The Balkan Trilogy (126 page)

Guy said: ‘There won’t be any more tea, so let her have it.’

Harriet waved her away with the pot and she was so eager to take it home, she forgot the money owing to her and had to be called back.

It was late afternoon when Guy returned. By that time Harriet had completed the packing and had made repeated journeys across the river-bed to try to find the cat. It had been a rather dirty little cat with scurfy patches in its fur, but its response to her had touched her out of all reason. A sort of obsessional frenzy kept her searching for it. She told herself that animals were the only creatures that could be loved without any reservations at all, and this was the only creature she wanted to love. She knew it would not be welcome at the Academy but she would take it with her. She was determined to find it.

She kept going back to the wood, expecting to find the cat at her heels, but each time met with nothing but silence. She was in the wood when Guy came back. He found her walking frantically backwards and forwards over the same ground, calling to the cat and pleading with it to appear. He did not like the gloom under the trees and, unwilling to enter, shouted to her from the river-bank. He had brought a taxi which was waiting for them.

She came to the edge of the wood and said: ‘I can’t go without the cat,’ then walked back into the shadows, feeling he was a hindrance to her purpose which was more important than anything he could offer. He climbed up the bank and stood watching her, baffled. He wondered if she were becoming unbalanced. As for the cat, he decided someone had probably killed it for food, but said: ‘The gun-fire’s frightened it. It’s gone to a safer place.’

‘Quite likely,’ she agreed, still wandering round.

He said firmly: ‘Come on, now. The taxi’s waiting and it’s getting dark. You’ve got to give up.’

‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘You see, this cat is all I have.’

‘Darling!’

His cry of hurt surprise stopped her in her tracks. She saw no justification for his protest. He had chosen to put other people before her and this was the result. Each time he had overridden her feelings to indulge some sense of liability towards strangers, a thread had broken between them. She did not feel there was anything left that might hold them together.

He called her again, but she did not move. He stood there obstinately, a shadow on the edge of the wood, and she resented his interference. She had supposed this large, comfortable man would defend her against the world, and had found that he was on the other side. He made no concessions to her. The responsibilities of marriage, if he admitted they existed at all, were for him indistinguishable from all the other responsibilities to which he dedicated his time. Real or imaginary, he treated them much alike, but she suspected the imaginary responsibilities had the more dramatic appeal.

‘Darling, come here!’

Reluctantly she moved over to him. During the last weeks she had almost forgotten his appearance: his image had been overlaid by another image. Now, seeing him afresh, she could see he was suffering as they all suffered. He had become thin and the skin of his face, taut over his skull, looked grey. He had at last come to a predicament he could not escape. He would have to share the stress of existence with her, but it did not matter now. She had learnt to face it alone. Still, she pitied him. He had nothing to do. His last activity had deserted him: but no activity, however feverishly pursued, could hide reality from him. They were caught here together.

His troubled face pained her. She put her hands on to his hands and he held her in his warm, familiar grasp.

She said: ‘I’m sorry. I did not mean to desert you.’

‘I did not think you did.’

‘You see, Charles loved me.’

‘Do you think I don’t love you?’

‘You love everyone.’

‘That doesn’t make me love you less.’

‘I think it does.’

It was not his nature to argue. He always expected understanding, and perhaps expected too much. He said simply: ‘We must go. They’re expecting us for supper at the Academy. If there’s a raid, we could get caught here again for a couple of hours.’

She went back with him to collect their possessions and lock up the villa. She had lost hope of finding the cat, but she did not feel that their talk had changed anything.

29

The Pringles were given the room which had belonged to Gracey. There was no sign that anyone else had lived in it since he left.

Harriet looked out on the twilit garden where, from the dead tangle of old leaves, the new acanthus was rising and uncurling, and the lucca throwing up a spike of buds. The garden smell, dry and resinous, that she had described as the smell of Greece, was overhung with the fresh, sweet scent of the lemon trees.

The room was bare but here, in touch with their protectors, the Pringles felt they were safe. Her despondency lifting, Harriet said: ‘I like this, don’t you?’

‘I certainly do.’ Guy began to unpack and arrange his books on top of the chest-of-drawers, taking trouble as though they might be here for a long time.

