The Balkan Trilogy (16 page)

‘A lot of things,’ said Guy, ‘I’m pretty sure the Russians won’t commit themselves before they’re ready.’

Galpin looked him over with bleak amusement: ‘You think you know about Russia, the way the Pope knows about God. You wait and see. We’ll have one or the other of the bastards here before you can say “Eastern Poland”.’

Guy laughed, but he laughed alone. The others were subdued by a sense of disaster.

The next morning, walking in the Ci
ş
migiu, Harriet suffered again from uncertainty. She had made an appointment to see a flat, that mid-day. If they took it, they would be required to pay three months’ rent in advance. She was unwilling to risk the money.

Guy said: ‘Don’t worry. We’ll be here at least a year.’

They had the wintry park to themselves. When they reached the bridge, the wind came howling across the lake, carrying to them the icy spray from the fountain. They retreated and turned in among the flower-beds that displayed the last brown tattered silks of the chrysanthemums. A white peacock was
trailing a few tail-feathers in the mud. Pigeon-down and some scraps of leaf spun along the path. The path curved and brought them to the chestnut thicket that led to the restaurant. Guy put his hand through Harriet’s arm, but she was not responsive. He had promised to go with her and view the flat, but, having forgotten this promise, he had later arranged to give some special coaching to a student. The student’s need seemed to him the greater.

‘And I must see the landlord alone?’ said Harriet.

‘Oh no.’ Guy was delighted by his own resource. ‘I’ve rung up Sophie and she has agreed to go with you.’ This he thought an altogether better arrangement, it being known that no English person could grapple unaided with the cunning of a Rumanian landlord.

It was an arrangement that did not please Harriet at all. Guy, as they walked, had been lecturing her on her unwisdom in not making better use of Sophie, who would, he knew, be only too delighted to help Harriet, if only Harriet would ask for help. Sophie had been very helpful to him when he was alone here. He was sure she was, fundamentally, a good-hearted girl. She had had a difficult life. All she needed was a little flattery, a little management…

Harriet, whom he seemed to imagine was absorbing this advice, said at the end of it no more than: ‘I’m
sick
of Sophie.’ After a pause, she added: ‘And we can’t afford to go on feeding her.’

Guy said: ‘Things will be easier when we have our own flat. Then we can entertain at home.’

They had now strolled out of the trees and could see the café’s wooden peninsula with the chairs and tables stacked up under tarpaulins. The kitchen was shuttered. A lock hung quivering in the wind. Guy asked Harriet if she remembered hearing here the announcement of C
ǎ
linescu’s assassination. Did she remember the heat, the quiet, the chestnuts falling on the tin roof? Rather sulkily, she replied that she did. Taking her hand, Guy said:

‘I wish, darling, you liked Sophie better. She is lonely and
needs a friend. You ought to get on well with her. She is an intelligent girl.’

‘She lets her intelligence trickle away in complaints, self-pity and self-indulgence.’

‘You are rather intolerant.’

Before Harriet could reply to this, they heard a step behind them and glancing round saw a figure that was familiar but, so unlikely was the setting, unfamiliar.

‘Good heavens,’ said Guy, glad of diversion. ‘It’s Yakimov.’ Harriet said: ‘Don’t let talk to him.’

‘Oh, we must have a word.’ And Guy hurried out of reach of her restraint.

Yakimov, in his long full-skirted greatcoat, an astrakhan cap on top of his head, his reed of a body almost overblown by the wind, looked like a phantom from the First World War – a member of some seedy royal family put into military uniform for the purposes of a parade. As he tottered unhappily forward, his gaze on the ground, he did not see the Pringles. When stopped by Guy’s exuberant ‘Hello, there!’ his mouth fell open. He did his best to smile.

‘Hello, dear boy!’

‘I’ve never seen you in the park before.’

‘I’ve never been before.’

‘What a magnificent coat!’

‘Yes, isn’t it!’ Yakimov’s face brightened a little as he turned a corner of the coat to show the worn sable lining. ‘The Czar gave it to m’poor old dad. Fine coat. Never wears out.’

‘It’s splendid.’ Guy stood back to admire the theatrical effect of the coat, his appreciation such that Yakimov’s gaze went to Guy’s coat in the hope of being able to return these compliments, but no return was possible.

Guy said: ‘It makes you look like a White Army officer. You should have a peaked cap. A sort of yachting cap.’

‘M’old dad had one; and a beard like Nicholas II.’ Yakimov sighed, but not, it seemed, over these glories of the past. His whole body drooped. Now he had come to a standstill, he seemed to lack energy to proceed.

