A Song for Summer

Now, nearly ten years later, he had to face the fact that Hallendorf's early promise had not really been fulfilled. The intelligentsia of Europe and America continued to send him their children, but it was becoming clear that his idealistic progressive school was being used by the parents as ... well, as a dump. The children might come from wealthy homes, and certainly he extracted the maximum in fees so that he could give scholarships to those with talent, but many of them were so unhappy and disturbed that it took more than experimental productions of the Russian classics or eurythmics in the water meadows to calm them. And the staff too were ... mixed. But here his mind sheared away, for how could he dismiss incompetent teachers when he allowed Tamara to inflict her dreadful ploys on his defenceless children?

It had to be admitted too that Hallendorf's annual performance in the theatre the count had built for his mistress had not, as Bennet had hoped, brought eminent producers and musicians to Hallendorf.

Toscanini had not come from Milan (and a lady rumoured to be the great conductor's aunt had turned out to be someone quite different), nor Max Rheinhardt from Berlin, to recognise the work of a new generation, and the villagers continued to stay away.

And now of course Max Rheinhardt couldn't come because he had fled to America along with half the theatrical talent of the German-speaking countries. It had happened so quickly, the march from the last war to the possibility of the next. Bennet did not think that the insanity that was Hitler's Germany could last, nor did he think that Austria would allow itself to be swallowed by the Third Reich, but fascism was on the move everywhere, darkening his world.

Furthermore, the money was running out. Bennet's fortune had been considerable, but short of standing on a bridge and throwing banknotes into the water, there is no faster way to lose money than the financing of a school.

A knock at the door made him look up. The new matron entered.

She was all that he had feared yet it was hard to be disappointed. True, she was very young and very pretty, but she had a smile that was funny as well as sweet, and there was intelligence in the soft brown eyes. What held him though, what surprised him, for he had found it to be rare, was something else. His new housemistress looked ... happy.

"You're very much younger than we expected," he said when he had asked about her journey and received an enthusiastic reply about the beauty of the landscape and the kindness of her fellow travellers.

She acknowledged the possibility of this, tilting her head slightly in what seemed to be her considering mode.

"Might that be an advantage? I mean, there's a lot to do."

"Yes. But some of the older children are not easy." He thought of Bruno, who that morning had defiled the Greek temple with his opinion of eurythmics, and Frank, who was on his fifth psychoanalyst and had seizures in unsuitable places when his will was crossed.

"I'm not afraid of children," she said. "What are you afraid of then?"'

She pondered. He had already noticed that it was her hands which indicated what she was thinking quite as much as her face and now he watched as she cupped them, making them ready to receive her thoughts.

"Not being able to see, I think," she said. "Being blind, you mean?"'

"No, not that. That would be terribly hard but Homer managed it and our blind piano tuner is one of the serenest people I know. I mean ... not seeing because you're obsessed by something that blots out the world. Some sort of mania or belief. Or passion. That awful kind of love that makes leaves and birds and cherry blossom invisible because it's not the face of some man."

For a moment he allowed hope to rise in him. Might she see how important it was, this job he was asking her to do? Might she have the humility to stay? Then he forced himself on to the denouement.

"I'm afraid I didn't have the chance to lay out your duties completely in my letter. My secretary, Margaret Sinclair, will tell you anything you want to know, but briefly it's a question of seeing that the children's rooms are clean and tidy, that they get to bed on time, of collecting their laundry and so on. We try to see that everyone speaks English during the day. I suppose the English language is the single most important thing we have to offer now. Not because it is the language of Shakespeare," he said wi/lly, touching the bust of the man who made the whole vexed question of being British into a source of pride, "but because increasingly parents look to England and America to save them from the scourge of Nazism. But at night you can let them chatter in their own tongue."

"Yes," she said. "Of course I will do all that, but I was wondering how much time I should spend--"'

Ah, here it comes, he thought, and his weariness was the greater because for a moment he had believed in her integrity.