Take My Life (2 page)

‘Remember, Nick, when I get out on the stage I'm going to forget all those white faces and think I'm just singing to you.'

He said: ‘Suits me … All right, now?'

She nodded. ‘All right.'

He squeezed her arm and went out, began to walk back to his box.

For all his assumed certainties he had moments of doubt as he threaded his way through the theatre-goers moving about the long corridors of the Opera House. He had not the slightest doubt of her capacities, but so much hung on tonight. Tastes, he knew, differed; and what might please an Italian audience would not necessarily please an English one, even though the Italians might be considered the better judges. It was the one danger, and he did not know enough about opera to be as sure as he sounded. And unlike her, he had no real fancy for a continental life. While he was stationed in Italy it had been splendid to be in the same city or within easy train or car distance of each other. Now that he was demobilized it was a different story. Poor at languages, unsympathetic to the Latin, he longed to make England or America their ground. This performance would largely decide their future.

When he reached the box he was met by the harmonious conversation of the orchestra just below him; the tenor squeak of the violins, the reedy baritone of the cellos, upward trips of a flute; one, two, three, like a child climbing a stair. It was all tunefully noisy and warm and exciting.

Joan Newcombe and Leslie had arrived, and he greeted his sister and her son with pleasure. It was the eleven-year-old Leslie's first visit to opera, and he had been allowed to come as a special treat. He was shinier and smoother and neater than Nick had ever seen him before, as if he had been scrubbed and polished with an unsparing hand.

‘I say, Uncle Nick,' he began in a stage whisper, ‘this is a ringside seat. How did you get it?'

‘Influence,' Nick said. ‘I know the star slightly. But don't think this is going to be a boxing match. Philippa doesn't fight the conductor or anything. At least we hope not.'

Joan smiled at him. The wine-red taffeta she was wearing brought out all the well-remembered colours in her hair.

‘Is she nervous?'

‘A bit. But she'll be all right.'

‘It's ‘‘house full'', I suppose?'

‘Yes. They're allowing thirty in for standing, but there was a queue of about a hundred when I looked out just now.'

‘Uncle Nick,' Leslie said, ‘ you might tell me when to clap. A fellow at school says it's bad form to make a row in the wrong place.'

Staring over the audience, Nick said: ‘I'll sit beside you and pinch you when it's our turn to make a noise.'

They were all in their seats now: that was a blessed regulation about closing the doors.

Tier upon murmuring tier, box upon box, talking and settling, programmes lifted and let fall like leaves in an errant breeze. It was like the inside of a great loaf-shaped wedding cake, like a great inverted wedding cake, with all the icing on the bottom tiers. As your eyes climbed towards the roof, so the luxury and the brilliance exhausted itself in rows of peering anonymous faces staring down at the sugared almonds below. But they, the people in the gallery and the upper circles, were no less arbiters of the night's success than the well-fed critics in the front rows of the stalls.

The critics were numerous tonight, according to the manager. And other distinguished people were present.

The curtain was going to be late; a bad thing, liable to fray a performer's nerves and to make an audience out of patience.

At last a little ripple of clapping spread about the house as Paroni made his appearance. Last-minute fears were gone, and he was master of the situation now. A moment's consultation with his first violin, a rap, rap of his baton; the rustling and movement in the audience faded to a thin hissing murmur; the murmur died and there were a few moments of breathing quiet with a white cloak or a woman's arm luminous in the half shadows of the boxes. Then Paroni raised his baton and the opera began.

The wheel of London moved a turn. The earliest congestion of traffic had eased. In the half-lit dark people moved too, singly and in groups, hasty and leisured, strolling and talking, jostled each other, waited to cross, queued for the cinemas, crowded in milk-bars, moved furtively round chemists' shops, argued and elbowed and sneezed and loitered and spat.

