Armande was affectionately amused by Mme. Nachmias’s excellent imitation of a Parisian lady who had been dragged to the Middle East against her will and only longed to return to Europe; it might even have deceived her if she had not heard Madame deal with an offending chambermaid in a screaming flow of invective which left no doubt that Arabic was her mother tongue. Abu Tisein’s wide Palestinian culture did not appeal at all to his wife. It smelled too much of humble origins.
“The Lebanese,” Armande remarked, “say that they preferred the Turks to the French.”
“Just because those were the good old times. All the world looks back to the days before 1914. Myself, I prefer Palestine and the Lebanon as they now are. But I admit I was content under the Turks.”
“You were also younger,” Madame reminded him sharply.
“Yes, but it is not only that. In those days we were left in peace. So long as my people are left to multiply in peace, I do not care who governs—Turks or English or Arabs.”
“David!” Madame protested. “One would think you passed your life in chewing melon seeds or smoking a nargileh!”
“I like to do both,” murmured Abu Tisein.
“He is impossible, Mme. Herne! Do not believe a word he says! Everyone knows that the Jewish Agency could not exist a moment without my husband. And to say that he would not mind being ruled by Arabs! That, David, when you saw what the Arabs did in Safad!”
She tore the white, spotted scarf from her head with a sweep of the arm that expressed tragic exasperation, and fanned herself impatiently.
“Dear Mme. Herne, it was horrible! I, I who am speaking to you, I was nearly violated!”
“But you were not,” said Abu Tisein peaceably, “for one recognised you in time. No, Mme Herne, do not misunderstand me. As things are, we must trust the Arabs to the Jews, rather than the Jews to the Arabs. We are excitable, I admit, but we do not cut women and children into little pieces. I am a Jew and I live and work for Jewish Palestine—but I permit myself to regret the days when my country was not full of Poles and Germans, and the Arabs were more friendly. Like a good civil servant in England, I do what I am told but I do not always approve of it.”
Mme. Nachmias, implying her opinion that the conversation had become impolitely deep for the presence of two fashionable women, began to prattle trivialities. A French officer invited Armande to dance; when she refused on the grounds of heat and headache, he showed a tendency to hang about the table in the hope of being invited to sit down. To Armande’s annoyance, Abu Tisein welcomed him and Madame sparkled with conversation, playing the witty Frenchwoman of uncertain age. Such rapid fire would have overwhelmed Armande even if she had wished to compete.
As soon as Madame and her officer had, inevitably, reached the dance floor, David Nachmias said:
“I suppose that you will be going to Cairo soon?”
This was an obvious invitation to talk of her plans. Armande realised that she had watched unsuspectingly one of Madame’s disappearing acts, by which, without any collusion between husband and wife, Abu Tisein was left alone with the person to whom he wanted to speak.
“Yes, I may go—though I don’t know what use I shall be when I get there.”
“Then why go, Mme. Herne?’
“I’m so tired of Beirut, and waiting and watching.”
“Waiting and watching is the occupation of half of the world,” said Abu Tisein. “Till the land in spring, gather the crop in summer, accept the fact that there is nothing to do for the rest of the year. It is a full life.”
“I know, but for us it’s such a waste. And I do want to help. I was really useful in the first year of the war.”
“Not since?” he asked.
“Not to myself or anyone. My spirit was defeated with the French, I think.”
“You puzzle us all, you know.”
There was no hint of criticism in his slow voice, but Armande was disappointed. David Nachmias attracted her because she pictured herself as a feminine edition of him—a quiet creature, minding her own business, in whose reserve of strength the world naturally confided. Abu Tisein, however, gave an impression of fine simplicity. Socially, he was not puzzling at all; he was restful.
“It’s not my fault,” she protested.
“No, no. But—well, why not tell me about yourself?”
“Where shall I start?” she laughed, awkwardly concealing her reluctance.
“At Calinot, for example. I am aware, of course, that you came out to the Middle East with Calinot. How did you get to know him?”
