Appassionata

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘I have just seen a pig fly past the window,’ Viking muttered to Blue, as they waited for their luggage in Seville. ‘Carmine has just forked out a hundred pesetas for a trolley for Abby’s cases. This is going to be a fight to the death.’

  The Seville sky was the palest blue, as though it had been through the washing-machine a thousand times. As they chugged past ancient tawny houses, and streets lined with glossy green trees, Viking leant out of the bus and picked an orange. It was much hotter than Rutminster. This time everyone was housed in the same hotel. Before the rehearsal, Abby had a quick swim in the hotel pool. Every man in the RSO seemed to have the same idea, showing off with high dives and flashy crawls.

  Old Henry, dreaming of his new bow, dog-paddled eagerly around Abby. Carmine kept vanishing under the water, only deterred from groping her by Viking, who wouldn’t have dreamt of crinkling his hair by swimming before a concert, but who prowled round the edge of the pool keeping an eye on his quarry.

  At six o’clock there was a panic instead of a rehearsal, because the cherry-red RSO van hadn’t arrived with the instruments and all the music. The real heroes of the tour, Charlton Handsome and his humpers and roadies, had been driving from Rutminster since Saturday morning. They had been held up at the border, where Customs, assuming they were a rock band, upended the entire van for drugs.

  As the van finally drew up outside the Seville concert hall, frenzied musicians fell on it, terrified their precious instruments might have gone astray. Charlton was rolling the big bass drum down the ramp, when he was pushed aside by Dimitri, frantic to find his Guarnieri, vowing they’d never be parted again.

  ‘Just fuck off, Knickers,’ Charlton was now saying to an hysterical Nicholas, ‘or I’ll drive the ‘ole lot into the river.

  ‘Fanks, love,’ he added to Flora, who’d brought out a six-pack of iced beer.

  ‘I will not have drinking during working hours,’ spluttered Miles, rolling up in a dinner-jacket.

  ‘I’ll ’ave you remember, Mister Brian-Knowles,’ snapped back Charlton, ‘that while you was shacked up all cosy last night wiv Lady ‘Ilary, me and the boys,’ he pointed to an ice pick and shovel attached to the inside of the lorry, ‘was digging our way outa the Pyrenees.’

  Miles went purple, particularly when Flora burst out laughing.

  ‘What’s in that box?’ she asked, as Charlton relieved her of another can of beer.

  ‘Viola players – you get more in if you slice them thinly.’

  The concert was a massive success. John Lill, the soloist, played the Rachmaninov so beautifully he had the very formal, straight-backed audience yelling their dark sleek heads off.

  Abby was nervous how they’d react to Rachel’s Requiem, but they listened enraptured, and when Viking launched into ‘Rachel’s Lament’, they all started to clap as though he were Pavarotti singing ‘Nessun Dorma’, so Viking played it again, and the applause at the end went on for ten minutes.

  As the roadies loaded up again for the drive to Granada, Charlton told Julian he’d heard that ‘triffic tune’ twice on the bar radio during the concert. Francis the Good Loser, climbing up a lamp-post in the main square to get a better reception on the World Service, nearly got arrested later in the evening.

  ‘Listen,’ he thrust out his radio.

  ‘Ah, “Rachel’s Lament”, very good tune,’ chorused the ring of policemen, giving him a round of applause when he played it on his fiddle.

  As Abby came into the hotel around one o’clock after an official dinner with John Lill and the Mayor of Seville, the foyer was suddenly full of male musicians. Jerry and Quinton both wanted words about their solos in Beethoven’s Ninth, and individually wondered if they could run through them in Abby’s suite.

  ‘No, you fucking can’t,’ Viking was at Abby’s elbow, waving her key. ‘You pinched that solo from Cyril, Quinton, you bloody sort it out.’

  ‘What about a drink?’ he murmured to Abby, two minutes later as he opened her door.

  Abby havered, then said wistfully, ‘I ought to get an early night, and I’ve gotta practise the Mozart – it’s more difficult than I figured, I’m terrified of letting Rodney down.’

  Or yourself, thought Viking.

  He wasn’t going to push it. Instead he gave her the orange he’d picked from the bus, and made her promise to have dinner with him later in the week.

