Death on the High C's Read online

  Nobody took any notice, and the fact that nobody was in a hurry to get back to rehearsing gave Owen Caulfield, stirring uneasily in his chair by the wall, the chance to butt in with: ‘OK. Enough’s enough. Shall we get on now, then?’

  Somehow Owen often managed to touch a nerve in a way that Gaylene, with all her loud obviousness, never did. Simon Mulley turned on him.

  ‘This is a vocal rehearsal. As singers we are paying tribute to a fellow artist. The emotion which prompts this is not one that you would recognize or understand.’

  There was a complete silence. Such a defiance would normally be the occasion for one of Owen’s outbursts, a bout of shouting tinged with hysteria, followed by a little mock-penitence and a great show of making it up with everybody. But Simon was not an ordinary member of the company. The integrity of his artistic standards and the misfortunes of his career gave him a position of unique respect in any company. His life in opera had been marked by brief moments of brilliant success, followed by resignations, rows, withdrawals. To compromise, to accept the shabby, the routine, the second-best which is part of life in an opera-house, was difficult for Simon. To do something with less than full seriousness, to give any work he was in anything but entire love and respect was impossible. He was now forty-five, a great artist who had never had a great career. He would stay in Manchester as long as he was convinced of the seriousness of the company. If he began to doubt that, he would go. This everyone knew. So after his outburst, which had a touch of the theatrical which in Simon was not insincerity, but part of his character, Owen Caulfield was silent. He sat down, and once again buried his chin ostentatiously in his hand.

  After that, the rehearsal went smoothly enough. Gilda was killed, vocally, and put in her sack; Calvin managed the reprise of ‘La donna’ with much more panache, but Bridget seemed a little damped by the battle of words earlier, and the final duet did not quite have the pathos and beauty all had been expecting. But when they broke up they were most of them moderately pleased with themselves. Calvin and Bridget stood talking by the door and looking out into the tentative sunshine, he leaning elegantly against the doorpost, and both entirely taken up with themselves, each other, and their music. Simon Mulley dragged a seat over by Mr Pettifer, and they both went concentratedly over the moment of Rigoletto’s opening of the sack, wrestling with the music and its emotional implications. Raymond Ricci and Gaylene went into a close huddle in the corner where she had dumped her bags, but they were not discussing music.

  Owen was alone and unnoticed. It was moments like this that he feared, that set up inside him a panic sense that he had no existence, that presented him with a vision which he knew was not true, but which terrified him—the vision that he was nothing more than a noisy space. He stood irresolute in the centre of the Hall, half trying to look as if he were thinking and planning, half hoping that someone would call him in on their discussions. They were all being so damned musical, he thought—as if you could divorce it from the rest, from all those other parts of the pie in which he could legitimately plant his finger. Wanting to belong, incapable of belonging, Owen stood immobile for some minutes in the centre of the Hall. Then, as if at a signal, all the groups began to break up and drift out. As they came out into the watery sun and the crunching grime of the streets, Calvin and Bridget, too absorbed to think of bidding farewells, drifted off in the direction of a Wimpy Bar.

  Owen turned to Gaylene. ‘Lunch as usual?’ he said.

  ‘Jeez, you’re slow,’ said Gaylene. ‘I take first comers, you know that.’

  And she put her arm around Raymond Ricci’s waist, and he—slim, lithe, sallow, and strangely Mephistophelean in his tight black garb—draped his arm around her shoulder, and they walked off down the shabby little street. Their bodies, intertwined yet ill-assorted, somehow seemed to work together, to form some sort of instant intimacy.

  Owen watched them go, and turned abruptly in the direction of his car. His face was quite blank.

  CHAPTER II

  Mezzo Forte

  It was not until several days later, when things were well under way, and the shape of the production was already becoming clear, that Calvin and Bridget really got down to a concentrated discussion of their parts, and the way things in general were going. Bridget was in the kitchen of her ramshackle, roomy flat in Salford, cooking supper, and Calvin was stretched full length on the ancient sofa, relaxing after another successful performance of Bohème.

