Lady Althea, adjusting a blue chiffon scarf around her head so that it fell loosely about her shoulders, observed her husband closely. He seemed to be himself again. She had been relieved to find him in bed and asleep when she had entered their bedroom the night before. Nor had she questioned him. Better to let things alone…. She had caught sight of friends driving away from the Church of All Nations, Lord and Lady Chaseborough, who were apparently staying at the King David Hotel, and they had agreed to meet by the Dome of the Rock at eleven o'clock. Such a surprise. If only she had known they were coming to Jerusalem she would have arranged to stay at the King David Hotel too. Never mind. At least she would get a glimpse of them, be able to exchange news of mutual friends.
'There's something going on at the far end of this courtyard,' said Robin. 'Look, Grandfather, quite a big queue. Shall we join them? It looks like some sort of excavation.'
'Pool of Bethesda,' replied the Colonel. 'They've done a lot of work there since my day. I doubt if there's much to see. Part of the city drain.'
But Robin was already running ahead to join the queue. His attention had been drawn to a screaming child, carried in the arms of her father, who was pushing his way to the head of the queue.
'What on earth are they doing with that child?' asked Kate Foster.
Babcock had been glancing at his notes again. 'The site of the old sheep market. You remember Chapter 5 of St John's Gospel, Mrs Foster, and the Pool of Bethesda, where the infirm waited to be healed, and how the angel came at certain times to trouble the water? Our Lord healed the man who had been lame for thirty-eight years.' He turned to the Colonel. 'I think we should just take a look at it.'
'Come along, then, follow me,' said the Colonel, 'but I warn you, it's only part of the old sewer system. We had trouble with it in '48.'
Miss Dean was still standing outside the church of St Anne. She felt confused by all the chatter and bustle. What did the Rev. Babcock mean by saying they would be walking several feet above where Our Lord had trodden? The church here was very beautiful, no doubt, but the Colonel said even this had been built on the foundations of an earlier one, which in its turn had been erected over the simple dwelling of St Joachim and St Anne. Was she to understand that the parents of Our Lady had lived underground? In that curious sort of grotto they had visited before coming out of the church? She had hoped to be inspired by it, but instead she was disenchanted. She had always had such a happy picture of St Joachim and St Anne living in a pleasant whitewashed house with flowers growing in a small garden, and their blessed daughter learning to sew by her mother's side. There had been a calendar once with just such a painting upon it; she had treasured it for years until Dora took it off the wall and threw it away.
She looked around her, trying to conjure up the garden that no longer existed, but there were too many people present, none of them behaving with the slightest reverence, and one young woman was actually sucking an orange and giving pieces to the small child trailing at her skirt, then scattering the peel on the ground. Oh dear, sighed Miss Dean, how Our Lady would have hated litter….
The pressure was intense around the steps descending to the Pool of Bethesda, and an official was standing with his hand on the rail, directing the people to go down one by one. The little girl in her father's arms was screaming louder than ever.
'Why is she making such a fuss?' asked Robin.
'I don't think she wants to go to the Pool,' replied Babcock in some hesitation. He averted his eyes. The child was obviously spastic, and the father, with his anxious wife by his side, was apparently intent upon dipping her in the Pool, hoping for a miracle.
'I think,' said the Colonel, sizing up the situation, 'we'd be well advised to push on to the Praetorium before the crowds get worse.'
'No, wait a minute,' said Robin. 'I want to see what happens to the little girl.'
He leant over the rail and stared down into the Pool with interest. It was certainly not much of a place, the water dark and rather slimy, the steps slippery-looking too. Grandfather must be right, and it formed part of the city drain. The man who had been lame for thirty-eight years was lucky when Jesus came along and healed him instantly, rather than waiting for someone to lift him into the Pool. Perhaps Jesus realised the water was bad. There they go, he said to himself, as the father, ignoring the child's terrified screams, slowly descended the steps. Freeing one hand, he dipped it in the pool and sloshed the water three times over his daughter, wetting her face, her neck, her arms. Then, smiling in triumph at the curious watchers above, he ascended the steps to safety, his wife smiling with him, mopping the child's face with a towel. The child herself, bewildered, distraught, rolled her frightened eyes over the heads of the crowd. Robin waited to see if the father would put her down, cured. Nothing happened, though. She began screaming again, and the father, making soothing sounds, bore her away from the top of the steps and was lost in the crowd.
