‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ Felix said, ‘I used to have coffee.’
‘Tea is better for you. I wish I could afford to give you milk, but it’s out of the question. Perhaps one month Mrs Ellis will take over the housekeeping and then she’ll understand.’
When they were brought up by the wall and gateway of the mosque a small Arab boy ran at them shouting: ‘Mamnû Ekfel.’
Miss Bohun stopped with her mouth open: ‘What,’ she said, ‘is it Friday?’ But it was not Friday. She looked very cross and brushed the small boy aside. He at once flung after her a stone he had been holding in his hand. When she had spoken to an Arab inside the gate, she beckoned commandingly to Felix: ‘Come on,’ she called and as they passed through the archway she smiled happily and said: ‘Sucks to the little boy.’
After the confined and shadowed lanes of the Old City, the great area of the mosque opening before them seemed adazzle in the early sunlight. There had been a shower in the night and the slabs of white paving-stone had a scrubbed and powdery look. Between the stones, here and there, the jewel-green grass had pushed up as fine as hair. On the courtyard the tiled mosque with its dome, the rows of pillars, the little Dome of the Chain, the place of ablution and the single cypresses black as rook feathers stood isolated each over a distance that had a dream-like immensity.
Gazing around him, Felix whispered: ‘Oh!’
‘Haven’t you been here before?’
‘No.’ Felix had been nowhere.
‘I keep forgetting,’ Miss Bohun murmured, ‘we must do something about your sightseeing, but another day. Now, we go over here. Shoulders back, head up, walk slowly – make a good impression.’
Felix glanced sideways at Miss Bohun and modelled his movement on hers. Together they did a dead march towards a doorway in the wall through which an old Imam could be seen sitting cross-legged on a rug. The walk was a long one. Miss Bohun had time to say: ‘I remember our Major Joffey who preceded me as pastor of the “Ever-Readies”. He was such a wonderful man, such an organiser! Before we entered a meeting he would take a duster out of his pocket and polish my shoes, and polish his own shoes, and then he’d say: “Head back, shoulders square,” and we would march together into the hall. How right he was! How very right! It is so necessary to make a good impression.’
As they drew near, the old man could be seen gazing through the doorway as though completely unaware that two persons were advancing at a crawl upon him. It seemed that only when their shadows fell across his rug did they become visible for him. He made no move, but looked up and smiled broadly. Miss Bohun gave her greetings very competently in Arabic.
‘. . . and this is my young friend and lodger Mr Latimer,’ she said.
The Imam nodded to Felix and waved towards a stone ledge that ran round the wall of the bare little room. Two or three hangers-on of the mosque, who were sprawling on this, shifted as Miss Bohun and Felix sat down. One of these was sent for coffee; the others watched the money pass with eager, interested eyes. Felix felt rather embarrassed when Miss Bohun put down, separately and with a flourish, the one pound and twenty-five piastres that she was voluntarily adding to the quarter’s rent; it seemed such a small sum, but the Imam expressed delight and Miss Bohun flushed with pleasure at his appreciation and her own liberality. When the coffee pan appeared with three set in brass egg-cups, Miss Bohun seemed to be carried away: ‘It is a long time,’ she said, ‘since I have received a visit from the ladies of your family.’
The Imam, who understood but could not speak English, made a pleased gesture with his hands and replied: ‘Bukra’.
‘Ah!’ Miss Bohun nodded, her cheeks pink: ‘Bukra fil mish-mish,’ and the Arabs roared with laughter.
Felix watched the exchange with admiration so that even Mrs Ellis passed from his mind. As they walked back Miss Bohun seemed equally admiring of the way she had carried off the visit to her landlord: ‘But English women are highly respected here,’ she said. ‘Of course we have Lady Hester Stanhope and people like that to thank, but, apart from that, I think the Arabs appreciate our spirit. I’m told that an English woman is the only sort of person that can travel in safety from one end to the other of the Levant. That is one of the things that draws me to this country. As an Englishwoman, one has standing,’ and she smoothed the front of her dress with satisfaction. ‘And then,’ she continued as they passed out into the dark lanes full of smells of fruit, wine, drains and stale meat, ‘there is their wonderful, old-world feeling for hospitality. We understand it; we appreciate it. And in return, of course, you need only make a gesture – like my inviting his wives and daughters to come and see me. They won’t come, of course. I don’t suppose the older ladies ever leave the house.’
