Song Cycle (Warrender Saga Book 8)

by Mary Burchell

  “I’m speaking, Mr. Keyne.”

  “Oh —” he sounded amused but not at all displeased at being recognised — “this is very short notice, I know, but would you come along to the Carrington Studios again this afternoon at three?”

  “This — this afternoon would be difficult,” she stammered, her father’s worried, disjointed sentences still ringing in her ears. “You see —”

  “It’s important, Miss Fulroyd. Could be very important to you.” She wondered if she only fancied a slight cooling of the tone. “Warrender has an hour or two available, and we’re going to do some final sorting out. I’d be sorry for him not to hear you.”

  She would be sorry too And somehow the wording rather implied that it would be now or never.

  “When did you say? I’ll be there,” Anna promised desperately.

  “Three o’clock. Carrington Studios as before.” And then he rang off.

  “I must get hold of Dad and explain,” muttered Anna, beginning to dial frantically. She heard the dick of the connection and then the ringing of the bell the other end. But although she let it ring for quite a long time there was no reply, and she guessed that her father had probably been telephoning direct from the hospital.

  She tried once more through the operator, just to make sure, but with the same result. And finally there was nothing to do but replace the receiver and go to join Carrie in the kitchen.

  Carrie, who had the day off and was luxuriating in an unusually leisurely breakfast, looked up immediately as she came in.

  “Any further news?” she enquired sympathetically.

  “No. I can’t get through. Dad couldn’t have been phoning from home. He said he would call again this afternoon after — after the operation. But, Carrie, I just have to go out. It’s an audition — just about the most important audition that’s ever come my way. What can I do?”

  “Leave the number of wherever you’re going with me, of course,” replied Carrie, who was bright enough when not being stupefied by the row in her store. “I happen to have the day off.”

  “Oh, but weren’t you going out?”

  “I was. But it’s nothing important. Just a movie with Len, and it’s time I said ‘no’ to him occasionally. He’s getting a bit above himself anyway. Leave the number with me, and when your dad rings I’ll tell him where to find you. I suppose there will be some arrangement where you can take a call at this place where you’re going?”

  “There must be, of course. Oh, Carrie, you’re an angel!” And, almost sick with relief, Anna began to search through the directory for the telephone number of the Carrington Studios. “Yes, here it is.” She scribbled it down hastily. “And I’ll be back the first moment I can get away. I may well be back even before Dad phones with — with better news —”

  And then suddenly she could say no more. For suppose it were not better news — suppose something should happen to her mother —

  But nothing could happen, of course! Nothing — irrevocable, that was. Not to her mother, who was the very personification of security and normality. It was unthinkable. Particularly just now, when everything promised to go as she and her parents had hoped and planned for so long.

  “I ought to have realised something was wrong, when I was at home,” she thought remorsefully. “I did think once or twice that she was preoccupied, almost sad. Why didn’t I ask her then? I was just too selfishly intent on my own affairs. And what, for heaven’s sake, do they matter if anything really happened to Mother?”

  But they did matter, of course. They mattered terribly. Everything she had done for the last few years had been geared to reaching the sort of goal which was to be dangled before her that very afternoon. It was no good feeling guilty because the thought of that vital audition kept on blotting out everything else. There was no point in going to that all-important audition with less than total concentration on doing her best. Even her mother, lying ill in hospital, waiting to be taken to the operating theatre — Desperately, she switched her thoughts from the possibilities implicit in that reflection and willed herself to be calm as she went to her morning lesson with her teacher.

  Madame Marburger, characteristically, was sympathetic about Anna’s personal trouble, but very bracing about the necessity of concentrating all her thoughts and energies on the testing afternoon.

  “An artist’s life is full of this sort of crisis,” she told Anna. “You are just having to learn rather early that even the deepest personal feelings have to take second place to a professional emergency. You could do nothing for your mother if you were there, and you owe it to her, and her sacrifices on your behalf, to do your best this afternoon.” This was sound, if ruthless, common sense, of course. And, having telephoned to Carrie and ascertained that no message had yet come through, Anna went to the studio that afternoon at least outwardly calm and relaxed.

