‘Come on: give!’ he shouted, refusing any sort of compromise, requiring from them all the volume, vitality and abandon of which they were capable.
The only ones exempt from duty were the cast of Maria Marten – Yakimov, Alan Frewen and Ben Phipps who sat ‘saving their voices’ in a row along the wall.
Those who knew Harriet were too engrossed to notice her. Entering unseen, she sat beside Ben Phipps who, with hands in pockets and feet thrust out before him, watched the proceedings with a sardonic grin.
The song ended. Guy was far from satisfied. He scrubbed his handkerchief over his face and told the boys and girls of the chorus they would have to work. The others must work, too. They might be non-appearers, mere enhancers, but only their best was good enough. Now! He stuffed the handkerchief away, and signalled Miss Jay. The song broke out again.
Guy had thrown off his jacket. Singing at the top of his voice, he stripped off his tie and undid his collar button. He rolled up his sleeves but as he waved his arms in the air, his sleeves unrolled themselves and the cuffs flew around his head.
‘Once more,’ he demanded even before the chorus had panted to an end. ‘What we want is spirit. Give it more spirit. This is for the chaps at Tatoi. Come on now, they don’t get much fun out there. Put your heart and soul into it.’
Watching him urging the performers with the force of his personality, Harriet wondered: ‘How did I come to marry someone so different from myself?’
But she had married him; and perhaps, unawares, it was his difference she had married.
Though she had no wish to know many people, could not endure for long the strain of company, she could take pride in his wide circle; even satisfaction, feeling that she lived, if only at second-hand. But to live at second-hand was to live at a distance. By withdrawing from Guy’s exhausting enterprise, she withdrew from Guy. The activity was the man. If she were not willing to be dragged at his elbow then, she feared, she must watch him pass like a whirlwind and the day might come when she must wave good-bye.
The chorus sang the song again and again until at last, scarcely able to keep on their feet, the young people were dismissed and Guy, unwearied, called for the cast of Maria Marten. Looking round, he saw Harriet and waved, but he had no time to speak. Ben, Alan and Yakimov were already on their feet.
The rehearsal over, Guy walked in the midst of a noisy group to Omonia Square. The girls had to return home early and the male students were deputed to see them safely back. But that was not the end of the evening for Guy. He insisted that everyone else must come and have a drink.
Mrs Brett and her friends, intoxicated by all the commotion, let themselves be led to Aleko’s, a café that at any other time they would fear to enter. When they were packed together in the plain little room behind the black-out curtains, Mrs Brett was as boisterous as she had been at her own party. Catching sight of Harriet for the first time, she gripped her wrist and shouted: ‘You’re a lucky girl!’
Harriet smiled: ‘I suppose I am.’
‘My, what a lucky girl you are.’ She looked about her shouting above the noise. ‘Isn’t she a lucky girl!’ confident she spoke for all present.
As no doubt she did. Harriet, becalmed against the wall, saw Guy at the centre of the group shining and jubilant. She knew then the thing he loved most was the fatuous good-fellowship of crowds. Of course she had suspected it before. On the train to Bucharest, she had watched him surrounded by admiring Rumanian women, his face alight as though with wine, his arms extended to embrace them all. To someone so enamoured of the general, could the particular ever really mean anything?
Looking her way and meeting her speculative gaze, he thrust out his arm and drew her into the mêlée. ‘What did you think of Maria Marten?’ he asked.
‘Very funny. The men will love it.’
‘They will, won’t they?’ Had he been engineering some great work that would last for all time, he could not have been more gratified. He would not let her go. Holding her to him, his arm about her shoulder, he coaxed her into the talk as though she were a shy child.
But she was not a child, and she was only shy when forced, as she now was, into a confusion of people whom she scarcely knew. He was eager that she should share his joy in the company; while she, doing her best to smile, was eager only to escape it. Forcibly held in the centre of uproar, she bore the situation as long as she could, then managed to get away. He glanced after her, a little puzzled, a little grieved, wondering what more she could want. But the problem did not hang long on the air. Distracted by some question put to him about the production, he was caught again into a hurly-burly of suggestion and counter-suggestion, of public extrinsicality so pressing and time-absorbing that the problem of living had to be put on one side until tomorrow, or the day after or, indeed, until death should come and fetch him.
