“What are you doing here?’ Barbara said, ‘Now, now!’ said Ruth.
Barbara thought this strange. She said, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘You don’t ask questions,’ Ruth said. ‘You’re not really ill, are you?’
‘Well, yes, I’m down with scarlet fever. But I’m past the infectious stage.’
Only then it occurred to Barbara that Ruth Gardnor was the Miss White she had been told to expect. Suzi had certainly warned her not to ask questions of Miss White. ‘Are you the Miss White?’ Barbara said.
Ruth crossed her legs and puffed her cigarette, leaning back in the soft chair. She said, ‘Yes, of course. And you’re not the Barbara I expected to find. But I expect you’re used to that. You’re not really ill, are you?’
‘I’ve had scarlet fever. To tell you the truth, I’m on the run.’
‘Yes, I know. I heard in Amman today that you’re being looked for by the local boys.’ She laughed then, and said, ‘I actually told some people connected with the Jordan Intelligence that I knew you slightly and would look out for you.’ She was still laughing. ‘How was I to know that the Barbara Vaughan I already knew was the Barbara I’ve got to look after, here?’
Barbara felt safe in saying little. It was the most plausible course, until she should find out what Ruth was up to. Which was exactly what Freddy had been suggesting. It appeared that Ruth assumed Barbara to be someone importantly on her side, secretly connected with whatever activity she herself was here for, and to be faking illness while lying low.
The fact that Ruth was extremely kind to Barbara throughout the next two weeks was something that Barbara kept repeating when the Foreign Office man came to question her shortly after her escape back to Israel through the narrow Mandelbaum Gate.
‘But you know,’ said Barbara, ‘as soon as she was convinced I really was feeling rather weak she couldn’t do enough for me. On the personal level she was terribly sweet.’
The nice young man was amused, because Barbara had just been telling him about her fight with Ruth Gardnor. ‘Yes, I do mean a fight,’ she said. ‘Hands, fists, nails, and feet.’ And she said one of the tendons of her neck still hurt from the force of the wrench Ruth gave it, holding Barbara’s head in her hands to try to subdue her, while Barbara scratched and bit some part of Ruth. To the Foreign Office man, fascinated beyond the call of duty by the details, Barbara had said, ‘I just couldn’t stand it any longer. She assumed, of course, that I was part of her organization. I’m sure of that, because after a day or two she said to me. “Oh, come off it. Suzi’s told me you’re one of us” — or something to that effect. Then, day after day, I had to pretend to be in sympathy or at least refrain from speaking my mind. So it came to a fight….’
In the retrospect of a few weeks it was curiously more vivid than the reality had been. In her low physical condition at the time Barbara could hardly believe what was going on, and the two weeks passed like an amorphous cloud of cosmic matter interrupted at intervals by specific points of occurrence, small explosions in the spacious night-sky of her boredom. She had no books to read. No one in the house had a book. Freddy had gone away without producing any papers or magazines. Yes, someone in the house had a book. It was in Arabic. Ruth Gardnor told her it was a book of mystical poetry by a Sufi woman mystic of the eighth century. Ruth could read Arabic and translated, ‘0 Lord, if I worship thee from fear of hell, burn me in hell, and if I worship you in the hope of heaven, reject me from heaven, but if I worship thee for thine own sake then do not withhold thyself from me in thine eternal beauty.’
This was about Thursday, two days after Freddy and Suzi had left. Barbara listened out for Suzi’s return. ‘Shall I read you some more?’ Ruth said.
‘No thanks.’
‘She’s as good as any of the Christian mystics.’
‘I know. There’s no need to be defensive. All the mystics are much alike to me.’
‘So many Catholics won’t listen to any other religious writings. It’s killing. And the things they swallow themselves….’
This was nothing new to Barbara; ever since her conversion she had met sophisticated women who, on the subject of Catholicism, sneered like French village atheists, and expected to be excused from normal good manners, let alone intelligence, on this one subject. But she thought it worthy of note that Ruth did not doubt she was a Catholic. That Barbara was a half-Jew on a clandestine Christian pilgrimage, Ruth did not for one moment believe. She knew for certain that she had roused the Jordanian authorities’ suspicions, and by now she had come to accept that Barbara was genuinely feeling rather weak and by no means feigning her illness.
