Jilly Cooper - Appassionata

‘Are you speaking to me?’ drawled Viking.

‘What does eet look like?’ Tigerish, Rannaldini was poised to lash out.

‘Eeet looks awfully rude. Please don’t slag off my section like that, we are quite prepared to do anything you want, but only if you ask us nicely. Secondly the orchestra have now played for an hour and a half, I suggest you thank them and give them a break. Finally Cyril used to play in a horn section that was known as God’s Own Quartet. Frankly, you’re not fit to lick his boots.’

With Rannaldini’s screams ringing in his ears, Viking strolled off to Close Encounters which by special licence was open all day.

On his return, Rannaldini was still yelling in his dressing-room.

‘How dare you insult Maestro Rannaldini,’ spluttered Miles. ‘He says he never been spoken to like that in his life.’

‘What a good thing I was here to teach the little shit some manners.’

‘I didn’t know you played the violin,’ said Knickers reproachfully thinking of the times he had been short of a fiddler.

‘Indeed I do, Knickers, I’m Irish.’

By this time Hermione had arrived and was savaging her poor dresser. She had just been the subject of This is Your Life (who’d had an awful time finding people to be nice about her) and was also Artist of the Week on Radio Three, so you couldn’t escape the old bat, particularly if you were George. He had been excited and wildly flattered when Dame Hermione had asked if she could deal with him directly. He had never dreamt it would involve endless reversed-charged calls at four o’clock in the morning.

‘I’ve just remembered something else you can put in the programme about me, George. I’ve sung Susannah forty-eight times not forty-seven.’

And George had had to go back to the printers again because after ‘God Save the Queer’, he didn’t trust Jessica.

But Hermione still had numerous admirers. All the occupants of the Close had their binoculars trained on her heaving bosom as they pretended to do The Times crossword.

A besotted Gilbert had even shipped Gwynneth off to a crumhorn workshop in Bath for the afternoon and rolled up with her Red Riding Hood basket filled with aubergine rissoles and a bottle of parsnip wine. Hermione accepted a glass graciously, but unfortunately Gilbert had been pre-emptied. Always on the prowl for likely lads, Hermione had taken a shine to Viking. The shine was not reciprocated. For a start, Viking didn’t like her dismissive remarks about Abby.

‘Look how happy these musicians are to be playing once more under a great conductor,’ Hermione told him, as the entire RSO, who’d all felt the need for several strong drinks, filed grinning back from Close Encounters after the break.

Hermione then started bitching about her fellow soloists.

‘I don’t know why I’m working with such people.’

‘To make money, presumably,’ said Viking, emptying the last of Gilbert’s parsnip wine into her glass.

Seeing his mistress coffee-housing with Viking as he returned to the rostrum, the ‘great conductor’ decided not to appreciate her next aria.

‘Why you make a pausa on Top E.’

‘I always make a pausa there, Rannaldini.’

‘Eef Haydn had wanted a pausa, he would have written. He didn’t write, so we do not make.’

The screaming match that ensued shocked even moony Gilbert.

‘You seeng like a strangulated parrot.’

‘I won’t sing at all if you speak to me like that,’ squawked Hermione, certainly sounding like one, and stormed off the set.

‘Menopausa,’ grinned Viking and, as Rannaldini was yelling at the cellos, carried on an argument he and Blue were having about who had bonked the oldest women.

‘I’ve had lots in their seventies,’ said Viking airly. ‘And their daughters at the same time.’

‘Bet you can’t bonk Dim Hermione on her birthday.’

‘Indeed I can.’

‘How will you prove it?’

‘You can watch from the wardrobe. Just bring some rope.’

After the rehearsal, Viking sidled up to Hermione who was still foaming over the pausa, and suggested a drink at her hotel before the concert.

Orchestras and managements all over the world had discovered if you gave Hermione a less than perfect hotel on which to vent her spleen, she was less likely to be histrionic before a performance. The Rutminster Royale was a new and fearfully expensive high-rise barracks, half a mile outside Rutminster. When asked by Hermione to collect her key, Viking, with great aplomb, asked the dopey receptionist for the key to the room above, which even better, turned out to be unoccupied.

Having kissed Hermione with Celtic fervour in the lift up (during which time she had to clench her buttocks because Gilbert’s parsnip wine was making her fart like a drayhorse), Viking thrust her into the empty bedroom.

Enraptured by such youthful vigour, Hermione murmured she must freshen up. Telling Viking to open a bottle of ‘bubbly’ she disappeared into the bathroom giving him time to smuggle Blue and an old bell rope he’d found in the vestry into the wardrobe.

When Hermione emerged, grumbling she couldn’t find her sponge bag, Viking threw her on the bed, and produced Blue’s rope.

‘I thought you might like a spot of bondage.’

Hermione’s brown eyes glittered with excitement as he tied her to the bed post. Blue was laughing so much he fell out of the wardrobe.

‘A threesome,’ cried Hermione in excitement.

To Blue’s regret, Viking then stuffed a handkerchief into Hermione’s mouth, no-one was allowed to slag off Abby except himself, and hanging a ‘Do not Disturb’ sign on the door, he locked it, handing in the key as he and Blue left the building.

No-one could find Hermione. There was no answer from her hotel room. Christopher Shepherd, her agent, supposedly on his way down from London, wasn’t answering his mobile. Fears grew that the great diva had actually carried out her threat and walked out.

‘Perhaps she’s playing Haydn-seek,’ giggled Clare.

‘Perhaps she’s been kidnapped,’ said Miles in alarm.

‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ muttered George. He was fed up with both Hermione and Rannaldini, neither of whom had stopped complaining. In the inside pocket of his blue-and-white striped seersucker jacket, bulky as a hidden gun, was one hundred thousand pounds in cash to be handed over to them before they emerged from their dressing-rooms tonight.

All the same, he was faced with a mega crisis. Fans in their thousands waving banners and wearing ‘I love Hermione’ T-shirts were pouring into the water meadows, unpacking lavish picnics. Close Encounters was doing a roaring trade in bottles of chilled champagne. Every seat in the stands was sold. Everyone living in the Close had turned their chairs round to watch from the windows.

Starlings making a din overhead scattered as the cathedral clock tolled seven. It was an hour to blast off.

‘Flora’s been studying the part with her singing teacher,’ said Julian. ‘She knows it backwards.’

‘And she’s got a beautiful voice,’ said Viking, who’d just rolled up looking innocent.

‘Flora has flu,’ said Miles beadily.

‘Came on very fast,’ said Hilary bitchily. ‘She was in the pub at lunch-time.’

Getting no answer on his mobile, George drove over to the cottage. The drought was in its fourth week. He had got the baking hot evening he’d prayed for.

The tractors raised clouds of dust as they chugged back and forth over the bleached fields. Collapsed goosegrass lay like brown dust sheets over bramble and nettles. As he turned the Mercedes up the rough track to Woodbine Cottage, George’s view was obscured by giant hogweed disappearing into the thick cloak of traveller’s joy. Next moment he’d gone slap into Flora and Trevor driving the other way. Flora was tear-stained and eating a Mars bar. Neither car was damaged badly. Grabbing Trevor, Flora tore back to the cottage. She was locking George out, when he put his foot in the door.

Expecting a bollocking, she was amazed when he asked her to go on in Hermione’s place.

‘Don’t be fatuous.’

‘Viking says you have a beautiful voice.’

‘Viking lied before he could talk.’

George shouted, then pleaded. She couldn’t let the RSO down.