Despina had tidied the room. ‘It’s super,’ Sasha said, then added as he sat down on the edge of the bed: ‘Jolly nice to have a real bed,’ but Harriet felt he scarcely cared where he was as long as someone stood between him and the discomforting world outside.
As he was arranging papers and pencils on the bedside table, she noticed he had brought down among his other things, his military uniform.
She said: ‘Did you have any sort of papers? I mean, a passport or permis de séjour?’
‘I have this.’ He searched the uniform jacket and produced the carte d’identité issued to conscripts.
She saw it contained what she wanted, Sasha’s photograph and said: ‘This is evidence against you. I had better destroy it.’ She took it to the kitchen where she unpeeled the photograph and put it into her handbag. The card she tore into fragments and burnt in an ash-tray.
That evening Sasha sat down to supper with them. While they ate, they listened to the news, or what served for news these days. It consisted, on this occasion, of an indictment of Carol, who was described as the Pandora’s Box from which all Rumania’s evils had sprung. But, listeners were reminded, Hope had been imprisoned at the bottom of the box, and Hope, in the shape of General Antonescu, was in the studio. He would address the country.
Antonescu came at once to the microphone. Speaking in simple biblical language, he promised that once the country had expiated its sins, it would be restored to greatness. No one need fear. The new regime would bring neither bloodshed nor recriminations. For every useful member of Society, regardless of race or creed, there would be an ordered and protected life.
‘Do you think we can count on that?’ Harriet asked.
‘Why not?’ said Guy. ‘We haven’t lost the war yet; and we may not lose it. The British are known to have great powers of survival. Antonescu doesn’t want to antagonise us, and while our Legation is here, we’re a recognised community.’
Harriet asked Sasha what his family had thought of Antonescu. Sasha shook his head vaguely, apparently never having heard of him. ‘Despina says he’s quite decent,’ he said.
Sasha had watched the revolution from the roof. What had he made of it all? He certainly had not been disturbed. It probably never entered his head that events could jeopardise his protected position. As for the fate of Rumania, why should that mean anything to him? Although he had been born here, he was no more emotionally involved with the place than were the Pringles themselves. Reflecting on his English schoolboy slang that at once placed and displaced him, she thought wherever he was, he would belong nowhere.
Guy’s students, reassured by the general’s speech, turned up in force at the University on Monday morning, but Sunday’s gloom still hung in the air. Cinemas and theatres were to remain shut for the rest of the week. Although they had been ordered to return to work, thousands of people still kept half-hearted holiday, wandering the streets as though waiting for a sign that their disorganised world would become normal once again.
Bella had telephoned Harriet that morning, excited because she had been right in suspecting that Carol had not left immediately after his abdication. He had, in fact, remained in the palace another twenty-four hours, then gone by rail, taking a train-load of valuables.
‘And all the El Grecos,’ Bella said, scandalised.
‘But weren’t they bought by his father?’
‘Yes, with public money. Of course, Lupescu and Urdureanu went with him. One of the waiters on the train is putting it round that the three of them squabbled all the way, blaming each other for what had happened. At the frontier, the Iron Guard machine-gunned them and they had to lie on the floor. Just think of it!’ said Bella, giggling as she thought of it herself.
Harriet expressed some concern that the ex-King and his followers should have been all day in the palace listening to the rejoicings over their downfall.
‘Oh,’ said Bella, ‘don’t you fret your fat over that lot. They’ll live in luxury with the cash they’ve salted away. Nikko says it was a mistake, letting them go. They should have been arrested and tried and forced to disgorge. The Iron Guard needs some diversion. There’s no knowing what they’ll get up to now.’
Bella seemed less confident that the Iron Guard could be kept from power. ‘After all,’ she said, ‘who else is there? Maniu’s pro-British and Bratianu’s anti-German. I can’t see Hitler standing for either of them. And,’ she glumly added, ‘we’ve got these wretched refugees pouring into the town, filling up the hotels and cafés, and putting up prices again.’
‘What will happen to them?’
‘God knows,’ said Bella.
The trains had stopped for two days when the news of the revolution reached Transylvania and most of the refugees were only now reaching the city. Those that filled the hotels and cafés were the fortunate few. The majority, the dispossessed peasants, had had to shelter beneath the trees of the park and up the Chaussée. Arriving during an interregnum, they received less consideration than the Poles had done. No one was empowered to deal with them. They spent their days standing dumbly before any large building where power might reside. Imagining that justice must eventually be brought out to them, they were prepared to wait days and weeks: and they probably would have to wait, for the Cabinet had not yet been appointed. The prefectura and ministries were empty of important people. The senior civil servants were spending their days with the processions of penitents that followed the priests and nuns about the streets.
Harriet, when she went out, took a trăsură up the Chaussée as far as the fountain that marked the edge of the town. She was on her way to visit Clarence who lived in a new block on an unfinished boulevard. Never having been there before, she had difficulty in finding it. She might have telephoned him and arranged to meet him in the English Bar, but felt an unexpected call would be more likely to impress him with the urgency of her request.
When Harriet asked for Domnul Lawson his cook, a grimy woman with a sly manner, pointed, grinning, at the balcony as though to say: ‘He’s there, where he always is.’ Harriet found him lying on a long chair, a copy of the Bukarester Tageblatt on the floor beside him. He wore a heavy white sweater across the chest of which was embroidered the word ‘Leander’. His eyes were shut. He did not open them until she said: ‘Hello, Clarence,’ then he started up, confused by the sight of her, and was immediately on the defensive. In a complaining tone, he explained: ‘I’m supposed to rest. The mornings are getting chilly. With my weak chest, I have to be careful.’
The balcony was in the shade, overlooking open fields from which came a hint of breeze. Swallowing back a derisive comment, Harriet mildly said: ‘I’m sorry if I disturbed you.’
He gave her a suspicious glance. Seeing she was serious, he said: ‘I suppose you’ve heard? The blitz on London has begun.’
She had not heard the news that morning. Looking down at the German paper, she asked: ‘What does it say?’
‘According to this rag the whole city’s aflame. They say the fire service could not cope. They claim tremendous damage done, thousands of casualties and so on. Probably a lot of lies – but who knows?’
‘If we get back, there may be nothing to get back to.’
He shrugged and dragged himself out of his chair. ‘How about a drink?’
While he went into the room and called to the servant for glasses, Harriet remained on the balcony, shocked by what she had heard. On the other side of the road there was a cornfield. The corn, a second or third crop, not more than a foot high, was still grey-green. Its freckling of poppies gave the vista a look of spring, but the mountains were visible in the distance – a sign that the summer haze was lifting and autumn had begun. There was even a glint of snow on the highest peak.