At some point during the previous night, Prue had dreamt about rats: a long tunnel, and the sense that they were there, rather than actually seeing them. Since the grenade blew apart the windows of the ballroom there had been men busy all over the hotel, hammering, chipping, stomping about. Her room, which had always felt unsafe, like a boat, felt even more so now. Last night, something strange had happened.
Her father had knocked and come into her room. I’d like to draw you, Prue. His words hooked her out of sleep and fished her to the surface. She sat up in bed, blinking at him. He was holding his drawing things – charcoal, thin pencils – and two fluttering candle lamps which he arranged on the table. He used his architectural papers with scraps of plans on them, but turned on to their backs for blank clear sheets. He asked her to sit on the chair in front of the window shutters. She did exactly as he instructed, rising from the bed slowly, shivering.
‘Arrange your hair that way,’ and she pulled the rope of it over her shoulder. He sat on the edge of her bed and began to sketch her, making quick furious marks with an irritable expression on his face at first, and then slowed and drew in a softer way. As he drew it seemed to her that she was turning to stone. When he lowered the page she saw versions of herself. Lips. Neck. The cross of her foot over her ankle. Then he stopped abruptly and stood up.
‘Thank you, Prue,’ he said, as if she had fetched him his dinner. He took his drawings with him, but left the charcoal, and walked out of the room. Over breakfast, and now, on the way to the church, it had not been mentioned.
—–
Her father was by far the tallest man in the congregation and Prue was conscious of their foreignness in this church more than elsewhere in Jerusalem. Here, Englishmen dressed in military attire ruled and strode about in charge and rolled their eyes at the Turks, even though Ihsan said that Turks was the wrong word for them. ‘Your eyes are the colour of water,’ Ihsan had said, and she supposed they were. She wished her eyes were brown, her lashes black. She could hear her father breathing.
‘I have a penchant for architects,’ her mother used to say, when she was in one of her shrill, bright moods. ‘Oh yes! Architects! They come in and bring light into the corner of your broken bedrooms; they take a frame and readjust it, and they move the furniture. Lord knows, we need the furniture moved. Does a gardener always have a terrible garden? Weeds taking over and trees not pruned. Your father,’ she would shout, ‘always about to find a home, about to purchase a home, about to settle before moving on to a new project, and his wife and daughter are kept in rented rooms of interchangeable character in suspended places and how long are we supposed to do this?’
Prue flipped through the Bible as the sermon rolled on. What was the Table of Kindred and Affinity? Who could a husband’s mother’s brother be? And why did it need to be said that you must not marry your son’s daughter or sister’s daughter’s husband? Letters from her father used to arrive with the prettiest stamps. Postmarks from Khartoum, Delhi. Prue collected the stamps in a special book, but where was that stamp collection now? At the end of the sermon was the singing, her father the loudest. Hosanna in the highest!
When the service was over she walked next to him, towards the bright light coming through the door.
‘I was reading the Table of Affinity in the Bible, Father.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes, and I was wondering how . . . Frau Baum fits in, to the table?’
He shook his head, as if the question had disappointed him, and did not answer.
‘Tell me about our villa in Lifta,’ Prue said, with desperation.
He smiled, sniffed, the tip of his nose very red. He looked down at his lapel where a purple cyclamen was drooping and nodded to a passing woman.
‘It is a simple place, a village home. There is a youk carved from the wall. There are white walls, without much decoration, although near the fireplace there is a silver dagger hanging. But there is something special about it, Prue.’
‘Oh?’
‘The floor is tiled, in the main room, and they form a circle in the dead-centre. On the full moon in August a line of light hits the centre of the circle, perfectly. Just that night, that year. For a few minutes. You could live your whole life there and never know.’
When? She was about to ask, when would they go there? But it was too late; a man pounced on her father as they walked out of the church, speaking in a fast voice of terrible attacks, a flare-up and a fight in a private café near the Schmidt Building.
‘Urgent message from Cresswell, Charles.’ The man waved a telegram.
‘Read it for me, would you? I haven’t got my reading spectacles.’
