‘Quite impossible.’ Her husband emerged from the wings, Sir Andrew in flame-coloured hose. ‘I may not sing like Grassini, but I venture to think I can take a comic part without disgracing myself.’ He looked round for confirmation.
His guests murmured sycophantic agreement, while Gair racked his brains. Here was his chance, if he could only take advantage of it, to make Juana Brett his friend for life. He led her forward through the interested crowd and up the flight of steps on the left of the stage. ‘Here’s your Viola,’ he said. ‘Or Cesario, rather. I found her out-singing the nightingale by the river and must congratulate you on your casting, Vanessa. But as to the duel scene; a pity, surely, to depart from Mr. Haydn’s text? Why not mime it? Your audience, we hope, will be familiar enough with the play to understand, and surely your musicians can contrive some accompaniment, based on Mr. Haydn’s own music, that will be more in keeping with the rest of the piece than a sudden intrusion of the spoken word?’
‘Gair! You’re a genius! Of course that’s what we’ll do. You’ll not mind miming, will you Miss Brett?’ Without giving her time to answer, Vanessa turned back to Gair: ‘I only wish you could solve our other problem so easily.’ And then: ‘Good God! How could I be so stupid! You’ll do yourself! Don’t you see the likeness?’ She appealed to her husband, who was busy making practice passes with his foil at a potted plant in the corner of the stage.
‘Likeness, my dear? I don’t believe I quite understand you.’ His voice was querulous. ‘And as to mime: I’m not so sure about that. I’ve learned quite half my words already.’
‘And what a struggle that was.’ His wife did not quite manage to conceal impatience. ‘Be grateful, my love, to be spared the rest. You will be able now to give your full attention to the niceties of the duel itself – and, don’t you see, I’ve found you your opponent. Gair will make an admirable Sebastian. He and Miss Brett are almost of a height; they’re both dark and pale-skinned; it is but to dress them alike and they’ll be a perfect pair of twins. How odd it is.’
Turning to his companion, Gair saw angry colour along her prominent cheekbones to show that she had not missed the implication. He had always believed in facing facts, pleasant or otherwise. The fact of his own good looks was one he had early learned to take for granted and use at discretion. His appearance was, simply, one of the tools he must use to make his fortune. He might, at the lowest point of his London career, have gone hungry; he had never gone shabby. But the strong bones and dark, deep-set eyes that made him handsome made Juana Brett plain, and her unusual height, carried awkwardly, was the last straw.
Now her step-mother came forward to exclaim about the likeness and elaborate on the theme of Juana’s unfortunate height: ‘Quite unlike my own girls! Would you believe it, ma’am?’ To Vanessa. ‘I have to order a whole extra length for her gowns!’
‘What a disaster!’ Vanessa’s tone made it a ruthless snub. She turned back to Gair. ‘I’ll have your costume made up tomorrow like Miss Brett’s – but what are we to do about her hair? We had proposed to put it up under her cap but that will never do if she’s to look like you. How could you have yours cut so short, Gair?’
‘ “There was no thought of pleasing you,”’ he quoted, laughing, and then, to his silent companion: ‘Can I not prevail upon you to follow my example, Miss Brett? I have the strangest feeling that it would suit you admirably. Our expressive faces – since we must plead guilty to the likeness – were not meant to be obscured by ringlets – however stylish they may be.’
His sister went off into a hoot of laughter. ‘I can just see you in ringlets, Gair!’
She was interrupted by an angry protest from Mrs. Brett: ‘And when I think of the trouble those curls cost me!’ she concluded.
‘Precisely,’ her step-daughter spoke at last. ‘I’ll have them cut d … d …’
‘You’ll do nothing of the kind.’ Angrily. ‘I’ll not have you making yourself any more conspicuous than you are already! What! A shorn head to top off that beanpole figure of yours? What are you thinking of, child!’ Behind her Gair could hear a chorus of amused agreement from her two daughters.
