School for Love (20 page)

‘I recognise the “Sea-shell”,’ said Mrs Ellis coolly, ‘but tell me – what is a “Botany”?’ The man swung on his wife: ‘What is a “Botany”?’

‘It is a Trade Mark,’ she repeated as before and from the loftiness of her self-control made the statement: ‘All wool, madame, is from the sheep; where else is wool coming?’ The man laughed unpleasantly. He and his wife fixed on Mrs Ellis stares of pitying contempt.

She said to Felix: ‘Let’s get out of here.’

In the street she seemed unaffected by the scene, but there was a slight colour in her cheeks.

‘Why was he so cross?’ asked Felix.

‘Because he’s crazy. Everyone’s crazy here, perhaps because of living on top of a mountain. I don’t know. Anyway it makes life very difficult.’

‘Is that why you said Miss Bohun is mad?’

‘Probably. Do stop asking silly questions. Sometimes you’re a damned silly kid for your age. When are you going to grow up?’

Felix, startled and rather hurt by this, was also oddly awakened. He realised his naïveté did not go down with everyone. His mother had said: ‘Oh, how I wish my little boy could remain a baby all his life,’ or ‘How I dread the day when my little boy loses his freshness and innocence.’ His mother had been his world and he, out of touch with other boys, perhaps unconsciously to please her, had remained rather too ‘fresh’ and ‘innocent’. Anyway, it didn’t please everyone. He became conscious suddenly of his own developing attitude to life. Now he was alone in the world, it was just as well he couldn’t remain a little boy all his life. The sooner he became as sensible as Mrs Ellis, the better for him.

The summer was coming. There was no more rain; the sun’s heat grew, the spring flowers wilted, dried, turned to dust, and the fields grew bare. Now the beauty of the day came with the sunset and the sky turned from a pure, bright green to a peacock blue in which the stars shone each evening larger and more brilliant. The sunset translucence and colour lingered, perhaps until dawn. Felix was never up late enough to know; but the colour and the beauty of the sky filled him with excitement as though the iron rule of the night had been overcome. It was
wonderful to go out with Mrs Ellis and to saunter beside her, with the red tip of her cigarette moving through the delicate air, and to see the crenellations of the old city wall cut romantically black against the brilliant sky.

If by chance at the Innsbruck Mrs Ellis and Felix (for Felix never let himself be separated from Mrs Ellis) were cornered by one of the Poles, the conversation would take a sombre and personal turn. There were two Poles, rather alike, with taut, yellowish skin strained over their skulls and pale eyes flatly set in their heads. They had got out of Poland into Russia and had recently, with several others, been sent to join the hundreds of Poles in Palestine. These two seemed always to be in the café; if none of Nikky’s other friends had arrived, they would sit together silent, each having untouched before him a small
café turc
. One evening Mrs Ellis and Felix found themselves cut off from the main group by the Poles and the four of them sat for a long time without a word. Then the elder Pole murmured gloomily: ‘To-day I saw some blue flowers and they made me think of Poland.’

Mrs Ellis, who was beside him, made a sympathetic murmur and asked: ‘Are there many blue flowers in Poland?’

‘There are some,’ he answered and added after a long pause, ‘naturally.’

‘I supposed there would be,’ Mrs Ellis said.

At the other end of the long table, which comprised three small café tables pushed together, someone was being very funny. Felix, gazing across the two stiff emaciated bodies of the Poles, strained to hear what it was about, but he could only get a word here and there. At last Mrs Ellis asked: ‘Did you have much difficulty in getting out of Poland?’

‘No, I was near the Russian frontier – there were many of us in lorries and we drove across. But the Russians seized us. You would not believe it; they put us in a camp. “Where is my servant?” I asked. “Here, in our regime,” said they, “you have no servant.” “This,” I shouted, “is an outrage. If you wish no servant, that is your own affair. I, I must have a servant. I am not of your regime. I demand a servant.”’ As he told the story, the Pole began to tremble; his lips shuddered with spasms of anger and he suddenly slapped the fragile table and upset the cognac to which someone had treated him. He made no comment on this, but sombrely watched the split cognac drip off the edge of the table. In a minute he whispered: ‘They laughed at me. Yes, I have suffered.’

Here the other Pole joined in, although he had not appeared to be listening: ‘I, too,’ he said; ‘in my camp we had to eat only potatoes! Frost-bitten potatoes. Day after day, potatoes. Believe me, my friends, that is to suffer.’

Mrs Ellis shook her head slowly in sympathy: ‘And what did the Russians eat?’ she asked.

‘They also ate potatoes. There was a famine. But that was their affair. You cannot treat a Polish officer as if he were a Russian.’

‘One is not used to such food,’ said the other with a grimace of distaste, and after a long pause added suddenly as an afterthought, ‘and every day they beat me.’

‘Beat you? Why did they do that?’

He shrugged his shoulders: ‘How should I know.’

Felix moved restlessly in his seat and looked at Mrs Ellis hoping she might catch his eye and agree to go. But she was sitting with hanging head as though there was over her, as over Felix, a deep depression. She said
without looking up: ‘Ah, well, the war will soon be over and then you can return to Poland.’

