The Balkan Trilogy (105 page)

Spreading her large-boned hands in front of one of the fires, she was shaking all over and nearly deranged at being the centre of so much attention. When the Pringles tried to speak to her, she pushed them aside and went to the kitchen where something was cooking.

The room was full of middle-aged and elderly guests, mostly women who had remained in Athens because they had no reason to go anywhere else. Harriet, seeing no one she knew, thought: ‘If we hadn’t come, we would not have been missed.’ They remained unwelcomed until Mrs Brett returned to the room. Becoming aware of them, she seized hold of Guy as though his arrival were a long-awaited event. ‘Attention,’ she called. ‘Attention. Now! I want you all to meet the new Chief Instructor at the English School: Mr Guy Pringle.’ This announcement was made with such impressement that there was a flutter of clapping before anyone had time to reflect and ask what it was all about. Mrs Brett, hand raised, stood for some moments rejoicing in their bewilderment, then decided to enlighten them. She said:

‘You all saw the announcement that Archie Callard was to
be the new Director at the School! Perhaps you don’t all know that he isn’t the new Director after all? The appointment wasn’t confirmed. No. Lord Bedlington decided that Lord Pinkrose was better fitted to take charge in an important cultural centre like this, and I’m sure you all agree with him. Lord Pinkrose is
somebody
, not like … well, naming no names. Anyway, Lord Pinkrose was told to appoint Guy Pringle here as Chief Instructor; and do you know why?’ She grinned at the circle of blank faces, then turned on Guy: ‘Do you know why?’ Guy shook his head.

‘Does Lord Pinkrose know why?’

‘I don’t think he does,’ Guy said.

‘I’ll tell you why. I’ll tell you all why. I had a hand in it. Oh, yes, I had. My Percy had friends in high places. We knew a lot of people. The poor old widow’s still got influence. We knew Lord Bedlington years ago when he was just young Bobby Fisher, travelling around, and he used to stay with us at Kotor. He’s just been made Chairman of the Organization, and when I heard he was in Cairo, I sent him a letter. It was a strong letter, I can tell you. I let him know what’s been going on here. I let him know about Gracey and Callard and Cookson. I said we were all disgusted at the way the School had gone down; and I said things would be no better under Callard. I said Callard couldn’t run a whelk-stall. Yes, I said that. I don’t mince matters. And I said there was this nice young chap here, this Guy Pringle, and he was being discriminated against. I opened Bobby Fisher’s eyes, I can tell you. And the long and the short of it is, our friend Guy Pringle’s got the job he deserves.’ She lifted her hands above her head and applauded herself.

‘What an
éclaircissement
!’ said Miss Jay acidly. ‘Just like the last act of a pantomime.’ But whatever doubts she raised were dispelled by Guy who flung his arms round Mrs Brett saying: ‘Thank you. Thank you. You’re a great woman!’ He kissed her resolutely on either cheek.

Flushed, bright-eyed, gasping from her oration, Mrs Brett, not a little drunk, danced up and down in his arms, snapping
her fingers to right and left, and shouting: ‘That for Gracey; and that for Callard! And that for the hidden hand of Phaleron! You can go and tell Cookson there’s life in the old girl yet!’

If she had caused embarrassment, Guy’s spontaneous and artless good nature had won the guests and the embarrassment went down in laughter. Everyone, even Miss Jay, joined Mrs Brett as she banged her hands together. Harriet, observant in the background watched the room converge round Guy while he looked to her, smiling, and held out his hand. He might have said: ‘You see how right I was to come here,’ but he said nothing. He merely wanted to include her in the fun.

The rumpus subsided when Mrs Brett shouted: ‘The hot-pot! The hot-pot!’ and ran back to the kitchen.

‘About time,’ said Miss Jay whose heavy cream wool dress with all its fringes hung lank upon her.

The lean times were telling on Miss Jay and her monstrous face had drooped into the sad, dew-lapped muzzle of a blood-hound. It was not only her flesh that had collapsed. Her malicious self-assertion had lost its force and her remarks made no impact at all.

Harriet knew now she could, if she wished, say anything she liked about English society in Athens. Miss Jay counted for little. Local soceity had shrunk like a balloon losing air and Miss Jay had shrunk with it. Harriet was free to speak as she pleased.

During the excitement of Mrs Brett’s speech, she had noticed Alan Frewen among the guests. Moving over to him, she asked: ‘Is Miss Jay a rich woman?’

