La's Orchestra Saves the World (20 page)

He remained still. “No, I didn’t say that. I said something else.”

“But you did. You said it.”

He sat up, quite abruptly, and La gave a start. He turned to her. “I said that the Germans would say something about chaos and bad government, if they told us what they really think. They do not think that the Poles can run a country, or deserve to do so.”

He rose to his feet. “I’m going to tie those beans,” he said. “Then I’m going to have to go.”

“I must pay you,” she said. After the first few months, when he insisted that he was paying for the flute, La had taken to giving him money for his work in the garden. He had been reluctant to accept it, but she had insisted. Now she got up out of her deck chair and went into the house to fetch the coins from her purse.

Inside, she stopped for a few moments in the corridor. Perhaps it really was a slip of the tongue; he’s speaking a foreign language, after all, even if he speaks it very well. That
must be it.
We
and
they
are easily confused; anybody might make such a mistake.

She took the coins out to him. He seemed to have forgotten the incident, and talked to her about the four rows of beans of which he seemed very proud.

“You will have a very good crop,” he said. “You wait and see.”

LA LISTENED TO A STORY
on the radio. It was about a woman who lived in a small town in Kent who took a lodger, a commercial traveller. The traveller had a leather suitcase in which he kept his samples; he sold brass fittings to hardware stores, and the case sometimes made a clinking sound when he set it down. He was a good tenant; he paid the landlady his rent every Friday morning, and he was always neat and tidy. On Sundays he went by bus to a Catholic church before he came back for lunch with his landlady. He often had a small gift of something for her—a jar of marmalade, a small parcel of lamb chops. He was married, he said, but his wife was living in Belfast, where she was looking after her infirm mother. They would get together again when the mother was no more: she could not last forever, he said.

The landlady found one evening that her lodger had left his sample case on the landing. She picked it up and took it to his room. She knocked, but he did not reply, and so she opened the door gently. He was sitting at the table near the
window, writing something in a book. When he saw her come into the room, he closed the notebook and stood up. He seemed very uncomfortable that she was holding the sample case, and he took it from her quite roughly. She was surprised, but understood that men sometimes became short when they had been working too hard and were tired.

The lodger kept odd hours, but that was not unusual for a commercial traveller. He went off to the railway station and took trains to various parts of the country. He had clients all over England, he said.

He seemed to have no friends, or none that she knew about. He came from Manchester, he said, but he had no family up there any more. He was a loner, she thought; she had had lodgers like that before, and they were no trouble.

La listened to this. It was a trite story and she knew exactly where it was leading. People were always being told to be on the look-out, to be careful of what they said and to whom they said it. The landlady would come into the room and discover a transmitter, or a code-book perhaps. It was all too obvious.

And it was uncomfortable. She turned off the wireless and went to stand by the window. It was afternoon and the shadows were lengthening. That evening they would have an orchestra rehearsal, and she had matters that would occupy her mind. She was copying out a part for one of the trumpeters—slow, laborious work that she did not enjoy—
and she should be doing that rather than listening to the radio. Ridiculous story—like a simplified morality play for the unsophisticated. Did they really want to have everybody looking into everybody’s business, just in case …

After a few minutes she went back to the wireless and turned it on again.

“… at his trial,” said the voice. “The landlady was there, and one or two intelligence people who had been involved in the case. The judge said very little. The case had been one of the worst he had seen; the information sent back to Germany could have cost the lives of many innocent people. There was a sentence provided for by law and that was the sentence that he now felt he must impose.

“They took him away. He showed no emotion, even when his landlady looked at him from the public benches. He gave no indication of recognising her. He said nothing.

“In prison he refused food, right up to the time that they took him from his cell. His legs failed him at the end, though, and they had to carry him to his death; he died a coward. Afterwards he was buried in an unmarked grave. They never knew his real name, but they were sure that he was an Englishman.”

