Secret Kingdom

by Francis Bennett

  7

  ‘Hello. Martineau.’

  He was perched on the edge of his desk, head bent forward over the telephone, facing the window to prevent Hart from hearing what he was saying. He spoke in curt monosyllables.

  ‘Right. Fine. Good. Yes.’ He replaced the telephone. ‘I have to go out,’ he said, sliding off the desk and putting on his jacket. ‘Someone needs their hand holding. I’m not sure when I’ll be back.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll mind the shop.’

  Eva.

  She’d bought lunch for two, she’d said; she apologized for not telephoning earlier but, if it was not inconvenient, would he like to come as soon as he could? He wanted to shout with pleasure and excitement. That could only mean one thing. Dora must be away. Why else would Eva have rung?

  He waited impatiently for the ancient lift but someone had left the door open two floors below, and no amount of pressing the bell persuaded them to close it. He ran down the stairs. They would be alone together. Alone. After all this time. He raced through the lobby of the embassy. Vaci Street. That was where he was going. Vaci Street. Where the world ended and paradise began.

  The taxi bumped agonizingly slowly down the narrow cobbled street, past shops and restaurants whose names he was now familiar with, before stopping in front of her apartment building with its worked cast-iron gate. He pressed the buzzer, heard the satisfying click that released the lock and went inside. He ran up the stone stairs two at a time again until, breathless and trembling, his heart ready to burst in his ribcage, he stopped to rest on the third landing. He couldn’t arrive at her apartment bent double, unable to say a word. That would be too humiliating. If only he was twenty years younger. He leaned against the wall and looked out over the central courtyard, breathing deeply in an effort to recover his composure. He put a comb through his unruly hair, straightened his tie and wiped the sweat off his face with his handkerchief. Then, his breathing under control once more, he walked steadily up the remaining stairs to the top of the building.

  She was kissing him almost before he had knocked on the door, dragging him into the flat and quickly pushing the door shut behind them.

  ‘Eva.’

  ‘Why do you come wearing these silly things,’ she asked, wrestling with his tie. ‘They are so difficult to undo.’

  ‘Wait,’ he said, trying to restrain her. ‘Wait, please.’

  ‘Bobby?’ She drew back from him, uncertain. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Where’s Dora?’

  ‘Dora is with her friend Elena. They are revising for exams. She will stay overnight and return tomorrow at nine.’

  He laughed with relief and pleasure and she laughed with him. ‘I telephoned the moment she left. I couldn’t wait to see her go. Not very maternal, is it?’ she said, taking off her dress.

  ‘It was sweet of you to ring. For a moment I couldn’t believe it was you.’

  ‘You sounded very serious. I was afraid you would not come.’

  ‘I had to pretend you were someone else.’ How easily these small lies came. Never far from the truth, but never quite the truth either.

  ‘Why was that?’ she asked innocently.

  ‘Guess,’ he said evasively, throwing his shirt over the back of a chair. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be at work?’

  ‘Even interpreters have days off, you know. What was your excuse?’

  ‘Excuse?’

  ‘To explain your absence from the office this afternoon.’

  ‘Research,’ he said. ‘I’m doing research.’

  ‘Is this what you call research?’

  She stood in front of him naked, smiling, inviting, a beautiful dream that was his alone to savour. That this young woman was here now, in this room, offering herself to him was a miracle he could neither understand nor question.

  ‘Bobby?’

  He fell to his knees in front of her, his head against her belly, his eyes tightly closed, his arms around her legs. On her skin he smelled the sweet air of the marshes he’d known as a child; in her veins he heard the distant sound of the sea. She was his, she was his to take and to love.

  He looked up to see tears in her eyes. ‘You’re crying.’

  ‘I cry when I am happy,’ she said.

  On the last day of June Martineau and Eva Balassi became lovers.

  THE SWIMMING POOL IN THE DYNAMO STADIUM

  May 1940

  The lights of the city float on the dark surface of the pool, orbs, crescents, triangles and other more obscure shapes, burning gold and silver in the limpid black water. The heat is intense. She has taken off her shoes and is cooling her bare feet in the swimming pool. Whenever she moves she makes ripples that alter the shapes of the reflections. Tempting jewels of light. They look so close she wants to reach out and scoop them up in her hands. The moment she tries, they shrink from her, treacherously slipping through her fingers and sinking deeper into the mysterious depths. Another illusion.

