As Western Tartary could not be made into a film or a play, or adapted, with incidental seagulls, for broadcasting, it continued to be read as a book. Another author benefited by all this; the Travels of Sir John Mandeville was presently reissued in a cheap edition. Aubrey was fond of Mandeville, and would, presumably, have taken this as a good enough memorial. However, he is also commemorated in his native town. In the Tittingham Folk Museum there hangs a neat Victorian water-colour enhanced by a great deal of mount and a gold frame. Below it is a pasteboard notice.

OPIE COTTAGE, c. 1840

Artist Unknown

Opie Cottage, pulled down in 1930 to make room for the present structure, was the birthplace of Aubrey Cutbush, Traveller, and Author of ‘Western Tartary’.

Presented, 1936, by Dulcibella Tregurtha, B.Litt.

181

Emil

It was April 1938 and Mrs Hathaway said to Mrs Kirkpatrick, ‘We are going to take an Austrian refugee.’

‘Really? An Austrian? I believe they are charming. My cousin Linda adores hers. But I can’t imagine you without your old Hannah. I didn’t know she was leaving.’

Mrs Hathaway explained that this refugee was not coming as a domestic servant. He was an Austrian who had escaped to England after the Anschluss. ‘It’s a boy,’ she said, and blushed, for it sounded so ridiculous, as though she were announcing a birth.

Emil Kirchner was rather more than a boy. He was twenty-one. He was an orphan, his elder brother was pro-Hitler. He had a high forehead and curly, mouse-coloured hair and a small mouth. He spoke English fluently. Mrs Hathaway had imagined that on their first introduction he would bow from the waist and kiss her hand, but instead of kissing it he shook it.

They met in London at the house of a friend of the Hathaways, a woman who worked in an organization called the Friends of Democracy. There had been a tacit understanding that if Mrs Hathaway did not like the looks of this refugee she could have another. But the idea of picking and choosing among the unfortunate was repulsive to her. She could not imagine herself leading Dora Welsford toward 182the window and murmuring, ‘I should like to see another of them.’ And anyhow, Emil seemed a very pleasant young man.

So Emil picked up his suitcase and they went off together and had some tea, Mrs Hathaway apologizing that it was not chocolate. And then they went to Charing Cross, and travelled to Ryebridge, and went on by bus to the village of France Green.

The village was looking its best. The converted cottages—converted to the use of the small gentry—seemed to wear looks of gentle festivity, fluttering with clean window-curtains and posied with flowers. Even the unconverted cottages, which were much more recent in date and built of red brick, had a certain comfortable glow in the sunset. As they walked along the village street, Mrs Hathaway, exchanging nods and greetings with neighbours, said to Emil, ‘That is Mrs Kirkpatrick—an old friend of ours,’ or ‘Major Cullen. He knows Austria, too,’ or ‘That’s Miss Forrester. You’ll like her so much.’