‘Not just now.’ Leaving Yakimov in jaunty mood, she wandered on with nothing to do and nowhere to go, but restless with the anxious susceptiveness of someone who has lost something and still hopes to find it. She had heard nothing from Charles and this time she had no hope that, meeting, they would be drawn together again. He would not forgive her. She had nothing to gain by meeting him. Their relationship, without reason, had destroyed itself, yet she longed to come face to face with him. Although she looked for him among the mid-day crowds she was startled, when she saw him, into a state of nausea.
He was standing beside a military lorry in Stadium Street. The lorry was one of a convoy preparing to move off. Harriet, on the opposite pavement, watching him examining a map of some sort, expected him to feel her presence and cross over to her, but she soon saw there was no time for subtleties of that sort. One of the drivers spoke to him. There was a movement among the men. In a moment he would be gone. She ran across the road. Perturbed and breathless, she managed to call his name. He swung round.
‘You’re going?’ she asked.
‘Yes. We’re off, any minute now.’
‘Where will you go? Have you been told? Alan says the English forces are at Monastir.’
‘They were, but things are happening up there. We won’t know anything till we get to Yannina.’ Speaking with even detachment, he smiled formally, a guarded, defensive smile, and moved a little away as though on the very point of taking his departure; but she knew he would not go. This was the last moment they would have here, perhaps the last they would ever have. He could not leave until something conclusive had been said.
‘Is there any chance of your coming back to Athens?’
‘Who knows?’ He gave his brief ironical laugh. ‘If things go well, we’ll drive right through to Berlin.’ He moved towards her, then edged away, suspicious of the attraction that even here gilded the air about them. He wanted to turn his back upon the deceptive magic.
‘I may not see you again, then?’ she said.
‘Do you care? You have so many friends.’
‘They aren’t important.’
‘They only seem to be?’
The argument was ridiculous. She could not carry it on, but said: ‘It was difficult. Among all these alarms and threats, coming and goings, no one has a private existence. When it is all over …’ She stopped, having no idea when it would be over and knowing time was against her. To interrupt a spell was to break it. Whether they met again or not, they had probably come to an end.
The convoy was ready to start. The driver of the first lorry climbed to his seat and slammed his door shut. The noise was a hint to Charles: he must get his farewells over and return to duty.
‘Good-bye, and good luck,’ Harriet said. She put her hand on his arm and for a second his composure failed. He stared into her face, anguished, and she was appalled to realize he was so vulnerable.
There was no time to waste now. He said: ‘Good-bye’ and, crossing the pavement, swung up beside the driver and shut himself in. He could now look down on her from a safe distance, apparently unmoved, smiling again.
Some Greeks had gathered on the pavement to watch the convoy set out. As the first lorry started up, a woman threw a flower into the cabin, the valediction to valour. Charles caught it as it came to him and held it up like a trophy. The lorry moved. The last thing Harriet saw was his hand holding the flower. The second lorry obscured the first. The other lorries followed, driving eastwards, making for the main road to the north.
She went after them, returning the way she had come, and watched them as they went into the distance. With the last of them out of sight, she no longer had any reason for going in that direction, but she had no reason for going in any other. She had been left alone with nothing to do and no reason for doing anything.
Her sense of vacancy extended itself to the streets about her. It was a grey, amorphous day in which people and buildings had lost identity, dissolving with every other circumstance, into insipidity. The town had the wan air of a place in which human life had become extinct. The streets seemed empty: left there without object or purpose, she felt as empty as the streets.
When she found herself back at Constitution Square, she stopped out of a sense of futility. Why go anywhere? She simply stood until she saw Guy coming towards her. Her impulse was to avoid him, but he had already seen her and as he came towards her, he asked: ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Charles has gone.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He took her fingers and squeezed them, looking at her with a quizzical sympathy as though her unhappiness were something in which he had no part. He was sorry for her. Feeling she did not want this sort of commiseration, she detached her fingers from his hold.
He asked where she was going? She did not know but said: ‘We could see if the Judas trees are coming out.’
Guy considered this, but of course it was not possible: ‘I’ve a date with Ben,’ he said. ‘He’s trying to get a call through to Belgrade. If he can’t reach Belgrade, he’ll try Zagreb. He may be able to find what’s happened to the Legation people.’
‘No sign of David yet?’
‘None; no news of any sort. I’ve met most of the trains. The road beside the School runs straight through to the station, so I can get there quickly. The trains are packed to the doors. I’ve spoken to a lot of people, but there’s such a flap, it’s hard to discover what’s happening inside Yugoslavia. I suppose the Legation will see it out to the end.’
‘But David has no diplomatic protection?’
‘No. Well, I must get on.’ Before leaving, Guy wanted to see her comfortably disposed and said: ‘Tandy and Yakimov are at Zonar’s. Why don’t you go and have tea with them?’
‘No. I won’t be in the office this evening. In fact, I won’t be going back there. My job’s packed up. I think I’ll take the metro home.’
‘Yes, do that. I can’t get back for supper, but I won’t be late.’
Guy sped happily on his way, seeing her problems as settled.
The climbing plant on the villa roof had come into leaf and, spreading over the pergola, was forming a thatch against the sun. It had budded and now the buds were starting to open. The little white waxen flowers had a scent like perfumed chocolate. Anastea had told Harriet that in summer the Kyrios and Kyria would take their breakfast and supper under the pergola at the marble table, and soon the Pringles would be able to do the same thing.
Since the district had taken on the verdancy of spring, its atmosphere had changed. Harriet sometimes walked beside the little trickle that was the Ilissus, or up among the pines that overhung the river-bed. The villa was at last beginning to seem a home, but a disturbed, precarious home. Though it was not within the target area, it was near enough to the harbour to be shaken by gun-fire, and when there were night raids, the Pringles would sit up reading, having no hope of sleep till the ‘all clear’ sounded.
Up among the pine trees she had met a cat which followed her to the edge of the wood but would not come into the open. It was a thin, little, black female, its dugs swelling out pink from the sparse black fur, so she knew it had kittens somewhere. She thought it must have a home in one of the shacks beyond the trees. It was obviously a home where there was not much to eat, but there was not much to eat anywhere these days. Harriet knew the cat’s eager attentiveness was an appeal for food. There was nothing at the villa except the grey, dry tasteless bread they had for breakfast. She took some to the wood and the cat devoured it with savage exultation.
She asked Anastea to whom the cat might belong, but Anastea treated the question with contempt. Seeing Harriet put the bread into her pocket, she grumbled to herself. Harriet did not understand what she said but could guess: if there was bread to spare, there were human beings in need of it.