A Song Begins (Warrender Saga Book 1)

by Mary Burchell

  Then, as they hurried along the side of the Opera House, she said,

  “That’s the stage door, where we wait sometimes for hours after a performance to see the stars come out. And that’s the side entrance where we go in. Now I’ll take you round to the front of the house and show you where you go. Don’t look so solemn. You’re going to enjoy yourself. Why, half the people here would willingly give their back teeth to change places with you tonight!”

  And, when she had shown Anthea the beautiful porticoed entrance to the Opera House, she gave her arm a reassuring squeeze and exclaimed, “Have a wonderful time,” before she slipped off to join her friends for an evening of much less inhibited enjoyment in the amphitheatre.

  The lights and the crowds in the foyer bewildered Anthea at first, and she was seized with panic lest she should be unable to find the conductor among all these people. But then she saw him — indescribably distinguished in evening clothes, talking to a small, animated man with grey hair.

  She approached somewhat diffidently and stood almost at his elbow for a moment or two before he realised she was there. Then he said, “Oh, hello. You found your way all right, then?”

  “Yes, thank you. I came with some of the other students at my boarding-house. They were also coming and brought me by Tube.”

  He introduced his companion then, as “Max Egon, the producer,” and added to the short grey-haired man, “This is the girl I was telling you about.”

  Immediately, of course, she was consumed with curiosity to know in what terms he had “told about” her. But the other man replied rapidly in German, which Anthea could not follow.

  She did, however, know enough to gather that the conductor replied impatiently in the same language, “One day, one day. Too early to say yet.” And then a bell rang, and Oscar Warrender said, “Come,” and, taking her lightly by the arm, he ushered her towards the grand staircase, with its glittering mirrors and chandelier.

  Until the moment he touched her, Anthea had always assessed his impact and attraction simply by his looks and the way he spoke. But as she felt those long, strong fingers close round her arm, with only the thin silk of Vicki’s gold stole in between, she was immediately aware of a current of feeling that was electric in its primitive suddenness and violence. She felt the colour shocked into her face and then away again.

  There was nothing even remotely familiar in his touch, and the complete indifference of his expression showed that the contact meant nothing to him. But for Anthea it was the most extraordinary and disturbing discovery she had ever made: that by the mere sense of touch this man could make her feel as though something had lit a fire within her.

  As they passed up the great staircase and into the Grand Tier, more than one person turned to look at them. It was, of course, the first time in her life that Anthea had experienced the heady sensation of walking with the famous, and she felt almost light-headed with the strange, intoxicating novelty of it all.

  She was not quite sure how much of her feeling was due to his touch on her arm, how much to the dazzling surroundings, and how much to the extraordinary experience of being a focus of interest. But, when she finally entered Oscar Warrender’s box with him, and the full beauty of one of the loveliest opera houses in Europe burst upon her, she whispered half to herself and half to him,

  “I can’t believe it. I simply can’t believe it!”

  “What can’t you believe?” he wanted to know. “Everything,” she exclaimed comprehensively. “It’s like a dream — and then one wakes up. Like something one invents, but never really expects to come true. Th-thank you most awfully for bringing me.”

  “It hasn’t begun yet,” he replied, rather disagreeably. “If this side of the curtain dazzles you so completely, what’s going to happen to you when you get to the other side?”

  “The — other side?” she stared in fascination at the great velvet curtain, with its regal monogram. “The other side?” Then she turned to him impulsively, and this time it was she who put her hand on his arm. “Tell me truthfully — do you honestly think that one day I shall get to — the other side?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied composedly, removing his arm from under her hand. “Only time will tell. But I shouldn’t be wasting all this time and energy on you if I didn’t feel there was some faint possibility that I could make something of you.”

  “You say ‘make’ as though you almost literally mean to — to mould me into something you want,” she said a little apprehensively.

  “Of course,” he told her coolly. “That’s exactly what I mean to do. I don’t think you’ll break in the process, because you’re basically tough. But if you do,” — he shrugged — “well, then I guessed wrong and you’re — you’re – ”

  He seemed to seek for a word, and she drily supplied it.

  “Expendable?”

  “Precisely,” he agreed, apparently slightly amused that she had got his meaning so accurately. And then the conductor entered the orchestra pit to the sound of applause, the lights were dimmed and, with great crashing chords, they were precipitated into the opening storm of Otello.

  “Expendable!” thought Anthea, in angry disgust. “What a word for him to accept.”

  And then she thought no more about herself and Oscar Warrender, for she was sucked into the vortex of the drama on the stage, and for a while she was oblivious of anything but the terror and pity of it all.

  She was unaware that the man beside her watched her a good deal in the faint light from the stage. Only when the curtain fell for the first interval, he said quietly,

  “Yes, I think perhaps Egon was right.”

  “What?” she said vaguely, and turned her almost dazed glance upon him.

  “You didn’t understand what Max Egon said about you?”

  She shook her head, still hardly interested in anything but the shattering artistic experience of the last hour.

  “He said, ‘If she has the voice to match her looks and manner, she is a Desdemona.’”

