Civil to Strangers

by Barbara Pym

  What was she going to do in Budapest when she got there? Now that she had given Mr Tilos the slip, she was eloping all by herself, as it were. How would she fare in the City of Love? She would no doubt find a good tourist guide, but how much less trouble it would have been not to have come at all.

  The train was approaching Frankfurt and she had to say goodbye to her friends and go on by herself, but she felt quite happy about it now that she knew that Mr Tilos was no longer around.

  ‘Goodbye everyone,’ she said, ‘and thank you so much for your kindness to me. I have so much enjoyed travelling with you,’ she said with complete truth. Miss Edge grasped Cassandra’s hands. ‘Goodbye, my dear. Remember, if you are ever near St Monica’s do drop in and see us. And I hope you enjoy yourself in Budapest.’

  The train started to move out of the station and she heard Canon Coffin’s voice saying, ‘Now we are all going on a bus to the Hotel Schweizerhof … ’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  ‘Together down they sink in social sleep;

  Together freed, their gentle spirits fly

  To scenes where love and bliss immortal reign … ’

  Cassandra was a little disappointed to find no letter from Adam awaiting her at the hotel, although she was relieved to see that her luggage had arrived safely, thanks to poor Mr Tilos. How long would she have to wait for Adam himself, she wondered, for she had quite made up her mind that he would follow her here. She did not want to sit in the hotel all day, although she had no doubt that she would make friends with somebody if she did. There were several elderly English ladies and an English couple with two rather plain-looking daughters, whom she had noted in case of future need. All the other people seemed to be foreigners. There were at least half a dozen who looked exactly like Mr Tilos and a number of blond, sunburnt young people, who might have been German or Austrian.

  Cassandra was hardly surprised when, on her first morning in Budapest, she found herself in a motor coach, setting out for a tour of the city. Usually she preferred looking at shops to sightseeing, but, after all, she thought, she had done the wrong thing in coming to Budapest, so she could at least make amends for it by doing the obviously right thing on her first day here. Besides, Adam would have been pleased, and she liked to think that she was pleasing her husband, even if he wasn’t there to know about it. It was depressing to think that you could probably please a husband far more when he wasn’t with you than when he was.

  Cassandra enjoyed the sightseeing tour more than she had thought she would. It was very hot, but not unpleasantly so. The sunshine only seemed to make the radiant city more beautiful. Cassandra thought she had never seen happier or more handsome-looking people walking about the streets. She was sure they were happier and more handsome than the Cumberland rustics, who were in touch with the beautiful and permanent forms of Nature, and wished that Adam had been with her, so that they could have had a nice argument about it. Everyone was so friendly, too. At the Angol-Magyar Bank, where Cassandra changed her money, a smiling Hungarian in shirt-sleeves wished her a pleasant holiday, and told her that she must be sure to visit the Angol Park.

  ‘The Angol Park?’ asked Cassandra, rather puzzled. She supposed that as the word ‘Angol’ occurred in both names the Park must have something to do with the Bank, although it was difficult to see how this could be.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Hungarian, smiling. ‘Angol means English. That is why you must go to the Angol Park. You will like very much the amusements there, I think.’

  So it was an amusement park. Cassandra thought it would have been more suitable if the Hungarian bank clerk had urged her to visit the János-Hegy, or the Royal Palace, or some building of historical interest, but on second thoughts she decided that it was much nicer to be told about the places you might like to visit rather than the places you ought to visit. She was glad that she had been taken for the sort of person who would like very much the amusements at the Angol Park.

  She smiled at the Hungarian as she folded the ten pengö notes into her bag. How nice Budapest was! There was a bank where the English could change their money and an amusement park where they could spend it. A sort of Hungarian Blackpool to make the English feel at home. She hoped that Adam would take her there when he came.

