The Winding Stair (3 page)

No trace of a stammer now, as she stood, head thrown back, smiling a little, and her voice sent a hush through the chattering groups in the hall. ‘ “But you should pity me.”' The last notes died away and, once again, a buzz of spontaneous applause broke out so that Olivia had to pause on her cue.

Somehow, illogically that settled it for Gair. He sat up late that night, writing a long letter to old Mrs. Brett in Portugal.

During the busy week of rehearsals that followed, Gair watched Juana Brett as closely and as unobtrusively as possible. This was easy enough, since her position as second heroine of the opera inevitably brought her constantly into the limelight, while his own short part as Sebastian left him plenty of time to lounge in the wings and watch her.

He soon decided that nothing could be much worse than her present situation. Her father was a cipher, whom Vanessa had dismissed as incapable of carrying even a walking-on part in her opera. Marrying for the second time late in life, Reginald Brett had surrendered himself, willingly enough it seemed, to the domination of his blonde, bad-tempered Cynthia. The daughter herself of spendthrift aristocrats, she might, Gair thought, have forgiven her husband his connection with trade a good deal more easily if it had not been for his fatal quarrel with his formidable mother, the head of the family. Insisting on reopening the London branch of the Bretts' wine business, he had failed hopelessly, had been cast off by his mother and reduced to living on the tiny income left him by his first wife. His second one had been, she suggested to anyone who cared to listen, much misled when she married him, and as for her two dowerless daughters, it was simply monstrous that he had never contrived to obtain any allowance for them from rich old Mrs. Brett. Daisy and Teresa were her pride and joy. Had not their father been the son of an earl?

Gair did not think they actually tried to make their stepsister stammer, but the fact remained that she was always at her miserable worst in their company. Their names were no help: ‘t' and ‘d' were her bad letters, and here she was, with Daisy and Teresa for sisters. Someone, he thought, should, in mercy, have invented easier nicknames for them, but then who, in that family ever thought about Juana!

And he had contrived, he recognised, to make matters worse for her by his suggestion about her hair. Shorn of her girlish, unbecoming ringlets, she emerged, not in the least as a beauty, but as a young woman of character. Her forehead was still too
high, her nose too Roman, and her cheekbones too pronounced, but when Antoine had arranged a negligently falling lock across the forehead – ‘Just like the Prince of Wales' – and brushed the short side-hair forward to give width to her lower face, the effect was, at least, arresting. She looked, Gair thought, like someone with whom one would like to talk, and then, inevitably, thought – a pity about the stammer. Surely, to arrange for her return to Portugal, whatever danger it might involve, was the kindest thing he could do for her.

He thought this more than ever when he saw her family's reaction to her changed appearance. Her father, characteristically, noticed nothing, but her step-mother and sisters were something else again. Even Vanessa noticed their jealous teasing and took Gair aside to ask him to do something about it. ‘If they go on,' she said, ‘they are likely to reduce her to a stuttering imbecile – and then what's to become of my opera? The Melbournes are coming, Gair, and the young Lambs, and Lady Jersey, and everyone who is anyone: I've let it be known that I've got a second Catalini – it must succeed, or I'll be a public laughingstock. And it will be all your fault.'

‘Ungrateful! I found her for you, didn't I?'

‘Yes, and you must keep her in line! If things go on as they are, she'll start stuttering when she sings, and then, goodbye! Gair, you must do something. Can't you make her fall in love with you, just a little, to take her mind off her troubles? You know there's not a girl can resist you, creature that you are! And I never could see why.'

He made her a mock bow: ‘It's my charm, dearest sister.'

‘Well then, for God's sake use it. Put your spell on her, so she thinks of nothing else.'

‘No.' It came out more violent than he meant and he hurried into further explanation. ‘Don't you see that for me to pay her any marked attention would merely make those cats of sisters more jealous than ever?'

She sighed. ‘You're right, of course. Then what can we do? Gair, don't laugh, it's serious! I can't have Lady Melbourne and her party, and Lady Cahir triumphing at my expense. You know what their theatricals are like.'

‘Oh, poor Vanessa, is it so important to you?' Suddenly, he felt years older than this elder, successful sister.

