The Balkan Trilogy (59 page)

Having spoken, he glanced at Inchcape, restoring him to the centre of the attention. Inchcape did not move. Staring down at his white buckskin shoes, his hands clasped before him, he conveyed a modest intent to influence no one. After a long pause, he glanced up and from side to side, inviting independent opinion. Mrs Ramsden’s vast hat, trimmed with pheasant feathers, swung about as she looked for the next speaker, and her taffeta creaked. When no one else spoke, Miss Turner, the eldest of the three, said in her plaintive little voice: ‘We do know that things are bad here, but surely now that our aeroplanes have raided Berlin … I mean, surely that makes a difference?’

Dobson, leaning courteously towards her, explained as to a child: ‘We are all delighted about the raid. It’s enormously good for our prestige, of course, but the situation here has deteriorated much too far to be affected by it. The truth is – we have to face it! – Rumania is, to all intents and purposes, in enemy hands.’

Miss Turner looked sorrowfully at Inchcape, hoping for more favourable comment, but Inchcape had nothing to say. Guy again rose to his feet: ‘We’ve all known for some time that our situation here is precarious. In spite of that, we’ve chosen to stay. Probably we are a trouble to the Legation, but the point is …’

‘My dear fellow,’ Dobson expostulated, ‘we’re concerned for your safety.’

‘I am just twenty-four,’ Guy said. ‘Clarence, Dubedat and Lush are all of military age. Our contemporaries are in uniform. I do not think we’re in any more danger here than we would be in the Western Desert.’

Having decided what he would say, Guy said it with firm
directness, but Harriet, watching him, realised he was under strain. He pressed the lower edge of his right palm against his brow and held it there as though for support. Coming from a provincial University and a background of poverty, he did not find it easy to withstand the majesty of the British Minister and his Legation.

He paused, then said quickly, almost aggressively: ‘I think we should remain in Bucharest while there is a job to be done.’

‘Hear, hear!’ said Mrs Ramsden.

‘But
is
there a job to be done?’ Clarence’s tone had changed now to languid indecision. ‘What can we do – or the Legation, either, for that matter – remnants of a discredited force in what is virtually an enemy-occupied country?’

Guy said: ‘It’s true, the British have failed here; but if we can stay to the end, we may give someone something to believe in during the time ahead. There are many people here in much greater danger than we are. For them we represent all that is left of Western culture and democratic ideals. We cannot desert them.’

‘Be reasonable, Pringle!’ Dobson spoke amiably enough: ‘What have you got here now? A handful of Jewish students.’

Guy answered: ‘While the Jewish students are loyal to us, we must remain loyal to them.’

Dubedat, his face expressionless, was picking at an eyetooth with one of his long dirty fingernails. Toby, pipe-sucking just behind him, leant forward and whispered something. Dubedat frowned him into silence.

Inchcape, bland now and smiling, sauntered forward, saying: ‘We must also remember the Cantecuzeno Lecture. Professor Lord Pinkrose is being flown out.’

‘Who the hell is Professor Lord Pinkrose?’ Clarence asked. Lying there, supine, vacillating between truculence and sentiment, he was, Harriet realised, more drunk than sober.

Still smiling, Inchcape looked about him. ‘Does anyone need me to answer that?’ he asked.

‘The students are the first consideration,’ said Guy, dogged now in combating Legation indifference to his cause.

Harriet felt a stab of pride in him, yet felt, at the same time, some resentment that his first consideration was not their own safety. She knew, were it not for Sasha she would be concerned for nothing but getting Guy away before it was too late. Trapped here by her sense of responsibility for him, she was near to resenting Sasha too. And, she thought, it was Guy’s easy, almost feckless willingness to adopt the world that had brought the boy into their home.

She did not really imagine that the Legation could persuade them to go ‘in good order’. She had faith in Inchcape’s determination to remain while there was any excuse for remaining, but she saw now that the problem of Sasha must be settled somehow. They must, when the time came, be free to go without a qualm.

Inchcape had taken the centre of the room again and was saying: ‘Pinkrose is out of the top drawer. That sort of thing goes down well with the Rumanians.’

Apparently it also went down well with Dobson. He was already retreating. He had not been impressed by Guy’s appeal for loyalty to the students, but here he was nodding in reverent approval as Inchcape enlarged on the social importance of the lecture and the lecturer. She was surprised that Dobson did not comment on the fact that the London office knew no better than to fly out this professor. Inchcape, of course, had kept them in ignorance of the true situation here – not wantonly, but from sheer unwillingness to face it. She smiled a little bleakly as it occurred to her that, thanks to Inchcape’s vanity, Lord Pinkrose might end like the rest of them, in a German concentration camp.

