Music of the Heart (The Warrender Saga No. 6)

by Mary Burchell

  They were sitting late over breakfast one morning, in the bright little breakfast-room of their pension, when Liz said without looking up from her paper, ‘I see Marc Bannister has a new opera coming on in London. It’s the first night tonight.’

  ‘Tonight?’ There was a ring of such poignant interest in Gail’s voice that the other girl did look up then.

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Yes. I nearly got a part in his opera. Oh, I wish I’d known it was tonight. I think—I think I might have sent him a telegram or something.’

  ‘There’s still time,’ said the practical Liz. ‘Why don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, well—’ Gail could not imagine why she had made such a ridiculous suggestion—‘no, I don’t think I will. It’s silly, somehow. What’s one telegram among all the others on an occasion like a first night?’

  ‘You’re right,’ agreed Liz. ‘Why don’t you call him instead?’

  ‘Call him?’

  ‘Well, ring him up. Isn’t that what you say?’ Liz grinned. ‘Do just that. Call him.’

  ‘I couldn’t think of such a thing,’ exclaimed Gail, panic-stricken, though she was already thinking very hard about it in a dazed sort of way.

  ‘Sure you could! Don’t be so British and reserved,’ said the American girl. ‘A call’s much better than a cable. As you say, he’ll get dozens of those. From all his friends and quite a lot of his enemies, if I know the musical world. And the sweeter the message the deadlier the hopes of failure. Come on, Gail. A call from abroad, just as he’s feeling deathly—which he probably is right now—’

  ‘Now! Do you mean—phone him now?’ Gail was white except for a bright spot of colour in each cheek.

  ‘Now’s as good a time as any. Better than most. What are you scared about? It’s only a short overseas call. I guess you can even dial it from here. If you’re in such a state about a little call like this, what would you do if you were calling Texas, which is what I have to do whenever I want to speak to my heart-throb?’

  Gail felt she should explain that Marc was not her heart-throb. But she was so unnerved by the whole conversation, after being weeks without the possibility of even uttering his name, that she remained silent.

  ‘Do you know his number?’ inquired the determined Liz.

  ‘Yes. He’ll be at his London flat, I expect.’ Gail passed the tip of her tongue over her dry lips.

  ‘Then it’s simple. You don’t even have to call “Information”.’

  ‘But what will he think?'

  ‘He’ll think, “Fancy that angel child calling me all the way from Germany. Things have to be all right now.” And he’ll be just crazy over the idea and not feel so badly about tonight.’

  Gail could not imagine Marc in any circumstances thinking of her in those strange terms. But the idea that she might have a reason—any reason—for speaking to him, if only for two minutes made her feel slightly intoxicated.

  That was the only reason that she could give to herself afterwards for what she did. That and the fact that the impulsive Liz—who always preferred action to discussion—refused to listen to any excuses.

  ‘Go on, you silly! If you know him, call him. If you don’t know him, admit as much, and we’ll drop the subject.’

  Somehow it was that which stung Gail into final capitulation. That the overwhelming reality of her life should be shadowed by doubts was simply not to be borne. She went into the little telephone room and dialled Marc’s number. And before she could drop the receiver, in terror at what she was doing, his voice replied. So clearly that he might have been standing at her elbow. ‘Yes? Marc Bannister speaking.’

  ‘Oh, Marc!’ She thought she heard him catch his breath, so he must have recognized her voice immediately. ‘Please don’t be angry with me for phoning—’ that was not quite what she had meant to say, but it slipped out involuntarily. ‘I just had to wish you luck for tonight.’

  There was a slight pause. Then he said, rather formally, ‘That’s very kind of you, Gail. Where are you calling from?’

  ‘Hamburg.’

  ‘From Hamburg! You rang from Hamburg just to wish me luck? Oh, Gail—’’

  ‘It’s awful being so far away just when everything is happening.’ Suddenly she had found the right words. ‘But my heart will be with you all in the Opera House tonight. Please tell Erna Spolianska that the girl who didn’t get the part wishes her all the luck in the world.’

