While undressing, Guy grumbled about Galpin, Screwby ‘and the rest of the riff-raff we’ve got here calling themselves journalists. They’re utterly irresponsible. A story at any price. What does it matter so long as they can startle people into buying the paper?’
Harriet, sitting up in bed, red-eyed, limp and relieved, said: ‘You shouldn’t have gone off with Dubedat without leaving a message. You should have known I’d be worried.’
‘Surely you weren’t worrying about me, darling? You know I’m always right.’
She said: ‘If the fifth columnists came for you, I’d murder them, I’d murder them.’
‘I believe you would, too,’ he said indulgently as he pulled his shirt over his head.
17
It was a winter of unusual cold in Western Europe. The cinema newsreels showed children snowballing beneath Hadrian’s Arch. Rivers were transfixed between their banks. A girl pirouetted on the Seine, her skirt circling out from her waist. The Paris roofs spilled snow in puffs, like smoke. The Parisians carried gas-masks in tin cylinders. An air-raid warning sounded and they filed down into the Métro. The streets were empty. A taxicab stood abandoned. Then everyone came up again, smiling as though it were all a joke. (‘And perhaps it is a joke,’ Yakimov thought, ‘perhaps this will go down in history as the joke war.’) St Paul’s appeared briefly with a feather-boa of snow. A glimpse of Chamberlain and his umbrella gave rise to a flutter of applause. At once the film was interrupted and a notice appeared on the screen to say public demonstrations of any kind were forbidden. The audience watched the rest of the film in silence.
Yakimov, in the cheapest seats, was reminded by these pictures of the fact that he would sooner or later have to return to the streets of Bucharest, where the hard ridges of frozen snow bit through his shoes and the wind slapped his face like a sheet of emery paper.
He had taken to the cinema when finally prevented from bedding down at the Athénée Palace. He had managed at first to maintain not only some sort of social life there, but a semblance of residence. Unwilling to take the long journey each afternoon back to his lodgings, he would slip upstairs when the bar closed and settle himself in any bedroom he found with a key left in the lock. If there was a bathroom attached, he would take a bath, then sleep the afternoon away. When caught, as he often was, by the room’s rightful owner, he apologised for having mistaken the number. ‘All these rooms look alike,’ he would explain. ‘Your poor old Yaki belongs on the floor below.’
But suspicions were roused; complaints were made. He was caught, and recognised, by one of the porters who knew he had no bedroom on the floor below. The manager warned him that, caught again, he would be forbidden entry to any part of the hotel. After that, he was found stretched out on one of the main room sofas. He was warned again. He then tried sleeping upright in an arm-chair, but the guests objected to his snoring and the waiters roughly awakened him.
Hounded, as he put it, from pillar to post, he went, when he could afford it, to the cinema. When he could not afford it, he walked to keep himself awake.
Morning and evening, he joined the mendicant company of Hadjimoscos, Horvath and Cici Palu, and stood with them on the edge of one or the other of the groups at the English Bar. Sometimes, ignoring insults, stares of disgust, excluding backs and shoulders, they had to stand about an hour or more before someone, out of embarrassment or pity, invited them in on a round. They expected nothing from habitués like Galpin and Screwby, and got nothing. They had most to hope for from the casual drinker, an English engineer from Ploȩsti or a temporary American visitor elated by the black-market rate in dollars. When Galpin, seeing the three at his elbow, said ‘Scram’, an American newspaperman said: ‘Oh, I guess we owe the local colour a drink.’
Sometimes, to encourage patronage, one of the group would offer to buy a round, then, the order given, would discover he had come out without any money. It was surprising how often some bystander would lend, or pay, out of shame for the tactics of the group. Albu refused to pour these drinks until the money was produced, but what he thought of it all, no one knew. While the pantomime of pocket-patting and consternation was going on, he would stand motionless, his gaze on a horizon not of this world.
Something in Albu’s attitude disturbed Yakimov. Not the bravest of men, he was often painfully upset by the audacity of the others, and yet he clung to them. It was not that they welcomed him – it was simply that he was not welcomed by anyone else. He, who had once been the centre of Dollie’s set, was now without a friend.
He could not understand why Hadjimoscos, Horvath and Palu were ‘horrid’ to him; why there was always a hint of derision, even of malice, in their attitude towards him. Perhaps the fact that he had once been in the position of patron had marked him down for all time. They had once deferred to him, now they need defer no longer. And there had been the incident of Hadjimoscos’s teeth. Returning drunk from a party, Hadjimoscos, sick in a privy, had spewed out his false teeth. Yakimov, in attendance, had flushed them away before he realised what had happened. At least, that had been Yakimov’s story – and he had told it widely, and unwisely, round the bar. Hadjimoscos could not contradict it because the teeth were missing, and remained missing until a new set could be made. He had no memory of what had become of them. Too late, Yakimov became aware of the displeasure in Hadjimoscos’s mongoloid eyes – a displeasure that gave them a truly frightening glint. He murmured: ‘Only a little joke, dear boy,’ but it was after that that Hadjimoscos refused to take him to parties, always giving the excuse that he had not been invited.
The trio also, it seemed, resented Yakimov’s attempts to repay drinks with amusing talk. In front of him, Hadjimoscos said with disgust to the others: ‘He will tell his dilapidated stories! He will insist that he is not what he seems!’
The second accusation referred to the fact that, when asked what he was doing in Bucharest, Yakimov would reply: ‘I’m afraid, dear boy, I’m not at liberty to say.’ In reply to someone who said: ‘I suppose it’s your own government you’re working for,’ he mumbled in humorous indignation: ‘Are you trying to insult poor Yaki?’
A rumour had reached the Legation that Yakimov was working for the Germans, and Dobson, taking the matter up, had traced it back to Hadjimoscos. Dropping into the English Bar and inviting Hadjimoscos to a drink, he had remonstrated pleasantly: ‘This is a very dangerous story to put around.’
Hadjimoscos, nervous of the power of the British Legation, protested: ‘But, mon ami, the Prince is a member of some secret service – he himself makes it evident. I could not imagine he worked for the British. They surely would not employ such an imbécile!’
‘Why do you say he “makes it evident”?’ Dobson asked.
‘Because he will take out a paper – so! – and put to it a match with fingers shaking – so! – then he will sigh and mop his brow and say: “Thank God I have got rid of that”.’
Yakimov was ordered to the Legation. When Dobson repeated his conversation with Hadjimoscos, Yakimov was tremulous with fear. He wailed pathetically: ‘All in fun, dear boy, all in innocent fun!’
Dobson was unusually stern with him. ‘People,’ he said, ‘have been thrown into prison here for less than this. The story has reached Woolley. He and the other British businessmen want you sent under open arrest to the Middle East. There you’d go straight into the ranks.’