Flora Mackintosh and The Hungarian Affair Read online

  Flora Mackintosh and the Hungarian Affair

  By

  Anna Reader

  *****

  Flora Mackintosh and the Hungarian Affair

  Copyright: Anna Barber 2016

  First published: 2016

  The right of Anna Barber (writing as Anna Reader) to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  For Wabs

  ONE

  “I say, Flors, I’d get a wiggle on if I were you – the Battle-axe is on the move.”

  A moment later a stockinged ankle slid through the open window, and a brown brogue sought the carpeted floor of the Upper Sixth common room. The lipstick stained stub of a smouldering cigarette was flung carelessly into the rhododendrons three storeys below by a slender wrist disembodied in the gloaming, and a narrow face framed by a shock of chestnut curls suddenly emerged through the curtains.

  “Lord, she’s absolutely tireless,” Flora complained as she scrambled in out of the cold November air. “I’ve lost three cigs this week because of Baxter’s prowling. Thanks, Bella.”

  “Don’t mention it,” replied the sentinel, a whip-thin girl engaged in slavering butter over a crumpet freshly plucked from the toasting fork in the fire. “Catch.” Abandoning the greasy knife for a moment, Bella Forsyth fished a small bottle of scent out of her embossed satchel and flung it across the room - displaying a deadly accuracy which would have rendered St. Penrith’s games mistress speechless, given Bella’s lacklustre performance in every P.E session she’d ever attended.

  Managing to douse herself liberally in Coque d’Or before Miss Baxter descended upon them, Flora seized Pliny the Younger and arranged herself nonchalantly in a chair by the fire, one foot dangling over the arm-rest as she flicked idly through the pages of the Epistulae. She was a tall, loose-limbed girl with endless legs, finely sculpted cheekbones and a wide mouth which was always ready to break into a slow smile. To the younger girls of St.Penrith’s there was also something distinctly mysterious in the feline curve of her hazel eyes, and many fourth formers had been moved to write odes to Flora’s enigmatic beauty over the years. Indeed, not many months previously a substitute teacher newly graduated from Oxford had taken the extraordinarily bold step of quoting some fairly earthy lines from Ovid’s Amores in Flora’s exercise book – one assumes in a bid to woo her. Needless to say he did not last the week, and Flora remained entirely unmoved by his efforts.

  “Girls,” Miss Baxter boomed in stentorian accents as she burst into the room, “Miss Waverley has just informed me that an individual has been spotted hanging off the fire escape yet again, Gauloise in hand. Would any of you care to do the decent thing and accept responsibility?”

  Miss Baxter – or Battle-axe to the ladies of St. Penrith’s - was a robust woman of grim aspect. With her thick forearms and tight blonde bun there was definitely something of the German shot-putter about her, and her foul temper had made her deeply unpopular amongst her charges during the twelve months she’d been at the school.

  “Miss Baxter,” came the prompt retort from Alice Weaver, Flora’s great friend, and a young lady who evinced a dangerous predilection for the anarchic, “how could any of us possibly source Gauloises cigarettes? I know for a fact that the post office only stocks gaspers, because my poor papa was forced to buy some when he ran out last Commem.”

  Miss Baxter peered down at Alice through her small pince-nez. “Thank you, Weaver, for that invaluable insight. Whilst I do not wish to dwell on the possibility of the Upper Sixth common room managing to procure such exotic fare, I should say that I do not for a moment doubt your ability to do so – particularly when the scent of Guerlain perfume still lingers in the air.”

  “Well played, Baxter,” Bella Forsyth muttered under her breath, before taking a bite from her oozing crumpet.

  “I shall give you all until breakfast to reveal the culprit,” Miss Baxter announced, narrowing her eyes. “And if no one comes forward, this weekend’s exeat will be cancelled as far as the Upper Sixth is concerned.”

  “But Miss Baxter!” wailed Olivia Fotherington-Smyth, leaping from her chair as though stung, “I simply must go home this weekend! I’m due in London for a dress fitting - it’s the last one before my Presentation! I absolutely cannot be presented at court in an ill-fitting gown, Miss Baxter - I’d die of shame.”

