School for Love

by Olivia Manning

  ‘The very thing,’ she kept saying. ‘The very thing. Felix, get a knife from the dresser. Now, cut the halvas into—How many?’ she stood in the middle of the room and turned round as she counted her guests, pointing a finger at each as though they were children. The guests expressed delight and amusement at this behaviour, so Miss Bohun let her voice rise higher and higher as a form of entertainment: ‘Thirteen,’ she concluded, ‘cut it into fifteen pieces, there’s a good boy. You and Mr Liftshitz must share in. How fortunate I noticed this in the kitchen this morning. I think it belongs to Nikky; I will have to pay him for it, still it was a very lucky thing.’

  Felix cut the halvas into small cubes and offered the plate round the room. Each of the visitors took a piece and sat holding it until everyone was served. When the plate with two remaining pieces was presented to Mr Liftshitz, he seemed overwhelmed and stammered his refusal, his hands moving, his face twitching in worried nervousness.

  ‘Oh, well, I’ll have it then,’ said Miss Bohun, and, every piece delivered, they were eaten in unison.

  This accomplished, Miss Bohun seemed quite at her ease and she gave her attention to the eldest lady in the room and talked at her fluently in Arabic. The lady smiled broadly, her hand raised to hide her toothless mouth, but she did not seem to understand what was being said to her. The others kept up their own conversations but their eyes seldom left Miss Bohun. Half an hour must have passed before the eldest lady rose, rather abruptly, and held out a hand to Miss Bohun. Miss Bohun looked disconcerted; she stopped talking, then remembered to rise and shake hands. The others, nudging one another to attention, rose too, and Miss Bohun moving in a circle round the room, shook hands with each of them. Then they adjusted their veils and, all black except for the silken legs of the girls, filed out through the door into the yard. Miss Bohun, with Felix and Mr Liftshitz following at a discreet distance, saw them into the taxis that awaited them. As they went off waving through the windows, she turned back into the yard and let her breath out with relief: ‘What an invasion! When they came in my first thought was: “How can we possibly spare coffee for all these . . .” Poor Nikky’s halvas!’ Then she noticed Mr Liftshitz. ‘Dear me, Mr Liftshitz, your hour is nearly up. To-day was not exactly a lesson, I’m afraid, but an interesting experience nevertheless. I hope you profited by it.’ She looked at her watch pinned to her dress and exclaimed. ‘Ten minutes left – now then, let us see how much we can get done. To work, Mr Liftshitz, to work.’

  She motioned Mr Liftshitz back to the room as though the whole delay had been caused by his folly, and as Felix returned upstairs he heard Miss Bohun dictating at top speed: ‘“Coachman, the postillion has been struck by lightning.” Postillion? Oh, a sort of man-servant. Really, Mr Liftshitz, we’ll get nowhere if you keep interrupting with these questions.’

  8

  Although the spring was bright and dry, the night cold held a long time that year. At supper Miss Bohun would say: ‘I usually put the fire away in the spring, but if you still feel the cold . . .’ Felix did feel the cold, so also did Mrs Ellis. She said: ‘I’ve never lived in a house as cold as this; it’s like living in a vault.’ One evening when she came down from the attic, Miss Bohun found Mrs Ellis holding her hands to the bar of the fire, her fingers dark with cold.

  ‘Haven’t you any gloves?’ asked Miss Bohun.

  ‘No thick ones. I can’t find any here.’

  Miss Bohun started her meal, but suddenly, as she was lifting a fork to her mouth, she exclaimed: ‘Oh, I know!’ and, dropping the fork with the food still on it, she rose and ran upstairs. When she came back she was holding a pair of fur-lined leather gloves.

  ‘Now,’ she announced impressively, ‘these are for you. I’m going to make you a present of them. They were given to me one Christmas by an officer friend who lived here, but I’ve never had occasion to wear them. They’re too good – so you must wear them for me.’

  Mrs Ellis frowned at the gloves, then shook her head: ‘It is very kind of you but I could not possibly accept them.’

  ‘But you must,’ Miss Bohun looked surprised at this refusal, ‘I want you to have them.’

  ‘No. I couldn’t take them.’ Her refusal was coldly decided: it was clear that nothing would persuade her to take the gloves.

