Mark remembered entering the ground floor flat in a Victorian house in West Hampstead, the heavy antique furniture, the good oil paintings and some fine aquarelles on the walls by painters he had never heard of, the ecru lace tablecloth, the fine Herend coffee cups in which strong coffee was served accompanied by poppy seed and ground walnut roulade: the specialty of the house, as Helen, Daniel’s grandmother, had jokingly said, offering a plateful to the guest. It was a world alien to his, yet warm and accommodating.
Helen’s husband, Tibor, was a small child when they escaped. One late November evening in 1956, his father had come home and told his wife to pack: they would be leaving tomorrow. They should not waste any time since the borders to Austria would be soon closed. Their flat was in central Budapest, on a side street which had been caught up in the crossfire between the Soviet tanks in the main avenue and the freedom fighters. As they were locking the door of their flat behind them, Tibor asked his father when they were coming back.
‘Never,’ was the curt answer.
Mark could hardly imagine this experience of people escaping from their home into the unknown because the fear, desperation and hopelessness in their life was greater than any uncertainty the future might bring. At the time he did not know that the Weisz family had had previous experience of losing their home when they had been herded to ghettos in the spring of 1944 soon after the German Army had invaded Hungary. Yet they were more fortunate than their provincial relatives, some of whom ended up in the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen or in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
For the first time in his life, from the stories of an old Hungarian Jew, the ghosts of recent European history had resurfaced to cast deep shadows over the hitherto unperturbed sunny upland of Mark’s English youth. He had studied modern history at school, and James was also a more than average knowledgeable guide to continental upheavals, but listening to Daniel’s grandfather was altogether a different experience: the urgency of the witness combined with the acuteness of the storytelling. Listening to Tibor Weisz he was mesmerised, but only later did he realise the importance of their encounter.
Their escape, although started rather conventionally, was nothing if not miraculous. To avoid suspicion, they had left all their possessions behind, packing only bare essentials and some food in a small weekend bag. Tibor’s mother had sewn her jewellery into the lining of her winter coat: they were all wearing their warmest clothes.
Had they been stopped and questioned by the police, their story that they were visiting relatives in the county would have sounded plausible. As his father closed the door of their flat finally behind them, Tibor was seized by fear and remorse that he would never see his friends again. They walked to the Eastern Railway Station situated barely one mile from their flat, and took the first train to the west. At the last large stop before the border they managed to hire a taxi and asked the driver to take them to a village that was only a few miles from the border. Tibor’s father had done his homework in advance and scouted out the easiest and safest place to cross into Austria.
From this village they had set out on foot towards the border. For Tibor the walk in the dark seemed never-ending. From time to time the night sky was illuminated by flares streaking across it in a blaze of light and extinguished on the horizon. He was terrified and clung to his father’s hand. His mother was a few steps behind them. Yet he was fascinated by the daring of their escape and thrilled by the danger: it was an adventure, the like of which he had previously only read of in books. There were border guards and soldiers in the area, but more ominously they had picked up rumours in the village of the recent arrival of a Russian unit in the nearby town.
They navigated gingerly through a copse of trees in the dark. Heavy clouds obliterated the moon and the stars, but they did not dare switch on their torch for its light might attract the border guards’ attention. Their feet sank deep into carpets of sodden leaves. They were paralysed by fear as rabbits suddenly jumped up to escape into the night.
The trees had thinned out behind them and they arrived in a clearing. The border must not be far now, they thought. Suddenly a shaft of light blinded them. They were frozen to the spot. Two border guards wearing Hungarian uniforms, appearing from nowhere, stood ten yards in front of them. They came closer: both were in their early twenties. One slowly focused the light on their faces one by one without saying a single word. Having finished the inspection, the guard holding the torch turned around, directing the light away from the three terrified figures into the thickness of night:
‘That way is to the border. Good luck.’ He switched off the torch and they were gone.
At dawn they were picked up by Austrian border guards, and deposited in one of the refugee camps outside Vienna that the Austrians had set up with international help to receive tens of thousands of Hungarians. From the temporary collection centres the refugees had later been dispersed to the four corners of the world. Their guardian angel in the camp was an eccentric charity worker in his late twenties who, despite his extraordinary name of Prince Arnold von Lobkowitz, was an English nurse from London. As the Weisz family later learned, he had been adopted by an Austrian aristocratic family when he was a child. He spoke a few words of Hungarian and had become fond of Tibor’s father whose knowledge of Austro-Hungarian history impressed the Englishman.
