by Jilly Cooper
‘I didn’t know you played the violin,’ said Knickers reproachfully thinking of the times he had been short of a fiddler.
‘Indeed I do, Knickers, I’m Irish.’
By this time Hermione had arrived and was savaging her poor dresser. She had just been the subject of This is Your Life (who’d had an awful time finding people to be nice about her) and was also Artist of the Week on Radio Three, so you couldn’t escape the old bat, particularly if you were George. He had been excited and wildly flattered when Dame Hermione had asked if she could deal with him directly. He had never dreamt it would involve endless reversed-charged calls at four o’clock in the morning.
‘I’ve just remembered something else you can put in the programme about me, George. I’ve sung Susannah forty-eight times not forty-seven.’
And George had had to go back to the printers again because after ‘God Save the Queer’, he didn’t trust Jessica.
But Hermione still had numerous admirers. All the occupants of the Close had their binoculars trained on her heaving bosom as they pretended to do The Times crossword.
A besotted Gilbert had even shipped Gwynneth off to a crumhorn workshop in Bath for the afternoon and rolled up with her Red Riding Hood basket filled with aubergine rissoles and a bottle of parsnip wine. Hermione accepted a glass graciously, but unfortunately Gilbert had been pre-emptied. Always on the prowl for likely lads, Hermione had taken a shine to Viking. The shine was not reciprocated. For a start, Viking didn’t like her dismissive remarks about Abby.
‘Look how happy these musicians are to be playing once more under a great conductor,’ Hermione told him, as the entire RSO, who’d all felt the need for several strong drinks, filed grinning back from Close Encounters after the break.
Hermione then started bitching about her fellow soloists.
‘I don’t know why I’m working with such people.’
‘To make money, presumably,’ said Viking, emptying the last of Gilbert’s parsnip wine into her glass.
Seeing his mistress coffee-housing with Viking as he returned to the rostrum, the ‘great conductor’ decided not to appreciate her next aria.
‘Why you make a pausa on Top E.’
‘I always make a pausa there, Rannaldini.’
‘Eef Haydn had wanted a pausa, he would have written. He didn’t write, so we do not make.’
The screaming match that ensued shocked even moony Gilbert.
‘You seeng like a strangulated parrot.’
‘I won’t sing at all if you speak to me like that,’ squawked Hermione, certainly sounding like one, and stormed off the set.
‘Menopausa,’ grinned Viking and, as Rannaldini was yelling at the cellos, carried on an argument he and Blue were having about who had bonked the oldest women.
‘I’ve had lots in their seventies,’ said Viking airly. ‘And their daughters at the same time.’
‘Bet you can’t bonk Dim Hermione on her birthday.’
‘Indeed I can.’
‘How will you prove it?’
‘You can watch from the wardrobe. Just bring some rope.’
After the rehearsal, Viking sidled up to Hermione who was still foaming over the pausa, and suggested a drink at her hotel before the concert.
Orchestras and managements all over the world had discovered if you gave Hermione a less than perfect hotel on which to vent her spleen, she was less likely to be histrionic before a performance. The Rutminster Royale was a new and fearfully expensive high-rise barracks, half a mile outside Rutminster. When asked by Hermione to collect her key, Viking, with great aplomb, asked the dopey receptionist for the key to the room above, which even better, turned out to be unoccupied.
Having kissed Hermione with Celtic fervour in the lift up (during which time she had to clench her buttocks because Gilbert’s parsnip wine was making her fart like a drayhorse), Viking thrust her into the empty bedroom.
Enraptured by such youthful vigour, Hermione murmured she must freshen up. Telling Viking to open a bottle of ‘bubbly’ she disappeared into the bathroom giving him time to smuggle Blue and an old bell rope he’d found in the vestry into the wardrobe.
When Hermione emerged, grumbling she couldn’t find her sponge bag, Viking threw her on the bed, and produced Blue’s rope.
‘I thought you might like a spot of bondage.’
Hermione’s brown eyes glittered with excitement as he tied her to the bed post. Blue was laughing so much he fell out of the wardrobe.
‘A threesome,’ cried Hermione in excitement.
