The Balkan Trilogy (118 page)

‘Oh, what a surprise for the Duce, the Duce!

He can’t put it over the Greeks.’

The words amused her at first but they soon reached a point of unendurable familiarity.

‘Is that the
only
song in the revue now?’ Harriet asked, speaking grudgingly, for she resented the revue and hardly ever mentioned it. Guy always had had, and always would have, some preoccupation or other, but she had persuaded herself that were it not for the revue she would not have turned to other company. Delighted by her interest, Guy did not give her the chance to add that if there were another song, she would prefer it, but rushed in to say how much the revue had improved since she had seen it in the Tatoi hangar. Then it had been no more than a parish hall show; but since the arrival of the troops the British residents, seeing the war in Greece as their own war, had taken up the revue in a remarkable way. The chorus was twice the size and made twice as much noise and the troops joining in singing the songs. Greek songs like ‘Oh what a surprise for the Duce’ had been translated into English, and special songs had been composed by an English businessman in honour of Greco-British unity. All the camps were clamouring for the
revue. Everyone wanted to see it. It was a stupendous success.

‘What about Pinkrose?’

‘Not a squeak out of him. He knows he’s defeated.’

‘I can see you’re having the time of your life.’

‘You’d enjoy it. Come and see it tonight. We’re going to Kifissia for a special show and the Naafi are supplying refreshments for the cast. Do come.’

Harriet had her own plans for that evening. ‘I don’t think I can,’ she said, but Guy bent over her and, catching her by the shoulders, looked down on her with an urgent and questioning intentness, saying: ‘I would like you to come.’

‘Then of course I will.’

‘Fine.’ He was away at once, hurrying round, looking for this and that. The military lorries were picking up the cast and visitors in Kolonaki Square. ‘I suppose you can get out of the office early?’

‘I suppose so. I was seeing Charles. Do you mind if I bring him?’

‘Bring anyone you like, but make sure you come yourself.’

He was gone. Harriet watched him through the large window as he slammed the front door behind him and sped up the lane past the villa, impelled by all the activities he had planned for the day.

Yakimov said of Guy: ‘He’s a dear, sweet fellow, but he doesn’t understand how you feel.’ She had thought Yakimov was right. Now she thought Guy saw more than he would admit to seeing, understood more than he appeared to understand; but he would not let observation or understanding impede him. He was a generous man, anyway in material matters. He loved her, but his love must be taken for granted. If she put it to the proof according to her needs, she found herself sacrificed to what he saw as a more important need: his need to be free to do what he wanted to do. Challenged, he never lacked justification. He did not recognize emotional responsibility and, unlike emotional people, he was not governed by it. She suffered compunction; he did not. It was
compunction – a quite uncalled-for compunction – that caused her to disappoint Charles, who had booked a table at Babayannis’, and demanded that he go to Kifissia instead. She knew that he enjoyed being fêted at Babayannis’, but they could go there any night. She was surprised, shocked, even, when he refused to go to Kifissia.

The office had been stirred by the news that Yugoslavia had been presented with a German ultimatum. The fate of Yugoslavia presaged the fate of Greece; yet, in the face of this new crisis, Charles and Harriet could do no more than bicker over their evening’s entertainment.

They went into the Zappion Gardens where everything was bright with spring, but nothing was bright for them. Each looked inward on a private injury, determined not to yield a point to the other.

Charles kept his face turned from her but he spoke in an agreeable tone that was as cruel as a threat: ‘Don’t worry about me. There are other things I can do. I’ve been neglecting my friends lately. I ought to write some letters. In fact, I shall be glad to have a free evening.’

‘We have to think of Guy,’ Harriet said. ‘I promised him …’

‘And you promised me; you promised me first. Still, it doesn’t matter. Please don’t worry. I shall be quite happy on my own.’

‘Guy does not object to my seeing you. He’s not mean or demanding; we owe him one evening. I think we ought to go …’

‘
You
ought to go, certainly.’

‘We will have other evenings …’

‘Perhaps; and perhaps not.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

Pale and inflexible, he stared down at the path and shrugged his shoulders. ‘This Yugoslavia business. If they reject the ultimatum, every available man will be rushed to the frontier.’

