So Abby told him about Christopher.
‘We call him Chris-too-far over here,’ observed Rodney. ‘He’s avaricious, always pushes his artists too hard, gets as much money out of them as quickly as possible before they burn out. You ought to have been allowed to unwind after that exquisite concerto, or at least have tomorrow off, so you can have some fun, and do other things.’
‘I want to have a go at conducting.’
‘Don’t know how ready the world is for women conductors,’ mused Rodney. ‘Women in power are often unnecessarily brutal to their subordinates. Thatcher crushing her cabinet, who reacted with appalling spite. Musically you’re quite good enough, darling, you’ve got the authority too, but concert tickets tend to be bought by women and queers.’ He gave Abby a foxy nudge in the ribs. ‘And they prefer a glamorous bloke at the helm, and orchestras are very tricky, you’d only get by if they loved you.’
‘What about Edith Spink?’ protested Abby.
‘Edith’s a chap, and she’s got her composing, although her last symphony sounded as though a lot of drunken bears were having a saucepan fight.’
‘I must go,’ Abby leapt to her feet, as she suddenly noticed how old and tired he looked.
As he led her to the door, he begged her to come and stay in his house in Lucerne.
‘It’s on the lake and quite ravishing, there’ll be no passes, scout’s honour, and you’re going to come and play for my orchestra in Rutminster, ravishing country there too, and my boys and girls would love you.’
‘Shall I pack for you?’ asked Abby.
Rodney shook his head.
‘The sight of you bending over my suitcase,’ gently he patted her bottom, ‘would be too much for me. Goodnight, my new little friend.’ He stood on tiptoe to kiss her cheek.
‘You’d have enjoyed it, you know, there’s many a good tune played on an old fiddle, and I’m a spring chicken compared to your Stradivarius.’
Returning, still laughing, to the Hyatt Hotel and reality, Abby found an express parcel from Christopher.
Frantic with excitement, hoping for a gold bracelet or even a diamond pin as an act of atonement, Abby ripped it open and found six copies of the CD contract for the Mozart concertos. It was covered in primrose-yellow stickers telling her where to sign. Also enclosed was a brusque note from Christopher ordering her to return the contracts at once. A car would be waiting at Heathrow tomorrow to take her on to a rehearsal and recital at the Wigmore Hall. The next day she would start recording the Bartók concerto with the LSO.
‘If Declan O’Hara or Rupert Campbell-Black try to contact you, I cannot urge you too strongly to resist them,’ ended Christopher. ‘That’s the one thing that could, screw up the Rannaldini deal.’
I better call Rupert at once, thought Abby.
Five Mozart concertos, music she loved, spoilt for ever by bullying and screaming matches.
Her shoulders, her arms, her back and her neck still ached. In the old days, Christopher had cured her, rubbing in Tiger Balm, a mixture of herbs and menthol, and sooner or later his fingers had crept downwards in pursuit of pleasure. Abby groaned at the memory.
Taking her violin from its case, she cleaned its strings with eau-de-Cologne, then dusted its smooth flanks and delicate neck curving over into the seahorse head.
‘It’s you and me against the world, little fiddle,’ she said sadly. ‘If I don’t play you well enough, the bank will take you back again. You must have witnessed so much misery in two hundred and eighty years, but have you ever been played by anyone as lonely and unwanted as me?’
But that wasn’t true, Rupert had wanted her, and men’s hands had trembled when they’d asked her to sign their records this evening. Even Rodney’s jovial elephantine pass had made her aware she was desirable.
She was only so isolated, because Christopher, when he had wanted her had not wanted witnesses, and had driven away all her friends, and even her noisy fat mother. Pacing her room all night, she watched the sky lighten and the city emerge.
Far below she could now see a row of pretty pastel houses, the kind she would have loved to have settled down in, lining the bottle-green, oily waters of the canal, on which floated brightly coloured barges, attached at the centre like the petals of a flower. All round was debris, where bulldozers and cranes were in the process of flattening beautiful old russet buildings, churches, meeting houses and a factory with tall pipes. I’ll be bashed down before I have any chance to enjoy life, thought Abby, her eyes following the path of the canal which flowed under roads and bridges, past a man throwing sticks for his shaggy white dog, along a row of dark cypresses, into the mist, keeping its head down, amid the hubbub of the city. The hands of the little red clock-tower merged into one at six-thirty.
Abby flipped. She was enmeshed like Laocoon, she had to break free. First she chucked Rannaldini’s contracts out of the window. Blue birds of unhappiness, they wheeled downwards. Then she took the earliest shuttle to Heathrow, and booked herself onto Concorde.
Buoyed up by an excess of champagne, she wept over a piece in the Independent about Rachel Grant, the beautiful pianist, who’d been recording the Beethoven concertos with Rannaldini. She had evidently driven over a cliff because she’d seen a picture in The Scorpion of her husband sneaking out of the apartment of a former mistress. What a tragic loss to music, wrote the reporter.
Abby got stuck back into the champagne.
I’m immortal, she thought drunkenly as they approached New York. I could fly this aeroplane if they asked me and I can fly straight back into Christopher’s heart.
Still feeling immortal, she called Christopher on landing, but was utterly deflated to be told he was out. Sandra, his manipulative blonde secretary, had gone to the dentist. Christopher’s mobile had also been switched off. He was probably at a recording session, where they were not popular.
In despair, plunging down from the champagne, Abby took a taxi to her Riverside apartment. Geography was taking over. This was New York, every brick and street number reminded her of once being happy with Christopher. The river looked grey, seal-like and unfriendly, boats were chugging sluggishly upstream like commuters. Someone had left the elevator door open, so she had to hump her bags up five floors.
Letting herself in, Abby gave a sigh of pleasure to see the pale peach walls, the dark peach carpet. Going into the living-room, she was startled to find an empty bottle of champagne, two glasses and a bunch of pale yellow roses, roughly rammed into a vase. Abby’s first terrified thought was burglars. Her eyes raced round the walls and furniture checking pictures, ornaments and silver, but everything seemed in place.
Then, as painful as stubbing one’s toe on a dog bowl in the dark, she noticed the grey pin-stripe jacket hanging on a chair. What, too, was the crocodile wallet she’d given Christopher doing on the glass table beside the keys she’d lovingly had cut so he could let himself into the apartment? A letter from Rupert had already been opened.
Somehow Abby’s buckling legs carried her next door. She had always wanted a beautiful bedroom. Other stars celebrate overnight fame with Ferraris, yachts or Picassos, or a Central Park penthouse. But Abby, as she practised nine hours a day and faced tiny, indifferent audiences in draughty halls, had only dreamt of a bower of bliss.