‘Where did you hear that?’
‘I heard it before I left the office. It was the last piece of news to come out of Yugoslavia.’
Guy shook his head, but did not try to comment. There was a period of quiet, then a sound of rough and tuneless singing came from the top of the lane where some men had gathered in one of the half-built houses to raise their voices against the darkness.
As the singing went on and on, Harriet began to feel it unbearable and suddenly cried out: ‘Make them stop.’ Before Guy could say anything, she ran to the kitchen and told Anastea to go out and deal with the singers. Anastea shouted a command up the lane and the song came abruptly to a stop.
Shocked, Guy asked: ‘How could you do that?’
Harriet did not look at him: she was nearly weeping.
‘They may be men on leave, or invalided from the front. Really, how could you?’
He was so seldom angry that she felt stunned by his reprimand. She shook her head. She did not know, she really did not know how she could do it, or even why she did do it. She wanted Guy to forget the incident but as he returned to his books, his face was creased with concern for the men slighted in that way. It did not relax, and suddenly she collapsed and began to cry helplessly, unable to swallow back her own guilt and remorse and the personal grief shut up inside her.
Guy watched her for a while, too upset to try to comfort her, then said as though it were only now he could bring himself to say what he had to say: ‘We’re leaving here. Alan Frewen thinks he can arrange for us to have a room at the Academy.’
‘But I can’t go. I can’t leave the cat.’
‘We have to go. It’s not just the raids and the lack of sleep. He says we must be somewhere where we can be reached by telephone.’
She sat up, jolted by the alarm that in Rumania had become a chronic condition. ‘Are things worse? What is happening?’
‘I don’t know. Nobody knows. There’s a complete ban on news.’
‘But surely there are rumours?’
‘Yes, but you can’t rely on rumours. The thing is: we have to move from here, simply as a precaution. Nothing more than that. Alan will let me know tomorrow.’
They had only clothing and books, yet in her exhausted state it seemed almost beyond her power to cope with them. She begged him: ‘Couldn’t you help me move?’
‘But, of course,’ he said, surprised by her tone. ‘Why not?’
‘You’re usually too busy.’
‘Well, I’m not busy now. The revue’s at an end and there’s hardly anyone at the School.’ He sounded exhausted, too, and spoke as though he had been defeated at last. She was about to ask him what he did with himself in Athens now but at that moment Anastea came in to take her leave and Harriet said instead: ‘I think I’ll go to bed.’
The raid went on all night. There was no respite for the men at the guns, and no rest for anyone withing hearing. By morning Harriet was quite ready to move anywhere, it did not matter where, so long as she could sleep.
Guy was seeing Alan at luncheon and said he would be back as soon as he knew what arrangement had been made for them. He got out his rucksack and began taking his books from the shelves. Anastea, who had been expecting something like this, noted what he was doing, went to the kitchen and returned with a tea-pot which Harriet had bought a couple of months before. The villa did not contain much kitchen equipment, and this was the only piece that belonged to the Pringles. Nursing it in the crook of her arm, smoothing the china with her ancient, wrinkled hand, Anastea pointed out that there had been no tea in the shops for weeks. Harriet nodded and told her to leave the pot on the table, but Anastea clung to it, stroking it and patting it as though it were something of unusual value and beauty. She began to beg for it, pointing to the pot and pointing to her own bosom, and Harriet, surprised, said: ‘She doesn’t drink tea. She doesn’t even know how to make it. We ought to give it to someone who’ll have a use for it.’
Guy said: ‘There won’t be any more tea, so let her have it.’
Harriet waved her away with the pot and she was so eager to take it home, she forgot the money owing to her and had to be called back.
It was late afternoon when Guy returned. By that time Harriet had completed the packing and had made repeated journeys across the river-bed to try to find the cat. It had been a rather dirty little cat with scurfy patches in its fur, but its response to her had touched her out of all reason. A sort of obsessional frenzy kept her searching for it. She told herself that animals were the only creatures that could be loved without any reservations at all, and this was the only creature she wanted to love. She knew it would not be welcome at the Academy but she would take it with her. She was determined to find it.
She kept going back to the wood, expecting to find the cat at her heels, but each time met with nothing but silence. She was in the wood when Guy came back. He found her walking frantically backwards and forwards over the same ground, calling to the cat and pleading with it to appear. He did not like the gloom under the trees and, unwilling to enter, shouted to her from the river-bank. He had brought a taxi which was waiting for them.
She came to the edge of the wood and said: ‘I can’t go without the cat,’ then walked back into the shadows, feeling he was a hindrance to her purpose which was more important than anything he could offer. He climbed up the bank and stood watching her, baffled. He wondered if she were becoming unbalanced. As for the cat, he decided someone had probably killed it for food, but said: ‘The gun-fire’s frightened it. It’s gone to a safer place.’
‘Quite likely,’ she agreed, still wandering round.
He said firmly: ‘Come on, now. The taxi’s waiting and it’s getting dark. You’ve got to give up.’
‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘You see, this cat is all I have.’
‘Darling!’
His cry of hurt surprise stopped her in her tracks. She saw no justification for his protest. He had chosen to put other people before her and this was the result. Each time he had overridden her feelings to indulge some sense of liability towards strangers, a thread had broken between them. She did not feel there was anything left that might hold them together.
He called her again, but she did not move. He stood there obstinately, a shadow on the edge of the wood, and she resented his interference. She had supposed this large, comfortable man would defend her against the world, and had found that he was on the other side. He made no concessions to her. The responsibilities of marriage, if he admitted they existed at all, were for him indistinguishable from all the other responsibilities to which he dedicated his time. Real or imaginary, he treated them much alike, but she suspected the imaginary responsibilities had the more dramatic appeal.
‘Darling, come here!’
Reluctantly she moved over to him. During the last weeks she had almost forgotten his appearance: his image had been overlaid by another image. Now, seeing him afresh, she could see he was suffering as they all suffered. He had become thin and the skin of his face, taut over his skull, looked grey. He had at last come to a predicament he could not escape. He would have to share the stress of existence with her, but it did not matter now. She had learnt to face it alone. Still, she pitied him. He had nothing to do. His last activity had deserted him: but no activity, however feverishly pursued, could hide reality from him. They were caught here together.
His troubled face pained her. She put her hands on to his hands and he held her in his warm, familiar grasp.
She said: ‘I’m sorry. I did not mean to desert you.’
‘I did not think you did.’