by Ann Bridge
Again the girl’s face showed that wonderful radiance.
“If they’re through Sofia they’re clear away. They’re safe!”
“Well, you’ve done it,” Bill said temperately. “Done it single-handed, too. Sam said I was to tell you that you’re marvellous!”
“It’s marvellous,” she corrected him. “But oh, I do wish we knew what has happened to Father and Mother.”
That anxiety about the old Kirklands overshadowed the whole evening, as for Bill anxiety about Hope had overshadowed the previous one. To distract her mind he told her about the arrangements that he had made for the funeral with Mother Antony; she roused herself then from her distraite faraway mood—which Bill guessed had probably nearly as much to do with Sam as with her parents—and said that that was fine, and thanked him warmly. “Did you get the picture?” she asked.
“Yep. I got the lot. The landlady said they didn’t owe anything for rent, so I brought them all along.”
“Good for you. I expect they’ll love to have them all—but it’s the one of the house that really matters.” She fell silent, wondering where those gallant expatriates would be able to put half-a-dozen pictures in any foreseeable future, and a look of distress came into her face, which pained and puzzled Bill. Probably old M. Moranski’s charming canvases would spend quite a lot of time propped against the wall in some dingy room in some alien city, she thought, whether in Sam’s care or in Stefan’s—perhaps in a whole series of dingy rooms. And suddenly tears filled her eyes, and brimmed over and fell.
“Hopey, what is it?” Bill asked, in distress.
“Oh, just those pictures. Where they’ll go, when no one who wants them has a home any more. Things are so sad—almost worse than people, don’t you think?—when they’ve no homes?”
Bill Hershey had never had occasion to think about the sadness of “things” in his life. He and everyone he knew had always had a home, even if only a temporary one in some foreign capital, in which to bestow them. What he saw clearly was that little Hopey was tired and overwrought, and no wonder. He took her up to bed. On the way—“When’s the funeral? I’d love to go,” she said.
“I don’t know. Mother Antony was to call me.”
“Oh well—you’ll let me know. I wish we knew what’s happened to Father and Mother.”
“They’ll be all right, you’ll see,” Bill said stoutly. Then he went downstairs again and sat up till midnight, waiting on news of the Kirklands—at last, tired, anxious, and indefinably discouraged, he went wearily up to bed. He felt old tonight, somehow; perhaps it was having Hope, who was so young, around—here in his very house. And he kept on wondering, till he fell asleep, how things would work out for her and Sam, who was such a grand person, if she’d gone and lost her heart to somebody else. It had been quite a shock to Bill to learn that she and Sam were actually engaged—but still more to realize the extent of her involvement with the people who lived in that wretched room, with nothing tolerable, nothing really normal in it except Hope’s own Herend flower-basket, and those pictures which now leaned against the wall of his sitting-room. Even those god-damned paintings had made her cry!—he thought, half angrily, as he fell asleep.
He who falls asleep angrily wakes in anger, as a rule. And when the telephone by Bill Hershey’s bed went off at 3 a.m.—like a time-bomb, to his sleep-drugged ears—he reached for the receiver and said “What the Hell is it?” in furious tones. In reply he heard John Kirkland’s familiar voice asking mildly—“That you, Bill?”
“Oh, thank God!” Bill exclaimed, as fervently as he had spoken furiously two seconds before. “You both O.K.? We’ve been worried to death about you.”
“Yes—sound as bells! Sorry to call you at an hour like this, but we’ve just got in, and Alice couldn’t sleep till I’d got through to you, now we are some place where we can use the telephone.”
“Where are you?” Bill interjected.
“Sofia—The Bulgaria. Have you any news of Hopey?”
“Yes. I have her here.”
“What d’you mean, here? In Budapest?”
“Yes. She’s right here in my house, fast asleep.”
John Kirkland said “Thank God” in his turn. “What happened to her?” he asked.
