Arabesque (11 page)

Their conversation startled him. The contrast between these bitter mercenaries and his late companion in the fifteen-hundredweight was depressing. That driver believed in nothing, but hated
nothing; he had the resignation, the inner discipline of the soldier, and an appreciation of vitality and comedy wherever they might be. The police loathed both their service and Palestine. Indeed,
Prayle suspected, they would have loathed anywhere but the suburbs of a large town.

His comments and questions could never elicit what they did appreciate, never once during the whole journey. When the road passed through Qiriat Mozkin, lined on both sides by Jewish light
industries, there was not a word of interest in the passion that had made toothpaste and textiles grow in the desert, only stories of the gangsterism of Jewish labour. At Jenin, sore and scowling,
they laughed in the faces of the passing Arabs. In lovely Nablus they told how the police had at last taught the army to put down the Arab rebellion by bothering no longer with the laws of
evidence. Their windy epic of patrol, assassination and reprisal showed that at least they admired the desperate courage of their leaders. Over the hills where the Kings of Judah and Israel had
carried on their private warfare, they cursed the fields, windswept and glorious to Prayle, because they were not green; and at the sight of Jerusalem, tip-tilted towards the traveller from the
north so that the roofs and streets within the walls were defined as in a medieval map, they damned its opportunities and longed for the stews of Tel Aviv where in the tactful control of vice or
traffic a man could make a bit of money.

Much of their talk Prayle discounted—after all, a first sight of Jerusalem would soon cease to be any more enthralling than a sight of Manchester—but he was weary of their hatred of
the Jews, the more remarkable since all three of them appeared to have Jewish mistresses, and of their contemptuous liking for the Arabs. Lord! And the whole world was open to the humble!

The police dropped Sergeant Prayle in Allenby Square, and directed him to the Field Security Office. The sun had gone down behind the tall, stone houses. The pale and very distant sky, ringed
with clouds on the horizon, seemed to give out a soft wind that blew from no definite quarter. His first impression of Jerusalem was that the English, shamed by the Holy City into thinking, had
been inspired to control and design beauty of architecture that they had not produced in their own country for a hundred years. His second impression was that he felt remarkably well. That, he
reflected, might be the cause of a few thousand years of trouble. Too many people had felt too full of beans.

Prayle entered the billet. The was a light in the section officer’s room. In the main office there was no one but a Scots sergeant sitting in front of a typewriter and fighting with a
ferocious black kitten. Prayle introduced himself and asked for the sergeant-major.

“The sergeant-major is in Tel Aviv, and we are careful not to disturb him in his meditations,” said the sergeant sardonically. “It’s myself and the skipper do the
work.”

“His nibs very busy too?” asked Prayle, nodding to the kitten.

“His nibs is providing me with diversion while I wait for the skipper to complete his weekly report,” said the sergeant. “As nothing whatever has happened, he will be thinking
up a few dir-rty cracks for the amusement of a headquarters that verra strongly appreciates us both.”

Sergeant MacKinnon rose majestically from his typewriter, deposited the kitten in the waste-paper basket and put his head through the officer’s door.

“Will ye hold the for-rt, sir, while I take the man Prayle to the canteen?”

“Duty clerk, too, am I?” protested a voice from the office. “All right. And I’d like to see him when he’s cleaned up and had a drink.”

“A verra good skipper!” said the sergeant. “But he canna see that a man wants his rations at six o’clock and not at the godless hours when he eats himself. Drink, says
he! Well, I gie ye a drink, but it’s food ye’re wanting.”

He injected a swift and powerful whisky into Prayle, and then led him round the back of the building into the Y.M.C.A. canteen.

When Prayle returned to the billet, he found three weary N.C.O.’s sitting around and talking shop. MacKinnon was hammering on his typewriter and joining in the conversation. The kitten was
tearing to pieces a dog-sized joint of beef. The stove was lit and there was a proper army fug, for Jerusalem evenings were cold to those who had come up from the coast or the Dead Sea. Prayle
recognised the authentic, tense and easy atmosphere of his service.

