by Jilly Cooper
During a rather strained and stilted drinks party, when the contestants stared at each other like cats, Marcus noticed Benny Basanovich, black hair curly as a Jacob’s sheep, surrounded by girls, but paying particular attention to a voluptuous Slav beauty, with long sloe-black eyes, soft, drooping scarlet lips and large breasts. That must be Rannaldini’s protegee Natalia Philipova. Marcus felt a surge of pity for his mother. How could all the silicone implants in the world compete with that, he thought savagely.
Over an excellent dinner of steak and kidney pudding, and a huge pie made from dark blue bilberries picked off the moor, served with big jugs of cream, the level of chat and laughter started to rise.
Everyone then drew for position in the competition. With forty-eight contestants to play, the first round would take four days. Mid-morning or mid-afternoon were best. People who played first thing had to warm up the jury and the audience. Immediately after lunch was dodgy, because half the jury would be sleeping it off. By the end of the day everyone was irritable and tired. Marcus drew the very last number, then had a nail-biting, four-day wait.
On the first morning of the competition, however, all the contestants were expected to turn up at the small concert hall belonging to Appleton University, where the first two rounds were taking place, to be officially welcomed by Lady Appleton.
The jury were already in position in the gallery, including Jennifer the labrador, who was leaving blond hairs all over the shiny dark suit of the Ukrainian judge.
Marcus nearly fainted when he saw Boris, Rannaldini and oh God, Pablo Gonzales, who was raising binoculars with a shaky hand to spy out the better-looking male contestants.
Only after the last winner had accepted her little silver piano, had it been discovered that before the competition she had deliberately taken private lessons with most of the jury then further sucked up by writing them sycophantic thank-you letters.
This year Lady Appleton was taking no chances, and kept the names of the judges under wraps to prevent them being got at before the competition.
After welcoming everyone, and thanking the sponsors, Mr Bumpus of Bumpy’s Scrumpy, she stressed the importance of the jury not having any contact with the contestants.
‘I know many of you know each other, but try and restrict yourselves to a little wave until after the final.’
Monocled and massive in Prince of Wales check, Dame Edith promptly raised Jennifer’s fat yellow paw and waved it at Marcus.
‘Finally,’ went on Lady Appleton charmingly, ‘don’t be frightened or discouraged if you go no further — remember that every member of the jury was once knocked out in the first round of a competition.’
‘I was not,’ said a deep voice in outrage.
‘Sorry, except Dame Hermione,’ laughed Lady Appleton. ‘Now let us welcome our first candidate, Miss Han Chai from Korea.’
On went the jurors’ spectacles, as the prettiest little raven-haired teenager came dancing onto the stage with her pink skirts swirling and played Debussy, Liszt and Mozart with such proficiency and delight that she plunged every other candidate into despair.
Bruce Kennedy, the great American pianist, who always voted against the Eastern bloc only gave her five out of ten.
‘Technically perfect,’ he muttered to Dame Edith, ‘but I don’t figure she’s experienced “Life”.’
‘If you want to see raw emotion,’ whispered back Edith, who’d given her six, ‘look at her teacher in the front row. Don’t you agree, Boris?’
Boris, who was sitting behind them, gave a sulky grunt, and added another semi-quaver to the clarinet’s part in Act Two of King Lear. There was manuscript paper all over the floor and the seats on either side of him. He supposed it would be construed as collusion if he enlisted Marcus’s help to put in the bar lines.
Boris had only fallen under Lady Appleton’s spell and agreed to judge when he was plastered at some reception last year, and was livid to be dragged away from work.
He wasn’t remotely gratified that Rachel’s Requiem had now gone to Number Five, and he was incensed that Rannaldini had been given a suite at the Prince of Wales, with a room next door for Clive, his sinister leather-clad henchman, while he, Boris, had only a dimly lit shoe-box facing a grubby brick wall with no mini-bar.
Hermione was even crosser than Boris. Having promised her his full attention, Rannaldini had rolled up with a beady-eyed Helen, and then spent his time caballing.
