School for Love

by Olivia Manning

  He had never dreamt of his mother again. He might dream of Mr Posthorn or of Maria or of a camel he had seen pass the house, but he did not dream of his mother, who was the person most in his waking dreams. Now as he thought of her, he was filled with a longing for her so profound, his eyes swam with tears.

  He went on down the street till he came to Zion Circus and the cinema with the funny film that Frau Wagner had mentioned. This was the film he most wanted to see and he was able to put in a lot of time looking at the stills. He took out his money and recounted it, but he had not enough. Cinemas were expensive here; last week he had gone twice, for now the only place in which he was happy was the cinema; the world to which it gave him access was as much his as anyone’s. When the cold drove him on, he took a roundabout walk through the side-streets to look at two more cinemas he had discovered during his early days in Jerusalem. One had the stills inside a passageway that was warm and well lit, with basket-chairs and a palm or two. By pretending to be waiting for someone he was able to spend half an hour there. Sometimes he pulled aside his cuff a little as though glancing at a wrist-watch and sometimes he stared with an anxious, grown-up frown at the clock inside the paybox, but however long he stayed no one would come to say: ‘Hello Felix, darling, so sorry I’m late. I can’t think what kept me.’ (His mother was always late and never knew why.) He had to go in the end.

  Twice, as he wandered about, he passed the post-office to see the time. He was afraid of returning too soon, but he arranged things so well that when he reached the gate of the house from one direction, Miss Bohun was coming towards it from the other. They met on the step. She peered at him through the darkness: ‘Is that you, Felix? You went out? You left them alone? After you promised me!’

  He had expected her to be hurt, but because she was merely indignant, he did not mind so much. He said: ‘I couldn’t stay. They didn’t want me to. I thought perhaps you’d understand.’

  ‘Couldn’t stay? My dear boy, that’s exactly why I wanted you to stay.’

  He hurried ahead with some idea of warning Mr Jewel and Frau Wagner that Miss Bohun was behind him, but he found the sitting-room dark and empty. As Miss Bohun crossed the yard, he ran up the stairs and managed to get out of sight before she switched on the light.

  4

  On Sunday morning Felix was hanging around the kitchen door. He was unencouraged but gained from the nearness of Nikky and Maria a sense of being in company. Ten minutes before he had watched Miss Bohun go off to the ‘Ever-Readies’, with Frau Leszno half a step behind. Miss Bohun, wearing her ‘cartwheel’, was giving instructions or advice, and this was met every few moments by Frau Leszno’s subservient whine: ‘Yes, Miss Bohun.’ ‘No, Miss Bohun.’ ‘Yes, Miss Bohun.’ The two women seemed now to be on better terms, a condition made more obvious to Felix by the fact that Miss Bohun had scarcely noticed him since his defection. He felt very low, very much in the wrong, and the cathedral bells with their repeated frill of noise seemed to him to be mapping out the monotony of the friendless days to come.

  He leant against the kitchen door-frame and gazed fixedly at Nikky and Maria. Neither noticed him. Nikky was sitting on the kitchen table smoking a chocolate-coloured cigarette, and Maria, as slowly as a slow-motion film, was drying the breakfast dishes.

  Maria was telling Nikky how, on her afternoon off, she had helped her son kill two tame pigeons at his place of employment.

  ‘My son,’ she was saying, ‘took the first and I held the second, so, so,’ she put down the tea-towel and cupped her two dark claws tenderly over nothing, ‘the first moved – ah, very much, but my son with a strike, so, cut off its head. And when the second one saw what had happened to her friend – ah, her little heart failed and her head drooped so, so—’ Maria’s head fell slowly to her shoulder, ‘and I called to my son: “Quickly kill this one or it will die,” and quickly, before it could die of fright, while I held it fainting so, he cut off its head.’

  Nikky was not watching the old woman’s actions but staring out through the kitchen window. He smiled distantly and acknowledged the story with a down-twist of the lips.

  Maria put the tip of her finger to a tear that lay in the wrinkle by her nose and trailed it off the edge of her face. ‘I have wept since.’

