The Balkan Trilogy (10 page)

‘Said “No” straight away. One doesn’t complicate one’s life unnecessarily. But she would never have tried it on with me. Knowing I was not susceptible, she disliked me on sight. With you, of course, she thinks she can get away with anything.’

‘Darling, don’t be so harsh. She’s an intelligent girl. She can speak half a dozen languages …’

‘Did you lend her any money?’

‘Well, yes. A few thousand.’

‘Did she pay it back?’

‘Well – she didn’t regard it as a loan.’

Harriet enquired no further but said only: ‘I don’t want to see her every night.’

Guy stretched across the table and squeezed Harriet’s arm. ‘Darling,’ he said, ‘she’s sad and lonely. You can afford to be kind to her.’

Half-heartedly, Harriet said: ‘I suppose I can,’ and let the matter drop.

They had eaten their omelettes and were waiting for coffee, when Harriet noticed two begger children who had climbed up on the pier from the lake and were keeping out of the waiter’s sight. The older child came crawling under the tables until it reached the Pringles, then it stood up, ragged, wet and dirty, thin as a gnat, and clutching the edge of the table with its bird-small hand, began the chant of ‘
Mi-e foame
’.

Guy handed over his small coins. The child scuttled off and
at once its place was taken by the younger child, who, hopping from one foot to the other, eyes on a level with the table-top, kept up, in a sing-song, what seemed to be a long, unintelligible story. Having no more change, Guy waved it away. It flinched from his movement as from a blow, but, recovering at once, went on with its rigmarole. Harriet offered it a piece of bread, then an olive, then a piece of cheese. These offerings were ignored, but the whine went on.

After some minutes of this, Harriet, irritated, hunted through her bag and found an English sixpence. The child snatched it and ran. They had returned to the quiet that came of being surrounded not by land but water, when the music stopped abruptly. The silence was suddenly so dense that Harriet looked round, expecting something. At that moment a voice broke shrilly from the loud-speaker.

The men near the kitchen sat up. One jumped to his feet. A chair fell. The voice spoke again. The waiter came from the kitchen. Behind him, in singlet and trousers, very dirty, came the cook. The man who had jumped up started shouting. The waiter shouted back.

‘Is it the invasion?’ asked Harriet.

Guy shook his head. ‘It was something to do with C
ǎ
linescu.’

‘Who is C
ǎ
linescu?’

‘The Prime Minister.’

‘Why is everyone so excited? What did the announcer say?’

‘I don’t know.’

Taking advantage of the distraction, the elder beggar boy had come up under the very nose of the waiter and was now begging urgently, time being short. The waiter went to the rail and shouted down to a man who hired rowing-boats. The man shouted back.

‘He says,’ said Guy, ‘that C
ǎ
linescu has been shot. They announced that he is either dead or dying. We must go to the English Bar. That’s where you get all the news.’

They left the park by a side gate where a statue of a disgraced politician stood with its head hidden in a linen bag.
Hurrying through the back streets, they came into the main square as the newsboys were calling a special edition of the papers. People were thrusting each other aside to seize them, and when they had read a line were throwing the papers away. The square was already littered with sheets that stirred slightly in the hot breeze.

Guy, pushing his paper under his arm, told Harriet: ‘He was assassinated in the Chicken Market.’

As he spoke, a man standing nearby turned sharply and said in English: ‘They say the Iron Guard is wiped out. Now such a thing happens! It can mean anything. You understand that? It can mean anything.’

‘What can it mean?’ Harriet asked as Guy hurried her across the square.

‘That the Germans are up to something, I suppose. We’ll hear everything in the bar.’

But the English Bar, with its dark panelling and palms in brass pots, was dismally empty. The hard shafts of sunlight falling in from high-set windows made the place look like cardboard. There must have been a crowd in recently because the air was heavy with cigarette smoke.

Guy spoke to the barman, Albu, a despondent, sober fellow regarded in Bucharest as a perfect imitation of an English barman. Where was everyone? Guy asked.

Albu said: ‘Gone to send news.’

Guy, frowning with frustration, asked Harriet what she would drink. ‘We’ll wait,’ he said. ‘They’re sure to come back. This is the centre of information.’

6

In an upper room of the hotel, Yakimov was roused to reluctant consciousness by the squawks of the newsboys in the square.

The day before, when he handed his British passport to the clerk, he had been asked if he wished to be awakened in the ‘English manner’ with a cup of tea. He had replied that he did not wish to be awakened at all but would like a half-bottle of Veuve Clicquot placed beside his bed each morning. Now, getting his eyes open, he saw the bucket and was thankful for it.

