The Balkan Trilogy (116 page)

She asked gently: ‘How is it between you and Sophie?’

‘How do you think? The last time I saw her she was coming out of Sicorel’s. She’s just bought a thousand pounds’ worth of evening dresses.’

‘You’re joking. Surely you’re not as rich as that?’

‘Rich? Me? You don’t think
I
paid for them?’

‘Who did, then?’

‘A silly little Cherrypicker with a title and money in the bank. He paid for them and probably paid for a lot of other things as well.’

‘You mean, she’s left you?’

‘Yep. Not surprising, is it? What had I to offer a girl like Sophie?’

‘How long were you married?’

‘Week. It took a week to get her passport, then she looked round, sighted something better and was off like a greyhound from a trap. I admit things were grim. I had no job – we had only one room, in a dreadful pension. She hated me.’

‘Oh, come!’

‘Hated me!’ Clarence repeated with morose satisfaction: ‘Anyway, off she went. In next to no time she’d got herself a poor devil of a major. Not that I pity him. A bloody ordnance officer, feathering his nest while better men rot in the desert. She didn’t stick him for long. She went on to an Egyptian cotton king, but he was only an interlude. She didn’t intend to lose a valuable passport just to go and live in the delta. I don’t know who came next … I lost sight of her. Cairo is the happy hunting ground for girls like Sophie. They can pick and choose.’

‘Are you divorcing her?’

‘I suppose so. She said she might want to marry this last one. She does love dressing up. As she came out of Sicorel’s, her face was glowing. It’s the only time I ever saw her
really
happy.’

‘But what can she do with so many evening dresses? Is Cairo like that?’

‘O
Lord
, yes!’ Clarence glanced critically at Harriet’s plain suit, then stuck out his lower lip at the women with their faded dresses on the dance floor. His eyes ceased to focus. Lost in memory, he suddenly laughed: ‘Sophie had something,’ he said: according a benevolent admiration. ‘She really was a little trollop.’

‘You knew that when you married her.’

‘Of course I did.’ Clarence stretched back in his chair, relaxed and fired by wine, and smiled aloofly, having reached now the stage of philosophical titubancy which granted him insight into all things. ‘You just don’t understand. You simplify life too much. Things are subtle … complex … frightening … One does things because one does things. You’re so clever, you don’t know what I mean. But what a fate! Really, when you come to think of it. I don’t envy her.’

‘Who?’

‘Sophie. He won’t marry her. They never do. She’ll be stuck there with her British passport. In a few years’ time she’ll be just like all those raddled Levantine wives who got left behind in Cairo after the last war. She’ll keep a pension …’

‘It’s an old story.’

‘Yep. Life’s an old story. That’s what’s wrong with it. Still, it interests me. I interest myself.’

‘I’d never have thought it.’

‘Hah!’ Clarence turned his moist reminiscent eye and now the admiration was for Harriet. ‘You’re a bitch. Sophie was only a trollop, but you’re a bitch. A bitch is what I need.’

‘I don’t think so. You need someone who can share your illusions …’

‘Go on talking. You do me good. You always despised me. Do you remember that night I came in drunk from the Polish party and David Boyd was there? You debagged me. The three of you. Guy and David held me down and you took my bags off.’

‘Did we do that? What shocking behaviour. But we were young then.’

‘Good heavens, it was only last winter. And before I left –
do you remember? – I asked for those shirts I’d lent Guy and you were furious. Quite rightly. I didn’t really want them. I was just being bloody-minded. And you were
furious
! You took them out to the balcony and threw them down into the street.’

‘What a stupid thing to do!’

‘No, not a bit stupid. You were always doing extraordinary things – things no one else thought of doing. I loved it. I bet if I asked you, you’d get up on this table here and now, throw off your clothes, and dance the can-can.’

‘I bet I wouldn’t.’

Clarence sat up, urging her, ‘Go on. Do it.’

‘Don’t be a fool.’ She wondered if Clarence had always held such an absurd view of her, or had she, with the passage of time, become a myth for him?

Clarence was pained and disappointed by her refusal but the waiter arrived and he forgot the can-can. Their meal was served. Clarence took a mouthful and put down his fork.

‘This is pretty terrible,’ he said.

‘It’s better than you’ll get anywhere else.’

‘Then we’ll need a great deal more to drink. Let’s go on to champagne.’

