The Portuguese Escape (25 page)

‘Ah.' The Frenchwoman appeared to reflect. ‘You must pardon my ignorance of your movements—but at luncheon I thought that you seemed to profess to a certain knowledge of Monsieur Atherley's character; this misled me.'

‘Some characters one can assess more rapidly than others, do you not think?' Hetta responded, trying to keep
cool—she wished fervently that Oliveira would drive faster, and bring this conversation to an end.

‘Possibly. Though not perhaps that of the person in question, who is, believe me, a rather more complicated character than he may appear.' She spoke with an appearance of kindly indulgence. ‘Rapid assessments can be, also, mistaken ones,' Mme de Vermeil added, with a fine air of detachment.

Hetta inclined her head politely in response to this observation, but said nothing.

‘Has it occurred to you that
Richard
‘—the Countess stressed the name—‘is rather
volage
, as well as being very mature?'

‘Indeed yes,' Hetta said curtly. ‘That is why, as you doubtless heard me tell the Comte de Bretagne at luncheon, I said only yesterday to Monsieur Atherley that it would not suit him to live in Obidos.' To her great relief she saw that the car had at last reached the public garden; in a few seconds this encounter would be over. But Mme de Vermeil had not finished with her.

‘Did he propose to live in Obidos alone?' she asked.

‘Madame la Comtesse, since you know him so well, why do you not ask Monsieur Atherley
himself
with whom he wished to live there!' the girl flashed, driven beyond all endurance by this final impertinence, as the car drew up before the hotel. She sprang out, not waiting for the swarming pages to open the door. ‘You will excuse me— my mother awaits me. I am happy to have been of service to you,' Hetta Páloczy said, with an impeccable last word, and ran in through the revolving glass doors.

Up in the flat her mother, mercifully, was by no means waiting for her; after lunching with the Salzbergers at the Avis—where she had greatly enjoyed making elaborate apologies for Hetta's absence because the Pretender had summoned her to lunch with him—Dorothée had betaken herself to bed with two aspirins and
Time
magazine. So Hetta was free to run to her room, fling off her coat and hat, and then walk about, raging. What an insupportable woman!—and what unendurable insolence!'
Stupid
, too!' the girl muttered furiously—‘As if I had not told him myself all, and more than all, than she told me!' But what
lay behind all this? Could Richard really care for a person like that? Oh yes—alas, he could; Mme de Vermeil possessed, to an extreme degree, all the things which she, Hetta, had so ruthlessly belittled to him only yesterday in the
largo
at Obidos: looks, dress,
savoir-faire
. No, not complete
savoir-faire;
the Frenchwoman's good manners had failed her twice—at luncheon, when the Pretender, however elegantly, had corrected her, and again in the car, no doubt provoked by her, Hetta's, attitude. This must mean something—Hetta studied what it meant, and reached a not inaccurate conclusion. ‘Whether he loves
her
or not, she is in love with him, and means to keep him for herself!' the little cook from the presbytery in the Alfold said to herself, sizing up the beautiful Parisienne; having decided this, she burst into angry tears.

Hetta's distress was easy enough to understand. In this strange and difficult world into which she had so suddenly been plunged Atherley had been to her, from their first meeting, a link with home: a person who had been to Detvan and known and liked Pappi, the one adored and stable figure throughout her childhood, till he was swept away on the inrushing Communist flood, and she was left alone with the good nuns. In fact that loneliness had been extreme to the eager, positive, impulsive child, accustomed to the most expansive intimacy with so many people at home; the deliberate, carefully inculcated detachment and impartiality of the convent, easily endurable for three terms a year, had become a terrible thing to bear when there was
no
let-up, no times-off to be loved and spoiled and petted at Detvan.

Atherley, therefore, had come trailing clouds of all sorts of glory to her first cocktail-party, when he had at once spoken of the Alfold; and he had been
kind
to her, patient with her when she made a fool of herself at his luncheon, interested in her even, she told herself with frank humility, before he began to be a little in love with her. And as she had said of Julia Probyn, she felt that
he
was nice,
he
was true; she trusted him and felt at home with him. The bare idea of being loved by, even possibly marrying such a person had made a sort of opening, however distant and uncertain, in a future which otherwise seemed to her dark
and blank indeed—to lose him would be a desolating loss.

