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Covent Garden is a surprisingly busy place, even for the premier of an opera that Edward has heard is — or has been — eagerly awaited in England. He is as glad as ever of James’ company; of his happiness to push through people who seem determined to stop and chat for hours on end in the middle of narrow and busy corridors. James is no doubt as glad of Edward’s company as Edward is glad of his, because without somebody to prod him James will almost certainly fall asleep mid-way through the piece.
The fellow that Edward had ‘met’ (and then subsequently more than met a few times over the next couple of months until they had tired of each other) who had been the one to mention Ernani to him had been quite sniffy about it. That had been his opinion of most of Signor Verdi’s works; but that is an opinion with which Edward thinks he can sympathise.
“What’s this piece… about, then?” James asks as they make their way to their seats.
“The King of Spain hiding in a cupboard to spy on some woman’s interactions with her bandit lover, as far as I know,” Edward says.
“Sounds scandalous.” James sits down. “I imagine it will all be presented under a thick veil of implication. Nothing more interesting than touching a hand, I expect.”
Edward has chosen seats where they won’t be likely to be seen — not the more expensive boxes but they had still cost him a pretty penny. Certainly more than he would have been willing to stretch to under ordinary circumstances over the last eighteen months. The view of the stage is, in Edward’s opinion, subpar. He assumes that it would be much the same in any of the other boxes but he feels the slightest bit cheated no less.
“It’s a shame that I never learned Italian, really,” Edward says. He sits down on what is at least a relatively comfortable chair and looks first towards the stage and then at James. “A — ah — a friend of mine who speaks the language fluently told me that there’s always something missing from the translations that they use at these places.”
James raises his eyebrows a little at the mention of Edward’s ‘friend’. Edward is not actually glad not to be in contact with that ‘friend’ any more — he had been perfectly good company — but he had clearly been looking for something more than Edward had been. At least they hadn’t ended it with too much animosity. A bit of awkwardness, perhaps, but nothing worse than that.
“Perhaps you’ll have something to talk about on this next ship of yours, since we’re seeing this today,” James suggests. “That’s what Commissioned Officers are supposed to talk about, isn’t it?” he asks.
“I’ll have been a Lieutenant for nearly eight years by the time we depart, you know,” Edward teases back. “I can’t say I’ve met many other Lieutenants who are similarly interested.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Perhaps Ernani is just not George’s usual style where opera is concerned, or it might be that he is in the wrong frame of mind for seeing an opera at all with what has happened recently. Either way, right from the second that he first sets foot in the opera house at Covent Garden, George is filled with the sensation of something being very, very wrong.
He knows, he tries to tell himself, very little about Verdi. A friend of his brother’s had suggested that Ernani might be an acceptable first foray — he had seen it not in the translation that it will be presented in here but in the original Italian, in Italy, and he had had only good things to say. But George has his doubts about whether he should have believed that.
But he would believe, no less, that he had just tried to do this far too quickly. It hasn’t quite been a month since all the drama with John — or since the absence of any drama with John to indicate that what had happened was coming — and in truth George is still a lot more emotionally raw than he had expected to be. Not for himself — not just for himself, rather — but because he knows for a fact that even the most bottled-up people don’t just do as John had done.
He cannot, obviously, take any comfort in the fact that he and John will now be stuck with each other in the Arctic. If James’ original intentions for his own officers on board Erebus, had James and not Sir John been the one in command of the whole expedition, had come to pass then that would be one thing. But rather than that — rather than George being James Fitzjames’ second Lieutenant, along with Le Vesconte as his First and James Fairholme as his Third — he is to be the Second Lieutenant to Captain Francis Crozier, on board HMS Terror.
Crozier is not the problem.
Where George is concerned that is saying a lot.
Under any other circumstances, a Captain who reminded him that much of his father might be the end of George. Sir John had known his father, in fact, and that had been off-putting enough — not least because James had had to gently head Sir John off his conviction that Reverend Hodgson’s youngest child had been a daughter. George had not, in fact, been a daughter. But that message had taken a while to reach him, let alone anybody else — and thereafter it had taken a while for anybody to believe him.
