Death on the High C's

by Robert Barnard

  ‘You must think I’m up the ruddy wall,’ said Bob. ‘I find it difficult enough to pass the time of day with them, in case one of them gets the wrong idea and slits my throat.’

  As he went, Superintendent Nichols went back to the little dressing-table. The fingerprint boys had done their work on the room, and on the letter Gaylene had received before her untimely electrification. Now it was lying there. It was from her agent, telling her that the BBC was interested to know if she would be available next year to sing at the last night of the Proms. What play Gaylene would have made with it at the rehearsal, if she had lived to be there! But Nichols felt glad that the few remaining English patriots, who suffered greatly, had been spared the ultimate indignity of a sexy performance of ‘Rule, Britannia’.

  • • •

  At home, Simon Mulley’s slight theatricality of manner left him almost entirely. Like most singers, he liked to eat well and drink well, but he did it without ostentation or ceremony. When he had joined the company he had rented an ugly little detached house in the suburbs of Manchester, with a tiny porch, little bits of ply-wood timbering, and a weedy garden. He and his wife Margaret had brought up most of their furniture, and they had managed to turn its inconveniences and its absurdities into something oddly pleasant and satisfying. Over dinner on the evening of the first full rehearsal he relaxed, gave a proper degree of attention to his food, and as usual enjoyed talking over with his wife the events of the day.

  ‘It must have been a terribly nervy rehearsal,’ Margaret Mulley said, thinking at the same time that Simon was more relaxed than for a long time. ‘Everyone looking at everyone else, and wondering which it was. Or wasn’t it like that?’

  ‘Well, it was certainly no picnic,’ Simon admitted. ‘But rehearsals with the Ffrench woman around were pretty jumpy as well. You never knew what vulgar insult she’d be coming out with next. So though Caulfield was still around of course, pretending to direct—and how he does direct!’ he added, with a wicked little smile at his wife, ‘still, in a way we seemed to work together better today.’

  That’s what you value most, isn’t it?’

  ‘Working together, as a company? Yes, that’s what this business is all about, for me.’

  ‘What about the new girl?’

  The understudy?’ Simon chewed a forkful of food, as if trying to find a way of putting his feelings tactfully. ‘It’s funny, you know: twenty years ago that girl would have gone to music college, got a few oratorio parts under her belt, pushed the bottom of her voice down to make a good chesty boom, and made a respectable career for herself doing Elijah and Messiah all over the North. And she’d have been perfectly happy, and probably been a useful teacher to boot. These days nothing contents them but going into opera. Really, opera is about the only industry that’s booming in this country.’

  ‘You should worry about that!’ said Margaret Mulley. ‘But you think she’s not fitted?’

  ‘If she works like a demon,’ said Simon, ‘she might just pass muster—in certain roles. In others she’ll never be anything but an embarrassment—to herself and everyone else.’

  ‘Poor thing. Maddalena’s not the easiest of parts if you don’t take naturally to the stage.’

  ‘No. Of course it’s hellish for her, and almost as bad for Calvin. There’s not much any of us can do about it, but naturally Caulfield is going about it entirely in the wrong way.’

  ‘Not shouting at her?’

  ‘Sarcasm, the raised voice just short of the shout, nagging—he’s really as pathetic a creature as she is.’

  ‘She probably sees him as an ogre.’

  ‘Probably. He just stopped short of being the complete bully today, but he’s bound to get worse.’

  ‘Couldn’t you take him aside?’

  ‘I’m the last person who could, after the little set-to we had the other day. In any case, I doubt if anyone would have any effect, except the effect of driving him in the opposite direction. You simply can’t tell a man as unsure of himself as that. Any suggestion is an affront, something that has to be fought.’

  ‘What a shame—to have the last act mucked up, when the rest is going so well.’

  ‘Musically well, anyway,’ said Simon. ‘And, when Bridget Lander takes over as Gilda it will go much, much better. When you’ve got good voices in the main roles and three or four reasonably intelligent actors, nothing Caulfield can do can bring the thing down completely. In fact, the reviews will probably call him a “promising young producer”, all the basis of our hard work in resisting his suggestions.’

