‘Please?’ Mr Liftshitz moved troubled hands.
‘Now, perhaps we’d better go in and do some dictation.’
Miss Bohun’s hat crossed the lawn to the house. It disappeared under Felix’s eyes; Mr Liftshitz behind it. For the next half an hour her voice came up through the floor droning simple sentences with the most exact intonation. Felix, deciding that no one could concentrate against such a noise, picked up Faro’s rabbit’s paw and offered to throw it for her again. She got up reluctantly, yawning and stretching herself, and he went out of the room to give her a long run down the passage. He swung his arm and sent the paw flying towards the front bedroom door; before it landed, Faro was off the table and after it. Speeding with a furious scuffling noise, she seized the paw in her mouth, brought it back and dropped it at Felix’s feet. When he had thrown it three times, Miss Bohun gave a long-drawn, wavering call from the bottom of the stairs: ‘F-e-e-l-iks!’
‘Yes, Miss Bohun?’ He bent down over the stairs so that he could see her standing at the bottom.
‘Please don’t make that noise, there’s a good boy. Teaching, you know, calls for so much concentration. The least sound is distracting.’
‘I’m sorry, Miss Bohun.’
‘Shouldn’t you be at your studies?’
‘I’ve finished them.’
‘Well, try and be quiet until tea-time.’
Standing in the passage, wondering what he could do next, he looked at the door of the front bedroom and saw the key was in the lock. Once or twice during his first weeks in the house he had tried the door and found it locked; now he tiptoed towards it, turned the key and entered. He felt a slight, immediate shock at the change in the light. His own bedroom was full of sunlight. This room, running the length of the house-front and having three windows, was filled with cold, blue shadow. It was much longer than its width; in it stood a single bed, made up and covered with a white counterpane, a wooden chair and a little desk on which stood a bible. The room, narrow and chill, looked like a hospital ward. It touched Felix with a desolating sense of emptiness; he left it at once and locked it in on itself.
Then, from sheer boredom, he decided to take a look in Miss Bohun’s bedroom. It was, he knew, as bare as his own had been on his arrival, but the time he had seen it – on his second day, when Miss Bohun had called him in and suggested in an undertone that it would be seemly were he to pay his rent in advance – he had noticed a fretwork book-shelf hanging on the wall. While Miss Bohun was talking he read the titles of the books: The Golden Treasury, The Broken Halo, The Fountain, If Winter Comes, The Story of San Michele and all the works of C. S. Lewis, also a large black book called Control of the Flesh.
Felix had said: ‘I suppose you haven’t any books by Rider Haggard. I read one at the Shiptons’ and it was super.’
‘No. And I’m afraid my books are a bit above your head. Anyway, I never lend books on principle.’
‘My mother used to read C. S. Lewis.’
‘Indeed! I believe he’s quite widely read; whether he’s understood or not is another matter.’
‘Is he hard to understand?’
‘Now, Felix, I can’t discuss these deep matters with you,’ she had dismissed him – quite unlike his mother, who would put down anything she was doing, at any time, to discuss any matter, the deeper the better.
Rapidly, alert to any sound outside, Felix now went to the shelf and, taking down the C. S. Lewis books one after the other, moved his hand across the cover of each. He thought sadly of those evenings when he had sat with his mother in the pension garden and gazed towards the red, satin-surfaced Tigris, talking, talking, talking. As he took down the last book he heard steps on the stair and instantly, with the preternatural speed of guilt, he replaced it and got himself safely outside the door again. Then he realised the steps were not ascending but descending. Someone was coming down from the attic. Felix stood against the wall as Mr Jewel, in an old brown suit from which his body had shrunk away, crossed the passage and went on down to the sitting-room. He was too absorbed in his own progress to notice Felix.
