A Song for Summer

"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