Unbidden Melody Read online

  Over the choice of the meal he consulted her meticu­lously, but over the wines hardly at all, for which she was glad since her knowledge of wines was sketchy in the ex­treme. When this was done, he sat back with an air of gen­uine relaxation and asked, as though it really interested him to know her opinion, “How did you enjoy the rehear­sal?”

  “Beyond description!” Mary told him truthfully. “I never heard great singers at such close quarters before. I’m still a bit dazed by the experience.”

  “Did we make such a noise, then?” he enquired am­usedly. “It can be quite shattering in a smallish studio if you’re not used to it, I know.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean that!” She was a good deal shocked. “It was, of course, much louder than anything I’m used to. But what was so terrific was—I suppose one would have to call it the emotional impact. I’ve heard ‘Carmen’ more times than I could say, but this was like being per­sonally involved in the final tragedy.”

  “That’s how it should be.” She thought he was pleased by her choice of words. “To tell the truth, I seldom even rehearse it myself without that sense of tremendous in­volvement. I think it’s the same with any reasonably sensi­tive artist.”

  “I overheard Mr. Warrender say your voice was in specially good form,” she volunteered presently. “And I don’t think I ever heard you sound more wonderful.”

  “No? It’s partly the long rest, of course.”

  “And partly—?” she invited him to finish that.

  But his expression went curiously bleak and he said, “Partly something quite else—I think. But never mind about that now.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said quickly, feeling that perhaps she had sounded inquisitive rather than pleasantly interested.

  “You have no need to be.” His slight smile absolved her of any such suspicion and made her feel disproportion­ately happy. And then, between courses, he said unexpec­tedly, “Tell me something about yourself.”

  “About me? There’s really nothing much to tell,” Mary protested. But because there is no sweeter flattery than to have those words uttered by someone who interests one, she proceeded to give him a brief, but not unamusing, account of her family background and her working life.

  “And in your out-of-office hours?” he wanted to know.

  “I’m primarily an opera and concert fan, as I told you. I used to think when I was much younger—” she missed the smile which that drew because she was intent on her story—“that perhaps I might be a singer myself. But I found I really hadn’t anything like enough talent. So I enjoy myself as mere audience.”

  “But you don’t go to these performances all on your own, surely?”

  “Oh, no! There are quite a crowd of us. Friends, ac­quaintances, even a few enemies when it comes to fighting about rival favourites,” she conceded with a laugh.

  “But no one special person?” he pursued, apparently with genuine curiosity.

  “You mean—am I engaged or anything?”

  “I suppose I did. But perhaps that’s inexcusably in­quisitive?”

  “No.” Mary shook her head. “I don’t mind your ask­ing.” Again she had realised that he was asking about her life because he had no wish to sit there reflecting on his own. “I don’t imagine it’s a very interesting story for any­one famous like you. You must know all sorts of fascin­ating people and—”

  “Tell me, all the same.”

  She laughed a little shyly and turned her wine-glass on its stem. And suddenly she found that she truly did not mind his asking about her. In an odd way, it was even something of a relief to talk to someone about Barry. Someone so far removed from her own private life that he was as safe a confidant as anyone.

  “It must happen to a lot of girls, I’m sure,” she said reflectively. “I was very much in—I was keen on a man who quite suddenly got engaged to another girl. It’s about a year ago, and I’ve got over it now, in a way. Enough to realise that I was very silly even to suppose I was his type or—”

  “What was his type?” Nicholas Brenner wanted to know.

  “Oh, something much more sophisticated and worldly than I am. More—more interesting, you know.”

  “No,” he said, “I don’t think I do know. What is so interesting about being sophisticated and worldly?”

  “Well—” began Mary. And then, as she seemed to find that difficult to define, he said,

  “Never mind. Go on. Did he marry the other girl?”

  “No, he didn’t. That’s the odd thing—”

  “Not odd at all,” Nicholas Brenner assured her lightly. “Quite a number of men wake up just in time.”

