by Jilly Cooper
‘About four months, but we’ve only seen each other twice, and it’s over now, I promise.’
‘You son-of-a-bitch,’ screamed Abby, banging her fist down on her bedside table scattering ashtrays and message pads. ‘Two-timing me exactly like Christopher did, only wanting me for the dough. You fucker! Why didn’t you break it off, instead of making a goddamn idiot of me? God, I hate you, hate you, hate you.’ Her voice rose to a hysterical scream.
But Marcus couldn’t breathe and couldn’t answer, so Abby slammed down the telephone, and sat shuddering on the bed, clenching and unclenching her hands, her eyes darting madly round the room.
Lord Leatherhead got a miniature brandy out of the fridge and poured it into a glass. He wasn’t enjoying this at all. When the telephone rang again Miles snatched it up. It was The Scorpion. ‘I’m afraid Miss Rosen has no comment to make,’ said Miles, then ordered the switchboard not to put through any more calls.
‘The Scorpion has already been on to us with the whole story,’ he told Abby bleakly. ‘It reflects disastrously on the orchestra. First their musical director posing naked with a lover to promote a pop record-’
‘Beattie Johnson stitched me up,’ whispered Abby. ‘She stole that photograph.’
‘But you gave her the interview. All that nauseating claptrap about being ma-a-a-dly in love,’ Miles lingered lubriciously over the word.
He’s loving this, thought Abby numbly.
‘Then we learn,’ he added silkily, ‘that you’ve both got other people and are only masquerading as lovers to push the record.’
‘That’s bullshit,’ shouted Abby. ‘I loved Marcus. I’m supposed to be marrying the guy. I didn’t know anything about him being gay.’
‘You’ve hardly been a vestal virgin yourself and your orchestra are so nauseatingly avaricious it can’t be long before one of them sells the story of you and Viking to The Scorpion.’
‘I’m not having an affaire with Viking,’ hissed Abby.
Miles gave her a pained look of utter disbelief. ‘What about the night Rodney died? There are dozens of witnesses.’
‘That was a one-night stand, everyone was plastered. Hilary was there. She probably shopped us to The Scorpion. It only happened once, for Chrissake.’
‘I find that very hard to believe. Anyway, it’s going to be all over The Evening Scorpion this afternoon, and all the other papers will carry the story tomorrow, bringing utter disrepute on the orchestra. The one thing the Press hate is being cynically manipulated.’
‘I didn’t manipulate them, right,’ Abby was hysterical. ‘I genuinely believed Marcus and I were getting married. Look, he gave me this ring,’ she held out her right hand.
‘A virtuous woman should have a price above rubies,’ said Miles sarcastically, as he selected a Granny Smith from Abby’s fruit bowl. Hilly’s new diet had done wonders for his spots.
‘I was only pushing “Madly in Love”,’ gibbered Abby, ‘because the orchestra got half the royalties.’
‘I’m afraid we don’t want your — er — ill-gotten gains.’
‘We had an emergency board meeting this morning,’ said Lord Leatherhead gently. ‘There was a unanimous vote demanding your resignation.’
‘I can see Hilly voting me out, but not Bill Thackery — Bill’s a good friend.’
‘Not so you would know it,’ Miles bit viciously into the apple. ‘He’s never forgiven you for not making him leader after Lionel left, nor for giving his solo back to Julian.’
‘Oh for Chrissake.’
‘You can’t expect to conduct the orchestra with such a scandal hanging over you,’ added Lord Leatherhead. ‘We’ll honour your contract and pay you up to the end of February.’
‘George is still chief executive. He won’t let you fire me.’
‘Having seduced a member of the orchestra almost half his age,’ said Miles fastidiously, ‘I hardly think George, or his opinion, would carry much weight. I doubt either if he’d be very interested. He hasn’t even had the manners to leave a telephone number.’
‘But I can’t let the orchestra down.’ Leaping forward, Abby clung to Miles’s new lapels. ‘Please, please!’
‘You’ve let them down enough already.’
‘Who’s going to conduct them at such short notice?’
But Abby already knew the answer.
‘Rannaldini has very kindly agreed to step into the breach,’ said Miles triumphantly.
