A Song for Summer (20 page)

When he came round again his victim was kneeling beside him, opening a suitcase. "I'm afraid I can't offer you a balanced diet," she had said, shining a pocket torch on to a salami in a lattice of gold, a packet of Karlsbad plums, a cluster of grapes. "You must eat very slowly," she had instructed him in her gentle voice, with its very slight English accent, "otherwise you'll be sick."

He was famished, but he reached out not for the strange foods she was proffering from her magic suitcase but for her hair, touching it once where it clustered on the nape of her neck. She existed then; she was real.

"There seems to be a bottle of Tokay here also," she said, lifting a flagon wrapped in straw out of its wooden box. "But you mustn't drink that; not yet. There's a tap at the back of the house; I'll get you some water."

Isaac had shaken himself out of his trance then. Ashamed of his weakness, he stretched out his hand for the bottle. "Water is for the feet," he said.

She'd looked up quickly as if what he had said was a password. "You're Marek's friend," she'd stated, "so I shall help you."

He tried to argue. He had no papers; if he was questioned he would be transported back over the border or imprisoned. "Anyone who helps me could be in trouble."

"No one will question you. You're my new assistant. You were visiting Chomsky and I offered you a job for a while. Unpd, of course!"

He had continued to protest but she took no notice; already then he was aware of her strange mixture of softness and steel. She'd returned with some of Chomsky's clothes, and so far she'd been right. In a school where Russian ballerinas came from Workington and Costa Rican revolutionaries were employed as groundsmen, no one questioned Isaac's presence as a trainee chef. Isaac slept in Chomsky's room, and did his best to make himself useful. It seemed to him that the

great cathedrals of the Middle Ages which had given sanctuary to the hunted were as nothing compared to the Hallendorf kitchens: the warmth, the cleanliness, the rich and fragrant smells, the funny, kindly children--and Ellen, whom he could scarcely bear to let out of his sight.

But at night, Isaac kept watch. He had not told Ellen about that second shot but he knew that she too waited for the light in the window which never came.

Now, though, she wanted to know about Brigitta. "Why did she come, Isaac, do you know? What did she want from Marek?"'

He shrugged. "I've been away for so long --but there was some rumour that she was commissioning an opera. Or it could be any crisis in her career. She's been trying to get him back ever since she sent him away."

"But she must be quite old. Forty at least." "M. But music can build bridges between the most unlikely people. She's an awful woman but she sings Marek's music like no one else. I recorded the Songs for Summer with her in Berlin. She made scenes, she was impossible, but the finished result was superb.

Mind you, women have been pursuing Marek ever since he was a boy in that forest of his."

"Have you been there? To Pettelsdorf?"' Isaac shook his head. "He only asks people who really matter to him. It's his sanctuary."

"You matter to him. Surely he's shown that."

"Perhaps. He did say that after the premiere he'd take me. I don't think he likes to mix his different lives.

When he's at Pettelsdorf I think he somehow hopes his music will go away."

"But it won't?"'

"No, Ellen. Not ever. You can be sure of that."

She nodded. She had understood in any case that no one who knew as little about music as she did could ever seriously matter to him, but she asked a feminine and foolish question.

"Has Brigitta been there?"'

Isaac smiled. "I don't think so. No, I'm sure. But it isn't for want of trying."

A breeze was rising, ruffling the dark water. "You should go in, Isaac, it's getting cold."

But Isaac was in the grip of his devils.

"If anything's happened to him, Ellen ..."

"It won't have. He'll be back. He'll bring Steiner and you'll get away to safety. I told you about the candle--

it burnt straight and true."

"Ah yes, the saint with the salamanders. You think she will concern herself with the rescue of one unimportant Jew?"'

"If she can save salamanders she can save Jews--and you don't even have spots."

Isaac shook his head. "I said I'd haunt him till his dying day if he didn't let me play his concerto and sometimes I think I've done just that. He's wasted years trying to find me, getting people out ... It's an amazing piece, the concerto ... the slow movement ... God! If I had known what he was going to do in Berlin--he practically killed the director. In Germany he's excoriated or worshipped --and he wants neither."