  ‘The old weep easily.’ Nikky took a slow, elegant pull at his cigarette and narrowed his eyes at the distance. His face was touched with amusement as he saw Mr Jewel go into the bathroom opposite with his slop-basin. He nodded towards the closing bathroom door:

  ‘We’re getting rid of that one,’ he said.

  ‘What? What?’ Maria turned quickly to look. ‘He is going, the old man upstairs?’

  ‘Yes. She has said to him: “Please Mr Jewel, take up your bed and walk.” To-morrow, he walks.’

  ‘You say!’ Maria breathed, then pursed her lips and shook her head slowly with surprise.

  Felix was surprised, too. He had, it was true, overheard Miss Bohun promise Frau Leszno to ‘think about the attic’, but that had seemed to him no more than a formula putting things off indefinitely – but now, suddenly, it was all accomplished; and behind his back. All the week Mr Jewel had been as silent as ever. Miss Bohun had been preoccupied, but when Felix spoke, she had answered with bright, aloof efficiency, forestalling the possibility of the suggestion that there was anything wrong anywhere. Yet, at some time, Miss Bohun had seen and spoken to Mr Jewel: everyone – Miss Bohun, Mr Jewel, Frau Leszno and Nikky – had known of the change coming in the house: Felix alone had known nothing. Used to his mother’s habit of discussing with him every move for days before making it, and used also to her inability to keep up a quarrel, he was startled by Miss Bohun’s withdrawal. Also the swiftness with which she had acted against Mr Jewel, seemed to him ruthless and frightening. To feel contact with someone, he spoke to Nikky, knowing as he spoke, he’d be snubbed for it.

  ‘But what will happen to Mr Jewel?’

  Nikky slid his eyes round to look at Felix, then, without turning, twisted his mouth so that the smoke he blew out went in Felix’s direction. ‘This is a kitchen,’ he said. ‘A kitchen is for servants, not for little gentlemens. Now, be so kind and hop it.’

  Felix went off slowly. He wandered down the passage to the garden. It was a bright morning. Osman, the gardener, stout and slow-moving, was bending awkwardly to pluck the new grass up from the gravel path. On seeing Felix, he straightened himself with relief, grinned and gave a greeting, touching his brow and heart. As all the language they had in common were the words similar in Palestinian and Iraqi colloquial Arabics, Felix knew from experience that it was not much use trying to talk to Osman; besides, Miss Bohun had told him that Osman was paid by the hour so was not there to waste time in talk. Osman seemed only too happy to waste it. He made a long speech with gestures towards the sky and the grass. Felix smiled and nodded and replied, from habit, in Iraqi-Arabic; then began calling: ‘Faro, Faro.’

  ‘Faro heneh,’ said the gardener and, delighted by his own perception and helpfulness, pointed to Faro asleep along a limb of the mulberry tree. She half-opened her eyes when Felix called her, but would not come down. Felix wandered off, disconsolately kicking a stone, and made his way round the wood-shed, in which Maria now slept. He had seen her go in and come out and had wondered how such a place could be combined into wood-shed, tool-shed, bedroom. On the side away from the house he noticed a small, unglazed window cut high in the wooden wall of the hut. He caught its edge and jumped. With his elbows gripping his waist he managed to hold his weight long enough to see stacked in one corner the gardening gear; and in another the wood; and in another an old mattress heaped with ragged covers. Above it was a hook from which hung Maria’s other dress. The air smelt stale. He dropped back to the ground.

  At last Mr Posthorn arrived. Occasionally on Sunday mornings Mr Posthorn, who attended the English cathedral, would drop in on his way back to look through Felix’s week-end exercises. He had suggested, which Miss Bohun never did, that Felix should
attend the cathedral and walk back with him, but Felix said: ‘I couldn’t do that. My mother did not believe in organised religion.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Mr Posthorn, ‘and what about your father?’

  ‘He was an atheist.’

  Mr Posthorn made no comment, but screwed his face as though he smelt something unpleasant. He was a very tall, narrow-shouldered man, who, at the end of an undistinguished career, took pride in the one thing that set him apart from his fellows – his learning.

