by Jilly Cooper
‘I sure hope he’s going to win, but naturally we’ll treat all the contestants the same.’
The copy then switched to the record itself which Abby had had secretly made at Christmas as a surprise present for Marcus.
‘“Everyone thinks Marcus is wealthy, but he hasn’t spoken to his snooty dad in two years.” Rupert cut him off after a family tiff and he is too proud to take any money from his multi-millionaire stepdad, Sir Roberto Rannaldini (family motto: I will dump from a great height).
“I admire Marcus more than any boy I know,” enthuses Abby. “He sold the twenty-thousand-pound painting by horse artist Alf Munnings his dad gave him for his twenty-first to buy me a ruby engagement ring and he is a wonderful, caring and tender lover. But I hope one day that he, Rupert and Sir Roberto will be reconciled, perhaps at our wedding.”’
There was a lot of guff about Abby having slashed her wrist four years ago:
‘When she caught her agent and married lover cheating on her with his secretary: but Abby’s certainly turned her career around. Just back from a wildly successful tour of Spain, next week it’s the Appleton, and she still dreams of taking her orchestra on tour to the US. “But Marcus comes first,” sighs L’Appassionata. “His career is more important because we’re madly in love.”’
Abby had never seen Marcus really angry before.
‘How could you, Abby, how fucking could you?’ he yelled. ‘You know I never wanted to get anywhere on Dad’s back, and how could you say I flogged the Munnings? How d’you think Dad’s going to feel, and Mum? And you’ve totally buggered any chance I might have had in the Appleton. Even if I get through the first round they’ll say you pulled strings, or Rannaldini has, and finally that fucking record, you know how I feel about pop music.’
He was blue in the face, gasping for breath, clinging onto the kitchen table.
‘Don’t you remember me warning you. Beattie Johnson was Dad’s mistress between marriages, and his nemesis,’ he went on furiously. ‘She’s been trying to bring him down ever since.’
‘She stitched me up too, right?’ screamed Abby, ‘She never let on she was from The Scorpion, it was all off the record. I thought she was a legit music critic, or Megagram wouldn’t have given her an advance copy. It’s their fault for telling her where I live.’
‘It’s your bloody fault; why d’you always blame everyone else?’
‘I wanted people to know how good you are. Someone’s got to blow your own trumpet. You won’t.’
‘By putting out some fucking pop record. Why the hell didn’t you ask me? Because you knew I’d say no.’
‘Because I knew you needed the money.’ Abby was now hurling insults as if they were crockery. ‘I’m sick of having to pay for everything. I’m sick of you wasting your energy on stupid pupils. I’d quite like to be taken somewhere nice occasionally, get a few flowers and chocolates, the odd pin. If it becomes a hit you’ll make a bomb.’
‘Bombs bloody maim and destroy people. Anyway, why the hell did you give them that photograph?’
‘She stole it without asking. I only wanted to show her how beautiful you were. There must be some reason I’m throwing myself away on a penniless wimp.’
The telephone rang. Abby ran out of the room. Marcus picked it up, so short of breath he could only croak, ‘Hallo.’
It was Helen. Marcus steeled himself. But his mother was surprisingly chipper. Abby had given her a very good press, and had been quoted as saying:
‘Marcus gets his looks from his beautiful mother, she’s very supportive of him and is the only member of his family he can relate to.’
‘After all,’ protested Helen, ‘Abby hasn’t said anything that isn’t true. You and she are madly in love. Rupert has been fiendish to you all his life, and given you no encouragement at all. And everyone will buy the record now. Abby only meant it as a surprise. Everyone will understand it was just a bit of fun at the office Christmas party. And it’s wonderful publicity for both you and the RSO.’
‘I don’t want to be a fucking pop star.’
‘Kiri and Placido cross over — didn’t do them any harm. You’re overreacting — don’t excite yourself before the competition. At least you and Abby really love each other.’ Helen’s voice broke. ‘I’m sure Rannaldini’s got someone else. He was checking his Interflora bill, but when I came into the room yesterday, his hand shot down over it like a guillotine.’
‘You shouldn’t bloody well have married him,’ howled Marcus, slamming down the telephone.
