The Episode at Toledo

by Ann Bridge

  Gossip knows no frontiers, at least in Europe; Hetta was not in the least surprised by this remark, but took occasion to make the position clear.

  ‘There is an admirer, yes; he was coming to Gralheira to meet her Father, and—well, to see if matters could be arranged. But with this mourning, it has had to be postponed—and this gives on her nerves! So I asked her to come to us, to give her some distraction. Your Excellency might help to distract her!’

  ‘You really are a little monster, Hetta!’ the Ambassador said, still amusedly. ‘Putting temptation in my way! Well, bring her to luncheon; I shall be discreet, as I always have to be; but if I can secure an invitation to shoot partridges at Gralheira it won’t be for lack of trying!’ He paused. ‘I was sorry to drag you and your husband back,’ he went on, ‘but you see he’s been so closely in touch with Nato in Paris, so recently, that I felt I really had to have him on hand for this visit—which is pretty crucial. And personal background knowledge is so essential, especially when one is dealing with Americans; somehow they have such a personal approach.’

  ‘Quite true—of course I know this, as my Mother is an American,’ Hetta said.

  The Ambassador actually blushed slightly—an unusual phenomenon. He had quite forgotten, damn it, that Countess Dorothée Páloczy, who was now cutting rather a figure as a hostess in Washington, and very much in touch with the White House, was in fact Hetta’s Mother; his Counsellor’s wife always seemed to him so wholly European. He took her hand.

  ‘My dear, forgive me! I have been clumsy. But look,’ he went on, relinquishing her hand and deftly changing the subject—‘Why does the postponement of the boy-friend’s visit upset her so much? Has she des doutes, the poor child? Of course long engagements are very trying, for both parties.’

  ‘I think Luzia could put up with an engagement of twenty years!’ Hetta averred. ‘But you see they are not yet engaged. This is tedious for her.’ She was mollified by his penitence, and a little ashamed of the remark which had prompted it.

  A man in chauffeur’s uniform now approached, also with a tray of cocktails; as he took the Ambassador’s empty glass—‘Might I fetch a whisky for His Excellency?’ he asked, in admirable English.

  ‘Yes, do, Luis,’ the diplomat said. ‘Excellent fellow, that,’ he went on, as the man went off. ‘The Parrotts are lucky to have him. He can turn his hand to anything, as well as being a first-rate chauffeur.’

  ‘Where did they get him?’ Hetta asked.

  ‘Took him over from the Peabodys when poor Peabody was taken ill, and had to go home so suddenly.’

  Hetta knew about the sudden departure of Parrott’s predecessor.

  ‘And where did the Peabodys get him?’ she pursued.

  ‘They brought him with them from Washington when they came,’ Sir Noël said, slightly surprised by her interest in a colleague’s chauffeur.

  ‘Ah. So he is not Spanish?’

  ‘I really don’t know. He speaks it like a native. Why?’

  Before Hetta could reply the man came back, bringing a small tray with a syphon and decanter; the Ambassador helped himself, and again thanked the useful Luis. When the man had gone the Ambassador in his turn pursued his question. He was puzzled by Hetta’s enquiries.

  ‘Why do you want to know his nationality?’ he asked.

  ‘It is just an idea I had,’ she replied, rather evasively. ‘Certainly if he came from Washington with the Peabodys he would hardly be Spanish.’ As the French Ambassador came up to them she returned his greeting, and presently drifted away, leaving Sir Noël puzzled.

  By now the room was filling up; the Spaniards, belatedly, were beginning to arrive, and he moved about performing his social duties with easy skill; Hetta was doing likewise, and he had no further opportunity of catechising her. But more than once he noticed his Counsellor’s wife glance at the Parrotts chauffeur with an expression of distaste and uneasiness. What idea could she have got into that little dark head of hers? There must be something; Hetta usually had a very sound reason for anything she said or thought.

  The puzzle remained with him, and when the party began to thin out, and no more arrivals were to be expected, he left; Commander Mansfield’s duties were over too, and the Ambassador offered him a lift home. If anyone would know the answer to Hetta’s question it would be Mansfield, who had been so long in Madrid. In the car——

  ‘Do you know anything about that chauffeur of the Parrotts?’ he asked casually.

