Never Say Never

Never Say Never

This is a story. It is a romance. It is a slow burner. The sex is at the end, Stick with it.

The backdrop to this story is the beautiful city of Budapest, a city I know well.

As always any mistakes in editing are mine and mine alone.

Thank you for reading.

David's Story

I first met Helen when I was just turned eighteen and in my first term at college. Perhaps I shouldn't use the word met since we didn't talk to one another and she didn't notice me, so encountered would be the better word. I was eating alone in the cafeteria at lunchtime when I first saw her. When I noticed her, she was sitting with a friend at a table about 30 yards away on the other side of the large room.

She was facing me, eating her lunch, and as I watched she would periodically look up, smile, and say something to her companion. I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. She had long wavy red hair, freckles, and big brown eyes, and her face lit up when she smiled. I couldn't keep my eyes off her and picked at my food and pushed it around my plate.

Eventually, she stood up and walked towards the refectory door and I was able to see her contours. She was tall, maybe five feet nine, and slim but with a well-rounded figure. She was dwarfed by the man with her, who stood a good nine inches taller and was about a yard wide. I am not small and am a good six-three tall. Back then, I was fit and worked out, but he was a giant. I found out later he was one of the first-team rugby players.

My heart sank as I saw him place his arm around her shoulder and guide her toward the cafeteria exit, and I realised they were an item.

This disappointment was, of course, quite irrational. At the time, my confidence in wooing the opposite sex was virtually non-existent. I had attended an all-boys school, had no sister, and had never had a girlfriend. At the time, I believed she was way out of my league and wouldn't look at me twice (or even once).

Nevertheless, you can dream. And dream I did. Of holding her in my arms and kissing her, although I was fairly clueless about exactly what might happen next.

All of that year I saw her around. She was often in the company of "the Hulk," and appeared to be in a stable relationship. Halfway through the second year I was gratified to see that she no longer appeared to be seeing him, now preferring to keep company with a group of her girlfriends.

I was happy that she was no longer seeing Bruce (that was his name) the rugby player for more than the obvious reason. He was a well-known person on campus and was a thief and a bully. The firsts rugby team, en masse, would often gate-crash student parties or discos and demand beer for which they rarely if ever paid. Anybody who stood up to them was threatened and intimidated and I didn't like any of them, most especially Bruce. I simply couldn't understand what she was doing with him and had convinced myself that she was far too good for him.

My dislike of Bruce and his teammates was based on personal experience. One Friday evening there was a discotheque in the hall of residence in which I lived, and Bruce and a group of rugby players removed an eleven-gallon keg of bitter and a tap and gas cylinder from the bar store. I and a few others confronted them, and a fight was looming, when help arrived in the shape of the bouncer we had hired.

He was a huge Glaswegian with the improbable name of Jock, and nobody wanted to mix it with him. The beer was returned, and I did not get a good hiding.

By the summer term of my second year, I no longer dreamed of a relationship with Helen and had moved on, having been seduced by a very confident young lady with bags of sexual experience who fancied me and had propositioned me. I accepted the offer, but the subsequent fumbling attempt to screw her was not very satisfactory and she quickly moved on.

Nonetheless, this episode gave me the confidence to understand that I did have sex appeal to at least one young lady and, rationally, there must be others about. By the time Helen became a free agent I was screwing my first real girlfriend. Her name was Julie. She was pretty enough with big tits and a big arse, and she fucked like a bunny rabbit.

And so, Helen drifted slowly into the background and eventually, I forgot her.

***

Seven years later having met and married a Hungarian lady, I was living in Budapest. I had set up my own import-export business and this was doing well. What wasn't doing so well was my marriage. I met my wife, Anna, the year after finishing University. She was dark-haired and alluring, and at first very exciting. She had come to the UK, fully funded by her father to learn English. She was also very keen to eventually return home to Hungary and, after our marriage five years previously, we had moved and rented an apartment in Budapest.

