“Hey!”
But Evgeny leaned over and silenced him with a lingering kiss before throwing a towel around his middle, picking up his clothes and leaving.
Lydia twisted round to look up at the perplexed face of her lover.
“Do you think he’s really okay with this? With me?”
Milan kissed the tip of her nose.
“I thought so. He hasn’t said otherwise. He likes you, he says so.”
“I don’t think he does. Not really. I think he’s jealous of me.”
“Lydia, Lydia.” Milan moved so that they both lay flat on the bed, wrapped around each other. “Who could be jealous of a sweet thing like you? Especially one that gives such great blowjobs?”
She kneed him gently in the thigh and pouted.
“Life’s not all about sensual gratification, you know. There are things called emotions too.”
“Is that right? Nobody told me.”
“God, you’re such a jerk sometimes. I really wish I didn’t want you so much.”
“Unlucky for you. Lucky for me.”
“But seriously, Milan…if you had to choose between us…”
“It won’t come to that. Shh, now. We should sleep.”
He threw the duvet over them and burrowed down beneath it, kissing away her fears and her misgivings, at least for that night.
Waking up with Milan in a king-size bed in Budapest was one of the shining moments of Lydia’s life. Tired and aching as she was, she breathed in his smell of man and sex and faded aftershave and her clit tingled despite herself. This man had turned her from a demure violinist to a raging sex maniac, she reflected ruefully. But there was no way around it. She wanted him all the time, every waking moment.
Watching his face in sleep, she bent over and kissed his ear, then his cheek, then, when he didn’t wake up, his neck and shoulder. She gave in to the temptation to nibble at his firm, pale flesh, wanting to bite into that succulent swan neck, but before she had the chance he woke and rolled her over, pinning her down.
“It’s never enough for you, is it?” he said hoarsely, rubbing his morning erection between her pussy lips. “Aren’t you sore and worn out from last night?”
“Yes,” admitted Lydia. “But there must be things we can do…”
There were things they could do. Mindful of her raw pussy and puffy clit, Milan eased himself gently into her wet slit and took her for a slow, leisurely ride. Lydia still felt the pain, but she embraced it, opening herself to his tender attentions and soon forgetting the sting as the pleasure built. He rocked over her in tiny movements, keeping her mouth filled with his tongue, bathing them both in sensation.
When the wave crashed over Lydia, she found herself saying, “I love you, I love you, I love you.” Luckily the words weren’t coherent, falling as they did into Milan’s throat, so he never heard them.
What if he had? Would it have mattered? Would it destroy everything, or would it lead somewhere new? Lydia didn’t dare rock the boat—it was unsteady enough already.
Instead, she joined Milan in the shower, dressed and went down to breakfast.
Evgeny was already at the buffet, helping himself to fruit salad and yogurt.
“Are you okay?”
“Of course.” He turned to her, watching her fill her bowl with cereal, stony-faced.
“Where are you sitting? Can I join you?”
“Aren’t you going to sit with Milan?”
“He wants to get an hour’s practice in first. He’ll be down later.”
They took their dishes to a corner table and waited in guarded silence while a waitress poured their coffee and took requests for hot dishes.
“Why did you leave last night?” Lydia opened, once she was sure they wouldn’t be overheard.
Evgeny’s lips curled sulkily.
“I told you. I sleep better in my own bed.”
“That’s why you spend so many nights at Milan’s place, is it?”
“That’s different. It’s late. The tubes aren’t running. It makes sense to stay. Here I have a bed of my own, paid for. Why not use it?”
“Evgeny, if you think I’m taking Milan away from you—”
“I don’t. I don’t think that. I don’t think you could, anyway. You aren’t enough for him.”
“What do you mean?”
The cereal felt dusty and lumpy in her throat. She swallowed it with some effort.
Evgeny drew a breath, as if gearing up for a lengthy expulsion of bile. Lydia flinched in advance.
“There is no substance to you,” said Evgeny. “You have no history and you’ve never suffered.”
“I… What?”