Robin turned to the Rev. Babcock. 'No luck, I'm afraid. There wasn't a miracle. I didn't really think there would be, but of course you never know.'
The rest of the little party had moved away, embarrassed, distressed, unwilling witnesses of what appeared to be an excess of faith. All but Miss Dean, who, still standing before the church of St Anne, had seen nothing of the incident. Robin ran towards her.
'Miss Dean,' he called, 'you haven't seen the Pool of Bethesda.' 'The Pool of Bethesda?'
'Yes, you know. It comes in St John. The pool where the Angel troubled the water and the lame man was healed. Except that Jesus healed him, not the pool.'
'Yes, of course,' said Miss Dean. 'I remember well. The poor fellow had no one to carry him down, and he used to wait day after day.'
'Well,' said Robin proudly, 'it's over there. I've just seen a little girl carried down to it. But she wasn't cured.'
The Pool of Bethesda…. What a strange and curious coincidence. She had turned to that very chapter in the Gospel the night before on returning to the hotel, and the whole scene was vivid in her recollection. It had made her think of Lourdes, of all the poor sick people who travelled there every year, and some of them indeed were cured, doctors and priests were quite confounded, there was never a medical explanation. Of course some came back without being cured, but then it could be that they did not have sufficient faith.
'Oh, Robin,' she said, 'I would like to see it. Will you show it me?'
'Well,' he replied, 'actually it's a bit disappointing. Grandfather says it's a drain. He remembers it in '48. And the rest of us are going on to the Praetorium where Jesus was scourged by the soldiers.'
'I don't think I could bear to go there,' said Miss Dean, 'especially if it's underground, like everything else.'
Robin, intent upon the next adventure, was not going to waste time showing the Pool of Bethesda to Miss Dean.
'The pool is over there,' he said. 'There's a man who stands at the top of the steps. See you later.'
His grandmother was waving to him in the distance. Lady Althea was impatient to meet her friends at the Dome of the Rock.
'Do go back and tell Miss Dean to hurry up, Robin,' she called. 'She doesn't want to see the Praetorium,' he replied.
'Neither do I,' said his grandmother. 'I'm meeting the Chase-boroughs instead. Miss Dean will really have to take care of herself. Darling, you had better run ahead and join Grandfather. He's just passing under the archway now.'
Everything was so disorganised owing to Babcock's lack of experience that it was a case of each one for himself, she decided. If Miss Dean failed to join up with the rest of the party, she could always go and sit in the hotel bus that was parked just round the corner outside St Stephen's Gate. If the crowds were too impossible, the Chaseboroughs might invite herself and Phil and Robin back to lunch at the King David Hotel. She watched Robin until he had caught up with his grandfather, and the pair of them were lost in the throng of sightseers and pilgrims, then she followed the sign pointing towards the Dome of the Rock.
'Via D
olorosa… the Way of the Cross…'
The Colonel pushed ahead, ignoring the eager guides. The street was very narrow, flanked by high walls, the walls themselves spanned by archways covered in vine-leaves. Walking was difficult, indeed impossible. Some of the pilgrims were already on their knees.
"What's everybody kneeling for?' asked Robin.
'First Station of the Cross,' said the Colonel. 'In point of fact, we're on the site of the Praetorium, padre, this was all part of the old Antonia fortress. We can get a better idea of it inside the Convent of the Ecce Homo.'
He was not sure, though. Things seemed to have altered since '48. Men were seated at a table taking tickets. He had a murmured consultation with Babcock.
'How many of us are there?' he asked, searching the eyes of strangers.
He could see none of his party except himself, Robin and the padre. The place seemed to be full of nuns. The pilgrims were being divided into groups.
'Better do what they tell us,' he muttered to Babcock. 'Call themselves the Soeurs de Sion, can't understand a word they say.'
