‘How did it turn out with those kids Rupert adopted?’
‘That’s the worst part,’ sighed Flora. ‘I’m afraid there’s no milk. Rupert’s totally besotted with the boy, Xavier, cured his squint and nearly his birthmark, got him racing round on Lysander’s old Shetland pony. Rupert’s got the tearaway he’s always wanted,’ Flora lowered her voice. ‘It’s crucified Marcus.’
Returning to the living-room, Abby heard a voluptuous explosion of notes, and gave a cry of joy. Marcus was playing Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata.
‘It’s so darling, to play that — well — sort of in my honour.’ She went over to the piano.
‘Sort of,’ Marcus blushed, being a truthful boy. ‘Next week I’m also playing it in a recital at college.’
‘I’ll come along,’ said Abby in excitement, making Marcus blush even more darkly. ‘Did you know that to understand the Appassionata, Beethoven said you have to read The Tempest?
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury, and my passion,
With its sweet air.’
Marcus nodded. ‘My stepfather told me, and quoted the same lines. Sorry,’ as a flurry of wrong notes resulted, ‘I’m no good at talking and playing.’
Abby retreated to the sofa.
‘God, my back aches,’ said Flora, who was plaiting Boris’s hair. ‘Three hours of Bartók takes it out of you.’
‘I’ve got some Ibuleve in the bathroom,’ said Boris.
A smell of bonfires was still drifting in through the open window. Glancing at his watch Marcus saw it was nearly eleven o’clock. They were still clamouring for more in the flats outside. He’d better stop soon or the kids would never get to bed. He launched into Roger Quilter’s Children’s Overture.
‘There was a lady loved a swine,’ sang Flora, as she returned with the Ibuleve.
That’s a stunning voice, too, thought Abby in envy. Goodness they were a talented trio!
Flora slumped between Boris’s knees, calmly pulling off her daisy-embroidered T-shirt and using it to cover high, pointed breasts, as Boris began to rub the gel into her shoulders.
And I wonder what their relationship is, thought Abby.
Glancing across the room as he launched into ‘Baa Baa, Black Sheep’ Marcus met Abby’s eyes, saw the admiration in them and thought how lovely she looked, her strong, proud face softened by the lamplight. She was much more boyish than he’d expected. Sitting on the sofa, her long legs tucked underneath her, she looked like a model for Gentleman’s Quarterly.
Marcus’s timidity with women had been exacerbated two years ago at the stag-party of Basil Baddington, one of his father’s wilder cronies. Rupert, irked by Marcus’s apparent lack of interest in girls (after all, he was supposed to produce an heir one day), had organized a hooker.
Marcus had been quite unable to get it up and had been violently sick. Terror, which makes people take deeper breaths, triggered off a violent asthma attack, which could have been fatal. The whole thing was hushed up by Rupert’s GP, the admirably unflappable James Benson, who got Marcus onto a nebulizer at the local hospital just in time.
Before he’d lost consciousness, miserably aware of regurgitated wine all down his dress-shirt, Marcus had heard James Benson reproving his father.
‘You must be more careful with him, Rupert, you know he’s never been strong.’
By mutual agreement neither Taggie nor Marcus’s mother had been told of this disaster, but Marcus’s relationship with Rupert, always shaky, had inevitably deteriorated.
Reluctant to witness the love he had always craved, so unstintingly lavished on little Xavier, Marcus had avoided Pensombe and concentrated on his career. Girls, except Flora who was more of a pal, were avoided even though they chased him like mad, not least because of his father’s bank balance.
Last night after copying out Boris’s score until long after midnight, Marcus had collapsed into bed, only to be jolted by a terrifyingly erotic dream about Boris, and woken, sobbing his heart out because it could never be possible.
Having dreaded confronting Boris today, he was ecstatic to find himself suddenly so attracted to Abby. His blue shirt was still stiff from the salt of the tears she’d shed outside Madame Tussauds. All this added radiance to his playing.
‘Who did Marcus’s mother marry?’ asked Abby, thinking of the stepfather who had quoted The Tempest.
‘Malise Gordon, thirty years older,’ replied Flora, writhing half in ecstasy, half in pain under Boris’s fingers. ‘He’s been a brilliant stepfather and really encouraged Marcus, but that doesn’t make up for one’s own father not giving a toss.’
Flora suddenly shivered. They had been so wrapped up in talking they hadn’t realized how cold it had become. As she banged down the big sash window the telephone rang. It was Helen, Marcus’s mother, in hysterics. It was a few moments before Boris could get any sense out of her. Malise had had a massive stroke and been rushed to hospital. Marcus must go home at once.
TWELVE
Marcus drove straight home to Warwickshire. He was bitterly ashamed afterwards that his main emotion was despair that he would probably have to duck out of a recital yet again, and disappointment that he would no longer be faced with the terrifying yet magical prospect of Abby in the audience. He wasn’t even very worried about Malise who, never having let him down, seemed unlikely to start now.
In fact Malise never regained consciousness. Marcus was devastated. He had loved his stepfather deeply. Kind, formal, old enough to be his grandfather, Malise had always encouraged him. They had played endless duets together; Malise had explained harmony, taken Marcus to concerts and shared with him his 78s of Myra Hess and Denis Matthews and Solomon. He had also provided him with a role model of total integrity and honour.
But Marcus had to surpress his anguish in order to comfort his mother who, having been adored and wrapped in cotton wool by Malise for sixteen years, was quite incapable of coping with funerals, let alone life, on her own.
The Press, of course, had a field-day dredging up the old story of how Malise as chef d’équipe had held the British Show-Jumping Team together during their golden era, and how during the LA Olympics, when Rupert Campbell-Black’s great rival, Jake Lovell, had run off with Rupert’s wife, Helen, the team had gone on with one man short to win the gold. There was also a lot of guff about how Malise had picked up the pieces, marrying Helen and restoring her self-confidence, which had been shattered by eight years of hell married to Rupert, and a disastrous few weeks with a miserably dispossessed Jake, who couldn’t wait to belt back to his wife.
The funeral was rather like a rerun of Madame Tussauds with all the show-jumping greats rolling up to pay their last respects and Rupert and Jake glaring into space.
As a further insult, Jake had brought along his son Isaac, a brilliant young jockey, who had beaten one of Rupert’s horses earlier that week. The only thing that could have redressed the balance for Rupert would have been if Marcus could have played Malise’s favourite Bach Prelude quite beautifully on the Steinway that Helen had insisted on hiring for the service.
But Marcus’s asthma always grew worse under stress and, in the panic of overseeing all the last-minute arrangements, he forgot to bring his inhaler. He just managed to help carry the coffin the three hundred yards across the village green to the church before collapsing fighting for breath beside his mother.
Helen was still young enough at forty-four to be described as ‘absolutely stunning’ rather than ‘having been absolutely stunning’. She was far too unnerved at seeing Jake again after all those years, and wondering guiltily if she were wearing too much blusher and eyeshadow on the grounds that Malise would have wanted her to look beautiful, to notice Marcus’s plight.
Unfortunately a church filled with flowers and the fumes from the ancient pew, which had recently been treated for woodworm, made the band round Marcus’s chest even tighter.
Rupert’s best friend, Billy Lloyd-Foxe, had reduced everyone to tears, including himself, reading the ‘Dedication to the Horse’, which always brought the house down at the end of the Horse of the Year Show. According to the service sheet Marcus should have been next but, white and sweating, he could only clutch his chest and shake his head, so, after a long agonizingly embarrassed pause, the parson, who had been a family friend for years, twigged what was up and carried on with the service.
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