Reparation

by Gaby Koppel

  The tube is hot and humid. I’m jammed up against the door, with somebody else’s bum pushed into my stomach. I let go of the handrail, wriggle out of my jacket, and use it to wipe the droplets of sweat from my forehead. What on earth shall I do? I should leave Mutti in jail until the weekend just to show her. I can’t ask for leave now, anyway. Sarah would go ballistic with me, and that would be the end of my frigging film directing career. Game over.

  What would Dad do? That’s the question tormenting me as the tube rattles along. I just want to pick up the phone and call him, like I used to. There’s a physical absence around my right hand and a cold sensation on that side of me because I know I can’t just dial their number right now and catch him sitting at his desk working on his invoices. There was a phone extension in the kitchen, of course, which meant the sometimes she got to the phone first when it was him and him only I wanted to speak to. So I’d cut the line because I didn’t want my conversation with him to be mediated by her. He was constant, predictable, safe. Gone.

  By the time I hit King’s Cross station, I’ve decided to ask Sarah for one day’s leave. Just one. I’ll book a cheap flight, nip out there, get Mutti and be back pronto, without causing the slightest ripple in my film schedule. At Holloway Road, someone gets out and I collapse into the empty seat. Of course I can’t ask Sarah for leave, even a single day. She’s just made a massive favour of giving me this great opportunity. It’s my last chance, and all the rest of it. She has spotted my latent talent under layers of crap, and all that. It’s a big front, power suit and all, but I can’t help wanting to be like her, one day when I’m a grown up.

  Come to think of it, I can probably get away without even asking for leave. I’ll be out on a recce in the Leicester area. Nobody will even notice I’m gone. By now I’m halfway to Dave’s place, but that’s no good. I stumble out of the tube. It’s still only four-thirty. Not sure which way to choose, I set off down High Holborn looking for a travel agent. I find one soon enough. Not part of a big chain, just a scruffy looking office with dayglo posters in the window advertising cheap flights. Long haul and short haul – Jo’burg, Paris, Bangkok, Amsterdam, Delhi, Munich. And Budapest. The whole transaction takes less than twenty minutes. I walk out holding a ticket.

  Clasped in my hand, the flimsy paper has a reassuring feel between my thumb and index finger. I get back onto the Piccadilly Line. As the tube chunters along the dark tunnel, I turn the separate, thin sheets, with their self-carbon backs, the clerk’s neat handwriting transmitted from sheet to sheet. Each page is parent to the next, the words a bit fuzzier and fainter as they pass all the way to the back of the booklet.

  I fall out of the train at Manor House and head home in the car. The flat is hot and airless. I open all the windows, letting a breeze blow through. It scatters all my papers on the floor and makes a mess of my study. I pick up the phone to call the British Embassy back again. I imagine Mutti must be absolutely frantic, banged up in a Hungarian cell, like a bad rewrite of all her worst childhood traumas. I try calling the numbers I’ve got for the Budapest police, but it seems impossible to get through to the right person. Nobody answers the phone, at least nobody who can speak English. I speak to the Embassy again. The woman I get hold of treats me like someone used to dealing with slow learners in a primary school. No we don’t need a lawyer. All that is required is that I turn up with my British passport and the means of paying a fine.

  Out on the balcony, I glug down the dregs of an old bottle of wine, watching the neighbours’ kids play in their back garden. Kids and parents. Will they grow up to torture each other? I’m haunted by thoughts of Mutti returning to the place where she hid from murderous fascist gangs in a crowded cellar, as her city collapsed under Russian bombardment. Starving and cowering, surrounded by death. And now she’s there again, banged up and all alone.

  I call Dave. He’s a bit abrupt, and I can’t even remember whether he’s right to be so. I’m in a goldfish bowl, and the sounds coming through the glass and water is thick and muffled. I’m trying to explain myself and what the problem is but it’s impossible and in the end I just put the phone down. He calls again and says he’s coming round.

  While I’m waiting, I decide to go for a walk round the back streets behind Camden Road, leaving the windows open. A burglary would be a pleasant diversion right now. The traffic’s backed up. I look at the people stuck inside their hot little tin cans. They’re probably on their way to normal homes and families, where people plan a barbecue on the weekend instead of a hopeless quest for restitution in a country only recently liberated from the yoke of communism.

  Dave’s sitting on the step when I come back, and I burst into tears when he puts his arms around me. We open a fresh bottle of red and sit on the balcony, in the cooling night, watching the lights flicking on in back windows along the terrace opposite.

  “The problem,” I say, “is that she clicks her fingers and I jump.”

  “You don’t actually believe that, Elizabeth. She’s been arrested in the place where she endured stuff we can’t even imagine. That hardly counts as clicking her fingers.”

  “Yes I know, I know. I know what she went through, and I really feel for her – I’m not just saying that I do. But that’s little comfort right now because I’m effectively responsible for her. Isn’t it usually parents who go and get their wayward kids from police custody for breaking some minor law or getting drunk? This feels uncomfortably like role reversal but the upshot is that I need to go over there and get her. There’s no alternative. I’m stuck.”