  “Then I would suggest, Olivia,” Miss Baxter replied coolly, “that you encourage the culprit to give herself up. Otherwise your dress will look as though it were off-the-peg.”

  This heartless pronouncement was greeted by gasps of horror and looks of unadulterated loathing; Alice Weaver, meanwhile, muttered darkly about the cruel oppression of the masses. Strangely, no looks of reproach were cast upon the eternally-popular Flora, who continued to flick through her book unperturbed, a beatific look of calm fixed upon her symmetrical features.

  “Mackintosh,” Miss Baxter declared, casting her beady gaze upon Flora, “come with me.”

  This instruction immediately elicited a chorus of anxious whispers from the common room, and, noble second that she was, Alice seriously contemplated claiming responsibility for the cigarettes in order to protect her friend. Flora quelled this incipient heroism with a quick grin, however, and, tossing the book aside, unravelled herself from the arm-chair before following Miss Baxter out of the room.

  “See you at supper, ladies,” she promised as she pulled the common room door closed behind her.

  Flora followed Miss Baxter down the long corridor towards the staff room. The draughty halls of St Penrith’s were unbearably cold in November, and the swarms of younger girls hurrying about them on their way to prep all sported the beleaguered aspect of the nearly-frozen. This was in part due to the miserliness of the headmistress and her refusal to heat the building until the girls had reached Bronte-esque levels of discomfort, and in part due to the pecuniary disadvantages of this once grand establishment. In its heyday, the gothic towers of St. Penrith’s School for Girls had tended to the education of some of the most privileged young ladies in the country. Since the war, however, the student body had undergone a dramatic transformation, its numbers shrinking alarmingly, and whilst the school still catered for some of society’s most well-connected offspring, their parents’ ability - or willingness - to pay their fees had reached a truly dismal nadir.

  Flora was a case in point. Her late father, Laszlo Medveczky, had been a Hungarian aristocrat of enormous charm, and her mother, Beatrice, one of the most celebrated debutantes of her generation. After Laszlo’s death at the Battle of Jutland, however, Beatrice Medveczky (née Mackintosh) had fled back to her parent’s estate in Surrey with baby Flora in tow. Flora had been packed off to boarding school as soon as she had reached the ripe old age of seven, and the whimsical Bea had contented herself with producing endless oil-paintings which now adorned the dilapidated walls of Brinkley Manor.

  Occasionally Beatrice (or Bumble to her friends) was able to sell a painting to an unsuspecting relative or one of her numerous male admirers, however given the sad state of the Mackintosh coffers, this was rarely more than enough to keep the family in gin. St.Penrith’s had therefore r
eceived little by way of remuneration for educating Flora for the past eleven years. Fortunately, Flora had turned out to possess an exceptional intelligence which had enabled the school to bestow a scholarship upon her at an early age. Whilst that may have appeased the headmistress, it had, alas, done little to satisfy the Bursar, who had a reputation for pursuing defaulting parents with unparalleled zeal.

  “Sit down,” Miss Baxter commanded as the pair reached the staff-room. “Well, I will get straight to the point, Mackintosh,” she said rather brusquely, evincing a good deal of discomfort. “I am sorry to have to inform you that your uncle is dead.”

  “My uncle, Miss Baxter?” Flora asked sceptically, swiftly casting her mind back through eighteen years’ worth of Christmases and birthdays and finding evidence of no such relation. “I don’t think that I possess such a thing.”

  “Certainly not any longer,” Miss Baxter said rather tartly, this cool response having taken her by surprise. “However, according to the missive I received from your mother earlier this afternoon, you were indeed someone’s niece until two days ago.”