  He told Felix once: ‘Latin makes the gentleman. You’ll have to mug it up, my boy. You’ll get into no sort of nice society without it.’ While Felix was with him in his office, Mr Posthorn often had to speak on the telephone to other Government officials, and sometimes, not knowing Felix was there, one of them would look into Mr Posthorn’s office to discuss some small matter. The officials of his own age, many of whom had fought their way up to Jerusalem in the Allenby Campaign and been rewarded with Government appointments, accorded him a sort of N.C.O.’s respect for book-learning: to these he spoke with a half-sneering smile, in an elaborate phraseology that hid his unease of the world; to the younger men, who saw him as a joke, he had nothing to say at all. It seemed that what friends he had were among the boys he had tutored, and when one of these rang him up, a mild humorousness seemed to come over him and, forgetting Felix’s presence, he would talk and laugh with a natural sweetness. Sometimes Felix would picture to himself the day when Mr Posthorn would admit him into this select group of his friends, but he knew it to be far distant. At the moment Felix’s ignorance forced Mr Posthorn to treat him as though he were a senior Government official.

  Mr Posthorn sighed now as, sitting on the garden wall in the sunlight, he went through Felix’s exercise books. ‘I despair of you, Latimer,’ he said in his thin, genteel voice, ‘I despair of you.’

  Felix, restless, bored and getting hungry, watched for Miss Bohun’s return across the wasteland. He had determined that at luncheon-time he would break through all barriers and ask her about Mr Jewel’s departure.

  At last Frau Leszno appeared, trotting ahead to attend to the meal. Seeing Mr Posthorn, who did not see her, she looked down with humility and hurried through the gate. Miss Bohun, who now rose over the crest, was talking with loud good-fellowship to a companion, a soldier.

  ‘Ah!’ she cried, ‘how nice! There is my young friend Felix of whom I told you, and he’s with his tutor.’ As she drew near she said: ‘Good-morning, Mr Posthorn. Now, Felix, here is a lonely young warrior who wandered into our “Ever-Ready” Meeting. I hope you’ll be great friends. And you, Mr Posthorn, I know, are fond of the young. If you could see the gratitude of these poor boys, separated from home and loved ones, when we offer them spiritual refreshment and, indeed, physical, for I never begrudge a meal in a good cause – I think it would warm your heart.’

  Mr Posthorn flicked his book impatiently so that it closed itself and he looked, with his discouraging smile, from Miss Bohun to the soldier. The soldier stood a step behind Miss Bohun, his head hanging.

  ‘His name is Marshall,’ said Miss Bohun, as though the soldier were too young to speak for himself. ‘Now sit down on the wall, Marshall, and make friends, while I go in and see about the luncheon.’

  Miss Bohun hurried away across the lawn, her batik scarf floating after her. Marshall edged himself uncomfortably on to the wall. Felix expected Mr Posthorn to rise at once and abandon the pair of them, but instead, with his mouth askew, he fixed his eyes on Marshall’s large, unshinable boots and offered him a cigarette. Marshall, his red hands hanging between his knees, in an attitude of crouching meekness, looked up without raising his head and smiled weakly: ‘Oh no, sir,’ he said, ‘I don’t indulge. Don’t smoke. Don’t drink. I promised my mum.’

  ‘Oh!’

  Marshall kept his head down while Mr Posthorn lit a cigarette for himself, then shook out the match and put it back dead into the box. ‘Been here long?’ Mr Posthorn asked stiffly.

  ‘Three months. Getting a bit homesiek.’ Marshall began fumbling in his shirt pocket. ‘Got a photograph of my mum here.’ His red, square fingers with nails so bitten down they had become no more than dents in the flesh brought out a wad of dog-eared letters and photographs. ‘That’s her,’ he said.

  Mr Posthorn gave the photograph a glance: ‘Very charming face,’ he said and passed it to Felix. Felix, gazing into the small brown square, saw someone that might have been Marshall had Marshall worn his hair bobbed.

  ‘This one’s my sister Glad, only the sun got in the camera; and here’s our little Bethesda, West Hartlepool Road. I’m Little Bethesda myself at home, but,’ he added quickly, ‘I take my hat off to the “Ever-Readies”. Can’t say a thing against them.’ Marshall’s voice, that had been, at first, thin and nasal with respect, now took on a deeper note of confidence.

