Unbidden Melody

by Mary Burchell

  With completely natural grace Nicholas immediately leant back against the wall behind Marcus, the mellow candlelight softening the strong, handsome lines of his face, in the way the old footlights used to give romantic charm to an actor’s expression.

  He looked across the piano straight into the darkened room. Straight at Mary. At Dermot Deane too, to tell the truth, but she could not imagine that it was to her em­ployer that those tender, heart-melting phrases were directed. It was to her, and her alone, that he was singing them. It was to her that he was saying that she must surely love him, because his love for her was such a real and living force.

  “It’s not fair!” she thought once, almost drowning in the irresistible sweetness of the moment. “This is meant to be directed at a whole theatreful of people, not just one defenceless girl.”

  She had forgotten the very existence of her employer by now, of course. She had forgotten about everyone and everything except Nicholas, who in that golden, matchless tenor voice was weaving such a spell of love and enchant­ment that it was all she could do not to get up and go to him.

  At the end everyone broke into spontaneous applause, both for the singer and the song.

  “It’s an undoubted winner, Bannister.” That was Oscar Warrender, shaken out of his habitual professional calm. “It simply can’t fail. Particularly if you have Nicholas in the part.”

  “Only if you have Nicholas in the part,” murmured Mary.

  At which her employer glanced at her and said, “Yes, he certainly knows how to deliver the goods, doesn’t he? It almost made me feel myself that I was a silly young girl being serenaded. Partly the effect of his looking straight out of that ring of candlelight at one, of course.”

  She wanted to say, “You don’t suppose he was looking at you, do you? He was looking at me. He was singing to me!”

  But of course she somehow held her peace. She just joined in the general chorus of approval with a few dis­creet words. She listened with politeness—and genuine pleasure—to the rest of the excerpts which were tried out. But all through her coursed a sort of warm, golden flood of happiness, because he had sung that love song to her.

  Surely, surely he had sung it only for her?

  The rest of the evening passed swiftly. Or so it seemed to Mary. Though afterwards she could not recall in any detail what was said or sung. She did remember that Mar­cus Bannister sat at the piano for some time improvising, while the rest of them relaxed and enjoyed themselves. She had half hoped that Nicholas would come and sit beside her then. But he made no move to do so. And pre­sently good nights were being exchanged and Mary went upstairs, still in a semi-daze of happiness.

  She was too excited and moved to go straight to bed. Indeed for the first few minutes she just walked silently up and down her beautiful room, clasping and unclasping her hands. The relief of no longer needing to keep up an appearance of easy composure was such that she simply had to express her feelings in action.

  “Theatre people do these charming, slightly melo­dramatic things,” she told herself once. But the words made almost no real impression upon her.

  For a little while longer she heard the sound of voices, the occasional repeated “good night” and the closing of doors. Then silence fell on the house, and only from the open window came the small sounds of night. The twit­tering of a sleepy bird shifting in the branches of a tree, the cry of a night-owl somewhere in the distance, and the faint lapping of the water as it slid over the little weir at the end of the garden.

  Mary switched off all the lights except the one by her bed, and went to sit at the window for a few minutes. Now she was aware of night scents as well as night sounds and, half soothed, half excited by the heavy scent of the clinging roses, she cupped her chin on her hands and gazed out across the garden, her eyes now becoming more ac­customed to the darkness, so that she could see the out­lines of trees and bushes.

  Presently a pale moon came out from behind a cloud, casting a subdued radiance on the path beneath her win­dow. Her thoughts were still formless as her gaze idly followed the moving line of light along the path, until it touched the wall which jutted out at the end. Then, with a sudden start, she realised that the moonlight had touched not only the wall but someone who was standing there.

  He was leaning back carelessly against the brick wall, exactly as he had leant back against the studio wall, earlier that evening, and he was looking up at her framed in the subdued light of the one lamp behind her.

  “Nicholas—” she hardly breathed the word.

  “Come down,” he said, softly but in that tone which could carry to the last row of the gallery on little more than a whisper. “It’s too beautiful to go to bed yet. Come down, darling.”

  “I don’t think—I don’t know—”

  “Do you want me to serenade you again?” He had come forward right beneath her window now, and she saw that he was smiling. “I’ll make it Faust or Romeo—or Marc’s air once more, if that’s what you would like.”

  “No, no,” she whispered hastily. “Someone might hear.”

  “I’d sing pianissimo,” he promised, and she heard his laugh—”But if you came down instead—”

  “I’m coming—I’m coming!”

  “Come through the drawing-room, then. The door on to the terrace is open.”

  Her hands were shaking a little as she gathered up a soft woollen stole and flung it round her shoulders. Then she slipped quietly out of her room, and went silently down through the silent house.

  CHAPTER V

  As Mary stepped out on to the terrace she saw that he was standing there in the moonlight, like a figure on a stage, and he held out his arms to her. Without even paus­ing to think what she was doing or what this might imply, she ran straight into his arms. And as he held her and kissed her she made only a fugitive clutch at her vanishing common sense.

  “Nicholas, this is crazy! I don’t know what we think we’re doing—”

  “I know exactly what I am doing,” he retorted gaily. “I’m kissing the girl I love, and enjoying every minute of it.”

