The Lorimer Legacy

by Anne Melville

  It took her only a moment to learn the melody which the young poet had used for her verse; a lilting tune with an exuberant chorus. She sang her part and the students joined in with a roar which became more rumbustious at each repetition. In a steady beat they thumped their mugs and stamped their feet in accompaniment to Alexa’s clear tones. Her excitement fed on the presence of so many admiring young men, the touch of apprehension about what was in store, and the exhilaration which always came when she projected her whole personality into her singing. She wished that the moment could last for ever. And then, abruptly, the bubble was pricked.

  The door opened, and Lord Glanville stepped inside. He stood still for a moment, his tall presence impressive even when, as now, his face was grey with tiredness. Alexa was the first to see him and the only one who could guess why he was there, but the recklessness induced by so much beer and the heady atmosphere of the beer cellar carried her on to the end of the song. Only then, as the students roared and banged approval, did she become quiet and ashamed.

  As she stepped away from the long table, the Duke of Caversham looked round and sprang to his feet. He reached Lord Glanville before Alexa could, blocking her way to him. He was drunk enough to be belligerent, but the older man did not flinch.

  ‘I have not had the pleasure of meeting you since your school-days, Your Grace,’ Lord Glanville said. ‘Allow me to take this opportunity of expressing my sincere regret at your father’s death. And now, if you will excuse me, I have come to take Miss Lorimer back to Baden-Baden.’

  ‘Miss Lorimer is here under my protection, my lord. You are not insinuating, I hope, that she has anything to fear in Heidelberg.’

  Behind Alexa, the singing had begun again, but between the two men in the doorway there was a long silence which seemed charged with antagonism. Alexa, without understanding what was at stake in the confrontation, was frightened. They would surely not fight. There could be no doubt that they were both angry, both prepared to defend injured pride; and the scarred faces around them made the thought of a duel less impossible. But duels, although an accepted part of the Heidelberg way of life, were illegal for Englishmen, and aristocrats did not exchange blows. She told herself that she must be exaggerating their antagonism; yet still she was frightened.

  The young duke, beer-blustering and with the need to maintain his reputation in front of his companions, might have pressed the challenge into an open quarrel. But the older man, tired with more than the rigours of travel, not only refused to be provoked but offered Caversham a means of saving face.

  ‘Miss Lorimer is my wife’s companion and her presence is required at once. My wife is gravely ill, and is to leave Germany without delay. I am sure Miss Lorimer is most grateful to you for entertaining her, but she will acknowledge that I have some claim on her services.’

  Sulkily, the young man stepped aside and allowed Alexa to pass. She held out her hand to him, not wishing their acquaintance to end in anger.

  ‘It has been a very pleasant visit, Your Grace. I hope very much that one day we may meet again.’

  He bowed over her hand without speaking and watched her go. Lord Glanville offered his arm, and she took it. As the clear summer air refreshed her after the smoky noise of the beer cellar, she told herself that she must not be angry with her patron. He had presumed on his position; there could be no doubt of that. But although she was not quite sober yet, she was sensible enough to realize that – not for the first time – he had saved her from a situation which she could not have controlled. She was prepared to be grateful. What she was not prepared for was the realization that Lord Glanville himself was almost too angry to speak.

  When she did understand it, she became indignant.

  ‘I have not had a single free day since my first meeting with you, my lord,’ she protested. ‘I know how much I owe you, and I am truly appreciative. But it is surely not too much to ask that just for a few hours I should be allowed to enjoy myself as other young people do.’

  Lord Glanville came to a standstill in the middle of the cobbled street. ‘You misunderstand my feelings,’ he said. ‘I am tired, yes, for I have travelled from England and then have been forced without resting to come in search of you. And I am angry with you, yes, because you have been blind to what has been happening. But most of all I am upset, because what has brought me to Germany is what you appear not to have noticed. Did you really not see that my wife is dying?’

