Nightingales (Warrender Saga Book 11)

by Mary Burchell

  ‘I’m willing to gamble.’ That was Lewis, pale and very determined.

  ‘I don’t doubt it, my dear fellow,’ was the dry reply. ‘But the principal gamble is mine. If the whole thing is a flop you are still an unknown composer who may do better one day. I, on the other hand, am staking my reputation as a conductor and organiser of some distinction. If I fail, my enemies—and they’re many—will rejoice, while my friends will say uneasily, “Poor old Warrender, he’s beginning to lose his touch.”’

  Recalling Jerome’s malicious words the previous evening, Amanda winced. Then she said in a low but resolute tone of voice. ‘Are you going to risk that, Sir Oscar?’

  ‘Are you going to do exactly what I tell you for the next two and a half months?’ he countered. And, taking her hand, he gave her the smile of infinite charm which he used only when it was essential for him to gain his point.

  ‘I’m prepared to do anything and everything you ask of me to the best of my ability,’ she replied earnestly.

  ‘Very well, we’ll take the risk.’ He got up from the piano. ‘You’ll drive back with me to London tonight. Lewis will find a substitute at the church here for the next few months and will join us tomorrow. By then I shall have gone through the whole score—’ he gathered the manuscript sheets together in one comprehensive gesture—‘and be ready to discuss any possible amendments. How about Rogerson?’ He glanced at Lewis. ‘Can we rely on his total collaboration in the coming weeks?’

  ‘Entirely,’ said Lewis and Amanda in one breath, and she added, ‘He’s staying at The Nightingale. I’ll cycle back immediately and alert him. If you will stop for me on the way back, Sir Oscar, I’ll have my things ready, and it’s possible that he can come too. Oh——’ she suddenly remembered her arrangement with Jeremy.

  ‘What now?’ Warrender asked a little impatiently.

  ‘Nothing of any importance,’ Amanda said in a tone of cool decision. And in that moment she knew she was speaking the exact truth. Jerome was no longer of any importance in her life. Indeed, she decided with a touch of malice in her turn, he deserved to be jettisoned if only for the disparaging way he had spoken of Sir Oscar the previous evening.

  Lewis came with her to the front door, and in the narrow passage she turned and put her hands up against him.

  ‘You’re quite sure you want to gamble on me?’ she said.

  ‘There’s no gamble involved,’ he told her deliberately. ‘We’re going to succeed together. Why else do you suppose I taught you to sing?’ And he opened the front door and ushered her out before she had time to ask just what he meant by that.

  On the way back she asked herself—did he mean that he had had her in mind from the beginning to be of use to him in his own career? Or did he mean that this dramatic situation which linked them together seemed to him no more than the logical conclusion of all they had done together? She had found no satisfactory reply by the time she reached The Nightingale.

  To Nan she explained rapidly that circumstances forced her to go back to London earlier than she had expected, and she asked her sister-in-law to telephone Jerome and explain this. She herself felt unequal to dealing with Jerome’s inevitable questions, and she was relieved when Nan agreed without any objection.

  She did however ask curiously, ‘Are you going back by train?’

  ‘No. Sir Oscar is calling for me in less than an hour.—Oh, and Patrick too if he can manage it. It’s—it’s all to do with the Northern Counties Festival, but I don’t know any details. And to tell the truth—’ as she saw several questions surfacing in her sister-in-law’s mind—‘to tell the truth, Nan, since you’re going to tackle Jerome for me it’s just as well if you don’t know too much. Then you can’t say anything out of turn.’

  ‘Meaning—just be diplomatic and dumb?’ Nan suggested.

  ‘Just that,’ Amanda agreed with a smile. Then she suddenly threw her arms round her sister-in-law and exclaimed, ‘Oh, Nan, say a prayer for me. I’m going to need it in the coming weeks.’

  ‘I will,’ promised Nan quite seriously. ‘And, what’s more, I won’t ask questions. If Warrender himself has come to fetch you back it must be important. But I’m afraid Patrick will have to follow on his own. He went out only half an hour ago and said he wouldn’t be in to dinner.’

  ‘Did he say where he was going?’ Amanda asked anxiously.

