Death on the High C's

by Robert Barnard

  She put her arm round the back of his chair, and Owen, seemingly rather grateful for her attention, entered into the intimate spirit of the scene.

  ‘I’ve got to get the whole thing in my mind’s eye,’ he said. ‘Put everything into place. The Italian will have to fit herself into my scheme of things. But you needn’t worry: the last act will get its fair share of rehearsal time.’

  ‘Oh Jeez, I’m not worried about that. I know what sort of performance I’m going to give, and rehearsals aren’t going to change that very much. Give me a good sexy part like this, and I’m in it body and soul. But the others—well—’ Gaylene gave a gigantic sniff—‘they’re a bit English, wouldn’t you say? Stiff and reserved, like. If you ask me the lot of them need a firework up their backsides.’

  ‘We haven’t got all your wonderful Australian spontaneity,’ said Raymond Ricci, lazily strolling over. ‘Take Simon, for example: you may not believe this, but just occasionally he actually likes to think about his part. You must find that curious—but as a matter of fact, now and again I do too.’

  ‘You’ll never make a real opera-singer,’ said Gaylene, unperturbed. ‘You’ll never give a performance. And nor will that wet prick Calvin, come to that. Christ—the way I have to work on that weed. And to date I’ve got precisely nowhere.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Bridget acidly, ‘if you worked less, you might get further. In any case, it’s his part that’s important. You’ve got to let him work it up in the way he wants it, and fit yourself into his interpretation.’

  ‘Stuff that,’ said Gaylene contemptuously. ‘He’d do better to leave the ideas to Owen, and try working up a bit of passion instead. At the moment I’m throwing myself at him the whole time, and the most I get is a chaste hand placed lightly round my waist. Talk about Victorian!’

  ‘Passion isn’t just a matter of two people throwing themselves around on top of each other,’ said Simon.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ said Gaylene, for a moment looking genuinely puzzled. Then her face cleared. ‘But you’re too old. Probably hardly remember what it was like.’

  ‘You make it all much too obvious,’ said Bridget earnestly. ‘And you nag him too much. You get his back up.’

  ‘Not at all the part of him she wants to get up,’ said Raymond softly.

  Gaylene withdrew her arm from Owen’s back, and put out her tongue in Ricci’s direction.

  ‘I can get as much of that as I want any day of the week, as you very well know. There’s queues from here to Manchester Central Station, as a matter of fact. In any case, in a week or so I’ll be doing without the lot of you for a bit.’

  ‘Some private form of Lent?’ enquired Ricci politely.

  ‘Shit you. My boy-friend’s coming.’

  ‘Boy-friend?’ said Bridget. ‘I didn’t know you had a boy-friend.’

  “Whadderyou mean?’ brayed Gaylene. ‘Why shouldn’t I have a boy-friend? He’s my fiancé actually, if you must know. And he could knock any of this collection of imitations of masculinity into the middle of next week, I’ll tell you that.’

  ‘Christ, Muhammed Ali,’ said Ricci. ‘I might have known no one else would take her on.’

  ‘His name’s Hurtle, if you must know,’ said Gaylene. ‘He’s with the touring NSW Rugby team. They’re coming to Manchester next week. He’ll be staying a week or so.’

  ‘Well,’ said Bridget, ‘that’s nice. Perhaps we shall be able to rehearse some of the other bits of the opera that week.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Gaylene, ‘by that time Signora Spaghettini will arrive, and you’ll be back to two lines in Act I. Matter of fact, I’m looking forward to her coming. I’m hoping a bit of Latin passion might do the trick with poor old Calvin. Nothing else seems to raise a spark.’

  ‘Gaylene,’ said Bridget slowly, and with weighted emphasis, ‘I’m getting a bit fed up with this continual sniping at Calvin. You’d better know, we got engaged last night.’

  ‘What?’ roared Gaylene, so shocked that she stood up, her face twisted to a rare expression of outrage. ‘What?’

  ‘Engaged,’ said Bridget. ‘To be married.’

  ‘But you can’t,’ said Gaylene. ‘You just bloody can’t.’

  ‘Are you the only one allowed to have a fiancé?’ asked Bridget.

  ‘You can’t marry him,’ Gaylene shouted, red and furious. ‘He’s a nigger. He’s a bloody black.’

