A Song for Summer

  ‘Stop,’ said Marek.

  Now he looked around the hall more carefully. Other faces were missing: the first horn, a man called Cohen, the second flautist. . .

  ‘You will be kind enough to tell me where they have taken Meierwitz?’ said Marek quietly.

  ‘I’m afraid I haven’t the slightest idea.’ The director was becoming ruffled. ‘You must agree yourself that German music needed purging from foreign influences and in particular from –’

  Marek could never describe the onset of his rages; those first moments were out of time. When he came to himself, he was holding the portly, squealing little man out of the first-floor window by one pin-striped trouser leg.

  ‘Where is he, you little toady? Where have they taken him?’

  ‘Stop it, stop it! I’ll be killed – pull me in, damn you. Help! Help!’

  Marek lowered his grip so that he was holding only one ankle. Down in the street a crowd was gathering; a man hurried out of the house opposite with a camera . . .

  ‘You heard what I said. Where is he? You’ve got exactly one minute.’

  ‘He’s in a camp . . . Weichenberg . . . near the Czech border. It is for resettlement.’

  Overcome by disgust, Marek hauled him in and hung him over the sill. Then he turned to the orchestra.

  ‘There will be no performance of this concerto, gentlemen. Nor of any of my music while the present regime is in power,’ he said – and left the hall.

  He went back to Pettelsdorf. His determination to find and rescue Meierwitz had been instantaneous and it seemed to him that he could do it better from somewhere familiar whose every hiding place he knew well.

  But even his own country was not free from evil. Not all the Sudeten Germans were making trouble, not all of them wanted to belong to the German Reich, but there were enough hotheads, egged on by the Nazis in Berlin, to make life perilous for those who wished only to live in peace. Marek’s father was insulted because he was content to be part of the Czech Republic; some of his workmen were beaten up when they went into the market town; and Marek’s action in withdrawing his work from the Reich was seen by many as treachery. He found himself watched and visited by high-ranking Nazis trying to make him change his mind, and it soon became clear that he was making trouble for his family and that as Marcus Altenburg, the avowed friend of Jewish musicians and other ‘Enemies of the Reich’, he could not go unobserved.

  It was then that he came to Hallendorf to find Professor Steiner, meaning only to borrow his van – and found a man as obstinately determined as he was himself to put right the wrongs that his homeland had perpetrated.

  Kendrick Frobisher had his faults but he was a truthful young man. When he said that his mother had delivered a camel on the way to church he was reporting facts that were well known in the district, and when he said that Crowthorpe Hall was both wet and red, he did not exaggerate.

  What he had perhaps not made clear to Ellen – for he was, in his own way, a modest person – was that it was also large. The house had fourteen bedrooms, only some of which were so mildewed and damp that they were virtually unusable. It had a drawing room, a billiard room, a library (some distant ancestor having gathered together the most unreadable collection of books ever assembled), a dining room lined in peeling Morocco leather and a gallery which ran round the vast and draughty hall.

  The size of Crowthorpe was augmented by an eruption of turrets, gables and other protuberances, for the house had been extensively rebuilt in Victorian times, and stained-glass windows and heavily swathed curtains managed to reduce the light which came in from the melancholy, sheep-ridden countryside to the point where the lamps had to be lit by three o’clock in the afternoon, even in summer. Inside too the heavy, convoluted furniture, the claw-footed tables and blood-red Turkey carpets created an ambience in which Queen Victoria, not noted for her joie de vivre, would have been entirely at home.

  The significance of Crowthorpe, however, lay not in the house, but in the land which surrounded it. The estate comprised nearly four thousand acres, and though much of it was in the same melancholy and largely useless vein that characterised the house – a lake full of ill-tempered pike, a bosom-shaped hill on which (despite its relatively low stature) two hikers had perished in a blizzard, a derelict gravel pit – there was also, in the fertile river valley which the mansion overlooked, a large and profitable farm, which had been managed frugally and effectively by the farm manager, a Cumbrian born and bred, for many years.

