‘What?’ cried her husband, interrupting this superbly brief résumé of Nicola’s muddled story. ‘She chose today to do that? Why, it could ruin his whole performance.’
‘Of course. That’s why she’s upset.’
‘How could you be such a wicked little fool?’ Nicola could never have supposed her Uncle Peter could speak with such violence, and she shrank a little against her aunt.
‘Don’t be silly, Peter. Why are any of us wicked fools at some time in our lives?’ countered Torelli with magnificent calm. ‘For the husband of a prima donna you’re showing singularly little understanding of the unreasonableness of the human race. It was a mistake to go away on holiday for so long. It has blunted your technique.’
‘What do you expect me to do, then?’ Her husband made a visible effort to exert his usual patience.
‘You, dear? I don’t expect you to do anything,’ replied Torelli, with deceptive mildness. ‘This is something for me to tackle.’
‘You?’ exclaimed her husband in his turn, and he ran his hands over his hair as though he thought it might have grown even greyer in the last ten minutes. ‘Have you forgotten you’re singing tonight? — an important first night, at that.’
‘I forget nothing,’ replied Torelli, firmly and not quite accurately. ‘But Nicola has some vital explanations to make to Julian. Probably she is the only person in the world who can calm and steady him for tonight, and so — ’
‘I couldn’t possibly speak to him!’ Nicola cried. ‘I can never, never speak to him again. I’m too ashamed and wretched and — ’
‘And who do you suppose is interested in your shame and wretchedness?’ inquired her aunt coldly and bracingly. ‘All we are interested in is Julian — and the performance. You have done him a great injustice and now you will have to explain to him — ’
‘He won’t listen to me! If I tried to ring him up now, he would hang up the receiver the moment he heard my voice. He’s probably refusing all calls, anyway, and — ’ ‘You are not going to speak to him on the telephone, dear child. You are going to speak to him face to face.’
‘I couldn’t! Anyway, he wouldn’t agree to see me.’ she exclaimed, with a cowardly clutch at a passing straw.
‘Very likely not. But he will agree to see me,’ replied Torelli calmly. ‘Wash your face. Comb your hair. And get ready to come with me. Peter, call the car.’
‘I can’t. I truly, truly can’t,’ pleaded Nicola.
‘You must. You’ve inflicted enough anguish on Julian in a poor cause. Now you can inflict some on yourself, in the best of all possible causes — a great performance. Stop being a coward. And please, Peter, don’t you interfere. Just go and order the car.’
She made a brief, Queen-of-the-Night sort of gesture, and her husband went out of the room.
‘Now, Nicola — ’ she turned back to her pale niece, who had drawn away and was standing now, in an agony of indecision, twisting her hands together. ‘The first thing is to get your priorities straight. Do you love Julian? No coy evasions, mind. And no question of whether it’s right or wrong, wise or unwise. Do you love him?’
‘Yes,’ said Nicola, in a very low voice. ‘But he can’t bear me.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘He couldn’t, after what I’ve done.’
‘There’s no guarantee of that. Men are great fools. So are women, of course. But in rather different circumstances. If you love him, I suppose you want him to succeed tonight?’
‘Of course, of course!’
‘Above everything else? Think carefully.’
‘Above everything else,’ said Nicola, still in a low voice, but firmly.
‘Then there is no question of your not coming now and trying to right what you have done, is there?’
‘But what can I say to him? What can I say to him?’
‘I don’t know. Whatever you think he most wants to hear. I suppose it could be just that you love him,’ said Torelli, with the magnificent simplicity of perfect art.
‘You — you do know all the answers, don’t you?’ Nicola gazed at her in a sort of wonderment.
‘Not all of them — no. No one does. But I know a lot of them. That’s why I am who I am,’ replied Torelli coolly. ‘Get ready.’
So Nicola washed her face and combed her hair and, trembling but resolute, was ready to accompany her aunt in a matter of minutes.
‘Do you want me to come?’ her uncle asked.
‘No,’ said Torelli. ‘Nicola and I can handle this.’