They were descending to a lower level, and this, thought Robin, must be what Miss Dean didn't want to do. It's not particularly frightening, though. Not nearly as bad as the Ghost Train at a fair.
The nun in charge of their party was explaining that they were descending to the lithostratus or, as the Hebrew had it, the Gabbatha, the stone-paved judgement-place of Pilate. The pavement had only recently been discovered, she told them, and perhaps the most striking proof that it was indeed the site of the place where the Seigneur had been held by Pilate, and scourged and mocked, was furnished by the curious markings on the flagstones themselves, the criss-cross lines and pits which, the experts told them, the Roman soldiers used for games of chance. Here in this corner they would have sat, dicing, guarding their prisoner, and we now know too, she said, that it was a Roman custom to play a game called The King, when a condemned prisoner was crowned king during his last few hours, and treated with mock ceremony.
The gaping pilgrims stared about them. The place was low, vaulted, like an immense cellar, the flagstones hard and rugged beneath their feet. The whispering voices died away. The nun herself was silent.
'Perhaps,' thought Robin, 'the soldiers didn't actually mock Jesus at all. It was just a game, which they let him join in. He might even have thrown dice with them. The crown and the purple robe were just dressing-up. It was the Romans' idea of fun. I don't believe when a prisoner is condemned to death the people guarding him are beastly. They try and make the time go quickly, because they feel sorry for him.'
He could imagine the soldiers squatting on the flagstones, and with them, chained to a fellow-prisoner, a thief, was a young man, smiling, who threw his dice with greater skill than his gaolers, and so won the prize and was elected king. The laughter that greeted his skill was not mockery, it was applause.
'That's it,' thought Robin. 'People have been teaching it all wrong through the years. I must tell Mr Babcock.'
He looked about him, but he could see none of his party except his grandfather, who was standing very still, staring towards the far end of the vaulted room. People began to drift away but the Colonel did not move, and Robin, content to squat on the flagstones and trace the curious lines and markings with his finger, waited until his grandfather was ready.
We only acted under instructions, the Colonel told himself. They came direct from High Command. Terrorism was rife at the time, the Palestine Police Force couldn't deal with it, we had to take control. The Jews were laying mines at street corners, the situation was deteriorating daily. They had blown up the King David Hotel in July. We had to arm the troops, and protect them and the civilian population against terrorist attack. The trouble was, there was no political policy back at home, with a Labour government in power. They told us to go soft, but how can you go soft when people on the spot are being killed? The Jewish Agency insisted that they were against terrorism, but it was all talk and no action. Well, then we picked up this Jewish boy and flogged him. He was a terrorist, right enough. Caught him in the act. Nobody likes inflicting pain… There were reprisals afterwards, of course. One of our officers and three N.C.O.'s kidnapped and flogged. Hell of a row about it at home. I don't know why standing here should bring the whole scene back so vividly. I haven't thought of it since. Suddenly he remembered the expression on the boy's face. The look of panic. And his mouth twisting as the lashes fell. He was very young. The boy was standing there in front of him once again, and his eyes were Robin's eyes. They did not accuse him. They simply stared at him in dumb appeal. Oh God, he thought, oh God, forgive me. And his years of service fell away, became as nothing, were wasted, useless.
'Come on, let's go,' he said abruptly, but even as he turned on his heel and walked across the flagged stones be could hear the sound of the blows, could see the Jewish boy writhe and fall. He pushed his way through the crowd up into the open air, Robin at his heels, and so out into the street, looking neither to right nor to left.
'Hold on, Grandfather,' called Robin. 'I want to know exactly where Pilate stood.'
'I don't know,' said the Colonel. 'It doesn't matter.'
Another queue was already forming to descend to the paved Gabbatha, and here outside the pilgrims were thicker than ever. A new guide was standing at his elbow, who plucked at his sleeve and said, 'This way, the Via Dolorosa. Straight on for the Way of the Cross.'
Lady Althea, wandering within the Temple area, was doing her best to shake off Kate Foster before they met the Chase-boroughs.
