Song of the Damned

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘Dear God. Still … Do you know her well enough to invite her here?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ There was, in fact, no reason why Olivia could not ask Imogen – or anyone else – to the cottage. Within certain restrictions, and subject to a few rules, the boarders could go out and about. Nobody would think twice about Imogen Amberton coming to Infanger Cottage, perhaps on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, as a friend of Olivia’s. Gustav would know this, of course, but Olivia said it anyway.

  ‘Yes, but I don’t want anyone else to know about it,’ said Gustav.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I don’t want people knowing about the opera – not until I’m ready,’ he said impatiently.

  ‘Oh, I see. It might have to be late at night, then. She could slip out through the downstairs cloakroom window.’

  ‘That happens, does it? In my day it certainly wouldn’t have been permitted. Still …’ He frowned, then said, ‘Yes, all right. Do it. And as soon as possible. Until I hear this aria sung properly, I can’t finish The Martyrs.’

  SIX

  ‘I suppose,’ said Imogen Amberton, suspiciously, ‘that this is for real, is it? I mean, your uncle isn’t some weirdo trying to get off with me?’

  Imogen always thought people were trying to get off with her, and she usually tried to claim prior involvement with other girls’ boyfriends, as well. Olivia remembered her telling everyone that the organist’s son had only asked Arabella Tallis out last Christmas because Imogen had turned him down. Nobody had known if this was true. Nobody knew if the stories she had spread about where she had been and what she had been doing when she absconded on those other occasions were true, either. One of her year had said, crossly, that Imogen had been holed up in a seedy flat in Peckham with a drop-out from a rock group, which most people thought was as near the truth as they were likely to get.

  When Imogen said this about Gustav wanting to get off with her, Olivia could not think what to say, because it seemed to her utterly bizarre to allot any kind of sexual behaviour to him.

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said, after a moment, ‘nothing like that. He’s composing this really great opera, only he needs to hear some of it properly sung.’

  ‘Why can’t you properly sing it for him?’

  ‘I haven’t got a good enough voice.’ It was necessary to bite down the angry jealousy, and Olivia said, ‘He heard you at the Advent recital, and he wants you. It’ll only mean an hour or so, I think. He’ll make tapes to send to – um – agents and music people when it’s all finished.’ Imogen was displaying a spark of interest now, so she said, ‘He’d put your name on it, of course. And … and when it’s performed, they might even ask you to be in it.’

  She had no idea if that was remotely likely, but Imogen clearly thought it was. She tossed her hair back from her face, and said, ‘Yes, I’d be up for that. I’m exploring all the avenues, you know. I’m applying to go on The X Factor next year. And that other one that’s coming here from America.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. And there’s another one starting up – that’s only a radio thing, but I saw details online, and they want photos, so I’m sending some to them.’

  ‘Should you do that kind of thing? I mean it could be anyone—’

  ‘Oh, it’s perfectly legit,’ said Imogen. ‘In any case, I’m seventeen now, which is practically adult. It was my birthday last week, did you know that?’

  Olivia did not say most of the school had known it, because Imogen had told everyone.

  ‘I did know,’ she said.

  ‘I had a party,’ said Imogen. ‘Midnight feast – like those old schoolgirl stories, only we had better food. Arabella Tallis sneaked in a few bottles of vino. And everyone’s really envious of the TV things, of course. Mad Hats and Davy Lamp don’t know about it yet, though, and if you dare tell them—’

  ‘Of course I won’t.’

  ‘Right. Good. But this opera thing – that’d be a different league altogether, wouldn’t it? That’d be really classy.’

  ‘Very classy indeed. Royal Opera House. The Met. Paris and Milan,’ said Olivia, snatching at the names and the places almost at random from things Gustav had said. It seemed to be having the right impact. Imogen’s expression was avid. She really is greedy and vain and self-centred, thought Olivia.

  ‘So can you come to the cottage?’ she said. ‘Could you come tonight?’

  ‘Don’t see why not. But listen, any hint of groping or dicking around, and I’ll raise such a fuss Gustav Tulliver won’t know what’s hit him. You tell him that. And,’ she said, ‘tell him I’ll be wearing my Phillip Lim’s, so one kick and he wouldn’t be interested in groping anyone again.’

