The Balkan Trilogy (39 page)

‘What do you think?’ Harriet asked.

‘I don’t know.’ Clarence spoke slowly, putting up a show of reflective calm. ‘The Germans reached the Marne in the last war. The French fought like madmen to save Paris. They went to the front in taxis; every man in Paris turned out; and the line held. It could happen again.’

As they approached the Arc de Triomphe, the crowds thinned. Three little peasant girls, not yet in their teens, wearing embroidered dresses and flowers in their hair, suddenly appeared in front of them, and, dancing backwards, began chanting something at Clarence. Harriet thought they were begging, but they were not using the beggar’s whine, and they occasionally gave Harriet mischievous side-glances of great liveliness.

‘What do they want?’ she asked.

‘Why,’ said Clarence, ‘they’re offering themselves, of course. They’re whores.’

‘They can’t be. They’re children.’

Clarence shrugged. With his chin down, his lower lip thrust out, he looked from under his brows at the girls who were dancing before him, sometimes scattering apart and sometimes bunching together and giggling at whatever they were suggesting.

‘They’re a lot more cheerful than most peasants,’ Harriet said, laughing.

Clarence grunted. ‘They haven’t yet learnt what life is like.’

‘It’s odd they should approach you when I’m here.’

‘They’re inexperienced. They know no better.’

Aware they were being discussed, the girls shrieked with laughter, but they had begun to look about them for more promising material. Seeing a group of men together in the distance, they suddenly ran off, squeaking among themselves like a flock of starlings.

Harriet, her mind elsewhere, said: ‘That was rather amusing.’

‘You think so!’ Clarence sombrely asked.

They went to one of the smaller garden restaurants, where the dusk was clotting in the trees. It was the time of the year when the evenings were most delightful – as warm as summer but still scented and moist with vegetation. Out here, beyond the houses, the whole sweep of the sky was visible from the iris-blue of the horizon up to the zenith, that was the rich, bloomed purple of a grape. There were a few stars of great size and brilliance.

A small orchestra was playing in the garden. When it came to a stop, neighbouring orchestras could be heard wailing and sobbing in response like birds. Somewhere in the distance Florica rose to her top note. But the music soothed no one. The diners glanced from table to table, aware of themselves and those about them, all gathered helplessly here in a time of disaster. Only the lovers at secluded tables remained untouched in their private worlds outside the flow of time.

Clarence sighed and said: ‘I wonder what will become of
us. We may never get home again. I imagine your parents are pretty worried.’

‘I haven’t any parents,’ said Harriet. ‘At least, none to speak of. They divorced when I was very small. They both remarried and neither found it convenient to have me. My Aunt Penny brought me up. I was a nuisance to her, too, and when I was naughty she used to say: “No wonder your mummy and daddy don’t love you.” In fact, all I have is here.’

She wondered what it was she had. Looking up through the leaves at the rich and lustrous sky, she felt resentment of Guy because he was not here. She told herself he was a man who could never be present when needed. This was a time they should be together. Looking at the budding canna lilies and breathing in the scent of the box, she thought she should be sharing with Guy these enchantments that gave so keen an edge to suspense.

They had ordered their food. When the wine waiter came, Clarence said: ‘Well, if we die tomorrow, we can at least drink well.’ He chose an expensive Tokay.

Harriet thought that, after all, she was not alone. She had someone. It was a pity she could feel no more for Clarence than that. It was, she thought, a charade of a relationship, given an added dimension by the uncertainty in which they existed. It had to serve for what she missed with Guy. And did Guy realise she missed anything at all?

She wondered if he had any true awareness of the realities of life. That morning Dobson had rung the flat to say that British subjects must get transit visas for all neighbouring countries against a possible sudden evacuation. Guy said: ‘You’ll have to get them. I’m much too busy with the play.’ She felt his escape from reality the less excusable because it was he who, in their few pre-war days together, had been the advocate of an anti-fascist war, a war that would, he knew, come down like a knife between him and his friends in England. He had often quoted: ‘So I drink your health before the gun-butt raps upon the door.’ Well, here was the gun-butt – and where was Guy? He would be
dragged off to Belsen protesting that he could not go because he was too busy.

