‘Smoking spoils the voice, sir. I wish to do you—and myself—justice, later, so you will excuse me, I hope.’
Later turned out to be some time later. By the time they joined the women, who were sitting like so many swans, their arms so long and lovely, their heads so proud, many of the men had already over-indulged, Sir Ratcliffe among them.
Cobie called to him the hovering footman who was holding his guitar and retrieved it. The Prince was standing, so everyone else stood. He waved a hand, said, ‘Sit, sit,’ and then sat himself, so that everyone else could.
‘Mr Grant is to entertain us,’ he announced. ‘A Royal Command Performance, you understand. No gossiping.’
Violet made a moue, and Sir Ratcliffe looked displeased as the damned mountebank opened the case in which his guitar was kept and began to tune it.
‘Do you have any particular piece in mind, sir?’ Cobie asked, playing a series of quiet chords.
The Prince shook his head. ‘Nothing dismal, that’s all. I’m in no mind to be bored.’
‘Mmm.’
He thought a moment, then began to play, gently at first as his total recall brought back both words and music, the Lord High Executioner’s song from The Mikado.
I’ve got a little list, I’ve got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed—who never would be missed!
The bored expressions on everyone’s faces vanished as his pleasant baritone wound its way to the end of the song. He finished with a flourish, bowing his head over his guitar. The Prince immediately began to applaud his virtuosity.
‘Oh, bravo, Grant, bravo. Better than all that stuff I have to endure with a straight face at the opera. Where did you learn to play and sing like that?’
Cobie bowed, amused that his talent with the guitar, although quite differently expressed, was entertaining the massed ranks of the British aristocracy and gentry as it had amused the outlaws at San Miguel so long ago.
‘At the Yale Glee Club, sir.’
‘It is to be congratulated—as are you. More, please.’
Cobie decided to offer something different.
He said, ‘This has to be done standing up,’ and began to play a Mexican love song, ‘La Paloma’, his guitar high on his shoulder. It was full of wild riffs, and he sang it first in Spanish, rolling the vowels liquidly on his tongue, and then in English.
The applause which followed was genuine. The Prince led it, then spoke to his wife, before turning to Cobie to say, ‘The Princess asks if you have a love song you would care to sing.’
He considered and, moved by something—perhaps it was Susanna’s face, sad in repose, reproaching him for having deserted her—said, ‘Yes, I think you would like this.’
So saying he sat down again and began to sing ‘Plaisir d’amour’, one of the most haunting and sad of ballads telling of love’s pleasures being short, but its pains, alas, being long and lasting a lifetime. His voice had changed again to match the music, and he sang it with all the feeling he could muster. It was almost as though he could feel Susanna’s pain, as though she had laid it on his back as a burden to be carried.
Perhaps, also, he thought, he was trying to tell Dinah something. He looked up once, to see her face, rapt, her eyes only for him. Slowly, slowly, as the song reached its sad end, he was suddenly in another room, far away in space and time, a room which knew nothing of kings and princes and nobility. In that room he had thought that in playing yet another elegiac tune he had finally said farewell to Susanna, but he might have known that their star-crossed love was not so easily renounced, and that Susanna’s pain still being with her, he was to be compelled to share it, even to the end.
The last notes died on the air. There was silence for a brief moment, before the Princess said, ‘Thank you, Mr Grant, that was beautiful,’ and began to clap, the rest of the audience following suit.
‘And that,’ said the Prince, ‘must be that. We thank the singer for his song,’
Only, a little later, he came up to Cobie, winked and smiled, murmuring, ‘When we go to the smoking room, shortly, bring your guitar with you. I have a bet that you have other songs to sing, even more entertaining.’
Which was a royal command. Sir Ratcliffe came up, flushed with drink, Susanna by him, and a few of his boon companions at his elbow.
‘Eh, well, Grant,’ he said, winking at his friends, ‘if all else fails, and the Stock Market falls through the floor, you can always earn a living on the pier at Brighton, what!’
‘I can think of worse ways of earning one,’ said Cobie coolly, refusing to return the insult, although Susanna’s mocking smile of pleasure at it cut him to the heart. He thought that drink was making Sir Ratcliffe unwary, besides ruining his complexion.
Susanna stayed behind for a moment, to whisper reproachfully, “‘Plaisir d’amour” was a most suitable song for you to sing, Cobie—except for one thing. You are highly qualified to speak of the shortness of love’s pleasure. The pains, however, you hardly seem to be acquainted with. You should leave singing of them to others.’
Cobie had a brief flash of total recall. He saw a lovely face, the face of a girl long dead, half-Yankee, half-Mexican, and thought that the pains of that lost love might be with him always. He said, quickly and urgently, ‘Susanna, I would like to speak to you about a serious matter.’
She looked at him, her face stone. ‘If it is about Sir Ratcliffe and me, you may spare yourself. Once and for all, we have done with one another. Let that be it. I want no sermons from the cheat and womaniser which you have become.’
It was useless. He bowed to her before she swept away. He saw Dinah coming, and thought bitterly, What damage am I doing to her, that she will end up by either reproaching me or hating me? I never thought that Susanna and I would come to this.
Dinah, her intuition working again, knew at once that, although his face was impassive, he was distressed. She said, ‘You sang beautifully, Cobie, but are you sure you wouldn’t like to leave early?’
He replied, almost roughly for him, ‘No, Dinah. And I have yet another royal command to obey. I am not ill.’
‘No,’ she answered him quietly. ‘And you don’t look ill. But remember what you once told me, “Appearances often deceive.” I think yours deceive me and everyone else tonight.’
‘Not you,’ he said, still rough. ‘You are learning from the book of life so rapidly, Dinah, that you will shortly be leaving me behind. For tonight accept that however I feel, I must do what I have to do, and that is obey the Prince’s orders. Something tells me that I have not finished this night’s work yet.’
Nor had he.
Some time later, walking into the smoking room, full of tobacco fumes, where the Prince, seated among his little court, was drawing gratefully on his cigar, after half an evening’s abstinence, he was greeted by men who were demanding to be entertained without the restraining presence of women.
Sir Ratcliffe, by now almost unbuttoned—Susanna and her husband had already retired—sprawled in a great armchair, a tot of whiskey in his hand while he watched Cobie play and sing ‘The Old Chisholm Trail’—in the half-expurgated version.
‘Bravo,’ he said languidly. ‘It seems I underrated you. The Music Hall in Brixton is your proper métier, my friend. Why not take yourself there?’
Before anyone could expostulate at such gross discourtesy, the red rage had Cobie by the throat. Not the complete thing, but something near. Regardless of whether Sir Ratcliffe might know of his secret plans to bring him to justice, he said rapidly, ‘I don’t underrate