‘We must get some,’ said Ellen decidedly. ‘We must make them come. Storks are lovely; they bless a house, did you know?’
Sophie considered this. ‘It could be difficult about the blessing,’ she said, ‘because we don’t have anybody to do it here. We don’t have God.’
‘Ah well,’ said Ellen, turning back into the room. ‘One thing at a time. What we need now is a bonfire. Can you find me two boys with strong muscles? Big ones.’
Sophie puckered her forehead. ‘The biggest are Bruno and Frank but they’re awful. Bruno wrote “Eurythmics is . . .”, he wrote that thing about Eurythmics on the temple and Frank is always thumping about and banging into people.’
‘They sound just what I want. Could you go and get them for me please?’
Lucas Bennet sat in his study with its book-lined walls, sagging leather armchairs and the bust of William Shakespeare which held down the sea of papers on his desk. He was waiting to interview his new housemother and had prepared himself for the worst. Ellen Carr had only been in the building for an hour and he himself had not set eyes on her, but he already knew that she was very pretty and very young and this could only mean disaster. She would want to produce a ballet based on Book Three of the Odyssey, which she would not actually have read, or write a play in which she would take the lead while the children filled in as woodland spirits or doomed souls in hell. Chomsky would fall in love with her, Jean-Pierre would flirt with her, the children would run wild in their dormitories and after a term she would leave.
Which was unfair, because this time he had taken the advice of his sensible secretary and advertised not in the Socialist Gazette or the Progressive Educator, but in the Lady, a magazine in which employers sought old-fashioned nannies and housekeepers and cooks. Visions of an ample widow with bulging biceps had sustained him ever since Conchita’s need to join a Marxist flamenco troupe could no longer be gainsaid and she had removed herself, two weeks into the term, leaving the children with no one to care for their domestic needs.
And now it was all going to start again.
Ten years had passed since he took over the lease of the castle and started his school. A small, plump and balding visionary, he came from a wealthy and eccentric family of merchant bankers, diplomats and scholars. His time at Oxford (where he read Classics) was cut short in 1916 by the Great War, which left him with a troubling leg injury and a loathing for nationalism, flag-waving and cant. Obsessed by the idea of art as the key to Paradise – as the thing that would make men equal and set them free – he decided to start a school in which children from all nations would come together in a common endeavour. A school without the rules and taboos that had made his own schooling so wretched, which would offer the usual subjects but specialise in those things that were his passion: Music, Drama and the Dance.
The time was ripe for such a venture. The League of Nations gave hope of peace for the world; in Germany the Weimar Republic had become a byword for all that was exciting in the arts; the poverty and hardship of the post-war years seemed to be over. And at first the castle at Hallendorf did indeed attract idealists and enthusiasts from all over the world: followers of Isadora Duncan came and taught Greek dancing; Russian counts explained the doctrines of Stanislavsky; disciples of Brecht came from Germany to run summer schools and put on plays. True, the villagers continued to stand aloof, not pleased to find naked Harmony professors entangled in their fishing nets, but in those first years it seemed that Bennet’s vision would largely be realised.
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 wistfully, 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.
‘Ellen, I have to make one thing absolutely clear,’ he said, not letting her explain to him that she was an experienced producer of operas for the Fabian Society or had understudied Ariel in Regent’s Park. ‘Your job is an arduous one and absolutely full time. Of course you could watch rehearsals at the weekend – last year we did The Lower Depths by Gorky – and if you wish it you could join the choir, although our music teacher has gone to fight in Spain. And the weekly meetings in which the productions are discussed are open to everyone, but –’
Ellen’s eyes widened. She half rose from her chair.
‘Oh please, I can’t sing at all. And I’m not very good at meetings. I was brought up with meetings and they always make me fall asleep. Surely –’ She drew breath and tried again. ‘Of course I’ll do anything I have to do . . . but what I wanted to know is how much time I’m entitled to spend in the kitchen.’
‘Entitled?’
