A Song for Summer (17 page)

"Why don't you all come?"' repeated Brigitta.

Benny made up his mind. "All right," he said, nodding. He hated the country but he could manage a few days.

"And you, Liebchen?"' asked

Brigitta, a shade anxiously, turning to the count.

Stallenbach patted her hand. "I think not," he said, smiling. His role as Brigitta's "protector" was a conventional one; his family for generations had supported singers or dancers, enjoying their favours and their company. But Stallenbach was in his sixties and had, moreover, a secret in the form of an abiding and deep enthusiasm for the company of his wife. A few quiet weeks without Brigitta were very welcome: nor was he worried about being usurped by Altenburg. The count knew rather better than Brigitta just how many women had thrown themselves at the composer.

"Actually," he said, "I have a cousin who has a villa near there. It's empty, I believe; I'm sure she'd lend it to you." He was rewarded by Brigitta's famous, but genuinely lovely, smile.

"Of course he goes off suddenly like that. Of course he doesn't even bother to say goodbye. I could tell at once that he was no good," said Tamara pettishly.

Bennet was silent. Marek had in fact said goodbye and told him why he was going and what had been his reason for coming to Hallendorf. He had explained that since Leon and Ellen now knew who he was, he could not risk any further involvement by anyone in the school. "Knowing things can be dangerous business nowadays," he said.

Bennet had agreed. Ellen could make her own decisions, but Leon was a child for whom he was responsible.

"We shall miss you," he said--and indeed it was extraordinary how much he minded losing this man whom he had trusted instinctively from the start.

"And Derek is making a complete mess of the play," Tamara went on. She was the only person who used FitzAllan's Christian name. "I've told him exactly where my ballet should go and he continues to misunderstand me."

Bennet looked with reluctant pity at his wife. He knew exactly where Tamara's ballet would go in the end.

FitzAllan had already shortened it and put it behind gauzes. The next stage--total exclusion--was only a matter of time. On occasions like these, the Russian ballerina vanished and Bennet found himself looking into the desperate, sallow face of Beryl Smith from Workington. And against his better judgement, he smiled at his wife and gave her arm an affectionate squeeze.

Too late he realised his mistake.

Tamara swivelled round, seized him by the shoulders and kissed him hotly on the lips.

"I will wait for you upstairs," she said hoarsely.

Oh God, thought Bennet, even as he gave a polite nod. Tamara claimed her rights so very rarely now--

not more than a few times a year--and always after some blow to her pride. When she did expect him to make love to her the routine was one that never ceased to alarm him: the incense sticks which smoked out his bedroom, the record of the Polovtsian dances, to which Tamara undulated naked ... and afterwards the floods of tears because

Toussia Alexandrovna had found the sexual act so very, very sad.

But there was nothing for it. Bennet went to the cupboard where he kept his whisky and poured himself a large tumbler full. Then he took down the Shakespeare Sonnets and turned to Number 116. Number 18

was beneficial too in moments like this, and Number 66 ... but after Number 116 it was impossible not to feel love for someone, and with luck it could be channelled in the direction of an avid wife. First, though, for no reason he could find, he went along to Margaret Sinclair's office. Though it was late, she was as usual working at her typewriter.

"There's a letter from Brigitta Seefeld--the opera singer. The one we invited for the play two years ago.

She thinks she might come."

"A bit late, I fear," said Bennet. "Abattoir is hardly her style. Still, tell her she'll be welcome any time."

He looked round Margaret's office: at the neatness, the quietness--and at Margaret herself, putting the cover on her Remington. A plain woman--plain as in bread, as in the hands of Rembrandt's mother, thought Bennet, who was a little fuzzy from the whisky.

The office looked out on to the courtyard. In the dusky light they could make out Ellen sitting on the rim of the well. She was holding something in both hands, seemingly talking to it.

"What is it?"' Bennet asked.

"It's the tortoise," said Margaret, coming to stand beside him.

"Ah yes."

Ellen was spending rather a lot of time with the tortoise. I hope it's not too late, thought the headmaster, and made his way slowly upstairs towards his apartment. The Polovtsian dances had passed the languorous phase and reached the barbaric and shimmering middle section during which Tamara usually paused to cover herself in Bessarabian Body Oil.

"Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds ..." murmured Bennet, and opened the bedroom door.

It was not exactly too late. Marek's absence did not blot out the world for Ellen, though it took a little more concentration than formerly to become one with the skimming swallows, the stars crowding the night sky outside her window. It was not his absence that grieved her so much, for she had known he would not stay; it was the way that they had parted. Bennet had taken her into his confidence; she knew now just how dangerous was the work on which Marek was engaged, and that she had sent him away yelling like a fishwife was hard to bear. She had gone over the next day to apologise but Steiner's house was shuttered, the door locked and the van gone.

Fortunately there was so much to do that she had little time to brood. Both pupils and staff were throwing themselves into work for the play but the atmosphere was stormy. The director removed the tambourines from the girls in the Salvation Army on the grounds that they were too cheerful; children fell off the stage, dazzled by the searchlights that played on the capitalist oppressors; and the tiny, curly-haired Sabine from Zurich was forgotten in the darkened theatre, left hanging in a muslin bag to represent a side of pork after FitzAllan had tried out the disposition of the meat hooks.

The staff fared little better. Hermine had been reproached by the director for being too emotional.

"But for me it is emotional ... to feel the pre-slaughtering fear ... the twitching of the limbs ... the flow of blood," said poor Hermine, whose baby, while perfectly willing to bite into a ham sandwich, showed absolutely no inclination to be weaned.

It was Chomsky, however, about whom the greatest anxiety continued to be felt. With Marek gone there was no one to help him with the welding of the three-tiered struts and the first attempt to lift them on to the stage had been disastrous. From swimming three times a day, Chomsky now swam four and since the weather had turned cool and cloudy, Ellen became seriously concerned for his health.

Aware, perhaps that Abattoir was not proceeding quite as smoothly as he had hoped, FitzAllan now came to Bennet to tell him that he thought it essential that those children taking part in the play should visit an actual slaughterhouse.

"There is a certain lack of authenticity in some of the performances which I'm sure could be put right by total immersion in the mise en sce@ne," said FitzAllan.

"I'm afraid that would be an expensive business--we'd have to hire a bus for a start," said Bennet, "and I have to point out that we already have

an increase of thirty per cent in vegetarianism since rehearsals began."

But FitzAllan was adamant. "Time spent in research is never wasted," he said, waving a slender hand.

From the uproar of Abattoir, Ellen escaped sometimes to Lieselotte's house on an alp above the village, where Lieselotte's family always welcomed her with open arms: Frau Becker was teaching her to make Mandelschnitten and Zaunerstollen and Lieselotte's brothers and sisters never tired of hearing stories about the school. Knowing how much Bennet wanted the villagers to be involved, Ellen had hoped that the Beckers would be able to come to Abattoir but it turned out that the play was due to open on the name day of Aniella.

"Of course I'm very sorry," said Lieselotte with a mischievous smile. "We would very much have liked to come, but it's a special day for us, you'll understand."

"Of course. What happens on Aniella's name day?"'

"Oh, we carry her picture round the church and sing some hymns. Her relics too. She has very nice relics: not toe bones or finger nails but a piece of veiling from her wedding dress, and a circlet of pearls. I don't think it's enough, but you know how people are: so lazy."

It was when she was coming down the mountain after one such visit that Ellen met Sophie and Ursula running towards her.

"Guess what, Ellen--Chomsky's had a nervous breakdown! A proper one!" said Sophie, her eyes wide and alarmed.

"An ambulance came and took him away. He's gone to a nursing home in Klagenfurt. I expect they'll put him in a straitjacket." Ursula was gleeful.

"It was the scaffolding. FitzAllan yelled at him and he began to sob and wave his arms about and then he sort of dropped on the floor and shrieked."

"Oh poor Chomsky!" Ellen was devastated.

"And Bennet wants to see you," said Sophie. "He said to come as soon as you got in."

"This is a bad business, Ellen," said the

headmaster. He looked tired and strained, and the letter from his stockbroker lying on his desk seemed to be very long. "I knew that Chomsky was highly strung; I should have been more careful."