"When you're safely away he'll go back to music, won't he?"'

He turned to smile at her, thanking her for the "when". "He must do. The Americans didn't want to let him go. He should go back there till all this blows over."

"Yes." Ellen bent her head. America was ... far.

"He has this gift not only of writing fine music but making it happen. In Berlin, in Vienna too, wherever a dozen people came together, Marek had them doing something; he could get music out of three tram conductors and a road sweeper. He never saw it as something for professionals only, though he was so dedicated about his own work-- his scores used to look like Egyptian palimpsests--he wrote and rewrote again. But when he was with ordinary people music was just something everyone could do."

She nodded, silent and pensive, and he longed to reach out for her and hold her and never let her go.

"What about you, Ellen?"' he asked. "What does music mean to you?"'

It was a while before she answered. "When I was at school ... quite little still ... there was a girl there who had perfect pitch and a lovely voice and she played the piano. I used to hear people talking about her." She paused, lacing her fingers together. ""She's musical," they used to say, "Deirdre's musical," and it was as if they'd said: "She's angelic." That's how it seemed to me to be musical: to be angelic."

Isaac turned to her. "My God,

Ellen," he said huskily, "it is you who are angelic. If there's anyone in the world who is angelic it is you."

The news for which Kendrick had been waiting so eagerly came through three days after his previous visit to the travel agency.

"We've got them, sir," said the helpful girl. "We've got the tickets for the gala! They were returns but they're wonderful seats--a box in the Grand Tier. They were reserved for an American diplomat and his wife, but he's been recalled to Washington."

She seemed almost as pleased as Kendrick, but she was a conscientious girl and felt compelled to add:

"There have been rumours of a bit of trouble --Seefeld isn't pleased with the conductor, but I'm sure it'll be all right."

For a moment, Kendrick blenched. What if he payed out so much money and then some inferior soprano took over the lead? How would Ellen react? Trying to assess this, he had to face the fact that he did not know exactly how deeply Ellen felt music. Once he had taken her to a Tchaikovsky concert at the Queen's Hall and after the concert he had asked Ellen what she was thinking of and she had said, "Sorrel Soup."

She had explained that the slow movement of the Path@etique made her think of a green forest and this in turn had made her think of sorrel and made her wonder if she could get some to make into soup for one of the Gowan Terrace aunts who had a stomach complaint. All the same, it had been a shock.

But she would not think of Sorrel Soup after Rosenkavalier. After Rosenkavalier she would think--she would have to think--of love, and it was after the opera, in some spot that he had not yet finalised, that he intended to propose. This would not be a hasty declaration forced out of him in a kitchen like his previous one; it would be a brief but considered speech which would reach straight to her heart. He had made a short list of places that might be suitable: the Donner Fountain in the Neuer Markt (which personified the tributaries of the Danube), the Mozart Memorial in the Burg Garten, and the equestrian statue of the Archduke Albrecht on the steps of the Albertina--all of which were within a few minutes' walk of the opera house.

And this brought him to the delicate question of the hotel. They would need two rooms in a suitable establishment--but not adjoining rooms, which might frighten Ellen and give her a wrong idea of his intentions. Perhaps they should be on a different floor, thought Kendrick. He had heard his mother refer to men who could not control their instincts as "animals". The idea that Ellen might think of him a in any way an animal was too dreadful to be borne.

Stammering slightly, Kendrick put the problem of accommodation to the nice girl in the agency, who recommended the Hotel Regina in the Graben, a historic street in the Inner City, and promised to make the booking straight away.

There was therefore nothing left to do except write a second letter to Ellen, begging her to come to Vienna, for she had not yet answered the first. But even in this letter he did not mention the gala and Seefeld. If anything did go wrong she would not be disappointed, and the idea of surprising continued to excite him. She would think they were going to some ordinary ball with champagne and waltzes--and then he would spring on her a treat so far above the humdrum one of whirling round a dance floor as would completely overwhelm her.

