The Balkan Trilogy (44 page)

‘He’s an old man,’ said Guy, deflecting criticism as much from himself as from his superior. Since Inchcape, who was the professor, had become Director of Propaganda, Guy had run the English Department with the help only of three elderly ex-governesses and Dubedat, an elementary school-teacher, marooned in the Balkans by war. With uncomplaining enthusiasm, Guy did much more than was expected of him; but he was not imposed upon. He did what he wanted to do and did it, Harriet believed, to keep reality at bay.

During the days of the fall of France, he had thrown himself into a production of
Troilus and Cressida
. Now, when their Rumanian friends were beginning to avoid them, he was giving himself up to this summer school. He would not only be too busy to notice their isolation, but too busy to care about it. She wanted to accuse him of running away – but how accuse someone who was, to all appearances, steadfast on the site of danger, a candidate for martyrdom? It was she, it seemed, who wanted to run away.

She asked: ‘When does the school start?’

‘Next week.’ He laughed at her tone of resignation, and, putting an arm round her, said: ‘Don’t look so glum. We’ll get away before the summer ends. We’ll go to Predeal.’

She smiled and said: ‘All right,’ but as soon as she was alone she went to the telephone, looking for comfort, and rang up the only Englishwoman she knew here who was of her generation. This was Bella Niculescu, who had very little to do and was usually only too ready to talk. That morning, however, she cut Harriet off abruptly, saying she was dressing to go out to luncheon. She suggested that Harriet come to tea that afternoon.

Harriet waited until nearly five o’clock before venturing
into the outdoor heat. At that time a little shade was stretching from the buildings, but in the Boulevard Breteanu, where Bella lived, the buildings had been demolished to make way for blocks of flats, only two or three of which had been built when war brought work to a stop. The pavements were shade-less between the white baked earth of vacant lots.

In summer this area was a dormitory for beggars and unemployed peasants, and the dust-filled air carried a curious odour, sweetish, unclean yet volatile, distilled by the sun from earth saturated with urine and ordure.

Bella’s block rose sheer from the ground like a prow from water. Against its side-wall a peasant had pitched a hut for the sale of vegetables and cigarettes. Several beggars sleeping in the shade of the hut made an attempt to rouse themselves at Harriet’s step and whined in a half-hearted way. One of them was well known to her. She had seen him first on her first day in Bucharest: a demanding, bad-tempered fellow who, recognising a foreigner, had thrust his ulcerated leg at her like a threat and refused to be satisfied with what she gave him. At that time she had been horrified by the beggars, especially this beggar. Having just journeyed three days to the eastern edge of Europe, she had seen him as a portent of life in the strange, half-Oriental capital to which marriage had brought her.

Guy had said she must become used to the beggars; and, in a way, she had done so. She had even become reconciled to this man, and he to her. Now she handed him the same small coins a Rumanian would have given and he accepted them, sullenly, but without protest.

The smells of the boulevard did not enter the block of flats, which was air-conditioned. In its temperate, scentless atmosphere, Harriet’s head cleared, and, stimulated and cheerful, she thought of Bella to whom she could look for companionship during the empty summer ahead. She contemplated their meeting with pleasure, but as she entered the drawing-room she realised something was wrong. She felt so little welcome that she came to a stop inside the door.

‘Well, take a pew,’ Bella said crossly, as though Harriet were at fault in awaiting the invitation.

Sitting on the edge of the large blue sofa, Harriet said: ‘It’s beautifully cool in here. It seems hotter than ever outside.’

‘What do you expect? It’s July.’ Bella pulled a bell-cord, then stared impatiently at the door as though she, who chattered so easily, were now at a loss how to entertain her guest.

Two servants entered, one with the tea, the other with cakes. Bella watched, frowning in a displeased fashion, as the trays were put down. Harriet, discomfited, also found herself at a loss for conversation and looked at an early edition of the evening paper which lay beside her on the sofa. When the girls went, she made a comment on the headline: ‘I see Drucker is to be tried at last.’

Bella inclined her head, saying: ‘Personally, I’d let him rot. He made out he was pro-British, but his rate of exchange was all in favour of Germany. Lots of people say his bank was ruining the country.’ She spoke tartly, but in a refined tone reminding Harriet of their first tea-party when Bella, fearing that her guest might have pretensions to family or wealth, had overwhelmed her with gentility. Eventually set at ease, Bella had revealed a hearty appetite for gossip and a ribaldry which Harriet, in need of a friend, had come to enjoy. Now here was Bella, a great classical statue of a woman in an unnatural pose, again barricaded behind her best electro-plated tea-service. For some reason they were back where they had started from.

