La's Orchestra Saves the World Page 0,2

me in that house when I first moved to Suffolk. She welcomed me to the village. Of course La’s orchestra was already a thing of the past then, but people still talked about it. It was something the village had done, and they were proud of it.

“I bought this house from Mrs. Dart’s estate. They hadn’t put it on the market, and I went to the solicitor who handled her affairs. He was in Newmarket, so I went there to speak to him about it. I remember it very well, going into town that morning when they were exercising the racehorses, a long line of them, and their breath … was like little white clouds. It’s a very clear memory that has stayed with me.

“I still think of this as La’s house, you know. And that’s what some people in the village still call it—even people who never met La. It’s still La’s house to them.”

“And her garden,” said the driver.

“Yes. That was so important. And he was responsible for that, you know. During the war, La dug up the lawn and planted whatever it was that she grew. Potatoes, I suppose. Beans. All of that formal garden was taken up, except for a small bit round the side of the house. She kept that as an ornamental garden. Feliks helped.

“And afterwards, when all the fuss was over and people didn’t have to grow so many vegetables, she put that lawn back in, and replaced all the shrubs that she had taken up. She put them all back, in their original spot, working from memory and from photographs.”

They talked. Then, when they had finished their tea, she suggested that they walk the short distance to the church hall.

“It’s a tin hall,” she said, as they approached it. “Made entirely of corrugated tin. You occasionally get that in this county—little tin halls that have withstood the weather, and the years. It was a way of making something reasonably durable on the cheap.”

They stood still for a few minutes and admired the modest building from the end of its path. The walls of tin had been painted in a colour somewhere between ochre and cream, and the roof was rust-red. At one end of the building—the one facing them—there was a small veranda, dominated by a green door. The door, the thin casements of the windows, and the supports under the eaves, were the only wood on the outer surface of the building.

“I have a key,” she said, reaching into a pocket. “It’s a privilege of being on the parish council. We can look inside—not that there’s much to see.”

They walked down the path. The lock, an old-fashioned one, was stiff, and had to be coaxed into opening, but at last the door was pushed open and they found themselves standing in a vestibule. There was a notice-board, a square of faded baize, criss-crossed with tape; but no notices; a boot-scraper with bristle and a metal bar. That was all.

She pushed open the inner door, which was unlocked. The air inside was cool, but with a slight musty smell. Light filtered in through small windows that needed cleaning, bars of weak sunlight slanting across the benches stacked along the side of the wall.

“Nowadays,” she said, “it’s used for the school play and the occasional dance. We still have a village dance, you know, in spite of everything. And everybody goes.”

“And the orchestra?”

She gestured about her. “Under this very roof. Right here. This is where the orchestra played—so I’m told.” She pointed at the windows. “They were covered, of course. Black-out curtains.”

The driver detached himself and walked to the far end of the hall. The floor underfoot was red polished concrete of a sort that for some reason he associated with hospitals in foreign countries. He had become sick once as a student, travelling in India, and the hospital ward, with its red concrete floor, had been a little like this.

She spoke to him from the other end of the hall. “I met somebody who had played here,” she said. “The orchestra sat over there, where you are now, and when they gave a concert the audience sat at this end. It would have been the whole village, then. Everybody would have come to listen. Everybody.”

He turned round. He looked up at the ceiling, which was made of large expanses of white board nailed onto the roof-beams. The board was discoloured here and there from leaks, brown rings spreading out in concentric circles.