‘This is the best possible thing for Sophie,’ he said. ‘She’s not a bad sort of girl. Living here alone, an orphan, half-Jewish, belonging to neither community, she has never had a chance. It will make all the difference to her to get away. You’ll see. She’ll make a splendid wife.’
Harriet had her doubts and so, it would seem, had Clarence. He did not respond to Guy’s enthusiasm and, after Guy had further extolled Sophie’s virtues, Clarence gloomily mumbled: ‘I’ve always wanted to help someone. Perhaps I can help her.’
‘You could do the world for her,’ Guy confidently assured him.
Clarence turned his head towards Harriet, his expression yearning and miserable as though even now she might relent and save him. But, of course, she would not. No, not she. He turned away brusquely, finished off his drink, sat upright and said: ‘One thing I must do before I go: I must return these shirts to the Polish store.’
‘You mean the shirts you gave to Guy?’
‘You know I didn’t give them. They weren’t mine to give. I lent them. Now they must go back.’
‘But the store is closed. You sold all that stuff to the Rumanian army.’
‘The sale’s still being negotiated. It takes time for these deals to go through. I’m leaving the matter in the hands of an agent. I’ve given an inventory and everything must be accounted for. There were some vests, too, and a Balaclava helmet.’
‘That ridiculous helmet!’ Harriet’s indignation collapsed into mirth.
As though the demand were the most reasonable in the world, Guy said: ‘Of course we must return the things.’ He looked to Harriet as the only one likely to know where they were.
Without further ado, she went into the bedroom and began searching the drawers. The vests were at the laundry. Guy had long ago lost the Balaclava helmet. She returned to the room carrying three shirts.
‘All that’s left,’ she said.
Looking grimly justified, Clarence rose to take them, but Harriet did not give them to him. Instead, she strode out to the balcony and threw them over the balustrade. ‘If you want them,’ she said, ‘go down and get them.’
He hurried to the balcony and stared down to where the shirts were settling on the wet, grey cobbles below.
‘Well, really!’ Scandalised, he watched while several beggars converged upon the booty. The shirts were snapped up in a moment.
Clarence looked to Guy for support.
‘Darling, you shouldn’t have done that!’ Guy said with no real belief in his power to remonstrate with Harriet.
Taking no notice of either of them, she waved encouragement to the beggars as they stared up.
Looking deeply hurt, Clarence returned to the room and threw himself back into his chair. He dug his hands into his pockets. ‘How could you?’ He gloomed for some moments, then said: ‘Just when I’d brought you what you asked me for.’ He drew a small book from his pocket.
Alight with amusement at her own action, Harriet snatched the book from his hand and leafed it over. She came on the photograph of Sasha.
‘A passport?’
‘Yes, for your young friend Drucker.’
‘Clarence!’ Harriet threw out her arms to him and he smiled as one who deserved no less.
Standing up rather sheepishly, he explained: ‘It’s an Hungarian passport – in the name of Gabor. Most foreigners are known to the prefectura, but there are so many Hungarians here, they can’t keep track of them. We’ve put in visas for Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece. All he’ll need when the time comes is an exit visa.’
Realising the passport was both a parting gift and a token of truce, Harriet ran to Clarence and embraced him with a warmth to which he immediately responded. He held her over-long, saying: ‘You will not forget me?’
‘Never, never,’ she cried, refusing to be serious.
Guy said: ‘We’ll miss you.’
‘Soon there will be no one left,’ said Harriet.
Clarence picked up his scarf, preparing to depart.
‘But this isn’t the end,’ Guy said, unwilling to see him go. ‘We’ll be at the station to see you off.’
‘No. I hate farewells from trains. I’d rather say goodbye now.’ Clarence spoke with decision and Harriet felt he did not wish them to see him possessed by Sophie. Nor, she thought, did she wish to see it.
‘What’s happening to your flat?’ she asked.
‘A new tenant comes in next week: a German consular official. I’m glad to say he’s keeping on Ergie, my cook, and her family. I don’t know where they’d go if they were thrown out, poor things!’
