The Balkan Trilogy (95 page)

There was not much to be said about the war and when they had said it all, they sat for a long time in the sunlight while Harriet considered how she might put to him the questions that Yakimov could not answer. She at last overcame her own reticence and asked:

‘Have you known Cookson long?’

‘I’ve been seeing him on and off, over the years.’

‘You’ve lived here a long time, then? Before the war, were you one of these people who live abroad and do nothing?’

Alan laughed at her disapproving tone and said: ‘Indeed I was not. I had to earn my living. I came here as a photographer. I had a studio on Lycabettos and I went to stay in places like Mycenae, Nauplia, Delphi and Olympus. When I settled in a place, I’d try to absorb it and then record it. I wrote a
few introductory pieces to albums of photographs, nothing much, the pictures were the thing. I’d like to record the whole of Greece.’

‘And when you have, what will you do?’

‘Begin at the beginning again.’

‘And Diocletian goes with you?’

‘Of course. Diocletian is a Grecophil like me. I brought him from England when I was last there, five years ago – partly for his own sake and partly so I need not go back.’ When he saw her look of inquiry, he smiled. ‘If I took him back he would have to go into quarantine. We would be separated for six months, which is unthinkable. He is my safeguard. When my relatives write reproachful letters, I reply: “I would love to come and see you, but there is the problem of Diocletian.”’

‘But supposing you have to leave? I mean, if we all have to leave? What will you do?’

‘Let us consider that when the time comes.’

She took the chance to return to Cookson. ‘He seems to be very influential,’ she said.

‘He is, I suppose. He’s lived here a long time and knows a great many influential people. He’s liked. He’s rather a charming old thing; he has this house at Phaleron – by the sea, very pleasant in summer. He’s hospitable. His parties are famous and no one wants to be left out.’

‘Is he married?’

‘He was once, I think.’

‘And now?’

Alan laughed. ‘Now? I really can’t say. He invited me once to “a ra-ther small and ra-ther curious party”. I’m afraid I left early; I could see it was going to get curiouser and curiouser.’

‘He seems to have been extremely kind to Gracey.’

‘Yes, they’re great friends. Gracey played up to him. They all play up to him. That’s all that’s necessary.’

‘I wish Guy could do that,’ Harriet said. ‘But he never plays up to the right people.’

‘I imagine that’s the nice thing about him?’

‘Perhaps, but I don’t suppose it will get us anywhere.’

Alan laughed and when he said nothing, she went on to ask about Gracey. Was he really an invalid?

‘Who can say? He certainly slipped on Pendeli and hurt his back. A good many people have done that but I’ve never known anyone before who had to spend months lying in a chair. Still, he seems determined to get to the Lebanon clinic for a cure.’

‘My belief is, he’s tired of the whole game.’

‘Really?’ Alan looked round, his face alive with amused interest: ‘You mean the injury? You think it’s a game, do you?’

‘Yes. Mrs Brett says he’s bone lazy. I’m sure he never wanted to run the School, he wanted to be an elegant figurehead; but the lecturers went off leaving the place on his hands. He must have been thankful when Toby and Dubedat turned up; and the accident was a godsend. It excused his idleness, but now the pretence has been going on too long. He’s stuck with it till he can get away.’

‘You may be right.’ Alan edged himself off the seat and managed to stand up. Rejecting Gracey as an enigma of little importance, he said: ‘It looks as though we’re in for another shower.’

The sun had gone in. The grown-ups were calling the children from the lake and a few drops of rain made small moon-craters around the fluttering water-birds.

Walking back under the trees, Alan stared ahead and did not speak. Unless stimulated by questions, he seemed to feel no need for conversation and Harriet wondered why a man so withdrawn and silent should seek out company at all. As there was little else to be said, she might as well continue to ask her questions. What about Archie Callard? He was, of course, a friend of the Major, but was he anything more than that?

‘He’s a clever young man,’ Alan said. ‘No fool I assure you, but he’s handicapped by having a rich father. He is not forced to work but is always complaining that he doesn’t get enough
to spend. He occasionally starts out on some project that he hopes will bring in money. He went to Lemnos to look for a labyrinth that probably never existed. Recently he’s been staying on Patmos with some idea of writing a life of St John. Of course he gets bored, and back he comes and that, for the moment, is that.’

