Appassionata

‘You can’t say that. Malise always felt-’

Fortunately Rannaldini’s third secretary popped her head round the door to say the Princess of Wales was on the line.

‘My dear,’ Rannaldini took the telphone, ‘may I ring you back in one hour.’ He’d be leaving for the Albert Hall to conduct Turangalila around five o’clock.

Helen was so speechless with admiration that this great Maestro should find time for her she forgot about Simon Rattle.

‘Why don’t you come with me this evening?’ asked Rannaldini, playfully spooning the last of her lobster into her mouth.

‘I must get back for Marcus.’

‘Eef only I had had a mother like you.’

‘Will Hermione Harefield be singing in Prague?’ asked Helen. ‘This salad is so good.’

‘No, she sing in Aida in Rome, and elephant run away with her. Nellie the Elephant pack her trunk and run away with Hermione,’ sang Rannaldini. His face was expressionless but he gave Helen a wicked side-glance and she burst out laughing.

‘Poor Hermione. I have to confess,’ Helen went on, ‘I do have reservations about Don Giovanni as an opera. The Don reminds me so much of Rupert,’ she gave a shiver, ‘and the way he used to get his best friend Billy Lloyd-Foxe to cover for him like Leporello.’

‘I know,’ Rannaldini slid his hand over hers. ‘Jake Lovell talks of you often, how terribly unhappy Rupert made you.’

‘How kind of Jake,’ said Helen, touched.

‘Jake threw you life-belt when you needed it,’ said Rannaldini. ‘But long term he would have bored you, you are much too bright for him.’

Machiavellian, Rannaldini pressed every organ stop of Helen’s vanity.

‘That’s why he let you go,’ he added, knowing perfectly well that Jake had dumped Helen.

‘Do you think he’s happy with his wife?’

‘Jake dream of you often,’ lied Rannaldini, selecting a ripe peach, caressing its downy curves, ‘And who would not?’ Picking up a knife, he laid bare the gold flesh.

Helen found herself not only sharing the peach with him but, after another glass, agreeing to come to Prague.

Rannaldini’s secretary then brought in a pile of fan mail.

‘Have you sewn that button on my tail-coat?’ he called after her shapely departing back.

‘People think being a conductor,’ he continued as in dark green ink he scribbled his name on each letter, ‘is all helicopters, jets and princesses, but eet consist of worry where you’ll stop long enough to get your laundry done.’

‘Genius shouldn’t have to worry about clean shirts and missing buttons,’ said Helen shocked. ‘Rupert never bothered to answer fan mail,’ she added.

‘That appal me,’ Rannaldini signed a couple of photographs. ‘Eef by writing back to these young people I can lead them on to a lifetime of loving music, it is small thing.’

‘What a genuinely good man you are,’ Helen suppressed a belch. ‘How people have misjudged you.’

‘Come for a walk,’ said Rannaldini, putting his huge wolf coat round her shoulders. ‘How it become you, a leetle lamb in wolf’s clothing.’

As they walked up a path behind the house, the low afternoon sun kept parting the clouds, shining through yellow-and-orange leaves, so they glowed like amber and topaz. Rannaldini picked up a red beech leaf and held it against a soft brown wand of ash leaves.

‘You must always wear brown with your red hair,’ he told her. ‘Black is too hard.’

As they passed a monk’s graveyard, Helen noticed a little pink flower with bright crimson leaves growing out of the wall.

‘What a dear little plant.’

‘It ees called Herb Robert, all the year it flower, the monks used the leaves to staunch flow of blood.’

‘Herb Roberto,’ teased Helen, as they stopped to lean on a mossy gate. ‘Such a beautiful name, why don’t you use it?’

‘My mother, who reject me, call me that.’

‘Roberto,’ repeated Helen softly.

‘Coming from your lips it sound bettair.’ Not wanting to frighten her, Rannaldini decided against a kiss.

As they turned for home, a biblical ray appeared through the clouds spotlighting Valhalla and the saffron larches, as though the place was on fire.

‘Look Helen, it is omen, my past go up in flames like Gotterdammerung. I bring you on this walk,’ Rannaldini took her hand, ‘because the trees at the top of the wood never turn because they only get sunshine in the evening. Oh Helen, let us have some sunshine in the evening of our lives.’

Helen squeezed his hand, so moved that she couldn’t speak.

‘Before you come to Prague,’ said Rannaldini, ‘I must send you my video of Don Giovanni.’

Helen, who prided herself on telling the truth, took a deep breath.

‘We have the video, Roberto, but I must say, neither Malise nor I thought it was your best effort. The music was delightful but all the sexual innuendo and the nudity seemed to trivialize the production.’

‘Go on,’ said Rannaldini icily.

‘And we both felt that the camera rested on your face too much. Although it’s fascinating watching a great conductor at work, it rather distracts from the action.’

‘My Don Giovanni achieve higher rating than EastEnders.’

‘It had popular appeal maybe, Roberto,’ said Helen earnestly, ‘but I think you are capable of greater things.’

‘Do you indeed?’ Rannaldini gazed fixedly ahead.

Realizing she had goofed, Helen said hastily, ‘I guess it’s my fault, as I said the Don is so like Rupert.’

‘How is Rupert’s exquisite wife?’ asked Rannaldini silkily.

Helen’s face tightened; she was wildly jealous of Taggie. Not only had she made Rupert happy, she was also adored by Marcus and Tabitha, and when he was alive, by Malise.

That’ll teach her to slag off my Don Giovanni, thought Rannaldini in amusement.

‘I expect she’s busy chaining herself to some railing to stop lambs and calves being shipped alive to the continent,’ said Helen tartly.

The thought of Taggie Campbell-Black being chained to anything excited Rannaldini unbearably.

‘Peter Maxwell Davies is on the telephone.’ The second secretary greeted Rannaldini and Helen as they entered the house. ‘Have you looked at his symphony yet?’

‘Put it in my briefcase, I do it tonight,’ Rannaldini looked at his watch.

‘Do you admire Boris Levitsky’s Berlin Wall Symphony?’ asked Helen, anxious to keep her end up. ‘Malise and I were overwhelmed by it.’

‘Hopelessly derivative. Boris speak of being divinely inspired by the great composers.’ Sneeringly, Rannaldini pretended to pick up a telephone, ‘’Allo, Beethoven, ’Ow are you? I am ready to receive message, I take it down… and out come chopsteeks.’

‘That’s unfair,’ said Helen reprovingly. ‘Boris is very dear. He’s been so supportive since Malise died, he rings me three or four times a week. I know Marcus would love him as a stepfather,’ she added defiantly, and then felt absolutely miserable.

She is very insecure, decided Rannaldini, Malise had restored her confidence and hung a picture-light over her beauty; now it had gone out.

Changing tack, he said gently: ‘Many men would like to be Marcus’s stepfather. Eef you didn’t like my Don Giovanni, I must give you other records and eef you won’t come to Albert Hall, Clive, my chauffeur, will drive you home.’