SIXTY-SIX
At St Theresa’s, Marcus came off the telephone in total shock, wheezing in short bursts like a frantically panting dog. Oh poor darling Abby, he must get to her and stop her killing herself. He couldn’t find his puffer, he’d never make it upstairs to inject himself with steroids. No-one was about to help him. Lurching into the common room he found the score of the Schumann concerto open on the upright piano, with all his instructions pencilled in. But where he’d scribbled ‘Ped’ for Pedal, someone in emerald-green ink had turned the word to ‘Pederast’. Giving a choked sob, frantically battling for the tiniest breath, he stumbled into the hall, out through the front door, slap into a cameraman and a girl reporter.
‘It’s him,’ the reporter proffered her tape-recorder as casually as if it had been a packet of fags. ‘How long have you been having an affaire with Nemerovsky?’
But Marcus, blue in the face, could only give desperate little whimpers, stretching out pleading hands for help.
‘You sure it’s him,’ said the photographer snapping away like a jackal, ‘more like some kind of deaf mute.’
‘Probably a ruse to fox us,’ said the girl. ‘Have you told Abby yet, Marcus?’
‘Looks as though he’s having an epi. You OK, mate?’ the photographer lowered his camera.
Ducking round them, Marcus collapsed with a crash on the stone steps.
‘Christ, someone better give him the kiss of life,’ said the reporter.
‘Don’t touch him,’ shouted the doctor, who’d arrived to treat Carl’s tendonitis, then taking one look at Marcus. ‘He’s having a massive asthma attack.’
Fortunately in his car he had a portable nebulizer, a breath mask, which delivered the drug Marcus so desperately needed in tiny drops of damp air. In an attempt to rally him, the doctor also gave him a steroid injection, but Marcus was too far gone, the blue had a purple tinge now, his airways had closed up like one of Simon’s oboe reeds, and he was too weak and exhausted to draw in air through such minuscule holes.
The doctor had to make a lightning decision. It would take too long to summon an ambulance. Appleton’s little cottage hospital only worked skeleton shifts at weekends; Marcus must be rushed the ten miles to Northladen General.
‘You drive,’ he ordered the cameraman, as they laid Marcus down in the back of his estate car, ‘I’ll look after him and direct you. You telephone Northladen Intensive Care, and tell them he’s going to need a ventilator,’ he added to the reporter.
‘Who is he anyway?’ he asked as the cameraman, used to chasing Princess Di round Gloucestershire, hurtled at a steady 80 m.p.h. between high stone walls.
‘Rupert Campbell-Black’s son — what d’you give his chances?’ the reporter had kept on her tape-recorder.
‘Not a lot, he’s not responding at all, poor little sod. I wonder if he’s been taking beta-blockers, a lot of contestants do to calm the nerves. Fatal with asthma.’
Aware that they had a ‘very important patient’, Intensive Care was already all stations go. Within seconds of his arrival, to the accompaniment of bells and flashing lights, a lifeless, unconscious Marcus had been laid on a bed, and given an injection to paralyse him totally. This was so that he couldn’t resist the transparent tube which had been shoved down his throat, and which was now pumping air and oxygen from a huge black box into his lungs.
‘Christ,’ muttered the anaesthetist, glancing at the box to judge the extent of the resistance in Marcus’s lungs, ‘he’s up to eighty.’
‘Is that bad?’ asked the re
porter, who, passing herself off as Marcus’s sister, had infiltrated herself into the room.
‘Let’s say a normal person’s between ten and twenty.’ Then catching a flicker of terror in Marcus’s staring eyes, the anaesthetist put on a heartier voice, ‘It’s all right, lad, we’ve had to paralyse you, only temporarily, to keep the tube down your throat. This is to sedate you, so you don’t fight against it.’ And he plunged another injection into Marcus’s arm. ‘Don’t fret yourself, we’ll soon have you breathing on your own.’
They’re lying to me, thought Marcus in panic, I’ve had a stroke, or I’ve broken my back falling over, I’m going to be trapped inside this coffin of a body for the rest of my life. Oh please let me see Alexei once more, and he drifted back into unconsciousness.
Marcus was sinking. Sister Rose, a pretty nurse from Glamorgan sat by his bedside talking to him all the time in case he woke and panicked. Mozart piano concertos were being played to soothe him. They had tried taking him off the ventilator for short spells, but he had showed great distress and no sign of being able to breathe on his own.
