The Balkan Trilogy

by Olivia Manning

  ‘I didn’t give anything away.’

  ‘That’s all right then. But …’ an expression of inquisitorial cunning came over Toby’s features and he pointed the pipe stem at Guy: ‘Supposing Mr Gracey asks you direct what we did?’

  Formal with annoyance, Guy replied: ‘I would tell him I do not discuss my friends’ affairs.’

  ‘Oh, good enough! Good enough!’ Toby whoofed with relief: ‘And you didn’t mention we’d done a bolt?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Fine. Splendid. I said you wouldn’t.’ Much heartened, Toby leant back against the wall and, taking out his tobacco and matches, prepared himself for a chat.

  Harriet was having none of this. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘I’d like to ask you something. What did you tell Gracey? Did you say that Guy wasted his time producing Troilus and Cressida?’

  Toby jerked up with a pained frown. ‘Me? I never did.’

  ‘What about Dubedat?’

  Toby sat up. Scrambling his equipment together with agitated hands, he said: ‘How do I know? He sees Mr Gracey in private. He doesn’t tell me everything.’ He got to his feet. ‘Have to scarper. The old soul’s a bit carked. I’ll let him know you didn’t sneak. He’ll appreciate it.’

  ‘He ought to.’

  Toby made off with the gait of a guilty fox. When he had gone, Harriet said to Guy: ‘Dubedat means to be Director. He’s afraid you might have queered his pitch.’

  ‘It certainly looks like it,’ Guy was forced to agree. Pale and unhappy, he returned to his books, wanting to hear no more. Harriet pitied his disillusionment, but had no patience with it. Reality was not to be altered by an inability to recognize fact.

  She had remained with Guy, imprisoned in the room, but now, uplifted by a sense of being the stronger of the two, she said: ‘Come on, let’s go for a walk.’

  He did not move. ‘You go. I don’t want to go.’

  ‘But what will you do, shut up here alone?’

  ‘Work.’

  ‘Have you any work?’

  ‘I’m getting quotations for a lecture on Coleridge.’

  ‘Surely you could do that any time? You might not lecture again for months.’

  He shook his head. Bent over his books, he whistled softly to himself: a sign of stress. Harriet stood at the door, longing to go out, not knowing what to say. During past crises – the fall of France, the final break-up in Bucharest – he had found escape, first by producing Troilus and Cressida, then by organizing a summer school. Throwing himself into one occupation or another, he had managed to keep anxiety on the periphery of consciousness; now, without employment, without friends, without money, he was trying to follow his old escape pattern. But there was no route open to him. All he could do was sit here in this dark, narrow room and try to lose himself in work.

  ‘Wouldn’t you be better at the School library?’ she asked.

  ‘I’d rather not go there.’

  One afternoon, while wandering about alone, Harriet met Yakimov and, strolling with him up University Street, took the opportunity to ask about some of the people they had seen in Athens.

  ‘Who is Major Cookson?’

  Yakimov answered at once. ‘Very important and distinguished.’

  ‘Yes, but what does he do?’

  That was more difficult. ‘Do, dear girl?’ Yakimov pondered the question heavily, then brightened: ‘Believe … indeed, have inside information to the effect: he’s something big in the S.S.’

  ‘Good heavens, the German S.S.?’

  ‘No. The Secret Service.’

  As there was little point in pursuing that fantasy, Harriet went on to inquire about Callard and Phipps. Sighing at being forced into intellectual activity, Yakimov dismissed them as ‘both very distinguished’.

  ‘What about Mrs Brett and Miss Jay?’ Harriet persisted.

  ‘Don’t ask me, dear girl. Town’s full of those old tits.’

  ‘Yes, but what are they all doing here?’

  ‘Nothing much. They live here.’

  The English who lived in Bucharest had gone there to work. The English in Athens were clearly of a different order. Encountering for the first time people who lived abroad un-occupied, she was amazed by their inactivity and, learning nothing from Yakimov, decided to take her curiosity to Alan Frewen. He had asked them if they would go with him on Sunday morning when he exercised Diocletian in the National Gardens.