Clarence, watching her, asked her what she was smiling at. She said: ‘I was thinking of Guy.’ After a pause, she asked him: ‘Did you know that Guy once thought of marrying Sophie to give her a British passport?’

‘Surely not?’

‘He
thought
of it. But I doubt if he would ever have done it. He might be a natural teacher but he’s not taking on, on a permanent basis, the teacher-pupil relationship. No, when it came to marriage, he chose someone he thought would not make too many demands. Perhaps the trouble is, I make too few.’

Clarence looked at her keenly but his only comment was to say in a tone of high complaint: ‘Guy picks up with the most extraordinary people. Take Yakimov, for instance. Now, there’s a mollusc on the hull of life, a no-man’s-land of the soul. I doubt if Guy will ever shake him off. You’ve got him for life now.’

Harriet, refusing to be upset, said: ‘I think Guy saw him as a subject for improvement. He could turn him into something, even if it were only an actor. You know what Guy is like. I’ve heard you say he is a saint.’

‘He may be a sort of saint but he’s also a sort of fool. You don’t believe me? You’ll find I’m right. He can’t see through people as you can. Don’t be misled by him.’

Harriet said: ‘He’s not a fool, but it’s true, he can suffer fools. That’s his strength. Because of that, he’ll never have a shortage of friends.’

‘There’s a streak of the exhibitionist in Guy,’ said Clarence. ‘He likes to feel himself at the centre. He likes to have a following.’

‘Well, he certainly has got a following.’

‘A following of fools.’

‘That’s the only sort anyone can hope to have. The discriminating are lonely. Look at me. When Guy is occupied, I have no one but you.’

Clarence smiled, taking this as a compliment.

The fiddler from the orchestra was wandering round playing at each table in turn. When he reached Clarence and Harriet, he bowed with significant smiles, certain they were lovers. He struck his bow across the strings and, working himself into an immediate frenzy, produced poignant howls from his instrument. It was all over in a moment, a rapid orgasm, then he bowed again, and Clarence gave him a glass of wine. He held up the glass first to Clarence, then to Harriet, congratulating them – on what? Probably on their non-existent passion.

Clarence’s beautiful, gentle mouth sank sadly as he gazed into his glass. When he had drunk enough, Harriet noted, forbearance took the place of self-criticism. He now felt love and pity for his own sufferings.

She said: ‘You should get married.’

‘One can’t just marry for marrying’s sake.’

‘There’s always Brenda.’

‘Brenda is twelve hundred miles away,’ he said. ‘I don’t know when I’ll see her again, and I don’t know that I want to. She isn’t what I need.’

Harriet did not ask him what he needed, but he was now drunk enough to tell her: ‘I need someone strong, fierce, intolerant and noble.’ He added: ‘Someone like you.’

She laughed, rather uneasy at so direct an approach. ‘I don’t recognise myself. I’m not strong. I suppose I’m intolerant – a bad fault. I have no patience with people. Sophie told Guy he had married a monster.’

‘Oh, Sophie!’ Clarence spoke the name with contempt.

Harriet said: ‘I sometimes think I shall end up a lonely, ragged, mad old woman trailing along the gutter.’

‘Why should you?’ Clarence tartly asked. ‘You’ve got Guy. I suppose you’ll always have Guy.’

‘And he’ll always have the rest of the world.’

When they drove up the Calea Victoriei, they saw that the illuminations had been switched off in the Ci
ş
migiu. The park, where people walked in summer until all hours, was now
silent and deserted, a map of darkness in the heart of the subdued city.

Clarence said: ‘“The Paris of the East” mourning her opposite number.’

In contrast, the German Bureau window was brilliant with white neon, and still drew its audience. They saw, as they passed, the red arrows, open-jawed like pincers, almost encircling the site of Paris.

When they entered the theatre, they entered an atmosphere so removed from the outside tension that it might have been that of another planet. Every light was lit in the foyer. People were hurrying about, all, it seemed, so hypnotised by Guy and his production that reality had lost substance for them. They were possessed by a creative excitement, anticipating fulfilment, not defeat.

Even Clarence was caught, as he entered, into this atmosphere. He said: ‘I must leave you. Guy wants us dressed and ready by eleven o’clock,’ and he hurried off into a maze of passages to find the dressing room assigned to him.

