I WAS HAVING A HOLIDAY
Instead of enjoying my summer in Budapest, as I imagined and hoped I would, I had to commence studying for exams in respect of the year I lost at school. My studies in Switzerland were not acceptable and I was to sit an exam for all my subjects in September just a few days before the regular school year was to commence.
While in England, Father arranged for an English exchange student to come to Hungary. He was supposed to stay with some of our relations who had two sons keen to learn English. However, due to my unexpected return to Hungary plans were changed as Father decided that my needs to learn English were greater. So John Bell, a 19 year old student from Oxford, who was reading history and was planning to become a diplomat as his father and grandfather before him, came to us for his 1939 summer holidays.
We were all supposed to learn English from him, but his Hungarian improved much more rapidly. I did pick up a few words which I subsequently forgot and the main thing I learned from John Bell was his method of making his bacon and eggs and spooning the hot lard from the bacon over the eggs. His method of using the back of the fork to put the semi-liquid egg into his mouth was fascinating and impractical. It was also considered by us quite hazardous.
He spent a lot of time with some of our relations who were the same age as he was and whose interest he shared. They took him out often and obviously he enjoyed their company much more than the turmoil of our family. His presence at the dining table did not stop the arguments which were conducted in a language strange to him and at a sound level, that must have been even stranger. It must have been quite embarrassing for him to sit in at the shouting matches conducted between my parents. I am sure that he never heard anything like it in his sheltered life.
He came from a "good family" yet his one and only pair of pyjamas were full of holes. My mother was quite shocked. How can a young English Gentleman, (those days all Englishmen were "Gentleman") possess just one wreck of a pair of pajamas. She bought him two pairs and while she was at it she bought some socks and arranged the darning of his pants and the jacket, which already had leather batches at the elbows. Father was furious and accused Mother of having fallen in love with John Bell, some 26 years younger than her.
When in the first week of September the British Embassy suggested to John Bell that owing to the political situation he should return to England, he must have been quite relieved to leave Central Europe and the crazy family he had the misfortune to encounter. He has probably tried to explain to his family where he spent the last summer of peace and his experiences, but no doubt, seeing that no-one believed him, he gave up.
During that summer, every afternoon one or another of my teachers from my school appeared at our house and attempted to teach me the subjects I was to sit in exam. They traveled up the hill in the chauffeur driven car Father sent for them and they came, taught me, enjoyed the afternoon coffee and cakes and than returned to their homes.
Needless to say that under the circumstances I was not interested in acquiring such skills as reciting German poems, in the language, which I spoke very well indeed, or to learn about Hungarian history or geography, when the teacher in charge of the subject was being fed and paid by my Father. You did not need to be Einstein (who was then still alive) to know that the teachers were being paid not just to teach me, but also to ensure that they are going to assist in passing exams. The mentality of those days and that part of the World was, that everybody was on the take from waiters and bellboys right up to the teachers and of course almost all the politicians and the civil servants.