‘We better alert his next of kin,’ said the anaesthetist. ‘He doesn’t seem to have any will to live, he must have had some terrible shock.’
What this was became evident when the piece on Marcus and Nemerovsky appeared in The Evening Scorpion, as vicious as it was damaging. Spectacles misted up, grey buns stood on end, as every judge in the lounge of the Prince of Wales read The Scorpion inside their copies of the Daily Telegraph and the The Times.
Although Miles had issued a brief emollient statement that Abby had resigned and been replaced by Rannaldini, it soon leaked out that she’d been fired and had vanished without trace. Both the hospital and the hotel were besieged by reporters. Helen, in a state of mounting horror, sat beside Marcus’s bed, as drips, tubes, catheters, huge black machines and most of Northladen General appeared to be fighting to save his life.
‘I know it’s difficult,’ kindly Sister Rose gave Helen a cup of tea, ‘but try not to show how worried you are, it’s crucial that Marcus is subjected to as little stress as possible.’
To complicate matters, Rupert had taken off for a twenty-four-hour break with Taggie before the Czech Grand National and, leaving no telephone number, could not be traced.
The RSO arrived in Appleton, already hot and bothered because Miles in the latest economy drive had insisted they travel on coaches without air-conditioning. As they hung up their tails and black dresses in the town hall dressing-rooms, they learnt from a distraught Charlton Handsome that Marcus was on the critical list, Abby had been sacked and Rannaldini had taken over — news that both outraged and terrified them. In one maestro stroke, Rannaldini had virtually gained control of both the CCO and the RSO.
He was already cleverly infiltrating CCO players into the RSO instead of extras. One of their fiddlers had replaced Bill Thackery on the front desk of the First Violins.
Nicholas, when badgered, mumbled something about Bill being off with a frozen shoulder.
‘More likely, been frozen out,’ said Dixie. ‘Now L’Appassionata’s been given the push, Rannaldini doesn’t need Bill’s vote any more, nor does he have to put up with Bill’s terrible sound.’
Quinton had moved up to First Horn, but the entire section was shocked to find the Third Horn seat had been filled by Rowena Godbold, the CCO’s charismatic blond First Horn.
‘Couldn’t you and I just merge with each other and forget about orchestras,’ said Quinton with a leer, as he followed Rowena’s tight-jeaned bottom up onto the platform.
Blue, on the other hand, was totally unmoved, sunk into despair. His mobile had been switched on since the tour, but Cathie hadn’t telephoned.
Little Han Chai couldn’t stop crying over Marcus and was almost too upset to rehearse Beethoven’s Third, her chosen concerto. At first Rannaldini was moderately accommodating, announcing that Northladen General had his mobile number and would ring if there were any change in Marcus’s condition. But he was soon picking on individual players, and talking sinister notes into a pocket computer.
‘That is a strange sound your instrument ees making,’ he sneered at Barry.
‘That’s because it didn’t have any time for lunch,’ Barry cuddled the sunburnt Junoesque curves of his double bass defensively.
‘What does it eet for lunch?’
‘Conductors,’ snarled Barry.
But the laughter was nervous and uneasy. Never had the orchestra been more in need of Viking to raise their spirits.
It was during the break that the RSO clapped horrified eyes on The Evening Scorpion and realized that poor Abby had not just been the victim of a coup d’état, but also, since Marcus had been outed, of a homosexual conspiracy. Like many departed conductors, she had suddenly become very dear to them. They had only needed a rehearsal to remind them how much they loathed Rannaldini.
They were also desperately upset about Marcus, as the bulletins grew increasingly bleak. Nor were they the only ones, even those judges who’d taken bribes and frolicked in the chlorine with Rannaldini were deeply shocked that such an outstanding candidate should have dropped out.
Nor was Benny very happy as the odds shortened on Natalia.
‘I want first prize, Rannaldini.’
‘Why?’ mocked Rannaldini. ‘Are the others so bad?’
‘I only entered because Howie promised you’d see me right.’
Benny couldn’t face the humiliation of being beaten by a girl, particularly one he had failed to pull.
Woken fleetingly by the chorus singing fortissimo on a CD of Mozart’s Requiem, finding he couldn’t move and forgetting he’d been deliberately paralysed, Marcus thought he’d already arrived in hell. Standing at the foot of the bed, wafting Maestro, magnificent in white tie and tails, the Prince of Darkness in person, stood Rannaldini.
