Appassionata

FORTY-FIVE

Cash crisis followed cash crisis throughout the winter. Bad weather kept audiences away in droves. George told the orchestra they might even have to take cuts in salaries. Two more players had their houses repossessed and moved into awful rented rooms where people banged on the wall if they practised. A bass player, a cellist and one of the Second Violins left and were not replaced.

Even Julian was downcast. ‘We’ll be a string quartet at this rate,’ he said gloomily.

Flora’s answer to her bank manager was to tell Miles she had an appointment with the dentist in Harley Street and to go busking on the South Bank. One of Viking’s mates at the London Philharmonic Orchestra had arranged for her to have a slot.

She chose a horribly cold grey morning and had great difficulty in getting out of bed. Returning to earth after making love, slumped on her back, fingers resting on her forehead, she glanced sideways at the watch on her wrist, worried about missing the train, and saw that instead of figures and hands the dial was filled with roses reflected from the curtains of Viking’s four-poster

‘Time ceases to exist when I’m with you,’ she said in a choked voice. ‘It’s turned to roses. You’ve made me terribly happy,’ she added, kissing him, ‘I’m so grateful.’

Viking drove her to Rutminster Station. Then, casually as the train was moving out, he said: ‘How about you and me getting our own place together?’

‘D’you think Nugent could learn to love Scriabin?’

‘Will you ever be serious?’

‘I’d like it, love it,’ stammered Flora. ‘It’s just such a surprise. As long as I can pay my way — I don’t want to be a kept woman.’

‘You can be a capped woman then.’ Removing Rodney’s cap, Viking plonked it on her head. ‘Be careful, if anyone asks you for a drink, say no.’

‘I love you,’ said Flora and, despite the cold, stayed watching him until he was out of sight.

London was much colder than Rutminster. Flora felt so sorry for the shivering sweeps of purply-blue crocuses in the parks and the almond trees whose pink blossom, forced out by a mild January, was already being scattered by a vicious wind.

The newsagents’ windows, scarlet with Valentine Day displays, provided the only cheerful note. She must buy a really gorgeous card for Viking, and a big jokey one for Mr Nugent from Scriabin. She couldn’t believe he’d asked her to move in with him, but allowed her thoughts to wander happily. He was so good with kids, he’d make a brilliant father and Flora O’Neill sounded so much more romantic than Flora Seymour. Oh God, let her not be too presumptuous.

She took up her position in Concert Hall Approach under Hungerford Bridge in a little paved garden with boxes full of trailing ivy and laurel bushes. At first she tried to put up a stand but the wind blew her music all over the place so she played by ear. Soon concert-goers on their way to the Festival Hall and office workers setting off to lunch were enjoying her exquisite sound, feeling sorry for her playing on such a cold day and chucking coins and even notes into her tin.

It was hard to say thank you when you were playing the viola, so Flora made do with smiles and massive nods. After In the South, an old man asked her if she’d made any records and between ‘The Pink Panther’ and ‘Panis Angelicus’ a blushing couple asked if she’d play at their wedding. Flora said she’d adore to and gave them her telephone number.

Then she nearly dropped her viola in the middle of ‘Where E’er You Walk’ as she saw George Hungerford (perhaps he’d come to admire his bridge) jump out of a taxi and dive into the Archduke Wine Bar opposite. He was probably in London for a meeting of the Association of British Orchestras. She’d be sacked if he saw her. Flora pulled Viking’s cap over her nose. The next moment her bow really did skid all over the strings as a sleek dark blue Mercedes drew up, a black-leather-clad chauffeur jumped out and opened the door for Rannaldini. Hearing such discords, Rannaldini immediately swung round, but Flora had dived behind a concrete pillar. Rannaldini was wearing his black overcoat with the Astrakhan collar and looked as fatally glamorous as ever. Flora wanted to race through the traffic, fall at his feet and plead with him to take her back; she wasn’t cured in the slightest.

In horror, she watched him walk quickly towards the Archduke and the manager fling open the door to welcome him, congratulating him no doubt on being the greatest conductor of the year and of all time.

For a second, a 77 bus blotted out her view. A minute later, through a jungle of glossy dark green plants, Flora could see him and George sitting down at a table on the first floor. Rannaldini was unfolding his napkin and laying it across those iron-hard thighs that had gripped her once with such lust. Now he was picking up the wine list. God, he was wearing a wedding-ring. Helen must have far more influence on him than poor Kitty. Please make him look at me, please make him not, prayed Flora launching into ‘Dido’s Lament’. And what the hell was he doing with George?

Frozen but oblivious to the cold because the pain in her heart was so terrible, she watched George and Rannaldini coming out forty minutes later both looking much more cheerful. They stood talking for half a minute, until Rannaldini’s Merc glided up and whisked them both away.

Flora walked off in deep shock forgetting to take her tin of money. What could they be up to? No good, if Rannaldini had anything to do with it. But the RSO was far too small-fry for him.

It was only when she got back to Rutminster, and passed the newsagent on the platform, that she realized there was no point getting a valentine card for Viking. Then she started to cry.

Viking was utterly angelic.

‘So, you’re not over Rannaldini?’

‘No, no, not at all. I’m so sorry, Viking. It’s like thinking you’ve zapped cancer, then discovering you’re only in remission. You’ve been so lovely to me.’

‘Let me go on being lovely, josst give it time, sweetheart.’ It was the nearest he got to begging.

‘We can’t, not if I’m still in love with Rannaldini. You’re too, well, decent to put up with half-measures.’

‘So young, and so untender’ said Viking bitterly.

‘So young, my lord, and true.’

Just to test Flora’s total immunity, Viking tried another tack. Why didn’t he mix business with pleasure by making a play for Jessica, George’s thick but stunning secretary?

‘Then I can lure her back to The Bordello for long lunches when George is away and you can raid the files and see what the dirty duo are really op to.’

Viking winced when Flora agreed listlessly, but without any display of jealousy, that this would be a very good idea.

‘But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,’ he said sadly, taking Flora’s hand.

He then went out and got drunk. He was far too proud to show it, but he was desperately unhappy for the first time in his life.

Valentine’s Day temporarily distracted the RSO from their gloom. Suddenly red envelopes were nesting like robins in pigeon holes. Still shell-shocked by her sighting of Rannaldini, Flora hardly noticed how many she received. Blue reeled round the band room in ecstasy, because he recognized Cathie’s writing on the envelope sending him a chocolate heart. Militant Moll ordered Ninion to put a valentine message in the Independent and left it lying around. Poor Fat Isobel sent three cards to herself to avoid humiliation. All Cyril’s week’s wages went on two dozen red roses for Miss Priddock. Miles smirked to get an unsigned jokey card from Brittlecombe, the village in which Hilary lived. Noriko was thrilled to have a valentine teddy bear holding a single red rose from Cherub. Dixie and Clare, Randy and Candy, Dimitri and Miss Parrott all went out to individual valentine dinners.

George Hungerford was distracted for ten minutes from the deficit while he opened his cards. All the management’s secretaries (including Miss Priddock, who had to think of John Drummond’s future) and most of the women musicians still harboured hopes of becoming the second Mrs Hungerford. Viking, who got twice as many cards, didn’t bother to open them. Jessica, George’s lovely secretary, however, was overwhelmed at lunch-time to receive a balloon in the shape of a pink heart bearing the words, ‘Hiya sexy’, rising out of two dozen pale pink roses accompanied by a card saying: ‘Love from Viking.’

Earlier in the day Jessica had been feeling a bit low. George had called her a blithering idiot for booking a pianist to play Bartók’s Second Piano Concerto rather than his First, which had been rehearsed by the orchestra — a mistake only discovered on the afternoon of the concert.

Viking reassured her it was the easiest of mistakes. He was so comforting the following day, after Jessica had another bollocking from George for passing ‘Drunks 6 p.m.’, on an invitation when it should have been ‘Drinks’, that she accepted a dinner invitation. During the evening Viking learnt that the confidential files were stored on microfilm in George’s office and handled by George’s London secretary who usually came down one day a week.

Acting dumb, Viking told Jessica he was only bog Irish and had never seen a really sophisticated computer system before. Over a bottle of Moët in Jessica’s office on the second date, he managed to persuade her, since she was so brilliant, to initiate him into its mysteries. Jessica was feeling low that day because George had bawled her out for typing ‘Piggy Porker’ on a place card.

Immensely flattered by Viking’s admiration, Jessica showed him how to find the Index which was called the file menu, how to locate the individual file one wanted and then how to print it out.

‘Of course, I’ve never looked at any of these files,’ she said. ‘They are far too secret, George would sack me.’

At a fleeting glance at the file menu, Viking couldn’t see any reference to Rannaldini, but during a steamy session, after Jessica had drunk seven-eighths of the Moët, he managed to elicit the password ‘Georgetown’ needed to enter the system.

‘But you must promish, promish not to tell anyone,’ whispered the delectable Jessica.

‘Georgetown,’ cried Viking in elation, as he entered her system.

Having stopped himself coming too soon, by studying the photographs of Mel Gibson and kittens and a poster calling for the banning of veal crates, Viking lay back afterwards playing ‘She loves me, she loves me not’, with the chewing-gum parked under Jessica’s desk. It came out: ‘She loves me not.’ Jessica was far prettier and had a far more beautiful body, but Viking was missing Flora so much it killed him. Somehow she had to be freed from Rannaldini’s evil spell.

In late February George went skiing. ‘No doubt to put another million in his Swiss bank account,’ said Flora sourly.

By coincidence, it was noticed Juno Meadows had taken the same week off. George was due back late Wednesday afternoon. In anticipation Miss Priddock took herself off to the hairdresser in her lunch-hour and Viking lured Jessica back to The Bordello for a long lunch leaving Flora free to raid the files.

Shaking with terror that she would trigger off an alarm or someone would come in, Flora locked herself into George’s office. It was rather like a sweet little village, with all those Perspex models with their balconies, loofah bay trees and Dinky cars outside the front door. Somehow, their cosiness blinded one to the tragedies behind their realization: the terrified old ladies, the threats of knee-capping, the flooded basements, the doors knocked out in the middle of the night.

The only jolly note was John Drummond fatly asleep in George’s out-tray and a bunch of Cyril’s yellow crocuses like a little gold sun on the big desk. Realizing what an ugly customer she was dealing with, Flora quailed. But, after all Viking’s hard work, she must be brave.

Turning on the computer, she was confronted with a screen as blank as Rannaldini’s face until the words ‘Enter Password’ came up. Her hands were trembling so much she had three goes before she managed to type in ‘Georgetown’.

Eureka! There was the main menu. Running hastily down through the files: ‘Office Accounts’, ‘Foreign tours’, ‘Salaries’, she came to the word ‘Private.’

Locating the ‘Private’ file menu she found far more exciting fare. She was tempted to stop and read the private detective’s report on George’s wife’s adultery or the details of various property fiddles: the Cotchester bypass, for example, was scheduled to go slap through Rupert’s estate. Serve him right for being such a sod to Marcus. Even more interesting would be the assessments on members of the RSO. Bloody hell, she couldn’t go through every file. She jumped nervously as John Drummond gave a great snore in his out-tray.

Looking back at the list of files she noted the innocuous words ‘Orchestra South’, scrolled the cursor down the page and double clicked to get into the file. Got it in one! With increasing moans of horror, she realized she had unearthed a fiendish plot to merge the Cotchester Chamber Orchestra with the RSO and form a new Southern Super Orchestra. Rannaldini had always been wildly jealous of Simon Rattle and longed for the same sort of set-up as the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna State Opera where the musical director had control of a pool of crack musicans who could be called on to play for either company.

As soon as Edith Spink retired later in the year, Rannaldini would take over as musical director of the CCO, Abby’s contract wouldn’t be renewed after March, nor would those of most of the RSO.

‘This is the only way we can hack out the dead wood,’ Rannaldini had written to George. The date was 5 January. Had Hermione introduced George to Rannaldini after Messiah?

Julian would be fired because he had defied Rannaldini in New York. Viking, Blue, Simon, Dimitri and Peter were among the few players who would join the new Super Orchestra. Between them George and Rannaldini would build it back to double strength with virtuoso players in every department. Running her eye down the list Flora saw that surprisingly George had put a question mark beside her name. Then she gave a wail of misery discovering Rannaldini’s next E-mail.

Definitely not, he had written crushingly, Flora is unstable, vindictive and a pernicious influence.

The crumbling H.P. Hall and its surrounding twenty acres were the RSO’s only assets. This was where George came in. He would buy the property for a pittance in a white-knight gesture to get the orchestra out of debt, then lease it back to them. As soon as the orchestra folded he would build a supermarket.

The plot was horribly ingenious. Instead of putting horrid little houses all over Cowslip Hill, which no-one wanted, he would build a festival centre, a megaplex with twenty-four drive-in cinemas, golf-courses, food halls, virtual-reality centres and bouncy castles which would bring employment, tourists, fun and prosperity to Rutminster. In return all he asked was planning permission to knock down the highly dangerous, collapsing Victorian monstrosity, the Herbert Parker Hall and build a supermarket with a new roundabout to hive off traffic. No wonder George had been so reluctant to repair the roof. Cotchester already had a beautiful hall, no distance from Valhalla by helicopter in which the new Super Orchestra would be housed. The only sticking point seemed to be Rannaldini’s insistence on absolute hiring and firing rights.

Flora was about to print out the whole file when she nearly died of heart failure because there was a great hammering on the door.

‘Anyone at home? Come oot, come oot,’ called Dixie’s voice.

‘Priddock must be having a ziz,’ said Randy.

‘Or Jessica a bonk.’

But after a bit more hammering they got bored and wandered off.

Sweat was trickling down Flora’s body. She’d never make a burglar; her hand was shaking so violently she was petrified of pressing the wrong button and wiping all the evidence. But somehow she managed to switch back to the file menu and type in ‘Print’ beside ‘Orchestra South’. Slowly but miraculously fifteen pages rolled out. She had just managed to shove them up her jersey and unlock the door when Jessica staggered in. It would have been hard to decide who looked the more guilty. Jessica’s hair was sopping from the shower. Flora felt sick with misery. Viking had obviously screwed her.

Hearing a thud behind her, she jumped out of her skin but it was only John Drummond crash landing on the carpet, weaving round Jessica’s buckling legs. Flora hoped to God he didn’t speak English.

‘He’s asking for his dinner.’ said Jessica. ‘George is having a black-tie do at home this evening and he wants everything perfect. I’ll have to go out shopping again later, I wasted my entire lunch-hour trying to find scallops. If only there was a Waitrose in Rutminster.’

‘There may be one sooner than you think,’ said Flora grimly as she sidled out.

What the hell was she to do? Viking would have left for London by now to record the Brahms Horn Trio. The only answer, if she were to save Abby and the rest of the orchestra, was to tackle George at once.

Driving down the High Street, she saw a newspaper hoarding: MEGAPLEX FOR COWSLIP HILL.

Screeching to a halt she picked up a paper but it only reported the delighted reaction of councillors and residents.

Alan Cardew, the planning officer, was quoted as saying, ‘This really puts Rutminster on the map.’

It was a bitterly cold evening. After a boiling bath to remove the sweat and a couple of stiff vodkas, Flora slid all over the road as she drove round to George’s splendid house which was situated on the other side of Rutminster as far as possible from both Cowslip Hill and H.P. Hall. George wouldn’t want to spoil his own green hills with megaplexes and supermarkets, thought Flora savagely as her wheel tracks ruined his perfect lawn.

The whole place, she could see, was speedily being wrecked by George’s fearful taste, a man on his own who had no truck with interior designers.

‘Bet he knocked her arms off,’ she muttered, as she passed a huge replica of the Venus de Milo glittering with frost.

The butler told her to hop it. So Flora asked him to tell Mr Hungerford that it was Flora Seymour and he better get rid of his dinner party, because she wanted to talk about Orchestra South.

After two minutes, by which time Flora had practically frozen to the doorstep, she was shown into George’s study.

The room was lit by a large chandelier which the butler promptly dimmed. The autumnal-leaf-patterned carpet was so new, he had great difficulty tugging the door shut over it. Brown leather sofas and armchairs hung about awkwardly, like buffaloes. Repro-Georgian bookshelves on either side of the gas log fire were filled with book-club editions, videos and reference books including Encyclopaedia Britannica by the yard.

One wall was covered by a vast television screen and a stereo, a second by thousands of LPs, tapes and CDs. The third, which faced George’s imposing, incredibly tidy desk, was dominated by a Green Park railing portrait of a beautiful woman with short pale yellow hair and cold hare-bell-blue eyes, whose brilliance was accentuated by the huge sapphires round her neck. She had the disdainful perfection of women behind the beauty counters of big department stores, who want to shame you into spending a fortune on make-up and skin care. This must be Ruth whom George refused to divorce. She didn’t look a bundle of laughs. You could see why George had the hots for Juno. She and Ruth were the same type, ice rather than nice maidens.

Flora’s teeth were rattling like Cherub’s castanets, a glance in the ornate, white gold framed mirror over the fire showed her nose bright red as a clown’s. Ruth would no doubt have recommended green foundation. Flora jumped as she heard voices. Obviously guests were being hastily ejected.

Opening the heavy rust dralon curtains a fraction, she could see Alan and Lindy Cardew (very done up in diamonds and a new full-length mink), two other men she recognized as high-profile local councillors, two bankers from the RSO board and their wives and goodness, the Steel Elf, wrapping herself in a long blue velvet cloak, all going towards their cars.

Then she heard George apologizing for some cock-up in the kitchen.

‘See you in the Hoogry Hoonter in ten minutes.’

‘You’ll be lucky,’ snarled Flora.

Enticing smells of wine, herbs and scallops wafting from the kitchen, belying any cock-up, reminded her she hadn’t eaten all day. Feeling dizzy, she leant against the marble mantelpiece.

A week’s skiing, even if the mobile had gone up the mountain with him, had almost ironed out the bags under George’s eyes. His dark brown shiny face matched his leather sofas and armchairs. The black and white of his dinner jacket softened the rough, rocky features. White teeth chewing a cigar, big suntanned hand clamped round a glass of whisky, obviously trying to bluff it out, he looked almost genial as he shoved open the door:

‘Well, what’s all this about? I haven’t got much time.’

‘You better make it,’ snapped Flora.

Except for her red nose, her face was whiter than the marble fireplace. With the collar of her long black overcoat turned up, she looked like a Victorian waif in the last stages of consumption. George was about to offer her a drink when she said: ‘I know exactly what you’re up to, you bastard. I was busking outside the Archduke in Concert Hall Approach two weeks ago. I saw you and Rannaldini going in and coming out. You must both have needed really long spoons to sup with one another.’

George took a slug of brandy.

‘I was in London for a meeting of the Association of British Orchestras,’ he said flatly. ‘Rannaldini and I were discoosing him guest conducting the orchestra on the occasional date. He does happen to live in the area.’

‘Bollocks,’ shouted Flora, ‘you were discussing his taking over the RSO and firing 90 per cent of the orchestra.’

Then, at George’s look of amused incredulity, she added, ‘And if you don’t renew Abby’s contract for starters, I’m going straight to the Press. My mother has contacts with every newspaper editor in Fleet Street and New York.’

‘This is blackmail,’ said George bleakly and reached for the telephone.

‘The blackest possible,’ said Flora. ‘It’s the only way to cope with shits like you. Buying the hall cheaply in a white-knight gesture, then building supermarkets on the site the moment the orchestra folds. You bloody Waitrosencavalier!’

Jolted at last George dropped the telephone back on the hook: ‘How d’you know about that?’

‘You shouldn’t give your stupid secretary, who gets paid twice as much as a rank-and-file viola player, such long-lunch hours. I raided your computer today and printed out the entire “Orchestra South” file.’

George gave a long sigh. ‘It’s the only way to save the orchestra — at least the good people get to keep their jobs.’

‘Abby doesn’t and she flaming well deserves to. Have you any idea how hard she works, poring over the wretched scores day in day out, till two or three in the morning.’

‘She’s an hysteric.’

‘So — she’s an artist. The orchestra’s getting better and better.’

‘I wish the houses were. We’re haemorrhaging to death, can’t you understand that?’

‘Give her time, look how long it took Simon Rattle to turn the CBSO around.’

‘And now they’ve got a bluddy great deficit,’ said George brutally.

‘Anyway,’ Flora briskly disregarded a point against herself, ‘the RSO doesn’t want to live in Cotchester and play in some horrible opera pit under a little Hitler. It’s like sending ponies down the mine.’

‘You overdramatize everything. They’d be well paid and they’d make great music.’

‘No, they wouldn’t, super orchestras don’t work. There are too many chiefs and not enough Indians for them to boss around. The mix is too rich. Anyway, they’d get sacked if they split a note.

‘Rannaldini’s evil,’ Flora’s voice was rising, ‘He lives near my parents and poisons the air like pesticide and I bet you told him we were about to record Winifred Trapp and Fanny Mendelssohn.’

‘Don’t be fatuous,’ roared George, losing his temper. ‘If you think I want to be landed with the bills for soloists you must be joking.’

Somehow he managed to control himself and sitting down at his desk, got out a cheque book.

‘OK, how much will it take?’

‘I don’t want money,’ said Flora in outrage. ‘I want everyone’s contracts renewed — except Hilary’s, Carmine and the Steel Elf,’ she added as an afterthought.

‘Who?’

‘Juno Meadows. I saw her poncing out of here with her Gstaad tan. How you have the gall to tell Abby she’s losing caste living with me — yes, you did — when you’ve been guzzling glühwein off piste with Juno.’

‘Don’t by bluddy childish, Juno was making oop the noombers.’

‘And doing a number of you, soixante-neuf, I suppose, although she’d be a bit refined for that. I’m surprised you haven’t built a horrid little chalet on her.’

Flora was beginning to feel faint; somehow she reached the door, half-expecting to slip on those autumn leaves. She must keep talking to shut him up: ‘I’ll only tear up that print-out when I’ve got proof everyone’s contracts have been renewed. Rannaldini’s a fiend, remember, he’ll double-cross you the moment he gets the chance.’ And she was out of the door running towards her car.

Fortunately the roads were empty. She felt so lonely she longed to drop off at The Bordello, curl up in Viking’s bed with Nugent and wait for him to come home. Since they split up, however, the rest of the Celtic Mafia, not knowing the reason and sensing Viking’s unhappiness, had become wildly antagonistic.

After a sleepless night and a long unrewarding day of rehearsal with a stupid guest conductor whose beat was impossible to follow, Flora returned to Woodbine Cottage and an equally shattered Marcus. She had refrained from telling him about George’s and Rannaldini’s skulduggery. He didn’t need upsetting. Tomorrow evening he was playing the Rachmaninov. Flora was terrified he’d peaked. He had practically worn out the keys of the Steinway. He had lived the piece, crawled inside it, knew every note, not only his own part, but also the orchestra’s by heart. But would he have enough heart to do it justice?

He and Flora were just commiserating over a cup of tea and slices of cherry cake when Abby floated in brandishing a magnum of champagne.

‘We have got to celebrate, right? George has just summoned me and said the board are going to renew my contract for another year. I’m not sure how pleased Howie will be — he figures I oughta move on, but I expect George will be able to persuade him.

