The Tightening String

by Ann Bridge

  ‘But your train goes early on the nth, to the Russian frontier.’

  ‘Quite so – but I shan’t go on it unless those seven wagons of the prisoners’ stuff have crossed the frontier at Hegyeshalom. I know it will be frightfully inconvenient for your Government to have the British Counsellor’s wife stay behind when the whole Legation staff has gone, but that’s just something you will have to put up with, unless you get that clothing away in time. I shall know, Pista, remember – and / don’t go till it’s gone.’ She rang off. And about noon on the 10th Colonel Morven telephoned to her to say that all seven trucks had safely crossed the frontier into German-occupied Austria, and been accepted by the German authorities. Then Mrs Eynsham relaxed a little, and went on with the business of handing over the wool, the names of the ladies in the knitting-parties, and the undespatched stores to the wife of the American Military Attaché, who had nobly promised to go on sending parcels as long as she could. This lady was another of the ‘unknowns’, like Prince Willie and Mr Smith and Mrs Starnberg, to whom the British prisoners owed more than they ever realised.

  When a Diplomatic Mission leaves a country there is usually a certain careful formality about the actual departure – a platform cordoned off, plenty of police in control, a Government representative to make the official leave-taking. But the Hungarians, normally the most courteous of nations, were so rushed and rattled on that April morning in 1941 that nothing of the sort was organised. The train for the Allied diplomats was drawn up at an ordinary platform, unguarded by police; such crowds of the public were milling about on it that the diplomatic parties had difficulty in getting to their carriages — conspicuous among these crowds were German officers in uniform, elbowing people – including the departing ladies – out of their way.

  ‘This is outrageous!’ David Eynsham said angrily to his chief.

  ‘I know. It will be reported’ Sir Hugh said. ‘Get in and sit down, David – Horace and I will see to everything.’

  A few of the many friends who had come to the station to say goodbye succeeded in pushing through the mêlée and reaching the train – among them Mr Smith, Mrs Starnberg, and Emmi Weissberger and her Mother; the last three were in tears. So were Erich and Anton, who had brought down the luggage, and now came to report. ‘Oh, auf Wiedersehen’ Anton said, kissing Sir Hugh’s hand. ‘The best, the kindest of masters! Oh! – oh weh! What becomes of us without you?’

  That was indeed the prevailing note. Rosina, after settling David in a corner seat and checking the hand-luggage – the net of oranges and lemons, and the pigskin bag, at last coming into its own, were all in the rack – got out of the train again, said goodbye to Emmi and her Mother, and kissed Mrs Starnberg.

  ‘You’ve done so much – I can never thank you. I do hope you’ll be all right – I wish you were coming.’

  ‘I can’t leave Herberth – and he won’t leave.’

  ‘I know. Bless you. Write.’

  ‘Rosina, we’re off – get in’ Horace said brusquely. She did so, and the train pulled out, with waving from the platform and from the windows – then its occupants, feeling curiously dislocated, sat down and presently began to do something rather ordinary, consciously or unconsciously to take their minds off this painful severance from a place and people that most of them had liked so much. Sir Hugh, in his carriage, began to read a copy of The Times which had come by the last bag; Colonel Morven lit a pipe, while Gina took out a tiny brocade bag and began to crochet some exquisitely fine lace; Horace Wheatley put on a pair of leather gloves – he hated dirt on his fin-like hands – and began to read a well-bound book. Martha Beckley didn’t sit down till she had been along the coaches to see that everyone was all right, particularly the Dutch; she had a bag full of Penguin thrillers, which she handed out right and left, including one for Eleanor Wheatley, who sat unoccupied and gloomy opposite her husband – they shared a carriage with the Morvens, and though he had carefully asked her permission, she disliked the Colonel’s pipe.

  The Eynshams had a carriage to themselves – they were three, and he was the Counsellor. Lucilla went out and stood in the corridor; Mrs Eynsham, her despatch-case on her knee, began writing letters to prisoners’ relations – there were a few late ones that she had failed to answer in the hurry and turmoil of the last few days.

