Eva Ibbotson - A Song For Summer

His intention at first was simply to adapt some of the well-known folk songs and hymns of the district, orchestrating them for such instruments as were to hand and teaching the smaller children a simple accompaniment.

Then on the first day Ellen had come in with a tray, for he had made it clear that he would not come in for meals. The tray contained a plate with a pork chop, a helping of mashed potatoes and some garden peas. For dessert she had given him fresh fruit: a bunch of black grapes, a peach.

A pot of coffee was keeping warm under a cosy. She put the tray down and for a moment he saw her: the asymmetrical hair, the concerned eyes and strongly marked brows.

“How’s it going?”’ he asked her.

“It’s amazing. The exact opposite of Abattoir. People are coming from everywhere to help. We’ve even found a fierce horse for Count Alexei-it used to pull the dustcart and it’s a stinker. And believe it or not, they all want Frank to be the angel: a huge, ferocious angel like Raphael with enormous wings and—”’

But Marek had stopped listening. She saw the sudden withdrawal into his own thoughts and left him. As soon as she was gone, he dropped the manuscript paper on to the floor. Two hours later, he had written what came to be called the Aniella theme.

My God, this is worse than Hollywood, he thought. A girl comes in with a pork chop and I write a song for her. It wasn’t quite like that, of course, but it was true that he had wanted suddenly to express the sense of joy in simple things which characterised her. But now he was done for. The growling march for the evil knights was already in his head, and now the interaction of Aniella’s theme with that of the angel in the grotto.

“Idiot!” he told himself, facing days without sleep and an amount of work out of all proportion to the occasion-but nothing now could have stopped him.

In the evening she came again with the fresh supply of manuscript paper he had sent out for, and a supper tray.

“I need a large Thermos of coffee,” he said. “Black. Nothing else.”

When she had gone he went to the window and stretched. It occurred to him to wonder if he would have written this music if Ellen had agreed to be Aniella; if she had given in to the clamour of those who wanted her to be the pageant’s star. But she had not considered it even for a moment.

“It would be completely wrong for me to do it; I’m not Austrian and I’m not a Catholic. I’ll help in any way I can but there’s only one person who can do it-you must see that.”

And they had seen it. Lieselotte would not have to act-she was Aniella-and by insisting on this uncomplicated and well-loved girl, Ellen had brought the village round behind the enterprise to a man. But it had touched Marek, as it had touched Bennet, that she had meant what she said when she’d insisted that she herself did not want to act or sing or be singled out in any way.

“What if it rains?”’ asked Frau Tischlein. She was the old woman who had warned Ellen of the wild children at Hallendorf. Now suddenly the wild children were everywhere; in the village, in Lieselotte’s house… suggesting, rehearsing… They were even in the church, where hammering and sawing could be heard all day, for Lieselotte, at her own insistence, was to be flown upwards to the tower.

“It won’t rain,” said Frau Becker.

“God would not permit it when we are working so hard in his name.”

They were certainly working hard. The scheme for the pageant seemed to grow spontaneously like a river gathering tributaries. Lieselotte’s own house was too high up the mountain to be used, but a similar wooden house not far from the grotto was commandeered. To this house the villagers brought flowers for the window boxes and tubs of ornamental shrubs, and when Rollo fixed an imitation morning glory up one wall, it became the house in the painting.

“I want to be a salamander too,” said the six-year-old son of the shoemaker and was sent to Bruno to be fitted out with yellow spots.

What had happened to Bruno was as great a miracle to Ellen as anything that had happened to the saint. Coming to look for him late one night, she found him in the art room.

“Don’t tell me to go to bed,” he said angrily-and she didn’t, for she had seen what he was making: the mask that would turn Aniella into an old crone, an uncanny masterpiece fashioned from rice paper and silk in which Lieselotte’s pretty features were still discernible beneath the wrinkles.

“They have taken my baby!” cried Hermine, finding the herring box empty and coming distraught to Ellen.

“It’s all right, she’s with Frau Becker and the others in the sewing room.”

“But they will give her bad things to eat- sweet things, and in the book it says—”’

But when Andromeda was returned, with icing sugar on her cheeks, she smiled and cooed and slept the night through for the first time since she was born.

Problems arose continuously. How would the followers get from the house to the church? Not everyone could go in the flotilla of boats. No one expected the tight-fisted Captain Harrar to offer his paddle steamer, but he did; it would follow at a distance and there would be room for everyone.

When it became clear that even with all the village women sewing, the dresses would not be done, six nuns appeared from the convent, asked for Ellen, and were led to the hall which had been taken over as a workshop. One of these, Sister Felicity, turned out to be an expert botanist and supervised the making of Alpenrosen petals for Aniella to strew over the lake, and headdresses of saxifrage and gentians and cornflowers for the guests. But it was Ellen who made Aniella’s wedding gown, fighting Bruno for the last of the muslin and creating a dream dress which had Lieselotte in tears.

Only Ursula still stood aside.

“I wish you’d be one of the bridesmaids like us,” said Sophie. “We’ll be sailing over the lake with Aniella; it’ll be fun. Ellen’s got a dirndl for you, she told me.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Ursula.

“No one wore braces on their teeth in those days. People would jeer at me.”

“No they wouldn’t,” began Sophie-but Ursula had already marched off with her red exercise book.

There was to be as little “acting” as possible, everyone agreed on that. Enacting yes, acting no, but it had been decided that there should be a brief commentary to link the scenes together and to his utter amazement, Bennet himself had agreed to write it.

What am I doing? he asked himself. I’m an atheist; I’ve been one all my life. Yet now he wrote words for an Austrian saint who lived by God, for an angel lit from behind (if the generator worked) by a Marxist teacher of mathematics. He wrote words to proclaim the treachery of the greengrocer, who had been cast as Count Alexei-and told himself he was an idiot and did not stop.

By now no one remembered any more who belonged to the village and who to the school. Bennet cancelled all afternoon lessons, did not even open the letter from his stockbroker and told Margaret to abandon all correspondence with Toscanini Aunts. Convinced that he faced ruin and derision from such parents as would make their way to Hallendorf, Bennet found he did not greatly care. If this was the end of his beloved school, it was a good one.

Into this creative chaos, there now burst Marek’s music.

On the morning of the fourth day he showered, shaved, and went to find Ellen.

“I want Leon-tell him to copy these parts; I need three copies at least. And find me Flix and those Italian twins and the red-haired boy with a scar behind his ear.”

“Oliver?”’ she said. “You want him?”’ “Yes; he can sing. I heard him when he was carving. And Sophie; she can hold a tune. I’ll teach them first and they can help the others. Three o’clock this afternoon in the music room.”