Authors: Jilly Cooper

Tags: #Fiction, #General

Appassionata (97 page)

BOOK: Appassionata

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‘Don’t, for Chrissake,’ begged Viking, but it was too late.

At first she thought it was the Press, as the flashes of a dozen cameras blinded her. Then, in horror, she took in the muscular hairy legs below the straining black skirt of the waitress who was carrying the sliding magnum of Moët aloft. Behind her, leering and cheering in varying degrees of drunkenness, were most of the male members of her orchestra.

‘Who’s a clever Viking, then?’ shouted Randy.

‘Hooray for the lucky winner,’ cried Peter Plumpton, who was still wearing his upended bread basket.

‘Too much molestar-hic, too much molesta ar,’ cried a dripping Dirty Harry.

‘I’ve won more than you, Viking.’ An exuberant Dixie smugly patted his strawberry-blond wig. ‘I had a grand on you at three to one.’

‘Fock off the lot of you,’ howled Viking, yanking Abby back inside, ‘and leave os alone.’

A moment later, the crowd dispersed as a yelling regiment of policemen and soldiers, brandishing guns, stormed the landing.

Another moment later, there was a crack like a pistol shot as Abby drove her high heel through Brahms’s
Horn Trio
.

Davie Buckle, having passed out behind the jacuzzi, had missed the arrival of the forces of law and order, but waking, had dragged a pair of underpants on over his trousers, and was now progressing noisily along the third floor.

Julian caught up with him outside Number 387.

‘Hallo there,’ he was saying to an enraged Spanish bureaucrat in a hairnet.

‘Come on, Davie.’ As Julian took his arm, Davie started walking away from him in little circles. ‘You’ve got to stop disturbing people.’

‘Got to find Abby.’

‘Not at four o’clock in the morning.’

Julian decided his own room was the nearest.

Once he’d thrown Davie on the bed, however, Davie started to fight.

‘Got to find Abby.’

‘I shall telephone Brünnhilde,’ said Julian sternly.

Davie looked owlish. He was terrified of Brünnhilde.

‘She’s in Rutminshter,’ he said sulkily, then brightening, added, ‘then I’ll telephone Luisa.’

‘Luisa doesn’t mind, she trusts me,’ said Julian, dropping five Redoxins into a tooth mug, and handing them to Davie.

‘You’ve got Beethoven
Nine
again tomorrow, no it’s tonight now, drink it.’

‘This isn’t Scotch,’ Davie looked into the tooth mug in outrage. ‘Someone’s pissed in this glass.’

Limping towards the window, he was about to chuck it into the street.

‘Drink it,’ ordered Julian.

A shattered George fell into bed at four o’clock in the morning after trying to unravel the endless red tape of flying Rodney’s body back to Lucerne. Having switched off his mobile, he was roused a few minutes later by his wife.

‘It’s Nicholas someone, he sounds put out,’ she added, as George took the house telephone from her.

Knickers was apoplectic. The orchestra were completely out of control, orgying and rioting in Abby’s jacuzzi which had overflowed and flooded the bridal suite below, where the President of some African state was having an illicit unbridal bonk. His bodyguards had gone beserk and called the troops out. Twenty members of the orchestra had been arrested and were now cooling their heels in Barcelona gaol.

‘Which members of the orchestra?’ asked George icily.

‘Dixie, Randy, Blue, Nellie, Ninion, Dimitri, Candy and Clare. Cherub escaped I think, Flora, I can’t remember exactly.’

The arrested players had never seen anything equal to the rage George had worked up by the time he’d driven the forty miles to Barcelona gaol.

He found most of his orchestra still plastered. Dimitri was crying because he couldn’t remember where he’d left his cello; Miss Parrott was hiccupping with her rhubarb-pink beehive askew and singing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’; Dixie, still in his black-and-white maid’s outfit, was being leered at by the guard; and Ninion, still necking ferociously, looked as though he was going to be sucked inside Fat Isobel like a minnow at any second.

Only by handing over hoards and hoards and hoards of greenbacks did George manage to spring them. The one saving grace was that none of them had got round – yet – to taking drugs.

‘Where’s Flora?’ snarled George, as the motley bunch swayed in front of him.

‘Oh, Flora wasn’t with us,’ said Nellie, who was wearing a Spanish policeman’s hat, ‘the poor thing had a migraine. She was crying with pain when I popped in around midnight.’

Only Blue, who had his hand in Cathie’s and was soberer than most, noticed that George suddenly cheered up, and the great thundercloud threatening to drench them all suddenly rolled away.

‘You better go back to the hotel and pack,’ he told them unsympathetically. ‘And get your baggage outside your doors. The coach leaves in an hour.’

Ignoring two wake-up calls, Barry the Bass was finally roused by a call from the leader of the orchestra who’d spent the rest of the night in an armchair.

‘It’s about Davie,’ said Julian apologetically.

‘Where did he end up?’

‘My room, eventually. He’s snoring so loudly, Brünnhilde will hear him in Rutminster, and I can’t wake him. He’s going to miss this goddamn roll-call.’

‘Give me five minutes.’

Barry the Bass, who was highly experienced in these matters, from his days in a rock band, kicked Davie in the ribs.

‘Get up, you drunken bastard.’

Davie groaned, but didn’t stir.

Deodorant sprayed into his face had no effect.

It was only when Barry seized the foot with the sprained ankle and twisted it round and round that Davie finally woke up.

The three made it outside just in time.

In the absence of Miles, Knickers begged George to inspect the troops. ‘And please, please chew them out. I simply can’t control them any more.’