  Miss Bohun still stood holding them towards Mrs Ellis. Felix, seeing Miss Bohun’s hurt and confusion, wished that Mrs Ellis would anyway reach out, take the gloves into her hands, and perhaps admire them or make some alleviating comment before returning them. But Mrs Ellis did nothing.

  Miss Bohun at last put them down on a corner of the table, where they lay throughout the meal with a forlorn, repudiated look. She ate in silence: the others had nothing to say. Mrs Ellis sat with a cross little frown as though there had been in the incident some insult to herself. Felix, unable to understand her annoyance, felt her remote now, a disturbing and frightening person. Her behaviour was to him different from the behaviour of anyone he had known before; this greatly increased her attraction for him.

  Mrs Ellis was the first to speak. After the last course, she turned her chair to be nearer the fire and suddenly smiled at Felix: ‘Look who’s here,’ she said and Felix saw that Faro was curled on her lap. At that moment Miss Bohun, as she often did, threw off her depression and said loudly and cheerfully: ‘How nice! How nice! To-night we really are a happy family. What a pity I have to dash away again. And Faro, too . . .’ she put out her dry, yellow hand and gave Faro a touch: ‘How thick their fur is!’ she said. ‘How easily they grow it! When you think of a bald-headed man – he’d pay thousands to be able to produce what kittens and puppies sprout so luxuriously.’

  Mrs Ellis gave a small, distant smile and ran her fingertips over Faro’s head, outlining the base of the seal-dark ears that fitted like wings on to the pale fur of the brow. Miss Bohun went on talking, but in the middle of a sentence she broke off to ask: ‘Must I go on calling you Mrs Ellis?’

  Mrs Ellis raised her face with a surprised look, but, after a moment, said: ‘My first name is Jane.’

  ‘And mine is Ethel,’ said Miss Bohun. ‘Now this would have been an ideal night for our cosy chat, but, alas! I’m away to my “Ever-Readies”.’ She was putting on her coat and winding her scarf into a turban. With a wild, uncertain laugh and a wave of her hand, she went out, shouting: ‘It’ll be splendid when we can go hand-in-hand.’

  Mrs Ellis, occupied with lighting a cigarette, made no reply. Felix crossed over to stroke Faro, who awoke, yawned, purred a moment, then recurled herself and slept again. Felix, feeling a sort of electricity come from Mrs Ellis’s nearness, could not speak. He had to move away. He returned to his seat at the table and said hoarsely: ‘Faro likes you.’

  ‘And I like her.’ Mrs Ellis stretched and yawned: ‘Didn’t I see you leaving the hospital to-day?’

  ‘Yes. Were you there?’ and as she nodded he found himself able to ask: ‘But you aren’t ill, are you?’

  ‘No. I’m going to have a baby.’

  It was as well that Felix, at the table, could keep his face hidden, for he was appalled by this revelation. He sat for several moments, dizzy as though he had been struck a blow, then said with anguished quiet: ‘But Miss Bohun said you were a widow.’

  ‘I am a widow. I’ve been a widow for three months. My husband never knew we were going to have this baby.’

  ‘Oh! Have you told Miss Bohun?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Will she mind – I mean, having a baby in the house. She’s a bit funny.’

  ‘It won’t affect her. I’m taking the house over in the autumn. She heard I wanted to rent a house and offered me this one. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘Really?’ He swung round in his surprise and asked: ‘But what is Miss Bohun going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. She told me she wanted to spend one more summer here because of her beloved garden, then she wanted to throw off “the care of housewifery”. I said that suited me; I don’t need a house be
fore the autumn. Then she said she had a room to let and whoever rented the room would get first chance of the house, so I had no choice but to move in. It’s not for long. I can bear it.’

  ‘What about Faro?’

  ‘She can stay with me.’

  ‘Well, that’s something.’

  Felix moved the napkin rings about on the table. Nervously and disconsolately, he considered the break-up of this house that was, he supposed, his home. Probably it was because of this Miss Bohun had wanted to throw off the responsibility of Frau Leszno. After a long pause, he said:

  ‘I hope I get a passage to England before then.’

  ‘If you don’t, you can stay on here.’

  ‘Really!’ he swung round again, very excited: ‘Don’t you mind?’

