Eva Ibbotson - A Song For Summer

Marek was only partly aware of the babble around him and her coy possessiveness. He was still with the orchestra as they followed him through the extraordinary richness and intricacy of the score. The performance had not been perfect: the più tranquillo before the Presentation of the Rose had been too drawn out-Feuerbach’s sentimentality could not be eradicated in an instant-but they had played like… well, like the Vienna Philharmonic.

But I’ll make my Americans just as good, he swore to himself, they can do it. He had missed the boat from Genoa but there was a faster one leaving from Marseilles; he would hardly be late.

Brigitta leant even closer against him; she had decided to make her sacrifice now, rather than in the privacy of her rooms, knowing how much it would please Staub who was sitting on her other side. Hitherto she had been firm in her refusal to portray Helen of Troy crouching in a state of terror in a doorway, but now…

“Darling,” she said confidingly to Marek. “I’ve decided. If you set the opera I’m prepared to do it. I’m prepared to huddle.”

Marek looked at her, trying to focus on her words. Benny had refilled his glass and he had not resisted, needing to unwind. The last time he had drunk champagne had been in the dining room at Kalun.

And at that moment, as if conjured up from that sulphurous place, he saw a girl in a white dress standing under a street lamp and staring at him through the glass.

“Excuse me,” he said and got to his feet. But when he reached the street she was nowhere. He must have been drunker than he realised.

“I’m sorry, Brigitta,” he said, sitting down again. “I thought I saw someone I knew.” And making an effort: “What was it you were telling me?”’

“That I was prepared to huddle,” said Brigitta crossly-but this time it did not sound the same.

Some two hours after the end of the opera, Kendrick was still pursuing suitable locales for his proposal of marriage. They had had supper in a restaurant on the Albertinaplatz, but as they came out and he saw, commanding a flight of steps, the equestrian statue of the Archduke Albrecht, his courage failed him. Close to, the horse reminded him too much of the horses his brothers had ridden at Crowthorpe. Their taunts at Kendrick as he repeatedly fell off a small Welsh pony, their efforts to make him less cowardly by tying him to a tree and galloping at him with home-made lances, came back to him as if it were yesterday, and now he suggested to Ellen that they take a stroll in the Burg Garten, where he had selected the Mozart Memorial as another suitable venue in which to declare himself.

“All right, Kendrick. But I’d like to get back soon-I’m rather tired.”

She was in fact having the greatest difficulty in connecting with what Kendrick was saying, or even hearing his voice, but she walked with him into the cool dark garden, where the sight of Austria’s best loved composer greatly cheered Kendrick, erasing the memory of his brothers, for in this man’s music there was a purity and goodness which must surely reach out and bless his enterprise.

But when they got closer Kendrick saw that the spirit of the composer was already blessing someone else-a youth in a loden jacket passionately embracing a plump and acquiescent girl-and there was nothing for it except to circle the gardens and come out again into the street.

The third of Kendrick’s chosen sites was the Donner Fountain in the Neuer Markt. It was on the way back to the hotel and the guide book spoke highly of it, but when he suggested to Ellen that they walk back to the Graben she turned to him and said: “Kendrick, I’ve got rather a headache. Do you think you could try and get a taxi? There are some in the Philharmonikergasse.”

“Yes… yes, of course.” Kendrick hid his consternation. People did propose in taxis, but not Frobishers; the possibility of being overheard by the driver put that entirely out of court.

They walked down the narrow street, approaching Sacher’s, where (as he was able to inform Ellen) Billroth had frequently breakfasted on oysters with Johannes Brahms. But Ellen, who had hitherto been so receptive to the information he offered her, seemed scarcely to take it in, and only asked him again to get a taxi. “Look, there’s one just coming in-I’ll wait while you run and get it.”

He had done as she asked and when he came back for her, he found her standing on the pavement outside the lighted windows of the famous restaurant looking so shaken and weary that all he could do was help her quickly into the car.

But the image of Patricia Frobisher, like a matrimonial Boadicea, was still with him, urging him on. He had to propose and he had to do it tonight in the balmy romantic ambience of a summer night in Vienna. Tomorrow morning would not do. He was going to try and see the leprosy sanatorium by Otto Wagner and the place where Wilibald Gluck had breathed his last, as well as the cathedral, and at midday Ellen was going back.

The taxi stopped in the Graben and Kendrick saw his chance. Opposite the hotel was a tall marble pillar decorated with convoluted statuary and topped with gold: the Trinity Column, which he had not had time yet to study in detail. With unusual firmness he walked Ellen over to examine it and found, as he had hoped, that at this late hour there was no one else there.

“Ellen,” he began. “You know how much I love you and now it is not only I who want to make you my wife, it is also my mother.” He broke off, aware of problems with his syntax, and tried again. “I mean, my mother has begged me to marry and I have told her that there is no one I could consider except you.” He paused to examine Ellen’s face, hopeful that the approval of Patricia Frobisher had effected a change in Ellen’s sentiments, and found that she had closed her eyes. “So please, darling Ellen, won’t you—”’

He rambled on, expressing devotion and a stammering hope. To Ellen it was a fitting end to this nightmare evening and as soon as she could, she said: “Kendrick, I wrote to you quite clearly when I accepted your invitation that I was coming as a friend. You have no right to put me through this again.”

But Kendrick had reached that state of obstinate exaltation so common to those who believe that a passion as great as theirs must somehow find an echo in the recipient. It was only gradually that her continuing refusal reached him, and exaltation was turned to misery and the familiar fear of his mother’s wrath.

“Of course I shouldn’t have hoped,” he said wretchedly. “If it had been Roland or William, but—”’

“No, Kendrick, no!” said Ellen-and made a last effort before this horrendous evening could end in solitude and her bed. “It’s not that at all. You sound much nicer than your brothers- you’re the nicest possible person but—”’ and then with an impulse to comfort which was stronger than discretion and her inmost desire for privacy, she said: “It’s just that… I’m in love with someone else. He’s not in love with me; he doesn’t care about me at all but I can’t help—”’ And found to her horror that she had burst into tears.

But her chivalry achieved its aim. That Ellen was wretched made Kendrick’s own misery bearable. Since his dreadful childhood, Kendrick had known that the world was a dark and threatening place; sadness was a country in which he felt entirely at home. That Ellen, so beautiful, so desirable, should also be unhappily in love was a profound consolation. To be allowed to put his arms round her in brotherly love, to let her cry on his shoulder, eased his own distress immeasurably. He murmured condolences, he promised always to be her friend, and of course to be there if ever she should change her mind. He even managed to make a kind of joke, for he had remembered now what the Viennese called the statue they were standing under: the Pestseule. “It’s a monument to the Great Plague-about a hundred thousand people died in it, pretty horribly,” he said, “so perhaps I didn’t choose too well!” — and was rewarded by Ellen’s smile, and her arm in his as they walked back to the hotel.