Replacement Girl Read online

  ‘Not particularly,’ he said.

  She’s been travelling a lot,’ Douglas said, when we were on our way to Waikanae where his mother had a house. ‘Even more than usual since Dad died of a heart attack two years ago. He was an anthropologist, just fifty-two years old. I expect Hamish, my brother, will turn up today. He’s just off to Canada for a couple of years. Some kind of a research grant – he’s a biologist.’

  I was already out of my depth with the arrivals and departures in the Simpson family when Douglas mentioned that his sister Jenny, whom he hadn’t seen for several years, was also likely to be at his mother’s. ‘She’ll be on her way back to Christchurch, where she lives, from the Cook Islands, where she’s been doing research.’

  Douglas and I were the first to arrive.

  ‘If you come early, you can leave early,’ Douglas assured me.

  We found Daphne Simpson on her knees in the garden.

  ‘Well, Douglas, how are you? How is work? Pleased to meet you, Eva.’

  She showed no emotion at seeing her son, merely offered her cheek for him to kiss.

  ‘My mother doesn’t know what chemists do exactly but she is always punctilious about asking about my work,’ said Douglas as we looked for a place inside to leave our jackets and bags.

  Back in the garden, I noticed how Daphne’s clothes fluttered around her in the breeze. Her dress was rather unusual. The garment was a mixture of negligée and oriental pyjama. I wondered if she was going to change into more suitable clothes and also wash her hands, dirty from gardening, before the other guests arrived. It seemed not, for someone was arriving already.

  ‘An old friend, the ex-professor of chemistry,’ Douglas said.

  ‘Splendid, splendid,’ the ex-professor said.

  Behind him were several other guests.

  ‘Would you mind, Douglas, we need more chairs out here and some rugs.’

  While Douglas went in to do as asked, I gazed around the vast lawn. My eyes were drawn particularly to two cherry blossom trees, one pink, one white, both in full bloom. There was a big hammock strung between them.

  ‘The hammock is lovely for the children.’ The speaker was Jenny Albright, Douglas’s sister. Her entire body was enveloped in brown wool.

  ‘She has crocheted the poncho herself,’ said Daphne as she introduced us.

  Jenny had a baby in her arms and a small child tugging at her leg. She collapsed into the nearest chair, pulled up her poncho and her jersey, and unhooked her bra. One breast went straight away into the mouth of the baby; the other was for the small child. She opened a thick book called Social Structure, balancing it precariously on one knee.

  ‘It helps the milk flow if I read. I’ll catch up with you later, Eva.’

  Jenny was completing a dissertation on child rearing practices in the Cook Islands, Douglas said. Her husband, also an anthropologist, was still in the Islands, completing his own research.

  After Jenny, I met a linguistic expert, a man who was something in the diplomatic corps, the newest staff member in the university’s music department, a promising young poet, a female glass-blower, an eminent public servant, the talented architect of the Williams building, the elderly author of the essential book about the Chinese Revolution, a Listener columnist, a music critic, an ex-editor of a literary journal, and a distinguished ex-All Black turned local politician.

  Next came a Jewish refugee who used to be a doctor but was now doing well in leather, followed by a procession of guests too numerous to remember, though I gathered from remarks made by Douglas, who was back at my side after sorting out chairs and rugs, that they were men and women who had all achieved some kind of distinction in their particular field.

  At last, to my relief, behind a leading figure in the Broadcasting Service, came a young man who had yet to find a niche. He was followed by an unmarried mother of two with one more on the way.

  ‘She’s definitely carrying Bohemianism too far,’ said Douglas. I had the feeling that there may have once been something between Douglas and the extreme Bohemian. When I had asked him about girlfriends he said that, yes, there had been someone not so long ago whom he had been fond of, but it was over now and he wasn’t the sort of person to waste his time getting sentimental about the past.

  ‘How does my mother collect all these people?’ said Douglas. He disappeared to fill up glasses.

  Left alone, I went inside and stood in a corner, hoping to merge myself with the rows of books about music, art, history, politics, linguistics. What difference, I wanted to find out, would the presence of so many people who were supposed to be clever make to the conversation?

