The Travellers

by Ann Swinfen

  The last house in the group of three was her favourite. As well as the delicate bow windows it had a semicircular fan-light above the door with a fine tracery of carved wooden glazing bars. At the time the house was built such a fan-light must have been a sign of real status in the community. The front door was generously wide, and in its centre had a very large, faceted brass knob, rather tarnished at the moment, she noticed. Then she saw that an estate agent’s sign was leaning drunkenly over the side wall next to the opening which led into Fish Lane. The house was for sale, and looked as though it had been for some time. Tendrils of Russian vine and bindweed had wreathed themselves around the sign and looked well established. There were no curtains at the windows and the whole place was in darkness. It was a much smaller house than Craigfast, but Kate recalled that in her girlhood this was the house she had dreamed of owning. It probably had four bedrooms, and the garden was not very large, though spacious compared with the scrap of yard they had owned in London. Altogether it had a more kindly look than the grand house up on the hill.

  The church clock began to strike. Kate craned to check her watch in the light from the street lamp. Eight o’clock already. She must get back home and finish her packing. Her heart gave a lurch. This time tomorrow she would be nearing Budapest.

  * * *

  The morning drive to Edinburgh airport was easy: they went by back roads and allowed plenty of time. Kate felt elated. The scenery northwards up the coast and over the border was beautiful; at some moments the road allowed glimpses of the sea, at others it swooped above hidden valleys with small farms and ancient fields girded with dry-stone walls, then crossed high moorland with nothing but a few sheep and curlews amongst the scrub. They saw few cars and no lorries.

  When they set out, Sofia sat beside Kate tensed forward in her seat, her hands gripping her knees. She had found it difficult to fasten her seat belt, and Kate realised with a shock that she had probably hardly ever ridden in a private car since she had come to Dunmouth. She made rare visits to Charlborough, but they were by bus. The thought of all this strangeness, of Sofia whisked away from her solitary life by the sea to the busy hum of international airports and jet travel, added to the dreamlike quality of this whole adventure.

  They left the car in the secure car park and were ferried to the airport in a jolting minibus by a cheerful driver who whistled as the hard seats banged up and down. The traffic at the Newbridge roundabout held them up for several minutes.

  ‘Awful lot of traffic, isn’t there?’ said Kate.

  ‘Och, this is no’ bad. Ye should see it in the rush hour.’

  As soon as the lights changed, the bus shot forward, nearly throwing Kate into the aisle.

  ‘Aye,’ he resumed, swinging on to the road to the airport. ‘Before they put the lights in, ye couldnae get across from the Edinburgh end in under half an hour in the mornings.’

  He helped them unload their suitcases from the bus, and Kate thought that (despite the discomfort of the non-existent suspension) it was a good service. They had had sole use of the bus.

  ‘Now, I’ve a note of your return flight. Ye’ll be picked up yon.’ He pointed round the curve of the service road to the far side. ‘If we’re no here, ring this number and we’ll be straight over to fetch ye.’ He gave Kate a business card, and went whistling off, with the bus clanking and rattling around him.

  They bought magazines and checked their luggage in, then went to have tea and cakes at a table overlooking the runway.

  ‘Our last food in England,’ said Kate. ‘Scotland, I mean.’

  ‘This is very good,’ said Sofia, biting into a Danish pastry.

  ‘They’re supposed to be locally baked. What is the food like in Hungary?’

  ‘Nowadays, I do not know. When I was a girl... Well, the true Hungarian food is quite rich and heavy, with lots of paprika. It is necessary to understand paprika to appreciate Hungarian food. There are many different kinds, many different flavours. But of course, because of the Hapsburg Empire, there was also much Austrian influence. A lot of dumplings.’

  Kate made a face.

  ‘It all sounds very heavy for this hot weather.’

  ‘If it is hot here, it will be much worse in central Europe! But the Austrians also brought their cakes to Hungary. Very beautiful, very light. These you will enjoy. But you may not be able to get tea. Unless everything is changed.’

