‘O day of wrath, O day of calamity,’ sang the front-desk cellist who’d nearly lost his Strad in Rannaldini’s flat the day before. ‘Bob’ll get lynched if Boris cocks it up.’
‘Boris is a good boy,’ said his neighbour, opening the score they were sharing.
‘And virtually inexperienced in public.’
‘We’ll be OK as long as we don’t look up.’
Larry Lockton was so enraged he had to rush to the bar for a quadruple whisky. In anticipation of massive popular demand, Catchitune had just put on a huge re-press of Harefield’s and Rannaldini’s legendary 1986 version.
‘The only thing that fucker can be relied on to do is to let one down. We’re leaving at the interval.’
‘There isn’t an interval,’ said Marigold, consulting her programme. ‘They keep going for ninety minutes without a break. Poor Boris. I wonder what’s happened to Hermione and Rannaldini.’
‘I hope it’s something serious,’ snarled Larry.
It was bang on seven-thirty. Boris tried to keep still, take deep breaths and make his mind a blank, but the butterflies inside him had turned into wild geese flapping around.
‘Good luck,’ said Bob. ‘And may God go with you,’ he whispered.
The promenaders scrambled to their feet. Boris fell up the stairs as he and the four soloists came on and had to be picked up by Monalisa Wilson, enormous and resplendent in flame-red chiffon.
‘I’m glad mega-Stalin is indisposed,’ she murmured to Boris. ‘He frightens the life out of me.’
Reluctant laughter swept the hall as she brushed the dust off his knees in a motherly fashion and straightened his tie.
‘We show eem, we do better wizout him,’ whispered Cecilia, who looked stunning, but more suited to sing in a night-club in clinging gold sequins. The boy’s very attractive, she thought, and comparatively untouched by human hand.
The biggest audience ever squeezed into the Albert Hall were bitterly disappointed, but they saw Boris’s deathly pallor and his youth and some of the
Standing on the rostrum, all Boris could see below the soaring organ pipes were rows and rows of men and women dressed in black — as if for his funeral. He saw the pearly skins of the drums and the gleaming brass who would play such a big part in the next ninety minutes. The bows of the string section were poised above their instruments.
Boris looked at them all solemnly and searchingly. The notes of the score seemed to swim before his eyes — 278 pages of decision making and complexity. Bending his dark head he kissed the first page and with a totally steady hand gave the upbeat. The whispering nightingales of the ‘Kyrie eleison’ can seldom have been slower or more hushed. Alas, some gunman took off down Kensington Gore after a shoot-out and soon a convoy of police cars, sirens wailing sforzando and hurtling after him, could all be heard within the hall, destroying the mood of veneration and snapping Boris’s concentration.
The first deafening crashes of the ‘Dies Irae’ were very ragged. Every hair of Boris’s black glossy head was drenched in sweat. The audience were beginning to exchange pained glances. Twice he lost his place, pages fluttering like a trapped butterfly, but like kindly trusty old Arthur with a nervous young rider, the London Met carried him until he found it again.
His stick technique was ungainly. When emotion overwhelmed him, he slowed down dangerously. In the ‘Recordare Jesu Pie’ when Cecilia and Monalisa sang their first exquisite, divinely complementary duet together, their voices chasing each other in arrows of light like fireflies, he was so moved that he took his stick in both hands and began loudly to sing along with them, until he remembered where he was, and then had to wipe his eyes. But slowly both orchestra, chorus and packed crowd responded to his passion and terrifying intensity.
Back in Paradise earlier in the evening, Lysander, sounding like Neptune at the bottom of the sea, had rung Georgie from his car.
‘I’ve really goofed this time,’ he said. ‘Rannaldini’s ducked out of the prom so Boris is going on in his place — Verdi’s Recreation or something. Rachel wanted to tape it on my machine, but it’s fucked and I was stupid enough to say I was coming to see you and before I knew it, Georgie, I said, why didn’t she come as well. I’m really sorry, I’ve screwed up Flora’s last night.’
‘It’s OK,’ Georgie stemmed the flow.
‘We’ll get a take-away. Rachel can have very dry vegetables,’ said Lysander, reeling in gratitude. ‘She’s seriously fierce, but basically if she’s watching Boris she won’t have too much time to bang on about unleaded pet- food.’
Rachel was even fiercer. Overwhelmed with envy for Georgie’s lovely house, her replete, indolent beauty and the obvious adoration of Lysander, only curbed by Flora’s presence, she was driven into a frenzy of disapproval. She was also overcome with nerves for Boris, furious at having to watch him in front of strangers, ashamed how jealous she felt that he rather than she should be given this massive break.
A quick drink on the terrace before the programme produced a storm of abuse because the overflow from Flora’s bath came splattering out on to the terrace and no-one did anything to save the water for the garden or even for washing the car. Trying to lighten things, Lysander said it was like Arthur peeing and then couldn’t stop laughing.
Georgie, who was wearing an old sundress and a yellow chiffon scarf to hide yet more lovebites, was taken aback by how pretty Rachel was. Like one of those girls the upper fourth have crushes on at school, she carried understatement to an art form. Tonight her unmade-up eyes were hidden by big spectacles and, with loose black trousers and padded shoulders on her long black cardigan, you had no idea what shape she was, but could only think how marvellous she’d look with everything off.
On the way into the drawing room and the television, Georgie made the mistake of showing her the new yellow-flowered paper in the dining room.
‘I wonder how many rain-forest trees were cut down to produce that,’ said Rachel coldly. ‘I prefer painted walls myself.’
Nor were matters improved when Flora wandered in with a huge vodka and tonic and wearing one of Guy’s shirts with all the buttons done up to hide her lovebites from her mother, and promptly lit a cigarette.
‘You shouldn’t be smoking at your age,’ snapped Rachel.
Having heard about Flora throwing up in Boris’s trumpet and remembering him saying how sexy and talented she was, she was not disposed to like her.
‘If I want to kill myself I should be allowed to,’ said Flora, kissing Lysander hallo.
‘It’s the harm you’re doing to everyone else’s lungs. Move dog,’ ordered Rachel, who wanted to sit on the sofa facing the television.
Dinsdale growled ominously.
‘I’m afraid he won’t,’ said Georgie apologetically.
‘The fleas are terrible, Mum,’ said Flora slapping her ankles. ‘Like dew leaping on the lawn.’
Very pointedly curling her long legs underneath her, Rachel sat in an armchair. Richard Baker was now telling viewers that Rannaldini and Hermione wouldn’t be appearing.
‘Why on earth d’you think Rannaldini cried off?’ asked Georgie, emptying the remains of a bottle of Muscadet into everyone’s glasses. Flora, who knew, couldn’t say anything.
‘Expect he had an offer he couldn’t refuse,’ remarked Rachel sourly. ‘Like some girl he hadn’t fucked before.’
Once in flow, she went on about Rannaldini’s promiscuity.
‘He was always trying to get me into bed, and he’s had Chloe, Boris’s present incumbent.’
Ultra-cool on the surface about Rannaldini, having enjoyed nearly a month in his company, Flora was now realizing how desperately she was going to miss him. Tired, and depressed that she hadn’t done any of her holiday work, she wondered how on earth she would put up with the restrictions of Bagley Hall; and now this stupid bitch wouldn’t stop slagging him off.
