Jilly Cooper - Appassionata

‘Juno won’t have to try,’ sneered the First Trumpet, who had a cruel red-brick face.

‘Who said that?’ Viking was on his feet.

‘Don’t rise.’ The Second Horn pulled him back by his ‘Spoilt Bastard’ T-shirt.

‘Only joking,’ grinned the First Trumpet unrepentantly. ‘Sorry Juno.’

The orchestra, particularly the prettier girls, who entirely agreed with the First Trumpet, smirked into their music-stands.

‘Strauss also portrayed his tempestuous relationship with his wife, Pauline,’ went on Abby, ‘who was a coquette and very capricious.’

The First Trombone, who had a complexion like red rock, very blue bloodshot eyes and hair the colour of wet sand, rather like a South of France travel poster, put down his copy of Playboy.

‘You mean she was an absolute bitch,’ he said.

The orchestra giggled. Abby decided to ignore him.

‘As I am sure you all know, Pauline is portrayed by the leader of the orchestra.’ Abby smiled fondly at Hugo.

‘Hope you’re going to wear a pretty frock, Hugo, dearie,’ shouted the First Trombone.

‘And Strauss even portrays himself in the closing pages on the French horn.’ Abby smiled up at Viking, who put down Auto Express and smiled back.

‘After a terrific battle,’ concluded Abby, ‘when the brass and percussion can really play fortissimo, the work ends with the hero and his wife reconciling their differences in one of the loveliest tunes ever written, with the solo violin singing and sobbing and the solo horn — er — weaving round her like a great purring panther.’

‘Grrrrrr,’ growled Viking.

‘Show us your tits again,’ shouted the First Trombone.

Abby blushed crimson.

‘Let’s get started.’

It was like hanging onto the coat-tails of a hurricane, thought Abby, as she opened her raised arms, and whipped the orchestra to a frenzy in the battlescenes, then quietened them for the love duet. Here, she felt Hugo, although a dashing and technically faultless player, lacked passion. If only she could have taken his place, providing Viking with a player up to his weight. As she sang along with them, she realized how unendurable life would be until she could play again. She hadn’t done any physio for weeks.

Confronted by genius, however, Abby was always generous. Passing Viking on her way out as he put his horn back in a battered case, lined with crushed purple velvet, she stammered: ‘You were terrific, I’m not just bullshitting.’

‘It’s like being a racing driver or a test pilot,’ said Viking. ‘You just got to believe you’ll come out the other end.’

Hugo’s right, thought Abby, he does have the sexiest peat-soft voice in the world, and he was a good three inches taller than she was.

Hugo took her to the Shaven Crown for lunch. The record shop in the High Street had a display of her CDs and a coloured cardboard cut-out taken from an old photograph when she’d been all wild-haired and smouldering.

‘D’you think people will recognize me?’ she asked Hugo in alarm.

‘Of course, the explosive element is still there, the lovely body, the lovely face.’

Was her face lovely? he wondered. The nose was too big, the eyelids, the bottom lip, even the jaw too heavy and yet and yet.

‘Genuflect to our benefactress,’ he added sourly, as they passed a big department store, draped in banners saying: ‘Parker and Parker Welcomes Abigail Rosen.’

There were even windows devoted to men in tails and women in spangled evening dresses playing instruments.

‘You’ll meet Peggy Parker tomorrow night,’ said Hugo. ‘She’s as squat and brick red in the face as the Herbert Parker Hall. She loves to patronize the arts, patronize being the operative word. And she’s not very keen on Rodney because he remembers her when she was a junior in the underwear department with a tape measure hanging from her neck, and he was always nipping in to buy lingerie for his various popsies. That was before Peggy married the boss. She’s now on the RSO board and a Force to be Reckoned With, because she pumps in a lot of dosh.’

‘I hope she doesn’t force the orchestra into those awful dresses,’ shuddered Abby.

The Shaven Crown had a thatched roof kept in place by a wire hairnet and pale pink walls. Inside it was already packed with musicians and full of inglenooks, black beams, barmaids in medieval dresses and a long-suffering landlord, who wore a monk’s habit when the antics of the RSO became too much for him.

