The Portuguese Escape

by Ann Bridge

  Up this small road, to this house, there passed in the course of that Saturday a considerable number of cars, from the station-wagon with the chef and a selection of servants to the two Daimlers with the Duke, Dona Maria Francisca, Luzia and Father Antal in one and Nanny, the secretary, and Mgr Subercaseaux in the other, Elidio sitting beside the chauffeur. Very much later Julia also drove up it; later still, long after dark, the unhappy Dom Pedro, chilly and cross, bounced along it in the Land-Rover.

  Julia had asked to see the Duke early that morning; she knew that he always took his coffee and rolls well before nine o’clock. In his study she reported to him the events of the night before—as she expected, they left him quite unmoved. ‘Raison de plus for taking them away,’ he said calmly; while she was still in the room he rang up the police of the quarter and arranged for a couple of men to be on duty in the street that morning, to check on any cars parked there. This done, he turned to her.

  ‘Had you not better drive up with us?’

  ‘Duke, if you don’t mind I’d rather follow you later in my own car—I’ve got several things to see to this morning. I’ve packed, and I can leave this house while the police are still about; if I find I’m being followed I shall garage my car and come on some other way.’

  The Duke smiled.

  ‘How shall you ascertain whether you are being followed or not?’

  ‘Oh, pull up beside the point policeman in Alcobac, a or Leiria or somewhere and fiddle with my engine,’ Julia said airily. ‘I shall soon see if another car stops and hangs about.’

  ‘You are very resourceful!’ the Duke said. ‘Very well— I am sure you are perfectly able to take care of yourself, but do take care.’

  ‘Indeed I will—I don’t want to cause you any extra bother. It is so frightfully good of you to take all this on anyhow.’

  ‘On the contrary, it is at once a privilege and a pleasure,’ said the Duke in his measured tones, and Julia knew that he meant what he said.

  Her main reason for wishing to be independent and drive up to Gralheira alone was that she wanted to see Torrens and find out how he was, and whether he had slept—she had never seen him in such a nervous state as the night before, and she was worried on his account. Moreover, on her way downstairs to see the Duke a servant had intercepted her to take a telephone call on the extension outside the chapel—this was from Atherley, who asked if she wouldn’t come round to the Chancery and tell him ‘how everything was going’, before she went away to bury herself ‘in your ducal province’. Julia, remembering Father Antal’s expressed wish to see Hetta, and thinking that Atherley could probably arrange this, promised to look in at the Rua São Domingos à Lapa before she left. Richard told her that the Major had intimated that he might be coming along too. ‘Oh well, I suppose there’s some ghastly waiting-room full of Punches and The Illustrated London News where he and I can talk quietly, isn’t there?’ she said.

  ‘You can go into the garden, Maud—much nicer,’ the young man responded.

  ‘Cheek!—all right. Soon after eleven.’

  Soon after eleven Julia pulled the inner wheels of her new car well up onto the pavement under the barred windows of the Chancery, out of the way of the trams— this being the recognised method in that inconveniently narrow street, where so many cars are of necessity parked for much of the day—and went in and asked for Mr. Atherley.

  ‘Hugh hasn’t come?’ she asked, up in Richard’s room.

  ‘No, but I expect he’ll be here soon. Patience is a virtue!’ Richard said, with a mocking grin. ‘Meanwhile, tell me what’s happened. Did the Duque play? Is Father Antal going to Gralheira?’

  ‘They’ve gone.’

  ‘What, the Monsignor too? Splendid. No wonder Torrens is late, if he’s been tearing out to Estoril to collect the contact! I say, what is it?’ the young man asked, suddenly struck by something in Julia’s expression.

  ‘We fetched them both last night,’ Julia said. ‘It was the Duke’s idea, and like all his ideas, it was a good one.’

  ‘Did he put them up here in Lisbon as well?’

  ‘Yes—three-course supper at 1 a.m.!’ Julia said, with a wry fleeting smile. ‘But it was all rather disconcerting.’

  ‘Why, what happened?’

  She told him, in her slow casual voice and with her usual tendency to understatement; even so Richard Atherley frowned.

  ‘Nasty,’ he said. ‘But how can they have tied the Monsignor in with the Duke’s house?’

  ‘They may have been watching him, and I suppose they bribed the car-hire people and got the number of my new car, and my address,’ Julia said sourly.