There was silence downstairs. Mr Liftshitz must have gone, but Miss Bohun was still there, for as soon as Mr Jewel got down Felix heard voices. He wondered if Mr Jewel were going out. If so, this would be a heaven-sent opportunity to satisfy his curiosity about the attic. He made no attempt to overhear the conversation below, but waited impatiently for it to stop. At last the door opened on to the garden and Mr Jewel came out to cross the lawn. Felix watched him through the passage window. Although the old man was cautious on the stairs, he walked briskly enough on level ground. He straightened his shoulders, shot his wrists out of his sleeves, and went off with the alert air of an old soldier. As soon as he was through the garden gate, Felix made his way silently up the attic stair. He held his breath as he went. At the top the sudden, under-roof chill made him sneeze. He paused, heard the tea-things chink below, then edged round the torn, heavy, dusty curtain and entered the attic. Inside there was the smell of an oil-stove but no warmth. Under the oil-stove was the smell of Mr Jewel – a combination of strong, stale tobacco and the odour of ear-wax. The room was no more than a space under the roof. There was a dormer window and six square foot of floor-boards with a surround of bare rafters. On the island of floor there was a camp-bed, neatly made, a kitchen table and a chair. On the table were little pots of household paint and a bunch of brushes stuck into a jam-jar. Again holding his breath, Felix moved over a pathway of boards to the table and looked at the pieces of cardboard and plywood on which Mr Jewel worked.
There were only three pictures on the table, but there were dozens more stacked under it.
‘Pictures of flowers,’ Felix said aloud. He bent over them while Faro, who had come up with him, sniffed at Mr Jewel’s spare pair of boots, then passed to the slop-bucket. Mr Jewel had painted, no doubt from memory, primroses and violets, a large pink rose, primroses and moss surrounding a nest in which lay three speckled blue eggs.
‘How wonderful,’ thought Felix, who could not draw anything himself. His admiration for Mr Jewel quite transcended Miss Bohun’s disapproval of the old man. To think that Mr Jewel, working up here alone in the cold, was an artist! Perhaps a great artist!
He was startled from his thoughts by Miss Bohun’s singing from below: ‘F-e-e-l-iks!’
Felix slid round the curtain and got down the stairs in a flash, Faro, infected by his panic, close at his heels. He gathered her up and got her into his room, then shouted: ‘Coming.’ He washed his hands. When he reached the sitting-room he had regained his breath.
Miss Bohun was sitting at the table. Felix’s tea looked as though it had been poured out some time, but she did not ask what had kept him. She seemed preoccupied. He felt that some new confidence was behind her silence and as soon as he had taken a piece of bread, she said in an aggrieved way:
‘Mr Jewel wants to bring a visitor in to dinner to-night. He knows it’s unfair on the servants, and I get the backwash. Frau Leszno is so bad-tempered when she has to cook an extra meal.’ After she had sipped her tea for a while, she said: ‘Heigh-ho!’ (Felix had never before heard anyone say the words exactly as they were written) then brightened as she often did: ‘But I suppose it’s my own fault. I said when he came first: “I want you to regard this as your own home, Mr Jewel, and if you ever want to invite a friend in for a meal, you have only to let me know.” You see, I used to let the officers bring in a friend occasionally, but then they often went out for meals themselves and they were most generous about getting food from the Naafi. All that made up for the trouble. With Mr Jewel, of course, I was unwise. I said it on an impulse; out of kindness. It never entered my head he knew anyone to ask. Besides, Frau Leszno can’t bear her.’
‘Is Mr Jewel’s friend a lady, then?’
‘Of sorts,’ Miss Bohun replied with a twist of the mouth, but suddenly she lifted her eyes, looked at Felix and smiled: ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I’m not in the habit of judging people.
No doubt Frau Wagner is a very nice sort of person. I don’t know her well enough to say – but there is something about her. For one thing, she’s Austrian! They say the German Jews are the worst of the lot – very rude and pushing when they can get away with it and very subservient when they can’t. That’s because they’re Germans, of course, not because they’re Jews. I would never say anything against anyone for being a Jew; dear me, no. I’m not an anti-Semite; and I’ve some very nice Jewish pupils. Look at Mr Liftshitz, a perfect gentleman. Well, the Eastern Jews don’t like the German Jews, and Frau Leszno thinks she’s an Eastern Jew because she was born in Poland, so she doesn’t like Frau Wagner.’
‘But I thought you said . . .’
