Unbidden Melody

by Mary Burchell

  She continued to look at the letter for a moment, while Mary could scarcely restrain the impulse to snatch it from her.

  “Why, of course! It’s Nick Brenner’s writing. And about time he wrote too! These men! Who do they think they are?” And she good-naturedly tossed the letter on to the bed and went out of the room, leaving Mary shak­ing with mingled hope and fear.

  But hope was uppermost. For her own change of heart about the last scene with Nicholas was so complete—her good intentions for the future so clear—that it seemed impossible that he might not feel as she did.

  She drew the one sheet of paper from the envelope and, even at a glance, she thought that the handwriting, with its heavily accented downstrokes, bespoke agitation, as though the writer had driven his pen hard into the paper with the intensity of his feelings.

  “Mary—” he had written, without any “dear” or “dar­ling” to soften it—”What can I say to you—what can either of us say to each other—after last night? The scene must have been as horribly revealing to you as to me. For a few short, wonderful weeks I had thought that there was not only love but complete trust and understand­ing between us. Now I see that such a thing doesn’t exist. Perhaps it doesn’t exist between any man and woman in the sense I mean. I don’t know. Possibly it’s I who am un­reasonable, and you who are the norm. If so, I accept the responsibility of this disaster as mine. I expected too much and was unfair to do so. But if that is how it has to be then marriage—any marriage—is not for me.

  “I’m trying not to blame you unduly. God knows, I can’t afford to criticise others, with one marriage failure already behind me. But surely somewhere there must be someone who means the same as I do by the words ‘trust’ and ‘understanding’. When I realised you had been spying on me, very much as Monica used to spy on me, I knew it was the end. Yet I had to see you, to seek some explana­tion—any explanation. And all you had to offer me were the hideously familiar reproaches and suspicions.

  “I’m not questioning your love, Mary. But I just can’t live with a stifling, demanding, jealous love like that. I wish I could see some future for us—but I know there is none. You probably know it too in your heart.

  “ ‘Addio’ is the saddest word in the Italian language. Perhaps that is why Puccini’s Mimi softened it magically with the words ‘senza rancor’—without ill-feeling. I’m sorry, my dear, but that’s what it has come to with us. Addio, senza rancor—Nicholas.”

  “I don’t believe it.” Mary realised that she had actually whispered the words aloud. “I don’t believe it.”

  But she had to believe it. He had written it all down, exactly as it must have seemed to him. And he had ended with an absolutely final farewell.

  She made herself read it again—every wounding word of it—and she felt overwhelmed by remorse and a sense of her own inadequacy. For she had failed him. That was the sum total of it. She had failed him. She loved him—how she loved him!—she had wanted to support and sus­tain him, and she had thought she understood him. But when it came to the crunch—she had failed him.

  If he had come into the room at that moment and stood before her, there was nothing she could think of that she would have been able to say to him in extenuation of her behaviour. Just perhaps the small, small fact that she had written to him first to tell him she was coming to Amster­dam. At least she had not crept up on him unawares, as he believed. But that seemed small now, measured against what had followed.

  For a long time she lay there, holding back her tears and swallowing the lump that kept on coming into her throat. She was still doing that when Lisette came in with her lunch and, tempting though it looked, Mary said im­mediately that she didn’t want anything to eat.

  “Of course you do. It is lunchtime and you must eat.” Lisette spoke as though she were dealing with a fractious child.

  “I’m not hungry.” Mary turned her head away.

  “Are you not well again?”

  “I’m just not hungry. I don’t want any lunch.”

  Lisette, who was used of course to every sort and kind of temperamental reaction, muttered to herself in French and went out of the room again. Three minutes later Tor­elli entered.

  “What is this nonsense about no lunch?” Torelli’s methods were even more direct than Lisette’s.

  “Just that. I’m not hungry.”

  “It is not necessary to be hungry. But you must eat, otherwise you will not get well. And then when you die of malnutrition your mother will blame me.”

