‘Oh, Ellen!’ said Kendrick as she floated down the stairs dressed for the opera. ‘You look –’
But what did she look like? The Primavera certainly – that Botticelli – like floating as if she was weightless – though the way her lustrous hair curved and coiled around her brow was more like Venus rising from the waves . . . except that Venus wasn’t wearing anything at all, whereas Ellen was dressed in a marvellous white concoction that frothed and foamed and swirled like sea spray, like gossamer, like flakes of snow. Stumbling from painter to painter, from woodland nymphs and enchanted swans and back again, Kendrick tried to bring his erudition to bear on Ellen, en grande tenue, and failed.
But if he was confounded he had a right to be, for Ellen and the Gorgon needlework professor at the Lucy Hatton School of Household Management had wrought a masterpiece.
‘You can’t use tulle, like that,’ Miss Ellis had said sniffily. ‘Not if you want the finest denier. You’ll be up all night setting the ruffles.’
‘Then I’ll be up all night,’ Ellen had said, and almost was for several nights, by which time Miss Ellis had caught the infection. The dress had won first prize at the graduation ceremony, but it had done considerably more than that.
As the taxi dropped them on the steps of the opera house and Ellen got out, a little girl held aloft on her father’s shoulder said, ‘Is she a princess?’ and was as instantly put right by someone in the watching crowd who said dismissively, ‘Not her – she’s far too pretty.’
For they knew all about the aristocracy, the bystanders that had come to watch, and they thirsted for them. Having deposed the last Hapsburg some twenty years ago, they had become specialists in those kings and queens who had hung on to their thrones. The Austrian President was greeted by the smallest of cheers, but King Carol of Romania, with his dubious personal life, got an ovation.
Inside the foyer, the excitement of a gala seemed to Ellen to be augmented by something else. The dowagers in ropes of pearls, the men with their decorations, the clusters of beautiful women, appeared to be buzzing with news of some kind of scandal or calamity. Their faces as they repeated, ‘Are you sure?’ or ‘I can’t believe it,’ reflected the kind of salacious glee, masking as concern, that is devoted to disasters which do not affect one personally.
From the general hum of words, Ellen repeatedly caught one name.
‘Who’s Feuerbach?’ she asked Kendrick as they made their way up the magnificent staircase.
‘The conductor.’ He had noticed nothing; his German was poor and he was busy bringing out his pocket score, his magnifying glass and the notes on the opera he had copied in the London Library.
‘Kendrick, what marvellous seats!’
‘They are, aren’t they,’ said Kendrick, and couldn’t resist telling her what they cost.
In the box on their right, two men were talking, their voices perfectly audible to Ellen.
‘It’s all right!’ said a small dark man who had just joined his friend. ‘They’ve talked him round, but it was a struggle. He chased Feuerbach all over town trying to get him to change his mind, but it was no good.’
‘What did he do to make Feuerbach walk out – defenestrate him or something?’
‘Not a bit of it. He kept his temper all the way through. It was the orchestra. They made life impossible for Feuerbach. But this is it, Staub – there can’t be any doubt about it now – she’s got him back and Stallenbach’s away. Your opera’s in the bag.’
Staub nodded. ‘I showed him the libretto and he was definitely interested.’
The last of the kings and queens had arrived; tired-looking persons weighed down by their jewels – and then a lone elderly man who attracted rather more attention as he appeared in the stage box. Richard Strauss, the opera’s composer, the most famous musician in the world, who had travelled up from Garmisch.
The lights were going down now, but the whispers of rumour and speculation had not yet died away.
Then the curtains parted and the manager appeared.
‘Your Majesties, your Royal Highnesses, Herr President, Ladies and Gentlemen – I have an announcement to make. Owing to the indisposition of Herr Feuerbach, tonight’s performance of Rosenkavalier will be conducted by Marcus Altenburg.’
The audience behaved badly. They clapped, they cheered, they hugged each other. The gossip had been known for days – that Brigitta Seefeld’s lover had returned to coach her, that their famous affaire had been resumed, that the unpopular Feuerbach had made scene after scene . . .
And now here was Altenburg, riding to the rescue!