‘And I’ve persuaded George not to cut salaries at the moment to zap all those rumours about a merger between us and the CCO. He and I are going to assess the merits of everyone in the orchestra over the next few weeks and renew as many contracts as possible.’

And George thinks that’ll keep me quiet, fumed Flora.

Abby looked wonderful, the cold weather always whipped up colour in her sallow cheeks.

‘And,’ she went on scrabbling at the gold paper round the top of the bottle, ‘at last I can get rid of El Squeeko and Cyril.’

‘You can’t,’ said Flora appalled. ‘Viking’ll never let you.’

‘And Juno.’

‘You may have lucked out there.’

But Abby was on a roll; she had totally misjudged George.

‘He’s not the philistine I figured he was. It’s kinda gratifying when all one’s hard grind pays off. Now we can build the orchestra together. I guess he is attracted to me,’ she announced happily.

Flora was upset to see the hurt in Marcus’s eyes; she herself was enraged — after all she’d done to save Abby, particularly when Abby smugly announced that Flora’s was one of the contracts George was iffy about renewing.

‘He didn’t know you were only on six months’ trial. He figures you’re not pulling your weight. Says you’ve got an attitude problem.’

‘And he’s got a platitude problem,’ snarled Flora.

‘That is monstrously unfair,’ protested Marcus.

‘Tell him to go and jump in the cement mixer.’

‘I’m just reporting what he said.’ The flying champagne cork sent the cats racing from the kitchen. ‘But I figure I’ve managed to persuade him you’re a worthwhile member of the orchestra.’

Flora suddenly realized she’d eaten the rest of the cherry cake and had to undo her jeans.

Bloody Abby, if only she knew. Flora was tempted to tell her the truth but again didn’t want a scene before Marcus’s concert.

Abby should have spent the evening studying the Rachmaninov but, convinced she knew it, because she’d heard Marcus playing it so often, she got tight instead.

FORTY-SIX

On the wall of Marcus’s dressing-room was a photograph of Clifton Suspension Bridge. He wished he could jump off it. How could he possibly play the most difficult piano concerto ever written when his violently trembling hands wouldn’t tie his white tie or slot in the gold cuff-links bearing the Campbell-Black crest. The rehearsal had been disastrous. Abby had faffed around telling the orchestra Rachmaninov was born on April Fool’s Day, and had lived on Lake Lucerne like Rodney, and that Mahler had conducted the second performance of the concerto in the States, until Dixie had yelled, ‘Come back, Gustav, all is forgiven.’

Marcus had never dreamt the orchestral sound would be so dense, loud and so distracting or that desperately trying to keep up with Abby’s beat he would play so many wrong notes and at one point stop altogether.

The orchestra, totally indifferent to such calamities, only raised the odd eyebrow and carried on reading their newspapers, filling in tax forms and applying for other jobs.

Abby wouldn’t even give him time to rehearse the cadenza.

‘That’s your baby, you know it backwards.’

And instead of going back over the places where he’d screwed up so he could correct his mistakes she then moved on to Hilary’s and Simon’s solos, and one or two of the more complicated tuttis. She then spent the rest of the rehearsal perfecting the timing of Carmine Jones’s off-stage trumpet solo in the Third Leonora overture.

‘It’s exactly eight minutes before you come in, Carmine, so don’t fall asleep.’

‘Not bloody likely.’

Carmine, in a new butch lumberjack shirt, winked at Lindy Cardew, who, in a tight shocking-pink sweater, was jabbing huge scented pink lilies, no doubt paid for by her husband’s massive backhanders from George, into vases along the front of the stage.

Any flowers or blossom played havoc with Marcus’s asthma. Flora, in a rare act of domesticity, had brushed and washed down his tails to save fumes from dry cleaning. But even worse chemicals were now wafting from the walls of his dressing-room, newly painted a restful green gloss to calm soloists.

Glancing in the mirror, he noticed his face had a sinister blue tinge. In case of any emergency attack he had brought a pre-loaded syringe but he was terrified of letting down Abby, the orchestra and George, who’d engaged him and been so particularly kind. Worried that Marcus was too thin and probably hadn’t eaten all day, George had arranged for lentil soup, grilled plaice and fruit salad to be sent in from the Old Bell, and Marcus had just thrown up the lot, panicking all the while that he might choke. The more he fretted the harder it was to breathe. It was as though someone had held a pillow to his face.

But the greatest terror was the Rachmaninov lurking ahead: dark, fierce, explosive, mysterious as the Russian continent, a huge monster waiting to be captured and tamed by his bare hands.

Passionate relief battled with bitter disappointment that neither Rupert nor Taggie had bothered to come or even send him a good-luck card. Helen, on the other hand, had rolled up an hour before the off and hung around reading his cards and moaning about Rannaldini who was taking a masterclass in Rome, until George barged in and bluntly told her to pack it in, because ‘the lad needs to distance himself.

George then whisked Helen off to wow the sponsors in the VIP lounge. Lady Rannaldini was looking particularly fetching in a Lindka Cierach suit of ivory silk with a short fitted jacket emphasizing her tiny waist and her newly lifted and remodelled breasts and bottom.

Was Helen in on George’s and Rannaldini’s plan for a super orchestra and market? wondered Flora. She couldn’t see Helen frolicking on a bouncy castle. At least Helen and George can have a good bitch about me, she thought wryly.

Still hubristic over yesterday’s renewal of her contract and her rapprochement with George, Abby had also nipped into Bath that morning and bought a wildly fashionable, very ostentatious orange satin bomber jacket, which she teamed with matching orange satin drainpipes and a black bra. With her wild, shaggy, dark curls, drug pallid face and snake hips she looked like a rock star.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen, please take your places on the platform,’ Knickers was shouting along the passage at the musicians.

‘Christ, here comes Sunset Boulevard,’ said Dixie, as Abby came out of the conductor’s room and popped next door to show herself off to Marcus, who was frantically flipping through his score. He could hardly see it for pencil marks.

‘Don’t look any more, right? You’ll confuse yourself.’

‘I’m going to throw up again.’

‘No, you’re not. I’ll take care of you. You’ve got a good twenty minutes. Leonora takes about fourteen, then they’ve got to get the piano on.’

‘Don’t take it too fast,’ pleaded Marcus, ‘It says allegro but ma non tanto.’

‘Trust me, d’you think George’ll like this pant suit?’

‘Fantastic, he’ll pant with lust.’

‘You reckon.’ Abby fluffed her hair in the mirror and sauntered off towards the stage.

Marcus felt that his hammering heart would soon leave internal bruising on his ribs. The only benefit of panic attacks was that they dulled the pain of Abby lusting after other men.

He picked up his mascot, the copy of The Tempest she had given him which he took everywhere.

‘Merrily, merrily shall I live now,’ he read

‘Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.’

Ariel couldn’t have been an asthmatic.

Viking and Flora should have already been on stage, but Viking had only just got back from recording the Brahms Horn Trio and Flora was giving him a whispered update on her raiding of the files, her confrontation of George and George’s new alliance with Abby.

‘The bastard,’ said Viking outraged.

‘We must tell the orchestra,’ pleaded Flora. ‘If they were prepared to strike to get rid of Abby, they’d certainly come out against a merger.’

Viking shook his head.

‘No-one loses strikes except musicians. They’d just close us down without any redundancy. Let’s see what George does next, he won’t want you shopping him to the Press or he might not get planning permission to pull down the hall. At least this gives us room to manoeuvre.’

‘I don’t trust him.’

‘I quite like the guy,’ admitted Viking.

‘Only because he’s offering you a job in the new orchestra. He’s just swanned off with Lady Rannaldini.’

‘Is Sir Roberto here?’

‘He’s in Rome,’ said Flora bitterly. ‘Taking a mistress-class.’

Unable to stop himself, Viking pulled her into his arms.

‘I know how this hurts you, sweetheart.’

‘What the fuck are you two doing?’ screamed Abby, jealousy surging up as uncontrollable as vomit, at finding them together when she was convinced the affaire was over.

Flora nearly dropped her viola.

‘You both should have been on stage five minutes ago,’ yelled Abby. ‘Julian is waiting to go on, Knickers is going ballistic looking for you.’

‘Great outfit, Maestro.’ Totally unabashed, Viking wandered towards the stage. ‘Onotterably chic to match it to your soloist’s hair.’

‘Have you got some sort of death-wish?’ Abby turned her fury on Flora. ‘I told you last night, OK? Your job’s on the line.’

Once again, not wanting to rattle Abby with the merger plot in case she flipped and unnerved Marcus, Flora blurted out that Viking was boasting that he’d just pulled Jessica.

‘It’s called liaising with the management,’ she muttered and fled.

Abby, who still went weak at the knees, every time she remembered Viking kissing her outside St Clement’s, was totally thrown. Somehow she got through the overture because the orchestra could play it in their sleep. She didn’t even notice that Carmine was late on his off-stage entrance because he’d been kissing Lindy Cardew in the instrument room.

But arrogantly thinking she knew the Rachmaninov well enough and opting to conduct without a score she got hopelessly lost in the first movement.

Flora was bowing away furiously among the violas, worrying about Marcus’s set white face and his faltering sound. Looking up for reference, she found Abby’s beat wasn’t there, lost confidence and started to panic and make mistakes. Soon the rest of the orchestra, who had also been hopelessly under-rehearsed, were all over the place, half of them coming in, half of them not, unravelling and about to stop dead.

‘Fucking brown-trouser job,’ muttered Dixie to Randy.

Ironically this was Marcus’s salvation. He had nearly fainted with terrror when he first saw the size of the audience. Fighting for breath, his smile sellotaped to his face, his fingers, when he began playing, had been impossibly stiff and wouldn’t do anything he told them.

But, realizing his darling Abby was in desperate trouble, he forgot himself, concentrating on saving her. Steady as a Welsh cob, he kept going, hammering away repeatedly at the first subject, Dum, di-di, dum di-di, dum, dum, nodding until the orchestra found their place.

Abby, with no score for reference, however, was still floundering, her gaudy orange suit making her all the more conspicuous. Towards the end of the movement she got completely lost again so Marcus, with amazing assurance, skipped a page, plunging straight in to the cadenza, so everyone knew where they were and could have some breathing space.

He had chosen Rachmaninov’s second cadenza which was far more demanding. Gradually, as he relaxed and the music he adored took over, he forgot everything else. His pale tortured face grew happy and peaceful. Listening to the melancholy torrents of sound, glittering like a waterfall in the moonlight, Flora ached at the beauty of it. Glancing round, she caught Viking looking straight at her, although he smiled, his eyes were as wet as her own.

Marcus held his breath as the cadenza drew to a close. Not having rehearsed it at all, would Abby know when to cue in the orchestra? He had to accompany brief, beautiful echoes from Peter Plumpton on the flute, then Simon, then Hilary and finally Viking and Quinton, but they all came in on the dot, and the movement finished more or less together.

In the intermezzo where Marcus interpreted the word pianissimo in a multitude of different ways, and in the heroic splendid finale, he grew and grew in stature. Beneath his racing fingers, the great dark Russian monster had become suddenly biddable, and was carrying him home as joyfully as Arion’s dolphin.

But it was a close-run thing. Marcus got an ecstatic reception, in part because he’d looked so vulnerable and terrified at the beginning and so handsome and touchingly amazed at the applause at the end. Most of the audience hadn’t a clue anything had gone wrong. But the orchestra had, and they cheered him to the leaking rooftops, rattling their bows, beating out a tantivy of approval on the shoulders of their cellos and basses.

Utterly distraught, Abby fled to her dressing-room refusing to return, so none of the soloists within the orchestra were raised to their feet for a special clap, which enraged Hilary.

‘Abby should have brought the wind up,’ she kept saying.

Marcus took five curtain calls and was just collapsing thankfully in his dressing-room when Noriko banged on the door.

‘Quick, quick, quick, Mr Brack,’ she cried enthusiastically, ‘come and pray again, the pubric are still crapping.’

Marcus was still laughing when he reached the middle of the stage and shook hands with a beaming Julian yet again.

‘You’ll have to give them an encore.’

‘But I haven’t practised anything.’

It would have seemed so presumptuous.

‘Just busk it,’ shouted Bill Thackery.

For a second, Marcus gazed at the ecstatic pink faces, their clapping hands growing pinker by the minute, luxuriating in the sound like waves rolling down the shingle. Then he sat down and played Schumann’s Dreaming, which had everyone in floods and elicited even louder roars of applause.

Meanwhile George had had a wearying two days justifying his volte-face over Abby’s contract to various enraged members of the board including Miles, Mrs Parker, Canon Airlie, not to mention Gwynneth and Gilbert. Aware he would receive even more flak after tonight’s near débâcle he went grimly into the conductor’s room to find Flora yelling at a sobbing Abby.

‘You’re just jealous because he’s got more talent than you, that’s what, and you can’t bear anyone to get ahead. After all Marcus has done for you. All that transcribing and simplifying and explaining those bloody great scores. Think of the times he’s lugged your clothes to the cleaners and cooked and cleaned up after you and fed your cats and polished your shoes and let you pinch his jerseys.’

‘You pinch his jerseys,’ wailed Abby,

‘I’ve known him longer, I’m allowed to. You wouldn’t have got a second foot on the rostrum without him, you stupid bitch, and you’re so fucking vain you had to jeopardize his big break conducting without a score.’

‘I know, I know.’

Alarmed he might not have a second half, George told Flora to pack it in and Abby to wash her face and pull herself together.

He then dragged Flora outside.

‘Nice to see someone else getting it in the neck,’ he said drily. ‘And that’s the “stupid bitch” you’re so determined to save.’

Flora blushed, then hastily changed the subject. ‘Didn’t Marcus play brilliantly?’

‘He had absolutely no choice,’ said George bleakly.

Somehow Abby managed to limp through Schubert’s Fourth Symphony.

Then, speaking to no-one, cutting the sponsor’s reception again, she hurtled home to a deserted Woodbine Cottage.

Flora had gone out boozing with Cherub, Noriko and Davie Buckle. Marcus had been swept out to dinner by George, Miles and a manic Helen.

FORTY-SEVEN

Sitting next to Marcus at dinner, George fired off endless questions about Abby’s, Flora’s and Marcus’s plans for the future, then insisted that his chauffeur, known as Harve the Heavy, took him back to Woodbine Cottage.

‘You’re not driving with all that drink inside you. It’s not as if we’ve had to fork out for your room at the Old Bell.’ Then, affectionately ruffling Marcus’s hair, said, ‘You did bluddy well, lad, we’d have been right in it if you hadn’t come to Abby’s rescue.’

Marcus fought an insane drunken urge to collapse into George’s arms. He was so strong and solid and he had the same brusque gentleness, the almost patriarchal kindness that Marcus missed so much since Malise’s death. He couldn’t imagine why Flora and, until recently Abby, kept slagging him off.

Perhaps George was in love with Helen, Marcus thought wistfully. From Jake Lovell onwards, men had been particularly kind to him for just that reason. Marcus hoped not. George had promised to look at the RSO calendar and try and find him another date.

Slumped happily in the front of the Rolls, Marcus gabbled most uncharacteristically to Harve that Piggy Parker had booked him for a soirée in June, playing tunes like ‘After Henry’ and ‘Lady be Good’. Marcus beat them out on the dashboard until Harve started singing along.

‘And Gwendolyn Chisledon wanted to know where Mr Hungerford was going to build his ghastly multiplex,’ went on Marcus. ‘When she heard it was on Cowslip Hill, she heaved a sigh of relief. “Oh, that’s all right, I thought it was our side of Rutminster.”’

Harve grinned.

‘And Howie Denston rang me on George’s mobile in the middle of dinner and wants me to get into bed with him.’ Marcus giggled. ‘I do hope he means financially not sexually.’

‘Either way, if I may say so,’ said Harve, in his gravedigger’s drawl, ‘you’re going to be screwed.’

It was a beautiful clear night. Although the great beeches along the lake glittered with frost, the moonlight was bright enough to pick out the first pale primroses nestling in their roots.

Singing and laughter was coming from The Bordello; Marcus wished he could have dropped in. One of his best moments of the concerto had been Viking’s little horn solo in the middle movement; he’d just liked to have talked the concerto through with someone.

As he stumbled out of the car, Orion, his favourite constellation, was free falling into the poplar copse at the top of the wild-flower meadow. Mars, a gold butterfly, was being chased by Leo the Lion. The outside lamp was still on, transforming the leafless clematis over the front door into a scrunch-dried blond; but the cottage was in darkness.

‘Thank you so much,’ said Marcus.

‘Pleasure sir, I am not a great lover of classical music but may I trouble you for your autograph. One day it will be something to show my grandchildren.’

‘Dum di-di dum di-di dum dum,’ sang Marcus.

His shadow was squat and black at his heels, reminiscent of one of Malise’s labradors. Had his stepfather from beyond the grave sent the dog to guard him on such a special evening?

Only after several fumbling attempts did he realize the door wasn’t locked.

‘I did it, I fucking did it.’ As he punched the air he nearly fell over Abby’s music case in the hall. Then he heard the sound of desperate sobbing and stumbled upstairs where, watched by two worried cats, Abby lay slumped on her four-poster. She was dressed in jeans and Marcus’s old black sweater with two holes in the elbows. She was utterly distraught to have let him down.

‘Flora’s right — I have always taken you for granted. I haven’t cleaned a pair of shoes since I moved in.’

‘But I l-like looking after you.’

Collapsing on the patchwork counterpane, he found himself stroking her hair, drenched with tears rather than sweat now, as thick and coarse as a pony’s mane. Outside he could see the lake gleaming silver and mysterious. Trailing his hand downwards, he patted her shuddering shoulders, which were hard and muscular from so many hours conducting. Her long legs reached to the bottom of the bed. She hadn’t bothered to shower after the concert and smelled disturbingly of dried sweat and Amarige. From their moonlit reflection in the long mirror opposite, they could have been two boys. Marcus took her in his arms.

‘Oh Christ, Abby, I’ve always loved you. From the moment you came loping up to the stage at the Academy.’

Her mouth tasted acid from fear, but as he kissed her he thought she would suck the tongue out of his mouth and was amazed by the leaping wolf-like passion of her response.

Apart from an ill-fated scuffle on the lawn with Boris she had been celibate since the trauma of Christopher three years ago. She had Marcus’s clothes off him in a trice, ripping off several shirt buttons, nearly garrotting him with his tie and jamming his zip in the process. Like quick silver she was all over him, blowing in his ears, running her fingers through his hair, nuzzling his neck. Then she moved downwards, slowly kissing each bumpy rib, burying her face in his taut belly, exclaiming in wonder at the greyhound grace of his body.

There was only one drawback. Marcus couldn’t get it up. Even when his cock was sucked into the warm dark wet cavern of Abby’s throat, it remained as soft and as innocent as a lamb’s tail.

Marcus was even more contrite than Abby had been about the Rachmaninov. Abby, however, was surprisingly understanding.

‘It doesn’t matter, you’ve had a skinful, OK, and you’re pooped. You know what Luisa Pellafacini says: “Before a concert Julian won’t, after the concert he can’t.”’

‘I feel such a wimp.’

‘You can still make me come.’ Abby put his hand between her legs.

‘I’m seriously sorry,’ Marcus muttered into her shoulder, ‘but I don’t know which doorbell to press.’

Raising his head, prising his face round towards hers, Abby could see him blushing the same blood-red in the moonlight as his hair.

‘But I thought you and Flora — surely at school? The way she wanders into the studio half-naked.’

Marcus shook his head.

‘We snogged once or twice but we know each other too well and always started to laugh. Oh Abby, darling, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I’m a virgin.’

‘You gotta be joking, with a father like Rupert.’

‘That’s the trouble,’ Marcus rolled over and buried his face in the pillow. ‘Everyone expects me to be a great macho super-stud like Dad, and I just bottle out.’

Then stammering frantically, almost crying, he told her about the night of Basil Baddingham’s stag-party. ‘Edith was there. She drunk everyone under the table,’ and his disastrous encounter with the tart, and the near-fatal asthma attack.

‘Every time I try and make it with a girl I see contempt in Dad’s face.’

Holding his shuddering rigid body in her arms, Abby was overwhelmed with tenderness.

‘That’s enough to put anyone off sex,’ she said indignantly, ‘and on top of that it’s a knee-jerk reaction to think you’ll choke again. What a son of a bitch, what a damn fool insensitive preppy asshole.’

‘He wants an heir,’ said Marcus wearily.

‘Now listen to me, right.’ Abby pulled the duvet up tucking it round his shivering body. ‘For starters you’re the prettiest guy I ever saw, sure you are, and tonight you were the most shit-scared. I never saw stage-fright like that. I know what guts it took even to get onto the platform, OK? But in the end you showed everyone you’re made of steel. You were the superman, you saved us.

‘I love you, Marcus,’ her voice broke. ‘It’s just hit me like one of George’s bulldozers, and if we love each other we only need time. I’ll get you going, there are so many tricks.’

Marcus’s shivering became a quiver of pleasure as she ran her fingers lingeringly along the cleft between his buttocks.

‘All women,’ she went on half-mockingly, ‘want to marry a virgin so they can mould him exactly the way they want.’

‘Perhaps Barbara Cartland will make me the hero of one of her novels.’

‘You’re my hero anyway. George never stops nagging me to get involved in educational projects. Teaching you about sex is far more rewarding than relating Respighi’s Birds to the Blackmere Woods.’

As Marcus started to laugh, Abby took his hand, first moving it over her acorn-hard nipples, then burying it in her wiry dark pubic hair.

‘Under the fold you can feel a little nipple, that’s the clit, now lick your middle finger and stroke it, very gently, a mild pizzicato, right? Now slide a finger down and inside me in and out, deeper and deeper, testing for wetness, that’s lovely, now back to the clit again.’

It was rather like being taught fingering by his old music mistress, thought Marcus hazily. Any minute he expected Abby to tell him to use the long fingers for the black notes, and not to turn his whole hand, when he moved the thumb under.

‘Oh, wow,’ murmured Abby happily, ‘long fingers aren’t just good for tenths, I’m nearly there.’

He expected her to scream, shout and thrash about, and was alarmed he’d done something wrong when her body suddenly arched, stiffened, trembled violently all over and seemed to stop breathing.

‘Abby, are you OK?’

‘Heavenly.’ Her body slumped, but inside he could feel her melting and throbbing. ‘You’re a genius. You made me come.’

‘Truly — I thought it would be so noisy.’

‘When it’s real, it’s the quietest thing on earth. I love you.’

She fell asleep at once. Marcus lay awake stunned by the evening’s developments, reliving all the mistakes he’d made, particularly at the beginning of the Rachmaninov, luxuriating in the memory of the applause, and the kind things people had said. He hardly dared think how miraculously it would sort out his problems if he got it together with Abby.

I’m straight, I’m straight, he made a thumbs-up sign to his reflection in the mirror. All the same, like some lovely little restaurant you stumble on in the Dordogne when you’re pissed, he wondered if he’d ever be able to find the clitoris again. Perhaps Abby would let him bring a magnifying glass into lessons.

The next day, he had great difficulty keeping his newly straight face when he went back to H.P. Hall to collect his car, and was greeted by an overjoyed Noriko, waving a newspaper.

