‘Very well, on the whole,’ her father replied, just as naturally. ‘I’m in good voice, thank heaven, and Anthea of course is beyond praise. The best Desdemona in all my experience.’
‘And the Iago?’ she inquired, by way of working round to asking about the rest of the cast.
‘Excellent. But then he never is anything else. Morven is good too,’ he added, without forcing her to inquire about him. ‘He plays the part rather as I used to myself, making an alarmingly attractive creature of him.’
‘How do you mean—alarmingly attractive?’ she asked quickly.
‘He doesn’t alarm me, if that’s what you’re asking.’ Her father smiled slightly. ‘But one sees why Otello’s jealousy was not difficult to arouse.’
‘Then he must be exceptionally good.’
‘He is exceptionally good,’ her father conceded. ‘Are you coming to the dress rehearsal?—you are? Then you’ll see for yourself.’
But on the morning of the dress rehearsal he was moody and difficult, and most unexpectedly said he would rather not have her there. Charles could come with him instead.
‘But, Father, why not?’ She was terribly taken aback. ‘I always come! I was looking forward to it so much.’
‘You don’t “always come”,’ retorted her father unreasonably, and not entirely accurately. ‘Anyway, you have the performance to look forward to. No, please, Natalie, for heaven’s sake’—as she made as though to protest further—‘do I have to explain my slightest wish to my own daughter before I can have my own way? I’m nervous and tense enough already. Stop being so selfish, and think for a moment what it means to have to play a part like this.’
She stopped arguing on the instant, of course, but her disappointment was almost unbearable. Not only because she wanted so much to hear him, but because she wanted so much to hear and see Laurence.
Then gradually her disappointment began to give way before a feeling of anxiety. Why did he not want her there? Was he afraid that she, who knew his work so well, might detect the fact that he was less than his best? Was that it? Beneath the cool confidence, which had suddenly turned to nervous irritability and unreasonableness, was there a deep, agonising insecurity?
Day after day he had been hearing himself in competition with the fresh young voice of Laurence Morven. What had that done to him? Suddenly a great pity welled up in her, swamping both disappointment and resentment.
‘Look after him, Nat. They don’t come, in that pattern any more.’
If all she could do for him was stay away from that vital dress rehearsal, that was what she was prepared to do. Though she had to wipe away a few very bitter tears at the thought.
Somehow she occupied herself during the long hours of the morning, resisting the almost overwhelming temptation to go to the Opera House and at least walk around outside. In that way she might even have caught a glimpse of Laurence—but that, of course, was not the important thing.
The rehearsal must have gone on until late in the afternoon, for it was five o’clock before her father and Charles returned. Her father went straight to his room without comment, and chilled and fighting something like panic, Natalie followed Charles into the office.
‘How was it, Charles?’ She was surprised how the words almost stuck in her throat.
‘Fine,’ said Charles, cheerfully and not very informatively.
‘How was Father?’
‘Superb. Saving himself a little—as he’s entitled to, of course, at a rehearsal. But he got through splendidly. Morven was excellent too. I’ve never seen or heard such a good Cassio. The whole part came to life in a riveting way. He really is a handsome devil. He makes Iago’s task of creating Otello’s jealousy almost easy.’
‘Charles,’ said Natalie slowly, ‘why did Father not want me to come?’
‘How should I know, my dear?’ Charles was glancing through a pile of correspondence as he talked. ‘They’re all unreasonable on the day of a performance, and some of them are just as bad over a dress rehearsal.’
‘He’s never been like that before.’
‘Perhaps he’s never been so afraid before,’ replied Charles.
‘Afraid?’ She caught her breath. ‘Do you think he was really afraid?’
‘Yes.’ Charles was no longer fingering the letters in front of him. ‘Afraid that you, his own daughter, would find Morven’s voice more beautiful than his, and somehow convey that to him between the dress rehearsal and the performance. It would have knocked the bottom out of his confidence, you know, and he’s going to need every ounce of that confidence to take him through.’
