The Balkan Trilogy

by Olivia Manning

  ‘But the bastards are expecting us every time,’ shouted Zipper Cohen, and Surprise, shaking in his chair, said: ‘Thank God for the Greek air force. They’ll fly anything. They go up on tea-trays tied with string.’

  The wine was as much for Guy as for the air-crew. Among the Greeks he was an honorary Greek, among the fighting-men, he was an honorary fighting man. Aware that she could not, for the life of her, attract so much enthusiasm, Harriet was moved with pride in him.

  Now there were six men out dancing and the clapping had settled into a rhythmic accompaniment that filled the room. Unfortunately, while things were at their height, Major Cookson felt he must take his party away. He said to those around that it was all very pleasurable but, alas, he had invited friends to drop in after dinner and must be at Phaleron to greet them. Those with him rose, but not very willingly. Harriet felt Charles Warden look at her as he went, but she kept her eyes on Zipper Cohen.

  The departure of Cookson brought the dancing to a stop. In the silence that came down, Chew Buckle threw back his head and sang to the tune of ‘Clementine’:

  ‘In a Blenheim, o’er Valona,

  Every morning, just at nine;

  Same old crew and same old aircraft,

  Same old target, same old time.

  “Bomb the runway,” says Group Captain,

  “And make every one a hit.”

  If you do, you’ll go to heaven;

  If you don’t, you’re in the … whatd’ycallit … ?’

  Amidst the applause, Buckle climbed slowly and deliberately up on his chair, then to the table where he bowed on every side before sinking down, as slowly as he had risen, and going to sleep among the bottles.

  Alan said it was time to get the boys back to Tatoi. He went out to order a taxi while Guy roused Chew Buckle and got them moving. As they left the room, Dobson called to the Pringles:

  ‘Hey, you two! There’s a special film show. You’ve got to come. It’s in aid of the Greek war effort. After the show, we’re holding a reception.’

  Guy looked at Harriet and said: ‘Would you like to go?’

  ‘I’d love to go,’ she said.

  ‘Then you shall.’ In elated mood, he flung an arm round her shoulder and said: ‘You know if you want to go, you’ve only got to say so. Whatever you want to do, you’ve only got to let me know. You know that, don’t you?’ He spoke so convincingly, that Harriet could only reply: ‘Darling, yes, of course.’

  10

  Every day now there was something to celebrate. There might not be a decisive victory like Koritza, but there was always an advance and always stories of Greek prowess and heroism. People queued to give food and clothing to the men who, having quelled the invaders, were now driving them into the sea.

  The snow was falling in the Pindus mountains. As it blocked the passes and disguised the hazards of the wild, roadless regions, the retreating Italians abandoned their guns and heavy armaments. It was said the mere sight of an unarmed Greek would put a whole Italian division to flight. Posters showed the Greeks in pursuit, with nothing to abandon, leaping like chamois from crag to crag. The Italian radio called them savages who not only pitched their enemies over precipices but threw after them the splendid equipment which the Italian people had bought at such sacrifice to themselves.

  While it snowed in Albania, it rained in Athens. The wind blew cold. The houses were unheated. People went to cafés and crowding for warmth behind the black-out curtains, told one another if it were not victory by Christmas, it would be victory by spring.

  Guy could be idle no more. He went to Aleko’s and announced his intention of starting an English class. Would any student lend a living-room in his house? The boys, made exuberant by his exuberance, all offered living-rooms.

  When Guy turned up for the first class, expecting perhaps a dozen pupils, he found the room packed to the door with young people who acclaimed him not merely as a teacher but as a representative of Britain. Some of them had attended the School before it closed, but the majority knew only a little English. They felt if they were too young to fight, they could at least learn the language of their great ally. Guy, greatly stimulated by their response, began to plan a course of study. He would divide up the students into grades and hold a class every night. But where? The householder, a widow, treating the invasion of her living-room as a joke, said: ‘Tonight, yes. Very good. Other nights, some other place. Yes?’ The classes were moved from house to house, but no room was large enough and everyone hoped that soon some permanent meeting-place would be found.

