“How uncomfortable,” said Vicki. “I’m glad I’m no more than mildly talented. It’s a hell of a life if you’re the real thing. Did he take you round backstage afterwards?” Anthea nodded.
“What did he think of Otila Franci? — of the Desdemona?”
“Oh, he didn’t say!” Anthea was rather shocked at the idea that he might have confided his artistic view to her. “But,” she added reflectively, “I had the feeling that he didn’t think a great deal of her.”
“Quite right of him too,” declared several of them in knowledgeable chorus. And Violet Albany added disparagingly, “She isn’t even good second-rate. I bet he didn’t choose her for the part. Pity we couldn’t have had Peroni.”
“She’s a bit old for it now,” Vicki said with a regretful shrug, at which a quite furious argument broke out, first about Peroni’s actual age and then about her ability to substitute high art for mere youth.
With an instinct for pouring oil on unexpectedly turbulent waters, Anthea interjected firmly,
“Anyway, she came round backstage. I saw her there.”
“Did you meet her?” They all stopped arguing immediately and turned to regard her with fresh interest.
“Not actually.” Anthea shook her head. “She spoke to Mr. Warrender In fact” — she smiled suddenly — “she kissed him, which I thought rather daring of her. But he seemed to take it rather well.”
And, having reduced the incident to an amusing little anecdote, she somehow felt better about it. Particularly as they then all retired to the kitchen to consume cocoa and biscuits which, Vicki informed Anthea, Mrs. McManus always thoughtfully left ready for them if they had been out late.
The following day the new pattern of Anthea’s life began to take shape in earnest, and she went for her first singing lesson to Enid Mountjoy, who lived within walking distance.
Although there was great charm and a sort of solid elegance about the handsome house in which the retired singer lived, nothing could have been more different from the flat in Killigrew Mansions. Equally, nothing could have been more different from Oscar Warrender’s method of dealing with Anthea.
Anthea knew from the very beginning that she was going to love her lessons with Enid Mountjoy. Not least because she gave full credit to the work already done by Anthea’s first teacher, and it was pleasant to know that Miss Sharon’s dedicated efforts were appreciated.
“You are not only very gifted,” Enid Mountjoy told her. “You have also been exceedingly well taught. And you are essentially musical, which is going to be an enormous help to you. I’m telling you all this quite frankly because I think” — she smiled slightly — “there are probably going to be times when you will require a certain boost to your morale and self-confidence.”
She naturally made no reference to Oscar Warrender by name, but Anthea gathered that she meant she was not unaware of the special difficulties which might arise from time to time in that direction.
Not that she was anything but a strict and exacting teacher herself. But she had infinite patience and a naturally calm manner, which Anthea was to find, in the next few weeks, a welcome antidote to her stormy sessions with the conductor.
Her language classes were rather fun. And, whatever Oscar Warrender might have said about the poorness of her Italian, she soon found that she had quite a talent for languages, and particularly that she had a good ear for accents.
As for her new home life at Mrs. McManus’s boardinghouse, Anthea enjoyed every minute of it. It had always been a matter of some regret to her that she had no sister, and in the lively, affectionate and stimulating company of Vicki Donnington she sometimes thought she had found the next best thing.
It was true that Vicki’s easy-going approach to her studies differed vitally from Anthea’s own wholehearted absorption. But she was so engagingly frank about her own limitations that Anthea was amused, rather than shocked by her attitude.
“Anyway,” Vicki explained candidly, “I don’t have to make a living out of it eventually. My mother is quite embarrassingly well-off, as it happens. Only she’s chosen to marry again and provide me with a stepfather I don’t like.”
“How awful,” said Anthea sympathetically.
“No, no, not really,” Vicki assured her. “I don’t have to live with them. In fact, it gave me the perfect opportunity of getting away on my own, which was what I really wanted. Mother said plaintively couldn’t I study something, and as I have a rather pretty voice I said what about studying singing? She thought that was absolutely splendid, as it would take me about two hundred miles away from where she was, and so she provided for me here on a reasonably generous scale, and we’re both perfectly satisfied.”
“But aren’t you and your mother — fond of each other?” asked Anthea, trying — without success — to imagine her own comfortable, commonsense mother behaving in this extraordinary manner.
“Not specially,” Vicki admitted, without either rancour or regret. “She’s very, very pretty and frightfully young-looking for her age, and I think it embarrasses her to have a grown-up daughter around. For my part, I wish her awfully well, but know we have almost nothing in common. To tell the truth she really bores me dreadfully, and I suppose I bore her just as much, so we’re much happier apart.”
“I see,” said Anthea. But she didn’t really see at all. Human relationships in Cromerdale seemed very, very normal in comparison with Vicki’s cheerful disclosure.
But, however unconventional Vicki might be in her mother-daughter relationship, there was no doubt that she was a loyal and reliable friend, and Anthea counted her among the happiest features of her new life.
With her singing lessons going well, her language classes yielding good results, and her day-to-day home life gay and pleasant, Anthea could have been supremely happy but for one thing. Only with Oscar Warrender himself did she find it impossible to achieve even meagre success.