The floor cleared and the singer came out: a stout woman, not young, not beautiful, but it was for her that people came to the Pomegranate. She sang ‘Anathema’ and Clarence asked: ‘What is that song?’

‘A curse on him who says that love is sweet.
I’ve tried it and found it poison.’

‘God, yes!’ Clarence sighed fervently and filled his glass. He gave up any further attempt to eat.

The singer sang: ‘“I’ve something secret to tell you: I love you, I love you, I love you.”’

The pretty girl who had attracted Clarence closed her eyes, but a tear came from under one lid. Clarence gave her a long look and, dismally bereft, turned on Harriet:

‘That chap you were with today: what’s he doing here?’

‘He has some sort of liaison job. He won’t be here much longer.’

‘No, he won’t,’ Clarence maliciously agreed. He sat up, preparing an attack, but at that moment Guy arrived.

‘Ah!’ said Clarence, his voice rich with interest, ‘here he is at last.’

They watched Guy as he made his way round the room greeted by people Harriet did not know, talking to people she had never seen before. Dobson, dancing with the widow, flung out an arm as Guy passed and patted him on the shoulder.

‘A great man! A remarkable man!’ said Clarence, deeply moved.

Behind Guy came Yakimov, the hem of his greatcoat trailing on the floor.

Clarence said: ‘Hell!’ then added: ‘Never mind, never mind,’ and in a mood to accept anything, shouted: ‘Good old Yakimov.’ The reprimand intended for Harriet was delayed by the new arrivals and the need to order food and more of the gritty, sweet champagne. Eventually, when they had all settled down again, Clarence looked angrily at Harriet and said: ‘You’ve the best husband in the world.’

‘Yes,’ Harriet agreed

‘You’re lucky –
damned
lucky – to be married to him.’

‘So you keep telling me.’

‘I’m telling you again. Apparently you need telling. What were you doing walking about holding on to that bloody little pongo?’

‘I like that. You’re a pongo yourself.’

Guy said: ‘Hey. Shut up, you two.’

‘I’m telling her,’ Clarence explained to Guy, ‘she’s married to the finest man I’ve ever known … a great man, a saint. And she’s not satisfied. She picked up with a kid one pip up …’

Guy said again: ‘Shut up, Clarence,’ but Clarence would not shut up. He continued to condemn Harriet and condemn Charles. He and Charles might have little enough in common,
but both had an instinct for intrigue. To each, the very sight of the other had roused suspicion, and Clarence took Harriet’s guilt for granted.

She was angry but, more than that, she was shocked. She was particularly shocked that these accusations should be made in front of Guy who seemed to her, at that moment, like some one of an older generation, who must be protected against the atrocities of sex. When Clarence at last reached an end, she said to Guy: ‘You know this isn’t true.’

‘Of course it isn’t. Clarence is being silly.’ Guy rose as he spoke, looking for a refuge, and seeing Dobson leave the floor, hurried over to his table.

‘Now look what you’ve done!’ Harriet said.

‘What do I care!’ mumbled Clarence. ‘Someone had to say it,’ and self-justified and self-righteous, he sank into a despondent half-sleep.

Yakimov, who had listened to none of this, was waiting for his food. When it came, the waiter was sent to summon Guy who looked round, waved, nodded and went on talking to Dobson.

Yakimov, smiling blandly, said: ‘I think I’ll begin,’ and when his own plate was empty, peered at Guy’s: ‘Do you think the dear boy doesn’t want it?’

The food, some sort of lung hash, had fixed itself, cold and grey, on Guy’s plate. To Harriet with her disordered stomach it looked inedible, but nothing was inedible to Yakimov. She said: ‘You might as well have it.’

When Guy eventually returned, she told him: ‘I’ve given Yakimov your food.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

Clarence began struggling up and calling the waiter. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said frantically.

‘Not yet,’ Guy protested. ‘I’ve only just got here.’

‘You got here nearly an hour ago,’ Harriet said crossly. ‘You spent all the time at another table.’

‘Why didn’t you come over?’

‘We weren’t asked to come over.’

‘Do you need to be asked?’

Clarence persisted that he must go. ‘My berth’s booked on the night train. I’ll be in trouble if I miss it.’

‘Oh, all right; but I’ve seen nothing of you.’

‘Whose fault is that?’

‘And I’ve had nothing to eat.’