Prue put her finger on the crumbling cracked surface of a gravestone which read REST WELL, ELIAS POLAND, 1888. Listened to the man’s quick clipped voice.
More news of McLaughlin and the Palestine police: unspeakable behaviour. Charging through the district like the wrath of the Lord, shooting it out through the foothills, taking prisoners and doing sickening things to them in the name of British supremacy. Complaints from the District Court. Urgent action required. Can’t emphasise enough. Cpt. CC.
‘Captain Cresswell . . . Prue, dear, can you make your own way back to the Fast?’ He turned away from her before she even answered, and the two men leant towards each other like old trees against the wind.
Prue walked slowly through the Old City and it seemed as though it had all been rearranged, as if for a trick. The entrance to the gate walls was surely further to the east than it had been yesterday. The haberdashery had swapped places with the little hole-in-the-wall bakery. She drifted past the Notre-Dame Hotel and the French hospital, past the small Arab cafés, and did not realise at first that the hooting and honking and calls from the street were directed at her: she was in the way of everybody. She left the main roads and went down into the narrow streets of the souk.
Two Arab children were playing in a stairwell, the younger boy hopping from one step to another and leaning forward to tug on his elder sister’s hair. The girl was ignoring her brother, twirling a piece of rope, dreaming her own dreams. Imagine if Prue took the small boy by the hand and simply led him off, away. I’m your new sister, she would say, and they would make their way to the villa with the magic tiles and live there with fifty grey kittens for company. Brother and sister looked up at her then and, like all the children here, they did not smile, just stared, half-threatening and half-inviting.
Prue walked on, pretending to be unconcerned. Loneliness crept through her body, the way sun bleeds across the carpet in the morning, forcing you to wake up. Then Prue saw Eleanora, in her fur, turn into the passageway ahead and walk towards her. She was with the pilot and they were not quite arm-in-arm but leaning towards one another, not looking up. Prue stepped backwards and folded herself, quite neatly, cleverly, into a Bedouin rug that was hanging for sale. She watched their feet pass. ‘You can’t imagine . . .’ Eleanora was saying, but the rest was muffled. Prue touched the rough textured Bedouin rug with her fingertips and listened to their voices disappear. When she stepped out again they were gone, into a deeper, more hidden part of the souk.
They had looked very close. Seeing the two of them gave Prue a cold feeling inside, as if part of her was freezing up, and Ihsan’s words came to her mind. Bring me what you can? . . . It will be useful . . . intentions regarding our lovely Mrs Rasul. Now was a good time, given that the pilot was categorically not in his room at the Fast. She ran, darting along the cobbled streets, flitting past the stands and the stalls, through Jaffa Gate and towards the hotel which, as usual, looked like a ship coming into harbour rather than a building on dry land. The whole of her body was concentrated on the task in hand. Her good work for Ihsan.
In the lobby she composed herself. It was surprisingly easy to convince the woman at the front desk. Lieutenant Harrington’s in the restaurant with my father, he just asked me to run up to his room and get his watch for him. Voice light and swinging, and she was lucky beca
use it was the young receptionist, not too worried about details. The key came towards her, dangling on its large wooden peg.
The lift doors opened like curtains on a stage, the corridor was empty. She looked left and right before knocking and letting herself into the pilot’s room. It was not as big as her father’s, who had an entire suite, but it was much larger than Prue’s own room and it was a surprise to see that he wasn’t particularly orderly. Half-drunk whisky glasses were scattered about, and clothes in untidy piles, which was not how one thought of a pilot. A dirty handkerchief on the chair.
Prue sat on the bed, felt the sag of it underneath her and breathed illicit air. Now she was in here she was unsure what to look for, what to take. What did Ihsan want? What had he said? Will you slip into his room . . . bring me . . . What was it? What you can . . . any identification, or books . . . to understand why he is here. She thought of the shifra code. A rooster wallows in dir. A hoopoe cries. What details are meaningful and what are not? On a kneehole writing bureau was a drift of papers, rubble from pockets. A black suitcase was on the floor near the window. Prue rifled through the possessions but found nothing particularly interesting.
‘Must you always creep about?’ her father had said to her once, when he found her under a table. ‘Do you know Garo the concierge calls you the Little Witness? Always behind curtains and under tables writing your notes.’
