Eva Ibbotson - A Song For Summer

He then commandeered Bennet’s car and drove to the village where he asked to see the leader of the Hallendorf Brass Band and said he expected him and his players next morning at the castle.

“But we’re competing in the finals at Klagenfurt in a month,” said the leader. “We—”’

Marek said this was a pity, but he expected them at ten, and disappeared into the kitchens of the Goldene Krone, summoned the assistant chef and told him to fetch his brother and his accordion. Two hours later he was in Klagenfurt, in the school of music, and said he needed a fiddler, a cellist and a viola player for the coming week.

“But that is out of the question. No one will come for a country pageant. They have exams.”

“Ask them,” said Marek briefly-and handed over his card.

The principal backed away. They were true, then, the rumours he had heard.

“Yes, sir; of course. I’ll send the best players I’ve got.”

“They’ll need strong shoes,” said Marek. “Ten o’clock at the castle.”

In the days that followed, Bennet, watching Marek’s rehearsals, saw every one of his educational beliefs thrown over.

“I can’t sing;” said Sophie, “my mother says I have a voice like a corncrake,”-and was treated to a blistering attack on people who at the age of twelve were still under their mother’s thumb. “If you were an Arab you’d be married by now,” said Marek. “I decide who can’t, and no one else. Now open your mouth and sing.”

Leon, after three hours of copying music, said he was tired and was treated to a stare of such contempt that he changed his mind, and reached for another pile of manuscript paper.

“You’re late,” said Marek to the students of the Klagenfurt Academy, emerging from their car.

“I’m sorry, Herr Altenburg. We had a puncture.”

“Don’t let it happen again. Here’s your music. I want it by heart tonight. You represent continuity; you’ll go from venue to venue accompanying the narrator. In the last scene you’ll be playing in the tower of the church.”

“Herr Altenburg, I can’t; I have vertigo.” And as Marek looked at him: “All right-I’ll get the chemist to fix me something.”

But with the youngest children from the village and the school Marek was gentle. He played the tune for Aniella once, and again and for the third time. He played the tune for the wicked knights (to be enacted, unexpectedly, by the greengrocer, the butcher-and Chomsky) and the music for the wedding feast. And he told them that they must be strong and trust him while they learnt to play their triangles and shake their tambourines and bang their drums in the right way, because while this happened the tunes would go away.

“But they’ll come back,” he said, “all the tunes will come back and you’ll see how important you are,” and they nodded and let themselves be led away by Freya to practise.

Odd things happened. A boatload of dentists from the conference booked into the annexe of the Krone overheard a rehearsal.

“You’re short on the woodwind,” said one of them. “I play the clarinet-I can go and get it.”

And he got it, and cut a symposium on Geriatric Orthodontics and said he could stay till the pageant. A girl on a walking tour turned out to be a singing student from Paris and stayed also-perhaps because of the music, more probably because of the dentist who looked like Cary Grant.

Odder still perhaps was a plaintive letter from Sophie’s mother to complain that her daughter hadn’t written.

“I forgot,” Sophie told Leon, half appalled, half excited. “I forgot to write to her!”

“About time too,” said Leon. He had graduated to being Professor Steiner’s assistant in transcribing parts and had begun to see what hard work really meant.

Then came the day when Marek led the youngest children to Aniella’s house for a rehearsal, and told them to beat their drums and shake their tambourines and their triangles in the way that they had learnt-and as Lieselotte came out of the door, the assembled musicians began to play, and they saw, these obedient, small musicians, where they fitted in-that by themselves they were nothing, but now, with everybody joining in, they were part of something glorious.

And it was then that the little fat boy who loved mathematics put down his triangle and sighed and said: “Oh gosh! It’s better than the calculus.”

It did not rain.

At seven in the morning, the dentist who played the clarinet was woken by the chambermaid at the inn and went downstairs to find a small, fierce-looking child standing in the hall.

“I want you to take out my brace,” said Ursula.

The dentist, scarcely awake, blinked and rubbed his eyes.

“What?”’ he said stupidly.

“My brace. They didn’t have them when Aniella was alive.”

“My dear, I can’t do that. I don’t have the right equipment; it would hurt, and in any case—”’

Ursula stood unmoving. She had woken at dawn and trudged on foot round the lake. Now she dredged up a word she scarcely ever used. “Please,” she said.

In the house on the alp, Lieselotte woke and stretched and was suddenly terrified.

“I can’t, Mama. All those people… I can’t. You must tell—”’

But at that moment Ellen came up the path, carrying the basket of pins and needles, of scissors and glue, that had become a symbol of all that went into the making of Aniella’s name day, and kissed her friend, and looked so pleased and happy, and so calm, that Lieselotte’s panic abated and she decided she could after all swallow a cup of coffee and eat a roll.

A charabanc drove into the village square and disgorged a busload of tourists, but no one had time to bother with them. Everyone was gathered outside the little wooden house, the rows of waiting animals in their place, and the sun shining out of a clear blue sky. Then the head boy of the village school stepped forward to speak Bennet’s words: “We have come together to celebrate the name day of Saint Aniella who was born here at Hallendorf on a morning such as this…”

And as Lieselotte stepped out of the door, Marek brought in his musicians-and the pageant began.

No one who was present ever forgot it. They had rehearsed it separately in every combination, but now, coming together, it took on a life of its own. An amazed recognition, a kind of wonder at what they had made, lifted them out of themselves. Propelled by Marek’s music through the familiar story, they constantly found new meanings, new gestures, which were yet always part of the whole.

And those who had come to watch were drawn in also.

When a small hedgehog stumbled, a woman on the edge of the crowd came forward to help her, blurring the separation between watchers and participants, which was so much a characteristic of the day. Frank’s father, who had threatened to withdraw his son from school, could be seen elbowing his way to the front as they reached the grotto-the only example of bad manners to be seen all day.

Even the unexpected things, the mishaps, turned into marvels.

“Are we sinking?”’ asked Ursula, sitting in Aniella’s boat, forgetting her sore mouth.

“No.” But it was true that the rim of the brocaded canopy (the best bedspread of Frau Becker’s aunt) had dropped into the water and was slowing the boat… slowing it more and more, so that it echoed uncannily Aniella’s reluctance to go to her wedding.

Outside the church, the dustcart horse, who had a dozen times walked up the church steps in rehearsals, reared and refused-and the peace-loving greengrocer became a red-faced, furious seducer, kicking his mount with his heels as if he really was Count Alexei of Hohenstift.

The trick with the mask worked-even those who had been warned hissed with distress as Lieselotte became a wrinkled crone-and Rollo had been more than generous with the blood.