There was nothing more to be said. The sun had gone down while they were talking. Watching the distant hill stained rich with the afterglow of evening, Harriet seemed to see, like something sighted from a speeding train, an enchantment they could not share. So Athens was not for them! But what was there for them in this disordered world? Where could they find a home?
Dubedat had also observed the changing light. ‘Oh, dear,’ he said, ‘we’ll have to go. What a pity! Another night you might have stayed to supper.’
Toby explained: ‘We’ve been asked to Major Cookson’s. Sort of royal command. He likes everyone to be on time.’
The Pringles did not ask who Major Cookson was. It did not matter. They were not likely to receive his royal command. Guy emptied his beer and they left with scarcely another word.
The lights were coming on in the small shops and cafés in the square of Kolonaki. The central garden was dark. Pepper trees grew along the pavements, their fern-fine foliage clouding in the air like smoke. A smell of dill pickle came from the shops.
Harriet said: ‘Will you cable the London office?’
‘Yes.’
His decision disturbed her. Because of their insecurity, the streets seemed hostile and she began to see Cairo as a refuge. ‘Perhaps we’d better take the next boat,’ she said.
Guy said: ‘No,’ his face fixed with his resolution: ‘I don’t want to go to Egypt. There’s a job here, and I intend to stay.’
Their money had almost run out. They could not afford Zonar’s, so walked the length of Stadium Street and sat at a café in Omonia Square where, drinking a cheap, sweet, sleepy, black wine, Harriet thought of Yakimov and wondered how he had survived his years of beggary in foreign capitals. She, with Guy beside her, knowing the worst anyone could do was send them to Egypt, felt very near weeping.
3
The hotel in which the Pringles were staying had been recommended to Harriet as the most central of the cheap hotels. It was gloomy and uncomfortable but favoured by the English because of its position and its extreme respectability. Athens had been absorbing refugees since 1939 and, even before the Poles arrived, there had been a backlog of Smyrna Greeks and White Russians seeking some sort of permanent home. Hotel rooms were scarce; flats and houses even scarcer.
The Pringles, packed together into a single room, had been promised a larger room should one fall vacant. When Harriet reminded the porter of this promise, he told her that rooms never fell vacant. People stayed at the hotel for months. Some had made it their home. Mrs Brett, for instance, had lived there for over a year.
Harriet knew Mrs Brett, a gaunt-faced Englishwoman who eyed her accusingly whenever they met on the stair. One day, a week after Guy’s arrival, Mrs Brett stopped her and said: ‘So your husband did arrive, after all?’
As Harriet tried to edge past, Mrs Brett stood her ground, saying: ‘Perhaps you don’t remember me?’
Harriet did remember her. When alone in Athens and distracted by the news from Rumania, Harriet had approached this fellow Englishwoman and confided the fact she had left her husband in Bucharest. Mrs Brett had replied: ‘He’ll be put into a prison-camp. You’ll have him back after the war. My husband’s dead.’
This may have been meant as condolence, but it did not console Harriet who now wanted only to avoid the woman.
‘I’d like to meet your husband,’ Mrs Brett said. ‘Bring him to tea on Saturday. I live here in the hoteclass="underline" room 3, first floor Come at four o’clock,’ and without waiting for acceptance or refusal, she was off.
Harriet hurried to tell Guy: ‘That God-awful woman’s invited us to tea.’
‘Why, how kind!’ said Guy, to whom any social contact was better than no contact at all.
‘But it’s the woman who said you’d be put in a prison-camp.’
‘I’m sure she meant no harm,’ Guy confidently replied.
The Pringles, on the top floor of the hotel, were in a slice of room overlooking a china-bricked well and containing two single beds, end to end, a wardrobe and a dressing-table. Mrs Brett’s room, at the front, was a bed-sitting room and was crowded with an armchair and table, as well as a large bed. Mrs Brett had hung up two paintings, one of anemones and one of lily-of-the-valley, and she had set out her china on the table beside a large chocolate cake.
Guy, delighted that someone had made them a gesture of friendship, met Mrs Brett with such warm enthusiasm, she became excited at once and dodged around them, shouting: ‘Sit down. Sit down.’ Another visitor was in the room. This was a square-built man who was growing heavy in middle age.
‘Really!’ Mrs Brett complained. ‘You two big men! What am I to do with you both? And,’ she turned to the middle-aged man with amused horror, ‘Alison Jay says she’ll be dropping in.’
‘Dear me!’ the man murmured.
‘We’ll manage. We’ve managed before. Mrs Pringle can take the little chair – she’s a lightweight; and I’ll give Miss Jay the armchair when she comes. Now, you two! Here.’ She placed the two men side by side on the edge of the bed. ‘Sit down,’ she ordered them. ‘I don’t need any help.’
A hotel waiter brought in a pot of tea and while Mrs Brett was filling cups and asking each guest several times whether he took milk and sugar, the man beside Guy spoke below the commotion. ‘My name is Alan Frewen.’
‘Didn’t I introduce you?’ Mrs Brett shouted, pushing cups at her guests. ‘That’s me all over; I never introduce anyone.’
Alan Frewen, whose large head was set on massive shoulders, had a face that seemed to be made of brown rock, not carved but worn to its present shape by the action of water. His eyes, light in colour and seeming lighter in their dark setting, had a poignant expression; and as he sat on the bed edge stirring his cup of tea, his air was one of patient suffering. Having given his name, he had nothing to say but kept looking uneasily at Mrs Brett because she was on her feet while he was sitting down.
She said to Guy: ‘So you’re just out of Rumania? Tell us, are the Germans there or not?’
While Guy was answering her, Alan Frewen observed him and the large, dark face softened as though something in Guy’s appearance and manner was allaying his sorrows. He leant forward to speak but Mrs Brett did not give him a chance. She said to Guy:
‘You’re an Organization man, aren’t you? Yes, Prince Yakimov mentioned it. I could tell you a few things about the Organization. You knew my husband, of course? You knew what they did to him here?’
As Guy said, ‘No,’ Alan Frewen gave a slight moan, anticipating a story he had heard before and dreaded hearing again.
Ignoring Frewen, Mrs Brett stared at Guy: ‘I suppose you know my husband was Director of the School?’
‘Was he? I didn’t know.’
‘Aha!’ said Mrs Brett, preparing the Pringles for a grim tale. She kept them in anticipation while she handed round the cups. Alan Frewen watched her with an expression pained and fascinated. She sat down at last and began.
‘My husband was Director, but he was displaced. Very meanly displaced, what’s more. You must have heard of it?’
‘We know very few people here,’ Guy said.