  ‘Indeed?’ sounded Mr Posthorn, stiffer than before. Another pause, then he asked: ‘Have you done any sightseeing here?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marshall. ‘The Colonel laid on the Holy Places when our draft came out.’

  ‘What did you think of them?’

  ‘Well,’ Marshall wriggled slightly, obviously trying to suppress his sense of superiority. ‘What I says is: All that’s all right for show, like, but it’s not religion. Now religion – this is only my idea, mind, and I don’t say you haven’t got a right to question it, but what I always says is . . .’

  As Marshall was speaking, a clock in the distance struck one and Mr Posthorn got abruptly to his feet: ‘Must be going,’ he said and walked out through the gate.

  Marshall stopped speaking, but his mouth remained open. Humble again, he glanced round to see if Felix were still there.

  ‘I say,’ said Felix, ‘do tell me about the “Ever-Readies”. What do they do?’ But he was also interrupted, for Miss Bohun came out to the door, waving to them in a lighthearted way, shouting: ‘Now you two, come on, come on,’ and ringing the bell at the same time.

  On the table there was a mound of mashed beans. Marshall, as he seated himself, stared at it in a disturbed way. When Miss Bohun put a wodge on his plate, he hung his head over it, but his eyes wandered over the rest of the table. Seeing nothing but the dark Palestinian bread, the pepper, salt and a jug of water, he slowly lifted his knife and fork.

  ‘Bread?’ said Miss Bohun. ‘I don’t eat bread myself. The millers here grind up stone with the corn to make the flour weigh heavier – so bad for the intestines.’

  Marshall ignored the bread. ‘Is this all you folk get to eat of a Sunday?’ he asked, his humility ebbing again and a sort of sullen aggressiveness taking its place.

  Miss Bohun seemed not to notice the change; her voice still rang out happily: ‘We civilians have got no Naafi, you know – but this is wholesome food. It’ll do you good. Don’t cut it with a knife, just use your fork as we do.’

  But Marshall cut off a cube of the bean-mash with his knife and put it in his mouth. He chewed slowly, a dark and swindled look on his face.

  Miss Bohun talked on: ‘I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a good thing you boys should experience civilian conditions here. The army do themselves very well – they just requisition civilian supplies on the frontier. I’m told they don’t know what to do with the stuff. Half of it’s wasted. Of course we don’t begrudge you boys your food, but I’m sure you’ve never been so well fed in your lives before. . . .’

  ‘That’s a lie.’ Marshall stared angrily at Miss Bohun. ‘My mum never stinted us. On Sundays we’d have a proper blow-out – roast beef and Yorkshire, and roast potatoes and cabbage, and apple pie and custard and tea. None of this muck.’

  ‘My dear boy,’ Miss Bohun’s tones grew hushed and refined in rebuke, ‘there’s no need to bawl. I’m quite sure you were adequately fed at home, but conditions out here are different. Besides, I believe in the virtue of vegetables. Some of the great thinkers and mystics of India ate nothing else. As for this excellent bean-mash – it may taste different, but it’s
quite as strengthening as meat. At school our teacher used to set light to a bean to show us how it burnt with a blue flame – that meant it was full of protein.’

  ‘Maybe it was,’ said Marshall. ‘But you’d need ten times as much.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Marshall let his voice rise again with a harsh superiority. ‘I’m not denying there’s protein in them beans, but you’d have to eat ten times as much of ’em as meat – that’s what I mean. I know. I’ve taken the “Health and Hygiene” course.’

  ‘Well—’ Miss Bohun seemed at a loss. ‘You’re welcome to a second course.’

  ‘Can’t eat this lot,’ he gave his plate a pettish push. ‘My mum never gave me mash – she knew it made me puke.’

  ‘Have some bread then . . .?’

  ‘What, with stones in it? No thanks.’ A new derisive note came into his voice and he lumbered to his feet. ‘I’ll shove off. I can get my Sunday dinner at the barracks.’ He glanced over the table once more with a wry, disillusioned smile, then made a large patronising gesture with one hand: ‘Day to you,’ he said and went with a trampling of feet.

  Miss Bohun looked after him, an unnatural pink tinging her cheeks: ‘Well!’ she shook her head, for some moments seeming quite crushed. ‘How hard it is to help some people! And he was so respectful at first.’