Orchestra A had just telephoned, closely followed by Orchestra B, because orchestras, like busses, unfailingly arrive together. With a critical discernment which cannot be over-praised, both were yearning to employ me that evening. Louise was keen that I should close negotiations with one or the other and who could blame her? She was yet to Know All!

"Louise" I told her, "You do not yet Know All. My advice is to tell fixer A to join forces with fixer B and drown their joint sorrows in the nearest pub. Fond though I am of them both - and I am devoted to all my fixers, this is official - I am inflexibly pledged elsewhere, to wit, with my personally-managed, jet-propelled string quartet, and in Hampton Court Palace to boot. They've got name, rank and serial number, so no other cello basher will do."

This level of discourse would have foxed a lot of diary service personnel, but not Morgenstern's dulcet-toned Louise, who had doubtless been wondering for some moments when (or if) I would put a sock in it.

"Just leave it to me," quoth this paragon, so I did. Louise, with her unfailing ability to chortle at all my jokes, was a constant mystery to me, until I fathomed the level of commitment involved in making her the virtuoso communicator that she is. This is doubtless the scene on training days:

Julian: Ready? "Here comes the joke about the sheep again".
Louise: "Crumbs, not THE 'the one about the sheep'!"
Julian: (patient) "Now Louise, you know what musicians are like".
Louise (sighing) "Tell me the one about the sheep".
(Julian tells Louise joke re sheep)
Louise: (choking with laughter) "Brilliant! Terrific! Tell it again!"
Julian: "Fine Louise, great, but fall about a bit more the next time. Your turn, Lydia... What exactly do you do when a viola player...?"
I knew we were in trouble

they ring up the S.Q. the night before and request that it show up, en masse, an hour earlier than previously booked

The organisers phoned me shortly after Louise, and I knew we were in trouble. They had realised that there are shots which are on the board and shots which are not on the board, and that one of the latter consists of taking a group into Hampton Court Palace on an icy November eve, and shoving them around the guided tour before the administration of alcoholic fortification. I could have told them that when we were booked, months ago, but nobody asks the string quartet, do they! No, what they do is ring up the S.Q. the night before and request that it show up, en masse, an hour earlier than previously booked, in order to accompany the pre-guided tours drinks.

Now this proved more complicated than it sounded. Our leader was coming hotfoot from the Royal Musicological Association's annual jamboree. Our violinist was time-tabled to arrive immediately after conducting his ensemble in Oxford's Holywell Room. I had spent most of the day decorating the cello section of a noted Classical Orchestra, while the second violin couldn't leave Essex until his wife got home from work at five, due to an overflow of in-house toddlers.

Hence the caterers were told that what they were getting an hour before the kick-off was a string duo consisting of leader and cello, max. The duo was on time, but Hampton Court security was caught off-guard. Yet another old biddy in a grace-and-favour apartment had set a kipper alight, and half London's fire brigade had been called upon to prod the remains. Security was a long time in fetching us, which was just as well because the entry hall where we were to play was well below freezing. The door opened at intervals, lowering the temperature another few centigrades, in order to admit members of the catering team, led by distinguished butler A and younger butler B.

It being always my aim and object to give the natives a treat, I had brought my sapphire blue dress, complete with forties costume jewellry. This proved a near-fatal error. The hairs on my arms stood out from their attendent goose pimples like frilly swords, and I couldn't begin to feel my fingers. A Hampton Court security lady, observing me turning roughly the same blue as my dress, very kindly fixed us up a heater. It was a game little heater, and puffed bravely, but it retired hurt half-way through. The catering team, in green jackets, stood around and breathed on their fingers, the security men in duffle coats breezed in and out of the open door while we waited for the first armoured division to appear.

At the eleventh hour, it did, in the shape of Andrew, our stalwart violist. Traffic from Oxford had been rotten, and he entertained the gravest doubts of Simon's progress on the fog-bound motorway from Essex, but we were a trio ready with a heart for any fate, not excluding freezing. We started playing, at a signal from Butler A, just as the first guests hove into view.

Like experiencing a Pinter play

It consisted of a family, American, rich, and, as I imagine most rich families are, extended. The excuse for the shindig was the seventieth birthday of the head of the clan's mother. She was a startlingly plain woman stumping about in sable. Her son was a silver-haired complacent-looking fellow who cherished a long-term ambition to look down my dress. Her daughter-in-law was the rich-bitch-blonde in fox-fur. There were several heir-apparents, forty-ish, accompanied by their consorts and - and this was the killer - offspring. There seemed to be, in the party of twenty-four, about forty-eight children, but this was mere hallucination. When all the returns were in, there was a girl with pebble-glasses, and three boys, all aged between four and seven. But were they ever noisy.

