The Balkan Trilogy

by Olivia Manning

  At mid-day the air was warm as summer. Every waste place had become green and the budding shoots almost at once became flowers. There were flowers everywhere. The old olive groves up the Ilissus Kifissias Road, the grey banks of the Ilissus, the stark, wet clay about the Pringles’ villa – all these places dazzled with the reds of anemones and poppies, with hyacinths and wild lupins, acanthus flowers and asphodels. The wastelands of Athens had become a garden.

  The flower shops, packed to the doors with flowers, threw out such a scent the streets were filled with it. If there were nothing to eat, there were carnations. Wherever they went, the British soldiers were handed posies and in the bars they received gifts of wine.

  People had feared the British expedition. Some had said the British would never fire a shot, that they had only to set foot on Greek soil and the wrath of Germany would descend; but here they were and nothing had been heard from Germany yet.

  The snows were melting in Macedonia. The Greek forces, taking fresh heart, would advance again. Any day now there would be new gains and new victories. The fact the Germans had occupied Bulgaria meant nothing very much. At this festival of philoxenia, in the midst of spring, the old hopes had returned and people pointed out that Mussolini had made a fool of himself. ‘Why should the Germans start another front simply to save the Duce’s face?’ More likely the Germans were enjoying the situation as much as the Greeks. In Athens the promise was: ‘Victory by Easter; by summer, peace.’

  The British troops went wherever they liked. The café-owners would not support regulations concerning officers and Other Ranks, and the military police could not keep the men within bounds.

  The Greeks, for their part, made no complaints. They expected tumult and enjoyed it. As for the damage: that was also to be expected in a town crowded with foreign troops. They offered their losses up to the Greek cause. When the Australians were confined to barracks, the Greeks were indignant. And Mrs Brett was indignant. At the canteen she told Harriet how she had been stimulated by contact with men who were ‘wild in such a natural way’.

  They had come into the English tea-room while she was taking tea with the padre. There were three of them, each carrying a potted plant which he had lifted from someone’s window-sill. The drinking must have started early for they were all unsteady on their feet and one of them, sighting Mrs Brett, invited her to dance with him. He swayed dangerously over the table and the padre, pointing out that there was no dance-floor and no music, suggested he should sit down. The Australian replied: ‘Shut up, you pommie bastard.’

  ‘Of course I know how to deal with men in that state,’ Mrs Brett said. ‘I’ve had experience of all sorts, and it pays to be agreeable. Talk to them, get them interested; so I said: “Sit down, there’s a good fellow, and I’ll you order you some tea.”’ The Australian had seated himself ‘like a lamb’ but unfortunately knocked over a chair. ‘That’s a crook chair,’ he said in a threatening way and he began blaming the waiters for the chair’s defect. Mrs Brett, afraid he might start trouble, tried to draw him into conversation: ‘How are you enjoying Athens?’ ‘What’s Athens?’ he asked. ‘Why this is Athens. Where you are now. Isn’t it a beautiful city?’ ‘I wouldn’t know, mem,’ he said. ‘I ain’t never seed a city till they brought the draft through Sydney and we was all drunk when we got there.’ ‘What do you think of that! That shows judgment – and honesty! He didn’t want any tea but I persuaded him to take a cup. “To oblige you, mem,” he said, “I’ll even drink the stuff.” We had a nice long chat and he showed me all the photographs in his wallet – Mum and Dad and Sis and so on. D’you know, he became quite attached to me. It was my evening at the canteen – but could I get away! No, I could not. Every time I stood up, he pulled me down again. “Don’t you go, mem,” he said. “You stay here and talk to me.” Really, you know, it was quite heart-warming, but the padre got restive. I said: “Don’t be alarmed, padre. I understand men; this poor boy’s missing his mother.” “You’re right, mem,” said my Australian: “I never had a mom like the other fellas.” “Now, now,” I said: “What about that snapshot you just showed me?” “That’s the old man’s second wife,” he said. “And a right cow she is!” What a fascinating language! At last I said, nicely but firmly: “I have to go now. You come tomorrow and have tea at my flat and you can tell me all your troubles.” “Anything you say, mem,” he said, and I wrote down the address. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to seeing him again.’

