by Wilbur Smith
‘And spoilt little boys should grow up before they come out on their own,’ she flashed back at him.
‘Thanks!’ he snarled. ‘I don’t have to stay around taking insults from any professional virgin.’
‘Well, why don’t you move out then?’ she challenged him.
‘Hey, that’s a great idea!’ He turned his back on her and walked away up the beach. She had not expected that, and she started to run after him – but her pride checked her. She stopped and leaned against the rock.
He shouldn’t have rushed me, she thought miserably. I want him, I want him very much, but he will be the first since Dudu. If he will just give me time it will be all right, but he mustn’t rush me. If he could only go at my speed, help me to do it right.
It is funny, she thought, how little I remember about Dudu now. It’s only three years, but his memory is fading so swiftly, I wonder if I really did love him. Even his face is hazy in my mind, while I know every detail of David’s – every plane and line of it.
Perhaps I should go after him and tell him about Dudu, and ask him to be patient and to help me a little. Perhaps I should do that, she thought, but she did not and slowly she walked up the beach, through the silent town to the hotel.
Hannah’s bed across the room was empty. She would be with Joe, lying with him, loving with him. I should be with David also, she thought. Dudu was dead, and I’m alive, and I want David and I should be with him – but she undressed slowly and climbed into the bed and lay without sleeping.
David stood in the doorway of ‘2001 AD’ and peered through the weirdly flashing lights and the smog, the warm palpable emanation from a hundred straining bodies. The BEA hostesses were still at the table, but Joe and Hannah had gone.
David made his way through the dancers. The one hostess was tall and blonde, with high English colour and china-doll eyes. She looked up and saw David, glanced around for Debra, made sure she was missing before she smiled.
They danced one cut of the record without touching each other and then David leaned close to her and placed both hands on her hips. She strained towards him with her lips parting.
‘Have you got a room?’ he asked, and she nodded, running the tip of her tongue lewdly around her lips.
‘Let’s go,’ said David.
It was light when David got back to his own room. He shaved and packed his bag, surprised at the strength of his residual anger. He lugged his bag down to the proprietor’s office and paid his bill with his Diners Club card.
Debra came out of the breakfast room with Joe and Hannah. They were all dressed for the beach with terry robes over their bathing gear, and they were happy and laughing – until they saw David.
‘Hey!’ Joe challenged him. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I’ve had enough of Spain,’ David told them. ‘I’m taking some good advice, and I’m moving out,’ and he felt a flare of savage triumph as he saw the quick shadow of pain in Debra’s eyes. Both Joe and Hannah glanced at her, and quickly she controlled the quiver of her lips. She smiled then, a little too brightly and stepped forward, holding out her hand.
‘Thank you for all your help, David. I’m sorry you have to go. It was fun.’ Then her voice dropped slightly and there was a tiny quiver in it. ‘I hope you find what you are looking for. Good luck.’
She turned quickly and hurried away to her room. Hannah’s expression was steely, and she gave David a curt nod before following Debra.
‘So long, Joe.’
‘I’ll carry your bag.’
‘Don’t bother.’ David tried to stop him.
‘No trouble.’ Joe took it out of his hand and carried it out to the Mustang. He dumped it on the rear seat.
‘I’ll ride up to the top of the hills with you and walk back.’ He climbed into the passenger seat and settled comfortably. ‘I need the exercise.’
David drove swiftly, and they were silent as Joe deliberately lit a cigarette and flicked the match out the window.
‘I don’t know what went wrong, Davey, but I can guess.’
David didn’t reply, he concentrated on the road.
‘She’s had a bad time. These last few days she has been different. Happy, I guess, and I thought it was going to work out.’
Still David was silent, not giving him any help. Why didn’t the big bonehead mind his own business?
‘She’s a pretty special sort of person, Davey, not because she’s my sister. She really is, and I think you should know about her – just so you don’t think too badly about her.’
