by Jilly Cooper
The leaves of the rescued branch of philadelphus were now shrivelled, its petals fallen. Ramming the branch in the dustbin, Marcus reflected bitterly that at least he had given it the same brief chance to blossom as Alexei had given him. Freedom was clearly a destiny he was not going to reach.
Flora was horrified, but didn’t show it, when Abby confided over lunch that she and Marcus were getting married.
FIFTY-THREE
The long summer ground on, with all the inhabitants of Woodbine Cottage working flat out. As well as playing for the RSO, Flora was studying The Creation with her singing teacher because the Academy had invited her to sing the soprano part in a student production in September. She had most fun playing chamber music, as part of Julian’s quintet. It taught her to listen to herself, and she soon lost her shyness, joining in the furious arguments about tempo, and merrily added to the wrong notes which increased dramatically as the red wine flowed, until Canon Airlie who lived next door banged plaintively on the walls.
Flora grew so fond of Luisa and the Pellafacini children that she could not bear the thought of such a happy family being ousted by a putsch. Late one hot night, when she and Julian were polishing off a bottle together in the garden, she told him about George’s and Rannaldini’s merger plot. Julian’s bony face was impassive, but, as he drained his glass, his trembling hand spilled red wine dark as blood in the moonlight on his white shirt.
‘George is a great guy,’ he said slowly. ‘He’s done a helluva lot for the orchestra and he speaks his mind.’
‘About a quarter of his mind,’ snapped Flora, ‘the rest is working out dirty deals, he’s utterly Machiavellian beneath that bluff northern exterior.’
‘I somehow trust the guy,’ persisted Julian. ‘Rannaldini’s different, inflicting pain is the only other way he gets his rocks off.’
‘If he takes over, we’re both for the high jump,’ said Flora.
Julian, however, agreed with Viking that the whole truth would only panic a dreadfully demoralized orchestra,
‘Let me do some digging. I’ll have a word with Bill Thackery, he’s so discreet and now he’s on the board he may have inside information.’
Flora was also worried about Marcus, trapped at Woodbine Cottage slogging away at pieces for the Appleton, and endlessly accompanying Abby on the violin. Flora, having been invited to join the Pellafacini Quintet, had indeed been the spur to make Abby practise seriously again. The sound was amazing; there was no doubt she would be up to concert standard by the autumn.
Marcus, however, was listless and losing weight. Helen, encouraged by Rannaldini, had struck up a terrific friendship with Abby and had taken to dropping in, getting on Marcus’s nerves, constantly harping on her delight at his secret engagement.
Meanwhile George and Miles were busy finalizing details for the tour of Spain at the beginning of October. The orchestra would be playing Rachel’s Requiem with Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet overture and Rachmaninov’s Paganini Rhapsody, to pull in the punters, and on alternate nights, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with a Spanish chorus. The highlight of the tour, however, would be Barcelona, where a sufficiently recovered Rodney would fly in to conduct his old orchestra in an eightieth-birthday concert.
Megagram were chipping in because the tour was a splendid opportunity to launch Rachel’s Requiem in Europe. But the RSO were still desperately short of cash. London orchestras charged large fees on tour, but payments to regional orchestras didn’t ever cover their costs. Additional funding therefore had to be found.
During the summer break, George had taken to dropping in on Woodbine Cottage to discuss the orchestra with Abby who automatically assumed he was after her. She hoped he would act as a spur to Marcus, who seemed increasingly detached. She also continually harped on about Flora’s antagonism.
‘Marcus and I want to have you and Juno over to dinner, but we’ll have to choose an evening when Flora’s playing chamber music, as I know Juno, you and she don’t get along.’
This was borne out by Flora vanishing like smoke whenever George rolled up. Then, on the first Saturday in August, Trevor went missing. Flora, Abby and Marcus had been watching the CCO at the proms on television. Dame Edith was due to retire in the autumn, and, as this would probably be her last prom, had camped it up like mad in white tie and tails. In the middle the cameras had panned to Gilbert and Gwynneth looking odiously enthusiastic in the stalls. This had produced so much barracking that Trevor, who only liked noise if he made it himself, bolted out of the cat door.
Absolutely demented, Flora combed the woods for twenty-four hours trying to find him.
