by Ann Swinfen
‘Lovely to see you, darling,’ said Kate. ‘Do you want to have a shower and crash out on your bed, or do you want to come with me?’
Beccy had admired her room, newly decorated by Kate. It had seemed thoroughly depressing on her one previous flying visit to Craigfast House. Now she had planted herself on a kitchen chair and looked disconcerted as Kate turned towards the door.
‘Why are you rushing off? Can’t you stay for a cup of tea and a natter? I’ve only just arrived.’
‘I know, and I’d love to, but I promised Linda I’d go back this afternoon and help. She’s opening tomorrow and half the stock hasn’t even been unpacked yet.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘Linda. My friend Linda from primary school. Who’s done up Harbour Steps Cottage and is opening it as a bookshop. Tomorrow. Darling, I wrote and told you every single thing about it.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Beccy vaguely, who had a blurred memory of half reading a letter from her mother, then throwing it aside when friends collected her to go to the pub one evening. She couldn’t remember what she had done with the letter, which had arrived about a fortnight ago. She rather thought she had never finished reading it.
‘So what is it you’re going to be doing? Unpacking books and putting them on shelves?’
‘That’s it. We could natter while we do it, if you come too. And there will almost certainly be a cup of tea.’
Beccy had been hoping to have her mother to herself before Stephen and Roz came home from school, but she agreed, somewhat ungraciously, to come down to the bookshop and help.
They found Linda kneeling on the floor surrounded by cardboard boxes, some still tightly bound with plastic tape, others open, with piles of gleaming new books glimpsed within. She was holding a sheaf of invoices in one hand and pushing back her cascade of red hair with the other. There was a young man with her, quite a personable young man, holding a stiff new reporter’s notebook and looking at her hopefully.
‘We’ll be featuring the opening of the bookshop in tomorrow’s Dunmouth and Welbank Herald,’ he was saying. ‘It should help to get you off to a good start. And the photographer will be here soon.’
Linda looked around wildly. The cottage resembled a cross between a car boot sale and the aftermath of a hurricane.
‘This is Chris Harding,’ Linda said to Kate. ‘He’s in his first week as a junior reporter on the Herald.’
‘How do you do,’ said Kate, shaking his hand. ‘This is my daughter, Beccy.’ She glanced at the heaps of crumpled brown paper and the unopened boxes. ‘I don’t think you can take a picture yet, do you? Unless you want to wait until we’ve finished.’
‘We could photograph the front of the shop, if you like, instead of the inside. Your sign and the lettering on the windows look really good.’
‘I’ll need to finish doing the window displays,’ said Linda, but more calmly.
‘I could help with that,’ said Beccy, noticeably reviving in the presence of Chris. ‘Show me which books you want to use and I’ll arrange them.’
‘While you do that I’ll go round to the jewellers,’ said Kate, ‘and pick up Mrs Hennage’s ring. Then we can give it to her this evening.’
Beccy, who had been told the story of the ring on the way down into the village, repeated it to Chris. His face lit up.
‘That’s fantastic. We could do a feature on that. “Lost Ring Found After 75 Years!” We’ll get a picture, too. Tell you what – why don’t you have a presentation of the ring as part of your opening ceremony tomorrow? Then as well as this week’s preview article about the shop opening, we could do a follow-up featuring the opening itself and telling the story of the ring.’
Kate could see that Linda was too tired and worried to be able stand up to this enthusiastic young man’s energy. She laid a restraining hand on his arm.
‘Mrs Hennage is quite an elderly lady, you know, and not very robust. I don’t think you should think of putting her through a lot of publicity. At first we were simply going to hand the ring back when we found it, but we decided to get the jeweller to clean and polish it, and check that the setting of the stone is quite secure. He’s putting it in a pretty ring box for her as well, and we’re just going to take it round to her this evening. No drama. No fuss.’
He really was quite a nice young man. He capitulated at once, but asked if he might come along that evening. ‘I promise I won’t harass her. I’ll just get the details – the names of the family, the date the ring was lost and so on. And –’ he grinned wickedly – ‘people aren’t as averse as you might think to having their pictures in the paper. I’ll ask her if I can send the photographer round to take a picture.’
In return for getting his way, at least partially, Chris rolled up his sleeves and helped them unpack the books, put them on the shelves, and clear away the debris. Later, when they were all sitting in Linda’s newly completed kitchen, he told them about himself. Mainly, Kate suspected, for Beccy’s benefit.
‘I’ve just finished a diploma in media studies. I think the exams went all right.’ He touched the wooden table, laughing. ‘I was lucky enough to land the job with the Herald a couple of months ago and they wanted me to start straight after my exams, because they have two people going on holiday next week. So here I am.’
‘It must be great to be finished with exams,’ Beccy groaned. ‘I’ve got two more years to go. Uni is great, but exams are the pits.’
‘Of course, the Herald is just a start,’ said Chris. ‘I want to join a national paper eventually. But it has a good reputation as a stepping stone. People reckon you’ve been trained well if you start at the Herald.’ He drained his mug of tea. ‘Yes, thanks, some more would be great. Awfully thirsty work, unpacking books! Of course, there’s another reason why I’m glad I got the Dunmouth job.’ He paused.
