by Alec Waugh
‘I suppose you hogged it at the Athenaeum?’
‘I lunched with my father at the Isthmian.’
‘Then you did hog it; I know Poppa; or rather swilled it, in these spartan days.’
‘What are we going to drink by the way with that chicken that you scrounged?’
‘Which would you prefer: a Burgundy?’
‘I think a Burgundy. How long will it take to get that chicken ready?’
‘Not more than three-quarters of an hour.’
‘Then I’ll uncork a bottle.’
‘Wouldn’t you like a whisky first?’
‘I nearly took one half an hour ago.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘I didn’t know how long that bottle had to last.’
She shrugged. ‘I get one a month. I keep it for occasions.’
‘That’s what I suspected.’
‘But this is an occasion isn’t it?’
They sat together, sipping at the fragrant liquid. She asked him about his lunch. ‘Poppa’s beginning to show his age. How was he?’
‘Fine. We’re going down to Fernhurst next week, to see the boys.’
‘Good, they’ll love that.’
He asked her about the flat. ‘Don’t you have any help?’ he asked.
‘There’s a woman who comes in once a week. That’s all I need.’
‘What about the holidays?’
‘We manage. The boys are very good. They cook their own lunches, or go out. I do their dinners.’
‘And do you do your own dinners when you’re by yourself?’
‘I’m not very often by myself. I go out most evenings.’
He nearly asked with whom, but checked. A whole new life had started for her since she came to London—with her job and her committee work. Personable women never needed to be alone in wartime.
‘Shall I find the boys very different?’ he asked.
She pouted. ‘They seem the same to me but then I’m seeing them all the time. They may not to you. Four years is a long time.’
They finished their whiskies slowly. ‘You’d like a second, wouldn’t you?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘We mustn’t make it too much of an occasion. We must leave something there for other ones.’
She rose, and he rose too.
‘Can I help you?’
It was her turn to shake her head. ‘Next time; you watch me now. This is your first day home.’
He sat on the kitchen table, watching her fiddle round the stove, watching her lay the table. ‘Do you realize,’ he said, ‘that this is the first time we’ve ever picnicked—in a house of our own, I mean?’
‘Wartime has its compensations.’
‘We missed a lot when we were young. There were always children and servants in the way.’
‘There’ll be children here again in three weeks’ time.’
The chicken was on the table and the wine was poured. He held his glass to his nose. ‘I hope it’s as good upon the palate.’ It was. ‘We’re in luck,’ he said. He lifted his glass to her. ‘Let’s stay in luck,’ he said.
He asked her about the farm. How soon could they hope to get it back. ‘I’ve my hands on the right strings,’ she told him. He asked her about mutual friends. She shrugged. ‘I see scarcely any of them. If I were to make a list of the people who in January 1939 I thought of as my best friends, I’d be surprised if I’ve seen more than three of them in the last twelve months. Everything is so difficult nowadays. It’s a major project to get one’s hair done or to see a dentist. One does one thing at a time. One sees the people that one works with and that’s all there is to it.’
‘I must ask her about her work with Palestine,’ he thought. ‘But later, when things are cleared away. When we are cosy over coffee and a cognac.’
‘Jenks was at the Isthmian today,’ he said.
‘Was he?’
‘I’ll be going round to see him one day next week. I suppose that in spite of taxes, because of that legacy to the boys we are rather more comfortably off ourselves.’
‘We are very much more comfortably off now.’
‘Till they come of age.’
‘Exactly, till they come of age.’
Should he have mentioned that, he wondered. Perhaps he should have waited. Could he have ignored it though, completely? It had to be brought up some time. ‘How do the boys feel about it?’
‘They haven’t grasped it. They take a very temporary point of view. They’ve never worried about money: they never heard money discussed as though it were a problem. They’ve always assumed there was enough of it.’
He asked about the bomb damage in London. ‘In point of fact did you know a single person who was killed in an air raid?’
‘No one that I knew well.’
‘Not nearly as many as were killed in cars or aircraft.’
‘No, not nearly.’
‘But a great number of our friends have had their houses smashed.’
‘A great, great number.’
They talked of the houses that had been destroyed. ‘You’ve not been round London yet. In every square and street and crescent it’s the same. One or two houses gone. They all look like mouths with a couple of front teeth missing.’
The level of the wine sank slowly in the bottle. Its warmth spread along his veins. It was good to be home, even in this furnished flat, which did not contain a single personal possession. The mere fact of eating in a private house, with an attractive woman sitting across the table was a relief unbounded, after the succession of meals in messes that had been his background for close upon four years. Most of the occasional dinner parties to which he had been invited had been masculine, or, when there had been a hostess, with a masculine preponderance of six to one. He had not had a single meal alone in feminine company since he had lunched with Diana in Cairo in the late autumn of 1942, nearly three years ago.
Slowly a deep peace of spirit settled on him. He was returning from a long, long exile: an exile that had taught him to appreciate the things that he had taken for granted six years ago. He was returning to the amenities and graciousness of living. He would set the right value on them now. He had learnt his lesson, just as Rachel had. Diana was his equivalent for her American. For both of them without that experience, life would have been incomplete, would have been half lived. Now they could start afresh, on equal terms, ready to attain the happiness, how was it that de Maurier had put it, ‘that lies so easily within the reach of all of us once we have ceased crying for the stars.’ It was going to be all right. Of course it was going to be all right.
