The Portuguese Escape (5 page)

‘Yes. It's—well, somehow it's tiresome,' he said, feeling ashamed. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘Do not be. This helps me—I have so much to learn. Will you tell me again what I should say when I have not understood?'

‘Well, I think “would you repeat that?” is about the best,' Townsend said, quite abashed by her humility.

‘Thank you.'

‘Shall you feel up to meeting the Press tomorrow?' he asked presently.

‘Oh yes—I have told Mama I would.'

‘Fine. I'll tell Perce—our Press Attaché, you met him this morning—that I think it ought to be as full-dress as he can make it. It will be a big thing.'

‘Can you tell me
why
one must speak to journalists?' the
girl asked. ‘You and my mother both think so, but I do not really see why.'

‘But—' he paused, staggered by such ignorance. Then he began to expound the importance of publicity, the propaganda value of her story, so unique and fresh. Warming to his theme—‘I'm certain Radio Free Europe would love a recording of a talk by you,' he said—‘You could do it in Hungarian, if you'd rather. And some articles, too—they'd be syndicated all over the States.'

‘PI—I mean what does “syndicated” mean?'

‘Printed in about seventy papers. It's such a story!— the Press will eat it up.'

She considered all this for a little while in silence; her first look of surprise changed then to one of mild and lightly charitable disdain.

‘You mean, tell newspaper men, or write for newspapers, what I have told you?'

‘Yes—exactly that.'

‘No,' Hetta said—and the single syllable again had a ring. ‘I told you because you have been kind, and saw that I was tired and hungry. But I will not make this “story”, as you call it, for journalists and the radio. What business is it of theirs?'

‘I've just told you'—and again he tried to hammer home the importance of publicity and propaganda. But Hetta would have none of it.

‘I feel all this to be quite false. If such things must be done, they should be done by people who know a great deal, and have importance. I am quite unimportant, and know nothing but what I have seen.'

‘That's the point—you
have
seen; you can tell the world.' But Hetta would not give way; he was surprised both by her toughness, and at her reasons.

‘If the world is to be told, it must be told by those who can speak with authority. The recollections of an ignorant girl are mere gossips.'

The phrase made him laugh, but when he tried to press her further she quietly shut him up, saying—‘If I could help my country in any proper way, I would; but this— please forgive me—is to my mind foolish, and almost indecent.'

‘Then you won't see them?'

‘Of course I will see them—have I not said so?—because my mother wishes it. And I will describe my journey, and speak of small things. But I will not do what you suggest, and make “a story”.'

‘You're making a great mistake,' the American observed, gloomily.

‘Possibly. But I shall make it,' Hetta said.

If the meeting with the Press next morning was not exactly a failure it was mainly owing to the Countess, who herself did a good deal of the talking, and
compèred
her daughter as far as she could, leading her on to describe the expedition to buy those dismal clothes, and so on—it was perhaps just as well really, she reflected, that Hetta hadn't felt up to going to M. Alfred the previous evening, for her shock-headed-Peter aspect fitted in very well with her ill-fitting ugly dress. Hetta, caught between her desire not to vex her mother, and her distaste for the whole idea as Townsend Waller had revealed it to her, did her best within her self-imposed limits, confining herself as far as possible to dates and generalities. ‘Looks to me as if she'd been brain-washed before she came out, so she'd give nothing away,' one correspondent muttered to a colleague, going down in the lift.

‘Maybe she's just born dumb, though she doesn't altogether look it,' the colleague responded. ‘Anyway those
clothes
are a story in themselves!' They both laughed.

