A Place to Stand

by Ann Bridge

  “No, Stefan was at home this time.” It was the old lady who answered. “He is out just now, trying to find out what has happened to Jurek. Oh dear!” she sighed a little soft resigned sigh. “It is very disturbing, all this.”

  “Mother dearest, it has to be done, you know,” Litka said.

  “Yes, my child, I know. Only it was not so in the old days. We had our anxieties then, certainly—but it was different at home.”

  Hope was filled with pity for her—so small, so fragile, so obviously unfit to be mixed up in this sort of thing. Teaching small children a forbidden tongue by one’s own fireside, among one’s own people, was very different—true enough!—from being involved in underground activities in a strange city. And Mme Moranska—the thought struck her as she looked at the worn lined face, the blue-veined old hands that trembled a little as they lay in her lap—had been a young woman then; as young, very likely, as Litka was now. A quite new compassion—compassion for the old, just for being old—came over the young girl, whose reaction to her parents’ age was usually nothing but exasperation. She leaned forward and said—“It is very hard for you, all this, dear Madame.”

  Before there was time for a reply a rapid step was audible in the passage outside, the door opened, and Stefan came in. He closed it quickly behind him and said, before he had noticed Hope’s presence—“Not a word, yet! I have been everywhere, and there is no sign nor sound of him.” Then he saw Hope, and while Litka twisted her hands in distress he exclaimed—“You here?”—almost vexedly. He came over and kissed her hand, very formally. “How do you do?”

  Hope was too anxious to show any resentment at his coldness.

  “Was Jurek getting men out of a camp near Eger last night?” she blurted out.

  He almost jumped. “Yes,” he said, startled into speaking the truth. Then he pulled himself together; the steely look came back. “How do you know about this?”

  “They were talking about it at lunch, at home; Mother had a party.”

  “Who was talking? Who was there?”

  “The French First Secretary, and a man from our Consulate—and Father, of course—and two boys from our Legation.”

  Stefan’s steeliness became more pronounced than ever.

  “Please tell me exactly what each one said.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t do that! Well, I’ll tell you all I can remember. It was Spencer Westerman, from our Legation, who said that the truck had been shot up outside Eger. Oh yes, and so did the Frenchman—they both knew of it.”

  “Shot! Maria preserve us!” Litka ejaculated. But—“Go on, please,” said Stefan.

  “Well, Spencer said it was a Deuxième Bureau car that did the shooting.” Hope went on, wishing, too late, that she had said nothing about that part of it, as she saw the expression on the old lady’s and Litka’s faces.

  But Stefan was inflexible in his cross-examination.

  “What else was said?”

  “Well, Father said that 35,000 Poles had got out since 1939, and that the Hungarian Government had been winking at it, and Count Tibor said that it couldn’t have been done unless they had winked; and——”

  “Count Tibor? Count Tibor who? Was a Hungarian also there?” Stefan interrupted sharply.

  “Yes—Tibor Zichy. I forgot him. He’s always at our house.”

  “What else did he say?”

  “Tibor? Nothing but that, really. He seemed pleased. And then they talked about the Szállascists, because Bill—that’s our friend at the Consulate—said that the Deuxième Bureau was mainly staffed by them, and Mother didn’t know about the Arrow Cross, and asked a lot.”

  “This is all you can remember? Nothing more—nothing about how these people were got out from the camps?”

  Hope searched her memory—she was flustered by Stefan’s rather hectoring manner. But she did not have to search far.

  “Yes. Bill said it was getting harder to do now, because the Germans were putting pressure on the Government here to stop it; and Father asked who was doing the actual running.”

  “So,” the young man said. “And was that answered?”

  “Yes. Spencer said it was being done by Poles who somehow weren’t in camps; in fact by people like you! That’s why I came round,” said Hope; “I was worried when I heard that.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “Not a word! Why should I? What do you take me for?” the girl answered, vexed at last.

  But Litka had a question, and now interposed with it.

  “Did this American, who spoke of the camion being shot at, say if anyone was hurt?”

