‘You’d enjoy it. Come and see it tonight. We’re going to Kifissia for a special show and the Naafi are supplying refreshments for the cast. Do come.’
Harriet had her own plans for that evening. ‘I don’t think I can,’ she said, but Guy bent over her and, catching her by the shoulders, looked down on her with an urgent and questioning intentness, saying: ‘I would like you to come.’
‘Then of course I will.’
‘Fine.’ He was away at once, hurrying round, looking for this and that. The military lorries were picking up the cast and visitors in Kolonaki Square. ‘I suppose you can get out of the office early?’
‘I suppose so. I was seeing Charles. Do you mind if I bring him?’
‘Bring anyone you like, but make sure you come yourself.’
He was gone. Harriet watched him through the large window as he slammed the front door behind him and sped up the lane past the villa, impelled by all the activities he had planned for the day.
Yakimov said of Guy: ‘He’s a dear, sweet fellow, but he doesn’t understand how you feel.’ She had thought Yakimov was right. Now she thought Guy saw more than he would admit to seeing, understood more than he appeared to understand; but he would not let observation or understanding impede him. He was a generous man, anyway in material matters. He loved her, but his love must be taken for granted. If she put it to the proof according to her needs, she found herself sacrificed to what he saw as a more important need: his need to be free to do what he wanted to do. Challenged, he never lacked justification. He did not recognize emotional responsibility and, unlike emotional people, he was not governed by it. She suffered compunction; he did not. It was compunction – a quite uncalled-for compunction – that caused her to disappoint Charles, who had booked a table at Babayannis’, and demanded that he go to Kifissia instead. She knew that he enjoyed being fêted at Babayannis’, but they could go there any night. She was surprised, shocked, even, when he refused to go to Kifissia.
The office had been stirred by the news that Yugoslavia had been presented with a German ultimatum. The fate of Yugoslavia presaged the fate of Greece; yet, in the face of this new crisis, Charles and Harriet could do no more than bicker over their evening’s entertainment.
They went into the Zappion Gardens where everything was bright with spring, but nothing was bright for them. Each looked inward on a private injury, determined not to yield a point to the other.
Charles kept his face turned from her but he spoke in an agreeable tone that was as cruel as a threat: ‘Don’t worry about me. There are other things I can do. I’ve been neglecting my friends lately. I ought to write some letters. In fact, I shall be glad to have a free evening.’
‘We have to think of Guy,’ Harriet said. ‘I promised him …’
‘And you promised me; you promised me first. Still, it doesn’t matter. Please don’t worry. I shall be quite happy on my own.’
‘Guy does not object to my seeing you. He’s not mean or demanding; we owe him one evening. I think we ought to go …’
‘You ought to go, certainly.’
‘We will have other evenings …’
‘Perhaps; and perhaps not.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
Pale and inflexible, he stared down at the path and shrugged his shoulders. ‘This Yugoslavia business. If they reject the ultimatum, every available man will be rushed to the frontier.’
The argument was not resolved but it came to a stop. They passed under the trees and came to the pond where children were playing in the water. Everything was in leaf and flower, but all without meaning. At the pond they turned and walked back to Constitution Square.
Though it was too early for the office, Harriet paused at the side entrance of the hotel and Charles walked on without a word. She called: ‘Charles.’ He looked round and she ran to him and took both his hands: ‘Please come to Kifissia,’ she said.
He frowned and reflected, then said: ‘Very well,’ but he said it with a poor grace.
‘Call for me here. Come early, won’t you?’
‘Yes.’ He walked off, his face still sullen, but she did not doubt he would come as agreed. As she had expected, he was waiting outside when she left the office. He refused to speak as they went to Kolonaki where the lorries waited, surrounded by Guy’s company, a few people known to her and a great many unknown.
Driving out of Athens, they passed the Yugoslav legation where the Greeks had gathered to sympathize with a country threatened like their own. So far as they knew, Yugoslavia was still considering the German ultimatum. Ben Phipps said he had faith in the ability of Prince Paul who would ‘box clever’, but Guy thought the Yugoslavs would fight.
