The Tightening String

by Ann Bridge

  ‘Beautiful people! Let me have a go at the music. I’ll talk to old Madame Buday – she plays a Strad herself, and used to run a small private orchestra – I expect her attics are full of tattered scores.’

  Prince Willie also thought a camp orchestra a good idea, and amusing. ‘I am coming up on Monday, and will see you. Probably for musical instruments there will have to be export licences; but I can see the Old Boy. It will all arrange itself; don’t worry. How is your husband?’

  Then there was Baron Schonheim to see. Rosina went to his house after dark, in a taxi – she suggested this herself, to his manifest relief. She found an enormous pale, fair man, with a heavy careworn face; he was much more open about his fears for the future than Hugo’s father had been. ‘I can only expect the gas-chamber, if the English leave and the Germans enter here’ he said – and Mrs Eynsham, horrified, heard for the first time how Polish Jews were already faring at German hands. ‘But while there is time, let us do what we can’ he said. ‘I am glad that you can offer work to some of these unemployed Hungarian women. I shall send one of my managers to arrange this, and collect the material. Must he go to the Legation?’

  No, to her own house, Rosina told him; and the garments when made up could be returned there – she wrote down the address.

  ‘Ah, excellent.’ Then, like Baron Hermann, he opened his notecase; but he gave her 4000 pengoes.

  ‘Oh Baron, this is too much!’ She was quite overwhelmed.

  ‘Nothing is too much for England – our only hope! I have spoken to my friends; they will send also, but with no name, probably – it is safer so.’

  ‘But then I can’t thank them.’

  ‘They do not want thanks.’ Then he asked her if she had any notion of how things were going? ‘Do the Americans come in? England cannot do all, alone.’

  Rosina said she had no idea.’ No one over here can ever guess what the Americans will do, can they? I mean they’re always so busy electing a new President, or arranging pensions for War Veterans from 1918, or fussing about educating or not educating the Negroes, or just hating all colonial countries – they’re quite out of touch with the real world, don’t you think?’

  He gave a gloomy laugh.

  ‘This is true – lamentably true. But perhaps one day the “real world”, as you call it, may hit them.’

  ‘Oh do you think so? That would be splendid. Anyhow, thank you a thousand times for all your help. Could I have a taxi?’

  Next morning a small furtive-looking Jew arrived at her house, and carried off all the Yugoslav flannelette to be made up into shirts and pyjamas. And day after day envelopes, typewritten, now arrived at the Eynshams’ house, enclosing Hungarian bank-notes ranging from one or two thousand pengoes down to ten, or even five; none ever gave a name or address – the most usual covering note, if there was one at all, said: ‘From a friend of England.’ The generosity of this Hungarian response – for many who were not Jews openly gave large sums, after some skilful begging on Martha Beckley’s and Gina’s part – touched the little group of English people deeply.

  Prince Willie duly called on Rosina. ‘I have seen the Old Boy, and everything is arranged for your band! All you have to do is to send a list of your crates and their contents to the National Bank, and they will give the export licences. We do not mind sending away violas and trombones – if it were food or clothing it would be more difficult. The shortages here are getting very serious.’

  Rosina thanked him ‘Everyone is so good’ When he had gone she hurried down to the various musical-instrument shops and told each to send her a list, in triplicate, of all cases, with the weight and contents of each. Being down in Pest she seized the chance to pay an extra visit to David. She found him in tremendous spirits.

  ‘Mendze says I can come out at the end of the week, if I go fairly slow. Such a boon – I get bored in here.’

  ‘Darling, how splendid.’

  ‘That means we can still go to the Hortobagy the weekend after next, and get some duck, and please God some geese too. I rang up Hugo just now, and told him to confirm the rooms at the czarda. He thinks the geese will still be in.’

  ‘To the Hortobagy?’ She was all astray.

  ‘Rosina, you’re losing your grip! We arranged ages ago that Hugo Weissberger was to take us down to the Hortobagy to shoot that week-end, and all stay in the pub – he, and Endre, and you and I and Lucilla. I want Lucilla to see the Hortobagy; there’s nothing else like it in the world.’

  ‘But that was before she and Hugo’ – his wife began.

  ‘Oh, bother their love-affairs! Hugo won’t mind – he’s all on. You’ll enjoy it too, Rosie – there are mirages, something you’ve never seen. You’ll pack for me on Friday, won’t you?’

