FIFTY-FOUR
No-one could find Hermione. There was no answer from her hotel room. Christopher Shepherd, her agent, supposedly on his way down from London, wasn’t answering his mobile. Fears grew that the great diva had actually carried out her threat and walked out.
‘Perhaps she’s playing Haydn-seek,’ giggled Clare.
‘Perhaps she’s been kidnapped,’ said Miles in alarm.
‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ muttered George. He was fed up with both Hermione and Rannaldini, neither of whom had stopped complaining. In the inside pocket of his blue-and-white striped seersucker jacket, bulky as a hidden gun, was one hundred thousand pounds in cash to be handed over to them before they emerged from their dressing-rooms tonight.
All the same, he was faced with a mega crisis. Fans in their thousands waving banners and wearing ‘I love Hermione’ T-shirts were pouring into the water meadows, unpacking lavish picnics. Close Encounters was doing a roaring trade in bottles of chilled champagne. Every seat in the stands was sold. Everyone living in the Close had turned their chairs round to watch from the windows.
Starlings making a din overhead scattered as the cathedral clock tolled seven. It was an hour to blast off.
‘Flora’s been studying the part with her singing teacher,’ said Julian. ‘She knows it backwards.’
‘And she’s got a beautiful voice,’ said Viking, who’d just rolled up looking innocent.
‘Flora has flu,’ said Miles beadily.
‘Came on very fast,’ said Hilary bitchily. ‘She was in the pub at lunch-time.’
Getting no answer on his mobile, George drove over to the cottage. The drought was in its fourth week. He had got the baking hot evening he’d prayed for.
The tractors raised clouds of dust as they chugged back and forth over the bleached fields. Collapsed goosegrass lay like brown dust sheets over bramble and nettles. As he turned the Mercedes up the rough track to Woodbine Cottage, George’s view was obscured by giant hogweed disappearing into the thick cloak of traveller’s joy. Next moment he’d gone slap into Flora and Trevor driving the other way. Flora was tear-stained and eating a Mars bar. Neither car was damaged badly. Grabbing Trevor, Flora tore back to the cottage. She was locking George out, when he put his foot in the door.
Expecting a bollocking, she was amazed when he asked her to go on in Hermione’s place.
‘Don’t be fatuous.’
‘Viking says you have a beautiful voice.’
‘Viking lied before he could talk.’
George shouted, then pleaded. She couldn’t let the RSO down.
‘Don’t pull that boy-scout number on me. Anyway I can’t go on. I look ghastly.’ Flora glared at herself in the hall mirror.
‘The make-up girls’ll patch you up,’ George was inside the cottage now.
‘And I’ve got nothing to wear. Although as I keep saying nothing’s very appropriate for Eve, why not provide fig leaves for me and Walter? Alphonso would need a rhubarb leaf,’ Flora was edging across the kitchen. ‘No prizes for guessing who’s going to play Satan.’ And with that she disappeared out through the back door.
George, who had once played wing forward for the West Riding, caught up with her, bringing her down with a fine tackle on the parched yellow lawn. For a second as they struggled he realized how thin she had become, and she discovered he was far less fat now than solid muscle.
‘Stop playing Jeremy Guscott,’ she hissed up into his battered Rotweiller face. ‘You’re not pretty enough.’
‘Ouch,’ yelled George as Trevor bit his ankle.
‘Well done Trev,’ Flora was temporarily ecstatic.
Looking down, George could see her eyes were the same smoky green as ash leaves on the turn.
‘Please, Flora, please,’ he rubbed his ankle.
For a second Flora pressed her head against his shoulder, then the tears spilled over.
‘Rannaldini won’t let me onto the platform.’
‘He’s got no option, come on, luv, we’ll all be behind you.’
‘You’re on top of me,’ grumbled Flora.
Her last defence was that she’d lost Foxie.
‘I’ll find him, go and get dressed.’
Abby’s cream silk shirt was miles too big and fell to just above Flora’s knees. She looked like a shepherd boy.
‘What about a skirt.’
‘I’ve only got minis.’
‘OK forget it.’
‘Why don’t you ramraid Parker’s, and get me a little spangled number?’
‘You look chumpion.’ George thrust Foxie into her arms.
Only the child lock stopped Flora jumping ship, first into the lake whose surface was suddenly darkened as a black cloud moved over the sun, then onto the burnt verges, particularly when she saw the huge crowds.
Overhead drifted a lilac-and-shocking-pink striped air balloon.
‘I’ve always longed to go up in one of them,’ moaned Flora, ‘particularly now.’
But the waiting make-up girls had fallen on her like vultures, drawing her into the cathedral chapter.
‘What kind of base would you like?’
‘Preferably one that sings in tune,’ said Flora.
She couldn’t study the score, because they were putting blue drops in her reddened eyes, and then making them up. She couldn’t reply to Walter’s and Alphonso’s rather hearty assurances of support because her lips were being painted. Passionately relieved they didn’t have to compete with Hermione, they were clearly apprehensive about being landed with an absolute lemon. Sweat was flowing in rivulets down Flora’s ribs, she was shaking violently, she knew Rannaldini would screw her up, not giving her time to breathe.
‘There, you look lovely, good luck, there’s so much goodwill for an understudy,’ chorused the make-up girls.
Outside George’s fingers closed on her wrist like a handcuff.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said in surprise.
‘I look like a tart in all this slap, Eve would have no need of an apple.’
‘How are zee buttieflowers?’ asked Alphonso, whose girth was winning the battle against his white waistcoat.
Leaving her in the warder care of Miles and Walter, George steeled himself to make an announcement. Christ, the crowd was enormous, all those excited faces suddenly becoming an ugly black sea of hostility.
‘I have to apologize for the ubsence of Dame Hermione, who I’m afraid is indisposed,’ George shouted over a rising surge of disapproval. ‘But I am happy to announce that a local lass has gallantly taken her place, Miss Flora Seymour, who is the daughter-’
‘Oh no, poor Mum,’ groaned Flora, appalled.
‘Is the daughter of Rutshire’s very own Georgie Maguire.’
The crowd wasn’t remotely mollified. There was a lot of booing and shouts of ‘Give us our money back’.
Miles knocked cautiously on Rannaldini’s door. He didn’t want a repeat of Alexei and the gala.
I’m going to faint, thought Flora.
Her heart was pounding her ribs, the inside of her knees were black and blue from knocking, her throat as dry as Miles’s drinks cupboard, she’d never be able to sing.
Out swept Rannaldini, his musky cloying scent nearly anaesthetizing her. She noticed his teeth were whiter than the gardenia in his buttonhole, as he smiled and clapped friendly hands on the shoulders of Alphonso and Walter.
