‘He sent you his best, Abby. There’s a car waiting to take you up to Birmingham. I promised Howie’ (Rosalie looked faintly embarrassed), ‘I’d escort Mrs Harefield home to Rutminster. We’re all frightfully excited about the possibility of having her as a new client,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll catch up with you tomorrow. You’ll love the CBSO.’
Abby slumped in the front seat of the limousine, cruising at ninety up the Ml. Outside the spring barley shivered like animal fur, cow parsley tossed on the verges, the white spikes of blossom on the hawthorn hedges rose and fell like Benny Basanovich’s fingers, lambs slept beside their mothers, cattle grazed towards the setting sun. Occasionally an adorable little village or a huge house at the end of a long, tree-lined avenue, flashed by.
All life going on without me, thought Abby despairingly.
Inside the car was as coolly air-conditioned as the bottom of the sea.
Birmingham temporarily cheered Abby up. She was deeply impressed by the orchestra and the awesome acoustics of Symphony Hall. Her hero, Simon Rattle, however, was in Vienna and the guest conductor was a charming wily old fox called Sir Rodney Macintosh. Short, balding, very rotund, with twinkling pale blue, bloodshot eyes, and a pink beaming face above a neat white beard, he wore a black smock, purple track-suit bottoms and gymshoes with holes cut out for his corns.
Normally musical director of the Rutminster Symphony Orchestra, Sir Rodney was drawing to the end of a long, distinguished career and knew everyone in the music world.
‘How did you get on with Madame Harefield?’ was his first question as he gave Abby tickling kisses on both cheeks.
‘I thought she was a cow.’
Rodney looked shocked. ‘That’s very unkind.’
Oh God, I’ve goofed, thought Abby.
‘Very unkind to cows,’ said Rodney. ‘They’re such innocent, sweet-natured animals,’ and he roared with such infectious laughter that Abby joined in.
Leading her to her dressing-room, he waddled ahead, chattering all the time.
‘Hermione didn’t go to a very good charm-school, did she, darling? If you want a laugh see her sing Leonore in plum-coloured breeches, got a bum on her bigger than Oliver Hardy.
‘I hear Rannaldini was conducting in BA’ he went on. ‘Defininitely top of the Hitler parade, darling, a cold sensualist, driven by lust that never touches the heart. Here’s your dressing-room, next to mine, which is frightfully posh and normally belongs to Simon Rattle. Like a peep?’
‘Oh yes please,’ said Abby, admiring the grand piano draped in tapestries, the sofas, the scores, the big bowl of fruit on a marble table and the photographs of beautiful children in silver frames. She would have a room just like that when she became a conductor.
Her own dressing-room was full of flowers. Christopher, she thought, with a bound of hope. But they were only orange lilies from Howie, ‘Sorry babe, catch up with you later’; red roses and ‘Good Luck’ from Rupert; bluebells and freesias from Declan O’Hara, ‘When shall we two meet?’ and finally great branches of white lilac pouring forth sweet heady scent, ‘In trembling anticipation’ from Rodney.
Abby hugged him. If only she had a grandfather like him.
‘I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes, darling.’
Abby was very nervous. She’d been up since six practising in her hotel bedroom. Between them, Rannaldini and Christopher had destroyed her confidence. But Rodney was such a tonic. Although he had been known to crunch glacier mints, filched from the leader during the cadenzas of soloists he disliked, he couldn’t have been sweeter to Abby.
‘You are an artist, dear child, play at whatever tempo you feel correct and we will accompany you. Isn’t it splendid?’ he added, as he led her into the vast soaring hall. ‘Pity about the cherry-red chairs, ghastly colour, but fortunately here they’re always covered in bums.’
Unlike Rannaldini, Rodney was also adored by the musicians. Having kissed the leader on both cheeks, he clambered laboriously onto the rostrum, collapsed onto a chair, mopped his brow on a lemon-scented, blue-spotted handkerchief, and beamed round at everybody.
‘That’s the hard part over. So lovely to be back with my favourite orchestra. You all look so divine and play so wonderfully, it doesn’t matter a scrap I can’t remember any of your names.’
The orchestra giggled.
‘Now I don’t need to introduce this ravishing child, she’s had a frightful time in BA with Rannaldini so you’ve got to be particularly nice to her.’
The orchestra gave Abby a friendly round of applause. Artists in their own right, they were not overawed by soloists.
Rodney opened the score and raised his stick.
‘Now, please play together, boys and girls, or I won’t know where to put my beat.’
Abby’s knees would hardly hold her up in the long wait before she came in, but from her first note, magazines and books were put down, crosswords abandoned, tax returns set aside, and the musicians looked at each other in awe as the raw, sad sweetness pierced the tidal waves of orchestral sound.
‘Ravishing, my dear,’ Rodney called a halt, halfway through the first movement. ‘Brass dearies, it’d be nice if the diminuendo could be slightly more pronounced, i.e. shut up a bit.’
Then when a vital bassoon entry was missed: ‘Agonizing over ten across, dear boy, it’s Laocoon. I always have trouble spelling it, now you can concentrate on Brahms.’
Much of the rehearsal was spent telling them about Princess Diana, whom he’d sat next to last night, ‘such a charmer’, and nodding off on the rostrum while Abby and the orchestra played on regardless.
‘Which orchestra am I playing with?’ he asked, being woken by a particularly noisy tutti.
‘The CBSO, Maestro,’ said the leader grinning.
‘Ah yes. Now boys and girls, why are we so happy? Because Uncle Rodney’s in charge. Tiddle urn, tiddle urn, pom pom, it was together when I sang it.’
Rodney lifted his stick again.
He had the weirdest beat, very high and wavery like a slow drunken flash of lightning. The best maestros, like Rannaldini, had a distinct click at the bottom of the down beat, so the orchestra knew exactly when to come in. But when Rodney was on the rostrum, the leader gave a nod to start everyone off, but it was very discreet because the orchestra had such respect for him.
‘I may go to sleep in the cadenza,’ he warned Abby.
‘When shall we wake you up, Sir Rodney?’ asked the leader.
‘When you hear me snore.’
The orchestra were in stitches, but despite such jokes and the legendary blasé-ness of musicians, they all stood up and cheered Abby at the end, and they were joined by people who’d crept into the seats all over the auditorium.
Abby burst into tears and fled to her dressing-room.
‘Rannaldini should be shot,’ said the leader furiously.
Rodney mopped Abby up over a cup of Earl Grey tea, insisting she have one of the sticky cream cakes he’d bought in white cardboard boxes for the entire orchestra.
‘Don’t worry about this evening, we will get ecstatic reviews, because you are breathtakingly beautiful, and because I am old and have a beard. What an easy way to eminence — to grow a beard. If you’re free, we might have a little supper after the concert.’
‘Won’t you be exhausted?’ Abby bit into a huge eclair.
‘Certainly not, I’ll have a good sleep during the Maxwell Davies which comes after the interval. I’m off home to Lucerne in the morning.’
Abby returned to the Hyatt Hotel and followed her usual routine, eating a small bowl of pasta for lunch, which gave her time if necessary to throw it up before the concert, a precaution she’d taken since bad fish had sabotaged her in Tel Aviv. She then lay down but didn’t sleep because she kept praying Christopher might call. An hour before she had to leave for the concert, she washed her hair, then warmed up for twenty minutes in her dressing-room, changing and making up during the overture which gave her as little time as possible to be nervous.