That was the end of the story. La turned away from the wireless in her irritation. Why had they called him a coward? She thought that he must have been brave, not a coward at all, taking all those risks and then saying nothing. That was brave, even if he was on the wrong side, on the side of darkness.
And anybody’s legs would fail them if they were made to walk to their death. What did they expect?

She sat down. She felt an emptiness, a rawness within her. She loved Feliks; she admitted that to herself now.
I love him
. It was an unreciprocated love, yes, but it was love nonetheless. She did not want him to die, to be carried to his death like the man in the story. Yet just as she admitted to herself that what she felt for him was love, so, too, she had to admit to herself that her duty was clear: this war was about evil, and the innocent could well be the agents of evil. Misguided people no doubt believed in Hitler and his cause; might even think they were doing the right thing. Feliks could be one of those; or he might be an uncomplicated patriot, for whom it was not a question of loyalty to Hitler and the Nazis, but to Germany itself. People said that there were officers in the German army who were in that position; men with a sense of personal honour, torn between loyalty and disgust. Oh Feliks …

She had to speak to Tim, not in the indirect way that she had on that previous occasion, but openly and unambiguously. He was rational and level-headed; a balanced man. He would assess whether what she had to say amounted to any sort of evidence at all, or whether there was an innocent explanation.

She telephoned Tim, who was not at his desk. The flight-sergeant who answered, whom La had met in making arrangements for the orchestra, said that he would pass on
the message to call her back. Fifteen minutes later, La received the call.

“I suppose you’ve heard,” Tim said to her before she could say anything.

“Heard what?”

“They’ve arrested Feliks.”

S
HE DID NOT CARE
that it would make her late for the orchestra. It was not an afternoon for cycling, the strong wind in her face making progress slow, but she had pedalled that route to Madder’s Farm so often before that she could do it virtually without looking where she was going. She had been there that morning for the hens and had left at eleven; everything had been normal then. She had exchanged a few words with Henry when she was stacking the eggs, but only a few words. His pain was worse; she could tell that since he was moving slowly, and he was always more taciturn when he was in pain.

She found him in the kitchen, sitting at the table, a half-drunk cup of tea in front of him. He looked up at her, eyes narrowed.

“So, you’ve heard.”

She took off her scarf and tossed it down on the table. “What happened?”

“He stole my money,” he said. “He stole all of it.”

“When?”

He took the cup in his right hand, carefully inserting one of his immobile fingers through the handle. “This afternoon. Lunchtime. I was down at Pott’s, and when I came back up I saw somebody cycling away from the house. It was him. I called after him, but he paid no attention.” He paused. “Then I went in and something made me check the … the place where I keep some money I have. It had been taken. All of it. Near on eight hundred pounds, if a penny. Eight hundred.”

La did not like the way he was looking at her. It was as if he felt triumphant; having suspected all along that Feliks was a thief, now he was being proved right.

“But were you sure it was him?” she asked.

“Yes. Of course I was. I know that man as well as you do.” He looked at her. “Well, maybe not quite as well as you do …”

La ignored this. “Maybe he came to see you. Maybe the money was already gone.”

Henry eyed her. “Wasn’t gone yesterday.”

“Well, it could have happened any time from when you last checked up on it. Where did you keep it?”

“Cupboard.”

“Which cupboard?”

“Cupboard in the sitting room. Round the front.”

La thought for a moment. “That’s a room you hardly ever go into, Henry. The door’s always closed there. You know that.”

He stared at her sullenly. “So? Money’s gone. He was here.”

In the past La had noticed that when Henry decided that something was the case, then it was not easy to shift him. He was doing it again. Feliks had been on the farm and the money was gone. The two facts seemed to him to be inextricably linked.

She tried again. “All that I’m saying is this, Henry. You don’t know when the money went missing. It could have been last night. You never lock your doors, do you? No, you don’t. I know that you don’t.”

He shook his head. “I would have heard somebody. If somebody came in last night I would have heard him. I’m a light sleeper. Always have been. I would have heard somebody downstairs.”

