The Balkan Trilogy (103 page)

‘Good news, I hope,’ Guy said.

‘Not very. It might even be bloody bad news.’

That put a stop to Alan’s activity and when everyone was attending him, Phipps went on: ‘One of our chaps, out on a reccy over the Bulgarian front, thought he saw something in the snow. Something fishy. He dropped down to have a dekko and nearly had kittens. What d’you think? Jerry’s got a mass of stuff there – tanks, guns, lorries, every sort of heavy armament. All camouflaged.
White
.’

‘You mean it hadn’t been there long?’ Harriet said. ‘But it could have been painted on the spot.’

Phipps gave her a look, surprised by her grasp of his point and not over-pleased by it. ‘Unlikely,’ he said. ‘That sort of stuff isn’t painted, it’s sprayed. A factory job.’

‘Couldn’t it be sprayed on the spot?’

‘Perhaps it could.’ A repository of information in Athens, he seemed more annoyed than not by the fact Harriet’s suggestions made sense.

‘Where did you hear all this?’ Alan wanted to know.

‘In the mess at Tatoi. I’ve been doing a piece on British
intervention in Greece. It may be hush-hush but when I was there the place was buzzing with it. The pilot had just come in. No one had had time to clamp down on his report and the chaps were talking.’

‘You think the Germans are preparing an invasion?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine. You might even say it’s as good as D’Albiac’s. No one knows anything. But you’d better keep it under your hat.’ Feeling he may have said too much, Ben Phipps looked sternly at the Pringles and turned to warn Yakimov, but Yakimov was dawdling far behind.

The party, oppressed by the day, became more oppressed as they contemplated the possibility of a German move. And how possible it now seemed! Why should the stronger partner of the Axis stand by inactive while the weaker suffered ignominious defeat? Yet who could bear to think the Greeks had suffered in vain?

Guy said: ‘The Bulgarian roads are the worst in Europe. There’s only one bridge over the Danube. How could all this heavy stuff get to the frontier? Don’t you think it’s some cock-and-bull story?’

‘Well …’ Having blown up his sensation, Ben Phipps saw fit to deflate it: ‘The pilot saw something all right, but perhaps it wasn’t what it seemed. It could have been a sham – something set up to scare the Greeks or, for that matter, the Jugs. There’s this tricky situation in Yugoslavia: Peter and Paul. Which one’s going to fly away? The pro-German faction’s behind the Regent; the others are behind the King. If Paul’s allowed a free hand, then the Germans’ll let things ride. Their troops are spread thin enough as it is. They don’t want to hold down more unproductive territory.’

Alan murmured his agreement. It was not much of a hope, but these days they existed off just such a hope as this one. And there was the persisting human belief that nothing could be as sinister as it seemed. They began to rise out of their consternation and as they did so, found that Yakimov, hurrying to catch them up, had caught a sentence or two of Phipps’s talk.

‘What’s this, dear boy? The Nasties coming here?’

Looking into Yakimov’s great, frightened eyes, Ben Phipps could only laugh: ‘I didn’t say so.’

‘But if they do: what’ll happen to us?’

‘What, indeed!’

Harriet said: ‘We have the sea. It makes me feel safe.’

‘This great ridiculous mass of useless water!’ Ben Phipps peered at it: ‘I’d feel a lot safer if it weren’t there.’

Guy said: ‘I’m inclined to agree,’ and the two men laughed as though they shared a joke.

Phipps’ manner towards Guy suggested understanding and incipient intimacy while Guy, aware of the interest they held in common, behaved as though their concurrence were only a matter of time. Harriet was disturbed, feeling that the atmosphere between them was like the onset of a love-affair. She became more critical of Phipps, suspecting he was the sort of man who, though sexually normal, prefers his own sex. He disliked her and probably disliked women. He had about him the reek of the trouble-maker, the natural enemy of married life; the sort of man who observes, or seems to observe, the conventions while leading husbands astray and undermining the authority of wives.

She walked between them but when they reached the point at Edam, they turned and Phipps placed himself beside Guy, saying: ‘I heard you’d been appointed Chief Instructor, and I was jolly glad. I never had any use for that twit Dubedat. And what about Callard? I bet he’s had some little
douceur
slipped into his hand?’

‘He’s to be Social Secretary.’

‘Social Secretary!’ Phipps’s tone was hollow with disgust. ‘The rest of us work our balls off for a living while he lies around at Phaleron and gets paid for it.’

