The Lives and Times of Bernardo Brown

by Geoffrey Household

  He threw the empty tumbler high in the air and neatly caught it upside down with the champagne bottle. The bottom of the tumbler exploded upwards. The rest of it formed a jagged crown around the bottle’s shoulder. Waving away the startled pilot, mechanics and guards, he took Bernardo’s arm and led him down the ramp to the tail of the plane.

  ‘Well, I can understand you would want the Hapsburgs back,’ Bernardo said.

  ‘Not in a hurry. Nothing can ever be the same again as in dear old Franz Josef’s day. So we must just forget it and see that chaps like you don’t rock the boat through no fault of their own. That’s a splendid stream you’ve got there. Lucky young fellow!’

  Bernardo Brown remembered that at that point Zita’s pills, combined with champagne, crumpled them up like a pair of opera hats. He presumed that pilot and mechanics hoisted them into their basket chairs.

  When he woke up, the plane was pitching violently over the hot plains of Hungary. The movement did not affect him; indeed he was beginning to feel eager for his next meal and wondering what it would be. Behind him he heard snores, then a long silence was succeeded by an explosive retch.

  ‘You all right?’ he asked, turning round.

  Pozharski was staring down into space.

  ‘My blasted false teeth! No time to get a hand to them! They could put some poor chap’s eye out if he’s looking up at us. Hell and damn, I hate eating pap!’

  Bernardo, roughly calculating height and speed, reckoned that Pozharski’s teeth would probably land on the esplanade of the most westerly Balaton spa. The pilot flew high over the full fifty-mile length of the lake, its shores dotted with parks and yellow beaches of little holiday resorts, and spiralled down to land on the edge of marshes near the lonely north-east end, then taxi-ing up a wide shallow channel between high reeds towards a cottage and a wooden jetty.

  There were only two persons to observe their arrival—a ferryman paddling out from the jetty in a punt and the chauffeur of a dark blue Daimler with two heraldic, coroneted falcons on the door panel. Bernardo saw little point in a clandestine landing when the plane must have been seen from all the police stations of Lake Balaton. Being now accustomed to the freedom and privileges of a primeval jet set, he assumed that Kalmody was as subject to custom controls as any of his fellow citizens but that no questions were asked if he broke laws decently and with tact.

  The blue Daimler rocked over a farm track which served nothing but the jetty and a few vineyards, and then headed east across the Hungarian plain with the power and indestructibility of a steam locomotive. It seemed to Bernardo a rich but very naked countryside in which the white villages, though not so mean as the streets of hovels on the rolling Spanish plateau, lacked the welcoming solidarity of the Basque coast. Government was more obtrusive than in Spain, every little town being dominated by the neat rows of windows in some small but imperial public building.

  Any moving vehicle left a towering thunder-cloud of dust behind it through which little could be seen in daylight and nothing at all in the gathering dust. The chauffeur seldom reduced his speed, confident that the road would be empty or that, if it wasn’t, the obstacle would be softer than the car. There was one splintering crash which he ignored. Pozharski made no move to stop him.

  ‘Only the wheel of a cart,’ he said. ‘Serve him right! At this hour peasants should be drinking, not on the road.’

  The surface suddenly improved and for mile after mile the headlights showed a ribbon of black tarmac passing through forested hills. Dim village lights could be seen up the side tracks but there was no town to justify the existence of such a highway.

  ‘Istvan’s father built it to link the estate with civilisation,’ Pozharski explained. ‘He meant to have a private railway but after your Edward VII talked him into motor cars he settled for a road. All done by the tenants and horse rollers!’

  They ran through a noble eighteenth-century gateway with the coroneted falcon of the Kalmodys surmounting each post, and up a long avenue of evergreen oaks. The mass of the house ahead, a long rectangle cut from the stars, was suddenly speckled with lit windows along the line of the ground floor. As they drove into the courtyard Bernardo’s impression was of a troop of wheeling cavalry and wide steps lined by footmen.

  ‘Who on earth do they think I am?’ he asked.

