A SONG FOR SUMMER

            by Eva Ibbotson

   Published by: St. Martin's Press,  New York, N.y.

Copyright 1997 by Eva Ibbotson.
 
       BOOK JACKET INFORMATION

  In a fragile world on the brink of World War II, lovely young Englishwoman Ellen Carr takes a job as a housemother at an unorthodox boarding school in Vienna that specializes in music, drama, and dance. Ellen simply wants to cook beautiful food in the homeland of her surrogate grandmother, who had enchanted her with stories of growing up in the countryside of Austria.
  What she finds when she reaches the Hallendorf School in Vienna is a world that is magically unconventional--and completely out of control. The children are delightful, but wild; the teachers are beleaguered and at their wits' end; and the buildings are a shambles. In short, the whole place is in desperate need of Ellen's attention.
  Ellen seems to have been born to nurture all of Hallendorf; soon everyone from Leon the lonely young musical prodigy to harassed headmaster Mr. Bennet to Marek the mysterious groundsman depends on Ellen for--well, everything. And in providing all of them with whatever they need, especially Marek, for whom she develops a special attachment, Ellen is happier than she's ever been.
  But what happens when the menace of Hitler's reign reaches the idyllic world of the Hallendorf School gives this romantic, intelligent tale a combination of charm and power that only the very best storytellers can achieve.

  Eva Ibbotson was born into a literary family in Vienna and came to England as a small child before World War II. She has written numerous award-winning novels for both children and adults, including A Countess Below Stairs and The Morning Gift. She currently lives in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, England.

     PRAISE FOR EVA IBBOTSON

  "Eva Ibbotson is such a good writer that her characters break the bonds of the romantic novel."
    --The Washington Post Book World
 
          Also by Eva Ibbotson

The Morning Gift Madensky Square A Company of Swans A Glove Shop in Vienna Magic Flutes A Countess Below Stairs

            For my family, with love and gratitude
 
         A SONG FOR SUMMER

               Part One

  In a way they were born to be aunts. Emancipated, eccentric and brave, the Norchester sisters lived in a tall grey house in Bloomsbury, within a stone's throw of the British Museum.
  It is a district known for its intellectuals. Blue plaques adorn many of the houses, paying tributes to the dead dons and scholars who once inhabited them and even the professors and librarians who were still alive walked through the quiet London squares with the abstracted look of those whose minds are on higher things.
  No. Three Gowan Terrace, the home of Charlotte, Phyllis and Annie Norchester, belonged firmly in this tradition. It was a three-storey house of amazing discomfort. The furniture was dark and disregarded; the bedrooms contained only narrow beds, desks, and outsize typewriters; in the drawing room the chairs were arranged in rows to face a large table and a notice board. Yet in its own way the house was a shrine. For the sisters, now middle-aged, had belonged to that stalwart band of women who had turned their back on feminine frippery, and devoted their whole beings to the securing of votes for women.
  Charlotte, the oldest, had been for six weeks on hunger strike in Holloway
Prison; Phyllis had spent more time chained to the railing of the hated women's gallery in the Houses of Parliament than any other suffragette; and Annie, the youngest, had knocked off the helmets of no less than seven policemen before being dragged away, kicking and protesting, to join her sister in prison.
  It had been a glorious time. Victory had come in 1918 when the heroic work of women in the Great War could no longer be gainsaid. But though women had had the vote now for some twenty years, the sisters were faithful to the cause. The curtains --in the suffragette colours of purple, green and white--might be frayed and dusty but they would never be removed. The picture of their leader, Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst, still hung in the
 
dining room, though she herself had been dead for many years and was now a statue on Victoria Embankment. Rubbing themselves down with the frayed, rough towels in the bathroom with its cake of carbolic soap and rusty geyser reminded them of those heady days being hosed down by brutal wardresses in prison; the boiled fish served to them by the elderly cook general scarcely differed from the food they had thrown out of the windows of their cells as they began their hunger strike. And the suffragette motto, They Must Give Us Freedom Or They Must Give Us Death was still written in large letters on a poster in the hall.
  But if they played the "Do you remember?"' game as they sat in their Jaeger dressing gowns drinking their cocoa, Charlotte and Phyllis and Annie never forgot how much was still owed to women even though the vote was won.
  Charlotte had qualified as a doctor and was now Senior Registrar at the Bloomsbury Hospital for Women--a brisk and busy person who wore her stethoscope as society women wore their pearls. Phyllis was the Principal of a Teacher Training College and Annie was the only female Professor of Applied Mycology, not only in the University of London, but in the whole of Britain.
  They might thus have rested on their laurels, but they did not. Every week there were meetings in the ice-cold drawing room: meetings to proclaim the need for more women in Parliament, in the universities, on the committee of the League of Nations. Lecturers came to discourse on the evils of female circumcision in Bechuanaland, on the shamefully low intake of women in the legal profession, on the scandalous discrimination against girls in Higher Mathematics. Leaflets were circulated, articles written, meetings addressed and as the Twenties moved into the Thirties and the canker of Fascism arose in Germany and Italy and Spain, women were urged to declare themselves against Hitler with his dread doctrine of Kinder, Kirche und K@uche which threatened to put them back into the Middle Ages.
  But it was during this decade that something disquieting began to be felt in Gowan Terrace, a development as unexpected as it was difficult
 
to deal with, and it concerned Charlotte's only daughter, Ellen.
  None of the Norchester sisters had intended to marry but in the year 1913 a brave and beautiful woman named Emily Davison threw herself under the King's horse in the Derby to draw attention to the suffragette cause, and was killed. It was at her funeral that Charlotte found herself standing next to a good-looking gentleman who, when she faltered (for she had loved Emily), took her arm and led her from the open grave. His name was Alan Carr, he was a solicitor and sympathetic to the movement. They married and a year later their child was born.
  It was, fortunately, a girl, whom they named Ellen, and Alan had time to dote on her and spoil her before he was killed at Ypres. The baby was enchanting: plump and dimpled with blonde curls and big brown eyes--the kind of person found in paintings leaning out of heaven and bestowing laurel leaves or garlands on deserving mortals down below.
  What mattered, however, was that she was clever. Every possible kind of intelligence test proclaimed that all was very well and her mother, Dr Carr, and her aunts, Phyllis and Annie, spared no effort to stimulate the little creature's mind. This girl at least should not struggle for her opportunities. Oxford or Cambridge were a certainty, followed by a higher degree and then who knew ... an ambassadorship, a seat in the cabinet-- nothing was out of Ellen's reach.
  So they did not, at first, feel in the least alarmed. All little girls picked daisies and arranged them in paste jars, usually in inconvenient places, and Dr Carr, bidden imperiously by her daughter to smell them, duly did so though the scent of daisies is not easily perceived by someone accustomed to the strong odours of lysol and chloroform. It was natural for little girls to bake buns and Ellen, perched on a stool beside the usually morose cook general with her curls tied in a handkerchief, was a sight that her mother and her aunts could appreciate. Children made little gardens and planted love-in-a-mist and forget-me-nots, and for Ellen to claim a patch of earth in the sooty square of ground behind the house which all the sisters were far too busy to cultivate, was natural. But children's gardens are generally outgrown and Ellen's little patch extended until
 
she had cultivated a whole flower bed and then she found cuttings of honeysuckle and clematis and trained them to climb up to the first-floor windows.
  Then again there was the question of the maids. It was of course all right for children to help servants: servants after all were a kind of underclass and should have been liberated except that it wasn't easy to see how to run a house without them. But it soon became clear that Ellen enjoyed making beds and polishing the grate and setting fires. They would find her folding sheets and putting her nose voluptuously against the starched linen. Once when the maid was ill they came across her with her school uniform hitched up, scrubbing the floor, and she said: "Look, isn't it beautiful, the way the light catches the soap bubbles!"
  Did she perhaps do altogether too much looking? The sisters had read their Blake; they knew it was desirable to see the world in a grain of sand and eternity in an hour. But the world in a scrubbing brush? The world in a bowl of fruit?
  "Perhaps she's going to be a painter?"' suggested Aunt Phyllis.
  A great woman painter, the first female President of the Royal Academy? It was a possibility.
  But Ellen didn't want to paint apples. She wanted to smell them, turn them in her hands, and eat them.
  Other members of the sisterhood were called in, honorary aunts to the child, and consulted: Aunt Delia, an inky lady who ran the Left
Book Club Shop in Gower Street, and the headmistress of Ellen's school, a full-bosomed and confident person whose bottle-green girls were the most academically motivated in London.
  "She is clever, isn't she?"' Dr Carr demanded. "You wouldn't lie to me, Lydia, after all we've been through together."
  And Lydia, who had shared a cell with Charlotte after they threw a brick through the windows of No. 10 Downing Street, said:
  "I tell you she is very bright indeed. Her last exam results were excellent."
  But at the end of the following term Ellen came to her and asked if she could take cookery lessons in the Sixth Form.
  "Cookery! But my dear, that's just for the girls
 
who aren't going to university."
  "I don't want to go to university," said Ellen. "I want to go to a Domestic Science College. A proper one where they teach you to sew and to cook and clean. I want," she said, opening her soft brown eyes in a look of entreaty, "to use my hands." And she spread them in the air, as pianists spread their fingers over an invisible keyboard, as if cooking was equivalent to the playing of a Chopin @etude.
  In facing this crisis, Ellen's mother and her aunts knew whom to blame. A woman who was the embodiment of everything they disliked in their sex: an abject doormat, a domestic slave, a person without a mind or will of her own--an Austrian peasant who kept house for Ellen's grandfather and whom Ellen, since the age of six, had inexplicably adored.
  The grandfather in question did not come from the Norchester side of the family. He was Alan Carr's father; a scholar engaged in a great work, the compilation of a glossary of Greek fishes, which seemed unlikely to be completed before he died. He had travelled to Vienna shortly after the end of the war to consult some manuscripts in the Hofburg library and had taken lodgings in an inn in Nussdorf where Henny, the landlady's daughter, had looked after him. She was a quiet, fair girl, gentle and deft, who both admired and pitied the serious Professor, for he had lost a son in the war and a wife soon afterwards with cancer.
  When he returned to Britain he asked her if she would come and keep house for him and she agreed.
  No house was ever so "kept" as Walnut
Tree Cottage in Wimbledon. Henny cooked the Professor's meals and washed his clothes and polished his furniture but she did much, much more. She found the pieces of paper with their Greek hieroglyphics which he had dropped on to the floor; she warmed his slippers; she cultivated the little London garden in which, inexplicably, there was no sign of a walnut tree.
  "Well, you see, he is a very clever man and I like to make him Comfortable," was the only defence she could put up against the shocked comments of Ellen's family.
  After she had been with him for three years the Professor said he thought they should be married.
  Henny refused. She was not of his world, she said;
 
it would not be suitable. She had shared his bed from the start, understanding that this was as important to gentlemen as the proper preparation of their food and the certainty of hot water for their baths, but when visitors came she retreated to the kitchen which alone she had claimed for herself and turned into a replica of the country kitchen in the Austrian mountains where she had grown up.
  Ellen was six years old when she was first taken to Wimbledon. Wandering away from the drawing room where literature was being discussed, she found Henny with a cullender in front of her, shelling peas.
  Afterwards Henny always remembered the child's first words. She did not say "I want to help," or "Can I help?"' She said: "I have to help."
  So it began. In Henny's kitchen with its scrubbed table and red and white checked curtains, its potted geranium and cuckoo clock, she spent the hours of her greatest happiness. Together she and Henny tended the little garden with its rockery of alpine flowers; they baked Krapfen and Buchteln and embroidered cross-stitch borders on the towels. Ellen learnt to hang up muslin to make Topfen and that cucumber salad could have a smell--and she learnt that it was all right to be pretty. Being pretty had worried her because she had noticed that when visitors came and praised her silky curls or big brown eyes, her mother and her aunts had not been pleased. But Henny laughed and said being pretty came from God and gave people pleasure and it meant one had to brush one's hair and buff one's nails just as one had to scour out the saucepans to keep them shining.
  Henny held coloured stuffs against her face and said, look how it brings out the gold of your eyes, and without her saying a word about love, Ellen knew that Henny loved her, and loved the selfish old professor with his Greek fishes, and learnt that this much discussed emotion could be about doing and serving and not about what one said.
  One day they were making Apfel Strudel.
The white cloth was spread on the table and they were lifting the paper-thin dough from below ... lifting it with spread fingers so slowly, so gently, making it thin and ever thinner without once letting it go into holes, and Henny stopped for a moment and said more seriously than she usually spoke: "You have a real talent, Hascherl. A proper one."
 
  Even so, when the time came to choose her career, Ellen didn't have the heart to rebel; she took her Higher Certificate and went to Cambridge to read Modern Languages because she spoke German already and was extremely fond of chatting. As it happened, not much chatting went on during her tutorials and her supervisor found the Austrian dialect in which she recited Schiller's poetry singular in the extreme. But she liked Cambridge well enough--the river and the Backs, and the friendly young men who paid her compliments and took her punting and asked her to dances. She learnt to deflect their proposals of marriage and made good friends among her fellow students, the shopkeepers, and the ducks.
  With Kendrick Frobisher she was less adroit. He was a blond, serious, painfully thin young man of twenty-eight with pale blue eyes, and belonged to her life in London where he assiduously attended the meetings at Gowan Terrace, addressed envelopes, and showed a proper concern for the Higher Education of Women.
  Kendrick was the youngest son of a domineering mother who lived in Cumberland and had, when she was a young woman, personally delivered a camel on the way to church. This had happened in India where she grew up, the daughter of an army colonel stationed in Poona. The camel was pregnant and in difficulties and though she was only nineteen years old, Kendrick's mother had unhesitatingly plunged an arm into its interior and done what was necessary before passing on, indifferent to her blood-stained dress and ruined parasol, to worship God.
  Returning to Britain to marry a landowner, this redoubtable woman had produced two sons, young men who hunted, shot, fished and would presently marry. Then came Kendrick who was a disappointment from the start--an unsporting, pale, nervous boy who was bullied at school and read books.
  In the London Library, researching the minor metaphysical poets on whom he was planning a monograph, or at the many lectures, art exhibitions and concerts he attended, Kendrick was happy enough, but real people terrified him. It was causes that he espoused, and what more worthy cause than the education of women and the emancipation from slavery of the female sex?
  So he started to attend the meetings in Gowan
 
Terrace and there found Ellen handing round sandwiches.
  "The egg and cress ones are nice," she said--and that was that.
  Because he was so obviously a person that one did not marry, Ellen was not careful as she was with the young men who kissed her in punts. It seemed to her sad to have a mother who had delivered a camel on the way to church, and Kendrick had other problems.
  "What is your house like?"' she asked him once, for he lived in a small bachelor flat in Pimlico and seldom went home.
  "Wet," he had answered sadly.
  "Wetter than other houses?"' she wanted to know.
  Kendrick said yes. His home was in the Lake District, in Borrowdale, which had the highest rainfall in England. He went on to explain that as well as being wet it was red, being built of a particular kind of sandstone which became crimsoned in the rain.
  Realising that it could not be easy to live in a wet red house with two successful older brothers and a mother who had delivered a camel on the way to church, Ellen was kind to him. She accompanied him to concerts and to art galleries and to plays without scenery, and smiled at him, her mind on other things, when he paid her compliments.
  These were not the ordinary kind: they involved Kendrick in hours of pleasurable research in libraries and museums. Ellen's hair had darkened to an unsensational light brown and she had, to her great relief, largely outgrown her dimples, but in finding painters and poets who had caught the way her curls fell across her brow, or the curve of her generous mouth, he was on fertile ground.
  "Look, Ellen," he would say, "here's a portrait of Sophronia Ebenezer by Raphael. Or it may only be by the School of Raphael," he would add conscientiously. "The attribution isn't certain. But she's tilting her head just like you tilt yours when you listen."
  In the delectable Nell Gwyn Kendrick discerned the curve of Ellen's throat and her bestowing glance, and Wordsworth's lines: "She was a phantom of delight" might have been penned with her in mind. Even music yielded its images: the Scherzo of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony
 
seemed to him to mirror precisely her effervescent capacity for joy.
  Aware that he was enjoying himself, Ellen was caught quite unawares when he followed her into the kitchen one day as she was making coffee and forgetting Sophronia Ebenezer and Nell Gwyn and even Beethoven, seized one of her hands and said in a voice choked with emotion: "Oh Ellen, I love you so much. Won't you please, please marry me?"'
  Too late did Ellen reproach herself and assure him that she did not love him, could not marry him, did not intend to marry anyone for a very long time. It would have been as well to try to deprive Sir Perceval of his quest for the Grail as persuade Kendrick that all was lost. He would wait, if need be for years, he would not trouble her, all he asked was to serve her family, address even more envelopes, attend even more meetings--and be allowed to glimpse her as she went about her work.
  Ellen could hardly forbid him her mother's house; there was nothing to do except hope that he would grow out of so one-sided a passion. And during her last year at university something happened which put the erudite young man entirely out of her mind.
  Henny fell ill. She had terminal cancer and Professor Carr, whom she had served with her life, proposed to send her to the geriatric ward of the local hospital to die.
  Like many peasants, Henny was terrified of hospitals. Ellen now stopped trying to please her relatives. She left college three months before her finals and told her grandfather that Henny would die in her own bed and she would nurse her.
  She had help, of course, excellent local nurses who came by day, but most of the time they spent together, she and Henny, and they made their own world. Herr Hitler was eliminated, as was Mussolini, strutting and braying in Rome. Even the clamour of King George's Silver Jubilee scarcely reached them.
  During this time which, strangely, was not unhappy, Henny went back to her own childhood in the lovely Austrian countryside in which she had grown up. She spoke of the wind in the pine trees, the cows with their great bells, about her brothers and sisters, and the Alpengl@uhen when in the hour of sunset the high peaks turned
 
to flame.
  And again and again she spoke about the flowers. She spoke about the gentians and the edelweiss and the tiny saxifrages clinging to the rocks, but there was one flower she spoke of in a special voice. She called it a Kohlr@oserl--a little coal rose--but it was not a rose. It was a small black orchid with a tightly furled head.
  "It didn't look much, but oh Ellie, the scent! You could smell it long before you found the flowers. In the books they tell you it smells like vanilla, but if so, it's like vanilla must smell in heaven. You must go, Liebling. You must go and put your face to them."
  "I will, Henny. I'll bring back a root and--"'
  But she didn't finish and Henny patted her hand and smiled, for they both knew that she was not a person who wanted things dug up and planted on her grave.
  "Just find them and tell them ... thank you," said Henny.
  A few days later she spoke of them again: "Ah yes, Kohlr@oserl," she said--and soon afterwards she died.

  Ellen didn't go back to finish her degree. She enrolled at the Lucy Hatton School of Cookery and Household Management and Henny was right, she did have talent. She graduated summa cum laude and her mother and her aunts and Kendrick Frobisher watched her receive her diploma. As she came off the platform with her prizes, grace touched Dr Charlotte Carr, who was a good woman, and she threw her arms round her daughter and said: "We're all so proud of you, my darling. Really so very proud."
  And three months later, in the spring of 1937, answering an advertisement in the Lady, Ellen set off for Austria to take up a domestic post in a school run by an Englishman and specialising in Music, Drama and the Dance.

  It was listed in the guide books as an important castle and definitely worth a detour, but Schloss Hallendorf had nothing to do with drawbridges or slits for boiling oil.
 
Built by a Habsburg count for his mistress, its towers housed bedrooms and boudoirs, not emplacements for guns; pale blue shutters lay folded against pink walls, roses climbed towards the first-floor windows.
  Carinthia is Austria's most southern province; anything and everything grows there. In the count's pleasure gardens, morning glory wreathed itself round oleander bushes, jasmine tumbled from pillars, stone urns frothed with geraniums and heliotrope. Behind the house, peaches and apricots ripened in the orchards and the rich flower-studded meadows sloped gently upwards towards forests of larch and pine. And to the front, where stone steps descended to the water and black swans came to be fed, was a view which no one who saw it ever forgot: over the lake to the village and up ... up ... to the snowy zigzag of the high peaks.
  But the Habsburg counts fell on hard times. The castle stood empty, housed wounded soldiers in the Great War ... fell empty again. Then in the year 1928, an Englishman named Lucas Bennet took over the lease and started his school.

  Ellen stood by the rails of the little steamer and looked back at the village with its wooden houses, the inn with its terrace and chestnut trees, the church on a small promontory.
It was a serious church; not onion domed but with a tall, straight spire.
  In the fields above the village she could see piebald cows as distinct as wooden toys. were they feasting on Henny's Kohlr@oserl, those fortunate Austrian cows?
  There was still snow on the summits, but down on the lake the breeze was warm. It had been a moment of sheer magic, coming through the Mallnitz tunnel and finding herself suddenly in the south. She had left London in fog and drizzle; here it was spring. The hanging baskets in the stations were filled with hyacinths and narcissi, candles unfurled on the chestnut trees; she had seen lemon trees and mimosa.
  The steamer which rounded the lake three times a day was steeped in self-importance. The maximum amount of bustle accompanied the loading and unloading of passengers, of crates, of chickens in hampers--and the captain was magnificently covered in gold braid.
 
  They stopped at a convent where two nuns came out with wheelbarrows to fetch their provisions, passed a small wooded island and stopped again by a group of holiday houses.
  "That's where Professor Steiner lives," said an old peasant woman in a black kerchief, pointing to a small house with green shutters standing alone by the water's edge. "He didn't get on with the Nazis so he lives here now." The boat drew away again and she moved closer to Ellen. "You're bound for the school then?"' she asked.
  Ellen turned and smiled. "Yes." "Visiting someone?"'
  "No. I'm going to work there."
  A rustle of consternation spread from the old woman to her neighbours. They drew closer.
  "You don't want to go there. It's a bad place. It's evil. Godless."
  "Devilish," agreed another crone. "It's the devil that rules there."
  Ellen did not answer. They had rounded the point and suddenly Schloss Hallendorf lay before her, its windows bathed in afternoon light, and it seemed to her that she had never seen a place so beautiful. The sun caressed the rose walls, the faded shutters ... greening willows trailed their tendrils at the water's edge; a magnificent cypress sheltered the lower terrace.
  But oh so neglected, so shabby! A tangle of creepers seemed to be all that held up the boathouse; a shutter flapped on its hinges on an upstairs window; the yew hedges were fuzzy and overgrown. And this of course only made it lovelier, for who could help thinking of the Sleeping Beauty and a castle in a fairy tale? Except that, as they came in to land, Ellen saw the words EURYTHMICS IS CRAP painted on the walls of a small Greek temple by the water's edge.
  "The children are wild," hissed the old woman into her ear. "They're like wild animals."
  The steamer gave an imperious hoot. A boy came forward with a rope.
  "You can always come back," called a youth in lederhosen. "They'll find room for you at the inn."
  Ellen made her way down the gangway, left her suitcase and walked slowly along the wooden jetty. There was a scent of
 
heliotrope. Two house martins darted in and out of the broken roof of the boathouse with its tangle of clematis and ivy--and in the water beside it she saw, among the bulrushes, a round black head.
  An otter? An inland seal?
  The head rose, emerged and turned out to be attached to the somewhat undernourished body of a small and naked man.
  It was too late to look away. Ellen stared and found unexpected feelings rise in her breast. She could feed him up, whoever he was; help him, perhaps to cut his hair--but nothing now could be done about the manic zigzag which ran like disordered lightning across his lower abdomen.
  "Chomsky," said the dripping figure suddenly. "Laszlo Chomsky. Metalwork," --and with extreme formality, he clicked his heels together and bowed.
  Which at least explained what had happened. A Hungarian, born perhaps in the wildness of the puszta; a place abundantly supplied with horses, geese and windmills, but lacking entirely the skilled doctors who could deal competently with an inflamed appendix.
  Moving up the shallow stone steps which lifted themselves in tiers between the terraces towards the house, she saw a girl of about twelve come running down towards her.
  "I'm late," said the child anxiously. "We forgot the steamer's on the summer schedule now. I'm supposed to be meeting the new matron but she hasn't come."
  Ellen smiled at the first of the "wild" children to come her way. She had long dark hair worn in pigtails which were coming unfurled, and a sensitive, narrow face with big grey eyes. Her white ankle socks were not a pair and she looked tired.
  Ellen put out her hand. "Yes she has; I'm her," she said. "I'm Ellen Carr."
  The wild child shook it. "I'm Sophie," she said, and put one foot behind the other and bobbed a curtsy. The next minute she blushed a fiery red. "Oh I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that."
  "Done what?"'
  "Curtsied. No one does it here like they don't go to bed much and they don't wear white socks, but I haven't been here very long and in
 
Vienna in my convent it was all different."
  "I liked it," said Ellen, "but I won't give you away. However I have to tell you that now I'm here people will go to bed and if they want to wear white socks they will wear them and they'll match and be clean."
  The child turned to her, transfigured. "Will you do that? Can you really?"' Then her face fell; the look of anxiety returned. For Ellen Carr had shoulder-length tumbled hair and gentle eyes; she wore a green jacket the colour of moss and a skirt that made you want to touch it, it looked so soft. And that meant lovers--lots of lovers-- as it had meant with Sophie's mother, who was beautiful too and had left Vienna for Paris and Paris for London because of lovers and was now in Ireland making a film and did not write. "No," she said. "You'll fall in love and go away."
  "No I won't," said Ellen.
  She put her arm round Sophie's shoulders but their progress towards the house was slow. A pink camellia detained Ellen and a white snail, fragile as a snowflake, swaying on a blade of grass.
  Then suddenly she stopped. "Sophie, what on earth is that?"'
  They had reached the first of the level terraces. Coming across a patch of grass towards them at an amazing speed was a tortoise. It looked much as tortoises do, its neck extended, its demeanour purposeful--but fastened to its back end was a small platform with two wheels on which it scooted as if on roller skates.
  "It's Achilles," said Sophie.
"His back legs were paralysed and he was dragging himself along. We thought we'd have to have him destroyed and then Marek came and made him those wheels."
  Ellen bent down to the tortoise and picked him up. Retreating only briefly into his shell, Achilles submitted to being turned upside down. The contraption supporting his withered legs was unbelievably ingenious: a little trolley screwed to his shell and supporting two highly oiled metal wheels.
  She put him down again and the tortoise scooted away over the grass like greased lightning.
  "It took Marek hours to do. He shut himself
 
up in the workshop and wouldn't let anyone come near."
  "Who's Marek?"' Ellen asked--but before Sophie could answer, a stentorian and guttural voice somewhere to their right cried: "No, no, no! You are not being rigid, you are not being steel. You are not being pronged. You must feel it in your spine, the metal, or you cannot become a fork!"
  Deeply curious, Ellen crossed the terrace. A second, smaller set of steps led down on to an old bowling green surrounded by a yew hedge. On it stood a large woman with cropped hair wearing a hessian tabard and a pair of men's flannel trousers, shouting instructions to a dozen or so children lying on their backs on the lawn.
  "Now open the fingers ... open them but not with softness. With these fingers you will spear ... you will jab ... you will pierce into the meat."
  "That's Hermine. Dr Ritter," whispered Sophie. "She's terribly clever--she's got a PhDo in Dramatic Movement from Berlin University. She makes us be bunches of keys and forks and sometimes we have to give birth to ourselves."
  But before the children could exhibit proper forkdom there was a fierce, mewing cry from what seemed to be a kind of herring box under the yew hedge and Dr Ritter strode over to it, extracted a small pink baby, and inserted it under her tabard.
  "That's her Natural Daughter. She's called Andromeda. Hermine got her at a conference but no one knows who the father is."
  "Perhaps we should show her how to make an opening down the front of her smock," said Ellen, for the baby had vanished without trace into the hessian folds. "And I didn't see any nappies?"'
  "She doesn't wear any," Sophie explained. "She's a self-regulating baby."
  "What a good thing I like to be busy," said Ellen, "for I can see that there's going to be a lot to do."
  She followed Sophie into the castle. The rooms, with their high ceilings, gilded cornices and white tiled stoves, were as beautiful and neglected as the grounds. But when she reached the top floor and Sophie said: "This is your
 
room," Ellen could only draw in her breath and say: "Oh Sophie, how absolutely wonderful!"
  The child looked round, her brow furrowed. The room contained a broken spinning wheel, a rolled up scroll painting of the Buddha (partly eaten by mice) and a pile of mouldering Left Book Club paperbacks--all left behind by various housemothers who had not felt equal to the job.
  But Ellen had gone straight to the window. She was part of the sky, inhabiting it. One could ride these not very serious clouds, touch angels or birds, meet witches. White ones, of course, with functional broomsticks, who felt as she did about the world.
  Lost in the light, the infinity of space that would be hers each day, she lowered her eyes only gradually to the famous view: the serrated snow peaks on the other shore, the climbing fir trees above the village, the blue oblong of water with its solitary island across which the steamer was chugging, returning to its base.
  Sophie waited. Her own view was the same --the room she shared with two other girls was only just down the corridor--but when she looked out of the window something always got in the way: images of her warring parents, the terror of abandonment, the letters that did not come. Now for a moment she saw what Ellen saw.
  When Ellen spoke again it was to ask a question. "Are there storks here, Sophie? Do you have them at Hallendorf?"'
  "I don't think so."
  "We must get some," said Ellen decidedly. "We must make them come. Storks are lovely; they bless a house, did you know?"'
  Sophie considered this. "It could be difficult about the blessing," she said, "because we don't have anybody to do it here. We don't have God."
  "Ah well," said Ellen, turning back into the room. "One thing at a time. What we need now is a bonfire. Can you find me two boys with strong muscles? Big ones."
  Sophie puckered her forehead. "The biggest are Bruno and Frank but they're awful. Bruno wrote "Eurythmics is ...", he wrote that thing about eurythmics on the temple and Frank is always thumping about and banging into people."
  "They sound just what I want. Could you go and get them for me please?"'
 
 Lucas Bennet sat in his study with its book-lined walls, sagging leather armchairs and the bust of William Shakespeare which held down the sea of papers on his desk. He was waiting to interview his new housemother and had prepared himself for the worst. Ellen Carr had only been in the building for an hour and he himself had not set eyes on her, but he already knew that she was very pretty and very young and this could only mean disaster. She would want to produce a ballet based on Book Three of the Odyssey which she would not actually have read, or write a play in which she would take the lead while the children filled in as woodland spirits or doomed souls in hell. Chomsky would fall in love with her, Jean-Pierre would flirt with her, the children would run wild in their dormitories and after a term she would leave.
  Which was unfair, because this time he had taken the advice of his sensible secretary and advertised not in The Socialist Gazette or the
Progressive Educator, but in the Lady, a magazine in which employers sought old-fashioned nannies and housekeepers and cooks. Visions of an ample widow with bulging biceps had sustained him ever since Conchita's need to join a Marxist flamenco troupe could no longer be gainsaid and she had removed herself, two weeks into the term, leaving the children with no one to care for their domestic needs.
  And now it was all going to start again.
  Ten years had passed since he took over the lease of the castle and started his school. A small, plump and balding visionary, he came from a wealthy and eccentric family of merchant bankers, diplomats and scholars. His time at Oxford (where he read Classics) was cut short in 1916 by the Great War, which left him with a troubling leg injury and a loathing for nationalism, flag-waving and cant. Obsessed by the idea of art as the key to Paradise--as the thing that would make men equal and set them free--he decided to start a school in which children from all nations would come together in a common endeavour. A school without the rules and taboos that had made his own schooling so wretched, which would offer the usual subjects but specialise in those things that were his passion: Music, Drama and The Dance.
  The time was ripe for such a venture. The League of Nations gave hope of peace for the world; in Germany the Weimar Republic had become a
 
byword for all that was exciting in the arts; the poverty and hardship of the post-war years seemed to be over. And at first the castle at Hallendorf did indeed attract idealists and enthusiasts from all over the world: followers of Isadora Duncan came and taught Greek dancing; Russian counts explained the doctrines of Stanislavsky; disciples of Brecht came from Germany to run summer schools and put on plays. True, the villagers continued to stand aloof, not pleased to find naked Harmony Professors entangled in their fishing nets, but in those first years it seemed that Bennet's vision would largely be realised.
  Now, nearly ten years later, he had to face the fact that Hallendorf's early promise had not really been fulfilled. The intelligentsia of Europe and America continued to send him their children, but it was becoming clear that his idealistic progressive school was being used by the parents as ... well, as a dump. The children might come from wealthy homes, and certainly he extracted the maximum in fees so that he could give scholarships to those with talent, but many of them were so unhappy and disturbed that it took more than experimental productions of the Russian classics or eurythmics in the water meadows to calm them. And the staff too were ... mixed. But here his mind sheared away, for how could he dismiss incompetent teachers when he allowed Tamara to inflict her dreadful ploys on his defenceless children?
  It had to be admitted too that Hallendorf's annual performance in the theatre the count had built for his mistress had not, as Bennet had hoped, brought eminent producers and musicians to Hallendorf. Toscanini had not come from Milan (and a lady rumoured to be the great conductor's aunt had turned out to be someone quite different), nor Max Rheinhardt from Berlin, to recognise the work of a new generation, and the villagers continued to stay away.
  And now of course Max Rheinhardt couldn't come because he had fled to America along with half the theatrical talent of the German-speaking countries. It had happened so quickly, the march from the last war to the possibility of the next. Bennet did not think that the insanity that was Hitler's Germany could last, nor did he think that Austria would allow itself to be swallowed by the Third Reich,
 
but fascism was on the move everywhere, darkening his world.
  Furthermore, the money was running out. Bennet's fortune had been considerable, but short of standing on a bridge and throwing banknotes into the water, there is no faster way to lose money than the financing of a school.
  A knock at the door made him look up. The new matron entered.
  She was all that he had feared yet it was hard to be disappointed. True, she was very young and very pretty, but she had a smile that was funny as well as sweet, and there was intelligence in the soft brown eyes. What held him though, what surprised him, for he had found it to be rare, was something else. His new housemistress looked ... happy.
  "You're very much younger than we expected," he said when he had asked about her journey and received an enthusiastic reply about the beauty of the landscape and the kindness of her fellow travellers.
  She acknowledged the possibility of this, tilting her head slightly in what seemed to be her considering mode.
  "Might that be an advantage? I mean, there's a lot to do."
  "Yes. But some of the older children are not easy." He thought of Bruno, who that morning had defiled the Greek temple with his opinion of eurythmics, and Frank, who was on his fifth psychoanalyst and had seizures in unsuitable places when his will was crossed.
  "I'm not afraid of children," she said. "What are you afraid of then?"'
  She pondered. He had already noticed that it was her hands which indicated what she was thinking quite as much as her face and now he watched as she cupped them, making them ready to receive her thoughts.
  "Not being able to see, I think," she said. "Being blind, you mean?"'
  "No, not that. That would be terribly hard but Homer managed it and our blind piano tuner is one of the serenest people I know. I mean ... not seeing because you're obsessed by something that blots out the world. Some sort of mania or belief. Or passion. That awful kind of love that makes leaves and birds and cherry blossom invisible because it's not the face of some man."
  For a moment he allowed hope to rise in him. Might she see how important it was, this job
 
he was asking her to do? Might she have the humility to stay? Then he forced himself on to the denouement.
  "I'm afraid I didn't have the chance to lay out your duties completely in my letter. My secretary, Margaret Sinclair, will tell you anything you want to know, but briefly it's a question of seeing that the children's rooms are clean and tidy, that they get to bed on time, of collecting their laundry and so on. We try to see that everyone speaks English during the day. I suppose the English language is the single most important thing we have to offer now. Not because it is the language of Shakespeare," he said wi/lly, touching the bust of the man who made the whole vexed question of being British into a source of pride, "but because increasingly parents look to England and America to save them from the scourge of Nazism. But at night you can let them chatter in their own tongue."
  "Yes," she said. "Of course I will do all that, but I was wondering how much time I should spend--"'
  Ah, here it comes, he thought, and his weariness was the greater because for a moment he had believed in her integrity.
  "Ellen, I have to make one thing absolutely clear," he said, not letting her explain to him that she was an experienced producer of operas for the Fabian Society or had understudied Ariel in Regent's Park. "Your job is an arduous one and absolutely full time. Of course you could watch rehearsals at the weekend--last year we did The Lower Depths by Gorky--and if you wish it you could join the choir, although our music teacher has gone to fight in Spain. And the weekly meetings in which the productions are discussed are open to everyone, but--"'
  Ellen's eyes widened. She half rose from her chair.
  "Oh please, I can't sing at all. And
I'm not very good at meetings. I was brought up with meetings and they always make me fall asleep. Surely--"' She drew breath and tried again. "Of course I'll do anything I have to do ... but what I wanted to know is how much time I'm entitled to spend in the kitchen."
  "Entitled?"'
  "Yes. Obviously the welfare of the children comes first, but it's not easy to separate children from what they
 
eat and I can't supervise the kitchen staff without doing some of the cooking myself, it wouldn't be fair on them. And quite honestly, Mr Bennet--"'
  "Bennet. We're very informal here." Ellen, remembering the appendix scar, nodded. "Well, Bennet, I just think it would be rather unfair if I had to watch rehearsals and listen to meetings about The Lower Depths when I could be cooking."
  Bennet closed his mouth which had been very slightly open.
  "You mean you have no desire at all to act? To be an actress?"'
  "Good heavens no! I can't think of anything worse--always in the dark and getting up at midday and worrying what people think about you."
  "Or to produce?"'
  She leant back and clasped her hands behind her back. She looked thoughtful and--there was the word again --happy. "Oh yes, I'd like to produce. I'd like to produce a perfect cr@epe suzette for everyone in the school. It's easy for one person--but for a hundred and ten ... That's what interests me very much. How to quantify good food." She broke off and looked out of the window. "Oh good, how very nice of them! What kind and helpful boys!"
  Bennet followed her gaze. There were a lot of ways of describing Bruno and Frank, his two most objectionable seniors, but this was not one of them. Bruno was trundling a wheelbarrow on which were piled a broken spinning wheel, a shattered wooden chair and a pair of ancient bongo drums towards the kitchen gardens. Behind him followed Frank, dragging a sack from which various scrolls protruded and a battered guitar case.
  "I asked them to make a bonfire. No one seemed to want the stuff in my room and they said they'd be very careful and only light it in the incinerator." And, as Bennet was silent, "You don't mind?"'
  "No," said Bennet. "I don't mind at all."
  At the door, leaving to go, she paused. "There's something I think we should have here."
  Bennet glanced at the letter from his stockbroker lying on his desk. "Is it expensive?"'
  She smiled. "I don't think so. I'd like us to have storks. Only I don't know how to make
 
them come. One needs a wheel, I think."
  "You must ask Marek, he'd know. He'll be back in a few days."
  She nodded, thinking of the tortoise. "Yes," she said, "he'd know. I see that."
  After she had gone, Bennet limped over to the window and looked out over the lake. Was it possible that something could go right? That she would stay and work--that in her care his children would be seen?
  And Tamara is away, he thought. She had not, as he had asked her, organised the turning out of Ellen's room, but when had Tamara done anything he had asked her? But he would not go down that road. Tonight he would not work late on the accounts. He would go to bed with a large whisky and golden Nausicaa in Homer's tensile, homely, heart-stopping Greek.

  "She won't last a week," said
Ursula, sitting in her hideous striped pyjamas on the edge of her bed.
  Sophie sniffed back her tears and agreed. With the advent of darkness the hope she had felt when she met Ellen had died. Ellen would barricade herself into her room like the others had done, Frank and Bruno would go on sliding up and down the corridor and crashing into doors--and her father would go further and further away, past America where he was giving lectures, and disappear over the rim of the world for ever.
  "I get so tired," she said.
  Ursula shrugged. She didn't mind Sophie as much as she minded most people, but she was soppy. Ursula got by on hatred--for her ancient grandparents in their horrible house in Bath, for Frank who teased her because she wore braces on her teeth, for Dr Hermine who breastfed her revolting baby during Movement Classes and expected Ursula to give birth to herself or be a fork. Above Ursula's bed was a row of the only human beings for whom she felt concern: a series of Indian braves in full regalia.
  The door opened and the new matron entered. "I came to say goodnight and see if you needed anything."
  She came over to Ursula's bed, smiled down at her, put the bedclothes straight. For a
 
dreadful moment Ursula thought she was going to kiss her, but she didn't. She stood looking carefully at the labelled portraits Ursula had put up: Little Crow, Chief of the Santees, Geronimo, last of the Apaches and Ursula's favourite, Big Foot, dying in the snow at Wounded Knee.
  "Isn't that where the massacre was?"' asked Ellen.
  "Yes. I'm going to go there when I'm grown up. To Wounded Knee."
  "That seems sensible," said Ellen. Then she went over to Sophie. "What is it? What's the matter?"'
  "She's lost her parents. I can't think it's anything to make a fuss about--I lost my parents years ago. I killed my mother because my arm stuck out when I was born and I killed my father because he went off to shoot tigers to cure his grief and died of a fever. But Sophie gets in a state," Ursula explained.
  Ellen sat down on the bed and smoothed Sophie's long dark hair. "When you say "lost", Sophie, what exactly do you mean?"'
  But what Sophie meant was not something she could put into words. She had been shunted backwards and forwards between her warring parents since she was two years old, never knowing who would meet her or where she belonged. Her homesickness was of that devastating kind experienced by children who have no home.
  "I've lost my father's address. He's not in Vienna, he's lecturing in America and I don't know where he is. And my mother's making a film somewhere in Ireland and I don't know where she is either."
  Ellen considered the problem. "Is there someone who's connected with your father's work in Vienna? Has he got a secretary?"'
  "He's got Czernowitz." Sophie was sitting up now. "He's my father's lab assistant. He looks after the rats. He gave me a rat once for myself. It was beautiful with a brown ear but it died."
  "It died of old age," Ursula put in. "So there's nothing to make a fuss about."
  "Well look, have you got Czernowitz's address?"'
  "Yes, I have."
  "Then it's perfectly simple. We'll
 
ask Bennet if you can telephone to Vienna and then he'll tell you about your father."
  Sophie's sobs grew less. "Would that be all right? Could I do that?"'
  "Of course you could. Now, where's Janey, because I'm going to put the lights out."
  "She doesn't come to bed. She sleeps in the bathroom."
  "What?"'
  "She wets her bed though she's quite old. Older than us. And the Coucoushka said she wouldn't deal with her sheets any longer. She was supposed to look after us when the last housemother left, till you came. Bennet doesn't know she said it--he'd be furious, because Janey's mother keeps trying to commit suicide and--"'
  Ellen interrupted them. "Who is this Coucoushka person?"'
  "She's a ballet dancer. Her name's Tamara. She pretends to be Russian and she likes people to call her Coucoushka because it means Little Cabbage, at least we think it does, and the Russians call people that. It's an endear--, it's something you call people when you like them, like the French calling people petit choux. But it doesn't work in English."
  "No, it certainly doesn't," said Ellen.
  She found Janey, a pale girl with wi/l blue eyes, sitting beside the bath wrapped in a blanket and reading a book.
  "Come to bed, Janey, the others are ready to go to sleep."
  "I don't go to bed. I sleep here at the minute."
  "No you don't. You sleep in your bed and if you wet it I shall wash the sheets in the morning because that is my job."
  Janey shook her head. "The Coucoushka said--"'
  "Janey, I am not interested in what the cabbage person said. I am now your housemother and you will sleep warmly and comfortably in your bed. Eventually you will grow out of the whole business, because people do, and till then it's not of the slightest consequence. Now hurry up, you're getting cold."
  "Yes, but--"'
  Ellen glanced at the cover of Janey's book which showed a jolly girl in jodhpurs
 
taking her pony over a jump. "Did you know that Fenella Finch-Delderton used to wet her bed when she was young?"'
  Janey stared at her. "The one that got second prize in the Olympics? Honestly?"'
  "Honestly," said Ellen, whose morality, though fervent, was her own. "I was at school with her sister."
  Which left Bruno and Frank. She found them crashing about in the corridor but not, had she known it, with quite their usual energy.
  "Ah good," she said. "I'm glad you're not in bed yet. I thought you might be kind enough to roll up the rug in my room and take it down to the cellar; I shall do better with bare boards. And there's the footstool; it seems to have a leg missing, so that can go down too."
  She kept them at work, going up and down the three flights of stairs to the cellar till Frank stopped, looking mulish. "It's past our bed time," he said. "We're supposed to be in bed by nine-thirty."
  "Oh dear," said Ellen innocently.
"That's what comes of being new. Hurry along then."
  Ten minutes later the west wing was bathed in silence and Ellen could go to her room. It was almost empty of furniture now; she would pull the bed under the window so that she could see the stars.
  "You were right, Henny," she said, leaning out to listen to the slow slurp of the water against the shore. "This is a lovely land."
  Images crowded in on her. The first sight of Sophie running down the steps towards her; Bennet's hand cupping the head of his beloved Shakespeare ... the house martins skimming in and out of the boathouse roof. But the image that stayed with her longest was that of the tortoise, rollerskating with abandonment across the grass.
  There was so much to do here--so terrifyingly much--but she knew that Marek, when he came, would help her. Which made Bennet's words when she had asked him who Marek was seem all the stranger.
  "That's a good question, Ellen," the headmaster had said. "You could say that he works here as a groundsman, and that would be true. Or that he teaches fencing to the older boys, and that would be true also, and that at the moment he is acting as chauffeur to Professor Steiner across the lake. But when you have said that, I don't know that you have said very much. I
 
think," and he had turned to her with his friendly smile, "you will have to find out for yourself--and when you do I would be very interested to hear what you discover."

  They had driven for the best part of the day, leaving Hallendorf by the road over the pass and turning north east along the river. The mountains became foothills with vineyards clinging to their slopes; the well-kept fields and quiet villages were tended by people who asked only to be left alone.
  Now the forest began. In an hour they would be at the border.
  The forest suited Marek; he settled into it as into a familiar overcoat--a large man, broad-shouldered with thick, straight hair, blunt, irregular features and reflective eyes. The road was straight here, a woodcutters' road; his hands lay on the wheel almost without movement. The scents he had grown up with--resin, sawdust, leaf mould--came in through the open windows of the van.
  "The wind's from the south," he said.
  He'd always known where the wind came from: in Vienna, in Berlin, in New York in the narrow tunnels between the skyscrapers. Women had teased him about it, thought of it as a parlour trick.
  "Are you missing the beautiful Tamara?"' asked the man sitting beside him.
  The uncharacteristic banter came with an effort from Professor Steiner. He was twice Marek's age: a scholarly man with a face from a D@urer etching--the full grey beard, the wise, short-sighted blue eyes, the features worn by time and, in recent years, by grievous sorrow.
  Marek smiled. The relief of being away from the crazy school in which he had taken refuge made him feel almost light-hearted yet no emotion could be less appropriate. He had allowed an old man of delicate health and considerable eminence to accompany him on an adventure which was more than likely to end in disaster. What they faced was not the danger risked by those who pit themselves against mountains or the sea. There was no evil on the rock face or in a tempest, but the force within the men they were confronting in the hell that Nazi Germany had become was something other.
  "Could I once again ask you to wait for me this
 
side of the checkpoint?"' Marek began.
"I promise you--"'
  "No."
  The old man spoke quietly and with total authority. If anyone knew the risks they were taking it was this high-born Prussian whose family had been at the heart of German affairs for generations. Steiner had spent most of his life in Weimar, a town which seemed to stand for all that was finest in the country's history. Schiller had lived there, and Goethe--the squares and statues resounded with the names of the great. The shopkeepers could set their clocks by Professor Steiner's progress each day, his walking stick aloft behind his back, as he made his way to the university. Steiner's work on the folk music of Eastern Europe was renowned; scholars and disciples came from all over the world to learn from him; his lectures were packed.
  In 1929 he had moved to Berlin as Head of the Institute of Musical Studies and continued to live the life of every decent German academic: lectures, concerts, music-making in his home and the constant care and support of his students.
  So why was it that when Hitler came to power it was he and not any of his colleagues--left-wingers and political activists--who had refused to dismiss his Jewish students? Why was it he and not Heinz Kestler, who had addressed so many meetings of the Left, who stood up for the social democrats on his staff? Why was it impossible to silence this elderly man who fell silent so easily during the interminable meetings of his faculty?
  The Nazis had not wanted to dismiss Professor Steiner. His family was eminent; he was exactly the kind of German, Aryan to his fingertips, they needed to endorse their cause. They gave him chance after chance, cautioned him, arrested him, let him go.
  In the end they lost patience. He was stripped of his post and his medals and told to leave the country. Others in his position went to France or America or Britain. Steiner only went over the border to Austria, still independent and free. His family had long owned a small wooden summer house on the Hallendorfer See. He had lived there for the past three years with his books and his manuscripts, needing almost nothing, looking
 
with gentle irony across the lake at the antics of the strange school which now occupied the castle.
  Then, two months earlier, Marek had suddenly appeared. He had known Marek's parents, but it was not the family connection which years ago had drawn Steiner to the boy. Even before Marek's special gifts had become apparent there was something about him: a wholeness, a strength allied with gentleness which is sometimes found in those who as children have been given much.
  "I only want to borrow the van, Professor," Marek had said. "And the equipment. There's no question of involving you. If I'm known to be one of your students and authorised to carry on your work, that's quite enough."
  "You can have the van, but I shall come too. I have to say you don't look like the popular image of a folk song collector. You will do better as my driver and assistant."
  They had argued and in the end Marek had agreed. It had cost him dear, allowing this frail and saintly man to risk his life, but he knew why Steiner had refused the posts he had been offered abroad and was still in Austria. He too had hostages to fortune in what had been his native land.
  The drew to a halt in a clearing. Marek got out and opened the door of the van. It was painted black with the letters INTERNATIONAL ETHNOLOGICAL FOLK SONG PROJECT written on it in white paint. Inside were the microphones, the turntables and wax discs, the piles of manuscript paper which they needed to record the ancient music of the countryside. And other things --food and blankets, because folk song collectors frequently have to venture far off the beaten track, and a loaded rifle, for these woods were part of the great primeval forest which stretched across Eastern Europe as far as Poland and Russia. Bears had been seen here not long ago, and wolves; guns were a necessity, as were spades and sacking for getting the van out of a rut, and a torch ...
  "We'd better find something nice for Anton," said Marek. It was not the first time they had crossed the border and the guards were becoming interested in their work.
  He put a needle on the turntable and an eerie, querulous wail broke the stillness.
 
  "Why are the wedding songs always so sad?"' asked Marek, remembering the tears streaming down the face of the old man, almost insensible on slivovitz, who had sung to them in a smoke-filled Ruthenian hut.
  "I don't know why, but they always are. On the other hand, the funeral songs are always jolly--and the curses too."
  "Well, one can understand that," said Marek. "We'd better get on then."
  He shoved a driver's cap on to his head and the van moved forward in the gathering dusk.
  Both men were silent as they drove towards the place where the map makers, confused by the rise and fall of empires, had allowed the boundaries of Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic to converge. A hundred miles to the east was Marek's home. The men would be coming in from the forest now and from the farm, unhitching the great horses from the wagons, and the westering sun would turn the long windows of the ochre house to gold. The storks on Pettovice's roofs fell silent at this time, weary of their domestic clatter, and the snub-nosed little maid would be lighting the candles in the drawing room.
  But it was best not to think of Pettovice, which had once been Pettelsdorf. Marek's home was out of bounds. Czechoslovakia was free still but there was dissent there too, Nazi sympathisers stirring up trouble, and he would not risk harm to those he loved.
  Professor Steiner too was thinking of the past: of his formidable grandfather, the Prussian Freiherr in his doeskin breeches and lynx cape who had turned Jewish pedlars from the gates of his home with a string of curses. That they had plucked von Einigen and his friends from their guards and led them to safety might have amused him: highborn hotheads who had tried to blow up Hitler might have been to his taste. Even the man they were hoping to meet today might have passed muster; a former Reichstag councillor, impeccably Aryan, who had spoken out against the Nazis. But what would the old bigot have thought if he'd known that his grandson was plunging into a Bohemian forest on account of a small man with sideburns named Meierwitz? It was Marek's determination to rescue his friend that had made them throw in their lot with the partisans who helped to lead victims of the Nazis across the border. There had
 
been no news yet of Isaac
Meierwitz, who had escaped from a camp and was in hiding, but till he was out of Germany there would be no safety for Marek, and no rest.
  The old often welcome adventure, having little to lose. But Marek, thought the Professor, had everything to lose. He took the greatest risk, leading the fugitives east along the hidden pilgrim routes he had known since childhood while Steiner waited with the van. And it was wrong. The world needed what Marek had to offer; needed it desperately.
  Yet how could I have stopped him? thought Steiner --and he remembered what Marek's mother had told him once as they walked back from a concert.
  "When Marek was three years old I took him to the sea," she'd said. "He'd never been out of the forest before but friends lent us a villa near Trieste. He just stood there looking at all that water and then he said: "Mama, is that the sea?" And when I said yes he turned to me very seriously and he said: "Mama, I'm going to drink it all up. I'm going to drink up every single drop!""
  Well, he had not done badly in his twenty-nine years, thought Steiner, looking at Marek's face, set and absorbed now that they were coming close to their destination. He had drunk his fill--but what he was doing now was madness. This man more than any he had known had no right to throw away his life.
  Perhaps I'm wrong, thought Steiner. Perhaps he is not what I think he is.
  But he knew he was not wrong.

