Bella Poldark

by Winston Graham

  ‘So I have heard.’

  ‘Another down-at-heel army officer, eh? They’re scattered all over the county now, now that the war is over. Half of ’em are destitute. Your friend Prideaux would be if it were not for his family connections.’

  ‘I’m told Christopher Havergal is not without modest connections, and that he is at present employed with Rothschild’s.’

  ‘Did Poldark tell you this while you were making an exhibition of yourself dancing with him?’

  ‘No, we had no breath to talk. I heard it from Polly Codrington, who seems to know these things.’

  George turned the guineas in his fob and was silent for a few moments.

  ‘Rothschild’s, eh? From my acquaintance with Nathan I should not think that likely to be a sinecure. He will have to sweat for his daily bread.’

  Harriet was feeling tactless. ‘Polly also says she has heard that Isabella-Rose is on the verge of making a success of her singing career.’

  ‘Success?’ said George. ‘That girl? If she tries to sing in London they’ll laugh her off the stage.’

  Chapter Twelve

  When Isabella-Rose returned to London she found a thick yellow sooty fog enveloping the city. It lay upon everything, it penetrated everything, it hid everything. Daylight almost disappeared; lamps were kept permanently on even at midday. The great city was surrounded by lime kilns and brickworks; they were like a besieging army pouring out a gas to asphyxiate the inhabitants. Carts, drays, barrows, coaches, those on horseback, proceeded all at the same snail’s pace, cursing and shouting at the shadows which lurched and loomed perilously near them. Flaming torches seemed often to add to the density of the fog. Now and again traffic came to a complete standstill, and one was surrounded by a mass of human beings all impatiently trying to break free on missions of their own. The stink of unwashed humanity mingled with and almost overpowered the smell of rotting vegetation, dead fish, horse and cow droppings and sour milk.

  If one blew one’s nose the handkerchief came away looking as black as a drain. Everyone, practically everyone, was coughing, and not a few spitting. Influenza was rife, bronchitis and tisick widespread. It had never been in Bella’s nature to be apprehensive of anything, especially not infection, but with two small engagements to be fulfilled in the first week in February she was naturally keen to keep her voice clear. She had a small but important part in a performance of Byrd’s Missa Solemnis at St Martin-in-the-Fields, and the following week she was due to appear on stage – for the first time – in a musical recital before, it was expected, the Duke of Cambridge. Hers again was a small part, but Christopher was strongly of the opinion that, aside from her voice, her personality would help to make an impression.

  And then the old King died.

  It was shortly before ten on the evening of Saturday the twenty-ninth of January that the news became widely known. He had been so long out of the public eye, blind, deaf, and mentally confused, and his eldest son had been Regent for so long, that one might have supposed that ‘Farmer George’ was long forgotten. But, because his sons were all so unpopular, particularly the Prince Regent himself, a large part of the public held the old man in high esteem and remembered his earlier days with affection. He had been King of England at least in name for sixty years, and his passing was the end of an era.

  The tolling of bells spread the news across the fogbound city, and continued throughout the Sunday. Every bell in a city of a hundred churches spread its wailful message. Churches were full. Parades and processions crowded every available square. Shops were still closed on the Monday, as were theatres and places of entertainment. The Times of Monday announced that all theatres would be closed until after the funeral, which would take place on Ash Wednesday – in two weeks’ time.

  Bella could hardly believe her ill luck. Her appearance in the musical evening before the Duke of Cambridge was an obvious casualty, but surely Byrd’s Missa Solemnis would go ahead, since that would be in keeping with the mood of the time? Christopher enquired and was told no. This would in a sense have been regarded as an evening of pleasure; though it was to be held in a church, the public were to be charged admission and that put it in the wrong category. Instead the evening would be devoted to prayers and an address given by the Reverend Dr Ireland, Dean of Westminster.

