Appassionata

Miss Parrott looked on and missed nothing, passing the time when she wasn’t playing knitting brightly coloured scarves for her favourites in the orchestra. Blue and Viking had two each. She always had a beta blocker and a glass of sherry before concerts, and liked to play her harp beside the flutes, complaining bitterly if ever she were relegated to the back of the Second Violins.

Although Miss Parrott claimed: ‘My feet are danglin’ from the shelf,’ she had no shortage of male admirers to mend plugs and tyres for her and carry her harp in and out of concert halls. Finally she was an inveterate moonlighter and, that very evening, after she’d dispatched Valse des Fleurs in the first half at Rutminster, would be belting over to Cotchester to play Debussy’s Dances Sacres et Profanes with the CCO.

Having finished her lemon sherbet, she asked Flora if she could have another one.

‘Goodness, Miss Parrott,’ piped up Cherub, ‘you’ve got a big suck.’

‘If you were ten years older, and Ay were ten years younger, Ay’d show you, young man,’ said Miss Parrott calmly.

Shouts of laughter greeted this as poor Cherub went as red as his bass drum.

As a new girl, Flora had been placed behind Fat Isobel, beside Militant Moll and in front of Juno and Hilary, none of whom were at all enthusiastic about her arrival.

Viking, who usually claimed droit de seigneur over any pretty girl who joined the orchestra, had noticed Flora’s bitten nails at the audition and the occasional flicker of desolation on her face, and didn’t believe she was as bonny and blithe as she appeared.

Writing: ‘Will you have a drink with me after this?’ on a paper dart, he chucked it in her direction.

Alas, the dart flew over Flora’s head and fluttered down onto the massive bosom of Fat Isobel who, still disappointed at being passed up during Viking’s erotic bonanza on the bus to Starhampton, swung round nodding frantically in acceptance.

‘Jesus, I’ll have to empty Oddbins,’ muttered an appalled Viking.

‘Isobel’s got lovely skin,’ protested Miss Parrott kindly.

‘Pity there’s so much of it,’ sighed Viking.

The rest of the Celtic Mafia were still crying with laughter when Abby arrived.

‘Quiet please, let’s get started,’ she said briskly. ‘Where are Clare and Dixie?’

‘Still in the pub,’ said Juno primly.

‘Shall I go and get them?’ piped up Flora eager to escape for a quick one.

‘Noriko can go,’ said Abby, adding pointedly, ‘she doesn’t drink.’

She couldn’t help feeling wildly jealous that Flora had been accepted so easily and had this gift of making people love her. Everyone wanted to play chamber music with her, the telephone rang the whole time at the cottage, her pigeon hole at H.P. Hall was filled with notes.

I must start playing the violin again, thought Abby fretfully, so people want to play chamber music with me.

‘It’s only because Flora’s new,’ Abby overheard Juno saying bitchily to Hilary. ‘They’ll soon get bored of her.’

THIRTY-ONE

Rutminster was gripped by a heatwave. Plans for holding Piggy Parker’s sixtieth-birthday concert inside or providing the orchestra with a canopy were shelved as the ground cracked, the huge domed trees in the grounds of Rutminster Towers shed their first yellow leaves and Mrs Parker repeatedly cursed her mother for conceiving her in a Ramsgate boarding-house in October rather than in September — which meant her birthday fell at the end of July, by which time the roses had gone over.

Short of glueing back every petal, the only answer was to bus in furiously clashing bedding plants from Parker’s Horticultural Emporium. Lorry-loads of electric-blue hydrangeas and scarlet petunias were racing armies of caterers up the drive, as the orchestra struggled in for an early rehearsal and to check the timing of the fireworks in William Tell, before the heat became too punishing.

Rutminster Towers itself stood in all its neo-Gothic glory, surrounded by a formal garden and parkland, overlooking the River Fleet. A platform for orchestra and choir had been set up on the river’s edge. Bronzed workmen putting up a large red-and-white striped VIP tent eyed Flora as she paddled and splashed water over a panting Mr Nugent.

Mrs Parker was frantic everything should go well. As a year ago, a pleasure launch of Hoorays playing pop music and drunkenly yelling ‘Hellair’ had disrupted Panis Angelicus, she was personally prepared to dam the river with her vast bulk to stop anyone sailing upstream during the concert.

She had, however, graciously invited the ladies of the orchestra to hang their dresses in the Long Gallery.

‘Is that a genuine Picasso?’ asked Nellie, as she peered in awe into the le-ounge.

‘No, no,’ giggled Candy, ‘look on the back. It says “Do Not Freeze, This Side Up”.’

‘Admiring my Picarso,’ said a loud voice behind them. ‘It was a silver wedding-gift from my late hubby.’

‘She’s even matched her grand piano exactly to the panelling,’ Clare told Dixie as she returned from the house, ‘and every piece of ghastly furniture is for sale.’

‘You don’t think an old bag like Piggy Porker would pass up an opportunity for commercial gain,’ said Dixie. ‘You could probably buy that oak tree for twenty grand.’

‘I’ll pay Sonny twenty grand to stay away,’ said Clare. ‘He’s been so preoccupied with his premiere he even forgot to buy Mumsy a birthday card.’

Today was also the birthday of Ninion, Second Oboe and oppressed partner of Militant Moll.

‘Just proves what utter crap astrology is,’ sneered Carmine Jones getting his trumpet out of its case, ‘when a thug like Piggy Porker and a wimp like Ninion have birthdays on the same day.’

Ninion ignored the crack, but his hands shook as he read his and Mrs Parker’s horoscope in the Rutminster Echo, which was part owned by Mrs Parker anyway, and which said it would be a good day for fireworks.

Underneath his mild blinking, field-mouse exterior, Ninion was hopping mad. Second Oboe often doubles up as cor anglais, but Knickers and Abby had humiliatingly not thought he was good enough to play the long ravishing cor anglais solo in William Tell, and brought in Carmine Jones’s wife, Catherine, as an extra.

Militant Moll should have been pleased a woman had been given the job. Instead she berated Ninion for not standing up for his rights.

‘You are quite capable of playing that solo, Nin. Why d’you let people push you around? Catherine Jones is a drip not to have left Carmine years ago.’

Moll was taking Ninion to a woman composers’ workshop in Bath as a birthday treat. Ninion brooded; he was fed up with women.

The surrounding fields were silvered with dew as the orchestra tuned up, but no breeze ruffled the forget- me-nots languishing on the river-bank. As Flora returned a dripping Nugent to Viking, she breathed in a heady scent. At first she thought it came from a nearby lime tree. Then she realized it was Blue’s aftershave, which he never wore normally, and that he had put on a ravishing new duck-egg-blue shirt. Blue was so handsome, quiet and dependable, but there was a sadness about him. Flora wondered if he were gay and secretly in love with Viking. He never had any women around.

‘God, it’s baking,’ said Viking, who was sharing his breakfast of a pork pie and a Kit-Kat with Mr Nugent. ‘Oh, go away,’ he snapped at Fat Isobel, who’d been panting after him like a St Bernard since he’d taken her out for a drink.

Flora looked up at the house. ‘How the hell did Piggy Porker get permission to build such an excrescence in