La's Orchestra Saves the World (15 page)

La sighed. “Poor hens. They have no idea there’s a war on.”

“Lucky them.”

La brought the conversation back to Feliks. “Where is he? I haven’t seen him.”

Henry pointed towards the far end of the farm. “Down there. Pott’s Field. He’s digging drainage. I’ve been meaning to do that for years, and now we can get it done. Pott’s has always been too marshy. If we drain it properly, we can get a winter crop maybe this year.”

She saw him, though, a few days later, when she was just about to finish work. Henry had asked him to take a break from the drainage and cut grass for fodder; he was using a scythe, and had taken his shirt off for the heat. La watched him for a few moments, and then, fastening the hen-run door, she made her way up to Henry’s kitchen.

Henry was sitting at the table with an open account book before him. He looked up when La entered.

“If I had to pay you and Feliks proper wages,” he said, “I’d be bankrupt.”

“You don’t expect me to believe that, Henry,” said La.

“Believe it or not, it’s true.”

“I think that you’re one of these farmers who keeps a lot of money under his bed, or in a cupboard somewhere.” She had read about just such a case; the farmer had died and his daughter had discovered six thousand pounds in a bag under the stairs.

Henry moved in his seat. Just slightly. “What makes you say that?” There was an edge to his voice.

“Oh, just a suspicion.” La moved to the sink, a large Belfast. “Anyway, I’d like to take him some water,” she said. “It must be hot work, out there in the sun.”

“There’s lemonade in the cupboard,” said Henry. “Take a look. Go on. He deserves it.”

She found the large bottle and poured a glass.

“And you?” said Henry. “You can have some if you like.”

“I don’t really deserve it,” said La. “He’s the one who’s been working.”

She went out with the glass of lemonade on a small tray and made her way down to the field. Feliks saw her coming before she arrived, and he stopped working, leaning on his scythe, waiting for her. She gave him the lemonade and he took it and drank it in one draught. He smiled at her, as if in triumph at the short work he had made of the drink, handing her back the empty glass.

The feeling that she had experienced came back. She felt her heart thumping. Ridiculous, she thought. Ridiculous. She looked down at the ground, at the blade of the scythe, at the shoes he was wearing, boots that had badly scuffed toes.

She felt the glass, cool to the touch, moist with condensation. “Would you like to come and have a meal at my house? Tonight?”

She surprised herself. This had not been planned.

He moved his hands on the handle of the scythe. “Yes, I would like that.”

“Good.”

“You must show me how to get there. Henry says there is a bicycle …”

La explained and he listened. She gave him the directions and left him. Up at the house, Henry wordlessly took the glass from her and returned to the scrutiny of his account book. But then, a few moments later, he looked up and said, “Don’t go and get any silly ideas about that Pole.”

La caught her breath. “What I do or don’t do is none of your business, Henry. Thank you.”

He assumed a pained expression. “Sorry! I was only thinking of you. Men could take advantage of you, you see.”

La’s answer was cold. “Thank you for worrying about me.”

I am not in love, she said to herself. I am finished with love.

WHEN SHE RETURNED
to the house that morning, the postman had delivered a letter from Tim, written on RAF stationery. “I have spoken to the C.O. about your orchestra,” he wrote. “He was a bit sceptical at first, but he’s like that about every idea that anybody comes up with. He pointed out that there were so many comings and goings that it would be difficult to have any continuity. Then he said that if we had anything, we should have a station band. And
that idea, he said, had already been rejected: nobody to organise it.

“So I persisted, because that’s the way you get anything done with him. If you ask twice the answer is usually no. Three times and it’s still no, but the no takes a little longer to come out. Four times and he begins to think of it, and then five times and you get a yes. It works every time.

“He said that we could use transport to get people over to your village, and that we could collect people from Bury St. Edmunds, as long as they don’t mind travelling in a truck—not the normal transport for an orchestra! So that means that our driver can go up to Bury, collect the players and then drive down to you. Once a month, though: no more, I’m afraid.