  Bella had only been three times to Dr Fredericks’s school since it reassembled: the intense fog and the crowded streets, which had been increasingly rowdy since Christmas, made Christopher and Mrs Pelham dissuade her from going even with an escort. She was not only disappointed but restless. It seemed as if her career had come to a halt and now there was not even the theatre to go to. Sometimes she even found the spoken dramas more exciting than the operas. She loved the melodramas, especially those at the Royal Coburg Theatre and at the Adelphi.

  Happily Christopher had an evening planned for the following Thursday. A German Count called Von Badenberg, who had links with the Rothschilds, was in London, and was giving a party at the Pulteney Hotel in Piccadilly. They had a private room to seat twenty. Franz Von Badenberg was a blond young man of about thirty with a big voice, a large moustache which curled over his upper lip, and impending dewlaps which wobbled when he laughed, which he did frequently. Bella at once spotted a tawny-haired young man whom she knew: Maurice Valéry.

  In the streets, either from decree or out of a sense of respect, everyone had dressed in dark clothes since the King’s death, which itself had been preceded by only a few days by the death of his younger brother, the Duke of Kent, and was shortly followed by news that the Prince Regent, now King George IV, was gravely ill with pneumonia. And everyone coughing, coughing in the raw yellow fog. So this party was a complete relief. Youth, good health, good spirits, wine and food and laughter: they asserted themselves among the gloom in defiance of the gloom, a microcosm of light and warmth in a bereaved city.

  ‘London,’ said Von Badenberg in his big voice, ‘is now the centre of the world. Socially, financially, politically, since the end of Napoleon it has become dominant over all the other cities of the Continent. It is richer, freer, in manners, in fashion, in social behaviour. There is poverty, of course, but even that is minor compared to the poverty in Europe. Tradespeople are becoming ever more prosperous, the middle classes are coining money, the rich so much that they scarcely know how to spend it. They say that Oxford Street is the longest in Europe. You now have five bridges across the Thames! You folk are lucky to live here. I come from Frankfurt – my father knew Meyer Rothschild – and though it is an important town it rates as a village beside London. All Europe seems by comparison provincial!’

  ‘Very well so far as it goes,’ said an older man. ‘But London also is the centre of England, and the English provinces are not prosperous. The new towns of the Midlands and the north are decrepit, the workers – where there is work – live on starvation wages. In Glasgow weavers, who once were paid twenty-five shillings a week, now try to subsist on five. And those who have no work starve. The streets of the new towns are silent and empty – unless you chance to walk through them, when you will be accosted by beggars who emerge like spectres from their hovels and claw at your cloak asking for a piece of bread. As you know from Peterloo, violent unrest exists everywhere and is fanned by agitators who seek to achieve what they achieved in France!’

  ‘Well, London itself is none so pretty,’ said a lady, fingering her necklace with jewelled hands. ‘There are enough beggars in the gutters here – many of ’em discharged soldiers and sailors who fought so brave in the wars – and the gutters themselves choked with every sort of filth imaginable. Every pillar and post is bedaubed with slogans, many of them obscene. And there are marches and countermarches, and rough and rude crowds everywhere . . .’

  Bella had become separated from Christopher, and she noticed that he was eating none of the bonnes bouches which were being handed round on trays before supper, but had a glass of white wine in his hand. A little worm of anxiety moved in her. Three times
only in their fairly long acquaintance had she seen Christopher drink white wine. Normally he ate and drank no more and no less than the next man. But he seemed to have a weakness for Canary or any Rhenish wine, especially if it was a little sweet, and every now and again the need for it overcame his self-control. Then he would refuse all food and drink glass after glass until he became totally drunk.

  They were sitting down to supper now, and she tried to edge towards him, but a middle-aged man, who was called Jasper Brown, took her arm and said: ‘Miss Poldark, the Count has asked me to take you in. Would you do me the honour?’

  She found that Christopher was on the other of two circular tables, each seating ten, and he had two elegant if middle-aged ladies to flank him. That would not matter, she thought, Christopher had a special charm for older women – perhaps all women – with the intent blue eyes, the military bearing, the drooping blond moustache. He still had the same fascination for her – when he was not drunk.

