Balint now saw Adrienne’s daughter for the first time. She was a strange-looking child who in no way resembled her mother. The girl’s face showed neither joy nor sadness; her expression was closed as if she must hide her thoughts, her complexion was pale and her big brown eyes seemed to look around without seeing what was in front of them.
‘Very well,’ said Countess Clémence, also in English, ‘you can go out now!’ She looked at the clock. ‘Walk for an hour and a half at the edge of the woods. I’ll join you later.’
The nanny and the little girl turned away and left the room without another word. The girl did not hop about, or jump or skip, as other children of her age would have done, but walked out sedately, politely. In a moment they were gone.
‘You were telling me about the latest talks with Burian?’
So the widowed countess and Abady went on making desultory conversation, both choosing their words carefully, though neither was in the least interested in what the other was saying.
When another half hour had passed, Countess Clémence rose from her seat ‘Shall we go into the garden?’ she asked.
They left the room, crossed the oval entrance hall and went out on to the forecourt through the castle’s main entrance. Once outside they turned left and walked round to the side of the house which faced over the valley. The house had seemed, from the entrance court to be only one storey high, but Balint soon saw that as it was built on a steep slope the façade looking over the valley had two floors and it was only from that side that one could see the house properly.
It was a pretty building in the baroque style with, in the centre, an enormous covered balcony that stretched the full length of the salon within. The balcony had tall columns which supported the half-cupola domed roof above and was itself supported on vaulted pillars beneath which a doorway led to the rooms below.
Gazing past the balcony he saw that another wing had been built jutting out at right angles from the main building and extending even further out from the hillside. This wing was entirely unexpected. Its lower walls were of rough undressed stone, the upper part of red brick, and the whole edifice had the air of a defensive redoubt. The roof was made of flat shingles, jutting well beyond the line of the walls with, as is to be found in Swiss chalets, an elaborate cornice of carved wood. At the far end a tower built of wood obviously housed a staircase, for none of its windows were on the same level. On the lower floor of this wing all the windows were heavily barred. The wing itself jutted out so far over the slope on which the house was built that at its farthest end it was three storeys high and seemed completely out of proportion to the beautiful old house to which it was attached.
‘My poor husband built that wing,’ explained Countess Clémence. ‘He fell in love with the alpine style when we visited the Tyrol together. I often think it should be pulled down, but my son seems to have got used to it.’
They descended a steep, well-kept path to a lawn so well seeded and maintained that no sign of a weed was to be seen. Here and there were planted groups of thuja, dwarf juniper or pyramid-shaped biota, and the paths were edged by well-trimmed box. Everything was neat and tidy, but it was strange to see a garden with no flowers and no flowering shrubs either. Below the lawns the park stretched down to the north and was closed by great groups of fine old oak trees. Above the leafy crowns of the park oaks the valley could be seen continuing, interrupted only by little forest-covered hills, to the foot of the steep cliffs on which stood the giant ruins of the old fortress of Almas, for the sight of whose lonely towers Balint always searched when his train emerged from the Sztana tunnel. From the distant railway line one could see what looked like two index fingers rising from the forest. Once he had thought it must be the Uzdy house itself, but standing now at Almasko, Balint realized that those two shining vertical lines were in reality formed by the two sides of the ruined keep between which the connecting walls had crumbled.
Balint and the old lady walked on through a grove of beech trees to an orchard that was planted with the new dwarf apple trees. The fruit trees were set in rows with military precision, each in its circles of well-hoed earth and each having a band of sticky grease round its trunk as a protection against destructive insects.
At the foot of the twentieth tree in the first row a woman was kneeling. She had her back to them and was wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat on her head. Her dress was protected by a yellow canvas apron. She seemed to be busy doing something at the roots of the tree. At her side a flat basket lay on the grass. Countess Clémence led Balint towards her.
When only a few steps away the old lady called out: ‘Adrienne! A guest has arrived!’
Adrienne turned, still on her knees, to see who had called to her. Balint was struck with wonder, for here before him was another Addy, different from the others he already knew. The yellow apron reached up to her neck and fell in narrow pleats to the waist. Below the tight belt it emphasized the lines and movements of her thighs as far as her bent knees. The late afternoon sun shone slanting down on to her face under the brim of the same sort of straw hat as was worn by the peasant-women of the Kalotaszeg, a flat hat like a saucer without a crown and which was kept on by a ribbon tied under the chin. With this thin body-clinging canvas covering and the floating disc of a hat, under which dark curls framed her face, she looked to Balint like a Tanagra figurine come to life.
Adrienne looked up. She was a striking figure, her pale oval face framed by a starling red ribbon like a shining, laughing mask of ivory, her amber eyes smiling and her lips as red as the ribbon tied under her chin.
‘Ah, AB, it’s you! I thought …’ but she stopped and did not finish the sentence, her face clouding over as if she had suddenly remembered where she was. She stood up, threw her secateurs into the basket and brushed the earth from the apron which covered her knees. ‘Look how dirty I am! I can’t possibly shake hands!’
As they moved back towards the house the first to speak was Countess Clémence: ‘My daughter-in-law is a great gardener, really a great gardener. She takes care of all the fruit trees and makes herself very useful.’ This might have sounded like praise if the tone had not been so condescending.
‘I only started last year,’ said Adrienne somewhat deprecatingly. ‘I’ve still got a lot to learn, but it amuses me, and gives me something to do.’
They walked slowly, the old lady in the middle, Balint on her right and Adrienne on her left. When they reached the grove of beeches Countess Clémence turned to Balint and said: ‘I must hand you over to my daughter-in-law now. So, until dinner, I’ll say au revoir.’
‘Where is Pali?’ asked Adrienne.
‘In his room, I expect. He does his accounts at this time and he hasn’t come down yet,’ said Countess Clémence before turning away and marching along the path through the trees with her distinctive stamping tread.
The two younger people stood watching in silence as the dark upright figure went on its way and was finally lost to sight among the soft shiny new leaves of the beech trees.
When she could no longer be seen Balint and Adrienne also left the orchard and followed the path through the wood.
For a few moments they walked together, side by side without speaking.
Under the century-old trees last year’s fallen leaves made a soft carpet underfoot. When they reached a twist in the path Adrienne stopped, looked swiftly around her, and then offered her mouth to be kissed. Their embrace lasted only a brief second but never before had Addy kissed him with such fervour and such abandon. Not, however, that this wild kiss was a kiss of love or surrender; rather it was an act of revenge or defiance, as if it gave her some savage satisfaction quite unconnected with him. After a second or two she pushed him away and walked on, her head held high, and her close-knit brows giving a serious and somewhat sad expression to her face. As they stepped out of the shadow of the trees into the sunlight of the meadow she turned once more towards him. ‘It’s so good that you came, AB. You don’t know how good it is!’