‘You should know,’ chorused the Celtic Mafia.
‘I said, on your own, First Horn.’
And Viking, who’d never been called First Horn in his life except by Rannaldini, retaliated by playing the solo from
Julian ran after her, but she wouldn’t talk to him. After last night she didn’t know who to trust, not even Flora, who’d been grinning like a jackass throughout the rehearsal.
Somehow, by the evening, fortified by a couple of beta-blockers, Abby had pulled herself together, and the applause, as always, even for a run-of-the-mill Beethoven’s
George sat in a box high above the orchestra. It was hard to tell who looked more frozen with misery, Viking or Cyril, for whom it was his last concert abroad, and who had been denied the great horn solo in the third movement.
But George couldn’t be bothered with other people’s problems tonight. And the moment Flora filed on with the other soloists, he never took his eyes off her, rejoicing in every note, as her piercing exquisite voice soared above everyone else’s, even when she joined in the chorus. Several times she smiled up at him and even made Foxie give him a wave. She has brought radiance to my life, thought George. Thank you, God, for giving me a second chance.
Having given her all to the ecstatic Toledo audience, Abby was on her knees. There had been too much going on to take in Rodney’s death. Now the shock was wearing off, and the pain beginning to hurt. Only to Rodney could she have confessed the agony and utter humiliation of having offered herself to Viking so totally and so trustingly, when all he was after was the macho gratification of winning some bet. She could imagine the guffaws, the sniggering, the slaps on the back.
‘What was the snooty cow like, Viking? What was she really like?’
And it had been so beautiful, so perfect, that was the pity of it.
She wanted to creep into bed and die, but George had to fly back for tomorrow’s RSO board meeting, so she had to take his place at dinner with the Toledo organizers.
Viking, probably for the first time in his career, didn’t go out on an end-of-tour razzle. He was utterly bewildered how depressed and ashamed of himself he felt. Abby had got under his skin and irritated him more than any woman he’d ever met. He had dreamt for so long of wiping the haughty expression off her face and reducing her to grovelling, pleading, adoring submission, and now he had, he loathed himself.
As leader of the pack, his street cred would have been utterly destroyed if he hadn’t won the bet. He also owed it to his backers. As the favourite, there had been a lot of money on him. Now he desperately wanted to explain to Abby that winning the bet had only been part of the incentive, and the actuality had been miraculous. He was certain if he and Abby had spent a week or so together unwatched by the lascivious or disapproving eyes of the orchestra, he could have fucked her out of his system and remained friends. Guilt was not a familiar emotion to Viking, and he didn’t think this time he’d be able to rid himself of it with a few Hail Maries.
He was also miserably aware that the three other people he loved and trusted — Flora, Julian and Blue — were absolutely furious with him.
‘You behaved abominably, Viking,’ Julian had shouted. ‘Rodney was just saying yesterday how you’d swung the RSO behind Abby. Now you’ve let him down. You’re as repulsive as Anatole in
Blue was even more upset. Cathie, having learnt about the bet, was refusing to have anything to do with him.
‘How could you men all hurt that lovely warm girl?’
Wandering wearily down the hotel landing, Viking could hear the sound of hair-dryers. Orchestra wives washing their hair to be pretty for their husbands tomorrow, leaving doors open so they could chat to one another. Mary, her hair in rollers, was finishing her sampler. One thing Viking hadn’t given Abby was ‘roots and wings’. God, he felt awful. Davie was asleep on a
‘Old age has yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all, but something ’ere the end
Some work of noble note, may yet be done.’
Viking had only just collapsed into bed wondering whether to ward off suicide or encourage sleep with a large whisky from the mini-bar, when Blue arrived and whispered that he’d finally persuaded Cathie to come back to the room with him.
‘I trapped her in the revolving doors so she couldn’t escape.’
‘Where’s Carmine?’
‘Enjoying a bonk with Nellie, since you bottled out. He left Cathie fast asleep in bed, having taken a Mogadon, or so he thinks.’
‘Bloody risky.’
‘Sure it is, we won’t have long, just bogger off and leave the coast clear.’
‘I won’t watch I promise,’ pleaded Viking, ‘I josst want to crash out.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ hissed Blue, ‘it’s my only chance. Please Viking, or Cathie’ll do a runner — she’s furious with you as it is.’
Wearily, Viking staggered upstairs, wrapped only in a towel, and dragging his duvet and a pillow. He was just banging on the Steel Elf’s door when the lift opened and out stepped Lord and Lady Leatherhead, Knickers and Hilary, all jolly from the official dinner. Trailing after them was a haunted, ghostly-pale Abby.
‘Abby, sweetheart, we mosst talk.’ Viking bounded forward, his only thought to comfort her.
Abby, who’d been on the Fundador on an utterly empty stomach, went beserk.
‘Get out of my life, you fucking son-of-a-bitch,’ she screamed, and slapped him really hard across the face.
With fatal timing, the door behind Viking opened to show the Steel Elf with her hair tied up in a pink bow and wearing a pretty rose-patterned nightgown.
‘Go back to your little prick-teaser, right?’ yelled Abby. ‘Let her put some more beer mats under your elbows, two grand’ll keep up her mortgage for at least six months.’ And with that she lashed her other hand back across Viking’s cheek, cutting it open with Marcus’s ruby.
Lord and Lady Leatherhead and Knickers looked on in horror; Hilary in delight, as Abby ran off down the landing to her suite, slamming the door behind her.
During the sex which took place between Blue and Cathie, which Cathie was far too frightened and ashamed of her body to enjoy, her make-up rubbed off to reveal a dark bruise below her left cheek-bone. She tried to cover up two more on her ribs.
Blue struggled to control his fury.
‘For poorer and poorer, for battered and even more battered, you’ve got to leave him, Cath.’
‘I can’t, I don’t believe in divorce.’
‘I wouldn’t believe in it either if you were married to me.’
Blue tried to kiss her but she jerked her head away. Only that morning Carmine had untruthfully told her her breath smelt, her bottom had dropped and her breasts were like drooping poached eggs.
‘I must go,’ she whispered, but, as she dived for her clothes, so he shouldn’t see her ugly body, Blue caught her wrist pulling her back.
‘I want to tell you a story.’
For a second, Cathie thought he was joking, but his clear blue eyes, the kindest in the world, were completely serious.
‘Once upon a time, there was a beautiful woman, married to a wicked philanderer who constantly diminished her and beat her op. But because she was a good Catholic, who wanted to go to Heaven, she stayed with him for fifty dreadful years.’
Cathie gave a sob.
