Funeral of Figaro Read online

  The kind, attentive, flattering eyes which had been appraising her silently all through lunch did not change their expression, yet her thumbs pricked suddenly. Nothing, just a shiver of awareness. A slight, infinitely slight tremor of response to those words of power, ‘only child’ and ‘money’. It illuminated everything, the expert compliments, the indulgent attentions he had been paying her.

  She thought, no, I’m imagining it! He’s world-famous, he has plenty of money already, why should he care? He just likes me, and enjoys playing with the children, that’s all. But the obstinate seed of doubt would not be quieted. Had he necessarily got plenty of money, just because he ranked amongst the greatest singers of the world? He must have made plenty, but that was another matter; probably he spent it as fast as he made it. And when you’re – what would he be? Forty-eight or forty-nine? – when you’re nearly fifty you can’t reckon on the funds being inexhaustible for ever. And then, an opera house thrown in!

  Well, she would soon see. If he stopped to speak kindly to Codger Bayliss, now that she’d clearly demonstrated her own partiality, she would know exactly why.

  And he did. Somehow she had been sure he would.

  Codger was alone in Sam’s room by the stage-door, knitting away for dear life, and he lifted his fine, blank eyes at them as they came by, and focused upon Hero the sudden, struggling glimmer of recognition and love that belonged to all Johnny’s chattels. The hands that shook and dangled aimlessly when they were disengaged, with an almost spastic compulsion, were steady enough on the steel needles. He was clean and closely shaved, and always neat in his person; Sam saw to that, and the legacy of the navy years helped. The big, well-shaped head with its motionless features might have been carved in wood, except when convulsed with the effort at speech, eternally painful and vain.

  ‘That’s a splendid pattern,’ said Chatrier gently, halting to smile at him and finger the green pullover. ‘Some day, if I earn the favour, I’m going to ask you to knit one like it for me.’

  Very nicely done, the touch and the voice. Like those odious people who take children on their knees to ingratiate themselves with their mothers, though they don’t want them, and the children don’t want to be nursed. Such people ought always to be confronted, and indeed usually are, with just such a cold, distant stare.

  So now she knew. It came as a shock to her vanity to realise that the man she had been making use of was also making use of her. But at least it eased her conscience of the slight compunction she had felt towards him.

  They went on along the corridor to the stairs. Twice he allowed his hand to touch hers, and each time closed his fingers momentarily and very delicately, as though the touch had been accidental, and his elaboration of it a motion of deference and apology.

  ‘Hero—’

  He drew her to a halt in the dimmest corner, and she turned to face him, speculating behind a placid face on what might be coming next. It was too soon yet for extremes, unless he thought her very impressionable.

  ‘Hero, if you’re free this evening will you come and have dinner with me in town? I should like just once to be quiet with you, before the excitement begins. Drive in with me after rehearsal. I’ll bring you back in good time.’

  ‘Oh, no, I should have to go home and change,’ she objected, fending off the necessity for answering with a definite yes or no. ‘I couldn’t possibly show up at the Grand Eden without my best frock. And I did half-promise to look in on my grandmother tonight.’

  ‘Come later, then, come for dinner at any rate. Grandmothers should be in bed early. She’ll spare you by eight o’clock?’

  She clutched at that. By eight o’clock she would surely have made up her mind, and if she wanted to back out she could think of some excuse, telephone him. All she wanted now was not to have to promise to go with him, to have time to think. ‘Yes, I could probably make it by eight. Yes, I’m sure I could.’

  ‘Good, then I shall expect you at eight. You won’t forget?’

  Probably she would have let it rest at that, if her quick ear had not caught and understood the faint creak of the stagedoor swinging as someone with a light, long step bounded in from the street.

  She knew that gait very well. Suddenly she lifted her face with the defenceless confiding of a child, in a half-invitation there was no mistaking. She saw Chatrier’s eyes kindle warmly in self-congratulation, and momentarily closed her own, as he drew her gently to him by the shoulders, and kissed her on the mouth.

  Only when the hasty footsteps rounded the corner and baulked wildly, did Chatrier disengage himself and turn, too late to see more than a hastily receding back in a light raincoat.

