Oliver persisted in speaking as though his father’s plan of coaching Gail secretly for the role of Anya constituted a definite move against Marc.
‘But it could be in Marc’s best interests,’ she had protested. ‘Your father probably does know better than Marc just how different an artist can seem and sound after some good coaching. You’re willing to concede that, I suppose?’
‘Yes, of course. In fact, there’s almost nothing Father doesn’t know about developing an artist’s hidden potential,’ Oliver agreed.
‘Well then — that’s it! Rather than argue it out with Marc, he prefers to prove his point by producing the finished article — me, in fact — at the right time. What’s wrong with that?’
‘Only the cool assumption that he knows better than Marc himself how Marc’s character should be portrayed. There are half a dozen ways of presenting any character of importance. You know that as well as I do, Gail. I don’t doubt that Father will perfect you as he sees Anya. But I question whether that will be exactly the way Marc — who created the girl — will necessarily see her.’
‘Then he can say so, at the auditions. And that will be an end of it,’ Gail countered.
‘No.’ Oliver shook his head slightly. ‘He won’t be the deciding factor at the auditions.’
‘But it’s his work!’
‘I’ve told you before — the people responsible for getting this work on a stage, the people who will be taking the risks in fact, will have just as much say as the composer himself. Marc’s will be one voice only at the discussions. Father will come up with his candidate, trained and coached to such a degree that she will inevitably seem streets ahead of the others in most respects. However instinctively Marc may feel that isn’t his Anya, he won’t have much chance of impressing the others with his ideas.’
‘Oliver,’ she said in a troubled voice, ‘are you against my having the part of Anya? I thought you were —’
‘No, dear! No, I’m not. I’m against Father’s way of pulling the strings beforehand so that his word will carry more weight than Marc’s, over something which is Marc's achievement.’
‘Then you think I ought to give up now? tell your father I’m not willing to do things this way?’
‘Good lord, no!’ For a moment Oliver looked startled at having his arguments carried to what Gail regarded as their logical conclusion. ‘I’m merely telling you to look at Father’s actions in their real light. It may end, of course, with Marc also finding you his ideal Anya. In which case everyone will be happy. Except maybe Tom,’ he added with a grin.
‘You still trouble me,’ Gail said slowly, though she smiled slightly over his last words. ‘I find it difficult even to imagine a situation like this in any family. In my own, for instance, it would be sheerly impossible for two of us to be pulling against each other like that.’
‘But, darling, I take it you haven’t got two near geniuses in your family,’ retorted Oliver with a laugh. ‘Father is, quite frankly, jealous of the fact that Marc has written something he couldn’t do himself. — Oh, yes, he is!’ as Gail made a movement of protest. ‘He probably doesn’t know it, and I don’t think one can altogether blame him. Composing was the thing he most longed to do. But although he had most of the other gifts, he just hadn’t got that.’
‘Will he feel just as badly about your work too?’ she asked.
‘No, no. He can allow himself the luxury of despising my type of composition. Or at least treating it with good-humoured condescension.’
‘Do you mind?’ she said curiously.
‘Not in the least. I see things as they are, not as I would wish them to be, which — as Napoleon or someone said — is the basis of being in a strong position. I and my mother are the clear-headed ones in our family —’
‘Your mother?’ Gail could not hide her surprise.
‘Yes, of course. Oh, don’t be deceived by that vague air of hers. It’s just a clever pose. Something which cools down tempers and prevents explosions in a family like ours. Behind it she has each one of us summed up to perfection. She loves us all, but my father infinitely more than Marc or me.’ He said that without a scrap of rancour. ‘That’s why she backed him up immediately when he wanted to hear you sing. She knows it soothes his pride to make decisions over everything that happens in our household.’
‘Do you think,’ Gail asked rather anxiously, ‘that she knows about your father’s plans for me?’
‘I expect so. At least, she probably guesses. She is an inspired guesser. She knows it will please the old man no end if he can feel that at least he discovered and personally developed the central character. Marc may have created the work, but he will virtually have created you.’