Ruth was fully convinced that Barbara was part of her spy organization. It was difficult for Barbara, at the time, to piece together exactly what or whom it served, although later, when the episode became a vivid whole in her mind, it was plain that the organization was an Arab nationalist one, communist-affiliated, with headquarters in Cairo.
Now Ruth would say puzzlings things as she sat and talked to Barbara. Ruth sat always languidly, with crossed legs and her head leaning back. She had a good, rather raddled, tanned face, long streaked blonde hair and an effortless look of glamour. Somewhere in London Barbara had first met her, years ago, at someone’s house, at someone’s dinner party — when? where? — just after the war, during the war — no, not during the war or just after, since Barbara did not recall any uniforms at that party. Maybe, though, it just happened there was no one in uniform at that party.
While she listened to Ruth she drank endless grape juice, orange juice, all prepared carefully by hand; by Ruth’s kindly hand. ‘Rupert and I are fed up with Britain. It’s finished. It’s become a bloody debating society. Europe is finished. The Jews have finished us off. There’s a Jews’ world-network, my dear. The American Jews are just plotting to demolish the rest of the world. Even the Kremlin knows that. I met a chap at the Russian Economic Mission the other day, he’d just arrived in Israel. He said he’d yet to find a Jew who was a docker in the Soviet Union. I said, “By God, you’d have to look hard for one who was a docker in the west.”‘
‘What about in Israel?’ Suddenly Barbara remembered the party where she had first met Ruth Gardnor with her husband. The night of the dinner party. And the cello: it had been an indifferent performance. Ruth had sat listening. The cello,’ Ruth had said afterwards, ‘is my favourite instrument. It speaks to me. ‘She said to Barbara, ‘You know what I mean?’ Barbara had said, ‘No, I don’t.’ Now Ruth was speaking again: ‘Israel? In Israel they’d have the whole Arab world doing manual labour for them if they could get them. Israel will burn itself out and just become another Levantine state.’
At the time this talk confused Barbara on the point of Ruth’s political allegiance. She was accustomed to regard anti-semitism as a note of fascism, not communism. Anyway, it went on day after day, and Ruth assumed that Barbara was like-minded, as apparently was everyone else connected with the headquarters in Cairo.
In her absence, Barbara fumed and imagined a fight with Ruth, how she would hit and kick her. She jumped from her bed frequently and went into the adjoining wash-room, a small closet with only a shower, no bath. There she would take cold showers and hot showers, many and many times a day, regardless of her weakness.
On no account was she to leave the room. On no account. Freddy had said so. Suzi had said, on no account. Ruth kept saying so. Ruth prepared food of an extremely rare and elaborate order to tempt Barbara. She must have spent all the hours that she did not spend with Barbara on planning, preparing and cooking these meals — chilled exotic soups, veal, chicken or lamb with herb-laden sauces. All for Barbara. They were served on a tray with lace-edged white cloths, for brave Barbara, who, like Ruth, thought Nasser was so marvellous and the nationalist cause so good and so essentially exploitable. The Party in Latin America is well aware that the big struggle to come, the final world-struggle, is with the Jews,’ said Ruth. Barbara could not eat, her cheeks were sunk w
hen she saw herself in the glass. She wondered if she was going mad, and at times this long thought was indistinguishable from madness.
‘How long have you known Freddy Hamilton?’ said Ruth.
‘Well, I don’t really know him at all.’
‘He was here, you know.’
‘Yes. I got a lift from Suzi with him.’
‘What was he doing here?’
‘Only touring.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, quite sure. He’s harmless.’
‘Don’t you think,’ said Ruth, ‘that Suzi’s a bit irresponsible? I mean, bringing him here. It’s awfully dangerous.’
‘No, I think it’s the sort of thing that would put them off the scent if they were at all on the scent.’
‘Of course, you realize, we pay those Ramdez people for the use of this house. They’re well paid. They ought to protect us.’
Suzi at last returned. Barbara later placed this day as the Saturday of that first week.
‘I can’t go on like this,’ she said to Suzi.