Stars had moved up the sky and been obscured by a freckle of rain. A cold breeze beat up the narrower streets, and the bright cheap women of the town – those who had not retired after the war years – moved into convenient doorways and stamped their feet and talked about the influenza. A man in a grey weatherproof turned up the collar of his coat and edged into the stage door of the Opera House. The doorkeeper glanced up from his last edition extra, but seeing that he came no farther and had the look of a gentleman, did not question him.

In the first box on the right Nick Talbot sat rather tautly, keen brown eyes fixed on the stage, nostrils a little flared. From time to time he smiled slightly. Beside him his sister, graceful and bright-eyed but a little languid, sat with one hand on her son's arm.

After half an hour's fascinated gazing at his new aunt, Leslie had begun to taste a few moments of boredom. He had kept it at bay so far by a number of mutely gleeful discoveries about the mechanics of the evening. The hairy hand with the gold signet ring which popped like a spider out of the small box at the front of the stage to turn over the pages of a just visible book, the curious periscope-like thing on which apparently a tiny mirror was set so that Hairy-Hand could see the conductor, the occasional glimpses of stage hands moving in the wings; these gave him something fresh to watch when the business of the evening dragged or he couldn't follow the story.

And there was something very interesting about the great lighted cavern of the orchestra pit, where every kind of musical instrument sawed and boomed and squeaked away; some even hidden under the stage, and all trying to drown poor Aunt Philippa just when she wanted to say something most.

By way of further change he could glance up and about the darkened auditorium with its bright ‘
EXITS
' staring at him like cats' eyes from every turn and tier, but this sooner or later earned him a reproving squeeze from his mother's hand and brought him back to the stage.

An unexpected diversion came when he was the first to notice that a strange man in evening dress had entered their box and was trying to attract Uncle Nick's attention. Leslie nudged the absorbed man beside him, and Talbot turned with an angry frown to know the reason of the interruption. Apologetically the man came a little forward and whispered something about Captain Talbot being wanted on the telephone. There was a brief irritated exchange, and then Nick's frown cleared and with a shrug of apology to Joan Newcombe he crept out of the box.

He was gone some minutes, and by the time he came back the first act was near its end. The curtain came down to a good deal of warm applause, but by the time the actors and actresses came forward to take their bows, some people in the stalls were already pushing their way out towards the bar where a thoughtful management had provided a cold buffet as well as the usual coffee and drinks. Under his breath Nick cursed the impatient and the ill-mannered, at the same time giving a brief explanation to Joan of his own apparent lapse. He was in fact elated as a result of his telephone call, and when the curtain had fallen for the fifth and final time he took Leslie out into the bar and bought him a drink of ginger pop. There, under the large muscular painting of Ariadne and Bacchus, he sipped whisky and listened to the conversation of the people about him.

It was too early yet; opinions were only just forming. The usual mixed crowd: the imitation beaver and the Burton suit rubbing shoulders with mutation mink and Savile Row.

He hoped Philippa hadn't noticed his going out. It would be so much more fun if he could tell what he had to tell as a surprise and not as an apology.

‘Why don't people circulate instead of standing here in this fantastic crush …?'

‘My tip for the National is Benny's Joy. An outsider, you know …'

‘They say she's English but she
came
from Italy. I wonder if it's a publicity stunt …'

‘Yes, pure silk damask, my dear. They're absolute bliss. But I'm terrified they may fade.'

‘Are you enjoying it?' – ‘Well, I feel I ought to be in a dinner-jacket.'

‘She trusts much more to a pure undisturbed cantilena than is usual these days. I think she'll go far.'

‘I've been to the counter, but they say I have to buy a ticket somewhere first.'

‘The scene struck me as rather tawdry. Did they bring it from Italy …?'

‘Yes, it's practically the only place to eat nowadays …'

‘So I told her. I said, if she
expected
an
au pair
to do that sort of thing …'

‘These sentimental operas. If one
thinks
of
Otello
…'

‘Come on, Leslie,' said Nick. ‘There's the first bell, and we'd better be getting back.'

The second act he knew would be the crucial test. Dramatically and musically the finest of the three, it offered all the opportunities of the evening. And within ten minutes of the curtain rise he knew she had ‘got' them.

