Jilly Cooper - Appassionata

I must start playing the violin again, thought Abby fretfully, so people want to play chamber music with me.

‘It’s only because Flora’s new,’ Abby overheard Juno saying bitchily to Hilary. ‘They’ll soon get bored of her.’

Rutminster was gripped by a heatwave. Plans for holding Piggy Parker’s sixtieth-birthday concert inside or providing the orchestra with a canopy were shelved as the ground cracked, the huge domed trees in the grounds of Rutminster Towers shed their first yellow leaves and Mrs Parker repeatedly cursed her mother for conceiving her in a Ramsgate boarding-house in October rather than in September — which meant her birthday fell at the end of July, by which time the roses had gone over.

Short of glueing back every petal, the only answer was to bus in furiously clashing bedding plants from Parker’s Horticultural Emporium. Lorry-loads of electric-blue hydrangeas and scarlet petunias were racing armies of caterers up the drive, as the orchestra struggled in for an early rehearsal and to check the timing of the fireworks in William Tell, before the heat became too punishing.

Rutminster Towers itself stood in all its neo-Gothic glory, surrounded by a formal garden and parkland, overlooking the River Fleet. A platform for orchestra and choir had been set up on the river’s edge. Bronzed workmen putting up a large red-and-white striped VIP tent eyed Flora as she paddled and splashed water over a panting Mr Nugent.

Mrs Parker was frantic everything should go well. As a year ago, a pleasure launch of Hoorays playing pop music and drunkenly yelling ‘Hellair’ had disrupted Panis Angelicus, she was personally prepared to dam the river with her vast bulk to stop anyone sailing upstream during the concert.

She had, however, graciously invited the ladies of the orchestra to hang their dresses in the Long Gallery.

‘Is that a genuine Picasso?’ asked Nellie, as she peered in awe into the le-ounge.

‘No, no,’ giggled Candy, ‘look on the back. It says “Do Not Freeze, This Side Up”.’

‘Admiring my Picarso,’ said a loud voice behind them. ‘It was a silver wedding-gift from my late hubby.’

‘She’s even matched her grand piano exactly to the panelling,’ Clare told Dixie as she returned from the house, ‘and every piece of ghastly furniture is for sale.’

‘You don’t think an old bag like Piggy Porker would pass up an opportunity for commercial gain,’ said Dixie. ‘You could probably buy that oak tree for twenty grand.’

‘I’ll pay Sonny twenty grand to stay away,’ said Clare. ‘He’s been so preoccupied with his première he even forgot to buy Mumsy a birthday card.’

Today was also the birthday of Ninion, Second Oboe and oppressed partner of Militant Moll.

‘Just proves what utter crap astrology is,’ sneered Carmine Jones getting his trumpet out of its case, ‘when a thug like Piggy Porker and a wimp like Ninion have birthdays on the same day.’

Ninion ignored the crack, but his hands shook as he read his and Mrs Parker’s horoscope in the Rutminster Echo, which was part owned by Mrs Parker anyway, and which said it would be a good day for fireworks.

Underneath his mild blinking, field-mouse exterior, Ninion was hopping mad. Second Oboe often doubles up as cor anglais, but Knickers and Abby had humiliatingly not thought he was good enough to play the long ravishing cor anglais solo in William Tell, and brought in Carmine Jones’s wife, Catherine, as an extra.

Militant Moll should have been pleased a woman had been given the job. Instead she berated Ninion for not standing up for his rights.

‘You are quite capable of playing that solo, Nin. Why d’you let people push you around? Catherine Jones is a drip not to have left Carmine years ago.’

Moll was taking Ninion to a woman composers’ workshop in Bath as a birthday treat. Ninion brooded; he was fed up with women.

