School for Love (22 page)

When he saw Mrs Ellis again, he believed he was quite indifferent to her, but after he had been in her company a little while, the indifference was disturbed by the fact she was so clever and funny and so often said what, with a sense of baptism, he recognised to be the truth. He knew then that he was not indifferent to her at all: he liked her very much, but for all that the first excitement had gone.

When he looked at her now he realised she had lost completely her fragility, her paleness and her remote look. Her skin had turned golden in the sun and as her figure grew heavy, she began to look robust and more a part of the everyday world. She no longer when she sat, lounged as though too frail to hold herself upright, but she planted herself down, legs apart, with an ungainly firmness. She was no longer very beautiful, but, strangely enough, he liked her better and felt more at ease in her company. She was a companion, a friend, someone he could trust, but the thought of their ultimate separation of their lives no longer filled him with despair. He would see her again somewhere sometime – why should he not?

Now that the afternoon sun fell so intensely into the back rooms of the house, he and Mrs Ellis took to sitting under the mulberry tree, she with a pad on which she
wrote letters to friends in Cairo or reading a novel; he with his school work, which had become simpler for him as his brain adapted itself to the necessity for study. Mr Posthorn occasionally admitted now that Felix might scrape through the London Matriculation when he reached England.

One day in May, when the late spring had changed to the heat of summer and only the leaves on the trees and the protected garden flowers remained, the war in the West was declared to be at an end. No one seemed very happy about it. There was a bleak little procession with a band and speeches, and in the evening, after sunset, people trailed about the twilit streets. But there was no enthusiasm. Indeed, at the Innsbruck, there was apprehension, for many thought the really important war – the war for Palestine – would break out straight away. The young Arabs and Jews were more conscious than ever of the uniqueness of their friendship and some were indignant that they, of all people, might be dragged into the struggle in spite of themselves. The party was much disturbed by Nikky’s describing how a couple of years before, when the Jewish authorities felt it politic for their men and women to join the Allies, tough members of a Jewish youth movement used to do the round of the cafés to ‘persuade’ young Jews to join up. They agreed if they stuck together, protecting one another, press gangs of that sort would hesitate to pick on them. But the days following the war’s end were so like the days preceding it, people settled down again, forgetful that they were now supposed to be living in the midst of peace. The war, after all, was still going on in the Far East and this fact should give Palestine a respite.

Felix, however, was called to the Transport Office and told to see that his passport was in order. Hundreds of English people caught in the Middle East by war had now to be sent home. He said he was in no hurry, but the authorities seemed to think the sooner the civilians went the better.

Although he was disturbed and depressed at the thought of leaving Mrs Ellis, he was also a little excited and a little afraid. Pictures of England he had long forgotten began to come complete and brilliant into his mind.

He saw the crescent where he and his mother had had their flat in Bath. The houses had been massive and columned like classical buildings, but in his imagination they hung upon the grey English atmosphere like drawings on tissue paper. He had been a little boy then – seven or eight; he had had a bicycle. He saw clearly his own red knees as he sped round the crescent. There were football-boots tied on his handle-bars. When he rode out through the town he had always gazed up from among the streets to see the near hills with their smooth, misted vistas of greensward and the smoky tree shapes crowding round great columned house fronts. Suddenly, walking in the hot, sun-shrill Jerusalem streets, he smelt the English autumn. He came to a stop, feeling upon his hands the damp-cold and seeing the blue drift of wood smoke, the patch of squelching mud at the field-gate; the red of the boys’ jerseys and the red berry clusters among the brown and yellow leaves. When he came to himself and realised how far away were these things, a nostalgia overwhelmed him. There had been Christmas. That came to him as something experienced indoors with the outside world green and wet. He saw logs on the fire, the glinting tree and,
again, his mother. Without her, of course, Christmas would be another thing. At some time he must have seen snow, for the memory of the Jerusalem snow seemed to echo a memory of England. Then, realising that one day Jerusalem would be only a memory, he felt regret for it . . . But this went when he saw – where had he seen it? – a flat field with a flat stream turning like a looking-glass snake between the pollarded willows. Although he was nervous of the distant country that had ceased to be familiar to him, he could remember how, neither privileged nor resented as he was here, he had once belonged there . . . But he had had his mother then; now, perhaps, it would be different. Perhaps he would take back with him a quality of strangeness; he might find he no longer belonged; he might be resented. He was touched by a nausea of apprehension and he wished he were not going alone. If only Mrs Ellis were going with him! Caught between desire to go and stay, nervous and alone, he made a desperate appeal to her:

‘Do try and come on my boat. It’d be such fun.’