It was von Lobkowitz who had helped to ease their passage to England, asking where the family wished to go once the new quotas of immigration became available. Tibor’s father chose England, a country he had admired and the only one in Europe that, according to him, had finished the war with honour. Living in England, they would remain in Europe but as far as possible from the communist satellites of the Soviet camp. Thus, the Weisz family of three had arrived on a windy January day.
The waitress brought their coffee. Mark turned to Daniel and finally recounted the events of the last couple of days.
‘Honestly, I don’t know whether Dufresne was behind the Research Council’s decision to postpone my funding application, but the interview at Paddington Green was a Kafkaesque experience. Apparently, it was all about last night’s accident.’ For a second he hesitated whether to tell Daniel about the unexpected ending of his interview.
‘You’re such a good driver but there was a collision. It was hardly an accident though: incidences like this occur every day by the thousand. Your Morton seemed to be a decent bloke who didn’t want to take it any further. If I had any doubt before that they had a hand in shelving your programme grant, it’s now clear that they’ve decided to put pressure on you.’
‘I’m afraid I have to agree,’ sighed Mark with an air of resignation. ‘If I had any uncertainty earlier, it was expelled today during my meeting with Blakemore. Unfortunately it became rather confrontational. He’s convinced that I should collaborate with Dufresne, otherwise we won’t have any funding for future research.’
‘Does it mean,’ Daniel started, but reading his thoughts, Mark pre-empted:
‘Yes, it does. It means that I can finish the preliminary experiments, but once they are completed, however successful they are, I have to stop altogether. Curtains for my academic career. It may get even worse: with Dufresne one doesn’t know. He really sends shivers down my spine.’
‘You can’t give up academic medicine altogether. That’s too high a price to pay. I know that your initial reaction was to refuse him – and I understand your arguments more than anybody else – but perhaps you’ve got to reconsider your position. It isn’t my field, but he has a cohort that otherwise you wouldn’t be able to recruit. And knowing the nature of your research, this is halfway to success.’ Mark remained silent: Daniel was right. For the first time he had to admit that the offer he had so abruptly dismissed earlier was an opportunity he ought to have seized. Daniel continued: ‘By the way, what did Anne say? She has such a rational mind.’
‘She is unequivocal that I should work with Dufresne. It’s intriguing that Dufresne contacted her without any qualms.’ Mark lifted his cup, then realising that he had already drunk his cappuccino, nervously replaced it on the saucer. Looking straight into Daniel’s eyes, as if pinning him against a wall, he abruptly asked: ‘In my position, would you collaborate with Dufresne?’
The question took Daniel by surprise. He raked his fingers through his hair, a gesture Mark had recognised a long time ago as a sign of nervousness. Daniel shifted his gaze from Mark. The cafe was quite busy, yet peaceful. Sinking into large armchairs or spreading over leather sofas, their colleagues conducted their conversations in hushed tones or buried their faces in the papers or more likely into their own manuscripts. Waitresses silently glided with their trays amongst the tables. The barman uncorked a bottle of white wine. Mark could not help feeling remorse for putting his friend on the spot. Finally, Daniel answered.
‘I don’t know. It’s a damn difficult decision. But in the end, yes, I probably would. Not for saving my research, that wouldn’t be good enough, but for being able to help those people.’
‘Daniel, you amaze me. You come from a family who sacrificed everything for their freedom – they even risked their lives. And now you advise me to compromise my professional integrity! You of all people! I can’t believe you.’
‘Mark, have you considered, forgetting for a minute about Dufresne, where your breakthrough may lead?’
‘Well, you are going to publish your experiments as soon as your cohort is going to be statistically significant and your results are solid. Yes?’
‘Of course. But what are you getting at?’
‘Once this work becomes public knowledge, everyone with your expertise can use it. There might not be many people who are so qualified but there are some. A couple of months after publication Dufresne might find someone less scrupulous who will do the job for him.’
‘I did think of this possibility.’
‘There is also another aspect to thought modification. You can help patients enormously with personality disorders, but this methodology could be endlessly abused in the wrong hands.’
‘Yes Daniel, I know. And yes, I have considered the implications. Is there anything new in this respect? Modern medicine has many variations on this theme. Drugs to heal can also poison people. Genetics can be misused and have been misused.’
‘Mark, calm down. You’ve had a very stressful couple of days and now you should put Dufresne’s offer into perspective. You aren’t being asked to make a Faustian deal, you only have to choose the lesser of two evils. However, whatever you decide you must know that you can count on me.’
