A Song for Summer

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,"