Guy stared into his glass, his eyebrows raised, his lips slightly pursed. He had had his interview with Gracey; he now had no cause for suspicion or complaint. He looked towards Harriet and put down his glass, preparing to go. He said: ‘If there’s no transport, we’ll have to stay in Athens – anyway for the time being. I don’t suppose you want me to be around doing nothing?’
‘Oh!’ Gracey made a gesture that suggested the matter was too trivial to be discussed further. ‘Argue it out with Dubedat. He’s in charge of the School now. If you don’t try to high-hat him, you’ll find him quite helpful. Go and be nice to him.’
The Pringles started to rise.
‘Stay a while. Have another drink.’
The command was cordial, but it was a command. Guy and Harriet settled back in their seats unwillingly, but not without hope. They had nowhere else to go. They might as well stay and perhaps, by staying, something could be gained.
Gracey now lay back as though the interview had wearied him. The Pringles, despondent, were not much company and they felt he was waiting in the hope of better.
Harriet said: ‘This is a pleasant room.’
Gracey looked at it doubtfully: ‘Rather comfortless, wouldn’t you say? A student’s room. This was a hostel for the young, of course. So cold in winter. And the cooking’s dreadful.’
Gracey’s complaints went on while Harriet looked round the vast, bare room in envy. The sun was low and the windows were in shadow, but outside the sunlight still trickled, like an amber cordial, beneath the olive trees. The distant glow was refracted into the room so the twilight about them was as tawny as the glitter in apatite.
This, she thought, was the room for her. The unpolished floorboards, the dusty herbal scent and the space, made more spacious by the vistas of garden, seemed familiar. For a moment she knew where she had encountered it before, then the knowledge was gone. As she pursued it through memories of childhood books, a noise recalled her.
Someone opened the door. Gracey, revivified at once, sat up and cried: ‘Archie, what a joy!’
A young man entered the room with a shy aloof smile, sidling in as though he knew himself more than welcome and wanted to counter the fact by apparent diffidence.
Gracey said to Harriet: ‘This is Archie Callard,’ then, seeing there was a second visitor following the first, added in a tone of anti-climax: ‘And this is Ben Phipps.’
Both men noted the Pringles as they might note people whom they had heard discussed. Ben Phipps stared with frank curiosity, but Callard gave no more than an appraising glance hidden at once in a show of indifference.
‘Where is the Major?’ Gracey eagerly asked.
Callard murmured in an off-hand way: ‘Gone to a party. He’ll come later.’
It was clear to the Pringles that they had been detained on view for Gracey’s friend. Once introduced, they could take a back seat and they were in no mood to do much else. Guy, usually stimulated by new acquaintances, sat silent, his glass held like a mask at the level of his lips. Harriet tried to accept the situation by detaching herself from it and watching the company as she would watch a play.
At first sight she could see no more reason for Callard’s welcome than Phipps’s lack of it. Callard was the better looking, of course, but Phipps had vitality and a readiness to please. When asked to pour drinks ‘like a good fellow’, he went at the task with a will. Perhaps he was over-ready. If that were a fault, it was not one of which Callard was guilty. He threw himself at full length on one of the two beds and when Gracey questioned him further about the Major’s whereabouts, did not trouble to reply.
Phipps gave the answers, only too eager to be heard. When the drinks had been handed round, he placed himself in the middle of the room, somehow extruding his personality, prepared to talk.
Addressing him as someone who knew, Gracey asked: ‘What’s the news from the front? Is anything happening up there?’
Phipps, short, thick-boned, with mongrel features and a black bristle of hair, sat forward on his strong, thick haunches and said in a decided voice: ‘Not much news. Town’s full of rumours, but no one knows anything.’
Archie Callard, muffled by the pillow, said: ‘The Italians’ll be here tomorrow – and that’s no rumour.’
Gracey jerked his head round and said reproachfully: ‘That’s not funny, Archie.’
‘It’s not meant to be funny. They crossed the frontier at six a.m. They’re making for Athens. What’s to stop them coming straight down?’
Gracey turned in appeal to Phipps: ‘Surely there’ll be some resistance? Metaxas said they would resist.’
Phipps, staring at his host, had an air of obliging good humour that came from the fact his gaze was neutralized by a pair of very thick, black-rimmed glasses. Harriet, viewing him from the side, could see, behind the pebbled lens, an observant eye that was black and hard as coal.
‘Oh, they’ll resist, all right,’ said Phipps. ‘Submission is all against the Greek tradition. They’re a defiant people and they’ll resist to the end, but …’ Having started out with the intention of reassuring Gracey, he was now led by his informed volubility into a far from reassuring truth. ‘They’ve got no arms. Old Musso’s been preparing for months, but the Government here’s done damn all. They saw the war coming and they just sat back and let it come. Half of them are pro-German, of course. They want things over quickly. They want a Greek collapse and an Axis victory …’
Guy, his attention caught by this criticism of the Metaxas Government, watched him with an intent interest, but Gracey, more mindful of the particular than the general, moved uneasily in his chair and at last broke in to protest:
‘Really, Ben! You’re trying to frighten me. You both are. I know you’re just being naughty, but it’s too bad. I’m an invalid. I’m in great pain when I walk. I couldn’t get any distance without help. If the Italians march in, you can take to your heels. But what can I do?’
Phipps gave a guff of laughter. ‘We’re all in the same boat,’ he said. ‘If there’s a ship of some sort, we’ll see you get away all right. If there isn’t, none of us’ll get far. The Italians will blow up the Corinth Canal bridge and here we’ll be – stuck!’
‘Why worry?’ Callard sat up, laughing. With auburn hair too long, mouth too full, eyes too large, he looked spoilt and entrancing, and conscious of being both. ‘The Italians are charming and they’ve always been very nice to me.’
‘I don’t doubt,’ Gracey said in a petulant tone. ‘But times have changed. They’re Fascists now, and they’re the enemy. They’re not going to be very nice to a crowd of civilian prisoners.’ The reality of war, touching him for the first time, was shattering his urbanity. He frowned at Ben Phipps, who may have been aware of his fears but too roused by the situation to be impeded by them.
‘I must say,’ said Phipps, ‘I like the idea of Metaxas coming down to see Grazzi in a bath-robe. It was about three-thirty. The ultimatum gave the Greeks about two and a half hours to hand over lock, stock and barrel. Metaxas said: “I couldn’t hand over my house in that time, much less my country.” I’ve never had much use for him but I must admit he’s put up a good show this time.’
‘Yes, but what am I to do?’ Gracey asked impatiently. ‘I’ve got to get to Beirut for treatment.’
The boasted ‘priority flight’ forgotten, he was twitching with so much nervous misery that Harriet could not but feel sorry for him. She said: ‘I’ve heard there’s to be an evacuation boat. It’s for women and children but I’m sure …’
‘Women, children and invalids,’ Archie Callard interrupted. ‘Don’t worry, Colin. The Major will get you safely away. He’ll fix it.’