by P. H. Newby
He had found he could not switch it off even when he was talking to Leah. “I’m not going to try and persuade you to stay. You go off. That’s fine by me. You buried your father, so there’s nothing to keep you.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I stay with the old woman and she stays out of cussedness.”
For a lawyer’s daughter Leah was stupid about the formalities that had to be gone through concerning her father’s estate. If it had not been for Townrow she would have left without registering the will or trying to fix some kind of security for the flat and its contents. Townrow made her hire a lawyer who was an Egyptian national and not Jewish nor from any European stock. The best they could manage was a Copt who had known old Abravanel well and, indeed, had worked together in property deals. Townrow saw to it that this man, Awad, was charged to look after Mrs K’s bits and pieces too. Once Awad had obtained Abravanel’s will from the bank where it had been deposited with all the old man’s securities he had it provisionally registered with a magistrate but said the real formalities could only be proceeded with once normal communication with Cairo was started again. He was a big-voiced, brooding, intent, watchful, rather small man who spoke of the care he would take to see that the Abravanel family tomb was looked after. There had been Abravanels in Port Said, he said, since Leah’s great-great-grandfather had been presented to the Empress Eugenie in 1869. Awad had the extraordinary idea of locking the flat, then actually sealing the door and windows with lead seals once Leah had finally left. Or was it wax? Awad could not be sure. He would look into the matter. Anyway, seals bearing the municipal device would be affixed to all means of access and the keys deposited with the civil authorities when they returned.
“We are at the end of an era,” said Awad. “Let us not deceive ourselves.” He looked at Townrow. “What is funny about that?”
Townrow realised he was grinning. “I’ve been a sick man. I’m O.K. now.” Leah even took his arm to walk down the dark passages to the lift. “Everything will be all right now. You can leave with a clear conscience. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“What’s this? The forgiveness of sins? Who do you think you are?”
On the pavement he asked if she had a notebook in which she could write an address. It was his bank in London. If ever she wanted him, he said as he watched her write in her diary with a little gold pencil, that address would find him. He remembered watching her carefully. If he never saw her again he wanted to fix her in his mind. He looked at the large, rather heavy eyes. They were real even if the lashes were not. The firm little cheeks were real too. And the way she breathed through her mouth when she was excited, that was real. He just could not understand what she had that still made life seem gay and full of adventures. Just to touch her was to feel that nothing was impossible, except despair and death, that is.
“What’ll your address be?”
She hesitated. He supposed she was wondering whether her husband would get better. Eventually she tore a leaf out of her diary with the address written on it, and walked away without another word or looking back. She picked her way among broken glass. How marvellous to be her. She was wearing very light brown shoes with flat heels. He could hear them slapping on the pavement even when she had turned the corner. Nice to be her, he thought. What fun to be her! She was a curious mixture, a stuck-up bitch at times and a slut at others. The footsteps had died away. If they had come back, if she had reappeared round the corner and stood there, as he imagined her standing there, looking at him with her chin tucked in, as was her way, saying, “Come on, then,” he would have gone without a word in spite of his tiger’s grin and bitterness. But she did not come and he rolled the little piece of paper between finger and thumb and dropped the pellet in the gutter.
The night of that day he slammed the door on Mrs K and got rid of Leah’s address without so much as looking at it he went round the bars. The Eastern Exchange was functioning. It was full of officers. Other Ranks were in the Hotel de la Poste. It was quite like old times. In a bar near Simon Artz’s he found a sergeant and three men drinking Cyprus brandy. He advised them to stick to gin and there was a bit of a row, after which they all found themselves standing on the pavement by a parked truck with ropes, picks, shovels and other gear in the back. The driver was sitting at the wheel reading the Daily Mirror with the help of an electric torch.
Townrow had drunk enough not to care too precisely what happened and the sight of this equipment put an idea into his head. He put one hand on the sergeant’s shoulder and spoke as intently, as watchfully, as broodingly, as if he had been Awad the Coptic lawyer; but with a sense of excitement, of having turned the last corner and seen some kind of ultimate reward or revelation wobbling before his dazed eyes. He was climbing back into his dream.
“I know where there’s loot, sergeant,” he had said.
“You English?”
“Ex-sergeant R.A.S.C. It’s O.K. I’ve been about these parts some time. We can pile in your truck and I’ll give the directions. Hell, you want to see something, don’t you?” He wanted to say that in that city, at that time, the only law was what you decided to do. But there was no need to argue. The party set off with a roar and a cheer.
Townrow had thought there might be some trouble getting into the convent. Surprisingly the great doors were wide open and labourers in white baggy trousers and embroidered waistcoats were stacking enormous baskets in the forecourt under the supervision of a couple of nuns. There were a couple of corded boxes and a line of labelled suitcases. Lights were on in the chapel, half a moon shone, the vast echoing sky poured down a soft radiance that turned into the smell of jasmine as soon as it hit the ground. That was how he understood it. Half way up a palm tree one yellow light burned like the eye of a sick snake. The nuns were leaving. Their voices were excited. The soldiers stood listening to the quick footsteps on the stone flags. The harmonium was, it seemed, being played in the chapel for the last time.
