School for Love

by Olivia Manning

  ‘What is the Cultural Mission?’ asked Mrs Ellis.

  ‘You do not know it, the Cultural Mission?’ Nikky jerked up his head in surprise, and sat down without further question. ‘It is a very important thing. I go in the afternoons, sometimes the evenings. We learn English; study literature and such. We hope to get scholarships and go to London.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll get a scholarship?’

  ‘Yes.’ Nikky looked down modestly, but with quiet confidence.

  ‘And what about the others?’

  He shrugged his shoulders and gave them a glance. ‘What are they? There are some Poles – and there are two Arabs, three Jews – and the young man in the green shirt, he is an Armenian who has been to Europe. They think they are intellectuals of Palestine – very tolerant, meeting here Arabs and Jews to talk about art – but how different, eh? from such intellectual life in Warsaw, or Berlin, or London? What talk there must be in the cafés of Piccadilly!’

  Mrs Ellis said without much interest: ‘I’ve only been to London once and then I was taken to see Peter Pan.’

  ‘Peter Pan! Very original book!’ Nikky commented gravely.

  Felix sat back, sipping his lemonade, concentrating his attention upon it, supposing he could not now hope to be included in the conversation.

  ‘What do you drink?’ asked Nikky, ‘coffee? How about some wine?’

  ‘Why? Are you feeling very rich?’ Mrs Ellis watched him with a cool and critical smile.

  ‘Rich! Is it so likely? when I am – what? A servant? and in such a house?’ Nikky laughed glumly.

  ‘Have some coffee?’

  ‘If you like,’ he frowned, but apparently his displeasure was against Miss Bohun for he said with sudden vehemence: ‘What food, eh? Never before have I eaten it. But we can do nothing. She does the shopping, keeps all the money, so,’ he held up his delicate white hand with fingers clenched. ‘Even when my mother would ask for such a thing – pepper at one piastre, a piece of sage, a lemon – always, “I will buy it myself”. No Arab would touch this job – and no Jew. The Histadruth see that servants are well paid. No, it is for some poor beggar like me who has suffered and says now “I have anyway the roof above my head”.’

  Felix, forgetting his lemonade, listened, fascinated by this new aspect of Nikky. Nikky’s pathos touched him in spite of himself, and when he glanced at Mrs Ellis to confirm his sympathy, he could scarcely believe in the smile of mockery that touched her lips.

  ‘Still,’ she said, ‘Miss Bohun “saved your soul alive”.’

  Nikky parted his lips, momentarily at a loss, then, like a clever acrobat, at once regaining his footing, he exclaimed: ‘Ach!’ He raised his hands to his head with a gesture of disgust and frantic humour that revealed him to Felix as someone not aloof and contemptuous, but really deliciously droll. Felix gave a sudden yelp of laughter that startled the whole café and made Nikky look at him as though the revelation were mutual.

  ‘But . . .’ Nikky protested elaborately at the impression he had made; he caught his breath as though words would not come, then sighed: ‘These “Ever-Readies”! What can I do? How am I to escape? I was so innocent when I came, and ill, and without friends. My mother, too, she had no idea – and then, alone here, strangers!’

  ‘But Jerusalem is full of Poles,’ said Mrs Ellis. ‘I should have thought you would have lots of friends.’

  ‘There are Poles and Poles,’ said Nikky and hurried on before this statement could be discussed. ‘But – but these “Ever-Readies”!’ he covered his face and laughed into his hands.

  ‘How often do you go to meetings?’ asked Mrs Ellis.

  ‘How often? I . . . Do not ask me. I am not the most ardent worshipper. No.’

  ‘But what is it all about? What are they “ever ready” for?’

  Felix leant foward, holding his breath at Mrs Ellis’s question. Nikky looked at Mrs Ellis, at Felix, then back at Mrs Ellis, and answered quietly: ‘For the Second Coming.’ With the suddenness of a dramatic actor, he shot out his arm and raised his voice: ‘It will happen here – to-day, to-morrow, next month, next year? Who knows? And Miss Bohun is Chairman of the Reception Committee. She has a room ready . . .’

  ‘The front room?’ cried Felix, ‘the front room!’

  Nikky nodded with dignity and echoed in deep, hollow tones: ‘The front room!’ He slid his large, dark eyes round on to Mrs Ellis and said in the same tone: ‘You have seen it, madam?’

  Mrs Ellis shook her head and laughed so she could scarcely light her cigarette.