  ‘No. Only that he’d be late.’

  ‘Then get him to phone Lewis when he does come in—however late he is.’

  ‘I will,’ promised Nan, again controlling her desire to know more, but with obvious difficulty.

  Amanda was ready and waiting with her suitcase packed ten minutes before Warrender arrived. He spared time for a few courteous enquiries after Henry, but then rapidly installed Amanda and her luggage in the car and, with a slight wave of his hand to Nan, set off towards London.

  For quite a long time there was silence between them, Amanda feeling virtually certain that casual chit-chat would not be acceptable to her companion; certainly not when his thoughts were busy on something really important. She was surprised therefore when he remarked, ‘You’re very quiet. Are you worrying about what you’re taking on? There’s no need to do so—you’ll be in safe hands.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure of that! My only worry is whether I’m really capable of doing justice to Lewis’s work.’

  ‘If I think at a later stage that you’re not developing as we hope I shall have no scruples about replacing you,’ he told her coolly.

  ‘But Lewis can be so determined!’

  ‘I too am not lacking in determination,’ Warrender assured her. ‘Take things one step at a time, and let me tell you that in the early stages you are essential. You seem to have a very personal effect on Elsworth. Does he imagine he’s in love with you?’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Amanda sounded shocked, and he laughed.

  ‘It does happen, you know,’ he said carelessly. ‘He wouldn’t be the first struggling composer to think he’s found his ideal in a personable girl with an excellent voice. Treat him lightly in these early stages, whatever your own feelings may be. We need to keep him happy. You can brush him off later if you want to—once we have the first performance successfully over.’

  There was a deep and disapproving silence from Amanda. Then she gathered sufficient courage to say, ‘That isn’t a very nice thing to say, Sir Oscar.’

  ‘But then I’m not a very nice man, Amanda,’ he replied amusedly. ‘In fact, where my art is concerned I’m a totally ruthless professional. The sentimental amateur has no place in my scheme of things.’

  ‘I believe you,’ said Amanda. Then she added more provocatively than she knew, ‘Lady Warrender practically told me as much.’

  ‘Oh? What did Anthea say about me?’ he asked, still amused but with a touch of genuine curiosity.

  Amanda shook her head, however, and refused to amplify her remarks. He on his side did not give her the satisfaction of asking further questions, and the rest of the journey was completed more or less in silence.

  On their arrival Anthea came running out into the hall to greet them and, seeing Amanda with her husband, exclaimed, ‘You brought her! Then is everything—all right?’

  ‘Not exactly that.’ He kissed her a trifle absently. ‘Let’s say that the signs are favourable, so far as I have had time to examine the work. It’s good—perhaps very much more than good. We’ll see when we begin serious work on it. Amanda is to play the heroine—on the insistence of Elsworth.’

  ‘Oh, my dear——’ she hugged Amanda, ‘I’m so glad for you!’

  ‘You might spare her some pity too,’ observed Warrender. ‘It’s going to be hell for her in the coming weeks.’

  ‘There’s no need to frighten her,’ retorted Anthea. ‘It will mean terrific work and probably some heartache too, Amanda. But you’ll look back on it afterwards as one of the great periods of your life. I know—I’ve lived through something similar. It’s like climbing a mountain on hands and knees, b
ut if you do make it and reach the top it’s like standing on the roof of the world. And no one can ever take that first breathtaking moment from you.’

  ‘Except that there’ll be times when you slip downhill again and have to retrace a very weary way.’ Warrender told her drily. ‘But that’s an artist’s life,’ he added with a shrug.

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ Amanda said again. ‘I can’t do more.’

  ‘What do you mean—you can’t do more?’ Warrender challenged her contemptuously. ‘You dare not do less! Your best is the very least I shall require of you.’

  And during the next few weeks Amanda found that was all too true. The task itself was very close to her heart, for she loved Lewis’s music, which lay well for her voice, and she felt some strange kinship with the girl she was trying to portray. The day-to-day work of making the part individually hers was not impossibly difficult. What was difficult was the necessity of reaching and maintaining Oscar Warrender’s standards.

