The Tightening String

by Ann Bridge

  ‘It might come to that’ Sir Hugh replied, laughing.

  Rosina was a regular Boy Scout about ‘being prepared’ and she took the Minister’s remark about walking quite seriously; indeed other members of the staff, she found, were all discussing that possibility, among others – though laughing about it as he had done. She made her dispositions. She had a large pigskin bag with a zip top and strong handles, and in this she proceeded to accumulate what she thought would be most useful on a journey of several hundred miles, on foot or otherwise. A set of spare underclothes, a thin blouse, a sweater; three pairs of ankle-socks and two of light string-soled shoes, which she preferred for walking in; handkerchiefs, a first-aid case. First aid made her think of health needs, in a large party, and in went a bottle each of Chlorodine, Aspirin and quinine; a bottle of gin in case anyone’s kidneys went wrong, of whisky against chills, of brandy as a restorative, and of rum as an all-purposes cheer-bringer. Cigarettes of course – 500, in those handy little sealed tins of fifty, as supplied to Legations; matches, and a bottle of lighter-fuel. What else? Some plain chocolate, and two or three aspirin-phials full of salt; finally, a last notion, she made a corner for a small aluminium saucepan.

  When the bag was full, zipped, and locked Mrs Eynsham lifted it, consideringly. It was far too heavy for anyone to carry, if it should come to walking. Sling it on a stick, and let two people carry it so? Possible. Then she had an idea. David’s aunt, old Countess Pongracz, had been mad on gardening, and used to possess one of those baskets on wheels with a walking-stick handle to cart her weeds about in – to the astonished mirth of her Hungarian gardeners. If it still existed it would be the very thing – and she drove out to the old lady’s house on the Rosza-Dom and called on her. The poor old Countess was by now rather gaga, but she remembered the wheeled basket, and said that of course dear David’s wife could borrow it. She sent for the gardener – she seldom left the house any more – and gave her orders; the man led Rosina to a tool-shed where, dusty and rusty, but still mobile if pushed, stood the weed-basket, which she took home in the car. Her chauffeur cleaned it, and oiled it till it ran smooth and free; it held the pigskin bag nicely, and was stowed in the back of the garage. With her supplies locked in the bag under her bed-table, and its transport secured, Mrs Eynsham, in spite of her husband’s mockery, felt ready for any emergency.

  But she was rather busy for several days – opening Baroness Weissberger’s bazaar, entertaining for the Minister, social doings of one sort or another; it was nearly a fortnight before she got round to the far more essential job of getting herself and Lucilla vaccinated and inoculated – Rosina was poor on priorities. When she eventually rang up the doctor who attended the Legation he was much distressed.

  ‘The small-pox is easy – I can do that. But there has been such a demand for the typhoid inoculations that I have no cultures left; so many people have asked for them: the French, the Dutch, the Belgians, even some of the Americans. None is left in Budapest.’

  ‘Oh how awful! How soon can you get more? Can’t you give us anything now?’ Rosina asked desperately, rightly feeling guilty at her negligence.

  ‘Gnädige Frau what I could get is some of what we give to our troops when they are going on manoeuvres; but this is very severe – it has the anti-cholera in it also.’

  ‘Oh, never mind the cholera! Can you have that today? Right – we’ll be down about five-thirty, my daughter and myself.’

  In fact the Hungarian Army inoculations were very severe indeed. The doctor wanted to put them into the trunk, but Mrs Eynsham unwisely insisted on having hers in her thigh; the result was that her whole leg swelled up to an enormous thickness, and was extremely painful-for some days she could only walk and with difficulty. Lucilla had much less discomfort – the doctor had been quite right, as doctors so often are. But it passed off in time – in fact just in time, for a few days after Rosina was mobile enough to swim again, about the third week in July, when she and Lucilla were already having raspberries with their coffee and rolls down by the bathing-pool on the Margit-Insel, the cards began to arrive.

