‘And how’s our old friend Inchcape?’ David asked.
Guy said: ‘He’s fine.’
‘I hear he’s risen in the world. Gets invited to Legation parties.’
Guy laughed and said he believed that was true.
‘When I was last in Cambridge,’ said David, ‘I met a friend of Inchcape – Professor Lord Pinkrose. They were up together. He was asking me about him. He said that Inch had been a remarkable scholar: one of those chaps who are capable of so much, they don’t know what to do first. In the end they usually do nothing at all.’
The restaurant was housed in an early nineteenth-century villa, with a front garden where bushes like giant heads set their chins upon the snowy lawn.
David, without a glance about him, talked his way up the front steps and entered as though he had never been away. They passed from the icy outer air into a hallway over-heated and scented by grilled meat. A stream of waiters were clattering and grumbling in and out of the four rooms. One of them tried to direct the three to a back room, but David, without bothering to argue, led the way to the main front room. The tables and chairs were rough. On the walls, papered in faded stripes, hung a few old Russian oleographs. From a dark ceiling hung a gilt chandelier laden with the grime of a decade. The place was noted for its excellent grilled veal.
When they were seated, David started at once to talk: ‘I saw Dobson, too, this morning – not a bad little chap. I always liked him, but the occupational disease is manifesting itself. I asked about the situation here. He said: “Quite satisfactory. The Sovereign is with us.” I said: “What if the people are not with the Sovereign!” “Oh, I don’t think we need worry about that,” said Dobson. When I asked him a few more questions, he h’md and hawed, then said, “The situation’s a bit complex for a newcomer!”’
‘He probably doubted your ability to understand it,’ Guy said, rousing David to a paroxysm of snuffling laughter.
When there was a pause in the talk, Harriet asked him where he was staying and learnt with surprise that he was at the Minerva. ‘But that is the German hotel!’
David said: ‘I like to practise my German.’ Turning to Guy, he said: ‘And one picks up useful odds and ends of information. In the bar there, where the German journalists congregate, you get the same stringmen that take the news to the English Bar. One version goes to the Athénée Palace another to the Minerva. In that way our Rumanian allies keep in with both sides at once.’
Guy, proud of his friend, now mentioned to Harriet that David spoke all the Slav languages.
David smiled down modestly. ‘My Slovene is a little rusty,’ he said, ‘but I can manage in the rest. I got through the first volume of Anna Karenina in the train. Now I find I haven’t brought the second volume. I’ll have to fly to Sofia to get it from the Russian bookshop. I’d like to know how it ends.’
‘Haven’t you read it in English?’ Harriet asked.
‘I scarcely need to brush up my English.’
If this were a joke, David gave no indication of the fact, but, sitting four-square on his chair, he stared down solemnly at the menu. His cap, when taken off, had left some snow in his curled black hair. As this melted and trickled down his cheeks, he thrust out his lower lip and caught the drops. His brow, visible now, was as massive as his chin.
Putting the menu down he said: ‘This policy of backing the established order, whether right or wrong, is not only going to lose us this country. When the big break-up starts, it will lose us concessions all over the world. In short, it’ll be the end of us.’
When on his own subject, David’s manner lost its diffidence. He tended, Harriet thought, to address his listeners less like a conversationalist than a lecturer – and a lecturer wholly confident in the magnitude of his knowledge. His self-sufficiency was now evident. She remembered that his hobby was bird-watching. He was saying:
‘Those F.O. dummies can’t see further than the ends of their noses. For them the position inside the country is of no importance. The Sovereign right or wrong – that’s all they know and all they need to know.’
While David talked – and he talked at length – a waiter came and stood by the table. David was not to be interrupted, but when the man decided to move away, David seized and held him by the coat-tails while saying:
‘I learnt on the train that German agents have settled in all over the country. They’re working through the Iron Guard, buying grain, secretly, at double the usual rate. They said: “See how generous we Germans are! With Germany as an ally, Rumania would be rich.” But could I persuade H.E. of this? Not for a moment. The Sovereign says the Iron Guard has ceased to exist and the Sovereign must be right.’
The waiter, his patience exhausted, began to tug at his coattails. Turning irritably on him and shouting: ‘Stai, domnule, stai,’ David went on with his dissertation.
‘Let us give our order,’ Harriet pleaded.
David jerked round on her and snapped: ‘Shut up.’
‘I won’t shut up,’ she snapped back, and David, suddenly sniggering, looked down, all his diffidence returned. ‘We must order, of course,’ he said. ‘I suppose we’ll have Fleicǎ de Braşov.’ They gave their order and the waiter was released.
‘Tell us what is going to happen here,’ said Guy.
‘Several things could happen.’ David shifted his chair closer to the table. ‘There could be a peasant revolt against Germany, but we, of course, will see that does not happen. The Peasant Party is in opposition to the Sovereign, so it gets no support from us. I’m the only Englishman in this country who has met the peasant leaders …’
Guy interrupted: ‘I met them with you.’
‘Well, we’re the only two Englishmen who have bothered to meet them: yet those men are our allies. They are our true allies. They would lead a rising on our behalf, but they are ignored and snubbed. We have declared ourselves for Carol and his confederates.’
‘Why are the peasants so despised?’ Harriet asked.
‘They suffer from hunger, pellagra and sixteen hundred years of oppression – all enervating diseases.’
‘Sixteen hundred years?’
‘Rather longer.’ David now set out upon a history of Rumania’s oppression, beginning with the withdrawal of the Roman legions in the third century after Christ and the appearance of the Visigoths. He passed from the ravaging Huns to Gepides, Langobards and Avars, to the Slavs and ‘a race of Turkish nomads called Bulgars’. ‘Then in the ninth century,’ he said, ‘the Magyars swept over Eastern Europe.’
‘Isn’t all this part of the migration of nations?’ Harriet asked.
‘Yes. Rumania is the part of Europe over which most of them migrated. There were, of course, intervals – for instance, a brief period of glory under Michael the Brave. That led to the most wretched and tragic period of Rumanian history – the rule of the Phanariots.’
The waiter brought them soup. As David emptied his plate, he followed the further misfortunes of the Rumanian people until the peasant revolt of 1784. ‘Suppressed,’ he said, putting down his spoon, ‘in a manner I would not care to describe during a meal.’
Harriet was about to speak. David raised a hand to silence her. ‘We come now,’ he said, ‘to the nineteenth century, when Turkish power was waning and Rumania was being shared out between Russia and Austria …’
They had ordered the veal grilled with herbs. It was brought to the table on a board and there chopped into small pieces with two choppers. Silenced by the noise, David frowned until it was over, then started at once to talk again. He was interrupted by the arrival of a short, round-bodied, round-faced man who entered quickly and came quickly to the table, smiling radiantly about him.