‘Eet ees shock. It’ll come back.’ Rannaldini poured her a glass of Pouilly-Fumé. ‘You shall come to Prague with me instead.’
‘But I can’t leave Marcus and I can’t afford it,’ babbled Helen.
‘You will be my guest. I stay in flat. I book you room in nice hotel. I will send you plane ticket and ticket for
Don Giovanni
just for twenty-four hours, you deserve a treat.’
Putting a warm hand on her neck as comforting as a wool scarf just dried on the radiator, he led her down more passages to the big kitchen whose walls were covered in a glossy green paper, populated by jungle animals and birds.
‘I certainly couldn’t improve on this,’ sighed Helen.
‘I want eet changed,’ said Rannaldini chillingly. ‘Keety loved the parrots and the humming-birds. I want eet out. Sit down. I will make your lunch.’
‘A bowl of soup will do,’ stammered Helen. ‘I can’t eat at the moment.’
‘Then you will start.’
From a next-door office, despite faxes billowing out like smoke, four telephones constantly ringing and the raindrop patter of expensive computors, Rannaldini’s secretaries, who’d all read
The Scorpion
, kept finding excuses to pop in and gawp at Helen.
Princess Margaret’s office had rung, they said; Domingo wanted advice on an interpretation; Sir Michael Tippett wondered if Rannaldini had had a moment to look at his latest opera; Hermione had rung four times. Rannaldini said he would call them all back later.
As he cooked, checking rice, throwing pink chunks of lobster into sizzling butter, then laying them tenderly on a bed of shallots, tarragon and tomatoes, separating eggs, boiling down fish stock, Helen talked. Her tongue loosened by a second glass of wine, she told him about her money problems, the big house she couldn’t afford to keep up, Marcus’s asthma and her worries about his friendship with Flora. She was delighted when Rannaldini dismissed Flora as ‘an evil little tramp’.
‘We will take Marcus to the mountains,’ he went on warmly, then his voice thickened like the eggs in the double saucepan. ‘How about your daughter?’
‘Quite out of control.’ Helen didn’t want to tell him how incensed she had been about the appropriation of the olive-green cashmere. So she added: ‘At half-term Tabitha borrowed my credit card saying she needed some school books, then used it to buy a pair of jeans and spend the afternoon on a sunbed. I cannot stand such vanity and such lies.’
Rannaldini, who was no stranger to lies and would have been quite out of control on a sunbed with Tabitha, expressed his disapproval. Topping a cloud of white rice with butter and putting it in a slower part of the Aga, he gave the lobster sauce a stir, and started chopping up chives for a salad of lettuce hearts.
‘How can you do so many things at once?’ marvelled Helen.
‘I am conductor.’
Helen wandered over to the screen which Kitty, over the years, had lovingly covered with photographs of Rannaldini and the famous.
‘Everyone’s here,’ she cried, thinking what fascinating people she would meet if Rannaldini became her – er – friend.
‘Why d’you record in Prague?’
‘Because it’s ten times cheaper than London or New York. Not speaking ill of your country, Helen, but I am tired of New York. Last time I record a Haydn symphony the shop steward sit watching second ‘and go round, four seconds to go, eight bars from the end, he leap on to the stage. “All right, you guys, it’s over.” I tried to keel him. I had to be pulled off. Eet takes an act of congress and then of God to get rid of musicians over there.
‘I am almost broken man,’ sighed Rannaldini, belying it by removing his suede jacket to show off his splendid physique. ‘But I must not talk any more, I will burn your lunch.’
Putting a white mountain of rice on each emerald-green plate, he spooned over the sizzling lobster mixture, then poured on the buttery sauce, topping it with a dash of cayenne.
‘Voila!’
‘This is too much,’ protested Helen.
‘You weel eat every bit, even if I have to feed you.’
Rannaldini filled up her glass again.
How wonderfully easy to give dinner parties, if one were living with Rannaldini, mused Helen, and think of the guest list. Her eyes strayed again to Kitty’s screen.
