Song Cycle (Warrender Saga Book 8) Page 4

  “Oh, thank you!” Anna gave him a pale smile and went quickly in search of her father, whom she found in the room indicated, sitting huddled up in an armchair, with an untasted cup of coffee on a table in front of him.

  “Dad —” She was beside him, her arms comfortingly round him almost before he knew she was in the room. And when she felt his trembling hand clutching her arm she realised that to anyone as sensitive and vulnerable as her father — anyone who had been in a sense protected for years by her mother — the shocks and horror of the last twenty-four hours must have been almost stupefying.

  “It’s all right, I’m here. And they say things are a little better —”

  “Who says so?” he demanded immediately.

  “The — the man at the enquiry desk.”

  “He wouldn’t know,” exclaimed her father almost querulously.

  “He wouldn’t presume to say it on his own initiative,” she countered bravely. “But tell me all about it, dear.

  Nothing is going to be so bad now we’re together. Drink your coffee. Why —” she touched the side of the cup — “it’s quite cold. I’m going to see if I can get some more.”

  “I don’t want any,” he said dispiritedly.

  “Well, I do. And you must keep me company.” She looked round and, seeing a bell, ventured to ring it, whereupon a pleasant, cheerful-looking ward maid immediately presented herself and, before Anna could address her, exclaimed, “Now, Mr. Fulroyd, you haven’t drunk that nice coffee I brought you, and you need something to pick you up after all the worry you’ve been through.”

  “If you could most kindly bring us two more cups, I’ll see that he drinks his,” Anna promised with a slight smile. “I’m his daughter. I’ll look after him now.”

  “Now, isn’t that better, Mr. Fulroyd?” The young woman looked approvingly from Anna to her father. “He’s been on his own all day, you know,” she added in parenthesis to Anna, a little as though her father were a small child and would not know what was being said. “But I keep on telling him the worst is over.”

  “She doesn’t know — any more than the man at the desk does,” Anna’s father muttered to her irritably. But the young woman evidently had sharp ears, because she replied, without a trace of offence,

  “Oh, yes, I do. I mayn’t be a qualified nurse, but I haven’t been around this hospital for ten years without learning a thing or two. You couldn’t have had a better surgeon than Mr. Coombes. He’s almost never been known to lose a patient, which is more than some of them can say. And if they say your wife’s as well as can be expected that may not mean an awful lot, but it does mean she’s alive, and while there’s life there’s hope. So I’ll fetch you some more coffee, and this time you must drink it, if only to please your daughter who’s come all this way to be with you.”

  She went away, and Anna hugged her father again and said, “Can you tell me something about it now, Dad? I don’t even know what’s the matter with Mother.”

  “Didn’t I tell you on the phone?” He passed a hand distractedly across his forehead. “It’s her heart. I thought I told you. That’s why she’s been finding everything such an effort lately.”

  “Her heart? Do you mean she’s had heart surgery?” Anna, who like most of us had the very vaguest idea of how her heart or anyone else’s worked, found it hard to imagine just what even the cleverest of surgeons might have been able to do if that most vital organ gave serious trouble. And, to tell the truth, her father seemed to know very little more than she did.

  He tried to explain, so far as he himself had understood, but it all sounded rather strange and improbable to Anna. So she gave up questioning him and, when the coffee and some thick but most welcome sandwiches were brought, she concentrated on being just generally encouraging and hopeful.

  She realised, from the pleasure with which he ate his sandwiches, that probably he had had little to eat all day. And only when the meal was finished did she venture to say timidly, “I suppose there’s no question of seeing Mother this evening?”

  He shook his head.

  “They said not until tomorrow and perhaps not then. She mustn’t have the slightest excitement or fatigue. I only stayed on here because I guessed you would come straight to the hospital and —” He stopped suddenly and gazed at her remorsefully. “Why, I never sent the taxi for you! And it’s a terrible evening.” He looked at the rain

  which was still running down the window pane. “How did you get here, my dear? You must have got soaked.” And he ran an affectionate hand down her coat sleeve.

  “No, no. As you see, I’m quite dry. Except for my gloves, which I dropped in a puddle.” She smiled reassuringly at him. “Young Mr. Delawney gave me a lift. Wasn’t it kind of him?”

  “Young Mr. Delawney?” Her father frowned consideringly. “Do you mean one of the Coppershaw Delawneys?”

  “Yes, of course. There aren’t any others besides the ones who live at Coppershaw Grange, are there?”

  “No. I just thought — How did you come to know him, Anna? Your mother and I don’t exactly move in that circle.”

  “I wasn’t moving in his circle.” Anna gave a laugh of genuine amusement, which she would not have thought possible half an hour ago. “I was just standing in the wind and rain at the station, and his car was waiting for him and he offered to give me a lift home. I explained about Mother, and he brought me to the hospital. He couldn’t have been kinder. He knew who I was, it seems. He knew about you too.”

  “How do you mean? — he knew about me.”

  “Well, he asked wasn’t I Miss Fulroyd and wasn’t my father the organist? Oh, and he said something about telling his sister to get in touch with you about some festival she’s organising. What is that, Dad, do you know?”

