The Balkan Trilogy (85 page)

Sofia appeared amid its hills, a small town, grey beneath a grey sky. It seemed to be the destination of most of the passengers. ‘I wish I were staying here,’ said Harriet.

Dobson smiled at her absurdity. ‘Athens is delightful,’ he said. ‘You’ll meet the most charming people.’ Preparing to leave her, he saw no reason at all why she should not be happy to journey on alone.

When the plane landed, Harriet walked with Dobson across
the airfield to the barrier. A chauffeur awaited him and as he handed over his luggage, Harriet glanced back and saw that her suitcase had been put out on the grass. Her plane was taxi-ing across the field.

She gave a cry and said: ‘They’re going without me.’

‘Surely not,’ Dobson said, but the plane was already rising from the ground. He spoke to the Bulgarian chauffeur who went to the customs-shed and came back with the information that the Rumanian plane had announced it would go no farther. Passengers for Athens must proceed on the German Lufthansa.

‘But why?’ Harriet was alarmed, remembering that Galpin had said: ‘When trouble starts, the air-service is the first thing to stop.’ She asked: ‘What has happened?’ but there was no one who could tell her.

Dobson said: ‘Probably some rumour has scared them. You know what the Rumanians are like.’

Harriet said: ‘I can’t go on the Lufthansa.’ She was genuinely afraid. A story going round Bucharest described how some British businessmen in Turkey travelling on the Lufthansa, contrary to protocol, had been taken not to Sofia but to Vienna, where they had been arrested and interned.

Dobson smiled at her fears. ‘For myself, I’d feel safer on the Lufthansa than on any Rumanian plane.’

‘But it’s forbidden.’

‘Only in a general way. You won’t be allowed past the barrier here: you can’t return to Bucharest: so you have no choice but to travel in the transport available.’

The large Lufthansa stood on the airfield with a German official at the steps. Harriet felt sick at the sight of it. Stricken by her own plight, she appealed to Dobson: ‘Please wait with me until I go.’

He said: ‘I’m afraid I can’t. The Minister’s expecting me for luncheon.’

Near tears, she pleaded: ‘It’s only about twenty minutes.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Dobson made a murmur of regret. He had lost his lightness of manner and she felt something inflexible
beneath the reverence with which he said: ‘I cannot keep the Minister waiting.’

After Dobson had been driven away, Harriet sat for a while on the bench by the shed and gazed at the German plane. Passengers were beginning to board it and she knew there was no purpose in delay. As Dobson had pointed out, she could neither stay here nor return whence she had come. She knew now what it was like to be a stateless person without a home.

Five men were filing up the steps of the plane, all, it seemed to her, inimical. Immediately in front of her was a little old man pulling on a string a toy dog, a money-box of sorts. He glanced back at her with a smile and as she noted his straggle of grey-yellow hair, his snub pink face, his wet blue eyes, she thought he looked as sinister as the rest. However, when she reached the official at the step, he produced a British passport and his aspect changed for her. Looking over his shoulder, she read that he was a retired consul called Liversage, domiciled in Sofia, born in 1865. The Germans treated the two British nationals with frigid courtesy. Harriet was thankful for the presence of this old man and his toy dog.

As they entered the plane, he stepped aside to let her choose her seat, and when she sat down, sat down beside her. He took the toy dog on his knee and, patting its worn hide, explained: ‘I collect for hospitals. Have collected hundreds of pounds, y’know. Thousands in fact. Been collecting for over fifty years.’

The journey no longer frightened her. She asked herself, was it likely they would divert the plane in order to capture one young English woman and a man of seventy-five?

As they flew over the mountains, Mr Liversage talked continually, pausing only to receive the answer to some question he had asked. Where was she coming from? Where going? What was she doing in this part of the world?

‘Is your husband a ’varsity man?’ he asked. He spoke pleasantly, but the question was clearly important to him. Her answer would place her. She wondered, would a provincial university be described as a ‘’varsity’? She decided to say: ‘Yes,’ and Mr Liversage seemed content.