  ‘What on earth are you writing letters for?’ David asked irritably. His face was flushed; he was still upset that his beloved Hungarians should somehow have permitted such an ugly muddle at the moment of their departure; those tell-tale corners of his palms were a more vivid pink than ever. ‘You can’t post letters in Russia’ he said.

  ‘I know. But as this train will be coming back to Budapest I thought I’d get the steward in the diner, or someone, to post them.’

  ‘Fair enough’ David said, more equably. But Rosina screwed on the cap of her pen and closed her despatch-case – if David wanted to talk, and she got the impression that he did, her letters could wait.

  She was right. When she lit a cigarette he began to speak of Count Teleki’s suicide, and the loss that his death meant to Hungary. ‘He was so able, and had such complete integrity; really their one major standby. Bethlen is getting old, and so is the Regent, poor old boy.’ Rosina smiled, thinking of the phrase so often on Prince Willie’s lips: ‘I will have a little talk with the Old Boy.’

  ‘The Regent has been tremendously good to us’ she said.

  ‘Yes. But I’m afraid Teleki Paul’s death is the beginning of the end for this darling, decent little country. I wish we could have stayed – I do love it so.’

  ‘Dearest, I know you do.’ She was moved by his distress, but she was also thinking that their departure spelt the end to their efforts to help the prisoners-of-war – a small thing compared with the submerging of a nation, but worth doing. If only they had been able to stay on till the British Red Cross really got going, as it was bound to do in time. Greatly to her surprise, David presently referred to this.

  ‘You weren’t here long, Rosie, but you did like them, didn’t you?’

  ‘The Hunks? I loved them. I even rather liked Anna Dolinsky, rabid Nazi that she was, and before she saved your life!’

  He grinned a little shamefacedly.

  ‘Anna’s one of those clever fools, if you follow me. But she can’t ever escape for long from her natural good heart – it’s always breaking through her perversity.’

  ‘She sent me a terrific box of chocolates from Gerbeauds – it must have cost pounds’ Rosina said. She had had to send a servant out to buy an extra suit-case in which to stow all the sweets and books that people had sent to her – their last-minute bouquets of flowers even now lay wilting in the rack above her head. But she was enjoying this talk with David – they had had so little time to talk of late. And then he gave her his surprise.

  ‘You did a very good job for the P.O.W.s.’

  ‘I didn’t think you knew much about that.’

  ‘Oh yes I did.’

  ‘Well now that’s over too’ Rosina said sadly.

  David glanced towards the corridor, where Lucilla stood, profiled against the window.

  ‘I’m afraid that child may have taken a bit of a knock over young Weissberger’ he said.’ I shouldn’t have minded her marrying him a bit – he’s a splendid boy. Do you know how that was left?’

  ‘Not for certain. She didn’t tell me, and I never ask. My guess is that she stood him off at the last.’ Bertha, with a nice servant’s deep interest in her employer’s affairs, had mentioned to her mistress that the gnädiges Fräulein had gone to her room in tears after returning from her last drive with the Herr Baron.

  ‘Quite right not to ask’ David said, with a husband’s insufferable patronage – Rosina, after years of marriage, had become inured to this tedious attitude, and wasn’t even much annoyed by it; she mentally said – ‘Yes yes – how right you are’ – aloud she said nothing at all.

  ‘The Min will probably know, or learn, more than either of us’
David pursued. ‘I gather she confides in him. But if you’re right, there’s another good thing come to an end.’

  ‘Oh dear me yes! – what a lot of endings, and how I hate them’ his wife replied.’ I like things to go on and on.’

  Lucilla stood in the corridor, alone, watching the Hungarian countryside, so much beloved, flow by. She was at once disappointed and relieved that Hugo hadn’t come to the station; she would have wished to see him again, but under his Mother’s shrewd eyes it would have been difficult to be sure of giving nothing away; and since they weren’t engaged, better not to betray their love. She fretted and puzzled over that – had she done right to refuse to be engaged to him, in the complete uncertainty of the future for them? She couldn’t be sure – she had hated seeing his disappointed face as he put that glorious ring, specially made for her, back in his pocket in its little case. She held out her left hand and looked at it speculatively – that tremendous diamond in its circle of sapphires might have been on her finger now. No! she told herself; better not, fairer not – she had made it clear that she was his, if marriage ever became possible; till then there was no need of a ring, least of all one so embarrassingly magnificent. As they walked down through the forest she had picked a wood-anemone and brushed it to his lips, and then put it in her note-case – it was there now. That Was her pledge of betrothal – humbler and sweeter than the ring, and better recalling their last time together.

