art.’
Flora had wanted to make him crawl, but she couldn’t help herself.
‘I love you,’ she whispered, clutching a huge bunch of copper roses to her breast.
Helen was distraught. That bloody girl, she’d always been after Rannaldini.
George who had read
Christopher Shepherd, who’d been delayed at the Barbican signing up a very pretty thirteen-year-old Chinese cellist, was not pleased to find a strange redhead singing the final chorus in Hermione’s place, and Shepherd Denston ten thousand pounds the lighter. He proceeded to jackboot about.
‘Where’s Dame Hermione?’
‘Never showed up,’ said George.
‘Dame Hermione has never been late in her life,’ thundered Christopher, quite untruthfully. ‘What in hell’s happened to her? She may have been kidnapped, right? Why didn’t you provide a body guard. Shepherd Denston will expect full compensation.’
Arriving at the Royale, however, Christopher and the other guests were relieved but somewhat startled to see Dame Hermione swinging like Guy the Gorilla from a rope of knotted sheets and duvet covers trying to find a foothold on the floodlit balcony of the Bridal Suite.
Unwilling to admit she’d been tied up and left by Viking and Blue, she had to fabricate a tale about being so upset about the ‘pausa’ row that she had locked herself into the wrong room without a telephone.
‘I couldn’t make anyone hear,’ she sobbed into Christopher’s manly chest.
‘Don’t worry, we’ll sue the hotel, and Rannaldini and the orchestra,’ Christopher glared at George, ‘for booking you into such a crumby joint.’
‘Bollocks,’ exploded George. ‘There’s absolutely no way we’re responsible. Every attempt was made to trace Dame Hermione.’
What a pompous prat, he decided.
Although Dame Hermione was hastily reassured by Christopher that she was insured against accident, her squawks increased when she discovered that Flora had stood in for her so triumphantly and, even more so, when she learnt Rannaldini and the little tramp had vanished.
Even more upset than either Hermione, Helen or Christopher, who was furious not to be able to sign Flora up, or Alphonso, who wanted to jump on her, or Walter, who wanted Marcus’s telephone number, was George. Totally abandoning his duties as host to an ever-willing Miles, in increasing despair he commuted between Rannaldini’s house in Paradise and Woodbine Cottage but both remained in darkness.
On a third visit to the cottage, which Flora in her haste had left unlocked, George collected a hysterical Trevor and took him back home.
At two o’clock the storm broke, the first clap of thunder sending the little dog shuddering into George’s arms.
George was still drinking whisky, stubbing out the umpteenth cigarette, listening to the thunder grumbling in the distance as though it had been evicted from the pub, when the doorbell jangled frantically and Flora staggered in.
There was an ugly bruise on her cheek. She was soaked to the skin. Abby’s shirt, ripped down the front, was almost transparent. She was clutching Foxie and shaking convulsively.
‘I can’t go back to the cottage in case Rannaldini follows me. Oh thank God, you’ve got Trev. You are kind.’ She gathered up the screaming excited little dog, whose scrabbling claws ripped Abby’s shirt even further. ‘Oh Angel, how could I have left you in this storm. Rannaldini has this horrible effect on me.’ Then she glanced up at George. ‘Please please don’t be cross with me. Can I have a bath?’
She must have slept with Rannaldini, thought George. The pain was horrifying, but he said of course, and poured her a large brandy.
When she came down wrapped in his huge green-and-blue striped dressing-gown, he gave her another brandy and put her in a leather armchair and turned on the gas logs.
‘I’m sorry,’ she sobbed, ‘I can’t talk about it,’ and then proceeded to do so for nearly two hours without stopping, telling him how Rannaldini had destroyed her.
‘He pursued me and pursued me and when I was sixteen, I didn’t fancy him at all, I was much keener on his son Wolfie, but finally I gave in and got totally hooked. Then he binned me like a mail-order shot because I said Boris was a brilliant conductor, and he promptly seduced Boris’s wife Rachel to punish Boris and me.’
‘I’ve behaved dreadfully badly,’ she went on in a whisper, ‘but I wanted to sleep with him one more time tonight, just so he could see how I’d improved — like the RSO — ’ tears were streaming down her blanched cheeks — ‘and I was so cross with you and Viking for forcing me to go on.’
‘I’m sorry,’ George shook his head, ‘but you were funtastic, ubsolutely woonderful. You saved the orchestra. None of us will ever be able to thank you enoof.’
‘I was lucky. Rannaldini was on my side for most of the evening. Anyway I thought you getting him in to conduct was all part of your plot to oust Abby, and infiltrate Rannaldini into the RSO.’
‘Happen it was,’ George looked faintly sheepish, ‘but not any more. Working with him at close range, I’ve realized what a shit he is.’
‘Bed wasn’t any good tonight.’ Dolefully Flora wiped her nose on the sleeve of George’s dressing-gown. ‘Now I feel empty, I’ve wanted him back for so long. But when he made love to me, I just felt dirty. We were in his tower.’
George touched the bruise on her cheek.
‘He do this.’
Flora nodded. ‘Because I didn’t want to make a night of it. But the scratches on my legs, those are brambles. I ran out on him through the wood, when I reached the road I hitched a lift.’
‘Christ, in that dress.’
‘I know it was crazy, I just felt if I got to you I’d be safe.’
A pale grey triangle between the curtains showed dawn was breaking, so George put her and Trevor to bed in a spare room with a hot-water bottle and a night-light.
Looking up at his tired turned-down eyes and squashed face, Flora decided he was more like a mastiff than a Rottweiler.
‘Why don’t you wear your glasses any more?’
‘They were only plain glass to intimidate people.’
Flora laughed drowsily. ‘Sorry, I screwed up your evening. I misjudged you — you’re a sweet guy.’
Closing the biggest deal had never given George such a lurch of happiness. He left her to fall asleep counting glow stars, but when he went in with a cup of tea at nine-thirty, she had fled again. The net curtains were flapping in the open window like a Dracula film. Perhaps Rannaldini had spirited her away. George was shocked at the wave of desolation that overwhelmed him.
FIFTY-FIVE
Flora didn’t become a star overnight, because she didn’t want to. She had seen what stardom had done to her parents’ marriage. Instead she told the journalists who clamoured for a story that she preferred to build her singing career slowly and stay with her friends in the orchestra.
‘What orchestra?’ snarled Dixie brandishing the