For despite Lady Appleton’s strictures, corruption was gloriously rife. Everyone, particularly the Eastern bloc, indulged in tactical voting. All the judges had been tempted by massive bribes. Dame Edith was shocked to be offered three Steinways, a diamond necklace and a week’s holiday for two by the Black Sea, Dame Hermione less so. The only safe unbugged place for intrigue was the heated pool. Rannaldini, who had the advantage of a magnificent Sardinian suntan and fluency in most languages, soon had wrinkled paws from dog-paddling with large lady judges, their long grey hair swept up on top.
A few of the judges argued the whole time, the rest were too terrified of Rannaldini and making fools of themselves to put forward any forceful opinions. This happened particularly after the Italian contestant, whom Dame Edith had described as ‘a fairly good-looking pig who unfortunately sounded as though she was playing with trotters’, turned out to be the daughter of Ernesto, the Italian judge. The strain of listening to music from nine in the morning until eight at night was telling on all of them. The old trouts found it impossible to stay awake, particularly after Bumpy’s Scrumpy and a large lunch.
As contestant followed contestant, however, stars were beginning to emerge. Most of the judges liked Han Chai, none of them liked Benny, who had only entered because both Howie and Rannaldini had persuaded him certain victory would lift a sagging career. Benny, on the other hand, was very famous, and rather good with judges, claiming not only genuine French-Russian parentage, but also aunts from Latvia, Romania, China and Ireland who, when necessary, became ‘my favourite relation’.
Also much fancied was Carl Matheson, a cheery, bouncing Texan with a terrific stage personality, who’d been told by his agent to leave his tails behind. This was an old trick. The contestant would then appear not to have expected to reach the final. If he did and walked onto the platform in his plaid jacket or a too large borrowed DJ, the audience and jury would be touched by his modesty and humility, and the fairy tale element of a rags-to-riches win, and mark him up accordingly.
Dominating the candidates, however, was Natalia Philipova, who’d ‘come a long way, baby’, since two years ago in Prague when Rannaldini had advised her to give up the piano, then relented and financed her private lessons. Now he was determined to make her a big star. Hence his tickling of all the old trouts in the swimming-pool and his waking them with a cattle-prod when it was Natalia’s turn to play.
He had chosen Natalia’s first round pieces well. Liszt’s piano adaptation of Tristran, and a Chopin sonata with a funeral march middle movement reduced everyone to tears. Howie had already signed up Natalia, but he was soft-pedalling the connection, as he and Rannaldini didn’t want Benny to go into drunken orbit. A win from Natalia would be that much more impressive and dramatic if she beat an established talent like Benny’s.
Finally, there was Anatole, a moody handsome Russian, and a marvellous pianist. He was left handed, which made him very strong in the bass and gave his playing a wonderful thunder. His hair was the browny blond of newly laid parquet, and like most eastern bloc players, he wore cheap clothes: shiny brown trousers, plastic shoes and his freckled back could be seen through his thin nylon shirt. But nothing detracted from his eruptive presence. His deadpan face, deep husky voice and occasional bursts of temper reminded Marcus agonizingly of Alexei. Howie, who was gasping to sign him up, had nicknamed him the ‘Prince of Polyester’.
Anatole, like all the other Russians who’d entered, had been playing his first-and second-round repertoire and his chosen concerto in concert halls all round Si
beria for the last six months. Although aware he would probably go back to Siberia for good if he didn’t win, Anatole was far more interested in winning the local pub talent competition.
All the contestants reacted to pressure in different ways. Some paced before they played, some took deep breaths or did yoga, others stared into space, some shook and sweated. Anatole kept throwing up, then lighting a cigarette immediately afterwards.
Marcus’s four-day wait would have been a torment if every day a fleet of cars hadn’t arrived to ferry the contestants either to the concert hall or to big houses in the area, where they were offered a grand piano on which to practise. Marcus was sent to a darling old lady called Mrs Bateson who’d been a friend of Thomas Beecham. Deciding Marcus needed fattening up, she baked wonderful cakes for him. All her family rolled up and listened whenever he played, but when they appeared at the hall to cheer him when his turn finally came, they had great difficulty getting seats. The place was packed with Press, chasing more copy on Rupert’s estranged son and Abby’s live-in lover.
Driven crackers by Helen’s moans about Natalia and Rannaldini, Marcus was almost relieved to get onto the platform, then started the Liszt B minor Sonata with an appalling crash of wrong notes.
