La's Orchestra Saves the World

  She disengaged from the embrace and they stood facing one another.

  “You don’t blame me, do you?” she asked.

  He hesitated, but she knew from his expression that he knew what she was talking about. “I did. But not now.”

  “I didn’t know what to do,” she said. “I was very confused.”

  “It was a confusing time,” he said. “But all that’s over now.”

  She saw him glance at his watch and she searched desperately for something to keep him. But she could not think of anything.

  “Will you come and see me again?” she asked.

  He pulled at the sleeves of his shirt. “One day, maybe. I don’t know where I’m going to be, though.”

  “Of course you don’t. But you know how to get in touch with me.”

  Tim had come over and was shaking hands with Feliks. La moved away. The friend of the man from Des Moines was standing not far away and she wanted to speak to him, as she imagined that he would be going off somewhere else now and there were things that she needed to say to him, even if there was nothing more she could say to Feliks.

  Twenty-four

  TIM LEFT THE BASE two months later, when he was given early demobilisation to take up a job with a civilian aircraft manufacturer in Bristol. Nothing had been said explicitly about disbanding the orchestra, but somehow everybody had assumed that this was what would happen. With Tim’s departure, it was inevitable, and La wrote a short letter to everybody telling them that her orchestra had served its purpose. Tim came to see her the day before he left.

  “We had a good innings,” he said. “But I suppose it’s time now, isn’t it? What are you going to do, La?”

  She had not thought about that. The euphoria and the air of unreality of the previous few weeks had kept her from planning a future for herself, and there was an element of denial, too. Now, without thinking about it, she replied, “Oh, I shall probably go and live in London for a while.”

  “Lucky you. Theatre, and all that. Proper orchestras.”

  “I imagine that it’ll take a bit of time to get used to it again.”

  She had not entertained the idea of moving back to London—not since Valerie had put her off at the beginning of the war—but the idea must have been there, subconsciously, as it had popped up so readily. She could do it. Richard’s parents had died during the war, within a year of one another, and their house in Chiswick, along with a substantial part of their estate, had come to her. She had already been comfortably off financially, and the money made no real difference. But the house was empty, looked after by their housekeeper, and she could move in whenever she wished. She could keep the Suffolk house, of course, as a weekend place; people would start to do that sort of thing again, now that the war was over. She could get the garden under control again; she would not need to grow so many vegetables, and she would be released from the hens … That, in itself, was reason enough to go, she thought. And she could get a job—a real job this time—something that would allow her to use her mind.

  The plan grew. She visited the house in Chiswick, passing through a London landscape that shocked her in its drabness and destruction. Entire streets had disappeared, others had wide gaps in them where buildings had disappeared. After Suffolk, where at least there was the high sky and the air, London seemed pinched and run-down, battered by what had happened to it.

  She was shown round the house by the housekeeper. It had been kept clean, but there was in it that coldness that comes when the inhabiting spirit leaves a building. She saw Richard’s room, which his mother had kept as a shrine to him, as parents will do. It was the room of a teenage boy; a cricket bat on the wall, school photographs, even a teddy-bear propped up on the shelf above the small fireplace. The housekeeper stood back, in sympathy, when she looked into this room, and when La came out of it she said, “I could clear that out for you, you know. It must be painful.”

  La nodded. “Thank you.”

  “And I could be out of my rooms in a week or two. I could go up north …”

  “You don’t have to leave, Mrs. Eaton. You can stay. There’s so much room here. You can stay.”

  She made arrangements, and two months later La moved from Suffolk to Chiswick. For a couple of weeks she organised the house, making it fresher and more habitable. Mrs. Eaton kept the kitchen, and proved to be a competent cook. She made evening meals for La, which she left in a warming oven with a note as to the menu. It was like living in a hotel, thought La, but she had a roof over her head—a large one—and there were so many in London who were living in cramped and unsanitary conditions. And she was alive. As Tim had said, that was the important thing.

