When she had eaten the omelette, she became restless and thought of going for a walk. Guy put his hand over hers and held to her, saying: ‘Listen to Ben.’
Ben, alerted by Guy, turned his gaze on her but could not keep it fixed anywhere for long. In ordinary exchanges he kept up an attitude of confident repose but when excited by his own disclosures, his pupils dodged about, black and small as currants behind his heavy lenses.
Harriet seized on a moment’s silence to inquire about the revue. Guy said that Alan Frewen had undertaken to speak to Pinkrose. Harriet attempted another question but Guy motioned her not to interrupt Phipps. At last Phipps reached his usual conclusion and paused to let Guy expose his own belief that had the forces that brought about the war used their wealth and energy to further the concepts of Marx, the earthly paradise would be well established by now.
Both Guy and Ben Phipps were proud of their inflexible materialism yet, Harriet decided, Phipps had a mystic’s insight into the workings of high finance, while Guy read Das Kapital as the padre might read his Bible. Seeing them hold to political mysteries as other men held to God, she told herself they were a pair of hopeless romantics. Their conversation did not relate to reality. She was bored. Ben Phipps bored her. Guy and Phipps together bored her. Would the day come when it was Guy who bored her?
She remembered when she had wanted him to take over her life. That phase did not last long. She had soon decided that Guy might be better read and better informed, but, so far as life was concerned, her own judgement served her better than his. Guy had a moral strength but it resembled one of those vast Victorian feats of engineering: impressive but out of place in the modern world. He had a will to believe in others but the belief survived only because he evaded fact. Life as he saw it could not support itself; it had to be subsidized by fantasy. He was a materialist without being a realist; and that, she thought, gave him the worst of both worlds.
Ben Phipps’s talk came to a stop when he noticed the time. He had to return to write up events. Guy, speaking as one conscious of new responsibilities, offered to take Harriet that evening to the cellar café, Elatos, and asked: ‘How about you, Ben?’ Ben said: ‘I’ll join you but, things being as they are, I’ll have to keep near to a telephone.’
It seemed that Guy did intend to take over her life. But too late. Much too late. And Phipps came with them wherever they went.
‘Darling,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how you can stand so much of him.’
Guy was astonished. ‘He’s a most lively, stimulating companion.’
‘Well, I don’t want to listen to him. Especially now, when things are happening here.’
‘If more people had listened to him, none of this need have happened at all.’
‘How can you be so ridiculous!’ She was beginning to fear she had married a man whom she could not take seriously.
‘Besides,’ Guy added with reason: ‘Ben knows what’s going on here. He knows more than most people. He told me that British troops were disembarking on Lemnos, and he was right. Now he’s found out they’re moving to the mainland. I don’t suppose even your friend Frewen could have told you that.’
‘He could, I don’t doubt; but he didn’t. I imagine it’s inside information.’
‘Well, if you want inside information, you’d better stick to Ben.’
Important visitors arrived in Athens. The Parthenon was opened to them and Ben Phipps, intending to report the occasion, obtained tickets and took the Pringles with him. The British Foreign Secretary stood at the Beulé Gate and smiled at Harriet as she passed. Harriet, smiling back at the youthful, handsome, familiar face, was transported as though some part of England itself had come to be with them here in their isolation.
Ben Phipps kept silent till they were upon the plateau, then he grinned round to Guy, his eyes sparkling with ironical glee, his whole square, heavy body twitching in his eagerness to shatter the moment’s awe. He began to say: ‘I bet …’ and Harriet said: ‘Shut up.’
‘Your wife’s a bloody Conservative,’ he complained.
‘Oh no,’ Guy put an arm round her shoulder, ‘she’s merely a romantic.’
‘Same thing.’
‘I wouldn’t say so. Romantics are relatively harmless.’
Harriet moved from under Guy’s restraining arm and made her way among the officers and officials who stood about on the hilltop in the last of the afternoon sunlight. Charles was not among them. She ran up the Parthenon steps and stood between the columns, watching Guy and Phipps crossing the rough ground; Phipps, in brown greatcoat, rocking heavy-footed on the stones, like a stout brown bear.
They decided to go to the Museum. As they walked inside the Parthenon, Charles, with two other officers, climbed the steps at the eastern end and came towards them. He saw Harriet. He looked at her companions and looked away. He smiled to himself. Neither Guy nor Ben Phipps noticed him. At the steps she managed to glance back, but he was already out of sight.
Not much was left in the Museum but enough to detain them. Harriet stood for a long time gazing at the archaic horses with their gentle curving necks, and thought: ‘It doesn’t matter. It was an impossible situation.’ Now, thank goodness, it was over.
When they came out the sun was sinking and the important visitors had gone. The last of the officers were wandering, shadowy in the later light, towards the gate. Outside the gate Alan Frewen was making his way cautiously down the rocky slope to the road and Ben Phipps asked: ‘What’s the great man doing here?’
Alan laughed: ‘I expect you know as well as I do.’
‘Would he stand for an interview?’
‘He might.’
‘Where’s he now?’
‘Probably half-way to Cyprus.’
‘Thanks for telling me. Come on, I’ll give you a lift back.’
When Ben dropped Harriet and Alan at the office, Guy arranged to pick her up again at seven o’clock. He and Ben were taking her to supper at Babayannis’.
Even octopus was scarce now. At Babayannis’ the menu offered lung stew and the laced up intestines that had given Harriet a chronic stomach disorder.
Guy said: ‘What does it matter? There’s plenty of wine!!’
Both men preferred drink to food; but Harriet would rather eat than drink. Made irritable by hunger, she felt she had been imprisoned long enough by Phipps and Guy; and she was further irritated by Guy’s folly. Everything said seemed to confirm it. In the past she had complained because she did not have enough of Guy’s company. Now she had too much.
Hacking away at the grey, slippery intestines, she heard Phipps repeat again Hemingway’s reply to Fitzgerald’s observation: ‘The rich are different from us.’
‘He said,’ said Phipps gleefully, ‘“Yes, they have more money.”’
She fixed Phipps in a rage and said: ‘I suppose you agree with Hemingway?’