Appassionata

Marcus told Abby how wretched Rupert had been after he gave up show jumping.

A lot of lunch was spent telling Abby how brilliantly she had conducted. Always boastful when she was unsure of new people, with her tongue loosened by unaccustomed drinking on a very empty stomach, she went into an orgy of name-dropping about the famous musicians who had, it seemed, either tried to screw her or screw up her career. Inevitably she eventually launched into a tirade against Rannaldini.

Flora let her run and, although she had downed most of a carafe of red by the time Abby had finished, no flush had invaded her pale cheeks.

‘Did you sleep with Rannaldini?’ she asked idly.

‘Certainly not,’ said Abby pompously. ‘He came between me and my art.’

Flora kneaded her bread into a pellet and lobbed it at the restaurant cat.

‘When I knew him he came between my legs. Whoops, sorry.’ Then, at Abby’s look of incredulity, continued: ‘I had an affaire with him when I was still at school.’

‘You gotta be joking. What happened?’

‘He dumped me, left me behind like an indifferent paperback in the folds of a hotel bed.’ Flora waved to the waiter to bring another carafe.

‘How long did it last?’

‘It’s a long, long time from May to September,’ sighed Flora. ‘Rannaldini’s so promiscuous, that being hopelessly, hopelessly hooked on him has all the exclusivity of a widow in the First World War, but it doesn’t seem to hurt any less; no safety in numbers.’ Her voice was getting faster and faster. ‘It’s like being alive in your coffin, but no-one hears you scrabbling to get out. I know he’s a shit, but not an hour passes when I don’t want him.’

She dropped her head like a broken daffodil, then the next moment had stubbed out her cigarette on Marcus’s untouched ratatouille.

‘Oh Christ, Markie, I’m sorry.’ Her head fell sideways onto his shoulder. As he put up a freckled right hand to stroke her cheek, she clutched it.

‘Heard the latest viola joke?’ said Marcus to cheer her up.

‘What?’

‘What d’you do with a dead viola player?’

‘What?’

‘Move him up a desk.’

Flora’s mouth lifted slightly.

Marcus had eaten, drunk and talked much less than the others. Occasionally his eyes met Abby’s and a shy, helpless smile drifted across his face. He was beautifully dressed in chinos, a dark brown cashmere sweater and a Prussian-blue shirt, which went perfectly with his dark red hair. When he removed his sweater Abby noticed he had a pianist’s physique: breadth of shoulder, arms grooved with muscle, and big hands that could stretch a tenth with ease. A gold signet ring bearing the Campbell-Black crest flashed on his left hand, as he practised on the table snatches of Chopin’s Grande Polonaise which he had to play in a college recital next week.

He’s very appealing, thought Abby, through a haze of wine. Perhaps I need a toyboy, particularly one who could simplify difficult repertoire by transcribing it for the piano. He also picked up the check.

‘I’ll pay you next week, it’s the end of the month,’ Flora called out as Marcus went over to the till. ‘I think I bought the whole of Jigsaw and HMV yesterday morning. Leave it,’ she said as Abby got out her purse, ‘Marcus gets a massive allowance from Rupert.’

‘How did you two meet?’

‘As I said we were at school together. I’d been drinking at lunchtime, comme toujours. I felt sick during a concert and threw up into Marcus’s trumpet. I think that was the moment Rannaldini fell, albeit temporarily, in love with me.’

Out of the window, a horse-chestnut tree, tawny against the palest blue sky, reminded Flora of the same great bell-like trees in Rannaldini’s park.

‘How was he really?’ she asked as she emptied Marcus’s untouched second glass of wine into her own.

‘Being upstaged by Marcus’s father. Rupert had flown out to sign me up for Declan O’Hara’s programme.’ Again Abby couldn’t resist boasting. ‘Rupert came on really strong; if I hadn’t been crazy about Christopher, we’d certainly have ended up in bed.’

‘I wouldn’t tell Marcus that,’ interrupted Flora sharply. ‘He’s bats about his stepmother.’

Abby jumped slightly as Marcus chucked three gold pound coins onto the red-and-white checked tablecloth. As he put a fiver alongside the pile of notes in his wallet, Abby saw a photograph of a very beautiful redhead.

‘Is that your partner?’ she asked archly. ‘D’you go for redheads?’

‘No, it’s my mother,’ said Marcus.

As it was four o’clock there was no point in going back to the Academy so, after Flora had rushed back to fetch her viola, which she’d left under the table, they tottered down the road to Madame Tussauds because Abby had never seen her own waxwork.

‘I went to see it as a pilgrimage my first day at college,’ confided Flora.

On the top floor, they discovered Rupert’s waxwork in red coat, breeches and brown topped boots, gazing moodily into space among the great sporting heroes.

‘Hi, Dad,’ said Marcus.

Ironically Rupert was next to Jake Lovell who was looking equally unfriendly.

‘Isn’t that the guy?’ asked Abby perplexed.

‘Who ran off with Marcus’s mother,’ said Flora, ‘who we don’t talk about in Rupert’s presence. I’m amazed they don’t come alive at night and throttle each other. Hi, Mum.’

There was Georgie Maguire with her long russet hair and sensual smiling face, clutching a microphone among the pop stars. Drifting into Classical Music, they ran slap into Hermione, mouth wide open in song.

‘Queen of the nightmare,’ stormed Flora, ‘ought to be in the chamberpot of horrors.’

Abby liked Flora more and more, particularly when she removed her chewing-gum and stuck it on Hermione’s nose and topped her dark curls with Marcus’s baseball cap.

‘Flor-ah,’ hissed Marcus, retrieving his baseball cap and looking nervously at an ancient dozing assistant.

‘Hope to God she doesn’t come to life like Hermione’s statue in The Winter’s Tale.’ Getting out a Pentel, Flora drew a big black moustache on Hermione’s upper lip.

Abby was clutching her sides and Flora was lighting an illicit cigarette. Then the temperature plummeted as though they had just stepped out of a plane in the Arctic Circle, and they found themselves confronting a fearsome, lifelike Rannaldini, brandishing his baton like a dirk. Everything was in place, the gardenia, the trained grey hair, the three inches of dazzling white cuff.

‘Waving his wand like the wicked fairy,’ said Flora stonily, ‘Good afternoon, Maestro.’ Drawing heavily on her cigarette, she shoved it between Rannaldini’s fingers.

‘If I was wearing a pin, we could stick it into him,’ said Abby.

By now their giggling had roused the attendant. Marcus hastily distracted him by asking where they could find Abigail Rosen’s waxwork. He’s got a beautiful voice, thought Abby, a bit like Prince Charles’s but with a slight break in it.

The attendant hadn’t recognized Abby and, after much head-scratching and consulting of lists, announced that her waxwork had been melted down because she wasn’t considered famous enough any more.

‘I flew too near the sun,’ said Abby tonelessly.

Once they got outside, she crumpled against Marcus.

‘I guess I’m an applause-junkie worse than Hermione,’ she sobbed into his shoulder. ‘I grumbled about the pressures at the time, OK? I complained endlessly about media intrusion, but I just can’t get used to not being famous any more, no fan mail, never being in the paper, not even the classical music press, and now this.’

The rush-hour traffic, crawling towards the Westway where a huge setting sun blazed like a stop sign, looked on fascinated. A trio of workmen crammed into the front of a blue van, seeing Abby so tall, slim and wide- shouldered in Marcus’s arms; lent out and shouted: ‘Fucking poofters.’

‘Fucking homophobes,’ shouted back Flora, making a V-sign.

‘It’s only because your agents have deliberately kept you out of the public eye,’ she comforted Abby. ‘Look