  But when would he come? Would he come at all? After she had been in Budapest a day and a night, Cassandra became more and more conscious that Budapest was indeed the City of Love, and that she was alone in it. A City of Love, surely, suggested a place full of well-matched and happy, though not necessarily married couples. The main point was that there should be couples; that was obvious. Cassandra felt that she was not getting her money’s worth, although, when she came to think of it, it was quite right that she should find herself alone. She wondered what Adam would be doing now. Perhaps he was still working in the Bodleian, watching the rain pouring down outside. He must be bored, she thought with satisfaction.

  At that precise moment, Adam was on the Vienna–Budapest boat, engaged in conversation with a middle-aged American lady, who had, by some extraordinary chance, read all of his books. It was the lady who was conversing, for Adam was merely listening happily, with a smile on his face, feeling the hot sun piercing right through to his bones.

  When she had finished telling him all about his novels, Adam began to tell her about Shropshire and Up Callow. He described The Grotto, with its beautiful garden and avenue of poplars, and the cedar tree on the lawn. Warming to his subject, he introduced the pleasing picture of himself, reclining on the bank by the stream, meditating on an epic poem. He even began to quote a little poetry, not his own, because he could think of nothing suitable, but the ever-useful Wordsworth.

  The trip down the Danube had been hot and pleasant and Adam congratulated himself on his decision to come this way. The country was green and wooded and there had been a remarkably fine sunset which made the river look red and gold. Actually, the best thing had been the ice-cream that tasted of fresh peaches, but when one had reached Adam’s age things like ice-cream are too childish to be mentioned among the attractions of the journey. All the same, he thought, Cassandra would not have hesitated to say that she preferred the ice-cream to the sunset if she really did.

  Dear Cassandra, he thought, as it grew dark and lights began to twinkle on the shore and the stars in the sky. How would he find her? Would Tilos be with her? The more Adam considered the idea of Mr Tilos, the more ridiculously impossible it seemed. No, Cassandra would be alone, he decided, pathetically alone. She might even be crying.

  As they approached Budapest and he saw the city in all its floodlit glory, Adam began to feel really excited. The place he was coming to looked like fairyland. It was impossible that it should be real. His journey took on an air of fantasy and became a dramatic adventure. He even forgot to ask which side of the river was Buda and which was Pest, as he would undoubtedly have done if Cassandra had been with him. The taxi took him from the landing stage to the hotel so quickly that he hadn’t time to think of what he was going to say.

  Cassandra was sitting in the corner of the lounge, looking almost beautiful in a white chiffon dress, and she was drinking not Tokay, or peach brandy, or even coffee or any of the other things that she ought to have been drinking in a foreign land, but tea. And quite strong, English-looking tea.

  She did not look up until Adam was near enough to call her name. And then, when she saw Adam standing by her, wearing a navy-blue pin-striped suit, and looking far more English than he ever did in Up Callow, she sprang up from the table and crying, ‘Adam, darling!’ flung her arms around his neck and kissed him, not once but several times. This scene was watched with great delight by János, the nice Hungarian waiter who had brought Cassandra her English tea, and had decided that she was much too charming to be alone. They were a perfect couple, she and the handsome Englishman, he thought. Perhaps they were running away together, for although the English lady wore a wedding ring, the man who had joined her did not look at all like an Engl
ish husband, nor was her greeting the one which wives usually gave to husbands, thought János, whose mind worked on very much the same lines as that of Mr Tilos.

  Adam and Cassandra were now sitting down, holding each other’s hands, and looking into each other’s faces to see that there could be no mistake.

  ‘Well, my love,’ said Adam, indicating the tea, ‘this isn’t quite how I expected to find you.’

  ‘Did you think I’d be at a night-club?’ laughed Cassandra.

  ‘No, not exactly. I didn’t expect to find you drinking tea, that’s all,’ he said.

