The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson Page A

course. I danced and sang too, but every time at the end of the show there had to be a number where I was hoisted up high and scattered things. The stage hands used to get quite cross, sweeping up roses, sweeping up daffodils, but the audience insisted. We toured all the big cities . . . we even went to London.’ She paused and stretched out her hand for the glass of water and Annika helped her to drink.
    ‘And then something happened,’ she went on.
    Annika put her hand over her mouth. ‘You fell?’
    ‘I fell all right, but not off the swing. I fell in love. Oh my goodness how I fell! He was a wonderful man . . . a painter . . . and when he smiled . . . Ah well, you’ll know one day.’
    ‘Did you get married?’
    ‘No. But I gave up the stage. I gave up everything and went to live with him in the most beautiful place in the world.’
    ‘Where’s that?
    ‘It’s called Merano. It’s a village in the South Tyrol, in the Dolomites; it’s where the mountains come down to shelter the valley. There are vineyards everywhere and flowers, and orchards full of fruit – and when you look up there are the great peaks, which turn to rose when the sun sets.’
    ‘Yes, I know about that. It’s called Alpengluhen .’
    She nodded. ‘Yes. His house was a little yellow villa halfway up the mountain, smothered in wisteria and jasmine, with a blue balcony where we had our meals. You must go there one day. You’ll know it because it has a tiny clock tower with a weathervane shaped like a crowing cock.’
    She groped for her handkerchief, then shook her head impatiently. ‘I’m not sad. It’s good to remember. We lived there for ten years and I was so happy. Not famous now . . . but my goodness, so happy! Then he was killed in a climbing accident. He was trying to help someone who was trapped on an ice ledge.’
    She stopped and Annika got up from her chair.
    ‘You’ll want to rest now.’
    ‘No, not yet. Then the vampires came. Six huge vampires. Harpies with fangs and claws. His relatives. Two sisters, an aunt, three cousins . . . They turned me out of the house – they wanted to sell it at once and get the money. So I went back to Paris. I tried to get back to work, but ten years is too long to be away from the theatre and I wasn’t so young and pretty any more. It was a difficult time. But I still had my jewels – the harpies couldn’t take them away from me. I’ll tell you about my . . . jewels when you . . . come again.’
    And almost at once she was asleep.
    The weather now became very hot and all the important people left Vienna to go on their summer holidays.
    The most important person of course was the emperor, who put away his military uniforms and the helmets he wore to attend to his duties and went off to his villa in the mountains, where he put on lederhosen and embroidered braces and pretended to be a peasant.
    Ellie was always pleased when he went away.
    ‘The poor old man: all those parades and processions and him with his bad back.’
    When the emperor left Vienna, so did the courtiers and the civil servants and the bankers and the opera singers.
    And so did the Lipizzaners – who were most certainly important – who went off to the high pastures to rest and grow strong on the rich grass. Their grooms led them through the quiet streets at daybreak, to the special train that was kept for them, and the Viennese heard them and smiled because it meant that the holidays had begun.
    The professors too went away. They always went to the same place, a quiet hotel in Switzerland, where they swam up and down a dark-green lake and read their books. Though the holiday was not a complicated one, getting them off safely was hard work. Annika’s job was to search their long woollen bathing costumes for moth holes, through which somebody might see pieces of their skin, while Ellie oiled their boots and Sigrid ironed Professor Gertrude’s dirndls, which were of the stately kind, with black aprons and many