by Jilly Cooper
Then Rupert’s mobile rang and Lysander, who’d been at the brandy on the way down, couldn’t stop laughing and loudly said, ‘Oouch’ when Kitty kicked him on the ankle. Distracted, Marcus played a repeat for the third time, wrong notes clattering down like hailstones.
Surreptitously, Rupert opened a catalogue to check the prices his yearlings had reached. Forgetting himself, Lysander suddenly said: ‘That was a bloody good horse.’
‘Tut up, Lysander,’ said Bianca reprovingly.
Aware of his father’s utter boredom, Marcus lost his place and ground to a halt. There was a dreadful silence. Marcus put his face in his hands.
‘Take your time,’ called out Monica Baddingham kindly.
Somehow Marcus stumbled through the prestissimo and fled to his dressing-room.
Bolting backstage, Flora found him slumped, white and shaking on the sofa bed, his breath coming in great wheezing gasps.
‘I can’t go back, not with Dad there.’
‘It was wonderful — you were playing better than ever before. You can’t let that bastard get to you, you’ve got to remount and finish the course.’
‘Anyone for orange squash or coffee?’ Miss Smallwood popped her white bun round the door.
Marcus clenched his fists.
‘He needs something stronger.’ Flora drew a half-empty brandy bottle out of her pocket.
‘He can’t have alcohol,’ said a horrified Helen who was dripping around like a wet hen.
Flora looked round for a tooth mug.
‘He’s got to relax. This’ll zap the asthma much quicker.’
The Cotchester Musical Society didn’t have a licence, so Rupert, who couldn’t understand why Taggie was so cross when he’d bust a gut to get there, swept Lysander off to the Bar Sinister, Basil Baddingham’s dive in the High Street. Most of Marcus’s fan club followed them in wonder. By the time they returned, Marcus had dispatched the Chopin adequately and was now playing The Bee’s Wedding.
Rupert proceeded to get out his blue silk handkerchief and pretend to be trying to catch the bumble bee, which reduced Lysander to even more helpless laughter.
‘Stop it,’ hissed Taggie over the applause at the end. ‘If Bianca can behave herself, you two bloody well can.’
At the prospect of Boris’s Siberian Suite many of the audience, including four girls who’d come in off the street mistakenly hoping it might be warmer inside, hadn’t bothered to return from the pub.
Cheered by another slug of brandy, ignoring the bewilderment of the audience, Marcus kicked off playing the suite quite beautifully. Boris was in ecstasy, delighted that in sympathy, the rain was rattling the window-panes that weren’t broken and the icy gale, whistling through the ones that were, was billowing out of the dark blue curtains at the back of the platform.
Rupert was reduced to shuffling his feet, sighing and reading Taggie’s programme. His face, quite expressionless as he clocked the Marcus Black, twitched slightly when he spotted the Dame Edith Spunk.
Dame Spunk has put up a Black in more senses than one, he thought sourly. After this fiasco, there was no way the society would ever ask Marcus back. And what the hell was Venturer doing advertising in the programme. The musical society were exactly the kind of old trouts who were always complaining about sex and violence, and television going to the dogs.
The penultimate movement, allegro furioso, in which Marcus had to drag his nails up the strings inside the piano to emulate the shrieks of the Siberian gales, dispatched more musical society members into the night. Even if television was going to the dogs, it was preferable to this din, which you couldn’t even nod off to.
Crash, crash, deliberately bringing down rows of notes at a time, Marcus’s whole arm was now moving up the piano.
‘I’m bored, can we go?’ Rupert whispered to a seething Taggie.
‘Lucky things,’ he sighed enviously, as two more bids scuttled out.
Boris was in despair; soon there would be no-one left to hackle his music. Seeing his father asleep, Marcus lost his place and stopped, and too embarrassed to bow he fled to his dressing-room.
Fortunately the remaining audience, thinking he had finished and blissful it was over, clapped, cheered and stamped their feet to get Marcus and their circulation back, so he returned to take a couple of bows. Monica Baddingham, whose ringing voice was used to calling to labradors across open spaces, then shouted, ‘Bravo’ several times and announced that the composer was in the audience, so everyone clapped Boris, too.