  ‘It’s empty, the front room,’ said Felix, ‘why is it always empty?’

  ‘It is empty,’ agreed Nikky, ‘but it is prepared.’

  ‘For the Second Coming?’ asked Mrs Ellis as she shook out her match. ‘And who believes in all this?’

  ‘Not I, for one,’ said Nikky with sombre decision, ‘but there are believers. . . . And for this our house was stolen from us. When they knew the war would start, they said: “This is, of course, Armageddon. We must have a room prepared.” (The last war was Armageddon, too, but no matter.) So, to find a room, Miss Bohun enters our house, hires two rooms from my silly mother – and in no time, what? She has the whole house. But that is another thing. I am not here to pity myself. You ask about these “Ever-Readies”! There used to be many such. You must have noticed how many places here are called “colony”? – the American Colony, the German Colony, the Swedish, the Greek, and so on! Well, at a time – perhaps forty, fifty years ago – all those people came to see the Second Coming. Some have lived here since, very old now, but most are dead. The “Ever-Readies” are one such.’

  ‘But what sort of people belong?’ asked Mrs Ellis.

  ‘Oh, there are Christian Arabs, a few convert Jews – all women, need I say, like my silly mother. For them, it makes a nice club. And then there are a few old English women, and a few old men – very prized, those few old gentlemen. I, I am the baby and so I am privileged.’

  ‘Does Mr Jewel belong?’ Felix asked eagerly.

  ‘No, no.’ Nikky, with a gesture, brushed aside such an idea. ‘Here there are such old gentlemen, such old ladies . . . such a sort! Ach!’ Nikky turned sideways in his chair and, covering his eyes with one hand, threw up his other hand in appreciation of their fantastic quality.

  ‘And they really believe the Second Coming will be any day now?’

  ‘How can I say? But there is money in it. Indeed, yes, money comes from America. In America there is a big “Ever-Ready” organisation. Very rich, very important. At a sign from the Jerusalem end, the big American airliners rise into the sky to bring here the Wise Virgins prepared for the Coming. Miss Bohun preaches very nicely on this subject.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mrs Ellis quietly. ‘So Miss Bohun is not an unpaid pastor.’

  Nikky gave a laugh and in a voice humorously and pertinently deep said: ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Well!’ Mrs Ellis stubbed out her cigarette, ‘we’re learning things! And what about the room? Is she paid rent for that?’

  Nikky shrugged his shoulders. He and Mrs Ellis smiled at one another in a contempt of Miss Bohun that Felix could not quite understand. Perhaps it was not so much contempt as resentment, or even pure dislike. And yet Miss Bohun had looked after the Lesznos and saved Nikky’s life: and Mrs Ellis herself had said on the day she arrived that Miss Bohun alone had been kind to her. Although he could not understand their condemnation of her, yet he found himself sharing it.

  ‘At the meetings!’ asked Mrs Ellis. ‘What happens at the meetings?’

  ‘Ach!’ Nikky, with a grimace, with a sudden skilful movement of the wrist, seemed to place the nullity of the meetings before them on the palm of his hand: ‘What can happen? What can they think of that was not thought of a thousand years before? They pray, they sing psalms, they read from the Bible . . .’ as he listed these activities he made them absurd by swaying his head from side to side, ‘and then . . .’ Nikky paused; he threw up a ridiculous f
inger; his face sprang into delighted life, he looked at Mrs Ellis, at Felix, back again at Mrs Ellis, keeping them breathless. . . . Felix watched entranced; he could not even glance aside at Mrs Ellis, so held was he by this manifestation of Nikky. Indeed, he was not certain that Nikky was not a greater wonder than Mrs Ellis.

  ‘And then, Miss Bohun gives the sermon.’

  ‘Really! Does she preach a sermon at every meeting?’

  ‘No. There are visiting preachers. There are “Ever-Readies” in Beirut, in Cyprus, in Cairo. . . . Sometimes they come here for the entertainments.’

  ‘The entertainments?’ breathed Mrs Ellis.

  ‘Oh!’ Nikky made a gesture that exceeded all his others in the expression of the inexpressible. ‘The entertainments! Last year there was a play which she wrote herself.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Indeed, yes; and she played the chief part – a man!’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Yes. She fancies herself in male costume, you know. In all her plays there is a chief part, a man in an historical dress, and she is it!’

  ‘Oh! And what was her play about?’

  ‘Ask another person – not me. It was very symbolical; full of ambiguities. Poetry to-day must be full of ambiguities.’