  It was not difficult to arrange that she should be called if anyone telephoned for her. “Though I couldn’t interrupt, of course, if you were actually in the studio,” the man in charge warned her. “Mr. Warrender’s auditioning this afternoon, as you probably know, and it’s a great deal more than any of us would dare to interrupt him. But so long as you’re still in the waiting room it will be all right.”

  Anna thanked him and went to the waiting room, where she found about half a dozen other singers in varying degrees of tension. None of them had been there at her previous audition and she guessed that some pretty ruthless weeding out had been done during the past week.

  After what the doorman had said she was prepared to find Oscar Warrender autocratic and disagreeable. But when her turn came and she was summoned to the studio, he treated her with the utmost courtesy. His invariable rule, had she but known it, when he wished to get the best out of someone, although, in the words of one disgruntled prima donna, “if he wished he could also be a monster.”

  At this time Oscar Warrender was well past his first youth but still a strikingly handsome man, with an air of command so natural to him that one would have said he was unaware that most heads turned when he passed. One would, however, have been wrong in this. Warrender had served his art faithfully all his life, with devotion and integrity, love and sheer hard work and, as he sometimes said himself, he would have been a fool not to savour the just rewards which had crowned his later years.

  “Unless you specially wish to sing something else, Miss Fulroyd,” he told Anna without preamble, “I should like to hear the three arias you sang for Mr. Keyne last week.”

  So Anna sang the two Mozart arias, but before she could go on to Musetta’s Waltz Song he stopped her and talked to her for a few minutes about the phrasing in the Pamina aria, suggesting one or two modifications, but with an air of talking to someone whose own views might not be negligible. Indeed, when she ventured to query something he suggested, he said,

  “You feel it should go that way? Try it, then, and let me hear it again.” And, after she had done so — “Yes, it’s not impossible. If you feel comfortable with it that way, keep to it. Elsa Marburger is your teacher, I believe?”

  “Yes, Mr. Warrender.”

  “You do her credit,” was the brief reply, and Anna thought she knew how people must feel when they were knighted.

  For a moment or two he and Jonathan Keyne conferred together in low tones, while Anna tried to look innocently unknowing, though she thought she heard Oscar Warrender say, “The girl this morning had more experience, of course.”

  Jonathan Keyne did not let that go unchallenged, she noticed, and Warrender said, “Yes, yes, I grant you that,” before he turned back to Anna and asked for Musetta’s song.

  Ever since she had sung this for Jonathan Keyne a week ago she had been thinking about what he had said, and how the part of Musetta called for charm and sparkle and a touch of pathos, all within a stylish, completely unvulgar framework. This was how she sang it now. And she was rewarded by seeing Warrender’s rare, extremely attractive smile as he turned to Keyne and said,


  “Yes, I see what you mean.”

  This one remark was not amplified at the moment, and Anna was asked to return to the waiting room, but told not to leave as she would be required again.

  She went back, aware of an indescribable sensation of warm, calm satisfaction. She knew she had done very well, and she was certain that both those influential men had been well impressed by her. It was difficult not to feel that the contract was virtually hers, and it was equally difficult not to feel elated and happy beyond measure.

  Only the sudden recollection of her mother’s condition shocked her back into a sense of fear and anxiety. And just because her personal qualms were so entirely at rest the return of her fears for her mother became all the more poignant. She found suddenly that she was trembling uncontrollably, so that the young man sitting nearest to her asked anxiously, “Was Warrender beastly?”

  “No! Far from it. He was very fair and — and courteous. It’s something else —”

  She broke off abruptly as the doorman looked in and, catching sight of her, beckoned.

  For a moment she found she could hardly stand up. Then she forced herself to her feet and followed him out into the corridor, where he indicated a telephone, set in an angle in the wall.