  Flora was perhaps less astonished by this revelation than many of her contemporaries would have been. Beatrice Mackintosh was possessed of what one might euphemistically call an Artistic Temperament (her own father had less charitably once described her as being noodle-brained), and although endlessly kind she had an unfortunate habit of forgetting things. Flora could recall one particular occasion on which she had returned from school for the Christmas holidays, only to discover that her mother had decided to winter abroad (apparently forgetting either that she had a child, or that Flora was due to spend the festive season with her – Flora was never entirely sure which). Finding that she had until very recently had an uncle ranked low on the list of things Beatrice had neglected to tell her over the course of her young life, and Flora accepted this with her usual sanguine good-humour.

  “I wonder which side of the family he was from?” she mused aloud, much to Miss Baxter’s displeasure.

  “For heaven’s sake, Mackintosh,” she exclaimed, “I hardly think that your mother would have neglected to introduce you to her own brother.”

  “That just shows how little you know Beatrice, Miss Baxter,” Flora replied, undeterred. “Really, I wouldn’t be surprised if you were to tell me that he was my mother’s twin.”

  “You are displaying a remarkable lack of proper feeling, Flora,” Miss Baxter pronounced with awful disapproval, “it is quite Unnatural.” She scowled at the school-girl through the tinted lenses of her pince-nez. Flora, with typical insouciance, simply stared back at her Housemistress with the easy good-humour which made her so popular with her contemporaries. Indeed, Flora always radiated a sense of simply taking life in her stride, and this encounter was no different: often she laughed at the world’s absurdities and sometimes she commented wryly upon its failures, but she certainly never seemed anything other than utterly in control of her own destiny. A remarkable trait in one so young.

  “Setting aside your lack of sensibility for one moment, Mackintosh,” Miss Baxter continued, removing the spectacles and polishing them furiously with a lace handkerchief, “it is also incumbent upon me to tell you that you received a telegram not an hour ago. From Hungary.”

  If Miss Baxter had hoped that this intriguing development would draw some kind of reaction from her pupil then she would have been sadly disappointed, as Flora simply smiled gently and crossed her long legs in front of her. “Well, Miss Baxter, I suppose I ought to take a look. Do you have it on you?”

  Miss Baxter scowled. “I do not. It is marked as being highly private and confidential, apparently, thus persuading the post-boy that he must deliver it into your hands directly.” The aptly named Battle-axe swept across to an old mahogany desk in the corner of the room, on which was perched a small brass bell. She rang it and looked expectantly at the side door to her office, which adjoined the rooms of the Deputy Housemistress, Miss Pring. She waited a moment, and rang again. Still nothing happened. “Pring!” Miss Baxter bellowed eventually, marching across to the side door and flinging it open, “bring that post-boy in here!”

  A mouse-like woman in an oversized woollen cardigan scurried into the office muttering apologies, and delivered the pimply post-boy to Flora.

  “Are you Flora Mackintosh?” the young man asked with evident suspicion.

  “I am indeed,” Flora confirmed, wishing she had another Gauloise to hand.

  “Do you have any Proof?” the unfortunate fellow pressed, clutching a piece of paper earnestly to his chest.

  “Not on me, I’m afraid,” Flora replied, raising an eyebrow and effectively quelling the boy’s pretensions. “Would you like to take a finger-print?”

  “Of course she’s Flora Mackintosh,” Miss Baxter interjected impatiently. “Hand her the telegram.”

  In the face of such stiff female opposition the boy’s resolve crumbled, and he reluctantly handed the telegram to Flora before being herded out of the room by the nervy Miss Pring.

  Flora sighed before tucking it into the pocket of her navy blazer. “Thank you,” she said with a sweet smile, pushing up from her chair and making to leave.

  “Well, aren’t you going to read it, Mackintosh?” Miss Baxter asked, blurting the question out before she could stop herself. “I have to tell you,” she added with a dry laugh, “that if I had just received a telegram from Hungary then I should be most keen to discover its contents.”

  “And so I am, Miss Baxter,” Flora replied serenely, “however I think that I shall have my supper first. It is so difficult to appreciate the epistolary arts when one is hungry, don’t you agree?” And with that, Flora slipped out of the door and made her way down the long corridor back to her dormitory, leaving Miss Baxter staring after her open-mouthed.