Near the Bulgarian frontier, the sky began to clear. Over Macedonia, the plane suddenly emerged into brilliance, coming almost immediately into sight of the Ægean that sifted its peacock blues and greens against the golden shore of Thrace. They passed, almost at eye-level, a mountain like an inverted bucket, but before she could comment on it Mr Liversage had talked them past it. While she looked below, seeing the Sporades fringed purple with weed, lying in shallows of jade and turquoise, Mr Liversage talked of his life in Sofia where he had ‘a nice little place, nice little garden: lived very happily’. But he had been advised to leave. Bulgaria, too, was threatened by the war that crept east like a grey lava to overwhelm them all.

‘So here we are!’ he said, his old hand with its loose, liver-spotted skin, patting the dog’s rump. ‘Going to Athens. Probably settle down there. Bit of a lark, eh?’

Perhaps it was. Harriet smiled for the first time since she had entered the ravaged flat the night before. The memory had begun to retreat as they flew out of the Balkan world, leaving behind all intimations of autumn, returning into summer. Everything below was parched to a golden-pink. The sun, pouring in through the windows, grew steadily fiercer as the day advanced.

Throughout the journey, which lasted until evening, Mr Liversage held his dog on his knee. He had brought a packet of sandwiches, which he shared with Harriet. Sometimes, as he talked, his hands were tensed about the dog so his knuckles shone, but his manner, matter-of-fact and cheerful, suggested it was for him an everyday occurrence to be uprooted in this way and no cause for complaint. The plane flew due south, showing no inclination to turn from its course. Indeed, Harriet realised, they were already over Athens.

‘We will meet again,’ said Mr Liversage as they began to descend.

Seeing the marble fa
ç
ades and the surrounding hills luminous in the rose-violet light of evening, she was thankful to come to rest in so beautiful a place.

29

When, after luncheon next day, Harriet came upon Yakimov, she felt jolted.

She had been wandering about the unfamiliar streets in a transport of release from all she had left behind. The previous evening she had gone to the cinema where the news-film had shown not the inexorable might of the German panzer divisions, but a handful of British sappers planting a mine among scrubby bushes somewhere in North Africa. At the back of her mind was the determination to return to Bucharest, but meanwhile there was the solace of this new world where to be English was to be welcome.

Yakimov, perched like a grasshopper on an old-fashioned bicycle, interrupted a dream, reminding her of the past. He leapt from the machine at the sight of her and came running downhill crying: ‘Dear girl! But this is wonderful! What news of the Hispano?’

‘It has been sold.’

‘
No!
’ He fetched up breathlessly beside her and began excitedly mopping his face. ‘Just when your poor old Yaki was asking himself where he could get a bit of the ready! What did she fetch?’

‘Sixty thousand.’

‘
Dear girl!
’ His large, pale, shallow eyes seemed to brim their sockets in delight, so she had not the heart to tell him that his sixty thousand was now worth less than ten pounds.

He was wearing his tussore suit and his Indian yellow shirt. The dark patches beneath his arm-pits had become darker and now had an edging of salt crystals. A leather strap over
his shoulder held a leather satchel filled with roneoed sheets. She asked what he was doing, bicycling in the heat of the early afternoon.

‘Got to get these delivered,’ he said: ‘news-sheets put out by the Information Office. Important job. They roped me in as soon as I arrived. Probably heard I’d been a war correspondent. Couldn’t refuse. Had to do m’bit. Well …’ He prepared to remount, holding the bicycle away from him as though it were not only unmanageable but vicious. ‘May say, you’ve got out just in time.’

She caught his arm. ‘Has something happened?’

‘Well, there’s this rumour of a German occupation.’

‘But Guy is still in Bucharest.’

Yakimov, one foot on the upraised pedal, blinked at her, disconcerted, then said: ‘I wouldn’t worry, dear girl. You know what these rumours are.’ He gained his seat and, trembling forward, attempted his baby wave. ‘We’ll meet again,’ he said. ‘I’m always at Zonar’s.’

Harriet stood in the road, looking after him. It was some minutes before all her old disquiet immersed her and she wondered how, in this strange place, where even the alphabet was unknown to her, she was to discover what was happening. Her hotel was small, staid and cheap, a resort of English residents. Someone there might be able to tell her something.

In the residents’ sitting-room, four women sat, each in her separate corner. The gaunt one drinking tea could only be English, Harriet decided and, usually diffident with strangers, she addressed her now without apology or excuse: ‘Can you tell me, please? Is there any news about Rumania?’

