Song Above the Clouds Read Online Free PDF Page B

she loved John—since, even now, she felt the urge to do what would make him happier—she might as well, she supposed, fall in with his suggestion. It would ease his conscien c e, that was obvious, and nothing else mattered very much.
    She would go to London and have this audition, if it were possible. Sue would probably be pleased, too. She might be successful, and she might not. But beyond the audition nothing mattered anyway, because beyond the audition John would not be involved.

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
    THREE weeks later, flying over the Alps on a cold, brilliant day of early winter, Candy found herself wondering, suddenly, what she was doing. Until that moment she had not thought much about it, for most of the time lately she had lived in a kind of daze, out of contact, almost, with reality, and the significance of what was happening in her life had glanced off her. But now, all at once, realization came to her—and with it a slight feeling of dizziness, and a sinking sensation in her stomach whic h she hadn’t even begun to feel when they were taking off.
    S he was on board an airliner bound for Rome, and with her, in the three or four ite ms of her not very smart luggage, she was carrying almost everything she posses s ed in the world. For her stay in Italy was likely to be a lengthy one, and there had been no point in leaving any of her things behind in England . .. even if she had been able to find accommodation for them, which would have been difficult. Her tiny flat in Kensington had been given up, and there was only Sue— she didn’t want to trouble Sue, who had put herself out quite enough already.
    There had been so much to do, so much to arrange in the course of this last fortnight, that without her sister Candy didn’t suppose she would possibly have been ready in time—not that that would have worried her v ery much, but it would, she knew, have worried Sue. The audition had been arranged so swiftly ... she had barely had time to think about it before she was su m moned to present herself at a rendezvous in Kensington, where she was to be met by an Italian gentleman known as Signor Maruga. Apparently—so Sue discovered—Signor Maruga was quite a well-known personality in the world of music, and his connections in Italy were even better known. In Italian eyes, as far as Sue could gather, they even had the edge on Signor Caspelli.
    Giacomo Maruga was short and plump, and he was gifted with a cherubic cheerfulness which Candy found oddly soothing. At the time of the audition she had had no nerves because, on the whole, it all meant very little to her, and yet at the same time she had done her best for Sue’s sake. The result had been that she had sung as she had never sung before, and Signor Maruga, his dark eyes sparkling with approval, had taken her hand in his and assured her that his good friend Lorenzo Galleo would certainly be delighted to see her in Rome. Everything that Signor Galleo could do to train her voice and shape her career would, he promised, be done, and she would have no need to trouble about finance.
    “A voice like yours, signorina ,” he had said, “is a gift from God—not only to you but to the whole world, if it is properly handled. It must be cherished, it must be brought to perfection—and that, signorina, you may safely leave to Lorenzo Galleo.”
    And so all the arrangements had been made—largely by Sue and Signor Maruga, who put their heads together and discussed things over Candy’s head very much as if she were already a temperamental, impractical prima donna who must not b y any account be worried with mundane trivialities. All of which was perfectly satisfactory as far as Candy was concerned, for she had no real interest in either the details or the main purpose of the adventure that lay ahead of her. She rather wished she didn’t have to go to Rome, for it was in Rome that that mysterious something had happened to John that had taken him away from her, but on the