The Balkan Trilogy (96 page)

Alan talked for some time about the Greeks and the countryside: ‘an idyllic, unspoilt countryside’. Guy, interested in more practical aspects of Greek life, here broke in to ask if by ‘unspoilt’ Alan did not mean undeveloped, and by ‘idyllic’, simply conditions that had not changed since the days of the Ottoman Empire. How was it possible to enjoy the beauty of a country when the inhabitants lived in privation and misery?

Alan was startled by Guy’s implied criticism. His great
sombre face grew dark and he seemed incapable of speech. After some moments he said, as though his vanity had been touched:

‘I’ve seen a great deal of the country. I have not noticed that the people are unhappy.’

There was a defensive irritation in his tone and Harriet would, if she could, have stopped the subject at once, but Guy was not easily checked. Certain that Alan, a humane and intelligent man, could be made to share his opinions, he asked with expectant interest:

‘But are they happy? Can people be happy under a dictatorship?’

‘A dictatorship!’ Alan started in surprise, then laughed. ‘You
could
call it a dictatorship, but a very benevolent one. I suppose you’ve been talking to members of the K.K.E.? What would they have done if they’d got power? Before Metaxas took over there’d been an attempt to impose a modern political system on what was virtually a primitive society. The result was chaos. In the old days there’d been the usual semi-oriental graft but as soon as there was a measure of democratic freedom, graft ran riot. The only thing Metaxas could do was suspend the system. The experiment was brought to a stop. A temporary stop, of course.’

‘When do you think it will start again?’

‘When the country’s fit to govern itself.’

‘And when will that be? What’s being done to bring Greece into line with more advanced countries? I mean, of course, industrially advanced countries?’

‘Nothing, I hope.’ Alan spoke with a tartness that surprised both Guy and Harriet. ‘Greece is all right as it is. Metaxas is not personally ambitious. He’s a sort of paternal despot, like the despots of the classical world; and, all things considered, I think he’s doing very well.’

Guy, assessing and criticizing Alan’s limitations, said: ‘You prefer the peasants to remain in picturesque poverty, I suppose?’

‘I prefer that they remain as they are: courteous, generous, honourable and courageous. Athens is not what it was, I
admit. There used to be a time when any stranger in the city was treated as a guest. As more and more strangers came here, naturally that couldn’t go on; yet something remains. The great tradition of
philoxenia
– of friendship towards a stranger – still exists in the country and on the islands. It exists here, in a little café like this!’ Alan’s voice sank with emotion; he had to pause a moment before he could say:

‘A noble people! Why should anyone wish to change them?’

Guy nodded appreciatively. ‘A noble people, yes. They deserve something better than subsistence at starvation level.’

‘Man does not live by bread alone. You young radicals want to turn the world into a mass-producing factory, and you expect to do it overnight. You make no allowance for the fact different countries are at different stages of development.’

‘It’s not only a question of development, but a question of freedom; especially freedom of thought. There are political prisoners in Greece. Isn’t that true?’

‘I’m sure I don’t know. There may be, but if people are intent on making a nuisance of themselves, then prison is the best place for them.’

‘They’re intent on improving the conditions of their fellow men.’

‘Aren’t we all?’ said Alan, with the asperity of a docile man attacked through his ideals. He took his dark glasses out and sat fingering them.

Seeing that his hands were trembling, Harriet said: ‘Darling, let’s talk of something else,’ but Guy was absorbed in his own subject. As he spoke at length of good schools, clinics, ante-natal care, child-welfare centres, collective farms and industries communally owned, Alan’s face grew more and more sombre. At last he broke in, protesting:

‘You come from an industrial area. You can only see progress in terms of industry. Greece has never been an industrial country and I hope it never will be.’

‘Can Greece support its people without industry?’

Without attempting to answer, Alan said: ‘I love Greece. I love the Greeks. I do not want to see any change here.’

‘You speak like a tourist. A country
must
support its populace.’

‘It does support them. No one dies of starvation.’

‘How do you know? Starvation can be a slow process. How many Greeks have to emigrate each year?’

There was a sense of deadlock at the table. Alan put his glasses down, stared at them, then gave a laugh. ‘You’ll have to have a talk with Ben Phipps,’ he said. ‘I think you’d see eye to eye.’

‘Really?’ Harriet asked in surprise.