The kindest interpretation one can put on their behaviour was that they were cold, but hell, we were all cold. One heir apparent, spotting our beaten heater, dived for it like a diving duck, missing our violist's bow by a centimetre. They were all downing champagne grimly in the dim, frosty light. Mine host, angling around my dress, observed Mozart on the back of our music and loudly affected to have recognised the master, while his grandchildren impersonated Lewis and Christie intent on the 100-meters only a foot away from my second-best cello. For two pins I wold have wrapped my bow around their necks. For one pin. For pleasure alone.

Pickled or Boiled

We were escorted through the formal garden to the banqueting room. Here a security fellow with a radio cheerily informed us of the multifarious motorway pile-ups due to the fog, and I began to wonder whether I would see our (still absent) second violinist in this world or the next. Butler A and I had a friendly dispute as to whether the guests should be pickled or boiled in oil, and which of us should preside over the proceedings. The security bloke started reading Asimov, so I struck up a literary conversation - a tragic error, as it so often rebounds on the victim (me). Before long he was favouring me with his epic poem, 'Jenny', which he just so happened to be carrying in his wallet. This was an epic about his lost love in which the best line rhymed moon with pain, and why not, it's a free country. It was that - surreal - kind of night. Then our second violinist finally arrived, to champagne all round, and we waited for the re-emergence of the cast.

I can't say that the Pinterians seemed to have relished their tour of the castle to any great extent, certainly not to the extent of the seven or eight thousand pounds from which they part you just to get Hampton Court opened of an evening. The heirs apparent charged straight for the booze, the rich bitches yearned for their cigarettes ('smoking NOT permitted in the castle, madam' - except for kippers) and the kids resumed their games with a dogged persistence one could not but admire. Then the little girl with the pebble-glasses was put through her catechism.

'And this is ANOTHER violin, and THIS is a VIOLA. Which do you think is bigger, the violin of the viola?'

Upon which the little girl buried her head in her mother's shoulder as if it was all too much. The mother tactlessly pursued the matter. 'And which instrument do you want to play when YOU grow up, Katie? The violin, the viola or the cello?'

I was considering putting in a good word for the flute, when little Katie burst into tears. Mind, I'm not blaming her. By then, Butlers A and B were shepherding the troops into the dining room. The champagne however was left in our anteroom, though dawn raids were made upon it by the heirs apparent for the next ten minutes, one of them winking at us as he gulped down his dose like medicine. Another of the heirs was living for brandy alone, but, with a family like that, who could blame him?

I should have drowned them at birth

Mine host told Butler A that he (Butler A) was a complete shmuck' and when Butler B was about to serve his wife before him, shouted, 'Serve me before you serve that rotting bitch.' Upon toasts being offered in honour of her seventieth birthday, the mother of this charmer was heard to declare, 'I should have drowned them all at birth,' a conclusion inescapable by any interested third party. Butlers A and B, infuriated at not having been informed about the children, favoured us with a delightful sotto voce duet of 'Why was she born so beautiful? Why was she born at all?' The fox-fur kept stealing into the garden, avec fags, closing the door behind her in a marked manner. There was the most tremendous row between Katie's parents, growing increasingly virulent during the Gershwin, but sinking to a whisper when we were given the signal for the advent of speeches next door. To my lasting regret, I missed the jist of the row. Perhaps Katie hadn't been making up to the host enough (it was hard to imagine little Katie being much of a sparkling conversationalist at the best of times). Perhaps Katie's father had been caught eyeing the fox-fur over the hors-d'oeuvres. The possibilities were endless.

Stop playing!

At various - and completely random-times, various heirs apparent would call for us to down tools while they made impromptu speeches, the most admirable of which lasted a quarter of an hour. Sycophantic applause would bring us hurtling back from our divided meal below stairs to grind into gear until our next unscheduled halt. Butlers A or B would occasionally stagger past, disputing whether a plea of diminished responsibility could get them off life, with much, of course, to be said on both sides. We played 'Happy Birthday' as advertised but everyone was either too smashed or too miserable to notice. Katie's parents left fast, tight-lipped. Mine host had one last go at my dress. The fox-fur almost got locked out in the garden by a security man. The security man went home to dreams of his Jenny and we left too.

The fog was suspended over the Thames, framing Hampton Court in a ghostly medieval haze; and the quartet's feet crisped on the frosted gravel entrance. Dark deeds had always been afoot there over the centuries, I thought, but none darker than tonight's.

Still, there was always the silver lining. I could ring Louise up at Morgenstern's and tell her what had happened, not omitting a new joke Andrew had loosed on us. Louise deserved a good laugh.

Yes, first of all, I thought, I would tell her the one about the sheep.

"While the Music Lasts" A Novel by Alice McVeigh Story is Published by Orion press ISBN number 1 85797 939 7

Alice McVeigh

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