The Tightening String

by Ann Bridge

  Rosina made a polite response to this – any reference to Dick disarmed her. But she noticed that Count Endre made no further reference to Lucilla’s fiancé. She was relieved to observe him, later in the day, flirting violently with, in turns, Anna Dolinsky and a beautiful young girl, Christina Fugger, who belonged to the famous German banking family.

  Next day Princess Oria, who like so many Hungarian women was as active and athletic as she was long-limbed and slender, suggested that they should bathe in Lake Balaton before luncheon. ‘If one keeps fairly near the shore it is not too cold, though it is not very warm yet.’ Besides Mrs Eynsham only the younger ladies in the house-party acceded to this suggestion: Erszebet Erdöszy, Count Endre’s sister, who had become a friend of Lucilla’s; the Fugger girl, and, slightly to Rosina’s embarrassment, Countess Dolinsky. The Terenys had a large bathing-hut on a quiet part of the shore, with plenty of cubicles for changing in; the party presently emerged onto the beach of flat water-worn stones in their various bathing-dresses. Rosina’s was much lighter and prettier than the one she had hired at Devis the previous day, a brief flowered tunic-cum-shorts with a tiny discreet little skirt; Countess Dolinsky however appeared in the first bikini any of the others had ever seen. Oria glanced at it with surprise, but made no remark except to praise Mrs Eynsham’s rather pointedly.

  The shallow water near the shore was warmed with the sun, but further out it was still fairly cold; most of the party turned back after about 100 metres, but Rosina, who was a strong swimmer, pushed on, as she thought alone; there were birds swimming about some distance off-shore, and she wanted to get close enough to see what they were. Suddenly one of her feet was caught from below, and she was pulled right under; she was really frightened. But after a few seconds her foot was released by whatever held it, and she came up, spluttering and gasping – as she wiped the water from her eyes with one hand she saw Countess Dolinsky’s laughing face a yard away.

  ‘That gave you a surprise, didn’t it?’ the young woman said. I‘m rather good at swimming under water.’

  ‘I don’t think it was very funny’ Mrs Eynsham said, trying to exercise the caution the Prince had enjoined on her,

  ‘Did you mind? Oh, then I am so sorry. I thought the English liked jokes.’

  ‘Yes – but this was what we call “a practical joke”, meaning a rather pointless trick’ Rosina said, rightly guessing that to criticise Countess Anna’s command of English was the surest way of snubbing her, and forgetting about caution.

  ‘So. Then a joke is what?’

  ‘Something verbal, and really witty. I am sure you are as good at that as at swimming under water.’ She looked towards the shore. ‘Aren’t we rather a long way out?’

  ‘Yes, perhaps. Shall we go back?’

  ‘Do – I’ll follow you in a few minutes.’

  ‘You want to get rid of me!’ Anna Dolinsky said reproachfully.

  ‘Well I don’t want to be drowned again!’ Rosina said laughing – really she was a beguiling creature.

  ‘Then let us go back together – 1 promise I won’t touch you.’

  ‘Good. But I want to go on and look at those birds.’

  The Countess trod water, and gazed over the silky shining surface of the lake. ‘They are just ducks’ she said – ‘and they are a long way away!’

  ‘Yes – we frightened them with our talking, of course. But they’re not clucks. I believe they may be Great Crested Grebes, and I want very much to see them. Countess Anna, do please be a dear and go away.’

  ‘What is this, grebe?’

  ‘Oh, a water-bird’ Mrs Eynsham said impatiently. ‘The English like birds much more than they do practical jokes. You go on back – I’ll follow you. You’ve come quite far enough; you look cold’ she said, a little concerned at a bluish tinge on that pretty face.

  ‘Yes, it is rather cold. I will go back’ – and she turned and swam away.

  Mrs Eynsham, with a slow powerful breast-stroke, swam on towards the birds; as she drew near them she stretched her arms out in front of her, quite still, to support her body, and swam only with her legs, very gently. Yes, they were Great Crested Grebes, with those enormous chestnut frills projecting on either side of their faces, and the funny horns of feathers from the back of their heads; but what delighted Mrs Eynsham was that they were surrounded by their striped offspring and were feeding them – as she trod water, only a few yards away, she watched the parent birds dive, come up with a beakful of small fish, and thrust them into the little gaping beaks. She had never seen this process going on at a distance of only a few yards – how many naturalists had, she wondered? Since she kept perfectly still the birds completely ignored her, and she could watch as she chose, out on the sunny water, with the low green shore opposite making a background to the beautiful creatures. But presently she remembered luncheon and Prince Willie’s passion for punctuality, and struck out vigorously towards the shore.

