The Balkan Trilogy (80 page)

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Guy, in fear of rousing Inchcape’s obstinate opposition, found himself lapsing into clichés: ‘Quite a good thing to get away from a situation – enables you to get it into focus.’

Latching on to Guy’s extenuating tone, Inchcape permitted himself a measure of agreement. ‘Of course, there’s more to these trips than meets the eye. There’s no knowing whom Sir M. met when down there, or what was discussed. I’ve often thought myself I could pay a call on our agent in Beirut, I could put him wise about a few things. He’s still in direct telephonic
communication with London office, you know. And they should be made to realise how things are changing here. The rise in the cost of living, for instance! We can’t go on indefinitely on pre-war salaries.’

Guy had not heard before of this agent, but was prepared to believe in him. The organisation supplied men to the American University in Beirut. He
said: ‘There’s probably an air-service between Istanbul and Beirut.’

Inchcape opened his mouth, but did not speak. There was a pause, then he nodded. It seemed to Guy that the trip was practically agreed upon. He was about to suggest that while Inchcape went to Beirut, he and Harriet could visit Athens, when he noticed Inchcape’s hand trembling on the white satin counterpane. He felt stricken. Telling himself that he was harrying this aged and lonely man out of the one place in the world where he had importance, he put his hand on Inchcape’s and pressed it.

At this touch, Inchcape’s lips shook: a tear trickled out between his swollen lids. ‘We can’t give in, Guy,’ he said. ‘We can’t run away. We must be represented.’

‘We aren’t running away,’ Guy assured him. ‘You are merely taking the leave that is due to you. I shall be here to represent you.’

‘That’s true.’ As though he knew he had committed himself to defeat, Inchcape let his head fall back and sobbed without restraint.

Awed by this collapse of a man who had until now appeared to be inflexible, Guy realised he had always taken Inchcape at his face value, accepting him as his chief, to be obeyed and honoured. He had never doubted that much of Inchcape’s temerity was based on self-deception but it appalled him to see this temerity collapse at the moment reality broke through. But perhaps it was the indignity that had destroyed Inchcape. The whole place must seem to him contaminated by this assault on him. No wonder he wanted to get away.

For a while Guy sat silent, at a loss before Inchcape’s weeping, then, realising that initiative had now passed to him, he said: ‘And another thing: London office must be told that we face a final break-up here. It’s only a matter of time. We should be instructed where we’re to go, what we’re to do when we get there. We don’t want to become refugees without employment.’

Inchcape nodded again. Finding a handkerchief, he dabbed gently at his eyes and nostrils. ‘You’re quite right,’ he said. ‘It’s not only advisable I should go, it’s imperative. And there’s no time to waste.’

‘None. You should go as soon as you feel equal to the journey.’

‘Oh, I’m all right.’ Inchcape gave something between a laugh and a gulp. He made another effort and this time managed to sit upright. ‘I’m not crippled. The sooner I get away, the sooner I’ll be back. I won’t take much: change of underwear, a few books, just a grip and a brief-case. I like to travel light. If there’s no plane to Beirut, there should be a train of some sort. An execrable journey, I imagine, but interesting. If nothing important crops up, I might get the Orient Express on Sunday night.’

‘Do you think you will be well enough?’

‘Nothing wrong with me. Just a few bruises.’ And now that matters were settled, Inchcape did seem much recovered. He threw back the coverlet, put his legs out of bed and began, in a feeble way, to feel for his slippers. Not finding them, he gave up and lowered himself back to the pillows, but he shot Guy a keen look. ‘You’ve not said a word to Pinkrose?’

‘No, I haven’t seen him since it happened.’

‘Good. He’s not likely to hear in the ordinary way. He takes a pride in keeping himself to himself. When he rang up last night, Pauli told him I was in bed with a temperature. That’ll keep the old cheeser at bay. He won’t risk catching anything.’

‘Don’t you think we should let him know you’re going?’

‘No, definitely not. He’d get into a proper tizzy. He’d have a heart attack. Or worse, he’d insist on coming with me. I couldn’t stand it.’ Inchcape fixed Guy, his expression piteous: ‘I’m not fit for it.’

Guy wondered what they were to do with Pinkrose after Inchcape’s departure, but, afraid to raise any problem that might impede it, he said: ‘Very well.’

‘Don’t tell anyone,’ Inchcape said. ‘I’ll be back before they even know I’ve left the country.’

