A moment later, Miss Priddock rushed in brandishing the Rutminster Echo as if there’d been a death in the family.

RUTMINSTER ABBY, shrieked the huge headline.

Someone, probably Hugo, incensed by the destruction of his yellow cords, had leaked the story of her appointment.

‘Some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them,’ wrote the Rutshire Butcher, arguing that Abby was an example of the John Major Syndrome. ‘You push someone young and inexperienced into a position of huge responsibility and then you pray like hell,’ which didn’t make Abby any happier.

The orchestra, with predictable artistic caprice, were absolutely livid. They had not been consulted. Abby hadn’t worked her way up as a conductor. She had no track record.

‘It’s a nice day, let’s go on strike,’ said Randy Hamilton, who’d had a big win on the Grand National and wanted to play golf with Dixie.

The rest of the orchestra were too strapped for cash to strike and plotted rebellion. It had been a lark having Abby poncing around with Squeakygate, but there was no way they were having her as musical director, planning the repertoire and taking over all Rodney’s concerts. They vowed to break her in a month.

‘Poor Princesse Lointaine,’ sighed Viking, when she gave him back his St Christopher. ‘The honeymoon’s over before you even had time for a wedding night.’

Instantly the orchestra started making her life a misery, turning rehearsals into the worst kind of blackboard jungle, barracking her, anwering back, carrying on when she told them to stop, passing notes, farting, burping and in her first concert as musical director, totally ignoring her and playing the Dvŏrák Cello Concerto and Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony exactly as they had always played them. Abby felt as effectual as a tiny child trying to flag down a passing helicopter.

At this initial concert, she first fully appreciated the deficiencies of the hall. The acoustics were frightful. The whole building trembled every time the express to Paddington went by. Every fire engine, back-firing car and tolling cathedral clock could be heard. Rain poured through the roof. Now she realized why they’d installed portaloos for her début concert. Only the most deafening tutti could drown the clanking of chains in the Ladies.

Nor did Abby get any support from Lionel Fielding, the leader, and Hugo’s reason for leaving, when he returned. He should have acted as a buffer between her and the orchestra, but accustomed to being a big fish and finding a far greater violinist had been appointed over him, he flew back in a rage that he had not been consulted.

Lionel was a very vain man, whose romantic good looks were marred by a petulant expression. Although he spent more time blow-drying his flowing ebony locks in the leader’s room than practising his solos, he wasn’t above launching into a Paganini Caprice before concerts just to unnerve less experienced string players.

He loved all the little marks of respect owed a leader, musicians standing up for him, being asked to dinner with the board and to parties after concerts. And since he had been guesting with a northern orchestra, who had a very lush leader’s room, with an en suite bathroom, a sofa, fridge and coffee machine, he was very discontented with the chair in a large cupboard provided by the RSO, and determined to replace it with something grander.

Known as the ‘Incredible Sulk’ because of his black moods, Lionel had a sweet wife, Miriam, who used to play Second Oboe. Lionel, however, had insisted she return home to look after their three children — ‘I will not have latch-key kids’ — leaving him free to pursue the Second Clarinet, Hilary Lloyd.

Nicknamed the ‘Swan of Purley’, because she was the leader’s mistress, Hilary Lloyd was an organizing bitch in her late twenties, who ran the RSO conker competition and terrorized any young pretty girl in the orchestra, by raising her eyebrows and sighing every time they played a wrong note. She also put in industrial earplugs in protest against the din of the brass section and to unnerve her section leader, a gentle old boy called Eldred whose job she wanted.

A school sneak, Hilary never forgot a birthday nor an insult. The players tended to suck up to her because as leader’s pet, she could make life very difficult, particularly in a time of recession. She had a very inflated idea of herself and would suddenly yell out, ‘Lionel, the First Violins ought to be more pianissimo,’ in the middle of a rehearsal, which was completely out of order.

Hilary’s best friend was ostensibly Juno Meadows, but they enjoyed a spiky relationship, Hilary envying Juno’s fragile beauty and her acquisition of Viking, and Juno envious of Hilary’s minor public-school background and her acquisition of Lionel, who as leader, outranked Viking. Much of their conversation revolved round whether Juno would reform Viking, or Lionel leave Miriam. Hilary prided herself on being better at sex, cooking and cherishing than Miriam. She would set her alarm for 3 a.m. so she could listen to Lionel playing the Kreutzer Sonata on the World Service.