  There Princess Oria stood waiting for her, fully dressed.

  ‘I sent the others home in the car. Countess Dolinsky had got chilled, and felt unwell’ she said. ‘But it will be back in a few minutes.’

  ‘Right – I’ll get dressed. I do hope I’m not late?’ Rosina said, pulling off her rubber cap and shaking the water out of it. ‘Goodness, my hair’s soaking!’

  ‘Did Anna do something foolish?’ Oria asked, with large serious eyes.

  ‘To me, do you mean? Yes – she dived down and pulled me under, silly little thing’ Rosina said, shaking her head like a wet spaniel, and beginning to rub it with a towel from her cubicle.

  ‘I thought she seemed upset – I think it was as much that as the chill that made her feel unwell. I am so sorry that this should have happened, here. She is impulsive, often, and unwise.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Oria dear. It didn’t matter. She was really cold, too – she was turning quite blue when I sent her back. I hope she’ll be all right. But you’ll have to lend me a bit of veiling to put over my hair for lunch – I shall never get it dry in time.’

  ‘Of course I will do this – and my maid shall set it for you afterwards. She has had a coiffeur’s training.’

  ‘Oh, lovely.’

  ‘Leave your bathing-dress – one of the servants will come down to rinse and dry them’ Oria called after her, as she went in to dress.

  They were just in time for luncheon – at which Countess Dolinsky did not appear; she had gone to bed, she was unwell. As Mrs Eynsham expressed polite regrets about this to the old Princess she saw the Prince watching her, with an eye like a Red Indian’s; but he said nothing till after the meal was over, when he took her aside in the big florid salon where coffee was served.

  ‘You are kind, and clever’ he said then. ‘Oria tells me there was a contretemps at the Balaton. What happened?’

  She told him. ‘I had no idea she was following me – I was swimming out to see the grebes. But it didn’t matter; it was just a prep-school boy’s trick.’

  ‘I did not think even Anna, who is very foolish, would have ventured to treat one of my guests so,’ he said. ‘I do apologise most deeply.’

  ‘Oh as the Americans would say, ‘forget it’, dear Willie. She’s a foolish creature as you said – though mind you she’s

  really rather sweet. She’d get round anyone – she quite got round me, when I ticked her off.’

  He laughed.

  ‘You are gracious. And I should like to have heard you “ticking her off” out in the middle of the Balaton!’ Then he turned serious again.

  ‘If you ever want help about anything here – quite quietly and discreetly – please let me know. I can always go and have a little talk with the Old Boy.’

  Mrs Eynsham smiled. ‘To have a little talk’ was Prince Willie’s invariable phrase for conducting a major intrigue. But she was grateful as well as amused.

  ‘Thank you, dear Prince. I shall take you up on that if I ever do want help’ she said – little guessing how soon she was going to apply
to him.

  In the afternoon several of the company went out to the stud-farm, where Prince Tereny bred his race-horses; he wanted to show his yearlings to Count Erdoszy, who only bred Arabs, but was a good judge of horse-flesh. They stood by the railings of a large green paddock while grooms led round, first, the solid sober-sided dams. ‘Those four in front are from the Aga Khan’s stable’ the Prince told Count Endre –’ and the next three I got from Lord Derby. Those two following are French; the French breed well, now. The last five are my own.’ Then the beautiful rough-maned leggy colts were brought out – walking, to begin with; at the second and third rounds they were hustled into a gallop, to show their pace and movement. Endre Erdoszy watched them closely, and when eventually the lovely creatures were led up to the rails he climbed through, and passed a knowing hand down their slender, knobby legs. ‘This is quite exceptional Willie – and this one, and this; and these three. Shall you be able to get them to Doncaster this year?’