‘Yes. Obviously the welfare of the children comes first, but it’s not easy to separate children from what they eat and I can’t supervise the kitchen staff without doing some of the cooking myself, it wouldn’t be fair on them. And quite honestly, Mr Bennet –’
‘Bennet. We’re very informal here.’
Ellen, remembering the appendix scar, nodded. ‘Well, Bennet, I just think it would be rather unfair if I had to watch rehearsals and listen to meetings about The Lower Depths when I could be cooking.’
Bennet closed his mouth, which had been very slightly open.
‘You mean you have no desire at all to act? To be an actress?’
‘Good heavens no! I can’t think of anything worse – always in the dark and getting up at midday and worrying what people think about you.’
‘Or to produce?’
She leant back and clasped her hands behind her back. She looked thoughtful and – there was the word again – happy. ‘Oh yes, I’d like to produce. I’d like to produce a perfect crêpe suzette for everyone in the school. It’s easy for one person – but for a hundred and ten . . . That’s what interests me very much. How to quantify good food.’ She broke off and looked out of the window. ‘Oh good, how very nice of them! What kind and helpful boys!’
Bennet followed her gaze. There were a lot of ways of describing Bruno and Frank, his two most objectionable seniors, but this was not one of them. Bruno was trundling a wheelbarrow on which were piled a broken spinning wheel, a shattered wooden chair and a pair of ancient bongo drums towards the kitchen gardens. Behind him followed Frank, dragging a sack from which various scrolls protruded and a battered guitar case.
‘I asked them to make a bonfire. No one seemed to want the stuff in my room and they said they’d be very careful and only light it in the incinerator.’ And, as Bennet was silent, ‘You don’t mind?’
‘No,’ said Bennet. ‘I don’t mind at all.’
At the door, leaving to go, she paused. ‘There’s something I think we should have here.’
Bennet glanced at the letter from his stockbroker lying on his desk. ‘Is it expensive?’
She smiled. ‘I don’t think so. I’d like us to have storks. Only I don’t know how to make them come. One needs a wheel, I think.’
‘You must ask Marek, he’d know. He’ll be back in a few days.’
She nodded, thinking of the tortoise. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he’d know. I see that.’
After she had gone, Bennet limped over to the window and looked out over the lake. Was it possible that something could go right? That she would stay and work – that in her care his children would be seen?
And Tamara is away, he thought. She had not, as he had asked her, organised the turning out of Ellen’s room, but when had Tamara done anything he had asked her? But he would not go down that road. Tonight he would not work late on the accounts. He would go to bed with a large whisky and golden Nausicaa in Homer’s tensile, homely, heart-stopping Greek.
‘She won’t last a week,’ said Ursula, sitting in her hideous striped pyjamas on the edge of her bed.
Sophie sniffed back her tears and agreed. With the advent of darkness the hope she had felt when she met Ellen had died. Ellen would barricade herself into her room like the others had done, Frank and Bruno would go on sliding up and down the corridor and crashing into doors – and her father would go further and further away, past America where he was giving lectures, and disappear over the rim of the world for ever.
‘I get so tired,’ she said.
Ursula shrugged. She didn’t mind Sophie as much as she minded most people, but she was soppy. Ursula got by on hatred – for her ancient grandparents in their horrible house in Bath, for Frank who teased her because she wore braces on her teeth, for Dr Hermine who breastfed her revolting baby during Movement classes and expected Ursula to give birth to herself or be a fork. Above Ursula’s bed was a row of the only human beings for whom she felt concern: a series of Indian braves in full regalia.
The door opened and the new matron entered.
‘I came to say goodnight and see if you needed anything.’
She came over to Ursula’s bed, smiled down at her, put the bedclothes straight. For a dreadful moment Ursula thought she was going to kiss her, but she didn’t. She stood looking carefully at the labelled portraits Ursula had put up: Little Crow, Chief of the Santees, Geronimo, last of the Apaches and Ursula’s favourite, Big Foot, dying in the snow at Wounded Knee.
‘Isn’t that where the massacre was?’ asked Ellen.
‘Yes. I’m going to go there when I’m grown up. To Wounded Knee.’
