‘Then you don’t know that there may be two big performances for Laurence?’ Natalie gave a rather unhappy little laugh and, as Mrs Pallerton looked inquiring, said, ‘Father isn’t well enough to sing Otello tomorrow night, and it’s proposed that they should repeat the Carmen instead.’
‘Oh, my dear, how terribly disappointing for your father!’
Natalie felt almost tearfully grateful that her father’s disappointment should be mentioned before Laurence’s big chance, and she said generously in return,
‘It’s a tremendous thing for Laurence, of course. He’ll be the hero of the occasion.’
‘It isn’t so important for him,’ was the unexpected reply.
‘Oh, it is, you know!’ Natalie found herself springing suddenly to Laurence’s defence. ‘After all, he’s the one who has to prove himself. Father’s position has been secure for very many years.’
‘The young always have time on their side,’ replied Mrs Pallerton impatiently. ‘When you’re climbing the mountain you can afford to slip back an occasional step, but when you’re at the summit the slightest touch to your security makes your heart quake.’
‘How well you understand!’ Natalie’s glance was both grateful and curious. ‘I would have expected all your sympathy to be for your own nephew and his great chance.’
‘I have every sympathy for him,’ Mrs Pallerton insisted. ‘He’s a dear boy and wonderfully gifted, and I hope with all my heart that he also will be at the top one day. But if you want my candid opinion, Natalie, there will never be another tenor like your father.’
‘You really think so?’
‘Of course. It’s partly that he was the legendary figure of my operatic youth, and all my generation were a bit in love with him, I suppose.’ She laughed reminiscently. ‘But it isn’t only that. It was his performance I came to hear, quite as much as dear Laurence’s.’
‘“Dear Laurence’s” performance is stunning too,’ Natalie assured her. ‘But do you mind if I tell my father what you’ve just said? It lifted my heart to hear you speak so of him, and I think it would cheer him too.’
‘It would be more likely to amuse him,’ returned Mrs Pallerton realistically. ‘I don’t think he was in any doubt of the way he was regarded by the girls of my youth. But if you think he’ll like to be reminded of it—tell him, by all means. I owe him a great deal more than a cheering laugh for all the joy he gave me. So you’ve heard Laurence’s performance already? The dress rehearsal, I take it?’
‘Yes. Both he and Minna Kolney are thrilling. I was hoping to hear the performance too——’ suddenly, she was overwhelmed by the frustration and misery of realising there was no question of it now.
‘Perhaps there might still be a chance?’ Mrs Pallerton glanced at her sympathetically.
‘No.’ Natalie shook her head, and the tight, aching feeling in her throat was almost more than she could bear. For now, of course, the way would be wide open for Minna. They would share not only one triumph together, but two. They would be depending on each other for one of the greatest occasions of their lives. How could that do anything but draw them closer together? And meanwhile she would be hovering in and out of a sickroom where she would not be desperately needed, but where her presence would be—legitimately—expected.
Presently Mrs Pallerton left her to go to her own room, and just as Natalie was deciding she might as well go upstairs herself, Laurence came in with an air of looking for someone, and came straight across to her.
‘Drury said I might find you here,’ he said. ‘Natalie, I’m truly sorry about what’s happened, whatever it may mean for me personally. Your father isn’t seriously ill, I hope?’
‘No, just a heavy bronchial cold, which makes it quite impossible for him to sing. He’s in bed now, and will probably have to stay there for some days.’
‘Then in that case’—his face brightened, inexcusably she thought—‘you’ll be able to come tonight?’
It seemed to her, in her anguish and disappointment, that he could hardly have said anything more insensitive.
‘Of course I can’t come,’ she retorted coldly. ‘I couldn’t leave him at such a time.’
‘But you’ve just said he isn’t seriously ill!’
‘He doesn’t have to be dying, to keep me away from an operatic performance,’ she said almost savagely. ‘Good heavens, I’ve heard enough of them in my life!’
