A Place to Stand Page 4

  “But you must; so fast as the music, one must dance!” he said. “Is it too much for you?”

  “Yes, it is a bit.”

  “What a pity.” He danced her rapidly to the side of the room where the old Countess sat with other dowagers in chairs ranged along the wall, kissed her hand, and released her with polite murmured thanks—immediately he led out another girl into the moving throng. Hope glanced round for a seat, and then observed something which struck her as quite extraordinary at a fashionable ball; in her absorption in her steps she had not noticed it before. The old Countesses and Princesses sat on what chairs there were, but all the younger members of the “first Society”, the rank and fashion of Budapest, were sitting quietly on the floor, leaving a big circle for the dancers, whom they sat watching with passionate interest—the young women’s frocks, spread out round them, made two-thirds of the huge ballroom look like a great flower-bed, its bright colours pricked with the sharp black-and-white of the men’s shirt-fronts and dress suits. The young girl sat down on the polished parquet among them, and also watched the dancers. Tibor Zichy, she saw, really did quickly tire out his partners—after ten or fifteen minutes they were done, and with a final twirl he sent them spinning out to the edge of the circle, plunged into the flowerbed and drew a fresh girl up by the hand, and danced back with her on to the floor. But the whole assemblage, dancers and onlookers—including the old ladies themselves, with diamonds glittering on their grey heads above their distinguished faces—were completely wrapt in the dance or in watching the dance; and they spent, happily, the next three hours at this, till at 5 a.m. the party broke up, and everyone went home.

  Hope slept late the next morning. Tibor had taken her back to the flat, announcing that he should go to six o’clock Mass on his way home, so as to be able to sleep in afterwards. When she woke and rang for her coffee her mail was brought in on the tray, and there at last was a letter with a Turkish stamp and the Istanbul post-mark. She tore it open. Most of it was as loverly as any girl could wish, and she read it eagerly, while she sipped her coffee and munched her rolls, huddled up in her little white satin and swansdown bed-jacket. But at the end came what she had been expecting. “I hope,” Sam wrote, “you weren’t vexed with me for putting those birthday cards in your parcel—but the sooner those friends of mine have their birthday party the better. Hope you found the place all right. Don’t write about it, except to say if you did.” There was no other message.

  Nothing in this really needed to be reported to Stefan Moranski, but over the rest of her coffee and rolls Hope decided that as she had promised to let him know if she heard any more from Sam, she ought to do so. There was no longer any question of church-going on Sundays for the Kirkland family, who were staunch Episcopalians—the Anglican parson had been evacuated by the Legation when they sent all British subjects home in 1939, and the Presbyterian minister had followed him some time in 1940. On Sunday mornings Mrs. Kirkland read her prayer-book through to herself; Mr. Kirkland did nothing; Hope when she felt like it drove her own car across the river and went and heard Mass in the Coronation Church up on the open square in Buda, the ancient part of the twin cities, full of whole streets of lovely yellow-washed 17th and 18th century houses, with its picturesque tree-clothed walks round the battlements—the Bastio. Her parents had submitted, reluctantly, to this practice. To give their precious child the best education available in Hungary they had perforce sent her to school at the Sacré Coeur, where the nuns taught such marvellous French—and they could not be surprised that she had picked up the habit of going to Mass; besides, she met all her Hungarian friends there.

  Hope accordingly announced her intention, on this Sunday morning, of going up to Buda, and bade her parents not to wait lunch for her; because if the champagne-bottle was standing in the window-box of the British Naval Attaché’s lodging—a signal that drinks were going on inside—she might go in and have one. Her Father laughed, her Mother sighed, and off Hope went.

  But she did not go to Mass. From a call-box in the street she rang up the Ibolya Penzio, and got hold of Stefan. “I’ve had a letter,” she said.

  “So. But please do not tell me on the telephone. Could you not meet me somewhere?”

  “Yes, of course. What about Gerbeaud’s—in a quarter of an hour?” She heard him laugh down the telephone before he said:

  “Yes, very well,” and rang off.

