The Tightening String

by Ann Bridge

  ‘Can you get food there without ordering it specially?’ Sir Hugh asked.

  ‘Oh yes, easily. I often have sandwiches and a Thermos of soup brought to the office, and so does Lucilla.’

  ‘I’m not perfectly sure about Anton’ Sir Hugh said to Martha. ‘It has been suggested to me that he is in the pay of the Gestapo.’

  ‘Oh well, they’ve got to look to the future, haven’t they?’ Martha said tolerantly. ‘We shan’t be here for ever, p’raps not for so long at all. Dear Anton! Look, Min – I’m sure your unexpected and furtive guests will be dying for eggs and bacon for breakfast, but that we can’t do; they’ll have to put up with milk and cereal and bread-and-butter.’

  He smiled his sidelong smile at her.

  ‘Most complete and admirable of Marthas, that will suffice. I don’t need to tell you anything! Who will be monitoring tonight?’

  ‘Lucilla and Phyllis.’

  ‘Can you stand Phyllis off and be there yourself?’

  ‘Of course, if you’d prefer it that way.’

  Martha hastily cancelled a date for a film that she really wanted to see, and spent a strenuous afternoon shifting furniture with Horace Wheatley, making up sheetless beds, and filling and re-filling hot-water-bottles from the kettle on which the Bulletin staff perpetually made tea. She sent Horace out to buy china: bowls, plates, cups and saucers, spoons – ‘The servants will want to take away everything they bring overnight, and then there’ll be nothing to use for breakfast. Oh what a worry!’

  ‘No knives? Are the poor wretches to live on slops?’ Horace asked grinning – he, like Martha, guessed what was afoot.

  ‘Yes – slops and sandwiches!’ Martha said with her brief laugh. ‘Oh, and bring a tea-pot, Horace – Franz will spot it at once if ours is missing.’

  From the point of view of concealment the prisoners’ hide-out could not have been better arranged. The door leading into the suite was so far inside the arched passage (where the sultanas had been unpacked) that it was impossible to see it from the glazed corridors round the main courtyard, and most of its windows gave on to the garden, which ended at the very lip of the Bastion slope, with nothing but air beyond. All the same, when she had finished Martha closed all the shutters, locked the main door of the suite, and pocketed the key. Then she went and did a little of her neglected editorial work, after standing Phyllis off; she also told the servants to bring two Thermoses of soup and two lots of sandwiches to her office that evening.

  Precisely at 7 p.m. the Minister came down and tapped on Martha’s door. ‘Give me the key’ he said. ‘I’m meeting them at the garden gate.’

  This also could not have been more convenient to their purpose. A very small narrow street, which rejoiced in the name of Lilac-utca, led down on one side of the Legation to the Bastion; it was a blind alley, little used save by lovers for kissing in the shadows. But a door opened onto it in the high wall of the Legation garden; and there the Minister stood in the dark, waiting. He heard a taxi pause up in the Verböczy-utca; then, silhouetted against the bright lighting he saw two very tall figures, wearing high sheepskin caps, coming down through the dimly-lit little street towards him. As they approached they walked more slowly, peering uncertainly about them in the darkness; when they came level with the door Sir Hugh said –’ Good evening. In here,’ in a low voice. They followed him in; he re-locked the door and led them across the garden, through the passage, and into the room prepared for them.

  There he introduced himself. ‘I am the British Minister in Budapest.’ And while they stood, blinking a little in the bright light, in the warm pretty room, he took a good look at his guests – their immaculately shaven faces were in strong contrast to their odd and rather shabby clothes.

  ‘Well, I hope you’ll be all right here’ Sir Hugh said. ‘A bit cramped, I’m afraid. Delighted to have you. I mustn’t stay now, or I may be missed; the Military Attaché will be seeing you tomorrow. You’ll get some supper presently – rather scratch, I fear, but the servants don’t know you’re here, and mustn’t know. That’s why there are no sheets—so sorry.’

  ‘Is this really the British Embassy? ‘the younger officer asked, with a wistful eagerness.

  ‘No, the Legation – not an Embassy in Hungary. Look, you can open one shutter on the garden side, there’ – he pointed – ‘when you put your lights out. But when you’re using the passage put one of those very peculiar jackets across the door-sill, so that the light won’t show. Bathroom and lavatory are first on the left; but don’t use those between 7.30 and 9 a.m. tomorrow, when the servants are about. You can have baths tonight, all right.’