‘Mr Black, Mr Black.’ At last she’d got her ‘L’s’ right. ‘Have you seen your wonderful clit in Lutminster Echo?’

The Rutshire Butcher had reviewed the encore not the concerto, and written of ‘Marcus Black’s exquisite control and beauty of tone, unhindered by orchestra or conductor.’

FORTY-EIGHT

The next day Flora felt very flat after her sighting of Rannaldini, her rows with George and an inexplicable feeling of something going on between Abby and Marcus. She needed a male in her life.

Having bought an electric blanket she went off to the nearest NCDL kennels. The desperate barking, the pleading faces, the scrabbling paws saddened her immeasurably. Like the Anouilh heroine, how could she ever be happy while there was a single stray dog in the world? But in the end she chose the smallest, ugliest black-and-tan mongrel and called him Trevor. Trevor had been so bored in the kennels, he’d spent all day playing with his own shadow. Realizing his luck, he settled in immediately. Abby was livid when he treed both Scriabin and Sibelius, two chattering magpies up in the chestnut tree again, and then wolfed all their food.

‘He’ll be a partner in crime for that bloody Nugent.’

‘He’ll be a terrific guard dog,’ beamed Flora. ‘Lady Chisleden had a break-in while she was at the concert last night.’

Trevor was all of nine inches high and sulked dreadfully when Flora forgot to put on the electric blanket. Although he immediately found his way out through the cat door and went hunting, he howled if Flora left him behind, so she smuggled him into rehearsals and he guarded her coat and her viola case in the women’s changing-room.

George was not amused by the arrival of Trevor, particularly when he noisily chased John Drummond between two Perspex models on his first morning. Fortunately for Flora, George had been instantly distracted by devastating news: the Cotchester Chamber Orchestra blithely announcing they would be staging their own Opera Gala in the grounds of Cotchester Cathedral starring Rannaldini and Harefield. The main problem was they had picked the same Sunday in early May that the RSO were mounting their All-Star Centenary Gala.

This would wipe out the RSO’s audience. Georgie Maguire and an increasingly doubtful Dancer Maitland singing Rodgers and Hammerstein could hardly compete with the rerun of the most successful classical record of all time.

George made out he was furious. Flora, who still had the print-outs under her mattress, suspected he had tipped Rannaldini off about the date of the gala, in order to run the RSO into the ground. The Arts Council, increasingly dismayed by the popularizing of the RSO repertoire, were muttering openly about closing down one orchestra.

At the beginning of March, El Creepo and Simon Painshaw came to the end of their two-year term as orchestral members of the board. Few players were interested in replacing them, as hatred of the management had reached an all-time high. In the end Hilary and Bill Thackery put themselves forward. Hilary, the orchestra decided, wanted the chance to exchange meaningful glances with Miles. She was a dangerous bitch but Bill would balance her out. Bill was such a nice guy and he’d behaved so well over the re-recording in January of Rachel’s Requiem and Julian repossessing his violin solo, that everyone felt he deserved to be on the board. Bill would see them right.

Meanwhile as a thank you and twenty-second birthday present, Abby took Marcus to Covent Garden, where the Cossak-Russe, the most dazzling ballet company in the world, were dancing Le Corsair. Tickets had sold out months ago and more touts were hanging round the opera house than pigeons. But the principal soloist, the great Alexei Nemerovsky, known in the Press as ‘The Treat from Moscow’ was both an old friend of Boris’s and a long-time collector of Abby’s records and had sent her two tickets.

It was heaven to escape from the RSO and all its problems for an evening, thought Abby, as she and Marcus wandered hand in hand through the packed foyer. Marcus had retrieved her orange satin trouser suit from the waste-paper basket and persuaded her to wear it. She was gratified how many people recognized her and nudged their companions, but she noticed the eyes of both sexes then swivelled to Marcus and stayed there in admiration.

He was wearing a dark suit that had been made for him two years ago by Rupert’s tailor and a lilac-and-white striped shirt and a purple tie, which Flora had given him for his birthday. Success in the Rachmaninov had given him new confidence, he seemed to walk taller. He is a beauty, thought Abby proudly. They had made love constantly since that first night, and although Marcus still hadn’t got it up, he had given her a lot of pleasure, and was about to graduate (B.Clit) in the geography of female sexual anatomy.

‘It’ll happen,’ Abby kept telling him, ‘you mustn’t have a hang-up.’

‘More of a hang down,’ grumbled Marcus.

At least they could laugh about it and after a couple of glasses of champagne in the bar, they sat very close together in the dark warmth of the theatre, opening their scarlet programmes, watching the lit-up bald head and waving arms of the conductor, aware that the vast audience could hardly wait for the overture to be over so they could catch a first glimse of their god.

Nemerovsky was also known as the third ‘N’, because with Nijinsky and Nureyev he made up the triumvirate of greatest male dancers of all time. His leonine dark head, with the sliding black eyes, the cheek-bones at forty-five degrees and the huge pouting mouth, glared haughtily out from poster and programme.

Back swept the dark red velvet curtains, like labia minor, thought Marcus in his new knowledge. In delight the audience clapped the brilliant set, in which a heaving sailing ship filled with long-legged, wild-haired pirates was wrecked on a rocky shore. The tallest of the pirates, who was wearing a floppy white shirt, black knickerbockers and a red scarf round his forehead, was clearly hurt and was carried ashore by two of his comrades as the ship broke up in a mass of spray and crashing waves.

‘That’s Nemerovsky,’ whispered Abby, as the pirates took refuge behind a rock and a lot of scantily dressed maidens swarmed on and jumped about.

I’m not sure I like ballet, thought Marcus.

Then Nemerovsky recovered from his concussion and suddenly erupted on to the centre of the stage as glitteringly dominant and beautiful as Orion in the winter sky.

Nemerovsky’s leaps were legendary — gasp followed collective gasp as the Corsair seemed to fly through the air, to whirl like a dervish to rise and fizzle like a fire cracker, yet his stillness seemed to freeze audience and orchestra as long as he wanted — so that any spontaneous applause, that could have interrupted the action, also froze on people’s hands.

And watching him, Marcus was lost, totally shipwrecked. He even felt himself groan with despair as the cold, poisoned steel of Cupid’s arrow plunged deep into his heart, routing out any hope of heterosexuality. He realized he was only in love with Abby emotionally and had never really desired a human being before. He looked at Nemerovsky, remembering that Browning poem Flora was always quoting.

‘As one who awakes.

The past was a sleep

And his life began.’

Abby was in raptures, half in wonder for the conductor, who must be having a coronary controlling the orchestra in the face of such unpredictability, half-identifying with Nemerovsky’s star quality. She had once held audiences captive, had been the only one on stage they had looked at. She must, must go back to the violin.

‘He’s got a butt almost as beautiful as Viking’s,’ she whispered to Marcus.

Boris, who was still wrestling with King Lear, only made the last act. It seemed sacrilegious to leave a seat empty for so long.

Afterwards Abby, Marcus and Boris went on to dinner at the Ivy, where they were later joined by Alexei and Evgenia, his stunningly pretty, principal ballerina. The whole restaurant rose and cheered them as they came in, and it was immediately champagne on the dacha.

Boris and Alexei fell on each other’s necks. When, demanded Alexei, was Boris going to write a ballet for him? Marcus was in a complete daze which went unnoticed as the other four gabbled away in Russian. Alexei seemed far more taken with Abby than Evgenia. Occasionally his black eyes slid speculatively over Marcus, and when Marcus couldn’t eat a thing, Alexei calmly forked up his potatoes announcing he was starving.

‘I cannot eat before dancing, I am much too exciting.’

He reminded Marcus terrifyingly of Rupert. He had the same cool arrogance, the same predatory ability to pick off anything he chose. He was now having a terrrific Russian row with Evgenia, because she’d ordered him a Dover sole, rather than Tournedos Rossini, and when Boris tried to defuse things, turned on him as well. Then Alexei emptied a glass of red wine over Boris, Boris emptied one over Alexei and they both smashed their glasses against the wall. The management were just moving in to break the whole thing up when they saw the two dripping men were laughing uproariously and left them to it.

Then as instantly they stopped laughing, because Boris asked Alexei about Russia.

‘There is no money,’ Alexei’s voice was deeper than the Corsair’s ocean, a thrilling, husky, basso profundo, ‘we are crippled by bureaucracy, the Mafia and chaos. There is no hope internally, eet must come from outside. I am OK, I come and go as I please, because I am beeg star. Everyone else is starving. Democracy does not feed people. So I owe eet to geeve my country spiritual uplift. You must come back, Boris, at least make visit.’

Boris, mopping his eyes with his table napkin, was so moved he drained both his own and Evgenia’s glass.

‘As Chekhov say,’ he sighed, ‘Freedom is destiny we may never reach, but we must squeeze slavery out of ourselves drop by drop,’ which reminded him his glass was empty, so he waved at the waiter to bring more bottles.

Trying to include Marcus, Abby told the others that he’d just played the Rachmaninov and Howie was trying to wangle him a date with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra playing Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto.

‘My father was friend of Prokofiev,’ said Alexei, his glittering eyes trailing round the table.

‘Just then a beeg grey wolf did come out of the forest,’ he said softly, and threw back his head and laughed showing off long flaring nostrils and the stubble darkening his beautiful strong neck, which had left make-up on the collar of his white shirt.

Oh Christ, thought Marcus, what the hell’s going to become of me? He felt dizzy with longing. Misinterpreting his distress, Evgenia said sympathetically that it was very difficult to make it as a pianist.

‘Marcus is very shy, too,’ Abby told her in Russian.

‘Is he?’ drawled Alexei in English, raising a jet-black eyebrow and staring at Marcus until he went scarlet.

‘Then he must make record in Prague. Until you have record you are nuzzing. To managers, engagers, musical directors, record is all.’

‘Serena at Megagram liked you a lot, Marcus,’ said Boris encouragingly. ‘She vill pick up production cost of record. I vill conduct for free, you will only need a few grand to pay the orchestra.’

‘Great, I’ll help out,’ said Abby eagerly.

Sensing Marcus would like to get off the subject, Evgenia asked Abby about her orchestra. In no time Abby was telling her about the RSO’s financial plight and Rannaldini’s latest act of vandalism, programming an Opera Gala on the same day as their centenary celebrations.

‘Rannaldini is very bad man,’ said Alexei. ‘He conduct in Moscow. Never again, eet was so fast, Swan Lake become Swan Rapids.’

Abby took a deep breath.

‘Oh Alexei, you’re not possibly free on Sunday 7 May to dance at our gala — only for ten minutes or so? It would honestly save us from going belly-up.’

In order to maintain his glitzy lifestyle, Alexei had been known to dance on a pin if the money was good enough but suddenly he agreed to appear at the gala for next to nothing. He and Evgenia would be in Paris at the time. As the gala was on a Sunday they could just nip over for the evening.

‘I would like that,’ smiled Evgenia, ‘I love Vest Country.’

‘You always need vest in Eengland,’ mocked Alexei.

A manic Abby hugged them both.

‘Oh thank you. That’ll zap Rannaldini and Harefield at Cotchester. People’ll fly in from all over the world to watch you two. What would you like to dance?’

‘Prokofiev,’ said Alexei, shooting a mocking glance at Marcus. ‘Romeo and Juliet. Stony leemits cannot keep love out.’

The waiters, trying not to yawn, were laying tables for the morrow. As they were leaving, Boris gave Alexei a score of Rachel’s Requiem, which had just been published.

‘Who did you dedicate it to, Flora or me or Marcus?’ asked Abby turning the pages. ‘To Astrid,’ she read in outrage.

Boris shrugged: ‘Someone ‘as to babyseet.’

The bridges along the Embankment glittered like necklaces on the night, buds thickened against a dun-coloured sky, the park was full of daffodils.

‘An ’orse guard, an ’orse guard, my keengdom for an ’orse guard,’ yelled Alexei, as the taxi swung into St James’s Street, dropping off him and Evgenia at the Stafford.

Abby and Marcus were staying at the Ritz. In the lift up, Abby put an idle hand on Marcus’s cock.

‘Oh my God.’ She gave a whoop of joy. Perhaps Marcus was suddenly relaxed because Howie was getting him work, and she and Boris were going to make a record with him. Potency was so allied to success.

They were hardly inside the door when Abby turned to him, putting her hands on his shoulders, drawing him towards her, not daring to breathe as she felt him rising against her.

There was no time to wash. She unzipped both their flies and left him to wriggle out of his trousers and boxer shorts as she ripped off the orange trousers of her suit. The next moment they were on the floor and he was inside her.

‘Aaah,’ moaned Abby, ‘that feels so good.’

The sex after that was fantastic. Marcus was so turned on by the thought of Alexei that with eyes shut and in desperate hunger he made love to Abby all night.

‘I knew it would come right, if we gave it time,’ sobbed a joyful Abby.

Marcus was so exhausted he forgot to take his asthma pills and had a bad attack in the morning. Driving back in the afternoon, they agreed not to tell anyone for the moment. Abby, however, couldn’t resist confiding in Flora, who was surprisingly unenthusiastic.

Abby construed this as jealousy because Flora hadn’t got a man at the moment. But Flora, who’d always suspected Marcus was gay, thought the whole thing would end in tears, and in turn couldn’t resist confiding in Viking, who was equally unenthusiastic and drove Abby crackers referring to the Centenary Concert as the ‘Gayla’ because Dancer Maitland and Alexei were taking part.

‘Alexei is not gay,’ yelled Abby, ‘He has a beautiful “partner” called Evgenia.’

Privately Abby was convinced Alexei had only agreed to dance because he fancied her. At any rate she had scored colossal brownie points with the board for providing Alexei, particularly when Declan O’Hara declared himself horrified by Rannaldini’s and the CCO’s attempts to sabotage Rutminster’s centenary celebration.

‘I’m afraid Edith’s lost any real interest in the orchestra since she shacked up with Monica,’ he told George over the telephone and then offered to read Peter and the Wolf at the gala.

Marcus was still reeling from meeting Alexei. He longed to talk to Flora, but felt it would be disloyal to Abby. If only he could have confided in Taggie. As an olive branch he sent her a Mother’s Day card, but heard nothing back.

FORTY-NINE

Once it became known that Nemerovsky and Ilanova would be dancing, the gala became a total sell-out. Miles was panicking how to pack a tenth of the audience into the H.P. Hall when a gilt fig leaf obligingly fell off one of the cherubs adorning the front of the dress circle, just missing the Lady Mayoress. Restoring the cherub’s modesty the following morning one of George’s sharp builders noticed a huge crack in the ceiling over the stalls. Repairs would be lengthy and cost millions.

GALA IN JEOPARDY, trumpeted the Rutminster Echo.

Overnight George came neatly to the rescue, offering, as an alternative, his beautiful park. The previous owner had been a polo fanatic and had levelled a field behind the house. Here the multitudes could stretch out and be charged a hundred pounds a car. George’s builders were soon at work, knocking up a splendid stage and a pit for the orchestra. Venturer Television were covering the gala because their own chief executive was reading Peter and the Wolf and Classic FM would record it. Stands on either side of the stage would seat a thousand people and, in front of the stage, fold-up chairs stretched back for forty rows to join the masses on the polo field.

With tickets ranging from five hundred to fifty pounds and freebies for anyone George wanted to woo, he and the RSO stood to make a killing. George’s white-knight gesture was much applauded by the nationals and the Rutminster Echo. Readers’ letters, no doubt penned by the recipients of George’s backhanders, poured in condemning the H.P. Hall as a potential death-trap, urging that another smaller venue be found for the RSO.

‘Preferably in Cotchester,’ raged Flora to Viking.

‘George has turned the whole thing to his advantage. I bet his builders made that crack so he can pick up H. P. Hall even cheaper. I hope it pisses with rain on the day.’

But the luck of the devil held. After a beastly cold grey, dry blustery April, a heatwave hit England in the week running up to the gala.

The only thing that cheered Flora up was George’s memo on the notice-board typed by Jessica.

‘As the gala takes place on the eve of the Fiftieth Anniversary of VE Day, please note “God Save the Queer”, will be played.’

On the great day Rutminster Hall was patriotically decked with red, white and blue bunting. In deference to the soloists, Irish and Russian flags also hung motionless in the burning air alongside the Union Jack.

As a sweating, grumbling RSO settled down to an afternoon rehearsal under a white hot sun, caterers in red, white and blue striped marquees tried to keep flies off the food, Venturer Television checked camera angles and George’s minions touched up the balcony, already on stage for Romeo and Juliet.

‘Trust George to use overwrought iron,’ said Flora sourly, ‘that balcony’s more suited to a Weybridge hacienda. Where are the carriage lamps and the window-boxes of petunias?’

At least George’s taste hadn’t ruined the park which was lit by white hawthorn exploding like grenades, clumps of white lilac, foaming cow parsley and the candles of the towering horse chestnuts, whose round curves were echoed by plump sheep and their lambs grazing among the buttercups and big white clouds massing on the horizon. Through a gap in the trees, on the banks of the River Fleet, stood a temple of Flora.

‘Just think he owns all this, like Mr Darcy,’ sighed Candy.

‘Mr Nazi,’ snapped Flora. ‘I’m surprised he hasn’t introduced peacocks yet.’

‘Why bother with our First Horn around?’ said Clare.

Viking, already bronzed and wearing only fraying denim shorts, was squeezing a lemon onto his hair to lighten it in the sun.

Marcus slumped in the stalls. A huge field of yellow rape on the horizon was wafting noxious pollen like chloroform towards him. Willow, birch and oak in the park, as well as all the blossom, were making it almost impossible to breathe. Only the desire to see Alexei had induced him to brave the rehearsal. He was bitterly ashamed that he had been so distracted yesterday, he’d forgotten to play at a wedding and the poor bride had come down the aisle to no music.

He had brought Flora’s Collected Byron with him, and found the original poem of ‘The Corsair’.

‘There was a laughing devil in his sneer,’ read Marcus.

He should have been at home working on Prokofiev’s Third but Abby had slid into her old trick of enlisting his help with the repertoire. The running order today was the Roman Carnival overture which had a beautiful solo for Cathie Jones; Georgie Maguire singing everything from Gluck to Gershwin; Declan reading Peter and the Wolf; the slow movement of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth because it had a beautiful solo for Viking, more songs from Georgie because Dancer Maitland had tonsilitis and finally Romeo and Juliet.

Abby was in a panic about conducting ballet. Rodney had been pragmatic when she called him.

‘They’re never in time, darling. Nemerovsky’s a frightful show-off, he’ll spin everything out as long as possible. Give him a fright occasionally by speeding things up but on the whole it’s best to wait till they land.’

Men were always showing off, thought Abby furiously, look at Viking sitting half-naked on the edge of the stage, making slitty eyes at every passing pretty caterer or waitress.

No-one could work out whether he was acting up because he was going to be hidden in the pit all evening or whether it was the creeping closeness of George and Juno.

Yesterday Abby had bawled him out for cracking three notes in the Tchaikovsky. Viking had proceeded to wake her up at the cottage at four o’clock in the morning to tell her he’d just finished practising, which was belied by howls of drunken laughter in the background. Then to top it, bloody Trevor, the mongrel, had chewed up her new black T-strap sandals bought to wear at the après-gala party and Flora had hardly apologized. She didn’t know what had got into Flora either. She was so ratty. Thank God for Marcus, who was always so sweet.

Declan hadn’t arrived and, as Marcus only had his nose in a book, Abby dragged him unwillingly onto the stage to act as the narrator in Peter and the Wolf.

‘“What kind of bird are you, if you can’t fly?” said the little bird,’ read Marcus sulkily, activating a joyous flurry on the flute from Peter Plumpton.

‘“What kind of bird are you if you can’t swim?” said the duck, and dived into the pond’ and in came Simon with a ripple of notes on the oboe.

‘You’re flat, Simon,’ said Abby.

‘It’s the bloody reed,’ said Simon shrilly.

‘Very appropriate,’ giggled Cherub who was wearing a Christopher Robin sunhat. ‘Ducks live in reeds.’

As Abby moved on to another tricky bit, Marcus felt his blue-denim shirt clinging wetly to his body. He wished he could take it off but the sun would torch his fair skin in seconds.

‘No matter how hard the duck tried to run,’ read Marcus, ‘the wolf was getting nearer and nearer and nearer.’

‘And then he caught ’er,’ said an unmistakable bitchy, deep, husky, foreign voice, ‘an’ weeth one gulp, swallow ’er.’

Marcus dropped the score, for there piratically grinning up at him, ‘a laughing devil in his sneer’ stood Alexei, smothered in a great wolf-coat, despite the punishing heat. With him were Evgenia, ravishing in a green sleeveless mini dress, with a white shawl slung round her hips and George looking big and suntanned after a week outside organizing things and as proud as hell.

The orchestra put down their instruments and gave them a clap. Abby jumped down falling on their necks, somewhat ostentatiously gabbling away in Russian, introducing Julian and Dimitri who would translate if they needed him.

‘Hi Marcus, how’s Prokofiev Three going?’ shouted Evgenia, holding up a little white hand.

Marcus blushed furiously to be singled out, particularly when Dixie shouted: ‘Go for it Marcus, you might get lucky,’ and even more so when Alexei reached up, squeezed the back of his leg, and with a sly smile handed him back the score, murmuring: ‘Hi, baby boy.’

Saying he and Evgenia would rehearse when they’d warmed up, George was about to whisk them off to their dressing-rooms which had been built under the beech trees when Miles bustled up.

‘I’ve got your schedule here, Mr Nemerovsky.’ Then he added unctuously, ‘After the rehearsal we know you’d like a steak and French fries, and then a rest but at six I’ve arranged for the The Times, the Independent, the Guardian and the Telegraph to have half an hour each with you.’

‘Niet,’ said Alexi firmly. ‘Thees is private visit.’

‘But you’ve got loads of time, you won’t be on before half-past ten.’

‘I have to lose fifteen year at least to become Romeo, I need till ten-thirty to prepare myself.’

‘It’s taken weeks to arrange,’ spluttered Miles.

‘Unarrange eet then.’

‘They may write very uncomplimentary things.’

‘Ees any different?’ shrugged Alexei and stalked off to his dressing-room.

‘Disgusting yob,’ said Hilary furiously.

‘What a star,’ sighed Flora.

‘He’s brought a portable barre,’ said Tommy Stainforth knowledgeably.

‘I didn’t know he was a boozer,’ said Cherub.

‘No, to practise ballet on, dickhead.’

Leaving poorjessica to cancel the Press, Miles turned his officiousness on the musicians. Mounting the stage with a large cardboard box, he handed over brilliant crimson silk jackets to the women in the orchestra. They were to wear them with black midi skirts to standardize their appearance, to match the RSO lorry, which had been newly painted crimson, and to curb such excesses as Nellie’s plunges and Flora’s ribbon straps.

‘That colour will clash with my sunburn,’ said Candy in outrage.

‘Silk’s so hot,’ moaned poor Mary, who was not enjoying pregnancy in such stifling heat.

‘And it’s got a polyester lining,’ said Clare in horror. ‘I can’t wear man-made fibres.’

‘I’m not wearing it at all,’ said Flora, ‘I’ll look like a blood orange.’