It was clear to Guy, as he returned home, that in sending for him Inchcape had merely sent for a persuader. Guy could not flatter himself that he had done much, but he felt pride, even a mild exultation, that by making the right gesture he had persuaded the poor old chap to take himself to safety. The resolute, he saw, were weaker than they seemed.

It occurred to him that Harriet, tackled in some such oblique manner, might be just as easily overthrown. Not that the conditions were exactly similar. Inchcape had collapsed at a first blow from reality. Harriet had never let reality out of her sight. When she said she would not leave, she saw as clearly as Guy did the dangers of staying – probably more clearly. Still, he was not discouraged. He had his own obstinacy. Once assured in his purpose, he could be as wily as the next man.

There were two weaknesses through which she might be assailed: himself and Sasha. Supposing he persuaded her to go to Athens on his behalf! Better, perhaps, persuade her to make the journey as friend and protector to Sasha.

He had long recognised her attachment to the boy without resenting it. He was glad that each could enjoy the companionship of the other. And he had no illusions about himself. He was over-gregarious, busy, disinclined to suffer constraint. Were he to accuse her of neglecting him, she had more than enough fuel for counter-accusation. If she felt the need for a friend and companion, better an innocent relationship than one that might prove less innocent. And something had to be done about Sasha. Even if he were not in danger, his life as he lived it now was hopelessly unprofitable. He had never been a brilliant pupil, but he had been a willing one. Now, in captivity, he had become idle and would not put his mind to the tasks which Guy set for him. He did not
even want to read. The most he would do was play games with Harriet or cover with childish drawings the large sheets of cheap cartridge paper which she bought for him. Sometimes, at his most active, he amused himself by helping Despina in the kitchen, but that amounted chiefly to gossiping and giggling.

When Harriet had shown him the faked passport, he had looked at it blankly. When she explained: ‘This means you can leave Rumania,’ his only reaction had been dismay: ‘But I don’t have to go, do I?’

‘Not now, of course. But if we go – and we may have to – you can come with us.’

Sasha’s expression had revealed his fear of change, or of any sort of move even made in their company. He wanted to spend the rest of his life like a pet in a cage.

When Guy reached the sitting-room he found Sasha and Despina putting the knives and forks on the table. The two were laughing together at something.

Despina, who was familiar with Harriet and motherly with Sasha, kept up the Eastern tradition that the man of the house was a minor despot. At the sight of Guy, she took herself off.

Sasha said: ‘Despina is so funny. She was imitating the cook from downstairs who sneaks into our kitchen and pinches our sugar. If anyone catches her at it, she whines: “Please, please, I came only to borrow the carving knife!”’

Guy smiled, but thought that Sasha, though he spoke like a schoolboy, was, in fact, a young man. At his age many Rumanian men were married. The only hope for the boy was to be forced into an independent existence. If he and Harriet travelled together, he must be made to see himself not as the protected but the protector.

As soon as he had Harriet alone, Guy told her of Inchcape’s collapse. ‘He’s going on Sunday to Beirut.’

She jerked up her head, her face brilliant with excitement. ‘He’s going for good?’

‘In theory, no: but I doubt whether he’ll come back.’

‘So there’s really nothing to keep us here, either. We can
go. We can go to Athens, and Sasha can come with us. We can all go together.’

Guy had to break in on her frantic delight: ‘No, I can’t go. Not yet. I’ve had to promise Inchcape that I would stay. He wouldn’t go otherwise. He felt he had to be represented here. And then there’s Pinkrose. But look’ – he seized her hands as her face dropped – ‘look,’ he coaxed her, ‘do something for me.’

‘What?’

‘Go to Sofia with Dobson.’

She pulled her hands from him, vexed, saying: ‘No, I wouldn’t go to Sofia, anyway. The only place I want to go to is Greece, but I’m not going without you.’

‘All right, better still, go to Athens. Take Sasha with you. And I can join you there.
Listen
, darling. Be sensible. There are two reasons why you should go. I think Sasha should be got out of here in good time. If he travels on the plane with you and Dobson, he’ll have your protection. They probably won’t even question why he’s going. He’ll be treated as a privileged passenger. If there should be trouble, we can rely on Dobson to exert his influence.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘I do think it. I’m sure Dobson will look after you both. He’ll be like a mother to you.’

