Eva Ibbotson - A Song For Summer

Marek would like it, thought Ellen, while the children exclaimed. Except that Marek will never see it, she told herself-but the smile persisted, as though the memory of that kiss in the garden could not be set aside. She could not hear from him till he was back from Poland but after that… Surely before he sailed he would write to her once, or even come, if only to give her news of Issac. It seemed impossible that the whispered pre-dawn farewell for the three of them could be the last goodbye.

Meanwhile, as always, there was work and the need to console others. Bruno, her hair sorted, retreated into his usual uncooperative state, denying the slightest artistic ability and refusing to help poor Rollo who had been informed by FitzAllan that the masks he had made for the animals were not suitably monolithic and drab.

“If you’ve ever seen a monolithic and drab piglet I’d like to see it,” said Rollo angrily.

Hermine had been told by the director not to feed her baby in the theatre. “I think he does not like my bosom,” said Hermine, coming tearfully to Ellen. “And this I understand. I do not like it myself,” she said mournfully, looking down at her cleavage, “but I cannot leave Andromeda so far away. Of course I should not have let the Professor overcome me—”’ But at this point Ellen changed the subject, for she could not bear Hermine’s remorse over her seduction by the Vocal Rehabilitation expert who had drunk too much gentian brandy at the conference in Hinterbruhl.

“I could put ground glass into his nut cutlet?”’ suggested Lieselotte, who had taken against the director from the start. She was particularly incensed when she compared the demands FitzAllan was making with the cheeseparing that went on in the village about Aniella’s name day celebrations. “Every year we say we will do something really nice for her and every year people are too lazy or too tired or too poor.”

FitzAllan had of course rung the slaughterhouse to check about the foot and mouth disease and found out the truth, and what he regarded as Ellen’s collusion with Marek in tricking him, and had scarcely spoken to her since.

Fortunately Chomsky, when she visited him, was improving. Not to the extent of returning to school but to the point where there was no longer any question of anyone taking him to a foreign place and asking her for his passport.

It was when she had been back for a week that Ellen realised that her ability to cope and comfort others had had an underlying cause. That somehow, against all reason and sense, she believed that she would see Marek again. That the time she had spent with him in the garden at Kalun had meant to him, perhaps not what it had meant to her-he was after all an experienced man with many affairs to his credit-but something. It was as though she was unable to conceive that this sense of total belonging, this mingling of utter peace and overwhelming excitement, was something she had felt all by herself.

As the days passed and she realised he must have returned from Poland she found herself waiting in the morning for the post bus-not now to console Freya if there was no news from Mats, or Sophie vainly awaiting a letter from her parents, but on her own account, and beneath the longing-a longing the depth of which she could not have imagined-there was anger. For she remembered very well what she had said to Bennet during her first interview when he asked her what she was afraid of. “Not seeing,” she had said. “Being obsessed by something that blots out the world. That awful kind of love that makes leaves and birds and cherry blossom invisible because it’s not the face of some man.”

Now, when she had a rare moment to herself, it was Marek’s face that she saw again and again as he paused in front of her door in the hotel corridor and said: “Ellen, if I were to ask you—”’

And then the door of Isaac’s room had burst open and poor Isaac came out trussed up in bandages and by the time she had helped him, Marek was gone.

What had he been going to say? Sometimes, deliriously, she thought it was “If I were to ask you, would you come to America?”’ or “If I asked you, would you stay with me tonight?”’, and to both those questions she would have answered “Yes” with every cell and fibre in her body.

But as the days went by and she heard nothing, she knew it could have been neither of those things. At the most perhaps he wanted her to look after the tortoise or see to Steiner’s bandages.

She did in fact go and see Steiner whenever she could; she had become extremely fond of the old man, but he too had heard nothing.

Then, about ten days after her return, she was coming off the steamer with a basket full of shopping, when Sophie ran towards her, waving a letter.

“It’s just come for you! It’s Express and Special Delivery and everything!”

Ellen put down her basket. For a moment she experienced a joy so pervasive and complete that she was surprised she had not been borne aloft by angels. Then she took the letter.

The joy died more gradually than she expected. Though she saw almost at once that the letter was from Kendrick, the message reached her brain only slowly. She was still smiling when she opened it, though the tears already stung her eyes.

“I’m awfully sorry to bother you again, Ellen,” Kendrick had written, “but it would be so lovely if you could come to Vienna and I still haven’t heard. Even if you’d just come for the weekend-I’ve got a surprise for you on Saturday night as I told you; something at which you could wear the amazing dress you made for your graduation. It would make me so happy and there is so much to see.”

“Is it from the man in the wet house?”’ asked Sophie, who seemed to be developing second sight.

Ellen nodded and handed her the letter. She still couldn’t trust herself to speak. Sophie obediently read through Kendrick’s hopes and his expectations of the cultural life in Vienna, but when she lifted her head again she had to draw a deep and unexpected breath. Ellen had always looked after them; now, suddenly, she had an intimation of a different state; a state in which she and her friends might have to look after Ellen.

And growing up a little, she said briskly: “Lieselotte’s waiting for the icing sugar,”- and saw Ellen bend to pick up her basket-and her life.

The letter Ellen had been waiting for came the next day-not to her but to Professor Steiner.

“He wrote it from Pettelsdorf,” said the old man gently and put it in her hand.

This time she was forewarned. There was no hope, no expectation of angels bearing her aloft.

“Isaac got away safely down river,” Marek had scrawled. “I’ve confirmed my passage and am sailing on the tenth from Genoa. Please say goodbye to Ellen for me once again and thank her for me. I shall always be in her debt and in yours. Marek.”

The following morning Bennet sent for her. “The children tell me you’ve been invited to Vienna.”

“Yes.”

Damn, thought the headmaster. Damn, damn, damn. He had seen it happening but he had hoped somehow that she would be spared. She will get over it; she will light her lamp again, he told himself-but it had been the brightest, loveliest lamp he had seen in years.

“I think you should go,” he said. “It’s only a weekend, and you’d be back for the play.”

“I’ve just been away.”

“But you still have time off owing to you. Freya will look after your children.”

“Very well,” she said listlessly. “Sophie tells me that you have a dress?”’

She managed a smile then. “Yes,” she said. “Sophie is right.” She lifted her head, and the smile became a proper one. “I definitely have a dress.”

Brigitta’s persuasions in the café at St Polzen had been ineffectual. The intrigues of the gala interested Marek not at all and he felt no obligation to involve himself in her affairs.