The sergeant entered the C.O.’s office and gave him a cracking regimental salute. It was always best to be on the safe side with unknown officers. Captain Fairfather looked up and grinned
appreciatively, faint amusement in his eyes suggesting that he accepted this tribute from one amateur soldier to another at its full worth as evidence of good manners. He was middle-aged, bald,
with a spare face, deeply lined. He would have given the impression of a lean, regular officer if it had not been for an air of being continuously entertained at finding himself an officer at
all.

“Pull up a chair, Sergeant,” he said, “and tell me all about it. How did you get here?”

“A lift to Ras Naqura, sir, and then on with the Palestine police.”

“Ah! So you know some of our problems already.”

Prayle smiled in silence, not knowing whether he was intended to take this remark in the sense he preferred.

“Well, now—Armande Herne. A soldier’s dream, Sergeant. I don’t say for all of us, but—it’s a long way from home, and we’ve been here a long time. And
when you get an Englishwoman of undoubted charm … Undoubted! Though perhaps a little self-conscious. What do you think?”

“Kensington, sir. She can’t get over it.”

“With long legs like that? You’re unjust, Sergeant Prayle. There’s more than a touch of Mayfair in her. Do you remember,” he added dreamily, “the legs one used to
see in Bond Street between midday and lunch? The feet, of course, enormous, so that one felt that shade of pity which is so dangerous when combined with admiration. And those faces of studied
melancholy. But I suppose, after all, that most of them came from Kensington. We must not abuse Kensington.”

“No hawkers or circulars,” Prayle explained bitterly.

“Nonsense! Really, you don’t understand her a bit. You’re impatient with her just because she cultivates the society of colonels. Some of them are quite intelligent, and they
like to be reminded of those quiet squares of Kensington. She dances beautifully, too. She should with those legs.”

Prayle did not reply. He resented conversation about Armande’s legs.

“Her face,” said Captain Fairfather, “is altogether too spiritual for me. Very hard to live up to. Hard for herself, too, perhaps. Yes, now I see why you find something
artificial in her—” He leaned forward, and his eyes, though they did not cease to twinkle amiably, lit with a hard interest. “Sergeant, if that young woman isn’t straight,
she’s dangerous. She’s just exactly what we all miss.”

“Isn’t she straight, sir?”

“I thought so. But I only have what Captain Wyne told me in his letter—that you know her better than any of us and want to ask her some questions about missing arms. Funny
word—missing. Down here we either steal arms or buy ’em. Which did she do?”

“Just among those present.”

“Well, go easy on her. It’s quite preposterous to think of her being mixed up in a sordid arms racket. If she’s up to anything at all, it’s bigger than that. And she
isn’t, you know, a snob—though I don’t think you quite meant that. Bloomsbury would be a better word of abuse than Kensington—except that for Bloomsbury she is too
fashionable. I knew her husband slightly in London. A dull fish, but restful. He’d be very shocked to hear out conversation, Sergeant. Have my chaps made you comfortable?”

“Four blankets underneath, sir.”

“Yes, that’s where you want them on these damned stone floors. Well, tell me what happens, will you? And keep it all in the family. We don’t want them to start fussing higher
up as yet.”

Prayle suddenly felt that he would be safe in asking for advice. This was not a man to condemn Armande merely because she was potentially dangerous—and he liked her, though his
appreciation seemed to be unnecessarily carnal.

“What do you think, sir, down here,” he asked, “of David Nachmias?”

“He’s a very good friend of mine. Down here? Well, down here we’re all much too afraid to think. If we lose the war in the Middle East, the Arabs will revolt, and if we win it,
the Jews will revolt. What’s the use of thinking? Day-to-day admininstration—that’s what we all do in Palestine.”

“Has Mrs Herne seen him?”

“Not much. And, by the merest accident, I know he is not anxious to be with her. I asked the Nachmiases to a meal with Armande, and Madame accepted with delight. She knew Armande in
Beirut, I gathered. And then David turned the invitation down on a flimsy excuse.”

“What’s your reading of it?”

