Pray for a Brave Heart (7 page)

He searched his pockets for his cigarettes.

The doorman said, “Taxi, sir?”

“If you can find one.” He lit a cigarette carefully and waited patiently, a man who had no appointment to keep, whose time was his own, whose evening had to be enjoyed in spite of weather, a simple, harmless visitor whose business was pleasure.

And, waiting, he became convinced of one more thing. They weren’t sure about him. The note had been a test, that was all. They had found some connection between Meyer and himself, but they weren’t sure why he was in Bern. The note had been a test, but he was taking it as a warning. Go carefully, he told himself, go carefully. They may not be sure, but they’re interested. They… Who were
they,
anyway?”

“Heavy traffic, tonight,” the doorman said, as a free cab drew up at last. “Everyone wants a taxi.”

Three women came out of the hotel, waved to the cab, cried,

“There’s one!” with remarkable powers of observation, and then wheeled in a tight phalanx towards its opened door.

“I beg your pardon,” Denning said overpolitely. “You know what?” he asked the open-mouthed doorman, as the women shut the cab door behind them, “I believe they thought I was trying to steal their taxi.” He slipped a coin into the man’s empty hand, won a sympathetic if startled look, and began walking.

That evening, Paula Waysmith said, “Look here, Francesca, you can’t possibly go back to Falken tonight.”

“Why not? It isn’t so far—it’s less than an hour away by motor coach.”

“By bus, darling. Just simple everyday bus. Your pupils will find American travel peculiar if you teach them things like motor coach and tramcar.”

“Bus,” Francesca agreed. The afternoon had been exhausting: Paula, trying to make up Andy’s mind by remote thought-control, hadn’t found an apartment or a house. At five o’clock she had said, “My decider is all worn out. Let’s get back to the hotel and rest, and finish all the rest of our news.” So here they were, back in the Waysmiths’ room at the Victoria, an elegant room of cream and gold, warmly comforting. Francesca was stretched out on one of the beds, Paula lay on the other. They each had a cigarette, their shoes off, a cocktail which Paula
had ordered (Americans were even business-like in arranging their comforts, Francesca decided), and the wonderful feeling of having earned it. “Bliss!” Francesca said, straightening her spine and stretching her feet. “The life of the Duchess of Parma.”

“I suppose it isn’t so far,” said Paula, thinking of Falken, a small village with pretty little houses scattered over green slopes. It was definitely pure country, not a touch of suburb: just unpaved roads leading from a wandering street, an inn for skiers in winter and walkers in summer, two shops, historical assets (a seventeenth-century church and an eighteenth-century bridge over the Falkenbach which chattered through the village), cowbells, cockcrows, the smell of hay and farm mud and sawed wood and barns, the smell of the hilly meadows which stretched out between the houses, the smell of the woods circling around. “Strange how quickly the country begins outside of a Swiss city,” she said. She was perpetually surprised by the shortness of distances in Switzerland.

She frowned, thinking up another reason to keep Francesca in Bern. “Still, I wish you’d call up your aunt and tell her there’s a spare bed here for you tonight. Listen to that rain!”

“I’m a country girl nowadays,” Francesca reminded her. “What’s rain?”

“You’ll come down with another attack of grippe. Besides, if you go back to Falken, I’ll have to spend a wet Thursday night all by myself in Bern.”

Francesca smiled. “Yes, Thursday makes a wet night particularly bad.”

“Then you’ll stay?” Paula asked quickly, pressing her advantage. “Wonderful. Where shall we eat?”

But Francesca was having a mild attack of after-thought. “I really ought to go back tonight.” There was a Committee meeting tomorrow morning, for one thing. But there wasn’t too much self-persuasion in her voice.

Paula, sighing, said, “It’s funny, isn’t it, how a woman can’t enjoy an evening alone—unless she stays inside her hotel and then finds a good book for bed.”

“Which only proves you’re virtuous, darling.”

“Aren’t most of us? And it isn’t virtue so much either as— just hating to be annoyed, or to be judged for something you aren’t. Now, if Andy were alone in Bern, he’d drop into a bar for a cocktail, then have a decent little dinner anywhere, but
anywhere
, he liked. Then he’d take in a theatre, or a movie, or go for a walk through the streets. And then he’d end with a nightcap at a place like the Café Henzi. But could I do that by myself?”