Harriet, after standing uncertainly awhile, went in search of a familiar face, but the people she met brushed past her, too wrapped up in their players’ world to recognise her. Only Yakimov, on his way to the stage in pink tights and a cloak of rose coloured velvet, stopped and said: ‘What’s the matter, dear girl? You look worried.’

‘Everyone’s worried,’ she said. ‘The Germans have almost reached Paris.’

‘Really!’ He looked concerned a moment, then someone called him, his face cleared, and he left her for more important matters.

She hoped she might be needed to advise on the wearing of the costumes, but she was only the designer. The wardrobe mistress, a student, pins in her mouth, needle and cotton in hand, was surrounded by enquiries and complaints. Harriet stood beside her a while, hoping to be consulted, but the girl, with a brief shy smile, indicated that she could cope very well on her own.

Harriet had never encouraged the students. She had, indeed, resented their possessiveness and their demands on Guy’s time, so now she knew she had only herself to blame if they received her with respect rather than cordiality.

She came at length on Bella, who was sharing a dressing room with Andromache and Cassandra. The girls were dressing unobtrusively in the background while Bella, already dressed, sat before the glass, critically yet complacently examining her face, that was richly coloured in creams, buffs, pinks and browns. Her hair, that had grown more golden since Harriet last saw it, was caught into a golden tube and hung in a tail down her back.

Harriet said: ‘I’ve brought the chiffons.’

‘Oh, darling!’ Without taking her eyes from the glass, Bella stretched a hand in Harriet’s direction and wriggled her fingers. ‘How sweet of you!’ She threw her voice back to the girls: ‘
Aten
ţ
iune!
Doamna Pringle has brought us some gorgeous chiffons.’ Bella, it seemed, had taken on with her status of actress the elevated camaraderie of the green-room.

When Harriet had distributed the chiffons, she made her way back to the immense auditorium, with its gilt and claret-coloured plush, that was lit only by the light from the stage. She took a seat in the row behind Fitzsimon, Dobson and Foxy Leverett, who were dressed ready for the rehearsal. Dobson and Foxy were advising Fitzsimon that he must ensure his success in the leading rôle by padding out the front of his tights.

‘– certainly stuffing in some cotton-wool,’ said Foxy, gleeful at the thought. ‘The girls here like to see a teapot.’

On the stage Guy, dressed as Nestor, but not made up, was haranguing a line of peasants who blinked bashfully into the glare from the footlights.

Harriet whispered to Dobson: ‘What is going on?’

‘They’re the stage-hands,’ said Dobson. ‘Guy spent the afternoon explaining what was required of them and putting them through it, but just now, when he started the rehearsal, they were hopeless. They’re just indifferent, of course. They think anything will do for a pack of foreigners.’

Driven into one of his rare fits of anger, Guy had lined the men up before him. Some were in dark, shabby suits like indigent clerks, others in a mixture of city and peasant dress; one man, so thin that he had an appearance of fantastic height, wore on the point of his head a conical peasant cap. Some stood grinning in a sort of foggy wonder at being addressed, and forcibly addressed, by a foreigner in their own language. One or two looked dignified and pained: the rest stood in a stupor, any language, even their own, being barely comprehensible to them.

From what she could catch of his words, Harriet gathered that Guy was impressing on the men that tomorrow evening a great company of Rumanian Princes, aristocrats and statesmen, foreign diplomats and distinguished personages of every nationality and kind, was to be present. This was to be a tremendous occasion when every man must do not only his best, but more than his best. He must achieve a triumph that would stun the world with admiration. The honour of this great national theatre was at stake; the honour of Bucharest was at stake – nay, the honour of the whole of Rumania was in their hands.

As Guy’s voice rose, the three Legation men stopped talking among themselves and listened.

The stage-hands shuffled and coughed a bit as the force of their responsibility was revealed to them. One, a short, stout, ragged peasant with a look of congenital idiocy, grinned, unable to take Guy seriously. Guy pointed at him. ‘You!’ he cried. ‘What do you do?’

The man was a scene-shifter.

A job of supreme importance, said Guy. A job on which depended the success or failure of the whole production. Guy looked to him for his full support. The peasant grinned from side to side, but, meeting no response from his fellows, his grin faded.