  ‘I’ll tell her. She’ll be truly touched. She’s a generous-hearted girl herself—’

  ‘Is she wonderful in the part, Marc?’

  ‘Yes, she’s wonderful,’ he said. And then, before she could ask him to enlarge on that—‘How are things with you, Gail?’

  ‘Fine, thank you. I’m getting a lot of useful experience.’

  ‘And are you happy?’

  ‘Happy?’ she repeated the word, a little as though she hardly knew its meaning. ‘Why do you ask that, Marc?’

  And then the line went dead. And she could not decide if she had been cut off, or if he thought the conversation had gone far enough. She tried to find out from an indifferent operator, but all she could get was that it was impossible to reconnect her as the line was temporarily overloaded.

  She hardly thought she would have asked to be reconnected, anyway. If Marc had said all he wished to say, he would hardly welcome a second call. She had had her moment. Much, much more than anything she could have dreamed of even an hour ago. She must be satisfied.

  For most of the day she was satisfied. During the long afternoon journey out to the small town where she was singing that night she pretended to be asleep, so that her colleagues should not try to engage her in conversation. But behind her closed eyelids she was visualizing, with the utmost clarity, what was happening in London. In turn, she imagined how Marc, how Quentin Bannister, how Spolianska, how Oscar Warrender—and again how Marc—would be passing the long afternoon hours until the evening that was to put all their hopes to the test.

  And if she had not deliberately thrown away her chance, she too could have been part of that great occasion. She too would have been one of the central characters. If she had not acted so impulsively—If Oscar Warrender had not sealed her decision by the offer to send her to Germany—

  It was then that she suddenly remembered the great conductor saying sardonically, ‘Don’t thank me. You’ll probably hate my guts when you’re singing in a small German town and you read of Spolianska’s success in “The Exile”.’

  Well, she didn’t hate him. The decision had been hers, and hers alone. But she did wonder, for a dreadful few minutes, why ever she had made it.

  She got through the evening’s performance somehow. She got through the long, late journey back to Hamburg. She fell into bed so exhausted that at least she slept immediately. And she woke to the knowledge that she must still wait some hours before the newspapers from England arrived.

  Even then possibly the criticisms would have been held over until the next day in the continental editions.

  They were. But spread across two columns of the front page, as a major news item, ran the headline, ‘Cheers for Great New British Opera’.

  She read every word of the enthusiastic, if rather superficial, report. And when the full musical criticisms came later she read every word of them too. Finally, when Veronica—faithful to her promise—sent every newspaper cutting she could put her hand upon, including the Sunday papers, she devoured them and then sat back and said aloud,

  ‘It’s true. There’s hardly a sour note in the whole lot. Marc has become in a night a famous composer.’

  But the criticism which gave her the deepest satisfaction of all was the one which said, ‘In any circumstances “The Exile” would be rated a fine opera. With Erna Spolianska in the role of Anya, it becomes a great human work.’

  She had been right to stand down.

  During her last two weeks in Germany Gail was almost completely happy. All her anxious doubts about her decision
had been resolved, and now she could hardly wait to see the performance for herself. She would slip in one evening unobserved and just hear and see for herself what Marc’s work was like, given perfect casting.

  In addition, she knew that she had given a good account of herself during her modest time in Germany, and it seemed certain that she would be asked back again at no distant date. Her own career, then, had not received any serious setback from what she had done. Rather the reverse. And, finally, that brief telephone conversation with Marc did rouse in her the hope that they were still friends to a very small degree.

  Indeed, on the way back to England, she even indulged in some day-dreams in which Marc sought her out for the express purpose of finishing that interrupted conversation. But, as her imagination would not take her any further than that, she had to leave the dream unfinished too.

  The sight of the familiar street, as the taxi drove up to her front door, almost brought a lump into her throat, and she realized that she must have been a good deal more homesick than she knew during the three months she had been away. And as she climbed the stairs even her luggage could not weigh down the lightness of her heart.

