The Tightening String

by Ann Bridge

  Rosina took his hand.’ Darling Sir Monty, bless you all. Tell them, will you?’

  Sofia was rather different. The Minister there was married, but his wife was in England coping with children’s school holidays – however he too showed a desire to help the prisoners. Bulgaria had more wool, since sheep are bred in the mountains; and being nearer to the Mediterranean coast somehow seemed to feel the blockade less – Mrs Eynsham ordered a lot of wool, after fingering samples carefully. Rather coarse, but it would make socks all right.

  ‘I thought they might be glad of some chocolate’ the Minister said, ‘so I have arranged for you to meet one of the principal manufacturers here. I expect you know that Bulgaria makes something like one-third of Europe’s chocolate.’

  Mrs Eynsham didn’t know this, but gladly went to interview the chocolate-maker. After fixing a price – a little less than cost price was all he would charge – she told him exactly what she wanted: a half hundredweight (fifty-six pounds), in half-pound slabs, every week.

  ‘I can do this’ the Bulgarian said – ‘but I shall not pack it in slabs. I shall have each quarter-kilo put up in fourteen fingers, separately wrapped in silver foil.’

  ‘Oh, but that isn’t in the least necessary’ Mrs Eynsham protested. ‘And it will make it more expensive, surely?’

  ‘No – the cost will be what we have agreed. This is something I do for your prisoners.’ He leaned back in his chair, not smiling, but with a very benevolent expression.

  ‘In the last war I was myself a prisoner for nearly two years, in British hands; and I learned then that one of the few things one could do for one’s fellow-prisoners was to make them little presents: a few cigarettes, or a piece of chocolate – naturally my family sent me chocolate from the firm. But a stick broken off a slab of chocolate – what an inelegant present this is! So in time I got them to send my chocolate wrapped in fingers – and your men now shall have it so. The English treated us well.’

  Mrs Eynsham was greatly touched by this – it was really the brightest spot among her efforts in Sofia, where in fact she experienced a certain sense of frustration. Once again the question of transport to Budapest arose; the Minister was adamant against using King’s Messengers for the purpose. Another little committee of women was formed, who undertook to buy wool and Macedonian cigarettes at intervals, and seek means of getting them up to Hungary; one or two of the wives on the Legation staff volunteered to come up themselves and bring all they could – with their laissez-passers they would have no trouble at the Customs. ‘Anyhow Budapest is such heaven, compared to this dump!’ one lively young woman said. ‘I’d adore to come, as often as ever I can.’

  The Minister, like Colonel Morven, was concerned about finance. ‘I’ve passed the hat round, naturally’ he said, ‘but the thing ought to be put on a proper basis. The Red Cross are the people who should pay – they have endless funds. Have they been approached?’

  ‘Sir Hugh was going to, when I left.’

  ‘Well I hope he will. If your parcels really reach the camps, and they know this, there ought to be no difficulty.’ (In this he was wrong, as it turned out.)

  ‘Meanwhile’ he went on, ‘for your immediate purposes I think it might be useful if you met the American Minister here. He is intensely pro-British; he served with our Navy in the last war, before America came in. He is having a birthday party tomorrow night at the Brown House – shall I ask him if I may bring you?’

  ‘Oh do by all means. What is the Brown House?’

  ‘The principal hotel here, the Bulgaria. It has a restaurant with a good dance-floor and band, but it’s cram full of Nazis; they’re trying to take over this , wretched little country, and the place is alive with them – naturally they have all congregated in the best hotel, so it’s known as the Brown House, after the original Nazi head-quarters in Munich.’

  The American Minister’s birthday party at the Brown House in Sofia was a very lively affair – unexpectedly so. The restaurant was circular in all respects: the band played on a circular platform, surrounded by an open space for dancing, which in turn was surrounded by a triple ring of tables; upstairs there was a balcony, like a dress-circle at the theatre, also full of tables for those who wished to eat rather than dance. The Minister had a large table adjoining the dance-floor; the balcony, as he pointed out to Mrs Eynsham, was filled with German officers in uniform. The food was good; Rosina, hungry after a hard day of going round to shops and factories in search of supplies, ate heartily. At a pause in the music the American diplomat clicked his finger and thumb at the bandmaster; when the man came over to the table he handed him a folded wad of leva notes, with the single word ‘Tipperary’. The bandmaster bowed; when he returned to his round platform the band struck up that tune – so valueless in itself, so symbolic to two whole generations, not only in England, but throughout Europe.

