by Jilly Cooper
Boris couldn’t sleep, desperately worried about his little friend Marcus and kept awake by the lorries still rattling down Appleton High Street. Suddenly he was roused by a terrible crash. It must be burglars trying to steal the finally completed Lear. Switching on the light, Boris found that the glass rack had fallen off the wall into the wash basin, smashing everything, including his half-full bottle of whisky and the Aramis Marcus had given him for his birthday. He couldn’t see Lear anywhere, and rushed in panic out into the passage, where he bumped into Deirdre who had also been woken by the crash.
Having located the manuscript under his pillow, Deirdre, who was wearing a red satin nightgown, invited Boris back to her room for a night-cap.
‘You know I’d never vote for a Brit,’ she told him fiercely, ‘but I’m sorry your friend Marcus can’t make it.’
For a second Marcus thought he had gone to heaven, when he briefly regained consciousness and found sweet Sister Rose smiling down at him. She’d just returned from the day-shift with a pile of CDs. If anyone could make him heterosexual…
‘Here’s something to cheer you up,’ she whispered.
The next moment Prokofiev’s introduction to Romeo and Juliet poured into the room. Seeing the tears sliding out of Marcus’s eyes into his hair, Rose realized her mistake.
‘Oh help, I’m sorry, Nemerovsky danced that at Rutminster, didn’t he?’ Turning off the CD player, she took Marcus’s hand. ‘I was in the audience. My boyfriend and I took the coach all the way down to Rutminster to watch him. He’s such a hero. I understand why you love him.’ She gave Marcus’s fingers a squeeze. ‘There’s nothing wrong with being gay, you just need to accept that there isn’t only one way to be in life.’
SIXTY-SEVEN
At the start of the afternoon’s rehearsal with Benny and Natalia, the orchestra enraged Rannaldini by waving ‘Save the RSO’ banners and all wearing hastily printed ‘Viva L’Appassionata’ T-shirts.
Miles rushed up in a frenzy.
‘Take those bloody things off.’
To which Nellie promptly obliged, showing off splendid duo-tanned breasts.
‘How could you, Nell?’ stormed Militant Moll.
‘I think Rannaldini’s rather sexy,’ pouted Nellie.
‘If you collaborate, Nellie Nicholson,’ hissed Candy, ‘we’ll shave all your hair off.’
By the time they’d changed into less subversive gear, Blue noticed that Cyril, who’d been knocking back Bumpy’s Scrumpy at lunch-time, was missing. Blue was about to send Lincoln to find him, when yet another highly embarrassed French horn player from the CCO slid into the Fourth Horn’s place.
‘Where’s Cyril, Knickers?’ shouted Blue.
Knickers was too distraught to answer. If Rannaldini kept feeding in extras, he’d be out of a job.
‘Cyril’s been sacked,’ said Rannaldini coldly.
‘For the second day running he was drunk when he arrived at the hall,’ said Miles sanctimoniously.
Blue rose to his feet.
‘I’m going too, then.’
‘Sit,’ howled Rannaldini. There were demanding solos for the Second Horn in both the evening’s concertos.
‘Don’t talk to me like Barbara Woodhouse,’ snapped Blue, then all the colour ebbed from his face as his mobile rang.
Only Cathie knew the number. With a trembling hand, he switched it on.
‘Blue.’
‘My darling.’
‘I’m leaving Carmine.’
She had piled the children, the ducks, the hens, Tiger the cat, and all the bulb bowls into the car.
‘Go to The Bordello. Mrs Diggory’s got the key,’ said Blue softly. ‘There’s plenty of whisky and tins in the larder and lots of catfood. The ducks and hens won’t hurt in the kitchen till I get there. I’ll be as quick as possible. I love you. Yippee!’ yelled Blue as he switched off his mobile. ‘Yippee!’
Momentarily roused out of their despondency, the RSO looked at him in amazement.
‘Where are you going?’ screamed Rannaldini.
‘Over the hills and as far away as possible,’ said Blue. ‘I’m not playing your fucking concert.’
‘Then you’re fired.’
‘Good, you can send on my redundancy money.’
‘Is Blue drunk, too?’ whispered Cherub in awe to Davie Buckle.
‘Only with ‘appiness,’ said Davie.