Harriet said: ‘I met Drucker once. His son was one of Guy’s students. He was a warm-hearted man; very good-looking.’

‘Humph!’ said Bella. ‘Seven months in prison won’t have improved his looks.’ Unable to repress superior knowledge, she took a more comfortable pose and nodded knowingly. ‘He was a womaniser, like most good-looking men. And, in a way, that’s what did for him. If Madame hadn’t thought he was fair game, she’d never have tried to get him to part with his oil holdings. When he refused her, she took it as a personal affront. She was furious. Any woman would be. So she went
to Carol, who saw a chance to get his hands on some cash and trumped up this charge of dealing in foreign currency. Drucker was arrested and his family skedaddled.’

Pleased by her own summary of the circumstances leading to Drucker’s fall, Bella could not help smiling. Harriet, feeling the atmosphere between them relaxing, asked: ‘What do you think they will do to him?’

‘Oh, he’ll be found guilty – that goes without saying. He’ll have to forfeit his oil holdings, of course; but there’s this fortune he’s got salted away in Switzerland. Carol can’t take that, so if Drucker makes it over he might get off lightly. Rumanians are quite humane, you know.’

Harriet said: ‘But Drucker can’t make it over. The money’s in his son’s name.’

‘Who told you that?’ Bella spoke sharply and Harriet, unable to disclose the source of it, wished she had kept her knowledge to herself.

‘I heard it some time ago. Guy was fond of Sasha. He’s been trying to find out what became of him.’

‘Surely the boy bolted with the rest of the family?’

‘No. He was taken away when they arrested his father, but apparently he’s not in prison. No one knows where he is. He’s just disappeared.’

‘Indeed!’ Used to being the authority on things Rumanian, Bella was looking bored by Harriet’s talk of the Druckers, so Harriet changed to a subject which was always of interest. ‘How is Nikko?’ she asked.

Conscripted like the majority of Rumanian males, Bella’s husband was usually on leave. It was Bella’s money that bought his freedom.

‘He’s been recalled,’ she said bleakly. ‘They’re all in a funk, of course, over Bessarabia.’

In the past Harriet would have heard this news on arrival and it would have kept Bella in complaints for an hour or more.

‘Where is his regiment at the moment?’ Harriet encouraged her.

‘The Hungarian front. That damned Carol Line, not that there’s anything anyone could call a line. A fat lot of good it would be if the Huns did march in.’

‘I expect you’ll be able to get him back?’

‘Oh, yes. I’ll have to cough up again.’

Bella had nothing more to say and Harriet, attempting to keep some sort of conversation going, spoke of the changing attitude of the Rumanians towards the English, saying: ‘They treat us like an enemy – a defeated enemy: guilty but pitiable.’

‘I can’t say I’ve noticed it,’ said Bella, her tone aloof: ‘But, of course, it’s different for me.’

There was a long silence. Harriet, exhausted by her attempts to break down Bella’s restraint, put down her teacup, saying she had shopping to do. She imagined Bella would be relieved by her departure, but, instead, Bella gave her a troubled look as though there was still something to be resolved between them.

They went together into the hall where Harriet, making a last approach, suggested they might, as they often did, meet for coffee at Mavrodaphne’s. ‘What about tomorrow morning?’ she said.

Bella put her large, white hands to her pearls and stared down at the chequered marble floor. ‘I don’t know,’ she said vaguely as she placed her white shoe exactly in the centre of a black square. ‘It’s difficult.’

Knowing that Bella had almost nothing to do, Harriet asked impatiently: ‘How, difficult? Whatever is the matter, Bella?’

‘Well …’ Bella paused, watching the toe of her shoe, which she turned from side to side. ‘Me being an Englishwoman married to a Rumanian, I have to go carefully. I mean, I have to think of Nikko.’

‘But, of course.’

‘Well, I think we’d better not be seen together at Mavrodaphne’s. And about ringing each other up: I think we should stop while things are as they are. My phone’s probably tapped.’

‘Surely not. The telephone company is British.’

