Valley of Decision (6 page)

At her agent's office, she voiced these doubts to Mark Wentmeyer.

‘Peter's a good teacher,' he said, ‘but he might not suit you. Work as hard as you can for him, and . . .'

‘But he was so dull.'

‘He's had too much success. He was only very moderate himself as a singer, but a good musician. I thought he'd do better as a conductor. But in the past fifteen years he's had some marvellous pupils.'

‘Did he teach Elizabeth?'

‘He did. She still goes to him. Or that's the story.' Wentmeyer patted her arm. ‘He's now of the opinion that one needs only to stand in his presence and improvement begins. But he can teach once he puts his mind to it.'

Mark looked pleased, expansive. He proposed that he'd tell her what he knew about the American company and that they would then discuss the plan of campaign over lunch. He must be enthusiastic, she concluded, in that she'd never eaten before at his expense.

An American tycoon had left money, a great deal, to be spent for the betterment of opera and opera singing. ‘Now, you know what opera's like,' Mark's eyes twinkled; ‘you can spend a fortune just looking for a suitable theatre, never mind putting one singer unaccompanied on stage. So the trustees, lawyers, an impresario and academic musicians, five all told, decided to set up this company, to perform short seasons of early operas over the next six years,
Dido, Venus and Adonis, Semele
, Locke's
Cupid and Death
, perhaps the
Incoronazione di Poppea
, round university campuses and towns. It'll cost a bomb, but even if it doesn't show much success commercially, they hope to raise funds, and it'll provide employment for orchestral musicians and promising young singers. The scenery's some simple marvel to be made by the plastic arts department at NYS, and the Met and the professional theatre have lent some costumes, a sure sign they're not threatened. The conductor'll mainly be this young man called Fenster, who's said to be good. They haven't nobbled Gage yet.'

‘And where do I come in?' she asked after further long explanations.

‘That's it really. That's the baffler. Lizzie's leaned on somebody. There are always wheels within wheels, even in a charitable concern like this, people doing themselves a bit of good, and I guess Lizzie Falconer's short season across there was always touch and go, and so she could demand your inclusion. That's how it is.'

‘You don't say a word about merit,' she objected.

‘There's plenty of that about. If that were the only criterion we could mount a dozen times the number of operas and still leave good singers unemployed.'

‘So it's nepotism or nothing.'

‘Don't get that into your head. They'll slide you out quick enough if they don't think much of you.'

‘Don't you think,' she asked, ‘I'm taking a risk? Putting my head on the block?'

‘No doubt of it.' He roared with good-natured laughter.

‘What should I prepare?' she asked.

‘Get yourself copies of the things they're doing and be ready to sing any part that lies between middle C and C in alt.'

‘That's not sensible.'

‘I know. I know. But you're in with this, and . . .'

‘Isn't it possible that they're waiting for me to arrive and then they'll find some excuse to push me out, or make me resign? Since I've been foisted on them?'

‘Three-quarters of the singers have been foisted, as you call it,' Wentmeyer argued. ‘It does no good to think about it in that way. Ulrich Fenster will listen to what he's got when he starts his preparation. Time's going to be short, I guess. He'll want you to pick up parts in a hurry. That's why I say, “Be ready”. You've plenty going for you: looks, a good voice, an English accent, and, not least, Lizzie Falconer's backing. Come on, girl. God knows where this may lead you.'

‘Away from my husband.'

‘If you get into the big league you'll be able to afford to tote him around with you, and get tax-relief on him as your consultant for historical research.'

Mary enjoyed the lunch because she realized that Wentmeyer saw advantage in his contact with the Falconer agents and the American end; he'd take something out of this for himself in any case, but it would do him no harm if she made a good showing. They laughed; he was excellent company; the wine calmed her trepidation and he covered his lack of information by bursts of praise.

‘You've actually sung with Falconer,' he said, ‘and so well that she's recommending you about the world. There won't be too many of them in that position.'

‘If not her, somebody else.'

