‘I think, dearest Ma —’ Freddy’s fountain-pen moved like an energetic snail over the letter-pad resting on his knee. He used a broad nib that left a trail of familiar patterns, his words; it was always a matter of filling in a lot of pages for Ma, she liked him to send long letters. The pen scratched noisily against the splash of the. watering-can in the hot afternoon, and Freddy functioned on with his letter, as he had done for thirty years of his natural history, a letter a week.
… both try to forget the garnet brooch incident. I shall drop a note to Benny. It is true there was no reason for her to ‘blow up’ about it. But do remember how touchy Benny has always been. Of course, one should be careful to ascertain the facts before one speaks in haste, although. goodness knows, as you say, Benny has known us long enough, and really ought to exercise a little understanding, as you are good to her. At the same time, dearest Ma, don’t please go giving away your stuff so readily. I feel Benny is quite well off without ‘extras’, and indeed, the garnet brooch must have become quite valuable by now. (You say it is only a semi-precious stone, but these semi-precious stones in old settings are become very rare.) However, I am glad that Benny is recovering her good sense and does not continue to feel aggrieved. As I say. it would be hard to replace Benny in times like these, and to be accused to her face of ‘borrowing’ the brooch was no doubt, to Benny, a source of …
Freddy looked up. I mustn’t appear to carp at her, he thought. On the other hand she looked in his letters for a certain amount of response to provocation. In a manner, it kept her going, to have a sort of unreal running bicker with him, serialized into his long weekly letters and her longer weekly replies.
The Arab odd-job boy finished his watering and silently returned to the house. Like that young Hardcastle, Freddy thought. Like Hardcastle, the gardener’s boy of Freddy’s youth, who had moved back and forth, remotely attending to things, unloquacious, unsmiling, totally unwilling to conspire in Freddy’s games. ‘Still waters run deep,’ Freddy’s mother had said, and true enough, young Hardcastle, when he attained the age of fifteen, had disappeared from the job, from the village, from his home, last seen by the bus driver who had borne him away never to be heard of again. Many young Arab boys in Palestine reminded Freddy of Hardcastle. They slightly disturbed him. He preferred the vivacious type in the alley bazaars, arguing, cheating, flashing Arabic code-words at each other in the presence of a stranger, or shouting cheerful abuse at their fellow-youngsters who led the mangy over-laden donkeys up the narrow pathways of Jordan’s Jerusalem continually.
Freddy saw the morose boy approach once more from the house. Freddy, in his shaded arbour, wished to break the silence, if only to make concrete his mournful sense of its being ultimately unbreakable. But his Arabic lessons had not progressed so far as to enable him to say, as he desired to do: ‘You fellows are lucky being able to stand the sun direct on your skin in the heat of the afternoon. We English have to keep in the shade.’ Freddy looked down at the letter and thought he must work round to write something on the question of the Arabic lessons he was taking from Abdul Ramdez, since his mother had replied to his first mere mention of the lessons: ‘I hope you are not getting too thick with that Arab teacher, When your Uncle Hamish was stationed in Egypt, his Arab teacher was quite scandalous.’ Yes, and so was Uncle Hamish.
The odd-job boy had moved the lawn-spray to another part of the lawn, and had returned to the house. Freddy listened for voices; Joanna had evidently not returned, for he heard none.
Usually, on his week-end visits to the Cartwrights, Freddy left his office on the Israeli side of Jerusalem early on Friday afternoon, plodding through the Mandelbaum Gate with his diplomatic pass in one hand and his zipper-bag in the other, always blinking in the glare, since he hated wearing sunglasses, which made one look so much like a rotten gigolo or spy. He came in the heat of the afternoon so as to reach the cool bungalow sooner. Both Cartwrights were usually out till five, busy with their work. But Freddy would make himself at home. Lemon tea, then a seat in the arbour, writing letters.
