Elusive Harmony (The Warrender Saga Book 10)

by Mary Burchell

  ‘How would you feel about singing the postponed Otello some time in November?’

  ‘Postponed?’ Natalie’s father looked slightly startled. ‘I wouldn’t have called that a postponement. It could hardly have been more thoroughly cancelled—and replaced! Are you saying that Paris wants a performance after all?’

  ‘Not Paris,’ replied Warrender, ‘here—in Covent Garden. I’ve been asked to arrange a charity gala, and have been given a virtually free hand with regard to work and cast. It occurred to me that a good many disappointed patrons would be willing to pay very highly to hear the Otello they missed in June. Anthea would sing the Desdemona, of course——’

  ‘To make up for my disappointment in Paris,’ she interjected.

  ‘—and Broncoli will be free to sing the Iago.’

  ‘You mean you had discussions with him before me?’ Lindley Harding said quickly, and he frowned slightly.

  ‘Not because I regard Otello as anything but the key rôle,’ said Warrender pacifically. ‘In fact, without you I shouldn’t be prepared to do it at all. We should have to choose something else. But it so happened that some of the important backers for the occasion were in New York when Anthea and I were there, and Broncoli was with us the same evening. It was natural enough to ask if he would be free.’

  ‘I see.’ Natalie saw her father smile, and she realised it was the old gay, confident smile which belonged to his heyday. ‘It’s a wonderful idea, Warrender! The three of us—well, the four of us, of course, including you—just as it was planned for Paris. My dear fellow, I shall be delighted, naturally.’

  ‘I hoped you would.’ Warrender smiled too, in a satisfied sort of way. ‘One or two of the original small-parters will also be available, I think, and Laurence Morven is to sing Cassio.’

  ‘Laurence Morven!’ Natalie felt the temperature fall several degrees. ‘Both of us in the same cast? I don’t think I should find that very agreeable. Nor do I imagine he would relish the comparatively small rôle of Cassio after his—triumphs in Paris.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ replied Warrender imperturbably, ‘the suggestion was his. He also was present at the preliminary discussion, and made the offer then and there.’

  ‘Why?’ Natalie thought she had never before heard her father’s voice so harsh.

  ‘Why?’ repeated Warrender, and shrugged. ‘He didn’t say why. Possibly he wished to make his contribution to a good cause. Or maybe he regards Cassio as an interesting and beautiful rôle—which it is.’

  ‘It was neither of those reasons.’ Lindley Harding pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘It was his way of challenging me on my own ground. “Let the public hear us both on the same evening and make their choice”—that was what he thought.’

  ‘I think you’re mistaken,’ said Warrender, still very cool. ‘But if you’re right and it was indeed intended as a challenge, do you propose to refuse it?’

  ‘No,’ said Natalie’s father slowly. ‘No. I accept—of course.’

  Chapter Seven

  Not until they were in the car on the way home did Natalie venture to mention the Otello casting to her father, and then she managed to sound very calm and impersonal.

  ‘I’ve been thinking of what you said about Laurence Morven wanting to sing Cassio as a sort of challenge to you,’ she observed reflectively. ‘You know, I don’t think anyone in their senses would expect to challenge Otello with a rôle like Cassio. It’s a relatively small rôle, he’s a weak and not very impressive character, and although the music is lovely, of course——’

  ‘One of the real tests of a lyric tenor,’ interrupted her father resistlessly. ‘Quite important enough for even John McCormack to sing it in his time and make a minor sensation.’

  ‘But do you suppose Laurence Morven is after a minor sensation, after what happened in Paris?’ she countered, with a touch of nervous impatience.

  ‘He’s after a head-on comparison of the two voices, on the same stage and the same night,’ replied her father, unmoved, ‘otherwise why should he concern himself with what you have yourself just called a relatively small rôle? And don’t forget that it’s Cassio who is Otello’s deadly rival on the stage—at least in Otello’s view.’

  ‘Oh, Father, you’re carrying things too far!’ she protested.

