Barbara was outside the context of worry. She sighed and said, ‘Freddy, dear, you’re sweet.’ Whereupon he beamed round at her.
‘You have such trouble for your religion,’ Suzi said, ‘but you were clever to become a Catholic rather than remain a Jew, as the Jews get in trouble from the Christians as well as the Arabs. It is no life to be a Jew. I would do like you if I was to be in your place.’
‘Oh, but she believes in it,’ Freddy said. ‘It’s a matter of conviction, isn’t it, Barbara?’
‘I suppose it is,’ she said, ‘but at the moment I don’t feel conviction about anything.’ The air was breathless.
‘Oh, at the moment, naturally — That’s one of the things the sermon was about, you remember. He said, “Don’t trust your feelings,” or “Don’t judge by your feelings when you’re out here in this heat” — something like that — remember?’
‘No, I don’t remember a thing.’
‘Did you convert to be a Catholic on account of a feeling?’ Suzi said.
‘No, I took a long time to make up my mind.’
‘You did right and clever. I would do the same if —’
‘Her religion’s sincere, I’m sure,’ Freddy said.
‘I do not say insincere. I say she did right and she did clever. I am most sincere, believing myself in religion, but I also do correctly and a clever thing to remain a Moslem in any country where Moslem is O.K.’
Freddy began, ‘But look —’
‘Leave us alone, Freddy,’ Barbara said.
‘It’s too bad that you have to suffer for your pilgrimage,’ Suzi rattled on. ‘The Moslems, too, suffer for pilgrimages maybe and maybe not, some have a jolly good time on these journeys. But you believe, that I know, you have Jesus to be God and he was crucified and suffered for your sins; isn’t it so?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well you say he took your sins upon him. The Christians say he took all this blame and suffered for it in their place. So if you have these misfortunes now, it is not your blame at all. You have no sins whatsoever to suffer for, as your God Jesus has taken these sins. Therefore all your suffering and inconvenience of scarlet fever is God’s blame.’
Her logical premise at an end, she said, ‘Keep down, we come to the Dead Sea Hotel.’ Barbara glimpsed through her veil and the quivering heat of the air, the great expanse of the steel-blue salt lake and a lonely structure, the hotel, and saw before she curled up, a white-shirted young man on a veranda, idly peeling the paint off green wooden supports. The car slowed down but did not stop. It cruised along while Suzi said, ‘I take my tourist for a view of the Dead Sea only, as there is a Secret Service boy on the veranda at a table and there must be men inside. Look only at the spots across the lake that I am pointing to, Freddy. Keep down, Barbara. We see what we see.’ In a few minutes the car had begun to put on speed and soon Suzi said, ‘You can sit up again now. I shall tell you if any car follows or passes.’
Barbara longed for a drink. Freddy said, ‘I’m thirsty — I don’t know about you girls. It was madness of me not to bring something.’
‘It’s God’s blame, as I said. But never mind; we go to Jericho very quick,’ Suzi said. ‘In Jericho is the most ravishing beautiful water. I will get you to Jericho as I have promised Alexandros.’
Freddy started to sing again. It was one of the things that puzzled him most, and shocked him, when these incidents came back to mind after his lapse of memory, that he sang quite a lot on the way to Jericho. He was to remember it clearly with a sense of special irresponsibility: ‘But why was I singing?’
The house at Jericho was some distance from the town. Nobody came out to welcome them, as if, Freddy thought, by special arrangement, or by habitual practice. Suzi hurried Barbara indoors and disappeared at the back of the house. Freddy followed with his zipper-bag and stood waiting in the large room into which the front door opened. The floor was tiled with a chipped but attractive bird design, which suggested that the clay-like fabric of the house had been set on ancient foundations. A round dining-table stood in the middle of the floor, surrounded by chairs. Freddy presently pulled one chair out and sat down with his zipper-bag on the floor beside him, gazing out of the open door into the sandy forecourt where a palm-tree, Suzi’s car, and a primitive well were the only visible objects.