  She looked round at the others, and they in their turn could only look miserable and embarrassed. For what Gaylene said was quite undeniable. Especially as even now Calvin was standing in the doorway looking very black indeed.

  CHAPTER III

  Molto Agitato

  The publicity manager of the Northern Opera got a good deal of mileage out of the engagement of Bridget and Calvin. Even the Guardian put on its multi-racial hat and had a photograph of them. Calvin was the main point of interest, since he was already singing successfully with the company, whereas Bridget had only sung down South, and so could only be described as ‘promising’. Then again, Calvin was black, and born British, and spoke the most impeccable English, and this (for some reason) thrilled most of the reporters to the depths of their liberal/radical souls. One of the reporters who had done some homework asked him if it was his ambition to sing Otello. ‘If my voice grows by about three hundred per cent,’ said Calvin. Another asked if he had found any examples of racial prejudice in the world of opera. To this Calvin cautiously replied that he found the audiences remarkably liberal-minded. The questioner seemed content with this.

  It wasn’t that Calvin was feeling particularly bruised by Gaylene’s nasty little outburst, any more than Raymond Ricci had resented her ‘pommie-wop’ slurs. On the other hand, during Calvin’s life-time his race—and others of a similar black, brown or dirty yellow shade—had taken over the whole burden of British racial prejudice, which had previously been distributed around, embracing Italians, Irish, Germans, and Jews. The old prejudices had not really died: they had been subsumed and concentrated into the more actual and immediate object. So though Calvin had been born in Britain, to a family that had already been comfortably settled in the country for two or three years, he had had in his time his share of mindless insults, of wanton rudeness or neglect in shops and restaurants, and more than his share of remarks prefaced by ‘Of course, there’s nothing personal in this, but in my opinion . . . ’

  Luckily the worst effects of hostility and ignorance had been cushioned by a stable home: his parents were West Indian, his father had a good job, comparatively, and they were churchgoers who had integrated themselves into the community years before ‘integration’ had become a problem to be mulled over by politicians, leaders of opinion, and the heavy Sundays. Calvin had always done well at school, and the chance at eleven to play the Negro page in Rosenkavalier at Covent Garden had sealed his fate. When his headmaster had told him, a couple of years later, that he ought to be thinking about Oxbridge, Calvin had said: ‘I’m going to be an opera singer.’ The headmaster had pointed out, with a gentle smile, that as his voice had not yet broken it was a little early to decide that. ‘Even if I sing like a cow with toothache, I’m going to be an opera singer,’ Calvin had said. Luckily the Good Lord had been in one of his rare obliging moods: Calvin got a voice.

  So, after an initial reaction to Gaylene’s remarks which was perhaps as much due to his general attitude to Gaylene as to racial feeling, Calvin calmed down, and laughed about it with Bridget in private. Still, he wasn’t going to pretend to the gentlemen of the press that as far as the company was concerned everything in the racial garden was lovely, so he confined his remarks to the audiences, and everything was smoothed over.

  On Monday morning, several members of the cast were relaxing in the Pitford Methodist Hall, in an interval between getting Act I, scene II into shape and starting in again on the unavoidable Act III. Inevitably, since like all singers and actors they loved publicity and had an implicit belief in its power, the papers were handed round, a
nd a good deal of gentle ribbing of Calvin and Bridget took place.

  ‘Obviously,’ said Owen, who always tried to relax and be nice to his singers in the intervals of rehearsing, ‘you’re both being groomed as the new Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy.’

  ‘Or perhaps Ted and Barbara Andrews,’ said little Mr Pettifer, revealing an unsuspected vein of slyness. ‘Their place has never really been filled.’

  ‘No, thank goodness,’ said Simon. ‘I hope the management are suitably grateful for all the publicity you’re bringing. They ought to throw a party for you both. I think I’ll go to Mike and suggest it.’

  ‘With the current financial situation of the company, I should think it would have to be a bring-your-own-wine-and-cheese-party,’ said Raymond Ricci.

  ‘We could all get together and arrange one,’ said Bridget. ‘Not for us, but it is the beginning of the new season, after all. We could have it while Gaylene’s Hurtle is here, perhaps.’