It was not that she did not try. Perhaps she even tried too hard. Certainly at times she was so tense and anxious that she could almost hear this reflected in her voice. And then he would growl, “Relax, can’t you!” But with a glance of impatient disgust that made it difficult not to exclaim, “How can I when you look like that?”
She hated him at these times. But she longed for his approval too. She sometimes felt that it would be worth almost anything she possessed just to hear him say she was good. But when she finally wrung his first real expression of approval from him, it was at the expense of so much nerve-strain and anguish that she hardly recognised it as praise.
The whole incident started most unpromisingly, by her being late for her lesson. Or rather, she supposed, when she looked back on the whole incident later, it started with deceptive pleasantness by her being called to the telephone one morning to find Neil Prentiss at the other end of the wire.
“Hello there!” The cheerful familiarity of his voice brought such a wave of joy and homesickness over her that she cried aloud,
“Why, it’s Neil Prentiss! How wonderful. Are you speaking from somewhere in London?”
“Yes, indeed. And do you happen to be free for lunch, and willing to take pity on a poor provincial?” he enquired.
“I’d love it!” declared Anthea from her heart. “Do you really mean that you have time for me?”
“I mean that you’re the very first person for whom I’m making time,” he retorted. “I have all sorts of messages from your family, and I’ve undertaken to bring back all the news of our Cromerdale prima donna. Can you meet me at the Savoy at one o’clock?”
“Rather!” She did not seek to hide her naive pleasure, and he laughed and said,
“Have you never been there before?”
“No, of course not! I don’t go to places like the Savoy.”
“Doesn’t our worthy conductor ever take you there?” he enquired amusedly.
“Again — of course not. What sort of terms do you suppose we’re on?”
“I don’t know. Maybe that�
��s one of the things you’re going to tell me/’ was the amused reply. “In the foyer of the Savoy at one o’clock, then.”
Not until he had rung off did she remember that her lesson with Oscar Warrender was for two-thirty that afternoon, instead of the more usual three o’clock, and she wished she had warned Neil Prentiss of this. But perhaps he would not mind being hurried a little, and for once she would take a taxi when she left him.
None of it worked out like that at all, however. To begin with, he was a quarter of an hour late. And, although his apologies were profuse and his explanation was more than adequate, she saw her time-limit shrinking drastically.
Anthea explained about her lesson, and he vowed that he would see that she got away in time. And after that she almost forgot the hurrying minutes, because it was so lovely to sit there in the quiet elegance of the Savoy Grill Room and hear him talk about her dear ones at home.
He smiled at her across the table and said, “You’ve changed quite a lot already.”
“In what way?”
“I — don’t know.” His glance was amused and admiring. “You’re more — poised, I suppose. And you look like the kind of girl to whom things happen.”
She was charmed. And, although she asked him searching and loving questions about her family and her home town, she thought more than once that he was right. She was now the kind of girl to whom things happened, and in some subtle way she was already rather different from the Anthea who had stood and cried outside Cromerdale Town Hall in the rain.
It was not his fault that it all took very much longer than either of them had expected. After all, people in a hurry do not go to famous restaurants, where the perfection of the cooking takes precedence over all other considerations. By the end, Anthea was wishing she had insisted on a snack bar.
“I’m sorry it’s been such a terrible rush,” he said, as she glanced in horror at her watch and refused coffee. “It was entirely my fault. But I shall be in London for a day or two, and perhaps you’ll dine with me one evening and we can take things at a more leisurely pace.”
“Yes — yes, thank you. I’d love that.” She was frantically gathering up her gloves and bag. “But I simply must rush now. Do you mind? Will you ring me up?”
“Yes, of course. And I don’t mind your running off now. I understand. I’ll just stay and settle the bill. And if you have to go before I join you, the commissionaire will get you a taxi.” He could not have been kinder or more understanding and, as he held her hand for a moment in farewell, he added with a laugh, “If Oscar Warrender cuts up rough, tell him you were lunching with me.”
“Oh, I will!” She was faintly comforted by the thought. For, if Neil Prentiss were providing all her training, even Oscar Warrender could surely hardly complain if she spent a few extra minutes with him.
She almost ran through the great foyer. But she was not the only one wanting a taxi, and there seemed to be some difficulty about getting a specially big American car out of the confined space of the hotel approach.
It was only five minutes really — but five hideously long minutes — before she was in a taxi and on her way. But already Big Ben was chiming the half-hour, and in spite of what Neil had said, Anthea was sick with anxiety.
Rain was falling steadily, and there had been some sort of procession, so that traffic was solid at the entrance to Trafalgar Square, and three times the lights changed colour without any progress being made.
“Can’t we go round another way?” cried Anthea desperately.
“What other way?” was the unhelpful reply. And then at last their stream of traffic began to move — slowly, slowly. But at least they were moving.
By the time she finally reached Killigrew Mansions, Anthea was limp, and she simply dared not look at her watch again. Here too, for the first time in her experience, there was quite a long delay while she waited for the lift. And when, at last, she was deposited outside Number Fourteen, her hand was so unsteady that she could hardly press the bell.
