The Levant Trilogy (64 page)

During the night a storm broke and, wakened by
the thunder, she went to the window and looked out on a small garden that ran
down to the lake. She could see the water in tumult and a palm tree, lashed by
the wind, bending from side to side, pliable as rubber, its fronds touching the
ground this way and that. Serpents of lightning zig-zagged across the sky and
flashed in sheets, illuming the scene with unnatural brilliance. The grass had
been flattened by rain and, as she imagined the lupin field laid low by the
torrent, she ceased to think of staying on in Galilee.

Next morning, the air glittered and the palm
tree stood upright in the sun. No sound came from the room occupied by Angela
and Castlebar. The next door was marked 'Bath' but when Harriet tried to open
it, the old woman ran from her kitchen, holding up ten fingers to indicate the
cost of a bath. Inside there was no bath but an old, rusted shower that creaked
and gasped and gave out irregular bursts of cold, brown water.

The restaurant was shut till mid-day. Walking in
the opposite direction, Harriet found beside the lake an open area planted with
pepper trees. Beneath the trees were some iron tables and chairs, wet from the
storm and as they dried, a mist rose into the delicate, lacy foliage of the
trees. The lake water was flat and clear as glass and the surrounding trees
motionless in the early morning air. A few people were sitting at the tables
drinking coffee and as Harriet waited, a waitress came with a towel and mopped
the rain from a chair and offered it to her.

Sitting happily alone beneath the shifting sun
and shade of the trees, Harriet was diverted by a flying-boat that circled the
lake and settled on the surface some fifty yards away from her. A rowing-boat
went out to pick up the passengers. They were brought to the café, a collection
of civilians with one army officer. The civilians, government officials or
journalists, passed quickly between the tables and were gone while the officer,
trudging up over the sandy floor, was left behind. He stopped in front of
Harriet.

'Well, I never, I know the Middle East is a
small world but surely the hand of fate is bringing us together.'

Wheezing and coughing through his big, fluffy
moustache, Lister dropped on to a chair and tried to seize Harriet's hand. She
slid it away from him, asking: 'What are you doing, arriving by sea-plane? Who
were the other men?'

'Box-wallahs,' Lister panted, exhausted by the
walk through the heavy sand: 'Secret mission. Trying to solve the food situation.
Very hush-hush. Everyone knows about it, of course. Everyone knows everything
here.' He coughed and spluttered before finding his voice again: 'The other
day I got into a taxi and said to the driver: "Take me to the broadcasting
station." "What you want, sah?" he asked. "You want
PBS
or you want Secret Broadcasting
Station?" I said: "How d'you know there's a secret broadcasting
station?" and the fellow roared with laughter: "Oh, sah, everyone
know secret broadcasting station.'" Lister, too, roared with laughter, his
big, soft body straining against his washed-out khaki shirt and faded corduroy
trousers. His eyes streamed and as he began coughing again, he took out a hip
flask and drank from it: 'That's better. Have to go. There's a bus picking us
up at 10.00 hours. See you in the Holy City, I expect. Oh, by the way, that
actor fellow Pratt is there. Did I tell you?'

'No. If we come, where can I find him?'

'He's at the same bunkhouse as I am, the
YMC
A. I see a lot of him but he doesn't
approve of poor old Lister. Thinks I'm fast or something. Look me up, won't
you? We'll have a blow-out. Must go. Must go.' Shifting about and squirming, he
managed to rise from his chair then, with a wave of his stick, he plodded on,
his desert boots sinking into the sand, his trousers splitting over his big
buttocks.

Jerusalem, Harriet decided, was the place for
her. With the help of Aidan and Lister, she would be able to find work in a
government office. Imagining all her problems were solved, she hurried back to
the pension and found Angela, too, preparing to set out for Jerusalem.
Castlebar had been sent to buy steak sandwiches and, soon after midday, they
had left behind them the flowers and meadows of Galilee. Angela drove up on to
the central ridge of hills to reach Nazareth where Castlebar thought they
might stop for a drink. Angela said: 'Not here. Dim little place. We'll go on
to Nablous.'