  Chapter 4

  The first postcard with the printed heading ‘OFLAG VII C’ to reach the Legation was addressed to the Minister; it came from a Second Lieutenant in the Highland Light Infantry whose sister had once acted as secretary to Sir Hugh; the writer asked for food, cigarettes, socks, a shirt, and above all a pair of pyjamas. Next day Colonel Morven had three cards from officers in the Cameron Highlanders, his own regiment; these, rather more literate, made the same requests, and explained the reason for the straits the prisoners were in. The Division had been sent to Germany practically in what they stood up in: three weeks’ march to the Dutch coast, just west of Antwerp, had finished their socks (besides leaving them almost starving) and though some enterprising officers had tried trailing their single shirt overboard on their voyage up the Rhine by barge, to wash the sweat out of it, this had been frowned upon by their captors. In fact they were hungry, filthy, and in need of almost everything – and very concerned about their men, from whom they had been separated. ‘We gather they are being sent to another type of camp, called STALAGS’ one officer wrote. ‘I wish we could have stayed together.’ The day after that Lucilla, at last, got a card from Hamish, from OFLAG XXX, asking for food, clothing, and cigarettes. ‘Well anyhow he’s alive’ Lucilla said. ‘But we simply must send him some clothes and eats, Mummy.’

  Everyone in the Legation felt the same; and within a few days the trickle of cards became a flood. But sending parcels to British prisoners in Germany was easier said than done. Enquiries from the Hungarian Post Office were discouraging – ‘Unless, of course, parcels are sent through the Red Cross. These go Fracht-frei (free of charge) and have a priority.’ But the Hungarian Red Cross, when approached, was cagey and not very co-operative – and the British Red Cross was in London, hundreds of enemy-held miles away.

  At this point Mrs Eynsham remembered Prince Tereny’s promise to help her if she ever needed it, and she rang him up. He was coming to Budapest next day, and called on her; she explained the difficulty.

  ‘I will have a little talk with the Old Boy’ Prince Willie said. He did. British prisoners-of-war in Germany from 1940 to 1945 owe more than they know to that old half-Scottish aristocrat. The result of his intervention with Admiral Horthy, the Regent, was that the Hungarian Red Cross received instructions to supply their own labels for parcels to British P.O.W.s in Germany, and to send a man up to the Legation as required to affix their own leaden seals. The first parcels ever to reach the P.O.W. camps in Germany were so sent off.

  But as the cards continued to pour in it became obvious that an effort on a much larger scale would be needed. Hungary was herself suffering from severe shortages of many essentials, mainly as a result of the British blockade of Central Europe; tea was almost unobtainable, coffee cost approximately forty-five shillings (or six dollars fifty) per pound. The export of all woollen goods was forbidden, since Hungary, which breeds cattle rather than sheep, had run out of wool – so how to get shirts, or wool to knit socks? The only permitted exports were luxury products like paté de foie gras, very high-class chocolates, and smoked goose-breast – a delicious edible; these the Legation staff sent off under the cover of the Hungarian Red Cross label, adding tins of their own ration of cigarettes – but clearly this would not suffice. And the men in the STALAGS – something must be done about them too.

  Martha Beckley and Colonel Morven decided to form a Committee to deal with supplies for the P.O.W.s – it met, that first time, in his room in the Chancery. Besides the Military Attaché and Martha there was Mrs Chalgrove, the Consul’s wife, Wheatley, the First Secretary, with his wife, Mrs Eynsham, and Mrs Morven. Horace Wheatley was tall and thin, and stooped; he had a curious habit of waving his long hands about like fins or flippers, and usually spoke in a rather low soft voice – these characteristics frequently misled people into underestimating him. In fact he was highly intelligent, a tiger fo
r work, and capable of ruthless determination. His wife, Eleanor, was equally misleading: small and pretty, with a sort of fair elfin charm, her manner usually displayed an easy affectionate friendliness; but she was as stupid as sin, as obstinate as a mule, and rather spiteful – in fact she constituted Number One problem in the small Legation community. Mrs Eynsham, that first morning, noted her presence with dismay; she guessed, rightly, that Eleanor Wheatley had insisted on taking part in anything that was going on.

  Gina Morven, on the contrary, was a delight – in every way the greatest possible contrast to Mrs Wheatley. She was Italian; the Colonel had married her when he was Assistant Military Attaché in Rome. Short, dark, crisp of hair and crisp of manner, well-read and well-dressed, she was an asset, not a liability; she always had a contribution to make to any conversation, generally a highly original one, and the more entertaining for being expressed in the most execrable English, practically the music-hall version of Italian speech. She had now been living with a British husband for ten years, much of the time in Great Britain; but she was still incapable of pronouncing the letter H, and added that redundant A to most words which ended in consonants. Everyone wondered why she had not troubled to learn her husband’s native tongue – but they wondered still more how the vivid creature contrived to remain so devoted to her rather heavy Hugo. In fact, everyone loved her.

