Appassionata

‘Prokofiev. Malise played that.’ Helen’s eyes filled with tears.

‘I am sorry. I will stop.’

‘No, no, I never dreamt I’d hear it again so soon. Do you play other instruments?’

‘Piano, oboe, trumpet, bassoon, violin, teemps.’

‘Goodness, with so many accomplishments what made you become a conductor?’

Rannaldini laughed.

‘Because at heart every man wants to be a fuhrer. We must go to lunch. I take you home.’ Then seeing the apprehension in Helen’s eyes, added, ‘Don’t worry, my secretaries, my gardener, my ‘ousekeeper and her ‘usband, my driver, Uncle Tom Cobbley and probably his grey mare will all chaperone you.’

As the helicopter circled the Old Rectory before turning south, Helen could see Mrs Edwards belting down the drive twenty minutes early and gave a wail.

‘I forgot to put on the alarm, I’m so scared of being burgled.’

Rannaldini smiled at her. It’s already too late, my darling.

Orange leaves of beech, saffron flames of larch still flickered in the umber woods as they flew over the little village of Paradise up the River Fleet to Rannaldini’s house, Valhalla, lurking pigeon-grey and wrapped in its conspirator’s cloak of trees.

Helen had a heady glimpse of tennis-courts, a swimming-pool, the dark serpentine coils of a yew-tree maze, wonderful gardens, horses out in their rugs in fields sloping down to the river and deep in the wood, the watch- tower, where Rannaldini worked and seduced. Valhalla itself, narrow-windowed and brooding had been built before the Reformation.

‘I’ve been reading a fascinating book on the dissolution of the monasteries,’ began Helen.

Not wanting another lecture, Rannaldini whisked her down dark passages, past suits of armour, tattered banners and tapestries into a red drawing-room.

‘How pretty,’ gasped Helen.

‘Meredith Whalen decorate it and the kitchen when I was married to Keety. You ’ave such exquisite taste, I pay you to theenk up new colour schemes.’

‘Oh, I couldn’t take your money.’

‘My child,’ purred Rannaldini, ‘I know you need eet, as I need your help to exorcize bad memory of my life with Keety. Next week I go to Prague for ten days. By the time I return you must think up something wonderful.’

But Helen was crying again.

‘Malise and I were going to Prague on 21 November for our anniversary. Malise tried to get tickets for a production of Don Giovanni at the Stasis Theatre. Mozart premiered it there in November 1787, you know, and that was where they made Amadeus. But it was sold out.’

‘Because I am conducting,’ smirked Rannaldini.

‘Of course, how stupid of me,’ said Helen appalled. ‘Since Malise died I don’t remember anything.’

‘Eet ees shock. It’ll come back.’ Rannaldini poured her a glass of Pouilly-Fume. ‘You shall come to Prague with me instead.’

‘But I can’t leave Marcus and I can’t afford it,’ babbled Helen.

‘You will be my guest. I stay in flat. I book you room in nice hotel. I will send you plane ticket and ticket for Don Giovanni just for twenty-four hours, you deserve a treat.’

Putting a warm hand on her neck as comforting as a wool scarf just dried on the radiator, he led her down more passages to the big kitchen whose walls were covered in a glossy green paper, populated by jungle animals and birds.

‘I certainly couldn’t improve on this,’ sighed Helen.

‘I want eet changed,’ said Rannaldini chillingly. ‘Keety loved the parrots and the humming-birds. I want eet out. Sit down. I will make your lunch.’

‘A bowl of soup will do,’ stammered Helen. ‘I can’t eat at the moment.’

‘Then you will start.’

From a next-door office, despite faxes billowing out like smoke, four telephones constantly ringing and the raindrop patter of expensive computors, Rannaldini’s secretaries, who’d all read The Scorpion, kept finding excuses to pop in and gawp at Helen.

Princess Margaret’s office had rung, they said; Domingo wanted advice on an interpretation; Sir Michael Tippett wondered if Rannaldini had had a moment to look at his latest opera; Hermione had rung four times. Rannaldini said he would call them all back later.

As he cooked, checking rice, throwing pink chunks of lobster into sizzling butter, then laying them tenderly on a bed of shallots, tarragon and tomatoes, separating eggs, boiling down fish stock, Helen talked. Her tongue loosened by a second glass of wine, she told him about her money problems, the big house she couldn’t afford to keep up, Marcus’s asthma and her worries about his friendship with Flora. She was delighted when Rannaldini dismissed Flora as ‘an evil little tramp’.

‘We will take Marcus to the mountains,’ he went on warmly, then his voice thickened like the eggs in the double saucepan. ‘How about your daughter?’

‘Quite out of control.’ Helen didn’t want to tell him how incensed she had been about the appropriation of the olive-green cashmere. So she added: ‘At half-term Tabitha borrowed my credit card saying she needed some school books, then used it to buy a pair of jeans and spend the afternoon on a sunbed. I cannot stand such vanity and such lies.’

Rannaldini, who was no stranger to lies and would have been quite out of control on a sunbed with Tabitha, expressed his disapproval. Topping a cloud of white rice with butter and putting it in a slower part of the Aga, he gave the lobster sauce a stir, and started chopping up chives for a salad of lettuce hearts.

‘How can you do so many things at once?’ marvelled Helen.

‘I am conductor.’

Helen wandered over to the screen which Kitty, over the years, had lovingly covered with photographs of Rannaldini and the famous.

‘Everyone’s here,’ she cried, thinking what fascinating people she would meet if Rannaldini became her — er — friend.

‘Why d’you record in Prague?’

‘Because it’s ten times cheaper than London or New York. Not speaking ill of your country, Helen, but I am tired of New York. Last time I record a Haydn symphony the shop steward sit watching second ‘and go round, four seconds to go, eight bars from the end, he leap on to the stage. “All right, you guys, it’s over.” I tried to keel him. I had to be pulled off. Eet takes an act of congress and then of God to get rid of musicians over there.

‘I am almost broken man,’ sighed Rannaldini, belying it by removing his suede jacket to show off his splendid physique. ‘But I must not talk any more, I will burn your lunch.’

Putting a white mountain of rice on each emerald-green plate, he spooned over the sizzling lobster mixture, then poured on the buttery sauce, topping it with a dash of cayenne.

‘Voila!’

‘This is too much,’ protested Helen.

‘You weel eat every bit, even if I have to feed you.’

Rannaldini filled up her glass again.

How wonderfully easy to give dinner parties, if one were living with Rannaldini, mused Helen, and think of the guest list. Her eyes strayed again to Kitty’s screen.

‘It is quite, quite delicious,’ she said in awe.

As he told her his plans for the future Rannaldini’s warm eyes never left her face.

‘The leaves tumbling down remind me of new leaf I must turn over. I am tired of jetting round world. I must settle down in this lovely house, write music and build up a great orchestra of wonderful musicians, who would not be always chasing engagements and money like the London orchestras or threatening strike action like the guys in New York.’

‘You could be another Simon Rattle,’ said Helen warmly.

Rannaldini scowled.

‘The CBSO is second-rate provincial orchestra,’ he said haughtily.