A Song Begins (Warrender Saga Book 1)

by Mary Burchell

  “Do as I tell you,” he interrupted harshly, “and don’t make so much fuss about it.” Then, turning back to the stage, he called up, “I’m sorry you are unwell, signorina. Go home and nurse the sore throat. I’ll take the act with a stand-in. Max, are you there?”

  The producer. Max Egon, emerged from the wings, looking both worried and intrigued.

  “Here’s Anthea Benton,” Oscar Warrender explained. “She can stand in for the last act. She knows the part and is not entirely impossible.”

  “Please, please – I can’t,” whispered Anthea imploringly at his elbow.

  He turned and stared at her, with those brilliant, rather frightening eyes.

  “You can and you will,” he told her brusquely. “Why do you suppose I’ve been hammering a little artistry and technique into you all this time? Go up on that stage and sing Desdemona. And if you don’t do me credit, by God I’ll choke you myself, when Otello’s done with you.”

  “Do you think that's the way to encourage me?” she said indignantly, and the frightened tears came into her eyes.

  And then, by one of those lightning changes of mood, by which he could reduce her to abject submission, he suddenly took her hand in his and smiled at her.

  “Do it for me, darling,” he said softly. “I need you very badly at this moment.”

  For a moment she stared back at him. And suddenly the impossible seemed possible, and his fantastic command almost reasonable.

  “Very well,” she whispered back. “I’ll do my best.”

  And she almost liked the fact that his long, strong fingers closed on hers for a moment until they hurt. Then he released her and, gathering all her reserves of courage, she went from him to the stage, where a half puzzled, half exultant Max Egon was waiting for her.

  “Try not to be scared,” he said reassuringly to Anthea, as she joined him in the wings. “Remember that everyone is pretty thankful to have you make even a shot at it, otherwise the rehearsal just could not go on.”

  “But surely,” Anthea objected timidly, “there must be a regular understudy for the part? How is it that everything must suddenly depend on me — an absolutely unknown quantity?”

  “Because the regular understudy is down with the flu,” explained the producer briefly. “And well did Miss Franci know it! She was really playing up a bit, you know. She hates Warrender because she knows he thinks poorly of her and is a devil for standards. Now come with me and I’ll show you one or two stage positions. There’s rather little movement in this act, fortunately, and you’ll manage all right.”

  She came out on to the bare stage with him and listened attentively while he paced the distances for her and showed her briefly but tellingly what she had to do and where to place herself.

  The girl who was singing Emilia smiled at her in a friendly way and said, “I’ll help you. And it’s only a rehearsal, after all.”

  “But a rehearsal with Oscar Warrender,” thought Anthea, and cast a nervous glance towards the orchestra pit.

  He was leaning over to speak to the leader of the orchestra, and she was surprised how well she could see him, in the light from the conductor’s desk. She was not quite sure at that moment if she regarded him as a menace or a lifeline.

  Then he looked up and called, “Ready?” and everyone scattered, leaving only Anthea and the Emilia on the stage.

  For a second such panic overwhelmed her that she nearly rushed from the stage too. But then an innate self-discipline — and the knowledge that several people were depending on her — gave her some courage. And the first notes from the orchestra warned her to be ready.

  In something between desperation and supplication, she glanced in the conductor’s direction, and again she received that wonderful smile which she had seen him occasionally bestow on others but never, until that day, on herself.

  “It’s part of his technique for making me do what he wants, and doesn’t really mean a thing,” she told herself. And then she thought no more of him as a person. Only as the supreme support and inspiration which carried her, almost effortlessly, into her first phrases from an operatic stage.

  At first, in her nervousness, she hardly seemed to hear anything. And then, suddenly, the glorious intoxication of singing with full orchestra for the first time was upon her. It seemed as though the whole world opened out before her to limitless horizons, and, as her voice soared into the upper reaches of the opera house, it was as though she soared too — a spirit released from human bondage.

  Nothing like it had ever happened to her before, and she was so indescribably elated that she would have forgotten all artistic discipline and control if she had not been held by the iron authority, and yet flexible direction, of the man at the conductor’s desk.

  She had no idea that several people came to stand in the wings to listen to her, or that Max Egon gripped his hands together, almost as though he were supplicating heaven to let this go on happening. She only knew that, because she derived such strength and confidence from Oscar Warrender, she was singing as she had never sung before; and that everything she had ever felt, learned, or known by instinct was being channelled into this performance.

  As the last lingering notes of the Willow Song died away high up in the empty spaces of the gallery, there was an irrepressible burst of applause from the people standing in the wings. But this was immediately silenced by the conductor, whose suddenly terrifying and compelling glance reminded Anthea that her final farewell to Emilia must show she was afraid to the very core of her being.

  There were the two fateful chords which gave the mood, and then — she could hardly believe it was her own voice — with full power, yet infinitely musical effect, she cried aloud her anguished farewell.

  She received no more than the faintest nod from him, but she knew she had done what he wanted and, in a mood of almost genuine serenity, she fell on her knees to sing the Ave Maria. It was all so easy, somehow. Such a natural expression of the doomed girl’s hopes and fears. And, at the end, Anthea felt curiously calm, as Desdemona might have felt calm, having consigned her soul to heaven.