There were three other doors in this room, one in each wall, leading, as Freddy correctly assumed, to three different wings of the house. The old foundations had probably been laid in the form of a cross by some Crusader mission or a later Christian community, and the house was no doubt built on the site of a church or a chapel within a larger place of worship. The door through which Suzi had hustled Barbara was the one opposite the front entrance. A small sound of voices came from this direction, as if they were quite a long way off, behind another closed door. Freddy was extremely thirsty. It occurred to him that Suzi might have intended him to follow her into the part of the house where she had taken Barbara, so he took his bag and went over to the door. It had been locked from the inside. He tried the two side doors, but these, too, were locked. From each door there came a sound of quiet, distant voices, too far away from him to distinguish whether the speakers were men or women. He put down his bag and went out into the forecourt to see if it gave access to the back of the house.
It was then that he saw Ruth Gardnor. Long-legged in blue slacks and a white blouse, she walked out of an alley that lay between a high, ragged wooden fence and the side of the house, in the breathless gold afternoon, and, like a fashion model, without looking one way or the other, made straight towards the palm-tree. Freddy was near Suzi’s car. He did not think of concealing himself until he had seen her take from the tufted bark of the tree a brown envelope and slip it into the pocket of her slacks. Then he crouched, while she returned across the forecourt, pacing steadily as she always did. Gardnor’s wife. Her hand left her pocket and swung empty with her moving arm as she walked. She did not trouble to look round her, and Freddy was again struck by the impression that this was a performance of prearrangement and habit, in the same way that he had felt the absence of anyone about the house to welcome them when Suzi’s car had drawn up outside.
He got back into the room, sat down and waited; meanwhile he thought over the amazing notion that had entered his mind. This is Nasser’s Post Office, he thought, and Gardnor is the man we’re looking for. Gardnor is our man. The more he thought of it the less amazing it appeared; in fact, everything pointed to Gardnor. Intelligence was not Freddy’s present job, but he was informed enough about what was going on in the office in Israel to know of the recent intelligence leaks, and, although no theory had been formed as yet, question had been more or less asking themselves, and had not been answered. And where was Nasser’s Post Office? This is it, Freddy thought. And Gardnor is our man. Yes, thought Freddy, but one doesn’t reach conclusions this way. Let’s start again; start from nothing: I know nothing but what I’ve seen. I shall simply have to see more, and get some definite idea what’s going on. If this is Nasser’s Post Office then our people in the field ought to have got it first shot, they really ought.
He had been half-conscious of the well in the forecourt as if it was nudging him. Soon he was fully conscious of his great thirst. His thirst asserted itself. The door through which Suzi had disappeared was now opened as quietly as if it had never been locked. Suzi looked in: ‘Oh there you are! Where have you been hiding? Barbara is in bed now and going to sleep. She has had mint tea. Come to my sitting-room and my wash-place. Do you like mint tea?’ Freddy followed her into a long passage with skylight windows. There were doors on each side of the passage. He started to say that he hadn’t been hiding, but Suzi continued: ‘We better discuss the plans for the future two weeks, because I am absolutely at sea what to do for the best, except I know that in the case of very bad fortune for Barbara the British Embassy in Amman must help her, but thus she gets no more pilgrimage in Jordan; or else my friends, one or two, can help, but th
us she has to give great lots of money. So it is best that we have good fortune….’ She opened a door into a sitting-room furnished in western cretonne comfort, and ended her speech ‘… like I have pledged to Alexandros. So we plan for good fortune.’
Freddy put down his bag and smiled at her. ‘Show me this wash-place of yours, there’s a good girl.’ She had looked at him when they got into the room, with her very deep-blue eyes set in her brown face, looking extraordinarily like Abdul. When he came back she was pouring out tea, and he kissed her. He thought, this is quite absurd; he had intended to lead the conversation somewhere in the direction of Ruth Gardnor, and her presence in the house. Suzi said. ‘You have a lovely kiss as well as smile.’ He thought, then, that his kissing her was not incompatible with investigation into Ruth Gardnor and what went on in this house; on the contrary. And he thought, I might even have planned it but I didn’t, it’s quite absurd. He kissed her again.