Amused by this direct question, Alan said: ‘I believe she has a modest competence, as Miss Austen would say.’

‘A modest competence’ seemed to disclose Miss Jay. Harriet saw her with her modest competence, tackling the world and getting it under control; but the world had changed about her and now, an obsolete fortress, with weapons all out of date, there was not much due to her but pity.

Alan suggested that Harriet meet the painter Papazoglou who, young and bearded, in a private’s uniform, was spread against the wall as though he would, if he could, sink through it and out of sight. Alan said that as everyone was doing something to enhance the Greek cause, Mrs Brett had proclaimed herself a patron of the arts and had placed the young man’s canvases round the room, calling attention to them with such vehemence that several people present were still under the impression she had painted them herself.

Papazoglou spoke no English so Harriet went round peering into the little paintings of red earth, dark foliage and figures scattered among the pillars and capitals of fallen temples. Much moved, she came back and said to Alan: ‘What can I do? Isn’t there any work for me?’

‘We’ve been given an office in the Grande Bretagne,’ he told her. ‘Now that we have more room, I’ll find you a job.’

A scent of stewed meat drifted out from the kitchen where Mrs Brett had been unpacking a case of borrowed plates. She came out shouting: ‘Supper’s ready,’ then explained how she had hired a taxi the day before and gone to Kifissia, having heard that a small landowner, taking advantage of the high prices, was killing off his goats for the festival. She could not find the landowner but she had been passed from one person to another and in the end had managed to buy a whole leg of kid. ‘And what do you think I’ve made? A real Lancashire hot-pot. I come from Lancashire, you know …’

While Mrs Brett talked, the smell of the hot-pot grew richer until Miss Jay broke in with: ‘Cut it short, Bretty. I’ll help you dish up.’

Miss Jay’s expression was avid as she spooned out the hot-pot. The plates were quickly emptied and Mrs Brett went round urging everyone to eat, saying: ‘Who’s for second helpings? Plenty more in the pot.’

Miss Jay was catching the last of the gravy in the spoon when a ring came at the front-door. Three women who had been detained at the bandage-rolling circle, walked in bright-faced, cold, hungry and ready to eat.

‘I forgot all about you,’ Mrs Brett said, ‘But never mind! There are some jolly nice buns for afters.’

Guy, appreciative of everything, handed back his plate with the remark that the hot-pot had been the best he had ever eaten.

The hungry ladies, taking it in good part, munched their buns and made jokes about not getting Mrs Brett’s goat.

‘Wasn’t that a good party!’ Guy’s voice rang through the empty darkness of the streets as they went home: ‘You wouldn’t have enjoyed the Major’s half so much.’

Blind in the black-out, he clung to Harriet as they slipped on and off the narrow pavement, and slid over the wet and treacherous gutter stones: ‘Isn’t Mrs Brett magnificent? Thanks to her, I have the job in the place where I most want to be.’

Harriet pressed Guy’s arm, happy to rejoice with him, and said: ‘Alan thinks the war might end this year.’

‘It might, I suppose. The Germans have most of Europe. We are alone. We may be forced into some sort of truce.’

‘But
could
the war end that way?’

‘No; and don’t let us deceive ourselves. It wouldn’t be the end. There would be an interval of shame and misery, then we would have to return to the fight.’

‘In fact, the real enemy is untouched. The real war hasn’t even begun.’

‘It could last another twenty years,’ said Guy.

The excitement of the party was wearing off. The warmth of the wine was passing from them and as they turned into the wet wind blast of the main street, they held to each other. knowing they might never see the end of hostility and confusion. The war could devour their lives.

Next day Yakimov was full of the fact that by leaving the Major’s party, the Pringles had missed ‘no end of a dust up’. Everyone was talking about it. Late in the evening, Phipps, described by Yakimov as a ‘a trifle oiled’, had attacked the Major for supporting Archie Callard’s appointment and deceiving Phipps himself about his chances.

‘Callard’s never done a day’s work in his life,’ he told Cookson and an attentive company. ‘What good did you think he’d be as Director? He’d’ve been a figurehead and a poor one, at that! He’s a playboy and a poseur with nothing but his neuroses to recommend him.’

‘And so on and so on,’ said Yakimov, aghast and delighted by such plain speaking.

