Appassionata

such a beautiful park?’ she asked ‘Every councillor has his price,’ explained Viking contemptuously. ‘All the fat cats on Rutminster Council, who you’ll see guzzling champagne this evening probably received a nice nest-egg in a Swiss bank or holiday home in Barbados. I wonder if Alan Cardew, the planning officer, would enjoy knowing that his wife Lindy is currently being knocked off by Carmine Jones.’

‘How could she? He’s loathsome. Imagine that brickred sneering face kissing you.’

‘That’s why Lindy was so livid when Abby sacked her from the choir. She can’t pretend to be sloping off to choir practice any more.’

‘All right, let’s get started,’ Abby had arrived, looking deathly pale after a sleepless night wondering whether to do a runner rather than be made over by Peggy’s beauticians. She was wearing a dark red vest and black bicycle shorts, and her lips tightened as she saw Flora gossiping with Viking.

The orchestra quickly whizzed through William Tell. Catherine Jones wasn’t turning up until the concert, so Ninion had to deputize for her, which made him crosser than ever. The fireworks would be let off after the trumpet fanfare during the rousing finale, which everyone knew because it had once been The Lone Ranger’s signature tune.

Fortunately the electrician who’d spent the morning hammering Roman candles, rockets and Catherine wheels onto posts liked music and knew exactly when to start the display.

‘Miss Rosen, we’re ready for you. I’m Crystelle by the way,’ called out a Parker beautician, who hovered, smiling like a crocodile. Her make-up was so thick you could have chucked rocks at it.

For a second Abby stared down at her, terrified and proud, Sidney Carton at the scaffold. Then she gathered up her sticks and her scores.

‘Please don’t ruin her, she’s so beautiful,’ called out Flora as Crystelle frogmarched Abby back to the house.

‘You need your eyes tested, Flora,’ said Carmine Jones nastily.

‘And you need a face transplant,’ shouted Flora.

The orchestra roared with laughter; singly most of them were too frightened to take on Carmine, whose face was now engorged with rage like a slice of black pudding.

It was now time for Sonny to take a last rehearsal of his Eternal Triangle for orchestra, cow bells and yodeller. A little man with a very large ego, Sonny (or rather Mumsy) had paid for several extra rehearsals. Many contemporary composers prefer to be programmed with other twentieth-century music. Not Sonny.

‘I’m not frightened of comparison with the great masters.’

Crash, bang, plink, plonk, went the orchestra. Sonny, a hopeless conductor, looked as though he were swimming through deep water and occasionally spearing a jelly fish.

Nor did he know anything about music, but fancying Viking, whose body was turning dark gold above his dirty white shorts, called out: ‘Four bars after twenty, Horns, marked gestopft. Could you play it on your own?’

‘Gestopft’ means putting the right hand up the bell of the horn to produce a muted buzzing sound. Viking, however, muttered to his section, ‘OKlads, play flat out.’

The next moment five horns blared out making two nearby pigeons and the rest of the orchestra jump out of their skins.

‘For goodness’ sake,’ spluttered Hilary, who hadn’t imagined she’d need her industrial ear plugs in the open air.

Sonny, however, was in raptures.

‘Splendid, Viking, splendid.’ He thrust forward a circle formed by his first finger and thumb.

‘Nor does the silly bugger realize that the trumpet’s been transposed into the wrong key by the copyist for the last three rehearsals,’ said Viking scornfully.

‘He’s been too busy jogging so he can rush up onto the platform in time to catch the applause,’ said Blue, shaking water out of his tuning slide.

Sonny had also been active organizing a claque of comely youths from the soft-furnishing department to provide a standing ovation.

‘Now, really clap your hands, boys, shout, “Bravo” and stamp your feet.’

Sonny’s favourite, however, was rumoured to be a plump young man with soft brown curls in all the right places, who was going to dress in lederhosen and provide the yodelling tonight.

At ten o’clock, by which time the temperature had soared into the nineties, the orchestra were released, many of them to sunbathe so they would look good in their summer uniform of white dinner-jackets, or for women, dresses in a single colour, whose skirts must fall at least nine inches below the knee.

As Rutshire was playing Yorkshire on the cricket ground next to the cathedral, Old Henry and Old Cyril found a couple of deckchairs. As he opened a can of beer, Old Cyril thanked God for the millionth time that Viking and Blue had carried him through his audition.

Having spent the morning on the telephone shouting at his builder who had omitted to put a staircase in a new office block: ‘Now, that’s one I really can’t lie about, George,’ George Hungerford had also hoped to slope off to the cricket ground to cheer on his home county.

Coming out of his office, however, he had found Eldred, the First Clarinet, in tears. They were so badly in debt that his wife had left him.

‘You better tell me about it,’ sighed George, going back into his office.

Carmine Jones’s face grew even redder as he pleasured Lindy Cardew, wife of Rutminster’s planning officer, on her peach nylon sheets.

‘I’ll get you back into the choir, Lindy, if it kills me.’

Poor Catherine Jones had no time to practise her cor anglais, she had been far too busy washing and ironing Carmine’s dress-shirt and getting suspicious-looking grass stains out of his white tuxedo, and sobbing over the primrose-yellow taffeta dress with huge puffed sleeves which had been fashionable the year the Princess of Wales had married Prince Charles, the same year she had married Carmine. Apart from a black polyester shift to wear to winter concerts, she had not had a new dress since then.

Tonight’s outfit had to be one colour. Cutting the orange fire bird made of sequins from the yellow taffeta bodice as she shoved baked beans down fractious children, Catherine had jagged a large hole in the bodice. At this rate, she wouldn’t have time to wash her hair. As Carmine was pathologically stingy he had ordered Catherine to come home immediately after William Tell to relieve the babysitter and not even stay for drinks in the interval. Catherine fingered a large bruise on her left cheek and hoped make-up would hide it.

The soloist in Liszt’s Piano Concerto that evening was Benny Basanovich, a half- French, half-Russian pig, who could only play loudly. He therefore chose pieces (and women, said Viking) where he could bang away. Good looking in a brutal fashion, Benny had thick black ram’s curls falling to his shoulders, a hooked nose, slanting eyes beneath thick brown eyebrows and a big, light red mouth. A Shepherd Denston artist, he’d always been wildly jealous of Abby because she was more famous than him, but he got much more work than he deserved because Howie fancied him.

After a brief telephone call to Lionel, both men decided that Lionel would follow Benny and bring in the orchestra as necessary, and that everyone would ignore Abby.

By two o’clock, the beauticians had Abby corsetted, dressed, made-up and coiffeured. She was then subjected to an interview and a long photographic shoot with the Daily Telegraph, followed by a press conference and photo-call in the burning heat.

‘Can’t I even take off my panty hose?’ pleaded Abby.

‘Certainly not, Luvlilegs have taken a full-page ad in the programme,’ said Crystelle, shutting up such subversion with a huge powder-puff slap in Abby’s face. ‘Always remember to brush powder upwards, it raises the hairs on your face and gives you a far livelier expression.’

‘Don’t you look a poppet,’ cried Peggy Parker in ecstasy. ‘What a transformation.’

Peggy herself, already made-up and wearing a white kimono over her massive corseted bulk, looked like an all-in wrestler. On the window-sill, as more dark blue lines were drawn under her lashes, Abby noticed a gift- wrapped present.

‘To Abigail Rosen, Thank you indeed for a very pleasant concert, sincerely, Peggy Parker,’ said the accompanying card.

There was one for Benny, too.