The orchestra gave Abby a friendly round of applause. Artists in their own right, they were not overawed by soloists.
Rodney opened the score and raised his stick.
‘Now, please play together, boys and girls, or I won’t know where to put my beat.’
Abby’s knees would hardly hold her up in the long wait before she came in, but from her first note, magazines and books were put down, crosswords abandoned, tax returns set aside, and the musicians looked at each other in awe as the raw, sad sweetness pierced the tidal waves of orchestral sound.
‘Ravishing, my dear,’ Rodney called a halt, halfway through the first movement. ‘Brass dearies, it’d be nice if the diminuendo could be slightly more pronounced, i.e. shut up a bit.’
Then when a vital bassoon entry was missed: ‘Agonizing over ten across, dear boy, it’s Laocoon. I always have trouble spelling it, now you can concentrate on Brahms.’
Much of the rehearsal was spent telling them about Princess Diana, whom he’d sat next to last night, ‘such a charmer’, and nodding off on the rostrum while Abby and the orchestra played on regardless.
‘Which orchestra am I playing with?’ he asked, being woken by a particularly noisy tutti.
‘The CBSO, Maestro,’ said the leader grinning.
‘Ah yes. Now boys and girls, why are we so happy? Because Uncle Rodney’s in charge. Tiddle urn, tiddle urn, pom pom, it was together when I sang it.’
Rodney lifted his stick again.
He had the weirdest beat, very high and wavery like a slow drunken flash of lightning. The best maestros, like Rannaldini, had a distinct click at the bottom of the down beat, so the orchestra knew exactly when to come in. But when Rodney was on the rostrum, the leader gave a nod to start everyone off, but it was very discreet because the orchestra had such respect for him.
‘I may go to sleep in the cadenza,’ he warned Abby.
‘When shall we wake you up, Sir Rodney?’ asked the leader.
‘When you hear me snore.’
The orchestra were in stitches, but despite such jokes and the legendary blase-ness of musicians, they all stood up and cheered Abby at the end, and they were joined by people who’d crept into the seats all over the auditorium.
Abby burst into tears and fled to her dressing-room.
‘Rannaldini should be shot,’ said the leader furiously.
Rodney mopped Abby up over a cup of Earl Grey tea, insisting she have one of the sticky cream cakes he’d bought in white cardboard boxes for the entire orchestra.
‘Don’t worry about this evening, we will get ecstatic reviews, because you are breathtakingly beautiful, and because I am old and have a beard. What an easy way to eminence — to grow a beard. If you’re free, we might have a little supper after the concert.’
‘Won’t you be exhausted?’ Abby bit into a huge eclair.
‘Certainly not, I’ll have a good sleep during the Maxwell Davies which comes after the interval. I’m off home to Lucerne in the morning.’
Abby returned to the Hyatt Hotel and followed her usual routine, eating a small bowl of pasta for lunch, which gave her time if necessary to throw it up before the concert, a precaution she’d taken since bad fish had sabotaged her in Tel Aviv. She then lay down but didn’t sleep because she kept praying Christopher might call. An hour before she had to leave for the concert, she washed her hair, then warmed up for twenty minutes in her dressing-room, changing and making up during the overture which gave her as little time as possible to be nervous.
In defiance of Christopher she put on a very short sleeveless dress, covered in midnight-blue sequins, which glittered with every movement, and wore her hair loose but pulled off her face with a crimson bow. She also ringed her eyes with black eye-liner, but left off her mascara in case the Brahms made her cry again.
Rodney had the entire orchestra and the audience in fits of laughter when he waddled on to conduct the overture from
His jaw dropped ten minutes later when he popped in to collect Abby.
‘Dear God, child. What a smasher you are. I ought to wave a sword rather than a baton to drive them off.’
‘And you look great too,’ sighed Abby. ‘I love that black-and-silver cummerbund.’
‘Madame Harefield,’ said Rodney acidly. ‘Couldn’t think where I’d found one big enough. If that woman were bowling for England, we’d have no difficulty retaining the Ashes… Tiddle om pom pom. Don’t be nervous. Birmingham’s in for a treat.’
Although Rodney dozed off twice in the first movement, he managed to wake up and bring the orchestra in after the cadenza. The audience sat spellbound by the beauty of Abby’s sound and the sadness on her face. Abby always felt the last moments of the concerto were the saddest, as the Hungarian gypsy seemed to romp down the hill, her feet, coloured skirts, earrings and dark curls flying, then suddenly to break down like a mechanical toy, and as the whole orchestra went quiet, limp stumbling through the last two bars, before the three final thunderous chords.
Invariably when Abby played, there was a long stunned silence at the end, as though it were intrusive to interrupt such sorrow and depth of emotion. Then the audience went wild, breaking into deafening rioting applause. Rodney turned, his plump hands apart, his head on one side — ‘What can I say?’ — before enfolding her in a warm, scented bear-hug.
The audience, crazy for an encore, would have gone on clapping for ages. Abby longed to oblige them, then to unwind slowly, savouring her triumph. But Rosalie Brandon, having spent twenty-four hours humouring Hermione, was back in martinet form, waiting in Abby’s dressing-room.
‘You haven’t time for an encore, you’ve got to sign CDs in the foyer, and then I’ve arranged for an interview with the
Abby loathed Rosalie being present at interviews. It had been the same when she was a kid, and her mother had insisted on staying in the room when the doctor examined her.
‘I’m having supper with Sir Rodney,’ she said firmly, ‘Christopher never stops chewing me out for not brown-nosing conductors.’
Christopher’s right, thought Rosalie beadily, Abby was definitely getting above herself.
Rodney, steaming like a pink pig in the conductor’s room as he changed into a clean shirt for the second half, gave Abby a jaunty wave as she passed by on her way to the foyer.
‘See you later, Abbygator.’
SIX
Abby regarded Rodney as far too old and gay to try anything, so she was relieved when he suggested supper in the apartment in which the orchestra put up visiting conductors.
‘You’ve been stared at quite enough,’ he announced as he emerged from the conductor’s room, wearing a big black cloak and a beatle cap tipped rakishly over one eye. He was clutching a clanking carrier bag, ‘Just a few little extras from Tesco’s,’ and singing a snatch from
As they toddled across the square arm in arm, passing cafes, boutiques, pigeons huddling in the eaves and a glittering canal, the moon, slimmer than two days ago, but still sporting a rust halo, was sailing through silvery wisps of cloud.
‘Ring round the moon means trouble,’ sighed Rodney. ‘I do hope I don’t get a tax bill in the morning.’
The apartment was blissfully warm, with a gas log-fire which Rodney immediately turned on. Looking down from the moss-green walls were portraits of music’s giants: Alfred Brendel, Andre Previn, Rannaldini, Giulini, Jessye