  “She – ? He meant me?” Suddenly she was awake to what he was saying. “He meant that — that I might one day sing in this wonderful, wonderful opera?”

  “No, he didn’t mean anything of the sort,” was the deflating reply. “He merely meant that you looked the part. So do lots of unsophisticated blondes. Few, however, ever learn to sing it.”

  “But you said just now — ” she searched her mind for his exact words — “you said you thought perhaps he was right. What did you mean by that?”

  “I meant that you reacted with some intelligence and seemed to having some feeling for the part,” he replied drily. “At last I noticed you cried in the right places,” and he smiled grimly. “Would you like to come out during the interval and have a drink or a coffee?”

  “No, thank you.” She shook her head, suddenly shy and overwhelmed. “I’ll just sit here and — and think about it all.”

  He left her then, and she sat there alone, almost exhausted by the depth and the complexity of the emotions she had experienced that day. It seemed weeks since she had left home that morning. Cromerdale and her family circle were a whole world away from all this, and suddenly she felt inexpressibly lonely as well as excited.

  If she could have rushed back to her mother after the performance, to tell her all about it — if she could have felt that somewhere outside this vast and glittering theatre she might run across Neil Prentiss — it would have been different. Perhaps in a few weeks’ or months’ time, when she was more at home in this strange setting, it would be better. But, sitting there now, in the splendour of Oscar Warrender’s box, she had never felt more alone in her life.

  She stared out across the opera house, at the people now beginning to filter back into the auditorium, and she knew none of them. Not one single person. It was the most extraordinary and disquieting experience for someone brought up in a place where one could scarcely go down the street to buy a packet of soap flakes without running into someone one knew.


  The only person she knew in this vast throng was the man now coming back into the box behind her –

  And then suddenly she remembered! and with a joy and relief beyond all expression, she leaned forward in the box and looked up into the far reaches of the amphitheatre.

  Immediately a handkerchief and two programmes waved, and with warmth in her heart, she waved back.

  “Who are the friends?” enquired her companion, in not very pleased surprise, she thought.

  “It’s Vicki and Violet and Paddy and Ella,” she explained expansively. “They’re up there. Oh, it’s wonderful to know someone here.”

  “You know me,” he pointed out. But when she said naively, “That’s different,” he did not dispute the fact.

  And then she looked at him and a sudden impulse came to her.

  “Mr. Warrender,” she said eagerly, “would you do something very, very kind?”

  “I don’t expect so. I’m not a very, very kind person,” he replied, mimicking her tone with cruel accuracy. “But what do you want me to do?”

  “Would you please look up at the gallery and smile at where those programmes are waving. It — it would mean a lot to them.”

  “Oh, I don’t think – ”

  “They’ve been very kind to me,” she pleaded quickly. “Vicki even lent me this stole so that I shouldn’t feel a bit drab in your company.”

  “You don’t say!” He glanced at the stole. “It’s charming,” he conceded unexpectedly.

  Then he leaned forward, looked up at the gallery and smiled full at the fluttering programmes. For a second they were arrested in mid-air, as though sheer astonishment held them rigid. Then, as they became even more agitated, he raised his hand in a careless, but singularly graceful, gesture of greeting, before he sat back in his seat again.

  “Thank you,” whispered Anthea fervently. “Thank you very much indeed!”

  “Don’t mention it,” said Oscar Warrender, with a sort of dry amusement. And then the lights went down for the next act.

  Anthea never forgot her first evening at Covent Garden.

  For one thing, she had never before, of course, either seen or heard a performance of that standard, and to witness it in the company of Oscar Warrender was a strange and heady experience. Then, to complete an incredible evening, when the opera was over he took her backstage with him, and for the first time Anthea entered that magical world of mysterious illusion and crude reality, of unbelievable drabness and indefinable glamour.

  As they went in at the stage door the crowd fell back for him. The doorman greeted him with respect, and people flattened themselves against the wall as he passed. For anyone else she would have found this reaction slightly absurd. For Oscar Warrender, she was bound to admit, it seemed perfectly natural. He was on his own territory and all-powerful.

  Even more was she aware of this natural dominion when they went upstairs to the artists’ dressing-rooms.

  Here she was introduced to the tenor, still in his dark Otello make-up, but remarkably cheerful considering how tragically he had just died; to the charming and courteous Italian who had played Iago with such terrifying and sinister conviction that it was difficult to credit that this was the same man; and finally to the soprano who had sung Desdemona — not, Anthea thought in her secret heart, quite as well as it should have been sung.

  Perhaps Oscar Warrender thought so too. At any rate, although the singer chattered to him eagerly in Italian, and called him “Maestro” in every second sentence, he was remarkably non-committal, Anthea noticed.

  Then, just as they had come out of the soprano’s dressing-room and were preparing to go downstairs again, a striking-looking woman, in a pastel mink jacket which made Anthea gasp, came from the other end of the narrow passage, and they met full face.

