Music of the Heart (Warrender Saga Book 6)

by Mary Burchell

  ‘Anyway, it shouldn’t take long to dispose of her. Here she comes,’ said Quentin Bannister.

  And, as he turned to go back to his seat near the front of the theatre, a thin, dark-haired girl came on to the empty stage. She was pale and nothing much to look at, and she was really rather shabbily dressed, with what looked like a dark scarf hung awkwardly over her arm.

  Apparently she had some difficulty in understanding English, because when Oscar Warrender was speaking to her she twice said, ‘Please?’ in a foreign sort of way, and he had to repeat himself.

  The pianist started the familiar opening phrases leading to Anya’s monologue, and the girl took what now could be seen to be a shawl from her arm and flung it round her thin shoulders. She drew it about her, glanced round like a half-frightened animal finding itself in a strange place, and began to sing. Half to herself at first and then, as the passion of her misery and loneliness grew upon her, the tones of her truly remarkable voice warmed and darkened.

  It was difficult to say at which point she ceased singing just as Anya. One only knew presently that she was singing for all the people of the world who had been torn from their proper moorings and cast upon the troubled waters of an alien existence. She was homesick longing personified. And the fact that she was not specially attractive made her all the more heartbreaking.

  Gail felt her throat tighten unbearably. And it was not just fear and anxiety which drew a band round it. At the end, she forced herself to glance at her teacher, and for the first time since she had known that dignified and self-controlled woman, she saw two tears tremble on her lashes.

  ‘She is wonderful,’ Gail said simply.

  ‘She has an impossibly strong foreign accent,’ retorted Madame Marburger, as though defensively.

  ‘What matter? Anya is, above all things, an alien — a foreigner in a foreign land.’

  Madame Marburger said nothing to that, and Gail turned back to the stage to see that the baritone had been recalled, and that Warrender was asking them to do the big ‘showdown’ scene, as Gail always called it to herself. The scene where Anya discovered that the man for whom she had torn herself from home and country was determined to desert her.

  For Gail this was always the most difficult scene of all, for it called for much more than pathos and appeal. In her heart, she sometimes thought, ‘I don’t know what I would do in such circumstances. I just don’t know.’

  But the Polish girl knew all right.

  At first she was quite quiet, as though unable to make herself understand what he was saying to her. Then, when the terrible truth could be held off no longer, she began to twist her thin, rather red hands, as she broke into awkward, heartbreaking appeal. Finally, even her desperate dignity dropped from her and she turned on him, like an animal who knew that the trap had finally closed, and there poured from her a stream of rage and anguish and despair that stopped one’s heart.

  They were exactly the same notes that Gail herself had sung again and again — appealingly and with great pathos — but they sounded like something quite different now. They were not strictly as well sung, but they stabbed to the very centre of one’s consciousness.

  Quietly and as though she could not help herself, Gail rose and went silently down the gangway until she could see the faces of the men who were sitting there watching the Polish girl. There was really only one face she wanted to see. Later would be soon enough to know what Oscar Warrender and Quentin Bannister thought. Just now only Marc’s reaction mattered.

  And then she caught sight of him. His face was pale and strained, his wide, fascinated gaze fixed on the Polish girl with almost agonized intensity. There was simply no doubt about it. He was watching Anya as he had visualized her.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘THANK you very much,’ Gail heard Oscar Warrender say to the Polish girl, who stood there now on the bare stage looking as though she scarcely knew where she was. With a slight start Gail also seemed to come out of a sort of trance, and hastily returned to her seat at the back of the theatre.

  As she sank down again beside her singing teacher, Madame Marburger said softly but urgently, ‘Stay where you are. If Mr. Warrender doesn’t notice us, we might manage to hear —’

  She left the sentence uncompleted, and Gail realized that Oscar Warrender was speaking to the Polish girl again, this time in German, which she evidently understood much better than English. She came forward to the edge of the stage to answer him and for the first time a smile passed over her thin face.