‘Of course he won’t die,’ he was reassuring a sobbing Helen, but his solicitous air was belied by the implacable hatred twisting his face.
Seeing the panic in Marcus’s eyes and the reading on the ventilator rising sharply, Sister Rose, who was for once reluctant to go off duty, hastily ushered Rannaldini from the room.
‘I know you’re worried, but it’s best if he has one visitor at a time.’
Emerging from the hospital on his way to the town hall, just when it would make a maximum impact and the morning papers, Rannaldini paused for a second.
‘Of course I am standing by my stepson,’ he announced smoothly. ‘Eef by some miracle Marcus pull through, what matter eef he is gay. So are many, many of my closest friends. I weesh I could stay longer, but I cannot let down the three young people who play their concertos at the town ‘all. Now eef you’ll excuse me.’
And as Clive and a huge black basketball player called Nathan, who’d been roped in as an extra bodyguard, held back the ravening paparazzi, Rannaldini slid into his black limo.
Meanwhile, on the steps of the town hall, Dame Hermione was giving an interview to Sky Television. ‘As a very close friend of Rupert Campbell-Black, my heart goes out to him at this difficult time.’
Like horses on the tightest bearing rein, Rannaldini drove the RSO through the packed-out evening performance. Anatole played his Brahms concerto magnificently, and was heavily tipped to take the competition from Natalia, although Carl in his plaid coat had brought warmth and almost folksy charm to the Mozart E Flat Major.
Far west on the coast of Cornwall in their little cottage under the cliffs, Flora, George and Trevor had taken blissful refuge. They had no telephone, nor television and had read no papers for days. Flora, in the nude, had just sung, ‘Where E’er You Walk’, to George, but had got no further than the second verse, because Trevor had thrown back his head and howled and George had pulled her back into bed.
Running the three of them up supper of rainbow trout, chips and Dom Perignon, Flora suddenly remembered it was the first night of the finals at Appleton, and turned on the ancient wireless to listen to Abby a
nd her friends in the RSO. She was appalled to learn not only that Abby had been ousted but also, in the news bulletin that followed, that Marcus was sinking fast in Northladen General.
The abandoned chip pan then caught fire and might have burnt down the cottage if George, hearing Flora’s wails, hadn’t rushed in and put it out.
‘Rannaldini’s pulled off that merger,’ sobbed Flora, ‘and Marcus is dying of an asthma attack.’
‘We’ll fly oop to Appleton at once.’ George drew her into his great warm bear-hug.
‘But you wanted a rest from the orchestra. This is meant to be our honeymoon.’
‘With you, honeymoons last for ever.’
All the papers on Sunday morning ran huge stories about Marcus fighting for his life, Helen keeping an all-night vigil, Rannaldini standing by, and Rupert, Nemerovsky and Abby being untraceable. The reporter who’d caught Marcus on the steps of St Theresa’s was delighted with her scoop: CARING SUNDAY SCORPION IN MERCY DASH, said the headline.
Back in Rutminster, Cathie Jones couldn’t stop crying. Poor sweet Marcus, who’d always been prepared to accompany her, poor Blue so soon out of a job, poor Abby who’d been so kind. Carmine would probably be fired, too. Rannaldini wouldn’t tolerate such bolshiness. Cathie trembled at the thought of her husband at home all day with no-one to kick but herself.
As Christmas presents, she was planting some indoor bulbs, laying them out in neat piles on the kitchen floor. White bulbs called Carnegie to remind Julian of Carnegie Hall, pink bulbs for Abby, Blue Delft, of course, for Blue.
The damp bulb fibre squelched in her hands like chocolate cake mix, as she put it into the blue chinese bowls she had bought for fifty pence each at the local market. Tiger the cat had just strolled up to inspect these impromptu earth boxes. Any moment he’d bound through the piles of bulbs mixing up the colours.
Gathering up the Blue Delfts, she hid them beneath the damp fibre, like me burying my love for Blue, she thought despairingly.
There were always things to do in the autumn to make winter bearable. When the bulbs came up, probably not in time for Christmas, their sweet smell would be a reminder of bluebells in the summer. Blue bowls, blue bulbs, bluebells, how would she ever get through the winter without him?