“There are girls like you in orchestras all over the world. Young, bright, optimistic, naïve. Milan collects them like china ornaments. I don’t know how many he’s had. He keeps them until they start to lose their optimism and their naïveté, then he gets bored and loses interest. Sure, he’s taken a shine to you for now, but it won’t last.”
The cereal plunged, leaden, to the pit of her stomach. Lydia felt horribly breathless, Evgeny’s words like a punch in the solar plexus.
“That’s…an awful thing to say,” she wheezed. “You make him sound like—”
“I make him sound like what he is. If you can’t handle it, get lost.” Evgeny shrugged and bit into a strawberry.
“And what’s so special about you? If you don’t mind me asking.” Lydia fought to keep the tremor from her voice, temporarily winning the struggle.
Evgeny smiled.
“I know him better than you ever will. I know his land and I know its past. I know how it feels when your talent is the thing you depend upon to get you out of hell.”
“Hell? I thought Prague was supposed to be quite nice.” Lydia couldn’t resist a sarcastic laugh.
Evgeny banged his spoon on the table.
“You know nothing! You’ve lived your comfortable life with your bourgeois parents, enjoying every privilege the West can give you. You know nothing.”
Evgeny’s face had whitened with fury. He pushed his bowl aside and stalked off, leaving the coffee half drunk and Lydia’s mind bursting with questions.
She deliberately dawdled over her breakfast, wanting to speak to Milan about the encounter, so by the time he appeared in the room she was chewing slowly on her third piece of toast, draining the dregs of her fourth coffee. At least she might stand some chance of staying awake for rehearsals, she thought. Plus, all last night’s action had left her with an enormous hunger, so the extra breakfast wasn’t unwelcome.
“Milan,” she said urgently, drawing him over to her table with his cup of coffee and croissant. “Evgeny is being weird with me.”
He sat down, rolling his eyes a little. “Weird? How?”
“I think he wants me to finish things with you.”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“He does! He said—”
“Lydia!” Milan’s tone was sharp and his lips thinned into a straight line. “I’m not a teacher for you to tell tales. I get enough of that from Evgeny.”
“So Evgeny tries to turn you against me?”
Milan sighed. “Perhaps this is all too much. Perhaps I need to take a break from it all.”
“You want to break it off?”
“Well?” He opened tired-looking eyes again, raising his eyebrows. “If you and Evgeny are going to squabble all the time, it’ll drain too much creative energy. I can’t have that. Neither can you. None of us can afford that level of distraction.”
“But I…that’s not what I want.”
“It’s not what I want either. Good. So you and Evgeny will play nicely, yes?”
“If he will, I will.”
“He will. I’ll make sure of it.”
“Are you going to talk to him?”
“Maybe. Lydia, I thought we were happy. I thought everything was good.”
“It is! Honestly. This is the time of my life—look, here in Budapest, playing in a world class o
rchestra…and you. Having you in my life. I couldn’t ask for more.”
Milan smiled, a little weakly. “Neither could I, miláčku. Neither could I.”
“He said…he said you’d been through hell.”
Milan shook his head. “Typical Evgeny. So dramatic.”
“What did he mean?”
“Nothing. Come on. We have a rehearsal. Go and get your violin.”
Chapter Eight
Mary-Ann tapped the music stand with her baton.
“Right then, guys,” she said. Lydia noticed how her style had altered over the weeks, from humorously ingratiating to unsmiling and brisk. Even in three months, the woman had aged visibly. “We have two days of rehearsals to get this absolutely down. The concert is tomorrow night, and it has to be good. A lot is riding on this. So I’m banking on your own professionalism and pride in your skills to get us through it. You are the talent—I’m just facilitating that talent.”
Milan grunted softly, but Lydia could tell that the speech pleased him. Mary-Ann had been underplaying her contribution to the performance more and more every week, until she’d begun to paint herself as some kind of passive vehicle, barely relevant to the music at all. She had lost confidence. Surely she wouldn’t last much longer.