‘Oh, yes. Ben prides himself on being a progressive.’

‘Surely Cookson wouldn’t approve of that?’

‘He’s not taken seriously at Phaleron. It’s fashionable to be left wing these days, as you know. Phipps is accepted as a sort of court jester. He can believe what he likes so long as he doesn’t try to change anything.’

‘I’d like to meet him again,’ Guy said.

‘I think it can be arranged.’

‘Let’s have another bottle.’

Alan had lost possibility for Guy, but unaware of this, he looked like a boy let out of school and returned to the beauties of Greece, talking at length about his travels on the main-land and to the islands. Guy, sitting back out of the conversation, attended with a smiling interest, viewing him no more seriously than Cookson viewed Phipps.

When they left, the proprietor took their hands and held to them as though he could scarcely bear to be left alone again in the empty silence that had once been alive with music and dancing youths.

There was little traffic outside and no hope of a taxi. Alan, walking ahead, led them through the narrow streets to the Plaka Square which they reached as the air-raid warning sounded. Police regulations required everyone to go under cover during an alert, but the raids, that came every day, were over the Piraeus, and Athenians avoided the regulation if they could. Alan suggested they should sit on the chairs outside the café in the square. They could hurry inside if the police appeared.

The moon, that shone fitfully through drifting cloud, touched the old houses and trees, and the plaque that said Byron had lived somewhere near. The strands of the pepper trees in the central garden moved like seaweed in the wind. It was too cold now to sit out after dark, but the outdoor chill was preferable to the hot, smoky air behind the curtain of the little café.

The café owner, hearing voices outside, looked through the curtains and asked if they would like coffee. Alan explained that they were only waiting for the raid to end. The owner said they might wait a long time and he invited them to take coffee as his guests. The coffee, hot and sweet, came in little cups, and the waiter left the curtain open slightly as a gesture of welcome while someone with a concertina inside began to play ‘Tipperary’ in their honour. They drank down their coffee and ordered some more. The moon disappeared behind cloud and there was darkness except for the crack of light between the café curtains.

Alan said: ‘“They are daring beyond their power and they risk beyond reason and they never lose hope in suffering.”’

‘Thucydides?’ asked Guy. Alan nodded and Harriet begged him: ‘Repeat some of your translations of Cavafy.’

He reflected for a while then began: ‘Why are we waiting, gathered in the market place? It’s the barbarians who are coming today …’ He stopped. ‘It is a long poem; too long.’

‘We have nothing to do but listen,’ said Harriet, and she suddenly realized how happy she was here with Guy, come out of his seclusion to be a companion of this freedom that, having neither past nor future, was a lacuna in time; a gift of leisure that need only be accepted and enjoyed.

Alan was about to start his recitation again when the all clear sounded. ‘Another time,’ he said. ‘Now I must go back and feed my poor Diocletian.’

7

Alan had asked Harriet if she would join him again when he went to the greens and, being told there was a visitor in the hall, she said to Guy: ‘Won’t you come, too?’

Guy, restored to all his old desire for contact with life, said: ‘I’d like to come,’ but running down the stairs, he stopped and whispered: ‘I don’t want to see him.’

‘Who?’

‘It’s Toby Lush again.’

Guy’s expression, injured and apprehensive, roused her to fury. ‘I’ll deal with him,’ she said. ‘You stay there.’

Toby, in his leather-bound jacket, with his wrack of moustache and hair in eyes, looked like some harmless old sheep-dog. He grinned at Harriet as though he had come on a pleasing errand and seemed startled by her tone when she asked:

‘What do
you
want?’

‘The old lad. Is he about?’

‘No.’

‘When can I see him? It’s urgent.’

‘You can’t see him. You can leave a message.’

‘No. Have orders to see Guy in person.’

‘He refuses to see you. If you have anything to say, you can say it to me.’

Toby spluttered and shifted his feet, but in the end had to speak. ‘There’s going to be an evacuation ship. It’s all arranged. Dubedat told me to tell you he’s wangled berths on it for the pair of you.’

‘Has he? Why?’

‘It’s your chance, don’t you see? There’s nothing here for you: no job, no money, nowhere to live, and now the Italians invading. You’re jolly lucky to be getting away.’

‘And is Gracey going?’

‘Yes, we’re losing him, sad to say.’

‘And you and Dubedat?’