‘The lecture’s a consideration, I agree,’ Dobson said, ‘though I’m sure H.E. would advise you to warn Lord Pinkrose what to expect here. If he knew the risks, he might think twice about coming …’

‘I doubt that, I doubt that,’ Inchcape broke in affably.

‘Well,’ Dobson concluded, ‘I suppose if your men are set on staying we’ll have to let them stay, anyway for a while. But’ – he turned to Mrs Ramsden, Miss Turner and Miss Truslove –
‘the ladies are another matter. H.E. says he cannot accept liability for unmarried English ladies. That is, ladies without menfolk to look after them.’

A moan passed among the three women. The feathers on Mrs Ramsden’s hat quivered as though set on wires. They looked at Dobson, who was beaming so pleasantly upon them, then turned to Inchcape for succour, but Inchcape, in high spirits at his victory, was willing to concede the women teachers. ‘On this point,’ he said, ‘I agree with His Excellency. I am sure you ladies would not wish to feel you were in the way here. Apart from that, your work is coming to an end. How many students enrolled for the summer school? Some two hundred. Now we’ve got – how many?’ He cocked an inquiring eye at Guy, who answered reluctantly:

‘About sixty. But the school is in five grades.’

‘It can be reorganised. The fact is,’ Inchcape looked at the women teachers, ‘your jobs will soon be folding up. You’d be better off elsewhere.’

‘We don’t want to go,’ said Mrs Ramsden.

‘It’s up to you, of course,’ Dobson said agreeably, ‘but when you next receive an order to quit I shall not be able to claim that your presence here is essential. It would be better for you to go in your own good time.’

‘But look here!’ Mrs Ramsden spoke with vigour. ‘We had all this when the war began. Mr Woolley gave his general order for the ladies to leave Rumania. He sent his wife home. Dozens of others went at the same time and most of them never came back. We three went to Istanbul. We had to stay in a
pension
– a hole of a place, filthy dirty
and
expensive. We were miserable. We just sat about with nowhere to go and nothing to do. We spent all our savings – and for nothing, as it turned out. In the end we came back again. This is where we belong. Our homes are here. We’re only old girls. The Germans wouldn’t touch us.’

‘And I have my little income here,’ said Miss Turner, whose complexion had the bluish pallor of skimmed milk. ‘The Prince lets me have it, you know. I looked after his children for
twenty years. I can’t take this money out of the country. They won’t let me. If I leave here, I’ll be penniless.’

‘We’d rather stay and risk it,’ said Mrs Ramsden.

‘Dear lady,’ Dobson patiently explained, ‘if the Germans come in, they won’t let you stay in your homes. You’ll be sent to prison camps, somewhere like Dachau, a terrible place. You might be there for years. You’d never survive it.’

Miss Truslove was dabbing at her eyes with a cotton glove. She spoke with an effort: ‘If I have to go away again, it’ll kill me … kill me.’ Her speech ebbed and became a sob.

Inchcape patted her shoulder, but he was not to be moved. ‘In war-time,’ he said cheerfully, ‘we must all do things we don’t like.’

Miss Turner plucked at his sleeve: ‘But surely you said … this raid on Berlin …’

‘Alas, that doesn’t mean the end of the war,’ and he made a little gesture dismissing the whole subject.

Miss Truslove, near weeping, began struggling with her gloves. She moaned: ‘I can’t get them on. I can’t get them on.’

Watching the old ladies, seeing them pitiable, Harriet knew nevertheless that Dobson was right. Mrs Ramsden might eke out a few years in a prison camp, but Miss Turner and Miss Truslove, frail and nervous creatures, would be doomed. They were not looking so far ahead. Catching her eye, Mrs Ramsden said: ‘I’m sure Mr Pringle doesn’t want us to go. I’d like to speak to him but’ – she looked wistfully at Guy, who was talking to Dobson – ‘I suppose I shouldn’t worry him now.’

Harriet said: ‘Professor Inchcape is still in charge of the department. I’m afraid he has the last word.’

As they moved off, they glanced back at Guy, hoping he would see them and somehow save them. But what could he do? He kept his back to them, probably in painful consciousness of their plight, and, with no excuse for lingering, they went.

