Crescendo (19 page)

She was to sing the tide-rôle in a production of
Carmen
for which Freeman was designing fresh costumes and scenery. Freeman considered this opera “old hat,” but had been assured by those in charge that he was employed especially to give freshness and originality to a somewhat stale theme. He had accordingly let his imagination gallop; the glowing result pleased him, and when he heard Fiammetta sing at rehearsal, his pulses quickened with delight. It appeared, however, that Fiammetta wished to sing in yellow instead of the traditional scarlet. Freeman was summoned to a conference on stage and informed of this desired change in an imperious tone. A new design for the dress would of course be needed.

“It can be done if you postpone the opening night for a month or two,” said Freeman with a smile.

“You require two months to design one dress?” said Fiammetta haughtily. (Her Italian-English, uttered in one of the finest contraltos of the century, was delicious.)

“By no means. But if the colour of Carmen's dress is changed, all the other costumes and the scenery must also be changed, or she will not appear the main character.”

“That is nonsense. Never have I heard such nonsense.”

“I think you're being a little unreasonable, Freeman,” said the stage manager anxiously.

Freeman shrugged his shoulders.

“If the signora wishes to be a mere blur against the background, let it be so by all means, but take my name off the programme.”

“Now, Freeman!”

“What is that, a blur? I do not understand this word,” said Fiammetta, looking round the group angrily.

Nobody ventured to enlighten her, and there was an uncomfortable pause.

“Something so beautiful a Carmen should never be,” said Freeman eventually, laughing.

Fiammetta gave him a glance in which, as Freeman clearly saw, disdain was mingled with calculation. He was not surprised therefore when she suggested that they should lunch together and talk over the matter, not surprised when he presently found himself alone with her in her suite at the hotel. He was not surprised, because her intention to use the power of her beauty to get her own way about the dress was throughout sufficiently obvious.

Sure enough, she began to flatter and soothe him, to gaze up into his eyes with that expression of admiring interest which is always so seductive, so apt to lead a man into those intimate confidences which place him in the power of their recipient. Freeman had had sufficient experience, in various preceding
amourettes
, of this enticing look, to know exactly what it meant; he therefore watched Fiammetta with a smile—he had no objection in the world to being seduced, but nothing would induce him to yield about the yellow dress. Fiammetta, it seemed, felt this, for she grew angry.

“You do not think me beautiful, Mr. Freeman?” said she, her wonderful eyes sparkling with rage.

(They really sparkled, thought Freeman, surveying them admiringly; in her case the
cliché
was literally true.)

“On the contrary, signora,” he replied pleasantly: “I think you the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

“Then why do you remain so cold? Come, kiss me! Do not be afraid.”

“I am not afraid,” said Freeman in an easy tone, laughing: “But it is only fair to tell you that I am capable of taking many kisses and yet not making you a yellow dress.”

He rose and gave her a little bow, to take his leave.

“And yet you call yourself an honourable man?”

“No,” said Freeman, pausing. “I have no such pretensions. I have come up out of the gutter and carry no sentimental luggage.”

“And I too, you fool!” cried Fiammetta, springing to her feet. “I too am of the gutter. I am as relentless as you are yourself. I take what I want.”

“Ah! Now we understand each other.”

“Stay, then,” said Fiammetta, stretching out to him her small hot hand, on which the diamonds glittered.

“No. It is the dress you want, not the man,” said Freeman, turning away. He spoke soberly, but felt violence rising in him like fever.

She threw herself between him and the door.

“Are you so certain, Freeman?” she cried, panting.

“Don't try to lie to me!” shouted Freeman, plunging into rage.

For a moment they stood glaring at each other, furiously angry; then they both began to laugh.

“I shall not make you a yellow dress,” said Freeman stubbornly.

“
Basta!
What do I care?”

“But I will design a beautiful new scarlet dress—the old one is too dull, too spiritless, for such a guttersnipe as you,” concluded Freeman, laughing.

He took her in his arms; they strained each to each as if their embraces could never be close enough to express how near
they were to each other, how separate from all the rest of the world.