  That the estate should go entire and unencumbered to the eldest son had been Mrs Kendrick’s intention, as it was the intention of every landowner in this self-contained and rural district. Since her husband’s death she had been in charge of Crowthorpe’s affairs, and that Roland meant to leave the Indian Army and come home to Britain was a source of great satisfaction. Roland had been a pleasure to her from the moment of his birth; a handsome, outgoing, tough little boy who seldom cried, was good at sport, and went off to his prep school at seven with a brave smile. Roland would make a good master for Crowthorpe and as he had had the sense to marry out there, there might soon be a son.

  And if anything happened to Roland there was William. William was not quite as steady as Roland – there had been a few debts during his young days and rumours of trouble with a girl who was undoubtedly common and had had to be paid off. But he had steadied down a lot; he was handsome and popular with the county, and no doubt would soon get himself engaged to someone suitable.

  So the succession was secure and normally Mrs Frobisher would not have given a second thought to poor Kendrick, that unfortunate afterthought which had resulted from her permitting her husband what she had virtually ceased to permit after her elder sons were born. Kendrick had been a disaster from the first, embarrassing and distressing her with his inability to fit in; his asthma, his fear of horses, his shame-making crying fits when it was time to return to school . . . and, later, the way he buried himself in his room listening to obscure and depressing music and ruining his eyes with endless reading.

  But that morning, in The Times, she had read that it was the intention of the Government to issue gas masks to the populace. Mrs Frobisher had not been very interested in the policies of Herr Hitler. She had no particular quarrel with him – indeed, with his attempts to clear away Jews, homosexuals, communists and gypsies she had a certain sympathy – but he was making a lot of noise about Lebensraum and colonies and that was a different matter. The art of colonisation was one that was only understood by the British, who knew how to deal with inferior races with justice and sternness. So it might after all be necessary to fight a war, and Mrs Frobisher, suppressing with an iron effort of will the panic that the memory of the last war and its hideous decimation of the nation’s youth brought to her, had decided that Kendrick must be sent for and instructed to marry. Kendrick would survive whatever happened; with his asthma and his astigmatism, not to mention the slight curvature of his spine, there was no question of his being called up for military service. Horrible as it was to imagine him as master of Crowthorpe, it would be better than letting the estate go out of the family.

  So Kendrick was sent for, and took Volume Three of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu for the train and a packet of Milk of Magnesia tablets, for a summons to Crowthorpe always gave him indigestion, and took the train north. At Carlisle, as always happened when he travelled home, it began to rain.

  In the old Buick which his mother had sent for him, he watched the mist swirling round the hills, heard the forlorn bleating of the black-faced sheep, and the sinister rushing of the brown streams running almost at flood level, and wondered what he had done. Kendrick had his own income, inherited from a distant relative who had been sorry for the unwanted little boy, and owned his flat in Pimlico, so there was not really much that his mother could do to him, but logic played little part in Kendrick’s perception of Patricia Frobisher.

  It was not until after dinner, which he took alone with his mother in the freezing din
ing room, that he gathered why he had been summoned.

  ‘I hope you can manage to have a sensible conversation about this, Kendrick,’ she said, when the maid had delivered herself of the blancmange and retreated, her duty done. ‘I don’t want any hysteria or panic. But it seems possible that there is going to be a war.’

  Kendrick put down his napkin, suddenly as pale as the pudding in front of him. In his head Zeppelins exploded into flame, planes zoomed, children ran screaming from their demolished houses.

  ‘Do you really think so?’ he managed to stammer.

  ‘I don’t know. Chamberlain is doing his best to avert it, but we must always look at possibilities unflinchingly.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kendrick, and thought longingly of Marcel Proust, his hero, who had spent twelve years in a cork-lined room working on his masterpiece. Strictly speaking this could not be regarded as an unflinching way of carrying on, but of course he had been a genius.

  ‘As you know, Roland is coming home, but if there’s any trouble he’s sure to join up and William is now an experienced pilot. If anything happens to them you will become the owner of Crowthorpe. Nothing can be done about this.’

  Mother and son gazed at each other over the enormous dining table, both equally appalled by the prospect. Huge bulls pursued Kendrick in his mind as he tried to give orders to the farm manager; the wheels of threshing machines whirred, blowing chaff into his asthmatic lungs; girls on large horses rode up the drive and despised him . . .

