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.