The unheard chorus fell silent. Cristabel stood, head up, gazing above and beyond the audience as Max had advised, waiting. But the clamour from the house went on, unabated, uncaring. Now his father had noticed, was stirring angrily, looking about him. Wondering what to do? And then, from the very back of the gallery, where the worst seats were thronged with Lissenbergers, came a single, clear cry: ‘Silence for our Prince! Silence for Orpheus!’
For an astonished moment, the house stilled, and Cristabel seized it, took one step forward, plunged into song. Max listened, spellbound. She was his friend, Bella, who had laughed and played with him, teased and quarrelled with him. And she was also something quite else. She was Orpheus. She’s right, he thought. She’s a prima donna.
The audience felt it too, growing quieter and quieter as the performance continued. You could feel them sobering up, Max thought, caught, held and mastered by the singing. But when the curtain fell for the last time the roar of applause was deafening. Holding Bella’s ice-cold hand, sharing that first surge of enthusiasm with her, he made up his mind. They had planned to take their curtain calls masked, but he knew now that he could not do it. As a musician, he could not accept the acclaim that was entirely hers. It would mean black trouble for both of them. No matter, it had to be done.
There were shouts for Orpheus now, for the Prince. It was his cue to leave the stage, to leave her alone to her triumph. He pressed her hand, in acknowledgment, in warning, took off his mask, bowed deeply to her, then more easily to the audience before he followed the chorus off stage.
At first, the audience did not understand. Cries of ‘Unmask!’ mingled with those for ‘Orpheus!’ and ‘The Prince!’ Bella stood alone for a moment on the huge stage, taking it all in. Then, with one slow step forward, she swept off mask, and wig and laurel wreath together and sank into the deepest, most formal of curtsies.
No mistaking her now; her dark ringlets had always stood out among the blond Lissenbergers. The audience gave a kind of universal gasp which merged into laughter, and clapping, and more cries of ‘The Prince, God bless him.’ They love him, she realised with a little shock of surprise. He’s their Prince. And, inevitably, her eyes lifted for the first time to the royal box and Prince Gustav. Expecting anger, she felt his rage palpable across the gulf between them, was relieved to see his new wife’s restraining hand on his arm.
Turning, she saw Kapellmeister Franck leading Max forward, the chorus following to form up behind them. ‘You wicked children.’ Franck took her hand, still holding Max’s. ‘I’ve never been so frightened in my life. Forward now, bow and curtsy, not as we rehearsed it, but who cares? May I write an opera for you, Lady Cristabel?’
‘I’ll do?’ She had to ask it, though in her heart she knew the answer.
‘Oh, you’ll do,’ he said. ‘No need to ask it.’ And stepped back, leaving the two of them together.
‘Bella!’ Max bent to kiss her hand. ‘I had to do it. Forgive me?’
‘Forgive? But, Max, your father …’
‘I know. Don’t forget to smile for them, Bella. This is your night. As for tomorrow …’
‘Let it come! Max, I do thank you! I know where I am going now.’ Absent-mindedly, intent only on him, she bowed, instead of curtsying, and got a roar of delight from the audience.
‘You have them in your hand,’ he said. ‘It’s a great gift, Bella. And I’m going to write you your first opera.’
After that, the chorus surged round to exclaim and congratulate as the audience began slowly, reluctantly to leave. It was all confusion, laughter, delight and there was not a single moment alone with Max until they parted outside their dressing-rooms.
‘Max, I do thank you!’
‘Sleep well, prima donna. I’ll tell you, in the morning, just how great you were.’
Miss Jevons was waiting in the dressing-room, her face chalk-white. ‘Bella, how could you? He’s most terribly angry.’
‘The Prince? I saw. Poor Max. Wasn’t he splendid, Miss Jevons?’
‘Not the Prince.’ Miss Jevons had hardly heard her. ‘Your father. We’re to leave in the morning. First thing. A figure of fun, he called you, a laughing-stock, a public show. All my fault. When I’ve got you safe home he says he never wants to see me again.’
‘But that’s not fair!’ She was slowly taking in the extent of the disaster. ‘I knew the Prince would be angry, but I really thought Papa would be pleased. After all, he made me sing in the opera.’
‘But he didn’t want you to,’ said Miss Jevons acutely. ‘I think a modicum of failure might have been more tactful.’