Nicola simply did not believe that they could. Not even Gina, with her genius and her confidence, could possibly right the fearful tangle of wrong which she herself had woven. But she owed it to Julian to try. She owed it to the man she loved to make some sort of gesture, however futile, however humiliating, in atonement for the dreadful thing she had done.
When they arrived at the Gloria it was Torelli who approached the inquiry desk, ignoring for once the flutter of startled recognition around her, and asked for her name to be sent up to the conductor.
‘He isn’t in, Madame Torelli,’ said a respectful clerk.
‘He must be. On a day of performance.’
‘No — ’ it evidently shook the clerk to have to contradict her — ‘he went out ten minutes ago. He went — ’ the clerk reached for a slip of paper — ‘to Covent Garden.’
‘So early?’ Torelli frowned and glanced at her watch. ‘Extraordinary. Well — thank you.’ And turning, she took Nicola’s arm and propelled her out once more to the waiting car.
‘Covent Garden,’ she said to the chauffeur. ‘Stage door.’ To Nicola, who had called on the last remnants of her courage as they entered the hotel, it was almost insupportable to have the crisis delayed. She leaned back in the car, pale and silent, during the few minutes it took to reach the Opera House.
As they went in at the stage door the man on duty said, ‘Mr. Evett’s already here, Madame. — Oh, and here comes Mr. Warrender,’ he added as a long black car slid up behind the one they had just left.
‘Oscar!’ Torelli waited for him and addressed him in open astonishment. ‘What are you doing here? What has happened?’
‘I was just going to ask you that,’ replied the famous conductor, who was frowning and looking rather grim. ‘Come — ’ he ignored the insignificant Nicola and took Torelli by the arm. And as they went along the corridor, past the big mirror near the ballet room, he said, ‘What’s the matter with Julian? Has he been in touch with you?
He telephoned and asked me to meet him here. He says he can’t conduct tonight — that I must take over. And he wants to run through the score with me and give any necessary pointers about the line he’s taken throughout the rehearsals. Is he ill or something?’
‘No, he’s not ill. There’s been a bit of a crisis.’
‘A crisis? Have you — ’
‘Not me this time.’ Torelli gave a quick, humorous glance at her old colleague. ‘Oscar, will you go to my dressing-room and wait for me? I’ll join you in a minute.’
‘But Julian asked to see me. There isn’t a lot of time to waste, you know.’
‘No time will be wasted,’ replied Torelli. ‘I doubt if you will have to take over, anyway. Give me a few minutes.’
The conductor looked at her, half amused, half doubtful. But he said, ‘Ten minutes, then,’ and turned off in the direction of the singers’ dressing-rooms, while Torelli, with an almost painfully firm hand on Nicola’s arm, turned the other way.
‘Gina, it’s no good! I can’t — ’
‘If he were drowning you’d do the impossible to save him,’ was the curious reply. ‘It’s somewhat the same thing.’ And she raised her hand and knocked authoritatively on the door of the conductor’s dressing-room.
‘Who’s that?’ There was a sort of feverish sharpness about the voice which answered.
‘Gina Torelli,’ replied the singer, a little as though she were announcing royalty. Friendly royalty perhaps — but
royalty without a doubt.
‘Madame — ’ They heard a chair pushed back and footsteps. But before he could reach the door, she opened it and walked into the room, her hand still on Nicola’s rigid arm.
‘Madame!’ he said again, and fell back from her, so that the light from the high window was full upon him and Nicola saw that he looked very pale, slightly dishevelled and, in some strange way, haunted.
‘Please go,’ he said. ‘Both of you.’
‘No. That would settle nothing.’ Torelli’s famous speaking voice was quiet, warm and authoritative — a voice there was no gainsaying. ‘I have come with Nicola because I knew you wouldn’t admit her if she were on her own, but — ’
‘I don’t want to see her,’ he interrupted. And as though the sight of her were literally an offence to him, he turned away.
‘She realizes that. What she did today she knows was quite inexcusable, but she did it because she was completely and maliciously misled. The rest she must say herself, so I am going.’
