‘Please, take me out of here before I remove all of my clothes and am arrested.’
Greek Street was full of the drunken and the loud, a crush of men rubbing up against one another and shouting for more drink. Tarts blinking from doorways eyed up the two men walking either side of me so that, oddly, I felt protective of them and glared at the women to scare them away even though they were ten, twenty years older. It was dark, but the rain had stopped. I asked the men to buy me a paper bag of chestnuts and they did. I knew by then that they would do whatever I told them but when we reached Shaftesbury Avenue it was as if I had emerged from a dream because all of my strength dropped away and I was exhausted. I hadn’t eaten for such a time, not a meal – my father had disowned me for coming to London and refusing to live with his sister, but I did have a small income from my mother’s family, £150 a year – and the chestnuts felt like globs of earth in my mouth. In the glare from the street lamp on a shop window-front I saw myself splintered, because the glass was not flat, distorted, and I took one of the men’s arms to stop myself from fainting. They introduced themselves. Piers. Marcus. Well-spoken. Clean ears. Bright eyes. All their teeth.
‘I’ve lost time,’ I say. ‘My name is Prudence.’
‘Don’t worry, Prudence,’ the one with fair hair said, ‘there is time at the hotel. We will show you.’
My hipbone aching, finally I get up from the hotel-room floor. Piers has gone with Marguerite, this is all I know. I am not sure how long he has been away. I go over to his typewriter on the table and pick up a page.
You can’t xxxxxx find a lonelier creature than a married person turning
the key in the backdoor, last one up, shushing the house
hand taking hold of the toe and anklexxxxxxxxxxx
but doesn’t wakexxxxxxxx
I screw this page up and then take off my clothes and run a bath and even though the water is cold I get in, and sit shivering, my skin puckering, my heart nearly fading, until something in me propels me to get out.
I escape the room by climbing from my balcony across to the next balcony and asking the woman inside, who looks rather shocked, if I can leave by way of her door. Her mouth swings open like a fish, but she lets me through. I am still wet, from the bath. In the corridor I walk along thick carpets leaving padded prints. I do not take the lift, but rather the stairs at the end of the corridor. In my head a looping refrain: Upstairs and downstairs. And in my lady’s chamber. Whither shall I? Whither shall I wander? A hotel man, the concierge or perhaps just a waiter or a kitchen person, comes towards me, surprised.
‘You can’t be here, madam.’ He has an accent; he does not know where to look.
‘Where are you from?’ I ask him.
‘Italy.’
‘Ah.’
I push past and then I am outside.
‘Madam,’ the doorman shouts.
It is raining; a taxi splashes along Russell Square, past the dripping, spacious doorways of each tottering Georgian house. I stand at the edge of the kerb. People are gathering. Madam. Madam. Barnes, who is back, leaning against his car and smoking a cigarette, drops it on the pavement and rushes towards me. He takes off his coat, covers me, bats away the doormen and outraged gentlemen and ladies who have congregated on the steps of the Russell Hotel in horror at my nudity. I feel Barnes’s hand on my back, pushing me into the back of the Buick. I sit on the leather seat, shivering inside his coat, grateful.
Barnes, in his driver’s seat, looks at me in the mirror with astonishing professionalism and waits for me to speak.
‘Would you mind taking me for a drive, Barnes?’
‘Where to, Mrs Miller?’
‘I’m not sure.’
He waits politely for a moment, and then says, ‘Would you like to go back up to your rooms?’
‘No. Definitely not.’ He nods. ‘To be perfectly honest I would be grateful if you would just drive. It doesn’t matter where to.’
‘Into the city or along the river?’
‘The river sounds like the perfect plan.’ I am grateful for him, and ashamed – although I never have been before – of the hours Piers makes him wait around for us.
He drives. I say nothing for a long time. His coat is scratchy on my skin. I lean forward.
‘Did you take Mr Miller somewhere this morning, or yesterday, or whenever it was?’