To Blue’s regret, Viking then stuffed a handkerchief into Hermione’s mouth, no-one was allowed to slag off Abby except himself, and hanging a ‘Do not Disturb’ sign on the door, he locked it, handing in the key as he and Blue left the building.
FIFTY-FOUR
No-one could find Hermione. There was no answer from her hotel room. Christopher Shepherd, her agent, supposedly on his way down from London, wasn’t answering his mobile. Fears grew that the great diva had actually carried out her threat and walked out.
‘Perhaps she’s playing Haydn-seek,’ giggled Clare.
‘Perhaps she’s been kidnapped,’ said Miles in alarm.
‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ muttered George. He was fed up with both Hermione and Rannaldini, neither of whom had stopped complaining. In the inside pocket of his blue-and-white striped seersucker jacket, bulky as a hidden gun, was one hundred thousand pounds in cash to be handed over to them before they emerged from their dressing-rooms tonight.
All the same, he was faced with a mega crisis. Fans in their thousands waving banners and wearing ‘I love Hermione’ T-shirts were pouring into the water meadows, unpacking lavish picnics. Close Encounters was doing a roaring trade in bottles of chilled champagne. Every seat in the stands was sold. Everyone living in the Close had turned their chairs round to watch from the windows.
Starlings making a din overhead scattered as the cathedral clock tolled seven. It was an hour to blast off.
‘Flora’s been studying the part with her singing teacher,’ said Julian. ‘She knows it backwards.’
‘And she’s got a beautiful voice,’ said Viking, who’d just rolled up looking innocent.
‘Flora has flu,’ said Miles beadily.
‘Came on very fast,’ said Hilary bitchily. ‘She was in the pub at lunch-time.’
Getting no answer on his mobile, George drove over to the cottage. The drought was in its fourth week. He had got the baking hot evening he’d prayed for.
The tractors raised clouds of dust as they chugged back and forth over the bleached fields. Collapsed goosegrass lay like brown dust sheets over bramble and nettles. As he turned the Mercedes up the rough track to Woodbine Cottage, George’s view was obscured by giant hogweed disappearing into the thick cloak of traveller’s joy. Next moment he’d gone slap into Flora and Trevor driving the other way. Flora was tear-stained and eating a Mars bar. Neither car was damaged badly. Grabbing Trevor, Flora tore back to the cottage. She was locking George out, when he put his foot in the door.
Expecting a bollocking, she was amazed when he asked her to go on in Hermione’s place.
‘Don’t be fatuous.’
‘Viking says you have a beautiful voice.’
‘Viking lied before he could talk.’
George shouted, then pleaded. She couldn’t let the RSO down.
‘Don’t pull that boy-scout number on me. Anyway I can’t go on. I look ghastly.’ Flora glared at herself in the hall mirror.
‘The make-up girls’ll patch you up,’ George was inside the cottage now.
‘And I’ve got nothing to wear. Although as I keep saying nothing’s very appropriate for Eve, why not provide fig leaves for me and Walter? Alphonso would need a rhubarb leaf,’ Flora was edging across the kitchen. ‘No prizes for guessing who’s going to play Satan.’ And with that she disappeared out through the back door.
George, who had once played wing forward for the West Riding, cau
ght up with her, bringing her down with a fine tackle on the parched yellow lawn. For a second as they struggled he realized how thin she had become, and she discovered he was far less fat now than solid muscle.
‘Stop playing Jeremy Guscott,’ she hissed up into his battered Rotweiller face. ‘You’re not pretty enough.’
‘Ouch,’ yelled George as Trevor bit his ankle.
‘Well done Trev,’ Flora was temporarily ecstatic.
Looking down, George could see her eyes were the same smoky green as ash leaves on the turn.
‘Please, Flora, please,’ he rubbed his ankle.
For a second Flora pressed her head against his shoulder, then the tears spilled over.
‘Rannaldini won’t let me onto the platform.’
‘He’s got no option, come on, luv, we’ll all be behind you.’
‘You’re on top of me,’ grumbled Flora.
Her last defence was that she’d lost Foxie.
‘I’ll find him, go and get dressed.’