The woman looked startled, then reproving of Harriet’s anxious informality. There was a pause before she replied: ‘As a matter of fact, we have just been listening to the news. The Germans have occupied Rumania.’

Clearly it was a matter of no concern to these women. Feeling that she alone knew the reality behind this announcement, Harriet burst out: ‘My husband is there,’ and she remembered how she had thought she might never see him again.

The woman, to whom she had spoken, said: ‘He’ll be put into a prison-camp. You’ll have him back after the war. My husband is dead,’ and having administered this rough comfort, she poured herself another cup of tea.

Harriet went to the hall and asked the clerk to direct her to the British Legation. She made her way through the deserted streets in the afternoon dazzle of salt-white walls, and found that at that hour no one was in the Legation but a Maltese porter. She told him her story, saying: ‘There’s no knowing what the Germans may do to my husband. He’s on a list of people wanted by the Gestapo.’ She pressed her hands over her eyes and choked in anguish, feeling an appalled remorse that she had left him without reflecting on what she might be leaving him to.

The porter, kindly and willing to help, said: ‘Perhaps nothing has happened at all. You know how these stories get around. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll telephone Bucharest. I’ll get through to the Legation and ask for news. I’ll ask particularly about your husband.’

‘How long will it take?’

‘An hour, perhaps two hours. Have tea at a café. Go for a walk. And when you come back, I think there will be good news.’

But when she returned there was no news. The porter had been unable to contact Bucharest. ‘They’ve brought down “the blanket”,’ he said, keeping up a show of optimism, but she could feel his uncertainty. This isolating ‘blanket’ was proof that something had happened or was about to happen inside the country. He promised to try again, and again she set out to wear away time by walking first in one direction, then in another.

As evening fell, she was back at the Legation. The porter could only shake his head. ‘Later,’ he said, ‘I try again.’

Too tired to walk farther, Harriet sat on a bench in the chancellery hall and watched people come and go. The staff had returned and the porter had duties to which to attend. No one spoke to her and she was reluctant to speak to anyone. She could do no good by pestering busy officials. If there were news,
the porter would bring it to her. Some time after dark, he came out of his room and looked at her. Embarrassed now because he could do nothing for her, he said: ‘Better go home. Come back in the morning. Perhaps tonight we can get through.’

‘Is someone here at night?’

‘There is always someone here.’

‘Then I can come back later?’

‘If you wish. You might try about eleven o’clock.’

Forced into the street again, she longed to confide her misery and could think only of Yakimov. Suddenly, she saw him as a friend – an old friend. Unlike the women at the hotel, he knew Guy and would sympathise with her dismay.

She ran down the hill to the city’s centre. In the main road she set out to search the cafés, not knowing one from the other. Earlier in the day, people had been sitting out on the pavements, but the evening had become chilly. The chairs were empty. She went into one café after another, hurrying round them, becoming almost frenzied in her search. By the time she came on Yakimov she was trembling in a distress that was near despair.

He rose, shocked by her appearance, and said: ‘Dear girl, whatever is the matter?’

She tried to speak, but, fearful of bursting into tears, she could only shake her head.

‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Have a drink.’

Yakimov’s companion was an elderly man, heavily built, whose white hair looked whiter in contrast with the plum-dark colour of his skin. To give her time, Yakimov said genially: ‘Meet Mustafa Bey. Mus, dear boy, this is Mrs Pringle from Bucharest. She doesn’t really approve of poor old Yaki.’ He smiled at her. ‘What will you drink? We’re having brandy, but you can get anything here. Whisky, gin,
ouzo
– whatever you like. It’s all on Mus.’

She chose brandy and, as she drank, regained herself sufficiently to talk. ‘About the German occupation of Rumania,’ she said, ‘it must be true. They’ve brought down a “blanket”. You know what that means.’

Mustafa Bey nodded his sombre, heavy head. ‘It is true,’ he said.

Harriet caught her breath and said: ‘What will happen to Guy?’

‘Guy’s no fool,’ said Yakimov. ‘He can look after himself, y’know.’

‘Our flat was raided the night before I left.’ Harriet saw, as she spoke, a tremor touch Yakimov’s face, and she thought of the oil-well plan. The tremor betrayed him. She knew who had taken the plan, but it scarcely mattered. She had much more to worry about.