  By the end of the first week, Ellen had settled into her work. She had begun with her own room, for she wanted the children to feel that they could come to her whenever they wanted, and this had involved her in some creative "borrowing", for by the time she had disposed of the archaeological remains of previous housemothers she was left with bare boards and a bed.
  In refurnishing the room, she called on the help of Margaret Sinclair, the school secretary, to whom she had taken an instant liking. Margaret trotted round the picturesque confusion of Hallendorf in a neat two-piece, lace-up shoes and a crisp white blouse. She had been perfectly happy as a secretary in
 
Sunny Hill School, Brighton, where the girls wore plum-coloured gym slips, addressed the teachers as "Ma'am" and charged round frozen hockey fields shouting, "Well played, Daphne!"--and she was perfectly happy at Hallendorf. Chomsky's sun-dappled appendix scar troubled her not at all, nor the oaths of the noisier children, and for Lucas Bennet, who had founded, and now carried selflessly the burden of running, this idealistic madhouse, she had a respect which bordered on veneration. That she would have carried the portly little headmaster between her teeth to safety if the school ever caught fire, was the opinion of most members of staff. Certainly Hallendorf would have run into the ground pretty soon without her.
  "I should just take anything you find, dear," she'd said to Ellen, in whom she recognised a kindred spirit. "If anyone comes looking for it, I'll give you warning."
  So Ellen borrowed two beaten down mattresses from the gym and made them into floor cushions which she covered with an Indian cotton tablecloth she had found scrunched up in a dressing-up trunk. She took an armchair which had suffered enough from a common room, stripped the covers and polished the arms. She "borrowed" a kitchen trolley and painted it ... and decided that a small lime tree in an earthenware pot would be in less danger with her than in the courtyard.
  But what Sophie saw, after she knocked timidly on the door, was mostly light.
  "Oh!" she said. "How did it get like that? What did you do?"'
  "It was like that already. So is your room. Rooms tell you what they want, you just have to listen!"
  Sophie's life had so far been devoid of certainties. The marriage of her beautiful English mother to an austere scientist in the University of Vienna was a mistake both partners quickly put right. Carla wanted to be an actress, have parties, have fun; Professor Rakassy needed routine, silence and respect for his work. The only thing they had in common was an ego the size of a house and an apparent indifference to the happiness of their little daughter.
  They separated and Sophie began her travels across the continent of Europe: on the Train Bleu to Paris, on the Nordwest
 
Express to Berlin when Carla got a walk-on part at the UFA studios ... on the Golden Arrow to London and back again ... always trying to please, to change identities as she arrived ... To be charming and prettily dressed and witty for her mother; to be serious and enquiring with securely plaited pigtails for her father ...
  Then suddenly the tug of war stopped. Both parents dropped the rope and she was packed off to a school that was unlike any she had known. That it was the beginning of a permanent abandonment, Sophie was sure.
  But now there was Ellen. Ellen had kept her promise about ringing Czernowitz and she kept other promises. Sophie attended lessons assiduously; she endured eurythmics and did her stint being a bunch of keys or a fork, but when there was a spare moment in her day she came back to her base, trotting behind Ellen with laundry baskets or piles of blankets and curling up in the evening on the floor of Ellen's room.
  And with Sophie came Ursula, bringing the red exercise book in which she was chronicling the brutalities the American Army had inflicted on the Red Indians, still scowling, still committed to hatred--but sometimes turning over what Ellen had said that first night. She had said it was sensible to go to Wounded Knee, and the calm word dropped into Ursula's turbulent soul like a benison.
  Others came, of course: Janey, and
Ellen's bodyguard, Bruno and Frank, and a long-legged American girl called Flix who was said to be a brilliant actress but wanted only to be a vet and kept a plaster of Paris ant nest under her bed.
  And a dark, irritating, handsome boy called Leon who used his origins to secure sympathy.
  "You have to be nice to me because I'm Jewish," he would say, which drove Ursula into one of her frequent rages.
  "You're only half Jewish," she said.
"And I bet it's the bottom half so I'll be nice to that but not to your horrible top."
  Leon was a committed Marxist and filled his room with posters of Lenin rallying the proletariat, but the carefully unravelled jerseys he wore were made of purest cashmere and his underclothes were silk. Leon's father (whom he referred to as a "fascist beast") was a wealthy industrialist who had transferred his business interests from
 
Berlin to London when Hitler came to power, and his devoted mother and sisters sent him innumerable parcels of chocolate and delicatessen from Harrods which he despised, but ate. But if it was difficult to like the boy, no one could dispute his gift; he was intensely and unmistakably musical.
  Ellen had expected the children to come, but she hadn't quite bargained for the staff, abandoning their cluttered bedsitting rooms to eat her Bath Oliver biscuits and drink her Lapsang Souchong tea. Hermine Ritter came with her love child in its herring box and sat with her grey-flannelled legs apart and spoke of the historic conference in Hinterbruhl where she had been overcome, virtually in her sleep, by a Professor of Vocal Rehabilitation who had drunk too much gentian brandy and left her with Andromeda, who was being brought up to be self-regulating but always seemed to be in a temper.
  "I will be glad to mind her for you sometimes," Ellen said. "But you must get her some proper nappies."
  "Oh surely not? In the book by Natalie Goldberger--"'
  But Ellen, watching the puce, distempered baby flaying about inside Hermine's tabard like Donald Duck in a tent, said she thought nappies would be nice for Andromeda.
  Jean-Pierre came, with his boudoir eyes and practised cynicism; a brilliant mathematician who professed to loathe children and could send them out of his classes reeling with excitement about the calculus, and Freya, a sweet-natured Norwegian who taught history and PE and was in love with a hard-hearted Swede called Mats who lived in a hut in Lapland and did not write.
  David Langley came, the bony-kneed biology teacher who was busy identifying the entire frit fly population of Carinthia, and Chomsky of course, fixing his congenitally despairing eyes on Ellen, and eating a quite remarkable number of biscuits.
  There was one member of staff, however, who was conspicuous by her absence. The Little Cabbage did not come and when Ellen met her, two days after her return, the encounter was unfortunate.
  Ellen during those first days worked as she had not
 
worked before. She scrubbed, she sewed on name tapes, she set up her ironing board in the laundry room, she brought pots of flowers upstairs and emptied washing baskets and mended curtains.
  Soon the words "Where's Ellen?"' could be heard with increasing frequency as children came in with grazed knees, bruised foreheads or more complex bruising of the soul. They learnt by the state of her hair how much time she could give them: when it was screwed up on top of her head it was best to fall in behind her with a cloth; when it was in a plait over one shoulder she was bound for the garden; when it was loose she had time to talk. Her clean, starched aprons, pink or white or blue, became a kind of beacon. On the days that they were blue, Chomsky would make an excuse to leave the metalwork shop and tell her that she reminded him of his nursemaid, Katya, whom he had deeply loved.
  During that time, when she took almost no time off and did not even allow herself to think of Kohlr@oserl Ellen began to feel that she was some way to accomplishing her task.
  But pride goes before a fall. Ellen's fall came at the end of the first week when she was cleaning out a strange collection of debris she found in a small round room in the East Tower.
  She had noticed a painting hanging on a dark wall above a table full of unsavoury litter: an old tin of Cerebos salt, rusty round the rim, a candle-end burnt dangerously low, a dead bunch of marigolds with slimy stalks and a piece of bread covered in mouse droppings.
  Appalled by this health and safety hazard, Ellen got to work. She tipped the bread and salt into her dustpan, threw the dead flowers away, gathered up the frayed cloth with its mouse droppings and soaked it in disinfectant. Half an hour later the room was clean, the blinds rolled up to let in the light and the painting--which was of a number of little men in conical hats and underpants adrift on an ice floe--was left in possession of the field.
  Ellen had gathered up her dustpan and bucket and was turning to go when her way was blocked by a tall, thin woman with long strings of hennaed hair, a pinched nose and wild, navy-blue eyes. She wore a muslin dress with an uneven hem, her long feet with their
 
prehensile-looking toes were bare and slightly yellow, and she was in a towering rage.
  "How dare you!" she shrieked in a strange accent which Ellen could not place. "How dare you destroy my sanctuary--the only place where I can refresh my soul."
  "Sanctuary?"' stammered Ellen, looking at the mouldy bread, the rusty salt tin in the waste bucket.
  "You ignorant English peasant!" the woman shrieked. "Of course you know nothing of how the Russians worship. You have never heard of the icon corner which in every Russian household is the heart of the home."
  Ellen could find no words. The woman's wrath flowed out of her; her narrow nose was white with anger and to her own annoyance, tears came to Ellen's eyes.
  "I didn't realise ... the bread was mouldy and--"'
  "Oh yes, of course; that is all you care for, you little bourgeois housekeeper. I have heard how you have scrubbed everything ... This picture," she pointed to the little men cowering in their shifts on the ice, "was given to me by Toussia Alexandrovna, the Prima Ballerina of the Diaghilev Ballet. These men are the martyred bishops of Tula--they died on an ice floe rather than renounce the Old Faith. Every day I light a candle here in this corner--the Krasny Ugol--and now you come here in one hour and destroy the atmosphere with your lower-class hygiene."
  "I'm sorry; I really am. I didn't know. But the flowers were dead and--"'
  "Enough!" The woman raised a hand as long and yellow as her feet. "Go! I shall speak to Bennet of this. It is possible you will be dismissed."
  Though she could see the absurdity of the encounter, Ellen found it difficult to shake off the misery and embarrassment of having upset a fellow member of staff, and instead of going to the common room at tea time, she went to find Margaret Sinclair in her little office.
  "Oh there you are, dear," said the secretary. "I was meaning to have a word with you."
  "Margaret, I have done this awful thing--but I didn't know. I just thought it was ... well, you know there are so many things lying around that have been forgotten and I'd simply never heard of the martyred
 
bishops of--"'
  "No, of course you hadn't. It's a disgusting place and we're all absolutely delighted that you got rid of it."
  "Yes, but she ... Tamara was furious. She's going to tell Bennet and she said she'd get me dismissed."
  "Oh my dear ... Come, I'll make you a cup of tea. What nonsense! Bennet knows all about the work you're doing; he wouldn't dismiss you in a thousand years and he never takes the slightest notice of what Tamara says."
  But Ellen was not so easily comforted. "Do you think I should go and explain to him and apologise all the same?"'
  "Well, he'll be happy to see you--he's going through a bit of trouble with the new play at the minute. But it's best not to talk to him about Tamara; it's not easy for him. He never speaks against her, but of course she is a deeply unpleasant woman, and what he goes through--"'
  She broke off her words and busied herself with the teapot.
  "But if she's so awful ... and I must say what she did to Janey ... I mean, why doesn't he get rid of her?"'
  Margaret spun round, her kind, plain face amazed. "Good heavens--did no one tell you? I suppose they thought you knew, and it's true we don't mention her if we can help it. We're all fond of Bennet--and the children too." She handed Ellen her cup. "She's his wife, you see, Tamara is. He's married to Tamara, only that isn't her real name, of course."
  "Oh!" It seemed incredible and also unutterably sad. In the short time she had been here, Ellen had conceived a great admiration for the hardworking, scholarly little man who powered the whole place with his vision. "But how? I suppose one shouldn't ask or pry, but--"'
  "It happened in Paris. Bennet was there looking up some texts in the Sorbonne--he's a fine classical scholar, as you may know. This was twelve years ago when he was still at Oxford. He was walking across the Pont Neuf; it was night time. Do you know Paris?"'
  "Yes. I was there for a term learning French." Ellen could see it: the Seine, the lamps lit, the moonlight, the boats sliding under the bridge.
 
  "And he saw this girl, huddled under a lamp-post and weeping. She had long hair and a thin face ... and all that," said Margaret, and paused, noting the bitterness in her voice. "You can imagine. He's a chivalrous man. It turned out that she was a dancer from the Diaghilev Ballet who'd been dismissed because she was pregnant. Her lover had deserted her, her mother wouldn't have her back, she had nowhere to go."
  "Yes, I see. It would be difficult to resist that kind of despair. And she was Russian?"'
  "Well, no--that's what's so ridiculous. She isn't Russian at all. Her name is
Beryl Smith and she comes from a mining village somewhere in the north of England. She had one of those ballet mums who pushed her through exams and she got taken on by Diaghilev for the Ballet Russe. They all had to have Russian names, so she became Tamara Tatriatova. I suppose it was her happiest time, being part of the troupe, all the warmth and the chatter and people lighting samovars and calling each other Little Pigeon and Little Cabbage and so on."
  Margaret's effort to be fair to Tamara was taking its toll. She had decided to give up sugar in her tea but now she reached for the bowl and spooned in a generous helping.
  "Actually I wondered about the cabbage thing," said Ellen. "Doesn't Coucoushka mean Little Cuckoo? We read a lot of Chekhov at school and--"'
  "Yes it does; you're quite right. But the children are convinced it means cabbage, and I must say, I myself--"'
  She broke off, not wanting to admit that being fond of birds she also preferred to think of Tamara as a vegetable. "Anyway, Bennet married her," she went on. "The baby was stillborn--apparently her grief was terrible. Bennet said he'd never seen anyone so distraught. He brought her here soon afterwards to regain her strength and she saw the castle and wanted to live in it and it was then that Bennet thought of the school. She said she'd like to be a mother to other children if she couldn't have any of her own, but of course it hasn't worked out like that. Not that one can blame her entirely," said Margaret, "for it is an unfortunate fact that the needier a child is the less attractive it is. I think she thought
 
they would be smaller, like fairies in a ballet. Since then she has got sillier and sillier and clings more and more to the Russian fantasy. No one believes it; I don't think she believes it herself. I suppose she is a little mad but that makes no difference. Bennet will never leave her; he is not that kind of man. He stops her teaching as much as possible but she's convinced she has a mission about The Dance."
  "Is it she who teaches eurythmics?"' asked Ellen.
  "Yes it is."
  Ellen nodded. "You've been extremely kind to tell me all this."
  She sent Ellen away comforted, but Margaret had not comforted herself. Why did I leave my peaceful plum-coloured girls? she wondered, rinsing the teacups. What am I doing here, eating my heart out for a small, bald man who's shackled to a cabbage?

  The morning after Margaret's revelations, Ellen got up early and went down to the store rooms and fetched a tin of white paint, two large paintbrushes and a bottle of turpentine.
  She had told Bruno what she was going to do and had left it to him whether he accompanied her or not. She did not really expect him to--Bruno liked his sleep. She had been determined to make Bruno undo his handiwork--her vision for Hallendorf did not include the defacement of Greek temples; but now that she had met Tamara, Ellen felt different. Tamara had stood over an empty cradle and wept, and whenever Ellen wanted to hit her, which she suspected would be often, she would think of this and refrain.
  But however careful she intended to be about Tamara, Ellen considered that any lesson she gave, whether it was eurythmics (about which Ellen was still hazy) or anything else, would be hard for anyone to bear, and certainly for a boy like Bruno who had set himself up as a muscle man destined for the army. So she was prepared to paint out what he had written on her own account.
  But when she reached the little temple, set so romantically on the edge of the lake, she found Bruno waiting on the steps.
  "What have you got?"' he said, coming over to inspect the paint pot and brushes. "Seems
 
OK. I'll have the bigger one."
  He took the bigger brush, added a small amount of turps to the paint in the tin, nodded. He seemed to have forgotten about the punitive aspects of the expedition and to be interested technically in the job in hand. As he began to sweep the paint across the letters on the wall, Ellen stood for a moment watching. He was handling the paint easily, in sweeping broad brushstrokes but covering evenly. She had expected to do the bulk of the work herself, but soon found herself in the role of assistant. It occurred to her also that the letters they were eliminating were not scrawled on in the usual way of graffiti; they were stylishly painted andwitha considerable panache.
  "It's a mess," said Bruno when they'd finished. "The rest of it will have to be done over. You leave the paint here, I'll see to it."
  Ellen, about to argue, decided to obey. It was Sunday--Bruno would not miss any lessons. "I'll bring you some breakfast," she said.
  But later that afternoon she went to find Rollo, the Art and Design master, who was making frames in the studio.
  "I wanted to ask you about Bruno." She told him about the morning's work. "He seems so good at painting, so assured."
  "Don't talk to me about that blasted child," said Rollo, a red-haired Welshman with a wide grin and a beer paunch. "I could kill him." He walked over to his cluttered bench, opened a drawer. "Look at this!"
  He pulled out a tattered exercise book, filled with sums, most of which had been marked wrong by Jean-Pierre in red ink. "Look at the cover."
  Ellen looked. Scrawled in pencil were kittens that leapt from baskets, were folded hands, were Jean-Pierre's head in profile and the unfurled ends of Sophie's pigtails as she leant over her desk.
  "He can draw anything but he won't. If you catch him unaware he'll doodle like this but I can't make him do anything in the classes. Just glares and acts dumb sullen. When we're doing designs for the plays he'll put on glue or hammer the flats, but if you try and make him create something original he just pushes off."
  "But why?"'
  "Have you ever heard of Klaus Feuermann?"' Ellen screwed up her forehead. "Is he a
 
painter?"'
  "Yes. A fashionable one; quite talented but an idiot: goes round in a cape and a great hat pretending to be Augustus John. Bruno's his son and the poor little brat spent the first six years of his life being a putto. You know, those fat things with dimpled bums they have on painted ceilings. All Feuermann's kids were used as models, and he had plenty, by plenty of women. You can see Bruno on the ceiling of the Zurich Odeon and in the Guildhall in Rotterdam and God knows where else. When he wasn't a putto he was slapped on the knee of some woman, having to be the Baby Jesus, or hung from the top of a four-poster being Cupid shooting his arrows. By the time he was ten he wouldn't go near a picture and all he did when the kids teased him was to fight them. That's why he wants to be a soldier and acts the tough. But I can tell you, Ellen, it's bloody frustrating. This place needs talent."
  "Yes," said Ellen. "I see."
  "For God's sake don't tell him I told you. Don't tell anyone. I only found out because I'm in the business. Bennet knows, but no one else. He's run away from three schools because the kids found out and teased him."
  "I promise I won't. Thanks,
Rollo." At the door she turned. "You know, I sort of pledged myself when I came here to love the children--all of them, however awful they seemed--and I think I might manage it. But to love the parents ... that's going to be the problem." She gave a shake of the head and was gone.

  If no one had spoken of Tamara before her return, both children and staff spoke frequently and willingly of Marek Tarnowsky.
  "He's got this amazing trick," said Frank. "If you blindfold him--really properly with layers and layers of stuff--and make him sit with his back to you and then you get a lot of twigs and swish them through the air he can tell you what they are."
  "It's true," agreed Janey.
"He'll just say "oak" or "ash" or "birch" --he doesn't make a mistake once. He says they just sound different."
  "And he dredged up the duck punt--it was a
 
complete wreck--and sawed some new planks and caulked it--"'
  "He didn't do it by himself," one of the other boys put in. "We helped him."
  "Yes, but he really knew what to do and it's afloat now and it's much the best boat."
  Sophie said that Marek was a person who found things.
  "What sort of things?"' asked Ellen. "Oh ... mouse's nests and fireflies ... and stars with their proper names. And when he shows you it's like getting a present."
  A shy French boy, who spoke little English, said Marek had made him understand what fencing was about. "It is not ... that one only tries to hit others. It is a system of the body."
  Ellen herself had seen Marek's spoor everywhere. In the prop he had made for the aged catalpa tree in the courtyard, in the rim of the fountain he had repaired, in the newly built frames in the kitchen garden.
  So she was surprised that one child seemed to hate him. Leon did not only criticise Marek; he spoke of him with an anger which startled Ellen and alarmed her.
  "He's not honest. He's a liar and a cheat."
  "What on earth do you mean?"'
  "He just is," said Leon. He had come from the practice rooms where she had heard him wrestling with a Beethoven sonata. "He absolutely hates music--he rushes away when the recorder group plays or they're rehearsing the choir. So what is he doing driving about the country collecting folk songs; just tell me that?"'
  "He's only acting as Professor Steiner's chauffeur." And as Leon continued to glare and mutter: "No one could be a liar and do what he did for Achilles," said Ellen, for whom the tortoise had become a kind of talisman. "You'd have to practically become a tortoise to do that."
  "Well, that's lying, isn't it? Pretending to be a tortoise," said Leon, and stalked off, swinging the monogrammed leather music case which he had not yet managed to reduce to the wrecked state he regarded as suitable for the proletariat.
  By the end of Ellen's second week the weather became properly warm and not only Chomsky but
 
others began to take to the lake. Ellen thus found herself acquainted not only with the Hungarian's appendix scar but with the thin white legs of the Biology teacher, David Langley, whose pursuit of the Carinthian frit fly did not seem to have affected his musculature, and the brilliantly orange curls covering both Rollo's chest and his stomach.
  Beyond reflecting on the sad difference between the Naked and the Nude, Ellen was untroubled, confining herself to seeing that the children brought in their towels and did not drip water on to the freshly polished corridors.
  Others were not so insouciant. Sophie said she couldn't swim because she had a mole on her shoulder, and Ursula said she wouldn't because swimming was silly. An Indian girl called Nandi also retired indoors, though what was supposed to be wrong with her perfect body was hard to imagine.
  Ellen listened to these dissidents without comment. Then on a particularly fine afternoon she invited the girls to come to her room to admire her bathing costume. "It's nice, isn't it? It was terribly expensive."
  "It's lovely," said Sophie. "But are you going to wear it?"'
  "Yes, I am. It was a present from my mother."
  "But is it all right? I mean, could one wear a bathing costume? Wouldn't people mind?"'
  "Now Sophie, don't be absurd. What could freedom and self-expression possibly mean except that you can wear something to swim in or not exactly as you please? I'm going to try it out tomorrow afternoon."

  Marek sat on the wooden seat in front of Professor Steiner's little house drinking a glass of beer. His face was relaxed; the eyes quiet. Above the reeds on the edge of the lake, the swallows skimmed and swooped; the afternoon sun held the warmth of summer, not the uncertain promise of spring. Soon now he must row himself back to the castle; he had been away longer than he intended, but he was in no hurry to return to Hallendorf's fishbone risotto, the racket of the children and Tamara's embarrassing advances.
 
  The journey had gone well. They had reached the border without mishap and found the man they had come for. A year in a concentration camp had not broken Heller. Beneath the emaciated body, the spirit of the debonair Reichstag delegate with his eyeglass and his bons mots was undimmed.
  "It won't go on," he'd said, as they drove east through the Bohemian forest. "The rest of the world will wake up to what is going on. God forbid that I should hope for a war, but what else is there to hope for?"'
  But he was angry with Marek, whom he had recognised at once, having known him in Berlin. "You shouldn't be doing this; you've other things to do. I was at--"'
  Marek hushed him. He didn't want to hear what he heard continually from Steiner. Ten miles from the Polish border they left Steiner with the van and prepared for the last part of the journey on foot. As they crouched in the undergrowth waiting for the darkest part of the night, Marek asked if he had heard anything about Meierwitz.
  "He's still alive," Heller had said.
"At least he was a month ago. A woman on a farm was hiding him. He's got guts, that little chap. He could have got out in '34, only--"'
  "Don't," said Marek. "It's because of me that he stayed."
  "Now that is nonsense," said Heller.
"I heard all about that and it was his choice to remain behind. He wanted the glory of--"'
  The barking of a distant dog put an end to all further speech, even in the lowest of whispers. At three a.m. the moon went in and they took off their clothes and waded across the river, and a man rose silently from a field of rye and beckoned them to follow. Heller would be all right, thought Marek now. He had a forged residential permit allowing him to stay in Poland; his sister had married a Pole and would give him shelter. He had been a flyer in the war and intended to offer himself as an instructor in the Polish Air Force. They would take him; he had the Iron Cross.
  From Steiner's living room came the cracked voice of the old crone he had found in the hamlet in which he had waited for Marek to return. He had led her into the van with the highest hopes: she was poor and toothless, her brown face seamed with dirt. If there was anyone who should have been a repository of ancient music it was Olga
 
Czernova, from whose black clothes there had come the smell of decay and leaf mould as if she had been dug up from the forest floor.
  But the tune which now drifted out towards Marek was not a work song from a bygone age, not a funeral dirge. It was "Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes" from The Pirates of Penzance and it was followed by "Lippen Schweigen" from The Merry Widow. For in the bosom of this old witch there dwelt a girl who had been to the city, escorted by a young man who swore he would marry her. The city was not Prague or Vienna, though Olga knew of them both: it was Olomouc, where once a Hapsburg emperor had been crowned. And in Olomouc there had been music! And what music! Not the boring dirges she had been brought up with, but lovely, lifting tunes played by the town band and sung in the operettas by hussars in silver and blue, and gypsies in layers and layers of twirling skirts ... And in the cafes too there had been music!
  The young man had left her--he was a wastrel --but the tunes of that magical time had stayed with her always. To the increasingly desperate Steiner she had sung the Champagne Aria from Fledermaus, Offenbach's Can Can and a duet--taking both parts--from a musical comedy called Prater Spring.
  "Put it in," she kept saying, while Steiner begged uselessly for the old songs she had learnt in the forest. "Go on. This is the part where he finds out she's really a princess."
  And Steiner had done so, meaning to erase the disc later, for it was hardly suitable for despatch to Bartok's Ethnographical
Music Collection in Budapest. But now he decided to leave it, for he too had been young and sat in caf`es, and Olga's final screechings reminded him of the moment when he had seen Marek return from the phalanx of trees and knew that he was safe. It got worse and worse, the waiting for the boy.
  Marek, sitting sleepily in the sunshine, heard Steiner moving about in his kitchen, preparing the evening meal. He made no attempt to help him: Steiner's kitchen, like his house, was tiny--it was this which had made Marek refuse the Professor's offer of hospitality and go to work in the school. Then he heard himself called.
  "Marek, come here a minute!"
 
  Steiner's only luxury in his exile was a large and very powerful telescope through which he watched the stars. But not only the stars ... He was the least voyeuristic of men but it amused him to watch the people on the steamer, the animals wandering on the high pastures, the holiday-makers picnicking on the island.
  Now though the telescope was trained on the castle and as Marek put his eye to it he could see, as if to touch it, the grass at the foot of the steps, the punt drawn up beside the boathouse ... and the wooden jelly along which there walked, with a purposeful grace, a young woman whose shoulders were draped in a snowy towel.
  And behind her, in single file like a brood of intent ducklings, came four ... no ... five little girls. They too moved with a look of purpose, they too were draped in snowy towels. Marek could make out Sophie with her long plaits and the bad-tempered English girl with a passion for Red Indians.
  But it was the woman who led them who held his gaze. Ellen now had dropped her towel, and brought one arm up to gather in the masses of her light brown hair and skewer it on to her head--and what Steiner had suspected was correct. She wore a blue one-piece bathing costume which entirely covered all those places that such a garment is structured to conceal.
  As if on a string, the little girls dropped their towels also and copied her movements, trying to scoop up and tether their hair as best they could-- and, yes, they too were wearing bathing suits.
  "I've never seen that before," said Steiner. "Nor I," said Marek, thinking of the hollows and sinews of Tamara's body as she lay splayed across his path, the white limbs of the Biology teacher and Chomsky's notorious appendix scar.
  Still watching the young woman, he saw her nod to the little girls, and then she dived neatly into the lake and one by one the children followed her: some jumping in, some diving, and the cross English girl going down the wooden steps.
  In the water she turned to see that all of them were safe and then she struck out into the lake, swimming strongly, but several times looking back to see that all was well--and behind her came her brood, fanned out in a V exactly like the ducklings that nested in the reeds.
 
  He stood aside to let Steiner have another look.
  "How seemly," said the old man, and
Marek nodded.
  It was the right word for the behaviour of this concerned and purposeful young woman. For a moment Marek let his mind dwell on Nausicaa, the golden girl at the heart of the Odyssey, who had left her maidens to bring help and succour to the weary Ulysses as he came from the sea. But the high-minded analogy was replaced by a different thought: that it was a little bizarre that the first person he had come across in that strange place whom he would have enjoyed seeing naked, was so resolutely clothed.

  Ellen had not expected that there would be Morning Assemblies at Hallendorf, but there were. Three times a week the whole school met in the Great Hall which ran along most of the first floor of the castle. Instead of pictures of school governors, the Royal Family and shields embossed with the names of prize winners, the hall was decorated with posters bearing rallying slogans and a frieze painted by Rollo's art class showing workers getting in the harvest, for the proletariat, of whom most of the children at Hallendorf knew remarkably little, were very dear to their hearts.
  On the platform at the far end of the hall was a piano and a large radiogram attached to an amplification system which had been about to be renewed when yet another letter came from Bennet's stockbroker. There was also a screen and a magic lantern.
  In the absence of prayers and hymns--and indeed of God--the assemblies, taken by members of staff in rotation and by any children who volunteered, were hard work, but Ellen found them genuinely moving, for in their own way they concerned themselves with the struggles of transcendence, uplift, and the soul. There was one in which Bennet read from The Freeman's
Worship by Bertrand Russell, a philosopher whose unsavoury private life did not prevent him from penning some discerning thoughts about the human condition. Rollo gave one about Goya, who had emerged from illness and despair to become one of the most compassionate painters of human suffering the world had ever known. Jean-Pierre, abandoning his cynicism, told them what the early manifestos of the French Revolution had meant to the huddled poor of
 
Paris--and an American boy projected slides of Thoreau's Walden, that unassuming segment of Massachusetts which for so many became a touchstone for what is good and gentle on this earth.
  But when Leon gave an assembly, Ellen found herself homesick for the boring, familiar routine of hymn singing and gabbled prayers she had known in England, for there was something disquieting about his performance.
  She had come in at the last minute and stood at the back. The hall was full and silent, but Leon, seated at the piano, did not begin.
  He was looking anxiously in Ellen's direction--not at her but at the door. Then it opened and a man entered quietly and stood beside Ellen. She had not met him yet but there could be no doubt about who he was--indeed it was strange how correctly she had imagined him: the size, the strength, the relaxed way he leant against the wall with folded arms. The warm greenish blue eyes fitted too, as did the thick light hair falling over his forehead. Only the large horn-rim spectacles covering part of his face surprised her. She had expected him to be keen-sighted, a forester out of a fable, and thought how absurd she had been.
  As though Marek's entrance was a signal, Leon began to play. He played a movement from a Beethoven sonata and he played it well. Both staff and children were silent, for if Leon was difficult to like, his talent was undoubted.
  When he finished, he rose and went to the front of the platform, commanding the hall as all these stage-trained children had learnt to do. He was very pale and surprisingly nervous for such an extroverted and bumptious boy.
  "That was Beethoven's Opus 26--the one with the funeral march--and it's Beethoven I'm going to talk about. Only not all of his life--the part of it that happened in Heiligenstadt when he was thirty years old."
  He cleared his throat, and once again he looked at the back of the hall, his gaze, which had something frantic about it, fixed on the man who stood unmoving beside Ellen.
  "Heiligenstadt is a village outside Vienna. It's pretty with linden trees and brooks and all that, but that wasn't why Beethoven went there. He went because he didn't want to be
 
seen; he wanted to hide. He was terrified and wretched and trying to escape from the world. He was going deaf, you see, and it was there that he finally gave up hope that the doctors would be able to cure him.
  "It's awful to read about the things he did to try and heal himself," Leon went on. "He poured yellow goo into his ears, he syringed them, he swallowed every kind of patent medicine, he stuck in hearing aids like torture instruments, but nothing made any difference. So he decided to die."
  Leon paused and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. No handkerchief, thought Ellen, blaming herself, and her heart smote her at the emotion generated by this unprepossessing boy.
  "But he didn't," said Leon. "He didn't kill himself," and he threw that too intense, slightly hysterical look towards the place where Marek stood. "He wrote a thing called The Heiligenstadt Testament, which is famous. He started by telling people to be good and love one another and all that, but the part that matters is what he wrote about art. He said if you have a talent you had to use it to go further in to life and not escape from it. I'll read that bit to you."
  He took a book from the top of the piano and first in English, then in German, read the words with which the unhappy composer had reconsecrated himself to music and to life.
  "So you see," said Leon fiercely. "You see ..." and Ellen saw Bennet turn his head, frowning, to follow Leon's gaze as it travelled yet again to Marek, still standing with folded arms beside the door. "You have to go on. Beethoven went back to Vienna and he wrote another seven symphonies and the violin concerto and Fidelio. He wrote dozens more string quartets and the Missa Solemnis and the Hammerklavier
... All right he was grumpy and bad-tempered, he hammered pianos to death and the people who came to see him fell over his unemptied chamber pots, but he never gave up. And when he died, all the schools in Vienna were closed. Every single school was closed so that the children could go to the funeral. Our school would have been closed," said Leon, as if that clinched the matter.
  He had finished his speech. Sniffing once more, pushing back his hair, he walked over to the radiogram. "I'm going to play a bit of the
 
Ninth Symphony to end up with. At least
I am if the blasted gramophone works," he said, descending from the heights.
  But as the triumphant strains of The Ode to Joy rang out across the hall, Ellen felt a momentary draught beside her.
  The man at whom this strange assembly had been directed, was gone.

  It was Ellen's habit to get up early and make her way round the grounds before anyone else was up. The lake was at its loveliest then; the mist rising from the water; the birds beginning to stir.
  But as she wandered, she garnered. Into a trug she kept for the purpose, she put the yo-yos she found tangled in fuchsia bushes, the roller skates left dangerously on the steps, the dew-sodden exercise books and half-knitted khaki balaclavas which (had they ever been finished) would have much reduced the chances of the International Brigade in their fight against Franco.
  On the morning after Leon's disquieting assembly, having collected a broken kite, a pair of braces and a damaged banana, she made her way towards the well in the cobbled courtyard behind the castle, to dredge up a gym shoe which she had noticed the night before.
  But there was someone else who valued the peace of the early morning. Marek did not sleep in the castle itself. He had a room in the stable block reached by an outside staircase. It was furnished as simply as a monk's cell--a bed, a table, a chair--and visitors were not encouraged.
  Now he made his way down the steps, carefully locking the door behind him, and strode off across the cobbled courtyard on his way to the shed where the tools were kept.
  The girl bent over the well did not at first see him, and he would have gone past, but at that moment she lifted her head and smiled and said "Hello".
  "Not a frog, I hope?"' he asked, fishing his spectacles out of his pocket and going across to her, for her sleeve was wet and a small tuft of moss had caught in her hair.
  She shook her head. "No. And if it was I wouldn't kiss it, I promise you. I might kiss a prince if I could be sure he'd turn into a frog but not the other way round. What it is
 
is a gym shoe, but I can't get at it.
It's stuck on a ledge."
  "Let me have a look."
  She had the idea that if it was necessary he would have torn up the iron grille screwed into the ground, so marked was the impression he gave of power and strength. But he merely rolled up his shirt sleeve and presently he fished out the shoe which he laid on the rim beside her.
  "I spend so much time picking gym shoes out of wells and yo-yos out of trees and sodden towels from the grass," she said when she had thanked him. "I wanted to teach them to be tidy by showing, but there's so many of them and there's only one of me. I suppose some of them will never see."
  "But some will."
  He had sat down on the stone rim beside her and as she looked up at him, grateful for his encouragement, he found it necessary to correct the impression he had formed of her. As she swam out with her brood, she had seemed strong-willed and purposeful. Since then, Chomsky's besotted ravings, Bennet's praise and the legend of the icon corner had led him to expect a kind of St Joan wielding a bucket and mop. But she looked gentle and funny ... and perhaps vulnerable with that wide mouth, those thoughtful eyes.
  Ellen too found herself surprised. If Marek's broad forehead and shaggy hair, his sojourn in the stable block, accorded well enough with the image of a solitary woodsman, his voice did not. He had spoken in English, in deference to the custom of the school, and his voice, nuanced and light, was that of a man very much at home in the world.
  "There was something I wanted to ask you," she said. "Bennet said you'd help me. I want us to have storks at Hallendorf. I want to know how to make them come."
  His face had changed; he was silent, withdrawn.
  "Perhaps it's silly," she went on, "but I think the children here need storks."
  The silence continued. Then: "With storks it isn't necessarily a question of needing them. It's a question of deserving them."
  But she would not be snubbed.
  "Sophie deserves them. And others too. Storks mate for life."
  "It's too late this year, you know that." "Yes. But there's next year."
 
  "Ah, next year." She had not deceived herself; somehow she had made him angry. "Of course. What a little islander you are, with your English Channel which makes everyone so seasick and you so safe. You think we shall still be here next year? You think the world will stay still for you?"'
  "No," she said, putting up her chin. "I don't think that as a matter of fact. I came here because I wanted to find Kohlr@oserl and thought maybe I didn't have very long, but it doesn't matter; the storks would still--"'
  "Kohlr@oserl? Those small black orchids?"'
  "Yes, my grandmother spoke of them before she died, but never mind about that. I want storks because--"' and she repeated the words she had spoken to Sophie, "because they bless a house."
  He had withdrawn again but she no longer felt his anger. "What exactly do you intend for this place?"' he said presently.
  It was her turn now to fall silent. She had tucked her feet under her skirt, still perched on the rim of the well.
  "I can't put it into words ... not properly. It's to do with those paintings of places where the lion lies down with the lamb ... you know, those primitive painters who see things very simply: birds of Paradise and great leaves and everything blending with everything else. Or the Forest of Fontainebleau--I've never been there, but I saw a picture once where the stags had crucifixes between their antlers and even the animals who are probably going to be shot look happy. When I saw the castle from the lake that first time, I imagined it all. The rooms clean and clear and smelling of beeswax and flowers, and the roses still free and tangly but not choked ... a sort of secret husbandry that made them flourish. I thought there might be hammocks under the trees where the children could lie and I imagined them running out when it rained so as to turn their faces to the sky--but not before they'd shut the windows so that the shutters wouldn't bang. I thought there could be a place where everything was received with ... hospitality: the lessons and the ideas ... and the food that comes up from the kitchens. Of course the food wouldn't be like it is now," she said, smiling up at him. "There'd be the smell of fresh rolls in the morning and pats of yellow butter ... and somewhere in the theatre which the count must
 
have built with so much affection for his mistress, there'd be a marvellous play full of magic and laughter and great words to which people would come from everywhere ... Even the villagers would come, setting sail for the castle in their boats--even the man who found Chomsky in his fishing nets would come." She looked up, flushing. "I know there can't be such a place, but--"'
  "Yes, there can," he said abruptly. "I could take you to a place that ... feels like that. If times were different I would do so."
  "And it has storks?"'
  "Yes, it has storks."
  He rose, dropped the gym shoe into her trug. Then he stood looking down at her--not smiling ... considering ... and she caught her breath, for she felt that she had been, in that moment, completely understood.
  "I'll look for a wheel," he said--and walked away across the courtyard to begin his work.

  But later, tending to the bonfire of lopped branches and hedge clippings, Marek wondered what had made him liken his home to this mad place. Pettelsdorf owed its existence--its wealth--to the forest which surrounded it, and those who are custodians of trees lead a life of rigorous discipline. To his father, and his father's father before him, the two thousand hectares of his domain were wholly known. An architect coming to bespeak oak planks for the belfry of a church was led to one tree and one tree only in the seemingly limitless woods. There were trees of course which were sacrosanct: a five-hundred-year-old lime, with its squirrel nests and secret hollows, which Marek as a boy had claimed as his own, would never be cut, nor the elm by the house beneath which he'd lain on summer nights watching the stars tossed back and forth between branches. But in general there was no room for sentiment at Pettelsdorf; a forest of sweet chestnuts and pine, of walnut and alder and birch, is not something that looks after itself. Only a meticulous daily husbandry ensures the balance between new growth and ancient hallowed trees, between sun-filled clearings and dense plantations.
  But Ellen had used the same word: husbandry. She saw the children (he had realised this at once) as his father, and he himself, had learnt to see their trees: those that needed pruning, those that grew aslant, those that required only light and air.
 
She was like those girls one sees in genre paintings: girls labelled Lacemaker or
Water Carrier or Seamstress. Quiet girls to whom the artists had not bothered to give names, for it was clear that without them the essentials of life would cease.
  Oh damn, he thought, having promised storks, having opened the door to a place he had never meant to leave and that was lost to him until his wearisome task was done. For it was strange how easily, had things been different, he could have taken her to Pettelsdorf. She would precede him up the verandah steps; the wolfhound would nuzzle her skirt; his mother would give the little nod she gave when she found the right word for one of her translations and his father would put down the gun he was cleaning and take out the 1904 Imperial Tokay he kept for special guests. While in the brook behind the house, the storks she craved would solemnly perambulate, searching for frogs ...
  Which was nonsense, of course, for the work he had to do must involve no one, and even if he did what he set out to do he would still not be free, for incredible as it seemed, it looked as though there was going to be another war.

  It was not till the beginning of her second week that Ellen was able to devote herself to the kitchen and its staff.
  The kitchens, which had once supplied the Hapsburg counts with roast venison and casseroles of grouse, and had sent sucking pigs and flagons of Napoleon Brandy upstairs, had not changed substantially since the days when the last of Hallendorf's owners had feted Franz Joseph after a week of hunting. An electric cooker had replaced the huge bread ovens and the range, and there was a frigidaire stuck with revolutionary slogans proclaiming the need for the overthrow of the Costa Rican government. But the vast wooden kitchen table was the same, the long passages which separated kitchen and larder and the stone steps down to the cellars.
  Nevertheless, Ellen, entering to begin her supervisory duties, looked at the room with pleasure. It was not dark; the windows at the back looked on to the courtyard and the catalpa tree, and everything was solid and clean.
  The cleanliness surprised her because the food which had hitherto been served up was dire. Lumpy
 
brown rice risottos to which spikes of bony fish adhered; strange salads devoid of dressing but rich in small pieces of gravel and slimy tropical fruits which had come from far away in tins.
  Ellen's arrival, in her crispest apron, was not greeted with enthusiasm either by the persecuted Costa Rican, Juan, or by Fr@aulein Waaltraut Nussbaum-Eisenberg, an impoverished aristocrat whose nephew was mayor of Klagenfurt.
  Juan cooked for his keep and a vestigial salary and expected any day, he said, to hear a knock at the door and to be taken away by the secret police of his country, and Fr@aulein Waaltraut disapproved of meat, eggs and fish and would have fed the school entirely on borage and bilberries if Bennet had let her.
  "Well, of course we must have salads," said Ellen, "but not with gravel, and stinging nettles must be picked young. Also these children are growing so we must make sure that there is plenty of protein."
  She laid her cookery books on the table and asked if she could see the larder. This went down badly, Fr@aulein Waaltraut pointing out that she wasn't used to being inspected and Juan waving his arms and declaring that it was a Thursday, and it was on Friday that the boat came with fresh supplies.
  Since it was obvious that both Juan and Fr@aulein Waaltraut, like the tinned mango shards from impoverished African countries, belonged to Hallendorf's tradition of succoring the needy irrespective of worth, Ellen continued to be surprised by the wooden table scrubbed to whiteness and the pots and pans scoured and neatly stacked. Clearly there was someone else working down here and presently she found her; not in the kitchen itself but in the scullery, washing up the breakfast things.
  Ellen came on her unobserved and as she watched, her spirits rose. The girl was very young--not more than eighteen--and dressed in a spotless dirndl: a blue sprigged skirt, a pink bodice, a white blouse. Her blonde hair was pinned neatly round her head, she was small and sturdy and she worked with a steady rhythm and concentration, as though what she was doing was ... what she was doing, and nothing else.
  "Grass Gott," said Ellen, holding
 
out her hand. "I'm the new supervisor --my name is Ellen."
  The girl turned, wiped her hands. "I'm Lieselotte," she said--but as she dropped a curtsy Ellen had to restrain herself from rushing forward and taking the girl into her arms. For this might have been Henny, come back from the dead: Henny as she had been in her own country, wholesome, giving and good.
  "Tell me, Lieselotte, was it you who boiled the eggs and made the poppy seed rolls on Sunday?"'
  Lieselotte nodded. "Yes. I am not supposed to cook, I'm just here to clean and wash up, but on Sundays Fr@aulein Waaltraut isn't here and--"' She flushed. "It's difficult. I am thinking of giving in my notice."
  "Oh no!" Ellen shook her head with vehemence. "You can't possibly do that. Don't even think of it. From now on it is you and I who are going to do the cooking."
  The girl's face lit up. "Oh, I love to cook. Everyone thinks Austrian food is heavy and greasy, but that's only bad Austrian cooking. My mother's omelettes are like feathers and her buttermilk is so fresh and good."
  "Your mother taught you to cook, then?"' "Yes."
  "And do you have any brothers and sisters? We shall need some help because I have to work upstairs as well."
  "I have two sisters. They wanted to come but my mother thought it wouldn't be good ... they're young--and sometimes the children behave so badly."
  "Well, anyone would behave badly if they had to eat fishbone risotto," said Ellen. "I tell you, Lieselotte, we're going to transform this place."
  "But," the girl looked towards the kitchens where an altercation was beginning between Juan and Fr@aulein Waaltraut, "how will you ...? He has nowhere to go and she is related to the mayor."
  "I think perhaps Juan could teach pottery. And --well, I shall think of something. Now, here are the menus I thought offor next week--but I'd like to use as much local produce as possible. I expect you know people who would supply us?"'
 
  "Oh yes. Yes." She smiled.
"But they do not live in Abyssinia."

  In Gowan Terrace, Ellen's mother and her aunts missed her more than they could possibly have believed. The house without her seemed empty, silent and cold. If Dr Carr had scarcely noticed, in her busy life, the flowers Ellen had brought in and arranged, she noticed their absence. Below stairs, the cook reverted to boiled fish and virulently coloured table jellies, and the man who came to help in the garden dug up Ellen's peonies and destroyed the clematis.
  Not that the sisters didn't keep busy. There were more meetings than ever: meetings about the disenfranchised women of Mesopotamia, about mathematics teaching in communes and free contraception for prostitutes. But even the meetings were not quite what they had been--they were briefer, there were fewer young men, and the sandwiches sent up by the cook were so unappetising that they abandoned them and settled for digestive biscuits.
  It was different, however, when one of Ellen's letters arrived from Hallendorf. Then Dr Carr and her sisters allowed special people to stay behind after the chairs were cleared and the lantern slides put away, and the letter was read not only to initiates like the "aunt" who ran the Left Book Club
Shop or the former headmistress of Ellen's school, but to others--even men--who had a record of good work for the causes. And among these was Kendrick Frobisher.
  Kendrick had made himself so useful in Gowan Terrace, addressing envelopes, sorting slides and fetching leaflets from the printers, that he could not really be left out of anything as enjoyable as reading the next instalment of life at Hallendorf. It was true that Annie (the one who was a Professor of Mycology and therefore saw things dispassionately) had voiced her doubts about the advisability of this.
  "He's very much in love with Ellen; don't you think it might encourage him to hope if we invite him to what are, in a sense, family occasions?"'
  But advisable or not, no one had the heart to exclude Kendrick, who had been compelled
 
to visit the wet house in Cumberland for a family reunion in which his oldest brother, a major in the Indian Army, had told him about pig sticking, and his other brother, a stockbroker who was learning to fly his own plane, had given an account of looping the loop.
  So Kendrick sat with Charlotte and
Phyllis and Annie and heard about the strange behaviour of the Little Cabbage (for whose eurythmics classes the children drew lots) and the play chosen for the end of the year performance which was set in a slaughterhouse and was politically sound but sad. They heard about the discovery of Lieselotte in the kitchen, about Ellen's rage with parents who did not write to their children, and her triumph in weaning Andromeda from sphagnum moss to Turkish towelling. And they heard--though briefly--about someone called Marek who had put a tortoise on wheels and was going to help her find storks. Sometimes Ellen would add: "Please give my love to Kendrick and tell him I'll write properly soon," and this would send the young man out into the night walking on air, and more determined than ever to fulfil what he saw as his mission.
  And his mission was no less than to bring to Ellen, through his letters, all the cultural activities of her native city. Now, when Kendrick went to an exhibition of Mexican funeral urns, or saw a Greek play in a basement in Pimlico, he went not only for Ellen, but in a mystical sense with her. He invariably bought two programmes and made careful notes throughout the performance so that he could share his experiences, and these he added with his comments and impressions to the weekly letter.
  Thus it was that when he attended a concert of contemporary music at the Wigmore Hall,
Ellen was treated to a complete breakdown of the music played, an annotated copy of the programme and two sheets of comments stapled to the back in Kendrick's handwriting.
  "Curiously enough, I think I know the man who wrote the songs I have marked, the ones which were encored. As you see, his name is Altenburg.
He was becoming well known in Germany before Hitler came to power but now he has withdrawn all his music from performance in the Third Reich--he won't even allow his compositions to be printed there. There was a boy at school with the same name-- he had a German father, or maybe it was
 
Austrian--and he stood out from the others because he was so good at music but also because he was so strong and unafraid. He was expelled after a year for hanging one of the housemasters out of a first-floor window. He didn't drop him but he held him out over the shrubbery by his ankles. It was a big scandal, because the master could have fallen and been killed, but we were all glad because the master was a sadist and he'd been beating small boys in the most appalling way, so Altenburg was a hero, but he left straight away. The school said they expelled him but we thought he just went. He didn't seem at all bothered about what he'd done. He just said defenestration was quite common in Prague where his mother came from."
  Kendrick paused, wondering whether to explain about the defenestration of Prague, which was a famous event in the history of Czechoslovakia. He was a person who could spell Czechoslovakia without recourse to a dictionary and was quite conversant with the religious disputations of the Bohemian capital which had resulted in two Catholics being thrown out of the window by irate Protestants who believed themselves betrayed. But there was no more room on the programme, and Ellen sometimes looked tired when he explained things at length, so he put the notes to one side and returned to his letter, telling her once more that he would always love her and that if she could ever bear to think of him as a husband he would be unutterably happy.
  He then signed the letter, put in the theatre programme of the Greek play, the reviews cut out of The Times, two exhibition catalogues, and the annotated programme of the Altenburg concert, and took them to the letter box.
  These all arrived safely, delivered on the yellow post bus with its Schubertian horn which careered round the lake at dawn. Ellen read the letter, for she continued to feel sorry for Kendrick, but she left the catalogues and the concert programme on her work table to look at later, for she was planning a complete refurbishment of Hallendorf's dining room and the cultural life of the metropolis would have to wait.

  On the same morning as Ellen heard from Kendrick and Sophie once again turned away empty-handed from her pigeonhole, Marek received
 
a postcard which he pocketed with satisfaction. The picture showed a pretty Polish village complete with smiling peasants and the text read simply: "Tante Tilda's operation a success. She sends her love."
  Heller was safe then. Marek could imagine him, his monocle restored, holding forth in the officers' mess of the Flying Corps. So now there was nothing to do till he got news of Meierwitz: the enquiries he had set in train as the result of Heller's disclosures would take time. And this rescue would be the last. He had promised Steiner, and he himself was aware that the time for lone adventures was past. Hitler's defeat now could only come from the other countries waking up to their responsibilities, not, as he had once hoped, from within.
  Marek therefore turned his attention once more to Hallendorf's neglected grounds, spraying the trees in the orchard, repairing the frames in the kitchen garden, staking the roses. Wherever he worked, boys congregated to watch but they did not watch for long. One either left Marek alone, or one helped, and the "helping" was not of the kind that involved self-expression or ceased when the novelty of the task had worn off.
  Most of the children were genuinely useful, but Leon's desire to "help" was different.
This quicksilver, twitchy child wanted something from Marek; his apparent affection was a kind of persecution. Marek was aware of this. He sent him to work as far away as possible: hoeing a path on the lower terrace, or wheelbarrowing logs from a distant wood pile, but it was impossible for the boy to stay away for long.
  Ellen, busy with her plans for redesigning the dining room, found Marek unobtrusively helpful. She would be dragging trestle tables out of doors so that she could feed the children in the courtyard till the job was done, and he would appear at her side unexpectedly to lift and carry or--with a few words--show her an easier way to do something.
  He was helpful in other ways too, explaining things she had not completely understood.
  "Chomsky does swim a lot, doesn't he?"' she said, as the metalwork teacher splashed past them once again. "I mean, three times a day."
  "It's because of the exceptional weight of his liver," said Marek. "Bartok swims a lot
 
too."
  "Bartok?"'
  "A Hungarian composer. Probably the best one alive."
  "Yes, I know. But is it something about Hungarians? That they have heavy livers and have their appendices taken out in the puszta?"'
  "Chomsky's appendix was taken out in the most expensive clinic in Budapest," said Marek, looking mildly offended, as though she had taken the name of Central Europe in vain. "His father is a high-ranking diplomat."
  It was not only the children who followed Marek about as he worked.
  Tamara was creating a ballet called The Inner is the Outer, based on a poem by Rilke she had found in the library but perhaps not completely understood. It was a solo ballet since the children had proved uncooperative, and its rehearsal, involving the kind of contortions to be expected of someone whose inside was outside, usually took place as close as possible to where Marek was.
  The way Marek coped with this was impressive. This man who noticed the smallest beetle on the trunk of a tree or picked the emerging, thumbnail sized frogs from the path of his scythe, dealt with Tamara as if she did not exist. Once, finding her splayed sunbathing across his path as he was going to the village, he tipped his hat to her as to an acquaintance encountered on the Champs Elys`ees, and walked on. Only when she picked up her balalaika and began to sing did he instantly disappear, showing the same unexpected skill in flight that he showed when teaching fencing.
  Ellen's own troubles with Tamara were horticultural. For it seemed that the girls of the Russian Ballet had gone about with flowers in their hair--large, mostly red flowers--and it was flowers such as these that Tamara plucked or tore up with her bony fingers and stuck into her hennaed locks.
  "I feel as though it's me she's picked and hung over her ear," Ellen admitted to Marek as the Little Cabbage yanked a perfect, double-petalled peony from its stem.
  Aware that she needed comfort, he said: "I think I've found a wheel. A farmer in the next valley's got one in his shed. He isn't sure
 
yet whether he'll let me have it but
I'm working on him."
  "Oh!"
  Ellen realised that her belief in storks was excessive. Storks would not necessarily make Sophie's parents write to her or stop Janey wetting her bed. It was probably beyond their powers, too, to turn Tamara into a decent wife who would help Bennet run his school. But she felt so hopeful that Marek, seeing her face, was compelled to add: "A wheel doesn't make storks come, necessarily."
  "No," she said happily. "But it's a beginning." And success going to her head she added: "Maybe we could have doves too--white ones? Fantails. There's a dovecot up in the fields. They'd look beautiful."
  "No!"
  "Why not?"'
  "Because they breed and breed and people who own them are compelled to collect the fledglings in washing baskets and try to give them to their friends," said Marek bitterly, recalling his mother's early and unsuccessful efforts to bestow her surplus on the landlords of Bohemia. "They are permanently in season," he said, making his point clear.
  "Like Tamara," said Ellen--and put her hand to her mouth, for she had sworn not to speak ill of the Little Cabbage who had suffered so much.

  The reopening of Hallendorf's dining room turned out to be unexpectedly dramatic, indeed there were children who remembered it long after they had forgotten the expressionist plays and dance dramas in which they had taken part.
  For two days before, the dining room had been closed and they were served alfresco meals. Then on the third day a notice appeared in the hall asking everyone to assemble outside the dining room five minutes before the evening meal.
  Needless to say this created considerable anticipation and even Rollo, who preferred to go to the village for beer and pretzels, and Chomsky, whose constitution was delicate, were waiting.
  At six-thirty, Bruno, who had been guarding the door, threw it open and everyone flocked in to find a transformation scene. Gone was the oil cloth with its institutional smell, gone the uncurtained windows, the crockery jumbled up in
 
metal baskets. The pine tables shone with beeswax; on the centre of each was a posy of wild flowers in a blue and white pottery jar; the places were carefully set.
  And the serving hatch, in which Fr@aulein Waaltraut usually stood with her ladle, was shut. Next to it stood four children with napkins on their arms, ready to serve their peers.
  When everyone was seated, Sophie, standing at a side table, picked up a bell and rang it. It was a cow bell, sweet-toned and mellow, and reminded those children whose parents had managed to get together long enough to celebrate Christmas, of reindeers and presents and candles on a tree.
  At this signal the door of the hatch opened. There, instead of Fr@aulein Waaltraut looking harassed, stood Ellen. She wore a white overall, and a white coif concealed her hair so that she looked like a devout and dedicated nun.
  But when she spoke, her words were not nun-like in the least.
  "As you see," said Ellen--and her voice carried without difficulty to all corners of the hall, "we have tried to make the dining room more inviting--and we hope and intend to serve up more inviting food. You all know that the school is on a budget so we can't perform miracles, but we will do everything we can to see that what you get to eat is fresh and well cooked, even if sometimes it has to be plain. But there is one thing I want to make absolutely clear and it concerns the proletariat." She paused, surveying her audience, who seemed to be suitably cowed.
"I have heard a lot about the proletariat and the downtrodden workers of the world since I came here, and I think that to care about them is right and honourable and good. But I want to make it absolutely clear that the proletariat doesn't only happen in far off places. Not only in the sweatshops of Hong Kong or the factories of the American Midwest. The proletariat is also here in this kitchen. Lieselotte, who got up at five in the morning to bake the rolls you are about to eat, is the proletariat. Frau Tauber, who washes up for you, is the proletariat when she stands by the sink for hours on her aching, swollen legs. I am the proletariat," said Ellen, waving her ladle. "When you throw a piece of bread across the room you are destroying what a man spent the night making even though his back ached,
 
even though his wife was ill. When you jostle and shove and spill the milk, you are belittling a man who gets up on a freezing morning and blows on his hands and goes into his shed to milk the cows while you are sleeping in your beds. And if you understand this, then I and all of us in the kitchen will do everything to serve good food, but if you can't then I swear it's back to fishbone risotto and mango shards because that's all you deserve!"
  A stunned silence followed this. Then from the back of the room a deep voice called "Bravo!" Marek's lead was one that was always followed. It was to an ovation that Ellen picked up her ladle and began to serve.

