Unbidden Melody

by Mary Burchell

  From Back Cover…

  Mary loved music more than anything else in the world, so she was thrilled to land a job as secretary to a famous musical impresario. Through her job she found herself meeting all sorts of interesting people—Oscar and Anthea Warrender, the composer Marc Bannister—and travelling to glamorous places like Paris and Amsterdam. But it was another matter when she found herself becoming involved with one of her boss’s clients, the celebrated opera singer Nicholas Brenner. Mary had always adored him from afar, and soon found him just as adorable in person. But where would that get her? She was in his world, it was true, but not really of it. How could she hope to compete with the sort of woman who really was a part of Nicholas’s life—like the beautiful and determined Suzanne Thomas?

  Unbidden Melody

  by

  Mary Burchell

  CHAPTER I

  “There’s only one thing for it,” Dermot Deane informed his secretary, without looking up from his crowded desk. “You will have to go to the airport and meet Nicholas Brenner.”

  “I shall?” Mary did look up, and with a startled glance. “But—”

  “Don’t say ‘but’,” interrupted her employer irritably. “There is no sillier or flabbier word in the English lan­guage. I don’t permit it in this office. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Mr. Deane,” said Mary submissively.

  Dermot Deane ran his hands through his thinning hair.

  “I can deal with an emergency single-handed. Even a crisis, if necessary. But—” he stopped, coughed and changed that to “however” before Mary could quite sup­press a smile—”However, when it comes to a catastrophe I expect co-operation, even if you are as raw as an egg and haven’t been here three weeks. In any case, it was you yourself who suggested the man,” he added, as though that clinched the matter.

  In this he was literally correct, Mary had to admit. But then, if singers were being discussed at all, Nicholas Brenner was the first name which inevitably sprang to her mind.

  Until she had come to work for Dermot Deane. Mary Barlow had only occasionally glimpsed that much-tried, but highly successful, impresario in concert hall or opera house when one or other of his famous clients happened to be singing, playing or conducting. She had always thought of him—if she thought of him at all—as a stout, knowledgeable, imperturbable man, quite impervious to the winds of crisis, temperament or fickle chance which were part of his particular world. But when she came to replace his invaluable secretary of ten years’ standing she discovered this was far from the case.

  “He’s just as temperamental as any of his clients,” the departing Miss Evans informed her. “And usually with much more reason. He’s the one who takes the final rap—the financial rap—if anything goes wrong. But all the time he has to look as though everything is going splendidly. He can’t indulge in displays of nerves or temper. He’s got to have the answer to everyone else’s questions. No won­der agents and impresarios get ulcers!”

  “Has he got ulcers?” Mary had enquired with sym­pathy.

  Miss Evans said—not to her knowledge, but that was because for all these years he had had a good secretary who had taken half the load.

  She was obviously referring to herself and at the same time giving Mary a hint that she must strive to follow worthily in her footsteps. So Mary made sympathetic noises to indicate that she would do her best.

  “D.D. is pretty fair as bosses go,” Miss Evans went on. “But if he turns savage, remember it probably just means that Torelli has been impossible, or Warrender unreasonable, or some indispensable tenor has inconsider­ately gone and broken a leg or something.”

  Mary nodded her fair head gravely and promised to remember. And she tried hard during the few days in which Miss Evans lingered to teach her her job, to absorb all she could of that lady’s tough wisdom as well as her official expertise.

  To Mary the position as Dermot Deane’s secretary re­presented not only a promotion. It was in some ways the realisation of a dream. For as long as she could remember she had been fascinated by the world of music and musi­cians. But because, along with her essentially artistic outlook, there went a strong streak of realism, she accep­ted quite early in life the fact that intense musicality, a faultless ear, a degree of natural taste, and a small, pleas­ing voice did not add up to the necessary equipment for a real career in the musical world.

