Driven crackers by Helen’s moans about Natalia and Rannaldini, Marcus was almost relieved to get onto the platform, then started the Liszt B minor Sonata with an appalling crash of wrong notes.

Helen, Boris, Pablo Gonzales, Edith, Jennifer the labrador, Mrs Bateson and all her family gave a collective groan of dismay. Marcus, on the other hand, thought: sod it. He’d obviously blown it, so he might as well enjoy himself on this wonderful piano, whose tone was as soft and mellow as any burgundy covered in cobwebs in his father’s cellar.

Forgetting the audience, he continued to play the Liszt so beautifully that the entire hall was in floods. He then raced with all the insouciance of an Olympic skier, through Balakirev’s Oriental Fantasy, which because of its racing octaves and chords is supposed to be the hardest piece ever written. He then collapsed in a giggling heap the moment he left the platform.

‘I have never been so scared in my life.’

By this time, he had brought the hall to their feet. To his amazed delight, he went through to the last twenty-four.

The second round was even more of an ordeal for the judges, consisting of long fifty-minute recitals. If any of the candidates overran Lady Appleton was meant to ring a large bell, but was often too kind to do so. Many of the contestants, however, had complained of the soft muddy tone of the piano in the first round, so it was now replaced by one with a harder, brighter sound.

The first day of the second round was also Pablo Gonzales eightieth birthday. Thinking it was a learned work of discography, the big Ukrainian judge brought him a copy of the Guinness Book of Records. Pablo was henceforth so transfixed with interest that he did hardly any judging at all.

All the other jurors fought to sit next to him so they could wile away the tedious hours of Bach and Debussy, reading about the fattest dog, the largest elephant or the heaviest twins in history.

Meanwhile the Irish judge, nicknamed ‘Deirdre of the Drowned Sorrows’ by Dame Edith, was quietly getting through a good litre of red wine a day. Boris was getting through about the same, but was a little happier, having orchestrated a whole act of King Lear. The Chinese judge had reached Schumann’s first signs of madness on his laptop. Jennifer had put on half a stone eating digestive biscuits.

The ancient Latvian judge, who had promised to vote for Natalia after caballing in the pool with Rannaldini, had not fared so well, and was now in bed with a head cold, unlikely to make the final. Rannaldini was so enraged to have wasted so much time on her, and even crosser when a grinning Dame Edith suggested Jennifer should take the Latvian’s place, that he was reduced to bonking Hermione in the lunch-hour.

Once again Marcus was the last to play. This time his agonizing wait was extended because Natalia had insisted on finishing Liszt’s Dante Sonata, despite Lady Appleton’s bell, and then complained bitterly about the brittle tinny sound of the new piano. A piano tuner was subsequently summoned and, after laboriously checking the piano, announced it was in perfect order.

Marcus bore this out by dispatching the Bach Busoni Chaconne with exquisite clarity and warmth, making the allegedly brittle and tinny piano reverberate like an organ. The jury were entranced, particularly by the accompanying drumroll from a lunchless Hermione’s tummy.

‘Even such an intellectual piece becomes audience-friendly under his fingers,’ murmured Bruce Kennedy.

‘No-one looks better in a dark suit than Marcus,’ sighed Pablo.

The Bach was followed by Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata which was going splendidly until the middle of the slow movement, when Marcus pressed down the soft pedal for the first time to add a little colour. He then discovered to his horror that the pedal had jammed, and as a result only two out of the three strings were being struck in the treble.

He was so thrown he momentarily lost his place and ground to a halt. Throughout the rest of the slow movement, and the ravishing flowing rondo, which was why Marcus had chosen the Waldstein in the first place, he had to bash away like Benny in an attempt to be heard at all by the jury in the dress circle.

Convinced the piano had been got at, Marcus came off the platform in a white-hot rage and immediately complained to the waiting officials. This was regarded as dreadfully unsporting. Natalia kicking up about a tinny sound was quite different to accusations of sabotage. Back came the piano tuner huffing and puffing.

‘When instruments are out of tune in an orchestra,’ he grumbled, ‘everyone blames the musician, when a piano’s out of tune, everyone blames the tuner,’ and having taken the piano apart once more, proved there was nothing wrong with it.