‘There aren't too many Falconers, I'll tell you. And they don't fall over themselves to give a lift up to rivals.'

‘You think over what you've just said,' Mary answered him. ‘She only praises those who are no good, and won't stand in her way.'

‘You won't be a Falconer. Ever, ever.' He laughed, his small beard flashing, his hair bouncing about his ears. ‘And to the best of my knowledge you're the only one she's done anything for. Or taken the initiative over. “Oh, Mary, this London's a wonderful sight”.'

She returned in euphoria, but the mood changed swiftly, darkly enough.

‘I don't want to go, David,' she wailed, clinging.

‘You do.'

‘It's ridiculous. I've a job and a home and a husband I love. When I get over there I'll make a hash of it, and come back with my tail between my legs. I'm a fool, David. Don't let me go.'

He hugged her.

‘If I stopped you from going,' he told her in her calmer moments, ‘you'd never forgive me.'

She eyed him then.

‘Sometimes you're a wise man,' she said.

‘Yes, but not often.'

They laughed, embraced, with more than a month to go.

Mary worked hard at voice production and her study of the operas. Twice a week they had dinner with the senior Blackwalls so she could practise for an hour or two with Joan as accompanist. The men were not allowed to listen.

‘Go and puff your cigars,' she ordered them. Neither man smoked. ‘This is work in progress, not fit to be heard.'

‘I'd listen to you gargling,' Horace told her.

She fell into a tête-à-tête with her father-in-law quite often, at work and at the weekends. He supported her powerfully.

‘I shouldn't want you to go,' he said. ‘Splitting up the partners of a new marriage is dangerous, but it has to be done in my sort of world. I know that. Neither shall I see much of you myself, and we shall miss you. Joan and I really like you.'

The voice ground out its sentences, impressing her.

At Christmas the departure seemed close enough to warrant a fervid gaiety in the festivities. David played in a concert or two, conducted a makeshift
Messiah
, and the pair attended parties, where she deliberately stayed sober.

‘I'm going to drive you back,' she told her husband, who had drunk sufficiently to stroke her buttocks in public. She did not care; she needed all the reassurance she could find. ‘I didn't know it would knock me about like this,' she would confess, ‘or I wouldn't have taken it on.'

‘You'll be as right as rain once you're there.'

‘And you?'

‘I shall have to grin and abide.'

‘Does that appeal then?'

‘It does not.'

‘Where's your puritan ethic?' she mocked.

Her own unease was demonstrated by her complaints about the lessons with Peter Reddaway.

‘He's an egomaniac,' she told her husband. ‘Everlastingly demonstrating what he can do. I hate wasting the whole of a Saturday going to London just to hear him boast. I learn as much from your mother in ten minutes as I do from my hour with him.'

‘Give it up, then.'

‘I may need him later. And it does keep me singing.'

‘Joan would do that.'

‘I know. But he's the outside world. I pit my arrogance against his. I've got to learn to be the sort of bighead he is.'

‘Oh, dear.'

David dreaded the tension in his wife's lips, the dark round her eyes.

No word came from the agent; whenever they rang he'd heard nothing, not even the place to which she had to report for rehearsals.

‘Really,' Mary argued, ‘they must know by now.'

‘I'm not sure about that. This is the initial shot at a one-off, experimental affair, and though I guess that the first few ports of call are fixed, in fact, I'm certain they are, the venue for the preliminary rehearsals will be a matter for negotiation. They'll rehearse in some school hall or barn or something.'

‘You make it sound very attractive, I must say.'

‘This is something out of the ordinary run of things.'

‘So I shall be living in a tent?'

‘Oh, no. But they'll be collecting their wits. Honestly. There'll be a fortnight's intensive chaos after which you'll be fit to sing at Bayreuth. This boy Gage is terror, they tell me, but he won't mind if you rehearse in the street.'

‘Find something out, will you?'

‘I'll ring my New York end and instigate inquiries.' His jokey choice and stress of words did nothing to allay anxiety, any more than the blank silence which followed.

