‘You receive so many of them.After every performance, there is always a bouquet waiting in your room or about to be delivered.I remember, after Rossini’sLa Cenerentola, there wasn’t enough room to stand in your dressing room.The entire backstage smelt like a flower market.My trombone player could not stop sneezing until they were cleared away.’
‘And he sneezed louder than the brass section during the second act.’She laughed, the lightness of it carried by the breeze.‘But you didn’t flinch.You just brought in the strings a little louder.Nothing unsettles you.’
‘That’s my role.’He kicked at a stone.‘It’s nothing.’
‘I have seen many conductors throw tantrums that would make the Hempel children blush.The way you keep your composure is hardly nothing.’They passed beneath an arch, then strolled by topiaries of elephants and a peacock.Low-lying ground covers bloomed into a colourful display of swirls and circles, like a painting made of plants.
‘I like these flowers preciselybecausethey are not mine,’ she said.‘We moved from Poland to Prague when I was very young.My grandmother sold flowers, and I would sing for coins.I was surrounded by flowers that I could not own, only enjoy.They were like music.Impossible to capture.These remind me of those times.’
‘Singing on the streets of Prague?’He couldn’t help but sound surprised.‘That’s not the story Karl puts in the programme.’
‘And is everything Karl puts in the programme true?To be fair, it is not his lie, only one inherited from a theatre manager in Nice who thought telling people I came from Paris instead of Poland would make me sound more glamourous.He turned my real surname—Dalewski—intode Lacaze.And then that terrible theatre where we met misprinted it asDelaney.Such small mistakes, when I was too young and too trusting to demand better.I let others make choices for me.Was too hungry to demand they be changed.I did not know they would follow me forever.I envy you that… taking Poland with you, I mean.All I have of her now is a name on my door that most people cannot pronounce.Let alone comprehend what it means to me.’
Sobieski.He’d never asked her about the name she’d given her villa, although he pulled the threads together as easily as ribbons.He’d first suspected that her story of being from Paris was a fabrication the same night he’d met her, and he’d been all the more convinced once they’d drunk to their failures.The more vodka she’d drunk, the more her accent had slipped.But the theatre was built on pretence and false names, so who was he to pry or even judge?Later, when he’d been invited to the first of her famedmusicales, his hazy hunch had been confirmed by a freshly installed stained-glass window above the door that spelt out a new name for her villa.Odette, like himself, had found a way out of their broken home, and likely carried the guilt of salvation, too.
‘Why Sobieski?’he asked.‘Why the old king of Poland and not your own people or country?’
She smiled to herself.‘To remind me to have courage.Babcia was a great admirer of Sobieski.I was too young to remember so much of our origins, and Babcia almost never spoke of our old life.How long should we walk for?I would much rather be rehearsing.It is only two weeks until opening.’
Cassius followed the brisk change in tone and topic of the conversation.‘You heard Karl.As long as is necessary for us to be seen.’
‘So much fuss for one little article.Karl should be firm with her.Tell her it doesn’t matter.She will ruin the show to save our morals.’
That morning,Tattlerhad printed an article about the prince’s discharge from hospital, and inside it, speculation abounded on whether he would attend the opening night of Odette’s next show.Normally, such coverage would delight Karl, and he’d start musing about extending the performance by a week or more.But this morning, he had seemed jittery, mumbling things likemaybe she won’t have seen itandnot everyone reads Tattlerto himself.By midday, he’d snapped.‘You can’t be a distraction if no one sees you!’he’d roared at Cassius, then announced that the understudies required the stage for an afternoon and Ezra could spend some time with the orchestra to talk them through part of the score.Afterwards, he’d taken the two of them aside with firm orders that they go somewhere, anywhere, as long as they were seen.Together.
Rather than a distraction, Cassius felt more like an accomplice.
‘Mr Northcote’s patron.You have a… a history with her?’
‘History is an exaggeration.She lives on my street.She runs a society promotingsocietal virtues, although I think she is having a hard time keeping members without the draw of Duke Arley as her patron.’She laughed, the sound hollow and just a little bitter.‘She makes meaningless complaints about any noise, tells Wilhelmina how to raise her children, is always arguing with Petunia about poor Elise, but she reserves the worst of her judgement for me.She once invited me to her society to talk about my career—not to inspire her ladies, but so I could serve as a cautionary tale.Nothing I have not heard before, but it feels different when it is right on my street, near my home.I can throw away a newspaper, but not a neighbour.Whenever I see her, I remember what so many think of me.I cannot hide from their opinions.’
‘Does your life… bother you?After what you said in the office the other day with Karl, I’ve wondered.Worried, even.I’ve been thinking about what you said, about the theatre needing the dream.You don’t take lovers because you feel compelled—’
‘Not you, too, Cassius.’She tutted.‘Let me guess.You are trying to decide if I am a victim or a strumpet.Because an unmarried woman is, of course, incapable of being anything else.Don’t fret, I make my own decision on who I take to be my lover.’She tugged him towards her so that he had to lean down, and when she spoke, her whisper caressed his ear.‘Did you ever imagine that, just like you, I might simply enjoy fucking?’
The shock of her brash confession nearly caused him to trip, and as she steadied him by the elbow, she burst out laughing.
How she could laugh.She took a breath of the world and transformed it into an explosion of joy and light.If mirth had a melody, it would match the song of Odette’s amusement.And if Karl wanted them to draw the attention of a crowd, this might well have been the fix.Two groups walking nearby—one at the edge of the pond and another on the far side of the garden display—looked towards them.A couple of women raised their hands to whisper to one another.Conversations were obscured behind a fan.Cassius shrugged, his coat suddenly itching at him.A man with a top hat and walking cane, clearly wealthy, paused in his step.His eyes trailed over Odette’s body like he knew it.Or perhaps, he had merely heard stories and shaped them into his own sordid tale in response.Cassius stared him down until he tipped his hat in deference and turned away with something like shame flitting over his face.
‘We should settle on a story,’ Cassius said, pulling her a little closer.‘In case someone asks.It will do the facade no good if we give different accounts on how we came to be courting.’
‘I thought we had decided.You begged me for a chance.I took pity on you.Simple.’
‘Simple?The most famous soprano in all of London supposedly falls in love, and you wantsimple?Your love story must be as captivating as a performance if you want people to talk about it.How about… love at first sight.Like inCendrillon, orTristan and Isolde?You were dazzled by me from the moment you set eyes on me.’
‘I was dazzled by your cheap coat and your terrible scowl?And it took fifteen years for the feeling to catch up with me?You will need to do much better than that.I think…’ She tapped her cheek in playful thought.‘You gave me a love potion.Yes.That’s the only thing that explains it.’
He laughed properly now.‘I slipped youThe Elixir of Love?But it’s just cheap wine, and the maid is a willing dupe.Are you?’
‘Hmm… I suppose you are right.The hero in that one is charming.Which you are not.We will need a much, much better story.’
Cassius watched her out of the corner of his eye as he selected his next weapon for their musical sparring.‘I offered you a quiet life in the countryside.’
‘A bad write up in the press is not the same as death!And I refuse to be a fallen woman like inLa Traviata.What a funny little world the opera is.’She laughed.‘I sometimes wonder if cupid has seen me fall in love on the stage so many times that he forgets I have never known the feeling.I suppose I will have to settle for elixirs and lightning strikes.’
‘Everyone loves you.You know that.’
‘They love the parts I play.The women I pretend to be.Not me.’She spoke with sadness, but also clarity.‘Do you ever wonder who you would be without the theatre?’
