Passengers on the 7.05 to Rutminster were amazed to see the romantic-looking man with the upended Beethoven hair singing along to his frantic scribbling, covering an entire table for four with his papers.

‘With a Hey Ho, the vind and the rain,’ sang Boris.

He hadn’t bothered to look at the Requiem, and became so immersed in a possible baritone aria: ‘As flies to vanton boys, are we to the gods,’ that he forgot to get off at Rutminster, and only arrived at the recording studios, situated in a basement in the High Street, at quarter-past eleven.

Miles, who had to pay for the taxi, was hopping.

‘Who produce Requiem?’ Boris asked him sulkily.

‘Serena Westwood. She’s been waiting for you since half-past nine.’

Miles might well have poured petrol all over a smouldering Boris, who loathed being bossed about by women. Serena was as smilingly serene as her name, but Boris was convinced a barracuda lurked beneath her steel-grey wool dress. Abby at least was on the side of music and she and Boris could swear at each other in Russian.

Serena, who was now sitting in the control-room, had been immersed in the score all weekend. She had taken the precaution of providing paper cups in case Boris started smashing things. In front of her, at a mixing desk like a vast switchboard and being paid a fortune by the hour, sat Sammy, the recording engineer. Through a glass panel, they could both see a forest of microphones like silver-birch saplings. Around these were grouped the RSO, swelled today by numerous extras, who also had to be paid. Except for Hilary who was ostentatiously reading Villette, they had all done the crossword and read the latest instalment in the Royal Soap in their own and each other’s papers.

To irritate Flora, the Celtic Mafia were now exchanging viola jokes.

‘What’s the definition of a lady?’

‘Go on, Viking.’

‘A woman who can play the viola but doesn’t.’

‘Ha, ha, ha, ha.’

‘Once upon a time, Princess Diana met a frog,’ went on Viking. ‘The frog said, “If you give me a big kiss, ma’am, I’ll turn into a handsome viola player.” So Princess Diana put him in her pocket. “Whaddja do that for,” protested the frog. “You’ll be more use to me as a talking frog,” said Princess Diana.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ snarled Flora, over the howls of mirth.

Everything irritated her at the moment.

Over her right shoulder she was constantly aware of Viking’s coldness since she’d slept with Jack, and over her left she was equally conscious of Carmine’s venomous animosity.

It was also such a long time since the RSO had made a record, that for many of the players: Candy, Clare, Lincoln, Viking’s Fifth Horn, Jenny, Cherub, Flora and Noriko, this was a first experience, and they were all terrified. Recordings were for ever. Every wrong note, dropped mouthpiece or rustled page would be picked up.

The long wait was telling on everyone’s nerves, particularly as Julian, good as his word, had refused to participate without Abby, and had swept Luisa and the children off to a pantomime in London. Bill Thackery, although thrilled to have this big chance to lead the orchestra, couldn’t, as Viking pointed out, lead the winning dog up to get the obedience championship at Cruft’s.

Wandering into the studio, Boris apologized for being late, paused to change a couple of bars of ‘Blow Vind’, opened the score of the Requiem, then remembering he hadn’t called Astrid picked up the telephone on the rostrum and found himself connected to Serena.

‘We’re all waiting, Mr Levitsky,’ she said icily.

‘Vun moment,’ Boris shot out to the call-box in the passage.

He’d fix the RSO management for dragging him away in the middle of Lear, and there was his old enemy Viking reading the Racing Post and ringing his bookmaker. Thank God he’d given ‘Rachel’s Lament’ to Cathie Jones, although she wouldn’t be needed until tomorrow.

The red light was on, shining through the mist of cigarette smoke like a setting September sun.

‘The tape’s started, Boris,’ said Serena, on the talk-back that could be heard by the whole studio. She would only use the telephone on the rostrum for private abuse.

Raising his stick, Boris noticed how many bows and instruments were trembling and smiled reassuringly.

‘You are nervous, don’t be, forget the microphones, we are making music. Eef we make few mistakes it doesn’t matter.’

‘No-one will notice anyway,’ muttered Old Henry who loathed contemporary music.

How lovely to have Boris back, after Abby’s relentless exactitude, thought the RSO fondly. Boris always kept them on their toes; they never knew what he would do next.