  She was silent then, quite still in the circle of his arms. He had actually said she was the girl he loved! But just how much he meant by that she simply did not know.

  Presently, impelled by the pressure of the arm he kept round her, she went slowly down the few steps with him to the lawn. Perhaps by accident or perhaps with the in­tention of avoiding any chance observation from the house, they kept mostly to the patches of heavy shadow cast by the trees on either side of the garden, and for a while they strolled in silence.

  Then he said at last, “You knew I sang that song to you, didn’t you?”

  “I hoped you did. But Dermot Deane thought you were singing it to him—” there was a little catch of laughter in her voice—”so afterwards I told myself perhaps that was just the way you worked your special magic. Making everyone in your audience feel, ‘He’s singing that to me.’ “

  “I was not singing it to Dermot Deane,” he assured her gravely.

  At which she laughed softly again and said, “It’s a perfectly beautiful air, isn’t it?” and she tried to sound as though she were academically considering the song rather than the singer.

  “It seemed to me one of the great tunes of the world. But perhaps that was partly due to the circumstances in which I sang it.” He was silent for a moment, then he said abruptly, “Do you want me to take the role, Mary?”

  “I?” She checked a moment in her slow walk and then went on again. “Of course I want you to take it if you would like to—if you think it’s the right thing for your career.”

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  “No?” She hoped he could not feel that she trembled slightly. “What did you mean?”

  “Do you want me to have a good reason for staying on much longer in London?” he asked deliberately.

  She was silent, making a tremendous effort to suppress her instinct to cry out, “Of course I do! I can’t even bea
r to think of your leaving.”

  Desperately she tried to recall the sensible things she had said to herself not a week ago, in her own bedroom. All about facing the fact that he couldn’t mean anything serious in her life, and that therefore she had better draw back from this entanglement before she was badly hurt.

  But then there was such a thing as not caring about being hurt later. Later seemed such a long way away! At the moment all she could think of was that he wanted her to say the simple truth—that every day he stayed longer would be precious to her.

  “Well?” he said quietly, and she realised that she must have been silent for several moments.

  There were so many ways of answering, of course. She could refuse to have the responsibility of choosing for him. She could say airily that naturally one liked one’s operatic favourites to be around for as long as possible. She could say she liked the work and wanted to hear it done in the best possible way. She could say—

  Mary said none of these things. She gave no qualify­ing reason at all. She merely said, in a half whisper, “I should like you to stay as long as possible in London.”

  “Thank you, darling.” She felt him very lightly kiss the side of her cheek again. “Tell me something. How much of that admission was addressed to the famous tenor, and how much to me—Nicholas?”

  “I don’t know!” suddenly she panicked. “Do I have to say?”

  “Not if you don’t want to.” He was quite gentle about that. A little sombre perhaps, as befitted an operatic hero at a display of indecision on the part of the heroine. But he was not insistent.

  “I must go in now,” she exclaimed, not even sure why she felt they had said all that could be said at that mo­ment. But he seemed to understand.—Or was it just that his artistic timing was always superb?

  Quite unbidden, that disquieting thought flicked across her consciousness. She wished she could have kept it away. No hint of cynicism should have clouded the bright­ness of this experience. But something deep inside her made her hurry that last good night, so that she almost fled from him, across the terrace and into the darkened house again.

  At first she could not even grope her way. She stood irresolute, hearing only the thumping of her own heart. Then her eyes adjusted to the indoor darkness, and she felt her way more surely through the long drawing-room and out into the hall.

  There was a dim light on the wide staircase. She had been glad of it when she was coming down. She was even more glad of it now. In some strange way, it seemed to light the way not only to her room, but back to the commonsense safety of her own way of life. Nothing in the remotest degree dangerous had happened in those ten or fifteen minutes with Nicholas in the garden. And yet she felt that those few words which they had exchanged had somehow breeched the walls which surrounded the con­ventional life of the Mary Barlow she had always known.

  In that moment, she would almost have been glad to be no more than the carefree fan she had once been. Some­one who gazed happily at her stars from a distance and romanced about them harmlessly. To be involved with them personally was something totally different.

  It was when Nicholas had asked her how much he was the famous tenor to her and how much the man that a sort of warning bell had sounded. And like an echo had come the other, even more disquieting question: How much of his attitude related to the man, and how much was he the fine artist playing his role almost unconsciously?

  It was a thought which followed her into her sleep and did not entirely leave her for the rest of that weekend.

  For the others, of course, the weekend had already served its delightful purpose. Dermot Deane had been successfully interested in Marc Bannister’s opera, and Nicholas was willingly committed to singing in it. There was nothing to do but enlarge on this pleasing conclusion, and conversation tended to centre round the possibilities of a future production in the fairly near future.

  Though the work had not been actually commissioned for the Opera House, Oscar Warrender was confident that a space would be found for it in the coming season. And as Mary listened—and took occasional notes for them all—she realised that Nicholas was evidently planning on making London his headquarters for some while.