They had arrived at Gail’s front door by the time they came to this point in the discussion, and she paused there, curiously disturbed by the idea of being, in a sense, Quentin Bannister’s creation.
‘Don’t look so worried,’ Oliver smiled down at her in the light from a nearby street lamp. ‘There are worse things for a singer to be than the creation of Quentin Bannister. It could be the beginning of a great career.’
‘I know. That’s why I was so tempted. But I hate the idea of Marc being — cheated, in some way.’
‘Oh, let him take his chance!’ Suddenly Oliver reverted to his more usual air of cheerful indifference. ‘I don’t know why I carried a torch so eagerly for him during the last ten minutes. Maybe I still half hoped, even now, to wean you away from your operatic plans and into our orbit. But I resign.’ He caught her hands and kissed them lightly, one after the other. ‘Go ahead and let Father do his best with you. Who knows? It might end in Marc simply loving you. In the part, of course.’
The discussion ended there, and he bade her goodnight. But the words which remained most persistently with her were his last ones. ‘It might end in Marc simply loving you. In the part, of course.’
On Tuesday she still had some faint doubts what she should or would do. But Quentin Bannister’s patent delight in her progress, and the absorbing interest with which he invested her whole lesson, decided her. All this weighed far more heavily in the scales then any academic doubts about justice being done to Marc.
So happy and excited were she and Quentin Bannister — and, indeed, Elsa Marburger too — that nothing in the world seemed so important as the slow, steady re-creation of what promised to be a splendid operatic figure.
‘Every operatic character is dead while still on paper,’ Quentin Bannister declared. ‘It’s like bringing someone to life to hear and see Anya like this.’
This was nothing less than the truth, of course. And the implication was warmly flattering to the work Gail was doing. But she remembered for a moment what Oliver had said, and she realized with a slight shock that the older Bannister spoke almost as though he were taking over his son’s work and making it something of his own.
‘I can’t help it,’ she told herself impatiently. ‘They must settle their family differences themselves. For me this is the chance of a lifetime, and I’m taking it.’
From then on she lived, breathed, slept and lived the part of Anya. The more so as Quentin Bannister told her that there was indeed a time limit. Oliver had been right. Oscar Warrender was sufficiently interested to want to conduct the first performances himself, and he would want the first auditions taken before he left for the States in some weeks’ time.
‘We are setting aside two weeks for auditioning,’ Quentin Bannister told her. ‘And if you go on like this I have very few doubts about your getting the part, Gail. — By the way,’ he smiled suddenly and produced another copy of the score, ‘Marc sent you this.’
‘Marc did?’
‘Yes. There are further copies available now, of course, and they are going out to the people we want to audition. Marc was quite willing for you to be one among the several. You had better take this one now and return me my personal score.’
Slowly she made the exchange.
‘Then it doesn�
�t matter now his knowing that I’m working on the role?’
‘Of course not. We just won’t mention the fact that you have been doing so already for the last month,’ he replied genially. ‘But that extra month should put you well in the lead,’ he added, with an air of considerable satisfaction.
‘You’re a fortunate girl,’ Madame Marburger told her later, when Quentin Bannister had gone. ‘Few people can have been given such intensive expert guidance for their first serious attempt at an operatic role.’
‘You don’t think,’ said Gail, looking down at the score she was holding, ‘that there’s something just a bit unfair about it?’
‘Unfair to whom?’ Elsa Marburger raised her eyebrows. ‘To your competitors, do you mean? It would be altogether too altruistic to look at it that way, Gail.’ She seemed amused — as well she might be, Gail supposed.: ‘You have certainly been very lucky to have Mr. Bannister interest himself so personally in your progress. But luck plays a part in every career. I don’t know quite what you mean by something unfair about it.’
‘No — no, of course not,’ Gail agreed hastily.