  She found a job. A small music publisher wanted a person to assist its manager. They specialised in the publication of collections of traditional songs, and they needed somebody who could turn a hand to any of the tasks associated with that. At her interview, La was shown their latest project, a collection of folk songs from the British Isles. The page proofs fell open at “Brigg Fair.”

  “We played that,” she remarked. “I had a little orchestra in Suffolk. Very amateurish. We played that during the war.” She turned the page. “And here’s ‘Scarborough Fair.’”

  She glanced at the familiar words. Remember me to one who lives there / She once was a true love of mine.

  The manager was looking at her across his desk. “Cambridge,” he said.

  “You, too?”

  “Yes. Do you remember Paulson’s Music Shop? We deal with him. He’s a stockist of ours.”

  She said that she did. And she remembered the buying of the flute, and the way that Feliks held it when she first gave it to him. I would have given you anything, she said to herself. Anything.

  The manager closed the file in front of him. “It seems to me that you would be just the person for this job, Mrs. Stone,” he said. “Now, as to salary. I’m afraid that with conditions as they are …”

  “That is not really a factor,” said La. “Please don’t worry about that.”

  THE JOB WAS PERFECT. When friends asked her, she described it as a “small job,” which it was, but it suited her ideally. The office, which was just off Russell Square, near the British Museum, was small and chaotic, filled with scores and proofs of scores and letters to arrangers and composers. La succeeded in bringing some order to it, and was promoted. She was given a new room, with a carpet, and a two-bar fire. From her window she looked out onto a small square of garden and a low wall on which pigeons settled and conducted their courtships. At weekends, she went to the house in Suffolk; Mrs. Agg would air it for her just before she arrived and make a fire in the range. Lennie cut the hedges and mowed the grass in summer. He talked to her now, and told her that he had somebody he called his “sweetheart,” a young woman from a neighbouring village. He would marry her one day, he said; maybe when he was forty or thereabouts.

  “You should marry again, Mrs. Stone,” said Mrs. Agg. “I hope you don’t mind my saying that. But you’re an attractive woman and there must be men enough in London.”

  La laughed. “I’m forty-one now, Mrs. Agg. Who wants a woman of forty-one?”

  “A man of forty-two, I’d say. Are there any of them in London?”

  FROM TIME TO TIME, she heard from Tim, and even saw him on occasion, when he came to London on business, and they would go for lunch in a Soho restaurant. They talked about the war, and the orchestra, and he told her the news from the aviation world, which meant little to her. Then, on one of these occasions, he suddenly said to her, “You know, La, there’s something I feel really bad about. Looking back … all right, we were all doing a job and we did it to the best of our ability. Nothing to be ashamed of in that. But I feel bad about the Poles.”

  She looked surprised. “But I always thought that you went out of your way to help them. Look what you did for Feliks.” He had been kind to him; she had seen that herself.

  “Oh, it’s not me personally. No, it’s what we as a people did.
We betrayed them.”

  “Yalta?”

  “Yes. Of course, there was that. I remember after the news got out, the Poles at the station just sat. They looked as if they’d been winded. And quite a few of us felt that we just couldn’t look them in the eye. We had to look the other way, because we knew what they were going through. We had just given their country to the very enemy who had joined in with the Germans in dismembering it. We gave it to the people who had been allies of Nazi Germany.”

  La agreed. But she pointed out it had not been easy to deal with Stalin. Roosevelt had wanted them to join in the war against Japan; he had to give them something. She sighed; the world was rotten. “Yalta was a disaster. Yes, I know. But what else could they do? How could they …” She searched for words, but none came. At the heart of the machinations of statesmen were greed and fear and a seeking of advantage. But could one say that without sounding completely cynical?

  Tim was watching her. “Yalta,” he said, “was the big sellout. But there were other things, too. Do you remember the Victory parade in London? Did you see it?”

  La had. She had watched it alone, in the rain, and afterwards had walked into an unfamiliar tea-room and sat for an hour before she had gone home. She had thought about how it must seem to those who had lost somebody and who were watching the parade. How did they feel when they saw everybody else parading but their husband, their father, their son or daughter. She replied simply. “I did.”

