Abby, with no score for reference, however, was still floundering, her gaudy orange suit making her all the more conspicuous. Towards the end of the movement she got completely lost again so Marcus, with amazing assurance, skipped a page, plunging straight in to the cadenza, so everyone knew where they were and could have some breathing space.
He had chosen Rachmaninov’s second cadenza which was far more demanding. Gradually, as he relaxed and the music he adored took over, he forgot everything else. His pale tortured face grew happy and peaceful. Listening to the melancholy torrents of sound, glittering like a waterfall in the moonlight, Flora ached at the beauty of it. Glancing round, she caught Viking looking straight at her, although he smiled, his eyes were as wet as her own.
Marcus held his breath as the cadenza drew to a close. Not having rehearsed it at all, would Abby know when to cue in the orchestra? He had to accompany brief, beautiful echoes from Peter Plumpton on the flute, then Simon, then Hilary and finally Viking and Quinton, but they all came in on the dot, and the movement finished more or less together.
In the intermezzo where Marcus interpreted the word pianissimo in a multitude of different ways, and in the heroic splendid finale, he grew and grew in stature. Beneath his racing fingers, the great dark Russian monster had become suddenly biddable, and was carrying him home as joyfully as Arion’s dolphin.
But it was a close-run thing. Marcus got an ecstatic reception, in part because he’d looked so vulnerable and terrified at the beginning and so handsome and touchingly amazed at the applause at the end. Most of the audience hadn’t a clue anything had gone wrong. But the orchestra had, and they cheered him to the leaking rooftops, rattling their bows, beating out a tantivy of approval on the shoulders of their cellos and basses.
Utterly distraught, Abby fled to her dressing-room refusing to return, so none of the soloists within the orchestra were raised to their feet for a special clap, which enraged Hilary.
‘Abby should have brought the wind up,’ she kept saying.
Marcus took five curtain calls and was just collapsing thankfully in his dressing-room when Noriko banged on the door.
‘Quick, quick, quick, Mr Brack,’ she cried enthusiastically, ‘come and pray again, the pubric are still crapping.’
Marcus was still laughing when he reached the middle of the stage and shook hands with a beaming Julian yet again.
‘You’ll have to give them an encore.’
‘But I haven’t practised anything.’
It would have seemed so presumptuous.
‘Just busk it,’ shouted Bill Thackery.
For a second, Marcus gazed at the ecstatic pink faces, their clapping hands growing pinker by the minute, luxuriating in the sound like waves rolling down the shingle. Then he sat down and played Schumann’s
Meanwhile George had had a wearying two days justifying his volte-face over Abby’s contract to various enraged members of the board including Miles, Mrs Parker, Canon Airlie, not to mention Gwynneth and Gilbert. Aware he would receive even more flak after tonight’s near debacle he went grimly into the conductor’s room to find Flora yelling at a sobbing Abby.
‘You’re just jealous because he’s got more talent than you, that’s what, and you can’t bear anyone to get ahead. After all Marcus has done for you. All that transcribing and simplifying and explaining those bloody great scores. Think of the times he’s lugged your clothes to the cleaners and cooked and cleaned up after you and fed your cats and polished your shoes and let you pinch his jerseys.’
‘You pinch his jerseys,’ wailed Abby,
‘I’ve known him longer, I’m allowed to. You wouldn’t have got a second foot on the rostrum without him, you stupid bitch, and you’re so fucking vain you had to jeopardize his big break conducting without a score.’
‘I know, I know.’
Alarmed he might not have a second half, George told Flora to pack it in and Abby to wash her face and pull herself together.
He then dragged Flora outside.
‘Nice to see someone else getting it in the neck,’ he said drily. ‘And that’s the “stupid bitch” you’re so determined to save.’
Flora blushed, then hastily changed the subject. ‘Didn’t Marcus play brilliantly?’
‘He had absolutely no choice,’ said George bleakly.
Somehow Abby managed to limp through Schubert’s
Then, speaking to no-one, cutting the sponsor’s reception again, she hurtled home to a deserted Woodbine Cottage.
Flora had gone out boozing with Cherub, Noriko and Davie Buckle. Marcus had been swept out to dinner by George, Miles and a manic Helen.
FORTY-SEVEN
Sitting next to Marcus at dinner, George fired off endless questions about Abby’s, Flora’s and Marcus’s plans for the future, then insisted that his chauffeur, known as Harve the Heavy, took him back to Woodbine Cottage.
‘You’re not driving with all that drink inside you. It’s not as if we’ve had to fork out for your room at the Old Bell.’ Then, affectionately ruffling Marcus’s hair, said, ‘You did bluddy well, lad, we’d have been right in it if you hadn’t come to Abby’s rescue.’
Marcus fought an insane drunken urge to collapse into George’s arms. He was so strong and solid and he had the same brusque gentleness, the almost patriarchal kindness that Marcus missed so much since Malise’s death. He couldn’t imagine why Flora and, until recently Abby, kept slagging him off.
Perhaps George was in love with Helen, Marcus thought wistfully. From Jake Lovell onwards, men had been particularly kind to him for just that reason. Marcus hoped not. George had promised to look at the RSO calendar and try and find him another date.
Slumped happily in the front of the Rolls, Marcus gabbled most uncharacteristically to Harve that Piggy Parker had booked him for a soiree in June, playing tunes like ‘
‘And Gwendolyn Chisledon wanted to know where Mr Hungerford was going to build his ghastly multiplex,’ went on Marcus. ‘When she heard it was on Cowslip Hill, she heaved a sigh of relief. “Oh, that’s all right, I thought it was
Harve grinned.
‘And Howie Denston rang me on George’s mobile in the middle of dinner and wants me to get into bed with him.’ Marcus giggled. ‘I do hope he means financially not sexually.’
‘Either way, if I may say so,’ said Harve, in his gravedigger’s drawl, ‘you’re going to be screwed.’
It was a beautiful clear night. Although the great beeches along the lake glittered with frost, the moonlight was bright enough to pick out the first pale primroses nestling in their roots.
Singing and laughter was coming from The Bordello; Marcus wished he could have dropped in. One of his best moments of the concerto had been Viking’s little horn solo in the middle movement; he’d just liked to have talked the concerto through with someone.
As he stumbled out of the car, Orion, his favourite constellation, was free falling into the poplar copse at the top of the wild-flower meadow. Mars, a gold butterfly, was being chased by Leo the Lion. The outside lamp was still on, transforming the leafless clematis over the front door into a scrunch-dried blond; but the cottage was in