  "You know, I almost wish I hadn't made it so clear that I didn't want her to get involved with the plays in any way," said Bennet later that night. "She seems to have a real flair for presentation."
  "That's true," agreed Margaret
Sinclair, who had come to his study with some letters for him to sign. "But mind you, I don't know how much effect the speech would have had by itself. I think that it was the food she produced afterwards that did the trick. That sauce on the W@urstl and that delicious Kaiserschmarren."
  "Well, you may be right. I'm just sorry I couldn't oblige her by letting Juan teach pottery. But Marek seems to have found work for him in the garden." To have two people on his staff on whom he could rely so completely was a bonus, though Marek, he knew, would not stay.
  Now Bennet remembered his first interview with Tarnowsky. He had rowed himself across the lake from Professor Steiner's house and asked for a job.
  "It won't be long. A few months ..." "What can you teach?"' Bennet had asked. It was not the way he engaged staff as a rule but he had no sooner seen the quiet, slow-moving man than he wanted him.
  "I thought I might work in the grounds," Marek had answered. "The orchard is in poor shape and the trees behind the jousting ground want thinning."
  "Could you take fencing for the older boys?"' asked Bennet, following his hunch.
  "If you like. And carpentry, I suppose." Bennet had tried pottery--he had a much
 
prized heap of clay in the cellar moistened periodically by trusted children awaiting someone worthy--but Marek disclaimed all knowledge of pottery.
  "There's a book," said Bennet, looking at the man's large, reassuringly "unartistic" hands.
  "I'll think about it."
  "I'm afraid I can't offer you much in the way of pay," Bennet had said.
  "I don't want any pay. But I tell you what I do want."
  He had wanted leave of absence to go with Professor Steiner on his folk song collecting expeditions whenever the Professor heard of a promising singer. As he reached the door, Bennet tried again. "What about music? Could you take the choir?"'
  Marek turned, shook his head. "Definitely not music," he said.
  Now it struck Bennet as singular that the three people on whom he could let his mind rest, certain that they would give of their best, were all of them uninterested in the ideas which for him empowered his school. Ellen, Marek and Margaret (who had come in at ten at night to help with his letters), did not seem to be concerned with freedom and self-expression--nor had they shown the slightest interest in the end of year play which everyone, though that was not its title, was calling Abattoir.

  Ellen's friendship with Lieselotte grew day by day. Her promotion from kitchen maid to cook brought a glow to Lieselotte's eyes; her pride in her work, her skill, were a joy to behold. Within a week she had brought her Cousin Gretl to help out, and with Juan working in the gardens and Fr@aulein Waaltraut ensconced in the library to prepare a report on culinary herbs, the kitchen became a haven of cleanliness and skill.
  Not only that, but in befriending Lieselotte, Ellen had acquired the goodwill of the Hallendorf tradesmen who had hitherto held disapprovingly aloof from the school. The butcher was Lieselotte's uncle, the baker was her mother's brother-in-law, and a farmer at whose apricot orchards Ellen had cast longing glances, was married to her aunt. Assured that the castle no longer meant to import corned beef from deserving stockyards in Ecuador or brown rice with
 
weevils from a distant cooperative, they promised to supply the Hallendorf kitchens with fresh meat and fruit--and at prices that were reasonable and fair.
  All the same, when Ellen announced that she was accompanying Lieselotte to church the following Sunday, her remark was greeted with consternation. Swimming in a bathing costume was one thing, but this was courage taken to dangerous lengths.
  "Can one?"' asked Sophie, her eyes wide. "Can one really do that?"'
  "Of course one can," said Ellen. "If one can worship Beethoven and Goya and Dostoevsky, why shouldn't one worship God? After all, who gave Beethoven and the others their vision? It might well have been God, don't you think?"'
  "It can't be, because God doesn't exist," said Leon. "And anyway religion is the opium of the people."
  "I used to go to church sometimes in Vienna," said Sophie wi/lly. "The housekeeper took me. It was lovely--the incense and the music."
  Ellen, steeling herself, said nothing. She had taken no Sundays off since she came and had reached the stage, so familiar to those who work in schools, when she wanted to speak to no one under the age of twenty, and thirty would have been better.
  "The steamer doesn't go till the afternoon on Sundays, does it?"' she asked Lieselotte.
  "No. There's a bus very early--but usually when he's here Marek takes us over in his boat: me and Frau Tauber and anyone else who wants to go. He has friends in the village. He's so kind and such a gentleman."
  And this of course was Ellen's undoing. Making her way down to the jetty soon after seven, she found Sophie sitting on the steps, her arms around her knees.
  If she had begged to be taken Ellen would have been firm, promising to take her some other time with her friends. But of course Sophie did not beg. She knew she was not wanted, and sat quietly on the jetty, and looked.
  "Would you like to come?"' Ellen said, and saw the spectacular change that happiness made in the thin face.
  "Am I tidy enough?"' she asked--and of
 
course she was; the only child in Hallendorf who could have got into a punt then and there and rowed to church.
  Leon was another matter. He liked Sophie, Ellen knew that even if Sophie didn't. Now he appeared and said he wanted to come too.
  "We're going to church, Leon. As an atheist and a Marxist and a person to whom people have to be nice because he is a Jew, I don't think this is the place for you."
  "I don't mind."
  "They, however, will mind if you turn up with a dirty face and unbrushed hair. If you can clean yourself up in five minutes and behave yourself properly, you can come. And if you do, you will please leave Marek alone."
  "What do you mean?"'
  "You know exactly what I mean. Now hurry."
  Ellen had expected Marek to leave them at the door of the church, but to her surprise he followed them in and saw them bestowed in the pew behind Lieselotte's family before taking his place at the end of the row.
  Their arrival caused a considerable stir. Marek was greeted by a surprising number of people, and Ellen's virtues had been proclaimed by Lieselotte, but no one had seen Hallendorf children in church before, and the old woman who had warned Ellen on the steamer could be seen whispering agitatedly to her friends.
  Ellen's thoughts always wandered in church, but they wandered well. Now she allowed herself to admire the blond heads of Lieselotte's little brothers and sisters in the row in front, and to admit that Marek (who did not seem to need his spectacles to read the hymn book) was looking extremely seigniorial in the loden jacket which had replaced his working clothes.
  But mostly her thoughts wandered to Henny, for whose soul she prayed though she had no right to do so, not being a Catholic, and certainly no need, since Henny's soul, if any soul on earth, could look after itself in the hereafter.
  When the service was over, Ellen said she would like to look round the church and this was approved of in every way but it was not apparently a thing that one did alone. Lieselotte's mother, Frau Becker, in particular expected to attend, as did her
 
uncle and the old woman who had warned Ellen on the boat. Nor did Marek's suggestion that he wait for them on the terrace of the inn prove to be popular. Herr Tarnowsky, who had helped Lieselotte's mother mend her roof and chopped down the baker's diseased pear tree, was expected to be present at this treat.
  But if there was a claque of villagers, it was Lieselotte who was allowed to be the spokesman, for in Hallendorf church there was a star, a local celebrity, a saint to whom the church was consecrated but of whom they spoke as of any girl who had lived among them and in her own way done extremely well.
  "Her name was Aniella," said
Lieselotte. "And look; here are the pictures which show you her life."
  She pointed to a row of oil paintings hanging on the chancel wall.
  "This is one of her with her family; she lived up on the alp underneath the Kugelspitze quite close to here. You can see all the animals she cared for too."
  The painting contained all the loving detail with which eighteenth-century artists depicted simple things. Aniella's house had window boxes of petunias and French marigolds; a morning glory climbed the wall. She herself was sitting on a bench and bending down to an injured creature who had placed his head in her lap--not a lamb; there were lambs as in all holy paintings, but further away in the meadow. No, Aniella was tending the broken leg of a St Bernard dog--one could see the keg of brandy around his neck. He was holding his paw up trustingly and beside him, jostling for a place, was a goat with a broken horn. Surrounding the girl, with her calm face and long dark hair, was a host of other animals: some were wounded--a cat with a bandaged ear, a calf with a sore on its flank--but there were others who seemed to be there more for company: a salamander walking over her foot; a grass snake curled up around a stone. It was a place where Marek's tortoise would have been very much at home.
  "She was a healer," said Lieselotte.
"She healed everything; she didn't mind what it was. Cripples and grass snakes and people, and she never harmed a creature in her life."
  "Are those her children?"' asked Sophie. "No, she was very young, only eighteen.
 
They're her brothers and sisters. They were orphans; their parents died and she looked after them even though she wasn't much older herself."
  The little peasant children in their dirndls and kerchiefs might have been Lieselotte's own siblings, they looked so wholesome and so good. They were helping, trained to work as peasant children are: a small boy with yellow hair was tending goats higher up on the mountain; another, a girl, sat close to Aniella, stirring something in a wooden bowl; two more were forking hay into a barn and one--a frail child with long hair--leant adoringly over Aniella's shoulder.
  "Look, there's her garden," said Lieselotte. "These are the herbs she grew and the flowers. She knew exactly what to use for healing."
  Aniella's garden, painted like a tea tray on the side of the mountain, was a miracle of husbandry. Rows of curly cabbages flecked in bright green paint, raspberry canes, small bushes which Lieselotte's mother named for them. "Rosemary, fennel, St John's Wort
..."
  "But she loved the wild flowers too," Lieselotte went on. "There's a picture of her over there in the triptych holding a bunch of gentians and marguerites and edelweiss."
  But Sophie was already worried. No one became a saint for loving flowers and being good to their family. What dreadful fate lay in wait for this appealing girl? They had only to turn to the next painting to see. A vile knight on horseback, his face set in a conquering sneer, rode with his henchmen towards the mountain. You could almost hear the clattering of hoofs, the clash of lances.
  "That's Count Alexei von Hohenstift," said Lieselotte. "He was a truly wicked knight and so were his followers, but when he saw Aniella he fell passionately in love with her and said she had to marry him. She wept and implored and begged him to leave her, but he said if she refused to be his bride he would kill every man and woman and child in the village and set it on fire."
  "Oh how awful," said Sophie. "What did she do?"'
  "Prayed, of course," said Leon.
  His irony was lost on these uncomplicated people.
 
  "That's right," said Lieselotte.
"She went into that little grotto there; you can see it in the inset. It's still there, halfway up the hill behind the castle. And an angel appeared to her and said she must prepare for her wedding and trust in God."
  In the next painting they could see that Aniella had obeyed. Helped by her brothers and sisters, down whose small faces there ran rows of perfectly painted tears, she was trying on her wedding dress while her friends put out trestle tables and food for the wedding feast--and even the salamander seemed to mourn.
  "This is the one I like best though," said Lieselotte, moving down the row.
  The picture showed a flotilla of boats crossing the lake towards the church. In one boat were the musicians with their instruments, in another the guilds, in a third the school children in the care of nuns. And in the centre of the flotilla, in a boat beautifully draped and swagged, sat Aniella in her wedding dress with her brothers and sisters, carrying a bouquet of the alpine flowers she loved so well and not looking at all as though she was going to her doom.
  "Because she trusted in God, you see," said Lieselotte.
  Sophie, who could not bear unhappy endings, who was waiting for the dismemberment, the breaking on the wheel, was biting her lip. "What happened?"'
  "You can see. Aniella reached the church and as she stood at the altar the vile count tried to ride into the church with his henchmen--but the horse reared, it wouldn't commit sacrilege--so he strode up the aisle and just as the priest started on the service Alexei stared at his bride and--"' Lieselotte paused dramatically.
"Look!"
  They leant over her shoulder. Aniella still stood there in her white dress with her bunch of flowers; but her face had become the hideous, wrinkled face of an old hag.
  "God had made her into a dreadful old witch," said Lieselotte. "Just in an instant. And the count screamed and drew out his sword and thrust it into Aniella's heart--if you come closer you can see the blood."
  They could indeed see it. It streamed over Aniella's dress as she fell to the ground, and over the children bending in anguish over their sister; it
 
dripped from the count's sword as he ran in terror from the church and spotted the carpet on the aisle.
  "So she did die," said Sophie. It was only what she had expected.
  "No, it was all right. Because as soon as the count had gone she became young and beautiful again and she rose up and up and God took her to him and flowers came down from everywhere."
  The last picture showed Aniella, floating over the roof of the Hallendorf church, radiant and lovely, and the angels leaning out of heaven to take her in.
  "She went to God," said Lieselotte, and such was her satisfaction that Sophie had to be content.
  "It's a lovely story, Lieselotte," said Ellen.
  "It isn't a story," said Lieselotte. "It's true."

  "What was it like?"' asked Ursula that night. "It was nice," said Sophie. "We heard about this saint--she was very horticultural and good. Like a cross between Heidi and Saint Francis of Assisi. Or a bit like a chicken ... you know, those hens that hold out their wings and protect their chicks?"' Sitting up in bed, Sophie stretched out her skinny arms. "She was a sheltering person."
  "Like Ellen," said Janey.
  "Yes," said Sophie, "exactly like Ellen."
  "What happened to her?"' asked Ursula. "She got killed."
  Ursula nodded. All the best people got killed: her mother and father, Geronimo ... and Sitting Bull who had been betrayed and assassinated at Standing Rock.
  Two doors down Ellen leant out of her window, looking out at the soft, expectant night. Below her the half-heard, half-felt murmur of the lake came as a counterpoint to her thoughts as she went back over the day.
  After the service, Marek had taken them to the inn for coffee and cakes and then excused himself; he was going to meet Professor Steiner. Leaving the children to wander round the village, she had slipped back to the church. There was something she wanted to look at more carefully; the triptych in which Aniella was
 
depicted holding a bunch of alpine flowers.
  She was still examining the painting when she became aware of someone in a side chapel. A man who had put a coin in the offertory box and now lit a tall white candle which he placed with the other votive candles beneath the altar. For a moment he stood with bent head over the flame. Then he looked up, saw her--and came over, quite unembarrassed, to her side.
  "Look," she said, "I think I've found them."
  Following her pointing finger, Marek saw the tiny black fists of the orchids among the brilliant colours of primulas and saxifrage and gentians.
  "Kohlr@oserl?"'
  "Yes." She was glad he had remembered. "So they were there then, up on the alp."
  "Which means that they might be there now. And if they are, then we can find them."
  It was absurd how pleased she had been by that "we". But the happiness she had felt there in the church was shot through now with something else: puzzlement, anxiety ...
  For whom had this strong and self-sufficient man needed to light a candle? For what person--or what enterprise--did he need to evoke the gods?

  Meierwitz, had he been present in the church, might have been surprised, but pleased nonetheless. No more than Marek would he seriously imagine that a minor Austrian saint of uncertain provenance (for Aniella's sanctity had been disputed) would concern herself with one small Jew without a home or country ... and one who didn't even attend his own synagogue let alone a church.
  But candles are ... candles. They are not confined to countries or religions; their living flame reaches upwards to places where disputation has long since ceased. Neither Krishna, nor Jehovah, nor Jesus Christ would claim to be the sole recipient of the hope and faith that goes into the act of candle-lighting, in the attics of unbelievers, in schools, on birthday cakes and trees ...
  Marek, lighting his candle, had uttered no specific prayer, yet it might be considered that the unuttered prayer was heard. For two days
 
later, Isaac Meierwitz found the courage to leave the farm in which he had lain hidden for months and set off under cover of darkness for the place near the border where he was to meet his contacts. He had been too much afraid to leave the familiar shelter until then, and he was still afraid ... but he had gone.

  In the third week of term, FitzAllan arrived from England to direct the end of term play.
  Owing to Hallendorf's emphasis on drama, the summer term was extended by nearly three weeks so that the play could not only be seen by parents and other visitors, but could serve as the opening of the Summer School which ran through August and the first part of September.
  The play chosen was thus of a special importance, and differed from other performances throughout the year in that staff and pupils acted in it together, and the design, the music and the lighting were a joint effort between adults and children.
  Bennet's decision to bring in an outsider to direct this year was a bold one. FitzAllan had demanded a substantial fee and fees--whether substantial or otherwise--came not out of the depleted coffers of the school but out of Bennet's own pocket. But Derek FitzAllan was not only a specialist in the Stanislavsky technique and a man who had studied under Meyerhold in Russia and Piscator in the Weimar Republic--he had produced a coup which Bennet could not afford to turn down.
  He had apparently persuaded Bertolt Brecht, now in exile from Germany, to let the school put on a translation of his unperformed play, Saint Johanna of the Stockyards.
Not only to put it on but to make the necessary alterations which would make it easy to perform in a school. Bennet, amazed that the playwright had shown himself so generous, accepted FitzAllan's offer, and reproached himself for a slight weariness, a faint longing for something with more colour and life affirmation than this Marxist drama seemed likely to provide.
  So now, driving with Tamara to meet the director from the train, he did his best to feel encouraged. FitzAllan had long silver hair, a relatively young, tanned face and was
 
dressed entirely in black. He was also, as he told Bennet immediately, a strict and undeviating vegan and asked that the information should be conveyed at once to the cook.
  "My goodness, what is that?"' asked Lieselotte when Ellen brought the news to the kitchen.
  "It's someone who doesn't eat anything that comes from animals," said Ellen. "No meat, no eggs, no milk, no cheese ..."
  "But what does he eat then?"' asked poor Lieselotte.
  "Nuts," said Ellen, curling her lip.
The director had already handed her his soiled underpants and socks to wash.
  Ellen had made clear her determination not to go to meetings about plays. But the gathering that FitzAllan had convened in the Great Hall as soon as he arrived, came at the end of a difficult day. Sophie had still not heard from her parents, Freya had had a rejective postcard from her Mats in Lapland, and Bruno had written "Shred the Little Cabbage" in red paint on an outhouse door. There was also the question of Hermine Ritter. It had not been Ellen's intention to get fond of Dr Ritter. Her flourishing moustache, her voice--with which one could have drilled a regiment of uhlans--and her complete inability to organise the life of her baby were not in themselves endearing.
  But in her own way, Hermine cared deeply about her work. Unlike Tamara, whose apparent concern for the children was really directed at her own aggrandisement, Hermine spared herself no effort, and when she asked Ellen to come to the meeting, Ellen found herself weakening. She knew that it was Hermine who had directed the previous productions and realised that it would not be easy for her to submit to the authority of an outsider.
  "I thought I might watch Andromeda for you," she said.
  But Hermine said she would take Andromeda and they could share her.
  So Ellen was present when FitzAllan, introduced by Bennet, leapt boyishly on to the platform and began to summarise the plot.
  "As you may know, the play is set in the Chicago stockyards in the Twenties and follows the fate of a group of slaughterhouse workers threatened by a lock-out engineered by their capitalist
 
bosses. The starving workers are visited by the band of the Salvation Army, led by the heroine, Johanna, who brings them soup and tries to convert them to Christianity, but though the workers eat the soup they reject the message of Christ." He paused, raking his silver hair, and sighed. Some of the children looked small; others looked stupid. He had forgotten that the school accepted juniors. "Johanna now begs the capitalists to relent, but though they pretend to listen, they do nothing; at which point she loses her faith, throws in her lot with the striking workers-- and dies of starvation in the snow."
  Thus described, Abattoir could not be called a cheerful play, but its sentiments did everyone credit, and as FitzAllan pointed out, no one need be without a part since in addition to the capitalists, the Salvation Army and the proletariat, there were parts for stock breeders, labour leaders, speculators and newsboys, not to mention the possibility of a chorus of slaughtered cattle, pigs and sheep, though this was not in the original script.
  Having summarised the play, the director invited suggestions as to how it should be treated.
  "Clearly in a Marxist work of this sort the emphasis must be on the persecution of the workers," said Jean-Pierre. "Their fate is paramount. We could show this by lighting them very strikingly--with military searchlights, for example--keeping the capitalists in the shadows."
  Rollo did not entirely agree. He felt that the core of the play lay in the three-tiered hierarchical structure of society and proposed a set built in layers of scaffolding: the workers at the bottom, the Salvation Army in the middle and the capitalists on top.
  "But not metal ..." said poor Chomsky under his breath. "Not metal scaffolding"--and was ignored.
  For Hermine, this was not the point at all: what she saw in Abattoir was a chance for the children to come inffcontact with their own physicality.
  "I will make exercises for the hanging motion of the carcasses and the thrust of the knife. They can experience rictus ... and spasms," she said, handing her baby to Ellen so as to demonstrate the kind of thing she had in mind.
  FitzAllan now put up his hand. "That is all very interesting and true," he said, and
 
Bennet, watching him, recognised all the signs of a director who had not the slightest intention of doing anything that anyone suggested. "But I have to remind you above all that Brecht invented the Alienation Theory. The
Verfremdungseffekt," he said, breaking into German for those of the children who were looking puzzled, "is seminal to Brecht's thinking."
  A brave child, a small girl with red hair, now put up her hand and said: "What is the Alienation Theory?"' and was rewarded by grateful looks from the other children.
  "Alienation Theory demands that the audience is in no way emotionally involved with the action on the stage. Brecht believed that the lights should be left on during the performance so that people could walk about and smoke cigars ... and so on."
  "What do you do if you don't smoke cigars?"' asked a literal-minded boy with spectacles, and was quelled by a look from the director.
  "Who's going to do the music?"' asked Leon. "What's going to happen about that?"'
  But here too Abattoir showed itself uniquely suited to the requirements of a school whose music teacher, swathed in unspeakable knitted balaclavas from his former pupils, was absent fighting in Spain. For as FitzAllan explained, the workers would sing the Internationale, the Salvation Army would bang tambourines and sing hymns, and the exploitative capitalists would listen to decadent jazz on the gramophone.
  "But there must be a ballet," declared Tamara --and a weary sigh ran round the room. "A red ballet with a theme of ... viscerality. It could come to the workers while they slept."
  FitzAllan opened his mouth, remembered she was the headmaster's wife and closed it again.
  "We'll discuss it in private," he said, treating her to one of his brilliantly boyish smiles.
  "Who's going to be the heroine?"' asked Janey. "The one who gives soup to the workers and dies in the snow?"'
  "I shall begin the auditions tomorrow," said FitzAllan--and reminding them that the clue to the piece would lie in its truthful and monolithic drabness, he declared the meeting closed.
  Although lessons continued in the mornings, the afternoons and evenings were now devoted to increasingly
 
frenzied rehearsals for Abattoir.
Not only rehearsals but workshops and seminars of every kind, many of which were conducted out of doors.
  Predictably, the play was taking its toll. The director's determination to make the children call up their own experience of being cruel employers was particularly unfortunate.
  "He said I oppressed Czernowitz because he came in on Sunday to feed the rats," said Sophie, coming in from one such Method Class in tears, "but I didn't--honestly, Ellen; I loved Czernowitz. I still do. If it wasn't for him I'd never know where anyone was."
  Leon had fallen foul of FitzAllan by pointing out that the wicked stockyard owners shouldn't be playing jazz on the gramophone. "Jazz comes from the Blues," said Leon. "It's the music the Negroes used to free themselves, so it isn't decadent at all," he'd said and been thoroughly snubbed.
  Worst of all was poor Flix.
FitzAllan had had the sense to see that the talented and unassuming American girl was perfect casting as the heroine, Johanna, but he had insisted on giving her a lecture on the Judas sheep.
  "It's a sheep that they set up to go into the slaughterhouse and lead all the others in. It never gets killed, it just goes round and round, but the others do. It seems so absolutely awful to make an animal do that," said Flix, who had recently become a Jain and wore a muslin gauze over her mouth in the evenings so that she would not swallow, or damage, the gnats.
  The staff were not immune either. Hermine's efforts to put the children in touch with their own physicality were affecting her milk and poor Chomsky's darkest fears had been realised. The three-tiered structure to represent the hierarchical nature of society was to be made of metal and the Hungarian, who had led a sheltered life getting the children to make bookends by bending a sheet of galvanised steel into a right angle, could be seen capering round the gigantic metal struts like a demented Rumpelstiltskin.
  Under these circumstances, Ellen found herself more and more grateful for Marek's quiet world of trees and water and plants. For Sophie was right, Marek did show you things--and the showing was like getting presents. Marek found a stickleback nest in
 
the reeds, he led her to a place where the emerging demozel dragonflies flew up into the light, and when a small barn owl was blown off course and sat like a bewildered powder puff under a fir tree, he fetched her from the kitchen so that she could help him feed it with strips of raw liver. After a short time with him out of doors, Ellen could return to her work and to the comforting of her children with renewed energy.
  "Is it possible that someone like FitzAllan could after all produce something good?"' she asked Marek as the director's strident voice came from the rehearsal room.
  "Unlikely. But does it really matter?"' "I'd like it to work for Bennet. He's been writing "Toscanini's Aunt" letters all day-- you know, letters to important people who he thinks might be interested in coming to the play. And Margaret says he's paying for FitzAllan out of his pocket."
  Marek leant for a moment on his spade. "Yes, he's a good man. But--"'
  He was about to say to her what he had said at the well. That time was running out. Not only was there no money for the school, but the school was threatened from the outside. For how much longer could it exist, this confused Eden with its unfashionable belief in freedom, its multi-lingual staff? Austria was leaning more and more towards the Third Reich; the Brownshirts strutted unashamedly in Vienna's streets, and even here in Hallendorf.
  But she knew, of course. He remembered what she had said when she'd asked him for storks. "They'll still be here even if we are gone." It was because time was short that she cared so much about the play.
  "It may work out," he said. "I've seen men behave worse than FitzAllan and it was all right on the day."
  To Ellen, watching him as he went about his work, it seemed that Marek was not quite so relaxed as he had been; she sensed that some part of him was alert, was waiting for something which had nothing to do with his life in the school.
  The impression was strengthened two days later when she saw him come out of the post office in the village. He was putting something into his pocket --a telegram, she thought--and for a moment he stared out across the sunlit square, unseeing. Then the blank gaze disappeared, his usual observant
 
look returned, and he greeted her.
  "I didn't know you were coming over. I'd have given you a lift. I've got the van."
  "I had some bills to pay and people to see." They began to stroll together towards the lake. The butcher, a little mild man, waved from his shop; the greengrocer sent his boy after her with a bunch of cornflowers, and the old lady who had hissed at her on the steamer rose from a bench and said Ellen must come to her house next time and try her raspberry wine.
  "You've made a lot of friends in a month," said Marek.
  "It's mostly Lieselotte," she said. "But I love this village, don't you?"'
  They reached the fountain and she paused to take a stale roll from her basket and crumble it into the water for the carp. By the gate to the churchyard, they came to Aniella's shrine: a little wooden house on stilts like a bird table.
  "Does she get fed too?"' he asked as Ellen stopped once more.
  She shook her head. "Just on cornflowers." She took a single flower from her bunch and laid it among the offerings the villagers had brought. "She's such a sensible person--and her candles burn straight and true," she said quietly.
  Marek looked at her sharply, but she had turned away. "I must go for the steamer," she said.
  "I'll take you back. I've finished with that old devil in the woodyard. But we'll have some coffee first at the Krone. The landlord's in a splendid mood because he's landed an entire conference of dentists for his new annexe. His wife thought he'd never fill it and lo, twenty-three dentists are descending in July!"
  "Oh I am glad! They work so hard, those two."
  They found a table under the chestnuts, and Marek ordered coffee and Streuselkuchen. Ellen's coffee came with a glass of clear cold water, but Marek's, by courtesy of the landlord, was accompanied by a full measure of schnapps.
  "Goodness, can you drink that so early in the morning?"'
  "Most certainly," said Marek, raising his glass. "Water is for the feet!"
  She had collected a posse of sparrows and
 
pigeons with whom she was sharing her cake.
  "Everything isn't hungry, you know," he pointed out. "Those carp, for example."
  "No," she said. "Perhaps not. But everybody likes to eat."
  He watched her as she skilfully distributed the food so that even the bluetits at the back were not upstaged by the pigeons, and remembered her each night in the dining room, assessing, portioning out the food fairly, keeping order without ever raising her voice.
  "You remind me of my grandmother," he said. "She was English too."
  "Goodness! I didn't know any part of you was English. Is that why you speak it so well?"'
  "Perhaps. I spent a year in an English school. A horrible place, I must say."
  "Is she still alive your grandmother?"' "Very much so."
  She waited, her head tilted so that a handful of curls fell over one shoulder. It was not a passive waiting and presently Marek conceded defeat and began.
  "Her name was Nora Coutts," he said, stirring his coffee. "And when she was twenty years old she went to Russia to look after the three little daughters of a general in the army of the Tsar. Only of course being British she used to go for long walks by herself in the forest; even in the winter, even in the rain."
  "Naturally," agreed Ellen.
  "And one day she found a woodcutter sitting in front of his brazier under a clump of trees. Only he didn't seem to be an ordinary woodcutter. For one thing his brazier wasn't burning properly and for another he was reading a book."
  "What was the book?"'
  "The Brothers Karamazov. So my grandmother smelt a rat, and quite rightly, for it turned out that the young man was an anarchist who belonged to a freedom movement dedicated to the overthrow of the Tsar. He had been told to keep watch on the general and tell his superiors when it would be a good time to blow him up without blowing up his wife and children. They minded about blowing up women and children in those days," said Marek, "which shows you how old-fashioned they were.
  "Needless to say, my grandmother thought this was not a good idea, and by this time the young man had fallen in
 
love with her because she had red hair and freckles and was exceedingly nice. But of course by refusing to blow up the general, he was in danger from the anarchists, so he and my grandmother ran away together and when they got to Prague they stopped running and settled in a pink house so small you could heat it with matchsticks, and gave birth to a daughter who grew up to write poetry and be my mother ... And who, if you met her, you would probably like a lot."
  She waited to make sure he had finished. Then: "Thank you," she said, "that was a lovely story. I liked it a lot."
  Marek leant back in his chair, pierced by a sudden regret. His time here was almost over; he was going to miss this untroubling and selfless girl.
  "Come," he said, "I've got something to show you."
  He led her back across the square and up a narrow street which sloped up towards the pastures. At the last house, with its lace curtains and pots of geraniums, he stopped and knocked.
  A frail, elderly man with a limp came to the door and Marek said: "I've brought Fr@aulein Ellen to see your animals. Is it convenient?"'
  The man nodded and led them through the front room into the kitchen with an extension built over the garden. On a large table were a number of wooden trays lined with layers of greaseproof paper.
  "Herr Fischer makes them to sell in Klagenfurt but I thought you'd like to see them."
  But Ellen could scarcely speak; she was spellbound. The trays were full of rows and rows of little creatures made from marzipan. There were lions with wavy manes, and hedgehogs, each bristle as distinct as pins. There were squirrels crouching in the curve of their tails, and a dachshund, and piebald cows with tufts of grass held in their mouths. There was a frog with a golden chin and dark brown splodges, and a penguin, and a mouse with outsize whiskers ...
  "Oh!" Ellen turned to Herr Fischer.
"I can't believe it! The colours ... the detail ... You must be so proud. I would give anything to be able to make those."
  He flushed with pleasure, then shrugged. "It's just a question of time, Fr@aulein; patience and time."
  "No it isn't. It's a skill. It's
 
art." She shook her head. "Is it the usual recipe--almond paste and egg white?"'
  "Yes, but a softer mixture--and of course the colours are the difficulty. A good green dye ..."
  "Oh yes--green is so difficult!" Marek listened, amused, as they became technical.
  As Ellen turned back for a last look at the trays, he saw on her face an expression he had known in a number of women: a degree of longing that could only be described as lust. He had seen it on Brigitta Seefeld's face as she peered at a sable coat in a window in the K@arntnerstrasse, and on the face of the little Greek actress he had known in New York for a diamond brooch at Tiffany's. Now he saw it on Ellen's face as she gazed at Herr Fischer's handiwork.
  "They're not for sale, I'm afraid," said Marek. "They all go to the patisserie in Klagenfurt."
  "That's true," said the old man. "But I can spare one for the Fr@aulein. Not to buy, of course; a gift." He stepped aside to let Marek see clearly. "If Herr Tarnowsky will pick one out."
  Marek moved forward. For a full minute he stood in silence. His hand hovered over a dementedly woolly lamb ... rested momentarily above a blond snail with sky-blue eyes ... and then came down with assured finality.
  "This one, please," he said, and Herr Fischer nodded, for even before he caught Ellen's intake of breath he had known that she would want the smallest, the most unassuming, yet somehow the brightest of all the little creatures on the tray.
  "When are you going to eat it?"' teased Marek as they came out into the street.
  "Eat it! Eat it!" said Ellen, outraged. "I'd rather die!"
  Back in her room that evening she took her gift out of its fluted twist of paper and stood holding it in her hand. She had always loved ladybirds especially: the guardians of roses, heroes of children's ditties and songs. If one flew up from your hand you could have a wish.
  It had been a happy day. When she first came to Hallendorf she had been sure that Marek would
 
help her and she had been right. He had helped her most truly and she was proud to have him for a friend.
  These warming and uplifting sentiments ceased abruptly two days later when he threw one of her children into the lake.

  It began with Leon's gramophone. Along with the other expensive presents with which Leon was showered, he had a blue portable gramophone which had arrived by special carrier at the beginning of term. New records packed in corrugated cardboard were added by his doting mother almost weekly. Half of them arrived broken, but enough of them survived to turn Leon into something of a hazard as he played them over and over again and was moved on from the steps of the terrace, the common room and the bedroom he shared with Bruno and a French boy called Daniel.
  During the week in which FitzAllan came to direct Abattoir Leon received another batch of records, among which was a group of songs by a composer of whom Ursula instantly disapproved because he was still alive.
  "People who are alive can never write tunes," she said.
  And it was true that the Songs for Summer were unusual and strange. If they depicted summer it was not the voluptuousness of droning bees and heavy scents, but rather the disembodied season of clarity and light. The tunes carried by the solo violin which rose above the orchestra, and the silvery soprano voice, seemed to Ellen to be "almost tunes"--they appeared, stole into her ear, and vanished before she could grasp them.
  But after a few hearings, she began to follow the piece with interest and then slowly with a pleasure that was the greater for not having been instantaneous.
  Leon, however, being Leon, could not leave well alone. He played the Songs for
Summer inside the castle and outside it. He took his gramophone into the rowing boat, and he was winding up the gramophone yet again, sitting on the steps of the jetty, when Marek came past, carrying a hoe, and told him to stop.
  Leon looked up, his thin face set in a look of obstinacy.
  "I don't want to stop it. I like it. It's beautiful and the man who plays the violin obligato is fantastic. His name is Isaac
 
Meierwitz and--"'
  Marek's hand came down and removed the needle.
  In the ensuing silence, the boy got to his feet. "You can't do that. You can't be horrid to me, because I'm Jewish. You may not care what happens to the Jews but--"'
  Watching Marek one would have seen only a slight tightening of the muscles round his mouth, but Janik and Stepan, the woodsmen whose job it had been to carry the infant Marek out into the fields until his devastating temper attacks had spent themselves, would have recognised the signs at once.
  Then he put down his hoe, moved slowly forward and pitched Leon out into the lake.
  Sophie and Ursula, running excitedly upstairs, brought the news to Ellen.
  "It serves him right," said Ursula. "He was following Marek about again--and he was playing his beastly gramophone right by the jetty."
  "But Marek waited to see if he came up again. He wouldn't have let him drown." Sophie was torn between pity for Leon and concern for her hero, Marek, who had certainly behaved oddly.
  Leon himself, wrapped in a towel and shivering theatrically, now arrived escorted by Freya who had been closest to the scene of the accident.
  "He's had a shock, of course, but I don't think any harm's been done." Her kind face was as puzzled and troubled as Sophie's. "I don't know why ..."
  Ellen put her arms around Leon. "Go and run a hot bath, Sophie," she ordered. "And Ursula, go and ask Lieselotte to bring up a hot-water bottle."
  "At least he didn't defenestrate me," said Leon as she stripped off his wet clothes. "That's what he usually does."
  "What do you mean, Leon?"'
  "Nothing." Still sniffing and gulping down tears, Leon turned his head away. "I don't mean anything."
  When she had dried him and put on clean pyjamas she found Lieselotte by his bed, plumping up his pillows.
  "Could you stay with him a minute, Lieselotte? I won't be long."
  Ellen had no recollection of how she got to the door of Marek's room in the stable block. The rage she had suppressed while helping
 
Leon now consumed her utterly.
  "How dare you!" she shouted, before she was even across the threshold. "How dare you use violence on any of my children?"'
  Marek looked up briefly from the drawer he was emptying into a battered pigskin case, then resumed his packing.
  "No child here gets physically assaulted. It is the law of the school and it is my law."
  He took absolutely no notice. He had begun to take documents from a wooden chest-- among them sheaves of manuscript paper.
  His indifference incensed her to fever point. "I have spent the whole term trying to calm Leon and now you have undone any good anyone might have done. If he gets pneumonia and dies--"'
  "Unlikely," said Marek indifferently. "You must be completely mad! It's all very well for you to amuse yourself here pretending to wear spectacles you don't need and parting your hair in a way that anyone can see it doesn't go. But when it causes you to brutalise the children--"'
  But she could not get him to react. She had the feeling that he was already somewhere where she and Hallendorf did not exist.
  "I'm leaving," he said. "As you see." "Good!" Leon's pinched face, his running nose and shivering, scrawny limbs kept her anger at burning point. "You can't go too soon for any of us."
  He did look at her then. For a moment she remembered what she had felt when she first saw him by the well: that she had been, for a moment, completely understood. This look was its opposite: she was obliterated; a nothing.
  But her rage sustained her, and she turned and left him, slamming the door like a child.
  When she got back she found Leon dozing, his colour restored. Lieselotte had remade his bed. Bending down to make sure he was tucked in properly, Ellen saw the corner of a white folder protruding from under the mattress and drew it out.
  "I only borrowed it," muttered Leon.
"I was going to give it back."
  "That's all right, Leon. Go to sleep." Examining what she held in her hand she found it was a concert programme--and pinned to it a number of sheets of paper covered in Kendrick's handwriting.
 
 An hour later, Marek knocked at the door of Leon's room. The children and Ellen were in the dining room; the boy, as he'd expected, was alone.
  "Now then, Leon," he said, sitting down on the bed beside him, "what exactly is it that you want?"'
  The tears started to flow again then; the twitchy face screwed itself into a grimace. "I just want you to help me," he sobbed. "That's all I want. I want you to help."
  "How?"'
  "I don't know anything ... I can't work out the fingering of my Beethoven sonata and I don't know if the quartet I've written is any good. My parents want me to be a musician--my mother's desperate for it, and my sisters too. They help me and help me, but I want someone to tell me if I've got any talent."
  "No one else can tell you that."
  "But how does one know if it's worth going on? I don't know whether I have any true creativity or--"'
  "Good God, Leon, why do you always turn back on yourself? If you feel the need to write music, or play it, then do so, but believe me your creativity is of no interest to anyone. Write something--then it's there. If it's what you wanted to write, if it exists, then leave it. If it doesn't, throw it away. Your beautiful state of mind is totally irrelevant."
  "But you--"'
  "What happened to me has nothing to do with it. As it happens I was not at all keen on my so-called creativity. I fought it hard and long because I saw that it would take me away from the place I wanted to spend my life in, and the work I thought I had been born to do. If I wrote music it was because I didn't know how to stop. But you--"'
  "My mother loves music so much. And my sisters, and my father is a businessman but he'd have liked to be a pianist--he's very good. So I thought ... I wanted. It's not that they force me, but--"'
  "Yes; I see." For the first time, Marek felt pity and affection for the boy. "Tell me, Leon, if I asked you what you wanted to do when you grow up, what would you say? Just answer
 
quickly."
  "Make films," said Leon in an  instant.
  Marek smiled. "That has the ring of truth."  He sat in silence for a moment, then decided  to give the boy what he had asked for--help.  "I said no one can judge another person's  vocation and I meant that, but ... I think that you are  genuinely musical; you will make an excellent  amateur--and remember please the meaning of the word.  An amateur is a lover of music. You will be  a fine facilitator, a person who can make  music happen. It is because of people like you and your  family that music is heard, that orchestras are  formed, and paid for, and that's something to be proud of. But  if you ask me whether you have the original spark,  well then, I have to say I think probably  not."
  He watched the boy carefully and saw the  screwed up look gradually vanish from his face.  Then he leant back on the pillow and smiled--a  slow smile of relief and happiness. Released  from his burden, he looked like a child again, not a  wizened old man.
  "They'd believe me if you told them," said  Leon. "I know you can't now but one day, if you  go back."
  Marek got up and went to the window. "Your  romantic notions of me are mistaken. I am  not at Heiligenstadt renouncing the world.  Simply I need a few months in which I am not  associated with my former life. But now you have--"'
  "I wouldn't say anything. Not ever. I've  known you since you came because my mother was in Berlin  when you defenestrated that Nazi and it was in all the    papers and I saw your picture. But I can  keep a secret."
  "If you cannot, the consequences would be very serious.  I take it no one else knows?"'
  Leon hung his head. "Ellen does. Now.  Her fianc`e sent her a programme of the concert  where they played your songs. I sort of borrowed  it and--"'
  "Her fianc`e?"' asked Marek,  momentarily diverted.
  "Well, she says she isn't going to marry  him, but we think she will because he keeps on writing  letters and she's sorry for him because he lives in a  wet house and his mother delivered a camel on the  way to church."
  His house would not stay wet long if  she married him, thought Marek, and saw Ellen with a  red-and-white-checked tea towel on a ladder,  carefully drying the chimneys.
  "His name is Kendrick Frobisher," said  Leon, "and he was at school with you."
  "Really?"' The name meant nothing to Marek.  He came back to the bed. "You have a close and  loving family, Leon," he said. "Not many  children are as fortunate. Trust them. Tell them the  truth."
  As he made his way to his room to pick up  his case, a sudden image came to him of a small  pale boy cowering beside a radiator. A much  bullied boy always trying to hide in a corner with a  book. Yes, he was almost sure that was  Frobisher.
  Well, that was ridiculous; there was no possible  way that Ellen could be going to marry him?
  Or was there? Could he turn out to be another  creature that needed to be fed--not with breadcrumbs  or kitchen scraps this time, but with her pity and her  love? In which case she was going to be most  seriously unhappy.
  But Ellen's concerns had nothing to do with him. His  life at Hallendorf was over. He had said  goodbye to Bennet and given in his keys. By the time  the children came out of the dining room, Marek was gone.

  Ellen, hurrying upstairs, found Leon  sitting up in bed--and totally transformed.
  "Marek came!" he said in a voice  resonant with hero worship. "He came and  it's all right, I don't have to be a great  musician, I can just do ordinary things. I can do  everything! Oh Ellen, isn't it marvellous? I  think he must be the most marvellous person in the  world."
  She stared at Leon. His face was glowing, his  restored and golden future lay before him. It was  in defence of this child that she had attacked Marek and  sent him away with the memory of her senseless and  infantile rage.
  "I'm going to get my parents to send me a  proper cine camera--you can get them quite cheaply--  well, not very cheaply perhaps--and I'm going to write  a script. Sophie can star in it and that will show her  beastly mother--"'
  Ellen let him babble on. Then he stopped.  "Ellen, you always say we have to have handkerchiefs and  it's you that's sniffing now."
  She tried to smile, wiping her eyes.  "It's all right. I quarrelled with Marek,  that's all, and now he's gone."
  "Oh, he won't bother with that. A man like that  wouldn't even notice. Ellen, when I'm grown  up I'm going to write Marek's biography--  if he'll let me. He's already had the most  amazing life, what with throwing people out of windows and  being a hero and having that opera singer in love with  him. She's terribly famous too--Brigitta  Seefeld--there was a lot about her in the sleeve  notes to my record."
  Leon had collected almost as much information about  his idol as Kendrick Frobisher. "I'm going  to be like Eckerman who wrote down everything that  Goethe said, or that man Bennet told us about in  English--Dr Johnson's friend Boswell. Do  you think you could try and remember the things he said  to you--because you were good friends, weren't you?"'
  "Yes, I think we were."
  Never let the sun go down on your wrath.  But the sun had gone down; it was sinking  spectacularly over the mountains, turning the  rock face to crimson and amethyst and gold.
  "Only where do you begin?"' asked Leon,  pondering his biography.
  "At the beginning, I suppose, Leon,"  she said wearily.
  At the place in Bohemia where his mother had  driven about with white doves in a washing basket  ...
  At the place where there were storks ...
  The house had been a hunting lodge built of  silvered aspen in the ancient forest preserved for  their sport by the Hapsburg princes who ruled  over the Bohemian lands. In the eighteenth  century it was enlarged, became a manor, its  windows shuttered, its stuccoed walls painted in the  Sch@onbrunn yellow which Maria Theresa  permitted to those who served her.
  Marek's great-grandfather, the Freiherr Marcus  von Altenburg, came there from Northern  Germany, fell in love with the countryside--its  ancient trees, its eagles and owls and  unlimited game--and bought it. He cleared enough land  round the house to make a small farm, dug a  fish pond, and let the sun in on  Pettelsdorfs roofs. It was then that the storks  came.
  For more than a hundred years the von  Altenburgs were citizens of the  Austro-Hungarian Empire. Then in 1918  Austria collapsed and Pettelsdorf--now  Pettovice--found itself part of the new Republic  of Czechoslovakia.
  No one at Pettelsdorf greatly cared.  Frontiers had marched back and forward in this part of  Europe for generations, but the same wind still blew  through the fields of oats and rye, the geese still  made their way in single file towards the water,  the high-cruppered dray horses still pulled their  loads along the dusty, rutted roads.
  Marek's father, though keeping his German  nationality, was happy to throw in his lot with the new  republic: Czechoslovakia, under Masaryk,  was a model of democratic government. He had  in any case married a wife brought up in  Prague, a bluestocking reared in a little  medieval house behind the castle. Milenka  Tarnowsky's mother was English, her father  Russian; she herself spoke five languages,  had taken tea with Kafka and earned her living  translating articles and poetry. To keep open  house for all nationalities was as much a tradition  of Marek's home as was the sheltering of wanderers by the  monasteries that lined the pilgrim routes towards
  
the east.
  It was an unexpected marriage--that of  Captain von Altenburg who lived for his  hunting and his trees, and the intellectual girl  whose spare, honed poems celebrated a unique  and inner vision--but it became a byword for  happiness.
  No wonder then that the son who was born to them  should regard the world as created for his personal  delight. There were no divisions at  Pettelsdorf between the manor and the farm, the farm  and the forest. Geese patrolled his mother's hammock  as she worked at her translations; his father's hunting  dogs tumbled with Milenka's popeyed Tibetan  terrier and the mongrels he rescued from the  village. As soon as he could sit on a  horse, Marek rode with his father on the neverending  work of the land, sometimes staying away for days.
  He was a person much addicted to abundance.  "I don't like either, I like and," said the  five-year-old Marek when the cook asked which  kind of filling he wanted baked into his birthday  beigli. "Apricots and poppy seed and  walnuts," he demanded--and got them.
  But if the house servants spoilt him, the men  in the fields did not. The woodcutters and  charcoal burners and draymen who were his heroes  knew better than to indulge the boy who would one  day be the master, and thus the servant of their  demesne. When he was overcome by one of his rare  but devastating attacks of temper, it was in the  hay barn or paddock that Marek took refuge,  kicking and raging till old Stepan, the head  forester, brought him back, tear-stained and purged.
  That he would follow in his father's footsteps was  something so obvious that Marek never consciously questioned  it, so when a fuss was made about his music, he  simply ignored it.
  It had shown itself early, his talent, as it so  often does. When he was three he had requested  the bandmaster in the local town to make way for him  so that he could conduct the band himself. Two years  later he wrote a song in six-eight time for the  birthday of a neighbouring landowner's daughter whom  he passionately loved. He played the piano  of course, and the violin, and had taught himself most  of the instruments he found in the village band which  played for funerals and weddings.
  But what was so strange about that? Everybody in  Bohemia was musical; half the horn players
  
in the Vienna Philharmonic were
Czech; their singers swarmed in the opera. Even when  that clich`e happened and the local music teacher said  he could teach the boy no more, Marek refused to be  deflected.
  "I'm certainly not going to start roaming the world  with little bits of my native earth in a pouch like  poor Chopin," he said.
  Efforts to send him away to be educated had  never been successful. He had discharged himself without  fuss from an Academy for the Sons of Gentlemen  in Brno, and from the British public school  recommended by his grandmother, the redoubtable Nora  Coutts, who lived in a wing of the house drinking  Earl Grey tea from Harrods and bullying him  about the syntax of the English language.
  Even when at last he consented to go to the  University of Vienna it was to read Forestry and  Land Management. But Vienna is not a good  place for a man fleeing from music. By the time he  met Brigitta Seefeld, Marek's course  in life was set.
  He was twenty years old sitting with his friends in  the fourth gallery of the Opera, when the curtain  went up on Figaro.
  Seefeld was not singing Susanna, that  life-affirming fixer; she sang the Countess,  to whom in "Dove Sono" Mozart has  given perhaps the most heart-rending lament for lost  love in all opera.
  Marek was overwhelmed. He heard her again as  Violetta in Traviata and Pamina in The  Magic Flute. The voice was ravishing;  ethereal, silvery yet full and strong. That she was  beautiful--fair-haired, blue-eyed, in the best  tradition of the Viennese--was not a  disadvantage.
  Arriving at the door of her dressing room  carrying a rather large arbutus in a pot, Marek  had intended only to pay homage, but within a month  the diva had led him firmly up the three steps  that ascended to her bed: an absurd bed decorated  with gilt swans--a present from an admirer after  her first Elsa in Lohengrin.
  It was not only the bed that was absurd: she herself  was vain, self-regarding and extravagant, but when  he held her in his arms (and there was plenty  to hold) he felt as though he was embracing the  great and glorious traditions of Viennese  music. He wrote the Songs for Summer for
  
her, and years afterwards his songs still came  to him in Brigitta's voice.
  It was a public liaison, much approved of  by the gossipy Viennese. Brigitta lost no  opportunity to parade her new admirer (now  known as Marcus, the German version of his  Christian name, for his descent as a  Fre@iherr was very much to her taste). Marek would  not have broken it up: Brigitta was more than ten  years his senior and he had all the chivalry of the  young. It was she who sent him away, "just for a little  while." She had dramatically overspent her  salary and needed to audition a rich protector.
  "If I go now I won't come back,"
Marek had said.
  She didn't believe him but he spoke the  truth.
  It was now, in the spring of 1929, that he went  to Berlin, with its pompous architecture, its  vile climate--and its superlative cultural  life.
  In Vienna he had been absorbed in his  affair with Brigitta--now he made friends, and  one friend in particular.
  Isaac Meierwitz was a violinist, well  known as a virtuoso soloist--but known too as  something more: a true musician who continued to play  chamber music, sat at the first desk of the Berlin  Akademia and taught needy students without  charge. Marek had met him at Professor  Steiner's house. Outwardly he looked like  everybody's idea of a Russian Jew:  small, pop-eyed and splendidly neurotic.  Meierwitz was allergic to egg white and  sopranos, saw ghosts, and kept his grandmother's  pigtail in the case which held his Stradivarius,  but he had the heart of a lion. He drank  vodka like mother's milk, needed almost no sleep,  was a first-class swimmer and a repository of  unbelievably awful jokes.
  Isaac was only a few years older than  Marek but he know everybody. He introduced  Marek to Sch@onberg and Stravinsky, took him  to Wozzeck at the Kroll, and to hear  Schnabel play Beethoven sonatas at the  Volksbuhne, wearing a lounge suit so that the  workers would feel at home. He found cellars  where the gypsies were not graduates of the Budapest  Conservatoire but true Zigeuners, and  cabarets where the chicanery of politicians was
  
blisteringly exposed.
  One day as they were walking through the Tiergarten after  an all-night party, Isaac said he thought it was  time he had his concerto.
  "I have my immortality to think of, you know."  "Good God, Isaac, surely your  immortality doesn't depend on a violin  concerto by somebody like me!"
  But Meierwitz was serious. "You're almost  ready. And remember, if anyone but me gets  to play the premiere, I'll haunt you to my dying  day!"
  Soon after this Marek was offered a two-year  contract at the Curtis Institute in  Philadelphia, the Mecca of all musicians  and a true honour for a man still in his early  twenties.
  He had loved America, become completely  absorbed in the music making there. At the end of    his stint he took six months off and went to live  in a hut on the Hudson River. One day,  walking by the water, he heard the theme for the slow  movement.
  Violin concertos have a distinguished provenance.  Beethoven, Sibelius, Brahms, all  wrote only one but they were written in blood.  When he had finished it, Marek sent the score  to Berlin.
  Meierwitz cabled at once, full of  superlatives. A premiere was arranged with the  Berlin Akademia for the following spring, with  Marek himself conducting. The year was 1933.  Marek now took off for the Mato Grosso in  Brazil to study the native music there. He was  out of touch with civilisation for the whole winter--even  so, later, he was amazed at how naive he had  been.
  He sailed for Europe in the spring of  1934: the South American papers had made  light of Hitler's doings and Meierwitz had  written to say that he'd been promised permission  to give the premiere and was staying on in Germany to do  so. The Bremen ran into a storm. Marek  arrived a day late and went straight to the concert  hall to start rehearsals. He found the new  music director waiting, full of smiles and  affability. The premiere was attracting much  attention, he said; to have Herr von Altenburg  back in Germany was an honour.
  Marek took little notice. He was waiting for the
  
soloist. He had phoned
Meierwitz's flat when the ship docked and left  a message.
  Then a young man, blond, friendly with innocent  blue eyes walked on to the platform with his  violin.
  "I'm Anton Kessler, Herr von  Altenburg," he said, bowing. "I have the  honour to play your concerto. Believe me, this is  a great day in my life."
  There was a dead silence in the concert hall.  Then: "No, Herr Kessler, you do not have that  honour. This concerto is dedicated to Isaac  Meierwitz and he and he alone will play the  premiere."
  The members of the orchestra shuffled their music;  Anton Kessler flushed.
  "Surely they told you ... Meierwitz  has been ... Meierwitz is a Jew; there is  no possibility that he should appear as a  soloist."
  Marek turned to the director. "I was told  that Meierwitz would be playing. I had a letter to that  effect before I sailed."
  The director smoothed his brilliantined  hair. "I think there must be some mistake.  Meierwitz has been taken ... Meierwitz  has left. He refused the chance of emigration.  He made difficulties and this is something that the  Third Reich cannot allow. I assure you no  harm will come to him, and Herr Kessler is an  excellent musician. Please, Kessler, show  Herr Altenburg."
  The blond young man moved to the front of the  platform and the theme which had come to Marek out there by the  Hudson River sang out over the hall. He  played well.
  "Stop," said Marek.
  Now he looked around the hall more carefully.  Other faces were missing: the first horn, a man  called Cohen, the second flautist ...
  "You will be kind enough to tell me where they have taken  Meierwitz?"' said Marek quietly.
  "I'm afraid I haven't the slightest  idea." The director was becoming ruffled.  "You must agree yourself that German music needed  purging from foreign influences and in particular  from--"'
  Marek could never describe the onset of his  rages; those first moments were out of time. When he
  
came to himself, he was holding the portly,  squealing little man out of the first-floor window by one  pin-striped trouser leg.
  "Where is he, you little toady? Where have they  taken him?"'
  "Stop it, stop it! I'll be killed--pull  me in, damn you. Help! Help!"
  Marek lowered his grip so that he was holding  only one ankle. Down in the street a crowd was  gathering; a man hurried out of the house opposite  with a camera ...
  "You heard what I said. Where is he?  You've got exactly one minute."
  "He's in a camp ... Weichenberg ...  near the Czech border. It is for  resettlement."
  Overcome by disgust, Marek hauled him in and  hung him over the sill. Then he turned to the  orchestra.
  "There will be no performance of this concerto,  gentlemen. Nor of any of my music while the  present regime is in power," he said--and  left the hall.

  He went back to Pettelsdorf. His  determination to find and rescue Meierwitz had  been instantaneous and it seemed to him that he could do  it better from somewhere familiar whose every hiding place  he knew well.
  But even his own country was not free from evil.  Not all the Sudeten Germans were making trouble,  not all of them wanted to belong to the German  Reich, but there were enough hotheads, egged on by the  Nazis in Berlin, to make life perilous for those  who wished only to live in peace. Marek's father  was insulted because he was content to be part of the Czech  Republic; some of his workmen were beaten up when they  went into the market town; and Marek's action in  withdrawing his work from the Reich was seen by many as  treachery. He found himself watched and visited  by high-ranking Nazis trying to make him change  his mind, and it soon became clear that he was making  trouble for his family and that as Marcus  Altenburg, the avowed friend of Jewish  musicians and other "Enemies of the Reich",  he could not go unobserved.
  It was then that he came to Hallendorf to find  Professor Steiner, meaning only to borrow his  van--and found a man as obstinately determined as  he was himself to put right the wrongs that his homeland had
  
perpetrated.

