The Balkan Trilogy (60 page)

‘You’d do better with Sophie.’

Guy called to Harriet and he and Inchcape descended the steps. She followed with Clarence. Sophie, down on the pavement, showed surprise at seeing Clarence, but it was all spoilt by Clarence’s reluctance to see her. She had to catch his arm. ‘I have had,’ she said, ‘a little chat with Mr Dubedat and Mr Lush. Ah, how nice is Mr Lush! So straightforward, so honest, so simple and so kind of heart. A true representative of England, I would say.’ Her glance at Guy and Inchcape suggested they might well take a lesson from Mr Lush, then she smiled at Clarence. Mumbling, shamefaced, he asked where they were going.

‘I like so much Cap
ş
a’s,’ said Sophie. ‘The garden there is so nice.’

Clarence looked at Inchcape and the Pringles, but there was no escape. As they went in one direction, he was led off in the other.

11

Drucker’s trial had been twice postponed, then suddenly, at the end of August, it was announced for the following day.

There was consternation among ticket-holders given less than twenty-four hours in which to arrange the luncheon and cocktail parties attendant upon such an occasion. Princess Teodorescu, with so many friends to be transported to the court-house, was forced to appear herself in the Athénée Palace foyer and commandeer every car-owner with whom she could claim acquaintance. Among them was Yakimov. Delighted to be drawn into the fun, if only in the capacity of chauffeur, he spent his last hundred
lei
getting the Hispano cleaned.

These were the dog days of summer when, at noon, the sky was like an open furnace, but Yakimov was not much discomposed by the heat. He walked nowhere. He would drive the distance between the Pringles’ flat and the hotel, even though the Hispano accelerated so rapidly, he was scarcely started before he must stop again. He enjoyed what he called ‘the cut and thrust’ of Bucharest traffic. He had regained all his old skill as a driver. Foxy Leverett, seeing him pull up outside the Athénée Palace, said: ‘You ride that car, old boy, as though you’re part of it.’ Although he had to admit that drink and misfortune had bedevilled his nerves, he could, when he chose, keep ‘the old girl’ going at a steady hundred.

On the first morning of the trial he rose early and, bathed and dressed in his best, reported at the hotel lobby.

Galpin was there, watching preparations. ‘Going to the trial?’ he asked.

‘Why, yes, dear boy,’ smiled Yakimov.

The English journalists were the only ones not invited and Galpin said glumly: ‘A waste of time, the whole slapstick. His Majesty won’t get a penny out of it.’

‘You mean he can’t confiscate the oil holdings?’

‘I mean he’ll be out on his ear.’

Before Yakimov had time to be perturbed by this prediction, he was seized on by Baron Steinfeld, who orderd him to escort Princess Mimi and Princess Lulie. The two girls were clearly displeased at being relegated to Yakimov, who could only hope that the sight of the Hispano, newly polished, its chrome asparkle, would console them. Mimi, indeed, gave him a cold smile, but Lulie kept her narrow, sallow face averted and her eyes fixed on the distance. Even when crushed with him in the seat, the girls maintained an aloof silence. He pressed the starter. The engine whirred and died. He pressed it again. Again the engine whirred and died, whirred and died.

The girls gazed blankly through the windscreen.

The indicator marked ‘
Essence
’, broken some years before, stood permanently at ‘
demi
’, but the tank was empty. He had been driving on Foxy’s two hundred litres and had completely forgotten the need to replenish them.

Lulie, dropping her eyelids, murmured: ‘
Quel ennui!
’

‘We’ll have to take a taxi,’ Mimi said and looked at Yakimov, but Yakimov had no money for a taxi. He jumped from the car, promising to be back ‘in a brace of shakes’, and hurried to the bar, where he set about trying to borrow money. Galpin did not lend money. No one else had any money to lend. By this time the lobby had cleared. The other cars had started off. When Yakimov emerged again, still penniless, the princesses had disappeared.

He stood for a long time beside the car, mourning over it and begging help of everyone known to him who entered or left the hotel – but there was no one in Bucharest these days who was willing to lend him anything.

In the end he had to leave the car where it stood, immediately outside the hotel entrance, and after two days the manager ordered him to move it.