“I put a sign up in the Mess and on station notice-boards. We’ve had seven people say that they’re interested, and that makes eight, with me. So all you need to do is to get the word out in Bury—in the parish magazines perhaps, and then we’re ready. I’m calling it La’s Orchestra, by the way. Nice name!

“Have you found a conductor? Or will you do it yourself? Conducting doesn’t seem awfully difficult to me—you just beat time and try to keep everybody together. Piece of cake, I would have thought.”

She smiled as she read the letter. The orchestra had been an impulsive idea on her part, and she had not imagined
that it would get this far. But now it seemed to have taken on an energy of its own, and … well, why not? Why should she not have a little orchestra that would entertain the players even if it never entertained anybody else? People spoke about morale—there was a lot in the newspapers about that, and an orchestra would certainly help morale. That was what orchestras did. They played in the face of everything, as the orchestra on the
Titanic
did when it was sinking. It played. Well, we shall play while the country is fighting for its life. We shall play no matter what the enemy throws at us. They would prefer silence—so we shall answer them with music, or cacophony—it did not matter a great deal. As long it was not silence.

She put the letter aside but brought it out that evening when she was waiting for Feliks to arrive. He had said that he would be there at seven, but did not come until almost a quarter to eight, when La had been on the point of deciding that he would not be coming at all. She thought it unlikely that he had forgotten, and he seemed too well-mannered to stand her up. He had lost his way, perhaps, or there had been some crisis at the farm—the fox, maybe, attacking the hen house. But he did not do that in broad daylight; his raids came at night.

She felt uneasy, on tenterhooks; she paced about the kitchen and went out into the garden to look at the rows of potatoes she had planted in a dug-up section of the lawn.
The garden was almost entirely given over to vegetables now—a wartime garden in which flowers and shrubs took second place. But she could not concentrate this evening, and found herself looking anxiously down the lane for any signs of Feliks.

When he eventually arrived, she felt only relief.

“I’m very sorry,” he said. “Henry cut himself. I had to make up a bandage. His finger.”

She winced. She had seen Henry fumbling with a vegetable knife in the kitchen. She asked how he was and was reassured that the cut was not too bad. “I have told him that I can cut things for him,” said Feliks. “But he is proud.”

“Yes. He does not want to be an invalid.”

He had ridden over on Henry’s old bicycle, which La had seen stored in a barn, covered in cobwebs. She showed him where he might stow it, and took him into the house. “It is very beautiful,” he said, looking about him. “These houses in England are so beautiful. They are so peaceful.”

She led him into the sitting room. When she had first come to the house, she had found a bottle of Gerald’s expensive sherry, which she now opened. She poured a small glass for each of them and passed one to him. He raised it politely, straightening up as he did so, and then bowing slightly in her direction. The gesture seemed to her to be very formal, almost Prussian, but she remembered what Tim had said about his background. This was no ordinary
farm worker; this was an educated man, a member of a landed family, for all she knew. Many of the Poles in their air force were from that sector of society, she had heard.

While they drank the sherry, they spoke about his cottage. He was completely satisfied with it, he said. It was heaven. “I do not have to listen to other men snoring,” he said. “That is bliss for me. Bliss.”

She asked him about his English. He had studied it at university level, he said. English and Polish literature. He found that languages came naturally to him, and that when the war was over, if Poland was still there, he would return to the university and complete the doctorate he had embarked upon.

“It must be strange,” she said. “One moment you are studying for a doctorate and the next you are in the air force. And then you’re digging ditches on a farm.”

“Everybody’s life is strange. Everything is turned upside down in war. It is not strange.”

She read him the letter from Tim. “He said that you play the flute. He thought you would be able to play in our little orchestra.”

Feliks was self-deprecating. “Me? I am not very good. Not good enough for an orchestra.”

“There are orchestras and orchestras,” she assured him. “Nobody in this one will be very good.”

“Even so, I have no flute. I’m sorry. I cannot.”

