The Balkan Trilogy

by Olivia Manning

  The evening was one of the few that they had spent in their living-room with its comfortless, functional furniture. The electric light was dim. Shut inside by the black-out curtains, Harriet mended clothes while Guy sat over his books, contemplating a lecture on the thesis: ‘A work of art must contain in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise.’

  ‘Who said that?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘Coleridge.’

  ‘Does life contain in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise?’

  ‘If it doesn’t, nothing does.’

  ‘But you think it does?’

  ‘It must do.’

  ‘You’re becoming a mystic,’ she said and after a long pause, added: ‘There are so many dead bodies in the ruins of Belgrade, people have stopped trying to bury them. They just cover them with flowers.’

  ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘I heard it before I left the office. It was the last piece of news to come out of Yugoslavia.’

  Guy shook his head, but did not try to comment. There was a period of quiet, then a sound of rough and tuneless singing came from the top of the lane where some men had gathered in one of the half-built houses to raise their voices against the darkness.

  As the singing went on and on, Harriet began to feel it unbearable and suddenly cried out: ‘Make them stop.’ Before Guy could say anything, she ran to the kitchen and told Anastea to go out and deal with the singers. Anastea shouted a command up the lane and the song came abruptly to a stop.

  Shocked, Guy asked: ‘How could you do that?’

  Harriet did not look at him: she was nearly weeping.

  ‘They may be men on leave, or invalided from the front. Really, how could you?’

  He was so seldom angry that she felt stunned by his reprimand. She shook her head. She did not know, she really did not know how she could do it, or even why she did do it. She wanted Guy to forget the incident but as he returned to his books, his face was creased with concern for the men slighted in that way. It did not relax, and suddenly she collapsed and began to cry helplessly, unable to swallow back her own guilt and remorse and the personal grief shut up inside her.

  Guy watched her for a while, too upset to try to comfort her, then said as though it were only now he could bring himself to say what he had to say: ‘We’re leaving here. Alan Frewen thinks he can arrange for us to have a room at the Academy.’

  ‘But I can’t go. I can’t leave the cat.’

  ‘We have to go. It’s not just the raids and the lack of sleep. He says we must be somewhere where we can be reached by telephone.’

  She sat up, jolted by the alarm that in Rumania had become a chronic condition. ‘Are things worse? What is happening?’

  ‘I don’t know. Nobody knows. There’s a complete ban on news.’

  ‘But surely there are rumours?’

  ‘Yes, but you can’t rely on rumours. The thing is: we have to move from here, simply as a precaution. Nothing more than that. Alan will let me know tomorrow.’

  They had only clothing and books, yet in her exhausted state it seemed almost beyond her power to cope with them. She begged him: ‘Couldn’t you help me move?’

  ‘But, of course,’ he said, surprised by her tone. ‘Why not?’

  ‘You’re usually too busy.’

  ‘Well, I’m not busy now. The revue’s at an end and there’s hardly anyone at the School.’ He sounded exhausted, too, and spoke as though he had been defeated at last. She was about to ask him what he did with himself in Athens now but at that moment Anastea came in to take her leave and Harriet said instead: ‘I think I’ll go to bed.’

  The raid went on all night. There was no respite for the men at the guns, and no rest for anyone withing hearing. By morning Harriet was quite ready to move anywhere, it did not matter where, so long as she could sleep.

  Guy was seeing Alan at luncheon and said he would be back as soon as he knew what arrangement had been made for them. He got out his rucksack and began taking his books from the shelves. Anastea, who had been expecting something like this, noted what he was doing, went to the kitchen and returned with a tea-pot which Harriet had bought a couple of months before. The villa did not contain much kitchen equipment, and this was the only piece that belonged to the Pringles. Nursing it in the crook of her arm, smoothing the china with her ancient, wrinkled hand, Anastea pointed out that there had been no tea in the shops for weeks. Harriet nodded and told her to leave the pot on the table, but Anastea clung to it, stroking it and patting it as though it were something of unusual value and beauty. She began to beg for it, pointing to the pot and pointing to her own bosom, and Harriet, surprised, said: ‘She doesn’t drink tea. She doesn’t even know how to make it. We ought to give it to someone who’ll have a use for it.’

  Guy said: ‘There won’t be any more tea, so let her have it.’

  Harriet waved her away with the pot and she was so eager to take it home, she forgot the money owing to her and had to be called back.

  It was late afternoon when Guy returned. By that time Harriet had completed the packing and had made repeated journeys across the river-bed to try to find the cat. It had been a rather dirty little cat with scurfy patches in its fur, but its response to her had touched her out of all reason. A sort of obsessional frenzy kept her searching for it. She told herself that animals were the only creatures that could be loved without any reservations at all, and this was the only creature she wanted to love. She knew it would not be welcome at the Academy but she would take it with her. She was determined to find it.

  She kept going back to the wood, expecting to find the cat at her heels, but each time met with nothing but silence. She was in the wood when Guy came back. He found her walking frantically backwards and forwards over the same ground, calling to the cat and pleading with it to appear. He did not like the gloom under the trees and, unwilling to enter, shouted to her from the river-bank. He had brought a taxi which was waiting for them.