The surrounding fields were silvered with dew as the orchestra tuned up, but no breeze ruffled the forget-me-nots languishing on the river-bank. As Flora returned a dripping Nugent to Viking, she breathed in a heady scent. At first she thought it came from a nearby lime tree. Then she realized it was Blue’s aftershave, which he never wore normally, and that he had put on a ravishing new duck-egg-blue shirt. Blue was so handsome, quiet and dependable, but there was a sadness about him. Flora wondered if he were gay and secretly in love with Viking. He never had any women around.

‘God, it’s baking,’ said Viking, who was sharing his breakfast of a pork pie and a Kit-Kat with Mr Nugent. ‘Oh, go away,’ he snapped at Fat Isobel, who’d been panting after him like a St Bernard since he’d taken her out for a drink.

Flora looked up at the house. ‘How the hell did Piggy Porker get permission to build such an excrescence in such a beautiful park?’ she asked ‘Every councillor has his price,’ explained Viking contemptuously. ‘All the fat cats on Rutminster Council, who you’ll see guzzling champagne this evening probably received a nice nest-egg in a Swiss bank or holiday home in Barbados. I wonder if Alan Cardew, the planning officer, would enjoy knowing that his wife Lindy is currently being knocked off by Carmine Jones.’

‘How could she? He’s loathsome. Imagine that brickred sneering face kissing you.’

‘That’s why Lindy was so livid when Abby sacked her from the choir. She can’t pretend to be sloping off to choir practice any more.’

‘All right, let’s get started,’ Abby had arrived, looking deathly pale after a sleepless night wondering whether to do a runner rather than be made over by Peggy’s beauticians. She was wearing a dark red vest and black bicycle shorts, and her lips tightened as she saw Flora gossiping with Viking.

The orchestra quickly whizzed through William Tell. Catherine Jones wasn’t turning up until the concert, so Ninion had to deputize for her, which made him crosser than ever. The fireworks would be let off after the trumpet fanfare during the rousing finale, which everyone knew because it had once been The Lone Ranger’s signature tune.

Fortunately the electrician who’d spent the morning hammering Roman candles, rockets and Catherine wheels onto posts liked music and knew exactly when to start the display.

‘Miss Rosen, we’re ready for you. I’m Crystelle by the way,’ called out a Parker beautician, who hovered, smiling like a crocodile. Her make-up was so thick you could have chucked rocks at it.

For a second Abby stared down at her, terrified and proud, Sidney Carton at the scaffold. Then she gathered up her sticks and her scores.

‘Please don’t ruin her, she’s so beautiful,’ called out Flora as Crystelle frogmarched Abby back to the house.

‘You need your eyes tested, Flora,’ said Carmine Jones nastily.

‘And you need a face transplant,’ shouted Flora.

The orchestra roared with laughter; singly most of them were too frightened to take on Carmine, whose face was now engorged with rage like a slice of black pudding.

It was now time for Sonny to take a last rehearsal of his Eternal Triangle for orchestra, cow bells and yodeller. A little man with a very large ego, Sonny (or rather Mumsy) had paid for several extra rehearsals. Many contemporary composers prefer to be programmed with other twentieth-century music. Not Sonny.

‘I’m not frightened of comparison with the great masters.’

Crash, bang, plink, plonk, went the orchestra. Sonny, a hopeless conductor, looked as though he were swimming through deep water and occasionally spearing a jelly fish.

Nor did he know anything about music, but fancying Viking, whose body was turning dark gold above his dirty white shorts, called out: ‘Four bars after twenty, Horns, marked gestopft. Could you play it on your own?’

‘Gestopft’ means putting the right hand up the bell of the horn to produce a muted buzzing sound. Viking, however, muttered to his section, ‘OKlads, play flat out.’

The next moment five horns blared out making two nearby pigeons and the rest of the orchestra jump out of their skins.

‘For goodness’ sake,’ spluttered Hilary, who hadn’t imagined she’d need her industrial ear plugs in the open air.

Sonny, however, was in raptures.

‘Splendid, Viking, splendid.’ He thrust forward a circle formed by his first finger and thumb.