  Gerbeaud’s, the big fashionable expensive confectioners in the Vörösmarty Tér, where one drank coffee and ate delicious creamy cakes, was usually crowded late on a Sunday morning; the Hungarians idled in after Mass for a coffee or a drink, and gossip with their friends. When Hope arrived, after parking her car in the square she found Stefan Moranski waiting outside.

  “No, not here, if you do not mind,” he said, as she made to go in.

  “But why on earth not?”

  “It is too big, and too crowded. I will take you somewhere else.”

  “Oh, all right. My car’s just over there,” she said, a little puzzled.

  “Do you mind walking? It is a lovely day,” he said.

  “No—not a bit. I’ve locked the car.” But this was all very peculiar. “You said Gerbeaud’s,” she said in a rather protesting way, as they began to walk down towards the river.

  “Please, no—you said Gerbeaud, and I said Yes,” he answered, looking amused. “I did not want to enter into explanations on the telephone, that was all.”

  “But why not? Do you think your telephone gets tapped?”

  “I know it does,” he said, not smiling now. “But I shall take you to a very nice place.”

  He did. When they reached the Danube they turned upstream along the embankment, and presently he led her in to a typical Budapest establishment, such as she had never entered before: a Kávé-Terrasz, a big L-shaped building all plate-glass windows, full of little tables. There were more of these outside on the raised terrace, mostly of bare iron, though on a few check cloths flapped against the restraint of metal clips; a low clipped privet hedge, just breaking into minute leaf, surrounded the whole.

  “Inside or out?” he asked, as they paused on the terrace.

  “Oh, out—it’s lovely today.”

  So they sat down at one of the little tables. It was indeed a lovely day, with the first hint of spring to be felt in the air, and visible in those tiny budding leaves, but winter had not really gone—up-river one could see the snow still lying in patches on the big shapely indigo hills, and the Danube itself had not yet taken on its silky Easter blue: ice-blocks and snow were floating down the rather yellow stream, muddy with thaw-water. But it was warm in the sun, and very pleasant. “What an amusing place,” Hope said, looking round her with pleasure.

  “Yes; and it is much better in an open place like this—if there is a raid, it is easier to get away,” the young man said matter-of-factly.

  She looked at him wide-eyed. “A raid? What sort of a raid? An air-raid?”

  The R.A.F. raids on Germany were very much in people’s minds in Hungary in the spring of 1941; everyone was hoping that the Government would somehow manage so to steer a middle course as to avoid the unwelcome attentions of either the Luftwaffe or the British airmen.

  Young Moranski smiled rather grimly at her question.

  “No. A police raid.”

  She stared at him. “But why should the police want you?”

  “Well you see, we have no residence-permits, and the authorities will not grant them to us.”

  All this seemed very strange to Hope Kirkland—especially it was strange to be sitting drinking coffee in the sun with a young man whom the police wanted. She had never done anything like that before. She considered it.

  “Well, if the police are after you,” she said at length, “now that you’ve got those passports, why don’t you clear out right away?”

  He hesitated. “It is not so easy. My Mother has a bad heart, and is hardly fit to travel at present—I do not like to leave her.” He paused
and looked at her, studying her face; then as one who has taken a resolution he went on—“I think I can trust you; anyhow I shall trust you. The fact is that no man of military age is allowed to leave Hungary now; if you are over eighteen and under forty-three you must have a doctor’s certificate to say that you are unfit for military service. There is a doctor, a Yugoslav, who used to give them to people like us, but he won’t any more; the police caught him at it, and made a lot of trouble for him.”

  She considered all that too. Fancy one’s freedom of movement hanging on a Yugoslav doctor’s certificate! It was incredible. But she wanted to help.

  “Maybe our doctor would—he’s terribly nice,” she said.

  He gave that grim smile again.

  “If he is a Hungarian doctor he can’t and won’t—it is illegal, and is now become too dangerous for them, in their own country. Only foreigners will, sometimes.”