  She came to the edge of the wood and said: ‘I can’t go without the cat,’ then walked back into the shadows, feeling he was a hindrance to her purpose which was more important than anything he could offer. He climbed up the bank and stood watching her, baffled. He wondered if she were becoming unbalanced. As for the cat, he decided someone had probably killed it for food, but said: ‘The gun-fire’s frightened it. It’s gone to a safer place.’

  ‘Quite likely,’ she agreed, still wandering round.

  He said firmly: ‘Come on, now. The taxi’s waiting and it’s getting dark. You’ve got to give up.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘You see, this cat is all I have.’

  ‘Darling!’

  His cry of hurt surprise stopped her in her tracks. She saw no justification for his protest. He had chosen to put other people before her and this was the result. Each time he had overridden her feelings to indulge some sense of liability towards strangers, a thread had broken between them. She did not feel there was anything left that might hold them together.

  He called her again, but she did not move. He stood there obstinately, a shadow on the edge of the wood, and she resented his interference. She had supposed this large, comfortable man would defend her against the world, and had found that he was on the other side. He made no concessions to her. The responsibilities of marriage, if he admitted they existed at all, were for him indistinguishable from all the other responsibilities to which he dedicated his time. Real or imaginary, he treated them much alike, but she suspected the imaginary responsibilities had the more dramatic appeal.

  ‘Darling, come here!’

  Reluctantly she moved over to him. During the last weeks she had almost forgotten his appearance: his image had been overlaid by another image. Now, seeing him afresh, she could see he was suffering as they all suffered. He had become thin and the skin of his face, taut over his skull, looked grey. He had at last come to a predicament he could not escape. He would have to share the stress of existence with her, but
it did not matter now. She had learnt to face it alone. Still, she pitied him. He had nothing to do. His last activity had deserted him: but no activity, however feverishly pursued, could hide reality from him. They were caught here together.

  His troubled face pained her. She put her hands on to his hands and he held her in his warm, familiar grasp.

  She said: ‘I’m sorry. I did not mean to desert you.’

  ‘I did not think you did.’

  ‘You see, Charles loved me.’

  ‘Do you think I don’t love you?’

  ‘You love everyone.’

  ‘That doesn’t make me love you less.’

  ‘I think it does.’

  It was not his nature to argue. He always expected understanding, and perhaps expected too much. He said simply: ‘We must go. They’re expecting us for supper at the Academy. If there’s a raid, we could get caught here again for a couple of hours.’

  She went back with him to collect their possessions and lock up the villa. She had lost hope of finding the cat, but she did not feel that their talk had changed anything.

  29

  The Pringles were given the room which had belonged to Gracey. There was no sign that anyone else had lived in it since he left.

  Harriet looked out on the twilit garden where, from the dead tangle of old leaves, the new acanthus was rising and uncurling, and the lucca throwing up a spike of buds. The garden smell, dry and resinous, that she had described as the smell of Greece, was overhung with the fresh, sweet scent of the lemon trees.

  The room was bare but here, in touch with their protectors, the Pringles felt they were safe. Her despondency lifting, Harriet said: ‘I like this, don’t you?’

  ‘I certainly do.’ Guy began to unpack and arrange his books on top of the chest-of-drawers, taking trouble as though they might be here for a long time.

  The house, secluded in its garden, seemed a place safe from the racket of war, but this impression was dispelled when they reached the dining-room. Alan had not come in to supper. Pinkrose, though he had kept on his room at the Academy, spent most of his time at Phaleron. The other inmates were talking in a subdued way but came to a stop at the entry of the outsiders. Harriet felt their retreat into discretion, but the atmosphere carried an imprint of consternation.

  Guy, who wanted to associate himself with the life of the place, reminded Miss Dunne that he would like to join her at tennis.

  She said: ‘I’ll give it thought,’ making it evident that she had more important things on her mind.

  When Guy began suggesting days and times, she twitched her shoulders impatiently but could not keep from blushing.

  They were served with goat’s cheese and a salad of some sort of green-stuff that roused a mild interest. Tennant went so far as to say: ‘This is a new one on me!’

  Guy suggested that it might be samphire and quoted: ‘Halfe way down Hangs one that gathers Samphire; dreadful Trade.’ Tennant smiled, but it was clear to Guy that this was no place for badinage.

  Supper over, he was eager to get down to the centre of the town and find his companions. In the Academy garden the evening was milky with the rising moon. Harriet wanted to stay out of doors and Guy followed her reluctantly into the Plaka where she walked quickly, driven still by a sense of search and conscious of having nothing she might find. She led the way towards the Acropolis.

  The sky was brilliantly clear. As they climbed upwards, the Parthenon became visible, one side still caught in the pink of sunset, the other silvered by the full moon. As the sunset faded, the marble became luminous like alabaster lit from within and the Plaka shone with a supernatural pallor.

  The Athenians remembered the threatened raid, knowing that some such shimmering, verdant night as this would be the night for destruction. Moving darkly in dark doorways, watching out at the passing strangers, people seemed expectant and distrustful.

  Guy, who did not know the area, was afraid they would get lost in the dark. Harriet, beginning to tire, was willing to go back.

