These stories of gallantry in the midst of defeat filled Guy and Harriet with profound sadness; and they felt the same sadness about them everywhere in the hushed city.
Vourakis suddenly remembered that his wife was waiting for him: ‘If you cannot escape,’ he said, ‘come to us,’ and he parted from them as though they had been lifetime friends.
When they went on towards Omonia Square, an ashen twilight lay on the streets. As the evening deepened, the atmosphere seemed to shift from despair to dread. There had been no announcement. Vourakis had said that telephone communication with the front had broken down. So far as anyone in Athens could know, there had been no change of any kind, yet as though the enemy were expected that night, there was a sense of incipient panic, impossible to explain, or explain away.
The School building had been shut for Easter week. Guy expected to find it empty but the front door lay open and inside half a dozen male students were moving furniture, despite the protests of the porter, George. Flushed by their activity, they gathered round Guy shouting: ‘Sir, sir, we thought you had gone, sir.’
‘I haven’t gone yet,’ Guy said, putting on an appearance of severity.
‘Sir, sir, you should be gone, sir. The Germans will be here tomorrow. They might even come sooner, sir.’
‘We’ll go when we can. We can’t go before. Meanwhile, what are you up to?’
The boys explained that they intended taking the School furniture into their homes to prevent its seizure by the enemy. ‘It will be safe. It will be yours, sir, when you come back. We’ll return it all to you.’
Three more students appeared at the top of the stairs carrying a filing-cabinet between them. Those at the bottom, shrill with excitement, began shouting up instructions and a small, dark youth with wide eyes and tough black hair, came panting to Guy, his teeth a-flash, crying: ‘To me, this very day, an admiring fellow said: “Kosta, you are to make suggestions born.”’
Guy insisted that operations should cease for that evening. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘you can take what you like, but just at the moment I want to sort out my belongings.’
The departing students shook him by the hand, exclaiming regretfully because he must go, but for the young there was piquancy in change, and they went off laughing. It was the only Greek laughter the Pringles heard that day.
George, the porter, his grey hair curling about his dark, ravaged cheeks, gripped Guy’s hand and stared into his face with tear-filled eyes. Guy was deeply moved until he discovered that this emotion had nothing to do with his own departure.
George had replaced a younger man who would now be returning from the war. ‘What is to become of me?’ he wanted to know. ‘He will turn me into the street.’ George had his wife, daughter and daughter’s two children in the basement with him. The School was their home; they had nowhere else to go. Kyrios Diefthyntis must write a letter to say that George was the rightful possessor of the basement room.
Guy was disconcerted by this appeal because the old porter knew his appointment had been temporary. ‘What of the young man who has been fighting so bravely at the front?’ he said.
The porter answered: ‘I, too, fought bravely long ago.’
Guy suggested that the problem be referred to Lord Pinkrose, and the old man gave a howl. Everyone knew that the Lord Pinkrose, a mysterious and unapproachable aristocrat, never came near the School. No, Kyrios Diefthyntis, with his tender heart, must be the one to act.
In distress Guy looked to Harriet for aid but she refused to be involved. Guy wanted only to give, leaving to others the much less pleasant task of refusing. In this present quandary, she decided, he must do the refusing himself.
She said she would wait for him in the sanded courtyard. When she left the building, she saw Greek soldiers walking along the side road and went to the wall to watch them. They were coming from the station. She had some thought of welcoming them back, but saw at once that they were not looking for welcome. Like the British soldiers she had seen on the first lorries into Athens, these men, shadowy in the twilight, were haggard with defeat. Some were the ‘walking wounded’, expected to find their own way to hospital; others had their feet wrapped up in rags; all, whether wounded or not, had the livid faces of sick men. They gave an impression of weightlessness. Their flesh had shrunk from want of food, but that had happened to everyone in Greece. With these men, it was as though their bones had become hollow like the bones of birds. Their uniforms, that shredded like worn-out paper, were dented by their gaunt, bone-sharp shoulders and arms.
