In the distance is St Paul’s where all the brick-heaped bomb sites have been colonised by rose bay willow herb and buddleias. They soften the devastation and make it appear natural, like ancient ruins. Bea starts to run. She shouts Arie’s name.
He seems not to hear. They are by a bar called Mooney’s Irish House when Bea catches up with him. She tugs his coat and he spins round, his face somewhere between anger and guilt.
‘Arie? Arie, it’s me.’
‘Beatrice?’
‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw you.’
Arie gives no smile of pleasure at their re-union. He quickly checks up and down Fleet Street. Then he takes her arm and guides her firmly into the pub. The air is layered with yellowish tobacco smoke, the bar lined with men in demob suits drinking pints. Arie finds an empty corner stall. Bea sits and waits, still trying to take in this coincidence of time and place. He returns with two glasses of bitter.
‘This is all they sell.’
‘Water would’ve done... it’s just so wonderful to see you, Arie.’
‘What are you doing around here?’
‘Oh, you know, some family matters to sort out.’
All the while, Arie fixes his gaze on the door as if he is expecting someone he does not want to meet. There was always an air of uncertainty about him, a hint of static.
‘So what brings you to London, Arie?’
‘This and that. A bit of journalism.’
‘That’s interesting. Who are you writing for?’
‘It’s only a small periodical. You wouldn’t have heard of it.’
‘But how long have you been back in England?’
‘Not long... a couple of months, I suppose.’
Arie’s eyes never settle. He examines each face coming into the bar as if to calculate risk and threat.
‘I never thought we’d see each other again, Arie. Of all the things to happen – ’
‘Did you think I was dead?’
‘Yes, sometimes. That last day... it was so awful.’
‘I’m sorry it was like that... but I killed a few Nazis for you.’
His voice could not have been calmer or more measured.
‘So you and Casserley’s men must’ve been in Europe?
‘Yes... with the resistance.’
‘I saw those dreadful newsreels, Arie... those camps.’
‘Belsen?’
‘Yes... I haven’t the words to say how I felt.’
‘Neither had I.’
‘You mean you saw it, too?’
‘Not the newsreel...’
‘God, Arie... no.’
Bea wants to hug him but can only lay her fingers gently on his hand instead.
‘It was just one of the camps, Beatrice. There were others.’
His eyes are black and stone hard.
‘What of your family? What happened to them?’
‘The Vilna ghetto was liquidated.’
‘So...’
‘...so no one is left.’
‘Arie, how can you bear it? I’m so dreadfully sorry.’
‘Yes, but I am not alone in this. Millions have died. Millions.’
She takes a sip of beer and sees him looking at her left hand.
‘Are you a mother yet, Beatrice?’
Bea shakes her head and looks away. She fights the urge to tell him about Liad, the child who must always be denied, the son whose blood ran between her fingers seven years before. How could her tears be measured in the grief that drowned his world?
‘Tell me about this lucky man, your husband.’
‘He’s called Francis. He was a bomber pilot.’
‘So, a lucky man and a brave one, too.’
‘He’s had to go to a meeting or he’d be with me.’
‘Is he still in the RAF?’
‘No, not any more. He’s something in the Foreign Office.’
‘Is he, now? Which department, do you know?’
‘No, he never talks shop. He’s very British like that.’
‘Well, he should mind his step.’
‘In what way, Arie?’
‘Because your Foreign Office is run by Arab lackeys.’
‘That sounds very heartfelt.’
‘If it is, it’s because some of us have every reason to think this way.’
She notes Arie’s accent has become almost officer-English, clipped and dismissive. He keeps looking at his watch. He is anxious to be going. Bea isn’t.
‘What are you really doing in London, Arie?’
‘I’ve told you. I’m just here to do a bit of writing.’
‘I’m no longer a child. Tell me the truth.’
Arie half smiles and finishes his drink.