  ‘It isn’t about that. I told you.’

  ‘I’ve only seen him in the distance, but he doesn’t look as if he could grope anything anyway,’ said Imogen, dismissively. ‘OK, I’ll get out about half eleven, and be with you by midnight. I can’t do it any earlier, because Hats and the Lamp prowl the corridors like SS officers in one of those old films. Colditz and stuff like that.’

  ‘Midnight’s fine,’ said Olivia. ‘I’ll leave lights on for you so you can see the way.’

  ‘Bit of an adventure,’ said Imogen. ‘Creeping along the woodland path at midnight. And if it really might mean a bit of fame and fortune at the end of it—’

  ‘It’s a marvellous work,’ said Olivia, earnestly. ‘Once it’s finished, it’ll be snapped up for the West End. You’d be part of that.’ And I’ll hate you if you are, she thought.

  But when midnight came there was no sign of Imogen, and Olivia began to wonder if she might have had second thoughts. Or if one of the teachers had found out and stopped her getting out. Or even whether Imogen had told people about it, after all, mocking and sneering. ‘Can you imagine,’ she might have said, ‘that they believed I’d go to that horrible cottage at midnight just to sing bloody opera. Opera, for heaven’s sake! Fat women screeching and wailing, and people warbling – probably in Italian.’ And the others would have laughed with her, and said what a stupid thing to expect of anyone, and Gustav Tulliver had always been a bit mad anyway. Some of them might even have added, ‘And so is that weird niece.’

  It was ten past midnight. She had stayed in the sitting room, half reading, half watching television. It helped to blot out the sounds of the piano from the music room. They were quite faint, because the cottage walls were thick, but she could hear Gustav playing the same few bars over and over again, occasionally trying out different chords and runs, or transposing to another key. At intervals he came into the sitting room and peered frowningly out of the window, each time asking Olivia if she was sure she had made the arrangements properly. Imogen had definitely said midnight, had she? Then he went back to the piano.

  Olivia was starting to slip down into sleep – the TV voices were blurring into a single drone – when she heard the sound of the door being unlatched. She sat up abruptly. Imogen must have come along so quietly Olivia had not heard her. She hastily smoothed her hair in the mirror that hung on the chimney breast, because Imogen was the kind of person who looked down her nose at you if your hair was a mess. The mirror was a bit foggy from the years of smoke from the fire, and it always made her look like a worried brown dormouse, but it could not be helped. She went through to the music room.

  Imogen was standing by the piano, studying a music score. She was wearing a black leather jacket, very slim-fit, deliberately ripped jeans, a good deal of goth-type black eye make-up, and the threatened Phillip Lim boots. Seeing the height of the boots’ heels, Olivia was not surprised Imogen had been a bit late; in fact she was surprised Imogen had managed the woodland path without breaking her ankle. It looked as if she had straightened her hair before coming out, because it had the drenched-in-the-rain look that Olivia had frequently tried to achieve, but never managed.

  Gustav was playing the music, and Imogen was following it on the score. She looked up when Olivia came in, and Olivia
said, ‘You got out all right then?’

  ‘No trouble. I told the other two in my room that I had a date.’

  ‘Won’t they want to know about it when you get back?’

  ‘Yes, but I’ve already told them I’m meeting someone who’s working with that new TV show. I told you about that, didn’t I, Livvy? And I’ll spin them a good story, anyway. Trust me to do that. Wouldn’t be the first time, not that I often have to make anything up.’ She smiled suggestively, then glanced at Gustav and returned to studying the music score. At least she seemed to be taking the music seriously.

  ‘So,’ said Gustav, removing his hands from the keys and not appearing to have heard this exchange, ‘you’ve heard it and you can understand what’s wanted. I’ll play it for you again, but you can follow it, can you?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter if you hit some wrong notes the first time round. The important thing is that the singing needs to be filled with fear – with pain, even. It’s that I want to record. This character is a young girl, probably not much older than you are, who’s in torment. I want you to sing as if the music is scalding its way out of you.’