  This seemed to Cassandra a very small point compared with their being together again, and yet perhaps it was a little disappointing for Adam to come and find her like this, having a cup of tea before she went to bed, just as she did at home. Obviously something more was expected of her. She looked up into his face and thought she detected a look of disappointment there. Poor Adam, he was only a child, and he must feel as if he had been deprived of a treat. She must make amends for it as quickly as she could.

  ‘Adam, dearest,’ she said gently, taking his hand, ‘I’ve been so silly.’

  ‘No, darling, I’ve been silly,’ said Adam, so firmly that Cassandra glanced at him in amazement to see if she could have heard aright.

  But he was quite serious. He even repeated it. ‘Let’s go out,’ he said. ‘I think I like this place, although it’s a little overdone. How clever of you to have thought of coming here. I should have been bored in Paris, and depressed in Vienna. You do everything so well, darling, just like ordering things for dinner,’ he added.

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is like that,’ said Cassandra, as they walked down by the river. She was glad that the place she had chosen for her elopement should please her husband in the same way as a well-ordered dinner. She supposed that she had put the finishing touch of perfection to it by not having any lover here to spoil it.

  ‘Adam, darling,’ Cassandra said suddenly, with a note of concern in her voice, ‘you look awfully thin. I can feel all your bones. Have they been looking after you properly at home? Have you had any lunch or any dinner?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure,’ said Adam, becoming a little more himself. ‘I can’t remember having had anything except some ice-cream on the boat, but I daresay I had some dinner.’

  ‘Oh, Adam, you are hopeless! Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Adam simply. ‘I suppose I was too excited at the prospect of seeing you to think about things like dinner.’

  Cassandra was very much pleased and touched at this, but she did not let it turn her head and really, when she came to think of it, she was more at ease seeing to her husband’s welfare than listening to him paying her compliments. It had been her business for five years now, and she did not think she wanted it changed. They were very soon sitting in the hotel, and Cassandra was watching Adam eat a good meal.

  As he ate, Cassandra remembered what Mr Tilos had said about going to Budapest with a husband. ‘You do not see the moon and the river. You are thinking only of what you shall eat. Your gulyás … ’ Perhaps it was true, and yet there was nothing wrong or even sad in acknowledging its truth. For, after all, eating nice things with a nice person in a gay foreign hotel was quite as romantic as looking at moonlight and rivers, and far more suitable for a man and a woman who had been married for five years. Cassandra was so happy just to have Adam sitting opposite her that she wouldn’t have minded if he had said nothing about being glad to see her again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘A delicate refinement known to few,

  Perplexed his breast and urged him to retire.’

  ‘Oughtn’t we to be going home, darling?’ said Cassandra to Adam when they had been in Budapest for a week. ‘I mean, what will people in Up Callow be saying? They probably still think I’ve eloped with Mr Tilos, and you are still working in the Bodleian.’

  ‘Could anything be less like the Bodleian than this?’ said Adam lazily.

  Cassandra agreed that nothing could. After a moment’s contemplation of the sunburnt bodies around her she lay back with a contented sigh. They were sunbathing at the St Gellért Hotel, watching the artificial waves in the swimming pool. Even Adam was enjoying these simple pleasures. He had raised no objections to Cassandra’s desire to visit the Angol Park, saying rather naïvely that, after all, even if it was a sort of Blackpool, it was at least a Hungarian one, and it was unlikely they would meet anyone they knew.

  ‘Don’t you think we ought to send the Wilmots a postcard?’ persisted Cassandra. ‘They would surely be interested to see a picture of Budapest floodlit at night.’

  ‘They will be very disappointed to find that you are just with your husband instead of Mr Tilos, but you choose a nice postcard and we will write something suitable on it.’

  ‘Do we have to explain everything?’ asked Cassandra. ‘There won’t really be room on a postcard.’

  ‘Let’s go into the water,’ said Adam.

  Hand in hand they walked down the steps, and sat down by the green marble lions’ heads which poured warm water on to their backs.

  ‘Why, look!’ said Adam suddenly. ‘There’s Tilos.’