It made him angry, a most unusual thing. ‘She’s thinking that style is more interesting than beauty, ma’am,’ he said. ‘And I, for one, agree with her. If you’ll let my sister’s man go to work on her, I think you will be surprised at the results. I suppose you have Antoine with you?’ This to Vanessa, with a wry memory of their bleak, north-country childhood when they cut each other’s hair and, as often as not, had to take it in turns to go out in the winter, having only one warm cloak between them.
‘Well, of course.’ Since she had married money, Vanessa had made the absolute best of it, and, he thought, the best, too, of her poor stick of a husband. ‘Antoine is a genius in his way,’ she told Mrs. Brett. ‘If you will let him look at your daughter’s hair in the morning, I am sure he will know what is best to do.’
‘Your ladyship is too kind.’ Mrs. Brett would never say no to Lady Forland. ‘Say thank you to Lady Forland, Juana.’
Juana Brett surprised them all, probably herself more than anyone. A long step forward into the middle of the stage and she swept a graceful bow to match her costume. ‘Your most obliged servant, ma’am.’ She blushed up to the threatened ringlets as a little buzz of applause broke out among the audience in the body of the theatre.
‘Very pretty,’ said Vanessa approvingly. ‘And you’re quite right, Miss Brett, it’s high time we got on with our rehearsal. We were waiting to do the scene where you and I first meet.’
The hint of reproach in her tone was not lost on Gair. ‘And I was detaining her, selfishly, in the garden,’ he said. ‘Well, you must call it a brother’s privilege, Vanessa.’
She laughed. ‘I wonder if you mean my brother or Viola’s. Now, off stage all of you. The countess awaits the duke’s messenger.’
As the orchestra struck up Gair retired to a secluded corner at the back of the hall with much to think about. A man of quick decisions, he was at once surprised and irritated to find himself so uncertain about Juana Brett. When she had first started to stammer, he had given up his whole mission as hopeless, only to discover, a few minutes later, that she was as fluent as he in Portuguese. And she longed to go back there. Telling himself this, he recognised the real basis of his doubt. It was not so much about her fitness for the job that he was worrying as about the possible – no, probable danger to her.
It was fantastic. He, Gair Varlow, the devoted student of Machiavelli, the worshipper of enlightened self-interest, was worrying about possible danger to a lanky, stammering girl he had just met for the first time. What could be the matter with him? Anyway, was he not entitled to do what he liked with her? If he had not stopped her, she would be drowned by now, a modern Ophelia, floating to muddy death down the river.
Would she? Here was cause for thought. Impossible, of course, to tell how his Portuguese project might work out. His intention, so far as it was clear at all, was merely to use her as a tool, an informer; but suppose the situation developed unexpectedly? … He was old enough, by now, in the secret service, to know that that was how situations usually did develop. Suppose he should find himself compelled to take her, to some small extent, into his confidence, to make her his ally? And then if she should turn hysterical or even suicidal on his hands? It might be more than herself that she destroyed.
He was interrupted by her voice rising clear and full above the violins:
‘ “Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love,
And sing them loud even in the dead of night”’
No trace of a stammer now, as she stood, head thrown back, smiling a little, and her voice sent a hush through the chattering groups in the hall. ‘ “But you should pity me.”’ The last notes died away and, once again, a buzz of spontaneous applause broke out so that Olivia had to pause on her cue.
> Somehow, illogically that settled it for Gair. He sat up late that night, writing a long letter to old Mrs. Brett in Portugal.
Chapter Two
During the busy week of rehearsals that followed, Gair watched Juana Brett as closely and as unobtrusively as possible. This was easy enough, since her position as second heroine of the opera inevitably brought her constantly into the limelight, while his own short part as Sebastian left him plenty of time to lounge in the wings and watch her.
He soon decided that nothing could be much worse than her present situation. Her father was a cipher, whom Vanessa had dismissed as incapable of carrying even a walking-on part in her opera. Marrying for the second time late in life, Reginald Brett had surrendered himself, willingly enough it seemed, to the domination of his blonde, bad-tempered Cynthia. The daughter herself of spendthrift aristocrats, she might, Gair thought, have forgiven her husband his connection with trade a good deal more easily if it had not been for his fatal quarrel with his formidable mother, the head of the family. Insisting on reopening the London branch of the Bretts’ wine business, he had failed hopelessly, had been cast off by his mother and reduced to living on the tiny income left him by his first wife. His second one had been, she suggested to anyone who cared to listen, much misled when she married him, and as for her two dowerless daughters, it was simply monstrous that he had never contrived to obtain any allowance for them from rich old Mrs. Brett. Daisy and Teresa were her pride and joy. Had not their father been the son of an earl?
