Ben Phipps, who on the bus had been silent as though unsure of his welcome in this company, frowned as the dog chased about him. When the uproar tailed off, he said: ‘I heard a bit of news yesterday evening.’
‘Good news, I hope,’ Guy said.
‘Not very. It might even be bloody bad news.’
That put a stop to Alan’s activity and when everyone was attending him, Phipps went on: ‘One of our chaps, out on a reccy over the Bulgarian front, thought he saw something in the snow. Something fishy. He dropped down to have a dekko and nearly had kittens. What d’you think? Jerry’s got a mass of stuff there – tanks, guns, lorries, every sort of heavy armament. All camouflaged. White.’
‘You mean it hadn’t been there long?’ Harriet said. ‘But it could have been painted on the spot.’
Phipps gave her a look, surprised by her grasp of his point and not over-pleased by it. ‘Unlikely,’ he said. ‘That sort of stuff isn’t painted, it’s sprayed. A factory job.’
‘Couldn’t it be sprayed on the spot?’
‘Perhaps it could.’ A repository of information in Athens, he seemed more annoyed than not by the fact Harriet’s suggestions made sense.
‘Where did you hear all this?’ Alan wanted to know.
‘In the mess at Tatoi. I’ve been doing a piece on British intervention in Greece. It may be hush-hush but when I was there the place was buzzing with it. The pilot had just come in. No one had had time to clamp down on his report and the chaps were talking.’
‘You think the Germans are preparing an invasion?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine. You might even say it’s as good as D’Albiac’s. No one knows anything. But you’d better keep it under your hat.’ Feeling he may have said too much, Ben Phipps looked sternly at the Pringles and turned to warn Yakimov, but Yakimov was dawdling far behind.
The party, oppressed by the day, became more oppressed as they contemplated the possibility of a German move. And how possible it now seemed! Why should the stronger partner of the Axis stand by inactive while the weaker suffered ignominious defeat? Yet who could bear to think the Greeks had suffered in vain?
Guy said: ‘The Bulgarian roads are the worst in Europe. There’s only one bridge over the Danube. How could all this heavy stuff get to the frontier? Don’t you think it’s some cock-and-bull story?’
‘Well …’ Having blown up his sensation, Ben Phipps saw fit to deflate it: ‘The pilot saw something all right, but perhaps it wasn’t what it seemed. It could have been a sham – something set up to scare the Greeks or, for that matter, the Jugs. There’s this tricky situation in Yugoslavia: Peter and Paul. Which one’s going to fly away? The pro-German faction’s behind the Regent; the others are behind the King. If Paul’s allowed a free hand, then the Germans’ll let things ride. Their troops are spread thin enough as it is. They don’t want to hold down more unproductive territory.’
Alan murmured his agreement. It was not much of a hope, but these days they existed off just such a hope as this one. And there was the persisting human belief that nothing could be as sinister as it seemed. They began to rise out of their consternation and as they did so, found that Yakimov, hurrying to catch them up, had caught a sentence or two of Phipps’s talk.
‘What’s this, dear boy? The Nasties coming here?’
Looking into Yakimov’s great, frightened eyes, Ben Phipps could only laugh: ‘I didn’t say so.’
‘But if they do: what’ll happen to us?’
‘What, indeed!’
Harriet said: ‘We have the sea. It makes me feel safe.’
‘This great ridiculous mass of useless water!’ Ben Phipps peered at it: ‘I’d feel a lot safer if it weren’t there.’
Guy said: ‘I’m inclined to agree,’ and the two men laughed as though they shared a joke.
Phipps’ manner towards Guy suggested understanding and incipient intimacy while Guy, aware of the interest they held in common, behaved as though their concurrence were only a matter of time. Harriet was disturbed, feeling that the atmosphere between them was like the onset of a love-affair. She became more critical of Phipps, suspecting he was the sort of man who, though sexually normal, prefers his own sex. He disliked her and probably disliked women. He had about him the reek of the trouble-maker, the natural enemy of married life; the sort of man who observes, or seems to observe, the conventions while leading husbands astray and undermining the authority of wives.
She walked between them but when they reached the point at Edam, they turned and Phipps placed himself beside Guy, saying: ‘I heard you’d been appointed Chief Instructor, and I was jolly glad. I never had any use for that twit Dubedat. And what about Callard? I bet he’s had some little douceur slipped into his hand?’
‘He’s to be Social Secretary.’
‘Social Secretary!’ Phipps’s tone was hollow with disgust. ‘The rest of us work our balls off for a living while he lies around at Phaleron and gets paid for it.’
Guy laughed. This exchange confirmed the understanding between them. Their unfortunate introduction at Zonar’s was forgotten and Guy’s manner lost a last hint of restraint.
Phipps became confidentiaclass="underline" ‘I won’t pretend I wasn’t after the directorship. I was. I need something more than free-lance journalism to keep me going, but it was Gracey who led me to believe I might get it. He humbugged me. And Pinkrose and Dubedat. We were all after it, you know that. He had us all running errands and taking him gifts and circling round him like planets round the sun. If he spoke we listened open-mouthed. We were all waiting for the crown to drop from his nerveless fingers; each one thought he’d get it when it fell.’
‘Did you know Callard was in the running?’
‘No. That was a secret between Archie and Colin Gracey. And the Major, of course. The rest of us poor mutts were just led up the garden. I have a reputation – you may have heard that I scribble a bit. I had a book published by the Left Book Club. I’m not unknown. I got friends at home to do a bit of lobbying. Then, if you please, word comes from Cairo that Archie’s got the job. Gracey had fooled me. I was mad. In fact, I was hopping mad.’
‘But why did Gracey choose Callard?’
‘A matter of friendship. Gracey liked to move in the right circles.’
‘And had Callard any sort of qualifications?’
‘He’d a degree of sorts; third in History or something. It’s quite fashionable to get a third, of course. One of his Oxford admirers described him as “frittering away an intellectual fortune”. The fortune, if it exists, is kept well under lock and key. I’ve seen nothing of it. Have you?’ Phipps spoke in a tone of breathless inquiry as though a sense of injustice were at last bursting free. ‘I could do the job better; you could do the job better; even Dubedat could do it better. Yet it was simply handed to Callard as though he had some natural right to it.’
Guy nodded in understanding of Phipps’s indignation. ‘He probably thought he had a natural right to it,’ Guy said. ‘A class right. There’s a certain sort of rich, privileged young man who imagines he is born to be in the front rank of everything; even the arts. If he chooses to write or paint, he must be a genius. There are some who feel quite a sense of grievance when proved wrong. Really, believe it or not, there were those who felt it monstrous that D. H. Lawrence, a miner’s son, should have so much talent. Some of them remain dilettante, believing that if they chose to apply their talents, they’d be remarkable; but they don’t choose.’
Ben Phipps’s laughter stopped him in his tracks. He threw back his head, shouting: ‘You’re right. That’s Archie: a genius by right of birth who has chosen to be a dilettante. The great “might have been”.’ Phipps’s laughter came to an abrupt stop. He said: ‘I can tell you this: if his appointment had been confirmed, I intended to institute an inquiry.’