  Kate, who had had the same fear, did not admit that she had packed a box of tea bags in her case.

  ‘They must be starting to cater more for the tourists now, I suppose. At least in the big towns.’

  There was a click from the loudspeaker above their heads.

  ‘Air UK Flight 0818 for Amsterdam now boarding at gate 4.’

  ‘That’s us,’ said Kate, draining her teacup and gathering up her handbag and shoulder bag.

  Sofia stood up calmly and smoothed down her skirt.

  ‘Let us go,’ she said.

  Chapter 7

  By the time they boarded the KLM flight from Amsterdam to Budapest, after scurrying across Schipol airport with little time to spare, Sofia began to feel like an experienced traveller. She had been dreading the flights more than she allowed Kate to suspect. Her only previous experience of flying – on the trip to Paris three years before – had been unnerving. They hit a freak thunderstorm on the outward flight, which threw the plane about with sickening jolts and sudden drops. On the return journey the pilot discovered technical trouble after he taxied out on to the runway. They returned to the loading bay, sat in the plane for half an hour without explanation, and were then unloaded and put on to another flight three hours later. Her innate fear of flying had been made much worse by these mishaps, and she did not want to repeat the experience. But the new determination which had driven her to confront the papers in the trunk, and then contemplate a return to Hungary, forced her to take hold of her courage.

  Kate was turning over the pages of the in-flight magazine, Holland Herald. She seemed tired, as though the strain of the last few days and the long drive to Edinburgh airport had taken their toll. Sofia looked out of the window. They were passing over a rolling field of white cloud, mounded like whipped cream, with the horizontal rays of the descending sun laying a pink glow over the west-facing contours. Although Kate had said little about Tom’s abandonment of their shared holiday in France, Sofia had gathered enough to realise that she was distressed and angry about it. The two women were travelling into an uncertain time ahead. Sofia was both excited and dismayed at the thought of seeing Hungary again, and she felt she was not sufficiently calm and in command of herself to be much help to Kate. Perhaps, she thought, we would have been better to have gone for a true holiday to some impersonal place. We do not know each other well enough to cope with the difficulties which may lie ahead.

  ‘Dinner, Madam?’ The air stewardess was proffering a tray.

  ‘Oh, yes, thank you.’ Sofia was startled out of her thoughts, and hastily pulled down the table from the back of the seat in front of her.

  ‘Madam?’

  Kate stuffed the magazine into the net pocket and took her tray from the girl.

  ‘Looks quite nice,’ she said, inspecting a colourful array of dishes and starting on the smoked salmon and salad.

  The stewardess returned with hot rolls and individual bottles of wine, and they progressed to Cajun chicken with rice, and Dutch cheese.

  ‘It’s just as well they feed you quite reasonably on international flights these days,’ said Kate, pouring out the last of her white wine and sipping it. On the Air UK flight they had been given tea with open sandwiches, scones, clotted cream and jam. ‘By the time we reach the hotel in Budapest it will be nearly eleven, what with the difference in the clocks. I suppose we could always get room service, but we’ll be too late for the restaurant.’

  ‘I’m not used to being looked after like this,’ said Sofia. ‘It’s quite a novelty. Look, they’ve given us strawberries and cream for dessert.’r />
  They ate for a while in silence, but Kate was thinking ahead.

  ‘The travel agent assured me that there would be a minibus to take us from the airport to the hotel. I hope we can find it all right. Thank heavens you speak Hungarian! I’m not used to travelling in a country where I don’t speak the language. My French and German will usually see me through any western European country. I wonder if we will find many people in Hungary who speak either of them – or English, for that matter.’

  ‘In the western part of the country they will surely still speak German. Austria is so near. In Budapest, I don’t know. Because of the long years of Russian occupation most people probably learned Russian.’

  Kate ripped open the packet containing a cloth soaked in eau de cologne and dabbed her face and hands.