  ‘Doesn’t it seem odd that he is still not married?’ said a voice.

  ‘Yes, there seems to be no reason for it,’ said another.

  I noticed that the female glass blower was devouring a plate of sandwiches. Where did she find them? I wondered, chewing on a stick of celery. We were here for lunch but there seemed to be little of it about.

  ‘One wonders if there might not be something between them,’ said the first voice.

  Perhaps the sandwiches are outside, I decided, heading in that direction.

  ‘A wife can be a most useful asset if she has the right kind of education,’ I heard the ex-All Black saying. He was standing beside a table that had a plate of olives on it.

  ‘I suppose common interests are the main thing,’ replied his companion, the leading figure in the Broadcasting Service.

  ‘Splendid, splendid,’ said the ex-professor of chemistry, watching his glass being refilled with more red wine.

  ‘Hello,’ said the Jewish refugee.

  ‘Fascinating accent,’ said the talented architect.

  I found myself beside a pond with floating lilies. The sun was out. Children were squealing, swinging on the hammock.

  Behind me the talented architect was recounting, ‘I was most fortunate to be able to buy the small property. It has every advantage – a flat section planted with natives and English trees, including a magnificent oak.’

  ‘Bellbirds sing in my garden,’ enthused the Listener columnist.

  ‘…roses are plentiful,’ agreed the linguistic expert.

  Where was Douglas?

  ‘One doesn’t want to be narrow and suburban,’ declared the talented architect, ‘but think of the noise.’

  I wondered if I should join one of the groups but did not feel able to manage the conversation.

  ‘The lawn is big enough for croquet,’ Douglas said when I found him again, listening thoughtfully to something the unmarried mother of two was saying.

  Daphne Simpson drifted by with a plate of carrots and celery. I helped myself to a carrot. Douglas refilled our glasses with red wine.

  ‘Have you published anything yet?’ Douglas’s brother Hamish asked when we were introduced.

  ‘Doesn’t Daphne look sweet?’ said the linguistic expert.

  ‘But they don’t know our customs,’ said the talented architect.

  ‘Isn’t it a lovely afternoon?’ said the music critic.

  ‘I expect she would like a walk,’ retorted the female glass blower.

  ‘Splendid, thank you,’ said the ex-professor of chemistry, holding out his glass for more red wine.

  The voices around me blurred as I drained my second, or was it third, glass of wine on a more or less empty stomach. I was starting to be almost indifferent to the precise nature of the eminence of a particular guest, when Douglas decided it was time for us to slip away.

  ‘Please come again, you’re always welcome,’ said his genial mother.

  When we were driving away, Douglas lit his pipe and said, ‘On my third birthday, when I had complications from mumps and ended up in hospital, where was my mother? Away in Tonga or Tokelau with my father. When I broke my arm, climbing the tree in the garden when I was four, where was she? Where was she on the day I started at Ngaio School? It was my aunt who packed my lunch into the shiny new school bag and held my hand as I
trudged along to school. My aunt.’

  It was different down the road at his cousins’, Douglas said, his aunt at the bench, his uncle in his study. His aunt always there, baking, sewing, gardening – building a warm home. Up the road, at his place, it was a struggle: he had to sew the buttons back on his shirt before school the next day; to make a hem on his trousers before the school dance; to stop his brother and sister constantly bickering. Where was his mother? In Geneva, or Paris, or London, keeping his father company.

  ‘So, Eva, what about you?’ said Douglas as he puffed steadily on his pipe. He must be smoking away his anger, I thought, for gradually he calmed down and became the carefree Kiwi bloke again. ‘Your turn now to tell me something about your childhood,’ he said.

  Zsuzsi says, ‘It’s forbidden to step between the cobblestones.’

  We are playing in the park across the road, near the deep pond. A group of boys set upon Petö and dump him screaming in the icy water. When he clambers out, they pelt him with dirt and stones. They run off laughing.