‘But it employs Rumanians. You don’t know this country like I do. Any excuse and they’d arrest Nikko just to get a bribe to release him. It’s always being done.’

‘I don’t honestly see …’ Harriet began, then paused as Bella gave her a miserable glance. She said: ‘But you’ll come and see me sometimes?’

‘Yes, I will.’ Bella nodded. ‘I promise. But I’ll have to be careful. I must say, I wish I’d never appeared in
Troilus
. It was a sort of declaration.’

‘Of what? The fact you are English? Everyone knows that.’

‘I’m not so sure.’ Bella drew back her foot. ‘My Rumanian’s practically perfect. Everyone says so.’ She jerked her face up, pink with the effort of saying what she had said, and her look was defiant.

Six, even three, months ago, Harriet would have despised Bella’s fears; now she felt compassion for them. The time might soon come when the English would have to go and Bella would be left here without a compatriot. She had to protect herself against that time. Harriet touched her arm: ‘I understand how you feel. Don’t worry. You can trust me.’

Bella’s face softened. With a nervous titter, she took a hand from her pearls and put it over Harriet’s hand. ‘But I
will
drop in,’ she said; ‘I don’t expect anyone will notice me. And, after all, they can’t deprive me of my friends.’

3

That evening, on their way to the Ci
ş
migiu Park, the Pringles met Clarence Lawson.

Clarence was not one of the organisation men. He had been seconded to the English Department by the British Council and at the outbreak of war had gone with Inchcape into the Propaganda Bureau. Bored by the work, or lack of work, there, he had taken on the administration of Polish relief and organised the escape of interned Polish soldiers.

Guy said to him: ‘We’re going to have a drink in the park. Why not come with us?’

Clarence, as tall as Guy but much leaner, drooped sadly as he considered this proposal and, rubbing a doubtful hand over his lean face, said: ‘I don’t know that I can.’

As he edged away a little, apparently feeling the pull of urgent business elsewhere, Harriet said: ‘Come on, Clarence. A walk will do you good.’

Clarence gave her an oblique, suspicious glance and mumbled something about work. Harriet laughed. Aware of his eagerness to be with her, she took his arm and led him up the Calea Victoriei. As he went, he grumbled: ‘Oh, all right, but I can’t stay long.’

They walked through crowds that, having accepted the loss of Bessarabia, were as lively as they had ever been. Harriet was used to the rapid recovery of these people who had outworn more than a dozen conquerors and survived eight hundred years of oppression, but now she thought they looked almost complacent. She said: ‘They seem to be congratulating themselves on something.’

‘They probably are,’ said Clarence. ‘The new Cabinet has repudiated the Anglo-French guarantee. The new Foreign Minister was a leader in the Iron Guard. So now they know exactly where they are. They’re really committed to Hitler and he must protect them. They think the worst is over, and –’ he pointed to the placard of the
Bukarester Tageblatt
which read: FRIEDEN IM HERBST – ‘they think the war is over, too.’

At the park gate, he paused, murmuring: ‘Well, now, I really think I …’ but as the Pringles went on, ignoring his vagaries, he followed them.

Passing from the fashionable street into the unfashionable park, they moved from hubbub into tranquillity. Here, as the noise of the street faded, there was nothing to be heard but the hiss of sprinklers. The air was sweet with the scent of wet earth. Only a few peasants stood about, admiring the spectacle of the
tapis vert
. The only flowers that thrived in the heat were the canna lilies, now reflecting in their reds and yellows and flame colours the flamboyance of the sunset sky.

Down by the lakeside, the vendors of sesame cake and Turkish delight stood, as they had stood all day, silent and humble beneath the chestnut trees. Beyond the trees, a little gangway led to a café which was chiefly used by shop assistants and minor clerks. It was here that Guy had arranged to meet his friend David Boyd.

As they crossed the flexing boards of the artificial island, Harriet could see David sitting by the café rail in the company of a Jewish economist called Klein.

Guy and David had met first in 1938 when they were both newcomers to Bucharest. David, a student of Balkan history and languages, had been visiting Rumania. He reappeared the following winter, having been appointed to the British Legation as an authority on Rumanian affairs. The two men, of an age and physically similar, resembled each other in outlook, both believing that a Marxist economy was the only remedy for the feudal mismanagement of Eastern Europe.