The Balkan Trilogy Read Online Free PDF

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 tr ǎ sur ǎ , 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 control: ‘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 opencountry. 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.
    ‘The Paris of the East,’ Harriet said, somewhat in ridicule, for they had disagreed as to the attractions of Bucharest. Guy, who had spent here his first year of adult freedom, living on the first money earned by his own efforts, saw Bucharest with a pleasure she, a Londoner, rather jealous of his year alone here, was not inclined to share.
    ‘What is it made of, the arch? Marble?’ she asked.
    ‘Concrete.’ It had been built previously by a fraudulent contractor who had used inferior cement. When it fell down, the contractor was put in prison and the arch re-erected to the glory of Greater Rumania – the Rumania that came into existence in 1919 when the Old Kingdom acquired, as a reward for entering the war on the side of the victors, parts of Russia, Austria and Hungary. ‘And so,’ said Guy, ‘like most people who did well out of the war, she is now a nice comfortable shape.’
    While Guy talked, young men howled past the tr ǎ sur ǎ in racing cars, each with a foot on his accelerator, a hand thumping up and down on the hooter. The horse – revealed by the street lights as a phantom horse, a skeleton in a battered hide – was not disturbed. Equally undisturbed was the coachman, a vast cottage loaf in a velvet robe.
    Guy whispered: ‘A Skopit . One of the sights of the city. The Skopits belong to a Russian sect. They believe that to find grace we must all be completely flat in front, women aswell as men. So, after they’ve reproduced themselves, the young people hold tremendous orgies, working themselves into frenzies in which they mutilate themselves.’
    ‘Oh!’ said Harriet. She gazed in wonder at the vast