  “Oh, one of those slightly pretentious social affairs, I imagine.” Her father smiled faintly, with that touch of scornful indulgence which the professional is rather apt to display towards the wealthy amateur who chooses to dabble in the arts. “I believe the daughter — and possibly Mrs. Delawney too — have some idea of acting as patrons of the arts. All rather amateur, I expect. A few concerts here and there, and some chamber music in the big drawing-room. I believe someone said something about turning the old tithe bam into a theatre, and no doubt there’ll be a lot of dressing up. I didn’t take it very seriously.”

  “But it might be rather an attractive plan,” protested Anna. “It might be extended to something in the church — and so on. I think it’s rather fine of the Delawneys to want to spend some of their money that way. Why not?”

  “No reason at all.” Suddenly her father smothered an almost irrepressible yawn. “It just didn’t strike me as particularly serious. Anna, if there’s no point in our staying here any longer —”

  “I know! It’s time you were home. You must be dead beat. Stay here, dear, and I’ll go and see if I can get any more news. And then we’ll go home. I think it’s stopped raining now.”

  Presently she managed to find the Night Sister who, though sympathetic, could supply little more information.

  “It would be wrong to say she is anything but critically ill, Miss Fulroyd, but she is as well as can be expected. In fact, rather better than we dared to hope a few hours ago. It’s largely a question now of how well her naturally good constitution can take the strain.”

  “Would there be any point in our staying on here during the night?” Anna asked.

  “None whatever. Even if we had facilities for keeping you, which we haven’t. Since you live near and are, I think, on the phone…?” she paused and Anna nodded. “My advice would be for you to take your father home and try to get him to rest. He’s a pretty highly-strung person, isn’t he?”

  “I’m afraid he is. My mother was always the strong, self-reliant one.”

  “I guessed as much. Well, get him home and to bed if you can, Miss Fulroyd. Otherwise you’ll have another patient on your hands. And you’re both going to need a lot of nervous energy during the nex
t week or two, however well your mother does.”

  So Anna thanked her and went back to the waiting-room, to find her father already anxiously pacing the corridor, convinced that her short absence somehow meant bad news.

  “Nothing of the kind, Dad,” she reassured him firmly. “On the contrary, the Night Sister says she’s better than they’d dared to hope a few hours ago, and that you and I had better go home and get a good night’s rest, as we shall need to be well and strong to look after Mother when she’s starting the long road back to recovery.”

  If this was a rather shameless paraphrase of what had actually been said Anna did not trouble her conscience about that. She was just unspeakably relieved to see the way her father’s poor, tired face cleared, and how even a little dash of colour came back into his cheeks. He made no further protest and, with his arm linked in hers, walked the short distance to their house with more reassurance and purpose than he had shown since she found him sitting in the waiting room with the cold coffee.

  Anna realised that she was at that moment applying the same protective technique to her father which her mother had used during most of her married life. Whether this were wise or not she did not know. But unquestionably he responded to the familiar treatment, and she guessed that during the immediate future she would simply have to replace her mother, so far as her father was concerned.

  This indeed proved to be the pattern of her new life.

  Contrary to all the early fears, Mrs. Fulroyd continued to hold her own, though there were, of course, setbacks which plunged Anna and her father into fresh terror and near-despair. Then slowly, slowly she began to improve, though she still hovered perilously on the danger list.

  “Even when she does eventually go home, she’s going to need a very long convalescence,” the surgeon explained to Anna. “No exertion, no worry for the next six months at least. What are the arrangements at home? Can she have complete rest there?”

  “Yes, of course.” Anna made the decision without a moment’s hesitation. “I’ve been in London studying for the last two or three years. But there’s no reason why I shouldn’t come home now and take over.”

  “What were you studying?” Mr. Coombes enquired.

  “Singing.” Anna spoke almost curtly, because when-she actually came to speak of her own affairs all her shattered hopes and plans rose up to reproach her. But what else could she do?

  “Singing?” The great man smiled indulgently. “Oh, well, I suppose you can take that up again at any time.”

  “I expect so,” agreed Anna drily. For what was the good of trying to explain to a dedicated surgeon that a dedicated artist also had a long, difficult apprenticeship, and that to interrupt things at the wrong moment could spell disaster and eventual failure?

  “It’s just a question of getting one’s priorities right,” Anna told herself, swallowing a sudden lump in her throat. “Mother must come first, of course. She’s given a lifetime of care to Dad and me. I’d be a poor sort of creature if I grudged her six months or a year of my love and care now.”

  Strangely enough, even her father had little to say about the indefinite interruption to her budding career.

  Possibly because he could see absolutely no other solution to the present emergency. If Anna were not to take over the running of the household and the eventual care of her mother, who could? He accepted things as they had to be.

  So did Anna. And, to her credit, with singularly little rebellion, even in her own heart and mind. The one person who did express profound indignation on her behalf was, surprisingly enough, Roderick Delawney.