The meal ended with strawberries, started after the last drop of the Burgundy had been sipped.
‘I’m afraid that I can’t give you cream,’ she said, ‘but I’ve saved the top of the milk.’
‘They’re the first strawberries I’ve had since I left the Lebanon. They seem very good to me.’
There was really no fruit like English fruit. The climate that made England so difficult gave it in recompense the loveliest gardens in the world and the richest, most subtle fruit.
‘Can I help with the washing up?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘Mrs. Gaskell comes on Friday. I leave as much as possible for her, but you can help me clear away. Then we can have our coffee at that corner table.’
It was a congenial corner table, with two stiff backed but well upholstered chairs set at right angles to one another. You were comfortable, but you were not lolling back; no one could talk effectively when they were lolling back. ‘I’m afraid this coffee will seem terrible after what you’ve been used to in the Middle East.’
‘England was never good at coffee.’
But this particular coffee was worse than anything that he remembered. ‘The brandy’s very good,’ he said. He had very rarely drunk French brandy since he had left Lebanon. In Baghdad he had been restricted to South African brandy, which was well enough mixed with ginger ale but was not a liqueur. ‘It’s a relief to drink
cognac again,’ he said. He took a long slow sip and held the time-ripened liquid against his tongue. How good to be able to do that again, instead of having to swallow quickly for the effect.
‘Tell me about this Palestine committee of yours,’ he said.
‘That’s exactly what I want to talk about. You can be most helpful to us.’
‘I, helpful? How? In what?’
‘In joining our committee, taking the chair at public meetings, helping us draft appeals. You are the very man we need, with your status as a historian and a professor, then your being just back from the Middle East, and as a Colonel too. You’d carry real authority. How long can you wear uniform?’
‘For three months.’
‘And I know you’re sick of it, but just for these few occasions, you wouldn’t mind. I know it would make all the difference. We must make the most of these three months.’
Her eyes were shining; there was a glow in her voice that he had not heard before. He had not believed her capable of so much enthusiasm; she had always been so restrained.
‘But what is your committee working for?’ he asked.
‘The scrapping of that ridiculous white paper; to let as many Central European Jews as are still alive get into Palestine right away.’
‘Do you think that is fair to the Arabs?’
‘What do the Arabs matter? They never made a proper use of Palestine. They neglected Palestine. Think what the Jews have done there within twenty years.’
‘We have a treaty with the Arabs.’
‘Treaties are made to be modified, to suit new conditions.’
‘It’s the Arabs’ country.’
‘Only because the Jews were dispossessed. It is their spiritual home: the centre of their faith and culture. For centuries they have carried round with them their sacred Torahs, sounding the Shofars on the Eve of their Holy Days, The Eve of Yom Kippur, on Rosh Hashanah, praying for the day of their return. Surely you must realize . . .’
He half-closed his eyes. Her arguments were familiar enough to him. There was no answer to them, any more than there was any answer to the arguments that Hassun had flung in his face in his Baghdad office. It was an impossible situation. There was no solution. He had suspected when he left Middle East that he would be involved in this kind of argument; and he had resolved that he would be non-committal: that he would stand on the touchline as he had during the Spanish Civil War. He would not take sides, since he could not give himself wholeheartedly to either party. He had foreseen such arguments.
He waited until Rachel paused. ‘It’s a very complicated business,’ he said. ‘There are arguments on the other side.’
‘What are the arguments?’
He gave them to her. In the main what he had to say was a paraphrase of Hassun’s denunciation. She listened carefully and her eyes were hostile. She did not interrupt. She waited till he had finished. ‘Is that what you believe yourself?’ she asked.
‘You didn’t ask me what I believed myself. You asked me what were the arguments on the other side.’
‘And what do you believe yourself?’ Her voice was glowering now not glowing.
‘I believe,’ he said, ‘that from the beginning the whole thing has been a mistake, a misunderstanding and a profound misfortune. The issue of the Middle East was handled after the First War carelessly and stupidly by politicians who were too concerned with their own European interests to understand the Arab problems that were involved in the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. I think the Arabs can justifiably consider themselves betrayed, not only by the creation of Palestine, but by the dismemberment of the country into British and French spheres of influence. At that time it was no one’s intention to create in Palestine an independent Jewish state. The population of Palestine at that time was only nine per cent Jewish. The Balfour Declaration referred to a spiritual home for the Jews, a national home for the Jewish people, was his phrase, not an independent Jewish State. No one could have foreseen then the Hitlerian persecution; it was that persecution that created an argument for a Jewish State.’
At that point she interrupted him. ‘I wouldn’t say an argument for; I would say a need for; I would go beyond that, I would say the necessity for.’
‘I can see that argument.’
‘Then in that case, why will you not help with my committee? You would carry so much weight. You can explain the historical background. You can tell them of your experiences in the Middle East, of the wonderful work the immigrants have done with their collective farms, how they have irrigated the land, how they made crops grow where they never had before. The Arabs are slovenly and idle, you know that. They rely on Allah to work miracles. You are the very man we need. You could do so much for us.’
