Having worked flat out in September and October, Abby was due for a break in November, and flew to America to see her mother. She spent most of the vacation locked in her bedroom familiarizing herself with the remaining Trapp-Mendelssohn repertoire and Rachel’s Requiem (which was now being recorded in December) — anything to avoid her mother’s constant moaning that Abby would never get off the shelf and provide her with grandchildren.

‘There must be some guy in your life, Abigail.’

For a second Abby’s thoughts flickered towards Viking, then sadly she admitted there was no-one.

November had been so mild, that as she was driven back from the airport, she noticed palest green hazel catkins already blending with the amber leaves still hanging from willow and blackthorn. It was a beautiful day. Reaching the H.P. Hall in the lunch-hour, she found Viking asleep under a horse-chestnut tree. He’d probably been up all night, moonlighting. Like some Victorian personification of autumn, his gold hair was spread out on the bleached grass, and his slumped yet still graceful body was almost entirely covered in kiteshaped orange leaves.

Happy days for him, thought Abby wistfully. Seeing an unusually angelic smile on his face, she was about to wake him. Then she noticed a piece of cardboard, cut in the shape of a tombstone, propped against his feet. On it someone had written:


Here lies Viking,

Very much to all our liking,

Who fucked himself to death.

With a howl of misery, Abby turned and ran inside.

Her mood was not improved when she learnt that George had axed the last two Trapp-Mendelssohn concerts and replaced them with lollipops, and that Megagram were now having cold feet about putting up the money for Rachel’s Requiem. This would be catastrophic for Boris, who had already spent all the advance.

At an emergency board meeting, Peggy Parker said she might bankroll the Requiem, but only if Sonny’s just completed Interruption Serenade could be used as a filler on the CD with a little picture of balding parrot-faced Sonny beside shaggy Boris on the sleeve. The plan was that the Requiem would be recorded in a studio, but the Interruption Serenade would be recorded live at its première just before Christmas, then Sonny could include as many interruptions as possible. Peggy Parker was not at all happy about Abby conducting either work, and after a few telephone calls to Serena Westwood at Megagram, who would still be marketing and distributing the record, felt she had discovered an ally and was biding her time.

Abby felt her authority ebbing away. Worse was to come. The RSO were due to play Messiah at the Cotchester Festival in December. At the last moment, Jason, the rackety owner of Macho Motors, ratted on his agreement to sponsor the performance. This was because he’d failed to get Abby into bed, and because the BBC wouldn’t allow one of his flash cars to be parked in the nave during the concert.

‘I can’t see why not,’ grumbled Flora. ‘Triumphal cars are always turning up in Milton’s religious poems.’

‘It’s a Ferrari, not a Triumph,’ said Marcus.

Abby was in no mood for jokes. As the concert was to be transmitted on Christmas Eve, it would be a ghastly humiliation if the RSO had to pull out through lack of funding.

They had only been invited to take part in the festival because Dame Edith, impressed by Abby’s début concert, had nagged the organizers. If they weren’t careful, their bitter rivals, the CCO, locked in mortal combat with the RSO for the same audiences, sponsors and subsidies from the Arts Council, would step into the breach.

As a final straw, that even more famous Dame, Hermione Harefield, whose single of ‘I Know that my Redeemer Liveth’ had sold over a million copies, had been booked as one of the soloists and would ‘Rejoice Greatly’ (which was on the flip side of the single) to see Abby so discomfited.

Abby was determined not to be beaten. As she had just received a large royalty cheque from the reissue of her early records, she blew the lot on a hefty insurance policy with Honesty Insurance in Rutminster High Street on condition that they sponsored Messiah.

Honesty Insurance drove a hard bargain. They wanted their slogan, ‘Honesty is the Best Policy’ on posters all over the cathedral as well as their name on the credits. The BBC refused. The deadlock was only broken when the Bishop of Cotchester, a pompous old fossil on the Venturer Board, agreed to mention the company and the slogan in his interval address.

Abby was livid George wasn’t more impressed by her White Knight gesture when she barged into his office to tell him the good news.

‘Honesty Insurance are a bunch of crooks,’ he said, only giving her half his attention because he was trying to sign his letters around a weaving, purring John Drummond.

‘They’ve given me this,’ Abby waved a cheque under George’s nose.

‘We better bank it at once. Jack Rodway says they’re about to go belly-oop. I hope you don’t lose out on that policy. You’d have done better to sponsor the concert yourself.’