  ‘There’s plenty of room.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed eagerly, ‘you know, there’s another big bedroom at the front.’

  ‘I know,’ Mrs Ellis smiled with bewildered interest, ‘why does she keep it empty?’

  ‘I don’t know, but she keeps getting it ready for someone.’ Felix described how he had heard her brushing the room on the day he arrived. They smiled at one another in the understanding and comradeship of their frank curiosity.

  Mrs Ellis stretched herself again, then put Faro carefully down in front of the fire. She sat up as though preparing to leave, but said: ‘What do you do here at night?’

  ‘At night?’ Felix looked uncertainly about him. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing. Surely you don’t just sit around this gloomy room?’

  ‘Oh, you mean if I go out? Sometimes I go to the pictures.’

  ‘The pictures?’ said Mrs Ellis as though she did not regard them as a form of entertainment. ‘What about all those cafés? Which are the best of those?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Let’s go and find out. Get ready.’

  With a sense of unbearable excitement Felix followed her upstairs. While he was putting his coat on, Mrs Ellis, who had thrown round her shoulders a loose coat the colour of her finger-nails, sauntered through his half-open door. A cigarette drooped from her lips and she kept her eyes narrowed and tilted back from the smoke. She moved round, glancing at the embroideries and the lamp beside his bed.

  ‘Does all this stuff belong to you?’ she asked, keeping the cigarette in her mouth as she talked.

  ‘Yes. It was my mother’s.’

  Mrs Ellis peered in a short-sighted way at things, but made no comment. Felix waited for her to speak. Her voice was quite different from his mother’s. He remembered an American saying in their Istanbul pension: ‘These English ladies are so soprano! There’s Mrs Latimer now, her voice just seems to come tinkling down from the top of a high mountain.’ But Mrs Ellis’s voice, naturally low, was husky with chain-smoking; its quality seemed to give wit and significance to everything she said.

  Now she crossed to the window and, peering out into the dark garden, said vaguely: ‘Shall we ask old what’sit to come with us?’

  ‘Who?’ Felix asked, unable to guess.

  She agitated her fingers as though to draw the name from the air, then said: ‘Nikky Leszno.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ gasped Felix, startled by the audacity of the suggestion and by fear that she might carry it out. ‘He wouldn’t come. Besides . . .’ Felix was suddenly elevated by inspiration, ‘he’s probably gone with Miss Bohun to the “Ever-Readies”.’

  ‘What! He goes in for that religious business?’

  Felix nodded: ‘Yes. Miss Bohun says she’s saved his soul alive.’

  ‘Really!’ Mrs Ellis blew her cigarette smoke out in a long exclamatory stream. ‘I can scarcely believe it. Who are these “Ever-Readies” the old girl’s always trotting off to see?’

  Felix began to giggle. When Mrs Ellis swung round on her heel and raised her eyebrows at him, his giggles became uncontrollable. She caught his arm and ushered him out with comic sternness: ‘You’re a naughty boy,’ she said, ‘you’re laughing at the poor old girl. It’s too bad! Somewhere, probably, she’s got a heart of gold.’

  Even while he was helpless with giggles, he felt some relief at this reassurance of Miss Bohun’s fundamental goodness. It was a relief, too, that the reassurance came from Mrs Ellis, who was, he was sure, not to be easily deceived.

  When they reached the sitting-room he had sobered enough to notice the fire was still burning, Faro curled like a shrimp before it. ‘We’re supposed to switch it off if we go out,’ he said.

  ‘And leave poor Faro alone in the cold? How could you?’

  Mrs Ellis swept Felix out with a gesture that infected him with her own recklessness. As they passed through the gate to the street, he raised his face to the sky. He had never before seen such enormous stars – and the sky’s colour, too, was changing from its winter dinginess to the grape-blue of spring. His heart seemed to swell within him. He felt if he jumped into the air, he would not come down again. He wanted to spread his arms and pretend to fly – but now he was too old to behave like that. He was growing up. He was going out on a grown-up expedition. He could scarcely breathe at the realisation. It was as though the gates of the world were slowly opening for him and he was dazzled by the light he saw beyond.

  ‘Where shall we go?’ Mrs Ellis asked when they came into Allenby Square. ‘Let’s go to the Innsbruck; I’ve never been there at night.’

