Dobson, almost asleep, slid forward in his chair, then, half-waking, slid back again. Inchcape was listening to Guy, his smile fixed. It was late, but no one showed any inclination to move. The restaurant was still crowded, the orchestra played on, Florica was expected to sing again. Harriet, suddenly exhausted, wished she were in bed. Guy had told her that on hot summer nights the diners in these garden restaurants might linger on under the trees until dawn. This, however, was not a hot summer night. Gusts of autumnal chill came at intervals from outer darkness and hardened the summer air. Someone, earlier in the evening, had mentioned that the first snow had fallen on the peaks that rose north of the city. She hoped that discomfort, if nothing else, would soon set people moving.
She watched Yakimov drain the last of the bottle into the glass. He then began glancing about, his eyes regaining the luminous gleam of life. When a waiter approached, he made a minimal movement and closed his eyes at the bottle. It was whipped away and replaced at such speed, Harriet could only suppose Yakimov had over waiters the sort of magnetic power some people have over beast and birds. His glass newly filled, he sank back, prepared, Harriet feared, to stay here all night.
As for Guy, the evening’s drinking had not touched on his energy. It had merely brought him to a garrulous euphoria in which discoveries were being made and flights taken into metaphysics and the moral sciences. Every few minutes, Sophie – happy and vivacious now – interrupted him possessively to explain what he was saying. Was it possible, Harriet wondered, that this talk was as fatuous as it seemed to her?
‘One might say,’ Guy was saying, ‘that riddles are the most primitive form of humour: so primitive, they’re scarcely humour at all, but a sort of magic.’
Sophie burst in: ‘He means, like the sphinx and like the oracle. Oracles always spoke in riddles.’
‘Not the oracle at Delos,’ said Inchcape.
Sophie gave him a look of contempt. ‘The oracle was at Delphi,’ she said.
Inchcape shrugged and let it pass.
At midnight Florica came out to sing again. This time Guy was too absorbed in his own talk to notice her. Harriet looked towards Ionescu’s table, but there was no one there. Florica, applauded with less vigour than before, departed and the orchestra strummed on.
Harriet yawned. Imagining she was accepting the situation indulgently, she watched Sophie and wondered: ‘Is Guy really taken in by this feminine silliness? If I made all those grimaces and gestures as I talked, and interrupted and insisted on attention would he find it all attractive?’ Almost in spite of herself, she said ‘I think we should go now.’
Shocked by the suggestion, Guy said: ‘I’m sure no one wants to go yet.’
‘No, no,’ Sophie joined with him at once. ‘We do not go so soon.’
Harriet said: ‘I’m tired.’
‘Tomorrow,’ said Sophie, ‘you have all day to sleep.’
Inchcape stubbed his cigarette. ‘I would like an early night. I did not sleep much on the train.’
‘Well, let me finish this.’ Holding up his glass, which was full, Guy spoke in the tone of a child that begs to sit up ten minutes more.
Refilling his own glass, Yakimov said: ‘It’s still very early, dear girl.’
They sat another half-an-hour, Guy eking out his drink and trying to regain the rhythm of talk, but something was lost. An end-of-the-evening lameness was in the air. When, at last, they were agreed to go, there was still the business of finding the waiter.
Inchcape threw down a thousand-lei note and said: ‘That ought to cover me.’ Guy settled the rest.
They picked up a taxi in the Chaussée and started back. Sophie, whose flat was in the centre of the town, was dropped first. Guy descended with her and took her to her door where she talked at him urgently, holding to his arm. Leaving her, he called back to her: ‘We’ll meet tomorrow.’
Next Yakimov was taken to the Athénée Palace. Outside the hotel, he said: ‘Dear me, I’d almost forgotten. I’m bidden to a party in Princess Teodorescu’s suite.’
‘Rather a late party,’ murmured Inchcape.
‘An all-night party,’ Yakimov said.
Guy said: ‘When we find a flat, you must come to dinner with us.’
‘Delighted, dear boy,’ said Yakimov, who, as he struggled out of the taxi, was almost sitting on the step. Somehow he got down to the pavement and crossed it unsteadily. Pressing against the revolving doors, he waved back baby-fashion.
‘I shall be interested,’ said Inchcape dryly, ‘to see what return you get for all this hospitality.’
Reprovingly, Dobson spoke from his corner: ‘Yaki used to be famous for his parties.’
‘Oh, well,’ said Inchcape, ‘we’ll see. Meanwhile, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be dropped next.’
The Pringles reached their room in silence, Harriet fearing complaint that she had broken up the party. A justified complaint. It was true she could sleep all day – and what did an hour or two matter in the face of eternity?
While she got into bed, Guy studied his face in the glass. He broke the silence to ask her: ‘Do you think I look like Oscar Wilde?’
‘You do, a little.’
He remained in front of the glass, distorting his face into the likeness of one famous film-star and another.
Harriet wondered if this was the moment to ask him about Sophie, and decided it was not. She said, instead:
‘You’re an incurable adolescent. Come to bed.’
As he turned from the glass, he said with inebriated satisfaction: ‘Old Pringle’s all right. Old Pringle’s not a bad chap. Old Pringle’s not a bad chap at all.’
4
Yakimov found his dress clothes sponged, pressed and laid ready for him on his bed. When he changed, he put on one black shoe and one brown.
At the party someone would be sure to mention the fact that he was wearing odd shoes. He would then gaze down at his feet in surprise and say: ‘And do you know, dear boy, I have another pair at home exactly like these.’
He believed this to be his most subtle party prank. He had not played it since dear old Dollie died, reserving it for those times when he was in the highest spirits. Now, so changed were his fortunes, he was ready for anything.
After he had dressed, he sat for a while re-reading a letter on which he was working. It was to his mother. In it he had already told her where he was to be found and had begged her to send his quarterly remittance as soon as possible. He was, he said, engaged on important voluntary war work, giving no details for fear she should be misled as to his need.
After a long reflective pause, he picked up his stub of pencil and added to please her: ‘Going tonight to Princess Teodorescu’s bun-fight.’ Ordinarily the effort of one sentence would have brought him to a stop, but in his present mood his hand drove on. With some words written very large, some small, but all legible like the carefully written words of a child, he concluded: ‘All the best then, dear old girl, and keep your pecker up. Your Yaki is in the big times once again.’
Filled with a sense of a task well done and pleasure ahead, he went down to meet Prince Hadjimoscos.
It had been for Yakimov a very satisfactory day. He was content, with a contentment he had ceased to experience since thrown penniless upon the world at Dollie’s death. That afternoon, newly risen from his siesta, he had gone down to the hotel bar, the famous English Bar, where he had seen, as he hoped he might, someone he knew. This was an English journalist called Galpin.
Galpin, seeing Yakimov, had looked elsewhere. Unruffled, Yakimov had placed himself in view and said: ‘Why, hello, dear boy! We met last in Belgrade,’ then, before Galpin could reply, he added: ‘What are you drinking?’ Whatever it was Galpin had been about to say, he now merely grunted and said: ‘Scotch.’