What was happening to him?
Immediately it rang again. It was the Sun and then the Mail, then the Express and then the whole of Fleet Street, and soon the cars were crunching over the conker husks, splashing up the path to Woodbine Cottage.
‘The only time I escape fucking tension is when I walk out onto the platform,’ Marcus yelled at a flabbergasted Abby.
The RSO the next day were almost as hostile. Management, i.e. Miles rewed up by Hilly, were horrified by the picture in The Scorpion.
‘Ghastly vulgar publicity,’ he told Abby furiously, ‘musical directors should not emulate Page Three girls. Any sense of gravitas is totally destroyed and Miss Priddock’s been fielding calls from the tabloids all day.’
‘Then buy her some gloves and a baseball cap,’ snarled Abby.
The Arts Council were also appalled. Gwynneth was particularly disapproving because Gilbert, having bought his own copy of The Scorpion, seemed to spend an unconscionable time reading the headline, the caption and the few lines of text flanking Abby’s naked boobs.
Peggy Parker and Canon Airlie had collective coronaries.
The rehearsals that day were even more acrimonious. When Abby came in to conduct Tchaikovsky’s Sixth every single player except Hilary was hidden behind a copy of The Scorpion, and all started singing ‘Madly in Love’. Abby started yelling at them and things went from bad to worse.
‘If you don’t get your act together after the break I’m walking out,’ shouted Abby.
‘Good,’ said Old Henry to everyone’s amazement.
‘Whaddid you say?’
‘He said, “good”,’ shouted Nellie. ‘Can’t you get it into your thick head, Abby, that without Viking the Pathétique is absolutely pathetic.’
Nor did Abby get any help at home. For a few days the Press hung around like starlings settling noisily on a tree, then just as suddenly they all flew off leaving the tree bare and bereft. Marcus retreated into his studio, practising for ten or eleven hours a day until the pieces held no surprises for him. He found it impossible to relax and kept a score beside him at mealtimes as a wall between him and Abby. Unable to sleep since she’d returned, he had retreated at nights to the studio, but was also getting up at first light to intercept the post in case a letter arrived from Alexei.
The morning after the Press took their departure he had heard Dixie’s springer spaniel barking down at The Bordello, and knew the postman would reach Woodbine Cottage in a couple of minutes.
Leaping out of bed, he had hurtled across the lawn, round the corner of the cottage, slap into Abby, wrapped in a towel, hoping for the miracle of a letter from Viking. Both jumped guiltily.
‘I was hoping to hear from Philadelphia,’ mumbled Abby.
‘I was h-h-hoping to h-h-hear from the record company in Prague,’ stammered Marcus.
But all the postman produced was an ecstatic postcard from. Flora and the telephone bill, which Marcus pocketed instantly. ‘I’ll pay that, you’ve picked up far too many bills recently.’ Anything to stop Abby seeing the itemized calls to Moscow.
‘Come back to bed, Markie,’ pleaded Abby.
Marcus shook his head.
‘Ought to have a bath first, I just fell into bed like a polecat last night.’
‘Oh OK, if you feel like that.’ Abby retreated upstairs banging her bedroom door.
As Marcus soaked in the last of Flora’s bath oil, he noticed a pale sun looking at him from the marble tiles on
the right of the bath. The tiles were picking up the sun’s reflection in the mirror opposite. It gave Marcus the creeps that the sun, hovering unseen and in apparent innocence outside, could watch him naked in the bath. Just like the Press, thought Marcus with a shiver. He kept hearing the collective rattle of himself and skeletons coming out of the closet.
He had made heroic attempts to be faithful to Abby, but five weeks ago Alexei had sent him a pair of emerald cuff-links with just one sentence: ‘Here are two green eyes of the monster who is jealous of anyone you even talk to.’
And Marcus had weakened and written back, and Alexei and he had been ringing up and writing to each other ever since. Finally when the RSO was in Spain, Marcus had flown out to Prague for four days, on the pretext of looking for a record deal, but instead spending every second with Alexei, growing more and more hopelessly in love. It was as though he had found a part of himself that had always been missing.
