What he didn’t realize was that Abby had persuaded Charlton Handsome to slip a recording mike in front of him which also picked up the ecstatic cheering and shouts for more at the end.

‘That recording’ll be worth a fortune one day,’ murmured Julian.

‘Boy plays like an angel,’ George said proudly to Miles, ‘I’m right glad we booked him.’

Abby and Marcus left soon afterwards because she was flying back to Philadelphia first thing the following morning. As Flora and Viking tottered out arm in arm several hours later, they found Eldred on the H. P. Hall steps, weeping at the prospect of a wifeless Christmas.

‘I’m coming back to Woodbine Cottage on Boxing Day,’ Flora comforted him. ‘I’ll ring you, you must come and try our erratic cooking and Marcus, you and I can play chamber music. We could start off with the Mozart Trio.’

Flora only stopped crying over Eldred as Viking drove over Rutminster Bridge and pointed out a very drunk Davie Buckle hurling his turkey into the River Fleet, yelling: ‘Go on, you bastard, fly.’

Trying to creep in without turning on any lights, Flora and Viking knocked over an umbrella stand and fell over Abby’s cases already out on the landing. Abby pulled a pillow over her head in anguish. Would she ever sleep again?

It seemed only seconds later that she was woken up by horrifying screams. Wrapping her naked body in a towel, tiptoeing onto the landing, she could hear Viking saying, ‘It’s OK, sweetheart, I’m here, it’s OK.’

He sounded so tender and loving. Almost deranged with misery, Abby could hardly read her watch. Five-thirty. She had to leave for Heathrow in an hour, she might as well get up.

Tottering wearily downstairs, she found it was still dark. Rain was rattling against the windows, pounding away the last patches of snow on the lawn. As she filled up the kettle, she heard piteous mewing. Frightened away earlier by Nugent, but seeing a light on, Sibelius had jumped onto the ledge and was squashing his drenched fur against the window-pane.

‘Oh, poor baby.’ Abby opened the window and, whipping off her towel, began to dry him, crooning how much she was going to miss him, patting his piebald face, squeezing water out of his furry tail.

Only when he was purring and almost dry did she hear a wolf-whistle and whipped round. To her horror, lounging in the doorway, wearing only jeans and a highly amused smirk on his evil, debauched face was Viking. She had no idea how long he’d been there.

‘What in hell are you doing?’ she howled. ‘Ouch!’ she screamed as a terrified Sibelius dug his claws into her breasts.

‘I’ve just come down to make a cup of tea, Flora had a nightmare,’ said Viking.

‘Called Viking O’Neill,’ sobbed Abby.

Seizing her towel, crashing against the door to avoid touching him, she fled upstairs.

Poor Sibelius was mewing again, hoping for an early breakfast. Switching on the kettle, Viking picked him up. His face was expressionless, as burying it in the cat’s fur, he breathed in Abby’s scent.

Depressed that Abby seemed almost suicidal when he got up to wave her off, Marcus was cheered when the post brought a Christmas card from Taggie, containing three hundred pounds, smuggled out of her private account. But it didn’t make up for not hearing from Rupert, and Marcus was so cast down by an enchanting photograph in the Daily Express of Rupert, Taggie, Xav and Bianca arriving in Monhaut for a skiing Christmas, that Flora persuaded him to come home to Paradise and stay with her parents.

‘I shall be playing the referee’s whistle, so you can accompany me. We must drop off a bottle of whisky on the way for poor Eldred.’

Despite Viking ringing every day from Dublin, Flora was ashamed how thrilled she was to hear that Helen’s Christmas with Rannaldini’s ex-wives and brat-pack had been a disaster. She had never been gregarious, and Rannaldini’s endless sexual games had absolutely horrified her.

‘I could have told you Helen of Troilism wasn’t a viable proposition,’ quipped Flora.

Marcus was demented.

‘I should have gone out there to protect her.’

What Helen hadn’t told him was that for Christmas Rannaldini had given her a blank cheque to have her face, breasts and bottom lifted.

‘But you said in Prague you loved me as I am,’ sobbed Helen.

‘I did, and I know it will hurt dreadfully,’ purred Rannaldini, ‘but I want you to be even more beautiful.’

Also if Helen was confined to barracks recovering from surgery, it would give him more free time.

FORTY-FOUR


After their fortnight off the RSO sank into deep gloom. Life seemed to be summed up by Francis’s turkey which he had forgotten to take home and which was found in the band room under Nellie’s camisole top belching forth maggots.

Francis had other things on his mind. His house had been repossessed and he had moved into a council flat.

‘My children are on free dinners,’ he said wearily. ‘My milkman earns more than I do.’

Mary-the-mother-of-justin was horrified to find she was pregnant. Her husband had lost his smart job in television, and was at home looking after Justin and giving Mary a lot of grief.

Everyone except Carmine, Hilary and Juno had overspent at Christmas, couldn’t pay their bills and were chasing after fewer teaching jobs as the education departments slashed the music grants to colleges and schools.

Flora was delighted to have a letter from Eldred thanking her for the Christmas bottle of whisky, but worried that she got no answer when she kept ringing to invite him to supper. Finally police broke in on 4 January and found Eldred had been dead for a week from an overdose.

The empty bottle of whisky was at his feet, he was clutching his clarinet and the Mozart Trio, which he had obviously been planning to play with Flora and Marcus, was on the music-stand. The gramophone was still on — he had been listening to one of his old records.

‘If he hadn’t had his coffee black, people would have known from the milk bottles,’ sobbed Flora. ‘If I’d rung earlier I might have saved him.’

Everyone was too stunned and ashamed to oppose Hilary when she immediately applied for Eldred’s job of First Clarinet. She was soon busy auditioning candidates for Second Clarinet.

‘One should intercept them at the H.P. Hall gate,’ said Viking, ‘hissing: “escape while you can, don’t work with that bitch.”’

With her step-up to section leader, Hilary’s bossiness increased a thousand-fold. She was singing madrigals regularly with Miles, Gwynneth and Gilbert. Jogging round the Close with Miles kept her in good shape for running to him if there was any trouble.

The only good thing about Eldred’s death was that Abby and Flora made it up, united in their distress. Abby had already brought Flora some rosin, mixed with meteor dust, back from America as a Christmas present. Flora, more generous and much more guilty, had given Abby a scarlet cashmere polo-neck. She also tried to play down her raging and continuing affaire with Viking. Viking, as part of his ‘exorcize’ campaign, had given Flora a toy black sheep for Christmas called Rannaldini.

‘You’ve got to meet it head on, darling.’

Abby pretended she was no longer interested in Viking but, as a post-Christmas fitness regime, took to jogging round the lake. On her first Thursday back, her progress was impeded by the dustcart outside The Bordello. She nearly fell down a rabbit hole, as Viking hurtled out barefoot and just in jeans, his eyes swollen and practically closed with sleep, waving a twenty-pound note to persuade the dustmen to remove the battalions of empties.

As she jogged home, Abby could see Viking, Mr Nugent and all the dustmen across the lake, still standing outside The Bordello clutching beer cans and laughing uproariously. As a result Woodbine Cottage’s dustbins weren’t emptied until midday.

‘Viking’s teaching my lad the ’orn,’ boasted one of the dustmen. ‘He finks the world of Viking.’

‘His hobby seems to be ornithology,’ said Abby sourly.

The orchestra’s black gloom was not improved by increasingly sinister rumours of an intended merger between the CCO and the RSO flying around like seagulls above a plough. Cotchester Ballet Company, accompanied by the CCO, had been staging popular classics during the school-holidays and had pinched a large chunk of the RSO’s audience.