Eva Ibbotson - A Song For Summer

“Do you suppose everything else was a lie too?”’ asked Ellen. “I mean that he worked with Meyerhold and Stanislavsky?”’

“Probably.” David Langley, who had wasted weeks of good summer weather, which could have been spent collecting frit fly, being a bloated stockyard owner or a carcass, was especially bitter. “Still, he wasn’t so stupid; he got paid in advance.”

Like the children, the staff were particularly upset for Bennet, who blamed himself for being taken in and made it clear that the whole responsibility for the disaster was his and his alone.

“But that is not so,” said Hermine. “If I had not permitted the Professor to overcome me in Hinterbruhl I could have produced a play as in the years before. It was to save me work that this Schweinkopf was engaged.”

“What about Tamara? How has she taken it?”’ asked Ellen.

Glances were exchanged, heads shaken. “Badly, as you can imagine. Very badly,” said David. “I think she thought he fancied her. She’s been storming about like a tragedy queen ever since he went.”

But it was worse than that. Going down after she had put her children to bed to comfort Margaret, Ellen found the secretary standing at the open window of her office. She looked weary and wretched, but when Ellen came she managed to smile, for she had no secrets from her.

“Listen!” she said.

Ellen went to stand beside her. From the floor above, faint but unmistakable, came the sound of the Polovtsian Dances played on Tamara’s gramophone.

“As though he hasn’t enough to put up with,” said Margaret bitterly. “The stockbrokers have written again; there’s real doubt about whether we can go on even for another term-and he’s so tired.”

Ellen put her arm round the secretary’s shoulders. “You love him, don’t you?”’ she said quietly. “I mean, really?”’

Margaret shrugged. “Yes, I think it probably is… really.” She shook her head. “Never mind; I’ll get over it. And you? Did you have a nice time in Vienna?”’

“Not very,” said Ellen.

And then, because they were both Englishwomen and their hearts were somewhat broken, they turned back into the room and put on the kettle and made themselves a cup of tea.

The newspapers from Vienna arrived the following day. All of them carried the story of the gala and Marek’s heroic rescue, and though the pictures of him which they had been able to get hold of were years out of date, there was no mistaking him. Both the Tageblatt and the Neue Zeitung concentrated on the musical aspects of the performance, but Wiener Leben carried the full gossip of Altenburg’s relationship with Seefeld as well as a picture of the composer embracing the diva under the benevolent eyes of Richard Strauss.

“And yet one is not absolutely surprised,” said Hermine as these revelations were discussed in the staffroom. “That he was someone one always felt…”

“And from the way he ran from Tamara’s balalaika one should have guessed that he was a musician,” said Jean-Pierre.

“Did you hear anything about this in Vienna?”’ they asked Ellen, and she shook her head. She could not bear to speak about the opera.

The children, like the staff, reacted with mixed feelings to the news. That it was an eminent composer who had healed their tortoise and hoed their garden paths was as exciting as anything in a film-but that he was going to America with Brigitta Seefeld, as the papers unequivocally stated, was sad. During her short tour of the school, the diva had not endeared herself to those whose path she had crossed.

Bennet, in order to allay speculation, made a short announcement in Assembly in which he said that Marek had wanted to spend some time incognito in order to rest and refresh himself, and implied that he had been gestating a composition of some importance in his room above the stables. If this contented most people, it did nothing to soothe Tamara’s rage. That she had let an eminent musician slip through her fingers was almost more than she could bear.

“He could have created a ballet on me,” she said peevishly. “I would not have prevented him. He is an idiot to have missed such a chance.”

It was the only child who was not surprised by the news who was the most affected.

Looking for Leon at bed time, Ellen found him standing forlornly in Marek’s old room. A spider had made a web across the window; Lieselotte had put some early windfalls to ripen on the sill and the tangy, wholesome smell seemed strangely to conjure up Marek in his blue work shirt.

“I keep thinking of what he wrote here, maybe,” said Leon. “I looked in the chest to see if there were any fragments but there aren’t.”

Ellen was silent, coming to stand beside him. She remembered Marek packing up his papers the day she had shouted at him for throwing Leon into the lake.

“It’s going to be awfully difficult writing his biography if he’s in America,” the boy said bleakly.

“I don’t see why,” said Ellen. “You may have to postpone it for a while but you’re not so far from being grown up. Why don’t you simply decide to go there when you’re old enough?”’

Leon looked at her gratefully. “Yes, I could do that.” He sighed. “He’s the best, you know, Ellen. Honestly. I mean not just his music. He’s absolutely the best.”

“Yes, I know, Leon. But come to bed.” The excitement of discovering Marek’s true identity lasted a day or two but then the children became listless and depressed. They had complained about Abattoir, but the play had been the centre of their lives. Hermine was organising movement workshops for the end of term, Freya intended to put on a demonstration of PE for the parents and Bennet was preparing extracts from The Winter’s Tale, but for visitors who had expected to see an original play by Brecht this would hardly make exciting theatre.

The demise of Abattoir had one immediate consequence. Chomsky returned! The news that FitzAllan was disgraced had effected an instant cure. Curiously enough, everyone was pleased to see him: they attended his classes more enthusiastically than before, bent sheets of metal into bookends and looked at his appendix scar with a sense of familiarity and relief. Ellen waited daily for him to discover the loss of his passport, but the Hungarian’s room was so untidy that he was lucky to find his bed, let alone examine the state of his documents, and having met his family she felt no anxiety about Laszlo’s ability to get home when the time was ripe.

Then, two days after Chomsky’s return, the deputation came.

They came not by steamer but by road in two cars: the mayor of Hallendorf, the butcher who was Lieselotte’s uncle, the head of the Farmer’s Cooperative and several other dignitaries, wearing stiff collars and looking important, embarrassed and hot.

Instinctively, both Ellen and Margaret, who were in the headmaster’s office, came to stand on either side of him.

“Now what, I wonder,” said Bennet wearily. “It can’t be Chomsky caught in their fishing nets already-he hasn’t been back long enough. Perhaps Frank has been lighting fires?”’

“No,” said Ellen. “I’m sure not.”

The men approached. Their expressions could be seen to be serious. That would be the last straw-a complaint from the village when at last relations between the school and Hallendorf itself had so much improved.

But Bennet was not one to shirk his duties. “I think we shall need some beer, Ellen,” he said-and went forward to greet the mayor and shake hands with everyone and lead them to his study.

It had seemed simple enough. He would call on the old farmer who had promised him the wheel off a derelict hay cart, pay him, leave instructions and a gratuity for the farmer’s boy who would put it up-and return to Vienna.