  It sounded a bit peculiar, said baldly like that, and Olivia expected Imogen to make some derisory remark. But Imogen said, ‘Yeah, OK, I’ve got it. It’s Ginevra’s song, right? That’s what you said, isn’t it? Ginevra’s song.’

  Ginevra …

  To Olivia, who had curled up unobtrusively in the corner chair, it was as if the name had wrenched at something deep within the very roots of the cottage.

  Gustav said, ‘Yes. In the opera, Ginevra is a young girl who’s left Cresacre to help the Revolution in France. But she’s been imprisoned, and in the scene I want you to sing, she knows she’s going to her death. She can hear the executioners coming to her dungeon. I need to hear her fear in the music.’

  Olivia knew she could have sung this quite as well as Imogen. She beat down the resentment, and said, ‘Shall I make us some coffee?’, not waiting for them to accept before going out to the kitchen.

  She tried to blot out the sounds of the piano by clattering cups loudly onto a tray, but she could still hear the piano and Imogen’s voice, but when she went back with the coffee, Imogen was saying, ‘I can’t do it.’ She sounded angry. ‘I can read the music and I can follow when you play it,’ she said, ‘but I can’t do any of that crap about pain and fear and stuff. Singing isn’t about that stuff, anyway.’

  ‘Of course it is. Your generation has it in all of your music,’ said Gustav, at once. ‘Loss of love, despair at life. For pity’s sake, girl, it’s the cry of every teenage generation. Surely you can link up to a girl of your own age who was frightened of dying.’

  Imogen gave a petulant shrug and picked up the mug of coffee.

  Gustav said, ‘This scene – this solo – is the pinnacle of the opera. Terror has to explode into the music. It’s the moment when Ginevra knows her death is approaching. And it’s a very bad death.’ He got up from the piano and went to the door. ‘If you’re going to do this properly, and if I’m to write it convincingly, I need to hear Ginevra’s emotions. So come with me now—’

  ‘Oh no.’ Imogen put up both her hands in a gesture of defence and denial. ‘I’m not going anywhere with you,’ she said. ‘I only came here at all ’cos Livvy said I could end up famous if we did this. West End. Opera Houses. That’s what you said.’ She glared accusingly at Olivia.

  ‘Yes. And you said you thought it’d be better than The X Factor,’ said Olivia.

  Gustav said, ‘Ah, celebrity. The double-faced, double-mouthed fame of Milton’s Dalila. It’s what all your generation wants, isn’t it? Still, with this you could get it. Your name will be on the recordings and I’ll refer to it in the submissions.’

  ‘My name’s going on it as well,’ said Olivia, eagerly, but he did not seem to hear.

  He said, ‘I can’t finish the opera until I can hear Ginevra’s voice. Imogen, I need you to be Ginevra.’

  He went out to the hall. Imogen looked at Olivia, then shrugged, and said, ‘Oh, what the hell,’ shook back her hair, and followed him.

  There was not much light in the hall, but there was enough to see Gustav go into the small side hall, and reach for the latch of the low door set into the wall. Imogen took a curious step forward, but Olivia hung back. The cellar, she thought. I don’t want to go down there. Whatever’s down there is dark and secret and it shouldn’t be disturbed.

  The door scraped slightly against the frame and, as Gustav pulled it back, a faint stench reached her, as if something cold and dead had huffed out its earthy breath.

  Imogen said, ‘Jesus, that’s a disgusting smell down there. What is it?’

  ‘Damp. Mould. And don’t blaspheme, at least not in my hearing.’

  ‘Ginevra would have blasphemed. If she was going to be executed she’d have effed and blinded like mad. There’s a cellar down there, right?’

  ‘Yes. It’s part of the cottage’s original foundations. Probably part of the old monastery.’

  ‘Bloody monks and sodding nuns. This gets weirder by the minute.’

  ‘West End and Royal Opera House, remember?’ said Olivia.

  ‘Oh, all right. You want me to go down there? And pretend I’m Ginevra in a dungeon, having hysterics and stuff like that?’

  ‘Yes, I do. Ginevra’s alone in the dark when she dies.’