“What’s this place then?” said the sergeant.
“We’re after something they wouldn’t be taking with them anyway.” Townrow had led the way into the inner courtyard where the soldiers had to use their torches to see where they were treading. A niche in the cloisters held a Madonna and two circles of lit candles that warmed their faces as they passed. It was not the convent Townrow remembered. It had become a public place. He could see into a lighted room where a bearded man in a broad-brimmed hat and a long black overcoat was sitting in a deck chair reading a small book with delicate pages that made no sound as the man, undoubtedly a priest of some sort, licked his forefinger and turned them over. Townrow remembered wondering if this man had known Elie. Probably. He seemed the boss round there. He was the sort of man who might at any moment look up, see them watching him through the window, and start shouting.
When Townrow showed them the grave and said he wanted it opened up some of the soldiers laughed, the sergeant said, “Bugger this for a lark” and a tall man with a hurricane lamp started singing a plaintive song.
Some folk, they say, we just fade away
Out of sight out of mind—
They had brought picks, iron bars, enormous hammers, ropes, two beer mugs and a canvas bag with bottles in it. Townrow had to wait while they stood about drinking beer. At the time, neither he nor these soldiers had thought what they were doing was all that odd. Perhaps they were too drunk to think anything. The tall singer hung the hurricane lamp on the broken frond of a palm tree and said, “Look, they’ve got graves with zip fasteners.”
He had slipped the end of an iron bar into a slot under the end of the stone and was levering it up with ease. In a couple of minutes the gang had removed it altogether and Townrow found himself looking down at packed yellow earth.
“What loot’s this, then?” The sergeant put a boot on the grave. “There’s a man down there if you ask me.”
“Then get him out of it. Start digging. You won’t have far to go.”
“You
joking?”
“Am I bloody joking? This man’s a friend of mine.”
“You said there was loot?” said one of the men.
“And there might be. I know for a fact he had gold teeth and a platinum plate.”
“This is body snatching. That’s an offence.”
“Not in Egypt. You never seen a mummy?”
Townrow took a shovel and began throwing the earth to one side. It was soft sand. The coffin was lying so close to the surface that he had it entirely exposed to view in a couple of minutes and the sergeant was reading out the name inscribed on the brass plate. “Elly Kowry. There what did I say? There’s a bloke in there.”
“You don’t know until you’ve opened him up.” Townrow leaned on his shovel, sweating in spite of the cool night. “Go on, lift him out and see how heavy he is.”
A couple of the men pushed past him. He could see by the ease with which they were slipping ropes under the coffin that it was no great weight. When it had been lugged out Townrow still leaned on his shovel, looking now at a patch of damp in the cavity they had left, the exact form of the coffin but about half the size. Then it faded. He could not be sure of this. The lamp and the torches were throwing an unsteady, deceiving light. He turned and lifted the end of the coffin with one hand. No need to prise open the lid. Sure, Elie was there. And nothing else. He was light. One man could have carried the box on his head. Lead lining? Undertaker’s sales talk and Mrs K had fallen for it.
“Is this the loot then?” said the sergeant.
“Sorry, mate. I made a mistake. We’ll not be opening this.”
“Better put him back then.”
“The widow’s an Englishwoman. She’s going to take him with her.”
“You mean this is some bloody prank on your part?”
“She’s English. It’s natural, isn’t it, wanting to take him.”
“My father’s ashes was sent home,” said one of the soldiers.
“That’s different. Ashes is different. This is morbid.”
“Maybe she’ll ask your permission to get him cremated,” said Townrow. “Come on, let’s get him out to the truck.”
He had no anxiety. He never questioned the Tightness of what he was doing. Nobody would interfere. Sure enough, the priest in the desk chair reading his Missal did not so much as raise his head when the cortège went past, two soldiers at the head of the coffin, two soldiers at the feet, following the sergeant with his hurricane lamp, who only stopped in the outer courtyard to watch the porters still busy with the baskets and say, “When a man’s dead it don’t matter whether he’s in or out or up or down. He’s just a load of stinking crap but you’ve got to respect the feelings of the next-of-kin. It’s a foreign name. But it’s O.K. by me if you say she’s English.”
It had been the first really cold night Townrow remembered since he had arrived. By the time the bearers reached the truck they were laughing so much at some crack that they almost let the coffin slip and Townrow had to put his shoulder under. He remembered the smooth, damp wood against his cheek and the smell of jasmine from the convent. The harmonium droned. The stars were farther away and the night sky was bigger than he remembered it, but he had the same feeling of rolling through a great galactic waste as when he had been out on the lake. If he took the lid off and shook Elie by the hand would it feel like that saint’s in the whitewashed tomb? He floated. He was caught in the drift of memory. He was spinning in time. Certain events he had thought in the past were, in fact, yet to come. The difference was he would be prepared for them. In Rome Airport he would have to take the initiative: he would tell that Jew from Budapest that in 1942——
He sat by the driver to give instructions. The streets were all of a sudden full of British trucks, moving down to the embarkation quays. When they arrived at the building where Mrs K’s flat was situated Townrow expected an argument with the porter but the hall was deserted. To be accommodated in the lift the coffin had to be stood on end. That left room for himself, the sergeant and two men. And they were all sober now.