Callard, listening, had put up a show of indifference, but the Major had been much upset. He had sniffed and dabbed his nose and tried to hush Phipps, but in the end he had turned and ‘told Ben P. a thing or two’. He had said that Gracey, when asked for his opinion, had cabled the London office to say that Phipps, as a result of his politics, his past association with undesirable persons and his generally facetious attitude towards the reigning authorities, was totally unsuited to be in any sort of authoritative position.

Having revealed this, the Major, in a state near hysteria, had shouted shrilly: ‘And I agree. I agree. I agree.’

‘Then you know what you can do,’ Phipps had told him and raging out of the house, had crashed the front door so violently the glass had fallen out and broken in pieces all over the hall.

Guy said: ‘We were fortunate to miss that.’ An opinion Harriet did not share.

PART THREE

15

In the New Year, when the move to the villa was imminent, Guy was too busy even to discuss it. He had returned to work like a reformed drunkard returning to the bottle. He was exuberantly busy.

Some mornings he would not wait for breakfast. When Harriet asked what he did all day, he said he was arranging schedules, laying out lecture courses, enrolling students and reorganizing the library. And what on earth kept him so late at the School each night? He interviewed students and advised which course of study was more suitable for each. Soon he would be even more busy, for he was about to rehearse the entertainment he had promised the airmen at Tatoi.

‘Is that still going on?’

‘Certainly.’

‘There seems to be no end to it.’

‘Of course there’s no end to it,’ Guy cheerfully replied. ‘That’s what teaching is.’

When she asked if he would help move their stuff to the villa, he could only laugh.

‘Lunch time, or evening, would do,’ Harriet said.

‘Darling, it’s impossible.’

She took the baggage in a taxi. The taxi could not get down the narrow lane to the villa. Kyria Dhiamandopoulou, seeing
her carrying the cases to the door, asked playfully: ‘Where is that nice Mr Pringle?’

‘Working.’

‘Ah, the poor man!’

Kyria Dhiamandopoulou was ready to leave but had to wait for her husband who had driven into Athens on some piece of business. She was a small, handsome woman who, in spite of the food shortage, had managed to stay plump. When they first met, she had been off-hand and seemed harassed; now, on the point of departure, she was in high spirits.

She insisted that Harriet must come up to the roof where the mid-day sun was warm. ‘See how nice,’ she said. ‘In spring you will see it is very nice.’ A marble table was set beneath a pergola over which a plant had been trained. Kyria Dhiamandopoulou touched the branches that flaked like an old cigar. ‘My pretty plant,’ she sighed. ‘How sad that I must leave it! Here, here, sit here! It is not so cold, I think? We will take coffee till my husband come.’

She sped off to fetch a tray with cups like egg-cups and a brass beaker of Turkish coffee. While they sipped at the little cups of sweet, black coffee, she pointed out the distant Piraeus road and the rocky hill that protected the roof from the sea wind. ‘On the other side there is a river. Now not much, but when there is more rain there will be more river. It is the Ilissus. You have heard of it? No? The classical writers speak of it. It is a classical site, you know. Before the invasion, they were building here, but now they have stopped. It is quiet like the country,’ she sighed again. ‘How sad that we must leave!’

‘But why are you leaving?’ Harriet asked.

Kyria Dhiamandopoulou gave her a searching glance before deciding to let her know the truth.

‘I dream true.’

‘Do you?’

‘I will tell you. You know,
par exemple
, that old woman who begs in Stadiou? In black, with fingers bound in such a way?’

Harriet nodded. ‘I’m frightened of her. They say she’s a leper, but I suppose she can’t be?’

‘I don’t know, but I don’t like. Now, I’ll tell you. I had a dream. I dreamt she came running at me in Stadiou. I ran from her … I ran to a shop, a pharmacy; she ran after me. I scream, she scream. What horror! She has turned crazy. Well, next day, I forgot. One forgets, you know! I went to Stadiou and there was the woman and when she saw me, she rush at me … “My dream!” I cry and I run to a shop. It is a pharmacy – the same pharmacy, mind you! The people inside, alarmed that I scream – the same! The very same! “Help me, she’s mad!” I cry and someone slams the door. The proprietor telephones the police. I sit in a chair and shake my body. It was unspeakable!’

‘Yes, indeed! But surely you are not leaving because of that!’

‘No. That was one dream only. I have many. Some I forget, some I remember. I dreamt the Germans came here.’