Appassionata

FORTY-EIGHT

The next day Flora felt very flat after her sighting of Rannaldini, her rows with George and an inexplicable feeling of something going on between Abby and Marcus. She needed a male in her life.

Having bought an electric blanket she went off to the nearest NCDL kennels. The desperate barking, the pleading faces, the scrabbling paws saddened her immeasurably. Like the Anouilh heroine, how could she ever be happy while there was a single stray dog in the world? But in the end she chose the smallest, ugliest black-and-tan mongrel and called him Trevor. Trevor had been so bored in the kennels, he’d spent all day playing with his own shadow. Realizing his luck, he settled in immediately. Abby was livid when he treed both Scriabin and Sibelius, two chattering magpies up in the chestnut tree again, and then wolfed all their food.

‘He’ll be a partner in crime for that bloody Nugent.’

‘He’ll be a terrific guard dog,’ beamed Flora. ‘Lady Chisleden had a break-in while she was at the concert last night.’

Trevor was all of nine inches high and sulked dreadfully when Flora forgot to put on the electric blanket. Although he immediately found his way out through the cat door and went hunting, he howled if Flora left him behind, so she smuggled him into rehearsals and he guarded her coat and her viola case in the women’s changing- room.

George was not amused by the arrival of Trevor, particularly when he noisily chased John Drummond between two Perspex models on his first morning. Fortunately for Flora, George had been instantly distracted by devastating news: the Cotchester Chamber Orchestra blithely announcing they would be staging their own Opera Gala in the grounds of Cotchester Cathedral starring Rannaldini and Harefield. The main problem was they had picked the same Sunday in early May that the RSO were mounting their All-Star Centenary Gala.

This would wipe out the RSO’s audience. Georgie Maguire and an increasingly doubtful Dancer Maitland singing Rodgers and Hammerstein could hardly compete with the rerun of the most successful classical record of all time.

George made out he was furious. Flora, who still had the print-outs under her mattress, suspected he had tipped Rannaldini off about the date of the gala, in order to run the RSO into the ground. The Arts Council, increasingly dismayed by the popularizing of the RSO repertoire, were muttering openly about closing down one orchestra.

At the beginning of March, El Creepo and Simon Painshaw came to the end of their two-year term as orchestral members of the board. Few players were interested in replacing them, as hatred of the management had reached an all-time high. In the end Hilary and Bill Thackery put themselves forward. Hilary, the orchestra decided, wanted the chance to exchange meaningful glances with Miles. She was a dangerous bitch but Bill would balance her out. Bill was such a nice guy and he’d behaved so well over the re-recording in January of Rachel’s Requiem and Julian repossessing his violin solo, that everyone felt he deserved to be on the board. Bill would see them right.

Meanwhile as a thank you and twenty-second birthday present, Abby took Marcus to Covent Garden, where the Cossak-Russe, the most dazzling ballet company in the world, were dancing Le Corsair. Tickets had sold out months ago and more touts were hanging round the opera house than pigeons. But the principal soloist, the great Alexei Nemerovsky, known in the Press as ‘The Treat from Moscow’ was both an old friend of Boris’s and a long-time collector of Abby’s records and had sent her two tickets.

It was heaven to escape from the RSO and all its problems for an evening, thought Abby, as she and Marcus wandered hand in hand through the packed foyer. Marcus had retrieved her orange satin trouser suit from the waste-paper basket and persuaded her to wear it. She was gratified how many people recognized her and nudged their companions, but she noticed the eyes of both sexes then swivelled to Marcus and stayed there in admiration.

He was wearing a dark suit that had been made for him two years ago by Rupert’s tailor and a lilac-and- white striped shirt and a purple tie, which Flora had given him for his birthday. Success in the Rachmaninov had given him new confidence, he seemed to walk taller. He is a beauty, thought Abby proudly. They had made love constantly since that first night, and although Marcus still hadn’t got it up, he had given her a lot of pleasure, and was about to graduate (B.Clit) in the geography of female sexual anatomy.

‘It’ll happen,’ Abby kept telling him, ‘you mustn’t have a hang-up.’

‘More of a hang down,’ grumbled Marcus.

At least they could laugh about it and after a couple of glasses of champagne in the bar, they sat very close together in the dark warmth of the theatre, opening their scarlet programmes, watching the lit-up bald head and waving arms of the conductor, aware that the vast audience could hardly wait for the overture to be over so they could catch a first glimse of their god.

Nemerovsky was also known as the third ‘N’, because with Nijinsky and Nureyev he made up the triumvirate of greatest male dancers of all time. His leonine dark head, with the sliding black eyes, the cheek-bones at forty-five degrees and the huge pouting mouth, glared haughtily out from poster and programme.

Back swept the dark red velvet curtains, like labia minor, thought Marcus in his new knowledge. In delight the audience clapped the brilliant set, in which a heaving sailing ship filled with long-legged, wild-haired pirates was wrecked on a rocky shore. The tallest of the pirates, who was wearing a floppy white shirt, black knickerbockers and a red scarf round his forehead, was clearly hurt and was carried ashore by two of his comrades as the ship broke up in a mass of spray and crashing waves.

‘That’s Nemerovsky,’ whispered Abby, as the pirates took refuge behind a rock and a lot of scantily dressed maidens swarmed on and jumped about.

I’m not sure I like ballet, thought Marcus.

Then Nemerovsky recovered from his concussion and suddenly erupted on to the centre of the stage as glitteringly dominant and beautiful as Orion in the winter sky.

Nemerovsky’s leaps were legendary — gasp followed collective gasp as the Corsair seemed to fly through the air, to whirl like a dervish to rise and fizzle like a fire cracker, yet his stillness seemed to freeze audience and orchestra as long as he wanted — so that any spontaneous applause, that could have interrupted the action, also froze on people’s hands.

And watching him, Marcus was lost, totally shipwrecked. He even felt himself groan with despair as the cold, poisoned steel of Cupid’s arrow plunged deep into his heart, routing out any hope of heterosexuality. He realized he was only in love with Abby emotionally and had never really desired a human being before. He looked at Nemerovsky, remembering that Browning poem Flora was always quoting.

‘As one who awakes.

The past was a sleep

And his life began.’

Abby was in raptures, half in wonder for the conductor, who must be having a coronary controlling the orchestra in the face of such unpredictability, half-identifying with Nemerovsky’s star quality. She had once held audiences captive, had been the only one on stage they had looked at. She must, must go back to the violin.

‘He’s got a butt almost as beautiful as Viking’s,’ she whispered to Marcus.

Boris, who was still wrestling with King Lear, only made the last act. It seemed sacrilegious to leave a seat empty for so long.

Afterwards Abby, Marcus and Boris went on to dinner at the Ivy, where they were later joined by Alexei and Evgenia, his stunningly pretty, principal ballerina. The whole restaurant rose and cheered them as they came in, and it was immediately champagne on the dacha.

Boris and Alexei fell on each other’s necks. When, demanded Alexei, was Boris going to write a ballet for him? Marcus was in a complete daze which went unnoticed as the other four gabbled away in Russian. Alexei seemed far more taken with Abby than Evgenia. Occasionally his black eyes slid speculatively over Marcus, and when Marcus couldn’t eat a thing, Alexei calmly forked up his potatoes announcing he was starving.