‘You wake her,’ he cajoled her, but she shook her head.
‘No, you must wake her.’
As he moved reluctantly towards the kitchen, she almost said: ‘All right, I’ll do it,’ but checked herself and for the first time in their married life stood firm.
4
Yakimov had played Pandarus in Guy’s production of Troilus and Cressida. The play over, his triumph forgotten, he was suffering from a sense of anticlimax and of grievance. Guy, who had cosseted him through it all, had now abandoned him. And what, he asked himself, had come of the hours spent at rehearsals? Nothing, nothing at all.
Walking in the Calea Victoriei, in the increasing heat of midday, his sad camel face a-run with sweat, he wore a panama hat, a suit of corded silk, a pink silk shirt and a tie that was once the colour of Parma violets. His clothes were very dirty. The hat was brim-broken and yellow with age. His jacket was tattered, brown beneath the armpits, and so shrunken that it held him as in a brace.
During the winter he had felt the ridges of frozen snow through the holes in his shoes: now he felt, just as painfully, the flagstones’ white candescence. Steadily edged out to the kerb by the vigour of those about him, he caught the hot draught of cars passing at his elbow. He was agitated by the clangour of trams, by the flash of windscreens, blaring of horns and shrieking of brakes – all at a time when he would ordinarily have been safe in the refuge of sleep.
He had been wakened that morning by the relentless ringing of the telephone. Though from the lie of the light he could guess it was no more than ten o’clock, apparently even Harriet was out. Damp and inert beneath a single sheet, he lay without energy to stir and waited for the ringing to stop. It did not stop. At last, tortured to full consciousness, he dragged himself up and found the call was for him. The caller was his old friend Dobbie Dobson of the Legation.
‘Lovely to hear your voice,’ Yakimov said. He settled down in anticipation of a pleasurable talk about their days together in Troilus, but Dobson, like everyone else, had put the play behind him.
‘Look here, Yaki,’ he said, ‘about those transit visas …’
‘What transit visas, dear boy?’
‘You know what I’m talking about.’ Dobson spoke with the edge of a good-natured man harassed beyond endurance. ‘Every British subject was ordered to keep in his passport valid transit visas against the possibility of sudden evacuation. The consul’s been checking up and he finds you haven’t obtained any.’
‘Surely, dear boy, that wasn’t a serious order? There’s no cause for alarm.’
‘An order is an order,’ said Dobson, ‘I’ve made excuses for you, but the fact is if you don’t get those visas today you’ll be sent to Egypt under open arrest.’
‘Dear boy! But I haven’t a bean.’
‘Charge them to me. I’ll deduct the cost when your next remittance arrives.’
Before he left the flat that morning, it had occurred to Yakimov to see if he could find anything useful in it. Guy was careless with money. Yakimov had more than once picked up and kept notes which his host had pulled out with his handkerchief. He had never before actually searched for money, but now, in his condition of grievance, he felt that Guy owed him anything he could find. In the Pringles’ bedroom he went through spare trousers and handbags, but came upon nothing. In the sitting-room he pulled out the drawers of sideboard and writing-desk and spent some time looking through the stubs of Guy’s old cheque-books which recorded payments made into London banks on behalf of local Jews. In view of the fact Drucker was awaiting trial on a technical charge of black-market dealing, he considered the possibility of blackmail. But the possibility was not great. Use of the black market was so general that, even now, the Jews would laugh at him.
In the small central drawer of the writing-desk he came on a sealed envelope marked ‘Top Secret’. This immediately excited him. He was not the only one inclined to suspect that Guy’s occupation in Bucharest was not as innocent as it seemed. Affable, sympathetic, easy to know, Guy would, in Yakimov’s opinion, make an ideal agent.
The flap of the envelope, imperfectly sealed, opened as he touched it. Inside was a diagram of a section through – what? A pipe or a well. Having heard so much talk of sabotage in the English Bar, he guessed that it was an oil-well. A blockage in the pipe was marked ‘detonator’. Here was a simple exposition of how and where the amateur saboteur should place his gelignite.
This was a find! He resealed and replaced the empty envelope, but the plan he put into his pocket. He did not know what eventual use he might make of it, but he would have some fun showing it around the English Bar as proof of the dangerous duties being exacted from him by King and country. He felt a few moments of exhilaration. Then as he trudged off to visit the consulates the plan was forgotten, the exhilaration was no more.
The consulates, taking advantage of the times, were charging high prices. Yakimov, disgusted by the thought of money wasted on such things, obtained visas for Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey. That left only Yugoslavia, the country that nine months before had thrown him out and impounded his car for debt. He entered the consulate with aversion, handed over his passport and was – he’d expected nothing better – kept waiting half an hour.
When the clerk returned the passport, he made a movement as though drawing a shutter between them. ‘Zabranjeno,’ he said.
Yakimov had been refused a visa.
It had always been at the back of his mind that when he could borrow enough to remit the debt, he would reclaim his Hispano-Suiza. Now, he saw, they would prevent him doing so.
As he wandered down the Calea Victoriei, indignation grew in him like a nervous disturbance of the stomach. He began to brood on his car – the last gift of his dear old friend Dollie; the last souvenir – apart from his disintegrating wardrobe – of their wonderful life together. Suddenly, its loss became grief. He decided to see Dobson. But first he must console himself with a drink.
During rehearsals, to keep a hold on him, Guy had bought Yakimov drinks at the Doi Trandifiri, but Guy was a simple soul. He drank beer and ţuicǎ and saw no reason why Yakimov should not do the same. Yakimov had longed for the more dashing company of the English Bar. As soon as the play was over, he returned to the bar in expectation of honour and applause. What he found there bewildered him. It was not only that his entry was ignored, but it was ignored by strangers. The place was more crowded than he had ever known it. Even the air had changed, smelling not of cigarettes, but cigars.
As he pushed his way in, he had heard German spoken on all sides. Bless my soul, German in the English Bar! He stretched his neck, trying to see Galpin or Screwby, and it came to him that he was the only Englishman in the room.
Attempting to reach the counter, he found himself elbowed back with deliberate hostility. As he breathed at a large man ‘Steady, dear boy!’ the other, all chest and shoulders, threw him angrily aside with ‘Verfluchter Lümmel!’
Yakimov was unnerved. He lifted a hand, trying to attract the attention of Albu, who, because of his uncompromising remoteness of manner, was reputed to be the model of an English barman. Albu had no eyes for him.
Realising he was alone in enemy-occupied territory, Yakimov was about to take himself off when he noticed Prince Hadjimoscos at the farther end of the bar.
The Rumanian, who looked with his waxen face, his thin, fine black hair and black eyes, like a little mongoloid doll, was standing tiptoe in his soft kid shoes and lisping in German to a companion. Relieved and delighted to see a familiar face, Yakimov ran forward and seized him by the arm. ‘Dear boy,’ he called out, ‘who are all these people?’