The Portuguese Escape (8 page)

The formal card, with the Lion and the Unicorn embossed in gold, impressed her a good deal—and why, she asked herself, should Lady Loseley, who appeared to live at the British Embassy, ask her, Hetta, to a cocktail-party? Hetta knew by now what cocktail-parties were, her mother
had taken her to several since her clothes arrived; but she knew no one at the British Embassy except Mr. Atherley. When she had finished her coffee and rolls she went to her mother's bedroom—the Countess always breakfasted in bed. After the good-morning kiss Hetta held out the card.

‘Mama, I am invited to a party at the English Embassy.'

‘So am I,' said her mother; she looked very pleased, Hetta noticed.

‘But is it not rather strange, since I don't know them?'

‘Not very strange—people are interested to meet you. The Loseleys are charming,' she went on, ‘and of course as we know Mr. Atherley, and he is on the staff there, it is quite reasonable that we should be asked.' Hetta realised then that this was her mother's first invitation to the British Embassy, and that it was a source of satisfaction to her. How peculiar!

Hetta set off in the Countess's car for her luncheon with Richard Atherley with sensations which were rather mixed. She was pleased to be going to see again, and in his own house, the man who remembered Detvan and the sun there; on the other hand she was a little nervous about this, the first social engagement that she had attended alone, though that big beautiful English girl whom she liked so much would be there—evidently a great friend of Mr. Atherley's. Bowling smoothly up the Tagus estuary, her thoughts were occupied with this new world of hers. She had asked Monsignor Subercaseaux, at confession, about going to lunch with young men, and had received full sanction; later he had been to see her at the hotel when her mother was out, and spent an hour with her. He was kind, genial even, and clearly anxious to help her and to smooth her path in this unfamiliar life; but she did not like his kind of help, and she did not like him. The fact was that Hetta Páloczy found herself rather up against the western world as presented to her at Estoril in many of its aspects, of which the social ease, the urbane worldly wisdom of her mother's confessor was most definitely one. The richly-dressed congregation at Mass on Sundays, with shiny cars waiting outside, the interior richness of the churches themselves, with all their treasures displayed, not hidden away in the deep reed thatch of some peasant's
house for security—the very safety of it all jarred on her, after the passionate devotion of the people at home, holding with such stubborn intensity to the practice of their religion in the face of persecution and danger. She remembered the skilful, wary sermons preached—only very rarely—by Father Antal, when he knew full well that there would be several ‘Spitzel' (Communist spies) posted among the congregation, waiting to lay information against him if anything he said could possibly be twisted into an anti-Communist utterance. Here, priests were safe, and could preach as they pleased—and then go on to eat of delicate dishes at luncheon, bow to rich ladies, and make graceful little jokes.
‘Pfui!'
said Hetta (who spoke German as well as she did French, English, and Hungarian) to herself.

Of course she was unjust. The young often are, and with less reason than Hetta, who had grown up in an unusually hard school; born courageous and tough, she had become intolerant. But as the car pulled up outside Atherley's little white house she forgot her criticisms in a warm feeling of happy anticipation.

A pretty smiling maid in a frilly apron and white cotton gloves led her up the narrow staircase and ushered her into the long narrow drawing-room; Atherley turned from the window at the far end as she entered, came over and kissed her hand.

‘Here you are—how nice. Your chauffeur found his way to my slum all right?'

‘How do you do. Please, what is slum?' she asked.

‘Slums are where poor people live; I am not so very poor, but I live in one because I like it. Come and see my neighbours'—and he led her to the window, below which the family life and daily activities of the inhabitants of the ravine were spread out like a diagram, or a child's toy farm on the floor. Hetta studied them all, thoughtfully.

‘This looks nice,' she said at length. ‘So we lived in the Alfold, cooking and washing out of doors when it was warm weather. But this is “slum”?' She pronounced the word with full Hungarian plumminess.