“No, you wouldn’t necessarily. People can be very quiet. You sleep upstairs, don’t you? You do.”

He contemplated this for a moment before he spoke again. “Anyway,” he said. “Percy Brown’s been down here. He said he was going over to arrest him at Archer’s place. So that’s it. And all I want to know is—when will I get my money back? They‘ll find it in his room, likely enough.”

La sighed. “You could be wrong, Henry. Have you thought of that?”

“Ain’t wrong.”

“Well, anybody can be wrong, you included. And if you are, then you’ve accused an innocent man of being a thief. How would you feel if you were accused yourself of stealing something and you hadn’t? Can you imagine how you would feel?”

“Haven’t stolen anything,” he said. “Not me. So your question makes no sense, La. And here’s another thing. Four eggs broken this morning. You’ve got to be more careful, La. Four eggs wasted.”

THE TRIP TO MADDER’S FARM
made her arrive ten minutes late at the village hall. They were working on an arrangement of “Brigg Fair” that had been sent from Cambridge, with a recommendation by Mr. Paulson. It was on the outer edge of their abilities, and they were struggling. The percussion was all wrong, and there was a new violinist from one of the nearby villages who was very rusty with the instrument. La glanced at Tim, who shrugged, but smiled encouragingly. It was not going well.

La remembered the words. They came back to her as she struggled with the music:
It was on the fifth of August, the weather fine and fair / Unto Brigg Fair I did repair, for love I was inclined
. She thought: to repair somewhere with love. To repair somewhere with love.
I took hold of her lily-white hand
,
O and merrily was her heart / And now we’re met together, I hope we ne’er shall part
.

She looked down at the music on the stand in front of her. She tried to keep time, but she lost the place and had to turn a sheet quickly. The orchestra continued, although one or two of the violins faltered. Tim looked up at her sharply. She concentrated on the music, but the words returned to her mind. Brigg Fair.
I hope we ne’er shall part
. One did not dare hope that; not these days, when people were thrown together in the arbitrary confusion of war and parted as easily and as quickly as they met. Yet people loved one another; in the interstices of all this, love was possible.

La put down her baton. She could not continue, for the tears she had fought to suppress now overcame her. She turned away, so that people might not see her cry. She put her hands up over her face.

One of the sisters from Bury was beside her. “La, dear. La.” There was an arm about her, and she was led to a chair at the side of the hall.

“I’m sorry. I’m just all over the place tonight. I’m sorry.”

“Hush. Hush. You don’t have to say sorry. There, La. There.” She leaned forward and whispered, “It’s Feliks, isn’t it, La? It’s Feliks?”

Tim was standing behind the woman from Bury. “Is there anything …”

“She’ll be all right.”

La looked up at Tim. She saw that the orchestra had broken up and people were packing their instruments away.

“Tim, I’m so sorry. I should have asked somebody else to take over tonight.”

He nodded to the woman, who moved away to let him forward. She threw an anxious glance at La.

La looked up at Tim, who had reached out to take her hand.

She had a handkerchief and wiped at her eyes. The tears had stopped, but her cheeks were still moist. “Can I talk to you in private?”

He nodded. “Of course.” He looked over her shoulder. “Look, the truck can take everybody home. I’ve got my car this evening. I’ll drive you back to your place.”

They did not wait until the hall had been closed off, but went out to Tim’s car and drove back down the lane. Tim was quiet in the car, although he said, “It’s been a difficult day for you. I can tell that. I was pretty taken aback myself.”

In the house, she put on the kettle and they sat down at the kitchen table.

“So,” said Tim. “Dab has been arrested. A nasty business.”

She took a deep breath. “It’s not that. Not the theft.”

He was puzzled. “He’s been arrested for something else? Where did you hear that?”

“No, I don’t mean the arrest at all. I want to talk about something else. I think that Feliks may be German.”

For a few moments Tim said nothing. Then he reached into a pocket and took out a packet of cigarettes. “I see.” He extracted a cigarette and tapped it against the table. La watched him. “And why do you think that?”