A Song for Summer

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 Elysèes, 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?"'