A Song for Summer

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.