Appassionata (44 page)
It was a matter of pride for Viking to get all his section through. His only worry was Old Cyril, the Fourth Horn, whose lips and teeth had gone so he couldn’t centre the notes any more, and who drank too much out of nerves and despair.
Once a great player and friend of Dennis Brain, Old Cyril always wore a tie and a jacket to rehearsals, sat up straight, was polite to everyone, loved his garden and Miss Priddock for the thirty years he had been with the orchestra.
Viking knew he ought to take the old boy aside and tell him he was holding the section back, but Cyril had looked after Viking when he joined the orchestra eight years ago. He would never survive if he were fired and had to eke out an existence teaching, and Viking wasn’t going to dump him now. Cyril, however, hadn’t helped himself by downing beer after beer in the Shaven Crown on the day of the auditions.
By lunch-time, Abby had reached screaming pitch. Why in hell had she started the beastly thing? If she heard another
Mozart
concerto murdered, she’d go ballistic. She’d forgotten, too, how terrifying auditions were for players. With throats constricting, fingers stiffening, tongues tying, and breath shortening to nothing, it was worse than ironing someone else’s silk shirt.
Mozart
concerto murdered, she’d go ballistic. She’d forgotten, too, how terrifying auditions were for players. With throats constricting, fingers stiffening, tongues tying, and breath shortening to nothing, it was worse than ironing someone else’s silk shirt.
Number Thirty-Nine, who’d just come in, played exquisitely for three minutes before launching into a flurry of wrong notes and bursting into tears.
Appalled, Abby jumped up, pushing the brown velvet curtains apart, to find Little Jenny, the round-faced baby of the orchestra who sat at the back of the Second Violins.
‘You did great,’ Abby put her arm round Jenny’s heaving shoulders. ‘We all thought you were a far more experienced player. Of course you’re through. Go and have a large drink.’
‘It was your idea to audition everyone,’ said Lionel nastily as Abby flopped back into her chair.
‘We better all go to lunch and cool down,’ said Miles primly.
Abby, who was not remotely hungry, went in search of Jenny’s section leader, Mary Melville, known as ‘Mary-the-Mother-of-Justin’, because she was absolutely bats about her baby son. Abby wanted to tell Mary how good Jenny had been and that she ought to play at a desk nearer the front.
The band room acted as a sitting-room where musicians dumped their instruments, ate their packed lunches and relaxed when they weren’t needed in a piece of music. As well as low sofas, chairs and tables, there was a ping-pong table, a notice-board and a small bar at the far end, providing bacon sandwiches, hot dogs and soft drinks, tea and coffee.
The room fell silent as Abby entered.
‘I’m looking for Mary.’
‘Gone shopping,’ said Clarissa, Principal Cello, who apologized for speaking with her mouth full and, to everyone else’s horror, invited a pathetically grateful Abby to join her for a cup of coffee.
Clarissa, like Charlton Handsome, was another of Abby’s supporters. She admired her as a great player and, as the mother of three with a husband out of work, Clarissa was always too worried about paying the mortgage and the school fees and scurrying from teaching jobs to cabal and bitch with the rest of the orchestra.
Slumping down on one of the uncomfortable olive-green sofas, trying to ignore the hostility all around, Abby was amazed to see Viking, who normally went to the Shaven Crown at lunch-time with the Celtic Mafia, unenthusiastically eating cottage cheese between two pieces of Ryvita.
Beside him the Steel Elf was looking at colour charts.
‘This room is terrible,’ she glared up at walls painted a vile shade of hen’s diarrhoea green. ‘Why don’t we all pitch in and rag and drag it a nice peach one weekend?’
‘Needs some decent pictures,’ said Viking, not looking up from
Viz
.
Viz
.
‘Perhaps we should commission a portrait of our new musical director,’ said Hilary, who had her back to Abby.
‘Won’t be here long enough,’ said Juno bitchily.
‘Ignore them,’ whispered Clarissa, returning from the bar with two cups of coffee.