‘I know he’s trapped down a rabbit hole or been kidnapped by vivisectionists,’ she sobbed.
As a final straw, having been stung, scratched and pricked to bits by nettles, thistles and brambles, her mobile had run out early on Sunday evening. Returning home, filthy, tearful, exhausted and hoarse from shouting, to check if anyone had rung the cottage with news, she was greeted at the back gate by Trevor. Trying to pretend he had been searching for her with equal fervour all day, he scrabbled at her so ecstatically that he pulled her boob tube down to her waist. He had in fact been languishing after one of George’s Rotweillers, who was on heat. Arriving home from Zurich, George had returned the lovelorn suitor and was now downing a large Pimm’s with Abby in the garden.
Flora, out of relief and gratitude, was forced to join them. Blushing because George must have had a good look at her breasts, she adjusted her boob tube, pulled down the green baseball cap, covering her dirty hair and prayed there were enough cuts and nettle stings on her legs to hide the fact that they had not been shaved for a fortnight.
What a ghastly contrast she must be to beautifully groomed Juno, or Abby, sleek and replete in a scarlet sarong.
‘I’ll just see if Trev’s hungry,’ Flora sidled towards the kitchen.
‘He isn’t, George and I tried to tempt him, he must be love sick,’ Abby handed Flora a glass of Pimm’s. ‘Try it, George and I made it with Kiwi fruit and mangoes.’
She couldn’t help feeling glad that Flora was being seen at such a disadvantage. Conversation was very stilted.
‘How’s the chamber music going?’ asked George.
‘Fine.’
‘Flora’s also learning The Creation,’ said Abby.
Convolvulus trumpets weaving in and out of the blackthorn hedge, blushed pink in the setting sun; George also blushed as he announced that there was a coincidence.
‘Having given the CCO a boost earlier this year, Dame Hermione feels she would like to redress the balance and award a similar favour to the RSO on her birthday on 31 August.’
‘Hermione’s a Virgo,’ gasped Abby.
‘Not for many years,’ giggled Flora.
‘I’m not having that bitch over the RSO threshold,’ snapped Abby flatly.
‘Stop being a drama queen,’ said George crushingly. ‘We need the cash. So we’re planning a huge spectacular of The Creation, and because it’s a religious work, the Bishop is allowing us to use the grounds of Rutminster Cathedral. We’ll bill it,’ his voice thickened slightly, ‘as Dame Hermione in Birthday Concert.’
‘If she’s singing Eve,’ pointed out Flora, ‘it ought to be Dame Hermione in Birthday Suit.’
‘Don’t be fatuous.’
Flora lifted Trevor onto her knee.
‘I’m so pleased to see you,’ she said, covering his little face with kisses. ‘Goaty Gilbert has such a crush on Hermione,’ she went on unrepentantly, knowing George had one, too. ‘Perhaps he’ll deliver her on the pillion of his new bike.’
‘She arrived by Land Rover at Cotchester,’ said Abby.
‘We’re aiming for a helicopter, more impact,’ said George briskly.
‘Ah! So she’s got a choice of your Chopper or Rannaldini’s,’ murmured Flora into Trevor’s rough fur. ‘I tort a taw a coup d’état a-creeping up on me.’
‘Shut up,’ hissed George, shooting a wary glance at Ab
by, who was far too upset to notice.
‘I am not going to work with that bitch after the way she and Rannaldini tried to scupper the gala.’
‘Pink, pink, pink, pink,’ cried an agitated blackbird, unnerved by the proximity of Scriabin and Sibelius who were chasing each other and big moths through the soft blue dusk.
‘With any luck, it’ll rain,’ said Flora.
‘Even if it chucks it down it won’t shrink Hermione’s monstrous ego,’ stormed Abby.
The coup de grâce for Abby was when Hermione announced a week before the concert, that she would need an extra ticket for her agent, Christopher Shepherd, who would be jetting in from New York.
Abby downed sticks and refused to conduct.
‘That man screwed my career,’ she screamed at George.
‘Not from what Marcus was telling me, he says you’re back playing chumpion.’
‘I don’t care, right? I am not conducting in front of Christopher.’