‘Dearest Ma …’ Freddy stared at the bungalow to gain thought. It was a slightly crooked house. He had heard that the Arab builders simply built a house, they did not use any instruments, not even a set-square. The walls and windows were slightly crooked. But the bungalow had a decidedly English appearance, probably due to the chintz curtains flapping in the breeze, and to the garden that seemed to support it. Joanna’s geraniums were marvellous, massed by the back porch. And the lawn really was green. Most of all did he feel at home with the wild-flower clumps. He had, in fact, contributed a few plant roots from the Israeli side of the border, some of which had flourished. Joanna’s labels bore witness to Freddy’s contributions from the Israeli side: Mount Zion, Galilee, Nazareth, Mount Tabor … Bulbous Buttercup, Speedwell, Yellow Cow-wheat, Hound’s Tongue. Freddy supposed he was wrong, he knew little about wild flowers, really, but he had a theory that these plants that he had pulled from the soil for Joanna, and those she had gathered for herself, were not indigenous at all. Their seeds had been brought to Palestine and sown, he suspected, by a conspiracy of the English Spinster under the Mandate. A second cousin of his had done the same service for India, where she had returned after every home leave with a shoe-box full of wild flowers gone to seed. This virgin cousin had expressed the sentiment that when she scattered these flowers abroad in the fields and sidewalks of India, she was doing something to unite East and West. Her father had shouted her down, in his fierce manner, denouncing the practice. ‘Never the twain shall meet —’ he reminded her, as if the words were Holy Writ. The old brigadier had gone on to tell Cousin Beryl that she was only making a lot of damn difficulties for the botanists; he added — irrelevantly as it had seemed at the time —that he himself had once forbidden an Indian servant to marry a girl from Bhutan, because it would only lead to a damn muddle in the offspring. But every third summer, Cousin Beryl, dressed always in loose, white shantung garments, packed her seed box and bore it away to Lahore. So it must have been, thought Freddy, with the spinster ladies of General Allenby’s time out here. He had not yet propounded his theory to Joanna. She would be sceptically interested in it. He was waiting for a moment when it was absolutely necessary for him to say something interesting.
To arrive here, a mile from the outskirts of Jerusalem on the Jordan side, Freddy had jostled his way from the guardhouse at the Mandelbaum Gate, through the Old City’s network of alleys, past the Damascus Gate. It had been too hot to take a crowded bus, and not for one moment was he tempted by a taxi. Sometimes Joanna could manage to meet him with her car, but Freddy was just as well pleased when she couldn’t. Past the Damascus Gate, towards the Holy Sepulchre and down to the Via Dolorosa, plodded Freddy, dodging the loaded donkeys and stick-wielding boys, who in turn were constantly dodging the vast wide motorcars that hooted with rage and frustration down the lanes; these cars were filled with hooded Arabs of substance and their emancipated wives. Freddy and numerous tourists had to flatten themselves hastily against a wall or a tangy-breathed donkey whenever the fanfare of a motor horn heralded one of these feudal-minded carloads. At the Via Dolorosa he ran into the huge Friday pilgrimage headed by the praying Franciscans, who moved from station to station, on the route from the Pillar of the Flagellation to Calvary. Freddy, with a number of the English Colony, had followed a much larger procession than this, last Easter, along the Way of the Cross; he had found it religiously moving, but it had exhausted his capacity for any further experience of the sort.
This Friday he dodged down a side-turning into the shop of an Arab dealer called Alexandros, whom he knew, to wait there till the procession had passed. Alexandros had been conducting a business courtship with Freddy for the past five months over an icon that Freddy had his eye on. The dealer was an Orthodox-Catholic from the Lebanon. Most of the Moslem Arab shops were shut on Fridays, and Alexandros therefore did some extra trade on that day of the week. He was serving a tourist, an Englishwoman, wh
en Freddy arrived, but he immediately sent a young assistant out to fetch Freddy some Turkish coffee. Freddy relaxed in the large cool shop and, as he waited for the deal to be done and the coffee to arrive, he thought of the hours to come, on the shady bench in Joanna’s garden, getting his letter off — Yes, you are right … no, I think you wrong … anything you like, dearest Ma…. and felt this hot effort to reach the house was worth it by virtue of the cool contrast ahead of him.
Alexandros, whose wares were superior to those of most of the other traders in the area, was attempting to persuade the customer of this fact. She seemed rather stupid and sceptical, as Alexandros implored her credence, using his arms to do so, a little more in the French merchant manner than the Arab. Freddy’s feelings expanded towards the salesman and contracted against the woman. Heavy Alexandros, dark, middle-aged, went on to explain that the little wooden crib-figures, for which he was asking five pounds the set, were by no means comparable to the mass-produced figures obtainable from the surrounding shops, on all days but Fridays, for a pound the set or eighteen shillings after the argument. Freddy, newly relaxed after the glare, smells and sticky heat of his plod from the border station, was prompted by a nervous reflex to intervene in the argument, and, much as the timid spinsters of the old days, while abroad, would be moved to violence against the maltreater of the donkey, Freddy now stood up. ‘Madam,’ he said, to his own astonishment, ‘I can vouch for the fact that those articles are what Mr Alexandros says they are, that is to say, hand-carved from pinewood. This shop, as he says, stocks only superior curios.’ He sat down again. His Turkish coffee arrived and was placed before him.
