Elusive Harmony (The Warrender Saga Book 10)

by Mary Burchell

  ‘I noticed too,’ Anthea agreed. ‘I don’t think I altogether believe that broad, but unsupported, hint that Laurence is somewhere in the matrimonial running.’

  ‘Don’t you?’ Natalie tried not to sound too eager about that. ‘Why not, Anthea? She’s very attractive, and they often sing together.’

  ‘Lots of stage people are attractive, and he doesn’t have anything to do with the casting,’ retorted Anthea reasonably. ‘Of course I think she would very much like to corral him, but he——’ she paused so long that Natalie could not help prompting her with an anxious, ‘What about him?’

  ‘I don’t think Minna is his type, somehow,’ said Anthea slowly. ‘For an odd flirtation, perhaps, but for the real thing——’ she paused again, and then smiled as though she had made an amusing and interesting discovery. ‘You know, I’d say you were more his type.’

  Natalie had often thought Anthea Warrender a darling—which she was—but never so much so as at that moment.

  ‘Why me?’ she asked, with an admirable assumption of lighthearted amusement.

  ‘There’s something warm and genuine about Laurence Morven,’ Anthea asserted. ‘He’s a romantic, and a little naïve—like all romantics. Besides, he’s a tenor and, boy! do tenors need a womanly woman to look after them and reassure them that they’re perfectly marvellous. Look at your father.’

  Figuratively speaking, Natalie looked at her father and said, ‘You’re not suggesting there’s anything alike between them, for heaven’s sake?’

  ‘Of course there is.’ Anthea was unmoved. ‘There’s something alike in their basic needs. And you’re the kind of girl who supplies those needs. Minna Kolney, on the other hand, just isn’t. She’s too much wrapped up in herself. Quite legitimately so, since she’s a star in her own right, but not the material to soothe tenor egos. I don’t mind betting that your father doesn’t like her.’

  ‘He doesn’t, as a matter of fact,’ admitted Natalie, impressed. ‘He doesn’t even think she’s very attractive.’

  ‘Well, there you are! I doubt if Laurence would think her all that attractive either if she weren’t clever enough to seem all things to all men for as long as it suits her. Which means, of course,’ added Anthea regretfully, ‘that she might well get him on a short-term run. Men can be so silly! Except Oscar. He’s pretty fly where women are concerned. Though even he once——’ she broke off and laughed. ‘That was before my time,’ she finished succinctly.

  Warrender’s early flights of fancy were no more than an interesting sideline to Natalie, however. She firmly brought her companion back to the real point at issue.

  ‘It would be a terrible pity if Laurence—if anyone so basically nice as he is—should get mixed up with the wrong type of girl,’ she said, in what she believed to be a strictly academic tone of voice.

  ‘A terrible pity,’ Anthea agreed. ‘What about mounting a rescue operation?’

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’ Natalie laughed, but there was a nervous little note of excitement in her voice.

  ‘Do you like him?’ countered Anthea frankly.

  ‘Well—I do, rather——’

  ‘Then you’d better manage to see a bit more of him,’ declared Anthea practically.

  ‘Difficult.’ Natalie shook her head. ‘With Father, I mean,’ she added elliptically.

  ‘There are always ways.’ Anthea’s beautiful eyes took on a dreamy but innocently calculating expression. ‘You ought to come to the Carmen dress rehearsal tomorrow, for one thing. No’—as Natalie made as though to interrupt her—‘don’t tell me your father can’t spare you. Of course he can.’

  ‘In actual fact—yes, but he’d simply hate it if I so much as indicated that I wanted to watch his possible successor rehearsing.’

  ‘You won’t need to indicate any such thing,’ replied Anthea firmly. ‘Have you forgotten that I’m singing Micaela? It would be very natural for me to want to have a friend and companion backstage with me, particularly during those long stretches when Carmen has the stage—and José—to herself, drat her! Shall I speak to your father about it?’

  ‘Anthea, you really are the best of friends!’ Natalie laughed breathlessly.

  ‘I don’t want to see Minna Kolney get Laurence,’ was the simple reply. ‘Come on, let’s go back to the hotel and find your father.’

