Mary Ann and Miss Mozart by Ann Turnbull Read Free Book Online Page A

possessions. There was a bed, a press, a cupboard, a music stand, a table and two chairs, cooking pots and a kettle. And all around the walls and on the mantelpiece and shelves were displayed playbills, engravings, open fans, a plume of feathers, a crimson shawl. The bed was curtained off, but the cooking area by the fireplace was open to the room.
    Mrs. Corelli put the kettle on a trivet over the fire, then took a small key from a bag at her waist and unlocked a little black lacquered tea caddy. Mary Ann felt privileged to be given tea, which was so expensive.
    “It’s cosy here. I like it,” she said, watching Mrs. Corelli measure a spoonful of tea into the warmed pot.
    “But hardly what you are accustomed to?”
    “Well…until Hatty and I were put together, I had a bedroom all to myself…”
    “In a big house, with servants to wait on you?”
    “Yes.”
    “I might have had the same, if I had not followed my heart.”
    Mary Ann had already noticed, in a frame on the wall opposite, a small painting of a young man, dark and slightly foreign-looking.
    “Is that Mr. Corelli?” she asked.
    “Yes.” Mrs. Corelli placed two cups of tea on the table. The cups were cracked but pretty. Mary Ann’s had medallions painted on it enclosing scenes of cupids and goddesses.
    “My husband was a singer,” Mrs. Corelli explained. “Italian. He had a fine voice and was much sought after by the opera companies.”
    “He was famous?” Mary Ann was entranced. “How did you meet? Where?” In her excitement she quite forgot to be deferential to her teacher.
    Mrs. Corelli did not seem to mind the informality. “At Drury Lane Theatre,” she said. “I was a singer too.”
    “Oh! I knew it!” exclaimed Mary Ann. Mrs. Corelli was no longer young, but she moved like an actress and her dress was always a little more flamboyant than you’d expect in a teacher. (“She knows how to wear a shawl,” Sophia had said once). “Were you famous?”
    “A little, for a while.”
    She opened a drawer and brought out a green cloth-covered box. Inside were old tickets, advertisements, playbills, prints of engravings.
    “Here is all my life, and my husband’s, on the stage.”
    Mary Ann leafed through them: “… The Beggars’ Opera …the part of MacHeath played by Enrico Corelli” … “Enrico and Jane Corelli” … “the celebrated Mr. Corelli…” … “Mrs. Corelli excels as Margarita…”
    “Oh! This is wonderful!” She sighed. “I wish I might do the same!”
    “It did not last long,” said Mrs. Corelli. “We had some good years. But now, you see, I am a widow, and my voice and looks are not what they were, and my home is this little room…”
    “I love your room!”
    Mrs. Corelli laughed. “So do I, my dear! It’s my haven. But you know, the stage is a difficult life without much reward for most people. And to achieve even a small success you must work hard, and practise daily, and above all be ready! Never give up hope.”
    A bell rang far below, and she stood up. “We shall practise again on Wednesday, and you will be in good voice and dry-eyed. Is that agreed?”
    “Yes, Mrs. Corelli.”
    She went out. The bell meant it was time for the afternoon break, and the girls would be gathering in the dining room for lemonade. Well, she didn’t need any; she’d had tea! She went into the dormitory and sat on her bed and pulled out the Ranelagh ticket from its crack in the panelling. She gazed at the nymph in her swirling drapery and Pan playing his pipes, and imagined just such a ticket announcing her own appearance as the nymph Galatea.
    Mrs. Corelli had cheered her up and made her feel that anything was possible. She saw now that she needed to work to make her own fortune. If her parents could not pay, she must find the money for next term herself in the only way she knew: she must sing for the money.

Chapter Nine

    Plans
    “I guessed, the first time I saw her!” declared Sophia, when Mary Ann told the other