If he had been offered nothing, if his future was (as she feared) vacant, he was already filling the vacancy with projects. The entertainment at Tatoi was only one thing. He discussed the possibility of producing Othello or Macbeth. And why should he not restage Troilus and Cressida?
Was there ever any need to pity him! He was never, as she too often was, disabled by disappointment. He simply turned his back on it.
Harriet noticed that Charles Warden laughed with Guy, not at him. Listening to Guy’s schemes, he murmured as though Guy and Guy’s vitality were things he had seldom, if ever, encountered before. She realized now that his restraint when replying to Callard had shown not self-importance but a disapproval of Callard’s insolent wit. She had to admit the young man was by no means as unpleasant as she had wished to believe.
The car stopped outside the main entrance to the Grande Bretagne.
‘Let’s meet again soon,’ said Guy.
‘Yes, we must,’ Charles Warden agreed.
Walking back to their hotel, Guy could talk of nothing but this new friendship until Harriet broke in: ‘Darling, tell me what Callard had to offer.’
‘Oh!’ Guy did not want any intrusion upon his felicity. In an offhand way, as though the whole matter were of no consequence, he said: ‘Not much. In fact, he wasn’t able to promise anything.’
‘But he must have had some reason for sending for you?’
‘He wanted to see me, that’s all.’
‘Didn’t he tell you anything?’
‘Well, yes. He told me … he felt he ought to tell me personally – which was, after all, very decent of him – that he had been forced to make Dubedat his Chief Instructor. He had no choice. Gracey made him promise.’
‘I see.’ For some minutes her disappointment was such she could not say anything more.
Guy talked on, doing all he could to justify Callard. Knowing that what he said was a measure of his own disappointment, Harriet listened and grew angry for his sake. She said at the end:
‘So Archie Callard was appointed on the understanding that he rewarded Dubedat for Dubedat’s services to Gracey?’
‘It looks like that. I will say Callard was rather apologetic. He said: “I’m sorry about this. I hope you won’t refuse to work under Dubedat?”’
‘He expects you to work under Dubedat? He must be mad.’
‘He said there would be work, but not immediately. He hopes to fit me in when things get under way. I must say, I rather liked Callard. He’s not at all a bad chap.’
‘Perhaps he isn’t. But here you are, the best English instructor in the place, expected to hang around in the hope that Dubedat will offer you a few hours’ teaching. It’s monstrous!’
‘I came here against orders. I’ll have to take any work I can get.’
‘What’s this about Lord Bedlington being in Cairo? Couldn’t you write to him or cable him? You have a London appointment. You’ve a right to state your case.’
‘Perhaps, but what good would it do? Bedlington knows nothing about me. Gracey, Callard and, I suppose, Cookson have all backed Dubedat. There’s no one to back me. I’m merely an interloper here. The fact that I was appointed in London doesn’t give me a divine right to a plum job. I could make trouble – but if I do that and gain nothing by it, I’m in wrong with the Organization for the rest of my career.’ Guy put his arm round Harriet’s disconsolate shoulder and squeezed it: ‘Don’t worry. Dubedat’s got the job and good luck to him. We’ll work together all right.’
‘You won’t work together. You’ll do the work, and Dubedat will throw his weight around.’
Guy’s tolerance of the situation annoyed Harriet more than the situation itself. He had achieved education and now, she suspected, his ambition had come to a stop. In his spiritual indolence, he would be the prey of those with more ambition; and he would not worry. It was, after all, easier to be used than to use.
She asked bitterly: ‘Will it be like this all our lives?’
‘Like what?’
‘You doing the work while other people get the importance.’
‘For heaven’s sake, darling, what do you want? Would you prefer that I became an administrator: a smart Alec battening on other men’s talents?’
‘Why not, if there’s more money in it? Why should you be paid less for your talents than other men are for the lack of them? Why do you encourage such a situation?’
‘I don’t. It’s the nature of things under this social system. When we have a people’s government, we’ll change all that.’
‘I wonder.’
They had reached the hotel. Her hands were clenched and Guy, picking them up and folding them into his own hands, smiled into her small, pale, angry face, saying, as he had said many times before: ‘“Oh, stand between her and her fighting soul.”’
‘Someone has to fight,’ she said. Repeating a remark she had heard as a child, she added: ‘If you don’t fight, they’ll trample you into the ground.’
Guy laughed at her: ‘Who are “they”?’
‘People. Life. The world.’
‘You don’t really believe that?’
She did not reply. She was more hurt for him than he was for himself. She had imagined because he was amiable, he must be fortunate, and now she saw others, neither able nor amiable, put in front of him. She felt cheated but tried to reconcile herself to things. ‘I suppose we are lucky to be here; and we’re lucky to be together. If you’re prepared to work under Dubedat, well, there’s no more to be said.’
‘I’m prepared to work. It doesn’t matter whom I work under. I’m lucky to be employed. My father was unemployed half his life and I saw what it did to him. We’ve nothing to complain of. Other men are fighting and getting killed for people like us.’
‘Yes,’ she said and embraced him because he was with her and alive.
An announcement in the English newspaper stated that the School would open under the Directorship of Mr Archibald Callard. Mr Dubedat was to be Chief Instructor and Mr Lush would assist him. But, for some reason, there was a delay.
The students returned to the School and waited about in the library and the lecture-room but Mr Callard, Mr Dubedat and Mr Lush did not appear. The librarian-secretary said they were not in the building. There was no one to enrol students. The offices were locked and remained locked for the next couple of weeks.
12
It was a dull December. The Greek advance had come to a stop. The papers explained that this was a necessary remission: the supply line must be strengthened, supplies brought up and forces rearranged. There was no cause to be downcast. But the victories, the bell-ringing, the dancing, the comradeship of triumph – these things were missing, and the city became limp in anti-climax. Even the spectacle of the Italian prisoners did little to distract people in a hard winter when it was as cold indoors as out and food was disappearing from the shops.
The prisoners were marshalled through the main streets: a straggle of men in tattered uniforms, hatless, heads bent so that the rain could drip from their hair. They were defeated men yet in every batch there were some who seemed untroubled by their plight, or who glanced at the bystanders with furtive and conciliatory smiles, or gave the impression that the whole thing was a farce.