‘You’re short on the woodwind,’ said one of them. ‘I play the clarinet – I can go and get it.’
And he got it, and cut a symposium on Geriatric Orthodontics and said he could stay till the pageant. A girl on a walking tour turned out to be a singing student from Paris and stayed also – perhaps because of the music, more probably because of the dentist, who looked like Cary Grant.
Odder still perhaps was a plaintive letter from Sophie’s mother to complain that her daughter hadn’t written.
‘I forgot,’ Sophie told Leon, half appalled, half excited. ‘I forgot to write to her!’
‘About time too,’ said Leon. He had graduated to being Professor Steiner’s assistant in transcribing parts and had begun to see what hard work really meant.
Then came the day when Marek led the youngest children to Aniella’s house for a rehearsal, and told them to beat their drums and shake their tambourines and their triangles in the way that they had learnt – and as Lieselotte came out of the door, the assembled musicians began to play, and they saw, these obedient, small musicians, where they fitted in – that by themselves they were nothing, but now, with everybody joining in, they were part of something glorious.
And it was then that the little fat boy who loved mathematics put down his triangle and sighed and said: ‘Oh gosh! It’s better than the calculus.’
It did not rain.
At seven in the morning, the dentist who played the clarinet was woken by the chambermaid at the inn and went downstairs to find a small, fierce-looking child standing in the hall.
‘I want you to take out my brace,’ said Ursula.
The dentist, scarcely awake, blinked and rubbed his eyes.
‘What?’ he said stupidly.
‘My brace. They didn’t have them when Aniella was alive.’
‘My dear, I can’t do that. I don’t have the right equipment; it would hurt, and in any case –’
Ursula stood unmoving. She had woken at dawn and trudged on foot round the lake. Now she dredged up a word she scarcely ever used. ‘Please,’ she said.
In the house on the alp, Lieselotte woke and stretched and was suddenly terrified.
‘I can’t, Mama. All those people . . . I can’t. You must tell –’
But at that moment Ellen came up the path, carrying the basket of pins and needles, of scissors and glue, that had become a symbol of all that went into the making of Aniella’s name day, and kissed her friend, and looked so pleased and happy, and so calm, that Lieselotte’s panic abated and she decided she could after all swallow a cup of coffee and eat a roll.
A charabanc drove into the village square and disgorged a busload of tourists, but no one had time to bother with them. Everyone was gathered outside the little wooden house, the rows of waiting animals in their place, and the sun shining out of a clear blue sky. Then the head boy of the village school stepped forward to speak Bennet’s words: ‘We have come together to celebrate the name day of Saint Aniella who was born here at Hallendorf on a morning such as this . . .’
And as Lieselotte stepped out of the door, Marek brought in his musicians – and the pageant began.
No one who was present ever forgot it. They had rehearsed it separately in every combination, but now, coming together, it took on a life of its own. An amazed recognition, a kind of wonder at what they had made, lifted them out of themselves. Propelled by Marek’s music through the familiar story, they constantly found new meanings, new gestures, which were yet always part of the whole.
And those who had come to watch were drawn in also. When a small hedgehog stumbled, a woman on the edge of the crowd came forward to help her, blurring the separation between watchers and participants, which was so much a characteristic of the day. Frank’s father, who had threatened to withdraw his son from school, could be seen elbowing his way to the front as they reached the grotto – the only example of bad manners to be seen all day.
Even the unexpected things, the mishaps, turned into marvels.
‘Are we sinking?’ asked Ursula, sitting in Aniella’s boat, forgetting her sore mouth.
‘No.’ But it was true that the rim of the brocaded canopy (the best bedspread of Frau Becker’s aunt) had dropped into the water and was slowing the boat . . . slowing it more and more, so that it echoed uncannily Aniella’s reluctance to go to her wedding.
Outside the church, the dustcart horse, who had a dozen times walked up the church steps in rehearsals, reared and refused – and the peace-loving greengrocer became a red-faced, furious seducer, kicking his mount with his heels as if he really was Count Alexei of Hohenstift.