‘He couldn’t have thought that!’ The colour swept into her face and then away again. ‘That’s something you’ve thought up on your own, and you’re mistaken, Charles.’
‘No, I’m not. He told me so.’
‘He told you so?’ There was half a minute of frozen silence. Then Natalie said shakily, ‘Father told you that—about me?’
‘It wasn’t a reproach, Natalie.’ Charles spoke rather uneasily. ‘It was just the way he thought things might be. And he couldn’t risk the nearest person to him showing enthusiasm and preference for the wrong man. This performance is the biggest challenge of his whole career. He’s like a man walking on the brink of a precipice—even a small stone in the wrong place could send him over.’
‘I wish he’d told me,’ Natalie said painfully. ‘Oh, I wish he had told me. I could have explained—reassured him.’
‘I don’t think you could, you know,’ replied Charles kindly. ‘People with an obsession aren’t easily open to argument. And he has a sort of obsession about Laurence Morven. He thinks he’s set to down him, and he thinks your loyalties and affections are uneasily balanced between them.’
‘Do you think that too, Charles?’ She looked directly at him.
‘My dear, what business is it of mine?’ He laughed protestingly. ‘I don’t know, and perhaps you don’t know either,’ he added shrewdly.
She did not answer that. But after a moment she said remorsefully, ‘And because of what he thought, I wasn’t there to comfort and support him.—Oh, I know you were there, Charles, and I’m sure you did everything that a good friend could. But he’s the kind of man who needs a woman to make a fuss of him when he’s feeling less than confident. Mother used to say that—and she was right.’
‘As a matter of fact’—Charles made a note on the side of his blotting pad—‘Mrs Pallerton turned up, so the womanly touch wasn’t entirely missing.’
‘Mrs Pallerton?’ A curious little stab of something like jealousy made Natalie wince. But she dismissed the feeling immediately with the self-scorn it deserved. She was glad if such a good friend had been there to make things easier for her father. But if only she could have convinced him of her support too. Of course she wanted Laurence to have a big success. But, even more, she wanted her father to be the sensation of the evening.
Even more? Yes, of course! for Laurence had most of his career still in front of him. For her father there could not be an unnumbered procession of triumphs left.
She longed to speak to him about what Charles had told her, longed to assure him of her undivided loyalty. But she realised that any form of discussion on that topic could only upset the fine balance of his security and composure. There was nothing she could do but keep her anxieties and her vague remorse to herself—the hardest thing in the world to do.
On the night of the performance he left for the Opera House an hour or two before her. This was quite usual, particularly when he had an extensive make-up to put on, but she hugged him before he went, with all her heart, and said,
‘I want it to be your great night, darling. I want that before anything else at all.’
‘Sure?’ He smiled at her with a good deal of his characteristic humorous charm.
‘Absolutely sure,’ she asserted earnestly. And he touched her cheek lightly and affectionately, but she heard a breath of a sigh before he turned away and went out to the car.
; All the time she was dressing, and on her way down to the Opera House, she thought continuously of him with a sort of tender anxiety. But when she entered Covent Garden—which was decorated for the gala occasion and looked glorious—the indefinable sense of excitement which a gala always engenders began to take hold of her.
Looking round, she saw many people she knew, and she was particularly glad to see that Mrs Pallerton was sitting near her. With a few minutes to spare before the curtain went up, she went over to thank her for having given friendly support to her father at the dress rehearsal.
‘I just happened to be there backstage,’ Mrs Pallerton assured her. ‘Laurence wanted me to bring something for him at the last minute. He was sorry not to see you there, Natalie.’
‘I was sorry not to be able to come,’ Natalie replied, without offering any explanation of her absence.
Mrs Pallerton glanced at her curiously and then, as though making up her mind about something, said, ‘Laurence asked me to give you his love.’