  ‘No, Erich shall – he’ll do it much better than I can’ Rosina said firmly. She was already wondering how she was going to manage to get through her work for the prisoners with David in the house, needing a lot of care, and on her way out she got hold of Dr Mendze.

  ‘Will you give me, in writing, exactly what my husband’s régime is to be at home?’

  ‘Madame, I can tell you. Breakfast in bed, which he must not leave before 9.45 a.m.; dinner also in bed – he should be between the sheets by 7.30. And two hours rest in the afternoon.’

  ‘Well put it in writing, please.’ Then she asked about the expedition to the Hortobagy.

  ‘Oh, for this let him relax the rules a little! What one enjoys does one good. He is really better, much better; but he must avoid great exertions – and of course any mental stress or anger can produce a recurrence. I had a patient, an old man, who died of a thrombosis because he lost his temper!’ Dr Mendze said laughing.

  ‘Oh dear! Lots of little things irritate my husband’ Rosina said anxiously.

  ‘Little things do not matter. But I shall warn him against giving way to irritation over anything.’

  Rosina, driving home through the elegant streets of Pest, more beautiful than ever in the misty autumn sunshine, then across the Danube on the Ketten-Brücke, and up the broad winding road to Buda, where the trees on the slope of the Bastion glowed golden, hoped fervently that Dr Mendze’s exhortations would prevent David from getting irritated – she had her doubts. She stopped at the Legation to go in and collect her mail; she could read it at her solitary luncheon. In the corridor she encountered the Minister.

  ‘Where are you racing off to?’

  ‘Home to lunch.’

  ‘Why not have it here?’

  ‘Because I must go through all these’ – she held out a fat bundle, round which she had slipped an elastic band.

  ‘Well at least come and have a drink first, and tell me what goes on.’ He opened the door into his study.’ Sherry, or a Martini?’

  ‘O, gin – just a plain gin and It. Don’t do anything elaborate; there isn’t time.’

  ‘You’re in a regular fuss’ Sir Hugh said, as he handed her her drink. ‘What’s it all about?’

  ‘David’s coming home, on Friday – and I know he’ll go and do all the wrong things, and get ill again’ she said distressfully.

  He lit a cigarette for her before he spoke.

  ‘Yes, I can see that that is going to be worrying for you. But it’s splendid news, all the same,’ he said. ‘He must be much better. And I suppose Mendze will tell him what he may and mayn’t do.’

  ‘I’ve said I must have that in black and white. But you know what David is – if there’s an emergency, or a rush of work, he’ll ignore everything anyone says.’

  ‘Yes.’ He smoked in silence for a few moments. ‘He ought really to go home, of course’ Sir Hugh said; ‘but honestly I should find it very hard – well really almost impossible – to manage here without him just now, with all his specialised knowledge. You wouldn’t believe what he has put through, even from his bed.’

  ‘Oh I would. Anyhow I know he wouldn’t go. And he couldn’t go alone – and how can I go?’ Rosina said incoherently. ‘No one else has
the time to do what I do – and with him at home I don’t know how I shall find the time.’ She paused. ‘It’s frightful of me, I see that, to mind his coming back – only in the nursing-home he was safe, and I was so much more free to work for the prisoners. Of course he ought to come first, and he does; but then helping them is so desperately important as well. I feel as if I were being torn in two! Oh dear, I don’t think I’m up to this job!’ She was near to tears.

  ‘You’d better have another drink’ Sir Hugh said, and refilled her glass. ‘My dear, we all have our moments de dêfaillance’ he went on. ‘I see that you are in one now.’

  ‘Yes, I am.’ How well he always understood.

  ‘Well, don’t weaken. Keep on at both your tasks; you’ll manage somehow. And take it all gently – though I know that’s easier said than done.’ He turned, deliberately, to the practical aspect. ‘Tell me, how much have you got in hand in the way of funds?’

  ‘I can’t say without looking – and I only enter the amounts under dates; never with names, even if there are names. But something like 30,000 pengoes. Why?’

  ‘Never mind – you’ll hear why later. I gather your Committee is sending vitriolic letters home to those in high places.’

  ‘I hope so. I expect mine will be much the most vitriolic! God, when can I do them? Tonight, I suppose.’