‘Best revenge — to show him how good you’ve got.’
But Abby was adamant. At such short notice she expected George would bring in the Fat Controller or one of the RSO regular guest conductors. But to her horror and Hermione’s delight, within an hour, Rannaldini, who was after all a local boy living in nearby Paradise, had found a rare window in his diary and agreed to take over.
Flora went ballistic. The whole thing was a set-up, a plot to infiltrate Rannaldini into the RSO. George had invited Christopher over deliberately, knowing Abby would back down.
‘I’m not going to be conducted by Rannaldini either,’ she told Viking, ‘I’m going off sick.’
The rehearsals for ‘Dim Hermione’s creating,’ as it became known, were incredibly acrimonious. The lecherous tenor, Alphonso, last seen adding a profane note to The Messiah when he swapped Louis Vuitton cases with Flora, was back, singing the archangel Uriel and jumping on everyone. He had got so much fatter that Miles, who met him at the station, couldn’t change gear and when they arrived at the cathedral, and George leapt forward to open the door, Alphonso tumbled out. Later when he fell over lurching forward to pinch Nellie’s bottom, he couldn’t get up but lay like a turtle and George had to rustle up the entire chorus to right him.
Adam and Raphael were both played by Walter, a charming bearlike bearded German, who detested Hermione.
‘Last time, I sing vith her and take a bow, she step in front and kick me in the shin,’ he told Flora.
Walter was very taken by Marcus, who accompanied him in a piano rehearsal. The boy, he said, was a natural accompanist and should take it up as a career as there was such a shortage of good ones. And why was Marcus so unhappy? When Flora mumbled about Marcus wanting to marry a beautiful girl and worrying about not being able to support her, Walter gave her an old-fashioned look.
‘You are sad too, my child.’
Flora confessed she couldn’t face Rannaldini and the moment his big black helicopter blotted out the sun, when he flew in to take a full choral rehearsal on the afternoon of the performance, she pushed off, claiming she’d got the flu. Abby, traumatized at the thought of Christopher’s arrival, had dragged Marcus off to Paris for the weekend. Flora would have joined them if she hadn’t promised to cat and dog sit.
In his pretty house in the Close, Julian had also seen the helicopter land. Knowing that Rannaldini would spend at least ten minutes primping in his dressing-room, he picked up the score of The Creation. He loved the joyful tunes, the celebration of nature, the exuberant orchestration full of ravishing woodwind solos, which enhanced but never overwhelmed the singing. Every day during its composition, Haydn had knelt down and prayed to God to ‘strengthen me for my work’. God had answered his prayers.
The last time Rannaldini and Julian had met, Julian had been sitting in the leader’s chair in drag. Aware that his job, and the house in which he and his family had been so blissfully happy, might at any moment be taken away from him, Julian fell to his knees, praying that he might keep his cool and have the courage to protect his orchestra.
Out of the window as he rose to his feet, he could see the RSO warming up, nervous yet thrilled at the prospect of playing under such a great conductor. The stage had been set up on the yellow, drought-dried water meadows in the shadow of the cathedral and sheltered by two huge limes, whose gold leaves trailed on the ground as if they were already in long dresses for tonight’s performance.
Twenty minutes later, the wilting musicians, still waiting for Rannaldini, were running through the recitative in which God created the animal kingdom.
Loudly and briskly Julian led his First Violins up the scale, followed by a fortissimo bellow from the bassoons and trombones. ‘With cheerful roaring, there stands the Lion,’ sang a smiling Walter.
The strings then scampered up another scale, followed by loud staccato pounces.
‘The Tiger comes bouncing in leaps from his lair,’ sang Walter.
Exactly on cue, more feline and explosively unpredictable than any tiger, Rannaldini bounded on to the rostrum. He looked magnificent, lean, fit and dark brown, as though he’d spent a month in linseed oil rather than Sardinia. Both his tan and his swept-back thick pewter-grey hair were enhanced by a polo shirt, the clear scarlet of a runner-bean flower, which was tucked into pale grey trousers. Despite his outward sophistication, all the primaeval darkness that had once covered the earth seemed concentrated in his malevolent black eyes. But as they swept disdainfully over choir and orchestra, every woman except Militant Moll, was glad she’d spent all morning, frantically pulling on different clothes, scenting, bathing, shaving legs, washing hair and putting on waterproof mascara, because Rannaldini always made women cry.