Nablous did not look much better but there was a
pool, a large tank, where boys were splashing about and making a lot of noise.

'Now this is fun,' Angela said, 'we'll stop
here.' When they had eaten their steak sandwiches, she wandered down and spoke
to the boys in Arabic. She asked how they had come by the pool and the boys
told her that a rich man had presented it to the town.

She asked when did the girls have their turn in
the water?

The girls? The boys looked confounded until one,
older than the others, as though talking to someone simple-minded, told her the
girls did not come to the pool. The girls had to stay at home and help their
mothers.

Angela came back to the car in a rage and said:
'This is a one-sex town. Let's push on to civilization.'

As they reached the end of the ridge, they
glimpsed distant towers and spires but it was not till they overlooked the
valley of Latrun that they saw the Holy City complete and radiant on its hills.
It seemed to float on a basin of mist and within its crenellated walls, the
golden dome of the Mosque of Omar radiated the evening sunlight.

There was a downdrop of hairpin bends. 'The
Seven Sisters,' Castlebar told the women. 'Notorious place for accidents,
designed by the silly Turks. This is where the horses would smell the stables
and make a dash and take the whole caboose over the edge. I hope our old moke
doesn't smell a garage.'

Angela smiled indulgently on him. 'You awful
idiot,' she said and bending to kiss him, nearly took the Alvis over the edge.

They drove down into olive groves then, rising
again, reached the outskirts of the city and came on to the Jaffa Road.

'Here we are,' Angela said and stopped the car
outside the King David Hotel.

The Jerusalem weather was still unsettled. Heavy
showers came and went, leaving on the air the scent of rosemary, but the rains
were nearly over. The sun, when it appeared, had the pleasant heat of an
English summer.

Settling down to their old routine, Harriet,
Angela and Castlebar would sit before dinner in the hotel garden and watch the
mist clear over the Jordan valley and the mountains of Moab appear,
purple-brown and wrinkled like prunes.

On the first evening, Angela was so pleased by
her surroundings that she said: 'We might spend the summer here,' and Harriet,
hoping soon to find work and pay her way, said she could think of no more
agreeable place.

'What about you, loved one?' Angela turned to
Castlebar and Castlebar, as usual, agreed with Angela.

But at dinner, her enthusiasm waned at the sight
of the strange, dark meat on her plate. She called their waiter, an Armenian,
and said: 'What on earth is it?'

The waiter was not sure. He said it could be
mutton or it could be camel.

'Mutton? Camel?' Angela cried out indignantly,
attracting the attention of the other diners: 'No one eats mutton these days.
As for camel!'

'Here, madam, we must be glad for what we can
get.' The waiter explained that the different communities conserved their food
for their own people. The Arabs fed the Arabs, the Jews the Jews, but the
British, having no one to provide for them, were always half-starved and the
hotels had to take what they could get. He, an Armenian, was not much better
off than the British so he was lucky to work where food was provided. His
manner, modest and considerate, disarmed Angela who smiled into his old, sad,
wrinkled face and said with humorous resignation: 'There's always a something,
isn't there? And I suppose you're going to tell me there's no Scotch whisky.'

'Oh, madam, there is whisky. Many kinds. You
like whisky, madam?' He asked as one asking a child if it liked chocolate.
Angela threw back her head and laughed, then said to all the interested diners:
'Isn't he sweet!' She told him he was her favourite waiter, her favourite of
all the waiters she had ever known and he smiled at her with gentle, adoring
eyes.

The Holy City was protected by a town planner.
The city was built of grey, local stone, and new buildings had to conform, but
opposite the hotel there was a red, stark structure that had somehow evaded
regulations. It was fronted by the small, neat rosemary hedges that scented
the air in wet weather. Harriet thought it was a block of municipal offices but
found it was the
YMCA.