  Guy, pressed by obligations, was now in the condition he most enjoyed. He wanted to do more and more. One night, coming back to the hotel-room, he told Harriet that the students were eager to do a Shakespeare play. He was thinking of producing Othello or Macbeth.

  ‘But then I’ll never see you at all,’ Harriet said in dismay.

  ‘Darling, I have to work. You wouldn’t have me hanging around doing nothing while other men are fighting?’

  ‘No, but I can’t spend my life doing nothing, either; and certainly not in this miserable little room.’

  ‘You can always go to a café.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Alan would be glad to have you with him.’ Guy had relegated Alan to the position of Harriet’s friend.

  ‘I don’t always want to be with Alan. Besides, people talk.’

  ‘Good heavens, what does that matter?’

  ‘I’m sure if you spoke to Dobson, he could get us into the Academy. We might even have Gracey’s room.’

  Eventually persuaded, Guy approached Dobson, but his approach was not successful. Dobson explained – ‘quite nicely’, Guy said – that the rooms had to be kept in case Foreign Office employees turned up.

  ‘Fact is,’ Dobson had said: ‘Gracey had no right to be there. Don’t know how he worked it, but I suspect the Major’s influence. Anyway, if he’d stayed on, he’d’ve been told to find “alternative accommo”, so you can see it’s a case of “no can do”.’

  ‘And that’s that,’ Guy said to Harriet, glad that his onerous task was over.

  Harriet had to accept it: the Academy was not for them. She said: ‘At least he’s sent us tickets for the film-show.’

  ‘What film-show?’

  ‘The one he told us about. A new English film has been flown out. It’ll be the first new film we’ve seen since Paris fell.’ She handed him the tickets that would admit them to a showing of a film called Pygmalion. Guy handed them back.

  ‘Sorry. Can’t manage it. That’s the evening I promised to address a gathering of students on the state of left-wing politics in England.’

  ‘But you promised to take me. You said when we were at Babayannis’ that we would go.’

  ‘I’m afraid I forgot. Anyway, the meeting’s much more important. I can’t let the students down.’

  ‘But you can let me down?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. What does a film-show matter?’

  ‘But I’ve been looking forward to it. I haven’t seen a new English film for months.’

  ‘You can get someone else to take you. Give my ticket to Alan.’

  ‘He doesn’t need your ticket. He’s going with Greek friends.’

  ‘Then ask Dobson to take you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of asking Dobson to take me.’

  ‘It’s only a cinema. Why not go by yourself?’

  ‘There’s a reception as well; and I won’t go by myself. I should hate it by myself. You ought to understand that. You promised to take me, and I want you to take me. I’ve been looking forward. So you must ask the students to change the day of the meeting.’

  ‘I can’t do that. I can’t put them off. It’s not possible. If you break an appointment with English people, you can explain. But it’s different with foreigners. They would think there was more to it. They wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘You expect me to understand?’

  ‘Of course.’

  To Guy, the
discussion had been light and Harriet’s disappointment was of so little moment that he scarcely paused to consider it. To her it was shattering. She could not believe it. She was certain that when Guy had reflected upon it all, he would arrange to change the day of the meeting and, this accomplished, would present the change to her as a token of their importance to each other; but he did nothing of the kind.

  The days passed. She began to wonder whether he had given the film-show another thought. He had not; and he was surprised when, at the last minute, she mentioned it again.

  ‘But we have discussed all this,’ he said. ‘I told you I had to go to the meeting. There was no question of putting it off. If it’s a choice of a film-show or a political meeting, naturally the meeting must come first.’

  To Harriet it seemed a choice between much more than that. She said: ‘You promised to take me.’

  ‘I told you to get someone else to take you.’

  ‘Wherever I go, I have to get someone else to take me. Why? Being married to you is much the same as not being married at all. You ought to understand my feelings. I want you to take me; just to show you understand. You’re my husband.’