They went to the landing with him.
‘We’ll meet again,’ said Guy.
‘If you have to leave here, why not come to Kashmir? We’d find a job for you.’ Clarence wrung Guy’s hand, then caught at Harriet and pecked her nervously. She realised he was not very sober and his eyes were moist. Not waiting for the arrival of the lift, he swung away from them and ran at a furious speed down the stairs.
24
The weather was slow in regaining itself. The sky remained broken, twilight fell early and the air was brisk.
The new term would start early in October. Guy had heard nothing of the reopening of his department, but he was preparing for it and a day or two after Clarence left he decided to pay a visit to the University.
The visit was to be a sort of reconnoitre. He might bump into the dean or one of the professors, or he might find his students hanging about the common-room as they used to do. Anyway, there would surely be someone there who would have something to tell him.
Harriet was doubtful about this essay into forbidden territory, but Guy refused to be dissuaded. He saw the University staff as friends. He had always been popular and privileged there and was sure he would be welcome. The visit would conclude all uncertainties. When she realised he was determined to go, she said she would walk with him as far as the building and then wait for him in the Cişmigiu. When he left her at the park gate she took the main path, intending to wait at the café.
There were very few people about. A haze, silvering the sky, gave a ghostly softness to the light. The distant elevations were washes of pearly transparency.
The flower-beds now had almost nothing to show except the lank stalks of withered plants. Dahlias and chrysanthemums fell, bedraggled, across the paths. On the long and almost leafless stems of the rose-bushes there were a few roses, small and colourless, too hard pressed to look like any particular sort of rose.
The dovecots seemed to be empty. From somewhere in the distance came, dismally, the squawks of the white peacocks.
Leaves were falling, littering the grass and sticking in wads to the damp asphalt of the paths, but beside the lake the trees were still thickly feathered, hanging over the water, drop-winged, like gorged and sleepy birds of prey.
Harriet found the café closed. She walked round to the bridge from which she could look on to the pier and see the chairs and tables stacked under tarpaulins and roped down against the coming of the winter wind. She was suddenly saddened by the sense of change in which she felt they had no part. When the café reopened, where would they be?
The lake water was pewter-dark, shirred here and there by currents of silver, and broken by the trails of the mallard ducks. Behind her the waterfall gushed bleak as a burst pipe.
Hearing a step, she turned and came face to face with Bella’s husband, Nikko. He looked nonplussed by this meeting, but when she said: ‘Why, Nikko! How nice to see you! When did you get back?’ he cried: ‘Harry-ott!’ stumbling forward in delight that his English friends were still, in spite of all, his friends. His black eyes shone and his teeth flashed from beneath his black moustache.
‘We thought on our return you would have left,’ he said, ‘but now I find you here and am so glad.’
‘Yes, and Guy even believes the English Department will reopen. What do you think?’
‘Who can say?’
Seeing he evaded the question, Harriet ch
anged the subject, asking: ‘How is Bella?’
‘Very well. Our holiday has restored her. But the summer was trying for her. Usually we are all the time in the mountains. My poor Bella! She suffers that I am away so much. I get little leave, then I am recalled and she weeps. Each month it becomes more difficult. Our great ally’ – he made a grimace – ‘demands that officers are always on the alert. For what, I ask you? But you – which way do you walk?’
Finding he was crossing the park to the rear gate, she said she would pass the time by walking with him.
They crossed the bridge together. As they went, a blur of white came into the sky where the sun hung behind the haze. The lake turned to silver. The still and humid air cut off the sound of traffic so they seemed to be moving into areas of cushioned silence.
Beyond the bridge there was a walk of lime trees, brilliantly yellow in the grey air, beneath which two German officers sauntered, in trench-coats with skirts swinging, the heels of their jackboots clicking on the paths. They gave an impression of acute boredom.
