The Balkan Trilogy (40 page)

‘And now,’ said Guy, stern but satisfied that by the force of his personality he had made them attend to him: ‘Now …’ and towering with his height and bulk over even the tallest
of them, he began to go again through the drill of scene and lighting changes which he had worked out.

Harriet stared up at Guy, her heart melting painfully in her breast, and asked herself what it was for – this expense of energy and creative spirit. To produce an amateur play that would fill the theatre for one afternoon and one evening and be forgotten in a week. She knew she could never give herself to such an ephemeral thing. If she had her way, she would seize on Guy and canalise his zeal to make a mark on eternity. But he was a man born to expend himself like a whirlwind – and, indeed, what could one do but love him?

At midnight, while the stage-hands were still being put through their duties, Harriet went home to bed. She heard Guy and Yakimov return some time in the middle of the night. They were gone again before breakfast. That morning there was to be a final rehearsal in the theatre.

When she left the house, people seemed to be in a state of subdued confusion. They were wandering about asking each other what was happening. The red arrows had come to a stop in the window of the German Bureau. Were the German forces at a standstill? Some thought there was a lull for strategic reasons. Others said the French had pulled themselves together and were holding the line round Paris. Whatever the news might be, the Rumanian authorities, ‘to avert panic’, were withholding information and had cut the international lines.

Harriet went to the Athénée Palace garden. No one there had much to say. Even Galpin was silenced by the sense that they were approaching an end.

‘What’s going to happen to us all?’ Miss Truslove asked out of the great nothingness of their thoughts.

‘That,’ said Galpin, ‘is anybody’s guess.’

After an interval, during which the fountain’s trickle was as monotonous as silence, Mrs Ramsden said: ‘Well, there’s the play tonight. That’s something to look forward to.’

‘Do you think anyone will come?’ asked Harriet, fearful now that there would be no audience at all.

‘Of course they will,’ said Mrs Ramsden. ‘Sir Montagu will be there. The Woolleys are going. Oh, everyone’s turning up. It’s
the thing
, I can tell you.’

Miss Truslove said: ‘It’s nice to have something to distract us.’

The others nodded agreement. Even Galpin and Screwby had booked seats.

‘Haven’t been inside a theatre for months,’ said Galpin.

Screwby said: ‘Haven’t been in one for years.’

‘An English play,’ said Mrs Ramsden. ‘For us here, that’s quite an intellectual treat.’ She sighed and said: ‘I do like an evening at the theatre.’

The morning was hot and growing hotter. The sun rose until it was poised directly over the lime trees. The English group at the table, meshed in a shifting, glimmering pattern of light and shade, was bemused with heat and half-sleep.

Harriet, lolling in her chair beside the fountain, lost sense of the garden altogether and seemed to pass into an English landscape of fields, some fallow, some furrowed, all colourless through mist. A few elms rose out of the hedges into a milky sky. The scene was so vivid, she shivered slightly in the English air, then a lime-flower dropped on to the table before her and she was returned, startled, to the sunlight. She picked up the flower and stared at it to cover the pricking in her eyes.

She remembered her arrival in Rumania, and her first long days of sunlight. That had been a difficult time, yet she thought of it nostalgically because the war had barely begun. She saw herself as she had been, nervous, suspicious and isolated among strangers; jealous of Guy’s friends and of his belief that he owed his chief allegiance to the outside world. Unmarried, she had been a personality in her own right. Married, she saw herself coming in, if at all, somewhere in Guy’s wake.

It occurred to her that it was only during these last weeks she had become reconciled to the place. She had faced uncertainty without Guy. Those who faced it with her had become,
through the exalted concord of their common fears, old friends.

She stayed with them until early evening, then went back to her flat to dress for the evening performance.

27

Only students had been admitted to the matinée performance of
Troilus and Cressida
: the seats were cheap. For the evening performance the price of seats was such that wonder had been aroused, bringing in a great many rich Rumanians and Jews who could not afford not to be seen in the audience. The profits were to be contributed towards a scheme devised by Guy and Dubedat for the housing of poor students. The fact roused more wonder than the price of the seats, for few Rumanians could believe that a group of people, even English people, would work so hard and so long at no profit to themselves.

