The Balkan Trilogy (120 page)

Yakimov wobbled into the pavement, put out a foot and somehow managed to get down. ‘Dear girl,’ he called to Harriet, ‘is everything all right?’

She was reminded of her anxiety of the morning but felt this was no time to discuss it. In any case, she saw that Yakimov had stopped for one reason and one reason only. He meant to meet Tandy.

Introducing the two men, Harriet stressed Yakimov’s title. Tandy’s eyes grew sharp with interest.

‘Sit down,
mon prince
,’ he said, ‘and join us in a snifter.’

Yakimov sat down at once. His own eyes, large and tender, examined, with no hint of envy, the immense, well-fed figure of Tandy who was dressed as, in better days, he would have dressed himself. The waiter was recalled and Yakimov asked for a brandy. It came at once and as he put it to his lips his excitement was evident. It seemed a destined meeting and saying: ‘I must go and speak to Guy,’ Harriet left them to find each other.

Guy was among the crowd at the desk. ‘I want to tell you something,’ she said.

Giving one ear to her and the other to the cross-currents about him, Guy said: ‘Go ahead.’

‘No. Come over here.’ Exasperated by the fact he was worrying over Tandy’s welfare as he would never worry over his own, she pulled him out of the press and said: ‘I’ve something important to tell you.’

As Harriet told her story Guy’s attention was on the bright out-of-doors and the enticing prospect of Tandy and Yakimov who at that moment were joined by Alan Frewen. She held on to him, and speaking quickly, gave the substance of Pinkrose’s report.

Guy, frowning, said: ‘It’s not important, surely. No one’s going to take any notice of Pinkrose.’

‘Why not? He was appointed Director. They didn’t appoint him in order to ignore him.’

‘Perhaps not; but they must know the sort of man he is. I’ve seen reports that Inchcape sent on my work. They were excellent. First-class. If Pinkrose sends in this report – and, after what you said, he may realize he’s doing the wrong thing – it will be compared with the others. They don’t relate. Someone’s talking nonsense and it isn’t Inchcape.’

‘How are they to know it isn’t Inchcape?’

‘He’ll be called in. He’ll be consulted.’

‘He may be dead by then.’

‘I don’t think so. Inch always took good care of himself. He’ll be flourishing; and I know he’ll stand by me.’

‘Will he? I wonder!’

‘You’re making too much out of this.’ Impatient of her fears, he patted her shoulder and was ready to depart. ‘Come and talk to Tandy. I’ve always wanted to meet him.’

‘You go. I’ll come in a minute.’

Without waiting to wonder what there could be to detain her inside the hotel, Guy sped off like a child allowed out to play. When he was through the door, Harriet took herself to the dining-room where she had arranged to meet Charles. She was very late.

Charles, at luncheon, got to his feet and waited for her to defend herself. She cut at once through any likely accusations by saying: ‘I’ve lost my job.’

‘I didn’t know anyone could lose a job these days.’

‘It wasn’t incompetence. I had a row with Pinkrose.’

Charles, forced to laugh, motioned her to join him at the table.

She said: ‘I can’t stay. Guy is expecting me.’

‘Oh!’ His laughter came to a stop.

He sat blank-faced, while she told the story of the report and concluded: ‘You know, this could wreck Guy’s career with the Organization.’

‘I’m sure it couldn’t. There are more jobs than men …’

‘I’m thinking of the future when there’ll be more men than jobs.’

‘The future?’ Charles looked puzzled as though the future
were some unlikely concept he had not studied before, then he glanced aside: ‘Yes, you must consider the future. You complain of Guy but you don’t intend to leave him.’

‘Do I complain of Guy?’

‘If you don’t, why are you wasting your time with me? You can’t pretend to love me?’

‘I don’t pretend anything. But perhaps I do love you. I would like to feel we were friends for the rest of our lives.’

‘Yes, indeed! You want me hanging around. You have a husband, but you must have some sort of
cavaliere servente
as well. There are a lot of women like that.’ Throwing his napkin aside, he got to his feet. ‘I can’t stand any more of this. I’m going up to my room. If you want to see me, you’ll find me there. If you don’t come, I’ll know you never want to see me again.’

‘This is too silly—’

‘If you don’t come, you never
will
see me again.’

‘An ultimatum?’ Harriet said.