A few days later Freeman said to Fiammetta, as she lay in his arms:

“Let us marry.”

“Why?”

“We are more than lovers.”

“That is true,” said Fiammetta. “Luckily my first husband died.”

“Who was he?”

“My first manager. A most kind, amiable, elderly man. But to me, nothing.”

The wedding was turned by the company into a wild and riotous affair, typical of the stormy, gay, frenziedly restless life which Freeman now lived in all the world's capital cities. He had never had a real home and Fiammetta had long since left hers behind; they did not make a real home together now, but met when they could, dashing about Europe—to the furious alarm of the theatre managements with which they were respectively concerned—on preposterous schedules, in order to spend a few passionate hours in each other's company. Sometimes these hours were filled with ardent love-making, sometimes with quarrels which shook the theatrical world, but they were always immensely satisfying to Freeman and Fiammetta. Opera houses in Berlin, Milan, Naples, Vienna, New York; flower-decked suites in luxury hotels; flower-decked cabins in immense Atlantic liners; surging music, with Fiammetta's magnificent voice throbbing through it all; applauding crowds; bold designs in black and scarlet; hours of frenzied work; wine; books, plays, films, ballets, pictures; elaborate arrivals, hurried departures; the speech and currencies of many different countries; the emotions of many different peoples—all these were jumbled in his memory into a glittering pageant; a seething flux of colour and sound, in which the most brilliant colour, the most vibrant note, was always his
feeling for Fiammetta. They both earned money in rich abundance and threw it away in lavish profusion, generous and open-handed to their friends, carelessly princely in their personal expenditure. Fiammetta's first husband, of a more cautious disposition than her second, had invested quite a pile of her earnings, but in some way Freeman did not trouble to understand all these savings were lost in the New York stock market debacle of 1929—they laughed together over this confirmation of the foolishness and meanness of trying to save.

Then, most unexpectedly and belatedly, long after they had abandoned any hope or even speculation on such a matter, Fiammetta found herself with child. They were astonished and disconcerted, and on account of Fiammetta's age, which by now was nearing the climacteric, somewhat alarmed. The alarm was justified, for Fiammetta's
accouchement
, which took place in Paris, was most painful and protracted, and the child, a daughter, appeared ailing and much underweight. But to Freeman's amusement and admiration, Fiammetta's peasant ancestry here asserted itself; shouting a vigorous stream of invective, she drove out doctors and nurses and tended the child herself with passionate care.

The little girl grew and thrived; the sweetest, gayest, darlingest child, as Freeman thought, in all the world, whenever he saw her. Gay was not a beauty like her mother, for she lacked Fiammetta's fine aquiline profile, and her dark hair was short and curly in a homely way, but the same wonderfully starry eyes shone in her round, merry little face, the expression of which was always most singularly loving, intelligent and tender. She lived chiefly in Freeman's flat in London, with excursions at first all over Europe to accompany her mother—her parents were always intending to take a cottage in the country somewhere and give her a settled life, but somehow they were never settled anywhere themselves long enough to bring this plan to fruition. Heaven knew, thought Freeman ruefully, looking back at it all now, how the child had contrived
to be fed and clothed and educated, but somehow she had managed it—herself; smiling and happy, observing everything with those beautiful eyes and storing it all behind her broad white forehead, she made arrangements of the most admirable kind for herself, quietly and without any tears or fuss. This was all the more necessary because Hitler's war suddenly cut the Freeman family in half.

Fiammetta was in Germany when it began. Freeman did not believe in Hitler's promises for a moment and considered Chamberlain a deluded ass for doing so; he rang Berlin repeatedly and implored Fiammetta to return to England while there was time. But Fiammetta had a contract to keep and a role to sing; besides, Germany and Italy were allies; if war should break out, what of it? Her next engagement was in America and Freeman and Gay could meet her there.