Like most successful property developers, George believed only in using other people’s money. When he took over the RSO he had vowed never to give them a penny. He did, however, have a long-term crush on Dame Hermione. She was thirty-nine like him. He and Ruth, also an avid fan, had enjoyed many of her concerts, and worn out her famous LP of the Verdi Requiem. Hermione, like Ruth, was someone George thought of as a ‘real lady’. He would therefore have been prepared to bankroll Messiah and pay Hermione her vast fee, her first-class air fare and her bill at the Cotchester Hilton. Now, thank God, Abby had saved him the trouble.

To avoid her nagging him about rain pouring through the hall roof, he had swarmed off for a lunch-time meeting with Rutminster District Council.

‘Perhaps one of Mr Hungerford’s builders could put in a cheap tender,’ suggested Miss Priddock.

Abby laughed without humour: ‘There is nothing cheap nor tender about Mr Hungerford.’

After a long and obviously successful lunch, George was back wafting brandy fumes, chewing on a huge cigar, and making a nuisance of himself at the afternoon’s rehearsal.

‘You’ve got to keep Messiah moving,’ he told the orchestra. ‘Particularly in part two when there aren’t many good tunes, before the “Hallelujah Chorus” wakes the audience up, and you’ve got to really belt it out to be heard in a big cathedral.’

Abby lost her temper. ‘Just because you come from Huddersfield, it doesn’t mean you own the work.’

‘Nor do you,’ shouted Carmine, who was anxious to put Abby down and to ingratiate himself with George. ‘I don’t know what you’re doing conducting Messiah when it was your lot who crucified the poor sod in the first place.’

‘That’s out of order, Carmine,’ snapped Julian.

‘It was Handel’s descendants,’ yelled back Abby, ‘who sent six million of our lot to the gas chambers.’

‘Please, everyone,’ Julian broke the horrified silence. ‘George is right — Abby, Luisa and I visited the cathedral last week, it’s huge. I know you all know Messiah backwards, but the audience knows it backwards too, so we can’t afford to make mistakes.’

‘Aint it rarver like takin’ coals to Newcastle,’ said Barry, who was hugging his double bass to keep warm. ‘I fort it was the CCO who’d cornered the baroque market. They’re the ones always winnin’ prizes.’

‘That’s why our reputation’s on the line,’ said George.

Messiah requires a very small orchestra, just strings, bassoons, oboes, two trumpets, timps and a harpsichord. So it was a depleted and resentful bunch who boarded the coach in the bitter cold under a lowering mustard-yellow sky the following afternoon. They had all been refused rises and resented having to trail over to Cotchester for no extra money.

With no Eldred and Peter Plumpton, the bridge four was incomplete. With no Hilary and Lionel gone, Ninion and Militant Moll couldn’t sing madrigals on their own. Without Miss Parrott, Dimitri gloomily shared a back seat with his cello.

All the pretty girls, nervous of appearing on television, drooped because there was no Celtic Mafia, except Randy, who was now an item with Candy, to jolly things along. The only cheerful note was Flora running on at the last moment, clean hair flopping, handing out tabloids like an air hostess. All the orchestra, except Hilary, who pretended to despise gossip, were obsessed with the collapse of the Prince of Wales’s marriage and had divided themselves into pro-Charles and pro-Diana factions.

Now they fell on the latest update in ecstasy.

‘I fancy the Brigadier, such piercing blue eyes,’ sighed Nellie. ‘And that’s a lovely new hold-all, Flora,’ she added, glancing up from the Daily Express for a second, ‘Louis Vuitton, isn’t it?’

‘Clever you,’ Flora stroked the dark green leather proudly. ‘Abby was so ashamed of me turning up at gigs weighed down by carrier bags of knickers that she gave it me as an early Christmas present. I can hang my black dresses up in it, and there’s room for Foxie, sponge bags, books and things.’

‘Here, let me.’ To everyone’s amazement, Carmine leapt to his feet and put the hold-all and Flora’s viola case up on the rack.

‘Come and sit here,’ he ushered her into the window-seat beside him.

‘Gosh thanks,’ stammered Flora. ‘Have a Kit-Kat.’ Then because Carmine had to play ‘The Trumpet Shall Sound’ towards the end of the evening, asked ‘Aren’t you terrified about your solo?’