  Fortunately, her parents—although they loved her dearly—also had no inflated ideas about their child’s talents. Consequently, though they allowed her to culti­vate her modest gifts for her own pleasure, they also saw to it that she was firmly equipped to earn her own living in a more conventional way. It is doubtful if the most de­voted of parents can do more for their children.

  As a result, Mary was spared the frustrating years of artificial hopes leading to inevitable disillusionment which are the lot of those who measure their ambitions by their wishes rather than a frank appraisal of their qualifica­tions. At twenty-two she was an excellent secretary, with a working knowledge of two foreign languages. In addi­tion she enjoyed a degree of self-respect which automatic­ally forbade her to give less than good value for whatever salary she drew.

  Instead of becoming an indifferent performer in her working hours, Mary became a pretty knowledgeable member of the audience when off duty—a position from which a great deal of enjoyment can be derived, and with which she would possibly have remained quite satisfied had she not heard of the pending vacancy in Dermot Deane’s office.

  She heard of this by way of the grapevine in the opera queue where she was booking tickets. And the moment her tickets were in her hand she rushed along to the office of Dermot Deane.

  Something in the firm but modest way she stated her qualifications and enthusiasm must have impressed him—and even Miss Evans, so far as she was capable of being impressed by any successor—for he hardly hesitated at all about engaging Mary. He jibbed slightly when she said she must work out a month’s notice with her present em­ployers, but yielded immediately when she pointed out that if she were prepared to let them down, the day would come when she would probably let him down.

  “All right,” he agreed. And he persuaded Miss Evans to put off her pending retirement for a few weeks longer, until Mary could honourably forsake the quiet backwaters of her legal office to plunge into the exciting, turbulent, sometimes dark currents which coursed through the office of London’s leading impresario.

  It was on her third day that one of the crises to which Miss Evans has so prophetically referred occurred in almost classic detail. The tenor cast for some much-heralded performances of “Carmen” at the Opera House did inconsiderately break an arm, and Dermot Deane was approached to find a substitute of comparable reputation and attainments.

  Mary was entranced by the discussion which then en­sued. Well-known names flew to and fro between Dermot Deane and Miss Evans, names which, until then, had simply represented dazzling figures behind the footlights to her. But each one was considered, assessed and for one good reason or another discarded.

  It was then that she looked up from her typewriter and suggested diffidently, “What about Nicholas Brenner?”

  “What about him?” countered her employer with some irony.

  “Wouldn’t he do?”

  “The top man will always ‘do’,” Dermot Deane in­formed her drily. “But as a stand-in for someone else—” he shook his head without completing the sentence. “Any­way, he’s been out of circulation since that car crash last March.”

  “He wasn’t much hurt himself,” Miss Evans put in. “He must have recovered long ago.”

  “But he hasn’t sung since. I suppose it’s some sort of nervous reaction after his wife was killed, and these things are harder
to deal with than anything else in an artist. All the same—”

  He paused once more. And Mary, reluctant to abandon even a slight hope of securing the singer who was to her of all singers the most fascinating and splendid, tried again.

  “Might he not be more willing to step in at a moment’s notice than work himself up to a formal comeback?” she suggested.

  “Could be.” Dermot Deane looked reflective. “He isn’t a difficult chap, really. As tenors go, of course,” he added in parenthesis. “And Don Jose is one of his best roles. He might also be interested in Lensky, when they revive ‘Eugene Onegin’. That would give—” he began to scribble on the side of his blotter. “M-yes. Eight performances. Perhaps ten. And Lensky isn’t a killer role. Just a walk­over for a man like Brenner.”

  “He should make a good Lensky. He has excellent legs,” observed Miss Evans unemotionally.

  “It’s his larynx, not his legs, that a tenor has to worry about,” growled Dermot Deane.

  “Good legs help too,” Miss Evans insisted. “Particu­larly in that costume.”

  “And his Russian should be all right,” Mary contri­buted eagerly. “He had a Russian grandmother, hadn’t he?”

