The Balkan Trilogy (28 page)

‘Anyway, it let you preserve your integrity intact.’

Clarence kept his head hanging for some moments, then, hurt, he said quietly: ‘I might have expected you to say something like that.’ He suddenly gave a half-laugh of satisfaction that she had fulfilled his worst expectations, then he said: ‘Someone had to look after the camp.’

‘A woman could have done the job.’

He raised his brows, considered this, then drawled: ‘No, not really,’ but he did not enlarge on his denial.

‘So there were no bitches there!’

‘Oh yes, there was one – a magnificent bitch. An English girl looking after a crowd of evacuee children. She did exactly what she liked. She slept with anyone she wanted. Even with me. Yes, one night she pointed at me and said: “I’ll have you,” and I followed her out.’ Clarence sat for a while silent, smiling at the memory of it.

‘Nothing came of that, I suppose?’

‘What could come of it? She had a Spaniard she was mad about. One of the English fellows went on leave to Paris and she ordered him to bring her back an evening dress. When he brought the dress, he gave a party, thinking she would dance with him: but she just ignored him and danced all night with the Spaniard. I like tough women. Women of character.’

‘You like being pushed around.’

‘Not necessarily.’ He sat withdrawn for a while, before he said: ‘In Spain there was colour and heat and danger. Things were significant there. Life should be like that.’

‘There is danger here.’

‘Oh!’ He shrugged his contempt of the present.

Throughout the meal Clarence pursued his memories, that were all much alike. Contemplating those worlds of delight from which he felt himself excluded, he said several times: ‘Life should be like that.’ When he had talked himself out and was waiting for the bill, Harriet asked him: ‘You like feeling dissatisfied with yourself. Why is that?’

Clarence stuck out his lower lip but did not reply.

‘For you do like it,’ she insisted. ‘You enjoy revealing your worst aspects.’

He said: ‘We all get corrupted. Even Guy.’

‘In what way is Guy corrupted?’

‘Before he married he owned hardly anything. He had no room of his own, not even a cupboard. People used to put him up: they loved having him. He didn’t mind where he slept. He’d sleep on the floor. Now you’re surrounding him with bourgeois comforts. You’re corrupting him.’

‘I thought he used to share a flat with you.’

‘Well, he did last spring, but when he first came here he had literally nothing. I’ve never seen a man with so few possessions.’

‘Now you’re blaming him for having a home like everyone else.’

The waiter arrived. Clarence, as he started to settle the bill, repeated obstinately: ‘You’re corrupting him.’

Harriet said: ‘He must have wanted to be corrupted or he would never have got himself married. A single man can go round sleeping on floors. A married couple are less welcome.’

Clarence did not reply. When they left the restaurant, Harriet realised he was rather drunk. She suggested they leave the car and walk to the hotel. He replied brusquely: ‘I drive best like this,’ and shot them with a series of violent movements round the corner and across the square. They jerked to a standstill outside the Athénée Palace.

They were late, but Guy was not in the bar and Albu had seen nothing of him. Harriet and Clarence decided to wait for him. The journalists – only a handful of whom were still in Bucharest – were in the telephone boxes in the hall. Harriet, alert now for the excitement of alarm, said: ‘I believe something has happened.’

‘What could happen?’ Clarence was gloomily ordering brandy.

Yakimov stood alone at the bar, holding an empty glass. Harriet was careful not to meet his gaze, but she had noticed a change in him. He was a down-at-heel, uncared-for figure very different from that she had met first in the garden restaurant. Then he had been allowed to dominate the scene, now it did not seem possible he could dominate anything. He was
sallow, rheumy, crumbled – a man in defeat. When he sidled up to Harriet saying: ‘Dear girl, how nice to see a human face,’ he looked so abject that she had not the heart to turn her back on him.

Drooping against the bar, holding the empty glass out at an angle that prevented its being overlooked, he sighed and said: ‘Haven’t been feeling too good. Bitter weather. Tells on your poor old Yaki.’

Harriet asked coldly if he had seen Guy. He shook his head.

‘Has anything happened?’

‘Not that I know of, dear girl.’ He glanced over his shoulder, then, stepping nearer, confided despondently: ‘Just had m’head bitten off by m’old friend, Prince Hadjimoscos. He was off to some party or other. I said: “Take me along, dear boy,” and what d’you think he said? “You’re not invited.” Not invited! I ask you! In a town like this. But I don’t let it worry me. It’s just anti-British feeling. It’s growing, dear girl. I can feel it. Haven’t been a war correspondent for nothing. They’re beginning to think the Allies are too far away.’