‘I’ll tell you something, Beatrice... something that might interest your husband.’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘The British mandate to rule in Palestine will not last much longer and when your army of police and spies go, there will be conflict, maybe another war.’
‘Must that be so, Arie... after all we’ve just been through?’
‘It is precisely because of what we’ve just been through that it will be so.’
‘The newspapers say the Jews aren’t being allowed back.’
‘They’re not. The Arabs don’t want us and the British won’t upset their Arab friends on our account.’
‘So what’s happening to the Jews who can’t get to Palestine?’
‘You might not credit this but some of them are still in the death camps. There’s nowhere else for them to go.’
‘That’s appalling – ’
‘Then you should tell that to your Foreign Secretary.’
‘Mr Bevin?’
‘Yes, that bloody Jew-hater, Bevin... and you should tell your husband that we Jews will have our independence. We won’t go quietly to the slaughter... never again.’
Arie stands up, ready to leave.
‘Arie, I want to see you again. I really do...’
‘It is better you don’t.’
‘Why? You mean the world to me, you must know that.’
‘No, it wouldn’t be wise.’
‘But I want to help you.’
‘You did already, remember?’
‘Yes, but I mean now – with whatever it is you’re doing in London.’
‘But what would your important husband say?’
‘Francis? He doesn’t need to know.’
Bea hears her words fractionally later than the mental impulse to utter them. She is aware of what might follow. So is Arie.
Bea looks at him, trying to see the poet behind the warrior, the Messiah who had clung to the bars of the embassy yard in Prague. It is still there like an imprint on a shroud.
Then, as if against all judgement, Arie takes a card from his inside pocket. Their fingers touch as he passes it.
Arie Minsky, Freelance Journalist & Consultant : Telephone MUSeum 2843.
‘I have an apartment in Gower Street. Now, we really must leave – separately.’
‘But why like this?’
‘Beatrice, please... this is serious. You must do exactly as I say.’
Bea goes first. They do not kiss. Arie does not smile or turn around and is gone into the crowd leaving her alone on the pavement.
A surge of energy runs through Bea’s body. There is danger and risk to her existence again. God had plaited Arie into her life once more. She would not give him up so easily this time. There was Liad, too. The ghost of their child. He needed his father.
Francis would understand. Just as Arie had understood about her marrying Francis.
Chapter Sixteen
McCall locked the dacha door and made for Francis’s other refuge, the church of St Mary and All Angels. He reached the porch to a drum roll of thunder from a bruised sky. McCall sat in the Wrenn family pew and stared up at the cross and its tortured man, skewered through the bones of his wrists and praying for the end to come. McCall feared he would not be equal to Franc
is’s impending death, not up to the ordeal of coping with this parental loss. Those who remain must look deep into themselves, at who and what they are and where they have come from. McCall couldn’t know... not for sure. He was suffering a kind of double vision, confusing the outlines of two fathers, two mothers... two lives.
A volley of hail hit the stained glass windows and a litter of unswept autumn leaves scratched across the draughty nave. Someone touched his shoulder and McCall started back in alarm. But it was only Mrs Bishop, a finger to her lips.
‘Putting flowers on David, I was. Come in here to shelter.’
McCall motioned her to sit by him. Mrs Bishop was not conventionally religious. God sinned most foul against her once and that she could never forgive. But village always bent the knee to church. That was the way of it so she attended on her terms, prayed in her way. She looked closely at McCall’s darkly drawn face and knew he was still sick – but whether in body alone, she could not be sure.
‘You’re upset about poor Mr Wrenn.’
‘Yes... it’s harder than I ever thought.’
The gradually rain moved west into Wales. They went outside and stood amid the graves. Flowers in jam jars had been beaten down and drooped across little hand written cards, rinsed of love and memory now.
‘You must look after yourself better, Francis.’
‘I’m trying.’
‘Come over to me. I’ll feed you up.’
‘I’d like that.’
