The noise was growing. Evidently a mob of some sort was making for the palace. Yakimov could only hope that the fracas here would draw attention from the side streets by which he would reach the station.
Before he left he took down his sable-lined greatcoat which hung behind his door. With coat, suitcase and what was left of Freddi’s twenty-five ‘thou’, he tiptoed from the flat. Down in the street he heard the rifles fire, and he ran towards the Boulevard Breteanu.
He reached the station unaccosted and unharmed. The Orient Express, ignorant of the events that Yakimov had left behind, was still awaiting the passengers that, strangely, did not arrive. Having acquired Yakimov, it seemed content, and almost immediately set out for Bulgaria. At the frontier there was a slight altercation because he had no Rumanian exit visas, but a thousand lei put that right.
He obtained a berth in the almost empty sleeping-car and next morning awoke to the safety of Instanbul.
PART THREE
The Revolution
15
During the first days of September the murmur of the crowded square had become for Harriet as familiar as the murmur of traffic. Shortly after Yakimov had set out for Cluj, it suddenly became a hubbub, there were new shouts of ‘Abdicǎ’ and a sound of breaking glass. Here, she thought, was uprising at last. When she went out to look, the crowd was in a ferment and the police were getting their hoses ready for action. The threat was enough. The uproar died down, but people did not disperse. This time they were not to be moved. If they might not speak, they could remain, a reproach to the despoilers within the palace.
Harriet remembered, when they took the flat, she had said to Guy: ‘We are at the centre of things.’ Now it seemed they were at the centre of trouble.
A little later, when the office workers had been added to the mob, there was a sudden burst of cheering. Guy had just come in and he joined Harriet on the balcony. With her long sight she could see a man in army uniform standing, hand raised, on the palace steps. Guy could see nothing of this but heard the crowd yelling in a frenzy of jubilation.
‘Can it be the King?’ said Harriet. ‘Has he done something to please them at last?’
Guy thought it unlikely. Despina came running into the room, waving her arms and shouting that something wonderful had happened. Antonescu had been brought a third time from prison and a third time offered the premiership – on his own terms. He had accepted, and at once demanded the resignation of Urdureanu.
Now, cried Despina, striking her fist into her palm, the country would be set right.
That, apparently, was everyone’s opinion. Antonescu was being treated as a hero. His car could scarcely get out of the palace gate for the press of admirers. When it disappeared into the Boulevard Elisabeta, everyone began to move off as though there were nothing left to wait for.
By early evening, the resignation of Urdureanu was announced. Guy and Harriet, going out to meet David, felt a change in the air. The sense of mutinous anger had gone and near-elation had taken its place. And this, they felt, was merely a beginning. As Despina had said, the country would now be set right. One man, parting from a friend shouted: ‘En nu abdic,’ raising laughter among all who heard him. The friend answered that Antonescu would make him change his mind.
David had invited the Pringles to eat with him and was waiting for them in the English Bar. He suggested they go to Cina’s on the square. They could seldom afford this restaurant, but the evening was a special one.
‘Anything may happen,’ he said, ‘and if it does, we shall have a ring-side seat.’
The day had been very hot and the evening was as warm as mid-summer. The garden tables were all taken by people who seemed to be awaiting an event.
‘Would it be the abdication?’ Guy asked.
David sniggered and said: ‘It seems to be expected.’
They were given a table by the hedge. Sitting in wicker chairs beneath the ancient lime trees, they watched the passers-by strolling in an amiable way about the square. Two or three dozen people, the remnants of the morning crowd, stood round the statue of Carol I. Suddenly everyone was on the alert. People began running towards the palace. The diners in the garden became excited and began shifting about in their seats and demanding information from the waiters. When the waiters could tell them nothing, they complained as though the news were being unjustly withheld from them. Several people called for the head waiter, an old man who knew everyone. Entering the garden he held up a hand and said in gentle, smiling reproof: ‘A decree, merely a decree,’ then quietly gave details to the waiters who went round from table to table repeating them.
The decree had cancelled the royal dictatorship, leaving the King with nothing but the right to wear decorations and present them to others. When required to sign it, he had raged like a madman and accused Antonescu of high treason, but he had been forced to sign in the end.
‘Alas, the poor old Great and Good!’ said David. ‘He’s become a mere figurehead. And now what will the General do? He can’t rule alone. He’ll have to call on the Iron Guard or the army, and I imagine he knows the army too well to trust it.’
Guy said: ‘You think we’re in for an Iron Guard dictatorship?’
David shrugged: ‘I can’t see any alternative.’
So their position, Harriet thought, was more precarious than ever.
As the foliage clotted above their heads, strings of coloured lamps were lit among the branches. Within the palace, where the King had been stripped of everything but his decorations, appeared the galaxies of the chandeliers. Above the palace, a single star, embedded in the cerulean satin of the sky, shone with great brilliance. The roofs were lustrous with the last radiance from the west.
Suddenly, in the middle of the garden, the orchestra stand sprang alight and the musicians, in white blouses and velvet knee breeches, filed between the tables, bowing to right and left. They climbed into the stand: there was a howl from the violin, a pause and then a frenzy of music was released upon the diners.
Harriet thought of the last time they had eaten here. It had been mid-winter and, sitting beside the double window, their table had been lit by the sheen from the garden which, fleeced with snow, had looked small and intimate. Two broken-down cane chairs were outside on the terrace, their seats cushioned with snow. Snow picked out the delicate traceries of the chair backs and limned every curve and indentation of the roofing of trees. Beneath the trees, caged in the complex of branches, was the snow-capped orchestra-stand, a piece of chinoiserie, lacquered in gold and yellow. Who, seeing it now, hung with lights and leaves and flowers, could think that in a little while it would be left forlorn.
Last autumn Inchcape had told Harriet that an enemy never invaded in the winter. He had said: ‘The snow will come soon and here we shall be, tucked away safe and sound.’
She felt a nostalgia for the snow which recalled for her some enchantment of childhood, a security she had known before her childhood changed. But the times had changed. Last autumn the Germans had been two frontiers away. This autumn, when the snow blocked the passes, it would enclose a host of Germans and the whole of the Iron Guard.
The Pringles awoke next morning to quiet. The Guardists had already taken up their position by the palace-rail but they stood there alone. The other inhabitants of the city were content to leave matters to Antonescu.