  Hero, emerging from the kiss chilled and stiff with doubt and self-reproach, caught one fleeting glimpse of Hans Selverer’s face as he skidded to a halt, hung for one instant dumbfounded and motionless, and then spread a hand against the wall, swung round, and retreated precipitately round the corner. If it was any satisfaction to her, at least he’d seen her this time. She carried the vision of his outraged and startled face with her as she drew herself quickly away and turned to scurry up the stairs.

  ‘You won’t forget?’ said Chatrier, letting her go by stages, his fingers slipping smoothly down her arm.

  ‘I won’t forget,’ she said, and ran for her dressing-room.

  It was what she’d wanted, what she’d intended to happen; yet now she wished it undone. It wasn’t the thought of Hans that had shaken her with this sudden storm of doubt and dismay, it was the memory of the embrace she had just provoked, so accomplished, so restrained, so gentle, so calculated. It was the first time in her life she had ever been kissed without the least trace of affection, and it had made her aware that she was playing with something considerably more dangerous than fire.

  All the same, she wasn’t giving up now, whatever the hazards. Not when Hans Selverer was just beginning to notice her existence!

  ‘Pay Johnny to keep an eye on that little madam,’ said Sam Priddy, watching them pass singly across the end of the corridor and climb the stairs; first the girl, flushed and in a hurry, then the man, at leisure and smiling faintly, the light of amusement and satisfaction in his eyes.

  ‘She’s all right,’ said Stoker Bates comfortably. ‘Our kid’s got all her buttons on, don’t you worry.’

  ‘I know she has. But that’s one bloke I don’t like, that Chatrier. Johnny should have left him where he was, as good a Figaro as he may be. Asks too many questions round here, and answers too few.’

  ‘He can sing like nobody’s business,’ said Stoker positively.

  ‘He can that, I don’t deny it. But he treats young Hans like a half-witted beginner, and he’s pretty offhand with Miss Salberg, too. And now he’s making a dead set at Butch. I don’t like it. And the hell of it is,’ said Sam, tugging irritably at his thick grey hair, ‘I keep thinking I’ve seen that superior pan of his somewhere afore. What’s more, I believe Johnny has the same idea. I’ve seen him looking sideways at the bloke sometimes, as though he was bashing his brains to remember where he’d run up against him, and couldn’t fix it. Maybe it’s only an illusion, maybe we’re just recalling photographs we’ve seen of him, or something. I just wish I could feel sure about it, that’s all. I just wish I knew.’

  Chapter Two

  ‘I shall be out tonight, darling,’ said Hero, half-obscured by the cloud of fair hair she was industriously brushing. The powdered wig was hot to wear, and crushed her feather cut. She kicked off Cherubino’s buckled shoes, and sank on to the stool before her mirror. ‘I’ve got a dinner date, but I promise I won’t be late back.’

  Johnny, half-submerged in the big tub chair by the window, looked up sharply.

  ‘Who’re you meeting?’

  It didn’t occur to him, until she turned to stare, how far he was stepping out of character. He never asked her where she had been, or with whom, he’d never had to. Usually she told him, and if she didn’t it was because she forgot, and then he trusted her. And no
w suddenly he sat upright and bristled at the mention of an unnamed date, and wondered that she gaped at him almost anxiously, as though he’d shown signs of growing old, or sickening for something.

  ‘I like to know these things, Butch,’ he said placatingly, subsiding again, but warily.’ Fathers get that way. You wouldn’t be flattered if I just said: OK, push off, who cares!’

  ‘Johnny, dear,’ said Hero, levelling her hairbrush at him admonishingly, ‘I’m getting a big girl now.’

  ‘I know,’ said Johnny moodily, ‘that’s the trouble. Other people are beginning to notice it. And since we’re on this subject, let’s say it right out loud – you’re a well-heeled girl, too.’

  She finished arranging her hair, and said nothing. He waited, growing a little anxious but sure he wouldn’t have to insist; but when she still said nothing he pursued doggedly: ‘So who’re you meeting?’