  ‘But surely it wasn’t written in poetry?’

  ‘There, dear lady, you say it – but Miss Bohun, she said it was poetry. And this play was about a mysterious stranger who visits the court of the King of Spain. Who is this stranger? Ah, who knows! But the King of Spain – our own Miss Bohun – he knows. And see our Miss Bohun in a black velvet suit – so!’ Nikky indicated balloon sleeves, ‘pearls – so! A great cross here,’ Nikky swung a hand in front of his chest. ‘Magnificent! And the stranger – that is old Mr Buffey who has a beard – has just a white robe and sandals. A small part. He comes – and then he goes.’

  ‘But where did the costumes come from?’

  ‘The Y.M.C.A. wardrobe. Pre-war. Very good. Oh, yes, very good! And every time the King of Spain spoke he marched to the footlight, threw out his chest, so! Threw out his hand, so! and shouted to the back . . .’ Nikky raised his voice and again the café was startled. Felix pushed aside his lemonade so that he could prop his head up to laugh; tears ran down his cheeks. He had never dreamt Nikky could be so funny, but Nikky was going to be much funnier. Suddenly he rolled his eyes from Felix to Mrs Ellis, and whispered:

  ‘Then someone laughed. Hey!’ he threw out a hand like a policeman stopping the traffic and imitated Miss Bohun’s voice: ‘“Stop the play! Stop! Stop, at once! Now, who laughed?” No one replies. So! She shouts:

  ‘“Put the lights on!” and someone in the dark puts out the footlights. “No, no, put on the lights! In the hall! In the hall!” Off goes all the lights on the stage – on go the hall lights, off go the hall lights, on go the stage lights – “No, no, no. Put off the lights – put on the lights – put off the lights. . . .”’

  Felix was convulsed: he leant weakly on his hands, sobbing and near hysteria. Mrs Ellis had tears in her eyes, her cigarette burnt forgotten in her hand.

  ‘“At last! All light on. Now, who laughed? I won’t go on until the one who did it owns up. Now, who laughed? Out with it! We’ll be here all night!” And so, at last, a soldier – there are always, I should tell you, one or two lonely soldiers who wander in – a soldier put up his hand. “You should be ashamed,” says Miss Bohun, “would you behave so in your own home town?” The soldier mumbles, head hanging . . . “All right, now we go on. . . .”’

  Felix sighed, almost sobered into coldness, incapable of laughing any more; he wiped his eyes.

  ‘And then it is all over and Miss Bohun says: “Hands up all those who would like us to do it again. No one? – Now, come on. Hands up! Is it this, the gratitude of the ‘Ever-Readies’ for all our work? Hands up at once. Ach, a hand! Loyal Gertie Goldberg . . . and Mrs Putkin . . . and chivalrous Captain Jenkins. Now, come on! If we get four hands we’ll do it again. Ach, one more hand! That makes three, now we only want a fourth. Come now! Be sports, girls of the ‘Ever-Readies’! You want us to do it again, don’t you? At last, a fourth hand.” Miss Bohun does, so!’ Nikky slapped his thigh: ‘A splendid show!’

  Felix, who had started laughing again, was shaking weakly, a sharp pain across his waist. He felt he could scarcely bear any more, but there was more to come—

  ‘And, the year before,’ said Nikky, ‘when she played Romeo. . . .’

  ‘Oh, no. She did not play Romeo?’

  ‘Yes, in the same black velvet – and the balcony broke down.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Look,’ said Nikky, ‘we must have wine.’ He dug into the pocket of his coat that hung about him like a black tent, and brought out a handful of small, dirty notes. Felix felt it impossible to let Nikky spend this money when he had so little, but Mrs Ellis said nothing. In a grand way, opening the sticky notes as he spoke, Nikky ordered three glasses of red wine.

  ‘Oh, not for Felix,’ said Mrs Ellis.

  ‘It will do him no harm.’