  True to his promise, he had made enquiries about her mother’s progress the very next day and, after that, at intervals of a few days. He was, he told Anna, when he met her one morning in the High Street, at home for a few weeks on holiday, and he asked her, quite as though he had a right to know, how she was herself managing to have indefinite leave from wherever she worked.

  “I’m not employed anywhere. I’m still only just emerging from the student stage,” Anna said, and then she found herself explaining at some length about her musical aspirations.

  “But surely this is just the wrong moment to break off and be missing from the scene?” he exclaimed with genuine concern. “If you’re beginning to get small engagements and good crits you need to keep on registering an appearance. Can’t you get a housekeeper or someone to look after your father, and then a nurse when your mother comes home?”

  Suppressing an impulse to ask him how much he thought all that would cost, Anna smilingly shook her head.

  “I don’t like the interruption, of course,” she conceded. “And, as you say, it couldn’t have come at a more unfortunate time. But no one can have everything as they want it, and Mother must come first. The only thing I —” she stopped, remembering with a stab of quite agonising regret how she had floated on a cloud of glory for just a few golden moments after she realised that both Jonathan Keyne and the great Warrender himself had found her impressively worthwhile as an artist.

  “Yes?” he prompted. “What is the only thing you just can’t reconcile yourself to?”

  “How do you know that was what I was going to say?” But her faint smile told him he had guessed correctly. “Well, you see, on the very afternoon of the operation I was auditioned for something very special. I know he — they were genuinely impressed. But I just had to turn it down then and there.”

  “But look here — !”

  “No, please! And don’t tell a soul. I don’t know quite why I told you, except that you’re so very kind and sympathetic. But my father has no idea and would be in despair if he knew. He has quite enough to worry him already without indulging in vain regrets on my behalf.”

  “You really are a good kid I A bit too good for your own advantage, I’m inclined to think.” And he frowned with the air of a man who was used to bulldozing his way to what he wanted even if other people’s interests stood in the way. “I wish I could do something. Suppose I ask Teresa — my sister — to find something for you in this festival of hers? Would that help?”

  “It’s terribly kind of you.” For a moment Anna’s hand lingered gratefully on his arm. “But at the moment I simply can’t make any plans except to look after my mother when she comes out of hospital.”

  “Well —” he shrugged as though accepting her decision for the moment, but for the moment only. And Anna went on her way home, sufficiently comforted by his concern to find the courage to write three difficult but necessary letters.

  The first was to Madame Marburger, explaining that her mother’s serious illness necessitated her giving up her lessons for an indefinite period. The second was to Carrie, asking her to send on the rest of her things and to make arrangements to find another girl to share the flat as it was impossible to say how long it would be before Anna could return to London. And the third one was to Judy, giving a brief outline of her present dilemma and asking if she could find out Jonathan Keyne’s address from the London telephone directory.

  “I feel I should write a few lines to him,” she wrote carefully to Judy, “as I owe him some sort of apology for just dropping out of the scene after he had shown genuine interest.”

  Madame Marburger’s regrets, expressed formally but with some feeling, came by return of post. “I fully understand that you cannot desert your parents at this point,” she wrote. “But keep in practice, and remember that you were so near to success that it would be almost a sin to give up now. I am not in the habit of over-praising my students, but I think I should tell you that you are among the few I have had through my hands who possibly possess the divine spark.”

  Anna was cheered at first to receive this praise. But then she found herself suddenly weeping a few reluctant tears for the present quenching of her divine spark.

  Carrie, for her part, made prompt and efficient arrangements to send on Anna’s possessions, and added a note to say there was no need to worry about the re-letting of her share of the flat. An
Australian cousin had turned up and was only too glad to take on the accommodation.

  Judy’s letter was naturally longer and more personal than either of the others, and was full of indignant sympathy for the ill luck which had befallen her friend.

  “I searched the phone directory for Keyne’s address,” she wrote, “but he seems to be ex-directory. And when I made some enquiries around the office I was told that he left London a few days ago and probably won’t be back for any length of time until he starts rehearsals for the Canadian tour. I should think he will get in touch with you if he really wants you, and the letter will no doubt be sent on to you. Maddening to have to wait again, my poor pet, I know. But that seems to be all you can do.”

  Anna, who had not told Judy anything of the final audition, folded up the letter with a sigh. Even now she winced at the thought of what she had missed — and much, much more of the way in which she had missed it. Her whole behaviour during those last few moments with Jonathan Keyne now seemed to her so deplorably silly and irresponsible that she simply had not had the courage to tell Judy. And what he himself must have thought she really could not imagine.

  If she had been able to write him a short letter of apology and explanation it would not have been so bad. But now it seemed that she must remain in his memory — if she remained there at all — as a stupid, ill-behaved, entirely unreliable exhibitionist.

  It would have been a melancholy day indeed for her if she had not gone to the hospital that afternoon and found that her mother had at last taken a real step on the road to recovery. For the first time she looked something like her real self — except, of course, that it was difficult to imagine Mother lying languidly in bed in ordinary circumstances. But she smiled her humorous little smile and asked in a rather low voice how Anna and her father were coping.