  ‘Just a guest sent by the Count—which means he has to be respectfully received. For all they know, I might be escorting the President of the United States.’

  ‘I hope I shall have an interpreter.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Nepamuk, the steward. He’ll be in charge of you.’

  Pozharski disappeared into some private world of his own, leaving Bernardo to be served with dinner in lonely state except for a butler who spoke a little French and was eager to know his tastes in wine, and Nepamuk who remained standing but at once assumed an air of intimacy.

  He was a Slovak, tough and strong in spite of a gross belly, who spoke fluent English with a whining cockney accent. Bernardo disliked him on sight and saw that it was always going to be difficult to get rid of him and his pretentious obsequiousness. Nepamuk was not only in charge—whatever that might mean—and indispensable, but he was an insistent chatterer repressing the smiling and intelligent Hungarian butler and ingratiating himself by dreary reminiscences of London and pubs. It appeared that Nepamuk, father, had worked in the embassy kitchens and made enough profit out of suppliers to return to Hungary, where Nepamuk, son, had jumped up a class and spent some years as a tax collector before entering Kalmody’s service.

  For the moment Bernardo’s inner self was busy as a machine; excellent food and drink were pumped in and the energy required for polite human contacts came out. But he never could forget the uneasiness of the faintly lit procession to his room. It still turned up in his dreams—a glimpsed immensity of doors and staircases and corridors with a few respectful wraiths, male and female, faceless and sinister, with whom it was impossible to communicate.

  When his valet and Nepamuk had gone the silence was too overpowering for sleep. The Kalmody palace had become an underworld, full somewhere of the half-living. He sat by the open window listening to far-off sounds of horses stirring in the stable wing and unfamiliar cries from the boundary between parkland and woods of which only owl and fox were certain. Though sleepless for most of the night—Zita’s pills had already ensured enough—morning and a cold shower restored curiosity. His day began with the reappearance of the valet who shaved and dressed him, accompanied by Nepamuk as interpreter. He did not mind being dressed, since choice had to be made and fitting supervised among armfuls of clothes and footwear, but he objected to being shaved and demanded a safety razor. There was not, Nepamuk said, such a thing in the house; it would at once be obtained. He wondered what they made of his arrival without any baggage. Perhaps political refugees were not uncommon and Kalmody’s retainers were trained to ask no questions.

  Pozharski was at the breakfast table dealing with a remarkable pap of eggs beaten up in apricot brandy. He was cordial as ever but anxious to be off at once to his Budapest dentist. He had hoped, he said, to stay for a few days to settle Bernardo in.

  ‘But you’ll find it very simple, dear boy. You can do anything you like—absolutely anything just so long as you use a bit of tact and common sense. Istvan has the local police in his pocket and they wouldn’t dream of bothering any guest of his. But you don’t want to make it too hard for them, so keep out of the villages! And I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with Heinz Nepamuk. An unpleasant fellow—but he helped Istvan to get his estate back from the communists in 1919.’

  ‘Was it difficult?’

  ‘Distasteful rather than difficult. It’s all forgotten now. I just mentioned it in case you find Nepamuk a little truculent. He has his orders, but keep him in his place!’

  Bernardo asked how much Nepamuk knew.

  ‘Only that you got mixed up in some royalist plot in Lequeitio. Good enough for these backwoods, but most unlikely.
Zita couldn’t tackle anything more complicated than getting a niece into a nunnery.’

  ‘How long do you think I’ll have to stay?’

  ‘That depends on what goes on in Spain. Are they going to be sensible when they find those two bodies? Leave it all to us and don’t worry. Istvan will look after you when all’s clear.’

  ‘But look here, Mr. Pozharski, I’m not an international criminal!’

  ‘Oh, all the best people are international criminals. Think of poor Bobo! Well, now I’m off. Try the bacon! Best in the world.’

  So that was that. Bernardo for the moment was overwhelmed by depression. These Hungarians were not the ghosts; he was. But it was no use gibbering. Somewhere in this emptiness one must come upon familiar human society.