  Felix, pushing aside his empty lemonade glass to take on the large, globular glass of cheap red wine, felt this the crown of the evening. Exhausted from laughing and sleepy because it was past his bedtime, he found as he drank the wine that his hold upon the conversation was slipping. When the wine was drunk, Mrs Ellis ordered three more glasses. Felix kept laughing weakly because now everything Nikky said seemed funny, but at one point, when he shook himself awake, he found he was no longer in the café, but had somehow been transported to Mrs Ellis’s room. He was sprawling on her bed, his shoulders propped against the wall, and Nikky was sitting at the end of it, drooping over the dark iron rail. Mrs Ellis was in the one comfortable chair. The fun seemed to have stopped at some time, for Mrs Ellis was talking seriously and Nikky was watching her with a serious, intent face. There was between them some sort of understanding from which Felix felt himself excluded. Except that the books and bookcase were gone, the room was furnished just as it had been when Miss Bohun slept here, but both the centre light and the reading lamp were lit, which made it seem quite different. On the table were cosmetic bottles and powder boxes such as his mother had had. There were some red rosebuds drooping like the heads of chickens whose necks have been wrung. The air was full of a heavy, unusual scent.

  ‘French scent,’ thought Felix. His mother used to send to Cairo for it and it got dearer and dearer as the war went on. Thinking of her, he was filled, not with the old despairing emptiness, but with a gentle sadness. Mrs Ellis, who was the most beautiful person in the world, had said he could stay on when she took over the house: and Nikky, who had been his enemy, was now his friend. He lay in a haze of delicious, melancholy peace through which he listened to Mrs Ellis’s voice:

  ‘. . . it would have been better if I’d been in England, thousands of miles away. I’d have known less about it – at least, that’s what I feel now. I did not know what to do, where to go—Then the doctor sent me up here. Cairo is a bad place for babies.’

  Nikky nodded gently: ‘But in England, you have a home, you have parents. You are not a refugee.’

  Mrs Ellis shrugged her shoulders: ‘I haven’t anything much. No home anyway. My father is in the regular army. My mother died years ago in India. The summer before the war my father was in Alex. He couldn’t get home so he arranged for me to come out to Egypt by boat. It was great fun. The boat was full of school children going out to their parents; it used to be called “the children’s boat”. We had the time of our lives. The grown-ups must have been driven mad by us. I loved Alex. I was fifteen and I met officers who were not much older than myself. I began to think I was grown-up. Then the war broke out and father was afraid to send me home, so I went to a finishing school full of Greeks and Egyptians – all stiff and correct and trying to be French. I loathed it. Two years later father was transferred to the Sudan; he’s there now. At that time things weren’t looking too good in the Middle East. There wa
s one of those evacuations and father thought I’d better go home. It was fairly safe going round the Cape. I was given a passage straight away – another “children’s boat”, but I counted among the grown-ups this time.’ At this point, Mrs Ellis’s voice faded away. Felix let his eyelids fall comfortably over his eyes, but for curious moments he flickered into complete consciousness and caught phrases, ‘. . . a pathetic little thing,’ and ‘. . . suddenly the ship lurched over;’ ‘. . . a hellish row,’ and ‘the water icy cold.’

  This was clearly a story about a shipwreck, but no effort could keep him awake to hear it. He must have fallen asleep, for, a long time after, he was startled by Mrs Ellis saying: ‘Well, I helped with the canteens and the troops’ entertainments; then I got a job at G.H.Q. I had quite a time. But I found I got worried at the cinema – the news films, you know. If I saw a ship on fire or sinking, I was liable to make a nuisance of myself.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Felix, awake now, suddenly cold, but full of curiosity.

  The others took no notice of him. Nikky said:

  ‘Then you got married.’ He sighed. ‘At least you have lived a little. For me – what? Waiting for the war to end. Then I return to my estate in Poland, then I am again a Count. . . .’

  At that moment the door fell open and hit the wall. Miss Bohun stood there staring first at Nikky then at Mrs Ellis with a look of incredulous anger. When she noticed Felix, her expression softened slowly into its old exasperation. She strode into the room and switched off the reading lamp: ‘You must try to help me to save,’ she said.

  As the others watched her, startled and silenced by her intrusion, she said with a defensive irritation: ‘I could see those two lights on as I crossed the wasteland. It really is too bad of you. . . .’ Then she swung round on Felix: ‘What is the matter with Felix?’ she said. ‘Why, the boy is half asleep. It’s long past his bedtime. I know I’m late, but really! I’m surprised at you, Mrs Ellis. And leaving the electric fire on downstairs. You ought to know better, Felix, if no one else does. And what are you doing up here Nikky? This doesn’t seem to me at all the thing. Of course, I’ve no objection to your making friends with the servants, Mrs Ellis – it shows a very democratic spirit – but please don’t carry these friendships beyond the sitting-room. Now, Felix – to bed! Nikky – downstairs! Good-night, Mrs Ellis.’