  Mary wanted to say that her mother would never do anything so illogical. But instead she began to cry.

  For a moment Torelli regarded her consideringly. Then her glance fell on the letter still open on the bed, and she picked it up.

  “I suppose that stupid Russian is responsible,” she said, ruthlessly stripping Nicholas of his half-British nation­ality in this moment of censure. “May I read this?”

  Mary made an instinctive gesture of dissent. Then, feeling that nothing in the world mattered much now, she nodded.

  With some deliberation Torelli proceeded to read. Mary kept her head turned away for most of the time. But finally she could not resist glancing at Torelli to see the effect of Nicholas’s words upon her.

  “It’s a nice touch at the end,” Torelli observed appro­vingly. “ ‘Addio, senza rancor!’ There’s the real artist.” And she actually sang the famous phrase, in half-tone but so beautifully that Mary immediately felt the tears come into her eyes again. “Did you really behave in this silly way?” Torelli wanted to know.

  “It—it wasn’t quite as he thought,” Mary murmured in self-defence.

  “It never is when two people who are in love fall out.” replied Torelli with rather touching truth. “Cheer up, dear child. There will almost certainly be a chance to ex­plain and apologise.”

  “How can there be?” Mary demanded forlornly. “With him in one country and me in another, and neither of us in the right one, come to that.”

  “There is no such thing as the right country,” Torelli told her severely. “All have their particular advantages. That is why I, for instance, pretend to be Italian, prefer to live in France, and hold on to my British nationality like grim death. You must not allow yourself to become narrow-minded just because you happen to be disillu­sioned for the moment.”

  This totally irrelevant and rather unfair attack served to distract Mary’s attention from her misery for a mo­ment. And Torelli went on, “Once you are able to get about again everything will seem different Meanwhile, he at least is mobile. He may well come rushing to Paris to see you when he hears that you are ill.”

  “After that letter? How could he?” Mary rejected the idea almost fretfully. “No man would do such a thing.”

  “On the contrary, many of them would. Men are constantly doing the most idiotic things,” Torelli asserted. “They are idiotic, by and large. Women too, of course,” she added with strict impartiality. “But in a different way. Now will you eat your lunch?”

  There seemed nothing else for it. So Lisette brought back her lunch and Mary contrived to eat it, with a faint return of her normal appetite. For one thing, completely illogical though Torelli’s arguments might be, they had been advanced with such confidence, and with such an air of knowing all about the mad world of the artist, that there was an odd sort of comfort about them.

  For most of that afternoon Mary lay there, alternating between the depths of her natural despair and the some­what unrealistic optimism generated by Torelli’s bracing assertions. Was it possible? Could she—dared she—be­lieve that when Nicholas heard of her accident he might still care enough to be anxious and feel impelled to come to Paris for himself and find out how badly she had been injured?

  The idea was so deliciously comforting that she allowed her thoughts to play around it, until she almost convinced herself that it was the logical conclusion to all that had happened.

  She could actually imagine the details of his arrival
—the sound of his footsteps in the hall, the opening of the door. It was difficult to think just what she would say to him. But perhaps there would be no need to say anything. Pale with anxiety and the intensity of his feelings, he would just come straight across the room and take her in his arms, and somehow the explanations would take care of themselves.

  At this point she realised that she was half asleep and that practical possibilities had slipped into wishful day­dreaming. So she roused herself and read his letter again, and was instantly plunged into fresh despair.

  The chill of the written word is always more final than anything actually spoken, and now she could not imagine why she had not had the courage and sense to stay and talk things out with him. She could have made some sort of defence, however much she might have been in the wrong. Instead of which, she had left him to commit his thoughts and fears to paper, which must inevitably have impressed them even more powerfully on his own mind.

  At that point her spirits slipped to their very lowest ebb. Then the blackness of her despair was pierced by the entry of Lisette with a slight air of mystery about her. And what she said was,

  “Do you feel well enough to have a visitor?”

