The Balkan Trilogy (112 page)

The revue dismissed, Guy said he was a tennis player himself. Would Miss Dunne be willing to give him a game?

At this, Miss Dunne’s colour darkened and spread up among the roots of her red hair and down the front of her emerald green dress. At the same time a knowing smirk spread over her large carmine face. She said archly: ‘I’ll think about it.’

Harriet, turning a glance of appeal on Alan, caught Charles’s eye. He gave her a sympathetic grin, and she grinned back. At this exchange, life lost its threatening desolation and the air grew bright.

Alan said he had arranged for their coffee to be sent to his room. Harriet, taken unwillingly upstairs, felt she was being taken from the one person she wished to see.

Alan’s room, which had only one window, was smaller than that which had been occupied by Gracey. When the door shut, Harriet turned on Guy:

‘That idiotic woman thought you were making advances to her.’

‘Darling, really! You are being ridiculous.’ He looked to Alan for support but Alan was inclined to side with Harriet.

‘I admired your campaign,’ he said. ‘I really think you won Miss Dunne’s heart. No small achievement. But, then, it would take a ruthless misanthrope to hold out against so simple and beneficent an approach to one’s fellow men.’

Alan had recently collected some photographs, taken during his wanderings in Greece, which he had kept in store. Now, lifting the large prints one by one from the portfolios,
he studied each tenderly and nostalgically before passing it to Harriet or Guy.

He was so pleased to have his friends share the sights he had seen, Harriet was touched and did her best to put Charles from her mind. Gazing into his pictures of rocky islands, olive trees, classical temples outlined against the sea, and chalk-white churches and houses taken at mid-day when the shadowed walls shimmered with reflected light, she said: ‘We wanted to come here. This is the country where we most wanted to be, but we have seen nothing. We might as well be in prison.’

On an impulse, Alan said: ‘I shall never leave Greece.’

‘But if the Italians come, how can you stay?’

‘I could hide out on the islands. I speak the language. I have friends everywhere. People would shelter me. Yes, I’m sure they would shelter me.’

Watching Alan as he spoke, Harriet saw him a ponderous man, quiet, sardonic yet gentle, patient and long-suffering. She had thought he loved only Greece and his dog, but now she saw that to him Greece was not only a love, it was sanctuary. But she could not suppose his plan to remain in hiding here was more than romantic fantasy. There had been Englishwomen in Bucharest, ex-governesses, without friends or money outside Rumania, who were determined to stay but, in the end, they had left with the rest.

While Alan was talking, she heard Pinkrose’s voice raised in the garden and, moving as though aimlessly, she went to the window. Pinkrose, muffled to the eyes, was standing on the carriage-way saying good-bye to Charles. She watched Charles as he saluted and turned and walked off towards the back garden gate. The lemon trees hid him from sight but she remained by the window, looking in the direction he had gone.

Guy and Alan were still intent on the photographs, with Alan giving a disquisition upon his photographic technique. Harriet knew Guy did not understand a word and it seemed to her that nothing Alan said had any relation to life. Nothing in the room had any relation to life. She could scarcely contain
her impatience to follow Charles out of the garden and down to the town centre where at that moment he was probably wondering what had become of her.

Alan, transported by Guy’s admiration for his work, dusted and opened more portfolios, and said with the emotion of a lonely man: ‘You will stay to tea, won’t you?’

Guy had had other plans for the afternoon, but the appeal was too much for him.

‘We would like to stay,’ he said.

21

Harriet was certain she would hear from Charles next morning. She suffered, as he had suffered, a feverish sense of urgency; but the messenger did not arrive. As the morning passed without a sign, her excitement died down. She had been mistaken. It had all been a mistake. There was nothing to hope for.

When she left the office at mid-day, Charles was passing the door. He gave her a sidelong smile but hurried on, too busy to stop. He did not look round. His long, quick strides took him down the square to the Corinthian. He disappeared inside.

Crestfallen, she, too, went down the square, but slowly, with no object in view. As she approached the Corinthian, Charles came out again. He stood at the top of the hotel steps, a cablegram in his hand. Seeing her, he came pelting down as though it were all some sort of game, and lightly asked: ‘Where are you going to eat?’

