Soon after that the company broke up, and the Bannisters and their house-guest went in to dinner, in a charming, panelled dining-room where the atmosphere was a good deal more intimate than in the big music-room.
Gail was healthily hungry by now. But between Mrs. Bannister’s vague reference to her singing, Quentin Bannister’s forthright request for it, and Marc’s crushing lack of enthusiasm about it, she was still not at all sure whether or not die would be expected to perform later. She felt she must play for safety, however, and so she ate rather sparingly until Oliver asked with some concern, ‘Aren’t you hungry, Gail?’
‘Oh, yes! and I’m enjoying my dinner immensely,’ she assured him.
‘She’s hoping to be asked to sing later,’ observed Marc so drily that Gail had some difficulty in resisting a sudden desire to kick his ankle smartly under the table.
‘She is going to be asked to sing later,’ Quentin Bannister stated. ‘I am particularly anxious to hear her.’ And it was suddenly plain to Gail that, for some reason or other, Quentin Bannister and his elder son had anything but a harmonious relationship.
The last thing she wanted was to be a bone of contention between them. At the same time, she could not help giving the older man a very warm and grateful smile as she remembered his reputation for being specially sympathetic towards young artists.
By the time he brought up the subject again, half an hour or so after they had returned to the music-room, Gail had already decided what she would sing.
‘I’d like to do something from Gluck’s “Orfeo”,’ she said, steering a careful path between the twin traps of coy prevarication and over-eagerness to air her gifts.
‘Not “Che faro”, for pity’s sake,’ put in Marc disagreeably. ‘It’s every aspiring contralto’s party piece.’
‘I thought of doing Orpheus’s appeal to the Furies,’ Gail told him tartly, and Marc’s father laughed suddenly.
‘Come along,’ he said, patting her on the shoulder. ‘I’ll play for you. And Marc can sit there and glower as one of the Furies, if he likes.’
For a moment Gail thought Marc was going to get up and leave. But then something—perhaps belated regret for his rudeness or perhaps just sheer curiosity—seemed to hold him there. He stirred impatiently in his chair, but at least he remained. His mother went on placidly doing tapestry work, with a concentration which set her slightly apart from the scene. And Oliver was really the only one who leaned forward with any air of eagerness.
But—as she was to remember with surprise afterwards—from the moment Quentin Bannister took her over to the piano, Gail hardly thought of anyone else in the room. To some extent, he was still her kind, well-wishing host, but suddenly he had also become the knowledgeable professional musician who knew exactly how to get the best out of any artist under his direction.
‘We’ll take it from here—’ he indicated a passage in the piano score. ‘I’ll play these last few pages of the Dance of the Furies so that you get the right atmosphere. Don’t bother about this room—or anyone in it. Look out through the windows into the night, and remember you’ve come to the edge of Hades to plead for the one person you love, and that you have nothing to rely on but your voice and your lyre.’
‘I’ll remember,’ Gail said softly. And she looked, out over the shadowy garden and the hills beyond, while there suddenly poured forth from the piano such a welter of sound and fury that it seemed as though a whole orchestra were playing.
Then suddenly, magically, as the feverish sound died away, there stole over the scene the limpid heavenly notes of a lyre, so exquisitely produced that it seemed impossible that any piano could be sounding them.
Gail was absolutely entranced by the way Quentin Bannister evoked the operatic scene, but the well-schooled, disciplined part of her was sufficiently free of the spell to bring her in at the right moment. She was surprised herself at the beauty and precision of her entry. And then she was aware of something else—the merging of her art with that of a much greater artist. It was exactly as though she and the elderly man at the piano were one force.
She had no idea how he produced his overwhelming effects. But they were all there. The angry cries of the Furies, the plangent phrases of the lyre, the very voices of the raging creatures answering her pleas. And through it all she heard her own voice—as though she could be both listener and performer—weaving the magic thread of sound until its spell was complete, and the chorus of protest and refusal sank at last into a sort of growling submission.