Still utterly unconvinced, Marcus escaped from the uproar and the lurking Press and stormed round the town square until shortness of breath forced him to collapse onto a hard bench. Opposite, against a pinky-yellow evening sky, was the town hall, where he certainly wouldn’t be playing on Sunday.

‘I’m sorry, Alexei,’ he muttered almost in tears, ‘I’ve let you down.’

How could he possibly be a great artist who only belonged to the world, when he couldn’t even make the final of a piddling piano competition?

To his right was a statue of the first Lord Appleton, examining a roll of cloth and with bird lime all over his frock coat and top hat. What was the point of becoming famous anyway? The Press dumped on you when you were alive, and pigeons when you were dead.

‘Oh fuck, fuck, fuck,’ sighed Marcus.

Meanwhile the judges had retreated into the jurors’ room to select the last six, unimpeded by parents, teachers, agents and representatives from the various countries. The contestants had retreated to the bar. The consensus of opinion was that Marcus had blown it.

‘Although they always have a Brit in the last six to pull in the crowds,’ said Benny snidely.

Piano competitions, however, do not end with the presentation of the award and a cheque for twenty thousand pounds. Afterwards the winner is assured a couple of years’ engagements in the greatest concert halls of the world. In the past, winners had often had difficulty coping with this pressure. The reputation of the Appleton worldwide depended on choosing a winner who could.

Reliability was therefore considered even more important than talent; someone who would carry out these engagements without letting them down, someone who wouldn’t make mistakes in recordings.

Rannaldini was soon at work influencing the jury.

‘Regretfully,’ he said winningly, ‘I must abstain from voting for my dear stepson, Marcus, but speaking totally impartially, although it pains me to do so, I feel the boy did not project enough, particularly in the Waldstein, where he gave a very flat two-dimensional performance.’

‘Bollocks,’ thundered Dame Edith. ‘He played exquisitely in the Chaconne, and in the first half of the Waldstein he had something quite beyond the notes.’

‘He had a memory lapse,’ snapped Rannaldini, who now that he had Dame Edith’s job, didn’t need to suck up to her any more.

‘Probably just nerves,’ snapped back Dame Edith.

She felt Marcus should go through. Pablo and Bruce Kennedy agreed. Pablo said he would resign if Marcus didn’t. The Russian, Sergei, deliberately voting against Bruce Kennedy, said he would resign if Marcus did. The Waldstein had no passion. He agreed with Rannaldini the boy was a ‘veemp’. Two of the old bids from Poland and Yugoslavia, who’d been chatted up by Rannaldini, and accepted promises of help from him for several of their pupils, voted against Marcus as well. So did Hermione, because Rannaldini told her to, and Deirdre O’Neill, because she hated the English. So did the vast Ukrainian because he was voting tactically. The ancient Swedish judge, who had only been kept awake after lunch by Benny’s banging, and nodded off afterwards, felt guilty he’d slept through the Chaconne and gave Marcus an amazing ten out of ten. The French judge loathed both Rannaldini and Sergei and had a crush on Dame Edith, so she gave him nine.

Lili voted against him because Rannaldini pinched her bottom in the lift and promised her a concert in New York. Ernesto promptly voted for Marcus because he was jealous of Rannaldini, so did Boris, which tied the score and a casting vote was needed.

‘Blodwyn,’ purred Rannaldini.

Lady Appleton looked up from a long list: Warm-up piano to be delivered, seven outside broadcast vans to be parked, seven microphones… and thought her name had never been pronounced so seductively.

‘Sorry, Maestro?’

‘Do you theenk Marcus Campbell-Black should go through?’ Surely not said those compelling inquisitorial night-black eyes.

‘Yes,’ said Lady Appleton.

Her friend, Mrs Bateson, had said the boy was a genius.

Taking Jennifer for a widdle in the town square, Dame Edith passed Marcus gazing into space with such a look of desolation on his face.

‘You’re through, you chump,’ she yelled. ‘And I agree — that piano was got at.’

All the favoured candidates — Han Chai, Carl the jokey homespun Texan, Anatole the moody Russian, Natalia and Benny — had made it. Marcus was the only outsider. A few tears were shed by the disappointed contestants. Lord Gargrave, on whose piano a brilliant German candidate had practised, was so upset the poor fellow hadn’t gone through that he invited him to stay on for a weekend’s shooting.