  ‘That is what I am considering. Last year, as you know, the Sale was cancelled – and though there was a second one later at Newmarket, with all the confusion after the outbreak of war I didn’t attempt to send anything. But I believe that this year there will be a mixed Sale at Newmarket in October, in which they propose to include yearlings. I should like to send some of these, I must say – I feel sure Lord Derby would send them up from his stud, if I could get them to England.’

  ‘How should you send them?’

  ‘They could go by train to Genoa, since Italy is neutral, and be shipped from there – though I do not care about a long sea-voyage for horses. I thought that possibly I might get them through France to Lisbon by train, and ship them from there.

  ‘H’m. Wouldn’t it be rather a risk to send them through France? I believe the French still mobilise horses! And I wonder how long one can count on Italy’s remaining neutral. I hear –’ he related some apparently inspired rumours from the Italian Legation about Mussolini being pressed by Hitler to become a more active partner in the Axis.

  Mrs Eynsham listened to this with mounting dismay. Only the day before yesterday she had seen that typist off, to travel through Italy and so home; not so long before the two new girls had come out by the same route to help with the Bulletin. If Italy were to come into the War – undoubtedly on the German side, if she did – the only way out, if the worst happened, would be south through the Balkans to Turkey, and so on to Palestine and Egypt. All routes to the north were through enemy territory – Austria, Germany, German-occupied Poland; to the north-east Czecho-Slovakia was what the Germans called a Protektorat, i.e. under German control, and recently they had been sending officers and troops into Rumania, to instruct and bolster up the Rumanian Army – so they said. In effect they now controlled that country too; the Hungarians, laughing, called it the Instruktorat. Rosina Eynsham had long had the uncomfortable feeling of living in a sack, whose mouth grew narrower and narrower as the string at the neck was drawn ever more tightly. If Italy came in, the mouth of the sack would be very narrow indeed.

  Chapter 3

  The jour on the Wednesday when Mrs Eynsham returned from Balaton-Siraly was exceptionally well-attended. No one could call Dunkirk a victory, indeed it ought to have counted as a disaster; the fact that by an amazing feat of improvisation it wasn’t somehow turned it into a triumph. It caught the Hungarian imagination, as it did that of much of the world, and people flocked up the wide stone staircase and into the long drawing-room to congratulate, to praise, to exclaim. If amateur yachtsmen and little launch-owners could bring 350,000 men across the Channel, at no notice, perhaps England was not sunk, not foutu- it seemed that she could do almost anything; she might win after all. But among all the throng there was no sign of Countess Dolinsky. Mrs Eynsham had seen the Minister in the morning, and reported her adventures – ‘Shall I ring up and remind her to come? Would that be a good move?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Let her come if she has the nerve, after that’ Sir Hugh had replied. ‘Brazen little creature! Willie Tereny was very upset – he telephoned to apologise last night.’

  ‘Did he? I told him not to worry.’

  ‘Yes, you seem to have done admirably; he was full of your praises.’

  One of Mrs Eynsham’s preoccupations in Budapest was to get exercise, both for herself and Lucilla, in their rather indoor life; and after her return from Siraly she started a new routine. Martha Beckley professed herself quite willing to do the monitoring from 7.30 till 9.30 a.m., so every morning the Eynshams, mother and daughter, drove down in bathing-gowns and bath-robes to the big swimming-pool on the Margit-Insel, the lovely green island in the middle of the Danube, and swam – four lengths of the pool equalled half a kilometre, and they both did it every morning. Then Lucilla would go and do her ballet-exercises on the lawns set with young willows – looking like a solitary Sylphide, her Mother thought; she, being rheumatic, went and lay on a submerged marble couch in the hot radioactive spring beyond the big pool, and smoked a cigarette while she studied her Hungarian grammar – the submerged couches most coveniently had un-submerged marble armrests, with ash-trays. Afterwards they both put on their bath-robes again, and had coffee and rolls in the sun at the open-air restaurant by the water’s edge – and then drove home, exercised and refreshed, to dress and tackle the day’s work.

  On the morning of June the 10th – they both remembered the date – Lucilla said to her Mother over their breakfast ‘Did you see Sonia?’

  ‘Sonia Marston? No. Was she swimming? I didn’t know she did.’