  ‘My husband!’ he echoed her. ‘The trouble is, you cling too much to things. You cried your eyes out when that kitten died. You couldn’t have made more fuss if it’d been a baby.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t a baby.’

  Ignoring this, he went on: ‘My husband! My kitten! You promised me. What an attitude!’ His face shut off in a mask of obstinacy, he began collecting his books together, eager to get away before she spoke again.

  She did not try to speak again. Instead, she told herself that the meeting was important to him not because of his political ideals, but because it would accord him what he wanted most: attention. He was simply longing to be on view again. Lecturing or teaching, producing plays or giving advice to students, he was what he most wanted to be – the centre of attention. That meant more to him than she did.

  As he made off, his face blank with purpose, she felt angry, but more than that, she felt abandoned. She sat for a long time on the bed, stunned and yet acutely lonely. The mention of the kitten had renewed in her a sense of loss. She had lost the kitten, she had lost Sasha, she had lost faith in Guy. Collapsing suddenly, she lay on the bed and wept helplessly.

  She might have asked someone to take her to the reception but to do so, she felt, would be a public admission that Guy had failed her. She imagined herself being taken out of charity, an object of pity, a creature wronged and humiliated. If she went alone, it would be the same. Guy, in the past, had laughed at what he called the female ‘zenana-complex’, no intelligent woman could possibly be restricted by such feelings. Yet something in her upbringing put an absolute check on the possibility of going alone.

  It was an evening of full moon. With nothing else to do, she went out, and, drawn to the occasion, made her way up through Kolonaki past the hall where the film was to be shown. She may have hoped that someone she knew would see her and persuade her in; but she walked so quickly and purposefully that anyone who did see her would have supposed she was hurrying to another engagement.

  And someone did see her. Charles Warden was standing outside the hall and as she gave a glance, fleet and longing, at the open door, she saw his face white in the white light of the moon. Safely past, hidden by shadow, she looked back. He was watching after her, regretfully; and she went regretfully on.

  Energetic in unhappiness, she made her way uphill until she reached the final peak of the town where the old houses, crowded together among trees and shrubs, made a little village on their own. It was here that Alan had had his Athens studio. A path ran away into the rough, open ground of the hilltop. Following it, she found herself in a deserted waste-land, passing further and further out of human existence; the moon her only companion. Hanging oddly near, just above her shoulder, the great white uncommunicating face, blank in a blank grey-azure sky, increased her sense of solitude.

  Athens, stretched below, was a map of silver. As she rounded the hill and came in sight of the Piraeus, the air-raid sirens began. At this height their hysterical rise and fall was faint and seemed not to relate to the city that in the blue-white light might have been a toy city, an object of crystal and moonstone.

  From habit, she looked for shelter. Ahead there was a hut where refreshments were sold in summer. Standing against it, she watched the bombers coming in from the sea. The guns opened up but the aircraft came on, untouched. One bomber dropped a star of light that hung, incongruous and theatrical, in the moon-hazed distance. Apart from the distant thud-thud of the guns, the whole spectacle appeared to be in dumb-show until an explosion startled the air. A fire sprang up.

  All the time the white, unharming city lay like a victim, bound and gagged, unable to strike back. The raid was brief. In a moment the raiders had turned. They flashed in the moon-light and were gone. The fire burnt steadily, the only thing alive among the white toy houses.

  The all-clear did not sound and at last, bored and cold, she started to walk again. The path brought her to the top terrace of houses. The releasing blast of the all-clear rose as she made her way down to University Street. After the empty hill-top even Toby Lush, when she met him, seemed a friend. She told him where she had been and he spluttered and guffed and said: ‘Crumbs! I wouldn’t do that walk alone at night for a lot of money.’

  ‘But surely it’s not dangerous?’

  ‘Don’t know about that. There’re bad types in most cities. I’m told it’s not safe to go on the Areopagus after dark.’

  ‘Oh dear!’ She was unnerved at having taken a risk from ignorance and, remembering the cinderous hill-brow in the ghastly light, it seemed to her there had been menace everywhere. She went back to the hotel, amazed at having survived the longest and loneliest walk of her life.