‘Not the most becomin’ shade for overheated orchestral complexions,’ observed Miss Parrott, retrieving a dropped stitch.

‘Well, I think they’re lovely,’ protested Juno, who never flushed pinker than a wild rose.

‘So do I, thank you, Miles,’ said Hilary, who was pale with dark hair and had also chosen the colour.

‘They’ll give the orchestra an identity,’ fluted Miles. ‘And look most dramatic beside the white-dinner jackets and while I’ve got you I want a word about protocol. Tonight’s as good a time to start as any when we’re anticipating a huge crowd of first-time concert goers. I want you all to come onto the stage together, five mintues before the off and not all straggle on in your own time, and more important, I want you to look cheerful.’

‘On our salary?’ scoffed Randy

Despite the heat the musicians laughed.

‘And to smile — ’ Miles glared at Randy — ‘both at the audience and each other. You are performers, not just musicians and at the end of a piece or in a lull, it would be rather nice if you exchanged little smiling conversations like newsreaders.’

‘Cuckoo, cuckoo,’ the angelic third floated out from the saffron depths of an oak tree.

‘You’re right, birdie, he is cuckoo,’ shouted Dixie in disgust. ‘What’s the point of smiling if you’re hidden in the pit.’

‘Can we get on with Romeo and Juliet, Miles?’ demanded Abby, who was getting increasingly jumpy at the prospect of conducting Alexei.

‘What d’you want us to be today, too fast or too loud?’ drawled Viking sarcastically.

Abby’s lips tightened.

‘As you know,’ she began, ‘Juliet on the night of the ball, from being an under-aged schoolgirl, who wants to stay home and play with her dolls, changes into a young woman swept by deepest passion. This is the greatest love scene ever written in literature or music and tonight it is to be danced by the greatest dancer. As someone said of Nureyev, he only had to walk onto the stage, raise his arm, and the lake would be filled with swans. With Nemerovsky, he has-’

‘Only to raise a stand and the polo field will be swarming with under-aged schoolboys,’ shouted Viking. ‘God Save the Queer.’

‘Will you shut up?’ screamed Abby to more guffaws. ‘You’re just jealous because Alexei’s a big star and you’re nothing but a big fish in a very small polluted pool.’

‘In this country they pronounce it p’lyooted,’ said Viking.

The row was only postponed because George returned with Evgenia, pretty as a lily in a white unitard, and Alexei, flaunting everything in clinging black Lycra shorts. Most dancers are well past their prime at thirty-seven, but Alexei’s golden body, oiled and rippling with muscle seemed to glow like old ivory in the white hot sun.

‘Look at that huge bulge,’ said Cherub in awe.

‘He’s got two pairs of legwarmers shoved down there,’ said Viking dismissively.

The Russians like their Romeo and Juliet majestic and imposing. Alexei was soon jackbooting around, changing tempi and criticizing the set.

‘That’s wrong,’ said Viking disapprovingly, as the music grew more and more funereal. ‘Romeo and Juliet aren’t dead yet and who wrote this music anyway, Prokofiev or Nemerovksy?’

Now Alexei was complaining about the pillar, behind which he had to await Juliet and the height of the balcony.

‘The balcony is fine, Alexei,’ said Evgenia running down the steps, ‘last time I dance Juliet, it nearly collapse beneath me.’

‘Up two three four, down two three four,’ called out Alexei, hoisting her into the air as if she was no heavier than a kitten. ‘Eet’s still too quick, Abby.’

‘Eef we could have pas de chat a bit slower too, Abby,’ begged Evgenia.

Knowing every man in the place was lusting after Evgenia, Alexei seemed to take a perverse pleasure in playing the scene for real but such was his presence that the bright burning afternoon became as filled with passion and dark lurking menace as night-time Verona.

Marcus was bitterly disappointed to miss Alexei’s rehearsal but quite relieved to be dragged inside because Georgie Maguire, with whom he’d spent Christmas, wanted a piano rehearsal. Like Flora, she had rolled up weighed down with presents, a copy of her latest album for Abby, a huge bottle of Joy for Flora, chewstiks for Trevor the mongrel, a biography of Pablo Gonzales for Marcus and a huge box of Belgian chocolates for George.

‘Miss Priddock said you had a sweet tooth.’

‘George’ll have to ration them to one a day,’ muttered Juno.

Juno was not the only one enraged. How could her mother treat with the enemy, thought Flora furiously, when George’s only aim was to build supermarkets and sack 95 per cent of the RSO.

Georgie had also brought several crates of iced beer for the orchestra and was so warm and friendly that Marcus longed to pour all his troubles out to her.

Singing half-voice because she didn’t want to tire her vocal cords, Georgie whizzed through Mozart, Puccini, Gershwin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, some VE Day songs and finally two of Strauss’s Four Last Songs because she wanted to raise two fingers to Dame Hermione who regarded them as her speciality.

Georgie then decided she and Marcus needed a drink but they found there wasn’t a maid in the house nor a waiter in the hospitality tent because they’d all sloped off to gaze at Nemerovsky. Over the hawthorn and lilac-scented air drifted the sweet doomed notes of the balcony scene.

‘Too slow,’ said Marcus with a frown. ‘Abby’ll have to divide.’

‘Lovely,’ sighed Georgie. ‘Let’s raid the fridge, I’m starving.’

The fridge, however, under Juno’s influence was disappointingly full of plain yoghurt, undressed lettuce, bean sprouts, carrots cut into strips to fend off George’s hunger pangs and plates of cold chicken and beef covered with cling film and marked ‘Lunch’ and ‘Dinner’.

Worse still, there was absolutely no drink so they had to do with Perrier. Georgie lit a cigarette and wanted to gossip.

‘Are you OK, Marcus? You look dreadfully pale. I suppose the pollen count’s gone through the ozone layer in this heat. You ought to get some concealer for those dark rings.’

Ought to get concealer for my feelings, thought Marcus wearily.

‘I saw Nemerovsky in New York.’ It was as though Georgie had read his thoughts. ‘He’s so cool you burn yourself, like ice trays out of the freezer. Is Flora OK? She’s been so off-hand, and she wasn’t a bit pleased with the bottle of Joy. I hoped it might prove symbolic. And she’s put on weight.’

‘That’s because she’s given up smoking, very nobly, because it gives me asthma.’

‘God, I wish I could. What happened to that nice Irish man who kept ringing her over Christmas?’

‘It petered out. He’s a seriously good bloke, he’s playing your horn solo in the Strauss.’

‘I guess she’s still hooked on Rannaldini,’ sighed Georgie. ‘He’s such a shit. Oh sorry, I forgot he was your stepfather.’

Opening the fridge again Georgie removed a cling-filmed plate of cold beef.

‘Shall we take that for Trevor? He’s such a duck. My elder daughter Melanie’s having a baby in November — I do hope I like it as much as Trevor.’

As the temperature rose so did tempers. Abby got even angrier with Viking. Not only had he stood on his chair when he was playing so he could watch Evgenia and later Georgie, who, being Irish, of course, took to him immediately, but now she’d caught him coming out of Evgenia’s dressing-room, ostentatiously wiping off lipstick.

‘Why must you always rock boats?’ stormed Abby. ‘Alexei’s antsy enough without you jumping on his girlfriend.’

‘Grow up, sweetheart. Alexei is about as straight as Shirley Temple’s curls.’

‘You’re just jealous. Don’t you dare upset him.’

‘Not nearly as much as Gwynneth and Gilbert have. That two broomstick family barged in onannounced as Alexei was slapping on his tenth layer of Max Factor to bring him greetings from the Arts Council of Great Britain. Alexei threw a queenie fit and started stoning them with pots of cold cream. You have to applaud the guy’s style.’

‘They have no understanding of the artistic temperament,’ raged Abby. ‘And I hope you and Flora are going to keep your dogs under control this evening.’

‘Of course, here’s one of them now,’ said Viking as Fat Isobel waddled up with a pile of evening-shirts and a white DJ on a coat-hanger.

‘I managed to get the mark out,’ she said adoringly.

‘That’s a darling girl, I’ll buy you a beer later,’ Viking pecked Isobel’s big blushing cheek.

‘You are so arrogant and lazy,’ said Abby furiously. ‘Why don’t you get someone to pull your toilet paper for you.’

FIFTY

Not a blade of grass could be seen on George’s polo field as loud speakers and huge screens waited to relay the concert to an audience any rock star would have killed for. Many of them waved Union Jacks in anticipation of the VE Day celebrations starting at midnight. In the distance Rutminster Cathedral, its spire rising out of the billowing green woods like a wizard’s hat, struck eight o’clock. Over the stage and pit hung a huge canopy like a nun’s head-dress, dark blue inside and dotted with stars to create Romeo and Juliet’s night-time Verona.

Into the pit through a side-door trouped the RSO in their white DJs and new crimson jackets, which were already uniformly darkened by damp patches under the armpits. The younger girls had rolled back their sleeves. Nellie had undone her top three buttons. Aware that her lower half was totally hidden in the pit, Flora had undone all but the top button. Everyone’s toothpaste smiles on Miles’s instructions were totally obscured by Peggy Parker’s massive flower arrangements.

Huddled in the front of the stalls, Marcus wished Abby had given him a less public seat. He was terrified Declan, his father’s great friend, would notice him and seek him out later. Even worse, on his right in a white shirt already covered with chocolate, a bow-tie and shorts of bottle-green velvet, wriggled two-and-half-year-old Justin propped up by three cushions so he could see Mary, his mother, at the front desk of the Second Violins. Marcus liked children but reduced to jelly at the prospect of meeting Alexei at the party later, he was driven demented by Justin’s incessant and often incomprehensible prattle. Johnno, his father, demoralized by four months out of work, wearing a crumpled light-weight suit which Mary hadn’t had time to iron, didn’t seem much of a disciplinarian.

‘So good to see little ones brought early to the sacred fountain,’ said Gwynneth, who clearly didn’t believe in deodorants, and who, to Marcus’s horror, was sitting on his left.

She was wearing vast silver earrings in the shape of ballet shoes in deference to Alexei, but was now furious because he’d hit her on the nipple with ajar of moisturizer and a large pot of cleansing cream had landed on Gilbert’s sandalled toe.

‘Gilbert’s bound to lose the nail.’

And half a ton of Rutminster dirt beneath it will be homeless, thought Marcus with a shudder.

‘I’d sue. Nemerovsky can afford it,’ said Peggy Parker who was massive in maroon on Gilbert’s left.

She was livid because Sonny hadn’t been given a slot in the gala, and her flowers on the platform hadn’t got a large enough plug in the programme.

To tumultuous applause Abby swept on looking dramatic, but definitely OTT in a purple tunic and floppy trousers. Influenced by Byron in the Old Bell, she had added a white turban secured with an amethyst pin.

‘Abby just wash her hair,’ piped up Justin.

‘Where’s Jemima, Imran?’ shouted the husband of one of Rutminster’s new Labour councillors, who’d never been to a concert before, and who was already plastered on George’s champagne.

The audience tittered. Abby gritted her teeth. She’d have had no problem carrying off the turban if Viking hadn’t called her Ghandi Pandy in the wings.

Checking that Venturer Television and Classic FM were rolling, she brought down her stick.

Cathie Jones, still ashen with fear despite the punishing heat of the pit, played the solo quite exquisitely in Roman Carnival. In fact everything was fizzing along splendidly until Abby discovered Flora’s goddamned dog had chewed up the last pages of the score, so she had to pretend to be turning earlier pages not to unnerve the orchestra. Not that she could see anything anyway because of the sweat cascading down from under her turban.

She couldn’t even yell at Flora for Trevor’s misdemeanour because Flora’s mother was on next. Ravishing in plunging coffee coloured lace, her red curls half piled up, half trailing down her freckled suntanned back, Georgie was soon belting out Mozart and Puccini as effortlessly as Gershwin. After years of smoking and far from light drinking, her voice was not perfect but it had exuberance and enormous charm.

‘Some day he’ll come along, the man I love,’ sang Georgie.

He already has, thought Marcus helplessly.

‘You have to admit my mother is a total star,’ muttered Flora to Fat Isobel.

It was time for Peter and the Wolf and Declan O’Hara, shaggy, noble and streaming with sweat like a Newfoundland dog just emerged from the sea. Being a true pro, he had spent hours perfecting the timing and, being Declan, he cried in all the sad bits and milked every dramatic effect for the television cameras.

Entranced, hypnotized, Marcus listened to the dark reverberating Irish voice: ‘Brave boys like he are not afraid of wolves.’

Oh but I am, sighed Marcus.

‘Just then a big grey wolf did come out of the forest’ went on Declan, narrowing his eyes and dramatically echoing Alexei in the Ivy.

Who else but Viking could play the wicked wolf? thought Abby furiously as she cued in the three horns.

Finally after the catching of the wolf and the triumphant procession, Declan came to the dreadful ending.

‘And if you were to listen carefully you could hear the duck quacking in the wolf’s belly because the wolf in his hurry had swallowed her alive.’

Even when the orchestra had pelted up the scale in the final tutti, the audience were totally silent for a few shocked seconds before they erupted into a storm of applause.

Justin, who’d been listening enraptured, broke into noisy sobs.

‘What happened to the duck, what happened to the poor duck?’

‘Of course, the whole thing’s political,’ said Gilbert sententiously. ‘The duck is meant to represent the dissident Russian artists imprisoned by Stalin.’

‘If they all behaved as badly as Boris and Nemerovsky,’ said Peggy Parker, with a sniff, ‘Ay think Stalin had a point.’

Hurriedly, Marcus wiped away the tears. Couldn’t everyone detect his longing for Alexei, quacking like the duck inside him, even though he was nightly enveloped by Abby’s passion?

He was glad when the birds started singing in the pale green trees during the interval, restoring normality. From the sloping woods on either side rose tier on tier of starry, wild garlic, its pungent smell mingling with lilac and soapy hawthorn making it increasingly difficult for him to breathe.

Glancing into the audience as she and Declan took a final call, Abby was touched to see Marcus’s face still wet with tears. He loved her so much and felt things so deeply. After the gala they would have more time.

In fact the only blot on a perfect evening for Abby continued to be Viking. Incensed to be confined to a pit where he couldn’t be gazed at or ogle every girl in the stalls, he had rigged up a driving mirror on the front of his music-stand so he could watch Georgie and Declan and no doubt later gaze up Evgenia’s skirt.

Worse was to come. After Tchaikovsky’s Fifth, Georgie returned to sing two of Strauss’s Four Last Songs, before starting the VE Day numbers.

Locked in Georgie’s dressing-room, Trevor stopped howling and decided if he took a Nemerovsky leap he could land on a chair and then take another leap onto the table underneath the open window.

Mr Nugent, on the other hand, had been allowed to wait in the wings, front paws together, gazing lovingly down at his master in the pit, trying not to interrupt his beautiful horn solo by panting. Suddenly Nugent stiffened and gave a muffled growl. His enemy Trevor was jauntily approaching from the other side of the stage, only pausing to lift his leg on one of Peggy Parker’s flower arrangements, fox-brown eyes searching everywhere for Flora. The audience nudged each other in ecstasy. Recognizing Flora’s mother, who’d given him chewstiks and cold beef, Trevor bounded forward, wagging his curly tail.

‘Long by the roses,’ sang Georgie with clasped hands, ‘she lingers yearning for peace.’

No-one was going to get any peace with Trevor around. Suddenly he clocked another enemy, Abby, waving a stick at eye-level, and proceeded to yap noisily, increasing in volume when Abby refused to throw the stick and even hissed at him to eff off.

All this was too much for Nugent. Shuffling out onto the stage on his belly, he attempted to round Trevor up and off the stage. Affronted, Trevor flew at Nugent’s throat, catching mostly shaggy black fur. Nugent was normally the most pacific of dogs, but dignity offended, he weighed in, and furious growling was relayed by speakers all over the ground as though every hound in hell had been unleashed.

In fits of laughter and with great presence of mind, Georgie grabbed Peggy Parker’s nearest flower vase and emptied three hundred pounds’ worth of lilies over Trevor and Nugent, who took absolutely no notice. There was no alternative but for a cringing Viking to clamber onto the stage and separate them. The crowd, already in stitches, were then treated to the edifying sight of the hero of the RSO in a beautifully pressed cream dinner-jacket and snow-white evening-shirt and, because he hadn’t expected his lower half to be seen in the pit, torn espadrilles and boxer shorts covered in fornicating frogs. What really upset Viking was that he hadn’t had time to brown his white legs. To a chorus of jeers and wolf-whistles he grabbed both dogs.

‘Come off it, ye basstards.’ And then, because Trevor was appropriately hanging on like a pit bull, Viking kicked him sharply in the ribs.

‘Don’t you hurt my dog, you fucking bully.’

The next moment Flora, who also hadn’t expected anyone to see her lower half, wearing only her crimson jacket flapping loose from its top button, and a patriotic pair of Union Jack knickers, had joined him on stage to more screams of laughter and roars of applause.

‘Talk about the black hole of “Oh Calcutta,”’ yelled Dixie.

‘Drop, Trevor, drop,’ screamed Flora, kicking Nugent as hard as she could with her bare feet.

‘Who’s the great fucking bully now?’ shouted Viking.

Only when Georgie, who was now even more hysterical with laughter than the audience, emptied the contents of another flower vase over both dogs and their owners, did Trevor release his grip. Whereupon Flora, clutching her dog like a furiously yapping handbag, and Viking frantically examining Nugent’s face and shoulders for gashes, continued to hurl abuse at each other, until George Hungerford marched on hissing: ‘Get those fooking dogs off stage at once,’ and seized the microphone to deafening cheers. He tried to diffuse the situation quickly by apologizing both to Georgie and the crowd.

‘I’m afraid everyone, including pooches, gets overwrought in this heat.’

In agreement Trevor peered round Flora’s arm and growled furiously at Nugent. Another great cheer went up:

‘What a dreadful, dreadful circus,’ said Gilbert appalled.

‘Thank goodness Sonny’s out of it, Peggy,’ said Gwynneth patting Peggy Parker’s hand.

Georgie seized the microphone.

‘It’s all my fault,’ she told the audience, ‘Trevor belongs to Flora, my daughter, who plays in the orchestra.’

‘Oh Mum.’ Departing Flora clutched her head with the hand that wasn’t clutching Trevor.

‘He’s a rescued dog, and clearly felt insecure locked up in my dressing-room,’ went on Georgie, ‘but he rescued me, I was having hellish problems with that Strauss song, so let’s get on with VE Day.’

Trevor and Nugent were soon forgotten. The sun set in a ball of flame. The polo field became a mass of waving Union Jacks as Georgie started belting out: ‘Roll out the Barrel’, ‘We’ll Meet Again’ and ‘There’ll be Blue Birds Over The White Cliffs of Dover’ until Declan joined her on stage, taking it in turns to dry each other’s eyes.

‘We really ought to be singing “The Rising of the Moon” to strike a balance,’ murmured Declan. Finally they brought the house down with ‘The Lambeth Walk’.

After a dressing down from George that neither of them would ever forget, Viking and Flora slunk back into the pit. Trevor and Nugent were now in the care of Harve the Heavy.

‘And if I get any more trouble out of you,’ George roared at Flora, ‘he’ll feed that bloody little dog of yours to my Rottweilers.’

Great jubilation resulted when it was relayed over the loud speakers that Rannaldini and Hermione had netted only half the RSO’s audience that night. The moment the Opera Gala was over, members of the audience had raced over from Cotchester and were already climbing trees, or crushing the wild garlic as they crept down through the woods, to catch a glimpse of the great Nemerovsky.

George, however, had a huge problem on his hands. Evgenia made up and ravishing in old rose chiffon, her dark hair embroidered with pearls and gold ribbon, had been ready for an hour. But Alexei was refusing to come out of his dressing-room. Not only had he insulted Gilbert and Gwynneth and blacked the eye of a Scorpion reporter who’d tried, through his dressing-room window, to do a Trevor in reverse, but he’d taken a passionate dislike to Miles.

‘Are you ready to dance, Mr Nemerovsky?’

‘No, I am not ready to dance, fuck off.’

‘Of course he’s not ready,’ said Viking scornfully, ‘fake tan takes at least eight hours to work.’

‘You should know,’ hissed Abby.

Convinced she was the only person who could coax Alexei out, she had been bitterly humiliated when he’d dispatched her as summarily as everyone else.

The concert was already running an hour late, which so far had only increased the bar takings and the anticipation. But Abby’s head would be on the block if Alexei didn’t deliver.

Outside Alexei’s dressing-room, George’s resolve was stiffened by the sight of Evgenia next door. Slumped on the floor in her beautiful dress, stretching and leaning forward to keep herself supple, smoking too many cigarettes, then cleaning her teeth till her gums bled because Alexei hated the smell of smoke, attacking increasing beads of sweat with a huge powder puff, she had been driven ragged by the delay and by Alexei’s monumental selfishness. The longer the wait, the greater the entrance.

Knocking on Alexei’s door, ignoring the snarl to fuck off, George went in.

‘We need to start, Alexei.’

Alexei’s belongings: track-suit bottoms, towels, books, tapes, shoes spilled out of suitcases all over the floor. Fully made up, wearing his wolf-coat over his Romeo costume of white tights and floppy green transparent shirt, Alexei shivered convulsively as he listened to Britten’s War Requiem on his walkman for the fifth time that day.

And George was suddenly reminded of a ram who’d strayed off the moors into his nan’s parlour, during a bitterly cold winter, who had knocked over all the furniture and the knick-knacks, reducing the room to a shambles before leaping straight out through the big sash-window.

George had never forgotten the combined terror and ferocity of that ram and looking at Alexei, he realized he wasn’t bloody minded, just shit-scared.

‘Always eet is same, why do I put ass on the line? No-one who doesn’t dance, understand the cold sweat, the fear.’

‘You haven’t faced the RSO in a bad mood or Rutminster Council when you’re trying to pull a fast one,’ George tried to lighten the conversation.

‘Is not comparable.’ Haughtily Alexei glared at George as if he was the village idiot. ‘Will I remember the steps? Will I bore the audience? Am I too old to play Romeo?’

In the still face, the black eyes rolled like marbles.

‘You’re the best in the world.’

Alexei shrugged. ‘Is millstone, eef you are best you must always be bettair.’

Plonking himself in the second armchair, George lit a cigar.

‘Please don’t smoke.’

George hastily put it out.

‘When I was first married,’ he said, ‘we had no money. We saved and saved either to hear Harefield sing-’

Alexei looked outraged. ‘That screeching beech.’

‘Or to see you dance. We saw you in Giselle at Covent Garden. We couldn’t afford a meal out afterwards, didn’t matter, we couldn’t have eaten anything we were so excited, we could hardly speak on the way home. It was truly the best evening of my marriage.’

‘That was fifteen years ago, I am old now.’ Sulkily Alexei turned to the mirror, picking up a cotton bud to tidy up a smudged eye-line. George admired the long eyelashes sweeping the slanting cheek-bones.

‘You’ve got a body any twenty year old would die for,’ he said humbly, patting his gut, which Juno’s diet didn’t seem to be having much effect on. He must stop sending Jessica out for Toblerone in the middle of the afternoon.

‘What ‘appen to your marriage?’ asked Alexei.

‘My wife left me.’

