Something to Answer For

by P. H. Newby

  Attracted by Leah’s cries a group of men, including Stokes and Thompson, gathered round and Townrow could tell opinion was pretty evenly divided between those who thought he was tight and those who thought he was having a fit. A man in a grey jacket, apparently a doctor, lifted his wrist and allowed it to drop back on to the arm of the chair. He pursed his lips and looked at Townrow for some moments.

  “Clochard, uh?” The doctor went off, seeming to think somebody was trying to pull his leg.

  Leah was trying to force some whisky into his mouth. It burned on his tongue but he could not swallow. He could not shake his head. He could not move a finger. But he was so relaxed the doctor could lift his hand and let it drop back again; and it did this fairly gently. No wonder the fellow thought this was the beginning of some horse-play. Townrow knew that part of him was laughing like hell but he was too much taken up with other splendours for fun of this kind. The greatest of these splendours was an assurance that everything would be all right. It was in order to be an optimist. He, personally, was O.K. Most things were O.K. If you watched long enough you saw that justice was done. Admittedly it might have to be a really long time. Even he, though, sitting in the sun as the convoy steamed north was there long enough to feel he’d had time to glance into the way the Universe was organised and see that some good principle operated.

  Stokes made the doctor come back. This time the Frenchman pulled down the lid of Townrow’s left eye and said, “You hear me? You get up?” He put his face so close to Townrow’s that Townrow could smell the coffee. He was manipulating the jaw and looking inside the mouth. He shrugged. Townrow knew perfectly well that all the time he was sitting there looking like an idiot or a ventriloquist’s dummy. Twelve ships had come out of the Canal by now. He had counted them. It must have been the complete convoy.

  A couple of servants arrived with a stretcher and Townrow, still feeling marvellous, was lifted on to it. He was pliable like rope.

  “Il ne cligne pas,” said the doctor thoughtfully. “Qui est? Il n’est pas de la Compagnie, non?”

  “Ah!” said Townrow, and began to shiver. The stretcher bearers stopped and Leah, who was holding him by the hand, said, “What is it?”

  “Justice,” he answered. “Can’t you see for yourself?”

  The stretcher bearers carried Townrow into a room behind the bar where he was followed by Leah, Stokes and the club secretary who said he had phoned for an ambulance. The main Canal Company hospital was at Ismailia but there was a reception station here in Port Fouad. He could be transferred to the British Hospital later on if that was justified.

  “What is it?” said Stokes. “Sort of fit?”

  Townrow began to chuckle in a very natural sort of way at this remark. The bearers were preparing to lift him off the stretcher on to a bed, but he said no and sat up. He swung his legs over the side of the stretcher.

  “Let me get out. I’m all right.” He stood on his feet, swaying a little. “All those resignations, there must be some jobs going. As a citizen of Ireland I could take one of those boats through. You’ve got to point it down the middle. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  This woman with the dark, red-tinted hair and the evening get up, the mock-diamonds, the big shawl, and all that, looked out of place. Her make-up seemed to have slipped. Like some bad bit of printing the colour shapes did not quite fit her mouth, or her eyelids, or her cheeks for that matter. She wanted some sleep. He could see that his manner frightened her, and that pleased him too.

  “We’ve got an appointment,” he said to her and began steering her through the crowd. Stokes tried to stop them but Townrow pushed him violently out of the way.

  All Stokes said was, “You couldn’t be a pilot. You haven’t got the qualifications.” Once again he tried to stop Leah leaving, but she said, “It’s all right, Leonard. He knows my father. He wants to see my father.”

  *

  What interested Townrow was that she even dressed the part: the nurse with the white smock and the long white sleeves and the hair done up in a white cap. He wondered where she could have found this gear in such a short time. It was possible that she had gone out and bought it while he was taking a bath, getting into the pyjamas, slippers and dressing gown (these were her father’s) and generally failing to resist orders. She had been giving these orders rather more sharply than was necessary, like a big girl playing hospitals. The fuss, the discipline, the concern, were all excessive. Old Abravanel was there but he was brushed aside. He had discarded his dark glasses and Townrow could see anxious, round, darting brown eyes like a chimpanzee’s. Leah made him go off and eat in the kitchen. The room Townrow was given had a view of the sea in one direction and the harbour in the other and since he absolutely refused to go to bed in spite of her bullying he was able to relax in a wicker chaise longue and look out at the shipping. This was where Dr Catafago examined him. Catafago was a bearded, kingly looking man, but with a shrill voice in which he said he was a graduate of the American University of Beirut and was paid by the visit, at the visit, to avoid misunderstanding.

  He rested his head against Townrow’s chest, presumably to listen to his heart (‘Do not believe in the stethoscope. I use the unaided ear.’), looked deeply into his eyes, tested various mechanical reflexes, prescribed a certain ointment for the sunburned and peeling skin. Again he put his cheek to Townrow’s chest. His beard scraped like a loofah. All this time Leah was standing at the foot of the chaise longue, holding a large silver pocket watch and a clinical thermometer. Catafago was giving orders now. She produced a notebook from a sort of pouch in her apron and began making notes. She said, ‘Yes, doctor. No, doctor,’ and did not so much look at Townrow as observe him.