  He was not disappointed.

  ‘Luis? Yes. He’s a Hungarian,’ Commander Mansfield replied, without the smallest hesitation.

  ‘A Hungarian! Then what on earth was he doing in Washington?’ Sir Noël asked, surprised.

  ‘A refugee from the 1956 uprising. We took quite a number of them in—not all that soon!’ the other replied, rather sardonically—‘but in the end we did have several thousand at Camp Kilmer.’

  ‘Then how did he pick up his job with the Peabodys?’

  ‘Oh, we absorbed as many as we could; he was a good mechanic and a good linguist; he made his way to Washington, and got employment with some Latin-American diplomats—the Columbians, I think Peabody said. And then Peabody took him on when he was coming here; he’d already picked up a fair amount of Spanish, and Peabody thought that might be convenient, as indeed it was—and is.’

  ‘I should have thought it might have been a little complicated,’ the Englishman said thoughtfully. ‘What papers has he got? Hardly Hungarian?’

  ‘Oh no. After they’d been screened, the ones who passed as reliable were given green cards entitling them to permanent residence in the States, and a couple of years later Congress passed an Act allowing them to become American citizens at the expiry of five years. So by the time he came out here with Peabody he had regular U.S. papers.’

  ‘Very convenient for him. Is Luis his real name?’

  ‘No, he must really be Lajos—that’s the Hungarian version.’ Mansfield in his turn was a little surprised at the Englishman’s interest in the Parrotts’ chauffeur, but he prudently asked no questions. And the Ambassador, saying ‘A ghastly business, that rising,’ turned the conversation. But over his solitary dinner he went on speculating about Mrs. Atherley. Some trick of manner, undetectable by a person of another race, might possibly have led her to spot the man as a fellow-countryman, but why the expression of discomfort when she looked at him?

  Hetta was particularly glad of Luzia’s presence during the next few days, when she and Nell Parrott and Mrs. Marchant were intensively occupied in shepherding the female Luxworthys. Hetta already had a baby girl of thirteen months; she was ten weeks gone in pregnancy with a second child, and did not feel at her best in the mornings. But the Portuguese girl knew Madrid well, and could always be relied on to give the visitors a satisfactory forenoon in the Prado, or to escort them to one or other of the very phoney and expensive antique shops, while the three married women wrote their notes and occupied themselves with their households; in the afternoons there was Balenciaga’s dress salon, which exercised a strong fascination over the two Americans, or the Escorial or some other excursion, before the evening cocktail-parties began. (The wife of their own Ambassador was down with scarlet fever, so she could do nothing for her two compatriots.) Moreover Joy Luxworthy, mercifully, took to Luzia, and hence was more amenable to suggestions from her than from the others. It was Luzia who persuaded her, with a mixture of firmness and mockery, that she really could not walk into the cocktail-bar of either the Ritz or the Palace Hotel in skin-tight scarlet ‘toreador-pants’, as Vogue called them.

  ‘But I bought them back home just for Spain,’ Joy protested.

  ‘Nevertheless you do not wish to be arrested by the police as una puta.’

  ‘What on earth is a puta?’

  ‘A disreputable woman. Such are arrested here if they make themselves conspicuous in public places,’ Luzia said with finality. ‘Why not wear that pretty red silk dress?’

  Sir Noël lost no t
ime in giving his luncheon for Luzia; as Hetta had insisted, it was small—only one other couple besides the Atherleys and the Marchants.

  ‘I didn’t ask the Luxworthys—they’re coming to dinner the day after tomorrow,’ the Ambassador told Hetta on the telephone. ‘I want to be able to concentrate on your lovely friend.’ He did—Hetta sat on his right, Luzia on his left; they got on famously. But Sir Noël did not forget that he wanted to pass on Commander Mansfield’s information about the chauffeur to Mrs. Atherley, and over coffee he invited her to come into a small morning-room to look at a new picture he had bought—she went, cup in hand. They discussed the picture for a moment or two; then, still standing in front of it, he said—‘I found out about that man Luis, the Parrotts’ chauffeur. He’s a Hungarian—he came out in 1956, and went to the States as a refugee.’