The house, secluded in its garden, seemed a place safe from the racket of war, but this impression was dispelled when they reached the dining-room. Alan had not come in to supper. Pinkrose, though he had kept on his room at the Academy, spent most of his time at Phaleron. The other inmates were talking in a subdued way but came to a stop at the entry of the outsiders. Harriet felt their retreat into discretion, but the atmosphere carried an imprint of consternation.

Guy, who wanted to associate himself with the life of the place, reminded Miss Dunne that he would like to join her at tennis.

She said: ‘I’ll give it thought,’ making it evident that she had more important things on her mind.

When Guy began suggesting days and times, she twitched her shoulders impatiently but could not keep from blushing.

They were served with goat’s cheese and a salad of some sort of green-stuff that roused a mild interest. Tennant went so far as to say: ‘This is a new one on me!’

Guy suggested that it might be samphire and quoted: ‘Halfe way down Hangs one that gathers Samphire; dreadful Trade.’ Tennant smiled, but it was clear to Guy that this was no place for badinage.

Supper over, he was eager to get down to the centre of the town and find his companions. In the Academy garden the evening was milky with the rising moon. Harriet wanted to stay out of doors and Guy followed her reluctantly into the Plaka where she walked quickly, driven still by a sense of search and conscious of having nothing she might find. She led the way towards the Acropolis.

The sky was brilliantly clear. As they climbed upwards, the Parthenon became visible, one side still caught in the pink of sunset, the other silvered by the full moon. As the sunset faded, the marble became luminous like alabaster lit from within and the Plaka shone with a supernatural pallor.

The Athenians remembered the threatened raid, knowing that some such shimmering, verdant night as this would be the night for destruction. Moving darkly in dark doorways, watching out at the passing strangers, people seemed expectant and distrustful.

Guy, who did not know the area, was afraid they would get lost in the dark. Harriet, beginning to tire, was willing to go back.

Tandy had left Zonar’s. It was warm enough to sit out after dark and they found him with the others on the upper terrace of the Corinthian. They were seated round a table by the balustrade, uneasy like everyone else in a city that, salt-white and ebony, was defined for slaughter. And they were uneasy for another reason.

Ben Phipps, who had his own sources, said the British troops were already in retreat.

‘If the Florina Gap’s evacuated, then Greece is wide open.’

‘You think the Germans are on their way down here?’ asked Tandy.

‘It’s likely. Almost certain, though there’s nothing definite. I’m inclined to blame the Greek command. Papagos agreed to bring the Greek troops out of Albania and reinforce the frontier. He didn’t do it. He said if they had to renounce their gains, the morale of the men would collapse. I don’t believe that. I know the Greeks. Whatever happened, they would defend their own country. And now what’s the result? The Greek army’s probably done for. One half’s cut off in Albania, and the other half’s lost in Thrace.’

They sat for a long time in silence, contemplating the possibility of defeat.

‘Still,’ said Guy, trying to dispel the gloom, ‘we’re not beaten yet.’

Phipps gave a snort of derisive laughter, but after a pause said: ‘Well, perhaps not. The British aren’t easily beaten, after all. And we’re bound to hold on to Greece. It gives us a foothold in Europe. We just can’t afford to lose it. We’re an incompetent lot, but if we have to do a thing, we usually do it.’

‘If we hold,’ Alan said, ‘we could regain everything.’

Ben agreed: ‘There have been miracles before.’

Miracles offered more hope than reason and Yakimov, his eyes wide and lustrous in the moonlight, nodded earnestly. ‘We must have faith,’ he said.

‘Good God!’ Tandy stirred with disgust. ‘Surely things aren’t as bad as that!’

‘Of course not,’ Alan Frewen said.

There was silence, then Guy asked: ‘What news of Belgrade?’

‘It’s off the air,’ Ben told him. ‘Not a good sign. Rumour says the Germans reached the suburbs two days ago.’

‘Is that fact?’

‘It’s rumour, and rumours these days have a nasty habit of becoming fact.’

‘Then David Boyd must have left. He’s sure to come tonight. The train’s almost due.’ Guy looked at his watch, preparing to start for the station, and Ben Phipps held his arm.

