The Balkan Trilogy

by Olivia Manning

  She said: ‘He must appoint you Chief Instructor. There’s no one else capable of doing the job. Pinkrose or Ben Phipps might have done as Director; but when it comes to teaching, who is there?’

  ‘Dubedat.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, darling.’

  The only heat in the hotel came from the oil-stove in the restaurant. The tables were set round it and guests were slow to take themselves up to their rooms. The Pringles were still sitting over their little cups of grey, washy coffee when the porter came down with a hand-delivered letter. He gave it to Guy, who, opening it, laughed and said casually: ‘It’s from Callard. An invitation to tea at Phaleron where he’s staying with Cookson. You’re to come, too.’

  ‘But this is wonderful, darling.’

  ‘Perhaps. We don’t know what he wants.’

  ‘Oh yes, we do. He’s got the directorship; now he wants someone to do the work.’

  ‘Come on. I’ll buy you some real coffee at the Braziliana.’

  In the little bar, that was so small there was nowhere to sit, people stood elbow to elbow drinking the strong, black coffee that was rare enough at the best of times but was now a luxury. Looking between the crowded faces, Harriet saw Ben Phipps. Thrust into a corner beside the door, he stood by himself, staring into the street with an air of bitter dejection. Could the directorship have meant so much to him?

  If she had liked him better, she would have pointed him out to Guy and Guy, of course, would have hurried over to console him. As it was, Guy was too short-sighted to see him and she too nervous to give him a second thought.

  It was a sepia day. When the bus left them on the front at Phaleron, they saw a yellowish sea indolently spreading its frills of foam like a bored bridge player displaying a useless hand. The shore was as empty as an arctic shore, and almost as cold. The esplanade, stretching into the remote distance, was grey and bare, but there were palms.

  ‘The Mediterranean,’ said Harriet.

  Guy adjusted his glasses to look at it: ‘Not exactly the sea of dreams,’ he said, but that afternoon they had something else to think about.

  Passing the villas where no one seemed to be at home, he hummed to express confidence in the interview ahead, and walked too quickly. Harriet, trotting beside him, kept up without comment. They hurried to meet the moment when their equivocal position would be resolved at last.

  Cookson’s villa was easily found. It was the largest of the seaside villas and its name, ‘Porphyry Pillars’, was written in roman letters. The villa was of white marble. The pillars – mentioned in Baedeker, Alan had said – were not at their best in this light.

  Harriet whispered: ‘They look like corned beef,’ and Guy frowned her to silence.

  A butler admitted them to a circular hall where there were more pillars, not porphyry but white marble, and on to an immense drawing-room filled with Corfu furniture and hung with amber satin.

  Out of the prevailing glimmer of gold, the Major rose and shifted his rolled handkerchief so he might extend a hand.

  ‘How delightful to meet you again,’ he said, though they had scarcely met before. He placed Harriet on an amber satin sofa as in a position of honour and apologized to Guy: ‘So sorry Archie isn’t here. He had a luncheon appointment in Athens and hasn’t got back yet.’

  Guy blamed himself for being early, but the Major protested: ‘Oh, no, it’s Archie who is late. Such a naughty boy! A little fey, I’m afraid. But never mind. For a tiny while I have you to myself, so you must tell me about Bucharest. I was there once and met dozens of princes and princesses; all delightful, needless to say. I hope no harm will come to them. What a débâcle! How do you account for it?’

  Guy talked more readily to Cookson than he had talked to Gracey. As he analysed the Rumanian catastrophe, Cookson gave exclamations of wonder and horror, then insisted on being told how the Pringles managed to make their escape. ‘And you,’ he asked Harriet with deep concern, ‘weren’t you most terribly worried by it all? Even, perhaps, a little frightened? And when you left, were you very, very sad?’