  ‘Well I suppose she can, up to a point; anyhow she was out in the middle of the pool nattering away to Egon von Schaffhausen – you know, that very good-looking man in the German Legation – for ages, while you were boiling and learning Hungarian. The privatest place in all B.P., at this hour in the morning,’ Lucilla said. ‘No walls to have ears, no hidden mikes, no cover for eayesdroppers! Erszi told me she’d rather taken up with him lately’ – a faint blush, very comprehensible to her Mother, appeared in Lucilla’s clear pale cheeks as she said this. ‘But she oughtn’t to, ought she? I mean, he is a German, and she’s English. And why at the pool, if it isn’t secrets? Ought we to tell the Min?’

  ‘I’ll think – and ask your Father. Don’t talk about it, darling.’

  ‘O.K.’ Lucilla said vulgarly, making her Mother smile. Everything about the ‘little Biedermeyer’ was so utterly unvulgar that common expressions, in her mouth, became actively funny.

  Thanks to Budapest gossip, and to a letter from a friend at home, Mrs Eynsham had quite recently learned something of the journalist’s background. A Russian Mother, a hard-drinking mining engineer for a Father; the parents divorced when Sonia was in her early teens, and the Russian woman given the custody of the child. Rosina was familiar with the deplorable results of ‘broken homes’ on the psychology of the children – only she, being Scottish, thought of these results more in terms of morals than of psychology. But her sense of compassion – rarely aroused, but strong when it was – had now extended itself to Sonia Marston, in so far as this was compatible with security. She realised too that the girl’s position in Budapest was made more difficult by the fact that she had succeeded a delightful and brilliant creature, Yvette Yarnton, who had been universally liked, when the latter was sent down to the Balkans; comparisons are as inevitable as they are odious, and Mrs Eynsham had by now heard plenty of laments over Miss Yarnton’s departure, and complaints about her rather difficile successor.

  During the day the news that Italy had entered the war on the German side broke on the world – and on the Legation. When she heard it Mrs Eynsham remembered Endre Erdöszy’s words out by the paddocks at Siraly, only a few days before. Too right, he had been! The mouth of the sack was getting pretty narrow. But Lucilla remembered what she had seen at the bathing-pool that very morning.

  ‘I bet von Schaffhausen knew then, and was telling Sonia’ she said. ‘Mummy, I do think you ought to tell the Min.’

&nb
sp; ‘All journalists like to get scoops’ Mrs Eynsham said temperately. ‘And I don’t think most of them worry much about what sources they use.’

  ‘Well, I think you ought to let the Min know’ Lucilla persisted. ‘She oughtn’t to do it. She may tell him things.’

  ‘I don’t think she gets much from the Legation nowadays’ Mrs Eynsham said thoughtlessly, bringing that blush of Lucilla’s out again.

  ‘Oh don’t be a beast, Mummy! I loathe Geoffrey. I didn’t ask him to chuck Sonia.’

  ‘I know, poppet. I’m sorry I said that – it was just une constatation’ her Mother replied, causing Lucilla to smile rather unwillingly. Une constatation was a tiny joke between them.

  Two days later Lucilla ran in and asked – ‘Mummy, what are you doing tonight?’

  ‘Nothing – well only writing a speech I’ve got to make for Emmi’s mother when I open her bazaar for The Save The Children Fund.’

  ‘Then could you monitor for me? I said I’d be on from nine-thirty to eleven-thirty, and now Emmi, as a matter of fact, has asked me to go with her and Hugo to the Arizona – they’ve made up a sudden party for some Austrian friends. I would like to.’

  ‘Yes, of course I will.’ Mrs Eynsham approved of the Weissberger brother and sister, Emmi and Hugo, and indeed of the whole family, far more than she did of many of her daughter’s friends. All the Weissbergers were serious and immensely given to good works in the slums of Budapest. All the same she groaned mentally: two hours perched on that small cork-topped stool in the bathroom of the guest suite, her pad perched on the rim of the bath, was an unpleasing prospect. ‘What do I have to monitor?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, only the B.B.C. – the English of course, and the German and French emissions. And then you might try Radio Toulouse; they sometimes have something. Don’t worry with the German stations – they’re mostly lies, and so are the Wops. Thank you – bless you! Leave your notes in the Chancery when you’ve finished.’ She kissed her Mother and hastened away.