“The merest conjecture. Armande has contracted an attack of Zionism. Now, Zionism with ignorance is a nuisance—embarrassing to a man like Abu Tisein. He’s a most able
politician. He has no patience with patriotism without technique. He doesn’t think in terms of America and Poland; he thinks in terms of Arabs. A dozen of his sort
could
make a
Jewish Palestine.”

“Whom does he really work for?” asked Prayle.

“The Jewish Agency first, foremost and all the time. But their interests are often ours. And you mustn’t think the Agency is some sort of sinister secret society. Jews—Zionist
Jews, that is—all over the world elect their representatives, and the representatives elect an executive to administer the National Home. That executive is the Jewish Agency. Its constitution
is democratic! Its methods are—well, I’ve never decided who does the most harm, the Agency orators or the Palestine Government. Our people, you see, have no patience with hysteria. We
show our distaste. We don’t even like having them to lunch in case they make speeches at us. That’s all wrong. Treat a Jew as if he were the Messiah (its amazing how often he thinks in
his own heart that he is) and he’ll eat out of your hand. Where does Nachmias come into your problem?”

“Back door, sir, if at all. Shall I talk to him first?”

“God forbid!” Captain Fairfather exclaimed. “If it comes to interrogating Abu Tisein, we’ll have to have it done on the highest level.”

In Jerusalem Armande was happy for the first time since the fall of France. She was back in a tiny apartment of her own: a penthouse on the top of a block of flats in Qatamon.
The roof stood high above the modern suburbs, looking east to the scrub and boulders of the barren Judaean hills, and west to the walls and pinnacles of the Old City. She was free to choose her own
friends, free of all those cheaply alluring competitors in the St. Georges; and, war or no war, it was pleasant to be back in a civilisation that recalled London. At the King David Hotel there were
even dinner jakcets to be seen in the restaurant.

She had no financial worries. M. Calinot’s money was near its end, but her expenses at Beit Chabab had been lavishly defrayed as if Anton’s inn were a hotel de luxe. She had
therefore decided to rid herself of Beirut, its useless life and its useless memories, and to settle in Palestine where there was nothing exceptional in being British and a civilian, and war work
of all sorts for the asking. Soon after reaching Jerusalem she had taken a job at Palestine Headquarters which paid her as yet a mere five pounds a week, but gave her security and self-respect. She
was at last a useful member of the fortress, not an idle mouth to be fed.

With all this outward peace she was gay at heart. She had carried out a difficult and secret assignment with such ease and efficiency. One night when she thought of the quiet commendation of
David Nachmias she had hugged her pillow and kicked with exhilaration like a month-old infant, until the loneliness of the pillow reminded her that she was a woman, not a child.

Abu Tisein had not told her very much of the end of the story—simply that at the appointed time and place Sheikh Wadiah had met the detachment of troops and led them to a temporary cache
where the arms awaited collection; he had been mildly offended because the party would not stay to a considerable cold supper which lie himself had carried out into the woods.

She sent Wadiah her Jerusalem address, and at once received a reply from him, written in a magnificent flowing hand on the most expensive paper obtainable in Beit Chabab, which happened to be
pale pink and deckle-edged. The letter contained nothing but resounding compliments, yet was delivered confidentially by a Maronite monk. Sheikh Wadiah was too much of an individualist to believe
in public services.

At the end of November the same monk, bowing, smiling and disappearing with ecclesiastical smoothness, delivered another letter. For two pages it expressed Wadiah’s allegiance to her and
her country, and then came to the point:

Armande discounted this conventionally exaggerated language. Fouad, she supposed, had some private business with army or government, and she was expected to do him a
favour—certainly a large and disreputable favour, since Wadiah himself made the request. Friendship in the Middle East always seemed to be a banding together against common enemies or the
officials of the state; it was not so sincere or disinterested as in Europe, yet carried greater responsibilities. She hoped that David Nachmias would be able to do whatever was required.

Abu Tisein kept clear of her in Jerusalem, explaining that there should be no public connection between them. His influence in the background, however, had been of use. He had insured that she
met the colonel who was now her employer, and he had opened to her the Zionist circles of Jerusalem.