  Tandy had left Zonar’s. It was warm enough to sit out after dark and they found him with the others on the upper terrace of the Corinthian. They were seated round a table by the balustrade, uneasy like everyone else in a city that, salt-white and ebony, was defined for slaughter. And they were uneasy for another reason.

  Ben Phipps, who had his own sources, said the British troops were already in retreat.

  ‘If the Florina Gap’s evacuated, then Greece is wide open.’

  ‘You think the Germans are on their way down here?’ asked Tandy.

  ‘It’s likely. Almost certain, though there’s nothing definite. I’m inclined to blame the Greek command. Papagos agreed to bring the Greek troops out of Albania and reinforce the frontier. He didn’t do it. He said if they had to renounce their gains, the morale of the men would collapse. I don’t believe that. I know the Greeks. Whatever happened, they would defend their own country. And now what’s the result? The Greek army’s probably done for. One half’s cut off in Albania, and the other half’s lost in Thrace.’

  They sat for a long time in silence, contemplating the possibility of defeat.

  ‘Still,’ said Guy, trying to dispel the gloom, ‘we’re not beaten yet.’

  Phipps gave a snort of derisive laughter, but after a pause said: ‘Well, perhaps not. The British aren’t easily beaten, after all. And we’re bound to hold on to Greece. It gives us a foothold in Europe. We just can’t afford to lose it. We’re an incompetent lot, but if we have to do a thing, we usually do it.’

  ‘If we hold,’ Alan said, ‘we could regain everything.’

  Ben agreed: ‘There have been miracles before.’

  Miracles offered more hope than reason and Yakimov, his eyes wide and lustrous in the moonlight, nodded earnestly. ‘We must have faith,’ he said.

  ‘Good God!’ Tandy stirred with disgust. ‘Surely things aren’t as bad as that!’

  ‘Of course not,’ Alan Frewen said.

  There was silence, then Guy asked: ‘What news of Belgrade?’

  ‘It’s off the air,’ Ben told him. ‘Not a good sign. Rumour says the Germans reached the suburbs two days ago.’

  ‘Is that fact?’

  ‘It’s rumour, and rumours these days have a nasty habit of becoming fact.’

  ‘Then David Boyd must have left. He’s sure to come tonight. The train’s almost due.’ Guy looked at his watch, preparing to start for the station, and Ben Phipps held his arm.

  ‘You don’t imagine there’ll be another train, do you? The Germans will have cut the line south of Belgrade. If your friend’s stuck, he’ll make for the coast. He might get a boat down from Split or Dubrovnik.’

  ‘Is it likely?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  Ben Phipps, bored with Guy’s anxiety for his missing friend, threw his head back and stared at the moon. His face blank, his glasses white in the moonlight, he said mockingly: ‘Don’t worry. Even if Boyd isn’t a diplomat, he’ll be covered with angels’ wings. If he’s caught, the F.O.’ll bail him out. There’s always something prepared for those chaps. Here they’ve got a yacht standing by. That’ll take everyone of importance.’

  ‘And the rest of us?’ Tandy asked.

  Ben Phipps looked him up and down with a critical and caustic smile. ‘What have you got to worry about? You can walk on the water, can’t you?’

  Tandy though he laughed with the others, had a remote and calculating expression in his little eyes. He had declared his policy for survival. He did not stay anywhere too long, but here he was in a cul-de-sac. What would he do now?

  As no one could answer this question, they turned their backs on a situation that was likely to defeat even Tandy, and began to talk of other things. Ben Phipps said Dubedat and Toby Lush spent their time standing in food queues. He had seen them in different shopping districts, buying up tinned foods that were too expensive for most people.

  ‘They’ll pay anything for anything,’ he said. ‘A
bad sign if the Major’s running short. How about Pinkers? How’s he facing up to the emergency?’

  ‘Splendidly,’ said Alan. ‘He’s got only one worry: who should he get to translate his lecture into Greek? He wants it published in both languages. He keeps saying: “I must have a scholar. Only a scholar will do,” and every day he trots in with a new suggestion. When this problem is settled (if it ever is!) we will have to decide who should print the work, then a distributor must be found …’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘My dear Ben, you think the question of the moment is: Will the Germans get here? If you worked in the News Room you would be required to ponder a question of infinitely greater import: how soon can we get Pinkrose’s lecture into the bookshops?’

  ‘So he’s no longer concerned about his safety?’

  ‘Never speaks of it.’

  ‘Think he’s got an escape route up his sleeve?’

  ‘If he has, I’d like to know what it is. A lot of people have to be got out of Greece: British subjects, committed Greeks, refugee Jews; four or five hundred, and quite a few children.’

  ‘I thought the children went on the evacuation boat?’

  ‘Not all. Several women wouldn’t leave their husbands. And life goes on. English babies have been born since the boat went.’

  ‘What has the Legation got in mind?’

  ‘We must wait and see.’

  There were two narrow beds in the Pringles’ room. Guy and Harriet had not slept apart since their marriage but now they would have the width of the room between them. Each felt cold alone, the covers were thin; and sandflies came in through the broken mesh of the window screens.