The Levant Trilogy (66 page)

Guy could see that Aidan did want it, though he
had little hope of it. The smile that had lingered on his face faded as he
contemplated a lifetime of war and he said: 'I believe a good many people
want it but, of course, they won't admit it. Look what the war has done to us
all! You've lost Harriet. I've lost my future as an actor, everything that
mattered to me. Do you remember that night in Alex when Harriet said she had
seen me as Konstantin in
The Seagull?
How
moved she had been! She said she was spellbound. On the first night, I said to
myself, "Now it's all beginning," and less than three months later,
it had ended. I declared myself a conscientious objector and I was directed on
to that ship taking the children to Canada
...'
Aidan's voice failed and Guy, not unfeeling, said: 'It'll end sometime. We'll
begin again.'

'But too late for me. I'll just be another
out-of-work actor.'

'You think you'll be forgotten so soon?'

'I'd scarcely done enough to be remembered as more
than promising. And I'll be edging into middle-age. Too late to be promising.
In the theatre, if you don't start young, you might as well not start at all.'

Guy shook his head slowly, having no consolation
to offer. As they walked to the station, Aidan broke their silence to ask: 'Did
you mean that about the Hundred Years War?'

'Not really, no. But however long it lasts, what
is lost, is lost. Things won't be returned to us. I forgot to tell you: Harriet
left something for you - one of those Egyptian votive figures. A cat. She said
you'd asked her to keep it for you.'

'Yes, I bought it for my mother.'

'Well, it's at the flat. I'll send it to you.'

They became silent again for some minutes then
Guy said:

'I've been reading Pater's
Imaginary Portraits.
He says that the
Greeks had a special word for the Fate that leads one to a violent end. It's
Κήρ
- the extraordinary destiny. It comes out to the cradle and
follows the doomed man all the way: "over the waves, through powder and
shot, through the rose gardens
..
."'

'The rose gardens!' Aidan jerked out a laugh:
'Aren't we all being followed through the rose gardens? One way or another,
we're all due for a violent end. But do you think Harriet suffered an
extraordinary destiny?'

'Who knows what happened on that ship?'

'Do you mean cannibalism? I assure you that in
our boat, no one even thought of it.'

'No, I didn't mean cannibalism. She probably
didn't even get into the life-boat. Just think of them all fighting for their
lives. She was thin and weak. She'd been ill. She wouldn't've stood a chance.'

Aidan did not answer. They had reached the
station and when he had found his berth in the sleeping-car, he stood in the
corridor to say goodbye. Guy, looking at him from the platform, said: 'If you
give me your address in Jerusalem, I'll post the cat to you.'

'Why don't you bring it yourself? You must have
some leave due to you. Come and spend a week in Palestine. Jerusalem is a
lovely place, just like a Cotswold town. A holiday will do you good. Take your
mind off things.'

'No.' Guy spoke firmly. He had seen enough of
Aidan for the time being and the remarks about Spain still irked him. He had
decided to see less of him in future. There would be no scope for personal
fantasies about a relationship that could never exist. Stepping back from the
carriage, he said: 'I won't wait any longer. I'll be off.'

Aidan could not let him go so easily. Putting
his arm out through the open window, he leant forward to touch
Guy,
pleading with him: 'Do come to
Jerusalem
...'
Before Aidan's hand
could touch him, Guy took another step back.

Looking at Aidan's eager, unhappy face, he shook
his head: 'It's out of the question. I'm much too busy. What is your address?'

'I'm at the
YMCA.
Are you sure you won't come?'

'Quite sure.'

'Perhaps later. In the summer. It's an ideal
summer climate.'

'No, I haven't time for holidays.'

'Or for me?'

Guy laughed, treating the question as a joke,
and Aidan, his dark eyes pained, stared at him and gave a long sigh. Saying,
'Then goodbye, Guy,' he turned and shut himself in his berth.

Guy sensed the finality in that 'goodbye' and
approved it. He would prefer not to see Aidan again. He had no wish to hurt him
but what was more hurtful than the pursuit of hopeless illusions? Outside the
station, he realized he had not answered Aidan and he said to himself:
'Goodbye, goodbye'.