She shrugged vaguely and said: ‘Oh, I don’t want to go back so soon. I believe it’s misery having a baby in England these days.’

Then, as time passed and no word came from the Transport Office, these thoughts and memories faded from his mind. But it was as though his life had been disturbed at the roots and would not settle into Palestine soil again. He did not find Mrs Ellis as satisfying a companion as he had done: her voice sometimes sounded harsh and unfriendly: her judgments hard. He knew now she was often bored with his company. Small, unimportant events could fill him with irritation so that he began to wonder,
if, like the man in the wool shop, he was suffering from living on top of a mountain.

One day as he was working in his room, he heard an unusual rustle among the mulberry leaves below his window. Looking out, he saw that a Bedu woman and her brats were filling some large, flat baskets with mulberries. One boy, up in the tree, was dropping mulberries in handfuls to another. Three girls spaced round the tree were picking at a great rate, as though they meant to strip the branches. One small child was tearing off handfuls of the lower leaves and berries and scattering them about the ground. The baskets were nearly full.

Felix felt indignation swelling in his throat. As he leant from the window to shout he could scarcely get the words out: ‘Yallah, yallah!’ The woman gave him a casual glance, then they all picked the faster. Felix shouted again, and when they still ignored him, he ran from his room. Rage seemed to transport him in a flash into the garden. He expected the whole family to bolt at the sight of him, but the children took no notice at all. The mother, twisting her face in a second into a mask of whining misery, stuck out a thin, dirty arm with a jangle of silver bracelets and began to beg. The small child, copying the attitude of its mother, began to beg, too, but the other children snatched the last of the berries within their reach. The boy up the tree stuffed his last handful into his mouth. The tree looked torn and naked.

‘Oh, yallah! Go on – yallah!’ raged Felix and ran at the boy under the tree, who was about his own age. The boy darted off nimbly: his brother slid down and away. The woman and the girls, making no haste, propped the edges of their baskets on to their hips and adjusted their
head-cloths before trudging off leisurely to start selling the fruit in the main street.

Felix watched them helplessly. It was only when they had gone that he noticed Nikky lying full-length on the seat beneath the tree, open-eyed and gazing up through the pale, translucent leaves at the top. In his anger he forgot his usual deference towards Nikky and said:

‘Didn’t you see that crowd of Bedu stealing the mulberries?’

Nikky twitched his shoulders: ‘Mulberries,’ he yawned, ‘a worthless fruit. Now, in Poland, we have raspberries . . .’

‘I like mulberries,’ Felix broke in and would not stay to hear about the Polish raspberries. When he returned to the sitting-room, he saw Miss Bohun coming downstairs and, sure of her approval, said: ‘There was a crowd of Bedu stealing the mulberries. I drove them away.’

Miss Bohun clicked her tongue but she did not seem much concerned. ‘It happens every year,’ she said, ‘you can do nothing with the Bedu. If you drive them off now they’re back early in the morning before you’re awake. But it’s such a big tree. Thank goodness there’s enough fruit for everyone. I often have to give it away; but I always feel that whatever I give comes back in some other way. If I let the Bedu take the mulberries, God will give me something much more useful in return.’

Felix, listening to this, on top of his indignation, felt at once irritated and in the wrong. He was relieved that Mrs Ellis, when she heard of the incident, was as indignant as he was. She said: ‘Those disgusting Bedu. It’s not only that they strip all the mulberries, but they tear the tree to pieces.’

They were both fond of the tree that, heavy in foliage now, was a refuge from the growing heat.

Sitting hidden beneath it, only a few yards from the open door of the house, they could overhear Miss Bohun giving a lesson or talking on the telephone. In this way they discovered she was organising a new ‘Ever-Ready’ entertainment. Parts were being apportioned and pupils were required not only to buy tickets, but to sell them.