And with the perfection of timing which never deserted her, Torelli went out of the room, closing the door behind her.
For almost a minute Nicola stood there by the door, every thought and word blocked off by terror and pity. Pity that he could look as he had in the one glimpse she had of him, terror that she was the cause of it.
Then at last he said, still without turning,
‘What do you want to say to me? What can there possibly be left to say between us now?’
What indeed? What word of excuse, contrition, explanation could ever reach him after what she had done? She caught her breath on a half-sob of despair. And then, like a light in the darkness, she remembered what Torelli had said, and every defence of pride or self-interest went down before the necessity of the absolute truth.
‘I love you, Julian,’ she said quietly and distinctly. ‘I loved you almost from the beginning, and that was what made me cruel. It was agony to feel so faithless to Brian, when I thought you guilty. I know now that you were not — ’
She was aware that he turned slowly, and the stream of words dried up.
‘What did you say?’ His voice was slightly hoarse, but he looked somehow as though she had reached him at last.
‘I said I love you.’
‘No — the other.’ He almost brushed aside the admission which had cost her so much. ‘About — Brian.’
‘I thought once that you were partly responsible for his death.’
‘But I was.’ He dropped into the chair by the dressing-table suddenly and buried his face in his hands. ‘I was — I was — I was — ’
‘No, you were not.’ She was quite calm all at once. And she came and stood beside him and stroked his bent head as though it were perfectly natural for her to be the comforter. ‘It’s been a sort of nightmare which you and I have shared in our separate ways. But it’s over now. I’ve recovered from the fever of it all, and you must too.’
He looked up at her haggardly.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said, with a sort of terrible weariness, and then suddenly he leant his head against her.
‘I’ll tell you, shall I?’ Her hand passed over his hair again and finally came to rest against his cheek.
‘Please.’
‘I loved Brian very much,’ she said slowly. ‘So much that if I had known the truth about him and Michele at first — ’
‘Do you know that now?’ he interrupted sharply.
‘Yes. Uncle Peter told me about an hour ago, not even knowing I was the girl concerned. I would have been tom and shattered if I had had to face that knowledge just after Brian died. It was you who saved me that anguish, Julian, and for this I owe you more than I can say. But in keeping me ignorant you put yourself horribly in the wrong in my eyes.’
‘I was in the wrong,’ he insisted wretchedly, but with slightly less conviction this time.
‘Not one of us was absolutely in the right,’ she said quietly. ‘Don’t you see that? I suppose Brian was wrong to fall for Michele in the circumstance. But who am I to judge, since I also fell out of love with him?’
‘Not while he was alive,’ he countered quickly.
‘But shamefully soon after he died. And with the man I then thought party responsible for his death.’
‘My God, do you mean that?’ He held her painfully tightly for a moment. ‘I didn’t dare listen when you said it before. I believed it was just something you thought up to console me or arrest my attention.’
‘It wasn’t a moment for that, Julian,’ she said quietly. ‘It was my only moment, out of all the time there is, in which to reach you. That was why it had to be the truth or nothing. I had taken your happiness and your peace of mind from you. I could only tell you that I loved you, in spite of all I had done. That was all I had to give. And if you refused it — ’
‘Why should I refuse it?’ he interrupted almost violently. ‘Didn’t you know it was the most precious thing in all the world to me?’
‘No! How could I know that?’
‘I thought you must know. Else how did you know exactly how to turn the knife in the wound every time? I loved you from the moment I saw you. In some strange way, almost before I saw you,’ he said half to himself. ‘That’s partly why I drove Brian so hard — I think. It sounds absurd and as though I’m trying to excuse myself when it’s too late. But I knew so much about you from him. If one can do anything so romantically idiotic as fall in love with a photograph, I half fell in love with you then. It drove me wild that he could let a worthless piece like Michele divert him.’
‘But you’ve been pretty friendly with Michele yourself during the last few weeks, haven’t you?’ She could not help that, for the thought of Michele and what she had said still burnt a hole in her memory.
