Appassionata

because of the row he was having with the council over planning permission for the fifty acres on Cowslip Hill.

George certainly had a terrific effect on waiters, who had all converged on the table, handing over red velvet, tasselled menus, gabbling about Plats du Jour, and filling glasses, particularly Boris’s, whenever they were empty.

‘Penny for your forts,’ asked Jack Rodway, who’d been admiring Flora’s profile.

‘I was thinking,’ replied Flora with a sweet smile, ‘what an ugly cow that is opposite.’

‘Her “partner” Gilbert is worse,’ murmured Jack. ‘I sat next to ‘im on the drive down. Stinks like a pole cat.’

Flora giggled. ‘Obviously thinks avant-garde is more important than Right Guard.’

Jack looked blank for a second, then roared with laughter.

‘That’s right, Flora.’

Jack Rodway had dissipated blue eyes in a ruddy expensive face, wore a sharp navy-blue suit, and was such an alley cat that Flora expected to see furry pointed ears protruding through his thatch of blond hair.

‘I suppose,’ she observed, ‘receivers and divorce lawyers are the only people making any money these days.’

‘Too right, Flora, with twenty thousand firms going belly up every year, it’s a growf industry, nime of the gime.’

‘Must be awfully depressing, like being an undertaker or a nurse in a vivisection clinic,’ Flora shivered. ‘All those poor employees losing their jobs.’

‘We try and mike it as pineless as possible for the personnel involved. No fanks,’ Jack rejected a wholemeal roll. Over forty, a flat stomach required sacrifices.

‘Moules are nice, Flora, just come in,’ suggested the head waiter, who was a great pal of Flora’s mother.

‘Lovely, I’ll have those,’ Flora beamed back at him. ‘I’m so hopeless at decisions.’

‘I’ll have smoked salmon, followed by steak and French fries,’ said Jack Rodway.

Suddenly Flora twigged.

‘You must be an invaluable contact for George. Presumably when companies go into receivership they often have huge crumbling old buildings that no longer qualify as listed, if you knock off a few cornices, but are ripe for development as office blocks or supermarkets.’

‘What a very astute young lidy you are, Flora,’ said Jack Rodway, filling up her glass. ‘Wasted on the violas.’

George, from his bootfaced expression, had obviously heard every word, but was being monopolized by Gwynneth.

‘I shall not let my sword sleep in my hand,’ she was saying affectedly, ‘until I have routed out sexual apartheid in British orchestras and until 50 per cent of the repertoire is by women composers.’

George choked on his glass of wine. Gwynneth turned greedily to the menu. As Megagram and the RSO were splitting the bill, she and Goaty Gilbert, who had granny specs and green teeth, surrounded by a straggly ginger beard, chose all the most expensive things on the menu.

‘Disgusting pigs,’ muttered Flora, receiving another glare from George. But nothing could dim her happiness. In the pocket of her Black-Watch-tartan dungarees was a postcard left in her pigeon hole:

Darling Flora,

Astrid is moving out, thank God. The pillow talk was very limited. Will you have a drink with me the second I get back from Glasgow?

All love,

Viking.

Viking was another alley cat, reflected Flora, but she felt he was the only person who could get her over Rannaldini. For the moment, she could practise on Jack.

‘D’you know Fatima Singh, Mr Hungerford?’ Across the table Gwynneth was returning the attack.

‘Does she?’ asked Flora.

‘What?’ said Gwynneth impatiently.

‘Sing?’ giggled Flora.

‘No, no, she composes. You must be familiar with her Elegy for oppressed Lesbians in the Harem.’

‘Best place for them,’ said Jack. ‘All girls togewer.’

‘She makes lovely use of the sitar,’ went on Gwynneth, totally ignoring them. ‘Gilbert and I note you have no Asian music in your repertoire, Mr Hungerford.’

Down the table, Boris was gazing into Astrid’s eyes and murmuring Pushkin in his deep husky voice. Abby, on an apres-concert high, was bending Gilbert’s dirty ear about the wonders of Winifred Trapp and Fanny Mendelssohn.

‘We have a terrific harpist, Miss Parrott, who’s mad about the Trapp solos.’

The Pellafacinis were talking about children with Serena Westwood.

‘I’m not an achiever,’ Luisa was saying apologetically. ‘I look after Julian and the kids.’

Abandoning George for a second, Gwynneth was now discussing madrigals with Miles.

‘The musicians sing them on the coach on the way to concerts,’ he was saying.

‘How joyful,’ Gwynneth brought her hands together with a clash of bangles. ‘When I come down on my three-day assessment of the orchestra, I hope I may be permitted to join in. We could sing motets as well — they are the religious equivalent of the domestic madrigal.’ And she went off into a flurry offa, la, las, in a quavering soprano.

If she got locked into the coffin-shaped lavatory with Viking, decided Flora, there wouldn’t be room for Hilary and Militant Moll as well.

Marcus sat in a daze, his fingers playing idly on the white table cloth, still coming down after the Requiem, unable to say a word on the noisy journey to the hotel, when everyone else was going beserk expressing their approval.

Suddenly he turned to Boris and blurted out: ‘That was one of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve ever heard, like discovering America or walking round Chartres Cathedral for the first time.’

There was a pause as everyone suddenly remembered the Requiem was why they were there.

Serena Westwood, who believed that a bonk a day kept the doldrums away, and who had high hopes of George, turned and looked at Marcus for the first time. What a beauty, such a sweet, sensitive yet strong face, and he was the only man she’d met whom the Hugh Grant hairstyle really suited.

‘Marcus is why Requiem happen,’ said Boris excitedly. ‘Ee copy, ee transcribe, ee listen, ee encourage, is super pianist, you must give him a contract,’ he added to Serena. ‘Let’s all dreenk to Marcus.’ Having drained his glass, he smashed it in the fireplace.

The other diners looked wildly excited. The waiters came running in in alarm, until George waved to them to forget it and to bring Boris another glass.

‘What have you done recently?’ Serena asked a desperately blushing Marcus.

‘T-teaching mostly. I had a recital in Bradford last week.’

‘Good?’

‘Not brilliant, a string broke in the middle of Bartok’s Allegro Barbaro. It sounded like a bomb going off, all the audience tore out, not many of them bothered to come back.’ Marcus smiled deprecatingly.

‘You must send me a tape,’ said Serena enthusiastically. ‘Perhaps you should have a crack at a piano competition. It’s good experience and the best way of getting known.’

‘It’s a lousy idea,’ snapped Abby, abandoning Gilbert in mid-flow. ‘Marcus doesn’t need gladiatorial contests. He’s gotta develop at his own pace.’

Marcus opened his mouth and shut it again

‘Well, at least get an agent,’ urged Serena. ‘I could suggest-’

‘If he needs an agent,’ snapped Abby, ‘he can go to Howie Denston.’