Eva Ibbotson - The Star of Kazan

Ellie was sitting at the kitchen table, reading the black recipe book which had belonged to her mother and her mother’s mother before her.

She’d got the book down because she wanted to check the quantities of sugar that were needed for some apricot preserve she was making. She had found the amounts almost at once, but now, some ten minutes later, she was still sitting with the book in front of her, and the page open at the entry that Annika had copied in on Christmas Eve.

‘A pinch of nutmeg will improve the flavour of the sauce,’ she read, for perhaps the hundredth time since Annika had gone.

Easter was over. On the Thursday before the holiday weekend, the emperor had given out purses to the poor and washed the feet of the twelve needy gentlemen who had been brought to him from almshouses in the city. Some of the needy gentlemen had enjoyed having their feet washed by the emperor, and some had not, but that was neither here nor there because the feet-washing was a tradition and had to be carried on.

After that, on Good Friday, the paintings and crucifixes in the churches had been shrouded in purple and the sounds of the street became muffled while the citizens mourned the death of Christ. And then on Easter Sunday the bells had pealed out joyously, there was music everywhere, the sun shone and everyone in Vienna seemed to have a new hat.

Ellie had done her best with Easter. She had not bought a new hat because her brown felt hat was only ten years old and had plenty of life in it still, but she had done all the things she had done the year before and the year before that. She had hard-boiled eggs for the little Bodek boys to paint; she had baked Easter muffins for Pauline and her grandfather, and a simnel cake for the professors, and she and Sigrid had taken flowers to the church.

But nothing gave her any joy.

‘I have to get over it,’ Ellie told herself. ‘It’s over two months since she went. Why doesn’t it get better?’

But it didn’t get better. If anything, missing Annika got worse.

There was a knock at the back door and Pauline came in carrying her scrapbook and a pot of glue. Since Annika had gone she came quite often to work in Ellie’s kitchen.

‘Have you had a letter?’ she asked.

Ellie closed the book. ‘No. Have you?’

‘No. And Stefan hasn’t either.’

‘It’s not so long since she wrote.’

‘It’s longer than it’s ever been,’ said Pauline. ‘Perhaps her mother has sent her into the forest with a huntsman and told him to kill her and bring back her tongue, like in the stories.’

‘For goodness’ sake, Pauline, what’s the matter with you? What have you got against Frau Edeltraut?’

‘She’s an aristocrat; they’re always doing things like that. Look at Count Dracula. And that horrible perfume she wears, like mangled wolves.’

But Sigrid came in at that moment and told Pauline to stop upsetting Ellie. Hating people helped some people, but it only gave Ellie a stomach ache.

Pauline put down her scrapbook and the pot of glue and reached for the scissors. She had found a story she liked very much, about a little boy who had climbed into a hot-air balloon and been carried away, but a crippled lady had raced after it in her wheelchair and managed to get hold of the rope and hold on…

For a while there was peace as Sigrid started on the ironing and Ellie went back to the stove. Then Professor Gertrude’s bell sounded from her bedroom. It was not her usual gentle ring but louder and more insistent.

‘Something’s the matter,’ said Sigrid.

They trooped out into the hall and found Professor Gertrude, still in her dressing gown and slippers.

‘It’s come!’ she said agitatedly. ‘I saw from the window! It’s come!’

No one asked what had come. Only one thing could make Professor Gertrude run round the hallway like a headless chicken, with her grey plait hanging down her back.

Her new harp. The great concert-grand harp ordered from Ernst and Kohlhart months ago; the largest and most valuable instrument of its kind in the city.

A ring on the front door was followed by a volley of thumps. Sigrid opened it to reveal an elegant delivery van with the words ‘Instrument Makers to the Imperial Court’ scrolled on the side, and two men wheeling an enormous wooden case towards them. It was painted a shining black, and the heavy clasps that fastened it were gold; it might have been the coffin of an exotic giraffe.

‘We’ll have to leave it at the door,’ they said. ‘We’ve got to take the trolley back,’ and with much muttering and heaving they set their load down on the pavement, presented Professor Gertrude with the receipt to sign, and pocketed their tip.

Professor Julian and Professor Emil were both out, but Gertrude knew exactly what to do.

‘Fetch Stefan,’ she ordered — and Pauline ran off across the square.

Stefan was always fetched when something heavy had to be dealt with; he was by far the strongest of the Bodek boys, and he came at once. Behind him, although he had told them to stay at home, ran two of his younger brothers, Hansi and Georg.

Sigrid had already moved the hall table and the umbrella stand. Ellie took away the potted palm.

‘You take the back end,’ Professor Gertrude ordered Stefan, ‘and I’ll take the front.’

‘Let me,’ began Sigrid, but Professor Gertrude waved her away.

Even for Stefan the weight was enormous, but he managed to lift the case, and Professor Gertrude, walking backwards, made her way upstairs. On the third stair her bedroom slipper came off, on the sixth she became entangled with her dressing-gown cord, but she carried on, stepping bravely backwards with her bare foot.

At the landing they stopped. Gertrude’s door was wedged open, but would the case go through?

‘I think it would be best to unpack it here,’ said Stefan, lowering the case.

On these matters Stefan was always listened to. Professor Gertrude took the keys hanging from one of the clasps and slowly, solemnly, she unlocked the case.

The inside, padded with gold-and-burgundy brocade, was unbelievably sumptuous. The harp itself was wrapped in a shawl of ivory silk, a present from the makers to those who bought this precious instrument.

Stefan lifted it out and carried it into Professor Gertrude’s room. Then he came out again, the door was shut, and everyone went back downstairs, knowing that this was a time when Gertrude needed to be alone.

In the kitchen, Ellie started to brew coffee and reached for the tin of biscuits, which she kept for the little Bodek boys, but when she turned round there was no sign of them. Stefan was there, and Pauline, but not Georg — and not Hansi, and this was strange because Hansi suffered terribly from hunger and usually stationed himself by Ellie’s biscuit tin as soon as he arrived.

‘They must have gone home,’ said Stefan. ‘I’ll go and see.’

He came back, looking puzzled. ‘They’re not there.’

They searched the downstairs rooms, the yard… But before they had time to become anxious, a kind of scrabbling sound came from the upstairs landing.

The harp case was where they had left it, flat on the ground. Sigrid lifted the lid. Inside the two little boys lay curled together like puppies.

‘It’s our house,’ said Georg blissfully. ‘It’s the best house in the whole world. We’re going to live in it for ever and ever.’

The following day was a Sunday and Pauline and Stefan set off early to tidy up the hut. Even though they couldn’t do plays without Annika, they still liked to use it for picnics and meetings with carefully chosen friends.

There were signs that the deserted garden was not going to be theirs for much longer. The barbed wire over the gate to the drive had been removed, perhaps to let the lorries through when the workmen came. Ye t on this fine spring morning it was still very quiet and very beautiful. There was dew on the grass; a thrush sang on a branch of the cedar.