Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Margaret Kennedy
Dedication
Title Page
Prologue: Sunday Morning
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Letters from the Island
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue: Sunday Evening
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
The History of Vintage
Copyright
About the Book
Elissa Koebel’s memoir is as scandalous and self-absorbed as its writer, but for Hope, it is more than just the latest salacious read. The chapter ‘A Summer in Ireland’ tells of an episode that Hope remembers well, when the younger, beautiful and unconventional Koebel arrived to disrupt a family holiday. But back then, Hope could not guess that her own fascination with Elissa was echoed by her father. Letters from the time reveal yet another side of the story – but which version of the story is the truth?
About the Author
Margaret Kennedy was born in 1896. Her first novel, The Ladies of Lyndon, was published in 1923. Her second novel, The Constant Nymph, became an international bestseller. She then met and married a barrister, David Davies, with whom she had three children. She went on to write a further fifteen novels, to much critical acclaim. She was also a playwright, adapting two of her novels – Escape Me Never and The Constant Nymph – into successful productions. Three different film versions of The Constant Nymph were made, and featured stars of the time such as Ivor Novello and Joan Fontaine; Kennedy subsequently worked in the film industry for a number of years. She also wrote a biography of Jane Austen and a work of literary criticism, The Outlaws of Parnassus. Margaret Kennedy died in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, in 1967.
OTHER NOVELS BY MARGARET KENNEDY
The Ladies of Lyndon
The Constant Nymph
Red Sky at Morning
The Fool of the Family
Return I Dare Not
Together and Apart
The Midas Touch
The Feast
Lucy Carmichael
Troy Chimneys
The Oracles
The Wild Swan
A Night in Cold Harbour
The Forgotten Smile
TO LAURENCE AND BARBARA HAMMOND
PROLOGUE
SUNDAY MORNING
SUNDAY MORNING
1
ELLEN NAPIER came downstairs with a piece of brown paper in her hand. From time to time she paused, for she was trying to remember where it was that she had secreted a particular piece of string which she had taken off a parcel of Parish Magazines.
It was not in the hall drawer, for she had looked, but it might be in the ginger jar on the dining-room mantelpiece. The whole thing would come back to her if she could only remember where she had been when the magazines had arrived. Was it the day before yesterday? What else had she done that day?
She came to a standstill on the half-landing and began methodically to live her life backwards, minute by minute. Yesterday evening, yesterday afternoon, yesterday morning … no magazines or string occurred in any of them. Well then, Friday evening …
Her daughter, who had just come into the hall, looked up at her and laughed.
“You ought to have your portrait painted like that, Mother. You ought to have your portrait painted standing on some stairs, just like that, holding a piece of brown paper. I wish I could paint!”
“What, dear?” said Ellen. “Was Friday the day before yesterday? Which day did we have kedgeree for breakfast?”
“Kedgeree? I wasn’t here….”
“No! That’s all right. I remember. I put it in the top drawer of the lacquer cabinet.”
She came down the rest of the stairs and vanished into the drawing-room.
Hope, who knew the workings of her mother’s mind, reflected:
“Now what … oh, string, probably! But why kedgeree? Because they always have it for breakfast on Saturdays, because they have fish on Fridays, because Maggie is a Catholic….”
She looked up again at the empty staircase and thought of the picture which she would have liked to paint. The idea had been conceived in a sudden rush of affection, of admiration for her mother’s character. For such a portrait there could be no better background than the hall at Cary’s End, which was large and square and lighted by a long north window. The colouring would be a trifle austere, for the walls, the doors and the banisters were all painted white. Twelve broad and leisurely stairs led to the half-landing, where Ellen had stood, and twelve more went up, at right angles, to an upper gallery. In spite of all the dog baskets, gardening scissors, newspapers and walking-sticks which littered the hall, there was a general effect of whiteness, space, and straight lines. The cold, prosaic northern light distributed itself impartially over the whole scene.
But it would not be a cold composition because the central figure would give it warmth. Even in her still pose, as she mused on the landing, she had been full of vitality and purpose. And the piece of brown paper in her hand would provide the final clue, both to character and to composition. It would make a pattern, breaking up the column of her black dress, seen against the whiteness of the walls. It would tell the beholder who she was and what she did: that she was a widow, living in the country, and that she had children and grandchildren to whom she was continually sending parcels.
“As good as bread!” thought Hope, as she went upstairs for her library book. “It would be a great picture, if anybody could bring out just that quality of goodness.”
Ellen had found her piece of string in the top drawer of the lacquer cabinet. She did up her parcel and wrote the address, clearly and firmly, in two places. Then she put it on the hall table in order to remind herself to have it posted on Monday morning.
Straightening herself, she pushed the untidy grey hair out of her eyes. What was the next thing to be done?
“Dick is dead,” she thought.
