The Balkan Trilogy (115 page)

Charles smiled down on her, in quizzical disbelief: ‘But are you ever alone?’ he asked.

‘Quite often. Guy is always busy on something. He’s …’ She was about to say ‘He’s too busy to live,’ but checked herself. It was, after all, a question of what one meant by living. She said instead: ‘He has his own interests.’

‘Interests that you don’t share?’

‘Often they’re interests I can’t share. These productions, for instance: he enjoys putting them on but he prefers not to have me there. It’s quite understandable, of course. The production is his world; he’s the dominating influence – and he feels I don’t take him seriously. When I’m there, I spoil it
for him. And he does much too much. In Bucharest, when he staged
Troilus and Cressida
, he worked on it day and night. The Germans were advancing into Paris at the time. I never saw him. He simply disappeared.’

‘What did you do? Were you alone?’

‘Usually, yes.’

Charles watched her gravely, awaiting some conclusive revelation satisfactory to himself, but she said no more. After a moment he encouraged her: ‘You must have been lonely, in a strange country at a time like that?’

‘Yes.’

‘You married a stranger, and went to live among strangers. What did you expect?’

‘Nothing. We did not expect to survive. It’s our survival that’s thrown us out. However, as a potential, Guy seemed remarkable. Now I’m not so sure about him. As a potential, he probably is remarkable, but all he does is dissipate himself. And why? Do you think he’s afraid to put himself to the test?’

Charles did not know the answer to this question, but said: ‘He seems confident enough.’

‘Guy’s confidence really comes from a lack of contact with reality. He’s stuck in unreality. He’s afraid to come out.’

Trying himself to gain more contact with reality, Charles asked: ‘What’s he doing at the moment?’

‘Rehearsing the revue again. They’ve all decided to defy Pinkrose, and the padre’s letting them use the church hall. He’s probably over there now.’

In this she was wrong, as she soon discovered. They passed a café. The day had brightened and sitting outside in the sun was Guy with a British army officer. ‘See who’s here,’ he called out to her.

Harriet had already seen who was there. The officer was Clarence Lawson, one of their Bucharest friends, now dressed up as a lieutenant-colonel. Grinning, Clarence rose up, tall and thinner than ever, keeping his long, narrow head on one side as though seeking to efface himself. In fact, Harriet knew, he was not only aware but disapproving. He had given her a swift,
appraising glance, and she saw him sum up the situation.

Clarence was not successful with women but he was a man whose life was lived in acute consciousness of the opposite sex, passing from love to love, preferring an unhappy passion to no passion at all.

She said: ‘Why, hello!’ hoping by her tone of hearty interest to distract him from the intimacy he observed between her and Charles. She held out her hand. He took it, but his eyes were on the hand that held the violets.

She rallied him on the rank he had reached since they last saw him. His grin became rueful and he mumbled:

‘Doesn’t mean much.’

Guy said gleefully: ‘You could not have come past at a better time. Clarence is only here for a few hours. He’s just arrived. I was on my way to the rehearsal when I bumped into him. Wasn’t it an amazing bit of luck? Here.’ Guy pulled up two chairs. ‘Sit down, both of you. What will you have? Coffee?’

‘We haven’t eaten yet.’

‘You won’t get anything now, but they might make a sandwich.’

Harriet, glancing at Charles, saw his face shut against her. He did not meet her eyes but spoke to Guy as though she were not present.

‘I’m afraid I can’t stay. There’s a lot going on at the moment. I ought to be at the office.’ Giving no one a chance to detain him, he turned abruptly and crossed the road.

Watching him as he went, Harriet’s sense of loss was so acute, she could not keep quiet: ‘I must go after him. I can’t let him go like that. I must explain …’

‘Of course,’ Guy said, voice and face expressionless: ‘If you feel …’

‘Yes. I do. I’ll come back. I won’t be long.’ She sped off and managed to catch sight of Charles among the crowd on the opposite pavement. He went into a shop that sold newspapers and cigarettes. She slowed to regain her breath and reaching him, was able to speak calmly: ‘Charles, I’m sorry.’

He swung round, startled to see her there beside him.

‘Clarence is here for so short a time. I’ll have to stay with them. I’ve no choice.’

‘Part of your past, I presume?’

‘No. At least, not as you mean it. Why do you say that?’

