At the age of seven, Clarence had been beaten for running away from the school. Afterwards, when he lay in bed ‘blubbing’, he did not know what it was he had done wrong. All he had known was that he wanted to return to his mother. Harriet thought of a child of seven – a child the same age, she imagined, as the boy who had frightened the pigeons with his gold-topped stick. It was scarcely possible to imagine anyone even slapping so young a child, yet Clarence insisted he had been savagely beaten, beaten with all the fury and vigour of revenge.
After a while, he said, he had learnt to ‘put up a show’. He had hidden his fears and uncertainties beneath the front he had retained until now, but the truth was that, over the years, his nerve had been broken. His home had offered him no escape from misery. His mother, a gentle creature who feared his father more than Clarence did, had been merely an object of pity, a weight on his emotions – yet, he said, she had been someone to whom he could talk. She had died when he was ten and he felt she had made her escape. She had abandoned him. His happiest times had been those Sundays when he had been permitted to cycle out on the moors with a friend.
‘You got on well with the other boys?’ Harriet asked.
Clarence looked sullen a moment, withdrawn from this question, then he answered it obliquely: ‘It’s always that sort of school where boys are bullied. It had a tradition of brutality. It was transmitted by the masters.’
‘But you weren’t actually ill-treated by the other boys?’
For reply, he shrugged his shoulders. They were walking down the main path beside the tapis vert. In this wind-swept area, which they had to themselves, the snow had drifted so thickly it was impossible to tell where the flower-beds ended and the paths began. Clarence kept tripping on small hedges, keeping no watch where he went, as he described those evenings when, cycling back from the moors, he had grown sick at the sight of the school gates and the sunset reddening the bricks of the school buildings. In time he had acquired a desolate resignation to his position – the inescapable position of victim. Even now, he said, even here in Bucharest, the summer Sunday light, the closed shops, the sound of the bell of the English Church, could bring back that sick hopelessness. It filled him with a sense of failure, and that sense would haunt him all his life.
They were nearing the Calea Victoriei. Harriet could hear the squeak of motor-horns, yet, as they walked isolated on the path, she had the sense of being in a limbo with Clarence. When she thought back on the scene, it seemed to her the snow had been reddened by the desolation of those sabbath sunsets. Though his story of childhood did not relate in any way to hers, its misery seemed altogether too familiar. As she grew depressed, he began to emerge from memory and to smile. She felt that by his confidences he had been making a claim on her. Involuntarily, she took a step away – not only from Clarence but from the unhappy past that overhung him. He had, she felt, been marked down by fear.
He did not notice her movement. Still confiding he said: ‘I need a strong woman, someone who can be ruthlessly herself.’
So Clarence believed her to be that sort of woman! She did not repudiate his belief but knew she was nothing like it. She was not strong, and she certainly felt no impulse to nurse a broken man. She would rather be nursed herself. At the gate, she said she was meeting Guy at the Doi Trandafiri.
Clarence frowned down at his feet and complained: ‘Why does Guy go to that place?’
‘He likes people. He likes being pestered by his students.’
‘Incredible!’ drawled Clarence, but, as Harriet went on, he kept beside her.
The café was as crowded as ever. Guy was nowhere to be seen. Harriet said: ‘He’s always late,’ and Clarence grunted agreement. They had to stand for some minutes before a table was vacated.
Almost as soon as they had sat down, David and Klein entered. Guy came hurrying in behind them. Because of the estrangement, she saw him newly again: a comfortable-looking man of an un-harming largeness of body and mind. His size gave her an illusion of security – for it was, she was coming to believe, no more than an illusion. He was one of those harbours that prove to be too shallow: there was no getting into it. For him, personal relationships were incidental. His fulfilment came from the outside world.
Clarence, meanwhile, had been talking to her, continuing his story as though there had been no interval between the park and the café. As he stared at her, resentful of her inattention, she knew he was one who, given a chance, would shut her off into a private world. What was it they both wanted? Exclusive attention, no doubt: the attention each had missed in childhood. Perversely, she did not want it now it was offered. She was drawn to Guy’s gregarious good humour and the open world about him.
She watched him as he came up behind David and Klein and, stepping between them, put his arms about their shoulders. Klein glanced back smiling, at once accepting this as a normal greeting, but David, though he was Guy’s intimate, looked confused and, flushing slightly, began to talk away his own confusion. In a moment, Guy saw her and, leaving the others, came hurrying towards her between the crowded noisy tables through the hot and smoky air. He put out his left hand, smiled and squeezed her hand. The estrangement was forgotten.
‘Who is this Klein?’ Clarence asked, as though the approaching stranger brought intolerable tedium.
‘A source of information,’ said Guy. ‘One of David’s contacts.’
When they were all seated, Clarence, doubtful and suspicious, made his usual defensive retreat into silence, but only Harriet noticed. Guy was eager to hear what Klein had discovered about the Druckers.
He had not discovered much. He said: ‘It seems that Sasha was taken with his father.’
‘You mean he was arrested?’
‘One cannot say that.’ Klein’s face creased with amusement. ‘This, you must remember, is a civilised country. There was no charge against the boy.’
‘Then what do you think has happened to him?’
‘Who can say! He is not in prison. If he were, I think I would discover it. A prisoner cannot be totally hidden.’
‘Perhaps he is dead,’ said Harriet.
‘A body must be disposed of. Here secrecy is not so easy. The people are given to talk. Besides, why should they kill the boy? They are not such bad people. They would not kill without reason. All I can say is, no one has seen him since his father’s arrest. He has disappeared. But something I have discovered that is very interesting. Very interesting indeed!’ He leant forward, grinning. ‘I have discovered that the Drucker money in Switzerland – a great sum – is banked in the name of Sasha Drucker. Is that not interesting? So, I think he is alive. In Switzerland the banks hold very tightly to money. Even the King could not demand it. It can be withdrawn only by the authority of this young Drucker or his legal heirs. He is an important boy.’
‘He is indeed!’ David agreed. ‘Perhaps he is being held somewhere until he gives his authority.’
Klein shot out his hands in delighted enquiry: ‘If so, where? Here we have not the Middle Ages. For our Cabinet the situation must be very difficult. Here is an innocent young man – a man so simple, young and innocent that no capital charge could be trumped against him. To hold him without a charge! That would not be civilised, not Occidental! Yet – a young man of such importance! How could they afford to let him leave the country?’ Klein sat shaking with laughter at authority’s predicament.
Guy frowned to himself, perplexed and concerned. ‘But what have they done with him?’ he asked the table.