‘I haven’t decided yet.’

She felt he expected something from her, but she did not know what. Irritated by the incident, she made to walk on and his face contracted with an odd, almost bitter, dismay: ‘Don’t go.’

‘I thought you were busy.’

‘Not now. I had to pick up this cable. It could have been important.’

‘But it wasn’t?’

‘Not very. Anyway, not so important it can’t wait.’

At a loss, she said: ‘I expected to hear from you.’

‘You turned me down at Tatoi. It rests with you now.’

‘Does it?’ she laughed and in her surprise examined him as though she had taken a step away from him. Behind his inculcated good manners, she had been aware of his demanding arrogance – the quality that had caused Alan to describe him as ‘a spoilt little boy’. Now it was subdued. Perhaps he was being cautious, but he gave an impression of humility. His fixed, entreating gaze brought Sasha to her mind, and, stretching out her hand, she smiled and said: ‘Then come and have lunch with me.’

In the second stage of their relationship, it seemed to Harriet she had no aim or purpose beyond seeing Charles; but she was not obsessed out of all reason. She knew the same compelling intention had once been directed on to Guy. Directed and deflected. Had Charles asked her, she would have said she had found her marriage hoplessly intractable. ‘Don’t blame me. It’s all too difficult.’ Charles asked her nothing. Apparently he had decided that explanations also rested with her. Unasked, she gave no answers. She had her own sort of loyalty.

The rain came and went. On wet afternoons they would take tea at the Corinthian. When it was fine, they walked about Athens, sensing the spring in the electric freshness of the air.

A haze of green was coming over the trees at the top of Constitution Square. During the weeks of winter Alan, unwilling to go far, had exercised his dog about the area of the Academy, and now that the weather was improving, he was aware of Harriet’s withdrawal and would make no claim on her. If she cared to join him at his mid-day session with Yakimov, then she was welcome, but he did not ask her to come for walks in the gardens. Once or twice when he met Harriet with Charles in the street, he glanced away, preferring to remain unaware of her new relationship.

Unreasonably, she felt deprived by Alan’s bashfulness. When she noticed the gardens coming to life again, she told Charles they must go in and visit the water-birds.

‘Which water-birds?’ he asked.

‘Those on the pond in the middle of the gardens.’

‘Oh!’ He smiled, but made no other comment.

As they passed the palms that stood sentinel at the gate, she said: ‘In this country even the trees are required to imitate columns.’

‘Don’t you think the first columns were meant to imitate trees?’

‘I suppose they were. How clever you are! When you’ve taken your degree, will you become an archaeologist?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘What will you do?’

‘I’ve really no idea.’

His vagueness perplexed her. Every other young man known to her had seen the future as a struggle for life, and had prepared his means of livelihood long before he reached the age of twenty. If Charles were unconcerned in this, then his background must be very different from hers. There was something unfamiliar in him – the unfamiliarity of the rich, the more than rich; but she would not question him. He did not ask her about her family and upbringing, and did not speak of his own.

Their sense of likeness astonished them. It resembled magic. They felt themselves held in a spellbound condition which they feared to injure. Although she could not pin down any overt point of resemblance, Harriet at times imagined he was the person most like her in the world, her mirror image.

Fearful that some revelation should break this enchantment, they instinctively suppressed their disparities. Their conversations were sporadic and strained; and often they would walk round the gardens without a word.

In spite of the war, the cold, the shortage of food and hope, the spring was beginning again with small red shoots on the wistaria and buds on the apricot trees. Threads of green, rising from seeds that had lain all the previous summer invisible, like dust among the dust, were already putting out minute leaves, each of its own pattern. Harriet listened for the noise
of children and birds, but there was no noise. As they advanced under the trees, the quiet grew more dense.

‘Are you sure this is the place?’ she asked.

He nodded and before she could speak again, they came out to the clearing. It was the same pond, filled by the winter rain. The sun broke through and dappled the water. On the sandy verge the iron chairs stood tilted to right and left. All the properties were there, but it was a stage without life. There were no children, no birds, no grown-ups, no old man to collect the small coins. The water was still. The air silent.