There had been a performance of the ballet Don Quixote on the second night. And although Marcus almost expired with desire and pride as he watched Alexei bringing the Prague audience over and over again cheering to their feet in stupified wonder, he realized he loved the man, not just the great star.
In a few years’ time, Alexei would have to give up dancing, probably to become a wonderfully autocratic director, but Marcus wanted to be there to take care of him while he made the adjustment.
Alexei, on the one hand, was still playing word games, insisting art was more important than love and that he and Marcus were owned by the world.
‘Ballet devour your whole life.’
But it didn’t stop him trying to persuade Marcus to leave Abby.
‘It will be perfectly better for you to live in Moscow weeth me.’
But Marcus, wiped out once more by ecstasy and guilt, had returned to England, insisting they must never see each other again and Alexei had stormed off in a fury, accusing Marcus of cowardice and hypocrisy.
It was this guilt that had made Marcus react so strongly to The Scorpion piece: Abby trumpeting fortissimo to the world of their passion for one another, when he was totally fogged with love for Alexei.
As he lay in the cooling water, Marcus noticed a bottle on the side for detangling hair. If only it could detangle his life.
When he settled down to practise he was so tired that he kept making stupid mistakes.
Much later as the light faded he went for a walk. Sibelius and Scriabin followed him, pouncing on gold leaves which were tumbling out of the wood. The sun, which had spied on him earlier, was now huge, orange and warming the slim bare limbs of the trees, so beautiful freed of their clothing of leaves, they reminded him of Alexei.
He hadn’t heard a word from Rupert or Taggie since The Scorpion. They were probably too outraged and saddened to get in touch. How dare Abby say Helen was the only person he related to, when Taggie had always given him so much love and understanding.
Ahead Marcus could see the lights of the cottage. Abby must have come home early. He found her still in her overcoat, gazing hopelessly at a burnt-out kettle. Sobbing hysterically, she collapsed against him.
‘I’m desperately sorry, Markie. My foot’s like a colander I’ve shot myself in it so often. I’ve just turned your evening-shirt blue putting it in the same wash as my scarf.’
The Fat Controller was guesting at the RSO for the next week, she continued, so she was pushing off to Philadelphia to clinch the American tour.
‘I lied to Miles that I was going to see Mom. He’d be so fucking smug if the tour didn’t come off, and if it does I guess it’s the only way the orchestra’ll forgive me. You’d think it was me sacked Viking. Anyway it’ll get me out of your hair and theirs. You all need a break.’
‘I need you to tell me what to do in the first round,’ protested Marcus, but only to comfort her.
Abby gulped. ‘You’re the sweetest liar. You’ll be far better on your own. I’ll fly back on Thursday morning and come straight up to Appleton for the finals the next day.’
‘Aren’t you cutting it a bit fine?’ said Marcus in alarm. Abby was going to have to conduct six concertos. ‘It’s a hell of a marathon.’
‘It won’t give me time to be scared. Imagine five million viewers.’
She was so tired it took her ages to pack, dragging out her power suits with shoulder pads to impress the conservative and sometimes stuffy American cultural committees. The cats kept getting into her cases; she loathed the idea of them going to a cattery, but at least they’d be together.
When, at last, she wandered across the moonlit lawn to Marcus’s studio, the crowded stars were listening enraptured to the last joyful tumultuous bars of the Schumann concerto.
‘You and I are going to play that together in the finals,’ said Abby, massaging his shoulders.
‘Some hope. It’s tempting fate to work on it when I know I won’t get that far. Did you know Benny’s entered, and a mass of other seriously good people.’
‘You’ll zap the lot of them. You know Rodney always sang “To the Life Boats, to the Life Boats”, during that bit in the last movement, when every pianist wants to jump ship because it’s so difficult to cope with the cross-rhythms. Play it again. I’ll be the orchestra.’
‘Promise to sing it slowly,’ Marcus flipped back the pages.
‘I promise. “To the Life Boats, to the Life Boats, to the Life Boats,”’ sang Abby, faster and faster, with Marcus frantically scurrying to keep up, until they collapsed in hysterical laughter for the first time in days until Abby’s laughter turned once more to tears.
