The Balkan Trilogy (91 page)

‘The Pringles have just come from Bucharest,’ Mrs Brett said. ‘They saw the Germans come in.’

‘Oh, did they!’ Miss Jay eyed the Pringles as though they might have brought the Germans with them. ‘We don’t want anything of that sort here.’

Alan Frewen, looking at Guy with interest, asked Guy how long he intended to stay.

Guy said: ‘As long as we can. But it depends on Gracey. I came here in the hope he would employ me.’

‘And won’t he?’ Frewen asked.

‘It doesn’t look like it. The trouble is, I can’t get him to see me. They say he’s too ill to see anyone.’

Mrs Brett broke in: ‘Whoever told you that?’

‘Toby Lush and Dubedat.’

‘How very odd!’ Alan Frewen looked at Mrs Brett, then at Miss Jay, his face crumpled like the face of a small boy trying to smile while being caned. ‘I don’t think there’s much wrong with Gracey, do you?’

‘It’s him all over,’ Mrs Brett said. ‘He can’t be bothered; he doesn’t want to be bothered. He leaves everything to those two louts. It’s disgraceful the way the School’s gone down.’

Still smiling his curious smile, Alan Frewen said: ‘I know Colin Gracey quite well. We were at King’s together. I could say a word …’

‘I wouldn’t interefere,’ Miss Jay interrupted with such decision that Frewen seemed to retreat. His smile disappeared and he looked so forlorn that Guy, whose hopes had been raised and then thrown down, felt it necessary to justify him.

‘I suppose we must leave it to Dubedat,’ Guy said. ‘After all, he is Gracey’s representative.’

Mrs Brett began to protest but Miss Jay had had enough of the conversation. Gripping her friend by the arm, she said: ‘I’ve heard about a flat that might suit you.’

‘
No
?’ Mrs Brett cried out in excitement; and Guy’s troubles were forgotten.

‘On Lycabettos. Two American girls have it at the moment. They’re going on the next boat. They’ll let it furnished. They’re looking for someone who’ll keep an eye on their bits and pieces, someone reliable. They’re not asking much for it.’

‘Suit me down to the ground.’

While Mrs Brett discussed the flat, Alan Frewen looked at his watch and Harriet raised a brow at Guy. The three rose. Miss Jay glanced at them brightly, glad to see them go, but Mrs Brett scarcely noticed their departure.

Frewen paused on the landing and looked at the Pringles as though he had something to say. When he said nothing, Guy decided to go down and ask at the desk if there was a message for him. They all descended the stairs together. At the bottom, a black retriever, tied to the banister post, leapt up in a furore of greeting.

At this, Frewen managed to break silence: ‘This is Diocletian.’ He untied the lead, then put on a pair of dark glasses preparatory to entering the twilit street, but he did not go. Holding his dog close, he stood with his face half obliterated by the black glass, and still could not say what he wanted to say.

Watching him, Harriet thought: ‘An enigmatic, secretive man.’

There was nothing for Guy at the desk and as the Pringles said their good-byes, Alan Frewen said at last: ‘Do you know the Academy? It used to be the American Academy of Classical Studies, but the Americans went home when the war started. Now it’s a pension for solitary chaps like me. I was wondering, could you find your way there one day and have tea?’

‘Why, yes,’ Guy said.

‘What about Thursday? It’s a working day but I’m not very busy. I needn’t get back to the office till six.’

‘What do you do?’ Harriet asked.

‘I’m the Information Officer.’

‘Yakimov’s boss?’

‘Yes, Yakimov’s boss.’ Alan Frewen gave his smiling grimace and, the invitation safely conveyed, he let the dog pull him away.

4

Harriet was usually wakened by the early tram-car. On Thursday morning she was wakened instead by a funeral wail which rose and fell, rose and fell, and at last brought even Guy out of sleep. Lifting his face from the pillow, he said: ‘What on earth is that?’

By now Harriet had remembered what it was. She had heard it on news films. It was an air-raid siren.

She put on her dressing-gown and went to the landing where the window overlooked the street. The shops were beginning to open and shopkeepers had come out to their doors. Men and girls going to work had stopped to speak to each other and everyone was making gestures of inquiry or alarm. People were running down the hotel stairs. Harriet wanted to ask what was happening, but no one gave her time. As the siren note sank and faded on a sob, a batch of police came running from the direction of the square. They were bawling as they came and some had taken out their revolvers and were waving them as though revolt were imminent. In a minute all the innocent, wondering bystanders had been pushed into shops and doorways. Cars were brought to a stop and their occupants sent indoors like the rest. The police sped on, making all possible noise, and leaving the street empty behind them.