  Zsuzsi and I crouch behind the trees at the edge of the toboggan track, watching Petö crying and shivering. His forehead, where one of the stones has hit, is bleeding. We stumble out from our hiding place and Zsuzsi gives him her handkerchief. He dabs at the blood and blows his nose. We know Petö from school. Not long ago our teacher pointed him out as the son of a traitor.

  We run home – past the statue of the Russian soldier, past the chestnut vendor, through the archway. Zsuzsi and I are eight years old and in the same class at school. She and I look very different, for Zsuzsi is plump with dark olive skin and shiny brown eyes while I’m fair, blue eyed and thin. We live in the same apartment building as Petö.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone what happened, Eva,’ she says over the din of the tram clattering past on its way to Erzsébet Street.

  Zsuzsi’s always telling me what to do, but there’s no need this time. In the morning, as I’m getting ready for school and my parents for work at the factory, my grandmother arrives with the news. There is shooting on Gellért Hill. As she crossed the bridge to Buda, she had to fling herself flat on the ground to avoid the bullets.

  Dashing upstairs to tell Zsuzsi, I meet Petö.

  ‘My mother saw a body hanging by the ankles from a tree in Lenin Street. He’s out there, my father, with the others, fighting the Stalinist bastards!’ His eyes glow. The big bruise on his forehead is covered with a bandage.

  We sit in the basement with the other families, waiting for news, never far from the silent radio. My parents are huddled together in dark coats; my grandmother wrapped in a blanket. Zsuzsi lets me unplait her dark brown, almost black, hair and plait it again.

  ‘You should let your hair grow, Eva,’ Zsuzsi says.

  ‘Long hair would only be a nuisance because there is not enough hot water,’ my mother says.

  I open the new diary with the bright blue cover, a birthday present from my grandmother, and write on the blank page:

  1 November 1956, Krisztina Körut 4, Budapest

  The adults are playing gin rummy. They are talking about the bread queues that stretch from our street to the bridge.

  ‘They killed him,’ someone says in a hushed voice. ‘Just an old man. He’s lying dead in the queue; the bread is still in his hand.’

  At last the radio is back on:

  Magyars arise, your country calls you!

  Meet this hour, what’er befalls you

  Shall we freemen be, or slaves?

  Choose the lot your spirit craves!

  The Russian tanks are coming. Petö wants to leave the basement and pour petrol in the path of the tanks and watch them burst into flames. His mother tells him to sit down and not be so stupid. He doesn’t look at Zsuzsi or me. His mother is crying.

  ‘His father is out there, throwing Molotov cocktails at the tanks. For years he has been waiting for this,’ his mother says.

  Zsuzsi and I are holding hands. The sound of firing and explosions comes closer. Someone brings the news. Petö’s father has been wounded and is in the hospital. He has lost much blood. The hospital doesn’t have enough new blood so he will probably die.

  ‘Take them, for the guide,’ says my grandmother when we say goodbye. She puts the bracelet and the rings into my mother’s hand. My mother stuffs them into her handbag.

  ‘Sew them into the lining of the coat.’

  ‘You’ve been seeing too many movies, Judit,’ says my father, slamming each door as he strides down the long dark passage to get away from my grandmother.

  ‘Anyuka, Gyuri, stop it,’ says my mother. She slams the door too because she can’t bear to hear them any longer.

  You’d think my father and grandmother would have a break from arguing when who knows if we’ll ever see each other again.

  ‘Don’t you leave me too, Kati Meyer,’ says my grandmother, sobbing on my mother’s shoulder. ‘Is it not enough that I lost my Imre?’

  We can’t take much luggage, just a small bag. At the dark Budapest Railway Station, waiting to board the train for the border, I remember the diary, still on my bed. We wear our spare clothes. I’m stiff and hot in my navy-blue winter coat. My father’s pocket bulges with vodka for the border patrols.

  There wasn’t time for a proper goodbye to Zsuzsi. It starts to snow when the train arrives. We get on. I can’t find a seat in the crammed train. A woman in a dark cloak with a red handkerchief on her head whispers the news about the last group crossing the border. All of a sudden there was a huge explosion. Mines were found, laid deep in the snow. A young girl lost her right leg and left arm.

