The Portuguese Escape

by Ann Bridge

  There was a tap on the door; at his ‘Come in!’ Nanny entered.

  ‘Good evening, Major. I’m glad you’ve come. Now you haven’t much time, his Grace is always so punctual, but I don’t suppose Antonio thought of it, so will you excuse me if I show you the geography?’

  ‘Oh yes, Nanny, do—thank you,’ Torrens said, shaking her hand.

  ‘This way—and don’t lose yourself! This is such a house-and-a-half,’ Nanny said, bustling ahead of him down three long corridors and round as many corners, while Torrens tried frantically to memorise his route. ‘There—that’s the gentlemen’s bathroom,’ she said at last, throwing open the door of an apartment the size of the back drawing-room in the average London house, which contained a bath with a sort of sentry-box at one end of it; the whole was encased in mahogany, and stood out in the middle of the room like a cenotaph; there was also a fitted basin and what should have been a hot towel rail—involuntarily Torrens went and laid his hand on it; it was cold.

  ‘The water isn’t always very hot in here,’ Nanny said, observing this gesture. ‘Dona Maria Francisca always has a hip-bath.’

  ‘Could I have one too? I love hip-baths.’

  ‘Certainly—I’ll tell Antonio. In the morning? And you’d like morning tea, I expect.’

  ‘Yes please.’

  Nanny, leaving the bathroom, indicated a door across the passage. ‘And that’s the other,’ she said. ‘Now I’ll leave you. Don’t lose your way going back!’

  ‘The other’, the lavatory, was also Victorian to a degree which highly amused Torrens; it took him back to his earliest childhood, and visits to his grandparents. The pan, set in a mahogany seat five feet wide, was covered all over with blue flowers, as was the little china bowl, let down in the wood, into which a brass handle shaped like a stirrup returned after being pulled up. ‘Marvellous,’ he said to himself, as he made his complicated way back to his room.

  He just managed to get dressed in time for dinner. Julia was waiting for him at the stairhead, and led him down and into the drawing-room, where the rest of the party were already assembled; the Duke introduced him to Dona Maria Francisca and Luzia, who was in animated conversation with Father Antal—he was offered a very small glass of white port, and downed it hastily; then they all proceeded into the dining-room, which was large, and as gloomy as dining-rooms so often contrive to be, whether in England or in Portugal.

  ‘Monsignor, as my chaplain has not yet arrived, will you say grace for us?’ the Duke asked—Subercaseaux obliged with a brief grace in Latin, everyone crossed themselves, and they sat down.

  Torrens found himself seated on his hostess’s left, with the Hungarian on his other side and Subercaseaux opposite; Julia and Luzia sat on either side of the Duke, with Nanny beside Luzia, and that end of the table was soon gay with the lively chatter of the two girls and the amused benevolent comments of the grey-faced man between them. At Torrens’ end there was considerably less animation. Dona Maria Francisca de Lencastre-Pereira was a small, pinched-looking woman in the fifties, who did her still-dark hair in the fashion of thirty years before, and wore clothes—invariably black—to match; she was sincere, kind, and truly good, but her only interests, apart from running her brother’s household and rather vaguely supervising the life of her young niece, were religion and the welfare of young girls, for whom she organised schools and rescue-homes, according to their degree of innocence or the reverse. Torrens essayed one or two remarks to her, but with little success; the good lady concentrated her attention almost entirely on the Vatican emissary, who was much more in her line. A holy Venus, toute entière à sa proie attachée, the Major thought to himself with a sour little grin, and turned his attention to Father Antal.

  He found the Hungarian good company: interested in everything he had seen on his drive up from Lisbon, and full of questions about the local methods of agriculture and so on which Torrens, himself new to Portugal, could not answer—Luzia, from across the table, stepped into the breach.

  ‘They put those clappers or whistles onto the sails of the windmills so that they can hear at once if the wind changes, Père François,’ she said. Torrens was momentarily startled by the name; it took him a few seconds to remember that they had settled on it in the Duke’s study in Lisbon only the night before. ‘You see most of the millers have a piece of land to till,’ the girl pursued, ‘and in this manner they can work at it without turning round to look all the time, because you can hear that noise more than half a kilometre away.’

  ‘And what does the miller do if the wind does change?’ the priest asked, smiling across the table.

  ‘Oh, of course he goes and adjusts the sails, so that they shall catch the air to the best advantage. There is such a nice old miller close by here—they call him “The Blacksmith”, though he is a miller, because once when the real smith was ill he shoed a horse.’

  Père François beamed at her. ‘I should like to meet him,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, you shall—I will take you to visit him tomorrow,’ Luzia said. It was clear to Torrens that the refugee priest and the very young girl with the remarkable grey eyes were delighted with one another—but at her last remark the Duke intervened.

  ‘No, Luzia.’

  ‘Why not, Papa?’

  ‘Because I say so. We will speak of it later.’ He turned and addressed a remark to Julia. And afterwards, when the party had adjourned to the drawing-room and drunk some rather weak coffee, he asked the two priests and Luzia to accompany him into his study—‘ You will excuse us for two minutes, ma chère, will you not?’ he said to his sister.