A week before her departure she sang Schumann's
Frauenliebe und -leben
at a charity gathering with Joan Blackwall as her accompanist. This had been half-arranged for six months, then seemingly forgotten and revived just before Christmas. Mary complained bitterly, but she knew the songs well enough; David remembered her singing them at the Royal College, and she had looked them through carefully enough once this performance had been mooted.

Joan, out of character, was uncertain even of the place at which they were to appear.

‘This is the story of my life,' Mary said in public, laughing. ‘Plenty to sing, but no idea where,' and to David, ‘I can't understand your mother. She must be off her head.' He understood the desperation of the statement.

The chosen venue turned out to be an Edwardian mansion in the park, the town house of a business magnate. The event was for cancer research; Mary sang and a violinist played a Tartini sonata. For the rest, drinks were served, raffle tickets and donated gifts sold, one or two competitive paper games were played and for this people paid good money, and promised more. The uncertainty about this happening was due to an enormous sale of expensive tickets by an energetic couple who had access to radio and newspaper publicity, and who found that they could not cram in the expected crowd and had to look at short notice for a larger space. They were never despondent, because they knew exactly what it was that they were after: a huge private house, preferably owned by somebody of note. Through friends they worked on Sir Harold Fitch, the managing director of a pharmaceutical complex, who opened his grandee's palace, Kenilworth, for the evening.

David bought a ticket, five pounds for admission only and the opportunity to purchase expensive alcohol. A television announcer auctioned toys, and then pretty trinkets. People talked at the tops of their voices, drank and seemed pleased with themselves. Many of the men wore evening dress as they wandered about the four large reception rooms and the foyer at their disposal; wives sounded as satisfied, as flashbulbs registered promised appearances in future issues of the local snob magazines if not the national. Nothing happened quickly; it took an age to dragoon an audience into the right place for the fiddler, and even as he played the voices at bars in the distance interrupted his powerful flow.

Mary did not sing until after ten o'clock; David thought that by that time the drink-happy audience would never assemble itself, but by 10.10 the concert hall was packed, more standing than sitting as the television personality silenced all clamour, David admired the man's iron charm, to announce Miss Mary Stiles, who next week was to make her American debut in opera, and whom they were lucky to have persuaded here tonight, but who out of her magnificently large generosity had put aside other commitments to sing these eight songs which he would paraphrase. They must offer her a fit welcome. They did. And her accompanist, Miss Joan Blake, formerly of the Royal Academy of Music, London. The announcer straightened his face.

Mary's entrance stunned her husband, though earlier he had watched her dress.

She had chosen white, which she wore with stately beauty, enhanced by the pallor of her face, the dark short shining curls. As she bowed, she smiled diffidently, but to them all, on the rows of chairs or behind a pillar, glass in hand. Her mother-in-law, trailing her, looked what she was, a well-to-do provincial lady in her best dress, who had been wrongly convinced by some back-street coiffeuse that a confection of grey waves would add to her attraction. Her turn would come, at least for the few listening to Schumann rather than Mary, when her fingers touched the keyboard.

In the earlier songs Mary Blackwall stood radiantly, her voice vivid with delighted love, the freshness of attraction, the brilliancy. The practice of the last weeks had provided power, and Schumann's melody compelled the audience, enlivening bodies to the fingertips, setting them on the edge of expectation in ‘Er, der Herrlichste von allen'. The room, jammed tight, with heads at all angles, the colours of dresses clashing or blending with the darkness of men's suits or the blackness of tall windows, seethed with excitement, David thought, so that people lost themselves in the genius of new love, marriage, childbirth and finally in the sustained sorrow of death. He said as much to his father later, and the old man nodded, at this mystery, life's passing, its bright fixing by this young man under womanly guise and voice, but David noted that as the audience walked out they spoke of gin, raffle tickets, chiropodists. That perhaps did not matter, he decided, in that for some minutes ordinary people had been allowed to climb, levitate above everyday concerns.