Starburst (3 page)

The offices and headquarters of Edinburgh International Festival are housed in a converted church at the very top of the Royal Mile, the building having lost its ecclesiastical name along with its pews and pulpit and “rechristened” the Hub. Pushing her way through two sets of swing-glass doors, Tess hurried along the central passage, at one time the aisle of the church, with the Hub Café behind a long glass partition to one side and the International Ticket Office on the other. She took the staircase two at a time, past the bright red wall with its random shelves of sculptured figurines, and as she stopped momentarily on the upper landing to catch her breath, she heard the telephone ringing in her office. She ran in and reached across the desk for the receiver, simultaneously ridding herself of the coffee cup and allowing her laptop case to fall from her shoulder onto the ground with an ominous thump.

“International office, good morning.”

“Good morning, Tess. It’s Alasdair.”

“Oh, morning, Alasdair.” Tess stretched out the telephone cable with her free hand and walked around the desk to her seat. “I’m sorry, have you rung before?”

“No, I left it a little later just to give you the chance to get into the office.”

Tess couldn’t tell from his tone whether he had said it with any seriousness, but nevertheless she felt her face pulse with nervous embarrassment. Her boss, Sarah Atkinson, was
never
late for her early-morning telephone call with the director.

“So, how’re things in Budapest?”

“All right. The dance company is good, but I don’t think the choreography is up to scratch, so I’m not going to risk booking them for this year. I’ll maybe see if I can’t fix up some sort of collaboration with Hans Meyer for next year. He’ll be coming to direct the Rombert at any rate.”

“Nothing you want me to do from this end, then?” Tess asked, tapping the point of a ballpoint pen expectantly on her desk pad.

“Not for this project,” the director replied, “but listen, when I was flying out here, I noticed in the newspaper that Angélique Pascal is playing at the Barbican this Thursday. I know it’s a bit early for publicity, but seeing she’s going to be the International’s star turn this year, try tracking her down and organizing an interview, and then give Harry Wills a call at
The Sunday Times
. There’s every probability you’ll get stalled by Albert Dessuin, her manager, but give it a go.”

Tess jotted the names down on her pad, but it was only as a reminder. Both names, especially that of the young French violinist, were well known to her. “Anything else?” she asked.

“Yes, I want you to ring up Jeff Banyon at the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and ask him if it’s definitely Tchaikovsky they’re going to be doing for the fireworks at the end of the festival. If not, then we’ll have to change our theme to accommodate whatever they’ve chosen. Now, do you have anything else for me?”

Tess searched the top of her desk for any messages others might have left for the director. “No, nothing at all.”

“All right. I’ll be back in the office tomorrow late afternoon, if all goes well with Air Paperclip. When does Sarah get back?”

“This afternoon.”

“Okay, let her know I’ll speak to her first thing tomorrow morning. Bye, Tess.”

Tess replaced the receiver and whistled out a breath of relief. She really liked the director but had always felt quite in awe of him. He had an unsettling manner that could be taken as being ice cold if one did not understand the constant pressure he was under, and coming up to work at her third festival in the International office, she felt only now that he treated her as an integral part of the team. Yet the story could have been completely different if he’d ever discovered what had happened over the course of the previous two festivals.

Her affair with Peter Hansen had been clandestine, exciting, and fired by the creative energy that thrummed through the city at the time of the festival. Peter was one of Denmark’s top artistic directors, brought in by Sir Alasdair Dreyfuss on a two-year contract to direct a number of theatrical productions, and it had been the director himself who had given Tess the job of chaperoning the man. In his mid-forties, Peter was famous, charismatic, and a practiced seducer, and Tess, having just become involved in her first festival, had been flattered by his attentions, and soon accepted her energetic sessions in one of Edinburgh’s five-star hotels as part of her duty. She and Allan had been going through one of their “cool” periods, and even though they were still seeing each other quite regularly, there was never a question of him finding out about it. There was always the excuse of a reception or a dinner she had to attend, or a late-night tour of the city’s nightclubs, entertaining the visiting classical performers. So, when the second year came round, both she and Peter took up where they had left off, and Tess knew at every moment of their affair that it was underhand and dangerous, not least because Peter Hansen just happened to be one of Sir Alasdair Dreyfuss’s oldest friends, and that for the past five years their respective families had joined together for skiing holidays in Norway.

