A Song for Summer

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.