'Yes, yes, very impressive,' she said vaguely as Kate pointed out the various domes, and began reading something out of a guidebook about Mameluke Sultan Quait Bai who had built a fountain over the Holy of Holies. They wandered from one edifice to another, mounted row upon row of steps, descended them again, saw the rock where Isaac was sacrificed by Abraham and Mohammed rose to Heaven, and still no sign of her friends. The sun, directly overhead, blazed down upon them.
'I think I've had enough,' she said. 'I really don't think I want to fag right over there and see the inside of that mosque.'
'You'll be missing the finest sight in the whole of Jerusalem,' retorted Kate. 'The stained-glass windows of the Al Aqsa mosque are world-famous. I'm only hoping they weren't damaged in the bomb explosions one read about.'
Lady Althea sighed. Middle East politics bored her, except when they were being discussed in an authoritative manner by a member of Parliament over dinner. There was so little to distinguish between Jews and Arabs anyway. They all threw bombs.
'Go and look at your mosque,' she said. 'I'll wait for you here.'
She watched her companion disappear and then, loosening her chiffon scarf, strolled back again towards the flight of steps leading to the Dome of the Rock. The one great advantage in being in this Temple area was that there were fewer crowds than in that narrow, stifling Via Dolorosa. So much more space in which to move about. She wondered what Betty Chaseborough would be wearing-she had only caught sight of her white hat in the car. Pity she had let her figure go these last few years.
Lady Althea installed herself against one of the triple pillars above the flight of steps. They surely would not miss her here. She felt rather empty; coffee and breakfast seemed a long time ago. She opened her bag, remembering the piece of ring-shaped bread that Robin had pressed her into buying from some vendor who had been standing with a donkey outside the Church of All Nations. 'It's not unleavened bread,' he had told her, tut the next best thing to it.' She smiled. His little ways were so amusing.
She bit into the bread-it was a lot harder than it looked-and as she did so she saw Eric Chaseborough and his wife emerging with a group of sightseers from some building Kate had said was Solomon's Stables. She waved her hand to attract their attention, and Eric Chaseborough waved his hat in reply. Lady Althea dropped the piece of bread back into her bag, and was instantly aware, from the odd sensation in her mouth, that something was terribly wrong. She thru
st her tongue upwards. It pricked against two sharp points. She looked down again at the piece of bread, and there, impaled in the ring, were her two front teeth, capped by her dentist just before she left London. She seized her hand-mirror in horror. The face that was hers belonged to her no longer. The woman who stared back at her had two small filed pegs stuck in her upper gums where the teeth should have been. They looked like broken matchsticks, discoloured, black. All trace of beauty had gone. She might have been some peasant who, old before her time, stood begging at a street corner.
'Oh no…' she thought, 'oh no, not here, not now!' And in an agony of shame and humiliation she tried to cover her mouth with her blue chiffon scarf as the Chaseboroughs, smiling, advanced towards her.
'Run you to earth at last,' called Eric Chaseborough, but she could only shake her head, gesticulating, trying to wave them off.
'What's the matter with Althea? Is she feeling ill?' asked his wife.
The tall, elegant figure backed away from them, groping with her scarf, and as they hurried to her side the chiffon fell back, revealing the tragedy, and the owner of the scarf, endeavouring to mumble between closed lips, pointed to the impaled teeth on the piece of bread within her bag.
'Oh, I say,' murmured Eric Chaseborough, tad luck. What a wretched thing to happen.'
He looked about him helplessly, as if, amongst the people mounting the steps, there might be someone who could give them the address of a dentist in Jerusalem.
His wife, sensing the humiliation of her friend, held on to her arm.
'Don't worry,' she said. 'It doesn't show. Not if you keep your scarf over your mouth. You're not in pain?'
Lady Althea shook her head. Pain she could have borne, but not this loss of pride, this misery of shame, the knowledge that in that one moment of biting the bread she had thrown away all grace, all dignity.
'The Israelis are very up to date,' said Eric Chaseborough. 'There's sure to be a first-rate man who can fix you up. The reception clerk at the King David will be able to tell us.'
Not After Midnight & Other Stories Page 22