  ‘What things?’ he inquired coldly. ‘Never underestimate a role like Cassio. I’ve known tenors build a career on that kind of part. It may not seem outstanding, but any part is what you make it. I once played Cassio myself when I was in my twenties, and there are at least three places where you can upstage Otello himself, if you have the right equipment.’

  ‘And what,’ asked Natalie, in spite of herself, ‘would you call the right equipment?’

  ‘Apart from a lyric tenor voice of genuine beauty?—good looks, real presence, and that certain charisma which makes the audience remember suddenly that Desdemona was once friendly with Cassio. If he can produce all that, then Otello has a real rival on the stage instead of a cardboard figure.’

  ‘And you think that Laurence has all that?’ She sounded more eager than she had intended.

  ‘I don’t know. But he obviously thinks he has,’ was the dry reply. And Natalie felt it would be unwise to continue the discussion. Besides, they had now arrived home.

  When they entered the house her father went straight through to the studio, late though it was, took out the score of Otello and stood by the piano, lightly picking out some chords with one hand. They were familiar enough to Natalie, and she recognised immediately that they were not from Otello’s own music. They came from the role of Cassio.

  Her father sang a few phrases, half tone but ravishingly and with a subtle suggestion of almost sensuous meaning. Immediately Natalie felt that stirring of her heart-strings which she inevitably experienced whenever he sang any love passage.

  ‘You hear what I mean?’ he said, and then he closed the piano again.

  And she heard what he meant.

  Whether or not Laurence were capable of putting something of that same significance into those phrases she could not tell. But, remembering his Andréa Chénier and his Don José, she had little doubt. And that was the moment when, dismayedly, she accepted the fact that her father could well be right in thinking that the performance of Otello was to be a neck-and-neck challenge between the two of them.

  She stood there for a moment, not knowing what to say. And then, because she felt she simply had to see her way clear, she asked rather stonily, ‘Do you expect me to regard him as an enemy from now on?’

  ‘I, my dear?’ Her father turned and surveyed her with what appeared to be genuine surprise. ‘How you regard anyone is your business, not mine.’ But before she could draw a quick breath of relief, he added, ‘I merely suppose you would wish to act towards me with some sense of loyalty.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Natalie. ‘I only ask because, as you know, I’m going to be Wendy Pallerton’s bridesmaid, and he’s to be best man. It could be awkward if—if we were openly on bad terms.’

  ‘Bad terms?’ He repeated the phrase distastefully. ‘Dear child, you surely have enough social know-how to avoid anything of the sort. Nothing about the situation requires you to be rude or awkward. Quite the contrary. My own invariable rule has always been that the more I dislike a person, the more I exert whatever charm of manner the good God may have bestowed on me.’

  Natalie thought of saying that she did not dislike Laurence; she also thought of recalling one or two outstanding instances when her father had departed from his invariable rule. But she realised no useful purpose could be served by mentioning any of this, so she desisted.

  It was the next day that she voiced some of what was in her mind and heart. And this time it was to the much more sympathetic ear of Mrs Pallerton.

  ‘Please don’t think I’m making any accusations against Laurence myself,’ she said earnestly, ‘but no amount of argument would make Father budge from his opinion. Naturally he’s aware that
the position presupposes a certain degree of rivalry, and he has exaggerated this in his own mind.’

  ‘Perhaps he hasn’t exaggerated it,’ replied Mrs Pallerton unexpectedly.

  ‘Oh——’ Natalie looked shocked. ‘Do you really think Laurence engineered this situation so that he could—so that he could——’

  ‘Show off his cruelly young voice against the voice of his ageing rival?’ finished Mrs Pallerton with frightening candour. ‘I don’t know, Natalie. Though he’s my own nephew. I know him mostly as a person rather than as an artist. He’s a good fellow as nephews go, but I’m not quite sure what happens when a very ambitious, single-minded artist has an unusual opportunity offered to him. Laurence is ambitious—I do know that. He wouldn’t be where he is if he were not.’

  ‘You mean you’re on Father’s side?’ said Natalie curiously, and was surprised to see Mrs Pallerton colour slightly.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t say that. It isn’t for me to take sides, as you put it. I only say that your father might be right. I earnestly hope he’s wrong—but I understand why you feel a little uncomfortable about the situation.’