They had reached the top of the hills above the town and the bay. David pulled on to the verge but kept the engine running. He looked down on the brilliant blue of the sea, where it met the cliffs and the pine-covered headlands.
‘She was going to be married,’ said Joe softly. ‘He was a nice guy, older than she was, they worked together at the University. He was a tank driver in the reserve and he took a hit in the Sinai and burned with his tank.’
David turned and looked at him, his expression softening a little.
‘She took it badly,’ Joe went on doggedly. ‘These last few days were the first time I’ve seen her truly happy and relaxed.’ He shrugged and grinned like a big St Bernard dog. ‘Sorry to give you the family history, Davey. Just thought it might help.’ He held out a huge brown hand. ‘Come and see us. It’s your country also, you know. I’d like to show it to you.’
David took the hand. ‘I might do that,’ he said.
‘Shalom.’
‘Shalom, Joe. Good luck.’ Joe climbed out of the car and when David pulled away he watched him standing on the side of the road with his hands on his hips. He waved and the first bend in the road hid him.
There was a school for aspiring Formula One racing drivers on a neglected concrete circuit near Ostia, on the road from Rome. The course lasted three weeks and cost $500 US.
David stayed at the Excelsior in the Via Veneto, and commuted each day to the track. He completed the full course, but after the first week knew it was not what he wanted. The physical limitation of the track was constricting after flying the high heavens, and even the crackling, snarling power of a Tyrell Ford could not match the thrust from the engine of a jet interceptor. Although he lacked the dedication and motivation of others in his class his natural talent for speed and his co-ordination brought him out high in the finishing order – and he had an offer to drive on the works team of a new and struggling company that was building and fielding a production team of Formula One racing machines. Of course, the salary was starvation, and it was a measure of his desperation that he came close to signing a contract for the season, but at the last moment he changed his mind and went on.
In Athens he spent a week hanging around the yacht basins of Piraeus and Glyfada. He was investigating the prospects of buying a motor yacht and running it out on charter to the islands. The prospect of sun and sea and pretty girls seemed appealing and the craft themselves were beautiful in their snowy paint and varnished teakwork. In one week he learned that charter work was merely running a sea-going boarding house for a bunch of bored, sunburned and seasick tourists.
On the seventh day the American Sixth Fleet dropped anchor in the bay of Athens. David sat at a table of one of the beach-front cafés and drank ouzo in the sun, while he studied the anchored aircraft carriers through his binoculars. On the great flat tops the rows of Crusaders and Phantoms were grouped with their wings folded. Watching them he felt a consuming hunger, a need that was almost spiritual. He had searched the earth, it seemed, and there was nothing for him upon its face. He laid the binoculars aside, and he looked up into the sky. The clouds were high, a brilliant silver against the blue.
He picked up the glass of milky ouzo that the sun had warmed and rolled its sweet liquorice taste about his tongue.
‘East, west, home is best.’
He spoke aloud, and had a mental image of Paul Morgan sitting in his high office of glass and steel. Like a patient fisherman he tende
d his lines laid across the world. Right now the one to Athens was beginning to twitch. He could imagine the quiet satisfaction as he began to reel it in, drawing David struggling feebly back to the centre, What the hell, I could still fly Impalas as a reserve officer, he thought, and there was always the Lear – if he could get it away from Barney.
David drained the glass and stood up abruptly, feeling the fading glow of his defiance. He flagged a cab and was driven back to his room at the Grande Bretagne on Syndagma Square.
His defiance was dying so swiftly that one of his companions for dinner that night was John Dinopoulos, Morgan Group’s agent for Greece, a slim elegant sophisticate with an unlined sun-tanned face, silver wings in his hair and an elegantly casual way of dressing.
John had selected for David’s table companion the female star of a number of Italian spaghetti westerns. A young lady of ample bosom and dark flashing eye whose breathing and bosom had become so agitated when John introduced David as a diamond millionaire from Africa.
Diamonds were the most glamorous, although not the most significant, of Morgan Group’s interests.
