The Balkan Trilogy (109 page)

‘Do you have to go?’

‘I promised him.’

‘I see.’

They had reached the main entrance of the hotel and he was about to enter without speaking again.

She said: ‘Will you come to lunch on Sunday.’

‘Where?’

‘At our house. The villa beside the Ilissus.’

‘I will if I can.’ He turned to go then paused and added more graciously: ‘I would like to come.’

‘Yes. Do.’ She spoke with enticing sweetness and he smiled and said: ‘Then of course I will.’

17

Guy’s position had not become wholly void. He had visited the Greek officials and persuaded them to return the keys of the School. As a result of his earnest and energetic appeal, they agreed that the library might remain open and the School premises be used as a club. He was now rehearsing the entertainment for the airmen at Tatoi and rehearsals were held in the Lecture Room.

Pinkrose did not object to this because he knew nothing about it. His appointment as Director of Propaganda had been confirmed. When Guy asked him to approve some action taken to restore the function of the School, Pinkrose said he was much too busy to be worried by matters of that sort. Guy could do what he liked.

Pinkrose came to the Information Office several days a week and shut himself into the room that had once been Alan’s office.

‘What does he do?’ Harriet asked.

‘He’s writing a lecture,’ Alan solemnly replied: ‘His subject is “Byron: the Poet-Champion of Greece”.’

‘When will he deliver it?’

‘That remains to be seen.’

The Tatoi entertainment was progressing. The theme song had been written by Guy himself and when he was home, which was not often, he sang it around the house until Harriet begged him to stop.

‘Was I singing?’ he would ask in apology. ‘I didn’t realize,’ and in a moment would sing again:

‘There’s fun and frolic, jokes and sketches, too.

You’ll find them all together in the R.A.F. revue.’

On the morning of Harriet’s luncheon with Charles, Guy had mentioned that the chief item of the revue, a play called
Maria Marten
, would be given its first run through that evening.

‘You can come and see it,’ he said. ‘You might even join the chorus.’

The invitation surprised her. In the past Guy had discouraged her from attending rehearsals. He had put her out of his production of
Troilus and Cressida
– a fact she had not forgiven – and when she protested, told her they could not work together. The trouble was, she did not take him seriously enough.

She said now: ‘Do you really want me to come? Don’t you find me a nonconforming reality in your world of make-believe?’

Untouched by mockery, he said: ‘The revue’s different. It’s not like a serious production. In fact, it’s just a joke. Why not come along this evening?’

‘I might.’ Remembering her past rejection, she would not commit herself, yet later in the day she said to Charles: ‘I am going to Guy’s rehearsal.’

There had, she decided, been a promise; and she set out, resolute, after supper, keeping her promise as a gesture of fidelity. When she reached the School, she could hear the rehearsal from the street. The chorus seemed to come from a hundred voices:

‘There’s fun and frolic, jokes and sketches, too.

You’ll find them all together in the R.A.F. revue.’

Looking in through the glazed doors, she saw a hundred mouths opening and shutting. Or what seemed like a hundred.

She knew perhaps ten people in Athens. Guy knew more, of course. She could not keep up with his gregariousness. Though she took it for granted, she wondered: Where did he find all these people? Peering in cautiously, she realized that among them were almost all the women who had been at Mrs Brett’s party. Confused by the number of Mrs Brett’s guests,
she had not tried to separate and identify them, but for Guy each had been an individual and, individually contacted, they had come here to help him; now they were singing, whether they could sing or not.

She saw Mrs Brett bawling away. And at the piano there was – of all people! – Miss Jay.

The chorus of pretty girls – students mostly, with one or two of the younger Legation typists – stood in line down the middle of the room. Behind stood an equal number of personable young males. They produced only a part of the uproar. Everyone was required to join in while Guy, acting as conductor, was inspiring, exhorting, giving himself and demanding that everyone else give, too.

‘Come on:
give
!’ he shouted, refusing any sort of compromise, requiring from them all the volume, vitality and abandon of which they were capable.

The only ones exempt from duty were the cast of
Maria Marten
– Yakimov, Alan Frewen and Benn Phipps who sat ‘saving their voices’ in a row along the wall.

Those who knew Harriet were too engrossed to notice her. Entering unseen, she sat beside Ben Phipps who, with hands in pockets and feet thrust out before him, watched the proceedings with a sardonic grin.

