Warrender’s arrogant eyebrows jerked up and he said drily, ‘Is that all the explanation I get?’
‘I’m afraid — ’ began Julian.
But Torelli said, ‘No, of course not. They’re in love. Can’t you see that for yourself, Oscar? They went through more than the usual degrees of idiocy before finding it out, though. And if you want to know even more about it than that, you had better ask your Anthea.’
‘Anthea?’ Warrender looked mystified. ‘What does Anthea know about it?’
‘Nothing about this particular case,’ replied Torelli. ‘But a great deal about the general difficulties of falling in love with a conductor, I imagine. Now take Julian with you and see he has some lunch and rests for the afternoon. I shall do the same for Nicola. And no one — I mean no one — is even to think about anything but the opera now until the final curtain falls tonight. Come, children.’
They came. Even Oscar Warrender accepted his instructions, though with a slightly amused air. Nicola and Julian could do no more than exchange a glance and a handclasp before they separated. But with that they said enough.
In the car there was silence at first. Then Nicola simply said, ‘Thank you. Darling, darling Gina, thank you.’
‘All right, child.’ Torelli patted her cheek sharply. ‘I quite enjoyed it, to tell the truth. But now I’m going to forget all about you.’
And with magnificent thoroughness she did.
As soon as they reached home she went to her own room, while Nicola was left to have lunch by herself, served by a silent, absorbed Lisette. Then her uncle came to her and said, just as though there had been no crisis that morning,
‘Your aunt says you are not to work this afternoon. You are to go home now, and go to bed and sleep.’ Torelli held no brief for people who could not fall asleep to order, since this was something she could do herself. ‘She doesn’t want you backstage before the performance for any purpose at all. Just join your parents and come to the Opera House. I’ll see you in the box tonight.’
‘Very well, Uncle,’ said Nicola, as she would have said to anything at all which Gina asked of her at that moment. And in perfect obedience she went home and did exactly as she had been told, even to falling asleep the moment her head touched the pillow.
She was so utterly exhausted both physically and emotionally that she slept deeply. But she woke to the most glorious sense of wellbeing she had ever experienced. The sunshine which streamed into her room was late afternoon sunshine. But the inner sense of being at the beginning of everything wonderful was like opening her eyes on the morning of the world.
‘Julian!’ she said aloud on a note of utter happiness. And then with a little laugh of amused tenderness, ‘Gina! — she’s unique.’
While she bathed and dressed and consumed tea and toast with childlike appetite, she could hardly keep from singing. Indeed, she did indulge in a few happy trills. But her standards had risen during her months with Torelli, and after a while she laughed and abandoned that form of expression.
She wished she had had a new dress for the occasion. But perhaps it hardly mattered. Certainly when her mother saw her she exclaimed, ‘Darling, what a wonderfully becoming dress! I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so nice.’
‘Nonsense. She always looks nice,’ declared her partial father. ‘Though I’m bound to say there’s something special about you this evening, Nic. What is it?’
‘Oh, just — I’m happy, I guess.’ She laughed and coloured slightly, which made her father glance at her a second time. But her mother merely said,
‘Did you and Gina have a nice quiet day together?’
‘That doesn’t quite describe it, Mother,’ Nicola felt bound to admit. ‘But it was — satisfactory.’
‘I’m so glad,’ said her mother kindly. ‘I don’t think I could deal with temperamental people myself. But obviously you have a special knack with them, dear.’ Nicola said modestly that perhaps she had. And then they left for the opera.
For the rest of her life Nicola never went to Covent Garden without a breath of the magic and wonder of that night returning to her. The glitter of the great chandelier on the stairs, the white and gold and crimson of the auditorium, the magnificent sweep of the red and gold curtains — all had their perennial charm. But for her the heart-stopping moment was when, to the sound of warm applause, Julian came into the orchestra pit as the lights were dimming.
He bowed briefly to the audience and cast one quick glance up at the box where Nicola was sitting. In the half-light it was unlikely that he actually saw her. But at least he knew she was there, and somehow she felt that there passed between them an indefinable beam of awareness, stronger than sight or sound or touch. It was on that utter security that he could rely as he gave all the rest of himself to the performance.
At first it was difficult for Nicola to judge impartially. She thought Julian wonderful and that was all there was to it. But as the evening went on and a subtle sense of thrilling discovery began to pervade the house, her critical faculties took over even from her deeply committed affections.
Whatever she had felt for him as a man — if she had been totally indifferent to him — she would still have almost had to love him for the spell he wove that night. With a sure, strong and loving hand he gathered his forces, supported them, deployed them, persuaded them and finally guided them to that inspired level of perfection which reaches just a fraction beyond the full extent of mere mortal attainment.
‘It was heavenly,’ declared Mrs. Denby at the end. And to her great gratification her brother-in-law said,
‘No word could be more exactly chosen.’