Harriet said: ‘You’ve only yourself to blame.’

‘Really, darling, need you be so disgruntled? Clarence is only here for one night.’

‘I must go,’ Clarence moaned.

‘All right. Don’t worry. Harriet and I are coming with you.’

Yakimov was content to be left behind.

Outside in the passage, the eunuch had left his base. An Australian soldier was sitting in the basket chair weeping. Perhaps he had been excluded from the club, perhaps he could not afford to pay.

‘What’s the matter?’ Harriet asked.

‘Nobody loves poor Aussie,’ he wept. ‘Nobody loves poor Aussie.’

‘He’s drunk,’ Clarence said in contempt. Stepping out to the street, he stopped a taxi in a businesslike way but, once inside it, fell across the back seat and lost consciousness.

The station was blacked out. The train, that used to be part of the Orient Express, stood darkly in the darkness. The station officials moved about carrying torches or oil lamps. One of the officials thought that Clarence must be the British officer who earlier in the day had left his suitcase in the cloak-room. Every man on the station joined in getting Clarence to his bunk. The two cases, whether they belonged to Clarence or not, were put up on the rack. Another British officer was leaning out of the window of the wagon-lit and it seemed that he and Clarence were the only passengers on the train.

Guy shook Clarence by the shoulder, trying to waken him: ‘We’re leaving,’ he said: ‘We want to say “good-bye”.’

Clarence shrugged Guy off and turning his face to the wall, mumbled: ‘What do I care?’

‘Isn’t there anything we can do for him?’

‘Nothing,’ said Harriet. ‘It’s another case of “Nobody loves poor Aussie”.’

The station-master warned them that the train was about to leave and Guy, suddenly upset, said: ‘We may not see him again.’

‘Never mind. We must regard that relationship as closed.’

But Guy could not regard any relationship as closed. All the way back to Monistiraki he spoke regretfully of Clarence, upset that he had seen so little of an old friend who held him in such high esteem.

‘I really liked Clarence,’ he said as though Clarence had departed from the world.

And, indeed, it seemed to Harriet that Clarence was someone who had disappeared a long time ago and was lost somewhere in the past.

23

March, as it moved into spring, was a time of marvels. The British troops were coming in force now, filling the streets with new voices, and the splendour of the new season came with them. The men were wonderful in their variety. As the lorries drove in from the Piraeus, bringing Australians, New Zealanders and Englishmen of different sorts, the Greeks shouted from the pavement: ‘The Wops are done for. When the snow melts, we’ll drive them into the sea.’

At mid-day the air was warm as summer. Every waste place had become green and the budding shoots almost at once became flowers. There were flowers everywhere. The old olive groves up the Ilissus Kifissias Road, the grey banks of the Ilissus, the stark, wet clay about the Pringles’ villa – all these places dazzled with the reds of anemones and poppies, with hyacinths and wild lupins, acanthus flowers and asphodels. The wastelands of Athens had become a garden.

The flower shops, packed to the doors with flowers, threw out such a scent the streets were filled with it. If there were nothing to eat, there were carnations. Wherever they went, the British soldiers were handed posies and in the bars they received gifts of wine.

People had feared the British expedition. Some had said the British would never fire a shot, that they had only to set foot on Greek soil and the wrath of Germany would descend; but here they were and nothing had been heard from Germany yet.

The snows were melting in Macedonia. The Greek forces, taking fresh heart, would advance again. Any day now there
would be new gains and new victories. The fact the Germans had occupied Bulgaria meant nothing very much. At this festival of
philoxenia
, in the midst of spring, the old hopes had returned and people pointed out that Mussolini had made a fool of himself. ‘Why should the Germans start another front simply to save the Duce’s face?’ More likely the Germans were enjoying the situation as much as the Greeks. In Athens the promise was: ‘Victory by Easter; by summer, peace.’

The British troops went wherever they liked. The café-owners would not support regulations concerning officers and Other Ranks, and the military police could not keep the men within bounds.

The Greeks, for their part, made no complaints. They expected tumult and enjoyed it. As for the damage: that was also to be expected in a town crowded with foreign troops. They offered their losses up to the Greek cause. When the Australians were confined to barracks, the Greeks were indignant. And Mrs Brett was indignant. At the canteen she told Harriet how she had been stimulated by contact with men who were ‘wild in such a natural way’.