‘Oh, darling Jevons,’ with a quick hug. And then, ‘But, tell quick, what about Max?’
‘He’s confined to his rooms. Until his father decides what to do with him. You’ll not see him again, Bella.’
2
Martha Ann Peabody was so rich that London Society almost forgave her for being American, the daughter of a rebel. A close friend of George Washington, her father had worn himself out making arms for the revolutionary forces in his Philadelphia factory. He had made money too. When he died, in 1800, Martha found herself an heiress, surrounded by hopeful wooers.
They bored her. The Philadelphia businessmen had no manners, spat and smoked in her presence, and talked to her about their manufactures. And the plantation owners, riding north to woo, treated her like Venetian glass and talked to each other across her. About horses, mostly. Since what she cared for was music, she had soon had enough of this. On the day of her twenty-first birthday, in 1801, she sent for her father’s man of business and told him she was going to England.
‘Pray don’t waste your time in protesting.’ She silenced him with a gesture, and he thought her more and more like her father. ‘I have it all arranged. I have been corresponding with my father’s old friend, the banker, Thomas Coutts. He promises me his daughters’ protection. They are very much the thing, apparently, all married to peers, for what that’s worth. They will see me launched in Society. And you will see to it that I don’t lack for funds, Mr. Jonas.’
‘But, Miss Martha –’ He had seen her grow up from a plain little girl to a neat, undistinguished young lady, had been awaiting the announcement of a suitable engagement. Now he gaped, as at a phoenix, rising. ‘The war – You will be taken by a privateer!’
‘Nonsense,’ but she said it kindly, ‘all the talk is of peace, as you well know. And naturally I shall travel on one of the Peabody ships, neutral and everyone’s friend. And I shall take my maid, Deborah.’ She laughed. ‘I am promoting her to the rank of cousin. She hates it, poor girl, but I tell her one must suffer to be free.’ She rose and held out her hand. ‘I know I can count on you, Mr. Jonas.’
‘You sound just like your father.’
‘Thank you! Nothing could please me more.’
Reaching England at last early in 1802, Martha found the Coutts sisters friendly but elusive, busy with matrimonial problems of their own. But they gave her the basic advice she needed about clothes, and house, and, most important of all, Society. She opened her attack on it with a musical soirée at which she had persuaded no less a person than Michael Kelly to sing. Short of funds as usual, the famous opera singer found the immense sum she offered him irresistible. It was he who told her the story of the Duke of Sarum’s daughter. Lady Cristabel had been kept immured at Sallis House, down in the country near Salisbury, since she had disgraced herself by singing a breeches part in Lissenberg, of all places.
‘Not breeches, in fact.’ Almost forty-two, Kelly had immense Irish charm, and made the most of it. ‘A tunic, you know, classical stuff. She sang the part of Gluck’s Orpheus and had the audience stuck like spellbound pigs in their seats. Her father was in a fine rage! Her mother was an opera singer, you see. Ran away after the girl was born. Preferred the stage to Sarum House. Can’t blame her really. He never forgave her, of course.’
‘What happened to her?’ Martha asked, fascinated.
‘Blessed if I know. H
aven’t heard of her for years. Dead I expect, poor thing. Her kind don’t wear well.’
‘And the daughter has been kept imprisoned in the country? It’s monstrous! Is her voice really so remarkable?’
‘So they say. And she’s not precisely imprisoned. Comfortable enough.’ Laughing. ‘What the Duke doesn’t know, because no one has told him, is that her mother’s old teacher, Signor Arioso, went there, when he heard, offered himself as undergroom or something, been teaching the girl all he knows ever since.’
‘Good gracious! Her father doesn’t know?’
‘Never goes there. He’s going to remarry in the spring – the mother must be dead, come to that – everything may change then. The wedding’s to be here in town; he can hardly leave the child out of that. Not a child really. Not much younger than the new bride, I believe. Eighteen, nineteen, something like that.’
‘What an extraordinary business. If she does come to London, I’d dearly like to meet her. Could you manage it for me, do you think, Mr. Kelly?’
‘For you, dear lady, I would do anything. But I warn you, it won’t be easy.’
