The Balkan Trilogy

by Olivia Manning

  As for Guy, he sat still for four minutes then looked at his watch and said: ‘I think we should go back. There might be something.’

  When they reached the hotel, the porter handed Guy an envelope. Inside there was a card on which the words ‘At Home’ were engraved. Mr Dubedat and Mr Lush invited Mr and Mrs Guy Pringle that evening to take a drink at an address in Kolonaki.

  The flat occupied by Dubedat and Toby hung high on the slopes above Kolonaki Square. The Pringles, admitted by a housekeeper and left on a terrace to await their hosts, looked across the housetops and saw Hymettos. The terrace, marble-tiled, with an inlaid marble table, wrought-iron chairs and trained creepers covering the overhead lattice, impressed Harriet who, looking to where the wash of pink-cream houses broke against the pine-speckled hillside, thought that Toby and Dubedat had done very well for themselves. The district had an air of wealth without ostentation: the most expensive sort of wealth.

  ‘Those two seem to be pretty well off,’ she said.

  Guy said: ‘Shut up.’

  ‘I suppose I can say that this is where I would like to live myself?’

  Toby Lush, walking silently on spongy soles, overheard her. He gulped and spluttered in gratification but, deferring to Guy’s egalitarian principles, said: ‘Nothing too good for the working classes, eh?’

  There was no democratic nonsense about Dubedat, who came out five minutes later. He had the aggressive assurance of a man who had seen bad times but had come into his own, and none too soon. He advanced on Harriet as though she were the final challenge. He swung his hand out to her, and when he spoke she noted he was trying to drop his north-country accent.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘this is very pleasant.’ He smiled and she saw that his teeth had been scaled. His fingernails had been cleaned. The scurf had been brushed from his hair. His gestures were languid and dramatic.

  Guy moved expectantly forward but Dubedat merely waved him to a chair. ‘Do sit down,’ he begged in his new social manner. His eyes and smiles were for Harriet, and Guy might have been no more than her appendage. Knowing he disliked her as much as she disliked him, Harriet supposed his belief was that if he could charm her, he could charm anyone. For Guy’s sake she responded as he wished her to respond.

  The housekeeper wheeled in a trolley laden with bottles and glasses. ‘What are we all going to drink?’ Dubedat asked.

  ‘What is there?’ Harriet asked, impressed and modest.

  ‘Oh, everything,’ said Dubedat.

  And, indeed, there was everything.

  ‘Shall I pour out?’ Toby asked.

  ‘No,’ said Dubedat sharply. ‘Go and sit down.’

  As he poured the drinks, there was a rattle of glass against glass. His face, with its prominent beak and tiny chin, was set as tensely as the face of a foraging rat. He became very red and at one point dropped a decanter stopper.

  ‘Can I give a hand, old soul?’ Toby solicitously asked.

  ‘You can not,’ Dubedat fiercely replied and Toby dodged back, pretending he had received a blow.

  He said: ‘Crumbs!’ and looked at the Pringles, but there was no laughter. Both Guy and Harriet were nervous, and everyone felt the delicate nature of the occasion.

  The drinks dispensed, Dubedat sat himself down briskly. ‘I’ve seen Mr Gracey.’ There was a pause while he placed his glass on the table and took out a handkerchief to wipe his fingertips. The pause having taken effect, he went on: ‘I regret to say I’ve no very good news for you.’

  The Pringles said nothing. Dubedat frowned at Toby, who was moving about the party like an anxious old sheep-dog. ‘Do sit down, Lush,’ he said, an edge on his voice. Toby obeyed at once.

  As though an impediment were out of the way, Dubedat cleared his throat and said impressively: ‘I’ve approached Mr Gracey on your behalf. He would see you, he would like very much to see you, but he’s not up to it.’

  ‘He’s really ill, then?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘He had an accident. He’s been unwell for some time. He has his ups and downs. At the moment he doesn’t feel he can see anyone. He says you’re to proceed to Cairo.’

  ‘Suppose we wait a few days …’ Guy began.

  ‘No,’ Dubedat interrupted with placid severity. ‘He can’t keep you hanging round here … can’t accept the responsibility. He wants you to take the next boat to Alex.’