  “There’s a good deal else offering, now that people realise you’re in operatic circulation again,” objected Der­mot Deane, who naturally saw things from the point of view of the agent and impresario who preferred his clients to spread their professional wings as far as possible.

  “You could do the early study on this work almost any­where. And, much though we like to have you around, there are several managers clamouring for you.”

  “If I’m going to do this role I’d like the opportunity of some early study with the composer,” replied Nicholas coolly. “It’s not often a singer gets such a chance. The other places can wait.”

  “Not all of them!” Dermot Deane protested.

  “Not all, perhaps. But first things first. Let me have a copy of the score when you can, Marc. I’ve only the Lenskys on my plate at the moment.”

  Dermot Deane started to say something about a short Continental concert tour—which was news to Mary—but Nicholas frowned.

  “Not just now,” he said curtly. “We’ll discuss that later.” And the subject was dropped.

  To Mary, who felt her whole life had changed since last night, it seemed incredible that the rest of the week­end could pass in such leisurely tranquillity. Discussion of a mere opera might be of immense importance to the others—even, apparently to Nicholas. But she was con­cerned with real life—her life—and not with some stage situation.

  She hardly knew what it was she expected Nicholas to do or say. But surely one could not have a declaration of love—even a half laughing one—and just go on from there as though everything were as it had been before?

  It was true that there were other people around them most of the time. But if he had really wanted to have her to himself, he could surely have found an opportunity. Or made an opportunity, come to that. She wished now, pas­sionately, that she had not refused to answer his leading question, and she wondered unhappily if by her stupid moment of panic and indecision she had spoiled that in­definable bond between them.

  To her disappointment, Nicholas left rather early on the Sunday afternoon, in company with the Bannisters, who had persuaded him to stop off for twenty-four hours at their own small home in Sussex. She hoped it was not just her imagination that, as the good-byes were said, he held her hand a fraction longer than was necessary.

  Certainly he said that he would see her at the first night of “Eugene Onegin” on the Thursday, and added, “I’ll have your ticket left at the box office in my name.”

  It comforted her a little to remember his insisting that he wanted her downstairs because he could see her there. But then she had to watch him go off so deep in conver­sation with Marc Bannister that he even forgot to look back.

  Was that how dedicated artists were when it came to their art? With all else forgotten or pushed aside? In theory, this had always seemed to her a very proper and praiseworthy attitude. In practice, it was curiously un­acceptable.

  Mary drove back to town with her employer, telling herself as she had told Anthea Warrender—that she had had a wonderful time. She had, of course! Who could share a weekend with those charming and celebrated people and not feel that it had been an experience in a thousand?

  But as she went over each detail of the weekend in her mind, she felt that all the highlights had come in the very first evening. And she wondered if she had herself been responsible for the slight dimming of the radiance there­after.

  No one suggested that she should go to the dress re­hearsal of “Eugene Onegin” on Tuesday, but at least she knew that Nicholas must be back in town again. If she had followed her most slavish inclination she would more or less have sat by the telephone, waiting for him to call. But she rallied her self-respect and good sense, and when Barry phoned, pressing her to go out with him that even­ing, she
went.

  Again she had the curious feeling that it was almost a relief to go with Barry because he presented no problems. And this time she was sharply aware that this was her reaction, and she soberly accepted the implications of it.

  Perhaps this was how sensible girls saw things, in the end. Perhaps they thought of the improbable glamour of certain brief experiences as outside the natural scheme of existence, and settled for the familiar—as regards both events and people.

  The idea was confusing. Not least because Barry had himself once represented glamour and the almost un­attainable. Now, in contrast to Nicholas Brenner and his world, Barry seemed—not ordinary—but understandable and unproblematical, in a wholly reassuring manner.

  He collected her from the office in an attractive car she had not seen before.

  “Barry, how lovely! Is it yours?” And when he nodded smilingly, she added, “I didn’t know you were thinking of a new car. The old one looked all right to me.”

  “Did it?” He was still smiling as he looked ahead. “We’re celebrating this evening, my love. I’ve had a pretty staggering promotion, the kind of step-up that I hadn’t expected for at least a couple of years.”

  “Oh, Barry, I am pleased! Where are we going to cele­brate?” she asked.

  “At a charming place I discovered recently, just beyond Windsor.”

  “Just—beyond Windsor?” She thought there must be an odd note in her voice, but he didn’t appear to have heard it.

  “Yes. A glorified riverside pub, with a beautiful out­look over the river. The kind of place for a real celebra­tion.”

  She thought of the Warrenders’ place “just beyond Windsor”, where she had spent that weekend of mingled magic and disappointment, and the garden, sloping down to the river, where she had walked in the moonlight with Nicholas. But she could not talk lightly to Barry—or in­deed anyone else—of that experience. So she just said that it sounded delightful, and left it at that.

  Barry had telephoned beforehand, it seemed, and a table had been reserved for them on the balcony, over­looking a stretch of river and country which seemed both excitingly and disturbingly familiar to Mary. They were on the opposite side of the river from the Warrenders’ house, but almost within sight of it. And to Mary, in her present mood, there seemed to be something almost sym­bolical about this. It was as though the smoothly flowing river divided the two sides of her life from each other.