‘No, it isn't really a slum at all,' Richard said, forced into accuracy by her literalness. ‘I was being affected.
Slums are degraded places in big cities, like London or New York, where people have no gardens, and no chance to live with decency or dignity. If there are gardens there is never degradation, and therefore no slums. That is Dr. Salazar's idea too,' he went on—‘When he lays out a new working-class suburb he insists that each house shall have a
bout de terre
, a small garden-plot where the husband can grow onions and saladings to bring in to his wife, instead of wasting his evenings and his money in drinking. He says that sociologically this is a fundamental principle, and he's quite right.'

Some of this was rather too difficult for Hetta's command of English—she seized on Dr. Salazar.

‘He dictates this country, no?'

‘NO, and no twenty times!' Richard exploded. ‘He guides it.' He went on for some time about Dr. Salazar, for whom he had a well-founded admiration.

‘You must forgive me—I am still learning,' Hetta said. She turned away from the window to the room. ‘But where is Miss Probeen? She does not come?'

‘Yes, she's coming all right; she's only late, as usual. Come and have a drink. Townsend tells me you like sherry better than cocktails.'

‘He remembers this? How
nice
he is,' Hetta said warmly.

Atherley, having given her a glass of sherry, was busy with the cocktail-shaker. ‘Oh yes, Townsend is nice,' he said, without much enthusiasm—why should young Hetta think Townsend so very nice? ‘Tell me,' he said, as he filled his own glass, ‘did the Monsignor say that you might go out alone to lunch with young men? Did you ask him?'

‘Yes, I did—and he said yes, certainly. He explained many things,' said Hetta; a certain lack of enthusiasm was evident in her tones.

‘Don't you like him?' the young man asked, slightly surprised.

‘No—I do not. He—'

The door was opened by the befrilled maid to usher in Julia and Major Torrens. There were greetings, one introduction, drinks—then they went down to the little dining-room on the ground floor.

It was a pleasant meal. The other three bestirred themselves to draw Hetta out, and in this congenial company they found little difficulty in doing so. The food, which as always in Atherley's house was delicious, caused her to volunteer her most spontaneous observations: she ate carefully, consideringly, Atherley noticed with approval, and occasionally commented on a dish.

‘There is something—yes, it is
fenouille
—how do you say that in English?—in this sauce,' she said at one point. ‘
So
good.'

‘We
call fenouille
fennel,' said Atherley—‘but how smart of you to spot it. I always tell Josquina to put very little of any flavouring in things, so that people shall wonder why they taste good, but not know why.'

‘This is so
right
—and she does it beautifully. I should not have known if I were not a cook myself.'

‘You a cook!' Torrens exclaimed. ‘What do you mean?'

‘I have been a cook for six years in Hungary,' Hetta replied airily—‘to a priest. A nun whom I was with was supposed to be his cook, but she was
so
bad, therefore I did it. I love cooking.'

‘Do you really?' the Major asked, fixing her with a startled eye.

‘Oh yes—also I love food,' the girl said frankly. ‘And is it not a form of blasphemy to abuse the gifts of God by bringing them badly cooked, and therefore
horrible
, to the table?'

‘Amen to that,' Richard said, while the others laughed.

There was only one rough patch, and it was Hetta's fault. Inevitably the subject of the royal wedding came up, and Julia mentioned in all innocence the extreme desire of a certain highly-placed official's wife to attend it— through the Ericeiras she was
au courant
with all the social and political gossip of Lisbon.

‘Well, if Madame de X. wants to see Princess Maxine married, X. will have to stop his opposition to the new ferry scheme,' Richard said, equally innocently. ‘He's been making a perfect nuisance of himself to the Government about that.'

‘Oh, he will—I understand that he went round to the Ministry this morning in a plain van, carrying a small
ladder to climb down by,' Julia said gaily, causing everyone to laugh. Except Hetta, who leant across the table, gazing at the young Englishwoman with what Torrens later described as a basilisk's eye.

‘May I know?—this Monsieur de X. attached importance to opposing the ferry scheme, whatever this may be?'

‘Certainly he did'—Richard, rather negligently, answered for Julia.

‘And withdraws his opposition at his wife's wish, because she will see a princess married?'

‘Just that. Men are often rather at the mercy of their wives.'

‘But for this man, this Minister, it was a matter of principle to oppose?'