  ‘Can we really, Sir? How grand.’

  ‘Yes – but before eleven; the night-watchman starts his rounds then.’

  ‘Thank you – we’ll do that. Frightfully good of you to have us.’

  ‘Not at all – so glad. Good night.’

  ‘Good night, Sir.’

  Martha was lurking at the door of the Bulletin office.

  ‘Everything O.K.?’

  ‘Yes. Here’s the key. You can send their supper across any time now.’

  ‘How many are there?’

  ‘Only two.’

  ‘I wonder what happened to the others’ Martha speculated.

  ‘I didn’t ask – I must get upstairs again. Such a nuisance Morven being out shooting with the Regent, today of all days. You just feed them – I’ve told them about the shutters, and their baths.’

  Martha went back to the office, where Lucilla was monitoring the wireless on the bathroom stool. ‘Getting anything? ‘she asked.

  ‘Radio Toulouse – nothing much.’

  ‘Well I’ll take over now. Listen, Lucilla. There are two escaped British prisoners in a room across the passage.’

  ‘Goodness! Some of them?” the girl asked.

  ‘I think so. Anyhow you nip across with that tray of sandwiches and Thermoses that’s on the table in the main office. Better take a look at the courtyard before you start.’

  ‘If they do come from there, they’re bound to have news of Hamish’ Lucilla said eagerly.

  ‘I should think so. You’d better wait while they eat their suppers, and bring the tray back; we don’t want more running to and fro than we can help. Here’s the key; lock them in when you leave.’

  Lucilla found the tray, and went out to look at the courtyard. Lights shone in some of the Chancery windows on the ground floor, and all round the glazed corridors on the next storey; the whole space was brightly lit – it was quite empty. She unlocked the door of the opposite suite, picked up the tray, and took it in; she had to set it on the floor while she re-locked the door. The little passage was dark save for a line of light showing under one door; she tapped on this.

  ‘Who is there?’ said a voice.

  ‘Your supper. Could you open the door?’ Lucilla said nervously. When the door opened she picked up the tray and took it in, looking with the deepest interest at the two men in the room as she set it down on the table, already laid with Horace’s crockery.

  ‘Ham sandwiches, by Jove!’ one of them said, lifting the cover of the Pyrex dish.

  ‘Yes – do start. I hope you don’t mind if I wait to take the tray back.’

  ‘Mind! I haven’t seen an English girl for nearly a year! Are you the Minister’s daughter?’ the older man asked, as they both fell to on the soup and sandwiches.

  ‘No, he’s a bachelor’ Lucilla said, laughing a little. ‘My Father is the Counsellor.’ She perched on the arm of one of the chintz easy-chairs.

  ‘No idea what that is. Does he give counsel?’

  ‘I hope so – anyhow he’s Number Two in the Legation.’ She was longing to ask about Hamish, but hesitated to do so while they were absorbed in their food.

  ‘It seems incredible that we should really be in the British Legation’ the younger man said.’ Safe at last!’ He was staring at her almost as greedily as he was eating his food. ‘I suppose you haven’t such a thing as a
tomato?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I’ll try to get some tomorrow, but I doubt it.’

  ‘Donald is mad on vitamins!’ the older officer said, looking amused.

  ‘Oh well, I believe the Min’s chef might have some green paprikas in the frig – I’ll see. They’re practically solid vitamins!’

  When they reached the stage of coffee, provided by Martha in her own Thermos, it occurred to Lucilla to offer them cigarettes.

  ‘Not Players’? God Almighty! I began to think I should never smoke a real Virginia again’ the younger man said, inhaling deeply. ‘Can one get them here?’

  ‘We do – they come by bag.’ At last she put her question. ‘Do you come from Oflag XXX?’

  ‘Yes. We were the lucky ones’ the Major said, also smoking with intense satisfaction. ‘We had the rounds of the outer patrol taped to the second, and there ought to have been ample time for the five of us to get clear – we drew lots, of course, for the order we left in. But for some reason the patrol came round ten minutes earlier that night, and spotted the other three; they wouldn’t halt, tried to run for it, and they were shot – Jock Campbell and Toby Graham and Hamish MacNeil, all such good chaps.’