They sat upon the terrace of Dionysius, for the evening was mild. The restaurant was carved into the living rock of the hill-top of Lycabettus, under the church of St Paul.
Down the zig-zag path from the church, the Easter procession of worshippers unwound in a flickering stream of candle flames through the pine forest below them, and the singing carried sweetly on the still night air. On its far hill-top the stately columns of the Acropolis were flood-lit so that they glowed as creamily as ancient ivory, and beyond that again on the midnight waters of the bay the American fleet wore gay garlands of fairy lights.
‘The glory that was Greece—’ murmured the star of Italian westerns, as though she voiced the wisdom of the ages, and placed one heavily jewelled hand on David’s thigh while with the other she raised a glass of red Samos wine to him and cast him a look under thick eyelashes that was fraught with significance.
Her restraint was impressive, and it was only after they had eaten the main course of savoury meats wrapped in vine leaves and swimming in creamy lemon sauce that she suggested that David might like to finance her next movie.
‘Let’s find some place where we can talk about it—’ she murmured, and what better place than her suite?
John Dinopoulos waved them away with a grin and a knowing wink, a gesture that annoyed David for it made him see the whole episode for the emptiness that it was. The star’s suite was pretentious, with thick white carpets and bulky black leather furniture. David poured himself a drink while she went to change into clothing more suitable for a discussion of high finance. David tasted the drink, realized that he did not want it and left it on the bar counter.
The star came out of the bedroom in a bedrobe of white satin which was cut back from arm and bosom, and was so sheer that her flesh gleamed with a pearly pink sheen through the material. Her hair was loose, a great wild mane of swirling curls – and suddenly David was sick of the whole business.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘John was joking – I’m not a millionaire, and I really prefer boys.’
He heard his untouched glass shatter against the door of the suite as he closed it behind him.
Back at his own hotel he ordered coffee from room service, and then on an impulse he picked up the telephone again and placed a Cape Town call. It came through with surprising speed, and the girl’s voice on the other end was thickened with sleep.
‘Mitzi,’ he laughed. ‘How’s the girl?’
‘Where are you, warrior? Are you home?’
‘I’m in Athens, doll.’
‘Athens – God! How’s the action?’
‘It’s a drag.’
‘Yeah! I bet,’ she scoffed. ‘The Greek girls are never going to be the same again.’
‘How are you, Mitzi?’
‘I’m in love, Davey. I mean really in love, it’s far out. We are going to be married. Isn’t that just something else?’ David felt a spur of anger, jealous of the happiness in her voice.
‘That’s great, doll. Do I know him?’
‘Cecil Lawley, you know him. He’s one of Daddy’s accountants.’ David recalled a large, pale-faced, bespectacled man with a serious manner.
‘Congratulations,’ said David. He felt very much alone again. Far from home, and aware that life there flowed on without his presence.
‘You want to talk to him?’ Mitzi asked. ‘I’ll wake him up.’ There was a murmur and mutter on the other end, then Cecil came on.
‘Nice work,’ David told him, and it really was. Mitzi’s share of Morgan Group would be considerably larger than David’s. Cecil had drilled himself an oil well in a most unconventional manner.
‘Thanks, Davey.’ Cecil’s embarrassment at being caught tending his oil well carried clearly over five thousand miles of telephone cable.
‘Listen, lover. You do anything to hurt that girl, I’ll personally tear out your liver and stuff it down your throat, okay?’
‘Okay,’ said Cecil, and his alarm was brittle in his tone. ‘I’ll put you back to Mitzi.’
She prattled on for another fifty dollars’ worth before hanging up. David lay on the bed with his hands behind his head and thought about his dumpy soft-hearted cousin and her new happiness. Then quite suddenly he made the decision which had been lurking at the edge of his consciousness all these weeks since leaving Spain. He picked up the phone again and asked for the porter’s desk.
‘I’m sorry to trouble you at this time in the morning,’ he said, ‘but I should like to get on a flight to Israel as soon as possible, will you please arrange that.’
