‘Is that a joke? I presume it is a joke. Anyway, I’ve had it with your bloody tent.’
He ignores her and keeps on walking. Perhaps one of those abandoned houses which they passed a while back? Perhaps the ditch beside the road? Perhaps that line of forest away to the right? They plod onwards…
24
Afternoon sunshine on the forests and fields of Bohemia. The embassy car reversed the route of the day before, passing through the West German border post without let or hindrance, crossing the bridge over the stream and climbing the slope through no-man’s-land towards the Czech customs post. The car slowed to a crawl. There was a queue of cars at the normal channel, a jaunty wave of recognition as the Humber moved towards the reserved lane. The barrier went up. Lenka relaxed her grip.
‘Not even a carton of cigarettes,’ Sam said. ‘But a pint for Derrick.’
‘Two, you said. And none of that fizzy Czech stuff. Watneys.’
The car cruised on. Ahead two figures appeared at the edge of the road. Long hair and jeans. The usual uniform. ‘Hitchhikers,’ Derrick said. His policeman’s mind came into play. Regulations were regulations no matter where you were. ‘Shouldn’t be hitchhiking in the border zone. Could find themselves inside.’ He slowed and pulled out to pass them. Sam glanced out of the side window. GB.
‘Better stop, Derrick. Otherwise the police will pick them up and the consular department will have to deal with it. No end of a fuss.’
The car came to a slow and reluctant halt. Lenka looked round. The two hitchers were shuffling forward under the weight of their rucksacks, looking bedraggled and grimy. A boy with a fledgling beard. A girl with chaotic hair.
‘Bloody kids,’ said Derrick.
Sam opened the door and climbed out as the couple approached. ‘Going to Prague?’
They came to a panting halt beside the car. ‘You’re English,’ the boy said. ‘I wondered what a Humber was doing here.’
‘Embassy car, actually. You’re lucky. It’s forbidden to hitchhike in the border zone. You could have got yourselves arrested.’
‘So sir’s come to tell us off, has he?’ the girl said.
‘Actually, he’s come to offer you a lift.’ Sam opened the boot of the car. ‘You may put your packs in with Her Majesty’s diplomatic bags as long as you can assure me that they do not contain any illegal substances. My name’s Samuel Wareham, by the way. Sam to friends and associates, but you may call me “sir” if you like.’
Chastened, the pair climbed into the back seat. A faint smell of unwashed bodies accompanied them. Lenka edged up to give them room and Sam took his place in front. ‘I’m Ellie,’ the girl said. ‘He’s James.’
‘From Oxford,’ the boy added.
‘City or university?’
‘University.’
‘Which college?’
He told him. ‘And Ellie’s at St Hilda’s.’
‘And you’re going to Prague…?’
‘To suss the place out, really. Spur-of-the-moment decision. And to hear Birgit Eckstein play.’
‘Are you musicians?’
‘We know her.’
‘Do you indeed?’
The girl explained – hitching through the Black Forest, a lift from a couple of Germans, one of whom was the cellist. ‘So we thought—’
The boy interrupted. ‘No thought involved, just the toss of a coin. Italy or here, that was the choice.’ His accent was from the North. South Yorkshire, Sam thought. Other side of the Pennines from Derrick. Chip on his shoulder, but that was hardly his fault when he found himself confronted by Oxford.
‘So you’ve opted for Slav drama, rather than Italian opera? Well, be careful. Prague’s all very exciting at the moment, but if you want to avoid getting into trouble, be careful what you do or say.’
‘Is that sir talking?’ the girl said.
‘Just a piece of advice. We don’t want to be arranging consular visits and trying to contact your parents to explain that their little darlings are in Pankrác prison.’
‘You didn’t do that for me when I was arrested in Paris last May.’
‘What were you doing there? Playing at revolutions? Here they have them for real – and that’s why it’s so dangerous. Ask Lenka.’
From her corner Lenka made a little moue of distaste. ‘I don’t want to talk about things. They’re young. Let them enjoy themselves.’
‘As long as it’s not at the taxpayer’s expense.’
‘Aren’t you enjoying yourself at the taxpayer’s expense?’ the girl said.
Sam laughed. She was a snappy young lady and would, he didn’t doubt, make a shrewish woman. ‘You’d make a good politician. Where are you staying in Prague?’
‘No idea,’ the boy replied. ‘A hostel or something.’
‘It’s not easy, accommodation in Prague. There’s a chronic shortage of beds, just like there’s shortages of everything else. It’s the result of a command economy. If no one has ordered hostels and hotels, hostels and hotels don’t get built.’
‘I can help maybe,’ said Lenka. ‘You can have my room.’ She glanced at Sam. ‘For a few days?’ She wasn’t intending to go back to her mother’s exiguous flat, he could see that by her look. Sam thought about Steffie and her reluctance to move in with him. Just the occasional night. Perhaps a weekend. ‘We have to recognise the proprieties,’ she had warned him whenever he’d suggested a more permanent arrangement. She had sounded like someone in a pre-war drawing-room drama. And now Lenka was looking at him with that knowing smile, as though proprieties meant nothing.
VI
25
The girl called Lenka has, it seems, taken them under her wing. James had thought her cold and indifferent when they first encountered her in the embassy car with that stuck-up Wareham bloke, but it appears he was wrong. Under her wing, in hand, whatever turn of phrase you choose. She’s given up the room she rents in a friend’s flat in the New Town, an area of largely nineteenth-century buildings beyond the square that everyone has heard of in the West, the square that isn’t a square, named after the king who wasn’t a king – Václavské náměstí, Wenceslas Square. ‘There you are,’ she says, handing them over to their new hosts. ‘You will be happy.’ Which is unlikely but full of good intent.
The flat is cramped and, despite being up under the roofs, cave-like. The ceilings slope, things are stacked in the awkward space where the ceiling meets the floor, the doors are low enough to catch out those unwilling to bow their heads. An upright piano occupies one wall of the living room, a poster by Alfons Mucha another. There is a family photograph – my grandparents, Jitka says – of a couple staring disapprovingly out of the Austria-Hungary Empire into the People’s Republic of Czechoslovakia. A violin case stands against the wall beside a gramophone and a cabinet of records. Their hosts are musicians, a violinist with one of the orchestras of the city and a composer. Jitka is the violinist’s name. She’s a sharp, nervous woman with a fine face that hasn’t quite discovered how to be beautiful but is instead merely trying to be interesting. Dark eyes and a sharp nose. A mole like a small blackcurrant above the corner of her mouth. Jitka is what everyone calls her, but her given name is Judita, the Czech version of Judith, she explains. Then she looks faintly embarrassed, as though such things don’t really matter. ‘You call me Jitka.’