18
When Harriet mentioned to Guy that she had invited Charles Warden to luncheon, he said: ‘Good! But I won’t be around long.’
‘I thought you would like to see him again.’
‘I would, of course; but I’ll be rehearsing all afternoon.’
Harriet also invited Alan Frewen. Hearing there were to be two guests, Anastea threw up her hands and asked what were they to eat? Her husband, who was a night-watchman, could sometimes, by joining a queue early in the morning, obtain food for the Pringles as well as for his family. But it was becoming more difficult; he might queue for three hours and at the end get nothing. Seeing the old woman distraught by the problem, Harriet promised to find something herself in Athens.
The villa, a flimsy summer structure, was very cold now. There was no oil for the heaters and on a fine day it was warmer outside than in. Sunday was bright and gusty. When Alan walked out to the villa with his dog, the Pringles took him up to the sheltered roof-terrace to drink ouzo. Harriet, looking towards the Piraeus road on which she expected the staff car to appear, said: ‘Charles Warden is coming.’
‘Is he?’
‘You do like him, don’t you? You must have known him before the war?’
‘I did know him slightly. Rather a spoilt boy, don’t you think?’
‘I wouldn’t say so.’
This reply daunted Alan who, made to feel that he had shown discourtesy towards a fellow guest, bent down and spent some time adjusting Diocletian’s collar.
A military car passed on the Piraeus road. Harriet watched it, unable to believe it had not gone by in error, but it did not come back. Guy looked at his watch and said his rehearsal was called for half past two. Harriet said: ‘I think we had better eat.’
‘What about young Warden?’
‘We can’t wait all day for him.’
Harriet had found nothing in Athens but potatoes which she told Anastea to bake. When they came to the table, they were mashed and served like an immense white pudding.
Alan laughed at Harriet’s apologies: ‘Potatoes in any form are a luxury to me. All we get at the Academy these days is salad made of marguerite leaves?’
‘Can one eat marguerite leaves?’
‘If they aren’t marguerite leaves, I don’t know what they are.’
When they had each taken a share of the potatoes, Harriet put the plate down for Diocletian. As the last vestige of potato was swept up by the dog’s tongue, Anastea came from the kitchen and gave a cry. Usually so meek and accepting of her employers’ peculiarities, she made a threatening movement at the dog, her face taut with anger. Alan paled and caught his breath.
Harriet had forgotten Anastea. She said: ‘What can we give her?’ but there was no answer to that question.
Guy put his hand in his pocket: ‘I’ll give her some money.’
‘What good is money? She wants food.’
Anastea herself said nothing. Having made her gesture, she took the dishes and went.
This incident hastened Guy’s departure; and Alan and Harriet went for a walk. They crossed the Ilissus and strolled through the sparse little pinewood where the tree
s had been dwarfed and distorted by the wind from the sea. Beneath the trees, the spikes of green were already shaping themselves into the foliage of future flowers. January was nearing its end and the light on the puddles on the glossy banks of wet clay had a new brilliance. Harriet said she could smell leaves in the wind. Alan said he could smell nothing but the brewery on the Piraeus road.
Harriet was contemplating a changed attitude to life. What she needed was independence of mind. She would turn her back on emotional involvements and seek, instead, the compensating interest of work and society. Charles was as good as forgotten; but when she returned to the villa, she asked Anastea if anyone had called in her absence.
‘Kaneis, kaneis,’ Anastea replied.
And that, Harriet decided, was that.
19
Sorry about yesterday. Lunch today?
Harriet answered: No.
The military messenger was back within ten minutes. The second message read: Forgive and say yes! Again Harriet replied: No. A third message came: Dinner and explanations? Harriet scribbled across it: Impossible.