“John, that’s a whole long story. I think she’d better tell it you herself. Now I know where you are I’ll get her off to you on a plane tomorrow—no, I mean today. Maybe lateish—the planes from us to you are a bit uncertain just now. I’ll call you when I have it fixed.” He paused. “This is wonderful, that you’re O.K.,” he said. “Hope’s been fretting after you terribly—she was afraid you’d have stopped over in Belgrade, and got caught in the bombing. Were you in Belgrade?”
“My God, were we!”
“Tell me quick, is the Minister really all right?—and all the staff?”
“Yes, no one hurt when we left—a miracle, really. Because Belgrade’s a mess all right.”
“How did you get out?”
He heard John Kirkland’s deep chuckle.
“Driving in a stolen car with a Yugoslav and his tart—and she was a great girl, let me tell you!—we’d all be dead right now, but for her. She’d been in Albania, and knew all the answers about invasions! But look, here’s Alice—she wants a word with you.” He chuckled again. “It was Alice who fixed up the stolen car—I wish you’d seen her at it! Come on now, Alice.”
Then it was Mrs. Kirkland’s slow voice saying—“Bill, I gather you know something about Hope. Is she all right?”
“Yes, Mrs. Kirkland—she’s as right as rain, only a bit tired. She’s here in my house, sleeping.”
“But Bill, where did she leave the train, and for what?”
“She left it at Kecskemét, Mrs. Kirkland, and to do something rather wonderful. Only she’s terribly ashamed, now, that she didn’t leave word to say she was coming back here—she was afraid you’d have been killed in Belgrade, and that it would be all her fault.”
“But why did she go back, Bill?”
“Mrs. Kirkland, she’d better tell you all that. By the way, Sam’s in Sofia—come up to cover this new war.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know where, but you’ll get him through the Legation. He’s been worrying about you, too. Maybe he’s right in your hotel.”
“Well, I don’t somehow think I’ll ask the reception for him now,” Alice Kirkland said flatly. “Now I know Hopey’s safe, I think I’ll get to bed. When will she come on here?”
“Tomorrow, Mrs. Kirkland, if we have any luck with the planes. As soon as I have something fixed I’ll call you.”
“Bill, you’re sure she’s all right?”
“Quite all right, and she’s been wonderful. Good night.”
17
When hope woke up next morning in Bill’s pretty spare room she looked round her, for a few seconds, with almost the same incredulous astonishment as when she had awoken in the Deuxième Bureau cell the morning before. Her nerves chattered at her for a little while; she rang and asked for breakfast. Bill peeped in before he went off to the Consulate, to tell her the good news that her parents were safe, and in Sofia, and added that he would fix up a plane reservation as soon as he could, so that she could go on down and join them.
The relief about her parents was immense, but her nerves started chattering again when he had gone, and she began to think about meeting Sam, perhaps that very day. She lay back on the pillows, safe, lapped in comfort, and yet confronted with a new insecurity, and a discomfort that never afflicted her during the direct surge of action that had driven her back from Kecskemét and to and fro among the police at the Penzio—as she turned restlessly on the soft mattress, between the fine sheets, she remembered with wonder how quietly she had lain down, how sweetly she had slept under the old blankets on the camp bed in the Moranskis’ room, with the corpse lying close to her on the other bed. Twisting her hands together, she struggled with the problems presented by her two worlds. How could she explain ev
erything to Sam? Need she explain at all? Oh yes, she must!—one couldn’t marry a person and live in mental dishonesty. And Hope, perhaps irrationally, still regarded it as axiomatic that she would marry Sam, because she had said she would.
Harassed by her thoughts, she got up and dressed; she walked in the tiny garden, full of sweet scents and spring flowers set out in formal beds; she wandered through the comfortable unaesthetic rooms of Bill’s house; she sought distraction in talking to Anna and Erich. Once she was startled by the sound of planes, and ran out into the garden to look; she caught a glimpse of a flight wheeling over the city before they disappeared. Presently the telephone rang. That would be Bill, and he would say when she was to start on the plane—with a pounding heart she went to it, lifted off the receiver with a slow hesitant hand, and heard Tibor Zichy’s voice, asking if he could speak to Miss Kirkland?
“Oh, hullo, Tibor.” She found she was almost too breathless to speak; from relief, perhaps.
