“Well, they trailed their coats, anyhow,” said Dominic.
Lucien Galt began with “Helen of Kirkconnell.” There was no doubt from the opening that here was an artist of stature, first because nature had given him a voice of great beauty, a warm, flexible baritone that would have been attractive even without art, and second, because he had the rare gift of total absorption in what he did, so that he lost them utterly while the song lasted. He was the bereaved lover hunting Helen’s murderer along the water-side, and hacking him in pieces for her sake. The voice that had been all honey and grief over her body could find gravel and hate when it needed them. He was all the more compelling because everything he did was understated, but the passion vibrated behind the quietness with an intensity that had them holding their breath. He seemed surprised when they applauded him; probably for the duration, of that experience he had forgotten they were there.
Next he sang “The Croppy Boy,” a venturesome choice for somebody without a drop of Irish blood; nor did he attempt to put on the Irish. He sang it like an Englishman possessed by the guilt of England past, and with an unexpected simplicity that made the child-soldier’s last innocent confession almost unendurably touching:
“ ‘I’ve cursed three times since last Easter Day.
At Mass-time once I went to play.
I passed through the churchyard one day in haste
And forgot to pray for my mother’s rest’.”
By the time he reached:
“ ‘Good people who dwell in peace and joy.
Breathe a prayer and a tear for the Croppy boy’.”
he had several of the teen-age girls in tears. That startled him, too, but he was disarmed. It was the first time Tossa and Dominic had seen him look kindly at his fans.
“And what’s the third one to be?” asked Meurice amiably.
Lucien thought for a moment, his lip caught between his teeth, his fingers muting the strings of his guitar. He looked across the rows and rows of expectant students, and Dominic, turning his head to follow that glance, caught a glimpse of Liri Palmer’s chiselled profile and great coil of brown hair. She sat at the back of the assembly, attentive and still. There was no reading anything into her face.
Lucien began to sing. They all knew the air as “Believe me if all those endearing young charms,” but that was not what he was singing.
“ ‘My lodging is on the cold, cold ground.
And hard, very hard is my fare.
But what doth me the more confound
Is the coldness of my dear.
Yet still I cry, O turn, love.
I prithee, love, turn to me.
For thou art the only one, love.
That art adored by me.
I’ll twine thee a garland of straw, love.
I’ll marry thee with a rush ring.
My frozen hopes will thaw, love.
And merrily we will sing.
Then turn to me, my own love.
I prithee, love, turn to me.
For thou art the only one, love.
That art adored by me’.”
“That ought to fetch her,” whispered Tossa, shaken, “if anything can.”
Dominic was astonished. He hadn’t noticed this incalculable girl of his following any significant glances, and yet it seemed she knew very well what was going on. He wished he did. There was certainly something, and there was a tension in the air that threatened more; yet nobody else seemed to have noticed anything. Maybe all the girls took that declaration to themselves, and applauded it accordingly; and it was just possible – wasn’t it? – that that applied to Tossa, too.
“Now hold your horses a minute,” beamed Dickie Meurice, fanning down the applause. “We haven’t finished yet. Oh, yes, I know that’s all we promised you, but we’ve still got a card up our sleeve, you’ll find. Some of you know it already, but to most of you it’ll be great news. Do you know who’s been modest enough to come along to this course as a student? She’s right there among you at this moment, maybe some of you talked to her at dinner and never realised. Liri… Liri Palmer! It’s no use trying to hide back there. I know where you are.” She hadn’t moved, not even a muscle of her disdainful face. She didn’t want to be haled out of her anonymity, but she certainly wasn’t hiding even from the crack of doom.
“Yes, folks, that’s the whole secret. Liri Palmer is here among us. There she sits! Now you give her a big hand, and maybe she’ll surrender.”
He was growing by the minute, expanding to fill the twenty-one inch screen that wasn’t there, to dominate the cameras, the emotions and the events of this evening. This was what he’d been waiting for.
“Come along, Liri, don’t cheat us. You can’t blame us for wanting you. Come up here where you belong, and let us hear from you.”
Every head had turned by this time, even the slowest of them had located her, even those who knew nothing about her had identified her by the glutinous stares of the others. Someone began to applaud, and all the rest took it up like a rising wave.
“Come on, Liri, we’re all waiting just for you.”
She rose from her chair, but only to gain a hearing. “I came to listen, you must excuse me. And I haven’t got my guitar down here.”
“Lucien will lend you his guitar, I’m sure. Come on, you can’t disappoint everyone. Lucien, don’t just sit there, help me out. If you ask her, I’m sure she’ll come.”
Lucien Galt was seen for once out of countenance, and that in itself was astonishing. He sat shaken and mute, staring across the array of hopeful faces to where Liri stood braced and annoyed, her brows drawn down in a formidable scowl. It was Lucien who flushed and stammered.
“Yes, Liri, please do. You’d be giving everyone so much pleasure.”
There could have been no milder invitation, but what happened next was more like the formal acceptance of a challenge.
“Very well,” said Liri abruptly, “since you ask me.” And she walked fiercely up the gangway between the goggling fans, and stepped up on to the concert dais in the great window-embrasure, where the artists sat. She took the offered guitar, sat down on the forward edge of Dickie Meurice’s table, and stroked the strings, frowning. There was a moment of absolute silence, while she seemed to forget they existed, and only to be gathering herself for a private outburst. Then the whole drawing-room shook to the shuddering chords she fetched out of Lucien’s instrument, and she lifted her head and poised her silver-pure entry with piercing accuracy, like a knife in the heart:
“Black, black, black, is the colour of my true-love’s heart!
His tongue is like a poisoned dart.
The coldest eyes and the lewdest hands…
I hate the ground whereon he stands!
“I hate my love, yet well he knows.
I love the ground whereon he goes.
And if my love no more I see
No one shall have his company!
“Black, black, black, is the colour of my true-love’s heart…”
An achingly sweet voice, so rending in its sweetness as to corrode like an acid when she used it like this, as if all the frightening possibilities of her nature, for good or evil, could be molten in the furnace of her feeling, and pour out in that fine-spun thread of sound to purify or poison. She sang with such superb assurance that they all accepted it as the only rightness, only realising afterwards how she had changed words to her own purposes, and torn the heart out of the song to leave it the antithesis of what it was meant to be. As if she turned the coin of love to show hate engraven in an almost identical design.