Abby’s cream silk shirt was miles too big and fell to just above Flora’s knees. She looked like a shepherd boy.
‘What about a skirt.’
‘I’ve only got minis.’
‘OK forget it.’
‘Why don’t you ramraid Parker’s, and get me a little spangled number?’
‘You look chumpion.’ George thrust Foxie into her arms.
Only the child lock stopped Flora jumping ship, first into the lake whose surface was suddenly darkened as a black cloud moved over the sun, then onto the burnt verges, particularly when she saw the huge crowds.
Overhead drifted a lilac-and-shocking-pink striped air balloon.
‘I’ve always longed to go up in one of them,’ moaned Flora, ‘particularly now.’
But the waiting make-up girls had fallen on her like vultures, drawing her into the cathedral chapter.
‘What kind of base would you like?’
‘Preferably one that sings in tune,’ said Flora.
She couldn’t study the score, because they were putting blue drops in her reddened eyes, and then making them up. She couldn’t reply to Walter’s and Alphonso’s rather hearty assurances of support because her lips were being painted. Passionately relieved they didn’t have to compete with Hermione, they were clearly apprehensive about being landed with an absolute lemon. Sweat was flowing in rivulets down Flora’s ribs, she was shaking violently, she knew Rannaldini would screw her up, not giving her time to breathe.
‘There, you look lovely, good luck, there’s so much goodwill for an understudy,’ chorused the make-up girls.
Outside George’s fingers closed on her wrist like a handcuff.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said in surprise.
‘I look like a tart in all this slap, Eve would have no need of an apple.’
‘How are zee buttieflowers?’ asked Alphonso, whose girth was winning the battle against his white waistcoat.
Leaving her in the warder care of Miles and Walter, George steeled himself to make an announcement. Christ, the crowd was enormous, all those excited faces suddenly becoming an ugly black sea of hostility.
‘I have to apologize for the ubsence of Dame Hermione, who I’m afraid is indisposed,’ George shouted over a rising surge of disapproval. ‘But I am happy to announce that a local lass has gallantly taken her place, Miss Flora Seymour, who is the daughter-’
‘Oh no, poor Mum,’ groaned Flora, appalled.
‘Is the daughter of Rutshire’s very own Georgie Maguire.’
The crowd wasn’t remotely mollified. There was a lot of booing and shouts of ‘Give us our money back’.
Miles knocked cautiously on Rannaldini’s door. He didn’t want a repeat of Alexei and the gala.
I’m going to faint, thought Flora.
Her heart was pounding her ribs, the inside of her knees were black and blue from knocking, her throat as dry as Miles’s drinks cupboard, she’d never be able to sing.
Out swept Rannaldini, his musky cloying scent nearly anaesthetizing her. She noticed his teeth were whiter than the gardenia in his buttonhole, as he smiled and clapped friendly hands on the shoulders of Alphonso and Walter.
‘Good luck, my friends, not that either of you need it,’ followed by little jokey asides in Italian and in German.
‘This is Flora Seymour,’ George propelled her forward like a reluctant dog towards the vet. ‘Who is very courageously standing in. I know you’ll give her every assistance, Maestro.’
‘We know each other,’ said Rannaldini flatly. Only Flora could read the implacable hatred in the midnight-black eyes.
‘Rannaldini was once with me in Paradise,’ she said sadly.
The orchestra gave her a great cheer when she came on, but a rictus animal grin was frozen on her face.
As his chief executive collapsed into the seat beside him, Lord Leatherhead noticed that George hadn’t changed and his seersucker jacket was covered in grass stains.
‘Hope you know what you’re doing, George.’
Only then did George pause and realize what he had done in his desperation for the concert to go ahead. There was the poor child looking frightened out of her wits and absolutely tiny beside Walter. How could he have bullied her into it? Suddenly despite the now-stifling heat of the evening he, too, was drenched in icy sweat. As he opened his programme, Hermione’s serene and lovely face smiled up at him. Getting out a biro, George drew a moustache on it. Along the front of the stage, huge regale lilies were scenting the hot evening air.
‘I would never have wasted my best blooms if I’d known that trollop was going to sing,’ hissed Peggy Parker.
