‘Fifty-Six,’ shouted Nicholas.

The piano started playing, a few seconds later a flute joined in.

Lionel and Miles stared fixedly at their notes. Abby felt as though steel nails were being drilled through her head. A wave of vindictiveness overwhelmed her.

‘That’s enough warming up,’ she shouted a few minutes later. ‘We’re pushed for time, right, can you get started.’

There was a pause, then a furious squeaky little voice said: ‘I’ve just played the slow movement of Poulenc’s Flute Sonata.’

Abby shook off Miles’s restraining hand.

‘Can you come through?’

Anger made Juno look even more enchanting, putting a rare warmth in her cold eyes.

‘It’s no good, Juno,’ said an unrepentant Abby. ‘I guess you’d better look for another job, you’re just not up to it.’

‘I was good enough for your predecessor,’ hissed Juno and stormed out.

‘That was very unwise,’ smirked Lionel.

‘Wonderfully lyrical,’ he murmured mistily a minute later, as Hilary, whom he’d coached between bonks last night, started paddling laboriously through the slow movement of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto.

She was interrupted, however, by Viking, barging in without knocking, all slitty eyes and blazing Irish rage.

‘How dare you sack Juno?’ he yelled at Abby.

‘S-s-she’s useless, she must have slept with someone to get that job.’

‘She’s sleeping with me, and if she goes, I go.’

And in barged Blue.

‘If Viking goes, I go.’

And in marched Dixie and Randy.

‘And if Viking and Blue go, we go,’ they chorused.

‘Woof, woof, woof,’ barked Mr Nugent, bringing up the rear.

‘You fucking band of brothers, I don’t understand you guys,’ yelled back Abby. ‘I guessed love was blind, but I never figured it was deaf as well. I don’t know why you’re being so supportive,’ she added to Nugent. ‘Juno’ll have you out in a trice.’

Miles, who disapproved of swearing and dogs, looked very shocked.

As a result, the Steel Elf was reinstated but Abby had made herself an implacable enemy.

TWENTY-SEVEN


Poor Abby had such good intentions. But being musical director of the RSO continued to be an absolute nightmare. After one particularly rowdy rehearsal towards the end of April, during which Viking had peremptorily summoned the entire brass section out into the car-park to push his ancient BMW because he was late for the dentist, Abby received a summons from the manager.

Finding Lord Leatherhead and Miles, who’d given her even less support than Lionel, awaiting her, Abby steeled herself for a wigging. Instead, they told her they had found a new managing director.

‘It’s George Hungerford,’ said Lord Leatherhead in tones of awe. ‘We’ve been very, very lucky.’

Abby had no idea who George Hungerford was, and was even less impressed when they told her he was one of the few property developers who had managed to increase his fortune during the recession.

A rough, tough Yorkshireman, who in his youth had sung bass in the great Huddersfield Choral Society, George had always fancied running an orchestra, and reckoned he could sort out the RSO in one or two days a month with his hands tied behind his back. He would take over at the beginning of May.

All the female musicians and the secretaries on the top floor were wildly excited that he was also between marriages. ‘Gorgeous George’ as they already called him, could also be relied on to take L’Appassionata down a peg. Blood in the aisles was joyfully predicted.

Abby was too worried about next week’s concert and her even more revolutionary plans to re-audition the entire and often frightful Rutminster Choir before the German Requiem in June, really to take in George’s appointment.

Wrestling with the complexities of the last movement of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony, she had only fallen into bed at five o’clock by which time the dawn chorus, who sang infinitely better than the Rutminster Choir, had started. She was woken by a maid coming in to clean the room at nine-thirty. Leaping out of bed, she frantically tugged on yesterday’s sweaty clothes. Racing down the High Street, she reached the auditorium at seven minutes to ten, only to find the place deserted. Unlike American orchestras, British players had a maddening habit of scuttling in at the last moment. As a final insult, Viking wandered in yawning at half-past ten.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ he smiled unrepentantly at Abby. ‘I was having a helicopter lesson and I couldn’t find anywhere to park. Hi, sweetheart.’ He paused on the way to kiss the Steel Elf.

Incensed because the French horns start the Fifth Symphony, Abby proceeded to dock half an hour off Viking’s pay, which triggered off the orchestra. She had vowed to be accommodating today and as a joke had even circulated a photostat of a dictionary definition of the word, pianissimo, to all the brass section to stop them drowning everyone else. But they had merely made paper darts and thrown them back at her.

Lionel the leader, who should have supported Abby, made no attempt to hush the chat that rose like a fountain whenever there was a pause. Now he asked if he might have a word. Abby jumped down from the rostrum, acutely conscious of her scruffy appearance and dirty hair beside Lionel’s coiffeured glamour. Even his breath smelt of peppermint, as he said: ‘Look, we’ve recorded this symphony with Rodney and Ambrose. If you want to get through it, just sit on top of the orchestra and coast.’

‘And leave you in charge, no, thank you,’ snapped Abby.

Lionel and Hilary exchanged told-you-so shrugs.

Two minutes later Abby called a halt.

‘Excuse me, flutes, you were dragging a little.’

‘You amaze me,’ Juno lowered her long blond eyelashes, ‘we were only following you.’

Ignoring the jibe, Abby tried to inspire them by telling them of Sibelius’s emotions when he wrote the symphony, but they all started yawning.

‘As you know the last movement ends with the six huge hammer blows of the God Thor,’ persisted Abby.

‘My back’s thore after all those semi-quavers,’ said a voice from the back of the violas.

‘Cut out the programme notes and get on with it,’ shouted Randy.

Dixie got out a porn mag.

Abby’s messianic streak emerged five minutes later when the horns launched into a glorious swinging tune.

‘This is a great euphoric affirmation of hope,’ she said earnestly, ‘which Sibelius wrote after he discovered that he wasn’t dying of cancer, after all, so I want you horns to play as though the sun was bursting through dark clouds and…’

Viking let her run on for a minute, before looking up.

‘You mean you want it louder,’ he drawled.

The orchestra cracked up.

‘No, I do not,’ screamed Abby. ‘I want you to play with more passion, and build up to a splendid sforzando.’

‘It says fortissimo in my score.’

‘Oh for God’s sake, let’s get on.’

Nellie Nicholson, the orchestra nymphomaniac, was a third desk cellist whose cello was nicknamed ‘Lucky’ by the male musicians. Five minutes later she came in loudly in one of the long pauses between the final hammer blows.

‘Sorry, sorry, Abby,’ she called out apologetically. ‘A fly landed on my score and I played it by mistake.’

Again the orchestra cracked up.

Abby totally lost her cool.

‘What in hell’s the matter with you guys?’

‘You are,’ piped up a voice from the back of the violas.

Abby couldn’t detect the offender who was hidden by Fat Isobel, who was even larger than Fat Rosie. Fat Isobel had a big jaw, and always looked as though she’d cleaned the grill pan with her hair. Despite this, on last year’s tour of the Oman, lots of Arabs had seriously tried to buy Isobel. Leaping down, barging between the second violins and violas, somehow circumnavigating Fat Isobel, Abby found Clare, the orchestra Sloane, and Candy, her best friend, from Australia, both ravishing blondes, playing battleships and discussing their sex life.

‘You will not hide behind Isobel,’ stormed Abby.

As she yanked their music-stand into view, the viola part of Sibelius’s Fifth fluttered to the floor.

‘Excuse me, Maestro,’ Steve Smithson, the RSO’s union rep, was beside her in a trice, breathing fire. ‘It’s Mr Charlton and the stage hands’ job to move the music-stands. If you observe Rule 223,’ he brandished the book under her nose.