Nikko, not in uniform, eyed them, cautiously silent until he and Harriet were well past, then he said in an undertone: ‘They have not yet won the war. I can tell you, Harry-ott, we are sick of the demands of the Germans. They will devour us. People are remembering the English, so honest, so dignified, so generous, and they say: “Perhaps even now the Allies will win.” And, I say: “Why not?” September is at an end, yet there has been no invasion. What has happened, we ask, to this talked-of invasion? The Germans put it off. They make excuses. Do not quote me, but we know already it is too late. They cannot invade.’
Harriet turned on him in hopeful surprise. ‘Why not?’
‘Why not?’ Nikko gave her a look of astonishment. ‘Surely you must know why not? Already the fogs cloak your shores. The Germans cannot find their way.’
‘Oh!’ Harriet gave a laugh of disappointment. ‘I’m afraid we can’t rely on the fogs.’
Nikko knew better. ‘Then why do they not invade?’ he asked. After a moment, he added: ‘They are a strange people. I remember last time when they came here, I was a little boy. We had a German officer billeted in our home. He was not so bad, you know. It was a time of great fear, and we did for him what we could. When they retreated, taking everything they could carry, this man, leaving us, gave to my mother a great parcel – this size; very big. He said: “This is a gift. I give you because you have been so kind.” After he was gone, she opened it and inside there was a bed-quilt. We all looked at it, thinking how nice, but my mother said: “I have seen before such a bed-quilt. I have already one like this,” and she went up to the cupboard to look. What do you think? He had given to my mother her own bed-quilt! Have you ever known such a strange people?’
As Harriet laughed, Nikko said: ‘I have loved England; I was long ambitious to work in England. I would be interested, I need say, only in a top-hole job, for I have top-hole qualifications. I read Punch and The Times – not now, of course, for they do not arrive, but my subscription is paid. And, as you observe, my English is unerring. But the war nipped me in the bud.’
Harriet laughed again. ‘It nipped us all in the bud,’ she said.
Nikko, having recalled his enthusiasm for England, now said with conviction: ‘I think the English Department will open again. Why not? It will open because they love Guy. He is a great man.’
‘Do you think so? Well, perhaps he is, in some ways …’
‘A great man!’ Nikko insisted, permitting no reservations. ‘And why? Because he is himself. Many Englishmen came here to be important people – the sahibs, as they called it. They would show these foreigners how to run the world. But not Guy. He came as one of us – a chum, you might say, a human being. Only the other day as we came into Bucharest, I said to Bella: “How I wish I had known better Guy Pringle. Now he will be gone, and I shall never know him.”’
Harriet smiled at the pattern of approval, never disclosed before, and said nothing.
Sensing her doubt in his sincerity, Nikko said: ‘Before you came, you understand, I had not much opportunity. Guy and Bella did not see eye to eye. She invited him to a cocktail, he did not turn up. She said: “That young man is not an advertisement for England. They should not have let him come here. He is badly dressed, he cultivates Jews, he is not careful what he says. The important English do not approve him.” All this perhaps was true, yet I approved him. I said: “Invite him again. He is always so busy …”’
‘Much too busy,’ commented Harriet.
‘But she would not invite him again, not until you came. You she approved.’
‘Oh,’ said Harriet, uncertain how to take this.
‘But I admired Guy,’ Nikko went on, not feeling the subject was yet exhausted. ‘I admired him because he spoke to one and all and dressed so badly. He wore that old overcoat. Do you remember that old overcoat? What Englishman here would be seen dead in such a coat? No, no, they must impress us. But it is not necessary, you know. We are impressed already by the English qualities. We know here that to be English is to be honest. You do things to your own disadvantage because you know them to be right. That is remarkable, I can tell you. So we love you.’
‘I’m not so sure of that,’ said Harriet, feeling the need to introduce some sobriety into this conversation. ‘I often feel the Rumanians are suspicious of us, and resentful.’
‘A little, perhaps.’ Conceding the point, Nikko hurried past it: ‘We envy you. You are a great, rich nation. We think you despise us, but we love you nevertheless. See!’ He paused at a railed area of uncut grasses among which some flowers ran riot. ‘This is the English garden.’