Townsend lunched that day with Atherley in the latter's small house up in the Lapa quarter of Lisbon, not far from the British Embassy. Richard Atherley disliked flats, and had been delighted to get hold of the little house: it was thoroughly Portuguese, with
azulejos
(coloured tiles) running in a bright cold 3-foot dado round the walls of the narrow hall and the small rooms, and rather sketchy plumbing; the furniture was distinctly sketchy too, except for a big sofa and some comfortable armchairs which the young Englishman, who was by no means poor, had brought out from home. But the house was perched on the lip of what was practically a ravine—although its broad bed was floored with small one-storey houses, their backyards full of rabbits and washing, set in cramped little gardens equally full of onions, fig-trees, and vines trained over trellises, under which the owners cleaned their shoes,
ironed their clothes, and ate their meals—and commanded a spectacular view across that end of Lisbon, white-walled and pink-roofed, to the great stretch of the Tagus and the green hills of the Outra Banda, the southern shore. It was very up-and-down, really like a small house in Chelsea except for the tiles and the view—and the food; unless the hostess cooks it, very few houses in Chelsea enjoy food like that which Atherley's elderly Portuguese servant habitually produced.

‘Well, how did the arrival go?' Atherley asked at once, over drinks in the little upstairs drawing-room—and Townsend described the scene, and Hetta's instant and spontaneous refusal to talk. ‘But I went to see her yesterday evening—I knew Dorothée would be at the Belgians.'

‘You never! What did you get out of her? Anything?'

Townsend's account of what he had got out of Hetta lasted through most of the meal—towards the end he recounted her unaccountable attitude towards propaganda and publicity. ‘Does that make sense to you?' he asked.

‘What happened this morning? Did she meet them, or not?'

‘Oh yes, she met them all right; but Perce says you'd have thought it was Dorothée who'd been in Hungary all this time!—she did most of the talking. I think they
just
got by. But can you understand why the girl won't tell a story like that?'

‘Yes, I think I can,' said Richard thoughtfully. ‘But she sounds interesting. I must meet her.'

‘Oh, you'll meet her all right! I'm sure Dorothée still means to cash in on her—though hoping for the best, poor woman, I expect after this morning!' said Townsend, with a rueful grin.

But in fact it was well over a week before Hetta Páloczy next appeared in public, and Atherley had the chance of meeting her. The interval was filled with endless visits to M. Lilas, the French-trained tailor, to Mme Azevedo, who produced blouses fine as cobwebs covered with what the French call
travail
, most delicate openwork and embroidery; to ‘Hélène' in the Chiado, one of the best shoe-shops in the world, for elegant confections in lizard- and alligator-skin, and to Le Petit Paris, also in the Chiado, for simple
becoming frocks. The Chiado (whose real name is the Rua Garrett) must be the steepest shopping street in the world; one pants going up, and is apt to slip going down on the tiny polished cobbles of the pavement—the shops are minute, yet produce superb craftsmanship. It is all very Portuguese; they are the most unobtrusive of races, preferring performance to advertisement. All this amused Hetta; and as she was dutifully anxious to please her mother she tried also to be interested in her new clothes— she ended, quite naturally and girlishly, in enjoying her pretty outfits.

She eventually made her début at a cocktail-party at the hotel, for which her mother had sent out the invitations on the same day that Hetta met the journalists. In theory it was a purely social affair; in fact the Countess had invited Mr. Nixon, some of the better-known correspondents, and a pretty clever girl representing Radio Free Europe, hoping that on a less formal occasion they might contrive to ‘draw' her daughter. She therefore responded favourably when Mr. Atherley rang up in the morning to ask if she would perhaps allow him to bring a young Englishwoman who had just arrived in Lisbon to ‘cover' the royal wedding for an English newspaper.

‘Of course I shall be delighted to see her, Mr. Atherley. What is her name?'

‘Miss Julia Probyn, Countess. That's very good of you.'

‘Where is she staying? I might get a card to her.'

‘Oh please don't bother—I'll bring her. She's staying with some Portuguese friends.' Atherley astutely refrained from mentioning that these friends were the Ericeiras; he knew that they were among the members of the
sociedad
of Portugal whose acquaintance Countess Páloczy had long sought in vain. Julia Probyn had spent some months teaching English to the Duke of Ericeira's only child, Luzia, and had become intimate with the family, and slightly acquainted with Atherley himself.