  ‘But wherever I am,’ Guy said reasonably, ‘I’ll have to hang around. Egypt’s full of Organization men, refugees from Europe, all waiting for jobs. The Cairo office doesn’t know what to do with them. They’re trying to cook up all sorts of miserable little appointments in the Delta and Upper Egypt. The work’s minimal: just a waste of time. If I have to wait for work, I’d rather wait here.’

  ‘No doubt. But Mr Gracey doesn’t want you to wait. You’re to proceed. It’s an order, Pringle.’

  There was a pause, then Guy spoke with mild decision: ‘Mr Gracey will have to tell me that himself. I’ll stay until I see him.’

  Dubedat, flushed again, took on his old expression of peevish rancour. His voice grew shrill and lost its quality. ‘But you can’t stay. You’re not supposed to be here, and Mr Gracey doesn’t want you here. You’re expected in Egypt. So far as the Cairo office is concerned, you’re a missing person. That’s why Mr Gracey can’t let you stay. And he’s doing the right thing – yes, he’s doing the right thing! You ought to know that!’ Dubedat ended on the hectoring note with which he had once condemned everyone whom fortune had favoured above himself.

  Guy, who had been worried by Dubedat’s earlier effusion, now said with composure: ‘I intend to stay.’

  Dubedat gave an exasperated laugh. A frantic sucking noise came from Toby in the background. No one spoke for some moments; then, gathering himself together, Dubedat began to reason with Guy: ‘Look, there’s no job for you here. What with the war and one thing and another, the School isn’t what it was. Mr Gracey hasn’t been well enough to see to things. Numbers have dropped off. That’s the long and the short of it. The work just isn’t there.’

  ‘So, as Harriet said, someone is needed to get the place back on its feet.’

  ‘Mr Gracey’s in charge.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Guy agreed. ‘And I’m not prepared to leave Athens before I’ve seen him.’

  Dubedat let out his breath, suggesting that Guy’s total lack of good sense was making things difficult for all of them, and said with the gesture of one throwing down a last card: ‘Your salary’s paid in Cairo.’

  ‘I can cable the London office.’

  ‘This is Mr Gracey’s territory. The London office can only refer you to him.’

  ‘I’m not so sure of that.’

  Dubedat, agape between surprise and anger, shifted in his seat. It had never occurred to him that Guy, the most accommodating of men, could prove so unaccommodating. Now, as he met Guy’s obstinacy for the first time, something malign came into his gaze. He put his hand into his inner pocket and brought out a letter. ‘I’d hoped we could discuss things in a friendly way, I didn’t think I’d need to produce this. Still, here it is. Better take a dekko.’

  When Guy had read the letter, he passed it to Harriet. It was a typewritten statement informing anyone whom it might concern that Mr Gracey, during the term of his disablement, appointed Mr Dubedat as his official representative. Harriet returned it to Guy, who sat studying it in silence, his expression bland.

  ‘So you see,’ Dubedat shifted about in his excitement, saying in a tone of finality: ‘What I say, goes. Mr Gracey can’t see you. He won’t see you and he won’t be responsible for you here. So if you’re wise, you’ll take yourself off on the first boat from the Piraeus.’ He snatched the letter from Guy and, folding it with shaking fingers, replaced it in his inner pocket.

  Guy looked up but said nothing.

  Beginning to relent a little, Dubedat leant towards him and spoke with an earnest, almost entreating, compliance. ‘If I were you, I’d go. Really, I would. For your
own sake.’

  Guy still said nothing. He maintained his bland expression but it was wan, and Harriet could scarcely bear his mortification. Unassuming though he was, he was conscious of a natural authority, the authority of the upright man. He believed in people. He had always supposed that his generosity would give rise to generosity. Helping others, he would, when the need came, be helped in his turn. It was not easy for him to accept that Dubedat, a mediocrity whom he had employed out of charity, would try to run him out of Athens. And the astonishing fact was that Dubedat was in a position to do it.

  There was nothing more to be said. The sun had gone down while they were talking. Watching the distant hill stained rich with the afterglow of evening, Harriet seemed to see, like something sighted from a speeding train, an enchantment they could not share. So Athens was not for them! But what was there for them in this disordered world? Where could they find a home?

  Dubedat had also observed the changing light. ‘Oh, dear,’ he said, ‘we’ll have to go. What a pity! Another night you might have stayed to supper.’