He is alert. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘An address in Pimlico, ma’am.’
‘Pimlico? Marguerite’s . . . I mean, Mrs Alva’s house?’
Barnes’s ears immediately go a bright red, and he makes an actual sound of suffering which he attempts to hide with a cough.
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ I say. ‘I will ask you no more questions. Forgive me.’
I am quiet for a long time, and we wind down towards the river. It is pleasant to look at the buildings on the opposite bank. In the rain-light they appear as if covered in silver paper. The road along Embankment is busy with traps and cars and omnibuses so that we move slowly. There is an enormous amount of traffic on the water. A large container ship creeps forward like an iceberg, and behind it barges look as if they might be sunk under their cargo of coal; a steamer comes too and in between them all smaller fishing and sailing boats, just like toys. We pass London Bridge.
The Buick edges towards the docklands where City men in their bowlers are not so much in evidence. We reach Trinity Buoy Wharf where we do not get out. Barnes stops, turns the engine off. I open the door and the air from the river comes in, smelling of the sea rather than the city. I point out to Barnes the cormorants hanging up their wings like vampires drying their cloaks, and then I ask if he will drive us back to the Russell and if he would be kind enough not to mention all of this to my husband, and he agrees to both.
But everybody else in the hotel has spoken to Piers and now I have been kept in this room for days. Similar to the times he locked me in to take the drawings or scraps of writing, but now he comes with fresh fruit and strokes my head and tells me to sleep and not to fret or strain or worry. Marguerite arrives and brings with her a doctor, Dr Ridgeway, Dr Radway? He is thin-faced and looks like a squirrel. When the compulsion comes, don’t do it. Think about doing it, run through it in your mind, slowly, controlling it, and then the desire will pass.
I say, ‘What compulsion?’
‘To be naked in public. How do you feel when you take off your clothes?’
‘Safer than with them on.’
After the doctor has gone, they sit around my bed, talking about a mini-exhibition they are organising for Piers’s work and mine. A Greek art buyer is interested in buying some of my photographic pieces.
‘Which ones?’
‘Those dust pieces,’ Piers says, ‘remember?’
As if I have lost my memory. As if I am an old lady. He is referring to a series of oblique close-up photographs of large pieces of glass covered in dust, entitled View From an Aeroplane, and indeed they do look like aerial views, with swirls and lines and abstract shapes. Glass plates I left under the bed to accumulate dust. Similar experiments are happening in Paris; Rrose Sélavy, they say, as if I am meant to be impressed.
They bring in another man: Sir Herbert Read.
‘We were meant to meet at the Savoy?’ I say.
‘No matter.’
‘I’m not looking my best.’
‘Never mind that.’
He asks me to explain: it’s the snapshot. The ready-made. The arbitrariness. That’s what they want. Snapshot. A long-lost memory of my Kodak Eastman (what happened to that?) and a bird on the ground. The freckles on Eleanora’s arm, the fact that Eleanora, remote, untouchable, was an inexplicable complexity at the heart of my travels. I don’t tell them, but from the bed I feel the curtain edge move. I am sure that there is a creature in there, something breathing quietly.
‘Where on earth did you find her?’ says Mr Read. He has taken his hat off and balanced it on the edge of a table
; I am worried it will fall.
‘Let Prudence tell you the story.’
I shake my head. I am nervous in front of this powerful dealer of art and maker of artists’ fortunes who is looking at me in bed. I listen, as Piers tells him about the night of The Lodger in Soho. Sitting around me, they all drink drink drink to my health and future. I lie on the bed and pretend that I am asleep until I am.
Jerusalem, 1920
Ihsan found Prue standing at the point where David Street became the Street of the Chain. If she stood here for long enough she might exist, like a stone lion statue in the heart of an Italian square. She had read of such a square somewhere along the train-tracks of her life and there was always the temptation to be magical and believe that such a place had been spread out like a painted set, just for her, that she had invented it. But really, she knew well enough that the places of the world existed whether she was in them or not.