  Kendrick Frobisher had his faults but he was  a truthful young man. When he said that his mother had  delivered a camel on the way to church he was  reporting facts that were well known in the district,  and when he said that Crowthorpe Hall was both wet  and red, he did not exaggerate.
  What he had perhaps not made clear to Ellen--for  he was, in his own way, a modest person--was  that it was also large. The house had fourteen  bedrooms, only some of which were so mildewed and  damp that they were virtually unusable. It had a  drawing room, a billiard room, a library  (some distant ancestor having gathered together the most  unreadable collection of books ever assembled),  a dining room lined in peeling Morocco leather and a  gallery which ran round the vast and draughty hall.
  The size of Crowthorpe was augmented by an  eruption of turrets, gables and other  protuberances, for the house had been extensively  rebuilt in Victorian times, and stained-glass  windows and heavily swathed curtains managed  to reduce the light which came in from the melancholy,  sheep-ridden countryside to the point where the lamps  had to be lit by three o'clock in the afternoon, even in  summer. Inside too the heavy, convoluted  furniture, the claw-footed tables and  blood-red Turkey carpets created an  ambience in which Queen Victoria, not noted for  her joie de vivre, would have been entirely  at home.
  The significance of Crowthorpe, however, lay  not in the house, but in the land which surrounded it. The  estate comprised nearly four thousand acres, and  though much of it was in the same melancholy and  largely useless vein that characterised the house--a  lake full of ill-tempered pike, a  bosom-shaped hill on which (despite its  relatively low stature) two hikers had  perished in a blizzard, a derelict gravel  pit--there was also, in the fertile river valley which  the mansion overlooked, a large and profitable farm  which had been managed frugally and effectively by the  farm manager, a Cumbrian born and bred, for  many years.
  That the estate should go entire and unencumbered to the  eldest son had been Mrs Kendrick's
  
intention, as it was the intention of every landowner  in this self-contained and rural district. Since  her husband's death she had been in charge of  Crowthorpe's affairs, and that Roland meant  to leave the Indian Army and come home to Britain  was a source of great satisfaction. Roland had  been a pleasure to her from the moment of his birth; a  handsome, outgoing, tough little boy who seldom  cried, was good at sport, and went off to his  prep school at seven with a brave smile.
Roland would make a good master for Crowthorpe and  as he had had the sense to marry out there, there might  soon be a son.
  And if anything happened to Roland there was  William. William was not quite as steady as  Roland--there had been a few debts during his young  days and rumours of trouble with a girl who was  undoubtedly common and had had to be paid off. But  he had steadied down a lot; he was handsome and  popular with the county, and no doubt would soon get  himself engaged to someone suitable.
  So the succession was secure and normally Mrs  Frobisher would not have given a second thought  to poor Kendrick, that unfortunate afterthought which had  resulted from her permitting her husband what she  had virtually ceased to Dermit after her elder  sons were born. Kendrick had been a disaster from  the first, embarrassing and distressing her with his  inability to fit in; his asthma, his fear of  horses, his shame-making crying fits when it was  time to return to school ... and, later, the way  he buried himself in his room listening to obscure and  depressing music and ruining his eyes with endless  reading.
  But that morning, in The Times, she had read that  it was the intention of the Government to issue gas  masks to the populace. Mrs Frobisher had not  been very interested in the policies of Herr  Hitler. She had no particular quarrel with him  --indeed, with his attempts to clear away Jews,  homosexuals, communists and gypsies she had a  certain sympathy--but he was making a lot of  noise about Lebensraum and colonies and that was  a different matter. The art of colonisation was one  that was only understood by the British, who knew how  to deal with inferior races with justice and sternness.  So it might after all be necessary to fight a war, and  Mrs Frobisher, suppressing with an iron  effort of will the panic that the memory of the last war  and its hideous decimation of the nation's youth brought
  
to her, had decided that Kendrick must be  sent forand instructed to marry. Kendrick would  survive whatever happened; with his asthma and his  astigmatism, not to mention the slight curvature  of his spine, there was no question of his being called up for  military service. Horrible as it was to imagine  him as master of Crowthorpe, it would be better  than letting the estate go out of the family.
  So Kendrick was sent for, and took Volume  Three of A la Recherche du Temps
Perdu for the train and a packet of Milk of  Magnesia tablets, for a summons to Crowthorpe  always gave him indigestion, and took the train  north. At Carlisle, as always happened when he  travelled home, it began to rain.
  In the old Buick which his mother had sent for him,  he watched the mist swirling round the hills,  heard the forlorn bleating of the black-faced sheep,  and the sinister rushing of the brown streams running almost  at flood level, and wondered what he had  done. Kendrick had his own income, inherited from  a distant relative who had been sorry for the  unwanted little boy, and owned his flat in  Pimlico, so there was not really much that his mother could do  to him, but logic played little part in Kendrick's  perception of Patricia Frobisher.
  It was not until after dinner, which he took alone  with his mother in the freezing dining room, that he gathered  why he had been summoned.
  "I hope you can manage to have a sensible  conversation about this, Kendrick," she said, when the  maid had delivered herself of the blancmange and  retreated, her duty done. "I don't want  any hysteria or panic. But it seems possible  that there is going to be a war."
  Kendrick put down his napkin, suddenly as  pale as the pudding in front of him. In his head  Zeppelins exploded into flame, planes  zoomed, children ran screaming from their demolished  houses.
  "Do you really think so?"' he managed  to stammer.
  "I don't know. Chamberlain is doing his  best to avert it, but we must always look at  possibilities unflinchingly."
  "Yes," said Kendrick, and thought longingly  of Marcel Proust, his hero, who had spent  twelve years in a cork-lined room working on his  masterpiece. Strictly speaking this could not be  regarded as an unflinching way of carrying on, but
  
of course he had been a genius.
  "As you know, Roland is coming home, but if  there's any trouble he's sure to join up and  William is now an experienced pilot. If  anything happens to them you will become the owner of  Crowthorpe. Nothing can be done about this."
  Mother and son gazed at each other over the  enormous dining table, both equally appalled by the  prospect. Huge bulls pursued Kendrick  in his mind as he tried to give orders to the farm  manager; the wheels of threshing machines whirred,  blowing chaff into his asthmatic lungs; girls  on large horses rode up the drive and  despised him ...
  "So it has become necessary for you to do your duty,  Kendrick. You must marry."
  Kendrick blinked at his mother through his thick  glasses. She wanted him to marry. And at the  word "marry" there came into his mind, erasing the  terrifying prospects of war and agriculture,  Ellen's lovely face, the soft mouth, the  gentle eyes and floating hair.
  "I should like to marry," he said, "but there is  only one woman I am prepared to consider."
  Patricia stared at her son, who had spoken  with unexpected certainty.
  "Who is that?"' she asked.
  "Her name is Ellen Carr. She's working in  Austria at the moment but her home is in  London. She is a wonderful person."
  "What is she working at? What does anyone  do in Austria?"'
  "She is a matron in a school. But she  also cooks. She is highly trained."
  Patricia controlled herself with an effort of will.  "A cook! I take it you are joking. Even  you would not imagine that a Frobisher could marry a  cook?"'
  But the image of Ellen had given Kendrick  unexpected courage.
  "There is no one else I am prepared  to marry," he repeated. "But she has refused  me."
  "Refused you! Good heavens, what is a  cook doing to refuse you? Does she know who you  are?"'
  "Yes. But she is not in love with me. Of  course a lot of people have proposed to her, but I shall  never give up hope. Never."
  Making a heroic effort, Patricia tried
  
to envisage a cook who had been much  proposed to and did not want to espouse a  Frobisher.
  "What is her background?"'
  "Her mother is a doctor. She was a  Norchester. There are three sisters who were all  suffragettes. They are admirable women.  Ellen's father was killed in the last war."
  "Good, not the Norchester gals? Phyllis and  Charlotte the third one called?"'
  "That's right. Well, well--Gussie  Norchester's gals--mad as hatters, all of  them, tying themselves to railings and God knows what.  Gussie had a dreadful time with them--they wouldn't  be presented or behave normally in any way."
  But the aberrant behaviour of the girls didn't  seem to matter, Kendrick found, for Gussie  Norchester had been the niece of Lord  Avondale and entirely acceptable. If the  cooking girl was her grand-daughter the whole thing was  obviously another eccentricity and could be  overlooked.
  "Perhaps you have not been firm enough," said Mrs  Frobisher. "Girls like to be dominated. Why  don't you go out there--to Austria--and press your  suit. If she knows that I am not against the match  it might make a difference."
  "I did wonder," said Kendrick. He  had indeed wondered very much, for the goings-on at  Hallendorf as read out in Gowan Terrace had  disturbed him increasingly. Ellen had written  light-heartedly about Chomsky and the rest, but  Kendrick was beginning to have nightmares in which his  beloved was subjected to advances by naked metalwork  professors or pinned to the wall by red-haired  Welshmen. "Perhaps I could ask her to meet me  in Vienna?"'
  "A good idea," said Mrs Frobisher.
She did not care for waltzes, but was aware that they  were considered beneficial for romance.
  But Kendrick's plans for his visit  to Vienna were cast in a much more serious vein. If  he was to lure Ellen to the Austrian capital,  it must be with a worthwhile programme of serious  sightseeing as well as visits to concerts, art  galleries and museums. Returning home, he  was soon closeted in the London Library where  the delights of the Austrian capital could be  carefully studied.
  There was so much to see: the churches of Fischer
  
d'Erlach (both the Elder and the Younger),  at least a dozen equestrian statues of  significance and a leprosy sanatorium in the  suburbs which was said to represent the pinnacle of  Secessionist architecture. There was the  Hofburg, of course, and the vault of the Capuchin  church containing the bodies of the Hapsburg  Emperors, but not, apparently, their hearts and  livers, for which it was necessary to go to the crypt of St  Stephen's cathedral. And of course there were all the  places where the great composers had been born or  died or simply resided. Schubert's  spectacles could be visited in Nussdorf, and  Beethoven's ear trumpet in the  Stadtsmuseum, though the attribution of  Mozart's billiard cue in a cafe in Grinzing  was seriously disputed.
  Best of all would be if he could take Ellen  to the opera. After all, the Vienna Opera was the  glory of Europe. Surely she would not  refuse to come if he could offer her seats for a  performance there?
  Calling in at his favourite travel agency,  one which specialised in Cultural Tours, he  spoke to a helpful girl who showed him the  programme for the Staatsoper and there, on 12  July, after the end of the official season,  Kendrick found a cultural gem that no one could  resist: Brigitta Seefeld, Vienna's  reigning diva, was singing in Rosenkavalier.
  "I'm not sure if I'll be able to get  tickets," said the girl. "And if I can  they'll be terribly expensive. It's a gala  and they always put up the prices for them."
  But Kendrick, imagining himself beside his beloved as  Seefeld renounced her young lover and sent him  into the arms of a foolish young girl, said boldly that  money was no object. She was to get tickets  at any price and let him know. For the truth was that  even if Ellen might prefer to investigate  Demels patisserie or the Nash Markt, he  himself would do anything to hear Brigitta Seefeld  sing. And he would be able to tell Ellen more about the  inspiring relationship between the diva and Marcus  Altenburg, for he had done a lot of research  on the composer's life since he realised that he  had been at school with one of the most highly  regarded musicians of the day.
  He would not raise Ellen's hopes at  once: he'd just say he hoped to get tickets
  
for the opera. Or should he say nothing about  it at all and give her a wonderful surprise?
  Standing on the pavement, jostled by the  passers-by, Kendrick sighed with anticipation,  and blushed, for he had just remembered that the  prelude of Rosenkavalier was supposed  to depict, in music, the act of love.
  Was this something he should explain--but very  delicately of course--to Ellen? She listened  so nicely when he told her things, her head on  one side, her lids drooping a little over her  gentle eyes. Sometimes he felt that that was what  he had been born for--explaining things to the girl  he loved so much.

  The Viennese afternoon was warm and mellow. The  sun shone down on the green and golden roofs of the  churches, warmed the stone archdukes and marble  composers in the parks; touched the courtyards of the  Hofburg, which had once been the home of  emperors and now housed government ministries,  Lipizzaner horses, and a few selected  citizens who had been given grace-and-favour  apartments by the state.
  Among whom was Vienna's favourite diva,  Brigitta Seefeld, who now woke in her  famous Swan Bed, stretched her plump arms and  demanded (but in a whisper for she never spoke on the  day of a performance), "Where are my eggs?"'
  Ufra shrugged. Her eggs were where they always  were, in a bowl on the dressing table, fresh that  morning from the market. An ugly black-haired  Armenian in her fifties, she had worked for  Brigitta for fifteen years and knew that today there  would be trouble. Brigitta was singing Mimi in  La Boh@eme and they had brought in a new  Musetta from Hamburg who was said to be both  excellent and young. And tonight too Benny  Feldmann was due back from America, and if  he hadn't found Marcus von Altenburg, thought  Ufra, God help us all.
  Brigitta rose, put on her peignoir and  descended from her dais. On the walls of her  bedroom, as on all the walls of her sumptuous  apartment, with its inlaid floors and porcelain  stoves, hung portraits of her in her most  famous roles: as the Countess in Figaro ...  as Violetta in La Traviata ... as a
  
pig-tailed Marguerite in Gounod's
Faust.
  Reaching the dressing table, she broke the first  egg and tipped it down her throat. A second  egg followed; then came the exercises. "Mi,  mi, mi," sang Brigitta, her hand on her  diaphragm--and outside in the street, the  porters looked up and grinned and the grooms leading  the Lipizzaners to their stables nodded to each other,  for Brigitta Seefeld's voice exercises  were as much a part of Vienna as the bells of St  Stephen's or the cooing of the pigeons on the  roofs.
  At four-thirty, Ufra admitted the  masseuse and after her came Herr K@oenig, the  leader of Brigitta's claque.
  Marcus had disapproved of claques. "You  don't need them," he'd raged. "It lowers  you, paying for applause."
  How idealistic he'd been, that wild boy  who'd come to her dressing room with an entire  tree, and into her life. But what did he know about  anything, with his tempestuous youth and his talent? It  was all very well for him; he could afford to go  slumming in the suburbs, conducting working men's  choirs and writing pieces for tubercular  schoolchildren to play. He wasn't dependent on  an arbitrary collection of cords and tendons which  could fail at any moment. A head cold, a  chest infection, an impending nodule on her  larynx would leave her defenceless, a prey to her  rivals, her status threatened. No wonder she  found it necessary to cultivate those who could help her.
  Herr K@oenig came forward to kiss her  plump, soft hand--possibly the most kissed hand  in Vienna--and was informed that Brigitta expected  not less than twelve curtain calls, and for herself  alone--not the beanpole from Hamburg who was singing  Musetta.
  Herr K@oenig blanched. Twelve curtain  calls, yes--but for her alone? The soprano from  Hamburg was said to be very good. On the other hand,  Seefeld was not singing again till her  Rosenkavalier at the gala in four weeks'  time. For the ordinary Viennese who could not afford  gala prices, tonight was effectively her last  appearance of the season. Looking into the diva's  appealing blue eyes, he was driven to rashness.
  "You shall have them," he declared grandly--and could be  seen, as he reached the street, striking his forehead
  
and cursing his stupidity.
  At five-thirty, Ufra prepared the dog.  Combing the long, silky hair of the little Tibetan  terrier, binding his topknot up in scarlet  ribbon, took almost as long as dressing  Brigitta's golden curls, but the public  expected Puppchen on his red lead, as they  expected the sable stoles, the jewels, the famous  smile.
  "In Armenia we would have eaten you," said  Ufra as he wriggled and moaned.
  At six-thirty the procession set off down  the Augustinerstrasse watched by the shopkeepers, the  man in the tobacco kiosk and those fortunate  tourists who had been tipped off that Seefeld was  en route to the evening's performance.
  Arriving at the stage door, Brigitta was  extremely gracious to the doorman,    considerably less gracious to the tenor who was  singing Rodolfo, and not gracious at all to the  beanpole from Hamburg who should have stayed where she  was even if she did happen to be married to a  Jew.
  But the performance went well. The voice--that  capricious Gestalt almost as external to herself as  the tiresome little dog that Marcus had given her--  had behaved itself, and Herr K@oenig had kept his  word. There were twelve curtain calls, and the other  singers, relieved that Brigitta would be absent  now for nearly a month, allowed her to take a  substantial number of these alone.
  Afterwards there was another smattering of applause  as she crossed from the opera house to Sacher's, the  hotel where she was accustomed to dine after a  performance. There were roses on the table especially  kept for her, and more hand-kissing, more bowing as she was  greeted by the ma@itre d'h@otel and her dinner  companions rose to their feet.
  "You were superb, Liebchen," said Count  Stallenbach, her current "protector", a  man sufficiently stricken in years to make few  demands on her person.
  Julius Staub, extinguishing his cigarette,  added his congratulations. A pale playwright with an  enormous forehead, who wandered about in a pall of  cigarette ash like an extinct volcano, he had  written the libretto of an opera about Helen of  Troy which only lacked a composer to be a  perfect vehicle for Seefeld.
  But the man she most wanted to see had not yet
  
arrived: Benny Feldmann, her agent  and business manager, who had just returned from the  United States.
  "He phoned to say he'd be along in half  an hour. The train was delayed and he's just gone  home to change."
  Brigitta nodded, but as she chose her dishes  and sipped her champagne, she could hardly conceal  her impatience.
  It had begun over a year ago, her desire  to find Marcus von Altenburg again. She had  been furious with him when he withdrew his violin  concerto in that melodramatic way. To lose the  chance of a Berlin premiere for a little Jew like  Meierwitz was absurd, and she had written  to tell him so. Music was above politics.
  But if Marcus had been labelled as a  person not welcome in the Third Reich, there were  other countries, seemingly, which did want him.  The French had just performed his First Symphony, the  Songs for Summer had been recorded in  London, and the Americans had invited him back  on generous terms to conduct. He was rumoured to be  over there now, negotiating.
  "He hasn't been so stupid," Benny  Feldmann had told her before he left for the  States. "The future is over there,  Brigitta. More and more people are going."
  Brigitta had no intention of leaving Vienna;  she was Viennese through and through. But the news from  Germany was bad: more and more Wagner operas staged  for the F@uhrer, more and more influence exerted by the  Bayreuth clique. She was a lyric  soprano: Wagner did not suit her voice.
If Hitler's hand of friendship to Austria became  a takeover, might it be wise to consider  alternatives?
  "Why don't you get Altenburg to write  an opera for you? You'd be welcome anywhere in the  world then," Feldmann had said, as he was leaving.  He was half joking. Men like Altenburg did not  write operas for people--they wrote them or not.
  But Brigitta had leapt at the idea.  Altenburg understood her as no one had ever done.  He had a devilish temper and had never quite lost  his air of emerging from a forest in a bearskin, but the  time she had spent with him had been like no other. It  was he who had persuaded her to take on the role  that had become her most famous one: that of the  Marschallin in Rosenkavalier--the lovely,
  
worldly aristocrat who gives up her young  lover to an ingenue of his own age.
  "I'm too young," she'd said--and so she had  been then: thirty-two to his twenty.
  "But that's the point don't you see, to make the  sacrifice while you are at the height of your  beauty--Strauss wrote it like that. It's not about  some middle-aged woman making the best of a bad  job; it's a supreme act of wisdom and  renunciation."
  The boy had been right. She had been sensational  in the role; her performance in what Richard  Strauss called his "Mozart Opera" had  become legendary. It was because of Marcus that she was  singing in four weeks' time before the President and the  crowned heads of several European states.
  And that was the trouble--that was why she was so  desperate to find him now. The opera could wait,  but not the gala. It was three years since she had  sung the Marschallin: her fortieth birthday was behind  her--rather more behind her than she admitted--and she  felt suddenly terrified and stale. There were things  badly wrong with the production, and Feuerbach, who  was conducting, lacked the authority and presence  to impose his will on the orchestra. Some of his  tempi were absurd; she couldn't take the Act  One monologue at that speed, and the girl who was  singing Sophie lost no opportunity to put herself  forward.
  It had all been so different when she was with  Marcus. He had been an amazing  r@ep@etiteur and coach, and the orchestra listened  to him. Even when he was twenty they had listened, and  now ... Marcus could make Feuerbach see  sense, she was sure of it. There would be people at the  gala longing to find fault with her--rival divas  from Berlin and Paris; officials from the Met.
  "Here he is!" said Staub as Benny came  towards them, his black eyes lively in spite  of the long journey.
  Brigitta could only just give him time to sit  down before she began: "Well, what's the news?  Did you find him?"'
  Benny shook his head. "No I didn't.
No one in Philadelphia had any idea where  he was. The Director of the Sinfonia's been  trying to get hold of him but he seems to have  vanished off the face of the earth. They thought he was  in that place of his in the forest but letters haven't been  answered."
  
  "But that's absurd. He must be  somewhere."
  Staub cleared his throat. His libretto was  without doubt the best thing he had written. Seen from  the point of view of a Greek soldier disgorged  from the wooden horse who encounters the fabled  Helen, huddled in a doorway of the burning city,  it should interest Altenburg with his well-known concern  for the common man. And Marcus might persuade  Brigitta to huddle--a thing that he himself did not  feel equal to.
  Now he said: "I think perhaps he may be here.  In Austria, I mean. Brenner said he saw  him down in Carinthia, driving with Professor  Steiner. He didn't see him clearly but he's  pretty sure it was Altenburg."
  "Steiner? That old folk song  collector?"'
  "Yes. I thought he must be mistaken because  Marcus was in America but now I wonder. He  and Steiner were friends, if you remember; Marcus  stayed with him in Berlin."
  Brigitta frowned. The professor belonged  to that group of musicians--Meierwitz was another  one--who had allowed themselves to become entangled in  politics.
  "But what could he possibly be doing down  there? And why hasn't he been in touch?"'
  Staub shrugged. "Brenner may be wrong but  he was quite close to him; the van stopped at a  level crossing and he tried to wave but  Altenburg just stared him down."
  What could it mean? thought Brigitta. Was he  hiding himself away to work? And if so ... if he was  writing music for someone else? A rival?  Oh, why did I send him away? she thought. I  must have been mad. He'd said he wouldn't come  back, and he hadn't, except as an  acquaintance when their paths happened to cross.  She'd only wanted a few months to sort out  her affairs and really it was his fault, refusing  to sell his wretched trees to pay for the sables she'd  set her heart on.
  "Where in Carinthia? Where did Brenner see  him?"'
  "Hallendorf. They were driving away from the  lake."
  "Hallendorf?"' she repeated. "Of  course, that's the place with that dreadful school."  The headmaster had had the nerve to write to her
  
asking her to attend some musical  performance of the children's a couple of years ago. She  hadn't even answered ... but might it do as an  excuse to make enquiries?
  "Is there anywhere decent to stay down there?"'  she asked. "Why don't we go and look for  him?"'
  Staub agreed at once but Benny  hesitated. He had not yet told Brigitta,  but he had decided to emigrate and was going  to transfer his business to New York. If  Brigitta did choose to follow him, there was little  he could do for her: America was flooded with Lieder  singers escaping Hitler, and the Met had their own  stable of sopranos.
  But Altenburg was a different matter; Benny  had been surprised at the high value the  Americans put on him. If Brigitta could  really get Altenburg to write an opera with a  part for her, the combination could be sensational. The old  "affaire" might be over, but a little carefully  placed gossip could add savour, and where better  to put that about--if Marcus could be persuaded  to attend--than at the gala?
  "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.
  "Next time, then!" cried the Chomskys,  kissing her fervently on both cheeks, and  Madame Chomsky followed Ellen in the  corridor to give her a last bulletin about her  youngest son.
  "It may be necessary to take him away to some spa  to make a full recovery," she said. "But I  think he just needs to rest quietly till this  dreadful play is over. Please tell Mr  Bennet he can be sure that Laszlo will not desert  him; he will return."
  Ellen smiled, detecting behind the effusive  warmth of Cliomsky's mother, a flicker of  anxiety lest her Laszlo might be returned  permanently to the fold, and promised that she would  set the headmaster's mind at rest.
  "I have put a few little things in, also, for the  children," said Madame Chomsky as Ellen picked  up the case, which certainly seemed to contain more than  a passport and a few documents. "You will not be  offended?"'
  Ellen shook her head, kissed everybody yet  again and was escorted to the bus station by Farkas, still  complaining because she would not dine with them.
  She had missed the bus which would have taken her  past the castle and was compelled to walk from the  village. On an impulse she decided  to walk along the eastern shore of the lake, along  the road which led her past Professor Steiner's  house.
  It was a foolish impulse, delaying her  by nearly half an hour and pointlessly, for no  light showed in the windows; the van was nowhere to be  seen. It was time to face the fact that they had gone  for good; that there would be no chance now to put things right  between herself and Marek.
  All the same, she paused for a moment by the path
  
that led to the house--and as she did so she  saw someone moving in the bushes. A man,  furtive and silent in the dark. Not Marek--this  man was smaller, and who could imagine Marek  looking furtive?
  She hesitated, then began to walk down the  path.
  "Is there anyone there?"' she called. If it  was a burglar maybe her voice would scare him  off.
  The man had vanished. Stupidly fearless, as  she later realised, she made her way towards the  door.
  Then a hand come round behind her and she was pulled  backwards on to the grass.

  It began like all the other journeys they had  made. Marek drove the van to the checkpoint and the  guards examined their papers only  perfunctorily.
  "Got any good tunes?"' Anton joked,  and they played him a bit of the old lady singing  "Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes" and he  waved them through.
  After twenty kilometres they turned north  west towards the German border and presently  Marek left the van and Steiner drove down a  rutted lane and parked in a clearing. There was no  hope of recording anything here; they had been here  too often. He could only wait and pray while  Marek plunged into the densest part of the forest to meet  his contact and--if their luck held--the man for  whom they had searched so long. And the waiting today was  going to be harder than ever. The news that  Meierwitz had broken cover and was on his way  at last had come with another piece of news that they  had been half expecting. The line of rescuers  was breaking up: one man had been arrested and shot;  the Sudeten Nazis had joined the Germans in  patrolling the no man's land between the borders.
  But when Marek had reached the meeting place, the  man they knew only as Johann was there--and with him  someone whom at first he did not recognise.  Meierwitz had been a portly person, fond  of his food, with an engaging tuft of reddish hair  and bright black eyes. This man was thin and hunched  and he shivered in the summer night.
  Afraid to shine his torch or speak, Marek
  
only put out his hand--but Isaac knew  in an instant.
  "You!" he whispered incredulously. "My  God, Marek--you!"
  He managed to hold his emotion in check as they  made their way towards the van but then, wrapped in  a blanket, given coffee from a Thermos, the  tears he had managed to control through his years of  flight and danger and imprisonment could be held  back no longer.
  "You," was all that he could say, over and over  again. "My God, Marek--you."
  Then Steiner came out of the driving seat and  embraced his former colleague, and for Isaac there was  another shock as he saw that this eminent and venerable  scholar had involved himself in his rescue.
  They set off then; Steiner drove and Marek  sat in the back with his friend. There were several hours  of relative safety before the next hazard, the  crossing of the border into Poland. Marek took  care to make light of his search, his obsessive  determination to set Meierwitz free, but Isaac  guessed, and it was a while before he could speak  calmly of what had happened in Berlin after the  Nazis came to power.
  "I was determined to play your concerto, and I  told them so; I suppose I threw my weight  about a bit; there was so much fear everywhere I  didn't want to add to it, and I was damned if  I was going to leave the country till I'd played  your piece. Even so I was surprised when they  agreed. It was a trick, of course; it was quite a  shock to them when they turned round and found there was  hardly a decent musician left in the country.  Then when they were sure of you, they came to arrest  me."
  "He'd spent nearly a year in the concentration  camp and then been transferred and managed  to escape. A woman I'd never set eyes on  hid me on her farm. She wasn't Jewish,  she wasn't musical ..." He shook his  head. "It's knowing you're endangering people that  drives you mad."
  He wanted to know about the concerto. "Who gave  the premiere?"'
  "No one. You're giving the premiere and that's  the end of the matter."
  "No, Marek. Don't be obstinate. I  shan't play again professionally. It's been more  than two years; that's too long to get my
  
technique back, and in the camp my  hands ..." He broke off, biting his lip.  "You must get someone else."
  "Well I won't, so let's hear no more  about it. What happened to your Stradivarius?"'
  "I left it with my landlady in Berlin. Do  you remember her--the one that went off into a faint  whenever there was a thunderstorm?"'
  They spoke then of the unimportant things they  remembered: the duck they had found wandering down the  Kurfurstendamm and adopted; a girl called  Millie who had stood on her head on the table  at the Lord Mayor's banquet; the trombone  player who'd got his girlfriend's shoe button  stuck up his nostril before the first night of  Tristan.
  "And you're not married yet?"' Isaac  asked.
  "No."
  "Your standards are probably too high,"  said Isaac, "with those parents of yours. What about  Brigitta?"'
  Marek shrugged. "I haven't seen her for  ages. Stallenbach is looking after her, I  believe."
  They had driven for three hours before Isaac,  knowing that his respite in the warm dark van was  nearly over, said: "And what comes next?"'
  "Well firstly," said Marek, "I want  you to dress up as a Jew. A proper one."
  Isaac stared at him. "Are you mad?"'  "No. There's a dark hat there, and a long  coat."
  "We're going to try to get into Poland with me  dressed as an orthodox Jew?"'
  "Exactly so." Marek grinned; it had  taken him months to fix up a suitable escape  route for Meierwitz, who had no ambitions  to join the Polish Air Force or become a  partisan in the resistance, and he was a little proud  of the route he had devised. "Have you ever heard  of the River Rats?"'
  Isaac frowned. "Wait a minute ...  aren't they those Jews that make their living poling  timber down the rivers? Weird people--very  religious--who live on rafts and don't  talk to anyone much?"'
  "That's right. People always think Jews are  entirely urban, but these people are skilled  woodsmen, amazingly so. I got to know them when
  
I went round on business with my father.  They take logs vast distances down the Niemen  and the Vistula and along the waterways, sometimes as  far as the Baltic. They're expecting you."
  "My God!"
  "It's as safe as anything can be. They exist  outside frontiers--no one bothers them; they're  too poor. When you get to K@onigsberg they'll  put you on a Swedish cargo boat; there'll be  papers waiting for you. It's all fixed up."
  Isaac was silent, thinking of the long journey  travelling through the dark, inhospitable waterways  of Poland with these uncouth and pious strangers.
  "Why?"' he asked under his breath. "Why will  they take me?"'
  But he knew. He himself had scarcely set  foot in a synagogue; his mother had been  baptised, but Hitler had created a new kind of  Jew--someone who existed to be hunted and killed  --and these unknown men had accepted him as a  brother.
  Some ten kilometres inside the border they  stopped. This was where they said goodbye to Steiner and  continued on foot.
  "I don't know what to say,
Professor," said Isaac. "The words
"Thank you" hardly seem to cover it."  Steiner shook his hand. "Nonsense. And  remember you will always be welcome in  Hallendorf. I'm on my way back now.
My house is small as you know, but there will be  room for you and you won't have to sleep on the verandah  like you did when you came with the quartet. Austria  is still free, so who knows?"'
  Isaac nodded. Austria was still free, that was  true, but without a permit to stay he would be a  fugitive once more, at best put into prison,  at worst deported back into the Third Reich.
  They had been driving through thick mist. Now it  began to rain--steady grey sheets obscuring  everything. Only Marek could have made any sense  of the terrain in which they found themselves.
  "Keep close," he said.
  He had given Isaac a compass, pepper  to head off pursuing dogs, money--but in this  Stygian world of dripping trees and cloud it would  be a nightmare for him to try and find his way  alone. They had just two hours of darkness still to find  Franz and ford the river into Poland.
  The barbed wire had been cut; everything seemed
  
to be in order, but Marek could not shake  off the feeling of unease that had been with him since  the beginning of the journey.
  They had reached the river. Nothing now except  to wait for the cry of an owl repeated three times.  The rain was relentless: the ground, the sky, the  river merged in a sheet of greyness.
  Then it came ... once ... twice ... and  they saw Franz's shadowy figure on the far  bank.
  But the third cry did not come. What came  instead was the sound of a shot--and they saw Franz  throw up his arms and fall.
  "Go back, Isaac," hissed Marek.  "Quickly. Run."
  "I won't go without you."
  "You'll do as I say. Try to get back  to Steiner and warn him. I'll follow but I've  got to see if there's anything I can do for  Franz. He may not be dead."
  He disappeared in the direction of the river  bank.
  The sound of a second shot came minutes  later.

  Leon had made good his boast to direct a  film and give Sophie a leading part. The leading  part turned out to be the only part, because even his  devoted parents had balked at sending a new  cine camera and the one they had found was turning out  to be more complicated to handle than he had  expected. There was moreover no sound equipment,  so the role he had created for Sophie--that of  Terrified Girl reacting to a Nameless Thing--  was silent.
  Sophie had written to both her parents begging  them to come and see Abattoir. Even without her  tambourine she felt that her role as a Salvation  Army girl, largely hidden by a poke bonnet  and surrounded by twelve others, would make it  possible for her not to disgrace herself--and if they both  came then perhaps--just perhaps--they would find that they still  cared for each other and buy a house which would always be  there and they would move into it, all together like a proper  family.
  For once the answers to her letters had come quite  quickly; her mother was certain she couldn't come because she  was still filming in Ireland, and the next day
  
Czernowitz had written to say that her  father was extremely sorry but he was delaying his  return from America.
  Her disappointment had brought the usual stricken  look to her eyes. What if no one came ever  again, what if the school emptied and she was  forgotten? But Ellen had not been interested in this  train of thought. "If the school empties and  you're forgotten I'll take you to Gowan  Terrace and we'll go to the zoo and see lots of  Charlie Chaplin films and make fudge."
  "I don't know why you want them to come," said  Leon. "It's an awful play."
  But he too had responded to Sophie's  distress, extending the role he had written for  her so that in addition to being terrified in her hovel  she was allowed to walk slowly into the lake, like  Ludwig of Bavaria, and drown.
  He was setting up this tricky shot during a  gap in Abattoir rehearsals when Sophie,  wading through the bulrushes, stopped suddenly and said:  "Goodness! Here comes Cleopatra in her  barge!"
  The children who had been resting in the grass sat  up. The boat making its way in a stately  manner towards them did indeed have something regal    about it, though it was only a motor boat hired from  the village. The woman who lay back against the  cushions was amply built, dressed in a  flowing, flowery garment with matching turban, and  held a fringed parasol in a gloved hand. Behind  her, wearing black, sat some kind of lesser  person, probably a maid, hanging on to the  collar of a small and excited dog.
  "She doesn't look like a parent," said  Flix--and this was true.
  Parents coming to see how their children were faring at the  school seldom approached with that air of grandeur  and self-assurance. They were usually thin people in  corduroy or ethnic skirts and looked  apprehensive.

  As they drew close to the castle,  Brigitta's hopes rose. Too vain to wear  the spectacles she needed, she could make out  only the beauty of the pink building and a number of  children moving about in the grounds. Altenburg's  devotion to children, his conviction that they could be taught  to sing or play from infancy, had irritated her in  Vienna, but made it more than likely that he should
  
be lying low in a place like this. She had  left Staub and Benny in the villa that  Stallenbach had procured for them, wanting to be  alone when she ran her old lover to ground. Now,  as the boat slowed down by the landing stage, she  promised herself that she would utter no word of  reproach when she came face to face with  Marcus. She would beg his help in the matter of the  gala and he would not deny her, she was sure. Then  when he was in Vienna and Rosenkavalier was  safely over she would show him Staub's  libretto and their true collaboration would begin.  Cosima von B@ulow and Wagner ... Alma  Schindler and Gustav Mahler ... George  Sand and Chopin ... there was nothing absurd in the  comparison. Cosima had cut off her long, long  hair and thrown it into Wagner's grave, thought  Brigitta, fingering her short permed hair under the  turban. If Marcus came back, if he  set Staub's opera, she might even be prepared  to huddle.
  The children waiting on the landing stage were larger than  she had expected and did not look salubrious,  but that only made it more likely that Marcus was  here.
  "Can we help you?"' said the only one that  looked even remotely clean and decent, a  girl with dark pigtails.
  "I am Brigitta Seefeld," the diva  announced, not troubling to introduce her maid.  "And I am looking for Herr Altenburg, the  composer, who I believe is working here."
  Sophie and the others, in all innocence, shook  their heads. Only Leon stiffened and looked  wary.
  "There's no one here called that," said  Sophie.
  "Definitely not," agreed Flix, making  her way towards the little dog.
  But Brigitta was not so easily put off.  "Take me to your headmaster," she ordered.  "Tell him that Brigitta Seefeld is  here."
  As the children led her towards the steps, Leon  took Sophie aside.
  "Go in and find Ellen," he whispered.  "Tell her Brigitta Seefeld is here and  looking for someone called Altenburg. Go on,  quickly."
  Sophie, without question, turned and ran towards the
  
kitchen. She did not pause to wonder  why Ellen had to be told of this visit or its  purpose: to fetch Ellen at all times was  second nature now to the children in the school.
  She found Ellen teaching the new kitchen hand how  to slice angelica into interesting shapes. He was  hoping to be a chef and had only been here a few  days but everyone liked him: he was quick to learn and  funny and would help with anything, indoors and out.
  "Ellen, a great big blonde woman has  just arrived; she's called Brigitta Seefeld  and she's looking for someone called Altenburg.  A musician. Leon said I should tell you."
  Ellen looked up, the egg whisk still in her  hand. At the same time a small exclamation from the  trainee chef made them both turn. Usually so  neat and careful, he had cut his finger.
  "Where is she now?"' asked Ellen.
  "Leon's taking her to see Bennet; we  told her there wasn't anyone like that here but she  didn't believe us." But Sophie was staring at  the new assistant, who had gone as white as his  overalls. There were people who couldn't stand the sight of  blood, she knew that. It was nothing to do with  cowardice; it was just one of those things. "Shall I go  and get some sticking plaster from your box?"' she  offered.
  Ellen shook her head. "No, I'll see  to it. Will you go to Bennet and tell him I'll bring  coffee and cakes to his study. I'll be there in  ten minutes if he would just wait there. Would you  tell him that?"'
  Sophie nodded and sped off--and Ellen went  to shut the door of the scullery in which Frau  Tauber was washing up.
  "She knows you, of course."
  "Yes." He was biting his lip. She could  see the effort he was making to control himself.
  "Well then, we must hide you," she said,  fetching a roll of plaster and some lint. She bound  up the finger, thinking. Then: "Didn't you offer  to stand in for David Langley at the  rehearsal?"' And as he nodded: "In that  case, our troubles are over. You'll be as safe  as houses there."

  Brigitta's route towards the headmaster's  study, escorted by Leon and followed by Ursula  and Janey, was unfortunate. Unaware that she had  been spared Chomsky's appendix scar, she
  
shuddered as the biology teacher, virtually  naked, ran past her with his net, searching for  dragonfly larvae in the mud. An uncouth boy  with dirty feet dropped from a tree, bumped  into her, swore and disappeared.
  "That's Frank," explained Janey  helpfully. "His father's a famous  philosopher and he's been through five  psychoanalysts."
  "I'll wait outside," said Ufra  firmly, and led the dog away towards the kitchen  garden.
  As she passed the open doors of classrooms  and rehearsal rooms, Brigitta's certainty  that she had found Marcus' hiding place began  to evaporate. In one a sinewy female in a  leotard was exhorting a group of sulky children  to give vent to their viscerality; in another a  mustachioed woman in flannels was demonstrating  the Primal Scream. A child lay on the floor  in the corridor, reading a book and eating a  banana. Surely even Marcus with his passion for  freedom and tolerance, would not be able to work in this  kind of bedlam?
  But when she reached Bennet's study she became  more hopeful again. The headmaster was a cultivated  and good-mannered man who spoke excellent  German and was properly dressed. His walls were  lined with books, and the bust of Shakespeare  encouraged her; Marcus had set six of the  Sonnets for tenor, strings and percussion when he  first came to Vienna, boring her with eulogies about  the verse.
  "I am Brigitta Seefeld--"' she  began--and frowned angrily as the boy who had  put himself forward all along, had the impertinence  to interrupt her.
  "Madame Seefeld has come because she thinks  Herr Altenburg has been here," he said  quickly. "I've told her he hasn't, but--"'
  "Leon is right, Madame Seefeld. There  has been no one here of that name," said Bennet with  perfect truthfulness, giving Leon a reassuring  nod.
  There was a brief knock at the door and  Sophie entered with Ellen's message, "She  won't be more than ten minutes, she said."
  Bennet nodded and sent the children away.  "Ellen is our matron--and in charge of the  kitchen too. An excellent woman."
  
  That Marek would want his stay in  Hallendorf kept secret even now, Bennet  was certain. Only three people knew his identity:  Ellen, Leon and himself, and it was clear that the boy  could be trusted.
  Meanwhile he was in effect looking at a kind  of Toscanini's Aunt. Brigitta
Seefeld was known all over Europe as a  brilliant singer, a doyenne of the operatic  stage. Two years ago when Franz Lerner had  produced an opera based on The Pied  Piper he had written to invite her  to Hallendorf and she had not even troubled  to reply. Now she was here and all he had to show her  was Abattoir. But was it "all"? Was he being  unduly pessimistic? A premiere of a  Brecht play directed by a man who had studied  with Meyerhold and Stanislavsky ...
  Motioning her to his slightly disintegrating  leather armchair, he set himself to be charming and  flatter her.
  "As you can imagine, this is a great honour for  Hallendorf. If you'd given me a little warning  we could have shown you some of the workshops in progress.  Unfortunately our music is at present our  weakest point. Our excellent music teacher  has gone to fight in Spain and so far we've not  found a replacement."
  "I understand Professor Steiner lives across  the lake." Brigitta was still suspicious.  "We called at his house but he seems to be  away. Couldn't he help you?"'
  "I wouldn't trouble a man of such eminence,"  said Bennet truthfully. "Or of his age. Some  of the children here are a little ... untutored."
  "Yes, I see that. But Altenburg has  been seen with Professor Steiner. I find it  hard to believe that he never came here. He is  interested in working with children."
  Bennet gave a wi/l smile. "I  assure you, we would have welcomed any help of that  sort with open arms."
  A knock at the door interrupted them, and  Ellen entered bearing a silver tray, a coffee  pot, and a plate of biscuits.
  "Ah--Vanilla Kipferl! I think you  won't do better than these even at Demels,"  said Bennet.
  Ellen set down the tray and smiled at the  woman described so fulsomely in Kendrick's
  
concert programme. Seefeld seemed  middle-aged to her; there was a puffiness under the eyes  and in Ellen's opinion she was not so much  voluptuous as fat. But the eyes themselves were a  bright periwinkle blue, the hair under the turban  still golden--above all Seefeld had the  assurance, the presence, that comes from years of  fame. That the collaboration between her and Marek had  been "fruitful" in all senses of the word,  seemed all too likely.
  Brigitta in her turn examined Ellen with  sudden interest. The girl was remarkably  pretty; the careless curls, the big gold-brown  eyes and soft mouth--and for an instant she thought that  maybe she had found the reason for Marcus'  sojourn in the neighbourhood. But that was absurd.  She was a below stairs person, she worked in the  kitchens. He might have flirted with such a girl  but that she could seriously interest him, that he could  write music for her was absurd. Even Marcus  did not write music for cooks.
  The coffee however was excellent, the  Vanilla Kipferl delicious. When they were  finished, Bennet invited her to the theatre where a  rehearsal for the play had just resumed.
  "The theatre was built at the same time as the  castle--in 1743. It's a remarkably  pretty one; the work of Grunwald von  Heilgen ..."
  He elaborated, and Brigitta suppressed  a yawn. "Very well. But I should like to look  over the school first. I should like to see everything."
  That Marcus, for no reason she could imagine,  was concealed in the building, was an idea that would not  entirely go away.
  But when they reached the theatre and found the  Abattoir rehearsal in full spate,
Brigitta finally realised that wherever her former  lover was it could not be here.
  Chomsky's three-tiered structure was in  place at last and FitzAllan was attempting  to get everyone on stage together: the capitalists  on top, the Salvation Army girls in the middle  and the workers on the bottom.
  Things were not going well. The Salvation Army  girls came on too soon, were yelled at and  vanished. The capitalists, rolling their dice,  looked green, contemplating the distance to the ground--  and there was trouble with the carcasses. There was always  trouble with the carcasses. FitzAllan had insisted
  
that the headless cadavers, completely  swathed in muslin, were played by real people who could  neither see nor be seen, and the opportunities for  disaster were endless.
  The arrival of the famous diva brought the  director unctuously to her side.
  "This is an honour indeed," he said in  excellent German, bowing over her hand, and led  her towards the footlights. "Carry on," he  shouted to the increasingly confused children, and a  disorientated slaughterhouse worker crashed into a  dimly lit side of beef, was sworn at, and  veered off at an angle. "As you see, we are  still feeling our way a little," said FitzAllan.
  Brigitta said she did indeed see this. She  made however one last attempt before making her  escape. "Who does the music--presumably  there is music?"'
  FitzAllan gave a modest smile. "I  have endeavoured to fill the gap left by the departure  of Franz Lerner. Perhaps you'd like to hear one of the  workers' songs? I've adapted it myself from one I  found in a Communist manifesto."
  He clapped his hands and those of the children who heard  him came to the front of the stage. "We're going  straight into the Song of Starvation at the end of  Act Two. I'll give you the note.
Ready?"'
  Brigitta listened and the last of her doubts were  laid to rest. Not in a hundred years could  Marcus have countenanced a noise like that. Turning,  she found the dark, intense boy who had met her  at the landing stage standing beside her.
  "If Herr von Altenburg could hear that,  he'd turn in his grave, wouldn't you say?"' he  whispered.
  Much as she wanted to snub the child, she could only  agree.
  "The premiere is at the end of July. If  you happened to be in the district we should be most  honoured," said Bennet.
  "Thank you, but my calendar for July is very  full," she said.
  She found Ufra and Puppchen already in the  launch. Puppchen was passionately chewing a  large leather gardening glove. "He found it in  one of the sheds," said Ufra. "It belonged to the  handyman. He's left now, so I thought he  might as well have it."
  "It's disgusting," said Brigitta, as the
  
object became covered in the little dog's  saliva. "Take it away and throw it into the  lake."
  But Puppchen wouldn't be parted from his treasure.  He growled and showed his crooked teeth and he was still  slobbering over it when the boat arrived in the  village, and the local taxi bore Brigitta  off to the villa so kindly provided by the count.

  Ellen waited till the theatre was empty and  dark before she made her way back stage.
  "It's all right," she said. "You can come out  now. She's been gone for ages."
  The ox carcass in its muslin wrapping  swayed; the papier-m`ach`e stump representing  its severed neck was lifted.
  "Goodness, you do look green! There's no need  to be afraid; she's miles away."
  "It isn't fear, it's seasickness," said  Isaac Meierwitz, and climbed out of the bag.

  By day Isaac could forget the terror in the forest;  the moment when Marek had disappeared in the direction  of the river, the second shot. He could forget the  hours he had stumbled through the mist, trying to find  Steiner's van, the baying of the guard dogs which had  sent him crawling under barbed wire, to find himself in  Austria ... the long journey, footsore and  starving, to Hallendorf, hoping against hope that  Steiner and Marek were there.
  But at night he played back the nightmare  again and again, and then there was nothing to do except get  up and go outside and sit on the steps of the little  temple, looking out across the lake to Steiner's  house, praying that a light would show in the windows  ... that the men who had risked their lives for him were  safely back.
  There Ellen found him the night after  Brigitta's visit, wearing a coat over her  nightdress, and bringing a blanket for him, for the  night was cool.
  "You should sleep, Ellen; you work so hard."  "Flix woke me," she said. "She had a  dream about the Judas sheep."
  She sat down beside him, wrapping the blanket  round them both, and her closeness gave him a stab  of something he did not recognise at first because it  had become so unfamiliar. Happiness? thought  Isaac--is that possible still? And answered himself:  Where she is, it is possible.
  
  The moment of panic by Steiner's door  when he had tried to pull the intruder down on to the  grass had not lasted long. The softness of her  body, the way she crumpled in his arms and then  stiffened, ready to fight, had overwhelmed him. He  let her go, and then the dizziness he had been  fighting overcame him, and he lost consciousness.
  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."
  He'd made no headway either in getting them
  
to apply for emigration visas.
  "You must see the way it's going," he'd  said. "Please."
  And he had repeated what he had told them  already: that it was a Czech voice, issuing from a  thug in a Nazi uniform, that had boasted of  Isaac's murder.
  "You go ahead," Milenka had said. "Knowing  you're safe is the only thing that matters. If you  go, and prepare the way for us, we'll follow."
  He knew that she lied. His father would not leave,  and while he stayed she would be with him. They were  strung together on one bow, these two unlikely people;  their lives together made the melody that was  Pettelsdorf.
  For Steiner the week of pain and grief for  Isaac had been shot through with a strange joy.
  He'd been thirty years old when he first  saw Milenka at a poetry reading in Berlin.  She was nineteen, a bird-thin girl whose soul one  could enter without subterfuge, for she hid nothing.  He fell terribly in love ... and lost her  to someone who should have been utterly unsuitable and  turned out to be her other half--this man who shot  too many animals and read too few books.
  Since then he had seen her in Berlin or  Prague, had taken her to concerts;  laboriously, grindingly, turning love to friendship  --but he had never dared to come to her home. Now,  nearing the end of his life, he was enormously  thankful that his image of her was complete. That he  had seen her at her desk, pushing aside the cat  that sat on her papers ... assuring herself that the  goose they were to have for supper was not a goose she  knew personally, but came from a neighbouring farm  ... That he had stood beside her in the moonlit  garden listening to the orioles and heard her read  once more, the poem he had heard first in her  deep, slightly husky voice:

"Not vanished, but transfigured are the things  that were,
To come again by, Oh, what bliss attended  ..."

  Steiner played no games with himself. He did  not pretend that Marek was the son they might have had;  there was far too much of the Freiherr von  Altenburg in the boy. But when Marek had come  to him to ask for his van, and Steiner realised he could
  
share his adventure and his danger, he had  been rewarded beyond his wildest dreams.
  "We need some petrol," said Marek now.  "And I'd like to check the oil."
  "There's a garage about ten kilometres  away; on the other side of the village."
  Marek nodded and drove on.

  The rain had stopped but the children in the bus had  fallen silent. Sabine, her curls matted with  sweat, was sitting beside Ellen; she had been sick  three times and did not seem to be finished yet.
  There was another hour at least to their destination.  Sophie too felt sick. It was partly the  motion of the bus, but mostly apprehension. Everything  had gone wrong with this trip. If FitzAllan  had been taking them Sophie wouldn't have minded  what they were going to do so much, but it was Ellen.  She'd had to step in at the last minute when  FitzAllan developed a migraine, and the  idea of getting Ellen into trouble was unbearable.
  "I wish we hadn't come," she said  to Leon. "I wish we could tell her and turn  back."
  "Well we can't," said Leon. "We  promised Flix we'd help."
  But Flix didn't look very good either. She  too had had to stop once to be sick and Frank,  whom she'd enlisted because he was supposed to be tough  and fearless, was fidgeting and scowling, and now, in a  throwback to his earlier schooling, he put up his  hand and told Ellen that he needed to be excused.
  Ellen nodded and asked Herr Tauber to stop  at the next convenient place, but Frank's  phraseology only confirmed her in the feeling that  something strange was going on. Frank did not ask  to be excused; he expressed the need to perform his  bodily functions with Rabelaisian vigour.  As she wiped Sabine's face with a damp  flannel she looked down the bus, wondering what  was wrong. Too many of the children had felt unwell.  She'd been with them when they went by bus to the  circus in Klagenfurt, and only Sabine and  one other child had been sick.
  Frank passed her and she saw that beneath his  usual sullen expression there was something else; a  kind of fear. He was sitting next to Flix and that  was unexpected too; Flix usually had little use  for him.
  "There's no need for us to go on with this
  
expedition," she said, standing up  to survey the children. "Absolutely no need.  We can go back without the slightest  difficulty."
  For a moment the faces turned to her looked  hopeful. Sophie half rose in her seat and was  pulled down by Leon. Then Flix, still pale and  puffy-eyed, said, "No. We want to go on.  We have to."
  Frank returned, they set off again. The  road was steep now; they had left the lakes behind.
  "I've got a headache," said Janey  miserably, laying her head against the window.
  Ellen, comforting her, could have said the same. She  also blamed herself very much for not having aborted this  expedition from the start.
  "It's a perfectly ridiculous idea,"  she'd said to Bennet, when he told her of  FitzAllan's determination to show the children a  proper slaughterhouse. "A man who eats  nothing but nut cutlets wanting to expose them  to all that."
  Bennet agreed. "I told him in any  case that hiring a bus would be far too  expensive."
  But here he had been undermined by Herr Tauber,  who was married to Lieselotte's aunt and had come  to work in the grounds after Marek left. The  beneficial mafia operated by Lieselotte's  relatives was growing, and Herr Tauber now  offered his bus for the price of the petrol only, if  it would help the school.
  Even so, the headmaster would not have given his  consent, but to his amazement a number of the children--  apparently led by the tender-hearted Flix--came  to him and said they wanted to go.
  "It would help us in understanding our parts in the  play," they said, echoing what had seemed to be  FitzAllan's idiocy.
  So it was agreed and then of course just before they were  due to go, FitzAllan succumbed to a frightful  migraine--or so he said.
  Ellen had not intended to pull FitzAllan's  irons out of the fire for him but for some reason the children  had been very disappointed at the idea of cancelling the  trip--and the truth was that she herself felt guilty  about her reluctance to visit the Carinthian  Municipal Abattoir. She was after all not a  vegetarian--quite the contrary: her Boeuf en  Daube had won first prize at the Lucy
  
Hatton School of Household  Management--yet she had never seen how the  wretched beasts she cooked so readily were  dispatched.
  So she had agreed to go and now was bitterly  regretting it.
  They had passed Klagenfurt and the  sanatorium where chomsky still lay surrounded  by devoted relatives. The last time Ellen had  visited him they were debating whether to take  Laszlo off to a spa to recuperate and had asked  her if she would like to accompany him on the journey  as his nurse.
  If only she could trust Isaac to be  sensible. She had left him with Lieselotte,  determined to venture into Kartoffelpuffer, but  he had begun to give up hope of Marek and was  talking about getting away on his own.
  Sophie, sitting in the row in front, turned  around.
  "Have you got a sick bag, Ellen?"' she  asked, and Ellen handed her the last one in her  basket.
  What was the matter with everyone?
  As so often with Sophie, she was trying  to reconcile her warring sides. In England she  read school-girl stories in which sneaking and  telling tales was the worst thing that could be done, but  in Vienna with her father, it was breaking the law that was  unforgivable. What if they caused Ellen to be  put in prison? They didn't put children in  prison but they put them in awful places--  borstal and worse. Should she tell Ellen what  was hidden in Flix's basket beneath the picnic  food and her rolled up raincoat, or in  Frank's? All of them had pliers and wire  cutters but Flix and Frank had great files,  and a handsaw.
  Flix had planned it all. She was going  to release the Judas sheep and shoo it away into the  forest. "Then the other sheep will follow," she'd  said, "and while the men are chasing them the rest of you  can free the animals in the trucks and in the  pens."
  Sophie had wanted to help--one simply had  to after FitzAllan had explained about the way the  steers were stunned and had their throats cut while  their hearts were still beating because that way the blood  drained away better, as though animals were a  kind of sewage. But she couldn't help wondering
  
if it was going to be as simple as that: the  stampeding beasts, the furious men, the blood ...  Oh God, what shall I do? thought Sophie, and was  angry with Ursula who had said from the start that it was  silly and wouldn't work. She'd come along, but she  wouldn't help in any way and she seemed to be the  only person who wasn't feeling ill.
  Another child put up his hand.
  "Herr Tauber, I think we'd better have a  break," said Ellen. "Do you know a suitable  place to stop?"'
  He nodded. "There's a garage at the  bottom of the hill with a place to park. They have a  fruit stall and toilets."
  "Then we'll pull in there if you'll be so  kind."
  They drove into the forecourt.
  "You can all get out and stretch your legs,"  said Ellen. "But five minutes only--we have  to get on. Anyone who wants to go to the  toilets--"'
  But the children, for once, were not heeding her. Leon  had given a shout and tumbled down the steps,  Sophie followed and then all of them were rushing  headlong towards the petrol pump in the far  corner where a tall man was standing talking to the  attendant.