‘Are you all right, Ellen?’ whispered Kendrick, for she had given a sudden sharp intake of breath. ‘Oh Ellen, isn’t this exciting, isn’t this amazing! I didn’t even know he was in Vienna! I wonder if I dare make myself known to him – he wouldn’t remember me, of course, though –’
But the house lights were fully dimmed now. Only the lamps on the rostrum and the musicians’ desks shone through the auditorium.
The conductor appeared and received an ovation which, waiting for silence, he ignored. Then he turned to bow – not to the crowned heads in their boxes or to the audience but to the old gentleman sitting alone in his box. To Richard Strauss.
Then he raised his stick and unleashed the prelude that Kendrick had worried about, and rightly – for it did indeed depict in music, and unmistakably, the act of love.
The shock, for Ellen, was overwhelming. This was his real life, this was his world. She had had an intimation in the dining room at Kalun but nothing had prepared her for this. Why did she think he belonged with lame tortoises and trees and storks? Even his bravery in the woods was only a small part of his life. Here where a band of the world’s most highly trained musicians were welded by his movements into one whole – here in front of this glittering audience with the composer sitting in his box, was where he belonged. Here with Brigitta Seefeld, who had stopped, the moment she opened her mouth, being a foolish, vain, over-painted woman and become the great artist that she was.
Only why did he lie to me? she thought wretchedly – for that hurt the most, that he had lied. I asked nothing from him so why did he pretend that he was sailing for America, that he had finished with Vienna, and with her?
It was some time before she really heard the music. She did not know the opera; at first she missed the obvious ‘tunes’, the dramatic ensembles. But then Baron Ochs entered, accompanied by his glorious, absurd waltzes, and the bustling courtiers . . . so that by the time Seefeld came to the famous monologue in which she mourns, with touching bewilderment, the passage of time, Ellen, who wanted to hate her, was strung out on the liquid notes, as hurt and puzzled as the singer wondering what God meant by it all.
‘One day you will leave me,’ Seefeld sang to her young lover. ‘Today or tomorrow or the next day . . .’
But Marek was not leaving. He was returning, thought Ellen. As the curtain fell on the first act, the applause was frenetic. Everyone recognised a triumph, a performance that would become an operatic legend.
‘Isn’t she amazing?’ said Kendrick. ‘Her interpretation has never been surpassed. But the conductor! I knew she was his muse, of course, but I had no idea he was in Vienna. Imagine, I used to sing in the same choir as him!’
Ellen said nothing, and a man staring at her admiringly as they made their way towards the refreshment room, dropped his eyes as she came closer, wondering why a young girl should look like that.
If only it was over, thought Ellen. If only I could go home . . . not to Hallendorf with its memories but right away from Austria. Back to grey and rainy London where they were digging trenches in the parks.
‘I’ve been to see her,’ said Benny, returning to his box. ‘She’s over the moon. I tell you, no one can resist what happens to Brigitta when she gives that kind of performance. She’ll have him in that Swan Bed of hers before the night is out if she hasn’t done it already. I’ll give her a few days – and then sign them both up. She?
??ll have to work out her contract here but she can follow him.’
Seefeld did not appear in the second act, which is devoted to the instant and joyous love of Octavian, the faithless Rosenkavalier, for the young Sophie von Faninal. But if Seefeld was missed, the orchestra under Altenburg played the Presentation of the Rose, the ecstatic duet for the young lovers and Baron Ochs’ sentimental, irresistible waltz as if for the first time. Women mopped their eyes; Benny shook his head. How had he coaxed playing like that even out of this famous orchestra?
Only one voice of dissent was heard in the second interval, from a sallow man wearing an Iron Cross in his lapel.
‘I grant you he’s a fine conductor but it doesn’t do to antagonise the Germans. He’s hated in Berlin; we shouldn’t seem to condone the stance he takes against Hitler, not with what may happen.’
But he was the only one and the others moved away from him. They might not be so brave tomorrow but tonight they were willing to snap their fingers at the Third Reich and Hitler’s offer of union and brotherhood.