  Hetta continued to stare at the picture in front of her for several seconds, with an expression of frowning concentration; then, suddenly, she gave a small start—the coffee-cup slipped sideways in the saucer, and some of the coffee was spilt on the carpet.

  ‘Oh, I am so sorry!’ she exclaimed. ‘Do excuse me.’ As he took the cup from her she moved to a chair and sat down; the Ambassador rang the bell. When he turned back to her it struck him that she was looking rather white, beyond her normal clear pallor. ‘I am so sorry,’ she repeated mechanically.

  ‘It doesn’t matter in the least,’ Sir Noël said. ‘Please don’t think of it.’ He gave an order to a footman who answered the bell, and turned to her again; she was still staring at the picture, frowning a little, but he got the impression that she did not really see it, but was concentrating on something else. As servants came in with a bowl and cloths to clean the carpet she got up, and again apologising, returned to the other room.

  Almost at once a secretary appeared to say that the Ambassador was wanted on the telephone from London; excusing himself, he went and took the call. When he returned to the drawing-room Hetta was talking to Maud Marchant about more plans for the Luxworthys, and Luzia turned to him with some question in a laughing argument that she was having with Colonel Marchant—‘Excellency, you shall arbitrate between us!’ There was no chance for him to speak to Hetta alone before they left. But when his guests had gone Sir Noël speculated long, and rather uncomfortably, about why the knowledge that the Parrotts’ chauffeur was a Hungarian should have disturbed his consellor’s wife so much, if that really was the reason why she had given that little start—and he thought there was a connection; he did not believe that he had imagined it. He must try to get hold of her again and find out.

  But in fact it is not so easy as might be supposed for the Head of a Mission to arrange a meeting in private with the wife of one of his staff; some opportunity must occur, or be contrived. Diplomats never use the telephone for possibly tricky conversations. Sir Noël had to let it go for the moment.

  But he had not been imagining things. The human memory works in curious ways, taking one so far and no further, or leaving unaccountable gaps. For a long time now the face of the Parrotts’ chauffeur had seemed vaguely familiar to Hetta, and in some unpleasant context; but there she stuck. At Nell’s party she had asked the Ambassador about him on an impulse, wishing to clear up this teasing uncertainty; when she stood looking at that picture in the small morning-room at the Embassy, and heard that the so-called Luis was a Hungarian, her memory suddenly raised a shutter on the past. Yes, she felt certain that she knew where she had seen him before. He had been one of a group of A.V.O. men, the Communist Secret Police, who had come suddenly to close down her convent school in Budapest, forcing the nuns to leave their home and abandon the habit, and dispersed them to scrape a living as best they could, in such civilian clothes as could be mustered for them. That was twelve years ago; the man was older and stouter; he had shaved off his moustache, his hair was now closely cut, and altogether he was smartened up almost out of recognition—but when that shutter went up she felt sure that he was the uncouth young man who had been so particularly rough with the old beloved nuns, horrifying her by his brutal words, and still more brutal laughter at their confusion and distress.

  When the Atherleys left the Embassy, Richard announced that he had got to go back to the Chancery—‘And what are you doing, darling?’

  ‘There is a cocktail at the Italians, but I think perhaps I do not go. Luzia is going—the Marchants will be there.’

  ‘Quite right, I should have a rest,’ her husband said. He knew about the pregnancy, and desperately wished that all should go well; he wanted a son this time.

  ‘You come back when?’ she asked him.

  ‘In time for dinner—I may look in and bring Luzia back. I’m going to play squash with Marchant first.’

  At home Hetta went to her room and lay down, but made no attempt to sleep; instead she thought intently. In her own mind she now had little doubt that Luis, the trusted factotum and confidential servant of the unsuspecting Parrotts, with free access to the American Embassy, was a Communist agent—she knew all about their trick of infiltrating spies among genuine refugees; several from the 1956 exodus had been spotted and caught already, in other countries. She must do something about it; but first she must decide what, carefully—it was no good acting in a hurry. And yet there was an element of hurry, or might be; Admiral Luxworthy was said to be due to arrive in Spain in a few days now. Hetta knew all about the Rota base and its importance; Richard had told her a certain amount, and Nell Parrott had of course chattered freely. Since the American Ambassador was in quarantine for scarlet fever the Admiral would be staying with his family at their hotel, and though an Embassy car and chauffeur would certainly be placed at his disposal, it was more than probable that much of the time he would go about with his Naval Attaché, actually driven by an enemy agent. Hetta, her wits sharpened by years spent under a Communist régime, and living now in the higher ranks of diplomacy, both in Paris and Madrid, was fully aware of all the considerations attaching to de Gaulle’s preoccupation with L’Europe des Patries, and the openings which his propaganda might afford for some Communist manoeuvre in Spain.