The song ended. Guy was far from satisfied. He scrubbed his handkerchief over his face and told the boys and girls of the chorus they would have to work. The others must work, too. They might be non-appearers, mere enhancers, but only their best was good enough. Now! He stuffed the handkerchief away, and signalled Miss Jay. The song broke out again.

Guy had thrown off his jacket. Singing at the top of his voice, he stripped off his tie and undid his collar button. He rolled up his sleeves but as he waved his arms in the air, his sleeves unrolled themselves and the cuffs flew around his head.

‘Once more,’ he demanded even before the chorus had panted to an end. ‘What we want is spirit. Give it more spirit. This is for the chaps at Tatoi. Come on now, they don’t get much fun out there. Put your heart and soul into it.’

Watching him urging the performers with the force of his personality, Harriet wondered: ‘How did I come to marry someone so different from myself?’

But she had married him; and perhaps, unawares, it was his difference she had married.

Though she had no wish to know many people, could not endure for long the strain of company, she could take pride in his wide circle; even satisfaction, feeling that she lived, if only at second-hand. But to live at second-hand was to live at a distance. By withdrawing from Guy’s exhausting enterprise, she withdrew from Guy. The activity was the man. If she were not willing to be dragged at his elbow then, she feared, she must watch him pass like a whirlwind and the day might come when she must wave good-bye.

The chorus sang the song again and again until at last, scarcely able to keep on their feet, the young people were dismissed and Guy, unwearied, called for the cast of
Maria Marten
. Looking round, he saw Harriet and waved, but he had no time to speak. Ben, Alan and Yakimov were already on their feet.

The rehearsal over, Guy walked in the midst of a noisy group to Omonia Square. The girls had to return home early and the male students were deputed to see them safely back. But that was not the end of the evening for Guy. He insisted that everyone else must come and have a drink.

Mrs Brett and her friends, intoxicated by all the commotion, let themselves be led to Aleko’s, a café that at any other time they would fear to enter. When they were packed together in the plain little room behind the black-out curtains, Mrs Brett was as boisterous as she had been at her own party. Catching sight of Harriet for the first time, she gripped her wrist and shouted: ‘You’re a lucky girl!’

Harriet smiled: ‘I suppose I am.’

‘My, what a lucky girl you are.’ She looked about her shouting above the noise. ‘Isn’t she a lucky girl!’ confident she spoke for all present.

As no doubt she did. Harriet, becalmed against the wall,
saw Guy at the centre of the group shining and jubilant. She knew then the thing he loved most was the fatuous good-fellowship of crowds. Of course she had suspected it before. On the train to Bucharest, she had watched him surrounded by admiring Rumanian women, his face alight as though with wine, his arms extended to embrace them all. To someone so enamoured of the general, could the particular ever really mean anything?

Looking her way and meeting her speculative gaze, he thrust out his arm and drew her into the mêlée. ‘What did you think of
Maria Marten
?’ he asked.

‘Very funny. The men will love it.’

‘They will, won’t they?’ Had he been engineering some great work that would last for all time, he could not have been more gratified. He would not let her go. Holding her to him, his arm about her shoulder, he coaxed her into the talk as though she were a shy child.

But she was not a child, and she was only shy when forced, as she now was, into a confusion of people whom she scarcely knew. He was eager that she should share his joy in the company; while she, doing her best to smile, was eager only to escape it. Forcibly held in the centre of uproar, she bore the situation as long as she could, then managed to get away. He glanced after her, a little puzzled, a little grieved, wondering what more she could want. But the problem did not hang long on the air. Distracted by some question put to him about the production, he was caught again into a hurly-burly of suggestion and counter-suggestion, of public extrinsicality so pressing and time-absorbing that the problem of living had to be put on one side until tomorrow, or the day after or, indeed, until death should come and fetch him.

18

When Harriet mentioned to Guy that she had invited Charles Warden to luncheon, he said: ‘Good! But I won’t be around long.’

‘I thought you would like to see him again.’

‘I would, of course; but I’ll be rehearsing all afternoon.’

Harriet also invited Alan Frewen. Hearing there were to be two guests, Anastea threw up her hands and asked what were they to eat? Her husband, who was a night-watchman, could sometimes, by joining a queue early in the morning, obtain food for the Pringles as well as for his family. But it was becoming more difficult; he might queue for three hours and at the end get nothing. Seeing the old woman distraught by the problem, Harriet promised to find something herself in Athens.