  She was glad of Patrick Rogerson’s co-operation, for he cheered her with his good-humoured optimism, but Lewis seemed unable to give her the same sort of support. Never having previously had anything to do with a creator in the throes of creation, Amanda was puzzled and distressed that he was so often nervous, tense and unreasonable. Almost, she told herself despairingly at times, as though he regretted his determination to have her sing the role.

  A good many tears were shed in the privacy of her room, but only once did she break down in front of the three men, and then it was in a scene which blew up with the suddenness and violence of a thunderstorm. Towards the end of a taxing and strenuous afternoon in the studio she found herself less and less able to understand just what it was that was required of her. Sir Oscar, who hardly ever raised his voice to her, turned at last from the piano and asked in a tone of cold exasperation, ‘Don’t you understand anything, or are you just sulking?’

  ‘I’m trying,’ she said frightenedly. ‘If you aren’t satisfied——’

  ‘If I’m not satisfied?’ he repeated in a tone of unexpected rage. ‘Who could be satisfied with such an abject performance? How satisfied do you suppose Lewis is feeling as you massacre this excellent work of his?’

  ‘Leave me out of it,’ Lewis growled.

  ‘We can’t leave you out of it. It’s to you that the girl owes everything, and it’s time she did something in return. And it’s no good crying, Amanda——’ he added, which naturally made Amanda burst into tears, at which Lewis went to her and put his arms round her.

  ‘Don’t start pampering her at this stage, for God’s sake,’ said Warrender. ‘What she needs is a bracing view of the situation as it really is. You owe Lewis your splendid training, the chance of a lifetime with this unique operatic role he insists on your having, and in your private life the fact that he’s paid everything to give your brother——’

  ‘Be quiet!’ exclaimed Lewis so violently that even the angry Warrender stopped in his tracks.

  But enough had been said for Amanda to raise her white face from Lewis’s shoulder where she had hidden it, and to ask in a curious, shaken voice, ‘What does he mean—everything?’

  ‘He’s exaggerating,’ Lewis told her curtly. But he did not meet her eyes and, suddenly pulling herself away from his clasp, she walked across the room until she stood within a couple of feet of Warrender.

  ‘You tell me the truth,’ she said, looking the intimidating conductor straight in the eye, ‘or I go out of here, and you can find another soprano to bullyrag. Did Lewis pay everything that was needed for Henry?’

  There was a long silence. Then Warrender replied, ‘I’m sorry. That was really Elsworth’s secret which I had no right to disclose. But—yes. And now you know the sum total of your debt to him perhaps you will put your best into making a success of his work.’

  ‘I believed I was already doing just that,’ Amanda said slowly. ‘I see now that I was wrong. Will you please go away, both of you. Give me ten minutes to myself, and I’ll be ready to go on.’

  ‘I’d like to say——’ began Lewis, but she rounded on the two of them and was astounded to hear herself shouting at them.

  ‘Get out—both of you,’ she ordered. ‘And when you come back if I can’t do everything you want I’ll resign the part.’

  To her astonishment they both went. And only when she heard the door close behind them did she realise that she had ordered Sir Oscar Warrender out of his own studio and he had gone.

  She sat down then on a property couch and buried her face in her hands, though there were no longer any tears. She was just forcing herself to think and think. Not about the shattering discovery of the fullness of her debt to Lewis: strangely enough, she contrived to shut her mind off from that for the time being. What she thought about was the girl she was trying to portray, and why it was that she had been unable to absorb and apply what Sir Oscar had been telling her.

  Deliberately she made her mind go blank. Then she slowly began to build up the scene again, with Warrender’s words in the background of her consciousness. He had demanded what he called ‘the colour of tears’ in her voice, and suddenly she knew what he meant. She went over to the piano, fingered a note or two, cleared the huskiness from her throat and softly sang the phrases again.

  She was still trying them over when the door opened and she switched round, ready to tell either Sir Oscar or Lewis that she had found what she needed. But it was not either of the men. It was Anthea Warrender, and she wheeled in a tea trolley set for two.

  ‘You’re probably in need of a cup of tea,’ she observed in a perfectly normal tone of voice.

  ‘Did they tell you I—I made a scene?’ Amanda asked.