The last act now. Comedy, bustle, misunderstandings . . . Baron Ochs discredited . . . And the entrance of the Marschallin, perhaps the most heart-stopping moment in opera. She stands in the doorway of the inn, knowing that her young lover has deserted her: not ‘someday’, not ‘soon’, but now. Yet Octavian is no knave, the girl he has fallen for no scheming minx. The lovers are caught by the one thing she cannot ever again reach out for – their youth. Bewildered, ashamed yet ecstatic, they look to her . . .
And she puts it right. The trio that follows is of a beauty that stills all turmoil. The Marschallin sings – not grandly, not histrionically – of the need for self-sacrifice. She sings, in fact, of something unbelievably simple and unbelievably difficult: the need to behave well. And the lovers reproach themselves, tremble and – blessed by her understanding – claim each other.
But when she leaves them, though they sing on, the opera is over. Not one person in the audience, or any audience anywhere, but weeps for the Marschallin. Everyone is on her side.
The curtain fell. Kendrick, looking at Ellen, was proud to see that she was crying. After the incident of the Sorrel Soup, he sometimes wondered how deeply she felt music.
Did she feel it almost too much? She was a girl who always had a handkerchief, but now he gave her his, for she was not doing anything to stem her tears.
Renunciation. Letting go. Brigitta who had nothing to renounce had sung of it. But I, who do not sing, I have to do it, thought Ellen. Only I wish I had something to renounce. I do so very much wish that.
The endless clapping, the cries of ‘Bravo’ and ‘Bis’, the flowers raining down, passed before her like a dream. But when at last Marek allowed himself to be dragged on to the stage, and brought his orchestra to their feet, when Brigitta came towards him with outstretched arms and he kissed her, to the delight and noisy approval of the Viennese, she saw that. She saw that quite clearly.
‘Well, we shall have something to tell our grandchildren after tonight,’ said Benny triumphantly. He was not married and had no intention of becoming so, but tonight he felt dynastic. Mahler’s Fidelio . . . Karajan’s Tristan . . . and now Seefeld’s Rosenkavalier. Or would it go down as Altenburg’s Rosenkavalier? But what did it matter? It was the combination that had made this evening into an operatic legend.
Everyone knew it; they came past their table at Sacher’s – acerbic critics, carping musicologists – and gushed like schoolchildren. The management had presented two bottles of champagne, Brigitta glowed and sparkled, and every so often she put a hand with loving ownership on Marek’s arm.
He’s mine again, she thought exultantly. I’ve got him back. Her mind went forward to the end of the meal . . . to the moment when they reached her apartment. Ufra would have done everything: the candles would be lit, the bed sprayed with Nuit d’Eté – but only a little, for Marcus had never liked strong scents – and the little dog safely shut up, for nothing could shatter the mood more than the boisterous welcome the creature would give him. And afterwards she would make the first of the many sacrifices she was going to make to inspire him for his art.
Marek was only partly aware of the babble around him and her coy possessiveness. He was still with the orchestra as they followed him through the extraordinary richness and intricacy of the score. The performance had not been perfect: the più tranquillo before the Presentation of the Rose had been too drawn out – Feuerbach’s sentimentality could not be eradicated in an instant – but they had played like . . . well, like the Vienna Philharmonic.
But I’ll make my Americans just as good, he swore to himself; they can do it. He had missed the boat from Genoa but there was a faster one leaving from Marseilles; he would hardly be late.
Brigitta leant even closer against him; she had decided to make her sacrifice now, rather than in the privacy of her rooms, knowing how much it would please Staub, who was sitting on her other side. Hitherto she had been firm in her refusal to portray Helen of Troy crouching in a state of terror in a doorway, but now . . .
‘Darling,’ she said confidingly to Marek. ‘I’ve decided. If you set the opera I’m prepared to do it. I’m prepared to huddle.’
Marek looked at her, trying to focus on her words. Benny had refilled his glass and he had not resisted, needing to unwind. The last time he had drunk champagne had been in the dining room at Kalun.
And at that moment, as if conjured up from that sulphurous place, he saw a girl in a white dress standing under a street lamp and staring at him through the glass.
