Beer in the Snooker Club (5 page)

‘I’ll look after it for you,’ he said.

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘Don’t bother.’

‘I’ll polish it too,’ he promised.

‘All right,’ I said and started going upstairs. Then I returned to the car and told him he could sit inside if he wished. I unlocked it and showed him how to work the radio. He was thrilled; his bare feet contracted with shyness.

‘I’ll clean every bit of it,’ he said.

‘Thank you very much,’ I said and went upstairs.

Edna was sitting looking out of the window, with a cup of coffee in her hand. She was well dressed in a black suit, her elegant legs crossed. She didn’t turn when I came in. I shook hands with Levy who was helping Font wash up some dishes in a corner. Levy is tall. He thrusts his head forward,
his chin horizontal, giving the impression that this is the only position to keep his spectacles from falling off. In contrast to Font, Levy’s eyebrows are pushed as far down as possible. I watched him dry the dishes, his movements awkward and absent-minded. There was something pathetic in the scene: Font handing Levy the dishes and Levy taking them, each with his own type of puzzled expression, a strange virus having struck them both and the symptoms of the disease so apparent. A silent
why?
on their faces. If you asked them why
what?
they would not be able to answer precisely.

I took a chair and sat half-facing Edna.

‘It was, therefore,’ Levy was telling Font, ‘both criminal and stupid.’ Levy is a product of one of the French Lycées in Egypt. This becomes obvious when he is with either Font or myself. Compared to our English education sloppiness and vagueness, his clarity in thought and speech is conspicuous.

‘But do you think England and France would have attacked us if Israel had refused to participate?’ Font asked.

‘Yes, and Israel would have attacked without the
active
participation of England and France. If Israel had added her voice to that of the Arabs in protesting against the troop concentration in Cyprus, and had told the Arab people: whatever our differences, we shall not be an instrument of imperial designs on you, an inestimable amount of good would have been done.’

‘Yes, yes; but all your “ifs” are nonsense. You know very well that all Israelis would like to see us dominated by Europe or America. Your “if” hasn’t got a leg to stand on.’

Levy was hurt at this. He is always being hurt anyhow.

‘It is a fact, Font,’ he said, ‘that a very large number of people in Israel objected to the Suez aggression. There is a large number of sincere socialists in Israel.’

‘Sincere socialists! I know your sincere socialists. Maurice Edelman – there is your sincere socialist.’

I smiled. Maurice Edelman is a very handy name for us when discussing socialism with Jews.

‘Don’t take him as an example,’ Levy said, ‘there are people like Victor Gollancz.’

Font has a weak spot for Victor Gollancz. ‘Victor Gollancz is not an Israeli,’ he muttered.

‘And neither is Edelman.’

Those two can go on like that for hours. With English personalities as a nucleus, they circle round and round, unaware that it is the Middle East they are discussing and not the United Kingdom.

I stopped listening to them and turned to Edna. I wondered whether Font and Levy were sexless. I wondered whether one has to be sexless to be completely sincere. I knew they had never considered Edna as a woman to be physically possessed. Doromian the Armenian once said that most men have their brains in their instruments and I wondered why Freud took so many volumes to say just that. Of course I go about pretending otherwise, but the fact is, no matter how important the subject I am discussing, let a beautiful woman appear and I know where my brain is. Except when I am seriously gambling. Perhaps, I thought, gambling is to me what socialism is to Font and Levy, but that didn’t strike me as true.

‘Edna,’ I whispered. She moved her head slightly but continued to gaze out of the window. I ran my finger slowly
up and down her sleeve. ‘Edna … Edna … Edna …’ She turned her head and looked at me. For a moment I thought it was a shadow playing on her cheek; at the same instant my hand involuntarily flew to my eyes and covered them. There was silence and then I heard Font and Levy go outside. From the corner of her lips, up her right cheek and to the lobe of her ear, was a thick line of raw flesh. The centre of the line was depressed and of a darker hue than the rest. The stitching had pulled her lips slightly to one side, and part of the skin on her neck was similarly stretched because of the wound.

‘Give me a cigarette,’ she said very softly. My hands were wet with sweat. I gave her a cigarette, then took one myself and lit both.

‘How do you like me now,’ she said.

‘I love you,’ I answered.