“Not for very long.”

“I couldn’t stay myself for very long, either. I couldn’t be natural.”

“Not honestly natural,” Francesca said. “I hate innocence when it starts pretending it doesn’t know. Either it becomes aggressive. Or artful. Which is the worse?”

“The question that’s occupying my stomach at the moment is—where shall we find that decent little dinner Andy would go out and have?”

Francesca glanced down at her clothes.

Paula said, “If I looked as well in a blouse and skirt as you do, I’d wear it dining at the Ritz. Look, why don’t I call your aunt while you think of food? You know, if inspiration fails you, I shouldn’t mind going back to the Café Henzi again. I liked it.”

“Did you?” There was a half-smile round Francesca’s lips.

“I’d like to hear that singing.”

“That happens much later in the evening.”

“Then what about going on there, after dinner?”

“What about that telephone call?” Francesca closed her eyes, thinking how delightful it was to allow yourself to be completely lackadaisical. And if Aunt Louisa raised any objections to this overnight stay in town, then Paula would be able to deal more firmly with them. It was strange: there was Aunt Louisa, Swiss born and bred, still living in her grandfather’s house where she and Francesca’s mother had grown up together, a placid calm woman in a placid quiet village, and she did nothing but worry secretly. And there, on the other hand, had been Francesca’s father, an Italian, a professor of music, living in a voluble excitable little Italian town—and had he ever worried at all? Perhaps emotion, when it is tightly disciplined, turns into worry. Perhaps her father, with his laughter and passion and arguments and music, perhaps he had had no emotion left over to be turned into any of the negative fears. And perhaps, she thought (as her Swiss mother might have thought), perhaps it might have been better for us all if he had known worry, been less confident about people, been more wary of treachery. And that was another strange thing: after an injury had been done to him, the Italian would remember it. He rarely foresaw it, but he would remember it. While Aunt Louisa would foresee every possible danger, probably avoid most of them, and blame herself if there was one she had underestimated.

That was the way it had been. Her father betrayed by a Fascist into German hands. Her brother betrayed by a Communist, murdered, his war record covered with lies and calumny to win
a propaganda victory. And her mother dead with the pain of it, blaming herself for not having foreseen the treachery.

And I’m left alone, Francesca thought. And for what? I can’t even warn people: they won’t listen. I am only heard by the ones who are already convinced. What good is that?

She swung her body off the bed. She was tense and cold again. “Well?” she asked Paula, who had just turned away from the phone. “Was Aunt Louisa worried in case I caught pneumonia?”

Paula said, smiling, “She did say you were to go to bed
early
tonight, with a good hot drink.”

Francesca searched for her shoes.

“She really is very kind,” Paula said, half-worried as she watched Francesca’s drawn face. “She’s asked Andy and me out to Falken for the week-end. I do hope Andy will be free.”

“I hope so.” Francesca was combing her hair, her long fair silken hair. Then swiftly she twisted it into a loose knot, low on the back of her neck, and pinned it quickly, skilfully, into exact place.

“She said that Gregor came to see you this afternoon.”

“Gregor?”

“That was the name, I think. Sounds Russian.”

“He is.” Francesca studied her pale cheeks in the looking-glass. “You wouldn’t think I lived in one of the healthiest villages in Switzerland, would you? Remember that old castle just over a mile away from Falken? They’ve discovered water there with lime and sulphur and horrible tastes, so it’s now called Schlossfalken-Bad, and people go there to take the cure. Perhaps I ought to walk in that direction more regularly.” She tried to smile.

But Paula was not side-tracked. “What kind of life do you have in Falken, anyway?”

“Oh—fresh air and mountains.”

“What about friends?”

“Difficult. Swiss air seems to bring out my Italian blood. Everyone is kind, but they think I’m a little bit of a freak. I read books, I like music, I enjoy arguing about politics. Man’s work, darling.”

“But there must be women your age.”

“Plenty. They’re round and pretty and red-cheeked, and they’re all married with at least three children.”

“Why don’t you get married?”

Francesca smiled.

“Who’s this Gregor?”

“A friend. A very good friend,” Francesca said gently. Then she looked quickly up at Paula. “And that’s all. We’re both too crazy to be able to live together peacefully. But Gregor
is
my friend.”

