The Lives and Times of Bernardo Brown

by Geoffrey Household

  ‘I have hardly had a chance.’

  ‘Istvan will be as enchanted as I am. He insisted on expecting a Russian refugee all pearls and tears and sensibilities. I told him we should find a muddied little oaf at the bottom of a bramble bush. How wrong we both were! To see you, my dear, is to wish to serve you. Never be afraid again!’

  ‘I am sorry I never noticed the hat when I cleaned up. Mr. Pozharski.’

  ‘And she can laugh! Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, swiping the key from Whitehall’s waistcoat pocket? Sweet seventeen against sixty odd is not fair, Nadya. I only wish it was up to you to get us out of this one, but only Kalmody can.’

  ‘I saw him in Buckingham the day before yesterday,’ Bernardo said. ‘Obviously on my trail! I don’t trust him.’

  ‘Well, you’re wrong. Having convinced himself that you are innocent, he is now furious with the Romanians for daring to harass a guest of his. A typical Hungarian, dear boy—arrogant, illogical and quixotically gallant! You couldn’t be in better hands. And by the way—in case we are suddenly interrupted—you had better know that I am the foreign correspondent of Az Ujsag, an excellent Budapest daily in which his party holds fifty-one per cent of the shares. Anybody who fools the Romanians is a natural hero. So the Hungarian people must have the low-down on you before you get extradited to Spain. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.’

  ‘I don’t see how it helps.’

  ‘Later! Later! What I’m afraid of is that the police may guess your movements just as we did and borrow a dog off the nearest farmer. Come on!’

  By way of the dark avenue of larches they entered the track which led across a long open field to another copse. As they passed the dilapidated hut, one corner of it quietly detached itself, swept off its hat to the startled Nadya and kissed her hand.

  ‘I am at your feet, Miss Andreyev. To you, Mr. Brown, I owe a thousand apologies. My correspondence with the Vatican....’

  ‘Damn the Vatican! Come out of the eighteenth century, Istvan, and tell us where you left the car!’ Pozharski interrupted.

  ‘Off the track in the wood over there. All’s clear. What’s the hurry?’

  ‘The hurry is that I don’t want to go to gaol.’

  ‘Oh, they’d only put you inside for a couple of months. Mr. Brown, the futility of apologies ...’

  ‘Why don’t you call him Bernardo? We always do when we talk about him.’

  ‘Well, if he will accept it from an older man whom he has no reason to like.’

  ‘But I did like you, Count Kalmody. Who wouldn’t? Only that vast place of yours was a nightmare.’

  ‘Of course. I should have seen it. I thought you would be so impressed that you would stick it out. But I could not cage hills and the sea along with you. I also thought—my very worst mistake—that you were too experienced to take very seriously—well, er, such distractions as were provided. Again I apologise, Bernardo. Now, to settle an argument with Sigi here. Did you or did you not have a fine toy railway at an early age?’

  ‘I did. And my father made a quay for it. And cranes.’

  ‘You see, Sigi?’

  ‘Yes. And I think I saw a blink of headlights in the trees there.’

  ‘Off this track then! Bernardo, you take Sigi and go round by the right hand hedge! Miss Andreyev and I will go by the left. We meet in four minutes precisely where the track enters the trees. Don’t cross it and keep in cover!’

  Kalmody’s manner had changed completely. He had taken Nadya’s arm and both were already indistinguishable against any background. Bernardo and Pozharski trotted straight down towards their hedge, quite content not to improve on darkness.

  ‘I still don’t see the newspaper correspondent,’ Bernardo said.

  ‘Simple, dear boy. What the police know, we know, given Istvan’s introductions and—not to put it too crudely—his lavish entertainment of them. I think they assume that Magyars live in tents on mare’s milk and are easily offended. We make them feel like the Bunga Bunga colonial police arsing about in khaki shorts and condescending to take the native gifts. So Istvan’s special pal calls us up and says he has got you cold. We shot down to Bletchley to see if we could help but came too late. They said you had both broken away and taken to the brickfields.’

  ‘Aren’t you talking a little loud, Mr. Pozharski? And keep into that hedge!’