Little witness. Little spy.
At the bottom of various receipts and envelopes was a blue cloth-covered book. PILOT’S FLYING LOGBOOK. Tucked into its back page were documents, some photographs, and attached to it was a typed piece of paper. IMPORTANT NOTICE. AN AIRCRAFT CRASHED THROUGH YOUR CARELESSNESS OR DISOBEDIENCE WILL DIVERT WORKERS FROM BUILDING FIGHTERS AND BOMBERS TO REPAIRING TRAINING AIRCRAFT. This would do, she would take the logbook. Underneath it was Hotel Fast headed writing paper and in light blue fountain pen the words Eleanora. Oriole. Prue ripped the page off and took that. She dropped down to her hands and knees and looked under his bed, but there was nothing there, just dust and a musty smell.
She ran to her room, put the stolen items under her pillow and then bolted downstairs to return the key. The receptionist barely looked up when she handed it back, but Prue jumped when she realised that Frau Baum was standing near the concierge’s desk, flicking through the telephone message book. Her tortoiseshell perfectly round glasses slipped down to the very end of her nose. Prue turned, thinking she had not been spotted, when she heard Frau Baum’s voice.
‘Konfitür, from my home. Would you like it?’ Frau Baum was holding towards her an attractive, glistening little jar. The gloopy substance inside the glass made Prue think of poison.
‘Oh no, I couldn’t possibly.’
Frau Baum looked very slight and feathery, as if she might take off and float amongst dust mites and loose thoughts. Then Prue knew what would really impress Ihsan.
‘Would it be possible to go to Father’s desk and get some of his large architectural paper?’ Prue asked. ‘I had this idea I might do some drawing. Some big paper would be useful.’
‘Of course, come on.’
Prue followed Frau Baum up the stairs, into her father’s room which he evidently, boldly, shared with Frau Baum because her possessions were everywhere: archaeological books on the desk near the window, hats and scarves on chairs. She supposedly had ‘a little room’ elsewhere in the city, but Prue knew that she in fact mostly lived here. She heard them at night, laughing, or the tap tap tap of the typewriter, interspersed with conversation.
‘I’ll leave you here to get what you need,’ Frau Baum said, in her weightless, soft voice. She drifted off to the larger room so that Prue was standing alone in front of her father’s things.
The contrast between her father’s desk and the pilot’s little kneehole could not have been more pronounced. This bureau was huge; it smelled of beeswax, ink, polish. It was covered with various large maps of Jerusalem and over the top of them, on thin tracing paper, were sketched alternatives: a repaired wall, additional stairs, extended ramparts. His handwriting was very neat. Covering half of the desk was a large roll of architecture paper. The top one said: Plans for the Demolition of the Clock Tower, Jaffa Gate. Prue pulled up the page and looked at the one below. Her father’s notes and drawing above had been done with a sharp pencil and the indents were clear. Carefully, she tore out the blank page underneath, rolled it up into a narrow tube. She listened for Frau Baum’s movements, but there was no noise. The desk was so intimately her father’s that standing near it felt like standing inside his arms. Prue touched the brass paperweight. She touched a candle holder. She touched the handle of one of the neat little drawers on the bureau, and tugged it open just to feel the slide of it. Inside, she saw her own girlish handwriting. A small pile of letters. Seven, to be precise, a letter a week since she’d been here, written dutifully to her mother. Her father had collected them from her but, evidently, he had not posted them. Prue pulled out the top one and saw that it had been opened, neatly, a sharp slit, the sort made by a paperknife. She looked on her father’s desk, and there was his bone-handled letter opener. She put her finger inside the envelope, and pulled out a page.
Dear Mummy
I am spending most of my time at present sitting on the roof of the Hotel Fast. There is a splendid view. I am not entirely sure if I am supposed to be up here, as I found the entrance at the top of the staircase that the maids use, but nobody else seems to come. From here I can see all the farmers going about their work, with carts, coming in and out. There are many animals in the streets here. You would think nothing of seeing goats walking along, donkeys, ducks and chickens.