Harriet, who had been watching him, felt forced to ask: ‘What is the matter?’

He looked up: ‘Not to tell a lie …’ he paused, at a loss for a lie to tell. ‘
Not
to tell a lie, dear girl, I’ve been rather badly treated. Given the push. Literally.’ He laughed sadly.

‘From the Athénée Palace?’

‘No. At least, not yet. No, I … I …’ he stared at the ground again, stammering as though his troubles were so compacted that they dammed the source of speech, then speech burst forth: ‘Given the push … flung out. Flung out of a taxi in a distant part of the town. Quite lost; not a
leu
on me: didn’t know where to turn. Then someone directed me across this God-forsaken park.’

‘You mean, you couldn’t pay the taxi?’ Harriet asked.

‘Wasn’t my taxi, dear girl. McCann’s taxi. McCann flung me out of it. After all I’d done for him.’ Yakimov’s lips quivered.

Guy took his arm, and as they walked towards the main gate he persuaded Yakimov to describe exactly what had happened.

‘McCann got me out of bed this morning at some unearthly hour. Rang me up, and said he wanted to see me. Said he was in the hall, just leaving for Cairo. Well, dear boy, had to get m’clothes on. Couldn’t go down in m’birthday suit, could I? Thought he was going to ask me to keep on the job. Didn’t know whether to say “yes” or “no”. Hard work, being a war correspondent. Comes a bit rough on your poor old Yaki. Not used to it. Well, got myself titivated. “Shall I accept the job, or shan’t I?” kept asking m’self. Felt I ought to accept. War on, y’know. Man should do his bit. Thought I’d done a good job. If I couldn’t get “hot” news in the bar, always got a warmish version of it. Well, down I went – and there was McCann, fuming. But
fuming
! Said he’d be late for his ’plane. Bundled me into the taxi with him before I knew what was happening, and then started on me. And what do you think he said? He said: “Might have known you hadn’t a clue. All you could do was collect rumours and scandal”.’

‘Really!’ said Harriet with interest. ‘What scandal?’

‘Search me, dear girl. I never was one for scandal. “And you did yourself damned well,” he said. “Two hundred thousand
lei
for a month’s kip. What’s my agency going to say when they have to pay that for the balderdash you’ve been sending home?” Then he stopped the cab, put his foot on m’backside and shoved me out.’ Yakimov gazed from one to the other of his companions, his green eyes astounded by reality. ‘And I’ve had to find m’way back here on m’poor old feet. Can you imagine it?’

‘And he didn’t pay you for the work you did?’ Guy asked.

‘Not a nicker.’

‘I suppose he paid the hotel bill?’

‘Yes, but what has he said to the blokes there? That’s what I’m asking m’self. Very worried, I am. Perhaps, when I get back, I’ll find m’traps in the hall. It’s happened before. I’d have to move to the Minerva.’

‘But that’s a German hotel.’

‘Don’t mind, dear boy. Poor Yaki’s not particular.’

They had reached the Calea Victoriei and there Yakimov looked vaguely about him. Recognising his whereabouts, he smiled with great sweetness and said: ‘Ah, well, we mustn’t worry. We’re in a nice little backwater here. We should get through the war here very comfortably.’ On this cheerful note, he set out to face the staff of the Athénée Palace.

Turning in the opposite direction, Harriet walked with Guy as far as the University gate. There he gave her two thousand-
lei
notes. ‘For lunch,’ he said. ‘Take Sophie. Go somewhere nice,’ and he went off with what seemed to her the speed of guilt.

Sophie opened the door in her dressing gown. Her face shone sallow for lack of make-up: her hair was pinched over with metal setting-grips.

In a high, vivacious voice she cried: ‘Come in. I have been washing my hair. Most times I go to the Athénée Palace salon, but sometimes – for an economy, you understand? – I do it myself. You have not been before in my
gar
ç
onnière
. It is not big, but it is convenient.’

She talked them up the stairs. In the bed-sitting-room – an oblong modern room with an unmade bed and an overnight smell – she pushed some clothes off a chair and said: ‘Please to be seated. I am unpacking my laundry. See!’ She lifted a bundle in tissue paper and gazed into it. ‘So nice! My pretty lingerie. I love all such nice things.’

Looking round for a clock, Harriet noticed a photograph frame placed face downwards beside the bed. There was no clock, but Sophie wore a watch. Harriet asked the time. It was a quarter to twelve.