‘I’m surprised they didn’t think it long ago.’

Albu had put two glasses of brandy on the counter. Yakimov eyed them, and Clarence, with resigned annoyance, asked him if he would take a drink.

‘Wouldn’t say “No”, dear boy. Whisky for me.’

Having accepted his drink, he began to talk. Veering between complaint and a tolerant acceptance of suffering, he described how his friends Hadjimoscos, Horvath and Palu had all been horrid to him. There was only one explanation of it – anti-British feeling. After a while, realising that this despondent talk was not holding his audience, he made a visible attempt to pull himself together and give some entertainment in return for his drink.

‘Went to see Dobson this morning,’ he said. ‘Heard most amusing story. Foxy Leverett came out of Cap
ş
a’s last night, saw the German Minister’s Mercedes parked by the kerb, got into his Dion-Bouton, backed down the road, then raced forward and crashed the Mercedes. Devil of a crash, I’m told.
When the police came up, Foxy said: “You can call it provoked aggression.”’

As he finished this story, the journalists began to return. Looking at the Polish girl who had entered with Galpin, he said, half to himself: ‘There’s that dear girl!’ His large eyes fixed on Wanda, he bent towards Harriet and said: ‘You’ve heard that Galpin’s got her attached to some English paper?’ Yakimov’s tone subtly expressed derogation of the sort of paper that would employ Wanda. ‘Charming girl, but so irresponsible. Sends home all sorts of rumours and gossip, doesn’t care where she picks up the stuff …’ His voice faded as the two approached.

Harriet, glad to drop Yakimov, asked Galpin if there were any news.

‘Uh-huh.’ Galpin nodded his head, his expression glum. Among the journalists now ordering at the bar, there was the excitement of a situation come to life.

‘What is it?’

‘Just heard Hungary’s mobilising. German troops flooding in. We’ve been trying to get Budapest all evening but the lines are dead. It’s my belief that this time we’re for it.’

Harriet felt the pang of fear. Now, after six months in Rumania, she reacted more sharply to news of this sort than she would have done when she first arrived. In a small voice, she said: ‘But aren’t the passes blocked with snow?’

‘Oh, that old theory! Do you think snow could keep out mechanised forces?’

‘The Rumanians said they would fight.’

‘Don’t make me laugh. Have you ever seen the Rumanian army? A bunch of half-starved peasants.’

Without waiting for the order, Albu had handed Galpin a double whisky. Now, taking a gulp at it, Galpin grew flushed and stared at Harriet as though angry with her: ‘What do you think will happen here? Fifth column risings. This place is stiff with fifth columnists – not only those German bastards, but thousands of pro-Germans and chaps in German pay. And there’s all those hangers-on of the German Legation. They’re
not here for their health. There’re two big German establishments here – and a regular arsenal in each of them. We’re all marked down. Yours truly with the rest. Make no mistake about it. We’re just sitting on a time-bomb.’

Harriet had grown pale. As she put her hand to the bar counter, Clarence drawled with exaggerated calm: ‘What are you trying to do, Galpin? Scare the wits out of her?’

Galpin now swung his angry stare on to Clarence, but he was slightly disconcerted by this reproof. He drank to give himself time, then he said: ‘We’ve got to face facts. The women oughtn’t to stick around if they can’t face facts. And you chaps’ll have to face them, too. Everyone thinks you’re agents. Don’t quote me, but the chances are you’ll wake up one night with a gun in your belly.’

‘I’ll worry about that when it happens,’ said Clarence.

Yakimov’s eyes had grown round. ‘Is this really true about Hungary?’ he asked in shocked surprise.

‘True enough for my paper.’

‘Meaning,’ said Clarence, ‘you and the others have just cooked it up?’

‘Meaning nothing of the sort. Ask Screwby here. Hey, Screws!’

Screwby loped slowly over from the other side of the room, his smile wide and simple. Appealed to, he scratched one cheek of his large, soft, heavy face and said: ‘Yah, there’s something to it all right. Budapest’s closed down. Can’t get a squeak from them. That means a “stop” and a “stop” can mean anything. Something’ll happen tonight, and that’s for sure.’

Harriet said anxiously: ‘We must try and find Guy.’

‘First,’ said Clarence, ‘have another drink.’

