Appassionata

darkness.

‘Thank you so much,’ said Marcus.

‘Pleasure sir, I am not a great lover of classical music but may I trouble you for your autograph. One day it will be something to show my grandchildren.’

‘Dum di-di dum di-di dum dum,’ sang Marcus.

His shadow was squat and black at his heels, reminiscent of one of Malise’s labradors. Had his stepfather from beyond the grave sent the dog to guard him on such a special evening?

Only after several fumbling attempts did he realize the door wasn’t locked.

‘I did it, I fucking did it.’ As he punched the air he nearly fell over Abby’s music case in the hall. Then he heard the sound of desperate sobbing and stumbled upstairs where, watched by two worried cats, Abby lay slumped on her four-poster. She was dressed in jeans and Marcus’s old black sweater with two holes in the elbows. She was utterly distraught to have let him down.

‘Flora’s right — I have always taken you for granted. I haven’t cleaned a pair of shoes since I moved in.’

‘But I l-like looking after you.’

Collapsing on the patchwork counterpane, he found himself stroking her hair, drenched with tears rather than sweat now, as thick and coarse as a pony’s mane. Outside he could see the lake gleaming silver and mysterious. Trailing his hand downwards, he patted her shuddering shoulders, which were hard and muscular from so many hours conducting. Her long legs reached to the bottom of the bed. She hadn’t bothered to shower after the concert and smelled disturbingly of dried sweat and Amarige. From their moonlit reflection in the long mirror opposite, they could have been two boys. Marcus took her in his arms.

‘Oh Christ, Abby, I’ve always loved you. From the moment you came loping up to the stage at the Academy.’

Her mouth tasted acid from fear, but as he kissed her he thought she would suck the tongue out of his mouth and was amazed by the leaping wolf-like passion of her response.

Apart from an ill-fated scuffle on the lawn with Boris she had been celibate since the trauma of Christopher three years ago. She had Marcus’s clothes off him in a trice, ripping off several shirt buttons, nearly garrotting him with his tie and jamming his zip in the process. Like quick silver she was all over him, blowing in his ears, running her fingers through his hair, nuzzling his neck. Then she moved downwards, slowly kissing each bumpy rib, burying her face in his taut belly, exclaiming in wonder at the greyhound grace of his body.

There was only one drawback. Marcus couldn’t get it up. Even when his cock was sucked into the warm dark wet cavern of Abby’s throat, it remained as soft and as innocent as a lamb’s tail.

Marcus was even more contrite than Abby had been about the Rachmaninov. Abby, however, was surprisingly understanding.

‘It doesn’t matter, you’ve had a skinful, OK, and you’re pooped. You know what Luisa Pellafacini says: “Before a concert Julian won’t, after the concert he can’t.”’

‘I feel such a wimp.’

‘You can still make me come.’ Abby put his hand between her legs.

‘I’m seriously sorry,’ Marcus muttered into her shoulder, ‘but I don’t know which doorbell to press.’

Raising his head, prising his face round towards hers, Abby could see him blushing the same blood-red in the moonlight as his hair.

‘But I thought you and Flora — surely at school? The way she wanders into the studio half-naked.’

Marcus shook his head.

‘We snogged once or twice but we know each other too well and always started to laugh. Oh Abby, darling, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I’m a virgin.’

‘You gotta be joking, with a father like Rupert.’

‘That’s the trouble,’ Marcus rolled over and buried his face in the pillow. ‘Everyone expects me to be a great macho super-stud like Dad, and I just bottle out.’

Then stammering frantically, almost crying, he told her about the night of Basil Baddingham’s stag-party. ‘Edith was there. She drunk everyone under the table,’ and his disastrous encounter with the tart, and the near-fatal asthma attack.

‘Every time I try and make it with a girl I see contempt in Dad’s face.’

Holding his shuddering rigid body in her arms, Abby was overwhelmed with tenderness.

‘That’s enough to put anyone off sex,’ she said indignantly, ‘and on top of that it’s a knee-jerk reaction to think you’ll choke again. What a son of a bitch, what a damn fool insensitive preppy asshole.’

‘He wants an heir,’ said Marcus wearily.

‘Now listen to me, right.’ Abby pulled the duvet up tucking it round his shivering body. ‘For starters you’re the prettiest guy I ever saw, sure you are, and tonight you were the most shit-scared. I never saw stage-fright like that. I know what guts it took even to get onto the platform, OK? But in the end you showed everyone you’re made of steel. You were the superman, you saved us.

‘I love you, Marcus,’ her voice broke. ‘It’s just hit me like one of George’s bulldozers, and if we love each other we only need time. I’ll get you going, there are so many tricks.’

Marcus’s shivering became a quiver of pleasure as she ran her fingers lingeringly along the cleft between his buttocks.

‘All women,’ she went on half-mockingly, ‘want to marry a virgin so they can mould him exactly the way they want.’

‘Perhaps Barbara Cartland will make me the hero of one of her novels.’

‘You’re my hero anyway. George never stops nagging me to get involved in educational projects. Teaching you about sex is far more rewarding than relating Respighi’s Birds to the Blackmere Woods.’

As Marcus started to laugh, Abby took his hand, first moving it over her acorn-hard nipples, then burying it in her wiry dark pubic hair.

‘Under the fold you can feel a little nipple, that’s the clit, now lick your middle finger and stroke it, very gently, a mild pizzicato, right? Now slide a finger down and inside me in and out, deeper and deeper, testing for wetness, that’s lovely, now back to the clit again.’

It was rather like being taught fingering by his old music mistress, thought Marcus hazily. Any minute he expected Abby to tell him to use the long fingers for the black notes, and not to turn his whole hand, when he moved the thumb under.

‘Oh, wow,’ murmured Abby happily, ‘long fingers aren’t just good for tenths, I’m nearly there.’

He expected her to scream, shout and thrash about, and was alarmed he’d done something wrong when her body suddenly arched, stiffened, trembled violently all over and seemed to stop breathing.

‘Abby, are you OK?’

‘Heavenly.’ Her body slumped, but inside he could feel her melting and throbbing. ‘You’re a genius. You made me come.’

‘Truly — I thought it would be so noisy.’

‘When it’s real, it’s the quietest thing on earth. I love you.’

She fell asleep at once. Marcus lay awake stunned by the evening’s developments, reliving all the mistakes he’d made, particularly at the beginning of the Rachmaninov, luxuriating in the memory of the applause, and the kind things people had said. He hardly dared think how miraculously it would sort out his problems if he got it together with Abby.

I’m straight, I’m straight, he made a thumbs-up sign to his reflection in the mirror. All the same, like some lovely little restaurant you stumble on in the Dordogne when you’re pissed, he wondered if he’d ever be able to find the clitoris again. Perhaps Abby would let him bring a magnifying glass into lessons.

The next day, he had great difficulty keeping his newly straight face when he went back to H.P. Hall to collect his car, and was greeted by an overjoyed Noriko, waving a newspaper.

‘Mr Black, Mr Black.’ At last she’d got her ‘L’s’ right. ‘Have you seen your wonderful clit in Lutminster Echo?’

The Rutshire Butcher had reviewed the encore not the concerto, and written of ‘Marcus Black’s exquisite control and beauty of tone, unhindered by orchestra or conductor.’