  “You’re really very good for my sagging morale.” She laughed outright at that. “But I didn’t mean his not marry­ing her was odd. I meant—” she hesitated. Then she shrugged and completed the story. “The odd part of the story is that I found out only today. He’s come back to live in London, and he rang me up this afternoon, in the office.”

  “Just to tell you he was not married after all?”

  “No, not only that. He wanted me to go out with him this evening.”

  “But, my dear, you should have gone!” Nicholas Bren­ner looked genuinely put out.

  “I had a prior engagement,” she reminded him with a rather mischievous smile. “I was going to rehearsal with you.”

  “But I would have understood!—At least, I think I would,” he added with a touch of rather engaging realism about himself.

  “It wasn’t necessary,” Mary assured him. “On the con­trary, it wasn’t a bad thing to be able to say ‘no’. I used to say ‘yes’ all too often in the old days, I think.”

  “Ah, well, that’s another thing!” He laughed with gen­uine amusement. “But—” suddenly something about her seemed to arrest his attention completely—”I see you have recalled something which is worrying you. You look dis­mayed all at once. Are you thinking it would have been better—”

  “No, it’s not that.” Mary looked past him with widened eyes. “It’s just that—someone I know has come into the restaurant.”

  Nicholas Brenner was not a highly perceptive artist for nothing. His curiously light hazel eyes regarded her with a touch of half cynical understanding.

  “I suppose, by one of those coincidences that only hap­pen in real life, the young man in question has just come in?” he said.

  “Y-yes. How did you know?”

  “By your expression. And also—life’s like that. It often plays that kind of malicious trick.” He spoke with an un­accountable bitterness which could have nothing to do with her and her inconsiderable affairs, she felt.

  “Has he seen you?”

  “Not yet—no. He’s talking to another man who came in with him.”

  “Then change places with me if his presence embar­rasses you.”

  “But you’ll be facing the room then, and you wanted to avoid notice.”

  “The young man is hardly likely to ask for my auto­graph, even if he happens to recognise me,” retorted Nicholas Brenner with a touch of humour. And, as un­obtrusively as possible, they changed places so that Mary now had her back to the room.

  “All this must seem rather small and silly to you,” she said apologetically. But he disclaimed this immediately.

  “If you want to know, I’m rather enjoying myself,” he declared. “If the young man comes this way do you want me to play the part of a rival admirer?”

  “No, of course not! In fact I feel I should apologise for having involved you at all in my unimportant affairs.”

  “Please don’t. It’s a refreshing change. You forget I’ve just come from rehearsing a scene of frantic jealousy and despair. I don’t at all mind reversing the situation and in­flicting the same thing on someone else.”

  She laughed at that and felt the sense of tension relax.

  “I don’t think Barry is likely to feel jealousy or despair over anything I do,” she said frankly.

  “Shame on him,” replied her c
ompanion. “He must be a very insensitive—or unappreciative—young man.”

  And then he allowed her to drink her coffee in silence while she reflected on the pleasing implication of his words. Presently she asked him one or two questions about the role he had just been rehearsing, and from that they passed to the other part he was to play during the season.

  “Mr. Deane described Lensky as ‘not a killer role’,” she told him with a smile.

  “Well, it isn’t, of course, in the sense of length or sheer expenditure of energy,” he agreed. “But it calls for some­thing like faultless singing, and it contains in my view one of the loveliest and most testing of all tenor solos. In addition—” he smiled suddenly with a sort of mischievous frankness which surprised her—”I rather fancy myself in the high hat and caped coat of the period. If one has to be shot in a duel one should at least be allowed to look romantically interesting beforehand.”

  She laughed out loud at that, and he said softly, “Your admirer is looking this way. Ye-es, I think he’s recognised that nice fresh laugh of yours. He’s getting up and com­ing over.”

  “Oh—” she was so unprepared for this that she looked put out, and he lightly put a reassuring hand over hers as it lay on the table.