A clean break, a tidy break, he thought as he
set out on the long walk through the town to Garden City.

The invitation to the Holy Fire completely
changed Angela's attitude towards Lister. Castlebar sometimes grumbled about
him, saying: 'Do we want that fat fool drinking our whisky every night?' Angela
now put a stop to these complaints. 'I won't hear a word against him. He's my
favourite man.'

Lister, flattered by her, seemed to melt into
self-satisfaction and was constantly lifting her hand to his wet moustache.
Everything he did seemed to amuse her. She made him repeat his limericks that were
less witty and more scatalogical than Castlebar's. Harriet thought them abject
but to Angela they were wildly funny and she demanded more and more. Lister's
pride rose to such a point, he decided to give a party.

'Small party. Nothing grand. Hope to see you in
my room at 18.00 hours. Eh?'

Lister's room could not have held a larger
party. He had invited a Wren officer on leave from Alexandria and the guests
were somehow packed in with the bed, wardrobe, small table and single chair.
The Wren, as newcomer, was given the chair and Castlebar stood, hanging over
her. A strip of carpet ran from chair to table and on the table there was a
bottle of gin.

Harriet and Angela were to sit beside Lister on
the bed. Before sitting down, Angela examined the ornamental label on the gin
bottle and read:

IN
MEMORIAM GIN

Bottled by H M King
George VI at Balmoral, England and Shipped by Messrs Ramatoola, New Delhi,
India.

She asked: 'Where on earth did you get that?' In
a lofty tone, Lister said: 'I have my contacts.' Angela told Castlebar: 'Gin
doesn't agree with you,' but Castle-

bar was not listening. Standing very close to
the pretty Wren, he said that as she was a sailor, she ought to know some sea
shanties. Cheerful and obliging, the girl sang 'Roll out the Barrel' while
Castlebar kept time with his forefinger. Though he seemed absorbed by the
singing, he slipped away every few minutes and tip-toed along the carpet to top
up his glass. Returning with the same tip-tippity step, he kept his finger
waving to cover his excursions to the bottle.

Angela watched anxiously as the line of his
steps was impressed on the carpet and whispered to Harriet: 'That stuff will
kill him.'

It was also having an effect upon Lister who was
beginning to hark back to ancient wrongs. He told the room that there had been
a 'super tart' staying at the King David the previous Christmas. He had
decided to give himself a Christmas present of a session with the lady but -
here his voice started to break: 'She wanted so much money, I couldn't afford
it. I said: "Season of good-will. Come on, do a chap a good turn,"
but she wouldn't drop her
..."
Lister ended on a sob.

'Wouldn't drop her what?' Angela asked crossly.

'Price,' Lister gulped.

Angela shouted to Castlebar: 'Time to go, Bill.'

He was led out of the YMCA in a dazed state and
half-way across the road he sank down on to his knees. Pulling him to his feet,
Angela demanded: 'What was that stuff you were drinking? Some sort of bootleg
poison, from the look of it.'

'Very strong,' Castlebar mumbled: 'Only needed a
sip to knock a fellow out.'

Angela ordered him to bed. When he was not well
enough to appear for supper, she confided to Harriet: 'I don't know what I'd do
if anything happened to Bill.'

The next day was the day of the ceremony. Before
Harriet had finished her breakfast, Lister arrived, eager to be off. In his
impatience, he left the hotel and walked up and down in the early sunlight
while Harriet telephoned through to Angela, urging her to come down.

Lister was wearing his cap at a jaunty angle,
the peak over one eye, but beneath it, his face was strained and he paused
every now and then to look down at the desert boot which held his gouty toe.

It was nearly nine before the party set out.
When they reached the Jaffa Gate, crowds were passing through it on their way
to the Holy Sepulchre - or so Lister said. He had forgotten that the ceremony
had been organized by the police and kept saying there would be no room for
them in the church.

