A Place to Stand Read online

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  As the night train for Budapest drew out of the steamy smoky station at Belgrade Hope Kirkland drew in her head, threw up the window of her sleeper, and sat down. Impatiently, she pulled off her little hat and tossed it onto the seat beside her; it hit a huge flattish circular parcel done up in bright paper and ribbon which already lay there, and rolled off on to the floor. As she stooped to pick it up mechanically beating it in case it had got dusty, and threw it further along the squashy green plush she glanced at the parcel with a half-tender, half-amused expression. What a mass of candies!—funny Sam, to give her that as a parting present! Of course she liked chocolates, and he said these came from Sofia where they make the best chocolates in Europe—who was that Frenchman who had told her that half the chocolatiers in Paris were Bulgarians? But it was a funny thing to give when you were saying goodbye for months and months; it was so—she sought for a word—impermanent. Her eyes fell on her left hand, where a splendid diamond set in sapphires shone on her fourth finger: well, for permanence she had her ring, that they had chosen together at Nassers. But still—

  She caught herself up. “Look, Hope Kirkland, you aren’t going to start getting discontented at Sam because he gives you candies,” she stated, throwing her hat and the great box of chocolates up into the rack overhead. She rang the bell for the attendant. “Make the bed, please—I am tired,” she said in Hungarian.

  “Plaît-il, Madame?” the man replied in rather rasping French.

  “Oh, make up my bed!” Hope ejaculated in English; and then gave the same order more decorously, in very good French. The attendant was obviously one of these Yugoslavs; she wished it had been a Hungarian, they were so polite and nice. She went out into the corridor, and stood staring into the darkness—a vast faint shimmer of water showed where the Danube was sweeping towards the sea—and went on thinking about Sam. It was marvellous to be engaged, and Sam was wonderful—not a bit like the philandering Budapest boys, Tibor and so on. She wished he hadn’t got to go off to Istanbul—it was horrid, precisely when they had got engaged, and so tiresome of his paper to choose this moment. “Well darling, I can’t just tell the paper to go to hell!” Sam had said, with his genial grin, when she complained to him—and “I can’t see why not,” she had said, half petulantly, half joking, in reply. But Sam had turned serious then, suddenly, as he sometimes did, and said: “Well you will see, one day”—rather grimly. Oh, she had been silly; she oughtn’t to have said that. Sam would never live on his wife—he wasn’t that sort. She felt altogether out of spirits; and she was tired—it had all been such a rush, and goodbyes were so horrid anyway! Vaguely dissatisfied with herself, she turned back to her sleeper. The man had just finished; the sheet was turned down on the narrow bed, the smooth white pillow gleamed invitingly. When he had gone she pulled her night-case down off the rack—a Hungarian attendant would have done that for you—threw out her things, undressed quickly, and got into bed.

  But she didn’t settle to sleep at once. She lay staring at the reddish wooden panelling, in whose high polish she could see the oblong of the pillow, and even the blur of her face on it. Hope Kirkland had a very pretty face, brown-eyed under soft brown hair, and rather markedly triangular, with well-defined eyebrows; there was altogether a good deal of definition about it, especially the wide mouth and clean-cut little nose. But for all the defined features, as she lay there in bed, relaxed and tired, the most noticeable thing was the general softness and immaturity, which somehow blurred it almost as its reflection was blurred on the polished mahogany overhead. Gradually she became quieter; her self-dissatisfaction faded as happier thoughts of Sam and the future crept in, softening her expression to a happy sweetness. She switched off the light and turned on her side to sleep.

  The Keleti Station at 6.30 in the morning is a chilly and disspiriting place. Hope climbed down out of her overheated sleeper into the raw air, pale and heavy-eyed; she hadn’t slept well, and had that shop-soiled feeling which is usual after a night in the train. As she walked out to the car she shivered a little, and her lip puckered like that of a child about to cry. Hell!—Budapest without Sam wasn’t going to be Budapest at all.