Rupert’s and Taggie’s romantic forty-eight-hour break in an ancient castle high up in the Czechoslovakian forests had not been a success. Taggie had had a punishing eighteen months anyway looking after Bianca, and coping with Xav undergoing a final and completely successful operation to straighten his eyes. She had then had to keep him quiet and happy during his convalescence. But she had had a far more difficult task trying to soothe Rupert as he became increasingly outraged and miserable over the defection of both Marcus and Tabitha, although he had been far too proud to approach either of them. Abby’s interview with Beattie in The Scorpion had destroyed him, although again he wouldn’t admit it.
Rupert, on the other hand, was aware that he had been giving his sweet wife a rotten time, and had insisted they went away for a break without Bianca and Xav. He was then appalled how much he missed them.
‘They’re bloody well coming with us next time,’ he told Taggie as the helicopter landed on the racecourse at Pardubika.
‘And Marcus and Tabitha, too,’ Taggie wanted to plead. But she didn’t want to set Rupert off before a big race.
The course itself resembled the park of some great house, with massive beech hedges, yew colonnades, long lakes and banks acting as fences. Goodness — they looked massive.
The off for the Czech Grand National was in an hour and a quarter. Rupert went straight to check on Penscombe Pride, who’d spent the night in his large, luxurious, dark blue lorry. But before he could look at the horse, Dizzy, his head groom, beckoned him up the steps into the living-room area of the lorry.
‘Thank God you’ve come.’
‘What’s the matter? It’s not Pridie?’
‘You better see this. I’m sorry, Rupert, but the Press are everywhere.’
Rupert took one look at yesterday’s Evening Scorpion. On the front page was a startled wide-eyed photograph of Marcus at his most delicately beautiful: RUPERT’S SON IS GAY said the huge headline.
It was as though he’d always known it.
‘So?’ he turned on Dizzy.
‘And Flora Seymour’s just rung from Appleton,’ stammered Dizzy, quailing in the blast of such ice-cold rage. ‘She says Marcus has collapsed with the most dreadful asthma attack. He’s in intensive care at Northladen General. Helen didn’t want you to be “bothered”, but I think he’s really, really ill. He’s been on a ventilator for twenty-four hours. He’s had to pull out of the piano competition,’ Dizzy’s voice cracked. She had known Marcus since he was three. He’d always been such a kind gentle little boy. ‘Flora left a number,’ she added.
‘Well, get her, for fuck’s sake.’
Having taken in the caption ‘Nemerovsky’s Little White Dove’, Rupert skimmed the front-page copy.
‘Gay deceiver, Marcus Campbell-Black, pretended to be straight to woo millionaire-maestro Abby Rosen after his super-stud dad, Rupert, cut him off without a penny. But all the time Marcus was cheating on his lovely fiancée with mega-star ballet dancer, Alexei Nemerovsky. (Continued on pages 4–5)’
Ripping the pages in his fury as he found the place, Rupert discovered other headlines:
‘THE STATELY HOMO. L’APPASSIONATA FLEES. RED IN HIS BED. A PRINCIPAL WITH NO PRINCIPLES’ above huge photographs of himself, Abby and Alexei. There was even a picture of Woodbine Cottage with a caption: ‘Fag Cottage’.
Irrationally, Rupert wondered how Nemerovsky felt about getting fourth billing. His eyes seemed to fill with blood. He felt a thrumming in his head.
‘Here’s Flora for you.’ Nervously, Dizzy pulled him back to earth.
‘I think he’s dying,
Rupert.’ Flora’s voice was shriller than ever with anxiety. ‘The hospital are worried stiff, although they’re keeping up a pretence that his condition is stabilized. I know you’ve had a row, but Marcus really, really loves you. He did everything for your sake. All that mattered to him was you not thinking he’d been an utter failure as a son.’
‘I hardly think this latest escapade-’
‘Oh shut up, let me finish. He never betrayed you with Rannaldini. He tried to stop Helen marrying him, and he’s refused ever to speak to Rannaldini since then, he’s too loyal to you. He’s utterly, utterly honourable. Please go to him.’
‘I’m not having anyone dictating-’
Flora lost her temper.
