by Cyril Hare
“We were talking about Dickens,” said Pettigrew rather stiffly. Ventry’s brand of conversation was not one that appealed to him. He looked round to Eleanor for a means of escape, but she had been button-holed by Mrs. Roberts, and for the moment he could see no excuse to leave him.
“Dickens? Well, that’s a gambit that’s never occurred to me, and I’ve tried a good few in my time. Still, if you have any Great Expectations in that direction, you want to look out for her husband. He’s the green-eyed monster, if ever there was one.” He peered through the haze of cigarette smoke at his guests. “Which reminds me, the Dixons haven’t turned up yet. That ought to be quite an amusing encounter.”
“Oh, you’ve asked them, have you?” Much though he longed to get away, Pettigrew found himself oddly fascinated by this gross creature. He began to wonder if he had not under-estimated him. Perhaps he was not such a simple bundle of appetites as he seemed. There was a malevolent gleam in his large blue eyes that hinted at something more than appeared on the surface.
“Asked them?” Ventry was saying. “Yes. Why not? They’re all sensible people—at least, I know that two of them are. As for Nicola—well, she ought to be pleased enough with life. I suppose you saw in the paper that it was a girl?”
“That what was a girl?” asked Pettigrew in complete bewilderment.
“The widow’s child—born a couple of weeks ago. Surely Mrs. Basset must have told you. She’s been talking about nothing else since. Dixon’s booked for a peerage now. What a game, what a game!”
The next moment he was effusively greeting a golden-haired creature who proved to be the wife of the clarinet-playing young Clarkson, and Pettigrew drifted away.
It so happened that a little later Pettigrew was present at the meeting of the past and present Mrs. Dixons and their respective husbands, which took place under the watchful and disapproving eyes of Mrs. Basset. All four, he thought, behaved very well. Dixon and Lucy, in particular, acted with admirable sang-froid. There was a faint flush on Nicola’s cheeks as she said, “Nice to see you again, Lucy,” but Lucy’s “How well you’re looking, Nicola!” was perfectly spoken. The auburn hair and the dark were close together for a moment and then the encounter was over. As they moved apart Pettigrew caught a simultaneous glimpse of their profiles, and the ghost of an idea flickered to the surface of his mind, to be gone again in an instant.
It recurred to him just as he was getting into bed.
“By Jove, I wonder!” he exclaimed. “Do you think she could possibly be Agnes?”
“Who could be Agnes?” said Eleanor drowsily. “Do put the light out, darling. I want to get to sleep.”
“Mrs. Dixon,” answered Pettigrew, obediently switching off the bedside lamp.
“Her name’s Nicola,” said Eleanor, falling asleep at once. But her husband remained awake for some time longer, staring up into the darkness in which Ventry’s fleshy face loomed over him, dissolving into the pale, intense features of a woman who repeated the incredible words, “I hate Dickens.”
“Those cocktails must have been much too strong,” was his last conscious thought.
4
The Rehearsal
Pettigrew had, of course, taken a ticket for the concert; but it was not until the morning of the event that he learned that he was expected to attend the rehearsal as well. Eleanor broke the news to him at breakfast, while they were discussing the arrangements for the day.
“Mr. Dixon asked me at the party yesterday whether you could come,” she remarked. “You were busy talking to someone else at the time, but I told him that you would be delighted.”
“I wonder how you guessed,” said Pettigrew thoughtfully.
“Honestly,” Eleanor persisted, “it will be quite amusing, and I know you haven’t anything else to do.”
“To answer your second allegation first, I had promised myself a delightful day with the current Law Quarterly Review. There’s an article in it entitled ‘Prolegomena to Puffendorf’ that simply cries out to be read.”
Eleanor’s brilliant blue eyes expressed the liveliest sympathy.
“Do take the Quarterly with you to the rehearsal then, darling,” she said. “You needn’t listen if you don’t want to. Shall I fetch it for you? I think it’s still where you put it last month to prop up the leg of your dressing-table.”
