It had not been bad. She had exchanged experiences with a woman whose husband was convalescing after an operation, and who belonged to Manchester WIZO. She had been befriended, briefly, by a family from Solihull with four young children, who had now gone home. In the restaurant at night the head waiter sat her at a table near the kitchens, in a row, together with the other singles, against a far wall. Sometimes she chatted to a solicitor and his wife from Hampstead Garden Suburb, who knew Hettie and Herbert Klopman. They took her for a Chinese meal – proscribed for her in London – at which she ate chicken chow-mein with chopsticks and kosher spare-ribs. As she eavesdropped on conversations round her, watched the kaleidoscope of the carefree vocational scenes, what she heard and what she saw was familiar to her. Lonely as she might be, in Israel for much of the time she felt herself at home.
A splash in the azure pool beneath her was made by an early morning swimmer, taking advantage of its desertion to do his solemn lengths. The silence of the sandy road that ran in front of the hotel between the pool and the beach – which could be crossed by the connecting bridge – was broken by the whine of an army truck bouncing crazily over the pot-holes. For the present, Israel was at peace but she was ready, like an old and practised actor waiting in the wings, for war.
In the 33 years that had passed since her independence she had already lost too many soldiers from her civilian army in a total of five confrontations. In England Kitty had fought vicariously the War of Independence (facing the menace of surrounding armies in the Negev and the upper reaches of Jordan), the Sinai Campaign, code name Kadesh (living with Israel her hundred poignant hours), the Six Day war (in which to be defeated meant annihilation), the War of Attrition and the war which had entrenched two new words securely in the English language, ‘Yom Kippur’. No matter where one went one was reminded of the nation’s struggle for survival, her tenuous hold on the changing map of the Middle East. A burnt out tank by the roadside; young soldiers hitching lifts. Underground shelters in schools, and operating theatres buried deep beneath hospitals, ate away at the defence budget and demonstrated the readiness of Israel’s David to stand firm against the Goliath of the countries which surrounded her, with their open threats to nudge her into the sea.
“Shalom!”
Below her the pool-man, his shorts and tee shirt like a white skin on his bronzed body, greeted the swimmer as he turned, exchanging pleasantries in the language that to Kitty habitually meant prayer. Perhaps she would learn modern Hebrew. They held classes at the synagogue. There seemed to be so many things that she wanted to do – in the music class they were on to Bach now, the variations he had composed for the insomniac Goldberg – new vistas opening up. Out there was a world of challenging opportunities. She had not been aware of its existence when hers had been circumscribed by Sydney.
Looking at her watch, and at the swimmer who had completed his lengths, Kitty saw that it was time to go down to breakfast if she was to be outside the hotel at eight-thirty for the bus. The days had been lazy. She had sunned herself, and swam, and walked – as far as the Coral Beach where she bought postcards for the family, sitting down for coffee and cake as she wrote them – and now she was ready to tackle the sights. She had reserved her seat on the air-conditioned coach which, on the first half-day tour, would take her to Ein Netafim, Canyon of the Inscriptions, and to the flat plain, girded by barren granite rocks, of the Valley of the Moon.
She checked her room to see that there was nothing she had forgotten – sun hat, sun-glasses, scarf – locked her door and pressed the button for the lift. Bare-legged children in the corridor, with happy, holiday faces, towels and snorkels, pressed it after her, each thinking his the alchemistic touch.
Outside the restaurant there was the customary queue which forged ahead as tables were vacated. The Israeli breakfast, laid out appetisingly on buffet tables was the best meal of the day: mitz (juices of orange and grapefruit); eggs any way; sardines, sprats and herrings (marinated, chopped and roll-mop); grated carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers and olives, both black and green; milk, yoghurt, soft and hard cheeses; honey, and jam of at least two kinds; fruit compôte (usually prunes); fresh rolls, with sesame or poppy seeds, wholewheat bread or toast, and steaming jugs of tea and coffee. It was not uncommon for those who would be out for lunch to fill not only their bellies, but their beach-bags, whose contents would sustain them for the day.