The door was opened by a singularly stolid young man, called James Cheetham, who did some coaching at the Opera House and a lot of manuscript copying and other routine work. He already knew Anthea quite well by sight, and he said — unnecessarily, she thought,
“You’re pretty late.”
“I know.” She went past him and into the studio, where Oscar Warrender was sitting at the piano, a little as though he had been waiting there since the moment that she should have arrived.
“I said two-thirty,” he observed.
“I know. I’m sorry. The traffic – ”
“The traffic is no excuse. In London one takes the traffic into consideration. Haven’t you discovered that yet? Where were you lunching?”
It sounded perfectly ridiculous, but she had to say, “At the Savoy.” And when his eyebrows went up, she added hastily and defensively, “With Neil Prentiss, if you must know. From my home town.”
A long pause. Then he said, quite gently, “If you are ever late again because you have been lunching with some boy-friend from your home town at the Savoy, don’t bother to come at all. You will have had your last lesson. Do you understand?”
“Yes, but – ”
“There are no ‘buts’ about this. Either your singing comes first, last and all the time, or I have no interest in you. Is that clear?”
She was shaking with dismay at this reaction, and at the discovery that the name of Neil Prentiss constituted no protection at all.
“I — I can tell you how sorry I am — ” she stammered.
“Don’t try,” he advised her. “It would bore me to distraction. Shall we start?”
She could not possibly be good after that, she told herself. It was all she could do just to get her breath and control her nervous trembling. But he gave her one glance and said, “Pull yourself together,” and somehow she did.
“Not very good,” was his verdict on the first ten minutes. But then he leaned back and looked at her and said unexpectedly, “Miss Mountjoy tells me she has been trying you out in the last scene of Otello.”
“Y-yes. I was so thrilled by it that first night that I — wanted to see what I could do with it.”
“I see. And what do you think you — did with it?” he enquired drily.
“It isn’t for me to say. What did Miss Mountjoy say?” she countered.
“She said your Willow Song and Ave Maria are not without merit,” was the thoughtful reply, and he looked at her again in that dangerously considering way.
“I — I’m glad she thinks so,” said Anthea, guessing what was coming next, and trying madly to remember everything Enid Mountjoy had taught her about the Willow Song and the Ave Maria.
“I’ll hear you,” he decided. “Take it from the opening of the scene, when you’re first speaking to Emilia. And remember that the fear of death is on you.”
She thought few remarks could have been less reassuring in the circumstances. But of course it was true. And somehow she managed to shed her own nervous identity, and take on the chill melancholy of Desdemona, singing her pathetic Willow Song on the last evening of her life.
He let her go right through to the moment between the two arias when Desdemona says goodnight to Emilia. Then he stopped her impatiently and exclaimed,
“No, no! You’re not telling her you’ll see her in the morning, over the toast and marmalade. You’re saying goodbye to her, you little idiot, knowing in your heart that you’ll probably never see her again. Listen to these chords” — he struck the terrible fateful chords on the piano — “don’t you hear that, as Emilia goes out, death comes in? That’s why your cry of farewell should chill the blood. You’re afraid — afraid — afraid – ”
She felt she was, too, when he said it like that, and stared at her in that cold, inimical way. So she repeated the phrases, and he nodded, presumably satisfied, and let her go on to the long, serene measures of the Ave Maria.
At the end, he let his hands fall on to his knees and asked,
“Do you know the rest of the act?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Why ‘of course’?”
“Because it doesn’t interest me to learn an isolated aria or two. I want everything that leads up to and away from them, or I can’t get the right mood.”
“Good,” he said, which nearly knocked her backwards. And then — “We’ll have the rest of the act, then. I’d like to see you act it out.”
“But how — without an Otello?”
For answer he went to the door and called, “Cheetham, come here a minute.” And when James Cheetham appeared in the doorway he said, “Come and play the last scene of Otello. I want to take Miss Benton through it. I’ll speak the part.”
“From the beginning of the act?” enquired James Cheetham, sitting down at the piano and apparently quite prepared to go through the whole score if necessary.
“No. Just after the Ave Maria. Lie on that sofa, Anthea. You’ve said your prayers and got into bed and then — Otello comes in.”
She did exactly what he told her. But she stared up at him with wide, frightened eyes, as he stood over her, instead of feigning sleep.
“Close your eyes,” he said softly. “Close your eyes. You’re asleep. And when you open them again, remember that you love the man you see there, even though you fear him.”
She closed her eyes. She was so much under the spell of his authority that she did not even dare to look at him through her lashes, although that beautiful, flexible speaking voice, saying the words against the sombre background of the accompaniment, had an overwhelmingly terrifying force.
For a moment she thought she could not possibly go on. Then she knew she must. And when she heard her cue from the stolid Mr. Cheetham at the piano, she opened her eyes, leaned up on her elbow and sang her opening notes on a soft rising accent of query.
He was standing looking down at her with heart-searching melancholy as well as indescribable menace, and she suddenly thought of what he had said — “You love the man, even though you fear him – ”
A Song Begins (Warrender Saga Book 1) Page 7