The Balkan Trilogy (23 page)

‘Without trial?’ Clarence asked, scandalised.

‘Certainly not,’ said Nikko. ‘This is a democratic country. There will be a trial. A
great
trial. A trial that will squash him flat.’

Dugdale gave a high neigh of a laugh. ‘Delicious!’ he cried.

Clarence asked: ‘You are amused by a system of government that permits wrongful arrest, wrongful seizure of property and imprisonment for life on faked charges?’

Dugdale turned slowly to examine Clarence and smiled slightly at what he saw: ‘Aren’t we in Ruritania?’ he said. ‘What do you expect?’

Nikko, looking in consternation from Dugdale to Clarence, tried to reprove both at once: ‘This is not a bad country. Many people come here as guests. They make money, they live well, and still they criticise. One admires England. Another admires France. Another America. But who admires Rumania? No one. She is a cow to be milked.’

The truth and vehemence of Nikko’s statement brought the table to a stop. After a silence, Harriet asked Dugdale if he thought he would enjoy Ankara.

‘Things could be worse,’ he said. ‘My first appointment. I was offered Sofia – a deadly hole. However, I exerted a little pull and landed Ankara. It’s an embassy. I’m not dissatisfied.’

Yakimov, who had just filled his plate with turkey, taking most of the breast, said: ‘Let’s face it, dear boy. An embassy is better than a legation.’ Having thus contributed to the conversation, he set about his food again.

Guy asked Dugdale what he imagined would be Germany’s next move.

Dugdale answered in an authoritative tone: ‘In my opinion Germany has made her last move. Russia is the one we have to fear.’

Yakimov, his mouth full, mumbled agreement.

‘The next victim will be Sweden,’ said Dugdale, ‘then, of course, Norway and Denmark. After that the Balkans, the Mediterranean, North Africa – what’s to stop them? The Allies and the Axis will watch helplessly, each unable to
make a move for fear of bringing the other in on the side of Russia.’

Guy began to say: ‘This is absurd. Russia has enough to do inside her own frontiers. What would she want …’

He was interrupted by Nikko, his brows raised in alarm. ‘But Rumania would fight,’ he said. ‘And the Turks, too. They would fight. At least I think so.’

‘The Turks!’ Dugdale put a small potato into his mouth and swallowed it contemptuously. ‘We give them money to buy armaments, and what do they spend it on?
Education
.’

‘Hopeless people!’ Inchcape grinned at Clarence, who grinned back. Harriet was thankful they had, at last, decided to come down on the side of flippancy.

Despina had cut more turkey and was carrying the large serving dish round again. When she came to Yakimov, she held it so that the white meat was out of his reach.

‘Just a
soup
ç
on
, dear girl,’ he said with an air of wheedling intimacy and, stretching out his arms, he again took most of the breast. Only a few vegetables remained. He took them all. Despina, hissing through her teeth, attracted Harriet’s attention and pointed to his plate. Harriet waved her on. Only Yakimov, intent on his food, remained unaware of Despina’s indignation. He ate at speed, wiped his mouth with his napkin and looked around to see what was coming next.

Guy, having anticipated an evening of Yakimov’s wit, now tried to encourage him to talk by telling stories himself. When his stories were exhausted, he started on limericks, occasionally pausing to ask Yakimov if he could not think of some himself. Yakimov shook his head. Despina having brought in a large mince pie, he could attend to nothing else.

Guy searched his mind for limericks and remembered one that he thought would seem particularly funny to the company. It concerned the morals of a British diplomat in the Balkans.

‘That,’ said Dugdale coldly, ‘seems to me in rather bad taste.’

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Yakimov heartily.

For some minutes there was no sound but that of Yakimov bolting down pie. He finished his helping before Despina had completed serving the others. ‘Hah!’ he said with satisfaction and, unimpaired, looked to her for more.

As soon as was possible, Harriet motioned Bella to retire with her to the bedroom. There, not caring whether she was overheard or not, she raged: ‘How dare he snub Guy! The gross snob, wolfing down our food, and bringing that dyspeptic skeleton with him. When he gave his tremendous parties – if he ever gave them, which I doubt – he would not have dreamt of inviting us. Now he entertains his friends at our expense.’

Bella was quick to echo this indignation: ‘If I were you, my dear, I wouldn’t ask him here again.’

‘Certainly not,’ said Harriet, dramatic in anger; ‘this is the first and last time he sets foot in my house.’