  His guide through the underworld turned up as soon as Pozharski had driven away. Nepamuk evidently considered that the royalist intriguer would be fascinated by the past glories of the Kalmodys and conducted him round the house with the pomposity and little jokes of a peak-capped courier. Armour. Furred robes. The library. The gold-inlaid chamber pot used by the Emperor Franz Josef. The bedroom of Edward VII when he was Prince of Wales. Bernardo asked what entertainment—beyond boar hunting—had been provided for his Royal and Randy Highness. Nepamuk pretended to be shocked. He said that one did not crudely provide such entertainment; one waited until the gaze of the distinguished guest fell upon a bit of stuff that appealed to him. One also ensured beforehand that the bit of stuff and its parents had no objections which could not be squared by a suitable reward.

  A heavy mausoleum of a house it was: furniture, panelling, tapestries, the lot. But one could imagine it with all the French windows open on a summer morning or every chandelier blazing at night, full of gaiety and the peacockings of rich and idle youth. Bernardo asked if the Count had no family. Yes, but they were all at Biarritz, and after that would come Paris and Budapest. They would not return till Christmas.

  He felt some sympathy for the Kalmody family’s absences from their too overpowering house; but when at last he was outside in the sun, passing through the Italian garden, the English garden, the avenues and the splendid stands of ornamental timber, he wondered how anyone who could afford such beauty could ever bear to leave it.

  ‘And while they are away you are always in charge, Mr. Nepamuk?’

  ‘Of the business interest, I am. Chancellor of the Exchequer, you might sye.’

  Influenced by Nepamuk’s barrow-boy English, Bernardo wondered how much he managed to slip into his own bank account. Yet when speaking his own Magyar language the steward was invariably cold, dignified and exacting. That much was clear without understanding a word he said. The respect paid to him was extreme. He received it without warmth, and whenever Bernardo genially stopped to talk he felt that the translation of his remarks never reproduced their tone. One couldn’t call the Kalmody employees submissive or servile, but in Nepamuk’s presence they divested themselves of all personality. Possibly the right pigeon-hole in which to place him was as an incorruptible feudal retainer who would stick at nothing to prove his loyalty.

  In the stables, where the steward’s only authority was to sign the cheques, he formally presented Mr. Kovacs, the Master of the ’Orse—a gallant old boy with a grin under his immense moustache who loosed off the few English greetings he knew, asked no questions and patted Bernardo as if he were a promising two-year-old appearing out of the blue by order of the Count.

  The domain of the horses had a warmth and democracy of its own to which Bernardo at once responded. The paddocks, the stallions, the brood mares under the shade of great trees—all seemed to him to represent a proper use for money. A self-perpetuating beauty had been created, and men served it proudly. He asked if he could be taught to ride. Of course! With pleasure! How extraordinary that an Englishman could not ride!

  Nepamuk translated the last remark with a shade of contempt which had not been there in the original. Thereafter Bernardo got along cheerfully with noises and sign language, leaving the steward trailing behind unless appealed to for help. His stable vocabulary was in any case limited to about as much as could be picked up while talking to the driver of a four-wheeler in a London pub.

  In a far paddock Bernardo’s eye was caught by three splendid ponies who seemed by their build and colouring—two duns and a pinto—as foreign as he among their fellows. When they came to the white rails he spoke to them with the Spanish endearments which he normally used for animals. The response was marked and immediate.

  ‘The Master of the ’Orse wants to know what you are speaking,’ Nepamuk said.

  ‘Spanish.’

  Kovacs was delighted to the last hair of his moustache. He had always maintained, he boomed, that horses were as human as himself, and there was the proof of it. Spanish was their language.

  He shouted for Perico. A lean man, somewhat more golden in complexion than the sun-browned Magyars, left his barrow of hay and lounged over to the group. He answered Kovacs in oddly accented Hungarian out of the corner of his straight horseman’s mouth. Then he addressed Bernardo in Spanish.

  ‘Yes, from the North,’ Bernardo replied. ‘And you?’

