Appassionata

‘It was a grite concert. Don’t know how you remember all them notes.’

‘Thanks,’ said Abby. ‘Where’s your boss?’

The chauffeur nodded up to the chairman’s office, where George Hungerford, puffing at a cigar, blotted out light from the window, as he paced back and forth, talking and talking.

Probably about me, thought Abby wearily.

As she entered her hotel, a yawning receptionist handed her a big bunch of wild garlic.

‘A child has just delivered this.’

Imagining some kind of voodoo, Abby was about to chuck the starry white flowers into the street, when she found a note, which she ripped open with trembling hands. She read:

Dear Miss Rosen,

Sorry I upset you,

love

Cherub Wilson.

It was the first kindness anyone had shown her in weeks. Abby started to cry helplessly. She must get a grip on herself.

Her honeymoon with the Rutshire Butcher it seemed was also over. His review of the concert was headlined: FLUSHED WITH SUCCESS — ‘The lavatory chain,’ he wrote, ‘was the only thing that played at the correct tempo in Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony.’

TWENTY-EIGHT

Fortunately George Hungerford disappeared in his helicopter the following morning, no doubt looking for properties to develop. He also had several acres in central Manchester to think about. After a slight blip in the recession, the developer’s cranes were flying again.

In the afternoon, the RSO, who were supposed to provide music for nine counties and who had at least two away fixtures a week, were due to set off to Starhampton in the West Country. Two coaches had been laid on for the hundred-mile journey. The first coach, which included non-smokers and non-drinkers, a bridge four who played regularly together and a high-minded group, headed by Hilary, who sang madrigals, was known as ‘Pond Life’. The second, which included drinkers, smokers and brass players was known as ‘Moulin Rouge’.

The Musicians’ Union is one of the few unions virtually untouched by Thatcher’s reforms. Steve Smithson set out on every trip armed with a tape measure (because any gig over seven miles away entitled the musicians to a meal allowance), a stop watch so they got sufficient breaks the other end and a thermometer to make sure the hall, cathedral or school in which they were playing reached the required seventy degrees.

Before an away fixture there was always an argy-bargy between Steve and Nicholas, the orchestra manager, who was known to the musicians as ‘Knickers’.

Orchestras are sustained by silly jokes. When poor Nicholas was unhappy and stressed out, which was most of the time, they all chorused ‘Knickers Down’, or ‘Knickers in a Twist’. Today Knickers had caught Steve trying to persuade the bus drivers to leave at one and dawdle, instead of one-thirty, so that the musicians could claim for a lunch allowance.

It was now twenty-nine minutes past one and Knickers stood beside the artists’ entrance of H.P. Hall, ticking off names in a tartan notebook as musicians clambered aboard the two coaches.

By one-thirty only Little Jenny was missing. As she played at the back of the second violins, it wouldn’t be a major crisis if she didn’t show up. So the buses set off, splashing down the High Street out into the angelic springtime, stopping to pick up Simon Painshaw from his bachelor pad in the Close and Hilary from her thatched cottage, and Barry, the Principal Bass, from his converted barn, with his beautiful new second wife running barefoot across the lawn to kiss him goodbye.

After yesterday’s downpour, cricket pitches under water glittered in the sunshine and puddles reflected thundery grey sky, pale green trees and clashing pink hawthorns.

It was an incontrovertible fact that however capable the RSO were of pulling rabbits out of hats and playing superbly when they reached their destination, many of them behaved like hyperactive children before and afterwards.

Usually Viking drove to concerts in his battered BMW, which had been fitted with a hooter that played Don Juan’s horn call. Into the car he would cram Juno, Blue, Randy, Dixie and Cherub, so they could all apply for a petrol allowance, or on occasion, a train fare.

But, at the last moment, Juno had cried off with flu. Finding a replacement at such short notice had added to Knickers’ problems.

As it was also Viking’s birthday, he and the Celtic Mafia decided to travel on Moulin Rouge. Viking, who’d been blasting his lip away moonlighting with a local jazz band, hadn’t been to bed and was drunk when he got onto the coach. Freed from Juno’s beady chaperonage, he was soon pouncing on every girl in sight.

‘That guy’s got no stop button,’ observed Candy, who was sitting beside her friend Clare, who was flipping through Hello! and Tatler recognizing all her friends.

‘When he’s plastered he’ll bonk anything,’ Clare lowered her voice, ‘Juno gave him a Black amp; Decker for his birthday, such an affront to his manhood. I think he’s miserable.’

‘Then why does he leap to her defence whenever Appassionata has a go at her?’

‘Must be elf-obsessed,’ giggled Candy. ‘Oh, there’s you,’ she peered at Tatler. ‘That ball gown’s great.’

From the back of the coach came shouts of laughter and the snatch of a rugger song, followed by Cherub’s high-pitched giggle which set everyone off. Blue sat slightly apart sipping malt whisky, immersed in Alan Clark’s diaries. Randy and Dixie were obviously determined to catch up with Viking, who was now snogging an overjoyed Nellie the Nympho.

In the Pond Life coach in front, as they drove through the outskirts of Bath, the madrigal group could be seen making silly faces.

‘April is in my mistress’ face and July in her eyes,’ sang Lionel in a light tenor as he gazed at a simpering Hilary.

Also in the group was Simon Painshaw, his red dreadlocks flying as he tossed his head in time to the music, and Molly Armitage, a rank-and-file viola player. Known as ‘Militant Moll’, Molly had short spiky hair, an aggrieved face, a triangular figure, with narrow, twitching shoulders falling to massive hips, and thought everything degraded women. She was having an affaire with Ninion, Second Oboe, who was half her size and normally very meek. Molly, however, had so fired him up that he had become very assertive and wanted to oust Simon as First Oboe. Militant Moll also wanted Ninion to leave his wife and take her name.

‘Fa, la, la, la, la, la,’ sang Militant Moll, gazing into Ninion’s blinking fieldmouse eyes.

‘Lardi, da, da, da, da, da,’ giggled Nellie, buttoning up her dress as she collapsed behind Candy and Clare. ‘That Hilary is such a bitch. Look at her vamping Lionel in her pie-frill collar. She gave me another bollocking about my cleavage last night. “You are not allowed to show flesh, Nell, we are all supposed to look black at distance.”’

Nellie caught Hilary’s mincing whine to perfection.

‘I’ll black her eye. You wait till she sees what I’m wearing tonight, the slit up my skirt meets my plunge head-on. I wonder how long it’ll be before L’Appassionata is shoehorned into one of Nosy Parker’s ghastly ge- owns.’

‘Wonder how long it will be before Gorgeous George shoehorns her out of the job,’ said Clare. ‘You can’t get away with V-signs on the platform, even if it’s only at Dixie.’

‘Taking my name in vain as usual. Any of you girls want a drink?’