The Balkan Trilogy (92 page)

‘That is the smell of Greece,’ Harriet said.

Alan Frewen nodded slowly: ‘I suppose it is.’

‘Can we have tea out here?’

‘I am afraid it is not allowed. Miss Dunne – who decides things here – says it makes too much work for the girls. The girls say they don’t mind, but Miss Dunne says “No”.’ A bell rang and they went inside and sat near the french windows. A plate of cakes came in with Alan’s tea-tray and he said: ‘I’m glad you’re here to help me eat these. When I heard the last boat had gone, I was afraid you might be on it.’

‘The last boat? Do you mean the boat that was going on Saturday?’

‘Yes. There won’t be another. The Egyptians won’t risk their ships, and who can blame them? The boat went this morning and the shipping clerks closed the office and went with her. I’m told that a few wide-awake people managed to get on board, though I don’t know who could have warned them.’

Guy said: ‘Surely there are Greek boats?’

‘No. Anyway, not for civilians. Greece is on a war-time basis now.’

‘And no air-service?’

‘There never was an air-service to Egypt.’

Looking at Guy, Harriet laughed and said: ‘Freedom is the recognition of necessity.’

‘What about Salonika?’ Guy persisted. ‘There must be a train to Istanbul?’

‘That’s a war zone, or soon will be. Anyway, there’s an order out: foreigners are not allowed to leave Athens. You might be refused an exeat to Salonika.’

‘Is that likely?’

‘Anything’s likely here during an emergency. Greek officials are very suspicious.’

‘So we can’t get away? In fact, no one can get away?’

‘There may be an evacuation boat of some sort. The Legation think they ought to send away the English women with children. I don’t know. Nothing’s been arranged yet. If Mrs Pringle wants to go, I could probably get her a passage.’

Harriet said: ‘I’m staying here, if I can.’

‘That’s the spirit. Anyway, what’s this talk of trains to Istanbul? I thought you both wanted to stay?’

‘It’s Mrs Brett’s stories. Guy doesn’t like the idea of working for Gracey now.’

‘Oh!’ Alan Frewen rubbed the toe of his shoe up and down the dog’s spine and smiled in apparent pain as the dog stretched in pleasure. He reflected for some moments, then said: ‘Mrs B.’s obsessional. She’s always telling stories about the Cookson set. I think Brett was treated meanly, but he was an old fuddy-duddy; quite incapable of running the School. All the work
was done by the two lecturers, who liked him. They left when Gracey took over, as I think you know.’

Harriet said: ‘What about the business of the memorial party?’

‘It was unkind, but she provoked it. She has been inexcusably rude to Cookson at different times. She practically accused him of murdering her husband. She’s a bit hysterical. You saw it yourself.’

‘If you’d been here, would you have gone to Cookson’s party?’

Frewen raised his eyebrows slightly at Harriet’s question, but smiled again: ‘I might, you know. It would have been a difficult choice. Cookson’s parties are rather grand.’

Guy said with conviction: ‘I am sure you would not have gone. No decent person would treat a lonely, ageing woman in that way.’

Frewen’s smile faded. He gave Guy a long, quizzical look, but before he could say anything a middle-aged woman in shorts, tennis racquet under arm, came in through the french windows. Lumpish, bespectacled, with untidy fox-red hair, she was hot and damp and breathing heavily. She acknowledged one or two of the men with sidelong grimaces, then, catching sight of the strangers, she rolled up her eyes in appalled self-consciousness and sped from the room.

‘Who?’ Harriet whispered.

‘That’s Miss Dunne, the terrible sportsgirl.’

‘Is she at the Legation? What does she do?’

‘Oh, something so very hush-hush, I’m told she’s led to it blindfolded. But I wouldn’t know, and I wouldn’t dare to ask. She’s the genuine thing, sent out by the Foreign Office. Most of us are only temporary, so she’s a cut above the rest.’

Harriet said under her breath: ‘Pinkrose.’ Guy looked up quickly. They watched as Pinkrose came across the room with a cake carton in his hand. He sat down, placed the carton very carefully on his table and opened it. When his tea arrived, he took out three ornamental cakes, disposed them on a plate and studied them. He chose one, transferred it to a smaller
plate, then, on reflection, returned it to the big plate and studied the three again.

Harriet asked Alan Frewen: ‘Do you know him?’

‘Indeed I do. He’s by way of being a colleague of mine.’

