A Song for Summer (32 page)

Children came to the kitchen, offering to help, but she only loaded them with food and sent them upstairs again. She was content to be alone and glad to be out of the way, for she knew all too well what was happening--not on the noisy terrace, but in the hastily erected marquee in the jousting ground where Bennet, with the assistance of the landlord and chef of the Krone, was entertaining the most extraordinary collection of Toscanini Aunts ever assembled in Hallendorf.

It had been the most amazing and unexpected thing: now, when Bennet had abandoned all hope of interesting anyone in the significance of the school, Aunts--and indeed Uncles--of the highest stature had appeared from everywhere. The director of the Festspielhaus in Geneva had been seen lumbering over the muddy boards at the lake's edge, scrambling for a place in the lighter which would take him to the boat. The manager of the Bruckner Theatre in Linz, to whom Bennet had written vainly two years before, had puffed his way up to the grotto, writing in his notebook-- and Madame Racelli, of the Academy of the Performing Arts in Paris, had cantered in her high heels and silver fox stole across the meadows, so as to miss no moment of what was going on.

The kitchen door opened and Lieselotte came in. She had changed into her dirndl, but the flush of happiness was still on her cheeks.

"I've come to help," she said, reaching for her apron and tying it round her waist.

"No, you haven't. You're going straight back up to dance with all your suitors and be the belle of the ball.

This is your night, Lieselotte, and I don't want you down here."

Lieselotte took not the slightest notice. She had taken up a knife and begun to slice the rolls. "We need more of the salami ones-- Chomsky's eaten three already."

"Lieselotte, I am your supervisor and

I order you to go back and dance," said Ellen. Lieselotte put down her knife.

"Yes, you are my supervisor, but also, I think ... you are my friend? And I want to be with you tonight."

But this was a mistake. Ellen's defences crumbled; tears gathered in her eyes--and nothing could be sillier, for she had known--everybody knew --that Marek was leaving the following day, that his boat sailed in a week--and that Brigitta Seefeld, the mightiest and most redoubtable of the uninvited "Aunts", had come to fetch him.

Marek's abrupt departure from Vienna had infuriated Benny and Staub, puzzled the musical establishment, and caused Brigitta to erupt into a series of violent scenes.

"How dare he treat me like that?"' she raged. "He begs to spend the night with me and then goes off as if I was a plaything!"

Then, about a week after his disappearance and shortly before he was due to sail, Benny called at Brigitta's apartment in an obvious state of excitement.

"Do you know where he is?"' he asked her, shooing away the masseuse.

"Where?"'

"In Hallendorf. Where they all swore they'd never heard of him. And do you know what he's doing?"'

"What?"'

"Writing music for a local pageant. For some obscure saint called Anabella or something."

"I don't believe it."

"It's true. I had it from Ferdie Notar at the Central who heard it from the clarinettist of the Philharmonic who heard it from the director of the Klagenfurt Academy."

"But that's ridiculous. Marcus hates all that sort of thing--villagers with fat legs and mud and everything going wrong." Brigitta's mind was racing. Was he writing her music for some female yokel with blonde plaits and cow's eyes?

"I checked with the Klagenfurt tourist board."

"I'm going back, Benny," said Brigitta imperiously.

"Me too," said Benny. "I smell gold."

Unfortunately he was not the only one. There were too many rivals brought by rumours of Altenburg's involvement in the proceedings. The director of the Festspielhaus, sitting across the table, had a nasty glitter in his eyes.

But with Brigitta to help him, with her influence over Marcus, he was bound to succeed. Staub wasn't much use--he'd insisted on coming but he thought of nothing except his libretto. It was Brigitta who would carry the day.

"I tell you, Marcus, the piece is made for the States," he said now. "They'd gobble it up. A music theatre piece with a message ... You might think they'd object to God and peasants and so on, but I promise it's not so. People always turn to religion when they think there might be a war."

Marek smiled at him lazily. "That's very

kind of them--but I'm afraid what they think about God or peasants has nothing to do with anything. The music for the pageant stays here. It was written for these people at this moment of time. They can use it again or not, but it's theirs."