  Will he come? He has already exhausted his passes for the month and there are still ten days to go. Now it is a question of whether he can find another way out of the barracks. He’d promised he’d meet her at midnight but she suspects that was bravado because he’d said it in front of his friends. She would wait another half an hour. Then if he didn’t turn up she would go.

  Does she love him? She thinks about him enough, all the time in fact, even when she is swimming. (It’s him she is swimming towards.) Is being in love allowing him to invade your being so that you feel incomplete when he is not there? She discusses this with Julia night after night. Is love wanting to touch someone, to give yourself to them, or is that something else? They giggle about this. In the socialist world they are building, there are conditions to love. They know all about that. If she loves Alexei, is she being true to her ideals? You have to share the same ideology with your lover; you must be committed companions, working to build a new world for the generations to come. You must set your beliefs before your personal needs because without those beliefs you are bourgeois, a traitor to the inevitable historical victory of the working classes. Since coming to Moscow they have both been sufficiently indoctrinated to be quite sure of that. In the secrecy of their room, late at night, they wonder why Marxism makes you so ugly. They haven’t met a single class leader who is good-looking.

  What does Alexei believe in? Eva asks only because she wants to talk about him.

  ‘Himself,’ Julia says immediately. ‘And his ambitions.’

  Eva isn’t listening. All she can see is the shining face of the young Soviet officer cadet who climbs out of his barracks at night, risking punishment, to see her, who comes to watch her swim whenever he can. Who isn’t handsome (Julia had said he wasn’t tall enough for that. She doesn’t agree but she hasn’t dared say so), but who is powerful, strong, and when he is away from her there is something about him she can’t forget. He has an intensity that no other boy she has known can match, thoughts in his head she can only guess at. This intensity is for her, she is flattered by that, but scared too, scared that he wants more than she is ready to give.

  She kicks her legs, making waves. Gold and silver shapes bob elusively in front of her. There is something frightening about this boy, but something irresistible too. If only she knew if what she felt is love.

  ‘Eva?’ A hoarse whisper. He is standing at the other end of the pool, peering into the darkness, searching for her. ‘Eva?’

  Alexei!

  She gets up and runs to him.

  ‘You managed it. You got away.’

  He laughs. ‘I had to see you.’ He draws her into his arms. ‘Nothing could stop me.’ His kiss is more than greeting. She lets him hold her tightly, she can feel the heat of his body through his shirt. ‘I missed you.’

  What he doesn’t tell her is that he’d found a dead cat in his locker that morning and pinned to its rotting head was a note with the words: ‘Fuck your own kind, not Magyar bitches.’

  He is kissing her neck, her shoulders, somehow –
how? – he has pushed away the strap of her dress and his hand has slipped down over her breast. It is too soon for that. Too soon. But she doesn’t know how to tell him to stop.

  ‘Come on, let’s swim,’ she says. ‘There’s no one here.’

  She ducks away from him, pulling up the strap of her dress as she does so.

  ‘I’m not a good swimmer.’

  Alexei, afraid of the water? How can that be? He is a soldier. Soldiers are fearless.

  ‘If you want me you’ll have to catch me.’

  She runs away to the other end of the pool. She undoes her dress as she runs and throws it over a bench. She takes off her underclothes and, naked, dives in. This is her element, her world, where she is in command. If she is to give herself to him, he must first surrender to her here.

  ‘Come on.’ She shakes the hair from her eyes and laughs at him. ‘What are you afraid of?’

  He is still standing at the edge, unsure of what to do. She dives under the water and swims across to the other side of the pool. When she surfaces again she sees that he has undressed and is slowly climbing down the ladder into the water.

  ‘It won’t hurt you.’ Her voice echoes in the empty chamber.

  By the time she reaches his side he is in the water up to his chest. ‘There,’ she says, ‘That wasn’t too awful, was it?’

