Excited voices passed the news along the street. There was a tapping at shutters, tapping on doors. Voices cried: “UNO voted 33 to 13! We’ve won!” Some children raced along the street beating on saucepans with sticks, and chanting: “33 to 13, 33 to 13!”
Lawton found his duty driver crouched over the car radio, listening to the tail end of the BBC news.
“That’s done it, Sir,” he said. “They’ve won the UNO vote.”
Lawton didn’t reply, but climbed into the car with a dispirited air and allowed himself to be driven back to his office.
The thought of Grete afflicted him; he dreaded the coming interview. Mentally he rehearsed various ways of breaking the news to her, dismissing them one after the other as foolish or inadequate. Should he perhaps just walk in and say, “He’s dead and he’s taken his secret with him.” That would sound melodramatic. Or should he simply say, “I have bad news for you. Please remain calm.”
For a moment, hovering between these various possibilities, he was tempted to turn coward and ring her up. Nevertheless, he found himself at last opening the door of his office and confronting the figure that rose to meet him from the ugly leather armchair. He found that he did not need to speak. She divined everything from his expression. As he stood staring at her, she read his face with its expression of commiseration like a book.
“It’s something bad, isn’t it? What is it, is he dead?”
He nodded.
“Did the Jews...?” She stopped and bit her lip.
“Suicide,” said Lawton tersely, finding his voice. Then she echoed the word on a sharp, plaintive note. She had turned pale now and whispered:
“Did he leave any message?”
“None,” said Lawton bitterly. “Nothing. Not a trace.”
She swayed and he caught her by the forearm and put her firmly down in the armchair. Here she sat, staring in a dazed abstraction at the further wall, completely still, except that her fingers plucked and picked at a tassel on the chair.
Lawton, feeling all at once clumsy, crossed to his desk and from the bottom of it extracted a bottle of whisky and a siphon of soda. He mixed a stiff drink, and without a word put it into her hand. She raised it to her lips and her teeth chattered against the rim of the glass. Then suddenly she burst out:
“I can’t believe it!”
“Drink that up,” said Lawton.
He was walking up and down before her on the carpet now, slowly, like a monomaniac. His face looked lined and tired. Outside, the night sky above Jerusalem had begun to hiss and crackle and change colour. He drew the heavy curtains and they found themselves staring out on an extraordinary night panorama of light and smoke.
She did not appear to care enough to ask the cause of this explosion of coloured light. He took the glass from her hand, put it on the desk and said:
“Come, I’m going to take you home.”
She obeyed him like a somnambulist, and together they walked down the dark staircase of the office. He had forgotten to retain the duty car, but at the street corner they picked up one of those ancient horse-drawn carriages which still did duty for taxis in Jerusalem. She sat, her arm inside his, but completely silent as they drove through the streets of the old town, which were now filling up with eager and excited people. From the Arab quarter, however, there was a noise of counter-demonstrations and the harsh scratching of Radio Cairo calling for the death and destruction of the Jews.
Now and again in the winding streets of the town, under this canopy of light, the carriage was almost brought to a halt by surging crowds shouting good-naturedly to them, “33 to 13!” And here and there an excited Jew cried to Lawton, “Britain, go home!”
The girl sat absolutely still and white as death, hardly taking anything in, until at last they reached the flat. Her teeth had begun to chatter now and, as they climbed the stairs, Lawton put his hand on her forehead to see if she gave any signs of fever.
Once in the flat she threw herself onto the sofa and, giving one long wretched moan, buried her face in the cushions. Lawton stood watching her, undecided. He felt awkward, helpless, furious. Should he perhaps insist that she go to bed? He lit a cigarette and walked to the window.
“Grete,” he said, “will you try and get some sleep?”
She did not answer and, as he was staring irresolutely at her, he heard the crisp note of the doorbell. Who could be calling at this time of night? He threw up the window and strained forward. Outside the block of flats on the pavement stood a small attentive-looking figure in the white robes of a Dominican priest. It did not look up, perhaps because the noise of the fireworks had drowned the sound of the window being opened.
Lawton crossed with swift steps to the hall and pressed the button which would release the front door spring. Then he returned to the sitting-room and said:
“Grete, there’s a priest coming up the stairs. Do you know who he might be?”
She did not hear him, and he crossed the room to shake her by the shoulder as he repeated the phrase. She raised her white tormented face and said incoherently:
“What priest?”
And as if in answer to her question, Father Gaudier was suddenly there. He materialized, or so it seemed, in the doorway of the room, his small white hands clasped in front of him. He was breathing rather hard from his exertions. He uttered her name on a note of interrogation with a kind of child-like submissiveness. He was a small and rugged little man, with a round cropped head of the type which is designated Alpine by ethnographers. His dark hair was cut en brosse, his skin was brown and tanned. His eyes were of the bright blueness of periwinkles. His manner suggested simplicity without archness, and he darted swift interrogative glances from Grete to the soldier and back again to Grete, smiling his simple smile. It took a few seconds only to register his appearance, but already the girl had scrambled into a sitting posture and made a desultory attempt to arrange her hair.
