The Balkan Trilogy

by Olivia Manning

  ‘Just as I thought.’ he said. He swung on Toby. ‘The rest of us have eaten nothing for two days. There are children on board and pregnant women. This stuff will be distributed: a tin for everyone on the ship.’

  Toby ran back to the Major’s cabin. His voice high with obsequious horror, he cried: ‘Major, Major, they’re taking the stores.’

  ‘God save us,’ said Phipps. ‘Listen to old Lush sucking up to the head girl!’

  Harriet returned to the boat-deck with a tin of bully beef. The tins distributed, Ben Phipps came round in a comic coda, sharing out the Major’s toilet rolls.

  ‘Here you are, ladies,’ he said as he gave three squares of paper to each. ‘One up, one down and a polisher.’

  ‘What about tomorrow?’ Miss Jay asked.

  ‘Tomorrow may never come,’ he cheerfully replied.

  The sun was low. With her head against the rail, watching the lustrous swell of the sea that held in its depths the hues of emeralds and amethysts, Harriet thought of Charles left behind with the retreating army, of David taken by the enemy, of Sasha become a stranger, of Clarence lost in Salonika, of Alan who would share the fate of the Greeks, and of Yakimov in his grave.

  Not one of their friends remained except Ben Phipps; ‘the vainest and the emptiest’, she thought.

  It seemed to her there would always be a Phipps, one Phipps or another Phipps, to entice Guy from her into the realms of folly, but Ben Phipps had almost had his day. Guy’s infatuation was waning; and, when he had seen through Ben’s last conceit, Ben would go elsewhere for attention.

  If Guy had for her the virtue of permanence, she might have the same virtue for him. To have one thing permanent in life as they knew it was as much as they could expect.

  Crete was still visible, shadowy in the last of the twilight, a land without lights. That night the race began. The ship’s old engines pummelled into speed, her timbers cracked and rattled, and the passengers, clinging to anything that gave handhold, lay awake and listened. At daybreak the uproar slackened: the danger was past.

  Their first thought was for the companion ships. They went up on deck to see the Nox and the tanker moving quietly on either side. The three old ships had survived the night and their journey was almost over.

  The passengers had awakened in Egyptian waters and were struck by the whiteness of the light. It was too white. It lay like a white dust over everything. Disturbed by its strangeness, Harriet felt their lives now would be strange and difficult.

  Someone shouted that land was in sight. She put her hand into Guy’s hand and he pressed her fingers to reassure her.

  She said: ‘We must go and see.’ Leaving Greece, they had left like exiles. They had crossed the Mediterranean and now, on the other side, they knew they were refugees. Still, they had life – a depleted fortune, but a fortune. They were together and would remain together, and that was the only certainty left to them.

  They moved forward to look at the new land, reached thankfully if unwillingly. They saw, flat and white on the southern horizon, the coast of Africa.