‘Where are they all? What has happened to the birds?’

He gave his brief derisive laugh: ‘What do you think?’

She wondered if her dismay had amused him, but he did not look amused. His smile was almost vindictive, as though she had hurt him and now was hurt in her turn. She said nothing. She shut herself off in silence, refusing to betray any emotion at all. They passed through the thicket to the formal gardens of the Zappion. The sunlight was cold; the low-cut shrubs offered no protection from the wind. Clouds, black with snow, were coming up out of the sea. At the end of the garden the monstrous columns of the temple of Olympian Zeus flashed against the heavy sky.

Harriet came to a stop and said: ‘I won’t go any further. I should get back. I have some work to do.’

Contrite, Charles said: ‘Come and have tea with me first,’ speaking as though this suggestion would put everything right.

‘No. I’d better go to the office.’ Harriet turned and walked back with her mind made up.

In sight of the Grande Bretagne, Charles said: ‘Must you go in?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do come and have tea!’

She did not reply, but when they reached the office entrance, she walked on with him to his hotel.

The Corinthian was still new enough to look opulent. Its modernity had remained modern because no one had time these days to outdate it. The foyer, with its plum-red carpet
and heavy, square-cut chairs, had strips of neon secreted behind the cornices. The main light came from the showcases, emptied now of everything except jewellery, which no one felt inclined to buy.

Though crowded with refugees and service-men, the hotel maintained such standards as it could, and was one of the few places where young Greek women might meet unchaperoned.

Several Greek girls sat at the walnut tables, some with fiancés on leave from the front. Harriet, following Charles through the plum-red gloom, noticed Archie Callard taking tea with Cookson. She caught Callard’s glance, saw him look at Charles, then turn and murmur to Cookson who, staring pointedly in a different direction, grimaced with unreal amusement.

Seated beside Charles, she asked him: ‘Do you see much of Cookson?’

‘I see him occasionally. He sometimes gives me supper.’

‘Has he ever invited you to one of his small and rather curious parties?’

‘No. Does he give small curious parties? What happens at them? How are they curious?’

She was paused by the innocence of Charles’s inquiry and, not attempting to answer, asked instead: ‘How do you come to know Pinkrose?’

A slow and quizzical smile spread over Charles’s face. ‘He was my tutor. Surely you don’t imagine I go to curious parties with Pinkrose!’

She blushed and did not reply, but after a moment said: ‘If you dislike me so much, why do you want to see me?’

His smile went at once. A concerned and wondering expression took its place. He moved towards her and was about to speak when Guy’s voice came in an anguished cry across the foyer: ‘Darling!’

Charles started away. Guy, his glasses askew, his hair ruffled by the wind, his arms stretched round an untidy mass of papers, was hastening towards them, his whole natural disorder exaggerated by the heedlessness of misery. Something was wrong. Imagining he had sought her out to accuse her, Harriet
sat motionless; but it was nothing like that. Reaching the table, he let the books and papers drop in a heap and said: ‘What do you think has happened?’

She shook her head.

‘Pinkrose has stopped the show.’

‘What show?’

‘Why, the revue, of course. The show we did at Tatoi. He forbids a second performance.’

‘I don’t understand …’

‘He says it’s indecent. We were rehearsing at the School when the boy from the Information Office brought a letter. He said he had received complaints about the revue and could not let the School be used for rehearsals. Also, he could not let Alan Frewen, Yakimov or me take any further part in it. As though it could go on without us!’

Harriet pulled herself out of her confusion and said: ‘The trouble must be
Maria Marten
. Couldn’t you leave it out?’

‘But
Maria Marten
’s the chief attraction. Everyone’s talking about it. Everyone wants to see it. Yakimov’s performance was the success of the show. We’ve already sold most of the tickets.’

‘I am sorry.’ Harriet wished she could say more, but Guy had taken himself and his activities so far beyond her ambience, she could only wonder why he had brought his anxiety to her. She glanced up at Charles who had risen and now stood looking troubled, until Guy, as though seeing him for the first time, said: ‘Hello.’