  Shocked out of her self-absorption, Alexa stared into her patron’s eyes. Recognizing the truth as soon as he spoke it, she was appalled at her own indifference. She had liked Lady Glanville from the moment of their first meeting, and the older woman’s kindness had deepened the relationship to one of affection. But to Alexa, young and healthy, the invalid’s condition had seemed a sad one from the start. Lacking experience as well as sensitivity, she had failed to note the moment when a continuing deterioration carried the sufferer past any hope of cure.

  ‘My lord!’ she whispered: and the depth of her sympathy produced an unexpected effect, for at once she found herself enclosed in Lord Glanville’s arms. With her head pressed hard against his chest she could hear him groaning aloud in despair, completely overcome by his emotions. They had stood like this once before, but then it was Alexa who was fearful and crying and in need of help. Now the positions were reversed, and the appeal for comfort was to Alexa herself. She gave it as well as she could, not caring what passers-by must think as he buried his face in her hair, his arms tightening convulsively around her waist. He was weeping, or else so near to it that his breath was forced out in sobbing gasps as he struggled to control his emotions. Alexa murmured in sympathy, hardly knowing what words she used, until his frenzy of grief had spent itself.

  Gradually the bruising tightness of his grip relaxed. He drew a very little away from her, although not far enough to let her look up into his face. There was a moment of quietness between them in which Alexa found herself suspecting feelings which in no circumstances could he ever have expressed. He loved his wife: she knew that well enough, but knew with equal certainty that it was a long time since Lady Glanville had last been able to live with him as a wife. What had never occurred to Alexa before was that he might love her as well. He could not confess it, and Alexa herself could not acknowledge it – nor, in fact, did she wish to do so. Lord Glanville was a kind man, a handsome man, an upright man; but in her eyes he was also an old man. She could take pleasure in his company: she certainly felt for him sympathy and gratitude and respect. But it had never occurred to her to love him, and it did not do so now.

  The clarity of her perceptions had an unexpected side effect. The Duke of Caversham had flirted with her, had pressed her hand, would have kissed her before the evening was out if there had been no interruption, and she would not have cared. She would have fought off any attempt on his part to go further, as she had fought off Lord Glanville’s brother; but that was a matter of reputation rather than of feelings. She did not love the Duke of Caversham any more than she loved Lord Glanville, but had she been asked an hour earlier she would have seen no obstacle to allowing some kind of relationship to develop. In this moment of emotional exposure, however, the memory of Matthew Lorimer, whom she had tried so hard to forget, flashed before her eyes. Almost as though he were standing in front of her she felt herself looking at his shy, serious eyes, his thick fair hair. She was still in love with him, after all. A flirtation could not have reminded her, but the intensity of Lord Glanville’s suppressed feelings had the power to raise the ghost of her own.

  The moment ended. Lord Glanville’s arms fell to his sides and he gave a single deep sigh. The spring of emotion, briefly uncoiled between them, sprang back into a tangle of words that could not be expressed. Throughout the journey back to Baden-Baden, neither of them spoke at all.

  4

  To the unhappy, ‘home’ is always somewhere in the past: to the contented, it is in the present. Alexa, in the emotional sense, had never had a home at
all, only a succession of addresses.

  She was not conscious of the lack. Because she had never felt an attachment to any place, she hardly knew that such a feeling existed. The subject was far from her thoughts when, three weeks after her escapade in Heidelberg, she was shown to a room in an Italian villa. Lord Glanville had learned that on the tiny peninsula of Sirmione, projecting into Lake Garda, there was a thermal site which might prove more beneficial to his wife than Baden-Baden. The area was not developed as a spa, but a local doctor had agreed to take Lady Glanville into his own home and treat her daily with baths of hot mud. Like every other doctor, he held out no hope of offering more than temporary comfort, but even that was to be welcomed.

