‘You don’t have a photograph of me in your wallet, Victor,’ nagged Juno.
‘Haven’t got a wallet,’ said Viking, who was returning from the bar with a cup of black coffee for Cyril and a Penguin for Nugent.
‘Haven’t got any money either.’
Neither Covent Garden nor the London Met had yet paid him and Juno’s mortgage was eating into his salary.
Hearing guffaws from the window, he swung round. It was Dixie and Randy grinning and red faced from the pub.
‘We’ve bought you a box of After Eights, Victoria dear, to round off your slap-up meal.’
Viking auditioned in the middle of the afternoon, and he mobbed the whole thing up. Somehow he had persuaded the pianist to play a piece of music more suited to a strip club. The listening panel pursed their lips and looked even more disapproving when, after a couple of bars from the French horn, a lacy black bra flew over the brown velvet curtains, followed in leisurely succession by fishnet stockings, scarlet satin garters and, finally, a purple G-string, which landed on the shiny board-room table in front of Abby.
Abby’s cries of ‘This is obnoxious,’ were then drowned by Don Juan’s horn call, before Viking launched into the love duet from
Sauntering out, he left a note on his chair:
‘Fuck,’ Randy said, after the tenth wrong note.
‘Shut up, you are not allowed to speak,’ hissed a sweating Nicholas, who was supposed to be calling out players’ numbers to the listening panel as he fed them in.
‘Fuck,’ said Randy for a second time, so distracting Nicholas, that Blue, plus horn, was able to slide into the board room unnoticed, and hide in a big cupboard in the corner.
Thus, when a swaying Cyril was posted in by Viking, and Nicholas had called out his number, fifty-five, Blue put his horn to his lips and played the horn solo from
‘That’s fine,’ Abby turned to Miss Priddock. ‘Put a “yes” to Number Fifty-Five.’
‘Definitely,’ agreed Lionel and Miles.
The next moment, to their horror, a beaming Cyril staggered through the curtains, solemnly shook hands with them all, blew a kiss to Miss Priddock and tottered out.
Miles and Lionel and Abby were all furious, but not so cross as Quinton Mitchell, Viking’s Third Horn, who threatened to sneak to the panel about Blue’s playing instead of Cyril.
‘I have to sit next to the drunken old bugger,’
‘If you breathe a word,’ Viking seized Quinton’s lapels, ‘I’ll tell Mrs Mitchell exactly who you were op to at Hugo’s leaving party.’
‘Fifty-Six,’ shouted Nicholas.
The piano started playing, a few seconds later a flute joined in.
Lionel and Miles stared fixedly at their notes. Abby felt as though steel nails were being drilled through her head. A wave of vindictiveness overwhelmed her.
‘That’s enough warming up,’ she shouted a few minutes later. ‘We’re pushed for time, right, can you get started.’
There was a pause, then a furious squeaky little voice said: ‘I’ve just played the slow movement of Poulenc’s
Abby shook off Miles’s restraining hand.
‘Can you come through?’
Anger made Juno look even more enchanting, putting a rare warmth in her cold eyes.
‘It’s no good, Juno,’ said an unrepentant Abby. ‘I guess you’d better look for another job, you’re just not up to it.’
‘I was good enough for your predecessor,’ hissed Juno and stormed out.
‘That was very unwise,’ smirked Lionel.
‘Wonderfully lyrical,’ he murmured mistily a minute later, as Hilary, whom he’d coached between bonks last night, started paddling laboriously through the slow movement of Mozart’s
She was interrupted, however, by Viking, barging in without knocking, all slitty eyes and blazing Irish rage.
‘How dare you sack Juno?’ he yelled at Abby.
‘S-s-she’s useless, she must have slept with someone to get that job.’
‘She’s sleeping with me, and if she goes, I go.’
And in barged Blue.
‘If Viking goes, I go.’
And in marched Dixie and Randy.
‘And if Viking and Blue go, we go,’ they chorused.
‘Woof, woof, woof,’ barked Mr Nugent, bringing up the rear.
‘You fucking band of brothers, I don’t understand you guys,’ yelled back Abby. ‘I guessed love was blind, but I never figured it was deaf as well. I don’t know why you’re being so supportive,’ she added to Nugent. ‘Juno’ll have you out in a trice.’
Miles, who disapproved of swearing and dogs, looked very shocked.
As a result, the Steel Elf was reinstated but Abby had made herself an implacable enemy.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Poor Abby had such good intentions. But being musical director of the RSO continued to be an absolute nightmare. After one particularly rowdy rehearsal towards the end of April, during which Viking had peremptorily summoned the entire brass section out into the car-park to push his ancient BMW because he was late for the dentist, Abby received a summons from the manager.
Finding Lord Leatherhead and Miles, who’d given her even less support than Lionel, awaiting her, Abby steeled herself for a wigging. Instead, they told her they had found a new managing director.
‘It’s George Hungerford,’ said Lord Leatherhead in tones of awe. ‘We’ve been very, very lucky.’
Abby had no idea who George Hungerford was, and was even less impressed when they told her he was one of the few property developers who had managed to increase his fortune during the recession.
A rough, tough Yorkshireman, who in his youth had sung bass in the great Huddersfield Choral Society, George had always fancied running an orchestra, and reckoned he could sort out the RSO in one or two days a month with his hands tied behind his back. He would take over at the beginning of May.
All the female musicians and the secretaries on the top floor were wildly excited that he was also between marriages. ‘Gorgeous George’ as they already called him, could also be relied on to take L’Appassionata down a peg. Blood in the aisles was joyfully predicted.
Abby was too worried about next week’s concert and her even more revolutionary plans to re-audition the entire and often frightful Rutminster Choir before the German Requiem in June, really to take in George’s appointment.
Wrestling with the complexities of the last movement of Sibelius’s