  A restaurant-car had been attached to the train, in which an excellent luncheon was served; it was followed at 8 p.m. by an equally excellent dinner. Between these two meals the Minister had been giving his mind to their arrival at the frontier, and dealing with the authorities there. He knew that Horace Wheatley, his First Secretary, could speak a little Russian, but not much; it was a relief to him to learn that the Attaché who had been seconded from Bucharest was fluent in it.

  ‘That’s excellent. Though I daresay the Embassy in Moscow will have sent someone down.’

  The Embassy had done nothing of the sort; their staff were over-pressed too. After dinner the air grew colder, and the train, climbing up onto the northern spur of the Carpathians, moved more and more slowly; the polite Hungarian chef de train explained that there was snow on the track – and indeed the travellers, wiping steam from the windows, could see whitened slopes on either side, and pine-trees whose boughs bent under a heavy white burden. ‘Goodness, how ghastly!’ Eleanor Wheatley said. ‘Snow as well as all the rest!’

  ‘The snow won’t affect you’ her husband replied coolly. ‘You’ll only have to step from one train to the other.’

  He was quite wrong. The Russians used to have very odd ideas about any form of contact with Western countries – this must always be made as difficult as possible. When the diplomatic train from Budapest at last reached the summit frontier at 10 p.m. the train from Moscow was indeed awaiting the travellers, but it had carefully been drawn up 200 yards away, far beyond the platform – a stretch of snow, fifteen inches deep, separated the two. A Russian Colonel, sent down from Moscow to meet these unwanted foreigners, lengthily explained the reasons for this arrangement to Sir Hugh, through the helpful Attaché from Rumania; there was also a prolonged inspection of everyone’s passports.

  ‘David, you go along and get into the other train and wait’ Sir Hugh said to his Counsellor when this performance was at last completed – it had taken a whole hour. ‘Horace and I will settle everything – we shan’t be long, with Dickie to translate. They say it’s along there.’ He pointed vaguely, and went away into the station buildings with the Russian Colonel; all the men except David went with him, as men do, leaving a train full of women and hand-luggage sitting in the snow in the middle of the night.

  ‘Mummie, I’ll go and reconnoitre, shall I?’ Lucilla asked.

  ‘Yes do, darling. Gina, will you go too? And get some porters – then we can follow on. jVb, David! – do sit quiet till they come back’ Rosina said to her husband.

  Gina and Lucilla presently returned.

  ‘We’ve found it, but it’s miles away; and there are no lights on in it! Have you got a torch, Mummie?’

  ‘It is black-outa’ Gina put in.

  Rosina had a torch in her bag; she raised what torches there were among the other women – the Dutch Minister’s wife had one like a searchlight. ‘Did you get some porters?’ she asked her daughter.

  ‘There don’t seem to be any.’

  ‘God!’ David Eynsham exclaimed angrily – ‘What a place! We’d better take what we can ourselves.’

  ‘Oh don’t, David.’ But he had pulled down her pig-skin bag, and insisted on carrying it; with the four bottles of gin, whisky, rum and brandy it was extremely heavy. Gina, Martha, and the typists all took up pieces of luggage and plunged out into the snow.

  Two hundred yards of deep snow seems quite a long way in the dark, burdened with luggage. When they climbed up into the Russian train – which mercifully was at least heated – and flashed their torches into the pitch-dark carriages, they were agreably surprised by their vast size; Russian railways are broad-gauge, hence their carriages are much wider than the ordinary European ones.

  ‘There. Now you lie down and rest’ Rosina said to her husband; as she spoke she undid the straps of a hold-all and laid two pillows at one end of the long seat, and a rug at the foot. ‘Undo your trousers – look, there are hooks for our coats.’ When she had settled him down – ‘Now I’d better help Martha with all these women and get the rest of the hand-luggage along’ she said.

  ‘Why on earth are there no sleepers?’ David asked irritably.

