Appassionata (4 page)

MISS PARROTT	The rather heavenly RSO harpist.

JULIAN PELLAFACINI	The highly respected leader of the New World Symphony Orchestra.

LUISA PELLAFACINI	His lovely bosomy wife.

NATALIA PHILIPOVA	An apparently untalented Czechoslovak pianist.

PETER PLUMPTON	First Flute of the RSO.

MISS PRIDDOCK	Mark Carling’s secretary, beloved of Old Cyril. An unfazed old trout.

ROBERTO RANNALDINI	Mega-Maestro and arch fiend, currently musical director of the New World Symphony Orchestra.

KITTY RANNALDINI	His third wife, in love with Lysander Hawkley.

JACK RODWAY	A randy receiver.

SISTER ROSE	A sympathetic nurse at Northladen General Hospital.

ABIGAIL ROSEN	American violinist, nicknamed ‘L’Appassionata’ whose dazzling talent and tigerish beauty have taken the world by storm.

THE RUTSHIRE BUTCHER	A very critical critic.

SANDRA	Christopher Shepherd’s secretary.

FLORA SEYMOUR	Wild child, pilgrim soul and daughter of Georgie Maguire. Destroyed by a teenage affaire with Rannaldini, now concentrating on the viola.

CHRISTOPHER SHEPHERD	Abigail Rosen’s agent, a control freak, who provides the respectable front of Shepherd Denston.

MISS SMALLWOOD	Secretary, Cotchester Music Club.

STEVE SMITHSON	Second Bassoon of the RSO and representative of the Musicians’ Union. Muscular right arm from throwing the book at people.

DAME EDITH SPINK	A distinguished composer and Musical Director of the Cotchester Chamber Orchestra.

TOMMY STAINFORTH	Principal Percussion of the RSO.

MRS DICK STANDISH	A skittish sponsor’s wife.

DENNIS STRICKLAND	Principal Viola of the RSO, known as ‘El Creepo’.

BILL THACKERY	Second Desk, First Violin of the RSO. Better at cricket than the violin. Jolly good sort.

JAMES VEREKER	A television presenter.

WALTER	A benevolent bass.

SERENA WESTWARD	Head of Artists and Repertoire at Megagram Records.

CLAUDE ‘CHERUB’ WILSON	Third Percussion of the RSO. Very dumb blond and orchestra mascot.

XAVIER	A Colombian orphan.

THE ANIMALS

BOGOTÁ	A black labrador puppy.
JOHN DRUMMOND	Miss Priddock’s cat, office mouser to the RSO.
GERTRUDE	Taggie Campbell-Black’s mongrel.
JENNIFER	One of Lady Baddingham’s yellow labradors.
NIMROD	Rupert Campbell-Black’s lurcher.
MR NUGENT	Viking O’Neill’s black collie.
PENSCOMBE PRIDE	Rupert Campbell-Black’s favourite and finest horse.
SHOSTAKOVICH	Rodney Macintosh’s grey Persian cat.
SIBELIUS AND SCRIABIN	Abigail Rosen’s black-and-white kittens. Like magpies, the two of them bring joy.
TIPPETT	Dame Edith Spink’s pug.
TREVOR	Flora Seymour’s rescued mongrel.

Appassionata

OVERTURE

ONE

In the second week of April, Taggie Campbell-Black crossed the world and fell head over heels in love for the second time in her life. The flight to Bogotá, delayed by engine trouble at Caracas, took fifteen hours. Taggie, who’d hardly eaten or slept since Rupert broke the news of their journey, could only manage half a glass of champagne. Nor, being very dyslexic, was she able to lose herself in Danielle Steel or Catherine Cookson, nor even concentrate on Robbie Coltrane camping it up as a nun on the in-flight movie. She could only clutch Rupert’s hand, praying over and over again: Please God let it happen.

By contrast Rupert, concealing equal nerves behind his habitual deadpan langour, had drunk far too much as he sat thumbing through a glossary at the back of a Bogotá guide book.

‘I now know the Colombian for stupid bugger, prick, jerk, double bed, air-conditioning, rum and cocaine, so we should be OK.’

At El Dorado Airport, the policemen fingered their guns. Seeing an affluent-looking gringo, the taxi-driver turned off his meter. As they drove past interminable whore-houses and dives blaring forth music, past skyscrapers next to crumbling shacks, Rupert’s hangover was assaulted as much by the shroud of black diesel fumes that blanketed the city as by the furiously honking almost static rush-hour traffic. There was rubbish everywhere. On every pavement, pimps with dead eyes, drug pushers carrying suitcases bulging with notes, tarts in tight dresses pushed aside beggars on crutches and stepped over grubby sloe-eyed children playing in the gutter. How could anything good come out of such a hell-hole?

As Taggie couldn’t bear to wait a second longer, they drove straight to the convent. Now, quivering like a dog in a thunderstorm, she was panicking about her clothes.