But her opera was equally important to him. It was no part of
his plan that Juana should be badgered into collapse. ‘Don't look so anxious,' he went on. ‘For you, Vanessa, I'll make the supreme sacrifice.'

‘Oh? And what may that be?'

‘Why, to make love to those comic-opera step-sisters.'

‘Gair, you're a genius! But – both of them?'

‘At once. It's the only way. They'll be so busy being jealous of each other, they'll forget all about poor little Cinderella.'

‘Cinderella? Oh – you mean Juana. I must say, Gair, “little” is hardly the word I would choose to describe her.'

‘Ah, but then you're such a little thing yourself, Van.'

She smiled at the childhood nickname and plunged into a question she had been wanting to ask him. ‘Gair, what is all this? Why did you want me to invite Juana Brett? And' – she held up a warning hand – ‘don't tell me it was all for my sake, because I won't believe you. Though I am grateful, mind. If all goes well, my
Twelfth Night
should be the talk of the town. But I know you too well to think you did it just for me. Besides, I've seen you watching her while you thought no one was looking. Not' – she paused for a moment – ‘not at all as if you cared about her. More as if she was some kind of specimen, something you were studying. What are you doing, Gair?'

‘Trying to earn my living, love.'

She looked more puzzled than ever. ‘But – you said you wouldn't make love to her. Besides, so far as I know, there's no chance of that old tartar of a grandmother's relenting and giving her a dowry. I must say,' she went on, ‘I don't blame her for washing her hands of Reginald Brett. He must have been a disaster as a man of business.'

‘He must indeed.' Gair found himself oddly grateful for the change of subject. It was not like him to have missed a whole range of possibilities, but here, suddenly, he saw that he had. Juana Brett and a dowry? Well, nothing was more likely. If old Mrs. Brett reacted as he imagined she would to the letter he had written her, Juana would certainly have her chance of one. And, judging by the rest of the strange family who lived in the castle on the cliff, it would be a good chance. Nobody knew what old Mrs. Brett was worth, but, he suspected, most guesses would be less rather than more than the real total.

So – here was a possible heiress, and one with the added advantage, from his point of view, that she was unaware of the
possibility. He had always meant, as a last resource, to marry a fortune if he failed to make one. And here he was, twenty-six, and with his foot still only on the first rung of the ladder. Why hesitate?

‘In a brown study?' Vanessa's voice roused him.

‘Yes, I'm trying to decide whether to begin with Daisy or Teresa, God help me.' But not Juana. Curious to find himself so decided about that.

He made it, in each case, the lightest of flirtations: a flattering word to Daisy balanced by a quick pressure of Teresa's hand; a turn in the garden with one, a long after-dinner tête-à-tête with the other. It worked to admiration. The two girls, once united in baiting their step-sister, now turned their small-arms fire against each other, while Gair caught their mother's eye, once or twice, fixed on him with a look of speculation he did not much like.

But he shrugged that off. He had dodged more formidable match-makers in his time. Besides, realist as always, he knew himself to be too small a fish for Mrs. Brett's ambitions. So he went on ogling Daisy while he turned the page of Teresa's music, or, during rehearsals, standing devotedly behind whichever one of them gave him the easiest view of Juana.

The mime scene was coming along admirably, since, being Lord Forland's favourite, it got very much more than its fair share of rehearsing. Watching his sister yield gracefully to her husband on this point, in order to get her own way on a score of others, Gair found himself oddly sickened by the whole business. If this was what marrying money entailed, was the game worth the candle?

‘Are you happy, Van?' He caught her, for a brief moment, alone in the deserted theatre.

‘Happy? What an odd question! And from you, of all people, who taught me to look always to the main chance. Of course I'm happy.' She said it almost angrily. ‘My own theatre – everything I've ever wanted – and, my God, have I told you? Sheridan has invited himself to come tomorrow. I've a million things still to do, and you talk to me of happiness!' And then, on a milder note. ‘But I'm grateful to you, just the same, Gair. Your prima donna is going to justify it all, don't you think?'

‘Mine?'