  ‘Provided you let them come back in time for the Rosary. I want the Monsignor to see the chapel.’

  The Duke of Ericeira’s study at Gralheira was something completely unexpected and in startling contrast to the baroque splendour of the rest of the house. Apart from the inevitable crucifix over the mantelpiece—in this case a fine piece of Flemish work—it was as severely up-to-date as the business-room of a progressive Scottish landlord. Filing-cabinets and book-shelves full of works on agriculture, wine-production, and archaeology lined the walls; on the very large desk which occupied the middle of the room there were no less than eight telephones. A few leather armchairs stood about, to which the Duke waved his daughter and the two priests; he himself sat down in a workman-like chair in front of the telephones.

  ‘I am naturally very reluctant to impose any sort of restrictions on guests in my house,’ he said; ‘and it is in your own interest that I am impelled to do so now. You have come here, in effect, to seek sanctuary; and within the walls of my estate you will, I trust, find it. But I must request you both, formally, not to go outside those walls without my knowledge or sanction. And there are two places within those walls which you must not visit—the kitchen, and the courtyard.’ He turned to Luzia, with an indulgent smile. ‘So if you wish Père François to meet “The Blacksmith” you must bring him here. But in fact the fewer people outside who know that foreign priests are staying here, and see these priests, the better. Do you understand? It is not necessary for you to know the reason.’

  ‘Very well, Papa. I understand,’ Luzia said—something in her tone made Father Antal look at her rather keenly, but he said nothing.

  Subercaseaux, however, was greatly intrigued by one of these prohibitions.

  ‘My dear Duke, it is not my custom to visit the kitchen in houses where I stay, but I am intensely curious to know why I may not visit yours.’

  ‘Luzia, you can go now,’ the Duke said.

  ‘Oh pouff, Papa! Really I know what this is all about; it is so that the man with an odd beard and the rolls of fat on his neck, who seeks Père François, shall not find him— and of course if he were clever he might come to eat in the kitchen one night, with all the others, and ask questions of the servants.’

  The Duke frowned; he looked greatly disconcerted.

  ‘How do you know this? Can Miss Probyn have been indiscreet?’

  ‘N
ot she—of course not. It was Atherley.’

  ‘Do you mean Mister Atherley, of the British Embassy? How did you meet him?’

  ‘He came to see Miss Probyn about the accident to her car, and I heard what he said; she had to write down a description of the men who ran into her, and when he read it he was funny about the man with the fat neck, and Charles Laughton.’

  ‘What had Charles Laughton to do with it?’ her father asked, in understandable bewilderment.

  ‘Nothing, Papa!—I repeat, Monsieur Atherley was being funny. Then at dinner last night this red-haired Commandant comes asking for Julia, and sees you, and she takes her car and goes off with him. And soon after half-past twelve the car came back—I was awake, and as you know Tia Maria Francisca will make me sleep in this nasty little room which overlooks the stable-yard,’ Luzia said, clearly voicing a long-standing grievance—‘so when I heard it I looked out and saw them all: Messieurs les prêtres and Julia and the Commandant, and Fausto, all standing like statues, frozen, listening to the sound of a car in the street; the luggage on the ground, no one moving or coming into the house till the other car had gone. And today these gentlemen drive up here with us, and you tell them that they have found sanctuary. So I have drawn certain conclusions. In any case, Tia Maria Francisca told me herself that the Monsignor is an emissary of the Vatican —she is quite exaltée about it!’ the girl ended, a surprising gleam of irony lighting up her young face.

  Father Antal laughed out loud.

  ‘Monsieur le Duc, I think you would be well advised to take your daughter into your confidence! Any attempt at concealment from her will obviously be time wasted.’

  Rather reluctantly, the Duke laughed too.

  ‘I am afraid I agree. In due course I will tell this inexcusably acute child of mine the little that she has not heard, or guessed.’

  But the Monsignor returned to his enquiry about the kitchen being out of bounds—he was not easily deflected from any point which had aroused his curiosity.

  ‘Duke, do pray tell me who all these people are who invade your kitchen at night, and why they should come there?’

  ‘They come to eat,’ the Duke said briefly.’ It has always been the custom in this country that poor people, wayfarers, should be able to stop at houses like this and be given a meal at night, somewhere to sleep, and breakfast before they go on their way in the morning.’ His long, rather gnarled fingers tapped reflectively on the broad polished expanse of his desk.

  ‘Here in Portugal,’ he pursued, ‘we have not as yet established very thorough “social services” in the modern sense; we still hold to something which I myself regard as valuable, because it is more direct, more intimate—the personal responsibility of those who have wealth to supply some, at least, of the needs of those who have not. That is why my house is open to the traveller; and in fact Luzia is right—someone who was acquainted with this custom could easily enter the kitchen with the rest, and a silly maid-servant might answer his questions.’

  ‘But in the kitchen!’ Subercaseaux was still inquisitive. ‘Is there room for them? How many come?’