The argument was not resolved but it came to a stop. They passed under the trees and came to the pond where children
were playing in the water. Everything was in leaf and flower, but all without meaning. At the pond they turned and walked back to Constitution Square.

Though it was too early for the office, Harriet paused at the side entrance of the hotel and Charles walked on without a word. She called: ‘Charles.’ He looked round and she ran to him and took both his hands: ‘
Please
come to Kifissia,’ she said.

He frowned and reflected, then said: ‘Very well,’ but he said it with a poor grace.

‘Call for me here. Come early, won’t you?’

‘Yes.’ He walked off, his face still sullen, but she did not doubt he would come as agreed. As she had expected, he was waiting outside when she left the office. He refused to speak as they went to Kolonaki where the lorries waited, surrounded by Guy’s company, a few people known to her and a great many unknown.

Driving out of Athens, they passed the Yugoslav legation where the Greeks had gathered to sympathize with a country threatened like their own. So far as they knew, Yugoslavia was still considering the German ultimatum. Ben Phipps said he had faith in the ability of Prince Paul who would ‘box clever’, but Guy thought the Yugoslavs would fight.

He asked the driver to stop and jumped down from the lorry in order to add his condolence and encouragement to the demonstration. Whenever an official could be seen at one of the legation windows, the Greeks applauded but the Yugoslavs looked glum.

Ben, leaning over the lorry side, called to Guy: ‘Come on. We’re going to be late,’ and, when Guy returned, said: ‘Oh, dry the silent tear for
they
– are going to cave in.’

Guy nodded sadly and said: ‘You may be right.’

Kifissia was fragrant with the spring. The houses and gardens that rose towards Pendeli were still caught in the honey gold of the evening sun while the shadowed area of the main road held a counter glow that was an intimation of summer. The lorry drew up beneath the pepper trees and as
the passengers jumped down, the trees trembled in the first breeze of sunset.

The Naafi had hired a hall that had been unused since war began. Boxes of sandwiches and cakes, sent for the performers, were being carried into the back entrance. The lorry passengers followed, filing through a narrow, neglected orchard that was full of the scent of citrus blossom. The dark hall, when they reached it, smelt of nothing but dust. Charles touched Harriet’s arm to detain her, saying: ‘Need we go in?’

‘I must see some of it.’

‘Let’s wait till it begins.’

Left behind by the others in the sweet outdoor air, Harriet smiled at Charles, coaxing him to smile back. From a camp somewhere in the distance came the Call which Harriet had heard in Bucharest coming from the palace yard. Feeling a nostalgia for lost time, she said: ‘Do you know what that says? “Come, water your horses, all you that are able. Come, water your horses and give them some corn. And he that won’t do it, the sergeant shall know it; he will be whipped and put in a dark hole.”’

‘Who told you that?’ Charles jealously asked.

‘I don’t know. I think Guy told me. There’s another Call that says: “Officers be damned; officers be damned.”’

‘The Officers’ Call.’ Charles still looked sullen.

They could hear Miss Jay striking chords on the piano and Harriet took his arm and led him inside. They sat in the back row beside Alan Frewen, Yakimov and Ben Phipps, who would not be required until after the interval.

Soldiers were filling the front rows. There were not many British troops left in Attika. There were New Zealanders, tall, sun-burnt men who seemed to maintain their seriousness like a reserve of power.

The airmen, Surprise and the others, had adapted themselves to their precarious, volatile life by treating it as a joke; the infantrymen, with feet on the ground, might find life funny but knew it was no joke.

Imagining their remote, peaceful islands, Harriet wondered
what had brought the New Zealanders to Europe? What quarrel had they here? They seemed to her the most inoffensive of men. Why had they come all this way to die? She felt, as a civilian, her own liability in the presence of the fighting men who were kept in camps, like hounds trained for the kill. However close one came to them, they must remain separate. Charles had warned her that, sooner or later, he would have to go. And soon they would all be gone.