  ‘That’s the way it goes,’ said Margaret Mulley.

  ‘Don’t I know it,’ said Simon, putting his fork down and smiling across the table.

  Later, over dessert, Margaret Mulley asked her husband what he would have done about Barbara Bootle.

  ‘Well, not have given her the part, for a start. You have to be much more careful about understudies than Mike Turner seems to have been in this case. In fact, the best thing would have been to send straight to London for a replacement as soon as Gaylene Ffrench died. Natural Maddalenas aren’t that rare. Granted that we’re landed with her now, she ought to be rehearsed day and night, kindly, patiently—in the hope that she will be able to give some kind of performance. And if we then found that she couldn’t, well, then we’d have to get on to the agents and get a last-minute substitute from London or wherever, however expensive it came. You just can’t have the last act ruined.’

  ‘Couldn’t someone coach her in private, without Owen Caulfield knowing?’

  ‘Who though? Calvin would be ideal, but the lad’s newly engaged: one could hardly expect him to give more than the occasional extra rehearsal to her. Then there’s Ricci—but one would certainly not want to turn any girl over to him.’

  ‘And you?’

  Simon looked at his wife, suddenly weary.

  ‘I have my responsibilities,’ he said.

  There was silence.

  ‘Hadn’t you better go up?’ said Margaret.

  ‘Yes,’ said Simon.

  He sat a few minutes longer. Margaret had watched him so often at this time that now she hated to look. His rather distinguished face began almost indefinably to collapse, the firm line of his mouth to droop, the eyes to lose their clear, intelligent focus. Suddenly one seemed to notice his greyness, and to remember that he was no more than forty-five. At that moment Simon Mulley looked like a man with no future, only tormenting memories.

  He stood up and left the room, without looking again at Margaret. He took the stairs heavily, one by one, and paused at the turn. Then he went on up to the landing, and opened the door to the smallest bedroom. He thought the woman on the bed gave a tiny smile of recognition as he entered. She was lying curled up on the pillow, sucking her thumb, her legs kicking idly at the bedclothes which had nearly all fallen off. Her body was gross and terrible, and no care in the clothing of her could hide the pity of it. Nothing could hide the vacancy of the expression on her face. Her eyes seemed to see the thumb and the pillow, and no more; no doubt her brain could hold the idea of the thumb and the pillow, and no more. The face had once been beautiful, perhaps, but now it was a blank, and a steady stream of saliva ran down her chin and stained the top of her night dress. As she sucked she made little grunts and moans of contentment.

  Simon Mulley looked at her, and smiled, and then gave a little wave. The creature went on sucking her thumb. Then Simon bent down slowly and kissed her.

  • • •

  Owen Caulfield roamed around the rooms of his little flat, while the gramophone on the sideboard played the Sutherland recording of Rigoletto. Now and then he tidied the pens and papers, the sketches and plans on his desk into neat piles, set the little ornaments and mementoes on his tables and mantelpiece into position, or glanced at himself in the mirror. He listened to the music, trying to hear what it should be saying to him. Could it be that other people did in fact hear more than he heard? No—that was just ostentation
and pretence. Owen put the thought from him abruptly. He loved opera, had loved it since grammar school days. He heard as much as anybody heard.

  Suddenly he thought: I should be relaxing. He sat down in the only good armchair, spread himself out in it, and tried to let the music wash over him. For a few moments it filled every corner of his mind. Then, in one corner of his brain it occurred to him to wonder whether he was lonely. Thirty-seven. Looking older. He nearly got up to look in the mirror again, but remembered he was relaxing. Thirty-seven. Never married. Plenty of odd little affairs, of course, but short. So short. Women took him on, took him up, rather, for a short time, and then—lost interest. Went on to others. Dropped him. No—not dropped him. Not dropped him.

  And as the idea edged its way forward to the front of his mind, he rejected it. These affairs just fizzled out, that was all. Typical theatrical affairs. He laughed nervously out loud. He wasn’t lonely—he was a loner: that was the right way to put it. He held that image of himself up before his eyes, inspected it, tried it on for size. He had tremendous inner resources, he took a woman when he needed one, then got rid of her. He was a frontiersman, a man who was happiest carving out his own path.