  “You’d better take it there. It’s the nearest extension. I’ve told the gentleman to hold on for a minute or two while I fetched you.”

  Anna murmured a word of thanks, clutched the receiver in a cold hand and, having cleared her throat twice, managed to say hoarsely, “This is Anna speaking.”

  “Anna dear —” her father’s tone was perfectly clear this time and singularly calm after the agitation of that morning call — “can you catch the next train down? The six o’clock, if possible. You’d better be here. The news is worse than we feared.”

  “Mother —” her tongue felt thick and stiff in her mouth. “Yes, I’ll come, of course. If I hurry, I can manage the six o’clock. Tell me, Dad, how — how bad is it?”

  “Of course, there’s always hope — remember that. But—” his tone did waver a little then — “I think if you want to see her you must hurry.”

  “I’m coming,” Anna said. “I’m coming this very minute.” And she put down the telephone and began to run down the corridor. As she did so she almost cannoned into Jonathan Keyne, who caught her by the arm and exclaimed laughingly,

  “Here, where are you running? We want you back in the studio.”

  “I can’t come.” She tried to wrench her arm away, and was astonished even then by the strength with which he held her. “I can’t come. I’m going home.”

  “You’re not, you know.” He spoke with cool, almost grim, determination. “You’re coming back with me to hear the terms of your contract.”

  “Contract?” She stared at him for a moment as though she hardly understood the meaning of the word. “Contract? — Oh, I don’t care about any contract now! Leave me alone.”

  And she tore herself free and sped along the corridor, while Jonathan Keyne looked after her, his expression blank with astonishment until slowly a dark flush of intense anger spread over his face.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Anna never forgot the misery of that long journey home. Even years afterwards she could hardly bear to think of it, with its weight of crushing anxiety making everything seem grey and vague around her, all her jangled nerves concentrating on the sharpness of her fear about her mother.

  When she had rushed from the studio, leaving an angry and astonished Jonathan Keyne behind her, she had been fortunate enough to pick up a taxi immediately outside. But the rush-hour traffic was already building up and there were several maddening delays before she finally erupted into the flat, explained briefly to Carrie about the emergency, threw a few necessary things into a case and hurried off again.

  Almost as she went, Carrie thought to call after her, “How did the audition go?”

  “All right, I think. But it doesn’t matter now. That’s all over,” Anna replied, and then she was on her way to the station, where she arrived just in time to catch the six o’clock train.

  But Carrie’s last-minute enquiry did serve to switch her thoughts for a few minutes to her own affairs and the unfortunate way in which she had parted from Jonathan Keyne.

  “He must have thought me mad,” she reflected unhappily. “Well, I suppose I was, just for a few minutes. I can’t remember what I actually said. I don’t think I explained at all — just pulled my arm away and shouted to him to leave me alone. How awful I As though I wanted to insult him. But it doesn’t matter now. Nothing matters except that Mother might be dying.”

  The journey took two hours and a half, and it rained almost all the way, sinking Anna’s spirits to an even lower ebb if that were possible. When the train finally stopped at her station the rain was coming down in torrents, and a vicious wind was sweeping the open platform.

  There was no sign of her father, which increased her alarm, because he knew that she had more than a mile to walk from the station unless the local taxi was sent to meet her, and obviously he had been too much concerned even to remember this necessary arrangement.

  The only vehicle standing outside the station was a handsome black car which, in a less confused moment, Anna would have identified as belonging to one or other of the Delawneys, the “local millionaires” as they were usually referred to — half scornfully, half admiringly — by residents of long standing in the district.

  As she stood there, undecided and shivering slightly under the onslaught of wind and rain, a clear, pleasant voice behind her said, “Can I give you a lift? It’s not exactly walking weather, is it?” and Anna turned to see that it was the Delawney son, Roderick, who was reputed to be a partner in some fantastically prosperous enterprise in the City of London, but who quite frequently visited the family home.