‘I mean aesthetically.’

A bloody officer. She didn’t have to tell me. A bloody bastard of an officer, come to search her house. A dashing swine of an officer with a moustache. Charming at the beginning. ‘Just routine,’ he must have said. A good lay, someone must have told him … a Jewess. What with? A knife? A broken glass?

‘A whip,’ she said without being asked.

‘So what?’ I shouted. ‘So bloody what? Aren’t there bloody officers in Israel? Haven’t they massacred Arab women and children? Isn’t Kenya full of bloody British officers? Isn’t Algeria full of bloody sadists in uniform? So what? Aren’t there Jewish officers in filthy Nato hand in hand with ex-Nazi officers? … oh, Edna … Who was it?’

She didn’t answer.

‘Who was it, Edna?’

But she wouldn’t tell.

She looked very much older than myself, and very tired. A storm of affection for her whirled in me, and the uselessness of it all and the unfairness of it all dulled my senses and made me want to cover myself with bedclothes and not open my eyes or emerge for a long time. I tried to pull her towards me, but she pushed me back. I desisted and she sat back, giving me her unscarred side.

All this is London. All this is London I told myself. All this comes of hearing Father Huddleston speak, of knowing who Rosa Luxemburg was, of seeing Gorki’s trilogy in Hampstead. It comes of Donald Soper at Speaker’s Corner, of reading Koestler and Alan Paton and Doris Lessing and Orwell and Wells and
La Question
and even Kenneth Tynan. Of knowing how Franco came to power and who has befriended him since, of Churchill’s hundred million to squash Lenin and then later the telegram; of knowing how Palestine was given to the Jews and why … of the bombing of Damascus and Robert Graves’s
Good-bye
. Oh, blissful ignorance. Wasn’t it nice to go to the Catholic church with my mother before I ever heard of Salazar or of the blessed troops to Ethiopia?

‘When did it happen?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she answered.

‘Where do you live now?’

‘A few yards from here.’

‘And your parents?’

‘In South Africa.’

I stood up and walked about the room. I looked under Font’s bed and found a bottle of cognac but I didn’t feel
like drinking. I looked out of the other window and saw Font and Levy downstairs with the owner of a coffee-house, sitting in chairs on the pavement and playing dominoes, the three of them. Did Font really like to play dominoes, or did the scene of himself and Levy playing with a man in peasant clothes complete a cherished self portrait?

‘Do you want some cognac, Edna?’

‘Yes,’ she answered. I took the bottle from underneath the bed and poured her a glass.

‘Why don’t you go away, Edna? Why don’t you go to Israel or South Africa or France or anywhere else and live and be happy?’

‘Because I am Egyptian,’ she said.

It took me some time to realize that this scar on Edna’s face was actually a disfigurement, and that it affected me as such; not as a repulsiveness, but in the tender way it endeared her to me. Somehow it made her more real and an individual. If only she would cry, I was thinking, if only she would cry and allow her emotions to overcome her thoughts. But in all the six years I had known her, she had never cried.

‘Do you ever cry, Edna?’ She brushed the question away as stupid.

It is strange. A man gets to know a woman. For a long time they are one. They have mingled their thoughts, their bodies, their hopes, their odours, their lives. They are one. And then a while later they are strangers. They are not one any more. Just as though it had never happened, as though looking at oneself in the mirror and seeing a stranger instead of one’s reflection.

I fetched a glass. What do people who do not drink do on such occasions? Face the facts perhaps. But facing a fact is
one thing, and overcoming it is another. Cognac was going to overcome the facts: overcome Edna’s willed hardness and overcome my lack of suitable words and actions. I filled my glass and hers once more, then sat at her feet in silence, she with her thoughts and I with mine. The cognac was already taking control of things. One more glass each and I kissed her on her knee, softly and affectionately. Slowly her hand came down and played with my hair and rubbed my head against her side. Spontaneous, perhaps, and unpremeditated; nevertheless a scene probably already encountered in a film or a play or an opera or a book which the brandy unknowingly evoked. Artists try to depict people; and people depict the artists’ conception of people.

And then the obvious thing to say and talk about came to me: ‘Do you remember?’ Would I have thought of that if it weren’t for the brandy? Perhaps I would have and even did; but it wouldn’t have come softly and at the right moment.

