‘If you get a return visa before you go, they must let you back.’
Reluctant, even at this point, to give way, she kept the argument dragging on, but in the end she found she had agreed to get a return visa. Having secured this, she could take Sasha to Athens and return alone if Guy did not join her there.
Despite something like near-intoxication from the prospect of escape, Harriet resented the fact that Guy had persuaded her to go.
Men like Woolley saw women as a ‘drag’ in times of danger. Mrs Woolley had been sent to England at the outbreak of war and had recently been sent somewhere else. Harriet, of a different generation, saw herself as an equal and a comrade. She was not to be packed off like that – and, yet, against her will, she had let herself be talked into going.
For Guy the day was one of modest triumph. In sending ahead Harriet, Sasha and that old self-deceiver Inchcape, he was not only safeguarding them, but clearing the decks for action in a war he had chosen to wage, the war against despotism. He believed the ultimate engagement was at hand. He could now face it alone.
26
Harriet would make no preparations for her journey. She would not even mention their plans to Sasha. She would do nothing until she had obtained the visa that was an earnest of her return. She got a bleak and sparkless satisfaction when it seemed she probably would not obtain it at all.
She had had to queue for the exit visa, but it was given without question. For the return visa, she was directed to a compartment which contained no clerk. No one was waiting before it. She stood for some time, then inquired and was told the clerk was not in the building. He might reappear at five o’clock.
In the late afternoon she returned to the prefectura, but the compartment was still unattended. She demanded to see the official in charge. When he eventually came, he took her passport away and left her waiting twenty minutes before he brought it back. She could be granted a return visa only if she supplied a letter of recommendation from her Legation.
She set out for the Legation, disheartened by fatigue and indecision, and heard from a side street the barrel-organ that played the old Rumanian tune, the name of which no one could tell her. Haunting and mysteriously simple, it reminded her of the day she had gone for a sleigh-ride up the Chaussée with Guy and Clarence. She thought of the shop-lights gilding the snow and felt an acute nostalgia for winter. She told herself she would not go. She could not leave Guy. She did not even want to leave Bucharest.
She wandered on and, crossing the square, saw Bella walking towards the Athénée Palace. The two women came face to face under the Nazi flag.
It had been a day of mild autumnal sunlight and Bella was in a new woollen suit with mink skins strung from elbow to elbow. This was their first sight of each other since her return to Bucharest. Seeing Harriet, she called out: ‘I was going to ring you! What do you think I got on the black market today? Just over six thousand to the pound. And it’s rising. My dear, we’re rich! I’ve been buying everything I could lay my hands on. After all, you never know, do you? I’ve just ordered a new coat – Persian lamb, of course. I picked out my own skins. Tiny little things! I wrote my name on the back of each so there’d be no hanky-panky. I’m getting half a dozen new suits for Nikko – best English tweed. The thing to do is to buy up what’s left. And shoes – a dozen pairs each. Why not, I ask you? We’ve money to burn.’ Elated by her rise in fortune, she looked up and smiled at the flag and the clear pale sky beyond it. ‘I love this time of the year,’ she said. ‘So delicious after the fug of summer. It makes one feel so alive.’ She seemed aglitter with life, almost dancing in her new green lizardskin shoes. Not finding Harriet very responsive, she looked at her more closely and thought to ask: ‘But how are you and Guy? What do you think of things?’
Harriet glanced up at the swastika. ‘Doesn’t that disturb you?’
Bella looked up again and gave an uncertain laugh. ‘Does it?’ she asked. ‘I don’t know. In a way, it makes me feel safe. It’s nice to be protected, even by Germans. And, you know,’ she gazed seriously at Harriet, a rather petulant gleam in her eye, ‘Rumania has been very unfairly treated. The Allies guaranteed her, then did nothing. Nothing. There was that plot to blow up the oil-wells, and there’ve always been those outside interests controlling Ploesti. Foreign engineers everywhere. No wonder we’ve been in an awkward position. You can’t blame the Rumanians for wanting the foreigners to go.’
‘When they go, what will the Rumanians do?’
‘Get in German experts, I suppose.’
‘So there will still be outside interests controlling Ploesti! Or don’t Germans count as outsiders any more?’
Bella, looking sulky, tilted up her chin as though sniffing out injury. She made a movement, seemed about to go, but, held by some memory of their earlier friendship, gave Harriet a look at once annoyed and compassionate. ‘But what about you? Aren’t you nervous, being here? I mean, it’s different for little me. I’ve a Rumanian passport.’ Suddenly the thought of something restored her humour. She gave a laugh: ‘People think I’m a German, you know. I can get anything I want.’
Harriet, fearing to enhance Bella’s isolation here, had not mentioned her possible departure, but now she realised that Bella’s high spirits were not a result of hysteria. She had found a means of managing her situation: she was shuffling off her own identity and taking on an aspect of the enemy.
Harriet said: ‘Guy wants me to go to Athens for a few weeks, but I’m having difficulty in getting a return visa.’
Hooting with laughter, Bella gripped Harriet’s arm. ‘My dear, you can get one in the twinkling of an eye. It’s just a matter of going about it the right way. Put a thousand-lei note inside your passport. But why get a return visa? If you’ve any sense you’ll stay there once you get there.’
‘I have to come back. Guy isn’t supposed to leave without orders.’
‘Oh, I’ll keep an eye on him. I’ll see he doesn’t get into mischief.’
Bella was enjoying herself. Here she was, secure and snug, while others must take themselves into exile. She could advise from a position of vantage. ‘You might like me to look after some of your things,’ she said. ‘Those nice Hungarian plates, for instance. I wouldn’t mind giving them a home.’
‘If we finally go, you can take what you like.’
‘Well, I must be on my way.’ Bella gathered her minks about her. ‘I’ve got several fittings this evening. I want to buy gloves. Look, give me a ring and tell me how you manage about the visa. I’ll call and see you before you go.’ She hurried away with a happy ‘Cheerio!’ and Harriet returned to the prefectura where she again asked to see the official in charge. When he came upon the thousand-lei note in her passport, he whipped it out so quickly Harriet scarcely saw it go. He stamped in the return visa.
‘Doamna is intrepid,’ he said in English. ‘These times, the British who go do not wish to come back.’ Smirking, he handed her the passport with a little bow.
Harriet wondered how Sasha would accept the news of their going. He accepted it impassively. After all, she thought, he merely lived as his family had lived for generations: in seclusion, dreading flight, but prepared for it.
‘What about Guy?’ he asked.
‘He’ll come when he can.’