Eva Ibbotson - A Song For Summer

“Is it she who teaches eurythmics?”’ asked Ellen.

“Yes it is.”

Ellen nodded. “You’ve been extremely kind to tell me all this.”

She sent Ellen away comforted, but Margaret had not comforted herself. Why did I leave my peaceful plum-coloured girls? she wondered, rinsing the teacups. What am I doing here, eating my heart out for a small, bald man who’s shackled to a cabbage?

The morning after Margaret’s revelations, Ellen got up early and went down to the store rooms and fetched a tin of white paint, two large paintbrushes and a bottle of turpentine.

She had told Bruno what she was going to do and had left it to him whether he accompanied her or not. She did not really expect him to-Bruno liked his sleep. She had been determined to make Bruno undo his handiwork-her vision for Hallendorf did not include the defacement of Greek temples; but now that she had met Tamara, Ellen felt different. Tamara had stood over an empty cradle and wept, and whenever Ellen wanted to hit her, which she suspected would be often, she would think of this and refrain.

But however careful she intended to be about Tamara, Ellen considered that any lesson she gave, whether it was eurythmics (about which Ellen was still hazy) or anything else, would be hard for anyone to bear, and certainly for a boy like Bruno who had set himself up as a muscle man destined for the army. So she was prepared to paint out what he had written on her own account.

But when she reached the little temple, set so romantically on the edge of the lake, she found Bruno waiting on the steps.

“What have you got?”’ he said, coming over to inspect the paint pot and brushes. “Seems OK. I’ll have the bigger one.”

He took the bigger brush, added a small amount of turps to the paint in the tin, nodded. He seemed to have forgotten about the punitive aspects of the expedition and to be interested technically in the job in hand. As he began to sweep the paint across the letters on the wall, Ellen stood for a moment watching. He was handling the paint easily, in sweeping broad brushstrokes but covering evenly. She had expected to do the bulk of the work herself, but soon found herself in the role of assistant. It occurred to her also that the letters they were eliminating were not scrawled on in the usual way of graffiti; they were stylishly painted andwitha considerable panache.

“It’s a mess,” said Bruno when they’d finished. “The rest of it will have to be done over. You leave the paint here, I’ll see to it.”

Ellen, about to argue, decided to obey. It was Sunday-Bruno would not miss any lessons. “I’ll bring you some breakfast,” she said.

But later that afternoon she went to find Rollo, the Art and Design master, who was making frames in the studio.

“I wanted to ask you about Bruno.” She told him about the morning’s work. “He seems so good at painting, so assured.”

“Don’t talk to me about that blasted child,” said Rollo, a red-haired Welshman with a wide grin and a beer paunch. “I could kill him.” He walked over to his cluttered bench, opened a drawer. “Look at this!”

He pulled out a tattered exercise book, filled with sums, most of which had been marked wrong by Jean-Pierre in red ink. “Look at the cover.”

Ellen looked. Scrawled in pencil were kittens that leapt from baskets, were folded hands, were Jean-Pierre’s head in profile and the unfurled ends of Sophie’s pigtails as she leant over her desk.

“He can draw anything but he won’t. If you catch him unaware he’ll doodle like this but I can’t make him do anything in the classes. Just glares and acts dumb sullen. When we’re doing designs for the plays he’ll put on glue or hammer the flats, but if you try and make him create something original he just pushes off.”

“But why?”’

“Have you ever heard of Klaus Feuermann?”’ Ellen screwed up her forehead. “Is he a painter?”’

“Yes. A fashionable one; quite talented but an idiot: goes round in a cape and a great hat pretending to be Augustus John. Bruno’s his son and the poor little brat spent the first six years of his life being a putto. You know, those fat things with dimpled bums they have on painted ceilings. All Feuermann’s kids were used as models, and he had plenty, by plenty of women. You can see Bruno on the ceiling of the Zurich Odeon and in the Guildhall in Rotterdam and God knows where else. When he wasn’t a putto he was slapped on the knee of some woman, having to be the Baby Jesus, or hung from the top of a four-poster being Cupid shooting his arrows. By the time he was ten he wouldn’t go near a picture and all he did when the kids teased him was to fight them. That’s why he wants to be a soldier and acts the tough. But I can tell you, Ellen, it’s bloody frustrating. This place needs talent.”

“Yes,” said Ellen. “I see.”

“For God’s sake don’t tell him I told you. Don’t tell anyone. I only found out because I’m in the business. Bennet knows, but no one else. He’s run away from three schools because the kids found out and teased him.”

“I promise I won’t. Thanks, Rollo.” At the door she turned. “You know, I sort of pledged myself when I came here to love the children-all of them, however awful they seemed-and I think I might manage it. But to love the parents… that’s going to be the problem.” She gave a shake of the head and was gone.

If no one had spoken of Tamara before her return, both children and staff spoke frequently and willingly of Marek Tarnowsky.

“He’s got this amazing trick,” said Frank. “If you blindfold him-really properly with layers and layers of stuff-and make him sit with his back to you and then you get a lot of twigs and swish them through the air he can tell you what they are.”

“It’s true,” agreed Janey.

“He’ll just say “oak” or “ash” or “birch” — he doesn’t make a mistake once. He says they just sound different.”

“And he dredged up the duck punt-it was a complete wreck-and sawed some new planks and caulked it—”’

“He didn’t do it by himself,” one of the other boys put in. “We helped him.”

“Yes, but he really knew what to do and it’s afloat now and it’s much the best boat.”

Sophie said that Marek was a person who found things.

“What sort of things?”’ asked Ellen. “Oh… mouse’s nests and fireflies… and stars with their proper names. And when he shows you it’s like getting a present.”

A shy French boy, who spoke little English, said Marek had made him understand what fencing was about. “It is not… that one only tries to hit others. It is a system of the body.”

Ellen herself had seen Marek’s spoor everywhere. In the prop he had made for the aged catalpa tree in the courtyard, in the rim of the fountain he had repaired, in the newly built frames in the kitchen garden.

So she was surprised that one child seemed to hate him. Leon did not only criticise Marek; he spoke of him with an anger which startled Ellen and alarmed her.

“He’s not honest. He’s a liar and a cheat.”

“What on earth do you mean?”’

“He just is,” said Leon. He had come from the practice rooms where she had heard him wrestling with a Beethoven sonata. “He absolutely hates music-he rushes away when the recorder group plays or they’re rehearsing the choir. So what is he doing driving about the country collecting folk songs; just tell me that?”’

“He’s only acting as Professor Steiner’s chauffeur.” And as Leon continued to glare and mutter: “No one could be a liar and do what he did for Achilles,” said Ellen, for whom the tortoise had become a kind of talisman. “You’d have to practically become a tortoise to do that.”