  ‘No. But they both looked rather chastened,’ replied Anthea, ‘and said you’d sent them out. I was so Intrigued at the idea of anyone dismissing Oscar from his own studio that I felt you deserved—and probably needed—a cup of tea.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Amanda laughed shakily. ‘I told them I wanted ten minutes to myself.’

  ‘Oscar seemed to think half an hour would be better. And if you ask me, he was thinking of them as well as you.’ Anthea poured out the tea and handed a cup to Amanda. ‘Do you want to tell me what happened? or do you prefer to put it right out of your mind?’

  ‘I couldn’t do that,’ Amanda said with a shake of her head. ‘But if I answer your question will you then answer something for me?’

  ‘If I can.’

  So Amanda described the scene which had taken place and was relieved when the other girl nodded sympathetically and said, ‘I’m sorry, my dear. I know how you must have felt. But it’s no good my telling you to take no notice, because of course it’s by taking full notice of these occasional miseries that we learn what to do.’

  ‘Yes, I think I did learn what Sir Oscar meant, and I’m pretty sure I can do it now,’ Amanda acknowledged unexpectedly. ‘And will you please tell me in return—why did you let Lewis shoulder all the financial burden of helping Henry?’

  ‘Oh—’ Anthea bit her lip doubtfully—‘so you know that was what happened?’

  ‘Yes. It came out in the course of the—row.’ Even now she hesitated to apply that word to any scene which involved Anthea’s husband.

  ‘Well, Amanda, it was mostly because he simply wouldn’t hear of anything else. He satisfied us that he could manage it without real financial embarrassment, and beyond that point we could hardly insist without offence.’

  ‘But why did he want it that way?’

  ‘I couldn’t say for certain. But I think he regards you very much as his creation, musically speaking, and possibly he wanted to complete what one might call a labour of love.’

  ‘You don’t think he wanted to put me under an obligation to him, so that he would have some—some sort of hold over me?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ Anthea shook her head slowly. ‘Some men would do that, of course. Heaven forgive me, I once thought it of Oscar. But I was wrong. And I think you would be wrong in attrib
uting anything so—so petty to Lewis. Besides, there was another reason. He felt very deeply for your sister-in-law in her distress, you know, and——’

  ‘She had that impression too,’ Amanda interrupted quickly. ‘He told her he knew what it meant to love someone who was desperately ill and not be able to do a thing about it.’

  ‘Then you know about the young cousin?’

  ‘The—cousin? It was a cousin, was it? How old was she?’

  ‘He,’ corrected Anthea absently. ‘Just a schoolboy, I think, when he died.’

  ‘So he—died?’ Amanda’s voice shook slightly, but she could not have said whether this was because the pathos of the story moved her or because she was suddenly overwhelmed by some inexplicable sense of relief.

  Anthea nodded. ‘Apparently at the time Lewis had very little money and could do pathetically little for this boy to whom he was devoted. When he was telling us about it he said something I’ll always remember because it was so true and so touching. He said nothing is easier to give than money if you have it—or more difficult if you have not. I think perhaps he felt that in helping your sick brother he was somehow doing what he’d longed fruitlessly to do for his own young cousin.’

  There was quite a long silence. Then Amanda said, ‘I’m sorry I said that about wondering if he wanted to put me under an obligation to him. It was quite unworthy. Of course he’s far too generous to think of any such thing.’

  ‘I agree.’ Anthea got up and piled the tea things on the trolley once more. ‘Shall I tell them they can come back now?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Amanda smiled suddenly. ‘Sir Oscar may return to his own studio, and I’ll somehow manage to do exactly what he wants of me.’

  And she did. No one apologised to anyone else, though they were all specially polite to each other. Most remarkable of all, when Amanda did manage to do exactly what was required of her, Warrender refrained from asking her why she could not have done that before. There was never again anything approaching a real ‘scene’ between them. And by the time they all went north, to the lovely place in the Tyne Valley where the Northern Counties Festival took place every autumn, there was, on the surface at least, an atmosphere of artistic harmony. If they all knew at heart that they were engaged on an unusually risky enterprise they did not discuss the fact.