‘And now I can go to Oxford and enjoy myself for the whole day without a qualm!’
‘To Oxford?’ Nicola was taken aback. ‘But why should you be going to Oxford?’
‘Didn’t I tell you? I’m visiting old Professor Davey. He is under the impression that he’s unearthed a hitherto unknown Cherubini manuscript. I think it doubtful myself. But it’s a chance one couldn’t altogether ignore. Imagine!’ She clasped her hands and looked almost ecstatic. ‘Imagine if another “Medea” were to come to light!’
‘But — ‘ Nicola could not conceal her dismay — ‘I thought Michele was coming this afternoon.’
‘She is. I arranged it, if you remember.’ Torelli looked rather excessively innocent.
‘But if you’re in Oxford all day you can’t see her.’
‘See her?’ repeated Torelli. ‘I don’t want to see the girl. It’s you who want to see her, dear.’
‘But she’s expecting to see you at first. You indicated that you wanted to discuss something with her, I thought.’
‘Don’t start every sentence with “but”, darling. It gets monotonous and tires the ear. When she arrives, you will explain, of course, that there was some confusion about dates. You can say I made the mistake, if you like,’ she added generously.
‘You mean that you never really intended to see her at all?’
‘Certainly not. What would I have to say to her?’ Torelli looked surprised. ‘And I don’t know why you’re looking shocked. There was no absolute deception about it.’
‘A trifle disingenuous, though, don’t you think?’ retorted Nicola, both amused and put out.
‘And how do you suppose, dear child, that I arrived at the position I have without sometimes being a trifle disingenuous?’ Torelli wanted to know. ‘Enjoy yourself, dear, and get all the information you can. You will have the field to yourself.’
She was so patently pleased with the way she had arranged things that it was impossible to withhold the word of thanks she obviously expected. And once this had been accorded her, she dressed in the kind of suit which can very nearly stop the traffic with its deceptively simple perfection, had Lisette summon her car, and took herself off to Oxford for the day, with every appearance of innocent enjoyment.
As the ruse was not one to which Nicola would ever have thought of resorting herself, she was faintly annoyed and felt unusually self-conscious about her position. But after reflection she decided there was nothing to do but accept the doubtful service which had been rendered her. And by the time she heard Michele’s ring at the bell, she was cool and ready for whatever the occasion might bring.
There was the sound of Lisette going to answer the summons of the bell, the slight murmur of voices in the hall, and then the drawing-room door opened and Michele was shown in.
Nicola contrived to appear perfectly natural and friendly as she greeted her visitor and then she said frankly. ‘I’m afraid I have a disappointment for you. Madame Torelli had to go to Oxford. It’s about some important musical manuscript, I understand. She asked me to give you her very sincere apologies — ’ Nicola thought she might stretch the truth as far as that — ‘and make you welcome.’
‘Until she comes back, you mean?’ the other girl asked quickly.
‘No, I’m afraid she won’t be back until quite late, but — ’
‘I wish I’d known! I wouldn’t have come.’
‘I had no number where I could phone you,’ Nicola reminded her, though without rancour. ‘But now you’re here, do have some tea. Lisette — ’
At that moment, Lisette, whose timing was almost as superb as Torelli’s, wheeled in a tea trolley, and a little reluctantly Michele sat down in the chair which both Nicola and Lisette secretly regarded as exclusively ‘Madame’s property’.
‘What exactly did Madame Torelli want to discuss with me?’ Michele accepted her tea with the same air of reluctance she had shown in remaining at all.
‘I don’t really know,’ Nicola admitted. ‘I thought myself that your discussion in Paris was exhaustive enough. But she’s such a perfectionist that she concerns herself over the smallest detail, you know. I’m sure she will manage to have some sort of chat with you before the first rehearsal.’
‘Julian Evett is taking that himself,’ Michele volunteered. ‘He’s leaving very little to any of the Opera House coaches. He’s a perfectionist too.’ And she laughed and made a slight face.