When Angela and Castlebar were settled in the
bar, she crossed the road to enquire for Aidan Pratt.

The porter told her: 'Captain Pratt gone away.'

'And not coming back?'

'Yes, indeed, coming back. We keep his room. He
come when he come. When? Any time now, I think.'

Harriet, eager to start work, left with a sense
of hope deferred. Outside on the steps, she met Lister who gave her a riotous
welcome: 'Here she is, my lovely girl. Come to find her old Lister.'

'Well, not exactly. To tell you the truth, I was
looking for Aidan Pratt but he's away.'

'That one is always away. He thinks the War
Office sent him out on a joy-ride. Do you want him for anything special?'

'Only to see him. It's just that he's a friend
of Guy.'

'Aren't we all? Everyone's a friend of Guy.'

'When do you think Aidan will be back?'

'I don't know but I could find out. Why worry
about him when you've got your old Lister to show you round. How long will you
be in Jerusalem?'

'I'm not sure.' There was, Harriet realized, a
flaw in her plan to live and work here. Guy had friends in the city and sooner
or later, one of them would tell him where she was. She had been prepared to
take Aidan into her confidence but Lister was another matter. She could not
trust him to keep her presence secret.

He said: 'Come over to the bar and have a
drink.'

Having no reason to refuse, Harriet went with
him to the hotel, discomforted by the thought that Angela did not want to see
him again. But Angela seemed to be amused by the sight of him and when he pressed
his damp moustache ardently against the back of her hand, she asked: 'And how's
the little bum tonight?'

'Ho, ho, ho,' Lister shook all over and on the
strength of their previous acquaintance, sat down and helped himself from the
whisky bottle. His hand was shaky. It was obvious he had already reached the
talkative stage of inebriation but he said: 'First today.' Then: 'Just met
this girl looking for that actor fellow Pratt. She said he was a friend of Guy.
"Aren't we all?" I said: "Aren't we all?" Eh, eh? Not
surprising, eh?' He eulogized Guy's good fellowship, his gift of making people
feel wanted, his readiness to help anyone who needed help and so on. While he
talked, his eyes slid loosely in their sockets and several times looked to
Harriet for confirmation of what he said, expecting her to be gratified.

And, in a way, she was. Guy deserved this
praise, she could even feel proud of his deserving but the fact remained, she
had not been included in this widely bestowed generosity.

Angela listened but said nothing. Castlebar
smiled and gave Harriet a sly glance. Lister, catching the glance, shouted:
'Eh, you poetaster? What do you think? Do you agree or disagree?'

'I agree, of course.'

'Ever hear that story about the two men on the
desert island? Neither knew the other but they both knew Guy Pringle?'

'Oh, y-y-yes, frequently.'

'There you are, then! The man's a legend. Isn't
he a legend, eh?'

'Y-y-yes. Very lively legend, though.'

Mollified, Lister subsided: 'Glad you've turned
up. Nice to have someone who talks one's own language. You'll be here most
nights, I expect. Nowhere else to go, is there?'

Lister helped himself again from the bottle and
in return for hospitality, set out on a survey of Palestine as it looked to
him.

'Ideal climate this, never too hot, but awful
place, everyone hating everyone else. The Polish Jews hate the German Jews, and
the Russians hate the Polish and the German. They're all in small communities,
each one trying to corner everything for themselves: jobs, food, flats, houses.
Then there's the Orthodox Jews - they got here first and want to control the
show. The sophisticated western Jews hate the Old City types with their fur
hats and kaftans and bugger-grips. See them going round on the Sabbath trying
the shop doors to make sure no one's opened up on the quiet. All they do is
pray and bump their heads against the Wailing Wall. Their wives have to keep
them. Then all the Jews combine in hating the Arabs and the Arabs and Jews
combine in hating the British police, and the police hate the government
officials who look down on them and won't let them join the Club. What a place!
God knows who'll get it in the end but whoever it is, I don't envy them.'

