On the day that news came of the bombing of Paris, a last French film reached Bucharest, like a last cry out of France. It showed refugees trudging a long, straight road; feet, the wheels of perambulators, faces furtively glancing back; children by the roadside drinking in turn from a mug; the wing of a swooping plane, a spatter of bullets, a child spread-eagled on the road. The French film cried: ‘Pity us’; the German film that followed derided pity.
Out of the smoke of some lost city appeared the German tanks. They followed each other in an endless stream into the sunlight, driving down from Ypres and Ostend. A signboard said: Lille – 5 kilomètres. There seemed to be no resistance. The Maginot Line was being skirted. The break-through had been so simple, it was like a joke.
And the fair-haired young men standing up in their tanks came unscathed and laughing from the ruins. They held their faces up to the sun. They sang: ‘What does it matter if we destroy the world? When it is ours, we’ll build it up again.’
The tanks, made monstrous by the camera’s tilt, passed in thousands – or, so it seemed. The audience – an audience that still thought in terms of cavalry – sat watching, motionless, in silence. This might of armour was a new thing; a fearful and merciless thing. The golden boys changed their song. Now, as the vast procession passed, they sang:
Someone gasped. There was no other noise.
Harriet, alone this time, at a matinée, surrounded by women, felt they were stunned. Yet, as she left in the crowd, she heard in its appalled whispering a twitter of excitement. One woman said: ‘Such beautiful young men!’ and another replied: ‘They were like the gods of war!’
It was strange to emerge into the streets and see the buildings standing firm. Harriet now had somewhere to go. She went straight to the Athénée Palace garden, that had become a meeting-place for the English since they were dispossessed of the English Bar.
The bar itself had been occupied by the Germans one morning at the end of May. The move was obviously deliberate. It was a gesture, jubilantly planned and carried out by a crowd of journalists, businessmen and members of the huge Embassy retinue. The English – only three were present at the time – let themselves be elbowed out without a struggle. The Germans had the advantage of their aggressive bad manners, the English the disadvantage of their dislike of scenes.
Galpin was the first of the three to pick up his glass and go. Before he went, he spoke his mind. ‘Just at the moment,’ he said, ‘I can’t stomach sight, sound or stench of a Nazi.’ He walked out and his compatriots followed him.
There were more Germans in the vestibule. Germans were crowding through the public rooms into the dining-room. Some sort of celebratory luncheon was about to take place. Galpin, trying to escape them, marched on, drink in hand, until he found the garden – a refuge for the routed.
The next day the Germans were back again in the bar. Apparently they had come to stay. Galpin returned to the garden: anyone who wanted him was told they could find him there. Most of the people who came in search of news had not known before that the hotel garden existed.
Galpin now spent most of his day there. It was there that his agents brought him news of Allied defeats and an occasional item of Rumanian news, such as the enforced resignation of Gafencu, the pro-British Foreign Minister, whose mother had been an Englishwoman. Other people came and went. As the situation, growing worse, became their chief preoccupation, they began to sit down and wait for news; each day they stayed longer and longer. They were drawn together by the one thing they held in common – their nationality. Because of it, they shared suspense. The waiter, understanding their situation, did not trouble them much.
Clarence, Inchcape, Dubedat and David looked in between work and rehearsals, but not, of course, Guy and Yakimov. It was thought to be a sign of those strange times that the English, the most admired and privileged, the dominating influence in a cosmopolitan community, should be meeting in so unlikely a place.
The summer was established now. The city had come out of doors anticipating three months or more of unbroken fine weather. The heat would eventually force it in again, but for the moment the open air cafés were crowded all day.
Galpin had taken over as his own a large, rough, white-painted table that stood by the fountain in the centre of the garden. When Harriet arrived from her cinema matinée, she found installed there with Galpin and Screwby the three old ladies who always formed the afternoon nucleus of the group. These were retired governesses who lived by giving English lessons. They took classes for Guy in the morning and for the rest of the day had nothing to do but face disaster. They chose to face it in company. They greeted Harriet like an old friend.
As she sat down, she asked, as everyone always asked on arrivaclass="underline" ‘Any news?’
Galpin said: ‘There’s a rumour that Churchill has made a statement. It may be relayed later.’
The three old ladies had ordered tea. Harriet took some with them. She was sitting, as she usually sat, nearest to the stone boy who poured his ewer of water into a stone basin. At first she had been irritated by this monotonous tinkle, then, recognising in it a symbol of their own anxiety, she adopted it into her own mind – a vehicle of release. It had become a part of these hot, lime-scented improbable summer days in which they learnt of one defeat after another. She knew she would never forget it.
‘Very nice tea,’ said Miss Turner, the eldest lady, who usually spoke only to mention the household of a wealthy Rumanian whose children she had educated. She mentioned it now: ‘We used to have tea like this in the old days. The Prince was most generous in every way. He never stinted the nursery – and that’s rare, I can tell you. When I retired he gave me a pension – not a very big pension, it’s true; I could not expect it. But adequate. He was a most thoughtful, perceptive man for a Rumanian. He used to say to me: “Miss Turner, I can see that you were born a lady.”’ She turned her pale, insignificant, little face towards her neighbour Miss Truslove, and nodded in satisfaction at the Prince’s perception. She then gave a pitying glance at the third woman, to whom she always referred, behind her back, as ‘poor Mrs. Ramsden’, for she had long made it clear to everyone that the fact she had been ‘born a lady’ placed her in a category of human being higher than that occupied by Mrs. Ramsden, who so obviously had not.
Mrs. Ramsden whispered to Harriet: ‘The pension’s only good here, of course. She won’t have a penny if we have to skedaddle.’
Having listened for a week to the conversation of these women, Harriet knew that what they dreaded most was the disintegration of their adopted world. Everything they had was here. Such relatives as remained to them in England had forgotten them. If they were driven out of Rumania, they would find themselves without friends, homes, status or money.