  11

  The bells rang again for the capture of Muskopolje. They rang again for Konispolis. And on the first day of December, while the rain teemed down on Athens, they rang for the great victory of Pogradets. This battle, that lasted seven days, was fought in a snowstorm. The old porter, who waited in the hall with the news, enacted for the Pringles and other foreigners the drama of the encounter. He stumbled about to show how the Italians had been blinded by snow then, drawing himself up, eyes fixed, expression stern, he showed how the Greeks had been granted miraculous penetration of vision by Our Lady of Tenos.

  ‘Why Our Lady of Tenos?’ someone asked.

  Because, explained the porter, his wife, who came from Tenos, had sent their son a Tenos medallion only two days before the battle began.

  Now victory followed victory. When the bells started up, strangers laughed and shouted to each other: ‘What, another one!’ The Athenians danced in the streets. Elderly men danced like boys and the women on the pavements clapped their hands. People said the Greeks had taken prisoner half of Mussolini’s army. As for the war materials captured, they could challenge the world with it.

  When someone came into a café and shouted a name that no one had heard before, there was no need to ask what it was. It was a victory. In no time it was familiar. Everyone repeated it: it was the most repeated name in Athens. Then, overnight, it became yesterday’s victory, and another name took its place.

  After Pogrodets, there came the capture of Mt Oztrovitz; then Premeti, Santa Quaranta, Argyrokastro and Delvino. The evzoni captured the heights of Ochrida in a snowstorm. The attack lasted four hours and the Greek women, who had followed their men, climbed barefooted up the mountainside to take them food and ammunition.

  For every victory the bells rang. People asked gleefully: ‘What now?’ The Greeks had captured a little town that no one could find on the map. Then came a halt. The Greeks had advanced along the whole Albanian frontier and, unprepared for such success, they were outdistancing their supply lines. This was a breakthrough on a grand scale. They must treat it seriously.

  On the morning when news came of the capture of Santa Qu
aranta – an important capture for the Greeks needed a port at which to unload supplies – Guy returned early for luncheon. He had heard, quite casually, from a student, that the new Director had been appointed. The School was to reopen. The students, weary of tramping around from one house to another, sent one of their number to tell Guy: ‘We have been grateful, sir, but now we must work at the School. There is no longer a room for teaching in any house. Our parents order us to enrol where there is space to learn.’

  ‘And who is the Director?’ Harriet asked. ‘Not Dubedat?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Pinkrose?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So it’s Ben Phipps?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There’s no one else.’

  ‘Archie Callard.’

  Electrified, Harriet said: ‘But this is much better than we expected. We had nothing to gain from Dubedat and Pinkrose, but with Archie Callard, there’s no knowing. He might do something for you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  They went to the hotel dining-room that nowadays, with food becoming scarce, was no worse than anywhere else. Guy behaved as though nothing singular had happened but there was something distraught in his appearance and he could not keep his mind on the meal.

  Harriet said: ‘When do you suppose Callard heard?’

  ‘Yesterday, I should think.’

  ‘Then he may still contact you.’

  ‘Oh yes, I’m not worrying.’

  ‘If he doesn’t, what will you do?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought.’

  ‘You have every right to contact him. He’s now your Director.’

  ‘Yes,’ Guy said doubtfully, disturbed by the possibility of having just such a move forced on him. Harriet, observing his timidity when it was a question of fighting his own battle, thought how little they had known each other when they married, hurriedly, under the shadow of war. The shadow, of course, had been there for years; but during the warm, dusty summer days when they first met, it had been the shadow of an avalanche about to drop. Having nowhere else to turn, people turned to each other. Guy had seemed all confidence. Had he grown up under the protection of wealth, he could not have displayed more insouciance, good-humour and generous responsibility towards life. Offering himself, he seemed to offer the protection of human warmth, good sense and reliability. And, in a sense, those qualities were his, but in another sense, he was a complex of unexpected follies, fears and irresolutions.