For a moment Harriet thought she saw in him an avidity, as though he would, if he could, absorb into his own person the substance of the earth; then he glanced at her. His eyes were guileless. Large, light green, drooping at the outer corners, they were flat-looking, seeming to have no more thickness than a lens and set, not in cavities, but on a flat area between brow and cheek.
He refilled his glass, obviously preparing to entertain the company. As Guy gazed expectantly at him, Sophie gazed at Guy. She plucked at his sleeve and whispered intimately: ‘There is so much I must tell you. I have many worries.’
Guy, with a gesture, cut short these confidences, and Yakimov, unaware of the interruption, began: ‘This morning, coming down early, who should I see in the hall of the Athénée Palace but …’
Yakimov’s normal voice was thin, sad and unvarying, the voice of a cultured Punchinello, but when he came to report McCann, it changed dramatically. As he reproduced McCann’s gritty, demanding tones, he somehow imposed on his own delicate features the shield-shaped, monkey mug that must be McCann.
He told the whole story of his meeting with McCann, of the plight of the Poles outside the hotel, of the sleeping girl, the scarf that had been buried with the dead. Although he mentioned, apologetically, that he did not speak Polish, he produced the accent of the angry Pole.
Guy, in appreciation of this piece of theatre, murmured ‘Marvellous’ and Yakimov gave him a pleased smile.
The others, though entertained, were disconcerted that such a story should be told like a funny anecdote, but when he opened his arms and said: ‘Think of it! Think of your poor old Yaki become an accredited war correspondent,’ his face expressed such comic humility at so unlikely a happening that they were suddenly won to him. Even Sophie’s sullen mouth relaxed. He united them in the warmth of amusement and, at least for the time, they accepted him like a gift – their Yaki, their poor old Yaki. His height, his curious face, his thin body, his large, mild eyes, his voice and, above all, his humility – these were his components and they loved them.
Dobson had clearly heard the story before. Glancing up from the bill, he smiled at its effect. When the laughter had died down, Sophie, who had not laughed, took the floor with impressive seriousness: ‘It is not so difficult to be journalist, I think. I have been journalist. My paper was anti-fascist, so now things will be difficult for me. Perhaps the Nazis will come here. You understand?’ As Yakimov blinked, appearing to understand nothing, she gave an aggravated little laugh: ‘You have heard of the Nazis, I suppose?’
‘The Nasties, dear girl, that’s what I call ’em,’ he giggled. ‘Don’t know what went wrong with them. They seemed to start out all right, but they overdid it somehow. Nobody likes them now.’
At this Inchcape gave a hoot of laughter. ‘The situation in a nut-shell,’ he said.
Sophie leant forward and gazed earnestly at Yakimov. ‘The Nazis are very bad men,’ she said. ‘Once I was in Berlin on holiday – you understand? – and a Nazi officer comes with big steps along the pavement. I think: ‘I am a young lady, he will step aside for me’, but no. Pouf! He brushes me as if I were not there and I am flung into the road with the traffic.’
‘Dear me!’ said Yakimov.
As Sophie opened her mouth to talk on, Harriet broke in to ask Yakimov: ‘Are you the man who painted the windows black?’
‘Why, yes, dear girl, that was poor Yaki.’
‘Won’t you tell us the story?’
‘Another time, perhaps. It’s a trifle outré and happened long ago. Soon after m’schooldays, in fact.’
Sophie, who had been watching Harriet sulkily, now smiled in triumph. Harriet realised, with surprise, that she saw this refusal as a point to her.
Harriet had failed to consider the possibility of a Sophie. Foolishly. There was always someone. There was also the fact that, whether Sophie had received encouragement or not, Guy’s natural warmth towards everyone could easily be misinterpreted. She had herself taken it for granted that it was for her alone. (She had a sudden vivid memory of one of their early meetings when Guy had taken her claw of a hand and said: ‘You don’t eat enough. You must come to Bucharest and let us feed you up.’) They had slipped into marriage as though there could be no other possible resolution of such an encounter. Yet – supposing she had known him better? Supposing she had known him for a year and during that time observed him in all his other relationships? She would have hesitated, thinking the net of his affections too widely spread to hold the weighty accompaniment of marriage.
As it was, she had, in all innocence, been prepared to possess him and be possessed, to envelop and be enveloped, in a relationship that excluded the enemy world. She soon discovered that Guy was not playing his part. Through him, the world was not only admitted, it was welcomed; and, somehow, when he approached it, the enmity was no longer there.
‘I imagine’ – Inchcape was speaking to Yakimov, his ironical smile giving a grudging credit – ‘I imagine you were at Eton?’
‘Alas, dear boy, no,’ said Yakimov. ‘M’poor old dad could not cough up. I went to one of those horrid schools where Marshall is beastly to Snelgrove, and Debenham much too fond of Freebody. But while we’re on the subject, there’s rather an amusing story about a croquet match played by the headmistress of a famous girls’ school against the headmaster – an excessively corpulent man – of a very famous boys’ school. Well …’
The story, vapid in itself, was made outrageously funny for his audience by the inflections of Yakimov’s frail voice. Pausing on a word, speaking it slowly and with an accent of a slightly breathless disapproval, he started everyone, except Sophie, first into titters, then to a gradual crescendo of laughter. Sophie, her face glum, stared in turn at the reactions of the three male listeners – Guy saying ‘Oh dear!’ and wiping his eyes, Inchcape with his head thrown back, and Dobson rocking in quiet enjoyment.
‘But what sort of balls?’ she asked when the story was over.
‘Croquet balls,’ said Inchcape.
‘Then I do not understand. Why is it funny?’
‘Why,’ Inchcape blandly asked, ‘is anything funny?’
The answer did not satisfy Sophie. She said with some asperity: ‘That is an English joke, eh? Here in Rumania we have jokes, too. We ask “What is the difference between a kitten and a bar of soap?” I think they are silly, such jokes.’
‘Well, what is the difference?’ Guy asked.
Sophie gave him an irritated look and would not answer. He set about persuading her until at last she whispered in a petulant little voice: ‘If you put a kitten to the foot of a tree, it will climb up.’
Her success surprised her. She looked around, suspicious at first, then, growing complacent, said: ‘I know many such jokes. We told them at school.’
‘Tell us some more,’ said Guy.
‘Oh, they are so silly.’
‘No, they are very interesting.’ And after he had coaxed her to tell several more, all much alike, he began a dissertation on basic peasant humour, to which he related the riddles to be found in fairy-tales. He called on Yakimov to confirm his belief that Russian peasant tales were similar to all other peasant tales.
‘I’m sure they are, dear boy,’ Yakimov murmured, his eyes vacant, his body inert, life extinct now, it seemed, except in the hand with which, every few minutes, he lifted the brandy bottle and topped up his glass.