“I’ve always known him. Before he started to make aeroplanes, he was a good little bourgeois manufacturer of racing bicycles and a friend of the family. He was only a tremendously optimistic financier, you see—and when it came to international contracts and dealing with the Air Ministry and the Treasury he was lost. British officials terrified him. So he took me on as his interpreter. I was a sort of elegant dragoman, really—explaining the ways of the natives and calming them down. In London I was quite important. And here too, at first. We flew out here as soon as France was invaded—Cairo, Jerusalem, Cyprus, Bagdad, everywhere in three weeks. He was looking for possible factory sites abroad. But when the French surrendered, that was the end. We had to stay in Beirut.
“M. Nachmias, I almost wanted England to make peace, just so that the two countries shouldn’t be separated. We couldn’t adjust ourselves. Nobody could think of France without England. Then we saw that it wasn’t the end of the war at all, and Calinot went back to Paris. He paid me a year’s salary in cash, and asked me not to mention it. I never have. That leaves me open to suspicion, but I can’t help it. Calinot had no right to pay a British subject so much, and he might have got into serious trouble.”
“Why didn’t you go to Palestine when he left?’ Abu Tisein asked.
“Well, his francs weren’t any use in Palestine. He was very French, and didn’t think of that. It was humiliating to have to wire home for money. So I just waited. I was certain that the army would declare for Free France, and that then I could be in the war again. They let me wait. They were very good to me. I ought to have been arrested when the German and Italian armistice commissions were here, but I was living quietly in my own flat, and my friends saw that I wasn’t bothered. Then when we fought each other in Syria, Loujon had to intern me. A beastly army lorry at dawn, just for me, with an embarrassed sergeant and an Indo-Chinese driver. It seemed so impersonal, so useless, just like shipping that magnificent army off to France—” She shuddered. “And now I am free, too free, with all my old world destroyed, and just beginning to long to make another. So, you see, there isn’t any mystery about me at all.”
“Not to you, perhaps,” he said. “But to the—what shall I say?—uniformed, you are a mysterious character. If you are ambitious, if you want to be used, that is the quality to be used.”
“I do want to be used.”
“Even if distasteful to … you are charmingly fastidious, Madame.”
“Even if distasteful.”
“Do you think you could fascinate a very distinguished old gentleman? No more. Just fascinate.”
“Is he married?”
“No. He is wildly romantic, but most unwilling to permit any interference with his liberty. A wife would destroy too much of him. He is wise enough to know it.”
The music stopped. Mme. Nachmias did not return to the table. She led her officer to the bar.
“The high stools, you know,” said Abu Tisein apologetically.
“Yes?” laughed Armande.
“Madame is the most sociable of creatures, but she has, like all charming women, her little affectations. One of them is to sit on a high stool in a smart bar. She says always that it reminds her of the Riviera. Myself, I seldom give her the pleasure, for I cannot endure high stools; they are too far from the floor where Allah in his wisdom intended us to sit. But I was telling you about old Sheikh Wadiah.”
“Is he very old?”
&nbs
p; “Verging on sixty, I think. I call him old from respect and affection. He is always young in heart. You will like him. Of course what I am going to tell you is in the strictest confidence.”
Armande nodded, without protesting her discretion. She knew that if David Nachmias chose to add himself to the number of people who talked to her unwisely, he was already sure of her.
“In the Lebanon there are a few families,” he began, “who are the hereditary leaders of the Christians. They were the protectors of their people against the Moslem. They still take their responsibilities seriously. The heads of these families are not rich, not politicians—just chieftains of clans, as you would say. None of them can put more than a hundred men into the field, but that is quite enough to deal—in their own mountains—with an old-fashioned party of Moslem raiders.
“Sheikh Wadiah Ghoraib is one of these chieftains. He foresees trouble after the war—who does not?—and he has brought his armaments up to date. This little campaign against the Vichy French was a godsend to him. His clansmen are strong in the hills above the coast road, where the fighting was hardest. They were crawling about the battlefields after dark, collecting weapons.
