The garden proved to be small, high-walled and accessible only through the French-windows of the breakfast room. Weather-worn tables and chairs stood under heavy trees. A few couples were sitting in secluded corners. The men glanced up at the newcomers in disconcerted surprise: the women, each of whom wore dark glasses, turned away. They all looked like people tracked down to a hide-out.
There were no flowers in the garden and no ornaments except, in the centre of the pebbled floor, a stone boy pouring an ewer of water into a stone basin. Sitting down beside the fountain, Harriet said: ‘This is better, isn’t it?’
Yakimov murmured doubtful agreement and sat beside her.
There was a sense of pause in the air. The couples remained silent until Harriet and Yakimov began to speak. Harriet asked: ‘Who was that girl with Galpin?’
‘Polish girl,’ said Yakimov, ‘Wanda Something. Came down here with McCann. Thought she was McCann’s girl; now, apparently, she’s Galpin’s. I don’t know!’ Yakimov sighed. ‘Wanted to have a talk with Galpin about this mobilisation order. Y’know, I’m a journalist. Have to send stuff home. Important to discuss it, get it straight. Went up to them in the bar just now, said “Have a drink”, and got the nose bitten right off m’face.’
He turned to stare at Harriet and she was surprised to see his eyes, set within the bewildered sadness of his face, become hard with grievance. He looked for the moment like an embittered child. Before she could speak, the waiter came to the table and she ordered lemonade. She said:
‘Do you think it significant, the mobilisation order? Are they expecting trouble?’
‘Oh no.’ Yakimov swept the thought aside with a movement of the hand. Galpin was forgotten now. Yakimov smiled with the delight of the entertainer. ‘You’ve heard about this frontier line the King plans to build round Rumania? Twice as strong as the Maginot and the Siegfried rolled into one? To cost a million million lei? The Imaginot Line, I call it, dear girl. The Imaginot Line!’
When Harriet laughed, he leant a little nearer to her and became gravely confiding. In the manner of an informed man, he said: ‘What I did think important was Hitler’s peace plan. Said he had no more territorial ambitions. Amazed me when I heard they’d turned it down. Don’t want to be critical, but I think Chamberlain slipped up there. No one wants this silly war, now do they?’
‘But Hitler so often said he had no territorial ambitions. We couldn’t possibly trust him.’
‘But we must trust him, dear girl.’ Yakimov’s great eyes seemed to swim with trust. ‘In this life we have to trust people. It’s the right thing to do.’
Unable to think of a reply, Harriet drank her lemonade. Yakimov, his face relaxing after his effort at earnestness, said easily: ‘I wonder, dear girl, could you lend me a couple of thou?’
‘What are “thou”?’
‘Why, mun, dear girl. Cash. Ready. Your poor old Yaki is broke until his remittance turns up.’
She was so startled, her cheeks grew pale. She opened her bag and searching through it with flustered movements, found a thousand-lei note. ‘It is all I have,’ she said.
‘Dear girl!’ – he pocketed the note in an instant – ‘how can poor Yaki express his gratitude?’ But Harriet did not wait to hear. As she rose and hurried from the garden, he called after her in hurt dismay: ‘Dear girl!’
She met Guy as he entered through the revolving door. He said: ‘What’s the matter?’
She was too abashed to tell him, but after they had crossed the square, she had regained herself enough to laugh and say: ‘Prince Yakimov invited me to have a drink. I thought he was being kind, but all he wanted was to borrow some money.’
Unperturbed, Guy asked: ‘Did you lend him any?’
‘A thousand lei.’
Now that Guy was treating the matter as unimportant, Harriet regretted her thousand lei. She said: ‘I hate lending money.’
‘Darling, don’t worry about it. You take money too seriously.’
She would have said that that was because she had never had any, but she remembered Guy had never had any, either. She said instead: ‘Yakimov is a fool. He was telling me we must trust Hitler.’
Guy laughed. ‘He’s a political innocent, but no fool.’
They were approaching the back entrance to the park where the disgraced politician stood with his head in a bag. The Drucker family lived nearby in a large block of mansion flats owned by the Drucker bank.
Within the doorway of the block were two life-sized bronze figures holding up bunches of electric-light bulbs. There was an impressive stairway, heavily carpeted. The hall had an atmosphere of France, but smelt of Rumania. The porter, who, in hope of a tip, pushed his way into the lift with them, reeked powerfully of garlic, so that the air seemed filled with acetylene gas.
They were taken to the top floor. When the Pringles stood outside the great mahogany doors of the Druckers’ flat, Harriet said: ‘I cannot believe that anything human exists behind these doors,’ but they opened even as Guy touched the bell and behind them stood Drucker and his sister and daughters. The actual opening of the door had been accomplished by a manservant, but Drucker’s impulsive movement forward suggested that, had convention permitted a gentleman to open his own front door, he would have done it for Guy’s sake.
At the sight of Drucker, Guy gave a cry of pleasure. Drucker shot out his arms and at once Guy threw wide his own arms. A tremendous babble of greetings, questions and laughter broke out while Guy, breathlessly trying to answer all that was asked of him, bent about him, kissing the women and girls.
Harriet stood back, watching, as she had watched the similar excitement in the wagon-lit.
It was Drucker himself – a tall, slow-moving man, stooping, heavy, elegant in silvery English tweeds – who came with outstretched hands to include her: ‘Ah, so charming a wife for Guy! Si jolie et si petite!’ He gazed down on her with a long look of ardent admiration. He took her hands with confidence, a man who knew all about women. Added to the sensual awareness of his touch was a rarer quality of tenderness. It was impossible not to respond to him, and as Harriet smiled he nodded slightly in acknowledgement of response. He then called to his eldest sister, Doamna Hassolel.
Doamna Hassolel detached herself from Guy, giving a slight ‘Ah!’ of regret. The animation of her face became restrained and critical as she was called to give attention to Harriet.
She was a small, stout, worn-faced woman with a decided manner. She took charge of the guests, apologising for the absence of the hostess, Drucker’s wife, who was still at her toilette. Harriet was introduced to the younger sisters, Doamna Teitelbaum and Doamna Flöhr. The first had a worried thinness. Doamna Flöhr, the beauty of the family, was plump and would, in time, be as stout as the eldest sister. She examined Harriet with bright, empty eyes.
They moved into the living room. As soon as they had sat down, a servant wheeled in a trolley laden with hors-d’œuvres and the little grilled garlic sausages made only in Rumania. Harriet, having learnt by now that luncheon might be served any time between two o’clock and three, settled down to drink ţuicǎ and eat what was offered her.
The room was very large. Despite its size, it appeared overfull of massive mahogany furniture and hemmed in by walls of so dark a red they were almost black. Hung on the walls, darker than the paper, were portraits heavily framed in gold. A vast red and blue Turkey carpet covered the floor. In the bow of the window, that overlooked the park, stood a grand pianoforte. Drucker’s eldest daughter, a school-girl, sat on the stool, occasionally revolving on it and touching a note whenever she stopped before the keyboard. The younger girl, a child of nine, dressed in the uniform of the Prince’s youth movement, stood very close to her father. When he had filled the glasses, he whispered to her. Shyly, she drew herself from his side to hand the glasses round.