Just inside the gate, where meat stalls imbued
the air with a smell like a rotting corpse, Angela stopped to laugh at a single
piece of black meat which hung in a mist of flies. The owner, supposing her to
be a customer, hurried out with his flit gun and sprayed the meat. Angela
started to chaff him in Arabic and Lister, beside himself with anxiety,
gripped her upper arm and urged her on, saying: 'It'll be your fault if we miss
the show.'

Elbowed by all the races of Palestine, they pushed
a way through the main alley that ran deeply between buildings that almost
touched in the upper air. Lister, hurrying his party on, realized he did not
know the way to the basilica. He began to force them wildly this way and that,
first through the fruit market, then the spice market, then into the bazaar of
the metal workers where the air rasped with the smell of white hot steel.

Lister, his voice thin, cried: 'This isn't
right. Where are we? Where are we?'

Angela stopped at a curio shop and began to pick
over antique fire-arms, their butts decorated with silver and brass and semiprecious
stones. When she said: 'One of these might frighten Bill's wife,' Lister limped
on in disgust.

'We're lost,' he said. 'We've taken the wrong
turning,' and he looked for someone who might give them directions. A camel
passed, shaking its tasselled head; donkeys were pushed through spaces too
small for their loads. Female beggars, their faces covered with black and
white veils, plucked at his arm and he shied away, thinking they were lepers.
At
last a man in a European suit came round
a corner and Lister stopped in front of him. The man was a Greek. Finding that
Lister understood modern Greek, the man began to rage at him then, suddenly
becoming all courtesy and smiles, directed him to the basilica.

'What was that about?' Angela asked.

'Oh, he was complaining about police
interference. He said no person of decent feeling would go near the basilica
this year. It's his opinion that if people want to be trampled underfoot, no
one has a right to stop them. Anyway, he thinks we should go through the Via
Dolorosa.'

In the Via Dolorosa a procession was advancing
slowly over the spacious, creamy flagstones, led by a bespectacled cardinal in
magenta canonicals. Lister saluted and the cardinal bowed towards him.

'Who was that?' Harriet whispered.

Lister replied with modest satisfaction:
'Spellman. Friend of mine.'

They came into the Greek quarter which was
strangely clean, empty and silent. Immense black coffin lids stood upright by
the doors of undertakers and small shops were filled with silk vestments and
olive wood camels. There was a scent of incense in the air and Lister said: 'At
last.'

Somewhere, hidden by the buildings that crowded
about it, was the basilica. They found it at the bottom of a narrow turning.
Seeing the great, carved door amidst the crumbling splendour of the facade,
Lister gave a shout of triumph: 'Here we are, and not a soul going in. We'll
have the whole place to ourselves.'

But the door was shut. A barrier had been
erected across it and two policemen sat in front of it. They observed Lister
with a contemptuous blankness as he took out his tickets and advanced upon
them. The door was not an entrance; it was an exit. Lister and his party must
return to the Via Dolorosa and start again.

Lister stood for a moment, stunned, then tried
to pull rank. He claimed friendship with the Greek Metropolitan and with
Cardinal Spellman. He said he knew the Chief of Police. He said the ladies were
tired and one of them had been very ill. The police could not be moved.
Ticket-holders, like everyone else, must enter by the main door.

Lister, who had advanced so confidently, now
limped back with a pained and foolish air. Reaching his guests, he said in a
low voice: 'Damned self-important nobodys. Just as I told you. Everyone
despises them so they try to get their own back. Bunch of conchies, most of
them. Shipped out here because they're no good for anything else. One of them
was a ballet dancer. Think of it, a policeman ballet dancer!' Lister tried to
laugh and Harriet was sadly aware that he had suffered such defeats all his
life.

The din around the main door was heard long
before they found the way to it. Almost at once they came up against a closely
packed crowd and could go no farther. Lister, trying to push through, demanded
passage for ticket-holders. No one moved.

A Greek in the back row turned to tell him that
people were wedged together for half a mile or more. Some had been waiting
since dawn. Some had been there all night.