‘Thanks,’ whispered back Abby. ‘What’s Viking doing here?’
‘Dixie has a tenner on at 100-1 that Juno will kick Viking out before the end of April,’ murmured Clarissa, picking up the black tights she was darning, ‘so it’s in his interest to lead Viking astray.
‘On Sunday, Viking was supposed to be putting up shelves. Dixie lured him out to the pub and Viking didn’t get back till midnight. Madam was hopping,’ Clarissa lowered her voice even further, ‘and has refused to sleep with Viking unless he stops drinking and carousing, and he has.’
‘My God, for how long?’
‘About forty-eight hours.’
Viking, meanwhile, was trying to look as though he was enjoying cauliflower florets and Vegemite sandwiches.
‘What did you put in for Nugent?’
‘Nothing, I keep saying dogs should only be fed once a day. With the warmer weather, he can soon sleep outside. What d’you think of that colour for our bedroom, Victor?’
‘Onspeakable. Nugent will not sleep outside,’ he handed Nugent half his sandwich, which Nugent promptly spat out, regarding it as no substitute for his own shepherd’s pie at the pub.
‘Any chocolate biscuits?’ asked Viking.
Juno cut a grapefruit in half and handed one part to Viking with a plastic spoon and a napkin. ‘Here’s your dessert.’
‘Some achieve grapefruit, some have grapefruit thrust upon them,’ sighed Viking. ‘Oh Christ.’
Old Cyril had come in, cannoning off both sides of the band room door before collapsing hiccuping on a sofa, gazing out unseeingly at the chestnut candles tossing in the park.
He was followed by Mary-the-Mother-of-Justin, angelic face flushed with excitement over the photos she had just picked up from Boots.
‘This is Justin.’ She brandished a photograph of a gorgeous two year old in front of Abby and Clarissa.
‘Gorgeous,’ sighed Abby. ‘And that’s darling of you and him.’
‘I expect my husband’ll put that one in his wallet,’ Mary said happily.
‘You don’t have a photograph of me in your wallet, Victor,’ nagged Juno.
‘Haven’t got a wallet,’ said Viking, who was returning from the bar with a cup of black coffee for Cyril and a Penguin for Nugent.
‘Haven’t got any money either.’
Neither Covent Garden nor the London Met had yet paid him and Juno’s mortgage was eating into his salary.
Hearing guffaws from the window, he swung round. It was Dixie and Randy grinning and red faced from the pub.
‘We’ve bought you a box of After Eights, Victoria dear, to round off your slap-up meal.’
Viking auditioned in the middle of the afternoon, and he mobbed the whole thing up. Somehow he had persuaded the pianist to play a piece of music more suited to a strip club. The listening panel pursed their lips and looked even more disapproving when, after a couple of bars from the French horn, a lacy black bra flew over the brown velvet curtains, followed in leisurely succession by fishnet stockings, scarlet satin garters and, finally, a purple G-string, which landed on the shiny board-room table in front of Abby.
Abby’s cries of ‘This is obnoxious,’ were then drowned by Don Juan’s horn call, before Viking launched into the love duet from
Ein Heldenleben
, establishing no doubt as to his identity.
Ein Heldenleben
, establishing no doubt as to his identity.
Sauntering out, he left a note on his chair:
‘Please leave this seat as you would find it,’
for Randy Hamilton, who laughed so much he could hardly play.
‘Please leave this seat as you would find it,’
for Randy Hamilton, who laughed so much he could hardly play.
‘Fuck,’ Randy said, after the tenth wrong note.
‘Shut up, you are not allowed to speak,’ hissed a sweating Nicholas, who was supposed to be calling out players’ numbers to the listening panel as he fed them in.
‘Fuck,’ said Randy for a second time, so distracting Nicholas, that Blue, plus horn, was able to slide into the board room unnoticed, and hide in a big cupboard in the corner.