  “Thank you very much. I —”

  “It’s Miss Fulroyd, isn’t it?” he interrupted. “And your father is the local organist — right? I was telling my sister that she ought to get in touch with him about this festival lark she’s arranging. Jump in.” He held open the door and greeted the chauffeur with, “Hello, Jenkins. You slip into the back. I’ll drive and Miss Fulroyd will come in front with me.”

  Within moments he had arranged things as he wished, and as they drove off, he said to Anna, ‘I’ll drop you right at your door. It’s the white house, isn’t it, at the end —”

  “Please —” she managed to arrest the spate of good-humoured arrangements — “could you drop me at the Cottage Hospital, if that isn’t out of your way?”

  “Of course.” He glanced at her, as though he took in for the first time her strained and preoccupied air. “I’m sorry. Are you visiting someone there?”

  “It’s — my mother. She had an operation this afternoon. My father phoned to fetch me from London.”

  “Oh, that’s tough!” He sounded so genuinely concerned that her chilled heart warmed gratefully to him. “Is there anything I can do? Wait for you and take you home afterwards, perhaps?”

  “No, thank you. But how — how very kind of you.” Her voice shook uncontrollably because his uninhibited willingness to be of help brought a lump into her throat. “I expect my father will be there. I think he’s been there all day. It’s — it’s serious, you see.”

  “There’s almost no limit to what doctors can do these days.” He removed one strong brown hand from the wheel to clasp it reassuringly over hers. “Don’t give up hope.”

  “N-no, of course not.” She was ashamed that a tear escaped, rolled down her cheek and fell on his hand. “It’s just that it’s all so sudden and unbelievable. Mother was — is, I mean — the most stable, secure force in our family and —”

  “I know. It’s the same with us. In the nicest way possible, my mother wears the trousers too,” he agreed.

  This was not, of course, at all the way Anna would have described her mother’s position in their family. But his sympathy and identification with her troubles were s
o complete that she accepted his reassurance as it was meant. And at that moment the car turned into the small forecourt in front of the hospital.

  “Wait here, Jenkins, for a minute or two. I’m going in with Miss Fulroyd to see she’s all right.”

  “Oh, you mustn’t really! My father —”

  “If he’s there, that will be fine. But I just want to make sure you’re not left there on your own.”

  It was impossible to press the argument further. In any case, in some indefinable way, she was glad of his bracing company as they entered the hospital. And even more so when she found that her voice completely deserted her when it came to asking for the vital information at the enquiry desk.

  As she stood there, wordlessly twisting her damp gloves, he took over without hesitation, addressing the man at the desk with that characteristic air of pleasant authority.

  “We’ve come to enquire about a Mrs. Fulroyd, admitted this morning for an emergency operation. This is her daughter from London and —” he hesitated only a fraction of a second — “I’m a friend of the family. Would you know if Mr. Fulroyd is still in the building?”

  “Yes.” It was apparently not necessary for the well-informed doorman even to consult his records. “Mrs. Fulroyd had her operation this afternoon and is as well as can be expected. Mr. Fulroyd is in the waiting-room along the corridor there. Third door on the left.”

  “Fine.” Young Delawney turned to Anna. “Would you like me to come with you?”

  She shook her head. Then she steadied her trembling lips and managed to say, “You’ve already been so terribly kind. I can never thank you enough—” she swallowed and then just said again, “—so terribly kind.”

  “A pleasure,” he assured her. “Keep up your heart. I’ll make enquiries tomorrow, if I may.” Then he patted her shoulder and went out of the hospital into the rain once more.

  To her surprise, the man at the enquiry desk looked after him and said curiously, “That was young Mr. Delawney, wasn’t it? They’re good friends of this hospital. Given a thumping cheque towards the new wing. And their money’s as good as anyone else’s, that’s what I say, however recently they came by it. — Third door on the left, and don’t mind if your father’s a bit upset, Miss Fulroyd. He’s had an anxious time, but things are a little better now, I’ve heard.”