‘Onotterably. She used to slide table mats onder my elbows in case I burnt the sheets.’
As Abby burst out laughing, Viking reached under his bed.
‘Here’s a present for you.’ He handed her his latest CD of the Brahms
‘Oh wow,’ said Abby in excitement. ‘Will you sign it for me, please write something lovely.’
As she ran a hand down his cheek, she could have grated Parmesan on the hard, emerging stubble.
‘I can’t help it, I just love you.’
He was about to kiss her, when there was a terrific hammering on the door.
‘Go away,’ shouted Abby.
‘Shot op,’ hissed Viking, putting fingers reeking of sex and
The hammering increased.
‘Must be Blue trying to get in — it is his room,’ protested Abby.
‘Who is it?’ she shouted.
‘Room shervish,’ said a voice.
‘We didn’t order anything, leave it,’ snarled Viking, tense as a roused Dobermann.
‘I could do with some more Dottch courage,’ teased Abby, ‘since you watered those flowers with my last lot.’ And wriggling out of his grasp, she wrapped herself in the blue shirt and fumbled with the door handle.
‘Don’t, for Chrissake,’ begged Viking, but it was too late.
At first she thought it was the Press, as the flashes of a dozen cameras blinded her. Then, in horror, she took in the muscular hairy legs below the straining black skirt of the waitress who was carrying the sliding magnum of Moet aloft. Behind her, leering and cheering in varying degrees of drunkenness, were most of the male members of her orchestra.
‘Who’s a clever Viking, then?’ shouted Randy.
‘Hooray for the lucky winner,’ cried Peter Plumpton, who was still wearing his upended bread basket.
‘Too much molestar-hic, too much molesta ar,’ cried a dripping Dirty Harry.
‘I’ve won more than you, Viking.’ An exuberant Dixie smugly patted his strawberry-blond wig. ‘I had a grand on you at three to one.’
‘Fock off the lot of you,’ howled Viking, yanking Abby back inside, ‘and leave os alone.’
A moment later, the crowd dispersed as a yelling regiment of policemen and soldiers, brandishing guns, stormed the landing.
Another moment later, there was a crack like a pistol shot as Abby drove her high heel through Brahms’s
Davie Buckle, having passed out behind the jacuzzi, had missed the arrival of the forces of law and order, but waking, had dragged a pair of underpants on over his trousers, and was now progressing noisily along the third floor.
Julian caught up with him outside Number 387.
‘Hallo there,’ he was saying to an enraged Spanish bureaucrat in a hairnet.
‘Come on, Davie.’ As Julian took his arm, Davie started walking away from him in little circles. ‘You’ve got to stop disturbing people.’
‘Got to find Abby.’
‘Not at four o’clock in the morning.’
Julian decided his own room was the nearest.
Once he’d thrown Davie on the bed, however, Davie started to fight.
‘Got to find Abby.’
‘I shall telephone Brunnhilde,’ said Julian sternly.
Davie looked owlish. He was terrified of Brunnhilde.
‘She’s in Rutminshter,’ he said sulkily, then brightening, added, ‘then I’ll telephone Luisa.’
‘Luisa doesn’t mind, she trusts me,’ said Julian, dropping five Redoxins into a tooth mug, and handing them to Davie.
‘You’ve got Beethoven
‘This isn’t Scotch,’ Davie looked into the tooth mug in outrage. ‘Someone’s pissed in this glass.’
Limping towards the window, he was about to chuck it into the street.
‘Drink it,’ ordered Julian.
A shattered George fell into bed at four o’clock in the morning after trying to unravel the endless red tape of flying Rodney’s body back to Lucerne. Having switched off his mobile, he was roused a few minutes later by his wife.
‘It’s Nicholas someone, he sounds put out,’ she added, as George took the house telephone from her.
Knickers was apoplectic. The orchestra were completely out of control, orgying and rioting in Abby’s jacuzzi which had overflowed and flooded the bridal suite below, where the President of some African state was having an illicit unbridal bonk. His bodyguards had gone beserk and called the troops out. Twenty members of the orchestra had been arrested and were now cooling their heels in Barcelona gaol.
‘Which members of the orchestra?’ asked George icily.
‘Dixie, Randy, Blue, Nellie, Ninion, Dimitri, Candy and Clare. Cherub escaped I think, Flora, I can’t remember exactly.’
The arrested players had never seen anything equal to the rage George had worked up by the time he’d driven the forty miles to Barcelona gaol.
He found most of his orchestra still plastered. Dimitri was crying because he couldn’t remember where he’d left his cello; Miss Parrott was hiccupping with her rhubarb-pink beehive askew and singing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’; Dixie, still in his black-and-white maid’s outfit, was being leered at by the guard; and Ninion, still necking ferociously, looked as though he was going to be sucked inside Fat Isobel like a minnow at any second.
Only by handing over hoards and hoards and hoards of greenbacks did George manage to spring them. The one saving grace was that none of them had got round — yet — to taking drugs.
‘Where’s Flora?’ snarled George, as the motley bunch swayed in front of him.
‘Oh, Flora wasn’t with us,’ said Nellie, who was wearing a Spanish policeman’s hat, ‘the poor thing had a migraine. She was crying with pain when I popped in around midnight.’
Only Blue, who had his hand in Cathie’s and was soberer than most, noticed that George suddenly cheered up, and the great thundercloud threatening to drench them all suddenly rolled away.
‘You better go back to the hotel and pack,’ he told them unsympathetically. ‘And get your baggage outside your doors. The coach leaves in an hour.’
Ignoring two wake-up calls, Barry the Bass was finally roused by a call from the leader of the orchestra who’d spent the rest of the night in an armchair.
‘It’s about Davie,’ said Julian apologetically.
‘Where did he end up?’
‘My room, eventually. He’s snoring so loudly, Brunnhilde will hear him in Rutminster, and I can’t wake him. He’s going to miss this goddamn roll-call.’
‘Give me five minutes.’
Barry the Bass, who was highly experienced in these matters, from his days in a rock band, kicked Davie in the ribs.
‘Get up, you drunken bastard.’
Davie groaned, but didn’t stir.
Deodorant sprayed into his face had no effect.
It was only when Barry seized the foot with the sprained ankle and twisted it round and round that Davie finally woke up.
The three made it outside just in time.
In the absence of Miles, Knickers begged George to inspect the troops. ‘And please, please chew them out. I simply can’t control them any more.’
Dawn was making flamingo-pink in-roads on the East as George walked slowly down the row. The Spaniards, he decided, could not have seen so many wrecks since the Armada. Flora looked frightful, her face