Dreading Helen’s reproaches, Marcus was relieved to pass her on the pay telephone on his way back to his dressing-room.
With trembling hands he put his encore piece, Schumann’s Dreaming, back in his case with the other music and wondered miserably if he’d ever have the guts to play in public again.
The poor professional, however, must always smile after a concert so people may be fooled into thinking it wasn’t too bad.
His friends, crowding in accepting glasses of white, were kind because they loved him.
‘How was the piano?’ asked Flora.
‘Terrible.’
‘What was wrong with it?’
‘Too many wrong notes.’
And his friends giggled in relief that he didn’t seem too cast down.
‘You were dazzling until your bloody father arrived,’ grumbled Flora. ‘Abby’ll be livid she missed it.’
‘You were terrific,’ Tagggie hugged him. ‘We’re all dying of pride. Bianca loved it.’
‘Good boy, Marcus,’ said Bianca, as he gathered her up into his arms.
‘Hallo, darling, you were good. Sorry about the ghastly cock-ups,’ he added to Taggie.
Taggie was too loyal to say she was sorry about Rupert, who had been side-tracked, talking to Monica Baddingham, an old chum whom he hadn’t seen since she had shacked up with Dame Edith. He was amazed how good she looked, and even more so when she insisted Marcus had played very well.
‘I’ve got to whizz home and tuck Edith up with a hot toddy, but I’ll drop him a line. Have you got his address?’
‘He’s living with Helen. That’s most of the trouble. How much would he have made this evening?’
‘Oh, about a hundred pounds, plus expenses.’
And he’s been practising for this concert for months, thought Rupert darkly.
He was overwhelmed by the greyness of the whole occasion. Wandering backstage, he was enraged to find himself at the back of a queue of more old biddies, who wanted their programmes signed, particularly when one, not realizing he was no longer her MP, gave him an earful about the poor dustbin delivery in the area.
He was so fed up that he took it out on Marcus when he finally reached him.
‘At least you got round this time. Monica’sjust told me how much they paid you. I think you should consider another career, something more lucrative, like nursing.’
Marcus’s friends, on the way out, laughed in embarrassment.
‘Rupert,’ reproached Taggie, seeing the brave smile slipping on Marcus’s face. ‘He’s only joking,’ she whispered. Then, relieving Marcus of a sleeping Bianca, added defiantly, ‘Everyone else thought you were marvellous.’
As they all drifted away, Marcus could see Helen was off the telephone and steeled himself to face her bitter disappointment. To his amazement, she was very chipper.
‘I’ve just been talking to the Evening Standard, they want to run a big story tomorrow.’
Marcus had very regretfully refused to go out on the toot with the bus load from the Academy, because he’d promised to have dinner with his mother. Now she suddenly cried off.
‘Janey Lloyd-Foxe is having — er — marriage problems. I promised I’d pop in and see her, so you go out with your friends.’
But as Marcus ran outside, he saw the minibus lurching off down the middle of the High Street.
The musical society were pointedly turning off lights and locking doors. Wearily Marcus returned to his dressing-room. He ought to
change, his shirt was still ringing wet. His neck was stiff, his arms and elbows were sore, his back ached as he slumped in the lone chair close to tears. Next month he would be twenty-one and going nowhere. He was roused by a knock on the door and an old man staggered in on crutches. Long white hair trailed out from under his black beret and he was wearing a black belted mac and dark glasses.
‘I am not too late?’
Oh Christ, thought Marcus.
‘Of course not.’ He leapt to his feet. ‘Would you like a chair?’
‘Please.’
‘And a glass of wine?’
‘Please.’ But when Marcus poured it, the old man put the glass shakily on a nearby table and took both Marcus’s pale, strong beautifully-shaped hands in his own which were covered in liver spots and as bent and as arthritic as oak twigs. The contrast could not have been more marked.
For a second the old man gazed at them. Then to Marcus’s horror, he dropped a kiss on each palm. Letting them drop, he took a sip of wine.
‘Those are the hands of a great pianist whom one day the world will know.’
