The Balkan Trilogy (6 page)

‘Really!’ Harriet was impressed by the law degree.

‘It doesn’t mean anything here,’ said Inchcape. ‘They all take law degrees. That qualifies them to become second assistant stamp-lickers in the civil service.’

‘Guy says the Rumanian girls are intelligent.’

‘They’re quick. But all Rumanians are much of a much-ness. They can absorb facts but can’t do anything with them. A lot of stuffed geese, I call them. An uncreative people.’ While speaking, he kept his eye on a young woman who now mounted the platform and, stopping at the table and ignoring the others present, stared mournfully at Guy. He, talking, failed to notice her.

In a plaintive, little voice she said: ‘’Allo!’

‘Why, hello!’ Guy leapt to his feet and kissed her on either cheek. Sophie suffered the embrace with a slight smile, taking in the company as she did so.

Guy turned cheerfully to Harriet: ‘Darling, you must meet Sophie. Sophie, my wife.’

As Sophie looked at Harriet, her expression suggested she was at a loss to understand not only how he had acquired a wife, but how he had acquired such a wife. She eventually gave a nod and looked away. She was a pretty enough girl, dark like most Rumanians, too full in the cheeks. Her chief beauty was her figure. Looking at Sophie’s well developed bosom, Harriet felt at a disadvantage. Perhaps Sophie’s shape would not last, but it was enviable while it lasted.

Guy looked for another chair.

‘Here,’ said Clarence, ‘take mine. I must go.’

‘No, no.’ Guy tried to hold him, but, after pausing uncertainly for a while, Clarence suddenly darted off.

‘Now where’s he gone?’ Inchcape stared after Clarence, then gave Sophie a frown of annoyance, making it clear he thought her a poor exchange. Ignoring him, Sophie watched Guy reproachfully. It was some time before he noticed this, then he said:

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Nothing to be discussed in public.’ After a pause, she added: ‘Ah, this war! Such a terrible thing! It has made me so sad. When I go to bed at night, I am thinking of it: when I wake, I am thinking of it. Always I am thinking of it.’

Inchcape filled a glass and put it in front of her. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘have a drink and cheer up.’ When Sophie ignored the wine, Inchcape turned his back on her and indicated the diners below. ‘Down there,’ he said, ‘unless I’m much mistaken, there’s a fellow who was at the Crillon when I stayed there some years ago. A Prince Yakimov. He used to be a very well known figure in Paris society.’

While Inchcape spoke, Harriet heard Sophie’s voice, uneven with tears: ‘How can he say to me “Cheer up”? Is this a time to cheer up? It is very well, the “stiff upper lip”, if you are not sensitive. But me – I am very sensitive.’ Guy was trying to distract her with the menu. What would she eat? It was difficult to decide. She had just come from a party where she had eaten this and that; and was not hungry but perhaps she would have a little smoked salmon.

‘Yakimov?’ Harriet tried to sort that name out of her memory. ‘Which do you mean?’

‘There, dining with Dobson. Haven’t you met Dobson? Yakimov’s the long, lean fellow, face like a camel. Not, I may say, that he’s one for going long without a drink.’

‘I’ve seen him before. He came on our train.’

This concentration of interest elsewhere was too much for Guy. Breaking through a new plaint from Sophie, he asked: ‘What are you talking about?’

‘A man called Yakimov,’ said Inchcape. ‘Something of a
raconteur
and joker. There’s a story about his painting the windows black.’

Harriet asked: ‘Which windows? Why?’

‘I’ve no idea. Being half Irish and half White Russian, he’s said to have a peculiarly English sense of humour.’

The three of them watched Yakimov, who, intent upon his food, was not recounting at that moment.

Petulantly Sophie broke in on them to ask: ‘What is a peculiarly English sense of humour?’

‘A pleasant humour, I suppose,’ said Guy, ‘a good-humoured humour. Here a painful boot in the arse is called a Rumanian kick, and a dunt with the knee is called the English kick. That’s the idea.’

At the word ‘arse’ Sophie’s face went blank, but only Harriet noticed it.

Guy said: ‘I’d like to meet Yakimov. Let’s ask them over.’

‘Oh,’ Inchcape protested, ‘do we want Dobson here?’

Guy said: ‘I don’t mind Dobson. He entered the diplomatic service so late in life, he is still reasonably human.’

‘An amateur diplomat, you might say. Drifted into the service after a rich and idle youth. I don’t dislike him myself. If it costs him nothing, he’d as soon be pleasant as unpleasant.’