‘And Ben Phipps? I shouldn’t have thought he had a rich father.’

‘Indeed he hasn’t. He’s been working here as a journalist and he’s published a few things. I haven’t read any, but I believe he has some reputation.’

‘What’s he doing in that set?’

‘Hanging on hopefully.’

‘But what is he likely to get?’

‘Preferment. He’s sick of scraping a living with his bits of journalism. He’d like an easy, steady, well-paid job; a job that would place him right in the front of the social picture.’

‘You mean: Gracey’s job?’

‘That would do as well as another.’

‘I see. If he got it, do you think he’d employ Guy?’

‘He very well might. I know he doesn’t think much of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.’

‘Lush and Dubedat? The betrayers who served the king. What rewards, I wonder, for those who have served Gracey?’

‘We’ll know soon enough.’

They were now back at Harriet’s hotel and as she paused, Alan said: ‘I’m meeting Yakimov at Zonar’s. Won’t you join us?’

She said: ‘I’d love to. I’ll see if I can get Guy out,’ and she ran upstairs to persuade him.

She half-expected to find him gone, for restless, gregarious, eager to entertain and influence, he was not one to spend two hours alone in their little room, yet he was still there lying on the bed, propped up with pillows, his glasses pushed to his brow, a pencil stuck in his hair and books all around him.

She scolded him: ‘You’ve been here long enough. You need a drink. Come on.’

‘I’d rather not.’

‘What’s the matter with you, for heaven’s sake? Are you ill?’

‘No,’ he pulled down the glasses in order to see her. ‘We haven’t any money.’

‘Let Yakimov buy you a drink. You bought him plenty when he was hard up.’

‘I can’t go to cafés in the hope someone else will pay for me.’

‘Do come. I’ll pay for you.’

‘No, don’t worry about me.’

‘Then come down to the dining-room and have something to eat.’

He followed her and took his meal without saying much. She had hoped that, alone here, dependent upon each other, they would be closer than they had ever been. Now it seemed to her she had been nearer to him when he was not here; nearest, probably, when she had imagined him in the Lufthansa above the Aegean. He had only to arrive to take a step away from her.

He was not to be shut up in intimacy. The world was his chief relationship and she wondered whether he really understood any other. His quarrel now was not with her, but with defaulting humanity and he was in retreat from it. And here they were with leisure and freedom – things they had not had before in the year of marriage – and Guy was closeted with his dilemma while she went for walks with a stranger.

6

Next morning, called to the telephone while at breakfast, Guy returned transformed. He took the dining-room steps at a run, his face alight, his whole person animated, and called to Harriet: ‘Hurry up. We’re going to the Legation.’

‘Really? Why?’

‘The Cairo office has approved my presence here. Apparently they’ve got all the chaps they can deal with in Egypt. They don’t want any more. The Legation say I can have some money.’

Harriet walked up with him and waited in the Chancellory while Guy saw the accountant and was permitted to draw on Legation funds. She could hear his voice raised happily in the office and when he came out he was pushing his drachma notes into an old two-penny cash-book which he kept in his breast pocket. He expressed by his action his indifference to money but he was not, Harriet now knew, indifferent to the lack of it.

‘And what do you think?’ he said: ‘Our old friend Dobbie Dobson is being sent here from Bucharest. We’ll have a friend at Court.’

‘Will we?’ Harriet doubtfully asked.

‘Of course.’ Guy was confident of it and walking downhill to the main road, he said: ‘I like Dobson. I do like Dobson. He’s so unaffected and amiable.’

Guy, too, was unaffected and amiable which, considering the poverty in which he had grown up, was a more surprising thing. He had seemed to Harriet to have a unique attitude to life, an attitude that was a product of confidence and
simplicity, but she had seen that the simplicity was not as unified as it seemed, the confidence could be shaken. Moneyless, he had remained under cover and now, emerging, he emerged for her in a slightly different guise.

She said: ‘I’m never quite sure with you where showmanship ends and reality begins.’

‘Don’t bother about that,’ he said. ‘Where do you want to eat tonight?’

‘Anywhere but the hotel crypt.’