‘Silly cow.’

Getting to his feet, Alexei put a hand on the portable barre, raised his leg till his calf brushed his ear, stretching and turning, then he wandered over to the window. Floating down from George’s silver-pillared beech trees was the first pale green foliage. Alexei broke off a twig, caressing the shiny satin leaves.

‘Tender as young flesh,’ he sighed. ‘Tomorrow, perhaps the day after, the leaves darken and harden and coarsen and they will never be that young again. Did you know Prokofiev was lousy ballroom dancer? He write these great ballets, but when he ask pretty young girls to dance with him, they ran away.’

Dropping the twig in his glass of Perrier, stealing a last glance in the mirror, Alexei touched George’s square blushing face with the back of a careless finger.

‘You are good guy, I will dance for you.’

Evgenia was waiting outside, bent over, arms flopping loosely, as graceful as one of George’s willows.

He’s on his way, a rumble of excitement went round the vast crowd, who were really squashed now as more and more people flowed in from Cotchester. Floodlighting added splendour to the towering trees and the battlements of the house.

Dropping his wolf-coat in the wings as if he were shedding the years, Alexei strutted on, nostrils flaring, dark head thrown back to show off the wondrous slav bone-structure, half-smile playing over the jutting lips, thrust-out chest beneath the floating shirt descending to the flattest belly, above long strong white legs, rippling with muscle. Alexei had no need of the older dancer’s disguise of black tights. There was strength and arrogance in every inch of his lithe youthful body.

‘Oh Christ, help me,’ murmured Marcus.

Never had the RSO strings played with such swooning lyricism. Alexei crept behind the pillar, the lurking lover quivering with anticipation.

Justin woken by the applause, however, had other ideas.

‘Dad, Dad, why isn’t that man wearing any trousers?’

There was a horrified pause.

‘That man’s got no trousers on, Dad.’

‘Expect he’s been playing in the pit,’ said the Labour councillor’s husband with a guffaw.

‘Shut up!’ hissed an anguished Marcus.

‘Dad, Dad, why’s that man got a big willy?’

‘It’s called a codpiece, Justin,’ said Gilbert, who believed in reason.

‘Shut up, you little fucker,’ hissed Marcus, who didn’t.

‘More like an ‘ole cod in there,’ said the Labour councillor’s husband. ‘They cover that bulge in foam padding so you can’t see the meat and two veg.’

A rumble of embarrassed laughter was already sweeping the stalls. Marcus wanted to die. Alexei swung round glaring directly in his direction. The laughter died. Alas Gwynneth had been far too busy chuntering over the dog fight and Alexei’s bad behaviour in the interval to eat anything. In her greed, she had emptied a plate of canapés into her Red Riding Hood basket to eat during Romeo and Juliet. Choking on a Scotch egg, she couldn’t stop coughing.

Alexei waited, then, when Gwynneth, puce as an aubergine, carried on, raised a regal hand and halted both orchestra and Evgenia, who by this time was floating down the staircase, skirts swirling.

‘Weel the old lady who ees bent on destroying thees concert,’ Alexei’s acid drawl echoed round the whole park, ‘please either cough everytheeng up now, or get out.’

The dreadful pause seemed to last for ever as Gwynneth stumbled out, then Alexei turned to Abby: ‘We are ready to dance, Maestro.’

Briefly he looked drained and middle-aged under the spotlight, then as the doom-laden, swooningly romantic music swept through the park, the years disappeared again. Evgenia danced angelically, but it was Alexei’s passion that took the breath away. He didn’t just dance, he became the young lover, awkward, shy, bewildered, reverent, deliriously happy by turns, holding Evgenia so tenderly, then releasing her to dance as if he’d opened a window for a trapped butterfly. Then he would leap into the air, showing off with wild grace. Look what I can do. Watch me touch the stars for love.

Wait till he lands, Abby told herself grimly, but time and again as Alexei hovered over the stage, it seemed he would never come down and the poor strings would run out of bow, and the woodwind and brass out of puff.

But as they danced on through the darkening night until the moon rose huge and pink over Rutminster Cathedral, everyone forgave him the delay and the tantrums.

Oh God, sighed Marcus, if only I were Juliet.

The applause went on for twenty minutes. Stepping over the flowers carpeting the stage, Alexei and Evgenia returned again and again. Pale and drawn, but with eyes glittering with elation, Alexei took up his position on Juliet’s balcony and, with princely wave after princely wave, raised each section of the orchestra to their feet, giving the longest stand-up to the strings, which was much appreciated as they were so often taken for granted.

‘Look at the old queen on the balcony,’ scoffed Viking.

‘He’s not a queen,’ protested Blue. ‘He was really French kissing Evgenia.’

‘I think he’s wonderful. Bravo, bravo, Alexei,’ cried Cherub excitedly.

Indignantly Abby noticed Viking was back on his chair squeezing Evgenia’s little hand every time she passed. But all her indignation was forgotten because of the deafening cheers when Abby joined the others on the platform and Declan kissed one hand and Alexei the other.

I’m with my peers, thought Abby joyfully, as they bowed again and again to the sea of happy ecstatic faces.

Stamp, stamp, stamp, thundered the feet.

Choking from the dust, Marcus thought how boyish Abby looked. She had thrown away her turban and slicked back her hair like Valentino to show off the amazing yellow eyes. Alexei was burying his big mouth in the palm of her hand again. Christ, things were complicated.

‘Encore, encore,’ the great rumble grew louder.

‘I ’ave idea,’ whispered Alexei, sending Abby back to the rostrum.

Once again, he only lifted a hand for a hush to fall.

‘It ees nearly meednight, we must all celebrate the most beautiful words in the twentieth century-’ his voice thrillingly deepened and broke slightly — ‘Veectory in Europe.’

The next moment he and Evgenia had broken into ‘The Lambeth Walk’, up and down the stage they danced so merrily and charmingly, followed like two baby elephants by Georgie and Declan, and the crowd bellowed their approval, and all over the polo field and in the aisles between the seats people jumped to their feet singing and joining in. Even Marcus found himself clamped to Peggy Parker’s maroon bustier.

‘We must finalize a date for my soirée, Sonny’s hard at work on your concerto,’ she shouted over the din, completely disproving the myth that fat women are light on their feet.

At midnight the fireworks went off, red, white and blue soaring into the sooty sky, writing VE Day across the stars.

Seeing Flora crying, Viking leant across and put a hand on her shoulder.

‘Cheer up, darling, you know what VE stands for?’

‘W-w-w-what?’

‘Viola Extinction Day, of course.’

FIFTY-ONE

It was a measure of George’s heavies that they dispersed the multitudes at amazing speed and soon only three hundred guests were left to enjoy Dom Perignon, asparagus, lobster Nemerovsky, cold roast beef, loganberry ice-cream and meringue Evgenia under the stars.

Everyone was desperate to meet Alexei. But, as if to protect himself from boring conversation, he had retreated with a vodka bottle through the cow parsley to a pale green semicircular bench under a big clump of white lilac and proceeded to flirt outrageously in Russian with Abby. Also in the same rowdy over-excited group were Georgie, Declan and Viking, who were all getting plastered and arguing about the peace process, and Evgenia, who seemed content to sit quietly retracing her steps in her head, sipping orange juice and relishing the taut warmth of Viking’s body and his hand on the seat behind her occasionally stroking her hair. Nugent sat beside them, pink tongue hanging out from the great heat and to pull in the pieces of roast beef everyone was giving him.

Watching them from the shadow of a weeping ash, Marcus was once more reminded of Peter and the Wolf. The cat (Viking) was sitting on one branch, the bird (Abby) on another, not too close to the cat, and the wicked wolf (Alexei) walked round and round the tree looking up at them with greedy eyes.

God, he’d shoot himself if Abby got off with Alexei, and, if she didn’t, how could Alexei not fancy Viking? thought Marcus in additional anguish.

Viking was wearingjust his denim shorts and his white evening shirt with all the buttons undone, gold hair ruffled, lazy smile showing the chipped very white teeth. His eyes, however, were cool and calculating, a beach-bum on the hunt for a sugar mummy to bankroll him through a long hot summer.

‘The lads are coming out all over Europe,’ he was telling Declan, as he glared at Nemerovsky ‘I’m so sick of being propositioned by gays in the music business, I’m getting an “I love Pussy” T-shirt printed.’

Then he put Abby’s turban on Mr Nugent which Nugent adored.

‘He’s going to open an Indian restaurant the Celtic Mafia won’t get thrown out of,’ Viking told everyone.

Abby tried to be a good sport about the turban and join in the roars of laughter, but underneath Marcus could see she felt hurt and foolish, which was no doubt Viking’s intention.

He daren’t go over and protect her in case Declan collared him. The ash pollen was tightening the band round his chest, he longed to slope off home but couldn’t tear himself away.

If anyone was unhappier than Marcus that evening it was Flora. From the safety of a little summer-house, she could see her mother getting plastered with Declan.

‘I’m just not trying any more,’ Georgie was yelling, ‘I’m on a permanent fault-finding mission, which doesn’t help my poor husband.’

Declan would make a nice stepfather, decided Flora, but Georgie, looking so good at the moment, made her feel fatter and frumpier than ever. She also knew that she would have been fired if her mother hadn’t diffused the dog fight.

All around her people were crowing about the gala pulling in a bigger crowd than Rannaldini and Harefield. If only people would stop talking about him.

A lamb was bleating persistently for its mother in a nearby field, which made her eyes fill with tears. God, the smell of wild garlic was strong. To stop a bristling Trevor wriggling out of her arms and attacking Nugent, who was still getting too much attention in his turban, Flora retreated to the shelter of a great oak tree, and watched George relentlessly working the room.

She also noticed the Steel Elf had piled up her golden hair and changed into a ravishing sea-green dress, Grecian in style and leaving one shoulder bare. Whenever George came across a restless pocket of bored men, he’d feed her in to bat her long blonde eyelashes and charm them. Watching them drool, Flora realized what an asset Juno was to him.

‘What a little cracker,’ said one of new Labour councillors, as she moved away from them. ‘Wouldn’t mind giving her one. Trust George.’

‘There’s no doubt,’ said his Liberal Democrat friend, ‘if George can mount a do like tonight, he can produce a megaplex with one hand tied behind his back. I think we should back him on that supermarket.’

Seeing Flora, they paused.

‘Lovely show, well done.’

Going through the french windows in search of more beef for Trevor, Flora surprised George eating illicit potato salad. He made some attempt at geniality.

‘How d’you enjoy playing in the pit?’

‘Good training for when we’re a super orchestra.’

George’s face hardened.

‘Hallo, George, great party. God, it’s hot.’ It was Lord Leatherhead mopping his very low brow and in search of strawberries.

‘Moost be nearly in the eighties,’ said George. ‘Look at that butter, it’s completely melted.’

‘Makes it easier for you to grease the palms of all those incoming socialist councillors,’ spat Flora.

‘That is no way to talk to your boss,’ said Lord Leatherhead with unusual sharpness.

‘One wonders how such a lovely warm, beautiful woman as Georgie Maguire can have such a bitch for a daughter,’ said George curtly and stalked out into the garden.

Shaken, Flora went in the opposite direction into the hall where she found Miles, Hilary, Juno, Gwynneth and Gilbert in a huddle with Mrs Parker.

‘She spoilt our concert,’ Hilary was saying, ‘wearing those dreadful Union Jack panties and letting that horrid little dog loose.’

Marcus trailed miserably through the park. The white hawthorn bushes were so like fluffy white sheep and their lambs that Marcus half-expected the smaller bushes to run bleating up to the larger ones as he approached.

Declan cornered him in the summer-house.

‘Darling boy, I’m onotterably sorry about the rift with your father. Are you OK?’

The boy didn’t look it; he was wheezing terribly and was far whiter than the cherry trees which were steadily snowing down their petals.

‘I hear you had a great triumph with Rachmaninov.’

‘It was OK.’

‘Taggie sent special, if surreptitious, love.’

Marcus looked up.

‘She did? D’you think Dad will ever forgive me?’

Declan shrugged his massive shoulders.

‘He blames you for Tabitha’s defection. She’s still in the Rannaldini camp, riding wonderful horses in America. He also thinks Rannaldini masterminded your Rachmaninov concert.’

‘But that was George’s doing,’ stammered Marcus, really agitated, fighting desperately for breath. ‘I haven’t spoken to Rannaldini since he married my mother. He’s destroying her.’

‘Let me talk to Rupert.’

‘No, no,’ Marcus shook his head frantically. ‘It wouldn’t do any good.’

What would Rupert do with a gay son? Marcus thought despairingly.

Cathie Jones leant against a wall, empty glass hidden in the folds of her skirt. Blue stood beside her close enough for the hairs on their arms to touch, neither able to speak. For once she didn’t mind that Carmine was in the bushes with Lindy Cardew. Half a dozen people had drifted over in the last half-hour and praised her solo, giving Blue the perfect opportunity to escape, but he was still there.

As the last person moved on, he said: ‘I ought to get you another drink, but I’m terrified you’ll vanish. I’m going to make sure the programme needs a cor anglais when we go on tour in October, then you can come, too.’

A limousine had arrived to take Georgie home.

‘Thank you for a heavenly evening — can I come back soon?’ she asked George and Miles as, swaying on her high heels, she fell back into the car.

‘Of course you can.’

‘And we’re going to lunch.’ She waved at Declan.

‘Indeed we are.’

Then, seeing Marcus, she called out wistfully: ‘Will you say goodbye to Flora for me? I haven’t seen her all night.’ For a second her face crumpled. ‘I’m afraid I embarrass her,’ then pulling herself together, said, ‘Well, thanks everyone.’

But, as the chauffeur moved forward to close the door, he was knocked sideways by Flora hurtling across the gravel.

‘Oh Mum,’ she sobbed, ‘I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch.’

Grabbing Trevor, plonking him down on the seat beside her, Georgie pulled Flora into the car, and took her in her arms.

‘It’s OK baby, it’s all right.’

I’ve got no-one to run to, thought Marcus despairingly as the limo bore them away.

To cap it, Howie, having paid court to Hermione in Cotchester, had beetled over to Rutminster to cash in on Abby’s great triumph. Seeing his newest client, he took Marcus’s arm.

‘How’s Prokofiev Five?’

‘It’s Three actually. I’ve got to go, Howie.’

‘Abby asked me to find you.’

Abby was still on the semicircular seat. Alexei was stretched out, his dark head in her lap, smoking a joint while Evgenia massaged his bony calloused feet.

Howie rushed forward. ‘Hi there, Alexei, I’m your greatest fan. Wonderful concert.’

‘Vonderful,’ said Alexei sarcastically. ‘The public, they clap even when it’s good.’ Then, peering round Howie at Marcus, murmured, ‘Hallo, little peasant.’

‘Hardly a peasant,’ laughed Abby. ‘Marcus’s father owns most of Gloucestershire.’

Marcus stared at them unable to move, his eyes huge and shadowed, his dinner-jacket slung over his shoulders.

‘He’s the one who should play Romeo,’ mocked Alexei.

‘Theese love is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;

Too like the lightning, which does cease to be

’Ere one can say it lightens.’

Howie, who wasn’t interested in Shakespeare, broke the silence.

‘I want Marcus to enter the Appleton, Alexei,’ he said. ‘Help me persuade him.’

‘Piano competitions are sheet,’ Alexei took a drag on his joint. ‘Rachmaninov greatest pianist ever, Clara Schumann, Liszt, Schnabel, Horowitz, Gilels, Pablo Gonzales, none of them went een for competitions.’

‘John Ogdon did and John Lill and Murray Perahia,’ protested Marcus.

‘Ees media circus,’ said Alexei. ‘If someone ees good he come through anyway. Competition is queek passport. Your priority should be long-term aspect of music.’

‘Marcus has to pay the rent,’ protested Abby.

‘Eef you lose competition,’ Alexei took a slug of vodka from the bottle, ‘you are finished.’

‘Not true,’ said Howie, ‘and if you win, OK, you’re made. Here’s my card, Alexei, let’s lunch anywhere in the world, you name it, what’s your favourite restaurant?’

Alexei glanced up at Howie’s waxy sweating face.

‘One een which you are not.’

Tearing Howie’s card into little pieces, he dropped it on the grass.

‘Don’t be so bloody rude,’ said Marcus furiously and stumbled off into the night.

Abby caught up with him by the car-park:

‘What’s gotten into you? You’re not mad because Alexei’s doing a number? I do believe you’re jealous. Oh Markie, you must know you’re the one I love.’

FIFTY-TWO

In the weeks that followed, as Alexei kept ringing up Woodbine Cottage from all over the world, Abby grew more uppity and convinced he had fallen in love with her. Horrified by the conflict inside him, Marcus lavished even more attention on Abby, but suffered fearful guilt. He could still only get it up when he made love by thinking about Alexei.

By day he concentrated on work. Having dispatched Prokifiev’s Third with credit in Glasgow, he now had another concert playing Bartók’s Second Concerto with the Rutminster Youth Orchestra in the pipeline. Persuaded by Abby, Helen and Howie, deliberately ignoring Alexei’s advice at the gala, he had also entered for the Appleton Piano Competition in October. As competitors came from all over the world seeking the twenty-thousand-pound prize, Marcus didn’t even expect to qualify. But if he did, it would be good experience of playing under pressure.

In a Rutminster jeweller, Abby pointed out a ruby ring in the shape of a heart. Knowing Marcus couldn’t afford it, she suggested she bought it instead. But Marcus was adamant. Any engagement ring would be paid for by him.

On the morning after the gala, Flora found a note from Julian in her pigeon hole, summoning her to the leader’s room at five-fifteen, which meant she had to sweat her way through six hours of rehearsals and a lunch-break before she knew her fate.

‘Has Julian said anything to you?’ she asked Abby.

‘Nothing, I guess he’s going to carpet you for the dog fight, flashing those Union Jack panties, and generally having a bad attitude, rubbishing George, and so on.’

‘George is a bastard.’

‘Just because he lent his house to us, and saved the RSO yet again? I don’t understand you, Flora.’

Flora didn’t understand herself at the moment. ‘I just hate playing for this bloody orchestra,’ she said crossly. ‘Perhaps I should switch to singing.’ She had promised her mother last night that she would start taking lessons again.

When she went quaking into the leader’s room, however, and was faced not just with Julian, but Old Henry, Dimitri and Peter, his grizzled desk partner: the firing squad, the RSO suddenly seemed very, very dear to her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she bleated, ‘I didn’t mean to act up.’

‘Sit down,’ said Julian, pouring her a glass of red wine. ‘We wanted to talk to you; we don’t feel you’re very happy.’

It’s the sack, thought Flora in panic, being held open for me to jump into, then they’ll tie it up and drop me at the bottom of the River Fleet.

‘Sally Briggs is getting married next month,’ Old Henry was saying, ‘so she wants her evenings free.’

Sally Briggs sat on the front desk of the violas beside El Creepo. She was a beautiful player who over the years had somehow withstood his wandering hands. Why’s Old Henry beating about the bush? thought Flora miserably.

‘Megagram vant us to record Schubert’s C Major Quintet,’ said Dimitri.

‘So we wondered if you’d like to join our chamber-music group,’ said Julian diffidently.

Flora choked on her wine.

‘Might seem a bit fuddy-duddy,’ said Old Henry apologetically, ‘probably got better things to do with your evenings.’

Flora gazed at them in bewilderment, fighting back the tears, colour flooding her grey cheeks.

‘You’re asking me? I could try,’ she mumbled ‘Oh, my God, it’s the nicest thing. I’ll have to make time to fit in my singing lessons as well.’

‘Of course,’ said Julian. ‘Just think about it.’

‘I don’t have to, I can’t think of anything I’d like better. But you’re all such wonderful players, I’m not nearly good enough.’

‘We’re the best judges of that.’ said Barry.

‘And we need some muffin for the record sleeve,’ smiled Dimitri.

‘He means crumpet,’ said Julian. ‘If you can get to my place tomorrow evening around six. Luisa will provide some kind of supper around half-eight.’

Flora reeled out of the leader’s room, slap into Viking who’d been hovering outside, also terrified she was going to get the sack. He now bore her off to the Old Bell for a drink. They travelled in convoy, Nugent glaring furiously out of the back window of Viking’s car, and Trevor, with his front paws on the dash board, hysterically yapping on the front seat beside Flora.

‘We are divided by our dogs like Montague and Capulet,’ sighed Viking as, abandoning both animals in their respective vehicles, they went into the pub.

Viking was touchingly pleased at her news.

‘It’s no more than you deserve, darling. Think how it’s going to put the toffee-noses of all those bitches, Hilary, Moll — and even Juno,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘out of joint.’

‘I don’t think Abby’s going to be very pleased, either,’ Flora said nervously.

‘Might get her off her ass and make her start playing the fiddle again,’ said Viking.

Viking was right. Abby tried to be generous, but raging inwardly with jealousy, she did start practising again, constantly dragging in poor Marcus to accompany her.

In June, however, she received the splendid accolade of being asked to conduct the London Met in a Sunday-afternoon concert because their principal guest conductor had been rushed to hospital with appendicitis. Abby was in raptures. Rannaldini’s old orchestra was still regarded as one of the greatest in Europe, and this invitation would certainly keep George and the RSO board on their toes. She was slightly miffed that Marcus refused to come up to London to witness her triumph because he wanted to work on the Bartók, but at least he could look after the cats.

Marcus was exceedingly twitchy. The night before Abby’s concert he had had a terrible dream about Alexei, and his beautiful oiled naked body dancing away from him. He woke pouring with sweat, sobbing his heart out.

‘I dreamt I lost my car keys,’ he lied.

‘That means frustration,’ reproached Abby.

Marcus hadn’t made love to her for three days. Being uptight about Bartók’s Second Concerto wasn’t a sufficient excuse.

As she was leaving the telephone rang. Smirking, buckling the aerial on the top of the back door, Abby waltzed the cordless into the garden, then returned three minutes later still chattering.

‘I guess I’ve broken through the gender gap, right, people no longer see me as the first woman to do this or that, but want to know what kind of artist I am. No, poor Markie’s battling with Bartók Two. I can’t entice him away. Well, if I see you, OK, I see you. Come backstage afterwards.’

‘That was Alexei.’ Smugly Abby switched off the telephone and then scooped up Scriabin, covering him with kisses, then spitting out his fur. ‘He’s stopping at the Ritz. He wanted to know what I, I mean, we were up to. Oh, there’s the car.’

A large black BMW had skilfully made its way up to the splashing stream scattering elderflower petals to right and left.

‘I must go.’ Kissing Marcus lightly, Abby climbed into the back of the limo so she could spread out the afternoon’s scores. A week ago she would have blown kisses and waved until she was out of sight.

It was such a beautiful day. Although the trees had lost the bright, shiny green of early summer, the field sloping upwards from the gate was streaked silver and gold with ox-eye daisies and buttercups, the limes were in flower luring the bees with their sweet, lemony scent. In a frenzy of jealousy and despair, Marcus washed up Abby’s breakfast and last night’s dinner, hoovered the drawing-room, choking on the dust, watered the pink geraniums falling out of the front windows, loaded the washing-up machine, changed the sheets on his and Abby’s bed. He then made a cup of coffee and, wondering why it tasted so disgusting, realized in his disarray he had added a teabag as well. But anything was better than the loneliness of wrestling with Bartók Two. He’d played the concerto his first year at the Academy, but half-forgotten, it was like dragging up an ancient wreck from the bottom of the sea. He must find his own voice but he had to master the notes first.