Castlebar said: 'I s-s-suppose things'll settle
down when the Jews feel more secure?'

'Don't know,' Lister had said his piece and had
now started to droop. 'Hatred,' he muttered. 'Terrible thing: hatred! My nurse
used to hate me, never knew why. She used the brush on me. Bristle side. Used
to pull down m'little knickers
...'

'Not that little bum again,' Angela interrupted
sharply and Lister gave her a hurt look, then sank forward on his stick. A tear
trickled down his cheek.

'No sympathy. No understanding
..."

'Come on,' Angela ordered Castlebar who
protested: 'But the bottle's still a quarter full.'

'Let him have it. You drink too much, anyway.
How about you, Harriet?'

'I'm coming.' Looking back, Harriet saw Lister
abstractedly refilling his glass. She expected a reprimand from Angela but
Angela said only: 'I suppose we'll have him every night,' and sighed as she
went into the lift.

Lister was, as she had feared, a nightly visitor
to the bar but he also escorted Harriet on sight-seeing trips while Angela and
Castlebar spent the afternoons in their room. Angela lent Lister the car and he
drove Harriet to Bethlehem to see the Church of the Nativity and a cave made
gaudy with velvets, brocades, ikons, holy pictures and bejewelled gewgaws that
claimed to be the manger where Christ was born. They went westward down through
the orange groves to Jaffa and eastward through the desert to Jericho and the
Dead Sea. All these trips were described in the evening to Angela who was
content to listen and see nothing, but there was one event that roused her
interest. The Armenian waiter had told her about the great ceremony of the
Greek church, the Ceremony of the Holy Fire.

Lister eagerly agreed: 'Mustn't miss it, even if
you have to camp in the church all night.' He said nothing more but a few days
later he arrived with an air of smiling complacency that had in it a slight
hauteur. Even his limp had acquired majesty. Bowing first to Angela, then to
Harriet and to Castlebar, he said: 'I have done the impossible. I have obtained
tickets for the Holy Fire; and ask you to honour me by coming as my guests.'

Gratified by their grateful acceptance, he went
to the bar and bought drinks for everyone. 'This year,' he explained in a somewhat
lofty fashion, 'the police are going to control the show. There will be no
fighting to get in, no violence or people getting killed. Admission will be by
invitation only.'

'But won't that spoil things?' Angela said.

'Not a bit. The hoi-polloi will simply have to
wait till the ticket holders are seated then they'll be admitted in an orderly
manner. There'll be a special entrance for distinguished visitors, among whom
will be
...'
he lifted Angela's hand,
then Harriet's, and having kissed them both, simpered at them:
'...
will be these two lovely ladies.'

Harriet asked: 'How did you get the tickets?'

'Never mind. There are ways and means,
if
one has influence.' Lister maintained his dignity for the rest of the evening,
leaving the bar while still reasonably sober and making no further mention of
his little bum. He refused to disclose how he had obtained the tickets but
Angela learnt from her friend, the Armenian waiter, that batches of
invitations had been sent out to the different orders of Jerusalem society: the
government officials, the military and the religious sects - the Greeks, the
Roman Catholics, the Copts, the Armenians and even the lowly Abyssinians who
were so poor, they had been pushed out of the interior of the church but had
managed to keep a foothold on the roof. 'The roof of what?' Angela asked.

'Why, madam, the roof of the church. The Holy
Sepulchre.'

Lister, when tackled by Angela, admitted he had
applied for four of the military allotment and had been granted them. 'Quite an
achievement, eh? Getting all four?' He produced the tickets and allowed his
guests to examine them then, with the air of a munificent host, put them back
in his wallet. He impressed on them the need to make an early start. Though the
onlookers would be organized, nothing could organize the Greek patriarch.

'The show begins when the old boy chooses to
turn up, and that could be any time. Want to get in at the start, don't we?
It'll be a great occasion, a great occasion.'

Lister, in his state of expansive authority,
remained as near sober as he ever was. The only thing troubling him was his
gout.