Elusive Harmony (The Warrender Saga Book 10)

by Mary Burchell

  ‘I’m glad too that you’re coming.’ Natalie smiled at him almost affectionately, for Charles was always a great support.

  ‘I must confess also to some curiosity to hear Morven’s Don José,’ he went on. ‘It should be quite an occasion if he’s as good as I expect.’

  ‘Who is singing Carmen?’ she asked. ‘Have you heard?’

  ‘Who do you think?’ Charles laughed. ‘Minna Kolney, of course. She seems to know how to worm her way into most of the casts that include him. But she should be good in the part. She’s almost a natural for Carmen—both by nature and art. There was a not dissimilar part in the Beverley Caine work, and she was extraordinarily good.’

  ‘Then you went to Kit Marlowe?’ said Natalie quickly. ‘To the first night?’

  ‘To the first night,’ replied Charles, a trifle defiantly, which was rather unnecessary because Natalie asked immediately with some eagerness,

  ‘Tell me, Charles—what was it like?’

  ‘Attractive, quite strong dramatically speaking, and eminently singable—which is, heaven knows, something to be thankful for in these days. But so far as I was concerned, it didn’t quite come off.’

  ‘Didn’t it?’ She was astounded and, to her own surprise, not exactly pleased. ‘Do you mean that Laurence Morven wasn’t as good as they say?’

  ‘Oh, he was good, all right. Sang splendidly and looked and acted well,’ Charles admitted. ‘But if you want my candid and, believe me, unbiased opinion, Natalie, I think your father would have made much more of it, even at his age.’

  ‘You mean that?’ She was divided between pride in her father and a sort of resentment that anyone could criticise Laurence, even by implication. ‘But—why?’

  ‘For one thing, I think the work is no more than good second-rate. The kind of work, in fact, which requires tremendous conviction on the part of the performers, and a sort of dash and panache which you hardly ever find in actors or singers today. Your father has just that quality, to the nth degree. Maybe it’s a slightly outmoded approach, and without terrific personality it can tumble over into melodrama, but if it comes off it can make a second-rate work seem a stroke of genius.’

  ‘I do love you when you talk of Father like that!’ exclaimed Natalie.

  ‘Thanks. It’s nice to be loved—if only as a second best,’ said Charles with a grin.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ She had turned to go, but switched round again to face him, and her colour rose.

  ‘Nothing much,’ he replied lightly, ‘but it occurs to me that Laurence Morven has something the rest of us haven’t got.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd! I can’t stand the man, if you really want to know.’

  ‘That’s sometimes the way it goes,’ Charles agreed equably. But nothing she could say would make him enlarge on that.

  The conversation troubled Natalie a little. But she was glad he was coming to Paris with them. He was good for her morale and made her forget—or almost forget—the humiliating hash she had made of her relationship with Laurence.

  To her pleasure, they travelled on the same plane as the Warrenders. And while her father and Sir Oscar discussed the coming performance—a little as though neither of them had ever done Otello before, and were just making one of the great discoveries of a lifetime—Natalie sat with Anthea Warrender and chatted on a slightly less exalted level.

  ‘I’m looking forward to the performance immensely, of course. I love singing with your father,’ Anthea said. ‘But I’m determined to take some time off to shop as well—I haven’t been to Paris for ages. Come with me to the Florian dress show, Natalie.’

  Natalie said she would be delighted to do so, and further was charmed to hear that they were all staying at the same hotel.

  Then, as an exciting yet chilling thought struck her, she asked, ‘Do you mean that most of the artists are staying there?’

  ‘I think so.’

  The name ‘Laurence Morven’ stuck in her throat and somehow she could not ask specifically if he would be there. But the moment they reached the hotel she caught a glimpse of him at the reception desk, and she turned her back on him and pretended to be occupied with the luggage.

  ‘Don’t fuss, my dear. Charles will see after that,’ her father said a little impatiently. And when she turned round Laurence had gone.