At the end of each day the Holy City shut down like a toy put back in its box. It was as if all the doors and windows were slamming and closing in front of her.
‘Prue?’
Ihsan was tightly wrapped in a thick coat, his face half-covered with scarves. The temperature had dropped further. She hadn’t seen him for a few days and he looked a little odd. Not quite himself.
‘What are you doing?’ he said.
When she saw him the part of her that was keeping her balanced on the ground snapped and she swayed. Ihsan took off his coat and put it over her and it was only when he did this that she realised that she was freezing, out in the cold air wearing a thin dress, not even a cardigan. It was windy, as well as cold. Since being here Prue had become frightened of the wind. She felt it might carry her away, or blow her apart.
‘Come with me. Walk to warm up.’
They walked quickly, in silence. Out of the Old City, out through Damascus Gate, and along the Nablus road. Her nostrils were sore. Ihsan was clearly on his way somewhere. She should make a polite exit; she knew as they walked he was thinking up ways to deposit her somewhere, just as everyone else did. Today, however, she had no pride.
‘Wherever are you going, Ihsan? Can I come with you?’
He frowned and tried unsuccessfully to hide it. Normally she would let Ihsan be, knowing herself unwanted, but today, without understanding why, she was frightened of being alone.
‘Of course. You come with me.’
There was a blue gate on the curve where the Nablus road climbs up the Mount of Olives towards Mount Scopus. Ihsan banged out a coded knock on the door and they were let inside by a man with a birthmark across the whole of his right cheek. The steps were steep and lined with tall, well-established cedars, like a scene from a Germanic fairy tale rather than a desert-dwelling garden. At the top they were met by a man whose mouth dropped open when he saw Prue at Ihsan’s side. In Arabic, he said, ‘You can’t bring an English child into the house of Abu Swayy, you louse.’ Her Arabic was shaky, but she worked out the essence.
‘Is Hassan Fahmi here?’ Ihsan said and then Prue, who was looking at the floor, heard him say in Arabic: ‘There is method. She brings us information from the Ingliz.’
The man called Hassan Fahmi was brought to the door and she stepped away a little to let them discuss whatever it was they needed to without her listening. She counted to ten to stop herself from rubbing her nose, and also to stop herself from crying which she seemed to be on the verge of doing. A robin sat on the bottom branch of the cedar but it would not look at her. It would not come close.
Ihsan turned to her and said quietly, ‘Prue, this way.’
There was a wide entrance-hall area, and everything inside was made from the pale grey-pinkish Jerusalem stone. Groups of men stood in clusters of three and four, talking. Ihsan whispered to her, ‘It is the Al-Muntada Literary Club.’
He steered her through a dark hallway, past a door which opened out on to a stone-floored kitchen, and round into a spacious living space. There were sofas along the edge of the wall and chairs arranged as if for a meeting or a talk in the centre of the room. Ihsan took her to one of the sofas and told her to sit.
‘Here is my friend, Saliba al-Jouzi,’ Ihsan said, and a man with beautiful shimmering eyes looked at Prue as if she were a rodent.
‘What are you doing?’ He spoke in Arabic.
‘She was with me, today, she wanted to come. She doesn’t understand it, don’t worry.’
‘You idiot. Get her out.’
Prue looked at Ihsan’s face. He was surely regretting bringing her now. When he came close she whispered, ‘I’m not sure I’m welcome, Ihsan, perhaps I should go?’
‘Come, come. Don’t worry, they are ignorant and foolish.’
The coffee boy came forward and took orders and then there was a cheer. The eyes that had all been looking at Prue turned away towards doors which led through to yet another room, and a balcony which opened up over the whole city and let in a bright harsh breeze. Ihsan squeezed her hand.
‘Just wait here, dear Prue, you will be quite safe. I will be back in a moment.’ And he stood up and went towards a small group of men on the balcony.