Lawton stood up and, feeling somewhat uncertain of himself, contented himself with a gruff “Good evening” and a short nod of the head.
The priest advanced with an air of uncertainty into the centre of the room and concentrated his glance upon Grete.
“I have some news for you,” he said.
“News?”
“I wonder if I might talk to you,” he said. “I was called to confess a man called Schiller late last night.”
The words had a mesmeric effect upon Grete. She rose from her seat white-faced and anxious. The little priest still smiled with his head on one side. His presence radiated a sort of doll-like composure. Lawton noticed his dusty little toes in their worn sandals.
“I think,” said the little man, “it would be better if I could see you alone for a few moments.”
Lawton took his point and instantly said:
“Of course. I shall be on my way. Good-night, Grete.”
“Oh, don’t run away,” said Father Gaudier. “What I have to say will not take long.”
But Lawton, despite his curiosity, gave them a cheerful “That’s all right” and closed the front door of the flat behind him, to leave the two of them alone.
Grete had clasped her hands in front of her body as she stared fixedly into the blue eyes of the priest. Father Gaudier, as if with a subconscious intention of reducing her obvious anxiety at what he might be about to reveal, came softly towards her and put two fingers of his right hand on her wrist. As if by his impulsion, she sat down once more and the priest took his place beside her, with his fingers still upon her hand.
“What did he tell you?” she managed at last to get out.
“May I smoke?” asked Gaudier humbly in a low voice.
“Of course.”
He helped himself to a cigarette from the enamel box on the table before them and thoughtfully blew a streamer of smoke into the air where it hung, slowly dispersing.
“He told me,” he said in a small, unemotional voice, “everything he could about his life and about yours. He committed many grievous sins,
my dear, and like all sinners was more to be pitied than hated.”
“He promised to tell me about the child,” said Grete, in a voice which had a hysterical edge to it.
“Almost the only thing he did not tell me,” said Father Gaudier with an air of pensive reproach, “was that he intended to commit suicide.”
“And even that did not make sense,” she cried bitterly. “It was simply to cheat me. I knew the child was alive somewhere.”
The priest coughed behind his hand, doubling it up into a grubby little paw.
“That is what I came to talk about,” he said. “It is very cruel and very ugly and will cause you great suffering, but from what he told me I know that beyond a shadow of a doubt your child is dead. In fact he asked me to tell you.”
The centre of numbness in the middle of her mind gradually overflowed to encompass her whole body. It overflowed like ink or blood on her carpet and she felt spreading through her a slowly expanding stain of something like amnesia. The phrase had turned her into a pillar of salt.
The little priest did not take his eyes from her face.
“If I tell you that he showed remorse,” he said, “I would not expect you to believe it; indeed, I hardly know whether to believe it myself. With a man so complicated it is always difficult to determine these things. He himself would not have been able to tell us whether he was play-acting or not. He somehow did not know where to find his own feelings or how to interpret them.”
Grete was not really listening, but she was grateful for the sound of his low voice and the cool sympathetic feel of his fingers on her wrist. The priest sighed and went on, almost as if he were talking to himself:
“It makes one wonder whether the consciousness of good and evil is the fruit of instruction or whether it’s inherited like an instinct. Nobody can answer this one. Are there people born without souls? I have met a few people who made me almost believe it — almost, but not quite.”
“Can a man who believes in nothing believe in God?” she asked bitterly. “Or rather, could a man who believed in the Nazi party do so?”
Father Gaudier shook his head with a puzzled air, as though all these questions belonged somehow to the rhetoric of theology which was outside the orbit of ordinary human actions.
“The human heart,” he said helplessly, as if confronting the central enigma of his own profession. “It has no bottom, it has no top, no centre and no sides.”
Holding her voice very steady, and wearing an artificial expression of composure, she said:
“You’re sure about the child...
“Completely sure,” he replied.
She got up, and very slowly walked across the room towards the window where the night sky still danced and flickered over the newly-born Israel. Her numbness had intoxicated her and had conveyed a kind of slow unsteadiness to her walk, which was the walk of drunkenness or pregnancy. She turned suddenly and looked across the room at Father Gaudier, who still watched her, head on one side like a diminutive spaniel.
“My God, how strange,” she said. “After so many years of longing and wondering, all I can feel now is an intense relief. Would you have expected that?”
“Yes,” said the priest.
“I feel so ashamed,” she said.
The priest stubbed out his cigarette and said in his level voice:
“You’ll begin to cry tomorrow — or the day after. Perhaps even next week. Or next year. Just now it is all over and you’re free from an incubus. Isn’t that so?”
“And yet a door has closed on everything I care about,” she said.
The priest stood up and flicked some ash off his soutane with his fingers.
“No door can shut,” he said, “without another opening somewhere. Life is beautifully arranged. Or perhaps I should say a devilishly well-organized affair.”
“Look,” said Grete... “I must know how it happened, where, when. I must.”
“Typhoid... Dachau,” said the little man.