She soon dried her eyes—Hetta very seldom cried, and was ashamed of herself when she did; tears had not been approved of in the convent—but she continued to walk to and fro across her bedroom, thinking. This antagonist of hers, she recognised, was a powerful and dangerous one— in spite of being so old! (Mme de Vermeil was in fact thirty-eight, but to twenty-two thirty-eight is practically antique.) Hetta had begun to realise the sheer
power
of perfect clothes and social skill, even while she despised them; and certainly this full-blown rose of a Frenchwoman —the contemptuous phrase came of itself into her mind— had them to the last, the supreme degree. A smaller person might have entertained the foolish notion of trying to acquire a rivalling degree of elegance herself; this has often been done by young girls in her situation, with conspicuous ill-success. But Hetta Páloczy was too intelligent and too uncompromising to waste time on such ideas. She had no intention of remaining passive while her hopes and her future were drowned in a flood of perfect make-up and marvellous clothes, but she needed help, advice, reinforcement—and for these she absolutely
must
see Father Antal. She decided, rather reluctantly, to ring up Richard and ask him to help her to get to—what was the place called?— Gral something—as soon as possible. There was really no one else to whom she could turn—Yulia and her redheaded Major were already up there, and Hetta with the ingrained caution born of long years of living under Communism hesitated to suggest such a trip to anyone else.

If she had rung up there and then things would probably have turned out differently, for Atherley at that moment was sitting with his feet up in front of his little log fire, reading Evelyn Waugh and intermittently thinking, with a good deal of affection and a slightly worried admiration, about Hetta herself. But just as she was about to ask for his number Esperanza came in to say that the Senhora Condessa was going to take
cha
, and wished the Menina to join her. So Hetta went and drank tea in her mother's room, and good-temperedly underwent a detailed cross-examination about her luncheon at the Pretender's, and who had been there and what had passed.
Dorothée was at once slightly annoyed and rather comforted that it had been, the Archduke apart, such a very family party.

‘And this Frenchwoman who came at the last moment —what was her name?'

Hetta couldn't tell her name, she had never caught it. ‘She was a Countess, a great huge woman, very blonde and very well-dressed—I brought her back; she is staying here.'

‘Oh, then it must be Fanny de Vermeil. How nice that you have met her, and were able to give her a lift—I suppose her car is coming by road. Has she come for the wedding? I expect so; she and the Comtesse de Bretagne were at school together.' Now that she was sure of a place at the wedding herself, Dorothy Páloczy could talk quite cheerfully about others who were to attend it.

Hetta could not say whether Mme de Vermeil had come for the wedding or not.

‘Oh, you may be sure she has. She goes to everything! Didn't you find her charming? And her clothes are so wonderful.'

Hetta, readily agreeing to the wonderfulness of Mme de Vermeil's clothes, managed with relief to avoid any reply about her degree of charm. But this conversation, which went on and on, increased her sense of desperation, and the urgency of her desire to see Father Antal at once.
Jesus Maria/
—if she was to be cooped up in this dreadful hotel (how
could
Pappi have borne it?) with that ageing French siren as well as her mother, what would become of her? The animosity of one, the contempt of both—it was impossible! And where was charity, in such a strait? When her mother at last went to take a bath the poor child, instead of ringing up Richard, flung a scarf over her head and ran across the garden through the sweet-smelling dusk to the church, where she knelt and prayed for pardon for her angers, for help, and for the man she loved.

She came back more leisurely, calmed and soothed; changed her dress so as to be ready for dinner, and then, at last, rang up Atherley. But by then the fortunate moment had passed—Mme de Vermeil had for the last half-hour been sitting in Richard's little drawing-room, and they
were in the middle of a rather awkward conversation, largely concerning Hetta herself.

‘Atherley,' Richard said into the telephone. ‘Oh, it's you'—when she spoke. ‘Could you ring up a bit later on, or tomorrow? I'm busy just now.' In his embarrassment he spoke more coldly than he intended, and his tone chilled Hetta—it also roused her temper.

‘No, I would rather speak now—I will not keep you a moment.'