Huge orange logs in the fireplace gave the impression of having smouldered for centuries. Having installed Abby in an alcove on a black bench which said, ‘Leader’s Chair’ in gold letters, Hugo went off to order.

Abby was soon distracted by shouts of laughter. Edging along the bench, peering through a pair of hanging lutes, she saw Viking surrounded by cronies including his Second Horn who had bright blue eyes, and the First Trombone who’d acted up during the rehearsal.

‘Absolutely flagrante,’ Viking was saying.

‘What happened?’ asked the First Trombone, draining his pint of beer.

‘I had a bit of a day,’ began Viking, ‘I had lunch with Thin Rosie, went back to her place and did the business, came out and on my way to the Garden bumped into Fat Rosie, so I went back to her place and catered for her.’

‘That’s why she was looking so cheerful this morning,’ said the Second Horn, glancing up from the Independent.

‘Then I gave my considerable all to Tristan and Isolde,’ went on Viking. ‘Three hours of it. I kept falling asleep, Jesus, I was tired. I josst managed to drive home to Rutminster, fell into bed, josst dropped off, when I was woken by an imperious tap on the shoulder. Her indoors saying: “Haven’t you forgotten something?”’ Then over the howls of laughter, added, ‘That’s why I had to re-accommodate her on the glockenspiel this morning, and in barges Priddock, John Drommond and L’Appassionata.’

As Hugo crossed the bar with his bottle of red wine, Viking leant round to see who he was lunching with, and seeing Abby, without any embarrassment, raised his glass to her.

‘All the girls behind the bar want your autograph,’ said Hugo, ‘and Bernie the landlord wants a photograph taken with you.’

She still loves the recognition, he thought as he filled up their glasses.

‘I shouldn’t drink.’

‘Yes you should, to celebrate, and eat. Two steak-and-kidney pies are on the way.’

‘That’s the nucleus of the Celtic Mafia, the wild men of the orchestra,’ said Hugo, after another roar of laughter from Viking’s table.

‘That’s Blue Donovan, reading the Independent. The quiet one, a seriously good guy and usually broke because he sends so much money back to his family in Deny. Always falling asleep because he plays most nights in a jazz club.’

‘Very attractive,’ mused Abby.

‘Very. Blue covers for Viking musically and in real life. Beneath the sang-froid, Viking’s pretty neurotic. First Horn has to have iron in his soul.’

‘Oh wow, this looks great,’ cried Abby as a steak-and-kidney pie with gold pastry billowing out of the little dish, a baked potato and broccoli were put in front of her. ‘I’m starved.’

‘Can we have some mustard, Debbie?’ called out Hugo.

‘French or English?’ asked the pretty barmaid.

Abby smiled sideways under her lashes at Hugo: ‘I always prefer French.’

Feeling encouraged Hugo continued his run down on the Celtic Mafia.

‘Sitting next to Blue is the First Trombone, Dixie Douglas. A brawny fearless Glaswegian, Dixie comes from northern brass band stock — lips of steel — his light duties as a trombone player give him rather too much time to booze, letch and mischief-make. You want to watch him, Abby. He’s trouble.’

‘He already has been,’ said Abby. ‘This is so good. I shouldn’t eat the pastry, but I’m gonna.’

‘Finally, the man with a moustache, who looks like a sandy-haired Clark Gable, is Randy Hamilton, Third Trumpet, another fearless hell-raiser from a barrack-room background. Randy’s energies when not boozing and womanizing are spent improving his golf handicap and loathing the First Trumpet, Charles Jones, nicknamed “Carmine” Jones because he goes bright red during solos.

‘Carmine, you may have noticed, had a go at Juno this morning, just to wind up Viking, because he hates the Celtic Mafia, and he’s been trying to get Juno into bed ever since she joined the orchestra, and he’s livid Viking got in there first. He always moves in on any pretty girl that comes on trial. “If you sleep with me, darling, I’ll put in a good word, along with my dick.” He’s a very, very nasty piece of work.