  The flat was warm enough, but energetic as Hungarian servants are, she realized that there was no hope of breakfast much before eight—Mother spoiled them, that was the fact. After a bath she felt better, but also hungry, and when she had dressed and done her face her eye lit on Sam’s vast box of chocolates, lying where she had thrown it on the bed. She undid the ribbons, ran her nail-file round the gilt sealing-paper, and took off the lid—there lay circle upon circle of the dark brown oblongs. My, they did look good! She took one and crunched it in her mouth—and then made a face. A soft centre! She tried another, and another; they were all the same—she tossed them into the waste-paper basket. “Goodness me, Sam Harrison, you might know by now that I only like hard centres,” she muttered, pouting. The little contretemps irritated her, tired and hungry as she was; impatiently she swept all the carefully-arranged top layer to one side, and lifted the glossy sheet of chocolate-coloured paper which covered the layer below—they would be sure to be hard centres.

  But when she had uncovered that second layer she did not take a chocolate—she stood staring at the box. The three outer rings were in place, but in the middle lay what looked like a passport. Rather gingerly, Hope slid her fingers in to pick it up. There were two—and they were passports, sure enough: two rather worn and grubby passports, right in among her chocolates. She turned them about and saw that a package of money was stuck in one of them, dinars and dollar bills, held in an elastic band; in the other was a note. She tore open the envelope—what on earth was all this? Inside was a sheet of paper, typewritten; it ran:

  Say nothing to anyone, but take these to the Ibolya Penzio, Room No. 11; ask for “Stefan”, and give them to him. If he is not there, wait for him. Give them to nobody else.

  There was no signature.

  Hope sat down on the bed beside the open box, the litter of spilt chocolates, the dirty passports and the bundle of notes, and stared at the paper in her hand. What could it all mean? For an instant she wondered if it was really from Sam at all—could she have got somebody else’s box? No—that, she saw in a flash, was why Sam had given her such a foolish parting present as a mountain of candies: to get these things where he wanted them got. But why? But what on earth?—

  There was a sound of footsteps and voices along the corridor outside. Hope sprang up, stuffed the money and passports into a drawer, locked it and put the key in her purse, tucked the note into the front of her dress. She was actually panting a little with haste and excitement when Mrs. Kirkland tapped at the door and came in, mother-like, right on the tap, swathed in a warm velvet wrapper, saying—“Well, Hopey, darling! Tired? János has coffee all ready.”

  Hope remembered that morning long afterwards—with surprise that already the knowledge of those passports locked in her drawer should have given a certain flavour of unreality to her other activities. She had eaten her coffee and rolls, telling her Mother meanwhile about her time in Belgrade; she had kissed her Father warmly, and replied as best she could to his questions as to what people thought down there about the way things were shaping as regards Germany, and whether the Minister had said anything. She had been rung up by Tibor and accepted the invitation to the dance at the Park Club, and written a polite little reply to the Countess’s note; had been rung up also by Bill, and had agreed to go to the Arizona that evening. “How was old Sam?” Bill had asked—answering “Sam was fine” she had felt strange; what was Sam up to? During all her round of small morning jobs—giving the clothes from her trip to the maid Berta to be washed or pressed, giving out gloves and a mussed frock to be sent to the cleaners, running round to the photographers with two rolls of films taken in Belgrade, answering an accumulation of notes from other American friends containing more invitations—she had been thinking hard about Sam. His behaviour had occasionally been odd, recently, and she
had puzzled over the reason for it: more than once he had annoyed her by failing to turn up for some engagement, with no notice at all; such a queer thing in punctilious Sam, and he had never had a very convincing excuse, she remembered. And often he had seemed abstracted, didn’t hear, the first time, what was said to him, as if his mind was far away—that had vexed her too. But if he was mixed up in some curious business, something very secret, it would explain a lot.

  She found a moment when neither Berta nor her Mother were in the room to get out the passports and take a good look at them. They were old, used Yugoslav ones, bearing newish-looking photographs of two young men—one thin, dark, and intellectual-looking, the other with a square pugnacious face, a snub nose, and curly hair; even in the very bad passport photograph this second one looked fairer than the other. And the pages for the names and descriptions were left blank!