‘He looked pretty sick when he saw I was with you.’

‘He’s only a friend; as much Guy’s friend as mine.’

‘You’ll be saying that about me one day.’

She laughed and slid her fingers into his hand. He was still annoyed but let her hand rest with his. She said: ‘I’ll see you tomorrow?’

‘Will you have luncheon with me?’

‘Yes.’

She made to pull her fingers away; he held to them a moment, then let them go. The meeting arranged, they could part with composure. Harriet went back to join Guy and Clarence. Clarence was restrained, making his disapproval evident and she tried to rally him: ‘I thought you were a conscientious objector?’ she said.

‘I still am a conscientious objector.’

‘But you’ve joined the army.’

‘Well … in a manner of speaking, yes.’ Clarence, lolling as he used to loll, hiding his discomfort beneath an appearance of ease and indifference, would not respond to her raillery. Despite his disapproval, he was, as he always had been, on the defensive.

‘Are you in the army or aren’t you?’

Clarence shrugged, leaving it to Guy to explain that Clarence was not a real lieutenant-colonel. He merely belonged to a para-military organization intended to protect British business interests in the war zones. He was on his way to Salonika to keep an eye on the tobacco combines.

‘Really! What a shocking come-down! Just an agent of the Bund, Wall Street and Zoippus Bank! He’d better not meet Ben Phipps.’

Clarence shrugged again, refusing to protect himself; and Harriet went on to ask what he had done since leaving
Bucharest in the company of Sophie, the half-Jewish Rumanian girl who had once hoped to marry Guy. He had been on his way to Ankara to take up a British Council appointment but Sophie had deflected him. She had decided that Ankara was not for her. When they left the express at Istanbul, she demanded that they take the boat to Haifa and from there make their way to Cairo.

‘So that’s where you ended up?’

‘Yep.’

‘What about the Council? Couldn’t they hold you?’

‘No. I was only on contract. They let me go.’

‘And now you’re a colonel! That’s pretty quick promotion.’

‘Yep. Lieutenant one day: major by the end of the week: lieutenant-colonel the week after. That’s what it’s like.’ He snuffed down his nose in self-contempt. ‘The office in Cairo is full of bogus half-colonels like me.’

‘And what about Sophie?’

‘She’s all right.’

‘Did you get married?’

‘Yep.’

‘Good for Sophie. And now she’s the wife of a lieutenant-colonel! I bet she likes that?’

Clarence hung his head and did not reply.

Taking this for a happy conversation, Guy decided he could safely go. He handed Clarence over to Harriet, saying he had been due at his rehearsal at 2.30 and he could not keep the cast waiting any longer. ‘I’ll be back at seven,’ he said. ‘I’ll meet you here. Think where you’d like to go for supper. Anyway we’ll spend the evening together,’ and, gathering together his papers and books, he was gone.

‘Guy hasn’t changed much,’ Clarence said.

‘Did you expect him to change?’

Harriet put the violets on the table in front of her and Clarence frowned on them. ‘Guy’s a great man,’ he said.

‘Well … yes.’

They had had this conversation before and Harriet could think of nothing new to say. She had seen a great deal of
Clarence, who in Bucharest had been her companion when, as usually happened, Guy was not to be found. She had accepted his generosity and given him nothing, but her chief emotion at the sight of him was irritation. Clarence, it seemed, was born to suffer. He wanted to suffer. If she had not ill-treated him, someone else would. But Clarence could take his revenge. He encouraged confidence and often gave sympathy, but was just as liable to snap back with: ‘Don’t complain to me.
You
married him,’ or: ‘If you didn’t let him play on your weakness, he wouldn’t impose these lame dogs on you.’

Now she was cautious. With the vindictiveness of the weak, he was likely to repay her behaviour with Charles; and given any opportunity, he would sink her with some appalling truth.

‘A great man,’ Clarence repeated firmly. ‘He’s not self-seeking. He’s generous. He’s a
big
person.’

‘Yes,’ said Harriet.

‘You’re jolly lucky to be married to him.’

‘I suppose I am … in a way.’

‘What do you mean: “in a way”? You’re damned lucky!’

Harriet let it pass. The café produced a sandwich for her. As the sun passed off the outdoor tables, the cold returned. Though the damp breeze smelled of spring, and almonds and apricots were in bloom, an icy tang came into the air at twilight. The nights were cold enough for snow.