  ‘Do you mean so she could bring him along, or in the hope that she would be otherwise occupied?’ enquired Calvin.

  ‘The first, beast,’ said Bridget. ‘It’s be-sweet-to-Gaylene week this week, as far as I’m concerned. All directed towards keeping the atmosphere pleasant for the production—I’m sure Owen will approve, won’t you?’

  ‘Oh—er—’ said Owen, not certain whether irony was intended.

  ‘And, of course,’ continued Bridget, ‘towards heaping coals of fire on Gaylene’s head. The interesting thing will be how long it takes her to feel the heat.’

  But they were interrupted by Gaylene herself, and a Gaylene who gave every indication of feeling the heat. No one ever thought of her as a cool, collected person, but they were all shocked to silence by the image she presented today. She threw open the main door, and strode forward. Red, sweating, her flesh blotchy and her expression vicious, she darted her bulbous eyes suspiciously from one member of the little group to the other as she came towards them. Suddenly there was no longer anything funny about her: she had been transformed from a comic gargoyle into a threatening figure of real menace, of a sort of malignant power.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Who was it? Which of youse is trying to murder me?’

  They had expected something melodramatic from her frightful appearance, but they hadn’t expected that. There was complete silence among the group for several seconds, then someone shifted uneasily, and Raymond Ricci said: ‘Oh, come off it, Gaylene—’

  ‘Which was it?’ bellowed Gaylene.

  ‘Dear girl,’ began Simon Mulley, ‘let’s talk this over rationally together—’

  ‘None of that,’ shouted Gaylene. ‘I’m not in the mood for any of this at-heart-we’re-all-good-pals stuff. I just want to know who did it.’

  ‘If you were to tell us what,’ suggested Bridget.

  ‘Sneaked into my flat in the middle of the night and turned on my gas-fire, that’s what. Any more questions?’

  There was silence for a moment, and the little group seemed able to do no more than stand around and gape at her. On the one hand there was the natural tendency to treat the whole thing as a big farce—another of Gaylene’s little ways, one which, like the rest, effectively drew attention to herself. On the other hand, that sweaty, bulging, shouting figure was horribly convincing: this looked like someone who really was beside herself with shock, rage and fear. Even Raymond Ricci piped down, though he was looking at her very closely, almost as if she were interesting from a dramatic point of view, a case-study. Finally Simon, as the oldest and most experienced in theatrical scenes, felt he had to say something.

  ‘Really, Gaylene,’ he began, trying to put a lot of sympathy into his voice, ‘can you be quite sure you didn’t leave it on yourself, and it accidentally blew out?’

  ‘On? In this heat? Are you crazy?’

  ‘Or knocked it just before you went to bed?’ suggested Calvin.

  ‘I didn’t go near the damned thing before I went to bed.’ She turned aggressively on Calvin. ‘Are you sure it wasn’t you? You want me out of the company, that’s for sure.’

  ‘My dear girl, nobody wants you out of the company,’ said Simon, an unfortunate lie that wouldn’t for a moment get past Gaylene.

  ‘Don’t make me laugh,’ she almost spat out. ‘I’m the only first-rate voice in this company, and don’t you all know it! Every one of you would pay my fare back to Australia like a shot, if you thought I’d go, and don’t pretend you wouldn’t. I suppose you hoped it would harm my voice?’

  ‘You’re being ridiculous, Gaylene,’ said Raymond Ricci in that calm, suave voice of his.

  ‘Oh, I hit the nail on the head, did I? You want to ruin my voice, do you? Well, let me tell you, you could have had a double murder on your hands!’

  Double! Most of the company involuntarily looked towards Owen and then towards Ricci, and then realized with a start that if either of them had been with Gaylene last night, they would certainly have known about the gas-fire before now.

  ‘I’m the last person to pry into your private life, Gaylene,’ said Calvin eventually, ‘but are you sure that—well, whoever you were with didn’t turn on the gas? A sort of mutual suicide pact without your consent?’

  ‘Funny bastard,’ said Gaylene. ‘Now listen here, you lot. I’m going to give this thing the works. I’m going to make sure the whole bloody company knows, and the newspapers as well. So if you’ve a mind to try these sneaky little tricks again, there’ll be that much publicity you’ll feel you’ve got the main spotlight on you.’ She turned to Owen. ‘And if you expect me to rehearse today, you’ve got another think coming. You can do without me. That’s obviously somebody’s aim—to do without me permanently!’