‘Have you worked with him before?’ Nicola asked, but the other girl shook her head.
‘Not personally — no. But I saw a good deal of his work when he was in Canada. At the Festival, you know.’
‘Yes, I know. That was where you met Brian Coverdale, wasn’t it?’ Nicola found suddenly that she was controlling her breathing with some difficulty. ‘And you knew him quite well in — in those last weeks, didn’t you?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘He implied it in the letter he sent me. The one which went astray and arrived long after — after it was over.’
‘You mentioned that letter before, when you spoke to me on the phone in Paris.’ The other girl’s tone was casual, but there was something about her not entirely relaxed. ‘What did he say? — beyond the fact that we met, I mean.’
‘Do you mind if I ask a leading question first?’ Nicola was surprised herself at the calmness of her own tone. ‘How much did Brian mean to you? — or you to Brian?’
‘Isn’t that a rather odd question from a virtual stranger?’
‘It’s a very odd question indeed from the girl who was going to marry him,’ replied Nicola drily. ‘And perhaps the best thing is for me to be quite frank and put my cards on the table.’ She paused, as though groping for the right words. Then she raised her chin a little defiantly and said, ‘Someone told me, on fairly good authority, that you and Brian meant a — a great deal to each other in those last weeks. Quite simply, I’d like to know if that was true?’
She heard Michele catch her breath, but whether in surprise or dismay she could not have said. Then the answer came quite deliberately.
‘No, that wasn’t true.’
‘It wasn’t?’ It seemed to Nicola that an almost physical weight had been lifted from her heart, and she was able to breathe easily and naturally again.
‘Did Brian even hint such a thing in this letter?’ Again Michele spoke casually, but again she looked not entirely at ease.
‘Oh, no! He treated the whole situation quite lightly and gaily. In fact,’ Nicola recalled with a smile, ‘he more or less coupled Julian Evett with you.’
‘He did?’ Suddenly all the tension was relaxed, and that slow, secret smile came over the other girl’s face. ‘Then perhaps I should say that Brian knew what he was talking about. He wasn’t the man in my life. Julian was. Or, if you prefer to have the truth brought up to date — Julian is.’
Nicola heard someone gasp, and then realized it was herself. At the same time she became aware that her own smile was freezing on her face. She tried to find some words — any words. Congratulation or surprise or just conventional comment. But nothing came. It was as though everything stopped, while she stood alone contemplating some impossible, yet irrefutable fact.
For in one moment of bewildering self-revelation she realized that though the statement about Brian had lifted a weight from her heart, the statement about Julian had placed an even heavier one upon it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
For a long time after her visitor had gone Nicola sat there alone in her aunt’s elegant drawing-room, staring absently into space and trying to understand what had happened to her.
While Michele had been there the absolute necessity of hiding her feelings had enabled her also to hide partially from herself the reason for this inner turmoil. Now she was alone the heart-shaking realization refused to be avoided. — It was a matter of agonizing importance to her that Julian Evett should be the man in Michele’s life. In the life of anyone but herself, come to that.
‘
I can’t be so disloyal to Brian, I can’t,’ she insisted to herself, and she made a deliberate attempt to conjure up his image before her, only to make the dismaying discovery that the once clear impression was now very slightly hazy. She could not have said when this had first happened. She only knew that total visual recall no longer existed for her where Brian was concerned.
Common sense told her that this must eventually happen with even the dearest of faces. Life goes on, patterns change and present passion merges into fond recollection. But it seemed to her nothing less than shocking that she could replace Brian’s image with that of the man responsible for his death.
She was still feverishly trying to persuade herself that it was a sort of romantic madness that would pass, when Lisette came in with the evening papers. She glanced at Nicola and observed, ‘Mam’selle looks pale.’
It was so unlike her to concern herself about the welfare of anyone but her mistress that Nicola realized she must indeed look upset. So she made a great effort to pull herself together and said quickly, ‘I’m all right, Lisette. When do you expect Madame?’