The woman looked at Freddy in a reserved way; she could see that he was at home in the shop. Freddy realized she was more suspicious than ever. His irritation by her doubts of his Alexandros was increased by the fact that this fat Englishwoman was only a passing tourist and he was more or less a resident; and there had been nothing more annoying to Freddy throughout all his postings in the Foreign Service than the sight of his compatriots making mistakes while passing through.
Alexandros, delighted by Freddy’s remark, was saying in a triumphant wail, ‘You hear what this gentleman tells you, Madam. This gentleman is Mr Hamilton, a very high officer of the British Government. He is my customer. He comes to Alexandros regular.’
Freddy murmured, ‘Perhaps the lady really wishes to think it over, Alexandros.’
The woman indicated, by picking up her gloves, that she was about to take advantage of this offer. But Alexandros spread out his hands and said, ‘Madam, this crib — look at the three Kings, how beautiful, and the camels, they are alive, and Saint Joseph here. The workmanship. You have it for the sake of your family, Madam. They will say, in the next generation, “This was when the Mama went to the Holy Land! She bought this set for the Epiphany crib!”‘
The woman seemed to waver at this. Then she said: ‘I’ll think it over and let you know in the morning.’
‘It is the last. It will go by morning. When the procession is finished the people come in to Alexandros. Alexandros does not close his shop on a Friday, like the Moslems.’
‘I’ll ask my travel agent here. He advises me what to buy and where to go. Thank you.’
Alexandros followed her to the door. ‘Who is the travel agent?’
‘Ramdez. I’ll ask him.’
Alexandros let her go, then. He came and sat beside Freddy. We can have a talk now.’ He seemed to have forgotten the woman. Freddy said, ‘I mustn’t stop. I’ve got some correspondence to attend to when I get to the Cartwrights’. I expect your customer will come back for that crib-set. It’s handsome.’
‘Not if she follows advice from Ramdez. Travel agent, yes, he is agent for all the curio-shops, he gets his share from them all. But he is not agent for Alexandros.’
‘I know Ramdez,’ Freddy said. ‘And I know his son Abdul over in Israel, he’s teaching me Arabic.’
‘The son is political for his living,’ said Alexandros quietly.
‘Oh, really? I thought young Abdul represented a life-insurance company.’
‘Yes, like the father. The father is agent for everything.’
‘Ramdez wants me to take out a policy. At least that’s what they say that they’re after me for.’
‘Which Ramdez? The father or the son?’
‘Well, both together, actually. They manage to communicate, I don’t know how. Anyway, whenever I come over here, old Ramdez turns up with news of Abdul. And when I get back there, Abdul turns up with the latest information from his father. I understand they don’t get on very well together.’
Alexandros laughed with Freddy. He took a bunch of keys from his pocket and opened a drawer, from which he took another key. With this he opened a glass cabinet and brought out the icon picture that Freddy admired. Alexandros smiled fondly at the flat, impassive Madonna and Child done in blue and faded gold. Neither man was quite sure of its date. They hoped it was twelfth-century. Freddy was consulting experts and generally looking into the subject in the meantime. ‘It isn’t normally the sort of thing I go in for,’ he said, as he always did. Alexandros replied. ‘It is early, not late, this icon.
‘Yes, it’s early, but the tradition varies so little, it’s difficult even for the experts to judge how early.’
‘I see an expert soon,’ said Alexandros. ‘He is coming from Italy. Next month.’
‘It appeals to me in any event,’ said Freddy.
‘It is yours. I keep it for you.’ The dealer put it back in the glass case and locked the door.
‘I can’t afford it,’ Freddy said.
‘It’s not a question of what you can afford. It is a question that you take home something from the Holy Land that is worth taking home.’ Alexandros started packing the crib-figures into a small box padded with cotton wool. ‘I am taking these to the lady at her hotel. I see her this evening.’
‘Why bother to go after her, Alexandros, for goodness’ sake?’ Freddy said. ‘It’s only a flyer.’ Alexandros was a substantial dealer.
‘I make a sale,’ Alexandros said.
Freddy lifted his zipper-bag. ‘I’ll look in some time tomorrow, perhaps.’
‘I make a sale to the lady,’ Alexandros said, and anxious to explain himself more clearly, he added, ‘Why do you walk all the way from the Mandelbaum Gate to the Bungalow Cartwright? — Mr Hamilton, a Chevrolet with driver is ten shillings only for this journey.’
‘I never take taxis and I never hire cars,’ Freddy stated, ‘not if I can help it. My father never did.’
