how deliriously excited everyone was today. Once the Press twig you’re the new Karajan, they’ll never leave you alone.’
‘And that’s as bad a nightmare,’ wailed Abby. ‘And I miss my Strad. It’s now being played by a bitch called Maria Kusak. I know she won’t look after it.’
‘I expect she’ll leave it in restaurants like I do,’ said Flora, as they rustled through plane leaves unhinged by the day’s great heat. ‘Now we could go to the Planetarium which would put everything in perspective and make us realize how infinitely trivial our lives are, but unfortunately it’s just shut, so we’re going to take you to meet a very glamorous Russian conductor.’
‘All Russian conductors are drunk and incompetent,’ said Abby ungratefully.
‘Boris is often very drunk but he’s a good conductor,’ said Marcus.
‘And a lot of people unaccountably think he’s a terrific composer,’ added Flora, reflecting that it couldn’t have been good for Abby’s ego, that all the people pouring out of offices stared at Marcus rather than at her.
But Abby had stopped in her tracks.
‘Are you talking about Boris Levitsky who married Rachel Grant?’
Flora nodded.
‘That’s weird.’ Abby was really agitated. ‘I read a piece about Rachel’s suicide. It really influenced me, right, that she could drive off a cliff, because she’d caught Boris cheating on her. After I cut my wrist,’ Abby’s voice broke, ‘I wanted to write to Boris and tell him I was sure Rachel didn’t mean to kill herself. It was just a crazy gesture to wipe out the hurt, with an even greater hurt, anything to make the pain go away.’
‘Tell Boris that, I’m sure it would comfort him,’ said Marcus.
‘Boris was very well known in Russia when I was at the Moscow Conservatoire,’ sniffed Abby later, as Marcus edged the Aston Martin through the traffic. ‘We all went to his concerts. It was a great scandal when he fell in love with Rachel and defected to the West. She was a marvellous player.’
‘I wasn’t a fan of hers,’ said Flora with rare coldness. ‘She was an awful bitch. You couldn’t blame Boris for straying. He used to be one of Rannaldini’s assistant conductors, and Rachel so detested the influence Rannaldini had on him that she had an
‘But I thought Boris and Rachel were reconciled,’ protested Abby.
‘They were,’ said Flora, ‘but Rannaldini and Boris were after the same job, running the New World Symphony Orchestra in New York. Boris looked as though he was going to get it. He was young, brilliant and back with Rachel.
‘We can’t stop here.’
‘We’ll have to stop somewhere. Boris’ll have drunk any drink he’s got. Boris was shattered by Rachel’s death,’ Flora turned back to Abby. ‘Particularly because she left him two young children to bring up. Not a great aid to composition. Despite such set-backs, Boris has had loads of women since Rachel died, men get over these things much more quickly than women, because they’re in a buyer’s market, but he still misses Rachel and feels dreadfully guilty about her. People are always giving him money to write things, then he doesn’t deliver. The Rutminster Symphony Orchestra commissioned a requiem to Rachel more than two years ago. An old duck called Sir Rodney Mackintosh-’
‘I’m his protegee,’ said Abby sniffily, ‘I’ve only been stopping at his house for the past two and a half years.’
I can’t be expected to know her entire c.v., thought Flora irritated.
‘Rodney’s so darling,’ added Abby possessively.
‘Darling,’ agreed Flora. ‘So you probably know Rodney felt sorry for Boris, but again Boris has failed to deliver. Every time he picks up his chewed pencil he thinks about Rachel, starts crying and has to have another huge glass of red wine, and the RSO have to keep rescheduling.’
‘Boris was a great conductor,’ mused Abby.
‘But not especially focused. He’s going out with some big boobed Bratislavian bassoonist tonight. So Marcus and I said we’d babysit.’
ELEVEN
‘Don’t mention Rannaldini,’ muttered Flora as, clinking bottles in time to the clanking of the ancient lift, they slowly climbed to the sixth floor, ‘or Boris will foam at the mouth.’
Boris was already foaming at the mouth. Hardly concealing his manhood with a Ninja Turtle face towel, he was waving a toothbrush instead of a baton. Having opened the front door, he dived into a nearby bathroom to spit out the toothpaste. He had just had a bath and was trying to dry a pair of boxer shorts with a hair-dryer.
Despite a sallow skin, deep-set eyes almost entirely concealed by puffiness, dark hair like an unclipped poodle and a chunky, rugger player’s body, there was an undeniable Byronic smoulder about Boris.
Abby took one look at him, realized she was half an inch taller, kicked off her shoes and bolted to the 100 to repair her smudged eyeliner and even put on some lipgloss.
Boris took one look at Abby and decided to give the Bratislavian bassoonist a miss. He and Abby were soon gabbling in Russian about their Moscow days.
‘What have you got for us to drink?’ asked Flora.
‘I cannot drink, I am on vagon.’ Then Boris saw the bottles Flora was taking out of an Oddbins carrier bag, ‘Oh vell, perhaps I am not.’
Abby was even unfazed by the messiest living-room ever. It was very Russian with crimson and scarlet furniture and gold icons on the midnight-blue walls, but every chair was piled high with clothes. The grand piano buckled under scores, covered in drink rings, and upended silver photograph frames. The dark red velvet cloth on the big table could hardly be seen for hamburger boxes and bottles wafting stale remnants of drink. On the bookshelves were half-eaten apples, overflowing ashtrays, tapes and CDs out of their cases.
While the entire family obviously chucked their shoes and boots in one corner, the rest of the floor was littered with orange peel, pencil sharpenings, tissues and crumpled-up pieces of manuscript paper.
‘Oh Boris, you are a slut,’ sighed Flora. ‘Where are the children — hidden under the rubble?’
‘I forget to tell — the kids, they stay with friends.’
‘Good thing, they’ll get bubonic plague if they stay here.’
Flora removed a curling ham sandwich from the mantelpiece.
‘When did you last eat?’
‘I verk since midnight last night,’ said Boris proudly. ‘Nearly twenty hours.’
While Flora chided, Marcus, who was more practical, had found a black dustbin bag in the kitchen and now settled down to clear up the mess.
‘Where’s the stuff you’ve just written?’
‘I put it in the samovar for safety,’ said Boris.
‘Is it numbered?’ asked Marcus, retrieving it.
‘Not that it matters,’ Flora, who was opening bottles, murmured to Abby. ‘Play it back to front, upside-down, it wouldn’t make any difference.’ She blew a kiss at Boris.
‘Let me see,’ said Abby reverently.
Marcus held out a manuscript page covered in a mass of black corrections.
‘Looks as though a lot of centipedes have been doing the Highland Fling after a mud bath,’ said Flora. ‘Why can’t you use a rubber instead of crossing out?’
‘Because eef my first thought was best, eef I rub it out, it is gone.’
‘How can anyone copy that?’ grumbled Flora.