  Toby explained: ‘We’ve been asked to Major Cookson’s. Sort of royal command. He likes everyone to be on time.’

  The Pringles did not ask who Major Cookson was. It did not matter. They were not likely to receive his royal command. Guy emptied his beer and they left with scarcely another word.

  The lights were coming on in the small shops and cafés in the square of Kolonaki. The central garden was dark. Pepper trees grew along the pavements, their fern-fine foliage clouding in the air like smoke. A smell of dill pickle came from the shops.

  Harriet said: ‘Will you cable the London office?’

  ‘Yes.’

  His decision disturbed her. Because of their insecurity, the streets seemed hostile and she began to see Cairo as a refuge. ‘Perhaps we’d better take the next boat,’ she said.

  Guy said: ‘No,’ his face fixed with his resolution: ‘I don’t want to go to Egypt. There’s a job here, and I intend to stay.’

  Their money had almost run out. They could not afford Zonar’s, so walked the length of Stadium Street and sat at a café in Omonia Square where, drinking a cheap, sweet, sleepy, black wine, Harriet thought of Yakimov and wondered how he had survived his years of beggary in foreign capitals. She, with Guy beside her, knowing the worst anyone could do was send them to Egypt, felt very near weeping.

  3

  The hotel in which the Pringles were staying had been recommended to Harriet as the most central of the cheap hotels. It was gloomy and uncomfortable but favoured by the English because of its position and its extreme respectability. Athens had been absorbing refugees since 1939 and, even before the Poles arrived, there had been a backlog of Smyrna Greeks and White Russians seeking some sort of permanent home. Hotel rooms were scarce; flats and houses even scarcer.

  The Pringles, packed together into a single room, had been promised a larger room should one fall vacant. When Harriet reminded the porter of this promise, he told her that rooms never fell vacant. People stayed at the hotel for months. Some had made it their home. Mrs Brett, for instance, had lived there for over a year.

  Harriet knew Mrs Brett, a gaunt-faced Englishwoman who eyed her accusingly whenever they met on the stair. One day, a week after Guy’s arrival, Mrs Brett stopped her and said: ‘So your husband did arrive, after all?’

  As Harriet tried to edge past, Mrs Brett stood her ground, saying: ‘Perhaps you don’t remember me?’

  Harriet did remember her. When alone in Athens and distracted by the news from Rumania, Harriet had approached this fellow Englishwoman and confided the fact she had left her husband in Bucharest. Mrs Brett had replied: ‘He’ll be put into a prison-camp. You’ll have him back after the war. My husband’s dead.’

  This may have been meant as condolence, but it did not console Harriet who now wanted only to avoid the woman.

  ‘I’d like to meet your husband,’ Mrs Brett said. ‘Bring him to tea on Saturday. I live here in the hotel: room 3, first floor Come at four o’clock,’ and without waiting for acceptance or refusal, she was off.

  Harriet hurried to tell Guy: ‘That God-awful woman’s invited us to tea.’

  ‘Why, how kind!’ said Guy, to whom any social contact was better than no contact at all.

  ‘But it’s the woman who said you’d be put in a prison-camp.’

  ‘I’m sure she meant no harm,’ Guy confidently replied.

  The Pringles, on the top floor of the hotel, were in a slice of room overlooking a china-bricked well and containing two single beds, end to end, a wardrobe and a dressing-table. Mrs Brett’s room, at the front, was a bed-sitting room and was crowded with an armchair and table, as well as a large bed. Mrs Brett had hung up two paintings, one of anemones and one of lily-of-the-valley, and she had set out her china on the table beside a large chocolate cake.

  Guy, delighted that someone had made them a gesture of friendship, met Mrs Brett with such warm enthusiasm, she became excited at once and dodged around them, shouting: ‘Sit down. Sit down.’ Another visitor was in the room. This was a square-built man who was growing heavy in middle age.

  ‘Really!’ Mrs Brett complained. ‘You two big men! What am I to do with you both? And,’ she turned to the middle-aged man with amused horror, ‘Alison Jay says she’ll be dropping in.’

  ‘Dear me!’ the man murmured.

