A Song for Summer

"You said "I've forgotten the wheel!"" He stared at her, suddenly wide awake. "Did I say that? That's right.

It's true."

As the train slowed down at Hallendorf station, Ellen saw that the platform was full of children. They were piled on to the benches, draped round the wrought-iron pillars with their hanging baskets of geraniums or just hopping excitedly up and down. Sophie was there, of course, and Leon and Ursula ... Janey and Flix and Bruno too, but also Frank, swishing a stick through the air, and a handful of village children.

She had expected to have the journey across the lake still to gather herself together, but when they surged towards her she was unexpectedly pleased to be among them again.

"We got permission to come and meet you,"

shouted Leon.

"There's been a disaster," said Sophie. "No, it isn't a disaster," contradicted Ursula.

"Yes it is. It is for Bennet. It's awful for him when he's written to all the Toscanini Aunts. And it's a disgrace for the school." Flix's lovely face was creased with concern.

Ellen put down her suitcase. "Could you please tell me what's happened?"'

"It's Abattoir!" Sophie had come very close, trying to convey the bad news in a suitably serious voice, but overjoyed to see Ellen again. "It's finished. Kaput. We're not doing it!"

"What? But what about FitzAllan?"' "Some men came." To Ellen's surprise, Frank came and picked up her suitcase.

"They were solicitors. Lawyers anyway," said Janey.

All the children were talking at once, clustered round Ellen. Even the village children, though everyone was speaking English, seemed to be involved in breaking the extraordinary news.

"And they said they represented ... they worked for Bertolt Brecht and he'd never given permission for the play to be done at all!"

"They were absolutely furious. They told Bennet he was breaking the law of copyright and if one single scene was acted they'd sue him!"

"So Margaret got furious. She said it wasn't Bennet, it was FitzAllan who said he'd got permission, and they all trooped off to the theatre--"'

"We were just rehearsing the bit where all the workers go on strike and start to die in the snow," said Flix,

"and they marched up to the front--the men in the dark suits--and said: "Stop this at once!""

"They were as red as Turkey cocks. Absolutely gobbling. And Bennet said: "I assure you that Mr FitzAllan has permission from Bertolt Brecht to perform this play; you will hear it from him." He was very dignified," said Sophie.

"And then everyone looked at FitzAllan and he just turned a sort of yellow and started stammering and saying there must have been a misunderstanding."

"But there wasn't!" Leon's thin face was contorted with contempt. "He'd made the whole thing up! He'd never been near Brecht, he just thought he could get away with it. The men went away threatening all sorts of things ... libel actions and stuff like that. And the next morning Lieselotte put out his horrible nut cutlet and he never came down for breakfast!"

"He did a bunk in the night!"

"So now we haven't got anything to show the parents, not a thing," said Leon. "It's the first time the school hasn't had a proper play for the end of term, and with the music being hopeless too ..."

Ellen, walking with the excited, hopping children towards the landing stage, was as indignant as they were. So much work wasted, so much money too ... the masks for the animals over which Rollo had laboured, often far into the night ... Jean-Pierre's military searchlights ... yards and yards of muslin ... And poor Chomsky, felled by the three-tiered structure, all to no purpose.

In the staffroom that evening she heard the details. "One of the parents was at a party in Zurich and boasted about the coup the school had pulled off," said Freya, "and someone who knew Brecht was there."

"But why?"' Ellen couldn't understand it. "Why should he go to such lengths to cheat? It's only a school play."

Jean-Pierre put down his newspaper. "Not so "only" perhaps--after all, some of the parents here are very distinguished: Frank's father, and Bruno's ... the parents of the little Sabine who own half of Locarno Chemicals. And the director of the Festspielhaus in Bonn had promised to come: he's almost a Toscanini's Uncle, one could say. If FitzAllan had pulled it off it could have been quite a coup for him."

"Do you suppose everything else was a lie too?"' asked Ellen. "I mean that he worked with Meyerhold and Stanislavsky?"'

"Probably." David Langley, who had wasted weeks of good summer weather, which could have been spent collecting frit fly, being a bloated stockyard owner or a carcass, was especially bitter. "Still, he wasn't so stupid; he got paid in advance."

Like the children, the staff were particularly upset for

Bennet, who blamed himself for being taken in and made it clear that the whole responsibility for the disaster was his and his alone.