He called for them as agreed and Guy said to Harriet, as he had said before: ‘You go.’
She pleaded: ‘Do come darling. He doesn’t want me alone. Why not bring your work and sit in the gardens while we walk round!’
Resolute in his revolt against circumstances, Guy said: ‘No, I’m all right here. Go on down. Alan’ll love having you to himself.’
Harriet could not believe it. She descended diffidently to the hall where Alan waited, his face so obscured by his glasses it was impossible to tell how he felt. He was as shy as she was and they said nothing until they reached the square.
He was limping and several times when the dog pulled on the lead, he had difficulty in keeping his footing. He apologized, explaining that he had had an attack of gout.
‘I had to stay home for a couple of days,’ he said. ‘Not that it mattered. Things are still slack at the office. There’s not much to do except get out the News Sheet.’
‘What does Yakimov do?’ she asked.
‘Oh, his job is to deliver it.’
‘Is that all?’
Alan gave a laugh and did not reply.
There had been a shower of rain, the first of the autumn. It had scarcely moistened the ground but the sky, broken with mauve and blue clouds, had taken on the fresh expectancy of spring. Harriet longed for Guy to be with them, not only to ease their constraint but to enjoy, as she enjoyed, the changing season.
She suddenly burst out: ‘Guy’s very unhappy. What can we do for him?’
‘You had no luck with Gracey, then?’
‘None at all. He said he had delegated his authority. He suggested Guy go and ask Dubedat for work.’
Alan stared down frowning, considering what she had said, then started to speak with some force: ‘I really feel this can’t go on. The School’s becoming a laughing-stock. There are all sorts of stories going round about the lectures. Apparently Lush suggested that Dante and Milton might have met in the streets of Florence. When one of the students pointed out that there was about three hundred years between them, Lush said: “Crumbs! Have I made a clanger?” Cookson’s protected the lot of them for some time, but there’ve been complaints. I know Mrs Brett has written home. I’m sure a responsible person will be appointed when Gracey goes. My advice is: wait.’
‘Guy would agree, but I’m afraid he finds it a strain.’
‘I know. I know,’ Alan nodded his sympathy, and after this she felt there was harmony between them.
It occurred to her that Alan was the first friend she and Guy had made on equal terms. In Bucharest the people she knew had been the people known to Guy before his marriage and she imagined herself accepted because she was Guy’s wife, a state of affairs the more disjunctive because she was unused to being a wife. It had seemed to her then that she had left behind not only her own friends but her individuality. Now she began to feel the absurdity of this. Why, after all, should Alan Frewen not be as content with her as he would be with Guy?
They passed the Washingtonia Robusta palms that stood with their great silvery satin trunks across the entrance to the gardens. Inside, the sandy walks curved and flowed beneath sprays of small, tremulous leaves. The sun came and went. Moving soundlessly, they entered a tropical dampness filled with the scents of earth. Alan released Diocletian, who was off at once prospecting beneath the bushy trees that sifted the sun on to the dark, soft, powdery ground. The paths were all much alike. The foliage was all light, a peppering of dry, rustling greenery that dappled the sand with light and shade. Then a vista opened. There was a drive lined with greyish, rubbery trees.
‘Judas trees,’ Alan said. ‘You must see them in the spring.’
‘Is that when they flower?’
‘They flower for Easter.’
And where would they be at Easter? Alan had said ‘Wait’, but he said nothing more. And what could he say? By coming here, Guy and she had created their own problem, and they must solve it for themselves.
She had thought they need only reach a friendly country and their lives could begin; but here they were, and their lives were still in abeyance. In Bucharest they had had employment and a home. They had had Sasha. Guy might find employment here, they might even find a home but Sasha, she feared, was lost for ever. Even his memory was disappearing into the past. For the last week or more she had not given him a thought, though there always remained, like a shadow on her mind, the hollow darkness into which he had disappeared. He was dead, she supposed, like her loved red kitten that had fallen from the balcony of the flat. If one could not bear the memory of the dead, then they must be shut out of memory. There was no other action anyone could take against the bafflement of grief.
She was recalled from her thoughts by the squawks of water-birds and the cries of children. They were walking through a coppice where the air was jaundiced with the weedy, muddy smell of lake water.
Alan said: ‘Where’s Diocletian? I’d better put him on the lead.’
He held the dog close as they emerged from under the trees and came to a sunlit clearing where small iron seats stood round the sandy lake edge. The lake was small. A bridge spanned the water that now, in the last days of the dry season, was scarcely water at all, but a glossy, greenish film in which ducks, geese and swans were squelching about. The children were feeding the birds and the birds, snatching and quarrelling, were making all the noise in the world.
Limping towards a couple of vacant chairs, Alan said he must sit down. He lowered his large backside on to the little iron seat and with a sigh let his bulk settle down. When they were both seated, an attendant came and stood at a distance, respectfully awaiting the sum that was payable in fee. When Alan handed over the money, the old man counted back some coins so small they now bought nothing but the right to sit for a while beside the lake. Alan talked in Greek with the attendant and afterwards told Harriet they had been discussing the war. The old man said he had two sons at the front but he was not at all disturbed because the English had promised to aid the Greeks and everyone said the English were the strongest people in the world.
‘He knows me,’ Alan said. ‘I come here often to read Cavafy. I suppose you know Cavafy? No? I’ll translate “The Barbarians” for you one day. It fits our times.’
‘Are the English going to send aid?’
‘I wish I knew. They haven’t much to send. I’ve heard the Greeks aren’t interested in half-measures and I don’t think we could rise to a full-scale campaign.’
There was not much to be said about the war and when they had said it all, they sat for a long time in the sunlight while Harriet considered how she might put to him the questions that Yakimov could not answer. She at last overcame her own reticence and asked:
‘Have you known Cookson long?’
‘I’ve been seeing him on and off, over the years.’
‘You’ve lived here a long time, then? Before the war, were you one of these people who live abroad and do nothing?’
Alan laughed at her disapproving tone and said: ‘Indeed I was not. I had to earn my living. I came here as a photographer. I had a studio on Lycabettos and I went to stay in places like Mycenae, Nauplia, Delphi and Olympus. When I settled in a place, I’d try to absorb it and then record it. I wrote a few introductory pieces to albums of photographs, nothing much, the pictures were the thing. I’d like to record the whole of Greece.’
‘And when you have, what will you do?’