  They left that subject—there seemed nothing more to be said. Hope in any case felt all at sea—what world was this, of raids and illegal documents and false passports hidden in chocolate-boxes? It was not at all like last night at the Park Club, or her evening with Bill at the Arizona—and yet, mysteriously, Sam was mixed up in it. And that reminded her of his letter. She drew it out of her purse and read the relevant passage, turning it into French as she went along—Moranski listened gravely. At the end, as before, he asked—“No other message?”

  “No.”

  “He says nothing about a car?”

  “No, nothing.” She felt that she—and Sam—were somehow being inadequate to the needs of this grave-faced young man. What ought there to have been about a car—and why?

  They left the Kávé-Terrasz presently, and strolled back in the sun to the Vörösmarty Tér. They did not talk much—they had so few subjects in common. Hope mentioned Berkés’ wonderful playing the night before, but the young man only said—“Yes, it seems he is formidable”—and she realized that the Park Club and expensive gypsy musicians indeed belonged to another world than his. She was thinking, as she walked, about her dentist, also a Yugoslav, who had once mentioned that he had a doctor compatriot practising in the town. She did not speak of it to Stefan, though. But during that rather silent walk she felt that he now trusted her, and more than ever wished to help these refugees—to help him.

  That wish stayed with her, and next morning she rang up the dentist and asked for an appointment to have her teeth polished; that was a call that she could safely put through from home. But Mrs. Kirkland overheard her, and when she came back into the drawing-room said mildly—“Why Hopey, I thought you had your teeth done only two weeks ago?”

  “Oh for goodness’ sake, Mother, don’t I know when my teeth want polishing?” Hope broke out, in a spasm of nervous irritation. “I’m not a child any more. I hate ail this watching and questioning.”

  Poor Mrs. Kirkland, without a clue as to the real reason for this outburst, climbed down apologetically, as mothers in such situations are apt to do—and Hope, penitent, apologized for her temper. When her child, humming a tune, had gone off to the dentist the older woman reflected that she was probably fretting after Sam, and reminded herself that they must some time have a talk about announcing the engagement—she had heard Tibor’s voice in the flat soon after five on Sunday morning when he brought Hope home, and it had sounded—well, ardent. But she would have to choose her moment to talk about that, some time when Hopey was her old sweet easy self.

  In the dentist’s bright glittering room, all glass and chromium and running water and electrical gadgets, Hope asked the blond young man in his white coat—attended by a still blonder young woman assistant in a white overall—about his Yugoslav doctor friend, in the intervals of having her pretty teeth needlessly re-polished; she did this very beguilingly, and had little trouble in getting the friend’s address. She rang up and made an appointment from a call-box on the way home; she wasn’t risking any parental comments this time. But how easy all these things were for her, she couldn’t but think, listening to the respectful eagerness of the voice at the other end of the line when she gave her name and address.

  “Yes, indeed, Mademoiselle; certainly, Mademoiselle. Twelve o’clock? By all means—yes.”

  In the doctor’s consulting-room next morning she didn’t beat about the bush at all. She had given a good deal of thought beforehand to her line of attack, for though she was young, Hope was no fool. She had put on a good dress and taken trouble with her face—this was really less necessary than she thought, given her extreme prettiness, but it was part of her thoroughness in trying to put the job through. She shook hands with the Yugoslav, a youngish-middle-aged, blue-jowled person with a rather intelligent face, and said at once—“Dr. Kraljic, I’ve come on false pretences. There’s nothing the matter with me whatever.”

  Dr. Kraljic rather gaped at this statement, as well he might, and at the pretty young lady, the rich American’s daughter, who made it so blandly, standing there in her long pale grey lambskin coat, with the dashing little cap to match set on her curly hair. To gain time—“Will you not sit down?” he said.

  Hope sat down.

  “Then what can I do for you?” he asked—he spoke rather fluent yankified English.

  “I thought you might be willing to help some friends of mine,” she said.