Benny put down his glass. "For heaven's sake, Marcus, be reasonable. Don't you see how you'd be helping them here if your piece became known all over the world? Think of Oberammergau. You've only got to score that theme you wrote for the saint for Brigitta and it would be a sensation."

"Possibly," Marek agreed, but he did not seem disposed to continue the conversation, and the director of the Festspielhaus now leant across the table to put in his own bid.

"I'd be prepared to put it on with all the actors--everyone from here who took part in it. That way it would stay in Europe."

Brigitta glared at him and put her hand on Marek's arm. It was time to assert her personal dominion over the composer.

"Darling, you can't just keep your work hidden away, you know that really. It belongs to the world. You've no right to keep it to yourself."

"I shan't be doing that. The population of Hallendorf is considerable."

"Well then, at least rescore that incredible theme--it would work marvellously on its own."

"I've done that already," said Marek. "But that too stays here."

Brigitta's eyes narrowed. For whom had he written that amazing tune? Who was behind the whole escapade? She had seen Lieselotte come out of her house at the beginning of the pageant with a certain relief--the girl was hardly more than a child, a peasant through and through. Brigitta had watched her like a hawk afterwards, but she'd made no attempt to come up to Marek--it was her own family she sought out.

But if not Lieselotte, then who? Not that ridiculous Russian woman drifting about in a shroud, not the pretty Norwegian, she was sure of it. No, there could be no one; not in that crazy school, nor in the village. She was silly even to think of it.

"You wrote that melody for me, didn't you? I know you did. It falls exactly for my voice."

She sang a few bars of the slow, ascending phrase to which the girl emerges into the sunlit morning, and she was right. The silvery, ethereal notes rose in the evening air and the people sitting close by fell silent.

Marek's face was closed; a mask; he hated what he had to do.

"No, Brigitta, I didn't write it for you. If I wrote it for anyone--if that's how it works and I'm still not sure--I wrote it for a girl who had no part in the pageant, whom nobody saw, who did not act or sing or play an instrument ... and who is not here now at the party but in the kitchen, making the food we are eating."

Brigitta's cry of fury and revelation rent the air.

"The cook!" she cried. "You wrote that music for the cook!"

"Yes."

It could have gone either way. Marek, certainly, was braced for pathos and tears--and they would have been justified, for she would have made a lovely thing of Aniella's music. But the fates who had smiled on Hallendorf all day still looked benignly on the inhabitants. Brigitta did not weep or beseech as she had done after the opera. She rose, expanded her well-documented ribcage--and exploded into righteousness and rage.

"How dare you insult me like that? How dare you beg for a place in my bed and then go and sport with domestics? I offered you my art and my love and you go off to roll in the gutter. Well, do it then --make Kn@odel with your cook, but don't come running back to me. When I think what I was prepared to do for you!" She turned majestically to Staub. "Go on. Remind him of what I was prepared to do!"

"She was prepared to huddle," said Staub weakly.

"I was prepared to huddle," repeated Brigitta, to the interest of those in earshot. "But not now. Not ever again. Get the driver, Benny-- we're leaving."

But this was not so simple. Infected by the day's proceedings, the taxi driver had pinned Hermine against the wall of the Greek temple, where he was outlining the plot of a possible music drama based on his grandmother's experience with her husband's ghost, and made it clear that he was in no way ready to depart.

It was after midnight when Ellen was finished.

Now she sat on the rim of the well where she had sat at the beginning, garnering gym shoes. Fireflies danced in the catalpa tree; an owl hooted--perhaps the same one which Marek had shown her how to feed. The music still came faintly from the terrace, but the younger children were in bed; the party had moved on to the village and would continue until dawn. Enough light came from the upstairs window to show her the outline of the wheel on the coach house roof. Would they come next year, the storks--and would there be anyone left to welcome them?

He came upon her quietly, but she knew his step and braced herself. This was where one let love go lightly--bade it goodbye with an open hand in the way the detestable Brigitta had sung about. And seeking help, she called up her pantheon of people who had behaved well as she now had to do: Mozart's sister, as talented as he was, who had disappeared uncomplainingly into oblivion and domesticity; Van Gogh's brother Theo, always helping, sending money, asking nothing for himself.