Townrow rang the bell while the coffin was being eased out on to the landing. He expected the boy to come but it was Mrs K herself, wearing a brown tweed suit and holding some knitting in her hands. When she looked past Townrow and saw what was going on her face opened up, mouth, little pig eyes behind those glasses, so that Townrow felt the only way to cope with her was brutally.
“I’ve got Elie. We’re bringing him in. You’re taking him out of this town.”
She could not understand what was happening, even when the soldiers carried the coffin through and put it on the floor in the hall. She removed her glasses and wiped them. She put them back and immediately saw the name on the brass plate, and from that moment, off and on, she screamed for about half an hour, by which time the soldiers had made themselves scarce and Townrow had stood a lighted candle in her best silver candle sticks at the four corners of the coffin.
*
When it came to the committal service Townrow shouted to Leah to let down the sail and come over and take his place at the tiller. At the right moment he and the chaplain would have to put Elie over the side and it had just struck Townrow he would float. He did not like to knock a hole in the side while Mrs K was watching. Anyway, that would not have been enough to ensure the coffin went to the bottom. You really needed some great chunk of iron to tie to it, but boats of this sort did not even carry an anchor. Why had nobody thought of this before? They were in for a painful half hour.
The chaplain stood up with his book open. He had to stand with his back to the mast and astride the end of the coffin. It was undignified but there was no alternative. He needed the mast against his back to steady him. The way the boat was rolling Townrow thought it was evens he would pitch over the side before the coffin did. And that was another problem. They would have to drop it over the stern unless they wanted to run the risk of capsizing. Mrs K shivered and turned up the collar of her coat. She seemed to be in a dream. Shock, no doubt, There were plenty of naval craft in the neighbourhood and it occurred to Townrow they might have to ask for help with the funeral if the old girl was not to be even more scandalised and upset. But as he was turning this over in his mind Leah came and sat so close to him their thighs rubbed. He knew this was not deliberate. You could not sit in the stern of that boat very well without rubbing thighs.
But she also said, “We mightn’t get taken on board the same boat. So we haven’t got much longer. Don’t forget no woman likes to be remembered because of the way she behaved in some special situation.”
“You’ve been in a special situation?”
‘Don’t you think so?“
They had been through it before and he was annoyed she should begin again just when they were starting on this messy, embarrassing, even horrifying funeral. Even knowing it was going to be all of these things did not enable him to do anything to stop it. The experience was too much like a dream. You hated it but you could not wake up. The disgusting nature of what they were committed to became all the more unbearable because Leah had taken it into her head, this moment above all, to remind him she had tried to justify her behaviour. He no longer wanted to know how she justified herself. What they had done together was over and done with. He wanted her to shut up. If she went on talking he would put a hand on her thigh, no matter what the nuns might think. That is to say, she would have got him again.
During the turn-out Leah had found two bottles of G.H. Mumm N.V. champagne in a box. There seemed no sensible alternative to drinking them, particularly as it was the evening of her father’s funeral, so she had both bottles in the ice box for a couple of hours. And it was after they had put away the contents of the first bottle she said, “I’m quite different in a normal place, even this place at a normal time. I’d like you to know that. I wouldn’t like you to know you’ve seen the real me.”
He had said something about being surprised his opinion was of any importance to her.
“You don’t under
stand.” Either there never had been any proper glasses, or they were lost, or they had been packed away. But they were drinking the champagne out of tumblers. There was no heating in the flat, it was lateish, and Leah was wearing a fur coat he had not seen before, so long and old-fashioned it was draped over her legs like a blanket when she sat down; dyed squirrel, he guessed, probably her mother’s. She was gay. It was the day the two of them had been the only mourners at her father’s funeral, and she was gay. Looking closer, he could see it was a brittle gaiety. She had drunk two good tumblers of champagne and her eyes shone as though they had been polished. “I was born in January. I’m a Capricorn subject.”
He had forgotten she read books on astrology.
“I know where I’m going,” she had said. “I’m ruled by my head. I’m not like you, emotional. No, don’t laugh! I’m mature and I never do things on impulse. That make sense? I’m not like you. I take decisions. I took certain decisions over the past few months, but I don’t want you to think they are the decisions I’d have taken in a different place and at a different time.”
He had asked her what decision she had in mind, particularly.
“Not to crack up,” was the reply. “To keep sane.”
“You used me.”
“I’m not like that.”
He opened the second bottle so clumsily the champagne frothed over the dyed squirrel but even this did not stop her talking. “You haven’t met people who knew me before I came back from the States, or before I married, or when I was married——” She hesitated. “I mean, I still am married. But you don’t know anybody who saw me under normal conditions. They just wouldn’t believe——” She stopped. “What makes me sick, you haven’t seen me as I really am, and now you’ll remember me all wrong. This really upsets me. You know?”