Oh God, like scrubbing off a tattoo, he tried to wipe out the indelible horror of Abby in Alexei’s arms, the après-concert euphoria leading on to something more. He loved Abby and she seemed his only hope of keeping out of the quicksand. As he wandered distracted into the garden he noticed the little stream shaking the ferns hanging over its bank as it hurtled towards the lake. Hart’s tongues, the ferns were called — like the tongues that would frantically wag if he were outed. ‘RUPERT’S SON A POOFTER,’ he could imagine the headlines. The papers would have a field-day. Sweating, he imagined his mother’s horror, Rupert’s lip curling in scorn — what else could any father have expected from such a wimp?

He wished Flora were here. He had so wanted to tell her about Alexei, but each time he’d bottled out. She was so busy playing chamber music with Julian and Old Henry and taking singing lessons that he never saw her.

By the front gate he noticed a white scented branch of philadelphus had been bashed down by last night’s downpour. As he broke it off to give it a few more days of life, he heard the telephone ring. Frantic with excitement, slipping on the mossy flagstones, he raced into the house. But it was only Helen, pumping him about Abby. Wasn’t it fascinating that she was conducting Rannaldini’s old orchestra? Rannaldini was kinda put out, said Helen laughing without amusement, but she thought she’d go along anyway.

Rannaldini was in Rome, she went on, expected back tomorrow. How was Marcus’s asthma? She rattled out the questions. Was he practising too little? Too much? Had he heard whether he’d qualified for the Appleton? She didn’t listen to any of his answers.

She sounded uptight when Marcus said Flora was away, then relieved when he added that she and Trevor were staying with her parents. Was Helen frightened of all Rannaldini’s exes? wondered Marcus, as he studied the Bartók, pencilling in reminders, as he listened to her.

Outside he could see Scriabin stalking a mouse, teetering along the fence, plumy tail aloft, like the sail of The Corsair’s pirate ship. Stealthily she crept towards him, on her velvet paws, thought Marcus.

He could bear it no longer. The moment Helen rang off he dialled the Ritz only to be told that Mr Nemerovsky had checked out, gone straight to Abby, no doubt. Marcus banged his burning forehead against the window-pane.

Work was the only salvation.

‘Always practise as though you were playing in front of an audience, even if it’s only the cat,’ Marcus remembered his old teacher’s words, so now he played for Scriabin, nearly breaking the keys in the fireworks of the last movement, working off his anguish until he was wringing wet. The sun had also appeared round the brow of the hill, blazing into his studio.

As he flung open the window, he could hear shouting and a time bomb tick. He must be hallucinating, for there, getting out of a taxi, smothered in the same grey wolf-coat that he had been wearing at the gala, was Alexei.

As he tore across the lawn into the darkness of the cottage, Marcus realized he had forgotten to put the branch of philadelphus in water. Brandishing it like a white hot, scented sword to defend himself, he opened the door.

‘I ’ave no money,’ said Alexei simply. ‘Can you pay the taxi? He will take cheque.’

‘I’ve got the cash,’ Marcus tried to curb his elation. ‘It’s only a fiver from the station.’

‘I come from the Reeetz.’

By the time Marcus had settled the bill, with a cheque which would probably bounce, Alexei had made himself at home, dipping chunks of brown bread into tara-masalata and pouring Abby’s vodka neat into two ice-filled glasses.

‘For you,’ Alexei chucked a little grey bag at Marcus, which clinked as he caught it. ‘Roubles for when you come to Moscow.’

Alexei tossed back one entire glass of vodka and handed the other to Marcus, who shook his head.

‘I’ve got to work. I’ve got a concert on Saturday. I don’t know the piece yet, anyway,’ he stammered, his blushing crimson cheeks clashing with his dark red hair, ‘Abby isn’t here.’

‘Of course, zat is vy I am here.’

Marcus’s heart was beating so fast, only Alexei’s flying feet could have kept up with it. Grabbing a rolling-pin, he bashed the stem of the philadelphus ferociously, before ramming it into a pale green Wedgwood jug. The heady sweet scent was overpowering.

‘I ought to work,’ he said obstinately.

‘I ought to walk,’ mocked Alexei. ‘I need country air in my lungs.’

He refused to remove his wolf-coat.

‘In Eengland, I am always cold.’

Outside, the sun highlighted his night-owl pallor, the flecks of grey in the thick straight black hair.

Last evening’s eye-liner still ringed eyes that were just slits of amused malice beneath the heavy lids. A half-smile played over the rubber-tyre mouth. A cocksucker’s mouth, his father would call it, thought Marcus, Oh God, help me.

Alexei walked, as he danced, with a springy step leaning backwards, chin raised, head thrown back proudly, idly whistling tunes from Romeo and Juliet as he went. As they reached the wider path along the edge of the lake, he took Marcus’s arm — it was like walking with a bear. Marcus prayed they didn’t bump into any of the Celtic Mafia. He was having great difficulty breathing, and longed to collapse on the bank amid the meadowsweet and watch the dark blue dragonflies dive-bombing the water lilies.

But Alexei was gazing at the mayflies endlessly dancing above the still dark water, making the most of their one day of life.

‘They are like me,’ observed Alexei bitterly, ‘you ’ave sixty, perhaps seventy more years to play the piano. I have ten to dance, eef I’m lucky. I’m not going to drag myself on like a wounded eagle like Rudi.’

‘You could always direct or teach.’

Alexei shrugged. ‘No more bravos, no more centre of attention.’

Reaching the end of the lake, they turned back up a rough track into the wood, going deeper and deeper until only the occasional sunbeam pierced the darkness, throwing ingots of gold light on the carpet of dark moss. It was wonderfully cool after the blazing heat. The birds were silent beneath their green-baize cloth of leaves. Marcus kept his distance.

‘What d’you call this ’ere?’ Alexei was shaking a great acid green shawl slung over the branch of a towering sycamore tree.

‘Old man’s beard,’ muttered Marcus. ‘Some people call it traveller’s joy.’

‘A nicer name, I am a traveller, who will bring you joy,’ announced Alexei, then, when Marcus didn’t respond, asked, ‘How ees anyone as beautiful as you so frightened, leetle Marcus? You should be enjoying your beauty. Brave boys like you should not be afraid of wolves,’ he added mockingly.

Marcus started, opened his mouth and shut it again. They had been joined by Mr Nugent and Mrs Diggory’s spaniel, who often escaped together on illicit hunting sprees.

Now the two dogs were crashing round trampling the last green seed-heads and yellow leaves of the wild garlic. The smell reminded Marcus of Taggie’s cooking and the gentle intimacy of long chats with her in the kitchen, until these had been ruined by the return of disdainful, disruptive Rupert, who was even jealous of a son he despised.

Once again Marcus thought how alike were Rupert and Alexei. Did all gays fall for men like their father?

Alexei walked very fast splashing through the puddles, while the dogs tiptoed round the edge. Marcus was getting breathless — he wished he’d remembered his inhaler.

‘You should take more exercise,’ said Alexei reprovingly.

‘I have asthma. It’s hard to breathe, the pollen and things.’

‘Foo to the pollen! Ees difficult to breathe because I am ’ere, and you know it.’ As Alexei raised his hand to touch Marcus’s cheek, the boy jumped away in panic, his eyes enormous.

Alexei laughed. ‘Just then a beeg grey wolf did come out of the forest.’

‘I can’t, Alexei,’ gabbled Marcus, ‘I can’t do it to Abby, the last time a man cheated on her, she slashed her wrists.’

‘Hopefully she do eet proper theese time.’

‘Shut up, I love her; anyway I’ve got to marry and have kids, my father’s got to have an heir. I’ve let him down so much already being a wimp, being shit-scared of horses, being terrified of him, not even succeeding as a pianist.’

‘It would feenish him off altogether eef he knew you were in love with a ballet dancer, hey?’

In terror, Marcus gazed into the still but curiously speculative face.

‘Am I?’ he muttered. ‘I’m supposed to be marrying Abby.’

‘You will make her terribly unhappy.’

‘Oh Christ, are you sure?’

This time when Marcus tried to jump away, Alexei held onto his hand with a boa-constrictor grip, drawing him close.

‘No matter how ‘ard the wolf try to escape, he only pulled the rope round his tail tightair,’ he whispered in Marcus’s ear.

The path ahead was really churned up — like walking on turkey fat. Brambles clawed Marcus’s legs as if trying to hold him back. Twice he slipped, twice Alexei caught him.

Then Alexei halted, idly pulling aside the curtains of ivy hanging from the roots of a massive beech tree to reveal a little cave. Marcus had to duck his head as Alexei pulled him inside, down onto a bed of mossy yellow stone strewn with ancient beech leaves.

‘You’re so beautiful,’ Alexei took the boy’s flushed, freckled face between his hands, gently smoothing his cheek-bones to wipe out the dark brown circles beneath the haunted apprehensive eyes.

‘Ees stupid to fight, it is so strong.’ The hard, haughty face was suddenly miraculously gentle and kindly. ‘First time I see you, I want you. You are the only reason I dance at Rutminster for pittance. You make me believe it would be possible to geeve the ’eart.’

Marcus could hear the manic rustling of the dogs after a rabbit, the gruff drone of a helicopter. Through the ivy curtain, he could see the brilliant blue sky thrusting between soaring grey limbs of a beech tree, then Alexei’s big mouth came down on his and Alexei’s body on top of him was as hard and elemental as the mossy Cotswold stone beneath.

A minute later, unable to breathe, Marcus wriggled away, but Alexei was too strong for him.

‘Look at me, silly boy, you ’ave pretty eyelashes, but it would be nice to see your eyes. Doesn’t this make your ’eart pound like nothing before?’

‘Nothing,’ gasped Marcus. ‘You know I love you. It was the same for me, I was utterly lost from the moment you bounded onto the stage like Nimrod.’

‘Neemrod?’ demanded Alexei in outraged jealousy.

‘My father’s lurcher, he’s got killer eyes,’ Marcus gave a half laugh, that became a sob. ‘You’re a cross between Nimrod and my father. I love you, but I can’t do this to Abby.’

‘’Ush, ’ush, look into my eyes. I am real, you are home where you belong. No more pretending, let eet happen.’

He was mumbling endearments in Russian now, which sounded so marvellous in his husky basso profundo voice. ‘You will always remember thees, because it ees the first time. Anyway,’ he added wickedly, ‘I must get out of these boots, I bought them to eempress you and they kill me.’

Back at the cottage dizzy with exhaustion and happiness, Marcus cooked burnt sausages and lumpy mash for Alexei which was mostly polished off by Mr Nugent and Mrs Diggory’s spaniel. The dogs didn’t stay, however, to hear Marcus play Schumann’s Dreaming in the fading light. He wasn’t nervous any more. Alexei had ironed all the tension out of his body.

At the end, Alexei got up and put his arms round him.

‘You cannot marry Abby.’

‘I must, it would destroy her.’

‘Not so much as eet would destroy her eef you do. Break it off now. She would be devastated, but only for a month or two. Far better an end with horror, than horror without end. You cannot afford to be tied. You and I are artists, like stars een the sky, we seem close in the night, but we are light year apart. We are pellegrino — eet means orphan and wanderer. We belong to the world, not each other. We are married to Art. Art is far more important than love.’

Not any more, thought Marcus, as Alexei slid two hands deep down inside his shirt.

He wanted to drive Alexei to Birmingham Airport to catch a late flight to Berlin, but Alexei insisted on taking a taxi.

‘Eef you are feet to drive, you should not be. My agent weel pay the other end.’

Alexei wouldn’t leave until Marcus had promised to join him wherever he was in the world, the moment he’d dispatched the Bartók. He also insisted they swapped watches. Strapping his Rolex, which reeked of Givenchy for Men round Marcus’s wrist, he proudly carried off Marcus’s schoolboy Swatch, as though it were made of diamonds.

Marcus was only too happy to be left alone in the dusk, stunned by the enormity of the afternoon’s events. A thrush was singing in the garden, repeating each exquisite phrase.

As he wandered down to the lake, it started to pour, huge raindrops dive-bombing unwary moths, clattering on the leaves, thrashing the lake, creating rings which spread and ran into each other. Marcus thought, watching them, how everyone’s actions affected everyone else’s in life.

‘Nemerovsky loves me,’ he shouted over and over again to the blue-black sky, his belly churning and caving in to meet his backbone as he shivered at the memory.

Waltzing home in the deluge, he was running a scalding bath, about to dream of Alexei before crashing out, when the front door flew open, and in burst Abby and Helen in a state of euphoria. Abby had had a wonderful success with the London Met.

‘It’s extraordinary,’ she told Marcus earnestly. ‘After four years, they still retain Rannaldini’s precision and special timbre.’

I don’t give a shit, thought Marcus as they rabbited on. Why are they telling me this?

Now Helen was explaining how she had gone backstage after the concert, and while she and Abby had supper together, Abby had confided that she and Marcus were getting married. Helen had been delirious with joy, not only was Abby a great and respected artist, but an American like herself.

‘She’ll help you in your career, and Rupert is bound to come round when he hears you’re getting married, and then you and he and Rannaldini can all be reconciled at the wedding.’

Helen, like Rupert, had always suppressed a deep-rooted dread that Marcus might be gay.

Marcus listened incredulously, watching their mouths moving like rapacious baby birds, as they planned his future. He must give up ‘all the horrible pupils with their awful mothers that drained him so dreadfully,’ and Rupert must give him a decent allowance. But they agreed that Rupert would only rate Marcus when he won a big piano competition, so all his sights must be set on the Appleton.

I’m on the wrong train hurtling towards a cliff and I can’t find the communication cord, thought Marcus in panic.

‘And what is more,’ crowed Abby, ‘I saw Lady Appleton, who runs the Appleton this evening, and she said you’ve qualified, but we’re not to tell anyone. You walked it. We must have a drink to celebrate.’

Neither she nor Helen realized that Marcus hadn’t moved, still on the bottom step of the stairs slumped against the wall, watching them.

Rootling around in the cupboard, Abby swore she had had some vodka. Flora must have drunk it, they’d have to make do with brandy.

‘And best of all,’ she said happily, filling up three glasses, ‘Lady Appleton is so fed up with the orchestra who normally play at the finals overcharging, that she’s chucked them, and she wants me and the RSO to accompany the finalists instead, which means two days of prime-time TV. Wow, what a day.’

Marcus’s mind was racing like a cornered rat.

‘I can’t go in for the Appleton if you’re conducting the orchestra,’ he stammered.

‘Only in the finals,’ said Abby soothingly. ‘There are two preliminary rounds before that. Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.’

Then suddenly she had a feeling of déjà vu, as water started dripping on her head reminiscent of the H.P. Hall, only this time it was hot.

‘Christ, Marcus, you’ve left the bath running.’

Racing upstairs, Marcus found it a relief to plunge his hand into the scalding water to find the plug. Anything to offset the agony of not seeing Alexei again.

When he came down, noticing how shivering and pale he was, except for one bright red arm, Helen and Abby decided he’d been overworking and packed him off to bed.

‘We’ll have to get your morning-coat out of mothballs,’ teased Helen, as she kissed him good night. ‘I’m so happy for you darling.’

A mourning-coat, thought Marcus, as he tossed and turned all night in agony.

The next day, as a gesture of defiance, he sold Rupert’s Munnings and bought Abby the ruby heart as an engagement ring. Abby, however, decided to wear it on her right hand until after the Appleton, in case she was accused of favouring Marcus.

Later in the day, while she was out shopping, Marcus wrote a brief letter of renunciation to Alexei, quoting Coventry Patmore:

Love wakes men, once in a lifetime each;

They lift their heavy lids, and look;

And lo, what one sweet page can teach,

They read with joy, then shut the book.

Then he thanked Alexei for the most wonderful few hours of his life, past, present and future, but insisted that they must never see each other again.

Alexei’s only reply was a white feather in an airmail envelope.

The leaves of the rescued branch of philadelphus were now shrivelled, its petals fallen. Ramming the branch in the dustbin, Marcus reflected bitterly that at least he had given it the same brief chance to blossom as Alexei had given him. Freedom was clearly a destiny he was not going to reach.

Flora was horrified, but didn’t show it, when Abby confided over lunch that she and Marcus were getting married.

FIFTY-THREE

The long summer ground on, with all the inhabitants of Woodbine Cottage working flat out. As well as playing for the RSO, Flora was studying The Creation with her singing teacher because the Academy had invited her to sing the soprano part in a student production in September. She had most fun playing chamber music, as part of Julian’s quintet. It taught her to listen to herself, and she soon lost her shyness, joining in the furious arguments about tempo, and merrily added to the wrong notes which increased dramatically as the red wine flowed, until Canon Airlie who lived next door banged plaintively on the walls.

Flora grew so fond of Luisa and the Pellafacini children that she could not bear the thought of such a happy family being ousted by a putsch. Late one hot night, when she and Julian were polishing off a bottle together in the garden, she told him about George’s and Rannaldini’s merger plot. Julian’s bony face was impassive, but, as he drained his glass, his trembling hand spilled red wine dark as blood in the moonlight on his white shirt.

‘George is a great guy,’ he said slowly. ‘He’s done a helluva lot for the orchestra and he speaks his mind.’

‘About a quarter of his mind,’ snapped Flora, ‘the rest is working out dirty deals, he’s utterly Machiavellian beneath that bluff northern exterior.’

‘I somehow trust the guy,’ persisted Julian. ‘Rannaldini’s different, inflicting pain is the only other way he gets his rocks off.’

‘If he takes over, we’re both for the high jump,’ said Flora.

Julian, however, agreed with Viking that the whole truth would only panic a dreadfully demoralized orchestra,

‘Let me do some digging. I’ll have a word with Bill Thackery, he’s so discreet and now he’s on the board he may have inside information.’

Flora was also worried about Marcus, trapped at Woodbine Cottage slogging away at pieces for the Appleton, and endlessly accompanying Abby on the violin. Flora, having been invited to join the Pellafacini Quintet, had indeed been the spur to make Abby practise seriously again. The sound was amazing; there was no doubt she would be up to concert standard by the autumn.

Marcus, however, was listless and losing weight. Helen, encouraged by Rannaldini, had struck up a terrific friendship with Abby and had taken to dropping in, getting on Marcus’s nerves, constantly harping on her delight at his secret engagement.

Meanwhile George and Miles were busy finalizing details for the tour of Spain at the beginning of October. The orchestra would be playing Rachel’s Requiem with Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet overture and Rachmaninov’s Paganini Rhapsody, to pull in the punters, and on alternate nights, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with a Spanish chorus. The highlight of the tour, however, would be Barcelona, where a sufficiently recovered Rodney would fly in to conduct his old orchestra in an eightieth-birthday concert.

Megagram were chipping in because the tour was a splendid opportunity to launch Rachel’s Requiem in Europe. But the RSO were still desperately short of cash. London orchestras charged large fees on tour, but payments to regional orchestras didn’t ever cover their costs. Additional funding therefore had to be found.

During the summer break, George had taken to dropping in on Woodbine Cottage to discuss the orchestra with Abby who automatically assumed he was after her. She hoped he would act as a spur to Marcus, who seemed increasingly detached. She also continually harped on about Flora’s antagonism.

‘Marcus and I want to have you and Juno over to dinner, but we’ll have to choose an evening when Flora’s playing chamber music, as I know Juno, you and she don’t get along.’

This was borne out by Flora vanishing like smoke whenever George rolled up. Then, on the first Saturday in August, Trevor went missing. Flora, Abby and Marcus had been watching the CCO at the proms on television. Dame Edith was due to retire in the autumn, and, as this would probably be her last prom, had camped it up like mad in white tie and tails. In the middle the cameras had panned to Gilbert and Gwynneth looking odiously enthusiastic in the stalls. This had produced so much barracking that Trevor, who only liked noise if he made it himself, bolted out of the cat door.

Absolutely demented, Flora combed the woods for twenty-four hours trying to find him.

‘I know he’s trapped down a rabbit hole or been kidnapped by vivisectionists,’ she sobbed.

As a final straw, having been stung, scratched and pricked to bits by nettles, thistles and brambles, her mobile had run out early on Sunday evening. Returning home, filthy, tearful, exhausted and hoarse from shouting, to check if anyone had rung the cottage with news, she was greeted at the back gate by Trevor. Trying to pretend he had been searching for her with equal fervour all day, he scrabbled at her so ecstatically that he pulled her boob tube down to her waist. He had in fact been languishing after one of George’s Rotweillers, who was on heat. Arriving home from Zurich, George had returned the lovelorn suitor and was now downing a large Pimm’s with Abby in the garden.

Flora, out of relief and gratitude, was forced to join them. Blushing because George must have had a good look at her breasts, she adjusted her boob tube, pulled down the green baseball cap, covering her dirty hair and prayed there were enough cuts and nettle stings on her legs to hide the fact that they had not been shaved for a fortnight.

What a ghastly contrast she must be to beautifully groomed Juno, or Abby, sleek and replete in a scarlet sarong.

‘I’ll just see if Trev’s hungry,’ Flora sidled towards the kitchen.

‘He isn’t, George and I tried to tempt him, he must be love sick,’ Abby handed Flora a glass of Pimm’s. ‘Try it, George and I made it with Kiwi fruit and mangoes.’

She couldn’t help feeling glad that Flora was being seen at such a disadvantage. Conversation was very stilted.

‘How’s the chamber music going?’ asked George.

‘Fine.’

‘Flora’s also learning The Creation,’ said Abby.

Convolvulus trumpets weaving in and out of the blackthorn hedge, blushed pink in the setting sun; George also blushed as he announced that there was a coincidence.

‘Having given the CCO a boost earlier this year, Dame Hermione feels she would like to redress the balance and award a similar favour to the RSO on her birthday on 31 August.’

‘Hermione’s a Virgo,’ gasped Abby.

‘Not for many years,’ giggled Flora.

‘I’m not having that bitch over the RSO threshold,’ snapped Abby flatly.

‘Stop being a drama queen,’ said George crushingly. ‘We need the cash. So we’re planning a huge spectacular of The Creation, and because it’s a religious work, the Bishop is allowing us to use the grounds of Rutminster Cathedral. We’ll bill it,’ his voice thickened slightly, ‘as Dame Hermione in Birthday Concert.’

‘If she’s singing Eve,’ pointed out Flora, ‘it ought to be Dame Hermione in Birthday Suit.’

‘Don’t be fatuous.’

Flora lifted Trevor onto her knee.

‘I’m so pleased to see you,’ she said, covering his little face with kisses. ‘Goaty Gilbert has such a crush on Hermione,’ she went on unrepentantly, knowing George had one, too. ‘Perhaps he’ll deliver her on the pillion of his new bike.’

‘She arrived by Land Rover at Cotchester,’ said Abby.

‘We’re aiming for a helicopter, more impact,’ said George briskly.

‘Ah! So she’s got a choice of your Chopper or Rannaldini’s,’ murmured Flora into Trevor’s rough fur. ‘I tort a taw a coup d’état a-creeping up on me.’