When the soldiers had occupied the first dozen rows, the civilians waiting at the front entrance were admitted to any seats that remained. A great many people, Greek and English, had heard of the revue and had driven out to Kifissia in hope of seeing it. The hall was filled in a few minutes, then the curtain jerked open and the chorus, ordered to make immediate impact, rushed on, breathless before they had even begun to sing. Miss Jay struck a blow at the piano and the men in mess jackets, the women in blue and white ballet skirts began ‘Koroido Mussolini’, the song that described the Italians at war:

‘They stay inside because it’s raining
And send communiqués to Rome,
In which for ever they’re complaining:
“It’s wet, so can we please go home?”’

The whole song sung, Guy, wearing a borrowed white mess jacket that would not button across his middle, came out as conductor of the revels. He demanded a repeat performance from the audience which, willing enough to participate and enjoy, sang louder and louder as Guy sang and waved his hands, exhorting those in front to give as much as he gave himself. He brought the hall to a state of uproar.

Ben Phipps, sitting hands in pockets, with chair tilted back and heels latched on to the seat before him, gave a guff of laughter and said: ‘Look at him!’ It was a jeer yet, unwillingly, as he repeated ‘
Look at him!
’ admiration came into his voice:

‘What can you do with a man like that? What’s it all about, anyway? Where’s it going to get him?’

Where indeed! Harriet, scarcely able to bear the sight of Guy cavorting on the stage, felt a contraction in her chest. She remembered how she had watched him haranguing the stage-hands in Bucharest, expending himself like radium in order to give two performances of an amateur production that would be forgotten in a week. She had thought then that if she could she would seize on Guy and canalize his zeal to make a mark on eternity. She felt now she had expected too much from him. He was a profligate of life. The physical energy and intelligence that had seemed to her a fortune to be conserved and invested, would be frittered away. And there was no restraining him. She might as well try to restrain a whirlwind. Watching him now, she felt despair.

The first half of the revue ended, the cast of
Maria Marten
went behind to dress.

Charles said: ‘You don’t want to see that play again, do you? Let’s go for a walk.’

She had, in fact, been looking forward to the play, but she followed him out into the twilight of the orchard where moths moved through the damp, night-chilly air. The pepper trees were disappearing into a fog of turquoise and violet. A single light showed between the looped curtains of a taverna. Some men were gathered outside on the pavement, the only life in the suburban street.

It would soon be dark. Charles suggested they follow a lane that went uphill between the gardens in a scent of orange and lemon flower. Here there was no noise but the croak of frogs. Above the gardens, they came into an olive grove where the undergrowth, dotted over with a white confetti of flowers, reached higher than their knees. Walking through it, they trod out the sharp, bitter scent of daisies and startled the grasshoppers into a see-saw of sound.

Though he had managed to take her away from any company but his own, Charles was not prepared to talk. She commented on things and asked questions but could not get
an answer from him. His unrelenting ill-humour filled her with a sense of failure. Why need time be wasted in this way? She felt him to be intolerably demanding and ungenerous, yet she was despondent because, in a few days, he would be gone and they might never meet again.

War meant a perpetual postponement of life, yet one did not cease to grow old. She had been twenty-one when it started. At the end, if there ever was an end, what age would she be? How could she blame Guy for dissipating his energies when all the resources of life were being dissipated? What else could he do? War was a time when mediocrities came to the top and better men must rot or die in the conflict.

As for Charles, whose prospects had been so much more promising than theirs, how must he feel at seeing his youth wasted on his present futile employment? He was uncomplaining, of course. His education and upbringing required him to be uncomplaining, but what secret misery did he express in his petulance and silences and sudden shows of temper?

She stopped speaking herself until Charles said: ‘There’s a walk along the top of Pendeli. It’s rather fine. We might go up there one day.’

She looked up to the spine of the hill that showed black against the stars. ‘Would we be allowed to go as far as that?’

‘I think so. Anyway, I could get permits.’

‘When could we go?’

‘We’ll have to wait until the weather is settled. It can be cold on the top, and there’s no shelter if it rains.’

The quarrel, it seemed, was forgotten. Despite their uncertain future, they planned the walk as a possible, even probable, event in the time ahead. Harriet thought Guy would come and they wondered who else might join the excursion.