At the Jaffa Gate, where there was a perpetual noisy traffic of men and beasts in the spring sunlight, they stopped at a small fish-shop and Miss Bohun bought sardines. The man tried to add another to make the half kilo but she would not take it. ‘They’re really quite expensive,’ she explained to Felix, ‘and two-and-a-half of them make a good meal for anyone.’ At another shop she bought cabbage and then all the way to Fullworth’s she talked about the price of vegetables until Felix felt guilty at being part of the cause that involved her in so much expense. If it had not been so near to luncheon and he could have thought of any excuse to go off, he would have gone, but as they returned through the Russian Compound he was rewarded for staying.
‘Look, look,’ Miss Bohun touched his arm. ‘Can that be Mrs Ellis?’
‘Yes, it is Mrs Ellis.’
‘Coming out of the Government Hospital! How very odd!’
‘Perhaps she’s been to see someone.’
‘Yes,’ murmured Miss Bohun with a deep and speculative frown, ‘perhaps she has.’
Frau Leszno left a few days later. Felix did not see her go: as far as he was concerned, she simply ceased to be there. Miss Bohun never mentioned her again, nor did she replace her. Everything was done now by Maria, who cooked neither better nor worse than Frau Leszno and who did her work much more willingly. Felix noticed it was she who now cleaned the windows and knives, but he was much too wrapped up in his admiration of Mrs Ellis to reflect on the possibility of Maria’s being overworked.
The next time he went to see Mr Jewel, he longed to talk about Mrs Ellis and only Mrs Ellis, but he was forced to avoid mentioning her for fear Mr Jewel would guess the attic was now occupied.
Mr Jewel was sitting on a bench in the garden, a blanket over his knees, and as he lifted his faded, blue-white eyes to the sky he said: ‘The sun – that’s what a feller needs.’ Behind his head bloomed a little jacaranda tree, a delicate branch of colour feathering out violet against the pallid stonework of the wall. He lifted his face round to smile at it: ‘And flowers,’ he said. ‘Sun and flowers.’
‘Don’t you ever want to go back to England?’ asked Felix, who privately thought England might be the best place for Mr Jewel.
‘No. When I came to Alex, I had an accident and in hospital they used to wheel me out every day on to the balcony, and there I lay in the sun and I thought: “This is the stuff – this is what I’ve always wanted. No grey skies, no rain, no cold – people in England don’t know what they’re missing.”’
‘But haven’t you any relatives there?’
‘Only my brother Samson, and I doubt he’s forgotten me now. Lord, no!’ Mr Jewel brooded a while, then shook his head: ‘An English winter’d do for me.’
Mr Jewel had always been a frail old man, but there was about him now a rustling, silvery dryness like that of a skeleton leaf.
Felix, sitting on the grass that was already turning yellow in the sun, gazed at Mr Jewel’s bone-thin, dry, old hands spread on the blanket; he supposed Mr Jewel was better off in this part of the world where, however poor a man might be, he was more often hot than cold; but Mr Jewel twitched inside his clothes and shuddered down his spine: ‘This has been a chilly spring,’ he said. ‘And it was a cold winter. A cold winter!’ Suddenly
something seemed to strike him: ‘Has she said anything about the rent?’
‘The rent?’ Felix thought of the visit to the mosque.
‘The rent of the attic. Does she think I ought to be paying?’
‘Oh, no. No, I’m sure she doesn’t.’
Mr Jewel was not listening to Felix’s reassurances.
‘Wonder she hasn’t been in for it. She’s religious, y’know,’ he said in a cracked, humorous whisper. ‘Where I came from it’s all religion; keep the Sabbath like anything they do – lot of Holy Joes but wouldn’t give you what dropped off their finger. D’you think you’d better take her this quid,’ he began fumbling in his breast pocket. ‘Wouldn’t like her letting it over m’head.’
‘I’m sure it’s all right; wait till she asks you.’
‘Ah, well,’ Mr Jewel let his hand drop, ‘I’ve got to give a bit here, y’see, not being a Government official. It doesn’t leave much.’