The line moved quickly with good-natured remonstrances to the chutzpadik children, in their flip-flops, who infiltrated its ranks.
Kitty filled her tray then sat by the window at a table for one – in the mornings there were no set places – listening to the cacophony, and finished her breakfast with five minutes to spare before the departure time of the bus.
In their shorts and in their sun hats, laden with bags – snacks for the children and water bottles, as if they were crossing the desert instead of penetrating a few miles into it – cameras and tripods, the group waited beneath the portico of the hotel, out of the sun which was now climbing swiftly into the cloudless sky. Fifteen minutes later – Kitty could, she thought, have had another cup of coffee – the blue and white coach swung recklessly into the drive. Before it had come to a halt the doors sighed open and expelled a harassed guide, his hands full of papers.
Kitty chose a window seat – this was not an aeroplane and she didn’t mind looking out – and put her hold-all at her feet. She was on nodding terms with the others from the hotel. There was an air of expectancy as they settled themselves – stowing their bits and pieces on the overhead racks – and waited for the guide, who had gone with the hall porter to check his vouchers for the trip.
A boy of about ten whispered to his mother.
“Hurry up already,” she said and watched with her people’s endemic anxiety as he jumped down the steps of the bus and disappeared into the hotel.
Kitty looked at her watch. Ten to nine. Not that she had anywhere else to go. The child came out again, a smile illuminating his face when he saw that the bus had not left without him. The guide – good-looking enough for the films, Kitty thought – followed him and counted heads. The sun was shining through the little window on to Kitty’s arm. She covered it with her scarf. The air was stifling. The guide said something she did not understand to the driver who had a rifle on the ledge beneath the steering wheel. The bus did not move. It was five to nine.
An elderly man with a walking stick and tweed hat, whom she had noticed round the pool, came, in his custom made clothes, carefully out of the hotel. They had been waiting for him. The guide gave him a hand up the steps, the engine sprang to life and the doors closed.
“Okay,” the guide said. “Shalom, good morning, guten morgen, bonjour, ciaou, buonas dias…that’s the extent of my lenguages,” he clung to a strap as the bus took the corner. “I’m only joking… I do my best you must excuse me! My name is Avi and this is your very good driver, Zvi…” There were other hotels to call at. Others waiting – as in Israel they had grown used to waiting – in their holiday groups. Kitty watched as they climbed aboard and made their way, with their belongings, down the narrow aisle between the seats: an Australian girl with her broad frame and open expression bringing a touch of the great outdoors; a nubile lady from the Bronx wearing a star of David, trousers – tight over her bottom – tucked into boots, hair pulled back into a pony-tail from her fastidiously made-up face; French students; a large, colourfully dressed Nigerian lady, her plastic carrier overflowing with biscuits and with fruit, with three colourful Nigerian children; a couple from New Mexico, he plump, red faced and bearded, with an albino wife in an ethnic dress; a precise German with his precise camera; two strapping Swedes in sawn off jeans; an exuberant family from Golders Green; two yeshiva bochers – their ivory faces framed by side-curls beneath their broad-brimmed hats – standing out amongst the suntans; a grey haired American in flat cap and zippered jacket on his own. When he had his full complement, of excited children, husbands who’d wandered off to buy ne
wspapers, and straying wives who’d gone to look for them, Avi verified his numbers for the last time, picked up his microphone and relaxed.
“Okay,” he said, against the noise of the engine and the blast of dance music from the radio, which Zvi was tuning at the same time as he lit his cigarette and negotiated the bends. “…Maybe you think we are a little disorganised in Israel. A friend of mine was telling me how much better they arrange things in Europe, how efficient they are. ‘In Paris,’ he told me, you get a beautiful breakfast – croissants, good coffee – the tours leave on time. You visit the Louvre, get a marvellous lunch, fantastic dinner, night-club, dancing, cabaret. The hotel rooms are clean, the beds wide and comfortable, and when you wake up in the morning you find five hundred francs under your pillow!’ ‘Impossible!’ I said. ‘You saw that with your own eyes?’ ‘No,’ said my friend. ‘I wasn’t actually there myself, but my wife was and she told me!’”