‘Make love to me, Marcus. It’s been so long, I need it so badly.’
Falling on each other, they tried to eradicate the memories of Viking and Alexei. For Marcus, it was as if he were attempting to quench a frantic thirst with great gulps of sea water. At least he hoped he had satisfied Abby. She fell asleep in his arms immediately. The studio was flooded with moonlight. On her right hand, clutching the pillow, Marcus’s ruby glowed like a drop of blood. Burning through the floorboards, under the bed, were Alexei’s hidden love letters, his Rolex and the emerald cuff-links.
White in the moon the long road lies
That leads me from my love, thought Marcus despairingly.
As Abby slept, he stole out of the studio and across the dewy lawn, his heart pounding. He didn’t even have to memorize the code for Moscow. But there was no answer. Alexei must have found other arms.
Appassionata. SIXTH MOVEMENT
SIXTY-FOUR
Appleton, a dark satanic mill town, lay just west of the Pennines with its grimy houses and factories spilling over the steep hillside as though someone had hurled a pot of black ink against a green wall. The surrounding countryside was dotted with imposing Victorian houses built by the old cotton manufacturers, who found patronizing the arts in the nineteenth century a gratifying way up the social ladder. The most imposing of these houses had belonged to the late Lord Appleton, a great charmer and music lover, who each year had invited a group of friends to play together over a long weekend. On the last day, the musician, who, by popular vote, had pleased his companions the most, was awarded five hundred pounds.
The comely Welsh pianist, Blodwyn Jones, who won the prize at the end of the Fifties, became Lord Appleton’s much younger wife, and when he died she joined forces with his inconsolable friends to found the Appleton Piano Competition in his memory. The Appleton had become as prestigious as the Leeds Piano Competition which took place every four years in August. Indeed Fanny Waterman, the founder of the great Leeds Competition was a friend of Blodwyn Appleton and had advised her in the early stages.
Lady Appleton was well named. She had a face as round, rosy and sweet as a Worcester Pearmain, and a nature to match. Although well into her sixties, she was able to charm distinguished musicians to give their services for almost nothing. This year, the very international jury contained several piano teachers, old trouts of both sexes, including a Romanian, a Latvian, a vast Ukr
ainian and a Chinese who spent his time writing a biography of Schumann from right to left on a laptop computer. Among the judges who still played in public was Marcus’s ancient admirer Pablo Gonzales, who had arrived without his blond boyfriend. Others included Bruce Kennedy, a cool laconic American, and Sergei Rostrov, a hot-headed voluble Russian, both great and famous pianists who felt they should put something back into music by sitting on the odd jury, but who detested one another.
Ernesto (an Italian who spoke little English) and Lili (a green-eyed German) were less good pianists. Both in their fifties, they preferred to judge rather than be judged and were making a nice living, thank you, sitting on juries all over the world and bonking each other.
Among the non-piano-playing judges were a svelte French feminist who played the harpsichord, and an Irish Contralto called Deirdre O’Neill, who had a winning cosy exterior, which mostly disguised a pathological loathing of the Brits, no doubt exacerbated by a recent divorce from a Weybridge stockbroker.
Completing the pack were Boris, Hermione and Dame Edith, who, because Monica was in Kenya awaiting her first grandchild, had rolled up with Monica’s yellow labrador Jennifer; and surprise, surprise, Rannaldini. All the judges were staying at the Prince of Wales Hotel in Appleton High Street.
The candidates on the other hand were housed at St Theresa’s, a local girls’ boarding-school, situated about three miles out of town on the edge of the moors. As the pupils had gone home for half-term, each contestant was allotted a tiny study/bedroom. Marcus collapsed in hysterical laughter when he found the walls of his room covered in half-naked posters of James Dean and Mel Gibson. Outside in the park, almost obscuring the view from his window, was a magnificent chestnut tree which still held on to its reddy gold leaves.
Across khaki fields, criss-crossed with stone walls and bobbled with sheep, Marcus could see the lights of Appleton. In case by some miracle he reached the final, he had brought his tails and the dress-shirt which Abby had turned pale blue in the washing-machine.