‘Really?’ stammered Marcus. Perhaps the old poofter was harmless, after all.
‘Really. I ’ave never ’ear Appassionata play like that, so beautiful, so eentense.’
‘I had a memory lapse.’
‘Stupid jargon. You stop. So? Eef one takes reesks one makes meestakes. You work ‘ard on piece, no?’
Marcus nodded.
‘You will always have to. Eef you have no originality, it is easy to reach perfection. The Levitsky piece is beautiful, too. But next time put the Chopin at the end so the audience stay because they have some bon-bons to look forward to.’
‘My piano teacher said the same.’
‘I don’t take pupils any more,’ went on the old man, ‘but eef you feel like a week in Spain, I have lovely house, you would be very welcome. I would be ‘appy to geeve you lessons.’
In what? wondered Marcus. He never knew what to do when men made advances, the old ones in particular were much harder to turn down; it seemed so rude. He was also sure he’d seen this man before.
‘You’re seriously kind,’ he mumbled, ‘but my stepfather died and basically I have to look after my mother.’
‘She will recover.’ The old man creaked to his feet, then holding his sticks with one hand, he got a card out of his pocket.
‘Don’t forget. The invitation is always there. But I may not be much longer.’
‘Thank you.’ Marcus pocketed the card.
Then to his intense embarrassment, the old man raised a hand and started stroking his cheek.
‘You have beautiful face which help in our profession.’
Marcus just managed not to leap away in horror. Thank God there was a knock on the door. He never thought he’d be so pleased to see Miss Smallwood, who was anxious to pay him and get off home. She even gave him a fiver for petrol, about enough to get the Aston round the statue of Charles I and back. Only when he’d thanked her and signed the receipt and was letting himself out of a side-door did he bother to glance at the card. He gave a gasp and rushed under a street-light. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t. It was, too. The card said: PABLO GONZALES.
With a whoop of joy, Marcus swung twice round the street-light, then, fighting for breath, tore up a side-street to see if he could catch the old man, his hero, his utter God. But, like the minibus, the huge Bentley had swept off down the High Street towards London.
The only media reference the next day was that as Rupert had been leaving his son Marcus’s concert, he and Lysander Hawkley (the man who made husbands jealous, now married to Kitty Rannaldini, etc.) had got into a fight with the hunt saboteurs.
NINETEEN
Taggie was of such a forgiving nature that Rupert was amazed the following morning when she still only snapped back in monosyllables and crashed his bacon and eggs down in front of him at breakfast.
‘What is the matter?’
‘You should have switched off your mobile.’
‘Not when someone was trying to tell me my best three year old’s been kicked. She’s as lame as a cat this morning. That’s more important than some tin-pot concert.’
‘Not to Marcus, it wasn’t.’
‘Tut up, Daddy,’ beamed Bianca.
‘And you can belt up, you cheeky monkey,’ Rupert turned on her.
‘Stop being horrible to all your children, you great bully,’ shouted Taggie, and Rupert stalked out, kicking Kevin’s rose even harder on the way.
Rupert was as skilled as Stalin at sustaining cold war. But it was such a beautiful day, and the robins and blackbirds were singing. Yellow celandine and coltsfoot exploded on the verges and after yesterday’s downpour, all the little streams, hurtling into his lake had set it glittering like a tiara on the brow of the valley.
Best of all, the vet had reassured Rupert his filly would be fit for the One Thousand Guineas. Returning from lunching with an owner, remembering that Kitty was taking Xav, Bianca and Arthur to a children’s party, Rupert felt suddenly springlike and decided to slope home early.
A great orange sun was filling his rear mirror and warming the lichened trunks of his chestnut avenue as he roared up the drive.
Ringing Taggie to tell her he would check things were all right in the yard, and then be in and she was to get upstairs and out of all her clothes, was met with an extremely icy response. Taggie then hung up. Storming into the kitchen, Rupert found his wife still fully dressed, her face pink and shiny, as she took the skin off a just-boiled ham.
‘Why are you still sulking?’
‘I am not sulking, I’m angry. The only thing I really hate, hate, hate about you is the way you’re so vile to Marcus. It was a good concert. The people who know about music gave him a standing ovation.’