“Wadiah has been buying, too. When fighting is over, soldiers must relax,” said Abu Tisein with patient understanding. “They have reached the limit of endurance. They become careless of their arms. So there are plenty in the market. I have known an Arab enter a tent of tired men, and steal eight rifles from under their blankets without waking one of them.
“Sheikh Wadiah has not been content with rifles. He has acquired a number of Hotchkiss machine guns and Brens. They cannot be left with him, Mme. Herne. When an Arab has machine guns—even if he is a Christian and educated in Paris—his one idea is to use them.
“We cannot force Wadiah to give them up. He will just swear that he has no arms, that it’s all a malicious rumour. But I think they might be obtained, quite unofficially—so long, that is, as he got his money back. To put it bluntly, he might sell them. Not to Moslem or French or Jew, but to the British, yes—if the right person approached him.”
Abu Tisein paused.
“But why am I the right person?” asked Armande.
“Because he will know of your reputation. Everyone does. Weren’t you interned as a British agent? He is strongly pro-British and chivalrous. He will consider your arrival a most delicate attention to him. No moral lectures. No violent methods. Just a charming, mysterious operator with a business offer. I know Sheikh Wadiah. If you cannot succeed, nobody can.”
“I’ll try, if you think I should be any use,” said Armande doubtfully. “But buying and selling arms seems to be the most awful crime. All these military lower their voices when they talk about it—just as if arms trading were something supernatural. Won’t Sheikh Wadiah think I am just being used to trap him?”
“He will, at first. But when you have his confidence you can assure him, if you like, that the money will be paid by a British officer in uniform and that British soldiers will collect the arms. That cannot be a crime.”
Abu Tisein spoke with a casual air of authority that was convincing. Armande saw that it was stupidity to ask him for his credentials. What would they be? And how in the world would she recognise them? Perhaps there were signs and countersigns that would identify him, but not to her. All he could do, if questioned, would be to refer her to some third person; and, so far as that was of value, she could find a third person of her own choosing.
It was, when you came to think of it, obvious that a new civilian recruit for any form of Intelligence must be picked up very much as she had been—watched, tested in many little conversations, and then told the minimum it was essential to know for the job in hand. The relationship was, in essence, intuitive and aesthetic. Character spoke to character. Vague, certainly—but, after all, the way in which real confidence between two human beings, and especially between a man and a woman, was offered, was accepted and grew.
She had never asked Loujon by what right he interrogated and interned her. It was obvious by his manner and authority that he had such a right. Nevertheless it seemed an elementary precaution to ask whether rumour was fact, and David Nachmias was indeed trusted by the British. She suspected that her hotel acquaintances would not know, but would never—least of all the senior officers—admit to a woman that they did not know. Sergeant Prayle, for all the convulsive leaps of his mind, seemed a likely person to give her an honest answer.
For two days Armande failed to find him haunting, as was his custom, the hotel desk and vestibule. She discovered him one morning when, leaning far out over her balcony to see what had happened to a pair of stockings hung out to dry and carried off by the wind, she caught sight of a corner of the service entrance. Sergeant Prayle was sitting on the steps, teaching the tiniest of the Lebanese page boys how to make a catapult.
She went down, and walked around the lower terrace of the hotel. Screams of orders, of protest and of conversation issued from the kitchens, together with a powerful but appetising smell of onions melting in a casserole. Sergeant Prayle and the page boy were discussing the treatment and use of elastic from the inside of an old golf ball. They spoke in soldier’s Arabic and Sergeant Prayle’s French, and appeared to understand one another perfectly.
The page boy fled through the service entrance and was swallowed up by the chaos within. Sergeant Prayle remained seated on the greasy top step. With a wave of his hand he offered the remaining length of it to Armande. She compromised by leaning against the balustrade where her head was level with his.
“You’ll get him sacked,” said Armande.
“Poor little devil!” he answered with a note of real pity and indignation in his voice.
“Why? He seems to enjoy himself.”