  Even that brief sight of him had been curiously unnerving, and yet exhilarating. It was useless to tell herself that he no longer was of the slightest concern to her; she still ached with misery over the rift in their friendship. And she still hoped that somehow she would have a chance to explain about the misunderstanding. If they were actually to be under the same roof—even if it were the sort of roof that covered several hundred people—surely some chance might occur. Even that very first evening, if they dined in the restaurant——

  But her father had no intention of dining in the hotel restaurant.

  ‘No, no,’ he said, in answer to her casual suggestion. ‘I hate these big, impersonal places. We’ll go to the Vert Galant, and dine in civilised and pleasant surroundings. It’s on the Ile de la Cité, if I remember rightly. But the taxi-driver will know.’

  The taxi-driver knew. And, with one glance at Lindley Harding, he volunteered the information that it was a favourite place for gentlemen of the theatre. Natalie saw that her father was not particularly pleased at the prospect of meeting too many other gentlemen of the theatre, but when they reached the place the way he was received, the instinctive awareness that he was Somebody, combined with the faultless food and wines, transformed him into his most urbane and charming self.

  Natalie too was happy to sit there in the atmosphere of elegance and repose, while her father discoursed on his own earlier days in Paris. He could be both amusing and interesting about his initial struggles, even when his daughter was his only audience, and Natalie was feeling relaxed and was enjoying herself when something made her glance across at the entrance as a tall, familiar figure came in.

  ‘There’s Laurence Morven,’ she said, on a note of breathless dismay.

  ‘Another gentleman of the theatre,’ observed her father almost genially. Then he looked across at Natalie and asked calmly, ‘Why does his presence here trouble you?’

  ‘It doesn’t! At least’—she swallowed slightly—‘I was terribly rude to him when I thought he was going to sing Otello,’ she was horrified to hear herself say. ‘It makes me miserable even to see him.’

  She had no idea why she had suddenly told her father. He was, she would have thought, the very last person in whom she would have confided her unhappiness. Nor did she know—because her gaze was determinedly fixed on the tablecloth—that he gave her a quick, wholly comprehending glance.

  All she knew was that his hand, which had rested on the table during this quick exchange, was raised suddenly in an unmistakable gesture of greeting and summons. And although she said, ‘No, Father!’ she knew it was too late.

  The next moment she heard her father say, ‘My dear fellow! so you have found this charming place, too? It’s a little late to ask you to join us for dinner, we are more than halfway through, but do at least sit down and have a drink with us.’

  Still she studied the tablecloth, reluctant to see his face when he made whatever cool and courteous excuse he thought proper. But then she was aware that someone had set an extra chair at the table and, with a murmured word of thanks, Laurence was sitting down between her and her father.

  She managed to look up then and, since the two men were talking and no one was regarding her with any special attention, she somehow took heart and stole a glance at Laurence. He was looking serious—no question of that—even a trifle wary. But then perhaps he too was wondering what was behind her father’s unexpected friendliness.

  Presently, of course, he had to turn to her—but only with the conventional inquiry as to whether she had been to this place before.

  ‘No,’ said Natalie rather huskily—and then, to her dismay, found she could say
no more. She glanced desperately at her father.

  ‘You must excuse my daughter for being somewhat subdued,’ she heard him say, with the perfect degree of rueful amusement in his tone. ‘I understand she was deplorably rude to you recently and, quite rightly, she is feeling guilty and self-conscious about it.’

  ‘Oh, no! If I remember rightly, we were both rather rude to each other,’ exclaimed Laurence, and although he managed to inject just the right amount of rueful amusement into his tone too, she thought she detected a note of something like relief as well.

  ‘It was—a mistake,’ she said eagerly. Though she could hardly believe that she was actually making these difficult explanations with her father sitting by.

  ‘What was a mistake?’ Nearly all the hardness and wariness had gone out of Laurence’s expressive voice now.