John had certainly believed that George was not a woman, at least. In fact, John had apparently believed him enough to disappear into the night thanks to the stress of being interested in him. Or that is all that George can assume happened, in the absence of any further communication. They have been in the same place a few times since but the closest they have come to a conversation has been as awkward that George had begun to think that he had made up the whole sordid affair. That would probably have been better.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
There is one latecomer to Ernani. Or they are a relative latecomer — Edward is a lot more interested at present in people-watching than he is in the potential plot of the opera. There are still about three minutes to go before the evening’s entertainment commences, which is certainly later than would be acceptable in Naval circles.
But in civilian circles it is perfectly acceptable. And somebody in one of the boxes opposite the one that Edward and James are in arriving so close to the start of the opera is at least more interesting than anything else that Edward has been talking about.
“I shall be seriously surprised, by the way,” James says, “if this opera has a plot that is anything like as interesting as you have suggested that it will have.”
“I should have taken you to see Lucia,” Edward says, half-teasingly. “You would at least have found that interesting.”
“Go on?”
“Most of the last hour or so of the piece was taken up by the poor lead soprano going about in a wedding dress covered with the blood of her husband.” Just as Edward had expected, James looks very curious about that. “Her late husband, who she stabbed to death after having the marriage foisted upon her by her brother and the local priest.”
“That does sound—” James says. Then he turns his head to look down towards the stage, where Edward can make out the white head of the conductor in the pit where he has just arrived. “Oh.” He nods. “You shall have to carry on telling me about this more interesting opera during the interval,” James laughs.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
It must just be that George had got to his seat not even five minutes before the start of the opera. It had thrown him an almost startling amount to have his usually well-kept routine rearranged like that and now, in the auditorium, he can feel that he isn’t completely back to his right mind again. It’s embarrassing, he supposes, but no more or less embarrassing than what had happened with John.
And, of course, he is still dwelling on John and how much he wants to see John again — and how much he has absolutely no desire ever to see him again. That is certainly enough to distract him as the orchestra tunes up and it is enough to distract him throughout the equally dull early scenes of the opera.
Verdi clearly is not George’s natural milieu where opera is concerned. That is all that he can think, because he cannot focus for even a second on the opera: not for the first act. He chuckles politely with the rest of the audience when the King’s apparent ‘deceit’ — actually just wearing a hat — is revealed, and the rest of the cast kneels in appropriate supplication. He applauds the technically well-sung cadenza of the soprano’s aria even though the piece as a whole seems as though it lacks something.
It’s embarrassing.
It is.
George had come here in part because the opera was something that John had always admitted that he had no taste for. He had seen an opera precisely once, as he had said: Lucia di Lammermoor, and more because he liked the pre-existing story than because he cared to hear it sung to him. As such, even though he had enjoyed the music, John had thought (as he had told George) that he would have enjoyed it far more if not for the story, which he half-remembered and could not make sense of in translation. He just couldn’t sit still in the dark for that long and focus on one singular thing, or so he had explained, and even if the stories were fun he…
Quite clearly, George’s attention is not on the stage throughout the first act. The only point at which his ears perk up, as it were, is when the bass — an elderly man who is less noble and more stupid — sings his aria. First, he bemoans how his old age has left him still emotionally sensitive. Then, he describes his ability to wield a sword, in spite of his advanced years. After he discovers his far-younger fiancée being courted by two far younger men than he. The innuendo is not lost on George.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Ernani’s first act is, as Edward had anticipated, particularly stupid. But he and James are tragically deprived of the sight of the King hiding in a cupboard and eavesdropping: not that his operatic disguise is any better than that. Edward is sure that a hat would not be enough to disguise the Queen.
He isn’t too surprised when the rest of the opera is similarly as silly as the first act of the piece. He is surprised by the method by which Mister Verdi and his librettist, via Victor Hugo, choose to dispatch the characters who inevitably die by the end of the piece. He can tell, as they make their way out of the theatre and into the surprisingly chilly evening, that James is just as baffled.
“I suppose that these Italian writers must have rather a different idea of what constitutes a shocking plot to us,” James says. Edward laughs. “Although — I’m not sure. I suppose I would be surprised if my spouse responded to the sound of a hunting horn in the distance by immediately proceeding to stab himself to death.”
Edward laughs. He sees that the couple ahead of them on their way out of the theatre, who he and James had moved aside to allow out of the doors before them, had overheard their conversation. The woman chuckles too, and so does her husband. Then, they depart out of the large doors and into the night while Edward and James linger to recollect themselves.