  At the very moment when she opened the door of her flat the telephone began to ring. And so appropriate did this seem to her dream about Marc that she rushed to pick up the receiver, not supposing for one moment that it could be anyone but him.

  It was Oliver’s voice which spoke, however, in tones of the greatest urgency.

  ‘Gail! Thank heaven you’re at home!’

  ‘At home? I’ve only just this moment put my foot inside the door after three months away. I haven’t even taken my coat off.’

  ‘Then don’t,’ was the curt reply. ‘Come round here at once. Tom and I need you as we’ve never needed anyone in our lives before. Hop into a taxi and come round to Tom’s studio.’

  ‘But what’s the matter?’ Gail cried. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Jane Purdie—the girl who’s been rehearsed for all the songs that were your songs—has had an accident and broken her leg. The opening night is next Tuesday. We’ve only five days to go, and you’re the only one who can save the show for us. You know the “feel” of those numbers as well as we know it ourselves. You can’t refuse us this time, Gail. You can’t!’

  ‘No—I can’t refuse this time,’ Gail agreed slowly. ‘All right, Oliver, I’ll come.’

  And without so much as a glance round her dusty little flat, Gail caught up her handbag and gloves and went out, closing the front door behind her.

  CHAPTER NINE

  When Gall arrived at Tom Mallender’s studio, she found Oliver walking up and down restlessly while Tom, lying full length in an armchair, his legs thrust out in front of him, looked the picture of silent gloom.

  ‘Here she is!’ exclaimed Oliver as Gail walked in, having been admitted by the cleaning woman who looked after Tom, and who had greeted her with a gusty whisper of, ‘They’re all of a heap, poor young gentlemen—both of them.’

  When did it happen?’ Gail took off her coat and flung it on a chair, without even referring to the three months’ gap since they had seen each other.

  ‘Two hours ago. We’d just heard when I phoned you,’ said Oliver. ‘It was all I could think of doing,’ he added rather pathetically, Gail thought. And it seemed to her that they were both as helpless as her own young brother and sister would have been in like circumstances.

  ‘Well, that was very sensible of you,’ she told him bracingly. ‘We’ve got five days, you say? We can do it all right in five days. Get up, Tom, and stop looking like a lost soul. It isn’t the end of—’

  ‘I am a lost soul,’ replied Tom dramatically. ‘This was the chance of a lifetime, and now the whole thing is doomed to failure. The luck’s run out. Jane was half the show. Well, a third of it, anyway. It can’t be anything but the most hopeless flop now.’

  ‘Don’t be such a drip!’

  She gave him a smart little kick on the ankle, which made him draw in his long legs and sit up quickly and say,

  ‘Here! That hurt'.'

  ‘It was meant to hurt,’ Gail assured him callously. ‘It was meant to recall you to realities and stop you from wallowing in cowardly self-pity. It’s true you’ve lost Jane What’s-her-name, and I’m terribly sorry for her and you. But you’ve got me instead. And only three months ago you were ready to beat a pathway to my front door with your pleas for me to join you. Come on and show me what I have to do. I bet Jane was no better in that Spanish number than I was.’

  ‘She’s right, you know.’ Oliver stopped walking up and down the room and looked a trifle brighter. ‘We said from the beginning that, good though Jane was, she wasn’t a patch on Gail.’

  ‘Since then Gail’s been working her way round Europe on “Messiah” or something,’ Tom said sourly. 'She’ll have spoiled her revue style.’ But he got to his feet and looked less suicidal.

  ‘Conceal your ignorance, if you can,’ Gail told him crisply. ‘I didn’t sing in “Messiah” as it happens. But a good Handel style fits one for any type of singing. And he knew what the public wanted, if anyone ever did. Why are we wasting time? And how many numbers did Jane have in the show?’

  ‘Five. But two of them can go to another girl who was almost equally good.’ Suddenly Tom seemed to come out from under his cloud of gloom and begin to make plans. ‘They are on the edge of broad comedy, and she’s a funny little cuss, which you are not. Oliver will have to transpose them for her, because she’s a light soprano so far as she’s anything. But that doesn’t matter. She’s dead funny, and her voice is quite a secondary matter.’