Felix, brooding over Mr Jewel’s condition, decided the thing to do was to find someone who would help the old man. This brother Samson was the best bet. In his mind, Felix began to formulate an anonymous letter modelled on some he had met in his reading: ‘To Mr Samson Jewel: Sir, Are you aware that your brother is lying penniless in . . .’ In his efforts to discover more about Samson Jewel, Felix sent Mr Jewel’s mind back to very early days when he had just left home and set out to see the world.
‘Samson! I met a Falmouth man once who told me Samson became an alderman.’
‘D’you think he’s rich?’ Felix cunningly asked.
‘Maybe. We were both left a bit,’ said Mr Jewel. ‘I remember I lent mine to poor Eli Frobisher. Eli owed money to everyone. It just slipped through his fingers. One day he borrowed twenty pound from a money-lender, had a good binge and shot himself. The only feller I knew that ever got the better of a money-lender.’ Mr Jewel cackled to himself.
‘And what about Samson?’
‘He had a headpiece, Samson. He invested his bit in a business. Sent lobsters and crayfish and such to big London hotels. Did very well, they say. And they made him an alderman.’
‘Alderman Samson Jewel, The Town Hall, Falmouth. Sir, Are you aware . . .’
‘Did you come from Falmouth, Mr Jewel?’
‘Near enough. Our old dad was a coastguard. Funny thing your asking all this now, for sometimes lately my mind’s gone back there so I think I’m a lad again. Yes, it’s a funny thing when you imagine you’re only a lad and then you look down and see your own hands like this,’ he fixed his eyes on his hands and murmured: ‘Deary me!’ then, quite suddenly forgetting his hands, he said: ‘The coastguard station was out on a headland. To get to it, I mind, you’d walk a double hedge for two miles with the wind blowing a gale over you.’
‘What! Always?’
‘In the winter anyway. It’d come across there so strong the birds ’d drop exhausted from the sky. Some of them died, too. I remember I found a guillemot once – dead, without a mark on it. I can see that bird lying on the sand now; I can see every feather – the breast so white and silky, the wings folded, the little feet clenched under it and the beak lifted as if it were still driving against the wind. As clear as clear. I’ve wondered often since at God who made these birds so perfect to fly, and the wind too strong for them.’
‘Yes,’ murmured Felix, much affected by the bird that had fallen before the wind perhaps fifty years before he was born.
‘Ah,’ said Mr Jewel. ‘In my head here I can walk again over the cliff-top and see every leaf and stone. And there’s a cove there, the most beautiful in the world, and I’ve seen the world, you know. I don’t speak from ignorance. No, I’ve seen nothing like it, with great caves in the green rock and the sand as smooth as a ballroom floor. The sand went right into the caves – like a carpet fitted everywhere – and when you walked alone, everything was silent, except the sea.’
‘Where was that?’ Felix asked eagerly. ‘What was it called?’
The old man shook his head as though puzzled by the question.
‘What was the name of the cave?’ Felix persisted.
After a pause Mr Jewel shook his head as though he had lost interest: ‘I can’t remember.’ The conversation was at an end.
Mr Jewel shivered a little and, suddenly petulant, said: ‘They’re leaving me out here too long.’
Felix said: ‘Shall I help you in?’
‘No, no. They said stay in the sun until tea-time. But it must be tea-time. I’m getting hungry.’
Felix was getting hungry, too. When Mr Jewel shut his eyes and sat for several minutes as though asleep, Felix got to his feet and whispered quietly: ‘Good-bye, Mr Jewel.’
Mr Jewel answered in a surprisingly firm voice: ‘Goodbye, good-bye. Come again,’ but did not open his eyes.
While his mind was alight with the idea, Felix went over to the post-office and bought an airgraph. He went into a corner to write to Samson Jewel. At the top a line demanded his name and address – and of course some sort of address must be given. Weeks would pass before a reply came and meanwhile Mr Jewel might leave the hospital. After some consideration he wrote: ‘From: “X”, c/o Miss Bohun, Herod’s Gate, Jerusalem. To: Alderman Samson Jewel, Falmouth, Devon. Dear Sir, Are you aware that your brother Mr Jewel is in desperate straits without home or money here in Jerusalem? Drop a line to “X” if you can help. Yours faithfully, A Friend.’ When he handed in the airgraph he was relieved that the girl behind the counter glanced neither at it nor at him.