‘Only one more week. I’m here for the week-end and Alexandros is here also with me. Sunday night, we return to Jerusalem. But next Saturday, Sunday, I come back to fetch you. Better you should get well and stay in bed the full period that the doctor said. Then the police forget to find you. They already have said you must have left the country.’
Suzi had brought a pile of travel pamphlets, so that Barbara could choose the places she wanted to visit when, a week hence, she would start off with Suzi on the pilgrimage. ‘Because,’ said Suzi, ‘we must have the pilgrimage. This time there is no trouble to anticipate, except you must be dressed still like an Arab woman to prevent trouble.’
‘Where are my own clothes?’ Barbara said.
‘I have them in Jerusalem.’
Barbara was eating quite a lot of cucumber sandwiches. She said, ‘I can’t eat anything that Ruth Gardnor brings me. I try, but I can’t.’
‘That woman is crazy. She is now all at once my enemy because I don’t join with the nationalist party or this, that, party. We give her the house where she operates, and if they catch her we take the risk for this crime of plot, so what more does she ask of us? She is like a fierce animal to me since I brought here Freddy. Before, she was my friend of the very best. Now she says it’s wrong that I bring Alexandros here, and she dislikes that we keep here the girls for the night-clubs. All these things she’s afraid of for her secrets which are nothing so very much, according to my father.’
Alexandros paid Barbara a visit, so noisy with greetings and celebration of the long-lost, that various whispers, titters and tripping footsteps at the end of the corridor occurred, whereupon Suzi could be heard chiding in Arabic and French. These were the night-club girls, who were habitually kept out of this side of the house.
Alexandros closed Barbara’s door and at Suzi’s request kept quieter. He said, ‘Mr Hamilton is not so very well’
‘What’s the matter?’
This I can’t tell you. But I have heard he is not very well, and perhaps it is sunstroke.’
‘Isn’t he coming here to Jericho this week-end? He promised to come and see me.’
‘No, but I am here with Suzi instead.’
Barbara let herself float on the waves of what was to be. She began to feel stronger on that second Sunday of her illness. She wanted to walk in the cool evening, but Suzi and Alexandros insisted this was dangerous.
‘Oh, I don’t care about the danger any longer. What have I done? I’m not an Israeli spy.’
‘It’s dangerous for your health,’ said Alexandros. ‘For anyone to rise from a bed to walk in the evening is dangerous.’
He seemed to have turned melancholy after talking about Freddy. Later, Suzi came and said to Barbara, ‘Freddy is now with his friends the Cartwrights, but he has not sent me a message or nothing. I’m too proud to go there to ask for him. How could I make excuse to call there unless he asks for me?’
‘Did he get that piece put in the Israeli newspaper as he promised?’
‘Piece?’
‘To say I’d changed my mind about coming to Jordan.’
‘I haven’t heard of it. No, I don’t think so.’
‘It doesn’t matter, of course.’ Barbara discerned that Suzi was personally troubled about Freddy’s ignoring her since his return to Jordan.
Suzi said, ‘I left him at the Via Dolorosa last Tuesday and he walked the rest of the way. He was O.K. then, you know. Alexandros says he’s sick, also occupied with affairs; but he could remember to write a note. He can get a letter through the diplomatic courier, easy. He hasn’t got the scarlet fever, Alexandros says. Now I don’t want Alexandros to see so much why I’m sad about Freddy. Maybe Freddy will leave a message for me at my home in Jerusalem when I return tonight.’
Barbara thought, he’s taken fright. Freddy must have decided to withdraw from the tangle, But, she thought, he wouldn’t do it this way. He wouldn’t do just nothing. Something must be wrong, that’s all.
But Suzi, to cheer up the atmosphere, was already recommending the route of their pilgrimage the following week.
