Appassionata

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.

One Tuesday in the middle of January, George summoned Abby to his office. He was in a bad mood anyway. An ancient sitting tenant was frustrating his attempts to convert four adjacent freeholds in Park Lane into a splendid office block which would retain the early nineteenth-century facade. When the old biddy rejected a cash offer, George moved the heavies in to frighten her, whereupon she had called up the Daily Mirror, who had chewed George out in a double-page spread that morning.

George pulled no punches therefore when he told Abby the orchestra’s deficit was the largest ever. To win the audiences back they must ‘cross over’ which meant programming Gershwin, Rodgers and Hammerstein and other non-classical music in the second half.

Abby was appalled.

‘We’re a symphony orchestra, for Chrissake.’

‘Not for much longer. It’s the only way we might survive. And I’m planning a huge gala centenary concert in May. I’ve already got feelers out for Dancer Maitland and Georgie Maguire.’

‘They’ll break the bank for starters. You know Georgie’s Flora’s mother?’

If George didn’t, he wasn’t going to admit it.

‘Can’t hold that against the poor woman,’ he said nastily. ‘Come in, Miles.’

Looking sanctimonious and disapproving, Miles sat down on a high-backed chair with his knees rammed together, and handed George some faxes. The first was a blank page from the Arts Council.

‘Is this supposed to be our next year’s grant?’ demanded George.

Miles smiled thinly.

‘The first page didn’t print out.’

The second page did and turned out to be a furious letter from Gilbert plus a photostat of a newspaper photograph of himself, Gwynneth, Peggy Parker and Sonny as portrayed by Dixie, Viking, Flora and Abby in the Christmas cabaret. Someone had obviously leaked it to the Rutminster Echo. The urn Viking was brandishing with ‘Clara’ written clearly on the side, had particularly offended Gilbert.

Just for a second George’s lips twitched, then he read on.

Now we know what your musicians think both of the Arts Council and their most generous patron. And when am I going to receive compensation for my cycle?

‘It was a bit of harmless fun,’ protested Abby.

‘Not harmless with next year’s grant about to be handed out,’ snapped George.

‘That bitch Hilary must have leaked it; she was taking photographs the whole time.’

‘Hilly wouldn’t do a thing like that,’ spluttered Miles. ‘Hilly only thinks of the good of the RSO, unlike some.’

‘Hilly’ now, thought Abby, they are getting thick.

Fortunately John Drummond chose that moment to seriously endanger a fifty-thousand-pound Perspex model of a neo-Tudor shopping precinct as he weaved round it. Landing with a thud on George’s knee, he started shredding Gilbert’s fax with his paws.

Abby burst out laughing, but was brought sharply back to earth by Miles, accusing her of taking no interest in the orchestra’s educational projects.

‘We must make musical excellence available to the widest possible audience,’ he added pompously.

‘As the last major educational project the RSO got involved in,’ snapped Abby, ‘was a search for Respighi’s Birds in the Forest of Dean, and Randy and Dixie and four schoolgirls vanished for over a week, I don’t figure this is feasible in January. They’d all die of hypothermia.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said George, wincing as Druramond’s claws punctured his pin-striped thighs.

‘Anyway I haven’t got the time,’ countered Abby, ‘I’ve got far too much repertoire to learn.’

‘If we switched to more popular fare,’ Miles cracked his fingers, ‘you’d know it already.’

‘And you could start,’ George added curtly, ‘by wasting less time with Flora Seymour — she’s a pernicious influence.’

George had not forgiven Flora for Alphonso’s case, Gilbert’s bike or the musical socks which had played ‘Jingle Bells’ when he’d absent-mindedly tugged them up during a crucial meeting with the Department of the Environment.

‘She’s not your greatest fan either,’ said Abby disloyally.

‘Well, she better watch her back.’

‘Rather hard,’ said Miles bitchily, ‘when she Spends so much time on it. Nor did she help matters by suggesting in her letter of apology to Gilbert Greenford that he should replace Clara with a Harley Davidson.’

Abby laughed.

‘It is not funny,’ said Miles primly. ‘And as Musical Director you ought to be seen to do more for charity.’

Abby lost her temper.

‘All my spare cash, OK, goes to the Cats Protection League, and I don’t mean old tabby cats either,’ Abby glared pointedly at Miles. ‘Get off my back both of you.’

All the Perspex models trembled and John Drummond shot up the brushed suede wall as she walked out slamming the door.

Cooling down, she wandered into the general office and learnt from the notice-board that the RSO were currently doing a project at St Clement’s Primary School. As there was no rehearsal that morning she decided to pop in on the way home.

She was not cheered, switching on the car radio, to hear Hugo playing the violin solo in Mozart’s SinJonia Concertante.

‘That was the CCO, one of our great little orchestras,’ said Henry Kelly.

‘Oh, shut up,’ said Abby.

It had been raining for days. The River Fleet had flooded its banks, St Clement’s playing-fields were under water, inhibiting outdoor activity, which probably explained the unholy din issuing from the building.

When the secretary directed her to a far-off classroom, however, Abby was flabbergasted to find Viking perched on the edge of a desk telling a group of enraptured eight year olds about the French horn. They were engaged in a project on Rutminster in the seventeenth century.

‘Charles, the King of England, spent a lot of time fighting,’ Viking was saying. ‘And in the end he had his head chopped off, probably because his hair was longer than mine.’

The children laughed.

‘But, on his day off, he often enjoyed a day’s hunting in the Blackmere Woods and used a horn to sommon