‘It’s all right,’ said Felix, staring over to one side of the room.
‘Not much fun here, eh? No English boys, no football, no cricket. What do you do all day?’
‘Nothing much. I’m studying for matric’.’
‘Perhaps soon they will send you home?’
‘There’s a long waiting list.’
‘They should send such a boy home first, I think.’
‘Oh, no. First there are ladies with babies, and troops.’
Mr Jewel and Frau Wagner laughed together as though Felix had said something funny. They stopped abruptly. The door from the courtyard opened, then they gave another laugh when it was only Nikky who entered. He carried in the soup when it was too heavy for his mother. Now, holding the battered metal tureen in his hands, he kicked the door closed behind him and trailed across the room in his black coat with the astrakhan collar. Frau Wagner fixed on him and followed him with eyes of brilliant, inhuman blue. When he had put down the tureen, he glanced round the table with a look of insolent amusement and went.
‘But what a handsome butler!’
‘That’s Nikky,’ said Felix.
‘So? I have seen him, of course, at the King David and the Innsbrück Café. They tell me he is a Polish Count.’
Felix was rather puzzled. ‘He is Polish,’ he said, ‘but I don’t think he can be a Count. His father was Herr Leszno.’ But Felix’s doubts were lost to the world because as he spoke them the door opened again and Miss Bohun entered. She had on her lamb-skin coat, a scarf bound in a turban round her head. ‘So sorry,’ she said. ‘One of my flock needed advice. I hope you’re not waiting for me.’
‘But of course,’ cried Frau Wagner. ‘We must await our hostess.’
Miss Bohun hung up her coat and hurriedly unwound the scarf from her head so that her hair stood out in wisps. She came to the table holding knitted gloves and kept them on her knees during the meal.
She took no notice of Frau Wagner’s polite remark, but feeling the fire on her legs she jerked round and looked at it: ‘So glad you did not fail to light the fire,’ she said, ‘I am fortunate in never feeling the cold myself, but they say the winters here are chilly. Well, let us have some nice hot soup.’
She served the soup in a rapid, businesslike way, keeping her eyes off Frau Wagner. It was pale soup and no longer hot.
‘I see,’ Frau Wagner leant smiling towards Miss Bohun, ‘you have a Count for a butler! But how chic!’
Miss Bohun, surprised now into looking at her, frowned, as bewildered as Felix had been: ‘We haven’t got a butler,’ she said.
‘Frau Wagner means Nikky,’ said Felix. ‘He brought in the soup.’
‘Oh!’ Miss Bohun made no other comment, but said: ‘Excuse me if I eat quickly; I’ve got to go out.’
‘But how extraordinary to find a Polish Count who will work, I have never known it.’ Frau Wagner laughed and gave Miss Bohun a sidelong glance. ‘He must do it for love, I think.’
Miss Bohun put down her spoon and compressed her lips. She rang the bell.
Frau Wagner gave an exaggerated sigh, saying: ‘Ah-ha,’ as she did so. ‘I, too, must work. In Vienna how different! My husband had a great factory. We had such a house, such a park – the Nazis took all, they took my husband, too, and now I must work. I am a cook. To think! Once I could not make water, now I make all.’
Mr Jewel guffawed and Felix began to giggle in spite of himself. Frau Wagner cocked an eye at them with the humorous sternness of a pantomime dame, revealing that she had had success before with that one. Miss Bohun, looking from one to the other of them, seemed bewildered, but when no one explained the joke, she became irritated and gave the bell a second ring. The others subsided under the noise. There was silence.
‘Really!’ Miss Bohun burst out. ‘What has happened to Frau Leszno?’ She was about to get up when Maria, wraith-thin, bent, her face dark and wrinkled as a prune, came in. Miss Bohun asked sharply: ‘Where is Frau Leszno?’
‘She sick.’
‘Sick!’ Miss Bohun spoke less with concern than with disgust. Maria picked up the empty tureen and as she went out with it Miss Bohun called after her: ‘Tell Frau Leszno to come here.’
Everyone was silenced by Miss Bohun’s annoyance. They scarcely breathed until Maria returned with the second course.
‘Frau Leszno in bed,’ she said.
‘What’s the matter with her?’
‘She got headache.’
‘But she can’t have a headache.’ Miss Bohun spoke with such decision that, looking round at the others, she felt forced to explain. ‘Frau Leszno is a member of the “Ever-Readies”. We don’t believe in illness.’