  “Why didn’t you ask me to go?” I look at him, uncomprehending. “Why did it have to be you?” He insists.

  “Well — ”

  “I haven’t got anything I have to do. I’ve got no films to set up or shot lists to compile for my career altering current project. You didn’t ask me. I bet you didn’t even think of it.” He’s right, of course. I’m locked into this metaphorical bloody arm-wrestling match with my mother. But I don’t know if I’m pulling her towards me or pushing her away.

  “And shall I tell you what?” he says. “You’re going because you want to, and you don’t want anybody else to take your place with Mummy. Until you stop doing that, you’ll never be free to grow up.” I feel as though I’m being told off, yet again. I open my mouth to snipe back, but haven’t got the energy. Because I know he’s right, and when I tell him, he puts his arm around me, accepting that this is something Mutti and I must work out together.

  We lie together, spoon-wise, his chin nestling on my shoulder. I can’t remember if I dream, but I wake up at five with my pulse racing. I throw some jeans and a summer dress into an overnight bag, and walk down the road to get on the first tube of the morning.

  While Dave sleeps on, I’m rattling along to Heathrow, trying to envisage the scene at the airport when Mutti was arrested. The thing is, their police are probably still communist boot boys. There may even be Gulags in Eastern Europe, for all I know.

  Chapter 23

  The cool of Budapest airport is a welcome relief from the baking tarmac outside. The square, concrete building is haunted by the elusive whiff of old-fashioned cigar. Around the time my colleagues will be beginning to trail into the office in London, I’m using a payphone in the arrivals hall to call to the British Embassy.

  Mutti has been taken to a police station halfway between here and the city centre. I get there just as someone in London will be taking orders for coffee and heading for the Italian place around the corner from the production office. I’m going to have to check in with them sometime today. Let’s hope they buy the fiction that I’m on a recce in Leicester. But instead of starting a day with East Midlands Police, I’m looking at an officer of the Budapest force. He stands behind a long, black reception desk that’s been polished to a high sheen and smells of wax.

  Polite but unsmiling, the policeman explains in excellent English how I go about getting Mutti released. There are forms to fill in, and of course the fine. Trav
ellers’ cheques, local currency and all major, international credit cards are acceptable. Can’t I see my mother, first? I ask. Just to satisfy myself that she’s well. The officer’s response is to take out a massive pile of paperwork and plop it in front of me. I’ll take that as a no then.

  I’m hungry and thirsty now, as I slept through breakfast on the plane. There’s no sign of a vending machine, and let’s not even think about the possibility of a cafeteria. I settle down to complete the forms. It becomes clear that relinquishing communism doesn’t mean abandoning a fixation with bureaucracy.

  It’s disappointing that I never get to see the inside of Mutti’s cell, because they bring her up to me. She doesn’t look miserable, grubby or even the least bit contrite as I wrap my arms around her. She pats me on the back, and continues chatting in Hungarian to the policeman who has brought her upstairs, as though they are acquaintances who have met at a cocktail party. All she says to me is, “Very good, very good.”

  Before we can leave, we need to retrieve her enormous suitcase and handbag. And – surprise, surprise – this seems to involve handing over another wad of cash, then signing a further form. The copper calls us a cab, and we head into town. I have a passing thought to ask Mutti to explain why she needs a globetrotter’s trunk full of clothes for a couple of days in Budapest, but get side-lined by practicalities. Where are we going? She gives the driver directions with all of her usual hauteur. As we drive along, she also provide a commentary about the many wonderful things we can see and do in Budapest, as though this was just another happy little mother and daughter jaunt. The thermal baths are an absolute must, it seems. And of course the magnificent Buda Castle. I interrupt her flow.

  “Are you even planning to say ‘thank you’? In fact ‘sorry’ would be nice.”

  “Well…”

  “You haven’t even told me what happened.”

  “You know what happened.”

  “I got the briefest possible outline from someone in the British Embassy. Something about lighting up on a non-smoking flight.”

  “These people are quite unreasonable. It’s a three-hour flight, for God’s sake.”

  “Everybody else seems to manage.”

  “Ah, but they are not real smokers.”

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “If you were a smoker, you would know.” I can’t be bothered to argue the toss over the likelihood that there’s not a single genuine smoker among the three hundred people onboard a Malev airlines flight. Mutti would always manage to have the last word. “Anyway,” she says, “if you had come with me in the first place, as I asked you to, this would never have happened.”

  “If I had been sitting next to you, you wouldn’t have lit a cigarette?”

  “Of course not.”

  “How d’you work that one out?”

  “You wouldn’t have let me.” So it’s all my fault. Of course.

  By now, it looks as though we are coming into downtown Budapest. Mutti has become flushed and excited, as she looks right and left out of the taxi windows and she’s stopped talking. The car bumps over a bit of cobbled road, passing a row of grand, art deco old buildings along an avenue. What’s Mutti making of all this after fifty years? Whatever it is must be given an undoubted extra soupçon of piquancy by her night in the cells. A tear is building in the corner of her eye. It wobbles, precarious on the rim, catching the harsh sunlight as we swing round a roundabout, and is dislodged by the momentum. She wipes her cheek, brushing it away, and shoots me a half smile, with the merest hint of apology around the edge.