‘Shut up,’ hissed George, shooting a wary glance at Abby, who was far too upset to notice.

‘I am not going to work with that bitch after the way she and Rannaldini tried to scupper the gala.’

‘Pink, pink, pink, pink,’ cried an agitated blackbird, unnerved by the proximity of Scriabin and Sibelius who were chasing each other and big moths through the soft blue dusk.

‘With any luck, it’ll rain,’ said Flora.

‘Even if it chucks it down it won’t shrink Hermione’s monstrous ego,’ stormed Abby.

The coup de grâce for Abby was when Hermione announced a week before the concert, that she would need an extra ticket for her agent, Christopher Shepherd, who would be jetting in from New York.

Abby downed sticks and refused to conduct.

‘That man screwed my career,’ she screamed at George.

‘Not from what Marcus was telling me, he says you’re back playing chumpion.’

‘I don’t care, right? I am not conducting in front of Christopher.’

‘Best revenge — to show him how good you’ve got.’

But Abby was adamant. At such short notice she expected George would bring in the Fat Controller or one of the RSO regular guest conductors. But to her horror and Hermione’s delight, within an hour, Rannaldini, who was after all a local boy living in nearby Paradise, had found a rare window in his diary and agreed to take over.

Flora went ballistic. The whole thing was a set-up, a plot to infiltrate Rannaldini into the RSO. George had invited Christopher over deliberately, knowing Abby would back down.

‘I’m not going to be conducted by Rannaldini either,’ she told Viking, ‘I’m going off sick.’

The rehearsals for ‘Dim Hermione’s creating,’ as it became known, were incredibly acrimonious. The lecherous tenor, Alphonso, last seen adding a profane note to The Messiah when he swapped Louis Vuitton cases with Flora, was back, singing the archangel Uriel and jumping on everyone. He had got so much fatter that Miles, who met him at the station, couldn’t change gear and when they arrived at the cathedral, and George leapt forward to open the door, Alphonso tumbled out. Later when he fell over lurching forward to pinch Nellie’s bottom, he couldn’t get up but lay like a turtle and George had to rustle up the entire chorus to right him.

Adam and Raphael were both played by Walter, a charming bearlike bearded German, who detested Hermione.

‘Last time, I sing vith her and take a bow, she step in front and kick me in the shin,’ he told Flora.

Walter was very taken by Marcus, who accompanied him in a piano rehearsal. The boy, he said, was a natural accompanist and should take it up as a career as there was such a shortage of good ones. And why was Marcus so unhappy? When Flora mumbled about Marcus wanting to marry a beautiful girl and worrying about not being able to support her, Walter gave her an old-fashioned look.

‘You are sad too, my child.’

Flora confessed she couldn’t face Rannaldini and the moment his big black helicopter blotted out the sun, when he flew in to take a full choral rehearsal on the afternoon of the performance, she pushed off, claiming she’d got the flu. Abby, traumatized at the thought of Christopher’s arrival, had dragged Marcus off to Paris for the weekend. Flora would have joined them if she hadn’t promised to cat and dog sit.

In his pretty house in the Close, Julian had also seen the helicopter land. Knowing that Rannaldini would spend at least ten minutes primping in his dressing-room, he picked up the score of The Creation. He loved the joyful tunes, the celebration of nature, the exuberant orchestration full of ravishing woodwind solos, which enhanced but never overwhelmed the singing. Every day during its composition, Haydn had knelt down and prayed to God to ‘strengthen me for my work’. God had answered his prayers.

The last time Rannaldini and Julian had met, Julian had been sitting in the leader’s chair in drag. Aware that his job, and the house in which he and his family had been so blissfully happy, might at any moment be taken away from him, Julian fell to his knees, praying that he might keep his cool and have the courage to protect his orchestra.

Out of the window as he rose to his feet, he could see the RSO warming up, nervous yet thrilled at the prospect of playing under such a great conductor. The stage had been set up on the yellow, drought-dried water meadows in the shadow of the cathedral and sheltered by two huge limes, whose gold leaves trailed on the ground as if they were already in long dresses for tonight’s performance.

Twenty minutes later, the wilting musicians, still waiting for Rannaldini, were running through the recitative in which God created the animal kingdom.

Loudly and briskly Julian led his First Violins up the scale, followed by a fortissimo bellow from the bassoons and trombones. ‘With cheerful roaring, there stands the Lion,’ sang a smiling Walter.

The strings then scampered up another scale, followed by loud staccato pounces.

‘The Tiger comes bouncing in leaps from his lair,’ sang Walter.

Exactly on cue, more feline and explosively unpredictable than any tiger, Rannaldini bounded on to the rostrum. He looked magnificent, lean, fit and dark brown, as though he’d spent a month in linseed oil rather than Sardinia. Both his tan and his swept-back thick pewter-grey hair were enhanced by a polo shirt, the clear scarlet of a runner-bean flower, which was tucked into pale grey trousers. Despite his outward sophistication, all the primaeval darkness that had once covered the earth seemed concentrated in his malevolent black eyes. But as they swept disdainfully over choir and orchestra, every woman except Militant Moll, was glad she’d spent all morning, frantically pulling on different clothes, scenting, bathing, shaving legs, washing hair and putting on waterproof mascara, because Rannaldini always made women cry.

Rannaldini didn’t miss a beat when he saw Julian.

‘They told me you had come here, Mr Pellafacini,’ he said softly.

Seeing their revered leader white and shaking, fear ran through the RSO. Cyril put away his bulb catalogue, Davie Buckle his pack of cards.

Rannaldini knew every note of the score and demanded fanatical precision. His personality was so strong that musicians responded to the slightest move of a suntanned finger, the lift of a thick ebony eyebrow. A flared nostril had been known to bring entire flute sections out in a rash.

Not by a flicker of a muscle, did he now show how jolted he was by how much the RSO had improved. When it came to attack, emotion and beauty of tone they were streets ahead of the CCO.

So, as was his wont, Rannaldini tore them apart, instantly identifying the weakest musicians, ordering them to play on their own, making his beat so small, and his instructions so piano, that it was also impossible at the back to interpret them.

‘Could you possibly beat a little more distinctly, Maestro, and speak up a little,’ quavered Old Henry.

‘I speak quietly,’ hissed Rannaldini, ‘so you will concentrate more. Get a hearing-aid, old man, eef you can’t interpret my beat, how will you ever read that telegram from the Queen when eet arrives.’

Seeing Militant Moll’s pursed lips, he rounded on her.

‘And you can stop faking,’ he screamed. ‘You’re not lying underneath your weemp of a boyfriend now.’

The orchestra gave a nervous guffaw.

‘Say something, Nin,’ hissed Moll.

Ninion gazed fixedly at his oboe.

Rannaldini’s cruellest jibes were reserved for Old Cyril, who had got plastered at lunch-time. In one aria, in which God created the flowers and fruits, the horns had beautiful drifting bars of triplets.

Realizing Cyril’s trembling lip couldn’t produce a pure note, Rannaldini made him play over and over again on his own, finally suggesting Cyril replaced his French horn part with his P45. Cyril burst into tears. Mortified, the orchestra gazed at the floor. Julian clenched his fists, willing himself to speak out.

Viking was already in a bad temper. He hated the chorus resting their scores on his head, and ramming their big knees into his back. Seeing him lean over and pat Cyril’s heaving shoulders, Rannaldini realized there was a member of the orchestra still to torture.

‘Seven bars after ten, on your own, First Horn.’

Flawlessly the notes floated round the water meadows.

‘Again,’ yelled Rannaldini, ‘I want no hint of brassiness. You are not weeth the Black Dykes Band now.’

Viking played it again: perfectly.

‘You no understand.’ Rannaldini jumped down from the rostrum and picked up Julian’s fiddle. ‘Theese is how I want it.’ And he proceeded to play the phrase beautifully but with a slightly different emphasis.

Viking put down his horn and, strolling towards the rostrum, picked up Mary’s violin and repeated the phrase even more beautifully.

‘Now you play it on the horn, Maestro,’ he said insolently.

The orchestra grinned.

Rannaldini lost his temper.

‘Your section sound like donkey gelded with sceesors,’ he screamed.

On cue the sun had crept round the cathedral spire, gilding Viking’s blond mane.

‘With cheerful roaring, there stands the lion,’ muttered Clare to Candy. ‘Oh, go on, Viking.’

‘Are you speaking to me?’ drawled Viking.

‘What does eet look like?’ Tigerish, Rannaldini was poised to lash out.

‘Eeet looks awfully rude. Please don’t slag off my section like that, we are quite prepared to do anything you want, but only if you ask us nicely. Secondly the orchestra have now played for an hour and a half, I suggest you thank them and give them a break. Finally Cyril used to play in a horn section that was known as God’s Own Quartet. Frankly, you’re not fit to lick his boots.’

With Rannaldini’s screams ringing in his ears, Viking strolled off to Close Encounters which by special licence was open all day.

On his return, Rannaldini was still yelling in his dressing-room.

‘How dare you insult Maestro Rannaldini,’ spluttered Miles. ‘He says he never been spoken to like that in his life.’

‘What a good thing I was here to teach the little shit some manners.’

‘I didn’t know you played the violin,’ said Knickers reproachfully thinking of the times he had been short of a fiddler.

‘Indeed I do, Knickers, I’m Irish.’

By this time Hermione had arrived and was savaging her poor dresser. She had just been the subject of This is Your Life (who’d had an awful time finding people to be nice about her) and was also Artist of the Week on Radio Three, so you couldn’t escape the old bat, particularly if you were George. He had been excited and wildly flattered when Dame Hermione had asked if she could deal with him directly. He had never dreamt it would involve endless reversed-charged calls at four o’clock in the morning.

‘I’ve just remembered something else you can put in the programme about me, George. I’ve sung Susannah forty-eight times not forty-seven.’

And George had had to go back to the printers again because after ‘God Save the Queer’, he didn’t trust Jessica.

But Hermione still had numerous admirers. All the occupants of the Close had their binoculars trained on her heaving bosom as they pretended to do The Times crossword.

A besotted Gilbert had even shipped Gwynneth off to a crumhorn workshop in Bath for the afternoon and rolled up with her Red Riding Hood basket filled with aubergine rissoles and a bottle of parsnip wine. Hermione accepted a glass graciously, but unfortunately Gilbert had been pre-emptied. Always on the prowl for likely lads, Hermione had taken a shine to Viking. The shine was not reciprocated. For a start, Viking didn’t like her dismissive remarks about Abby.

‘Look how happy these musicians are to be playing once more under a great conductor,’ Hermione told him, as the entire RSO, who’d all felt the need for several strong drinks, filed grinning back from Close Encounters after the break.

Hermione then started bitching about her fellow soloists.

‘I don’t know why I’m working with such people.’

‘To make money, presumably,’ said Viking, emptying the last of Gilbert’s parsnip wine into her glass.

Seeing his mistress coffee-housing with Viking as he returned to the rostrum, the ‘great conductor’ decided not to appreciate her next aria.

‘Why you make a pausa on Top E.’

‘I always make a pausa there, Rannaldini.’

‘Eef Haydn had wanted a pausa, he would have written. He didn’t write, so we do not make.’

The screaming match that ensued shocked even moony Gilbert.

‘You seeng like a strangulated parrot.’

‘I won’t sing at all if you speak to me like that,’ squawked Hermione, certainly sounding like one, and stormed off the set.

‘Menopausa,’ grinned Viking and, as Rannaldini was yelling at the cellos, carried on an argument he and Blue were having about who had bonked the oldest women.

‘I’ve had lots in their seventies,’ said Viking airly. ‘And their daughters at the same time.’

‘Bet you can’t bonk Dim Hermione on her birthday.’

‘Indeed I can.’

‘How will you prove it?’

‘You can watch from the wardrobe. Just bring some rope.’

After the rehearsal, Viking sidled up to Hermione who was still foaming over the pausa, and suggested a drink at her hotel before the concert.

Orchestras and managements all over the world had discovered if you gave Hermione a less than perfect hotel on which to vent her spleen, she was less likely to be histrionic before a performance. The Rutminster Royale was a new and fearfully expensive high-rise barracks, half a mile outside Rutminster. When asked by Hermione to collect her key, Viking, with great aplomb, asked the dopey receptionist for the key to the room above, which even better, turned out to be unoccupied.

Having kissed Hermione with Celtic fervour in the lift up (during which time she had to clench her buttocks because Gilbert’s parsnip wine was making her fart like a drayhorse), Viking thrust her into the empty bedroom.

Enraptured by such youthful vigour, Hermione murmured she must freshen up. Telling Viking to open a bottle of ‘bubbly’ she disappeared into the bathroom giving him time to smuggle Blue and an old bell rope he’d found in the vestry into the wardrobe.

When Hermione emerged, grumbling she couldn’t find her sponge bag, Viking threw her on the bed, and produced Blue’s rope.

‘I thought you might like a spot of bondage.’

Hermione’s brown eyes glittered with excitement as he tied her to the bed post. Blue was laughing so much he fell out of the wardrobe.

‘A threesome,’ cried Hermione in excitement.

To Blue’s regret, Viking then stuffed a handkerchief into Hermione’s mouth, no-one was allowed to slag off Abby except himself, and hanging a ‘Do not Disturb’ sign on the door, he locked it, handing in the key as he and Blue left the building.

FIFTY-FOUR

No-one could find Hermione. There was no answer from her hotel room. Christopher Shepherd, her agent, supposedly on his way down from London, wasn’t answering his mobile. Fears grew that the great diva had actually carried out her threat and walked out.

‘Perhaps she’s playing Haydn-seek,’ giggled Clare.

‘Perhaps she’s been kidnapped,’ said Miles in alarm.

‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ muttered George. He was fed up with both Hermione and Rannaldini, neither of whom had stopped complaining. In the inside pocket of his blue-and-white striped seersucker jacket, bulky as a hidden gun, was one hundred thousand pounds in cash to be handed over to them before they emerged from their dressing-rooms tonight.

All the same, he was faced with a mega crisis. Fans in their thousands waving banners and wearing ‘I love Hermione’ T-shirts were pouring into the water meadows, unpacking lavish picnics. Close Encounters was doing a roaring trade in bottles of chilled champagne. Every seat in the stands was sold. Everyone living in the Close had turned their chairs round to watch from the windows.

Starlings making a din overhead scattered as the cathedral clock tolled seven. It was an hour to blast off.

‘Flora’s been studying the part with her singing teacher,’ said Julian. ‘She knows it backwards.’

‘And she’s got a beautiful voice,’ said Viking, who’d just rolled up looking innocent.

‘Flora has flu,’ said Miles beadily.

‘Came on very fast,’ said Hilary bitchily. ‘She was in the pub at lunch-time.’

Getting no answer on his mobile, George drove over to the cottage. The drought was in its fourth week. He had got the baking hot evening he’d prayed for.

The tractors raised clouds of dust as they chugged back and forth over the bleached fields. Collapsed goosegrass lay like brown dust sheets over bramble and nettles. As he turned the Mercedes up the rough track to Woodbine Cottage, George’s view was obscured by giant hogweed disappearing into the thick cloak of traveller’s joy. Next moment he’d gone slap into Flora and Trevor driving the other way. Flora was tear-stained and eating a Mars bar. Neither car was damaged badly. Grabbing Trevor, Flora tore back to the cottage. She was locking George out, when he put his foot in the door.

Expecting a bollocking, she was amazed when he asked her to go on in Hermione’s place.

‘Don’t be fatuous.’

‘Viking says you have a beautiful voice.’

‘Viking lied before he could talk.’

George shouted, then pleaded. She couldn’t let the RSO down.

‘Don’t pull that boy-scout number on me. Anyway I can’t go on. I look ghastly.’ Flora glared at herself in the hall mirror.

‘The make-up girls’ll patch you up,’ George was inside the cottage now.

‘And I’ve got nothing to wear. Although as I keep saying nothing’s very appropriate for Eve, why not provide fig leaves for me and Walter? Alphonso would need a rhubarb leaf,’ Flora was edging across the kitchen. ‘No prizes for guessing who’s going to play Satan.’ And with that she disappeared out through the back door.

George, who had once played wing forward for the West Riding, caught up with her, bringing her down with a fine tackle on the parched yellow lawn. For a second as they struggled he realized how thin she had become, and she discovered he was far less fat now than solid muscle.

‘Stop playing Jeremy Guscott,’ she hissed up into his battered Rotweiller face. ‘You’re not pretty enough.’

‘Ouch,’ yelled George as Trevor bit his ankle.

‘Well done Trev,’ Flora was temporarily ecstatic.

Looking down, George could see her eyes were the same smoky green as ash leaves on the turn.

‘Please, Flora, please,’ he rubbed his ankle.

For a second Flora pressed her head against his shoulder, then the tears spilled over.

‘Rannaldini won’t let me onto the platform.’

‘He’s got no option, come on, luv, we’ll all be behind you.’

‘You’re on top of me,’ grumbled Flora.

Her last defence was that she’d lost Foxie.

‘I’ll find him, go and get dressed.’

Abby’s cream silk shirt was miles too big and fell to just above Flora’s knees. She looked like a shepherd boy.

‘What about a skirt.’

‘I’ve only got minis.’

‘OK forget it.’

‘Why don’t you ramraid Parker’s, and get me a little spangled number?’

‘You look chumpion.’ George thrust Foxie into her arms.

Only the child lock stopped Flora jumping ship, first into the lake whose surface was suddenly darkened as a black cloud moved over the sun, then onto the burnt verges, particularly when she saw the huge crowds.

Overhead drifted a lilac-and-shocking-pink striped air balloon.

‘I’ve always longed to go up in one of them,’ moaned Flora, ‘particularly now.’

But the waiting make-up girls had fallen on her like vultures, drawing her into the cathedral chapter.

‘What kind of base would you like?’

‘Preferably one that sings in tune,’ said Flora.

She couldn’t study the score, because they were putting blue drops in her reddened eyes, and then making them up. She couldn’t reply to Walter’s and Alphonso’s rather hearty assurances of support because her lips were being painted. Passionately relieved they didn’t have to compete with Hermione, they were clearly apprehensive about being landed with an absolute lemon. Sweat was flowing in rivulets down Flora’s ribs, she was shaking violently, she knew Rannaldini would screw her up, not giving her time to breathe.

‘There, you look lovely, good luck, there’s so much goodwill for an understudy,’ chorused the make-up girls.

Outside George’s fingers closed on her wrist like a handcuff.

‘You look beautiful,’ he said in surprise.

‘I look like a tart in all this slap, Eve would have no need of an apple.’

‘How are zee buttieflowers?’ asked Alphonso, whose girth was winning the battle against his white waistcoat.

Leaving her in the warder care of Miles and Walter, George steeled himself to make an announcement. Christ, the crowd was enormous, all those excited faces suddenly becoming an ugly black sea of hostility.

‘I have to apologize for the ubsence of Dame Hermione, who I’m afraid is indisposed,’ George shouted over a rising surge of disapproval. ‘But I am happy to announce that a local lass has gallantly taken her place, Miss Flora Seymour, who is the daughter-’

‘Oh no, poor Mum,’ groaned Flora, appalled.

‘Is the daughter of Rutshire’s very own Georgie Maguire.’

The crowd wasn’t remotely mollified. There was a lot of booing and shouts of ‘Give us our money back’.

Miles knocked cautiously on Rannaldini’s door. He didn’t want a repeat of Alexei and the gala.

I’m going to faint, thought Flora.

Her heart was pounding her ribs, the inside of her knees were black and blue from knocking, her throat as dry as Miles’s drinks cupboard, she’d never be able to sing.

Out swept Rannaldini, his musky cloying scent nearly anaesthetizing her. She noticed his teeth were whiter than the gardenia in his buttonhole, as he smiled and clapped friendly hands on the shoulders of Alphonso and Walter.

‘Good luck, my friends, not that either of you need it,’ followed by little jokey asides in Italian and in German.

‘This is Flora Seymour,’ George propelled her forward like a reluctant dog towards the vet. ‘Who is very courageously standing in. I know you’ll give her every assistance, Maestro.’

‘We know each other,’ said Rannaldini flatly. Only Flora could read the implacable hatred in the midnight-black eyes.

‘Rannaldini was once with me in Paradise,’ she said sadly.

The orchestra gave her a great cheer when she came on, but a rictus animal grin was frozen on her face.

As his chief executive collapsed into the seat beside him, Lord Leatherhead noticed that George hadn’t changed and his seersucker jacket was covered in grass stains.

‘Hope you know what you’re doing, George.’

Only then did George pause and realize what he had done in his desperation for the concert to go ahead. There was the poor child looking frightened out of her wits and absolutely tiny beside Walter. How could he have bullied her into it? Suddenly despite the now-stifling heat of the evening he, too, was drenched in icy sweat. As he opened his programme, Hermione’s serene and lovely face smiled up at him. Getting out a biro, George drew a moustache on it. Along the front of the stage, huge regale lilies were scenting the hot evening air.

‘I would never have wasted my best blooms if I’d known that trollop was going to sing,’ hissed Peggy Parker.

Rannaldini had deliberately chosen to wear black tails braided with satin, so he would stand out more dramatically against the white DJs and shocking pink jackets of the RSO. Down whisked his stick introducing Chaos which was portrayed by deafening discordant crashes, interspersed with sweet pianissimo murmurs on the strings followed by woodwind calling to each other across the dark void.

Flora was dimly aware behind her of Rannaldini’s beautifully manicured hands controlling the orchestra, hands that had once explored every inch of her body and brought her to the ultimate corrupt pleasure.

Perched on a gold chair, glared at by a vast crowd, she had a fifteen minutes’ wait before her first aria, and what terrible words to start with.

‘Astonished Heaven’s happy host gazes upon the wondrous work.’

Words and notes were a jumble of black. Alphonso and Walter had already sung. The audience were looking slightly less hostile. Here we go. Flora stood up. No-one could miss her frantically trembling legs — that must be why singers wore long dresses. Rannaldini gave her a curt nod.

‘Astonished haven’s hippy host,’ sang Flora, her voice coming out breathy and squeaky, ‘gazes on the wondrous wok.’

Someone laughed, someone booed.

‘And from their throats rings out praise,’ croaked Flora.

As the booing grew to a crescendo, she dropped her red score with a clatter and put her hands over her face.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t go on,’ she sobbed.

The ground fell silent. A police horse neighed.

George leapt to his feet, trying to climb along the row.

‘Sid-down,’ yelled the rows behind, who didn’t want to miss a thing.

Anyway George had been forestalled. Rannaldini had jumped down from the rostrum putting his arms round Flora, whipping the arctic-white handkerchief from his breast pocket, gently tugging down her hands, so he could dry her eyes.

‘Of course she can do eet,’ he shouted to the crowd. ‘She ees verra brave girl.’ Then turning to Flora, smiling at her with such encouragement. ‘We know you ’ave most beautiful voice in the world, carissima,’ he murmured ‘Do you want to go off for a moment?’ he added as Charlton Handsome belted on with a glass of water.

Flora shook her head. It was all over in a minute, Rannaldini gave her another hug, ruffled her hair causing a collective wince among the make-up girls, and climbed back onto the rostrum.

