It was a fine, mild morning. Harriet pulled up the window and leant out but saw only imprisoned faces, deserted pavements, abandoned cars.
Guy, getting into an emergency rig of trousers and pullover, shouted from the room: ‘Is anything happening down there?’
‘The police have cleared the street.’
‘It must be a raid.’
‘Let’s go down and find out.’ Harriet spoke with the calm of an old campaigner. Conditioned to disorder, she dressed with the sense that she was returning to reality, and when they ran down the stairs to the hall, she knew what to expect. She could have described the scene before she reached it, for she had seen it before on an evening of crisis in an hotel hall in Bucharest.
But here there was someone known to her. Mrs Brett, in a dressing-gown, her face flushed, was talking to everyone, her grey-brown pigtail whipping about as she jerked her head from side to side.
The porter was on the telephone, speaking Greek with occasional words of English, and his free hand was thumping the desk to emphasize what he said. The other guests, English, Polish, Russian and French, were chattering shrilly, while from outside there rose the high swell of the ‘All Clear’.
Seeing the Pringles, Mrs Brett shouted: ‘We’re at war. We’re at war.’ As she did so, the porter dropped the receiver on to the desk and throwing out his arms as though to embrace everyone in sight, said: ‘We are your allies. We fight beside you.’
‘Isn’t that splendid!’ said Mrs Brett.
The sense of splendour possessed the hall so it seemed that in secret everyone had been longing to live actively within the war and now felt fulfilment. The Pringles, because they were English, were congratulated by people who had not given them a glance before. They heard over and over again how the Greek Prime Minister had been wakened at three in the morning by the Italian Minister who said he had brought an ultimatum. ‘Can’t it wait till the honest light of day?’ Metaxas asked; then, seeing it was a demand that Greece accept Italian occupation, he at once, without an instant’s hesitation, said: ‘No.’
‘Oxi,’ said the porter. ‘He said “Oxi”.’
Mrs Brett explained that Mussolini also wanted his triumphs. He had chosen a small country, supposing a small country was a weak country, thinking he had only to make a demand and the Greeks would submit. But Metaxas had said ‘No’ and so, in the middle of the night, while the Athenians slept, Greece had entered the war.
‘Well, well, well!’ Mrs Brett sighed, exhausted by happiness and excitement, and turning accusingly on the Pringles, said: ‘You see, you’re not the only ones who have adventures. Things happen here, too.’ She started to go upstairs, then turned and shouted: ‘Anything yet from Gracey?’
‘Nothing, I’m afraid,’ said Guy.
‘Well, don’t go. You be like Metaxas. You stand firm. Tell him he’s got to give you a job. If I were on speaking terms, I’d tell him myself.’
Guy mentioned that they were going that afternoon to tea with Alan Frewen. Mrs Brett said she, too, had been invited but Miss Jay was taking her to see the promised flat.
‘You go,’ she urged Guy. ‘He’ll introduce you to Gracey.’
‘I don’t think so. He said nothing about Gracey.’
‘Oh, he will; Gracey’s up there. He lives at the Academy. Alan’ll do something – you’ll see! Cookson thinks he can fix everything, but he’s not the only fixer. A lot of things happen in my little room that he knows nothing about.’ Giving a high squawk of laughter, she shouted over her shoulder: ‘Oh yes, I’m a fixer, too.’
The Pringles had almost exhausted their money. They had just enough to pay their hotel bill and buy steerage berths on the boat that would sail on Saturday; but, caught up in the afflatus of events, they could not face the hotel breakfast and when ready to go out, decided to take coffee in the sunlight. The streets were crowded with people exchanging felicitations as though it were the first day of holiday rather than of war. It seemed an occasion for rejoicing until the Pringles met Yakimov, who was wheeling his bicycle uphill, a look of gloom lengthening his lofty camel face.
In the past he had gone through every crisis with the optimism of the uninformed. Now, working in the Information Office, nothing was hidden from him.
‘Greeks won’t last ten days,’ he said.
‘Is it as bad at that?’ Guy asked.
‘Worse. No army. No air-force. Only one ship to speak of. And the I-ties say they’ll bomb us flat. What’s going to happen to us, I’d like to know? They starve you in these prison-camps.’
‘Surely we’ll be evacuated?’ Harriet said.
‘Don’t know. Can’t say. All depends.’
Having reached the level of University Street, he ran his bicycle along, leapt at it, somehow landed on the saddle and, high perched in precarious dignity, he weaved away.
The Pringles, knowing Yakimov, could not rely on anything he said. They bought the English newspaper, which took an inspiriting view of the new front and made much of the fact the British had promised aid.
Harriet said: ‘Whatever happens, I want to stay. Don’t you?’ She felt confident of his answer and was dismayed when he replied: ‘I want to stay more than ever, but …’
‘But what?’
‘I can’t work for a man like Gracey.’
She realized the trouble was Mrs Brett. When, after the tea-party, she had asked Guy what he thought of Mrs Brett’s stories, he would not discuss them. Caught up in a conflict between his desire to remain here and the fact he could remain only by Gracey’s favour, he had to reflect upon them.
‘So you believe all she said?’ said Harriet.
‘I can’t imagine she invented it.’
‘There might be a basis of truth, but I felt she was pretty dotty. I’m sure if we knew the whole of it, we’d find it was quite different.’
‘I don’t know. She may have exaggerated, but the others didn’t defend Gracey. He seems to be quite despicable.’ Guy looked angry and defiant at the very thought of Gracey and Harriet knew that in this mood he would make no attempt to win him. Guy’s persuasive force could function only with people for whom he had respect. He was incapable of dissimulation. Once he had accepted the dictates of his morality, he could be inflexible. If he despised Gracey, or had cause to doubt his own personal probity in the matter, their cause was as good as lost.
She began to fear they would be on the Egyptian boat when it sailed in two days’ time.
By midday the first plaudits of war were over. By the time the Pringles set out to find the Academy, there had been news of a raid on the factories at Eleusis, and a rumour that Patras had been bombed. Athens, so far untouched, was sunken into the somnolence of afternoon.
Following the directions given by the hotel porter, the Pringles took the main road towards Kifissia. They were alone on the long, wide, sun-white pavement when a convoy of lorries, full of conscripts, passed on their way to the station. As the Pringles waved and shouted ‘Good luck’, the young men, recognizing them as English, shouted back ‘Zito the British navy’ and ‘Zito Hellas’ and, as Harriet called out to them, one of the young men bent down and caught her hands and said in English: ‘We are friends.’ Gazing into his dark ardent eyes, she was transported by the glory of war and threw herself on Guy, crying: ‘It’s wonderful!’
Guy hurried her along, saying: ‘Don’t be silly. They may all be dead in a week.’
‘I don’t want to go to Egypt,’ she said, but Guy refused to discuss it.
The Academy came into view: a large Italianate building painted ochre and white and set in grounds that had been dried to an even buff colour by the long summer heat.