When the women returned to the room, the men were gathered round the electric fire. Guy was helping Yakimov to brandy. Dugdale, unperturbed, was sprawling in the arm-chair again. At the entry of the women, he lifted himself slightly and was about to drop back, when Harriet pushed the chair from him and offered it to Bella. He took himself to another chair with the expression of one overlooking a breach of good manners.

Inchcape smiled maliciously at Harriet, then turned to Yakimov and asked him: ‘Are you going on later to Princess Teodorescu’s party?’

Yakimov lifted his nose from his glass. ‘I might,’ he said, ‘but those parties come a bit rough on your poor old Yaki.’

To Harriet’s annoyance, Guy was still trying to persuade Yakimov to talk. Yakimov seemed to be rousing himself, to be searching for jests through the fog of repletion, when there was a ring at the front door. Dubedat was admitted.

He made no concessions to the occasion. He had kept on his sheepskin jacket and to his personal smell was added the smell of badly cured skin. Looking, so Harriet thought,
dirtier than ever, he surveyed the table grimly, aware the others had dined here and he had not.

At the sight of this new arrival, Dugdale rose and said he must go.

‘Oh, no.’ Guy tried to detain him. ‘You have plenty of time to catch your train. You must have another brandy.’

Guy began rapidly splashing brandy from glass to glass, but Dugdale stood firm. He had, he said, to collect his baggage from the cloak-room.

‘Well, before you go,’ said Guy, ‘we must have “Auld Lang Syne”.’

Several people informed him that that was sung at New Year, but Guy said: ‘Never mind.’ His enthusiasm was such, the others rose and Dugdale let himself be drawn into the circle. When he had retrieved his hands, he said in a businesslike way: ‘Now, my overcoat.’

While he was wrapping himself up, Yakimov sat down again and refilled his glass. Harriet, noticing this, said: ‘I imagine you will see your friend to the station.’

‘Oh, no, dear girl. Yaki isn’t too well …’

‘I think you should.’

Even Yakimov recognised this as an invitation to go. Despondently, he gulped down the brandy and let himself be put into his coat.

When he and Dugdale had gone, Harriet and Bella freely expressed their indignation – an indignation that completely bewildered Guy.

‘What are you two talking about?’ he asked.

When they told him how he had been insulted, he burst out laughing. ‘I doubt whether Yaki even knew what he had said.’

Harriet and Bella would have none of this, and Nikko backed them. While the other men sat complacently uninvolved in the situation, the two women insisted that he should never speak to Yakimov again.

Guy sat in silence, smiling slightly and letting the storm pass over his head. When at last it died down, Clarence said
from the back of the room: ‘Yakimov came to the Relief Centre the other day presenting himself as a refugee from Poland. I lent him ten thousand.’

‘Oh,’ said Guy easily, ‘he’ll pay it back.’

Down in the street, Yakimov said: ‘Seems to me I was given the boot. Can’t for the life of me think why.’

Dugdale showed no interest. Calling a taxi, he said discouragingly: ‘I suppose you want to be dropped somewhere?’

‘Athéneé Palace, dear boy. Feel I ought to drop in on Princess T.’ As they drove across the square, he added: ‘I wonder, dear boy – end of the month and all that; bit short of the Ready – could you lend poor Yaki a
leu
or two?’

‘No,’ said Dugdale, ‘my last five hundred went on tea.’

‘If you have any odd pennies or francs …’

Dugdale did not reply. When the taxi stopped, he opened the door and waited for Yakimov to descend.

Yakimov on the pavement said: ‘Delightful day. Thank you for everything. See you when you’re back this way. Yaki’s turn next.’

Dugdale slammed the door on his speech and directed the taxi on. Yakimov pushed against the hotel door: the door revolved and he came out again. He stood for a moment looking after the taxi. Could he have brought himself to admit his address, he might have been driven all the way home.

He set out to walk. The Siberian wind, plunging and shrilling, stung his ears and tugged at the skirts of his coat. As he put up his collar and buried in it his long icicle of a nose, he murmured: ‘Poor Yaki’s getting too old for his job.’

Soon after the last of the Christmas guests had gone, the telephone rang in the Pringles’ flat. Guy answered it. The caller was Sophie.

Sophie had not arrived, as expected, after dinner. Harriet went into the bedroom and left Guy to talk to her.