  Alexa stood at the open window and looked out. The scents of cypress and rosemary were carried up by the warm air to caress her nostrils. There were cypresses everywhere, slim pillars of darkness, peacefully contrasting with the contorted shapes of ancient olive trees. At the foot of the garden lay the undisturbed surface of the lake, as placid as though it were coated with oil. While she watched without moving, its deep blue depths paled to a silvery turquoise: across it, a path of rosy orange led to the setting sun. She should have been tired after the slow journey, but instead she felt at rest, content.

  A servant arrived with her luggage and asked in Italian where he should put it. Without turning round, Alexa answered in the same language. The words came to her lips without any pause for thought. By the time she left Germany she had been able to speak German, but as a foreign language. Ten years had passed since she had last conversed in Italian with her mother, but she recognized instinctively that it was her native tongue. She looked across the lake at the black silhouettes of the mountains on its further side and knew in the same way that this was her country. ‘I have come home,’ she thought to herself in wonder, and all at once the wanderings of her childhood and youth fell into place. They had brought her to Italy, because Italy was where she belonged.

  It was like falling in love, but with a certainty and a happiness that love itself had not brought her. Margaret had written to her several times, asking when she would return – recognizing that she could not leave Lady Glanville while she was still of use, but begging her to remember that she would always be welcomed and loved at Elm Lodge. Until this moment Alexa had taken her eventual return as much for granted as her guardian did. Now – although with no good reason to support her certainty – she was suddenly sure that she did not wish to live in England again.

  What happened at Sirmione was that Alexa grew up. The startling moment when she had found herself clasped in Lord Glanville’s arms in the middle of Heidelberg had matured her emotionally. Never again would she be so completely the victim of her feelings as she had been during her brief relationship with Matthew. Now to that aspect of maturity she added a businesslike attitude to life – and, in particular, to the organization of her own career. Until this time she had relied on other people. In view of her sex and upbringing, this was hardly surprising, but it had put her at the mercy of events in a way which she did not intend to tolerate in the future. Her ambitions were clear, and equally clear was the fact that from now on she must achieve them by her own efforts. She recognized the good fortune that had come to her aid in the past year, but it was time to take control into her own hands.

  Gratitude, however, had still a part to play. As long as Lady Glanville lived, Alexa was at her service. In the stifling atmosphere of the mud room she read aloud for hour after hour – for by now Lady Glanville’s eyesight was affected as well as her muscles. Every evening she sang and played the piano, quietly and soothingly, without expecting any reaction from the invalid on the sofa. But as time passed and it became ever clearer that her services would not be needed for very much longer, she took one step to ensure that when Lord Glanville offered to take her back to England she would have the means to refuse.

  The moment came when some shopping had to be done, requiring a greater variety of merchandise than the tiny walled village of Sirmione could provide. The maid had drawn up a list of necessities, but she spoke no Italian, so Alexa’s offer to accompany her was welcomed. Lady Glanville herself insisted that Alexa should turn the chore of shopping into an interesting expedition – and Alexa had already made local enquiries which suggested the best place to choose from her own point of view.

  So she and the maid did not go to Verona, in spite of the fact that this was the nearest and best-stocked city. Although it had already become Alexa’s ambition to take part one day in the opera season which was mounted each year in the Arena there, she recognized that she could not hope to make her start so near to the top of the ladder. Instead, they boarded the west-bound train and, passing through Brescia, came very soon to Bergamo. By the time the shops closed for the afternoon siesta they had obtained everything they needed in the modern town at the foot of the hill. The maid, isolated in a remote part of a foreign country for so long, was eager to spend an hour or two enjoying the animation of city life, even if she could not understand it, and Alexa willingly climbed with her into the old fortified town which was perched on a hilltop. Together they explored the narrow cobbled streets and dignified market squares which surrounded the great cathedral. Together they looked down from the walls at the green countryside around.

  ‘I have one more errand to do,’ Alexa said abruptly. All morning she had been wondering whether she had the courage. To express her intention, even though she gave no details of it, would commit her to the action. She appointed a time when they should meet again, ready for the return journey, and then walked alone down the hill.

