by Ann Bridge
“Oh hullo, Hope. Here you are—that’s great. Your Father and Mother were a bit tired—they were driving most of last night—so I said I’d come out and meet you. I have a car.”
When he spoke to her Hope turned quite white. She had been scanning the small group of people waiting out on the apron for two other faces, and actually never noticed Sam till he pushed forward and took her by the hand. He saw her sudden paleness, noticed the rather breathless voice in which she said, “Oh, hullo, Sam”—and he guessed that she, like himself, was using the most banal words imaginable as a screen to conceal emotion: but while he knew perfectly well what his own emotion was, an uncommonly urgent desire to take her in his arms and tell her, between kisses, how brave and wonderful she had been, he had simply no idea what might be passing in her mind. Why did she look so white, all of a sudden, when he spoke to her?
At the police check-point he produced his press pass, always a most helpful object in small suspicious countries; when Hope grubbed out her passport from her bag he noticed that it was brand new—in fact the Bulgarian entry-stamp which the official banged down under their eyes was only the second one on it, the first being the exit visa from Hungary. This one small thing brought the full measure of what she had done sharply into his mind; and as they walked forward together through the uncouth sheds and passages which seem to be an inevitable accompaniment of air travel, inspection following inspection in cheap sordid shacks, he turned to her and said—“My, Hope, you have been a wonder! I don’t know how you fixed everything, you’ll have to tell me all about it—but I can’t thank you enough. They’re safe now, the whole lot of them. I kind of forgot about Litka—I mean, I thought she’d have to stay with her Mother. But I’m glad you got her out too. What happened to old Madame?”
“Oh, she died of a heart attack, because the police were so rough with her and Litka after the boys got away over the roofs, the night the Germans put a cordon round the city and started hunting out the Poles,” Hope said, speaking more naturally on this familiar and absorbing topic. “But it was all right; when I got back I found Father Kowalski at the Sörözö, just in time—he’d brought out the thing, you know, whatever it was—and he gave her Extreme Unction, and all.”
“Gosh, you were right in it!” Sam exclaimed. “So you know the Sörözö too? But you know, I never meant to let you in for all this—I thought you’d just take them the passports, and that would end it.” He spoke apologetically.
“No, it didn’t end it,” she said slowly, turning to look him full in the eyes—the queue of passengers was held up just then for a moment at the entrance to the Customs shed. “There was quite a lot more.”
Sam was struck by something about the tone in which she said that; but precisely at that moment the queue started to move on again, and they were shoved forward into the long dirty room where suitcases were being heaved up onto wooden counters, to be opened and pawed over by small Bulgarian Customs officials. The practical intruded, and Sam dealt with it. “You got any baggage?” he asked. “I quite forgot to ask.”
“Not a thing but what I stand up in,” she answered, with a little nervous laugh. It wasn’t easy, trying to tell Sam things in this ghastly place!
“I believe your Mother has some cases or grips of yours,” he said, beginning to get nervous himself.
“Oh, has she?” Hope replied indifferently. This unnerved Sam still more. Hope was always so keen on her clothes and all that, delicately fussy in a way that used to charm him—it was like the elegant fastidiousness of a small well-bred cat.
“Then let’s go and have a brandy,” he said. A drink was nearly always a help to any situation, and Sam was beginning to feel out of his depth. He studied her across the table as they sat in the little airport bar, as flimsy and meretricious as all the rest of the place, trying to sum her up, to understand what had happened to her. She was looking awful—tired, untidy, shabby—and not seeming to care; she never pulled out her compact to fix her face, she just sat there, silent, solemn. And all of a sudden it struck him that she reminded him of something, and of something almighty strange, as they sat waiting for their drinks. After a moment or two he got it; yes!—of all things, it was of one of those tall Madonnas that he used to see in churches when he was on that industrial strike assignment in Northern Italy—the ones with hollow cheeks under immense sad brown eyes, that looked less like pictures than like tragic statues. (He was thinking of Mantegna’s Madonnas, though he didn’t know it.) But who would ever have imagined Hope, of all people, looking in the least like a Madonna? Surprised, full of an almost awed wonder in the face of some new thing that he couldn’t yet in the least place or comprehend in connection with the innocent sweet-natured pretty creature whom he already loved so well. Sam Harrison once again took refuge in the practical, the non-committal.
“That’s Litka’s old coat you’re wearing.”
“Yes. I gave her mine to get out in.” The visible effort that she made to rouse herself, to respond, caused him an unexpected jab of pain. “Aren’t we alike?” she said.
“Superficially, yes.” His eyes were still on her face. “It’s odd that I never thought of it, till Bill told me about her getting out on your papers. But”—he paused for quite a long time. “You look different now from how you used to,” he said gently—almost timidly.
“Oh gosh, I feel different!” she said, in a very small shaky voice. “I seem to be two people now, and I don’t know which! Since you went away there’ve been so many things—Stefan, and the whole lot of them, and what they’re like, and how they lived—and then darling old Madame dying, and all. I—I simply don’t know what I am, any more!” Her brown eyes, so like those of the North Italian Madonnas, began to overbrim with tears.
His perspicaciousness had made Sam Harrison a good and valued newspaper correspondent, and at this point, in the little bar at Sofia airport, and with his whole life’s happiness involved, he began to see, however dimly, all sorts of things. He took appropriate action, according to his own ideas.
“Drink up,” he said cheerfully. “Your Pa and Ma will get in a fuss if we don’t go along now.” As Hope drained her glass obediently—
“I don’t care how many people you are!” he said, lightly and yet stoutly, but with immense gentleness. “They’d all be Hopes, and I could love any number of them! Come on!” And he swung her up by the hand and led her out to the waiting car.
Author’s Note
This book was planned twelve years ago, but for various reasons was only written in the course of 1951. It treats, at first hand, of a brief period of recent history; of necessity certain real political figures are referred to by name, and in accordance with the historical facts—so far as these are as yet ascertainable, or were actually observed at the time. But the central characters round whom the story revolves—American, Polish and Hungarian—are purely fictitious, and bear no relation to any real persons, living or dead.
This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader
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Copyright © 1955
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ISBN: 9781448200825
eISBN: 9781448202140
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