Hetta was about as inexperienced in social matters as a European young woman of twenty-two could possibly be, but perhaps just because of this she had the sharpened perceptions of a child or a clever dog. As she stood beside her mother, in a pretty and highly becoming cherry-red
frock which exactly matched her new lipstick, and accentuated her clear pallor and the darkness both of her eyes and of her now beautifully-arranged hair, she registered with considerable acuity which people her parent considered important, and to which she, Hetta, was supposed presently to talk. The young lady from Radio Free Europe began asking questions at once; Hetta was wise enough to leave her mother to indicate to the girl that she should do this later on—‘When the receiving is over, my daughter will enjoy talking to you.'

There were some other very concrete indications which Hetta did not miss. A short, brisk, cheerful Portuguese lady, greeted by the Countess as Mme de Fonte Negra, said as she shook hands, rather late—‘Well, my dear friend, so this is the daughter! You must send her to lunch with me one day; I should like to talk to her.' She glanced round the rooms. ‘I see the Regent is not here.'

‘No. They go out
so
little, as you know'—but Hetta recognised from long ago a sign of annoyance in the slight fluttering of her mother's eyelids. Later another guest said —‘I've not seen the Archduke; are they here?'

‘Oh poor dears, she is so lame, and it is such a long way for them to come, with no car,' the Countess replied, again with that rapid fluttering—and Hetta at once seized on the situation. Oh, poor Mama! If the Archduke would have come, her mother's car would undoubtedly have been sent for him, however far away he lived. There was a lot of talk about the impending royal wedding, too, both while she stood beside her mother, and later when, as directed, she moved about among the guests: who was going and who was not was clearly the burning question at the moment, and she overheard enough of the jockeying for position, the intrigues for invitations suggested or boasted of, to cause her a rather painful astonishment. So much effort, so much emotion merely about being at any wedding struck her as unworthy, unreal. But she kept her ideas to herself. All through the innumerable introductions and the stereotyped questions she was actively recording in her mind—this was now to be her world, and however little she might like it, she must get to know it. In one way Hetta was rather well equipped for this particular task,
since she had already had to come to terms with a world quite strange to her when she emerged from her convent school into a Communist Hungary, and she quickly marked down a few people as likeable and trustworthy among so many whom she found distasteful.

In particular she was delighted by a little old crook-backed Hungarian, an
émigré
journalist, who spoke to her in perfect idiomatic English. Instead of the stock questions he surprised her by saying at once—‘Are they bothering you to talk, and write? If so, don't do it—tell them all to go to Hell!'

‘I have, more or less,' Hetta replied, laughing. She had just been firm with the pretty girl from Radio Free Europe and with Mr. Carrow, whose name in American journalism, Perce Nixon had told her, stood ‘right at the top'.

‘Well, go on. They will tell you it's for Hungary, or for freedom and democracy—but in fact as to fifty per cent at least, it's either to line their own pockets or boost their own egos, or to gratify a vulgar curiosity which has no moral or political importance whatever. Of the readers or listeners on whose behalf they are pestering you, how many would lift a hand, give a penny, or even cast a vote for Hungary or for freedom? Perhaps one per cent!'

The old journalist spoke the last words loudly and emphatically; they were overheard by Mme de Fonte Negra, who laughed, tapped his arm, and protested—‘Monsieur de Kállay, do I hear you traducing the public of the free world?'

‘No, Madame,' he replied quickly, kissing the hand that tapped him—‘for really it is hardly susceptible of being traduced! I am telling this young lady, who as yet knows nothing of our western monstrousness, the truth—which you really know as well as I.'

‘I hope we are a little better in Portugal—but,
enfin
, I am afraid I must agree with you on the whole.' She turned her strongly-marked elderly aristocratic face to Hetta.

‘I should like it very much if you would lunch with me one day. I promise you that no-one but I will ask you questions, if you come! Your mother and I know each other well.'

Hetta had taken to this frank lady, and accepted with pleasure.

‘Very well—next Sunday, at 1.30. Your mother usually has people to luncheon on Sundays, so she can easily spare the car to bring you in to me.'

As Mme de Fonte Negra moved away Richard came up.