  By the time she arrived outside the Teatro Donizetti she was panting a little, more with apprehension than because of her speed of walking. To recover her breath, she paused in the shelter of a wide avenue of horse chestnuts and stared across at the theatre. Its stout wooden doors were closed, and the heavy blocks of grey and pink stone from which its façade was built suggested the massive strength of a fortress. She straightened her shoulders and summoned up all her courage. Even the strongest fortress could fall to someone who besieged it with sufficient determination.

  She knew that by now rehearsals must be in progress for the winter season of opera. Finding a side door open, she was guided to what she sought by a confusion of noise. A piano was playing, someone was singing, someone else was shouting over the song with instructions about movement, a carpenter in the background was hammering, a shabby group of people – the chorus, perhaps -were chattering none too quietly in a corner. All these sounds, except for the hammering, came to a ragged halt as Alexa appeared at the back of the stage.

  ‘What do you want?’ The voice came from the darkness of the auditorium.

  Alexa addressed herself to the man who was presumably the director of the opera. ‘I want to join your company, maestro.’

  There was a roar of laughter. The two singers already on the stage looked at her pityingly: the members of the chorus mocked her.

  ‘Every street urchin in Bergamo would like to join our company,’ the director called up as his amusement subsided. ‘But I choose my own singers and they are chosen. Go back the way you came, if you please. You have no right to be here.’

  Alexa did not bother to listen to what he had to say, knowing in advance that it could be nothing but a refusal. Instead, she began to sing almost as he began to speak. She had prepared herself for this moment, pondering for hours over the choice of an aria which needed no accompaniment, which showed her voice to its best advantage, and which contained no pause or quiet interlude which would allow of interruption. La Becattini had done her work well, developing a natural talent into a powerful instrument. As Alexa sang, the director’s protests faded, allowing the unauthorized audition to continue. When she had finished, there was a moment’s silence and only on the face of the woman who had been singing when Alexa arrived was there still any hostility to be seen. The director stood up and walked with great deliberation on to the stage. It took him some
time. Alexa felt her legs trembling as she tried to maintain a look of confidence. He planted himself in front of her, his legs apart, and his voice was rough and disdainful.

  ‘And I suppose you think, just because you are able to trill a little, that we shall fall on your neck at once and ask you to be our Marguerite, our Mimi, our Tosca.’

  It had been difficult for Alexa not to hope exactly that in the day-dreams which at first had taken the place of plans. But she had her ambitions under tight control by now. She was asking for work, not indulging a fantasy, and she was determined to get it.

  ‘Of course not, maestro. I hope that you might give me employment in the chorus. And that if you think me worthy, I might be allowed to understudy some of the smaller parts. I have studied under La Becattini and know how to prepare a role. But of course I realize that I lack experience. If you take me into your company, I will do whatever I am told.’

  There was a second silence. This time it must surely be a hopeful sign. If he were going to send her away, would he not have done it at once?

  ‘Your voice is too strong for the chorus,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. You sing not too badly, but –’

  A short, plump woman emerged from the shadows at the side of the stage to interrupt him, murmuring something that Alexa was not near enough to hear. For a third time the director looked her up and down.

  ‘I am reminded of a baby expected in March,’ he said. ‘It may be that by December Signora Fiorentino will cease to carry conviction as a young unmarried maid. Well, you may attend rehearsals if you wish, and prepare to act as understudy for her roles when it becomes necessary. But it would be on the understanding that you are not employed until you are needed.’

  Alexa accepted the arrangement with a promptness that gave him no time for second thoughts. It could not have fallen out better, for she would not have been free to join the company immediately even if her request had been successful. Now it seemed that she could not only stay on with Lady Glanville, but would have time to prepare the roles and might hope that they would not be too insignificant. It was not conceit but realism which assured Alexa that a single performance would be enough to secure her a place in the company. She knew her own ability.