He had begged Dobson to make him an advance on his remittance and had been reminded that the whole sum had gone on his visas and the cost of retrieving the Hispano from the Yugoslavs. Yakimov’s heart sank. However would he get to Freddi?

‘Couldn’t you lend your Yaki a thou or two?’

‘No,’ said Dobson. Guy also said: ‘No.’ This was the end. The days of his refulgence were over for ever. He was not only penniless, he was nearly in rags. He had only two things left in the world – his car and the sable-lined greatcoat which the Czar had given his father.

He would have to sell the car. Having made that decision, he was suddenly gleeful. He would be in the money again. He would ‘make a packet’. With this thought in mind, he set out to visit car salesrooms, which confirmed what Dobson had said. Only a few persons could afford to run a car like the Hispano, and those few were all Jews. As Jewish cars were being requistioned by the army, it was unlikely anyone would buy it at all.

At last a salesman, whose window was at the junction of the Calea Victoriei and the Boulevard Breteanu, lent Yakimov a can of petrol with which to bring the car to the shop. ‘
C’est beau
,’ he admitted when he saw it, but he would not buy. He agreed to display the car and would try to sell it for Yakimov. So it was driven into the large triangular window and left there.

Yakimov received no sympathy in the bar for the loss of the Hispano. When it had first appeared in Bucharest, Hadjimoscos had refused to go out and look at it, implying with a gesture that his life had been littered with such cars. Now he said: ‘Even were there no requisitions, only a fool would buy an Hispano. It eats up the
essence
and is without accommodation. No doubt, too, there will be many such cars for sale. The English, having failed to protect us, now run away to protect themselves.’

Yakimov, quite bewildered, said: ‘It’s true, dear boy, that a few old ladies have gone – Mrs Ramsden and that lot – but …’

‘I do not refer to old ladies,’ Hadjimoscos, agleam with malice, spoke very distinctly. ‘I refer to Mr Dubedat and Mr Lush.’

‘Lush and Dubedat? I’m sure you’re mistaken, dear boy.’

‘I think not. They were seen leaving the town with very much luggage. People say they are no longer at the University.’

Knowing nothing of this, Yakimov could only shake his head. When he returned to luncheon, he said to Guy: ‘There’s a
canard
going round that Lush and Dubedat have packed their traps and hopped it. Not true, I’m sure.’

Guy said nothing.

‘They’re still here, aren’t they?’ Harriet asked.

Guy shook his head. ‘I’m afraid they
have
gone.’

‘You said nothing about it. When did they go?’

‘I’ve been expecting them to turn up. They told me they were going away for the week-end. I took their classes on Monday, then, when they weren’t back on Wednesday, I sent a porter round to their flat. There was no one there, but the hall-porter there told him they’d paid off their servant and taken all their stuff away. This morning they heard at the Consulate that Toby’s old car has been found abandoned on the quayside at Constanza.’

‘They’ve bolted! They’ve gone to Instanbul.’

After a pause, Guy said: ‘I suppose one can’t blame them.’

‘Why can’t one blame them?’

‘They don’t belong to the organisation. It’s chance employment for them. Why should we expect them to take such a risk?’

‘And now you have no help at all? You’re alone at the University!’

‘I’ll manage somehow,’ said Guy.

That was all that was said in front of Yakimov. When he had retired, Harriet said: ‘With all these things happening, I have a feeling we won’t be here much longer.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Things could settle down.’

‘I’m getting worried about Sasha.’

Guy, preoccupied, said: ‘He’s all right up there, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, he’s all right. But what is going to happen to him if we go.’

‘We’ll have to think about that. Would Bella take him in?’

‘Bella? You’re crazy.’

‘You said she was a decent sort.’

She laughed at the fact Guy had simply taken her word for it, and said: ‘So she is, in a way, but one couldn’t expect her to take in a Jewish deserter whom she has never met. Anyway, left alone here, she’ll have her own problems. What about your students? Isn’t there one who would hide him?’

‘Several would, I’m sure,’ he said, then on reflection, he added: ‘But would it be fair to ask them? Besides, they’re all hoping to get away. He would merely exchange one temporary refuge for another.’

‘Then what do you suggest?’

‘Nothing at the moment.’ Mildly exasperated by her persistence, he added: ‘Now that Lush and Dubedat have gone, I have to rearrange all the classes. We can discuss this problem of Sasha when we have more time.’