Guy laughed. This exchange confirmed the understanding between them. Their unfortunate introduction at Zonar’s was forgotten and Guy’s manner lost a last hint of restraint.

Phipps became confidential: ‘I won’t pretend I wasn’t after the directorship. I
was
. I need something more than free-lance
journalism to keep me going, but it was Gracey who led me to believe I might get it. He humbugged me. And Pinkrose and Dubedat. We were all after it,
you
know that. He had us all running errands and taking him gifts and circling round him like planets round the sun. If he spoke we listened open-mouthed. We were all waiting for the crown to drop from his nerveless fingers; each one thought he’d get it when it fell.’

‘Did you know Callard was in the running?’

‘No. That was a secret between Archie and Colin Gracey.
And
the Major, of course. The rest of us poor mutts were just led up the garden. I have a reputation – you may have heard that I scribble a bit. I had a book published by the Left Book Club. I’m not unknown. I got friends at home to do a bit of lobbying. Then, if you please, word comes from Cairo that Archie’s got the job. Gracey had fooled me. I was mad. In fact, I was hopping mad.’

‘But why did Gracey choose Callard?’

‘A matter of friendship. Gracey liked to move in the right circles.’

‘And had Callard any sort of qualifications?’

‘He’d a degree of sorts; third in History or something. It’s quite fashionable to get a third, of course. One of his Oxford admirers described him as “frittering away an intellectual fortune”. The fortune, if it exists, is kept well under lock and key. I’ve seen nothing of it. Have you?’ Phipps spoke in a tone of breathless inquiry as though a sense of injustice were at last bursting free. ‘I could do the job better; you could do the job better; even Dubedat could do it better. Yet it was simply handed to Callard as though he had some natural right to it.’

Guy nodded in understanding of Phipps’s indignation. ‘He probably thought he had a natural right to it,’ Guy said. ‘A class right. There’s a certain sort of rich, privileged young man who imagines he is born to be in the front rank of everything; even the arts. If he chooses to write or paint, he must be a genius. There are some who feel quite a sense of grievance when proved wrong. Really, believe it or not, there were those who felt it monstrous that D. H. Lawrence, a miner’s son,
should have so much talent. Some of them remain dilettante, believing that if they chose to apply their talents, they’d be remarkable; but they don’t choose.’

Ben Phipps’s laughter stopped him in his tracks. He threw back his head, shouting: ‘You’re right. That’s Archie: a genius by right of birth who has chosen to be a dilettante. The great “might have been”.’ Phipps’s laughter came to an abrupt stop. He said: ‘I can tell you this: if his appointment had been confirmed, I intended to institute an inquiry.’

‘I think Pinkrose did institute an inquiry.’

‘Did he? Good for him. Still, I can’t see him making a go as director here. He’s too narrow, too much the don. It’s a position for a younger man. I should have got it.’

‘I think so, too,’ Guy spoke a firm declaration of faith in Phipps and Harriet, looking at Phipps, said:

‘You’d better not pass that on to Pinkrose.’

‘What do you think I am?’ Phipps stared angrily at her and she stared back, offering no conciliation. If Guy chose to make a declaration of faith, she was just as ready to make a declaration of war. Phipps turned his back on her and said to Guy: ‘Pinkrose’s own appointment was a bit of a wangle, I bet? How did he fix it?’

‘He’s a friend of Lord Bedlington. They knew one another at Cambridge.’

‘Hah!’ said Phipps, needing to be told no more, and the two walked just a little quicker, drawing ahead and dropping their voices in a privacy of agreement. Catching a word here and there, Harriet knew they were discussing in an atmosphere of scandalized conspiracy, the suppression in different countries of the left wing opposition, which was for both of them the suppression of desirable life.

‘Look at them!’ Harriet said to Alan. ‘They’re like a couple of schoolgirls discovering sex.’

Alan smiled. Sensing her jealousy but refusing to become involved with it, he started hunting for flat stones which he sent skimming over the sea for the entertainment of Diocletian. As the dog ran about, Harriet saw that its vertebra was visible and its
haunches stood out from its skin, but, galvanized by the game, it tore about the beach, splashing in and out of the water, and panting in anticipation whenever Alan felt need for a rest.

Yakimov said confidentially to Harriet: ‘I expect, dear girl. you’re feeling a trifle peckish. I know I am. Where are we going to eat? We ought to give our mind to the problem, don’t you think?’

‘Yes, I think we should.’

They had hoped to eat in one of the sea-side restaurants, which before the war had been noted for their crayfish and mullet, but now they were all shut, not from a shortage of fish but a shortage of fishermen.