Then, on second thoughts, he leapt down handing her back his handkerchief sending a benign rumble of amusement through the crowd.

Back on the rostrum he raised his stick, turning, smiling dazzlingly: ‘Okkay, Flora?’

Flora nodded, and the crowd gave a great roar of applause until Rannaldini silenced them.

‘How charming,’ hissed Peggy Parker to Gwynneth. ‘Abigail could never have handled that.’

Even Gilbert came out of mourning for Hermione. Flora Seymour had rather interesting breasts in that silk thingy, he must send her a bottle of parsnip wine.

Flora’s voice was a little choked and ragged to begin with, but grew in strength and sweetness by the minute. Throughout her first aria, Walter held her small hand. As Alphonso got up to sing he smiled across lovingly. The vast audience felt they were part of some family drama.

Flora’s next recitative began: ‘And God said let the earth bring forth grass.’ And legalize it, too, thought Flora which made her smile, and the aria that followed about the gentle jewelled charm of the wild flowers and golden fruit was so beautiful, that she suddenly realized the audience were smiling as well.

Rannaldini still wants me, she thought in rapture, I’m being given another chance. Her next entry was the trio with Alphonso and Walter. Both of them unselfishly held back so that her clear piercing voice could soar lark-like above theirs. There was a deafening applause at the end of part two and once the audience had accepted the fact that there was no interval and they’d have to cross their legs for another hour, they relaxed and enjoyed themselves watching the stars come out, and the houses in the Close light up like Hallowe’en pumpkins.

Pictures were now coming up on the huge television screens on either side of the platform, first the glitter of a trumpet, the gold of Viking’s mane, the hair on Julian’s bow drawn out like chewing-gum, Rannaldini’s left hand dancing like a blown leaf to the music, but mostly the cameras concentrated on Flora.

Watching her face growing more distinct as the light faded, George wanted to put her under his arm and warm her into clarity like a polaroid. By comparison, the ladies of the chorus looked like the witches in Macbeth.

He was increasingly uneasy about the undeniable chemistry between her and Rannaldini. Like one of Dracula’s bats, he could see the shadow of the television microphone on her freckled breast bone. Nor was Viking happy. The last thing he wanted either was for Rannaldini to get off with Flora again. He was extremely curious to see the man for whom Abby had cut her wrist, but noticed in extreme indignation that the seat beside Miles was still empty. Christopher Shepherd hadn’t even bothered to show. Bloody hell! So Abby needn’t have pushed off, after all, and Rannaldini needn’t have taken over and Viking had to admit that the bastard gave off such electricity that the orchestra were playing out of their boots and Abby couldn’t fail to show up unfavourably by comparison. He also had to confess that without Abby’s histrionics the RSO seemed very dull.

God was now creating Eve.

‘Adam’s lovely gracious wife in happy innocence she smiles,’ sang Alphonso.

Such was his swelling emotion that his waistcoat button gave up the unequal struggle and flew through the air nearly blacking Goaty Gilbert’s eye. Flora fought the giggles and only sobered up when she caught a glimpse of Helen looking blasted with misery in the fourth row.

The orchestra had played miraculously for nearly two hours, the strings’ bow-ties were under their ears. But at last they reached the final chorus with soloists.

‘To the glory of God, let song with song compete,’ sang Flora joyfully, ‘The glory of the Lord shall last forever, Amen.’

There was total silence, a dog barked, a car backfired, followed by hysterical screaming applause. The orchestra were all cheering for Flora.

‘Well done, darling,’ she could hear Viking yelling.

At first, very shy, not knowing how to accept such applause, she gradually began to smile and even blow kisses to the rapturous stamping, clapping, shouting throng.

And how could she not, with Rannaldini beside her lifting her hand to his lips, covering it with kisses, pouring sweet everythings into her ear.

‘My little star, my angel child, I knew you could do it. I distance myself, I know suffering produce great art.’

Flora had wanted to make him crawl, but she couldn’t help herself.

‘I love you,’ she whispered, clutching a huge bunch of copper roses to her breast.

Helen was distraught. That bloody girl, she’d always been after Rannaldini.

George who had read Paradise Lost at school suddenly remembered Satan like a toad squatting beside Eve, whispering words of temptation into her ear. He’d got to rescue Flora, he was convinced now that something had gone on between her and Rannaldini. But when he fought his way to her dressing-room, she had already been spirited away by Miles and Lord Leatherhead to the big celebration dinner for sponsors, soloists and the management at the Rutminster Royale who were giving the RSO a discount. He wasn’t even cheered that he’d saved forty thousand pounds on Hermione’s fee.

Christopher Shepherd, who’d been delayed at the Barbican signing up a very pretty thirteen-year-old Chinese cellist, was not pleased to find a strange redhead singing the final chorus in Hermione’s place, and Shepherd Denston ten thousand pounds the lighter. He proceeded to jackboot about.

‘Where’s Dame Hermione?’

‘Never showed up,’ said George.

‘Dame Hermione has never been late in her life,’ thundered Christopher, quite untruthfully. ‘What in hell’s happened to her? She may have been kidnapped, right? Why didn’t you provide a body guard. Shepherd Denston will expect full compensation.’

Arriving at the Royale, however, Christopher and the other guests were relieved but somewhat startled to see Dame Hermione swinging like Guy the Gorilla from a rope of knotted sheets and duvet covers trying to find a foothold on the floodlit balcony of the Bridal Suite.

Unwilling to admit she’d been tied up and left by Viking and Blue, she had to fabricate a tale about being so upset about the ‘pausa’ row that she had locked herself into the wrong room without a telephone.

‘I couldn’t make anyone hear,’ she sobbed into Christopher’s manly chest.

‘Don’t worry, we’ll sue the hotel, and Rannaldini and the orchestra,’ Christopher glared at George, ‘for booking you into such a crumby joint.’

‘Bollocks,’ exploded George. ‘There’s absolutely no way we’re responsible. Every attempt was made to trace Dame Hermione.’

What a pompous prat, he decided.

Although Dame Hermione was hastily reassured by Christopher that she was insured against accident, her squawks increased when she discovered that Flora had stood in for her so triumphantly and, even more so, when she learnt Rannaldini and the little tramp had vanished.

Even more upset than either Hermione, Helen or Christopher, who was furious not to be able to sign Flora up, or Alphonso, who wanted to jump on her, or Walter, who wanted Marcus’s telephone number, was George. Totally abandoning his duties as host to an ever-willing Miles, in increasing despair he commuted between Rannaldini’s house in Paradise and Woodbine Cottage but both remained in darkness.

On a third visit to the cottage, which Flora in her haste had left unlocked, George collected a hysterical Trevor and took him back home.

At two o’clock the storm broke, the first clap of thunder sending the little dog shuddering into George’s arms.

George was still drinking whisky, stubbing out the umpteenth cigarette, listening to the thunder grumbling in the distance as though it had been evicted from the pub, when the doorbell jangled frantically and Flora staggered in.

There was an ugly bruise on her cheek. She was soaked to the skin. Abby’s shirt, ripped down the front, was almost transparent. She was clutching Foxie and shaking convulsively.

‘I can’t go back to the cottage in case Rannaldini follows me. Oh thank God, you’ve got Trev. You are kind.’ She gathered up the screaming excited little dog, whose scrabbling claws ripped Abby’s shirt even further. ‘Oh Angel, how could I have left you in this storm. Rannaldini has this horrible effect on me.’ Then she glanced up at George. ‘Please please don’t be cross with me. Can I have a bath?’

She must have slept with Rannaldini, thought George. The pain was horrifying, but he said of course, and poured her a large brandy.

When she came down wrapped in his huge green-and-blue striped dressing-gown, he gave her another brandy and put her in a leather armchair and turned on the gas logs.

‘I’m sorry,’ she sobbed, ‘I can’t talk about it,’ and then proceeded to do so for nearly two hours without stopping, telling him how Rannaldini had destroyed her.

‘He pursued me and pursued me and when I was sixteen, I didn’t fancy him at all, I was much keener on his son Wolfie, but finally I gave in and got totally hooked. Then he binned me like a mail-order shot because I said Boris was a brilliant conductor, and he promptly seduced Boris’s wife Rachel to punish Boris and me.’

‘I’ve behaved dreadfully badly,’ she went on in a whisper, ‘but I wanted to sleep with him one more time tonight, just so he could see how I’d improved — like the RSO — ’ tears were streaming down her blanched cheeks — ‘and I was so cross with you and Viking for forcing me to go on.’

‘I’m sorry,’ George shook his head, ‘but you were funtastic, ubsolutely woonderful. You saved the orchestra. None of us will ever be able to thank you enoof.’

‘I was lucky. Rannaldini was on my side for most of the evening. Anyway I thought you getting him in to conduct was all part of your plot to oust Abby, and infiltrate Rannaldini into the RSO.’

‘Happen it was,’ George looked faintly sheepish, ‘but not any more. Working with him at close range, I’ve realized what a shit he is.’

‘Bed wasn’t any good tonight.’ Dolefully Flora wiped her nose on the sleeve of George’s dressing-gown. ‘Now I feel empty, I’ve wanted him back for so long. But when he made love to me, I just felt dirty. We were in his tower.’

George touched the bruise on her cheek.

‘He do this.’

Flora nodded. ‘Because I didn’t want to make a night of it. But the scratches on my legs, those are brambles. I ran out on him through the wood, when I reached the road I hitched a lift.’

‘Christ, in that dress.’

‘I know it was crazy, I just felt if I got to you I’d be safe.’

A pale grey triangle between the curtains showed dawn was breaking, so George put her and Trevor to bed in a spare room with a hot-water bottle and a night-light.

Looking up at his tired turned-down eyes and squashed face, Flora decided he was more like a mastiff than a Rottweiler.

‘Why don’t you wear your glasses any more?’

‘They were only plain glass to intimidate people.’

Flora laughed drowsily. ‘Sorry, I screwed up your evening. I misjudged you — you’re a sweet guy.’

Closing the biggest deal had never given George such a lurch of happiness. He left her to fall asleep counting glow stars, but when he went in with a cup of tea at nine-thirty, she had fled again. The net curtains were flapping in the open window like a Dracula film. Perhaps Rannaldini had spirited her away. George was shocked at the wave of desolation that overwhelmed him.

FIFTY-FIVE

Flora didn’t become a star overnight, because she didn’t want to. She had seen what stardom had done to her parents’ marriage. Instead she told the journalists who clamoured for a story that she preferred to build her singing career slowly and stay with her friends in the orchestra.

‘What orchestra?’ snarled Dixie brandishing the Telegraph Appointment page. ‘We’ll be lucky if we’re still in business at Christmas.’

The Arts Council, meanwhile, with predictable pusillanimity, had set up an independent review body to study the two orchestras. The Rutshire Butcher had not helped by giving The Creation a rave review, saying it showed what a lazy, lacklustre orchestra could do under a great conductor.

‘The sooner the CCO and the RSO are closed down and merged into a Super Orchestra,’ he had added, ‘presided over by Rannaldini the better.’

The review was picked up by all the nationals.

Rodney was outraged and weighed in from Lucerne in a letter to The Times. Independent review bodies, he wrote, consisted of a lot of old tabby cats and failed politicians guzzling digestive biscuits and exhausting entire rain forests, to produce reports that no-one read, for a sum of money that would keep both orchestras going for the next ten years. The Arts Council, he went on, ought to have their legs and hands tied together and be merged with the biggest tidal wave in history.

A fuming Miles rang Rodney and bollocked him for muddying the waters. Gilbert and Gwynneth had to be kept sweet.

‘Nothing could keep those guzzling pigs sweet except bombe surprise,’ replied Rodney sharply. ‘And don’t you speak to me like that, you little twerp, I’m nearly eighty and I can do exactly what I like.’

Feelings therefore ran high at the annual cricket match between the two orchestras, which this year was held at Cotchester. Everyone remembered why Rodney had employed Bill Thackery in the first place when he made an opening partnership of one hundred and fifty with Davie Buckle. The RSO were all out for two hundred and twenty-five and, justifiably certain of victory, got stuck into the beer in the tea-interval, only pausing to cross themselves as a shadow moved over a watery sun and Rannaldini’s helicopter landed on the pitch. To everyone’s horror Gwynneth and Gilbert were with him. As Gwynneth jumped down, the wind from the helicopter blades blew her natural-dyed skirt above her head to reveal hairy legs and a hugh black bush.

‘As though John Drommond had hitched a lift,’ said Viking.

Gwynneth promptly charged up to Miles and Hilary.

‘Just had luncheon in Paradise. Sir Roberto was so caring and remembered my weakness for caviar and bombe surprise. He picked us up in the heli, but I said he’d have to let Gilbert and I come home with you on the coach, because we want to sing madrigals.’

‘How wonderful,’ Hilary clapped her hands.

‘I sang “The Silver Swan” to Sir Roberto on the way here, he says my voice is remarkable,’ said Gwynneth complacently.

Rannaldini had had to do a lot of leg work with Gwynneth to make up for disappearing with Flora after The Creation, but had now completely won her over.

RSO spirits rose even higher when Hugo, very pleased with himself after a dazzling Lark Ascending at the proms was bowled for a duck, followed by the rest of the CCO losing eight wickets for one hundred and ten.

‘That’ll teach you to programme vegetarian crap,’ sneered Barry the Bass rubbing the ball on his long hard thigh, as Dame Edith strode in swinging her bat like Botham. Having captained Cheltenham Ladies before the war, she proceeded to play like Botham, making a hundred and twenty and breaking two Cotchester Town Hall windows.

‘Good thing those weren’t H.P. Hall windows,’ barracked the CCO from the pavilion. ‘You couldn’t afford to get them mended.’

Rannaldini who’d been pressing the flesh of local councillors then presented the cup to a puce and dripping Dame Edith, but left kissing her on both cheeks to a very uptight Lady Rannaldini.

Feelings ran so high, that after the shortest après-match drinks in the history of the fixture, a punch-up broke out in which Hugo’s eye was blacked and Viking lost his front tooth again, which had most of the RSO on their knees in the dusk looking for it. Miles was relieved to get Gilbert, Gwynneth and Hilary safely onto the Pond Life coach, leaving poor harassed Knickers to get the others and Viking’s tooth into Moulin Rouge before further mishap occurred. Or so he thought.

Five miles from Rutminster, as the madrigal group were soulfully carolling, suddenly Moulin Rouge overtook Pond Life, and ‘The Silver Swan’ died on Gwynneth’s lips as the entire Celtic Mafia, plus Cherub, Davie and Barry the Bass, flashed by doing a moonie.

‘What the fuck were you playing at?’ roared George, when he summoned Viking, Dixie and Barry as section and ring leaders into his office next day.

‘Giving Gwynneth a bum surprise,’ said Viking.

For a second George fought laughter, then he shouted: ‘It’s not funny, have you guys got some kind of death wish? I am trying to save this orchestra.’

‘Are you?’ snapped Viking who had not forgotten Orchestra South.

‘I bloody well am,’ snapped back George, who had just paid Mary-the-Mother-of-Justin’s telephone bill. ‘Even your pretty face isn’t enough to pull in the punters these days. An audience of twenty-eight in Stroud last week is not going to get us out of the wood.’

The one cheery note was that as a result of The Creation there was just enough money to go on tour. The hotels, the chartered flights, the coaches and train fares had all been paid for in advance.

Enough money had been set aside for the pianist in Rachmaninov’s Paganini Rhapsody, and the four soloists in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, when the soprano pulled out with shingles. Flora was consequently persuaded by Miles and Julian to take her place, which would save the orchestra a further ten thousand. The highlight of the tour, however, was still Rodney’s birthday concert. Knowing she would feel upstaged by his return, Rodney had telephoned Abby.

‘The birthday treat that would make me most happy, darling, would be our double come-back, and for you to play one of the Mozart concertos.’

To his amazement Abby had agreed. She’d have to take the plunge some time, and she couldn’t bear Flora to be the only one saving the orchestra money. She was annoyed that even when she promised to provide pianos in every city Marcus had refused to accompany her to Spain.

‘All anyone can think about around here is money,’ said Abby crossly.

But at least all the horrors of bills, repossessions, overdrafts and looming redundancy were forgotten as the tour approached.

Eighty-six musicians make up a sexually volatile mix. Tours abroad were regarded as bonking bonanzas. Davie Buckle, for example, was terrified by and totally faithful to his hefty wife Brünnhilde at home, but went berserk on tour. Players started stepping round each other, setting up liaisons weeks before. Dimitri brushed his wild hair for the first time in years in the hope of advancing beyond tea and cakes with Miss Parrott. Dirty Harry, an ancient bass player who never washed, was actually seen cleaning his teeth in the Gents. Even stingy Carmine bought a round in the pub.

Among the women, there was much highlighting of hair, bad temper over crash diets and waxing of legs. Despite Miles’s strictures that no-one might bring more than twenty kilos of luggage, everyone spent money they hadn’t got on new clothes.

It would be warm in Spain, announced Miles, shorts and a cardigan for the evening. Aware that she would be the prettiest girl on tour, Juno saw no point in buying anything but a chastity belt. She wished George were coming to protect her from lecherous Latins, but the poor darling was working too hard to get away.

Hilary had bought a copy of Don Quixote and several guidebooks, but felt mantillas would be cheaper when she got out there; she and Miles were looking forward to praying in several cathedrals.

On a management level, parsimony wrestled with morality. To save money, Miles wanted as many musicians to share rooms as possible, but he wanted blokes to share with blokes. Everyone refused to share with Dirty Harry or El Creepo.

There was consequently an unofficial list and an official one. Randy officially shared with Dixie, Candy with Clare. Once on tour, Candy would move in with Randy, Clare with Dixie. Everyone intended to play musical beds. Nellie had philanthropically promised herself to a different brass player each night, except for Blue and Lincoln, Viking’s Fifth Horn, a handsome willowy youth, who was in love with Little Jenny. Cherub was dying to make a pass at Noriko and had bought some black silk pyjamas which Miss Parrott had turned up for him.

The main push of the tour, however, was who was going to finally bed Abby. All interested parties had chipped in fifty pounds, the winner getting two thousand. Proof of the bonking had to be a picture of the winner and Abby in bed.

As a result Polaroid cameras sold out in Rutminster High Street. As an alternative, the event could be witnessed by telephoning Dixie who, since his success as Gwynneth in the Christmas concert, had taken to occasional cross dressing. Dixie would then barge into the room, disguised as a waitress, pretending to be delivering room service to the happy couple.

Randy had taken a book on the winner. Viking was favourite, Blue 5–1, himself 8–1 and handsome Barry the Bass 10-1, right up to Cherub 50-1, Peter Plumpton and Simon Painshaw, who were both gay, 100-1, and El Creepo, Carmine Jones and Dirty Harry 1000-1. This had all to be kept secret from the women of the orchestra, who might sneak to Abby, and particularly from Flora and Julian, who would both violently disapprove.

Most of the men would have liked to have a crack at Flora. They had originally backed off because they felt Viking had claimed droit de seigneur. But since The Creation Flora seemed to be putting out fewer signals than ever.

Flora didn’t want to go on tour one bit. She loathed the idea of leaving Trevor, whom she kept finding shuddering under the clothes in her suitcase, and although she scuttled away like an embarrassed daddy-long-legs every time George appeared in the building, she hated the thought of not seeing him for ten days either.

Blue had made no progress with Cathie Jones, but he knew she was in a bad way, because he’d seen her, grey as the fluffing willow herb, sitting down by the railway line which she always did when she was feeling suicidal. But good as his word at the gala, he had persuaded Knickers to take Cathie on tour as an extra.

At first Cathie refused because her only black dress stank under the armpits, and Carmine refused her the money for a new one. Blue got round this by buying her a crushed velvet midi from Next. He then tore out the label and persuaded a friend who worked for the Oxfam shop in Rutminster to make out a fifty-pence bill to show Carmine.

Carmine was furious, but he didn’t intend Cathie’s presence to cramp his style, he and El Creepo intended changing bedrooms several times.

Viking liked going on tour. Being blond like Juno, he was always mobbed in Latin countries. Not trusting the barbers of Seville, he had his hair cut and streaked by Giuseppe of Parker’s the week before. Dropping in at the solarium afterwards, he found the entire brass section stretched out on sun beds.

Returning in ‘disgosst’ to H.P. Hall, he was summoned to the top floor, where George, Miles, Digby, Quinton, his Third Horn, and an unhappy Julian awaited him. A very over-excited Miss Priddock was hovering in the doorway.

George then told Viking that Old Cyril must go. He was drinking far too heavily, he couldn’t centre the notes any more, and last week during Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony he had fallen off the stage and carried on playing a different tune.

‘And on Saturday Cyril passed water on stage,’ said Miles with a shudder.

‘He did not,’ snapped Viking.

‘Ay saw the steam raysing,’ chipped in Miss Priddock.

Viking looked at Cyril’s scarlet dahlias on George’s desk.

‘That steam was coming out of Blue’s ears, because Abby was wearing a silver flying suit,’ he said, but he knew he was fighting a losing battle.

‘He’s got to go,’ George said gently. ‘You can’t protect him for ever.’

‘Best before the tour,’ said Miles. ‘I’ll speak to him at once.’

‘We’re leaving on Monday,’ said Viking in outrage.

‘Well, he’s certainly not up to the Fourth Horn Solo in Beethoven’s Ninth — it goes on for pages,’ protested Quinton.

‘It’s really too high for Fourth Horn,’ said Julian reasonably. ‘Quinton had better play it.’

‘I’ll tell Cyril,’ said Viking icily, ‘and he can go at Christmas, give him time to adjosst.’ Then, looking round at their several dubious and disapproving faces, threatened, ‘If he goes before then, I go too.’

Viking found Cyril at home, downing his second bottle of red of the day and looking at the delphinium catalogue. They had such beautiful names, Faustus, Pericles, Othello, which was dark crimson, and Cassius, a rich dark blue. He could order some Cassius, and watch them merging into the deepening blue dusk next summer, as he sat out in the garden, listening to his old records and getting through the odd bottle before tottering off to bed.

He was delighted to see Viking, but surprised he wouldn’t have a drink. Viking did it so kindly.

‘I’m sorry, Cyril, we all adore you, but you’re not cutting it any more. You’re the best guy I’ve ever played with, I’ll still need your advice, so stay to the end of the year, and after that you must come and see us.’

Cyril would have preferred to have gone straight away, but he needed the money.

‘What will you do?’ asked Viking

‘I expect I’ll go and live with my sister.’

After Viking had left, Cyril tore up the catalogue — he couldn’t afford delphiniums now and there wouldn’t be room for them in his sister’s window-boxes.

Mrs Rawlings who lived next door could have sworn she heard pitiful sobbing later in the evening, but Cyril was such a cheery soul, it must have been the wireless.

Viking had gone out and got absolutely plastered.

On the eve of the tour, over in the Close, a disconsolate Julian, watched Luisa pack for him. He loathed touring, he couldn’t bear being parted from his dear wife for even a night.

‘Poor old Cyril,’ he sighed, ‘I’m not sure it isn’t kinder to put musicians down than to retire them. The RSO is all the family he’s got.’

Julian looked at the ‘Save the RSO’ sticker in the window — somehow he had to save his orchestra.