‘So I never let slip a tourist customer. So I go to the hotel after dinner and bargain with the lady and she gets the fine crib-set for four-fifteen, four-ten. It is my upbringing.’
‘How do you know her hotel?’ Freddy said.
Alexandros thought this question too amusing to need an answer. He said good-bye to Freddy in the French of the Lebanon, and Freddy responded, in his French of the Home Counties, to the effect that he, also, had been very greatly enchanted.
The hot walk from the Gate was well worth it, Freddy thought, if only because of the relief one felt when one turned in the familiar doorway of the bungalow. On the last lap of his walk, uphill, he was tempted to start composing a set of verses to send on his return to Israel, thanking Joanna for the week-end which had not yet come to pass. A villanelle perhaps … It is so very different here / In modern Israel from your! Delightful English atmosphere … Freddy realized he was cheating. The bread-and-butter verses could not in honesty be started until he had actually set foot on the other side of the Mandelbaum Gate on Sunday afternoon. He put temptation behind him and plodded up the hill to the week-end before him.
The bungalow was set in a clump of trees not far from a steeper hill that led to a tumbledown Orthodox church and the Potter’s Field, where, some way off, lived a marvellously feeble old monk, much liked by Freddy, and whose eyes alone seemed to keep his brittle limbs alive in one body, so spiritually did they b
urn in his skull. Freddy caught sight of the monk’s blue robe moving up there among the shrubbery as the old man came out to feed his chickens; whereupon Freddy had felt at home already, and had plodded the few steps onward to the silent bungalow, the garden bench awaiting him beside Joanna’s wild-flower arrangement, and the letter-pad on his knee. ‘Dearest Ma …’
You see, dearest Ma, the trouble is …
The trouble, in fact, was … Freddy’s thoughts dropped to a whisper in his brain. JERICHO, MOUNT OF OLIVES, GETHSEMANE. Hair Tare, Tufted Vetch, Hawk-bit, Corn Bluebottle. The trouble, in fact, was … Freddy’s thoughts whispered on, refusing to be shouted down by any other voice that might arise in his brain to hush them up. The trouble was that Ma was a peculiar type of tyrant-liar whose lies could only with difficulty be denounced because of her long-sustained tyranny, and whose tyranny could hardly now be overthrown because of her long-condoned lies. It was not only these days in her old age, but by very constitution, that Ma was like this. Consequently, it had taken most of their lifetime for her four children to realize that they were part of an unspoken conspiracy to concede that Ma’s falsehoods were truth. It was curious how, to this day, none of her children — although Freddy’s three sisters were married women — had it in them to look any of the others in the eye and suggest that dearest Ma was not really a very nice person, let alone to aver that she had cheated them all quite openly, as if by divine right, of various inheritances, denouncing the two sons-in-law as her enemies merely on the basis of their rational questioning.
Freddy pondered his letter, with its hypocritical advice. ‘At the same time, dearest Ma, don’t please go giving away your stuff so readily …’ It was the best Freddy could do, at this late stage in his career as Ma’s son. Knowing Ma, it was doubtful whether the garnet brooch belonged to Ma in the first place. It had probably been coaxed from some other, more feeble, resident in the hotel, or even stolen from Benny, and then handed over, or handed back, at some point, to Benny. At all events, it would be a confusing affair, that being Ma’s way of operating. The whole idea, anyway, was that Benny should be accused of something … SILOAM, JERICHO, Clary or Wild Sage. The young Arab boy had been in the garden again, and had now slipped like a lantern-slide into the house, leaving the picture as before. Ma was seventy-nine, of course, one should make allowances for that. Nonsense, Ma had always done this sort of thing. Benny would be nearly seventy, now. Poor Benny. Poor Benny, she, too, was far involved in the family secret. It was like a blood-pact. She had started to respond to Ma’s moral blackmail long years ago when she was Freddy’s nurse, and now Benny, a religious crackpot at the best of times, fully accepted that she was always suspect, always liable to crafty dealings, invariably in the wrong. Freddy thought, for a wistful moment, that he might in normal circumstances write to one of his elder sisters, Elsie: ‘Do see what new trick Ma’s up to. Apparently, she’s bullying Benny about a brooch.’ That is alliterative, noted Freddy, in his panic to note something. Because it was impossible to write to his sister as if circumstances were normal. She would only reply: ‘Whatever do you mean by your reference to dearest Ma’s new trick? Benny has been very irritable lately, I believe. She has too little to occupy her time, and dearest Ma can’t be expected to …’ They were all in it together, and it was too late. He bent over his letter, to fill in a harmless page about the housing situation in Israel.