He looked surprised, and he brushed the protest aside almost casually.
‘That was her price for not tormenting you with the truth about her relationship with Brian.’
‘What was?’ cried Nicola.
‘Why, that. Withdrawal of my opposition to her singing Pamina, and what she called a “generally friendly attitude”.’
‘And you agreed?’
‘What else could I do? I’d gone far enough to keep you in what I thought was happy ignorance. To be civil to Michele for a few weeks seemed a small, though disagreeable, addition.’
‘But didn’t you hate it?’
‘I loathed it,’ he said shortly. ‘But it doesn’t matter now. It was a typical Michele revenge for my attempt to get Brian out of her clutches.’
‘And when you were trying to get Brian out of her clutches, as you put it, you were really doing it — for me?’ She smiled slowly.
‘Partly,’ he told her with desperate truth. ‘Partly only. And I’ll never know what prompted me most. Concern on behalf of a girl I had never seen, anger because of his irresponsible professional behaviour — or just my own ambition, Nicola. His absence would have taken away from the full perfection of my concert. Did I just sacrifice Brian to my ambition? It was that thought which made it impossible to answer your reproaches.’
‘You can answer them now,’ she said. ‘Or rather, I’ll answer them for you and then they need never be repeated again. Your first concern was the concert. Not your concert or his concert, but the concert. You were in charge of it. It was your prime responsibility and your artistic duty to see that everyone pulled their weight. You made a tragic error of judgment, if you like, in refusing Brian’s excuses. But everything which had gone before led you — would have led anyone in your position — to think the excuses false. You made a mistake. We all do. Think of the mistakes I have made over the last few months and forgive me if you can. Then — ’
But he let her get no further. Getting up with a sudden air of energy, and looking as though vitality were literally flowing back into him, he caught her in his arms and kissed her over and over again.
‘I love you!’ he exclaimed. ‘Did I tell you that?’
‘Only after keeping me waiting a long time and frightening me desperately,’ she said as she returned his kisses.
‘My darling, I’m sorry!’ He stroked back her hair and looked at her, his thin, intelligent face alight now with eagerness and love and a sort of tender amusement.
‘It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters now. — Except the performance, of course,’ she cried, suddenly remembering her primary reason for being here.
‘The performance? — Great heavens, of course! The performance.’ He glanced at his watch, almost pushing her from him to do so. ‘And I asked Warrender — ’
‘It’s all right. Mr. Warrender is here in the Opera House. Gina made him go to her dressing-room, and she’s probably using every way she knows to keep him there. Perhaps — ’
‘Yes. We’ll go along and explain.’
‘And what,’ asked Nicola innocently, ‘are we going to explain?’
‘That I’m sorry to have brought Warrender here for nothing, that I’m conducting tonight, and that everyone, including ourselves, had better go back home and get some rest now.’
‘It sounds a sensible programme,’ she smiled mischievously.
‘It leaves out a great deal. But it will do for the moment.’ He flashed her that brilliant smile of his which she had thought she would never see again. ‘Come,’ he said. And they went, hand-in-hand, to Torelli’s dressing-room.
When they got there, Oscar Warrender was pacing up and down, frowning, while Torelli sat before the mirror, calmly trying on her first-act headdress and throwing an occasional word over her shoulder.
‘Gina, this is really enough stalling even from you,’ they heard him say. ‘If you won’t tell me — ’
‘Here they are. They’ll tell you themselves,’ replied Torelli, with a quick anxious glance at them in the mirror as they came in. ‘And I don’t think,’ she added with an audible sigh of relief, ‘that you’ll need to conduct tonight, Oscar.’
‘I’m sorry. I owe you the most abject apology.’ The frank smile which the younger conductor bestowed on his great colleague was free from any strain or indecision. ‘I shall manage, after all. I’m ashamed of myself for bringing you here unnecessarily, and I can only say how grateful and touched I am that you came so willingly.’
The Curtain Rises (Warrender Saga Book 4) Page 16