Unbidden Melody

by Mary Burchell

  “She is wonderful. Why shouldn’t he pay tribute to such a colleague before the audience they have both en­slaved?” Mary asked herself. And she felt better—as though she had somehow won a small victory—when she was able to clap with as much enthusiasm as anyone else in the audience when Suzanne took a solo bow.

  Not until the last group did she begin to feel nervous about going round backstage. The sheer excitement of the concert had held her full attention until that moment. But now—in the next ten or fifteen minutes—she was going to put all her personal anxieties to the test, and all she could think of was how she was going to greet Nicholas. And, still more, how he would take her sudden, un­announced appearance.

  Determined not to be involved in the rush backstage that would inevitably follow after the last encore, she slipped out of a side exit as they came on to the platform for the last time. From the passageway she heard Rich­ard Kenning play the opening bars of a provocative, folk-music type of duet with which they had already delighted the audience. Then she went through the pass-door at the end, firmly stating to the man on duty that Mr. Brenner was expecting her and that she was from his London man­ager.

  The not entirely truthful statement took her safely backstage, where the network of corridors was nothing like so complicated as in an opera house. Indeed, when she turned the first corner, she found that she could see straight on to the platform, where Nicholas and Suzanne were laughing and taking their last bows. In turn they bent down to clasp some of the hands which were eagerly held up from the audience. Then, as she saw they were about to leave, Mary instinctively drew back sharply behind her angle of the corridor.

  As she did so, she distinctly heard Nicholas exclaim, “Darling, you were superb! I never heard you better in the Rossini.”

  “Oh, Nick, it’s because you are there!” Suzanne’s lovely husky tones drifted down the corridor. “You do something to me. We ought always to be together—”

  As Suzanne’s voice stopped abruptly Mary was irre­sistibly impelled to lean forward to see what was happening. And there, framed in the small section of the passage she could see, was Suzanne with her arm round Nicholas’s neck, and he was laughing and holding her lightly round the waist as they kissed each other.

  Stunned, as though by a physical blow, Mary turned and went out of the building, almost blindly and a little unsteadily, and yet with some sort of instinct which took her unerringly through the nearest exit and into the street. Like someone escaping from a terrible danger, she walked rapidly then, not choosing any direction, not knowing at all where she was going. She just walked—anywhere, so long as it took her away from the scene she had just wit­nessed.

  At first no words formed, even in her mind. Then, when they began to filter into her consciousness, they were not words of her own. They were maddening snatches of what other people had said to her at various times. And all of them seemed to have some horrible bearing on what had happened.

  Dermot Deane saying, “This tour will be the test. She’s going to mount a pretty powerful campaign, if I’m not much mistaken.”

  Her mother saying, “There would be a lot of problems in that kind of life—”

  Barry, protesting, “It wouldn’t be the right life for you. All that stagey glamour, that artificial setting. You are an ordinary girl—in the dearest and most valuable sense of the word.”

  Barry! who knew her so well, loved her and had offered her security and the kind of life she knew.

  And then she remembered Nicholas himself saying, “I thought for a moment you were jealous.”

  “Oh, Nick, Nick, how could you?” She said the words aloud to the empty street. “You accused me of being jea­lous—made an issue of it Well, I am jealous, and I have every reason to be.—Oh, where am I? I don’t know. And I don’t care.”

  She went on walking, along the bank of one canal and across a bridge and then along the other bank. Sometimes she passed people, singly or in groups. But no one seemed to notice her or find anything unusual about her appear­ance.

  “That’s what happens. You’re shattered—stunned—almost dead. And the world walks past unknowing. Be­cause your silly little problems are all your own. And no one knows the answer. Not even you, at times.”

  This time she didn’t say the words aloud. She had got past that stage. And presently her pace slackened because she found all at once that she was utterly exhausted, physically and emotionally. The sensible part of her was beginning to realise that she must get back to her hotel. She could not go walking about a foreign city aimlessly and alone at this time of night. But another part of her said it was equally impossible to go back to that hotel bedroom and sit or lie still and think—and think.

  In the end, the decision was almost made for her. An unoccupied taxi drew up within yards of her, and by then her weariness was such that she hailed it automatically, muttered the name of her hotel and sank thankfully into its dim obscurity.

  Only when she found how long the taxi ride took did she realise how far she must have walked. A sort of dreary somnolence was settling on her by the time they arrived. And, having paid the man, she went into the hotel and to the desk to collect her key in something like a daze.

  As she turned away again, her glance idly swept the vestibule and the entrance to the lounge beyond. Then it stopped. For standing in the doorway, with the dimmed lights of the deserted lounge behind him, was Nicholas.

  She went slowly forward, but he made no move towards her, nor did he hold out his hands. Only when she came right up to him he said rather hoarsely, “Where, in God’s name, have you been?”

  “I’ve been—walking about.”

  He drew her into the room then, away from the obser­vation of anyone who might come into the hotel. But when he attempted to put his arms round her she pushed him away and said instinctively, “No—”

  “Mary, what’s the matter? Why are you here in Am­sterdam, anyway?”

  “I thought—” she gave a cracked little laugh—”you’d be pleased to see me.”