  So they returned to the hotel together, and the first person they encountered was Laurence Morven.

  ‘How did it happen that you were rehearsing this afternoon?’ Anthea wanted to know. ‘No one sent out a call for Minna or me?’

  ‘It wasn’t a real rehearsal,’ he explained, ‘just some personal coaching. Where is Minna, by the way? Were you out together?’

  ‘Only in the early part of the afternoon.’ Unexpectedly, Natalie found herself able to take a casual part in this conversation. ‘We were all at the Florian dress show. She seemed to think you might be coming too.’

  ‘Dress shows aren’t much in my line.’ He smiled as he used almost the same words as Warrender. ‘Did you buy up the place?’

  ‘I ordered two models,’ Anthea said.

  ‘And I somehow restrained myself.’ Natalie laughed. ‘I think Minna did too. She said something about looking at wedding dress designs, which rather intrigued us both.’

  It was an effort to say that lightly, but it had disappointingly little effect. He looked faintly surprised, she thought—and hoped. But then he seemed to feel that ended the conversation, because he nodded and passed on, while the two girls went up to the Hardings’ apartment.

  Here they found Natalie’s father rather peevishly signing letters and photographs which Charles Drury was firmly presenting for his attention.

  ‘How many more?’ he asked crossly, as they came in.

  ‘The last three,’ Charles assured him, with the cheerful air of a practised nanny dealing with a fractious child. And two minutes later he gathered up the pile and winked slightly at Natalie as he went out of the room.

  ‘Ridiculous, the way complete strangers insist on writing full details of their private lives,’ Lindley Harding grumbled. ‘Why should I be interested?’

  ‘You know perfectly well you’d be surprised and disappointed if the stream of letters dried up,’ Anthea told him cheerfully. And then she went to work with great charm and expertise to persuade him that it would be great kindness on his part if he would spare his daughter on the following day, to act as friend and counsellor during the Carmen dress rehearsal, as she would need someone to bolster up her spirits.

  ‘You don’t need anyone to bolster up your spirits,’ he returned with an air of amused indulgence, ‘and certainly not for Micaela, which you could do on your pretty head. But why ask me, anyway? Natalie is as free as air to do whatever she likes.’

  Fortunately, Anthea realised that he believed he was stating no less than the truth. So she planted a light kiss on his cheek and said, ‘You’re sweet. But then you always are.’

  ‘Is that the way you manage Warrender?’ he inquired with genuine interest.

  ‘No-o. Oscar is harder work,’ Anthea conceded.

  ‘Meaning, I suppose, that I am what is nowadays revoltingly called “a soft touch”,’ returned Lindley Harding, now in an excellent mood. ‘Well, go along with you. There’s a hint of the hussy about you, for all your innocent expression.’

  ‘I love your father when he uses these period terms,’ Anthea confided to Natalie as she went out of the room. ‘Who else would use the word “hussy”, in that deliciously complimentary sense? Rehearsal’s at ten o’clock tomorrow morning, Nat. So meet me downstairs by nine-thirty.’

  Promptly at nine-twenty-five next morning, Natalie was down in the hotel foyer, and when Anthea emerged from one of the lifts she was relieved to see that she was unaccompanied. To sustain the rôle of essential companion under the penetrating glance of Warrender would have been difficult, she thought.

  ‘I sent Oscar on ahead,’ observed Anthea, as though reading her thoughts. An
d then, as Laurence Morven came out of another lift and went towards the doorman, she exclaimed, ‘Oh, Larry, are they holding that taxi for you? and if so, could you give us a lift, please? Oscar took the car.’

  ‘Why, of course!’

  He ushered them both out to the waiting taxi and, when they were installed and it had shot off into the Paris traffic with all the caution of a charging rhinoceros, he looked at Natalie with undisguised pleasure and said, ‘So you’re coming to the rehearsal, too?’

  ‘She’s really keeping me company during the long waits when poor Micaela has to kick her heels backstage,’ Anthea explained. ‘But of course she must manage to hear and see some of it from the front of the house.’