Helen, Boris, Pablo Gonzales, Edith, Jennifer the labrador, Mrs Bateson and all her family gave a collective groan of dismay. Marcus, on the other hand, thought: sod it. He’d obviously blown it, so he might as well enjoy himself on this wonderful piano, whose tone was as soft and mellow as any burgundy covered in cobwebs in his father’s cellar.
Forgetting the audience, he continued to play the Liszt so beautifully that the entire hall was in floods. He then raced with all the insouciance of an Olympic skier, through Balakirev’s Oriental Fantasy, which because of its racing octaves and chords is supposed to be the hardest piece ever written. He then collapsed in a giggling heap the moment he left the platform.
‘I have never been so scared in my life.’
By this time, he had brought the hall to their feet. To his amazed delight, he went through to the last twenty-four.
The second round was even more of an ordeal for the judges, consisting of long fifty-minute recitals. If any of the candidates overran Lady Appleton was meant to ring a large bell, but was often too kind to do so. Many of the contestants, however, had complained of the soft muddy tone of the piano in the first round, so it was now replaced by one with a harder, brighter sound.
The first day of the second round was also Pablo Gonzales eightieth birthday. Thinking it was a learned work of discography, the big Ukrainian judge brought him a copy of the Guinness Book of Records. Pablo was henceforth so transfixed with interest that he did hardly any judging at all.
All the other jurors fought to sit next to him so they could wile away the tedious hours of Bach and Debussy, reading about the fattest dog, the largest elephant or the heaviest twins in history.
Meanwhile the Irish judge, nicknamed ‘Deirdre of the Drowned Sorrows’ by Dame Edith, was quietly getting through a good litre of red wine a day. Boris was getting through about the same, but was a little happier, having orchestrated a whole act of King Lear. The Chinese judge had reached Schumann’s first signs of madness on his laptop. Jennifer had put on half a stone eating digestive biscuits.
The ancient Latvian judge, who had promised to vote for Natalia after caballing in the pool with Rannaldini, had not fared so well, and was now in bed with a head cold, unlikely to make the final. Rannaldini was so enraged to have wasted so much time on her, and even crosser when a grinning Dame Edith suggested Jennifer should take the Latvian’s place, that he was reduced to bonking Hermione in the lunch-hour.
Once again Marcus was the last to play. This time his agonizing wait was extended because Natalia had insisted on finishing Liszt’s Dante Sonata, despite Lady Appleton’s bell, and then complained bitterly about the brittle tinny sound of the new piano. A piano tuner was subsequently summoned and, after laboriously checking the piano, announced it was in perfect order.
Marcus bore this out by dispatching the Bach Busoni Chaconne with exquisite clarity and warmth, making the allegedly brittle and tinny piano reverberate like an organ. The jury were entranced, particularly by the accompanying drumroll from a lunchless Hermione’s tummy.
‘Even such an intellectual piece becomes audience-friendly under his fingers,’ murmured Bruce Kennedy.
‘No-one looks better in a dark suit than Marcus,’ sighed Pablo.
The Bach was followed by Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata which was going splendidly until the middle of the slow movement, when Marcus pressed down the soft pedal for the first time to add a little colour. He then discovered to his horror that the pedal had jammed, and as a result only two out of the three strings were being struck in the treble.
He was so thrown he momentarily lost his place and ground to a halt. Throughout the rest of the slow movement, and the ravishing flowing rondo, which was why Marcus had chosen the Waldstein in the first place, he had to bash away like Benny in an attempt to be heard at all by the jury in the dress circle.
Convinced the piano had been got at, Marcus came off the platform in a white-hot rage and immediately complained to the waiting officials. This was regarded as dreadfully unsporting. Natalia kicking up about a tinny sound was quite different to accusations of sabotage. Back came the piano tuner huffing and puffing.
‘When instruments are out of tune in an orchestra,’ he grumbled, ‘everyone blames the musician, when a piano’s out of tune, everyone blames the tuner,’ and having taken the piano apart once more, proved there was nothing wrong with it.
Still utterly unconvinced, Marcus escaped from the uproar and the lurking Press and stormed round the town square until shortness of breath forced him to collapse onto a hard bench. Opposite, against a pinky-yellow evening sky, was the town hall, where he certainly wouldn’t be playing on Sunday.