  He puts his hands out towards her and says something she can’t hear as she dives away, eluding his grasp.

  ‘You won’t catch me that easily.’

  She is in the middle of the pool now, just able to touch the bottom with her toes if she bounces along. He is coming towards her, walking in slow motion, pushing his way forward, the water up to his shoulders.

  ‘Eva.’

  She laughs as he lunges towards her, swimming quickly out of his grasp, drawing him on and on towards the world where he will be at her mercy. He comes on, silent, determined, his dark eyes reflecting the darkness of the pool. The water is up to his neck now.

  ‘I’m here. Can you see me?’

  She dives again, twisting and turning so he won’t be able to find her. Down till she can touch the bottom with her hand, then round on her back, towards the far end of the pool. She surfaces once more and shakes the hair out of her eyes.

  Alexei is nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Alexei?’ Her words echo round the pool. ‘Alexei. Where are you?’

  No sign. No movement. The surface of the water is still.

  He is fooling her. Playing a trick. She dives again, eyes open, but in the darkness she can see nothing. She comes up hoping to catch sight of him close by. She sees nothing.

  ‘Alexei.’

  Suddenly she knows she has lost him. Somewhere in the darkness he is beneath the surface of the water, his lungs bursting as his life drains out of him. She dives and swims back towards where she has last seen him.

  ‘Alexei, where are you?’

  There is no movement except the ripples spreading outwards towards the sides of the pool across the gently rocking surface of the water. There is no sound except for the lapping of the water against the sides. The dancing lights that only moments ago were jewels are now accusations, withdrawing from her, condemning her foolishness. The game has turned sour and she is afraid. She is alone with a drowning boy, her Alexei, whose life she has to save.

  Then she sees him, a grey mass floating beneath the water. Three strokes and she is by his side. She grabs him by the hair to get his head out of the water. His body is inert. She turns him on his back, puts her hand under his chin and drags him slowly to the side. He has lost consciousness. She can’t tell if he is breathing or not.

  She struggles to pull him out of the pool. He lies on his back, not moving. She speaks to him gently, her face close to his, calling his name, Alexei, Alexei, touching him with her fingers. She sees his pale face made paler in the reflected light. How transparent his skin is; she’d never noticed that before, the veins like blue pencil marks beneath the surface. How dark his hair, made darker by the water. He is beautiful, she knows that in her heart. She draws her fingers over the muscles in his short, powerful body, feeling his strength, willing him to live. Her Alexei is beautiful and strong.

  ‘Don’t die, Alexei,’ she says, sobbing. ‘Please don’t die.’

  She feels him shake himself into life. Then he is coughing and choking, he is alive, not dead. Not dead.

  ‘Eva?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’

  She is weeping, though whether with horror at what she has done to him or relief that he is alive, she doesn’t know. He opens his eyes and stares at her as if he had never seen her before. Then he gently draws her down to him. She kisses him, tasting the chlorine on his lips. She feels the cool of his body against her. She is beyond resistance now, she is his, there is nothing she can do to stop herself. This is what she wants.

  Alexei. Alexei.

  That is the moment she knows she is in love.

  PART TWO

  Lighting Fires

  Summer 1956

  8

  1

  He’d passed the postbox in Weiner Leo Street three days running but there was nothing on it, no sign at all. He was worried, but it wasn’t a crisis. Vardas had been late before but he’d always delivered, he could rely on him for that. On the fourth day, as he was driving Christine to the embassy for the ambassador’s birthday party, he saw the double chalk mark, two horizontal lines meaning ‘meeting urgent’ – not the sign he wanted, the single line that meant ‘delivery ready’. He looked at his watch. Half past six. He’d have to get away from the party by seven-thirty if he was to make the first emergency meeting point by eight. If he missed that the next was at midnight.

  Archie Randall was at the door of the Counting Room, ‘counting everybody in’, he said with a rousing laugh. The embassy was housed in a building that had been built a hundred years before for a British bank. Over the door to each room was a plaster plaque, its fine lettering, entwined with vine leaves, announcing the function of the room.