The nearer Pole shrugged his shoulders: ‘To Poland! Such a thing is impossible. I have suffered too much, my health is not good. It is the chest, you know. The chest. I could not survive a northern winter.’

At that moment, on the order of one of the young Arabs or Jews, a waiter brought a brandy to replace the one that had been spilt. Without a glance to either side, the Pole picked it up and swallowed it, and Felix took the chance to whisper: ‘Let us go.’

‘All right,’ Mrs Ellis agreed, ‘we’ll go to the King David.’

‘Really!’ Felix stumbled with excitement as he got to his feet, ‘really the King David?’

‘Why not?’

Nikky had not arrived. The others were so engrossed in an argument that they accepted Mrs Ellis’s departure with no more than a few mild protests.

Out in the fresh spring air, she said: ‘I’m getting bored with the Innsbruck.’

As they entered through the swing doors into the central hall of the hotel, Felix was almost as disappointed as he had been on first entering a café. There were a lot of people about – English officers, Levantines, even two Transjordan Arabs in full dress – but everyone was behaving with the utmost decorum. A breeze, too cool for comfort, came from the revolving fans. The light was not bright enough: the people sitting at the little tables seemed scattered and silent. It seemed to Felix that a slight chill hung over everything, and as he crossed the floor behind Mrs Ellis this impression was deepened as he noticed Frau Wagner sitting by herself, upright, a fixed artificial smile
set upon her artificially-coloured face. A tiny liqueur glass stood on the table before her. In her eyes, as they drew near her, he saw for the first time in his life the ultimate despair of loneliness. He caught his breath, touched as though by death, and tried to hurry past unseen. But she recognised him. Hope came into her glance, appalling him. He smiled awkwardly and pushed Mrs Ellis slightly in his eagerness to pass without being intercepted, but when he saw Frau Wagner look quickly away and lift her chin with a bright false stare of interest in something at the other end of the room, he felt ashamed of himself. He sat silent for a long time before he suddenly said to Mrs Ellis: ‘I know that lady over there.’

‘Oh, which one?’

‘The one with golden hair – rather – well, a bit old; with a purple silk dress.’

‘How on earth do you come to know her?’

Felix told her the story of Mr Jewel and Frau Wagner and the unfortunate evening when Felix had failed to stay in the house as he had promised.

‘She told you to stay in and play gooseberry. How disgusting!’

‘Then you don’t think Mr Jewel was wicked?’

‘What do you mean by “wicked”? If you mean do I think he should be allowed to have a bit of slap and tickle with his old girl, I can only say it’s not my business. And it’s not your business either – or Miss Bohun’s.’

Felix did not know what to say, and after a moment’s pause Mrs Ellis burst out angrily: ‘I suppose the poor old things were lonely. Miss Bohun wouldn’t understand that – but everyone hasn’t got a jack-in-the-box called “God” in their minds.’

Felix caught his breath, startled into admiration of Mrs Ellis’s spirit, and yet worried by this irreverence about God.

‘People, you know, can get unbalanced by loneliness,’ said Mrs Ellis as she watched Frau Wagner. ‘That woman’ll go off her head one day.’

‘Really?’ Felix was deeply interested but felt more guilty than before. ‘Do you think we ought to go over and speak to her?’

‘Well . . .’ Mrs Ellis gave Frau Wagner another glance, then said: ‘We’ll speak to her on the way out.’

Felix felt much relieved, but he kept glancing over at Frau Wagner, seeing her now and then put the small glass to her closed lips and return it undrunk to the table. Whenever he could see her eyes they seemed to have a mad, bright light, and Mrs Ellis’s phrase ‘unbalanced by loneliness’ kept repeating itself in his head. He had a terrible urge to go over and say as they said at the Innsbruck: ‘Drink that one up and have another on me,’ but thank goodness, Mrs Ellis was with him and he could not leave her.

He said: ‘Do you think she’s mad because she’s lonely?’

‘I don’t know.’ Mrs Ellis had lost interest in the case, but in a moment she suggested: ‘Perhaps she’s lonely because she’s mad.’ After a pause she said as though she were quoting: ‘The desolating loneliness of the mad.’ She sighed and said: ‘I suppose if we were really kind, we’d do something about her, but the boredom – I can’t be bothered to be as kind as that. Besides, she wants a man.’

‘Perhaps she wants Mr Jewel?’ Felix suggested.

‘I suppose he’d do as well as another,’ Mrs Ellis agreed.

As she seemed so willing to talk, Felix took the opportunity to ask:

‘Do you think Miss Bohun is wicked?’

‘Don’t use that silly word, Felix. Of course I don’t. She’s absurd and tactless and a busybody, probably no worse. She belongs to a generation that seems to combine thinking the worse of everybody with trying to do the best for them. I expect she’s awfully innocent.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Felix, extremely flattered that he was by implication included among the less innocent. ‘Still,’ he added, ‘she does do her hair like that.’

‘In plaits round her head? What has that to do with it?’

‘My mother said that women who do their hair like that want to seem more simple than they really are.’

Mrs Ellis gave a laugh: ‘Did your mother say that? Perhaps she wasn’t such a fool after all.’