  ‘Shall we dance?’ the Minister said.

  ‘Yes, rather.’ Rosina was kindled by the meretricious music; it was nice to dance to ‘Tipperary’ in the depths of the Balkans; her heart warmed to the American. They rose and began to jig round the floor; so did several other couples. In the case of Bulgarians to do this was brave; it amounted to a political demonstration, with all those Germans sitting up on the balcony – but a few risked it, as well as some other Americans, and various Allied diplomats – soon the small floor was crowded. This annoyed the Germans, and one officer, who had drunk a good deal, presently flung an empty champagne-bottle from the balcony down onto the round orchestra dais. It only hit a music-stand before smashing harmlessly on the parquet floor; but the trombonist, a huge Bulgarian, was annoyed in his turn. He put down his instrument, ran up the stairs, seized the German officer and threw him bodily over the balcony rail onto the floor below; he landed with the astonishingly loud sound that a human body makes when it falls on something hard.

  No one was hit. The band went on playing, louder than ever, while waiters hurried to pick up the fallen man, and answer the protests of the other Germans, who came pouring down the stairs; the trombonist returned to his trombone and emitted a loud blare. Oddly, to Rosina, the dancers went calmly on dancing, still to the strains of’ It’s a long way to Tipperary’.

  ‘D’you mind?’ the American Minister asked, continuing to twirl Mrs Eynsham round.

  ‘Well, he asked for it,’ Mrs Eynsham said, though in fact she was rather shaken by this display of crude violence. Perhaps it was just the Balkan idea of clean fun, but the sight of the German officers, so ill-behaved, added force to her words when later she told the American, who raised the subject, of the reason for her mission.

  ‘Yes, your nice Minister told me about that. It’s too bad, losing all those prisoners. I and my staff would like to help – in fact I made a little collection this morning, after I heard I would have the pleasure of meeting you tonight.’ He drew out his wallet. ‘How would you like it? – in dollars or leva?’

  ‘Oh, in dollars, I think. They take dollars here, don’t they?’

  ‘Mrs Eynsham, they take dollars everywhere! And I hear you’re going on to Turkey, where they like dollars particularly. There.’ He handed her a roll of notes so large that she had some difficulty in stuffing it into her bag – when she counted them over before going to bed she found that she had been given 3000 dollars, at the then rate £750. Before she slept she scribbled a note to Martha, reporting her purchases, present and future, and the encouraging fact that between the two British Legations, and the U.S. Minister, she had already netted £1150 She set out for Turkey in high heart.

  Istanbul, however, at first proved discouraging. The ladies of the large – and rich – English colony there were already hard at work knitting – but for the crews of minesweepers. Mrs Eynsham tried to divert their activities to socks for the prisoners, without much success. They met to knit in the huge and mainly deserted British Embassy, that stately building copied from the Farnese Palace in Rome; the Ambassaor was at the new Embassy up in Ankara – if he had
to come down he lived on the official yacht, Makook. The abandoned kitchens and pantries of the great house were full of chests and crates containing the silver of most of the Ministers in South-East Europe, which they had prudently sent down to the Mediterranean sea-board to be shipped home when opportunity offered – in those days Ministers and Ambassadors were still expected to furnish their official dinner-tables with their own family possessions, as they had to supply their own table- and bed-linen, their glass and china. (Mrs Eynsham had already noticed in her scour through the Balkans that one now used, at Ministerial tables, nickel-plated forks and spoons to eat with.)

  However, in spite of the local obsession with minesweepers, she persevered with her task. She arranged sources for wool – in Turkey abundant and quite good; for sultanas and dried figs, which would help to replace sugar in the prisoners’ diet; she placed orders for considerable quantities of all these. But by now it was August; winter cold would be upon those men in Germany in three months time, and Rosina was obsessed by the picture which Corporal Fraser’s card had conjured up of the one thin blanket. If they were chilly by night in July, what would it be like in November? Escorted by one of the English ladies she made an expedition to the Bazar, that extraordinary roofed-in market, covering acres, on the European side of the Galata Bridge, to try to buy blankets. The kind woman who took her spoke some Turkish, but not very well, nor had she fully mastered the art of bargaining, so essential in Turkey – it usually involves leaving a given stall at least three times before a price is fixed. The Turkish blankets were very coarse, and heavier than they were warm; the price asked was exorbitant. Mrs Eynsham, profoundly discouraged, decided not to buy any.