It was a room full of men. They were mostly the same age as Ihsan, or younger, but there was one boy who was maybe just two or three years older than her. He looked at her, but he wasn’t interested. He turned back to the man next to him, a father or an older brother or an uncle, who put his big hands around the boy’s shoulders and he was pulled deep into the heart of their group and crushed by hands and arms.
She listened to the men laughing. She tried to identify the boy’s name because the older men joked with him often. Yusi, Yusa, Yasa, Yusef, Yaacoub, it could have been, but then she thought that might be the name of the older man after all, and in fact the younger one was called Isaaf or Issa. The older man kept touching him with a glorious straightforwardness: the younger, the elder; the protected and the protector. Twice, the boy looked over his shoulder at her, but he always returned to the men he belonged with. The conversations across the room appeared to get louder. People were both looking at her and ignoring her.
When Ihsan came back he was as ruffled as she had ever seen him. His face looked hot and he sat next to her, letting out a strange noise: ouf. He took a deep breath, patted his knee with his hands as if to say: we are here now. He told her the names of the men on the balcony: al-Jouzi and al-Nashashibi. Many of the men had begun chanting.
‘What are they saying, Ihsan?’
‘The Balfour Declaration is a lie and a trick! Unity for Syria!’
Prue’s eyes opened wide. There was a man leading the talks on the balcony, quite short, with his back to her. He was surrounded by a group of intense-looking fellows.
‘What are they saying now?’
‘A future of blood and the treachery of the British.’
You shouldn’t have brought me here. Though she knew it was she who had clamoured to come.
A man entered the room and several people shouted out, ‘Welcome. He is back, thanks be to Allah.’ The new arrival was immediately swept into the centre of things, people clapping his shoulders, taking his hand and kissing it. He scanned the room. When he saw her, his eyes widened a moment and then he glanced at Ihsan and nodded. The chanting on the balcony continued and then the man was walking towards her. He must be coming for Ihsan; but no. He was looking at her. Prue’s spine tightened. Treachery of the British. When he reached Prue he knelt down on one knee and she was sure she might let out a whimper.
‘Hello. You’re the daughter of Charles Ashton?’ he said in sing-song English.
When she nodded he said, ‘Can you give this to your father for me?’
He handed her a flat piece of card. It was a photograph, printed on shiny paper and pasted on to the card, and the image was of a courtyard, with a door in the background. On the floor were six children’s bodies, and next to them was a man with a broom, smiling at the camera. The child closest to the camera, she could not tell if it was a boy or girl, was nake
d and had a black mark, a stain, which Prue guessed was blood, across its chest. The eyes were open but it was not alive and then she realised that all the little bodies laid out in a row in the picture were dead and the man who was standing near them was laughing.
Ihsan sat up and said something in quick, ferocious Arabic that Prue did not understand. Prue’s eyes burned.
‘No,’ the man said to Ihsan, but in English, holding his hand up. He turned to Prue: ‘I want you to take this to your father, and say that we hold him and Storrs responsible for authorising these killings.’
The way he talked was very soft, kind almost, so that his voice did not match the words he was saying. Ihsan put his hand forward to take the picture away, but Prue stopped him.
‘She is just a child herself,’ Ihsan said, in Arabic, sadly.
Looking closer, she saw it was a boy. ‘How old is he?’ Prue said, her finger on the image of the child with the stain on his body, circling around the eyes and their strange look. The man in front of her shifted, his knees creaked a little. He looked down at the picture.
‘I imagine he is six. Something like that.’
‘Is he dead?’
‘Yes.’
Prue looked at him. ‘I will give it to my father.’
‘Thank you.’
Prue looked at his face, and then she knew who he was, from the picture in Eleanora’s room. It was Khaled Rasul. He turned abruptly to Ihsan, speaking in very fast Turkish, rather than Arabic, so that she couldn’t understand. Ihsan was rubbing his hand over and over his lip and finally Khaled Rasul walked away, towards the balcony, and as he did so there was a cheer.
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