Valley of Decision (3 page)

‘No. But she's had enough as the squire's wife.'

‘Has she told you?' Mary, mocking.

‘You know her better than I do,' he said sombrely. ‘She's ambitious, a singer. She thinks of herself. Can hardly do otherwise in her position. Sir Edward has had her home now for some months each year. People did say she was just a bit frightened of singing herself out.'

‘No sign of it,' Mary said.

‘There must be,' Horace Blackwall sounded interested, ‘quite a difference between Rathe Hall and Purcell and howling Wagner over immense distances and a full orchestra. It's nothing to do with music really.'

Nobody took him up. David had his eyes shut as if he were dropping asleep. When they had all refused alcohol Horace invited Mary to sing. She stood up.

‘I know what I like,' he said, guying himself.

‘Not more than two,' his wife warned, moving towards the piano. ‘Mary's tired.'

He chose, immediately, without hesitation. ‘Have you seen but a bright lily grow?'

‘And?' Joan looking for music.

‘“The Lass with the Delicate Air”.' He smiled in anticipation, pleased that he could make such a demand. He conducted to himself, though one could not tell which song.

Mary sang, standing by the piano, one hand splayed on the lid. Her voice rang with no strain, no fatigue, soared about the big room, clipping the notes in the centre, taking the upward rising scale of the first song like a jewelled stairway. She smiled vaguely, impersonally in the direction of her father-in-law. ‘Oh, so white', the tone exactly reflected the purity, the strength of her musicality and the transient, elusive beauty of whiteness in nature that resided permanently, ‘oh, so white, oh so soft', in the lady, in Mary. Small lines furrowed at the corners of her eyes, her mouth; her skin seemed, trick of the light, to have lost something of its bloom. She was tired, David decided, but it did not show in the voice. That sprang, leaped, couched, settled with creamy power.

Horace, David knew, was particularly fond of the high notes at the end of ‘The Lass'. Under Mary's skill the simple device, the soaring and dropping, had about it an innocence, a freedom from the sensual yet based distantly, obliquely in sexuality, a richness of some golden, naked age that existed only out of the corner of the eye. David himself stretching, knowing exactly how his wife would perform, would bring the effect off, was yet moved by it. It was distilled, freed from impurity, but caught the light artlessly like burn water. His father's eyes brightened with tears; the old man did not mind who saw him draw out, shake loose his handkerchief to wipe them off, but the voice with which he thanked her was steady enough.

‘One more,' almost peremptorily from Joan Blackwall. She had noticed her husband's joy, and would cover it with a different, livelier pleasure. She sorted through a small pile of music, held up a piece briefly, open, to Mary and then straightened it on her stand. David, staring, had no time to make out the title, but the first sharp chord, the pace now furious but steady, made him aware, and his father, of what happened. Purcell's ‘Hark the Echoing Air', lively, brisk, trumpet-bright, echoed from the panels of the room, bounced, ran headlong into the ears, gold, speedy, a marvel. Each semiquaver she touched burst with the flash of a grenade, small, lilting, lifting, a-dance, sparking with young life's exuberance. ‘And all around pleased Cupids clap their wings', and the accompaniment, needle-sharp, applauded the voice, little handclaps of musical appreciation, tripping, shifting perfumed air, clap, clap, clap, delicate in confidence, chasing, matching the racing voice so that when the second brilliance of the repeat ended with a touch, an off-handedness of allargando, the two men both sat upright, wanting the light, the run of tiny, life-giving explosions, again, again, again.

Mary smiled broadly. Her mother-in-law wiped nonexistent sweat from her brow. The men were smiling, sitting alert and radiant, wide awake, angels in bright daytime.

‘Marvellous,' Horace said.

‘Well done, both.' David.

‘We married a couple of winners,' the father said. ‘Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.'

The four sat for perhaps another ten minutes, completely content with the others, but immersed still in the music. They spoke, now and again, as if to disperse the solipsism of their pleasure; the longest passage between Joan and Mary concerned the breakdown of a washing machine, but that itself took the form of a text to be set by Purcell, a few incomplete statements needing music to match them to the hour.