Felix jerked up his head and looked at Mrs Ellis with such pain, she said quickly: ‘I didn’t mean “a fool”, of course. How silly of me. I meant – what did I mean? “Unworldly” – yes, that’s what I mean. My dear little Felix, don’t look so upset.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Felix. Despite the trembling of his hands and the tears in his eyes, he made an effort to drink the last of his lemonade.

‘Have another lemonade?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Then have a Peach Melba or an ice?’

Felix shook his head. He put down his glass and sat drooping, his hands clasped between his knees.

‘Oh, come on!’ Mrs Ellis rallied him. ‘I hurt your feelings, I was silly – but worse things happen at sea. Much worse.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed politely.

‘Shipwrecks, for instance.’

In spite of himself, he looked up: ‘Will you tell me about it?’

‘All right, if you’ll be a sensible boy.’

He had to smile: ‘Are you warmed up?’

‘Not yet. If you don’t mind waiting, I think I’ll get a cognac first.’

As soon as the cognac came and she had drunk some of it, she said: ‘This happened when they were sending the children home before El Alamein. I was about sixteen. We were all on a ship lying off Suez. We had to go round the Cape in those days.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Well, we older ones were put in charge of kids who hadn’t got their mother with them. I was given a little girl of five or six. I wasn’t too pleased – she was such a thin, pale, little creature – a bundle of nerves. I remember I was rather disgusted because her clothes weren’t too clean. It wasn’t her fault; she’d been neglected, but I thought then I’d never seen such a miserable-looking kid before. Her mother had gone off with a South African officer. Her father did not know what to do with her. He had got a divorce and wanted to marry again and the kid was only in the way. Then he had this heaven-sent chance of sending her home on this boat. She told me she was going to her grandmother. I had to be responsible for her in case there was any trouble. I was pretty fed up at first, especially as she seemed to take a fancy to me and wouldn’t let go of me for a moment. I thought “I’m in for a journey, my goodness, three months of this. . . .” But even though I didn’t like her I felt sorry for her. You see, I knew what was wrong with her. No one had ever loved her. She just didn’t know what life was all about. Anyway,
we were lying off Port Said waiting for a convoy and I was taking this kid to her berth for the night and she was holding my hand – and we were struck. Suddenly the most hellish row and the boat plunging about and, d’you know, I wasn’t afraid. I behaved in the most sensible way. I picked the kid up and said: “Nothing to be frightened of. We’re near the shore.” I remember saying those words: “We’re near the shore.” The kid just hung round my neck not yelling or anything. But the row that broke out! I’ve never seen such a pandemonium. In a minute there were kids everywhere, screaming and fighting, all terrified, and the grown-ups trying to get them up the stairs. I held on to my one and I got another one – a boy – by the hand, but he was lost in the crush somewhere. I turned to go back for him – but it was impossible; anyway, he’d disappeared. When we got on deck, we couldn’t see anything, but we could feel the deck slipping sideways. We were going down so quickly, I knew there was no time even to get in a boat. People were throwing the kids up on top of one another like a lot of parcels. I heard afterwards some of the boats sank as soon as they reached the water. I knew I’d just have to jump in. I said to the kid: “Now hold on tight. I’m going to swim to the shore.” The town was blacked out, but you could see a glimmer in the distance, two or three miles away. The water was black as hell. I jumped in, not even knowing how far I had to jump. It was icy. At first I thought I was the only person in the water and then, suddenly, there were hundreds of them all splashing about and shouting and not knowing what to do, and the poor brats . . . At one time I was swimming with half a dozen of them hanging on to me. I almost went under, but it was so cold, they couldn’t
hang on for long. They dropped off one by one, but my own kid hung on to my back without making a sound. I kept saying: “You all right?” She didn’t answer – then she slipped off into the water. I caught her arm and said: “Move, move, try and swim,” but I had to drag her along, then a searchlight went on. It lit up some boats that had come out to look for us and I made a bee-line for one of them and they hauled the kid and me on board and I took her on my knee. We went round for an hour or more taking people on board. It was strange. Although the sea had been crowded with people when I jumped in, we could scarcely fill the boat. We were still hunting for people when it began getting light and I realised the kid on my lap was dead. She looked like a wax doll. I remember one of her arms was stretched out stiff on my knee and her fingers were blue and they were curled up like this—’ Mrs Ellis stretched out her hand and curled her fingers and sat for some moments looking reflectively at her own long, dark red nails; then she said: ‘I went on holding her and all I could think of was that no one had loved her and now she was dead. Apart from thinking that, I felt quite indifferent really. I thought I was being pretty brave. It was only afterwards that I began to feel sorry about that kid just as though she’d been my sister or something, and also I began to be afraid. When they said I could go home on the next boat, I began to cry. They said: “You’ve been a very brave girl; you mustn’t give in now. Come on, pull yourself together,” but I couldn’t. It was impossible. I said I couldn’t go on a boat, again, and they had to let me stay. I got a room in a
pension
in Cairo and my father sent me an allowance. I lived
just like a grown-up. After a while I began to enjoy it. And I got married.’