  She didn’t know why she hadn’t told him at once; there must be something very slightly wrong with her conscience. Surely there was no reason in the world why he should be displeased, and yet she knew he would be. And she’d begun this all wrong in any case, because she hadn’t even made up her mind whether to go or not.

  She eyed her father in the mirror, steadily and warningly, and said: ‘It’s Mr Chatrier, if you want to know.’

  Johnny came out the chair as if he’d been stung, and hung over his daughter stiff with dismay, but not, she noted, with surprise. This was what he’d had in mind when he popped up like a jack-in-the-box and scowled at her.

  ‘Oh, it is, is it?’ said Johnny ominously. ‘Well, let me tell you something, Hero Truscott. I’ve been hearing things already about your goings-on with the great Figaro, and that’s one association I’d rather see kept strictly professional. You hear?’

  All she had really heard was the offensive description of her strategy, and she took fire at it. If there had been no goings-on at all – as indeed there so nearly had – she would have laughed at him and probably reassured him; but the one kiss, so clearly invited, stuck fast in her mind and wouldn’t be swallowed down. She turned on him with all the rage of her sore conscience.

  ‘Goings-on! Johnny Truscott, them’s fighting words! So you’ve been hearing things, have you? You never had the decency to come to me and say so straight out, and ask me what I had to say, did you? What am I supposed to have done? Go on, tell me! And who runs with the tales? Somebody with a pretty vivid imagination – and you swallow every word, I suppose.’

  It had only just dawned on her that one person at least might have something factural to report, and her eyes and mouth rounded with indignation. ‘Well, the stodgy great prig!’ she gasped. ‘Just wait till I see him!’

  ‘You leave Sam alone, he never said a word against you. I’m the one who called them your goings-on. Sam was only worried about you getting hurt. And why shouldn’t he be? And why shouldn’t he talk to me about it?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Hero in a subsiding breath, and smiled again for a fleeting minute, ‘oh, Sam!’

  ‘What do’ you mean—“Oh, Sam?” Dolly as well, if you must know. Damn it, we all take an interest in what you do, how can we help it? Anyhow, I’ve been noticing things myself the last couple of days. And I don’t want you to spend your time with Chatrier. He’s old enough to be your father, and let him sing as well as he will, he’s a man I find I don’t like. You be friendly with him while you’re at work, but don’t get involved with him.’ He linked his hands under her chin and turned up her face to him, smiling down at her anxiously, willing to be conciliatory if only she’d help him. ‘You won’t go, will you, Butch? Ring him up later, and say you’ve got a headache.’

  ‘Johnny! What a dirty trick!’

  She had to sound scandalised, because it was exactly what she’d been thinking of doing; and no sooner had she given utterance to this judgment than she had to accept it. She would go. Why shouldn’t she? If she didn’t she would be wasting all the trouble she’d already taken, and Hans would soon forget the salutary shock of seeing her devoting to someone else attentions she never bothered to lavish on him.

  ‘I promised to go,’ she said, all the more firmly because it was not strictly true.

  ‘Well, you can easily get out of it—’

  ‘And I want to go.’

  ‘Then this time,’ said Johnny flatly, ‘want will be your master, that’s all.’

  ‘Are you telling me I can’t go?’ She couldn’t believe it, such a thing had never arisen between them before, and she didn’t know how to deal with it without being furiously angry or melting into tears from pure shock.

  ‘Just that! I’m forbidding you to go.’ He didn’t trust her! After all the years he’d known her, he couldn’t rely on her to have a sense of values, to know what Marc Chatrier was and rate him accordingly. That was what hurt her most, that and the sting of knowing that she was to blame, and he was at any rate partially justified. Worse, he was justified without knowing it. And now she was fairly in it, and she had to go, or lose her self-respect for ever. Johnny’s daughter couldn’t back out, and mustn’t admit defeat.

  ‘I’m going!’ she said.

  ‘Is that so?’ said Johnny, his own temper flaring. ‘Now, look, I’m giving you one minute to see sense and promise me you’ll ring him and call it off.’

  ‘Why should I? I’m nineteen, and I’ve never given you reason … You’ve no right to be like this. All I’m going to do is have dinner with him, what is there in that? If you think you’re going to begin choosing my friends for me at this stage, Johnny Truscott, you can damn’ well think again.’