  Most fortunately some Turkish diplomats, friends of hers, were at home on leave, and she went out to spend a couple of nights with them at Büyük Ada, the sea-side resort in the Marmara; when she explained her problem her hostess at once said ‘But quilts!’ And when she returned to Istanbul the Turkish lady came with her, and led her to the arcade devoted to the wadded cotton quilts under which poorer Turks sleep. Mrs Eynsham was thrilled by these. They are normally covered in thin cotton in bright Paisley patterns, but she insisted that she only wanted them in the plain strong unbleached calico in which the cotton-wool itself is quilted, and of specified dimensions: six feet ten inches long by four feet ten inches wide. She reckoned that these, folded over and sewn or pinned down one side and along the bottom would make fine warm sleeping-bags for even big men. The price finally agreed on for these articles, after some hard bargaining in Turkish, was, if bought by the thousand, sixteen shillings each, then a little over three dollars – cheaper, and far warmer, than any blanket.

  Much encouraged, Mrs Eynsham went as usual to the Embassy to cash a cheque and pick up her letters. Among these was a note from the Ambassador’s wife at Ankara, asking if she could possibly go up there for a few days to discuss supplies for the prisoners? Ankara too, it seemed, had been getting cards from the camps. By this time Rosina would have gone to the North Pole to discuss supplies, let alone secure them; she telephoned from the Embassy to suggest coming at once – she set off the following evening.

  Ankara of course is in Asia, or at least in Asia Minor; hence Turkey’s two capitals, the old and the new, are separated by the waters of the Bosphorus, so that the journey from Istanbul begins with a crossing by ferry to Haidar Pasha, the Anatolian terminus of the railway to the South. Most fortunately a junior attaché was also travelling up, and brought a dragoman (an Embassy servant) along to deal with the swarming so-called porters who fasten on travellers’ luggage and race away with it, no one knows where – unless they can speak Turkish, which Rosina couldn’t.

  So presently she found herself installed in a comfortable sleeper, and later eating an excellent dinner in the restaurant-car opposite the young attaché, as the train, leaving the shores of the Marmara, turned inland. Here too lights showed across water; Turkey, in spite of all the astute von Papen’s efforts, was still neutral, and remained so to the end. Turkey had come in on Germany’s side in World War I, only to lose all her European possessions as a result; as far as the Turkish people were concerned they had had it, in regard to Germany. But they have not received sufficient credit for the risks they took in not succumbing to the intense pressure put on them by the Reich. Within weeks of Mrs Eynsham’s visit German squadrons were installed on the Bulgarian airfield at Chataldja, only a few minutes flying-time from Istanbul, then still a city built mainly of wood – it was within their power to reduce the place to ashes in a matter of hours. There were threats, but the Turks stalled – they are very good at stalling – and in the event they did as they intended, and preserved their neutrality.

  The atmosphere in Ankara was quite different from that prevailing in Istanbul, and to Rosina much more satisfactory. There was a lot of knitting – the Ambassadress even knitted during her parties; but it was pull-overs for the prisoners, not leg-stockings for mine-sweeper crews. She and Mrs Eynsham went through the cards together; there seemed to be a lot of duplicates. ‘Lady P. writes from Athens that she has had a lot too’ the Ambassadress said, when Rosina recognised several names. ‘Do you think they can be writing to all of us?’

  ‘I shouldn’t wonder a bit. I think we’d all better make lists: you give me yours, and ask Lady P. to send me hers – and when I get back I’ll send both of you the names we’ve sent to from B.P. We don’t want to send too much to some, and leave the rest without.’

  ‘That’s a good idea. I think you had better be the clearing-house, since you can really get your parcels in through the Hungarian Red Cross – that’s so wonderful. Lady P. says that a Greek merchant has offered 100,000 cigarettes a week, but she doesn’t know how to despatch them safely.’