‘You mean he’s found a job already?’

‘Yes, though job is no name to call it by. He got into the Information Office somehow. I gave him a desk in the News Room and he potters about. That enables him to live here. He told them at the Legation he couldn’t afford an hotel.’

‘You’re joking?’

‘I’m not. He could have gone back to England. There was a ship going from Alex round the Cape, but he wouldn’t risk it. He said he had a delicate constitution and would be less of a burden to others in a comfortable climate.’

‘He may be regretting that now.’

‘If he is, it’s not affecting his appetite.’

After tea they strolled with the dog about the garden and coming back through the lemon trees that shaded the drive, Alan said diffidently: ‘I mentioned to Gracey that you would be here this afternoon. He suggested you might go and see him about six. Of course, if you don’t want to, I can make your excuses.’

Guy grew red and after a moment said: ‘This is very kind of you.’

‘Oh, no. I made the merest mention, I assure you. It was his idea.’

‘I will go, of course. I’m very grateful.’

‘I’ll take you up to Gracey’s room, but I can’t stay. I’m due back at the office.’

Gracey’s door was at the end of the long, broad, upstairs passage. Alan knocked. The voice that called him to enter was firm, musical and beautifully pitched.

The room inside was a corner room with windows overlooking the gardens to north and east. Between the two windows Gracey was stretched out on a long chair, a table nearby and a circle of chairs about him.

He welcomed them on a high note: ‘Ah,
do
come in! Do
sit down! How nice to meet you two young people at last! Alan, be a good chap; pour us some sherry! It’s on the chest-of-drawers.’

When he had handed round the glasses, Frewen said he would have to go.

‘So soon?’ Gracey sounded very disappointed. ‘Are you so terribly busy?’

‘Not busy at all, I’m afraid. I wish we were. The situation demands action, and we don’t know what to do. Still, one must put up a show. I feel I ought to get back.’

Gracey protracted the good-byes as though he could not bear to part with Alan; then, the parting over, he leant earnestly towards Guy: ‘You must tell me all about your escape from Bucharest. I want to know every detail.’

He spoke as though their safe arrival had been a profound relief to him and the bewildered Pringles did not know what to say. Their ‘escape’ was over and done with, the ‘details’ were losing importance. No one could tell what was happening in Rumania now. A door had shut behind them and they had other things to worry about.

Awkward in his distrust of Gracey, Guy did his best to give an account of the Rumanian break-up, while Harriet observed the man who had been, they were told, too ill to see them. His long, graceful body lay in an attitude of invalidism, but the impression he gave was of perfect health, almost of perfect youth. There was, she felt, something almost shocking about his fair, handsome head. It was some minutes before the effect began to crumble. There were lines about his eyes, his cheeks were too full for the structure of his face and his hair was blanched not by sun, but by age. He must be forty or more; perhaps even fifty. She began to see him as mummified. He might be immensely old; someone in whom the process of ageing was almost, but not quite arrested. As he gazed at Guy and listened, the smile became congealed on his face.

Guy’s constraint was making things difficult. Even if he had not heard Mrs Brett’s stories, he would not have been at his best. He was a man whose charm and vitality were most
evident when he was himself the giver. Now, dependent upon Gracey’s bounty, his spirit shrank.

Gracey let him struggle on a little longer, then asked: ‘You knew Lord Pinkrose, of course?’

‘Yes.’

‘He may look in this evening, I’m sure he’ll be delighted to see you. My friends are so kind. Major Cookson has been particularly kind. They all come to cheer me up after supper. Sometimes there’s quite a crowd here.’

Gracey sipped at his sherry, then, as though the moment had come, he asked, laying the question like a trap: ‘What exactly were you doing in Bucharest?’

Guy looked surprised, but answered mildly: ‘I assisted Professor Inchcape who was in charge of the English Department. When war started, he became Director of Propaganda for the Balkans and I ran the department. It was rather reduced, of course.’

‘Of course. And our friend Dubedat? What part did he play in all this?’ Gracey was again leaning towards Guy and his smile encouraged confidences.

Guy answered stiffly: ‘Surely Dubedat told you what he did?’