“I am coming to see you,” the young man announced. “Bill has asked me to lunch, but he says he may be late, so I come round now. Is that all right?”
“Yes, surely, Tibor.” That was nice, that Tibor was coming; he would help her to keep the worried thoughts, that chased her like a pack of hounds, at bay, far better than Anna and Erich, kind and nice as they were. “Come right along,” she said, and then, as an involuntary afterthought—“Did Bill say anything about the plane?”
“Do you mean the planes that flew over? We do not know what they were.”
“No, I meant my plane to Sofia—Father and Mother are there, and I’m to go on to them.”
Hungarians are percipient to an extraordinary degree, and Tibor Zichy registered quite definitely Hope’s breathlessness when she first answered the telephone, and the change in her voice when after bidding him so gladly to come right along, she suddenly asked that question about the plane—there had been fear in her voice then. At first he put this down to natural nervousness about the mysterious planes over the capital, for by now the bombing of Belgrade was common knowledge; but her next words showed that it was not that. Then why should she be afraid of flying down to Sofia to rejoin her parents? What had been going on? He arrived at the villa on the Rózsa-Domb full of affectionate concern, but also full of curiosity, and a shrewd watchfulness.
Nerves, like shock, made one feel cold; this had happened to Hope that morning, and—since it was all the extra wrap she had—she had put on Litka’s terrible cheap check coat; she was wearing it when Tibor walked in, bent over her hand, and kissed it. His rapid appraising glance took in her pale face, without any make-up but powder and lipstick, the dark circles round her eyes, and also that terrible garment. What a thing for Hope Kirkland to be wearing! As he raised the cocktail which Erich had poured out for him he said, bowing to her—“Now please would you tell me what you have been doing; Bill said he could not, over the telephone. But first, where did you get this atrocious coat?”
Hope giggled weakly.
“Oh Tibor, it is great to see you! Isn’t it ghastly? It’s a Polish coat.”
“Nonsense! A Polish coat is that splendid solid affair of sheepskin, with the clipped fleece inside and the fur trimmings all round which we wear when we are going goose-shooting. Why do you call this horror”—he went over and fingered the cheap cloth—“a Polish coat?”
Hope went on giggling. Tibor’s positive lively stress on non-essentials was just what she needed at that moment—how good it was to be talking to him!
“Well, it belongs to a Pole,” she said.
“Then why do you wear it?” (This might tell him something.)
“Because the Pole it belongs to has got my coat—the grey lambskin.”
“And why must a Pole wear your coat, and you hers?”
“Well you see, she had to get out of the country, and take her brother out; it was important. And she was very like me, anyhow like enough to pass for me, in my coat and cap—so she just went.”
“In your car?” Tibor guessed. (So that was where Hope had gone from the garage—to exchange coats with some female Pole, who moreover had a brother. H’m—he was getting warmer.)
“Yes, in my car.”
“But what about papers?”
“Oh, I gave her my passport and all the car papers, of course,” said Hope airily. Then her face took on that joyous radiance that had so struck Bill Hershey. “And they’ve got clean away—through the cordon, over the frontier!—that Garner boy at Sofia saw the car go through; he told Bill. So they’re all safe!”
Tibor, being more perceptive, was even more impressed by the radiant expression on her tired, inadequately made-up face than Bill had been; he fixed her with a penetrating stare.
“Which was more important—the brother, or the girl who wore, so presumably also bought, this frightful thing?” he asked. “I cannot believe that a woman who would buy such a coat can be of any serious importance.”
“Oh yes they can—that’s just where you’re wrong! She was a splendid girl. But the important thing was what they were taking,” the girl said thoughtlessly—and then checked herself. “I’m not going to tell you a word about that, Tibor,” she said, suddenly serious, as she saw the young man’s eyes fairly popping with interest; “so you needn’t waste your time asking me.
“Very well, I shall not. All Poles live on espionage and counter-espionage; everyone knows this, and it ceases to be amusing, in the end,” he said.
“Now you’re being nasty. They’re only trying to save their country, and risking their lives doing it—which is more than some people do!” said Hope, furious colour flaming into her face.