  “Oh Litka yes, he did—he said some people had been wounded,” replied Hope wretchedly.

  “But not who? You did not hear who?”

  “Litka darling, how could I ask that? And I’m sure he wouldn’t have known, anyway. I can’t think how Spencer knows as much as he seems to,” said Hope candidly—“I’ve always thought him pretty stupid.”

  “You are sure that your Father—and all these people—do not know that you know us?” Stefan asked.

  “Perfectly certain—unless Father’s started having me shadowed!” said Hope with vigour. “I’ve been so frightfully careful.”

  “Well, be more careful still,” Stefan said sombrely. “We too have heard, from a friend in the police, that everything is now much more difficult, and that the difficulties will increase. All our calls are tapped, and now as well the caller is checked—so please never telephone from your house.”

  “I never have,” said Hope. “I’ve always gone to a callbox.”

  It had already struck Hope when she was at the Penzio that the door of the room seemed to be always opening, and someone coming in or going out; and since entrances in that household—if you could call one room a household!—were invariably a matter of anxiety, or at best uncertainty, this must all be very unrestful for old Mme Moranska, to say the least of it. She was reminded of this when, now, the door again began to open—rather slowly—and she saw how anxiously three heads turned towards it; she looked in that direction too, infected by their anxiety. A man with a dirty bandage round his head and his left arm in a sling walked in—it was a second or so before she recognized young Hempel, his pug face was so swathed in the bandages.

  Litka sprang up and ran to him. “Jurek! oh Jurek! You are here!—you are alive! But what has happened to you? Are you much hurt?”

  For some reason the Polish girl’s open concern, and her hands clinging to the young man’s uninjured arm, caused Hope a little stab of envy. But why? She was Sam’s fiancée; if Sam had been hurt she could have run to him in just the same way—so why envy Litka, running to greet a Polish lover? Why indeed?

  Old Mme Moranska, who had been sitting in an astonishing quiet patience while Stefan’s cross-examination of Hope was going on, also rose, slowly and rather stiffly, and went across and embraced Jurek, murmuring “Oh, thank God!” Litka steered the young man to a chair and made him sit down, while the old lady, unobtrusively, went and put the kettle on the gas-ring—in Poland a glass of tea is almost as much the cure for all earthly ills as a cup of tea is in England—and Litka broke into a flood of eager questions.

  Hempel, however, as he settled in his chair caught sight of Hope, and at once looked profoundly embarrassed—he even put up his good hand to his head in a futile gesture as if to conceal his bandages. “Later—later,” he muttered in Polish to Litka.

  “It is all right—you can talk before Miss Kirkland. She has already heard all about it,” Stefan said in French, with a touch of irony—“At a luncheon, here in Budapest. Go ahead.”

  “Impossible!”

  “Yes, she has. Nothing is impossible to her! Proceed,” said Stefan—but now his irony was softened by a friendly glance of amusement in Hope’s direction.

  Jurek asked nothing better than to tell his story; he was bursting with it. He and his lorryful of men had got safely out of the camp at Eger, and were travelling in the direction of the frontier, whic
h his cargo would cross on foot—“when we saw a smallish camion ahead of us, pulled up rather far out in the road. I thought that I could just get past, but I had to slow down to do it, and as I did so a man stepped forward from behind it holding a revolver, and signalled to us to halt. So naturally I stood on the accelerator for all I was worth, to rush it! He stepped back, the bastard, but I hit him—and knocked him down, I think—and then at the same moment there was a burst of fire from this infernal van. We weren’t expecting that, of course, and all the boys had their heads up over the top, looking out and enjoying the drive—I tell them not to, but you know how they will always do it,” he said to Stefan; “they’re so excited at getting out of those lousy camps.”

  “Were many hit?” Litka asked.

  “Five. And Wladek, who was in the cab with me. He was killed,” Jurek said, sadness for a moment overcoming the obvious relish with which he was telling his tale.

  “Didn’t they fire at your tyres?” Stefan asked—Hope was startled at the particular practicality of this question.