  On tours, as on away fixtures, the orchestra tended to split into two groups. Pond Life was epitomized by Peter Plumpton, Simon, Hilary, Militant Moll (and a reluctant Ninion), along with others who were either desperately broke or tight with money. This group, because breakfast was the only meal provided, came down, stuffed themselves, then loaded rolls, cheese, ham, yoghurt, apples, even cartons of decanted prunes into carrier bags, and lived off that for the rest of the day. This meant they could go home with enough totted-up lunch and dinner allowance to pay the gas bill or buy a microwave. They never went out boozing.

  In utter contrast, Moulin Rouge led by the Celtic Mafia were hell bent on whooping it up.

  ‘If you make breakfast,’ as Dixie was fond of saying, ‘you’re not regarded as one of the lads.’

  It would be hard to decide which group disapproved more strongly of the other. With the making of Abby on the agenda, however, the two groups became blurred with Ninion realizing he could buy an inferno of microwaves with the two thousand, and Francis appreciating he’d be able to pay for a hip operation for his wife, instead of waiting a year for one on the NHS. Peter Plumpton had already earmarked a button-backed sofa in an antique shop in Eldercombe.

  To add to the tension as the days passed, the schedule was absolutely punishing. Seville, Granada, Santiago, Corunna, in four days, with Madrid, Barcelona and Toledo to come, which meant rising at dawn to catch the coach to get to the airport or station followed by a long journey, no time to unpack before a rehearsal in a strange hall, with hardly any more time to change, tart up or snatch something to eat before the concert. After which it was natural to have a few drinks and let off steam. Staggering into bed around three o’clock in the morning, they all had to be up at crack of dawn to get on the coach to the next town the following day.

  The tour was an even worse nightmare for Miles and Nicholas, who not only had to keep Moulin Rouge in order, but also had to hand out and retrieve all the hotel-room keys at every stop, get suitcases into the right rooms, and drag musicians out of their beds into the coaches as alarm calls were increasingly ignored.

  No matter how many signs Knickers put up at each concert hall, the buggers still wandered round bleating: ‘Where’s the stage? Where’s the changing-room? Where’s the bog?’ which was odd when they never had any difficulty finding a pub or restaurant the instant the concert was over. There was a frightful row in Corunna because breakfast consisted only of croissants, coffee and orange juice. Pond Life, with nothing to live on for the rest of the day, nearly refused to get on the coach taking them to the station.

  Abby’s suitors got very excited in Santiago, when Viking started a rumour that she’d gone up the cathedral spire with Blue. Having panted to the top, with Old Henry and El Creepo nearly dying of heart attacks in the process, they found only Militant Moll bawling out Ninion, because she’d caught him peering into the women’s changing-room. With the coast clear, meanwhile, Viking had belted round to Abby’s hotel, only to find she’d gone out shopping.

  Her seducers had principally drawn a blank in the past few days because after the first night Abby’d been staying in different hotels.

  Tonight, however, they’d all be together in the Picasso Grand in Madrid. So many people were trying to bed her, in fact, that Abby-baiting had been suspended as the chief orchestra pastime and mobbing-up Miles had taken its place.

  In Corunna, a pedal had fallen off the piano and Miles had managed to put it back.

  ‘First time you’ve lain between a pair of legs and been able to find the right aperture,’ shouted Dixie to cheers all round.

 
; On the express to Madrid, which looked like a long grey electric shaver, Cherub charmed the guard into letting him use the Tannoy.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ he announced in his shrill voice, ‘that this train has run out of bog paper. Anyone in need – particularly anyone who had Squid Corunna in the Sir John Moore Wine Bar last night – is advised to apply to Miles Brian-Knowles for RSO contracts which are probably worth considerably less.’

  Roused by guffaws, Miles stopped telling Hilly how much he was looking forward to showing her Guernica and the other Picassos in the Prado.

  Julian, halfway through War and Peace, was sitting next to Mary who had nearly finished her sampler.

  ‘Dear Little One,’ read Flora over Mary’s shoulder, ‘I wish to give you two things: roots and wings. Oh, that’s lovely.’

  Flora’s eyes filled with tears. Roots and wings should be the basis for any happy relationship. She suddenly wondered how George was getting on in England and hoped Trevor was OK.