The trick with the mask worked – even those who had been warned hissed with distress as Lieselotte became a wrinkled crone – and Rollo had been more than generous with the blood.
And then, like a hand reaching down from heaven (or from the bell tower, where the brave dentist was perched on a joist and the vertiginous violinist played gallantly on) came Marek’s music, a high, pure skein of sound in which all the themes reached resolution, drawing the girl up and up for her apotheosis.
And as Sister Felicity’s flowers drifted down from the heights, caught in a moment of enchantment in the spotlights, there came from those who packed the body of the church – not clapping, not cheering – but a sigh that seemed to be one sigh . . . and then it was done.
‘We’ll do it again, won’t we?’ they promised each other – Frau Becker and Jean-Pierre, the butcher and Freya, everyone hugging everyone else . . . forgetting the troops mustered on the border, forgetting the final letter from Bennet’s stockbroker. The old woman who’d said it would rain was kissing Sabine, Chomsky and the greengrocer wandered arm in arm, and the reporters from the local newspapers clustered round Lieselotte, photographing her with her bridesmaids, her animals . . . ‘This won’t be the last time,’ they told each other. ‘We’ll do it every single year.’
There was a party, of course; the kind of party that just happens but happens rather better if there is someone in the background, putting butter on rolls, opening bottles of wine, of lemonade . . . fetching hoarded delicacies out of the fridge.
Ellen had excused herself from the proceedings and for an hour or more had been sending plates of food up to the terrace with its strings of fairy lights, and the music was playing on the gramophone now so that everyone could dance. The dentist was dancing with Ursula; Chomsky with Frau Becker’s aunt – and Leon’s father with Sophie.
‘And if her mother and father had come it would have been a miracle, I suppose,’ Ellen had said to the headmaster, watching Sophie’s vivid face, ‘and there aren’t a lot of those.’
‘No. But it might work out best like this. Leon’s parents have invited her to stay in London; they’re good people. She may be someone who has to get her warmth from outside the family.’
Later Bennet had taken her aside and said: ‘We owe this to you, Ellen. If you hadn’t befriended Lieselotte and made the links with the village, none of this would have happened.’
She had shaken her head – yet it was true that some of what she had imagined that morning by the well and spoken of to Marek had materialised this day. People had come from everywhere . . . had received with hospitality what was offered . . . the lion, just a little, had lain down with the lamb.
Children came to the kitchen, offering to help, but she only loaded them with food and sent them upstairs again. She was content to be alone and glad to be out of the way, for she knew all too well what was happening – not on the noisy terrace, but in the hastily erected marquee in the jousting ground, where Bennet, with the assistance of the landlord and chef of the Krone, was entertaining the most extraordinary collection of Toscanini Aunts ever assembled in Hallendorf.
It had been the most amazing and unexpected thing: now, when Bennet had abandoned all hope of interesting anyone in the significance of the school, Aunts – and indeed Uncles – of the highest stature had appeared from everywhere. The director of the Festspielhaus in Gen
eva had been seen lumbering over the muddy boards at the lake’s edge, scrambling for a place in the lighter which would take him to the boat. The manager of the Bruckner Theatre in Linz, to whom Bennet had written vainly two years before, had puffed his way up to the grotto, writing in his notebook – and Madame Racelli, of the Academy of the Performing Arts in Paris, had cantered in her high heels and silver fox stole across the meadows, so as to miss no moment of what was going on.
The kitchen door opened and Lieselotte came in. She had changed into her dirndl, but the flush of happiness was still on her cheeks.
‘I’ve come to help,’ she said, reaching for her apron and tying it round her waist.
‘No, you haven’t. You’re going straight back up to dance with all your suitors and be the belle of the ball. This is your night, Lieselotte, and I don’t want you down here.’
Lieselotte took not the slightest notice. She had taken up a knife and begun to slice the rolls. ‘We need more of the salami ones – Chomsky’s eaten three already.’