‘Now I rely on you, Mr Liftshitz,’ her voice came one afternoon through the door, ‘to take four tickets for your family and I hope you will sell two more to your mother-in-law.’

‘Ach, no,’ breathed Mr Liftshitz nervously, ‘I cannot my mother-in-law make buy any such things.’

‘Nonsense, Mr Liftshitz. I’m sure you would succeed if you kept poking her.’

Mr Liftshitz, murmuring and sighing, was hustled from the room and went out of the garden gate with the tickets in his hand.

One pupil, a Greek, counter-attacked by asking Miss Bohun to help organise an entertainment that would bring in money for the Greek refugees encamped, she said, in misery down at Rafah. The appeal grew impassioned and was not brief. Miss Bohun apparently did not interrupt it, but when it was over she replied in coolly measured words: ‘I would like to help you, Madame Babayannis, but I am forced to think of others. My time belongs to many things. First, of course, to the “Ever-Readies”, then to my lodgers; fifteen hours a week of my time belongs to my pupils; it does not belong to me. And then I have this house – some of my time belongs to that. Besides, I know how much organisation costs. I feel I owe it to myself
never to take on that sort of thing without payment. It would not be fair to my other commitments.’ There was a pause during which Madame Babayannis must have sorted out this reply, for her voice came in a sudden explosion: ‘Ah, Miss Bohun, this is a new thing – the property of time.’

‘I don’t quite know what you mean by that curious phrase, Madame Babayannis. I have told you before that your English is good, but you tend to run before you can walk. Well, now – if time is a property, it is a valuable property, and we must not waste it like this.’

The Greek woman’s voice cut in with the impatience of anger: ‘That, Miss Bohun, is what you call in English, “the snub”, is it not? But I am not accepting it. You live here – how? In an Eiffel Tower. You know nothing of the sufferings of my peoples . . .’

‘I cannot discuss the sufferings of Greece to-day,’ Miss Bohun interrupted with businesslike decision, ‘I have no time to waste. If you do not wish to continue your lesson then I must . . .’

‘Ah! You are well known, if I may say so.’ Madame Babayannis in her turn interrupted with a cold intensity: ‘Is there anyone who does not speak of you for this thing? For instance, do you know one Gradenwitz?’

‘Gradenwitz! Never heard of him.’

‘Did he prune trees for you? Yes or no?’

‘Oh, that man! What has he got to do with the sufferings of Greece?’

‘Nothing. He works for a Greek lady and thus I learned this Gradenwitz was shocked at the little you pay your Arab gardener.’

‘Really, Madame Babayannis,
really!
’ In her indignation
Miss Bohun sounded out of breath: ‘I refuse to be discussed in this way behind my back.’

‘We are discussed without our permission, Miss Bohun. And I may say, the comment was made in company that so mean a pay goes ill with so much religiosity.’

Miss Bohun’s voice and phrasing changed now as she felt herself at a loss: ‘You don’t know the facts. The gardener hardly does any work at all – really, I have to work almost as hard as he does keeping him at it. You don’t know the trouble I have driving him all the time . . .’

‘Then why do you keep him?’ rapped Madame Babayannis remorselessly.

Miss Bohun regained herself as she answered this one: ‘Because I have a theory one must support the aged. It is a duty. And now your hour is up, Madame; no doubt my next pupil is in the courtyard. So, good-afternoon.’

While this conversation had gone on, its subject, the gardener, with fat, good-natured face sweat-slimy, was idly plucking off some withered leaves. When Madame Babayannis darted out from the door, he started to pick wildly, but seeing it was not Miss Bohun, he stopped and straightened himself with groans, and smiled, preparing to salute her. Her face looked dark and puckered. Mrs Ellis called to her. She swung round aggressively.

Mrs Ellis passed through the mulberry branches into her view and said: ‘Would you let me help with your concert for the Greek refugees? When is the date?’

Madame Babayannis was too angry to give thanks, but she glanced at the tickets in her hands and said sharply: ‘August 9th.’

‘Isn’t that the date of Miss Bohun’s “Every-Ready” entertainment?’