Problematically, Budapest was not where Anna had meant by home. She came from Debrecen in eastern Hungary close to the Romanian border and one hundred and twenty miles from Budapest as the crow flies. It was in Debrecen, close to her mother, father, two sisters, and numerous aunts, uncles, and their offspring, that she wanted to be. I, on the other hand, needed to be in Budapest so that I could grow my business.

Anna had been pressuring me to move to Debrecen from the second year after we arrived in Hungary. I felt I had already done enough by moving to Hungary away from my parents and two brothers who lived in and around Dundee in Scotland. Moving to Debrecen would have been a step too far. After five years in Budapest, I was well integrated into the ex-patriot community and liked to attend events such as Burns Night, the St Patricks Day March, and the St Andrews Day Ball. Although Anna had been happy to attend these events when we first arrived In Budapest, lately she had become unwilling for us to go to them, preferring the company of her Hungarian friends. To make her happy and because my long-term plan was to remain in Hungary I had taken language lessons. Many of the people I mixed with spoke good English, but unlike many of the ex-pats I had made the effort to learn Hungarian, a notoriously tortuous and difficult language to learn.

My unwillingness to move cities was not the only bone of contention between us.

Anna's father was a rich industrialist with his finger in several pies including pharmaceuticals and ball bearings. He thought of my business as very small potatoes and made that very clear at every opportunity. He also voiced his opinion that he had paid for Anna to" learn English and not marry one." Nonetheless, if we moved to Debrecen, he would give me a well-paid job within his organisation.

Whilst Anna thought this a very generous offer I knew this was a poisoned chalice. I had no intention of becoming the family lapdog dependent on the charity of others, and I told Anna this. She was not pleased.

Whilst we were in England our different political views had been unimportant. You don't talk politics when you are busy fucking. Once we got to Budapest, and the fucking became infrequent, our political differences assumed much more importance. I have always been left-wing in my beliefs whilst I found Anna's right-wing racist views increasingly abhorrent. I tried to excuse her by telling myself that these were the views that she had been brought up with, but this did not help.

Eventually, after five years in Budapest, I was married to a woman from whom I had grown apart, and whom I had grown to dislike. Divorce was looming, and I consoled myself that at least we had no children and had not made the mistake of having them to try to save a failing relationship.

***

It was a Sunday morning in early April, and I went to Bern rakpart to join the Budapest Hash House Harriers, go for a run, and then visit a bar and drink too much beer afterward. I had not been to a meeting for a few weeks. Anna did not much like my friends at the Hash or indeed any of my ex-pat friends, but that weekend had gone to Debrecen for her mother's birthday and left me alone in Budapest.

I arrived at the meeting point at half past eleven, and a small group of maybe thirty people had already congregated. I knew most of them. The group was multinational. There were folk from the British Embassy, Brits employed around the city, a couple of American guys, a Canadian lady, and assorted Europeans. We waited for another ten minutes for stragglers to turn up and were just about to start to run when a pair of young women appeared. They were both slim and wore jog suits.

"Virgins," said David the club secretary. Rang up yesterday to see if they could join. I told them to just pitch up.

"Hope they can hold their drink," I said.

"Intros at the bar," he replied.

He turned to the newcomers.

"Can you run? Do you know Budapest?"

The taller of the two replied.

"We can run ok but we're new to the city. Only been here a few days on holiday. I like to run in every city I visit. I did the Istanbul Hash last summer."

David turned to me.

"Can you run with these ladies? We don't want them to get lost. He smiled. "You should be able to keep up with them."

"OK," I replied. "If that's OK with the ladies."

Then for the first time, I took a proper look at them, and then looked again. There, not six feet away and smiling, stood the object of my desire during my university years. It was Helen, older, more mature, and even more beautiful than I remembered.

As I stood looking at her in shock, she said something that confused me further.

"Hello, Gordon."

For a moment I just stared back at her but then I found my tongue.

"Hello, Helen."

And I saw her eyes open in surprise.

For just a couple more second we stood facing each other when a voice broke the silence.

"And I'm Sue." And then laughingly, "if anybody gives a shit, that is."

***

We set off jogging down the street. That Sunday morning in the spring the city was not crowded. The Spring Festival had finished a week before, and the summer crowds had not yet arrived. It was a perfect day for running. The clouds cleared just after we set off and the day was cool and clear.