  He liked that image. It had all the simplicity and directness of a children’s Saturday morning cinema film. How he had loved them, on those rare occasions when his father had let him go. The image kept him in his chair for a few minutes more, as Sutherland and Milnes poured out their lungs in the vendetta duet. Then all at once another thought occurred to Owen, and he looked around the room. Was it too tidy? Did it look as if he were obsessive? He went around the room again, ruffling the papers on his desk and displacing the ornaments. It would be ridiculous for people to think he was obsessive. If anyone should come.

  • • •

  James McKaid was phoning his wife in Dungannon. He had enjoyed a long, luxurious bath after the rehearsal, eaten well at the best Italian restaurant in Manchester (where he had waved to Giulia Contini and Signor Pratelli, and been mortified by their all too evident uncertainty as to who he was), and had come straight back to his flat which was conveniently close. Now he was sitting in the easiest of easy chairs, with the receiver crooked between his shoulder and his ear, and a stiff glass of whisky convenient to his right hand.

  ‘It went as well as you could expect,’ he was saying. ‘Jumpy? Yes, of course everyone’s jumpy. You couldn’t expect anything else, could you? And the Superintendent interviewing people when they were off-stage didn’t help . . . Ricci . . . Yes, I shouldn’t be surprised . . . He didn’t say much when he came out . . . But the rehearsal didn’t go too badly, all things considered, and when you remember the limitations of that bunch. The Contini is a great farce of course.’ He opened his lungs and sang into the receiver: ‘Oh-ee-ah-oo-ai . . . No, nothing but, the whole time! I didn’t hear a single consonant. And it’s not even much of a voice. So much for engaging a singer on the basis of a few good reviews in Opera. Mike Turner should have learnt a thing or two from this little fiasco, anyway . . . Simon? Oh, being the great artist, as usual. I never did think method acting went too well in opera, but grant the approach, grant the approach, it’s a perfectly respectable performance.’ He took a good gulp of whisky, and closed his eyes. ‘Ah yes, our resident black, the living proof of our tolerance and intellectual maturity? A very nice little performance. Very nice. They’ll cheer him to the echo, of course. All those long-haired scruffs in the gallery who’ve been howling at his Rodolfo. They’d cheer Cassius Clay as Tristan, they would: put something in front of them that they think is a challenge to their radical consciences, and they’re off after it like a pack of demented beagles, however ludicrous it may be. Still, all in all, Calvin doesn’t disgrace the company, though some people might think that faint praise . . . Will you be coming Thursday? . . . Yes, I’ll meet you if I can . . . Anyway, I’ll try and phone you Sunday—there’s no rehearsal then, unless they try and dig a performance out of the Bootle girl . . . I shan’t be involved, anyway . . . I’ll meet you in the car if I can, if not go to Plimsoll Street . . . Right . . . Love you.’ And he made kissing noises into the receiver, and put it back on its rest.

  He took another good mouthful of whisky, then rummaged in the pocket of the silk dressing-gown which he had put on when he had got back from the restaurant. He believed in being comfortable. He scribbled for some time on the back of an envelope, and then looked at the result with satisfaction. Then he took up the phone again, and dialled. This time he held the receiver to his ear carefully, and spoke softly into the mouthpiece.

  • • •

  Mike Turner was also relaxing in his enormous Victorian apartment near the centre of Manchester, and he was relaxing impeccably. He had showered, and donned cream slacks and a chocolate-coloured silk shirt. Then he had eaten the lobster mayonnaise left out for him by his housekeeper-cook, whom he rarely saw, but who worshipped his smooth good looks in the various photos of him around the apartment, and who worried whether he was getting enough to eat. Then he made himself thick black coffee, lit a Piccadilly, and walked around the wonderfully spacious expanses of his sitting-room. He looked as if he were advertising the sort of car that everyone foolish envies, and no one sensible can afford.

