fact that the Celtic Mafia creamed off the prettiest groupies after concerts.
‘They’re a lot of prima donnas, Abby, you stick to your guns,’ he encouraged her as he rehung the dusty brown velvet curtains across the board room to provide a screen, and turned the big mahogany table sideways. He then lined up chairs on the far side for a listening panel, which would consist of Abby, Miles, relevant section leaders when they weren’t auditioning themselves, and Miss Priddock with a list of numbers for each member of the orchestra to be ticked off ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ after they’d played.
Most stretched of all by the event was Nicholas Digby, the incredibly harassed orchestral manager. Nicholas had an anguished face, ginger hair falling like Saluki’s ears on either side of a very bald cranium and looked rather like Mr Pinch in
He now had the thankless task of feeding members of the orchestra one by one in to the board room and attempting to preserve their anonymity by stopping them speaking.
‘Leave off your aftershave, and stump in in Doc Martens,’ Dixie advised Randy. ‘And they’ll assume you’re a woman and pass you automatically.’
Sections varied in size in the RSO. Lionel, as well as leading the orchestra, presided over thirteen first violins. Peter Plumpton, First Flute, on the other hand, only had the Steel Elf and an occasional piccolo player to boss. Section leaders, or principals as they were known, were responsible for the various problems within the section, stopping personality clashes, deciding who should sit where and next to whom, generally improving the sound.
They also tended to shield bad players. Barry, the Principal Bass, a grey-haired giant with a gypsy’s face, who came from a rock band, had an old boy, known as ‘El Squeako’, in his section. El Squeako, who relied on his double bass to hold him up, had a hearing-aid which frequently let off eldritch squeaks during the most intimate pianissimo, reducing the entire orchestra to hysterical giggles. Somehow El Squeako had to be nursed past the listening panel.
It was a matter of pride for Viking to get all his section through. His only worry was Old Cyril, the Fourth Horn, whose lips and teeth had gone so he couldn’t centre the notes any more, and who drank too much out of nerves and despair.
Once a great player and friend of Dennis Brain, Old Cyril always wore a tie and a jacket to rehearsals, sat up straight, was polite to everyone, loved his garden and Miss Priddock for the thirty years he had been with the orchestra.
Viking knew he ought to take the old boy aside and tell him he was holding the section back, but Cyril had looked after Viking when he joined the orchestra eight years ago. He would never survive if he were fired and had to eke out an existence teaching, and Viking wasn’t going to dump him now. Cyril, however, hadn’t helped himself by downing beer after beer in the Shaven Crown on the day of the auditions.
By lunch-time, Abby had reached screaming pitch. Why in hell had she started the beastly thing? If she heard another
Number Thirty-Nine, who’d just come in, played exquisitely for three minutes before launching into a flurry of wrong notes and bursting into tears.
Appalled, Abby jumped up, pushing the brown velvet curtains apart, to find Little Jenny, the round-faced baby of the orchestra who sat at the back of the Second Violins.
‘You did great,’ Abby put her arm round Jenny’s heaving shoulders. ‘We all thought you were a far more experienced player. Of course you’re through. Go and have a large drink.’
‘It was your idea to audition everyone,’ said Lionel nastily as Abby flopped back into her chair.
‘We better all go to lunch and cool down,’ said Miles primly.
Abby, who was not remotely hungry, went in search of Jenny’s section leader, Mary Melville, known as ‘Mary-the-Mother-of-Justin’, because she was absolutely bats about her baby son. Abby wanted to tell Mary how good Jenny had been and that she ought to play at a desk nearer the front.
The band room acted as a sitting-room where musicians dumped their instruments, ate their packed lunches and relaxed when they weren’t needed in a piece of music. As well as low sofas, chairs and tables, there was a ping-pong table, a notice-board and a small bar at the far end, providing bacon sandwiches, hot dogs and soft drinks, tea and coffee.
The room fell silent as Abby entered.
‘I’m looking for Mary.’
‘Gone shopping,’ said Clarissa, Principal Cello, who apologized for speaking with her mouth full and, to everyone else’s horror, invited a pathetically grateful Abby to join her for a cup of coffee.
Clarissa, like Charlton Handsome, was another of Abby’s supporters. She admired her as a great player and, as the mother of three with a husband out of work, Clarissa was always too worried about paying the mortgage and the school fees and scurrying from teaching jobs to cabal and bitch with the rest of the orchestra.
Slumping down on one of the uncomfortable olive-green sofas, trying to ignore the hostility all around, Abby was amazed to see Viking, who normally went to the Shaven Crown at lunch-time with the Celtic Mafia, unenthusiastically eating cottage cheese between two pieces of Ryvita.
Beside him the Steel Elf was looking at colour charts.
‘This room is terrible,’ she glared up at walls painted a vile shade of hen’s diarrhoea green. ‘Why don’t we all pitch in and rag and drag it a nice peach one weekend?’
‘Needs some decent pictures,’ said Viking, not looking up from
‘Perhaps we should commission a portrait of our new musical director,’ said Hilary, who had her back to Abby.
‘Won’t be here long enough,’ said Juno bitchily.
‘Ignore them,’ whispered Clarissa, returning from the bar with two cups of coffee.
‘Thanks,’ whispered back Abby. ‘What’s Viking doing here?’
‘Dixie has a tenner on at 100-1 that Juno will kick Viking out before the end of April,’ murmured Clarissa, picking up the black tights she was darning, ‘so it’s in his interest to lead Viking astray.
‘On Sunday, Viking was supposed to be putting up shelves. Dixie lured him out to the pub and Viking didn’t get back till midnight. Madam was hopping,’ Clarissa lowered her voice even further, ‘and has refused to sleep with Viking unless he stops drinking and carousing, and he has.’
‘My God, for how long?’
‘About forty-eight hours.’
Viking, meanwhile, was trying to look as though he was enjoying cauliflower florets and Vegemite sandwiches.
‘What did you put in for Nugent?’
‘Nothing, I keep saying dogs should only be fed once a day. With the warmer weather, he can soon sleep outside. What d’you think of that colour for our bedroom, Victor?’
‘Onspeakable. Nugent will not sleep outside,’ he handed Nugent half his sandwich, which Nugent promptly spat out, regarding it as no substitute for his own shepherd’s pie at the pub.
‘Any chocolate biscuits?’ asked Viking.
Juno cut a grapefruit in half and handed one part to Viking with a plastic spoon and a napkin. ‘Here’s your dessert.’
‘Some achieve grapefruit, some have grapefruit thrust upon them,’ sighed Viking. ‘Oh Christ.’
Old Cyril had come in, cannoning off both sides of the band room door before collapsing hiccuping on a sofa, gazing out unseeingly at the chestnut candles tossing in the park.
He was followed by Mary-the-Mother-of-Justin, angelic face flushed with excitement over the photos she had just picked up from Boots.
‘This is Justin.’ She brandished a photograph of a gorgeous two year old in front of Abby and Clarissa.
‘Gorgeous,’ sighed Abby. ‘And that’s darling of you and him.’
‘I expect my husband’ll put that one in his wallet,’ Mary said happily.
