At last the door opened and Callard appeared. Though the light was failing, the Pringles saw from his face that he had forgotten them. He was not alone. Charles Warden was with him.
Harriet and Warden exchanged a startled glance, and Harriet felt her temperature fall. It was as though some trick had been played upon the pair of them.
Callard had dropped his old air of jocular indifference to life and, conscious of responsibility, was sober and constrained. ‘How kind of you to come,’ he said. ‘You do all know each other, don’t you?’
Accepting this as introduction, Harriet and Warden bowed distantly to each other and waited to see what would happen next.
The Major, who seemed flustered by Callard’s new importance, rose and said:
‘Archie dear, I think I’ll take Mrs Pringle and Charles into the garden while you have your little talk. There’s just light enough to see our way around. Now, don’t be long. I’m sure we’re all dying for our tea.’
He opened the french windows and led the young people outside. Harriet went with some excitement but, looking back as the door closed, she saw Guy inside, his face creased with strain. Guilty at having gone so willingly, she hurried ahead to join the Major, behaving as though he and she were the only people in the garden. He conducted her round the beds, describing the flowers that would appear after the spring rains, and though there was not much to admire, she exclaimed over everything. Flattered by her vivacious interest, he said: ‘You must see it in Apriclass="underline" but, of course, I hope you’ll come many times before that.’
The lawn was set with citrus trees that stood about in solitary poses like dancers waiting to open a ballet. Harriet kept her back turned to Charles Warden but, pausing to examine some small green lemons, she glanced round in spite of herself and saw him watching her behaviour with an ironical smile. She was gone at once. Catching up with the Major, she defiantly renewed her enthusiasm.
As they rounded the house and came in sight of the sea, the clouds were split by streaks of cherry pink. The sun was setting in a refulgence hidden from human eye. For an instant, the garden was touched with an autumnal glow, then the clouds closed and there was nothing but the wintry twilight.
‘Yes,’ said the Major regretfully, ‘we must go in; but you will come again, won’t you? You really will? I give a few little parties during the winter, just to help me pass the gloomy weeks. There’s always a shortage of pretty girls – I mean, of course, pretty English girls. Plenty of lovely Greeks, and how lovely they can be! Still, English girls are a thing apart: so slender, so pink and white, so natural! Do promise you will come?’
Smiling modestly, Harriet promised.
The chandeliers had been lit inside the golden drawing-room. The Major tinkled on the glass, at the same time opening the door and saying: ‘May we join you?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Callard, as though he could not understand what they were doing out there.
Apparently the talk inside the room had finished some time before. Harriet had entered in high spirits but, meeting Guy’s eye, she lost her buoyancy. He gave her a warning glance, then stared down heavily at the floor. Now, she only wanted to leave this treacherous company, but the Major was saying: ‘Come along. You’ve got your business over, so let’s have a jolly tea.’
The dining-room was on the other side of the hall. Tea was served on a table with rococo gilt legs and a surface of coloured marbles. The marbles formed a composition of fruits and game entitled in letters of gold: ‘The Pleasures of Plenty’. Placed on the centre of the picture was a plate of very small cakes. The Major said:
‘Dear me, look at them! As cakes increase in price, they decrease in size. One day, I fear, they’ll vanish altogether.’
As though he found these remarks frivolous or vulgar, Archie Callard said: ‘Then you won’t have to pay for them.’
The Major laughed, knowing himself reproved, and went on in a pleading tone: ‘But, Archie, such absurd little cakes! Do look at this one! Who would have the heart to eat it? Really, I’m ashamed, but …’ He turned to Harriet: ‘It’s not easy to get any these days, even at the Xenia. Don’t you find shopping terribly difficult?’
‘We live in an hotel,’ she said.
‘How wise! But not, I hope, at the G.B.? I hear the Military Mission has taken possession of our darling G.B. and all our friends have been turned out. So sad to be turned out of one’s suite at a time like this! Dear knows where they’ve all gone. And no more cocktail parties in that pretty lounge! Not that there have been many since the evacuation ship took the ladies away. Still,’ he added quickly: ‘We mustn’t complain. Others have come in their place.’
‘Really!’ said Archie Callard, ‘you seem to suggest that the ship took the rightful occupants of Athens and left behind nothing but wartime flotsam.’
‘Archie, that’s quite enough!’
Delighted at having shocked the Major, Callard gave his attention to Charles Warden. He wanted to know all about the Mission. What was its function? How many officers were there? What position would Charles himself hold?
Speaking stiffly and briefly, the young man said he knew nothing. The Mission had only just arrived.
There was, Harriet thought, a hint of self-importance in his tone and she condemned him not only as an unpleasant young man but as one who took himself too seriously.
The telephone rang somewhere in the house. A servant came to say that Mr Callard was wanted.
Archie Callard, tilting his head back with a fretful air, asked who was on the line. When told the British Legation, he said: ‘Oh, dear!’ The Major sighed as though to say that this was what life was like these days.
When Callard went off, the others waited in silence. Glancing at Charles Warden, Harriet found his gaze fixed on her and she turned her head away. He said to Cookson: ‘I’m afraid I must get back to the office.’
‘But you don’t have to go, do you?’ the Major smiled on Guy and Harriet. ‘Please stay and have a glass of sherry!’
Before they could reply, Archie Callard returned with a rapid step, his manner dramatically changed. Both his fraudulent gravity and his irony were gone. Now he was not playing a part. With face fixed in the hauteur of rage, he ignored the guests and demanded of Cookson: ‘Did you know Bedlington was in Cairo?’
‘Bedlington in Cairo? No, no. I didn’t.’ Bewildered and alarmed, the Major dabbed at his nostrils. ‘But what of it? What has happened?’
‘You should have known.’
‘Perhaps I should, but no one told me. People are too busy to keep me posted and, living down here, I’m a bit out of things. Why are you so annoyed? What’s the matter?’
‘I’ll tell you later.’ Callard made off again, slamming the door as he went.
‘What can it be?’ said the unhappy Major. ‘Archie’s such a temperamental boy! It’s probably something quite trivial.’
The invitation to sherry was not repeated. The Major’s anxiety was such he scarcely noticed that the guests left together.
A staff car was waiting outside for Charles Warden and he offered the Pringles a lift. Heartened by this kindness, Guy rapidly regained his spirits and as they drove up the dark Piraeus road, was voluble about an entertainment which he planned to put on for the airmen at Tatoi. He may only just have thought of it – certainly Harriet had heard nothing about it – but now as he talked, the idea developed and inspired him. The Phaleron interview was forgotten. If he had been depressed, he was depressed no longer; and Harriet marvelled at his powers of recuperation.