‘Yes, as I said, Frau Wagner is an Austrian. She came from Vienna, as a matter of fact. But I must say I dislike the Austrians even more than the Germans. They’re so deceitful and so ingratiating and so . . . That “charm” of theirs is quite sickening. Well, you’ll see for yourself. Frau Leszno disliked Frau Wagner on sight. After Frau Wagner came here the first time, Frau Leszno made a scene. She said she wasn’t a servant and she wasn’t going to wait on other servants, especially women like Frau Wagner. She said Frau Wagner was often seen sitting alone in the King David Hotel, and she said Mr Jewel visited her in her room. You’re old enough, Felix, to understand what I mean.’
Felix, with his mouth slightly open, blushed and lowered his head.
‘Frau Wagner is a sort of cook-housekeeper. I went round to where she works and asked her employer if she thought it nice that gentlemen should visit Frau Wagner in her room. Her employer, a Frau Doctor Zimmerman, a very nice person in a way, showed me the room. It was quite definitely a bed-sitting-room – it had a wireless set and Frau Zimmerman said that anyway it was so difficult to get good servants, she could not interfere with Frau Wagner’s private life. I had to sympathise. Well, Mr Jewel knows he must not take lady visitors upstairs so he goes round occasionally and sees Frau Wagner. I’m sure it’s all quite respectable,’ Miss Bohun made a slight click with her tongue against her upper teeth, ‘but it’s not quite nice, not quite healthy. He brought her here to supper last summer and I had to give my whole evening to entertaining her. To-night is my “Ever-Ready” night – perhaps that’s as well. I don’t suppose Mr Jewel remembered it was “Ever-Ready” night, still – I don’t like it. And the waste of electricity.’ She paused, then said: ‘I want you to promise me something, Felix.’
‘Yes,’ Felix looked up, willing to be helpful.
‘I want you to promise not to leave Frau Wagner and Mr Jewel alone together in the house to-night.’
‘Why?’ he asked from surprise.
‘Because,’ Miss Bohun spoke with a sudden aggravated clarity, ‘it would not be nice. Now, I want you to give me your promise.’
‘All right,’ Felix was annoyed to feel his cheeks grow hot again, ‘I wasn’t going out anyway.’ Because of his embarrassment he started washing down the last of his bread with his tea in haste to get away. Perhaps Miss Bohun felt his distaste for she said:
‘You know, Felix, I keep Mr Jewel for practically nothing.’
‘Hasn’t he any money?’
‘Not much. He left the Merchant Service before his time was up.’
‘Why did he leave?’ asked Felix.
Miss Bohun drew down her mouth into a small half-hoop. For some moments Felix feared she was going to answer, as she had done once before: ‘I have not asked him,’ but she seemed to remember in time that she had admitted him to a friendlier footing now and she said: ‘Well, as he told me quite openly – not in confidence, you know – I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you. When his boat was at Alexandria he had a fall and hurt his head. He had to be taken to hospital and the boat went without him; he was in hospital a long time and when he came out his Company told him to join another ship, but he wouldn’t. He’d taken a fancy to Egypt and he said he wouldn’t go home again. He’s been hanging around ever since.’
‘Why didn’t he want to go home again?’
‘My dear child, how do I know?’ Talking about something other than the Lesznos, Miss Bohun seemed always to be discouraging. ‘I can only tell you what he told me. He got himself a little job in the passport office at the British Consulate. Very pleasant, I’m told. They used to spend the summer in Alexandria and the winter in Cairo. Well, he gets a small allowance from the Consulate; a ridiculous amount, really. I can tell you, if he were in England, he’d be in the workhouse. He must have outlived his usefulness in Cairo – anyway, when they evacuated the city they took the chance to get rid of him. He came up here. A lot of very odd people came here at that time – those who had money went to hotels and pensions, and the rest were packed into a barracks in Bethlehem. I’d never seen anything like it. I went down to distribute some tracts. I saw the poor old soul, he seemed lost among that mob – mostly foreigners they were. Well, we got talking, I felt it was my duty to offer him a home. I’ve always said we’re put into this world to help one another. And I had to get Nikky out of the house. I felt I owed it to myself. I said to Mr Jewel: “This is an occasion when we can do each other a good turn. I want to let my attic, but it’s not everyone who’d take it; you need a home and you won’t be too particular – so, it’s mutual aid.” He was very grateful and I must say, on the whole, he’s been no trouble – but this Frau Wagner – it’s taking advantage.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Felix, indignant on Miss Bohun’s behalf.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ Miss Bohun muttered and sighed to herself, then raised her voice to include Felix, ‘perhaps the time has come to make a change.’