  “But I am pleased to see you! Of course I am. Why didn’t you come round after the concert? Kenning said you were in the hall. I couldn’t understand—”

  “I did come round,” she said, slowly and distinctly. “I came round just in time to see you and Suzanne fall into each others arms, while you called her ‘darling’ and she said you ought always to be together.”

  He went very white. She saw that even in the half-light.

  “I did no such—” he began. Then he stopped, as though something knocked faintly at the door of his memory. “It didn’t mean a thing!” He spoke almost absently. Then he added, curiously, “Where were you when you heard that, Mary?”

  “Near enough to catch every word. I was hidden by an angle in the corridor, but I—”

  “You were—bidden by an angle in the corridor,” he repeated, and the horror in his expressive voice gave such significance to the words that she exclaimed quickly,

  “No—no, it wasn’t the way you make it sound. It was—”

  “You came from London to Amsterdam, without telling me you were coming—”

  “I sent a letter,” she cried fruitlessly.

  “If Richard hadn’t run into you I wouldn’t even have known you were here. And you—hid in the corridor—”

  “I didn’t hide! Not deliberately. I didn’t want—”

  He brushed aside her protest with something like a shudder, and she heard his murmur, “Like a recurring nightmare. Like a nightmare.”

  “Nick—Nick, please listen to me.”

  “I’m listening,” he said wearily. “I’m listening. But it isn’t really necessary. I can tell it to you as well as you can tell it to me. I know it all, like an old record I’ve heard dozens of times before.”

  It was she who fell away from him then, the back of her hand pressed against her mouth, in the sudden ap­palled realisation that nothing she could say would make him believe she had not come jealously to spy upon him. Th
at she was completely innocent, and that she had quite unintentionally stumbled on something for which she might well reproach him, seemed to have nothing to do with the situation now.

  To him the point was that he believed she had spied upon him. To her the point was that she felt any jealousy of hers was well merited. They were like people talking different languages. Or like people walking along parallel paths which could never meet.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said hopelessly at last. “There’s nothing either of us could say that would reach the other, in this mood. I’m so tired—and stupid. And you look all in too. We’d be talking in circles.”

  He made a slight gesture of agreement.

  “Tomorrow—perhaps tomorrow—” He turned from her and went slowly towards the door, touching the furni­ture as he passed, as though he needed some support, or at least the reassurance that there was something concrete in this fog of doubt and wretchedness which had descen­ded upon them.

  And she watched him go, without either the heart or the will to tell him that tomorrow she would be gone to Paris, by an early morning plane.

  Later, in her room, she thought dazedly, “I let him go. Not just from the hotel, but out of my life. There’s no way back after the things we said to each other. I should have tried to justify myself—now. Before the certainty of his own belief could be fixed in his mind.”

  And if she had done so, and he had accepted her falter­ing explanations in the end—what then? Was it she who had to do the apologising? Was she to accept in her turn that scene between him and Suzanne, with all its implica­tions?

  If she had never come to Amsterdam, she would never have known about it. But she had come to Amsterdam—and seen for herself. Better to make the break now, be­fore she was more hopelessly involved. At present she could still feel angry with Nicholas, and that gave her a sort of strength.

  She stared into the darkness and seemed to see in let­ters of fire those words of Barry: “It wouldn’t be the right life for you.”

  The next morning she left the hotel early. Even earlier than was necessary in order to catch her plane. But she was suddenly panic-stricken lest Nicholas should come or even telephone before she could get away. And then, when she was sitting in the busy airport, counting off the extra minutes of waiting, the chilling conviction came to her that she had really hoped Nicholas would come or tele­phone.

  When she finally heard her flight to Paris announced over the air she had an almost overwhelming desire to turn back. Even now, at this very last half—minute, the decision was still hers. Her luggage would have to go on, of course. But she could follow by another plane. It would take very little while to drive back into Amsterdam. She could go to his hotel. She knew which one it was now.

  But then, in imagination, she saw herself walking into the Amstel and asking for Nicholas, and somehow getting Suzanne instead. So she caught her plane to Paris, as ar­ranged. And within an hour or two she was driving down the Champs Elysées for the first time in her life.

  Bruised and wretched and heartbroken though she was, she could not be entirely indifferent to the most beautiful street in Europe. She gazed around her, faintly comfor­ted by what she saw. And with all her might she tried to wrench her thoughts away from her own miserable little affairs and concentrate on the fact that her employer had trusted her to make some sort of assessment of a new and rising soprano. That meant an evening at the opera which would include, among other things, the supreme ex­perience of hearing Gina Torelli sing the Queen of the Night.

  At any other time she would have been excited and thrilled—her first time in the Paris opera, and for such an occasion. But the sombre cast of her spirits kept her calm and serious as she mounted the great staircase of Garnier’s beautiful building. And even when the performance be­gan she remained aloof enough to be able to make a well-balanced—though favourable—assessment of the young soprano who was singing Pamina.

  But when Torelli made her brief and shattering appear­ance as the Queen of the Night, Mary sat on the edge of her seat, almost literally, her lips parted in excitement and delight. For, though no longer young, Torelli could still toss off that fiendishly difficult first aria with almost terrifying power and splendour. And the house was hers, as the saying is.

