Harriet, laughing with the rest, kept her face turned towards the lake from which came a creak of oars and the lap of passing boats. She looked down on a creamy scum of water on which there floated sprays of elder flower, flat-faced and lacy, plucked by the boatmen and thrown away. A scent of stocks came from somewhere, materialising out of nothing, then passing and not returning. The wireless was playing ‘The Swan of Tuonela’, bringing to her mind some green northern country with lakes reflecting a silver sky. About them, she thought, were the constituents of peace and yet, sitting here talking and laughing, they were, all of them, on edge with the nervous city’s tension.
She began to think of England and their last sight of the looped white cliffs, the washed white and blue of the sky, the sea glittering and chopped by the wind. They should have been stirred by the sight, full of regrets, but they had turned their backs on it, excited by change and their coming life together. Guy had said they would return home for Christmas. Asked how they took life, they would have said: ‘Any way it comes.’ Chance and uncertainty were part of it. The last thing she would have wanted for them was a settled life lived peaceably in one town. Now her attitude had changed. She had begun to long for safety.
‘… and then the new Prime Minister makes a great speech.’ Klein raised his hand and gazed solemnly about him. ‘He says: “Now is the time for broad issues. We do not worry about trifles …” then, suddenly, he stops. He points to the things on his table. His eyes flash fire. “Cigarettes,” he cries, “pastilles, mineral water, indigestion tablets, aspirin. Auguste,” he calls, “come here at once. How many times I say to you what must be on my table? Tell me, Auguste, where is the aspirin? Ah, so! Now I speak again. This, I say, is the time for broad issues …”’
A gipsy flower-seller, trailing around her an old evening dress of reseda chiffon, came to the table and placed some tight little bunches of cornflowers at David’s elbow. She said nothing, but held out her hand. He pushed them aside and told her to go away. She remained where she was, silent like a tired horse glad to stand rather than move, and kept her hand out. If they ignored her, she might stand there all night. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said David in sudden, acute irritation, and he gave her a few lei. Shyly, with an ironical grin, he slid the flowers over to Harriet.
The park was now in darkness. During the early summer it had been illuminated, but the lights had been switched off when Paris fell and never switched on again. The café floating, an island of brilliance on the water, drew the boats towards it. Though poor, it had its pretensions. It did not admit peasants in peasant dress, but these were allowed to hire the cheap and shabby boats. Now, stopping just beyond the water’s luminous verge, the boatmen gazed with envious respect at the patrons in their city suits.
Klein was saying: ‘… then the Prime Minister says: “Here is the report. Domnul Secretary, never must this report be shown to Herr Dorf. You understand?” The secretary writes across the report: “Never to be shown to Herr Dorf.” One minute later the door opens and in comes Herr Dorf. The secretary holds the report to his chest. Never will he show it; first will he die. But what does the Prime Minister say? “No,” he says, “Herr Dorf shall see the report. Always I play with my cards on the table.”’
At Guy’s shout of laughter, the nearest boatload realised that here were foreigners. The opportunity was too good to miss. Their oars touched the water: they drifted into the light. The man in the middle seat began to do some simple acrobatics, then managed, clumsily, to stand on his hands. While this was going on, his companions stared expectantly towards the English. The acrobatics over, they began singing together a sad little song, after which they made diffident attempts to beg. Harriet, the only one who had been aware of the performance, threw some coins. They lingered awhile, hoping for more but lacking the courage to ask, then at last took themselves off.
The talk had now moved to the Drucker trial. It was Klein who had obtained for Guy the little information he had about Sasha Drucker’s disappearance. He grimaced now as the others questioned him about the trial, saying he was not much interested in this Drucker ‘who had lived well and now was not so well’.
‘Will the Germans protect him?’ Guy asked.
Klein shook his head.
‘As his business was with Germany,’ said Clarence, ‘the trial could be interpreted as an anti-German gesture?’
Klein laughed. ‘A gesture perhaps, but not anti-German. They try to show him Rumania is still a free country. She is not afraid before the world to bring this rich banker to justice. And the trial diverts people. It keeps their minds off Bessarabia. But the Germans, what do they care? Drucker is no use now. Ah, Doamna Preen-gal’ – as Klein leant towards Harriet a pink light coloured his cheek – ‘was I not right? I said if you stayed here it would be interesting. More and more is it necessary to buy off the Germans with food. Believe me, the day will come when this’ – he touched the saucers of sheep-cheese and olives that came with the wine – ‘this will be a feast. You are watching a history, Doamna Preen-gal. Stay, and you will see a country die.’
‘Will you stay, too?’ she asked him.
He laughed again – perhaps because laughter was the only answer to life as he saw it: but it occurred to her, for the first time, that his was the laughter of a man not completely sane.
Speaking seriously, David asked him: ‘Can you stay? Are you safe here?’
Klein shrugged. ‘I doubt. The old ministers would say to me: “Klein, you are a Jew and a rogue. Make the budget balance,” and they would joke with me. But the new men do not joke. When I am no longer of use, what will they do to me?’
‘Are you ever afraid?’ Harriet asked.
‘But I am always afraid,’ Klein laughed, and taking Harriet’s hand, stared at her. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘Doamna Preen-gal should not stay too long.’
An hour or so later, Clarence was still with them, though he had had nothing to say since his remark about the Drucker trial. When they left, he let Guy go ahead with David and Klein, and loitered behind, hoping Harriet would join him. She had seen very little of him, since at the party given for Guy’s production of Troilus and Cressida she had been unable to take seriously the suggestion she should return to England with him. Now their friendship was, as she supposed, at an end, she found herself regretting it. Usually silent under the pressure of competitive talk, she did not enjoy the audience Guy liked to have around him. With a single companion, however, she talked readily enough and, herself the child of divorced parents, neither of whom had found it convenient to give her a home, she had felt a rather unwilling sympathy for Clarence, whose childhood had been wretched. She did not want to share his distrust of the world. She had rallied him, scoffed at him, but the sympathy had been there nevertheless. Now, as she walked with him, she felt his distrust turned against her. He had accused her of encouraging him and rejecting him – and perhaps she had. They passed in silence under the chestnut trees, avoiding the peasants who had settled down to spend the night there, and turned into a side lane, overhung by aromatic trees, where the air, damp and cool, was occasionally scented by unseen flowers.
To start him talking she asked if he were busy, though she knew he was not. He answered, rather sullenly: ‘No,’ and added after a long pause: ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here at all.
‘Since Dunkirk the Bureau’s been at a standstill. That doesn’t worry Inchcape, of course. He never did do much. What have we ever had to propaganda, apart from the evacuation of the Channel Islands and the loss of Europe?’ He laughed bitterly.