Laughing with them, Dobson said: ‘How Foxy would have loved that,’ and he continued a threnody on his friend – sports-man, playboy and Legation jester: ‘The best fellow in the world! We shared a flat in the Boulevard Carol.’ He went on to tell how Foxy practised revolver-shooting, using a Louis XIV clock as a target. One night he shot at the ceiling and sent a bullet into the bed of the landlord, who said: ‘Anyone else but you, Domnul Leverett, and I would have told him: “This is too much.”’
The road was lined with garden restaurants. It was all very urban, but as soon as the car turned off the main road they came into a wild region of stone peaks where the rock was patched over with alpine moss and there was no vegetation but a few dwarf juniper bushes. In every hollow among the hills a small lake lay dark and motionless.
Dobson stopped the car and they went for a walk over the cinderous ground between the rocks. There was a little grass round the lakes where a few lean cows grazed. Pointing to one of them, Guy said: ‘Harriet says she loves these creatures.’
Dobson gave his easy laugh. ‘She’s probably quite willing to eat them,’ he said, and Harriet stared at her feet, conscious of her human predicament. Putting an arm round her shoulder, Guy rallied her: ‘Come on, tell us, why do you love them?’
Irritated that he questioned her in front of Dobson, she said defiantly: ‘Because they are innocent.’
‘And we are guilty?’
She shrugged. ‘Aren’t we? We’re human animals that maintain ourselves at the cost of our humanity.’
He squeezed her shoulder. ‘Guilt is a disease of the mind,’ he said. ‘It’s been imposed on us by those in power. The thing they want is to divide human nature against itself. That permits the minority to dominate the majority.’
Dobson smiled blandly, apparently detached from the Pringles’ conversation, but Harriet, certain he was listening intently, did not encourage Guy to say anything more on this subject.
They drove into Sinai as evening fell. Dobson said: ‘We’ll snatch a bite before trying our luck,’ taking it for granted that the Pringles anticipated with as much pleasure as he an evening of losing money at the casino.
The casino attempted a grandeur that was thwarted by Balkan apathy and the harshness of the overhanging crags. A chill had entered the air after dark. The yellowish bulbs that lit the casino gardens, touching rocks and trees and the wavering fronds of the pampas grass, could not dispel the gloom of the failing year. The paths glistened with damp.
The large entrance hall was deserted. Such life as there was about the place had taken itself to the main salon where only one table was in use. Lit by low-hung, green-shaded globes, the gamblers sat, absorbed and silent, in the penumbra around the table.
Dobson found a seat. Guy stood behind him, watching the play, while Harriet tiptoed to the end of the table, where she paused and looked down its length at the faces intent upon the turning wheel. She thought: ‘What a collection of oddities!’ seeing them as though they grew like distorted mush-room growths from their chairs. One man, whose shoulders were abnormally wide but who rose barely eighteen inches above the table, had a vast, formless face, like a milk jelly, glistening with ill-health. Beside him was an ancient skeletal female her mouth agape and askew, as though she had died without succour. One male head was abnormally large like a case of giantism. Here and there were faces, not aged and yet not young, having the immaterial look of arrested decay.
It seemed to Harriet that in this room without windows, artificially lit both by day and by night, these people, with their pallor of indoor life, existed in a self-contained world, beyond consciousness of war, change of government or threat of invasion, indeed unaware there was an outer world, like insects in a gall. They would scarcely know if the Day of Judgement were upon them. For them life’s prodigiousness was diminished down to a little ball spinning in a wooden bowl.
The ball fell into a groove. A stir, almost a sigh, touched the players. It fell upon a stillness so complete she could almost feel, as they must, that did conflict exist anywhere at all, it was too remote to matter.
The croupier’s rake came into the light, pushing the chips about. No one smiled, or showed concern or pleasure, but, as one player, in placing his stake, accidentally touched that of another, there broke out between them a quarrel, brief but vicious, like a quarrel between the insane.
The ball was spun again. Harriet took a step forward to watch and at once the man seated before her glanced round, his face distorted with irritation at her nearness. She tiptoed on.
When she reached the other side of the table, she looked across at Dobson and realised Guy was no longer there. He had found someone to talk to in the dim, empty regions beyond the table. When she reached him, she found his companions were Inchcape and Pinkrose. He was talking with his usual animation, but in an undertone, while Inchcape, hands in pockets, head bent, listened, tilting backwards and forwards on his heels. Pinkrose stood a step apart, watching Guy with an expression that told Harriet the Gieseking concert would not be forgotten in a hurry. Inchcape looked up.
‘Hah! So there you are!’ Inchcape said as she approached. ‘Let’s go and get a drink.’ Walking ahead, he glanced back for Harriet and as she caught up with him, said: ‘Have you enjoyed your break?’
‘Very much. And you?’
‘Don’t speak of it.’ He dropped his voice. ‘I never could abide that old so-and-so.’
‘Then why did you invite him to Rumania?’
‘Who else would have come at a time like this? How does he strike you?’
‘Well …’ Harriet evaded the question by asking: ‘Why, I wonder, is he so suspicious of poor Guy?’
‘Him!’ Inchcape snorted in amused contempt. ‘He’d be suspicious of the Lamb of God.’
In the bar, that was large, bleak, bare and empty except for the barman, Inchcape told them he had lost chips to the value of five thousand lei. ‘That was my limit,’ he said. ‘As for Pinkrose here! Tight-fisted old curmudgeon, I couldn’t get him to risk a leu.’ He turned on Pinkrose. ‘You’re a tight-fisted old curmudgeon, eh?’ He gave Pinkrose’s shoulder a push. ‘Eh?’ he insisted, staring at him with quizzical disgust as though he were a wife of whom he was more than half ashamed.
Pinkrose, sitting with his legs tightly together, his feet side by side, his little waxen hands folded on his stomach, smiled vaguely, apparently taking Inchcape’s chaff as a form of admiration, which perhaps it was.
The bar was cold. The windows had been opened during the day and were still open, admitting shafts of damp, icy air. Pinkrose began to twitch. He pulled his scarfs about him, looking miserable, but before he could say anything the waiter came to them.
‘I know,’ said Inchcape indulgently. ‘We’ll have hot ţuicǎ. We’ll celebrate the coming winter. I like to hibernate. I shall devote the next six months to Henry James.’
The ţuicǎ was served in small teapots. Heated with sugar and peppercorns, the spirit lost its rawness and gave the impression of being much milder than it was. Pinkrose drew back, frowning, as a pot was put before him, and said: ‘No, really, I think not.’
‘Oh, drink it up,’ Inchcape said, with such exasperation Pinkrose poured a little into his cup and sipped at it.
‘Umm!’ he said, and after a moment admitted: ‘Pleasantly warming.’
Dobson came to look for them and, as he sat down, Guy asked him: ‘What luck?’
‘None,’ he cheerfully told them. ‘But, then, one doesn’t expect to win. One plays for the fun of it. Dear me!’ He stretched out his legs and rubbed a silk handkerchief over his baldness. ‘How one longs for the normal life! I’m not as young as I was, but I’d be overjoyed if I could close my eyes and open them to find myself enjoying a debs’ dance at the Dorchester or Claridge’s!’ He smiled round, never doubting but that the others would take equal pleasure in such a transportation. ‘As it is’ – he folded his handkerchief carefully and put it away – ‘tomorrow back to the plough.’ Turning to Pinkrose, he pleasantly asked: ‘Are you staying long?’