He moved the conversation on to another subject, and then they went through to the kitchen, where she had laid a gingham tablecloth on the table and place-mats at either end. She had made a salad using lettuce and radishes grown in her garden, and a sausage and sultana casserole. There were still sausages to be had, and she had prepared generous portions.

After the meal he looked at his watch. “I will have to go now.”

“Yes, of course.”

There was still some light left in the sky, but he had brought a small carbide lamp should he need to cycle back through the darkness. She went into the garden with him and watched him mount the cycle. He smiled, and doffed the grey tweed cap he had brought with him.

He said, “If you wish, I could look after the hens for you tomorrow. You could have a day off.”

She did not want that. She was used to her hens, and she felt responsible for them. She knew the fox and his ways; if her back was turned he would surely take advantage of that.

He cycled off, waving as he turned out of her drive and onto the lane, wobbling as he picked up speed. She stood for a moment and watched him before she went back into her house; he did not look back, and did not see her. The gingham tablecloth brought a touch of colour into the
kitchen, a splash of red. That cheered the place up, but the house seemed empty now that he had gone, and for her part La felt ill at ease. She locked the back door and went into the sitting room. She had missed the main news bulletin on the wireless, but there was a later one that she just managed to catch. There had been further raids, and the enemy had lost a substantial number of aircraft before they had been able to reach their targets. The voice of the newsreader was even; the voice of one who was used to the breaking of bad news.

She listened in a half-hearted way, before switching off. She wondered what he thought of her. It was difficult to read him, and she feared that his politeness was just that and no more: politeness. He had shown no desire to stay and chat after dinner, and it was difficult to see why he should want to get back to his cottage when there can have been very little for him to do there. He did not want to spend more time in her company; that was the only conclusion she could reach.

She turned out the lights and went into her bedroom to get ready for bed. There was a mirror beside her wardrobe, and she looked at herself in this. I am not attractive, she said to herself. Not really. I am just the woman who looks after the hens. If he wants anybody, then it will be somebody younger, somebody more appealing than I am. There are plenty of girls, and with most young men away, they were eager to meet any man they could. Feliks was good-looking;
he would turn heads. He could have any woman; he would not be interested in me.

She sat on the bed and removed her stockings. She glanced again at her reflection in the mirror. There are ways of looking into mirrors, she thought, one of which is to open your eyes and see the person who is looking back at you.

I
T WAS TIM HONEY
who did most of the work of getting the orchestra together. La recognised this all along, and later she said, “Tim, you may call this La’s Orchestra, but it’s really you who’s done all the work.”

He was modest. “Nonsense. It’s La’s Orchestra because it was your idea and you’re the conductor. Enough said.”

But she was right about the work. After he had written the letter to La, it was Tim who was in touch with the vicar in Bury. He proved enthusiastic: “Can’t play a note myself, not a note. Can’t sing either—if you came to evensong here you’d know all about that. But there are plenty of people here who would like to join.”

The plenty of people of the vicar’s imaginings turned out to be seven, but four of them were strings players—three violinists and a cellist—and one of them was a reasonably
strong player. The violinists were all women—two sisters, retired teachers, who lived together, and the almoner from the hospital. The cellist was a man, a youngish bank manager whose asthma prevented him from joining anything more demanding than the Home Guard. They were all enthusiastic and had time on their hands, and had no objection to making the short journey from Bury in the back of an RAF truck.

With the eight volunteers from the base, most of whom were wind players, the orchestra at least had a core. To this there were added two players whom La had discovered in the village—the postman, Mr. North, who had an ancient set of drums in his attic, and his sister-in-law, who was prepared to assist him in the percussion section “as long as North keeps me right on the rhythm.”

“I shall do that,” said La. “I am the conductor. You watch me.”

It was Tim, too, who managed to get together the music to start them off. The air force, he explained, had a music department—bands and the like—and they were sympathetic. A crate of sheet music was dispatched and triumphantly delivered to La’s doorstep by Tim.