Jilly Cooper - Appassionata

‘It doesn’t matter, you’ve had a skinful, OK, and you’re pooped. You know what Luisa Pellafacini says: “Before a concert Julian won’t, after the concert he can’t.”’

‘I feel such a wimp.’

‘You can still make me come.’ Abby put his hand between her legs.

‘I’m seriously sorry,’ Marcus muttered into her shoulder, ‘but I don’t know which doorbell to press.’

Raising his head, prising his face round towards hers, Abby could see him blushing the same blood-red in the moonlight as his hair.

‘But I thought you and Flora — surely at school? The way she wanders into the studio half-naked.’

Marcus shook his head.

‘We snogged once or twice but we know each other too well and always started to laugh. Oh Abby, darling, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I’m a virgin.’

‘You gotta be joking, with a father like Rupert.’

‘That’s the trouble,’ Marcus rolled over and buried his face in the pillow. ‘Everyone expects me to be a great macho super-stud like Dad, and I just bottle out.’

Then stammering frantically, almost crying, he told her about the night of Basil Baddingham’s stag-party. ‘Edith was there. She drunk everyone under the table,’ and his disastrous encounter with the tart, and the near-fatal asthma attack.

‘Every time I try and make it with a girl I see contempt in Dad’s face.’

Holding his shuddering rigid body in her arms, Abby was overwhelmed with tenderness.

‘That’s enough to put anyone off sex,’ she said indignantly, ‘and on top of that it’s a knee-jerk reaction to think you’ll choke again. What a son of a bitch, what a damn fool insensitive preppy asshole.’

‘He wants an heir,’ said Marcus wearily.

‘Now listen to me, right.’ Abby pulled the duvet up tucking it round his shivering body. ‘For starters you’re the prettiest guy I ever saw, sure you are, and tonight you were the most shit-scared. I never saw stage-fright like that. I know what guts it took even to get onto the platform, OK? But in the end you showed everyone you’re made of steel. You were the superman, you saved us.

‘I love you, Marcus,’ her voice broke. ‘It’s just hit me like one of George’s bulldozers, and if we love each other we only need time. I’ll get you going, there are so many tricks.’

Marcus’s shivering became a quiver of pleasure as she ran her fingers lingeringly along the cleft between his buttocks.

‘All women,’ she went on half-mockingly, ‘want to marry a virgin so they can mould him exactly the way they want.’

‘Perhaps Barbara Cartland will make me the hero of one of her novels.’

‘You’re my hero anyway. George never stops nagging me to get involved in educational projects. Teaching you about sex is far more rewarding than relating Respighi’s Birds to the Blackmere Woods.’

As Marcus started to laugh, Abby took his hand, first moving it over her acorn-hard nipples, then burying it in her wiry dark pubic hair.

‘Under the fold you can feel a little nipple, that’s the clit, now lick your middle finger and stroke it, very gently, a mild pizzicato, right? Now slide a finger down and inside me in and out, deeper and deeper, testing for wetness, that’s lovely, now back to the clit again.’

It was rather like being taught fingering by his old music mistress, thought Marcus hazily. Any minute he expected Abby to tell him to use the long fingers for the black notes, and not to turn his whole hand, when he moved the thumb under.

‘Oh, wow,’ murmured Abby happily, ‘long fingers aren’t just good for tenths, I’m nearly there.’

He expected her to scream, shout and thrash about, and was alarmed he’d done something wrong when her body suddenly arched, stiffened, trembled violently all over and seemed to stop breathing.

‘Abby, are you OK?’

‘Heavenly.’ Her body slumped, but inside he could feel her melting and throbbing. ‘You’re a genius. You made me come.’

‘Truly — I thought it would be so noisy.’

‘When it’s real, it’s the quietest thing on earth. I love you.’

She fell asleep at once. Marcus lay awake stunned by the evening’s developments, reliving all the mistakes he’d made, particularly at the beginning of the Rachmaninov, luxuriating in the memory of the applause, and the kind things people had said. He hardly dared think how miraculously it would sort out his problems if he got it together with Abby.

I’m straight, I’m straight, he made a thumbs-up sign to his reflection in the mirror. All the same, like some lovely little restaurant you stumble on in the Dordogne when you’re pissed, he wondered if he’d ever be able to find the clitoris again. Perhaps Abby would let him bring a magnifying glass into lessons.

The next day, he had great difficulty keeping his newly straight face when he went back to H.P. Hall to collect his car, and was greeted by an overjoyed Noriko, waving a newspaper.

‘Mr Black, Mr Black.’ At last she’d got her ‘L’s’ right. ‘Have you seen your wonderful clit in Lutminster Echo?’

The Rutshire Butcher had reviewed the encore not the concerto, and written of ‘Marcus Black’s exquisite control and beauty of tone, unhindered by orchestra or conductor.’

The next day Flora felt very flat after her sighting of Rannaldini, her rows with George and an inexplicable feeling of something going on between Abby and Marcus. She needed a male in her life.

Having bought an electric blanket she went off to the nearest NCDL kennels. The desperate barking, the pleading faces, the scrabbling paws saddened her immeasurably. Like the Anouilh heroine, how could she ever be happy while there was a single stray dog in the world? But in the end she chose the smallest, ugliest black-and-tan mongrel and called him Trevor. Trevor had been so bored in the kennels, he’d spent all day playing with his own shadow. Realizing his luck, he settled in immediately. Abby was livid when he treed both Scriabin and Sibelius, two chattering magpies up in the chestnut tree again, and then wolfed all their food.

‘He’ll be a partner in crime for that bloody Nugent.’

‘He’ll be a terrific guard dog,’ beamed Flora. ‘Lady Chisleden had a break-in while she was at the concert last night.’

Trevor was all of nine inches high and sulked dreadfully when Flora forgot to put on the electric blanket. Although he immediately found his way out through the cat door and went hunting, he howled if Flora left him behind, so she smuggled him into rehearsals and he guarded her coat and her viola case in the women’s changing-room.

George was not amused by the arrival of Trevor, particularly when he noisily chased John Drummond between two Perspex models on his first morning. Fortunately for Flora, George had been instantly distracted by devastating news: the Cotchester Chamber Orchestra blithely announcing they would be staging their own Opera Gala in the grounds of Cotchester Cathedral starring Rannaldini and Harefield. The main problem was they had picked the same Sunday in early May that the RSO were mounting their All-Star Centenary Gala.

This would wipe out the RSO’s audience. Georgie Maguire and an increasingly doubtful Dancer Maitland singing Rodgers and Hammerstein could hardly compete with the rerun of the most successful classical record of all time.

George made out he was furious. Flora, who still had the print-outs under her mattress, suspected he had tipped Rannaldini off about the date of the gala, in order to run the RSO into the ground. The Arts Council, increasingly dismayed by the popularizing of the RSO repertoire, were muttering openly about closing down one orchestra.

At the beginning of March, El Creepo and Simon Painshaw came to the end of their two-year term as orchestral members of the board. Few players were interested in replacing them, as hatred of the management had reached an all-time high. In the end Hilary and Bill Thackery put themselves forward. Hilary, the orchestra decided, wanted the chance to exchange meaningful glances with Miles. She was a dangerous bitch but Bill would balance her out. Bill was such a nice guy and he’d behaved so well over the re-recording in January of Rachel’s Requiem and Julian repossessing his violin solo, that everyone felt he deserved to be on the board. Bill would see them right.