‘One imagines so, or he would hardly have made so much fuss for so long,' Richard said frankly. ‘But why, Countess? Does it matter?' He was astonished at her persistence.

‘To me such a thing is infamous,' Hetta Páloczy said, once again with that ring in her voice. ‘To sacrifice a principle for a social occasion! Where I come from people
die
for a principle!'

Of course that led to an awkward little pause. It was broken by Julia Probyn, who said gently—‘I expect we all lead frightfully low, unworthy lives by comparison with the people you have been accustomed to live among. I'm sorry. That's the way we are—we have been too safe, and had it too easy, for too long. You'll have to be patient with us—I hope you will be.'

‘Oh,
you
are nice—you are
true
! I knew this at once! Please forgive me—everything here is so strange!' She looked ready to burst into tears.

‘Of course it's strange to you—and in fact we are probably a lot of miserable bastards, as Miss Probyn says,' Richard said comfortingly. ‘Don't worry, Hetta—if I may call you that?'

‘Hetti, please,' she said, the tears now falling.

‘Very well. Dear Hetti, go upstairs with Julia and powder your nose, and then come and have coffee in the garden.'

The garden was really only a small flagged terrace at
the back of the house, shaded by a vine trained over a trellis, with two or three narrow flower-beds; its low walls were both faced and topped with glossy blue-and-yellow
azulejos
. There was an azulejo-topped table too, and some garden-chairs with cushions, but when the two girls came out Torrens and Atherley were sitting on the wall, enjoying the view.

‘Oh, how pretty!' Hetta said, with her little
grande dame
air, to Richard's relief entirely ignoring the scene she had created only a few minutes before. ‘But this is perfectly charming.' She went to the wall and looked over. ‘Another garden—is this yours also?' she asked him.

‘No, that belongs to one of my neighbours,' he said. In fact the gardens of the little houses below came right up to the foot of the wall; the nearest was full of ancient and enormous medlar-trees with grey leathery leaves, vegetables growing among them; similar gardens, divided from one another by the frailest of fences draped in runner beans, spread right down to the houses at the bottom. Torrens turned to examine them, standing with a foot on the wall.

‘Where does that track between the houses go to?' he asked.

‘It leads out into a maze of little streets, down towards the river, and that level crossing where the goods trains hoot so frightfully at 2 a.m. Lady Loseley is always grumbling to the Commandant of the City about it; she says the noise comes right in at the Embassy windows,' Atherley said.

‘Perfect get-away if you wanted one—drop off the wall and down through those shrubs and creepers,' Torrens pursued.

‘Ah, but I enjoy diplomatic immunity, so I don't have to think of those things, Torrens. Hetti, have some coffee?'

‘Richard, I think I've persuaded Countess Hetta to come out and have supper at the Guincho on Tuesday,' Julia said—‘Will you come too? Hugh, of course, goes without saying.'

‘Julia, I don't go
anywhere
without saying. What is the Guincho?'

‘A place along the coast beyond Cascais, all sand and
rocks, with one or two little shacks of restaurants where one gets the most delicious sea-food.'

‘Thank you, I shall love to come,' said Atherley. ‘I like the Guincho.'

‘Good. Perhaps you'll bring Hugh, and I will take the Countess.'

‘If Mama has nothing else arranged for me—but I can let you know, if you will give me your address.'

‘Oh, I'll keep you in touch with one another,' said Richard, rather hastily. ‘Don't bother, Julia.' He made a face at her over Hetta's head, and Julia obediently put away her card-case—she had become accustomed to the use of visiting-cards during her stay in Portugal.

Richard drove Hetta back to Estoril. The moment they were in the car she apologised for her behaviour at lunch. ‘To be so angry, and to cry! I am very sorry; I was silly— as silly as a nun!'

‘Are nuns silly?'

‘Only when they come out into the world, and everything is strange. Not in convents.'

Richard had been startled, and rather upset, by Hetta's outburst. He was considerably taken with her, little dark thing that she was, with her splendid eyes and her remarkable voice—and he found her freshness of outlook interesting. But Atherley liked a certain ease and smoothness in social intercourse, and he had remembered Julia's uncomfortable remark about Hetta's conventual life possibly ‘smothering dynamite'.