‘It is quite, quite delicious,’ she said in awe.
As he told her his plans for the future Rannaldini’s warm eyes never left her face.
‘The leaves tumbling down remind me of new leaf I must turn over. I am tired of jetting round world. I must settle down in this lovely house, write music and build up a great orchestra of wonderful musicians, who would not be always chasing engagements and money like the London orchestras or threatening strike action like the guys in New York.’
‘You could be another Simon Rattle,’ said Helen warmly.
Rannaldini scowled.
‘The CBSO is second-rate provincial orchestra,’ he said haughtily.
‘You can’t say that. Malise always felt—’
Fortunately Rannaldini’s third secretary popped her head round the door to say the Princess of Wales was on the line.
‘My dear,’ Rannaldini took the telphone, ‘may I ring you back in one hour.’ He’d be leaving for the Albert Hall to conduct
Turangalila
around five o’clock.
Helen was so speechless with admiration that this great Maestro should find time for her she forgot about Simon Rattle.
‘Why don’t you come with me this evening?’ asked Rannaldini, playfully spooning the last of her lobster into her mouth.
‘I must get back for Marcus.’
‘Eef only I had had a mother like you.’
‘Will Hermione Harefield be singing in Prague?’ asked Helen. ‘This salad is so good.’
‘No, she sing in
Aida
in Rome, and elephant run away with her.
Nellie the Elephant pack her trunk and run away with Hermione
,’ sang Rannaldini. His face was expressionless but he gave Helen a wicked side-glance and she burst out laughing.
‘Poor Hermione. I have to confess,’ Helen went on, ‘I do have reservations about
Don Giovanni
as an opera. The Don reminds me so much of Rupert,’ she gave a shiver, ‘and the way he used to get his best friend Billy Lloyd-Foxe to cover for him like Leporello.’
‘I know,’ Rannaldini slid his hand over hers. ‘Jake Lovell talks of you often, how terribly unhappy Rupert made you.’
‘How kind of Jake,’ said Helen, touched.
‘Jake threw you life-belt when you needed it,’ said Rannaldini. ‘But long term he would have bored you, you are much too bright for him.’
Machiavellian, Rannaldini pressed every organ stop of Helen’s vanity.
‘That’s why he let you go,’ he added, knowing perfectly well that Jake had dumped Helen.
‘Do you think he’s happy with his wife?’
‘Jake dream of you often,’ lied Rannaldini, selecting a ripe peach, caressing its downy curves, ‘And who would not?’ Picking up a knife, he laid bare the gold flesh.
Helen found herself not only sharing the peach with him but, after another glass, agreeing to come to Prague.
Rannaldini’s secretary then brought in a pile of fan mail.
‘Have you sewn that button on my tail-coat?’ he called after her shapely departing back.
‘People think being a conductor,’ he continued as in dark green ink he scribbled his name on each letter, ‘is all helicopters, jets and princesses, but eet consist of worry where you’ll stop long enough to get your laundry done.’
‘Genius shouldn’t have to worry about clean shirts and missing buttons,’ said Helen shocked. ‘Rupert never bothered to answer fan mail,’ she added.
‘That appal me,’ Rannaldini signed a couple of photographs. ‘Eef by writing back to these young people I can lead them on to a lifetime of loving music, it is small thing.’
‘What a genuinely good man you are,’ Helen suppressed a belch. ‘How people have misjudged you.’
‘Come for a walk,’ said Rannaldini, putting his huge wolf coat round her shoulders. ‘How it become you, a leetle lamb in wolf’s clothing.’
As they walked up a path behind the house, the low afternoon sun kept parting the clouds, shining through yellow-and-orange leaves, so they glowed like amber and topaz. Rannaldini picked up a red beech leaf and held it against a soft brown wand of ash leaves.
‘You must always wear brown with your red hair,’ he told her. ‘Black is too hard.’
As they passed a monk’s graveyard, Helen noticed a little pink flower with bright crimson leaves growing out of the wall.
‘What a dear little plant.’