Pettigrew frowned. “It’s high time I got the carpenter to look at that table,” he observed. “It’s hard enough to keep abreast with one’s law without that kind of handicap. Well, I’m prepared to waive Puffendorf just for this once. But I still don’t understand what use I am supposed to be at a rehearsal.”
“Mr. Dixon seemed to think it would be a good plan to have you there to represent the committee, in case anything cropped up.”
“I’m sure Dixon is much more capable of handling any emergency than I am. However, as you have pledged me to go, I will. Let’s hope I shall be purely decorative, like a fireman at the Paris opera.”
Three o’clock accordingly found the hon. treasurer once more at the City Hall. Although he had not particularly looked forward to hearing rehearsed the music which he was to listen to all over again the same evening, it proved a more interesting afternoon than he had expected. In particular, he found Clayton Evans a fascinating study. Evans at a rehearsal was something quite different from the assured, aloof figure on the rostrum with which earlier concerts had made him familiar, or from the quietly compelling expert whom he had encountered at committee meetings. This was a new Evans, at once pathetic and terrifying—pathetic in his efforts to extract from his players a standard of performance which neither they nor, probably, any musicians in the world were capable of reaching, and terrifying in the intensity that he brought to the task. He was a man strung to a pitch of excitement that was not long in communicating itself to the orchestra, and Pettigrew began to wonder before long whether the result would be a superlatively good performance or the complete collapse of all concerned from sheer nervous exhaustion.
Evans opened the proceedings with a few pointed words to the professionals.
“We begin the concert with the National Anthem, played by the whole band,” he said in a taut, strained voice. “I repeat, the whole band. I am quite aware that the first number in the programme is not scored for all the instruments required for the violin concerto that follows it. That makes no difference. My orchestra understands that I do not allow players to trample in and out between performances according to whether or not there is a part for them in the particular piece being played. Those of you who are not concerned in the Handel can sit and listen to it. It will be a new experience for some of you to listen to music, in any case. Is that understood?” He tapped his desk sharply. “The National Anthem, please.”
“Ought one,” Pettigrew asked himself, “to stand up while the National Anthem is being rehearsed?” It was the kind of delicate point on which there was no reliable authority. He glanced round and from the corner of his eyes saw Lucy Carless still in her seat a row behind. As a foreigner, she was not perhaps a reliable guide. Her husband was certainly standing up, but scarcely in the manner prescribed to loyal citizens. He had his back to the platform and appeared to be conducting a sotto voce argument with a figure whom Pettigrew could not distinguish in the shadows. Dixon had disappeared. Pettigrew decided that it would be a work of supererogation to stand. He was glad of the decision when he realized that Evans in his then mood would tolerate nothing perfunctory in the playing of even this hackneyed tune. It took nearly ten minutes and some very bitter language before the society could be induced to perform it to his satisfaction.
“Well! I’m for it now!” said a voice in Pettigrew’s ear. The figure in the shadows had materialized, and proved to be Ventry. “Have I a hangover? My fingers are going to be all thumbs this afternoon. Evans’ll bite my head off. It’ll be all right on the night, but what’s the good of telling him that in his present state?”
“You should practise more, Mr. Ventry, and
drink less!” said Lucy Carless’s clear voice from the next row. “Now run along, Mr. Evans is waiting for your A.”
With a grimace and a wave of his hand Ventry trotted off to the stairs leading to the organ loft, where he appeared in a time that did credit to his physical condition, hangover or no hangover. As the tuning note sounded from the organ, echoed by the instruments on the platform, Pettigrew caught snatches of what appeared to be a rather ill-tempered little conversation behind him.
“That’s an odious creature,” said Sefton’s voice. “And so damned conceited, like all these amateurs. I’ve just been telling him——”
“He is not odious at all, Lawrence. I find him quite amiable.”
“You find everybody amiable—that’s your trouble.”
“And your trouble is your absurd jealousy. As if anybody else could not see that Mr. Ventry is épris of Nicola. Really I feel sorry for poor Robert.”
