Appassionata

It was only when she got back to Rutminster, and passed the newsagent on the platform, that she realized there was no point getting a valentine card for Viking. Then she started to cry.

Viking was utterly angelic.

‘So, you’re not over Rannaldini?’

‘No, no, not at all. I’m so sorry, Viking. It’s like thinking you’ve zapped cancer, then discovering you’re only in remission. You’ve been so lovely to me.’

‘Let me go on being lovely, josst give it time, sweetheart.’ It was the nearest he got to begging.

‘We can’t, not if I’m still in love with Rannaldini. You’re too, well, decent to put up with half-measures.’

‘So young, and so untender’ said Viking bitterly.

‘So young, my lord, and true.’

Just to test Flora’s total immunity, Viking tried another tack. Why didn’t he mix business with pleasure by making a play for Jessica, George’s thick but stunning secretary?

‘Then I can lure her back to The Bordello for long lunches when George is away and you can raid the files and see what the dirty duo are really op to.’

Viking winced when Flora agreed listlessly, but without any display of jealousy, that this would be a very good idea.

‘But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,’ he said sadly, taking Flora’s hand.

He then went out and got drunk. He was far too proud to show it, but he was desperately unhappy for the first time in his life.

Valentine’s Day temporarily distracted the RSO from their gloom. Suddenly red envelopes were nesting like robins in pigeon holes. Still shell-shocked by her sighting of Rannaldini, Flora hardly noticed how many she received. Blue reeled round the band room in ecstasy, because he recognized Cathie’s writing on the envelope sending him a chocolate heart. Militant Moll ordered Ninion to put a valentine message in the Independent and left it lying around. Poor Fat Isobel sent three cards to herself to avoid humiliation. All Cyril’s week’s wages went on two dozen red roses for Miss Priddock. Miles smirked to get an unsigned jokey card from Brittlecombe, the village in which Hilary lived. Noriko was thrilled to have a valentine teddy bear holding a single red rose from Cherub. Dixie and Clare, Randy and Candy, Dimitri and Miss Parrott all went out to individual valentine dinners.

George Hungerford was distracted for ten minutes from the deficit while he opened his cards. All the management’s secretaries (including Miss Priddock, who had to think of John Drummond’s future) and most of the women musicians still harboured hopes of becoming the second Mrs Hungerford. Viking, who got twice as many cards, didn’t bother to open them. Jessica, George’s lovely secretary, however, was overwhelmed at lunch-time to receive a balloon in the shape of a pink heart bearing the words, ‘Hiya sexy’, rising out of two dozen pale pink roses accompanied by a card saying: ‘Love from Viking.’

Earlier in the day Jessica had been feeling a bit low. George had called her a blithering idiot for booking a pianist to play Bartok’s Second Piano Concerto rather than his First, which had been rehearsed by the orchestra — a mistake only discovered on the afternoon of the concert.

Viking reassured her it was the easiest of mistakes. He was so comforting the following day, after Jessica had another bollocking from George for passing ‘Drunks 6 p.m.’, on an invitation when it should have been ‘Drinks’, that she accepted a dinner invitation. During the evening Viking learnt that the confidential files were stored on microfilm in George’s office and handled by George’s London secretary who usually came down one day a week.

Acting dumb, Viking told Jessica he was only bog Irish and had never seen a really sophisticated computer system before. Over a bottle of Moet in Jessica’s office on the second date, he managed to persuade her, since she was so brilliant, to initiate him into its mysteries. Jessica was feeling low that day because George had bawled her out for typing ‘Piggy Porker’ on a place card.

Immensely flattered by Viking’s admiration, Jessica showed him how to find the Index which was called the file menu, how to locate the individual file one wanted and then how to print it out.

‘Of course, I’ve never looked at any of these files,’ she said. ‘They are far too secret, George would sack me.’

At a fleeting glance at the file menu, Viking couldn’t see any reference to Rannaldini, but during a steamy session, after Jessica had drunk seven-eighths of the Moet, he managed to elicit the password ‘Georgetown’ needed to enter the system.

‘But you must promish, promish not to tell anyone,’ whispered the delectable Jessica.

‘Georgetown,’ cried Viking in elation, as he entered her system.

Having stopped himself coming too soon, by studying the photographs of Mel Gibson and kittens and a poster calling for the banning of veal crates, Viking lay back afterwards playing ‘She loves me, she loves me not’, with the chewing-gum parked under Jessica’s desk. It came out: ‘She loves me not.’ Jessica was far prettier and had a far more beautiful body, but Viking was missing Flora so much it killed him. Somehow she had to be freed from Rannaldini’s evil spell.

In late February George went skiing. ‘No doubt to put another million in his Swiss bank account,’ said Flora sourly.

By coincidence, it was noticed Juno Meadows had taken the same week off. George was due back late Wednesday afternoon. In anticipation Miss Priddock took herself off to the hairdresser in her lunch-hour and Viking lured Jessica back to The Bordello for a long lunch leaving Flora free to raid the files.

Shaking with terror that she would trigger off an alarm or someone would come in, Flora locked herself into George’s office. It was rather like a sweet little village, with all those Perspex models with their balconies, loofah bay trees and Dinky cars outside the front door. Somehow, their cosiness blinded one to the tragedies behind their realization: the terrified old ladies, the threats of knee-capping, the flooded basements, the doors knocked out in the middle of the night.

The only jolly note was John Drummond fatly asleep in George’s out-tray and a bunch of Cyril’s yellow crocuses like a little gold sun on the big desk. Realizing what an ugly customer she was dealing with, Flora quailed. But, after all Viking’s hard work, she must be brave.

Turning on the computer, she was confronted with a screen as blank as Rannaldini’s face until the words ‘Enter Password’ came up. Her hands were trembling so much she had three goes before she managed to type in ‘Georgetown’.

Eureka! There was the main menu. Running hastily down through the files: ‘Office Accounts’, ‘Foreign tours’, ‘Salaries’, she came to the word ‘Private.’

Locating the ‘Private’ file menu she found far more exciting fare. She was tempted to stop and read the private detective’s report on George’s wife’s adultery or the details of various property fiddles: the Cotchester bypass, for example, was scheduled to go slap through Rupert’s estate. Serve him right for being such a sod to Marcus. Even more interesting would be the assessments on members of the RSO. Bloody hell, she couldn’t go through every file. She jumped nervously as John Drummond gave a great snore in his out-tray.

Looking back at the list of files she noted the innocuous words ‘Orchestra South’, scrolled the cursor down the page and double clicked to get into the file. Got it in one! With increasing moans of horror, she realized she had unearthed a fiendish plot to merge the Cotchester Chamber Orchestra with the RSO and form a new Southern Super Orchestra. Rannaldini had always been wildly jealous of Simon Rattle and longed for the same sort of set-up as the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna State Opera where the musical director had control of a pool of crack musicans who could be called on to play for either company.

As soon as Edith Spink retired later in the year, Rannaldini would take over as musical director of the CCO, Abby’s contract wouldn’t be renewed after March, nor would those of most of the RSO.

‘This is the only way we can hack out the dead wood,’ Rannaldini had written to George. The date was 5 January. Had Hermione introduced George to Rannaldini after Messiah?

Julian would be fired because he had defied Rannaldini in New York. Viking, Blue, Simon, Dimitri and Peter were among the few players who would join the new Super Orchestra. Between them George and Rannaldini would build it back to double strength with virtuoso players in every department. Running her eye down the list Flora saw