  ‘Give me the name of the car-hire people, will you? Campbell must see the Colonel about this,’ Richard said, drawing a block towards him; ‘Are you driving up alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Look here, Julia, I think you’d better take my car. That can outpace anything on the road. Can you drive a Bentley?’

  ‘Drive any make!’ Julia replied—‘but don’t bother, Richard. It’s frightfully kind of you, but I should be terrified of someone else’s car, especially a Bentley.’

  ‘No, you’d better. I shall feel easier. What’s your hireling?’

  ‘Oh, an old Packard.’

  ‘Well give me your key—here’s mine.’ He tossed it onto the table.

  Julia was considerably touched by this gesture of Atherley’s. Indeed it is not nothing for a man to hand over his car—especially if that car is a Bentley—to a woman with whom he is not in love. She picked up Richard’s key slowly, and gave him her own.

  ‘By the way,’ she said, ‘Father Antal wants to see Hetta. Can you organise that?’

  ‘Yes—in fact, I must. I promised her she should see him before he goes, and she’s certainly going to. How long is he staying?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Personally, I feel that the sooner he’s out of Portugal the healthier it will be for all of us,’ Julia said, with some feeling. ‘Look, Richard, why don’t you bring her up to Gralheira tonight for the week-end? Then it would be over with. Are you free?’

  ‘I am, as a matter of fact—the de Freitases have got measles, and have had to cancel. But what about the Duke, and Dona Maria Francisca?’

  ‘Oh, the Duke has invited Hetta already! That’s to say, when we were arranging it all last night I told him that Hetta had been the Father’s cook, and he asked at once if she was to come along?—but Hugh stood him off. There’ll be no trouble about that, if she’s free.’

  ‘But how can we catch them?’ Richard objected. He was at once strongly tempted by the prospect of a country week-end with Hetta, and hesitant at the idea of inviting himself to people like the Ericeiras.

  ‘They always lunch at the “Lis” in Leiria on the way up, to give the staff a bit of a start—too easy!’ Julia replied. ‘Ring Hetti up—go on. It would be such fun.’

  Still rather doubtfully, Richard asked Mrs. Tomlinson to get him Countess Hetta Páloczy. While they waited for the call Julia walked over to the window and looked out.

  ‘Nice garden for Maud,’ she observed. Turning round— ‘I can’t think what’s happened to Hugh,’ she said. ‘When did he say he was coming?’

  ‘About eleven—the same as you.’

  ‘It’s after half-past now,’ she said, with a glance at her watch. ‘Did he sound all right?’

  Richard’s telephone buzzed.

  Hetta Páloczy soon killed the week-end idea.

  ‘Oh Richard, I am so sorry, but it is impossible that I should go away tomorrow,’ her clear voice told him. ‘I must go out to luncheon.’

  ‘Must you really? I was going to take you to see your late employer.’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘The person you used to cook for.’

  ‘Oh!’ A pause—then ‘Oh!’ again, followed by silence.

  ‘Hullo?’Richard said.

  ‘I am thinking!’ Hetta said curtly. ‘Please wait a little.’ After another pause—’ No, even to see
him, I do not think that I can alter this,’ her voice pronounced rather sadly.

  ‘Who on earth is this luncheon tomorrow with?’ the young man asked, slightly annoyed.

  ‘With the de Bretagnes. You see—I am so sorry, Richard —I said that I would not go to them unless they asked Mama to the wedding, and now they have. So I think that I must go to déjeuner with them. What a pity!—for otherwise I am quite disengaged. Please do not mention this,’ she added.

  ‘God Almighty!’ Richard ejaculated—then his voice changed.

  ‘Hetti, you’re a darling and a wonder! God bless you— I’m sure He will, for this.’

  ‘I can see—him—some other time, can I not?’ the voice on the telephone asked, now very small. ‘You did promise it.’

  ‘Yes, and I’ll damn well perform my promise. Don’t worry, Hetti darling—I’ll see to it. You really can trust me.’

  ‘Oh, I do.’ She rang off quickly.

  ‘What in the world was all that?’ Julia asked, full of curiosity, as Richard put down the receiver. ‘Who is she lunching with tomorrow?’

  ‘The Bretagnes.’ Richard’s battle with his conscience was brief, and soon lost.

  ‘Don’t pass this on,’ he pursued, ‘but the little thing absolutely refused to go to their house unless they invited Dorothée to the wedding.’

  ‘And have they?’

  ‘Yes; so now Hetti is paying Mama’s debts, when she would give her right hand, this minute, to see that priest. You’ve no idea what it means to her.’