  He went on to describe how they had seen this, waiting in the shadow of a small building for their companions to join them. ‘But then the alarm went, and we heard the Huns calling for the dogs, so we cleared off. There was nothing we could do for them – the guards switched on the searchlights the moment they heard the shots, and we could see that none of them was moving. It was a damned shame.’

  So there, in that overcrowded bedroom, Lucilla learned of her fiance’s death. She sat, rather white, holding the back of the chintz armchair tightly, while the two men went on recalling their adventures, clearly enjoying this first opportunity of doing so safely, to an Englishwoman, on English territory. Oh, poor Hamish! But she asked no more questions; she tried to think of proper responses to make to their narrative: ‘No?’ ‘Goodness!’ ‘Not really!’ she kept saying at intervals, and offering them more cigarettes. At one point, lighting another, the young Captain said – ‘I say, if you really have Players here, do you think we could buy a few?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll bring you 300 tomorrow – I don’t need them now.’ The ‘now’ slipped out unthinkingly, in her increasing agitation; of course she hadn’t needed them for Hamish since the hateful, hateful War Office had stopped her private parcels to him.

  ‘Why not now?’ the Major asked, innocently.

  ‘Oh, I’m getting to like Balkans.’ But she must get away – she couldn’t stand much more of this. She put her cigarette-case – a long folding one, a present from Hamish – on the table.

  ‘I’ll leave you those for tonight. I’d better take the tray back now. Will you wash out your cups in the bathroom? I’ll take these bowls back for the servants to see.’ Her emotions were so confused that she was getting almost incoherent.

  ‘Can’t I take the tray?’ the Major asked.

  ‘As far as the door. Switch out the passage light while I have a look.’ He stood holding the tray in the darkened corridor while she unlocked the door and examined the courtyard. Most of the Chancery lights were out now, but the blazing upper passages still illuminated it, again perfectly empty.

  ‘O.K. I’ll take it now. Don’t talk after eleven, or the night watchman may hear you.’

  ‘You couldn’t stay a little? – or come back?’ the younger man said, over the Major’s shoulder. ‘It’s so wonderful to talk to someone English.’

  ‘No!’ Lucilla hissed, desperately. ‘Good night. Shut the door quietly.’

  ‘Can’t thank you enough’ the Major said.’ Good night.’

  She slipped across the passage to the Bulletin office, opened the outer door, picked up the tray again, and started to carry it into the big room with the Roneo machine, where it was always left on the table – she meant to go back and lock the two prisoners in. But in her distraught state she stumbled against a pile of Bulletins on the floor; the tray slipped from her hands and crashed to the ground. This small disaster overset Lucilla altogether; she sank down on a chair and burst into tears.

  Chapter 11

  Martha beckley, making shorthand notes on the stool in the bathroom, heard the smashing of crockery and muttered – ‘Damn. Silly little fool!’ But she didn’t leave the wireless, because she was listening to one of the really inspired things which the B.B.C. did during the War. That evening, December the 20th, 1940, was the first anniversary of the suicide of Captain Langsdorf, the Commander of the crack German ‘pocket battleship’, the Admiral Graf Spee; wounded by British warships she had taken refuge in the harbour at Monte Video, but on Hitler’s orders her Captain took her to sea and scuttled her – then, in Buenos Aires, he shot himself. That night, a year later, the B.B.C, in German, gave a brief account of the man, his career, and his end –’ a good sailor, a gallant officer, whom a disgraceful order drove to his death. Though no voice is raised in his honour in Germany to-day, we in England, a nation of sailors, will praise him’: and a male-voice choir broke into ‘Ich hatt’ einen Kamaraden’, the cherished theme-song of all the German armed services for fallen comrades. Even hard-boiled Martha felt the tears stinging behind her eyes.

  ‘Superb! That will fetch them in Germany’ she muttered. ‘I wish I knew who thought it up.’ Then it occurred to her to wonder what had happened to Lucilla. Was she afraid to come and confess that she had broken all the Thermoses? She lowered the radio volume, and went along to the main office. There, surrounded by broken crockery and shivered glass, the girl was sitting at the table, her head in her hands; when Martha entered she looked up.

  ‘I am so sorry. I don’t know how it happened’ she said,

  ‘Are you ill?’ Martha asked, a little frightened by the deadly whiteness of Lucilla’s face, from which she had made no attempt to wipe off the tears.