As the faster and more thirsty of our group shot off down the road in front of us, Helen and Sue kept up a good steady pace. I ran about five yards behind them only talking to them to give them instructions when the route was not clear.

I was alone with my thoughts. It was not just the surprise that Helen was here in Budapest, but that she knew my name. That was what was confusing me. And I was reminded of the adolescent puppy love that I once had for her, but quickly put these thoughts away. I was a very different person from the young man I was when I met her a decade previously. I had grown up. How wrong I was.

The run was about 3 miles long, along the banks of the Danube underneath Buda Castle, and over the Elizabeth Bridge into Pest, and an hour later everybody was sitting in the bar. I ordered a bottle of Arany Ászok for myself, and one for each of the girls.

"So how do you guys know each other?" asked Sue.

I looked at Helen.

"Good question," I said. "Why don't you explain?"

"Gordon is the idiot who, virtually single-handedly picked a fight with half a dozen rugby players when he was at university. It was the most stupid thing to do; all over some beer they had stolen. It wasn't even his. I saw it happen. He was saved by the bouncer at the disco where it happened. It was very brave and very stupid. My boyfriend at the time was one of the rugby players involved and it was the beginning of the end of our relationship. I got tired of the way he and his friends threw their weight about. It opened my eyes to what a bastard he really was.

Now then Gordon, why don't you explain how you know my name?"

I had been rehearsing the answer in my mind.

"Everybody knew your name. I'd seen you around," I said noncommittedly.

Before Helen could reply our conversation was interrupted by Tom, one of the Americans, who asked us if we'd like another beer, and I accompanied him to the bar to help him carry back the fourteen beers that he was about to buy. I realized that with a round like that, it was going to be a long afternoon, and was thankful that Anna would not be around when I got home. Lately, whenever I drank more than four bottles of beer she'd meet me at the door and disparagingly tell me,

"Részeg vagy" or You're drunk.

Tom returned to the end of the long trestle table where we were sitting and sat next to me opposite the young ladies. He immediately struck up a conversation with Sue who seemed very flattered by his interest. This left Helen and me to talk between ourselves and, at first, I was very self-conscious and a little tongue-tied in her presence. Even in my anxious state, I couldn't fail to notice that Helen was also uneasy.

Three beers in, we were both more relaxed and were starting to talk like old friends. I learned that she and Sue were "oldest friends from school" and had come on holiday together. They were celebrating Sue's messy divorce. Helen was not married but lived with her partner in Richmond in Southwest London. She was an English teacher. He was a forensic accountant.

In turn, I told her I was married, settled in Budapest, and with my own business. I didn't tell her my marriage was on life support.

We spent a little time talking about our time spent at university but with one notable exception our paths never crossed, and we had nothing in common to reminisce about.

I forget what we discussed after that except we covered almost everything. Books we'd read, films we'd watched, places we wanted to visit, Hungarian food, and sights to see in Budapest.

She seemed very impressed by my Hungarian language skills when she accompanied me to the bar and heard my short conversation with the barman. I begged to differ.

"My accent is shit, and I'm not that fluent. Whilst the British are normally totally unimpressed by foreigners who are fluent in English and often condescending to those with a bad accent or who speak poorly, the Hungarians are impressed when anybody speaks their infuriatingly complex language. I'm sure the barman was working hard to understand me and being polite."

"I just sound fluent to you. I'm assuming you don't speak a word."

"I can say two," she said, as she took her beer from the tray I was carrying back to the table.

"Thank you.....köszönöm."

"That's one," I replied, with a smile.

Around three o'clock, Sue announced that, if it was alright with Helen, she and Tom were going for a walk, and could they meet back in the hotel later. We hardly noticed them go, and soon we were the only participants in that day's Hash still sitting in the bar.

After my sixth beer, and Helen's third or fourth, we were both in need of some fresh air and I suggested we go for a walk. If she wanted I could walk her back to her hotel, or if it was over the river in Buda and she was tired, we could take a taxi.