Avi waited for the laughter to die down then held up a hand for silence. “Okay, so this morning we visit Biquat ha Yareah – Valley of the Moon – in the Negeve, the Red Canyon, and Canyon of the Inscriptions. On our way we stop at En Netafim…” he enunciated carefully, “…where the water comes from a spring in the face of the rock. The Negev, in the southern region of Israel, stretches from the hills of Judea in the North to the Red Sea. The word ‘negev’ means dry…”
Kitty, listening with one ear and looking out of the window at the rises, crevasses and sudden, unexpected flat stretches of parched land, was beginning to enjoy herself as they followed the trail – used a thousand years before by caravans bearing the perfumes of Araby – between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. Strange violet mountains, orange rocks, and contorted shapes, which she had thought belonged to the Wild West, unfolded before her gaze. Avi, swaying with the bus, did not stop for breath. Neot Hakikar, a collective farm in the Negev, was, he told them, where he lived. The desert was clearly in his bones. Kitty wished, as she so often did, achingly, that Sydney was with her, if only to see the colours, soft yellows now and pinks –which had come as a surprise, for she had thought the desert brown – to ride with her the rough ribbon of the road as the juddering bus traversed the galaxy of stone. She would not be able to tell it to anyone, except on a postcard where it would be stripped of its immediacy. ‘Today we drove into the Negev.’ Her pen was not lyrical. She would not recapture for the family at home the spirit of adventure that she felt – as if she personally had hewn out the dusty road between the jagged crags – the lure of the harsh and desolate terrain, unfolding, like a school contour map, on either side of the coach. She could not even discuss the excursion with Addie. She would save it up for her, but knew that the sights and sounds, the surprise glimpses of blue water across the dusty brown surfaces, would be lost.
At En Nefatim where they got out of the bus, the dry rock was scored with streaks of purple and brilliant green, the natural effect, according to Avi, of oxidation. Outsize coloured stones, like precious gems strewn by the hand of some profligate desert god, lay casually on the ground. Kitty put her sun hat on. They crossed the old Egyptian border, which in three months was to be restored, leaving the narrow landmass that was Israel exquisitely vulnerable once again. In a semi-circle Avi’s group stood on the dry cracks of the barren plain, resembling the surface of the moon after which the valley was named. From the crevices Avi plucked desiccated blooms, like fossils, and distributed them to his party. “Rose of Jericho,” he said, “when put in water it will open.” Kitty was sceptical but folded the brittle flower carefully in her scarf before putting it into her bag.
At the Canyon of the Inscriptions they straggled after Avi, in his blue denim suit and his kibbutz hat, to the mouth of the ravine. A class of schoolchildren from the coach ahead of them had already descended the cleft and was making its way, noisily, some of them balancing on ledges, along its length.
“I’m not going down there!” Kitty said, horrified, looking at the sheer drop without hand or foot hold, “I’ll wait in the bus.”
Avi pointed to the children. “The kids are also afraid,” he said shrugging. “What’s the difference?”
“A good few years,” Kitty said. She did not care for callisthenics.
Avi, like a mountain goat, jumped on the rubber soles of his sneakers into the ravine.
A bronzed sabra, he looked up, extending a helping hand to the members of his party, scrutinising each face in turn for their enthusiastic reactions and fearful exclamations. One way or another, slithering, sliding and finally jumping, they all made it. Kitty looked down at the waiting faces below and searched for her courage which was nowhere in evidence. She had no head for climbing nor for heights.
“Sit on the rock,” Avi shouted up.
Kitty looked at the smooth boulder.
“Throw your bag!”
Kitty threw her hold-all into the ravine – where it was caught by the grey-haired American – and with it her opportunity to return to the safety of the bus.
“Now sit on the rock.”
Easy to say. The rock itself was some three yards away over lesser boulders. Kitty teetered tentatively, wishing she had brought her old sandals which had rubber soles. She reached the boulder, collapsing on to it with both hands, inelegantly. Avi climbed to a point half way up the funnel, his feel almost at right angles to the rock face.