  Her reverie was interrupted by Cherub’s shrill voice over the Tannoy again, interspersed with fits of giggles.

  ‘This is a special message for all members of the RSO. Tonight’s rehearsal has been cancelled.’

  An enraged Miles then had to hurtle up and down the train, denying this and thrusting aside garlic-reeking peasants, sleek businessmen, and Randy and Candy, once again straightening their clothes as they emerged from the loo.

  As the train stopped at a station Miles saw Cherub belting down the platform in the other direction.

  ‘This is your last life, Wilson,’ he yelled out of the window.

  ‘Look at Thrilary, mouth vanished altogether,’ murmured Viking to Blue. ‘She is being screwed by Miles.’

  As reddy-brown fields and orange, pink and green rock like vegetable pâté flashed by, Steve was waving the rule book at poor Knickers. ‘An orchestra marches on its stomach,’ he was shouting. ‘That breakfast was a diabolical travesty.’

  ‘Foxie is so hungry,’ piped up Flora, making her puppet fox clutch his furry tummy, ‘that he’s going to eat Miles in a minute.’

  ‘Gimme that fox.’ Dixie, still plastered from the night before, snatched and threw Foxie to Randy, who threw him down the open compartment to Davie who threw him to Barry, who threw him to Carmine, who threw him out of the window, whereupon a screaming Flora pulled the communication cord, and the orchestra never made the Madrid rehearsal at all. Hilary was absolutely hopping because she was not going to see Guernica.

  ‘Why bother?’ said Viking. ‘It’s all around you.’

  The result was a duff Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The only thing which excited the fur-coated Madrid audience was Davie Buckle, his fluffy white drum heads frenziedly dancing on the surface of his kettle drums, going beserk in the scherzo.

  ‘Apart from Beethoven Nine and The Rite of Spring, all music is piffle,’ Davie told anyone who would listen, as he got legless afterwards in the bar of the Picasso Grand.

  It looked as though Abby’s suitors thronging the foyer just after midnight were going to be disappointed again. Returning from dinner with King Carlos, she had escaped to her suite up the back stairs.

  ‘No-one is going to get L’Appassionata into bed this evening either,’ announced Viking firmly. ‘She’s got to practise the Mozart concerto for tomorrow night.’

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ muttered Davie.

  As the week progressed, Abby in fact had hardly noticed her suitors, even Viking, because she was increasingly terrified about playing again in public. She was now so engrossed in perfecting the langorous trills of the adagio, she didn’t even notice the bulky figure on the balcony outside. Davie, having downed twelve pints of beer, and dropped his mobile down the lavatory trying to ring Brünnhilde in England, had intrepidly climbed across from the next-door balcony, and settled down to wait for Abby to finish practising.

  Three hours later, she wandered next door into her bedroom. Finding Old Henry sitting up in her bed, wearing only pyjama bottoms and reading Murder on the Nile, she was so bombed that she thought she’d strayed into the wrong room.

  ‘Oh Henry, just the person I wanted to see. I’m so sorry to barge in, but could you possibly help me with the dynamics in the rondo? Mozart puts in so few marks.’

  ‘It’s the same with his later piano concertos,’ Henry put a book mark in Murder on the Nile. ‘He leaves it up to you.’

  Even when they’d sorted out the problem and Abby asked Henry to rub tiger balm into her aching neck and shoulders, he made no pass.

  ‘She’s playing better than ever,’ he sighed to a lurking band of suitors when he finally left her room.

  ‘That two thousand could have bought you a bow and paid your gas bill,’ said Barry reprovingly.

  ‘Some things are more important than gas bills,’ said Old Henry.

  Abby took a long time to go to sleep. She was worried that every time she called the cottage to ask after the cats, she got her own voice on the answering-machine. Where the hell was Marcus? And although she doted on Rodney, she was depressed that the RSO were so longing to see him in Barcelona tomorrow. All the old anecdotes and catch phrases were coming out.

  ‘Why are we so happy, boys and girls? Because Uncle Rodney’s in charge. Where’s Dixie? When he arrives tell him he’s much too loud.’