  But the next day there were no Australians in Athens and Mrs Brett’s new friend did not arrive for tea. When it was discovered later that the whole battalion had been condemned as a menace to the peace of Athens and hurried to camps up north, the Greeks protested: ‘We liked them like that. They’re human. They behaved as they wanted to behave. Not like you English.’

  Still the fun went on. The English soldiers, their first awkwardness overcome, were found to be human enough. The homage due to the men-at-arms passed over on to the civilians, and in bars and restaurants the English, simply because they were English, received tribute of wine ceremonially laced with slices of apple or sections of orange. Harriet when out with Charles was accorded a special recognition for not only was she English but the companion of an English officer who, according to the Greeks, ‘had the face of a young Byron’.

  One day the Athenians were amazed to see Highlanders in the street: men skirted like evzones and carrying bagpipes like the shepherds of Epirus. At the cellar café of Elatos two of them took the floor, placed their knives on the ground and danced, grave-faced, without music, the rhythm marked by the pleats of their kilts that closed and opened about them like fans. As the Scotsmen toed and heeled and turned in unison, the Greeks, intent and silent, understood that this was a ritual dance against the common enemy.

  Harriet asked Charles: ‘Is there a Highland regiment here?’

  ‘God knows,’ he replied. ‘Anyone or anything might turn up. The C.O. said: “Just for the record; don’t call this a campaign. Put it down as a skimble-skamble.”’

  Harriet never saw the Highlanders again. No one knew where they came from, or where they went. Many of the men appeared in Athens one day and were gone the next. Others remained so long in the suburban camps that their faces became familiar in this bar or that as though they were on native ground; but everyone knew that sooner or later they would be gone. Expectations and preparations were in the air. The rumour that the Italians were asking for terms was not a popular rumour. No one these days wanted the Italians to ask for terms. Imagination was set on a great offensive that would finish the Italians for good and all.

  Guy had postponed his production in aid of the Greek war effort. The demand was for entertainment in the camps, where entertainments were few. Immediately after the first landings, he offered the show to the tank corps at Clyfada. The offer was immediately accepted.

  While Guy was absorbed into the business of entrepreneur, Charles had nothing to do at all. Like the other men, he awaited a summons, never knowing the day nor the hour when he must pack and go. He belonged to a Northumberland cavalry regiment that was sending units to Greece but had as yet heard nothing of where they would land or when.

  ‘Do you come from Northumberland?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What a long way away!’

  ‘Do you mean from Greece? Surely not much farther than London?’

  ‘Oh, much. Much farther.’

  They were walking by the sea at Phaleron, covering the same stretch of shore that Harriet and the others had covered on the Christmas walk. Now, in the light of spring air, it was a different shore. The sea was tender, the waves creeping in over sand that sparkled in the crystal light. Here, by the Mediterranean, looking across the blue of the water towards the blue-blacks and harebell colours of the Peloponnese, Northumberland seemed as remote as the Arctic.

  ‘A distant country,’ she sang. ‘The edge of the world. Dark, silent, mysterious and far away.’

&n
bsp; He laughed: ‘You’re thinking of Siberia.’

  ‘Perhaps. Will it soon be warm enough to bathe?’

  She had taken off her shoes and stockings but the water was glacial.

  Charles had hoped they might find a restaurant open even though Harriet said on Christmas Day they had been all boarded up. Christmas was winter, he said. Now it was spring and the restaurants would be re-opening. He was wrong. They were still boarded up.

