Bella’s face had softened, but Harriet felt depressed. She saw her designs now as stark and insipid. She felt she had spoilt the play. The dressmaker tried to speak again. Harriet asked:
‘What does she want?’
‘She wants to be paid.’
Harriet began getting out the money. Bella said: ‘She’s asking a thousand lei. Give her eight hundred.’
‘But a thousand is nothing. It’s barely ten shillings.’
‘She doesn’t know that. She’ll take eight hundred. A Rumanian would give her half that.’
Harriet had nothing smaller than a thousand-lei note. The woman accepted it with a show of bashful reluctance, but as soon as it was in her hand she bolted to the door. Bella, near the door, shut it before she could reach it, then sternly demanded the two hundred lei change. The woman, her face drawn, whined like a professional beggar, then began to weep. Bella held out her hand, unrelenting.
Harriet said: ‘Bella! She’s earned her money. We don’t want a row over a couple of bob. Let her go.’
Bella, startled by this appeal, moved from the door and the woman fled. They could hear her scrabbling with a lock, then, as she went, leaving the front door open, the click of her heels as she sped down the marble staircase.
‘Really!’ Bella grumbled in self-excuse. ‘You can’t trust them an inch. They always take advantage of foreigners. If you’d had as much to do with them as I have, you’d be just as sick of them.’
Before Harriet went, they found the dressmaker had abandoned the parcel of costumes which she was supposed to deliver to the other female players.
‘There, look at that!’ said Bella. ‘We’ll have to get a man to take it to the University.’
‘I’ll take it,’ said Harriet.
‘No, no.’ Bella held it firmly. ‘I’ll take it,’ she said, ‘I’m not ashamed to be seen carrying a parcel.’
When Clarence drove her back to the knitting factory, Harriet found the tights completed and exactly as she had ordered. On the way back he called again at the Polish store and came out with an armful of shirts and underwear. He put these on her lap. ‘For Guy,’ he said.
‘Why wouldn’t you give me these before?’
‘Because you were being so bloody-minded. Don’t you realise – if you treated me properly, you could get anything in the world you wanted from me?’
That afternoon, when Harriet sat with the others in the Athénée Palace garden, the news of the Italian declaration of war on the Allies was brought out by an Italian waiter who sometimes served them. He beamed over the English faction at the table, saying several times: ‘You are surprise, eh? You are surprise?’
Galpin replied: ‘We are not surprised. We’re only surprised there aren’t more of you hungry hyenas trying to get in on someone else’s kill.’
The waiter did not understand or, if he did, he was unaffected. He merely said: ‘Now it is we, the Italians, who will go abroad to look at picture galleries.’ He gave a flick of his cloth at the lime-flowers on the table and went off singing a snatch, laughing on a high note of triumph.
26
The dress rehearsal of Troilus and Cressida was to take place after the theatre closed on the night of Thursday, the 13th of June. From then until midnight on Friday the theatre and its staff were hired by the English players. Harriet was invited to this final rehearsal, which was called for eleven p.m.
Clarence, who was taking her out to supper, called for her in the early evening. He said: ‘There’s some sort of scare on. The police are stopping people and examining their papers.’
‘What are they looking for?’
‘Spies, I suppose.’
The crowds were out walking as usual in the streets. Police were moving among them in sky-blue knots of three or four. Police vans stood at the kerbs. No one seemed much alarmed. The situation was too desolating to cause excitement.
For Bucharest, the fall of France was the fall of civilisation. France was an ideal for all of those who struggled against their peasant origin. All culture, art and fashion, liberal opinion and concepts of freedom were believed to come from France. With France lost, there would be no stay or force against savagery. Except for a handful of natural fascists, no one really believed in the New Order. The truth was evident even to those who had invested in Germany: the victory of Nazi Germany would be the victory of darkness. Cut off from Western Europe, Rumania would be open to persecution, bigotry, cruelty, superstition and tyranny. There was no one to save her now.
An atmosphere of acute sadness overhung the city, something near despair. Indeed, it was despair. Harriet and Clarence drove up to the Chaussée in what seemed the last sunset of the world.
The grǎdinǎs, that all winter had been a waste of snow, were alive now with lights and music. Here there was an attempt to believe that life was going on as usual. People were strolling beneath the chestnuts and limes that, in full leaf, were still unblemished by the summer heat. Harriet and Clarence left the car and joined the crowd, walking as far as the Arc de Triomphe. Around them they could hear, in several languages, expression of the bewilderment they felt themselves. People were asking one another what had happened inside France. What confusion among the French forces, what failure of spirit, had enabled an enemy to make this rapid advance? ‘It is the new Germany,’ said a woman. ‘No one can withstand it.’
Clarence laughed shortly and said: ‘Steffaneski’s gloating a bit. He said he had to hear enough about the three weeks’ war in Poland. Now we can reflect on the fact that Holland and Belgium have capitulated and the English been forced out of Europe all within eighteen days. He doesn’t give France another week.’
‘What do you think?’ Harriet asked.
‘I don’t know.’ Clarence spoke slowly, putting up a show of reflective calm. ‘The Germans reached the Marne in the last war. The French fought like madmen to save Paris. They went to the front in taxis; every man in Paris turned out; and the line held. It could happen again.’
As they approached the Arc de Triomphe, the crowds thinned. Three little peasant girls, not yet in their teens, wearing embroidered dresses and flowers in their hair, suddenly appeared in front of them, and, dancing backwards, began chanting something at Clarence. Harriet thought they were begging, but they were not using the beggar’s whine, and they occasionally gave Harriet mischievous side-glances of great liveliness.
‘What do they want?’ she asked.
‘Why,’ said Clarence, ‘they’re offering themselves, of course. They’re whores.’
‘They can’t be. They’re children.’
Clarence shrugged. With his chin down, his lower lip thrust out, he looked from under his brows at the girls who were dancing before him, sometimes scattering apart and sometimes bunching together and giggling at whatever they were suggesting.
‘They’re a lot more cheerful than most peasants,’ Harriet said, laughing.
Clarence grunted. ‘They haven’t yet learnt what life is like.’
‘It’s odd they should approach you when I’m here.’
‘They’re inexperienced. They know no better.’
Aware they were being discussed, the girls shrieked with laughter, but they had begun to look about them for more promising material. Seeing a group of men together in the distance, they suddenly ran off, squeaking among themselves like a flock of starlings.