‘He did?’ Natalie looked startled and her colour rose. ‘Just—casually, you mean?’
‘No, Natalie. I don’t think there was anything casual about it. I think he hoped you would take the message seriously.’ Mrs Pallerton smiled, but not as though there were any joke involved.
‘O-oh,’ said Natalie, and that was all she said, because it was time then to go to her seat. But as she went she thought, ‘He sent me his love! But it’s a good thing I didn’t go to the rehearsal. He might have said something—unwise. And then what might Father not have thought?—But Laurence sent me his love.’
The lights were already going down as she slipped into her seat, to the sound of the applause which greeted Oscar Warrender’s appearance. And then she was, as always, swept away on the waves of storm music, held as it were in the vortex of the tempest, hardly catching her breath until the hurricane had blown itself out and her father made his splendid entrance.
She held her breath once more, but for a different reason this time. She need not have worried, however. As he delivered the tremendous, trumpet-like notes of Otello’s first phrases the whole audience seemed to shiver with a sort of ecstatic incredulity. Effortlessly, triumphantly, almost arrogantly he flung those well-nigh unsingable notes into the auditorium, and then strode from the stage as though they had presented no more difficulty than a nursery rhyme.
‘The house is his!’ Natalie thought, as she sensed the atmosphere around her, and the intensity of her relief and pride brought the tears into her eyes. Indeed, it was minutes before she even realised that Laurence was on the stage.
She saw him first through a mist of unshed tears, so that he seemed to move—lightly, elegantly, romantically—in a kind of golden glow. Even when, yielding to the blandishments of Iago, he became increasingly and dangerously drunk, his attraction was only half obscured; and during the ensuing fight he displayed a sort of dashing grace which was breathtaking.
Natalie was not the only one who stiffened with almost painful anxiety when he stood at last before the angry Otello and was dismissed contemptuously from the scene. It was almost too realistic, she thought—and then was immediately absorbed in the matchless way Anthea and her father sang the love duet which ended the act.
In the interval she heard someone say, ‘This is going to be a night to remember for the rest of our lives!’ And then Mrs Pallerton came across to her and Natalie saw she was almost as excited as she was herself.
‘He’s beyond praise,’ Mrs Pallerton said, in a shaken sort of voice.
‘They both are,’ returned Natalie quickly.
‘Yes, yes, of course. But there’s no comparison between the two achievements. Laurence is splendid, I grant you; the best Cassio I ever remember. But it’s your father who is carrying the full weight of the performance.’
And so it was throughout the evening. Laurence took every opportunity his rôle offered, and sang with a freshness and beauty that was a joy to hear. But hardly ever, in all her experience, had Natalie heard or seen her father rise to such heights. Vocally and dramatically he could not put a foot wrong. Even without the voice he would have dominated the scene by his acting and the sheer nobility and poignancy of his interpretation. But with the voice added—that unique, brilliant, heart-searching tenor sound—he captured and held every person in the audience.
Quite a number of people besides Natalie must have wondered if, at his age, he could still work the magic spell which had put him, and kept him, at the top all these years. That he had done so, and even virtually bettered his own best, constituted the sort of miracle against which no one is proof. It was one of those occasions in which all take part and all feel a sense of personal triumph. Just to have been there seemed an achievement, and the place went wild.
For several curtain calls he refused to come out alone. But in the end Anthea led him on and determinedly left him alone on the stage, to receive the kind of ovation which crowns a whole career. The reward not only of genius—which, after all, is a gift from Heaven—but of a lifetime’s work and devotion to one’s art.
‘He’ll never do it like that again; no one could,’ Anthea said to Mrs Pallerton, who had joined her now as they stood among the applauding throng. ‘It’s a once-in-a-lifetime performance.’
‘I don’t think he ever means to do it again,’ replied Mrs Pallerton quietly. ‘He told me after the dress rehearsal that if he could score an overwhelming triumph this time, he would probably allow it to be his last Otello.’