‘To change the subject, something else emerged from the past rather out of the blue and completely unrelated to the accident during the interview. Perhaps I should have started with this terrible story, but I just wanted to calm down first. It isn’t easy to talk about it, even to you. You will be shocked, I have to warn you.’ Daniel listened to the story of his friend’s first love: previously Mark had never mentioned Julia and a closed chapter of his friend’s life opened up.
‘Have you ever tried to see her again?’
‘Yes, I did. The other medical student Julia shared a flat with in Bloomsbury told me that she’d moved out at short notice before the exams, without leaving a forwarding address. I tracked her parents down in Lancaster but they practically warned me off her: they were adamant that their daughter didn’t want to see me or hear from me ever again. I couldn’t do much else. Marriage wasn’t an option. It was a traumatic experience: the feeling of guilt haunted me for a long time. Today Julia returned from the past to reclaim a place in my conscience from which I have tried to erase her. I can’t help feeling that I am, at least partly, responsible for her death.’
‘You are not! But it’s natural that you feel guilty. Does Yasmina know about Julia?’
‘No, she doesn’t. Rightly or wrongly, I decided it wasn’t relevant to our relationship.’
‘Are you going to tell her now?’
‘Perhaps Julia should remain our secret for the time being.’ Without saying a word both felt that discussing this tragic episode of Mark’s life had strengthened the bond between them.
Daniel suddenly changed the subject. ‘What are you doing tonight? Why don’t you and Yasmina come to have dinner with us? I could telephone Chris to find out whether we’ve food in the house, and even if the fridge is empty we could always go out.’ Daniel suggested that they meet in their house off the Essex Road in Islington at eight o’clock.
Before leaving the cafe, Mark called Morton again. This time he was lucky, the pharmacologist answered: ‘I received your message and was about to call you – I’ve just returned from work.’ Mark could barely withhold his anger.
‘I was interviewed at Paddington Green Police Station this afternoon on account of our encounter last night. You apparently made a complaint against me.’
There was silence at the other end. Morton must have been taken aback by Mark’s directness and was considering his response. When it finally came, it did not surprise Mark:
‘I was contacted by the police. They stated that the cameras picked up the accident and were surprised that we didn’t report it. It was my duty, they said, to make a statement.’
‘And did you?’ There was yet more silence.
‘They advised me to do so.’
Mark contemplated the nuances of meaning with which this verb could be invested.
‘Did they also advise you to report the accident to your insurance company? We didn’t find any damage worth reporting last night.’
‘On a more thorough look in daylight, I did discover a dent on the back bumper which might have to be replaced.’
By now Mark was convinced that the police had pressurised Morton to report the accident to create an excuse, if they needed one, for his interview. Any further conversation was futile, and he brought the exchange to an abrupt end.
Stepping out into Wimpole Street, Mark hesitated to hail one of the passing black cabs, and chose to walk home. The rain had stopped, a warm wind dried the pavement and the setting sun made a fleeting appearance under threatening clouds in the western sky. From the corner of Cavendish Square he spared a glance at his favourite London sculpture: Epstein’s Madonna and Child pinned to a stone arch between two Palladian buildings leading to what had once been a theological college. The unexpected meeting with Daniel and sharing the burden of his interview had helped to lift his gloom, and the serene beauty of the statue had filled him with confidence. Inexplicably, he had gained strength from pieces of stone – a woman protecting and yet at the same time offering her child to the world. For the first time that day he felt that he could face the trials which had come his way during the last forty-eight hours.
He turned into Harley Street. The private surgeries were closing: secretaries were clearing their desks and turning off the lights, couriers were collecting late reports, and the last patients were hailing taxis or getting into waiting limousines. Within half an hour the street would be deserted. He crossed Marylebone Road and the Outer Circle, and through one of the small cast iron gates he entered Regent’s Park. The lights had suddenly faded and a fine drizzle started to fall. He quickened his steps; he did not want to get wet or to be stranded in the Park.
It was getting late: the gates of the Inner Circle were locked at dusk by the park’s guards who drove around in a van closing the gates in an order unknown to evening visitors. That he might have to climb over the railing to get out, as occasionally had happened in the past, should have occurred to him earlier. But tonight he wanted to spare himself this acrobatic performance and quickened his pace. He was lucky, since one of the guards, seeing the lonely figure hurrying towards him, held the gate open to let him out.
Unexpectedly the drizzle turned into a heavy shower, and by the time he rushed down the few steps to the door of their house he had been drenched. The lights were on: Yasmina had arrived home earlier. The glare of the illuminated windows shining through the downpour offered a warm welcome.