  Marek was not pleased to see them come. He had  finished with the school, and the events of last week had  shown him how important it was that he involved no  one in his concerns. But as more and more children ran towards  him, he found himself smiling at their affection and  enthusiasm.
  "Where are you off to?"' he asked, and they  told him, excitedly, confusedly. Something fell  from Frank's pocket and the boy picked it up  quickly but not before Marek had seen what it was.
  "Ellen's taking us," said Sophie, and the  worried look returned to her face. "It was  meant to be FitzAllan but now it's her."
  Marek looked across at the bus and saw Ellen  standing on the steps. He had forgotten the way her  hair fell asymetrically, more of it to the left  side of her face. Remembering how she had  yelled at him the last time he saw her, he  waited--but she came down and walked towards him  and said, "Could I speak to you alone? Just for a  moment?"'
  "Of course."
  
  He shooed away the children and together they  walked to where they could not be overheard.
  Then: "I have him," she said very quietly.  "I have your friend."
  Marek gave a half shake of the head. Her  words made no sense to him.
  "I have Meierwitz," she repeated.
"He's with me, working in the kitchen."  But the transition was too sudden. He had  left Isaac in his mind, shot down in the forest;  he could not believe her.
  "I left him with Lieselotte. She's  teaching him to make Kartoffelpuffer."
  The Kartoffelpuffer achieved what her  assurance had been unable to do--no one invented that  unnecessary way of dealing with potatoes--and now at  last Marek heard her words and believed her, and  understood that the impossible had happened and his friend was  safe.
  "Oh Ellen," he said.
  Then he took a step towards her and, uncaring  of the watching children, took her in his arms.

  FitzAllan lay back on the pillows and  covered his forehead with a languid hand. He had  drawn the curtains, but enough light came through  to hurt his eyes whenever he opened them. The  purple zigzag stage of his migraine had  passed but his head ached unbearably and he felt  sick.
  It was the strain, of course: the strain of pitting  his will against the staff and children who balked him at every  turn as he tried to put into practice his ideas.  Strain always brought on one of his attacks, and  Tamara's tantrum when he had felt compelled  to shorten her ballet once again had made him  worse.
  But at least he had prevailed in the matter  of the slaughterhouse visit. Bennet had opposed  him--everyone had opposed him, but he had won.  Even now the children were being shown around the Carinthian  Municipal Abattoir and perhaps that would get them  to give some decent performances.
  The castle was wonderfully quiet. They  wouldn't be back till the evening and if he could  get some sleep now he might be fit for work again  tomorrow. He drifted off in a day dream of acclaim  in which theatre producers congratulated him on  what he had achieved with inferior material, and  offered him work in Paris, London and New
  
York. "The risks you took were  entirely justified," they said.
  He was woken by a door slamming; the sound of  excitable voices. The corridors had filled  once more with children. It must be the ones who had not gone  on the trip--the bus couldn't possibly have  returned yet. But he thought he heard Frank  shouting, and then Bruno ... and both of them had  signed on to go.
  Flinching as he turned on the bedside light,  FitzAllan looked at his watch. Half past  five. They must have run round the slaughterhouse in  record time. There was a brief knock at the  door, and Ellen entered.
  Even in his feeble condition, FitzAllan  noticed that she looked cheerful. She looked, in  point of fact, radiant, and the director, who  did not like her, felt unaccountably nervous.
  "I've brought you a present!" she  announced. "Shut your eyes and put out your  hand."
  "I can hardly bear not to shut them," said  FitzAllan in a failing voice. But he put  out his hand and felt a small, softish object  placed in his palm.
  "What is it?"'
  "It's a boa constrictor," said Ellen  tenderly.
  In spite of himself he gave a scream and  dropped it, and Ellen reproachfully put it  back in his fingers. "I'll open the curtains so  you can see it properly. It's made of  marzipan."
  "No!"
  "Well, I'll describe it to you. I  don't know if it's authentic--I think Herr  Fischer hasn't seen a real one, but it's  better than authentic. It's curled round on  itself and has green zigzags and yellow diamonds  and you can see its split tongue as clear as  anything. All of us bought marzipan animals in  Klagenfurt from Herr Fischer's shop. Marek  gave every single child some money to do it and it's really  interesting what they chose. Sophie has a  crocodile and Leon chose a snail--not at  all what I'd have expected, and--"'
  "Wait. Why did you go to the patisserie in  Klagenfurt? I don't understand."
  "Well, after Marek told us that the  slaughterhouse was closed because of foot and mouth
  
disease--"'
  "What!" FitzAllan forgot his  migraine, sat bolt upright, and groaned. "But  that's nonsense. I checked it yesterday."
  "Oh, it only happened this morning. Marek  came from there--he brought Professor Steiner  back and they went right past it and there were huge  notices saying CLOSED. I assure you,"  said Ellen sweetly, "that it's true."
  "I don't believe it."
  "Well, you can ask Marek."
  And if I hadn't been going on your stupid  trip I might have missed him, thought Ellen, and  smiled at FitzAllan with ineffable joy. He  would have dropped Steiner and gone away again and I  wouldn't have seen him and he wouldn't have hugged me and  thanked me for saving his friend and Isaac wouldn't be  hopping up and down now in Chomsky's room.  "I must go and serve supper," she said, "though  I doubt if anyone will eat very much. It was a  sort of party we had after Marek told us we  couldn't go, oh it was lovely--and so interesting! I  think if I was Professor Freud I wouldn't  waste so much time finding out what people had seen their  parents do and about incest and all that--I'd take  them to Herr Fischer's shop and see what they  chose. You wouldn't believe it but Frank  didn't pick an animal at all--he chose  a conker. Just an ordinary brown marzipan  chestnut--there was a tree in his mother's garden, he  said, when he was small! And Sophie ate her  crocodile then and there in two big bites; I  was really encouraged--I think she may be getting  just a little bit tough inside."
  At the door she paused and smiled once more  at the patently uninterested invalid. "If you  want to know what animal I bought," she said  dreamily, "I didn't buy anything. I already  have one, you see. I have a ladybird!"

  The shutters were closed tight over the windows of  Steiner's little house. The boat in which Ellen and  Isaac had rowed across was hidden in the  Professor's boathouse. The night was dark and  moonless; hardly a ripple stirred the water.
  Ellen had intended to let Isaac go alone; the  reunion between him and Marek was something she thought should  be conducted in privacy, but Isaac was not  interested in privacy. He wanted her to come  to Steiner's house; he wanted her to come everywhere with
  
him always. So Ellen had busied herself  checking the dressing on the Professor's wound and  making coffee in the little kitchen while Isaac and  Marek exchanged their memories of that frightful  night. Now, over a glass of cognac, the map  spread out on the table, they were discussing the next  stage: Isaac's escape from Central  Europe.
  "The river line is still intact," said  Marek. "Uri goes down once a week with the  logs; he'll take you. But how to get you  into Poland? We can't use the van any more,  Franz is dead and they've doubled the guards.  We'll have to go properly armed this time and--"'
  "Well I think that's completely silly,"  said Ellen.
  "Oh you do?"' said Marek. "You've a  better idea, I suppose?"'
  "Yes. It's what I was going to do if you'd  turned out to be dead," she said.
  "Well I'm not dead, so take that wi/l  note out of your voice." And then  reluctantly: "All right then; how were you going  to get Isaac into Poland?"'
  "In a train. In a first-class sleeper.  A wagon-lit, preferably with Lalique  panels and Art Nouveau lamps, because I'm  interested in Secessionist architecture," she  said primly. "He wouldn't be able to go to the dining  car, because being a serious mental case he would have  to stay in bed, but I would, because nurses are allowed  to eat--and they do quail's eggs in aspic on the  Warsaw Express, I've heard, and I've  never tried them."
  They all stared at her. "What are you talking  about?"'
  "Chomsky," said Ellen. "That's what  I'm talking about. They were thinking of taking him to a  spa to recuperate. There's one there in Poland."  She pointed to a place near a bend on the  Vistula river. "They offered me the chance  to accompany him as a sort of nurse and it so  happens that I have his passport, so why shouldn't  Isaac go instead? Could you get the photo  changed?"'
  "Not in a hurry. The man who did the  forgeries is the one they caught."
  "Well, it might not matter--Isaac's the  same age as Chomsky, and it would be night time and  he'd have his head bandaged."
  
  "It's still a risk," said Marek.
"And not one that you will take. Get his passport  and give it to me and--"'
  "No," said Ellen. "I won't. You can  come along and start shooting people or hanging them out of  windows if things go wrong but I'm going to be  Isaac's nurse."
  "I would like her to be my nurse," said  Isaac--and Marek turned on him angrily.
  "Be quiet, Isaac. This isn't a joking  matter. I'm sorry, Ellen, but I  absolutely will not allow you to become involved  any further. I shall always be in your debt but--"'
  "Allow!" said Ellen, putting down her  glass. "Allow? How dare you speak to me like  that? I nearly turned Isaac over to the police  because you didn't trust me enough to tell me what  you're doing."
  "Ellen, this is no job for--"'  "Don't!" She turned on him  furiously. "Just don't dare to say this is no  job for a woman. My mother and my aunts didn't  get kicked by police horses and thrown to the  ground for you to go round treating me as an  imbecile. Furthermore if war comes no one will  bother to distinguish between men and women. Ask the women  of Guernica whether anyone cared what sex they were  when they bombed the market place. Getting  Isaac out is part of fighting Hitler and I  won't be left out of it."
  She broke off and they turned to look at  Steiner. The old man was leaning back in his chair  and laughing at some personal and highly amusing  joke.
  "Wonderful!" he said. "Milenka would be  delighted. You should really take her  to Pettovice, Marek. She and Ellen are  sisters under the skin."
  Marek frowned, remembering his first sight of  Ellen at the well and how he had thought that one day  he might do just that.
  "Don't you see how unbearable it is for me  to put you into danger?"' he said in a low voice.
  But she gave no quarter. "Don't you see  how unbearable it is for me not to be allowed  to help?"' she answered. "Isaac and I are  friends."
  Friends? thought Marek, caught by the passion in her  voice. Or something more? He had seen how  Isaac followed her with his eyes.
  
  He picked up his glass, drained  it, and smiled at her. Then: "Since you seem  to be an expert on Chomsky's passport,  did you happen to see what he put under  Distinguishing Characteristics?"'
  She beamed back at him. "My
Hungarian's not very good but I did look and he  hasn't mentioned it. Which is just as well. Not that  Isaac will be travelling in his swimming things, but  all the same ..."

  Isaac turned over in his bunk and gazed, from  under the huge bandage which covered his head, at  Ellen. The soft light of the luxurious sleeping  compartment shone on her fluted cap, her snowy  apron. She looked like a nurse specially  lowered from heaven for his benefit and he did not know  how he could bear to leave her.
  "You're being angelic, again," he said.  "Hush. You're supposed to be asleep."
  Everything had gone smoothly. Marek had hired  an ambulance and booked the sleeper. He himself  had driven them to the station wearing a Red Cross  armband, and they had settled Isaac into his  quarantined compartment. Then Marek had driven the  ambulance away, and returned dressed in his own  clothes with his pigskin suitcase and his passport  which stated truthfully that he was Marcus  Altenburg, a musician. If asked he would  have said that he was travelling to a music festival  in Warsaw, but he was not asked.
  Ellen could see him now, standing in the corridor  unobtrusively keeping watch. He had booked  a first-class compartment next to Isaac's and hers,  and seemed to have it to himself. After they left the train,  he and Isaac would go on on foot and she would  return to Hallendorf.
  Isaac, wearing a spare pair of Chomsky's  pyjamas, lay back on the pillow. He was  certain that he would be apprehended, either at the two  checkpoints they faced on the train or as he  reached the Baltic, and if they tried to send him  back to Germany he had decided he would kill  himself.
  But meanwhile there was Ellen.
  He put out a hand and she took it and held it.  She could see his thoughts working across his face as  clearly as if he had uttered them.
  
  "Ellen, if I get out ..."
  "When."
  He managed a smile. "When. Why don't  we start a restaurant? I think I'd make quite  a good chef."
  "Maybe. But you're a violinist."
  "I was. I'm not any more--I tried  to make Marek see that it's over. In the camp,  after they found out I was a violinist ..." but he  could never talk about what they had done to his hands.  "When I cut my finger the other day and it  didn't matter, it was such a relief! I would  work really hard. Think about it, Ellen. If I  had something to look forward to ... something we could do  together, it might be worthwhile trying to stay  alive. I've loved you from the moment I saw you  kneeling there beside that extraordinary suitcase."
  "Oh Isaac, I love you too but--"'
  "Yes, I know. Not like that. But that might come.  I think we'd make a splendid team. Perhaps  Marek would put some money into it."
  "Marek is convinced that you're one of the best  violinists in the world and that you'll play again."
  He shook his head. Pretending to close his  eyes, he could still see her, her head bent over  her book. He had hoped she would lie down on  the bunk beside him; he wouldn't have laid a finger on  her but it would have been something to remember while he  sat huddled in the evil-smelling lean-tos in which  the rivermen slept as they poled down towards the  sea.
  "It's an hour still till the border,  Isaac. Get some rest."
  She looked up and saw Marek's silhouette  against the window. He was still keeping watch and it was  all she could do not to follow him into the corridor  to draw comfort simply from his quiet presence, his  size.
  But they got through the first checkpoint without  difficulty. The halt between Austria and  Czechoslovakia was only a huddle of shacks  and a road barrier. The two men who came along  the corridor were friendly enough: Czechs with broad  cheekbones; peasants without an axe to grind.  Ellen gave them her passport and Chomsky's,  putting her finger to her lips to show that her patient  was asleep.
  They scarcely looked at one of the  passports, held the other long enough to make  Ellen's heart thump almost unbearably in her
  
chest.
  "You're British," said one of the soldiers,  in heavily accented German, and Ellen saw that it  was her passport he was holding.
  "Yes."
  "Your government should help us," he said.  "They should support us against Hitler," and handed  it back.
  The first hurdle was over then.

  She slipped out into the corridor and Marek, in  his role as a well-to-do passenger starting a  flirtation with a pretty nurse, turned to make  way for her. They were travelling through wooded  countryside towards Olomouc and Marek told  her about the old woman who had sung the wrong  songs to Steiner.
  "Only they weren't the wrong songs, we were  being absurd. They were the songs of her youth."
  People started going past them towards the dining car,  among them a heavily painted woman in a fur  cape who threw Marek a sultry glance from under  clogged eyelashes.
  "I'm sorry you can't come and try the  quail's eggs in aspic."
  "I don't want to leave Isaac."  "No." He had seen how tenderly she  leant over Isaac, held his hand. "I'll  bring him a bottle of champagne. He can drink  it in his bed."
  "Like Chekhov," she said. "I was glad  he died drinking champagne."
  "Yes. A good man." He pointed out of the  window at a stream just visible in the gathering dusk.  "Do you see that river?"'
  "Yes."
  "My grandfather used to fish in there; it flows  past our house about a hundred miles to the  west."
  "The Russian anarchist? The one who wanted  to blow up the general but your grandmother wouldn't let  him?"'
  "That's the one. He loved fishing and he loved  Chekhov. He was always quoting what Chekhov  said about fishing."
  "God won't subtract from man's  appointed span the time spent fishing," she said.  "Is that the one?"'
  Marek nodded. "One day about two years before  I was born he was sitting by the bank with his rod and
  
my mother came and told them what she'd just  heard in town. That Chekhov was dead. My  grandfather was absolutely shattered. "To think that I  should outlive Chekhov," he kept saying--and he  didn't go fishing once for the rest of the summer."
  "He was such a gentleman--Chekhov, I  mean," said Ellen. "I always think of him  coughing into little twists of sugar paper down in  Yalta and writing to his wife in Moscow  telling her not to worry; telling her to stay where she  was and to do what she wanted. So he was an odd  man for an anarchist to love so much."
  "Perhaps. But he was not a very good anarchist, if  you remember. And Chekhov had been to the penal  colony in Sakhalin and written about the fate  of the prisoners there. My grandfather was very influenced  by that."
  She was silent, thinking of the strange mix of  ancestors that had gone to make the man beside her:  Russian and English, German and Czech. No  wonder he was at home in borderlands.
  "Is this the sort of country Pettelsdorf  is in?"'
  "Yes. The woods are denser perhaps."
  She thought of it, this tantalising demesne to which  only the wounded were admitted. "You'll miss it  when you go to America." He was planning to sail  as soon as Isaac was on his way; this was almost the  last time she would see him.
  Marek shrugged. "It's best not to get too  attached to places in the kind of world we live in  now."
  "Or to people, perhaps."
  She was silent, remembering her mother's latest  letter. They were digging trenches in Hyde Park, she  had said, and asked her daughter to come home at  once if there was any sort of crisis.
  "Or to people," he agreed.
  "Only I don't know how you would write  music without attachment," she went on. "I  suppose it would come out like Buddhist music;  sort of prayer wheels tinkling in the wind and those  sad horns. Not that I know anything about it," she  added, suddenly embarrassed.
  "On the contrary, you clearly know a lot about  it--and about most other things," he said, and wondered  why he wasn't simply kissing her instead of  discussing Chekhov and the Nature of Attachment.  "Even though you do look like a rather delectable ham  with that ruffle on your head."
  
  "It's not a ruffle; it's a proper  nurse's cap," she said crossly. "I thought  if I got one that wasn't stodgy it would have a  resale value. After all, I bought it with your  money and I want to pay you back."
  More passengers came past, bound for the last  sitting of dinner. "Are you certain you won't come  and join me? We'd be back long before we got  to the border."
  It was hard to refuse; harder than she could have  imagined, but she remembered the fear in Isaac's  eyes and shook her head. "Tell me what you  ate, won't you? In detail?"'
  "I promise."
  But still he didn't go. Was he waiting for  someone?
  "Isaac is convinced he won't ever play the  violin again because of something they did to his hands in the  camp," she said. "But I watched him when he  was helping me in the kitchen. I could swear his hands  are all right now; he made piped eclairs and you  can't do those without good coordination. I wish you'd  make him see. He wants us to start a  restaurant."
  He frowned. "Us? You mean you and him?"'  Isaac must be seriously gone in love then, or  mad. "Do you want to do that?"' he asked  curtly.
  She shook her head. She was about to make her  way back to her compartment when a woman in a tight  red satin skirt, a frilly gold lam`e  blouse and an outsize feather boa came along the  corridor--a blonde of unbelievable  vulgarity who smiled unashamedly at Marek.
  And whose smile was returned. Marek excused  himself and to Ellen's chagrin followed the woman's  waggling behind towards the dining car.
  One hour, another. The passengers returned  from dinner but Marek did not come in with the promised  champagne. Then the train slowed down and stopped  in the kind of place that was the same all over  Europe: custom sheds, army huts in which men  sat playing cards, road barriers--and a station at  which no one who could help it ever got out.
  Ellen opened her nurse's bag, took out a  syringe partly filled with a red liquid, and stood  by the door. Two border guards got on: a young  private and a sergeant. The Poles had been  fought over too often: there was nothing casual about  these lean-faced, unsmiling men.
  
  Ellen's door slid open. The  sergeant went on up the train; the private  entered.
  "Passports, please."
  She handed him hers, then Chomsky's. The  soldier motioned her aside. He wanted to see  who was in the bed.
  Ellen picked up her syringe. Instead of  impeding him, she touched the soldier's arm,  indicating that she needed more blood from her patient,  soliciting his help.
  For a moment it looked as though it would work. She  had seen so many strong men keel over in a faint  at first-aid classes, and the contents of the syringe,  mixed in the art room at Hallendorf, were a good  imitation of the real thing. But though the soldier made  a gesture of distaste, he did not retreat.
  "Turn him round," he ordered.
  Ellen touched Isaac's shoulder and he  groaned.
  "Hurry," barked the Pole.
  But before she could obey there was the sound of a  dreadful and ear-splitting scream from the next  compartment. A second scream followed, and the  soldier elbowed Ellen aside and went out into the  corridor. Seconds later the door was pushed  open and a woman hurled herself into the soldier's  arms. Her blonde hair was matted with sweat,  her scarlet lipstick was a smear across her  trembling mouth--and she was totally and  spectacularly naked.
  "Help me! Help me!" she yelled.  "Protect me! He tried to rape me, the  brute!"
  Her thin arms closed round the soldier's neck  like a vice: the scent of her cheap perfume, her  stale deodorant, pervaded the corridor.
  The Pole was twenty-one years old and  prepared for anything but this.
  More doors opened; distressed passengers  appeared; an old man and his wife ... the  sleeping car attendant. Then the door of the  compartment from which the woman had erupted opened once  more--to reveal Marek in a loosely knotted  bathrobe, his hair on end. The sight of him  caused the woman to become even more frenzied.  "You must take me with you!" she screamed at the  soldier. "You must look after me!" She began  to cry, rubbing her face into his, pressing her  body against the rough uniform. "I'm afraid!"
  
  Trying to free himself--he dropped the  passports.
  "She's lying," said Marek. "She said  she'd do it for a hundred marks. She's a lying  bitch."
  More passengers appeared, and the guard ... then the  sergeant who was in charge of the young Pole. Speaking  furiously to the soldier, he tried to loosen the  woman's hold, but she only clung tighter,  babbling and weeping.
  The sergeant spat, then pulled her free with a  vicious gesture. "Out," he gestured to his  underling. "Out!"--and picked up the two  passports and handed them to Ellen.
  Five minutes later, the train was on its  way.

  Marek had chosen the town of Kalun for an  overnight stop before the journey on foot to the  River Rats.
  Situated on a tributary of the Vistula some  two hundred kilometres north of Warsaw, it  was an austere and somewhat gloomy place which had  survived the wars, sieges and other horrors of the  past centuries with its buildings more or less  intact.
  In the guide books, Kalun advertised itself  proudly as a spa, but it was some way from rivalling  Baden-Baden with its clientele from the Almanac  de Gotha and its Kurpark full of  magnificent trees. No royal visitors  had come to Kalun incognito and raced pretty  girls through the woods in wheelbarrows; the  Empress Sissi had not taken the small  grape cure there as she had done in Merano--and  Goethe, who had spent thirteen summers in  Karlsbad, had almost certainly never heard of  Kalun, let alone set foot in it.
  But the Poles, ever a hopeful race, had  dug out a series of springs in the rocks above the  little town and sent their sulphurous and  evil-smelling water through into the bath houses of the  spa hotels. Doctors had been persuaded  to come and offer treatments for an impressive list  of ailments; wheelchairs plied to and from the pump  rooms, and a whole posse of attendants  pummelled and immersed and weighed the sick and  elderly for a quarter of the fee required in the  spas of France and Germany.
  Marek had booked three rooms in the Kalun
  
Spa Hotel, an austere building with  endless corridors and cavernous rooms permeated  with the smell of hydrogen sulphide. The arrival  of Isaac with his nurse in this sepulchral  building passed without incident: the passport  numbers were registered; the ambulance returned to the  garage. Tomorrow a telegram would come  necessitating Isaac's return for family  reasons, but now he was requested to select the  ailment for which he wished to be treated.
  Consulting the impressive list on a kind of  menu pinned to his door, Isaac  unhesitatingly chose otorhinolaryngological  disease, something which no one could prove he did not  have, and was borne off in a sedan chair by two  gleeful male nurses for a course of  hydrotherapy and massive immersion in  radioactive mud. The disease had been losing  ground among clients and his choice had given great  pleasure.
  Marek had tried to persuade Millie to stay  till the morning and travel back part of the way with  Ellen; the girls seemed to get on well together.  But Millie had an engagement in a Berlin  cabaret; she was returning in a few hours on the  sleeper. Ellen had suggested she come and rest in  her room but though Millie came she was not  exactly resting. She was in fact sprawling on  Ellen's bed, chain-smoking de Reskes and  reminiscing about the days in Berlin when she had known  Marcus von Altenburg and his friend.
  "They were such fun. You should have seen Isaac in  his evening clothes all dolled up for a concert--he  always had a white carnation; it had to be white, red  wasn't any good--and handmade shoes. You'd think  he was a proper little monkey but when he played--  my God, it would make the hair stand up on the  nape of your neck. That soulful music and then  he'd be out on the town till the small hours,  dancing and cracking jokes. It's awful to think  what they've done to him."
  "Do you ever think of leaving Germany?"'
  "I think of it. But I've a mother and a brother  --my father pushed off. Working in the cabaret helps  ... and sometimes ... you know, I get other work.  I can make good money like that." She stretched out  her arm and watched the gold bangle on her wrist  with pleasure. "He had no call to give me  this; he paid me for what I did and I'd have done  it for nothing. But Marcus is like that; he'd give
  
anyone the skin off his back. People used  to think he was rich, but he wasn't, he just never  seemed to count up what he had."
  "How long did you know them in Berlin?"'  "Oh, most of the time Marcus was there--and I  went on seeing Isaac till the Nazis came.  They were such friends those two; it did you good to see  them. So different ... Isaac never stopped  finding people to help Marcus; it was he that got him a  break as a conductor. And they weren't ever jealous  of each other like people so often are when they're in the  same line of business. Even over women, though  it must have been hard for Isaac."
  "What must?"'
  "Well, he'd pick up some girl in a  nightclub maybe and bring her back to his table,  and chat her up--he was always falling for women--and  Marcus wouldn't say much; you could see him making  himself quiet, sort of trying to be like one of his  trees so that Isaac could have her, but by the end of the  evening it was Marcus the girl wanted."
  "It doesn't seem fair."
  "No. But what's fair about life--turning  a nice bloke like Isaac into an outcast because  he's got a nip in his foreskin." She broke  off. "Sorry, don't mind me. But I can  tell you, when I met Marcus at the station and he  asked me if I'd be willing to make a bit of a  diversion if it was needed so as to help Isaac  get through, I was as pleased as Punch. And I'll  tell you though you haven't asked: no, I  didn't do it with Marek, not on the train--not ever,  in point of fact, though I'd have done it like a  shot. It was strictly business."
  Ellen smiled at her, "I wish you'd stay  longer, Millie. You'll be so tired travelling  back tonight."
  But Millie shook her head. "I have to go,  Ellen, but if ever you come to Berlin ..."
  "Or you to London."
  There was a knock at the door and an elderly  maid announced the arrival of the taxi for the station.
  The girls embraced.
  "Take care," said Millie. And at the  door: "Are you in love with Isaac?"'
  Ellen shook her head. "No. I'm  terribly fond of him, but--"'
  "Oh that!" Millie waved a dismissive  arm. "He's got it badly over you."
  "It's just because I found him and sheltered him.
  
As soon as he's out in the world again  he'll forget me."
  "Maybe." Millie put on her scarlet  beret, adjusted the angle. "What's funny  is that I don't see Marek trying to be a  tree."

  The dining room of the Kalun Spa Hotel was  a cavernous room whose heavy swagged curtains,  dim chandeliers and dusty Turkish carpets gave  off an air of sombre melancholy. It was as  though here the authorities had finally given up  hope of putting the town on the map of Great  Spas of Europe, had accepted the fact that  Queen Marie of Rumania or Alfonso of  Spain would never now drink the evil waters of the  pump room. The few diners already assembled were in  the last stages of disintegration, sitting in  wheelchairs or precariously propped on  cushions with their walking frames beside them; the  smell of hydrogen sulphide blotted out the  odour of frying onions from the kitchens and the  waiters were as ancient and arthritic as the guests.
  Entering the dining room, Ellen saw Marek at  a table by the window scribbling something in the large  menu, bound in maroon leather, provided by the  management. As she reached him, and he got to his  feet, she realised that what he had been writing,  between the announcements of liver broth with dumplings,  boiled beef with noodles and other delights--  was music; and for a moment she felt as though a  door had been opened on his other life; a life  from which she must always be excluded whatever he wrote  on menus.
  "Please don't let me disturb you," she  said.
  He shook his head, put away his propelling  pencil. "It's of no importance. I'll  finish later."
  "Like Mozart," she said.
  He grinned. "Oh, exactly like
Mozart."
  "I mean he was supposed to write anywhere and  not mind being disturbed."
  He shrugged. "It's not so mysterious, you know,  composing. If you were writing a letter and I came  in, you wouldn't fuss." He pulled out a chair  for her. "You look charming. Where did you get that  delightful dress?"'
  "I made it; the material comes from an old
  
sari; it's a Gujerati design."
  Marek raised his eyebrows. The workmanship  of the short blue silk jacket, the swirling  skirt with its stylised design of roses and stars    and tiny birds, was remarkable. "I'm afraid  you're unsettling the old gentlemen. I can hear  the crunch of vertebrae as they try to turn their  heads."
  "Perhaps it's you they're looking at because you're  healthy and can get in and out of your dinner jacket  by yourself. It makes one feel guilty, doesn't  it?"'
  "Our turn will come," said Marek. "And  Isaac? Is he on his way?"'
  She shook her head. "He got ambushed by the  masseuses. I think the excitement of having  someone with an otorhinolaryngological complaint  went to their heads. They're giving him a special  supper in his room and weighing him and God knows  what. I tried to persuade him to come down but he  saw two people he thought were policemen in the  corridor. I'm sure they were only fire  engine inspectors, but I think the thought of tomorrow is  making things hard. It must be so awful to start  running again."
  "He'll be all right, you'll see. Let me  pour you some champagne. The wine list was not  encouraging but this is Dom Perignon, and it  makes a very acceptable aperitif."
  They clinked glasses. "Water is for the  feet," she said obediently. And then: "Where  does it come from, that toast?"'
  "I got it from Stravinsky. He always says  he conducts best with a couple of glasses of  cognac inside him. Mind you, I could show you a  place where water isn't for the feet."
  "At Pettelsdorf." It was not a question.  "Yes. There's a well in a field behind the  orchard--it has the clearest and coldest water in  Bohemia. The village girls go there after their  wedding and draw a glass of it to take to their new  husbands. It's supposed to ensure a long and  faithful marriage."
  Not only the village girls, he thought.  Lenitschka had told him of his mother, making her  way between the apple trees, shielding her glass,  when the Captain brought her as a newlywed from  Prague.
  But their waiter had now managed to reach their  table. He seemed to be in his early eighties; his
  
grey face suffused with anxiety as he  set down their plates of soup. Beneath the circles  of congealing grease, they could make out a posse of  liver dumplings, like the drowned heads of ancient  ghouls.
  "At least one doesn't feel that Isaac  is missing anything," said Ellen. "I  promised I'd go up later and see that he's  all right. A nurse shouldn't abscond to the dining  room like this."
  "I'm glad she has. I shouldn't like to dine  in this place alone."
  "I just want you to know that if Isaac can get  himself to England my mother and my aunts will put him  up till he finds his feet. Or sponsor  him. I've written to them."
  "And they've agreed?"'
  "I haven't heard yet--I only wrote  a few days ago. But you can rely on it."
  "A compliment--that you can speak for them so  certainly."
  "Well, I can. It's not being in need that's the  problem in Gowan Terrace. It's not being in  need." She bent her head, frowning momentarily.  She had still not answered Kendrick's letter begging  her to come to Vienna. And because Gowan Terrace  made her think of her brave mother's insistence on  facing facts, she said: "Have you booked your  passage yet?"'
  "There's a boat sailing from Genoa on the  tenth. I'm trying to get a berth on that." And  then: "I'm running away."
  "That isn't a thing you usually do, I  imagine."
  "No. But the Americans were very good to me;  there's an orchestra there that I shall enjoy licking  into shape--and once I'm there I can put  pressure on my parents to join me."
  They had been talking German throughout the  journey on account of Isaac, and without thinking he  had continued to do so though they were alone. Now he  thought how sweet and funny it sounded, this  intelligent girl speaking so softly and fluently  but with a trace of an accent that seemed to come less  from England than from some Austrian country  province that he could not place.
  "You know, your German is amazing. You can't  have learnt it at college?"'
  "No. I learnt it from my grandfather's  housekeeper. I wanted her to be my grandmother--
  
she had to be. Talking to her was like entering  another country, a country I needed."
  He nodded, remembering suddenly the words of a  pedantic professor in Berlin. "Love is  a matter of linguistics," the old man had said.  "It is completely different in French or  German or Spanish ... even in the dark, even  when no words are spoken."
  She had been struggling valiantly with the soup,  not wanting to hurt the feelings of the waiter, but now  she laid down her spoon. "It makes one  wonder if Fr@aulein Waaltraut has a  sister working in the kitchens."
  The waiter, sad but unsurprised, removed  their plates and tottered back with two helpings of  gristly grey beef surrounded by a mass of  self-adhesive noodles.
  "Perhaps we should have had your piece?"' said  Ellen, looking down at the staves of music  Marek had written between the mythical  alternatives to their entr@ee.
  "I think perhaps the answer is another bottle  of champagne."
  He was right, thought Ellen, as he so often was.  Champagne might not be the natural choice to go  with what they were eating, but it was beginning to put a  barrier between her and the knowledge that this was the last time she would  see Marek. When they parted now she would be  casual--she would be British--and that was what all  along she had been aiming for.
  "Perhaps we'd better skip the dessert,"  said Marek. "Just have coffee?"'
  But the waiter, when they suggested this, was  desperate. He had, he announced, a  special treat for Mademoiselle, his own  speciality, perfected when he spent a year in  France as a young man. He wished--indeed he  implored her--to let him make a cr@epe  suzette.
  "I don't know if he should be doing that," said  Ellen worriedly. "It's quite tricky."
  But they could not resist his entreaties, and when at  last he reappeared pushing the trolley with its  copper pan of folded crepes, its spirit lamp,  its small bottle of orange liqueur and  large bottle of brandy, his look of pride was  such that they could only be glad they had relented.
  With a shaking hand, he poured a measure of  orange liqueur on to the crepes and then a  measure--indeed a very large measure--of brandy.
  
  Then, with what he clearly intended as  a flourish, he lit a match and put it to the  contents of the pan. There was a whooshing noise of  surprising loudness--a sheet of flame shot  upwards--and Ellen lifted her head with a small  and startled cry.
  Marek's response was so instantaneous that those  watching could have sworn that there was no gap between the  moment when the girl's hair caught fire and the  moment when he picked up the champagne bottle  and hurled its contents at her head. Then he  pulled the tablecloth away, and as the glasses and  lamps and cutlery crashed to the floor, he  wrapped the damask tightly round her head,  pulling her towards him to pat out the last possible  smouldering embers.
  They were surrounded now by people: the panic-stricken  waiter, flapping his napkin; a maid trying  to pull the fire extinguisher from the wall; one of the  diners hobbling towards them on crutches.
  "Go away!" commanded Marek. "Everyone.  Now."
  "But--"'
  "Go!"
  He bent over her, unwrapped her ... and  saw a drenched girl missing a number of curls  ... a girl with startled eyes--but without the burns  he had dreaded.
  "Thank God! Come on--let's get out of  here. You need some air."
  He put his arm round her and led her out through the  hall and into the deserted garden. It was growing dark,  but he found a bench under an acacia tree lit  by a single lantern and made her sit down while  he examined her face more carefully, pushing the  hair back off her forehead. There was only the  smallest of red marks, but as he searched, one  imperilled curl came off in his hand, and he put  it in his pocket.
  "You're soaked," he said, and took off his  jacket and wrapped it round her shoulders.
  "I'm all right, honestly. It's the waiter  I'm worried about. I don't want to get him  into trouble."
  "Interceding for that old fool comes later,"  said Marek sitting down beside her. "Quite a lot  later."
  She put up a hand to her hair, let it  fall. "It's best not to think how I look."
  "I'll tell you how you look," he said
  
gently. "Flamb`eed ...  asymmetrical ... and like Madame
Malmaison in the rain."
  "Madame Malmaison?"'
  "My mother's favourite rose. Very tousled,  very fragrant. She sheds petals as you shed  curls but there are always plenty more."
  He had spoken in a voice she had not heard  him use before and it seemed to her that she must now be as  silent and unmoving as she had ever been. That she  must accept obediently what the next moments  brought and that this uncomplaining acceptance was the most  important thing she had ever had to do.
  But it was not necessary. He did not move away or  make a brisk remark. What she had to accept  was different: it was the touch of his hands as he turned  her face towards his ... and then the homecoming, the  moment that was out of time, yet contained the whole of  time. What she had to accept was his kiss.

  They had walked for a day and part of a night and now  were on their way again: two Jews in long dark  coats wearing wide-brimmed hats, with pedlar's  packs on their backs.
  No one stopped them or asked their business;  they were too poor. The Polish forest had seen  wanderers and fugitives and pilgrims since the  dawn of time. This was the Urwald with the bisons that  Marek had craved as a boy, angry that they were not  to be found as far west as Pettelsdorf. Once  some children in a village threw stones at them, but  when the taller of the "Jews" turned round they  stopped and ran away.
  "It's not Jews they are stoning," Marek  had said quietly, seeing Isaac's face.
"It's strangers."
  In their packs they had bread, pepper to turn  away dogs, trinkets and prayer shawls.  Marek's staff was sharpened to a lethal point but  he carried no gun. They had spent the night in  a brushwood shelter. Scooping up dry leaves  and ferns to make a bed, they found something  metallic and round which glinted in the moonlight: the  greatcoat button of a Russian soldier from the  Battle of Tannenberg. It could as easily have  belonged to one of Napoleon's fusiliers or a  marauding Turk. The whole history of Eastern  Europe could be unearthed here beneath the leaf mould and
  
pine needles of these woods.
  On the afternoon of the second day they came to the  river. It was already wide here; a silent silver  highway which would join the tributaries of the  Vistula and the great lakes, on its journey to the  sea. Here and there swathes had been cut in the dark  phalanx of the trees and the logs trundled down the  ramps. They were not far now from the men they had come  to find.
  Marek was looking with pleasure at the herons  fishing in the shallows, the trout jumping for flies,  but Isaac saw only the dreaded journey in  appalling conditions with men of whose skills and  traditions he knew nothing--and at the end  uncertainty again, and danger.
  "Listen, Marek ... my violin is in  Berlin with my landlady. The Stradivarius, I  mean--the others I gave to the Institute."
  "With your grandmother's pigtail still safe  inside, I hope?"'
  "Yes." But Isaac was in a serious  mood. "If anything happens to me and you can get  it out, I want Ellen to have it."
  "Ellen? But she doesn't play, does  she?"'
  "She doesn't need to; she is  music," said Isaac, and Marek frowned at the  uncharacteristically high-flown language. It was  serious, then, Isaac's passion; in Ellen lay  this tormented man's hope for the future.
  "Very well, I'll see to it. But you will get  out. You'll get to K@onigsberg; you'll get on  to the boat; you'll get your papers and in no time  at all you'll be parading about in your tails on a  concert platform."
  Isaac shook his head. "It's over,
Marek, I've told you. I shan't play again.  But if I could have her ... If she would ..."  He stopped and turned to look up at his friend.  "I've never minded in the past, not really. I  always understood why they preferred you. But this time,  Marek, please ..."
  He broke off, ashamed. They walked on for  another hour and came to a clearing. Piles of  felled timber were being pushed down a wooden chute  towards the water, steadied by men in dark hats and  sideburns wielding their long spiked poles.  More men, calling to each other in Yiddish, were  balancing on the logs already in the river, getting  ready to surround the floating island with a ring of
  
chains. A raft with an open-sided  lean-to on the deck was moored by the pontoon  bridge; inside they could see piles of sacking  and a crate of chickens.
  "That's where you'll sleep," said Marek,  grinning. "But don't worry--the chickens  won't trouble you for long; they're the larder."
  On a slight rise, commanding a view of the  river in both directions was a neat wooden hut  surrounded by a fence, the only permanent  structure in this floating world. Uri, the  overseer, was old and had laid claim to a piece  of Polish earth. There were sunflowers in the tiny  garden and a plot of vegetables. He had been  married once and came here between journeys.
  He was waiting, sitting on a wooden bench.  Marek's greeting was in Polish--neither he  nor Isaac spoke more than a few words of  Yiddish.
  "I thought you wouldn't come," said Uri.  "There were troubles," said Marek.
  "Yes. There are always troubles. So this is the  man."
  "Yes."
  Uri nodded. He had blue eyes,  unexpected in the dark bearded face. Isaac  stood before him with bowed head. Alienated,  grateful and apprehensive, he said: "I have  only the ordinary words. Thank you."
  He spoke in German but Uri understood.  "It is enough." He pointed down to the bustle  of the river. "We leave in the morning; there's  another load coming down, still."
  "You've a fine team," said Marek, looking  with admiration at the men freeing a log jam that had  built up round the end of the raft. To make the  journey which so appalled Isaac had been  Marek's dream since childhood.
  "Yes. They'll be knocking off soon; the  light's going."
  He led them into the hut; there was a table spread  with newspaper, a few chairs, a bunk bed.  On the walls were hooks for coats, lanterns;  on a shelf, lay something wrapped in a shawl from  which Isaac averted his eyes.
  Uri went to a ramshackle cupboard and took  out a grimy vodka bottle and three glasses  which he filled almost to the brim.
  "Lechaim!" he said, and they raised their  glasses and repeated the age-old Hebrew
  
toast: "To Life!"
  The men came up later when they had washed and  said their prayers. Marek had brought what he could  carry: smoked sausage, tobacco, a few  small gifts ... Another bottle of vodka  was produced; they drank it neat with pepper. When  they talked it was in Yiddish with a smattering of  Polish, a few words of German, but they did not  talk much; they ate and drank and watched their  protege' and the man who had brought him.
  But when the level in the bottle had sunk almost  to nothing, Uri rose and went to the shelf at the  back and fetched something wrapped in a piece of  coloured cloth.
  "Do you play?"' he asked Isaac,  carefully unwrapping the violin.
  Marek watched with narrowed eyes. He had  told the old man nothing about Isaac; only that  he was a Jew and a fugitive.
  Isaac pushed back his chair, trying to distance  himself from the object on the table.
  "No," he said violently. "No, I do  not play."
  There was a murmur of disappointment. Uri  spread out his fingers, bent with rheumatism, to show  why he could no longer make music.
  And suddenly Marek was filled with rage.  He got up, towering over Isaac, and the words  he spoke were spat at him as to an enemy.
  "How dare you!" he said to the man who was his  dearest friend. "How dare you be so arrogant--so  mean and ungiving. They're risking their lives for  you and you're too small-minded to play for them."
  Isaac was dumbfounded, cringing in his chair.  "I told you ... I can't ... my hands  ..."
  "I'm not interested in your hands. No one is  interested in them. Dear God, I'm not asking you  to give a concert performance. These people are tired--they  want a fiddler. A fiddler on the roof as your people  have always had--but I suppose you're too grand for  that."
  Isaac had grown white with shock. Marek's  contempt had never been turned against him before. The  men were silent, not understanding.
  "Oh go to hell," said Marek, turning  away.
  But Isaac had picked up the violin ... the  bow ... he was testing the strings. An old country  fiddle, but lovingly cared for. He put it to his
  
chin; began to tune it.
  Then again he lost heart, put it down. But now  it was too late; the men were watching him; he saw  the hunger in their eyes. He could not speak to them,  he knew nothing of their religion.
  But he knew their music.
  He did not even know that he knew it till he  began. What grandmother, what ancient retainer in  some shetl had hummed the lullaby he played  now? Where did it come from, the lilting wedding song that  followed? Isaac's fingers found the old dances,  the old serenades ... they found the music that the  Zigeuners had borrowed from the Jews, and  altered, and given back again ... and the melodies  crooned beside the wagons that made their way west  across the steppes, fleeing from pogroms ...
  His fingers were stiff but it didn't matter; the  vodka had helped, and Marek's rage.
  When he stopped at last they didn't thank  him or clap. They blinked themselves back into the world  and sighed--and one man, toothless and scarred, leant  forward and touched him for a moment on the arm.
  "Wait," said Isaac. "I'll play you  one more tune. A new one."
  Uri translated; the men settled themselves again.  But after he had retuned the fiddle, Isaac  didn't start at once. He went to the door and  opened it wide to the starry night.
  The men were puzzled. They had enough fresh air  in their lives; the whine of the mosquitoes, the cry  of a forest animal in pain filled the room.
  But Isaac wanted the river. He wanted  to look out on it as Marek had looked out at the  Hudson all that time ago.
  Then he began to play.

  The villa which Count Stallenbach's cousin had  put at Brigitta's disposal was sufficiently  comfortable for the diva and her party to spend another  week by the W@orthersee even after the search for  Marcus had ended in failure.
  Now however their return to Vienna could not be  put off any longer. Leaning back on the  cushions of the first-class compartment, Brigitta  surveyed the rehearsals which awaited her with deep  foreboding. They had given her the Hamburg  beanpole for her Octavian, the  r@ep@etiteur was new and inexperienced, and her  deadly rival was already spreading slanders about the  state of Brigitta's voice.
  
  But the real disaster was Feuerbach.  Attempts to get the regular conductor of the  Philharmonic to return from his summer  engagements abroad had failed, and she was  supposed to work with an opinionated upstart who  wasn't fit to have charge of a band of superannuated  dustmen.
  Staub, sitting beside her, was regretting the  failure of their quest. He had worked on his  libretto solidly ... had framed the story of  burning Troy in the words of the soldier in the  wooden horse returning home and trying to get  someone to listen to him. A sort of Ancient  Mariner whom no one heeded, except one small  boy. Altenburg would have loved it, he was sure.
  Benny as usual was doing his sums. He would  stay for the gala and then leave for the States.  Brigitta on her own was no use to him; maybe  he could get her a short tour as a Lieder singer  next year but that was the extent of it.
  "All change next stop. All change at
St Polzen," said the guard, coming down the  corridor. Why this obscure town had been  chosen as an important railway junction, no  one had ever discovered; certainly it wasn't for the  facilities it offered to travellers.
  "You'd think they could run a direct service  to Vienna," grumbled Brigitta, and stood  by while the men took down her hat boxes, her  make-up case, her furs and portmanteau.  Ufra, who travelled third class with the dog,  put on her coat.
  The train slowed down ... stopped. Ufra  opened the carriage door and Puppchen leapt  down, gave vent to a frenzy of barking, tugged the  lead out of her hand and raced across the platform.
  "For goodness sake--can't you control the wretched  animal," scolded Brigitta, descending in  her turn.
  Her maid stood looking after the dog, now  leaping up and down in front of a man sitting  alone on a wooden bench.
  "No," said Ufra. "As a matter of  fact, I can't."

  Marek had travelled overnight from Warsaw.  He had seen Isaac off down river and now had  broken the journey at this junction where he had  left his father's car when he'd picked up the  ambulance. He only had to go across the road,
  
fetch the car and drive to Pettelsdorf  to pick up his things and say goodbye to his  family. He had already taken his leave of Steiner  --and of Hallendorf.
  But he was tired now that the adventure was over,  and for a moment he sat down on a bench in the sun.  There was a train to Hallendorf in twenty  minutes--he could get on it and in three hours be  there. Would she be serving supper at the hatch, her  burnt curls hidden under her hygienic hat ...  or leading her modest girls into the lake?  Closing his eyes, he let the memories come:  Ellen garnering gym shoes that first morning ...  feeding Aniella on cornflowers ... taking a  splinter out of Sabine's foot.
  And then he was back in the sulphur-smelling  garden at Kalun as she lifted her face for his  kiss--and this now was not remembering, it was "being  there". During those moments as he held her in his  arms he had wondered if at last he need no  longer envy his parents; if he too had found the  supreme simplicity of a total and committed  love. Leading her back to her room afterwards,  putting the key in the lock for her, he had begun  to speak--and then the neighbouring door had opened and  Isaac had appeared, tied up in some  ridiculous medical corset, and as Ellen went  forward to help him, the moment had passed.
  Marek had not answered Isaac's appeal by the  river. He did not believe that  self-sacrifice was a sound principle on which  to base one's life. And yet ... As they had  washed in the stream that first morning, Marek had seen  the concentration camp mark branded on Isaac's  arm. Was something special owed perhaps to such a man?
  Ten minutes before the train came back ...  he could still go. There was nearly a fortnight before he  sailed; much could be sorted out in that time.
  But now, on the other platform, a train was  drawing in--not the one to Hallendorf, but the one from  there. How absurd that everyone had to change always in  this uninteresting little town.
  A carriage door opened. Marek heard the  fierce yapping of a little dog and then the creature was  upon him, leaping up, rolling over, wagging his tail  in a paroxysm of welcome.
  And after him, of course, came Brigitta,  her arms thrown out.
  "Marcus! Darling! But this is incredible!  We've been looking for you everywhere!"
  
  Staub came forward to shake hands, then  Benny, much hampered by the antics of Puppchen,  whose sole achievement seemed to be to remember  Marcus for remarkable periods of time.
  "It's a miracle!" said Briggita.  "It's destiny, finding you. A portent. Now  I know you'll come to Vienna and--"'
  "I'm sorry, Brigitta, but you're  mistaken. I'm going home and then  to America."
  "But you can't! You can't! You tell him about the  gala, Benny. Tell him about Feuerbach."
  "It certainly seems to be bedlam there,"  said Benny. "If you could come even for a few days  ..."
  "I'm sorry," Marek repeated. Of the  group surrounding him, he was the most pleased to see  the little dog he had bestowed on Brigitta all  those years ago: the dog and Ufra, for whom he  had always felt respect.
  "Well, at least, darling, come and have some  coffee. Please. We've an hour to kill,"  begged Brigitta, who was convinced that no man could  remain even a few minutes in her presence and not  be persuaded to do what she wanted.
  "All right, Brigitta." There were limits  to churlishness. "We'll have a coffee for old  times' sake."
  As they made their way across the square, he  heard the little train for Hallendorf come chugging  in.
  Fate had spoken and it had spoken rightly. For  after all, what bound him was not just loyalty to a friend  who had suffered. It was not the mark branded on  Isaac's arm; it was the moment when Issac had  turned to him in the hut, his face alight for the first  time in weeks, and said: "I told you, didn't  I? I told you I'd play the premiere!"
  He had played only the theme of the slow  movement, but was enough.
  From this man, whose musicality and dedication had  somehow survived through so much hardship, one did not  snatch what he believed was his fulfillment and his  future.

  Two days after Ellen returned from Kalun,  Bennet gave an assembly which she found a little  disquieting.
  It was about a Greek warrier called  Philoctetes who was bitten in the foot by a
  
serpent and abandoned by his friends on a  lonely island because they couldn't stand the stench from his  wound. True, the story ended happily: finding  they needed him to fight the Trojan War, his  companions returned and after much grovelling  persuaded him to sail with them to Troy where he  dispatched Paris with his bow and arrow, thus bringing the  whole sorry business to an end.
  But the somewhat lachrymose way in which the  headmaster dwelt on the abandoned hero's wounds and  his friends' ingratitude was not at all in  Bennet's usual style and Ellen was not  surprised, when she spoke to Margaret, to hear that  the secretary was getting very worried.
  "It's that wretched FitzAllan and his  play," she said. "He carries on as though  there's nothing else in the world and asks for more and more.  Everyone's told him the money just isn't there. And  Tamara's chasing after him in the most blatant  manner, trying to save her stupid ballet."
  "Surely he wouldn't--"'
  "Oh no, not him. He's far too selfish  to notice anyone else, but really her sunbathing  is getting perfectly ridiculous. She went and  laid herself down right in the middle of David  Langley's fruit fly experiment, even though  he labelled it quite clearly."
  "I tell you one thing, Margaret, if I ever  catch her sunbathing on Kohlr@oserl I  won't answer for the consequences," said Ellen.
  "I wish Bennet wouldn't worry about the  play so much. His own workshop on The Winter's  Tale is what they'll come for anyway in the  Summer School." She looked admiringly at  Ellen. "I must say, your fringe is quite  enchanting. What a strange boy Bruno is."
  "Yes, indeed."
  Coming into her room on the night she got back,  Bruno had found Ellen trying to repair the  damage done by the cr@epe suzette. He had  watched for a moment as she tried to level out the  mangled curls and then shaken his head.
  "You want to cut more off. A lot more."  "What do you mean?"'
  Words were not Bruno's coinage. He took the  scissors from her and told her to shut her eyes.  It was not easy sitting still while this badly behaved  boy cut off what felt like large chunks of her  hair but she did it, while the other children watched in  silence.
  
  But when he had finished and Ellen went  to the mirror, she found herself smiling with surprise  and pleasure. He had reduced her damaged  curls to little half-moons and brought more hair in  to make a tousled, tentative fringe which lapped  her brows and echoed the gold-brown of her eyes.  If she looked like a courtesan who had just got  out of bed, she looked like a very expensive one.
  Marek would like it, thought Ellen, while the children  exclaimed. Except that Marek will never see it,  she told herself--but the smile persisted, as though the  memory of that kiss in the garden could not be set  aside. She could not hear from him till he was  back from Poland but after that ... Surely before he  sailed he would write to her once, or even come,  if only to give her news of Issac. It  seemed impossible that the whispered pre-dawn  farewell for the three of them could be the last goodbye.
  Meanwhile, as always, there was work and the need  to console others. Bruno, her hair sorted,  retreated into his usual uncooperative state,  denying the slightest artistic ability and refusing  to help poor Rollo who had been informed  by FitzAllan that the masks he had made for the  animals were not suitably monolithic and drab.
  "If you've ever seen a monolithic and drab  piglet I'd like to see it," said Rollo  angrily.
  Hermine had been told by the director not  to feed her baby in the theatre. "I think he  does not like my bosom," said Hermine, coming  tearfully to Ellen. "And this I understand. I do not  like it myself," she said mournfully, looking down  at her cleavage, "but I cannot leave Andromeda  so far away. Of course I should not have let the  Professor overcome me--"' But at this point  Ellen changed the subject, for she could not bear  Hermine's remorse over her seduction by the  Vocal Rehabilitation expert who had drunk  too much gentian brandy at the conference in  Hinterbruhl.
  "I could put ground glass into his nut  cutlet?"' suggested Lieselotte, who had  taken against the director from the start. She was  particularly incensed when she compared the demands  FitzAllan was making with the cheeseparing that went  on in the village about Aniella's name day  celebrations. "Every year we say we will do something  really nice for her and every year people are too lazy  or too tired or too poor."
  