  But to whom should she pass on her disagreeable information? Richard? After some consideration she thought perhaps not; Richard had already begun to show signs of brushing aside some of her ideas as the curious fancies of a woman in pregnancy. The Parrotts? Definitely better not; Walter would persist in talking, so ill-advisedly, to Nell, and this sort of thing ought always to be handled with absolute discretion. The Ambassador would be the best person; but it was even more difficult for her to get hold of him, especially without Richard’s knowledge, than for him to get hold of her for a talk in private. Then who?

  Oddly enough she decided in the first place to speak to Luzia. When she herself had been kidnapped and drugged in Portugal on her way to Gralheira, soon after her escape from Hungary, Luzia, then not really out of the schoolroom, had played a major part in outwitting the principal communist agent, who in his turn had been drugged and captured by a member of the English Secret Service at Gralheira itself, and handed over to the Portuguese authorities. If only he were here now! And what was his name? She couldn’t remember, she had seen hardly anything of him; but Luzia would certainly know, and she was absolutely reliable and discreet. She rang the bell, and sent a maid to ask if her guest could come and see her?

  Luzia came at once; she too had been resting, and appeared in a floating white wrapper. Hetta asked her to bring her towel from the bathroom, and wrapped its thick folds over, under, and round her bedside telephone; then she switched on her small transistor.

  ‘Sit close to me; we must speak low, but the music helps,’ she said.

  ‘Something goes on?’ Luzia asked, obediently drawing up a chair.

  ‘Yes, I think so—and one never knows where there may be microphones—put the lamp over on that other table.’ These precautions taken, she told her friend what had happened at the Embassy.

  Luzia listened attentively.

  ‘You are a
bsolutely certain that this Luis is the Secret Police man you saw in Budapest?’ she asked.

  Hetta pushed up her dark hair, with a worried expression.

  ‘It came to me that he was, then—that is why I spilt my coffee. I was frightened. But it was twelve years ago, and I only saw him on that one day; he had a moustache then. It would be—awkward—to have made a mistake. I do not think I have, only Richard would so much dislike it …’ she left the sentence unfinished.

  ‘Still, you cannot leave it as it is,’ Luzia said firmly, ‘if there is even the possibility that this Luis is an agent.’

  ‘No. Someone should make enquiries. I was wishing that this Intelligence person who was at Gralheira were here now, but I forget his name.’

  ‘Torrens—Major Torrens. He was in love with Miss Probyn,’ Luzia said, with a mischievous smile. ‘Yes, it would be good to have him here.’

  ‘But how could one find him?’

  ‘Oh, I have no idea. And I think it would be of no use to write to him ourselves. Write to Julia; either she will know, or she can find out. Or her husband might come—this would be better, if he is not abroad.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘In Scotland with the baby, still I think for some weeks. I give you the address. By airmail she should get a letter in two days—no, in Scotland perhaps three. Write now, while I dress—then I will post the letter myself at the Centrale on my way to this cocktail.’

  ‘How much should I tell her?’ Hetta asked. Luzia’s clearheadedness and decision were being a comfort to her—why did being enceinte seem to take away both one’s mind and one’s resolution?

  ‘No details, I think; not now. Just that there is a possible Luzia reflected.

  danger—and to ask if Colonel Jamieson or Major Torrens could come. Miss Probyn will do whatever is sensible. Is this your writing-case?’

  So while Luzia dressed for her party, Hetta wrote the letter which was to arouse so much speculation and concern at Glentoran a few days later; Luzia made time to dash off a hasty corroborative note herself to Julia Jamieson, and posted both with her own small white-gloved hand at the Central Post Office, to the dismay of the Atherleys’ well-trained chauffeur.