Nikko, having formally asked Guy’s permission to escort Harriet to the play, called for her at half-past seven. In his waisted dinner-jacket, with his beautifully tied bow, he looked like a dark, angry little male cat. He seemed ready to hiss. Instead he smiled brilliantly and kissed her hand.

‘Harry-ott, a token of esteem!’ He presented her with a rose from the King’s flower-shop. ‘I do not often go there. I would not myself encourage a King who is not only a gangster but a common shopkeeper, but tonight, when I passed the window, I saw the rose and thought of Harry-ott.’

He went on smiling, but he was on edge and, as Harriet poured him a drink, he burst out: ‘I am not one to speak of money. Like the English, I think it not
chic
to speak of money, but …’ he drew up his shoulders and spread his hands like fins. ‘For weeks I am grass widow. I have no wife – and now what do they say? “Domnul Niculescu, please pay five thousand
lei
to see Doamna Niculescu walk upon a stage.”’ He
gave a gulp of disgusted laughter and tried to look amused. ‘It is funny, is it not?’

Harriet said: ‘There were no free seats. The proceeds are for charity.’

‘The poor students, you mean? Ah, Harry-ott, cast half an eye around. There are too many poor students. Every son of a peasant-born priest or schoolmaster must go to the University. All seek to be lawyers. Believe me, there are already too many lawyers. There is not the work for them. What we need are artisans.’ Here he interrupted himself: ‘But this is no time for solemn talk. I take a beautiful lady to a great occasion. It is rather a time for levity. Come, the taxi awaits.’

In the taxi, he asked: ‘You have heard the news?’

‘No. Is there news?’

‘Madame has demanded a speed-up of the Drucker trial. She is afraid the German influence may squash it. A trial could be embarrassing to Germany.’

‘So the German influence may save Drucker?’

‘Indeed not. Nothing can save Drucker. For him, if it is not Bistri
ţ
a, then it will be Dachau. He is no use now to Germany or anyone else.’

‘Then I do not understand – what is Madame afraid of?’

‘Without a trial, his oil holdings cannot be seized by the State. They would remain the property of Doamna Drucker.’

Harriet was thankful to see the theatre foyer full. ‘A brilliant audience,’ said Nikko as they took their seats. He rose frequently to bow from the waist in this direction and that, his bared teeth white beneath the black bar of his moustache. Between bows, he indicated to Harriet the titles about them. Among these were a great many princes and princesses. ‘Of great family,’ whispered Nikko, ‘but almost all on their uppers. I wonder who paid for their seats!’ Among them was Princess Teodorescu with her Baron.

‘Ah, Harry-ott,’ said Nikko, ‘you can be proud. And reflect also, Harry-ott, we are even now the ally of England. We come to show sympathy.’

Every seat was taken before the curtain rose. Harriet smiled
about her in relief at the sight. She even smiled at Woolley, who, sitting with his arms folded high on his chest, turned his chin on to his shoulder and accorded her a brief nod.

Sir Montagu and his party appeared in the royal box. The audience rose while ‘God Save the King’ was played as a dirge. This was followed by the Rumanian national anthem, after which the orchestra slid into a waltz that faded with the fading of the lights. The crimson curtains glowed. Between them appeared a student, wrapped to the chin in a black cloak, who spoke the Prologue. He had been well rehearsed. As he backed out of sight, members of the audience whispered congratulations to the parents. The father half-rose to bow his acknowledgments. Harriet watched this interruption anxiously. Fortunately the rise of the curtain brought it to a stop – and there, standing languidly, hand on hip, was Fitzsimon in white and gold, padded out as Foxy Leverett had advised, his looks enhanced with a golden wig.

The audience gasped. Heads went together. A twitter of excitement passed like a breeze over the stalls. The impression was such that some of the women began to applaud before they realised what they were applauding. Fitzsimon stood with a fine air of disconsolate virility, waiting for silence. His eyes moved slowly over the women in the front rows. When satisfied by the expectant hush, he fixed his gaze on Princess Teodorescu, sighed and said:

‘Call here my varlet; I’ll unarm again;
Why should I war without the walls of Troy,
That find such cruel battle here within?’

No one noticed Yakimov until he asked: ‘Will this gear ne’er be mended?’ conveying in his light, epicene voice a world of bawdy insinuation while moving towards the footlights with a gentle confidingness that was bewilderingly innocent.