‘People who live in bloody glass historic houses shouldn’t throw stones. If you hadn’t carried on like a rabbit when Marcus was a child — causing scandal after scandal — what did you do in the Circulation War, Daddy? — and given him the tiniest bit of support, he wouldn’t have needed to search out father-figures like Malise or Nemerovsky.’
‘Have you finished?’ hissed Rupert.
‘Yes… but please go to him. It’s the one thing that might save him.’
‘What the fuck else do you think I was going to do?’
‘It’s Room Twenty-Five on the second floor,’ said Flora, and hung up.
The dearest and most precious horse Rupert had ever owned and trained was about to run in the most treacherous and demanding race in the world. Most people thought Pridie was past his best, and should not be subjected to such an ordeal. Nor had worry about this helped Rupert’s and Taggie’s romantic break.
Dizzy had told Taggie about Marcus. Rupert was ashen as he came down the steps of the box. Taggie ran to him, holding him in her arms, feeling him rigid with shock.
‘Oh darling, poor Marcus, poor you, we must go to him.’
‘What else can we do?’ said Rupert bleakly, then, turning to Dizzy: ‘Tell the pilot to refuel.’
Pridie whickered with relieved delight at the sight of his master and nearly pulled Sandra the stable girl over as he bounded down the ramp. He had been bred at Penscombe and had never run a single race without Rupert. Having given him a couple of Polos, Rupert quickly felt the little horse’s legs, praying he could find some swelling or heat to give him an excuse to pull him. But they were perfect, and Pridie’s coat gleamed in the soft autumn sunshine, redder and brighter than any of the RSO cellos.
Briefly Rupert hugged his old friend.
‘We’re going to have to cope without each other. Pray for me, Pridie.’
Taggie felt utterly helpless on the flight home, as Rupert glared unseeingly out of the window, tension flickering like lightning around his jaws. Only once did she try to tempt him with a large whisky, but he shook his head violently.
‘It’s probably just a one-off with Nemerovsky,’ she stammered. ‘He’s so powerful and glamorous, anyone would find him difficult to resist… Lots of people have flings.’
‘What the fuck do you know about it?’ snarled Rupert, gazing through the dusk down at the white horses flecking the English Channel.
‘N-nothing.’
‘Well, shut up then.’
‘He could be bisexual. One affaire doesn’t mean he’s gay.’
‘Course he is… always has been.’
Taggie gave up. Oh dear God, she thought, please don’t let him be horrible to Marcus.
Back at Appleton Town Hall, the judges, after a jolly rest day visiting Delius’s old haunts in nearby Yorkshire, and enjoying a long lunch at the famous Box Tree Restaurant in Ilkley, were looking forward to a boring, untaxing evening. Although Benny would pull out the stops and wow the audience tonight, most of them had already chosen either Anatole or Natalia as the winner. But with only two contestants this evening, the edge had gone out of the competition. The bleak bulletins from Northladen General had cast a shadow over the proceedings. They all felt poor Marcus had been very shabbily treated. After all, as Dame Edith had pointed out noisily at lunch,
‘Everyone knows there are only three types of pianist — Jewish, Gay or Bad.’
The Scorpion and all the rest of the Press, they agreed, were making a ridiculous fuss.
‘Lucky, lucky Nemerovsky,’ sighed Pablo Gonzales.
‘Rather nice for Helen to have a gay son,’ said Dame Hermione with her head on one side. ‘They’re always so devoted to their mothers.’
Seven-fifteen… Benny had been to make-up and could be heard by the entire audience warming up in a practice room. The great clock of the town hall had been stopped for two hours to prevent it tolling during performances. Time would stand still, but hopefully the whole contest would be wrapped up by ten o’clock in time for the news.
As Benny left the practice room, Rupert gave his third police car the slip, hurtling a hired Mercedes through the driving rain towards Northladen General. A white-knuckled Taggie nearly bit her lower lip in half trying not to cry out in terror.
Meanwhile in Room Twenty-Five on the second floor, Marcus tried not to exhaust himself as, desperately slowly, he put on black evening trousers and the crumpled blue dress-shirt which he had pulled out of his suitcase which his mother had brought him from St Theresa’s.