‘It ees called Herb Robert, all the year it flower, the monks used the leaves to staunch flow of blood.’
‘Herb Roberto,’ teased Helen, as they stopped to lean on a mossy gate. ‘Such a beautiful name, why don’t you use it?’
‘My mother, who reject me, call me that.’
‘Roberto,’ repeated Helen softly.
‘Coming from your lips it sound bettair.’ Not wanting to frighten her, Rannaldini decided against a kiss.
As they turned for home, a biblical ray appeared through the clouds spotlighting Valhalla and the saffron larches, as though the place was on fire.
‘Look Helen, it is omen, my past go up in flames like
Götterdämmerung
. I bring you on this walk,’ Rannaldini took her hand, ‘because the trees at the top of the wood never turn because they only get sunshine in the evening. Oh Helen, let us have some sunshine in the evening of our lives.’
Helen squeezed his hand, so moved that she couldn’t speak.
‘Before you come to Prague,’ said Rannaldini, ‘I must send you my video of
Don Giovanni
.’
Helen, who prided herself on telling the truth, took a deep breath.
‘We have the video, Roberto, but I must say, neither Malise nor I thought it was your best effort. The music was delightful but all the sexual innuendo and the nudity seemed to trivialize the production.’
‘Go on,’ said Rannaldini icily.
‘And we both felt that the camera rested on your face too much. Although it’s fascinating watching a great conductor at work, it rather distracts from the action.’
‘My
Don Giovanni
achieve higher rating than
EastEnders
.’
‘It had popular appeal maybe, Roberto,’ said Helen earnestly, ‘but I think you are capable of greater things.’
‘Do you indeed?’ Rannaldini gazed fixedly ahead.
Realizing she had goofed, Helen said hastily, ‘I guess it’s my fault, as I said the Don is so like Rupert.’
‘How is Rupert’s exquisite wife?’ asked Rannaldini silkily.
Helen’s face tightened; she was wildly jealous of Taggie. Not only had she made Rupert happy, she was also adored by Marcus and Tabitha, and when he was alive, by Malise.
That’ll teach her to slag off my
Don Giovanni
, thought Rannaldini in amusement.
‘I expect she’s busy chaining herself to some railing to stop lambs and calves being shipped alive to the continent,’ said Helen tartly.
The thought of Taggie Campbell-Black being chained to anything excited Rannaldini unbearably.
‘Peter Maxwell Davies is on the telephone.’ The second secretary greeted Rannaldini and Helen as they entered the house. ‘Have you looked at his symphony yet?’
‘Put it in my briefcase, I do it tonight,’ Rannaldini looked at his watch.
‘Do you admire Boris Levitsky’s
Berlin Wall Symphony?
’ asked Helen, anxious to keep her end up. ‘Malise and I were overwhelmed by it.’
‘Hopelessly derivative. Boris speak of being divinely inspired by the great composers.’ Sneeringly, Rannaldini pretended to pick up a telephone, ‘’Allo, Beethoven, ’Ow are you? I am ready to receive message, I take it down . . . and out come chopsteeks.’
‘That’s unfair,’ said Helen reprovingly. ‘Boris is very dear. He’s been so supportive since Malise died, he rings me three or four times a week. I know Marcus would love him as a stepfather,’ she added defiantly, and then felt absolutely miserable.
She is very insecure, decided Rannaldini, Malise had restored her confidence and hung a picture-light over her beauty; now it had gone out.
Changing tack, he said gently: ‘Many men would like to be Marcus’s stepfather. Eef you didn’t like my
Don Giovanni
, I must give you other records and eef you won’t come to Albert Hall, Clive, my chauffeur, will drive you home.’
Later that evening, Marcus endured a half-hour moan about bills from a restless, sobered-up Helen. He then pointed to Nielsen’s
Flute Concerto
and Mahler’s
Resurrection Symphony
lying on the piano.
‘If we’re that broke, why are you buying that bastard’s records?’
Startled, because Marcus was normally so tolerant, hoping Mrs Edwards wouldn’t drop her in it, Helen tried a grey lie.