Miss Gladys Twocurry said: ‘We can’t have this young man coming in and out of here with his noisy boots. He’s upsetting my sister.’
‘It’s an essential part of my work,’ Harriet replied.
‘If it goes on,’ Miss Gladys threatened, ‘I’ll complain to Lord Pinkrose,’ but the messenger did not come back.
Miss Gladys also had a typewriter, a newer and finer machine than that provided for Miss Mabel. It stood on a billiard table and twice a week it was carried over to her desk by the Greek office boy. She used it to cut the stencil for the biweekly news-sheet, which Yakimov delivered on his bicycle. The stencil cutting, her chief employment, was treated as the most important activity in the office. The duplicator stood in a corner and when not in use was covered with a sheet. The Greek boy would uncover it and spread the ink from the tube. Then tutting, sighing, breathing loudly, Miss Gladys fitted on the stencil. This done at last, the office boy turned the handle and kept the copies neatly stacked. When twenty were ready, they were handed to Miss Mabel, who folded them and put them into envelopes. The envelopes then went to Miss Gladys, who addressed them from a list in a bold, schoolgirlish hand. When the addressed envelopes began to pile up, Yakimov would receive his call from the boy and appear ready-coated, bicycle-clips in place.
Everyone concerned treated the production and delivery of the News-Letter as a supremely exacting operation. If a query arose, it was discussed in whispers.
Yakimov, packing the letters into his satchel, would also speak in whispers; and setting out on his delivery round, he went with strained and serious face.
The last letter run off, folded, placed in an envelope, addressed and delivered, everyone was exhausted, but the most exhausted was Yakimov who, safely back in his office, would collapse into his chair and seem, like the runner Phidipides, about to die from his efforts.
Altogether some four or five hundred envelopes were sent out, some to Greeks but most to English residents in and about Athens. Harriet had been surprised to realize how many British subjects remained, and how much ground Yakimov had to cover on his bicycle. Letters, tied up in batches, were marked not only for the city centre, but for Kifissia, Phychiko, Patissia, Kalamaki, Phaleron and Piraeus.
The first time she had seen them prepared for delivery, she tried to break down Miss Gladys’s hostility by saying: ‘I never knew poor Yaki worked so hard.’
‘Poor Yaki!’ Miss Gladys caught her breath in horror. ‘Are you referring to Prince Yakimov?’
Harriet did not improve matters by laughing. She might treat Yakimov as a joke, but he was no joke for the Twocurrys. Her casual manner towards a man of title marked her for them as one who had too high an opinion of herself. Several times in the office Miss Gladys often began remarks with ‘I never presume’ or ‘I know my station’, and she saw her station increased by the fact she worked with a lord and a prince.
The Twocurrys were not alone in respecting Yakimov’s title. Several among the remaining English were delighted to have a prince drink himself senseless at their parties.
Alan told Harriet that soon after Yakimov arrived he was seen standing on the balcony of a flat where a party was in progress. Singing mournfully to himself, he displayed the organ, the secondary function of which is the relief of the bladder, and sent a crystal trajectory through the moonlight down on to the heads of people drinking coffee at an outdoor café below.
Alan told the story with tolerant affection. In Rumania, where there were too many princes, most of them poor, it would have been told with venom and indignation. His situation there had become such he would, had Guy not given him refuge, have died, as the beggars died, of starvation and cold. In those days he used to speak contemptuously of Greek cooking, yet it was here in Greece that he had regained himself and found friendship.
Harriet, who saw him often, could not imagine why she had ever disliked him. He had become not only a friend, but an old friend. They shared memories that gave them the ease of near relationship.
When Alan and Yakimov went to Zonar’s or Yannaki’s, they would take Harriet with them. ‘Do come, dear girl, we’d love to have you,’ Yakimov would say as though it were he and not Alan who dispensed hospitality.
