Eva Ibbotson - A Song For Summer

“I’d be prepared to put it on with all the actors-everyone from here who took part in it. That way it would stay in Europe.”

Brigitta glared at him and put her hand on Marek’s arm. It was time to assert her personal dominion over the composer.

“Darling, you can’t just keep your work hidden away, you know that really. It belongs to the world. You’ve no right to keep it to yourself.”

“I shan’t be doing that. The population of Hallendorf is considerable.”

“Well then, at least rescore that incredible theme-it would work marvellously on its own.”

“I’ve done that already,” said Marek. “But that too stays here.”

Brigitta’s eyes narrowed. For whom had he written that amazing tune? Who was behind the whole escapade? She had seen Lieselotte come out of her house at the beginning of the pageant with a certain relief-the girl was hardly more than a child, a peasant through and through. Brigitta had watched her like a hawk afterwards, but she’d made no attempt to come up to Marek-it was her own family she sought out.

But if not Lieselotte, then who? Not that ridiculous Russian woman drifting about in a shroud, not the pretty Norwegian, she was sure of it. No, there could be no one; not in that crazy school, nor in the village. She was silly even to think of it.

“You wrote that melody for me, didn’t you? I know you did. It falls exactly for my voice.”

She sang a few bars of the slow, ascending phrase to which the girl emerges into the sunlit morning, and she was right. The silvery, ethereal notes rose in the evening air and the people sitting close by fell silent.

Marek’s face was closed; a mask; he hated what he had to do.

“No, Brigitta, I didn’t write it for you. If I wrote it for anyone-if that’s how it works and I’m still not sure-I wrote it for a girl who had no part in the pageant, whom nobody saw, who did not act or sing or play an instrument… and who is not here now at the party but in the kitchen, making the food we are eating.”

Brigitta’s cry of fury and revelation rent the air.

“The cook!” she cried. “You wrote that music for the cook!”

“Yes.”

It could have gone either way. Marek, certainly, was braced for pathos and tears-and they would have been justified, for she would have made a lovely thing of Aniella’s music. But the fates who had smiled on Hallendorf all day still looked benignly on the inhabitants. Brigitta did not weep or beseech as she had done after the opera. She rose, expanded her well-documented ribcage-and exploded into righteousness and rage.

“How dare you insult me like that? How dare you beg for a place in my bed and then go and sport with domestics? I offered you my art and my love and you go off to roll in the gutter. Well, do it then — make Knödel with your cook, but don’t come running back to me. When I think what I was prepared to do for you!” She turned majestically to Staub. “Go on. Remind him of what I was prepared to do!”

“She was prepared to huddle,” said Staub weakly.

“I was prepared to huddle,” repeated Brigitta, to the interest of those in earshot. “But not now. Not ever again. Get the driver, Benny- we’re leaving.”

But this was not so simple. Infected by the day’s proceedings, the taxi driver had pinned Hermine against the wall of the Greek temple, where he was outlining the plot of a possible music drama based on his grandmother’s experience with her husband’s ghost, and made it clear that he was in no way ready to depart.

It was after midnight when Ellen was finished.

Now she sat on the rim of the well where she had sat at the beginning, garnering gym shoes. Fireflies danced in the catalpa tree; an owl hooted-perhaps the same one which Marek had shown her how to feed. The music still came faintly from the terrace, but the younger children were in bed; the party had moved on to the village and would continue until dawn. Enough light came from the upstairs window to show her the outline of the wheel on the coach house roof. Would they come next year, the storks-and would there be anyone left to welcome them?

He came upon her quietly, but she knew his step and braced herself. This was where one let love go lightly-bade it goodbye with an open hand in the way the detestable Brigitta had sung about. And seeking help, she called up her pantheon of people who had behaved well as she now had to do: Mozart’s sister, as talented as he was, who had disappeared uncomplainingly into oblivion and domesticity; Van Gogh’s brother Theo, always helping, sending money, asking nothing for himself.

But there are times for thinking about Mozart’s sister, and a night full of fireflies and stars did not seem to be one of them. Marek had sat down beside her and the memory of Kalun, his arms round her, the place on his shoulder made specially to fit her head, made her close her eyes.

“I’ve brought you some news,” he said. “Isaac is safe.”

She looked up then. “Oh, that’s wonderful. I’m so glad!”

“They hope to get him across to England, so your family may be hearing from him soon.”

“They’ll help him, I promise you.”

“You know that Isaac is in love with you,” he said abruptly.

She sighed. “He was afraid; I helped him-he was bound to feel that. I explained it all to Millie. But now that he’s safe—”’

“I’m not so sure.” He was silent for a moment. Then: “If he asked you to marry him would you accept? Could you be persuaded to?”’

“What?”’ she asked stupidly. The question made no sense to her.

“Your friend Kendrick came to see me in Vienna. He told me you were in love with someone else. I thought it might be Isaac.”

But even as he spoke he realised that her answer did not matter. Whatever she might say about Isaac was irrelevant; the time for chivalry was past. When he had first seen her by the well he’d thought of her as a girl in a genre painting: as Seamstress or Lacemaker-but he’d been wrong. She was a Lifemaker; he’d seen that watching her ceaseless, selfless work for the pageant. Had his friend still been in danger Marek might have continued to stand aside, but not now. Isaac must take his chance.

Ellen had shrunk away from him. “I don’t know why you’re putting me through all this,” she said, her voice full of bewilderment. “When you know—”’ she broke off, reaching for the tatters of her pride. “I’ve never asked you for anything. I’ve always known that you were going to America with Brigitta… and that no one who doesn’t understand about… enharmonic intervals and tritones… and species counterpoint can matter seriously to you. But—”’

“You’re so right,” interrupted Marek earnestly. “So absolutely right! The idea of sharing my bed and board with someone who doesn’t understand tritones and enharmonic intervals is absolutely abhorrent to me. I can conceive of nothing more dreadful. I am particularly attached to conversations about enharmonic intervals before breakfast-and species counterpoint too, though in general I prefer to discuss that in my bath.”

She looked up, trying to read his voice. He had bent down to pick up a tin punched with holes which he handed her.

“I’ve brought you a present.”

“Not a frog? Because I don’t kiss them, if you remember, so it would be a waste.”

“No, not a frog. Open it.”

She could not clearly see the flowers lying on the damp moss, but she could smell them-and Henny had been right. Only in heaven could one find such a scent.

“Sister Felicity told me where to look for them. I only brought a few; they’re getting rare.”

She couldn’t speak. Any other farewell present she could have taken lightly, but not this.

Marek had risen and now stood looking down at her.