  ‘Tell her to send them to us, and we’ll get them off’ Rosina said confidently.’ And so we will anything that you send up.’ Then she raised the question of the quilts. The Ambassadress was enthusiastic – ‘What a splendid idea!’

  ‘I think we ought to send one to every single prisoner,’ Rosina said. ‘But that will cost quite a lot – far more than we can manage unless the Red Cross helps.’

  ‘Let’s talk to my husband about it’ her hostess said.

  The Ambassador was equally pleased with the idea of the quilts. ‘But my Military Attaché says that there are nearer 40,000 than 30,000 prisoners, he hears. At sixteen shillings per man’ – he did a rapid sum on the telephone pad – ‘that comes to £32,000. No, the British Red Cross will have to help with this. And I wonder if we can get so many. Who’s your merchant?’

  Mrs Eynsham delved in her handbag and brought out the note-book in which all her sources of supply were written down.

  ‘Oh, old Panoukian. Yes, he’s perfectly reliable, and in a very big way of business indeed. Funny how these really important merchants still work from a potty little stall in the bazaar – but that’s the local tradition. He could certainly produce 40,000 quilts within a few weeks, at the outside.’ He reflected. ‘I think I’ll telegraph to the Red Cross via the Foreign Office. The sooner we start on this, the better.’

  ‘Won’t it cost a lot to send all that mass of quilts up?’ his wife asked.

  ‘Not if we send them through the Red Crescent, consigned to the Hungarian Red Cross – all Red Cross goods are supposed to go free of charge. But I’ll check on that.’ He pressed one of several flat bells on a table; Rosina’s travelling companion appeared almost immediately.

  ‘Oh Ralph, I want someone to get onto the Red Crescent and confirm that they can consign goods in bulk to the Hungarian Red Cross in Budapest, for our P.O.W.s, with no charge for freight. I’d like the answer quickly, even if they are all sun-bathing at Büyük-Ada!’

  The young man grinned.

  ‘Right. I’ll see to that at once. That all?’

  ‘Yes, for the moment. I shall be sending a cable to the Red Cross later.’

  ‘Who are the Red Cross to answer to – you or us?’ Mrs Eynsham asked, not very gramm
atically.’ I mean, we shall want to know too, if we are going to despatch the things.’ She was thinking of where 40,000 quilts were to be packed, and who would pack them, in the already over-crowded Legation.

  ‘Yes, that’s a point. I’ll tell them to reply to Hugh, with a copy to us’ the Ambassador said. ‘Is lunch ready?’ he asked his wife. ‘I’ve promised to ride with the Foreign Minister this afternoon.’

  Chapter 5

  The Turkish Red Crescent did ultimately agree that goods for prisoners-of-war could be sent free of charge, but this was not before Mrs Eynsham’s departure, so she left Istanbul on the Simplon Orient Express with her sleeper crammed with figs and sultanas and wool. By the time she had picked up half a hundredweight of that specially-wrapped chocolate in Sofia, and several bales of khaki-dyed flannellette in Belgrade, there was no room for her in the sleeper at all; even the berth was piled high with stuff, and she couldn’t get near the basin to wash. Perfectly content, she put her despatch case under her head and slept all night on the floor of the corridor.

  Greatly to her surprise, David was at the Keleti-Station to meet her, though the train got in soon after 6 a.m.

  ‘You look fit enough’ he said, after a rather perfunctory kiss. ‘But what have you done to your dress? It’s all crumpled, and dusty.’

  ‘Oh is it? Yes, I dare say – I slept in it. David, I think we shall want a taxi as well as the car – I’ve brought rather a lot of stuff.’

  ‘What on earth is all this?’ David Eynsham asked, as bales, sacks, wooden cases, and cartons were bundled down out of the Wagons Lits coach.

  ‘Prisoners’ stuff. Haven’t I got a splendid lot?’ She studied his face. ‘You look tired, David. How are you? And how’s Lucilla?’

  ‘I’m all right. Lucilla seems perfectly fit, in spite o working all day, and dancing all night with her various admirers’ he said with a wry grin. ‘But you’ll find the house upside-down.’