‘Come on,' David said, yawning again. ‘It's time.' The others rose; he kissed his mother here, though he would kiss again by the door.

‘That was a treat,' Horace touched his daughter-in-law on the arm, ‘and a half.' He was fond of his childhood's phrases.

Mary seemed to expand as she put on her outdoor clothes. Now, hatted, she stood larger than life, a Valkyrie, formidably tall, not the slim girl who'd dazzled them with brightness of voice.

‘Ready, my lord,' she informed her husband. She kissed the parents.

‘Save something for Saturday,' Horace said.

‘You'll get your money's worth.'

‘In mushroom sauce.'

They laughed hoarsely in the hall and the heavy door clanged, dividing their harmony. Horace switched on the television with lacklustre eye, knowing he had to pass time until he went upstairs to bed. His wife pottered round in the kitchen; she could always find a chore to combat the bathetic, but he had no such art. David drove home quietly and saw Mary's eyes closed against undipped headlights. The road shone greasily; their house was cold and the electric blankets unwarming. On the wall the quartz clock ticked synthetically and louder than usual.

‘Another day gone,' she said, plugging in the kettle.

‘You're not making another drink?' he complained.

‘We've got to give the blankets half a chance.' She seemed livelier. ‘Enjoy it?'

‘I'm always too tired, but, yes. You transform the old man. I wouldn't have said he was all that keen on music, but look at him tonight.'

‘He was crying, David.'

‘Yes.'

‘Why was that?'

‘Who am I to say?' He spoke sharply, as if annoyance had woken him from lethargy. ‘He feels strongly, and that's how it shows itself. He's getting old.'

‘He's fifty-eight, and young at that.'

David did not answer, but banged about the house closing up. Perhaps he felt betrayed by his father's overt emotionalism, she did not know, or perhaps he'd had an unsatisfactory day at school. She sipped her weak instant coffee, wishing him quiet and sitting by her.

‘Liz Falconer rang me up at work,' she told him. He did not answer, waited for further information. Mary seemed unwilling to continue without his questions.

‘Um?' he compromised, then capitulated. ‘About tomorrow?'

‘No. She was sounding me out about a singing job.' She used the flat words to pacify him. ‘In America. She's singing for two seasons there, she says. In a year's time.'

‘Wagner?'

‘No, she's already committed to that in Bayreuth and Paris. This is Mozart, Meyerbeer and perhaps
Dido,
she hopes. And she says she can get me into the act.'

The steadiness of the tone belied the lightness of the words.

‘Is she sure?' he asked.

‘No. Not really. It depends if I want it, but then she'll use her influence. She couldn't promise anything. She made that clear.'

‘And you said?'

‘That I'd have to think about it, and consult you.'

They both sat at either end of a table laid for breakfast, awake, troubled for the other. Ten o'clock struck.

‘Do you want to hear the news?' she asked.

‘No.' He shook his head, sighing, like a dazed boxer. ‘Well, what do you think then?'

‘I don't know.'

A spurt of anger jangled in him.

‘That means you'd like to go,' he said.

They did not stir, but she watched him as he idly but methodically moved spoons and plates about the tablecloth.

‘I don't blame you,' he continued, but dully, as if he were hampered by a cold in the head. ‘It's a great opportunity.'

‘I'm not sure.' Mary spoke firmly now, as his father spoke about imports of Swedish furniture or the buying of shares in office blocks. ‘There'll be some travelling because there'll be at least two companies, and I shall almost certainly be in the “B” if not lower. And that's not altogether comfortable. Digs,' she said laughing, ‘and men. And women.'

‘But you'll see the world.' It sounded feeble.

‘It will only be worthwhile if I do well enough to go on. And you know what that means.'

‘If you don't do it, you'll blame yourself for the rest of your life.'

‘I wonder,' she said.

At the words love gushed in him, like the bursting of an artery, a warm, a killing comfort. It meant nothing; she would modify the meaning in the next sentence in all probability, but the three syllables spoke with a reasonableness that masked love, a mathematical equation, a quantifying of her affection for him.