It was a fine, mild morning. Harriet pulled up the window and leant out but saw only imprisoned faces, deserted pavements, abandoned cars.

Guy, getting into an emergency rig of trousers and pullover, shouted from the room: ‘Is anything happening down there?’

‘The police have cleared the street.’

‘It must be a raid.’

‘Let’s go down and find out.’ Harriet spoke with the calm of an old campaigner. Conditioned to disorder, she dressed with the sense that she was returning to reality, and when they ran down the stairs to the hall, she knew what to expect. She could have described the scene before she reached it, for she had seen it before on an evening of crisis in an hotel hall in Bucharest.

But here there was someone known to her. Mrs Brett, in a dressing-gown, her face flushed, was talking to everyone, her grey-brown pigtail whipping about as she jerked her head from side to side.

The porter was on the telephone, speaking Greek with occasional words of English, and his free hand was thumping the desk to emphasize what he said. The other guests, English, Polish, Russian and French, were chattering shrilly, while from outside there rose the high swell of the ‘All Clear’.

Seeing the Pringles, Mrs Brett shouted: ‘We’re at war. We’re at war.’ As she did so, the porter dropped the receiver on to the desk and throwing out his arms as though to embrace everyone in sight, said: ‘We are your allies. We fight beside you.’

‘Isn’t that splendid!’ said Mrs Brett.

The sense of splendour possessed the hall so it seemed that in secret everyone had been longing to live actively within the war and now felt fulfilment. The Pringles, because they were English, were congratulated by people who had not given them a glance before. They heard over and over again how the Greek Prime Minister had been wakened at three in the morning by the Italian Minister who said he had brought an ultimatum. ‘Can’t it wait till the honest light of day?’ Metaxas asked; then, seeing it was a demand that Greece accept Italian occupation, he at once, without an instant’s hesitation, said: ‘No.’

‘
Oxi
,’ said the porter. ‘He said “
Oxi
”.’

Mrs Brett explained that Mussolini also wanted his triumphs. He had chosen a small country, supposing a small
country was a weak country, thinking he had only to make a demand and the Greeks would submit. But Metaxas had said ‘No’ and so, in the middle of the night, while the Athenians slept, Greece had entered the war.

‘Well, well, well!’ Mrs Brett sighed, exhausted by happiness and excitement, and turning accusingly on the Pringles, said: ‘You see, you’re not the only ones who have adventures. Things happen here, too.’ She started to go upstairs, then turned and shouted: ‘Anything yet from Gracey?’

‘Nothing, I’m afraid,’ said Guy.

‘Well, don’t go. You be like Metaxas. You stand firm. Tell him he’s got to give you a job. If I were on speaking terms, I’d tell him myself.’

Guy mentioned that they were going that afternoon to tea with Alan Frewen. Mrs Brett said she, too, had been invited but Miss Jay was taking her to see the promised flat.

‘You go,’ she urged Guy. ‘He’ll introduce you to Gracey.’

‘I don’t think so. He said nothing about Gracey.’

‘Oh, he will; Gracey’s up there. He lives at the Academy. Alan’ll do something – you’ll see! Cookson thinks he can fix everything, but he’s not the only fixer. A lot of things happen in my little room that he knows nothing about.’ Giving a high squawk of laughter, she shouted over her shoulder: ‘Oh yes, I’m a fixer, too.’

The Pringles had almost exhausted their money. They had just enough to pay their hotel bill and buy steerage berths on the boat that would sail on Saturday; but, caught up in the afflatus of events, they could not face the hotel breakfast and when ready to go out, decided to take coffee in the sunlight. The streets were crowded with people exchanging felicitations as though it were the first day of holiday rather than of war. It seemed an occasion for rejoicing until the Pringles met Yakimov, who was wheeling his bicycle uphill, a look of gloom lengthening his lofty camel face.

In the past he had gone through every crisis with the optimism of the uninformed. Now, working in the Information Office, nothing was hidden from him.

‘Greeks won’t last ten days,’ he said.

‘Is it as bad at that?’ Guy asked.

‘Worse. No army. No air-force. Only one ship to speak of. And the I-ties say they’ll bomb us flat. What’s going to happen to us, I’d like to know? They starve you in these prison-camps.’