  Hope sat with the pictures of these two unknown men in her hand, looking at them—wondering; then she got up, quickly, and locked them away again. An idea of what it might all be about was beginning to dawn in her mind. All Eastern Europe in 1941 was full of refugees of one sort and another—she knew that, vaguely; in particular Hungary was full of Poles—50,000 members of the Polish army had marched across the frontier, away up in Ruthenia, in the desperate winter of 1939, when their country was invaded by Russia from the East as well as by Germany from the West, to lay down their arms and be interned; there were camps of them all over the place. People said they had been escaping in considerable numbers, and getting down to Egypt, or across to France. There were Czech refugees, too. But what Sam, a plain journalist, had to do with all that fairly passed her. Anyhow, she decided, she would go that very afternoon, on the pretext of going to the hairdresser.

  This involved a slight battle with her Mother. Mrs. Kirkland thought her precious child ought to rest that afternoon, after her night journey, and before Bill’s party.

  “Now look, Mother dearest, I’ve had two nights in the train! How can I possibly go out to a party with my hair in this state?”

  Mrs. Kirkland, glancing at her daughter’s shining brown curliness, unwisely said that she looked very nice.

  “Well, it isn’t nice—and you’re crazy, darling, to think it even looks nice. It’s full of smuts and it stinks of sulphur, and I’m not going out with Bill with it that way, or anyone else!” Nervousness made Hope unusually vigorous in her speech—generally she was fairly gentle with her Mother. Mrs. Kirkland gave way under this onslaught—“Well, try to get a little rest when you come in.” And Hope gave her a kiss and said that she would.

  She looked out the Ibolya Penzio in the telephone book, and found that it was in the Radolny utca, down at the far end of the Andrássy ut, the great east-west thoroughfare that runs right through the busiest part of Pest, almost from the Danube right up to the Park with its Zoo, which the Kirklands’ flat overlooked—in fact, Hope recalled, the Radolny utca was only just round the corner from the garage where their three cars were kept and serviced, so really it was hardly worth while ringing up for her own car—and anyhow cars with U.S. number-plates were rather conspicuous. There was a taxi-rank just outside the flats. But when she reached the ground floor, with the passports, the money, and Sam’s note stuffed in her bag, she suddenly decided not to take a taxi either—buses ran right down the Andrássy, and she went round into it and hopped on to one, rather pleased with herself for taking this precaution.

  She got off at a stop close to the street, and walked back to it. It was narrow, with high buildings on each side, grey and uncompromising in their 19th-century mock-baroque. She found the number she wanted on a plaque over an arched porte cochère leading through into a high narrow courtyard, with balconies running round it on each floor. Much of Pest, the flat half of the city to the east of the Danube, is built so, and in these great shabby rookeries small businesses, private residences, and cheap penzios or boarding-houses are huddled together, higgledy-piggledy, the little furrier or dressmaker is quite as often on the sixth floor as on the first. There is seldom a lift—there wasn’t here. Hope stood under the port cochère and studied the big board on the wall which indicated who, or what, carried on existence on which floor—the Penzio was on the sixth. She turned away and began to walk up the stone staircase, with its wide shallow treads; in spite of the dirt and shabbiness, the dust at the corners, the cigarette-ends, the bits of paper blowing about in the draught which swept now up, now down, this sort of wind-tunnel, the staircase had a certain dignity owing to its size and elegance of proportion. Pest is like that. Taken individually its buildings are almost ugly, very often—at least they have no real architectural merit; but the large and ample scale of the lay-out, the careless involuntary grace of the sham-baroque architecture give the city, somehow or other, the charm of a beautiful woman who has, carelessly, not bothered to do her hair properly, still less to arrange her face—but who nevertheless remains lovely and captivating.

