Free A Song for Summer by Eva Ibbotson Page B

properly. It's to do with those paintings of places where the lion lies down with the lamb ... you know, those primitive painters who see things very simply: birds of Paradise and great leaves and everything blending with everything else. Or the Forest of Fontainebleau--I've never been there, but I saw a picture once where the stags had crucifixes between their antlers and even the animals who are probably going to be shot look happy. When I saw the castle from the lake that first time, I imagined it all. The rooms clean and clear and smelling of beeswax and flowers, and the roses still free and tangly but not choked ... a sort of secret husbandry that made them flourish. I thought there might be hammocks under the trees where the children could lie and I imagined them running out when it rained so as to turn their faces to the sky--but not before they'd shut the windows so that the shutters wouldn't bang.
    I thought there could be a place where everything was received with ... hospitality: the lessons and the ideas ... and the food that comes up from the kitchens. Of course the food wouldn't be like it is now," she said, smiling up at him. "There'd be the smell of fresh rolls in the morning and pats of yellow butter ... and somewhere in the theatre which the count must
    have built with so much affection for his mistress, there'd be a marvellous play full of magic and laughter and great words to which people would come from everywhere ... Even the villagers would come, setting sail for the castle in their boats--even the man who found Chomsky in his fishing nets would come." She looked up, flushing. "I know there can't be such a place, but--"'
    "Yes, there can," he said abruptly. "I could take you to a place that ... feels like that. If times were different I would do so."
    "And it has storks?"'
    "Yes, it has storks."
    He rose, dropped the gym shoe into her trug. Then he stood looking down at her--not smiling ...
    considering ... and she caught her breath, for she felt that she had been, in that moment, completely understood.
    "I'll look for a wheel," he said--and walked away across the courtyard to begin his work.
    But later, tending to the bonfire of lopped branches and hedge clippings, Marek wondered what had made him liken his home to this mad place. Pettelsdorf owed its existence--its wealth--to the forest which surrounded it, and those who are custodians of trees lead a life of rigorous discipline. To his father, and his father's father before him, the two thousand hectares of his domain were wholly known. An architect coming to bespeak oak planks for the belfry of a church was led to one tree and one tree only in the seemingly limitless woods. There were trees of course which were sacrosanct: a five-hundred-year-old lime, with its squirrel nests and secret hollows, which Marek as a boy had claimed as his own, would never be cut, nor the elm by the house beneath which he'd lain on summer nights watching the stars tossed back and forth between branches. But in general there was no room for sentiment at Pettelsdorf; a forest of sweet chestnuts and pine, of walnut and alder and birch, is not something that looks after itself.
    Only a meticulous daily husbandry ensures the balance between new growth and ancient hallowed trees, between sun-filled clearings and dense plantations.
    But Ellen had used the same word: husbandry. She saw the children (he had realised this at once) as his father, and he himself, had learnt to see their trees: those that needed pruning, those that grew aslant, those that required only light and air.
    She was like those girls one sees in genre paintings: girls labelled Lacemaker or Water Carrier or Seamstress. Quiet girls to whom the artists had not bothered to give names, for it was clear that without them the essentials of life would cease.
    Oh damn, he thought, having promised storks, having opened the door to a place he had never meant to leave and that was lost to him until his wearisome task was