Guy tore a sheet from a notebook and scribbled on it while Inchcape, having no part in the invitation, looked the other way. The note was taken by the waiter. Dobson wrote a line on it and sent it back.

‘They’re coming for coffee,’ said Guy.

‘Ah!’ Inchcape let his breath out and helped himself to wine.

Before retiring to bed that afternoon, Yakimov had sent to the station for his cases and handed most of his clothing over to the hotel valet.

Now, sauntering behind Dobson across the restaurant, his yellow waistcoat newly cleaned, the fine line of his check suit accentuated by skilful pressing, he had an air of elegance, even if rather eccentric elegance. When he reached the table to
which he was being led, he smiled benignly upon it. After he had been introduced to the table, he picked up Harriet’s hand, kissed it and said: ‘How delightful, when one has lived too long abroad, to meet an English beauty.’

‘I’m told you have a peculiarly English sense of humour,’ said Harriet.

‘Dear me! Has poor Yaki’s reputation preceded him?’ Yakimov showed his gratification so simply, it dissipated Harriet’s first suspicion of him – a suspicion based on nothing she could define. He repeated: ‘A peculiarly English sense of humour! I am flattered,’ and he looked to see if Dobson had overheard the tribute, but Dobson was talking to Guy. He said: ‘I was delighted to hear you chaps were back, but surprised they let you come.’ His nervous explosion of laughter softened his remark, but Inchcape’s mouth turned down.

Dobson, who had walked trippingly, carrying himself so that his back line curved in at the waist and his front line curved out, was in young middle age, plump, dimpled, pink and white as a cupid. He was very bald but over his pate were pools of baby-soft fluff left by the receding hair.

Guy said: ‘I was ordered back here. The London office says we’re in a reserved occupation.’

‘So you are,’ Dobson agreed, ‘but they don’t think what a worry it is for us chaps now having a lot of British nationals here without diplomatic protection.’ His laughter exploded again, joking and tolerant, but Inchcape was not amused.

He said: ‘I imagine that worry is part of your job.’

Dobson jerked his head up, discomforted at being taken so seriously. He laughed again and Harriet understood why he seemed to Guy ‘reasonably human’. This constant nervous laughter rippling over his occupational self-possession gave the impression he was more approachable than his kind. At the same time, she realised he was more than a little drunk. She decided he might be an easy acquaintance, but would not be easy to know.

Chairs were becoming scarce now. Guy had to tip the waiter before he would set out in search of more. When two arrived,
Dobson lay on his as though about to slide off it, and stared at a slip of paper he held in his hand. It seemed so to bewilder him that Harriet looked over his shoulder. He was studying his dinner bill.

Yakimov placed his chair beside Harriet. To Sophie, on the other side of the table, the arrival of these newcomers was, apparently, an imposition scarcely to be borne.

Harriet said to Yakimov: ‘I saw you on the train at the frontier.’

‘Did you indeed!’ Yakimov gave Harriet a wary look. ‘Not to tell a lie, dear girl, I was having a spot of bother. Over m’Hispano-Suiza. Papers not in order. Something to do with a permit. ’Fraid they impounded the poor old girl. Was just explaining to Dobbie here, that little frontier incident cleared me right out of the Ready.’

‘Where were you coming from?’

‘Oh, here and there. Been touring around. Too far from base when troublestarted, so came in to the nearest port. Times like these after all, a bloke can be useful anywhere. ’S’matter of fact, m’chance came this morning.
Ra
-ther an amusing story,’ he looked about him to gather in a larger audience and, seeing that Guy was ordering coffee for the party, he said: ‘How about a drop of brandy, dear boy?’

The waiter placed out some small brandy glasses. ‘Tell him to leave the bottle.’ Then, wriggling in his chair, trying to mould the seat more comfortably to his shape, he lifted his glass to Harriet, drained it and smacked his lips in an exaggerated play of appreciation. ‘Nourishment!’ he said.

For a moment Harriet thought she saw in him an avidity, as though he would, if he could, absorb into his own person the substance of the earth; then he glanced at her. His eyes were guileless. Large, light green, drooping at the outer corners, they were flat-looking, seeming to have no more thickness than a lens and set, not in cavities, but on a flat area between brow and cheek.

He refilled his glass, obviously preparing to entertain the company. As Guy gazed expectantly at him, Sophie gazed at
Guy. She plucked at his sleeve and whispered intimately: ‘There is so much I must tell you. I have many worries.’