The audience stirred, not knowing how to take it until Sir Montagu gave a guff of appreciation and the Rumanians relaxed. Once reassured, they took wholeheartedly to Yakimov.

He, for his part, had given himself at once, never for a moment doubting their response. In little more than a moment, they loved him. After his first speeches, they were scarcely breathing for fear of missing a nuance of impropriety. The women enjoyed themselves under cover of darkness while the male laughter burst out repeatedly without restraint.

Harriet watched him intently, drawn in in spite of herself. This was ‘your poor old Yaki’ – the same that had entranced the dinner-table that first night in Bucharest. ‘Your poor old Yaki,’ she thought. ‘My poor old Yaki. Anyone’s poor old Yaki, providing they’re doing the paying,’ yet that was not wholly just, for now it was Yakimov who was making repayment. Guy had befriended him and Guy was being rewarded. Yakimov had learnt his part; he was giving himself without stint. He was helping to make Guy’s production, and Harriet was thankful to him.

His exit led to a tumult of applause and comment that held up the action for several moments. Harriet remained tense, watching Fitzsimon, who accepted the delay good-humouredly. When at last he held up a hand and, smiling, said: ‘Peace, you ungracious clamours! peace, rude sounds!’ the laugh accorded him left no doubt but that the audience was on the side of the players. Harriet felt about her the willingness to be pleased. Unless something went badly wrong there was nothing to fear.

She relaxed gradually as the scenes passed, not only without mishap, but with gathering pace. The show was succeeding with its own success and she was warmed to all those who were doing so well: Dubedat, Inchcape, David – and the men from the Legation whom she had supposed would treat the whole thing as a joke.

As for Sophie! Sophie’s performance was beyond expectations. As she sauntered and swayed with little meaningful looks and gestures, letting her pink chiffon drift, like a symbol of her own sexual fragrance, about Troilus or her manservant or, indeed, any male who happened to be near, Harriet realised the girl was a born Cressida, a ‘daughter of the game’. Even
in her scenes with Pandarus she was not overshadowed. The two enhanced and complemented each other, a scheming partnership of niece and uncle set to devour the guileless and romantic Troilus.

Nikko turned excitedly in his seat, trying to read her name on the programme. ‘Who is she?’ he asked. ‘Is it Sophie Oresanu?’

‘Yes.’

‘But she is
charming
!’

The interval came after Pandarus had conducted the lovers to ‘a chamber with a bed’.

In the bar, where Nikko had to struggle for drinks, Harriet, wedged into the crowd, listened to the comment about her. She heard mention of Clarence (‘You would not think, to see him in the street, that Mr. Lawson could be so comic’) and Dubedat, who, with his snivel schooled to virulence, was declared to be ‘
très fort
’.

‘And that young Dimancescu!’ exclaimed a woman. ‘Such a beautiful English! And in manner the English aristocrat, no?’ recalling Dimancescu’s throw-away indifference and the wearily drooping eyelids that had been lifted once, in rapid rage, when Patroclus had missed his cue.

‘And Menelaus!’

‘Ah ha, Menelaus!’ A titter passed among the men, for Dobson, unable in his Greek dress of skirted corselet to emulate the effect created by Foxy Leverett and Fitzsimon, had managed to suggest that, even had his dress permitted, his part called for no such display. He conveyed, with rueful and apologetic smiles that appealed to the Rumanian sense of humour, his unenviable position.

When Nikko returned to Harriet with two glasses of whisky, he was congratulated on Bella’s performance. Her appearance had caused no small sensation.

One of the men said: ‘She looked like Venus herself.’ She had indeed, Harriet thought, looked like a Venus of a debased period; a great showy flower without scent.

The student who had played Paris, not very well, had been completely dwarfed by his impressive paramour as she swept
to the centre of the stage, keeping her profile well in view. Yakimov, who had excelled in this scene, had carried the weight of Bella’s playfulness, glossing the exchange with the ebullience of wit.

Someone in the audience, having consulted his programme, had whispered in amazement: ‘Is it possible this lady is a Rumanian?’

‘Yes, yes,’ another whisper answered him and Nikko had been scarcely able to contain his pride.

Now, as he received congratulations, his face was so contracted with bliss that he seemed about to weep.