‘I can,’ said Marcus, removing the pages to the safety of his music case.
‘Vot does eet sound like?’
‘I’ll try and play it later when I’ve tidied up this dump.’
‘What a wonderful wife you’ll make someone.’ Flora lobbed some orange peel at Marcus’s black bag and missed. ‘If you want to make yourself useful,’ she said to Abby, ‘go and wash up four glasses. Abby had a dazzling debut as a conductor,’ she was telling Boris as Abby returned with an assortment of mugs, cups and even a small vase.
‘Ear is the only theeng that matter,’ said Boris, filling them all up to the top. ’Ear and rhythm, telling the orchestra how and ven to play. A conductor must learn what is possible to ask, then ask the orchestra ten times more. He must also come into a room at any time and command attention.’
‘“
‘What piece did you do?’ asked Boris.
‘Bartok’s
‘Ah,’ Boris gave a theatrical sigh and drained his glass. ‘Bartok is like me. His last Christmas he could never leave hees flat because he was so ashamed he had no money to tip lift man.’
‘Bartok had security till he was eight, then his father died like mine did,’ said Abby, taking a huge gulp of red wine.
‘He was Aries like me,’ said Flora.
‘Like mine, his genius was never recognized.’ Boris was near to tears. ‘He die in poorness like I shall.’
‘If you gave up drink and worked a bit harder, you’d be very rich,’ said Flora, tipping a pile of
Removing it from the pile, Flora sat down on the arm of Boris’s chair and started to brush his wild curls.
‘My music reflects the chaos of our times.’
‘I don’t know why you don’t save time and programme this flat instead.’
Ignoring her, Boris topped up Abby’s glass. ‘I am sorry about your wrist. I have all your records. Vil you play again?’
‘My physio thinks so, but I still can’t grip the neck of a violin and my fingers can’t get around the strings.’
‘Eet is same, I ’ave music bursting to get out of my head, but I cannot write.’
‘It’s not the same at all,’ reproved Flora. ‘You can still move a pencil. Don’t be a drama queen.’
‘Ouch,’ said Boris, as she tugged at a tangle at the back. ‘What’s got into you?’
‘I am sick of an old passion. Christ, you’ve got chewing-gum here.’
‘I wanted to tell you, Boris.’ Lowering her voice Abby broke into Russian again, obviously talking about Rachel because soon they were both crying and wiping each other’s eyes and pouring out more glasses of red.
‘Summit meeting between the super powers,’ said Flora drily, as Marcus returned with a second dustbin bag.
Beautiful red-and-blue patterned rugs were beginning to emerge on the floor and a gold-and-blue embroidered shawl on the piano where Marcus was righting the silver-framed photographs of the old days in Moscow: children on toboggans, grannies with swept-up hair, the young Boris with Prokofiev and Shostakovich.
‘That vas my Rachel,’ Boris pointed to a photograph of a beautiful but disapproving-looking woman. ‘She vas a saint.’
‘She was a crosspatch,’ said Flora, getting a black velvet toggle out of her trouser pocket to tie back Boris’s curls. Finally she brushed his wild eyebrows.
‘There, Mel Gibson.’ She kissed the tip of his nose.
‘How many voices are you scoring the
‘None,’ said Boris flatly. ‘The instruments play the voices. The RSO chorus is full of squawking amateurs and Hermione Harefield wanted to sing soprano part. So I stop them all. I ’ate singers.’
Returning to the pile through which she was making slow progress because she kept stopping to read things, Flora was now brandishing an unstamped postcard with a charging bison on the back.
‘Why are you writing to Edith Spink?’
‘She send tape of concert of my
‘Don’t be silly,’ Flora tore up the postcard and chucked it into Marcus’s black bag. ‘Edith’s a good egg. When Rannaldini blocked my scholarship to the Academy, she put in a good word. You’re stupid to upset her, Boris, she’s on your side.’
‘Not ven she play my music like that. I shall have to go back to teaching.’
‘You can’t, you hated teaching,’ said Flora sensibly. ‘All those staff meetings about handles on lavatory doors, all the fuss when you wanted time off to go to performances, let alone rehearsals. And you can’t compose if you have to write lectures. You’ve got to finish,
‘I never meet a deadline or an honest woman,’ said Boris sulkily.
‘That’s bloody rude when I’ve given you the benefit of my advice. Christ,’ Flora pulled out a sheaf of brown envelopes, ‘don’t you ever pay bills?’
‘Not if I can’t pay them. I cannot buy my kids clothing, I cannot redecorate my flat. Look at the damp.’ Boris pointed to a dark stain above the window.
‘You’ll be able to paper it with brown envelopes,’ said Flora, ‘Here’s one from the Danish National Ballet — surely you don’t owe them any money?’
Opening the envelope Flora triumphantly shook out a cheque for thirty thousand kroners which Boris held up to the light in ecstasy.
‘It’s for ballet they want me to write about Little Mermaid.’
‘That’s terrific,’ said Abby excitedly. ‘You’ll get repeats every time anyone wants to do it and they can sell videos and tapes in the foyer.’
Boris, whose melancholy alternated with raging high spirits, became quite expansive at the prospect of relative riches. Normally he, Flora and Marcus would have played chamber music into the small hours but desisted in deference to Abby.
‘What are your plans?’ he asked her.
‘Take the course at the Academy. I’ve familiarized myself with loads of scores in Lucerne, now I need practise. I’ll take any gig offered.’
Having tidied up as much of the sitting-room as possible, Marcus was wheezing so badly from the dust that he had to retreat to the kitchen, resort to a couple of puffs from his inhaler, and sit down for ten minutes, hunched over the kitchen table to recover his breath. Then he started on supper. There was only a certain amount of his day that he could cope with other people. He needed to be alone now to think about next week’s concert.
Finding a lot of eggs of dubious antiquity, some rockhard Gruyere and some big tomatoes, he decided to make cheese omelettes and tomato salad. There was no vinegar so he used the juice of a wrinkled lime and brought a loaf out of retirement by turning it into garlic bread.
Rubbing the Gruyere up and down the grater until the curls of cheese had overflowed the bowl, he studied the Chopin, humming and making notes.
‘Need a top-up?’ It was Abby with a bottle.
Marcus shook his head.
She looked much better than she had earlier. There was a sparkle in her eyes and colour in her cheeks.
‘My, that’s good,’ Abby pinched a bit of tomato out of the salad bowl. ‘Who taught you to cook?’
‘My stepmother.’
‘The divine Taggie,’ teased Abby. ‘Hermione Harefield said she wasn’t a woman of substance.’
‘She’s the most s-s-ubstantial person I know,’ stammered Marcus furiously. ‘She’s b-b-eautiful and k-kind and she’s the only woman who’s ever made my father happy. That bitch Hermione’s just jealous.’
‘I told you to keep your trap shut, Abby,’ said Flora, appearing in the doorway.