  Programmes of Rodney’s concerts before the war; photographs of him looking dashing in the Navy or with great musicians: Solomon, Kreisler, Rubinstein, Callas and Gigli had been collected and framed. Messages of love were pouring in from the living: Domingo, Pavarotti, Kiri, Alfred Brendel, Simon Rattle, Pablo Gonzales, and Menuhin. They all loved Rodney. He had brought enormous fun to music.

  Forget the Bennies, the Maria Kusaks, the Bill Thackeries, and the Junos, thought Abby bitterly, Rodney in all his life never worked as hard as I do.

  Restlessly she picked up a fax from George that had just been shoved under the door. Rachel’s Requiem was Number Twenty in the classical charts, people were playing it on pop channels as well, and even more amazing, Sonny Parker’s Interruption Suite for lavatory chain, coughing, etc., had been nominated for a Gramophone award. The Observer had also got wind of her come-back and done a big piece headed: OUR OWN ABBY ROSEN.

  Abby felt happier and she fell into such a deep sleep, she didn’t even wake when dozing Davie fell off the balcony and sprained his ankle.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  No-one was more on the ball than George Hungerford. He understood balance sheets, had an instant grasp of any financial problem, never missed a crooked picture nor an appointment. He also drove the hardest bargains. The deal had been all. His first marriage had collapsed because he was a workaholic. To survive the pain, he had worked even harder.

  But now the RSO had gone like Bonnie Lesley to spread their conquests further, it was time for him to take stock of their future. Could they possibly survive even until Christmas? The latest estimate for the repairs and revamp of H.P. Hall was five million pounds. It was also essential that he devoted some time to his other companies, which, after all, brought in the dosh. Ten acres in central Manchester couldn’t run themselves.

  But George, who had never had a daydream in his life, found himself hopelessly inattentive. Only this morning he had found a file he had accused Jessica of losing in the office fridge, and his boxer shorts in the pedal dustbin at home instead of in the washing-machine.

  He had even started reading horoscopes and poetry and gazing at the clump of beeches in the park whose leaves were turning the same red-gold as Flora’s hair. He ought to be looking for companies to buy and properties to snap up, but his mind, like Scarlatti’s Adonis, had turned from hunting to love. Frequently he was cast into an abyss of self-doubt. How could such a bright, beautiful young lady possibly fancy an uncouth, working-class, middle-aged, North-Country lout?

  All that he had to go on was that she had once called him a really sweet guy, but since then she’d scuttled away from him, and he’d been far too shy to ring her up.


  He should at least have been working out how they could cut costs on the orchestra’s trip up north for the Appleton Piano Competition; instead he sent for the holiday lists, and chose the weeks his Principal Viola, El Creepo, was away to programme Harold in Italy and Elgar’s In the South overture, both of which had wonderful solos for Flora.

  ‘Oh, she does teach the torches to burn bright,’ murmured George.

  Then Miss Priddock had barged in and announced that the soprano who was singing in The Messiah next month had decided to cry off because she was expecting triplets.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ said George, ‘I was just brooshing oop on my obstetrical skills. Still she might have suspended belief when she sang, “A Virgin Shall Conceive”. Oh well . . . Flora can take her place. We’ll have to pay her extra though.’

  ‘Judgin’ by the way she’s been behavin’ on tour, Ay would have thought Flora would find it even more difficult to portray a virgin,’ said Miss Priddock with a sniff.

  ‘That was quite uncalled for,’ snapped George. ‘Get out.’

  Miss Priddock flounced off, squawking like a wet hen. George picked up The Times.

  ‘Venus is a morning object,’ he read in the monthly astronomy round-up of the stars.

  How could the Goddess of Love be so prosaically straitjacketed? In George’s heaven, she was on twenty-four-hour duty.

  Back came Miss Priddock, ten minutes later, exuding smugness and reproach in equal proportions, as she ushered in Gilbert and Gwynneth, whom George had clearly forgotten were coming. By this time, he was drinking a large Scotch, with his feet on the table, feeding strips of smoked salmon to a purring John Drummond, and watching a video of Flora singing The Creation.

  Gwynneth and Gilbert promptly went into raptures over the way Rannaldini had held the orchestra together after Hermione’s disappearance – surely the mark of a great conductor.

  ‘The orchestra played great,’ said George icily. ‘They saved the performance because they luv Flora and their pride is sooch they wouldn’t allow themselves to produce anything less than a rare defiant performance.’