  On the sixth floor landing a black-and-gold plate outside a door announced the Ibolya Penzio; the door was ajar, and after a moment’s hesitation she walked in, to a little lobby with one chair beside a small table with an aspidistra and a telephone on it—the wall above this table was scrawled with telephone numbers and idle sketches. She went forward, looking at the room numbers; the lobby gave on to one of the courtyard balconies, and was quite light, but No. 11 proved to be down a branch passage with rooms on both sides, lit by two very dim electric lights, and smelling stuffy and airless. At last she found it, and tapped on the door.

  It was opened at once by a little old woman, who beamed at her, saying “Litka, kochana!” and started chattering away in some language Hope couldn’t understand, meanwhile drawing her into the room.

  “Is Monsieur Stefan at home?” Hope asked in French, rather disconcerted by this unexpected welcome. The old lady seemed disconcerted too; she peered at her, looking puzzled, stopped beaming, and replied in exquisite French—

  “No, he is out; he will be back quite soon. You wished to see him?”

  “Yes, if you please,” Hope said, rather timidly. “But I can come back later, if you will tell me when he will return.”

  The old lady, however, said that “my son” would be back so very soon that Mademoiselle should come in and wait, and once more drew her forward and gave her a small chair, one of two or three standing about. The room was fairly large: it contained a big double bed piled with blankets, a small iron stove, a round table, the aforesaid shabby chairs and a camp bed; a press stood against the wall, a gas-ring on a low deal stool. Clothes, men’s and women’s, hung from hooks on the door and on the wall near the stove; it was clear that this was both bedroom and living-room for several people. Hope Kirkland had never seen such a room in her life; while she made rather stilted conversation in French with her hostess—who, she noticed, asked no questions as to who she was—she glanced round it, registering, however inexperiencedly, the evidences of poverty and discomfort. Her eye was caught by one single sign of civilisation or taste, a group of canvases, unframed, leaning against the wall in a corner—the outside one, which was all she could see, looked rather good. Sam loved modern painting, and had started to give her an interest in it.

  After a few minutes of rather uneasy intercourse—though the old lady, Hope decided, had beautiful manners and was very sweet—the door opened and a young man burst into the room, chattering as he came in that language incomprehensible to Hope; he checked at the sight of a stranger.

  “Ah, Jurek!” said the old lady—“Te voilà! Where is Stefan? This young lady has come to see him.”

  The young man, who was fair, curly-haired, pug-nosed and bouncy—recognizably the original of the second passport photograph—came over to Hope and kissed her hand. Obviously he had none of the old lady’s courteous inhibitions. “You are a friend of Stefan’s?” he asked, eyeing her curiously—indeed her well-cut dark coat, little fur toque and high fur-lined suede boots, all in the latest fashion, did look strange in th
at room.

  “No,” Hope replied, blushing a little under his unabashed gaze; “I have a message for him. My name is Hope Kirkland.”

  “American, not?” the young man enquired—his French was not nearly so good as that of the old lady, whom he now proceeded to introduce as Mme Moranska. “And I am Jurek Hempel—from Lódz.” (As he pronounced this word “Woodzh”, Hope was not much enlightened.)

  “I don’t know where that is,” she said.

  “Poland!” said the young man, with an emphasis that had a ring of pride about it.

  “And Madame is Polish too?” Hope asked politely of the old lady—she had referred to “Stefan” as her son, but if they were Poles, why on earth Yugoslav passports?

  “Yes, Mademoiselle—we are all Poles.”

  Hope was beginning some sympathetic remark—gosh, the room looked just like a refugees’ room, anyway—when the young man called Jurek observed to Mme Moranska, gesturing at Hope: “How like she is to Litka, eh?”

  “Very like indeed—remarkably,” the old lady said, gazing earnestly, though more politely than Mr. Hempel, at their visitor. “When Mademoiselle arrived, in the bad light, I took her for Lydia.” She smiled apologetically at Hope.

  At that moment the door opened again, and a tall dark young man entered rapidly, shutting it after him: Hope had no difficulty in recognizing that rather thin intellectual face, with the wide brow and clean-cut mouth, as the face in the other photograph. “Ah, Stefan, my son!” the old lady exclaimed, with obvious pleasure. “Here is a young lady who waits for you already some time: Mademoiselle”—she hesitated.