‘A play!’ Hadjimoscos’s smile grew wide with malice. ‘Have you then found employment in the theatre?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Yakimov, shocked. ‘It is an amateur show. Several important members of the British Legation are taking part.’
The others looked at one another. They pretended to hide their scorn under an air of bafflement. How very bizarre the English were! As a result, Yakimov felt it necessary to imply that the play was a cover for something more important – something to do with the secret service. Hadjimoscos raised his eyebrows. Horvath and Palu looked blank. Yakimov opened his mouth, but was saved from further folly by the entrance of Galpin, taut and jumpy with news. There was a general movement of enquiry. All present, except Yakimov, became alert with expectancy. Yakimov was bewildered to see Hadjimoscos, Horvath and Palu united with the rest.
‘They’re across the Meuse,’ Galpin announced. ‘The Dutch Army has just capitulated.’
Yakimov did not know who was across the Meuse, but having heard rumours of their rapid advance through Holland, he supposed ‘they’ must be the Germans. He said: ‘Why so alarmed, dear boy? They’re not coming our way.’
No one took any notice of this remark. Yakimov felt completely outside the society of the bar, that, occupied with the movements of a far-off army, had no interest in Yakimov or his performance in a play. Discomforted, he left, with no desire to return, understanding now why Guy preferred to make his own world at the Doi Trandafiri and attend only to his production.
Rehearsals were becoming intensive. Guy had announced that the theatre was booked for the night of June 14th. That gave the players a month in which to perfect themselves. They had no time to brood on present anxieties. They lived now to pursue a war of the past. The common-room at rehearsal time was always crowded with students. Some came who had no part in the play; others were not even in the English faculty. The production had become a craze among them. Yakimov was talked about throughout the University. His arrival in the common-room would give rise to a fury of whispering. Some of the students would call out as at the entry of a hero. He would smile around, radiating good-will over his admirers, seeing no one very clearly.
The only others accorded anything like this reception by the students were Guy, Sophie and Fitzsimon. Guy was not only producer but a popular figure in his own right. Sophie was one of them. Fitzsimon was acclaimed for his extraordinary good looks and his easy, casual manner admired by the girls, whom he ogled with exaggerated eye movements whenever Sophie let his attention wander. When he announced that ‘on the night’ he intended to gild his hair, the girls gave little screams of shocked excitement. He took his part more seriously than anyone had hoped.
Most members of this enclosed fellowship had forgotten the war altogether, but even here reality sometimes intruded. One or other of the Legation members would throw in the bad news – there was no good news these days – with the humour of one whose duty it is to keep calm: ‘Just heard the bastards have taken Boulogne’ or ‘Those blighters have got Calais now.’
‘Calais!’
Even to Yakimov this was the fall of a neighbour. Yet what could be done about it? Nothing. It was a relief for them all to turn their attention to the fall of Troy.
Before the end of May, Yakimov had memorised all his lines. Guy let him make his speeches without interruption. After the first complete run-through, Guy looked round at the thirty-seven men and women of the cast, and as they looked anxiously back at him, said: ‘It’s shaping. Cressida is good. Helen, Agamemnon, Troilus, Ulysses, Thersites – good. Pandarus – very good. The rest of you will have to work.’
One day Harriet broke in on them with the smell of outdoor anxiety still about her, startling them back to the present.
Guy, running his fingers through his hair, had been lecturing his audience on the character of Achilles, who, offered the alternative of a long life spent in peaceful obscurity and a short life of glory, chose the latter. In Homer, Guy was saying, Achilles was the ideal of the military hero: but Shakespeare, whose sympathies had been with the Trojans, had depicted him as a fascist whose feats were performed by fascist thugs. Young Dimancescu, standing hand on hip, idly playing with a foil, was smiling a wan, warped smile, satisfied by this interpretation of his part. He turned this smile, lifting his brows a little in surprise, as Harriet walked in to the middle of the room, Clarence behind her.
Guy paused, brought to a stop by something in her manner. He asked: ‘What is the matter?’
She said: ‘The British troops have left Europe. They’ve got away.’
What she had brought was news of the Dunkirk evacuation.
‘They say it was wonderful,’ she said. ‘Wonderful.’ Her voice broke.
Yakimov looked in a puzzled way at Guy. ‘What is it, dear boy?’ he asked. ‘A victory?’
‘A sort of victory,’ said Clarence. ‘We’ve saved our army.’
But the students, crowding up against Harriet and the circle round her, glanced at one another and started to whisper among themselves. Evidently to them it was no sort of victory. The Allied armies, that existed, among other things, for the protection of Rumania, had disintegrated. The French were being routed; the English had fled to their own island: the rest had capitulated. Who was to protect Rumania now?
Harriet, in the centre of the floor, did not move until Guy put his hand to her elbow and gave her a slight push, gently impatient. ‘We must get on,’ he said.
She stood for a moment, frowning at him, seeming unable to keep him in focus, then she said: ‘I suppose you’ll come home some time.’
As she went, Clarence started to follow her, but Guy called to him: ‘Clarence, I want you.’ Clarence paused, about to excuse himself, then was caught under Guy’s influence. He said: ‘Very well,’ and Harriet returned alone to the uneasy streets.
25
Inchcape’s servant, Pauli, made a model in a sand-box of the British Expeditionary Force queueing for embarkation on the Dunkirk beaches. The little ships stood in a sea of blue wax. Inchcape put it in the window of the Propaganda Bureau. Though it was skilfully made, it was a sad-looking model. The few who bothered to give it a glance must have thought the British now had nothing to offer but a desperate courage.
In Bucharest the most startling effect of events was the change in the news films. French films ceased to arrive. Perhaps there was no one left with the heart to make them. English-speaking films were blocked by the chaos of Europe. What did come, with triumphant regularity, were the U.P.A. news films.
People sat up at them, aghast, overwhelmed by the fervour of the young men on the screen. There was nothing here of the flat realism of the English news, nothing of the bored inactivity which people had come to expect. Every camera trick was used to enhance the drama of the German machines reaping the cities as they passed. Their destructive lust was like a glimpse of the dark ages. The fires of Rotterdam shot up livid against the midnight sky. They roared from the screen. The camera backed, barely evading a shower of masonry as tall façades, every window aflame, crashed towards the audience. Bricks showered through the air. Cathedral spires, towers that had withstood a dozen other wars, great buildings that had been a wonder for centuries, all toppled into dust.
Clarence, sitting beside Harriet, said in his slow, rich voice: ‘I bet these films are faked.’
People shifted nervously in their seats. Those nearest glanced askance at him, fearful of his temerity.
The cameras moved between the poplars of a Flemish road. On either side stood lorries, disabled or abandoned, their doors ripped open and their contents – bread, wine, clothing, medical supplies, munitions – pulled out and left contemptuously in disarray. In the main streets of towns from which the inhabitants had fled, the invaders sprawled asleep in the sunshine. These were the golden days, the spring of the year. Outside one town, among the young corn, tanks lay about, disabled. Each had its name chalked upon it: Mimi, Fanchette, Zephyr. One that stood lopsided, its guns rakishly tilted, was called Inexorable.