Yakimov did not buy drinks for his companions. The habit perhaps had been lost during his days of penury, but once in a while, when the glasses were empty, he would become restless as though, given time and money enough, it might return. It never did. Alan would say: ‘How about another?’ and Yakimov would remain poised for a second, then ask in hearty relief: ‘Why not?’
Yakimov would contribute a joke, his own joke; but once conceived, it had to do long service. The joke of the moment, derived from his contact with the decoding office, was one that called for careful timing. He had to wait until a second order was given then, the waiter having come and gone, he would say with satisfaction: ‘Three corrupt groups asking for a repeat.’
When at last Alan said, ‘Need we repeat it again?’ Yakimov murmured sadly, ‘’M growing old; losing m’esprit. Poor old Yaki,’ and the joke went on as before.
Alan and Yakimov would discuss Maria Marten and the gossip of the rehearsals, and Harriet learnt more from them than she ever learnt from Guy.
It was Yakimov who mentioned that Dubedat and Toby Lush had approached Guy and asked if they might take part in the revue. Guy had made no promises and later the two found the rehearsals were proceeding without them.
‘Bit of a jolt for them,’ said Yakimov. ‘Am told Dubedat was ruffled. Trifle put out, you know. Goes round telling people if it weren’t for him that show we did in Bucharest – what was it called, dear girl? – would have been a fair foozle. Says that only his performance saved the day. Told the Major that. Bit unfair to the rest of us, don’t you think? Or wouldn’t you say so?’ Yakimov gazed anxiously at Harriet, who, assuring him that in her opinion it was his performance that carried the production to the heights, said: ‘You were Pandarus to the life.’
Much gratified, Yakimov said: ‘Had to work very hard. Guy kept me at it.’ He reflected for some minutes then a look of pique crumpled his face. ‘But what came of it? Nothing. When it was all over, your Yak was forgotten.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘Yes, forgotten,’ Yakimov insisted bleakly. ‘Dear fellow, Guy. Best in the world. Salt of the earth, but a trifle careless. Doesn’t understand how a poor Yak feels.’
Harriet was startled by this criticism – she had imagined she was the only one who criticized Guy – and the more startled that it should come from Yakimov. Yakimov, picked up when hungry and homeless, had been lodged by them for seven months and she felt angry that he should dare to criticize Guy, and criticize him in front of Alan.
Yet, startled and angry as she was, she realized he had spoken out of a genuine sense of injury. Guy had made much of him, then, the play over, had abandoned him. Guy imagined he was all things to all men,
but did he really know anything about any man? Did he know anything about her? She doubted it. She, too, was beginning to accumulate a sense of injury.
Yakimov had suffered from coming too close to Guy. Guy was, she suspected, resentful of those near enough to hamper his freedom. It occurred to her that he might resent her. Why, for instance, had he not told her himself that Lush and Dubedat had asked for a part in the revue and been rejected? He may have forgotten to tell her, but more likely he had not chosen to tell her. He would not admit that he felt about them as she did. He would rather protect them against her judgement.
She felt his attitude betrayed the concept of mutual defence which existed in marriage.
But perhaps it existed only for her. It would be impossible to persuade Guy that he betrayed a concept that did not exist for him. He would condemn it as egoism. He might have his own ideas about marriage, but she doubted it. Having married her, he simply ceased to see her as another person. She had once accused him of considering her feelings less than those of anyone else with whom they came into contact. Surprised, he had said: ‘But you are myself. I don’t need to consider your feelings.’
In Bucharest, where he continued his classes for Jewish students in spite of Fascist demonstrations, he said: ‘They need me. They have no one else. I must give them moral support,’ yet he seemed unable to understand that, living as they did, she, too, needed ‘moral support’. As she met every crisis alone, it seemed to her she had been transported to a hostile world, then left to fend for herself.
Here, if she had nothing else, she had her work and the friendship of Alan and Yakimov. Alan, seeing her daily, had become more easy company. He would talk freely enough, though he had areas of constraint. One of these was Pinkrose and everything to do with Pinkrose.
The Balkan Trilogy Page 87