  “No, for a wonder they didn’t. I suppose seeing all the boys’ heads out, they lost their own heads!” said Jurek. “I bumped their damned van, because there was barely room to pass, and buckled my wing down so that it rubbed the tyre, but I managed to keep her going.”

  “Where to?”

  “To a village about eighteen kilometres further on. I had to get a puncture just then!—luckily almost in the village. I was in a fix! I couldn’t take her any further, and I was sure that infernal van would be after us—I was afraid I hadn’t properly knocked it out.”

  “What did you do with your men?”

  Hempel grinned broadly.

  “Took them all to the police-station, and had them locked up! It was much the safest place. We had to put poor Wladek in there too, but that was all right—they all knelt and prayed by him in turns, two at a time. Then I ran the truck into an old man’s barn, and we pulled hay down from the loft above, all over it, till the place was one mountain of hay—how he laughed, that old gaffer!”

  “But did the police allow you to hide the men there? Did they know what they were?” Hope asked, greatly surprised by this extremely concrete piece of “winking” at the departure of Poles from Hungary.

  “Oh yes, they knew all right. The country police are fine—they always help us,” said Jurek blithely. “As a matter of fact I think they must have heard before we came in; we were close to some small place when we were shot up, and two of those country gendarmes—you know, the ones who walk about in hats with great plumes of cocks’ feathers, and carbines slung at their backs—were close by on the road and saw the shooting. I expect there was a telephone in the post-office or somewhere, and that they rang ahead down the road. Anyhow, we had no trouble.”

  “And where did you go?” Hope asked. “After you’d camouflaged the lorry with hay?”

  “Into the confessional!” Hempel replied, grinning more broadly than ever. “I saw the priest in the street as I came away from that barn, and hauled him off to the church, and went on confessing for three-quarters of an hour. No one can touch you in the confessional,” the young man said blandly. “I heard that beastly van come in, and stop, and wait for a little—and then drive on again.”

  “Did you get them out all right?” Stefan asked.

  “Oh yes—none of them were too badly hurt to go on—except Wladek, poor soul. But I had to wait till nightfall to change the wheel on the lorry, and it was all such a mess of hayseed, and no light but a stable lantern!—it was a job-and-a-half! That was what delayed me, of course. But those village people are very good at managing—just like our own countryfolk at home; they bandaged us all up, and gave us hot food, and splendid wine,” said Hempel with great satisfaction. “And we got off all right, and the boys crossed just before dawn. But Stefan, I’ve had to leave the lorry in that barn—I took her back and tucked her away again under Grandpa’s hay! I didn’t dare to bring her back here till we can get some fresh number-plates.”

  “No, quite right,” Stefan said. Then he frowned a little. “It is awkward, though, that. We are getting so short.”

  “What became of the police van? Didn’t they come back to look for you, when they didn’t find you further down the road?” Hope asked curiously.

  “They came back, but they didn’t look for us any more. That whole countryside is a network of little roads, we could have been on any one of fifty!—and they had to give it up when the light began to go.”

  “I wonder they didn’t see the tracks of your truck leading into the barn,” pursued Hope, whose imagination was busily at work on every aspect of this extraordinary performance. “Those villages are so muddy always, except on the main road.”

  “They would have done, if the old fellow hadn’t got some boys to strew hay all over them, while we were fixing the lorry,” said Hempel, grinning again. “That old Grandfather thought that up himself!—I’d meant to speak of it, but I forgot.”

  “You should not have forgotten that,” said Stefan rather sternly.

  “No, I know; but it was all such a rush, and—oh, what is it?” Hempel exclaimed.

  A small sound had come, quite unexpectedly, from old Mme Moranska. She had been sitting quietly by the gas-ring through all this, and when the kettle began to sing she rose and stretched out her arm for the tea-pot, which stood on a shelf just above; then she made that tiny gasping noise and stepped back towards her chair again, swaying a little, and deathly white—Stefan sprang up, caught her in his arms, and lowered her into it. “Where are her drops?” he said sharply to Litka.

