Unbidden Melody

by Mary Burchell

  “I don’t really understand it”—he sounded genuinely mystified as well as amused. “But it certainly makes for problems at times. The difficulty was that she loved every­thing connected with the fame and success and—glamour, if you like—which are part of a successful singer’s life. She couldn’t have enough of that, so long as I wasn’t singled out for any personal attention. That did make her jealous. And so she began to—compete, I suppose is the word. To show that she too could attract people if she liked.—I’m not really explaining this very well, because it’s still a sort of horrible puzzle to me. I don’t know my­self at which point we lost touch.”

  “One seldom does, I expect,” Mary said sadly.

  “I just suddenly woke up to the fact that my wife was deliberately playing off other men against me. After that the rows started. Bitter, scarifying rows in private, but with a pleasant, smiling façade kept up in public. I got so that I didn’t know if I acted more on the stage or off. Then that last morning—”

  He stopped as though someone had put a hand round his throat. But she said quietly, “Go on.”

  “As usual, we quarrelled about something utterly trivial—a question of who should drive the car. I insisted. I drove it. There was an accident. And she was killed.”

  As though by common consent, they came to a halt, and Mary turned to face him.

  “Was the accident your fault?” she asked steadily.

  “I don’t know.” He put his hands on her upper arms and gripped them hard, without apparently realising what he was doing. “I don’t know. And I never shall. That’s what takes the joy out of everything. Even singing.”

  She was so overwhelmed by the scene that she very nearly fell then and there into his arms in a welter of shared sorrow and sympathy. But fortunately, just in time, her practical streak asserted itself with some force. And, somewhat to her horror, she heard herself say,

  “There’s no need to be melodramatic about it. And stop playing the melancholy Slav! Why shouldn’t you know, for goodness’ sake? To begin with, was any other car involved?”

  She could almost feel the salutary shock run through him. Then he said, rather like a subdued schoolboy an­swering up at a difficult examination, “I ran into a parked lorry. It was on the wrong side of the road and—”

  “Then it was not your fault!”

  “If I’d been more alert, more on the lookout for what was ahead. But she’d just said something wildly provoca­tive. I turned my head to throw a violent reply at her—and the thing happened.”

  “Then still less was it your fault,” Mary stated firmly. “I’m terribly sorry for her, but the fact is that she even provoked the inattention which caused the accident. For you to talk about having killed her is just self-dramatisa­tion.”

  There was an extraordinary silence, and Mary suddenly recollected that this was a very famous artist whom she was almost bullying about his most private affairs. She was so shocked that she actually shut her eyes for a second and waited for the lightning to strike. Instead of which, to her immeasurable surprise, Nicholas Brenner leant forward and kissed her quite deliberately.

  “As a melancholy Slav,” he said, with unmistakable laughter in his voice, “I can only say ‘thank you’ for that chastening deluge of British common sense. What is your other name, by the way? I can’t go on calling you Miss Barlow after all this.”

  “It’s Mary,” she said in a very small voice. “And I don’t know what came over me. I’m terribly—”

  “Mary—” He savoured it with some amusement. “Yes, of course, it would be. Well, Mary, I don’t promise never to play the melancholy Slav again, but—”

  “Oh, please! May I take that back?”

  “No, you may not. It’s all too accurate. We do rather like dramatising ourselves, you know, and being interest­ingly sad. I’m sure your brand of common sense is good for one.”

  “You’re being very kind,” Mary said remorsefully. “And please don’t think I’m unsympathetic, or that I’m not very, very grateful to you for a most wonderful even­ing.—I have to turn off here. This is my road, and that’s my home over there. The small house with the white door.”

  He looked across with interest and asked, “Do you live there on your own?”

  “Oh, no, with my parents. I told you about them over dinner, but perhaps I didn’t explain that I live with them.”

  Momentarily, she had a crazy impulse to invite him in to meet them. But, although her father and mother were inclined to take things very much as they came, she felt that perhaps a famous tenor at this hour of the night might tax even their equanimity.

  So instead she directed him to the nearest taxi rank and was just about to leave him when he said, “Will you come out with me again, Mary?”

  She hesitated a moment, divided between the longing to accept immediately and the uneasy feeling she should remind him who she was.

  “If you find you have time for—for Mr. Deane’s sec­retary—”

  “Tomorrow evening?” he suggested, apparently obli­vious of the hint.

  “I can’t tomorrow, I’m afraid,” she reminded him. “I’m going out with Barry.”

  “The unappreciative young man who wanted to marry someone else? Very well, another time.” Then as she turned away he caught her lightly by the arm and drew her back again. “Are you going to tell him that I kissed you?” he asked with unmistakable amusement in his voice that time.

  “No, of course not. It was just a momentary—Well, a sort of impulse that was half a joke.”

  “So that’s what you thought of it!” He was amused still, but she realised that he was slightly nettled too. “Well, dismiss it that way if you like. But this is deliber­ate.” And he tipped up her chin and kissed her firmly on her lips. “How about that?”

  “A splendid stage exit,” she retorted, and managed to produce a very casual little laugh in her turn. Then she pulled herself away and ran up the path to her home with­out looking back.