That Ellen might not accept his invitation occurred to him but he fought it down. In a bookshop in the Tottenham Court Road, Kendrick had found a pamphlet called Positive Thinking for Beginners. He had not bought it--it was not the kind of book that a Frobisher bought--but he had read it in the shop and was determinedly putting its precepts into practice. He had even written cheerfully to his mother, announcing his plans--and writing cheerfully to Patricia Frobisher was not a thing he did often.

Fortunately he was expected that evening at Gowan Terrace to help with a lantern slide show in aid of Basque refugees and could share his

success with Ellen's mother and her aunts.

"She's sure to get leave just for a day or two, don't you think?"' he asked, and they said they thought it more than likely.

Aunt Annie--the one who was a mycologist --continued to feel that it was unwise to encourage the poor young man, but Dr Carr was not sorry to think that her daughter might be having a break in that most beautiful of cities. In her last letter Ellen had sounded a little tired. It occurred to her that Ellen had not mentioned the groundsman recently--the one who had put the tortoise on wheels. She hoped he was still there; he had sounded sensible, and not many of the staff at Hallendorf sounded that.

As for Aunt Phyllis--she was having a thought which when it came to the surface of her mind upset her deeply, for it was a throwback to the days when she was Gussie Norchester's biddable daughter and leading a life of stifling conventionality. She had caught herself thinking that there were worse places than a large house in rural Cumberland, in the event of war, for her beloved niece.

As they drove down the winding road towards the first of the lakes, it began to rain. Marek wound down the window of his father's old Talbot and switched on the windscreen wipers which fibrillated uncertainly and then stuck. The car was used only on the farm; an ancient pick-up. He had refused to borrow the Captain's Buick.

Beside him Steiner sat silent, his arm in its sling supported on the cushion that Marek's mother had arranged for him when they set off. He was angry with Marek.

"There's no need for you to do this," he'd said. "I can easily make my own way back by train."

Marek had taken no notice, but now, as he drove through the prim, uncaring villages towards Steiner's house, there was little they could say to each other. Their long quest for Isaac had ended in tragedy; Steiner was hurt; the van had had to be left, hidden in a shed at Pettovice, to be dismantled and refitted as an ordinary lorry. Steiner's folk song collecting days were over.

"You must get back to work,

Marek," the old man said eventually. "You must book your passage to America. I shall stay and edit my papers and if you get in my way I shall be extremely cross. My house is too small for the two of us."

Marek managed a smile. "I won't stay long. Just long enough to see that your arm is healed."

The bullet fired through the windscreen by the Nazi louts who had ambushed Steiner had only grazed the skin, but there were splinters of glass more deeply lodged.

"My arm is healed," said the Professor angrily. "Let me tell you, Marek, I will not endure being fussed over." Dear God, he thought, what will make this obstinate man understand where his true destiny lies?

"There's nothing more you can do for Meierwitz."

"I should like to have buried him," said Marek grimly.

There had been no choice but to take the injured Steiner to Pettelsdorf. The van could only limp along at a snail's pace, the glass was shattered; there was no possibility of crossing the border and bringing him home. Remembering the fearless way his people had come forward, Marek could hardly bear to think that he had endangered them. He had scarcely brought the van to a standstill than it was removed, hidden.

No one asked any questions--not Janik or Stepan, not Andras in the mill; everyone was instantly alert, everyone understood. Lenitschka, usually so voluble, took Steiner upstairs in silence while the maids fetched bandages ...

But with his mother he had quarrelled straight away. "You had no right to keep your work a secret. We want to help, all of us. We want to fight this evil. We could have sheltered your fugitives and made everything easier."

She had always been politically aware, reared among intellectuals. From the day Hitler burnt the books in front of the university, Milenka was implacably engaged against the Nazis. Nor was his grandmother an ally.

"Your mother is perfectly right," said Nora Coutts, emerging from her room to interfere with Lenitschka as she dressed Steiner's wound. "You have always been in danger of patronising women. I've told you before."