‘The appointment with the landlord is at twelve o’clock,’ said Harriet.

‘Ah!’ Sophie, who was now unpacking her laundry, seemed not to hear. She lifted her underwear, piece by piece, with a sort of sensual appreciation. Smoothing down little bows, straightening borders of lace, she opened drawers and slowly put each piece away. When this task was completed, she threw herself on the bed. ‘Last night,’ she said, ‘I was out with friends, so this morning I am lazy.’

‘Do you think we could go soon?’

‘Go? But where should we go?’

‘Guy said you would come with me to see the landlord.’

‘But what landlord?’

Harriet explained her visit and Sophie, lying propped on one elbow, looked troubled: ‘He said you would call to see me. A friendly call, you understand, but he did not speak of a landlord.’ Sophie looked at her fingernails, then added as one who understood Guy better than Harriet did: ‘He arranges so many things, he forgets to explain, you know.’

‘Well, can you come?’

‘But how can I? I must first have my bath. Then I must dress. It will take a long time because I meet a friend for lunch. And my fingernails. I must put on more varnish.’ Sophie spoke as though these activities might be a little selfish but were all the more endearing for that. She gave a laugh at Harriet’s blank face and rallied her: ‘You can see the landlord by yourself. You are not afraid?’

‘No.’ With a sense of giving Sophie a last chance, Harriet said: ‘The trouble is, I do not speak Rumanian.’

‘But the landlord will speak French. I am sure you speak very well French?’

‘I hardly speak it at all.’

‘That is extraordinary, sure-ly?’ Sophie’s voice soared in amazement. ‘A girl of good family who cannot speak very well French!’

‘Not in England.’ Harriet stood up.

Sophie encouraged her on the way out: ‘The landlord will not eat you. He will be nice to a young lady alone.’ She laughed, apparently delighted at the thought of it.

Harriet did not see Guy again until the evening. She told him she had come to an agreement with the landlord. She had taken the flat for six months.

‘And what did Sophie think of it?’

‘She did not see it.’

‘She dealt with the landlord, of course?’

‘No, she could not come. She wasn’t dressed when I called.’

‘But she promised to go with you.’

‘She said she hadn’t understood.’

Guy’s expression left Harriet in no doubt but that Sophie had understood perfectly. He routed his dissatisfaction with a burst of admiration for Harriet: ‘So you did it all alone? Why you’re wonderful, darling. And we have a flat! We must have a drink to celebrate.’ And Harriet hoped that for a few days, at least, she would hear no more of Sophie.

10

When they moved into the flat, the Pringles discovered that in negotiating with the landlord Harriet had not been as clever as they thought. Some of the furniture was missing. The bedside rug had been taken away. There were only two saucepans left in the kitchen. When telephoned, the landlord, with whom she had dealt in a mixture of English, French, Rumanian and German, told Guy he had explained to Doamna Pringle that these things would be removed from the flat.

They also discovered that if they wanted electricity, gas, water and telephone, they must settle the bills of the previous tenant, an English journalist who had disappeared without trace.

The flat was on the top floor of a block in the square. From the sitting-room, which was roughly coffin shaped, five doors opened. These led to the kitchen, the main bedroom, the balcony, the spare-room and the hall. The building was flimsy. What furniture remained was shabby, but the rent was reasonable.

When they took possession, on a day of exceptional cold, the hall-porter who brought up their luggage put a hand on the main radiator and grinned slyly. Noticing this, Harriet felt the radiator and found it barely warm. She told Guy to ask the man if it was always like this.

Yes, the flat was hard to let because it was cold. So the rent was low. The boiler, explained the porter, was not big enough to force the heat up to the top floor. Having made this revelation, he became nervous and insisted that the flats were of the highest class, each having attached to it not one
servant’s bedroom but two. He held up two fingers, pulling first one, then the other.
Two
. One was behind the kitchen, the other on the roof. Harriet said she had not noticed a bedroom behind the kitchen. The porter beckoned her to follow him and showed her a room some six feet long and three feet wide, which she had mistaken for a store cupboard. Guy surprised her by showing no surprise. He said most Rumanian servants slept on the kitchen floor.

When they had unpacked, they went out on to the balcony and surveyed the view that was their own. They faced the royal palace. Immediately below them, intact among the disorder left by the demolishers, was a church with gilded domes and crosses looped with beads. Apart from the Byzantine prettiness of this little church, and the palace fa
ç
ade, which had a certain grandeur, the buildings were a jumble of commonplaces, the skyline mediocre: and much was in ruins.