Jilly Cooper - Appassionata

‘Congratulations, it was well worth waiting for.’

Boris was so overcome he burst into tears. Abby then put on the pressure, persuading him that ‘Rachel’s Lament’ would only work if Viking played it. In the interests of art, Boris reluctantly gave in. As a result, Viking nearly got his tooth knocked out again.

Wandering into H.P. Hall after another late-night moonlighting, and no doubt pleasuring Astrid, he noticed Julian in the leader’s room poring over a score. Beside Julian, Viking could see lustrous black curls, and a beautiful lean body in a checked shirt and jeans. Confronted by such a delectable bottom, Viking couldn’t resist pinching it. Next moment an enraged Boris had swung round, and Viking was belting down the passage.

‘Sorry, sorry Boris,’ he pleaded. ‘Don’t hit me again. I’ve josst spent five hundred quid at the dentist. You’ve lost so much weight, I thought you were Abby. Look,’ he went on, as Boris kept on coming, ‘Astrid wants to come back to you, she’s absolutely miserable with me.’

‘She is?’ Boris lowered his fist. ‘Oh my Astrid.’

Terrific news, thought Abby, overhearing the conversation as she came out of the conductor’s room. ‘And Boris has agreed “Rachel’s Lament” sounds better on the French horn, so he’s written it back in for you,’ she told Viking.

‘Sweet of Boris,’ said Viking coolly, ‘but I’m flying to Glasgow tomorrow to play a Mozart concerto with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, their First Horn’s dislocated a shoulder. I cleared it with George,’ he added as Abby’s face contorted with fury.

Blue would have killed him, reflected Viking, if he’d stolen Cathie’s solo.

Abby could have killed him anyway. ‘And that Hugh Grant hairstyle doesn’t suit you at all,’ she yelled after his departing back view.

The première in fact was a success. All the London critics came down for a number of reasons: Levitsky was still a name; they were curious to see how Abby was making out; but, most of all, they wanted to hear this great new leader who had graced little Rutminster with his lustre. Even the Rutshire Butcher, deliberately invited to the last rehearsal and force-fed lobster thermidor and Moët afterwards by George, wrote that it was good to have some meaty tunes after all those one-note jobs, which had dominated the classical hit-parade for so long.

The two representatives attending from the Arts Council were positively orgasmic about the piece. Nothing got them going like 75 per cent of the audience looking bewildered. By carefully placing round the hall a number of the Friends of the Orchestra to cheer and stamp, George managed to generate a standing ovation for Boris, who looked so mournfully handsome and romantic, that the audience kept on clapping, particularly when he led Cathie Jones forward. Aware that Blue’s good-luck card was hidden in the pocket of her black dress, she had played exquisitely.

Seeing the pink-and-orange chrysanthemums Miss Priddock was bringing on for Abby, Boris thrust them into Cathie’s rough red hands. ‘I zank you viz all my ’eart. I feel Rachel forge eve me at last.’

‘Well, you must be happy with that,’ said Abby, chucking down her baton and the Requiem score, as she and Boris finally returned to the conductor’s room.

‘No-one hackled, no-one booed,’ said Boris darkly. ‘Maybe I am not avant-garde any more, maybe I’m too predictable.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’

But the next moment, predictability and the avant-garde were forgotten, as Astrid, wearing a new lilac suit, no doubt bought with the proceeds of Viking’s moonlighting, barged into the conductor’s room without bothering to knock, straight into Boris’s arms.

After the première, George took a party out to dinner at the Old Bell. His guests included Abby, Julian and his lovely bosomy wife Luisa, Serena Westwood, head of Artists and Repertoire at Megagram who were recording the Requiem at the end of the month, Jack Rodway, the evening’s sponsor, who was a specialist in receiverships in a leading firm of accountants, and, representing the Arts Council, a caring beard called Gilbert Greenford and his ‘partner’, a folk-weave biddy called Gwynneth.

Having laid on limos to the Old Bell, George was extremely irritated to be lectured by Gwynneth all the way on the evils of air-conditioning in large petrol-swilling cars.

‘You ought to get a cycle,’ she stared beadily at George’s straining waistband, ‘Gilbert and I cycle everywhere, indeed Gilbert has had his cycle, Clara (after Clara Schumann, of course), since he was at Keble.’

It was clearly going to be difficult reconciling the middle-of-the road tastes of Serena Westwood, a single parent whose calm beautiful face was belied by a rapacious body, with those of Gilbert and Gwynneth from the Arts Council, who only liked the obscure and discordant, and of Jack Rodway, who had a penchant for Boléro because ‘it makes me feel right randy’.

To George’s further irritation, he arrived at the hotel to find a joyfully drunk Boris, who’d been on the red wine all day, had rolled up not only with Astrid, but also Marcus and Flora who was totally unsuitably dressed in sawn-off Black-Watch-tartan dungarees. George hadn’t spoken to Flora since she’d brought Marcus over to be impossibly rude to Peggy Parker at the sixtieth-birthday concert, but he had noticed her cool deadpan face among the violas, or more often the top of her red-gold head because her freckled nose was always in a book. He knew she was trouble.

Once the waiter had added another table, Boris, Marcus, Astrid and the Pallafacinis commandeered it, wanting to mull over the concert and talk musical shop. They had kept a place for Flora.

But determined Flora shouldn’t cause any more trouble and to keep her away from Gilbert and Gwynneth, George frogmarched her down the table into the seat nearest the window, with Jack Rodway next to her, hissing: ‘He’s paid for this evening, so bloody well be nice to him.’

Planning to put himself opposite her to keep an eye on her and at the same time talk business with Jack Rodway, George held out a seat for Serena Westwood, intending her to sit next to him, so they could discuss recordings for the RSO. But alas, a second later, ghastly Gwynneth had landed on the seat like a wet lump of potter’s clay.

‘I feel you and I should get to know each other, Mr Hungerford, and you sit on my left, Mr Brian-Knowles,’ she added archly to Miles, nearly giving him a black eye with one of her huge silver earrings, hanging like gongs on either side of her round, smug, pasty face.

Gwynneth had buck teeth, beady little dark eyes, a pepper-and-salt bun, and was also a great lard-mountain of self-importance as she was constantly fawned on by men who ran orchestras and ballet and opera companies who knew she had the power to slash their grants.

Seeing Flora gazing at Gwynneth in horror, George snapped at her not to stare. So Flora looked out of the window at the yellow willow spears falling into the dark river, and at the lights on the bridge silhouetted against the russet glow of the Rutminster sky.

On all sides, at other tables, ancient residents were ekeing out slices of cheddar and half-bottles of red, nudging each other because they recognized Abby. Some of them also recognized George from the local papers, because of the row he was having with the council over planning permission for the fifty acres on Cowslip Hill.

George certainly had a terrific effect on waiters, who had all converged on the table, handing over red velvet, tasselled menus, gabbling about Plats du Jour, and filling glasses, particularly Boris’s, whenever they were empty.

‘Penny for your forts,’ asked Jack Rodway, who’d been admiring Flora’s profile.

‘I was thinking,’ replied Flora with a sweet smile, ‘what an ugly cow that is opposite.’

‘Her “partner” Gilbert is worse,’ murmured Jack. ‘I sat next to ‘im on the drive down. Stinks like a pole cat.’

Flora giggled. ‘Obviously thinks avant-garde is more important than Right Guard.’

Jack looked blank for a second, then roared with laughter.

‘That’s right, Flora.’

Jack Rodway had dissipated blue eyes in a ruddy expensive face, wore a sharp navy-blue suit, and was such an alley cat that Flora expected to see furry pointed ears protruding through his thatch of blond hair.