“Oh, so you feel like consoling him, do you?”
“Lawrence, if you say a word more you will make me nervous.”
This was evidently a threat that could not be disregarded, for Sefton subsided at once. A moment later the organ concerto began.
The quick exchange of words had started a train of thought in Pettigrew’s mind that distracted his attention from Handel’s forthright music. Whether or not Miss Carless found Ventry “too amiable” was a matter of very little importance. It was obvious that Sefton was of an almost pathologically jealous type. But her easy assumption that Ventry had designs on Mrs. Dixon interested and surprised him not a little. He cast his mind back to the party of the day before and tried to recollect whether he had noticed anything that could support the theory. “Perhaps I am very unobservant in these matters,” he thought. “Men always are, I suppose. At any rate, the husband is always said to be the last person to notice.” It occurred to him that, so far as he could judge, Dixon was not likely to be an unobservant man. In that case, he gloomily reflected, the affairs of the committee were going to be unpleasantly complicated.
His meditations were interrupted by the sudden silence which marked the end of the performance. At the same time he became aware that Dixon had dropped into the seat beside him.
“Well,” Dixon was saying, “I thought that went very nicely, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Pettigrew replied a little guiltily. “Very well indeed.”
“Ventry bungled his entry in the second movement, of course, but apart from that——” He turned to speak over his shoulder to Lucy Carless, who was preparing to go up to the platform. “You needn’t hurry,” he said. “Evans is bound to want that bit over again.”
He was right. After a few sharp words, inaudible to the listeners, the piece was recommenced in mid-career and played through again to the end. With his mind still running on the same subject—and it was surprising, as he afterwards reflected, how much impression Miss Carless’s assertion had made upon him—Pettigrew studied his neighbour with interest. Dixon seemed to be paler than usual, and there was a strained expression about the mouth that he had not noticed before. “Not that I seem to have noticed much, so far,” Pettigrew told himself. It was probably imagination, and in any case no affair of his. None the less, in the pause that succeeded the repetition of the Handel concerto, and while Lucy Carless was making her way to the platform, he found himself saying, almost involuntarily, “Your wife isn’t here this afternoon?”
It was an idiotic question to ask, as Pettigrew realized at once. There was no earthly reason why Mrs. Dixon should attend the rehearsal. She did not play, nor was she on the committee. But Dixon did not appear to find it strange.
“No,” he said. “She isn’t. She’s coming to the concert this evening, of course. I’ve left her the car. I shan’t be going home before the concert myself. I shall hang around and see that the pros are being properly looked after.”
“I see.” Pettigrew tried not to look as bored as he felt. He had hardly expected such a flood of supremely uninteresting information on his personal affairs from a man normally so reserved as Dixon. It seemed so out of character as to make him feel almost uneasy. Why should the fellow expect him to be interested in whether he went home before the concert or not? It sounded almost as if——
“I say,” said Ventry’s thick voice from just behind, “that was a rotten bloomer I made in the second movement, wasn’t it? I can’t think how I came to do it. Thought I knew the old Alleluia backwards. But it sounded all right the second time though, didn’t it?”
Pettigrew was just beginning to assure him that it had sounded perfect when Sefton’s voice broke in.
“Will you please be quiet?” he said in an icy tone. “My wife is about to play.”
As though to add point to his words, he rose from his seat and moved to the far end of the row.
“Disagreeable blighter,” remarked Ventry reflectively. “‘My wife is about to play,’ indeed! She’s much too good for him—if you don’t mind my saying so, old man.”
The last remark was addressed to Dixon, and Pettigrew wondered whether he had ever heard anything in quite such bad taste. Dixon said nothing in reply. He did not even turn his head, continuing to stare straight in front of him towards the platform where Lucy Carless was finishing tuning her violin, but a red spot on his cheeks shewed that the allusion had not been lost on him. The awkward silence was broken a few seconds later by the sharp tap of Evans’ baton.
