Miss Dunne, appalled by this discussion, gasped and goggled as though suffering strangulation; and Guy, observing her discomfort, leant towards her and asked with friendly interest: ‘What is it you do at the Legation?’
Her answer was immediate: ‘I’m not in the habit of discussing my work.’
Even for Guy, Harriet thought, that should be enough; but far from it. Challenged by her awkwardness and vanity, he cajoled her as though she were a difficult student, telling her about the revue. There was to be a repeat performance and he suggested she might take part.
While he was talking, Miss Dunne wriggled so much her chair worked backwards until she was two foot or more from the table. When he paused for a reply, she gave her head a violent shake. Those nearby watched his tactics with apprehensive delight.
The revue dismissed, Guy said he was a tennis player himself. Would Miss Dunne be willing to give him a game?
At this, Miss Dunne’s colour darkened and spread up among the roots of her red hair and down the front of her emerald green dress. At the same time a knowing smirk spread over her large carmine face. She said archly: ‘I’ll think about it.’
Harriet, turning a glance of appeal on Alan, caught Charles’s eye. He gave her a sympathetic grin, and she grinned back. At this exchange, life lost its threatening desolation and the air grew bright.
Alan said he had arranged for their coffee to be sent to his room. Harriet, taken unwillingly upstairs, felt she was being taken from the one person she wished to see.
Alan’s room, which had only one window, was smaller than that which had been occupied by Gracey. When the door shut, Harriet turned on Guy:
‘That idiotic woman thought you were making advances to her.’
‘Darling, really! You are being ridiculous.’ He looked to Alan for support but Alan was inclined to side with Harriet.
‘I admired your campaign,’ he said. ‘I really think you won Miss Dunne’s heart. No small achievement. But, then, it would take a ruthless misanthrope to hold out against so simple and beneficent an approach to one’s fellow men.’
Alan had recently collected some photographs, taken during his wanderings in Greece, which he had kept in store. Now, lifting the large prints one by one from the portfolios, he studied each tenderly and nostalgically before passing it to Harriet or Guy.
He was so pleased to have his friends share the sights he had seen, Harriet was touched and did her best to put Charles from her mind. Gazing into his pictures of rocky islands, olive trees, classical temples outlined against the sea, and chalk-white churches and houses taken at mid-day when the shadowed walls shimmered with reflected light, she said: ‘We wanted to come here. This is the country where we most wanted to be, but we have seen nothing. We might as well be in prison.’
On an impulse, Alan said: ‘I shall never leave Greece.’
‘But if the Italians come, how can you stay?’
‘I could hide out on the islands. I speak the language. I have friends everywhere. People would shelter me. Yes, I’m sure they would shelter me.’
Watching Alan as he spoke, Harriet saw him a ponderous man, quiet, sardonic yet gentle, patient and long-suffering. She had thought he loved only Greece and his dog, but now she saw that to him Greece was not only a love, it was sanctuary. But she could not suppose his plan to remain in hiding here was more than romantic fantasy. There had been Englishwomen in Bucharest, ex-governesses, without friends or money outside Rumania, who were determined to stay but, in the end, they had left with the rest.
While Alan was talking, she heard Pinkrose’s voice raised in the garden and, moving as though aimlessly, she went to the window. Pinkrose, muffled to the eyes, was standing on the carriage-way saying good-bye to Charles. She watched Charles as he saluted and turned and walked off towards the back garden gate. The lemon trees hid him from sight but she remained by the window, looking in the direction he had gone.
Guy and Alan were still intent on the photographs, with Alan giving a disquisition upon his photographic technique. Harriet knew Guy did not understand a word and it seemed to her that nothing Alan said had any relation to life. Nothing in the room had any relation to life. She could scarcely contain her impatience to follow Charles out of the garden and down to the town centre where at that moment he was probably wondering what had become of her.
Alan, transported by Guy’s admiration for his work, dusted and opened more portfolios, and said with the emotion of a lonely man: ‘You will stay to tea, won’t you?’
Guy had had other plans for the afternoon, but the appeal was too much for him.
‘We would like to stay,’ he said.
21
Harriet was certain she would hear from Charles next morning. She suffered, as he had suffered, a feverish sense of urgency; but the messenger did not arrive. As the morning passed without a sign, her excitement died down. She had been mistaken. It had all been a mistake. There was nothing to hope for.
When she left the office at mid-day, Charles was passing the door. He gave her a sidelong smile but hurried on, too busy to stop. He did not look round. His long, quick strides took him down the square to the Corinthian. He disappeared inside.
Crestfallen, she, too, went down the square, but slowly, with no object in view. As she approached the Corinthian, Charles came out again. He stood at the top of the hotel steps, a cablegram in his hand. Seeing her, he came pelting down as though it were all some sort of game, and lightly asked: ‘Where are you going to eat?’
‘I haven’t decided yet.’
She felt he expected something from her, but she did not know what. Irritated by the incident, she made to walk on and his face contracted with an odd, almost bitter, dismay: ‘Don’t go.’
‘I thought you were busy.’
‘Not now. I had to pick up this cable. It could have been important.’
‘But it wasn’t?’
‘Not very. Anyway, not so important it can’t wait.’
At a loss, she said: ‘I expected to hear from you.’
‘You turned me down at Tatoi. It rests with you now.’
‘Does it?’ she laughed and in her surprise examined him as though she had taken a step away from him. Behind his inculcated good manners, she had been aware of his demanding arrogance – the quality that had caused Alan to describe him as ‘a spoilt little boy’. Now it was subdued. Perhaps he was being cautious, but he gave an impression of humility. His fixed, entreating gaze brought Sasha to her mind, and, stretching out her hand, she smiled and said: ‘Then come and have lunch with me.’
In the second stage of their relationship, it seemed to Harriet she had no aim or purpose beyond seeing Charles; but she was not obsessed out of all reason. She knew the same compelling intention had once been directed on to Guy. Directed and deflected. Had Charles asked her, she would have said she had found her marriage hoplessly intractable. ‘Don’t blame me. It’s all too difficult.’ Charles asked her nothing. Apparently he had decided that explanations also rested with her. Unasked, she gave no answers. She had her own sort of loyalty.
The rain came and went. On wet afternoons they would take tea at the Corinthian. When it was fine, they walked about Athens, sensing the spring in the electric freshness of the air.
A haze of green was coming over the trees at the top of Constitution Square. During the weeks of winter Alan, unwilling to go far, had exercised his dog about the area of the Academy, and now that the weather was improving, he was aware of Harriet’s withdrawal and would make no claim on her. If she cared to join him at his mid-day session with Yakimov, then she was welcome, but he did not ask her to come for walks in the gardens. Once or twice when he met Harriet with Charles in the street, he glanced away, preferring to remain unaware of her new relationship.