‘No, we’d go if we could, but we’ve got to hold the fort. The ship’s not for us chaps. The old soul used his influence and they stretched a point because he said you’re stranded.’ Laughing nervously, his moustache stirring, damp, beneath his nose, Toby added; ‘I’d rather go than stay.’

‘You surprise me. The news is unusually good. I’ve been told the Italians are putting up no fight at all. There’s a whole division trapped in a gorge of the Pindus mountains and they’re not even trying to fight their way out.’

‘Oh, you can’t believe those stories. The Greeks’ll say anything. The I-ties may be stopped for the moment, but they’re bound to break through. They’ve got tanks, lorries, big guns, the lot. Once the break comes, they’ll be down here in a brace of shakes. We don’t want to stay here, but we’ve got a job to do.’

‘You had a job to do in Bucharest, but you bolted just the same.’

‘Oh, I say!’ Toby had been searching his pockets and now, finding a match, he began digging about in the bowl of his pipe. ‘Play fair!’ he said. ‘The old soul’s put himself out for you. And you’re lucky to be going.’

‘But we’re not going.’

Toby’s eyes bulged at her. ‘You are, you know. It’s orders. You saw that letter. Dubedat’s boss here now and if Guy’s sensible he won’t make trouble. If he reports for work in Cairo, we’ll stay mum. Not a word about his coming here against orders. The old soul promises. Now be sensible. It’s the only boat. The last boat. So hand over your passports and we’ll do the necessary.’

Harriet repeated: ‘We’re not going,’ and went upstairs while Toby shouted: ‘We’ll ring the Cairo office. We’ll complain …’

Guy had gone to the room where Harriet found him sprawled on the bed, a book in his hand, an air of detachment hiding his anticipation of a new betrayal.

‘We’re ordered on to the evacuation boat. Dubedat’s command.’

‘Is that all?’ Guy laughed and dropped the book.

‘It’s the last boat. If we don’t go, we’re stuck.’

‘We couldn’t be stuck in a better place.’

8

The night before the ship sailed, Cookson gave a farewell party for Gracey. Yakimov was among the invited.

‘Who was there?’ Harriet asked him next day.

‘Everyone,’ said Yakimov.

Harriet felt excluded because she had imagined herself and Guy to be part of English life here; now it seemed they were not. But when the ship had sailed a different atmosphere began to prevail. Uncertain who had gone and who had not, the survivors met one another with congratulations and, like veterans left behind to stem an enemy advance, they felt a new warmth towards one another.

At the same time, the situation had changed. The ship had no sooner gone than the streets were jubilant with the news that the Alpini Division trapped in the Pindus had surrendered to a man. The Greeks had taken five thousand prisoners. People said to one another: ‘Even Musso can’t make the I-ties fight.’ The Greeks, who had fought but imagined the fight was hopeless, now began to see the enemy as a pantomime giant that collapses when the hero strikes a blow.

On top of all this excitement, British airmen began to arrive at Tatoi and Eleusis and appeared in the streets just when the Greeks were buoyant with triumph and hope.

Guy and Harriet, invited to Zonar’s by Alan, saw the young Englishmen, pink-faced, and sheepish, pursued and cheered by admirers in every street. Walking up to the café, they met a crowd running down the road with a bearded English pilot on their shoulders. As he was carried towards Hermes Street,
the Greeks shouted the evzone challenge of ‘Aera! Aera!’ and the pilot, his arms in the air, shouted back: ‘Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.’

A woman on the pavement told everyone that that was the very pilot who had shot down an Italian bomber over the Piraeus. The statement was accepted as fact and there was applause among the Greeks seated outside Zonar’s. When the Pringles joined Alan, a man nearby, hearing them speak English, asked: ‘What is the “yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum”?’

‘It is an old English battle-cry,’ Alan replied and as his words were repeated around, the applause renewed itself.

The pilot was now out of sight, but before enthusiasm could die down, a lorry-load of Greek soldiers stopped on the corner. The men were perched on bales of blankets and heavy clothing donated by the Athenians who were giving all they could give to the troops now fighting in rain and sleet. At the sight of the lorry, people went out to seize the soldiers by their hands. Harriet, carried away by the ferment, lifted Alan’s glass and ran with it to the road, where she held it up to the men. One of them, smiling, took it and put it to his lips, but before he could drink, the lorry drove off taking both man and glass.