Because the peasants themselves were given to holiday colours of great brilliance, their male descendants dressed in grey, the women in Parisian black with such pearls, diamonds and silver fox furs as they could afford.
Harriet, meeting glances that became critical, even slightly derisive, of the fact the Pringles were hatless and rather oddly dressed, became censorious herself. ‘They have,’ she said, ‘the uniformity of their insecurity.’
‘They’re not all Rumanians,’ said Guy. ‘There are a great many stateless Jews; and there are, of course, Hungarians, Germans and Slavs. The percentages are …’ Guy, his head lifted above the trivialities of conduct, brought out statistics, but Harriet was not listening. She was absorbed in warfare with the crowd.
The promenade was for her a trial of physical strength. Though leisurely, the Rumanians were ruthless in their determination to keep on the pavement. Only peasants or servants could be seen walking in the road. The men might, under pressure, yield an inch or two, but the women were as implacable as steam-rollers. Short and strong, they remained bland-faced while wielding buttocks and breasts as heavy as bladders of lard.
The position most fiercely held was the inner pavement beside the shop windows. Guy, too temperate, and Harriet, too light-boned, for the fray, were easily thrust out to the kerb, where Guy gripped Harriet’s elbow to keep her from slipping into the gutter. She broke from him, saying: ‘I’ll walk in the road. I’m not a Rumanian. I can do what I like.’
Following her, Guy caught her hand and squeezed it, trying to induce in her his own imperturbable good humour. Harriet, looking back at the crowd, more tolerant now she was released from it, realised that behind its apparent complacency there was a nervous air of enquiry, an alert unease. Were someone to shout: ‘The invasion has begun,’ the whole smug façade would collapse.
This unease unmasked itself at the end of the Calea Victoriei where the road widened in a no-man’s-land of public buildings. Here were parked a dozen or so of the Polish refugee cars that were still streaming down from the north. Some of the cars had been abandoned. From the others women and children, left while the men sought shelter, gazed out blankly. The well-dressed Rumanians, out to appreciate and be appreciated, looked affronted by these ruined faces that were too tired to care.
Harriet wondered what would be done with the Poles. Guy said the Rumanians, once stirred, were kindly enough. Some who owned summer villas were offering them to Polish families, but stories were already going round about the refugees; old anti-Polish stories remembered from the last war.
Near the end of the road, near the cross roads where the turbaned boyar, Cantacuzino, pointed the way to the Chicken Market, a row of open trǎsurǎs waited to be hired. Guy suggested they drive up the Chaussée. Harriet peered at the horses, whose true condition was hidden by the failing of the light.
‘They look wretchedly thin,’ she said.
‘They’re very old.’
‘I don’t think we should employ them.’
‘If no one employed them, they would starve to death.’
Choosing the least decrepit of the horses, the Pringles climbed into the carriage, which was about to start when commanded to a halt. A tall, elderly man was holding out his walking-stick with an imperious air.
Guy recognised the man with surprise. ‘It’s Woolley,’ he said. ‘He usually ignores “the culture boys”.’ Then his face lit with pleasure: ‘I expect he wants to meet you.’ Before Woolley could state his business, Guy introduced him to Harriet: ‘The leading English businessman, the chairman of the Golf Club’, enhancing from sheer liberality of spirit such importance as Woolley had; then, turning with tender pride towards Harriet, he said: ‘My wife.’
Woolley’s cold nod indicated that duty not frivolity had caused him to accost them. ‘The order is,’ he announced in a nasal twang, ‘the ladies must return to England.’
‘But,’ said Guy, ‘I called at the Legation this morning. No one said anything about it.’
‘Well, there it is,’ said Woolley in a tone that implied he was not arguing, he was telling them.
Harriet, exasperated by the mildness of Guy’s protest asked: ‘Who has given this order? The Minister?’
Woolley started, surprised, it seemed, not only by the edge on her voice but by the fact she had a voice at all. His head, hairless, with toad-mottled skin, jerked round and hung towards her like a lantern tremulous on a bamboo: ‘No, it’s a general order, like. I’ve sent me lady wife home as an example. That was enough for the other ladies.’
‘Not for me, I’m afraid. I never follow examples.’
Woolley’s throat moved several times before he said: ‘Oh, don’t you? Well, young woman, I can tell you this: if trouble starts here, there’ll be a proper schemozzle. The cars and petrol will be requisitioned by the army and the trains’ll be packed with troops. I doubt if anyone’ll get away, but if you do, you’ll go empty-handed, and it won’t be no Cook’s tour. Don’t say I haven’t warned you. What I say is, it’s the duty of the ladies to go back home and not to be a drag on the gents.’
‘You imagine they’ll be safer in England? I can only say, you don’t know much about modern warfare. I think, Mr Woolley, it would be better if you set an example by not getting into a panic.’
Harriet poked at the coachman and the trǎsurǎ, seeming about to break fore from aft, heaved itself to a start. As it went, Harriet looked back to give a regal nod and saw that Woolley’s face, under a street lamp, had lost what colour it had. He shouted after them, his voice passing out of controclass="underline" ‘You young people these days have no respect for authority. I’d have you know, the Minister described me as the leader of the English colony.’
They were under way. Guy, his brows raised, gazed at Harriet, having seen an extra dimension added to the woman he had achieved. ‘I never dreamt you could be so grand,’ he said.
Pleased with herself, she said: ‘He’s an impossible old ass. How could you let him bully you?’
Guy laughed. ‘Darling, he’s pathetic.’
‘Pathetic? With all that self-importance?’
‘The self-importance is pathetic. Can’t you see?’
For a sudden moment she could see, and her triumph subsided. His hand slipped into hers and she raised to her lips his long, unpractical fingers. ‘You’re right, of course. Still …’ She gave his little finger a bite that made him yelp. ‘That,’ she said, ‘is in case you get too good to be true.’
They had returned down the Calea Victoriei, crossed the square and had reached the broad avenue where the German Embassy stood among the mansions of the very rich. This led to the Chaussée, that stretched, wide and tree-lined, into open country. The trees, a row on either side of the pavements, were almost bare, what leaves that remained so scorched by the summer’s heat that they hung like scraps blown from a bonfire.
It was almost dark. The stars grew brilliant in the sky. The Pringles, sitting hand-in-hand in the old four-wheeler that smelt of horse, were more aware of each other than of anything else. Here they were, a long way from home, alone together in a warring world.
Made a little self-conscious by these thoughts, Guy pointed out an archway at the end of the vista. ‘The Arc de Triomphe,’ he said.