Jilly Cooper - Appassionata

‘I t-t-tried,’ stammered Marcus.

‘Like hell — and why the fuck didn’t you warn me? Have you considered what that paedophile might do to Tab? Your mother’s a whore, she might as well have married the devil.’

Marcus lost his temper.

‘She did that the first time round. No-one could have made her more miserable than you did.’

‘She’s a parasite,’ howled Rupert. ‘She’s always been greedy, never bothered to earn a penny in her life. Now she’s sold out to the highest bidder, and you’ll never make it either, you’re a parasite, too. Don’t expect to get another penny out of me. Go and sponge off Rannaldini.’

‘I don’t want your bloody money,’ yelled Marcus, ‘I’ll get there on my own.’

And he slammed down the telephone. He was struggling for breath, desperately delving in his pocket for his inhaler, when Rannaldini came smirking out of the bedroom. He was wearing the blue-and-green Paisley dressing-gown which Marcus and Tabitha had clubbed together to give Malise for his seventy-fifth birthday, a month before he died.

‘What’s the matter, dearest boy?’ crooned Rannaldini.

He’s the Erl-King, thought Marcus in terror.

‘You bastard,’ he gasped. ‘How dare you tell the papers I’ve been welcoming, you know I was dead against the wedding, and only came to it because of Mum. If you hurt a hair of her head, I’ll kill you. I don’t want any of your bloody money or your Steinway either.’

Somehow he got himself to Flora’s digs without collapsing, and then had to cope with Flora, for once dropping her guard and sobbing wildly that there was no hope of her getting Rannaldini back any more.

Rupert was so incensed, he proceeded to cancel both Marcus’s and Tab’s allowances, and write them out of his will.

‘It’s Tabitha Rannaldini’s after,’ wept Flora. ‘That’s what’s driving Rupert crazy.’

The only thing that cheered Flora up was the new Dame Hermione’s fury over the marriage.

‘Talk about caterwauling for her demon lover.’

Helen, oblivious of the devastation she had created, returned from her weekend in Milan more in love than ever, and reprimanded Marcus for being horrid.

‘Roberto so longs for everyone to be friends.’

As Rannaldini already had five houses, she also felt magnanimously that she should put the Old Rectory on the market, because it had such unhappy associations for her, and hand half the proceeds over to Malise’s daughter.

‘It’s such a good time to sell in the spring when the tulips, the apple blossom and the crown imperials are all out.’

The final straw for Marcus came when he wanted to listen to Myra Hess playing the Appassionata on Monday evening, and discovered Helen, in a flurry of tidying, had chucked out all Malise’s old 78s. Marcus was on to her at Rannaldini’s London flat in a trice.

‘How could you? They’re irreplaceable.’

‘Don’t be silly. They’re all on CD now — Rannaldini’s getting them for you as a surprise.’

‘I want the 78s. Malise left them to me.’

‘Darling, be reasonable, they were only cluttering up the place.’

‘Like me,’ shouted Marcus, slamming down the telephone.

Outside the window, white daffodils lit up the garden and the dark yew hedges, a little unkempt now, which Malise had planted to divide it. Did Malise’s ghost, astride his old hunter, jump them in the moonlight? Would the new owners cut them down?

Marcus, who had lived here since he was four years old, was now not only penniless, but soon to be homeless. He was surveying the wreckage of his life, when the telephone rang. He couldn’t cope with a reproachful Helen, but it was Abby jibbering with excitement.

‘I’ve got my first gig, conducting the Rutminster Symphony Orchestra. Rodney and Howie squared it for me. Only one problem, right? I’ve gotta learn the repertoire in a fortnight. Will you help me?’ There was a pause. ‘You don’t sound very excited for me, Marcus.’

‘Mum’s just married Rannaldini.’

‘I read it. Not the ideal stepfather — I’m really sorry. But think of the doors he’ll open for you, and at least it’ll get your mom off your back, and you can come back to the Academy. It’s poor Flora who’s been blown out of the water. God, I’m scared about this gig.’