‘When she chooses to come,’ replied the maid with a faintly sardonic smile. For though she worshipped the ground Torelli trod she often made it clear that she had no illusions about her mistress.
Half an hour later Torelli returned. She had obviously had an enjoyable and stimulating day. And over the excellent little dinner which Lisette served, she told Nicola in detail about it.
‘The manuscript was a curiosity rather than an exciting discovery,’ she declared. ‘Cherubini without doubt, but not at all in his strongest vein. Nothing in it for me.’ By which she meant it was no vehicle for her particular combination of talents. ‘But it was pleasant to be fêted and shown round the place. Oxford is quite charming.’ She said this as though she were the original discoverer of the fact. ‘And what happened with you, dear?’
‘Michele came all right. She was put out at first to find you were not here, but I made your apologies — ’
‘That was unnecessary,’ interjected Torelli. ‘Does she think I have nothing better to do than sit around waiting for her to drop in? She has an altogether inflated idea of her own importance, that girl.’
‘You had invited her,’ Nicola reminded her aunt mildly. ‘Anyway, over tea I brought the conversation round to the Canadian Festival and her part in it. And finally I just asked her outright how much she had meant to Brian — or he to her.’
‘Just like that?’ Torelli seemed to think this poor technique. ‘Without any real finesse?’
‘Without any finesse,’ Nicola agreed. ‘She was inclined to tell me to mind my own business — understandably, I suppose. But I reminded her that I had been more or less engaged to Brian and that I had heard this story about her on quite good authority. She suddenly became quite expansive then and denied categorically that Brian had been anything to her. She added, for full measure — ’ Nicola steadied her voice carefully — ‘that it was Julian Evett who was, to use her own phrase, the man in her life. He still is, apparently.’
‘Then I was right in the beginning!’ Torelli was highly delighted. ‘I must tell Oscar so. Well, dear child, that’s very satisfactory, isn’t it?’
‘Very,’ said Nicola unhappily, and her aunt looked at her sharply. But, uncharacteristically, she made no further comment. Possibly because she was unwilling to enlarge upon a matter she now considered settled.
During the next few days Nicola made great efforts to be cheerful, normal and affectionately concerned with her aunt’s affairs only. She succeeded so well that not only was the observant Torelli satisfied, but she even half convinced herself that she had largely imagined that tremendous moment of self-revelation.
Not until she accompanied her aunt to the first combined stage and orchestral rehearsal of ‘The Magic Flute’ did she really put her feelings to the test, and then in circumstances she could not have imagined.
As usual Torelli sent her into the front of the house, telling her to observe, make notes and if she wished criticize later.
‘I’ve told you,’ Nicola said with a smile. ‘You’re beyond criticism so far as I am concerned.’
‘Then go and criticize the others,’ retorted Torelli good-humouredly. ‘And watch Julian. He’s going to be a really great operatic conductor one of these days.’
‘Isn’t he one already?’ asked Nicola.
‘No, of course not!’ Torelli flashed round on her with an expression of something like fury. ‘Never say that of a young artist you wish well. It’s the absolute kiss of death! However gifted one is it takes years of study and experience and steady, humble work to make a great artist. These poor little flash-in-the-pan creatures who are heralded as “great” when they’re no more than gifted beginners never have a chance. They’re doomed from the start by fatuous friends and by critics drunk with the pomposity of their own shallow judgments. Julian is thrillingly promising — which is all he should be at his age. Remember that.
‘Now go. You tire me when you talk to me so much before a rehearsal,’ declared Torelli, obviously quite unaware that she had done most of the talking. ‘Go — and watch Julian.’
So Nicola went.
She sat almost alone in the empty stalls and watched Julian. She watched the others too from time to time, of course. Particularly Torelli who, in spite of no stage costume or make-up, created the now familiar impression of demonic power to an almost hair-raising extent each time she made her appearance.