Guy, with a gesture, cut short these confidences, and Yakimov, unaware of the interruption, began: ‘This morning, coming down early, who should I see in the hall of the Athénée Palace but …’

Yakimov’s normal voice was thin, sad and unvarying, the voice of a cultured Punchinello, but when he came to report McCann, it changed dramatically. As he reproduced McCann’s gritty, demanding tones, he somehow imposed on his own delicate features the shield-shaped, monkey mug that must be McCann.

He told the whole story of his meeting with McCann, of the plight of the Poles outside the hotel, of the sleeping girl, the scarf that had been buried with the dead. Although he mentioned, apologetically, that he did not speak Polish, he produced the accent of the angry Pole.

Guy, in appreciation of this piece of theatre, murmured ‘Marvellous’ and Yakimov gave him a pleased smile.

The others, though entertained, were disconcerted that such a story should be told like a funny anecdote, but when he opened his arms and said: ‘Think of it! Think of your poor old Yaki become an accredited war correspondent,’ his face expressed such comic humility at so unlikely a happening that they were suddenly won to him. Even Sophie’s sullen mouth relaxed. He united them in the warmth of amusement and, at least for the time, they accepted him like a gift – their Yaki, their poor old Yaki. His height, his curious face, his thin body, his large, mild eyes, his voice and, above all, his humility – these were his components and they loved them.

Dobson had clearly heard the story before. Glancing up from the bill, he smiled at its effect. When the laughter had died down, Sophie, who had not laughed, took the floor with impressive seriousness: ‘It is not so difficult to be journalist, I think. I have been journalist. My paper was anti-fascist, so now things will be difficult for me. Perhaps the Nazis will come here. You understand?’ As Yakimov blinked, appearing
to understand nothing, she gave an aggravated little laugh: ‘You have heard of the Nazis, I suppose?’

‘The Nasties, dear girl, that’s what I call ’em,’ he giggled. ‘Don’t know what went wrong with them. They seemed to start out all right, but they overdid it somehow. Nobody likes them now.’

At this Inchcape gave a hoot of laughter. ‘The situation in a nut-shell,’ he said.

Sophie leant forward and gazed earnestly at Yakimov. ‘The Nazis are very bad men,’ she said. ‘Once I was in Berlin on holiday – you understand? – and a Nazi officer comes with big steps along the pavement. I think: ‘I am a young lady, he will step aside for me’, but no. Pouf! He brushes me as if I were not there and I am flung into the road with the traffic.’

‘Dear me!’ said Yakimov.

As Sophie opened her mouth to talk on, Harriet broke in to ask Yakimov: ‘Are you the man who painted the windows black?’

‘Why, yes, dear girl, that was poor Yaki.’

‘Won’t you tell us the story?’

‘Another time, perhaps. It’s a trifle
outré
and happened long ago. Soon after m’schooldays, in fact.’

Sophie, who had been watching Harriet sulkily, now smiled in triumph. Harriet realised, with surprise, that she saw this refusal as a point to her.

Harriet had failed to consider the possibility of a Sophie. Foolishly. There was always someone. There was also the fact that, whether Sophie had received encouragement or not, Guy’s natural warmth towards everyone could easily be misinterpreted. She had herself taken it for granted that it was for her alone. (She had a sudden vivid memory of one of their early meetings when Guy had taken her claw of a hand and said: ‘You don’t eat enough. You must come to Bucharest and let us feed you up.’) They had slipped into marriage as though there could be no other possible resolution of such an encounter. Yet – supposing she had known him better? Supposing she had known him for a year and during that
time observed him in all his other relationships? She would have hesitated, thinking the net of his affections too widely spread to hold the weighty accompaniment of marriage.

As it was, she had, in all innocence, been prepared to possess him and be possessed, to envelop and be enveloped, in a relationship that excluded the enemy world. She soon discovered that Guy was not playing his part. Through him, the world was not only admitted, it was welcomed; and, somehow, when he approached it, the enmity was no longer there.

‘I imagine’ – Inchcape was speaking to Yakimov, his ironical smile giving a grudging credit – ‘I imagine you were at Eton?’

‘Alas, dear boy, no,’ said Yakimov. ‘M’poor old dad could not cough up. I went to one of those horrid schools where Marshall is beastly to Snelgrove, and Debenham
much
too fond of Freebody. But while we’re on the subject, there’s rather an amusing story about a croquet match played by the headmistress of a famous girls’ school against the headmaster – an excessively corpulent man – of a very famous boys’ school. Well …’