Zapolya's wife, the Countess Dorottya, was plump and grey-haired, but appeared to be still on the right side of fifty, so a good twenty years younger than himself. As she extended a beautifully kept hand to Gregory he remembered just in time not to kiss it, as a chance remark he had heard in the bar of the Zur Krone two nights before had informed him that the Hungarian aristocracy now regarded the custom as bourgeois. That she was the Count's second wife emerged a few minutes later when a tall man with Tartar features, also about fifty, was introduced to him as the Count's eldest son, Count Rudolph.
There was a beautiful black-haired Italian, the Countess Marcella, who was the wife of a much younger son, not present, and a bronze haired Countess Erzsebet, who was a daughter of the house; a handsome young man named Count Istvan, and a hunchback with a clever, amusing face named Count Laszlo. But before Gregory could gather more than a vague idea of their relationships they all went in to lunch.
They were using, as Gregory learned later, the smaller dining room; but it could easily have seated twenty. Standing in it near the far end of the table were a sandy haired young man with thickened glasses, whom Gregory thought looked suspiciously like a German, a mousey looking woman in a white blouse and black skirt, a boy of about nine and a pretty little dark girl of about eleven. The children, Count Sityi and Countess Teresa, belonged to the Countess Marcella, and the grownups were their Austrian tutor and French governess.
Throughout the meal a major-domo stood behind Count Zapolya's chair while elderly footmen handed dishes that had nothing Hungarian about their cooking, but were obviously the productions of an excellent French chef. Nevertheless, it proved a jolly, informal, family party with everyone laughing and talking at once. But for the medley of tongues it might have been a luncheon in one of the stately homes of England for, like the English, and unlike the Germans, Austrians and French, these Magyar aristocrats regarded the fact that they had been born noble as so natural that they made no effort whatever to impress, or to protect their dignity behind a cold, formal manner.
In the role of the French major who had got away from
Dunkirk, Gregory gave an account of wartime life in England, and described the blitz. Most of them knew London well, and while the burning of a large part of the City meant little to them, they pressed him for further details when he spoke of the great raid on the West End.
On that Saturday night he had been dining with friends at Hatchett's when a stick of bombs crashed along Piccadilly and scores more fell in the neighbourhood. An hour or so later, when they left the restaurant, fires along the wide thoroughfare had made it as bright as day from the Circus to the Ritz, and from pavement to roof every window in 'Burtons the Tailors' building was belching great tongues of flame.
Most of the men among Gregory's listeners had pleasant memories of being entertained at the famous clubs in Pall Mall and St. James's Street, so were distressed to hear that many of them had been severely damaged; yet, having no experience of air raids, it was the after effects which struck them most forcibly. No doubt they would have faced the dangers of the blitz with commendable bravery, but they were quite shocked when Gregory told them that, after he had made a tour of the area the following morning to see the worst for himself, owing to the electric and gas mains having been wrecked the Berkeley could provide him only with a cold lunch.
With fruit and dessert wines the luncheon continued in leisurely fashion till past three o'clock, then the Count told Gregory that it was the custom of the house party to go for a drive in the afternoon. Thereupon Gregory remarked that his poor driver must be wondering how much longer he meant to stay, and that in any case it was time for him to be starting back for Budapest; but Zapolya would not hear of his doing so.
'Nonsense, my dear fellow,' he declared. 'My people will have seen to it that the man was given a meal then paid off. If you must return to Budapest tonight, I'll have you driven to the station at any hour, and the Station Master will flag the first train that comes along to stop and pick you up. But unless you have engagements that you cannot possibly cancel by telephone, I suggest that you should spend the next few days here. We shall then have an opportunity to discuss matters in more detail.'
Gregory said that he would have been, delighted to accept but had not with him even a toothbrush, let alone a change of clothes. The Count waved the objection aside. He would send his valet in on the next train to collect Gregory's things from the Vadaszkürt, and the man would be back by nightfall. He would also arrange with the management that Gregory's room at the hotel should be reserved so that he could return to it whenever he wished.
In consequence, Gregory drove out with the family, and on his return was equipped for dinner, by the charming Countess Elizabeth, with an Hungarian costume, selected from the great store of finery kept in the house for amateur theatricals and dressing up. To put him at his ease several of the other men also wore the national dress that night and the women all congratulated him on the fine figure he cut. When, at two o'clock in the morning, he eventually went up to bed he found that all his own things had been arranged in his room as though he had already occupied it for a week.
On waking the following morning between the fine lawn sheets he found it difficult to believe that he was not still dreaming. Twenty-four hours earlier he had been convinced that he had come to Hungary on a wild goose chase; now there seemed a definite possibility that he might succeed in engineering a break between the Hungarians and the Nazis. The half waking thought was made all the more unreal by kaleidoscopic memories of having the previous day walked into a world of luxurious, cultured leisure that he had believed to have become extinct for two years or more all over war torn Europe. Yet his transitory doubts were dissipated by the arrival of a French speaking manservant who brought him a breakfast which could not have been surpassed in pre-war days, and asked him at what temperature he liked his bath.
For the next three days he remained at Nagykata, enjoying to the full a gracious hospitality, and much laughter; but the secret reason for his presence there was kept well in mind by his elderly host. Unostentatiously the Count called several conferences in his own room. Before the first he explained to Gregory that his eldest son, Count Rudolph, was interested only in agricultural problems, so would be of little use in their deliberations; but the Baron Alacy who was also a retired General the Bishop, and the merry eyed hunchback, Count Laszlo, were called in. All three agreed that, short of some unforeseeable circumstance, the combination of the United States, the British Empire and Soviet Russia must in the end defeat Germany and Japan; so that Hungary's best hope
for the future lay in going over to the Allies. But there was a considerable divergence of opinion on the question of the conditions to be stipulated in any secret pact and the timing of this exceedingly dangerous volte-face.
In the meantime, Zapolya had written guardedly to a number of his other relations and most intimate friends, and convened a meeting at the Nobles Club in Budapest for Thursday the 20th.
From the time of Gregory's arrival in Budapest up to the morning of that day, the news had been far from favourable to his mission. Lieutenant General Gott, who he had heard was the most promising of our younger Generals in the Middle East, was reported killed while over Libya in an aircraft. The British had arrested the leaders of Congress on evidence that they were preparing to sell out India to the Japs, which had led to serious rioting in Bombay. Another attempt to relieve besieged Malta had been carried out at heavy cost, the cruiser Manchester and the aircraft carrier Eagle both being sunk as well as many other ships. And, worst of all for the Allied cause as a whole, the German offensive in Russia was meeting with spectacular success. Von Bock was still being held outside Stalingrad, but further south the Germans had penetrated the foothills of the Caucasian mountains and were threatening Krasnodar. The hope that these claims might be exaggerated had been nullified by an admission from the Soviet High Command that they had evacuated Maikop, the oil centre north of the Caucasus, and were destroying many oil wells in the threatened area.