  Barefoot in the white, powdery sand, feeling the edges of the shells, and the black, dry scratch of seaweed, Harriet was drawn on by a dream that the restaurant keeper who had fed them at Christmas might be there again; and she imagined Charles delighted as she had been delighted. When they came to the wooden hut on stilts, she ran up the steps and looked in through the window, but the place was deserted. She remained on the balcony with her hands on the boarding, feeling the warmth of the wood, while Charles watched her from the shore, puzzled by her behaviour.

  She said: ‘There’s no one here.’

  ‘I should have thought that was obvious. If we don’t get back, we’ll get nothing at all.’

  Walking back she told him about the man who had fed them with fish bought for his own family. Charles said nothing, not wanting to hear of any part of her past in which he had no part.

  Before they left the beach, she found a branch that had been washed a long time in the sea and now, thrown clear during the winter, was dried, bleached and so glossy it seemed to be some substance other than wood. She still had it in her hand when they came opposite the bus stop. The bus was coming. As he made towards the esplanade, saying: ‘If we can’t get anything else, we can get tea at the Corinthian,’ she wandered down to the water’s edge, unwilling to leave the dazzle of the shore.

  Finding she had not followed him, he ran back to her.

  ‘How fortunate we are! It will be wonderful here in the summer,’ she said, as though their friendship would go on for ever.

  ‘The bus is coming.’ He took the branch from her hand and flung it a long way out to sea. His single, accomplished movement, like that of a cricketer pitching a ball into a field, startled her and she said: ‘You’re only a schoolboy. You remind me of Sasha,’ suddenly seeing his contrarieties as no more than the defences of youth.

  He appeared not to hear her. Telling her to put on her stockings and shoes, he went to the bus-stop and asked the driver to wait. On the journey back he seemed in an even humour but, while they sat talking happily at the Corinthian, he broke in on their contentment, accusing her: ‘I suppose you’ve always had someone like me to trail round after you?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘It is true, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, it’s not. It’s simply stupid.’

  ‘Then who was Sasha?’

  When she saw him again after the meeting with Clarence, Charles had asked: Who was Clarence? What was he doing there? Harriet said: ‘He’s gone to Salonika. He’s in Greece to protect business interests.’

  ‘Oh, that lot!’ Charles’s scorn had extinguished Clarence and she had heard no more about him. Sasha would be less easy to explain away. She had been unwise in mentioning him but, having mentioned him, she had to explain. ‘He was a boy we knew in Rumania. His father was a banker. The father was arrested on a faked-up charge, and the son was forced into the army. He had a wretched time but, worse than that, he was in danger of being murdered because he was a Jew; so he deserted and came to Guy for help. He had been one of Guy’s students. We hid him for a few months. That is all.’

  But not enough for Charles. That she had related Sasha to him, that she had spoken Sasha’s name in a special tone: these things roused Charles’s suspicions and only the most complete vindication of them could satisfy him.

  She said: ‘If you like, I will tell you the whole story.’

  His voice cold with mistrust, he said: ‘All right. Go ahead.’

  As she described Sasha’s innocent gentleness, the affection he had roused in her and the plan to smuggle him from Rumania that was frustrated by his disappearance, Charles was reassured. How strange, she thought, that someone who had so many advantages in life needed to be reassured!

  He said: ‘You will never know what became of him?’

  ‘I suppose not. The Legation was our last hope; but now we’ve broken off relations with Rumania. It’s an enemy country.’

  Sasha was finished and done with: and Charles, free to sympathize, touched her hand with a contrite movement and said: ‘That day, when you ran after me into the shop, I knew …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That you needed me.’

  ‘But surely you must have known from the beginning …’

  ‘Why? How could I know? Why should you need me? You’re married. You seem quite happily married. You have a husband whom everyone likes and admires. There was no reason why you should need me.’

  ‘What did you think, then?’

  ‘I … well, I thought you were simply playing a game with me; amusing yourself while Guy was at work.’

  She smiled and shook her head.