  She had no stern principles about drinking. She drank herself: she liked the slightly tipsy feeling when life, always exciting, became still more rosy. Her mother and father drank. Everyone drank, most people over-drank. It was not an unusual thing for men to slip under the table and snore till morning.

  But it worried and upset her when Christopher proceeded to do just that. Moreover, his was not quite a normal drunkenness. It was not a part of gluttony. On those – mercifully rare – occasions when the mood took him, he would never touch food: he just poured wine into himself as if down a drain, as if some devil entered him and commanded him to drink himself insensible.

  A few months ago Bella had sat beside a judge at Mrs Pelham’s house. The subject of drunkenness came up, and he had defined for her the four legal definitions of the stages: jocose, bellicose, lachrymose, comatose. She never forgot this. But they could not be so ascribed to Christopher. The middle two stages were completely missed out. He had always been a jolly, daredevil young man, and the only change in his nature when drunk was an exaggeration of his normal impulses. He was kind, friendly, loving towards Bella, protective of her person, anxious for her comfort, ready for anything. The second bout that had occurred since she knew him had taken place at the musical party at Mrs Pelham’s; the first had been at a Hallowe’en party given by some friends, where he had ridden a bucking horse sidesaddle until he was thrown off, and later, false foot and all, climbed a clock tower to tie a pair of gentleman’s stays to a lightning conductor. Bella had been told by Geoffrey Charles of his first meeting with Christopher under the walls of Toulouse, and his chasing and catching a hare with the guns of the enemy trained on him, and she wondered sometimes whether spirituous liquor had been in him then.

  After supper Maurice Valéry came to sit beside her. ‘Mad’moiselle, I am so happy to see you here.’ He spoke fluent English, but it was heavily accented. ‘You are so beautiful.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ she answered.

  ‘You know?’ He opened his deep-set eyes wide. ‘Then it—’

  ‘I meant only that I knew what you were going to say. Because you said it the last time we met.’

  ‘Did I? Alors, that is what I meant! Is it unforgiven to repeat oneself twice?’

  ‘Not if it is sincerely intended.’

  ‘Why should you doubt it, Mad’moiselle?’

  She smiled at him. ‘How is your orchestra in Rouen?’

  ‘It prospers mightily. But it is not quite my orchestra. I direct it and am given considerable freedom, but there is a committee to oversee. The committee controls the funds which enable us to function, so who holds the purse strings has a high degree of authority.’

  ‘What have you been playing most recently?’

  He told her. ‘Of course there are some choral performances as well, but all too few. And I and two friends have a proposition to put before the committee that we should produce a series of operas. Why do you not come and see me there?’

  ‘Christopher and I?’ Bella said, looking around for Christopher.

  After a slight hesitation Maurice said: ‘With Christopher? But of course. Is it true that you are shortly to be married?’

  ‘Probably at Easter. We shall go back to my home in Cornwall for that.’

  Maurice dabbed his mouth with a lace handkerchief.

  ‘Forgive what may seem an impertinence, Mad’moiselle, but it is sometimes incautious for a professional singer to become attached too soon.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, it is so clear to be seen. A woman who has the ambition to become a prima donna assoluta should have – it is almost essential that she should have – a total dedication to her art. For her, love is a dalliance, a light emotional interlude, enabling romance to broaden and deepen her life, while on the other hand a settled domestic existence will only serve to choke and stultify.’

  At the next table they were talking about the King’s sudden death. ‘I have been told,’ came Count Von Badenberg’s powerful voice, ‘that the King just turned his face to the wall and said: “Tom’s a-cold”, and when his valet touched him he was dead!’

  ‘Who is Tom?’ someone asked.

  There was a laugh.

  Bella said: ‘Are you married?’

  Maurice smiled. ‘No, Mad’moiselle. Oh no. Of course I have amours. That is necessary for a balanced life. But music is my marriage. I do not – I think I do not have the potential future that you have. To be a prima demands everything that a human being can give. A conductor is one stage lesser in the order – in a sense more important in the musical world, but he does not carry his instrument about in his own body, where it is a precious but fragile possession on which he depends nightly for his reputation, his fame, his total success or failure.’