  Julia was struck by the fact that Richard apparently had such a very good idea of what it meant; that affair must be coming along faster than she had realised. But she only said—

  ‘All arranged by old pussy-cat Monsignor, I suppose?’

  Richard gave a rather unwilling laugh. ‘Well, yes,’ he was beginning when Tomlinson tapped on the door and ushered in Major Torrens.

  The Major was far from presenting his usual neat and slightly military appearance. His clothes were crumpled and his shoes dusty; he was unshaven, and there were dark circles under his eyes.

  ‘Gracious, Hugh, you are a sight!’ Julia said. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Been spending the night on the tiles, Torrens?’ Richard enquired.

  ‘No—in the British Hospital.’

  ‘Good Heavens! You aren’t hurt, are you?’ Julia asked, now rather anxiously.

  ‘Not in the least—but it seemed a good place to pass the little that was left of the night in. There was rather excessive thug activity outside my rooms when I got there, and no answer to the unutterable Melplash’s bell, so I thought the hospital would be a good quiet place, and went there.’

  ‘I’m surprised they let you in, at that hour,’ Julia said.

  ‘Night-sister is a charmer, and she remembered me: I often went in to see Campbell in January, when he had tonsilitis.’

  ‘Torrens, exactly what thug activity was going on outside your pub?’ Richard asked.

  ‘Oh, the usual half-dozen men, in the usual grey raincoats, standing about in the street. I’m beginning to think that some, at least, of the ones who bothered the little Countess so at Portela on Thursday when she was trying to spot our man may have flown in with him from Madrid.’

  ‘You didn’t see a club beard, or rolls of fat on any neck?’ Julia enquired.

  ‘Can’t be sure. When I saw them I made my taxi-man step on it, and we shot through them—the fact was I rather wanted to get to bed, somewhere or other. May I have a cigarette, Atherley? I ran out several hours ago.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ He held out the Alentejo box. ‘Fill your case.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Julia, don’t you think the Major had better go up to Gralheira with you, as things are?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think I’d better stay here,’ said Torrens. ‘I ought to see Colonel Marques myself, and try to get those people cleared up.’

  ‘Campbell can do that,’ Richard said. ‘Julia’s going to take my car, so it should all be quite smooth.’

  ‘I can’t go like this,’ the Major protested—‘and I’ve no clothes, or kit.’

  ‘You could fetch those in your car before we start, couldn’t you, Richard?’ Julia suggested.

  ‘Yes of course.’ He glanced at his watch, dialled an interior Embassy number, and spoke. ‘Oh, Campbell, could you ring up the Colonel’s Office, now, and ask him to have a couple of men outside No. 35 Rua Dr. Antonio Pereira in ten minutes’ time? I’ve got to make a call there, and I don’t want any knives in my tyres! What? Yes there was a little trouble there last night—I’ll tell you later. No, he’s all right; going to the country for a quiet week-end, which I may say I think he needs. I’ll see you before lunch; can’t stop now.’ He turned to Torrens. ‘Give me your key.’

  Torrens next objected that he couldn’t go to the Duke’s without at least letting him know in advance—‘and they’re on the road now. It’s impossible.’

  ‘No it isn’t.’ Julia explained again about the ‘Lis’. ‘And the Duke did ask you.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll do that when you’ve gone. Come on, your key, Torrens. In fact I am an excellent packer,’ Richard continued, ‘and you can shave at the Bau in Alcobaça when you stop for lunch.’

  The drive from Lisbon to São Pedro do Sul is long but attractive. Up the Tagus valley, rather industrialised; past the lovely red-and-white town of Alenquer, looking as Moorish as its name, piled up above the shallow river bordered with long brick-built factories of a Georgian and quite astonishing elegance; through Alcobaça, where the great church is gold flecked with grey; past the even greater abbatial church of Batalha, Portugal’s Battle Abbey, grey lightly washed with gold—on and on through the charming smallness of Estremadura: little hills, little fields, patches of pine-wood, patches of vineyard or of blue field cabbage, all jumbled up together and studded with snug whitewashed villages and elegant small towns— nothing large, nothing grandiose (except the bronze-coated slow-moving oxen, drawing carts laden with dung or country produce at a majestic snail’s pace) but all serene, all delightful to a degree.