Behind Harriet, Toby was talking about Cluj – the dangers he had foreseen there and his own wisdom in getting away before the present crisis developed. He claimed that the professor had attempted to ‘bully-rag’ him with all sorts of threats
into keeping his contract, but Toby knew that as a foreigner he could plead
force majeure
. It was typical of Toby’s stories. He led one to believe he had always been involved in such a morass of University politics, only a very wily fellow could have survived. It occurred to her, as she glanced round at his soft, fleshy face, his soft chin slipping back from under his moustache, hearing him say in self-congratulation: ‘A chap’s got to survive,’ that he might well survive where the rest of them would not.

Suddenly Dubedat stepped briskly over to Dobson and broke into his talk with Guy. ‘About this Slav plot,’ he said as though he had no time to waste: ‘is there any basis for believing we’ll be cut off from Constanza?’

Dobson, abashed for only a moment, answered lightly: ‘So far as we know, none at all,’ then turning from this intrusion, continued his conversation with Guy: ‘Hitler cares nothing for Balkan politics. He is interested only in Balkan economics. He has ordered the Rumanians to settle these frontier problems simply to keep them busy until his troops are free to march in. That could be any day now.’

Dubedat glanced at Toby and made a movement with his head. He left the room. Toby followed him without a word.

The porter came to ask if he could lock up. Inchcape led Dobson, Clarence and the Pringles from the building. On the terrace, they paused in the greenish glow of evening. As the swaddling bands of heat loosened and the air moved and cooled, people were crowding out of doors. This was the pleasantest hour of daylight. Dobson offered a lift to whomsoever should want it, but the others preferred to walk. ‘I must be off then,’ he said, and with his front line curving out before him he ran trippingly down the steps.

Waiting till he was out of earshot, Inchcape laughed. ‘The day is ours,’ he said.

Guy was not responsive. His face was creased with concern for the victims of their victory. He said: ‘Perhaps we could give Mrs Ramsden and the others introductions to our representative in Ankara? They’re good teachers. He could use them.’

‘Why not? Why not?’ said Inchcape, adding at once: ‘Now
how are we to entertain Pinkrose? I’m afraid he’s a bit of a stick.’

Harriet leant on the balustrade, gazing down into the flower-baskets. As she had expected, Clarence made his way over to her, though slowly and, she felt, unwillingly. When he reached her, she said: ‘Will we ever get away?’

Clarence was not in a sympathetic mood. ‘You’re free to go any time,’ he said. ‘You haven’t even a job to keep you here.’

‘I have a husband. Even if I were willing to go without him, he couldn’t afford to keep two homes going.’

‘You could get work of some sort.’

‘That’s not so easy in a foreign country. Anyway, I’m staying while Guy stays.’

The gipsies, excited by the growing crowds, were darting about in their chiffon flounces, accosting people with shrieks of ‘Domnuli … domnuli … domnuli.’

Harriet noticed Sophie standing among the flowers in a yellow dress cut to enhance her large bosom and small waist. Whom was she waiting for? She looked up and, noting Clarence above her, began moving from basket to basket with the peculiar precision of someone conscious of the limelight. She smiled admiration all about her, then paused at a basket packed with rosebuds. She picked one out, sniffed at it ecstatically, then held it at arm’s length. Harriet half-expected her to stand on the point of one foot and pirouette. Instead, she approached the vendor.

The summer before, Harriet had watched Sophie bargaining for violets. Then she had bargained sharply; now she was all artless sweetness. When the gipsy named a price, she made a little movement of hurt protest but, helpless in a world where even beauty had a price, she paid without argument.

Harriet looked at Clarence. Clarence was watching Sophie with a peculiar smile. ‘Is she waiting for you?’ Harriet asked.

‘I suppose so.’ Clarence smirked, knowing he had surprised her: ‘Sophie seems to have become attached to me for some reason. She said the other day that when I’m drunk I have a dangerous look.’

‘Oh, really!’ Harriet laughed with more irritation than amusement: ‘I’ve seen you drunk often enough, but I’ve never seen you dangerous.’

Clarence grunted, saying after a pause: ‘Sophie says you have no heart. I’m sure she isn’t right.’

‘Do you want a woman with a heart?’

‘No. I want someone as tough as old boots. In fact I want you. I knew you were my sort of woman the first time I set eyes on you. You could save me.’