  ‘Natalie thought,’ explained her father indulgently, ‘that you were proposing to sing Otello—a manifest absurdity. While you, I understand, were under the impression that she was telling you I wished to sing Don José—an almost equal absurdity, I regret to say.’

  Even then, Natalie could not help noticing that to her father there was no question which was the greater absurdity.

  ‘You couldn’t have thought me such an ass as to attempt Otello yet!’ Laurence turned to her with a transparent surprise which, she felt sure, must almost endear him to her father.

  ‘It was stupid of me, I suppose.’ She gave him a small, uncertain smile.

  ‘I must say, my dear Morven, it wasn’t specially intelligent of you either to imagine I would still regard Don José as being in my repertoire,’ observed her father good-humouredly. ‘But perhaps we might accept apologies all round and wish each other well in the rôles which really do belong to us.’

  ‘Indeed, yes!’ Laurence was looking at Natalie now with the smile which warmed her heart. ‘I’m sorry, Natalie——’ and he held out his hand.

  ‘I’m sorry, too.’ She put her hand into his, and she wondered if he also was remembering that the last time they said that to each other they had kissed.

  He stayed only a few minutes longer with them and then went to his own table. But it seemed to Natalie that in all the world there was no city like Paris, no restaurant like the Vert Galant—and no father like hers.

  How had he done it? Why had he done it?

  Although she often made herself suspend judgment about his attitude towards her, she knew perfectly well that he regarded her—very lovingly, of course—as pretty well his exclusive property. More than once there had been evidence that he did not welcome the idea of any rival in her affections or attentions. If he had chosen to widen the rift between her and Laurence—or at least to leave it unbridged—that would have been quite in keeping with what she would have expected of him. Instead, he had exerted his considerable charm and skill to put things right.

  She glanced up and found him watching her with half-smiling, half-concerned attention.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ she asked frankly. ‘Why did you step in and make things all right for us?’

  ‘My dear child, why should I not try to make things all right, as you term it, for my own daughter?’

  ‘But’—she dropped her voice, though unnecessarily—‘you don’t really like him, do you?’

  ‘I don’t have to like him. I wasn’t doing it for his sake. It’s you I don’t like to see looking unhappy. For a fleeting moment’—he frowned suddenly—‘you looked like your mother, the only time I quarrelled seriously with her. Ah, well’—he gave a sigh that was almost completely unforced—‘I suppose we get more sentimental as we get older.’

  ‘It wasn’t being sentimental,’ Natalie insisted. ‘It was being the best father anyone ever had.’ And, in that moment, she meant it.

  He laughed at that. But then he said, more seriously, ‘You had let the whole thing get out of proportion, my dear. If we hadn’t brought the situation back to a normal level you would have regarded a minor upset as a great tragedy, and I’m afraid the young man would have taken on a dangerous degree of importance. He’s an attractive fellow, I grant you, but—as I think I said before—we tenors are not to be taken too seriously.’

  She wished he wouldn’t say that. But as she looked across at him, she suddenly thought with some astonishment, ‘There were some adventures before Mother came into the picture. And, though it’s an odd thing to think of one’s own father, he must have been irresistible in his time.’

  She did not altogether forget what he had said during the next few days, but, in the relief and happiness of being on good terms with Laurence again, she thought little about it. Once or twice she met Laurence briefly in the hotel, and each time he had a smile and a few friendly words for her, though obviously he was a good deal concerned with the responsibilities of his new and challenging rôle.

  Then came the afternoon when Natalie and Anthea were to go to the Florian dress show.

  ‘It’s a special mid-season show, with almost theatrical designs, so there should be some good ideas for concert dresses there,’ Anthea declared. ‘Don’t you want to come, Oscar?’

  ‘No, thank you. Dress shows aren’t much in my line,’ her husband said, ‘but enjoy yourself.’ He kissed her, which he seldom did in public. ‘And buy whatever you fancy,’ he added, almost as an afterthought.

  ‘He’s really very indulgent to you, in spite of his dictatorial manner, isn’t he?’ Natalie remarked approvingly as they went off together.