  ‘You’re going nowhere but home tonight,’ said Johnny, sticking out his jaw. ‘Make up your mind to that.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I am, I’m going to the Grand Eden. Try and stop me!’

  ‘I mean to,’ he said promptly, and turned and plunged upon her clothes, that lay in a frothy little pile upon a chair. He scooped them up in one arm, wrenched open the wardrobe and gathered her dress and coat from their hangers. She flew to intercept him, but he evaded her with a swerve that would have done credit to a rugby forward, and was out of the room with her stockings floating behind him.

  The door slammed; incredulously she heard the key turn.

  She banged furiously on the panels for one moment, and then gave up. This time he’d gone too far. He expected her to laugh, and rage, and argue, and finally allow herself to be appeased and cajoled into giving way gracefully. He’d find out his mistake. She wasn’t his daughter for nothing.

  She stood silent, glaring at the door, beyond which the expectant silence gradually lengthened out into an uneasy hush. She could practically see him standing there, the pig-headed old autocrat, waiting for her to speak first.

  At last he drummed his fingertips suggestively against the door, and said in a carefully level voice that couldn’t quite disguise his baffled disquiet: ‘I’ll be back in an hour. If you’re ready to talk sense then you can come out.’

  Poor Johnny, he’d wanted the whole thing to break down in laughter, maybe even in a rough-and-tumble, so that they could go off home cronies as thick as ever. She steeled her heart and said equally constrainedly: ‘And if I’m not?’

  ‘Then you can stay there till you are.’

  ‘You’d better start phoning round for a substitute Cherubino, then,’ said Hero coldly. ‘Good night! Don’t bother to come back in an hour, you’ll only be wasting your time.’

  Johnny exploded with the kind of oath he thought he’d forgotten, and stamped away along the corridor and left her to her obstinacy. The toe of a nylon drooped derisively from the crack of the door. She damned it and sat down to scowl at her own face in the mirror. Now how on earth had all that come about, when neither of them had wanted it?

  She curled up in the tub chair and waited for Johnny to come back, sure of his surrender if only she stood her ground.

  He made her wait the full hour, and then she heard his fingers rap softly at the door again. Cajolingly, close to t
he panel, he said: ‘Butch!’

  No answer.

  ‘You ready to come home yet?’ coaxed Johnny.

  ‘On what terms?’ said Hero.

  ‘Now don’t be an ass. What’s so important about this business, anyhow?’

  ‘The principle,’ said Hero grimly.

  ‘All right, then! On my terms. You stop this nonsense and come home with me, or I’ll leave you here until after the performance tonight, and see how you like that,’ said Johnny, beginning to shout again, ‘you obstinate little hellion!’

  ‘Good night,’ said Hero; and Johnny went.

  Now she’d really done it. He wouldn’t come back until the house lights went out for the night, and then, in a way, he’d have won, and that was unthinkable. She couldn’t get out, no use even shouting for someone else, because Johnny’d taken the key. She’d be late for her date now in any case. And she had no clothes, and if she sneaked back to the house to change she might get caught. Even supposing she could get out in the first place, which she couldn’t.

  It took her half an hour more to remember the hatches Johnny had had run through the walls in the three end dressing-rooms on this side, because the windows were not suitable for an outside fire escape. They had never been used, and no one thought of them; even Johnny had forgotten. But there in the corner was the low square trap, and all she had to do was slip through it into the dressing-room next door and walk out blithely into the corridor.

  It was as simple as that! And as for clothes – well, these were good enough for the eighteenth century, why not for the twentieth?

  Her eyes had begun to dance as soon as she saw her way to a victory. She scrambled back into Cherubino’s embroidered coat, smoothed on the powdered wig with its neat black ribbon queue, and shot her ruffles with a swagger in the mirror. Gleaming pale-blue satin breeches, white silk stockings, black buckled shoes, full shirtsleeves knotted with black ribbon billowing in the wide cuffs of the sky-blue coat, and pearl-grey waistcoat stiff with silver thread. Nothing could possibly be more respectable.