  ‘The trouble with Owen,’ shouted Calvin, over the sizzling hamburgers (both he and Bridget had healthy, undiscriminating singer’s appetites), ‘is that he’s the typical dictator producer, but he doesn’t have any interesting ideas to impose. So it all amounts to much ado about nothing. All that energy, all that shouting, all that finicky concern with detail—and what is it going to come out like in the end? The same old Rigoletto everyone’s seen a thousand times.’

  ‘He hasn’t a great deal of imagination,’ agreed Bridget, appearing at the kitchen door. ‘He’s got all the detail worked out, every gesture, and he’s had one or two good ideas about the set. But it doesn’t add up to much yet.’

  ‘All this fiddling,’ said Calvin, ‘all this regimentation, and in the end you’re back with the old Carl Rosa or something—the same old rep production.’

  ‘Of course, in the long run that may be all to the good,’ said Bridget, to be fair. ‘It’s a production that’s got to last, and there’s bound to be changes of singers the whole time—as we all get our summonses to Covent Garden or the Met.’

  ‘I thought of La Scala for myself,’ said Calvin agreeably. ‘Oh yes, I agree—it’s bound to be a bit workaday, but it doesn’t have to be so damned standard. I think if we went about it the right way we could do something about it.’

  ‘What, for example?’

  ‘Well, humanize these puppets. You know, just a few small touches could make all the difference.’

  Later, tucking in hungrily to their hamburgers, and periodically wiping the tomato sauce from around their mouths with the backs of their hands, they took the thing further.

  ‘I don’t go for the usual “cynical libertine” kind of interpretation of the Duke,’ Calvin said. ‘There is that element, but you’ve got to remember, his aristocratic background: he’s always had any woman he wanted, and he’s come to take that as a matter of course. I think he’s sincere, passionate even, in his love for Gilda—as far as it’s in his nature to be. When he’s had her, he goes on to someone else—as he always has done. He loves the girl, but he’s shallow, and naturally can’t transcend his background.’

  ‘If we were to do it like that,’ said Bridget, ‘then Gilda wouldn’t need to be the usual bird-brained slip who falls for the first handsome face she sees. I could try to fill her out a bit, give her a bit of initiative.’ She grinned as she said: ‘We could even try to show it as a clash between class behaviour patterns.’

  ‘Not in Owen’s production we couldn’t,’ said Calvin. ‘You will be the silent-film heroine, and I will be the silent-film handsome seducer, if he has his way. But if we’re careful, if we just slip in a few touches, without making an issue of them with Owen, we should at least be able to make a start at humanizing them. It would be interesting to try, anyway.’

  They munched away strenuously for some minutes (‘feeding my voice’ Bridget called this to herself), and then she said: ‘One thing we can be sure of: whatever we do, Gaylene’s interpretation of Maddalena will remain . . . what shall we call it? Traditional?’

  ‘Christ, what a bag,’ said Calvin. ‘I wish Bonn would offer for her Carmen. I’d whip round and raise the fare for her in a couple of shakes of her bosom.’

  ‘I must say,’ said Bridget, ‘I thought when she came she was nervous and putting her worst foot forward. I now realize she was on her best behaviour.’

  ‘You’re lucky you don’t have to act with her,’ said Calvin. ‘You don’t have her clutching you to her bosom every other moment, whether called for or unc
alled for, and brushing you sexily every time she passes you.’

  ‘I don’t think she’d bother to do that to me, even if I were acting with her,’ said Bridget.

  ‘You do wonder,’ said Calvin, ‘how she gets so many into bed with her. First Mike, then Owen, now Raymond. What do they see in her?’

  ‘That should be obvious to the shortest sight,’ said Bridget. ‘But you notice she doesn’t seem to keep them long.’

  ‘She doesn’t want them long,’ said Calvin. ‘She’s voracious for variety. It’s terrifying. It seems like she’ll be satisfied with nothing less than saturation coverage.’

  Bridget roared with laughter, wiped the crumbs from around her mouth, and they went on to other things.