  ‘So it has become necessary for you to do your duty, Kendrick. You must marry.’

  Kendrick blinked at his mother through his thick glasses. She wanted him to marry. And at the word ‘marry’ there came into his mind, erasing the terrifying prospects of war and agriculture, Ellen’s lovely face, the soft mouth, the gentle eyes and floating hair.

  ‘I should like to marry,’ he said, ‘but there is only one woman I am prepared to consider.’

  Patricia stared at her son, who had spoken with unexpected certainty.

  ‘Who is that?’ she asked.

  ‘Her name is Ellen Carr. She’s working in Austria at the moment but her home is in London. She is a wonderful person.’

  ‘What is she working at? What does anyone do in Austria?’

  ‘She is a matron in a school. But she also cooks. She is highly trained.’

  Patricia controlled herself with an effort of will.

  ‘A cook! I take it you are joking. Even you would not imagine that a Frobisher could marry a cook?’

  But the image of Ellen had given Kendrick unexpected courage.

  ‘There is no one else I am prepared to marry,’ he repeated. ‘But she has refused me.’

  ‘Refused you! Good heavens, what is a cook doing to refuse you? Does she know who you are?’

  ‘Yes. But she is not in love with me. Of course a lot of people have proposed to her, but I shall never give up hope. Never.’

  Making a heroic effort, Patricia tried to envisage a cook who had been much proposed to and did not want to espouse a Frobisher.

  ‘What is her background?’

  ‘Her mother is a doctor. She was a Norchester. There are three sisters who were all suffragettes. They are admirable women. Ellen’s father was killed in the last war.’

  ‘Good God, not the Norchester gals? Phyllis and Charlotte and what was the third one called?’

  ‘Annie.’

  ‘That’s right. Well, well – Gussie Norchester’s gals – mad as hatters, all of them, tying themselves to railings and God knows what. Gussie had a dreadful time with them – they wouldn’t be presented or behave normally in any way.’

  But the aberrant behaviour of the girls didn’t seem to matter, Kendrick found, for Gussie Norchester had been the niece of Lord Avondale and entirely acceptable. If the cooking girl was her grand-daughter the whole thing was obviously another eccentricity and could be overlooked.

  ‘Perhaps you have not been firm enough,’ said Mrs Frobisher. ‘Girls like to be dominated. Why don’t you go out there – to Austria – and press your suit. If she knows that I am not against the match it might make a difference.’

  ‘I did wonder,’ said Kendrick. He had indeed wondered very much, for the goings-on at Hallendorf as read out in Gowan Terrace had disturbed him increasingly. Ellen had written light-heartedly about Chomsky and the rest, but Kendrick was beginning to have nightmares in which his beloved was subjected to advances by naked metalwork professors or pinned to the wall by red-haired Welshmen. ‘Perhaps I could ask her to meet me in Vienna?’

  ‘A good idea,’ said Mrs Frobisher. She did not care for waltzes, but was aware that they were considered beneficial for romance.

  But Kendrick’s plans for his visit to Vienna were cast in a much more serious vein. If he was to lure Ellen to the Austrian capital, it must be with a worthwhile programme of serious sightseeing as well as visits to concerts, art galleries and museums. Returning home, he was soon closeted in the London Library, where the delights of the Austrian capital could be carefully studied.

  There was so much to see: the churches of Fischer d’Erlach (both the Elder and the Younger), at least a dozen equestrian statues of significance and a leprosy sanatorium in the suburbs which was said to represent the pinnacle of Secessionist architecture. There was the Hofburg, of course, and the vault of the Capuchin church containing the bodies of the Hapsburg Emperors, but not, apparently, their hearts and livers, for which it was necessary to go to the crypt of St Stephen’s Cathedral. And of course there were all the places where the great composers had been born or died or simply resided. Schubert’s spectacles could be visited in Nussdorf, and Beethoven’s ear trumpet in the Stadtsmuseum, though the attribution of Mozart’s billiard cue in a cafe in Grinzing was seriously disputed.

  Best of all would be if he could take Ellen to the opera. After all, the Vienna Opera was the glory of Europe. Surely she would not refuse to come if he could offer her seats for a performance there?