  He called for them as agreed and Guy said to Harriet, as he had said before: ‘You go.’

  She pleaded: ‘Do come darling. He doesn’t want me alone. Why not bring your work and sit in the gardens while we walk round!’

  Resolute in his revolt against circumstances, Guy said: ‘No, I’m all right here. Go on down. Alan’ll love having you to himself.’

  Harriet could not believe it. She descended diffidently to the hall where Alan waited, his face so obscured by his glasses it was impossible to tell how he felt. He was as shy as she was and they said nothing until they reached the square.

  He was limping and several times when the dog pulled on the lead, he had difficulty in keeping his footing. He apologized, explaining that he had had an attack of gout.

  ‘I had to stay home for a couple of days,’ he said. ‘Not that it mattered. Things are still slack at the office. There’s not much to do except get out the News Sheet.’

  ‘What does Yakimov do?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, his job is to deliver it.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  Alan gave a laugh and did not reply.

  There had been a shower of rain, the first of the autumn. It had scarcely moistened the ground but the sky, broken with mauve and blue clouds, had taken on the fresh expectancy of spring. Harriet longed for Guy to be with them, not only to ease their constraint but to enjoy, as she enjoyed, the changing season.

  She suddenly burst out: ‘Guy’s very unhappy. What can we do for him?’

  ‘You had no luck with Gracey, then?’

  ‘None at all. He said he had delegated his authority. He suggested Guy go and ask Dubedat for work.’

  Alan stared down frowning, considering what she had said, then started to speak with some force: ‘I really feel this can’t go on. The School’s becoming a laughing-stock. There are all sorts of stories going round about the lectures. Apparently Lush suggested that Dante and Milton might have met in the streets of Florence. When one of the students pointed out that there was about three hundred years between them, Lush said: “Crumbs! Have I made a clanger?” Cookson’s protected the lot of them for some time, but there’ve been complaints. I know Mrs Brett has written home. I’m sure a responsible person will be appointed when Gracey goes. My advice is: wait.’

  ‘Guy would agree, but I’m afraid he finds it a strain.’

  ‘I know. I know,’ Alan nodded his sympathy, and after this she felt there was harmony between them.

  It occurred to her that Alan was the first friend she and Guy had made on equal terms. In Bucharest the people she knew had been the people known to Guy before his marriage and she imagined herself accepted because she was Guy’s wife, a state of affairs the more disjunctive because she was unused to being a wife. It had seemed to her then that she had left behind not only her own friends but her individuality. Now she began to feel the absurdity of this. Why, after all, should Alan Frewen not be as content with her as he would be with Guy?

  They passed the Washingtonia Robusta palms that stood with their great silvery satin trunks across the entrance to the gardens. Inside, the sandy walks curved and flowed beneath sprays of small, tremulous leaves. The sun came and went. Moving soundlessly, they entered a tropical dampness filled with the scents of earth. Alan released Diocletian, who was off at once prospecting beneath the bushy trees that sifted the sun on to the dark, soft, powdery ground. The paths were all much alike. The foliage was all light, a peppering of dry, rustling greenery that dappled the sand with light and shade. Then a vista opened. There was a drive lined with greyis
h, rubbery trees.

  ‘Judas trees,’ Alan said. ‘You must see them in the spring.’

  ‘Is that when they flower?’

  ‘They flower for Easter.’

  And where would they be at Easter? Alan had said ‘Wait’, but he said nothing more. And what could he say? By coming here, Guy and she had created their own problem, and they must solve it for themselves.

  She had thought they need only reach a friendly country and their lives could begin; but here they were, and their lives were still in abeyance. In Bucharest they had had employment and a home. They had had Sasha. Guy might find employment here, they might even find a home but Sasha, she feared, was lost for ever. Even his memory was disappearing into the past. For the last week or more she had not given him a thought, though there always remained, like a shadow on her mind, the hollow darkness into which he had disappeared. He was dead, she supposed, like her loved red kitten that had fallen from the balcony of the flat. If one could not bear the memory of the dead, then they must be shut out of memory. There was no other action anyone could take against the bafflement of grief.