  • • •

  A conversation of a quite different kind occurred that same evening in Gaylene Ffrench’s apartment. She was leaning her massive contralto’s shoulders against the bedstead and a wall of pillows and tucking appreciatively into an enormous slice of cream cake. Her splendid breasts, flopping randomly around the rapidly emptying plate, were being watched with slightly sardonic fascination by Raymond Ricci, who had stretched his naked saturnine length in the opposite direction, and was leaning his oily mediterranean head against the foot of the bed. He was smoking a long cigarette, and his eyelids were half-closed, giving his ordnance-survey consideration of Gaylene a cynical, amused, detached quality. Nobody, looking at them, would think that Raymond was very deeply involved. Come to that, nobody looking at Gaylene’s rapt concentration on her cake would think she was either. When she had finished it, she drew her finger methodically over the plate, and sucked it. Then she said: ‘That was good.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Raymond Ricci.

  ‘Not that,’ said Gaylene. ‘Big head.’

  ‘You hadn’t spoken since,’ said Raymond. ‘So I thought you might be paying an unexpectedly generous tribute to a fellow-artist.’

  ‘If that’s a crack about that Bridget girl,’ said Gaylene, ‘you can pipe down. I don’t know what’s gotten into you lot: you’re all going out of your tiny pink minds about that young lady. Do her no good in the long run, you realize that, don’t you? Voices like that are two a penny in Australia.’

  ‘No, darling,’ drawled Ricci, ‘not even in God’s own sun-baked, surf-riding, tennis-playing land are voices like that two a penny.’

  ‘They are too,’ said Gaylene, her voice beginning to bray, as it did when anyone was foolhardy enough to contradict her. ‘What do you know about it, you pommie-wop? What counts is what you do with the voice, and if she’s not careful she’s going to take on all the big parts much too early, and end up as a singing teacher in Wup Wup. Mark my words.’

  ‘Perhaps you should warn her,’ suggested Raymond, his heavy-lidded eyes watching to see if his humour got through. ‘That’s the sort of thing that needs to be done tactfully—you know, the sisterly approach. You’d do it very well.’

  His irony was lost on Gaylene.

  ‘Stuff that,’ she said briefly. ‘Let her fry. I don’t owe that young miss any good turns that I know of.’

  Raymond stretched out his sallow length languorously, and scratched her ear with his big toe.

  ‘It’s you I’m thinking of, darling. You need to exercise a bit of discretion, or let’s say wholesome deceit, anyway. We all know what this business is like: it’s full of people elbowing their way to the top. The sensible ones put padding on their elbows. It softens the impact. With you, darling, one feels the hard bone in one’s ribs.’

  Gaylene looked at him for some moments, as if quite unsure of what he was trying to say. Then she screwed up her face, squared her obstinate shoulders, and said: ‘If a thing needs saying, I say it. Straight out. It’s the best way in the long run. And if you want to know the truth, I don’t go much for your super-subtle, snake-in-the-grass pommie-wop ways, so put that in your pipe.’

  This was the second time in the space of a few minutes that Gaylene had called Ricci a pommie-wop. Once she had got hold of a good line of attack or abuse, she rarely let it fall into disuse. Ricci was not greatly perturbed by racial sneers. He had a cat-like self-satisfaction, an utter assurance that he would come well out of any imaginable situation he might let himself get into, that made him quite unaffected by other peoples’ opinions of him or his methods. Still, the crudity of it irritated him. He was fond of his parents, who had brought him to Britain when he was very young, in the early fifties, had worked hard to build up an Italian delicatessen in the unpromising suburb of Birmingham where he had grown up, and who had surrounded his childhood with adoration and music. In so far as he acknowledged any loyalties, it was to them. And they returned it a thousand fold. He had a younger brother, a promising baritone, in the chorus of the Northern Opera, and his parents would travel miles to see any performance in which either of them was to appear. And when he thought about it, it seemed pretty ironic that Gaylene, who spent much of her professional life singing in the works of Italian composers, should regard his ancestry as a matter for crude racial abuse. But then Gaylene never thought, and therefore could never connect. She merely reacted. He wondered how long he would be able to put up with her brazen egotism, how long it would be outweighed by the sexual pleasures of her company. Not long, he thought. Not very long.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said, putting his head back on the mattress and letting his eyes rest on the dirty ceiling. ‘Do it your own sweet way. Batter your way forward, bruise the shins of everyone in sight, tread on everybody’s toes.’