  ‘Get a report on conditions in the camps from the American Embassy in Berlin, who visit them, before you write – that will carry much more conviction’ Sir Hugh said.

  ‘Good idea.’ And even before she sat down to a belated lunch Mrs Eynsham telephoned to her friend Howard at the American Legation and asked him to ring up Berlin for a report. ‘We want to put a rocket under the Red Cross” she explained.

  ‘Are those poor devils still getting no parcels?’

  ‘From home? Not a single one! Only from us, and some by air from a splendid woman in Lisbon – privately.’

  ‘It’s damnable. O.K., Rosie, I’ll rustle them up in Berlin, and tell them to hurry – or at least send the reports from their last round, at once.’

  ‘Oh fine. Bless you.’

  Mrs Eynsham spent the afternoon checking acknowledgements of parcels received against lists of those sent, and sending lists of further parcels despatched. She went home to supper late, and tired; to her surprise and pleasure Lucilla, exceptionally, was there to share the meal, and she told her of her Father’s return at the end of the week, and of the expedition to the Hortobagy.

  ‘Yes, isn’t it lovely? I’m longing to see the Hortobagy. Hugo says it’s quite entrancing.’

  ‘How did you know? Did your Father ring you up?’

  ‘No, Hugo did.’ No embarrassment. ‘Martha’s so incredibly nice – she’s given me from mid-day Friday to mid-day Monday off for that week-end. It’s a longish drive, it seems.’

  Mrs Eynsham was more concerned with the prisoners and their needs than with the Hortobagy.

  ‘I thought I’d write to Uncle Jim’ she said presently, ‘and ask him to beat up the people in Argyll to send us cheques for the P.O.W.s. After all, lots of them are in the Argylls.’

  ‘Pure waste of time, if you ask me’ Lucilla said. ‘Uncle Jim won’t send you much money, if any; and he’ll find some splendid excuse for not taking any action. He loathes doing anything.’

  It was at 1.30 a.m., after having drafted replies to numerous Vertrauensmänner and distracted English relations, that Mrs Eynsham, in spite of Lucilla’s discouraging remarks, got down to her begging-letter to Uncle Jim, General James Cowall – who was really only a cousin, but was always called ‘Uncle’ by the Eynsham children. She reported the piteous state of the officers and men of the Highland Division in the prison-camps, and the total failure of the Red Cross to get any parcels to them. ‘But we can, from here – our parcels reach them in under a fortnight. Do please ask the V.s, and the W.s, and the X.s and Y.s and Z.s, and anyone else you can think of, to send us money; not to the Red Cross.’ She gave instructions about posting cheques to the Embassy in Lisbon per the Foreign Office, and also gave some figures. ‘A parcel of four kilos of food, chocolate and cigarettes costs fifteen shillings; that leaves half a kilo for books, clothes, a pipe or whatever, and another half-kilo for the packing, which costs a little extra; but there is no freight or postage, as the parcels all go through the Hungarian Red Cross, free. So one can send a man a weekly parcel for three months for a tenner – enough to keep him going. But we must have money to buy the stuff, quickly. They are so hungry. Please, dear Jim, do do what you can. Let people say what they will give – and then send me a wire – “Rosina Eynsham, Prodrome, Budapest”, saying “300 coming” or “600 coming” or “a thousand coming”; and I can begin buying. We have to get a lot in from outside – this country is pretty short itself.’ She ended with eager inquiries about mutual friends. Then, well after 2.30 a.m., she went to bed.

  Alas, Lucilla was quite right, as the young so often are. Far from asking his neighbours in Argyll to contribute, all the General did was to send Rosina’s appeal on to his old friend Lady Otmoor, who lived in London, and request her to discuss it with the Red Cross! In due course he sent her answer on to Mrs Eynsham, via Lisbon.

  ‘My dear Jim

  I have visited Lady R., Mrs T., and Miss N. – rather like Dickens’ Great Circumlocution Office! – but they are all very capable ladies. And it boils down to this. No one is allowed now to send Money out of the Country, Defense of the Realm Act; but of course Rosina has showed you a way! But the Red X. are having parcels sent from Canada, the Balkan States, Lisbon, and other parts. Rosina’s parcel is the same weight as that sent by the Red X, but of course not nearly as good a parcel, and costs 15/- against Red X. 10/6. Of course Rosina’s parcels might suplement’ (spelling was not Lady Otmoor’s strong point) ‘what is being sent by the Red X.’

