Guy said: ‘We’ll miss you.’
‘Soon there will be no one left,’ said Harriet.
Clarence picked up his scarf, preparing to depart.
‘But this isn’t the end,’ Guy said, unwilling to see him go. ‘We’ll be at the station to see you off.’
‘No. I hate farewells from trains. I’d rather say goodbye now.’ Clarence spoke with decision and Harriet felt he did not wish them to see him possessed by Sophie. Nor, she thought, did she wish to see it.
‘What’s happening to your flat?’ she asked.
‘A new tenant comes in next week: a German consular official. I’m glad to say he’s keeping on Ergie, my cook, and her family. I don’t know where they’d go if they were thrown out, poor things!’
They went to the landing with him.
‘We’ll meet again,’ said Guy.
‘If you have to leave here, why not come to Kashmir? We’d find a job for you.’ Clarence wrung Guy’s hand, then caught at Harriet and pecked her nervously. She realised he was not very sober and his eyes were moist. Not waiting for the arrival of the lift, he swung away from them and ran at a furious speed down the stairs.
24
The weather was slow in regaining itself. The sky remained broken, twilight fell early and the air was brisk.
The new term would start early in October. Guy had heard nothing of the reopening of his department, but he was preparing for it and a day or two after Clarence left he decided to pay a visit to the University.
The visit was to be a sort of reconnoitre. He might bump into the dean or one of the professors, or he might find his students hanging about the common-room as they used to do. Anyway, there would surely be someone there who would have something to tell him.
Harriet was doubtful about this essay into forbidden territory, but Guy refused to be dissuaded. He saw the University staff as friends. He had always been popular and privileged there and was sure he would be welcome. The visit would conclude all uncertainties. When she realised he was determined to go, she said she would walk with him as far as the building and then wait for him in the Cişmigiu. When he left her at the park gate she took the main path, intending to wait at the café.
There were very few people about. A haze, silvering the sky, gave a ghostly softness to the light. The distant elevations were washes of pearly transparency.
The flower-beds now had almost nothing to show except the lank stalks of withered plants. Dahlias and chrysanthemums fell, bedraggled, across the paths. On the long and almost leafless stems of the rose-bushes there were a few roses, small and colourless, too hard pressed to look like any particular sort of rose.
The dovecots seemed to be empty. From somewhere in the distance came, dismally, the squawks of the white peacocks.
Leaves were falling, littering the grass and sticking in wads to the damp asphalt of the paths, but beside the lake the trees were still thickly feathered, hanging over the water, drop-winged, like gorged and sleepy birds of prey.
Harriet found the café closed. She walked round to the bridge from which she could look on to the pier and see the chairs and tables stacked under tarpaulins and roped down against the coming of the winter wind. She was suddenly saddened by the sense of change in which she felt they had no part. When the café reopened, where would they be?
The lake water was pewter-dark, shirred here and there by currents of silver, and broken by the trails of the mallard ducks. Behind her the waterfall gushed bleak as a burst pipe.
Hearing a step, she turned and came face to face with Bella’s husband, Nikko. He looked nonplussed by this meeting, but when she said: ‘Why, Nikko! How nice to see you! When did you get back?’ he cried: ‘Harry-ott!’ stumbling forward in delight that his English friends were still, in spite of all, his friends. His black eyes shone and his teeth flashed from beneath his black moustache.
‘We thought on our return you would have left,’ he said, ‘but now I find you here and am so glad.’
‘Yes, and Guy even believes the English Department will reopen. What do you think?’
‘Who can say?’
Seeing he evaded the question, Harriet changed the subject, asking: ‘How is Bella?’
‘Very well. Our holiday has restored her. But the summer was trying for her. Usually we are all the time in the mountains. My poor Bella! She suffers that I am away so much. I get little leave, then I am recalled and she weeps. Each month it becomes more difficult. Our great ally’ – he made a grimace – ‘demands that officers are always on the alert. For what, I ask you? But you – which way do you walk?’
Finding he was crossing the park to the rear gate, she said she would pass the time by walking with him.
They crossed the bridge together. As they went, a blur of white came into the sky where the sun hung behind the haze. The lake turned to silver. The still and humid air cut off the sound of traffic so they seemed to be moving into areas of cushioned silence.
Beyond the bridge there was a walk of lime trees, brilliantly yellow in the grey air, beneath which two German officers sauntered, in trench-coats with skirts swinging, the heels of their jackboots clicking on the paths. They gave an impression of acute boredom.
Nikko, not in uniform, eyed them, cautiously silent until he and Harriet were well past, then he said in an undertone: ‘They have not yet won the war. I can tell you, Harry-ott, we are sick of the demands of the Germans. They will devour us. People are remembering the English, so honest, so dignified, so generous, and they say: “Perhaps even now the Allies will win.” And, I say: “Why not?” September is at an end, yet there has been no invasion. What has happened, we ask, to this talked-of invasion? The Germans put it off. They make excuses. Do not quote me, but we know already it is too late. They cannot invade.’
Harriet turned on him in hopeful surprise. ‘Why not?’
‘Why not?’ Nikko gave her a look of astonishment. ‘Surely you must know why not? Already the fogs cloak your shores. The Germans cannot find their way.’
‘Oh!’ Harriet gave a laugh of disappointment. ‘I’m afraid we can’t rely on the fogs.’
Nikko knew better. ‘Then why do they not invade?’ he asked. After a moment, he added: ‘They are a strange people. I remember last time when they came here, I was a little boy. We had a German officer billeted in our home. He was not so bad, you know. It was a time of great fear, and we did for him what we could. When they retreated, taking everything they could carry, this man, leaving us, gave to my mother a great parcel – this size; very big. He said: “This is a gift. I give you because you have been so kind.” After he was gone, she opened it and inside there was a bed-quilt. We all looked at it, thinking how nice, but my mother said: “I have seen before such a bed-quilt. I have already one like this,” and she went up to the cupboard to look. What do you think? He had given to my mother her own bed-quilt! Have you ever known such a strange people?’
As Harriet laughed, Nikko said: ‘I have loved England; I was long ambitious to work in England. I would be interested, I need say, only in a top-hole job, for I have top-hole qualifications. I read Punch and The Times – not now, of course, for they do not arrive, but my subscription is paid. And, as you observe, my English is unerring. But the war nipped me in the bud.’
Harriet laughed again. ‘It nipped us all in the bud,’ she said.
Nikko, having recalled his enthusiasm for England, now said with conviction: ‘I think the English Department will open again. Why not? It will open because they love Guy. He is a great man.’