Jilly Cooper - Appassionata

‘I shouldn’t be doing this,’ grumbled Flora as Jack aimed the remote control to open huge electric gates. ‘What happens if your wife rolls up?’

‘She’s in Italy,’ said Jack.

They seemed to get upstairs to the bedroom awfully quickly.

‘I’m glad you turned up at the party,’ gabbled Flora. ‘Things were a little flat, before Carmine tried to rape me.’

‘I’ll set you up in a little flat,’ Jack guided her into a bedroom out of a Laura Ashley catalogue.

‘I ought to clean my teeth,’ said Flora, as she collapsed onto a daisy-strewn counterpane. ‘I better fetch my smart new bag to match such a smart bedroom.’

‘Use my toothbrush,’ said Jack, pulling her to her feet. ‘Use anyfing in the bathroom, most of all, use me.’

Flora was woken by Jack marching in with black coffee, croissants and a large jug of Buck’s Fizz.

‘You’re a seriously nice man.’

Jack smirked.

‘And that is a really pretty view.’ Flora reared up in bed to admire a wood and white houses nesting in skewbald hills. People were already tobogganing. ‘And a lovely little village.’

‘Shame the bloody bells wike us up at twenty to eleven every Sunday morning.’

‘Help. Is that the time?’

‘You were very tired. I wish I could still crash out like that.’

Jack was wearing a white towelling dressing-gown and was obviously poised for a replay. He looked much older in daylight with his thatched hair pushed off his lined forehead.

‘Coincidence you going to Verona,’ he went on. ‘Have a Crusoe.’

Croissant’s the one word that always trips them up, Flora was appalled to find herself thinking, and said hastily, ‘I’ve never been to Verona.’

‘Come on, the label’s on your smart ‘old-all.’

Flora was downstairs in a flash. In the Louis Vuitton bag with the Verona label, she found several toots of cocaine, two very hard-porn mags, a year’s supply of condoms, ten grand in cash, some grey silk pyjamas, voluminous enough to make a parachute, Alphonso’s tails, his passport and his tickets to Verona on a plane that had left at eight o’clock that morning.

Flora went beserk.

‘He’s got Foxie,’ she sobbed. ‘I can’t move without Foxie, he’s been with me since I was a baby.’

She was on to Woodbine Cottage in even more of a flash.

‘Dirty stop-out,’ were Abby’s first words.

‘I’ve lost Foxie, and my lovely new case.’

It was several seconds before Abby could make herself heard.

‘It’s OK, Nellie’s got them.’

‘How on earth?’

‘She went back to the Cotchester Hilton with Alphonso.’

‘Omigod.’

Abby couldn’t stop laughing.

‘Nellie said Alphonso burrowed in his case for a line and a condom and discovered Foxie.’

‘Condomingo,’ said Flora, who was reeling with relief. ‘Poor Foxie, where’s he now?’

‘Alphonso gave him and your case to George.’

‘Oh de-ah,’ said Flora wearily, ‘he’s not going to be very happy. I’ve got Alphonso’s case here.’

George had not been able to keep his rendezvous with Dame Hermione. A man of sorrows, acquainted with a whole load of grief, he had instead spent the night with an increasingly hysterical Alphonso, who refused to let him call the police, because of the contents of the case, but insisted George ring every member of the orchestra, which was difficult when the snow had brought down so many telephone lines, to try and locate its whereabouts.

George really roared down the telephone at Flora.

‘Where the fuck have you been? Alphonso’s threatening to sue the orchestra, unless we get his case back and him on the evening plane. He’s got to fly to the States in the morning. I’ll send the helicopter for the case at once. Where are you?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘Then you’re fired.’

Flora put a sweating hand over the receiver.

‘Can you lend me the money for a taxi back to Rutminster?’

Grim-faced, Jack seized the telephone.

‘George, it’s Jack, Jack Rodway, Flora’s wiv me.’ Then, interrupting the torrent of abuse, snapped, ‘I don’t want the fuzz involved, Janice’d do her nut, and having seen the contents of Alphonso’s case, I can see why he don’t either. I’ll shunt Flora over to you as quick as possible.’