  FitzAllan had of course rung the  slaughterhouse to check about the foot and mouth disease  and found out the truth, and what he regarded as  Ellen's collusion with Marek in tricking him, and  had scarcely spoken to her since.
  Fortunately Chomsky, when she visited him,  was improving. Not to the extent of returning  to school but to the point where there was no longer any  question of anyone taking him to a foreign place and  asking her for his passport.
  It was when she had been back for a week that  Ellen realised that her ability to cope and comfort  others had had an underlying cause. That somehow,  against all reason and sense, she believed that she  would see Marek again. That the time she had spent with  him in the garden at Kalun had meant to him, perhaps  not what it had meant to her--he was after all an  experienced man with many affairs to his credit--but  something. It was as though she was unable to conceive that this  sense of total belonging, this mingling of utter peace  and overwhelming excitement, was something she had felt  all by herself.
  As the days passed and she realised he must have  returned from Poland she found herself waiting in the  morning for the post bus--not now to console Freya  if there was no news from Mats, or Sophie  vainly awaiting a letter from her parents, but on her  own account, and beneath the longing--a longing the depth of  which she could not have imagined--there was anger. For she  remembered very well what she had said to Bennet  during her first interview when he asked her what  she was afraid of. "Not seeing," she had said.  "Being obsessed by something that blots out the world. That  awful kind of love that makes leaves and birds  and cherry blossom invisible because it's not the face  of some man."
  Now, when she had a rare moment to herself, it was  Marek's face that she saw again and again as he  paused in front of her door in the hotel  corridor and said: "Ellen, if I were to ask  you--"'
  And then the door of Isaac's room had burst  open and poor Isaac came out trussed up in  bandages and by the time she had helped him, Marek was  gone.
  What had he been going to say? Sometimes,  deliriously, she thought it was "If I were to ask  you, would you come to America?"' or "If I  asked you, would you stay with me tonight?"', and to both those  questions she would have answered "Yes" with every cell and
  
fibre in her body.
  But as the days went by and she heard nothing, she  knew it could have been neither of those things. At the  most perhaps he wanted her to look after the  tortoise or see to Steiner's bandages.
  She did in fact go and see Steiner whenever she  could; she had become extremely fond of the old  man, but he too had heard nothing.
  Then, about ten days after her return, she was coming  off the steamer with a basket full of shopping, when  Sophie ran towards her, waving a letter.
  "It's just come for you! It's Express and  Special Delivery and everything!"
  Ellen put down her basket. For a moment she  experienced a joy so pervasive and complete that  she was surprised she had not been borne aloft  by angels. Then she took the letter.
  The joy died more gradually than she expected.  Though she saw almost at once that the letter was from  Kendrick, the message reached her brain only  slowly. She was still smiling when she opened it, though  the tears already stung her eyes.
  "I'm awfully sorry to bother you again,  Ellen," Kendrick had written, "but it would  be so lovely if you could come to Vienna and I still  haven't heard. Even if you'd just come for the  weekend--I've got a surprise for you on  Saturday night as I told you; something at which you  could wear the amazing dress you made for your  graduation. It would make me so happy and there is  so much to see."
  "Is it from the man in the wet house?"' asked  Sophie, who seemed to be developing second  sight.
  Ellen nodded and handed her the letter. She still  couldn't trust herself to speak. Sophie obediently  read through Kendrick's hopes and his expectations  of the cultural life in Vienna, but when she  lifted her head again she had to draw a deep and  unexpected breath. Ellen had always looked after  them; now, suddenly, she had an intimation of a  different state; a state in which she and her friends  might have to look after Ellen.
  And growing up a little, she said briskly:  "Lieselotte's waiting for the icing sugar,"--  and saw Ellen bend to pick up her basket--and  her life.
  The letter Ellen had been waiting for came the  next day--not to her but to Professor Steiner.
  "He wrote it from Pettelsdorf," said the
  
old man gently and put it in her hand.
  This time she was forewarned. There was no hope, no  expectation of angels bearing her aloft.
  "Isaac got away safely down river,"  Marek had scrawled. "I've confirmed my  passage and am sailing on the tenth from Genoa.  Please say goodbye to Ellen for me once again and  thank her for me. I shall always be in her debt and in  yours. Marek."
  The following morning Bennet sent for her.  "The children tell me you've been invited  to Vienna."
  "Yes."
  Damn, thought the headmaster. Damn, damn,  damn. He had seen it happening but he had hoped  somehow that she would be spared. She will get over it;  she will light her lamp again, he told himself--but it  had been the brightest, loveliest lamp he had  seen in years.
  "I think you should go," he said. "It's  only a weekend, and you'd be back for the play."
  "I've just been away."
  "But you still have time off owing to you. Freya will  look after your children."
  "Very well," she said listlessly.  "Sophie tells me that you have a dress?"'
  She managed a smile then. "Yes," she  said. "Sophie is right." She lifted her  head, and the smile became a proper one. "I  definitely have a dress."

  Brigitta's persuasions in the caf`e at  St Polzen had been ineffectual. The  intrigues of the gala interested Marek not at all  and he felt no obligation to involve himself in her  affairs.
  Yet less than a week after their encounter, he  found himself in Vienna, having decided to break his  journey there on the way to Genoa. The person who  had effected this change of plan was not the diva but  a quiet, grey-haired, bespectacled man; the  head of Universal Editions who had been  Marek's music publishers for the past ten years.  Herr Jaeger ran the firm from a dusty office  in the Kohlmarkt; a place of hallowed  associations for all those who cared for music, and it  was his letter to Pettovice which had brought Marek  to town.
  
  Marek booked in at the Imperial,  feeling in the mood for luxury after his week in the  forest, telephoned Herr Jaeger, and went to have his  hair cut in the Graben where the barber was displeased  with the way his client's thick, springy hair formed  itself into unexpected whorls.
  "I don't know what you've been doing to it,  sir," he grumbled. "It looks as though  you've been sleeping in a hedge."
  Marek did not enlighten him and the conversation  turned inevitably to the gala. "You'll have seen  the paper," said the barber. "She's threatening  to cancel."
  "She?"' asked Marek, but already he knew.  "Seefeld," said the barber. "She's  fallen out with the conductor: chap called  Feuerbach. He's a stopgap because  Weingartner's abroad."
  "She's got no business to carry on like  that," said a burly man in working clothes, the  driver of a petrol tanker, having a trim in the  neighbouring chair. "Tantrums the whole time.  They ought to give the role to Baumberger."
  "No, they oughtn't," said a fat man with a  shiny red face, waiting his turn. He spoke in  the thickest of dialects and wore the blue  overalls of a meat porter. "Tantrums or  not, she's the best. My mother's seen every  Rosenkavalier they've done since 1911 and  she swears there's no one to touch Seefeld."
  "I didn't say she wasn't good," said the  lorry driver. "I didn't say she wasn't  great. But she's got the whole cast at sixes and  sevens, and once you get on the wrong side of the  Vienna Philharmonic, God help you."
  "It's not the orchestra she's got the wrong  side of, it's Feuerbach, and she's quite right. I  heard him conduct Bruckner's Seventh in Linz  and he was crap," said the meat porter, wiping his  face with a spotted handkerchief.
  Marek took the newspaper the barber handed him.  That day there had been a massacre in Peking, the  city of Bilbao fell to Franco and Moscow  had executed another thirty intellectuals on  the grounds of "spying", but the headline of the  Wiener Tageblatt said "Seefeld
Threatens Cancellation. Gala in Jeopardy."  Coming out into the street, Marek thought with  exasperation of the Viennese, to whom nothing mattered  except what was going on at their opera house.
  
And yet ... perhaps it was because he knew this  was goodbye, because he foresaw much suffering for this  absurd city, that he felt himself able to surrender  to the sheer beauty of the Biedermeier houses, the  compact and companionable streets, the domes of  green and gold. If the Viennese fiddled while  Rome burnt perhaps there were worse occupations, and  when it was over--the catastrophe he saw so  clearly--they would still quarrel at the barbers about the  high C of some soprano not yet born, or  argue over the tessitura of a newly imported  tenor.
  Herr Jaeger was waiting in his dark little  office.
  "Herr Altenburg!" he said, rising  to shake hands. "This is a pleasure. It was good  of you to come in person."
  "Not at all," said Marek, dropping his  hat and gloves on to a bust of Mahler. "I  see you share my view of what is to come."
  "I'm afraid I do. We're transferring  our business to London as I told you. We're  hoping to be able to forge some transatlantic links  too from there. It was a hard decision--as you know,  our traditions go back three hundred years."
  Marek nodded. He had dealt with Universal  Editions since his student days; they had proved  competent and fair, but it was more than that: under glass  in a corner of the office was the facsimile of the  Schubert Quartetsatz. The first edition of  Berg's Wozzeck, heavily annotated, lay  in another case.
  "We were hoping of course that you would stay with us,  but--"'
  "I have decided to do so. I'm leaving for  America very soon, but if you're setting up  links with the United States, London could be a  convenient halfway house."
  "I'm very pleased to hear it and my partner will be  too. He's going ahead; he's Jewish and we  feel ..."
  "Yes, you may feel that."
  "You don't have anything ready now? To arrive  in London with a piece by Altenburg would be a  certain triumph."
  "Soon," said Marek. "I've been doing  other things."
  "But you'll be staying for the gala?"'  "I doubt it. I gather there have been  ructions."
  
  Herr Jaeger smiled. "Yes, you  could say that. You could certainly say that. Now, as  to the contracts; I wonder if you could glance at  these ..."
  Leaving the office, making his way towards the  Hofburg, Marek saw a group of tourists  outside the Stallburg waiting for the  Lipizzaners to be led from the Spanish Riding  School back to their princely stable. This was how  they had waited--and probably waited still--for  Brigitta to come out of her apartment and make her  way to the Opera, and that was reasonable enough. She was  after all a kind of human Lipizzaner, richly  caparisoned, adored and nobly housed, and knowing  perhaps at some level that he had meant to do this all  along, he made his way past the Augustiner  Kirche and the Albertina, and found himself by the small  unobtrusive door which said simply: "Zur  B@uhne."
  Outside, on an upright chair sat an old  man, still wearing the uniform of the stage doorkeeper  though he had been retired for many years. His son  was the doorkeeper now but Josef was an  institution, allowed to watch the great and the good come through  that small entrance into the opera.
  "Good afternoon, Josef."
  The old man looked up, blinked--and  recognised him. "Herr Altenburg," he  said. "You're back in Vienna. Well, well  --wait till I tell my son."
  Nothing could stop him getting to his feet and  leading Marek into the cluttered office. "Here's  Herr Altenburg, Wenzel; you'll remember  him."
  His son nodded. "There's a bit of a to-do in  there, sir. It's the gala--they're doing Act  One and well ... I expect you've heard.  No one's to be admitted, but as it's you ..."
  Both father and son could remember the time when  Herr Altenburg had accompanied the diva  to rehearsals. A golden age, he'd heard it  referred to, when she'd behaved herself and sung like  an angel.
  "They're in the auditorium, sir. It's the  first rehearsal with the full orchestra."
  Marek nodded, made his way down the familiar  corridors, pushed open the heavy door--and  stood quietly at the back.

  "I shall cancel!" cried Brigitta. "I
  
tell you, I shall cancel. You can go now, you  can tell the papers, you can tell anyone! I cannot  sing at this tempo, it is an insult to me and an  impossibility for my voice. Either you fetch  Weingartner or I cancel."
  "Now Brigitta, please ..." The  voice coach came out of the wings and tried  to mollify her. The music director, sitting  in the front row, groaned. Nothing but tantrums  and tempers from the wretched woman. There was a  week to go to the gala and he was sick of it. He  didn't just want her to cancel, he wanted her  to be run over by a tram or eaten by rats or  both. But who could they get at the last minute?  The gala had been set up with her in mind.
  "Perhaps we could try again, Herr  Feuerbach," said the director. He detested  Brigitta, but it had to be admitted that  Feuerbach was a disappointment: an arrogant little  man who had got on the wrong side of the  orchestra. Once that venerable body of men  despised a conductor they were implacable. If the  Vienna Philharmonic could ever be said to play  badly they were doing it now.
  "I gather you want it played like a funeral  march," sneered Feuerbach.
  "No. Just a little more andante. It is after all  a lament for the passing of time," said the director,  wondering why it was necessary to explain the score of  Richard Strauss's most famous opera to the man  who was conducting it.
  Feuerbach curled his lip and raised his  baton. Brigitta moved forward.
  They were rehearsing the first of the famous  monologues on the mystery of time and its  inexplicable passing. The Marschallin is alone  on the stage; so far she has been presented as a  grande dame voluptuously loved, or as the  centre of a melee of courtiers. Now the mood  changes: the orchestra is reduced to solo strings  and clarinets as she goes to the mirror and evokes  the young girl she has once been, coming fresh from the  convent--and then, in a moment of terror, the old  woman she will one day be, mocked and pointed out,  her beauty gone. Yet it has to be endured, she  muses--and the oboe (now coming in magnificently in  spite of Feuerbach) echoes her bewildered question:  "Only how? Wie? ... How does one  endure it?"'
  And as he listened to her, Marek was suddenly
  
overwhelmed. He was back in the fourth  gallery, shaken by the sheer beauty of the voice that  God had placed so capriciously inside the  body of this tiresome woman. Brigitta was  trying, in spite of Feuerbach's dragging beat.  She did not want to cancel; this was her role.
  And all at once there came into Marek's head  with the force of an explosion, a vision of the whole  glorious masterpiece that was Rosenkavalier, with  its riotous waltzes, its soaring invocation of young  love and the sense of sublimity and honour that was at  its heart. Rosenkavalier as it should sound and could  sound even now.
  For it could still be done. Brigitta would have to be  coaxed and bullied, forbidden to scoop and  sentimentalise. Feuerbach, though one longed  to throttle him, would have to be appeased, the  orchestra schooled to heed him. It would take every  moment of the day and night, every ounce of energy, but it  could still be done.
  Only not by me, thought Marek. Absolutely  not by me. I'm sailing on the Risorgimento.  This is goodbye.
  "Very well," said the director. "We'll  break there."
  The conductor left the rostrum but the  musicians did not follow him. Marek, without  realising it, had moved closer as Brigitta  sang. Now one of the double bass players leant  forward and whispered something to a cellist, who passed  on the word and spread it back to the woodwind, the  brass, and forward to the violas, till it reached the  violins ...
  The leader turned his head.
  "Are you sure?"' he said quietly.  "Positive," said his neighbour. "I  played for him in Berlin."
  The leader nodded. Then he rose to his feet  and as he did so the orchestra, to a man, rose with  him. And as the violins tapped their bows against the  music stands, he said: "Welcome back  to Vienna, Herr Altenburg."
  The homage was not for his political stance,  Marek knew that. It was not for him personally at  all: it was for what he and these men shared and served.  It was for music.
  But now Brigitta had moved towards the  footlights, shading her eyes. Then she gave a  theatrical shriek, disappeared into the wings, and  reappeared again in the stalls to hurl herself into his  arms.
  "Marcus!" she cried. "I knew you would  come! I knew you would help me. Now everything's  going to be all right."
  "If you want me to help you, you can start by not  sentimentalising "Where are the Snows of  Yesteryear". You held that B flat far too  long. I've told you, you must not be maudlin.  Pity and self-pity are mutually exclusive."
  "It's not my fault. It's Feuerbach's.
I have no help from--"'
  "I take it you're not complaining about the way the  oboe followed you?"' said Marek icily.
  "No, but--"'
  "Good. I suggest you look to your own performance  and the rest will sort itself out. I'll be back in an  hour. We'll start with Baron Ochs' exit and go  on to the rest of the act."
  "You're limping, Kendrick," said Ellen.  "Would you like to sit down for a while? We could have a  cup of coffee over there." She pointed to a  beguiling caf`e with pavement tables across the  square, but Kendrick shook his head.
  "I'll be all right. We've still got the  Hofburg to see, and the cathedral. We can't afford  to waste a minute."
  But actually his foot was hurting quite badly.  He had a big blister on the heel and a corn  developing on the left toe and this was because he had  already spent three days in Vienna sightseeing before  Ellen arrived. Kendrick had visited the  Central Cemetery to see the graves of  Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms, paying  particular attention to Beethoven's grave because it  was said to contain the pince-nez of Anton  Bruckner, who had dropped them into the open coffin  by mistake when the composer's relics were  transferred from the cemetery in Wahring. He had  taken a tram to St Marc's, which turned out to be  a long way away, to look at the place where  Mozart had possibly been interred, and another  to another suburb to pay homage to the tomb of  Gustav Mahler.
  And that was only the graves: there were still all the  places where composers had been born or died or  simply done things: hammered pianos to death or  quarrelled with their landladies or thrown chamber  pots out of the windows, often in houses which were  surprisingly far apart.
  All this had made his feet very sore, and then  there had been the Art: the Secessionist building which    was near a rather messy food market and the  Kunsthistorisches Museum which was deeply  inspiring, but the marble floors were surprisingly  hard and the lavatories difficult to find.
  But he had kept the best-known sights for  Ellen, who had arrived that morning and was standing  patiently beside him, looking cool in her cream  linen dress, as they waited to go into the crypt of the  Capuchin church where the Hapsburg Emperors were  buried. Or rather their bodies were buried--their  hearts and organs were elsewhere, as he had
  
explained to Ellen, and fitting them in was  going to be a problem. Peering at his Baedeker,  worrying, Kendrick felt Ellen's cool touch  on his arm and realised that the guide had come and they  were moving down into the vaults with their heavy,  ornate marble sarcophagi.
  The Emperor Franz Joseph ... his  unfortunate wife, the lovely Sissi,  assassinated by an anarchist on Lake Geneva  ... their son, the Crown Prince Rudoll,  dead by his own hand at Mayerling ...
  Moving past the gloomy opulence of the tombs,  Ellen found one she liked.
  "Look, Kendrick! This one isn't an  emperor or an empress! It's a governess--  Maria Theresa's governess. The Empress  loved her so much she was allowed to be buried here  even though she wasn't royal. So if a  governess, why not a cook? Perhaps I shall end up in  the vaults at Windsor!"
  Ellen had not wanted to come to Vienna, but now  she was here she was determined to enjoy herself. The  weather was glorious, the city was beautiful--there could  be no better place to forget Marek, who would be  sailing away now to a new life. She had been  foolish, attaching so much importance to a  flirtation and the courtesy of a kiss, but she did not  intend to become a victim. "One has a  choice," she had told herself--and she had chosen  healing and happiness, if not immediately, then soon.
  Their next tour, that of the Private Apartments  in the Hofburg, revealed the Royal Treasure  Chest containing a number of priceless objects of  surprising ugliness and a suite of  claustrophobic apartments characterised by a total  lack of bathrooms. As they came out into the  Michaeler Platz, Kendrick, peering at his  guide book, said that they just had time to make their  way to the house where Hugo Wolf had written the  M`orike Lieder.
  "Look--it's in this little street here--we  take the first left and then the first right--"'
  "Kendrick, you go and see the house where  Hugo Wolf wrote the M`orike Lieder,  but I'm going to Demels to have a large coffee and  eat Indiancrkrapftn and study their  patisserie."
  A terrible conflict raged in Kendrick's  breast. To leave Ellen whom he loved so much  even for half an hour was hard--but to miss Hugo
  
Wolf's house which the guide book  particularly recommended was hard too.
  "Remember you've got a whole day after  I've gone. I have to go back tomorrow."
  "Very well, I'll come with you," said  Kendrick and limped with her towards Demels,  where he was rewarded by Ellen's face as she gazed  at the counter, her eyes moving from the intricate  lattice of the Linzertorte, to the baroque  magnificence of the layered chocolate cakes, and  back to the Schaumrollen, fat and soft as  puppies. And even Kendrick took pleasure  in seeing the eclairs they had chosen wheeled away  by attendents, as if to a select nursing home,  to be injected with fresh whipped cream.
  It was as she poured a second cup of the  marvellous coffee that Ellen said: "Don't you  think we ought to call at a chemist's and see if  we can get a proper dressing for your foot?  It's going to be really painful for you trying to dance  with that blister."
  She was looking forward to the ball--the orchestra  was sure to be good and even if she and Kendrick  danced very little she would enjoy watching the other people.
  But to her surprise, Kendrick coloured up  and put down his cup. He had not meant to reveal  his delightful surprise till they were back in the  hotel, but this was as good a moment as any.
  "Ellen, we're not going to a ball," he  said, leaning across to her. "We're going somewhere much  more exciting. Somewhere absolutely special."
  "And where is that?"' A slight foreboding touched  Ellen.
  "The opera!" said Kendrick happily.
"The Vienna State Opera! We're going  to see Rosenkavalier--and guess who is  singing the leading role."
  "Who?"' asked Ellen obediently--but the  foreboding had, so to speak, settled in.
  "Brigitta Seefeld! Her interpretation  is absolutely legendary. She's marvellous;  remember I wrote to you about her, about the songs  Altenburg wrote for her. I can't tell you  what a miracle it was getting the tickets.  Everyone in Vienna will be there." And suddenly  seeing something in her face: "You're pleased,  aren't you? You wouldn't rather have gone to a ball?"'
  She lifted her head. "No, no,
Kendrick. Of course I'm pleased. It'll be  lovely." There was no point in spoiling his
  
pleasure, and if she wanted to watch that  overweight cow sing about as much as she wanted  to spend the night in a sewage farm, she would  keep it to herself. With Marek on the ocean and  Isaac safely out of the country, Seefeld  posed no threat. All the same she felt  entitled to some consolation, and: "I'm going to have  another Indianerkrapfrn," she said.
  "Another one?"' asked Kendrick,  shocked.
  "Yes." I need cheering up, she could have  said, but didn't because of the wet house and the camel  and the fact that Kendrick looked so very pleased.

  "Oh Ellen!" said Kendrick as she  floated down the stairs dressed for the opera.  "You look--"'
  But what did she look like? The Primavera  certainly--that Botticelli--like floating as if  she was weightless--though the way her lustrous hair  curved and coiled around her brow was more like Venus  rising from the waves ... except that Venus  wasn't wearing anything at all, whereas Ellen was  dressed in a marvellous white concoction that  frothed and foamed and swirled like sea spray, like  gossamer, like flakes of snow. Stumbling from  painter to painter, from woodland nymphs and enchanted  swans and back again, Kendrick tried to bring his  erudition to bear on Ellen, en grande  tenue, and failed.
  But if he was confounded he had a right to be, for  Ellen and the Gorgon needlework professor at  the Lucy Hatton College of Household  Management had wrought a masterpiece.
  "You can't use tulle, like that," Miss  Ellis had said sniffily. "Not if you want the  finest denier. You'll be up all night setting the  ruffles."
  "Then I'll be up all night," Ellen  had said, and almost was for several nights, by which time  Miss Ellis had caught the infection. The  dress had won first prize at the graduation  ceremony, but it had done considerably more than that.
  As the taxi dropped them on the steps of the  opera house and Ellen got out, a little girl  held aloft on her father's shoulder said, "Is  she a princess?"' and was as instantly put right  by someone in the watching crowd who said dismissively,  "Not her--she's far too pretty."
  For they knew all about the aristocracy, the
  
bystanders that had come to watch, and they  thirsted for them. Having deposed the last  Hapsburg some twenty years ago, they had  become specialists in those kings and queens who  had hung on to their thrones. The Austrian  President was greeted by the smallest of cheers,  but King Carol of Rumania, with his dubious  personal life, got an ovation.
  Inside the foyer, the excitement of a gala  seemed to Ellen to be augmented by something else. The  dowagers in ropes of pearls, the men with their  decorations, the clusters of beautiful women,  appeared to be buzzing with news of some kind of  scandal or calamity. Their faces as they  repeated, "Are you sure?"' or "I can't  believe it," reflected the kind of salacious  glee, masking as concern, that is devoted to disasters  which do not affect one personally.
  From the general hum of words, Ellen repeatedly  caught one name.
  "Who's Feuerbach?"' she asked Kendrick  as they made their way up the magnificent  staircase.
  "The conductor." He had noticed nothing;  his German was poor and he was busy bringing out his  pocket score, his magnifying glass, and the  notes on the opera he had copied in the  London Library.
  "Kendrick, what marvellous seats!"  "They are, aren't they," said Kendrick and  couldn't resist telling her what they cost.
  In the box on their right, two men were talking,  their voices perfectly audible to Ellen.
  "It's all right!" said a small dark man  who had just joined his friend. "They've talked him  round, but it was a struggle. He chased Feuerbach  all over town trying to get him to change his mind,  but it was no good."
  "What did he do to make Feuerbach walk  out--defenestrate him or something?"'
  "Not a bit of it. He kept his temper all  the way through. It was the orchestra. They made  life impossible for Feuerbach. But this is it,  Staub--there can't be any doubt about it now--she's  got him back and Stallenbach's away. Your  opera's in the bag."
  Staub nodded. "I showed him the libretto and  he was definitely interested."
  The last of the Kings and Queens had arrived;  tired-looking persons weighed down by their jewels
  
--and then a lone elderly man who  attracted rather more attention as he appeared in the  stage box. Richard Strauss, the opera's  composer, the most famous musician in the world, who  had travelled up from Garmisch.
  The lights were going down now, but the whispers of  rumour and speculation had not yet died away.
  Then the curtains parted and the manager appeared.  "Your Majesties, your Royal Highnesses,  Herr President, Ladies and Gentlemen--I  have an announcement to make. Owing to the  indisposition of Herr Feuerbach, tonight's  performance of Rosenkavalier will be conducted  by Marcus Altenburg."
  The audience behaved badly. They clapped,  they cheered, they hugged each other. The gossip had  been known for days--that Brigitta Seefeld's  lover had returned to coach her, that their famous  affaire had been resumed, that the unpopular  Feuerbach had made scene after scene ...
  And now here was Altenburg, riding to the  rescue!
  "Are you all right, Ellen?"' whispered  Kendrick, for she had given a sudden sharp  intake of breath. "Oh Ellen, isn't this  exciting, isn't this amazing! I didn't even  know he was in Vienna! I wonder if I dare  make myself known to him--he wouldn't remember me,  of course, though--"'
  But the house lights were fully dimmed now.  Only the lamps on the rostrum and the  musicians' desks shone through the auditorium.
  The conductor appeared and received an ovation which,  waiting for silence, he ignored. Then he turned  to bow--not to the crowned heads in their boxes or to the  audience but to the old gentleman sitting alone in  his box. To Richard Strauss.
  Then he raised his stick and unleashed the  prelude that Kendrick had worried about, and  rightly--for it did indeed depict in music, and  unmistakably, the act of love.

  The shock, for Ellen, was overwhelming. This was his  real life, this was his world. She had had an  intimation in the dining room at Kalun but nothing  had prepared her for this. Why did she think he  belonged with lame tortoises and trees and  storks? Even his bravery in the woods was only  a small part of his life. Here where a band of the  world's most highly trained musicians were welded
  
by his movements into one whole--here in  front of this glittering audience with the composer  sitting in his box, was where he belonged. Here with  Brigitta Seefeld, who had stopped, the  moment she opened her mouth, being a foolish, vain,  over-painted woman and become the great artist that  she was.
  Only why did he lie to me? she thought  wretchedly--for that hurt the most, that he had lied.  I asked nothing from him so why did he pretend that  he was sailing for America, that he had finished with  Vienna, and with her?
  It was some time before she really heard the music.  She did not know the opera; at first she missed the  obvious "tunes", the dramatic ensembles.  But then Baron Ochs entered, accompanied by his  glorious, absurd waltzes, and the bustling  courtiers ... so that by the time Seefeld came to the  famous monologue in which she mourns, with touching  bewilderment, the passage of time, Ellen, who  wanted to hate her, was strung out on the liquid  notes, as hurt and puzzled as the singer wondering  what God meant by it all.
  "One day you will leave me," Seefeld  sang to her young lover. "Today or tomorrow or the  next day ..."
  But Marek was not leaving. He was returning,  thought Ellen. As the curtain fell on the first  act, the applause was frenetic. Everyone  recognised a triumph, a performance that would  become an operatic legend.
  "Isn't she amazing?"' said Kendrick.  "Her interpretation has never been surpassed.  But the conductor! I knew she was his muse, of  course, but I had no idea he was in Vienna.  Imagine, I used to sing in the same choir as  him!"
  Ellen said nothing, and a man staring at her  admiringly as they made their way towards the  refreshment room, dropped his eyes as she came  closer, wondering why a young girl should look like  that.
  If only it was over, thought Ellen. If  only I could go home ... not to Hallendorf with  its memories but right away from Austria. Back  to grey and rainy London where they were digging  trenches in the parks.
  "I've been to see her," said Benny,  returning to his box. "She's over the moon.  I tell you, no one can resist what happens
  
to Brigitta when she gives that kind of  performance. She'll have him in that Swan Bed of  hers before the night is out if she hasn't done it  already. I'll give her a few days--and then  sign them both up. She'll have to work out her  contract here but she can follow him."
  Seefeld did not appear in the second act,  which is devoted to the instant and joyous love of  Octavian, the faithless Rosenkavalier,  for the young Sophie von Faninal. But if  Seefeld was missed, the orchestra under  Altenburg played the Presentation of the Rose,  the ecstatic duet for the young lovers and Baron  Ochs' sentimental, irresistible waltz as if  for the first time. Women mopped their eyes; Benny  shook his head. How had he coaxed playing like that    even out of this famous orchestra?
  Only one voice of dissent was heard in the  second interval, from a sallow man wearing an  Iron Cross in his lapel.
  "I grant you he's a fine conductor but it  doesn't do to antagonise the Germans. He's  hated in Berlin; we shouldn't seem to condone the  stance he takes against Hitler, not with what may  happen."
  But he was the only one and the others moved away  from him. They might not be so brave tomorrow but tonight they  were willing to snap their fingers at the Third Reich  and Hitler's offer of union and brotherhood.
  The last act now. Comedy, bustle,  misunderstandings ... Baron Ochs discredited ...  And the entrance of the Marschallin, perhaps the most  heart-stopping moment in opera. She stands in the  doorway of the inn, knowing that her young lover has  deserted her: not "someday", not "soon", but  now. Yet Octavian is no knave, the  girl he has fallen for no scheming minx. The  lovers are caught by the one thing she cannot ever again  reach out for--their youth. Bewildered, ashamed yet  ecstatic, they look to her ...
  And she puts it right. The trio that follows is  of a beauty that stills all turmoil. The  Marschallin sings--not grandly, not histrionically  --of the need for self-sacrifice. She sings, in  fact, of something unbelievably simple and  unbelievably difficult: the need to behave  well. And the lovers reproach themselves, tremble  and--blessed by her understanding--claim each other.
  But when she leaves them, though they sing on, the  opera is over. Not one person in the audience,
  
or any audience anywhere, but weeps for the  Marschallin. Everyone is on her side.
  The curtain fell. Kendrick, looking at  Ellen, was proud to see that she was crying. After the  incident of the Sorrel Soup, he sometimes  wondered how deeply she felt music.
  Did she feel it almost too much? She was a  girl who always had a handkerchief, but now he  gave her his, for she was not doing anything to stem  her tears.
  Renunciation. Letting go. Brigitta who  had nothing to renounce had sung of it. But I,  who do not sing, I have to do it, thought Ellen. Only  I wish I had something to renounce. I do so very  much wish that.
  The endless clapping, the cries of "Bravo"  and "Bis", the flowers raining down, passed before  her like a dream. But when at last Marek allowed  himself to be dragged on to the stage, and brought his  orchestra to their feet, when Brigitta came  towards him with outstretched arms and he kissed her,  to the delight and noisy approval of the  Viennese, she saw that. She saw that quite  clearly.

  "Well, we shall have something to tell our grandchildren  after tonight," said Benny triumphantly. He was  not married and had no intention of becoming so, but tonight  he felt dynastic. Mahler's Fidelio
... Karajan's Tristan ... and now
Seefeld's Rosenkavalier. Or would it go  down as Altenburg's Rosenkavalier? But  what did it matter? It was the combination that had  made this evening into an operatic legend.
  Everyone knew it; they came past their table at  Sacher's--acerbic critics, carping  musicologists--and gushed like schoolchildren. The  management had presented two bottles of  champagne, Brigitta glowed and sparkled, and every  so often she put a hand with loving ownership on  Marek's arm.
  He's mine again, she thought exultantly.  I've got him back. Her mind went forward to the  end of the meal ... to the moment when they reached her  apartment. Ufra would have done everything: the candles  would be lit, the bed sprayed with Nuit d'Et`e  --but only a little, for Marcus had never liked  strong scents--and the little dog safely shut up, for
  
nothing could shatter the mood more than the  boisterous welcome the creature would give him.  And afterwards she would make the first of the many  sacrifices she was going to make to inspire him for  his art.
  Marek was only partly aware of the babble around  him and her coy possessiveness. He was still with the  orchestra as they followed him through the  extraordinary richness and intricacy of the score.  The performance had not been perfect: the pi@u  tranquillo before the Presentation of the Rose had  been too drawn out--Feuerbach's sentimentality  could not be eradicated in an instant--but they had  played like ... well, like the Vienna  Philharmonic.
  But I'll make my Americans just as good,  he swore to himself, they can do it. He had missed  the boat from Genoa but there was a faster one leaving from  Marseilles; he would hardly be late.
  Brigitta leant even closer against him; she  had decided to make her sacrifice now, rather than  in the privacy of her rooms, knowing how much it would  please Staub who was sitting on her other side.  Hitherto she had been firm in her refusal  to portray Helen of Troy crouching in a state  of terror in a doorway, but now ...
  "Darling," she said confidingly to Marek.  "I've decided. If you set the opera I'm  prepared to do it. I'm prepared to huddle."
  Marek looked at her, trying to focus on her  words. Benny had refilled his glass and he had  not resisted, needing to unwind. The last time he had  drunk champagne had been in the dining room at  Kalun.
  And at that moment, as if conjured up from that  sulphurous place, he saw a girl in a  white dress standing under a street lamp and staring  at him through the glass.
  "Excuse me," he said and got to his  feet. But when he reached the street she was nowhere.  He must have been drunker than he realised.
  "I'm sorry, Brigitta," he said,  sitting down again. "I thought I saw someone I  knew." And making an effort: "What was it you  were telling me?"'
  "That I was prepared to huddle," said  Brigitta crossly--but this time it did not sound  the same.

  Some two hours after the end of the opera,
  
Kendrick was still pursuing suitable  locales for his proposal of marriage. They had  had supper in a restaurant on the  Albertinaplatz, but as they came out and he saw,  commanding a flight of steps, the equestrian statue  of the Archduke Albrecht, his courage failed  him. Close to, the horse reminded him too  much of the horses his brothers had ridden at  Crowthorpe. Their taunts at Kendrick as he  repeatedly fell off a small Welsh pony,  their efforts to make him less cowardly by tying him  to a tree and galloping at him with home-made  lances, came back to him as if it were yesterday, and  now he suggested to Ellen that they take a stroll  in the Burg Garten, where he had selected the  Mozart Memorial as another suitable venue in  which to declare himself.
  "All right, Kendrick. But I'd like to get  back soon--I'm rather tired."
  She was in fact having the greatest difficulty  in connecting with what Kendrick was saying, or even  hearing his voice, but she walked with him into the cool  dark garden, where the sight of Austria's best  loved composer greatly cheered Kendrick, erasing  the memory of his brothers, for in this man's music  there was a purity and goodness which must surely reach out  and bless his enterprise.
  But when they got closer Kendrick saw that the  spirit of the composer was already blessing someone else--a  youth in a loden jacket passionately embracing  a plump and acquiescent girl--and there was nothing  for it except to circle the gardens and come out again  into the street.
  The third of Kendrick's chosen sites was the  Donner Fountain in the Neuer Markt. It was on  the way back to the hotel and the guide book  spoke highly of it, but when he suggested to Ellen  that they walk back to the Graben she turned to him  and said: "Kendrick, I've got rather a  headache. Do you think you could try and get a  taxi? There are some in the  Philharmonikergasse."
  "Yes ... yes, of course." Kendrick  hid his consternation. People did propose in taxis,  but not Frobishers; the possibility of being  overheard by the driver put that entirely out of  court.
  They walked down the narrow street, approaching  Sacher's, where (as he was able to inform Ellen)  Billroth had frequently breakfasted on
  
oysters with Johannes Brahms. But
Ellen, who had hitherto been so receptive to the  information he offered her, seemed scarcely to take  it in, and only asked him again to get a taxi.  "Look, there's one just coming in--I'll wait  while you run and get it."
  He had done as she asked and when he came  back for her, he found her standing on the pavement  outside the lighted windows of the famous  restaurant looking so shaken and weary that all he  could do was help her quickly into the car.
  But the image of Patricia Frobisher, like a  matrimonial Boadicea, was still with him, urging  him on. He had to propose and he had to do it tonight  in the balmy romantic ambience of a summer  night in Vienna. Tomorrow morning would not do. He was  going to try and see the leprosy sanatorium  by Otto Wagner and the place where Wilibald  Gluck had breathed his last, as well as the  cathedral, and at midday Ellen was going back.
  The taxi stopped in the Graben and Kendrick  saw his chance. Opposite the hotel was a tall  marble pillar decorated with convoluted statuary and  topped with gold: the Trinity Column, which he  had not had time yet to study in detail. With  unusual firmness he walked Ellen over  to examine it and found, as he had hoped, that at this  late hour there was no one else there.
  "Ellen," he began. "You know how much I  love you and now it is not only I who want  to make you my wife, it is also my mother." He  broke off, aware of problems with his syntax, and  tried again. "I mean, my mother has begged me  to marry and I have told her that there is no one I  could consider except you." He paused to examine  Ellen's face, hopeful that the approval of  Patricia Frobisher had effected a change in  Ellen's sentiments, and found that she had closed  her eyes. "So please, darling Ellen, won't  you--"'
  He rambled on, expressing devotion and a  stammering hope. To Ellen it was a fitting end to this  nightmare evening and as soon as she could, she said:  "Kendrick, I wrote to you quite clearly when I  accepted your invitation that I was coming as a friend. You  have no right to put me through this again."
  But Kendrick had reached that state of obstinate  exaltation so common to those who believe that a passion  as great as theirs must somehow find an echo in the  recipient. It was only gradually that her continuing
  
refusal reached him, and exaltation was  turned to misery and the familiar fear of his mother's  wrath.
  "Of course I shouldn't have hoped," he said  wretchedly. "If it had been Roland or  William, but--"'
  "No, Kendrick, no!" said Ellen--and  made a last effort before this horrendous evening could  end in solitude and her bed. "It's not that at  all. You sound much nicer than your brothers--  you're the nicest possible person but--"' and then with  an impulse to comfort which was stronger than discretion and  her inmost desire for privacy, she said:  "It's just that ... I'm in love with someone  else. He's not in love with me; he doesn't  care about me at all but I can't help--"' And  found to her horror that she had burst into tears.
  But her chivalry achieved its aim. That  Ellen was wretched made Kendrick's own  misery bearable. Since his dreadful childhood,  Kendrick had known that the world was a dark and  threatening place; sadness was a country in which he  felt entirely at home. That Ellen, so  beautiful, so desirable, should also be unhappily  in love was a profound consolation. To be allowed  to put his arms round her in brotherly love, to let  her cry on his shoulder, eased his own distress  immeasurably. He murmured condolences, he  promised always to be her friend, and of course to be there  if ever she should change her mind. He even  managed to make a kind of joke, for he had  remembered now what the Viennese called the  statue they were standing under: the Pestseule.  "It's a monument to the Great Plague--about a  hundred thousand people died in it, pretty  horribly," he said, "so perhaps I didn't  choose too well!"--and was rewarded by Ellen's  smile, and her arm in his as they walked back to the  hotel.

  Marek was extraordinarily tired. The  Feuerbach crisis had meant a day of  incessant rehearsals and then four hours on the  rostrum for the opera. Nothing had seemed quite real  to him since the curtain went down, and now he  realised how foolish he had been. It had  seemed polite to escort Brigitta to her  apartment, and now here it all was: the double doors  open to reveal the ridiculous Swan Bed, the  plumped up cushions, the clinging smell of her
  
scent. Brigitta had disappeared and  reappeared in a cream lace peignoir, and was  trying to snuggle up to him on the sofa.
  He moved away.
  "Brigitta, that's over, you know it is. I  came to help with the opera. We're colleagues,  that's all."
  She lifted her face to his. The  periwinkle-blue eyes filled with tears.  "Darling, how can you say that? When you know I  love you."
  "But I don't love you, Brigitta."  God, how hard it was to say that to a woman. He  pushed a hand through his hair, angry that she had put  him in this position. "I respect you  enormously as a musician; you gave a  marvellous performance tonight, but our affair is  over. I'm going to America and you have  Stallenbach."
  "Oh him!" She edged closer. The  peignoir was wide open now; clearly he was  supposed to be dazzled by her breasts, her stomach  --and indeed if quantity were all this would have been  no problem.
  "Don't you remember, my darling, how  marvellous it was?"'
  Marek sighed. It had been good at times, but  even then it was that she had always stood for something. It  was Mozart's lovelorn Countess or  Violetta--doomed and dying with perfect breath  control--that he had felt he was holding in his  arms.
  She had begun to cry now, but carefully, for she  still wore make-up. "It's because I'm getting  old. It's because I'm nearly forty."
  She was forty-three and she was using blackmail.  She was still playing the role she had played in the  opera. "You're like Octavian," she stormed.  "The first young thing you see and you're away."
  "No, Brigitta, it isn't that; you're still  a very beautiful woman."
  It wasn't because she was young that he had wanted  Ellen.
  Brigitta was crying in earnest now. "I  worked so hard for you. And now because my youth has gone  ..."
  She had worked hard. She had been as obedient  as a child, this bullying, autocratic woman.
  "Come, Brigitta; you'll be stopping all the  clocks next."
  
  She had played that scene superbly;  the scene where the Marschallin describes the  "unrelenting flow of time" and how sometimes she  gets up in the night and stops the clocks in the  palace. He could hear their soft chiming, evoked  by the harps and the celeste, and her voice soaring above  them. Did he have the right to deride her fear of  ageing even if she was using it to get her way?
  Never sleep with anyone out of pity. The  maxim was engraved on his heart, as on the heart  of everyone who wished to take and receive pleasure in  the act of love.
  "I'm leaving, Brigitta. I'm going  to America, you know that."
  "Then stay with me just one more time. Stay with me  because of what we made tonight."
  "All right, Brigitta. I'll stay for  that."

  At three a.m. he woke in the opulent bed,  hot and oppressed, and sat up suddenly.
  "What's the matter?"' she asked  sleepily.
  He turned a blank face to her.  "What?"'
  "You said something. Did you have a nightmare?"'  He pushed the hair out of his eyes, longing  to leap out of bed, to go and walk and walk, away from  this stifling place.
  "What did I say?"'
  "You said "I've forgotten the wheel!""  He stared at her, suddenly wide awake.  "Did I say that? That's right. It's true."

  As the train slowed down at Hallendorf  station, Ellen saw that the platform was full of children.  They were piled on to the benches, draped round the  wrought-iron pillars with their hanging baskets of  geraniums or just hopping excitedly up and down.  Sophie was there, of course, and Leon and  Ursula ... Janey and Flix and Bruno  too, but also Frank, swishing a stick through the  air, and a handful of village children.
  She had expected to have the journey across the  lake still to gather herself together, but when they surged  towards her she was unexpectedly pleased to be  among them again.
  "We got permission to come and meet you,"
  
shouted Leon.
  "There's been a disaster," said Sophie.  "No, it isn't a disaster," contradicted  Ursula.
  "Yes it is. It is for Bennet. It's  awful for him when he's written to all the  Toscanini Aunts. And it's a disgrace for the  school." Flix's lovely face was creased with  concern.
  Ellen put down her suitcase. "Could you  please tell me what's happened?"'
  "It's Abattoir!" Sophie had come very  close, trying to convey the bad news in a  suitably serious voice, but overjoyed to see  Ellen again. "It's finished. Kaput. We're  not doing it!"
  "What? But what about FitzAllan?"'  "Some men came." To Ellen's surprise,  Frank came and picked up her suitcase.
  "They were solicitors. Lawyers  anyway," said Janey.
  All the children were talking at once, clustered  round Ellen. Even the village children, though  everyone was speaking English, seemed to be involved  in breaking the extraordinary news.
  "And they said they represented ... they worked for  Bertolt Brecht and he'd never given permission  for the play to be done at all!"
  "They were absolutely furious. They told  Bennet he was breaking the law of copyright and if  one single scene was acted they'd sue him!"
  "So Margaret got furious. She said it  wasn't Bennet, it was FitzAllan who said  he'd got permission, and they all trooped off  to the theatre--"'
  "We were just rehearsing the bit where all the  workers go on strike and start to die in the snow,"  said Flix, "and they marched up to the front--the  men in the dark suits--and said: "Stop this at  once!""
  "They were as red as Turkey cocks.  Absolutely gobbling. And Bennet said: "I  assure you that Mr FitzAllan has permission  from Bertolt Brecht to perform this play; you will hear  it from him." He was very dignified," said  Sophie.
  "And then everyone looked at FitzAllan and  he just turned a sort of yellow and started  stammering and saying there must have been a  misunderstanding."
  
  "But there wasn't!" Leon's thin  face was contorted with contempt. "He'd made the  whole thing up! He'd never been near Brecht,  he just thought he could get away with it. The men went  away threatening all sorts of things ... libel  actions and stuff like that. And the next morning  Lieselotte put out his horrible nut cutlet  and he never came down for breakfast!"
  "He did a bunk in the night!"
  "So now we haven't got anything to show the  parents, not a thing," said Leon. "It's the first  time the school hasn't had a proper play for the  end of term, and with the music being hopeless too  ..."
  Ellen, walking with the excited, hopping children  towards the landing stage, was as indignant as they  were. So much work wasted, so much money too ...  the masks for the animals over which Rollo had  laboured, often far into the night ...  Jean-Pierre's military searchlights ...  yards and yards of muslin ... And poor  Chomsky, felled by the three-tiered structure,  all to no purpose.
  In the staffroom that evening she heard the  details. "One of the parents was at a party in  Zurich and boasted about the coup the school had  pulled off," said Freya, "and someone who  knew Brecht was there."
  "But why?"' Ellen couldn't understand it. "Why  should he go to such lengths to cheat? It's only a  school play."
  Jean-Pierre put down his newspaper. "Not  so "only" perhaps--after all, some of the parents here  are very distinguished: Frank's father, and Bruno's  ... the parents of the little Sabine who own half of  Locarno Chemicals. And the director of the  Festspielhaus in Bonn had promised to come:  he's almost a Toscanini's Uncle, one could  say. If FitzAllan had pulled it off it  could have been quite a coup for him."
  "Do you suppose everything else was a lie  too?"' asked Ellen. "I mean that he worked with  Meyerhold and Stanislavsky?"'
  "Probably." David Langley, who  had wasted weeks of good summer weather, which could have  been spent collecting frit fly, being a  bloated stockyard owner or a carcass, was  especially bitter. "Still, he wasn't so  stupid; he got paid in advance."
  Like the children, the staff were particularly upset for
  
Bennet, who blamed himself for being taken  in and made it clear that the whole responsibility  for the disaster was his and his alone.
  "But that is not so," said Hermine. "If I  had not permitted the Professor to overcome me  in Hinterbruhl I could have produced a play as  in the years before. It was to save me work that this  Schweinkopf was engaged."
  "What about Tamara? How has she taken  it?"' asked Ellen.
  Glances were exchanged, heads shaken.  "Badly, as you can imagine. Very badly," said  David. "I think she thought he fancied her.  She's been storming about like a tragedy queen ever  since he went."
  But it was worse than that. Going down after she  had put her children to bed to comfort Margaret, Ellen  found the secretary standing at the open window of her  office. She looked weary and wretched, but when  Ellen came she managed to smile, for she had  no secrets from her.
  "Listen!" she said.
  Ellen went to stand beside her. From the floor above,  faint but unmistakable, came the sound of the  Polovtsian Dances played on Tamara's  gramophone.
  "As though he hasn't enough to put up with," said  Margaret bitterly. "The stockbrokers have  written again; there's real doubt about whether we can  go on even for another term--and he's so  tired."
  Ellen put her arm round the secretary's  shoulders. "You love him, don't you?"' she said  quietly. "I mean, really?"'
  Margaret shrugged. "Yes, I think it  probably is ... really." She shook her  head. "Never mind; I'll get over it. And  you? Did you have a nice time in Vienna?"'
  "Not very," said Ellen.
  And then, because they were both Englishwomen and their  hearts were somewhat broken, they turned back into the  room and put on the kettle and made themselves a  cup of tea.

  The newspapers from Vienna arrived the following  day. All of them carried the story of the gala and  Marek's heroic rescue, and though the pictures  of him which they had been able to get hold of were years  out of date, there was no mistaking him. Both the  Tageblatt and the Neue Zeitung
  
concentrated on the musical aspects  of the performance, but Wiener Leben carried the  full gossip of Altenburg's relationship with  Seefeld as well as a picture of the composer  embracing the diva under the benevolent eyes of  Richard Strauss.
  "And yet one is not absolutely  surprised," said Hermine as these revelations were  discussed in the staffroom. "That he was someone one  always felt ..."
  "And from the way he ran from Tamara's  balalaika one should have guessed that he was a  musician," said Jean-Pierre.
  "Did you hear anything about this in Vienna?"'  they asked Ellen, and she shook her head. She  could not bear to speak about the opera.
  The children, like the staff, reacted with mixed  feelings to the news. That it was an eminent composer  who had healed their tortoise and hoed their garden  paths was as exciting as anything in a film--but that  he was going to America with Brigitta  Seefeld, as the papers unequivocally stated,  was sad. During her short tour of the school, the  diva had not endeared herself to those whose path she had  crossed.
  Bennet, in order to allay speculation, made  a short announcement in Assembly in which he said  that Marek had wanted to spend some time incognito  in order to rest and refresh himself, and implied that  he had been gestating a composition of some  importance in his room above the stables. If this  contented most people, it did nothing to soothe Tamara's  rage. That she had let an eminent musician  slip through her fingers was almost more than she could bear.
  "He could have created a ballet on me,"  she said peevishly. "I would not have prevented  him. He is an idiot to have missed such a  chance."
  It was the only child who was not surprised by the  news who was the most affected.
  Looking for Leon at bed time, Ellen found  him standing forlornly in Marek's old room. A  spider had made a web across the window;    Lieselotte had put some early windfalls  to ripen on the sill and the tangy, wholesome smell  seemed strangely to conjure up Marek in his  blue work shirt.
  "I keep thinking of what he wrote here,  maybe," said Leon. "I looked in the chest  to see if there were any fragments but there aren't."
  
  Ellen was silent, coming to stand beside him.  She remembered Marek packing up his papers the  day she had shouted at him for throwing Leon into the  lake.
  "It's going to be awfully difficult writing  his biography if he's in America," the boy  said bleakly.
  "I don't see why," said Ellen. "You  may have to postpone it for a while but you're not so far  from being grown up. Why don't you simply  decide to go there when you're old enough?"'
  Leon looked at her gratefully. "Yes,
I could do that." He sighed. "He's the best,  you know, Ellen. Honestly. I mean not just his  music. He's absolutely the best."
  "Yes, I know, Leon. But come to bed."  The excitement of discovering Marek's true  identity lasted a day or two but then the children    became listless and depressed. They had complained  about Abattoir, but the play had been the centre  of their lives. Hermine was organising movement  workshops for the end of term, Freya intended to put  on a demonstration of PE for the parents and  Bennet was preparing extracts from The  Winter's Tale, but for visitors who had  expected to see an original play by Brecht this  would hardly make exciting theatre.
  The demise of Abattoir had one immediate  consequence. Chomsky returned! The news that  FitzAllan was disgraced had effected an  instant cure. Curiously enough, everyone was  pleased to see him: they attended his classes more  enthusiastically than before, bent sheets of metal  into bookends and looked at his appendix scar with a  sense of familiarity and relief. Ellen waited  daily for him to discover the loss of his passport,  but the Hungarian's room was so untidy that he was  lucky to find his bed, let alone examine the  state of his documents, and having met his family  she felt no anxiety about Laszlo's ability  to get home when the time was ripe.
  Then, two days after Chomsky's return, the  deputation came.

  They came not by steamer but by road in two cars:  the mayor of Hallendorf, the butcher who was  Lieselotte's uncle, the head of the Farmer's  Cooperative and several other dignitaries,  wearing stiff collars and looking important,  embarrassed and hot.
  
  Instinctively, both Ellen and
Margaret, who were in the headmaster's office,  came to stand on either side of him.
  "Now what, I wonder," said Bennet  wearily. "It can't be Chomsky caught in their  fishing nets already--he hasn't been back long  enough. Perhaps Frank has been lighting  fires?"'
  "No," said Ellen. "I'm sure not."
  The men approached. Their expressions could be  seen to be serious. That would be the last straw--a  complaint from the village when at last relations between  the school and Hallendorf itself had so much  improved.
  But Bennet was not one to shirk his duties.  "I think we shall need some beer, Ellen," he  said--and went forward to greet the mayor and shake  hands with everyone and lead them to his study.

  It had seemed simple enough. He would call  on the old farmer who had promised him the wheel  off a derelict hay cart, pay him, leave  instructions and a gratuity for the farmer's boy who  would put it up--and return to Vienna.
  In the event it was not simple at all. While  old Schneider admitted that Herr Tarnowsky  had enquired about a wheel some weeks ago, the  farmer did not recollect having given a firm  promise to let him have it.
  "I can't go giving farm equipment away,"  he said, leaning against the door of his filthy shed.
  "I didn't ask you to let me have it. I  offered you a fair price for it. However, if that  isn't enough I'll increase it--on condition you and  your boy put it up for me."
  Herr Schneider, though interested in the price  Marek now mentioned, said there was no question of them  putting it up. He had haemorrhoids and was not  allowed on a ladder and his son was up on the high  pasture dealing with the cows.
  "It's a tricky job, putting up  wheels."
  "Rubbish. It's going on the gable end of the  coach house. Any able-bodied man can do it in  ten minutes."
  But this gambit was a mistake, leading back  to Herr Schneider's haemorrhoids and the fact  that the doctors in Klagenfurt knew nothing and  cared less. "I'll sell you the wheel but you must  put it up yourself," said Herr Schneider, adding
  
grudgingly that Herr Tarnowsky could use  the tools in the outhouse.
  Marek swore and handed over a sheaf of notes.  Seemingly he had hit on the one man in the  district who was not related to Lieselotte.  "I'll have to borrow your van," he said.
  An hour later, the wheel lashed to the back,  he was on his way to Hallendorf.

  If it hadn't been for Lieselotte, Ellen  wouldn't have come--her dislike of meetings was growing  worse rather than better--but this one mattered  terribly to her helper, so she had found her  usual place on the windowsill and now, with  Sophie on one side and Lieselotte on the  other, she listened to Bennet's summing up.
  "I explained to the mayor that we were greatly  honoured to be asked--as you know, a closer union  of the school and the village is something I have always  wanted. On the other hand, I had to tell him that  I didn't feel that the school as a whole could be  involved in the project. Of course any  individuals--staff or pupils--who want  to help in their own time are entirely free to do so,  but--"'
  "Why?"'
  The interruption came from Sophie, whose shyness  was proverbial, and who now blushed crimson at  her own daring.
  Bennet looked across at her with his charming  smile.
  "You mean why can't the school be involved in a  pageant to celebrate the life of St  Aniella?"'
  "Yes." Sophie nodded, still crimson.  "Because we would be taking part in a religious  ritual," explained Bennet. "It would be  outside our brief as an educational  establishment."
  "She's nice though, Aniella is." The  tiny Sabine spoke with unexpected resolution.
  "Yes, she is," said Sophie. "She's  ordinary but she's special too. She's a  chicken saint--you know, the kind that shelters people."  She stuck out her thin arms, turning them  into sheltering wings. "She looks after children and old  people--"'
  "And after animals," put in Flix. "Every  kind of animal. Even salamanders and hedgehogs  and grass snakes. The pictures are in the
  
church."
  "Do you all know the story then?"' Bennet was  surprised.
  "No, we don't," said some children at the  back.
  "Perhaps you'd better tell us then,  Sophie," said the headmaster.
  "Oh no, I couldn't!"
  "Go on, Sophie," said Ellen gently.
  So Sophie took a deep breath and began.  Her mother had told her she couldn't project her  voice and her father had said one must never put oneself  forward but now she forgot both of them. As she  spoke, the children could see Aniella moving among  the sick and wounded animals in her flower-filled  meadow ... could hear the clatter of hoofs as the  evil knights rode towards her house. They were  with her as she prayed in the grotto ("It's the  one above the larch plantation, the one full of  bicycle tyres," said Sophie) and hear the  wing beats of the angel who consoled her. They  followed the saint across the lake in a flotilla  of boats, and felt the horror as she was stabbed and  blood flowed over her wedding dress. "But it was  all right," said Sophie, using the words that  Lieselotte had used in the church. "Because she  became beautiful again and floated up and up and  flowers came down and lovely music played."
  "It could be a promenade performance," said  Leon when she had finished.
  "What's a promenade performance?"' asked  Janey.
  "It's where people follow the action round. You'd  start in Aniella's house and go on to the grotto  and so on. Not that I could have anything to do with it,"  Leon went on hastily, "because religion is  the opium of the people."
  "Well that's really stupid," said Ursula  hotly. "You might as well say you can't do a  play about the Arctic because you're not a penguin."
  "Leon is perfectly correct, however,"  said Jean-Pierre. "It is out of the question that we  should have anything to do with a piece of Catholic  superstition. Still, the lighting in the cave could be  interesting: by using mirrors and back projection  ..." His gaze became inward as he gave vent  to a farrago of technicalities.
  "We've got all those animal masks  spare from Abattoir. I don't see why we  couldn't let them have those," said Rollo.
  