‘That seems sensible,’ said Ellen. Then she went over to Sophie. ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’
‘She’s lost her parents. I can’t think it’s anything to make a fuss about – I lost my parents years ago. I killed my mother because my arm stuck out when I was born and I killed my father because he went off to shoot tigers to cure his grief and died of a fever. But Sophie gets in a state,’ Ursula explained.
Ellen sat down on the bed and smoothed Sophie’s long dark hair. ‘When you say “lost”, Sophie, what exactly do you mean?’
But what Sophie meant was not something she could put into words. She had been shunted backwards and forwards between her warring parents since she was two years old, never knowing who would meet her or where she belonged. Her homesickness was of that devastating kind experienced by children who have no home.
‘I’ve lost my father’s address. He’s not in Vienna, he’s lecturing in America and I don’t know where he is. And my mother’s making a film somewhere in Ireland and I don’t know where she is either.’
Ellen considered the problem. ‘Is there someone who’s connected with your father’s work in Vienna? Has he got a secretary?’
‘He’s got Czernowitz.’ Sophie was sitting up now. ‘He’s my father’s lab assistant. He looks after the rats. He gave me a rat once for myself. It was beautiful with a brown ear but it died.’
‘It died of old age,’ Ursula put in. ‘So there’s nothing to make a fuss about.’
‘Well look, have you got Czernowitz’s address?’
‘Yes, I have.’
‘Then it’s perfectly simple. We’ll ask Bennet if you can telephone to Vienna and then he’ll tell you about your father.’
Sophie’s sobs grew less. ‘Would that be all right? Could I do that?’
‘Of course you could. Now, where’s Janey, because I’m going to put the lights out.’
‘She doesn’t come to bed. She sleeps in the bathroom.’
‘What?’
‘She wets her bed though she’s quite old. Older than us. And the Coucoushka said she wouldn’t deal with her sheets any longer. She was supposed to look af
ter us when the last housemother left, till you came. Bennet doesn’t know she said it – he’d be furious, because Janey’s mother keeps trying to commit suicide and –’
Ellen interrupted them. ‘Who is this Coucoushka person?’
‘She’s a ballet dancer. Her name’s Tamara. She pretends to be Russian and she likes people to call her Coucoushka because it means Little Cabbage, at least we think it does, and the Russians call people that. It’s an endear—, it’s something you call people when you like them, like the French calling people petit choux. But it doesn’t work in English.’
‘No, it certainly doesn’t,’ said Ellen.
She found Janey, a pale girl with wistful blue eyes, sitting beside the bath, wrapped in a blanket and reading a book.
‘Come to bed, Janey, the others are ready to go to sleep.’
‘I don’t go to bed. I sleep here at the minute.’
‘No you don’t. You sleep in your bed and if you wet it I shall wash the sheets in the morning because that is my job.’
Janey shook her head. ‘The Coucoushka said –’
‘Janey, I am not interested in what the cabbage person said. I am now your housemother and you will sleep warmly and comfortably in your bed. Eventually you will grow out of the whole business, because people do, and till then it’s not of the slightest consequence. Now hurry up, you’re getting cold.’
‘Yes, but –’
Ellen glanced at the cover of Janey’s book, which showed a jolly girl in jodhpurs taking her pony over a jump. ‘Did you know that Fenella Finch-Delderton used to wet her bed when she was young?’
Janey stared at her. ‘The one that got second prize in the Olympics? Honestly?’
‘Honestly,’ said Ellen, whose morality, though fervent, was her own. ‘I was at school with her sister.’
Which left Bruno and Frank. She found them crashing about in the corridor but not, had she known it, with quite their usual energy.
‘Ah good,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you’re not in bed yet. I thought you might be kind enough to roll up the rug in my room and take it down to the cellar; I shall do better with bare boards. And there’s the footstool; it seems to have a leg missing, so that can go down too.’ She kept them at work, going up and down the three flights of stairs to the cellar till Frank stopped, looking mulish. ‘It’s past our bed time,’ he said. ‘We’re supposed to be in bed by nine-thirty.’