  But once she was inside the house she leant against the door, the back of her hand against her lips.

  “I’m quite mad!” she thought. “Quite, quite mad. That was Nicholas Brenner who kissed me—deliberately. And I adored it!”

  “Is that you, Mary?” her mother called out at that mo­ment from the back room.

  “Yes, Mother.” She went in immediately.

  “I thought I heard you come in. What a long rehearsal it must have been! Aren’t you starving, you poor child?”

  “Oh, no. No, it’s all right, Mother. I went—I was taken out to dinner afterwards.”

  “By Barry?” Mrs. Barlow was shrewd enough to make that casual rather than curious.

  “Barry?” Mary had no idea how completely her tone dismissed Barry. “No. By Nicholas Brenner.”

  “Dear me!” Her mother put down her knitting at that and regarded her child with interest. “On your own, do you mean?” And then, as Mary nodded, she picked up her knitting again and said, “That must have been quite ex­citing, going out with a famous singer. Or is he rather dull off stage? These people sometimes are, I believe.”

  “No, he wasn’t a bit dull,” Mary stated judicially. And then, as that seemed faint praise indeed for the most ex­citing person she had ever met, she tried again. “He was extremely kind, and looked after me charmingly. He wouldn’t let me come home alone. He brought me all the way by taxi. Wasn’t that nice of him?”

  “Extremely,” her mother agreed. “Very proper beha­viour.”

  Mary thought about that last kiss and felt that “proper” was perhaps not quite the right word in that par­ticular context. So, instead of enlarging on that she launched into a lively account of her day, knowing how her mother enjoyed hearing about her doings, even though she never displayed unwelcome curiosity. And, to her sur­prise, she found that she could talk about Barry without any self-consciousness, even adding to her account the fact that he had not been specially pleased when he came into the restaurant and found her dining
with Nicholas Brenner.

  “I think I like the sound of Nicholas Brenner,” said her mother inconsequentially. At which Mary laughed and kissed her good night and went off to bed feeling inexplicably lighthearted.

  The next morning Dermot Deane—who had flown back from Paris the previous evening—was in the office almost as early as Mary. And in answer to her sympathetic en­quiries about his trip, he admitted cautiously that all had gone exceedingly well.

  “One never knows with Torelli, of course. She always plays hard to get, on principle. But once you’ve got her she’s more reliable than all the younger ones put together. She’s probably shortened my life by at least ten years, over the time I’ve known and dealt with her, but I adore the woman. How did the rehearsal go?”

  “Marvellously! At least, I thought they were all perfectly marvellous, and Mr. Warrender seemed pleased. And then Mr. Brenner took me out to dinner.”

  “On your own?” enquired Dermot Deane, as her mother had done, but in a rather different tone.

  “Yes. Was it all right for me to go?”

  “If you thought so—most certainly.” Her employer laughed. Then he leant back in his chair and regarded her with amused interest and said, “You’re quite a dark little horse in your way, aren’t you?”

  “No!” Mary was rather indignant. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I was wondering just how you snitched him away from under the very nose of Suzanne Thomas. Didn’t she want to go out with him?”

  “Yes,” admitted Mary reluctantly, at which Dermot Deane laughed immoderately.

  “But he was tired—and he’d already asked me,” she ex­plained earnestly. “Besides, he was depressed about—about being in London for the first time alone since the accident. Suzanne Thomas is a bit high-powered if one’s feeling depressed, don’t you think?”

  “I, my dear? If you’re asking me personally, Suzanne Thomas is a great deal too high-powered for my taste, however I’m feeling. So he parried her advances, did he, and took you out instead? I said you were a dark horse.”

  And after that they got on with the day’s work.

  All day Mary was too busy to spend any time musing on the previous evening, but she was vaguely, though illogically, disappointed to arrive at the end of the afternoon without hearing anything of or from Nicholas Brenner. Not that she was expecting him to contact her personally, of course. But she felt somehow that something about him or his activities should have required her willing at­tention in the office.

  Instead, she had to spend a great deal of time over the affair of a very boring German baritone who had an ex­aggerated idea of the value of his lieder recitals in the international music scene.

  So long did he detain her while he explained himself, in great detail and two languages, that she knew she was going to be at least a quarter of an hour late for her ap­pointment with Barry. And she had just flung the last file into the filing cabinet and was about to reach for her coat when the phone rang again.

  Great was the temptation to ignore the wretched tiling. But her official conscience stabbed her too fiercely, so she seized up the receiver and rapped out the number with something less than her usual courteous tone.

  There was a second’s pause. Then Nicholas Brenner’s voice asked doubtfully if that were Miss Barlow.

  “Mr. Brenner!” She was not aware that the change in her tone was very nearly comical.

  “It didn’t sound like you,” he said.

  “I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise it was you. I thought you were a boring baritone who—”

  “Please! Insult could hardly go further. To be mistaken for a baritone is in itself a shock to any self-respecting tenor. But a boring baritone—”

  She found herself laughing more than she would have thought possible after her irritating afternoon.

  “I take it all back! What can I do for this anything-but-boring tenor?”

  “Nothing, if you still insist on going out with the un­deserving Barry whose surname I have forgotten.”