‘Are you bored with your work here?' he asked.

‘No, I'm not. There's plenty to do, and I've got the hang of it. I like the people, and this house.' The blue eyes widened. ‘Then there's you.'

‘Yes,' he said.

‘What do you think?'

‘If you want to go, you grab the chance. “There is a tide in the affairs of men . . .”'

‘I don't really know, David. I wish she hadn't said anything. I was quite settled yesterday, and enjoying the chance to sing the Purcell, and now. I don't want to change.'

‘But you want to try it.'

She shook her head. Her bewilderment touched him, more deeply than his own anxiety, his self-interest. He held out his hand and she took it; the contact of flesh on flesh meant nothing in that it did not allay foreboding. They sat there, hand in hand, as if in a charade, parading the action of love to themselves, ingraining the habit.

‘I wonder why she rang up just this morning,' Mary asked. She could not, he thought, let it go.

‘She wanted to hear you first.'

‘Rehearsals. We've been at it for weeks.'

‘In performance. And she'd have her friends here, and they'd perhaps say something. There'll be pieces in the Sundays, I tell you. She doesn't sing, even in a small concern like this, unnoticed. Her agents will have notified everybody.'

‘I'm surprised,' she said, ‘that she's been allowed to sing. She must be under contract to half the operatic managements in the world.'

He shrugged. ‘Three nights. In an out-of-the-way place. Professional help to be hired. I wonder she did it at all. She could have given an equivalent to the profit they'll make and not notice it. Don't know. Can't fathom her.'

‘She's a marvellous voice, hasn't she?'

‘Sure. Even at half throttle. And personality.' He laughed, dropping her hand. ‘She must think highly of you. There's no need for her to make moves on your behalf, is there? You must have impressed. Her or somebody else.' He laughed again, a chuckle in his throat, poor acting. ‘She's not got the reputation of a wrecker, has she?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Oh, come on.'

‘She wouldn't want to do you and me one in the eye, split us apart, just out of mischief, would she?'

‘Why would she want that?' Mary asked.

‘Mischief, I suggested, or to get her own back on Edward. It is just possible, my sweet, that she envies you, with your little house and your little schoolteacher . . .'

She stared, then frowned before her face cleared. He was making fun of her.

‘Let's go to bed.' He put his hand out again. She took it, but made a revolver with her other, pointing it at him.

THE DRESSING ROOMS,
formerly servants' quarters, for
Dido and Aeneas
were scattered; the men replaced jeans and pullovers by dinner jackets or sailors' kilts, courtly togas, hunting brown and green in a disused kitchen, while the ladies prepared themselves in bedrooms along a corridor two storeys above the hall itself. Elizabeth Falconer changed from twentieth-century flamboyance to a more restrained royal purple or white in some distant chamber, but already messages had been dispatched to the lower orders that she was displeased with Friday's performance. The conductor, an up-and-coming young man from Covent Garden, had been sent for during the day, when he had been handed a typed list of errors to be set right. He could not disagree, la Falconer had her musical wits about her, but with an amateur chorus, however good, a partly amateur orchestra, an unsuitable cramped stage, inadequate lighting, he hardly expected otherwise.

He ventured to say as much.

Elizabeth Falconer did not argue.

‘Mr Silver,' she said. ‘It will be right this evening.'

‘There are no . . . I can't call another rehearsal.'

‘You can let them know what you think. The performance was not a patch on Wednesday's.'

‘With amateurs . . .'

‘You are not an amateur. I may say with confidence that I am not an amateur.'

His attempts at argument were met with direct orders. ‘It will be better tonight. As musical director it is your duty to see to it.'

She had influence, he knew. Her husband, Sir Edward Brook-Fane, escorting him from the presence, offered no comfort.

‘Why's she so upset?' the conductor had asked.

‘She has her standards.'

‘That performance was no better and no worse than I expected. Given the . . .'

‘Make it known to your people.' Sir Edward seemed almost biblical conveying his wife's tablets of stone.

‘And have them flustered?'