  After the performance, Mary went round to see Tor­elli. Her employer had instructed her to be sure to pay his respects—and hers—to the diva. And, as Mary was no longer so timid about going backstage, she was delighted to have this opportunity of meeting the legendary Torelli at close quarters.

  “Dermot sent you?” The great singer surveyed her with an air of not unfriendly curiosity. “How is he, dear fel­low? Still putting on weight?”

  Mary replied to this difficult question with what tact she could, and added that she was grateful indeed to her employer for arranging that she should have the tremen­dous experience of hearing that evening’s performance.

  “Well—” Torelli smiled indulgently—”it’s a favourite role of mine, though it would be unrealistic to pretend that I can go on doing it for many years longer. Which is a pity, because most Queens of the Night are spiritless creatures who only get the role because they can just touch those top notes. She needs to be a demonic force, not a canary in a temper. What did you think of the Pamina?”

  “I liked her.” Mary felt slightly apprehensive at having to voice her opinion to this forceful lady. “Not a world-shaking voice—”

  “Certainly not!” interjected Torelli.

  “—but I thought she showed great musicality and a real sense of style.”

  Before she could say more, however, the girl herself tapped on the door and came into the room. She came across and kissed the older woman rather emotionally and then burst into a flood of German, the general gist of which seemed to be that she would never forget Madame’s kindness to her.

  Torelli replied in equally fluent French, and they ap­peared to understand each other very satisfactorily, so far as Mary could tell.

  But once the girl had gone again Torelli observed, with a shrug, “I didn’t understand much of what she said. She talks too fast. But I think it was an elaborate form of say­ing thank-you. Anyway, she’ll do quite well if she works hard.”

  Mary laughed aloud, and remarked that the soprano seemed a very nice girl, anyway.

  “She doesn’t need to be a very nice girl,” replied Tor­elli, leaning forward towards the mirror as she added a touch of shadow to her magnificent eyes. “She needs to practise a good legato and keep her diction clear. That’s much more important. Her final consonants are sometimes very blurred. Didn’t you notice?”

  Mary had to admit quite honesty that she had not.

  “Well, it takes a good ear to notice these things.” Tor­elli seemed pleased rather than otherwise that Mary had not noticed. “Would you like to come to supper with me?”

  “Madame Torelli, I’d love to, of course! But why me? There must surely be any number of people who would like to take you to supper.”

  “Of course. But most of them irritate me. My husband is away on business in the States. I don’t usually miss him for a week or two. I hardly notice he’s gone,” Torelli ad­mitted with candour. “But then I begin to get touchy and restless, and I’ve reached that stage now. So you had bet­ter come with me and amuse me with all the London gossip.”

  “Willingly. Though I don’t think I know much gossip,” Mary warned her.

  “You must, working in Dermot’s office. Did you come straight from London?”

  “N-no. I came by way of Amsterdam, so that I could hear the joint recital of Brenner and Suzanne Thomas.”

  Torelli gave a malicious but extremely musical trill of laughter.

  “There, right away, is an item of gossip,” she declared. “Is she going to marry the poor Brenner, now that Monica has been rather providentially removed? Come—” she shrugged on a very beautiful mink stole—”we will go somewhere nice and quiet, and you shall tell me all about it.”
/>   Nothing was further from Mary’s intentions. Though she longed to talk—and hear—about Nicholas, she shrank from the idea of having anything she said subjected to the shrewd scrutiny of Torelli. But the decision was com­pletely out of her hands. Having tackled her stage-door admirers with a sort of brisk graciousness which evidently enchanted them, the diva stepped into her waiting car and, almost before Mary could sit down beside her, said, “Now tell me about Amsterdam.”

  During the short drive Mary did her best. But her guarded style of describing something that had been so personally wounding to herself hardly satisfied her host­ess.

  “You make it all sound very dull and uneventful,” she said critically. “Was it really like that, or are you perhaps poor at describing things?”

  “I think I must be poor at describing things,” Mary admitted meekly. “The recital wasn’t a bit dull or un­eventful. Far from it,” she muttered involuntarily as the car stopped outside the restaurant.

  Torelli informed her chauffeur that she would not need him again, as she would walk or take a taxi later. Then she swept into the restaurant amid a good deal of fussing and hand-kissing on the part of the gratified proprietor, who evidently knew his famous patron well.

  Mary dared to hope that, in the general to-do, the sub­ject of the Amsterdam concert would be dropped. But the hope was vain. Hardly had the waiter departed with their order when Torelli turned to her and enquired, exactly as though there had been no interruption to their conver­sation,

  “What did you mean by that last muttered remark? Why did you say the recital was far from dull and un­eventful?”

  “I—” Mary, suddenly wordless, looked at her in some dismay.

  “Had you some personal stake in it?”

  “What makes you think that?” Mary asked rather fear­fully.

  “The fact that you have a very open face and that I am not exactly a fool,” was the brisk reply. Then she sampled the wine which had just been poured out for her to taste, pronounced it unsatisfactory and sent it away.