Child Of Music (7 page)

She had little time to take in more than a general impression before Stephen Tarkman came in from the garden by way of the French windows, but she was already so utterly charmed with the place that she greeted him with, 'What a perfectly beautiful room!'

'It is nice, isn't it?' He smiled at her with unexpected friendliness. 'It was my father's favourite room. And he would have approved of you standing there in that very charming dress. He always used to say that what this room required to set it off was a lovely woman wearing a dress which made a really brilliant splash of colour against all the paler tints.'

'Oh, thank you.' The compliment was so unexpected that she found herself blushing like one of her own schoolgirls. At which he looked amused and asked her what she would drink.

She tried to look sophisticated and at ease as she watched him bring their two glasses across, and she hoped that he would now tell her what it was he had wanted to talk over with her.

He made no attempt, however, to start the subject immediately. Instead, he began to tell her something about the house and the school, which now occupied what had once been the original family house.

'I spent all my growing-up years there, of course. I always remember it as incredibly large and impersonal and unsuitable for private living. It requires about fifty people to make it feel lived in, which is what it has now, of course — along with a number of other civilizing improvements. This house where we are now was built in the grounds in the last years of my father's life, when he decided to start the Tarkman School and use the big house for the purpose.'

'So the original idea for this special school for musical children was his, not yours?'

'Certainly it was his idea. So was almost everything else to do with the administration of the Trust. He was a man of considerable vision. I merely try to carry out his ideas as I think he wanted them to be.'

'Turning visions into practical fact is quite something, isn't it?' She smiled at him in her turn. 'Everyone says you make a
marvellous
job of it.'

'Not everyone,' he assured her cynically. 'Some people think I'm just an arrogant bounder who rides roughshod over some of the most cherished theories of the day.'

'Oh, well—' began Felicity. Then she stopped and looked confused.

'Do go on,' he said amusedly.

She turned her glass on its stem, smiled suddenly and said, 'At the risk of being rude to my host, I was going to say that I could well imagine your riding roughshod and being—'

'Arrogant,' he prompted.

'Arrogant,' she accepted. 'But I'm quite sure that you're scrupulous to the last degree about carrying out what you think your father really wished to have done.'

'I do my best,' he conceded, 'even if I sometimes translate into my own terms. What I do always keep in mind is his overriding wish that the school should turn out not simply self-absorbed, technically stunning exhibitionists, but real music-makers in the truest sense of the term.'

'I know—' suddenly her eyes were shining with sympathy and eagerness — 'I know exactly what he meant.'

'Yes, you do, don't you? Because that's your
speciality
too.'

'How do you know?' She was rather taken aback.

'I've been making quite a lot of inquiries about you,' he told her coolly.

'You have? From whom?'

'First from Mrs. Bush, who may not know much about music but is a very shrewd judge of her staff as people. Then from the head at your last school—'

'Miss
Evesham
!'

'Yes, Miss
Evesham
. And finally the very remarkable headmaster of your first school.'

'Oh, he really did know about music-making!' she said quickly.

'Yes, so I realized. But each one of the three, though different in outlook and temperament, had exactly the same thing to say about you in one respect.'

'And what was that?' She was surprised and intrigued.

'That they had never come across anyone with your remarkable capacity for arousing interest and enthusiasm. Or, as Miss
Evesham
rather picturesquely put it, for opening windows on fresh and exciting horizons.'

'She said that?' Felicity was genuinely touched, for she had not known that Miss
Evesham
rated her so highly. 'How very nice of her. But, Mr. Tarkman, why have you been going round collecting opinions about me? And incidentally, what was it you wanted to discuss with me before the others arrived?' She glanced at her watch.

He noted the gesture with a smile and said, 'I can save time by giving the same answer to both those questions. I want to persuade you to join the staff of
Tarkmans
as a visiting lecturer on music appreciation — or whatever term you choose to apply to your special gift for opening windows on fresh musical horizons.'

'Me? You want
me
to teach at
Tarkmans?
But—' genuine humility came over her — 'I'm not at all sure I'm that standard.'

'If you weren't I shouldn't be asking you,' he assured her drily. 'Think it over, Miss Grainger. I hear our first guests arriving. And let me know your decision at the end of the evening.'

Dazed
as she was by Stephen Tarkman's unexpected offer, Felicity found some difficulty in pulling herself together sufficiently to appear calm and sociable when the first visitors were ushered in. But as one of them proved to be Julia Morton, she called on all her powers of self-control, smiled sweetly and contrived to say all the right things.

With Mrs. Morton came Professor Blackthorn who was, Felicity remembered, the other person Stephen Tarkman had originally proposed to bring with him to the ill-fated school concert. Apparently the professor — a pleasant, middle-aged man with shrewd dark eyes behind horn-rimmed spectacles — remembered this too, because he immediately said,

'I was sorry not to come to your end-of-term concert a few weeks ago, but I had to go north to adjudicate at a county competition that night. How did things go?'

She was taken aback to find that apparently Janet had not rated so much as a word of discussion between the two men and she asked quickly, 'Didn't Mr. Tarkman tell you?'

'I haven't had a chance to talk to him since,' the professor explained.

'Oh — well,' Felicity admitted, 'I'm afraid my
protégée
had a fit of nerves and did herself less than justice, but—'

'It often happens,' he interrupted consolingly. 'She may get another opportunity. How old is she?'