‘Then we can have a talk, like we used to in the old days.’
‘What would we talk about, Mrs B?’
‘Anything what’s bothering you, my lovely.’
They paused. The sound of thunder came again but distantly, like a fading migraine. McCall did have a question which only Mrs Bishop could answer.
‘It was you, wasn’t it, Mrs B?’
‘It was me what?’
‘...that sent that photograph of me to school, me as a baby with my parents?’
‘Don’t know what you’re saying.’
‘Come on, Mrs B. It’s your writing on the envelope.’
‘That a fact, is it?’
‘I think so, yes. But where did you get the picture, Mrs B?’
‘I’m not saying I did.’
‘I can keep a secret. I just want to know more about them, that’s all.’
Winnie Bishop took time buttoning up her shapeless coat and adjusting her hat. But she was reared to tell the truth and shame the devil.
‘I found it.’
‘Where did you find it?’
‘Up at Garth.’
‘In which room?’
‘Can’t remember exact... one of the guest bedrooms.’
‘You mean in a drawer or a cupboard?’
‘No. On the floor. Someone dropped it.’
‘Why didn’t you just give it to Bea or Francis to pass onto me?’
She was starting to fidget and look uncomfortable.
‘It wasn’t theirs.’
‘Whose was it, then?’
‘Your mother’s.’
‘My mother’s? How on earth do you know that?’
‘Because I do.’
‘But she never came to Garth.’
‘Didn’t she, now?’
‘No. Bea said they never had any contact with her.’
‘Well, all I know is what I know.’
‘You mean you actually saw her there?’
She began to walk away, along the glistening gravel path towards where David lay beneath the fallen white petals of the roses she had left. McCall followed close by.
‘Did you, Mrs B? Did you see her at Garth?’
‘Leave the dead and dying in peace, young Francis.’
‘But we’re talking about my mother.’
‘You haven’t done much of that in the past, or about your Dad.’
‘God, Mrs B. Don’t make me feel any worse.’
‘Then take my advice. Leave well alone.’
‘But you said we could talk about anything that’s bothering me.’
‘I didn’t mean about that.’
‘About what?’
Mrs Bishop had gone too far already. McCall knew he would not pressure any more out of her. He let her go. She was bitter and old and could get things wrong – but this ? McCall owed all he was to Bea and Francis. They had no motive to hold back on something so trivial as his mother visiting Garth Hall. Yet he knew Bea was mistaken to say they had shown him the footage of his father. McCall’s story was in those seven seconds. Each and every one he would have remembered.
And if Mrs Bishop was right, it would mean he had been misled twice. However frail he was feeling, the hack in McCall wanted to chase down the lie to source. But these were raw times – for him and for Bea. He could not go in hard.
McCall found her struggling down the attic stairs with a bucket of rainwater from the leaking roof. He emptied the others for her though the effort exhausted him. She made him sit and rest with her in the kitchen. He told her he had just seen Mrs Bishop.
‘We got talking about the past and she started to tell me about the time she’d met my mother, years ago.’
‘Really? Old Mrs Bishop said that? I’m sure she’s mistaken.’
‘She seemed pretty certain to me. Said my mother had been to Garth.’
‘Never. Your parents didn’t meet until after the war and we’d all gone our separate ways by then.’
‘So my mother never visited here?’
‘No. Why ever would she?’
‘Well, Francis knew my father so he might’ve known my mother as well.’
‘It’s a bit sad really but dear old Mrs Bishop was always getting things mixed up with the housekeeping and everything. I’m afraid her memory is playing tricks again.’
Chapter Seventeen
Adultery, n.
Violation of the marriage bed, whether one’s own or another’s – Chambers’s Twentieth Century Dictionary.
It is a grubby, blowzy word, a word with a past, a word that loiters in cheap hotels or back street restaurants where alibis are cooked up.