‘What’s that?’ Beccy asked, on cue.
‘I did a degree in east European studies before I did the diploma, and I got very interested in a Hungarian woman poet who is supposed to live somewhere around here. She writes mostly in Hungarian, publishing in magazines run by exiles – though now that eastern Europe has opened up she’s starting to be published in Hungary itself. Hungarian wasn’t one of my languages, but I’ve read her work in translation, and the few things she’s done in English. I suddenly made the connection after the Herald offered me the job. Nobody has ever been able to do an interview with her, and I thought if I could pull that off, it would really make the big boys sit up and take notice.’
‘Terrific!’ said Beccy, enthusiastically.
‘Mmm.’ Linda’s mind was still on tomorrow’s opening.
But Kate felt a sudden instinctive surge of alarm, seeing in her mind’s eye a slender, upright figure wading towards her out of the sea, with her hands overflowing with the beautiful ruffles of the sea-lettuce.
* * *
The ceremony of presenting Mrs Hennage with her ring took place at seven o’clock that evening. Linda’s two children, Emma and Lucy, had arrived home from primary school and been taken round to a friend’s house for tea. Kate and Beccy walked down the hill again after Stephen and Roz got back from Charlborough. Beccy seemed more willing to come with her mother this time.
‘I thought you had a steady boyfriend already,’ said Kate delicately, as they reached Mrs Hennage’s house, one of the modernised cottages in Fisher Gate. ‘Jerry, isn’t he called?’
Beccy smiled blandly. ‘Do him good to learn he can’t take me for granted,’ she said.
Mrs Hennage welcomed the addition of the young people to the party, producing two more glasses of dark, sweet sherry, and passing round home-made cheese straws. She answered Chris’s questions and agreed imperturbably to having a photograph taken. When Linda handed her the black velvet ring box, however, she became very quiet, and sat down in a chair by the window. Her hands, caressing the box, were trembling. She fumbled over the catch and when the lid sprang open and the ring was revealed, gleaming ag
ainst the white satin lining, she groped in her sleeve for a handkerchief. They had all been watching her eagerly, but now turned away, a little abashed.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Mrs Hennage. ‘It’s very silly of me. But I can’t tell you what this means to me. So many of my family and friends gone, and now this little bit of my childhood coming back to me. Bless you, both of you, my dears.’
Later, when they were standing outside the front door of the cottage, Chris said he must rush off to the office. Friday was their busy night, with the Herald coming out on Saturday, and though he had filed his story about the bookshop opening he was needed as general dogsbody until midnight at least.
‘I’ll see you all at the grand opening tomorrow,’ he called, as he started off down the street at a fast lope.
Linda left to fetch her daughters and Kate and Beccy started the climb up the hill. Beccy drew her mother’s arm through her own and glanced over her shoulder at the red bars of the sunset lying across the sky upriver.
‘Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. You know, I think I might find this summer in Dunmouth quite tolerable after all.’
* * *
After dinner István, Magdolna and József sat outside on a wooden bench, with their backs to the sun-warmed wall of the house and their faces to the river. József had brought out glasses and a bottle of Tokay, and they sipped the fine sweet wine in a contented silence which did not require conversation. From the rough meadow behind the village they could hear András and his friends kicking a football, and from the open window of a neighbouring house came the sound of a radio programme playing gypsy music. István could make out, as well as the fiddles and a small drum, the sound of a cimbalon. They were playing the plangent, repetitive refrains of the lassu, which brought to his mind the tragedy of old battles and lost sons and lovers. The air was still heavy with the heat of the day, but a faint breeze seemed to rise off the river as if it were exhaling long slow breaths.
‘You will be glad to have Anna back,’ said István, holding out his glass for József to refill. ‘When the law faculty closes for the summer.’
‘She may not come home,’ said József. He was a slow, quiet man, with a pipe usually held in the corner of his mouth, unlit. ‘She thinks she will get a job and stay on for the summer in Budapest. There’s a lot of confusion over student grants, with the change of government this spring. She wants to be sure that she can complete her studies, and she knows we can’t give her much. Magdolna’s work may be highly praised by the critics, but the galleries keep three-quarters of the selling price of her pieces for themselves.’
Both men smiled fondly at Magdolna, who was sitting between them. There was a smear of whitish clay on her cheekbone which neither of them had mentioned. It gave her round, serene face a slightly rakish air.
‘If I can help at all,’ said István, ‘I hope you’ll let me. Now that László has finished his studies, I have no one else to spend my money on, apart from your two.’
‘No, no.’ Magdolna patted his knee. ‘It is not a serious matter yet. Anna is very independent and does not want to be a burden to us. Odd, isn’t it, that we had our education paid for, under the communist regime? It is one of the penalties of freedom, I suppose. Now the students are free to say whatever they like, but they may need to earn the money to pay for their own education.’
‘Well, it’s the same for us farmers,’ József pointed out. ‘It used to be that the Soviets took all our produce and paid us badly for it – or paid us by so kindly stationing their garrisons here. Now we are producing more than ever, but they have no money to pay, so we have to compete with the West. There is good and bad in everything.’