He asked the driver to stop and jumped down from the lorry in order to add his condolence and encouragement to the demonstration. Whenever an official could be seen at one of the legation windows, the Greeks applauded but the Yugoslavs looked glum.
Ben, leaning over the lorry side, called to Guy: ‘Come on. We’re going to be late,’ and, when Guy returned, said: ‘Oh, dry the silent tear for they – are going to cave in.’
Guy nodded sadly and said: ‘You may be right.’
Kifissia was fragrant with the spring. The houses and gardens that rose towards Pendeli were still caught in the honey gold of the evening sun while the shadowed area of the main road held a counter glow that was an intimation of summer. The lorry drew up beneath the pepper trees and as the passengers jumped down, the trees trembled in the first breeze of sunset.
The Naafi had hired a hall that had been unused since war began. Boxes of sandwiches and cakes, sent for the performers, were being carried into the back entrance. The lorry passengers followed, filing through a narrow, neglected orchard that was full of the scent of citrus blossom. The dark hall, when they reached it, smelt of nothing but dust. Charles touched Harriet’s arm to detain her, saying: ‘Need we go in?’
‘I must see some of it.’
‘Let’s wait till it begins.’
Left behind by the others in the sweet outdoor air, Harriet smiled at Charles, coaxing him to smile back. From a camp somewhere in the distance came the Call which Harriet had heard in Bucharest coming from the palace yard. Feeling a nostalgia for lost time, she said: ‘Do you know what that says? “Come, water your horses, all you that are able. Come, water your horses and give them some corn. And he that won’t do it, the sergeant shall know it; he will be whipped and put in a dark hole.”’
‘Who told you that?’ Charles jealously asked.
‘I don’t know. I think Guy told me. There’s another Call that says: “Officers be damned; officers be damned.”’
‘The Officers’ Call.’ Charles still looked sullen.
They could hear Miss Jay striking chords on the piano and Harriet took his arm and led him inside. They sat in the back row beside Alan Frewen, Yakimov and Ben Phipps, who would not be required until after the interval.
Soldiers were filling the front rows. There were not many British troops left in Attika. There were New Zealanders, tall, sun-burnt men who seemed to maintain their seriousness like a reserve of power.
The airmen, Surprise and the others, had adapted themselves to their precarious, volatile life by treating it as a joke; the infantrymen, with feet on the ground, might find life funny but knew it was no joke.
Imagining their remote, peaceful islands, Harriet wondered what had brought the New Zealanders to Europe? What quarrel had they here? They seemed to her the most inoffensive of men. Why had they come all this way to die? She felt, as a civilian, her own liability in the presence of the fighting men who were kept in camps, like hounds trained for the kill. However close one came to them, they must remain separate. Charles had warned her that, sooner or later, he would have to go. And soon they would all be gone.
When the soldiers had occupied the first dozen rows, the civilians waiting at the front entrance were admitted to any seats that remained. A great many people, Greek and English, had he
ard of the revue and had driven out to Kifissia in hope of seeing it. The hall was filled in a few minutes, then the curtain jerked open and the chorus, ordered to make immediate impact, rushed on, breathless before they had even begun to sing. Miss Jay struck a blow at the piano and the men in mess jackets, the women in blue and white ballet skirts began ‘Koroido Mussolini’, the song that described the Italians at war:
‘They stay inside because it’s raining
And send communiqués to Rome,
In which for ever they’re complaining:
“It’s wet, so can we please go home?”’
The whole song sung, Guy, wearing a borrowed white mess jacket that would not button across his middle, came out as conductor of the revels. He demanded a repeat performance from the audience which, willing enough to participate and enjoy, sang louder and louder as Guy sang and waved his hands, exhorting those in front to give as much as he gave himself. He brought the hall to a state of uproar.