  ‘You don’t understand at all!’ thought Natalie. But she managed to say quite naturally, ‘So long as there isn’t any unpleasantness at the wedding.’

  ‘Why should there be?’ inquired Mrs Pallerton, rather as Natalie’s father had done. ‘People who gather at weddings aren’t all necessarily friendly towards each other, but in a civilised community they give the impression of being so.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ agreed Natalie. And she wondered if she were singular in supposing that she and Laurence might find the occasion both difficult and embarrassing.

  Everything else concerned with Wendy’s wedding seemed to go smoothly. Even Natalie’s father appeared to be pleased rather than nonplussed by his own invitation.

  ‘You’ll meet Laurence there,’ Natalie reminded him quickly.

  ‘Yes, of course. Very kind of Enid to invite me too, but then she is an exceptionally kind and charming woman.’

  It took Natalie a second to identify ‘Enid’ as Mrs Pallerton, and then she was surprised, for unlike so many of his younger colleagues, her father was very sparing in his use of Christian names. For some odd reason, she took heart at that. At least her father did not think less of Mrs Pallerton because she was related to Laurence, whatever he might believe of his younger rival’s intentions towards himself.

  After that, the last week or two before the wedding slipped by very quickly, it seemed to Natalie, and she was curiously unprepared for the slight shock of seeing an excellent newspaper photograph of Laurence arriving at London Airport. The caption underneath stated that he was to act as best man at his cousin’s wedding and would also be appearing in the gala performance of Otello in which Lindley Harding would be singing the name part.

  Somehow, seeing it all in black and white gave it an almost startling sense of significance and reality. But, since no one had at any time appeared to share her anxieties, Natalie kept them to herself.

  Then, on the very day before the wedding, Laurence himself telephoned; mercifully, when her father was out. Even so, she was surprised to hear herself say, ‘Oh, Laurence, I’m so glad to hear from you!’

  ‘Are you? Then I’m sorry I wasted several days doubting if I should phone,’ he replied lightly. ‘We’re to meet tomorrow, I gather, in specially friendly circumstances, and I was wondering if we were going to let bygones be bygones and forget about our last rather stormy encounter.’

  ‘I was wondering too! And it—it’s very generous of you to make the first approach.’

  ‘Well, one of us had to,’ he said practically.

  ‘Yes. But it was I who—who——’

  ‘Committed assault and battery?’ he suggested.

  ‘Oh, Laurence, I’m ashamed of myself whenever I think of it,’ she exclaimed remorsefully.

  ‘Then don’t think about it,’ he advised her.

  ‘You mean that?’

  ‘I mean it. Where would be the sense of continuing to feel badly about something so silly? We were both under a good deal of strain at the time. And isn’t a wedding—even someone’s else’s wedding—supposed to be an occasion for measureless good feeling?’

  ‘Oh, yes! I’m so glad you feel that way. I was getting ridiculously nervous and self-conscious about it all, and felt quite unhappy.’ Thus did she reduce weeks of misery to that harmless phrase. ‘Now I can enjoy dear Wendy’s wedding as one should.’

  ‘Apart from which, of course, we should have had to come to some sort of truce, shouldn’t we?’ he went on. ‘If I’m going to sing in the same performance as your father I can hardly be quarrelling with his daughter.’

  ‘No—that’s true,’ she said, but suddenly her lightened spirits dropped. For, incredibly and unforgivably, she had actually forgotten about the Otello performance. Now she recalled it with a sense of guilt and unease, for she began to see what might well lie behind this casual peace offer.

  ‘Until tomorrow, then,’ he was saying. ‘And for my part, Natalie, I’m looking forward to it.’

  ‘I, too,’ she said, as enthusiastically as she could. Then he rang off, and she was left standing there, the receiver still in her hand, while she tried to decide if her father’s loyal daughter should have handled this conversation quite differently.

  Not that one could have rejected Laurence’s olive branch, of course. Her father himself had expressed himself in favour of pleasant, civilised behaviour. There was hardly anything in what she had said which needed any change, nor was there much in the way she had said it which could be criticised, except perhaps that her tone had been a little over-friendly.