  Fortunately this exasperating missive did not reach Mrs Eynsham for three weeks, otherwise her letters complaining of the Red Cross’s failures would have been even more vitriolic. How did the ‘capable ladies’ in Grosvenor Crescent decide that her parcels were inferior to theirs? Did they send paté de foie gras and smoked goose-breast, with their high fat content? Spam and tinned sausages, more likely. And ‘suplement’, when no Red Cross parcels were arriving from England. Also what ‘Balkan States’ were sending parcels for the British Red Cross? – and where to? She was draining them dry herself. ‘Lies, lies, lies!’ she said angrily – and she was not wrong. Dear Lady Otmoor’s letter was a classic example of what very capable ladies, when assailed, are capable.

  However well before this deplorable letter arrived, David came home, in the happiest of moods at being back in his own house, in his sunny bedroom looking out onto the golden trees on the Bastion slope; to his wife’s infinite relief he kept faithfully to Dr Mendze’s time-table, and sank contentedly into bed at 7.30 p.m. – she always went in to supervise his supper, and took coffee with him after it, gossiping over the day’s events. And then, exactly a week after his return, they all went down to the Hortobagy.

  Chapter 9

  This peculiar region lies to the east of the Tisza, the Danube’s big northern tributary – an immense, open, treeless plain, geometrically flat, unfenced and uncultivated; the saltpetre in the soil prevents the growth of any crop save grass, on which tens of thousands of horses, sheep, cattle and pigs grazed in huge flocks. There were no houses or villages save round the periphery; the whole vast area, some fifty miles long by thirty wide, was empty save for the livestock and the men who tended them, and criss-crossed in every direction by rough earthen tracks used by the animals. It was studded all over by shallow blue lakes to which, in autumn, ducks and geese came flighting in; but it was so featureless, land and water so mixed up, that those who came to shoot always had to take a guide to lead them to any given mere.

  In the heart of this strange place stood the czarda, or inn, on which the shepherds, swineherds, cowherds and horse-masters, the Czikös, who lived too far from the outlying villa
ges to ride to them, relied entirely for supplies; they both ate there, and bought their food and tobacco. This was the czarda’s raison d’être, but there were a few bedrooms for the odd sportsman who came after duck and geese. It was a long white one-storey building, in front of which, on that Friday evening, the Eynshams’ car drew up. There was no sign of Hugo and Endre, who were to have gone on ahead to arrange everything; but David had been coming there since boyhood, and was greeted warmly by the landlord, who showed them their clean simple rooms. Five minutes later the other two hurried in. ‘We had a deffetct!’ (This was the invariable Hungarian phrase for a puncture, or any sort of breakdown.) All agreed that it was too late to go out after duck that night; it wasn’t, but they were thinking of David Eynsham’s fatigue after the long drive from Budapest. However they strolled about in the low evening sunshine, admiring some splendid grey bulls with horns a yard across, penned in wooden enclosures – there was to be a sale next day. Rosina wandered off by herself to a small pond behind the inn, in which a purple heron was wading; in the half-bare willow-boughs which overhung it some extremely ugly birds, a sort of buff egret, were already going to roost; occasionally one plunged like a kingfisher into the water, and came up with a fish in its powerful beak.

  When she returned to the czarda the others were already having drinks in the garden, where a few late flowers still bloomed under clipped trees; dung from the cattle-pens had made some degree of cultivation possible here. A she-ass and its colt were wandering between the tables, pushing their grey heads and soft moist muzzles over the shoulders of the guests, trying to reach the salted apricot-kernels which were served with the local vermouth. ‘What a sweet place this is,’ Rosina said happily, observing with satisfaction that David was drinking his own whisky.

  ‘I told you you’d like it’ he said. ‘Come and have a drink.’

  ‘I’ll just wash first – I won’t be a minute.’ What she really wanted was to unpack David’s things, get out his hot bottle and so on; this she did rapidly, and then unpacked her own – in the small czarda they had to share a room, and she didn’t want to fret him by fussing round when he was in bed. This done, she went to wash in the bathroom; someone had filled the basin, and the donkey and its child were drinking from it – more delighted than ever, Rosina shooed out the pretty intruders and washed her hands.