‘Lieselotte, I am your supervisor and I order you to go back and dance,’ said Ellen.
Lieselotte put down her knife. ‘Yes, you are my supervisor, but also, I think . . . you are my friend? And I want to be with you tonight.’
But this was a mistake. Ellen’s defences crumbled; tears gathered in her eyes – and nothing could be sillier, for she had known – everybody knew – that Marek was leaving the following day, that his boat sailed in a week – and that Brigitta Seefeld, the mightiest and most redoubtable of the uninvited ‘Aunts’, had come to fetch him.
Marek’s abrupt departure from Vienna had infuriated Benny and Staub, puzzled the musical establishment, and caused Brigitta to erupt into a series of violent scenes.
‘How dare he treat me like that?’ she raged. ‘He begs to spend the night with me and then goes off as if I was a plaything!’
Then, about a week after his disappearance and shortly before he was due to sail, Benny called at Brigitta’s apartment in an obvious state of excitement.
‘Do you know where he is?’ he asked her, shooing away the masseuse.
‘Where?’
‘In Hallendorf. Where they all swore they’d never heard of him. And do you know what he’s doing?’
‘What?’
‘Writing music for a local pageant. For some obscure saint called Anabella or something.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘It’s true. I had it from Ferdie Notar at the Central who heard it from the clarinettist of the Philharmonic who heard it from the director of the Klagenfurt Academy.’
‘But that’s ridiculous. Marcus hates all that sort of thing – villagers with fat legs and mud and everything going wrong.’ Brigitta’s mind was racing. Was he writing her music for some female yokel with blonde plaits and cow’s eyes?
‘I checked with the Klagenfurt tourist board.’
‘I’m going back, Benny,’ said Brigitta imperiously.
‘Me too,’ said Benny. ‘I smell gold.’
Unfortunately he was not the only one. There were too many rivals brought by rumours of Altenburg’s involvement in the proceedings. The director of the Festspielhaus, sitting across the table, had a nasty glitter in his eyes.
But with Brigitta to help him, with her influence over Marcus, he was bound to succeed. Staub wasn’t much use – he’d insisted on coming but he thought of nothing except his libretto. It was Brigitta who would carry the day.
‘I tell you, Marcus, the piece is made for the States,’ he said now. ‘They’d gobble it up. A music theatre piece with a message . . . You might think they’d object to God and peasants and so on, but I promise it’s not so. People always turn to religion when they think there might be a war.’
Marek smiled at him lazily. ‘That’s very kind of them – but I’m afraid what they think about God or peasants has nothing to do with anything. The music for the pageant stays here. It was written for these people at this moment of time. They can use it again or not, but it’s theirs.’
Benny put down his glass. ‘For heaven’s sake, Marcus, be reasonable. Don’t you see how you’d be helping them here if your piece became known all over the world? Think of Oberammergau. You’ve only got to score that theme you wrote for the saint for Brigitta and it would be a sensation.’
‘Possibly,’ Marek agreed, but he did not seem disposed to continue the conversation, and the director of the Festspielhaus now leant across the table to put in his own bid.
‘I’d be prepared to put it on with all the actors – everyone from here who took part in it. That way it would stay in Europe.’
Brigitta glared at him and put her hand on Marek’s arm. It was time to assert her personal dominion over the composer.
‘Darling, you can’t just keep your work hidden away, you know that really. It belongs to the world. You’ve no right to keep it to yourself.’
‘I shan’t be doing that. The population of Hallendorf is considerable.’
‘Well then, at least rescore that incredible theme – it would work marvellously on its own.’
‘I’ve done that already,’ said Marek. ‘But that too stays here.’
Brigitta’s eyes narrowed. For whom had he written that amazing tune? Who was behind the whole escapade? She had seen Lieselotte come out of her house at the beginning of the pageant with a certain relief – the girl was hardly more than a child, a peasant through and through. Brigitta had watched her like a hawk afterwards, but she’d made no attempt to come up to Marek – it was her own family she sought out.