  ‘Tonight there are fifteen,’ the Duke said, smiling. ‘Elidio always tells me the numbers, but this evening before dinner I went out, as I often do, to see them and bid them welcome. And there is in fact plenty of room.’

  ‘At any price I must see this kitchen, which can accommodate fifteen guests while a dinner such as we have just enjoyed is being cooked!’ Subercaseaux exclaimed.

  ‘You shall see it tomorrow morning,’ the Duke said, rather pleased.

  But the Monsignor’s curiosity was not yet exhausted. His gaze moved to the telephones ranged on that enormous desk.

  ‘My dear Duke, I have, as you will have observed, a prying disposition. May I ask, why eight telephones?’ Ericeira laughed.

  ‘A measure of economy! It costs me less to instal eight instruments than to pay the wages of someone to operate— almost certainly extremely inefficiently—a switch-board.’ He leaned forward, and tapped the machines one by one. ‘This is to the bailiff’s office, and this to his house; that to the oil-mill, that to the stables; this one is to the farm, and this to the lagare, where the wine is made—of course it is only used during the vintage; this is to the garage, and finally, here is the one which connects me with the outside world.’

  ‘This same system used to operate in the big country houses in Hungary,’ Father Antal put in, ‘and for the same reason. Rustic people find these complicated mechanical contrivances difficult to manage.’

  There was a tap on the door, and Nanny’s neat head, veiled in black lace, appeared round it.

  ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, Your Grace, but Dona Maria Francisca wants to know if the Monsignor is ready to come to the chapel for the Rosary?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ the Duke said rising, with a rather resigned expression. ‘They will come immediately.’ He kissed Luzia—‘Good night, my child’—and turned to the two priests. ‘I must ask you to excuse me—I have things to attend to. I wish you a very good night. Make my excuses to the Senhora Condessa, Nanny,’ he said urbanely. When they had all gone off to say the Rosary he settled down in an armchair and began to read The Farmer and Stock-breeder.

  Chapter 10

  ‘You aren’t by any chance poaching just a little on my preserves, are you?’ the Military Attaché said to the First Secretary on the morning of that same Saturday, when after Julia and Major Torrens had driven off Richard Atherley went and asked Colonel Campbell to get Colonel Marques to come round to the Chancery.

  ‘If I am it’s most unwillingly, I assure you, my dear Campbell,’ Richard said heartily. ‘Your miserable clients are pestering the life out of me—even the Monsignor! However, thank you for organising police protection for me at No. 35.’

  ‘What on earth were you doing at Torrens’ diggings?’

  ‘Packing his clothes for his visit, under Miss Probyn’s wing, to the Duke of Ericeira’s country-seat.’

  ‘Oh, he’s gone up there, has he? I think he might have told me.’

  ‘Between ourselves, I think he was a little distraught.’

  ‘Hardly too distraught to pack his own bags before he came away, I should have thought.’

  ‘He didn’t know he was going, and anyhow he wasn’t at home last night.’

  ‘Where was he, then?’

  ‘In the British Hospital,’ Atherley said blandly, with enjoyment.

  ‘Why? Is he ill?’

  ‘No. He just thought it would be a good place to sleep in.’

  ‘Well, perhaps you’ll explain all this,’ the Colonel said, leaning back and looking resigned.

  Atherley explained at some length what had taken place the night before, and how he had dispatched Torrens and Miss Probyn in his own car, not twenty minutes ago.

  ‘Good God, do you mean to say you’re letting that girl use your Bentley?’ Colonel Campbell asked—this fact seemed to impress him more than all the rest of his colleague’s recital.

  ‘Yes—in your interest, Campbell, I may say! But you realise, don’t you, that her car is already compromised, though she’s only had it two days; the car-hire firm she got it from must have sold the number, and her Lisbon address, to the opposition. That’s what I want you to see Marques about.’

  ‘Well he’ll be along in a few minutes. Yes, he ought to get after those car people. Where’s Miss Probyn’s car now?’

  ‘Under your window. Here’s the key’—he threw it on the table. ‘Over to you, Campbell—you can be your own game-keeper for a bit,’ Richard said, with an amicable grin. ‘By the way, what are you doing this afternoon?’

  ‘Playing golf. Why?’

  ‘I wondered if you would lend me your car? I want to take someone for a drive, and I don’t particularly want to use Julia Probyn’s, and be mobbed by Spanish Communists in raincoats.’

  ‘Yes, of course take it—that’s the least I can do, though as you know it isn’t a Bentley! I can use one of the Chancery cars. Wh
y, has the Countess turned up?’

  Richard stared in incomprehension. His mind was on Hetta: she had said that she was free for the whole weekend, and he had conceived the idea of taking her out for a drive that afternoon; her self-abnegation over the luncheon with the Armorican Pretender on Sunday had moved him a good deal. ‘She hasn’t left Estoril since she got out, so far as I know,’ he said, taken by surprise by Campbell’s question.

  ‘Oh, sorry—you’re talking about little Countess Páloczy. I meant the Countess de Vermeil,’ Colonel Campbell said, looking slightly embarrassed.