  The next moment Barry stood before her, his eyes alight with pleasure, interest and frank curiosity.

  “Hello! What are you doing here?” he wanted to know.

  “I’m having dinner with Mr. Brenner,” she explained a little unnecessarily. “The rehearsal is just over.” Then she quickly made the introductions and the men exchanged polite if not specially cordial greetings.

  “I’m afraid I forestalled you and had already claimed Miss Barlow for this evening,” the tenor said carelessly.

  “For a rehearsal—yes. She told me about that,” Barry agreed, with a certain smiling exactness which was some­thing less than friendly. “But tomorrow it’s my turn, I believe.”

  “I’m not sure. We hadn’t discussed tomorrow,” re­plied Brenner pleasantly.

  “But Mary and I have, and the arrangement is made,” Barry returned, just as pleasantly.

  “In that case—” Brenner made a regretful little gesture towards Mary, who was rather enjoying this in a fright­ened sort of way.

  “Yes, tomorrow—as we arranged,” she said quickly. And before she quite realised what she was doing she had given Barry a cool little nod of dismissal which would have been unthinkable in the old days.

  He withdrew, in reasonably good order, and Brenner said, “Shall we go now?”

  “Yes, of course.” With a touch of anxiety she remem­bered his telling Suzanne Thomas that he had had a long and tiring day. “I expect you want to get back to your hotel and to bed.”

  “Oh, no!” His slight grimace of distaste disclaimed any such idea. “I’ll take you home first.”

  “But you can’t do that! I live out in the suburbs. And anyway, it’s quite an easy journey by bus. I do it twice a day.”

  He said no more about that, but called for the bill. Then he put on her coat for her with an air of rather more special attention than was called for, she thought, and followed her through the restaurant. As they came abreast of Barry and his companion he gave them a faintly lordly bow which is peculiar to most stage celebrities when they wish to make their weight felt. It was so different from his almost unobtrusive entrance an hour and a half ago that, when they were outside on the pavement, she could not help asking, “Why did you do that?”

  “Why did I do what?”

  “Bow in that over-gracious way.”

  “Oh—” he laughed. “That’s what’s called ‘putting on the tenor’,” he told her coolly. “I thought the young man deserved it.”

  “Because of the way he treated you?” she asked diffi­dently.

  “No. Because of the way he treated you” was the un­expected reply. Then he raised his hand to summon a cruising taxi and asked, “Where to?”

  “The Gloria, I suppose.”

  “No, I’m taking you home.” He spoke as though the subject had not been previously mentioned. And because further protest would have been ungraceful she gave him her Hampstead address and got into the taxi with him.

  As they drove north she left the silence unbroken for a few minutes. Then she said with feeling, “Mr. Brenner, I don’t know how to thank you. This evening has been a sort of opera-lover’s dream. To go to a private rehearsal and then to be taken out to dinner by the star of the occa­sion—”

  “One of them,” he murmured modestly.

  “The brightest one,” she retorted with pleasing par­tiality. “And then that you should show such kind interest in the affairs of an unimportant member of the aud­ience—”

  “No member of the audience is unimportant to a public performer, Miss Barlow,” he said amusedly.

  “Oh, in a sense, I daresay. But you gave me most of your evening. It was wonderful of you.”

  “Didn’t you realise that I was glad to occupy myself with someone else’s affairs on this particular evening?” he said suddenly, and all the laughter was gone from his face and his voice. “It’s I who should be thanking you for this evening. You can have no idea how I loathed and dreaded the thought of this first evening in London.”

  He spoke with such bitter intensity that for a moment she was struck dumb. Then she said gently, “I think I do understand. At least, so far as an outsider can understand someone else’s tragedy. It was the idea of being alone, wasn’t it, in a city where you and your wife had been so often together?”

  He nodded slightly.

  “That applies to several other cities, of course.” He spoke more calmly now. “It was the thought of the first few days in any one of them that made the idea of a come­back so insupportable. I think—perhaps—I shall never mind quite so much again.”