Gair did not think they actually tried to make their stepsister stammer, but the fact remained that she was always at her miserable worst in their company. Their names were no help: ‘t’ and ‘d’ were her bad letters, and here she was, with Daisy and Teresa for sisters. Someone, he thought, should, in mercy, have invented easier nicknames for them, but then who, in that family ever thought about Juana!
And he had contrived, he recognised, to make matters worse for her by his suggestion about her hair. Shorn of her girlish, unbecoming ringlets, she emerged, not in the least as a beauty, but as a young woman of character. Her forehead was still too high, her nose too Roman, and her cheekbones too pronounced, but when Antoine had arranged a negligently falling lock across the forehead – ‘Just like the Prince of Wales’ – and brushed the short side-hair forward to give width to her lower face, the effect was, at least, arresting. She looked, Gair thought, like someone with whom one would like to talk, and then, inevitably, thought – a pity about the stammer. Surely, to arrange for her return to Portugal, whatever danger it might involve, was the kindest thing he could do for her.
He thought this more than ever when he saw her family’s reaction to her changed appearance. Her father, characteristically, noticed nothing, but her step-mother and sisters were something else again. Even Vanessa noticed their jealous teasing and took Gair aside to ask him to do something about it. ‘If they go on,’ she said, ‘they are likely to reduce her to a stuttering imbecile – and then what’s to become of my opera? The Melbournes are coming, Gair, and the young Lambs, and Lady Jersey, and everyone who is anyone: I’ve let it be known that I’ve got a second Catalini – it must succeed, or I’ll be a public laughingstock. And it will be all your fault.’
‘Ungrateful! I found her for you, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, and you must keep her in line! If things go on as they are, she’ll start stuttering when she sings, and then, goodbye! Gair, you must do something. Can’t you make her fall in love with you, just a little, to take her mind off her troubles? You know there’s not a girl can resist you, creature that you are! And I never could see why.’
He made her a mock bow: ‘It’s my charm, dearest sister.’
‘Well then, for God’s sake use it. Put your spell on her, so she thinks of nothing else.’
‘No.’ It came out more violent than he meant and he hurried into further explanation. ‘Don’t you see that for me to pay her any marked attention would merely make those cats of sisters more jealous than ever?’
She sighed. ‘You’re right, of course. Then what can we do? Gair, don’t laugh, it’s serious! I can’t have Lady Melbourne and her party, and Lady Cahir triumphing at my expense. You know what their theatricals are like.’
‘Oh, poor Vanessa, is it so important to you?’ Suddenly, he felt years older than this elder, successful sister.
But her opera was equally important to him. It was no part of his plan that Juana should be badgered into collapse. ‘Don’t look so anxious,’ he went on. ‘For you, Vanessa, I’ll make the supreme sacrifice.’
‘Oh? And what may that be?’
‘Why, to make love to those comic-opera step-sisters.’
‘Gair, you’re a genius! But – both of them?’
‘At once. It’s the only way. They’ll be so busy being jealous of each other, they’ll forget all about poor little Cinderella.’
‘Cinderella? Oh – you mean Juana. I must say, Gair, “little” is hardly the word I would choose to describe her.’
‘Ah, but then you’re such a little thing yourself, Van.’
She smiled at the childhood nickname and plunged into a question she had been wanting to ask him. ‘Gair, what is all this? Why did you want me to invite Juana Brett? And’ – she held up a warning hand – ‘don’t tell me it was all for my sake, because I won’t believe you. Though I am grateful, mind. If all goes well, my Twelfth Night should be the talk of the town. But I know you too well to think you did it just for me. Besides, I’ve seen you watching her while you thought no one was looking. Not’ – she paused for a moment – ‘not at all as if you cared about her. More as if she was some kind of specimen, something you were studying. What are you doing, Gair?’
