Marcus winced. He had insisted on dropping the ‘Campbell’ for the competition. But hearing his famous name, people nudged and stared as he edged through the tables. He had told Alexei he never wanted to hear from him again but always when the telephone rang he prayed it might be him. Equally irrationally he had prayed all week for a good-luck card. The telephone was in an alcove by the stairs. The walls were covered with numbers.
‘Hallo,’ he picked up the receiver, ‘you’ll have to speak up, there’s a hell of a din going on here.’
‘Hi, Marcus. I gather congratulations are in order on your engagement to Abby Rosen. Lucky sod, when are you getting married?’
Hearing the whining, thin, ingratiating, very common, male voice, Marcus started to tremble.
‘Who the hell are you?’
‘It’s The Scorpion.’
‘I’ve nothing to say.’ Marcus was drenched in sweat.
‘We wanted to run a little story about you getting to the finals of the Appleton. Abby must be knocked out. It’ll be hard for her not to favour you.’
Marcus was about to hang up, when the voice thickened and became even oilier, almost lascivious with menace. ‘Another thing. We’ve got in our possession some letters to you written by Alexei Nemerovsky.’
Marcus couldn’t breathe, his crashing heart seemed to have filled his lungs and windpipe.
‘Hallo, are you there? They make very interesting reading. Things were obviously pretty passionate between you, particularly in Prague when you broke the bed.’
‘I don’t know what you’re taking about,’ croaked Marcus. ‘I never wrote any letters to Alexei, he never wrote any to me.’
‘Oh come, come. Some of them are very poetic: “My little white dove lying warm and no longer frightened in my hands”.’
‘They’re fakes,’ wheezed Marcus. ‘P-please burn them, My father and mother… no-one could be interested.’
‘I think they could. It’s very much in the public interest. Two household names like your dad and Nemerovsky, not to mention L’Appassionata, lovely girl, Abby, tried to top herself last time a man cheated on her. Think you’ve been quite fair to her?’
‘No, yes, it must have been you who broke into the cottage.’ Oh Christ, he shouldn’t have said that. ‘You don’t have any right to publish those letters.’
‘That’s a matter for the lawyers. We’re going with the story anyway. We just wanted to give you the chance to put your point of view to us.’ The voice became suddenly cosy, the mental nurse about to hand over the valium. ‘We’re talking six figures, I’m sure you could use the money.’
‘No, no,’ Marcus was frantic. ‘Please burn them. I’m not anyone important.’
‘You’re Rupert’s son, mate,’ said Torquemada chillingly. ‘Does he know you’re gay?’
Marcus gave a sob and dropped the telephone, leaving it clattering against the wall. He was desperately fighting for breath. Perhaps it would be better if he did die.
Choking, sobbing, he stumbled through the night back to St Theresa’s. He kept slipping on wet leaves, and fell over twice. Fortunately the foyer was temporarily deserted. Marcus tried to ring Alexei, but there was no answer. Abby would be on the way to the airport by now. Rupert was at the Czech Grand National. Marcus had read it in The Times that morning. Penscombe Pride was running in the big race on Sunday, just to prove he wasn’t past it.
Where was Helen? Marcus tried to gather his thoughts. Oh Christ, he couldn’t tell Helen.
Crawling into bed, pulling the bedclothes over his head, gasping for breath, fighting an advancing tidal wave of panic, he waited for the dawn and the army of reporters who, like a slavering pack of hounds, would tear him to pieces. How was he going to face Abby, Helen and, worst of all, Rupert?
As soon as it was light, he got up, and staggered into Appleton to get the papers. The temperature had dropped, bringing winter. The glowing horse-chestnut tree outside his room had been stripped in a day. Like a burst pipe in a distant room, he could hear the leaves rustling down in the park. As he passed the lake, there was a dull thud, and a figure leapt up in front of him. Marcus cringed, imagining a lurking reporter, but it was only a heron. Rising with flapping wings like a biplane, it carried a wriggling carp in its mouth.
I’m that fish, but without its innocence, thought Marcus in horror. It would be so much easier for everyone if he topped himself. He had to stop every ten yards to get his breath. He was wheezing like the kind of broken-winded old chaser his father would have dispatched to the knackers.
As he reached a newsagents on the edge of town the gutters were full of beech leaves like rivers of blood. In a garden opposite a large magpie strutted across the lawn. Self-satisfied, rapacious in its white tie and tails, it was just like Rannaldini. Bird of ill omen: one for sorrow.
‘Oh please, Mr Magpie, where’s your friend?’ begged Marcus, ‘Oh God, let The Scorpion not have printed it.’
‘You don’t want to read that rag,’ chided the newsagent, as Marcus picked up a copy. ‘It’s roobish. Good luck for tomorrow evening.’
‘We recognize you from the Manchester Evening News,’ said his wife. ‘Used to love your Dad when he were show jumping.’
Gasping his thanks, stumbling out of the shop, collapsing against a wall, Marcus fumbled frantically through the pages. There was nothing, thank Christ, maybe it had been some practical joke. Maybe they’d pulled the story… no, that reporter had known too much. He was only in remission.
He tried to act normally, but he was shaking and wheezing so badly when he finally reached St Theresa’s that Natalia persuaded him to take one of Rannaldini’s beta-blockers.
‘They’re terreefic for zee nerves, I had one before both rounds.’
Carl Matheson was worried by tendonitis.
‘I guess I better see a doctor before I rehearse this afternoon.’
Abby had stayed on an extra twenty-four hours in Philadelphia to confirm the American tour, so she could brandish the details as one glorious fait accompli in front of Miles, the board and Shepherd Denston. Nor could they winge about money. The wonderfully generous US cultural committee, coupled with American Bravo Records, had agreed to pick up most of the bill.
‘We figured we’d lost you to the UK for good, Abby,’ the chairman had told her. ‘We all feel it’s high time you brought your orchestra home.’
Abby’s eyes filled with tears every time she repeated his words. Always one track, she had concentrated all her energies on the deal in a desperate attempt to forget Viking. But now it was clinched, surely she could ask him back. The Americans would just adore him.
Appleton looked particularly bleak on such a cold wintery morning, but at least the huge begrimed town hall had been decorated by the flags of the nations in the finals. Abby was delighted an American had made it. She hoped Carl would at least come second.
She reached the Prince of Wales at ten o’clock which would give her a few hours’ zizz before rehearsing Beethoven’s Third with Han Chai at two-thirty.
There was a tray of red poppies for Remembrance Day in reception. Abby couldn’t see her pigeon hole for messages. The first asked her to call Marcus at St Theresa’s urgently. The second wanted her to call The Scorpion. Like hell she would. The third was to call Miles.
The RSO’s greatest coup for years was to be the orchestra chosen to play in the Appleton. Most of the board had flown up to bask in reflected glory. Looking round the splendid suite, for which the orchestra had forked out to enable her to give interviews, Abby decided she better ring Miles first.