  Mary was so truly moved that it was a moment before she could say anything.

  “I’m glad if I helped in any degree,” she said simply at last. “I know it’s no good saying, ‘Try not to think of this—or that.’ Particularly with anyone so absolutely memor­able as your wife. I saw her more than once at the stage door. She was so radiant and perfectly beautiful, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes, I think she was the most beautiful woman I ever saw.”

  “I’m so terribly sorry.” Quite without thinking she put her hand warmly over his. “Did you love her very much?”

  His hand turned slowly and held hers in a grip that hurt.

  “No,” he said, with almost frightening deliberation. “In the end I hated her. That’s why I find it so hard to live with myself now. I was driving the car when it hap­pened, you see. In a way, I killed her.”

  CHAPTER II

  Mary caught her breath on a slight gasp. Then she rallied all her common sense and said deliberately, “You’re ex­aggerating, you know. You didn’t kill her. You’re so emo­tionally involved that you’re recalling everything in the wrong terms and tormenting yourself quite unnecessar­ily.”

  “You don’t know anything about it!” he retorted angrily.

  “Not about the exact circumstances, that’s true. But do you suppose this sort of reaction doesn’t come to most well-intentioned people? Almost everyone who has lost someone in a tragedy thinks afterwards, ‘Oh, why did I say or do—or even think—this or that?’ It’s quite natural. Don’t get things out of proportion.”

  “They were out of proportion already,” he said mood­ily. “There had been times when I almost wished her dead. And then, suddenly—she was.”

  His marvellously flexible voice dropped quite naturally to a near-whisper, and the compelling theatricality of the scene was such that Mary had to make a real effort not to yield over much to its spell.

  “Did you have any real reason for wishing her—for feeling like that, I mean?”

  “I thought so. But—” He stopped and gave a short, incredulous little laugh. “You strange girl! You don’t sound even remotely shocked.”

  “Oh, I a
m—inside,” Mary admitted. “But that’s not important. If it makes you feel better to talk about it—”

  “In some odd way, it does.” He spoke half to himself.

  “Then we’d better stop the taxi and get out here,” she said practically. “We can walk across this corner of the Heath. If we go on driving we shall be at my home in five minutes.”

  So they got out, he paid the driver and they struck out across the Heath, at first in silence. Then, as though for a moment she impinged on his consciousness as a person, instead of just a sounding-board for his spoken thoughts, he said, “You’re not cold, are you?”

  “Not at all. But it’s I who should be asking you that. You’re the one who has to be in good voice for Don Jose next week,” she reminded him. At which he laughed and drew her arm through his and said thoughtfully,

  “Jose—who killed the woman he loved.”

  “Am I supposed to draw some interesting parallel from that?” she asked rather crisply, determined not to let him indulge in too many histrionics, however naturally they might come to him.

  “Not really.” He looked faintly abashed, and then said rather engagingly, “You think I’m a bit of a show-off, don’t you?”

  “No more than a famous tenor is entitled to be,” she assured him a little indulgently. “But I suppose you’re try­ing to tell me that you were in love with—with your wife to begin with?”

  “But of course! She—well, you’ve seen her for your­self—one could hardly help falling in love with her. And when things began to go wrong it wasn’t only her fault, of course. I’m not specially easy to live with. Few suc­cessful theatre people are, I suppose. We tend to live too much with our nerves at full stretch.”

  “We’ll allow you that.” Mary smiled slightly. “So you were difficult and she—I suppose she was so lovely that other men ran after her, which made you jealous?”

  “Not at first. Oddly enough, it was she who became jealous first. You see—it sounds idiotic, I know—but there’s something about a voice, particularly a tenor voice, which does things to—”

  “Oh, you needn’t tell me!” Mary’s gay laugh eased the tension. “From stalls to gallery there’s hardly one woman who remains unaffected by a tenor of quality. He can look like a pig and still do considerable execution. And if he looks like you—well, it’s really quite unfair.”