  ‘How do you know what my potential is?’ Bella demanded. ‘When have you heard me sing, Monsieur?’

  ‘I have heard you twice. Do you remember going with your tutor, Dr Fredericks, to a convent in Southwark, where some of his pupils performed before an invited audience?’

  ‘Yes, but you—’

  ‘I was there, quite by accident. Then again I called on Dr Fredericks to discuss one of his former pupils, and I heard you singing. I asked who it was, and he told me it was Miss Bella Poldark. Which in fact I had already guessed. Your voice has the rare quality of being unmistakable.’

  Von Badenberg was still talking: ‘Now the new King is sick almost to death. Eh, well, you would be well quit of all the Hanoverians. Britain would make a pretty republic!’

  Bella said: ‘Pray excuse me, I must seek Lieutenant Havergal.’

  ‘He is in a little room off the dining room. I will take you to him – in a moment. First . . .’

  ‘First?’

  ‘I invited you to come to Rouen. It is only a provincial town but it is near Paris. If at any time in the future, any time, either before or after your marriage to Lieutenant Havergal, you thought to come alone to see my town, my orchestra, my theatre, either a visit of two or three days or to stay longer and sing at one of the operas we are planning, pray keep this card – that is my address, and send word to me. It would be a great privilege to escort you, and you shall be escorted home again whenever you choose.’

  ‘Oh, thank you. But I—’

  ‘This is not – what you call it? – superficial; this is serious. I want you, Mam’selle. I need you. I am making my way, and you are making your way. I need your voice and your presence. With them I could get to Paris, and take you to Paris. I do not know if you were jesting with me about your looks, but to me you are beautiful, and I long to put you in a new opera called The Barber of Seville. I would want you for the principal part, the mezzo part of Rosina. It is an opera that has not yet been seen in France. Will you please consider it?’

  Bella looked into his earnest eyes. She felt suddenly hot.

  ‘I – will . . . yes, I’ll consider it, Monsieur Valéry. But . . .’

  ‘Pray say no more now. I shall be in London again in early March. Return me your answer the
n.’

  She had been about to move away, but she turned back.

  ‘Monsieur Maurice . . . I do not think you can ask me to make such a decision. I am, as you know – committed. And willingly, happily committed. You have great hopes for my career. Christopher has great hopes for my career. I am – that grateful for your – your admiration and your interest. Perhaps somehow we might all get together sometime so that your hopes – and his hopes – can be put to the – put to the trial, the test. I am not ungrateful for your – your warm words, believe me. It is very good to be so – wanted. But I am – have been for a long time – bespoke.’

  He smiled. ‘You are very gentle. If—’

  ‘No, I am not!’

  ‘At least, you are very young. I am thirty-one. As life goes on one becomes more – more cynique. I admire you for your loyalty. But in ten years’ time, looking back, you may feel that loyalty is not all.’

  The house that Christopher was proposing to buy was in the Green Lane, which ran north parallel with Tottenham Court Road, a little further from Mrs Pelham’s than Bella would have liked, but it was pretty, or would be when it was finished, being a smallish terraced house built in the style of Nash. The air, Christopher explained, was fresher up here, and the area was being rapidly developed for that reason.

  She had found him last night asleep in a chair in the cloakroom; and he had staggered to his feet and then fallen down before pulling himself up again with Bella’s help. Their carriage had been called and Bella had been irritated to have to wait inside the coach while Christopher was helped down the steps of the hotel to join her. As usual he was full of apologies and tender in his concern for her, but she felt his apologies a shade superficial as if he had accidentally trod on her foot in a cotillion.

  As they were returning to Mrs Pelham’s after visiting the new house, she interrupted him by saying: ‘Christopher, have you heard of a man called Rossini?’

  ‘Who? Rossini. I think he’s a tenor. An Italian tenor. Why?’