  ‘And shut in a cellar I’d be alone and in the dark. This is method acting, isn’t it?’ said Imogen. ‘What did your character have for breakfast, and how many times did you shag last week, and all that. Still, it’s the start of the fame, right? And I’m up for that. Fear, that’s what you want?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Make a good story later, I suppose,’ said Imogen. ‘“What was your strangest experience as a performer?” they’ll ask. And I’ll say, “The night I was forced to sing in a cellar.” That’d make a good line, wouldn’t it? Make the shit hit the fan.’

  She looked at Gustav and then at Olivia, as if expecting an approving response, and when neither of them said anything – Olivia had no idea what to say anyway – Imogen sighed, and said, ‘Give me that music again. It’ll be a cappella, right?’ It came out with a kind of smug insistence, as if she wanted to show she knew the term.

  ‘Unaccompanied singing. Yes, it’s a cappella,’ said Gustav.

  ‘Won’t it be too dark to read the score? Can I have a torch?’

  ‘I’ll leave this door slightly open. Olivia and I will wait here at the top of the stairs.’

  ‘No light at all?’ she said. ‘Let Livvy come down there with me, then.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just let her sit halfway down the stairs. Otherwise I won’t do it.’

  Olivia would have let herself be shut in the cellar to sing Ginevra’s song for as long as it took, but she said, ‘I could sit just inside the door – at the top of the steps. Imogen would be very nearly on her own.’

  Gustav seemed to hesitate, and Imogen said, ‘It’s either that, or no deal.’

  She went back into the music room and shrugged on the discarded leather jacket, as if preparing to leave. Gustav made an impatient gesture, then said, ‘All right. But Olivia, you’re to go no further down than just inside the door, and you’re to stay on the top step, and be absolutely still and silent. Imogen, here’s the recorder. It’ll be on battery, but it’ll run for long enough. Make sure you sing as close to the speaker as you can.’

  ‘God, what an antique,’ said Imogen, examining it disparagingly. ‘Haven’t you heard of the digital age? I’d’ve brought my Sony recorder with me if I’d known. Oh, there’s an app on the phone, though, and you can record stuff with that—’

  ‘I want this machine used,’ said Gustav, stubbornly, and Imogen shrugged, thrust the recorder into the pocket of her jacket, put the music score in the other pocket, and went through the cellar door.

  Olivia followed her, and the minute she stepped onto the top st
air she knew that she had been right to think that this was where that dark distorted feeling came from. Something bad had once happened in here. Something connected to Ginevra?

  But she sat on the top step, hugging her knees and trying not to shiver. She supposed she must have been into the cellar before – she had explored the cottage when they moved in – but the cellar was larger than she remembered. She had forgotten there were arches and brick alcoves. Some of the alcoves had been bricked up – it was possible to see the line of the later bricks – but two had not. The walls and the bricks were different from the cottage itself – Gustav was probably right to believe this was a remnant of the original monastery’s foundations. At the far end was a kind of shallow semi-arch just under the roof. It looked as if it had once been a shallow window, just about at ground level from outside, that had been bricked up.

  Imogen went cautiously down the steps, swearing because it was so dark and the steps were steep.

  ‘If I twist my ankle or damage these boots, you’ll be in big trouble, is that clear?’

  Gustav only said, ‘Can you see to read the music?’

  ‘Tell you when I get all the way down. It’s bloody spooky here, and – oh Jesus, something’s rustling in a corner. It’s like somebody whispering. Mice, I s’pose.’

  Olivia’s heart lurched again, and for a moment she thought she, too, could hear the strange whispering echoes.

  Gustav was closing the door, doing so very slowly, and Olivia was aware of panic again. Supposing he was able to shut them in – barricading the door in some way – and that he left them? You heard of men becoming mad and imprisoning girls for years. She looked up at the door. It was still open by about a foot, and through that gap, Gustav was staring in, one hand grasping the edge of the door. His eyes looked strange in the dim light. And then he looked down to Olivia and nodded and there was uncharacteristic reassurance in the small gesture.

  He left the door slightly open, and Olivia saw with relief that a sliver of light from the hall fell across the top of the steps. It did not reach the dark well down in the cellar itself, though, and after a moment, in defiance of her uncle’s orders, she crept down a few more steps.