Later on that evening she said to Barbara, ‘Freddy likes me, and I think it is because he likes Abdul. Never mind why, it’s fine.’
It occurred to Freddy that he was a different sort of man from most men in all important respects. He did not mean morally, but essentially. He was astonished that he had never realized this before, and wondered if other men felt the same. He was increasingly at ease with Suzi without being aware that this was mainly due to relief at finding her part of the house well appointed, in western style. The day had been a strain. He drank his tea, took more, kissed Suzi again, and, as she nuzzled up to him, he told himself that of course he would not think of using her as a mere means to some external purpose. He said, ‘This is a large house. Very fine.’
‘It’s an old Crusader church in the foundation.’
‘I thought it must be, from its shape. Who lives here besides your stepmother?’ He suddenly did not want to let her know that he had seen Ruth Gardnor, now that things had become personal.
‘Friends, contacts, clients of my father,’ she said, ‘also employees for his night-clubs, also at times, sub-agents for travel, insurance, et cetera, etcetera. Are you married to a wife?’
‘No,’ Freddy said.
‘Have you been married?’
On imperceptible second thoughts Freddy said he hadn’t.
‘I thought at first, you must be the lover of Barbara. But when I see you together I know you are not lovers, I mean bed-lovers.’
‘We’re getting into deep waters,’ Freddy said, reclining among the chintzes.
‘I can swim,’ she said.
‘I dare say.’ She was beside him on a large flowered and hilled divan which was presumably her bed, but he was only partly aware of the girl’s outline since he was looking particularly at her blue eyes and their setting between her brow and cheek-bone. He said, ‘Abdul’s giving me lessons in Arabic, you know.’
She laughed, short, clear, with a touch of general mockery. She was very like Abdul. ‘I can give you lessons in Arabic,’ she said.
‘I dare say.’
She said, ‘Speak in Arabic what Abdul has taught you.’
He repeated, in slow formal syllables, one of the exercises from the Arabic grammar, ‘The affairs of our nation became secure after the murder of the author of that harmful book.’
‘Abdul is wasting your time. You do not need to speak these words except in Egypt and Syria. Here we have not murdered the authors of books, I don’t think. We don’t have authors of books much, though. Poets, a few. Sometimes the assistant in the store can be a poet. The Prophet Mohammed was not favourable of poetry. I think he was in the wrong for that, but I can’t say anything against the Prophet out loud, naturally. The Arabs love poetry, and they ignore that the Prophet was against it. When I say this, that, this, that, against the Prophet and the religion, the people say it’s the reason no one has married me. Also because I have lovers; they don’t know this exactly, but they know enough, and they say, “No one will marry Suzi Ramdez. Why buy a goat when you can get two pennies’ worth of milk.”‘
‘I shouldn’t worry about them,’ Freddy said. ‘You should have your poetry and your boy-friends.’
‘They are lovers, not boys.’
‘I write poetry,’ Freddy said.
‘Make me a poem.’
‘All right. When I go away I’ll write a poem to say thank you.’
‘Maybe you wait and see how much you want to say thanks to me. What is your job for the British Government besides poetry?’
‘Oh, it’s nothing much,’ Freddy said.
‘You handle all the intelligence and the top secrets of these treaties with the Arab countries? Do you get wind of all the intrigues between Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Kuwait and so forth?’
Freddy marvelled at this direct interrogation. ‘No, I’m not much more than a sort of filing-clerk, actually.’
‘Filing-clerk is best job for getting the secrets. When we seek for spies in our government we look first for the filing-clerk. They know all.’
‘Well, I don’t know all. None of us knows all, in fact. We’re a jolly incompetent bunch. Always getting caught on the hop. It’s well known.’
‘But what is not well known is the top secrets.’
He was not sure how naïve she was. She was remarkably like Abdul. He said, ‘Where is Barbara’s room?’
‘In this wing of the house. Two doors to the left. Now I’m going to look at her. If she sleeps, that’s good. By tomorrow there is no more infection, but she just stays in bed.’
‘I’d be most interested to see over the house before I leave.’