  “A visitor, Lisette?” Suddenly she rocketed to such dizzy heights of hope that she actually caught her breath. “Yes, of course! Who is it?”

  “A very good-looking young man,” replied Lisette, with an unexpected dash of coquetry which sat oddly upon her. “He just said to tell you he thought you would be glad to see him.”

  Glad to see him! Nothing—nothing in the whole world—could express her gladness. The heavens opened and the angels sang. And dear, dear clever Torelli had been right. He had come!

  Mary sat up, pushed back her hair and reached for the very becoming dressing-jacket which was a present from Torelli.

  “Do I look all right, Lisette?”

  “I guess he’ll think so,” Lisette laughed. “Shall I show him in?”

  “Yes, please!”

  She heard his step in the hall, just as she had imagined. She heard it even above the loud beating of her own heart, and she willed him to come straight across and take her in his arms.

  The door swung open, propelled by Lisette’s willing hand. And suddenly Mary’s heart gave a sickening down­ward lurch.

  For it was not Nicholas who came into the room with an eager, anxious smile. It was Barry.

  CHAPTER IX

  “Oh, Barry—dear! How good of you to come.”

  Somehow she managed to get out the appropriately grateful words, to smile at him with an appearance of de­lighted surprise, to hold up her face for his anxious, af­fectionate kiss, to hide the bitter disappointment that he was Barry and not Nicholas.

  Fortunately, he seemed to find it quite natural that he should do all the talking at first. That gave her time to collect her thoughts and to realise that, if she had not been indulging in absurd day-dreams about Nicholas, she would have been happy indeed to see Barry, or anyone else from home.

  “What brought you here? What a lovely surprise!” She could say that now with some sincerity.

  “I phoned yesterday evening to ask you to come to a show, and your mother told me about your accident. I couldn’t rest until I had come to see for myself how you really were.”

  “That was kind of you, Barry.” And she thought, “Mother would be well impressed by that. She’s probably thinking more approvingly of him now than she ever did before.”

  “Nothing kind about it,” he insisted. “I just had to know. How are you feeling now, darling?”

  He looked at her so tenderly that it would have been churlish to query, even mentally, his right to call her “darling”. So she let him continue to hold the hand he had taken, while she gave him a favourable account of her progress.

  At the conclusion of this he immediately began to talk of the possibilities of getting her home, and she found herself listening eagerly. Until then she had been content to exist in a sort of luxurious vacuum. Now, as he spoke of the dear, familiar, everyday details of home, she real­ised that she longed passionately to be there.

  “Nothing could be simpler,” he assured her. “Once you’re allowed up and have gathered some strength to­gether, you could be driven to the airport, taken to the plane in a wheeled chair and flown to London Airport where I could meet you.”

  “I’m already being allowed up for a little while each day,” she told him.

  “Well, there you are! It’s probably only a question of a day or two before we can have you home.”

  “Do you really think so?” Her eyes sparkled. “Not that I haven’t been very happy here,” she added quickly. “Madame Torelli has been incredibly kind. And I think she rather enjoyed having me. I was a bit like a new toy to her.”

  “Good lord!” said Barry. “What an extraordinary idea.”

  “Oh, no, not really. She dramatises everything, and liked to think I had saved her life, just because I pulled her out of the way of a taxi and got bumped myself. She’s a trifle bored when her husband is away and I filled the gap. But he’s due back at the end of the week and, from something Lisette said, I believe they had planned to go to the South of France. I daresay it would suit them both very well if I were well enough to go home soon.”

  This was not quite what Torelli admitted to when she came in. For one thing, she preferred to make any arrange­ments herself and was not too pleased with Barry for tak­ing the initiative. But he exerted all the charm and persuasion which had helped to put him at the top of his firm, and presently she did concede that, provided it could be arranged with no harm to Mary, her return home would indeed fit in with the plans she and her husband had in mind.