It had all come to an abrupt end with a week of the previous festival still to run. She arrived at work one morning to find a note on her desk from Sarah Atkinson saying that Peter Hansen had rung to say he had no further need for her services and that he would be leaving for Copenhagen the following night, immediately after the final performance of the play he had been directing. Tess tried to contact him on his mobile phone, but he never answered. In time, she came to understand that her usefulness to Peter had run its course and that he had simply been using her as a form of diversion, just as he had probably done with a plethora of stupid, gullible young girls in cities where he had been working throughout the world.

Sir Alasdair Dreyfuss never found out about the affair. If he had done so, there was no doubt in her mind that she would have been thrown out of the International office without her feet touching the ground. But Allan had found out. It was her own fault, really, walking around in a gloomy daze and bursting into tears for no apparent reason. So when he eventually asked her what was wrong, she told him everything. It could have all ended there. That’s what she was expecting, but instead dear, sweet Allan simply pulled his snivelling wreck of a girlfriend close to him, heaved out a long, painful breath and said, “We’re going to have to stop doing this to each other, Tess. We can’t sustain a relationship when we’re constantly ignoring the basic rules of trust and fidelity between us.” And just when she thought her own selfish stupidity had cost her the love of the one person for whom she had really cared, he said, “Our only chance of survival is to get married. What d’you think?”

And she’d accepted without hesitation.

Tess jerked her head to break away from her thoughts, realizing she had been sitting staring at the telephone ever since she had finished her call with the director. She leaned over and picked up her discarded case from the floor, unzipped it and placed her laptop on the desk. As it was booting up, she glanced at her watch and decided it was too early to start trying to trace the whereabouts of Angélique Pascal and her manager. Consequently, she thought it as well to wait until nine o’clock before making any of her telephone calls.

Which gave her all of forty-five minutes to do a Google search on “Barbados Holidays” and look for a September booking for her much-delayed honeymoon.

D
ue to an inadequacy of space in the rented industrial unit on the outskirts of Cheltenham, the offices and storage facilities of the Exploding Sky Company had recently been moved to a block of outmoded farm buildings deep in the rolling countryside of the Cotswold Hills. Even though it was a transaction that had stretched the relationship with his bank manager to near breaking point, Roger Dent, sole proprietor of the company, was extremely thankful at that particular moment that he had undertaken the move, if only for the soothing vista of sheep quietly grazing with their lambs in the verdant pastures outside his window. He sat slumped in a high-backed swivel chair at his desk, open-mouthed with jet lag, hardly aware of the fact that Cathy, his wife and personal assistant, had succeeded in turning the once dark and smelly piggery into the company’s new stately office during the two weeks that he had been away. White-painted windows now replaced the cobwebbed jute sacks that had once flapped in the open frames, hardboard floors were laid and carpeted, and the walls, now lined with plaster board and resplendently fresh in Dulux “Magnolia,” were hung with photographs that displayed some of Roger’s most triumphant moments: the darkened silhouette of Blenheim Palace lit by a blinding shower of green and silver cascading from its roof; the huge shimmering palm tree of illumination that arced above the barge on the river Thames, catching in its brilliant rays the frontal elevation of the Houses of Parliament and the stolid, square tower of Big Ben; and the largest of them all, an aerial shot that showed a night sky emblazoned with incandescent spirals and trailing meteors that fell earthwards in flames of red and gold onto the battlements of Edinburgh Castle. These, and the countless other photographs still packed away in removal boxes, were testament to his skills as a master pyrotechnic.

Roger was brought out of his soporific state by a coffee mug being placed with a clatter on the desk in front of him and a kiss being planted on the side of his bearded face. He closed his mouth and turned to watch with heavy eyes as his wife came to lean her denim-ed bottom on the desk beside him, her arms folded across the front of a faded blue cotton shirt and a concerned smile sliding her mouth to one side.

“You look all in.”

Roger stretched his legs out under the desk and ran a hand over the top of his thinning hair. Even though he was yet to reach his mid-forties, he no longer had the wherewithal for the ponytail that had, at one time, trailed down his back, covering the ESC logo on the back of his navy-blue sweatshirt, a garment which he wore, along with a pair of heavy-duty cotton chinos, as his constant uniform.

“I am,” he replied, mid-yawn. “There was a problem with the plane in Shanghai, so we were four hours late in boarding.”

“What time did you get back here?”

“Six-thirty this morning. I didn’t bother coming to bed. Thought I’d just disturb you.”

“That was very considerate of you,” Cathy said with a smile. “So, tell me, how did the trip go?”