But if not Lieselotte, then who? Not that ridiculous Russian woman drifting about in a shroud, not the pretty Norwegian, she was sure of it. No, there could be no one; not in that crazy school, nor in the village. She was silly even to think of it.
‘You wrote that melody for me, didn’t you? I know you did. It falls exactly for my voice.’
She sang a few bars of the slow, ascending phrase to which the girl emerges into the sunlit morning, and she was right. The silvery, ethereal notes rose in the evening air and the people sitting close by fell silent.
Marek’s face was closed; a mask; he hated what he had to do.
‘No, Brigitta, I didn’t write it for you. If I wrote it for anyone – if that’s how it works and I’m still not sure – I wrote it for a girl who had no part in the pageant, whom nobody saw, who did not act or sing or play an instrument . . . and who is not here now at the party but in the kitchen, making the food we are eating.’
Brigitta’s cry of fury and revelation rent the air.
‘The cook!’ she cried. ‘You wrote that music for the cook!’
‘Yes.’
It could have gone either way. Marek, certainly, was braced for pathos and tears – and they would have been justified, for she would have made a lovely thing of Aniella’s music. But the fates who had smiled on Hallendorf all day still looked benignly on the inhabitants. Brigitta did not weep or beseech as she had done after the opera. She rose, expanded her well-documented ribcage – and exploded into righteousness and rage.
‘How dare you insult me like that? How dare you beg for a place in my bed and then go and sport with domestics? I offered you my art and my love and you go off to roll in the gutter. Well, do it then – make Knödel with your cook, but don’t come running back to me. When I think what I was prepared to do for you!’ She turned majestically to Staub. ‘Go on. Remind him of what I was prepared to do!’
‘She was prepared to huddle,’ said Staub weakly.
‘I was prepared to huddle,’ repeated Brigitta, to the interest of those in earshot. ‘But not now. Not ever again. Get the driver, Benny – we’re leaving.’
But this was not so simple. Infected by the day’s proceedings, the taxi driver had pinned Hermine against the wall of the Greek temple, where he was outlining the plot of a possible music drama based on his grandmother’s experience with her husband’s ghost, and made it clear that he was in no way ready to depart.
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It was after midnight when Ellen was finished. Now she sat on the rim of the well where she had sat at the beginning, garnering gym shoes. Fireflies danced in the catalpa tree; an owl hooted – perhaps the same one which Marek had shown her how to feed. The music still came faintly from the terrace, but the younger children were in bed; the party had moved on to the village and would continue until dawn. Enough light came from the upstairs window to show her the outline of the wheel on the coach house roof. Would they come next year, the storks – and would there be anyone left to welcome them?
He came upon her quietly, but she knew his step and braced herself. This was where one let love go lightly – bade it goodbye with an open hand in the way the detestable Brigitta had sung about. And seeking help, she called up her pantheon of people who had behaved well as she now had to do: Mozart’s sister, as talented as he was, who had disappeared uncomplainingly into oblivion and domesticity; Van Gogh’s brother Theo, always helping, sending money, asking nothing for himself.
But there are times for thinking about Mozart’s sister, and a night full of fireflies and stars did not seem to be one of them. Marek had sat down beside her and the memory of Kalun, his arms round her, the place on his shoulder made specially to fit her head, made her close her eyes.
‘I’ve brought you some news,’ he said. ‘Isaac is safe.’
She looked up then. ‘Oh, that’s wonderful. I’m so glad!’
‘They hope to get him across to England, so your family may be hearing from him soon.’
‘They’ll help him, I promise you.’
‘You know that Isaac is in love with you,’ he said abruptly.
She sighed. ‘He was afraid; I helped him – he was bound to feel that. I explained it all to Millie. But now that he’s safe –’
‘I’m not so sure.’ He was silent for a moment. Then: ‘If he asked you to marry him would you accept? Could you be persuaded to?’
‘What?’ she asked stupidly. The question made no sense to her.
‘Your friend Kendrick came to see me in Vienna. He told me you were in love with someone else. I thought it might be Isaac.’