‘Yes, an ultimatum.’ He marched off, attracting attention as he passed through the room. He was watched, Harriet saw, not only with admiration, but something near tenderness. She could imagine that for these people he presented an ideal image of the ally who, with nothing to gain, had made this foolhardy venture to fight beside the Greeks. She herself had seen him a symbol touching and poetic of the sacrificial victims of war. Now she knew him better she scarcely knew how she saw him. He passed through the door, angered and injured, and made off to nurse his injury somewhere out of sight.

One thing was certain: she would not go after him. She would make sure of that by joining Guy and the other men outside, but not at once. Lingering in the dining-room, she saw again his swift, exact movement out of the room and felt drawn to follow him. Not knowing what to do, she sat on as though expecting something or someone to make the decision for her. Or perhaps Charles would come back, rather shamefaced, and treat his ultimatum as a joke.

Instead, Alan Frewen came to look for her. He said they
were all going round to Zonar’s. He did not ask what she was doing there, alone in the dining-room, sitting opposite someone’s uneaten meal, and she realized he did not need to be told. He asked nothing, and said nothing. He did not criticize his fellow men; nor did he wish to become involved in their problems.

‘Guy thought you would like to come with us?’

‘Yes. I’ll come with you.’

As they passed through the foyer, she glanced up the stair-case with a vision in mind of Charles hurrying down to her. But there was no one on the stair and no sign of Charles.

Alan said: ‘Surely you haven’t left the office for good? I need someone to edit my notes on the German broadcasts to Greece.’

Harriet was beginning to regret her lost employment, but said: ‘I can’t work in the Billiard Room with the Twocurrys.’

‘I thought you’d have more space there; but if you like, you can join Yaki and me in the News Room.’

‘I’d like that,’ she said.

26

Prince Paul claimed that he and his faction had saved Yugoslavia. Perhaps they had unintentionally saved Greece. No one had time to find out. The Regent was gone in a night and next morning all the talk was about revolution. The Regency was terminated. Peter had displaced Paul. The quisling ministers had been arrested. The English, Americans and Russians were being cheered in the streets of Belgrade, and the whole of Yugoslavia was a ferment of rejoicings and anti-Axis demonstrations.

‘Magnificent,’ said Ben Phipps. ‘But what happens next?’

‘It’s magnificent,’ Guy said, ‘chiefly because they didn’t stop to ask what happens next. They could not accept German domination. They revolted against it without counting the cost. That was certainly magnificent. And what would have happened in any case? Would the Germans have kept the terms of the agreement?’

Called to order, Ben murmured: ‘Not very likely,’ and Harriet noted that these days Guy was more inclined to call Ben Phipps to order and Ben Phipps more ready to agree with him. As a result, although she still disliked Phipps, she was less resentful of his influence over Guy.

‘Still,’ he said. ‘What
will
happen next?’

Tandy grunted once or twice and Guy and Ben looked at him. He spoke seldom. When he did speak, it was slowly, with pauses and grunts that promised some deep-set thought, not easily brought to birth. Now, at last reaching the point of speech, he said: ‘We must wait and see.’

Waiting to see, they waited in the ambience of Tandy who
spent most of his day at Zonar’s, usually at an outdoor table he had adopted as his own. He could always be found by anyone in need of companionship. Although he had only just arrived and might soon be returning whence he had come, he was already an established figure in Athens. Large and splendid, he seemed, in a changing world, permanent and unchanging. People gathered about him as about a village oak.

Tandy came like a gift, a distraction heaven-sent, just when the fine hopes of March were changing to doubts again. Guy had discovered him but Phipps took him up with enthusiasm, and Yakimov clung to him like a lover. In spite of his fame, no one knew much about him. From occasional remarks, they gathered he had begun the war very comfortably in Trieste but, fearing to be trapped there, had moved to Belgrade shortly before the Italians entered against the Allies.

‘Doesn’t do to stay anywhere too long,’ he said.

Ben Phipps said: ‘You certainly left Belgrade in good time.’

Tandy gave him a reproving look. He said nothing then but later conveyed, almost without words, the fact that his flight from Belgrade had not been impetuous; nor, as it might seem, premature.

‘Not a private person,’ he mumbled. ‘Under orders.’

‘Really?’ said Harriet. ‘Whose orders?’

Tandy silenced her with the same reproving look and Guy and Ben Phipps, when they later had her alone, told her one did not ask questions like that. The two men, conferring together, decided that Tandy must be an exile who had been placed in jeopardy by his extreme left-wing activities and would, when he received the word, rejoin the Yugoslav revolutionaries as a sort of classical demagogue.