  ‘Oh, yes! I used to be terrified of him when I was a student, and even when I got my first part,’ Anthea confessed. ‘But I understand him now. And one doesn’t get the results he gets by being soft to people.’

  ‘What was your first part, Anthea?’ Natalie asked with interest.

  ‘Desdemona. That’s one reason why I love it so much. I didn’t have the support of your father that first time, of course, but I’m so glad he’s doing it here.’

  ‘Do you really think he’s the best Otello still?’ Natalie could not help asking the leading question.

  ‘No doubt of it,’ Anthea replied without hesitation. ‘It’s the incredible brilliance in the voice. If you haven’t got vocal brilliance you can leave Otello alone. Size is no substitute. And then the way he acts it! He always has me in tears at the end. I have to shut my eyes tightly so that the tears won’t slip under my lashes. It’s quite an effort sometimes.’

  ‘Dear Anthea! Tell him some of this, won’t you? I think sometimes he “hears Time’s wingéd chariot”, and even the greatest need reassurance then.’

  ‘I know! and I promise—Here we are. Oh dear, there’s Minna Kolney! I know she’s very fine on the stage, but she isn’t my favourite person.’

  ‘Nor mine,’ said Natalie as they got out of the taxi. ‘But we needn’t sit near her. She looks as though she’s waiting for someone.’

  In the entrance to the famous dress house Minna Kolney greeted them pleasantly enough.

  ‘Have you come after concert dresses too?’ asked Anthea, pleasant in her turn.

  ‘No.’ Minna shook her head. Then, after a moment’s hesitation she said, ‘I’ve come to look at wedding dress designs.’

  ‘Have you?’ Anthea managed to look interested rather than startled.

  ‘I wanted Laurence to come too, but I doubt if he will. He told me not to wait for him beyond three o’clock, as he was rehearsing.’

  ‘Men hardly ever will come to this sort of thing,’ Anthea declared cheerfully, while Natalie felt a deadly chill begin to creep over her. ‘I tried to make Oscar come, but he wouldn’t.’

  ‘I know——’ Minna nodded with smiling understanding, ‘but I thought Laurence might, in the circumstances——’ she left the sentence unfinished as she walked to the door to look up and down the street again.

  ‘What do you think she meant by that?’ Anthea muttered as she and Natalie mounted the stairs together.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Natalie between stiff lips.

  ‘He’s too good
for her! I should just hate him to marry her.’

  ‘So should I,’ agreed Natalie with great composure. But not even to the sympathetic Anthea Warrender could she even begin to say how furiously, desperately, hopelessly she would hate Laurence to marry Minna Kolney.

  Chapter Five

  Like most Florian dress shows, this one was breathtakingly elegant, and if Natalie had been in any mood to think of clothes, she would have hankered after at least half a dozen of the beautiful creations displayed. But from the moment she had heard Minna Kolney mention wedding dresses—with the murmured suggestion that she and Laurence might be mutually interested—she could think of nothing else.

  She tried to tell herself that this would not have been the first time Minna had deliberately given inaccurate information or implied something which was only half the truth. But each time she reviewed the few words which had been spoken at the entrance to the salon she found them more disquieting.

  A few minutes before the show began Minna had slipped into a seat opposite. (At least Laurence had not accompanied her, which was something!) But then it might well be true that only a rehearsal had kept him away on this particular occasion. Natalie wished now that she—or, better still, Anthea—had asked one or two explicit questions. It would be agony, of course, to know that Laurence thought of marrying Minna; but then it was also agony not to know.

  After the show, Anthea lingered to examine two or three models, and perforce Natalie stayed with her, to help her decide what she would really like for a concert dress. In the end she chose two, with a cheerful indifference to the price, which marked her as the indulged wife of a very rich husband—quite apart from the fact that she was a highly-paid artist in her own right.

  ‘I noticed Minna didn’t stay,’ Natalie managed to say carelessly, as she and Anthea relaxed later over tea in a nearby café.