  ‘I’ve no idea – p’r’aps there are some somewhere further on. But do stay here for now.’

  ‘I want some whisky’ he said.

  ‘Right you are.’ She watched him anxiously as she took a flask from her enormous hand-bag. ‘Let me take the torch a second, will you? I expect there are glasses somewhere.’ She was right – in a cubby-hole at the end of the coach, above the usual samovar, was a rack full of tumblers; she took two back, poured him out a drink, and added water from the tap in the wash-place attached to each compartment – the cases of mineral-water were still in the other train.

  ‘Now, are you all right, dearest? If so I’ll go and help Martha.’

  David was sipping his whisky.

  ‘I’m all right’ he said.

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yes – go along. I’d like that torch, though.’

  ‘Of course.’ She stood it on the floor beside him, where its beam illuminated the green-painted roof of the carriage, casting a faint light over everything. ‘All right like that?*

  ‘Yes. What a lunacy, not having porters! Try and find Hugh and get him to make these infernal Russkis do the normal decent thing. It’s ridiculous that we should have to carry our own luggage, and the lights ought to be on.’ He was getting angry again.

  ‘I’ll do my best. But please don’t fret, David. Here’s the flask, and a spare glass of water, if you want another drink. I won’t be long.’

  She felt her way through the dark corridor, climbed cautiously down the high steps, and stumbled along in the snow towards the distant lights of the station. Besides her concern over David Mrs Eynsham was worried about Martha, who had started influenza two days ago, though she had concealed the fact from the Minister – she had a temperature, and ought not to be running about at night in the cold. Half-way to the station she met Lucilla, Gina and a convoy of typists, all weighed down with miscellaneous baggage; behind them came Martha, also burdened, and driving before her two Russian porters festooned with luggage, urging them on with gestures and loud commands in English.

  ‘Goodness, so there are porters’ Rosina exclaimed.

  ‘Well there are two. Go on, Ivan! – go on, Wronsky!’ Martha said, as the men paused when she did; grinning, they obeyed her.

  ‘Is this all?’ Mrs Eynsham asked.

  ‘Lord no! But I think two more trips will do it. Anyhow we’re making a track in the
snow to walk on, that’s one thing. Keep moving, Ivan!’ Martha said to one of the porters who had paused again; the man went on.

  ‘I’ve left Eleanor in our train’ Martha pursued, ‘and told her not to let anyone in. She says she’s not fit to carry luggage.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re not’ Rosina said. ‘Don’t come back; go and sit with David, and let me take over. He’s in the first coach; you’ll see the light, he’s got my torch.’

  ‘Is he all right?’ Martha asked. ‘He oughtn’t to have carried anything, and that leather bag of yours weighs a ton. I’ll see to this, Rosina – you go back to him.’

  ‘No, you keep quiet. Where’s the Min?’

  ‘Somewhere in the station, parleying. Do you want him?’

  ‘David wants the lights put on.’

  ‘Goodness, I should think so! Ah’ – she turned as another little party, also laden with suit-cases, approached them from the direction of the Hungarian train. ‘Here come the Dutch.’

  ‘We go where?’ the Minister asked.

  ‘Straight on – our train’s just along there. But Your Excellency, it would really be more useful if you left that luggage to us, and went into the station to find Sir Hugh’ Martha said. ‘He has an interpreter, and we simply must have the lights turned on – could you ask him to see about it? It’s really hopeless in the dark.’

  ‘The train is not lit?’

  ‘As black as the pit’s mouth! Do do this, please.’

  ‘Then who takes these pieces?’ the Minister asked.

  ‘The porters will do it.’ But in fact when he had turned back towards the station lights Rosina picked up the two suitcases which he had dumped in the snow – they were enormous, and very heavy – and somehow dragged them along to the foot of the steps into the train. ‘Make those porters get them up’ she said to Martha, who by gestures and loud words did so.

  ‘Now you stay there in the warm’ Mrs Eynsham said. ‘You can look after David; I don’t like leaving him alone. Have some whisky – he’s got my flask, and there are glasses by the door, here. Gina! Lucilla! Miss Maudsley! – come on, all of you; let’s finish this job. What time is it?’