Whenever the tipsy cleaning lady scolded him he just listened in silence with his head hanging down. He was used to being misunderstood.
“No doubt, after a month or two, I’ll get her to come walking with me. One fine spring afternoon we’ll be strolling in Regent’s Park and we’ll happen to meet the lady I had her from. ‘Madam,’ I shall say, ‘as you see, I have faithfully watched over that which you entrusted to me. Madelon has grown a little since then, it is true, and yes, she has put on a little weight, perhaps, but not enough to harm her figure. Obviously she’s spent the last few months in serious intellectual company. I don’t believe it’s done her any harm.’
“And one thing would lead to another, we’d go and have tea, then to the cinema, who knows…?” The lady, so far as he could remember, was rather attractive and engaging, with wonderfully square shoulders… simply dressed, but in excellent taste. Obviously the wife of a young but successful tobacco merchant… her father a respectable greying functionary in a large insurance company… all living in a little house somewhere, East Ealing perhaps, in one of those streets with sixty addresses on either side of the road, all exactly the same, with more or less identical lives being led inside them. Oh, the English lower middle classes, with their five-o’clock teas, their tranquil winter evenings by the fire, the single words let drop once every half-hour, most probably about the Prince of Wales…
In the afternoon the bell rang. Bátky roused himself from his reverie about the middle classes and opened the door. There stood the lady.
“I’ve come for Madelon,” she said simply.
“Oh… oh… and oh again!” he said, lost in contemplation of the strange workings of fate. “Do take a chair. Madelon is still alive. But how ever did you find me? London is so large…”
“It was very easy,” she replied. “You gave me this book to hold yesterday, while you took care of her. There was a letter inside addressed to János Bátky, Francis Street, London… I thought that must be you. I came in the afternoon hoping to find you at home. I really must apologise… I can imagine what Madelon got up to in the night… you poor man!”
“Oh, we were just beginning to make friends,” Bátky replied modestly. “I stroked her the whole night. I thought you would have done the same. I kept thinking that it was your hand touching her.”
“How very kind,” she said, and took off her hat.
Now for the first time Bátky noticed how handsome she was. (“I’ve always adored tobacconists’ wives. Their hair has something of the rich gold of the finest Virginia.”)
They made tea, and while she was pouring it Bátky took the opportunity to record on a slip of paper: “Love affairs usually start in either September or January.”
After tea he sat at her feet and laid his head on her lap. He imagined that they were now at home, in her home, in East Ealing… family photos hanging on the wall… the grandfather with huge whiskery sideburns… Christmas carols playing on the gramophone… everything serene and unchanging, the British Empire on its mighty foundations, and Madelon playing with a kitten beside the hearth.
Her lips had the taste of home-made strawberry jam. Her movements, as she undressed, were calm and placid, as if tomorrow were another day. Her whole being radiated such complete self-assurance he quite forgot to wonder at his unexpected conquest. Apparently it was what everyone did in this country after tea. Even Jenny.
“I’ll come again,” she said, some time towards evening.
“I’d be delighted,” he replied with conviction. “Won’t you tell me your name?”
“Oh, I thought you’d recognised me. You must have seen my picture in the papers — it’s there often enough. I am Lady Rothesay.”
And off she went.
This parting note unsettled Bátky. He placed a high value on truthfulness in other people. He had many times broken off with a woman because she said she’d been at the dentist when she had in fact been with another man. “Why was she so ashamed to be the wife of a young but successful tobacconist? These English are incurable snobs. If I had a little house in East Ealing, and a whiskery grandfather hanging on the wall, I would never dream of denying it.”
Her falsehood depressed him so much he couldn’t bring himself to fall in love with her. Once more his loneliness pressed down on him like a slowly lowered ceiling. The same gloom as always darkened the London streets. A fine drizzle was falling. On Camden Hill elderly gentlemen strolled towards their eternal rest. In Kensington alone there were two million old ladies. Life was quite meaningless… Somewhere, deep inside a Scottish castle, or in some dark avenue of ancient trees, the deranged wife of an earl was putting an end to it all…
One day she appeared on his doorstep again.
Once again, they spent a very pleasant afternoon. Bátky was in an intimate and sentimental frame of mind, talking about Budapest, where the cafés spilled a warm, cosy light onto the pavement, the waiters knew exactly which paper you liked to read, and the mysterious lower orders cleared the lovely white snow overnight.
“So what is your name?” he asked her, thinking that this time she would be sincere.
“But I’ve already told you. I am Lady Rothesay.”
Bátky became cool and detached. He could see he would never get close to this woman, and what is love without a meeting of souls?
“I’m going away tomorrow, to France. My father is a tower guard at Notre Dame.”
“And when are you coming back?” she enquired.
“I’m not coming back,” he replied grimly.
“As you wish,” she shrugged, and made her way quickly down the stairs.
A few days later the Sunday Pictorial found an occasion to carry yet another picture of Lady Rothesay. It was her all right.
“Women are incomprehensible,” he wrote on a slip of paper, and carefully filed it away.
1934
MUSINGS IN THE LIBRARY
LOOKING BACK on the blissful days of my youth, as they begin to slip away from me, I can now see that the best of them were those spent in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris. I won’t deny that the hours I whiled away on night watch at the Scouts camp were also very pleasant, and my first amorous embrace, up in the mountains of Austria, though pure puppy love, comes pretty close — love and nature have seldom let me down. But the very best moments were undoubtedly those spent in the Bibliothèque nationale, especially the winter evenings.
Now, the beauty of penny-pinching is perhaps that it is so typically French. No illumination of any kind was permitted to penetrate the ever-receding mystery of the huge space under the arched ceiling. That would have been wanton extravagance. Instead, tall green lampshades, placed at strictly rational distances apart, burnt directly over the tables. These were of course switched on only after total blindness had set in. Immediately the silence intensified, humming with feverish excitement, since closing time was now imminent and everyone’s life suddenly depended on getting through the next fifty pages. The only sound to be heard was the rhythmic, monotone rustling of pages being turned and the occasional voice raised in protest by some superannuated lunatic at the counter where the all-powerful ushers were enthroned.
At five minutes before a quarter to six, a personage specially assigned to the task would proclaim in a voice of thunder: “Mesdames et Messieurs, on va bientôt fermer”—the closing ‘er’ being wonderfully drawn-out, wavering off to vanish in the remoteness of those never-to-be visited rooms where the library kept its millions of books. Then, at five forty-five precisely, the same functionary would call out, with all the succinctness we have come to expect from ancient prophets of doom: “On ferme!” And everyone trooped out.