  Tim looked at her enquiringly. “And who wasn’t there?”

  La knew. “The Poles.”

  “Exactly. We didn’t let them—let those brave men—march alongside everybody else because Stalin had said they were not to be in the parade. Our parade—not his. Ours. And do you know something, La? I had a letter from one of them who said to me that he watched the parade in tears. He had to stand on the pavement because there was no place for him or any of his fellow Poles in that parade.”

  He watched the effect of his words. La looked down at the tablecloth.

  “And do you know something else?” Tim continued. “Some of our politicians called the Poles fascists. They were so much in love with their hero Stalin and his beloved Soviet Union that they took their cue from the very Russians who had murdered all those Polish officers—lined them up and shot them. Or had carted people off to die in their labour camps.” He shook his head. “No wonder, La. No wonder the Poles felt betrayed. They fought for a country that they would never be able to return to. They lost everything. No pensions. Nothing. All gone.”

  “But what makes me sick at heart, La, is the thought of those men watching the parade. They had fought in the Battle of Britain, with us, right beside us, and they were forbidden to take part in the parade. Because of some Russian butcher. That’s what sickens me—that more than anything else. The thought of those men standing there in tears. Attlee … well, but how could Churchill have allowed that?”

  La thought: Doesn’t he remember? “He had no power.”

  “Or the King?”

  La shrugged. “Even less power.”

  Tim looked away, and La reached out to lay her hand on his forearm. “I’m sure that Feliks would have understood.”

  “Would he?” Tim asked. “Do you really think so?”

  “Possibly not.”

  They talked about Feliks. “I’ve often thought,” Tim said, “that you and Feliks might have been … suited. You were very friendly, weren’t you?” He smiled encouragingly. “Was there ever anything between you?”

  La held his gaze. “Nothing. Not really.”

  “Pity.”

  IN THE LATE SUMMER of 1960, La went to Edinburgh, to the Festival. She travelled up with her friend Valerie, who was at a loose end because her husband was in Australia on business. They decided that they would spend ten days there, at concerts and at the theatre. They had different tastes and so they did not go to the same events, but they had each other’s company for dinner.

  On the evening before they were due to return to London, La went by herself to an orchestral concert at the Usher Hall. At the end of the concert, there was still some light in the northern sky, and the evening was a warm one. The audience spilled out onto the pavement in front of the hall, talking about the programme, exchanging the welled-up small talk that concert audiences release at the end of a performance. La stood for a moment on the steps, enjoying the festival feel of the occasion, and it was then that she saw Feliks.

  He had come out of a side door and was about to walk up Lothian Road when he stopped and turned to face her. It seemed that he was hesitant to approach her, but she made the first move and took a few steps towards him.

  They shook hands. It was very formal.

  She smiled at him, hoping that he could not hear her wildly beating heart. “I thought it was you.”

  “And it is. Fifteen years later? Yes, fifteen.”

  He seemed pleased to see her, in spite of the formality.

  “Where …,” she began to ask. But he cut her short.

  “I live in Glasgow now. I’ve lived there since the end of the war. I was offered a job there by a Pole who had set up a business.”

  “Oh.”

  She did not look for it, but she saw the ring. He noticed.

  “Yes. I married a Scottish lady. Twelve years ago. We have two small boys. One is five and the other is seven.”

  La tried to smile. Again he noticed. He could see the effort.

  “My marriage is not a success,” he said. “She calls herself a Catholic, but she is a rather bad Catholic, I’m afraid. I see her every few weeks—she comes to visit the boys—but she is living with a man who has a bar.” He shrugged. “That is how it is.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear that.”

  He nodded. “Not good. But you—where are you?”

  “I am in London.”

  “And you are happy there?”

  “Yes. But I still go out to Suffolk. I still have the house.”

  His eyes lit up. “With the lavender bushes?”

  “Yes. They need cutting back, I think.”