One man seeing her watching so closely, crossed to her and said: ‘Dhos mou psomi,’ and as he came near, she could smell the disinfectant on his clothing. She could only guess what he wanted. She opened her hands to show she could give him nothing. He went on without a word.
When they reached the main road, most of them stopped and looked about them in the last forlorn glimmer of the light. Some of them stood bewildered, then one after the other they wandered off as though to them one direction was very like another.
After they had all gone, Harriet still leant against the wall staring into the empty street.
The civilian image of the fighting man was much like that of the war posters that showed the Greeks in fierce, defiant attitudes, exhorting each other up snowbound crags in pursuit of the enemy. Now, she thought, she had seen them for herself, the heroes of Epirus.
She had been told that many of the men had no weapons, yet, like riderless horses in a race, they had gone instinctively into the fight. Starving, frost-bitten, infested with lice, stupefied by cold, they had endured and suffered simply because their comrades endured and suffered. The enemy had not had much hand in killing them. The dead had died mostly from frost-bite and cold.
The men she had seen, the survivors, had undergone more than any man should be asked to undergo. They had triumphed and at the last, unjustly defeated, here they were wandering back, lost in their own city, begging for bread.
University Street, when the Pringles walked back, was unusually bright. The raids had stopped – an ominous sign – and the café owners, knowing the end was near, had not troubled to put up their black-out curtains.
With faces lit by the café lights people could recognize one another, and Guy and Harriet, stopping or being stopped by acquaintances, were told that the Thermopylae defence was breaking. The Germans could arrive that very night. What was there to stop them? And the retreat went on. The main roads were noisy with the returning lorries. At times, passing through patches of light, they could be seen muddy as farm carts, with the men heaped together, asleep or staring listlessly at the crowds. Stories were going about the retreat itself. The returning soldiers said it had been carried out amidst the havoc of total collapse. Driven from Albania, the Greeks had found only one road open to them. The others were held by the Germans. The remaining road, which ran west of the Pindus, was choked with retreating men, refugees, every sort of transport – broken-down cars and lorries, tanks that had lost their treads, the ox waggons which had carried Greek supplies to the front, mule trains, and the hand carts and perambulators of the civilians. The whole densely packed, chaotic and despairing multitude was constantly bombed and machine-gunned by German aircraft.
Some Greeks had been cut off in Albania; some British were cut off in Thessaly. For the British now passing through Athens the important thing was to cross the Corinth canal before the bridge was blown up or taken by enemy parachutists. The English residents, beginning to lose faith in authority, told one another that if next morning there was still no sign of an evacuation ship, then they had better jump the lorries and go south with the soldiers who hoped to be taken off by the British navy at ports like Neapolis or Monemvasia. This was a rake-hell season that called for enterprise. If authority could not save them, then they must save themselves.
In the upper corridor of the Academy, the wash-room door opened and Pinkrose came out, wearing his kimono with the orange and yellow sunflowers. Guy hurri
ed after him, trying to speak to him, but Pinkrose went faster. Guy called: ‘Lord Pinkrose,’ but Pinkrose, shaking the door-handle in his haste, pulled his door open, entered and shut it sharply behind him.
Alan Frewen had remained at the office for a second night. Ben Phipps had not been seen or heard of. There was still no news of a ship for the English, and no news of anything else.
Something woke Harriet at daybreak. She jumped up and went to the window: the Major’s Delahaye was standing in the drive and Toby Lush was rearranging the luggage in the back seat.
Guy was asleep, his face pressed into the pillow, his shoulder lifted like a wing over his ear. He might have been defending himself against attack, but in this icy light he looked exposed and defenceless.
