“You were angry about the Smetana?”
“Exactly. My country, you know, not hers. I knew you’d understand.”
“I do, in a way, but—”
“Can you forgive me? I don’t deserve it, but to lose you as well as the chance to conduct… Well, it would serve me right, I guess—”
“No, no, Milan…it’s okay. Really. But please don’t ever treat me like that again.”
“Let me make it up to you. I have tickets for Rigoletto at Covent Garden—the Royal Box! And for dinner afterwards. You will come, yes?”
“The Royal Box? Really?”
“Ah, when you are on TV suddenly everyone is crazy, giving you things.” Milan rolled his eyes and grinned wolfishly, irresistibly.
Lydia despised herself, but her heart seemed to have cut adrift from her head and was floating dangerously out of control, drawing the rest of her in its destructive wake.
“Just you and me? Or Evgeny too?” she asked softly.
“Just you and me.”
“I’d love to.”
“Great. Saturday. Let’s make a day of it. I’ll meet you for lunch.”
“Okay. Lovely.”
Mary-Ann entered the hall in a beautifully-cut pinstriped suit, head down, jaw set.
“Good,” breathed Milan, watching her stomping progress. “Now let’s have some fun.”
The rehearsal went badly. Very badly. And so did the next, and the one after that.
Lydia, watching Mary-Ann try tactic after tactic to get the orchestra on her side, felt uncomfortable and sorry for her. She started off with bluff jollying along, moved on to reason, through sarcasm, remonstration and ended, worryingly quickly, at pleading. But, no matter what she did, the tempos were all wrong, the strings shrieked rather than sang, and people persistently came in at the wrong bar, or finished the phrase in a ragged shambles. Lydia couldn’t believe how easy it was for a world-class orchestra to sound like a school band. She felt ashamed of Milan and embarrassed for the Westminster Symphony and its supporters. No matter how hot she was for the first violinist, she would never approve of this strategy.
On her way to the Tube station on the Friday night before her hot date with Milan, Lydia was surprised to find herself beckoned into a coffee shop by Mary-Ann, who was sitting glumly in the window sucking up an extra-huge dose of caffeinated badness.
“Oh, hello,” she said, poking her head around the door.
“Come in,” said Mary-Ann. “Shut that door, for heaven’s sake, you’ll let that bitter wind in. Let me get you a coffee. If that’s okay, I mean. Are you in a hurry?”
“No,” said Lydia, perching on the neighbouring stool. “Just a long night of practicing and watching old concerts on Sky Arts for me.”
“Ah, know the feeling. So, then—what’s your poison?”
Mary-Ann brought Lydia a large cappuccino, plus a second extra-strong espresso for herself.
“I hope you don’t mind my collaring you like this, Lydia, but I’ve noticed this week that you don’t seem to be as ‘in tune’ with the string section as some, and I’m just wondering…what gives?”
Lydia felt cornered, but she couldn’t help liking and respecting the forthright woman, so she took a long sip of her cappuccino and mentally put some words in as tactful an order as she could.
“I mean,” Mary-Ann rattled on, almost to herself, “this is one of the world’s great orchestras. But it sounds fucking awful. Is it me? Is it me, Lydia?”
“No,” she said. “It’s not you.”
“Then what? Something’s going on with Mr Milan-the-Sleb… That much I can make out. But what’s his problem? Does he hate women conductors?”
“No. But he hates conductors who aren’t him. Especially when they’re conducting classics by Czech composers.”