Thus, when a swaying Cyril was posted in by Viking, and Nicholas had called out his number, fifty-five, Blue put his horn to his lips and played the horn solo from
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
so beautifully, the panel halted him after a couple of minutes.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
so beautifully, the panel halted him after a couple of minutes.
‘That’s fine,’ Abby turned to Miss Priddock. ‘Put a “yes” to Number Fifty-Five.’
‘Definitely,’ agreed Lionel and Miles.
The next moment, to their horror, a beaming Cyril staggered through the curtains, solemnly shook hands with them all, blew a kiss to Miss Priddock and tottered out.
Miles and Lionel and Abby were all furious, but not so cross as Quinton Mitchell, Viking’s Third Horn, who threatened to sneak to the panel about Blue’s playing instead of Cyril.
‘I have to sit next to the drunken old bugger,’
‘If you breathe a word,’ Viking seized Quinton’s lapels, ‘I’ll tell Mrs Mitchell exactly who you were op to at Hugo’s leaving party.’
‘Fifty-Six,’ shouted Nicholas.
The piano started playing, a few seconds later a flute joined in.
Lionel and Miles stared fixedly at their notes. Abby felt as though steel nails were being drilled through her head. A wave of vindictiveness overwhelmed her.
‘That’s enough warming up,’ she shouted a few minutes later. ‘We’re pushed for time, right, can you get started.’
There was a pause, then a furious squeaky little voice said: ‘I’ve just played the slow movement of Poulenc’s
Flute Sonata
.’
Flute Sonata
.’
Abby shook off Miles’s restraining hand.
‘Can you come through?’
Anger made Juno look even more enchanting, putting a rare warmth in her cold eyes.
‘It’s no good, Juno,’ said an unrepentant Abby. ‘I guess you’d better look for another job, you’re just not up to it.’
‘I was good enough for your predecessor,’ hissed Juno and stormed out.
‘That was very unwise,’ smirked Lionel.
‘Wonderfully lyrical,’ he murmured mistily a minute later, as Hilary, whom he’d coached between bonks last night, started paddling laboriously through the slow movement of Mozart’s
Clarinet Concerto
.
Clarinet Concerto
.
She was interrupted, however, by Viking, barging in without knocking, all slitty eyes and blazing Irish rage.
‘How dare you sack Juno?’ he yelled at Abby.
‘S-s-she’s useless, she must have slept with someone to get that job.’
‘She’s sleeping with me, and if she goes, I go.’
And in barged Blue.
‘If Viking goes, I go.’
And in marched Dixie and Randy.
‘And if Viking and Blue go, we go,’ they chorused.
‘Woof, woof, woof,’ barked Mr Nugent, bringing up the rear.
‘You fucking band of brothers, I don’t understand you guys,’ yelled back Abby. ‘I guessed love was blind, but I never figured it was deaf as well. I don’t know why you’re being so supportive,’ she added to Nugent. ‘Juno’ll have you out in a trice.’
Miles, who disapproved of swearing and dogs, looked very shocked.
As a result, the Steel Elf was reinstated but Abby had made herself an implacable enemy.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Poor Abby had such good intentions. But being musical director of the RSO continued to be an absolute nightmare. After one particularly rowdy rehearsal towards the end of April, during which Viking had peremptorily summoned the entire brass section out into the car-park to push his ancient BMW because he was late for the dentist, Abby received a summons from the manager.
Finding Lord Leatherhead and Miles, who’d given her even less support than Lionel, awaiting her, Abby steeled herself for a wigging. Instead, they told her they had found a new managing director.
‘It’s George Hungerford,’ said Lord Leatherhead in tones of awe. ‘We’ve been very, very lucky.’
Abby had no idea who George Hungerford was, and was even less impressed when they told her he was one of the few property developers who had managed to increase his fortune during the recession.
A rough, tough Yorkshireman, who in his youth had sung bass in the great Huddersfield Choral Society, George had always fancied running an orchestra, and reckoned he could sort out the RSO in one or two days a month with his hands tied behind his back. He would take over at the beginning of May.
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