Appassionata

‘Follow me,’ Rodney winked at Abby. ‘Back in a tick, darling heart.’

Hair dripping with sweat, aching all over, Abby was dying for a quick shower to clear her head before the Strauss, but curious, she lingered as Rodney flung open the door of Anthea’s dressing-room, then pausing in the doorway, opened his arms.

‘Anthea, my darling,’ he boomed, ‘magnificent is not the word.’

‘Very clever,’ muttered Mark in admiration, ‘must remember that one.’ Magnificent, he tapped it into his pocket computer, is not the word.

As Anthea was temporarily tied up with Rodney, Howie felt it safe to sidle out and pay court to Abby for a second.

He was going to have his work cut out at the party later. Anthea and Hermione would want his full-time attention, so would Abby, and after hearing Oberon, Howie was determined to sign up Viking, who was a really hot man. Probably straight but Howie wouldn’t mind getting his jaw broken finding out.

The audience were flowing back now. The piano had gone, and there was nothing to distract them from Abby and a vastly enlarged orchestra. The Tchaikovsky had done her no favours with the critics. She had forty minutes to redeem herself.

Everything was going wonderfully. Ein Heldenleben was drawing to a close. The woodwind had made horribly crabby and discordant critics. The brass had been so loud and exuberant in the battlescenes they must have roused Strauss in his musicians’ heaven. The drums had thundered continuously. The four cymbals had clashed in perfect unison to mark the end of hostilities, and Don Juan’s horn call, the warrior returning from the wars in search of dalliance, had echoed joyfully through the park.

Abby’s hair was sopping, her face lurexed with sweat under the hot lights. She could see the shadow of her hands moving on the bare lectern. Somehow, she must hush the huge orchestra to make the pianissimo contrast of the love duet all the more touching. The cor anglais was now gracefully paddling like a swan. Throughout the piece, Abby had felt like a pilot, faced by a massive dashboard of dials and switches. Her aeroplane had survived the thunder and lightning of a great storm; she was now bringing its precious cargo of musicians safely in to land.

Then, as she cued in the horns, nothing happened. She tried again, nothing. She gasped in horror. Cramp gripped her right hand, which had never let her down in three years, totally immobilizing it. After a three-hour rehearsal this morning, then three-hours practising in front of the mirror, followed by all the tension of the performance, it had finally seized up.

For a few seconds, the orchestra cruised on automatic pilot. Realizing something was wrong, the cor anglais kept paddling, Hugo was poised to take over, when Abby grabbed her right elbow with her left hand, yanking it through the motions, one, two down, three to the left, short four and five back and six up to the centre, and one, two down, to re-establish the tempo.

The pain was so excruciating she thought she’d black out. But there was only one more discordant outburst from the orchestra to go as the weathercock shrieked, the wind howled, the enemies trumpeted, then the hero’s theme was back, with the horns, basses and cellos leaping nobly and majestically up the scale, and they were into the love duet.

On the big screens outside, the vast crowds could see Hugo’s sleek, dark head cocked to listen, and Viking never taking his narrowed eyes off Abby’s face, which was now shining with tears, as she cajoled them through the last few bars. And as suddenly as it had gripped her, the cramp melted away, soothed as much by the solo violin’s exquisite lullaby as by the unearthly beauty of Viking’s dark, tender reply.

Lifting both arms, she was back on course, bringing the great aeroplane down, down through the blue and landing without a bump on the runway. She felt so relieved, she almost forgot to bring in Carmine Jones and his trumpets to echo the hero’s theme fortissimo. Then a mighty crash from the wind and brass faded into the final peaceful, reassuring chord — the hero finally triumphant, bringing the H.P. Hall and the park outside yelling to their feet.

Marcus leant against the rough trunk of a big horse-chestnut tree, clutching himself; his debts, lack of recognition, loneliness, unrequited love, Rupert’s animosity, all totally forgotten. He had never heard anything so wonderful in his life, particularly as the gruesome butchering of the Tchaikovsky had nearly broken his heart. Oh darling, darling Abby, and darling St Cecilia or Polyhymnia, or Euterpe, or whoever guides the fortunes of musicians, prayed Marcus, make the same thing happen to me.

After the sixth call-back, Miss Priddock braved the stage with a huge bunch of red roses and, employing her old trick, an exhausted tearful, ecstatic Abby broke the cellophane with a stab of her baton, and handed a rose to Viking and one to Hugo who was near enough to kiss her.

The next time she returned with a beaming Rodney, who got a great roar of delighted recognition and immediately hushed the audience.

‘My lords, ladies, gentlemen, musicians, we have just heard a masterpiece about a hero overcoming his enemies, most beautifully played.’ He winked at his orchestra, triggering off a volley of ‘bravoes’.

‘But tonight we’re speaking about a heroine,’ he shushed more cheers, ‘who, in the last three years, has battled with dreadful pain, adversity, self-doubt, only to emerge tonight into a new career, as triumphant as she looks beautiful.’ One final time he raised his hand for quiet. ‘I am proud of the RSO, but the night is Abigail Rosen’s. Ladies and gentlemen, a star is reborn.’

TWENTY-THREE

As she fled back to her dressing-room, it was like the old days. People pressed themselves against the wall to let her pass, cheering her, others reached out to shake her hands, for others it was just enough to touch her for luck.

Howie was in raptures, fluttering round her, taking credit for everything. Anthea was a has-been, she didn’t even get the limo to take her back to London. Instead, it swept Abby on to a party at the sort of shabby grand house much featured in British mini-series before the stylist moves in. It belonged to Lord Leatherhead, the chairman of the orchestra.

‘Don’t get him on to bottled water, for God’s sake,’ Hugo had warned her. ‘He’s changed his family motto to “Springs Eternal”.’

As the limo clanked over a cattle-grid, Abby caught a glimpse of a llama and a couple of yaks blinking in the headlights.

Having insisted on showering and changing first, she had arrived so late that she was relieved to see Mr Nugent still there, plumey tail waving as he paid court to the house springer spaniels, who were more interested in finishing up abandoned plates of moussaka and spitting out the aubergine.

Howie was delighted that although Megagram had bankrolled the party, half the record producers in Europe seemed to have crashed it, climbing in through large Georgian windows or bribing the kitchen staff. He was less amused that half the agents in Europe had done the same thing, and were now circling Abby like jackals.

‘The fuckers, the fuckers, why didn’t Megagram put bouncers on the door? But they’re gonna have to fight to keep you, Tiger,’ he told Abby. ‘You stick with me, I’ll field any difficult questions.’

Orchestras aren’t generally invited to parties, being a large number to cater for, but tonight a representative selection of the glamorous and well-behaved had been allowed in to impress potential sponsors.

Old Henry, the oldest member of the orchestra, a rank-and-file fiddle player who could tell you whether Heifetz had started up bow or down bow in 1942, but hadn’t heard of Abby before yesterday, came over and kissed her hand.

‘It’s not often I know why I became a musician.’

Abby longed to talk to him, but he was immediately sent flying by Dame Edith Spink. Massive and monacled, with the solid waistless figure of a cooling tower, Edith promptly whipped the dark red carnation out of her dinner- jacket and presented it to Abby.

‘Bloody good show, particularly the Strauss. That Anthea needs her bottom spanking.’ Dame Edith looked as