‘Do you remember?’

‘What?’ she whispered.

We remembered, and the stranger in the mirror became familiar once more, recognizable and close and one and the same.

Font and Levy came in and ignored the fact that my head was against Edna’s knee and her hand on my head. Such irrelevant things are never worthy of the attention of socialists. I was going to ask Font what, in his opinion, Lenin would have done had he discovered his wife with another man, but I changed my mind.

‘Everything is Allah’s will,’ Font began. ‘Ask him how much money a year he makes, and he answers: “Allah be
praised, enough.” Ask him whether he is happy Nasser has rid us of Farouk, he answers: “Whatever God brings is good.” Ask him how much he pays his waiter, he says: “Allah knows, more than enough.” ’

Levy said there was a ‘psychological barrier’ between Font and Kharafallah downstairs. But Font said he was only a hired hand in the snooker club, and therefore no such barrier should exist, and Edna said something about being careful not to patronize. I waited to see how the conversation would turn to English politicians. If it didn’t turn in that direction soon, I was going to steer it that way myself because they are never so happy as when beating the bush in London. However, Edna told Font he was acting like a Fabian, and Levy illustrated Fabianism by describing Bernard Shaw, and Font defended Wells, so they were on the right track and I rubbed my head against Edna’s knee.

‘I’ll drive you home,’ I told Edna.

‘I live next door,’ she said.

‘Let’s all go for a drive.’

‘All right,’ she said.

Just as we were going out of the door, Levy turned to Edna and said:
‘Tu te sens mieux?’

I saw her frown slightly; she didn’t like this particular intimacy simply because they were both Jewish. At the same time Levy’s face reddened at his mistake.

We heard music as we approached the car, and I remembered the little boy who offered to clean it. He was curled up in the front seat, asleep, the rag with which he had cleaned the car still clasped in his hand. We all peered at him as I explained how he came to be there. Edna put the radio off and woke him gently.

‘Where do you live?’ she asked. He rubbed his eyes and looked at us from under his eyebrows, his head bent. Then he saw me and smiled.

‘I’ve cleaned it
three
times,’ he said.

‘It’s beautiful,’ I said.

‘Where do you live?’ Edna asked again. ‘Your mother must be worried about you.’

‘Oh, it’s all right, mistress,’ he said, ‘I have no mother or father, so it’s all right.’

‘Where do you live then?’

‘Oh, just here.’

‘Which house?’

‘In one of the doorways, it doesn’t matter which.’

‘You mean you have no home?’

‘No, but in winter I sleep behind the police officer’s desk at the station.’

‘Police officer?’

‘Yes, he is my friend,’ he said proudly. I watched Font’s face. I could see the genuine frustration and the anger at his inadequacy and the injustice of it seep up to his eyes and blind him with useless fury.

‘How old are you?’ Edna asked.

‘I don’t know.’

Just then Kharafallah, the coffee-house owner, came and peered at the boy. ‘No father, no mother,’ he sighed. ‘What can we do? It’s God’s will.’

‘Where does he eat?’ Levy asked.

‘Here and there. A loaf here, a bit of cheese there; we do what we can – he is not the only one. What can we do? It’s Allah’s will.’

‘Doesn’t he go to school?’ Font in his dreaminess asked.

‘School? What school? He has no father or mother I tell you.’ Kharafallah shook his head. ‘School indeed!’ He laughed. ‘This one is lucky; the police officer, a good man, may God keep him, helps him in the cold. What can we do?’

Edna gave Kharafallah some money and told him to look after the boy until we made some arrangement for him.

We drove towards the Pyramids, Edna and me in the back seat, and Font driving with Levy by his side. Levy had his arms crossed in resignation. He is authentically lonely. We first met him in London, working in a Lyons Corner House, shouted at by an unpleasant manageress. He has never quite fitted in with us. Apart from our having had an English education and he a French one, there is an aura of humility about him which is sometimes embarrassing. Edna paid his passage to Egypt and Font befriended him. He teaches Arabic now to adult Egyptians who have suddenly been faced with the necessity of knowing that language, which he had studied under Moslem Sheikhs at the Azhar University. He would probably have become a scholar of repute in the Arab world had it not been for the Suez war. I wondered why he didn’t go to Israel.