  She was recalled from her thoughts by the squawks of water-birds and the cries of children. They were walking through a coppice where the air was jaundiced with the weedy, muddy smell of lake water.

  Alan said: ‘Where’s Diocletian? I’d better put him on the lead.’

  He held the dog close as they emerged from under the trees and came to a sunlit clearing where small iron seats stood round the sandy lake edge. The lake was small. A bridge spanned the water that now, in the last days of the dry season, was scarcely water at all, but a glossy, greenish film in which ducks, geese and swans were squelching about. The children were feeding the birds and the birds, snatching and quarrelling, were making all the noise in the world.

  Limping towards a couple of vacant chairs, Alan said he must sit down. He lowered his large backside on to the little iron seat and with a sigh let his bulk settle down. When they were both seated, an attendant came and stood at a distance, respectfully awaiting the sum that was payable in fee. When Alan handed over the money, the old man counted back some coins so small they now bought nothing but the right to sit for a while beside the lake. Alan talked in Greek with the attendant and afterwards told Harriet they had been discussing the war. The old man said he had two sons at the front but he was not at all disturbed because the English had promised to aid the Greeks and everyone said the English were the strongest people in the world.

  ‘He knows me,’ Alan said. ‘I come here often to read Cavafy. I suppose you know Cavafy? No? I’ll translate “The Barbarians” for you one day. It fits our times.’

  ‘Are the English going to send aid?’

  ‘I wish I knew. They haven’t much to send. I’ve heard the Greeks aren’t interested in half-measures and I don’t think we could rise to a full-scale campaign.’

  There was not much to be said about the war and when they had said it all, they sat for a long time in the sunlight while Harriet considered how she might put to him the questions that Yakimov could not answer. She at last overcame her own reticence and asked:

  ‘Have you known Cookson long?’

  ‘I’ve been seeing him on and off, over the years.’

  ‘You’ve lived here a long time, then? Before the war, were you one of these people who live abroad and do nothing?’

  Alan laughed at her disapproving tone and said: ‘Indeed I was not. I had to earn my living. I came here as a photographer. I had a studio on Lycabettos and I went to stay in places like Mycenae, Nauplia, Delphi and Olympus. When I settled in a place, I’d try to absorb it and then record it. I wrote a few introductory pieces to albums of photographs, nothing much, the pictures were the thing. I’d like to record the whole of Greece.’

  ‘And when you have, what will you do?’

  ‘Begin at the beginning again.’

  ‘And Diocletian goes with you?’

  ‘Of course. Diocletian is a Grecophil like me. I brought him from England when I was last there, five years ago – partly for his own sake and partly so I need not go back.’ When he saw her look of inquiry, he smiled. ‘If I took him back he would have to go into quarantine. We would be separated for six months, which is unthinkable. He is my safeguard. When my relatives write reproachful letters, I reply: “I would love to come and see you, but there is the problem of Diocletian.”’

  ‘But supposing you have to leave? I mean, if we all have to leave? What will you do?’

  ‘Let us consider that when the time comes.’

  She took the chance to return to Cookson. ‘He seems to be very influential,’ she said.

  ‘He is, I suppose. He’s lived here a long time and knows a great many influential people. He’s liked. He’s rather a charming old thing; he has this house at Phaleron – by the sea, very pleasant in summer. He’s hospitable. His parties are famous and no one wants to be left out.’

  ‘Is he married?’

  ‘He was once, I think.’

  ‘And now?’

  Alan laughed. ‘Now? I really can’t say. He invited me once to “a ra-ther small and ra-ther curious party”. I’m afraid I left early; I could see it was going to get curiouser and curiouser.’

  ‘He seems to have been extremely kind to Gracey.’

  ‘Yes, they’re great friends. Gracey played up to him. They all play up to him. That’s all that’s necessary.’

  ‘I wish Guy could do that,’ Harriet said. ‘But he never plays up to the right people.’