  ‘Well, that leaves us with three numbers for me. What makes you think I can’t manage that, you mutt? I take it the Spanish scene is one of them?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Tom regarded her with a touch of new respect and then said to Oliver, ‘I say, she’s changed a bit, hasn’t she? Less of the dew and more of the vitriol. She’ll be good in the Greek scene.’

  ‘Greek scene?’ Gail looked surprised and intrigued. ‘That doesn’t sound much like revue.’

  ‘Oh, it’s a sort of skit, of course, on the scene where Paris couldn’t decide to which of the three goddesses to award the golden apple. It’s rather funny, to tell the truth.’

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ Gail said encouragingly. ‘Which of the three am I?’

  ‘Hera. You have to have a dark voice for the Queen of Heaven when she’s in a temper.’

  ‘As Wagner discovered long ago,’ murmured Gail.

  But when Tom asked, ‘What did you say?’ she replied lightly, ‘Oh, nothing. Let’s get on.’

  So for the next two hours they went over the three numbers in which Gail was to star, as Tom expressed it.

  ‘Star?’ said Gail doubtfully. Do three numbers make a star?’

  ‘One number can do it—if it’s the right number and the right artist. And the way you do these three—yes,’ stated Tom, who was a mercurial creature and had now completely recovered his customary good spirits and enthusiasm. ‘Lord, I’d forgotten how good you were! And you’ve got more assurance—more real professionalism—now. You take the stage, as it were, in a way you didn’t before, good though you were in the studio sense of the term.’

  ‘Well, I’ve had a good bit of professional experience since I first sang for you,’ Gail reminded him with a smile.

  ‘Only standing sedately on a platform singing oratorio,’ countered Oliver, though not so disparagingly as Tom spoke of her usual work.

  ‘I also had a lot of training from your father.’ Gail looked straight at him. ‘Remember?’

  ‘Oh—yes, that too.’ Oliver grinned reflectively. ‘I don’t think he’s forgiven you yet, by the way. He must have worked harder on you than he ever did on anyone else, if he’s to be believed.’

  ‘He gave me the most wonderful concentrated coaching,’ Gail said earnestly. ‘I owe him more than I could possibly say. He taught me things about phrasing and colouring that
I’ll never forget. I was using some of that, though unconsciously perhaps, in these three numbers, believe it or not.’

  ‘Nice work. And it’s generous of you to talk like that.’ Oliver patted her shoulder. ‘You know, of course, that “The Exile” was an unqualified success?’

  Yes, I know.’

  ‘In a way, I suppose even Marc knows now that it was a sort of stroke of good fortune that you preferred that other chance, in Germany. Spolianska was a knock-out in the part of Anya. I’ll never forget how the house rose to her on that first night. And, good though I don’t doubt you were in the part, she was something so special that I don’t think anyone else could have approached her, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

  ‘No, Oliver, I don’t mind a bit. In fact, I’m glad to hear you say so. I knew she could be the making of the work, even at that first audition. That helped me to take my decision. I mean—’ she added hastily—‘it made me feel that I wasn’t entirely letting Marc down by refusing the role.’

  ‘You’re not half as glad about it all as we are,’ Tom put in. ‘I suppose if you’d made a thumping success in Marc’s opera you could hardly have come to our rescue now. A few revue numbers would have been beneath your musical dignity and all that.’

  ‘Which brings us to the point that it might be better for you to take another name for this occasion, Gail,’ said Oliver quite seriously. ‘It might not be a good thing for your real career to be associated with this, now you’re making a success abroad and so on. Like people who write thrillers under one name and real egg-head books under another, you know.’

  ‘Don’t be an intellectual snob,’ retorted Gail. ‘Particularly about your own excellent work. Whatever I do I do under my own name. If I do it to the best of my ability I’m not ashamed of it. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well and being acknowledged.’