‘Guy thought you would like to come with us?’
‘Yes. I’ll come with you.’
As they passed through the foyer, she glanced up the stair-case with a vision in mind of Charles hurrying down to her. But there was no one on the stair and no sign of Charles.
Alan said: ‘Surely you haven’t left the office for good? I need someone to edit my notes on the German broadcasts to Greece.’
Harriet was beginning to regret her lost employment, but said: ‘I can’t work in the Billiard Room with the Twocurrys.’
‘I thought you’d have more space there; but if you like, you can join Yaki and me in the News Room.’
‘I’d like that,’ she said.
26
Prince Paul claimed that he and his faction had saved Yugoslavia. Perhaps they had unintentionally saved Greece. No one had time to find out. The Regent was gone in a night and next morning all the talk was about revolution. The Regency was terminated. Peter had displaced Paul. The quisling ministers had been arrested. The English, Americans and Russians were being cheered in the streets of Belgrade, and the whole of Yugoslavia was a ferment of rejoicings and anti-Axis demonstrations.
‘Magnificent,’ said Ben Phipps. ‘But what happens next?’
‘It’s magnificent,’ Guy said, ‘chiefly because they didn’t stop to ask what happens next. They could not accept German domination. They revolted against it without counting the cost. That was certainly magnificent. And what would have happened in any case? Would the Germans have kept the terms of the agreement?’
Called to order, Ben murmured: ‘Not very likely,’ and Harriet noted that these days Guy was more inclined to call Ben Phipps to order and Ben Phipps more ready to agree with him. As a result, although she still disliked Phipps, she was less resentful of his influence over Guy.
‘Still,’ he said. ‘What will happen next?’
Tandy grunted once or twice and Guy and Ben looked at him. He spoke seldom. When he did speak, it was slowly, with pauses and grunts that promised some deep-set thought, not easily brought to birth. Now, at last reaching the point of speech, he said: ‘We must wait and see.’
Waiting to see, they waited in the ambience of Tandy who spent most of his day at Zonar’s, usually at an outdoor table he had adopted as his own. He could always be found by anyone in need of companionship. Although he had only just arrived and might soon be returning whence he had come, he was already an established figure in Athens. Large and splendid, he seemed, in a changing world, permanent and unchanging. People gathered about him as about a village oak.
Tandy came like a gift, a distraction heaven-sent, just when the fine hopes of March were changing to doubts again. Guy had discovered him but Phipps took him up with enthusiasm, and Yakimov clung to him like a lover. In spite of his fame, no one knew much about him. From occasional remarks, they gathered he had begun the war very comfortably in Trieste but, fearing to be trapped there, had moved to Belgrade shortly before the Italians entered against the Allies.
‘Doesn’t do to stay anywhere too long,’ he said.
Ben Phipps said: ‘You certainly left Belgrade in good time.’
Tandy gave him a reproving look. He said nothing then but later conveyed, almost without words, the fact that his flight from Belgrade had not been impetuous; nor, as it might seem, premature.
‘Not a private person,’ he mumbled. ‘Under orders.’
‘Really?’ said Harriet. ‘Whose orders?’
Tandy silenced her with the same reproving look and Guy and Ben Phipps, when they later had her alone, told her one did not ask questions like that. The two men, conferring together, decided that Tandy must be an exile who had been placed in jeopardy by his extreme left-wing activities and would, when he received the word, rejoin the Yugoslav revolutionaries as a sort of classical demagogue.
They were displeased when Harriet said: ‘He seems just another Yakimov to me.’
‘That’s only the get-up,’ Ben Phipps said.
Yakimov was a joke: Tandy was not. He certainly managed, while speaking seldom, to extrude a sense of gravity and intellectual weight beside which Yakimov seemed a shadow. When anyone expressed an opinion or expounded a theory, he gave the impression that he knew what was about to be said but wouldn’t spoil the fun by saying it first. He could also disconcert the speaker by dropping his eyelids so there was no knowing whether he agreed or disagreed.
When news of the Yugoslav revolution went round, he had seemed to share Guy’s enthusiasm while, at the same time, reflecting Ben Phipps’s qualms. They waited to see what he would do now. Forty-eight hours later he was still in Athens, still sitting at his table outside Zonar’s, and Harriet said: ‘Doesn’t look as though he’s going back, does it?’
Ben Phipps snorted: ‘I don’t know what he’s up to, but I’m beginning to think it’s nothing very much.’
Guy laughed, agreed and said: ‘Never mind. I like the old buffer. He may be another Yakimov, but he pays his round.’
Finding he said little when drunk and nothing much when sober, Guy and Ben ceased to consult Tandy on political matters and, talking across him, did not even look to see whether he dropped his eyelids or not. Even though curiosity about him had gone down in disappointment and boredom, they liked him to be there. He was a centre of companionship, and was, as Guy said, scrupulous in paying his round. He was equally scrupulous in seeing himself repaid. He was the only person with whom Yakimov drank on equal terms. Though he paid from a bulky crocodile wallet with gold clasps and Yakimov, when his turn came, had to search his torn pockets for a coin, Tandy, compassionless, let Yakimov search. He was tolerant of Yakimov, no more. He made no concessions and this fact seemed to heighten Yakimov’s regard for his new friend. Charmed and challenged by the first sight of Tandy, Yakimov, in the News Room, would murmur to himself: ‘Remarkable chap!’ and bring Tandy’s name into conversation as though he had him constantly in mind.
‘We’re fortunate in having him here,’ Yakimov said.
‘Why?’ Harriet asked.
Yakimov shook his head slowly and drew in an appreciative breath, marvelling at Tandy’s quality. ‘He’s travelled, dear girl. Your own Yak got around in his day but that one – That One has trotted the globe.’
‘But would you say that travel, in itself, is an achievement. It only calls for money and energy. Has he travelled to any purpose? Has he, for instance, written anything about his travels? I don’t think so.’
‘Scarcely surprising,’ Yakimov smiled at her ingenuousness. ‘The dear boy’s tied down by the Official Secrets Act.’
‘You mean he was sent abroad? He’s a secret agent?’
‘Indubitably, dear girl.’
‘I can’t believe it. No secret agent would dress like that.’
‘I think I ought to know, dear girl.’
‘How did you know?’
Yakimov shook his head again, wordless with admiration of the man. He had told Ben Phipps: ‘At first sighting, I recognized Roger as a Master Spy.’
‘How did you do that?’ Phipps asked.
‘There are signs. That wallet stuffed with the Ready – the money comes from somewhere. But there’s more to it than that. He recognized your Yak. Nothing said, of course; but we made contact.’
‘You tipped each other the wink, eh? How’d you do it? Tell me. A handshake, like the Freemasons?’
‘Not at liberty to say, dear boy.’
Guy and Phipps were now inclined to laugh at Tandy, but Yakimov refused to join in.
‘Remarkable man,’ he insisted. ‘Most remarkable man! In disguise of course.’