  The Major, looking from Harriet to Guy, from Guy to Harriet, exuded so attentive a sympathy that Harriet was completely won by him. His attitude was that of a courteous and benevolent host welcoming newcomers into the circle of his friends. And how privileged, these friends! She could well understand why, in the social contest, poor Mrs Brett had scarcely made a showing.

  But Guy was less easily beguiled and less ready to desert Mrs Brett. Though he responded to the Major – being quite incapable of not responding – it was not his usual whole-hearted response to a show of friendship. Once or twice when there was some noise in the house, he glanced round, hoping for Archie Callard’s arrival. The Major, apparently unaware of such moments of inattention, said: ‘Do tell me …’ asking one question and another, doing his best to distract them from their unease. But too much depended on the interview ahead. The atmosphere was amiable but Guy’s thoughts wandered and the Major murmured, ‘Where can Archie be?’

  At last the door opened and Callard appeared. Though the light was failing, the Pringles saw from his face that he had forgotten them. He was not alone. Charles Warden was with him.

  Harriet and Warden exchanged a startled glance, and Harriet felt her temperature fall. It was as though some trick had been played upon the pair of them.

  Callard had dropped his old air of jocular indifference to life and, conscious of responsibility, was sober and constrained. ‘How kind of you to come,’ he said. ‘You do all know each other, don’t you?’

  Accepting this as introduction, Harriet and Warden bowed distantly to each other and waited to see what would happen next.

  The Major, who seemed flustered by Callard’s new importance, rose and said:

  ‘Archie dear, I think I’ll take Mrs Pringle and Charles into the garden while you have your little talk. There’s just light enough to see our way around. Now, don’t be long. I’m sure we’re all dying for our tea.’

  He opened the french windows and led the young people outside. Harriet went with some excitement but, looking back as the door closed, she saw Guy inside, his face creased with strain. Guilty at having gone so willingly, she hurried ahead to join the Major, behaving as though he and she were the only people in the garden. He conducted her round the beds, describing the flowers that would appear after the spring rains, and though there was not much to admire, she exclaimed over everything. Flattered by her vivacious interest, he said: ‘You must see it in April: but, of course, I hope you’ll come many times before that.’

  The lawn was set with citrus trees that stood about in solitary poses like dancers waiting to open a ballet. Harriet kept her back turned to Charles Warden but, pausing to examine some small green lemons, she glanced round in spite of herself and saw him watching her behaviour with an ironical smile. She was gone at once. Catching up with the Major, she defiantly renewed her enthusiasm.

  As they rounded the house and came in sight of the sea, the clouds were split by streaks of cherry pink. The sun was setting in a refulgence hidden from human eye. For an instant, the garden was touched with an autumnal glow, then the clouds closed and there was nothing but the wintry twilight.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Major regretfully, ‘we must go in; but you will come again, won’t you? You really will? I give a few little parties during the winter, just to help me pass the gloomy weeks. There’s always a shortage of pretty girls – I mean, of course, pretty English girls. Plenty of lovely Greeks, and how lovely they can be! Still, English girls are a thing apart: so slender, so pink and white, so natural! Do promise you will come?’

  Smiling modestly, Harriet promised.

  The chandeliers had been lit inside the golden drawing-room. The Major tinkled on the glass, at the same time opening the door and saying: ‘May we join you?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Callard, as though he could not understand what they were doing out there.

  Apparently the talk inside the room had
finished some time before. Harriet had entered in high spirits but, meeting Guy’s eye, she lost her buoyancy. He gave her a warning glance, then stared down heavily at the floor. Now, she only wanted to leave this treacherous company, but the Major was saying: ‘Come along. You’ve got your business over, so let’s have a jolly tea.’

  The dining-room was on the other side of the hall. Tea was served on a table with rococo gilt legs and a surface of coloured marbles. The marbles formed a composition of fruits and game entitled in letters of gold: ‘The Pleasures of Plenty’. Placed on the centre of the picture was a plate of very small cakes. The Major said:

  ‘Dear me, look at them! As cakes increase in price, they decrease in size. One day, I fear, they’ll vanish altogether.’