Ben Phipps, sitting hands in pockets, with chair tilted back and heels latched on to the seat before him, gave a guff of laughter and said: ‘Look at him!’ It was a jeer yet, unwillingly, as he repeated ‘Look at him!’ admiration came into his voice:
‘What can you do with a man like that? What’s it all about, anyway? Where’s it going to get him?’
Where indeed! Harriet, scarcely able to bear the sight of Guy cavorting on the stage, felt a contraction in her chest. She remembered how she had watched him haranguing the stage-hands in Bucharest, expending himself like radium in order to give two performances of an amateur production that would be forgotten in a week. She had thought then that if she could she would seize on Guy and canalize his zeal to make a mark on eternity. She felt now she had expected too much from him. He was a profligate of life. The physical energy and intelligence that had seemed to her a fortune to be conserved and invested, would be frittered away. And there was no restraining him. She might as well try to restrain a whirlwind. Watching him now, she felt despair.
The first half of the revue ended, the cast of Maria Marten went behind to dress.
Charles said: ‘You don’t want to see that play again, do you? Let’s go for a walk.’
She had, in fact, been looking forward to the play, but she followed him out into the twilight of the orchard where moths moved through the damp, night-chilly air. The pepper trees were disappearing into a fog of turquoise and violet. A single light showed between the looped curtains of a taverna. Some men were gathered outside on the pavement, the only life in the suburban street.
It would soon be dark. Charles suggested they follow a lane that went uphill between the gardens in a scent of orange and lemon flower. Here there was no noise but the croak of frogs. Above the gardens, they came into an olive grove where the undergrowth, dotted over with a white confetti of flowers, reached higher than their knees. Walking through it, they trod out the sharp, bitter scent of daisies and startled the grasshoppers into a see-saw of sound.
Though he had managed to take her away from any company but his own, Charles was not prepared to talk. She commented on things and asked questions but could not get an answer from him. His unrelenting ill-humour filled her with a sense of failure. Why need time be wasted in this way? She felt him to be intolerably demanding and ungenerous, yet she was despondent because, in a few days, he would be gone and they might never meet again.
War meant a perpetual postponement of life, yet one did not cease to grow old. She had been twenty-one when it started. At the end, if there ever was an end, what age would she be? How could she blame Guy for dissipating his energies when all the resources of life were being dissipated? What else could he do? War was a time when mediocrities came to the top and better men must rot or die in the conflict.
As for Charles, whose prospects had been so much more promising than theirs, how must he feel at seeing his youth wasted on his present futile employment? He was uncomplaining, of course. His education and upbringing required him to be uncomplaining, but what secret misery did he express in his petulance and silences and sudden shows of temper?
She stopped speaking herself until Charles said: ‘There’s a walk along the top of Pendeli. It’s rather fine. We might go up there one day.’
She looked up to the spine of the hill that showed black against the stars. ‘Would we be allowed to go as far as that?’
‘I think so. Anyway, I could get permits.’
‘When could we go?’
‘We’ll have to wait until the weather is settled. It can be cold on the top, and there’s no shelter if it rains.’
The quarrel, it seemed, was forgotten. Despite their uncertain future, they planned the walk as a possible, even probable, event in the time ahead. Harriet thought Guy would come and they wondered who else might join the excursion.
Talking, they made their way back between the gardens. By the time they reached the hall, they had decided to arrange the walk early in April.
Charles said: ‘The first Sunday in April would be a good day.’
‘Will you still be here?’
Charles walked up the length of the orchard path before he muttered: ‘How do I know?’
Inside the hall the chorus, giving encore after encore, sang:
‘Oh, what a surprise for the Duce, the Duce,
He can’t put it over the Greeks.’
Harriet and Charles went behind the stage where the refreshments would be served. The wooden trays covered with tissue paper were stacked one on top of the other. The cast of Maria Marten, back into everyday dress, were waiting for food and as the chorus waved the audience away and the hall emptied at last, Ben Phipps slapped his hands together and said: ‘Now for the grub; and, mein Gott, ich habe Hunger.’