There was a different sort of interest and attention in the audience now. Before it had been a friendly one made up of two thousand separate individuals; now suddenly it had become one big approving beast. Applause broke out after each of the arias, and after the duet with Suzuki, whose lovely little mezzo voice was a perfect foil to Philippa's, it would not be restrained. From then on there was dead silence until the end, where Philippa stood against the blue dawn of the latticed window with her servant sleeping at her feet. The curtain came down in dead silence, and then the applause burst. For a few minutes the lure of the light refreshments was forgotten and the curtain was parted and allowed to fall time after time. Then Philippa was given a curtain to herself and the whole house stood up and roared.

‘Uncle Nick,' cried Leslie, trying to make himself heard, ‘ you've pulled your programme to pieces.'

Nick patted the boy soundlessly on the head and grinned at Joan and thumped the plush rim of the box. The thing he had not expected was that she should be a
greater
success in her own country. Strangely he felt he might start blubbering, which was a curious way of showing his triumph. When at length the interval was fully under way he did not go down into the bar or the foyer but talked in monosyllables to Joan, keeping his fingers crossed and wishing that this was the end of the whole performance. For if the second act of
Butterfly
holds most of the opportunities, the third holds most of the pitfalls, many of them dramatic rather than musical. But there was nothing really to
fear
, except a certain amount of anticlimax, and that could never really affect the judgement of the evening.

At the stage-door a crony had come across from ‘The Belvedere' to talk about Pool results with George.

‘How's it going?' he said presently, with a jerk of the head towards the interior.

‘Oh, they near took the roof off after the second act. Reminds you of the old days. It'll be a quarter of an hour yet before it's done. What I say is, it's always worth 'aving a gamble with one or two entries. It don't cost you. no more, and there's the chance … Do something for you, sir?'

The stranger in the dark trilby hat hesitated. ‘No, thank you. I'm waiting for someone.'

‘Best wait outside. There'll be a lot of comin' and goin' through that door soon.'

‘When I'm in the way I'll move,' said the man.

The doorkeeper stared coldly at him a moment, and then thought it was not worth exerting his authority – yet. He turned back to his coupons.

The curtain had been down a dozen times, the clapping, at first explosive, had taken on the character of a bush fire, dying here, spreading there, fanned to fresh flames at each raising of the curtain. It was not the ovation of the second act, but it confirmed and verified Philippa's success beyond all doubt.

Nick got up.

‘Come along,' he said, his hands tingling. ‘We'll get behind before the corridors fill up.'

As they walked round a number of people were already trickling out, intent on getting the first overcoat or bus or taxi. Some were talking excitedly of the performance, others vacantly, disjointedly, of homely personal things as if the opera had already dropped out of their minds.

They were held up by a press of people at the last door, and Philippa had reached her dressing-room before them.

There were people round her already. She was flushed, still tense, but happy and just beginning to relax. She was trying hard not to believe it, but she knew in her heart she had been the success of the evening. The best had happened. Paroni, who had been on the stage, was here, and a woman reporter had somehow squeezed in, together with a half-dozen notabilities.

Nick found a gap for himself and bent and kissed her. She squeezed two of his fingers.

‘Marvellous, darling!'

She nodded. ‘ I think it's going to be all right, Nick.'

‘What do I tell her?' said Paroni, modestly shaking his pince-nez at Nick. ‘She follow my beat and she is a star!'

‘Miss Shelley,' said the woman reporter, ‘it's said that you're Italian-born; is that true?'

‘Ruggero taught her,' came a deep voice in the background. ‘The technique is unmistakable.'

‘My dear Miss Shelley, it's never been sung better. I thought of Marcella Zembrich. And what's more, it's never
looked
better …'

At that moment there was an eruption at the door, and Ravogli, the director of the San Giovanni Theatre in Rome, who had travelled with the company, came in in great style and put his arms round Philippa in a great bear hug.