‘Don’t press your luck too far, though,’ her teacher warned her brusquely. ‘You will have to be supremely good, even now, to carry off the prize. You are an absolute unknown, remember — in this field particularly — and you may not be everyone’s idea of Anya, so —’
‘What do you mean by that?’ Gail looked startled.
‘Just what I say, my dear. You sing the part well, and present it with a great deal of youthful pathos and charm. Maybe that’s how Marc Bannister meant it to be. But there are other ways of playing it. There always are. Particularly with an entirely new role. If you risked being less than your own particular best, and someone else offered a different, more acceptable way of doing it, your chances would be halved. So go on working hard.’
Gail went on working hard. And a week later she had a telephone call from Marc. She recognized his voice at once, and her heart gave a nervous little flutter which, oddly enough, was almost entirely pleasurable.
‘Gail? I wanted to know if you are still seriously interested in auditioning for Anya?’
‘But of course I am!’ To Gail, who had thought of little else for weeks, this was so self-evident that she nearly gave herself away. Then she remembered that of course Marc had no idea how intensively she had been involving herself. ‘I loved the role even on first hearing,’ she explained hastily. ‘Thank you very much for sending me the score. I’ve worked on nothing else all this week.’
That was the truth, if not the whole truth. And she heard him give a pleased laugh.
‘You restore my spirits,’ he told her, half seriously. ‘I had just reached the point of wondering if the work was any good, after all.’
‘You can’t be serious!’
‘More than half,’ he assured her. ‘One does get like that, you know, over one’s own work. At one moment it seems the ultimate expression of all one wanted to say. Then suddenly you can’t imagine why you ever thought it worth bothering about. But I’m encouraged by Warrender’s view. He thinks it’s really worthwhile, and there’s no better judge alive. Though, like everyone else, naturally, he suspends final judgement until the work is off the page and on the stage, so to speak. By the way, he is going to be one of the judges at the auditions.’
Gail started to say, ‘I know —’ But remembering that she was not really supposed to know anything much about the progress of the whole enterprise, she hastily changed it to, ‘I know you couldn’t have anyone better. Have there been many applications for the part of Anya, Marc?’
‘Rather more than I expected. You’ll be getting particulars about the day and time when they — we — want to hear you. I just wanted to make sure that you were seriously in the running still.’
She thought, ‘I’m in the lead, if you but knew it!’ Then the sheer conceit of that shook her and she said humbly, ‘I’m very glad to be allowed to make a stab at it.’
‘Well — good luck.’ He said that as he might have said it to anyone, but she prized it all the same. And when he had rung off she stood for several seconds with the receiver in her hand before she slowly replaced it.
Two days later her summons to the audition came. It was for an afternoon in about ten days’ time, and there was apparently no objection to Madame Marburger coming with her, if she wished to do so.
‘Of course I’ll come!’ Madame Marburger looked rather less than her calm, dignified self at the prospect. ‘It could be an historic occasion, I suppose.’ She laughed good-humouredly and patted Gail’s arm. ‘In any case, to hear Oscar Warrender — not to mention the two Bannisters — hold an audition is in itself something not to be missed.’
Gail was very glad of her company when the great afternoon finally came. The auditions were being held in a small practice theatre off Oxford Street, and when they made their entrance by the stage door they could already hear sounds of a tenor voice filtering through from the stage.
‘That’s Henry Paulton, if I’m not mistaken,’ observed Madame Marburger, cocking an attentive ear. ‘Wonderful character singer, although he’s quite young. Very sympathetic and sensitive. I shouldn’t wonder —’ She broke off, as though realizing suddenly that she could hardly expect her young companion to be interested in the prospects of any mere tenor at that moment.
They were conducted by an extremely indifferent young woman into a small dressing-room, and asked to wait. Here also they could hear something of what was happening on the stage. And presently the tenor voice was succeeded by a good strong mezzo voice singing Anya’s monologue from the first act.
Neither Gail nor her teacher said anything until the end. Then Madame Marburger shook her head decisively.
‘It’s a good voice,’ Gail ventured.