“Doucement, doucement,” the young man said gently. “Of course they are fantastically brave, the Poles, and great patriots. But tell me about this brother—you knew him?” He felt sure that the brother, even of a girl who had had such an appalling coat, was probably the clue to all this, and to what had happened to Hope herself.
“Oh yes.”
“What was he like? Was he charming?” Tibor asked.
She didn’t answer at once. Was Stefan charming?—with his lean figure and keen lined face, his shabby old raincoat, and—so often—his steely voice and expression? No, that wasn’t the word; and moreover she didn’t know what the word was. Tibor watched her withdrawn remote expression while she sought for it. When she finally brought out—
“No, I don’t think you’d call him charming, but he was more alive than most people”—he simply ignored her actual words.
“Did you fall in love with him?” he asked, with that Central European directness which is at once so disconcerting and so engaging to the tongue-tied Anglo-Saxon races.
Hope Kirkland heard the extraordinary question with astonishment, with embarrassment; but also, amazingly, with a strong sense of relief.
“Yes, I did,” she said, quite undefensively, and as directly as he. “And the odd thing was that it was Sam who put me onto him.”
“Why is that odd?” Tibor asked.
“Because I’m engaged to Sam.”
“So. I had no idea. Well, you are engaged to a very valuable and delightful person. My best felicitations!” he said, getting up and kissing her hand again.
“Yes, I know—I mean thank you,” Hope said confusedly. “Sam’s a darling, really. But don’t you see—” She broke off, once again at a loss for words.
Tibor was seeing quite a lot. But with his customary skill he began once again on inessentials.
“I did not know that Sam took part in this Polish programme—that is interesting.”
“Nor did I, till he planted me with two faked Yugoslav passports in a box of chocolates, when I went down to Belgrade to see him off!” said Hope with energy.
“No! Did he? How fascinating! Who was the second one for?—since you had to give your own to this sister who had so little dress-sense?”
Hope laughed out aloud. How comfortable Tibor was!
“For his cousin, the girl’s fianc�
�. But I think it’s more money than dress-sense that she’s short on,” she said; then, rather soberly, “Tibor, you haven’t an idea how those people live!”
He let that alone, pursuing his own thought.
“Sam must have thought this whole thing very important indeed, to let you get involved in it,” he said.
“That’s what Stefan said—he hated my being mixed up in it all.”
“Ah, his name is Stefan, is it? A great name.” He studied her face, to which letting that name slip out had brought a faint blush. Poor child—poor nice, young, good child! What terribly heavy weather the English and Americans made of such very natural things as falling in love out of step, so to speak.
“Does this seem to you terrible, that while you were engaged to Sam you have fallen in love with somebody else?” he asked.
“Why Tibor, of course it does. Wouldn’t it to anyone?”
“No. Certainly not to me. These things happen. In any case so much depends really on how far you were in love with Sam when you got engaged to him, and in what way.”
She fairly jumped in her chair.
“But that’s just what I’ve been asking myself! Tibor, do you know you really are marvellous at understanding things?”
“Not marvellous at all—just sensible, and unhypocritical. You Anglo-Saxons go in for such fantastic hypocrisy about love, which is of its nature such an honest thing,” the young man said coolly. “But will you not tell me all about it—first Sam, and how you came to get engaged to him, and then about this Stefan person, and why you fell in love with him? There must be some facts, or factors, which will explain it. Only do please be quite honest, or neither I nor you will ever be clear about it all; and that you should be clear about it to yourself is the truly important thing.”
Gratefully, simply, she began to tell him. Her long meditations while she kept watch by Mme Moranska’s corpse had already begun to make her own feelings rather clearer to her, and putting it into words to somebody else made it, as always happens, clearer still: for though she did not choose her words very well, her intention of sincerity was complete. There was something positively bleak in her recognition of the immature, fun-seeking quality of the feeling she had had for Sam, which led to their engagement—“in fact, I see it now, Sam himself was the only valuable thing about it,” she said at one point. “Sam’s a grand person—that’s why it’s such a shame.”