It is, of course, a scene which never fails of its effect. And at the end there was a moment’s silence, as though everyone—even Gail herself—were stunned by it. Then Oliver, speaking almost in a whisper, said, ‘Gail! I had no idea you could sing like that.’
And Quentin Bannister got up from the piano and said, ‘That’s a very beautiful voice of yours, my dear. And you use it extremely well.’
‘But—you!’ Gail turned to him with both her hands out. ‘You! I never heard anything like it. You created orchestra and stage in one. Like—like a miracle. Like—’ and suddenly overcome by her own excited emotions, she put her hands over her face.
‘Oh, come, come!’ Amused, but undoubtedly pleased, the older man put his arm round her. ‘I’ve been doing this sort of thing a long time, you know. I’m an old hand at it.’
‘It’s not that.’ She dropped her hands and looked at him. ‘It’s not that at all. I suppose,’ she said slowly, ‘it’s the first time I’ve experienced real genius at close quarters. It’s—it’s like an elemental force.’
‘Well, I must say you have a nice turn of phrase for flattering an old man,’ Quentin Bannister laughed, and actually dropped a light kiss on her hair. ‘We must try you out on something else tomorrow. Marc, what about letting her try the first act monologue in “The Exile”? It’s an idea.’
‘Yes, it’s an idea,’ replied Marc, in a tone which implied it was not a very good idea.
And then a maid wheeled in a tea trolley, and Mrs. Bannister proceeded to dispense China tea and cold drinks, along with the sort of harmless social conversation which is guaranteed to take the tension out of any situation.
From then until she went to bed Gail had a nice, cosy chat with Oliver in a secluded corner of the music-room, during which he repeated his incredulous delight in the way she had sung, and added, for good measure, that she had obviously made a great hit with his father.
‘I said no more than I really felt,’ Gail assured him. ‘I think he’s terrific, don’t you?’
‘Oh—yes, he’s terrific all right.’ Oliver grinned good-humouredly. ‘It’s hard work living in his shadow, though, and he does try to run our lives too, you know. I don’t mind it so much, because he doesn’t really think I’m sufficiently gifted to warrant much interference. But Marc’s a different proposition.’
‘They don’t get on well, you mean?’
‘Well, it’s difficult for them both, Marc being a very gifted composer and my father everything but that. It just isn’t in him, and I think he’s never quite resigned himself to the fact. When Marc began to show signs of genuine talent, Father pretty well wanted to take over and tell him what to do. It didn’t go down at all well with Marc. He’s a lone wolf anyway.’
‘I—see. It’s tricky, isn’t it?’
‘Very tricky,’ Oliver agreed, but he laughed lightheartedly enough. And rather soon after that she said goodnight, because suddenly she was very tired after the varied experiences of the evening.
Both her host and hostess bade her a kind goodnight, but Marc was nowhere about, so she had to go without speaking to him. When she was half-way up the wide staircase, however, he came out of a room at the side of the hall and stood looking up at her.
‘Miss Rostall,’ he said quietly, ‘there’s something I want to say to you.’
‘Yes?’ She looked over the stair-rail in surprise at him.
‘I thought your singing this evening was quite beautiful—’
&
nbsp; ‘Did you?’ She was indescribably gratified and came several steps down again until she stood only a little way above him.
‘—But there’s something I want to make quite clear. I have no intention of being stampeded into giving you the leading role in my opera, however much Oliver may push your claims, or you yourself may ingratiate yourself with my father. It will be easier for all of us if you understand that here and now.’
CHAPTER TWO
There was a moment of stunned silence. Then Gail said in a tone of cold fury, ‘If this is going to be a moment of truth then let me tell you that I’m not in the least interested in your silly little opera, hard though you may find it to believe me.’
