Jilly Cooper - Appassionata

Handel’s original version of The Messiah was scored for a very small orchestra and Abby had arranged her room so each instrument was represented by a different object. The bookshelf on her left was the First Violins, the chest of drawers next door the Second Violins. The faded crimson armchair the First Oboe, the trouser press the Second Oboe, the stuffed bear in the mitre seemed appropriately august to play both bassoons.

Rodney’s beady Cousin Myrtle, gazing down between the windows, which looked on to the back garden, represented the violas. And Abby’s white-and-yellow four-poster, against the right-hand wall, which she hadn’t made yet, had to act as the harpsichord.

The Messiah begins with the entire orchestra playing together loudly and gravely for twenty-four bars. Abby glared round the room to see that everyone was paying attention, paused and raised her baton. Rannaldini was said to have a down beat that could halve butter straight from the freezer. Abby was determined to be as incisive. One, her stick whistled downwards, two to the left, three to the right, and four in a sweeping quarter-circle back to one.

At bar twenty-five after a diminuendo, the tempo changed and she had to cue in the crimson armchair and the chest of drawers after the first beat of the bar, and then bring in the bookshelf and the trouser press, followed four bars later by the stuffed bear, the four-poster and Rodney’s Cousin Myrtle. And all the time she had to sing the tune in a breathless soprano.

Playing away for all their worth, the whole room reached bar ninety-seven, and the first recitative: ‘Comfort Ye…’ Beating eight quavers to the bar with her right hand, Abby exhorted the bookshelf, Cousin Myrtle, the chest of drawers and the four-poster to play slowly and quietly by shaking her left hand, still as rigid as a Dutch doll’s, downwards, as though she were drying her nails. Glancing round she nodded to her dark green bathrobe hanging on the door who was standing in as the tenor.

‘Comfort ye, comfo-ort ye-ee, my pee-eeple,’ sang Abby, quelling Cousin Myrtle with a death-ray glance for coming in too early. As she speeded up the tempo to walking pace for ‘Every Valley,’ she must remember the bassoons, who dodged about all over the place throughout the aria. Nor did she think the stuffed bear was capable of counting thirty-one bars between twiddles, should she forget to cue him in, but somehow they circumnavigated every ‘rough place and crooked straight’, to end with a splendid run of trills from the crimson armchair.

‘Well done, everyone,’ called Abby. ‘Try and be even more together.’

Only the stuffed bear and Cousin Myrtle were looking at her, but in her experience most musicians didn’t bother to look much at conductors.

And now for the first chorus, with a ten-bar allegro tutti, before she stretched out both hands to the gold trees in the orchard outside, who were playing the part of the chorus.

‘And the glory, the glory of the Lord,’ sang the alto apple trees.

‘Terrific, wonderful,’ Abby urged them on. ‘Oh wow,’ she added as she cued in the plums, the, pears and an ancient quince tree, to bring in the basses, sopranos and tenors. It seemed right that such a pretty delicate tree as the pear should sing soprano.

Oh thank God, it was all coming good.

‘And all flesh shall see it together,’ encouraged the apple trees.

Abby worked on frenziedly until the light started fading. She was just about to embark on ‘A Trumpet Shall Sound’, which required a solo trumpet, when she noticed a candidate had rolled up in the form of Shosty who was back, mewing piteously, rubbing his fur against the window pane. She’d been so foul to him earlier. Putting down her baton, Abby opened the window. Leaping onto her shoulder, Shosty smelt of thyme and marjoram, he must have been hunting at the bottom of the mountain.

For a second he purred round her neck, a grey muffler, louder than any percussion player, then jumped onto the table to lick up the butter that had escaped from the smoked salmon soufflé.

Although her wrist ached dreadfully, a great peace swept over Abby. She’d had such a good afternoon’s work. How could she have been so foul to Gisela and Rodney? It was she who needed her rough places planed with the most vicious sandpaper. She’d go into Lucerne tomorrow and buy Gisela that new winter coat she’d been talking about.

Abby wandered over to the front window. The sun had set, leaving the lake a drained vermilion. The snowy mountains opposite had turned dark pink like summer or rather autumn puddings, as they rose out of their gold ruff of woods. To the left she could see the island where Hans Richter had practised his French horn. There were no horns in The Messiah. If only some wonderful musician could row over from the island to woo her. She was almost resigned to the loss of Christopher, she no longer jumped with hope each time the telephone rang or the post arrived. But she felt overwhelmed with sadness, like the Marschallin in Der Rosencavalier, that something she had so cherished had gone for ever.

She jumped as Shosty, bored by salmon flavoured butter, joined her on the window-ledge, weaving against her. Putting out an idle hand to stroke him, Abby froze, whipping back her hand as though she had had some fearful electric shock; then she put it back, held it there and began to tremble violently. There was no doubt, she could feel the faint tickling of his fur against her palm. Pressing down gently she could feel the hardness of his backbone, and running her hand to the left encountered the ramrod straightness of his tail. Then she rubbed the hopelessly wasted ball of her thumb against him. No feeling there yet, nor in her fingertips. Still shaking, she put her palm down again; she could definitely feel his fur moving.

The next moment, the front door banged.

Gathering up Shosty, she raced downstairs screaming with excitement.

Rodney was standing in the doorway still in his station-master’s cap, smiling guiltily. He’d spent far too much money on, among other things, a new train set. Gisela, as though catching the last rays of the sun, was proudly wearing a new red overcoat.

‘Oh Rodney, oh Gisela,’ screamed Abby.

‘Darling, you look happier,’ said Rodney, who never harboured grudges.

On the way down the last flight, Abby lost Shosty, who, indignant at being carted in such a noisy and unseemly fashion, wriggled out of her arms and flounced off to the kitchen.

‘I can feel, I can feel, I can feel Shosty’s fur on my hand,’ whooped Abby, going straight into Gisela’s arms. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch, I was so scared.’

Gisela could feel Abby’s face soaked with tears, and her desperate thinness. Her ribs were protruding like an old-fashioned radiator.

‘There, there,’ she stroked Abby’s heaving shoulder, ‘you will get best now.’

Putting down his parcels, Rodney took Abby’s hand and kissed the palm.

‘Can you feel that?’

‘I can feel your beard tickling more than Shosty’s fur.’ Abby was between tears and laughter. ‘I’m gonna play the violin again.’

‘Richter and Wagner shared half a bottle of champagne when Wagner wrote the last bar of The Mastersingers,’ said Rodney happily. ‘We all deserve a nice bottle of Krug.’

Abby worked for nearly two more years in Lucerne before moving to London to take a conducting course at the Royal Academy of Music. A solid roan-and-white Edwardian building, the Academy stands in the Marylebone Road, flanked by plane trees. The autumn term had already begun, but London was enjoying a very hot Indian summer. Few members of the Academy’s orchestra, red-faced from lugging heavy instruments, noticed the ‘Viva L’Appassionata’ poster hanging from the flagpole as they scuttled in through the glass front door.

Inside, anticipation had reached fever pitch. Since her attempted suicide, Abby had achieved cult status among students who collected her old records and pinned up her posters, portraying her in her tempestuous gypsy beauty. In a materialistic world, she had sacrificed all for love.

In the foyer, therefore, an unusual number of students, who should have been at their various classes, pretended to read notices about scholarships and forthcoming concerts. Such was the excitement that one half expected the antique fiddles to break out of their glass case and offer Abby their services, or Sir Henry Wood in his red robes to shout ‘Bravo’ from his portrait in an ante-room.