Sitting at her dressing-table, Harriet heard Guy’s voice, concerned, solicitous, apparently pleading, and it renewed in her the anger Yakimov had aroused. Bella had said if she were
Harriet, she would put a stop to that relationship. This, Harriet felt, was the moment to do it. She went into the sitting room and asked: ‘What is the matter?’

Guy was looking grave. He put his hand over the mouthpiece and said: ‘Sophie’s in a state of depression. She wants me to go over and see her. Alone.’

‘At this time of night? Tell her it’s out of the question.’

‘She’s threatening to do something desperate.’

‘Such as?’

‘Jump out of a window, or take an overdose of sleeping-tablets.’

‘Let me speak to her.’ Harriet took the receiver and said into it: ‘What is the matter, Sophie? You are being very silly. You know if you really intended to do anything like that, you would do it and not talk about it.’

There was a long pause before Sophie’s voice came, tear-fully: ‘I will jump if Guy doesn’t come. My mind is made up.’

‘Then go ahead and do it.’

‘Do what?’

‘Why, jump, of course.’

Sophie gulped with horror. She said: ‘I hate you. I hated you from the first. You are a cruel girl. A girl without heart.’ There came the thud of her receiver being thrown down.

‘Now,’ said Guy severely, ‘I shall have to go. There’s no knowing what she may do if I don’t.’

‘If you go,’ said Harriet, ‘you won’t find me here when you come back.’

‘You are being absurd,’ said Guy. ‘I expected more sense from you.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I married you. You are part of myself. I expect from you what I expect from myself.’

‘You mean you are taking me for granted? Then you are a fool. I won’t tolerate any more of this Sophie nonsense. If you go, I leave.’

‘Don’t be a baby.’ He went into the hall and started to put on his coat, but his movements were uncertain. When he was
ready, he stood irresolute, looking at her in worried enquiry. She felt a flicker of triumph that he realised he did not know her after all, then she choked in her throat. She turned away.

‘Darling.’ He came back to the room and put his arms around her. ‘If it upsets you, of course I won’t go.’

At that, she said, ‘But you must go. I can’t have you worrying about Sophie all night.’

‘Well!’ He looked into the hall and then looked at Harriet. ‘I feel I ought to go.’

‘I know,’ she said, solving the problem as she had intended to solve it all along. ‘We’ll go together.’

The front door of Sophie’s house was unlatched. The door into her flat was propped open with a book. When she heard Guy’s step, she called in a sad little voice: ‘Come in,
chéri
.’ As he pushed wide the door, Harriet, behind him, could see Sophie sitting up in bed, a pink silk shawl round her shoulders. On the table beside her the picture that had been face downwards on Harriet’s first visit now stood upright. It was a photograph of Guy.

Despite the smallness of her down-drooping smile, Sophie was much restored. She put her head on one side, sniffed and began to speak – then she noticed Harriet. Her expression changed. She turned on Guy.

‘Your wife is a monster,’ she said.

Guy laughed at this statement, but it brought Harriet to a stop in the doorway. She said: ‘I’ll wait for you downstairs.’

She waited for about five minutes in the hallway of the house, then went out into the street. There she started to walk quickly, scarcely aware of the direction in which she went. For the first few hundred yards, feeling neither cold nor fear of the empty streets, she was carried on by a sense of injury that Guy should choose, after such a remark, to stay with Sophie: that he was, in fact, still with her.

Harriet was resolved not to go home. She found herself in the Calea Victoriei moving rapidly towards the Dâmbovi
ţ
a, then she asked herself where she could go. In this country, where women went almost nowhere unescorted, her appearance, at
this hour, luggageless, in an hotel would rouse the deepest suspicion. She might even be refused a room. She thought of the people she knew here – Bella, Inchcape, Clarence – and was disinclined to go to any of them with complaints about Guy. Inchcape might be sympathetic but would have no wish to be involved. Clarence would misunderstand the situation. Whever she went, she would take with her an accusation of failure against Guy’s way of life. She reflected that for her, and for Clarence, life was an involute process: they reserved themselves – and for what? With Guy it was a matter to be lived.

Contemplating in Clarence her own willingness to escape from living, she felt a revulsion from it. She had, she knew, done her worst with Sophie. She had made no attempt to flatter, she had not admitted herself to be vulnerable, she had not wanted Sophie’s assistance. She had made none of those emotional appeals to which Sophie, once put into a position of power, might have responded with emotion.