Martha was soon fending off English fortune-hunters, just as she had done American ones, and finding them different, but not much more interesting. Totally realistic about her own appearance, she knew that the fashionable high-waisted muslins did nothing for her. She was neither tall nor slender, and her hair remained mouse-coloured, however stylish its cut. ‘I’m not an antidote,’ she told her maid, and confidante, Deborah, ‘but I’m no beauty. No sense flattering myself that they court me for my looks.’
She read the details of the Sarum wedding in her Morning Chronicle and noted that Lady Cristabel had indeed made an appearance as the senior among a bevy of bridesmaids. And when the Duke took his bride for a honeymoon tour of his Irish estates, Lady Cristabel was reported to be staying on in Sarum House.
‘I long to hear her sing,’ Martha told Michael Kelly. ‘But how?’
‘Nobody has, that I know of. The Duke has left her in the care of his dragon of an elder sister, and there seems no sign of her making an appearance in Society.’
‘At least he’s not sent her back to moulder in the country. That has to be encouraging. Tell me about the dragon-aunt.’
‘Not a lot to tell. Younger than her brother. Never married; God knows why not, with her fortune … Must have a fortune.’ He thought about it, added a qualifying, ‘I suppose.’
‘Does she go out in Society? Did she before Lady Cristabel joined the household?’
‘Not a great deal. St. James’s for the Birthday. That kind of thing.’
‘That’s not much help to me. Where could I meet her?’
‘That’s a hard one. Frankly, I don’t know, Miss Peabody.’
‘Think about it for me?’
‘I’d do more than that for you.’
‘Ah, don’t you start! Tell me, Mr. Kelly, the singing master – what did you say his name was? Did he come to London too?’
‘Blessed if I know.’
‘Find out for me?’
‘Delighted to.’
He called next day to report that Signor Arioso was indeed to be seen in his old haunts in town. ‘He don’t talk about the girl, but the word is that he’s in touch with her.’
‘Without the knowledge of the dragon aunt? I wonder how. Has he a voice still, Mr. Kelly? Could he perform at one of my evenings?’
‘I don’t know…’ doubtfully.
‘Unlike you to admit ignorance. Would you ask him for me?’
‘To sing?’
‘No, to call on me.’
Signor Arioso arrived a few days later. He was small, plump, anxious, in clothes that showed their age, and he was very much puzzled by the summons. ‘Miss Peabody,’ his English was accented but fluent, ‘you wished to see me?’
‘It’s good of you to come so promptly. Mr. Kelly has told you about my musical evenings?’
‘I have heard of them, of course.’
‘I was hoping you might care to perform at one of them.’
‘I?’ His laugh had a savage note. ‘Why do you think I became a singing-master, Miss Peabody? It was because I lost my own voice. After such a sacrifice! Mr. Kelly was doubtless embarrassed to explain to you. I have grown used to it! My parents had such hopes for me. And then, nothing, at seventeen, to find that one had lost everything that makes a man’s life worth living! And all for nothing.’
‘You mean, you’re …’ She had heard of the barbarous custom, but boggled at the word.
‘A castrato, Miss Peabody, but without the voice. I’m no use to you, to myself, to anyone.’
‘Mr. Kelly says you managed to be of much use to the Duke of Sarum’s daughter.’
‘Lady Cristabel! Ah, there’s a voice for you. Better than her mother’s because there is more behind it. Not a drawing-room voice, you understand, an operatic miracle. And all they’ll let her do is sing to the company after dinner, if she is lucky. Her father and his new bride return from Ireland next month. Then we shall see …’
‘It sounds as if you manage to keep in touch with her.’
‘Oh, yes. I’ve not seen her since she came to town, but we correspond. All the servants love her, that’s the kind of person she is.’
‘You make me more and more eager to meet her. But how?’
Michael Kelly supplied the answer, calling to report that the Duke and his new Duchess were back in town. ‘And it sounds as if his bride had talked some sense into Sarum while they were away. At all events, the girl is going into Society with them. A stunner, they say, in her own way. Raven-black hair and blue eyes. The Duchess is a blonde English beauty, maybe likes the child as a foil. Anyway, they are to be seen everywhere, hand in hand. “Like sisters,” the Duchess says. But what I came to tell you is that Lady Cristabel is to sing at the charity concert in the London Rooms. Quite a concession by her father, you must admit, and absolutely as far as he is going to go, Arioso tells me. So if you are really so eager to hear her, I had better set about getting you tickets for the concert.’