Ellen was indignant. "How could you have been? How could anyone foresee what would happen?"'

"Perhaps not. But the trouble is that Chomsky comes from a very wealthy and distinguished family--his father is a high-ranking diplomat who's served in the Hungarian government; he has connections everywhere. Our Chomsky is the youngest of five brothers who are all powerful men. Laszlo wasn't quite up to those sort of pressures, which was why they sent him here. As a kind of refuge."

"I see." Marek's words came back to Ellen: "His appendix was taken out in the most expensive clinic in Budapest."

"I don't think they'll make trouble ... sue us or anything like that. But if they did ..." Bennet was silent for a moment, foreseeing yet another form of ruin for his beloved school. Then he came to the point. "Chomsky asked for you when they took him away in the ambulance. He wanted you to bring some of his clothes and belongings, but mostly he just wanted to see you. I gather his mother and some other relatives are coming from Budapest to visit him in hospital. If you could go there, Ellen, and make contact--I think if anyone can turn away their wrath, it's you."

But when, two days later, Ellen knocked on the door of Room 15 in the Sommerfeld Clinic for Nervous Conditions, she saw at once that there was no wrath to turn away.

The clinic was light, sunny and opulently furnished, with deep pile carpets and reproductions of modern art. Chomsky's room faced a courtyard with a Lebanon cedar and a fountain, and resembled a suite in an expensive hotel rather than a hospital.

But it was the gathered Chomskys, seeming to Ellen to be ranked tier upon tier like cherubim round Laszlo's bed, that gave the metalwork teacher the look of a potentate holding court. Beside his locker a woman in a superb embroidered jacket and silk shirt was arranging fruit in a crystal bowl: peaches and nectarines, figs and almonds and bunches of blue-black grapes. Her resemblance to her son was marked: the same fervent dark eyes, the

same eager movements. Two handsome men, also unmistakable Chomskys, stood by the window: one was smoking a cigar, the other was just opening a bottle of champagne. A grey-haired woman, wearing a silver fox stole in spite of the heat, sat on a chair at the foot of the bed, her fingers clasped round an ebony cane.

"Ellen!" cried the invalid, sitting up in bed in yellow shantung pyjamas with his initials on the pocket. "You have come!" His happy shout cut short the Hungarian babble. Madame Chomsky advanced towards Ellen and threw out her arms. Laszlo's brother Farkas and cousin Pali were introduced, as was his great aunt Eugenie who had been taking the waters at Baden when she received news of the accident.

"We've heard so much about you!" said Madame Chomsky in German, while cousin Pali, in English, offered champagne and brother Farkas took the suitcase Ellen had brought and found another chair.

Within minutes Ellen found herself in a huddle of approving Chomskys: Chomskys thanking her for her kindness to their Laszlo, Chomskys hoping that the suitcase had not been too heavy, Chomskys offering her a holiday in their villa on Lake Balaton, their mansion in Buda, their apartment in the Champs Elysees. Far from blaming anybody at the school for his accident, they seemed to feel only gratitude to Bennet for having found work for the baby of the family whom they loved dearly but who had not shown himself to be quite in the ambitious, thrusting mode of his older siblings.

"Is she not like little Katya?"' Chomsky wanted to know--and was reproved by his mother, who said that Ellen was much prettier than his nursemaid and how could he say such a thing?

An hour later, Ellen had still not been able to take her leave. She had the feeling that the Chomskys would have given her everything they possessed, including their youngest son in marriage. Every time she tried to go she was promised another treat--a new cousin arriving shortly from Transylvania, a slice of the special salami which Madame Chomsky had brought from Budapest because the Austrians could not be trusted where salamis were concerned; the ratio of donkeys to horses in the meat was never satisfactory west of the Hungarian border.

At six o'clock the nurse returned with the empty suitcase for Ellen to take back.

"We won't need the passport or the birth certificate," she said. "I've put them in the inside pocket; they don't like valuable documents lying round in the clinic."

"But you must have dinner with us!" cried Farkas, as Ellen got to her feet. "The food is not at all bad at the Imperial."

Since the Imperial was a sensationally expensive hotel with its own park beside the lake, Ellen said she was sure this was so, but she had to get back to her children.