He had waited, feigning sleep, until she had left for the town hall. Helen had sat with Marcus through the night and morning until he miraculously regained enough strength in his lungs to come off the ventilator. When the effects of the paralysing drug and sedatives had worn off, and he was able to swallow again, she had even fed him some pale tasteless scrambled eggs. But he was acutely conscious that she couldn’t meet his eyes, and was dreadfully embarrassed to be in the same room with him. No-one had let him see the papers, although Helen had told him Rannaldini had replaced Abby, but her face had said it all.
For now her ewe lamb wasn’t going to die, the other two nightmares had enveloped her life: her husband was a compulsive womanizer and her son was a homosexual, his career in smithereens. There was also a deep-seated guilt that her obsessive, clinging love might have caused both these things. If only Malise was still alive.
Rannaldini had been sympathetic, but always at Rupert’s expense.
‘If Rupert had not been a sadist, you wouldn’t have had to compensate so much. Marcus never had a father to relate to. You always implied Rupert and Billy Lloyd-Foxe were unnaturally close, and even more so, Rupert and Lysander. It’s in the genes, you mustn’t torment yourself.’
This situation suited Rannaldini perfectly. Marcus had been the only serious threat to Natalia in the competition and, with Helen cemented to Marcus’s sick-bed and unhinged with worry, he had had all the more opportunity to spend time with Natalia.
He had virtuously resisted from making love to her after her rehearsal in case it relaxed her muscles too much before the final. But between chatting to Northern Television and escorting Benny onto the platform, Rannaldini found time to slip into Natalia’s dressing-room. How adorable the sweet child looked with her shining hair in rollers.
‘Thees is how I warm up,’ he said sliding his soft, newly manicured hands inside her willow-green silk dressing-gown. Oh, the wonder of those large springy young breasts. Helen’s silicone replicas were like two buns on a cake rack since she had fretted away so much weight.
‘Good luck, my Maestro,’ whispered Natalia, resting her spiky head against his starched white shirt-front. ‘I am safe when you are ’ere.’
‘Tonight,’ promised Rannaldini, ‘we weel drink champagne together from the Appleton Cup.’
The RSO stopped tuning up and gave a great shout of relieved joy as George walked into the hall with Flora. They both looked very tired from worry about Marcus, but their glow of happiness in each other and in his recovery seemed to light them from inside and set them apart from the black-tied, taffeta and satin audience around them. Neither of them had bothered to pack much when they’d leapt into the helicopter. George was now wearing a blazer, a blue-and-white-striped shirt, and no tie, because
Flora had borrowed the only one he had brought to belt in his dark blue shirt which she had also annexed.
‘Aren’t they glamorous,’ sighed Clare.
‘I’m sure Flora’s pregnant,’ hissed Candy. ‘Look how her boobs have grown.’
The big smile of pride was wiped off George’s face when he saw Miles, Hilary’s mother, Gilbert, Gwynneth, Mrs Parker and Lord Leatherhead all huddled together looking wrong-footed in the stalls.
‘You’ve been bluddy busy in my ubsence,’ said George not lowering his voice at all. ‘I’d like to remind you that I’m only taking a sabbatical and I’m still chief executive of the RSO, and you and your fancy piece, Miles,’ Hilary’s mother turned purple, ‘better hop it, as you’re sitting in our seats.’
To the left of the stage, the flags of the five participating finalists soared to the dark blue vaulted ceiling. If only the Union Jack had been up there as well, thought Helen despairingly as she huddled in dark glasses in the middle of the stalls. Behind the orchestra rose a huge, far from portable, red-and-white organ, flanked by two proud unicorns holding up the red rose of Lancashire. Above them two angels held out a scroll saying: ‘The Truth is Great and Shall Prevail.’
There were gasps of admiration as Rannaldini in his black-and-white splendour, swept on and mounted a rostrum a foot higher than usual so everyone could see him. The great prevailer, he smiled down at Benny’s shock of dark curls. He knew exactly how to wrong-foot the foolish Frenchman to Natalia’s advantage.
His two bodyguards, Clive and Nathan, the black basketball player, stood watchful at the back of the hall. Rannaldini was taking no chances.
As the clock started on the monitor, the vast audience went quiet. Five, four, three, two, one. The camera panned in on the little silver piano, which would be awarded to the winner. The last round of the Appleton Piano Competition, live from the town hall, was under way.
