The situation would have been simplified for her could she, like Guy, have seen the peasants not only as victims, but as blameless victims. The truth was, the more she learnt about them, the more she was inclined to share Doamna Drucker’s loathing of them; but she would not call them beasts. They had not the beauty or dignity of beasts. They treated their animals and their women with the simple brutality of savages.
Driving now down the long, deserted Calea Victoriei, it seemed to her she could smell in the wind those not so distant regions of mountain and fir-forest where wolves and bears, driven by hunger, haunted the villages in the winter snow-light. And the wind was harsher than any wind she had ever known. She shivered, feeling isolated in a country that was to her not only foreign but alien.
A few yards past the University, she saw Guy walking, rather quickly, and stopped the trǎsurǎ. His face was creased and troubled. He said he was returning to Mavrodaphne’s to look for her.
‘Surely you didn’t suppose I should still be there?’
‘I didn’t know.’ He obviously had not supposed anything at all. His mind had been elsewhere.
As he took the seat beside her, she said: ‘Did you see Sasha?’
He shook his head. He had gone to the flat but no one opened the door. He found the porter, who told him that the whole family had left that morning with a great deal of luggage. The servants had gone soon after. The flat was deserted. Asked about Sasha, the man could not remember having seen him with the others. Guy had then gone to the University, where there were, as usual, students sitting about in the common-room for want of anything better to do. There he learnt that the Drucker sisters, their parents, their husbands and the two girls had been seen at the airport boarding a plane for Rome, but Sasha and his step-mother had not been with them. There was a rumour that Doamna Drucker had gone to her father’s estate in Moldavia.
Guy said: ‘Perhaps Sasha has gone with her.’
Harriet said nothing but she thought it unlikely that Doamna Drucker would burden herself with Sasha.
‘Wherever he is,’ said Guy, ‘I shall hear from him. He knows I will help him if I can.’
Harriet was thinking of the panic that must have filled the household after Drucker’s arrest, the hasty packing, the hasty departure.
‘How did they get extra visas so quickly?’ she asked.
‘They must have been prepared. Drucker after all had been warned. If the arrest had not been made so quickly, he might have got away.’
Thinking of the household with its solid furniture, the family portraits in their huge frames, a setting designed as a background for generations of Druckers, she knew she had been envious of its permanence.
‘And yet,’ she thought, ‘that enclosed family was no more secure than we are.’
The trǎsurǎ was crossing the cobbles of the square. The driver turned to ask for direction.
Guy said to Harriet: ‘Where are we going to eat? Shall we go back to the hotel?’
She replied: ‘Tonight we are going to eat at home.’
11
When Yakimov returned to the Athénée Palace after his conflict with McCann, he went to the English Bar and ordered himself a double whisky.
‘Chalk it up, Albu, dear boy,’ he said.
When Albu ‘chalked it up’, he knew that his credit was still good. His anxiety vanished. A problem that need not be faced straight away was no problem to him.
At the end of the week he was presented with a bill. He looked at it in pained astonishment and required the manager to come to him. The manager explained that, as Yakimov was no longer backed by McCann’s agency, he must settle a weekly account in the usual way.
‘Dear boy,’ he said, ‘m’remittance should be here in a week or two. Difficult time. Posts uncertain. War on, y’know.’
His quarterly remittance had, in fact, come and gone. Bored by the menu of the hotel, he had spent it on some excellent meals at Capşa’s, Cina’s and Le Jardin.
The manager agreed to let the account run on and it ran unquestioned until Christmas visitors began to fill the hotel. This time it was the manager who sent for Yakimov.
‘Any day now, dear boy,’ Yakimov earnestly assured him. ‘Any day.’
‘Any day will not do, mon Prince,’ said the manager. ‘If you cannot pay, I must now present this matter to the British Legation.’
Yakimov was alarmed. Galpin had told him: ‘These days you can be packed off under open arrest, third class and steerage, to Cairo, and there given the bum’s rush into the ranks before you have time to say “flat feet”, “conscientious objector” or “incurable psychotic”.’
Trembling slightly, Yakimov said to the manager: ‘Dear boy, no need to do that. I’ll go there myself. M’dear old friend Dobbie Dobson’ll advance me the necessary. Just a question of asking. Didn’t realise you were getting restless.’
Yakimov was given another twenty-four hours. He did not go at once to Dobson, who was becoming less and less willing to lend him money, but first approached the hangers-on of the English Bar. Hadjimoscos, Horvath and Palu, as usual, together. He spoke first to Horvath:
‘Dear boy, I have to settle a little bill. M’remittance is delayed. Never like to owe money. Wonder if you could manage to repay …’
Before he could finish, Horvath had spread hands so eloquently empty that Yakimov’s words died in his throat. He turned to Hadjimoscos: ‘Do you think I could ask the Princess …’
Hadjimoscos laughed: ‘Mon cher Prince, rather ask the moon. You know the Princess. She is so irresponsible, one is made to smile. And it is the Rumanian habit never to repay a loan.’
Yakimov moved his appealing eyes to Cici Palu, a handsome fellow who was said to do well out of women. Palu took a step back and glanced away with the air of one who sees and hears nothing that does not concern him. In desperation, Yakimov moaned: ‘Can no one lend me a leu or two?’ To encourage them, he tried to order a round. Albu shook his head. The others smiled, deprecating this familiar refusal, but their contempt was evident. Yakimov was now no more than one of them.
He was forced in the end to return to Dobson, who agreed to settle the bill on condition that he moved to a cheaper lodging.
‘I was thinking of trying the Minerva, dear boy.’
Dobson would not hear of the Minerva, or, indeed, of any other hotel. Yakimov must find himself a bed-sitting-room.
So, on the morning of the following Saturday, having been permitted a last breakfast in the dining-room, Yakimov departed the Athénée Palace. When he carried his own luggage through the hall, the porters looked the other way. Even had they been willing to attend him, attention would have been distracted from him by a new arrival who caused even Yakimov, burdened as he was, to pause and stare.
This was a white-haired, dark-skinned little crow of a man in a striped blue suit. He moved with a rattle of chains. One of his eyes was covered with a patch; the other swivelled about in keen and critical survey of all it saw. His left arm, with hand too small in its skin-tight glove, lay crooked across his breast. He wore a gold chain in a loop from button-hole to trouser pocket. Another heavier chain, attaching a walking-stick to his right wrist, struck repeatedly against the stick’s silver mounting. Clearly unimpressed by the hall and its occupants, he strode to the reception desk and rapped out: ‘Any letters for Commander Sheppy?’