An hour or so later, having bathed, dressed and been served with a little cold chicken in his room, he made his way down to the bar. The bar was now crowded. Yakimov ordered a whisky, swallowed it and ordered another. When the drinks had steadied him a little, he turned slowly and looked at the group behind him.

The journalists were standing around Mortimer Tufton, who sat on the edge of a stool, his old, brown spotted hands clenched on the handle of his stick.

Galpin, noticing Yakimov, asked: ‘Any news?’

‘Well, dear boy, it was quite a party.’

‘I’ll say it was,’ said Galpin. ‘One hell of a party. And the old formula, of course: someone inside creates a disturbance and the bastards march in to keep order.’

Yakimov stared at Galpin some moments before comment came to him, then he said: ‘Quite, dear boy, quite.’

‘I give them twenty-four hours.’ Galpin, sprawled with his back against the bar, was a string of a man in a suit that
seemed too small for him. He had a peevish, nasal voice and, as he talked, he rubbed at his peevish yellow, whisky-drinker’s face. Over his caved-in belly, his waistcoat was wrinkled, dirty and ash-spattered. There was a black edging of grease round his cuffs; his collar was corrugated round his neck. He sucked the wet stub of a cigarette. When he talked the stub stuck to his full, loose lower lip and quivered there. His eyes, that he now kept fixed on Yakimov, were chocolate-coloured, the whites as yellow as limes. He repeated: ‘Twenty-four hours. You wait and see,’ his tone aggressive.

Yakimov did not contradict him.

He was bewildered, not only by Galpin’s remarks, but by the atmosphere in the bar. It was an atmosphere of acute discontent.

In a high, indignant voice, Galpin suddenly said to Yakimov: ‘You heard about Miller of the
Echo
, I suppose?’

Yakimov shook his head.

‘As soon as it happened, he got into his car and drove straight to Giurgiu. He may have got across, and he may not, but he’s not stuck here like a rat in a trap.’

Galpin was clearly speaking not for Yakimov’s enlightenment but from a heart full of bitterness. Letting his eyes stray about, Yakimov noticed the young couple called Pringle whom he had met the night before. There was something reassuring about Guy Pringle’s size and the mildness of his bespectacled face. Yakimov edged nearer to him and heard him say: ‘I still don’t see how the Germans will get here. The Russians have moved into Eastern Poland. They’ve reached the Hungarian frontier.’

‘My good chappie’ – Galpin turned, expressing his bitterness in contempt – ‘the Nazis will go through the Russkies like a hot knife through butter.’

Guy put an arm round his wife’s shoulder and looked into her strained, peaky face. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said to her, ‘I think we’re safe.’

A small man, grey-haired, grey-faced, grey-clad, more shadow than substance, entered the bar and, skirting apologetically round the journalists, handed Galpin a telegram and
whispered to him. When the man had gone, Galpin said: ‘My stringman reports: German Embassy claims to have proof the murder was organised by the British Minister in order to undermine Rumania’s neutrality. That gets a laugh.’ He opened and read the telegram and said: ‘So does this: “
Echo
reports assassination stop why unnews stop asleep query.” So Miller made it! Nice scoop for Miller! And a raspberry for the rest of us.’

Tufton said: ‘There’s safety in numbers. We couldn’t all be flogging the dog.’

Under cover of this talk, Yakimov whispered to Guy: ‘Dear boy, what
has
happened? Who’s been assassinated?’

It so happened this whisper came out during a moment of silence and Galpin caught it. He turned to Yakimov, demanding in scandalised tones: ‘You mean to say, you didn’t know what I was talking about?’

Yakimov shook his head.

‘You hadn’t heard of the assassination? You didn’t know the frontier’s closed, the international line is dead, they won’t let us send cables, and no one’s allowed to leave Bucharest? You don’t know, my good chappie, that you’re in mortal danger?’

‘You don’t say!’ said Yakimov. Stealthily he glanced around for sympathy but was offered none. Trying to show interest, he asked: ‘Who assassinated who?’

The journalists made no attempt to reply. It was Guy who told him that the Prime Minister had been assassinated in the Chicken Market. ‘Some young men drove in front of his car, forcing him to stop. When he got out to see what was wrong, they shot him down. He was killed instantly. Then the assassins rushed to the broadcasting studios, held up the staff and announced he was dead, or dying. They didn’t know which.’