‘Excellent raw material,’ replied Madame Marburger. ‘Very raw,’ she added, and Gail felt cheered.
Five minutes later the indifferent young woman looked in and said, ‘If you’re ready, Miss —’ she consulted a list — ‘Rostall.’
Miss Rostall had never felt less ready in her life. But she came. In the dusty space at the side of the stage, Quentin Bannister unexpectedly came forward to greet them. But he made rather more of Madame Marburger than her pupil. (‘Just as though he hadn’t seen me since that week-end in his home,’ thought Gail, oddly shocked.)
‘Come and sit in the body of the house, Madame Marburger,’ he said courteously. ‘We’re very glad to have you here. And no doubt you’ll prefer to hear your protégée from a good vantage point.’
So Gail was left alone, standing in the wings, and feeling indescribably lost and scared. Then Oscar Warrender’s authoritative voice said from the darkened stalls, ‘Miss Rostall? — Will you come on now, please. We should like to hear you sing the monologue from the first act.’
From somewhere in the shabby little orchestra pit a piano began to play, and Gail came out on to the stage. There was not a thing to help her. Nothing to create an atmosphere. Not a backdrop, not a stage prop. Nothing but a bare, dusty stage, and the yawning cavern of the darkened theatre where presumably the arbiters of her fate were sitting. In all her life she had never been so alone and scared.
Then she glanced down at the pianist and at that moment Marc leaned forward in the front row to say a word to the man at the piano. She saw him very distinctly in the unshaded light from the orchestra pit and he too looked tense and fearful. And all at once she realized that, however dreadful this was for her, it must be ten times worse for him. Over and over again he must have had to listen to his own music sung in a variety of ways, from good to very bad. The exacting and unsympathetic circumstances must have been like a butchering of all he held most dear.
Her whole heart went out to him in that moment, and instantly her nervousness left her. All she wanted was that he should hear how truly beautiful his own creation was. And she began the lovely, nostalgic, heart-searching air with all the vocal skill which Madame Marbu
rger had taught her over the years and, it must be admitted, with all the infinitely musical phrasing and artistic tone colouring that Quentin Bannister had imparted to her over the last few weeks.
No one stopped her at any point. She was allowed to sing right through to the end. After which there was almost a minute’s silence that was, she knew, an astonished tribute to her unexpected performance.
‘Very beautiful,’ said Quentin Bannister’s voice from the darkness at last, as though he were just as surprised as everyone else. ‘I congratulate you on your pupil, Madame Marburger.’
Gail did not hear what tactful words her teacher murmured in reply, for Oscar Warrender came forward into the circle of light from the stage, looked up at her and said, ‘Have you studied the last act, Miss Rostall?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Miss Gregory —’ he called into the wings, and the indifferent young woman — now looking rather slavish — trotted out expectantly. ‘Ask Mr. Paulton to come back here if he is still in the house.’
‘Yes, Mr. Warrender.’ She hurried away, and there was a slight pause, while Gail was aware of a good deal of low-toned conversation going on in the body of the theatre.
Then a rather slight, youngish-looking man with an eager, intelligent face came on to the stage.
‘Mr. Paulton’ — that was Oscar Warrender again — ‘this is Miss Rostall, who is auditioning for the part of Anya. We should like to hear her in the final scene. Would you mind joining her for the duet?’
It seemed he didn’t mind at all. He smiled at Gail in a friendly way and said, ‘Are we taking it from your entrance?’
‘I think so.’ She glanced inquiringly at the pianist, who nodded. And, quite naturally, as though she knew every move in the scene, Gail went to the back of the stage. Then, with the instinctive feeling for simple pathos which was one of her genuine gifts, she made a slow, bewildered, childlike entrance, singing her first broken phrases.
No one had really suggested that the two should act out the scene, as well as sing it. But young Paulton, who was a born stage person, immediately fell in with her mood, and together they went through to the end of the opera, giving quite a remarkable degree of acting power as well as some excellent singing.
Music of the Heart (Warrender Saga Book 6) Page 9