The music coming from the other house had changed. The gypsies had moved on to the second part of the performance, the friss, with its strong martial rhythms that made you want to tap your feet in time to the beat.
‘More good than bad,’ said István firmly. ‘A little financial tightening of belts will do the country no harm. It’s a small price to pay. What I don’t like is the way some of the old Party members have been resurfacing, wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing – pretending that what we need is their brand of “socialism”: the “good old days” when the State took care of everything, including what we were allowed to think and say.’
‘Now, now,’ said Magdolna soothingly, ‘you don’t have to convince us. Relax a little now that you are home. You’re looking tired. You’ve been overworking.’
‘Not too much. But I do wish I could stay longer than Tuesday.’
‘You will come for your month’s holiday later on, won’t you?’
‘Try to keep me away!’ István laughed and stretched out his long legs. ‘Now then, when are you going to tell me about what you found under the barn floor?’
His sister and brother-in-law exchanged glances, then József got up and went into the house. He returned with a black metal box, about two feet long, a foot wide and a foot high. It had been padlocked, but the lock had been prised open with some tool, and the bright metal shone through the black paint where it had been scratched and dented. József laid the box on István’s lap and sat down again beside his wife.
When István lifted the lid, he saw, in the light falling from the window, that the box contained mainly papers – letters, notebooks, newspaper cuttings and pamphlets. There was also a small leather jewellery case. He opened this first. It contained a heavy fob watch on a triple interlinked chain in three kinds of gold.
‘It is Papa’s watch,’ said Magdolna. ‘Grandmama never knew what had become of it. She thought the soldiers had stolen it. But Mama must have had it all the time, and kept it secret.’
‘Perhaps Papa hid it himself.’
‘No, no. Some of those papers are later, from the time after he was taken away. The earrings are Mama’s too. I remember her wearing them, and I was only two years old when he was taken, so all these things must have been put there later by Mama.’ Magdolna clasped her hands tightly together, but her face was calm. ‘Look at the locket hanging on the watch chain.’
István inserted his thumbnail in the tiny catch and opened the locket. It was about two inches high, with a delicate frame and glass on both sides. Under the glass on the left lay a curl of black hair. On the right there was the photograph of a beautiful young woman, with dark hair piled up on her head in an old-fashioned style. Her lips were slightly parted and curled in a secret smile.
‘It isn’t Mama,’ said Magdolna.
‘No.’ István gazed at the photograph, then raised his eyes and looked out over the river, where the outlines of the islands had blurred into the river with the nightfall. He could hear the musicians change tempo again. With a swoop and a heart-stopping leap of melody that never failed to move him they plunged into the csárdás.
‘No. It must be his wife.’
Silence fell over them. They knew very well that their father had had a wife. That he had lost her, but did not know if she was alive or dead, so he had never been free to marry their mother, although they had lived together as man and wife for seven years. Living rough in the woods, in a partisan camp, their mother had cared nothing for the conventions. But later, when they were children in Szentmargit, Magdolna and István had felt it keenly.
‘What are the other papers? Is this Papa’s underground newspaper?’
‘Yes. And the issues Mama produced after he was gone. The cuttings are from government papers – during the war, Nazi papers, and afterwards, Stalinist ones. They are reports of sabotage and revenge taken, or demonstrations put down. I suppose they must be operations our parents were involved in.’
István fingered the yellowed newsprint abstractedly. It was all so long ago. The Nazis were gone. Stalin was dead and reviled even by his own country. He caught sight of a picture of tanks in Heroes Square in Budapest. The date on the paper was November 1956. It must be one of the last cuttings.
‘And these other things? What are they?’
‘A few letters fro
m friends. A few our parents wrote to each other when they were apart – which wasn’t often. Those brown school notebooks are a diary Papa kept. It starts at the end of 1938 and goes on to 1948, just a day before they came for him.’
‘I would like to read that.’ István felt a sudden bitter yearning, which he had not experienced for years, but which used to seize him often when he was young. He had been four when his father was taken away and he retained only a few hazy memories of him. All his life it had itched like an unhealed scar. As a child he would make up stories of how his father would come back. István would be running across the village square and suddenly a tall man would appear from the woods below the great house. They would know each other at once, and his father would catch him up in his arms, and then they would walk down to Grandmama’s house, striding along together. For a long time he had clung on to this dream. Sometimes people did come back from the gulags. But gradually, as he had grown up, the dream had faded, and he came to accept that he would never know his father.
‘There’s something else,’ said Magdolna, ‘and I don’t know what to do about it.’ She got up and went into the house.
István raised an eyebrow at József, who had remained silent all this while.
‘She will explain,’ he said. ‘She is very troubled about it.’
Magdolna came back with another letter, which she had set aside. It was newer than the others, a blue airmail envelope with slanting red lines printed round the edge. It was addressed to their father, care of the priest in the village, and it was dated October, 1956.
‘It’s from his daughter,’ said Magdolna, who could not contain herself long enough for him to read the letter. ‘She says they have tried repeatedly to reach him since the end of the war, but their letters must have gone astray. She thought she would try again, because this time the letter might get through – and of course, it did.’