‘After all,’ Yakimov tried to soothe her, ‘we can’t do anything. Might as well have a couple while we’re able. Doubt if we’ll get much in dear old Dachau.’ He giggled and looked at Clarence. Clarence ordered another round. When it was drunk, Harriet would stay no longer.

As they crossed the hall, the hotel door started to revolve. Harriet watched it hopefully but it was only Gerda Hoffman,
‘trying to look’, Harriet thought, ‘as fatal and clever as she’s reputed to be’. The train of Germans that followed her appeared to be in the highest spirits; congratulating themselves, it seemed to Harriet, on the elements of victory.

‘I wish we were safely out of this country,’ she said.

‘You’ll get leave in the summer,’ said Clarence. ‘Only five more months.’

They drove to the Doi Trandafiri. Guy was not there. They did a round of several other bars, but could see nothing of him. Harriet was mystified by his disappearance. In the end she said she would go home. When Clarence left her at the door of Bloc
ş
ul Cazacul, he said: ‘I expect he’s up there waiting for you.’ This now seemed so probable that Harriet was the more disturbed to find the flat dark and silent and the bedroom empty.

She was suddenly convinced that Guy’s disappearance had something to do with the scare about Hungary. Perhaps Sheppy had already taken him off on some sabotaging expedition. Perhaps he had already injured himself – or been arrested – or seized by the fifth columnists. Perhaps she would never see him again. She blamed herself that she had not gone immediately to Inchcape and asked him to interfere: now she went to the telephone and dialled his number. When he answered, she asked if Guy were with him. He had seen or heard nothing of Guy that evening.

She said: ‘There’s a rumour that Germany has invaded Hungary. Do you think it’s true?’

‘It could be.’ Inchcape took the news lightly. ‘It doesn’t mean they’ll come here. Hungary is, strategically speaking, more important to Germany than Rumania is. It simply means the Germans are straightening out their Eastern front.’

Harriet, in no mood to listen to Inchcape’s theories, broke in rather wildly: ‘Everyone thinks they’ll come here. All the journalists think so. And Guy has disappeared. I’m afraid he’s gone to Ploe
ş
ti with Sheppy on one of these insane sabotage plans.’

‘What insane sabotage plans?’ Inchcape spoke with the mild
patience of one out to discover something, but Harriet did not need to be manoeuvred. She was keeping nothing to herself. All she wanted now was to seize Guy back from disaster.

She answered: ‘Putting detonators down the oil wells. Blowing up the Iron Gates …’

‘
I see
! That’s what he’s up to, is he? Indeed! Well, don’t worry, my dear child. Leave this to me, will you?’

‘But where is Guy? Where is
Guy
?’

‘Oh, he’ll turn up.’ Inchcape spoke impatiently, the question of Guy’s whereabouts being, in importance, a long way behind the threat to his dignity contained in Sheppy’s use of his men.

As Harriet put down the receiver, she heard Guy’s key in the lock. He entered singing, his face agleam with the cold. ‘Why, hello!’ he said, surprised at seeing her standing unoccupied beside the telephone.

‘Where on earth have you been?’ she asked. ‘We were meeting you in the English Bar.’ She was guilty and cross with relief.

‘I glanced in and there was no one there, so I walked down to the Dâmbovi
ţ
a with Dubedat.’

‘Couldn’t you have waited? Can’t you wait for me even for ten minutes? Do you know that German troops are pouring into Hungary? They may invade Rumania tonight.’

‘I don’t believe it. I bet you got this from Galpin.’

‘I did, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.’

‘These rumours are never true.’

‘One day one will be true. This sort of phoney war can’t go on for ever. Someone’s got to move some time and we’ll be trapped. Galpin says the place is full of fifth columnists. He says you’ll wake up one night with a gun in your belly. We’ll be sent to Dachau. We’ll never be free … we’ll never go home again …’ As he reached her, she collapsed against him crying helplessly.

‘My poor darling.’ He put his arms round her, astonished. ‘I didn’t realise you were getting nervous.’ He put her into the armchair and telephoned the Legation, where Foxy
Leverett was on duty. He learnt that the rumours had derived from nothing more than a breakdown on the line to Budapest. This had now been righted. Foxy had just rung Budapest and found all quiet there.

While undressing, Guy grumbled about Galpin, Screwby ‘and the rest of the riff-raff we’ve got here calling themselves journalists. They’re utterly irresponsible. A story at any price. What does it matter so long as they can startle people into buying the paper?’