A Remembered Serenade

by Mary Burchell

  But when she set off for her lesson the following afternoon her spirits lifted. For achievement is, to a true artist, like a drug; taste it and the desire for more is constant.

  The smiling maid who opened the door to her added her congratulations to those of everyone else, and then explained that Sir Oscar had just telephoned to say he had been delayed, and would Joanna mind waiting?

  'I don't mind a bit. Is Lady Warrender in?'

  'No, Miss Joanna. She's out too. But you go into the studio, and I'll bring you some tea if you like.'

  Joanna refused the offer of tea, but she went into the long, beautiful room where so much of her work had been done. Pale sunlight filtered through the curtains, and the greens and golds of Anthea's choice blended like colours in a woodland scene. On the piano was a new and charming photograph of Anthea herself, and Joanna was just studying this with pleasure when the sound of voices in the hall told her that Warrender had returned.

  As the door opened, she turned smilingly towards it. But the smile was struck from her face. For the man who came in was not Oscar Warrender. It was Elliot.

  'Elliot!' She actually fell back a pace.

  'Why - hello!' He looked as astonished as she did and almost as much put out. 'I had no idea you were going to be here.'

  'And I had no idea you were coming. I - I've just come for a lesson.'

  'Warrender must have mistaken the time,' he muttered. Then, with an effort, he managed a slight smile and said, 'Do you need any lesson after Tuesday night's performance?'

  'Yes, of course.' She smiled too, but very nervously. 'It-itwas just a good beginning. Were you there, Elliot?'

  'Yes, I was there.'

  'You didn't feel like coming round to see me?

  'No.' Long pause, 'I didn't think I would be welcome.'

  'You would have been,' she said simply. 'And I should have been glad of the opportunity to thank you.'

  'Thank me?' He looked unnaturally blank. 'I don't know what you mean.'

  'You know perfectly well what I mean.' Her voice shook a little, but she forced herself to go on. 'I started to thank your uncle, and then he told m that it was you who provided most of the money. That's why I have to thank you.'

  Perhaps it was an unfortunate choice of words, for he flushed and said, almost aggressively, 'You don't have to thank me for anything.'

  'I didn't mean it that way! I didn't mean there was any compulsion on me to thank you - though of course there is that too. I - I just wanted to thank you. Naturally.'

  He stared moodily at the ground and said, 'I couldn't let my uncle carry the whole burden.'

  'Of course not,' she said coldly, because this time his choice of words was unfortunate. 'Nor can I let either of you do so indefinitely. As I told your uncle in the beginning, any money was to be considered a loan. And now—' a sort of panic gripped her because all the right words were slipping away from her - 'apart from thanking you for what you advanced, I have to ask you just how much I owe you.'

  'You don't owe me anything,' he said harshly, and turned away.

  'Of course I do! You don't suppose I would accept an enormous gift of money from you, do you?'

  'Why not?' He still had his back to her.

  'Because,' she said deliberately, 'I should then be the sort of cadger you've always made me out to be.'

  'Oh, forget it!' He swung round to face her again. 'I never meant half the things I said. And anyway—' he stared at the ground again - 'when I saw you the other night I was - glad.'

  'Glad of what, Elliot?' Insensibly a little of the hardness had melted from her voice.

  'I was glad to have had a hand in - that evening. Oh, you can't buy your way into a great artistic per­formance, I know. But I sat there thinking, "I did help her in a tiny, unimportant way, after all—" '

  He stopped abruptly, and she had the extraordinary impression that he just could not go on.

  'It wasn't unimportant, Elliot,' she said at last. 'It was vital. Your generosity—'

  'It wasn't generosity!' he exclaimed desperately, and suddenly he dropped into a chair and buried his face in his hands. 'Don't you understand?' his voice came, muffled but so that she could hear every word. 'I'd give anything - anything - to be able to say I did it out of generosity to you - the dearest creature in the world. But I didn't, I did it partly from a genuine wish to help my uncle and partly out of pique and arrogance. I thought, "Let her have her chance to prove she's no good, and then I'll be free of her," And all the time—'

  'Don't, dear! Elliot—' she came and knelt beside him - 'you don't have to say these things.'

  'I do have to say them! It's time they were said. There's been too much unsaid. You couldn't say any­thing, could you? any more than that poor silent girl on the stage. You weren't even allowed to do your own pleading.'

  He sat up and looked at her haggardly. Then sud­denly he caught her against him so tightly that it hurt.

  'When I watched you the other night, telling all your thoughts with the movement of your hands, the turn of your head, the touching expressiveness of your face, it was as though you were speaking to me alone, and telling me what a crass, unknowing brute I'd been.'

  'You weren't meant to think that at all,' she mur­mured in protest, but she also put up a silent prayer of thankfulness to Madame Volnikov.

  'Perhaps not. But the message came over so clearly that I couldn't have stayed in the place except for that small rag of comfort - the thought that I'd helped you with the money, even if from the wrong motives. Please don't take even that away from me, Joanna. Please don't.'

  'But I wouldn't take it away from you for the world Not now,' she said, touching his cheek with a sort of dawning confidence. 'It isn't the moment for taking away, Elliot. It's a moment for giving.'

  'Giving?' he repeated, with something between doubt and hope in his voice. 'Giving - what?'

  'Reassurance to each other, I suppose. Forgiveness, if that's the word. And then - oh, I don't know what else, except that I love you, and I give you that with all my heart.'

  'Joanna—' he passed his hand over her hair again, almost wondering that time - 'is it really as simple as that? That we can say now that we love each other and the rest is somehow behind us?'

  'I don't know what else we should say.' She smiled at him almost mischievously. 'Nothing else matters very much, does it? Except to say thank you for something else that was given to both of us this afternoon. The chance to explain to each other at last.'

  'You're right.' He laughed as he kissed her. 'That was a very kind gift of fate, wasn't it?'

  'I don't think that was fate,' said Joanna, as she heard a step in the hall. 'I think that was Oscar War-render. It was thanks to him that you were summoned here at the exact time of my lesson.'

  'Nonsense.' Elliot looked amused but unconvinced. 'He just got the times mixed. Wasn't that it?' he added, turning to Warrender as he entered the room. 'You got your appointments mixed, and your timing wasn't too good this afternoon, was it?'

  'My timing, my dear fellow,' said the conductor agreeably, 'appears to me to have been absolutely faultless. I invited you here at the hour of Joanna's lesson, in the belief that you would like to hear her at work. You seem to be in the right mood for it. Shall we begin?'

  And he went towards the piano.

  END