She looked round the hall with an expression, timid and forlorn, like a woman who has reached an island in a crowded thoroughfare and who pauses, as if afraid of a new plunge into the dangers of the traffic. For a few seconds she was quite at a loss. Then she remembered, took refuge in the next thing. There was a place under the apple trees in the old orchard where the weeds had got very bad. If she did not clear it, Hawkins would, and he would be sure to dig up all the violets which she had planted there last year. Hawkins was much too drastic with that fork of his. But she would forestall him.
It was only in these empty moments, when she had finished some task and could not remember what came next, that her widowhood overpowered her. For Dick had been dead seven years and she had got used to being alone. There was always a great deal to be done, in the house and the garden and the village. After one thing there was sure to be another.
She went upstairs and presently re
appeared with her thick boots on. From the hall drawer she took a pair of leather gloves and from the cloak cupboard a sacking apron and an old black hat. Hope, who was reading by the drawing-room fire, protested:
“Why do you always wear your hats on the very top of your head?”
“Because they make them so small nowadays,” complained Ellen. “I haven’t had a hat for ages that didn’t give me a headache. Which reminds me … do you think I ought to have a new one for Rosamund’s wedding?”
“Of course you must. You’d better let me choose it for you or you’ll be getting ostrich feathers again.”
“I thought ostrich feathers were supposed to have come in again.”
“Not as you wear them. Standing up like a hedge all the way round a high crown. You mustn’t go to Rosamund’s wedding looking like a District Councillor.”
“But I am one. And I sit on D.C. meetings much oftener than I go to weddings. If I get a new hat …”
“I’ll choose one that’ll be right for both,” promised Hope.
Ellen pushed open the long window and disappeared into the foggy November morning. She went up to the potting-shed for a fork and a wheelbarrow. Every twenty minutes or so she went rumbling past the window again, with a load of weeds for the rubbish heap.
And Hope was able to go on reading The Story of My Life by Elissa Koebel, which she had brought down with her to enliven the week-end. It was only just published and she had been longing to get hold of it for two reasons: because it was said to be very scandalous and because it revived an episode in her own past.
Some twenty-five years earlier the Napiers had spent a summer holiday in the North-West of Ireland, sharing a house there with a tribe of aunts, uncles and cousins. It had been a memorable and romantic summer, especially for the children, since the house was really a small castle on an island in the middle of a lough. Their nurseries had been in the old Keep and they had gone to bed up winding turret stairs. It had been like living in a fairy tale. And part of the legend had been Elissa Koebel, who was suddenly of their party, and who was, as they all believed, the greatest singer in the world. She lived, like a witch, in a little cottage on the mainland, and nothing that she did was in the least like anything that anyone else ever did.
When they left Ireland this glamorous being vanished from their lives as suddenly as she had come. But Hope continued secretly to worship her. From time to time she heard stories of Elissa which were all fuel to her flame. As she grew older she realised that certain of her childish impressions might have been, perhaps, a little extravagant. There might be greater singers. But she was still sure that there had never existed a more remarkable woman. That brilliant and tragic progress, the colossal misfortunes, the equally colossal success, the string of world famous lovers, could not belong to anybody but a genius.
Even now, when she thought of these things, Hope could not quite escape from an odd little pang of envy and regret. For as a child she had confidently expected to be just like Elissa when she grew up. She too had meant to be a great woman, ravishingly beautiful, to flout the world and to live a free, adventurous life. She had never asked herself how this was to be managed, and she never knew at what moment the fantastic expectation began to crumble. She had been a stout, plain, uncharming child. She grew into a handsome, practical young woman, prudent in money matters and disliking insecurity of any sort. At twenty-six she married. She had three children. Neither before nor after her marriage had she felt inclined to take a lover. Yet there were still occasions when she felt that her life had been mismanaged in some way, that she ought to have been somebody quite different, that she would have been somebody quite different if only she had tried hard enough.
So that she looked forward to the publication of Elissa’s autobiography with an eager, half-bitter curiosity, scarcely knowing whether she was going to envy or censure the woman who had lived and written so frankly. Of the frankness there was no doubt; the reviewers in the week-end papers had already made that perfectly clear. They could talk of nothing else, though one or two of them had been dispassionate enough to complain also that the translation was poor, and that Elissa, who spoke seven languages, would have been better advised to make a translation of her own. But their criticisms, as a whole, were meek, slightly dazed, as though they needed a little more time to recover from the shock of Elissa’s experiences.
There were no pictures in the book, no portraits of the Diva in her principal roles. Elissa had always refused to be photographed, just as she had never allowed any records to be taken of her voice. It was possible, as one of the critics hinted, that she had been wise. Neither her features nor her voice had the qualities which survive mechanical reproduction. It was a question of the indwelling soul. Both her beauty and her art were articles of faith, to herself, and to her admirers.
But Hope was disappointed to find no pictures. She had wanted to remember exactly how Elissa looked. After hunting in vain through the volume she turned back to the list of chapters at the beginning. A title caught her eye: A Summer in Ireland. She stiffened with excitement.
