Guy said: ‘That’s nonsense, an old story. Every hack journalist with nothing better to write up was putting it around.’ Now that his ideals were attacked, he was on the defensive, no longer mild but ready to argue with anyone. Harriet, though the ideals were too political and disinterested to appeal to her, was prepared to take his side; but Galpin shrugged, giving the impression he thought the whole thing unimportant.
Before Guy could speak again, Mortimer Tufton, who had no patience with the conjectures of inexperienced youth, broke in with a history of Russian-Rumanian relations, proving that only Allied influences had prevented Russia from devouring the Balkans long ago. Rumania, he said, had been invaded by Russia on eight separate occasions and had suffered a number of ‘friendly occupations’, none of which had ever been forgotten or forgiven. ‘The fact is,’ he concluded, ‘the friendship of Russia has been more disastrous to Rumania than the enmity of the rest of the world.’
‘That was Czarist Russia,’ said Guy. ‘The Soviets are a different proposition.’
‘But not a different race – witness this latest piece of opportunism.’
Catching his small, vain, self-regarding eye fixed severely upon her, Harriet, deciding to win him, smiled and asked: ‘To whom would you award Bessarabia?’
‘Hmmm!’ said Tufton. He looked away, appearing to swallow something astringent in his throat, but, mollified by her appeal, he gave the question thought. ‘Russia, Turkey and Rumania have been squabbling over that particular province for five hundred years,’ he said. ‘The Russians finally got it in 1812 and held on to it until 1918. I imagine they kept it rather longer than anyone else managed to do, so, on reflection …’ he paused, hemmed again, then impressively announced: ‘I’d be inclined to let them have it.’
Harriet smiled at Guy, passing the award on to him, and Galpin nodded, confirming it.
Galpin’s dark, narrow face hung in folds above his rag of a collar. Elbow on bar, sourly elated by his return to his old position, he kept staring about him for an audience, his moving eyeballs as yellow as the whisky in his hand. As he drank, his yellow wrist, the wrist-bone like half an egg, stuck out rawly from his wrinkled, shrunken, ash-dusty dark suit. A wet cigarette stub clung, forgotten, to the bulging, purple softness of his lower lip and trembled when he spoke.
‘The Russkies are sticking their necks out demanding this territory just when Carol’s declared for the Axis.’
Guy said: ‘I imagine the declaration prompted them to do it. They’re staking their claim before the Germans get too strong here.’
‘Could be.’ Galpin looked vague. He preferred to be the one to theorise, ‘Still, they’re sticking their necks out.’ He looked for Tufton’s agreement and when he got it grunted, agreeing with himself, then added: ‘If the Germans ever attacked them, I wouldn’t give the Russkies ten days.’
As they were discussing the Russian war potential, in which Guy alone had faith, a small man in dilapidated grey cotton, an old trilby pressed against his chest, sidled in and nudged Galpin. This was Galpin’s scout, a shadow who lived by nosing out news, taking one version of it to the German journalists at the Minerva, and another to the English in the Athénée Palace.
When Galpin bent down, the scout whispered in his ear. Galpin listened with intent interest. Everyone waited to hear what had been said, but he was in no hurry to tell them. With a sardonic, bemused expression, he took out a bundle of dirty paper money and handed over the equivalent of sixpence, which reward was received with reverent gratitude. Then he paused, smiling around the company.
‘The eagerly awaited message has arrived,’ he said at last.
‘Well, what is it?’ Tufton impatiently asked.
‘The Führer has asked Carol to cede Bessarabia without conflict.’
‘Hah!’ Tufton gave a laugh which said he had expected as much.
Galpin’s close companion, Screwby, asked: ‘This is a directive?’
‘Directive, nothing,’ said Galpin. ‘It’s a command.’
‘So it’s settled,’ said Screwby bleakly. ‘No chance of a scrap?’
Tufton scoffed at him: ‘Rumania take on Russia single-handed? Not a chance. Their one hope was Axis backing if they stood firm. But Hitler doesn’t intend going to war with Russia – anyway, not over Bessarabia.’
The journalists finished their drinks before making for the telephones in the hall. No one showed any inclination to hurry. The news was negative. Rumania would submit without a fight.
When they left the hotel, the Pringles were surprised at the quiet outside. The Führer’s command must be known to everyone now, but there was no hint of revolt. If there had been a show of anger, it was over now. The atmosphere was subdued. A few people stood outside the palace as though there might still be hope, but the majority were dispersing in silence, having recognised that there was nothing more to be done.
After the tense hours of uncertainty, acceptance of the ultimatum had probably brought as much relief as disappointment. Whatever else it might mean, it meant that life in Bucharest would go on much as before. No one would be called upon to die in a desperate cause.
Next day the papers were making the best of things. Rumania, they said, had agreed to cede Bessarabia and the northern Bukovina, but Germany had promised that after the war these provinces would be returned to her. Meanwhile, in obeying the Führer’s will, she was sacrificing herself to preserve the peace of Eastern Europe. It was a moral victory and the officers withdrawing their men from the ceded territory might do so with breasts expanded and heads held high.
Flags were at half-mast. The cinemas were ordered to shut for three days of public mourning. And the rumour went round that the Rumanian officers, now pelting down south, had abandoned their units, their military equipment and even their own families, in panic flight before the advancing Russians. By the end of June, Bessarabia and the northern Bukovina had become part of the Soviet Union.
When the Pringles next visited the English Bar, Galpin said: ‘Do you realise the Russian frontier is less than a hundred and twenty miles from here? The bastards could be on top of us before we’d even known they’d started.’
2
Harriet had imagined that when the term ended they would be free to go where they pleased. She longed to escape, if only for a few weeks, not only from the disquiet of the capital, but from their uncertain situation. She thought they might leave Rumania altogether. A boat went from Constanza to Istanbul, and thence to Greece. Excited by the prospect of such a journey, she appealed to Guy, who said: ‘I’m afraid I can’t go just now. Inchcape’s asked me to organise a summer school. In any case, he feels none of us should leave the country at the moment. It would create a bad impression.’
‘But no one spends the summer in Bucharest.’
‘They will this year. People are afraid to leave in case something happens and they can’t get back. As a matter of fact, I’ve already enrolled two hundred students.’
‘Rumanians?’
‘A few. The Jews are crowding in. They’re very loyal.’
‘I should say it’s not just loyalty. They want to get away to English-speaking countries.’
‘You can’t blame them for that.’
‘I don’t blame them,’ said Harriet but, disappointed, she was inclined to blame someone. Probably Guy himself.
Now she was coming to know Guy, she was beginning to judge him. When they had married ten months before, she had accepted him, uncritically, as a composite of virtues. She did not demur when Clarence described him as ‘a saint’. She still might not demur, but she knew now that one aspect of his saintliness was composed of human weaknesses.