  ‘There are girls who want to bowl over every man they meet, just to prove they can do it. You might have been like that.’

  ‘But I’m not. You’re important to me; you know that.’

  ‘Yes; but why? I really don’t know why.’

  ‘You’re a friend.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘A particular friend. You are what I need most: a companion.’

  ‘But only that? Nothing more?’ He leant towards her and, moved by his looks, his ardent expectations, she felt the air charged between them. Her lips parted; she turned her head away and said: ‘If it were possible …’

  ‘You mean it is impossible?’

  ‘You know it is. I have to think of Guy.’

  He took that to be no more than conventional resistance. Catching her hand, he glanced towards the wide carpeted stair-way that led from the foyer to the upper floors, and said: ‘We can’t talk here. Come up to my room.’

  The impulse to please him almost drew her from her seat, but as she turned towards the stairs she saw faces that were familiar to her: Dobson’s woman friend was present; there were girls who went to the School or used the School library. Knowing how easily she could become a centre of gossip, she was chilled and drew her hand away. Laughing uneasily, she said: ‘What would these people think if they saw me going upstairs with you?’

  ‘Does it matter what they think?’

  ‘That’s a stupid question. I live here. Guy works here.’ While she spoke the waiter brought their tea-tray and she hid her confusion by pouring the tea. She imagined he would be sulking, probably blaming her for an ungenerous caution, but when she turned to hand him his cup, she found his gaze fixed on her with an expression of hurt entreaty that was more compelling than ardour. She was surprised and moved, but everything that came into her head seemed to her trite, heartless and flirtatious, so she said nothing. They took their tea in silence.

  Several days passed before he made any reference to this incident. They were walking in the gardens and coming on the pergola where the wisteria was putting out a lace of leaves, he said:

  ‘Tà kaïména tà neiáto

  Ti grígorá pou pernoun …’

  She looked inquiringly at him.

  ‘You must have heard that song,’ he said. ‘“Poor youth, how quickly it passes: like a love song, like a shooting-star, and when it is gone, it never comes again.”’

  Knowing he was blaming her for a waste of passion and misuse of time, she said: ‘It would be better if we did not meet again.’

  ‘Do you mean that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You must know.’

  ‘I only know this is an impossible situation.’

  ‘If you want me to go, I won’t trouble you again.’

  ‘If you want to go, I can’t stop you.’

  ‘But I don’t want to go.’

  It was an
argument carried on in the fatuity of emotional intoxication and they both knew that it would lead to nothing.

  24

  Guy had stopped singing the ‘fun and frolic’ chorus about the house. In the mornings, while bathing, shaving, dressing and preparing for the imponderables of the day, he sang in an energetic, swinging tune that stood up to his lack of tone:

  ‘Oh, what a surprise for the Duce, the Duce!

  He can’t put it over the Greeks.’

  The words amused her at first but they soon reached a point of unendurable familiarity.

  ‘Is that the only song in the revue now?’ Harriet asked, speaking grudgingly, for she resented the revue and hardly ever mentioned it. Guy always had had, and always would have, some preoccupation or other, but she had persuaded herself that were it not for the revue she would not have turned to other company. Delighted by her interest, Guy did not give her the chance to add that if there were another song, she would prefer it, but rushed in to say how much the revue had improved since she had seen it in the Tatoi hangar. Then it had been no more than a parish hall show; but since the arrival of the troops the British residents, seeing the war in Greece as their own war, had taken up the revue in a remarkable way. The chorus was twice the size and made twice as much noise and the troops joining in singing the songs. Greek songs like ‘Oh what a surprise for the Duce’ had been translated into English, and special songs had been composed by an English businessman in honour of Greco-British unity. All the camps were clamouring for the revue. Everyone wanted to see it. It was a stupendous success.

  ‘What about Pinkrose?’

  ‘Not a squeak out of him. He knows he’s defeated.’

  ‘I can see you’re having the time of your life.’