Eva Ibbotson - A Song For Summer

Once again the Lake District failed to live up to expectations. It was not raining; the late summer afternoon was golden and serene; after the devastation of the cities, this piece of untouched countryside with its dark, leafy trees, its running brooks, its silence, was Paradise indeed. Nor did the first sight of Crowthorpe dismay her; she had after all been born when Queen Victoria was on the throne; the gables and turrets and pointless timbering did not trouble her. She herself in Folkestone had been brought up in a villa not unlike Kendrick’s house.

But at the gate she hesitated. She had not told anyone she was coming; only Ellen knew her — to anyone else she would be just an old lady in stout shoes going for a walk. Her case was still at the station-she had wanted to leave her options open — and now she decided to take a path that led towards the back of the house and seemed to slope upwards towards the hill. In this country of ramblers it was probably a right of way, and she wanted above all to get the feel of the place, and of Ellen’s life.

She had not told Marek what she was going to do, for the simple reason that she did not know herself. To see if Ellen was happy? Nothing as simple as that-yet there was some question that she expected this visit to answer.

In a small meadow by the house she saw a flock of Angora goats; beautiful animals, their bells reminding her of the cowbells in the Bohemian hills and bringing a sudden stab of homesickness for Pettelsdorf. Down by the stream in the valley, children were paddling and calling to each other in Cockney accents. Evacuees. Yes, there would be evacuees; Ellen would welcome them with open arms.

She had come to the kitchen garden; looking through the gate in the wall she saw tomatoes ripening in the greenhouses and well-kept vegetable beds. As she gazed, a land girl came by trundling a barrow, but Nora was not ready yet and turned away. What had been a lawn had been ploughed up and planted with potatoes. As she might have expected, Ellen was presiding over a house and grounds most excellently and patriotically kept, and in a countryside of unsurpassed loveliness, and to her own dismay she found herself experiencing a pang of disappointment. Yes, there was no other word for it, and she was shocked. Had she wanted to find that Ellen was unhappy, full of regrets… even ill-treated or misunderstood? Had she wanted to take the girl in her arms and comfort her and tell her that Marek still loved her, and marriages could be annulled?

Surely not, thought Nora, shocked at her own thoughts. Her father had been a clergyman; she had the strongest views on the sanctity of marriage.

She walked on, making a loop behind the house. She passed a flock of bantam hens, their feathers brilliant in the sunlight, a little copse of foxgloves and meadowsweet-and found herself by the edge of the orchard.

The plums had been picked, and the cherries, but the apples were ripening: red and gold and green. Between the trees two washing lines were strung and a girl was hanging out the washing. Household washing: tea towels and pillow cases, shirts… and nappies; a lot of nappies. She moved gracefully, bending down to the basket, shaking out the garment, fastening it to the line, and because she had known at once who it was, Nora stepped back into the shelter of the copse so that she could watch unseen.

Ellen looked well. She was sunburnt, her faded cotton dress and sandals were the acme of comfort and ease; she was absorbed completely in her task; Nora could sense her satisfaction in seeing the clean clothes, caught by the breeze, billowing gently. There were three baskets: Ellen had emptied two of them, but now she turned, for from the third had come a small whimpering sound and she dropped the shirt she was holding back into the basket and went over and very gently picked up the baby that had just woken and put it over her shoulder, and began to rub its back. It was the essence of love, of motherhood, that gesture: the baby’s soft head nestling into Ellen’s throat, her bent head as she spoke to it, its sudden pleasurable wriggle of response… Nora could feel it as if it was her own shoulder that the baby leant against-so had she held Milenka, and so Marek, and the thought that this child could have been Marek’s child, flesh of her flesh, went through her, bringing an atavistic pang of loss.

But her question was answered and she could only give thanks that she had not made her presence known. A marriage could be annulled-an adult could take his chance and Kendrick must have known of the love Ellen bore Marek. But not a child; a child could not be set aside.

Long after she had made her way back and sat in the train as it crawled southwards, Nora still saw this idyllic vision: the red apples, the blue sky, Ellen with her windblown curls stroking softly, rhythmically the back of the child that lay against her shoulder, and somewhere in the orchard, a blackbird singing.

A man leaving wartime London, perhaps for ever, will say goodbye to a number of places. To St Martin-in-the-Fields to hear the Blind Choir sing Evensong; to Joe’s All Night Stall near Westminster Bridge where Wordsworth’s famous view can be combined with the best jellied eels in London; to the grill room of the Café Royal…

And to the Lunchtime Concerts at the National Gallery, possibly the best loved institution to come out of the war. If the British had heroines during these gruelling years-the Queen, tottering in her high heels through the rubble to bring comfort to those bombed from their homes, the Red Cross nurses accompanying the soldiers to the front-there was no one they loved more than Dame Myra Hess with her frumpish clothes, her grey hair rolled in a hausfrau bun, her musicality and her smile.

For it was this indomitable woman who had coaxed the best musicians in the land to play in the emptied gallery for a pittance and bullied the authorities again and again to repair the bomb-damaged building, making these lunch hours into an oasis for all those who cared for music. Marek, who knew her and loved her, had come early, knowing that on the days that she herself played the piano, the queue stretched round Trafalgar Square. He had every reason to be grateful to her; a protégé of hers had played his violin sonata here, and he had heard the finest quartets in the country here on his leaves, but today, probably his last time here, he wanted to sit quietly as a member of the audience, for he knew that the sight of the tired housewives, the sailors and office workers listening rapt to her playing would be one of the memories he would take with him overseas.

He was in London for a few days, waiting to hear the time and place of his departure, which was always a secret till the last minute. He wore uniform and his stick was on the floor under his chair. He walked with a limp still but his leg was almost healed.

The dark-haired girl next to him had come in late and moved in deliberately beside the distinguished-looking Flight Lieutenant. She was a dedicated intellectual and tended to pick up men in places where their intelligence was guaranteed — art galleries, concerts, serious plays. Marek, well aware of her intentions, was disinclined to take the encounter further than the remarks they exchanged in the interval… and yet it was a long time since he had had a woman.

But Myra Hess was returning; she had begun to play the Mozart A Minor Sonata and Marek closed his eyes, savouring the directness and simplicity of her playing. Then in the middle of the slow movement, the sirens went.

Attempts by performers and audiences alike to carry on during air raids as though nothing had happened had long since been frustrated. Gallery curators appeared from all sides, shepherding the audience down into the basement shelter — and Marek, who had hoped to escape from the building, found himself leaning against a wall, the dark-haired girl still pinned to his side.