  ‘We’ll manage. We’ve managed before. Mrs Pringle can take the little chair – she’s a lightweight; and I’ll give Miss Jay the armchair when she comes. Now, you two! Here.’ She placed the two men side by side on the edge of the bed. ‘Sit down,’ she ordered them. ‘I don’t need any help.’

  A hotel waiter brought in a pot of tea and while Mrs Brett was filling cups and asking each guest several times whether he took milk and sugar, the man beside Guy spoke below the commotion. ‘My name is Alan Frewen.’

  ‘Didn’t I introduce you?’ Mrs Brett shouted, pushing cups at her guests. ‘That’s me all over; I never introduce anyone.’

  Alan Frewen, whose large head was set on massive shoulders, had a face that seemed to be made of brown rock, not carved but worn to its present shape by the action of water. His eyes, light in colour and seeming lighter in their dark setting, had a poignant expression; and as he sat on the bed edge stirring his cup of tea, his air was one of patient suffering. Having given his name, he had nothing to say but kept looking uneasily at Mrs Brett because she was on her feet while he was sitting down.

  She said to Guy: ‘So you’re just out of Rumania? Tell us, are the Germans there or not?’

  While Guy was answering her, Alan Frewen observed him and the large, dark face softened as though something in Guy’s appearance and manner was allaying his sorrows. He leant forward to speak but Mrs Brett did not give him a chance. She said to Guy:

  ‘You’re an Organization man, aren’t you? Yes, Prince Yakimov mentioned it. I could tell you a few things about the Organization. You knew my husband, of course? You knew what they did to him here?’

  As Guy said, ‘No,’ Alan Frewen gave a slight moan, anticipating a story he had heard before and dreaded hearing again.

  Ignoring Frewen, Mrs Brett stared at Guy: ‘I suppose you know my husband was Director of the School?’

  ‘Was he? I didn’t know.’

  ‘Aha!’ said Mrs Brett, preparing the Pringles for a grim tale. She kept them in anticipation while she handed round the cups. Alan Frewen watched her with an expression pained and fascinated. She sat down at last and began.

  ‘My husband was Director, but he was displaced. Very meanly displaced, what’s more. You must have heard of it?’

  ‘We know very few people here,’ Guy said.

  ‘It was a scandal, and there was a lot of talk. It got around much farther than Athens. My husband was a scholar, a very gifted man.’ She stopped and fixed Guy accusingly. ‘But you must have heard of him? He wrote a history of the Venetian Republic.’

  Guy said soothingly: ‘Yes, of cours
e,’ and she went on:

  ‘You know this fellow Gracey, I suppose?’

  ‘I …’

  ‘It was Gracey got him out. Gracey and that louse Cookson.’

  Harriet said: ‘We’ve heard of Cookson. He seems to be important here.’

  ‘He’s rich, not important. Leastways, not what I call important. He calls himself “Major”. He may have been in the army at some time, but I have my doubts. He lives in style at Phaleron. He’s one of those people who don’t need to work but want to have a finger in every pie. He wants power; wants to influence people.’

  ‘And he’s a friend of Gracey?’

  ‘Yes, Gracey’s one of that set. When we first came here, Cookson asked us out to Phaleron but Percy wouldn’t go. He was doing his own work and running the School. No time for junketing, I can tell you.’

  ‘How long ago was this?’

  ‘Just when the war started. We knew the old Director: a fine man, a scholar, too. He retired when war broke out and offered the job to Percy. I told Percy he ought to take it. It was war work. He wasn’t a young man, of course, but he had to do his bit. I think I was right.’

  Mrs Brett paused and Alan Frewen stirred at his tea as though again bringing himself to the point of speech, but again Mrs Brett thwarted him. ‘Well, Percy took over here and everything was going swimmingly when that Gracey turned up.’

  ‘Where did he come from?’

  ‘Italy. He’d been living near Naples tutoring some rich little Italian boy and doing a bit of writing and so on; having a grand time, I imagine, but he knew it couldn’t go on. He got nervous. He decided to come here, worse luck; then, when he got here, he wanted a job and Percy took him on as Chief Instructor. Oh, what a foolish fellow! Percy, I mean.’ She shook her head and clicked her tongue against the back of her teeth.

  ‘He could scarcely have known,’ Alan Frewen said.

  Mrs Brett agreed as though the thought had only just occurred to her. ‘No, that’s right, he couldn’t.’