Her voice had a rich, fierce urgency. He had never believed that she had a gift of oratory. He knew now she had. He would have given anything to have acceded to her plea. But he shook his head.
‘Four years I’ve been living among Arabs. I have liked them personally. I have respected their way of life. I have absorbed their point of view.’
‘You are pro-Arab, that’s to say.’
‘Not in the terms of a controversy: as an issue in a conflict. But as I said, I have made many good Arab friends. I cannot testify against them, in public. There are certain loyalties.’
‘Then what are you going to do? Are you going to write a letter to The Times endorsing the Arabs claims, arguing for the white paper, insisting that every frontier should be watched, that these wretched refugees from terror shall be sent back to another terror, perhaps a worse terror, destitute, homeless, starving. Is that what you propose to do?’
‘It is not what I propose to do.’
‘Then what do you propose to do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing. With all these fine pro-Arab sentiments, this traditional English respect for the Arab gentleman: nothing, sit there and just do nothing.’
Her voice had struck a sneering note. He felt his temper rising, and he knew how easily when one’s temper rose, one lost track of one’s own identity in an argument. In order to score a point, one brought forward an argument whose validity one only in part accepted. ‘I must keep my head,’ he thought. ‘I must, I must.’
‘I do not believe that there is anything a person like myself can do. It is too late.’
‘What do you think is going to happen, then?’
‘I am not a prophet, but this I know, a situation has been created that will constitute at any rate during my life a running sore in Anglo-American relations with the Arab world.’
‘And you propose to sit there on the touchline and watch it happen?’
‘What else can I do?’
‘What else can you do? How like you. What else can you do. What else can you ever do, but stand aside; the onlooker: the neutral, the impartial chairman, never losing his temper, holding the balance. That’s you all through, as a man and a professor. “Catherine de Medici: was she an unmixed evil?” That was the kind of thesis you would set your students. And the papers that got the highest marks were those that patiently laid out the credit and the debit entries, setting the one against the other, and finally deciding that the world might have been a worse place if she had never lived. That’s you, Professor Reid. I know you. After all these years I know you.’
She had risen to her feet and her eyes were blazing; her voice low-toned with scorn and anger. As happened so easily in family disputes, a general issue had become a personal one. The smouldering resentments of twenty years had been quickened into flame. He had read once that there was no personal relationship in the world that could not be ruined by three sentences. ‘I’ve got to stop her,’ he thought. ‘I’ve got to stop her.’ But he could not see how. Not once in all their years together had she lost her temper. Nothing could stop her now. She had to get this off her chest. And nothing could ever be the same again between them.
‘That’s you, Professor N. E. Reid, always collected, always calm, jud
icial and impersonal. Never taking sides. Never losing your temper, never embroiled. A half man, that’s what you are. Thank God I met one real man before it was too late: a man who knew his mind; who when he saw what he wanted, went for it and got it. I found him; and I lost him: lost him through those foul Nazis, and how did I come to lose him, because of you, because of people like you, Professor N. E. Reid, who didn’t stop the Nazis when you had the chance: who stood aside and weighed alternatives. Non-intervention in Spain. Appeasement at Munich and then when you stumble into war, you dismiss the men who’d warned you as premature anti-fascists. God, but you make me sick, you English; your smugness, your complacence. Thank God, I met one real man once, even though I lost him. It makes the world seem less cheap.’
She swung round on her heel and the door slammed behind her. Everything depends on the first night. Of one thing Reid was sure. Never again would he and Rachel live together as man and wife.
Chapter Two
Reid met his father on the Tuesday, at the ticket barrier at Waterloo Station. They had agreed to meet half an hour before the train was due to leave. It was a long time since Reid’s father had been in a train. He had heard many stories of crowded carriages. It was essential that he should find a seat; but luckily there was no particular crush. They had corner seats in a carriage with the corridor to the left, so that they would get an early glimpse of the square golden tower. The train was due at Fernhurst shortly before noon. It was almost to a minute the same train that his father had caught in 1912 when he had come down to see him, half a lifetime ago. Reid was there before his father. With a wistful look he watched him shuffle across from the ticket office to the barrier. He wondered if his father would have the energy to walk from the hotel to the cricket field. Would there be a taxi? He was as touched as he was surprised that his father should have wanted to come down with him. ‘Isn’t it rather strange,’ he said, ‘that we should be catching now for the first time together, the train that we’ve caught so often separately.’
‘That’s exactly why I thought it would be rather pleasant for us to catch it now.’
There must be, he supposed, a ‘last-time’ quality about everything that his father was doing now. He wanted to refresh his memory, to add to his store of memories, so that he should have more to brood over, during those final months when he sat in an armchair before the fire, listening to the radio, struggling with crossword puzzles, reading the poems read in childhood. Perhaps too, he wanted a reassurance of continuity; to be reminded that things which he had known in boyhood still survived, which was something that England alone could offer now. England whose roads for nearly nine hundred years had been untrodden of foreign feet.