Leading Lady

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  ‘You called him your father.’

  ‘Why, so I did.’ They looked at each other for a long moment. ‘But what I am trying to tell you is that he has agreed to everything. Little Gustav to be heir for the time being; he and Gertrude to have their own apartments in the east wing. I did her less than justice about that; she refuses to part entirely with the child, but you are to have overall supervision of his upbringing.’

  ‘With his mother looking on.’

  ‘She is his mother.’

  ‘Fortunate woman.’ Suddenly, Martha was too angry almost to speak. Her hands shook as she pulled off the ceremonial necklace. ‘I noticed your father, as you now call him, looking round the palace with a proprietorial eye, today. Noting the improvements we have made; the comforts we have introduced. His wife, Princess Gertrude, congratulated me on making the place almost fit to live in. She was delighted with what she called the new fangled water closets in the east wing. She managed to make it sound as if she thought I was a plumber’s daughter, who had been seeing to the castle’s conveniences. Well, it’s true. And I don’t believe you have even noticed. You certainly never mentioned it.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Stiffly. ‘Yes, I did notice. You did it while I was away. But, love, it’s only money.’

  ‘Only money! Well, what did you marry me for?’ She stopped; hand to mouth; they looked at each other for a long moment, appalled.

  ‘You know that’s not true.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Oh, my darling, what can I say?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She did not mean it for a challenge, but saw him take it as one.

  Chapter 10

  Waking reluctant and gritty-eyed next morning, Martha wished she had had the strength of mind to banish Franz to the dressing-room, or to sleep there herself. Impossible to do so after that brief, horrifying scene, but it had meant a disastrous night. And their mutual state of jangled frustration was all wrong for this important day. He stirred a little beside her and she knew he was awake, fighting off morning. ‘I’m sorry, love.’ She bent down to kiss him lightly.

  ‘You’re sorry! Oh, my darling, what can I say?’

  ‘Nothing. No need.’ This time she said it lovingly. ‘Let’s just get through this day. Tomorrow has to be better. And, Franz –’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Forgive me for what I said?’

  ‘No need to ask. We were both on edge, and no wonder. And anyway it’s I who should be on my knees to you.’

  ‘What an idea!’ She laughed and kissed him again. ‘Besides, I hear Anna with our breakfast. How I wish it was tomorrow’s!’

  Down at the hostel, Desmond Fylde was grumbling over an early summons from Franzosi. ‘Something about the way he wants me made up,’ he told Cristabel over the breakfast to which he had somewhat belatedly returned, presumably from the arms of the seconda donnar. ‘Tedious fellow, why could he not think of it sooner? Shall I tell him we are leaving while I am at it, my queen? I’m tired of being at the beck and call of a second-rater like him. Besides, there is something going on in town. The sooner you and I are safely out of here, the happier I shall be.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Wish I knew! Something. Winks and whispers. Dry up tight when they see me coming. And Prince Gustav back at the palace, behaving like the lord of creation, they say. Princess Gertrude (as we must now call that tavern keeper’s daughter) is very kindly telling your friend Martha how to go on. And the palace full to bursting with Gustav’s servants. I don’t a bit like the sound of it.’

  ‘No.’ She thought about it. ‘You are sure of this?’ After she spoke, she remembered the rumours about the seconda donna and Baron Hals.

  ‘I make a point of being well informed. And I can tell you, just as soon as you have scored your triumph tonight, and put paid to the talk about your voice, my angel, we are going to give Franzosi our notice and have some time for ourselves. I cannot do without you any longer, my own. I hope you give me credit for my strength of mind, these last days, but tonight we shall celebrate. I will make up to you for all your sad solitary nights. What a good little trouper you have been to bear it all so patiently.’ He pushed down the sleeve of her négligée and planted an owner’s kiss on her shoulder. ‘Until tonight, my lovely. I must go while I still have the self command.’

  Left alone, she amazed herself by bursting into tears.

  ‘Curious how isolated one feels in this palace.’ Count Tafur joined Martha in the great hall, where the party was grouping itself for the carriage drive down to the opera house.