  ‘Good to see you, Bobby.’ A quick handshake. ‘Christine, how are you?’ A light kiss. ‘Go on in, you know everyone. Make yourself at home. Rachel’s in there somewhere.’

  The room was not crowded. Small groups, departments clinging to each other, stood around with glasses of wine while Hungarian waiters with brilliantined hair and white aprons moved among them with trays. Randall’s celebrations of his birthday and Christmas always heralded an exercise in democracy which the ambassador ignored for the rest of the year. ‘Get the chaps to mix a bit, break down the social barriers, rustle up some esprit de corps, that’s what it’s about, isn’t it?’

  It never worked. Nothing Randall could do dispelled the chill air of embarrassment as twice a year he conducted his social experiment, mixing chauffeurs with counsellors, cooks with First Secretaries, the administrative staff with the executive. If he knew of the derision such an exercise created, he ignored it.

  ‘Come and meet my new man,’ Martineau said. He had spotted Hart refilling his glass. ‘You’ll like him.’

  It was the only introduction among the familiar greetings, the only new face. Christine, knowing her duty, smiled graciously and asked how Hart was enjoying Budapest. Wasn’t it a lovely city? But so hot in summer. Did Hart manage to get away for weekends? They were lucky, Bobby’d found a place above Lake Balaton, so much cooler up in the hills, wasn’t it, darling? Turning to Martineau and touching his arm. He must come and stay. Get Bobby to bring him one weekend. How she wished she could retreat there in May and return in September. The heat in this city made one so languid, didn’t it?

  Martineau checked his watch. Seven-fifteen. How long before Archie gave his speech? How he hated Archie’s speeches. Whatever happened, he must contrive to get away by seven-thirty. He’d excuse himself from the dinner. He’d have to warn Archie.

  ‘Bobby, your glass is empty.’ Randall, beaming down through his half-moons, brushed away his forelock to reveal a sweating brow.
‘That won’t do.’

  ‘Do you have a moment?’ Martineau asked.

  ‘I have three precious minutes before I say my piece. Hateful responsibility, but one can’t duck out, the chaps expect it.’

  ‘I’m going to have to disappear. Something’s come up.’

  ‘Will you be back for dinner?’

  ‘Unlikely.’

  ‘Damn. That will ruin my placement.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that.’

  Randall pondered the question for a moment. ‘Ask your young man to join us, will you? I imagine he knows how to hold his knife. He can keep Christine happy in your absence. Right. That’s settled then. Time I addressed the troops.’

  Martineau stayed for the speech, the same old text wheeled out year after year, with slight variations; sang happy birthday to the bemused accompaniment of a gypsy band Archie had hired from some restaurant he’d been to recently, and had a quick word with Hart: ‘One of my Borises is having a crisis. Archie says will you join them for dinner, look after Christine. We’ll speak tomorrow.’ Then on to Christine, deep in conversation with Rachel Randall: ‘Darling, a bit of business has come up, I’m going to have to slip away. Hugh’s kindly said he’ll look after you, and I’ve fixed everything with Archie.’ False smiles, no kisses and no time to argue, and then it was out into the steaming night.

  He drove across the Danube, leaving the lights of Pest for the brooding streets of Buda. The river was the frontier in his life; Pest the surface of his existence, the cover story, Buda the secret kingdom where he retreated to meet his Borises under the eye of the enemy, where the real business was done. This was the territory he loved, the world of shadows and darkness, of secrets and whispers, where you pitted your skills against those of the enemy, an undercover war which would not end until the evil of communism was destroyed and what remained was no more than an archaeological curiosity.

  He turned left under the lee of the hill topped by the Soviet Freedom Memorial, an angel figure holding a palm leaf above her head that gazed down on the illuminated city (how hypocritical can you get?) and then, just before the Gellert Hotel, swung sharp right and on up the steep incline as Minerva Street twisted around the hill. Pest was below him now, and at odd moments through the trees he glimpsed the tide of buildings pushing out into the Hungarian plain and the Danube disappearing into the smoky distance. He drove on, the winding road taking him past the Swedish and Finnish embassies and the now deserted mansions of the once rich of pre-communist Budapest. He passed the bus stop, counted to a hundred and pulled over to the kerb.