‘Excuse me,’ he said and got to his feet. But when he reached the street she was nowhere. He must have been drunker than he realised.
‘I’m sorry, Brigitta,’ he said, sitting down again. ‘I thought I saw someone I knew.’ And making an effort: ‘What was it you were telling me?’
‘That I was prepared to huddle,’ said Brigitta crossly – but this time it did not sound the same.
Some two hours after the end of the opera, Kendrick was still pursuing suitable locales for his proposal of marriage. They had had supper in a restaurant on the Albertinaplatz, but as they came out and he saw, commanding a flight of steps, the equestrian statue of the Archduke Albrecht, his courage failed him. Close to, the horse reminded him too much of the horses his brothers had ridden at Crowthorpe. Their taunts at Kendrick as he repeatedly fell off a small Welsh pony, their efforts to make him less cowardly by tying him to a tree and galloping at him with home-made lances, came back to him as if it were yesterday, and now he suggested to Ellen that they take a stroll in the Burg Garten, where he had selected the Mozart Memorial as another suitable venue in which to declare himself.
‘All right, Kendrick. But I’d like to get back soon – I’m rather tired.’
She was in fact having the greatest difficulty in connecting with what Kendrick was saying, or even hearing his voice, but she walked with him into the cool dark garden, where the sight of Austria’s best loved composer greatly cheered Kendrick, erasing the memory of his brothers, for in this man’s music there was a purity and goodness which must surely reach out and bless his enterprise.
But when they got closer Kendrick saw that the spirit of the composer was already blessing someone else – a youth in a loden jacket passionately embracing a plump and acquiescent girl – and there was nothing for it except to circle the gardens and come out again into the street.
The third of Kendrick’s chosen sites was the Donner Fountain in the Neuer Markt. It was on the way back to the hotel and the guide book spoke highly of it, but when he suggested to Ellen that they walk back to the Graben she turned to him and said: ‘Kendrick, I’ve got rather a headache. Do you think you could try and get a taxi? There are some in the Philharmonikergasse.’
‘Yes . . . yes, of course.’ Kendrick hid his consternation. People did propose in taxis, but not Frobishers; the possibility of being overheard by the driver put that entirely out of court.
They walked down
the narrow street, approaching Sacher’s, where (as he was able to inform Ellen) Billroth had frequently breakfasted on oysters with Johannes Brahms. But Ellen, who had hitherto been so receptive to the information he offered her, seemed scarcely to take it in, and only asked him again to get a taxi. ‘Look, there’s one just coming in – I’ll wait while you run and get it.’
He had done as she asked and when he came back for her, he found her standing on the pavement outside the lighted windows of the famous restaurant looking so shaken and weary that all he could do was help her quickly into the car.
But the image of Patricia Frobisher, like a matrimonial Boadicea, was still with him, urging him on. He had to propose and he had to do it tonight in the balmy romantic ambience of a summer night in Vienna. Tomorrow morning would not do. He was going to try and see the leprosy sanatorium by Otto Wagner and the place where Wilibald Gluek had breathed his last, as well as the cathedral, and at midday Ellen was going back.
The taxi stopped in the Graben and Kendrick saw his chance. Opposite the hotel was a tall marble pillar decorated with convoluted statuary and topped with gold: the Trinity Column, which he had not had time yet to study in detail. With unusual firmness he walked Ellen over to examine it and found, as he had hoped, that at this late hour there was no one else there.
‘Ellen,’ he began. ‘You know how much I love you and now it is not only I who want to make you my wife, it is also my mother.’ He broke off, aware of problems with his syntax, and tried again. ‘I mean, my mother has begged me to marry and I have told her that there is no one I could consider except you.’ He paused to examine Ellen’s face, hopeful that the approval of Patricia Frobisher had effected a change in Ellen’s sentiments, and found that she had closed her eyes. ‘So please, darling Ellen, won’t you –’
He rambled on, expressing devotion and a stammering hope. To Ellen it was a fitting end to this nightmare evening and as soon as she could, she said: ‘Kendrick, I wrote to you quite clearly when I accepted your invitation that I was coming as a friend. You have no right to put me through this again.’