‘So?’ Frau Wagner made an elegant move of interest.
‘Frau Leszno say light in kitchen very bad and give her a headache.’ Maria left the room.
Miss Bohun clicked her tongue.
Frau Wagner asked in a tone high with interest: ‘Please to tell me, what is this “Ever-Readies”? It is like a trade name, is it not?’
‘“The Ever-Ready Group of Wise Virgins” existed long before trade names.’
‘How interesting, but please to tell me about it. I am greatly curious.’
Miss Bohun stood up to carve the meat. ‘I have no time now, I fear, to satisfy anyone’s curiosity.’
‘What a pity! But another time, yes?’
‘I cannot promise, Frau Wagner. We make a point of revealing our creed only to a select few. Please pass this to Frau Wagner.’ Miss Bohun gave to Felix on her left a plate which she might as easily have placed before Frau Wagner on her right. It held a sliver of meat so small that Felix felt compelled to say as he handed it over the table:
‘Are you sure you won’t have more than that?’
‘Oh no, oh no,’ said Frau Wagner, ‘I could not possibly eat more.’
Miss Bohun made no comment on this exchange. She cut off a meat sliver for each of the three remaining plates, then rang the bell and told Maria to take the joint away.
‘We have meat only once a week,’ she said to the table as the plates were passed, ‘so we must make it stretch. And we must think of the servants. Both the Lesznos and Maria are allowed their share. It pays to treat one’s servants well.’
‘Indeed yes,’ said Frau Wagner with feeling.
‘Also I make a point of never buying on the black market.’
‘Never? How then do you live?’ Frau Wagner’s surprise had in it admiration.
‘One can always make up with potatoes.’ Miss Bohun pushed the dish towards her.
‘Ah, your English boiled potatoes,’ Frau Wagner exclaimed with delight. She put on her plate two potatoes that seemed to be made of soap. ‘How clever a housewife you must be! My employer, Dr Zimmerman, buys meat every day (except, of course, Friday, when we have fish). He sees to the matter himself, personally; and always on the black market.’
‘I’ve no doubt. Even some English Government officials are remiss enough to encourage the black market. I buy nothing; except sometimes eggs. When they’re plentiful, they are cheaper on the black market – so it’s different.’
‘That is true,’ agreed Frau Wagner enthusiastically.
‘I don’t like boiled potatoes,’ Felix suddenly announced. ‘I like chips.’
Miss Bohun looked at him sharply and said:
‘Chips take too much cooking-oil.’ She had been eating at a great pace; now, the second course finished, she rose, holding her gloves in her hand. ‘You must excuse me. Felix will act as host. Here is the bell, Felix; ring it when you are ready.’ She rebound her head in her scarf. As she put on the sheepskin coat, Frau Wagner, who had been watching her with glittering eyes, exclaimed wildly: ‘What a lovely coat!’
This seemed to Felix most blatant flattery, but for some reason it made Miss Bohun unbend. She passed a hand over the dirty skin, then turned up a corner to look at the shaggy inside hair and said complacently: ‘It’s all right. It keeps me warm. But I’m afraid these c
oats are very common.’
‘Oh,’ breathed Frau Wagner, ‘last year they were common, yes. But not this year.’
‘Well, I must be off. I’ll say “good-night” Frau Wagner, you’ll be gone before I get back.’
As the door closed after Miss Bohun, Frau Wagner covered her mouth with her hand and laughed silently, Mr Jewel seemed to be trying not to laugh. Felix looked at the plates – all empty, except for a solitary cold potato which Frau Wagner and Mr Jewel refused in turn. He rang the bell. Maria brought in small plates, three dates on each. She took from the dresser some brass finger-bowls and filled them with water.
‘Very nice,’ she announced and, smiling round at them, she went.
When Frau Wagner and Felix had each eaten their dates, Mr Jewel offered them Miss Bohun’s share, but neither wanted them.
‘It’s too late for dates,’ said Felix, ‘they’re slimy and too sweet.’
‘Ah, Felix, you are a connoisseur!’ said Frau Wagner. ‘You know what is good.’
Felix smiled uncomfortably. He did not think Frau Wagner was laughing at him; he would have felt happier if she had been.
‘Tell me,’ she said to Mr Jewel, ‘where has our hostess gone so quickly?’
‘Don’t you know? She’s gone to see the other Wise Virgins.’