'Eleven. She is Mrs. Morton's niece,' Felicity added in a lower tone, and she glanced across the room to where Stephen Tarkman was displaying to his other guests what appeared to be a recent addition to his collection of water-colours.

'Really?' Professor Blackthorn seemed interested. 'Was it she who first drew Tarkman's attention to the girl?'

'On the contrary,' replied Felicity drily. 'In my view, Mrs. Morton seriously underrates her niece's gifts, and there seems little sympathy between them. But of course one doesn't want to bring personalities into these matters.'

'Of course not,' agreed the professor, but rather regretfully, as though he would have enjoyed a little gossip at that point.

Sounds of other arrivals were heard just then, however, and into the room came Oscar Warrender, preceded by his wife.

Once more Anthea Warrender looked so engagingly like the Anthea Benton Felicity remembered from her student days that the years seemed to fall away, and she watched smiling while Stephen Tarkman welcomed his distinguished guests. Then Anthea turned, saw Felicity and cried,

'Felicity Grainger ! I don't
believe
it! Where did you find her, Stephen?' She kissed Felicity warmly and, still holding one of her hands, turned to her husband. 'Oscar, you remember Felicity? She and I roomed together at Mrs. McManus's when we were students.'

Felicity could think of no reason why Oscar War
render
should remember her, and she shrewdly suspected that he couldn't either. But he greeted her with a touch of the famous charm which he used when he wanted to be specially nice to a friend or unpleasant to an enemy, and the talk became general.

Within the next few minutes other guests arrived — mostly connected in some way with the Foundation or local friends of Stephen Tarkman, Felicity judged. Then dinner was announced and she found she was seated between Professor Blackthorn and an engaging young man called Edgar
Inglis
, who turned out to be Warrender's private secretary.

'You
must have stamina!' she remarked, regarding him with slightly envious interest. 'Isn't it rather a hectic life?'

'Unbelievably so,' he agreed. 'But never dull, except when the fan-mail gets knee-deep. It's the life for me. It would kill me — although I'm remarkably tough — to have regular hours and some fool of a union man telling me which part of the job was mine and which wasn't.'

'How would you define your job exactly?' she asked, intrigued. 'Apart from the actual secretarial work, I mean?'

'I couldn't,' he assured her cheerfully. 'It varies from travel agent to psychiatrist, from father confessor to court jester.'

'And you mean to say Mr. Warrender really requires all that?'

'Oh,
he
doesn't. He's the most self-sufficient creature I ever came across. But one's inevitably involved with all the people who surround one's boss. And if he happens to be an international stage figure and a driving force in the musical world they include agents, managers, fans, pensioners, adorers, haters, fellow artists — both talented and dud-ambitious mums, self-deluded amateurs, jealous old pros — oh, the lot!'

'And how,' inquired Felicity with real interest, 'does Anthea make out in all this?'

'Anthea? Oh—' his mischievous smile softened slightly — 'she's our guardian angel, good fairy, or whatever else of the kind you like to call her. I tell you — if she wanted me to, I'd lie down on the ground and let her walk over me. But fortunately, she isn't given that way,' he added lightly. 'The only one she ever walks over — very occasionally — is Warrender.'

'She can do
that?''
Felicity was impressed.

'Only for his own good,' Edgar
Inglis
assured her with a grin.

After dinner, when the company moved back into the other room, Anthea found the opportunity to come and talk to Felicity and to ask what she had done since they had last seen each other at her own dinner-party three years ago.

'It's I who should be asking you that,' Felicity declared with a laugh. 'You are the one who has done the interesting things. What is it like to be a famous singer in your own right and married to the greatest conductor in the world?'

'Heaven, with an occasional dash of hell,' said Anthea succinctly. 'But I truly want to know about you. What's this about your coming to teach at Tarkmans?'

'Who told you that?' Felicity demanded.

'Stephen, of course.'

'As a settled thing?' She looked rather vexed. 'He is sure of himself, isn't he?'

'Well, of course, darling. Men like Stephen Tarkman don't get where they are by being u
rasure
of themselves,' Anthea pointed out. 'Isn't it true, then?'

'It's true that he asked me, just before the rest of the guests arrived. I was to think it over and let him know my decision at the end of the evening.'

'And you're busy thinking out ways of refusing?' inquired Anthea with a
sceptical
smile.

'No, of course not!' said Felicity. And then they both laughed so much that Stephen Tarkman who was passing stopped to ask with a smile if they were recalling their misspent student days together.

'We haven't got to the past yet,' Anthea assured him gaily. 'We were talking about the future — and about Felicity coming to teach at Tarkmans.'

"And
is
Felicity coming to teach at Tarkmans?' His amused glance moved so quickly to the other girl that he could not have failed to catch the look of sparkling delight which brightened her eyes and parted her lips.

'Yes, please,' she said, with the naive and breathless eagerness of a child. And at the same moment Julia Morton came up, slipped her arm into Stephen Tarkmans, and inquired what discussion was making Miss Grainger look so starry-eyed.

'It's not a discussion. It's a decision,' Stephen Tarkman informed her. 'Felicity — Miss Grainger — is going to take some classes for us at Tarkmans.'

'But I thought—' there was an almost imperceptible hardening of that charming voice — 'I thought Miss Grainger had a full-time post at Carmalton School!'

'She has,' he replied coolly. 'But arrangements can be made. I've already had a word with her headmistress about that.*

'Have
you?' Felicity was astonished.