  As though he found these remarks frivolous or vulgar, Archie Callard said: ‘Then you won’t have to pay for them.’

  The Major laughed, knowing himself reproved, and went on in a pleading tone: ‘But, Archie, such absurd little cakes! Do look at this one! Who would have the heart to eat it? Really, I’m ashamed, but …’ He turned to Harriet: ‘It’s not easy to get any these days, even at the Xenia. Don’t you find shopping terribly difficult?’

  ‘We live in an hotel,’ she said.

  ‘How wise! But not, I hope, at the G.B.? I hear the Military Mission has taken possession of our darling G.B. and all our friends have been turned out. So sad to be turned out of one’s suite at a time like this! Dear knows where they’ve all gone. And no more cocktail parties in that pretty lounge! Not that there have been many since the evacuation ship took the ladies away. Still,’ he added quickly: ‘We mustn’t complain. Others have come in their place.’

  ‘Really!’ said Archie Callard, ‘you seem to suggest that the ship took the rightful occupants of Athens and left behind nothing but wartime flotsam.’

  ‘Archie, that’s quite enough!’

  Delighted at having shocked the Major, Callard gave his attention to Charles Warden. He wanted to know all about the Mission. What was its function? How many officers were there? What position would Charles himself hold?

  Speaking stiffly and briefly, the young man said he knew nothing. The Mission had only just arrived.

  There was, Harriet thought, a hint of self-importance in his tone and she condemned him not only as an unpleasant young man but as one who took himself too seriously.

  The telephone rang somewhere in the house. A servant came to say that Mr Callard was wanted.

  Archie Callard, tilting his head back with a fretful air, asked who was on the line. When told the British Legation, he said: ‘Oh, dear!’ The Major sighed as though to say that this was what life was like these days.

  When Callard went off, the others waited in silence. Glancing at Charles Warden, Harriet found his gaze fixed on her and she turned her head away. He said to Cookson: ‘I’m afraid I must get back to the office.’

  ‘But you don’t have to go, do you?’ the Major smiled on Guy and Harriet. ‘Please stay and have a glass of sherry!’

  Before they could reply, Archie Callard returned with a rapid step, his manner dramatically changed. Both his fraudulent gravity and his irony were gone. Now he was not playing a part. With face fixed in the hauteur of rage, he ignored the guests and demanded of Cookson: ‘Did you know Bedlington was in Cairo?’

  ‘Bedlington in Cairo? No, no. I didn’t.’ Bewildered and alarmed, the Major dabbed at his nostrils. ‘But what of it? What has happened?’

  ‘You should have known.’

  ‘Perhaps I should, but no one told me. People are too busy to keep me posted and, living down here, I’m a bit out of things. Why are you so annoyed? What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’ll tell you later.’ Callard made off again, slamming the door as he went.

  ‘What can it be?’ said the unhappy Major. ‘Archie’s such a temperamental boy! It’s probably something quite trivial.’

  The invitation to sherry was not repeated. The Major’s anxiety was such he scarcely noticed that the guests left together.

  A staff car was waiting outside for Charles Warden and he offered the Pringles a lift. Heartened by this kindness, Guy rapidly regained his spirits and as they drove up the dark Piraeus road, was voluble about an entertainment which he planned to put on for the airmen at Tatoi. He may only just have thought of it – certainly Harriet had heard nothing about it – but now as he talked, the idea developed and inspired him. The Phaleron interview was forgotten. If he had been depressed, he was depressed no longer; and Harriet marvelled at his powers of recuperation.

  If he had been offered nothing, if his future was (as she feared) vacant, he was already filling the vacancy with projects. The entertainment at Tatoi was only one thing. He discussed the possibility of producing Othello or Macbeth. And why should he not restage Troilus and Cressida?

  Was there ever any need to pity him! He was never, as she too often was, disabled by disappointment. He simply turned his back on it.