Unfortunately this time Boris didn’t know either. He had totally underestimated the terrifying complexities of a work that suddenly seemed to have been written long ago by someone else. The first tutti was completely haywire, followed by two bars of silence, when the orchestra didn’t come in at all, except for a great tummy-rumble from Candy who’d been too nervous to have any breakfast, and who went bright scarlet, which sent all the rank-and-file viola players into fits of giggles.

This was followed by a dreadful crunch when Boris by mistake cued the horns into head-on collision with the trombones totally drowning a flute duet.

‘I don’t know what happened then,’ said Juno in a flustered voice, ‘I looked up at Boris.’

‘That was your first mistake,’ said Peter Plumpton grimly.

Serena glared down at the black tangle of notes like a front on the weather map, and picked up the telephone.

‘Let’s start again.’

But it was no better. Boris didn’t know when to bring anyone in, seemed unaware of colour, dynamics or tempo and was constantly behind the beat.

As his gestures grew wilder and more panicky, the level metres in the control-room kept bouncing off the top, leaving nothing in reserve for any big crescendo coming up.

Without Abby to hold it together or, at least, Julian to bring in other section leaders with great nods, the piece collapsed. Useless take followed utterly useless take.

‘Despite what anyone says,’ murmured Simon Painshaw to Ninion, ‘there is a difference between intended and unintended cacophony.’

The telephone rang constantly.

‘Serena’s trying to make a date with you, Boris,’ shouted Dixie, ‘very soft beds in the Old Bell.’

Boris growled back in Russian and retreated to the Old Bell for succour. He was very drunk when he returned after the break, but because the RSO had been taught the Requiem painstakingly by Abby, they struggled on to the end of ‘Dies Irae’.

‘Why isn’t Abby conducting this?’ grumbled Viking. ‘At this rate, we’ll be here till Boxing Day.’

Glumly the musicians watched the recording engineer dart in and shift a microphone towards Bill Thackery for the solo with which Julian had reduced everyone to tears at the première. It had been much too difficult for Lionel, and should have completely defeated Bill Thackery. But smilingly aware of opportunity knocking, he ploughed on, sublimely unaware that he sounded as though he was chainsawing through his grandmother’s wardrobe with Granny shrieking inside. Boris, however, was too drunk to notice.

In the lunch-hour, Francis the Good Loser, who had moved up to co-leader for the day and who had the sweetest nature in the orchestra, for once lost his temper.

‘How dare that tone-deaf nerd butcher such a beautiful solo?’ he stormed to Eldred, who cautiously agreed that Bill could have done with a drop of oil.

Alas the ‘tone-deaf nerd’ overheard them, retreated to the leader’s room in high dudgeon, and had to be coaxed out by Miles and Hilary. ‘Take no notice, Bill.’

‘Don’t listen to two such disgusting slobs.’

‘They’ve upset Bill, the nicest man in the orchestra,’ said Hilary as she flounced back to her seat.

‘And the worst bloody player,’ said Randy.

Serena was going up the wall, too. She had spent the lunch-hour in despair and on her mobile. She had a hundred other projects to look after and a small daughter, whom she’d been hoping to take to Toad of Toad Hall on Wednesday. Serena was ambitious. Apart from the cost of paying the musicians for extra sessions, she couldn’t afford to make a lousy record. They’d be lucky if they got five minutes in the can today.

Boris, drinking brandy out of a paper cup, was now slumped on one of the sleep-inducing squashy leather sofas at the back of the control-room. Damp patches met across the back of his dark red shirt. He was Lear on the blasted heath being ‘pussy-vipped’ by the elements.

‘I think because of Rachel’s death I block out Requiem.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Serena crossly, ‘you haven’t bothered to learn it. Now get back and finish this session.’

Miles was shuddering with disapproval. Knickers was very, very down. It would totally knock his budget on the head if he had to call in all those extras for additional sessions. How would they ever again be able to afford exciting projects like Fidelio and Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand to fire the public’s imagination.

Half an hour from the end of the afternoon, the RSO limped to the end of the ‘Benedictus’, and the section leaders crowded wearily into the control-room to listen to the play-back. Eldred, already suicidal at the prospect of a wifeless Christmas, was white and shaking because he hated rows. Dimitri, Simon and Peter Plumpton sat listening with heads bowed because they hated bad playing. Dixie and Carmine just hated each other. Jerry the Joker looked at Serena’s legs. Davie Buckle and Barry the Bass who had played jazz all night were asleep.