The sky was filled with a soft golden haze that came off the desert. The gigantic TWA 747 came down through it, and David had a glimpse of dark green citrus orchards before the solid jolt of the touch-down. Lod was like any other airport in the world but beyond its doors was a land like no other he had ever known. The crowd who fought him for a seat in one of the big black sheruts, communal taxis plastered with stickers and hung with gewgaws, made even the Italians seem shining towers of restrained good manners.
Once aboard, however, it was as though they were on a family outing – and he a member of that family. On one side of him a paratrooper in beret and blouse with his winged insignia on the breast and an Uzi submachine-gun slung about his neck offered him a cigarette, on the other a big strapping lass also in khaki uniform and with the dark gazelle eyes of an Israeli, which became even darker and more soulful when she looked at David, which was often, shared a sandwich of unleaven bread and balls of fried chick-peas, the ubiquitous pitta and falafel, with him and practised her English upon him. All the occupants of the front seat turned around to join the conversation, and this included the driver who nevertheless did not allow his speed to diminish in the slightest and who punctuated his remarks with fierce blasts of his horn and cries of outrage at pedestrians and other drivers.
The perfume of orange blossom lay as heavily as sea mist upon the coastal lowlands, and always afterwards it would be for David the smell of Israel.
Then they climbed into the Judaean hills, and David felt a sense of nostalgia as they followed the winding highway through pine forests and across the pale shining slopes where the white stone gleamed like bone in the sunlight and the silver olive trees twisted their trunks in graceful agony upon the terraces which were the monuments to six thousand years of man’s patient labour.
It was so familiar and yet subtly different from those fair and well-beloved hills of the southern cape he called home. There were flowers he did not recognize, crimson blooms like spilled blood, and bursts of sunshine-yellow blossoms upon the slopes – then suddenly a pang that was like a physical pain as he glimpsed the bright flight of chocolate and white wings amongst the trees, and he recognized the crested head of an African hoopoe – a bird which was a symbol of home.
He felt a sense of excitement building within him, unformed and undirected as yet but gro
wing, as he drew closer to the woman he had come to see – and to something else of which he was as yet uncertain.
There was, at last, a sense of belonging. He felt in sympathy with the young persons who crowded close to him in the cab.
‘See,’ cried the girl, touching his arm and pointing to the wreckage of war still strewn along the roadside, the burned-out carapaces of trucks and armoured vehicles, preserved as a memorial to the men who died on the road to Jerusalem. ‘There was fighting here.’
David turned in the seat to study her face, and he saw again the strength and certainty that he had so admired in Debra. These were a people who lived each day to its limit, and only at its close did they consider the next.
‘Will there be more fighting?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she answered him without hesitation.
‘Why?’
‘Because – if it is good – you must fight for it,’ and she made a wide gesture that seemed to embrace the land and all its people, ‘and this is ours, and it is good,’ she said.
‘Right on, doll,’ David agreed with her, and they grinned at each other.
So they came to Jerusalem with its tall, severe apartment blocks of custard-yellow stone, standing like monuments upon the hills, grouped about the massive walled citadel that was its heart.
TWA had reserved a room at the Intercontinental Hotel for David while on board the inward flight. From his window he looked across the garden of Gethsemane at the old city, at its turrets and spires and the blazing golden Dome of the Rock – centre of Christianity and Judaism, holy place of the Moslems, battleground of two thousand years, ancient land reborn – and David felt a sense of awe. For the first time in his life, he recognized and examined that portion of himself that was Jewish, and he thought it was right that he should have come to this city.
‘Perhaps,’ he said aloud, ‘it’s just possible that this is where it’s all at.’
It was early evening when David paid off the cab in the car park of the University and submitted to a perfunctory search by a guard at the main gate. Here body search was a routine that would soon become so familiar as to pass unnoticed. He was surprised to find the campus almost deserted, until he remembered it was Friday – and that the whole tempo was slowing for the Sabbath.