by Ann Bridge
‘Their Security people, yes—and I think possibly also their Ambassador. But you see Walter Parrott, their Naval Attaché, has a very silly wife, who cannot be prevented from talking about everything she hears; so even he was told as little as possible. She is still lamenting that chauffeur of theirs, who organised the Toledo ambush of the Admiral, since she could not be told that he had been deported.’
‘How very trying.’
‘It was.’ She went on telling Julia about her struggles with Nell during the Admiral’s visit, and with Luxworthy’s daughter, making her friend laugh; she gave little thumbnail sketches of the Admiral himself, of Lieutenant Ellington, and of the Ambassador, to whom she was obviously devoted—finally of Ainsworth and Major Day. Julia listened, amused, but in the end astonished. How she had matured! Her assessments of people and situations were so shrewd and balanced—very different from the impetuous, violent likings and antipathies of the little refugee, fresh from the wilds of Hungary, whom she had known in Portugal only a few years ago, with her intolerance of social observances of any sort; but still the same honesty and warmth that had made her so lovable then. She thought, too, of what Hetta had been through: two attempts at murder; perpetually being discreet and, she was sure, putting a brave face on everything—and all the time anxiety for the child she was carrying.
They sat on, talking; Speranza came in and took away the tea-things, but still they kept at it, till at last a bell boomed out high overhead.
‘What is that?’ Hetta asked.
‘Goodness, the dressing-bell already! I must go and feed that infant. Oh, there’s time enough—dinner isn’t till a quarter to eight.’
‘Do we dress very much?’
‘No—just something simple; high, if you like. Have you got a frock out?’
‘No—I will get one. They are in that trunk that Speranza has begun. Oh, how lazy one feels here!’
‘Well, be lazy. Can I get you one out?’
‘Oh, do—there is a red one quite near the top. And I will have a bath.’ She sprang off the bed and went and turned on the water in the bath-room. When she came back Julia was standing by the bed, on which a red silk dress was spread out; she was holding in her hands a little polychrome statuette of the Madonna, and gazing at it, absorbed.
‘Hetta, how did you come by this? It was wrapped up in the dress—is that the right one?’
‘Oh yes—Ellington only brought it just as I was leaving, so I rolled it up in the frock and put it in among my dresses, to be safe; there was no time to pack it properly in cottonwool.’
‘But how did Ellington get it? It’s quite exquisite; eighteenth century, isn’t it?’
‘The Admiral sent it to me, from America.’
‘Luxworthy? But surely it’s Spanish?’ She peered with her beautiful myopic eyes at some very faint gilded lettering round the base. ‘Nuestra Señora de—I can’t read the last part.’
‘Socorro. Our Lady of Deliverance,’ Hetta said, with an expression of great happiness on her face.
‘But how on earth could he get it over there?’
‘Oh, Mama always says that there are very good antiqueshops in New York—and Ellington said that he went up there and found it for me. You see we were together at Toledo, when the Communists had planned their first attempt, on him; and when he learned in Washington how they had tried to kill me at Gralheira, he determined to send me a present. Look underneath.’
Julia turned the beautiful little thing sideways. On a piece of paper gummed to the bottom was written: ‘With heartfelt thanks. H.L.’ She stood the statue carefully on a chest of drawers, and went over and gave Hetta a quick kiss.
‘I should like to meet your Admiral,’ she said. Then, as if to brush away the moment of emotion—‘What shoes are you going to wear tonight?’ she asked.
‘Speranza got out those from my dressing-case,’ Hetta said, indicating a pair of black satin court shoes under the dressing-table.
‘Oh, but they have such high heels! Haven’t you anything lower? Philip Reeder has rather a thing against very high heels.’
‘Yes, I have some silver sandals in that other case, with quite low ones.’
‘Well get those out, there’s a duck—or shall I send Speranza to you?’
‘Yes, do; then she can find them while I have my bath.’ As she spoke she took a small vase of gentians off the dressing-table and set it down by the little Madonna.
‘Tomorrow we will get Her some flowers of Her own,’ Hetta said. Then she went to have her bath, and Julia walked along the passage to feed her baby.
This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader
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Copyright © Ann Bridge 1966
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ISBN: 9781448207411
eISBN: 9781448207107
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