‘Oh, very well,' he said resignedly. ‘What is it?'

The resigned tone angered the girl more than ever, even while it filled her with a vague terror.

‘It is that I need to see Father Antal at once,' she said, almost as coldly as he.' Tomorrow, perhaps?—or on Tuesday? It is necessary that I should see him quickly.'

Richard had already heard enough from Mme de Vermeil to guess why Hetta felt it necessary to see Father Antal so urgently. He had, of course, been given a skilfully distorted account of what had passed at luncheon. ‘In your own interest, my dear Richard,' the lady had said languidly, ‘I think you should try to prevent her from boasting that you suggested living with her in some country town.' But though he had said ‘Oh don't be a fool, Fanny; I'm certain she never did any such thing. How disagreeable you can be when you try!' he was left wondering uncomfortably exactly what Hetta
had
said—she was so guileless, so unworldly, liable to be so indiscreet.

‘I'm not sure that that will be possible,' he said now, speaking carefully. ‘But let me telephone to you later tonight, will you?'

Hetta, at her end of the telephone, was making her own guesses; she might be unworldly, but it had occurred to her before she rang up that the French lady would lose no time in seeking Richard out and getting him into her toils again—no doubt she had done so.

‘No,' the girl said abruptly. ‘I need to know at once.
Will
you take me to see him? You made a promise, you may remember.'

Richard in his turn was dismayed by the icy edge on her voice, but he was angered too—no man likes to be
reminded of a promise that it is not at the moment convenient to fulfil.

‘I did—and I will keep it. But I am not a free agent, as you know; I have my work to do. I will ring you up later tonight.'

‘No, do not trouble to telephone,' Hetta said, trying to control her voice, which sobs now threatened to invade— was this the Richard who had told her yesterday that she was ‘very kind and very good', and that he could be happy with her anywhere? ‘I will make other arrangements—please do not concern yourself,' she said, and rang off. After a moment she lifted the receiver again and told the hotel exchange to get her Mr. Townsend Waller, of the American Embassy. Also, she added, apart from the American Senhor, she would take no more calls that night.

‘Now, Monsignor Subercaseaux,' the Duke of Ericeira said, coming in on Monday morning to the sitting-room overlooking the knot-garden which had been placed at the disposal of the two priests—‘would you care to come and visit the kitchen, which interests you so much? Or do I disturb you? You both appear very studious!'

The two ecclesiastics did look rather studious. At the Duke's entrance Father Antal closed an atlas, while the Monsignor put an elastic band round a small leather notebook in which he had been making microscopic scribbles, and tucked it away in his soutane.

‘On the contrary, my dear Duke, I shall be delighted,' he said.

‘May I come too?' Father Antal asked.

‘Dom Francisco, I hoped you would.' The Duke, not alone among the occupants of Gralheira, had begun to make comparisons between the blunt simplicity of the Hungarian and the florid politenesses of the Monsignor.

The kitchen at Gralheira was really something to see. It was roughly the size of two billiard-rooms placed end to end; the part nearest the entrance from the house was used for all cooking operations, the farther end for eating; another door led from this into the courtyard. Two great chimney-hoods descended over a pair of Briffault ranges, their bright-steel surfaces polished till they shone like silver, from a ceiling as lofty as the roof of a mediaeval tithe barn; a low brick-built shelf, with ovens set in it and open cooking-spaces on the top ran for several yards round the wall—an old crone knelt on the floor before one of these last, fanning the charcoal under a copper casserole to a glow with a palm-leaf fan. Down the opposite side of the great room several yellow marble sinks, with brass taps above them, projected from the wall; in these kitchen-maids were rinsing out crockery and copper pans, and washing vegetables. But the most remarkable sight of all
was the tables. There were two, each fully twenty feet long; their solid tops were made of the same yellow marble as the sinks, and rested on carved marble trestles. The farther one was already being set for the mid-day meal by two more kerchiefed girls, who plumped down gay country-made earthenware plates, thick soup-bowls, and heavy tumblers for wine in some forty places; a cheerful array of bottles, and huge wicker platters of
broa
, the maize bread beloved of the Portuguese country-people, were already in position down the centre.