  ‘He is telling her they may want to hear her again tomorrow,’ Madame Marburger translated in a whisper, though Gail’s German was good enough for her to follow fairly easily. ‘But he’s sending her away now. He wants her out of the way, I suppose, while they discuss this new development.’

  Her words were a tacit admission that the unexpected appearance of this newcomer had altered Gail’s prospects drastically. They had come that afternoon expecting to hear that the part was Gail’s. But the fact that Madame Marburger took it for granted there would be further discussion showed how good she considered the new girl to be.

  If she expected any protest from Gail, none was forthcoming. It was from Quentin Bannister that the protest came, and then only when the Polish girl had left the stage. But it was voiced so clearly and emphatically that both Gail and Madame Marburger heard every word of it in the back row.

  ‘Do we really have to go through the motions of hearing her a second time?’ he said, with an irritated little laugh, calculated to minimize the effect of the girl’s performance. ‘We had already made up our minds. We only auditioned her out of courtesy.’

  ‘On the contrary, we auditioned her because we wanted to hear what she could do with the part,’ retorted Oscar Warrender disagreeably.

  ‘Well, in my view, she is much too heavy,’ stated the older Bannister firmly. ‘She’s not my idea of Anya at all.’

  ‘The point is — is she Marc’s idea of Anya?’ replied the conductor. ‘How about it, Marc?’

  Gail bent her head and stared at her hands which were tightly clasped in her lap, and it seemed to her that what was really just a moment’s pause dragged on for minutes. Then she heard Marc’s voice, a trifle thick and hoarse, say, ‘We had virtually cast the part already. My father is right. I don’t see how we could take it away from Gail Rostall now.’

  On a sudden impulse, Gail gripped her teachers arm and whispered fiercely, ‘There’s a side door. Let’s slip out. We can’t listen to any more. Please — please —’

  They rose silently and, with no more than a slight click of the bar which held the door, they were out in the street.

  ‘We can’t just run away,’ Madame Marburger protested, once they were outside. ‘We have been specifically summoned to a second audition.’

  ‘We’ll walk around and then go in by the front entrance in a few minutes’ time.’ Gail looked so pale and determined that there was no gainsaying her. ‘We can apologize for being a little late if anyone says anything. But I don’t think they will. They — they have other things to think about.’

  ‘Mr. Bannister knows we were already there.’

  ‘Oh, he doesn’t matter!’ Gail dismissed him ungratefully and rather disrespectfully.

  They walked up and down for a few minutes. Then they went into the theatre by way of the shabby front entrance. And there, in what had once been the vestibule, they found Henry Paulton examining some flyblown notices.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘There seems to be quite a discussion going on in there. I thought I’d better make myself scarce, even though we’re running a bit over time.’

  ‘We thought we’d better wait too.’ Gail smiled and spoke quite calmly. ‘We were at the back of the auditorium, as a matter of fact. But we slipped out and decided to make another entrance.’

  ‘What happened?’ Henry Paulton looked at her curiously.

  ‘They auditioned a Polish girl for Anya, and she was simply stunning,’ Gail stated without
hesitation. ‘Frankly, I don’t think I have much chance of the role now.’

  ‘You can’t mean it!’ His protest was so obviously genuine that it warmed her heart a little. ‘Why, you’re just about as good as it’s possible to be,’ he asserted confidently. ‘In what way could this girl possibly be better? Who is she, anyway? What’s her name?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Gail, answering the last question first.

  ‘I think Oscar Warrender called her something like “Miss Spolianska!”,’ put in Madame Marburger.

  ‘Oh?’ Henry Paulton frowned thoughtfully. ‘Yes — yes — Greta Spolianska. No, that’s not the name. Erna! Erna Spolianska. She’s half German and half Polish. I heard about her when I was in Germany last year. She wasn’t described to me as the absolute tops. Just a good sound singer with a possible future.’

  ‘Well, she’s a good, sound singer with a probable present, if you ask me.’ Gail managed to laugh faintly. ‘She might not be right for everything. But she just is Anya.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe. From all accounts, she isn’t in the least like you.’

