Appassionata

waking them with a cattle-prod when it was Natalia’s turn to play.

He had chosen Natalia’s first round pieces well. Liszt’s piano adaptation of Tristran, and a Chopin sonata with a funeral march middle movement reduced everyone to tears. Howie had already signed up Natalia, but he was soft-pedalling the connection, as he and Rannaldini didn’t want Benny to go into drunken orbit. A win from Natalia would be that much more impressive and dramatic if she beat an established talent like Benny’s.

Finally, there was Anatole, a moody handsome Russian, and a marvellous pianist. He was left handed, which made him very strong in the bass and gave his playing a wonderful thunder. His hair was the browny blond of newly laid parquet, and like most eastern bloc players, he wore cheap clothes: shiny brown trousers, plastic shoes and his freckled back could be seen through his thin nylon shirt. But nothing detracted from his eruptive presence. His deadpan face, deep husky voice and occasional bursts of temper reminded Marcus agonizingly of Alexei. Howie, who was gasping to sign him up, had nicknamed him the ‘Prince of Polyester’.

Anatole, like all the other Russians who’d entered, had been playing his first-and second-round repertoire and his chosen concerto in concert halls all round Siberia for the last six months. Although aware he would probably go back to Siberia for good if he didn’t win, Anatole was far more interested in winning the local pub talent competition.

All the contestants reacted to pressure in different ways. Some paced before they played, some took deep breaths or did yoga, others stared into space, some shook and sweated. Anatole kept throwing up, then lighting a cigarette immediately afterwards.

Marcus’s four-day wait would have been a torment if every day a fleet of cars hadn’t arrived to ferry the contestants either to the concert hall or to big houses in the area, where they were offered a grand piano on which to practise. Marcus was sent to a darling old lady called Mrs Bateson who’d been a friend of Thomas Beecham. Deciding Marcus needed fattening up, she baked wonderful cakes for him. All her family rolled up and listened whenever he played, but when they appeared at the hall to cheer him when his turn finally came, they had great difficulty getting seats. The place was packed with Press, chasing more copy on Rupert’s estranged son and Abby’s live-in lover.

Driven crackers by Helen’s moans about Natalia and Rannaldini, Marcus was almost relieved to get onto the platform, then started the Liszt B minor Sonata with an appalling crash of wrong notes.

Helen, Boris, Pablo Gonzales, Edith, Jennifer the labrador, Mrs Bateson and all her family gave a collective groan of dismay. Marcus, on the other hand, thought: sod it. He’d obviously blown it, so he might as well enjoy himself on this wonderful piano, whose tone was as soft and mellow as any burgundy covered in cobwebs in his father’s cellar.

Forgetting the audience, he continued to play the Liszt so beautifully that the entire hall was in floods. He then raced with all the insouciance of an Olympic skier, through Balakirev’s Oriental Fantasy, which because of its racing octaves and chords is supposed to be the hardest piece ever written. He then collapsed in a giggling heap the moment he left the platform.

‘I have never been so scared in my life.’

By this time, he had brought the hall to their feet. To his amazed delight, he went through to the last twenty-four.

The second round was even more of an ordeal for the judges, consisting of long fifty-minute recitals. If any of the candidates overran Lady Appleton was meant to ring a large bell, but was often too kind to do so. Many of the contestants, however, had complained of the soft muddy tone of the piano in the first round, so it was now replaced by one with a harder, brighter sound.

The first day of the second round was also Pablo Gonzales eightieth birthday. Thinking it was a learned work of discography, the big Ukrainian judge brought him a copy of the Guinness Book of Records. Pablo was henceforth so transfixed with interest that he did hardly any judging at all.

All the other jurors fought to sit next to him so they could wile away the tedious hours of Bach and Debussy, reading about the fattest dog, the largest elephant or the heaviest twins in history.

Meanwhile the Irish judge, nicknamed ‘Deirdre of the Drowned Sorrows’ by Dame Edith, was quietly getting through a good litre of red wine a day. Boris was getting through about the same, but was a little happier, having orchestrated a whole act of King Lear. The Chinese judge had reached Schumann’s first signs of madness on his laptop. Jennifer had put on half a stone eating digestive biscuits.

The ancient Latvian judge, who had promised to vote for Natalia after caballing in the pool with Rannaldini, had not fared so well, and was now in bed with a head cold, unlikely to make the final. Rannaldini was so enraged to have wasted so much time on her, and even crosser when a grinning Dame Edith suggested Jennifer should take the Latvian’s place, that he was reduced to bonking Hermione in the lunch-hour.

Once again Marcus was the last to play. This time his agonizing wait was extended because Natalia had insisted on finishing Liszt’s Dante Sonata, despite Lady Appleton’s bell, and then complained bitterly about the brittle tinny sound of the new piano. A piano tuner was subsequently summoned and, after laboriously checking the piano, announced it was in perfect order.

Marcus bore this out by dispatching the Bach Busoni Chaconne with exquisite clarity and warmth, making the allegedly brittle and tinny piano reverberate like an organ. The jury were entranced, particularly by the accompanying drumroll from a lunchless Hermione’s tummy.

‘Even such an intellectual piece becomes audience-friendly under his fingers,’ murmured Bruce Kennedy.

‘No-one looks better in a dark suit than Marcus,’ sighed Pablo.

The Bach was followed by Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata which was going splendidly until the middle of the slow movement, when Marcus pressed down the soft pedal for the first time to add a little colour. He then discovered to his horror that the pedal had jammed, and as a result only two out of the three strings were being struck in the treble.

He was so thrown he momentarily lost his place and ground to a halt. Throughout the rest of the slow movement, and the ravishing flowing rondo, which was why Marcus had chosen the Waldstein in the first place, he had to bash away like Benny in an attempt to be heard at all by the jury in the dress circle.

Convinced the piano had been got at, Marcus came off the platform in a white-hot rage and immediately complained to the waiting officials. This was regarded as dreadfully unsporting. Natalia kicking up about a tinny sound was quite different to accusations of sabotage. Back came the piano tuner huffing and puffing.

‘When instruments are out of tune in an orchestra,’ he grumbled, ‘everyone blames the musician, when a piano’s out of tune, everyone blames the tuner,’ and having taken the piano apart once more, proved there was nothing wrong with it.

Still utterly unconvinced, Marcus escaped from the uproar and the lurking Press and stormed round the town square until shortness of breath forced him to collapse onto a hard bench. Opposite, against a pinky-yellow evening sky, was the town hall, where he certainly wouldn’t be playing on Sunday.

‘I’m sorry, Alexei,’ he muttered almost in tears, ‘I’ve let you down.’

How could he possibly be a great artist who only belonged to the world, when he couldn’t even make the final of a piddling piano competition?

To his right was a statue of the first Lord Appleton, examining a roll of cloth and with bird lime all over his frock coat and top hat. What was the point of becoming famous anyway? The Press dumped on you when you were alive, and pigeons when you were dead.

‘Oh fuck, fuck, fuck,’ sighed Marcus.

Meanwhile the judges had retreated into the jurors’ room to select the last six, unimpeded by parents, teachers, agents and representatives from the various countries. The contestants had retreated to the bar. The consensus of opinion was that Marcus had blown it.

‘Although they always have a Brit in the last six to pull in the crowds,’ said Benny snidely.

Piano competitions, however, do not end with the presentation of the award and a cheque for twenty thousand pounds. Afterwards the winner is assured a couple of years’ engagements in the greatest concert halls of the world. In the past, winners had often had difficulty coping with this pressure. The reputation of the Appleton worldwide depended on choosing a winner who could.