  “They all have Russian grandmothers or Hungarian uncles or Spanish girl-friends if they think that will help,” Dermot Deane said cynically. “But yes, Brenner’s Russian is fluent. I remember hearing him once do the Idiot in ‘Boris’. He was the Idiot to end all Idiots.” And he went into a smiling trance at the recollection.

  This was not quite the way Mary would have chosen to have her favourite tenor described, and she winced slightly at this slur on his romantic charm. But she said eagerly, “Then you’ll try for him?”

  “Yes, we’ll try for him,” Dermot Deane agreed, and he reached for the telephone.

  There followed an exciting day or two of cables, long­-distance telephone calls and express letters—typed by Mary with thrilling realisation that she was at the centre of a gorgeous operatic crisis. And, after Nicholas Bren­ner had finally been located at his lakeside hideout in Austria, the arrangements were made with remarkable smoothness and speed.

  He was prepared, it seemed, to come back to the oper­atic world to play Don Jose in “Carmen” and Lensky in “Eugene Onegin”. And the suggestion had been Mary’s in the first place! As she typed the final contract, she felt there were certain triumphs in the world of the theatre unmarked by applause or the sweeping up and down of curtains.

  Dermot Deane was generous enough to permit himself an occasional genial, teasing reminder to Mary that it was she who had started the ball rolling. And this subtly flat­tered and pleased her. Until the morning when her em­ployer—now bereft of the services of Miss Evans, and himself forced to fly to Paris to see Gina Torelli—in­formed Mary that she must go to London Airport to meet Nicholas Brenner in person.

  “You can drive out with me in the Bentley,” Dermot Deane informed her. “I have to go in half an hour. My plane takes off about ten minutes before Brenner’s comes in. You wait for him and give him the V.I.P. treatment, and Carter will drive you both back into town.”

  Mary wanted to ask what the V.I.P. treatment consis­ted of. But, reminding herself that her employer had plenty of worries without having to cross all the “t’s” and dot all the “i’s” for her, she bravely forbore. She simply said, “Very well,” with more composure than she felt.

  “Here is his schedule of rehearsals and performances.” Her employer handed her a sheaf of papers. “If he’s run­ning true to tenor form he’s probably lost his copy by now. And tell him we’ve reserved his usual suite at the Gloria. They like that sort of little attention.”

  Mary took the proffered papers and put them in her briefcase. Half an hour later she and her employer left the office to drive to London Airport, Dermot Deane sit­ting in front perusing some papers and Mary behind, in­dulging in her own thoughts.

  At no time in her carefree years as an opera fan could she have imagined herself actually having Nicholas Bren­ner put in her care. The nearest she had ever got to him was to stand at the stage door after a performance and watch him come out, usually accompanied by his very beautiful wife—the woman who had been killed in the car crash last March.

  Mary remembered her very well that last time, stand­ing there framed in the stage door, her honey-coloured hair almost the same shade as the golden dress which clung to her like a sheath to an exotic flower. She had been laughing at the enthusiastic scene, and if ever a girl looked carefree and on top of the world that girl had been Monica Brenner.

  Mary saw off her employer and then went to the arrival lounge to await Nicholas Brenner.

  His plane was fifteen minutes late. Which gave her time to experience several waves of panic and fight these down as best she could. Like all inexperienced people—and in this particular respect she was inexperienced—she thought of a dozen mistakes which she might inadvertently be making. Was she really waiting in the right place? Should she be warm and friendly when he arrived? distant and respectful? talkative or silent? Did she look ridiculously young and inexperienced to be taking a famous tenor under her wing?

  When he finally came, that seemed to be the first thing which struck him.

  She went forward to greet the unmistakable figure, and the slightly nervous words which came out were, “Mr. Deane asked me to come and fetch you, Mr. Brenner. He had to go to Paris himself and—”

  “You look rather small and young to be ‘fetching’ me,” he observed with a very slight smile. “Did I need fetch­ing?”