‘What about tomorrow night?’ He seemed determined to press on her raw nerves. ‘He can’t be so selfish as to——’
‘He is not selfish!’
‘Well, it seems to me——’
‘You do realise you’re speaking of the man to whom you owe your big chance, don’t you? If he hadn’t stepped down——’
‘Stepped down!’ He flushed and looked more angry than she had ever seen him look, ‘No one needs to step down for me.’
‘Well, not stepped down exactly.’ She hastily corrected her unfortunate misstatement. ‘But it was he who had the generosity to suggest the Carmen might be repeated.’
‘Generosity be damned!’ His temper had run away with him now. ‘There wasn’t another thing Warrender could do, and confoundedly glad he was to have me on the spot, if you want the truth.’
‘I don’t particularly want your version of the truth,’ she replied very coolly. ‘But it’s nice to know you regard yourself as indispensable. It’s always a help when one is—climbing.’
She turned away and would have left him at that, but he caught her by the arm and jerked her round to face him with such force that she actually staggered.
‘What did that nasty little crack mean?’ he demanded.
‘There was no “nasty little”——’
‘Oh yes, there was. You were trying to imply that in some way I was climbing on your father’s shoulders, weren’t you?’
‘I was not doing anything of the sort! And let go of my arm.’
‘Not until you explain what you said.’
She was frightened then. Not only because he looked rather as he had looked on the stage just before he stabbed Carmen, but even more because she could not imagine how she had got herself into this predicament, and still less how she could get out of it.
‘Let me go!’ She set her teeth and, when she found she could not wrench herself away, she raised her other hand and gave him a resounding slap on his cheek.
He did let her go then, in sheer astonishment. And at the same time Minna’s amused voice said behind them, ‘Is Natalie standing in for a last-act rehearsal?’
They turned as one to face her and found her laughing, but in a good-humoured way which seemed to underline Natalie’s undignified display of temper.
‘Come, Larry,’ Minna took him by the arm in a possessive sort of way, ‘it’s mean to tease her. Both she and her father must be hating you like hell at the moment. But you can afford to be generous.’
He made as though to say something else to Natalie, though whether in anger or conciliation she could not tell, for she had already turned her back on him so that he—and Minna—should not see that her eyes were full of angry, humiliated tears.
After a moment she heard them go away together, and she was left standing there in the deserted restaurant, her pride in pieces and her world in ruins.
*
During that day and the next Natalie isolated herself as much as possible from the operatic world and concentrated on nursing her father. But even so she could not avoid some echoes of the sensation which those two performances of Carmen evoked. There was no doubt that they had set both Minna Kolney and Laurence Morven well on the way to top stardom, and so remarkable was their achievement that most of the newspapers made no more than a passing reference to the fact that Lindley Harding had been too indisposed to sing Otello.
‘Who wants an old tenor when a new one is rising?’ Natalie’s father said bitterly, and she realised it was the first time she had heard him apply the word ‘old’ to himself in anything but the most
humorous fashion.
He was not at all easy to deal with during the weeks which followed what he determinedly referred to as ‘the Paris fiasco’. Even when he was well enough to travel and they were back again in the familiar comfort of their own home, he remained depressed and unreasonable. Where he had once made almost too light of his age—and certainly lopped a few useful years off it—he now laid gloomy emphasis on it, and tended to see slights where none were intended.
Few of his most intimate friends happened to be available at this time. The Bannisters had gone to the Edinburgh Festival, and the Warrenders had gone almost straight from Paris to the States. As indeed had Laurence Morven—and, Natalie greatly feared, Minna Kolney too. Any suggestions she offered that they should themselves go on holiday her father dismissed out of hand, saying that he had had enough of being ill in foreign hotels. And when she firmly pointed out that he was now in his usual excellent health, he merely replied that at his age anything could happen.
‘You must sometimes want to hit him,’ Charles Drury observed one morning, sympathetically.
But Natalie, remembering with humiliation and remorse how she actually had hit someone else in anger, hastily declared that this was not her natural reaction.