Knowing she would not sleep again, Harriet put on her dressing-gown and returned to the window to see what was happening outside. Toby had gone inside and was now carrying out the canvas bag in which Pinkrose transported his books. Pinkrose followed with the blankets from his bed. Neither of the men spoke. Though he appeared agitated, Pinkrose maintained silence, moving with a purposeful caution that reminded Harriet of Ben Phipps about to bury his victim in Maria Marten. The manner of both men suggested that they were engaged on a secret operation. She would have said they were making a get-away, if there were anywhere to go and anything to go on. As it was, she rejected her suspicions as a sign of strain. Pinkrose and Toby had no more chance of getting away than the Pringles, yet when the car drove off, she felt deserted. The plans that had sustained them the previous night had lost their allure. It might already be too late.
A mist was rising over the garden. Less than two months had passed since she had watched Charles walk away between the lemon trees and it had seemed then that life was just beginning. For a long time she had seen herself passing unscathed through experience, but experience had caught up with her at last. In the comfortless chill of early morning, she could believe that life was coming to an end.
The telephone rang in the passage. Guy seemed heavily asleep but at the first lift of the bell he sprang up as though he had been on guard.
‘This’ll be it,’ he said and he pulled on a cardigan without undoing the buttons.
The telephone was answered. A knock came on the door and Harriet opened it. Miss Dunne stood outside in a pink dressing-gown and pink fur slippers, hands stowed away in pockets. As the door opened, her gaze lit inadvertently upon Harriet. then sped to the safety of the cornice. Her whole stance conveyed the importance of her message: ‘You’re to go at once to the Information Office.’
‘Is there a ship, then?’
‘It looks like it. Each person is allowed one suitcase. Not more.’ Miss Dunne’s own personal importance had a tinge of magnanimity that made Harriet wonder if the Legation had felt some guilt about its stranded nationals.
‘Are you coming with us?’ Harriet asked.
‘Oh, no!’ Miss Dunne took a step away at the suggestion and explained that some of the Legation staff would have to go on the ship, but for persons like Miss Dunne there were other arrangements.
The Pringles set out with one suitcase and the rucksack full of books. Their other possessions and books were put into a wardrobe. ‘We’ll get them again when the war’s over,’ Guy said. They went to the main road hoping to find a taxi, but in the end walked all the way to Constitution Square where the uncomplaining English had formed an orderly queue to await transport to the Piraeus. Those who had found taxis had gone on ahead. The others would be taken by lorry.
Mrs Brett at the front of the queue called down to Guy and Harriet: ‘This is exciting, isn’t it? We’re going to be evacuated.’
‘Surely you don’t want to go?’ Harriet said.
‘Of course not. Percy’s grave is here; naturally I want to stay; but, still, it’s exciting to see the world. And we’re going to Egypt where the news is good. We keep capturing places in Egypt.’
An old coal lorry swept into the square with Ben Phipps standing up in the back. ‘Who’s next?’ he called as he jumped down, and Miss Gladys Twocurry in her green coat and Miss Mabel in her plum came out from the Information Office and closed the door behind them. Miss Gladys, guiding her sister across the pavement, looked flustered as though she felt herself at a disadvantage. Maybe she had expected to receive some sort of preferential treatment as a result of her attendance upon Pinkrose. Instead, here she was getting into the lorry like everyone else. Miss Mabel, hauled and pushed, was hoisted up and seated on a piece of luggage where she sat mumbling bitterly about the coal-dust on the floor.
When the lorry went off, only seven people remained to await its return. Ben Phipps joined the Pringles, his eyes jumping about with joy at his authoritative position. He slapped his hands together but gave no explanation of himself until Guy asked where he had gone the previous day.