  ‘From what I’ve seen of it, Hungarian looks an impossible language. It isn’t related to any of the other European languages except Finnish, is it?’

  Sofia smiled. ‘Like any language, it doesn’t seem difficult if you grow up speaking it. I suppose you could say that it is a microcosm of our history. We Magyars brought it with us from the east when the Turul bird led us to our promised land.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The Turul bird. A huge mythical bird who flew ahead of the wandering tribes until he brought us to the puszta, where there were rich wide plains of grass for our horses, and good lands for us to plant crops for ourselves. The tradition says that we arrived in 896 ad, and in 1896 there were great festivities for the millennium. The very first metro in mainland Europe was built, and the parliament building, and the cathedral of St Stephen.’

  Kate dived into her bag for the guidebook.

  ‘I think I saw a picture of that bird somewhere.’ She flipped over the pages. ‘Yes, here you are.’

  She held up a picture of Szabadság Híd, Freedom Bridge. On the pinnacle of each of its great supporting cast-iron towers was a bronze statue of a huge bird with wings outstretched, both soaring and protective. Sofia took the book from her and looked at the picture hungrily.

  ‘So the Freedom Bridge is still there. I wasn’t sure. So much was destroyed when the Germans and the Russians fought over Budapest.’

  ‘Most of the bridges were blown up by the retreating Germans, but they were restored. There’s something here about the millennium,’ said Kate, pointing. ‘It says the domes of both the parliament building and the cathedral were built 96 metres high, to commemorate the settlement of the Magyars in the country now known to outsiders as “Hungary”. That’s a very fine building, the parliament.’

  ‘It was inspired by Westminster, did you know? The Hungarians have always felt a special affection for the British.’

  ‘Look, it says there that the Chain Bridge was designed by an English engineer and built by a Scot.’

  ‘You see?’

  Kate sat back again. ‘We English haven’t been very good friends in recent times, though, have we? When Hungary appealed to us for help in 1956 we sat back and did nothing, too absorbed in our squabbles over Suez. And I was reading some Hungarian history in the first part of that book. It seems to me that we didn’t try hard enough to help Hungary get back the parts of the country taken away by the Trianon Treaty after the first world war.’

  ‘Yes, two-thirds of the country was given to Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania,’ said Sofia. ‘Then when we got a little bit back, when I was a girl, it was only by making concessions to Hitler. It was the start of his clever campaign to entrap our leaders.’

  The stewardess came round to collect their trays, and then the duty-free trolley was pushed along the aisle, which put a stop to conversation. Soon afterwards they landed at Vienna. It was half-past eight and twilight, so they could see little, although as they glided down towards the earth there was a glimpse of the Danube reflecting the lights of the city. After half an hour they were airborne again.

  The flight from Vienna to Budapest seemed to take no time at all. As they were fastening their seat belts for the descent to Ferihegy airport, Sofia said, ‘While we are in Budapest, I think we should be tourists. We are here on holiday, and you must see some of the beauties of the city. But there is one bit of business I must try to do.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Sofia opened her handbag, and unzipped an inner pocket.

  ‘This,’ she said, handing Kate a creased sheet of paper, on which the beautiful italic handwriting had faded to a pale brown. At the top of the sheet were some printed words which looked like the name of a shop, and an address.

  ‘What is it?’

  Sofia took back the paper and stared out of the window.

  ‘A few weeks before we fled from Hungary, my mother took her violin to Budapest for a small repair. She always went to the same place – a family of Jewish instrument makers and repairers who had a business near the Opera House in Pest. Then we left very suddenly from our own home in the country, because my father managed to arrange passage for us on a Polish boat travelling from Vienna to Romania. He rowed us out himself to join the ship. There was no chance to collect the violin, and my mother thought she had left the receipt at home with Papa. Later, after we reached London and unpacked, she discovered that she still had it. Of course, many of the Jews were killed by the Germans and by the Arrow Cross, and much of the city was bombed and destroyed by artillery fire. There is almost no hope that it will still be there, but I will not rest happy unless I try to find it.’