  ‘I imagine that’s the nice thing about him?’

  ‘Perhaps, but I don’t suppose it will get us anywhere.’

  Alan laughed and when he said nothing, she went on to ask about Gracey. Was he really an invalid?

  ‘Who can say? He certainly slipped on Pendeli and hurt his back. A good many people have done that but I’ve never known anyone before who had to spend months lying in a chair. Still, he seems determined to get to the Lebanon clinic for a cure.’

  ‘My belief is, he’s tired of the whole game.’

  ‘Really?’ Alan looked round, his face alive with amused interest: ‘You mean the injury? You think it’s a game, do you?’

  ‘Yes. Mrs Brett says he’s bone lazy. I’m sure he never wanted to run the School, he wanted to be an elegant figurehead; but the lecturers went off leaving the place on his hands. He must have been thankful when Toby and Dubedat turned up; and the accident was a godsend. It excused his idleness, but now the pretence has been going on too long. He’s stuck with it till he can get away.’

  ‘You may be right.’ Alan edged himself off the seat and managed to stand up. Rejecting Gracey as an enigma of little importance, he said: ‘It looks as though we’re in for another shower.’

  The sun had gone in. The grown-ups were calling the children from the lake and a few drops of rain made small moon-craters around the fluttering water-birds.

  Walking back under the trees, Alan stared ahead and did not speak. Unless stimulated by questions, he seemed to feel no need for conversation and Harriet wondered why a man so withdrawn and silent should seek out company at all. As there was little else to be said, she might as well continue to ask her questions. What about Archie Callard? He was, of course, a friend of the Major, but was he anything more than that?

  ‘He’s a clever young man,’ Alan said. ‘No fool I assure you, but he’s handicapped by having a rich father. He is not forced to work but is always complaining that he doesn’t get enough to spend. He occasionally starts out on some project that he hopes will bring in money. He went to Lemnos to look for a labyrinth that probably never existed. Recently he’s been staying on Patmos with some idea of writing a life of St John. Of course he gets bored, and back he comes and that, for the moment, is that.’

  ‘And Ben Phipps? I shouldn’t have thought he had a rich father.’

  ‘Indeed he hasn’t. He’s been working here as a journalist and he’s published a few things. I haven’t read any, but
I believe he has some reputation.’

  ‘What’s he doing in that set?’

  ‘Hanging on hopefully.’

  ‘But what is he likely to get?’

  ‘Preferment. He’s sick of scraping a living with his bits of journalism. He’d like an easy, steady, well-paid job; a job that would place him right in the front of the social picture.’

  ‘You mean: Gracey’s job?’

  ‘That would do as well as another.’

  ‘I see. If he got it, do you think he’d employ Guy?’

  ‘He very well might. I know he doesn’t think much of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.’

  ‘Lush and Dubedat? The betrayers who served the king. What rewards, I wonder, for those who have served Gracey?’

  ‘We’ll know soon enough.’

  They were now back at Harriet’s hotel and as she paused, Alan said: ‘I’m meeting Yakimov at Zonar’s. Won’t you join us?’

  She said: ‘I’d love to. I’ll see if I can get Guy out,’ and she ran upstairs to persuade him.

  She half-expected to find him gone, for restless, gregarious, eager to entertain and influence, he was not one to spend two hours alone in their little room, yet he was still there lying on the bed, propped up with pillows, his glasses pushed to his brow, a pencil stuck in his hair and books all around him.

  She scolded him: ‘You’ve been here long enough. You need a drink. Come on.’

  ‘I’d rather not.’

  ‘What’s the matter with you, for heaven’s sake? Are you ill?’

  ‘No,’ he pulled down the glasses in order to see her. ‘We haven’t any money.’

  ‘Let Yakimov buy you a drink. You bought him plenty when he was hard up.’

  ‘I can’t go to cafés in the hope someone else will pay for me.’

  ‘Do come. I’ll pay for you.’

  ‘No, don’t worry about me.’

  ‘Then come down to the dining-room and have something to eat.’