Rannaldini had deliberately chosen to wear black tails braided with satin, so he would stand out more dramatically against the white DJs and shocking pink jackets of the RSO. Down whisked his stick introducing Chaos which was portrayed by deafening discordant crashes, interspersed with sweet pianissimo murmurs on the strings followed by woodwind calling to each other across the dark void.
Flora was dimly aware behind her of Rannaldini’s beautifully manicured hands controlling the orchestra, hands that had once explored every inch of her body and brought her to the ultimate corrupt pleasure.
Perched on a gold chair, glared at by a vast crowd, she had a fifteen minutes’ wait before her first aria, and what terrible words to start with.
‘Astonished Heaven’s happy host gazes upon the wondrous work.’
Words and notes were a jumble of black. Alphonso and Walter had already sung. The audience were looking slightly less hostile. Here we go. Flora stood up. No-one could miss her frantically trembling legs — that must be why singers wore long dresses. Rannaldini gave her a curt nod.
‘Astonished haven’s hippy host,’ sang Flora, her voice coming out breathy and squeaky, ‘gazes on the wondrous wok.’
Someone laughed, someone booed.
‘And from their throats rings out praise,’ croaked Flora.
As the booing grew to a crescendo, she dropped her red score with a clatter and put her hands over her face.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t go on,’ she sobbed.
The ground fell silent. A police horse neighed.
George leapt to his feet, trying to climb along the row.
‘Sid-down,’ yelled the rows behind, who didn’t want to miss a thing.
Anyway George had been forestalled. Rannaldini had jumped down from the rostrum putting his arms round Flora, whipping the arctic-white handkerchief from his breast pocket, gently tugging down her hands, so he could dry her eyes.
‘Of course she can do eet,’ he shouted to the crowd. ‘She ees verra brave girl.’ Then turning to Flora, smiling at her with such encouragement. ‘We know you ’ave most beautiful voice in the world, carissima,’ he murmured ‘Do you want to go off for a moment?’ he added as Charlton Handsome belted on with a glass of water.
Flora shook her head. It was all over in a minute, Rannaldini gave her another hug, ruffled her hair causing a c
ollective wince among the make-up girls, and climbed back onto the rostrum.
Then, on second thoughts, he leapt down handing her back his handkerchief sending a benign rumble of amusement through the crowd.
Back on the rostrum he raised his stick, turning, smiling dazzlingly: ‘Okkay, Flora?’
Flora nodded, and the crowd gave a great roar of applause until Rannaldini silenced them.
‘How charming,’ hissed Peggy Parker to Gwynneth. ‘Abigail could never have handled that.’
Even Gilbert came out of mourning for Hermione. Flora Seymour had rather interesting breasts in that silk thingy, he must send her a bottle of parsnip wine.
Flora’s voice was a little choked and ragged to begin with, but grew in strength and sweetness by the minute. Throughout her first aria, Walter held her small hand. As Alphonso got up to sing he smiled across lovingly. The vast audience felt they were part of some family drama.
Flora’s next recitative began: ‘And God said let the earth bring forth grass.’ And legalize it, too, thought Flora which made her smile, and the aria that followed about the gentle jewelled charm of the wild flowers and golden fruit was so beautiful, that she suddenly realized the audience were smiling as well.
Rannaldini still wants me, she thought in rapture, I’m being given another chance. Her next entry was the trio with Alphonso and Walter. Both of them unselfishly held back so that her clear piercing voice could soar lark-like above theirs. There was a deafening applause at the end of part two and once the audience had accepted the fact that there was no interval and they’d have to cross their legs for another hour, they relaxed and enjoyed themselves watching the stars come out, and the houses in the Close light up like Hallowe’en pumpkins.
Pictures were now coming up on the huge television screens on either side of the platform, first the glitter of a trumpet, the gold of Viking’s mane, the hair on Julian’s bow drawn out like chewing-gum, Rannaldini’s left hand dancing like a blown leaf to the music, but mostly the cameras concentrated on Flora.
Watching her face growing more distinct as the light faded, George wanted to put her under his arm and warm her into clarity like a polaroid. By comparison, the ladies of the chorus looked like the witches in Macbeth.