Rannaldini didn’t miss a beat when he saw Julian.
‘They told me you had come here, Mr Pellafacini,’ he said softly.
Seeing their revered leader white and shaking, fear ran through the RSO. Cyril put away his bulb catalogue, Davie Buckle his pack of cards.
Rannaldini knew every note of the score and demanded fanatical precision. His personality was so strong that musicians responded to the slightest move of a suntanned finger, the lift of a thick ebony eyebrow. A flared nostril had been known to bring entire flute sections out in a rash.
Not by a flicker of a muscle, did he now show how jolted he was by how much the RSO had improved. When it came to attack, emotion and beauty of tone they were streets ahead of the CCO.
So, as was his wont, Rannaldini tore them apart, instantly identifying the weakest musicians, ordering them to play on their own, making his beat so small, and his instructions so piano, that it was also impossible at the back to interpret them.
‘Could you possibly beat a little more distinctly, Maestro, and speak up a little,’ quavered Old Henry.
‘I speak quietly,’ hissed Rannaldini, ‘so you will concentrate more. Get a hearing-aid, old man, eef you can’t interpret my beat, how will you ever read that telegram from the Queen when eet arrives.’
Seeing Militant Moll’s pursed lips, he rounded on her.
‘And you can stop faking,’ he screamed. ‘You’re not lying underneath your weemp of a boyfriend now.’
The orchestra gave a nervous guffaw.
‘Say something, Nin,’ hissed Moll.
Ninion gazed fixedly at his oboe.
Rannaldini’s cruellest jibes were reserved for Old Cyril, who had got plastered at lunch-time. In one aria, in which God created the flowers and fruits, the horns had beautiful drifting bars of triplets.
Realizing Cyril’s trembling lip couldn’t produce a pure note, Rannaldini made him play over and over again on his own, finally suggesting Cyril replaced his French horn part with his P45. Cyril burst into tears. Mortified, the orchestra gazed at the floor. Julian clenched his fists, willing himself to speak out.
Viking was already in a bad temper. He hated the chorus resting their scores on his head, and ramming their big knees into his back. Seeing him lean over and pat Cyril’s heaving shoulders, Rannaldini
realized there was a member of the orchestra still to torture.
‘Seven bars after ten, on your own, First Horn.’
Flawlessly the notes floated round the water meadows.
‘Again,’ yelled Rannaldini, ‘I want no hint of brassiness. You are not weeth the Black Dykes Band now.’
Viking played it again: perfectly.
‘You no understand.’ Rannaldini jumped down from the rostrum and picked up Julian’s fiddle. ‘Theese is how I want it.’ And he proceeded to play the phrase beautifully but with a slightly different emphasis.
Viking put down his horn and, strolling towards the rostrum, picked up Mary’s violin and repeated the phrase even more beautifully.
‘Now you play it on the horn, Maestro,’ he said insolently.
The orchestra grinned.
Rannaldini lost his temper.
‘Your section sound like donkey gelded with sceesors,’ he screamed.
On cue the sun had crept round the cathedral spire, gilding Viking’s blond mane.
‘With cheerful roaring, there stands the lion,’ muttered Clare to Candy. ‘Oh, go on, Viking.’
‘Are you speaking to me?’ drawled Viking.
‘What does eet look like?’ Tigerish, Rannaldini was poised to lash out.
‘Eeet looks awfully rude. Please don’t slag off my section like that, we are quite prepared to do anything you want, but only if you ask us nicely. Secondly the orchestra have now played for an hour and a half, I suggest you thank them and give them a break. Finally Cyril used to play in a horn section that was known as God’s Own Quartet. Frankly, you’re not fit to lick his boots.’
With Rannaldini’s screams ringing in his ears, Viking strolled off to Close Encounters which by special licence was open all day.
On his return, Rannaldini was still yelling in his dressing-room.
‘How dare you insult Maestro Rannaldini,’ spluttered Miles. ‘He says he never been spoken to like that in his life.’
‘What a good thing I was here to teach the little shit some manners.’