  She smiled sadly.

  ‘The instrument business dated back to the sixteenth century, before the Turks came, but it isn’t likely to have survived both the Germans and the Russians in this century.’

  When they emerged from the aeroplane at Ferihegy the building seemed grim as an army barracks, and quite deserted, although it was not yet ten o’clock. There was just one immigration officer on duty at passport control – a good-looking young woman who was painfully methodical. She scrutinised each passport, held the inside pages up to the light as if checking for forgeries, and stared balefully first at the photograph and then at the person proffering the passport before final stamping it and motioning to the next person. The queue of tired travellers shuffled slowly forward. A large American businessman just ahead of Kate and Sofia was grumbling loudly about the delay to an elderly Japanese couple.

  ‘Time they got their act together if they want to attract outside investment and tourism. You wouldn’t see this kind of hold-up at any airport in the US of A, no siree. She’s making like we’re some kind of criminals.’

  Considering, thought Kate, that they are so recently out from under the heel of the Russian military, it’s not surprising they’re still a bit like communist border guards.

  The American was now laying down the law about transport from the airport to the hotels in central Budapest.

  ‘Naw, naw,’ he was asserting. ‘You don’t want to take one of those bus things. Take a limo. They’re so desperate for hard currency here, it’s cheap.’

  Irritated, Kate murmured to Sofia, ‘I’m going to change some money at the bureau de change over there. I couldn’t get any small denominations from the travel agent. If they speak English, I’ll find out whether the buses are still running as late as this.’

  The woman at the bureau de change was helpful, and spoke English. She pointed out that at the adjacent counter tickets for the bus could be bought at a standard price of 600 forints each, to any hotel in Budapest. Certainly the buses would run until the last flight of the night landed. Kate returned triumphant and flourished the tickets at Sofia. They were now at the head of the queue for passport control. Kate noticed that Sofia was very tense, with fine beads of sweat on her upper lip. Would there be any trouble over the fact that Sofia had been born in Hungary, but held a British passport? She urged the older woman ahead of her. If there should be any difficulties, she didn’t want to find herself processed through and Sofia left behind.

  The passport official seemed to take longer than ever with Sofia�
��s passport, turning over every page, scrutinising the photograph. Once she closed the passport and seemed about to hand it back, then she opened it for a further look. Kate could feel sweat gathering on her own back and trickling down the groove of her spine. At last Sofia was waved through, and Kate received only cursory attention. As they collected their luggage and a smiling customs man indicated that they might pass on, Kate noted with some satisfaction that the loud American was having all his handsome cases thoroughly searched.

  They passed through a door and were suddenly hit by colour and sound. After the grim concrete bunker on the other side of the barrier, this seemed a different world. Dozens of people were milling about – new arrivals and locals who had come to meet them. There were all the usual airport conveniences – a café, a bar, a kiosk selling magazines and postcards, another bureau de change, comfortable chairs and low tables, and a desk for the airport buses.

  ‘It is like stepping from the communist past into the new Hungary,’ murmured Sofia, ‘but I am not sure yet whether one is free to say that.’

  A man with a clipboard was talking to the people clustered about the bus desk, checking destinations and asking them to take a seat until their bus was called.

  ‘It seems very efficient,’ said Kate as they sat down after telling him their hotel.

  Within five minutes he was back.

  ‘Atrium Hyatt, Marriott, Forum,’ he called. ‘This way, please.’ He repeated himself in French, German and Hungarian.

  They followed him out of the door into the night, and at last Kate began to feel that she had really arrived in Hungary. A smart white bus was parked beside the pavement. Along the side it said obscurely, in red-painted script, ‘...a légi utasok földi szállítoja...’ However, below this, sturdy black letters announced cheerfully: ‘Airport Minibus’. As they pulled away from the terminal buildings, Kate noticed that the large American, now with the small Japanese couple in tow, was arguing with a taxi driver.