Quest for Alexis (2 page)

Hugo gave me an encouraging nod and at once reached for a telephone on another desk. I guessed
what he was doing. Finding me a London flight. Then,
afterward, he would fix it with the boss. Dear, thought
ful Hugo.

Rudi still seemed doubtful. “I don’t know what to say, Gail. Of course it would be an enormous help
having you here, but I don’t want you to think that you
have
to come. I can manage. In fact, I’ve arranged
for an agency nurse to start tomorrow morning.”

“An agency nurse?” I exclaimed. “A stranger? Madeleine will hate that.”

“Don’t forget that Lady Caterina is only next door.
But it didn’t seem fair to expect her to do too much. I
thought I ought to get someone else in...
.
Gail, I promise to keep in touch so that you’ll know at once
what develops.”

I realized that poor Rudi felt partly to blame, as if
he’d failed us all by not preventing this dreadful thing from happening.

Rudi Bruckner had been with Alexis for two years
now. As a leader of student resistance in Prague in
1968 he had become a hunted man, a perpetual risk to
his friends and to the married sister who had brought
him up. Eventually, like so many others, like Alexis
himself, Rudi had been smuggled across the border into
freedom. Like so many others, too, he had arrived on
Alexis Karel’s doorstep with just the clothes he stood in
and a letter of introduction.

Normally, Rudi would have stayed at Deer’s Leap
only until such time as Alexis’s refugee contacts in
England could find him a home, a suitable job. But Rudi had begged not to be sent away. He had proved to be an invaluable secretary for Alexis, and Made
leine had taken to him from the start. He was always wonderfully patient and understanding with her.

“Rudi,” I said gently, “you mustn’t blame yourself
for what’s happened.”

“But, Gail, you don’t understand.” His voice was in
tolerably sad.

“Yes, I think I do understand. And I’m sure there
was nothing you could have done to prevent it.”

He said heavily, “I keep going over things in my
mind, Gail. Was there something I missed, some dis
turbance in the night,
anything?
The trouble is, I seem
to sleep so heavily. Why didn’t I even hear the car
driving away?”

“You wouldn’t, not from the garage.”

I broke off, because Hugo had raised a finger to
catch my attention. He whispered, “You’re on an evening flight. London Airport ten
A
.
M
.”

I   nodded at him gratefully. “Listen, Rudi, I’m com
ing home tonight. Be with you sometime tomorrow
midday. See you then.”

Putting down the phone, I sat back in my chair and
stared at Hugo bleakly.

He frowned. “It didn’t sound as if that guy could do much to fill you in, Gail. What did he have to say?”

As briefly as possible I repeated what Rudi had told
me. “He hasn’t any more idea what it’s all about than
I have. It seems a complete mystery.”

Hugo hesitated, giving me a look that was unusual
ly diffident for him. “This nurse of your aunt’s—Belle
Forsyth. What’s she like? Young?”

“About twenty-seven or twenty-eight, I’d guess.
Why?”

“Attractive?”

“Yes, very.” Then his meaning hit me. “Hugo, you
aren’t suggesting... ?”

“It’s the obvious answer, isn’t it? Both of them miss
ing at the same time—and your aunt a permanent invalid. Of course, the paper doesn’t say so straight out.
But obviously that’s what you’re meant to think, all
right.”

I was so choked with outrage that I could hardly speak. “If
...
if you knew Alexis, you’d never dream
of suggesting such a horrible thing. He’s absolutely
devoted to Madeleine.”

“But he’s a man, Gail. And the right sort of age for
jumping the tracks. What is he ... fifty?”

“Forty-nine,” I whispered.

Hugo nodded thoughtfully. “I can see how you don’t
like to think it of your uncle. But consider the alterna
tives. That the Commies have got him
...
or that he’s
defected and gone over to their side. Honestly, Gail,
when you come to think about it, isn’t it better this
way?”

Hugo drove me to Kennedy Airport.

The snow, after intermittent flurries all day, had
grown heavier when darkness fell, filling me with fore
boding that I would never get away. I felt a great
sense of thankfulness when at last I heard my flight
number being called.

Saying goodbye to Hugo was hard when it came to
the point. We’d grown to be good friends in the four
months I’d been in New York, and now I didn’t know
if I would ever see him again.

“I’m going to miss you, Hugo,” I said.

He smiled down at me ruefully. “I’d hate us to lose
touch, Gail. It’s been great knowing you. You’ll come
back if you possibly can, won’t you? We’ll keep that
desk dusted.”

I stood on tiptoe and kissed him. “Thanks, Hugo.
Thanks for everything.” There was a lump in my throat
as I turned away.

The plane was only half full, and I had no one sitting
next to me. I leaned back wearily, shutting my eyes
and ears to everything around me. I could have done
without taped music or films. The last few hours had been frenzied, packing my things and settling up with
the two girls whose apartment I had shared, generally
freeing myself of commitments. Now, for the first time
since the news about Alexis had hit me, I was alone. I
could think.

In all the dark mystery surrounding my uncle’s dis
appearance there was one thing I was sure of, though
it did little to comfort me. Hugo’s interpretation, built
upon the sly hint in the newspaper report, was com
pletely and utterly wrong.