“The horn seemed… contrived,” Edward agrees.
“The whole matter seemed contrived, Edward,” James says. “I did rather enjoy the King, though.”
“He did sing the role rather well,” Edward says with a nod.
And he supposes that one must remember the strange swing of recent politics in Italy when considering their operas. No doubt that’s the best explanation for it all — in as much as there is an explanation.
“I think I would have preferred your… blood-stained wedding dress piece that we were discussing before the curtain went up, though,” James says. “I’ll have to take you to see it when you get back at the other end.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
In spite of his determination not to think of John for the duration of the opera — and at any point besides that — George cannot stop himself from remembering things that John had told him over the course of their relationship. His father had been a friend of Sir Walter Scott’s, and so George supposes that that must be the reason that he is particularly on George’s mind.
Throughout the interval, George thinks that he would probably take Lucia di Lammermoor over Ernani, if he were given the option. He and John had talked about Lucia when they had been together — of course they had — and George still remembers being endeared by John’s puzzlement about the changes to the story, and by his curiosity about it. They had only listened to about ten minutes of it, as played by George on the piano before discovering it to be rather less simple a piano reduction than he could deal with. They had then found themselves getting distracted by each other.
John had been quite clear, after Easter Saturday, that that sort of thing would not be happening again in the future. He had not done so with words — and if he had just told George that he didn’t want to carry on with their association then that would probably have been bearable. It’s the sudden lack of any further contact, even eye contact, that stings. That and the fact that, even though they will be in the Arctic together and even though they had both been enthusiastic about that experience, it will likely be the worst few years of George’s life.
He finds himself only tolerating the second act of the piece, even after he had not found much to love about the first act. The wedding guests have lovely costumes, of course, each of which George imagines would have cost his entire salary to make and then his entire half-pay again to furnish with the appropriate gold and jewels and trimmings. They sing well, and so do the named characters — the quality of that is more than just acceptable.
George feels sick, for a reason that he cannot even begin to explain, when the lead tenor produces the hunting horn.
He has often been teased, either by his fellow officers or his friends and family members outside of the navy, for being something of a sensitive soul. And yet, there is something about the hunting horn — the horn that the tenor turns over to the bass with a promise that he, the tenor, would immediately kill himself if he heard it blown — that George knows he should find stupid. He knows that he would find it stupid, under any other circumstances.
He sees the way that the two men in the box opposite his glance at each other as the French Horn sounds in the pit. George knows himself well enough to know that he would probably be laughing privately along with them if he were not in the state of mind that he is in. That is the only explanation that George can think of for the sudden sensation of a fist closing around his throat; because nothing should be horrifying about this.
From that point, the whole opera gets a faint wash of another, far more sinister, colour. The election of Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor does not feel like a triumph. Nor do his declarations during his aria, that his name would live for centuries after his death. No, all that George can think of is a moth beating itself frantically against a window only to be swept away by a storm outside, never to be seen again.
The curtain finally comes down on the two lovers inevitably and strangely un-nervingly dead. The tenor stabs himself at the behest of the bass — who he had given the hunting horn in the first place — and his lover the soprano kills herself with the same dagger. George has always been sensitive to sound but that does not feel like it could be the only reason for his barely being able to bear the noise of the audience’s applause.
He looks down. It must be a trick of the light that it looks as though there is blood all over George’s hands. He blinks and looks away and looks back again to see nothing. But even then, he isn’t satisfied that he doesn’t have blood all over him — it had been so vivid that he couldn’t just have been seeing the auditorium lights reflected back as they hiss back into life again.
He can hear something. George is completely sure of that, even if he doesn’t know for a fact what the sound that is somewhere behind his ears is. He thinks for a second that his ears must just be ringing — he has been sensitive to just about anything that might make that happen ever since coming home in 1842 — but that usually stops within a few seconds. This sound, if George is indeed hearing anything at all, does not fade within the few seconds that he would ordinarily expect it to.
In fact, it gets louder as the rest of the noise in the auditorium fades to nothing with the departing audience. George has to shake his head almost violently to get the noise out of his head but just as he does — just as he gets up to leave — he realises what the sound is.