  ‘Oh, no! Not in the least. She plays it quite differently. But she — she tears at your heart-strings. I know that’s a silly, over-worked phrase, but it applies in this case. She gives a performance that hurts.’

  ‘Well — I suppose — she might,’ said Henry Paulton slowly. ‘I remember now. Someone told me she was born in a camp for displaced persons.’

  ‘Ah —’ said Elsa Marburger softly. And just then a door into the auditorium was thrust open and Quentin Bannister came out, blinking slightly in the sudden sunlight.

  ‘Oh, there you are!’ he exclaimed irritably. ‘Why are you hanging about here? You were supposed to be in the theatre a quarter of an hour ago.’

  ‘We thought,’ replied Madame Marburger smoothly, ‘that it was more seemly for us to make ourselves scarce while you were all discussing Miss Spolianska.’ And no one could have guessed from her polite explanation that, but for Gail, she would have done her best to stay and hear the vital discussion.

  ‘Well —’ began Quentin Bannnister. ‘Well, that was very discreet and proper, I’m sure. But the discussion is over. We all want to hear Gail and Henry again, as was originally intended.’

  ‘You — you want to hear me again?’ stammered Gail, her precarious calm deserting her and her anxiety showing in face and voice.

  ‘But of course.’ Quentin Bannister put his hand round her arm and said reassuringly, ‘Don’t worry, my dear child. Effective though that girl was, it’s you who will be getting the part.’

  For a moment hope flared up in her heart.

  ‘How do you know?’ she whispered urgently. ‘Mr. Warrender said you all wanted to hear her again tomorrow.’

  ‘If we do give her a second hearing, instead of phoning to say the role has already been cast, we should only be going through the necessary motions,’ he declared airily. ‘Both Marc and I are quite decided —’

  ‘Marc!’ she interrupted almost violently. ‘Marc wants me for Anya?’

  ‘Of course, of course. Marc has very good judgment, when it comes to the point,’ said Marc’s father generously.

  ‘Did he say he wanted me?’

  ‘Certainly he said so. You don’t have to be afraid of Marc.’

  ‘I’m not afraid of Marc,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘I’m afraid for him.’

  Quentin Bannister glanced at her quickly. But if he had any doubts on that he stifled them.

  ‘Marc feels — exactly as I do — that the part was virtually yours already. It was a mistake even to hear anyone else at this point. It only confuses the issue about the proper interpretation of the role. You had been as good as told that the part was yours. As Marc said, it would be grossly unfair to you, as well as detrimental to the performance, to make a change now.’

  ‘And Mr. Warrender? What did Oscar Warrender say?’

  ‘My dear —’ Quentin Bannister made a humorous little grimace of protest — ‘it’s not my business to report the exact exchange of opinions to you. And it’s certainly not your business to ask. Come along now and let us hear you and Henry again. What you will finally be told will be the majority opinion. And that’s all that concerns you.’

  So she went back into the theatre, where she and Henry Paulton went through a good deal of their part again. And presently she was called on to do the famous scene with the baritone. The one in which Erna Spolianska had been so overwhelming.

  Gail did her very best. She determinedly blanked off that part of her mind which kept on recalling the way Marc had looked when he had been listening to the Polish girl. And because she was, in actual fact, afraid that her dearest wish might even now be snatched away from her, she did give an extraordinarily moving impression of someone fighting desperately to retain all that she held most dear.

  It was the best she had ever done in this scene, she knew. But, even so, it seemed to her that her performance must be a pale thing in comparison with the Polish girl’s riveting presentation of the part. And at the end she was limp and distressed.

  Then Marc smiled up at her, which suddenly made her want to cry. And Quentin Bannister leaned forward and said something in a smiling undertone to Warrender.

  He received no answering smile. Warrender merely listened and then turned to Marc. There was a vigorous, low-toned conversation between the two, ending with a shrug on the conductor’s part. Then Warrender stood up and addressed Gail and the baritone.