‘I just wish someone would turn up who would direct his thoughts into more pleasing channels, though,’ she admitted with a sigh.
And then, that afternoon, someone did turn up. Mrs Pallerton called to consult Natalie about some detail connected with Wendy’s approaching wedding, and Natalie insisted on taking her in to see her father.
At first he was in one of his stately moods—the great man in virtual retirement, forgotten by the world. But when Mrs Pallerton began to talk of his earlier triumphs, with a really remarkable degree of detailed recollection, he became more animated than Natalie had seen him since his illness, and capped her stories with one of two of his own which were fresh even to his daughter.
‘A very charming woman,’ he said afterwards to Natalie. ‘Fancy her remembering the dress your mother wore after that Don Carlos performance. I’d forgotten it myself until she described it, and then I even remembered going with her to buy it. She had a wonderful clothes sense, your mother.’ And though he sighed, he smiled a little too and said, ‘Ask Mrs Pallerton again. I like her. Did you say she was Laurence Morven’s aunt?’
‘Yes—by marriage.’
‘Ah, well, I think we might call that extenuating circumstances,’ said her father, and she realised it was a long time since he had made that sort of joke.
After that Mrs Pallerton came fairly often, and once she even brought Wendy with her. It was from Wendy that Natalie learned of Laurence’s whereabouts, because somehow it was easier to ask her casual questions than to seek information from Mrs Pallerton in front of her father.
‘He had some engagements in the States after the Paris affair, I think,’ Wendy explained, ‘but now he’s back home in Canada, having something of a holiday.’
‘Any suggestion of further Covent Garden appearances?’
‘I don’t know about that. But he’s coming over for the wedding,’ Wendy volunteered absently, with most of her attention on the rival merits of bridal headdresses.
‘Is he?’ Natalie’s tone was so sharp and eager that her companion looked up.
‘Yes. Do you mind?’
‘Mind? No, of course not. Why should I mind?’ Natalie contrived to laugh on a perfectly natural note, though she was in fact bewilderedly trying to decide if she were appalled or enraptured at the thought of seeing him again, and in such intimate circumstances.
‘You sounded rather put out, somehow,’ Wendy told her. ‘And I think Mother had some ideas that you and he had words over the business in Paris.’
‘Not at all,’ said Natalie, stiffly and untruthfully.
‘Oh, well, I suppose it would be natural to feel some sort of resentment,’ Wendy observed broad-mindedly. ‘It must have been hard on your father to have to cancel, and then see Laurence make such a triumph. I like your father,’ she added, inconsequentially. ‘He’s rather a knockout even now, isn’t he? I should think thirty years ago he had lots of girls wanting to throw their caps over the windmill for him—as I’m sure he would express it.’
Natalie laughed, rather glad to have the subject changed from one tenor to the other.
‘He was very attractive, according to your mother—and I can well believe it. Though I suppose it’s always difficult to view one’s father in quite those terms.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Wendy retorted. ‘I’m sure my father was attractive enough, judging from photographs. But he was a bit of a bounder too, I believe,’ she added cheerfully. ‘He died when I was quite young, but I gather that was about the most useful thing he ever did. Mother is discretion itself, of course, and hardly ever mentions him, but I have two gossipy aunts who filled in the gaps very eloquently.’
‘Is Laurence on your father’s side?’ Natalie simply could not help asking.
‘Yes, but these things don’t necessarily run in families, you know.’ Wendy laughed lightheartedly. ‘Why do you ask? Do you think Laurence has something of a wandering eye?’
‘I have no idea. How should I?’ Natalie said quickly.
‘Well, I suppose since you live in this world you might see something of what goes on.’ Wendy turned her attention once more to the more interesting matter of bridal headdresses. ‘There was a very glamorous mezzo after him, wasn’t there?’ she said absently. ‘The girl who sang Carmen in those Paris productions. My! that’s a rôle to give you opportunities if you have designs on the tenor!’