22
Pulling Out
The ADC opened the side door and admitted Lawton to the gallery which ran around the reception rooms of Government House.
“H.E.’s out on the terrace,” he said.
Lawton followed him across the long room with its blazing chandeliers and heavy pile carpets. The long mirrors reflected back his lean form with its nervous long hands and preoccupied face.
“I think,” said the ADC, “H.E. is going to make honourable amends.”
“For what?” said Lawton in surprise.
“Well, for having disregarded all your political analyses of the last year. You’ll be able to say ‘I told you so’ with a vengeance. That will be pleasurable, no?”
“No pleasure at all,” said Lawton curtly.
H.E. was sitting on the terrace, staring thoughtfully at the firework display which still burst and scattered over Jerusalem. The aroma of his Juliet hung in the still night air.
“Ah, there you are,” he said pleasantly. “Come and sit down.”
He vaguely indicated a soda siphon and bottles on a side table and Lawton, according to long-established custom, crossed to make himself a drink, saying as he did so:
“I’m sorry about the rush, Sir. I didn’t expect to go on such short notice. The cable came through this afternoon and I’m to leave tomorrow.”
“So I understand,” said H.E. Then he added awkwardly, “I’m afraid you must think I’ve been rather a doubting Thomas... I mean, about your Intel reports.”
Lawton sat down and said equably:
“Political judgment is a queer thing. I could easily have been wrong, Sir, and you right.”
“Yes,” said H.E. handsomely, “but it’s my duty to be right, d’you see? And I was wrong.”
A note of vexation came into his voice.
“What do you see in store for us now?” he said. “You might as well give me the benefit of a parting word, eh?”
Lawton accepted a cigar from the inlaid sandalwood box.
“Well,” he said, “since my responsibility’s over, I suppose I can indulge in a bit of fortune telling. That’s about all it would be.”
“This time I’ll pay careful heed,” said H.E. “What do you predict?”
Lawton considered for a second and then said:
“Within three weeks, at the outside, we’ll all be pulled out of here to leave a vacuum into which eight Arab armies are going to get sucked.”
“And then?”
“War,” said Lawton laconically. “What I can’t tell you is whether the Jews or the Israelis, as they’re now called, can defend themselves. That will have to be seen. But none of us will be here to see it, unfortunately.”
H.E. got up and walked up and down the terrace slowly and ponderously, reflecting. His elegant and discontented face with its handsome head of grey hair was still part-turned towards Jerusalem. At this moment the ADC appeared in the lighted patch by the great French windows and said:
“Forgive me, Sir, London is on the wire. It’s the personal line. Secretary of State’s office.” Lawton finished his drink and rose.
“The Secretary of State?” said H.E. on a rising note.
The two men exchanged a quizzical and ironic glance.
“That’s probably our marching orders,” said H.E.
Extending his hand, he shook hands with unaccustomed warmth and added with unexpected generosity: “Good luck, Major. I wish we’d made better use of your brains.”
The words echoed pleasurably in Lawton’s mind as the duty car jogged him back to Jerusalem. Well, even a bloody fool can be a gentleman, he thought, and that was something. His thoughts reverted to Grete as he had last seen her, standing with an air of white-faced uncertainty while the little priest smiled at her from the sitting-room door of the flat. Perhaps this was the best way. After all, there was nothing left to say to her. He would leave without a word. It was idle to continue tormenting himself on her behalf, and of tantalizing himself by seeing her.
He climbed stiffly out of the car at the gate of his private villa and walked slowly up the path to the front door. Jenkins, his batman, had the evening off, so he was forced to use a latch key. The little villa smelled musty and his bedroom was full of mosquitoes. He hauled a couple of dusty suitcases out of the wardrobe and began to pack his few belongings. This did not take him long. Then he went to the telephone and asked the duty operator at the office to call him at four.
“I have a six o’clock flight from Lydda,” he explained.
Then he stood for a moment, irresolutely looking at the carpet and wondering whether he was tired enough to go to bed there and then.
Suddenly the phone rang. It was Grete. But her voice sounded changed. It had a queer note in it — he frowned as he tried to identify it. Was he wrong, or was there a suggestion of exultation, of relief, almost of triumph?
“What is it?” he said anxiously. “You sound so different.”
“I wanted to ask you if you were doing anything tonight,” she said. “I simply must go out. I can’t sit at home for the rest of the evening. Are you free?”
“Yes,” he said.
In fact, he cursed himself for his lack of resolution. He could easily have made some excuse; and then by morning he would have gone and a whole new cycle would have started. He was beginning to realize that, while he loved Grete, something in him also wanted to be rid of this encumbering, futile, rather sterile emotion which was doomed for lack of a response in her.
“By the way,” he said. “I’m off in the morning very early.”
The expression of her dismay seemed very pleasurable to him. “So soon?” she said in a hollow tone.
“I’ve been expecting it,” he replied. “We both have.”
“India is so far away,” she said.
He ignored the remark and said simply, “Where do we meet, and when?”
Judith Page 26