  "You could use some of the muslin that's  left over and dye it and use it to swag the  boats, each one a different colour," said  Bruno--and Rollo stared at him open-mouthed,  for the boy had seized a piece of paper and begun  to draw.
  Bennet, letting the discussion move freely,  found himself totally amazed. His agnostic--not  to say atheistic--children, his Marxist staff with their  detestation of any kind of superstition, were  seriously discussing a religious pageant  celebrating the life of a minor Austrian saint  whose authenticity was much disputed. He imagined  Frank's father hearing of it, or the other parents  who had entrusted their children to him on the understanding that they  would grow up free of the spurious consolations of an  afterlife. And why was Jean-Pierre, who slept  with a poster of Lenin above his head, holding forth on  the merits of the lighting technique known as  Pepper's Ghost?
  "I wouldn't mind being a salamander," said  Sabine firmly. "I'd rather be a salamander  than a carcass."
  Bennet called the meeting to order. "I shall not  prevent anyone from helping," he said, "but it  must be made clear that it is done on an  individual basis."
  The children, however, were concerned with a more important  point.
  "Who's going to be Aniella?"' they asked  each other. "Who's going to be the saint?"'
  It would have to be a grown-up--Aniella  wasn't a child--and someone whom everybody liked,  both the village and the school.
  But really the question was already answered. Bennet  saw them nod to each other, heard Ellen's name go  through the room like wind through corn ... saw them  looking to where she sat, leaning her head against the  window.
  They were right, of course. She would be wonderful  as Aniella. She would pull this amateurish  escapade together with her warmth, her gravitas.  Surely this time she would not refuse to be singled  out, to be in the limelight?
  Yes, she was going to do it! She had risen to her  feet and shaken out her hair--and she looked as  happy as she had done when he first saw her.  Happy and honoured, perhaps, at the obvious  wishes, now being expressed, that she should be the  pageant's centre and its star.
  
  Except that she wasn't looking at  the people now surging towards her; she had turned  back to the window and was looking out at the coach  house roof, on to the gable of which a man on a  tall ladder was fixing a wooden wheel.

  For three days Marek shut himself up in his old  room in the stable block. People who came to knock  on his door did not do so twice, and even  Tamara respected his wishes and stayed away.
  His intention at first was simply to adapt some of the  well-known folk songs and hymns of the district,  orchestrating them for such instruments as were to hand and  teaching the smaller children a simple accompaniment.
  Then on the first day Ellen had come in with a  tray, for he had made it clear that he would not come  in for meals. The tray contained a plate with a  pork chop, a helping of mashed potatoes and some  garden peas. For dessert she had given him fresh  fruit: a bunch of black grapes, a peach.
A pot of coffee was keeping warm under a cosy.  She put the tray down and for a moment he saw  her: the asymmetrical hair, the concerned eyes  and strongly marked brows.
  "How's it going?"' he asked her.
  "It's amazing. The exact opposite of  Abattoir. People are coming from everywhere to help.  We've even found a fierce horse for Count  Alexei--it used to pull the dustcart and it's a  stinker. And believe it or not, they all want  Frank to be the angel: a huge, ferocious  angel like Raphael with enormous wings and--"'
  But Marek had stopped listening. She saw the  sudden withdrawal into his own thoughts and left him.  As soon as she was gone, he dropped the  manuscript paper on to the floor. Two hours  later, he had written what came to be called  the Aniella theme.
  My God, this is worse than Hollywood,  he thought. A girl comes in with a pork chop and I  write a song for her. It wasn't quite like that, of  course, but it was true that he had wanted suddenly  to express the sense of joy in simple things which  characterised her. But now he was done for. The growling  march for the evil knights was already in his head, and now  the interaction of Aniella's theme with that of the  angel in the grotto.
  "Idiot!" he told himself, facing days
  
without sleep and an amount of work out of  all proportion to the occasion--but nothing now could have  stopped him.
  In the evening she came again with the fresh supply  of manuscript paper he had sent out for, and a  supper tray.
  "I need a large Thermos of coffee," he  said. "Black. Nothing else."
  When she had gone he went to the window and  stretched. It occurred to him to wonder if he would  have written this music if Ellen had agreed to be  Aniella; if she had given in to the clamour of  those who wanted her to be the pageant's star. But  she had not considered it even for a moment.
  "It would be completely wrong for me to do it;  I'm not Austrian and I'm not a Catholic.  I'll help in any way I can but there's only  one person who can do it--you must see that."
  And they had seen it. Lieselotte would not have  to act--she was Aniella--and by insisting on this  uncomplicated and well-loved girl, Ellen  had brought the village round behind the enterprise to a  man. But it had touched Marek, as it had touched  Bennet, that she had meant what she said when she'd  insisted that she herself did not want to act or sing  or be singled out in any way.

  "What if it rains?"' asked Frau  Tischlein. She was the old woman who had warned  Ellen of the wild children at Hallendorf. Now  suddenly the wild children were everywhere; in the village,  in Lieselotte's house ... suggesting,  rehearsing ... They were even in the church, where  hammering and sawing could be heard all day, for  Lieselotte, at her own insistence, was to be  flown upwards to the tower.
  "It won't rain," said Frau Becker.
"God would not permit it when we are working so hard  in his name."
  They were certainly working hard. The scheme for the  pageant seemed to grow spontaneously like a  river gathering tributaries. Lieselotte's  own house was too high up the mountain to be used,  but a similar wooden house not far from the grotto  was commandeered. To this house the villagers brought  flowers for the window boxes and tubs of ornamental  shrubs, and when Rollo fixed an imitation  morning glory up one wall, it became the house  in the painting.
  "I want to be a salamander too," said the
  
six-year-old son of the shoemaker and was  sent to Bruno to be fitted out with yellow spots.
  What had happened to Bruno was as great a  miracle to Ellen as anything that had happened to the  saint. Coming to look for him late one night, she  found him in the art room.
  "Don't tell me to go to bed," he said  angrily--and she didn't, for she had seen what  he was making: the mask that would turn Aniella  into an old crone, an uncanny masterpiece  fashioned from rice paper and silk in which  Lieselotte's pretty features were still  discernible beneath the wrinkles.
  "They have taken my baby!" cried Hermine,  finding the herring box empty and coming distraught  to Ellen.
  "It's all right, she's with Frau Becker  and the others in the sewing room."
  "But they will give her bad things to eat--  sweet things, and in the book it says--"'
  But when Andromeda was returned, with icing sugar  on her cheeks, she smiled and cooed and slept the  night through for the first time since she was born.
  Problems arose continuously. How would the  followers get from the house to the church? Not everyone  could go in the flotilla of boats. No one  expected the tight-fisted Captain Harrar to offer  his paddle steamer, but he did; it would follow at  a distance and there would be room for everyone.
  When it became clear that even with all the  village women sewing, the dresses would not be  done, six nuns appeared from the convent, asked for  Ellen, and were led to the hall which had been taken  over as a workshop. One of these, Sister  Felicity, turned out to be an expert botanist  and supervised the making of Alpenrosen petals for  Aniella to strew over the lake, and  headdresses of saxifrage and gentians and  cornflowers for the guests. But it was Ellen who  made Aniella's wedding gown, fighting Bruno  for the last of the muslin and creating a dream dress which  had Lieselotte in tears.
  Only Ursula still stood aside.
  "I wish you'd be one of the bridesmaids like  us," said Sophie. "We'll be sailing over  the lake with Aniella; it'll be fun. Ellen's  got a dirndl for you, she told me."
  "Don't be silly," said Ursula.
"No one wore braces on their teeth in those  days. People would jeer at me."
  
  "No they wouldn't," began
Sophie--but Ursula had already marched off with her  red exercise book.
  There was to be as little "acting" as possible,  everyone agreed on that. Enacting yes, acting no,  but it had been decided that there should be a brief  commentary to link the scenes together and to his utter  amazement, Bennet himself had agreed to write it.
  What am I doing? he asked himself. I'm an  atheist; I've been one all my life. Yet  now he wrote words for an Austrian saint who  lived by God, for an angel lit from behind (if the  generator worked) by a Marxist teacher of  mathematics. He wrote words to proclaim the  treachery of the greengrocer, who had been cast as  Count Alexei--and told himself he was an idiot  and did not stop.
  By now no one remembered any more who belonged  to the village and who to the school. Bennet  cancelled all afternoon lessons, did not even open  the letter from his stockbroker and told Margaret  to abandon all correspondence with Toscanini  Aunts. Convinced that he faced ruin and derision  from such parents as would make their way  to Hallendorf, Bennet found he did not greatly    care. If this was the end of his beloved school, it was  a good one.
  Into this creative chaos, there now burst  Marek's music.
  On the morning of the fourth day he showered,  shaved, and went to find Ellen.
  "I want Leon--tell him to copy these  parts; I need three copies at least. And find  me Flix and those Italian twins and the  red-haired boy with a scar behind his ear."
  "Oliver?"' she said. "You want him?"'  "Yes; he can sing. I heard him when he was  carving. And Sophie; she can hold a tune.  I'll teach them first and they can help the others.  Three o'clock this afternoon in the music room."
  He then commandeered Bennet's car and drove to the  village where he asked to see the leader of the  Hallendorf Brass Band and said he expected  him and his players next morning at the castle.
  "But we're competing in the finals at  Klagenfurt in a month," said the leader.  "We--"'
  Marek said this was a pity, but he expected them  at ten, and disappeared into the kitchens of the  Goldene Krone, summoned the assistant
  
chef and told him to fetch his brother and his  accordion. Two hours later he was in  Klagenfurt, in the school of music, and said he  needed a fiddler, a cellist and a viola player  for the coming week.
  "But that is out of the question. No one will come for a  country pageant. They have exams."
  "Ask them," said Marek briefly--and handed  over his card.
  The principal backed away. They were true,  then, the rumours he had heard.
  "Yes, sir; of course. I'll send the  best players I've got."
  "They'll need strong shoes," said Marek.  "Ten o'clock at the castle."
  In the days that followed, Bennet, watching  Marek's rehearsals, saw every one of his  educational beliefs thrown over.
  "I can't sing;" said Sophie, "my mother  says I have a voice like a corncrake,"--and  was treated to a blistering attack on people who at the  age of twelve were still under their mother's thumb.  "If you were an Arab you'd be married by now,"  said Marek. "I decide who can't, and no one  else. Now open your mouth and sing."
  Leon, after three hours of copying music,  said he was tired and was treated to a stare of such  contempt that he changed his mind, and reached for  another pile of manuscript paper.
  "You're late," said Marek to the students  of the Klagenfurt Academy, emerging from their car.
  "I'm sorry, Herr Altenburg. We had  a puncture."
  "Don't let it happen again. Here's your  music. I want it by heart tonight. You represent  continuity; you'll go from venue to venue accompanying  the narrator. In the last scene you'll be playing  in the tower of the church."
  "Herr Altenburg, I can't; I have  vertigo." And as Marek looked at him:  "All right--I'll get the chemist to fix me  something."
  But with the youngest children from the village and the school  Marek was gentle. He played the tune for  Aniella once, and again and for the third time. He  played the tune for the wicked knights (to be  enacted, unexpectedly, by the greengrocer, the  butcher--and Chomsky) and the music for the wedding  feast. And he told them that they must be strong and  trust him while they learnt to play their
  
triangles and shake their tambourines and  bang their drums in the right way, because while this  happened the tunes would go away.
  "But they'll come back," he said, "all the  tunes will come back and you'll see how  important you are," and they nodded and let themselves  be led away by Freya to practise.
  Odd things happened. A boatload of  dentists from the conference booked into the annexe of the  Krone overheard a rehearsal.
  "You're short on the woodwind," said one of  them. "I play the clarinet--I can go and get  it."
  And he got it, and cut a symposium on  Geriatric Orthodontics and said he could stay  till the pageant. A girl on a walking tour  turned out to be a singing student from Paris and stayed  also--perhaps because of the music, more probably because of the  dentist who looked like Cary Grant.
  Odder still perhaps was a plaintive letter from  Sophie's mother to complain that her daughter hadn't  written.
  "I forgot," Sophie told Leon,  half appalled, half excited. "I forgot  to write to her!"
  "About time too," said Leon. He had  graduated to being Professor Steiner's  assistant in transcribing parts and had begun  to see what hard work really meant.
  Then came the day when Marek led the youngest children  to Aniella's house for a rehearsal, and told  them to beat their drums and shake their tambourines and  their triangles in the way that they had learnt--and  as Lieselotte came out of the door, the  assembled musicians began to play, and they  saw, these obedient, small musicians, where they  fitted in--that by themselves they were nothing, but now, with  everybody joining in, they were part of something  glorious.
  And it was then that the little fat boy who loved  mathematics put down his triangle and sighed and  said: "Oh gosh! It's better than the  calculus."

  It did not rain.
  At seven in the morning, the dentist who played  the clarinet was woken by the chambermaid at the inn and  went downstairs to find a small, fierce-looking
  
child standing in the hall.
  "I want you to take out my brace," said  Ursula.
  The dentist, scarcely awake, blinked and  rubbed his eyes.
  "What?"' he said stupidly.
  "My brace. They didn't have them when  Aniella was alive."
  "My dear, I can't do that. I don't have the  right equipment; it would hurt, and in any  case--"'
  Ursula stood unmoving. She had woken at  dawn and trudged on foot round the lake. Now  she dredged up a word she scarcely ever used.  "Please," she said.
  In the house on the alp, Lieselotte woke  and stretched and was suddenly terrified.
  "I can't, Mama. All those people ... I  can't. You must tell--"'
  But at that moment Ellen came up the path,  carrying the basket of pins and needles, of  scissors and glue, that had become a symbol of  all that went into the making of Aniella's name day,  and kissed her friend, and looked so pleased and  happy, and so calm, that Lieselotte's panic  abated and she decided she could after all swallow  a cup of coffee and eat a roll.
  A charabanc drove into the village square and  disgorged a busload of tourists, but no one had  time to bother with them. Everyone was gathered outside the  little wooden house, the rows of waiting animals in  their place, and the sun shining out of a clear blue  sky. Then the head boy of the village school  stepped forward to speak Bennet's words: "We have  come together to celebrate the name day of Saint  Aniella who was born here at Hallendorf on  a morning such as this ..."
  And as Lieselotte stepped out of the door,  Marek brought in his musicians--and the pageant  began.

  No one who was present ever forgot it. They had  rehearsed it separately in every combination, but now,  coming together, it took on a life of its own. An  amazed recognition, a kind of wonder at what  they had made, lifted them out of themselves.  Propelled by Marek's music through the familiar  story, they constantly found new meanings, new  gestures, which were yet always part of the whole.
  And those who had come to watch were drawn in also.
  
When a small hedgehog stumbled, a  woman on the edge of the crowd came forward to help  her, blurring the separation between watchers and  participants, which was so much a characteristic of the day.  Frank's father, who had threatened to withdraw his son  from school, could be seen elbowing his way to the front  as they reached the grotto--the only example of  bad manners to be seen all day.
  Even the unexpected things, the mishaps,  turned into marvels.
  "Are we sinking?"' asked Ursula, sitting  in Aniella's boat, forgetting her sore mouth.
  "No." But it was true that the rim of the  brocaded canopy (the best bedspread of Frau  Becker's aunt) had dropped into the water and was  slowing the boat ... slowing it more and more, so that it  echoed uncannily Aniella's reluctance to go  to her wedding.
  Outside the church, the dustcart horse, who  had a dozen times walked up the church steps in  rehearsals, reared and refused--and the peace-loving  greengrocer became a red-faced, furious  seducer, kicking his mount with his heels as if he  really was Count Alexei of Hohenstift.
  The trick with the mask worked--even those who had  been warned hissed with distress as Lieselotte  became a wrinkled crone--and Rollo had been more  than generous with the blood.
  And then, like a hand reaching down from heaven (or from  the bell tower, where the brave dentist was perched on  a joist and the vertiginous violinist played  gallantly on) came Marek's music, a  high, pure skein of sound in which all the themes  reached resolution, drawing the girl up and up for  her apotheosis.
  And as Sister Felicity's flowers drifted  down from the heights, caught in a moment of  enchantment in the spotlights, there came from those who  packed the body of the church--not clapping, not cheering  --but a sigh that seemed to be one sigh ... and then  it was done.

  "We'll do it again, won't we?"' they  promised each other--Frau Becker and  Jean-Pierre, the butcher and Freya, everyone  hugging everyone else ... forgetting the troops  mustered on the border, forgetting the final letter from  Bennet's stockbroker. The old woman who'd
  
said it would rain was kissing Sabine,  Chomsky and the greengrocer wandered arm in arm, and the  reporters from the local newspapers clustered  round Lieselotte, photographing her with her  bridesmaids, her animals ... "This won't  be the last time," they told each other.  "We'll do it every single year."
  There was a party, of course; the kind of party that  just happens but happens rather better if there is  someone in the background, putting butter on  rolls, opening bottles of wine, of lemonade  ... fetching hoarded delicacies out of the  fridge.
  Ellen had excused herself from the proceedings and for  an hour or more had been sending plates of food  up to the terrace with its strings of fairy lights,  and the music playing on the gramophone now so that  everyone could dance. The dentist was dancing with  Ursula; Chomsky with Frau Becker's aunt
--and Leon's father with Sophie.
  "And if her mother and father had come it would have been  a miracle, I suppose," Ellen had said  to the headmaster, watching Sophie's vivid  face, "and there aren't a lot of those."
  "No. But it might work out best like this.  Leon's parents have invited her to stay in  London; they're good people. She may be someone who  has to get her warmth from outside the family."
  Later Bennet had taken her aside and said:  "We owe this to you, Ellen. If you hadn't  befriended Lieselotte and made the links with the  village, none of this would have happened."
  She had shaken her head--yet it was true that  some of what she had imagined that morning by the well  and spoken of to Marek, had materialised this day.  People had come from everywhere ... had received with  hospitality what was offered ... the lion, just a  little, had lain down with the lamb.
  Children came to the kitchen, offering to help, but she  only loaded them with food and sent them upstairs  again. She was content to be alone and glad to be out  of the way, for she knew all too well what was  happening--not on the noisy terrace, but in the  hastily erected marquee in the jousting ground where  Bennet, with the assistance of the landlord and chef of the  Krone, was entertaining the most extraordinary  collection of Toscanini Aunts ever assembled  in Hallendorf.
  It had been the most amazing and unexpected  thing: now, when Bennet had abandoned all hope of
  
interesting anyone in the significance of the  school, Aunts--and indeed Uncles--of the  highest stature had appeared from everywhere. The  director of the Festspielhaus in Geneva had  been seen lumbering over the muddy boards at the  lake's edge, scrambling for a place in the  lighter which would take him to the boat. The manager  of the Bruckner Theatre in Linz, to whom Bennet  had written vainly two years before, had puffed his  way up to the grotto, writing in his notebook--  and Madame Racelli, of the Academy of the  Performing Arts in Paris, had cantered in her  high heels and silver fox stole across the  meadows, so as to miss no moment of what was going  on.
  The kitchen door opened and Lieselotte  came in. She had changed into her dirndl, but the  flush of happiness was still on her cheeks.
  "I've come to help," she said, reaching for her  apron and tying it round her waist.
  "No, you haven't. You're going straight  back up to dance with all your suitors and be the  belle of the ball. This is your night,  Lieselotte, and I don't want you down  here."
  Lieselotte took not the slightest notice.  She had taken up a knife and begun to slice the  rolls. "We need more of the salami ones--  Chomsky's eaten three already."
  "Lieselotte, I am your supervisor and
I order you to go back and dance," said Ellen.  Lieselotte put down her knife.
"Yes, you are my supervisor, but also, I  think ... you are my friend? And I want to be with you  tonight."
  But this was a mistake. Ellen's defences  crumbled; tears gathered in her eyes--and nothing  could be sillier, for she had known--everybody knew  --that Marek was leaving the following day, that his boat  sailed in a week--and that Brigitta  Seefeld, the mightiest and most redoubtable of the  uninvited "Aunts", had come to fetch him.

  Marek's abrupt departure from Vienna had  infuriated Benny and Staub, puzzled the    musical establishment, and caused Brigitta  to erupt into a series of violent scenes.
  "How dare he treat me like that?"' she raged.  "He begs to spend the night with me and then  goes off as if I was a plaything!"
  
  Then, about a week after his disappearance  and shortly before he was due to sail, Benny  called at Brigitta's apartment in an obvious  state of excitement.
  "Do you know where he is?"' he asked her,  shooing away the masseuse.
  "Where?"'
  "In Hallendorf. Where they all swore  they'd never heard of him. And do you know what he's  doing?"'
  "What?"'
  "Writing music for a local pageant. For  some obscure saint called Anabella or  something."
  "I don't believe it."
  "It's true. I had it from Ferdie Notar  at the Central who heard it from the clarinettist  of the Philharmonic who heard it from the director  of the Klagenfurt Academy."
  "But that's ridiculous. Marcus hates all  that sort of thing--villagers with fat legs and mud  and everything going wrong." Brigitta's mind was  racing. Was he writing her music for some  female yokel with blonde plaits and cow's  eyes?
  "I checked with the Klagenfurt tourist  board."
  "I'm going back, Benny," said  Brigitta imperiously.
  "Me too," said Benny. "I smell  gold."

  Unfortunately he was not the only one. There were  too many rivals brought by rumours of  Altenburg's involvement in the proceedings. The  director of the Festspielhaus, sitting across the  table, had a nasty glitter in his eyes.
  But with Brigitta to help him, with her influence  over Marcus, he was bound to succeed. Staub  wasn't much use--he'd insisted on coming but he  thought of nothing except his libretto. It was  Brigitta who would carry the day.
  "I tell you, Marcus, the piece is made  for the States," he said now. "They'd gobble it  up. A music theatre piece with a message  ... You might think they'd object to God and  peasants and so on, but I promise it's not so.  People always turn to religion when they think there  might be a war."
  Marek smiled at him lazily. "That's very
  
kind of them--but I'm afraid what they  think about God or peasants has nothing to do with  anything. The music for the pageant stays here. It  was written for these people at this moment of time. They can  use it again or not, but it's theirs."
  Benny put down his glass. "For heaven's  sake, Marcus, be reasonable. Don't you see  how you'd be helping them here if your piece became  known all over the world? Think of Oberammergau.  You've only got to score that theme you wrote for the  saint for Brigitta and it would be a sensation."
  "Possibly," Marek agreed, but he did  not seem disposed to continue the conversation, and the  director of the Festspielhaus now leant across  the table to put in his own bid.
  "I'd be prepared to put it on with all the  actors--everyone from here who took part in it. That  way it would stay in Europe."
  Brigitta glared at him and put her hand on  Marek's arm. It was time to assert her personal  dominion over the composer.
  "Darling, you can't just keep your work hidden  away, you know that really. It belongs to the world.  You've no right to keep it to yourself."
  "I shan't be doing that. The population of  Hallendorf is considerable."
  "Well then, at least rescore that incredible  theme--it would work marvellously on its own."
  "I've done that already," said Marek. "But  that too stays here."
  Brigitta's eyes narrowed. For whom had he  written that amazing tune? Who was behind the whole  escapade? She had seen Lieselotte come out  of her house at the beginning of the pageant with a  certain relief--the girl was hardly more than a  child, a peasant through and through. Brigitta had  watched her like a hawk afterwards, but she'd made no  attempt to come up to Marek--it was her own  family she sought out.
  But if not Lieselotte, then who? Not that  ridiculous Russian woman drifting about in a  shroud, not the pretty Norwegian, she was sure  of it. No, there could be no one; not in that crazy  school, nor in the village. She was silly  even to think of it.
  "You wrote that melody for me, didn't you?  I know you did. It falls exactly for my  voice."
  She sang a few bars of the slow, ascending  phrase to which the girl emerges into the sunlit
  
morning, and she was right. The silvery,  ethereal notes rose in the evening air and the people  sitting close by fell silent.
  Marek's face was closed; a mask; he  hated what he had to do.
  "No, Brigitta, I didn't write it  for you. If I wrote it for anyone--if that's how  it works and I'm still not sure--I wrote it for a  girl who had no part in the pageant, whom  nobody saw, who did not act or sing or play  an instrument ... and who is not here now at the party  but in the kitchen, making the food we are eating."
  Brigitta's cry of fury and revelation rent  the air.
  "The cook!" she cried. "You wrote that  music for the cook!"
  "Yes."
  It could have gone either way. Marek, certainly,  was braced for pathos and tears--and they would have been  justified, for she would have made a lovely thing of  Aniella's music. But the fates who had  smiled on Hallendorf all day still looked  benignly on the inhabitants. Brigitta did  not weep or beseech as she had done after the opera.  She rose, expanded her well-documented  ribcage--and exploded into righteousness and rage.
  "How dare you insult me like that? How dare you  beg for a place in my bed and then go and sport with  domestics? I offered you my art and my love and  you go off to roll in the gutter. Well, do it then  --make Kn@odel with your cook, but don't come  running back to me. When I think what I was  prepared to do for you!" She turned majestically  to Staub. "Go on. Remind him of what I was  prepared to do!"
  "She was prepared to huddle," said Staub  weakly.
  "I was prepared to huddle," repeated  Brigitta, to the interest of those in earshot. "But  not now. Not ever again. Get the driver, Benny--  we're leaving."
  But this was not so simple. Infected by the day's  proceedings, the taxi driver had pinned Hermine  against the wall of the Greek temple, where he was  outlining the plot of a possible music drama  based on his grandmother's experience with her husband's  ghost, and made it clear that he was in no way  ready to depart.

  It was after midnight when Ellen was finished.
  
Now she sat on the rim of the well where  she had sat at the beginning, garnering gym shoes.  Fireflies danced in the catalpa tree; an  owl hooted--perhaps the same one which Marek had shown  her how to feed. The music still came faintly from the  terrace, but the younger children were in bed; the party had  moved on to the village and would continue until  dawn. Enough light came from the upstairs window  to show her the outline of the wheel on the coach house  roof. Would they come next year, the storks--and would  there be anyone left to welcome them?
  He came upon her quietly, but she knew his  step and braced herself. This was where one let love go  lightly--bade it goodbye with an open hand in the  way the detestable Brigitta had sung about. And  seeking help, she called up her pantheon of people  who had behaved well as she now had to do:  Mozart's sister, as talented as he was, who  had disappeared uncomplainingly into oblivion and  domesticity; Van Gogh's brother Theo, always  helping, sending money, asking nothing for himself.
  But there are times for thinking about Mozart's  sister, and a night full of fireflies and stars  did not seem to be one of them. Marek had sat  down beside her and the memory of Kalun, his arms  round her, the place on his shoulder made  specially to fit her head, made her close her  eyes.
  "I've brought you some news," he said.  "Isaac is safe."
  She looked up then. "Oh, that's wonderful.  I'm so glad!"
  "They hope to get him across to England, so your  family may be hearing from him soon."
  "They'll help him, I promise you."
  "You know that Isaac is in love with you," he  said abruptly.
  She sighed. "He was afraid; I helped  him--he was bound to feel that. I explained it all  to Millie. But now that he's safe--"'
  "I'm not so sure." He was silent for a  moment. Then: "If he asked you to marry him would  you accept? Could you be persuaded to?"'
  "What?"' she asked stupidly. The question  made no sense to her.
  "Your friend Kendrick came to see me in  Vienna. He told me you were in love with someone  else. I thought it might be Isaac."
  But even as he spoke he realised that her  answer did not matter. Whatever she might say
  
about Isaac was irrelevant; the time for  chivalry was past. When he had first seen her by the  well he'd thought of her as a girl in a genre  painting: as Seamstress or Lacemaker--but  he'd been wrong. She was a Lifemaker; he'd  seen that watching her ceaseless, selfless work for the  pageant. Had his friend still been in danger Marek  might have continued to stand aside, but not now. Isaac  must take his chance.
  Ellen had shrunk away from him. "I don't  know why you're putting me through all this," she said,  her voice full of bewilderment. "When you  know--"' she broke off, reaching for the tatters of  her pride. "I've never asked you for anything.  I've always known that you were going to America with  Brigitta ... and that no one who doesn't  understand about ... enharmonic intervals and tritones  ... and species counterpoint can matter seriously  to you. But--"'
  "You're so right," interrupted Marek  earnestly. "So absolutely right! The idea of  sharing my bed and board with someone who doesn't  understand tritones and enharmonic intervals is  absolutely abhorrent to me. I can conceive of  nothing more dreadful. I am particularly attached  to conversations about enharmonic intervals before  breakfast--and species counterpoint too, though in  general I prefer to discuss that in my bath."
  She looked up, trying to read his voice. He  had bent down to pick up a tin punched with holes  which he handed her.
  "I've brought you a present."
  "Not a frog? Because I don't kiss them,  if you remember, so it would be a waste."
  "No, not a frog. Open it."
  She could not clearly see the flowers lying on the  damp moss, but she could smell them--and Henny  had been right. Only in heaven could one find such a  scent.
  "Sister Felicity told me where to look for  them. I only brought a few; they're getting  rare."
  She couldn't speak. Any other farewell  present she could have taken lightly, but not this.
  Marek had risen and now stood looking down at  her.
  "I'm leaving in the morning," he said.  "Yes, I know."
  "But not for America."
  "Oh? Why not?"'
  
  He shrugged. "I don't really  know. I suppose you could say that I have decided  to stay and share the fate of my countrymen."
  She took a steadying breath. "Where to,  then?"'
  "To Pettelsdorf," he said, using the old  name for his home. "And I want you to come."
  Mozart's sister vanished into the shadows; Van  Gogh's brother dematerialised. Joy  exploded and the night stars sang.
  "To see the storks?"' she asked.  "That also," said Marek--and pulled her to her  feet.

  Tamara, alone of those at Hallendorf, had  had a frustrating and unpleasant day. Not one of the  Toscanini Aunts had noticed her or asked  about her career. She had been presented simply  as the headmaster's wife and then ignored.
  Well, now Bennet should make it up to her;  he should make her feel special and wanted again.  In the bedroom, with its windows over the courtyard,  she took the record of the Polovtsian dances out  of the sleeve, sharpened the fibre needle of the  gramophone, took off her dress.
  Bennet turned from the window to find the  proceedings well under way. But this time he did not  view them with his usual mixture of dread and  resignation. Instead he smiled pleasantly at  his wife and said: "Not tonight, dear. I'm rather  tired."
  He did not, however, show any particular  signs of fatigue. Instead he walked past  Tamara, who was in the act of unstoppering the  Bessarabian Body Oil, and made his way  downstairs.
  It seemed to him to be his duty as well as his  pleasure to be the first to congratulate the two people  he had seen embracing so closely and  passionately by the well.
  "A consummation devoutly to be wished,"  he murmured, thinking of Marek and Ellen sharing a  life.
  There could have been no better ending to this happy  day.

  It was as lovely as she had expected, the  famous Forest of Bohemia. Pools of light
  
between ancient trees, new-minted streams  tumbling over glistening stones ... Squirrels  ran along the branches of great limes;  woodpeckers hammered at the trunks of oaks that  had stood "from everlasting to everlasting".
  Bennet had insisted on lending them his car for the  few days he could spare Ellen. It was an open  Morris Minor; they drove along the lanes as  if in a beneficent perambulator, at one with the  birdsong and the sky.
  "Are you hungry?"' Marek said. "Would you  like to stop somewhere for lunch?"', and she wondered how  soon it would be before just seeing him turn his head would  no longer send her heart leaping. It would stop,  this joy, she told herself; she had watched married  couples on the Underground, in tea shops, and it was  clear they didn't feel like this, but at the moment it  was impossible to imagine.
  She shook her head. "I'm fine."
  But he decided to stop the car just the same.  "It seems I need to kiss you," he  explained. "If you have no objection."
  They drove on, past a tiny chapel with  silvered aspen tiles on the roof and water  wheels which seemed as much a part of the forest as the  trees. No wonder, she thought, that Marek growing  up in this had such assurance, such strength--and the  gift of silence which came from it.
  The assurance, too, to state his plans without  embarrassment.
  "I am going to take Ellen home to meet  my parents," he had said to the children and the staff.  "And when term is over, I'm going to marry  her."
  "Can we come to the wedding?"' the children asked:  Flix and Janey, Bruno and Ursula ... and  Sophie, trying to be happy for Ellen, trying  to fight down her fear of loss.
  "Of course."
  Later he had asked her if she wanted to be  married from Gowan Terrace. "Your mother would like  it, I imagine?"'
  Ellen did not mind "where" or even  "whether". She lived in a Blake-ian world of  now; if God had arrived she would have asked him  to dinner, unsurprised.
  Marek too had shrugged off his restless concern for  his country's future and his own. He would stay at  Pettelsdorf, write the symphony that for some  time now had declared its intention to be composed, and
  
fetch Ellen when the term was done.
  They had been so kind at Hallendorf, so  happy for her, thought Ellen gratefully:  Freya and Lieselotte offering to do her work,  Hermine hugging her ... Chomsky had been  surprised, understandably, that anyone could be  preferred to him, but if he had to lose he was  content to lose to Marek. Now she remembered  Leon's face as Marek handed him two sheets  of music--a Serenade he had written as a  boy and found in Steiner's trunk.
  "For my biographer," Marek had said,  teasing him, and the boy had flushed with pleasure and for  once been silent.
  Only Tamara had not been there to see them off.  "She's got a migraine," Margaret had  whispered. "It's a good one--Toussia  Alexandrovna was an expert!"
  But it was Steiner Ellen thought of now, fingering the  silver filigree cross she wore round her  neck. He had come across the lake to say goodbye  and taken her aside.
  "I bought this for Marek's mother many years ago  ... before she was engaged. I'd like you to have it,"  he'd said.
  She'd made no attempt to refuse. There were  no games to be played with this old man. She  only kissed him and wiped her eyes and asked no  more questions, for his lifelong love for Milenka was  obvious in the way he opened the box and took out  the beautiful thing he had chosen with such care, and  never proffered.

  In the early afternoon they stopped at an inn and  sat outside at a wooden table beside a stone  trough where the dray horses came to drink. They  ate rye bread and cheese and drank the famous  beer of Marek's country--and she asked again those  questions which are the best of all because the answers are  waited for, and known. Will Nora Coutts still be in  her room drinking Earl Grey from Harrods? Will  Lenitschka have baked a beigli for you and will it  contain apricots and hazelnuts? Will the geese  be patrolling your mother's hammock and is it  honestly true that your father goes hunting with  Albanian Indigestion Pills? She found she  knew the name of Marek's wolfhound but not of his  mother's Tibetan terrier, and now too she wanted  to know what the old man was called, the one who  kept bees and said: "Pity; pity about the
  
music," whenever Marek went away.
  "Tell it again," she begged, asking about the  spare doves that had to be driven away in washing  baskets, and the grandfather who had outlived Chekhov  and was buried with his fishing flies--and he would begin  to do so and then decide it was more urgent to hold her  and kiss her and learn the exact disposition of the  freckles on her nose.
  "The light will be right," he said as they got  back into the car. "The house faces west."  She would see it with the ochre walls bathed in the  sleepy gold of early evening. "It's just a  house," he said, trying to rein back, but it was  useless. Her love for Pettelsdorf, before she  had ever set foot in it, was ineradicable.
  Oh Henny, if only you were here, she thought;  if only you knew. But Henny did know. It was  Henny who had taught her not to fear happiness.  "It takes courage to be happy," Henny  had said. But I have it, thought Ellen, and looked  at Marek's hands on the steering wheel and vowed she  would give him space to work and time to be alone, but  not perhaps at this second when it was necessary to touch one of  his knuckles carefully with her fingertips in case  it went away.
  "I'd like to go to the well first," she said, "the  one you told me about in Kalun ... where the  girls go after their betrothal and draw a glass of  water and bring it to their lovers." She looked at  him a shade anxiously. "You will drink it,  won't you--even though water is for the feet?"'
  "Yes, Ellen," he said, his voice  suddenly husky. "I will drink it."

  They drove on for another hour. Then the  trees seemed to grow more luxuriant, more  spacious, and the verges of the road were tended. They  were coming to a demesne.
  Marek had been right about the light. The sun was  beginning to drop behind the trees, to send rays across  the trunks, illumining the willow herb and  foxglove in the grass. The time of day that means  home-coming, the end of labour, the welcoming  hearth.
  She leant out, filling her lungs with the scents  of the forest: resin, mushrooms, the peppery scent  of the birches--and something else.
  "A bonfire?"' she said. "Or are they  burning stubble?"'
  She did not realise anything was wrong till
  
she saw Marek's face and then,  suddenly, she was terribly afraid. And at the  same time, the smell grew stronger and there was a  sound like the wind which grew louder, became a roar.  Even then she thought only of forest fires. That  anything else could be burning was out of her power  to imagine.
  Marek had put his foot down on the  accelerator. The little car lurched forward, rounded a  bend ... and she found that she had whimpered like a  stricken animal.
  It was the house that was burning. Flames licked  the ochre walls; tongues of fire shot through the  blackened window frames ... had reached the roof  --and all the time, worse than the smoke, the  heat, was that terrifying, monstrous roar.
  She should have stopped him. In her nightmares,  for the rest of her life, she struggled with him, but he  was too quick. He didn't open the car door; he  vaulted over it, and ran.
  At the gates the men, pathetic firemen in  toy helmets with buckets, tried to hold him  back, but he pushed them away as if they were  flies and raced towards the house and vanished.
  "No!" they shouted after him. "No! Come  back!"
  She followed. Knowing it was madness, she ran  after him, but the men were ready for her. They pinned her  down as she struggled; held her fast. "No,"  they repeated in Czech. "No,"--hurting her  in their grasp, forcing her on to the ground.
  As she gasped for breath, lying pinioned, she  saw high above the burning house, the storks  circling and flapping for a last time above their  ravaged nests. Then they became black streaks  in the polluted, hellish sky, and were gone.

               Part Two

  Kendrick Frobisher's house, in the summer  of 1940, was not wet.
  It was a heavenly summer, the summer in which  France fell and the British Expeditionary Force  was evacuated from Dunkirk. Leaves were never such  an intense and iridescent green; sunlight  glinted on flower-studded meadows as the Germans  encircled the Maginot Line and overran not only  France but Belgium and Holland. Birdsong
  
filled the air in the lull between bursts of  gunfire and accompanied the fleeing refugees  who blocked the roads. It was as though the weather was  preparing a glorious requiem for the death of  Europe.
  In London, where Ellen was making sandwiches  in the basement of the National Gallery, the barrage  balloons swayed and glinted in the milky  skies; nurses and air-raid wardens and office  workers lay in the grass in their snatched lunch  hours. Anxious relatives, scouring the  bulletin boards to see who was safely returned  across the Channel, found it easier to hope because of the  warmth.
  There are a lot of sandwiches to be made in a  war. Ellen made them in the National Gallery  at lunch time, where the exhausted Londoners could  hear the best music in the land for a shilling. She  made them in a canteen for soldiers on leave in  Shaftesbury Avenue, and she made them, along  with basic meals of mince and mashed turnips, in  one of the British restaurants set up by the  government to help with the rations. She also went fire  watching twice a week on the roof of the  Methodist Chapel near Gowan Terrace because  she liked, even now, three years after she had  last seen Marek, to go to bed extremely tired,  and acted as model for the St John's Ambulance  classes on Thursday afternoons, being bandaged  by zealous housewives and carried about on gates.
  She would have done rather more than that--would have joined the  Auxiliary Territorial Service, in fact
--if it hadn't been for a visit she paid, in  late June, to Kendrick's house in  Cumberland.
  As Patricia Frobisher had expected,  Kendrick had been declared unfit for military  service. He had been directed into the offices  of the Ministry of Food, where he had been  instrumental in issuing the first ration books and  writing the edict forbidding the use of icing sugar in  wedding cakes.
  Ellen had seen him occasionally but it was not till  he came to a lunchtime concert in a state of great  distress that she allowed him to resume anything like  their former friendship.
  Kendrick's eyes were rimmed with red and he had  come to take his leave of her. For the thing that  Patricia had dreaded most of all had come  to pass. Kendrick's brother William had
  
been killed in a flying accident at the  beginning of the war and now it turned out that Roland, his  elder brother, had been lost during the retreat from  France.
  "I'm so sorry," said Ellen, trying  to comfort him--but it seemed that Kendrick's grief  was not for his brothers, who had behaved to him with  unrelenting cruelty, but for his mother.
  "If only it had been me," Kendrick  said, "I'm no use to anyone--but it had to be  Roland."
  This had annoyed Ellen very much--to the point where  she had agreed to come and visit Kendrick, who  had been perfectly happy in the Ministry of  Food and was now the sole owner of Crowthorpe: the  house, the farm, the derelict quarry and two  thousand acres of woodland.
  Ellen had gone with her raincoat and sou'wester,  her wellington boots and three sweaters,  prepared for the glowering house beneath its grey scree  of fells and rock.
  But something had gone wrong. She got out at the  station to find a landscape of brilliant sun and  dramatic purple cloud shadows; of luminous  cushions of moss and laundered lambs. The air  was full of the scent of may blossom; walking up  the drive she came on clumps of brilliant  pink and golden azaleas. Crowthorpe itself was  certainly an unattractive house: mottled  brick, mock Tudor arches, narrow  ecclesiastical windows, but there was a kitchen  garden whose greenhouses, untended since the  call-up of the gardener, still produced tomatoes and  cucumbers, and nothing could stop the roses climbing  up the liver-coloured walls.
  If only it had rained, she thought afterwards ...  but all that weekend the Lake District preened  itself, the air was as soft as wine, a silken sheen  lay on the waters of Crowthorpe Tarn and when  she climbed the hill where the hikers had perished  she saw a view to make her catch her breath.  In Kendrick's woods the bluebells lay like  a lake; there were kingfishers in the stream ...
  If only Patricia Frobisher had been  there to lay her dead, authoritarian hand over the  house and spoil Ellen's image of Crowthorpe  as a kind of jolie laide which could be brought back  to life ... But Patricia had overestimated  her own strength: stricken by her double loss,  appalled at the thought of Kendrick as sole owner
  
of her home, she had allowed her  brothers to take her away with them to Kenya.
  Perhaps it was the blond Jersey calf, the youngest  in the herd, which the farm manager made her feed from  a bucket ... Or the two old servants, the  only ones who had not left to do war work, who  invited her into the kitchen and fed her on shortcake  ... Or the sight of the sunshine streaming into a  small summer house where her Aunt Annie,  facing a gall bladder operation, could so suitably  recuperate. But most probably it was the sight  of three small, pale faces--Elsie and
Joanie and Doris--the Cockney evacuees  banished by Mrs Frobisher before her departure to the  gun room on account of ringworm, who threw  themselves on Ellen and said they wanted their Mam.
  Travelling back to London, Ellen thought of  Sophie, needing somewhere quiet to study for her  University Entrance, and Ursula, whose  appalling grandparents tried to keep her captive  in their hospitalised house among spittoons and  bedpans. Margaret Sinclair was working in the  dungeons of the Ministry of Information and seldom  saw the daylight; she would benefit from weekends in  the country. Bennet was incommunicado doing  something unbelievably secret in Bletchley  Park, but her mother was working far too hard in her  hospital. And if the bombing started, as everyone  thought it must do any day, there could be no safer  place in England than Kendrick's home.
  Even so Ellen held off until the day she  met two men in uniform wearing the badge of the  Czechoslovak Air Force--and realised that her  heart had not leapt into her mouth. That she no longer  expected Marek to appear, or claim her. That  dead or alive she knew him to be lost for ever.
  Kendrick would not have dared to propose to her again.  No one proposed to Ellen in those years since  Marek vanished. Isaac was sheltering in Gowan  Terrace, waiting for his visa to the States, when  Ellen came back from Hallendorf. He had  seen in an instant that his case was lost, and shown his  quality by leaving her alone. And the procession of  young men who came to the house after he left for  America, though they fell in love as they had  always done (she was perhaps more beautiful than ever)  knew better than to declare themselves. Perfectly  friendly as Ellen was, there was something in her manner  that put that out of court.
  It was Ellen who informed Kendrick that if he
  
was willing to consider a marriage of the  old-fashioned kind, for the management of land and the  care of children, she was prepared to become his wife.

  Sophie and Leon met during their lunch  break in Hyde Park to discuss the news of the  engagement. Sophie's father, complete with  experimental rats and Czernowitz, was now  installed in a big house in Surrey and her mother  was in Scotland, so she spent the week boarding in  Gowan Terrace.
  The bedding plants had been removed and the ground  divided into allotments so that Londoners could dig  for victory; the gas masks abandoned during the  phony war now hung again from people's shoulders--but  Sophie, who had been so terrified of rejection  and abandonment, found herself less frightened than she  had expected at the prospect of invasion and  total war.
  "Why is she doing this?"' Leon asked. He  was working as tea boy in a film studio, but still  enjoyed the comforts of his parents' mansion near Marble  Arch.
  "She's sorry for Kendrick and the  evacuees, and Aunt Annie has to have a gall  bladder operation, and she wants us all to go there when  the bombing starts--or even if it doesn't."
  They were both silent, remembering Ellen  driving off with Marek; the joy on her face--the  absolute happiness that transformed everything about  her--and her return after the fire.
  "Do you think he's dead?"'
  Sophie shrugged. "I almost wish he was;  she wouldn't be so hurt that way. Anyway, whether  he's dead or not doesn't make any  difference."
  "No."
  Ellen had explained to them carefully what had  happened at Pettelsdorf and why she would not be  seeing Marek again. She had stayed on for the  autumn term, the last term at Hallendorf, and  packed up the children's trunks and helped to clear the  building. She had taken the tortoise  to Lieselotte's house and then everyone left.  Two months later, Hitler had marched  into Vienna and been greeted by jubilant and cheering  crowds. Finis Austria ...
  "No storks have come yet," Liseselotte  had written that spring and the following spring--and then  she became "the enemy" and could write no more.
  
  "I suppose I'd better go and  congratulate her," said Leon now. "I'll  come round on Sunday."
  But on Sunday the inhabitants of Gowan  Terrace, having baked an egg-free cake in  his honour, waited in vain, and when they phoned  him, the telephone rang in an empty house.

  The wedding was planned for December, but long  before then the poor British, waiting for invasion,  standing alone against Hitler, succumbed not to panic,  for that was not in their nature, but to paranoia.  Nazis disguised as parachuting nuns were reported  daily; old ladies with a chink in their blackout  curtains were taken away for questioning--and now, in an  act of madness, they began to round up and  imprison just those "enemy aliens" who had the  most to fear from Hitler and Mussolini, and who had  been engaged in the fight against Fascism while  high-ranking British diplomats were still taking  tea with the F@uhrer and admiring the fact that the  trains ran on time.
  Austrian and German professors were hauled  out of lecture rooms, doctors out of  hospitals, students out of libraries, told  they could pack one suitcase and taken away by the  police. Italian shopkeepers, German  bakers who had spent years in Britain,  disappeared within an hour, weeping and bewildered.  Spy mania was everywhere; even one traitor  among the thousands of innocent refugees could not be  tolerated. The camps they were taken to were not in  fact concentration camps, the tommies who guarded  them were no Storm Troopers, but the bewilderment and  anguish, particularly among older refugees,  was appalling.
  Leon happened to be at home when two  policemen came for his father. He lied about his  age, packed his current film scenario--and was  taken to an internment camp consisting of a large  number of seaside boarding houses on the Isle  of Man.

  The views of the landladies evicted from their  villas--from Bay View and Sunnydene and  Resthaven--are not recorded. Forced to leave behind  their garden gnomes, their monkey puzzles and  brass plates offering Bed and Breakfast, they were  replaced by rolls of barbed wire, observation  towers and iron gates. Facing the sea but unable
  
to reach it, cut off from all news of the  outside world, the inmates wandered about, guarded  by soldiers with fixed bayonets, trying to understand the  nightmare that had enveloped them. Housed in  villas stripped of everything except camp beds  and a few cooking utensils, the men assembled each  morning for roll call and the rations which they had no  idea how to cook. And each day more confused  "enemy aliens" arrived--Nobel
Laureates, old men with diabetes, social  democrats who had been tortured in the  prisons of the Reich and had come to Britain as  to Mecca or Shangri La.
  Although it was obvious to even the thickest  British tommy that Hitler, if he had been  relying on these men for spies, would have little hope of  winning the war, the net which produced such a strange  catch did just occasionally dredge up a genuine  Nazi. When this happened, the results were  unfortunate. Immolated in boarding houses with  at least a dozen Jews whose suffering at the hands  of the Nazis had been unspeakable, a man  polishing his boots and saying that Hitler would soon  overrun Britain did not have a happy life.  He was refused his rations, ostracised, the  blankets stolen from his bed. Most of them  capitulated and learnt to hold their tongues, but  one of them, a handsome blond young man called  Erich Unterhausen, continued each morning  to polish his boots, give the Nazi salute and  say "Heil Hitler!"
  At least he did until a rainy morning in  late July when he flew suddenly out of the  first-floor window of Mon Repos, bounced off  a privet bush, and landed on a flower bed  planted with crimson salvias and purple  aubretia.
  He was not hurt, only bruised, which was a  pity, but the news, spreading quickly through the camp,  was regarded by the inmates as the first glimmer of  light since the Fall of France.
  Needless to say, the perpetrator of this  brutality was immediately marched off to the camp  commandant in his office, where he admitted his  guilt and was entirely unrepentant.
  "If you don't get rid of people like  Unterhausen you'll have a murder on your hands,"  he said, confusing the commandant with his flawless  English. "Rounding up accredited Nazis with these  people is madness. You know perfectly well who the
  
real Nazis are in this camp--I've  only been here a day but I can tell you:  Schweger in Sunnydene, Pischinger in that place  with the blue pottery cat--and the chap I threw out  of the window. He's the only one who could  possibly be a spy, and the sooner he's in a  proper prison the better--anyone worth their  salt could signal from here. As for Schweger,  he's in with some hotheads from the Jewish  Freedom Movement and they're starving him  to death."
  "Thank you for telling me my business," said  the commandant, and was disconcerted by an entirely  friendly smile from the tall, broad-shouldered man  with the scar on his forehead. He looked down at the  papers that had come with the prisoner.
  "You say you're a Czech."
  "I don't say I am; I am," said the  prisoner unruffledly.
  "So what are you doing here? The Czechs are  our allies."
  Marek was silent. The Czechs might be  allies now, but before, at Munich, they had been  betrayed.
  "Your name is German."
  "Yes. I came over in a fishing boat;  we were strafed and capsized outside Dover. I  got concussion. Apparently I spoke German  to the dogs."
  "The dogs?"'
  "There was a whole compound of stray dogs which the  tommies had smuggled out of France when they were  taken off at Dunkirk--you've never heard such  a racket. They put my stretcher down beside a  big black and tan pointer. My father's hunting  dogs were always trained in German and when I came  round--"' He shook his head. "It doesn't  matter about me; they'll sort it out. I'm quite  glad to be out of the way till the Czechoslovak  Air Force reassembles. But Unterhausen must  go, and the other Nazis--and old Professor  Cohen must go to hospital--the one who stands by the  barbed wire and gets his beard caught. He's very  eminent and very ill--if he dies there'll be questions  asked. They're being asked already in Parliament and  elsewhere."
  "Is there anything else you'd like to tell us?"'  sneered the second in command, a brash young  lieutenant, but the commandant frowned him down. A  humane man, he knew full well that he was
  
caught up in one of those administrative  muddles that happens in war and can claim lives.
  It was to him that Marek spoke. "Most of the people  in here understand what has happened--that there was bound  to be confusion after the French surrendered, that we've  got mixed up with the parachuting nuns and that it  won't go on for ever. But not all of them. There have  been two suicides in one of the other camps, as  you no doubt know. This whole business--interning the  people who have most of all to fear from Hitler--is going  to be a pretty discreditable episode in  retrospect. What's more, if Hitler does  invade, you've made it nice and easy for him,  corralling all the Jews and the anti-Nazis  together so he doesn't have to go looking."
  "So what is it you want?"' asked the  commandant.
  "A piano," said Marek.

  As he came out he found a knot of excited  people standing in the street.
  "I told you," cried a young man,  scarcely more than a boy, who rushed up and threw  his arms round Marek. "I told them it had to be  you! I said if someone had defenestrated  Unterhausen it would be you! But you aren't German,  are you? How did you get here?"'
  "How did you get here?"' said Marek,  suddenly angry. "You can't even be  seventeen." were they interning children now?
  "I told them I was older," said Leon.  "When they came to take my father, I wanted  to come too. My mother and sisters are in a camp on  the other side of the island."
  Leon's father, Herr Rosenheimer, now came  forward to shake Marek's hand. Though he had filed  naturalisation papers the week before his arrest and his  export-import business employed more than four  hundred British workers, he seemed to be without  bitterness, and had persuaded the internees (from whom  all news of the outside world was forbidden) to save the  newspapers that came wrapped round their ration of  kippers, so that he could keep in touch with the stock  exchange.
  Other familiar faces now appeared in the  throng: the er/while flautist of the Berlin  Philharmonic; a copying clerk from the office of  Universal Editions; Marek's old tailor  from the K@arntnerstrasse ... and all the time more people  appeared, overjoyed by the news of Unterhausen's
  
fate.
  But Marek did not intend to waste too much time  on swapping stories--and Leon, whose  reminiscences would lead to Hallendorf and thus  to Ellen, had straight away to understand that there would be  no discussion of the past.
  "There's a piano locked in the basement of the  Palm Court Hotel," he said. "We can have  it. It'll have to be moved into some kind of hall or  shed--anything. We're going to give a concert."
  "Of your music?"' asked Leon eagerly.  "No. Not now."
  "Of what then?"'
  Marek looked round at the weary men, the drab  streets, the barbed wire.
  "There's only one answer to that, don't you  think?"'
  "Johann Sebastian Bach," said the  flautist.
  Marek nodded. "Exactly so." For a moment  he raised his eyes to heaven, seeking guidance not  so much from God (whose musicality was not well  documented) as from his er/while representative on  earth, the Kapellmeister of Leipzig. Would  it seem sacrilege to the old man to put on his  masterpiece with an exhausted chorus of  amateurs and an orchestra which, if it could be found  at all, would be a travesty of what Bach had  demanded? Yet it was this monumental work, which  embraced the whole of the human condition, from the  painful pleading of the Kyrie to the blaze of  jubilant ecstasy of the Resurrexit, that these  bewildered exiles needed and deserved.
  Marek made up his mind. "We're going  to perform the Mass in B minor," he said.  "And no one had better release us till  we've got it right!"