  The next day he realised he was not only her patient but her prisoner, too.

  “Catafago is a fool. I must get an American doctor,” she said.

  It was a big flat, with large, lofty rooms and to keep it functioning there was a male cook, a Berber, and two Sudanese servants whose main duties seemed to have been switched to looking after Townrow. Or watching him, perhaps. They brought him toast and coffee, cold, cooked meats, fruit, cheese but no alcohol. Townrow appealed to Leah but she said he was on barley water and artichoke juice. It must have been the small hours of the morning when he woke up to find someone standing by his bed and reached out his hand to switch on the bedside lamp. She really did look like Matron.

  “I want you to know,” she said, “that I shall never allow anyone to take you away from here against your wishes. You are quite safe here.”

  Old Abravanel came in one afternoon. Leah ordered him out. He was as amazed by his daughter’s behaviour as Townrow was. What is this man to you? Why is he in my apartment? By the way he was switching his eyes from Townrow to his daughter and back again these questions were to be detected running through his mind. He looked at the clothes she was wearing. He was completely at a loss. He shrugged.

  “There is business to discuss.”

  “Not now.”

  “Do you not know,” said Abravanel trying to assert himself, “it is very likely the French and the British will invade this country?”

  “Out of the question,” said Townrow from his chaise longue where he was lying and looking at his naked feet.

  After her father had gone Leah came back and said there was a very good French doctor who ran the St. Francis de Sales hospital at Ismailia. She was trying to get him to come up because he was a specialist.

  “What in?” said Townrow.

  “He is a specialist,” she said.

  “I want to talk to your father.”

  “I can’t allow it.”

  “Look he has things to tell me, see?”

  “I can’t have you getting excited.”

  He climbed out of his chair and made for the door but she reached it first and put her back against it. “Just until this French doctor comes,” she said. “I don’t think you are at all seriously ill, but you are not to leave this room except to go to t
he lavatory. Are you not satisfied with your meals? The food is very good.”

  He fell back. “I’ve no complaints.”

  “Fine.” She led him back to the chair. “You want some books to read?” She produced from her apron pocket a copy of Victor Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea in an English translation and offered it to him. “My father prefers to read French books in English. This one was written by Victor Hugo when he was in exile.”

  Townrow opened the volume and found a drawing of a man with terrified eyes in a boat on a wild sea. “What’s the matter with you?” he said. “I’ve not read a book in years. What are you trying to do to me?”

  “I’m not trying to do anything. I’m trying to help you. I don’t want you to suppose that anyone is doing things to you. We are your friends.”

  “You’re treating me as though I was crazy.”

  “That’s absurd,” she said and went out. Townrow was looking once more at the picture in the book when he heard the key turn in the lock.

  The first reasonable opportunity he grabbed her round the waist and managed to kiss her on the lips. He was not passionate. He was curious. As he had guessed, her lips were hard to begin with but, as he had not guessed, they softened and parted. He kissed her on the closed eyelids. She had given way at the knees so badly that he was even able to kiss her on the throat.

  “Why do you dress like this?” he asked. “It doesn’t suit you.”

  “You were away all that time. We didn’t know where you were. You might even be dead.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “You are getting better,” she said. “I always said there was nothing much the matter with you.”

  “Why do you lock me in?”

  “It’s for your own good.”

  “You’ve taken all my clothes away too. Listen, my darling. If you don’t bring me some clothes back. Or some better ones. Do you know what? I shall strip naked and use a knotted sheet to lower myself to the next balcony down.”

  He could see her hesitating over this. Had he really wanted to he could have broken out long ago. He knew, though, that it was not the locked door, really, that prevented him from taking Abravanel by the beard and saying, “I saw Elie. I know he is alive.” It was the knowledge that this woman was his jailer. She hypnotised him. Now that he looked at her eyes more closely he saw she had her father’s worried expression: the brows a little lifted at the inner extremities, the mouth smiling, the eyes not.

  The afternoon Mrs K called Townrow was watching what he could see of the sea through narrowed eyelids and thinking that so much blue and brightness ought to be worrying him more than in fact it was. If he had been a painter he would have needed to do something about the way that heavy cobalt seemed to run on behind the lighthouse, as though the lighthouse were not quite opaque; and even if he had been just a writer he might have been searching round for words. Maybe he was a painter, or a writer, or a photographer. Well, he could have had the aptitude. Some such explanation seemed to be required for the way he knew the glare and the way the colours now seemed heavy, now washed out, all this, ought to be troubling him. A small voice was saying, You’ve got to deserve a view like that. What have you ever done to earn yourself a place in this great and glorious world? Well, nothing. The fact was it didn’t bother him in the slightest.

  He just relaxed and enjoyed himself. He heard Mrs K’s voice. She and Leah were outside in the hall, talking. Surprisingly Townrow did not get to his feet, go over and bang on the door, demanding to be let out.

  “He’s resting,” he heard Leah say.