  Litka was already at the press, getting out a bottle; Hempel fetched a glass and a spoon; while they mixed the dose Stefan knelt beside his Mother, his arms still around her, murmuring with indescribable tenderness—“There, littlest Mother, there, darling one! Litka has it she is bringing it; you will be all right.”

  Throughout this episode poor Hope sat, a helpless spectator. Helpless, but moved beyond measure by Stefan’s attitude to his Mother, as she was first given the medicine, then fanned, then had her hands gently rubbed by Litka, and finally was carried in Stefan’s arms and placed on the bed, while the others piled pillows high behind her. To the young girl there was something at once shocking and beautiful in the whole scene—shocking in the publicity of having to be put to bed in one room, the only room, beautiful because of the devotion shown by all three of the young people. It occurred to her with some force that she had a good deal to learn from these impoverished émigrés about how to behave to parents. Had she not, this very afternoon, felt an almost contemptuous unconcern while her own Mother was hunting for her bottle of aspirins? She had not attempted to help to look. Stefan would have done that.

  However, once the old lady was safely in bed the girl went over to Stefan and asked, rather shyly, if there was anything she could do. “Do you want a doctor?—Bendze is wonderful for hearts. I could fetch him in a taxi in no time—he’s always in in the afternoon; it’s his clinic time.”

  Stefan consulted with Litka in hurried Polish, and then turned back to Hope.

  “No—thank you so much—but that is not necessary. The pulse is steadier now, Litka says. The drops always help. My Mother often has these seizures now when anything occurs to agitate her; and she spent hours in anxiety over Jurek. I suppose hearing his story was too much for her—but what can one do? We have only this room.”

  “It came on when she stood up to get the tea-pot,” Hope said.

  “Yes—raising the arms is bad. But it will have been the emotion, really,” the young man said.

  “Well, if there’s nothing I can do, I’ll be getting along,” said Hope. She went over and kissed Litka goodbye, but left the frail old figure, lying with closed eyes on the bed, alone. “Say goodbye to your Mother for me later on,” she murmured to the Polish girl. “Oh, I’m so thankful that Jurek’s safe—that you’re all safe!” And slipped away.

  8

  A Few days later
the city of Budapest was awakened about 6 a.m. by a dull roar of mechanical sound, which went on for hours and hours—the roar of German Panzer Divisions passing down the broad embankments beside the Danube on their way to reduce Yugoslavia to submission. Mr. Kirkland had been quite right: Hitler had not stayed quiet for any length of time; the Yugoslavs had shown themselves altogether too independent-minded, and were to be quelled. Berta the maid came rushing in to her young mistress at half-past seven—an unheard-of hour—to tell her what was going on. Hope was incredulous. “The Germans? Here?”

  “Yes; yes indeed. János went out and has seen them—tanks, guns, the merciful God alone knows what! Let Miss Hope listen to the sound!”

  Still sleepy and half bewildered, Hope reached for her bed-jacket—pushing her arms into the sleeves. “Open the window,” she said. Berta did so, and at once that prolonged roar, even muffled as it was by distance, filled the pretty luxurious room—it seemed to fill it with something alien—menacing, almost appalling. Unlike the inhabitants of Vienna, Poland, Belgium, Denmark and northern France, Hope Kirkland had never heard the noise that mechanized divisions on the move make; she heard it now, and was frightened.

  “Shut the window,” she said, “and bring me coffee.”

  “Miss, the rolls have not yet come, and the chef has gone to look at the Germans.”

  “Then make the coffee yourself, and let János make some toast,” Hope snapped. She was usually particularly pleasant with the servants, of whom she was for the most part very fond; though she didn’t like the chef, whom she considered, not without reason, to be both spoilt and extravagant. But she was still not properly awake, and the bare idea of the Germans in the city had put her nerves on edge: what would this mean in the Radolny utca?

  “What’s the time?” she asked, wondering if it would be too early to go round.

  “Half-past seven, if you please.”

  “God, what an hour to wake me!” Hope grumbled.

  “I thought Miss Hope would wish to know that the Germans are here.”