Abby was as driven as a conductor as she had been as a violinist. Sweeping into the Old Rectory, she hardly noticed how ill Marcus was looking.

It was ironic that one of the pieces he had to help her learn was Ein Heldenleben, a Hero’s Life, Richard Strauss’s tone poem, which included a portrait of Pauline, Strauss’s capricious, demanding wife. Abby was a lot like Pauline, thought Marcus. She interrupted him for help whether he was practising or just firing off hundreds of letters to orchestra managers, concert halls and music clubs in a desperate attempt to get work. She had also commandeered Marcus’s CD player and would drag him out of bed in the middle of the night to listen to some rival violinist as she sobbed: ‘I’m better than that, aren’t I?’

This would have been the ideal moment for Marcus to have made a move. But he was haunted by his failure with Rupert’s hooker, so each time he bottled out, lying for hours afterwards twitching with desire.

He was also heartbroken that he couldn’t afford to stay on at the Academy. When Rannaldini and Helen returned from their extended honeymoon, he would have to move into a tiny room in Ealing. He could pay the rent and keep up the instalments on the Steinway, on which fourteen-thousand pounds was still owing, only if he took half a dozen pupils a day. By the time he’d paid off his college debts, the bank had started bouncing cheques. He had torn up all his credit cards. The only card in his pocket was Pablo Gonzales’s, but meeting him now seemed like a dream. Marcus didn’t have the bottle to write to him. His asthma was awful, he couldn’t walk twenty yards without stopping to rest.

If Abby was exhausting, she was also expensive. Seeing such a large, beautiful house (and this was only Marcus’s mother’s place. Flora had already told her about the glories of Penscombe), Abby assumed Marcus was just another trust-fund baby, and Marcus was too proud to tell her otherwise. As she had lived with Rodney, now she would live with Marcus. She was not grasping, her records had left her very well provided for, just thoughtless. Having worked for twelve hours sustained only by Granny Smiths and black coffee, she would emerge at dinner time.

‘I’m exhausted and absolutely starved.’

If dinner wasn’t ready, she would insist they took her scores out to the nearest restaurant where, having wolfed down a couple of baskets of bread, she often found she wasn’t hungry when the two courses she’d ordered arrived, and Marcus, being his father’s son, picked up the bill.

Back at the Old Rectory her mess spread from room to room, and had to be hurriedly tidied away by Marcus each time a buyer arrived to look at the house.

As the concert approached, Abby grew more histrionic, dickering over what to wear on the night — ‘I gotta look dignified and drop-dead gorgeous’ — and having screaming matches with Howie Denston, her agent.

The new Lady Rannaldini, thought Marcus, would go bananas when she saw the telephone bill, but that was Sir Roberto’s problem.

Mrs Edwards was in her element.

‘Lady Rannaldini’s residence,’ she would announce as journalists started ringing up, so they simply assumed Abby was Rannaldini’s protégée.

To keep the tabloids at bay, Howie installed bouncers. As a result the more enterprising reporters disguised themselves as prospective buyers. The man from the Telegraph got so into the part he even put in a bid for the Old Rectory, and was furious to be gazumped later in the week by a girl from the Independent.

Marcus took two days off to hold Abby’s hand. For a start, he drove her down to Rutminster.

‘How far is it?’

‘Malise and I always reckoned it was Beethoven’s Ninth to Rutminster and The Creation to Cotchester.’

‘It would have been far quicker in the Aston,’ said Abby petulantly.

As a last-ditch measure, to appease the bank manager, Marcus, the day before, had sold his beloved Aston and bought a third-hand, mustard-yellow Maestro, which Abby didn’t feel had sufficient gravitas. She was not even amused by jokes about taking the Maestro down in the Maestro. The next two days were going to be lean on laughs, thought Marcus with a sigh. Still, it was a beautiful day, with primroses fizzing along the bright green verges like sherbert and the cottage gardens still full of daffodils.