Jilly Cooper - Appassionata

Unable to face anyone, she jumped off the rostrum, handed Francis his violin, leapt off the stage, stumbling as she landed, then racing up the gangway, pushed through the swing doors out into the park. Seeing her face deathly pale and still wet with tears as she ran down the High Street, the shoppers parted to let her through. Cars screeched to a halt as she bolted across the road, drawn helplessly towards the lake.

Following her in his car, Viking caught up with her as the town gave way to fields.

‘Well done,’ he yelled out of the window. ‘D’you want a drink?’

But Abby was completely dazed, unable to speak, gazing at him with huge, haunted reddened eyes.

‘We all walked out of the union meeting,’ he said gently. ‘We were glad to get shot of the bastard, none of us liked him. You’ve won, sweetheart.’

The next morning, George Hungerford received a letter of no confidence in Lionel as leader, and upheld Abby’s decision to sack him. Hilary, Steve Smithson, Carmine, Juno, Militant Moll and Ninion (who was still smarting over Catherine Jones getting the big solo in Rachel’s Requiem) were the only members of the orchestra who didn’t sign.

Although it was RSO policy that its musicians were not allowed to talk to the Press, George caught Cherub on the telephone to the Evening Standard diary.

‘Yes, we called Lionel the Incredible Sulk,’ he was saying in his shrill voice, ‘because he sulked all the time. What did he sulk about? Well, people nicking his hairdryer mostly. Can I think of anything nice about him? That’s a tricky one,’ Cherub scratched his blond curls and after a long silence, ‘not really… oh, yes I can.’

‘That’s enough,’ George pressed the cut-off button, then out of curiosity, asked, ‘what was the nice thing you remembered about Lionel?’

‘That his brother was much worse,’ said Cherub, going off into such giggles that George had to join in.

All the same the RSO were left without a leader. The post was hastily advertised and leaders applied from all over the world. Many expected to have their air fares paid. Others crept surreptitiously into auditions hoping no-one would recognize them and sneak to their respective orchestras, or later know they had suffered the humiliation of not being offered the job. It was a laborious, expensive process. Miles and Mrs Parker, who’d lost a powerful ally in Lionel, were all for asking Hugo back. But Abby would have none of it. The sight of Hugo sleekly smirking in the leader’s chair at the Albert Hall during the CCO’s prom had convinced her she never wanted to work with him again.

Bill Thackery, who’d acted as leader since Lionel left, put himself forward, but was rejected as too stodgily dependable and too lacking in charisma. Rodney had only employed him in the first place because he had once played cricket for Rutshire and scored centuries in the RSO’s annual needle-match against the CCO.

Aware that she had hurt Bill, Abby had a restless night. Wandering round the garden at sunrise, leaving footprints on the dewy lawn, she realized after the long silence of the summer, a robin was singing again in the old crab-apple tree. Revelling in the sweet liquid notes, Abby was suddenly reminded of Julian Pellafacini, the kind, diplomatic, infinitely charismatic albino leader of Rannaldini’s New York Orchestra. She’d kept the letter he’d written her after she’d cut her wrist. Not caring that it was the middle of the night in America she called him at once.

‘Did I wake you?’

‘No, I have insomnia over Rannaldini. He sack everyone, I never come back from coffee-break to find the same musicians, yesterday he make me play three times alone in front of the orchestra.’

‘How obnoxious,’ said Abby furiously, adding hastily, ‘I’d never do that to you. Please come and lead my orchestra. We’re premiering Boris Levitsky’s Requiem in three weeks and I need you to show the strings how to play it, and in November we’re recording Winifred Trapp’s Harp Concertos.’

‘A wonderful composer,’ sighed Julian.

‘You’re the first person who’s heard of her,’ said Abby joyfully.

‘Rannaldini told me you were leaving.’

‘Not any more.’

‘Then I will come. My wife love England and ’ate New York.’

‘We will find you a house. How will you escape?’

‘Leave it to me.’

Sweeping onto the platform a week later to conduct a concert version of Parsifal, Rannaldini found his orchestra crying with laughter and his leader sitting at the front desk in an emerald-green pleated dress, green high heels, a white pudding-basin hat and full make-up, and sacked him on the spot. By this time, Julian’s contract with the RSO had been signed.

Julian arrived at the beginning of October and moved with his wife and children into a beautiful rented house in the Close paid for by the RSO. He was paid twice as much as Lionel, but he was worth every penny.

He was so kind, so respected, so gravely charming, that he had only to clap his hands in rehearsals for everyone to shut up and listen. He agreed that Rachel’s Requiem was a masterpiece, explaining it to the more inexperienced or resistant players until everyone found themselves singing the tunes.

The young players seemed to absorb his talent by osmosis, and Old Henry at last had someone to appreciate his stories and argue with about which quartet was Beethoven’s finest.

Abby was appalled by Julian’s appearance when he arrived. His long straight white hair had receded, he was as black under the eyes as his dark glasses, and he had lost over twenty pounds which his thin, stork-like frame could ill afford, but gradually he stopped talking too much about Rannaldini.

Miss Priddock was soon baking him cakes, Miss Parrott knitting him scarves, even Flora picked a lot of sloes intending to make him sloe gin, but they only gathered fluff in the fridge.

‘He’s terribly attractive,’ said Candy.

‘But far too nice to be heterosexual,’ sighed Clare.

That was before they’d met his lovely bosomy wife, Luisa, whom he adored and who gave uproarious spaghetti-and-red-wine parties at the house in the Close on Sundays to which rank-and-file players were asked with section leaders, so relations within the orchestra improved dramatically.

‘To make good music,’ said Julian, ‘you need to have confidence and people you trust on either side of you.’

‘Julian’s a mensch,’ said Abby. ‘That’s someone with standards, a good friend, a man you are proud to know.’

She had achieved great kudos for finding him. He also gave her confidence. She could easily have been jealous of his popularity, but he never took decisions without her, and gradually she became less aggressive and tactless, saying please and thank you, and taking people aside for a quiet word in the break rather than humiliating them in front of the entire orchestra.

‘I think that’s been played better in the past,’ she suggested to Jerry the Joker, after he’d made an appalling cock-up of a bassoon solo.

‘Yes, but not by me,’ said Jerry, to howls of laughter all round.

Morale was so high in Julian’s first weeks that everyone was convinced his leadership had been entirely responsible for the New World and Rannaldini sweeping the board at the Gramophone Awards. They didn’t even mind that Edith Spink and the CCO had won an early music award for Purcell’s King Arthur.

As the date for the première of Rachel’s Requiem approached, Boris, still minus Astrid, started hanging around H.P. Hall, tearful, apprehensive, aggressive by turns, changing everything.

The rows between him and Abby were pyrotechnic.

‘I’m conducting this piece.’

‘I wrote zee bloody thing.’

‘You didn’t even remember you’d introduced a variation of “Rachel’s Lament” as a violin solo in the “Agnus Dei”.’

After hearing Cathie Jones, still desperately nervous in the ‘Libera Me’, Boris went into an orgy of self-doubt and threatened to withdraw the lament altogether.

‘It sound immaculate in the head. Then you hear orchestra hacking through eet.’

Fortunately, George Hungerford, who’d become a terrifying figure of menace to Boris since threatening to make him pay back his advance, had been listening unnoticed in the stalls and came up and shook Boris’s hand.