  “The name is Courtland. And I do insist on going out with him this evening. I promised,” Mary stated firmly.

  “I see. Well, have a moderately good time. But not such a good time that you feel he is entitled to a lot of your attention in the near future. Will you come with me to the Warrender concert on Friday evening?”

  “Oh, I’d love to!” cried Mary impulsively. “But have you got tickets? It’s a sold-out house, you know.”

  “There is no such thing as a sold-out house,” he told her carelessly. “Dine with me first, will you?”

  She bit back the eager acceptance which sprang to her lips.

  “Mr. Brenner, don’t think this is inverted snobbery or anything. But I am just the girl in the office, you know. It’s terribly kind of you to invite me to the concert and I’ll be delighted to come. But the other might be a bit—a bit too much. You know what I mean, I’m sure.”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t,” said his voice courteously at the other end. “Do explain.”

  “Oh—” she glanced at the clock, suddenly remembered the waiting Barry and exclaimed, “I can’t explain over the phone. Please may I just accept for the concert, with­out the dinner?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Did you say-?”

  “I said ‘no’. I’m being temperamental. All tenors are allowed to be temperamental. It’s one of the perks of the job.”

  She began to laugh again, spontaneously and irresist­ibly. She had never before known anyone who could make her laugh in quite that way. But she remained firm.

  “I’ll love to come to the concert with you, but I’m afraid I just can’t dine with you first. Shall I meet you near the box office at the Festival Hall about a quarter to eight?”

  There was quite an astonished pause. Then he said, “If you say so-yes.”

  “Thank you very much. And now I simply must go.”

  “Yes, I expect Barry is waiting,” he agreed, with a cer­tain note of satisfaction in his voice.

  In spite of all her efforts, and some luck with a taxi, Mary was very late indeed when she breathlessly joined Barry and began to make her eager apologies.

  “It doesn’t matter.” He kissed her as though he had every right to do so—which perhaps he had, she supposed, if one thought about the past. “How very pretty you’re looking, Mary! Where did you get all that sparkle and vivacity?”

  “It’s because I’ve been hurrying,” she said quickly.

  “It certainly is not!” He laughed and drew her arm close against him. “It’s something much more subtle than that. Something or someone has kissed the sleeping prin­cess awake.”

  “I don’t know what you mean!” She was genuinely startled, because his laughing words recalled all too vividly the way Nicholas Brenner had kissed her.

  “You needn’t take that too literally!” He laughed, but he glanced at her as though something about her stirred his amused interest quite powerfully. “It’s just that you’ve grown up—stopped being a home-bird and flown out into the world to make it your own. Something like that. It doesn’t matter what, but it’s very attractive, my sweet. Has anyone told you that you’ve grown into a beauty over the last year?”

  “No. But my employer told me today that I was a dark horse,” she replied, and laughed in her turn. “Not quite such an engaging description, I’m afraid.”

  “But even more intriguing—and full of interesting pos­sibilities. Oh, Mary, how good it is to be with you again!”

  It was good to be with him too. However much she might tell herself that she would be more careful this time and take nothing for granted, nor let her feelings run away with her, the fact was that it was wonderful to be laughing and talking with Barry once more.

  She had missed him horribly. Only now could she bear to think how horribly. Over the long months she had made herself accept the fact that he was no longer any affair of hers. He belonged to another girl. Acceptance of that fact had hurt desp
erately, but somehow she had accepted it. And now here he was, back again with no strings at­tached.

  No longer need she put those agonising restrictions on her heart and her hopes. At least, only those restrictions which added wisdom might dictate. She was free to let her cramped feelings expand again. Cautiously perhaps, but without any sensation of guilt. And if his eager, laughing, admiring glances meant anything, he was sud­denly finding her far more attractive than he ever had be­fore. Charming and pleasing she once might have been. But now she was intriguing and captivating.

  “Has he changed? or have I?” Mary asked herself, as she lay in bed late that night thinking over her evening with Barry.

  She would have been less than human if she had not been elated and uplifted by the discovery that she was suddenly important in his eyes. Not only her heart, but her pride too had taken a terrible bruising over his defec­tion to Elspeth Horton. It was only natural to feel good now when she realised that something about her puzzled and charmed Barry in a way he obviously found infinitely attractive.

  “You’re learning rapidly,” observed Dermot Deane to her during the following morning. And although, naturally, he was referring to her grasp of the work, deep down inside Mary was the warming conviction that she was learning rapidly in other ways too.

  Aloud she said, with sincerity, “Everything about the work in this office is so interesting. One wants to learn.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s true.” Her employer grinned re­flectively. “There are times when I ask myself why I stay in the maddening game. But I’m a star-gazer by nature, even now. And I know I’d just wilt—so far as someone of my build can wilt—without the alarms and crises and triumphs and sheer thrills of the game. Can you make time to go along and see Suzanne Thomas this afternoon, by the way?”

  “Why, yes, of course, if you want me to.” Mary did experience the faintest qualm at the thought of Suzanne Thomas, though why she was not quite sure. “She’s stay­ing in a rented apartment off Hill Street, isn’t she?”