‘You don’t imagine there’ll be another train, do you? The Germans will have cut the line south of Belgrade. If your friend’s stuck, he’ll make for the coast. He might get a boat down from Split or Dubrovnik.’

‘Is it likely?’

‘It’s possible.’

Ben Phipps, bored with Guy’s anxiety for his missing friend, threw his head back and stared at the moon. His face blank, his glasses white in the moonlight, he said mockingly: ‘Don’t worry. Even if Boyd isn’t a diplomat, he’ll be covered with angels’ wings. If he’s caught, the F.O.’ll bail him out. There’s always something prepared for those chaps. Here they’ve got a yacht standing by. That’ll take everyone of importance.’

‘And the rest of us?’ Tandy asked.

Ben Phipps looked him up and down with a critical and caustic smile. ‘What have you got to worry about? You can walk on the water, can’t you?’

Tandy though he laughed with the others, had a remote and calculating expression in his little eyes. He had declared his policy for survival. He did not stay anywhere too long, but here he was in a cul-de-sac. What would he do now?

As no one could answer this question, they turned their backs on a situation that was likely to defeat even Tandy, and began to talk of other things. Ben Phipps said Dubedat and Toby Lush spent their time standing in food queues. He had seen them in different shopping districts, buying up tinned foods that were too expensive for most people.

‘They’ll pay anything for anything,’ he said. ‘A bad sign if the Major’s running short. How about Pinkers? How’s he facing up to the emergency?’

‘Splendidly,’ said Alan. ‘He’s got only one worry: who should he get to translate his lecture into Greek? He wants it published in both languages. He keeps saying: “I must have a scholar. Only a scholar will do,” and every day he trots in
with a new suggestion. When this problem is settled (if it ever is!) we will have to decide who should print the work, then a distributor must be found …’

‘Are you serious?’

‘My dear Ben, you think the question of the moment is: Will the Germans get here? If you worked in the News Room you would be required to ponder a question of infinitely greater import: how soon can we get Pinkrose’s lecture into the bookshops?’

‘So he’s no longer concerned about his safety?’

‘Never speaks of it.’

‘Think he’s got an escape route up his sleeve?’

‘If he has, I’d like to know what it is. A lot of people have to be got out of Greece: British subjects, committed Greeks, refugee Jews; four or five hundred, and quite a few children.’

‘I thought the children went on the evacuation boat?’

‘Not all. Several women wouldn’t leave their husbands. And life goes on. English babies have been born since the boat went.’

‘What has the Legation got in mind?’

‘We must wait and see.’

There were two narrow beds in the Pringles’ room. Guy and Harriet had not slept apart since their marriage but now they would have the width of the room between them. Each felt cold alone, the covers were thin; and sandflies came in through the broken mesh of the window screens.

In the middle of the night Harriet woke and heard Guy moaning. He had been reading, propped up with a pillow, and had fallen asleep with the light on. She could see him struggling in sleep as against a tormentor. She crossed the room to where his bed stood under one of the windows and saw the sandflies shifting, as he struck out at them, in a flight leisurely but elusive. A moment later they attacked him again. He did not wake up but was conscious of her, and whimpered: ‘Make them go away.’

She had bought a new box of pastilles and, after placing
them on the table, the bed-head and the window-sill, lit them so the smoke encircled him like a
cheval-de-frise
. The pillow had dropped to the floor. She put it under his head, then stood at the end of the bed and watched while the flies dispersed. He sank back into sleep, murmuring: ‘David has not come.’

She said: ‘He may come tomorrow.’

From some outpost of sleep, so distant it was beyond the restrictions of time, he answered with extreme sadness: ‘He won’t come now. He’s lost.’

‘Aren’t we all lost?’ she asked, but he had gone too far to hear her.

Back in bed, she thought of the early days of their marriage when she had believed she knew him completely. She still believed she knew him completely, but the person she knew now was not the person she had married. She saw that in the beginning she had engaged herself to someone she did not know. There were times when he seemed to her so changed, she could not suppose he had any hold on her. Imagining all the threads broken between them, she thought she had only to walk away. Now she was not sure. At the idea of flight, she felt the tug of loyalties, emotions and dependencies. For each thread broken, another had been thrown out to claim her. If she tried to escape, she might find herself held by a complex, an imprisoning web, she did not even know was there.