  ‘I’m glad you’ll hear some of it,’ he said, ‘because I suppose you won’t get to the actual performance?’

  ‘I—might. Why not?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ he returned, but his smile somehow made that inoffensive.

  ‘Well, it depends on—how other things go,’ she admitted. ‘It’s the final rehearsal for Otello tomorrow, of course. If everything goes well and Father is pretty relaxed about it, I might be able to go to the Carmen performance the next night. But if he’s edgy and nervous then I think I should stay with him, in preparation for his big night.’

  ‘What it is to be sandwiched between two distinguished tenors!’ declared Anthea.

  ‘What about you?’ Natalie retorted with a smile. ‘You actually have to sing with them both.’

  ‘I have Oscar to protect me,’ replied Anthea mischievously. ‘Anyway, Micaela isn’t a part that carries great responsibilities. And as for Desdemona—well, I’ll sing Desdemona any day of the week, for the sheer joy of doing it.’

  ‘Even so, two dress rehearsals and two performances all in four days make up quite an assignment,’ said Laurence, as they arrived at the stage door of the Opera House. ‘I don’t wonder you need Natalie to keep up your morale.’

  ‘I’ll send her along to give your morale a boost at some time during the morning,’ Anthea promised, ‘if you think you might need it, that is.’

  ‘I shall need it,’ he replied with a smile. ‘See you both later.’ And he paused to pay the taxi-driver, while the other two went into the building.

  Anthea was sparkling with amusement and satisfaction over the small encounter, until they reached her dressing-room. Then she immediately became the serious artist, with no further thought for off-stage gaiety and nonsense. She allowed Natalie to stay with her until she had completed her make-up and donned her first act costume, and then she said.

  ‘Go round to the front of the house now, dear. I can’t even pretend to need you any more, and I like to sit and think myself into the part. Besides, you should see and hear the first act in its entirety. Laurence is really something.’

  ‘I’m sure he is. And—Minna?’ asked Natalie.

  ‘You’ll see for yourself,’ was Anthea’s reply. After which Natalie found her way through the maze of corridors backstage and finally into the yawning gulf of the virtually empty auditorium.

  Not for the first time, she thought how strange it was that, without the lights and the public and the indefinable glamour of a performance, even the most beautiful opera house looked sad and chill. Even the tuning up of the orchestra lacked the breathless quiver of expectation which exactly the same process could send through the house when an audience was present. In the cold reality of a morning rehearsal it was hard to believe that there could be any magic in store.

  Until the conductor came in. From that moment Warrender entered, bade his orchestra a brief, ‘Bonjour, messieurs,’ and raised his baton, the spell began to work. It seemed to Natalie that even the temperature rose as the brilliant, evocative strains of the overture seemed to spill out the sunshine of a Spanish street scene, while the darker undertones already suggested the tragedy which was about to be played out.

  Anthea’s gentle yet resolute Micaela was not new to her, but she found it as moving as ever. The other girl, however, was a complete surprise to her. Offstage, as she knew to her cost, Minna Kolney could be a spiteful and shallow young woman, but as Carmen her impact was stunning. The touch of sultry splendour which was natural to her was perfectly judged and not the least overdone, but what made her performance riveting was the intelligence with which she invested the part, both musically and dramatically. This Carmen was no ordinary sensual gipsy. She was also the brains of the smugglers’ gang, and knew what she wanted and how to get it.

  As Natalie sat on the edge of her seat, like a child at her first pantomime, the phrase which came to her again and again was the one her father had used of Laurence Morven. Frighteningly good.

  Action and reaction are, of course, the stuff of which drama is made, and Natalie was thrilled to find that Laurence was easily Minna’s equal. He was singing superbly—all Natalie’s experience told her that—and his idea of the unhappy hero was richly individual. Fascinated—even mesmerised—though he might be by Carmen, he was not to be an easy conquest. And Natalie could already guess that when his final, inevitable disintegration came in the last scene the effect would be catastrophic.

  In the second interval she went backstage again to see if Anthea required her, and almost immediately ran into Laurence.