  ‘You feel it too?’ She looked exhausted, he thought, and plain, despite the diamonds, the grande tenue of some heavy wine coloured fabric he would be hard put to describe for Lucia Aldini when he got home. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she went on. ‘I even suggested it to Franz just the other day – that when this is all over, and things are settled, I’d like to move to a house in Lissenberg itself. Just a nice, ordinary house. With no tunnels!’ They were both surprised at how passionately this came out.

  ‘What would you do with the palace?’

  ‘It would make a wonderful hospital.’

  ‘What a woman you are.’ He looked at her with great affection. ‘Funded by you, I take it?’

  ‘Oh, money!’ She flushed, then turned alarmingly pale. ‘Why can one never get away from it?’

  ‘I’m sorry –’ But he had to turn to greet Princess Gertrude, who swooped down on them, both hands outstretched, to tell Martha how well she looked.

  ‘You make me feel dreadfully overdressed,’ she concluded. ‘But my lord and master would have it so. “Cloth of gold or nothing,” he said, and I do know enough always to do what he tells me.’ This with a quick, sharp glance for Martha.

  ‘So you should,’ said Tafur. ‘Seeing what he has done for you.’

  She gave him a look of overt dislike. ‘Nothing is too good for the mother of his heir.’ And, to Martha. ‘You can have no idea, my dear, what a man feels when his son is born.’

  ‘No, I can’t, can I?’ Martha gave it back to her straight. ‘But I see my husband beckoning. I think it must be time to start.’

  Inevitably, she shared a carriage with Prince Gustav and Max, while Franz reluctantly drove ahead with Princess Gertrude.

  ‘I’ve a scold for you, daughter,’ Prince Gustav had helped Martha ceremoniously into the second best state carriage. ‘What have you done to my poor boy to make him look so hag-ridden today? He was happy as a grig when we parted yesterday, and now look at him! You must learn, my dear child, how to manage that husband of yours a little better. We Europeans are not perhaps quite so easy to deal with as you newcome Americans, but an intelligent young woman like you must surely be able to see this. Max and I were saying just now what a pity it is that poor Franz looks so wretched on this, which should be his – and your – great day.’

  ‘Nothing of the kind,’ said Max angrily. ‘You were saying it to me, if you remember. I had not agreed. But then you do find forgetting remarkably easy, do you not? To listen to you now no one would guess what plans you had for me the other day.’

  ‘Plans, dear boy? What plans?’

  ‘What news do you have of little Gustav?’ Martha intervened hastily to avert an explosion from Max.

  ‘News!’ Surprised. ‘Oh, his illness you mean. My dear child, we are modern parents my wife and I. We see to it that our children are well looked after so that anxiety about them need not distract us from more important matters. It’s – forgive me – just a trifle bourgeois to be thinking always of one’s family.’

  ‘And no one could accuse the Countess Bemberg of being bourgeois,’ said Max.

  ‘The Princess Gertrude, you mean, my boy?’

  Martha was relieved to see the opera buildings ahead. ‘We’re almost there,’ she said. ‘I do hope Franzosi’s opera is going to be a success.’

  ‘I am sure he is going to surprise us all,’ said Prince Gustav.

  ‘And what precisely did he
mean by that?’ Max contrived to ask Martha in the little confusion of arrival.

  ‘I wish I knew.’ She had still not got used to sitting in state beside Franz in the two gilded chairs centrally and conspicuously placed to command every perspective of the ornate scenery. Nor had Prince Gustav prepared himself for his changed position in the house, which he had not attended since his fall from power the year before. There was actually a moment when Martha thought he was going to hand his wife into the left hand chair – it was almost a throne – and seat himself beside her. But Gertrude said something under her breath and he moved gracefully on to seat her in one of the chairs just below and to the side of the central ones. Martha was glad to see that Max was on the other side, below her own throne, so there was no chance of more friction between him and his father.

  The audience was restless. The Lissenbergers had always been fairly respectful listeners, and in fact the little opera house did not lend itself to the kind of socialising that went on during performances in Italy, but since Franz had been in power, an opera composer himself, it had become the accepted thing that when the music started, nobody spoke. Today, no one was actually talking as the overture began, but there was a kind of rustle in the house, an expectation?