  ‘Thank you, Bernardo. Experience teaches. Now I know why Istvan split us up like that. His only real passion in life is stalking animals. Sometimes he is so pleased to have outsmarted one that when he gets him in his sights he lets him go. He didn’t believe in the brickfield. He said he knew your mind from your movements. You used the railway to escape from Hungary. You bolted for it in London when they were minutes behind you. What you did then nobody knows, but somehow it must have been the railway. So he was sure you had gone up the line and betted me you had played with puff-puffs as a child. We looked at the map, made a bee-line for that bridge and his hunch paid off. Then we scouted around on foot and he swore you would have made for that copse and stayed there whether you had four legs or two.’

  They dived into the ditch as headlights flickered over the grass. A police car bumped out of the trees with four men and a dog inside it. When it had crossed the meadow and stopped somewhere near the hut, Kalmody stood up on the other side of the track. He held up a hand for silence and beckoned them on, himself leading the way with Nadya. About a hundred yards from the end of the wood and the good, metalled road which bordered it he turned into a rutted opening in the undergrowth where timber had been hauled out. His black car was there, invisible under hazels.

  ‘I’ll go forward and see if it’s safe to move,’ he said. ‘You stay here.’

  He was back quickly, moving over the grass of the ride as if he knew where to put his feet in spite of darkness, and reported that there were two men on the road. They could easily be rushed, but the car would be recognised.

  ‘I’ll try and draw them off to the north corner. Once they are rooting about in there we can risk it.’

  He vanished again. In a few minutes they heard a man rushing desperately and clumsily through the hazels to break out at the north corner. The reaction was two piercing whistles: one from the direction in which the Count was creating his diversion, the other from the junction of road and track. Kalmody was an exasperatingly long time returning. Meanwhile they heard the police car start up far away across the meadow.

  ‘Drawn off one of them,’ Kalmody reported, appearing at the bonnet of the car. ‘The other fellow must have had strict orders. He never moved from his post.’

  The police car had already entered the track and stopped. It sounded as if some of the men in it had got out and were beating half the wood—the correct half—towards the two stops on the road.

  ‘Get us out of this, Istvan!’ Pozharski exclaimed. ‘Damn it, you were once a captain of Hussars!’

  ‘Of course. One forgets. Covering fire!’

  He drew an automatic from his pocket and checked it.

  ‘For God’s sake, this is England! You’ll get us all twenty years.’

  ‘Nonsense! If I hit one I can always give him a pension.’

  Bernardo protested that they would accuse him, not Kalmody.

  ‘Well, they can’t prove it if you aren’t here.’

  ‘We used to draw off the police by starting a fight,’ Nadya said.

  ‘What sort of a fight?’

  ‘If they thought someone was getting killed, they dropped whatever they were doing and broke it up.’

  ‘She’s got it. Quick!’ Kalmody whispered.

  He disappeared with her across the track into the other half of the wood, racing against time and not caring whether the advancing party of police heard them or not. Then there was a silence, suddenly broken by Nadya screaming:

  ‘No! No! Help! No, don’t!’

  A shot cut the scream short. A few seconds later there was another shot—the cold finish of some
thing still alive.

  Old Mr. Brown said that never in the whole of his Grand Tour had he been so frightened. It had been utterly convincing. One could be sure—after a moment of agonising doubt—that Kalmody was reproducing the scene from past experience. Nobody had ever said much about the recovery of the estate from the communists with Nepamuk’s loyal assistance.

  ‘It worked like dynamite,’ he went on. ‘The beaters changed direction. One of them nearly ran into us in his hurry to get to the other side of the wood. Orders were shouted. The two fellows on guard in the road came charging up. And then Istvan Kalmody and Nadya were at the car. Don’t ask me how they got there! Nadya and I were bundled into the back under a rug and two suitcases and we were out of the hazels and in the track with one awful moment when the wheels wouldn’t grip in a rut. Then into the road and a right turn and Kalmody cornering through the lanes like a snipe he’d missed with the first barrel.’