  ‘Larry’—she was not even aware that she had adopted Anthea’s easy form of address—‘you’re absolutely marvellous! Not only the singing. It’s a glorious character study. I can’t tell you how——’ she broke off, too excited and moved to find further words.

  ‘Why, darling girl!’ He caught both her hands and drew her quite near. ‘Is it really as good as that?’

  ‘Better,’ she said, and laughed excitedly. ‘I don’t know how to say how good it is.’

  ‘And I don’t know how to say how much your praise means to me.’ They stood smiling at each other wordlessly for a moment, and then he kissed her. ‘Come to the performance, Natalie! It will mean a lot to me to have you there. Please come, my dear—and we’ll go out together afterwards.’

  ‘We can’t. There’ll be a celebration supper or something,’ she protested.

  ‘All right, then. We’ll do something else another time. But please be at the performance—and come on to the celebration afterwards. There’ll be a lot of people, but it will be something just to have you among them. Your father could come too, if that would help.’

  ‘He couldn’t do that, you know!’ She was rather shocked. ‘He has Otello the next evening.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I forgot the Otello,’ he said. And even then she wondered how anyone could forget Otello—with her father in the title rôle. ‘Well, then surely he’ll need to have a quiet evening, and so you can slip away and enjoy yourself.’

  ‘I can’t promise—I really can’t promise.’ And she pulled her hands away quickly as Minna Kolney came round the corner of the passage and stood still in astonishment.

  ‘Minna’—he seemed unabashed—‘it’s going splendidly. Natalie has just been telling me so.’

  ‘Was that what she was telling you?’ replied Minna drily, and went into her room.

  ‘Oh, dear! Did she mind, do you think?’ The words slipped out before Natalie could stop them.

  ‘Mind? Why should she mind?’ replied Laurence, and Natalie thought they were the loveliest and most intelligent words she had ever heard.

  She went to Anthea’s dressing-room then, and offered fresh congratulations. And Anthea nodded and smiled absently, because her big aria came in the next act and she was already thinking ahead to it. So Natalie slipped away without exchanging more than a word or two.

  Back in the auditorium, she found there were quite a number of people now scattered about the place, and she heard more than one person commenting on the excellence of the previous act.

  ‘This Canadian is a discovery,’ she heard one self-appointed critic say. ‘Harding will be hard put to it to make as good an impression when it comes to his evening. And Otello is a killer if you’re
not in top form.’

  ‘Have you heard any reports of how he is?’ inquired his companion, with more respect than Natalie thought his comments justified.

  ‘Only that he sounded a little tired at one or two of the early rehearsals, but he may have been conserving his strength.’

  ‘Of course that was what he was doing, you stupid, self-satisfied creatures!’ thought Natalie, a ripple of angry panic passing over her for a moment. At one time she would not have paid this type of remark the slightest attention. But nowadays it was a little different. Was her father sounding faintly tired? Could he still, at his age, completely sustain what had so aptly been characterised as the ‘killer’ rôle of Otello?

  For the first few moments of the next scene she was unable to concentrate on the stage. Then the irresistible attraction of the drama overcame even her own private worries, and once more she became immersed in the work, and in the tragedy which was now rapidly unfolding.

  In some strange way, she began to find it difficult to disentangle the stage figures from the people who were performing, and at one point it seemed to her that Minna was indeed Laurence’s evil genius, and that they must inevitably destroy each other. By the end, she was almost exhausted, even as a spectator, and when she finally went round to rejoin Anthea she was amazed to find her friend in excellent spirits and cheerfully ready to assess the various high points of the performance.

  ‘I know it sounds idiotic,’ Natalie said huskily, ‘but I find I just can’t dissect it like that. I’m still too much under the influence of the whole tragedy.’

  ‘Well, that’s fine!’ Anthea declared. ‘That means it really did make the right impact. Isn’t Laurence terrific?’

  ‘Yes. And so is Minna,’ Natalie replied, with dogged fairness. ‘She—frightens me, Anthea.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Anthea cheerfully. ‘But then Carmen should frighten one a bit.’

  ‘I didn’t mean only in the part. At least, I don’t think I did. She casts a sort of spell, doesn’t she?’ Natalie said slowly.