  ‘You will be hearing from us — both of you — by letter,’ he said. And the final audition was over.

  ‘Really, they might have given us some sort of hint,’ the baritone remarked to Gail with an angry little laugh when they were in the wings again. ‘I don’t know why they need to keep us on tenterhooks any longer. Gives them a feeling of power, I suspect. Warrender particularly.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s intentional,’ said Gail wearily. ‘I think there is genuinely a sharp division of opinion. About me — not you.’

  ‘You’re too modest,’ declared the baritone, but she thought he found her explanation acceptable. ‘Well, I suppose we shall have to chew our finger-ends a little longer.’

  But it seemed that Marc was determined that Gail at least should not be left any longer in agonizing doubt. He caught up with her just as she was going into her dressing-room, and before Madame Marburger had come round to join her.

  ‘It’s all right, Gail dear,’ he said. ‘I don’t intend to have you harrowed any more. The part is yours.’

  ‘You shouldn’t tell me!’ Suddenly there were tears in her eyes. ‘You can’t really know. Anything could happen.’

  ‘It’s my opera, isn’t it?’ He spoke almost defensively.

  ‘Yes, but —’ she stopped. And then she said doggedly, ‘That Polish girl was marvellous. Don’t you think so?’

  ‘Yes. But I think you’re marvellous too,’ he replied lightly. And then Madame Marburger came into sight at the end of the corridor, and Marc whispered quickly, ‘Don’t tell anyone else yet, though. It’s just between you and me.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Gail promised, and he was gone.

  ‘I have an appointment, Gail, and I must leave you now,’ her teacher said as she came up. ‘Try not to worry too much. You have done your very best and no one can do more.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Gail said, and she managed to smile almost naturally, because she was so relieved to be left alone and not to have to make conversation any longer.

  The events of the afternoon had followed so quickly and relentlessly upon each other that she had had no time to think of their significance. Still less their implications. But now, left alone, she sat down on one of the hard wooden chairs, leant her elbow on the wide shelf which did duty as a dressing-table, and tried to go slowly and constructively over all that had happened.

  At first there was just a confusion of impressions. But then the one thing which refused to be moved from her consciousness
by anything else was the absolute conviction that Erna Spolianska was better than herself.

  Quentin Bannister might say what he liked. He would in any case! Marc might allow himself to be swayed by the thought that he had already told Gail the part was hers. But she knew — and she was almost certain that Oscar Warrender knew too — that the Polish girl could do something for Marc’s opera which she, Gail, could not possibly do.

  ‘It’s not a question of work or coaching or even sheer devotion to the role,’ Gail told herself. ‘She knows what it’s like to be the eternal exile. And I don’t. Out of her misery and her experience she knows. Out of my good fortune and security I can only pretend. She deserves the part.

  ‘But it’s not only that. Marc deserves to have the very best person for the role. He has written a great role, a role that should go down in musical history. However good I may be — and I am good up to a point — I can only be a splendid copy of the real thing. She is the real thing. And Warrender knows it as well as I do.’

  She wished she could talk to the conductor about it. But he was the last person in the world to brook questions from the wrong quarter. He would just think she was trying to ‘pump’ him about the final result.

  As for the Bannisters, they both considered the matter settled. She winced at the very thought of what Quentin Bannister would say if she suggested that she should waste all the work and effort he had put into training her. And Marc would not thank her either if she assumed a self-sacrificing halo and insisted that she knew what was good for him, better than he knew himself. Yet, if she just let things go on as they were —

  ‘Good lord, I thought everyone along this corridor had gone!’ It was the hard-working pianist who put his head in at that moment. ‘Why are you hanging about in this godforsaken hole?’

  ‘I was just going.’ Gail sprang to her feet and reached for her coat. ‘Has everyone else gone?’

  ‘Everyone except me. And Warrender. He was sorting out his notes a couple of minutes ago. He may have gone too by now. Well, I’m off, and you’d better be off too. The cleaners will be coming any minute. Though what they do here in the name of cleaning I wouldn’t know. The place always looks a mess.’