All Jack’s bonhomie had evaporated. He couldn’t wait to get Flora out of the house.

Beside Foxie, George had found a black dress, a pair of shoes, a sponge bag and the Selected Poems of Robert Browning, which he was flipping through, when Flora, very pale but defiant, arrived at his office.

‘How sad and bad and mad it was -

But then, how it was sweet,’ quoted George, throwing the book across the huge polished table. ‘Pretty sad, bad and mad, for a girl of your age to go to bed with a middle-aged roué like Jack Rodway.’

Watching Flora dive on Foxie, kissing him thankfully, he reflected bitterly on his missed night-cap with Hermione, who was off round the world already, who might have soothed his sad heart. He didn’t know if he would ever meet her again.

‘You’ll have to pay for Alphonso’s air ticket,’ he said harshly.

Flora was gathering up the rest of her belongings and chucking them into her case.

‘I’ll have to consult my lawyer,’ she said haughtily. ‘George Carman’s a friend of my mother’s.’

‘I’ll dock it off your salary then.’

‘I must have picked up Alphonso’s bag in the cathedral. It was all your fault — there was no band room for safe keeping, everything was jumbled together. I’m going to talk to Steve.’

Appealed to, the union decided management was in the wrong and Flora didn’t have to pay up, but Steve shook his head.

‘George hates anyone getting the better of him, Flora. I’m afraid you’re a marked woman from now on.’

The RSO were highly amused by the annexing both of Jack Rodway and Alphonso’s case, and sang, ‘Pack up your troubles in a new kit bag,’ each time an increasingly irritated Flora came into the hall.

Although secretly delighted that Flora had got off with someone other than Viking, Abby was currently far more preoccupied with the recording of Rachel’s Requiem. It was her first CD as a conductor and for the RSO, and she was determined to trounce the CCO in next October’s Gramophone Awards if it killed her. Thank God, Boris was too immersed in King Lear to come down and interfere.

‘I leave it in your capable fingers,’ he told Abby. ‘Today I write vonderful aria: “Blow vind and crack your chicks.”’

Both, however, reckoned without the wrath of Piggy Porker. She was not going to put one hundred thousand pounds into the RSO centenary year, starting on 1 January, and provide half the money for the Requiem and Sonny’s Interruption if a blasphemer was at the helm. Miles, Canon Airlie and Serena Woodward, now known as ‘Princess Grace of Megagram’, who was producing the record, all backed her up, and so did George, when he saw the cash sum involved. Boris must conduct the Requiem he had written. He was also cheap because he liked to keep the adrenalin going by recording pieces straight through without any retakes as though they were live, so there were never any overtime problems.

They had, however, all reckoned without Julian who, in a midnight meeting, threatened to resign if Abby were supplanted, and without Boris, who flatly refused to co-operate.

‘Fuck off Parson from Portlock,’ he shouted when Miles rang, ‘Eef I break off now, I will lose Lear; all the characters, all the music vill slip away, it is best theeng I ever write. I try to forget Rachel and Requiem. Anyway I can’t do this to Abby who is a good friend.’

Nor did he want hassle from Astrid, who was wildly jealous of Abby, Rachel and anything to do with Rutminster.

‘Are you prepared to pay back your advance, if the record is pulled?’ asked Miles coldly.

Boris, who had just bought a little Polo for Astrid, and had the cheque bounced on him, said he was not.

‘You’ve got two days to mug up on the Requiem,’ ordered Miles. ‘And please catch a train on Sunday night, so you’ll be on time on Monday morning.’

Instead Boris caught an early train on Monday morning. It was a tedious union rule that no more than twenty minutes of music could be recorded in a three-hour session. But if he could finish the Requiem which lasted an hour in a day, the RSO would still get paid for a three-hour session tomorrow morning, and could go Christmas shopping or have a lie-in instead, and he could belt back to Astrid on a fast train this evening.