  He walked very elegantly, for smoothness is not something that should be lightly laid aside in private. At times it almost seemed as if he floated. His hands were the liveliest thing about him, for they were conducting, as they had been all afternoon—conducting Rigoletto. Parts of the score that particularly pleased him had him singing and conducting with a smile of contentment on his face. Parts that had not gone well that afternoon had him frowning, and trying them over various ways, always humming or growling in imitation of the orchestra. Sometimes he used his cigarette as a baton, and sometimes, especially in a tender passage, he looked at himself in the enormous mirror over the marble mantelpiece.

  He had been conducting Rigoletto to himself for nearly an hour when another thought struck him, and he took a sheet of paper from the drawer of the desk, seated himself decoratively on a corner, and did various calculations that seemed to mean something to him, to judge by the quizzical raising of the eyebrows, the comically-exaggerated perplexity of his manner.

  His smoothness was hardly disturbed by the infinitesimal sound of the opening of the main door of the flat, unexpected though it seemed to be. By the time the door to the sitting-room was opened he was half way across the room.

  ‘Darling,’ he said. ‘Darling.’

  The flat suddenly seemed filled with spring flowers, with strawberries and champagne, with the rustle of expensive materials and the taste of exotic meals.

  ‘This is a lovely surprise,’ said Mike, to the bringer of all these good things. ‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me you were coming?’

  ‘To catch you out, of course,’ said the splendid creature. ‘What sort of wife doesn’t itch to catch her husband out? It covers a multitude of her own sins.’

  ‘Well, this time,’ said Mike, ‘you are going to suffer a deep disappointment, I’m afraid, darling.’

  And he kissed her again. In the waste-paper basket by the desk lay a crumpled sheet of paper, with a series of calculations in pencil.

  CHAPTER XI

  Black Notes and White Notes

  ‘Hate her?’ said Calvin Cross, spreading out his hands ingenuously and looking at Superintendent Nichols. ‘I don’t know—one doesn’t really think in those terms. But certainly I thought her one of the most ghastly women I’ve ever met.’

  ‘You quarrelled, I gather,’ said Nichols.

  Calvin frowned briefly. ‘Ah—someone’s been talking. Who, I wonder? Well, again, quarrelled isn’t quite the word for it, because we didn’t have stand-up slanging-matches of the sort some members of the company go in for. It was more a matter of guerrilla warfare—of her lobbing neat little bombs in my direction, and me fielding them and lobbing them back. The fact is that we were sniping at each other, or niggling each other in some way, prett
y much the whole time.’

  Calvin’s pleasant, boyish face was open and transparent, his smile ready, his look steady. He seemed the frankest of frank witnesses, and Nichols found himself wondering what lay behind it, wondering if anything was being covered up, if another self lurked behind the white teeth and engaging smile. Because no one grew up black in Britain without bruises, little emotional wounds that could be cherished and nourished, and picked at until they became gaping holes. No black could be quite as genuine with a policeman as Calvin Cross was trying to be—it would go against his whole experience as an immigrant.

  ‘Was it just a matter of colour, this bad feeling between the two of you?’ Nichols asked.

  ‘Colour?’ said Calvin. ‘Oh, someone’s told you about that little incident, have they? Owen, I suppose. No, no—that didn’t come till we were well-entrenched enemies. I suppose you could say that our differences were mainly artistic.

  ‘You mean you had different approaches to the opera?’ asked Nichols.

  ‘That’s one way of putting it,’ said Calvin, his face becoming suddenly serious. ‘You see, we’ve got Simon Mulley as Rigoletto. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him, but the only thing to be said, really, is that he’s a great artist. Bridget and I are watching him every minute of rehearsals, every gesture he makes, just learning from him the whole time—quite apart from the singing, and what he can do with a simple phrase—it’s just unbelievable.’

  Calvin pulled himself up.

  ‘Sorry—you won’t want me getting all enthusiastic. But the fact is, working with him is a great experience for young singers like us. He’s marvellous to us: we all three talk over the opera a lot—our parts, the movements, and so on. Most of the time we have to fight Owen Caulfield to get to do what we want, but that’s by the way. The point is that the three of us—and Ricci, too—are really trying to do justice to the piece, if that doesn’t sound too pompous.’