  After the fire Marek had spent several weeks  in hospital in Prague. He'd been moved  there from the local nursing home when it became  clear that although his apparent injuries had cleared  up quickly--a burn on his temple where a beam  had glanced his forehead, the smoke inhalation which had  saved his life by rendering him unconscious before he  could go far into the building--there was something else most  seriously wrong.
  At first the doctors and psychiatrists who  examined him, the nuns who nursed him, put down  the patient's other symptoms to grief for his
  
parents' death, but as time passed and he  became wilder and more distressed, the possibility  of brain fever or dementia was seriously  discussed.
  Marek had not resisted the move, for the contacts  he needed to carry out what he now saw as his  life's work could be assembled best in Prague,  where the headquarters of resistance to the Germans had  recently been established.
  It did not take him long to prepare a  dossier on the man who had set his home alight  and killed his parents. Oskar Schwachek, who had  also killed Franz by the river and tried to murder  Meierwitz, was a Sudeten German who since  the age of fourteen had been a member of the Nazi  party--a fire raiser as a child, a disturbed and  vicious adolescent and now, at the age of  twenty-five, a killer who put his evil  talents at the disposal of those who wanted to hand  Czechoslovakia over to the Nazis.
  Stepan and Janik had seen him near the house  on the day before the fire; old Lenitschka, who  had perished with the Captain and his wife, had warned  them. Every servant at Pettelsdorf was looking  out for him and every member of the resistance.
  "But I want him alive," Marek said.
"I want him to know who kills him. And he is  not to be shot. It will happen slowly ... very  slowly."
  During those days of convalescence when the  specialists conferred and the nuns prayed over his  bed, there were only two visitors Marek did not  want to see.
  The first was his grandmother, Nora Coutts. She  had been going for one of her famous walks when the  fire began and had survived unscathed. Nora  had lost her only daughter, whom she adored, and  her son-in-law. She looked ten years older  and something had happened to her mouth, which had been set  in a firm line and now, on occasion, had to be  covered with her hand. But Marek's obsession with his  vendetta, which grew with his returning strength,  shocked her deeply.
  "Your parents died together and almost instantly,  I understand. What do you think they'd feel if they  knew you were going to poison the rest of your life with  this hatred? What do you think they would feel if they  knew what you were doing to Ellen?"'
  But Marek was deaf and blind. Ellen was a  danger. Ellen, who came every day and sat
  
quietly and patiently by his bed,  waiting for him to become sane again ... Ellen,  who was so beautiful and whole and true, would weaken  him. Even less than his grandmother did she understand  that nothing but hatred must now rule his life.  To track down Schwachek, to kill him very slowly  and carefully, explaining at each stage what was  happening to him and why--nothing else existed. And  when this was done, to face prison or hanging on his  own account without regret, knowing that Ellen was out of  it and safe.
  "There will be no more love and no more weddings,"  he had said when she first came.
  But she had not believed him. She thought as the  nuns thought, that the shock had temporarily unhinged  him. That he should wish to avenge his parents' murder  was understandable perhaps, but to make this vendetta his only  reason for existing seemed impossible. Surely  somewhere the man who cared for every living thing could not be  wholly and permanently dead?
  But the weeks passed and Marek became  steadily more hostile, more obsessed, more angry.  Even so, it was not till the doctors who were  treating him told her that she was making him worse  and delaying his recovery, that she gave up.
  He was standing by the window of his hospital room  when she told him she was leaving. A  tortoiseshell butterfly was beating its way  against the window, and as he caught it in his hand she  held her breath, for she expected him to crush it  between his fingers, so mad had he become.
  But he opened the window and released it carefully  into the summer afternoon. That was her last memory of  him: the killer with the scar on his forehead, gently  freeing the butterfly--and then his bleak, toneless and  unadorned: "Goodbye."

  The betrayal of the Czechs at Munich came  soon afterwards. Marek joined the Czech Air  Force, flew his plane to Poland when the Germans  overran his country, went on fighting with the Poles  --and when they were beaten, with the French.
  When the Germans advanced through Northern  France, he was flying Potez 63's with a  Reconnaissance Squadron of the French Air  Force, never sure whether the airfield from which he  took off would still be there when he returned,  attacked both in the air and on the ground.
  The occupation of Paris in mid-June put an  end to these adventures. The crews were summoned,
  
given rations and their pay, and told they were  on their own. Marek was caught up in the  demoralisation of the retreating troops, the fleeing  refugees. Separated from his crew, he reached  Brittany at last, found a fishing boat  willing to take him across to Dover, and opened his  eyes to the extraordinary sight of dozens of  baying, quarantined dogs.
  The slobbering, excited animals had given him  his first glimmer of hope--for it struck him as  possible that a nation mad enough to carry stray dogs  on to the boats that took them off the beaches might  --just might--be mad enough not to surrender simply  because all hope was lost.
  Closest to his stretcher was a pointer bitch with  anguished eyes. Marek soothed her, was  overheard by an exhausted sergeant who was trying  to sort out the flotsam that still came over the  Channel in the wake of the debacle--and  presently found himself on the Isle of Man,  watching Erich Unterhausen polish his boots and  give the Nazi salute.

  It had been Ellen's intention to get married  quietly in the Bloomsbury Registry
Office, invite a few friends back to Gowan  Terrace, and go up to Crowthorpe the next day.
  But in September the Blitz began. Broken  glass was swept from the streets along with the  autumn leaves; the scent of smoke was seldom  out of people's nostrils; nights spent in shelters  or the basements of their houses left everyone  exhausted--and a new band of heroes emerged: the  pilots who went up each night to give battle  to the bombers that came across to devastate the  cities. Doris and Elsie and Joanie, who  had crept back to their parents in London, were  sent back to Cumberland, the cook general who had  struggled on at Gowan Terrace left to make  munitions and at the end of October, the  Registry Office received a direct hit.
  Under these circumstances it seemed sensible to have the  wedding at Crowthorpe, and if the villagers were not  to be upset, to make it a wedding in the local  church--and this in turn meant Sophie and  Ursula as bridesmaids and inviting the guests
  
to stay the night before, since travel on  the blacked out trains was far too unreliable  to make a day trip possible.
  Announcing her engagement to the ladies with whom  she made sandwiches, her fellow firewatchers  and the women who bandaged her on Thursday afternoons,  Ellen now became lucky. She knew she was  lucky because everybody told her so.
  "Lucky you, going to live in the country,  away from it all," or "Lucky you, not having  to worry about the rations; they say you can get butter  and eggs and everything up there," or "I wish I  was you, getting a good night's sleep."
  Ellen's response to her great good fortune was  unvarying; she instantly invited whoever had  congratulated her to Crowthorpe: the milkman's  sister who had taken over his round when he was  called up, an old man who came to lick  envelopes at Gowan Terrace, and an orderly  at her mother's hospital. It was as though the  provision of fresh air, birdsong and  undisturbed nights was what made being so very  lucky endurable.
  But it was her family--her mother working too hard  at the hospital, her Aunt Annie whose  operation had been postponed as the wards filled up  with the casualties of the Blitz, the aunt who ran  a bookshop, and, of course, the Hallendorf children  --for whom she particularly wanted to provide  sanctuary.
  "You will come, won't you?"' she begged them.  "Not just for the wedding--you'll stay, won't you?  There'll be log fires, it'll be really comfortable,  you'll see,"--and they said, yes of course they  would come, though Dr Carr pointed out that she could not  leave her patients for long, and Aunt  Phyllis and Aunt Annie, who were helping  to organise petitions demanding the release of the  interned "enemy aliens" as well as their other  work, were not sure that they could take too much time off  in the north.
  "She is happy, isn't she?"' asked
Dr Carr of her sisters, who said they were sure  she was, and anyway it was probably a  mistake to start a marriage with too many  expectations. "Better to build it up  slowly," Phyllis said, a view which Ellen  shared and propounded to Margaret Sinclair over  pilchards on toast in Lyon's Corner
House.
  
  "People always used to get married for  sensible reasons," she said--and Margaret, whose  heart smote her, had perforce to remain silent,  for her own existence was hardly a blueprint for a  successful love life. Immured in his secret  hide-out in Surrey, reputedly breaking  codes, Bennet had been compelled, when the air  raids began, to send Tamara for safekeeping  to her mother in the north, and Margaret, deprived of the  hope that a bomb would instantly and painlessly  destroy the Russian ballerina, spent her  free time in her bedsitting room in case  Bennet could get to London and needed a cup of  tea.
  Sophie and Ursula (for whom Ellen was  making dresses out of parachute silk which  scratched her hands) tried to cheer each other up,  but without success.
  "She reminds me of Sydney Carton,"  said Sophie. "You know, the man who said "It  is a far, far better thing that I do now than I  have ever done before and then went off to be  executed." She sighed. "I wish they'd let  Leon out; he could help with the music at least."
  "You really miss him, don't you?"' said  Ursula.
  "Yes, I do. And his family. They've  been incredibly good to me."
  Kendrick was now officially released from the  Ministry of Food, since farming--which he was  believed to be about to do--was regarded as work of  national importance, and went north to Cumberland,  but could not be relied upon for practical  arrangements. He was in a state of profound  exaltation but slightly apprehensive. The  Facts of Life had been told to Kendrick not  by his mother, who had better things to do, or even by a  kindly nursemaid, as is so often the case with the  English upper classes--the maids engaged  by Mrs Frobisher were seldom kindly--but by a  boy called Preston Minor at his prep  school.
  Although the horrific information conveyed by this  unpleasant child had been modified later by the  reading of Great Literature, there was still a  considerable gap between Kendrick's conception of  Ellen as the Primavera or Rembrandt's  Saskia crowned with flowers, and what was supposed  to happen in his father's four-poster bed after the  nuptials were complete.
  
  The wedding was planned for the eighteenth of  December, and now the submarine menace came to the  rescue of the bridegroom and the bride.  Patricia Frobisher was unable to secure a  place on any of the convoys sailing from Africa  and would not be able to attend.
  Ellen, navigating with meticulous concentration  the route to the day which would make her so happy and so  fortunate, saw in this the hand of Providence. Her  plans for Crowthorpe could now go ahead without  battles: the proper housing of the evacuees, the  installation of land girls (a move opposed  by Patricia) and the removal of the green lines which  Mrs Frobisher, glorying in the restrictions of  wartime, had painted round the bath to show the limits  of hot water which might be used.
  Both the recent bereavement in the Frobisher  family and the bride's own inclinations made a  small wedding desirable. In addition to the immediate  families, they invited only a few university  friends, those of the Hallendorf children who could get  away, Margaret Sinclair--and Bennet, whose  kindness to her after her return from Prague Ellen  had never forgotten. Since it was unlikely that  Bennet would get leave, Ellen had hoped to be  spared Tamara, but fate decreed otherwise.
  On a visit to Carlisle not long before the  wedding, Ellen saw a sight which no one could have  beheld unmoved. Two women were plodding wearily  along the rain-washed pavement. Both carried string  bags of heavy groceries, both wore  raincoats and unbecoming sou'westers, both had  noses reddened by the cold. One was considerably  older than the other, but their resemblance was marked:  mother and daughter, clearly bored with each other's  company, on the weekly and wearisome shopping  trip.
  It was only when the younger woman stopped and  greeted her that Ellen realised she was in the  presence of the Russian ballerina who had been  Diaghilev's inspiration and the confidante of  Toussia Alexandrovna, now returned for wartime  safekeeping to her mother, and demoted most  pitiably to Mrs Smith's daughter Beryl.
  "Ellen--how lovely to see you!"
  Tamara's pleasure in the meeting was  unfeigned. Her mother's colliery village on  the bleak coastal plain was only thirty miles  from Crowthorpe; she knew of the Frobishers'  importance and Crowthorpe's size. She wanted
  
an invitation to the wedding, and she got it.  Appalled by the reduction of the sinewy sun  worshipper and maker of icon corners to Mrs  Smith's Beryl, Ellen invited her not only  to the wedding but--since there were no buses from  Tamara's village--to the house party on the  night before.

  On a morning in late November a number  of men were pulled out of the routine roll call in the  camp and told to report to the commandant. From  Sunnydene, an elderly lawyer named  Koblitzer who walked with a stick, and a  journalist named Klaus Fischer; from  Resthaven, Herr Rosenheimer and his son  Leon; and from Mon Repos (from which the  defenestrated Unterhausen had been taken  to Brixton Jail), Marcus von
Altenburg.
  Wondering what they had done, they made their  way down the grey rain-washed streets towards the  hotel by the gates which housed Captain Henley's  office.
  "We'll need a chair for Koblitzer,"  said Marek when they were assembled, and a chair was  brought.
  In spite of this request, an air of  cheerfulness prevailed. The commandant had shown himself  a good friend to the inmates; conditions in the camp had  improved considerably in the last two months.  Even the disagreeable lieutenant looked  relaxed.
  "I have good news for you," said the commandant.  "The order has come through for your release. You're  to collect your belongings and be ready for the  transport at seven in the morning. The ferry for  Liverpool sails at ten, and tickets will be  issued for your chosen destination."
  The men looked at each other, hardly taking it  in at first.
  "On what grounds, as a matter of  curiosity?"' asked Leon's father. "To whom do  we owe our freedom?"'
  Captain Henley looked down at his papers.  "You, Rosenheimer, on the grounds that you are  employing nearly five hundred British workers  in your business, and your son on the grounds that he  is under age. Klaus Fischer has been spoken  for by the Society of Authors, who say he's  been writing anti-Nazi books since 1933,
  
and Koblitzer on grounds of ill  health."
  Not one of them pointed out that all this information was  available at the time they were arrested. Yet their  joy was not unalloyed; they had made friendships of  great intensity, had started enterprises which must be  left undone. Fischer ran a poetry class,  Rosenheimer had started a business school--and  all of them sang in Marek's choir.
  One by one the men stepped forward, signed a  paper to say they had not been ill-treated, were  given their documents. Then it was Marek's turn.
  "You've been requested by the commander of the  Royal Air Force Depot, Cosford. The  Czechs have formed a squadron there to fly with the  RAF." Henley looked at Marek with a  certain reproach. "You could have told us you flew  with the Poles and the French."
  Marek, who had in fact explained this several  times to the interrogators at Dover and elsewhere,  only smiled--and then produced his bombshell.
  "I shall be very happy to be released," he  said, "but not before the end of next week."
  "What?"' The second lieutenant couldn't  believe his ears.
  "We're performing the B Minor Mass on  Sunday week. The men have been rehearsing for  months; there's absolutely no question of my  walking out on them at this stage. They'll understand  at Cosford."
  The commandant was an easy-going man, but this was  mutiny. "Men in this camp are released as and when  the orders come through. I'm not running a holiday  camp."
  Nobody made the obvious comment. They were all  staring at Marek.
  "If you want me to go before the concert you'll have  to take me by force. I shall resist and Klaus here  can make a scandal when he gets to London;  he's an excellent journalist. "Czech  Pilot Manhandled by Brutal Soldiery"--that  kind of thing. I'm entirely serious about this."
  No one knew what to say. They thought of the work  of the last weeks, the slow growth of confidence, the    obstacles overcome--and then the excitement as the  sublime music grew under Marek's  tutelage. No one who had sung Dona
Nobis Pacem in this miserable place would ever  forget it.
  "They're coming from the other camps," Marek
  
reminded him.
  The commandant did not need to be told this. He  himself had authorised a hundred men to come and had  borrowed spare copies of the score from the  cathedral choir in Douglas; news of the performance  had attracted interest all over the island. If  morale had improved, if there had been no  suicides, no serious breakdowns in his camp,  the Mass in B Minor had played a part.
  "Someone else can take your place, I'm  sure," said the lieutenant.
  "No, they can't. They can't!" Leon  spoke for the first time. "Only Marek can do it."  He stepped forward, leaning towards the commandant.  "And I want to stay too! I don't want  to be released till Marek is; I want  to--"'
  "No," said Marek, at the same time as  Herr Rosenheimer turned in fury on his son:  "You will please to stop talking nonsense,  Leon. You will come with me. Do you want to kill  your mother with worry?"'
  Frau Rosenheimer had been released three  weeks earlier and it was likely that her lamentations,  petitions and bribery had hurried her husband's  release.
  Leon might have argued with his father, but Marek's  face made it clear that he would give no  quarter.
  "I'll get in touch with the depot and see what  they say," said the commandant.
  It was a defeat, but as the men returned to their  houses, Captain Henley was not altogether sorry.  He had rejoined the army hoping to be sent on  active service, but they had told him he was  too old and sent him here to do this uncongenial  job. Yet sometimes there were rewards. He was not a  musical man but now, without knowing that he knew it,  he hummed the opening bars of the Sanctus with its  soaring, ever ascending solo on the flute.
  Then he picked up the telephone and asked for  Cosford.
  Outside a number of men were gathered, for  rumours of a new batch of releases had come through.
  "Is it true you're going tomorrow, Marek?"'  said a thin, white-faced man with his collar turned  up. He had dragged himself to rehearsals of the  Mass day in day out, in spite of a weakness of the  lungs.
  "No."
  
  Marek said no more but Leon, in a  white heat of hero worship, spoke for him.  "They wanted to release him straight away but  he won't go till after the concert."
  "Is it true?"'
  The news spread among the men, faces  lightened, someone came and shook him by the hand.
  "All right, that will do," said Marek, getting  irritated. "I'll see you at two o'clock in the  hall."

  Knocking on the door of Mon Repos that  night, Leon shivered with apprehension and the cold  wind from the sea. He had come to a resolution which  took all his courage. Ever since Marek had  appeared in the camp, he had made it clear that  Hallendorf and Ellen were taboo subjects--but  now Leon was leaving and he was going to speak.
  "I've come to say goodbye and to give you my  father's address in London. He says you'll be  welcome at any time for as long as you like--but you  know that. We've got a splendid air-raid  shelter!"
  "Thank you."
  Leon took a deep breath and plunged.  "I've heard from Sophie," he said.
  Marek was silent, his eyes wary.  "She's going to be a bridesmaid at  Ellen's wedding."
  He did not expect Marek to reply, but he  said: "To Kendrick Frobisher, I take  it?"'
  "Not exactly," said Leon. "More to his  kitchen garden and his cows and his evacuees. It's  supposed to be a sanctuary for us all, the wet  house. She hasn't asked us if we want to be  there."
  Marek had reverted to silence, his eyes fixed  on a sampler saying East West, Home's  Best which the departing landlady of Mon Repos  had forgotten to take down.
  "She's getting married on the eighteenth of  December, just a week before Christmas. The  wedding is at Crowthorpe in the village church  at two o'clock in the afternoon. Crowthorpe is where  Kendrick lives, it's between Keswick and  Carlisle ..."
  He babbled on, repeating the time and place, the  nearest railway station, till Marek turned his  head.
  
  "Shut up, Leon." There was no  feeling in his voice, only a great weariness.
  "I could tell her you're here. I could tell  her you're free. She doesn't know you're in  England--Sophie didn't know whether we  should--"'
  Now though Marek did show emotion. The onset  of one of his instant and famous rages.
  "You will say nothing about me to Ellen. You will not  mention my name. I put you on your honour," said  Marek, reverting unexpectedly to his year at  an English Public School. "You will--only  hurt her," he said presently.
  Leon's hero worship subsided momentarily.  "I could hardly hurt her more than you have done,"  he said.

  "Oh darling, you look beautiful," said  Dr Carr, stepping back and smiling at her  daughter. "You look quite lovely!"
  This is always said to brides by their doting mothers--but  as she turned from the mirror in her white dress,  it had to be admitted that Ellen's beauty was of  an unexpected kind. Perhaps it was the sepulchral  light of Crowthorpe in the mist and rain of  December as it came through the stained-glass  windows, but Ellen looked submerged, muted, like  a bride found under the sea.
  She had altered the dress she had worn to the  opera in Vienna and covered it with a short  jacket, and her curls were held in place by a  circlet of pearls left to her by her august  grandmother, Gussie Norchester. She wore no  veil, and Sophie had gone to fetch the bouquet  of Christmas roses which Ellen had made that  morning. The Christmas roses had been a  bonus; they had helped Ellen very much when she  found them unexpectedly growing behind a potting shed  in the dank and freezing garden, for it was not easy  to remember her vision of Crowthorpe as she had  first seen it on that summer day. But she would be  faithful; she would do it all; everyone who came  here should be fed and warm and comfortable--and the farm  manager had suggested they keep goats, whose  milk was not rationed.
  Thinking of goats, of whom she was extremely  fond, Ellen began to make her way  downstairs.
  Sophie and Ursula, shawls over their  bridesmaid's dresses, were on the landing,
  
talking to Leon. The lights had had  to be turned on by midday, but only a faint  glow, cast by a lamp in the shape of a  Pre-Raphaelite maiden, illumined the  stairs and they were too absorbed to notice her.
  "Janey's absolutely sure," Leon  was saying. "He wasn't on the train. She  waited till every single person had got off; and  there isn't another one today."
  "He doesn't have to come by train. Pilots  get petrol, I'll bet. He could come up  by car even now." Sophie, usually so inclined  to fear the worst, had all along been convinced that  Marek would come--that he would stride in at the last  minute and carry Ellen off.
  "Can't we do something to slow her up?"'  They thought of Aniella in her swagged boat,  the draperies trailing in the water. Crowthorpe  was wet enough, God knew, but Ellen was doing the  short drive to the church in the estate's old  Morris.
  "We could put sugar in the carburettor,"  suggested Ursula, who had become addicted  to gangster films.
  But sugar was rationed, and the wedding was in half an  hour.
  "He might still come," said Sophie  obstinately. "Marek's just the sort of person  to burst into the church and if he does I'll tug  at Ellen's dress or tell her to faint or  something."
  From upstairs they heard the rustle of silk, a  sharp intake of breath--then Ellen came down the  stairs towards them.
  "Marek is here?"' she said very quietly.  "He's in England?"'
  All three turned to her, consternation in their  faces.
  "Yes," said Leon, "I was with him in the  internment camp."
  "And he knows that I'm getting married today?"'  Silently they nodded.
  "I see."
  Anguished, waiting, they looked at her.  But she did not crumple up, nor weep.  She straightened her shoulders and they saw pride  cover her face like a film of ice.
  "I'll have my flowers, please,  Sophie." And then: "It's time to go."
  
  Kendrick was waiting at the altar beside  his best man, a Cambridge acquaintance whom  no one had met before. Pausing inside the church,  Ellen surveyed the guests as they turned their  heads. The Crowthorpe retainers in their dark  heavy overcoats fared best, accustomed as they were  to the hardship of the Frobisher regime and the freezing  church. Margaret Sinclair was there, giving her a  heartening smile, but not Bennet, who was still breaking  his codes ... Janey beside Frank, in the  uniform of a private ... a whole bevy of  gallant aunts, real ones and honorary ones,  in hats they had dusted out specially--and, sitting  a little apart and looking not at all like Beryl  Smith but entirely like Tamara Tatriatova,  (and wearing--Ellen had time to notice--coma  pilfered geranium from the conservatory in her  turban), the Russian ballerina. Yet it was  the detestable Tamara who had made the previous  night endurable, taking Kendrick into his study  to listen to Stravinsky and leaving Ellen free  to help the maids with preparations for the wedding lunch.
  But now it was beginning. Leon was sitting beside the  old lady who played the organ; he had insisted  on helping her turn the pages, ignoring her  plea that she knew the music by heart. He was  shuffling the music, still playing for time. She saw  him look directly at Sophie, who half  shook her head.
  "He might still come," said Sophie  obstinately. "Marek's just the sort of person  to burst into the church and if he does I'll tug  at Ellen's dress or tell her to faint or  something."
  From upstairs they heard the rustle of silk, a  sharp intake of breath--then Ellen came down the  stairs towards them.
  "Marek is here?"' she said very quietly.  "He's in England?"'
  All three turned to her, consternation in their  faces.
  "Yes," said Leon, "I was with him in the  internment camp."
  "And he knows that I'm getting married today?"'  Silently they nodded.
  "I see."
  Anguished, waiting, they looked at her.  But she did not crumple up, nor weep.  She straightened her shoulders and they saw pride  cover her face like a film of ice.
  
  "I'll have my flowers, please,
Sophie." And then: "It's time to go."

  Kendrick was waiting at the altar beside his best  man, a Cambridge acquaintance whom no one  had met before. Pausing inside the church, Ellen  surveyed the guests as they turned their heads. The  Crowthorpe retainers in their dark heavy  overcoats fared best, accustomed as they were to the    hardship of the Frobisher regime and the freezing  church. Margaret Sinclair was there, giving her a  heartening smile, but not Bennet, who was still breaking  his codes ... Janey beside Frank, in the  uniform of a private ... a whole bevy of  gallant aunts, real ones and honorary ones,  in hats they had dusted out specially--and, sitting  a little apart and looking not at all like Beryl  Smith but entirely like Tamara Tatriatova,  (and wearing--Ellen had time to notice--a pilfered  geranium from the conservatory in her turban), the  Russian ballerina. Yet it was the detestable  Tamara who had made the previous night  endurable, taking Kendrick into his study to listen  to Stravinsky and leaving Ellen free to help the  maids with preparations for the wedding lunch.
  But now it was beginning. Leon was sitting beside the  old lady who played the organ; he had insisted  on helping her turn the pages, ignoring her  plea that she knew the music by heart. He was  shuffling the music, still playing for time. She saw  him look directly at Sophie, who half  shook her head.
  There was nothing more to be done. The first strains of  Widor's Toccata rang out over the church,  Sophie and Ursula arranged the folds of  Ellen's dress, and she began to walk slowly  towards her bridegroom.
  She was halfway up the aisle when they heard  it--Sophie and Ursula, Leon with his keen  hearing ... and Ellen too, even above the sound of the  music. The creaking of the heavy oaken door on  its rusty hinges; and the gust of wind as it blew  open. Sophie tugged once at Ellen's  dress and Leon's hand came down on the  organist's arm so that she faltered ...
  What they saw then was a strange reversal of  what had happened to Aniella in the pageant. For  Ellen turned and as she saw the tall,  broad-shouldered figure outlined in the lintel of the  door, her face became transfigured. The
  
pride and endurance which had made her  look almost old, vanished in an instant, and she  became so beautiful, so radiant, that those who  watched her held their breath in wonder.
  Then the latecomer, a neighbouring landowner who  was Kendrick's godfather, removed his hat and  hurried, embarrassed, to his pew.
  And the wedding went on.

  In allowing the two ancient maids to prepare  the master bedroom for their use, Ellen realised  she had made a mistake. But she had not wanted  to stop them having the chimney swept and doing what  they could to air the bedclothes. Shut for years in their  basement kitchen, chilblained and deprived of  light, the Frobisher maids did not often use  their initiative, and Ellen had no wish  to deprive them of their traditional expectations.
  But she had not examined the room in detail,  having expected little from her wedding night except  to endure it, and she had not realised that there was quite so  much furniture: tables both round and square,  brass pots, palms and fenders, bellows and  tallboys and a stuffed osprey in a case. A  picture of the The Released Garrison of  Lucknow Crossing the Ganges hung above the  bed which was high and, considering its nuptial  purpose, surprisingly narrow, and on the  opposite wall was a painting of a pale, dead  shepherd in the snow, guarded by two collies who  did not seem to have gathered that he was no longer in a  position to tell them what to do.
  The farm manager had sent up a basket of  logs, but the vast size of the chimneypiece made  the small fire seem even smaller, and  Kendrick, in an unexpected attack of  masculinity, had earlier hit the logs with a poker  and almost destroyed it. On the chest in the dressing  room were photographs of Roland and William  in various manly situations--playing cricket,  decimating tigers or passing out on parade at  Sandhurst--and none as usual of Kendrick--who  now came nervously into the bedroom in his striped  pyjamas, fell over a padded stool and said:  "Oh Ellen!"
  His tone was reverent rather than passionate and he  looked cold.
  "Come and get warm," said Ellen, who was  already in bed, her hair brushed out, looking, as  Kendrick stammeringly began to tell her, like
  
Danae or Cleopatra, or perhaps
Goya's Maya on her satin couch.
  But even he realised that the time for conversation was  past, andwitha gulp he got into bed beside her where,  considering how thin he was, he seemed to take up  a surprising amount of room, especially his  feet, which were icy and very large.
  Once in bed, he found himself staring straight at  the dead shepherd being guarded by dogs and Ellen  saw a flicker of alarm pass over his face.
  "What is it, Kendrick?"'
  "I always used to look at that picture when  Mummy was telling me what I'd done wrong.  She used to send for me while she answered letters  at that desk. That was where she read me my school  reports too." His gaze turned inwards to the  terrors of the past.
  "We'll change the pictures tomorrow,"  promised Ellen--but the idea that anything connected  with his mother could be changed seemed to frighten Kendrick  even more.
  She lay back on the pillow, stifling a  yawn, and waited to see if Kendrick had any  idea of how to proceed--he might after all have  read a book. When this did not seem to be the  case, she stretched out her arms and drew her  trembling husband towards her, letting his head  rest on her breast, where he continued, though short  of air, to proclaim his worship and to liken her  to various people whose names she did not catch.
  "I think we should get undressed  properly," said Ellen, trying to repress the  school-mistressy note in her voice.
  She slipped off her night-dress, but the  sight of her naked, fire-lit body affected  him so strongly that he became hopelessly  entangled in his pyjama cord.
  Ellen freed him, glad that her time at  Cambridge had given her some experience.  "Don't worry, darling," she said.
"We've lots of time." And: "Everything's  all right," she said at intervals during the long  night, wondering what exactly she meant by this,  while Kendrick shivered and stuttered out his  admiration and said he was no good to anyone and never  had been but he loved her more than anyone had ever  loved before.
  "Do you think you would be better in another  room, Kendrick?"' she asked towards dawn.  "Somewhere that doesn't have these associations?"'
  
  For a moment, Kendrick brightened.  "There's the old nursery at the top of the house.  I slept there when I was little with my nanny."  Kendrick's face had relaxed; clearly he was  remembering a golden age. "It's quite a big  room and it clears the trees so you can see the  river."
  "Good. We'll try that as soon as I can  make some blackout curtains. Now don't  worry any more, darling. We'll be fine up there.  Just go to sleep."
  But Kendrick had sat up, in the grip of a  terrible panic: "You won't leave me,  Ellen, will you? You won't go away and leave me  alone? I've always been alone and I  couldn't--"'
  He began to weep and Ellen, fighting a  weariness so profound that she thought it must pull her  down to the centre of the earth, managed to take him  into her arms.
  "No, Kendrick, I won't leave you  alone, I promise. I'll never leave you  alone."
  He became calm then, and slept, and snored  (but not unpleasantly), while Ellen lay  awake till the image of the dead shepherd in the  snow became visible and she had achieved the dawn.

  "That's extraordinary," said Jan  Chopek, looking at Marek stretched out on his  iron bed in the Air Force Barrack at  Cosford. "I've never seen him drunk. Not like  this. Not incapable. God knows he drank all right  with the Poles, and with those idiots from the Foreign  Legion in France--but I've never known him  pass out."
  "Well, he's passed out now. Thank God  he's not on duty for the next forty-eight  hours."
  "If he had been he wouldn't have done it,"  said Jan, and the British Pilot Officer  shrugged. He'd already noticed that Marek was  hero-worshipped by his fellow Czechs.
  Marek had approached his blackout  systematically, retiring to his room, loosening  his tunic, and tilting the vodka bottle into his  mouth so that no one would have to drag him to his bed.  He had not even been sick, but all efforts  to rouse him were unavailing.
  Between his locker and Jan's was a picture of a
  
pneumatic blonde left behind by the  previous occupant who had not returned from a  night raid on Bremen, and a calendar. Under the  date--December the eighteenth--was the motto:  No Man Can Bathe Twice In The Same
River.
  "Something went wrong," said Jan. "He  tried to get leave for the weekend--he was going up  north to the Lake District for something. He got  it, too--and then Phillips pranged his car and  he had to go up instead of him. He didn't say  much, but he was very upset, I think."
  Marek, when things went wrong, became  extremely silent, but he had not often resorted  to the standard panacea for disappointment.
  "Well, there's nothing we can do except  wait till he comes round," said the Pilot  Officer.
  This Marek did some six hours later, about the  time that Ellen was rising from her nuptial bed. He  had a shower, changed and decided that Fate had  spoken. He was not certain now if he would have gone  north and interrupted the wedding like someone in an  opera. Certainly he had intended to. But the war  had intervened--while Ellen was being married he was  turning back over the Channel--and it was for the  best. For Oskar Schwachek, now  Gruppenf@uhrer Schwachek, still lived, and  while he did so, Ellen must be protected from  whatever was to come.

  It wasn't only Goethe who said beware of  what you wish for in youth in case in later years it  is granted to you.
  He did say it--in the course of his long  life Goethe said almost everything--but others said it  too, among them Nora Coutts, Marek's  formidable grandmother, who now sat by his bed and said:  "Did you expect to be pleased then, when you  heard?"'
  Eighteen months had passed since Ellen's  marriage. In the summer of 1941 Hitler's  madness had caused him to attack Russia, but  even if the danger of invasion had ceased, the  British, their cities ceaselessly bombed, their  Air Force stretched beyond its limits, were  experiencing total war as never before.
  Marek had flown Wellingtons with the Czech
  
Squadron of Bomber Command since his  release from the Isle of Man and always returned  safely, but the previous week a hit to his  port engine had forced him to bail out with his crew  before he could land. His leg was in plaster and in  traction, and now, to his fury, he was being taken  out of active service and sent to Canada as an  instructor.
  "I'll be fit in another month," he'd  raged, but without avail.
  "We need first-class people to train the younger  men," the Station Commander had said, not liking to point  out that two years of solid flying were enough for a man  well into his thirties and one who had been through  hell before he ever reached Great Britain.
  But it was not this news to which Nora Coutts was  referring. As next of kin she had been summoned  when Marek was injured, and now she sat at the head  of his bed, knitting comforts for the troops. The  balaclavas and mittens she made bore no  resemblance to the misshapen artefacts which Ellen  had garnered from the gardens at Hallendorf:  Nora was a champion knitter as she was a  champion roller of bandages and provider of  meals-on-wheels, and since her return to her  native land just before the outbreak of war had been the  mainstay of the WVS.
  "What did you expect?"' she repeated.
  "To be pleased. To be relieved ... to feel  that a weight had dropped from my mind," said  Marek, and wondered why he had been so stupid as  to share with his grandmother the news he had received three  days before from Europe. If he hadn't been  feeling so groggy and confused after they set his leg  he would have had more sense.
  "You ordered a man to be killed and to know who  was responsible. Your orders have been carried out,  Schwachek is dead--and you expect to be pleased?  You?"'
  "Yes."
  But looking into her face, whose implacable  sanity reminded him somehow of Ellen, he began  to realise how mad he had been. "I should have  done it myself. I wanted them to find him but it was for  me to do."
  "It's done now; there was no choice."
  But she said no more, for the fracture in his leg was  a multiple one and he had a dislocated shoulder  --and now he was to be separated from his comrades and the  work he loved.
  
  Lying back on the pillows, weary and  in pain, Marek reached out once more for the triumph  that should have been his--and once again it eluded him.  Schwachek had been bound for Russia. That  horrific campaign in which the Germans were dying  like flies might well have done Marek's work for  him. His grandmother was right; he had been mad.
  "Do you ever think of Ellen?"' she asked  suddenly.
  Marek turned his head on the pillow and  smiled.
  "What do you think?"' he said.

  After she left Marek, Nora Coutts did  something she did very seldom; she hesitated.
  She had not hesitated when she told the  Russian anarchist not to be silly, and she had not  hesitated when she left all her possessions  behind and walked to the Czech border, arriving there an  hour before the Germans invaded, but she hesitated  now.
  "Do you ever think of Ellen?"' she had asked  Marek, and got her answer.
  But Ellen was married. In the world into which Nora  had been born that would have been the end of the matter.  But in the world as it was now, where human beings were shot  out of the sky, or torpedoed or gunned down, was it  perhaps important that people should part without misunderstanding,  with the air clear between them? She did not for a moment  consider that Ellen would leave her husband, and would have  been shocked if anyone had suggested it--but would it  comfort Ellen to know that Marek was aware now of his  madness? That it would console Marek to see her before  he sailed, she was certain.
  In the end she decided to do nothing, but a month  after her visit to the hospital, a troop ship  en route from Canada was torpedoed.
  Two days later, she set off for the north.

  Nora walked from the station; at eighty-two she  would have scorned to take a taxi for a distance of two  miles. Marek had been discharged from hospital and  was waiting for his orders to sail. Glad though she  was that he was no longer flying, she would miss him  badly when he went overseas. He talked of her  joining him in Canada, but she would stay now and  die here.
  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 Caf`e
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 prot@eg`e 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.
  "Shall I get you a sandwich?"' she asked.  "They seem to have opened the canteen."
  Marek looked up and found himself staring straight  at Ellen.

  She had come down the day before for her mother's  fiftieth birthday, bringing butter and eggs from the  farm and dahlias and chrysanthemums from the garden.  Two of the windows of Gowan Terrace were boarded  up, leaking sandbags surrounded the house, but the  sisters saw nothing wrong; Holloway Prison  had been far more uncomfortable.
  Ellen had provided the kind of instant party  she was famous for, and assured her mother, as she  invariably did, that she was blissfully happy and  leading exactly the life she would have chosen.
  Then on the following day she went to the National  Gallery to visit her sandwich ladies. It was  meant to be a purely social visit, after which it  was Ellen's intention to go upstairs and hear the  concert properly and not in the occasional snatches  she had been permitted as a canteen worker when  somebody opened a door.
  But she was unlucky. The ladies who ran the  canteen were members of the aristocracy and famous  alike for the excellence of their sandwiches and the  ferocity of their discipline. Ellen chanced to arrive  on the day that the Honourable Mrs Framlington
  
had been delayed by a time bomb on the  District Line, and presently found herself behind the  counter, slicing tomatoes and piling them on  to wholemeal bread. But even the canteen ladies  had to take shelter when the sirens went, moving  across to the reinforced basement and setting up their  trestle tables among the audience.
  It was then that Ellen, finding herself opposite  Marek, did something unexpected. She put down  the plate of sandwiches, walked over to him and  grasped his sleeve in a gesture in which desperation  and possession were so strangely intermingled that the  dark-haired girl vanished into the crowd. Only  then, still grasping the cloth as though to let go would be  to risk drowning, did she respond to his  greeting, and speak his name.

  An hour later they sat on a bench in St  James's Park, looking not at each other but at  the ducks, waddling complacently up and down in  front of them. The meat ration was down to eight  ounces a week but the British would have eaten each  other rather than the wildfowl in their parks. Ellen  did not look at Marek because what she had  experienced when she saw him had frightened her so  badly that she had to search out neutral things  to look at: the withered grass, the empty deck  chairs and in the distance the gold railings of  Buckingham Palace. Marek looked away because  he was summoning up his last ounce of strength for  what was to come and sensed already that it might not be enough.
  The things they would normally have done to compose  themselves were denied to them. Since his leg was still stiff  and painful, they could not walk the streets, or  find, later, somewhere to dance where they could hold each  other with perfect propriety. They could not, in the  middle of the afternoon, have dinner and sit in intimacy  at a shaded table.
  "I must get back to Gowan Terrace,"  said Ellen presently, her voice hardly  audible. "They'll be expecting me."
  "So you've said," said Marek. "Several  times." But when he turned he saw that her eyes  were full of tears.
  "We shall have tea," decided Marek.
"Tea at the Dorchester. Tea is not  threatening; we will drink it calmly."
  "Yes," she said.
  They found a taxi and it was calming to drink  Lapsang Souchong and eat petits fours
  
overlooking Hyde Park as though four  years were not between them and there was no war. He had  told her about Schwachek's death. Now he told  her that he was going to Canada; that this was the last time  they would meet, and at once the intimacy of the tea  room, the soupy music vanished and Ellen found  herself trembling, plunged into a sudden hell.
  "I have to go," she said pitifully.
  He nodded and limped to the reception desk.  "Have you got one?"' she asked when he  returned.
  "Got what?"'
  "A taxi."
  He shook his head. "No. What I've  got is a room for the night."
  She shrank back in her chair. "You can't have  done that. You can't." She was unable to believe that  he could be so cruel.
  "You don't have to sleep with me. You don't have  to remove a single stitch of clothing. But before I  go we must talk properly. I must know if you're  happy and if you can forgive me for what I did  to us both."
  She was silent for long enough to make him very  frightened. Then she lifted her head and said that sad  thing that girls say when all is lost. She said:  "I haven't got a toothbrush."

  But for a long time no talking was done. There was a  moment when she first lay in his arms, both of them  perfectly still like children about to sleep, when she thought that  maybe she could hold back what was to happen--when  she thought that perhaps she did not have to know what was to be  denied her for the rest of her life. Perhaps Marek  also was afraid of the pain that knowledge would bring, for he  too made himself very quiet as though to rest like this was  enough to assuage his longing.
  But of course it was not to be, and later, when it was  over, she realised that it was as bad as she had  feared--that it was worse ... That to try and live  without the love of this one man was going to destroy her  --and yet that somehow it had to be done.

  "All right," said Marek. "Now talk.
I want to know everything about your life.  Everything."
  Darkness had fallen; the sky was clear and full  of stars; being able to see them, undazzled by the neon  lights, had been one of the benisons of the war.  Marek had gone to the window. Now he came back
  
to bed, and kissed her chastely on the  forehead to show her she could converse uninterrupted, and  like a child she folded her hands and began.
  "I have goats," she said. "Nearly  twenty of them. Angoras. They're very beautiful  animals. Kendrick doesn't like the milk--no  one likes the milk--but we make cheese, and they  don't smell at all, they're very--"'
  "Thank you," said Marek. "I am  acquainted with goats."
  "Yes." She admitted this, her head bent.  "And bantams; I have a flock of Silkies,  they're beautiful birds, white feathers and  black legs. Of course the eggs they lay aren't  very large--you wouldn't expect it--but they have a very  good flavour. And we won first prize in the  Village Show for our onions, and--"'
  She babbled on, producing her strange  agricultural litany, and Marek, afraid  he would be given the milk yield per Jersey  cow, gently turned her head towards him. "You  were going to make Crowthorpe into a sanctuary,"  he prompted, remembering Leon's words in the  internment camp.
  "Yes." She was silent, remembering her  vow. "And I have. It's just that when you have a  sanctuary you can't exactly choose. I mean,  when people came and knocked at the door of a  cathedral in the olden days, the priest couldn't  say "I'll have you and you and the rest must go away";  he had to have everyone." She paused, surveying in  her mind the current population of Crowthorpe.  "The land girls are all right, and so are the  evacuees that came first, the little Cockney ones,    but then we had two more lots from Coventry and  Birmingham and they hate each other and their children  make Molotov Cocktails in lemonade  bottles and throw them out of the window, and the people I  wanted like my mother and Sophie can't get away;  Sophie's in Cambridge and Leon's joined  the pioneers, so I'm left with people like  Tamara--"'
  "Tamara! You're not serious? The Little  Cabbage?"'
  She nodded. "She's not there all the time but she  doesn't get on with her mother and I don't mind  her too much because she plays the gramophone with  Kendrick and he tells her about Dostoevsky.  Of course it would be nice if she brought her ration  book and stopped stealing the flowers from the
  
conservatory, but it's not easy for  Kendrick, me being so busy ... and none of it  matters because it's wartime and compared to people all over the  world--"' She broke off and he saw her pass a  finger along her lower eyelid, in the gesture he  had seen her use at Hallendorf to stem the  tears of a child.
  "Ellen, I don't understand this," he said,  gathering her into his arms. "I don't understand  what you're saying. Nora said ... that's why I  didn't come ... Not because of Kendrick--he can go  to the devil--but because of you."
  "Nora," said Ellen, bewildered. "How  does Nora know?"'
  "She came up to see you." But he could not go  on. Nora's description of Ellen in her  fruit-filled orchard still had the power to sear him.  "She was like that girl in the Mille Fleurs  tapestry," she had said. "The one with the  unicorn. You must let her be, Marek. You must  promise me to let her be." Forcing himself, he  tried to put into words what Nora had told him.  "That's why I didn't come; because of the child."
  Ellen stared at him; a searchlight fingering the  sky passed over her face and he saw the huge,  bewildered eyes.
  "Oh God!"
  The bleakness in her voice made him overcome  his own misery. Somehow he must enter into what now  seemed her reason for living.
  "What is it, the baby? A boy or a  girl?"'
  She lay back against the pillows. "I  don't know," she said wearily. "It might have  been Tyrone or Errol or Gary ... there are  so many of them and they're all named after film  stars."
  He pulled her up, grasping her shoulders.  "Explain," he said urgently. "Don't  play games with me."
  She tried to smile. "I told you about  sanctuaries; you can't choose. The billeting people  asked me if I'd take unmarried mothers--the  idea is they help with light housework in  exchange for their keep and then when they've had their  babies, after a month, they go away and put their  babies in a cr@eche and find work. The first part  works all right--they're nice enough girls; they've  mostly been made pregnant by some soldier  who's posted overseas. It's when they're
  
supposed to go away that it's not so good."
  But he was scarcely listening. "You mean you  haven't got a child; you're not even expecting  one?"'
  She gave a forlorn shake of the head. "Nor  likely to," she could have said, but did not, for it  seemed important to protect Kendrick. The  move from the master bedroom to the old nursery had  not made much difference. Kendrick continued  to stammer out his adoration and to beg her night after  night not to leave him alone, but that was as far as it  went. At first the knowledge that his talentless fumblings were  unlikely to produce a child had devastated  Ellen, but the endless infants produced by her  unmarried mothers had calmed her distress. There would  be plenty of children after the war in need of homes.  She would adopt one then.
  But Marek was transfigured. He would not have  taken her from her child, or deprived a man of his  flesh and blood, but now there was no obstacle.
  "Thank God," he said. "You're mine  then"--and reached for her again.

  The second time is better than the first; more  certainty and already that touch of recognition that is  one of the most precious elements of love. Marek  now was a conqueror; the relief, the joy he felt  transmitted in every gesture, and Ellen followed  him movement for movement ... remembering as if  her life depended on it the feel of his skin, the  muscles of his shoulder, the touch of his hair.
  So that when morning came and she said she must go  back, he did not believe it.
  "You're mad. You're absolutely mad.
Do you think you're making that poor devil happy  with your pity? Surely he deserves better than  that?"'
  But he was not frightened yet. He was still certain of  victory.
  "I promised," she kept repeating. "I  promised I wouldn't leave him alone. Night  after night, I promised. He's always been  alone. His brothers bullied him and his mother  despises him. The whole house is full of  photos of Roland and William and not one of  Kendrick--"'
  "For God's sake, Ellen, do you suppose
I care about any of that? I remember him from  school--he was always by a radiator. You can't  help people like that."
  
  She shook her head. "I  promised," she kept repeating. "He's so  afraid; he follows me about all day and tells  me how much he loves me. You can't take your  happiness by trampling on other people." And then, very  quietly, "What will happen to the world, Marek,  if people don't keep their promises?"'
  She saw his jaw tighten and waited almost with  relief for him to give way to one of his rages.  A man who defenestrated Nazis and threw children  into the lake would surely lose his temper and make  it easier for her.
  But at the last minute he understood, and held  her very quietly and very closely, and that was almost more  than she could bear.
  "If you change your mind I'll be at the  Czech Club in Bedford Place till I  sail."
  But she only shook her head, and opened one of  his hands and held the palm for a moment against her  cheek, and then she said: "It's time to go."

  The train was exactly what she needed; it was  freezing cold, the toilet did not flush, someone  had been sick in the corridor. In such a train  one could let the tears come, and opposite her in the  evil-smelling frowsty compartment, an old woman  leant forward and touched her knee and said: "Aye,  there's always something to cry about these days."
  Kendrick would not be expecting her; she had  intended to stay away three days. She left the  taxi at the gates and walked to the house on  foot; the night air might undo some of the  ravages of her tears. For a moment she halted,  tipping her head back at the moon just freeing itself  from the scudding clouds.
  "I'm trying to do what's right, Henny," she  said. "I'm trying to be good. You said that  mattered, so help me, please!"
  But Henny had never been a nocturnal  person; she flourished in sunlight among pats  of yellow butter and golden buttercups, and there  was no rift in the wild and stormy sky.
  By the back door she put down her case and  let herself in silently. Everything was dark;  Kendrick would be in bed on the top floor.
  She crept upstairs, careful not to wake the  other occupants of the house. On the  second-floor landing she paused. Surely that was  music coming from the master bedroom which she and
  
Kendrick had vacated--music both so  unexpected and yet so familiar that she could not at  first think what it was.
  Puzzled, she made her way along the  corridor; and silently she opened the door ...

  Marek's orders to report for embarkation at  Liverpool came a day later. He spent his  last afternoon in London alone in his room in the  Czech Club, trying to overcome his wretchedness  sufficiently to join his friends drinking down below--and  watching through the window the procession of girls who  were not Ellen which had haunted him since he left  her. Girls with her way of walking, except that  no one walked with her lightness and grace; girls  whose burnished heads turned as they passed to show  him a completely different face.
  There was one crossing the garden square now, a  girl with raindrops in her hair, carrying a  suitcase ...
  Only she did not go past as the others had  done; she did not show him a completely different  face as she came closer. She made her way  up the steps and when she saw him at the window she  collapsed, helpless, against the rails.
  "What is it, my darling?"' he said, running  down and gathering her in his arms. "For God's  sake, Ellen, what's happened?"'
  She turned her face to his; and he saw her  tears.
  "The Polovtsian Dances is what's  happened! Oh Marek, you won't believe it,"  she gasped, and he saw that she was helpless with  laughter. "The Polovtsian Dances and the  Bessarabian Body Oil and the undulating--  all of it. Only I can't tell you here, it's  too indelicate."
  But even when they retreated to the privacy of his  room, she was too convulsed to speak.
  "I promised I wouldn't leave him alone  --but he wasn't alone! You see, he couldn't  ... with me ... because I was a goddess to him ...  But Tamara is not a goddess; she is an  elemental, she is a dark Life Force ..."  Laughter overcame her once more. "They tried  to explain it to me ... Oh, if you could have seen  her growling at him and calling him galubchick  --and then she pulled him on to the bed and the osprey  fell on top of them!"
  But later, when Marek had finished kissing her
  
and showering her with instructions about what she  had to do--go to Canada House, get permits,  set the annulment in train--she grew suddenly  silent and pensive and for a moment his heart  contracted.
  "What are you thinking, Ellen? Tell me, for  God's sake."
  She turned to him and because she knew that what she  was about to say might hurt him, she laid her hands  in a gesture of reassurance against his chest.
  "I was thinking," she said very seriously, "that  I was really going to miss the goats."

              Epilogue

  "We'll do it again, won't we?"' they'd  promised each other after the pageant: Frau  Becker and Jean-Pierre, the butcher and Freya  and the old woman who said it would rain. "This  won't be the last time," they'd said; Chomsky  arm in arm with the greengrocer, the reporters  photographing Lieselotte, and everywhere the  happiness, the triumph.
  And they did do it again, but many things had to happen  first. The end of the war, defeat for Austria and  years of occupation and hardship when the country was  policed by the allied powers.
  But in May 1955 the State Treaty was  signed, giving Austria full independence once  again, and soon afterwards the bombed opera house,  sumptuously rebuilt, opened with a gala  performance of Fidelio. For those who could not get  tickets, the music was relayed by a public  address system, and as they stood outside, many of  them in tears, Brigitta Seefeld in the  auditorium was obliging enough to cause the kind of  scandal so necessary to this kind of occasion by flouncing out  before curtain rise because she was expected to share a  box with a rival she detested.
  And in that year too the people of Hallendorf once  more celebrated the name day of Aniella.  Lieselotte, now a matron with children of her own,  had coached her niece Steffi to play the saint but  the greengrocer and the butcher still portrayed the  wicked knights, though Chomsky, now a  paterfamilias in Budapest and somewhat  henpecked, was only allowed to be part of the  audience.
  There were heartbreaking absences: Bruno, who  had been killed on the Russian front, and  Jean-Pierre, betrayed and shot while working in the  resistance. But Isaac was there with the young wife he  had found when he came to give a concert in  liberated Belsen--a cellist who had survived  by playing in the camp orchestra and who even now could  scarcely bear to let him out of her sight.  Bennet and Margaret were there, their obvious  contentment in each other's company a joy to behold,  and Sophie and Leon, returned from their kibbutz  in Israel. Leon's attack of Jewishness  had not lasted long: it was Sophie who had enjoyed  the companionship and friendliness of communal life.  They were back in London now, and married, and  planning to join Ursula in Wounded Knee  to make a film about her Indians.
  Even more people came than had come the first time, and  when it was over--when Steffi had soared up to her  apotheosis and Marek had once again made it  clear to the agents and impresarios who had  flocked to attend that his music was a gift to the people  of Hallendorf, and would remain so--there was the kind  of joy in the village that they had forgotten in those  grim years of war.
  "And it's because of you," they said, surrounding  Marek and Ellen and their nine-year-old son,  Lucas. "We know how busy and important you  are," they said to Marek, "but you came all the  way from Canada to help us."
  It was not till the next morning that Ellen could  slip away with Lieselotte and row across the  lake. The castle had been a convalescent home  during the war and now stood empty once again. As  they tied the boat to the jetty and made their way  up the steps, Ellen's memories of her first day  were as vivid as if it were yesterday. The scent of  verbena and jasmine, the sight of the skimming  swallows, all were as she had remembered them.  Here was the patch of reeds from which the dripping  Chomsky had risen, here was the door from  which Sophie, the first of the "wild" children, had come  running towards her--and here was the patch of grass  which the sunbathing Tamara had flattened, ruining  poor Langley's frit fly experiment. But  thoughts of the Little Cabbage, who had seen off  Patricia Frobisher (the camel notwithstanding)  within a month of her return from Kenya, now brought  nothing but amusement.
  "Here he is," said Lieselotte, pointing  to a wooden cross beneath the cypress tree.  "He died in our house but the children thought he'd like  to be buried in the castle."
  Ellen bent down to read the inscription,  carefully painted in gothic script  by Lieselotte's eldest daughter.

        HERE LIES ACHILLES
      A TORTOISE WHO LIVED
           LONG AND WELL
              R.i.p.

  Oh God, how right I was, she thought; how  unbelievably and absolutely right. As soon  as I saw what he did for the tortoise I  knew that he would help me--and she felt such  gratitude and joy that she leant for a moment against  the sun-warmed balustrade and closed her eyes.
  But it was not to see a grave that Lieselotte  had brought her friend. She forged ahead, across the  courtyard with the well and the catalpa tree.
  "Oh, I hope they're there," she said.  Then she nodded with relief and stepped aside  to let Ellen see.
  And there indeed they were--the strange medieval  birds standing sentinel on the monstrously  overbuilt nest they had made on Marek's  wheel.
  "They came the very week we decided to do the  pageant again! You said they blessed a place,  didn't you? I think things are going to be good for us  once more."
  "I know they are," said Ellen quietly.
  As she stood looking up at the birds, so  outr`e yet so universally loved, she heard  footsteps and turned to find Marek, his hand on the  shoulder of their son, coming over the cobbles towards  them.
  "Well, you did it," said Marek as  Lieselotte tactfully melted away.
  She shook her head. "It was your  wheel."
  "But your vision."
  They stood with the boy between them to pay their  respects to the birds which, for a while at least,  would have to be the sole keepers of the castle. Perhaps  they're your storks, Ellen wanted to say, perhaps  they're the ones from Pettelsdorf, but did not.  The peace and freedom which the Czechs had so  richly earned had been theirs for only three years  before the communists, under Moscow's direction, had  once again turned the country into a police state.  Pettelsdorf had been confiscated as being the  property of a capitalist oppressor; Marek  had not been back since the war. He had tried  to explain to his son that there had been a  demesne, now lost, which should have been his, but  Lucas had not been interested.
  "I didn't think anyone owned trees,"  he said, looking at the miles of virgin forest behind  their house.
  Now--though continuing to gaze respectfully at  the storks--he said: "Do you think we could go  home soon?"'
  Ellen and Marek exchanged glances. Both of  them had been so lost in the past that they were for a moment  at a loss. Did he mean home to the little house  which Steiner, dying peacefully a year after the war,  had left to them and where they were staying? Or had he  picked up their thoughts about Pettelsdorf ...  or was he referring to Gowan Terrace, where he  had been ludicrously spoilt on the way over?
  But of course he meant none of those things. He  meant home to the light-filled house on  Vancouver Island with its big windows overlooking  the Pacific. He meant home to his  Newfoundland puppy and his sailing dinghy and his young  sister who was frequently a nuisance but had many  uses. For to Lucas, the castle and its storks,  the lost domain in the forest of Bohemia, the  palace they had shown him in London where lived  a king and queen, belonged to the stuff of fairy  tales. He liked the stories but what he  yearned for now was his real and proper life.
  "Maybe even tomorrow?"' he suggested, his head  on one side.
  Marek and Ellen looked at each other. Then:  "I don't see why not," said Marek, and the  three of them linked hands and went to find the boat.