  By now all those present at that first momentous committee, except Gina, had received cards from OFLAG VII C; Mrs Eynsham had even had one from STALAG XX, one of the camps containing ‘other ranks’ – from a corporal who had been underkeeper on her Father’s estate in Scotland before he joined up. ‘The nights are cold here, for all it’s summer’ Corporal Fraser wrote – ‘and we have but one blanket, a poor thin thing; and we sleeping in our shorts.’ When she read this out it added to the general sense of urgency and desperation. The prisoners had got to be helped, but in Hungary the wherewithal to satisfy their needs simply did not exist. After a good deal of rather fruitless discussion Martha said, in her cool firm voice – ‘Mrs Eynsham, couldn’t you go down to the Balkans, and see what you can scrape up from the Jugs and the Bulgars? – or even the Turks? You’d do it very well, and you could get away. Lucilla can look after her Father.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose she could’ Rosina said, rather hesitantly, startled by the idea. To everyone’s surprise Gina put in her oar.

  ‘Meessis Eynsham, you must do zis! Unless someone goes to ozzer countries, and get food-a, it is absolutely’opless.’

  ‘Oh bless you, Gina’ Horace Wheatley said, with a warmth rather unusual to him. ‘You’re quite right. Mrs E., will you go?’

  ‘Just one moment, Horace’ Colonel Morven put in. ‘I agree that Mrs Eynsham would form an admirable buying commission of one – but how is it all to be financed? I suppose most of us could shell out something, but not on the scale that’s going to be necessary – nothing like it.’

  The Consul’s wife, a quiet unassuming woman, here observed that her husband had told her to say that several of the English business-men still in Budapest would be willing to contribute to any fund set up for prisoners’ relief.

  ‘That’s excellent, Mrs Chalgrove’ Martha said.

  ‘And a lot of the wives will be glad to knit – socks, or whatever is needed’ Mrs Chalgrove pursued, encouraged.

  ‘But what earthly use is it their being willing to knit, when there’s no wool to knit with?’ Eleanor Wheatley asked scornfully.

  ‘Don’t be bloody-minded, Eleanor’ her husband said, in his low slow tones, as calmly as if he were offering her some toast. ‘It may be a great deal of use when Mrs Eynsham sends us back hundredweights of wool. You keep them ready for action, Mrs Chalgrove.’ Mrs Chalgrove, who had appeared rather dashed, looked relieved; Rosina looked startled; Colonel Morven looked positively appalled.

  ‘But my good fellow, Mrs Eynsham can’t go off buying wool by the hundredweight without knowing how it’s to be paid for. I’ve already telegraphed to find out if we can get anything from regimental funds. Mrs Chalgrove, did your husband give any figure for these local contributions?’

  Mrs Chalgrove, dashed again, said No.

  ‘Well ask him to find out, will you? That would be a great help’ the Colonel said politely. ‘But we ought to have a budget, and settle how much Mrs Eynsham can spend before she starts’ he told the committee firmly. ‘Agreed?’

  During these interchanges Rosina had had time to recover from her initial surprise and hesitation – she had begun to see the thing as a whole: the need of those men in the camps, and the possibility of meeting the need; her imagination was alight. Now she spoke.

  ‘No, Hugo – not agreed. I’ll go, but I’ll go without any budget. I shall get whatever I can, on tick; we can think about raising the money afterwards.’

  ‘But how?’ the Colonel asked.

  ‘By begging, for one thing. I’m a good beggar!’

  Gina Morven jumped up and hugged her.

  ‘You are good everysing! I know you get-a ze money!’

  On the whole the committee approved of this rather optimistic approach, though Eleanor Wheatley muttered to Mrs Chalgrove that she didn’t see why an Italian had to be so keen on helping British prisoners. ‘Shut up, Eleanor’ Martha Beckley said coldly – she had overheard. ‘Learn to knit!’