“It must be about Inishbar,” she thought. “It must be about us!”
She found the place and began to read.
2
Extract from The Story of My Life by Elissa Koebel, translated by Fanny Bartlett, with a foreword by Johann Heinrich.
SPRING found me again in England, very ill and almost penniless. X thought that I was dying. I had been ill in Paris before we started and when we reached London I could scarcely speak. Terrible spasms of shivering shook me. Nothing could keep me warm. X knelt beside me in the train, chafing my hands and begging me to recover. It was a terrible journey. We thought that it would never be over. But at last we had arrived. We descended from the train.
A strange figure I must have looked, tottering down the platform, my long, white cloak wrapped round me like a shroud!
“Why do all the people stare at me so? What is it that they are staring at?”
“They think you are dying, Elissa. Let us drive immediately to a doctor.”
“No. I cannot pay a doctor. I have exactly ten francs. Let us drive to the hotel.”
But in the automobile a frightful fact assailed me. I became galvanised, alert. I recovered my powers of utterance.
“To what hotel,” I demanded, “are you taking me?”
Always, during my previous visits to England I had stayed with friends or, if at an hotel, at the Ritz. It was to the Ritz that we were now going. Poor Noemi had given the direction as a matter of course. I was furious. I loaded them with reproaches.
“Am I for ever to be surrounded by imbeciles?” I shouted. “Can you not understand that I have exactly ten francs? Take me some place where I can die in peace for ten francs.”
“But where, Elissa, where? We have never been in London before.”
X lowered the window and addressed the driver. He could not speak English at all, and I was too ill to help him. Those spasms, that dreadful shivering, had come back. I could only lie in Noemi’s arms, moaning and sobbing:
“Find me a place where I can die in peace for ten francs.”
Need I say that this prayer was not granted? There was no place in London, it seemed, where one could live, much less die, for as little as that.
“Then let us go to the Ritz….”
If one has not enough money to go to a bad hotel one should stay at a good one. I have always found this to be true. We went to the Ritz and we remained there for six weeks, in spite of our poverty; whereas, if we had gone to a cheap pension in a poor quarter of the town they would have thrown us out because we could not pay. My old suite, overlooking the park, was ready for me and already there were flowers from friends who knew that I was coming.
But our troubles were not over. My friends would gladly have died for me, but they were not practical. It was always I who had to think and act. I lost no time.
“We must have money, it seems. That is the first thing. I have still s
ome jewels which we must sell, as soon as we have recovered our luggage.”
“But your agent, Elissa, could you not ask him for an advance?”
I laughed at them.
“We shall see.”
In my despair I was still able to laugh.
That afternoon this same agent, who appeared such a wonderful individual to my poor friends, came to call upon me.
“You will be so good, Mr. Perkins, as to cancel all my London engagements. I cannot sing.”
“But, Madame …”
“I cannot sing.”
“But, Madame …”
“I cannot sing. I cannot sing. I cannot sing.”
It was quite true. I could not. My beautiful voice had left me as the soul leaves the body when it is dead. It was as if I had actually died on that terrible journey. That glorious fountain of music, which was my very life, had ceased to flow. I was convinced that I should never sing again.
There comes a time, I think it is written in the stars for every artist, there comes a moment of chaos, of nothingness. It is winter in the soul. The flowery promise of spring, the rich fruitfulness of summer, appear to have departed for ever. The earth lies frozen, spell-bound, under a sullen mist. The sap is stagnant in the trees. The warm currents of inspiration have ceased to flow.
For nature, which is without memory and without hope, this time is a season of sleep and forgetfulness. The trees, shorn of their leaves, feel no pain and no regret: they have forgotten all past springs and they know nothing of springs to come. But Man is not as wise as the trees. He is not content to lie fallow. He suffers. He remembers. He is impatient for the revival of his powers. He knows that he has ceased to find beauty and significance in the objects which surround him, and yet he still endeavours to create a false spring in the midst of winter, and, knowing it to be false, he despairs. He cries:
“My God! My God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?”
It was to such a valley of desolation that I had now come. The experience was new to me. Heretofore my life had been all summer. In spite of a thousand misfortunes my inner light had never failed me. I could not account for it. I was in despair. In vain did they tell me that I could not sing because I was ill. I knew better. I was ill because I could not sing. My God had forsaken me. In everything that I did there was the same quality of deadness. My life appeared to have no continuity, and no meaning. Nothing could move me. I visited picture galleries. I gazed upon the most glorious masterpieces of Raphael and Titian, and they were no more to me than senseless daubs. The poetry which had so often inspired me had no message of hope—the volume of Goethe or of Dante would fall from my listless hand. Nor could I fly to music as a refuge. That was the worst of all. The noblest Sonatas of Beethoven, the tenderest nocturne of Chopin, were nothing but a noise, a bruhaha, exasperating to my nerves.
A Long Time Ago Page 1