‘I’m sorry, Alexei,’ he muttered almost in tears, ‘I’ve let you down.’
How could he possibly be a great artist who only belonged to the world, when he couldn’t even make the final of a piddling piano competition?
To his right was a statue of the first Lord Appleton, examining a roll of cloth and with bird lime all over his frock coat and top hat. What was the point of becoming famous anyway? The Press dumped on you when you were alive, and pigeons when you were dead.
‘Oh fuck, fuck, fuck,’ sighed Marcus.
Meanwhile the judges had retreated into the jurors’ room to select the last six, unimpeded by parents, teachers, agents and representatives from the various countries. The contestants had retreated to the bar. The consensus of opinion was that Marcus had blown it.
‘Although they always have a Brit in the last six to pull in the crowds,’ said Benny snidely.
Piano competitions, however, do not end with the presentation of the award and a cheque for twenty thousand pounds. Afterwards the winner is assured a couple of years’ engagements in the greatest concert halls of the world. In the past, winners had often had difficulty coping with this pressure. The reputation of the Appleton worldwide depended on choosing a winner who could.
Reliability was therefore considered even more important than talent; someone who would carry out these engagements without letting them down, someone who wouldn’t make mistakes in recordings.
Rannaldini was soon at work influencing the jury.
‘Regretfully,’ he said winningly, ‘I must abstain from voting for my dear stepson, Marcus, but speaking totally impartially, although it pains me to do so, I feel the boy did not project enough, particularly in the Waldstein, where he gave a very flat two-dimensional performance.’
‘Bollocks,’ thundered Dame Edith. ‘He played exquisitely in the Chaconne, and in the first half of the Waldstein he had something quite beyond the notes.’
‘He had a memory lapse,’ snapped Rannaldini, who now that he had Dame Edith’s job, didn’t need to suck up to her any more.
‘Probably
just nerves,’ snapped back Dame Edith.
She felt Marcus should go through. Pablo and Bruce Kennedy agreed. Pablo said he would resign if Marcus didn’t. The Russian, Sergei, deliberately voting against Bruce Kennedy, said he would resign if Marcus did. The Waldstein had no passion. He agreed with Rannaldini the boy was a ‘veemp’. Two of the old bids from Poland and Yugoslavia, who’d been chatted up by Rannaldini, and accepted promises of help from him for several of their pupils, voted against Marcus as well. So did Hermione, because Rannaldini told her to, and Deirdre O’Neill, because she hated the English. So did the vast Ukrainian because he was voting tactically. The ancient Swedish judge, who had only been kept awake after lunch by Benny’s banging, and nodded off afterwards, felt guilty he’d slept through the Chaconne and gave Marcus an amazing ten out of ten. The French judge loathed both Rannaldini and Sergei and had a crush on Dame Edith, so she gave him nine.
Lili voted against him because Rannaldini pinched her bottom in the lift and promised her a concert in New York. Ernesto promptly voted for Marcus because he was jealous of Rannaldini, so did Boris, which tied the score and a casting vote was needed.
‘Blodwyn,’ purred Rannaldini.
Lady Appleton looked up from a long list: Warm-up piano to be delivered, seven outside broadcast vans to be parked, seven microphones… and thought her name had never been pronounced so seductively.
‘Sorry, Maestro?’
‘Do you theenk Marcus Campbell-Black should go through?’ Surely not said those compelling inquisitorial night-black eyes.
‘Yes,’ said Lady Appleton.
Her friend, Mrs Bateson, had said the boy was a genius.
Taking Jennifer for a widdle in the town square, Dame Edith passed Marcus gazing into space with such a look of desolation on his face.
‘You’re through, you chump,’ she yelled. ‘And I agree — that piano was got at.’
All the favoured candidates — Han Chai, Carl the jokey homespun Texan, Anatole the moody Russian, Natalia and Benny — had made it. Marcus was the only outsider. A few tears were shed by the disappointed contestants. Lord Gargrave, on whose piano a brilliant German candidate had practised, was so upset the poor fellow hadn’t gone through that he invited him to stay on for a weekend’s shooting.