‘D’you think I should have stopped off at the hotel and changed into something more motherly?’

Rupert glanced sideways. No-one filled a body stocking like Taggie or had better, longer legs for a miniskirt.

‘You look like a plain-clothes angel.’

‘My skirt isn’t too short?’

‘Never, never.’ Rupert put a hand on her thigh.

By the time they reached the convent, a sanctuary amid the squalor, appalling poverty and brutal crime of the slums, the fare cost almost more than the flight. The Angelus was ringing in the little bell-tower. The setting sun, finding a gap in the dark lowering mountains of the Andes, had turned the square white walls a flaming orange. A battered Virgin Mary looked down from a niche as Rupert knocked on the blistered bottle-green front door. But no-one answered.

‘We should have rung first to check they were in,’ said Taggie, who, despite the stifling heat of the evening, was trembling even more uncontrollably. She looked about to faint.

‘I can’t imagine they’re out at some rave-up.’ Gently Rupert smoothed the black circles beneath her terrified eyes. ‘It’ll be OK, sweetheart.’

He clouted the door again.

Now that he was in Cocaine City, Rupert had never more longed for a line to put him in carnival mood to carry him through the interview ahead. His longing increased a moment later when the door was unlocked and creaked open a few inches and he had a sudden vision that Robbie Coltrane had got in on the act again.

A massive nun, like a superannuated orang-utan, with tiny suspicious eyes disappearing in fat, a beard and hairy warts bristling disapproval, demanded what they wanted. She then insisted on seeing their passports, and looked as though she would infinitely rather have frisked Taggie than Rupert, before grudgingly allowing them in.

By contrast the Mother Superior, Maria Immaculata, was femininity and charm itself. She had a round, almost childish face, like a three-quarters moon, smiling, slanting brown eyes and a cherished olive complexion set off by a very white linen wimple. As she moved forward with a rustle of black silk, the pale hand she held out to Rupert and Taggie was soft and slightly greasy from a recent application of hand cream. Mother Maria Immaculata believed you brought more comfort to the poor and suffering if you looked attractive.

It was the same in her office. Crimson bougainvillaea rioted round the windows outside. Frescoes and wood carvings decorated the white walls of her office. On her shiny dark desk, which seemed to breathe beeswax, beside a silver vase of blue hibiscus flowers, lay the report of Rupert’s and Taggie’s marriage drawn up by English social workers.

But Maria Immaculata did not set much store by gringo gobbledygook. More importantly, Rupert and Taggie had come with an excellent recommendation from the Cardinal, who was a friend of Declan O’Hara, Rupert’s partner, whose television interviews were transmitted world-wide. Even the Pope, who was evidently writing a book, and might want to promote it on Declan’s programme one day, had put in a good word. Anyway, Maria Immaculata preferred to make up her own mind.

And then Sister Mercedes, who acted as the convent Rottweiler, had helped matters greatly by bringing in this beautiful couple – the man as blond, tall, handsome and proud as El Dorado himself, and his wife as deathly pale, slender and quivering as a eucalyptus tree in an earthquake, and whose eyes were as silver-grey as the eucalyptus leaves themselves.

Taggie was clutching a litre of duty-free brandy, a vast bottle of
Joy
, a British Airways teddy bear wearing goggles and a flying jacket, and a white silk tasselled shawl decorated with brilliantly coloured birds of paradise.

‘For you,’ she stammered, dropping them on Mother Immaculata’s desk and nearly knocking over the vase of hibiscus, if Rupert with his lightning reflexes hadn’t whisked it to the safety of a side table.

‘I h-h-ho-pe you don’t m-m-m-ind us barging in, straight from the airport, but we were so longing—’ Taggie’s voice faltered.

Timeo Danaeos
, thought Sister Mercedes grimly. She spent her life pouring cold water on the romantic enthusiams of Maria Immaculata, who was now lovingly fingering the white shawl.

‘Dear child, you shouldn’t have spoiled us.’

‘They will do for a raffle,’ said Sister Mercedes firmly.

Maria Immaculata sighed.

‘Perhaps you could arrange some tea, Sister Mercedes. Sit down.’ She smiled at Rupert and Taggie and pointed at two very hard straight-backed wooden chairs. ‘You must be tired after such a journey.’

‘Not when you’ve been travelling as long as we have,’ said Rupert, thinking of the wretched years of miscarriages and painful tests and operations, the trailing from one specialist to another, not to mention the humiliation of the endless KGB-style interrogations by social workers.

‘Are you capable of satisfying your young wife, Mr Campbell-Black?’ or ‘Would you be prepared to take on an older child, one perhaps that was coloured, abused or mentally and physically handicapped?’

To which Rupert had snapped back: ‘No – Taggie’s got enough problem children with me.’

‘You’re too old at forty-four, Mr Campbell-Black. By the time he or she is a teenager, you’ll be nearly sixty. I’m afraid if you want a baby, you and Mrs Campbell-Black will have to go abroad.’

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