‘Well, of course. I don't know what you did to her that first
night in the moonlight, and I'm not asking, either, but anyone with half an eye can see that she sings for you alone. It's quite another matter when you are not in the audience.' And then, reflectively. ‘She's no fool, for all the stammering, that little Brett. She knows just what you're doing with those step-sisters of hers. I've seen her watching. I was afraid, at first, that it would spoil everything, but not at all; she takes it to herself. And I don't blame her. I've seen you watching her too. You talk to me of happiness! You're not going to do anything foolish, Gair?'

‘I? Good God, no. But are you sure?'

‘Of course I'm sure. Remember, the looker-on sees most of the game. And now, I must go and read the riot act to those musicians of mine, did you hear how they dragged in the last act?'

She left him with much to think of. It was true: he had wondered how Juana would take his advances to her step-sisters, but it had never for a moment occurred to him that she might fathom their real purpose. If she had, she must be accepted, more than ever, as a young woman to be reckoned with. And an ally worth having? At all events, if Vanessa was right (and she usually was on such questions) it should make matters in Portugal much easier, if he ever contrived to get Juana there. An intelligent ally, devoted to him … what more could he ask?

And yet, a curious cloud of anxiety hung round him, all through the frenzied last-minute rehearsals next day. Luckily, Sebastian's part in the opera was even slighter than in the original play, so that his state of abstraction was not observed. He merely had to stand about, in doublet and hose, ready for his few, brief and silent appearances. He had plenty of time to congratulate Daisy on the new tilt she had given to her head-dress and to beg Teresa to save him one dance when the opera was over. And, disconcertingly, having done so, to catch Juana's amused eye taking it all in. What a miscalculation to think that because she stuttered, she must be stupid. She was quicksilver, gunpowder perhaps. Remembering the quick changes of their first meeting – the passionate would-be suicide flashing into a flood of Portuguese bad language – he found himself thinking of another of Shakespeare's heroines. She is ‘all air and fire', he told himself, and wished, as he did so, that it did not take so long to get an answer from Portugal.

Had he written enthusiastically enough to old Mrs. Brett?
Suppose she were to change her mind, now, when everything was so well in train? It did not bear thinking about.

‘Sebastian!' Vanessa's angry voice roused him from his dream. ‘I thought, at least, we could rely on you.' And he hurried forward to receive Sir Andrew Aguecheek's blows and return them in good measure.

The rehearsal was going well, he thought a little later. If the final performance, this evening, was anything like as good, Vanessa need not fear even Lady Melbourne's sharp tongue. They were working up for the finale now. It was almost time for the moment of silent recognition between him and Viola, the quick embrace, before she turned to confront the Duke and Olivia and join with them in Haydn's delicious trio:

‘ “
Now at last the truth is showing
Now our happiness is growing
Cups with gladness overflowing
…”'

Who had written the words, he wondered, and who had explained them to old Papa Haydn whose knowledge of English, surely, had been fairly limited?

Incapable of singing a note himself, he could still recognise the extraordinary quality of Juana's voice as it soared and swooped toward the oddly moving moment of silence when Olivia would turn and hold out her hand to Sebastian, and he must step forward to make up the quartet in appearance, if not in song. There: the three voices died away, Vanessa turned toward him, and as he moved forward to take her hand and give it a congratulatory squeeze, he heard, from the two ladies-in-waiting who stood behind her, a carrying whisper: ‘I'll wager a pair of French gloves she sticks on “triumph of delight”,' said Daisy. And, ‘Hush!' said Teresa.

Vanessa's hand was rigid in his own. He did not dare turn toward where Juana stood beside Orsino. The orchestra picked up the tune again. Vanessa squeezed his hand once, hard.

‘ “
Now the day has banished night,”' she sang
,

‘ “
Future joys are shing bright
In our triumph of delight
…”'

Oh God, thought Gair, as Orsino came in on his cue, why had he never noticed that fatal line, combining Juana's bad letters?
But, up to now, she had come through it without the slightest hesitation. ‘I don't stammer when I sing,' she had told him, and so far it had been true. But, now, after that fatal whisper which, surely, she must have heard?