But there are times for thinking about Mozart's sister, and a night full of fireflies and stars did not seem to be one of them. Marek had sat down beside her and the memory of Kalun, his arms round her, the place on his shoulder made specially to fit her head, made her close her eyes.

"I've brought you some news," he said. "Isaac is safe."

She looked up then. "Oh, that's wonderful. I'm so glad!"

"They hope to get him across to England, so your family may be hearing from him soon."

"They'll help him, I promise you."

"You know that Isaac is in love with you," he said abruptly.

She sighed. "He was afraid; I helped him--he was bound to feel that. I explained it all to Millie. But now that he's safe--"'

"I'm not so sure." He was silent for a moment. Then: "If he asked you to marry him would you accept?

Could you be persuaded to?"'

"What?"' she asked stupidly. The question made no sense to her.

"Your friend Kendrick came to see me in Vienna. He told me you were in love with someone else. I thought it might be Isaac."

But even as he spoke he realised that her answer did not matter. Whatever she might say about Isaac was irrelevant; the time for chivalry was past. When he had first seen her by the well he'd thought of her as a girl in a genre painting: as Seamstress or Lacemaker--but he'd been wrong. She was a Lifemaker; he'd seen that watching her ceaseless, selfless work for the pageant. Had his friend still been in danger Marek might have continued to stand aside, but not now. Isaac must take his chance.

Ellen had shrunk away from him. "I don't know why you're putting me through all this," she said, her voice full of bewilderment. "When you know--"' she broke off, reaching for the tatters of her pride. "I've never asked you for anything. I've always known that you were going to America with Brigitta ... and that no one who doesn't understand about ... enharmonic intervals and tritones ... and species counterpoint can matter seriously to you. But--"'

"You're so right," interrupted Marek earnestly. "So absolutely right! The idea of sharing my bed and board with someone who doesn't understand tritones and enharmonic intervals is absolutely abhorrent to me. I can conceive of nothing more dreadful. I am particularly attached to conversations about enharmonic intervals before breakfast--and species counterpoint too, though in general I prefer to discuss that in my bath."

She looked up, trying to read his voice. He had bent down to pick up a tin punched with holes which he handed her.

"I've brought you a present."

"Not a frog? Because I don't kiss them, if you remember, so it would be a waste."

"No, not a frog. Open it."

She could not clearly see the flowers lying on the damp moss, but she could smell them--and Henny had been right. Only in heaven could one find such a scent.

"Sister Felicity told me where to look for them. I only brought a few; they're getting rare."

She couldn't speak. Any other farewell present she could have taken lightly, but not this.

Marek had risen and now stood looking down at her.

"I'm leaving in the morning," he said. "Yes, I know."

"But not for America."

"Oh? Why not?"'

He shrugged. "I don't really know. I suppose you could say that I have decided to stay and share the fate of my countrymen."

She took a steadying breath. "Where to, then?"'

"To Pettelsdorf," he said, using the old name for his home. "And I want you to come."

Mozart's sister vanished into the shadows; Van Gogh's brother dematerialised. Joy exploded and the night stars sang.

"To see the storks?"' she asked. "That also," said Marek--and pulled her to her feet.

Tamara, alone of those at Hallendorf, had had a frustrating and unpleasant day. Not one of the Toscanini Aunts had noticed her or asked about her career. She had been presented simply as the headmaster's wife and then ignored.

Well, now Bennet should make it up to her; he should make her feel special and wanted again. In the bedroom, with its windows over the courtyard, she took the record of the Polovtsian dances out of the sleeve, sharpened the fibre needle of the gramophone, took off her dress.

Bennet turned from the window to find the proceedings well under way. But this time he did not view them with his usual mixture of dread and resignation. Instead he smiled pleasantly at his wife and said:

"Not tonight, dear. I'm rather tired."

He did not, however, show any particular signs of fatigue. Instead he walked past Tamara, who was in the act of unstoppering the Bessarabian Body Oil, and made his way downstairs.