“All in all, really good. We had a couple of ‘red tape’ problems, which I suppose is the norm for China, but we did manage to visit the factories in Beihai and Hengyang and they got pretty excited about the new material we’ve ordered from them. We spent two days on the test ground with this new lad from the research department in Hengyang and I have to say that some of the new multishot batteries he’d come up with were just mind-blowing.” Roger took a hefty slurp of black coffee. “Talking of which, have you seen Phil this morning? I have to remind him to send an e-mail off to the factory.”

“He’s with Danny in the storeroom, getting the gear ready for the weekend.”

Roger eyed Cathy for a moment, then leaned across his desk and opened his diary. “Oh, for heaven’s sakes, I’d forgotten about Cardiff. Looks like we’ll have to be back on the road tomorrow to get that one set up.”

Cathy pushed herself away from the desk. “Well, I’m afraid the best news I’m saving for last. Jeff Banyon from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra called this morning to find out how you were getting on with the Tchaikovsky piece for the festival.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him that you and Phil were working on it and that everything was going well.”

Roger snorted out a laugh. “That’ll be right. We haven’t even made a start to it.”

Cathy gave her husband’s hair a ruffle. “Don’t worry. You always say that some of your best displays are the ones you’ve left to the last moment.”

As she moved over to the door of the office it opened with force, and a short, well-built man with blond hair and eager blue eyes walked in. He encircled Cathy’s waist with powerful forearms, picked her up off the ground and twirled her around.

“Hi there, Cathy. Good to see you, babe,” he bellowed out in a thick Australian accent. He dropped her with little care back to her feet, moved over to the desk and gave Roger a solid slap on the shoulder. “How’re you feeling this morning, Rog?”

Roger did not reply, but turned and fixed his right-hand man with a caustic glare.

“Not very well, actually,” Cathy replied for her husband, “which makes me slightly wonder why
you’
re so chirpy?”

Phil Kenyon planted his sizeable backside on top of the desk, covering Roger’s diary in the process. “Oh, I never get jet lag,” he said cockily. “Comes from all those years of flying back and forth to Oz.”

“Bully for you,” Roger mumbled quietly, giving his diary a sharp tug to free it from captivity.

Phil leaned over, his annoyingly fresh face only a foot away from Roger’s scowling features. “Not feeling our best today, are we, Rog, mate?”

“Don’t bait him, Phil,” Cathy said warningly. “It’s not the best idea when he’s in this kind of mood. In fact, I think I might just leave you both so that I don’t have to clean the blood off the new carpet.”

“Oh, Rog wouldn’t hurt me, would you, mate?”

The remark was met with a short disparaging laugh from Roger. “I’d happily take you apart if we didn’t have work to do.”

As Cathy closed the door behind her, Phil pushed himself upright and jumped off the desk with a purposeful clap of his hands. “So what’s on the cards today?”

“The Tchaikovsky piece for the Edinburgh Festival. We’ve got to start programming it.”

Phil’s smile changed to a grimace of joylessness. “Oh, man, that’s a tall order.” He let out a heavy breath. “Oh, well, we’d better give it a go, I suppose. Where d’you put the CD they sent us?”

Roger’s energy levels were sufficient only for a finger to be pointed towards the row of filing cabinets against the wall. Phil walked over to them, selected a drawer and pulled it open. He retrieved the CD and returned to the desk, picking up a chair in passing and thumping it down next to Roger. He placed the disc in one of the CD players that were stacked to one side of the desk and sat down.

“Right,” he said, pulling forward a thick block of lined paper. “Ready to make a start?”

Roger shook his head slowly. “You know, Phil, I’m not really looking forward to trying to get this one programmed. With all those quiet passages, I just don’t see how it’s going to come together.”

Phil wrote, “Tchaikovsky, Edinburgh” at the top of the page, and then dropped the pen on the desk and turned to his boss. “I always seem to get an appalling attack of déjà vu when you say that kind of thing. Listen, mate, you’ve been doing the Fireworks Concert in Edinburgh for over twenty years now, and every year is more spectacular than the one before. I can’t think of any reason why this one should be an exception to the rule.” He picked up the remote and pressed the “play” button for the CD machine. “So what d’you say we just chill out and get on with the job in hand?”

Roger laughed quietly. “Were you born an optimist?”

“Na, mate, I was born in Wagga Wagga,” Phil replied, sticking his tongue in his cheek as the large floor speakers resounded with the opening bars of the classical piece.