  The guide in the fur hat who takes people over the minefield is waiting for his gold. He has a rifle slung over his shoulder.

  My father sits on a tree stump, burying his head in his hands.

  ‘Gyuri, I can’t do this. We must go back.’ My mother is pacing up and down, up and down.

  ‘Kati, Kati,’ says my father.

  What will happen to us?

  ‘Filth, Red Guard filth,’ the guide is muttering. I hear the phlop of his spit on the body by the hedge.

  When we start walking, it is so dark. Into my mind float pictures of Petö, weeping for his dead father. I can see the body. There is a hole where one of his eyes used to be; the other eye is popping out of his head. Someone closes the bulging eye and wraps him in the red, white and green flag. When I look closer, I see that it is the girl who lost her arm and leg. Blood is pouring from where her limbs used to be. Just then my father says: ‘Look, on the other side of the border are the lights.’

  ‘Perhaps we will see each other in America,’ I write to Zsuzsi from the refugee camp. ‘It is a cold, grey place of huddled, shivering people. We sleep in a long dormitory, separated from other families by grey blankets hung from bunks. There are twenty-five people altogether in our dormitory.’

  She may not get the letter, my mother says. The Rankis are also trying to get across the border.

  ‘Listen,’ says my mother. ‘Who can stand that horrible noise?’

  Someone in the next bunk is snoring like a pig.

  We poke our heads through the blankets to look at the man. He is sprawled on his back. An arm with a number on it dangles limply from under the blanket. His yellow moustache trembles with each snore.

  ‘Do something, Gyuri,’ my mother says.

  My father stands silent, willing the man with the tightly shut eyes to wake up.

  My mother has no qualms; she pulls the man’s leg – hard.

  His eyes fly open.

  ‘God have mercy,’ he implores. He rises from the bunk, scratching his stomach.

  ‘Good evening,’ says my father politely. ‘I hope you have slept well.’

  The man glares at him.

  ‘You’re making enough noise to split my head.’ My mother’s hands are pressed against her temples.

  ‘What’s going on?’ It is a woman’s voice from the next bunk. ‘Are you a normal person, attacking my husband in the mi
ddle of the night? A man who suffers from pains in the chest. Some people have a stone where there should be a heart.’

  In the morning we introduce ourselves. The snorer is Sándor Kunz; his wife is called Klára.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr and Mrs Fáber, and you Eva,’ says their son Tomi who is just one year older than me. He shakes hands with each of us with a serious look on his face.

  ‘What a well mannered boy,’ says my mother.

  Tomi wears a blue and red windbreaker with a hood, like the Austrian children in the village outside the camp. How I want a windbreaker too, but my mother says I am lucky to have my winter coat.

  Tomi’s father discovers a supply of extra food. It is in a bin outside the hall where the people who run the camp have their meals. When they come out, they scrape their leftovers into the bin. Sándor takes out the best bits: sausage, carrots, potatoes, a bunch of bananas. He gives the food to Tomi, who lets me taste a banana. It is mushy but so sweet.

  There is no hot water in the camp. Only cold comes from the single tap in the yard. Tomi and I walk to the public baths to have a wash. They find lice in Tomi’s hair. He cries when they try to get them out. They find some in my hair too but I do not cry.

  One day a girl snatches away my only book from home – Marika, Plucky Heroine of the Young Communist League, written in my own language. She scribbles over Marika’s red shirt on the cover. Tomi chases the girl and makes her give it back. Tomi shows me his English book about a bear called Rupert. We pore over the strange words and prepare ourselves for our new schools in America.

  I am waiting for a letter to come from Zsuzsi. In my head, I see her at the desk in the second row from the front, chewing the end of her pencil and writing:

  Dear Eva

  I was very happy to receive a letter from you. I would so like to be playing with you again. We have just come home from the cinema where we saw a very good film about a hero of the workers called Yóska. School has started again and we have lots of homework. I’m learning German. I expect every day to see you in class even though I know that you cannot be there. I hope you are well. I would like to see you again. Please write.