But the Queen of the Night makes only two appearances in the whole opera, so there was plenty of time to watch Julian, even if one spared some uneasy attention also for the unquestionably gifted Michele Laraut.
By now, experience had sharpened an already keen judgment, and Nicola was able to appreciate to the full that strong yet flexible beat, that eloquently expressive left hand and, perhaps most of all, the almost intangible rapport which he immediately established with his singers. He seemed to forestall difficulties, so that support was always there when needed, and he tempered exact musical discipline with the occasional artistic indulgence which can be risked only when taste and judgment are instinctive.
As she watched that thin, sensitive, intensely lively face in the light from the conductor’s desk it seemed to Nicola that she was seeing him fully for the first time. Here was the artist as well as the man, not only directing a great work, but living it and loving it as though he and it were part of each other.
‘None of it is for his own glory,’ thought Nicola, indescribably moved. And then she was almost frightened by the wave of admiration and actual love which swept over her at this realization.
One could love him as an artist, she hastily assured herself, while disliking him as a man. But after a minute she recognized that for the piece of hollow nonsense that it was. And suddenly she capitulated to something stronger than herself and allowed the complete and simple truth to engulf her. She loved him.
‘It’s ridiculous and hopeless and rather contemptible in the circumstances,’ she told herself. ‘But I love him.’ And then, as though clutching some small rag of protection round her — ‘No one must ever know!’
During the interval she remained in her seat. Lisette was of course in faithful attendance on her mistress, and Nicola could not imagine that she herself would be required. So she could stay safely where she was, in the half darkened auditorium, and not risk meeting Julian backstage.
Presently Dermot Deane came to have a word with her, and it was obvious that a more satisfied impresario could not have been imagined.
‘Gina’s unique,’ he remarked. ‘She lifts me out of my seat every time she does that first act aria, and yet I must have heard her do it dozens of times.’
‘Then you can imagine what it does to me,’ Nicola replied. ‘I haven’t a quarter of your experience. — Michele is good too, isn’t she?’
‘Yes, yes, she’s holding her own all right. But the one who is going to make the sensation is Evett. I d
idn’t know he had it in him. He’s a fine orchestral conductor, of course. But I didn’t realize he is also that rarest combination on God’s earth — a singers’ conductor and a man of the theatre. You don’t see it more than two or three times in a lifetime. Damned lucky if you see it as often, to tell the truth,’ he added reflectively.
‘Have you told Gina?’ Nicola inquired with a smile.
‘Told Gina? Gina doesn’t need telling,’ Dermot Deane laughed. ‘She probably spotted it before I did. And she’ll be the first to pay tribute, I can tell you. She can be sheer hell to an inconsiderable rival. But she’s generosity itself to an artist of equal calibre. That,’ he added almost carefully, ‘is why I love her, even though sometimes I could cheerfully strangle her.’
‘She scolded me for applying the word “great” to Julian just before this rehearsal,’ said Nicola slowly. ‘She said all the potential was there, but one must never spoil a young artist by allowing them to think they had arrived when they were still near the beginning.’
‘Evett is a long way from the beginning,’ Dermot Deane laughed again. ‘But she’s right, of course. Gina is always right about timing. Miraculous sense of timing even in personal matters. She says it’s the basis of all art. Perhaps she’s right. — Well, here comes Evett. So perhaps we’d better stop talking about his potential greatness, and keep it as a secret between ourselves.’
Nicola contrived to smile faintly at this sally, but she found it difficult not to go tense as Julian came purposefully up the gangway to speak to Dermot Deane on some technical matter.
For a moment or two the conversation passed to and fro over Nicola’s head. Then suddenly the conductor seemed to become aware of her, glanced down and said,
‘Hello, Nicola. How is it going?’
‘Wonderfully.’ Her voice came out rather huskily in spite of all her efforts to sound clear and unperturbed.
‘Satisfied with your protégée?’ His laugh was almost gay.
The Curtain Rises (Warrender Saga Book 4) Page 12