Song Above the Clouds Read Online Free PDF

but—well, there are other possibilities, you know . Good voices—really good voices—aren’t all that common, and the big names in the operatic world are always on the look-out. For instance, when I was in Rome...” He hesitated, and then went on rather quickly. “When I was in Rome I heard of a chap who has spent his life making that sort of ‘discovery’. He searches them out, then trains them and does everything necessary to groom them for stardom, as it were. The rest is up to the m , of course, and they don’t all make it, but I know for a fact that quite a number of his ducklings have turned into swans.”
    Half listening to him, half swallowing back a ridiculous urge to burst into tears, Candy murmured something inaudible.
    “What I’m getting at,” he went on, not looking at her, but apparently determined not to be put off, “is that this particular chap does it all for nothing—as far as the pupil is concerned, anyway. He’d do it for you.” Scarcely hearing what he said, Candy repeated automatically : “Do it for me?”
    “Of course he would. I’d say it’s a certainty . All you have to do is apply for an audition ... he has representatives in places like London and Paris. You know— people who sift through the local talent and send the pick of it on to him. ”
    “I don’t want to be sent anywhere,” she told him flatly.
    “Now don’t be absurd, my sweet. You want to do something with your life, don’t you?”
    He was looking acutely uncomfortable, she realized that now, and she sensed, too, that he very much wanted her to do what he suggested. She thought she knew why.
    “Don’t feel responsible for me, John.” She was standing still, now, in the middle of the road. On either side of them quiet meadows and patches of golden stubble stretched to the misty skyline, and there was no sound anywhere but the slowly retreating footsteps of the Rylands and the song of a bullfinch perched in the hedge. In the clarity of the autumn light her hair glowed more vividly than the beech leaves, and her eyes, wide and troubled, were like reed-shadowed pools.
    John put his hands in his pockets, and kicked at a pebble. “Of course I feel responsible for you—we’ve known one another a long time, haven’t we?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well . .. Naturally I take an interest in y o u. I want to see you make use of your talents—get something out of them.”
    Strange, she thought abstractedly, that he had never before seemed to realize she had any talents. The same thought evidently occurred to him.
    “I didn’t know you could sing—I mean, not like that. Look— Candy , are you listening to me?”
    As she looked at him her eyes were almost expressionless. “I’m listening, John.”
    “I want you to do as I say. Go to London and see this fellow’s representative-—have an audition. Before you know where you are you’ll be in Rome, training for La Scala.”
    “I don’t want to go to Rome,” she told him. “I don’t want to be a singer.” Deep inside her, something seemed to add that just now she didn’t want to be anything. Existence itself looked unbearably drab.
    “But why not at least give it a try? If nothing else, it’d be an experience.”
    And it might salve your conscience, she thought wearily. Suddenly everything seemed clear. While he was in Rome, something—or someone—very important had happened to John, and now, because of it, he saw everything in life differently. In particular, he saw her, Candy, differently—or rather, perhaps, he hardly, saw her at all, except as a being towards whom he felt a duty.
    And all this meant that for her, too, life was different. So different that it hardly had any meaning left. Without John, she had no desires or ambitions, no hopes ... or even fears. In fact she found it difficult, suddenly, to imagine the future at all. By far the easiest thing, since she had no wishes of her own, would be to fall in with the suggestions of others. And since