When Felix went up to his room after tea he found his oil-stove already lit. For this he had to thank the new servant Maria, the Armenian woman. He wondered if she would light the bath-boiler for him, too, and make his bed properly. He had never really complained about this work, but he had at first mentioned to Miss Bohun that Frau Leszno threw the bedclothes back on his bed so carelessly that they always fell off during the night. ‘Oh dear,’ said Miss Bohun, ‘I must speak to Frau Leszno, but you know, Felix, with the cooking and so on, there is a lot to be done in this house; I don’t like to overwork servants, and I’m told that in England even the best people have to do their own chores these days.’
Now, if Maria were going to do all these jobs, Felix could not help feeling, in a slightly guilty way that life would be much pleasanter. He had never been able to make his bed properly himself and when he awoke in the middle of the night to find the bedclothes on the floor and Faro crouching against him for warmth, he had felt a genuine hatred of the Lesznos while his sympathy with Miss Bohun became intense.
Although Miss Bohun had kindly said: ‘Don’t forget, Felix, the sitting-room is as much yours as mine,’ Felix usually stayed in his own room when indoors. The sitting-room had a desolate air of shabby discomfort and, with the stairs leading into it and doors leading directly to garden and courtyard, it was very draughty. The single-bar electric fire was switched on, if at all, by Miss Bohun herself just before dinner began. Felix had been worried each evening by the sight of Mr Jewel’s very cold, old hands, until at last, he had run down one evening and switched the fire on at about six o’clock. It was no good; before he got back to the top of the stairs he heard Miss Bohun’s entry, her exasperated exclamation and then the ping of the fire being switched off.
When Felix came down to dinner that evening he found Mr Jewel and Frau Wagner already seated at the table. The fly-blown, solitary bulb in its age-yellowed shade threw down a circle of light; the rim of this cut across their faces. Their shoulders were hunched forward with cold, but they communicated to Felix less a physical than a mental discomfort. Mr Jewel introduced Frau Wagner, who pursed up her mouth to smile and nodded her head in a grand way. ‘How do you do?’ she said. A very refined English accent – almost, Felix thought, a joke accent, a ‘plum-in-the-mouth’ accent – lay over her Austrian accent like jam spread on butter. Mr Jewel sat grinning at Fel
ix, but at the same time, somehow, he looked guilty and unhappy. Felix also felt guilty and unhappy because he felt bound to disapprove as much as Miss Bohun did of Mr Jewel’s bringing in Frau Wagner. That made it impossible for him to appear as friendly as politeness demanded.
Mr Jewel, usually silent, had suddenly become talkative and joking.
‘You ought to sit next to the lady,’ he said when Felix took the chair opposite her.
Felix blushed miserably, but stayed where he was.
‘He’s shy,’ said Mr Jewel.
Frau Wagner smiled.
‘He is so nice a boy,’ she said, ‘I like such fair hair.’
Frau Wagner sat stiffly upright and seemed very high above the table. She wore a dark green velvet frock trimmed with gold. The sleeves were wide and fell back when she raised her hands to show her gaunt pink arms. She had large aquiline features covered with a skin so thin it had the high mauve-pink tint of an albino. Felix could see she had tried to hide it beneath a coating of white powder. She was quite old, of course – fifty or more, but her long-bob hair, lint-white, made her look ancient.
Mr Jewel rubbed his hands together and said: ‘Do you think we could light the fire, eh? Do you think we dare?’ Felix, who could hear the dry, old skin crackling with cold, got up and switched on the fire.
‘You’re a brave boy!’ said Mr Jewel.
‘Ah, Alfred, it is not kind. Perhaps the boy will be blamed.’
‘No, I won’t,’ said Felix, his voice high with embarrassment. ‘I can put the fire on if I like.’
‘That’s right,’ said Mr Jewel, ‘the boy pays enough for what he gets.’
‘It’s not that,’ said Felix miserably.
Frau Wagner, smiling, her manners more elegant than before, cut across something Mr Jewel was about to say and asked: ‘And how do you like Jerusalem, Felix?’
School for Love Page 5