“Sit down!” he commanded.
Easier said than done. Kitty was making a fool of herself. Without letting go with her hands, she swivelled into a sitting position – if she’d known what was entailed on the tour she would not have worn such a tight skirt – and contemplated the ravine. There was no way she was going to jump down, to launch herself through space on to its obstacle strewn floor.
Avi extended his hand, but she could not reach it.
“Jump!”
He must be joking.
“Don’t be afraid…”
Afraid! She thought she would die of fright. There was not now even any prospect of going back.
“…We’ll catch you!”
The grey-haired American with her bag stood below with his arms out. “It’s okay!” His voice was reassuring, his accent foreign.
Kitty closed her eyes. There was no one to advise her. No one to care. She would die here in the desert and in the desert they would bury her.
“One, two…” Avi extended himself towards her as far as he was able without relinquishing his own perilous hold.
Why did I ever come, Kitty thought, without Addie? I must have been mad.
“…Three!” Avi said.
Kitty threw herself from the rock.
Seven
“There’s a postcard from Grandma,” Carol said. “A camel.”
She turned it over eagerly to see if her mother was well. She had wanted to invite Kitty to stay with them in Godalming over the long holiday but Alec had said no. Peartree Cottage was not large and they were bursting out of it. An extra guest in the cold weather, when the children would for the most part be confined to the house, would be too much. Besides, Alec said, he wanted a rest. Her mother would be no trouble, Carol had argued but it was not altogether true. She knew what Alec meant. He had worked hard in the general practice – its list of patients had grown to a size now necessitating three partners – and wanted to defer to no one over the Christmas period when he was not at the end of the telephone and was able to enjoy his own home.
Carol herself was ambivalent. There was no doubt that her mother was self sufficient when she came to stay with them – ousting Lisa from the room she shared with Mathew – she even cooked for all of them. But she came between herself and Alec as in the old days when they’d lived near to her. In any conflict of will or of opinion Carol would find herself siding with her mother – pulled by the umbilical cord she had almost, but not quite succeeded in severing. Kitty’s presence affected the children too. Debbie and Lisa, unconsciously almost, would try their luck with unaccustomed boldness in issues where they were at odds with th
eir parents, knowing that they had Grandma on their side. Even Mathew, almost two, sensed in Kitty’s presence an indubitable ally and exploited every situation to the full. From the moment she appeared on the doorstep there was a subtle, but unmistakable shifting of loyalties, which affected all of them with the exception of Alec who was not emotionally involved. Carol suffered most. She loved her mother and felt responsible; for her father’s death, although she could not be; for Kitty, although she was not. She had lain awake at night worrying about her mother, alone in the flat over Christmas, and had almost jumped with joy and relief when Kitty had announced that she was going, with Addie, to Eilat.
When Addie had broken her ankle, Carol, not thinking it right to let her go alone, had had wild thoughts of leaving the children with Alec, and accompanying her mother to Israel. She felt it the duty she had been brought up to do unquestionably. Alec had pointed out that if duty were involved, her allegiance was to him. As if she did not know. She loved Alec, but had to do frequent battle with her father’s legacy to her – the sense of obligation to her parents – which hung like a millstone round her neck and of which, no matter how hard she tried, she could not completely rid herself. A grown woman, middle aged almost, in any dealings with Kitty she was still the obedient child whose instinct assured her that whatever her mother did, whatever she said, was right. Her younger sister Rachel seemed to have no such problems, neither did Josh. They did not appear to suffer – as Carol suffered – where Kitty was concerned. She was, she supposed, unusually sensitive. Lately she had put her sensitivity to good use. She had begun to write poetry – for no reason that she knew of – when she was alone in the evenings, with Mathew tucked up, Alec at the surgery, and the girls doing their homework. She had sent one of her poems, secretly, to a woman’s magazine. It was why she had leaped out of bed, although it was Saturday, when she’d heard the postman crunching over the packed snow.
Rose of Jericho Page 6