  The Innsbruck café was quite dark outside. Its lights were hidden away behind heavy black-out curtains. Inside the air was stifling and heavy with smoke. Felix started to cough. The room was half-empty. At some of the occupied tables there were chess players, middle-aged exiles from Central Europe who bent silently over their boards, each player keeping safely within sight a chessman-box on which his name was printed in large letters. Some people were reading newspapers attached to cane holders. Some were talking, but most sat staring in a melancholy way at nothing at all. Very few were drinking wine and laughing; there was no music; no one was wearing evening dress; there were no ladies in ostrich feathers dancing in a row on the floor.

  ‘Don’t you like this place?’ Mrs Ellis asked when she saw Felix’s disappointment.

  ‘Cafés are different on the films.’

  ‘Are they? I expect you’re thinking of night clubs. Such goings-on are forbidden in the Holy City – but you wouldn’t be allowed into one anyway. You’re much too young. What will you have? Lemonade? I need coffee.’

  As Felix sat silent, depressed by his own youth, Mrs Ellis smiled at him, and with the most flattering implication that Felix knew everything and could be infinitely entertaining in his knowledge, she said: ‘Now, tell me all about Miss Bohun.’

  Felix shook his head, unnerved now he was actually sitting alone with Mrs Ellis at a table in a café.

  ‘Well, then,’ said Mrs Ellis, content to change the subject, ‘tell me about yourself – or about your mother.’

  ‘Oh.’ Felix had to face the fact that he had scarcely thought of his mother since Mrs Ellis arrived. He said: ‘My mother was terribly pretty and terribly clever. She died of typhoid. Everyone said: “I’m sure she’ll get better,” but she hadn’t had her typhoid injections. She said: “I think I’ll skip a year because they make me feel so ill,” and then she died.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I saw her when she was dead. She had on her best nightdress. It was grey crêpe-de-chine. She looked . . . she looked . . .’ Felix bent over his lemonade but, in spite of his efforts to control them, the tears welled into his eyes and a sob broke from his throat. Mrs Ellis slid a hand round the nape of his neck and patted his shoulder. He was too desolated to wonder at her kindness: he felt nothing but gratitude.

  ‘And where is your father? In the army?’

  Felix shook his head. ‘No. He’s dead. He was killed.’

  Mrs Ellis, seeing that his eyes dried as he remembered his father, asked with sympathetic interest: ‘How long ago was that?’

  ‘About a year. He was sent to Mosul because there wa
s some trouble. There were German agitators, you know, and the Iraqis were all shouting round the house. The man who lived there said: “Better stay inside,” but my father was terribly brave. He thought if he went out and faced them they’d respect him – perhaps they did, but they shot him just the same.’

  Mrs Ellis shook her head slowly over this tragedy. Felix said: ‘Your husband was shot, wasn’t he?’

  After a pause Mrs Ellis said: ‘Shot down in flames.’

  ‘In the R.A.F.! Really? A pilot?’

  ‘No, only a rear-gunner. I used to think it was lucky, his being in the Air Force. He could fly into Cairo sometimes. I saw him only two days before.’

  ‘Were you married a long time?’

  ‘Four months and five days.’

  Felix nodded in what he felt was a grown-up way. He stared reflectively over Mrs Ellis’s shoulder until suddenly, jolted unpleasantly, by the sight of Nikky trailing his fur-lined coat in through the black-out curtain. Felix looked away at once, shrinking within himself and changing back to an insignificant little boy. He hoped if he could not see Nikky, Nikky would not see him. He heard Nikky being greeted by a party of young men – the noisiest in the room – and, unfortunately, these loud greetings caused Mrs Ellis to turn.

  ‘There’s Nikky Leszno.’

  ‘He’s horrid,’ said Felix. ‘He’s terribly conceited and he’s rude,’ but Nikky had seen them and was coming over. He did not seem his usual aloof self, he moved his hands nervously as he looked at Mrs Ellis and said: ‘May I join you, madam?’

  Mrs Ellis, strangely enough, did not seem displeased by his request. ‘What about your friends?’ she said.

  Nikky shrugged his shoulders and, taking her question as permission, he said: ‘I see them too often; here, at the Cultural Mission, at the library. . . . Sometimes they bore me.’