  “Mr. Deane seemed to think so,” she smiled.

  “Felt I was not to be trusted to drive myself into town, I suppose?” There was a touch of nervous bitterness about that which she found terribly disconcerting.

  “Maybe he was thinking more of me—and what a tre­mendous thrill it would be to be allowed to fetch—to meet you,” she said calmly.

  And at that his tense expression relaxed. He put his hand round her arm suddenly and said, “Come along then. Where is the car?”

  He made a slight sign to the hovering porter, and they went out to the car, where the imperturbable Carter stepped out, saluted and said, “ ‘Morning, Mr. Brenner. Will you sit in front, or behind with Miss Barlow?”

  “Behind, with Miss Barlow.”

  So the sumptuous-looking luggage was stowed away and they got into the car. And as they drove away Mary thought, “I’m sitting beside Nicholas Brenner!”

  Nothing in her quiet, self-controlled manner betrayed what she was thinking. She gave him the papers which her employer had committed to her care, and as he studied them she remained silent. It was he who spoke first, and he did so without looking up from the papers.

  “Why did you say it was a thrill to fetch me? Aren’t you quite used to running around after Deane’s clients?”

  “Oh, no. I haven’t been in his office three weeks,” she explained with almost naïive candour. “You’re the first star I’ve had to—to look after.”

  “You’re doing quite well for a beginner,” he told her, still without looking up, but she thought he sounded amused.

  “It’s not too easy to transform oneself from a fan into a responsible representative of the firm,” she informed him.

  “No, I can imagine it has its difficulties,” he agreed, so seriously that she knew he was amused. “So you are a fan? an operatic fan, I take it?”

  “Yes. But—” she was afraid this was all beginning to sound rather too naïve and artless—”not the kind that mills round the stage door screaming.”

  “Don’t you mill round the stage door?”

  “Yes. But I don’t scream.”

  He laughed at that—a short laugh, but he did laugh. And then he looked up at her at last, and she thought he was slightly surprised to find that he had laughed.

  “May I hope that you have stood at the stage door for me in your time?”

  “Oh, certainly. I’ve also cheered for you from the gal­lery.”r />
  “Thank you,” he said. Then he lapsed into silence and looked out of the window.

  She allowed herself one quick glance before she turned to look out of her window, and she was surprised to find how clearly his whole appearance was instantly impressed on her vision. He was a bigger man than she had realised. Not only tall, but wide in the shoulders with that total impression of over-life-size which belongs to almost all great stage artists.

  From those stage-door glimpses she had not thought of him as having a slightly melancholy cast of countenance. Now he undoubtedly had. And because she thought he might be glad of something other than his own thoughts on the occasion of his first return to London, she said pre­sently, “Mr. Deane had to go to Paris to see Madame Torelli.”

  “Oh—Torelli?” He turned immediately, with an ex­pression of half-amused interest. “How is she?”

  “Marvellously well. Is she ever anything else?”

  “No. That incredible stamina and vitality! They’re as breathtaking as her voice. I never knew anyone else with such staying power. Monica—my wife—used to say—” He stopped suddenly, as though he had forgotten how that sentence finished.

  “Mr. Deane says it’s her peasant stock,” observed Mary smoothly, as though no break had occurred in the conversation.

  “Yes, that’s it,” he agreed, as though snatching that moment for complete recovery. “A streak of the peasant—something really earthy—stands us all in good stead. I’m always glad of my good dash of peasant stock.”

  “Was that the Russian grandmother?” Mary asked with interest.

  “Yes.” He smiled a little. “How did you know?”

  “I read an article about you once. It said you had a Rus­sian grandmother. Did you know her?”

  “Oh, yes!” Suddenly he looked genuinely interested, and like a different person. “She was a singer too in her youth. Not a top-liner, but she sang small parts with people like Sobinoff and Neshdanova—”

  “Sobinoff! and Neshdanova? But she must have been—”