‘As a matter of fact, it isn’t either silly or little.’ Suddenly he smiled up at her with genuine amusement and a touch of compelling charm she had not suspected in him. ‘It’s a full-length work and, if I may say so, it’s rather good.’
‘I don’t care what it is. I never heard of it or you before this afternoon and—'’
‘Didn’t you really?’ She saw the statement intrigued him and that he was almost tempted to believe her. ‘But you must admit it was a singular coincidence, your turning up here, within days of the details of my opera being made public—complete with genuine contralto voice and a great desire to please.’
‘There was no desire to please you,’ she told him coolly. ‘And though this opera may be the highlight of a decade for you, for me it’s no more than an untried work that I’m hearing about for the first time. For all I know, it may be dismal.’
‘Well, of course that’s true,’ he admitted, and again that extraordinarily charming smile flitted across his face. ‘You have a distinctly deflating turn of phrase, I must say.’
‘You asked for it!’
‘I suppose I did,’ he agreed unexpectedly. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Oh—’ she was almost completely disarmed. ‘I—I’m sorry too. I didn’t mean to drub you quite so heartily. But you seemed so convinced from the outset that I was only here to make use of you and—’
She stopped suddenly at the stormy look which came into his face. Then, on an inexplicable impulse, she leaned over the banister and said, quite kindly, ‘It was because you had been made use of in that way once before, wasn’t it?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ He looked startled and there was almost a rough note in his voice.
‘I mean Lena Dorman,’ Gail replied calmly. ‘She made up to you because she wanted to sing in the world premiere of your cantata, didn’t she? And then, when she’d got what she wanted, she left you flat for someone she thought would be of more use to her.’
‘Who told you that story?’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Oliver?’
‘Oh, no. I don’t think Oliver knows anything about it.’
‘Then what makes you think you do?’
‘My excellent powers of observation,’ Gail told him coolly. ‘And in view of what I saw—and deduced—I forgive you now for all your rudeness and wish you goodnight.’
Having said which she turned and went on up the stairs, pleasingly aware that she was making a splendid exit, and that he watched her in silence all the way.
Alone in her own room she found that she was breathless and a good deal shocked by her own bold candour. But there was not a word that she would have retracted and she spent no time lying awake regretting anything that had happened that evening. On the contrary, she fell asleep immediately, slept dreamlessly and awoke to find the late summer sunshine streaming in at the windows of her lovely room.
Even lying in bed she could see across country to the wooded hills beyond. But, entrancing though the distant view might be, she was more interested in what lay near at hand. So she got up and dressed, enjoying to the full her luxurious bathroom—so different from the chilly little slip of a place in her own flat—and then she went down through the silent house and out by a side door.
It was a beautiful morning and all along the terrace the late climbing roses were still in bloom. Their scent was faint and fresh in the morning air, but she guessed that when the sun was on them the terrace would be drenched with their fragrance.
A short flight of steps brought her to the wide lawn and she stood there for some minutes, loving the solitude and the silence. Then Oliver came out by one of the french windows and ran down the steps to join her.
‘Hello, you’re up early, aren’t you?’ He stood and smiled at her as though the sight of her there in the grounds of his own home gave him a very special pleasure.
‘It all looked so lovely from my bedroom window that I wanted to explore further,’ she told him.
‘Then come along.’ He caught her hand lightly in his. ‘I’ll take you round.’ And they went through the gardens and the orchard together, he quite obviously enjoying her unforced delight in everything that was so familiar to him.
‘I’m glad you didn’t let Marc’s rudeness spoil your pleasure in things,’ he said impulsively.
‘Oh, that—’ She dismissed Marc’s rudeness quite lightly, secure in the thought that she had certainly had the last word on the previous evening.
‘In any case, you know,’ Oliver went on, as though he thought she might still need reassuring, ‘Father is quite determined that you shall be tried out in this new work of Marc’s.’