Frau Wagner gave a hoot of laughter and Felix laughed too, but he flushed slightly, still discomforted, scarcely knowing why. For moments, when there was a gleam of humour about her, Felix had thought Frau Wagner ‘great fun’, but all the time he could not help feeling in her the quality that Miss Bohun did not like. Like the lion in the puzzle picture, once seen it was difficult to see anything else.
Mr Jewel seemed to feel Felix’s discomfort. He rubbed his hands together between his knees and grinned at Felix. As though they were boys of the same age, he said: ‘I wonder if we could get some coffee?’
‘But we never have coffee at night.’
‘This is a special occasion. I bet Nikky’s making some for himself – he always does; I’ve smelt it. If Frau Leszno is in bed, he might make us some. You go, Felix, you can get round him.’
Felix, startled and yet flattered by this mis-statement, whispered: ‘Oh, he wouldn’t let me have any.’
‘Go on,’ said Mr Jewel. ‘He’s not a bad sort.’
Against his own judgment Felix went out to the kitchen. Before he reached the kitchen door he heard Miss Bohun’s voice coming from Frau Leszno’s room and he paused, on the point of escape. Miss Bohun was speaking sternly, ‘. . . whatever the excuse, Frau Leszno, never – I repeat, never – again send in and say in front of visitors you are unwell. It’s letting the side down.’
Then came Frau Leszno’s high whine, but Felix could not hear what she said. ‘As far as the attic is concerned,’ Miss Bohun replied: ‘I can’t make any promises, but I’ll think about it. I’ll think about it.’ The door opened. Miss Bohun hurried off without seeing Felix. He put his head in the kitchen. Only Maria was there, washing the dishes.
‘Where’s Nikky?’ he asked.
‘Gone out a long time,’ she replied.
‘Mr Jewel would like some coffee.’
‘Coffee!’ repeated Maria, willing enough, too new to know the regulations. She looked round the dark, dingy kitchen and fixed her eyes on a cupboard. ‘No key. Coffee, tea, rice, sugar – all locked up.’
‘Oh, thank you,’ Felix replied politely and went back, glad he had done what he had been asked to do.
‘Humph,’ said Mr Jewel, ‘that’s that. Anyway, let’s sit somewhere a bit more comfortable.’
He and Frau Wagner took seats at either end of the horsehair sofa. Felix sat in one of the arm-chairs with wooden arms. They were near the fire now and Mr Jewel shook himself with a noisy shiver as he felt the heat.
‘Like an ice-box over there,’ he said.
Frau Wagner made no reply to him, but turned to Felix with an air of great interest and asked: ‘Tell me, what will you do when you grow up?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve got to go into the army.’
‘But the war will be over first, surely?’
‘I might go in, anyway. I want to be a veterinary surgeon. I’ll have to pass exams, of course.’
‘So? In England veterinary surgeons are gentlemens, perhaps?’
‘I suppose so. My uncle’s a vet.’
‘So?’
Since Miss Bohun left, Felix had felt a tension in the room. Perhaps for no reason other than that he had promised to stay in, he wanted to go out. Frau Wagner seemed to have nothing more to say but she smiled whenever he glanced at her. Mr Jewel was occupied with his pipe that he held in two pieces in his hand. He put a pipe-cleaner through the stem. The cleaner went in white and came out brown, then he blew through the stem, joined the two pieces together and blew again. When he was satisfied, he got out an old tobacco pouch and started to fill the pipe. It all took a long time. Felix looked at the clock. It was only half-past seven and Miss Bohun would not be back for two hours or more. He moved restlessly in his seat, feeling like a prisoner.
‘Before you came here, you lived in Baghdad?’ enquired Frau Wagner. ‘Perhaps you had a nice home there?’
‘We only lived in a pension.’
‘Ah, a pension, but that is nice. And have you lived all the war in Baghdad?’
‘Yes. At first we had a house of our own, but when my father was killed, my mother could not afford it, so we went to a pension.’
‘He was killed!’ Frau Wagner shook her head in regretful sympathy. ‘Such a bad thing! How came it so?’
‘The Iraqis shot him,’ said Felix, gazing intently at a piece of string he had found in his pocket. He started tying knots in it. There was a lot to tell about his father’s death but his whole attitude expressed unwillingness to tell it. How could he tell anyone who looked as German as did Frau Wagner that the rising in which his father had been killed was a German-inspired rising? His restraint communicated itself to the others and even Frau Wagner gave up trying.