  The walls of the school were variously adorned with photographs of hearty looking girls wielding lacrosse-sticks, and notice-boards advertising such delights as Miss Pevensey’s Hiking Club for Young Ladies, or Miss Waverley’s ill-fated production of Hamlet (which had been intended for the end of the previous term, only to be postponed when Ophelia ran away with one of the wags from St. Penrith’s for boys). Flora was just passing a poster reminding the girls not to talk to strangers (with particular emphasis lent to moustachioed men, according to the illustration), when the aforementioned Miss Pevensey bore down upon her, a pair of thick woollen socks encasing two highly-developed calves, and her suilline eyes sparkling with righteous indignation.

  “Mackintosh!” she barked, demonstrating the power in those lungs which had propelled her to the top of Mt. Kinabalu the previous summer, “why, pray, are you roaming the corridors at ten minutes past six? It is high time that you were in the dining hall enjoying cook’s boiled cabbage.”

  Miss Pevensey was on the cusp of commending to Flora the manifold benefits of this fibrous vegetable when she spied a solitary tear trickling down Flora’s left cheek. “I say, Mackintosh,” she blustered, “there is no need to cry. I know cabbage ‘aint to everyone’s taste, but dash it all…”

  “It isn’t the cabbage, Miss Pevensey,” Flora replied with noble fortitude. “It is my poor dear uncle. He’s dead, you see.”

  Miss Pevensey blanched at that, and sorely wished she was back at the top of a mountain. “Mackintosh,” she managed to say at last, “good lord, I’m extremely sorry. If you ever.... if you should....Yes. Well, as you were.” Giving Flora a bracing pat on the back, Miss Pevensey twisted her weather-beaten features into what she hoped was an expression of sympathy and swiftly hot-footed it back towards the staff-room. Flora, meanwhile, dashed the tear from her cheek and made her way onwards towards her dorm.

  In Flora’s defence, reader, it would be fair to say that Flora didn’t enjoy manipulating her fellow man by squeezing out timely tears, or deploying the occasional devastating smile. She had been blessed with a charisma which frequently enabled her to have her own way, but she made use of these tools sparingly, and only with the in
tention of pursuing the path of least resistance. She was not what one would call a cynical or Machiavellian creature, and though she may not have felt remorse at having rattled Miss Pevensey, precisely, she certainly had not derived any pleasure from it.

  Flora opened the door to the dormitory she shared with Alice, Bella, Pongo and Lettuce, and wandered across to the remaining chair situated by the window.

  “Flors!” Alice cried in delight, “we thought she’d got you this time. Cocktail?”

  Alice had, for the past two years, been romantically involved with a young man called Teddy Fortesque - former captain of rugby for St. Penrith’s for Boys and general Good Egg. Teddy had recently gone up to Oxford, yet, ever-mindful of his beloved, had made sure that he’d left Alice with a well-stocked bar before his departure. Alice had so far contrived to hide the contraband in the frame of her bed; the girls were all prepared to forgive the gentle clattering of glass whenever she rolled over in her sleep if it meant they would receive a pre-prandial drink.

  “Martini, please,” Flora said, tucking her feet up on the chair and settling herself cross-legged before her friends. “It wasn’t anything to do with the ciggie in the end – although I’ll own up in the morning, of course. Actually, it seems that an uncle of mine has just died. My ma asked the Battle-axe to let me know.”

  “Lord, that’s frightful news, Flor,” Bella said, her large brown eyes full of concern. “How did it happen?”

  “No idea,” Flora replied as she accepted a beaker from Alice and popped the olive between her lips. “I never met the poor fellow, so I can’t say that it has been too much of a blow. Still, it is rather an odd feeling, I must say. One doesn’t like to discover one’s relations post-death – rather takes the fun out of having a family.”

  “Bad luck, Flors,” Alice chipped in from under the bed, as she stashed the vermouth. “Will you be able to bust out of here for the funeral?”