“We have two Hungarian Rhapsodies, a set of Hungarian Dances and the Kodály Háry János suite to get through. I think we might as well start with a quick Hungarian Dance—number one, first things first.”
Lydia, caught up in the music and transported to the Hungarian plain where the wheat waved and the orchards hung heavy with ripening fruit, didn’t notice at first that the tempo was slipping. But when the moment came to pick up the original speed, it was a horrible mess, half of the violins coming in at least a beat behind the others.
Lydia looked sideways at Milan, noticing his cheekbones twitching mischievously. She pursed her lips, annoyed with him for orchestrating this new rebellion, and moved her gaze to Mary-Ann, who was shaking her head vigorously and tapping the music stand.
“Guys, guys! We’ve done this perfectly before. What happened there? Milan?”
“You’re the conductor—you tell me.”
“You’re the orchestra—haven’t you heard of watching the conductor? Following her beat?” Mary-Ann’s voice had risen to an unprecedented level and was shaking—she really seemed to be on the verge of losing her temper in grand style.
“Maybe you should let the ritardando come to its natural conclusion before picking up the beat?” suggested Milan, in such a sardonic tone that half the violinists snorted.
“Oh, really? That’s what you would do, is it?”
“Yes, that’s what I would do. I think you pick it up too quickly.”
“Oh, and do you know what I think? I think I’m the conductor and you play the thing the way I say.”
“The last note in that phrase is far too short. Who agrees?”
A forest of hands shot up to endorse Milan’s statement. Lydia half-raised hers, then put it down again, seeing the shimmer of tears in Mary-Ann’s eyes.
“Milan,” she whispered, but he was too busy enjoying his moment of triumph.
“I don’t care what you think,” stormed Mary-Ann, waving her baton around rather wildly, jabbing it to emphasise her point. “You’ve made it obvious that I’m not welcome, and if I conducted it that way you’d say that was wrong too. So just shut the fuck up with your constant undermining and do what you’re told.”
Milan put down his violin and folded his arms. A third of the string section followed suit.
“There’s no need to swear at us,” he said softly.
A tear of frustration spilled from Mary-Ann’s eye. Flinging down her baton, she turned and fled the rehearsal room.
“Oh, well done, Milan,” said Lydia sarcastically, though her words were drowned by the uproar that had broken out. Laughter and backslapping gave way a couple of minutes later to earnest discussion as it dawned on the orchestra that they had a concert the next day, and no conductor.
“I don’t want her, but she can’t quit right now,” said Milan thoughtfully. “Lydia—she likes you. Go after her. Talk her around. Promise her we’ll play Budapest the way she wants. Don’t make any promises for Prague, though.”
“Milan, just lay off her! I feel awful for her.”
“Your tender heart,” said Milan, ruffling her hair infuriatingly. “Hey, I could just step in and save the show. But that would ruin her career, don’t you see? So if you go and persuade her to come back, you are doing what’s best for everyone.”
Lydia sighed, grabbed her bag and headed out of the hall, figuring that the women’s restroom was as good a place as any to start looking.
But Mary-Ann was not to be found there, so Lydia left the building and scanned the street beyond. On a park bench in a small garden to the side of the concert hall, the routed conductor sat with her face in a handkerchief.
Lydia dashed down the steps, calling her name.
“Go ‘way, please,” said Mary-Ann, but Lydia took a seat beside her.
“Hey,” she said awkwardly. “Don’t be upset.”
Mary-Ann sniffed and laughed without mirth.
“How does that work, then? Everybody works together to trash my career and I’m supposed to be happy about it?”
“Not everybody.”
Mary-Ann turned pink-rimmed eyes to Lydia and grimaced in concession.
“No. You’re right. Some of you aren’t in league with the devil himself.”
“The devil himself?”
“Milan.” She laughed hollowly. “I wonder where he hides his horns and his forked tail.”
“Oh, he…” Lydia quelled her impulse to defend him. What he was doing was indefensible. “He wants what you’ve got,” she said instead. “He’s jealous of you. That’s all.”