Bea knows all this. She should feel guilt and shame but doesn’t, only a rush of anticipation as she pays off her taxi and walks the last hundred yards to Arie’s flat. It is mid afternoon, hot and dusty. She always has to ring the bell twice then cross Gower Street to wait by the bus stop opposite till she sees his curtains drawn. Arie is never less than conspiratorial, a bit shady but exciting, too.
Buses come and go. Then she sees his signal. She walks up four flights of bare wooden stairs. He waits for her in his clerk’s serge suit, as distracted as ever by matters he avoids discussing. Bea puts down the shopping bag of curtain material she has bought to explain her trip to Francis. Arie kisses her lightly on both cheeks, more brother than lover. He smells of French cigarettes and whatever he slicks on his tight gypsy curls.
‘There is tea. Would you like some?’
‘Tea, Arie? I’d hoped for something a little more risqué than that.’
‘Please Beatrice. You don’t understand how high the stakes are.”
But she does. That is what she loves about their affair. Yet how can she tell him Francis would not mind? She knows because she is certain of everything... as certain as only those who believe the world revolves around them can be.
‘I will have to go for a bottle of milk.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No. You must stay out of sight.’
‘Why? What are you afraid of?’
‘Stay here, Beatrice. Do not leave this room.’
His order allows for no dissent. She watches him go then thinks she will take a bath, cleanse herself of the city’s dirt and heat. She kicks off her high heels and lets her pleated tartan skirt fall to the floor, then the jacket and white silk blouse and each item of underwear. Her moves are slow and deliberate as she imagines those of a whore might be... brassiere, stockings, suspender belt, knickers, all cast down on the worn carpet in
this shabby little attic.
She luxuriates in the freedom of her pale nakedness – her seductive, unsuckled breasts, the smooth unstretched belly arching down to the dark reaches of her sex which yearns for Arie.
She pads softly into the narrow bathroom. The linoleum is cool to her feet. Tepid water, slightly rusty, spits down the knocking pipes and into a bath which needs bleaching. Bea leans against the door as the bath fills. The austerity of Arie’s life is clear – one chair, one plate, one suitcase. He lives like an outlaw. There is a trapdoor set in a dormer of the sloping ceiling, leading to a zigzag metal fire escape at the back of the apartments.
Arie could vanish at the ring of a bell.
This is the first time she has ever been alone in his flat. His desk is empty, which is odd. It is usually full of papers or articles he is writing. But they have all been moved away. Everything about this man still intrigues her. She peeps into his empty wardrobe, under the mattress of his metal camp bed, even in the food safe which contains nothing but an onion.
Bea shuts the door harder than she intended. Something wedged between the food safe and the wall falls to the floor. It is a brown envelope. Inside is a page ripped from a London street map and marked with three inked crosses in the area of Westminster. There are several sheets of Hebrew writing she cannot read – and a photograph.
It is of a man in his sixties with heavily framed spectacles and gun metal hair swept back from a wide, belligerent forehead. The face stares directly into the camera, tough and uncompromising. Bea recognises him immediately. This is Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Secretary. Francis introduced her at a reception after Labour beat Churchill to take power last year.
Arie says Bevin is responsible for stopping the Jews Hitler did not manage to kill from entering their homeland in Palestine. But why does he need a picture of him?
Bea hears faint footsteps on the stairs. She replaces the envelope and makes it into the bath as he opens the door. She splashes herself then wraps a towel around her waist and pulls the plug.
Tiny pearls of water course down her neck from strands of wetted black hair and run to the buds of her breasts.
Arie makes their tea at a gas ring and looks up as she leaves the bathroom. She pauses and he smiles. He comes to her. The towel falls between them. In his eyes, she sees a child, an assassin, and all the prepotent forces beyond the weakness of man to suppress. Not a word is spoken. He takes her where she stands against the wall, this gentle, violent, soldier-poet, lusting like only those who have lived with sudden death can do.
A Place Of Strangers Page 10
