Appassionata

edged her stool up the keyboard, until Marcus was sitting on the window-sill.

Then, when he had showed her some fingering, she had put her other hand over his, imprisoning it and murmuring: ‘My mother used to know your father. She said he was seriously wicked.’

‘I’m just seriously boring,’ said Marcus apologetically, turning his head so her kiss fell on his jawbone.

As she was leaving, she gave him a biography of Rachmaninov and a bottle of Moet.

‘See you next term. I’m going to get a terrific suntan skiing.’

He hadn’t the heart to tell her that her scent gave him asthma. Why hadn’t he kissed her back? She’d been so pretty. What would it have mattered?

Yesterday he had given a Chopin and Liszt recital at an up-market girls’ day-school, and afterwards signed two hundred autographs.

‘You wouldn’t like a job teaching music, Mr Black?’ the headmistress had asked skittishly. ‘I’m sure you’d cure our truancy problem overnight.’

Then she had given him a fee of seventy-five pounds.

There was no way he could pay the rent or for the Stein way, and buy presents for Abby and Flora. The cottage bills were horrific; Flora left lights and fires on all the time, and neither she nor Abby thought anything of ringing long distance for hours.

Marcus’s studio was freezing, but except when he had pupils, he tried to put on four jerseys instead of the heating. As if to save him electricity, the falling snow was lighting the room, thickening branch and twig, filling up the winter jasmine curling inside the lank skeins of traveller’s joy. He put the biography of Rachmaninov in the bookshelf, above the rows of CDs, tapes and scores.

The most charitable way you could describe the studio inside was minimalist: as little clutter as possible to attract the dust mites that caused his asthma. There were no carpets on the bare boards. The only furniture was the Steinway, two piano-stools and the bed. On the walls, apart from the bookshelf, hung only the Munnings of Pylon Peggoty, his grandfather’s grey, given to him by Rupert.

His asthma had been particularly bad since The Messiah. After spending the night with Monica and Edith, his homesickness had been so great that he had driven out to Penscombe, and from the top road had watched Rupert, who used to bobsleigh, hurtling down the fields on a toboggan. In front of him sat Xavier, squealing with joy. A pack of excited dogs followed them, the yelling and barking echoing round the white valley as everything sparkled in the sunshine beneath a delphinium-blue sky.

Then Rupert had taken Xav’s hand, and led him and the toboggan back up the hill to help Taggie and Bianca, a dash of colour in a scarlet skiing suit, make a snowman on the lawn in front of the house. Marcus had slumped against the steering-wheel — ‘I’ve failed him, I’ve failed him,’ — and, in utter despair, had driven home.

Now he was going to fail Rupert again by selling the Munnings. He could imagine the letter arriving from Sotheby’s. ‘We’ve just got in a painting that might interest you,’ and his father’s lip curling when he saw the polaroid.

But the only thing in the pipeline was a concert at Ilkley which would cost him as much in petrol as the fee. Oh God, when would he get a break? He was trying to learn one of Liszt’s Mephisto Waltzes, but as he sat down at the piano, his fingers were too stiff and frozen to master the diabolical twists and turns, which reminded him of Rannaldini. Helen was pressuring him to join them both for Christmas. Marcus would rather stay in bed without food or heating.

It was half a minute before he realized the telephone was ringing; he only just got there.

‘This is Miles Brian-Knowles,’ said a prim, fastidious voice.

‘Sorry, I was miles away,’ stammered Marcus, which wasn’t a good start. Miles probably needed a babysitter.

Instead he said the RSO had been badly let down by Benny Basanovich.

‘Says he’s got flu, diplomatic, I imagine. It’s a short piece, only six minutes and quite honestly there’s so much din going on, the odd wrong note won’t matter. It’s Sonny Parker’s Interruption Suite. We’re recording it live. I wondered if you’d be interested?’

‘I’ll do it,’ Marcus was desperate to accept before Miles changed his mind, or remembered Marcus had once been so rude to Peggy Parker.

‘Is a thousand pounds enough?’

‘More than.’ In passionate relief, Marcus’s head dropped onto the top of the piano. ‘You’ve saved my life.’

‘I’m afraid there’s no time for an orchestral rehearsal, but if you make your way over to the hall, I can give you the score and a practice room.’

‘Oh thank you, thank you, Father Christmas has arrived a week early.’

Miles was touched.

‘It’s a pleasure. I wish all transactions were as easy.’

In her pigeon hole that evening, Flora found a bunch of white roses.

Darling Flora, said the accompanying note. Just apologizing in advance for my appalling behaviour later on this evening, Love Viking.

Flora gave a whoop of ecstasy. Dancing down the passage singing Bolero, she went slap into George Hungerford.

‘Why the bloody hell don’t you look where you’re going?’

‘Dum de-de-de. De-de, de-de, de-de dum, de-de-de,’ sang Flora, weaving round him into the women’s changing-room, where, to Clare, Candy, Nellie, Mary, Hilary and Juno’s irritation, she fought for once just as fiercely, as they did, for a space in front of the communal mirror.

‘You don’t normally wear make-up,’ said Juno accusingly.

‘You look really, really pretty,’ said Clare in amazement.

Flora broke open the cellophane with her teeth and handed her new eye-liner to Nellie.

‘Can you paint it on — my hands are shaking too much.’

‘Why are you suddenly so nervous?’ demanded Hilary.

‘Because my mate, Marcus, is making his debut.’

‘That is one hell of a sassy dress,’ said Candy in wonder, as Flora slithered into a knee-length satin shift, only held up by two ribbon straps.

‘You can’t wear that, or those,’ spluttered Hilary, as Flora tucked her hair into a black velvet toggle and slotted in two of Viking’s white roses.

‘Mais, bien sur,’ Flora wrapped a black silky mantilla round her shoulders, ‘particularly as we’re playing Bolero.’ And clacking her fingers like castanets, she danced out into the passage.

‘What has got into her?’ asked a shocked Juno.

Sonny’s Interruption, a grisly one-note job for orchestra, piano, burglar-alarm, fax, telephone bleeper, railway train, back-firing car, pneumatic drill, coughing, snoring, rustling and lavatory chain, was to be recorded after the interval and before Bolero and the singing of carols. Sonny had diverted most of the brass section to the Ladies’ lavatory to provide a flushing chorus. Cherub and the percussion section had gone beserk in rehearsal, imitating the various sounds.

Having plink-plonked his way through the piano part several times in his dressing-room, Marcus decided he couldn’t be nervous about something quite so silly — particularly when Sonny strutted in to give last-minute advice, wearing a collarless scarlet tunic, white silk trousers, red satin slippers and a white-and-red scarf round his ponytail.

‘Hallo, Marcus Black,’ he said in his reedy voice. ‘You must not be daunted by the complexities. Mozart appeared complex, too. Like my work, the beauty, richness and depth bewildered his first listeners.’

He then suggested Marcus ran through the solo, paddling away with suggested fingering, and shoving his bony pelvis so hard into Marcus’s back, Marcus nearly elbowed him in the groin.

Fortunately Flora barged in to wish Marcus luck.

Sonny was livid.

‘I told Miles — no interruptions.’

‘But the work is all about interruptions. Shall I go out, and come in and interrupt again to get you both in the mood?’