  Mrs K seemed angry. He could not make out what she was saying but he formed the idea she wanted to accuse him of some failure to do what she had asked. The women’s voices became fainter. Townrow scratched some more skin off his forearm and yawned. He was ashamed Mrs K should discover he was locked in. That was why he had not gone over and banged on the door, not even to tell her that Elie was alive and living down in Arab Town, whoever had been buried outside Beirut or at sea. Sooner or later he would climb out of the window. Until then he just owed it to himself not to let Mrs K know he was a prisoner. She would despise him for it.

  He could hear breathing on the other side of the door. He turned his head in time to see a folded piece of white paper appear underneath and, apparently in response to some final tap, slide eighteen inches over the polished block floor. Townrow padded over on bare feet and picked it up.

  Dear Mr Townrow, [the writing was a debased copperplate in purple ink, like a menu in a French restaurant] The Egyptian Government will soon nationalise all property of British and French nationals and it is to her advantage for Mrs Khoury to transfer all her property to an Egyptian national, namely myself. She will not listen to me. Will you please persuade her?

  David Abravanel

  avocat notaire

  “Are you there, Mr Abravanel?”

  No reply. Townrow could hear the catarrhal breathing on the other side of the door. He could not be sure it was old Abravanel himself. Possibly it was one of the servants, but Townrow felt in his bones it was Abravanel.

  “Who is it?” He tried Arabic. Silence.

  The room had a writing table, ink and some steel nibbed pens.

  Certainly not, [Townrow wrote on the same sheet of paper] I am an Irish citizen and neutral. Property in my name would not be touched. You are Jewish. Mrs K seems to know a thing or two. How do you know you won’t be stripped as an Israeli sympathiser? Worse things have happened.

  J.T.

  He folded the sheet and pushed it under the door. Within a matter of seconds, it seemed, it had reappeared with some more of the purple writing on it.

  I have never been a Zionist and my famille has been in this country since the seventeenth century. We have always been good Egyptians.

  D. Abravanel

  avocat notaire

  So it was Abravanel on the other side of the door. What was he afraid of? That Leah would hear any spoken conversation and come to investigate?

  “Listen,” said Townrow. “You’d be well advised to transfer all your property into my name if the truth was know. I’ll give it back to you in ten years’ time. One way or another the Israel question will be settled by then.”

  Abravanel was sighing and clearing his throat preparatory to speech. What was the matter with the man? Townrow thought. Did he not think he could live ten years?

  “I am an Egyptian subject.” Townrow could tell by the fierce way he was whispering that he was angry. “There is not the slightest danger of my not being treated like any other Egyptian. You are British.”

  “I’m Irish I tell you.”

  “Is there an Irish Ambassador? No. Is there an Irish Legation? No. I don’t believe you are Irish but even if you were Irish the Egyptians would not know the difference. You were in the British Army. That would be enough for them.”

  Townrow turned the handle and pushed in the vain hope Leah had forgotten to lock it.

  “What makes you so sure I’m English?”

  “This does not matter.” The old man had worked himself into such a rage Townrow wondered about his heart. If he dropped dead on the other side of the door Leah would blame him for that too. Instead of keeping him prisoner up here she might transfer him to the basement. Those three servants could overpower him, and down there he could be kept years without anybody noticing.

  “I wonder you stay in this country. There’s no future for Jews here. Now look, you’re Jewish, you don’t believe the British could have done more than they did to save European Jews during the war, do you?”

  “How should I know, Mr Townrow?” Abravanel was amazed by this irrelevancy.

  “Your own common sense should tell you, shouldn’t it? There are a lot of Jews in England. You don’t think they’d have stood for it if they thought the government wasn’t doing everything. Don’t you agree?”

  “How should I know? The British Government was in the war. Perhaps they had other things to think
about than Jews.”

  “This was different. They would have done everything to warn Jews against going in those trains to Germany. You didn’t have to do much thinking to broadcast warnings. They did. Some people said they didn’t.”

  “Who say they didn’t?”

  “A man I met.”

  “Forget about it.”

  “The point is,” said Townrow, “it brings up this question of what you believe is possible, like bombing Cairo. You believe the British would bomb Cairo?”

  Abravanel seemed uninterested in this line of talk and he was silent until Townrow said, “Can’t you find the key and get me out of here? I want to talk to you. I saw Elie walking along the street. How do you explain that? He lives in Arab Town.”

  “Would I be asking Mme K to transfer property into my name if her husband was still alive?”

  “You’re a bigger rogue than I am, that’s all I know.”

  “Then you’re a simple-minded fool,” Abravanel broke out sharply. “You find it easier to suspect me of bad faith than you do to believe in the wickedness of your own government. On top of this you ask me how I know you are English.”

  “The world’s a great deal better for this kind of simple-mindedness. I wish you could get that into your skull. You’ve just got to believe there are limits. You’d go out of your mind. Perhaps I have and that’s why Leah’s got me pegged down.”

  “No, no, it is a way of making up for not helping her husband. She is trying to compensate, poor girl. It is pitiable.”