  ‘I intend to, if necessary,’ said Gaylene.

  ‘But don’t be surprised if you get knocks and bruises yourself in the process. This is a nasty profession and there’s no quarter given or asked: people climb over others, and then kick their faces down afterwards. Even the nicest of them know how to defend themselves.’

  ‘Do you think I don’t?’ said Gaylene. ‘I can give as good as any of this little lot.’

  ‘Just don’t come to me for help, that’s all,’ said Raymond.

  ‘You know perfectly well what I come to you for,’ said Gaylene. ‘And it’s about time you provided some of it.’

  • • •

  That Thursday, in the second week of rehearsals, the session at the Pitford Methodist Hall was to start with the baritone-soprano sections from the first act, and then was to go on to the inevitable third act, which to Gaylene’s gratification was being given all the prominence which she had prophesied—whether because it was (until the chorus scenes came to be prepared) the most complex scene, or whether because Owen wanted to win his way back to Gaylene’s bed, nobody knew. Owen was not the sort of person whom one asked to give reasons for his decisions.

  Vocally the Act I scenes went very well. Bridget and Simon were alone in the Methodist Hall, with only Owen and Mr Pettifer. The lack of distraction was beneficial: the working-out of all the problems of balance and emphasis in the duets went like a dream. Before that Simon’s ‘Pari siamo’ had been intensely dramatic: Simon’s strength was drama, nuance, the stripping of hidden meanings. If he had a fault, it was that the line of the music tended to suffer. Here the line was less important than the vigour of declamation:

  ‘Pari siamo! . . .

  I‘uomo son io che ride, ei quel che spegne!’

  he sang. ‘We are equals . . . I am the man of laughter, and he of murder.’ There was a shiver of self-knowledge in the voice.

  For the duets Bridget, after consulting with Simon and Mr Pettifer, was determined not to stint of voice. This Gilda was to be an emotional adult, a woman who knew her own mind. Simon followed suit, opening up with the splendid, full line that was his when he didn’t let his approach get too complicated by introspection.

  Dramatically things did not go quite so well.

  The stairs up to the pulpit represented the inevitable stairs up to Gilda’s bedroom (why Gildas should almost invariably have those obliging stairs up to their bedroom is unclear, but Owen had accepted the tradition that this should
be so). When Gilda came down them to meet her father, rushing impulsively, Owen objected: ‘Too modern, Bridget. Come down delicately.’

  ‘You mean trip, I suppose,’ said Bridget.

  ‘If you like, yes.’

  ‘I’m not a tripping kind of person,’ said Bridget.

  ‘You are supposed, you know, to be playing a part,’ said Owen reasonably enough but with that edgy, talking-to-idiots voice which did so much harm to the atmosphere at rehearsals.

  Bridget tripped.

  Later, as the duet worked up to its apprehensive, emotional climax, Bridget and Owen crossed swords again.

  ‘Clasp your hands,’ said Owen, entwining his fingers in a gesture of girlish supplication.

  ‘Has anyone, ever, off the operatic stage, clasped their hands like that?’ asked Bridget waspishly.

  ‘Will you do just what I tell you to,’ said Owen, his voice rising, ‘and cut out the continual sniping?’

  Bridget clasped her hands.

  So there was already something of an atmosphere in the Hall by the time Gaylene and Ricci arrived separately for the rehearsal of the last act. Calvin was going through parts of Bohème with a new soprano at the theatre, and would be late. Gaylene bounced in, looking more than ever like a collapsed air-hostess, and flopped straight over to Owen.

  ‘You poor fish,’ she said. ‘You look pooped. Have you been doing those ghastly long duets?’ She lowered her voice to a tone of elphantine confidentiality. ‘I don’t know why you bother with those scenes. You’ll have to go over them all again as soon as Signor Spaghettini arrives. Waste of good rehearsal time.’