‘He told you that?’ Natalie was astonished that her father should have confided such a thought to anyone but herself. Then she reminded herself that all artists tend to make dramatic prophecies when their nerves are taut. But even so——
‘I’m going round backstage now,’ she whispered. ‘I can see this is likely to last some time yet, and I’d like to be there before the crowd.’
‘All right, my dear, you go. I’m staying until the last clap,’ replied Mrs Pallerton with a laugh. And Natalie slipped away.
In spite of her good intentions, it took much longer than she had expected to make her way through the solid crowds who seemed disinclined to move for anyone. And when she reached the pass door she found it barred against her.
‘Can’t go round yet. No one allowed across the stage,’ the unfamiliar man on duty told her.
She thought of asserting her identity and arguing the question, but decided against that. Instead, she made her way out into Floral Street and round to the stage door, where she was greeted more warmly.
‘Go on up, Miss Harding. What an evening! What an evening! Your father certainly beat them all tonight. Never heard even him in better shape.’
‘Thank you——’ she found it unexpectedly difficult to steady her voice. ‘I thought he was marvellous too.’
She went along the familiar stone corridor and up the stairs to the dressing-rooms. There was hardly anyone about. But, as she reached the first floor, the door at the end of the corridor leading to the stage burst open, and several of the cast came surging through. They were talking, laughing, singing snatches of the opera—all in a state of high excitement and jubilation.
Her father was not among them, but Laurence was, and she went forward eagerly to greet and congratulate him. He almost held out his arms to receive her, and she would probably have run straight into them. But at that moment her father, almost terrifyingly splendid in his stage costume and with the aura of his success around him, appeared at the end of the corridor alone.
She forgot everything else at the sight of him. She almost thrust Laurence’s hand from her, and it was into her father’s arms that she ran, clasping him with all the strength of her love and devotion.
‘Oh, darling, you were superb!’ She hugged him afresh. ‘It was the finest thing even you ever did. There’s no one like you—no one!’
Her father held her very close for a moment and said nothing. Then she raised her glowing face to him and, as she did so, she saw that he was lookin
g over her head at someone, and on his expressive face was a slight smile of triumph.
Chapter Nine
‘Come——’ Natalie’s father said, his arm firmly round her so that she could not turn from him, ‘come in while I take off my make-up.’
‘Can I just——?’ she was pressing against his arm in an instinctive bid for release.
‘No,’ he told her, and with one of his effective stage gestures, he swept her into his dressing-room and closed the door behind them.
His dresser was already there, making it impossible for Natalie to enter into any passionate argument, even if she had wanted to do so; and certainly it was not for her to spoil the evening’s triumph with any paltry dispute.
But was it paltry? What had it meant to Laurence that she had brushed him aside, however understandably? And what had he read into the slight smile her father had given him?
‘Father, I haven’t had a word with anyone yet! May I just go and speak to Anthea and——’
‘No, stay where you are, darling.’ His tone was affectionately indulgent but quite firm. ‘I want you with me for a short while. I’ve seen so little of you in the last few days. It was my own fault, I know—I was jumpy and nervous and no company for my favourite girl.’
Only on very special occasions did he apply that laughing term of endearment to her, but somehow that only stiffened her sudden resolve.
‘You thought I might have the bad judgment to find Laurence Morven’s voice better than yours, didn’t you?’ she said, not looking directly at him, but meeting his eyes in the mirror. ‘And understandably, you couldn’t risk my giving you that impression just before a vital performance. You needn’t have worried, Father. Yours will always be the greatest voice in the world for me.’
He smiled at her in the mirror and replied almost negligently, ‘But he sang most beautifully tonight.’
‘Yes, he did.’ She spoke steadily. ‘And his idea of the part was splendid. But it was your night in every sense of the term, you must know that. Just as every person in the house knew it too.’
Elusive Harmony (The Warrender Saga Book 10) Page 14