  “Oscar!” She gave an expressive little laugh, half pleased, half provocative and, to Anthea’s astonishment, she reached up and lightly kissed the conductor on his cheek. To her even greater surprise, he smiled and as lightly returned the salute. And, in that moment, Anthea was aware of an extraordinary sensation she had never known before. It was something between anger and pain, and was quite unidentifiable by anything else in her experience.

  The conversation was brief, and again in Italian, but it was obvious that they knew each other exceedingly well. He made no attempt to introduce Anthea this time. But she noticed that he laughed and lightly touched the woman’s beautiful hand before he moved on.

  Anthea followed in his wake, feeling suddenly about fourteen. And although she drew Vicki’s golden stole around her, it no longer had the power to make her feel anything but ordinary and rather insignificant.

  “This way,” he said peremptorily, as they came out of the stage door. And, ignoring two nervously proffered autograph books, he stepped out into the roadway, shepherding Anthea before him. As he did so, a car swept round the comer, driven at high speed, and he snatched her back again out of its path only just in time.

  For a moment she was close against him, with his arm round her. And once more the feeling of contact was like an electric shock. It was something so strange and inexplicable to her that she felt almost weak when he released her, and as she walked on she actually stumbled slightly.

  “What is it?” He glanced at her in surprise and even put out a hand to steady her. “You weren’t scared, were you? There was no real danger, you know.”

  “N-no, I know there wasn’t,” she agreed. But, as she walked with him across a comer of the deserted market to where he had parked his car, the conviction came to her that she had encountered danger that evening, for perhaps the first time in her life. And the danger had nothing to do with the speeding car.

  He seemed disinclined to talk on the drive home, and at first she was silent too. But then, urged on by some compulsion she could not resist, she asked as casually as she could,

  “Who was the good-looking woman in the lovely mink jacket?”

  “Just now? backstage, you mean? That was Giulia Peroni. Didn’t you recognise her?”

  “Oh, yes! Now I remember. I have seen photographs of her. I wondered why she seemed familiar. She’s very famous, isn’t she?”

  “She’s one of the few artists today to whom one can unhesitatingly apply the word ‘great’,” he replied.

  “Oh.” Anthea was both intrigued and vaguely disturbed. And after a moment she asked, “Do you often conduct for her?”

  “Almost always when she sings in London, and sometimes when she sings elsewhere too. You shall come and hear her when I next conduct for her. That will be some time next month.”

  “Oh, thank you! She’s — very beautiful, isn’t she?”

  “No,” he said coolly. “She’s poised and marvellously intelligent and unpredictably attractive at times, which all adds up to something much more dangerous than beautiful.”

  He obviously used the word “dangerous” in its most complimentary sense. So Anthea said, “I see,” in a rather subdued tone. And after that she was silent until they arrived outside her boarding-house.

  Then she thanked him, shyly but fervently, for her wonderful evening. At which he smiled rather drily and said, “It’s all part of your training. Goodnight, Anthea.”

  She was startled and indescribably flattered that he should use her Christian name. And her answering, “Goodnight,” had a happy lilt to it, as she stepped out of the car and ran up the few steps to the front door.

  He drove off even before her key was in the lock. But, when she had let herself into the house, she closed the door behind her and leant against it, alone in the dimly lit hall.

  “I’m not poised, or marvellously intelligent, or unpredictably attractive,” she thought. “And I’m certainly not a bit dangerous. But he called me Anthea!”

  And suddenly, because of that, the evening seemed a success.

  CHAPTER IV

  Anthea’s fellow students came in a few minutes later, for as they had to walk some way from the Tube station th
eir journey had naturally taken rather longer than hers.

  Immediately she was overwhelmed with laughing thanks for having shared the attentions of her distinguished escort with them, even at a distant remove.

  “How did you do it?” Vicki wanted to know. “How did you manage to make him look up at the amphi and actually wave to us? We nearly fainted.”

  “I just — asked him to,” said Anthea.

  “Quite simply — like that?” They all laughed incredulously, and Vicki went on insistently, “But what did you say? Be a sport and give us a proper blow-by-blow account of things. You couldn’t simply have said, ‘Those are friends of mine up there; just wave to them, there’s a dear.’”

  “I didn’t say, ‘there’s a dear’,” Anthea assured her with emphasis. But then she laughed, because she recalled the scene with amusement and an extraordinary degree of pleasure. “He didn’t really want to do it at first. But then I explained how kind you had all been to me — and he changed his mind.”

  “Just because you said we’d been kind to you?” repeated Vicki slowly. “He must be very fond of you or something.”

  “Fond of me?” Anthea laughed again at the very notion.

  But the idea suddenly came to her, quite unbidden, that it would be somehow breathtaking to have Oscar Warrender fond of one in even the smallest degree. And because of that thought there was the slightest edge to her tone as she said quickly, “Nothing could be further from the case, I assure you.”

  “Do you mean he doesn’t like you?” Vicki looked curious and, to a lesser degree, so did the others.

  “I mean that he couldn’t be more completely indifferent,” Anthea retorted lightly. “He thinks I’m gauche and tiresome and rather stupid. But he does believe I have a voice of quality, and he as good as told me that he would make a singer of me or break me in the process.”