He had interrupted eagerly: ‘I could stand where no one would see me. I could just look at him.’
‘Wherever you stood, someone might see you. The risk is too great.’
Used to his gentle compliance, she was surprised when he persisted, his face becoming vivid with his eagerness to go. She reasoned with him as with a child that must be protected against its own rashness.
After a few minutes, his fervour suddenly collapsed. He looked so desolate that she felt guilty and wondered how much of her own opposition came of a will to control him. In a way Guy had eluded her, but Sasha was not only her pet and dependant, he was her prisoner. Nevertheless, she could not permit him to walk into a trap.
Watching her, he said: ‘If you won’t let me go, will you go yourself? If you saw him, you might be able to speak to him.’
Startled by this suggestion, Harriet said: ‘If I went, what could I say.’
‘Tell him I’m with you. Say: “Don’t worry about Sasha. We are looking after him.”’
That had been yesterday morning. Although she had not agreed to go, she had not actually refused. She discovered that Drucker left the court-house at midday, returned at three o’clock and left again at six o’clock, but she made no attempt to see him at any of those times. If she did go, she knew she would not speak to him. For one thing, his warders would probably not permit such a thing. For another, the English were conspicuous here. She must not give the outside world cause to connect her with the Druckers. Apart from all that, she had no wish to seem to gape at a man who had suffered the rigours of nine months in a Rumanian prison.
She decided she could not go. Yesterday evening, when Sasha was expecting her to bring him news of his father, she had failed to visit him. As she wondered how she could excuse her dereliction, she suddenly felt that he had not asked so much of her. Turning to her image of Guy, she protested: ‘If you give your devotion to others, why shouldn’t I?’
She started out immediately after tea. As she crossed the square she noticed the blinds were being raised in the palace and cars were entering through the palace gates. She could see from their white uniforms that the new arrivals were Crown councillors. The square, too, was coming to life. People were strolling in from the side streets and gathering on the pavement outside the palace rail. Their pace suggested not so much an event as hope of one.
By the time she had reached the main road, the newsboys were out. She bought L’Indépendence Romaine and read two lines in the stop press. Agreement had been reached in Vienna. Terms would be announced.
No time was given for the announcement, but people were coming out into the streets, all, for some reason, lively, as though expectant of good news.
The trial was again of secondary importance. On previous days, crowds of spectators had gathered to view the ticket-holders and the famous forty-nine witnesses called against the accused. This evening there were scarcely a dozen round the front entrance. At the back, in an area of small warehouses and workrooms still at work, there were some six or eight. They were discussing the news of the Transylvanian settlement and took no notice of Harriet.
A smell of salt fish hung in the air and the narrow, cobbled pavements were gritty with sand. A windowless van was at the kerb, its doors open to receive Drucker, who was due to appear at any minute. Harriet stood behind a group of clerks and gathered from their conversation that the prevailing optimism was based on the fact that Rumania had been acknowledged as a partner of the Axis. The Führer would see that she received fair treatment. One clerk said they might have to cede a province or two, but no more. In his opinion the German minorities in Transylvania favoured the Rumanian cause because the Rumanians, as a people, were more amenable than the arrogant, independent Hungarians.
The court door was thrown open and two warders emerged.
Harriet, who had seen Drucker only once, ten months before, remembered him as a man in fresh middle age, tall, weighty, elegant, handsome, who had welcomed her with a warm gaze of admiration.
What appeared was an elderly stooping skeleton, a cripple who descended the steps by dropping the same foot each time and dragging the other after. The murmurs of ‘Drucker’ told her that, whether she could believe it or not, this was he. Then she recognised the suit of English tweed he had been wearing when he had entertained the Pringles to luncheon. The suit was scarcely a suit at all now. As he approached, she noticed his trousers were so worn at the knees that she could see, as it bent against the cloth, the white bone of his knee-cap, but the broad herringbone pattern showed through the grime.
From the bottom step he half-smiled, as though in apology, at his audience, then, seeing Harriet, the only woman present, he looked puzzled. He paused and one of the warders gave him a kick that sent him sprawling over the narrow pavement. As he picked himself up, there came from him a stench like the stench of a carrion bird. The warder kicked at him again and he fell forward, clutching at the van steps and murmuring ‘Da, da,’ in zealous obedience.
As soon as the van doors closed on him, Harriet, unconscious now of the ferment of the pavements, hurried back to the Calea Victoriei. By the time she reached the end of it, she had decided she could safely deceive Sasha. He was never likely to see his father again.
There was now a considerable crowd in the square. Approaching her block of flats, she glanced up at the roof and saw Sasha on the parapet, staring down towards her. When she reached him, she was able to say convincingly: ‘Your father looked very well.’
‘You really saw him?’ He had jumped down at the sight of her and brushed his cheeks with the back of his hand, but she could see he had been crying. He asked eagerly: ‘And were you able to speak to him? Did you tell him I was living here.’
‘Yes of course.’
‘I am sure he was pleased.’
‘Very pleased. I can’t stay, I’m afraid. Guy is bringing a friend in to supper,’ and she went to avoid answering further questions.
The friend was David Boyd whom Harriet had not seen since their last meeting in the English Bar. He had then gone for a ‘bird-watching week-end’, which had become so protracted that Guy had at last telephoned the Legation to ask for news of him. Foxy Leverett’s secretary would say nothing but ‘The Legation is not alarmed by Mr Boyd’s absence.’
When David telephoned that morning Harriet had felt relief at his safe return, realising he had become important to her as one of their small and dwindling community. His sound nerves were comforting. And he was Guy’s friend. Whoever might desert them, David, she was sure, would stay to the end.
While awaiting the men, she heard a sound of agitation in the square and was about to send Despina to discover the cause of it, when Guy and David came in through the front door. David was talking loudly: ‘It’s exactly what Klein predicted. You remember his image of the great fortune? Well, this is the last of it down the drain. The country is falling to pieces.’
As they entered the room the two men, both large, their dissimilarities masked by sunburn, looked remarkably alike. They differed only in the colour of their hair. Guy had become bleached by the sun, David had remained very dark. His black curls glistened with moisture, and moisture lay along the ridge of his large dark chin. Both were carrying their jackets caught under their elbows. They had been walking and their shirts were soaking. A smell of sweat entered with them.
Guy said: ‘The terms of the settlement are out. Rumania has to cede the whole of Northern Transylvania: the richest part of it.’
‘Quite a nice bit of territory,’ David said, snuffling in delight: ‘Area about seventeen thousand square miles, population two and a half millions. But it means more than that. The Rumanians are emotional about Transylvania, “the cradle of the race”. This means trouble – as I imagine His Majesty will soon discover.’