  Few husbands are enthusiastic at the prospect of their housekeeper leaving her job for an indefinite time. David Eynsham was not, though he raised no serious objections. The objections arose in Rosina’s own conscience. Ought she to leave her daughter, with all these ‘wolves’ about? – and still more leave her delicate and over-worked husband? She puzzled over it the whole of that night. But Lucilla was fundamentally sensible, and the servants were so good that they would see to every comfort for David. But who would see to any comforts for the prisoners? This was a job she felt, with a sort of practical humility, that she could do – and she decided to do it. Three days later she set off.

  The Minister was most positively co-operative; he sent word to the Legations in Belgrade and Sofia, and to the Consultate-General in Istanbul, that she was coming, and the nature of her errand, and asked them to help her in every way. In fact Mrs Eynsham knew the Ministers in both the Balkan posts slightly; they invited her to stay, and promised all assistance. By the time she left the financial situation was already brighter; most members of the staff had begun to receive cheques from prisoners’ relations, begging them to send what they could from neighbouring Hungary to poor Tom, or Dick, or Harry. Unwisely, as it proved, most of the staff instructed their banks in London to place these cheques in a special ‘prisoners relief’ account – later the War Office froze them all.

  ‘Well, we shall miss you, but this is a job well worth doing’ Sir Hugh said to Rosina before she left. ‘I’ve telegraphed to the Red Cross asking if they can help with funds.’

  ‘Oh good. Anyhow the American Minister has given me a thousand dollars already – in notes!’

  ‘No! Well bless you – take care of yourself.’

  The Minister in Belgrade was a shrewd little bachelor, with a rather unusual capacity for assessing situations.

  ‘I’ve got all the local ladies coming at eleven for coffee’ he told his guest at breakfast – the night train from Budapest got in early in the morning. ‘If one is going to drive a coach-and-four through an Act of Parliament, women are the ones to do it – and knowing you, Mrs Eynsham, I feel fairly confident that you will be up to some illicit activities.’

  ‘Oh, I hope not! What I should like, Sir Monty, is a list of your prohibited exports, here. Then I shall know how to go on. In Hungary it covers practically everything.’

  ‘I’ll get the Commercial Attaché to produce that’ Sir Montague said. ‘And I’ve arranged for the M.A. to come in and see you at ten-thirty – he may have some ideas. You’ll come tonight to the concert? Prince Paul will be there. How’s David?’

  Belgrade proved to be a rather fruitful source of supplies. Yugoslavia had an
infant canning industry which produced a quite tolerable tinned goulasch – Mrs Eynsham sampled it; and the export of this was not only permitted but encouraged. In the recent process of industrialisation mills had also been set up to spin Macedonian cotton into flannellette; but owing to war-time difficulties of transport the manufacturers had stocks on their hands which they were not only willing but anxious to dispose of, and Mrs Eynsham at once thought of pyjamas. But here the Military Attaché had something to say.

  ‘Whatever you buy, Mrs Eynsham, you must get it dyed khaki, or the prisoners won’t be allowed to have it. I know this from’ – he hemmed. ‘Well my German opposite number here is a splendid chap; we used to be great friends, and he knows how upset I am about the 51st Division being mopped up. He tipped me the wink.’

  ‘How good of him!’ Rosina considered. ‘Are there dye-works here who can do khaki?’

  ‘I think so; but ask Mrs. Henderson – she knows everything. And by the way, when you’re shopping here don’t speak German, or you’ll get nowhere. These people absolutely loathe the Huns!’

  Mrs Eynsham spent a strenuous week in Belgrade. With the help of the local ladies, who also formed themselves into a committee, she placed orders for tinned goulasch, and arranged with Mrs Henderson’s help for the dyeing khaki of several hundred metres of flannellette. But all these things had got to be conveyed to Budapest somehow.

  ‘Look, Sir Monty dear, can’t the K.M.s bring some of this stuff along when they come up from you to us? Fatted creatures, always travelling about in single first-class sleepers – they might do a hands’ turn for the prisoners.’

  The Minister laughed.

  ‘What did I say about your attempting illicit activities? King’s Messengers are only supposed to convey diplomatic bags. However, we’ll see. Anyhow, I and my staff have coughed up a very small contribution to your funds’ – and he handed her a cheque for three hundred pounds. ‘Nearly all from the staff.’