  She kicked off her shoes and got into the stage bed and, as Otello stole into the room, she tried — as Oscar War-render had told her with brutal insistence again and again – to keep her mind entirely employed with the role, even though she was, for the moment, passive and unoccupied.

  The death scene remained a genuinely frightening experience, but not nearly so much as it had been on that afternoon when Oscar Warrender played Otello for her in the studio. Nothing in the tenor's reading of the part even approached the terror and horror of that moment when the conductor had caught her, as she tried to flee, and thrown her on the sofa.

  But the final scene went without a hitch and, at the end, there was an outburst of spontaneous applause, this time not quelled by the conductor. Several people came forward to congratulate Anthea, and the tenor actually asked her where she had been hiding all this time.

  “I’m just a student,” she said shyly. "I — I study with Mr. Warrender. That’s how he knew I knew the part.”

  “It’s not just a question of knowing the part,” observed the baritone, who had joined them at this point. “You have an innate feeling for it. Something one can neither teach nor learn. Congratulations, signorina.”

  “Oh, thank you!” Anthea, unused to such approval, could not hide her delight. But there was really only one verdict for which she was waiting with breathless anxiety, and when Oscar Warrender came up on to the stage, she ran to him, with an eagerness she had never shown him before and said,

  “Was it — all right?”

  He looked at her for a moment as she stood before him, wide-eyed and almost tremulous. Then he calmly took her face between his hands and kissed her.

  “Yes,” he said. “It was all right.” Then he turned to discuss some point with Max Egon, and she just went on standing there, trying not to look as dazed as she felt.

  Everyone was dispersing around her now. The
orchestra were putting away their instruments, and the singers scattering to their various dressing-rooms, the stage hands tramping round shifting pieces of scenery. Only Anthea stood there — until she suddenly realised that her usefulness was over and she had better go too.

  But, even as she turned to go, the conductor looked over his shoulder and interrupted his conversation with Max Egon to say abruptly,

  “Wait a minute, Anthea. You’d better come to lunch with me. I want to talk to you.”

  So she waited a little longer. And presently he indicated that he was ready, and they went from the Opera House together, he apparently so sunk in thought that he had not so much as a word to throw at her.

  Once they were in the car she hoped he might speak in some detail about her performance. At least all the others had seemed to think it merited considerable comment. But it seemed she had to be content with his mere verdict that it had been “all right”. That — and the kiss of approval.

  In a strange way, it was enough, she thought. She could still feel those strong, beautiful hands round her face, and recall the incredible fact that his kiss had had almost a quality of tenderness about it, so that one had forgotten for a moment how arrogant his mouth really was.

  He took her to a quiet, secluded Soho restaurant, where he was obviously very well known, and a respectful but fatherly waiter told them both what they had better choose for lunch. Either the conductor was indifferent, or he trusted to the waiter’s experience, for he said with good-humoured impatience,

  “Whatever you say, whatever you say. But the young lady’s tastes are rather unsophisticated, I believe.”

  Then, when the waiter had gone, he cleared the table in front of him with a quick gesture of his hand and, leaning his arms on the table, he looked straight across at her and asked,

  “How much of Desdemona’s part do you know?”

  “Why, all of it.”

  “All of it? I don’t just mean are you note-perfect? I mean do you know it in the sense that you could, with some coaching and guidance, project it as a fully integrated role?”

  She considered that. Then, firmly quelling the nervous, excited tremors which shook her, she said quietly,

  “I know it as a full character study. If you consider that what I did this morning was ‘knowing’ the part — then I know it all. Does that answer your question?”

  He did not reply immediately. He drummed his fingers consideringly on the table while the waiter set their first course before them. Then he seemed inclined to leave the conversation unfinished.

  This was too much for Anthea, however. She looked at him boldly and said,

  “Why do you ask? Have you — have you some idea of making me do it?”

  “I’m trying to decide, Anthea.” He had never shown indecision before in all her experience of him. “It’s a great temptation to let you do it. Or rather, to insist on your doing it — for I should have to bulldoze my way past considerable opposition first. But the risk is as great as the temptation.”

  “You mean that you think I might make a hash of it?”

  “No, no,” he replied impatiently. “If I had the handling of you, the chances are that you would make a minor sensation. That’s the risk.”

  “I don’t think I — understand.”

  “Of course not. How should you?” he rejoined disagreeably. “But if you made a success you would get a great deal of passing publicity. It’s the favourite story. Girl springs to fame in a night. Then every opera manager without a conscience — which means most of them — would be eager to exploit you. You would have quite a number of really tempting offers, I assure you. And if you then liked to turn your back on me, having said, ‘Thanks, Mr. Warrender, I’m made,’ that would be the beginning of three years of cheap success for you — and the end of one of the few good lyric voices I’ve heard in the last decade.”

  “And why,” asked Anthea quietly, “should you think I would turn my back on you?”