‘Oh, no. The other parts are not mine. It’s forbidden to enter. Latifa, my father’s first wife, is very old-fashioned.’
She left the room and must have been away about half an hour, for Freddy dozed off for a while, and she was still absent when he woke. He had at first intended to spend the night in Jordan, crossing through the Gate on Monday morning. But now, since he had seen Ruth Gardnor he was determined to wait an extra day, if necessary to find what she was doing here and see if his suspicion about the place had grounds. He could put up at a hotel in Jericho, no doubt. He wondered if Suzi knew of Mrs Gardnor’s presence in the house, and if Suzi herself intended to remain with Barbara in this house during her two weeks’ incarceration.
Among all the factors that filled Freddy with an exaggerated sense of his irresponsibility, when he came to remember these forgotten days, was his treatment of Barbara. He was amazed, when it all came back to him. That he could have contrived the scheme at all, dressing her up like that, and so exposing her to far more suspicion, had she been caught, than if she had been going round undisguised — permitting her to travel with scarlet fever — allowing it to go probably unreported — then leaving her in the hands of total strangers in Jordan, with a promise, never fulfilled, to arrange for an announcement in the Israeli papers that she was still in Israel — and then, the subsequent upset, with Barbara’s relations pressing for news, and the embassies and Arab authorities all at odds…. When he tried to convey this to Barbara later on, she replied, genuinely surprised, ‘Irresponsible? No, you were splendid, Freddy. You were never responsible for me; I’m responsible for myself. I knew what I was doing. I’m grown-up.’
In Suzi’s sitting-room he had faith in his plan, he was beyond questioning the success of Barbara’s pilgrimage. One who can move mountains does not stop to doubt the success of Barbara’s pilgrimage, and the scarlet fever was to him only a slight set-back which, by happy chance, had led him to Nasser’s Post Office here. Suzi had not yet returned; he withdrew again into a half-doze and was once more on that afternoon’s journey from Jerusalem, through the steep craggy wilderness of Judaea and the oppressive plains, to the heavy Dead Sea with its saline content bearing no breath of life.
He was still in his second doze when Suzi returned. She sat and watched him, amused and quiet, as later her brother Abdul would watch him, that day in the following week when he would call at Freddy’s hotel in Israel to give him his Arabic
lessons, smell the moth-balls of Freddy’s winter suit, and wait, idly reading Freddy’s letters, till Freddy should wake from his tired sleep.
Suzi watched him and decided to put him up overnight and take him back to Jerusalem the next morning. She had spoken to Barbara, who was now cool and lucid. Barbara was very happy about her scarlet fever since it would keep her out of the way of her English enemy, Ricky. Suzi had very quickly understood, when Barbara told her about the headmistress of the school who was pursuing her out of love and hatred, and who would like to stop Barbara’s marriage to her lover, Harry. It seemed perfectly understandable to Suzi, and she had only interrupted Barbara’s explanation to say ‘We have also these things of oppression among our Arab women,’ and ‘I wouldn’t have thought that the English have also these affairs where the woman pursues the woman to stop the business of lovers, and makes hell.’
‘Oh, you’d be surprised,’ Barbara had said. ‘And what’s more…’ And when Barbara next explained that the headmistress was that very one who had tried to speak to her at the Holy Sepulchre, they had both laughed with very much hysteria; Suzi had fallen limp upon Barbara in her laughter, and Barbara had said, ‘Don’t. You’ll catch my scarlet fever.’
‘I’ve had it already. My stepmother just told me.’
Then they started all over again until the laughing was spent out and Barbara closed her eyes with a weak, final, convulsive gasp.
Presently Suzi had said, ‘Freddy will put that piece in the newspaper of the Jews, and then I shall see that it is made known to this English mistress. If she goes round asking, “Where is my friend?” and, “Has Miss Vaughan been here?” — this will be easy to get done. Soon she gets the reply that you never came.’
‘I’d rather be taken into custody by the Jordanian police,’ Barbara said, ‘than be caught by her.’
‘This I can well understand. The police want always the body but not the soul.’