Gracey lay back, not answering the question but apparently reflecting upon it, then said: ‘I am grateful to Dubedat; and to Lush, too, for that matter. They’ve proved invaluable. When I had my accident, they took over and thus enabled me to recoup in peace and quiet. You may have heard there had been a little trouble here? Two lecturers left. They had been fond of Brett. He was hopeless as Director, but a nice enough old fellow and his men resented me. So off they went and I was left to cope alone. The London office couldn’t replace them. When Dubedat and friend turned up, I didn’t inquire too closely into their teaching experience being thankful to get them.’

Gracey’s tone implied that he was inquiring now. He looked expectantly at Guy, but Guy merely said: ‘I understand.’

His tone a little sharper, Gracey said: ‘I’ve never regretted the association; I’ve only wondered why you let them go.’

‘They chose to go,’ Guy said.

‘Ah?’ Gracey regarded Guy with a warm interest. ‘I gather there had been jealousy. Dubedat and Lush are active fellows; apt, perhaps, to take too much upon themselves. After all, they were not officially appointed. Someone may have wanted them out of the way? Most likely Professor Inchcape?’

Guy said: ‘Professor Inchcape barely knew them. They were employed by me.’

Still holding Guy with his warm, smiling regard, Gracey said: ‘Anyway, the story seems to be: they received the usual order to leave the country and no one made a move on their behalf. They were just let go.’

‘They told you that?’

Gracey looked perplexed. ‘Someone told me. It’s so long ago: I’ve quite forgotten the details.’

‘May I ask,’ Guy asked, ‘did Dubedat mention that I came to Athens in the hope that the Organization could use me here?’

‘Yes. Oh, yes, Dubedat let me know you were keen to stay.’ Gracey sat up and stared, as though entranced, from the window to where the sun had dropped down behind the olive trees and the light came broken through the small grey-silver leaves. ‘I have no wish to criticize,’ he said. ‘You were answerable to your professor, of course; no doubt he approved. But don’t you think there was a lack of – what?
Seriousness
, shall we say? … Well, to put it another way: wasn’t it a tiny, a very tiny, bit frivolous to put on a theatre production during the blackest days of the fall of France?’

Guy, startled by this criticism, flushed and began to say: ‘No, I—’ But Gracey went on: ‘
And
when your students needed elementary English in order to get to English-speaking countries?’

‘I suppose Dubedat told you that he took a part in the play?’ Harriet said.

Guy moved a hand to silence her. Dubedat’s part in the play was a point beside the point, and one he would not make. Willing to do more work than most, conscious of his own
integrity, he had, over the years, become unused to criticism and tended to see himself as above it. But he was ready to accept the justice of Gracey’s criticism and said only: ‘Am I to take it that this is why you do not choose to employ me?’

‘Good gracious me, no,’ Gracey laughed. ‘That is merely a private opinion. The question of your employment doesn’t rest with me any longer. I’m
hors de combat
. I’ve delegated authority, and, I may say, I’m preparing to leave Greece. A friend, a very generous friend, feels I must have proper treatment. He has offered to send me to the Lebanon where there is an excellent clinic.’

Harriet said: ‘Mr Frewen says there are no ships. The Egyptian line has come to a stop.’

‘That won’t affect me. I’m hoping to get a priority flight, but it’s all hush-hush, of course.’

‘So Dubedat is in charge?’ said Guy.

‘Someone has to be,’ Gracey said. ‘But I cannot say who will take over when I’m gone. There are several candidates for the post.’

‘I suppose the London office knows …’

‘Oh, dear me, yes. Cables have gone forth and back. It all takes so long nowadays.’

‘Is there any likelihood of Dubedat being appointed?’

‘Dubedat’s name had been mentioned, but it does not rest with me. The London office will make the appointment.’

Guy stared into his glass, his eyebrows raised, his lips slightly pursed. He had had his interview with Gracey; he now had no cause for suspicion or complaint. He looked towards Harriet and put down his glass, preparing to go. He said: ‘If there’s no transport, we’ll have to stay in Athens – anyway for the time being. I don’t suppose you want me to be around doing nothing?’

‘Oh!’ Gracey made a gesture that suggested the matter was too trivial to be discussed further. ‘Argue it out with Dubedat. He’s in charge of the School now. If you don’t try to high-hat him, you’ll find him quite helpful. Go and be nice to him.’

The Pringles started to rise.

‘Stay a while. Have another drink.’

The command was cordial, but it was a command. Guy and Harriet settled back in their seats unwillingly, but not without hope. They had nowhere else to go. They might as well stay and perhaps, by staying, something could be gained.