“That’s why. There he is—at his age!—always smiling just as the customers expect. Hell, I say! It isn’t right. One ping with that catapult on the headwaiter carrying a pile of plates, and he’ll have a memory that will comfort him all his life.”
“You will, you mean. It’s not fair.”
“He will. An egg or a good squashy tomato—most people would feel better for the rest of their lives if they really did throw one. You would, too. In spite of Kensington.”
“I should always think of the person at the receiving end,” Armande retorted.
“Ah, but the target must be worthy. A social pest like a cinema organist, or a pest in his own right like a politician. But you have no indignation.”
“I have a great deal,” replied Armande warmly. “I hate injustice, and I do what I can.”
“All subscriptions to Mrs. Herne. Light refreshments at 10 p.m. Lord Tripe and Onions will say a few words—if sober. No, no! You need a barrel of eggs in the hall.”
“I wish you wouldn’t always put me on the defensive,” said Armande, smiling at him. “You’ll never get the best out of people that way.”
“I might get the worst. But you’ve forgotten what your worst is like. Whom are you looking for, Mrs. Herne, me or the page boy?”
“You.”
The sergeant’s expression returned to that kindliness with which he had regarded the Arab child in buttons. When his eyes were merry, they were so intelligent. Armande felt regret that she could not like him. It was impossible—or not, perhaps, impossible, but he made it so coarsely and unnecessarily difficult.
“Any trouble?” he asked.
“I want some information. On a person—if you are allowed to give it to me.”
“We’ll stretch a point, anyway. Whom do you want to know about?”
“David Nachmias.”
“Old Abu Tisein? Thanked by generals. O.B.E. when there’s a handout. Why?”
“Is he really working for you?”
“For us? Good Lord, no!” he exclaimed. “We don’t deal in big bugs like him. But he has certainly worked for other departments. During the campaign he used to go in and out of Syria just as he liked, and bring home the bacon every time. He’s trus
ted, and no secret about it. But—be careful, won’t you?”
“It’s just that he offered me some letters of introduction to Arabs,” Armande prevaricated.
“Then you’re in luck. They respect him. Let me know what you’re up to.”
“I will of course,” Armande answered conveniently. “Why do they call him Abu Tisein?”
“It means Father of Two Buttocks. Arabic dual. Not two complete bottoms, you see, but both stout cheeks.”
Armande disliked the relish with which he gave her the translation, and made no comment. How lightly and amusingly any of her Franch friends could have explained these Arab subtleties of anatomy! Sergeant Prayle’s deep voice sounded so vulgar.
Under a screen of polite thanks she drifted with Prayle back to the hotel lobby, hoping that she did not show her disapproval, wondering indeed why she bothered to disapprove. His blotched, untidy face, his impossible clothes, were all so uninviting. It was no fault of his own, of course, but he was one of those people who simply had to stick to the rules in order to be tolerated.
Chapter Two
Prayle
Sergeant Prayle wished that he could express his thoughts to society, but was aware that he could not even express them to himself. He knew that he was by nature as inquisitive as an old hen. Over religion, philosophy and all abstract exercises of the spirit he brooded quietly with no expectation of hatching more than ingenious fantasy; but at the fatness of human nature he would peck eagerly, watching this way and that for the motive under the action, scratching up emotion to discover truth. In the presence of another person he could not be bored, but his satisfaction was, he feared, entirely personal and therefore futile.
He had been transferred from the Yeomanry to Field Security because he spoke French. He spoke it fluently and grammatically, but as if its consonants and vowels were those of his own language. This almost unintelligible accent, above all when employed in idiomatic profanity, greatly endeared him to the French, who considered him less suspiciously bilingual than his colleagues. His Field Security Section had taken him to France, and his own ability to extract anything out of the masses, from chickens to a horse and cart, had taken the section out again through Dunkirk and had advanced him to the rank of sergeant. Soon after his return he had been posted to the Middle East. His section spent an agitated winter up and down the Western Desert, and in the summer of 1941 were moved into the Lebanon to clean up after the campaign.
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