They were displeased when Harriet said: ‘He seems just another Yakimov to me.’

‘That’s only the get-up,’ Ben Phipps said.

Yakimov was a joke: Tandy was not. He certainly managed, while speaking seldom, to extrude a sense of gravity and intellectual weight beside which Yakimov seemed a shadow. When anyone expressed an opinion or expounded a theory, he gave
the impression that he knew what was about to be said but wouldn’t spoil the fun by saying it first. He could also disconcert the speaker by dropping his eyelids so there was no knowing whether he agreed or disagreed.

When news of the Yugoslav revolution went round, he had seemed to share Guy’s enthusiasm while, at the same time, reflecting Ben Phipps’s qualms. They waited to see what he would do now. Forty-eight hours later he was still in Athens, still sitting at his table outside Zonar’s, and Harriet said: ‘Doesn’t look as though he’s going back, does it?’

Ben Phipps snorted: ‘I don’t know what he’s up to, but I’m beginning to think it’s nothing very much.’

Guy laughed, agreed and said: ‘Never mind. I like the old buffer. He may be another Yakimov, but he pays his round.’

Finding he said little when drunk and nothing much when sober, Guy and Ben ceased to consult Tandy on political matters and, talking across him, did not even look to see whether he dropped his eyelids or not. Even though curiosity about him had gone down in disappointment and boredom, they liked him to be there. He was a centre of companionship, and was, as Guy said, scrupulous in paying his round. He was equally scrupulous in seeing himself repaid. He was the only person with whom Yakimov drank on equal terms. Though he paid from a bulky crocodile wallet with gold clasps and Yakimov, when his turn came, had to search his torn pockets for a coin, Tandy, compassionless, let Yakimov search. He was tolerant of Yakimov, no more. He made no concessions and this fact seemed to heighten Yakimov’s regard for his new friend. Charmed and challenged by the first sight of Tandy, Yakimov, in the News Room, would murmur to himself: ‘Remarkable chap!’ and bring Tandy’s name into conversation as though he had him constantly in mind.

‘We’re fortunate in having him here,’ Yakimov said.

‘Why?’ Harriet asked.

Yakimov shook his head slowly and drew in an appreciative breath, marvelling at Tandy’s quality. ‘He’s travelled, dear
girl. Your own Yak got around in his day but that one –
That One
has trotted the globe.’

‘But would you say that travel, in itself, is an achievement. It only calls for money and energy. Has he travelled to any purpose? Has he, for instance, written anything about his travels? I don’t think so.’

‘Scarcely surprising,’ Yakimov smiled at her ingenuousness. ‘The dear boy’s tied down by the Official Secrets Act.’

‘You mean he was sent abroad? He’s a secret agent?’

‘Indubitably, dear girl.’

‘I can’t believe it. No secret agent would dress like that.’

‘I think I ought to know, dear girl.’

‘How did you know?’

Yakimov shook his head again, wordless with admiration of the man. He had told Ben Phipps: ‘At first sighting, I recognized Roger as a Master Spy.’

‘How did you do that?’ Phipps asked.

‘There are signs. That wallet stuffed with the Ready – the money comes from
somewhere
. But there’s more to it than that. He recognized your Yak. Nothing said, of course; but we made contact.’

‘You tipped each other the wink, eh? How’d you do it? Tell me. A handshake, like the Freemasons?’

‘Not at liberty to say, dear boy.’

Guy and Phipps were now inclined to laugh at Tandy, but Yakimov refused to join in.

‘Remarkable man,’ he insisted. ‘Most remarkable man! In disguise of course.’

‘Odd sort of disguise,’ Phipps said.

‘All disguises are odd,’ Yakimov said in a tone of reprimand, gentle but dignified.

Harriet, who had not expected much of Tandy, did not share Guy’s disappointment. She had liked him well enough at first and still liked him after the brief myth died. He made no demands, but he was there: his table was a meeting place, a lodgement during stress and a centre for the exchange of news.

Charles intended, apparently, to keep his word. She had rejected his ultimatum and would not see him again; and so was drawn like an orphan to Tandy’s large, comfortable, undemanding presence.

‘May I adopt you as a father figure?’ she said, approaching his table. For answer, he rose and bowed.