‘Haven’t we all, dear boy,’ said Yakimov giving a whinny of gleeful anticipation. As he moved towards the trays, Mrs Brett pushed him aside and said: ‘All right, Prince Yaki, I’m in charge of this department. I’ll do the honours.’ She lifted down the top tray and removed the paper. The tray was empty. The tray beneath it was empty. All the trays were empty. A crust or two, a single cherry, some fluted paper cups, proved that food had been there once.
Some local men, hired to put out the chairs and act as stagehands, were gathered with their women at the back door, watching, blank-faced and silent. Mrs Brett turned and raged at them in a mixture of Greek and English.
Smirking in embarrassment, they shook their heads and held out their hands, palms up; they had nothing, they knew nothing.
Guy said: ‘They were hungry. Say nothing more about it.’
‘We’re all hungry. They’d’ve got their share,’ Mrs Brett faced the employed men again, saying: ‘If you didn’t eat it all, where is it?’ They looked at one another in wonder. Who could tell?
Their perplexity was so convincing, several people glanced suspiciously at Yakimov, but Yakimov’s disappointment was plain. He picked up the crusts and ate them one by one, leaving the cherry for the last. Wetting a forefinger and pressing it down on the crumbs, he murmured: ‘Sponge-cake.’
Mrs Brett said: ‘We should have placed a guard on the food. But, there you are! One thinks of these things too late.’
The weary players went for their coats. Ben Phipps, seeing a telephone on a table, lifted it and, finding it connected, shouted to Guy: ‘Half a mo’: let’s see if anything’s happened.’ He rang the Stefani Agency. The others stood around while Ben, his eyes shifting from side to side, shouted: ‘They’ve signed, eh? They’ve signed …’ He nodded knowingly to Guy: ‘What did I say? While you were demonstrating your solidarity, it was all over. Paul’s made a clever deal. The Germans will respect Yugoslav territory.’
They climbed into the lorry and sat close together in the cold night air while Guy affirmed his faith in the Yugoslavs: ‘They’ll never stand for an alliance with Hitler.’
‘Be your age,’ Ben said. ‘If they can keep the Germans out, they’ll save their bacon and probably save ours as well. If Hitler can
’t move through Yugoslavia, he’ll be left sitting on the Bulgarian frontier. It’s less than 300 kilometres, all mountain country. Olympus is our strong-point. We could trap the bastards behind the Aliakmon and keep them trapped for months.’
In spite of their hunger, in spite of the cold, in spite of themselves, the passengers in the lorry felt a lift of hope. Their new enemy might in the end be the saviour of them all.
PART FOUR
The Funeral
25
On the morning following the submission of Yugoslavia, the office boy, summoned by Lord Pinkrose, returned to the Billiard Room with a foolscap draft of material to be typed.
All such material went first to Miss Gladys who would look through it, then, with explanation and encouraging noises, set her sister to work. If anything of particular interest came to hand, she would keep it for herself.
The foolscap sheet caused her to squeak with excitement and she ordered the boy to bring her typewriter to her desk. Her preparations for work were always protracted. This morning there seemed no end to them. As she fidgeted with the typing paper, her grunts and gasps and heavy breathing told Harriet that the foolscap sheet contained matter of unusual import. She supposed it must relate to the Yugoslav situation. The Legation had telephoned Alan warning him that refugees from Belgrade were moving towards Greece, the direction left to them.
Harriet had been in the News Room that morning when the call came. While she waited to speak to Alan, Pinkrose entered and signalled that he had something to say more important than anything that might be said by the Legation. His chameleon face was grey with the sweat of panic. He drummed on the desk, too agitated to know or care that Harriet and Yakimov were watching him.
Imagining that Pinkrose’s needs were more pressing than those of the refugees, Alan apologized to his caller, put down the receiver and turned his long-suffering gaze upon the Director of Propaganda.
Pinkrose shot a finger at the map on the News Room wall: ‘You see what’s happened, Frewen? You see … you see … !’
The Balkan Trilogy Page 94