  Bernardo and Nadya disentangled themselves and sat up on the car floor, braced between front seats and back. Hedges loomed up and were miraculously avoided. Pozharski was helplessly trying to read the map on his knees.

  ‘I don’t think they are on our tail,’ he said.

  ‘Of course they aren’t. They can’t leave until they are sure there is no corpse and no Bernardo.’

  ‘They’ll suspect it was the foreign correspondent of Az Ujsag.’

  ‘Yes. To-morrow. When they can’t find us in the district any longer. But you’ll be all right when we have gone, Sigi. They can’t prove a thing. You were after your story and you lost your nerve when you heard the police begin to shoot.’

  ‘The police are not armed in this country.’

  ‘Well, you’re what they call a bloody foreigner and you don’t know it. Not armed when chasing a desperate character like Bernardo? It’s incredible.’

  Pozharski made him stop at the next signpost while he made some sense out of the map. He said that if they kept going they must hit Watling Street somewhere and then would have a civilised run to London produced by Romans, not Saxons driving pigs round angles.

  ‘Then that’s where we can expect a road block, if any. Cross it and work east as soon as we are well clear.’

  The two Hungarians might be clear, but it did not seem to Bernardo that he was. There was no frontier he could safely cross, no identity he could safely take, and the rescue which Kalmody had mounted could only lead to another tactful imprisonment.

  ‘May I know where we are going?’ he asked.

  ‘Spain. Both of you.’

  ‘They’ll arrest me as soon as we arrive.’

  ‘They will not know you have arrived. I may need your knowledge of the coast, but leave the rest to me!’

  ‘You mean the plane?’

  ‘Sitting on the River Crouch, full up with oil and petrol. The pilot came over to look for a new engine. No connection with me at all.’

  ‘They’ll work it out eventually,’ Pozharski said.

  ‘So what? Let them fine me for taking off without clearance. All Europe knows I can’t be bothered with papers.’

  The journey was cramped and painful but without incident. Two hours after dawn Kalmody, with something of a conjurer’s pride in his voice, told them to sit up and look out of the window. They were on rising ground above Burnham, and there down river was the seaplane sitting on the water. He said that they would not take off till nightfall when he hoped they could get out to her unseen. All that must be arranged. As it would be unwise to leave car and passengers in the town while he talked to the pilot, he would leave them in the safest place that could be found and go back to Burnham alone.

  Kalmody drove out to the marshes, twisting at random among tracks which only served isolated farms. It was a grey day without colour in grass or sedge. Beyond the sea wall the ebb tide was baring mile after mile of grey flats. Bernardo thought their exposure far from ideal after the closed country of the Midlands. The car could be seen from far off; on the other hand, so could a constable on a bicycle. A half empty, hidden creek with a hard bank above the mud offered perfect cover. There Kalmody left them with a bottle of champagne for breakfast and a stale sandwich apiece.

  Nadya was silent and restless. Had memories of the bare spaces of Russia anything to do with it? Bernardo could only guess that she had not resigned herself as he had, and distrusted so sudden a leap into an uncontrollable, pointless future.

  ‘I am hot and uncomfortable and bruised, Mr. Pozharski, and I am going to walk to the sea.’

  ‘Come then!’ Pozharski invited. ‘Bernardo should stay in his accustomed ditch. But you and I? Father and daughter bird-watching on the Essex marshes? There’s no one to show curiosity unless it’s a Dutchman with a telescope.’

  Rather to Bernardo’s surprise she answered his smile and seemed grateful. He lay on the edge of the bank and watched their two figures diminishing as they plodded towards the sea wall. The dull flats of the North Sea were depressing, infinitely far away from the sunlit reeds and lively frogs of the Danube marshes. He could tell from the poise of Nadya’s head and shoulders that she was talking eagerly. A gust of the easterly breeze carried the music of laughter. The last time he had heard it was also in answer to Pozharski. One had to admit that the old scoundrel’s love of women was instantly perceived by them. Kalmody’s extreme and formal courtesy gave nothing like so much confidence.

  The Count was still not back when they returned, flushed with sea wind and exercise and on the best of terms. Bernardo remarked that they should have shown more interest in birds.