  Through all this, in Atherley’s Bentley, Julia drove Major Torrens on that Saturday. They lunched—and the Major shaved—at the Hotel Bau in Alcobaça, as Richard had suggested, but Julia firmly refused to allow her companion to so much as glance into the church—‘Do it on the way back,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to get in after dark.’ There was a trim little policeman on the wide sunfilled square, who saluted Julia, or rather the Corps Diplomatique number-plate, when she drew up beside him, and instantly undertook to watch over her car while she was taking almoço in the hotel, and to send in and report to her if any other car stopped close by and appeared to be taking an interest in hers.

  ‘What nice people they are,’ Torrens said as he sat down to lunch, having been led by a beaming chambermaid with a jug of hot water to a clean bathroom in which to shave.

  ‘Wait till you get to Gralheira, and you’ll begin to see how nice,’ Julia responded.

  The food at the Bau is simple and thoroughly Portuguese, but very good; the same applies to the wine. Restored by this, by driving through lovely country, and with a return of self-respect after he had shaved, Torrens began to recover his normal equable spirits, which were increased by the little policeman’s report to Julia that no other car had approached the Bentley—’ nor even cast an eye upon it’. They drove on again, through Leiria and the long stretch of pine-forest beyond it; at Coimbra, a university city as old as Oxford and more spectacular, they crossed the Mondego, the river south of which one cannot, according to the Portuguese, drink vinho verde, the astringent, stimulating, prickling wine of the Minho, so rightly delighted in by the inhabitants, so wrongly alleged to be deadly to the foreigner. (Intoxicating it is; indigestible it is not.) At Mealhada they branched right towards Viseu, still through this rich, gentle, happy countryside; in Santa Comba Dão Julia slowed down to point out to her companion the little house where Dr. Salazar was bo
rn and where he still spends his rare holidays—a simple low building with a tiled roof, sitting modestly beside the road like the other houses in the village. But once again she would not allow sight-seeing. It was getting late; the light grew rich as the gold of evening deepened it, the air blowing in at the car windows was chill with the approach of nightfall—and it was in the glare of the Bentley’s headlights that Torrens at last saw those tall cypresses overhanging the grey demesne wall, the great gateway, and the baroque façade above the front door of Gralheira.

  The first stay in a Portuguese country-house usually produces a certain impact on English visitors. There is the unwonted size and splendour of the rooms and their furnishings, to say nothing of the wealth of objects of art strewn about; the even more unwonted numbers of servants; the colossal quantity of wonderful if unusual food and, by way of contrast, a quite astonishing absence of those modern conveniences which most of us have come to take for granted, even in our cramped flats. At Gralheira all these things—the splendour, the service, the food and the lack of modernity—were present to a high degree, and did not fail of their impact on Hugh Torrens, though to Julia they had become second nature. Atherley had caught the Ericeira party in Leiria with the message from Julia, and the Major was expected; the Duke emerged from his study to greet him in the hall, already in a dinner-jacket. ‘I am so glad that you were able to come after all.’ he said. ‘Dinner will be in twenty-five minutes; Antonio will show you to your room.’

  Escorted by Antonio, a countrified-looking man in spite of his livery, Torrens mounted long stairs—on a landing he caught a glimpse of Julia gossiping with Nanny and being hugged by a tall beautiful girl. What first struck him about his room when he entered it was that no attempt had been made to unpack his luggage, though this had preceded him upstairs—nor did the worthy Antonio make any move to do so; he bowed and retired. This surprised the Major, who was familiar with one or two ducal households in England: there, if there was a footman at all, he unpacked. The second thing to surprise him was the washing arrangements. He looked round for a fitted basin; there was only a huge marble-topped washstand of Victorian aspect, with an equally Victorian ewer and basin adorned with immense crimson carnations. As he opened his suit-cases and began to fling his effects onto the bed, which had a high pointed wooden headpiece ornamented with faded paint and gilding, an even more countrified youth in a pantry-jacket appeared bearing a white enamelled can of hot water, which he set on the washstand and carefully draped in a colossal bath-towel before he, too, bowed and retired. Torrens, hurriedly but methodically placing his brushes on the high chest of drawers which served for a dressing-table, and emptying the contents of his sponge-bag onto the black marble of the wash-stand, swore at the immense spaces he had to traverse between each piece of furniture, even while he noticed with envious admiration the superb Arroiolos carpet across which he walked, and with amusement the carnations repeated on the lids of the soap-dish and the long receptacle for a tooth-brush. ‘Perfect, down to the last detail,’ he muttered, as he peered under the bed and observed that the china object there also bore red carnations.