  ‘No, I was just clumsy. I’m so sorry’ Lucilla repeated, stupidly.

  Martha could recognise shock when she saw it.

  ‘Stay where you are’ she said peremptorily. She went along to her own office, where she always kept a bottle of whisky and some glasses for visiting journalists; she poured out a stiff tot, and added water from the tap in the bathroom, where the wireless was now muttering in Rumanian. Something must have happened – probably something to do with Hamish; the child was all to pieces. She picked up her packet of cigarettes from the soap-shell at the end of the bath, and took it along with the glass.

  ‘Drink that up’ she said. ‘Come to think of it, I’ll have one too – nothing much seems to be going on, except that we’ve bombed the Ruhr, as usual.’ When she returned with her own drink Lucilla was obediently sipping at hers; her face was a shade less white. Martha gave the girl a cigarette, and lit one herself; but she had got to know what was the matter with far the most valuable member of her staff, and after a moment she asked straight out – ‘Did they give you bad news of Hamish?’

  ‘He’s dead’ Lucilla said, putting her glass down.

  There is always an appalling finality about those two words.

  ‘Good God! What happened?’

  Lucilla told her. ‘But for that change in the patrol’s time he’d have been here tonight, I suppose’ she said, and once more wept, thinking of Hamish’s kind, dull old parents, in their ugly house, and what this news would mean to them.

  ‘How absolutely bloody’ Martha said. ‘Lucilla, you know how sorry I am.’

  ‘Of course. But please don’t tell anyone’ the girl said imploringly, ‘or people will go condoling.’

  ‘I won’t. Now you’d better go off to bed. Give me the key – H.E. will want it tomorrow.’

  ‘God! I don’t believe I locked the door’ Lucilla said, handing the key over.

  ‘I’ll do that – you get to bed. Have you got sleeping-pills?’

  ‘Mummy has.’

  ‘Well take two. You’ll carry on first thing tomorrow morning, won’t you? ‘Martha had a wholesome
belief in work as an antidote to grief.

  ‘Of course. But how awful about the Thermoses – yours, too! What are we to do?’

  ‘Not to worry! – the Min has heaps. Now take those pills, and sleep tight.’ Martha gave her an unwonted kiss, and Lucilla slipped away across the now darkened courtyard; she heard the waste running from the prisoners’ bathroom as she went, and cried afresh – when had Hamish last had a lovely hot bath? The very ambiguity of her own feelings added to her distress on his account.

  Rumour can be a deadly thing – so can the Press if suitably manipulated. On the following day, while the Military Attaché, a stenographer in attendance, was sitting in that over-full bedroom in the Legation questioning the two officers as to their capture, the conditions of their imprisonment, and the circumstances of their escape, and getting all their replies taken down in shorthand, the very air of Budapest, and the mouths of its inhabitants, suddenly became full of the actual names of the five officers who were supposed to have reached Sweden, including that of Hamish MacNeil. And a Budapest evening paper, the Esti Ujság, printed them in full – all spelt perfectly correctly, an unusual thing for foreign names in a Hungarian journal. Colonel Morven did not hear of this at once; even before getting his report off to the War Office he was busy having the prisoners measured for civilian suits and overcoats, and sending down to the town for these – the largest available sizes were a bit skimpy on those two tall Scotsmen, but they had to do. Meanwhile the Passport Control Officer was getting the two men photographed and fudging passports for them in false names. ‘What shall we call them?’ the P.C.O. asked.

  ‘Smith and Brown?’ the Colonel suggested.

  ‘Oh no – they’d spot that at once. It must be something unfamiliar.’ He thought. ‘Freeman, Hardy and Willis – let’s call them Hardy and Willis; excellent English names. ‘The M.A. laughed, and agreed to the use of the well-known shoemakers’ names.

  The Minister did not hear the rumours either; he was preparing for a hurried journey down to Belgrade on the midnight train, with Horace Wheatley in attendance, as well as a clerk and a man-servant, respectively called Hardy and Willis. There was no trouble in Budapest, but the Hungarian frontier police, already beginning to be linked with the Gestapo, started a fuss at the exit into Yugoslavia; in the cold dark of the winter’s morning Horace Wheatley, an overcoat over his pyjamas, came and tapped on the door of Sir Hugh’s sleeper and reported. ‘They say the passports bear no entry visa into Hungary.’