Clarence called her. She went into the room and looked about at the dark, carved furniture, the painted plates and the cloths and cushions embroidered in blue and red cross-stitch.
‘Peasant stuff,’ said Clarence: ‘I bought it from the previous owner for a few thousand. I got the cook as well. She sleeps with her husband and three children in the kitchen. Not an ideal arrangement but if I’d got rid of them, they’d have nowhere to sleep at all.’
‘Do peasants have furniture as good as this?’
‘Some do, but even the most prosperous have a miserable diet.’
He handed her a glass of ţuicǎ. She looked about her thinking that in this small room, which was exposed and overlighted like a birdcage on a wall, she would suffer from both claustrophobia and agoraphobia. Clarence, however, seemed content.
He said: ‘The flat suits me. I live, eat and sleep in one room, but I don’t mind. I like to have all my needs within reach. But I’m getting rid of it. I haven’t told anyone yet: I’m leaving.’
‘Leaving Rumania?’
‘Yep.’
‘Oh!’ Harriet, who on the long drive up the Chaussée had thought of Clarence gratefully as one who stood with them in peril, now felt a drop in spirits. She said: ‘You think it’s time to go? That something is going to happen here?’
‘I’m not worrying about that. It’s simply that I’ve nothing to do here.’
‘What about your job at the Propaganda Bureau?’
‘You know as well as I do, the Bureau is a farce.’
‘When will you go?’
‘Oh, no hurry.’
That was a relief, anyway. She asked: ‘And where will you go?’
‘Egypt, perhaps. Brenda cabled me last week.’
Brenda, Clarence’s fiancée, was in England. When Harriet first saw her photograph, she had said: ‘A nice, good face,’ but Clarence showed no enthusiasm. He said now: ‘She’s joined some sort of women’s naval service and is going to Alexandria. She wants me to meet her there and get married.’
‘Why not?’
‘Why not, indeed?’
‘You now have Sophie to think about, of course.’
‘To hell with Sophie. Would you condemn me to that? Brenda at least would respect me.’
Harriet smiled. ‘For what?’
Satisfied that he had provoked her raillery, he lay back in his chair and sombrely echoed her: ‘For what?’ He thrust out his lower lip then, after some moments, said: ‘The gall of frustration has poured for years into my system. I’ll die of it in the end.’ He gave her a long, brooding look, intended to be darkly significant, so she had difficulty in not laughing outright.
She decided to ask his help before things deteriorated further. Changing her tone, appealing to his generosity, she said: ‘I’ve come to ask your help. Before you go, there’s something you must do for us.’
‘Ah!’ Clarence looked down into his glass. He did not move but his attitude had become wary. After a long pause, he asked: ‘What?’
‘We have to try and get someone out of the country.’
‘Not Yakimov?’
‘Yakimov’s gone.’
‘Indeed? He never paid back that ten thousand he got from the Polish fund.’
‘He never paid back anything. We’re worried about Sasha Drucker. If we have to go, what will happen to him?’
‘You were a couple of fools to keep him in the first place.’
‘Well, we did keep him and now we have to look after him.’
‘Why? He’s not a child. Surely he can look after himself? He belongs here: he must have friends …’
‘He hasn’t. Anyway, his friends would be Jews. They couldn’t help him.’
Her urgent advocacy made Clarence sit up, sobered and vexed. He said sharply: ‘I can imagine Guy busy-bodying himself about this fellow. But why are you involved?’
Harriet reflected on the complex of instincts that caused her to protect such dependent innocents as Sasha and the red kitten but did not suppose Clarence would be satisfied by any attempt to explain them. After some moments, she said: ‘We can’t just abandon him here. You must see that. We thought, if we could get him a passport of some sort, he could come with us.’
Clarence stared blankly at her.
‘Guy says you had someone who forged passports for the Poles.’
Seeing where this was leading, Clarence smiled to himself. ‘They were made by Poles for Poles.’ He shifted in his chair, throwing one leg over the arm, and explained with superior patience: ‘The whole set-up was organised inside the Polish army: the Rumanian government connived at it. In those days, Rumania was our ally and the Poles were escaping to join the allied forces in France. The Rumanians did quite well out of it. They were paid so much per escape. It ran into thousands. This fellow of yours is a different matter. He’s a deserter from the army and all the frontier officials would be on the look-out for him.’
‘Is there anyone left of the people you had working for the Poles?’
Clarence made a movement suggesting that even if there were, he personally was taking no risks.
‘You might help, Clarence. Please. If you could get him a passport and drive him over the frontier into Bulgaria …’
Clarence interrupted her with an angry laugh. ‘My dear child, do you realise what you’re asking? If I were caught with this fellow in my car, I’d stand a fair chance of ending my days in a Rumanian prison.’
She said with persuasive sweetness: ‘At least, get me the passport.’
Clarence stared from the window, his expression sullen, his glass forgotten in his hand. He had once said to her: ‘If you treated me properly, you could get anything you wanted from me,’ but she had, of course, to reckon with Clarence’s ideas of proper treatment. They changed with his moods. He now said coldly:
‘You can be very charming when you want something.’
‘Well, I don’t want something for myself. I want to help this poor boy.’
‘Why? What do you care about Sasha Drucker?’ He turned on her a stare of black resentment that made clear to her the fact that he might do something for her but would do nothing for Sasha. He would do even less when it was she who pleaded for him. It would have been better had Guy made the appeal.
She stood up. ‘We’ve taken him in,’ she said. ‘We feel for him as for a child who has a right to the elements of a reasonable life. That’s all.’
Clarence got slowly to his feet. She waited, but he remained silent, embarrassed, but sustained by his obstinate jealousy.
She took out Sasha’s photograph and put it on the table, making a last plea: ‘Will you think about it?’
In acute exasperation, he burst out: ‘Think about what? You’re asking the impossible. I can do nothing.’
She left the photograph, feeling it might speak for itself, and went, saying nothing more.
She walked the two miles back to the centre of the town. For most of the way she felt empty with disappointment, then her old anxiety began seeping back again. What had seemed so simple a solution of the problem had proved no solution at all. When, after luncheon, she had Guy to herself, she told him of Clarence’s refusal to obtain the passport. Giving an explanation not too painful to her own vanity, she said: ‘You might suppose he was jealous of the boy.’
Guy laughed. ‘He probably is. He has always been very devoted to me, investing me with the qualities he lacks himself.’