  They both laughed. Then La said, “Feliks, I have to ask you. If I don’t ask you now, then I may never know. Do you know why I had to speak to Tim as I did? Do you understand?”

  Behind them a woman said something to a man in a dinner jacket and the man chuckled. Feliks glanced at the couple and then back at La. “Yes, I do understand. You knew that I was German.”

  It took her a moment to grasp what he said.

  “So I was right?”

  “Yes. But you were kind to me and you did nothing about it. You see …” He looked over his shoulder, as if concerned that he might be overheard. “You see, my parents were Germans who went to live in Poland. My father was a businessman. I was eight when they went and I went to school there. I learned Polish and spoke it all the time. We stayed, and then when I went to university I decided that I would be Polish altogether. What is the first eight years of your life? Not very much. The Nazis had come to power then in Germany. I had no desire to go back. Then I joined the air force. I took the identity of a man who had worked for my father and who had died. I joined the air force under his name.”

  She reached out and took his hand. He did not resist; they held hands.

  “It seemed clear to me,” he continued. “If I tried to explain to people who I really was, they would have been suspicious. When I ended up in England, they would probably have interned me.”

  He was right. People were interned indiscriminately. “Yes, that could have happened.”

  “It was simpler to be Polish,” he said. “Which is what I felt, and what I feel now.”

  She wanted to hug him.

  “I understand,” she said. “I understand.”

  “They found all this out in London, but the man who interrogated me was sympathetic. He had a German grandfather and he knew that we were not all monsters. He gave me clearance and they found work for me.”

  “So,” she said.
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  “Yes. So.”

  He looked at his watch. “I have to get back to Glasgow. The boys are being looked after tonight by the wife of a friend. But I have to get the last train back.” He reached for a pen from his jacket pocket and started to write on the back of his programme. “Here is my address in Glasgow. Perhaps one day we shall be able to meet again.”

  She took the programme for him, and put it in her bag. She felt tears in her eyes and turned away. It is always like this, she thought; I cry. He pressed her hand briefly, and was gone.

  Twenty-five

  THE FOLLOWING YEAR, in 1961, the year of La’s fiftieth birthday, the music publishers were acquired by a larger firm, competitors who had eyed them for some years and were now in a position to make an offer that the handful of shareholders in the smaller company found sufficiently attractive. Nobody’s job was threatened, the new owners said, but people would have to be prepared to be flexible. La was told that she was still needed, but that she would have to move to a smaller office in a new building. The old premises, with their view of the small garden and the wall, with their creaky staircase and their staff coffee-room with the Georgian cornice, were too valuable to keep and would be sold.

  La resigned. She would miss the job, but she did not need to work; and London was becoming more of an effort, with its crowds and its noise. A hotel had opened near her house in Chiswick, and its bar was a source of disturbance at night. She decided to go back to Suffolk, keeping the London house for when she wanted to spend time in town. Mrs. Eaton had long since retired; she could find a lodger who would look after it, a student nurse perhaps, somebody like that.

  Agg had retired, and sat in the kitchen all day, complaining to Mrs. Agg about the weather and the government, and other matters, too. Lennie ran the farm, and had married the woman he called his sweetheart. She got on well with her mother-in-law, and they seemed happy enough. “You can’t make a farmer’s wife,” said Mrs. Agg. “You’re born to it or you’re not. Lennie’s sweetheart was born to it.”

  Henry Madder was in a wheelchair, but had stayed where he was; no Madder had ever gone anywhere, he claimed. A nephew on his wife’s side had taken over the running of his farm and had got rid of the hens, using the wood from the hen houses to patch up fences and gates. The pig farmer had died in a fall from his horse. Percy Brown had become a sergeant and had left the force to drive a taxi in Bury in his retirement. He picked up La from the station one day and told her that his one outstanding ambition had never been fulfilled: to catch one of the gypsies from Foster’s Field red-handed. “They were too wily for me,” he said. “Our problem in the police was always proof. Still is, I suppose.”