  ‘From Argentina.’

  ‘What the devil brought you here?’

  ‘Because there are people with more money than they know what to do with.’

  They went at it with the complete abandon of two exiles. Kalmody had bought three of the best polo ponies in Argentina and their groom with them. Perico had now been two years on the estate, first with a special interpreter, a Spanish-speaking Jew, and then on his own when he had learned some of the language.

  ‘They treat you well?’

  ‘Yes, and the horses too. For these Hungarians there is little difference between us.’

  Before Perico could develop that double-bladed remark Nepamuk interrupted, disquieted by the fact that there was someone else to whom Bernardo could talk. The Master of the Horse told Nepamuk—so Perico said—to shut up. Mr. Kovacs was a man of one idea at a time and he was listening to the foreign language as if it preserved mysterious secrets of the Tartar past.

  ‘The old one says that here is your home,’ Perico translated, ‘and I am to teach you to ride.’

  A week passed in which Bernardo was easily able to accept his prison without bars. Perico’s lessons put some points of reference into blank space and gave him a sense of live action so that on waking each morning he could ignore the overpowering lushness of his confinement. He was also satisfied with himself, for he had found a sport at which he could be more than competent. His understanding of the animal, mounted or not, was quick and instinctive. All he had to learn was to impress upon it who was boss. That had been very good for his character, old Bernardo said; up to then he had always lent himself rather than commanded.

  Perico became an intimate friend, neither of the two having any other. The result of his quick-fire comments was to turn the whole place from the incredible into a human society. Perico’s description of Kalmody fitted the man with whom Bernardo had spent a single evening. He was impulsive, generous and popular when he was on his estate. But that was seldom. Meanwhile servants and tenants were left to the mercies of middle-class zombies of whom Nepamuk was typical. Their obsession was that the abyss between themselves and the peasants should remain impassable.

  Perico’s invective did not extend to Kovacs, whom he admired. Kovacs, he said, was half horse and worthy of any grandee’s carriage. It was a vivid sketch of the old boy’s massive, springy bearing, grey forelock falling over his forehead and yellow teeth in a long face. The Master of the Horse stood no nonsense from Nepamuk, shooing him off when he insisted on attending lessons. The steward need not have worried, for Bernardo never rode outside the park. He still had in his ears Pozharski’s question: are they going to be sensible? The Kalmody palace was exasperating, but a lot better than Bilbao gaol.

  He was of course widely known to exist, but Pozharski was right in telling him that a guest of
Kalmody had no official being so far as the police were concerned. Nepamuk must have offered them some explanation. Whatever it was—too ardent admiration of Zita or a suspected case of leprosy—it had been accepted. Bernardo’s own story to Perico was that Kalmody had snatched him out of Spain when he was in trouble with the law and had good reason for it. Perico showed no curiosity. Everyone had friends tangled up with politics or the law. One did not discuss the matter till help was required.

  Refreshed by open air and the society of the stable block, Bernardo began to hope that the tradition of hospitality which governed the visits of royalty might be extended to his own bedroom as well. The steward was impervious to hints, nor had any Edwardian bit of stuff appeared—apart from a couple of chambermaids whose mischievous eyes and ripe-apricot complexions made him curious as to what the technique should be in dealing with so many voluminous petticoats.

  Perico was sympathetic but had no suggestions. The few wives and daughters in the stable cottages were highly respectable, and he himself had had no success at all. There was a satisfactory whore in the nearest town and a couple of semiprofessionals in a Kalmody village. He was ready to take the risk of fetching one of them over to the hay barn if Bernardo was really desperate and would finance the transaction until his friend was in the money again.

  Money was the tactful chain which prevented any break for more liberty. Bernardo had the best of food and wine, horses to ride and every comfort of a rich recluse, but not one penny in his pocket. When he complained to Nepamuk that he ought to be able to hand out some tips, especially to Perico and his valet, the steward replied that he had only to say the word and it would be done. The Kalmodys themselves never had any money when they were at home; they couldn’t be bothered with the stuff.