Natalie found herself completely wordless on this subject, and almost immediately Wendy ran on, ‘Speaking of designs, I definitely think this is the one.’ And she planted a firm forefinger on the illustration of her choice.
‘It would suit you beautifully,’ Natalie said with an effort, ‘and go marvellously with your dress.’
‘And there’s no doubt about that being the one for my almost-too-attractive bridesmaid.’ Wendy good-humouredly indicated another design. ‘That slightly Tudor look requires your heart-shaped type of face. Did I tell you that Laurence may be best man?’
‘No! I thought—I thought you said it was to be Peter’s brother.’
‘It was, but his firm have suddenly offered him a super assignment in South America, and it means his going almost right away. It’s too good a chance for him to turn down—the kind of thing he’s been hoping for for years. So, when we heard Laurence was coming over for the wedding after all, we thought it would be rather chic to have the family celebrity stand in. Don’t you think it’s a good idea?’
‘Yes,’ said Natalie slowly. ‘I think it’s a wonderful idea.’
‘You won’t mind being specially nice to him, even if you did have some sort of brush with him in Paris, will you?’ Wendy said. ‘As the one and only bridesmaid you’ll be paired off most of the time with the best man.’
‘I shan’t mind,’ replied Natalie, swallowing hard. ‘So long as he doesn’t.’
‘Why should he mind?’ Wendy wanted to know.
‘Well—I slapped his face last time we met,’ said Natalie with an effort.
‘Good for you! I expect he deserved it,’ Wendy said in a shamelessly prejudiced manner. ‘Lots of men do, and tenors more than most, I should imagine. Anyway, I expect he’s forgotten all about it by now.’
‘Oh, no, he couldn’t do that,’ exclaimed Natalie, who felt the occasion was written in letters of fire on her own memory.
‘Well then, you must just manage to kiss and make up,’ declared Wendy airily. ‘There’s nothing like a wedding for providing opportunities for kissing. I shouldn’t worry about it if I were you, Nat.’
And Natalie saw Wendy really would not, and marvelled at the way some people seemed to sail through life without any emotional complications.
All the same, from that moment her own life seemed to take on a much more peaceful and cheering quality.
For one thing, the improvement in her father’s spirits made everything so much easier. When she heard him begin regular practice again she knew that time—and Mrs Pallerton—had done their work. He no longer gave his excellent performance of the great artist weary of the world; on the contrary, he went out into society once more and enjoyed himself—for he was a sociable man—and when Dermot Deane telephoned about some dates for the following spring, he not only accepted them, but asked if there were anything of special interest coming up before then.
‘Could be,’ said his manager cautiously. ‘Have you seen Warrender since he came back from the States?—You haven’t? Well, I think he has something he wants to discuss with you. I’ll leave it to him to explain.’
Later that same afternoon Anthea telephoned and asked both Natalie and her father to dinner.
‘How is he, Natalie?’ she asked affectionately.
‘Absolutely himself again,’ Natalie assured her. ‘He was a great deal depressed for some weeks after the Paris disappointment, but he’s in splendid form now.’
‘And vocally?’ To Natalie’s sensitive ears there was a note of eagerness in the other girl’s voice.
‘He’s been practising regularly for the last two or three weeks, and to me it sounds as fresh and brilliant as ever,’ Natalie declared. ‘Why, Anthea?’
‘I think Oscar has something up his sleeve. We’ll tell you when you come,’ replied Anthea, and hastily rang off.
Natalie forbore to report these intriguing words to her father, knowing that he set some store by the direct approach where professional matters were concerned. But it was with a lively sense of curiosity that she accompanied him to the Warrenders’ famous flat in St James’s the following evening.
There were, she noted immediately, no guests other than themselves, so it was to be an intimate occasion, suitable for private discussion. But during dinner conversation was on fairly general topics. It was after dinner that Warrender said, without any preamble,
Elusive Harmony (The Warrender Saga Book 10) Page 11