‘Let’s ask Frewen to supper. He’ll say where we should go.’

At midday they found Alan at Zonar’s, in his usual place. When he received their invitation, he grew red and his face strained into its painful smile with a gratitude that was almost emotional. They could see how deeply he wished for friends. And how odd, Harriet thought, that he had so few and, after all his years in Greece, should be dependent upon newcomers like Yakimov and the Pringles. Was it that he approached people, instigated friendship, but could go no further? She could imagine him with many acquaintances but known by none of them.

He suggested that they go to a taverna where they might see some Greek dancing. He knew one beyond the Roman agora and that evening called for them in a taxi. He handed Harriet a bunch of little mauve-pink flowers.

She said: ‘Cyclamen, already!’

‘Yes, they begin early. In fact, things here begin almost before they stop.’

‘Do you mean the winter stops before it starts?’

‘Alas, no. The winter can be bitter, and it’s likely to come down on us any day now. The weather’s broken in the mountains. Reports from the front say “torrents of rain”. I only hope the Italians and their heavy gear get stuck in the mud.’

They were put down in a wide, dark road where the wind blew cold. Alan led them between black-out curtains into a small taverna where there was only the proprietor, sitting as though he despaired of custom. At the sight of Alan, he leapt up and began offering them a choice of tables set round an
open space. The space was for dancing, but there was no one to dance.

When they sat down, he stood for some time talking to Alan, his voice full of sorrow, his hands tragically raised, so the Pringles were prepared for unhappy news long before Alan was free to interpret it. The proprietor had two sons who, being themselves skilled dancers, had drawn in rival performers from the neighbourhood. But now his sons and all the other young men had gone to the war and here he was, alone. But even if the boys were home, there would be no dancing, for the Greeks had given up dancing. No one would dance while friends and brothers and lovers were at the war. No, no one would dance again until every single enemy had been driven from the soil of Greece. Still, the taverna was open and the proprietor was happy to see Alan and Alan’s companions. When introduced to Guy and Harriet, he shook each by the hand and said there was some ewe cooked with tomatoes and onions, and, pray heavens, there always would be good wine, both white and black.

He went to the kitchen and Alan apologized for the gloom and quiet. Seeing him crestfallen, Harriet began asking him about the boys who used to dance here. How did they dance? Where did they learn?

Stimulated at once, Alan began to talk,
saying: ‘Oh, all the Greek boys can dance. Dancing is a natural form of self-expression here. If there’s music, someone runs on to the floor and stretches out his hand, and someone else joins him and the dance begins. And then there’s the
Zebeikiko
! The dance they do with their arms round each other’s shoulders. First there may be only two or three, then another joins and another; and the women clap and … oh dear me! The whole place seems to be thudding with excitement. It stirs the blood, I can tell you.’

‘I would love to see it.’

‘Perhaps you will. The war won’t go on for ever.’

When the wine was brought, Alan invited the proprietor to drink to a speedy victory. The old man held up his glass, saying: ‘Niki, niki, niki,’ then told them the Italians would be on their knees before the month was out. He had no doubt of it.

When he left them, the room was silent except for the purr of the lamps that hung just below the prints pinned on the walls. One print showed the Virgin done in the Byzantine manner; another was a coloured war-poster in which the women of Epirus, barefooted, their skirts girded above their knees, were helping their men haul the guns up the mountainside.

After he had brought in the food, the proprietor retired tactfully and sat at his own table, apparently preoccupied until Alan called to him: ‘Where are all the customers?’

The proprietor sprang up again to reply. He explained that in these times people were not inclined to go out. They would not seek merriment while their young men were fighting and losing their lives.

When the man returned to his seat, Alan gazed after him with a reminiscent tenderness and Harriet said: ‘You love Greece, don’t you?’

‘Yes. I love the country and I love the people. They have a wonderful vitality and friendliness. They want to be liked, of course: but that does not detract from their individuality and independence. Have you ever heard about the Greek carpenter who was asked to make six dining-room chairs?’

‘No. Tell us.’

‘The customer wanted them all alike and the carpenter named an extremely high figure. “Out of the question,” said the customer. “Well,” said the carpenter, “if I can make them all different, I’d do them for half that price.”’