Prue put the letter back in the envelope. The watch that her Uncle Horatio had given her as a leaving present was too small; the strap gripped into her skin and it had been irritating her for some time. Now, at this instant, she couldn’t stand it for another moment. She poked her finger under it, to find space, as if she could stretch leather, as if she could force it to fit properly and not hurt her, just by touching it, but it did not adjust.
‘Jerusalem, is it?’ Uncle Horatio had said to her when she had been sent for. He had stepped in to look after her in the short interim between Mother and Father. ‘Very odd place. Positively stuffed with earnest European women, pilgrims, missionaries, archaeologists, charity workers and religious zealots, shuffling about in stones, or whatever their religion might be, no children coming from those women, no men wanting them. Be careful you don’t become one of them, Prue. You promise me?’ He had repeated it, over and over, ‘You promise me? You promise me?’
‘I promise.’
‘Write to your mother. Promise?’
‘I promise.’
Prue pushed the letters back into the drawer and closed it quietly. She called out a thank you to Frau Baum and did not wait for a response before rushing with the roll of paper out into the corridor, where the doors were all the same and led to nowhere and the carpet was thick, but not comfortable.
Back in her own room, Prue shivered, but could not sit still. She paced like a dog marking out the borders of its own territory, but no matter how many times she did that the room did not feel safe.
Outrage. At being a child. There, on that very bed, the Prue of the first few weeks of being here had sat writing the letters to her mother. Naive little descriptions of her first trip to the market or the Wadi al Jouz, or the Mount of Olives cemetery. Already, she was not the same person she had been in the first week, in the second week. Already, she understood Jerusalem more. It was not just a market, religious walls; the stones here – the rocks, she had been collecting good ones and had a row of them under her bed – the limestone here was alive. There were different types of stone, of colours. Ihsan had explained: royal stone, sweet stone, Jewish stone, red stone. Nari. Kakula. She could not possibly have known the names of the stone or the feeling of holding it, the reds and pinks in her hands, at the beginning when writing to her mother. Now she was different. She had
even asked her father several times why her mother had not written back and he had replied that perhaps she was too ill. Uncle Horatio had looked at her sadly when she left. Perhaps he had known that her letters were not going to be sent.
On top of her red embroidered bedcover Prue spread out the stolen spoils of the day. She unpeeled the architectural paper. The pilot’s book. His letter page. She was good at stealing things; it felt good to be good at something. She could do that at least. The front half of the pilot’s book was a log, of flights, times, distances. At the back, though, were sketches. Birds, dragonfly wings and aeroplane engines that looked very technical. She almost liked him a little, when she saw the detail in the dragonfly wing. There were photographs, but they made no sense: swirls and dots and shades and shapes, but then she realised they were pictures from the air; they were beautiful. She would like to discuss them with somebody.
She went to the window: flying, falling, she thought. Almost the same.
Here was the city. A long way from the sea. How grey it always was, the sea, and how much she missed it, and how sad it was that she spent her time sneaking and stealing, but there it was. Prue did not know who bestowed talents, who chose pursuits, or why a person became good at this one thing over another. In one of the first letters to her mother she had described how she had accidentally opened a large linen closet, thinking it was a doorway to a back staircase, and inside a woman was asleep in the pillowcases. When she saw Prue the woman jumped up and said, ‘Shalom, shalom.’ She had black hair and was quite young and looked terrified. Prue said, ‘Do you speak English?’ ‘No.’ ‘French?’ She nodded. In faulty French the young woman pleaded with Prue to forgive her for being asleep amongst the sheets. She was a Polish DP. A displaced person, come to Jerusalem on the promise of a room, but when she arrived, it had been let, or stolen, or burned down, or had never existed. Prue had not known what to say, had closed the door. She had written to her mother about the stairs going up and up in Eleanora’s house and how Ihsan had told her that Jerusalem is a ladder, an axis mundi; that it leads to a blissful place. I wonder why, she had written in that letter which was never sent, if Jerusalem is a city that reaches the sky, why can you not see up? Why did the closed tunnels and stairwells of the Old City shut her down when she thought of it? Why was there no sky?
The Photographer's Wife Page 9