Appassionata

which God created the flowers and fruits, the horns had beautiful drifting bars of triplets.

Realizing Cyril’s trembling lip couldn’t produce a pure note, Rannaldini made him play over and over again on his own, finally suggesting Cyril replaced his French horn part with his P45. Cyril burst into tears. Mortified, the orchestra gazed at the floor. Julian clenched his fists, willing himself to speak out.

Viking was already in a bad temper. He hated the chorus resting their scores on his head, and ramming their big knees into his back. Seeing him lean over and pat Cyril’s heaving shoulders, Rannaldini realized there was a member of the orchestra still to torture.

‘Seven bars after ten, on your own, First Horn.’

Flawlessly the notes floated round the water meadows.

‘Again,’ yelled Rannaldini, ‘I want no hint of brassiness. You are not weeth the Black Dykes Band now.’

Viking played it again: perfectly.

‘You no understand.’ Rannaldini jumped down from the rostrum and picked up Julian’s fiddle. ‘Theese is how I want it.’ And he proceeded to play the phrase beautifully but with a slightly different emphasis.

Viking put down his horn and, strolling towards the rostrum, picked up Mary’s violin and repeated the phrase even more beautifully.

‘Now you play it on the horn, Maestro,’ he said insolently.

The orchestra grinned.

Rannaldini lost his temper.

‘Your section sound like donkey gelded with sceesors,’ he screamed.

On cue the sun had crept round the cathedral spire, gilding Viking’s blond mane.

‘With cheerful roaring, there stands the lion,’ muttered Clare to Candy. ‘Oh, go on, Viking.’

‘Are you speaking to me?’ drawled Viking.

‘What does eet look like?’ Tigerish, Rannaldini was poised to lash out.

‘Eeet looks awfully rude. Please don’t slag off my section like that, we are quite prepared to do anything you want, but only if you ask us nicely. Secondly the orchestra have now played for an hour and a half, I suggest you thank them and give them a break. Finally Cyril used to play in a horn section that was known as God’s Own Quartet. Frankly, you’re not fit to lick his boots.’

With Rannaldini’s screams ringing in his ears, Viking strolled off to Close Encounters which by special licence was open all day.

On his return, Rannaldini was still yelling in his dressing-room.

‘How dare you insult Maestro Rannaldini,’ spluttered Miles. ‘He says he never been spoken to like that in his life.’

‘What a good thing I was here to teach the little shit some manners.’

‘I didn’t know you played the violin,’ said Knickers reproachfully thinking of the times he had been short of a fiddler.

‘Indeed I do, Knickers, I’m Irish.’

By this time Hermione had arrived and was savaging her poor dresser. She had just been the subject of This is Your Life (who’d had an awful time finding people to be nice about her) and was also Artist of the Week on Radio Three, so you couldn’t escape the old bat, particularly if you were George. He had been excited and wildly flattered when Dame Hermione had asked if she could deal with him directly. He had never dreamt it would involve endless reversed-charged calls at four o’clock in the morning.

‘I’ve just remembered something else you can put in the programme about me, George. I’ve sung Susannah forty-eight times not forty-seven.’

And George had had to go back to the printers again because after ‘God Save the Queer’, he didn’t trust Jessica.

But Hermione still had numerous admirers. All the occupants of the Close had their binoculars trained on her heaving bosom as they pretended to do The Times crossword.

A besotted Gilbert had even shipped Gwynneth off to a crumhorn workshop in Bath for the afternoon and rolled up with her Red Riding Hood basket filled with aubergine rissoles and a bottle of parsnip wine. Hermione accepted a glass graciously, but unfortunately Gilbert had been pre-emptied. Always on the prowl for likely lads, Hermione had taken a shine to Viking. The shine was not reciprocated. For a start, Viking didn’t like her dismissive remarks about Abby.

‘Look how happy these musicians are to be playing once more under a great conductor,’ Hermione told him, as the entire RSO, who’d all felt the need for several strong drinks, filed grinning back from Close Encounters after the break.

Hermione then started bitching about her fellow soloists.

‘I don’t know why I’m working with such people.’

‘To make money, presumably,’ said Viking, emptying the last of Gilbert’s parsnip wine into her glass.

Seeing his mistress coffee-housing with Viking as he returned to the rostrum, the ‘great conductor’ decided not to appreciate her next aria.

‘Why you make a pausa on Top E.’

‘I always make a pausa there, Rannaldini.’

‘Eef Haydn had wanted a pausa, he would have written. He didn’t write, so we do not make.’

The screaming match that ensued shocked even moony Gilbert.

‘You seeng like a strangulated parrot.’

‘I won’t sing at all if you speak to me like that,’ squawked Hermione, certainly sounding like one, and stormed off the set.

‘Menopausa,’ grinned Viking and, as Rannaldini was yelling at the cellos, carried on an argument he and Blue were having about who had bonked the oldest women.

‘I’ve had lots in their seventies,’ said Viking airly. ‘And their daughters at the same time.’

‘Bet you can’t bonk Dim Hermione on her birthday.’

‘Indeed I can.’

‘How will you prove it?’

‘You can watch from the wardrobe. Just bring some rope.’

After the rehearsal, Viking sidled up to Hermione who was still foaming over the pausa, and suggested a drink at her hotel before the concert.

Orchestras and managements all over the world had discovered if you gave Hermione a less than perfect hotel on which to vent her spleen, she was less likely to be histrionic before a performance. The Rutminster Royale was a new and fearfully expensive high-rise barracks, half a mile outside Rutminster. When asked by Hermione to collect her key, Viking, with great aplomb, asked the dopey receptionist for the key to the room above, which even better, turned out to be unoccupied.

Having kissed Hermione with Celtic fervour in the lift up (during which time she had to clench her buttocks because Gilbert’s parsnip wine was making her fart like a drayhorse), Viking thrust her into the empty bedroom.

Enraptured by such youthful vigour, Hermione murmured she must freshen up. Telling Viking to open a bottle of ‘bubbly’ she disappeared into the bathroom giving him time to smuggle Blue and an old bell rope he’d found in the vestry into the wardrobe.

When Hermione emerged, grumbling she couldn’t find her sponge bag, Viking threw her on the bed, and produced Blue’s rope.

‘I thought you might like a spot of bondage.’

Hermione’s brown eyes glittered with excitement as he tied her to the bed post. Blue was laughing so much he fell out of the wardrobe.

‘A threesome,’ cried Hermione in excitement.

To Blue’s regret, Viking then stuffed a handkerchief into Hermione’s mouth, no-one was allowed to slag off Abby except himself, and hanging a ‘Do not Disturb’ sign on the door, he locked it, handing in the key as he and Blue left the building.