‘I can a tale unfold,’ he said. ‘Where do you think I went? Where did little Benny go, eh? Little Benny went to the Piraeus to have a looksee-see, and what did he see-see? He saw two ships astanding by, waiting to take Major Cookson and all Major Cookson’s friends and valuables to some nice safe place. And Benny wasn’t alone. Who did I meet down there but the old padre nosing around. He’d had the same idea. So we joined forces. We explored every avenue, we left no stone, we bloody well pushed our way into everything and everywhere. And there were these two old vessels tucked away in a corner: about the only things down there intact. We managed to find one of the stokers who said they’d been chartered by an English gentleman. He didn’t want to say more but we put the screws on him, the padre and me. And who was this English gentleman? None other than the bloody Major. A lot of his stuff was already on board. He’d been preparing for weeks. He and his friends were going to travel in comfort, with all their possessions. “Right!” said the padre, “we’ll see about this,” and back we went to the Legation. The padre, I’ll say it for him, was magnificent. He said: “I demand that every British subject and every Greek who is at risk as a result of working for the British, shall be given passage on those ships.” Our diplomatic friends were not at all happy about it. The Major had chartered the ships. What about his rights? – the rights of the moneyed man?’
‘Private property, eh?’ said Guy.
‘Private property – you’ve said it. But the padre, dyed in the wool old Tory though he is, was having none of it. He said human beings came first. He refused to move until our F.O. friends agreed that the ships would be held until every British subject was on board. As soon as the Major heard what was going on, he tried to speed up his departure. He meant to sail at daybreak, but when he got down to the Piraeus he found the ships were being held by the military.’
‘Is he coming with us?’
‘Oh, yes, he won’t be left behind; he’ll travel with the hoipolloi, but I’m told he’s hiding in his cabin. In fact the gallant Major’s already feeling sick.’
Guy shook hands with Ben, delighted by the Major’s defeat. ‘A victory for human decency, a victory for human rights,’ he said. Ben was eager in agreement but watching him dancing in vindictive triumph, Harriet wondered what would have happened had Ben Phipps not quarrelled with the Major. Supposing he had been among the privileged few invited to save themselves on the Major’s ship! Hatred, she saw, was a considerable force; and Ben was likely to go far.
She had once been ambitious for Guy, but saw now the truth of the proverb that the children of darkness were wiser than the children of light. Guy, with all his charity, would probably remain more or less where he had started.
The lorry returned and the last half-dozen fugitives climbed on board.
It was Good Friday. The town was in abeyance but already the inhabitants were abroad, wakeful and restless in their apprehension.
Ben Phipps said: ‘The pro-German elements are out in force,’ but the Greeks who waved to the lorry as it passed looked the same as the Greeks who had wandered about last evening in the despairing twilight. And there were soldiers among them.
Ben Phipps nodded at them furiously. ‘The whole Greek army’s been sent back on leave. It’s another act of sabotage. Papademas says it’s been done to save them from the futile slaughter of a last stand; but if they’d joined our troops at Marathon, they could have accounted for a good few Germans. Now, the bloody Hun’ll walk in.’
As they came on to the long straight Piraeus road which shone empty, in the morning sun, Harriet said: ‘I suppose Alan Frewen’s already on board?’
Ben Phipps shook his head: ‘Nope.’
‘No? Then where is he?’
‘On the way to Corinth, I imagine. He wanted a car, so I sold him mine. When he saw the evacuation all set, all ticketyboo, he shoved his dog into the back and drove off.’
‘But where is he going?’
‘Don’t ask me. He was in a hurry to get over the bridge before someone blew it up. That’s all I can tell you.’
‘So he intends to stay in Greece? Can he survive down there?’
‘Can he survive anywhere? He’s the sort that starts heading for the high jump the day they’re born.’
‘And the dog will starve,’ said Harriet.
‘Good God!’ Ben Phipps gave a yelp of laughter at her absurdity and she, turning on him angrily, said: ‘And you let him go! You even sold him a car …’
‘I suppose he can do what he likes?’ Ben Phipps blinked at her in injured astonishment. ‘If he wants to go, it’s not my job to stop him.’
‘No, you’re not your brother’s keeper, are you?’
Ben Phipps laughed, too angry to speak.
Harriet, thinking disconsolately of Alan, the lonely man who had loved Greece and the Greeks, and could not leave them, stood up to take a last look as they passed the villa and the Ilissus and the little wood, whispering: ‘My poor cat.’
The Balkan Trilogy Page 104