Eva Ibbotson - A Song For Summer

“Goodness, can you drink that so early in the morning?”’

“Most certainly,” said Marek, raising his glass. “Water is for the feet!”

She had collected a posse of sparrows and pigeons with whom she was sharing her cake.

“Everything isn’t hungry, you know,” he pointed out. “Those carp, for example.”

“No,” she said. “Perhaps not. But everybody likes to eat.”

He watched her as she skilfully distributed the food so that even the bluetits at the back were not upstaged by the pigeons, and remembered her each night in the dining room, assessing, portioning out the food fairly, keeping order without ever raising her voice.

“You remind me of my grandmother,” he said. “She was English too.”

“Goodness! I didn’t know any part of you was English. Is that why you speak it so well?”’

“Perhaps. I spent a year in an English school. A horrible place, I must say.”

“Is she still alive your grandmother?”’ “Very much so.”

She waited, her head tilted so that a handful of curls fell over one shoulder. It was not a passive waiting and presently Marek conceded defeat and began.

“Her name was Nora Coutts,” he said, stirring his coffee. “And when she was twenty years old she went to Russia to look after the three little daughters of a general in the army of the Tsar. Only of course being British she used to go for long walks by herself in the forest; even in the winter, even in the rain.”

“Naturally,” agreed Ellen.

“And one day she found a woodcutter sitting in front of his brazier under a clump of trees. Only he didn’t seem to be an ordinary woodcutter. For one thing his brazier wasn’t burning properly and for another he was reading a book.”

“What was the book?”’

“The Brothers Karamazov. So my grandmother smelt a rat, and quite rightly, for it turned out that the young man was an anarchist who belonged to a freedom movement dedicated to the overthrow of the Tsar. He had been told to keep watch on the general and tell his superiors when it would be a good time to blow him up without blowing up his wife and children. They minded about blowing up women and children in those days,” said Marek, “which shows you how old-fashioned they were.

“Needless to say, my grandmother thought this was not a good idea, and by this time the young man had fallen in love with her because she had red hair and freckles and was exceedingly nice. But of course by refusing to blow up the general, he was in danger from the anarchists, so he and my grandmother ran away together and when they got to Prague they stopped running and settled in a pink house so small you could heat it with matchsticks, and gave birth to a daughter who grew up to write poetry and be my mother… And who, if you met her, you would probably like a lot.”

She waited to make sure he had finished. Then: “Thank you,” she said, “that was a lovely story. I liked it a lot.”

Marek leant back in his chair, pierced by a sudden regret. His time here was almost over; he was going to miss this untroubling and selfless girl.

“Come,” he said, “I’ve got something to show you.”

He led her back across the square and up a narrow street which sloped up towards the pastures. At the last house, with its lace curtains and pots of geraniums, he stopped and knocked.

A frail, elderly man with a limp came to the door and Marek said: “I’ve brought Fräulein Ellen to see your animals. Is it convenient?”’

The man nodded and led them through the front room into the kitchen with an extension built over the garden. On a large table were a number of wooden trays lined with layers of greaseproof paper.

“Herr Fischer makes them to sell in Klagenfurt but I thought you’d like to see them.”

But Ellen could scarcely speak; she was spellbound. The trays were full of rows and rows of little creatures made from marzipan. There were lions with wavy manes, and hedgehogs, each bristle as distinct as pins. There were squirrels crouching in the curve of their tails, and a dachshund, and piebald cows with tufts of grass held in their mouths. There was a frog with a golden chin and dark brown splodges, and a penguin, and a mouse with outsize whiskers…

“Oh!” Ellen turned to Herr Fischer.

“I can’t believe it! The colours… the detail… You must be so proud. I would give anything to be able to make those.”

He flushed with pleasure, then shrugged. “It’s just a question of time, Fräulein; patience and time.”

“No it isn’t. It’s a skill. It’s art.” She shook her head. “Is it the usual recipe-almond paste and egg white?”’

“Yes, but a softer mixture-and of course the colours are the difficulty. A good green dye…”

“Oh yes-green is so difficult!” Marek listened, amused, as they became technical.

As Ellen turned back for a last look at the trays, he saw on her face an expression he had known in a number of women: a degree of longing that could only be described as lust. He had seen it on Brigitta Seefeld’s face as she peered at a sable coat in a window in the Kärntnerstrasse, and on the face of the little Greek actress he had known in New York for a diamond brooch at Tiffany’s. Now he saw it on Ellen’s face as she gazed at Herr Fischer’s handiwork.

“They’re not for sale, I’m afraid,” said Marek. “They all go to the patisserie in Klagenfurt.”

“That’s true,” said the old man. “But I can spare one for the Fräulein. Not to buy, of course; a gift.” He stepped aside to let Marek see clearly. “If Herr Tarnowsky will pick one out.”

Marek moved forward. For a full minute he stood in silence. His hand hovered over a dementedly woolly lamb… rested momentarily above a blond snail with sky-blue eyes… and then came down with assured finality.

“This one, please,” he said, and Herr Fischer nodded, for even before he caught Ellen’s intake of breath he had known that she would want the smallest, the most unassuming, yet somehow the brightest of all the little creatures on the tray.

“When are you going to eat it?”’ teased Marek as they came out into the street.

“Eat it! Eat it!” said Ellen, outraged. “I’d rather die!”

Back in her room that evening she took her gift out of its fluted twist of paper and stood holding it in her hand. She had always loved ladybirds especially: the guardians of roses, heroes of children’s ditties and songs. If one flew up from your hand you could have a wish.

It had been a happy day. When she first came to Hallendorf she had been sure that Marek would help her and she had been right. He had helped her most truly and she was proud to have him for a friend.

These warming and uplifting sentiments ceased abruptly two days later when he threw one of her children into the lake.

It began with Leon’s gramophone. Along with the other expensive presents with which Leon was showered, he had a blue portable gramophone which had arrived by special carrier at the beginning of term. New records packed in corrugated cardboard were added by his doting mother almost weekly. Half of them arrived broken, but enough of them survived to turn Leon into something of a hazard as he played them over and over again and was moved on from the steps of the terrace, the common room and the bedroom he shared with Bruno and a French boy called Daniel.

During the week in which FitzAllan came to direct Abattoir Leon received another batch of records, among which was a group of songs by a composer of whom Ursula instantly disapproved because he was still alive.

“People who are alive can never write tunes,” she said.

And it was true that the Songs for Summer were unusual and strange. If they depicted summer it was not the voluptuousness of droning bees and heavy scents, but rather the disembodied season of clarity and light. The tunes carried by the solo violin which rose above the orchestra, and the silvery soprano voice, seemed to Ellen to be “almost tunes”-they appeared, stole into her ear, and vanished before she could grasp them.