  She says something to the driver, he replies and opens his window. She does the same, then loads her cigarette holder and lights up. Just as I’m about to completely lose it with her, I realise that the driver is puffing away too. Smoking is in the Hungarian lifeblood, then, just like loud conversation and rich cakes. The combined output from the two of them blows back over me, and even though I’ve grown up with the reek of tobacco, it makes me feel sick all over again.

  I look out of the window to distract myself from the wave of nausea, and find we’re soaring over an immense river on a suspension bridge. Passenger cruisers glide both ways on the glinting water of the Danube below. There’s a disappointing lack of blue in the water. But of course, Strauss was Viennese. The Hungarian Danube is almost black.

  I’ve got the book in my bag, the one I took from Mutti’s house. I’ve read it and re-read it many times by now, wearing down the pages yet further. And I’d say we can’t be too far from the place where Arrow Cross death squads did their dirty work. Hideous things happened in the very streets our cab is trundling through right now. People hid for months in stinking, overcrowded basements, lice-ridden and scrambling for scraps, cowering from constant bombardments. As we swing down a side street, Mutti’s looking both ways with a thoughtful expression. But if she’s remembering what happened to her back then, she doesn’t say a thing.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “A little guest house,” says Mutti. “Very modest.” And before I can ask whether we even have a booking she adds, “Civilised policeman let me telephone to say I arrive one day late.”

  We stop in front of a white-painted building in a terrace of similar houses. It looks not much bigger than the average London family home. Above the door, a sign reads ‘Pension Eszterházy’. A small, cluttered reception area is dominated by an oversized chandelier. There’s no response to the brass bell on the reception desk. Nothing. Then a distant shuffling sound, like mice running down a corridor, and finally a small woman with an enormous bosom bustles in on high heels. Gracious ropes of beads swaddle her minimal neck. Improbably red hair is scraped up into an imposing bun above Edith Piaf eyebrows. Though she looks like a brothel madam from central casting, her manner is formal. “Igen?”

  Mutti says something in Hungarian. The only bit I understand is our names. The formality is dispensed with, something has unlocked a cascade of verbiage, beginning with the words, “Madame Mueller, szervusz, szervusz!” uttered in an operatic manner, and continuing without pauses. Mutti looks regal, and very pleased with herself. The two women shake hands, and our hostess bobs up and down in what strikes me as a distinctly pre-communist curtsey.

  As Mutti only booked for one, we are sharing a room. It’s small and simply furnished, with little more than the Spartan looking double bed and a cupboard, and two unmatched wooden bedside cabinets. The floor space is minimal, and now it is almost entirely taken up by Mutti’s massive suitcase. The plain furniture is relieved by a scattering of painted ornaments, and a vase containing dried flowers. The effect is pretty grim and my face must give me away, because Mutti shrugs.

  “Very cheap, for good location,” she says. I see her quickly pull down the bedcovers, as if checking for bugs, but she doesn’t tell me whether she’s found any. I declare the bedroom a no smoking zone. Mutti doesn’t object, but I suspect she’s just deferring the battle.

  Downstairs there’s a little booth draped with nylon lace curtaining, where Madame keeps her antiquated Bakelite telephone. I sit on a wobbly plastic stool and call Malev to change Mutti onto the same flight home as me. Thank God she’s old fashioned enough to travel scheduled. No cut price rubbish for her. We’ll both be on tomorrow night’s plane to London. Then I dial the office, to speak to Sarah’s PA Millie. By now it’s mid-afternoon here, so they’re probably just coming back from lunch.

  “Hi,” I say. “Did you get my fax?”

  “Yeah. Are you OK?”

  “Fine, I’m in Leicester.”

  “So you said.”

  “Is everything OK at the office?”

  “Why shouldn’t it be?”

  “Er, no reason. Elizabeth, this line is very echoey, where are you?”

  “I’m using a phone in the pub. My mobile’s battery has gone flat.”

  “Right.”

  “Millie, any chance you could make a couple of calls? I’ll ask Sarah if you can have a researcher cred
it if you pull in the goods.”

  “No probs. And Elizabeth?”

  “Yes?”

  “Be careful. I’m watching your back, but Sarah’s got an uncanny sixth sense.”

  “There’s nothing to worry about. But thanks, and everything.” I give her the numbers, and tell her what needs doing. My next call is to DI Jenkins.

  “I just wondered what’s happened with Stamford Hill.”

  “I’ve been leaving you messages all over the place. Didn’t you get them?”

  “Oh. I’m on a recce for my next job. In Leicester.”

  “Really?”

  “Is it that surprising?”

  “No, except I spoke to some bloke at your office, who seemed to think you were about to leave the programme. Made some sort of cryptic remark he seemed to think was very funny.” Andrew. Fuck. What does he know?

  “Sorry about that. The half-arsed researcher who sits next to me. He’s got a strange sense of humour. Makes up for being rubbish at his job.”