  The curtain rose to reveal the Prince of Ephesus, holding court. He was passing judgment on Aegeon, a merchant of Syracuse and therefore an enemy of the state of Ephesus. There was a sigh of disappointment from the audience. These were both minor characters, but were listened to in silence as they laid down the lines of the story in what Martha thought too much recitative. Aegeon was looking for his wife and their twin sons, lost eighteen years ago in a storm at sea. The prince, pitying Aegeon, gave him a day to try to find someone to pay the fine that would save his life. ‘Hopeless and helpless,’ sang Aegeon, knowing himself friendless in the city, and the curtain fell.

  There was a sigh of anticipation from the audience as it rose again to reveal a street scene, with an ornate balcony above, and Desmond Fylde, who played both the twins, both named Antipholus, for some reason best understood by Shakespeare, with the baritone who played both Dromios, their twin servants. A fine basic comic situation, thought Martha, but why had the audience drawn a breath of such extreme pleasure?

  She looked at Fylde again and saw what she had missed before, the likeness to her husband and Max. How had it been achieved? By very clever make-up, of course. The heavy eyebrows the brothers shared, and just a touch of the slav about the high cheekbones. I should have expected this, she thought, once I knew it was about twins. I’m a fool, a total, complete abject idiot. But what to do? And what use was going to be made of the likeness? A quick glance to Franz beside her told her he had not noticed it yet. One does not easily recognise oneself. Besides, she knew that he had not read the Shakespeare play. She had, but long ago. Idiotic, lunatic not to have made sure of getting hold of a copy to reread it.

  Dromio left the stage to return as his twin, and to the inevitable comic misunderstanding with Fylde as the man who thought himself his master. The baritone who played both Dromios was throwing his heart into the comedy, but for the first time ever Martha actually found herself feeling sorry for Desmond Fylde. He was singing Antipholus as if it were some great serious part, Idomeneo or Aeneas. And as the opera went on she recognised that the rest of the cast were playing up to this. The whole production had been skilfully shaped around Fylde’s incapacity as a comic figure. The result was to isolate him, set him up as a butt. Was Cristabel aware of this? She thought not, since she was not involved in the knockabout element of the comedy. But she was singing superbly, surely with a new depth.

  Sitting between Franz and Max, Martha was not sure which one of them first noticed Fylde’s make-up, but by the end of the first act she was aware of furious tension in both of them. ‘Someone’s idea of a joke?’ Franz leaned down to ask Max quietly as the curtain fell and the audience broke into slightly hysterical applause.

  ‘Not one I find particularly amusing,’ said Max. ‘Franzosi must have tired of his position here, I think.’

  ‘If it’s only that.’ But Franz had to turn away to speak to Princess Gertrude, and the curtain rose again almost at once.

  The opera was in three acts. By the end of the second one, the audience was laughing every time Fylde appeared, and he was beginning to show signs of unease. Only Cristabel still seemed unaware of anything unusual, wrapped up in her own singing. She’s not singing for Fylde at all, Martha realised. Can there be someone else?

  The curtain fell to end Act Two. ‘So,’ said Franz to Max and Martha. ‘What do we do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Max.

  ‘I blame myself,’ said Martha.

  ‘Absurd,’ said Franz.

  ‘Dear boys,’ Prince Gustav leaned across his wife. ‘I do hope you are seeing the jest of this.’

  ‘The audience is,’ said Franz.

  In her dressing-room, Cristabel stared into the glass as her dresser tidied her ringlets. ‘Something’s going on,’ she said. ‘What is it? They’re laughing too much.’

  ‘You haven’t seen?’ The dresser was amused too. ‘I don’t think Herr Fylde has either.’

  ‘Seen what?’

  ‘It’s the new make-up. From the front of the house he looks just like the two princes.’

  ‘What?’ She took it all in. She had noticed, without much caring, what Franzosi was letting happen to her husband, but this was something else again. Something dangerous. ‘Who’s that?’ A knock on the door. ‘You know I’m never disturbed.’

  But it was Doctor Joseph. ‘You’ve seen what’s going on?’ he asked as their eyes met and held.

  ‘I’ve only just realised. It’s monstrous! What’s to be done?’ She turned to him with total confidence.

  ‘Only you can do it. Turn the tables. Turn the last act into the opera seria Fylde’s been singing all along. You’re singing so well! I don’t need to congratulate you.’ They were both aware of the dresser standing by. ‘Now, imagine you are Gluck’s Alceste or Purcell’s Dido. You have lost your husband in some great drama, not in a petty street comedy; now you find him again. You can do it.’

