she accepted a large glass of white wine, deliberately not allowing their fingers to touch.

  Having downed a third of a pint of beer and wiped the froth off his lips with the back of his hand, Viking sat down at right angles to her, long legs so wide apart his knee nearly grazed hers, staring her out in amusement.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘That was kinda impressive,’ stammered Abby. ‘I never saw you as a Pied Piper.’

  ‘Music’s being left to die on its feet in schools,’ said Viking suddenly angry. �
��There’s no band any more, no singing, no hymns at compulsory Assembly. Kids can’t learn an instrument any longer unless their parents can afford the extra fees for lessons. Gradually the orchestras will die because there’ll no longer be a pool of bright young musicians to draw from.’

  He shook his head, ‘Sorry, I’m getting heavy.’

  ‘No, it’s great,’ Abby was thrilled to glimpse a more serious Viking. ‘No thanks,’ she shook her head as he offered her a packet of crisps. ‘I’m also glad of a chance to talk. I wanted to discuss your section.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘I just adore Cyril,’ went on Abby, ‘he was obviously a great musician once, but his lips have gone and he’s always drunk.’

  ‘That’s an exaggeration,’ said Viking coldly.

  ‘Well, he reeks of booze.’

  ‘He retires in four years’ time.’

  ‘Why can’t he teach?’

  ‘Too shy. Those kids today would make dog-meat out of him.’

  Abby took a gulp of wine to strengthen her resolve.

  ‘He’s pulling back the orchestra.’

  ‘The orchestra’ll have to pull a bit harder then. I don’t want to discoss it.’

  The most delectable smells were wafting in from the kitchen. Abby proceeded to lecture him and Viking to disagree with her, until a barmaid in a tight gentian-blue sweater and an emerald-green mini skirt came over with the menu.

  ‘D’you want to order, Viking?’

  ‘I’m not sure. That’s a fantastic sweater.’ Then, turning to Abby, asked, ‘Do you want some lunch?’

  Abby shook her head irritably.

  ‘I’ve got far too much work.’

  Viking smiled up at the waitress. ‘Can I have my bill?’

  ‘Irish stew’s delicious. I could do you a take-away.’

  Viking eyed her up. ‘There are things I’d rather take away.’

  The waitress giggled. ‘I’ll get you your bill.’

  ‘Can’t you pass anything up?’ snapped Abby.