‘But not against your brother’s will! I don’t think I’d like that,’ Gail objected. ‘It is his opera, after all. He’s entitled to cast it his own way.’
Oliver shook his head.
‘It’s not as simple as that—which is what riles him, I suppose. It isn’t an easy matter to get a full-scale work put on the operatic stage unless you have some pretty solid backing—either artistic or financial or both. Marc can have both—in Father. The old man carries a lot of weight in the musical world, both here and abroad. And frankly he is an extremely wealthy man. Marc can’t afford to disregard his wishes entirely. Not if he wants his support, that is. And without it his chances of seeing his opera on the stage would be immeasurably reduced.’
‘Your father is really as influential as that?’ Gail looked dubiously at Oliver.
‘Oh, yes. He might very well conduct the work himself.’
‘Not Marc?’ There was a note of protest in her voice.
‘Not very likely. Although he is a more than competent conductor his name wouldn’t fill the house, whereas Father’s would, of course. These are all things which have to be taken into consideration.’
‘But then surely the same thing applies to the casting of the principal roles,’ Gail said quickly. ‘Which definitely rules me out, however good an impression I might make at an audition.’
‘No, it’s not quite the same thing,’ Oliver told her. ‘There are three major roles—the other two being for men. If both these were taken by established artists one could risk a really promising unknown for the girl. Indeed, it would add an element of interest and piquancy if one did so. I have an idea that’s what is in Father’s mind.’
‘You have got it all worked out, haven’t you?’ She smiled at him, but her sense of excitement began to mount once more.
‘Of course. Little else has been talked of in the family for months.’ Oliver shrugged expressively. ‘It’s only recently that the whole thing became public. But here, at home—!’ He laughed. ‘One doesn’t have a new opera every day, even in the Bannister family.’
‘Oliver—’ she turned and faced him—‘was all this in your mind when you invited me down here?’
‘Most of it.’ He smiled back at her. ‘I like you, Gail. You may have noticed that. And I like your voice. I don’t know if it’s ideal for the part, but I would have said you had an interesting outside chance. So why shouldn’t I arrange that you should have an opportunity to be heard?’
‘You’re a dear.’ She put out her hand and touched his. ‘I’m infinitely grateful, and of course the very thought of being considered is intoxicating. But I shouldn’t like to—well, to be the cause of any fami
ly friction, you know.’
‘There’s always friction between Marc and Father, whether you’re concerned or not,’ Oliver told her philosophically. ‘A bit more or less won’t tear the family apart. In any case, my dear, no one gets to the top of the tree by considering everyone else’s sensitive feelings. You must learn to be more thick-skinned about people’s likes and dislikes. If you landed this part—and it’s a big “if’—it would be a very fine operatic plum for a beginner. Well worth bulldozing through any objections of Marc’s, I’d say.’
She winced slightly at the expression. But before she could say any more there was the sound of a distant bell and Oliver remarked with satisfaction,
‘That sounds like breakfast, and I for one am ready for it.’
Gail found she was too, and they went into the house together.
For a while they were the only ones in the breakfast room, as they helped themselves from a selection of dishes on an electric hot-plate and from vacuum jugs of coffee and milk.
‘There are no hard and fast rules about Sunday breakfast,’ Oliver explained. ‘Father’s a bit of a martinet during the rest of the week, but we all relax on Sundays. Mother usually breakfasts in her room—’
‘But not today, dear,’ said his mother, coming in at that moment. ‘I want to see something of Gail while she is here.’ And she smiled kindly at her young guest, who smiled shyly in return.
‘When are Marc and my husband going to try you out in this new work of Marc’s?’ she inquired rather absently, as she helped herself to coffee and paused to put some bread in the toaster.
‘I—I don’t know,’ stammered Gail, a little taken aback, for Mrs. Bannister had shown no special interest in her singing until then. ‘I’m not even sure that I’m going to be tried out.’
Music of the Heart (The Warrender Saga No. 6) Page 3