  “What are they? I wouldn’t have thought any friends of yours needed my help.” He spoke politely, but the sudden suspicion in his manner was evident.

  “They’re Poles,” Hope blurted out. “The police are after them, because they can’t get a residence-permit, so they have to get out; but they can’t without one of those certificate things that doctors give to men under forty-three. They’ve got their passports—all they want is the certificates.” She spoke eagerly, now. “I thought maybe you’d give them those.”

  “What passports have they?” he asked.

  “Yugoslav.”

  “And how did they get them?”

  “I brought them to them, from Belgrade.”

  He gaped more than ever, at that. “You brought them? How did you get them?”

  “Oh, that’s a long story,” the girl said. “Anyway I brought them. But now, will you help?”

  He got up out of his shiny leather tub chair, and began to stalk about the room.

  “No, I won’t,” he said quite angrily. “I have had quite enough trouble already over unfitness certificates for Poles. The risk is far too great for me, a foreigner. I cannot do it,” he said, turning to her. “It is asking too much.”

  Hope was terribly dashed, and her face showed it.

  “I know it’s asking an awful lot,” she said sadly. “And you don’t even know me—there’s no earthly reason why you should do it just because I ask you.” She sat silent, drooping, wondering what else she could say to move him. Offer to pay? That occurred to her, but some instinct warned her against it at this stage. “They do need it so terribly,” she said lamely. “They’re completely up against it, and the Poles have had such a frightfully raw deal, anyway, wouldn’t you say?”

  Her words might be lame, but her face, sad, earnest and pleading, spoke eloquently. The doctor studied it keenly—it surprised him.

  “Why this concern?” he asked abruptly, in fact harshly. “You are an American—what do you care for the troubles of Europeans? Americans are always safe—they have consulates, and dollars!” He almost spat the last word at her.

  Hope was astonished by this outburst, and somehow very much hurt. She had never heard that particular view of Americans put into words before.

  “Well, I—I’ve lived here—for eight years,” she stammered out. “And I’m human, after all.” She was beginning to feel angry.

  “How do you know that it isn’t a trick?” Dr. Kraljic asked. “They might be agents provocateurs.”

  “Oh, I’m sure they aren’t that,” she said earnestly. “They’re absolutely honest-to-God.”

  He studied her face again—so young, so smooth and soft, so
candid; and so desperately in earnest. Extraordinary!—in a wealthy Yankee business man’s daughter.

  “How many are there?” he asked.

  “Two.”

  “And is one of them your fiancé?”

  She blushed at that, as he had expected; she gulped rather curiously, and then said “Yes” with a certain decision.

  He hesitated, watching her again, considering the thing. Her father was very rich and influential—and she was very sweet and disarming—charming, really. It was generally a sound thing to put rich Americans under an obligation, and though he guessed, from the blush and gulp, that the Papa didn’t yet know about the engagement, probably he would do anything this delightful daughter asked when the time came—if it should come. Anyhow he, Kraljic, was all for giving Poles a break, poor devils—at least they were fighters like his own Serbs; not like the Czechs!

  “Well, I will do it for you,” he said at last.

  “Oh, how wonderful! That’s terribly good of you. I don’t know how to thank you.” Quite spontaneously, she clasped her hands as she spoke. She isn’t putting it on, the Serb thought, she’s too naïve for that; she’s just a born actress, or rather a born expresser, and the natural expressions of emotion imitate the stage in the most extraordinary way. But the next moment she surprised him. A funny business-like look came over her eager little face as she said—“Look, Dr. Kraljic, these people are terribly poor. So I’m paying the fee, whatever it is. And I want it to be a fee to match the risk you’re taking. Is that understood?”

  For the first time since she came into the room he smiled. What a combination she was!—love (he would swear), tenderness, delicacy, charm—and a strong Yankee business head! But a Yugoslav finds it nearly as impossible as an Irishman to mention a figure—it might always be too low. And anyhow it is an indelicate subject. He waved his hand.