Hilary had a cottage outside Rutminster which Lionel visited on the way to and from work, but unlike Viking he didn’t pay the mortgage, having a large one of his own already. As a result Hilary was very tight with money, never buying a drink and always taking the manilla envelope round to collect for leaving presents, so no-one would realize she hadn’t put in any money.

The departing Hugo had been much-loved, and Hilary collected enough money to buy him some new yellow cords, a pair of waterproof trousers and a symbolic gym slip and hockey stick, because he was defecting to join the Headmistress’s team in Cotchester.

His leaving party, in Close Encounters Wine Bar near the cathedral, was extremely wild. Viking and Dixie brought the house down with a touching rendition of ‘The Lost Cords’. Canon Airlie, taking a midnight stroll with his Welsh terrier, Trigger, was appalled to see a shrieking schoolgirl with only a hockey stick for protection being chased across the Close by the Celtic Mafia and a large barking black dog. The schoolgirl was then stripped of her gym slip and thrown into the River Fleet. Rushing to her rescue, the Canon nearly suffered a coronary on being confronted by a thick hairy chest and worse, as Hugo emerged laughing uproariously, bellowing French expletives, from the foam.

Abby had not been invited to the party — ‘You’re management now, duckie’ — but heard the sounds of revelry as she leant wistfully out of the Lord Byron Suite, breathing in the smell of white lilac and newly mown grass, and praying that one day she would be accepted.

But no-one could accuse Abby of cowardice. Her first job was to sort out the RSO.

‘I know you’re all desperately underpaid and hungover,’ she told them with a smile the following morning.

The orchestra, green to the gills, did not smile back.

‘And I’m going to push for more bucks for you,’ went on Abby. ‘But not until you play better. You’ve got sloppy and lazy and there are too many players not pulling their weight: faking or being protected by their colleagues.’

She then produced the bombshell that she wanted the entire orchestra to re-audition behind a screen and in front of a listening panel in the American fashion.

‘So no bias against women, foreigners, young or old, black or white, can creep in. This won’t mean mass sackings, we can’t afford it.’ Abby smiled again at the orchestra who glared back stonily. ‘I just want to locate the bad apples.’

‘We could start with you,’ shouted the bullying, brickred faced First Trumpet, Carmine Jones.

Miles Brian-Knowles, the general manager, who was already cross with Abby because she claimed she was too busy to meet and charm any sponsors, was absolutely furious.

‘You can’t sack anyone, it’s not just the money, the unions won’t let us, and any musician fed up with working in London is far too expensive.’

The board, however, supported Abby, as did one of her few fans, the stage manager, Tony Charlton, known as ‘Charlton Handsome’. Charlton was a larky boy, who looked almost as good in jeans as Viking, and resented the fact that the Celtic Mafia creamed off the prettiest groupies after concerts.

‘They’re a lot of prima donnas, Abby, you stick to your guns,’ he encouraged her as he rehung the dusty brown velvet curtains across the board room to provide a screen, and turned the big mahogany table sideways. He then lined up chairs on the far side for a listening panel, which would consist of Abby, Miles, relevant section leaders when they weren’t auditioning themselves, and Miss Priddock with a list of numbers for each member of the orchestra to be ticked off ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ after they’d played.

Most stretched of all by the event was Nicholas Digby, the incredibly harassed orchestral manager. Nicholas had an anguished face, ginger hair falling like Saluki’s ears on either side of a very bald cranium and looked rather like Mr Pinch in Martin Chuzzlewit. One of his many jobs, along with providing complimentary tickets, and seeing the soloists’ dressing-rooms were all right, was getting the correct number of musicians on and off the stage for every concert. He had a nervous breakdown every winter finding extras when the RSO were laid low with flu.

He now had the thankless task of feeding members of the orchestra one by one in to the board room and attempting to preserve their anonymity by stopping them speaking.

‘Leave off your aftershave, and stump in in Doc Martens,’ Dixie advised Randy. ‘And they’ll assume you’re a woman and pass you automatically.’