Nicola was not listening to either of them. She was standing at the front of the box, flushed, bright-eyed, clapping and cheering with the best of them. Torelli graciously kissed her hand in the direction of the family box and then Julian looked up and smiled. And Nicola fell silent and just stood there, her hands clasped against her, and smiled back at him. For just one moment, in all that crowded, cheering house, for each of them there was only the other. Then the curtains swept together again and her Uncle Peter was saying,
‘I think that’s about the lot. We’d better make our way round backstage.’
They did so — to find that the atmosphere backstage was electric. What some of the audience had gathered the artists and critics knew by instinct and experience. A great new operatic conductor had arrived. And if Nicola had supposed that she would have a quiet word with Julian in his dressing-room she was greatly mistaken.
The dressing-room was besieged by eager admirers, who were pushed out only with the greatest difficulty even when he insisted that he must change. So, controlling her disappointment, Nicola accompanied her parents and her uncle to Torelli’s dressing-room, where they were received with the utmost warmth and good humour. For Torelli, who had insisted on having Julian to please herself, was now accepting as her right the praise heaped on her for her splendid judgment in picking him out from the beginning as potentially a second Oscar Warrender.
‘Be patient, child,’ she whispered with singular understanding, as she kissed Nicola. ‘I’ll see you have your turn. Julian will be joining us for supper. You shall have him to yourself at some point or other.’
‘Thank you,’ whispered Nicola, with complete faith in her aunt’s power to arrange anything. But at that moment there was a knock at the door and Julian himself came in.
Fresh congratulations broke out on all sides, in the midst of which he quietly possessed himself of Nicola’s hand and held it while he answered the compliments and questions showered upon him.
‘It was a wonderful evening,’ Mrs. Denby told him kindly.
‘It’s a wonderful work, Mrs. Denby,’ he replied, smiling upon her with special brilliance because she was her daughter’s mother.
‘Yes, of course! The music, anyway.’ Mrs. Denby knew she was on safe ground with Mozart. ‘Though of course the story is very improbable, even for an opera, isn’t it?�
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‘What is improbable about it?’ inquired her sister-in-law without turning from the mirror, where she was sitting, taking off her make-up.
‘Well — ’ Mrs. Denby gazed dubiously at Torelli’s back.
She had really been thinking about the improbability of ever meeting anyone like the Queen of the Night, but she abandoned all thought of saying so and groped for something less controversial. ‘The way the young man becomes involved, for instance. Men don’t just fall in love with the picture of a girl. They really don’t.’
‘Oh, Mrs. Denby, I’m afraid they really do.’ Julian Evett suddenly laughed with the utmost gaiety. ‘They do, even to this very day.’
But before Mrs. Denby could ask what he meant by that, Dermot Deane put his head round the door and asked, ‘Anyone want a lift to the Gloria?’
‘Yes, Dermot,’ Torelli answered swiftly. ‘Take Dr. and Mrs. Denby, will you. We’ll follow in a few minutes.’
She hustled her brother and sister-in-law out with kindly firmness and then turned to the remaining three. ‘Julian, you take Nicola. Peter — ’
‘Wait,’ said Julian, and for once even Torelli paused. He came slowly over to her and took both her hands in his, while she watched him with that wonderful, half startled expression which she sometimes used with such effect on the stage.
‘What do I say to you, incomparable Gina Torelli? — except that I have to thank you for everything which matters most to me.’
‘Don’t exaggerate.’ Her voice was suddenly husky, though full and thrilling still. ‘It’s unbecoming in an artist, and anyway, you make me want to cry.’
‘No, you mustn’t cry.’ Smiling, he leant forward and kissed her. ‘Thank you for Nicola, without whom I should be only half a man, and thank you for giving me the chance tonight to open the door to a great career.’
‘Peter, have you got a handkerchief?’ She held out her hand with an indescribably telling gesture, but it was Nicola who came to her, to kiss her tenderly and offer a handkerchief.
‘Don’t cry, darling Gina.’ She smiled across Gina’s dark bent head in complete understanding at Julian, for it was a wonderfully effective scene and almost entirely genuine. ‘If we make you cry Uncle Peter will be cross with us.’
‘It doesn’t matter so much after a performance,’ said her uncle in his matter-of-fact way. But his glance held affection as well as amusement.
‘I’m all right now.’ With her usual perfect timing, Torelli raised her head then and smiled faintly at them. ‘Go now, children, and if you take longer to reach the Gloria than we do, no one will ask questions.’
Then she kissed them both and half pushed them from the room, turning then to say almost impatiently to her husband, ‘Happiness is quite exhausting sometimes!’
In the now deserted corridor Julian and Nicola kissed each other, silently but in a way that said everything they needed to say. Then they went down to the stage door, where the patient crowds were waiting.
There was a great burst of cheering as Julian appeared in the doorway, and he looked almost startled for a moment. Then he smiled and submitted to the necessity of signing the inevitable autographs. As he stood there someone said feelingly, ‘The greatest night of your life, I should think!’
‘Yes,’ he said, and he raised his head and smiled at the girl beside him. ‘The greatest night of my life. Wish us both luck.’ And taking Nicola by the arm, he shouldered his way through the crowd to his car.
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The Curtain Rises (Warrender Saga Book 4) Page 17