‘All right,’ she said, wondering as she did so whether he had ever given any thought to it. How much feeling had he for Sasha? He had been fond of the boy when they were master and pupil. He had been grateful to the Druckers for extending their friendship to him while he was alone here. But how involved was he now? She felt the trouble was that Guy was fond of too many people. Allegiance was a narrow business. She had almost ceased to expect it from him. It would be as difficult, she thought, to tie him down on Sasha’s behalf as on her own.

Her long silence caused him to say: ‘Don’t worry. We’re not leaving tomorrow. We’ll think of something.’ When she still did not speak, he went round the table, took her hands and pulled her up. ‘You don’t trust me enough,’ he said.

She slid her arms round his waist and felt reassured by the nearness of his warm, muscular body. ‘Of course I trust you,’ she said and, their dissensions forgotten, they went into their room. But Guy could not forget the time for long. With all
the work of the summer school on his hands, he would not even wait for tea.

As he was dressing, she said: ‘Couldn’t I take some of the classes for you?’

He shook his head doubtfully: ‘You’ve no experience of teaching, you’re quite unqualified and it’s more difficult than you think.’

12

When Guy left, Harriet, fretted by the peculiar insipidity of life at that hour, went out to the balcony and looked over the empty square. The air was furred with heat. On the pavement the Guardist youths with their banners and pamphlets, were still trying to rouse revolt. Although a sense of revolt agitated the nerves like an electric storm that would not break, the city was lethargic, the palace dormant, its white blinds drawn down against the tedium of the afternoon.

A third conference had broken down and now the Transylvanian question was being discussed in Vienna. People had begun again to believe it would be solved by proving insoluble. Yakimov, repeating the opinion of the bar, had said: ‘Dear girl, it’ll all trickle out in talk, talk, talk.’

It was barely five o’clock, but already the light had an autumnal richness. The height of summer was past. The dahlias were ablaze in the Ci
ş
migiu. Up the Chaussée, the trees were parched, their few leaves dangling like burnt paper, as they had been the first time she saw them. The brilliant months had gone down in fear and expectation of departure.

She had been married a year. It was, as Guy liked to point out, a pre-war marriage. With a sadness that seemed an emanation of the deepening, dusty colour of the air, she thought perhaps it might not, after all, prove to be what it had seemed at first, an eternal marriage. She could imagine the loosening of the bond. Guy had said to her: ‘You can’t trust me enough,’ yet he had not had cause to say that when, after three weeks’ acquaintance, she had crossed Europe with him. If she did not trust him now, if, left on her own, she
sought companionship elsewhere, he had himself to blame.

At that moment, she remembered that Sasha had asked her to do something for him. He had asked her to try and see his father.

Drucker was, for the moment, the most talked-of man in Bucharest: the
u
sound of his name seemed constantly in the air. Despina’s husband had brought in the information that at different times of the day the accused man could be seen entering and leaving the back entrance of the court-house. Despina, always eager to impart news, had run at once to tell Sasha. The next time Harriet had gone up on the roof, she had found him awaiting her in great excitement. He began eagerly to beg to be allowed to go, that very evening, to see his father leave the court, and perhaps even accost him.

Harriet had been appalled at the suggestion. ‘It’s out of the question,’ she said. ‘The military police are looking for you. They might be waiting there for you, and there’s the danger someone might recognise you, expecially if you spoke to him …’

He had interrupted eagerly: ‘I could stand where no one would see me. I could just look at him.’

‘Wherever you stood, someone might see you. The risk is too great.’

Used to his gentle compliance, she was surprised when he persisted, his face becoming vivid with his eagerness to go. She reasoned with him as with a child that must be protected against its own rashness.

After a few minutes, his fervour suddenly collapsed. He looked so desolate that she felt guilty and wondered how much of her own opposition came of a will to control him. In a way Guy had eluded her, but Sasha was not only her pet and dependant, he was her prisoner. Nevertheless, she could not permit him to walk into a trap.

Watching her, he said: ‘If you won’t let me go, will you go yourself? If you saw him, you might be able to speak to him.’

Startled by this suggestion, Harriet said: ‘If I went, what could I say.’