  ‘Of course I can.’ They both knew she would sing it for him.

  By the beginning of the last act, stage confusion had confounded itself. Antipholus of Syracuse had fallen in love with Adriana’s sister, played by the seconda donna, and the two Dromios were similarly embroiled. The audience was laughing harder than ever and Franzosi was having difficulty keeping his orchestra together. Fylde was badly rattled, and Martha thought that the same was true of Franz and Max. Intolerable to be made so subtly and so publicly to look fools.

  A particularly vigorous bit of slapstick between Dromio and Antipholus of Syracuse brought him under the balcony where Adriana stood watching for her husband, the other Antipholus. As he left the stage, Dromio tripped Antipholus, who fell sprawling, to a roar of laughter. Impossible that this should have been rehearsed; Fylde would never have agreed to it. The way he picked himself up, obviously furious, amply proved this and sent the audience into an orgy of hoots, shouts, catcalls. In the pit, Franzosi stood pitifully irresolute, arms upraised, baton motionless.

  Martha clutched Franz’s hand. In a moment, the house would erupt into violence. Franzosi was obviously unable to control it. She felt Franz make to rise, but there was no way from house to stage. Hopeless. Disastrous. Then Cristabel took one step forward on the tiny upstage balcony, raised a hand with absolute authority. Martha had never seen her quell a house before, but Max remembered the girl who had played Orpheus all those years ago. Amazingly, the house slowly hushed, and Cristabel began to sing. ‘Where have you been, my darling, this long day?’ They were restless at first, an isolated titter breaking out here and there, instantly suppressed as the music had its way with them. Martha felt a sheen of tears behind her own eyes, and reached out a hand to find Franz’s, seeking hers. There was a moment when Franzosi seemed to hesitate and only the violins followed as Crist
abel repeated her first line, ‘Where have you been …?’ But Franzosi and the rest of the orchestra recognised the extra repeat for the bold act it was and came in again strongly on the next line. The audience, spellbound now, hardly seemed to notice.

  From then on, they were watching grand opera. Did the rest of the cast instinctively play down the comedy, or was there less anyway in this last act? At all events, as revelation and reunion followed on each other the entire cast were singing as if possessed, the audience with them every inch of the way, while Desmond Fylde caught fire from his wife’s performance and sang his own final aria with a new intensity. Only, when he folded Cristabel in his arms at last, passionately, Martha saw her head turn a little away from his, and felt a shiver of anxiety. She forgot it again as the last notes of the finale were almost drowned in a roar of applause, and the audience rose to its feet, howling for Cristabel.

  The ovation went on and on, but at last Franzosi appeared, leading Cristabel on stage for a final bow. He turned, bowed low to her, then back to the audience and raised a hand for silence. What now? A public thank you for Cristabel? He looked nervous enough for anything, Martha thought, and no wonder. The audience settled gradually back into its seats, with exclamations, mutters of ‘silence for the maestro’, a few last calls for Cristabel. Gradually the calls for silence predominated, they came from all corners of the house, surely a pre-arranged claque.

  Cristabel was still on stage. She looked at Franzosi, surprised, then paused, turned to listen, her attention helping to quiet the audience.

  ‘Citizens of Lissenberg,’ Franzosi began. ‘I have been asked to speak to you tonight on a very serious subject. You will look on me, I beg, merely as a mouthpiece, a voice speaking for Lissenberg, speaking for you all. We are here, all together, celebrating the great things that happened in this very house, a year ago. Since the citizens of Lissenberg have no other chance for public discussion, I have been asked to suggest that we seize upon this one, when we are all here together, to discuss the future of the country. We all know what storm clouds are gathering around us. We have seen the messengers arriving at the palace. What have they been saying? Last year, if you remember, our new prince told us great things of democracy, of self-government for Lissenberg. I say to you, friends, that it is time we challenged him on this, asked him just what his plans are for Lissenberg, now he has finally returned from his long attendance on the great enemy, Napoleon. But, first, since this is bound to be a long and serious discussion, I suggest, my friends, that we let the ladies among the audience go home to their beds.’