  Calling in at his favourite travel agency, one which specialised in Cultural Tours, he spoke to a helpful girl who showed him the programme for the Staatsoper and there, on 12 July, after the end of the official season, Kendrick found a cultural gem that no one could resist: Brigitta Seefeld, Vienna’s reigning diva, was singing in Rosenkavalier.

  ‘I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get tickets,’ said the girl. ‘And if I can they’ll be terribly expensive. It’s a gala and they always put up the prices for them.’

  But Kendrick, imagining himself beside his beloved as Seefeld renounced her young lover and sent him into the arms of a foolish young girl, said boldly that money was no object. She was to get tickets at any price and let him know. For the truth was that even if Ellen might prefer to investigate Demels Patisserie or the Nash Markt, he himself would do anything to hear Brigitta Seefeld sing. And he would be able to tell Ellen more about the inspiring relationship between the diva and Marcus Altenburg, for he had done a lot of research on the composer’s life since he realised that he had been at school with one of the most highly regarded musicians of the day.

  He would not raise Ellen’s hopes at once: he’d just say he hoped to get tickets for the opera. Or should he say nothing about it at all and give her a wonderful surprise?

  Standing on the pavement, jostled by the passers-by, Kendrick sighed with anticipation, and blushed, for he had just remembered that the prelude of Rosenkavalier was supposed to depict, in music, the act of love.

  Was this something he should explain – but very delicately of course – to Ellen? She listened so nicely when he told her things, her head on one side, her lids drooping a little over her gentle eyes. Sometimes he felt that that was what he had been born for – explaining things to the girl he loved so much.

  The Viennese afternoon was warm and mellow. The sun shone down on the green and golden roofs of the churches, warmed the stone archdukes and marble composers in the parks; touched the courtyards of the Hofburg, which had once been the home of
emperors and now housed government ministries, Lipizzaner horses and a few selected citizens who had been given grace-and-favour apartments by the state.

  Among whom was Vienna’s favourite diva, Brigitta Seefeld, who now woke in her famous Swan Bed, stretched her plump arms and demanded (but in a whisper for she never spoke on the day of a performance), ‘Where are my eggs?’

  Ufra shrugged. Her eggs were where they always were, in a bowl on the dressing table, fresh that morning from the market. An ugly black-haired Armenian in her fifties, she had worked for Brigitta for fifteen years and knew that today there would be trouble. Brigitta was singing Mimi in La Bohème and they had brought in a new Musetta from Hamburg who was said to be both excellent and young. And tonight too Benny Feldmann was due back from America, and if he hadn’t found Marcus von Altenburg, thought Ufra, God help us all.

  Brigitta rose, put on her peignoir and descended from her dais. On the walls of her bedroom, as on all the walls of her sumptuous apartment, with its inlaid floors and porcelain stoves, hung portraits of her in her most famous roles: as the Countess in Figaro . . . as Violetta in La Traviata . . . as a pig-tailed Marguerite in Gounod’s Faust.

  Reaching the dressing table, she broke the first egg and tipped it down her throat. A second egg followed; then came the exercises. ‘Mi, mi, mi,’ sang Brigitta, her hand on her diaphragm – and outside in the street, the porters looked up and grinned and the grooms leading the Lipizzaners to their stables nodded to each other, for Brigitta Seefeld’s voice exercises were as much a part of Vienna as the bells of St Stephen’s or the cooing of the pigeons on the roofs.

  At four-thirty, Ufra admitted the masseuse and after her came Herr Köenig, the leader of Brigitta’s claque.

  Marcus had disapproved of claques. ‘You don’t need them,’ he’d raged. ‘It lowers you, paying for applause.’

  How idealistic he’d been, that wild boy who’d come to her dressing room with an entire tree, and into her life. But what did he know about anything, with his tempestuous youth and his talent? It was all very well for him; he could afford to go slumming in the suburbs, conducting working men’s choirs and writing pieces for tubercular schoolchildren to play. He wasn’t dependent on an arbitrary collection of cords and tendons which could fail at any moment. A head cold, a chest infection, an impending nodule on her larynx would leave her defenceless, a prey to her rivals, her status threatened. No wonder she found it necessary to cultivate those who could help her.