  What really pricked her conscience was the way she had felt, but no one need ever know about that, of course. She slowly replaced the receiver, as though sealing off the contact with Laurence and everything it implied. But the fact remained that for her the joy of hearing his voice again, uttering words which seemed to put them back on a friendly footing, meant more than anything else which had happened since the quarrel in Paris.

  The wedding next day followed the pattern of most weddings. Wendy was perhaps a little less nervous than most brides, her mother less tearful and emotional than many mothers on these occasions, and the bridesmaid found herself wondering how anyone could have preferred the quite pleasant groom to the unfairly attractive best man.

  She saw him for the first time as she gravely followed Wendy up the aisle; and it seemed to her that, even in stage costume and at the centre of the scene, he had never appeared handsomer or to more advantage than now, when he was playing second fiddle to the bridegroom.

  He flashed her a smile before he turned to carry out his simple duties and, as Natalie stood behind Wendy, listening to the words of the marriage service, she thought a great deal about that smile and rather too little about the bride whose bouquet she was now holding.

  What did it feel like to exchange those familiar words with the one person who mattered most in one’s life? and how could one assess the importance of any other circumstance—or loyalty—when measured against that thought?

  Somehow she had not quite expected to find herself alone in the car with Laurence on the way to the reception, but so it happened, and the sudden intimacy of the situation made her feel shy and as though, after all, she did not know him very well.

  He, on the other hand—confident and gay—turned to her and said, ‘You’re looking gorgeous! Who chose that lovely little Tudor headdress for you?’

  ‘Wendy, I think.’ She gave him a quick smile. ‘Didn’t she look simply beautiful herself?’

  ‘Yes, she did. She’s a good-looking girl.’ He said that sincerely, but somehow in quite a different tone. ‘Do you know the couple who’re giving the reception?’

  ‘Only that they’re called Colonel and Mrs McEvleigh. They’re cousins of some sort on Mrs Pallerton’s side, aren’t they? Wendy described them as “remote but rich”.’ Again she gave th
at slight, tentative smile. ‘She said both she and her mother would have preferred something less formal, but the offer was made—kindly but rather firmly—and it would have been difficult to refuse without offence. Besides the fact, of course, that they could give Wendy a much more gorgeous affair than her mother could have done.’

  ‘Well’—he glanced out of the window to see where they were going—‘I suppose every girl likes as many frills as possible to her wedding.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Natalie considered that soberly. ‘I’m not sure that I agree.’

  ‘How would you like it to be, then?’ he asked, as though he were really interested to know.

  ‘I—haven’t thought about it,’ she said, not quite truthfully. ‘There are more important things to a wedding than the frills, as you call them. Don’t you think so?’

  ‘I? I don’t know that I’ve thought much about it either,’ he admitted. But being at a wedding makes one think about weddings in general, I suppose.’

  And then the car drew up outside one of the few handsome houses overlooking the Park which are still in private hands.

  Their host and hostess, Natalie realised immediately, were much more socially aware—even snobbish—than the Pallertons. Undoubtedly they had organised the wedding reception extremely well, but to Natalie, who had seen a good deal of this sort of thing in her time, it was obvious that Mrs. McEvleigh at any rate was not so much a star-gazer as a star-collector. She immediately swept both Natalie’s father and Laurence Morven into her own personal net; and Natalie herself, as a not inconsiderable appendage to her famous father, came in for some gracious attention too.

  Presently, on the legitimate plea that the bride might need her, Natalie managed to disentangle herself.

  ‘The place seems full of people I don’t know,’ she said frankly to Wendy.

  ‘Same with me,’ the bride replied cheerfully. ‘But then Sarah McEvleigh thinks every social occasion is a chance to gather names and titles under her roof. With Laurence as best man I imagine she’s concentrated on stage people, whether or not they’re interested in me or Peter. I can tell you, Mother and I didn’t send invitations to more than two-thirds of these people. But it doesn’t matter,’ she added lightheartedly. ‘We’re the star performers, they’re just the supers. Do you, for instance, know any of the people coming in at the moment?’