  Harriet noticed that Charles Warden laughed with Guy, not at him. Listening to Guy’s schemes, he murmured as though Guy and Guy’s vitality were things he had seldom, if ever, encountered before. She realized now that his restraint when replying to Callard had shown not self-importance but a disapproval of Callard’s insolent wit. She had to admit the young man was by no means as unpleasant as she had wished to believe.

  The car stopped outside the main entrance to the Grande Bretagne.

  ‘Let’s meet again soon,’ said Guy.

  ‘Yes, we must,’ Charles Warden agreed.

  Walking back to their hotel, Guy could talk of nothing but this new friendship until Harriet broke in: ‘Darling, tell me what Callard had to offer.’

  ‘Oh!’ Guy did not want any intrusion upon his felicity. In an offhand way, as though the whole matter were of no consequence, he said: ‘Not much. In fact, he wasn’t able to promise anything.’

  ‘But he must have had some reason for sending for you?’

  ‘He wanted to see me, that’s all.’

  ‘Didn’t he tell you anything?’

  ‘Well, yes. He told me … he felt he ought to tell me personally – which was, after all, very decent of him – that he had been forced to make Dubedat his Chief Instructor. He had no choice. Gracey made him promise.’

  ‘I see.’ For some minutes her disappointment was such she could not say anything more.

  Guy talked on, doing all he could to justify Callard. Knowing that what he said was a measure of his own disappointment, Harriet listened and grew angry for his sake. She said at the end:

  ‘So Archie Callard was appointed on the understanding that he rewarded Dubedat for Dubedat’s services to Gracey?’

  ‘It looks like that. I will say Callard was rather apologetic. He said: “I’m sorry about this. I hope you won’t refuse to work under Dubedat?”’

  ‘He expects you to work under Dubedat? He must be mad.’

  ‘He said there would be work, but not immediately. He hopes to fit me in when things get under way. I must say, I rather liked Callard. He’s not at all a bad chap.’

  ‘Perhaps he isn’t. But here you are, the best English instructor in the place, expected to hang around in the hope that Dubedat will offer you a few hours’ teaching. It’s monstrous!’

  ‘I came here against orders. I’ll have to take any work I can get.’

  ‘What’s this about Lord Bedlington being in Cairo? Couldn’t you write to him or cable him? You have a London appointment. You’ve a right to state your case.’

  ‘Perhaps, but what good would it do? Bedlington knows nothing about me. Gracey, Callard and, I suppose, Cookson have all backed Dubedat. There’s no one to back me. I’m merely an interloper here. The fact that I was appointed in London doesn’t give me a divine right to a plum job. I could make trouble – but if I do that and gain nothing by it, I’m in wrong with the Organization for the rest of my career.’ Guy put his arm round Harriet’s disconsolate shoulder and squeezed it: ‘Don’t worry. Dubeda
t’s got the job and good luck to him. We’ll work together all right.’

  ‘You won’t work together. You’ll do the work, and Dubedat will throw his weight around.’

  Guy’s tolerance of the situation annoyed Harriet more than the situation itself. He had achieved education and now, she suspected, his ambition had come to a stop. In his spiritual indolence, he would be the prey of those with more ambition; and he would not worry. It was, after all, easier to be used than to use.

  She asked bitterly: ‘Will it be like this all our lives?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘You doing the work while other people get the importance.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, darling, what do you want? Would you prefer that I became an administrator: a smart Alec battening on other men’s talents?’

  ‘Why not, if there’s more money in it? Why should you be paid less for your talents than other men are for the lack of them? Why do you encourage such a situation?’

  ‘I don’t. It’s the nature of things under this social system. When we have a people’s government, we’ll change all that.’

  ‘I wonder.’

  They had reached the hotel. Her hands were clenched and Guy, picking them up and folding them into his own hands, smiled into her small, pale, angry face, saying, as he had said many times before: ‘“Oh, stand between her and her fighting soul.”’