‘Trying to earn my living, love.’
She looked more puzzled than ever. ‘But – you said you wouldn’t make love to her. Besides, so far as I know, there’s no chance of that old tartar of a grandmother’s relenting and giving her a dowry. I must say,’ she went on, ‘I don’t blame her for washing her hands of Reginald Brett. He must have been a disaster as a man of business.’
‘He must indeed.’ Gair found himself oddly grateful for the change of subject. It was not like him to have missed a whole range of possibilities, but here, suddenly, he saw that he had. Juana Brett and a dowry? Well, nothing was more likely. If old Mrs. Brett reacted as he imagined she would to the letter he had written her, Juana would certainly have her chance of one. And, judging by the rest of the strange family who lived in the castle on the cliff, it would be a good chance. Nobody knew what old Mrs. Brett was worth, but, he suspected, most guesses would be less rather than more than the real total.
So – here was a possible heiress, and one with the added advantage, from his point of view, that she was unaware of the possibility. He had always meant, as a last resource, to marry a fortune if he failed to make one. And here he was, twenty-six, and with his foot still only on the first rung of the ladder. Why hesitate?
‘In a brown study?’ Vanessa’s voice roused him.
‘Yes, I’m trying to decide whether to begin with Daisy or Teresa, God help me.’ But not Juana. Curious to find himself so decided about that.
He made it, in each case, the lightest of flirtations: a flattering word to Daisy balanced by a quick pressure of Teresa’s hand; a turn in the garden with one, a long after-dinner tête-à-tête with the other. It worked to admiration. The two girls, once united in baiting their step-sister, now turned their small-arms fire against each other, while Gair caught their mother’s eye, once or twice, fixed on him with a look of speculation he did not much like.
But he shrugged that off. He had dodged more formidable match-makers in his time. Besides, realist as always, he knew himself to be too small a fish for Mrs. Brett’s ambitions. So he went on ogling Daisy while he turned the page of Teresa’s music, or, during rehearsals, standing devotedly behind whichever one of them gave him the easiest view of Juana.
The mime scene was coming along a
dmirably, since, being Lord Forland’s favourite, it got very much more than its fair share of rehearsing. Watching his sister yield gracefully to her husband on this point, in order to get her own way on a score of others, Gair found himself oddly sickened by the whole business. If this was what marrying money entailed, was the game worth the candle?
‘Are you happy, Van?’ He caught her, for a brief moment, alone in the deserted theatre.
‘Happy? What an odd question! And from you, of all people, who taught me to look always to the main chance. Of course I’m happy.’ She said it almost angrily. ‘My own theatre – everything I’ve ever wanted – and, my God, have I told you? Sheridan has invited himself to come tomorrow. I’ve a million things still to do, and you talk to me of happiness!’ And then, on a milder note. ‘But I’m grateful to you, just the same, Gair. Your prima donna is going to justify it all, don’t you think?’
‘Mine?’
‘Well, of course. I don’t know what you did to her that first night in the moonlight, and I’m not asking, either, but anyone with half an eye can see that she sings for you alone. It’s quite another matter when you are not in the audience.’ And then, reflectively. ‘She’s no fool, for all the stammering, that little Brett. She knows just what you’re doing with those step-sisters of hers. I’ve seen her watching. I was afraid, at first, that it would spoil everything, but not at all; she takes it to herself. And I don’t blame her. I’ve seen you watching her too. You talk to me of happiness! You’re not going to do anything foolish, Gair?’
‘I? Good God, no. But are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure. Remember, the looker-on sees most of the game. And now, I must go and read the riot act to those musicians of mine, did you hear how they dragged in the last act?’
She left him with much to think of. It was true: he had wondered how Juana would take his advances to her step-sisters, but it had never for a moment occurred to him that she might fathom their real purpose. If she had, she must be accepted, more than ever, as a young woman to be reckoned with. And an ally worth having? At all events, if Vanessa was right (and she usually was on such questions) it should make matters in Portugal much easier, if he ever contrived to get Juana there. An intelligent ally, devoted to him … what more could he ask?
The Winding Stair Page 2