‘You think you can?’
‘Did you not tell me you were President Washington’s god-daughter?’
‘I am certainly named for his wife. But that can hardly be a recommendation here, Mr. Kelly.’
‘Among the Whig ladies who are patrons of this concert? I think it might do the trick. It’s a pity Mr. Coutts’ three graces haven’t bestirred themselves a bit more for you.’
‘Three graces? It’s not what I’d call them.’
‘Ah, the poor girls. You should have seen them when Angelica Kauffman painted them in their prime. They’ve all had noble husbands long enough now to know it’s not roses all the way. English Society’s a battle from start to finish, Miss Peabody. Never forget that.’
‘Oh dear!’ She sighed, shrugged, rose to her feet and prowled over to the window that overlooked fashionable Bruton Street. ‘You’ve put your finger on it, Mr. Kelly. I came here with such hopes. Of a Society more interesting than ours at home, where a woman might be allowed some small part in the conversation, be listened to sometimes. But it’s really just the same. Oh, they pretend to listen, because I am rich. Am I such a bore, Mr. Kelly?’
‘Of course not.’ He had risen when she did to follow her to the window. ‘And you know it. A pity, really, that your talent is so general. If you painted just a little better, or had started to learn the piano earlier, you could set up as a virtuosa. Lead a life of your own. Like Madame Le Brun or Angelica Kauffman. As it is, you’ll need a companion for the concert, you know.’
‘I suppose so.’ She had begun to recognise that Deborah was not taken quite seriously as a chaperone. An acute observer, she had noticed that the young and not so young men who thronged her elegant drawing-room did not treat her quite as they did their sisters and cousins. At first she had thought this a tribute to her American differentness, but as she became gradually more and more aware of a hint of freedom in their behaviour, she had
begun seriously to wonder whether she ought not to hire some old tartar of a chaperone. Or was it already too late? For the moment, she smiled at Michael Kelly. ‘I’m sure you must know some impecunious, starchy, old lady I could bribe to accompany me.’
He laughed. ‘For you, anything.’
Martha refused an offer of marriage from a delightful young Irish captain that night, and found his reaction disconcerting. ‘They said it was no good at the Club.’ He had drunk a good deal of her excellent wine to bring himself to the point. ‘Said you were hanging out for an earl at least. You could make my fortune if you’d just tell me, Miss Peabody. The bets are mounting up in the Club book. Be a sport, tip me the word. I can’t begin to tell you how dead broke I am.’
‘I’m sorry, Captain O’Shaughnessy.’ Hard to know whether to be amused or angry. ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you.’
It took her a very long time to get to sleep that night. Bets on her at the clubs! Had she made the most appalling mistake in coming to England?
She woke next morning to the sound of bells, and talk of the charity concert gave way for a while to talk of the Peace of Amiens.
‘Mr. Addington calls it the peace everyone’s glad about and no one’s proud of.’ Michael Kelly had called with tickets for the concert. ‘I’ve found you a companion, by the way, a Miss Chevenix. You won’t like her, and I doubt she’ll approve of you, but she has as many quarterings as I have notes, and for the evening, she’ll do.’
‘I don’t know what I’d do without you, Mr. Kelly.’ She held out an impulsive hand.
‘Miss Peabody.’ He took it in both of his. ‘I’m old enough to be your father, but I’ve taken a real fancy to you. Just think what a life we could lead –’
‘Oh, Mr. Kelly, not you too.’ She shook her head at him and withdrew her hand gently. ‘I’m grateful to you for not lying and talking of love, but if I ever do marry, that will be what it is for.’
‘Forgive me?’
‘Of course.’
Miss Chevenix was everything Michael Kelly had suggested, but she was also passionate about music, and she and Martha found common ground in this. The concert hall was packed when they reached it. ‘Everyone is here,’ Miss Chevenix looked round with satisfaction. ‘Natural enough, since it’s for such a good cause. Funds for men wounded in the long war with France. And the performers all of the most impeccable breeding. I am afraid you and I may have to make allowances for them, my dear Miss Peabody. They are used to perform for each other at Lord Guilford’s home, Wroxton Abbey. A more tolerant audience, I imagine, than this will be.’
First Night Page 2