  ‘Our Nadya was anxious about both your futures, dear boy. When Istvan is operating at speed he is not easy to understand. Naturally she wanted to know what he thought of all the Scheeper escapade.’

  ‘How did he come to hear of it at all?’

  ‘I was in Romania while you were still there, instructed by Istvan to find you at all costs. Mountains and plains, the Danube and the Dniester—all blank, absolutely blank until I returned to Bucarest and visited the Alhambra for postgraduate studies. It’s extraordinary how a little relaxation is often more productive than the stern voice of duty.’

  It certainly had been. He heard of one Mitrani who had escaped from the police by, it was said, driving a trasura down the Boulevard Carol in the middle of the night. His housekeeper reported that the house had been burgled, an old coat, toilet articles and some laundry stolen and a cabman’s fur hat left behind. Was it possible that this Mitrani was young Brown, especially since the burglar had known where the drinks were?

  ‘You should never again be rude to diplomats, Bernardo. Their parties are tedious, I admit, but a marvellous source of information. I heard that Mitrani was indeed you. I heard of this adorable Nadya and Scheeper’s passport. And then Istvan—with all the suppressed energy of a lifetime’s idleness—charges into action mounted upon political influence with his squadron of letters of credit galloping behind.’

  It was another half an hour before they saw the car threading the marshes. It was obvious that Kalmody was not driving it with any kindness. He got out, followed by his pilot, and walked quickly down into the cover of the creek. He was in a rage of controlled temper, his face two shades lighter than usual.

  ‘I told him never to go out of reach of a telephone,’ he said.

  ‘Wouldn’t he look a bit conspicuous, Istvan?’

  ‘That has nothing to do with it. My orders should be obeyed, right or wrong.’

  ‘I can’t see a stake anywhere.’

  ‘What in God’s name do you want one for?’

  ‘For you to burn him at.’

  The pilot, a Frenchman who spoke little English, observed the conversation with a look of stolid irony. Except on Spezia airport Bernardo had seen almost nothing of him but his back. His face suggested that he might be genial company when not submitting to the incalculable whims of his employer.

  ‘I repeat that six hundred and fifty miles across open sea is lunacy, monsieur le comte.’

 
; ‘You can make Spezia from Pasajes.’

  ‘Unwillingly. But in case of engine failure there are ports within easy reach.’

  ‘So it can be done!’

  ‘Not against the prevailing winds.’

  ‘The wind is east, my friend.’

  ‘It will change to-night.’

  ‘I pay you to take risks.’

  ‘On the contrary! You pay me not to take risks.’

  ‘It is not my safety that is at stake. It is my honour.’

  ‘I permit myself to doubt whether that will affect the oil gauge.’

  Kalmody was all ice in his manner, all fire in the way he held himself with one hand on hip and the other gripping the edge of some imaginary and barbaric robe. The pilot remained immovable in his equal professional pride.

  ‘If we’re in trouble there’s bound to be one of the fishing fleets in sight at dawn,’ Bernardo said.

  Kalmody jumped at this highly speculative suggestion.

  ‘You see? I even give you a Biscay pilot.’

  ‘Well, I will risk the two of you if the wind holds.’

  ‘Two? There are four of us! Two in the seats, two on the floor.’

  ‘Utterly impossible! I will not even allow you to take off.’

  ‘Two is enough,’ Pozharski said in English. ‘It will be a pleasure for me to look after our Nadya.’

  ‘But suppose she is picked up?’ Bernardo protested.

  ‘I will make her disappear.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Into a very private hospital. With all my faults, Bernardo, I am a man of taste. My duty in this world—if I have any—is to assist its creator to perfect it.’

  ‘It can’t be done.’

  ‘Then they will tell me so, David,’ Nadya said.

  ‘Need I remind you of delicate missions, dear boy? I have my trusted specialist. And if he does not put me on to the right surgeon instanter, he’s seen the last princess with the clap I ever send him.’

  ‘Bernardo, I promise you that Sigi will cherish your Nadya as if she were my own daughter,’ Kalmody declared.

  Bernardo and Pozharski caught each other’s eye and looked away before a smile could break.