She left earlier than she need to go to the office. When she returned, Clarence had moved inside. He had been drinking cognac and his gloom had lifted. He now accorded her his old romantic admiration.

At eight o’clock Ben Phipps, on his way to the Stefani Agency, entered and came to the table, doing a favour but not willingly. He had a message from Guy and his delivery was off-hand: ‘He says he’ll have to rehearse the chorus again. But you’re to go to the Pomegranate and he’ll join you there.’

‘Why the Pomegranate?’

‘Don’t ask me. That’s what he said.’

‘How long will he be, do you think?’

‘God knows. You know what he’s like.’

Clarence asked Phipps to join them for a drink, but Phipps, humorously patronizing, somehow implying that to him a lieutenant-colonel was a joke, said: ‘Haven’t time, old chap.
I
have to work for my living,’ and went.

The Pomegranate was a night club and an odd choice for Guy. He may have thought that, as Clarence in his new glory could afford it, it would be an especial treat for Harriet.

She said: ‘It’s expensive, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh well! If the food’s good …’

‘There’s no such thing as good food these days.’

‘You mean, not at any price?’

‘Not at any price. But they have a singer who’s very good; and it’s run by a eunuch. A real one; one of the last of the old Ottoman empire.’

‘Oh well! That’s something.’ Clarence got unsteadily to his feet.

The hallway of the Pomegranate was lit by an indefinite inkish glow from bulbs hidden inside paper pomegranates. The eunuch who sat there collecting the entrance fees was not fat as his kind are said to be, but marked by an appearance that resembled nothing but itself. His face was grey-white, matt, and very delicately lined, like crackle ware. It was fixed in an expression of profound melancholy. He appeared unapproachable. A walking-stick, resting between his legs, showed that he was a cripple. Harriet, who felt for him the same anguish that had been roused in her by the deliberately maimed beggar children of Rumania, had once seen him making his way like a wounded crab down University Street. People walked round him, avoiding him not because of his awkward movements but because he had been separated from human kind by an irreparable injury. He seemed to have retreated from society like someone who had been a centre of scandal and would not risk another brush with life. But he purveyed life of a sort. He had started the night club, the best in Athens, and, sitting in a basket chair at the door, watched all who came and went.

Those who entered found a vapid, colourless little hall with
a dance floor. Most of the tables were taken. Any still unoccupied were marked ‘reserved’. The ‘reserved’ ticket was taken off for Clarence and Harriet, and Clarence said: ‘I hope this table wasn’t intended for anyone else. I dislike being given special treatment because of my rank.’

His expression was smug and Harriet said: ‘Don’t worry. You are favoured not because you’re an imitation colonel, but as a guest and an ally. The Greek army is professional: rank has nothing to do with class, only with proficiency. The Greek soldiers go wherever they can afford to go, so I hope the British command will stop all this nonsense about Other Ranks.’

‘I’m pretty sure they won’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s obvious.’ Clarence spoke peevishly, disliking the discussion. The Athens streets had been noisy with the newly arrived troops who, coming in from camps, wandering about, lost in the darkness, blundered in between the black-out curtains of any door that seemed to offer a refuge. They had not managed to pass the eunuch at the Pomegranate. His fee was too high.

‘You don’t want them in here, do you?’ Clarence asked. ‘For one thing, there isn’t room.’

There certainly wasn’t much room. The people present resembled those who had been at Cookson’s party. The dance floor was packed with couples clinched face to face and barely able to move. Among them Harriet saw Dobson with the widow of a shipping magnate, whom he was trying to marry.

‘What shall we drink?’ Clarence asked, insisting on happier things. He ordered retsina and when the third bottle was opened his smile had become mild, placatory and rather mawkish: ‘Come on and dance,’ he said, but Harriet was not dressed for dancing. When she refused, he said: ‘If you won’t, then I’ll dance with that pretty girl over there.’

‘She’ll refuse you. Greek girls don’t dance with foreigners.’

‘Why ever not?’

‘It’s out of loyalty to their own men at the front.’

‘Loyalty?’ Clarence brooded on the word then added with feeling: ‘Yes. Loyalty. That’s the thing. That’s what we need.’
An impassioned gloom came over him and Harriet knew he would now be willing to talk.