‘Filled him full of lead,’ Galpin broke in. ‘He clung to the car door – little pink hands, striped trousers, little new patent-leather shoes. Then he slid down. Patches of dust on the side of his shoes …’

‘You saw it?’ Yakimov opened his eyes in admiration, but Galpin remained disapproving.

‘It was seen,’ he added: ‘What the heck were you up to? Were you drunk?’

‘Did have rather a heavy night,’ Yakimov admitted. ‘Your poor old Yaki’s just levered head from pillow.’

Tufton shifted impatiently on his stool. ‘Fortune favours fools,’ he said. ‘We were forced to tarry while he slumbered.’

The hotel clerk entered the bar and announced that cables could now be sent from the Central Post Office. As the journalists jostled their way out, Yakimov imagined his ordeal was over. He was about to order himself another drink, when Galpin gripped his arm.

‘I’ll give you a lift,’ said Galpin.

‘Oh, dear boy, I don’t think I’d better go out today. Don’t feel at all well.’

‘Are you doing McCann’s job or aren’t you? Come on.’

Looking into Galpin’s crabbed, uncharitable face, Yakimov dared not refuse to go.

At the post office he wrote on his form: ‘Very sorry to tell you the Prime Minister was …’ then hesitated so long over the spelling of the word ‘assassinated’ that the office emptied and he was alone with Galpin. Galpin, his face solemn, said: ‘You’ve got the story, of course? Who’s at the bottom of this? And so on?’

Yakimov shook his head: ‘Haven’t a clue, dear boy.’

Galpin tut-tutted at Yakimov’s ignorance. ‘Come on,’ he said more kindly, ‘I’ll give you a hand.’

Taking out his fountain-pen, Galpin concocted a lengthy piece which he signed: ‘McCann’.

‘That’ll cost you about three thousand,’ he said.

Yakimov gasped, dismayed. ‘But I haven’t a
leu
,’ he said.

‘Well, this once,’ said Galpin, ‘I’ll lend you the cash, but you must have money for cables. The international line may be closed down for weeks. Trot along now and see McCann.’

Next morning, as he went to the breakfast room, Yakimov saw Galpin and a Canadian called Screwby coming purposefully from the bar. Suspecting they were on the track of news,
he tried to avoid them, but it was too late. Galpin had already seen him.

‘There’s a spectacle in the Chicken Market,’ said Galpin as though Yakimov would be delighted to hear it. ‘We’ll take you in the old Ford.’

Yakimov shied away: ‘Join you later, dear boy. Trifle peckish. Must get a spot of brekker.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Yakimov,’ said Galpin unpleasantly, ‘I’m McCann’s friend. I’ll see him served right. You do your job.’ And, taking Yakimov’s arm, he led him out to the car.

They drove through the Calea Victoriei towards the river Dâmbovita. Yakimov had been put into the uncomfortable back seat. Galpin, apparently satisfied by his submission, talked over his shoulder: ‘You’ve heard, of course, they got the chappies who did it?’

‘Have they, dear boy?’

‘Yah. Iron Guardists, just as I said. A German plot, all right: an excuse to march in and keep order, but they reckoned without the old Russkies. The old Russkies got in their way. The Germans couldn’t march through them. But these Guardist chappies didn’t realise. They thought, when the Germans got here, they’d be the heroes of the new order. No one’d dare touch them. They didn’t even go into hiding. They were picked up before the victim was cold and executed during the night.’

‘But what about the King, dear boy?’

‘What about him?’

‘You said he said he’d get C
ǎ
linescu.’

‘Oh, that! It’s a complicated story. You know what these Balkan countries are like.’ Galpin broke off to nod out of the car window. ‘Tension’s relaxed,’ he said.

Screwby gave the passers-by a knowing look and agreed that tension was relaxed.

‘Not that most of them wouldn’t rather have the Germans here than the Russians up on the frontier.’ Galpin nodded again. ‘Look at that fat bastard. Got pro-German written all over him.’

Yakimov looked, half expecting to see a duplicate of Goëring, but he saw only the mid-morning Rumanian crowd out for its refection of chocolate and cream cakes. He sighed and murmured: ‘Don’t feel so well. Hollow with hunger,’ but he was ignored.

They crossed the tram-lines and entered the road that sloped down to the river. Galpin parked the car on the quayside and Yakimov saw the enormous winding queue, compacted like gut, that filled the market area. It gave him hope. Even Galpin must think twice of joining it.