'But why are they waiting?' Lister asked: 'Why
don't they go into the church?'

'Because the door's locked and there's a barrier
across it. A police barrier,' said the Greek, spitting his contempt.

'How long are they going to keep us here?'

He was told they would have to remain till the
Armenian patriarch arrived. The door belonged to the Armenians, the patriarch
kept the key, and only he had the right to unlock it.

While this talk went on, more people had arrived
so Lister's party had ceased to be at the back of the crowd and now was in the
midst of it. As those at the rear tried to push forward, the English visitors
were wedged into a solid mass of bodies and Harriet, more frail than the
others, could not free her arms. Her face was pressed against sweaty clothing
and she had to rise on tiptoe to get air to breathe.

More and more people arrived and as the pressure
grew, some of the older women began to moan, fearful of what would happen when
there was a move. A batch of Greek soldiers, finding the way blocked, tried to
prise themselves into the crowd with their elbows. Eyes were struck, arms came
down like hammer blows on heads and shoulders, and there were screams of pain
and wrath. A woman began to pray and others took up her prayer. The screaming,
the prayers of the women, the moans of those held prisoner and gasping for
breath, caused waves of panic to pass backward and forward through the
congested bodies.

Angela clung to Castlebar. Harriet, crushed and
nearly senseless, remained upright simply because there was no room to fall.
Lister, pressing his arm in between her body and the one behind, gripped her
round the waist and catching her elbow on the other side, whispered: 'When the
rush starts, hold on to me.'

There was a cannonade of hisses and enraged
insults and word came back that the Armenian patriarch was about to unlock the
door. Lister, a head taller than those about him, laughed and said: 'The old
fool's skipped inside pretty quick. Scared out of his black socks.
Notvl
Keep hold of me!' But the door
was shut again and the enraged Greeks shouted: 'Break down the barrier!' As a
drive like a battering ram struck the rear of the crowd, one old woman began to
call on God and her cry was taken up by men as well as women. People pleaded:
'Let us out. Let us out,' and Harriet, clinging to Lister, felt the same
primitive urge to call on God, the last resort of them all.

The barrier crashed down. The crowd toppled
forward and as the police shouted warnings and the Greek soldiers howled as
though rushing into battle, Lister gathered Harriet into his arms and shouted
to her: 'Stay upright. Whatever you do, don't let them knock you down.'

People pelted past them, striking against them
like rocks rushing downhill. One furious blow knocked Harriet out of Lister's
arms but he caught her wrist as she fell and held on to her until she was
afraid the bone would break. Then another blow sent them spinning together into
a curio shop. Crashing through the candles that hung over the doorway,
scattering rosaries, crucifixes, olive wood boxes, baskets of Jericho roses,
they fell into a corner with a table on top of them.

Shaken but unhurt, they were helped up by the
shopkeeper who said: 'The police will pay for this. They caused this trouble,
so we'll make them pay.'

'And serve them bloody well right,' said Lister.

Laughing and forgetting to limp, he kept his arm
round Harriet as they made their way to the churchyard where the soldiers were
breaking up a paling intended to keep the visitors in an orderly queue. The
police had taken themselves off, leaving the Greeks free to smash whatever
could be smashed. The front of the basilica, riven by age and earthquakes, was
held up by wooden struts and these, too, were attacked until a priest came out
and demanded a stop.

There was no sign of Angela and Castlebar. 'How
will they get in?' asked Lister anxiously as he brought out his tickets, but no
one was taking tickets. Inside the porch, a black-clad Armenian monk stood
guard over the Armenian door, fiercely observing everyone who passed through
it. Inside the church there was chill and quiet. To add to the drama of the
occasion, all the candles had been extinguished and the place was in darkness.
As Harriet and Lister made their way blindly forward, they were met by a
major-domo with a silver-headed stick. Finding they had tickets, he conducted
them in a formal manner to the chairs reserved for distinguished visitors. So
far the only distinguished visitor present was Angela. She had lost Castlebar
and Lister was sent off in search of him.