She said: ‘We could try the Piraeus. There must be some sort of eating place for the men employed about the harbour.’

‘You think that’s the best we can do?’ Yakimov looked glum. ‘I know, dear girl, one mustn’t complain. Not the done thing. Must think of the fighting men; but it comes a bit rough on your poor old Yak. I’m doing an important job, too. I need nourishment. Don’t get paid much, but it’s regular. For the first time in years your Yak can lay his hands on the Ready, and he can’t get a decent meal for love nor money.’

‘It’s hard,’ Harriet agreed: ‘But, remember, you’re going to the Major’s party.’

‘Oh yes. Get a bite there all right.’ He turned to Alan: ‘What about you, dear boy?’

Alan, like the Pringles, had been invited to both parties. He had, he said, decided to support Mrs Brett.

Harriet looked to where Guy and Phipps walked with their heads together: ‘Why don’t we ditch Mrs Brett?’ she said.

Alan said, shocked: ‘No. No, we couldn’t do that.’

The rain began to fall in a gentle film, chilling their faces like powdered ice. Someone was coming towards them along the esplanade: a man with a fish basket, the first human being they had met since they left the bus. They were all hungry with a hunger that had not yet touched starvation but caused an habitual unease. As the man approached, Harriet, though talking of something else, watched him in expectation, certain
he was there on their behalf. He had fish in the basket and would open his restaurant for no purpose but to feed them. Impelled by her faith, or so it seemed, he made for a wooden cabin, unlocked the padlock and went inside.

Alan grunted as though he had shared Harriet’s dream, and said: ‘It looks as though we may get something after all.’

The cabin, of clinker board, was built out to form a verandah over the shore. A stairway led up from the beach.

Recalled by the same excitement that possessed the others, Ben Phipps and Guy went up the stair and knocked on the door. Alan, Harriet and Yakimov watched hopefully from below. The man came out, surprised to have custom, but when Phipps explained their need, he smiled and said he had come from Tourkolimano where he had been able to buy some red mullet. He waved them to the verandah tables, for the cabin itself was nothing but a cook-house.

The verandah had a roof and there were rush-screens at either end so that the party would be protected from the rain if not from cold.

As the smell of frying mullet came from the kitchen, Yakimov hunched his shoulders and clasped his hands to his breast as though in prayer. The others swallowed down their impatience and stared out at the sea that had lost its violet and green. The band of indigo still lay along the horizon but the rest was a glaucous yellow pocked by rain-drops. The rain, gathering strength, bounced on the glossy sand and hit the roof above their heads. Diocletian had remained on the shore, but soon had had enough of it and came up in search of his master. Finding Alan, he shook himself violently then eagerly sniffed the air. ‘Lie down,’ said Alan and he lay, head on paws, but with eyes restless, on edge with hunger like the rest of them.

The talk had lapsed. Harriet asked Yakimov if he could still get
blinis
at the Russian Club. He sighed: ‘
Hélas!
No caviare, no cream, no
blinis
. But sometimes they have octopus. Do you like octopus?’

‘Not much.’ She had an innate horror of eight-legged
creatures, but was glad enough to eat anything for now not only the flesh of beasts, but the hearts, kidneys and livers went to the army, and the civilians ate the intestines. Grey, slippery and bound up like shoelaces, these had brought about an epidemic of dysentery.

The mullet was ready. The proprietor hurried out to set the table and Alan asked if he had anything to spare for the dog. The man bent down and ruffled Diocletian about the ears then, shaking his head in compassion, he described the dog’s condition with sad gestures. When he brought out the mullet, he placed three squid before the dog. Diocletian opened his mouth and they were gone. The company watched open-eyed, but they had been small squid and the fish also were small. They disappeared as quickly as the squid. Guy said: ‘We’ve had our Christmas dinner, after all.’

‘I wish we could have it again,’ said Yakimov. ‘D’you think he’d fry a few more?’

‘We have had our share.’

The man came out and said he was leaving but the guests were to remain seated until the rain grew less. He refused payment for the squid which were a present for the dog, and charged very little for the mullet. After they had settled their bill, he remained for a while talking to Alan with so much vitality and laughter that Harriet and Yakimov, who knew no Greek, thought he was telling some entertaining story. When he had shaken hands with them all and gone off, still carrying his fish basket, Alan said: ‘He said he didn’t intend opening today. He went to Tourkolimano at dawn and waited all morning to get the fish. It was for his own family. He came here merely to get his knife, but seeing we were English, he could not refuse us.’