At last the clock struck a quarter to eight. Mr Jewel was smoking at his pipe as though it were the most engrossing thing in the room. Frau Wagner sat upright with her clasped hands on her knees. When she caught Felix’s glance she made one last attempt and, smiling, she pursed up her mouth and told him the spring would soon be coming. ‘You will like that, Felix.’
After that the silence went on as though no one had the strength to stop it.
There was something about the two of them sitting there apart on the sofa that touched Felix painfully. He fidgeted in his chair. Because Miss Bohun had said it would be wrong to leave them, he was obsessed by the sense that they wanted him to go; he felt it like a physical force impelling him to bolt from the room. He would not have minded could he have been sure, as Miss Bohun was, of their wickedness. The trouble was that he wasn’t at all sure, and on top of his uncertainty he was beset by something he could not bear. He did not know what it was. Suddenly he jumped up and said: ‘I’m going to the pictures.’
Frau Wagner let her breath out as though it had been pent up for some time.
Felix, without another word, ran upstairs for his coat. When he returned, he said good-bye and shook Frau Wagner’s hand with the enthusiasm of relief. Frau Wagner seemed relieved, too, and said happily: ‘Ah, at the Zion there is a so funny film.’
Out in the courtyard, Felix felt like a genie that had been let out of a bottle. He started to laugh at the idea, then, almost at once, remembered he had broken his promise to Miss Bohun. He stood still, wretchedly uncertain what to do, but knowing that whatever he did, he could not go back to the sitting-room. As he stood, he stared through the dirty lace curtains that covered Frau Leszno’s little window and saw Frau Leszno lying in bed. She had her back to him – her backside made a large curve in the bedclothes, her shoulders a smaller one, and at the top was the greasy knot of her hair. She held a book in one hand and was reading by the light of an oil-lamp. Above the bed a heart made of pink sugar d
angled from a ribbon. The room had been meant for an Arab servant and was no more than a whitewashed cell to hold a mattress. Frau Leszno had somehow got into it not only her bed and chair, but a large wardrobe. This furniture was stuck together like objects packed into a box. When he realised he was doing a quite inexcusable thing – staring into a lady’s bedroom – Felix made off at once.
In the street, he again did not know what to do. It was near the end of the month and he had no money for the cinema. His mother, who had lived on an allowance that died with her, had left a few hundred pounds that the British Consul in Baghdad, acting as executor, was doling out to Felix at the rate of £22 a month.
When the Consul heard that Miss Bohun was charging Felix £21 a month, he wrote to someone he knew at the Y.M.C.A. and discovered that Felix could live there for £4 less. He then wrote to Felix: ‘You would have your own room, with central heating and hot running water and I’m told the food is excellent. I advise you to put your name down at once.’
Felix tore up this letter in small pieces and burnt each separately, afraid Miss Bohun might see it and think that, after all her kindness, he was planning to leave for the sake of £4. But now he could not help thinking that an extra £4 a month would be jolly useful.
At Herod’s Gate he turned right and went uphill beside the long, dark city wall to the Jaffa Road. The Jaffa Road was the centre of life in Jerusalem, but after dark it looked like everywhere else, shut and deserted. A strict black-out was imposed on everything, except, of course, military headquarters. The only sign of life appeared when someone opened a café door; with the momentary flash of light, there came a smell of fried food that made Felix realise he was still hungry. Indeed, at Miss Bohun’s he was always more or less hungry, but there was nothing to be done about it. Miss Bohun would never buy on the black market and there was very little food anywhere else.
As he passed the Jaffa Road cafés, he occasionally heard from behind the black-out curtains the sound of voices; in one café the wireless was repeating some Arab saga, in another someone was playing a kanoon. He, out in the cold, dark street, felt lost and without destination in the world. He went over the people he knew here – Miss Bohun and Mr Posthorn, Mr Jewel and Frau Wagner, Frau Leszno, Nikky and Maria. The only one who did not enhance the isolation of his youth was Mr Jewel, and Mr Jewel had Frau Wagner. Felix came to the first cinema and stood a long time staring at the ‘stills’ pinned into cases behind wire mesh and lit by small blue bulbs. They were pictures of a cowboy film he had seen in Istanbul months before. They were familiar but, because of the strange, inadequate light, they looked mysterious and exciting, and for some reason they reminded him of the dream he had had on the aeroplane.
School for Love Page 6