Alexis was an attractive, virile-looking man. Though his hair was prematurely white, it grew thickly from his
wide brow, setting off the healthy tanned skin of his
face—a man who could easily pass for ten years younger. But it was well known that Alexis Karel was tied to
a frail and chronic invalid. Perhaps, to strangers, the conclusion was inevitable that he had become infatuat
ed with his wife’s beautiful young nurse, and they had
run away together.

But I knew Alexis better than that. I was closer to
him than anyone—apart from Madeleine herself.

My deep feelings of affection, of love, for Alexis went back to those early days in Prague, even before
he became my uncle. Alexis and my father had been
friends from the time of their first meeting, soon after
Father was posted to the British Embassy there. It was
a friendship that had led to trouble. The Czech government made clear their strong disapproval of foreign
diplomats who showed partiality to critics of the re
gime, and my father was discreetly recalled to London.
But shortly before this happened, Mother’s younger sister Madeleine came out to stay with us in Prague,
and there she met Alexis.

My mother often told me about it afterward, a story
that caught my romantic imagination as a child. “When
you fall deeply in love as they did,” she said once,
smiling sadly to herself, “the differences of upbringing
and background seem so unimportant. Your father
and I could see what was happening from the very
beginning. We knew Madeleine and Alexis would be
married.”

I remember how I hated it when we had to return
to London, leaving behind the uncle and aunt I’d
grown so fond of. At ten years old I could see no rea
son why they shouldn’t come with us and tried to make
an issue of it.

“Don’t be silly, Gail,” said my mother in exaspera
tion. “This is Uncle Alexis’s country. He’s a Czech
citizen, and his work is at the university in Prague.”

So I switched my tactics. “Well, why can’t we stay here? I like it here. I don’t want to go back to London.”

I wasn’t told, then, of my father’s mild disgrace—
not until I was older, by which time he had spent
three years or so in relatively minor jobs in London.
When at last it was considered that he had served a
suitable penance, he was sent to Japan. He and Mother were flying to Tokyo, leaving me behind at boarding
school—and their plane crashed. My parents and the
other passengers were lost in an arctic wasteland five hundred miles from Anchorage.

By then, Alexis and Madeleine had been living in England for nearly twelve months.

In the intervening years, they had been through a
terrible time. Though feared and hated by the Novotny
regime, Alexis himself had been too popular a hero to
be attacked directly. So Madeleine was used as a
weapon against him, in a vicious game of cat-and-mouse. She would be picked up for interrogation by
the secret police, sometimes for days at a time, return
ing from these sessions in a condition of dazed shock.

It was by such methods that they succeeded in silenc
ing Alexis, until eventually friends in the underground movement managed to smuggle them both out of
Czechoslovakia.

But for Madeleine, escape came too late. The mental
anguish and physical hardship she suffered, the loss
of her baby, born dead, had been more than my poor
aunt could withstand. She was now a semi-invalid and
would remain so for the rest of her life. She spent most
of the time in her room, and often her withdrawal from
reality was so complete it seemed impossible to get
through to her.

It was Alexis who’d had to shoulder the whole bur
den of responsibility for their thirteen-year-old or
phaned niece. One terrible day in early June, a day of
sticky sweltering heat, he had arrived at my school to
break the news of the death of my parents to me. I
knew instantly from the look on his face, even before
the headmistress left us alone together in her study.

“It’s Mummy and Daddy, isn’t it? Something happened.”

Alexis took me by the shoulders, gently, his gray
eyes looking gravely into mine. “Yes, Gail. You must
be very brave. The plane crashed. There were no
survivors.”

He had driven me back with him to Deer’s Leap,
the beautiful, rambling old manor house deep in the
Sussex weald where he and Madeleine now lived—
thanks to the generosity of Sir Ralph Warrender.

Sir Ralph had been cultural attaché at the Embassy
in Prague in the old days. He had not been unaware of what was happening to Madeleine and Alexis,
though impotent to help. Sudden blindness had forced
Sir Ralph to resign his post. He and Caterina had re
turned to England and retired to his family home. And
when within a year Alexis had arrived in England too,
an exile, Sir Ralph had at once stepped in with the
offer of the west wing of his manor house as a refuge,
as a retreat where Madeleine could spend her days in
peace and tranquility.

In the weeks that I stayed at Deer’s Leap before the
start of the next school term, a new relationship de
veloped between Alexis and myself—more than just
affectionate uncle and adoring niece. I clung to him
as the pivot of my existence, the one person who could
give meaning to my shattered life. But my feelings for Alexis were not in the least selfish. I always knew that Madeleine’s welfare counted above everything else for
him.

“Your poor aunt endured more than I can possibly
tell you,” he confided to me in those first few days. “A number of times I pleaded with her to leave Czecho
slovakia and go back to England so that she would be
safe. You see, marrying me had not deprived her of
her British nationality, so it could have been arranged.
But Madeleine refused to consider leaving the country
if it meant leaving me.” Alexis blinked away the tears
that had come into his eyes and smiled at me. “And
now, Gail, you and I will look after her together, won’t
we?”

We became, as it were, conspirators in caring for Madeleine, with an unspoken pact that she was to be
sheltered and protected at all costs. Alexis was shrewd
enough to understand, I think, that this intense con
centration on someone else’s needs was the best pos
sible thing for me just then, helping me to overcome
the grief I felt at my parents’ death.