  “You don’t like me, for one thing.” He gave her that quick, wicked, flashing smile. “And I am aware that I am not an easy taskmaster. If you left me, you would be offered star roles — for a while. For my part, I should keep you on small parts, and the good, slightly dull, bread-and-butter roles, where you get no applause for anything but pure singing. Only when your voice is fully ‘set’ and your vocal discipline perfect would I allow you the dramatic stuff in which you can be allowed to enjoy yourself as an actress because you are completely secure as a singer.”

  “Then why even suggest that I might sing a performance of Desdemona now?”

  “Partly because I should like to hear you do it,” he replied coolly, “and it’s vocally safe for you, provided I have the guidance of you. But partly also because I know Otilla Franci means to put me in a spot at some time or another. Like you, she doesn’t like me. But, unlike you, she has her own way of taking revenge. She will be diplomatically ‘ill’ at short notice, I feel sure, in the belief that she will spoil my performance.”

  “But there would be a regular understudy, wouldn’t there?”

  “And how many first-class Desdemonas do you think there are, wandering round looking for a job?” he rejoined drily. “When I was a boy, Anthea” — she tried to think of him as a boy and failed — “you could have cast any Verdi opera well two or three times over, given a few days’ notice. Today they’re looking with a flashlight all over Europe for a good Verdi soprano. And do you know why?”

  She shook her head, her fascinated gaze on him.

  “Because every time a talented singer makes a small success, she is hailed as a new Callas, or he is described as a modem Gigli, and the poor creature’s half-baked talents are ruthlessly exploited instead of developed. There’s a glitter of starlight as the rocket goes up — and then darkness and extinction. There are times when I could weep over it — and people call me a hard man!”

  She had never heard him speak like that. She had never seen him look so angrily unhappy before. And for a moment she was silent in sheer astonishment. Then she said gravely,

  “Do you want me to make a solemn declaration or something.”

  “What do you mean?” He raised those rather cynical eyes and stared at her in a not very friendly way.

  She smiled and, raising her hand in a mock gesture of taking an oath, she said, “I hereby promise and declare that, whatever the temptations, I shall not leave your direction until you tell me to go.”

  “My God,” he said softly, “you sound as though you really mean that.”

  “But I do!”

  “Even though you think me — what were the words? — the most odious and insufferable person you have ever met?”

  “That’s beside the point,” replied Anthea, thinking of his lips against hers, and immediately rejecting the thought.

  “You are the one person I trust absolutely from a professional point of view. I know I’m lucky beyond belief that you’re even interested in my career. It would take more than a tempting offer from an ignorant manager to make me turn my back on that.”

  “I see,” he said, and he held out his hand to her across the table. She slowly put her hand into his, and he went on, “I shall be no easier to you because of what you have said, and I shall hold you ruthlessly to your bargain. But, if you do what I tell you absolutely in the next few years, I promise you that you will sing eventually almost anything you like in the world.”

  “I — I think I shall cry, if you talk like that,” she declared, half laughing, half serious.

  But he made an impatient little gesture and exclaimed,

  “Don’t do that. Tears bore me. Now I want you to prepare this part — with me and Enid Mountjoy — as though you might be called upon at any moment to sing it with one, possibly two, stage rehearsals. I’ll have you on the stage most days in future. Either walking on in the chorus or doing small parts — anything to get you used to the feel of a stage. Even if I never require you to take the part of Desdemona, the experience will
be invaluable.”

  “But if the occasion does arise – ?” she prompted him breathlessly.

  “I think I shall let you take it,” he replied coolly.

  After that, he refused to talk any more of professional matters, and very soon the lunch was over.

  He seemed so little interested in her now that he let her go off home alone, without attempting to offer her a lift in his car. But Anthea did not mind. She wanted to be alone. To walk and walk through the crowded streets, wrapped in the isolation of her own unbelievable reflections.

  It had all come so much, much sooner than she could possibly have anticipated. Whatever he might say about keeping her on small roles, reducing her almost to student level for as far ahead as she could calculate, she knew now that her foot was on the very first rung of the ladder. She had sung on Covent Garden stage, with full orchestra, with Oscar Warrender conducting. And the fact that it had been no more than an emergency rehearsal could not take away from the magic of the thought.

  “I don’t care how much he bullies me,” she told herself rashly. “I don’t care how many setbacks and disappointments there may be. I know now that I can do it — provided he is there.”

  That was the most curious — perhaps the really disquieting — thought. She needed him, as she needed light and air, food and drink. She could never even have contemplated what she had done that morning unless Oscar Warrender had been there, first to order her harshly to do what he wanted, and then to guide her unerringly through the ordeal.

  “What would I do without him?” Anthea asked herself. And she was suddenly alarmed to realise that the question went far beyond the limits of her professional career. That she could not sing successfully without him was not hard to accept. But at that moment she simply could not imagine life without him either.

  He might frighten, agitate, anger and appall her. But if she had to go through life without the flashing light of his genius, the exhilarating thunderbolt of his anger or, most incredibly of all, the touch of almost fugitive tenderness which very, very occasionally tugged at her very heartstrings, there would be no point in anything any more.