“I don’t understand it,” said Mary-Ann. “He’s famous, a brilliant musician, everyone seems to think he’s some kind of sex god. Why the hell would he be jealous of me?”
“He wants to be in charge. He hates being told what to do.”
Mary-Ann put her handkerchief back in her jacket pocket and frowned at Lydia.
“You’ve made quite a study of him.”
“No, not really. It’s common knowledge. In the orchestra, anyway.”
“So tell me. What else should I know? About Milan, and the WSO in general?”
“Oh, I’m no expert. I’m the rookie.”
“I know that. It means you haven’t been sucked in yet. You see things with a clearer, more objective eye. Perhaps you can help me, Lydia.”
“Do you really think so? Why don’t you come back up? We need you, you know.”
Mary-Ann exhaled her dismissal of this idea.
“Nah. I’m done with backbiting violinists for the day. Tell you what. Why don’t we go and get some lunch and let them get on with it. Maybe I’ll come back tomorrow for the concert, maybe I won’t…”
“Well, okay,” agreed Lydia, seeing a spark of hope present itself. “Where shall we go?”
“Have you been to Margaret Island?”
“Not yet.”
“What are we waiting for, then?”
Lydia emerged from the ladies’, having texted Milan a message about what was going on. Now she was free to relax and chill out in the company of a person she liked and respected. Milan could do his worst, but she wasn’t going to join in with the sabotage of Mary-Ann’s conductorship.
Margaret Island was a beautiful green oasis in the middle of the Danube, boasting its own thermal spa resort, and it was in the cafe of this healing environment that Mary-Ann and Lydia chose to escape the hurly-burly of orchestral life.
“What am I going to do, Lydia?” asked Mary-Ann, pouring the first of many glasses of wine.
“Come back and conduct the concert,” said Lydia, more confidently than she felt. “It’s not just the reputation of the orchestra at stake—it’s your reputation too. Don’t ruin that for the sake of some silly s
pat with Milan.”
“It’s a nightmare, though, Lyd. I’ve never experienced anything like this. Don’t you find the atmosphere awful to work in?”
“Well, I’ll admit, it’s not what I was expecting.”
“What would happen, do you think, if I complained to the trustees about Milan?”
The wine glass tilted in Lydia’s hand, almost slopping rich Hungarian red over the rim. “Oh, don’t do that,” she said quickly.
“Why not?”
“Because most of the orchestra, and pretty much all of the strings, would go with him if he left. And he would leave. And the trustees don’t want that. He’s a money-spinner, now he’s done all that media-darling stuff.”
Mary-Ann contemplated this. “Yes, I do see that. So what’s the solution? I leave and let him take over?”
“Stick it out for this tour, at least,” said Lydia. “I don’t think he’ll mess up the concert. His own pride wouldn’t let him do that.”
“You’re right. Good. Okay, let’s finish this bottle, then how about a boat trip on the Danube?”
Much later, after a trip on a boat and a walk up to the Fisherman’s Bastion, Lydia and Mary-Ann found themselves in a bar near the hotel, still avoiding the rest of the orchestra, continuing a long and rambling conversation about their childhoods, families, musical influences and adolescent crises.
“God, it was painful,” lamented Mary-Ann over yet another glass of Bull’s Blood, her spectacles now a little crooked over her nose. “I literally thought I was the only lesbian at my school and nobody else ever, ever had those kinds of feelings about other girls. I couldn’t tell anyone. Then I got friendly with a tuba player at youth orchestra—Joanne, her name was—and thought perhaps she might understand. She tweaked my underdeveloped gaydar—cropped hair, lumberjack shirt and so on. But my gaydar was rubbish. I came out to her and she just laughed and told the rest of the brass section, who kind of avoided me after that.”
“That’s awful! Why were they so mean?”
“Oh, you know what kids are like.” Mary-Ann seemed to intend the comment to be throwaway, but Lydia saw the telltale dazzle of tears at the corner of her eye. She put one of her hands over the conductor’s and squeezed it.
Highly Strung Page 9