  Barry had to return to London that same evening, so his visit was necessarily brief. But before he left a great deal had been arranged. The doctor’s permission for Mary to travel had been sought and obtained, the air re­servation confirmed, and arrangements made for her to have an invalid’s treatment on the flight.

  Once he had gone, Torelli asked with customary curio­sity, “And where does he come in >“

  “Barry? I suppose you could describe him as an old flame of mine,” Mary said lightly. “I was very sweet on him once, then he nearly married another girl. But that didn’t come off, and he and I became friends again.”

  “Friends?” Torelli rejected the word with splendid scorn. “The man’s in love with you.”

  Mary was silent. And after a pause Torelli said con­sideringly, “He might be a lot better for you than Nicho­las Brenner. More your type—conventional without being dull. Rather charming. And he’d wear well.” She paused again and then added on a note of not unkindly warning, “We artists are difficult to live with, you know.”

  “I know,” said Mary.

  “Well—” Torelli slightly raised her expressive hands and let them fall again—”I won’t say any more. People don’t really ever want to hear advice, however good it may be.”

  “That’s what my mother says,” Mary smiled. “She says people only want someone to tell them what they want to hear.”

  “I think,” said Torelli, “that I should like your mother.”

  “I’m pretty sure,” replied Mary with some surprise, “that she would like you. You couldn’t be more differ­ent in most ways. But you both have the same sort of basic common sense.”

  “Ah—common sense!” The singer gave her quite lovely smile. “A most precious commodity, and almost always in short supply, as the ridiculous modern phrase has it.” Then she added, with apparent irrelevance, “I was talking to Dermot on the phone earlier today. He wants me to come to London for a concert towards the end of the year.”

  “Oh, do! Please, please come. It would be wonderful. I’ve never heard you in a concert.”

  “I’m good,” stated Torelli without false modesty.

  “If you’ll come and do the concert I’ll promise not to burst into tears when I have to say good-bye. Much though I shall want to.”

&
nbsp; “Emotional blackmail,” observed Torelli, looking ex­tremely pleased. “All right, you can tell Dermot I agree. But with a ten per cent increase on my previous fee. Costs are rising every day. And now—no tears, mind. I dislike tears except as a tribute to one of my operatic perform­ances.”

  So even when it came to saying good-bye some days later, Mary gallantly controlled her emotions, although she did cling to Torelli and kiss her with some fervour.

  “There, there.” Torelli patted her shoulder brusquely. “Come and see me when you’re next in Paris.” She spoke as though Mary might make a habit of whisking across the Channel whenever the mood took her. “Let me know if they don’t treat you properly on the journey and I’ll give the airline hell. I know one of the directors.”

  There was no need, however, to have this threat imple­mented. Mary was looked after like precious china all the way, and was eventually handed over to Barry at Lon­don Airport by an attractive air hostess.

  She was tired by then, in spite of all the comfort and care, and was glad just to sit back in the car beside Barry, with the pleasant awareness that she was on the last lap home.

  He glanced at her anxiously once and said, “You’re all right, aren’t you? I didn’t hustle you back too soon.”

  “No, no, I’m quite all right so long as I make no sort of effort. It’s lovely just to sit here knowing you’ll look after everything and get me home safely.”

  “Of course, my darling. That’s what I’m here for.”

  She wanted to tell him that alas, she was not his darling. Not now nor at any other time. She valued his friendship and was infinitely grateful for the way he looked after her. But when it came to being someone’s darling, if she could not be Nicholas’s darling she was no one’s. Some­time she would have to convince Barry of this. But to­day was hardly the day to tell him.

  At home once more, in her mother’s care, Mary felt a different being. The luxurious indulgence of the Torelli ménage might be missing, but all the familiar affection and security lapped her round, and she throve like a plant in its natural soil. Indeed, within a matter of days, she was already talking of going back to the office, even if for only a few hours a day.