They did get away the following week, but not before Barbara amazed herself by throwing at Ruth Gardnor a clock and a vase. Ruth was even more amazed. She was carrying a wireless set with large earphones of the early vintage, which she had managed very cleverly to piece together from two separate sets, one old and one new; this was for Barbara’s benefit, for Suzi had not wanted her to draw undue attention to her presence by the sound of a wireless in her room. Barbara threw these objects at Ruth, then in a frenzy leapt upon the woman and battered her head with the disconnected earphones of the wireless. Ruth kept saying, ‘My God, please Barbara, quiet! Quiet, Barbara, please — quiet!’ Barbara scratched. Every obscene word that she had ever heard and (what was so strange) never heard, Barbara pelted forth at Ruth Gardnor. Ruth took Barbara’s head in her hands and wrenched it. It took them seven minutes to wear themselves out. Ruth was wounded with a cut on the forehead and a deep scratch on her chin. Barbara had some bruises that came up later, and her neck ached for weeks. It was something like the rehearsal that had been going on in her mind for ten days. Over and over again, when Ruth in her kindness had brought her some tempting thing and tried to wheedle and coax, very sweetly — over and over again — tried to coax, then sat to talk confidentially about the ideals that she served and those that she felt by instinct only. then Barbara had listened and not argued. Over and over again Barbara had rehearsed the fight, and it had amazingly taken place. Ruth was frightened. She sobbed softly and said, ‘How ill you are! Oh, God, and I’ve no one here to help me.’
Barbara got back to bed, spent out. She said nothing, only listening still in memory to the pounding waves of Ruth’s chatter, day after day. Nasser is marvellous. Really, let’s face it, Hitler had the right idea. Ten days of Ruth’s chatter. It’s a network on a world scale. The Jews. They’ve got us in a net. If you knew how the banking system worked, you’d realize…. Would you like to sleep now? Would you like to sit up? I’ve got to go out for a while, do you mind? But now Ruth was only sobbing in the chair, with blood on her face. Barbara lay and watched her through slit eyes and heard her murmur, ‘Oh, I wish I’d someone to help me!’ Then Ruth said, ‘Have you been told to do this to me?’ Barbara said nothing. Ruth said, ‘Oh God! Don’t they trust me? What have I done? Rupert will have to come over — I can’t wait on and on.’
Barbara said, ‘Yes, you’ll let them down, all right.’ She said this out of the dark, but meant it decidedly for a thrust, which it turned out to be. Ruth looked cornered. She said, ‘I see.’
Barbara had no idea how they would go on for the rest of the week. This was eight o’clock on Thursday morning. Ruth picked up all the fragments of clock, wireless sets, and vase. Suzi was to come on Saturday or Sunday. Ruth went away after a while, and Barbara fell into a moaning exhaustion, and finally a deep sleep such as she had not enjoyed since her ar
rival.
She woke in the afternoon when she heard a whistling scrape on the front door of the house, and a car drew up. Shortly afterwards, Ruth came in with tea. Barbara was horrified: Ruth was haggard and patched with small pieces of plaster; she was frantic with worry.
She said to Barbara, ‘Listen — don’t please, please, make any more fuss, more noise. Joe Ramdez has come again with his tourist woman. If you’re caught, I’ll be in trouble. H.Q. will blame me. How do you feel?’
Barbara felt like an animal. She wanted to ask, honestly, ‘Who are H.Q.?’ But she kept silent. Suzi had said on her last visit, ‘It’s lucky you have none of your own clothes, she has noticed only the garment of Kyra hung up in the press, and this makes her sure that you are a spy with her organization…. She was foolish to let you know of her activities for this organization. But she has told, not I.’
‘Which organization?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t ask. To tell every Arab organization would take a day, if I should tell you the list. But you must keep quiet about this to your friends, or you make trouble for me. She is only a mad woman.’
‘You make trouble for me,’ said every face in Barbara’s crowded dreams. Later, when the Foreign Office man came to visit her in Israel, there was no point in keeping quiet. Not only had they seen Freddy the day before, but she had seen Abdul that morning. He had come straight up to her room, and she found him at the door, beaming with some extra pleasure.
He took a telegram from his pocket. ‘Suzi’s safe,’ he said. ‘Suzi is in Athens.’
‘In Athens? I didn’t know she was in danger.’
‘The police put her under arrest when they broke into the house at Jericho to find Mrs Gardnor. They had to take someone in custody, so they took Suzi.’
‘How did she getaway? Did they let her go?’