She had dreamed up all sorts of awful possibilities: Rupert breaking down and walking out, leaving the show to crawl to disaster; Rupert stopping the proceedings and addressing the audience; or the audience itself growing more and more restless or apathetic and the performance ending on the scantiest show of applause, and the audience being harangued by an infuriated Sommita.
None of these things took place. True, as the opera developed, the boisterous good humor of the audience seemed to grow tepid, but the shock of that Golden Voice, the astonishment it engendered note by note, was so extraordinary that no room was left for criticism. And there was, or so it seemed to Troy, a passage in the duet with Hilda Dancy — “Whither thou goest” — when suddenly the music came true. She thought: That’s one of the bits Signor Lattienzo meant. She looked along the row and he caught her glance and nodded.
Sir David Baumgartner, whose chin was sunk in his shirt frill in what passed for profound absorption, raised his head. Mr. Reece, sitting bolt upright in his chair, inconspicuously consulted his watch.
The duet came to its end and Troy’s attention wandered. The show was well dressed, the supporting artists being clad in low-profile biblical gear hired from a New Zealand company who had recently revived the York Cycle. The Sommita’s costume, created for the occasion, was white and virginal and, if it was designed to make Ruth look like a startling social misfit amidst the alien corn, succeeded wonderfully in achieving this end.
The quartet came and went and left no mark. Sir David looked irritated. The Sommita, alone on stage, sailed into a recitative and thence to her big aria. Troy now saw her purely in terms of paint, fixing her in the memory, translating her into a new idiom. The diva had arrived at the concluding fioritura, she moved toward her audience, she lifted her head, she spread her arms and rewarded them with her trump card — A above high C.
No doubt she would have been very cross if they had observed the rule about not applauding until the final curtain. They did not observe it. They broke into a little storm of clapping. She raised a monitory hand. The performance entered into its penultimate phase: a lachrymose parting between Ruth and Signor Rodolfo, plump in kilted smock and leg strappings and looking like a late photograph of Caruso. Enter Boaz, discovering them and ordering the gleaner to be beaten. Ruth and Naomi pleading with Boaz to relent, which he did, and the opera ended with a rather cursory reconciliation of all hands in chorus.
The sense of relief when the curtains closed was so overwhelming that Troy found herself clapping wildly. After all, it had not been so bad. None of the horrors she had imagined had come to pass, it was over, and they were in the clear.
Afterward, she wondered if the obligatory response from the audience could have been evoked by the same emotion.
Three rapid curtain calls were taken, the first by the company, the second by the Sommita, who was thinly cheered by back-benchers, and the third again by the Sommita, who went through her customary routine of extended arms, kissed hands, and deep curtseys.
And then she turned to the orchestra, advanced upon it with outstretched hand and beckoning smile, only to find that her quarry had vanished. Rupert Bartholomew was gone. The violinist stood up and said something inaudible but seemed to suggest that Rupert was backstage. The Sommita’s smile had become fixed. She swept to an upstage entrance and vanished through it. The audience, nonplussed, kept up a desultory clapping which had all but died out when she reentered, bringing, almost dragging, Rupert after her.
He was sheet-white and disheveled. When she exhibited him, retaining her grasp of his hand, he made no acknowledgment of the applause she exacted. It petered out into a dead silence. She whispered something and the sound was caught up in a giant enlargement: the northwest wind sighing round the Island.
The discomfiture of the audience was extreme. Someone, a woman, behind Troy said: “He’s not well; he’s going to faint,” and there was a murmur of agreement. But Rupert did not faint. He stood bolt upright, looked at nothing, and suddenly freed his hand.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said loudly.
Mr. Reece began to clap and was followed by the audience. Rupert shouted, “Don’t do that,” and they stopped. He then made his curtain speech.
“I expect I ought to thank you. Your applause is for a Voice. It’s a wonderful Voice, insulted by the stuff it has been given to sing tonight. For that I am responsible. I should have withdrawn it at the beginning when I realized — when I first realized — when I knew—”
He swayed a little and raised his hand to his forehead.
“When I knew,” he said. And then he did faint. The curtains closed.
iii
Mr. Reece handled the catastrophe with expertise. He stood up, faced his guests, and said that Rupert Bartholomew had been unwell for some days and no doubt the strain of the production had been a little too much for him. He (Mr. Reece) knew that they would all appreciate this and he asked them to reassemble in the drawing room. Dinner would be served as soon as the performers were ready to join them.
So out they all trooped and Mr. Reece, followed by Signor Lattienzo, went backstage.
As they passed through the hall the guests became more aware of what was going on outside: irregular onslaughts of wind, rain, and behind these immediate sounds, a vague ground swell of turbulence. Those guests who were to travel through the night by way of launch, bus, and car began to exchange glances. One of them, a woman, who was near the windows, parted the heavy curtains and looked out, releasing the drumming sound of rain against glass and a momentary glimpse of the blinded pane. She let the curtain fall and pulled an anxious grimace. A hearty male voice said loudly: “Not to worry. She’ll be right.”
More champagne in the drawing room and harder drinks for the asking. The performers began to come in and Hanley with them. He circulated busily. “Doing his stuff,” said Alleyn.
“Not an easy assignment,” said Troy and then: “I’d like to know how that boy is.”
“So would I.”
“Might we be able to do anything, do you suppose?”
“Shall we ask?”
Hanley saw them, flashed his winsome smile, and joined them. “We’re going in now,” he said. “The Lady asks us not to wait.”
“How’s Rupert?”
“Poor dear! Wasn’t it a pity? Everything had gone so well. He’s in his room. Lying down, you know, but quite all right. Not to be disturbed. He’ll be quite all right,” Hanley repeated brightly. “Straight-out case of nervous fatigue. Ah, there’s the gong. Will you give a lead? Thank you so much.”
On this return passage through the hall, standing inconspicuously just inside the entrance and partly screened by the vast pregnant woman whose elfin leer suggested a clandestine rendezvous, was a figure in dripping oilskins: Les, the launch man. Hanley went over to speak to him.
The dining room had been transformed, two subsidiary tables being introduced to form an E with the middle stroke missing. The three central places at the “top” table were destined for the Sommita, her host, and Rupert Bartholomew, none of whom appeared to occupy them. All the places were named and the Alleyns were again among the V.I.P.s. This time Troy found herself with Mr. Reece’s chair on her left and Signor Lattienzo on her right. Alleyn was next to the Sommita’s empty chair, with the wife of the New Zealand conductor on his left.