‘Surely we’ll be evacuated?’ Harriet said.

‘Don’t know. Can’t say. All depends.’

Having reached the level of University Street, he ran his bicycle along, leapt at it, somehow landed on the saddle and, high perched in precarious dignity, he weaved away.

The Pringles, knowing Yakimov, could not rely on anything he said. They bought the English newspaper, which took an inspiriting view of the new front and made much of the fact the British had promised aid.

Harriet said: ‘Whatever happens, I want to stay. Don’t you?’ She felt confident of his answer and was dismayed when he replied: ‘I want to stay more than ever, but …’

‘But what?’

‘I can’t work for a man like Gracey.’

She realized the trouble was Mrs Brett. When, after the tea-party, she had asked Guy what he thought of Mrs Brett’s stories, he would not discuss them. Caught up in a conflict between his desire to remain here and the fact he could remain only by Gracey’s favour, he had to reflect upon them.

‘So you believe all she said?’ said Harriet.

‘I can’t imagine she invented it.’

‘There might be a basis of truth, but I felt she was pretty dotty. I’m sure if we knew the whole of it, we’d find it was quite different.’

‘I don’t know. She may have exaggerated, but the others didn’t defend Gracey. He seems to be quite despicable.’ Guy looked angry and defiant at the very thought of Gracey and Harriet knew that in this mood he would make no attempt to win him. Guy’s persuasive force could function only with people for whom he had respect. He was incapable of dissimulation. Once he had accepted the dictates of his morality, he
could be inflexible. If he despised Gracey, or had cause to doubt his own personal probity in the matter, their cause was as good as lost.

She began to fear they would be on the Egyptian boat when it sailed in two days’ time.

By midday the first plaudits of war were over. By the time the Pringles set out to find the Academy, there had been news of a raid on the factories at Eleusis, and a rumour that Patras had been bombed. Athens, so far untouched, was sunken into the somnolence of afternoon.

Following the directions given by the hotel porter, the Pringles took the main road towards Kifissia. They were alone on the long, wide, sun-white pavement when a convoy of lorries, full of conscripts, passed on their way to the station. As the Pringles waved and shouted ‘Good luck’, the young men, recognizing them as English, shouted back ‘Zito the British navy’ and ‘Zito Hellas’ and, as Harriet called out to them, one of the young men bent down and caught her hands and said in English: ‘We are friends.’ Gazing into his dark ardent eyes, she was transported by the glory of war and threw herself on Guy, crying: ‘It’s wonderful!’

Guy hurried her along, saying: ‘Don’t be silly. They may all be dead in a week.’

‘I don’t want to go to Egypt,’ she said, but Guy refused to discuss it.

The Academy came into view: a large Italianate building painted ochre and white and set in grounds that had been dried to an even buff colour by the long summer heat.

Alan Frewen was waiting for them in the common-room. He hurried towards them, his dog at his heels, his manner stimulated by the day’s events, saying: ‘I’m glad you’re early, I may get called back, but probably not. At the moment the Information Service is little more than a joke, but if the Greeks make any sort of a stand, then we’ll have to pull up our socks.’

‘Can the Greeks make a stand?’ Guy asked. ‘Have they anything to make a stand with?’

‘Not much, but they have valour; and that’s kept them going through worse times than these.’

While Alan talked, Harriet glanced about her. Agitated by the fact she was in Gracey’s ambiance, she wanted to see the other occupants of the vast room who, seated on the faded armchairs and sofas, gave a sense of being intimately unrelated in the manner of people who exist together and live apart. The room itself had been bleached like the garden, by the fervour of the light. Even the books in the pitch-pine bookcases were all one colour, and the busts that looked down from the bookcase tops were filmed with dust and as sallow as the rest. She made a move towards one of them but Alan stopped her, saying: ‘All locked. We are in the Academy, but not of it. The students left their
materiel
behind but we, of course, must not touch.’

He led them out to the terrace where seats and deck-chairs, blanched like everything else, were splintering in the sun. Stone steps led down to a garden where nothing remained of the flower-beds but a tangle of dry sticks. The lawn beyond, brick-baked and cracked in the kiln of summer, was an acre of clay tufted over with pinkish grass. The tennis courts were screened behind olives, pines and citrus trees. The wind that played over the terrace was full of a gummy scent, unique and provocative, that came from the pines, and from the foliage that had dried and fallen into powder.