  And Gaylene pranced out.

  Her threat to tell the newspapers had caused a perceptible lowering of tension among the others. The hideous spectacle she had presented on her arrival, the spectacle of a rather unattractive animal at bay, combined with the passionate venom of her accusations, had convinced most of them that someone really had tried to kill Gaylene—or play a particularly nasty trick on her, at best. Each of them knew that they loathed her; most of them thought they knew that all or most of the others loathed her as well. This being so, they all had the fascinated, guilty feeling that what she said was not inherently improbable. But when she mentioned publicity—ah well: this was just Gaylene. Gaylene fed on newspaper items about herself. She was as hungry for a mention as a fading Hollywood actress or an up-and-coming politician. That explains things, they all told each other, in gestures and raisings of the eyebrow that were more eloquent than words. Let’s just forget it and get back to work.

  • • •

  SINGER ACCUSES: SOMEONE IS TRYING TO KILL ME. sang out the Manchester Evening News. Gaylene had given their reporter the works, and he squeezed a picture of her, pop-eyed and malevolent, on to the arts page. Other Northern journals gave her a modicum of space, in the less serious parts of the paper. The ‘sensation’ didn’t last. Stage-people are notoriously hysterical, suspicious, prone to persecution mania. One couldn’t pay attention to every one of them who made wild accusations of that sort, especially when the nation was tottering from one financial brink to another, and the football season was starting. The thing died down.

  In the company the gossip lasted a little longer. The whisper went around that Gaylene’s bed-partner of the night in question had been Jim McKaid, a small-part player with the company, not much liked, with a chip on his shoulder and a sense that managements ‘held him back’. He had a wife over in Dungannon, and he didn’t want to talk about the affair, but he did swap a few words with Calvin while they were rehearsing the Second Act, in which he played Marullo:

  ‘She’s a good lay all right,’ he said, with his twisted smile, ‘but I’m damned if she’s worth getting gassed for.’

  CHAPTER IV

  Double Entry

  Giulia Contini, faithfully attended by her manager, Signor Pratelli, arrived from Verona on the Monday of
the next week, and that evening they were entertained to cocktails by Mike Turner, the director, together with a group of notables—not members of the company, naturally, but local businessmen and civic dignitaries. The company, for its part, accepted that Mike had to go whoring after scraps of charity, and merely looked forward with anticipation to her appearance at the Friday morning rehearsal. She came late, of course. Mussolini was probably too busy making trains arrive on time to effect the same transformation on Italian singers—or if he did, his influence was as ephemeral as on the trains. Giulia was three-quarters of an hour late, and she came attended bustlingly by fat little Signor Pratelli, and by Mike, who smilingly ushered her in.

  Visually, Signorina Contini was a great disappointment to Gaylene. She was short, plump, and quite unalluring, with a small, sharp-featured face that somehow managed to accommodate a good-humoured expression. She was, in fact, ordinary, as only an Italian girl can be ordinary, and the fact that she had bought most of her clothes from a good Italian couturier only underlined her ordinariness. The clothes had been the reward of success, and the success had been based on her winning the Bellini Competition in Siena the year before. Since then she had been much talked about in Italy, and her name had begun to penetrate to the outside world through reports in Opera and The Times. She had appeared in a mediocre Italian television production of Madam Butterfly, had been cheered rapturously at Rome, booed at Parma, and had cut her first disc of war-horses for Decca. The engagement with Northern Opera was her first modest excursion on to the international treadmill, and for this event she had expressed herself willing to learn the role in English. Her engagement in Manchester had aroused a little flutter of interest among English opera-goers, and before the first night she was to be interviewed by Alan Blyth.

  Now, after she had divested herself of her splendid fur, which must have been prompted more by the thought of Manchester than by the actual climatic conditions that summer morning, she smiled around on her assembled fellow-singers with great geniality, and Mike took her protectively by the arm to effect introductions. Mike, a local boy made smooth, a little over-polite and always impeccably dressed, was nevertheless showing some small signs of nervousness. It soon became clear why.