‘All five of them. They were just relieved such a bloody awful din was over.’
‘You’re be-e-e-e-estly,’ screamed Taggie. ‘See pigs jolly well can fly.’
Grabbing the ham, she hurled it at Rupert, who ducked so it crashed into the dresser behind him, breaking two coronation mugs, and smashing the glass on a framed photograph of Gertrude the mongrel, who led the stampede of dogs from the room.
Rupert couldn’t stop laughing which made Taggie crosser than ever.
‘Get out of my life,’ she shrieked.
Having cleared up, chuntering like a squirrel the while, washed the ham, and sprinkled the fat with breadcrumbs, Taggie had cooled down, and went in search of Rupert. She had been turning out the attic and nearly filled up a skip with the contents.
By the time she had searched the house, the huge gold sun had deepened to scarlet, and was flaming the puddles in the yard. Then she saw Rupert, on top of the skip. He was sitting on an ancient sofa, whose springs had gone, sharing a packet of crisps with Nimrod the lurcher, and reading Horse and Hound.
As Taggie burst out laughing, Rupert leapt down, pulling her into his arms, nuzzling at her neck.
‘Let’s go to bed.’
‘Not until you promise to be nicer to Marcus.’
‘That’s blackmail.’
‘I mean it, and we ought to give a twenty-first birthday party for him next month.’
‘And then he can invite all his ghastly bearded musical friends. Oh all right, you can see how badly I want to go to bed with you.’
‘And you’ll be nice at the party.’
‘I promise, and if you don’t come upstairs, I’ll take you here and now in front of all the lads.’ Rupert started to pull Taggie’s jersey over her head, so she scuttled protesting inside.
Marcus, however, quashed the idea. Helen, he said, was still in mourning and not up to a party. Privately, after the horrors of Christmas and his début concert, he couldn’t face a family get-together.
Rupert was relieved he didn’t have to cough up, but, again pestered by Taggie, gave Marcus a beautiful Munnings of one of Eddie’s old steeplechasers, Pylon Peggoty, who’d won a lot of races. Rupert had been
trying to track the painting down for years. Marcus wasn’t wild about horses, they gave him asthma, but he was deeply touched, knowing Rupert would have given anything to keep the painting.
Flora, who was broke, but always incredibly generous, had gone busking for three days, and bought Marcus Pablo Gonzales’ recording of all Chopin’s piano music. Marcus listened till he was cross-eared. Abby sent him a crate of champagne, and said they were all missing him in London. While she was in Lucerne with Rodney she’d discovered a fantastic nineteenth-century composer called Winifred Trapp, who’d written among other things a wonderful piano concerto.
‘Perhaps you’ll play it, if I can get a record company interested.’
Helen was delighted Marcus got so many presents, it made her feel less guilty about standing him up again on the night of his birthday. Marcus didn’t mind. On the strength of the cheques he’d been given, he had just bought a second-hand Steinway on the never-never and was dying to try it out. It had arrived late that afternoon after Helen had gone out, and, big, black and shiny, was now dominating the charming porcelain-crammed drawing-room at the Old Rectory, like a bull trying to be good in a china shop. Marcus hoped Helen wouldn’t be too upset by the intrusion.
She’d been so strange lately, ringing up and pleading he came home for supper, sobbing that she couldn’t stand another evening on her own, then he would find a brief note when he arrived, saying that she’d had to go out, after all, leaving him nothing for supper.
Having heated up a tin of tomato soup, and noticed some surprisingly sexy underwear, gold satin french knickers, with a matching bra and suspender belt, clinging to the side of the tumble dryer when he put in his shirts, Marcus settled down to the Bach Preludes. The Steinway was magical, unlike the brute at Cotchester where every note had been like lifting a ton of coal.
He so wished Malise was still alive. Helen pretended to be interested in music, but he and Malise had really been able to dissect pieces together and Malise’s detached, kindly criticism had been such a help and a comfort. Marcus hoped he was OK in heaven, he had been such a courteous man, but strangely shy underneath. Perhaps he was playing duets up there with Boris’s wife, Rachel.