7
Felix had been afraid that by some super-subtle instinct Faro would know that, despite his reconciliation with her, his mind was still occupied by Mrs Ellis: but Faro still came to lie in the sunlight in his room and at night would push her way in between the covers as soon as he was in bed. He was surprised, and perhaps as much hurt as relieved that the secret workings of his emotions made no difference to her. He accused her: ‘You’re only a little cat. You only want to be warm and fed and made a fuss of. You don’t care for anything else,’ and she yawned enormously, showing the corrugated roof of her pink mouth.
Whenever he was working in his room he was alert for the footsteps of Mrs Ellis, who was more often out of the house than in it, more often out for meals than in. Even Miss Bohun had ceased to complain that Mrs Ellis regarded the house merely as a pension and could not be controlled. At meal-times she would look at the empty chair and say: ‘I wonder if our young lady is coming in or not?’ but there was a strain about her forbearance that was less irritated than disappointed. Felix reflected that, after all, Miss Bohun had more to be disappointed about than he had. She had discovered Mrs Ellis and had planned to make her a friend, while Felix had expected nothing until he met her. Then he had been startled delightedly by the sight of her, and by the luck that brought her to live in the same house and share four meals a day; he could scarcely complain when it became clear that Mrs Ellis intended to share very few meals with them. Her life was lived in some independent way, mysteriously and out of their reach. Miss Bohun’s cheerfulness became subdued. The relationship was clearly at a standstill.
Mrs Ellis was out of the house when, a few days after the visit to the mosque, Felix sat in his room unwillingly overhearing Miss Bohun giving a lesson to Mr Liftshitz. Now that the windows were open, he could hear every word she said. He recognised the exercise as one from the Russian grammar.
‘There are weasels in the palace of the Czar. . . . Weasels, weasels,’ she repeated impatiently, then was forced to spell the word: ‘W-e-a-s-e-l-s, Mr Liftshitz . . . Yes, weasels . . . Oh, something like rats. Now, do let us get on. Coachman, bring your drosky nearer. . . . Drosky, d-r-o-s-k-y. What is a drosky? I’ve no idea. Now . . . Tell me a queer story . . . a queer story. . . .’
A door opened. Suddenly (it seemed to Felix) the dictation lesson was lost in a babble of voices. The noise grew rapidly. Laughter rose. It was as though an endless stream of persons was pouring into the room below. Faro pricked her ears and sat alert on
Felix’s lap. Felix listened intently, but could make nothing of it. Whoever had arrived had evidently settled down to stay. At last, consumed by curiosity, he sorted out what excuse he could give for going down. Miss Bohun had said: ‘Please, Felix, try not to pass through the room when I’m giving a lesson,’ but there were some excuses that had to be accepted. He decided to go to the privy in the yard.
He shut Faro into the room behind him and quietly, unobtrusively, started down the stairs.
As soon as he had descended half-a-dozen steps, he could see into the room. It was full of women. They were all dressed in black. Some, very old, wrinkled and dark-skinned, were wrapped in black robes from head to foot; but the girls – some lovely girls, pale-skinned, black-eyed, smiling – wore short skirts and silk stockings. Each one, as soon as she glimpsed him, raised a hand to her veil, but seeing at once that he was not a Moslem, she let the hand fall again. All of them, young and old, seemed to be excited and shy; and each, even the oldest, as she caught Felix’s eye, began to giggle.
Miss Bohun was still sitting at the table with Mr Liftshitz; her face had the blankness of someone too lost to express anything. Seeing the others look at Felix, she looked up herself and in her helplessness seemed to snatch at him:
‘Why, Felix, there you are. Isn’t this nice! The ladies of the Imam’s family have paid us a visit. Could anything be nicer? What on earth – I mean, what can we do?’ her voice dropped and she repeated: ‘What can we do?’
The visitors – Felix by now had counted them and found there were only thirteen – were sitting wherever possible. A few of the younger girls were forced to stand, but Mr Liftshitz, understanding nothing, remained in his seat like someone stunned by shock, and stared about him with owlish eyes.
The women were grouped round the table like an audience. They were chattering in hushed tones among themselves, the younger ones going off at times into fits of giggles, but all the time they were conscious of Miss Bohun, alert to be silent should the party begin. Felix felt her dismay; it was painful. Then, suddenly, some solution presented itself. Her face lit up and she brought her hands together: ‘I know,’ she called happily and in a few moments she had hurried from the room and returned again with a piece of halvas on a plate.
School for Love Page 11