Next day Yakimov was full of the fact that by leaving the Major’s party, the Pringles had missed ‘no end of a dust up’. Everyone was talking about it. Late in the evening, Phipps, described by Yakimov as a ‘a trifle oiled’, had attacked the Major for supporting Archie Callard’s appointment and deceiving Phipps himself about his chances.
‘Callard’s never done a day’s work in his life,’ he told Cookson and an attentive company. ‘What good did you think he’d be as Director? He’d’ve been a figurehead and a poor one, at that! He’s a playboy and a poseur with nothing but his neuroses to recommend him.’
‘And so on and so on,’ said Yakimov, aghast and delighted by such plain speaking.
Callard, listening, had put up a show of indifference, but the Major had been much upset. He had sniffed and dabbed his nose and tried to hush Phipps, but in the end he had turned and ‘told Ben P. a thing or two’. He had said that Gracey, when asked for his opinion, had cabled the London office to say that Phipps, as a result of his politics, his past association with undesirable persons and his generally facetious attitude towards the reigning authorities, was totally unsuited to be in any sort of authoritative position.
Having revealed this, the Major, in a state near hysteria, had shouted shrilly: ‘And I agree. I agree. I agree.’
‘Then you know what you can do,’ Phipps had told him and raging out of the house, had crashed the front door so violently the glass had fallen out and broken in pieces all over the hall.
Guy said: ‘We were fortunate to miss that.’ An opinion Harriet did not share.
PART THREE
The Romantics
15
In the New Year, when the move to the villa was imminent, Guy was too busy even to discuss it. He had returned to work like a reformed drunkard returning to the bottle. He was exuberantly busy.
Some mornings he would not wait for breakfast. When Harriet asked what he did all day, he said he was arranging schedules, laying out lecture courses, enrolling students and reorganizing the library. And what on earth kept him so late at the School each night? He interviewed students and advised which course of study was more suitable for each. Soon he would be even more busy, for he was about to rehearse the entertainment he had promised the airmen at Tatoi.
‘Is that still going on?’
‘Certainly.’
‘There seems to be no end to it.’
‘Of course there’s no end to it,’ Guy cheerfully replied. ‘That’s what teaching is.’
When she asked if he would help move their stuff to the villa, he could only laugh.
‘Lunch time, or evening, would do,’ Harriet said.
‘Darling, it’s impossible.’
She took the baggage in a taxi. The taxi could not get down the narrow lane to the villa. Kyria Dhiamandopoulou, seeing her carrying the cases to the door, asked playfully: ‘Where is that nice Mr Pringle?’
‘Working.’
‘Ah, the poor man!’
Kyria Dhiamandopoulou was ready to leave but had to wait for her husband who had driven into Athens on some piece of business. She was a small, handsome woman who, in spite of the food shortage, had managed to stay plump. When they first met, she had been off-hand and seemed harassed; now, on the point of departure, she was in high spirits.
She insisted that Harriet must come up to the roof where the mid-day sun was warm. ‘See how nice,’ she said. ‘In spring you will see it is very nice.’ A marble table was set beneath a pergola over which a plant had been trained. Kyria Dhiamandopoulou touched the branches that flaked like an old cigar. ‘My pretty plant,’ she sighed. ‘How sad that I must leave it! Here, here, sit here! It is not so cold, I think? We will take coffee till my husband come.’
She sped off to fetch a tray with cups like egg-cups and a brass beaker of Turkish coffee. While they sipped at the little cups of sweet, black coffee, she pointed out the distant Piraeus road and the rocky hill that protected the roof from the sea wind. ‘On the other side there is a river. Now not much, but when there is more rain there will be more river. It is the Ilissus. You have heard of it? No? The classical writers speak of it. It is a classical site, you know. Before the invasion, they were building here, but now they have stopped. It is quiet like the country,’ she sighed again. ‘How sad that we must leave!’
‘But why are you leaving?’ Harriet asked.
Kyria Dhiamandopoulou gave her a searching glance before deciding to let her know the truth.
‘I dream true.’
‘Do you?’
‘I will tell you. You know, par exemple, that old woman who begs in Stadiou? In black, with fingers bound in such a way?’
Harriet nodded. ‘I’m frightened of her. They say she’s a leper, but I suppose she can’t be?’
‘I don’t know, but I don’t like. Now, I’ll tell you. I had a dream. I dreamt she came running at me in Stadiou. I ran from her … I ran to a shop, a pharmacy; she ran after me. I scream, she scream. What horror! She has turned crazy. Well, next day, I forgot. One forgets, you know! I went to Stadiou and there was the woman and when she saw me, she rush at me … “My dream!” I cry and I run to a shop. It is a pharmacy – the same pharmacy, mind you! The people inside, alarmed that I scream – the same! The very same! “Help me, she’s mad!” I cry and someone slams the door. The proprietor telephones the police. I sit in a chair and shake my body. It was unspeakable!’
‘Yes, indeed! But surely you are not leaving because of that!’
‘No. That was one dream only. I have many. Some I forget, some I remember. I dreamt the Germans came here.’
‘You mean to this house?’
‘Yes, to this house. When I wake, I say to my husband: “Now is the time to leave. I have a brother in Sparta. We will go to him.”’
‘Are you sure they were Germans? They might have been Italians.’
‘They were Germans. I saw the little swastika. They came down the lane. They struck upon the door.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘I saw no more.’
‘But Greece is not at war with Germany.’
‘That is true. Still, we go to Sparta.’
‘If the Germans come here, won’t they go to Sparta?’
‘I have no indication.’
Harriet, easily touched by the supernatural, was dismayed by Kyria Dhiamandopoulou’s dream, but Kyria Dhiamandopoulou, mistaking her fearful immobility for phlegm, said: ‘You English have strong nerfs!’
Before Harriet could disclaim this compliment, a hooting came from the unmade road at the top of the lane and Kyria Dhiamandopoulou leapt up delightedly, crying: ‘My husband. Now we can go,’ and she ran down to join Kyrios Dhiamandopoulos who had already started loading up the car.
Joining in the bustle and laughter of the departure, Harriet forgot the dream, but then, all in a moment, the Dhiamandopoulaioi were gone and she was alone in the unfamiliar silence.
When she had unpacked the clothing, she went out to look at the Ilissus. The lane led over the hill through the damp, grey clay from which flints protruded like bones. On the other side a trickle of water made its way between high clay banks overhung by a wood of wind-bent pines. It looked a sad little river to have engaged the classical writers and survived so long. Half-built houses stood about amid heaps of cement and sand, but the district seemed deserted.
The memory of Kyria Dhiamandopoulou’s dream came down on her and she knew she had made a mistake. She had brought Guy here against his will. They had no telephone. They were too far away from things. They would be forgotten and one day wake to find the Germans knocking at the door.