Paula looked worriedly at Francesca. “Well, if there is no one in the village who interests you, aren’t there ever any visitors to Falken?”

Francesca said, “Oh, they come. And they go.” She half-paused. “There’s one who has just bought a house. An American. He says he means to stay.”

“Do you like him?”

Francesca’s cheeks coloured for a moment. “I don’t like or dislike him,” she said too quickly. “But he
is
different… He’s so anxious to make friends, to be happy, and yet—he can’t somehow. He’s incredibly shy, perhaps unsure of himself.” And that’s something I do understand, she thought sadly.

“But he keeps looking at you?” Paula asked, with a smile.

Francesca glanced at her. “Really—” she began coldly.

“Very flattering,” Paula conceded. “But if he starts making you feel sorry for him, then that’s a type I’d discourage most heartily. Pale knights lonely loitering are much more devastating than any
belle dame sans merci.
See, I do remember some of the poetry that was pumped into us at school.” And Francesca had begun to smile, too. “But I’m sorry, if I spoiled Gregor’s evening. Perhaps he wanted to give you a party.”

“Probably he just called to discuss some things before the Committee meeting tomorrow. Gregor loves discussions.”

“Gregor’s on the Committee?” Paula couldn’t hide her surprise.

“He began it, actually. But then, he knew what it was like to be a prisoner. He’s thirty-four, and he has spent nine of those years in concentration camps. Russian and German. He was a music student, before that.”

“How does he live now?” asked the practical Paula.

“Gregor would say he existed by cutting down trees, and lived by composing music. But mostly he thinks about the Committee. It’s his hope and joy.”

“Haven’t you given it a name, yet?”

“Oh, we’ve had such arguments about that! We usually end by simply calling it the Falken Committee. After all, it is composed of people who live in Falken, or who have houses there. One is a doctor at Schlossfalken-Bad, for instance; a nice elderly Frenchman. Then there’s a retired Englishman who has lived in Falken for thirty years. And we’ve a lawyer from Bern—and so on.”

“You don’t keep it secret?” It almost scares me, Paula
thought, the calm way she takes all this.

“Secret enough. We had to let the government know what we planned—we didn’t want them to come asking, ‘Now what kind of a conspiracy is going on here?’ But we do work discreetly. The people we help remain anonymous even to Falken—and that’s easy enough to arrange. Why, Switzerland always did have so many committees and clubs and associations and sanatoriums and children’s homes and lunatic asylums and metaphysical societies, that one more group of people getting together to try to help others—well—” Francesca shrugged her shoulders. “What about dinner? The Café du Théâtre is good. Then we can go on to the Kursaal, up on the Schänzli. There’s music there, if you want that.”

“You ought to give the Committee a name, though,” Paula said, trying to think of one. Committees always had names.

“Gregor wants it to be called ‘The Committee for Freedom of Choice’. He says that’s the basic freedom, and he ought to know. But then our retired Englishman wants us called ‘The Iron-smelters’ or ‘The Curtain-Raisers’. That shocks Gregor.”

“It startles me, too. But tell him Englishmen always make a joke about anything over which they’re deadly serious.”

“None of us think we are playing a game,” Francesca said slowly.

Paula looked at her. I ought not to have suggested revisiting the Café Henzi, she realised. That was silly; cheap. Peter Andrássy may be one of the great composers in this world, but I was foolish in wanting to see him again. More than foolish in being excited about the small part I had in getting him a job in America. What is danger to the Committee is only excitement to me.

She was very silent, for Paula, all through an excellent dinner.

* * *

But later that evening when the Kursaal’s concert was over and dancing was about to begin, it was Francesca who said, “Well, if you still want to go to the Café Henzi, why don’t we go now?”

“Wouldn’t you object?” Paula was startled. “I mean—oh, you know!”

Francesca smiled at Paula’s new caution. “Thursday is his half-day. He will be out in Falken, playing chess and talking music with Gregor. He always does that.”

“He won’t be at the Henzi, then?” Paula was half-disappointed in spite of her resolutions.

“No. Do you still want to go?” Francesca’s amusement grew.

“Of course,” said Paula swiftly. “You see, I’ve been thinking about the houses for rent which we saw today. And I’ve begun to wonder if Andy wouldn’t prefer something more in town, and the older the town the better. You know how men always rush for the Ile Saint-Louis in Paris? So I’d like to see the old town—”