  Before Cassandra had found him among the crowd of laughing, foreign faces, a voice was shouting, ‘Jó reggelt! Hallo!’

  ‘I wondered when we should meet again,’ said Cassandra, feeling that her greeting was inadequate, but not knowing how to better it.

  He held her hand for rather too long, and then introduced two men who were with him. ‘My brother, Tilos Béla, and my uncle, Hunyadi Ferenc.’

  Tilos Béla was almost exactly like Tilos Stefan, except that he looked a great deal younger and less sophisticated. The only English he seemed to know was ‘thank you’, which he pronounced ‘senk you’. Uncle Ferenc was a stout, good-looking man in the middle forties. He spoke English well, and was very high-spirited.

  They were soon all sitting at a table in the outdoor café, drinking coffee and iced water, and eating peaches.

  Cassandra decided that Mr Tilos was very much more attractive in his own land than he had been in Up Callow, because here his gaiety fitted in with the sunny atmosphere of the place and did not seem at all ridiculous. She had imagined that when they met again there would be a great deal of awkwardness between them. It was surely fitting that there should be between the parties in an unsuccessful elopement, even though one of the parties had not been eloping at all.

  It was all over. He looked at her and seemed about to say something. She smiled at him uncertainly.

  ‘You will both come with me to visit my aunt at Siófok?’ he asked surprisingly.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Cassandra, overcome with relief, ‘oh, yes, we’d love to.’

  ‘Is your uncle married?’ asked Adam idly.

  ‘Yes, he has had one wife only, but she is dead,’ replied Mr Tilos. ‘He is the younger brother of the aunt you shall meet at Siófok. He is a rich man because he has no wife to keep.’

  Cassandra smiled, thinking that something might be done about it. ‘It would be nice if he would visit you in Up Callow,’ she said.

  ‘Ah-ha! Ferenc, old boy,’ said Mr Tilos, leaning across the table, ‘you have made a conquest. Cassandra asks that you shall visit me in Up Callow.’ He pronounced it as one word, Upcalloe.

  ‘It would be delightful,’ said Uncle Ferenc, bowing low over the table.

  Adam, who had been carrying on a conversation in German with Béla, looked up in surprise.

  ‘You would see our beautiful Shropshire countryside,’ said Cassandra firmly, for she was suggesting this visit for purely unselfish reasons. It had occurred to her that, given propitious circumstances, Uncle Ferenc might do as a husband for Miss Gay. She felt that it would be a great triumph if she could return bringing with her a husband for Angela, especially if that husband were a rich, Hungarian widower. The inhabitants of Up Callow would no doubt overlook all they imagined they had to overlook in her conduct of the
past week or two. She told Adam of her idea when they were back in their hotel. He agreed that it was a good one.

  ‘Only I’m afraid that as he’s seen you he won’t think anything of her,’ he added affectionately.

  They were going to Siófok in Uncle Ferenc’s car. Adam sat in the front with him, while Cassandra was squashed into the back between the Tilos brothers. They were just like children, she decided. Béla was a baby who had not yet learned to talk, for as he knew no English he could only smile and nod and utter an occasional ‘senk you’, whenever he felt the context demanded it. Cassandra tried to teach him the names of things by pointing at them and saying the appropriate English word. She felt she would like to adopt him, or keep him as a pet. Stefan kept up a brilliant and ridiculous conversation about the differences between the English and Hungarian countryside. He seemed to be mimicking Adam, though whether consciously or not Cassandra could not decide.

  ‘You have nothing like this in England.’ He smiled, indicating the fields which stretched on either side of the hot, dusty road. They were very flat, and the grass was burnt yellow by the sun. Along the sides of them grew masses of pale blue cornflowers. When they stopped at a village, Béla picked a large bunch of them for Cassandra, and presented them to her rather shyly, saying ‘very pretty’, which was a phrase she had just taught him.