The villa, a flimsy summer structure, was very cold now. There was no oil for the heaters and on a fine day it was warmer outside than in. Sunday was bright and gusty. When Alan walked out to the villa with his dog, the Pringles took him up to the sheltered roof-terrace to drink ouzo. Harriet, looking towards the Piraeus road on which she expected the staff car to appear, said: ‘Charles Warden is coming.’

‘Is he?’

‘You do like him, don’t you? You must have known him before the war?’

‘I did know him slightly. Rather a spoilt boy, don’t you think?’

‘I wouldn’t say so.’

This reply daunted Alan who, made to feel that he had
shown discourtesy towards a fellow guest, bent down and spent some time adjusting Diocletian’s collar.

A military car passed on the Piraeus road. Harriet watched it, unable to believe it had not gone by in error, but it did not come back. Guy looked at his watch and said his rehearsal was called for half past two. Harriet said: ‘I think we had better eat.’

‘What about young Warden?’

‘We can’t wait all day for him.’

Harriet had found nothing in Athens but potatoes which she told Anastea to bake. When they came to the table, they were mashed and served like an immense white pudding.

Alan laughed at Harriet’s apologies: ‘Potatoes in any form are a luxury to me. All we get at the Academy these days is salad made of marguerite leaves?’

‘
Can
one eat marguerite leaves?’

‘If they aren’t marguerite leaves, I don’t know what they are.’

When they had each taken a share of the potatoes, Harriet put the plate down for Diocletian. As the last vestige of potato was swept up by the dog’s tongue, Anastea came from the kitchen and gave a cry. Usually so meek and accepting of her employers’ peculiarities, she made a threatening movement at the dog, her face taut with anger. Alan paled and caught his breath.

Harriet had forgotten Anastea. She said: ‘What can we give her?’ but there was no answer to that question.

Guy put his hand in his pocket: ‘I’ll give her some money.’

‘What good is money? She wants food.’

Anastea herself said nothing. Having made her gesture, she took the dishes and went.

This incident hastened Guy’s departure; and Alan and Harriet went for a walk. They crossed the Ilissus and strolled through the sparse little pinewood where the trees had been dwarfed and distorted by the wind from the sea. Beneath the trees, the spikes of green were already shaping themselves into the foliage of future flowers. January was nearing its end and
the light on the puddles on the glossy banks of wet clay had a new brilliance. Harriet said she could smell leaves in the wind. Alan said he could smell nothing but the brewery on the Piraeus road.

Harriet was contemplating a changed attitude to life. What she needed was independence of mind. She would turn her back on emotional involvements and seek, instead, the compensating interest of work and society. Charles was as good as forgotten; but when she returned to the villa, she asked Anastea if anyone had called in her absence.

‘
Kaneis, kaneis
,’ Anastea replied.

And that, Harriet decided, was that.

19

Sorry about yesterday. Lunch today?

Harriet answered:
No
.

The military messenger was back within ten minutes. The second message read:
Forgive and say yes!
Again Harriet replied:
No
. A third message came:
Dinner and explanations?
Harriet scribbled across it:
Impossible
.

Miss Gladys Twocurry said: ‘We can’t have this young man coming in and out of here with his noisy boots. He’s upsetting my sister.’

‘It’s an essential part of my work,’ Harriet replied.

‘If it goes on,’ Miss Gladys threatened, ‘I’ll complain to Lord Pinkrose,’ but the messenger did not come back.

Miss Gladys also had a typewriter, a newer and finer machine than that provided for Miss Mabel. It stood on a billiard table and twice a week it was carried over to her desk by the Greek office boy. She used it to cut the stencil for the biweekly news-sheet, which Yakimov delivered on his bicycle. The stencil cutting, her chief employment, was treated as the most important activity in the office. The duplicator stood in a corner and when not in use was covered with a sheet. The Greek boy would uncover it and spread the ink from the tube. Then tutting, sighing, breathing loudly, Miss Gladys fitted on the stencil. This done at last, the office boy turned the handle and kept the copies neatly stacked. When twenty were ready, they were handed to Miss Mabel, who folded them and put them into envelopes. The envelopes then went to Miss Gladys, who addressed them from a list in a bold, schoolgirlish hand. When the addressed envelopes began to
pile up, Yakimov would receive his call from the boy and appear ready-coated, bicycle-clips in place.