“We’re off!” murmured the unabashed Ventry. “Quiet, boys!”
For the next thirty minutes Pettigrew forgot his concern over Dixon’s matrimonial affairs, his annoyance with Ventry and his own resentment at being made to attend the rehearsal against his will. He knew nothing whatever of the technique of the violin, but Lucy Carless had not played half a dozen bars before he realized that he was listening to a superb executant playing at the very top of her form. The warm romantic appeal of Mendelssohn suited her. The orchestra, taking fire from her, played with a brilliance that it is not often given to amateurs to achieve. Pettigrew had recently more than once heard the concerto described by the austerer members of the society as “popular music”, and being himself something of an intellectual snob, had joined in the superior sniffs that naturally accompanied the words. Recollecting it now, he told himself that it was only right and proper that such music should be popular, and hoped he would have the courage to say so when he next heard the phrase.
The performance ended in a pleasant scene of mutual congratulations between soloist, orchestra and conductor—all the more pleasant because there was no audience to make them seem artificial and theatrical. Lucy seemed genuinely pleased with herself and her fellow players. The orchestra—at least the amateur portion of it—appeared quite astonished at its own performance. Even Evans looked almost satisfied. He had taken the concerto straight through without more than a minimum pause between the movements and had so far refrained from comment or criticism. Now, mopping his brow with his handkerchief, he endeavoured to say something above the hubbub of conversation that had broken out. “Cellos, you must remember, in the slow movement——” he began, but broke off, with a reluctant smile. “But you were jolly good, all of you!” he exclaimed. Mrs. Basset, who was usually a figure of grim concentration on the platform so far forgot herself as to wave her bow gaily in his direction. “We’ll remember, won’t we, girls?” she cried archly—an exclamation that produced a shout of surprised laughter from her fellows, who would as soon have expected to be called “girls” by the jubilee statue of Queen Victoria in the Market Square.
Looking at all the flushed and happy faces, seeing Eleanor, in her humble seat among the second violins, with her features transfigured by pure pleasure, Pettigrew realized for the first time what it was that made all the trouble and drudgery of practice and rehearsal worth while for these people. He envied them deeply. “They hardly need a concert with an audience,” he thought. “Making the music is the fun for them.” He suddenly felt an outsider, and alone.
&
nbsp; At that moment he realized that he was, in fact, alone. Dixon, Ventry and Sefton had each made their way to the platform. Although the rehearsal was not over—there was still the Mozart symphony to come—by common consent there was a pause at this point. Some relaxation was obviously necessary after the tension of the performance, such as would be provided at the concert itself by the interval. The players left their seats, stretched their legs, lit cigarettes and chatted to one another or joined in the informal reception which Lucy Carless, who seemed refreshed rather than exhausted by her efforts, was now holding on the platform. Pettigrew was amused to see that Sefton had established himself firmly by her elbow, and that this had not prevented Ventry from approaching her and engaging her in a short but animated conversation. Dixon was somewhere near, but soon lost to sight in the throng.
Pettigrew decided to go up on to the platform himself, not to inflict himself upon the heroine of the moment, but with the more sober purpose of keeping his wife company. He found Eleanor talking to Mrs. Roberts. They were on the first tier of raised seats immediately behind the stage and Pettigrew joined them there. Standing beside them he was within a few yards of Lucy and Evans, and consequently had an excellent view of the unpleasant scene that followed a few minutes later.
It began, as he had reason to recollect later, with Mrs. Roberts, though it would be obviously unfair to consider that excellent lady as anything but an innocent agent in the affair. He had only exchanged a few words with her when they were joined by a small, dark man who had stepped down from the ranks of the wind instruments above and behind them.
“Well, Mrs. Roberts,” said the new arrival in a heavily accented voice, “did you find it good?”
“It was splendid, really splendid,” said Mrs. Roberts. “How superbly she plays! If only we are as good this evening—Mr. Pettigrew, I don’t believe you have met Mr. Zbar—Zbar—I’m sorry, but I’m so silly about names.”
