Clarence pointed out the skeleton of a new Ministry building that stood on the other side of the boulevard. Work on it had now come to a stop. The Minister had decamped to Switzerland with the Ministry funds. Meanwhile the workmen, left stranded, were camping in sheltered corners. Harriet could see them now, standing on the girders, gazing down into the street.
‘Now it’s growing cold,’ said Clarence, ‘they light bonfires and sit around them at night. Dear knows what they’ll do when the winter comes.’
Among the confusion below was a single rococo house, its stucco cracked and grey, its front door of engraved glass opening on to a pretty curve of broken steps, its garden a wasteland. Someone was still living in it. At the windows hung thick lace curtains, as grimy as the stucco.
‘Do you think we could find a house like that?’ Harriet said.
As she spoke, some check in Clarence – a defensive prejudice against her, or perhaps mere shyness – broke suddenly, and he leant forward, smiling. ‘I’m fond of those old houses, too,’ he said, ‘but you can’t live in them. They’re alive with bugs. We’re seeing the last of them, I’m afraid.’ He kept glancing sideways at her, awkwardly, half-smiling. ‘If Rumania had been as long under the Austrians as she was under the Turks, she might be civilised by now.’
She noticed among his features, which before had had no special appeal to her, his sensitive and beautiful mouth. An occassional intentness in his glance made it clear to her that somehow there had been inaugurated an understanding, a basis for a relationship. It was an understanding in which she had no faith, a relationship she had no wish to pursue.
Their talk was interrupted by the distant thud-thud of a funeral march. The three hurried into the front room and, opening the windows leant out. The procession was appearing on the left and heading for the square. From there it would take a roundabout route to the station. Cǎlinescu was to be buried on his own estate.
People were crowding out on to balconies, calling and waving to friends on other balconies. Despite the weather, there was an atmosphere of holiday. As the band drew near, the umbrellas, quilted below, moved towards the kerb: the police, wearing mourning bands on their arms, rushed wildly along in the gutter pushing them back again. A news-man on a lorry started turning his camera handle. The monstrous catafalque appeared, black and blackly ornamented with fringed draperies, ostrich feathers and angels holding black candles. It was drawn by eight black horses, weighted with trappings, the whites of their eyes flashing behind black masks. They slipped about on the wet road so that the whole vast structure seemed to topple.
The Prince walked behind it.
Ah! people shouted from balcony to balcony, this was just what they had expected. The King had been afraid to attend even in his bullet-proof car: yet there was the young Prince, walking alone and unprotected. It was felt that the crowd would give a cheer, were it an occasion for cheering.
Behind the Prince came the canopy of the Metropolitan. On either side the priests swept the watery streets with their skirts. The old Metropolitan with his great white beard, seeing the camera, plucked at his vestments, straightened his jewelled cross and lifted his face with mournful dignity.
The massed military bands, having changed from Chopin to Beethoven, went past uproariously. Then came the cars. Clarence and the Pringles looked out for Inchcape, but he could not be recognised among the anonymous, dark-clad figures within.
The tail of the procession crept past and hard upon it came the press of traffic released from the side streets. All in a moment, it seemed, even while the funeral was still thumping and wailing its way to the square, the Calea Victoriei was aswarm with cars hooting, dodging, cutting in upon each other, eager for life to return to normal.
The ranks of spectators broke up and people began crowding into bars and cafés. They swept past the neon-lit window of the German Information Bureau, which displayed a map of Poland partitioned between Germany and Russia. A swastika obliterated Warsaw. No one paused to give it a glance.
Confidence was growing again. The black market rate had dropped, so even Guy was inclined to agree they could not entertain Sophie every night. One Bucharest paper had expressed in a leader regret that Greater Rumania had not been given the chance to pit her strength against a mighty enemy. She would show the world how a war could be fought. Readers were reminded that in 1914 Rumania’s gold had been sent for safety to Moscow. It had never come back again. Rumanian manhood was eager to redress this wrong – but would the opportunity ever come?
Clarence, drawing in his head and closing his window, said: ‘Now we’ve heard the last of Cǎlinescu, let’s go and get a meal.’
But Cǎlinescu was not to be so easily put out of mind. Three days of official mourning were proclaimed, during which the cinemas were to remain shut. When they opened, they showed a news-film of the funeral. For a week the giant coffin was carried by peasants through rain, to the family tomb, then, at last, the late Premier was replaced and forgotten. Forgotten also was the Iron Guard. Its members, declared Ionescu, had been wiped out to a man.
PART TWO
The Centre of Things
8
Harriet Pringle, no longer fearing that she and her husband would have to flee at any moment, began to look for a flat, buy clothes and take an interest in the invitations that were arriving now that the university term had started. Among those invitations was one from Emanuel Drucker, the banker, whose son was Guy’s pupil.
The rain came and went. At night the wind blew cold and the Chaussée restaurants moved their chairs and tables back to their winter premises. After a week of grey weather the sun shone again, but it was possible to sit out of doors only at mid-day.
To the north of the city, where before there had only been the sheen of sun and mist, mountains appeared, crevassed and veined with glaciers that looked like threads of cotton. One morning the highest peak was veiled with snow. Each day the snow grew a little whiter and spread further down the mountain-side. Although Guy laughed at Inchcape’s theory of invasion, saying the Russians could come by the coastal plain any time they liked, Harriet was comforted by the thought of the high passes silting up with snow.
The day they were invited to luncheon with the Druckers was one of the last warm days of October. Harriet had arranged to meet Guy in the English Bar, but when she looked for him in the bar, he had not arrived. This did not surprise her, for she was beginning to realise that however late she might be for an appointment Guy could always be later.
The bar was not quite empty. Galpin sat at a table with a girl of dark domestic beauty, while Yakimov stood alone, disconsolately looking at them. Tufton and most of the visiting journalists had returned to their bases.
‘Dear girl,’ Yakimov called when he noticed Harriet, ‘come and join poor Yaki in a whisky,’ his plaintive voice suggesting not the intimidating social background described by Inchcape, but a need for comfort.
She entered. The air was smoky and stifling, and she said: ‘Do you really like this bar? Hasn’t the hotel a garden where we could sit?’
‘A garden, dear girl?’ He glanced around as though there might be a garden at his elbow. ‘I’ve seen one somewhere.’
‘Then let’s look for it.’ Harriet left a message for Guy with Albu, and led Yakimov away.