Dawn was making flamingo-pink in-roads on the East as George walked slowly down the row. The Spaniards, he decided, could not have seen so many wrecks since the Armada. Flora looked frightful, her face chalk-white, her eyes through crying as red as a white rat’s. Slumped against the coach, slitty eyes gazing into space, Viking looked even whiter than she did. Of the whole lot, only the Steel Elf, who didn’t drink, looked beautiful, the violet shadows under her eyes increasing her look of fragility.

‘Where’s Cherub?’ intoned Knickers, checking his list.

‘It’s not his fort,’ piped up Noriko. ‘Poor Cherub’s lost all his crows.’

On cue, Cherub shot through the swing doors, holding a tambourine over his cock and totally naked except for his shoes.

Scuttling down the steps, he slid into the line-up just as George reached him. The players, despite hangovers, were in total hysterics – waiting for a blistering undressing down. But George’s eyes merely ran over Cherub for a second.

‘Shoes need cleaning, Wilson,’ he said coldly and moved on.

The next moment, Noriko had hurtled down therow and wrapped Cherub in her long pink cardigan.

George returned to the middle of the row, climbing back up three of the hotel steps so he could talk to his orchestra. In his haste to reach the gaol, he had put his dark blue poloshirt on inside out – lucky for him, thought Flora wistfully.

‘You’re all an absolute disgrace,’ he roared, then, like the turned-up corner of a page, a faint smile lifted his square face. ‘We’ll be in Toledo by ten o’clock. Beethoven
Nine
is appropriately scheduled to start at nine. As you can play it in your sleep, I suggest a short rehearsal at eight after your meal-break, but only on condition that you spend the afternoon in bed, alone and you play out of your boots this evening.’

And he strode off towards the car-park.

‘He’s in a jovial mood,’ said Miss Parrott in surprise.

Out of masochistic yearning, Flora stationed herself in front of Hilary and the Steel Elf, but they both slept all the way to Toledo. A rowdy party carried on at the back of the coach, but they couldn’t persuade Flora to join them.

‘
Milesie loves me, yes I know
,

Cos my pay cheque tells me so
,’ sang Cherub to the tune of ‘Jesus Loves Me’.

Viking sat by himself. The sky clouded over as they drove into Toledo. Viking could see a red traffic-light reflected in the bus window like a setting sun. If only he could have turned back the clock twelve hours. He was in the kind of eruptive, jungle-cat mood where everyone avoided him.

But, as they surged into the hotel reception which was appropriately filled with glossy dark jungle plants, to collect their new keys from Knickers, Randy shouted ‘Lunch on Viking, everyone.’

‘I’m crashing out,’ Viking shot a warning glance in Flora’s direction.

‘Dom Perignon all round,’ went on Randy evilly.

A mocking Dixie put his arm round Flora’s shoulders.

‘You missed all the fun last night.’

‘Shot your face,’ howled Viking.

‘What
are
you talking about?’

Flora didn’t believe Dixie at first. Then he waved a polaroid under her nose, and she flipped. All her pent-up misery over George going back to his wife and the thieving bloody randiness and fecklessness of men in general, poured out of her, as she screamed at all of them.

‘How could you do that to Abby, you bastards,
BASTARDS
. You swore you’d break her, and now you bloody well have.’

Locking herself in her room she threw herself down on the bed, sobbing her heart out, ignoring the bombardment on the door until they all got bored and wandered off. Then the telephone went. It was Viking.

‘It wasn’t like you think,’ he begged. ‘Please put in a good word to Abby.’

‘Oh, fuck off. I am just writing a stinking letter to St Patrick, telling him there was one utterly poisonous snake he didn’t drive out of Ireland. Haven’t you any idea either how this will hurt Marcus?’

The moment she slammed the telephone down, it rang again.

‘Fuck off, fuck off,’ shrieked Flora.

‘Is thut Room 854?’

‘How do I know?’

‘It’s George.’

‘Whadja want?’ She mustn’t start crying again.

‘You once said you wanted to go oop in an air balloon.’

‘I’ve got a headache.’

‘Fresh air’ll do you good – a car’ll pick you up at two o’clock.’

SIXTY

Remembering the coiffured, manicured Ruth, Flora decided two could play at that game. Systematically, she worked her way through the little bottles in her bathroom, washing her hair, then lying in a bubble bath, in a shower cap as transparent as her motives, as she scrubbed her body with a tiny oblong of soap. Then she rubbed in all the available moisturizer and gargled away all the pink mouthwash. She would have scrubbed her entrails if she could have got at them. She put on a dove-grey sundress, thrown out by her mother as being too young, and left her hair loose so it shone and swung like a copper bell. With a desperately trembling hand, she just managed to draw two thick lines round her eyes until they dominated her face like a bush baby’s, and painted her lips the glowing coral of japonica in spring. The gentle dove-grey was wonderfully becoming. Jumping with nerves, she went downstairs to find various members of the orchestra passed out on chairs and sofas in the foyer. The bar was propping up a green-faced Davie. Others were setting out on jaunts with guide books.

‘I’ve got to see something of Spain other than concert halls and ceilings,’ announced Nellie.

In a nearby booth, Randy’s big checked shoulders were hunched over the telephone as he called home for the first time in six days. The next moment he was crying so much he could hardly tell his wife he’d see her tomorrow.

‘What on earth’s the matter?’ asked Flora.

‘Kirsty put each of the children on to speak to me,’ sobbed Randy, ‘I miss them all so much.’

BOOK: Appassionata

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