"Why not," she said. "I don't know if I'll see Sue again until much later, if at all, tonight. Tom seemed very keen, and she's not had much luck with men lately. But what's your wife going to think about you walking a strange lady home?"

I allowed the beer to talk. "My wife is away with her parents in the east of the country, and I doubt she'd care. I'm sure she'd claim she did and give me an earful if she ever found out. We fell out of love a long time back. The best thing we can do is divorce."

And you're not strange. You're an old friend from university who just happens to be a woman.

I'm sorry I've already told you too much."

Helen smiled sadly. I don't think she knew what to say, so she said nothing. She had only spoken to me for the first time a few hours ago and didn't need to know of my troubles.

"Where are you staying?" I asked.

"The Corinthia. it's no distance, but I'd like a walk first."

"Have you seen the Shoes Memorial on the Danube Bank?"

"No."

"Ok, we'll walk up the Danube Promenade as far as the Parliament building and then double back to your hotel, and I'll show you the Shoes."

Twenty minutes we stood on the side of the River Danube three hundred yards from Parliament and looked at sixty pairs of rusting iron shoes set into the embankment. This is a memorial to the victims of fascist militiamen, three thousand five hundred people, eight hundred of them Jews who were shot on the banks of the Danube during the winter of 1944 -1945. Before they were shot into the freezing water, and their bodies floated away, they were made to remove their "valuable" shoes.

I had been to this place many times, but it still moved me. It is a memorial to man's inhumanity to man.

We stood on the riverbank together in silence, and then, just for a moment, Helen took my hand and squeezed it hard for a moment before letting go. I don't believe she even remembered doing it. Looking back, I believe that was the moment my infatuation turned into a fledging form of love.

A little later we arrived at the Corinthia. As we reached the Lobby, Helen's phone pinged. She took it out of her pocket and read the text message before reading it out loud to me. " I won't be back tonight. See you tomorrow. Sue."

"Looks like we're both free this evening," she said. "Can I buy you dinner?"

"No, I'm buying. I'll go home and change and meet her at half past seven if that's OK."

***

I was back at the hotel at a quarter past seven, and five minutes later the lift door opened, and Helen appeared. Heads turned as she crossed the lobby. She was wearing a long white woollen coat which contrasted with her flame-red hair.

I asked the taxi I had come in to wait, and thirty minutes later we arrived at a restaurant in the Jewish district. In Budapest, many restaurants were closed on Sundays, but this was a regular haunt of mine and I had rung and made reservations. We ate Bundás csiperkegomba, breaded mushrooms followed by Hungarian goulash, and finally Hungarian apple cake. We drank water, having had enough alcohol for the day.

We talked and talked. I cannot remember spending an evening like it. All too soon it was over, and I accompanied her back to her hotel. I had asked her how long she was staying when we were in the restaurant.

"We have three more full days," she had replied.

As she was collecting her keys at the hotel reception I spoke.

"Can I see you tomorrow? I can take you sightseeing. I can easily take the time off. I'm the boss."

"That would be nice, But what about Susie? I can't leave her alone."

"Bring her along," I said. "Can I have your telephone number in case there's any last-minute change in plans?"

***

The following morning I arrived back at the Corinthia. It was nine o'clock and Helen was already in the hotel lobby. She was alone, and there was no sign of Susie. I looked enquiringly at Helen.

"She's not coming. She didn't come back last night and then rang me this morning to tell me she was spending the day with Tom and did I want to come. I told her I had my own tour guide and, to be honest, she seemed pleased."

Not as pleased as I am, I thought quietly to myself, and I suppressed a smile.

"What have you seen in Budapest?"

"On Friday, the day we arrived we visited the Children's Railway, and then on Saturday, Buda Castle, and the funicular. When we were in the castle we visited, the Budapest History Museum, the Hungarian National Gallery, and the National Széchényi Library. We saw the Hospital in the Rock Nuclear Bunker too. It was a busy day. To be honest I'm cultured out. No more museums for me today."

"Just as well. it's Monday and they are all closed," I replied. "But there are a lot of other things to see. Do you have any shopping to do?"