War broke out and Fiammetta simply disappeared; in spite of Freeman's frantic string-pulling he could get no news of her. Had she perhaps returned to Italy? He hoped so. Was she regarded as Italian by the Germans because of her birth, or as English because of her marriage? He could not discover. He found himself busily employed in the matter of camouflage, and tried to still his anxiety by overwork, but at times the misery of uncertainty flooded his mind and drove out every other thought. He tried to send his little Gay away to America, but she would not go; when the matter was broached to her she said nothing, but clasping his arm with all her strength, she gazed up at him with such terrible though silent reproach that he simply could not say another word about it. Accordingly they went through all the vicissitudes of the war together and came to disregard them as most Londoners did at the time. In the absence of her mother Freeman loved Gay with all his heart but without knowing her very well; one could not force a daughter's confidence.

The war was over. The Red Cross found Fiammetta in a concentration camp, whither some stormy resentment of police
regulation, or some indiscreet championship of her husband's country—Freeman could never discover quite which—had sent her. She returned to England—to die, as she bitterly said. Freeman and his daughter, now in her teens, stood on the station platform as the hospital train rolled smoothly in. Racked by an anguished expectancy, Freeman ran heavily up and down, seeking for his wife. It was Gay who found her; exclaiming “Mother!” she threw herself down beside a stretcher on which lay a small figure with a yellow, wizened face.

“No, no!” stammered Freeman, embarrassed, pulling at Gay's shoulder. “Some mistake—we are looking for my wife.”

“You don't recognise me, Freeman?” said the woman, smiling. “But I know you, my dear. You are not changed.”

The sardonic droop of her lip was Fiammetta's. But her once beautiful body was merely skin and bone, her face deeply wrinkled, her eyes lustreless and sunk into her head. Worst of all, her voice, that once superb instrument, now sounded shrill, uncertain.

Or rather, reflected Freeman, that was not the worst. The worst was that she was simply too exhausted to take any further interest in life. The once superabundant vitality was now flickering to extinction. Occasionally for a few moments her eyes would brighten and she would show her husband and her daughter the love which a wife and mother should, laying her hand on Freeman's, or putting the curls back from Gay's face, as the pair bent over her bed. But soon the flicker of interest died, the hand dropped, the look of almost peevish weariness returned. Fiammetta withdrew into herself, far away from Gay or Freeman, and lay silent, brooding. Eventually she slipped away from them. They wept together for her loss, not as she was now but as they wished to remember her. Then life began again for them.

In the great burst of theatrical activity which followed the close of the war Freeman participated at first joyously. He
noticed that his commissions were slightly less frequent than of old, but attributed this to the dislocation caused by the war—as peace settled in, he thought, the world of the theatre would steady. He noticed too that his name seemed unfamiliar to most of the promising young men who were now beginning to make their appearance, and that there was a general tendency on the part of any who did know him, to regard him as the “grand old man” of scenic design. This amused him; he was in his late sixties, of course, but tremendously strong physically and as powerful as ever in his art. Indeed he thought himself more powerful; his war experience with Fiammetta had, he knew, deepened his sense of the ironies of human existence, and that should surely increase his feeling for beauty and truth.

Television came. Ever ready to attack a new problem, Freeman made an attempt or two to adapt his style to the requirements of this fresh medium. But he abandoned them impatiently. He felt like a bull in a small china shop. There was no colour yet, and his bold lines looked simply an untidy mess on the tiny screen. Designing for television was clearly a job for smaller people than himself, people who devoted their whole professional lives to television, who worked within one or other of the great television corporations. Freeman observed with a shrewd eye the decay of the theatre in the provinces as the new medium flooded them; he was troubled, for he did not see how, in such conditions, young men of talent, such as he had been, could work their way up to the top as he had done. He mentioned this to Gay, who listened with her usual look of loving sympathy but could suggest no solution.

Indeed she seemed even more troubled than the situation demanded, thought Freeman; almost, indeed, as if she were personally involved. She was rising eighteen, now; not handsome, not (it seemed) particularly talented in any special direction and rather silent in general, but sweet and comely and loving, altogether a most darling person. No doubt she
would marry soon, thought Freeman benevolently; in the course of her work as his secretary and general manager of his affairs, she met many young men. He could not help being glad that her choice of a partner was delayed, but of course he would not for a moment stand in the light of his darling daughter's happiness when she found her man.