Neither agreeing nor disagreeing, she asked in a noncommittal tone: ‘And the other reason?’

‘If I go to Turkey, I’ll probably be sent to the Middle East. I hate those hot, sandy countries. I want to go to Greece, just as you do, and if you’re there already I have the excuse of joining you.’

Before she turned her face aside, he could see the idea of a mission was working on her. She bit her lip in doubt.

‘And,’ he said, ‘if things settle down here, you can come back.’

But she was still resistant. ‘This uncertainty could drag on for months. We simply haven’t the money …’

He interrupted, urging her: ‘Go for a few weeks, anyway.
See the head of the organisation in Athens. Tell him I want to work there. You know you can do it. If he likes you, he’ll want to employ me: so when I leave here, there’ll be somewhere for me to go.’

It all seemed odd to Harriet, like a conversation outside reality, yet it was breaking down her resistance. Bewildered, half persuaded, she said: ‘If I want to come back here, they may not let me in. People are being expelled all the time.’

‘If you get a return visa before you go, they must let you back.’

Reluctant, even at this point, to give way, she kept the argument dragging on, but in the end she found she had agreed to get a return visa. Having secured this, she could take Sasha to Athens and return alone if Guy did not join her there.

Despite something like near-intoxication from the prospect of escape, Harriet resented the fact that Guy had persuaded her to go.

Men like Woolley saw women as a ‘drag’ in times of danger. Mrs Woolley had been sent to England at the outbreak of war and had recently been sent somewhere else. Harriet, of a different generation, saw herself as an equal and a comrade. She was not to be packed off like that – and, yet, against her will, she had let herself be talked into going.

For Guy the day was one of modest triumph. In sending ahead Harriet, Sasha and that old self-deceiver Inchcape, he was not only safeguarding them, but clearing the decks for action in a war he had chosen to wage, the war against despotism. He believed the ultimate engagement was at hand. He could now face it alone.

26

Harriet would make no preparations for her journey. She would not even mention their plans to Sasha. She would do nothing until she had obtained the visa that was an earnest of her return. She got a bleak and sparkless satisfaction when it seemed she probably would not obtain it at all.

She had had to queue for the exit visa, but it was given without question. For the return visa, she was directed to a compartment which contained no clerk. No one was waiting before it. She stood for some time, then inquired and was told the clerk was not in the building. He might reappear at five o’clock.

In the late afternoon she returned to the
prefectura
, but the compartment was still unattended. She demanded to see the official in charge. When he eventually came, he took her passport away and left her waiting twenty minutes before he brought it back. She could be granted a return visa only if she supplied a letter of recommendation from her Legation.

She set out for the Legation, disheartened by fatigue and indecision, and heard from a side street the barrel-organ that played the old Rumanian tune, the name of which no one could tell her. Haunting and mysteriously simple, it reminded her of the day she had gone for a sleigh-ride up the Chaussée with Guy and Clarence. She thought of the shop-lights gilding the snow and felt an acute nostalgia for winter. She told herself she would not go. She could not leave Guy. She did not even want to leave Bucharest.

She wandered on and, crossing the square, saw Bella walking towards the Athénée Palace. The two women came face to face under the Nazi flag.

It had been a day of mild autumnal sunlight and Bella was in a new woollen suit with mink skins strung from elbow to elbow. This was their first sight of each other since her return to Bucharest. Seeing Harriet, she called out: ‘I was going to ring you! What do you think I got on the black market today? Just over six thousand to the pound.
And
it’s rising. My dear, we’re rich! I’ve been buying everything I could lay my hands on. After all, you never know, do you? I’ve just ordered a new coat – Persian lamb, of course. I picked out my own skins.
Tiny
little things! I wrote my name on the back of each so there’d be no hanky-panky. I’m getting half a dozen new suits for Nikko – best English tweed. The thing to do is to buy up what’s left.
And
shoes – a dozen pairs each. Why not, I ask you? We’ve money to burn.’ Elated by her rise in fortune, she looked up and smiled at the flag and the clear pale sky beyond it. ‘I love this time of the year,’ she said. ‘So delicious after the fug of summer. It makes one feel so
alive
.’ She seemed aglitter with life, almost dancing in her new green lizardskin shoes. Not finding Harriet very responsive, she looked at her more closely and thought to ask: ‘But how are you and Guy? What do you think of things?’