Harriet looked in astonishment. She had sometimes wondered about this patch that she would not have described as a garden of any kind.
‘Yes,’ Nikko assured her. ‘It is a genuine English wilderness. So you see,’ he nodded as though proving his point, ‘we have an English Bar and an English garden.’
‘Yes,’ said Harriet. They had now reached the gate and she paused before saying she must turn back.
Nikko took her hand. ‘Goodbye, Harry-ott. Let us, this winter, meet more often. Persuade Guy to come and have dinner with us.’
She promised she would. Nikko looked pleased, as though a whole future of friendship lay ahead, but Harriet felt in their parting a note of farewell.
When she returned to the lakeside she saw Guy walking rapidly, down between the chrysanthemum beds, his expression troubled, his appearance more dishevelled than usual. When she called to him, he glanced towards her but did not smile.
‘What is the matter?’ she asked.
‘I must see Inchcape. Will you come with me?’
As they walked together back to the main road, he described to her how, entering the University building, he had found all the doors of his department locked. Even his own study door had been locked against him. He had noticed the porter, with whom he had been a favourite, sliding out of sight as he entered. Guy, determined to speak to him, had tracked him down to the boiler-room in the basement. The old man, stammering in his embarrassment, asked: What could a poor peasant do?
‘These are wicked days, domnule! Bad men possess our country and our friends are severed from us.’
‘He said that?’ Harriet asked in admiration.
‘Something like that,’ said Guy. ‘He said he had no keys for my rooms. They had all been taken away by the Foreign Minister.’
‘Have you much stuff in your office?’
‘Some of my books. A lot of Inchcape’s. My overcoat.’
‘Oh, well!’ said Harriet, feeling things might have been worse.
Guy sighed, apparently stunned by a rebuff that did not surprise her in any way.
‘Do you think Inchcape can do anything?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know.’
She could scarcely keep up with him as he made his way to the Propaganda Bureau. She had no wish for the department to reopen, but, remembering how, on the day of the abd
ication, she had found Guy waiting for the students who did not come, she felt an acute pity for him. Whatever he chose to do – and it was, after all, done from a sense of responsibility and a need to be occupied – he must be her first concern.
When they reached the main road, they became aware that something had occurred. A crowd stood opposite the English Propaganda Bureau, gazing across at it. The pavement outside it was empty of people: those who approached it, swerved away from it as though it held contagion. The trespass of the bystanders on to the road had caused a traffic hold-up. The result was an hysterical din of motor-horns.
Guy and Harriet were conscious of being watched as they crossed the road to the Bureau. The pavement when they reached it was a litter of splintered wood, glass and scraps of torn cardboard. The Bureau window had been shattered; its faded display wrecked. The model of the Dunkirk beach-head seemed to have been attacked, savagely, with hammer blows. The ‘Britain Beautiful’ posters had been ripped down and screwed into balls. Everywhere lay remnants of the photographs of ships and soldiers.
Despite the disorder there was no sign of police or any official keeper of law and order.
Guy said: ‘Wait here. I’ll look inside,’ but Harriet kept at his heels. The door stood ajar. Inchcape was alone in the downstairs office. He was sitting in the typist’s chair, pressing a folded handkerchief to the corner of his mouth. He greeted the Pringles with a wry smile.
‘It’s all right,’ he said; ‘they barely touched me.’
As he spoke, blood welled out of the corner of his mouth and trickled down his chin. Blood and serum from a wound under his hair was trickling down into his left ear. His natural pallor had taken on a greenish tinge.
‘For heaven’s sake,’ said Guy. ‘We must get a doctor …’ He went to the telephone, but Inchcape detained him with a gesture.
‘Believe me, it’s nothing.’
There was a sound of car-doors banging outside, then Galpin entered with Screwby and three other journalists from the English Bar. Galpin crossed to Inchcape, observed him keenly, flicked open a notebook, then asked: ‘What happened? What did they do to you?’
The Balkan Trilogy Page 62
