School for Love (19 page)

‘Did she make that frilly thing in your room?’ asked Mrs Ellis.

‘Yes, and she was terribly clever at buying things. She always bought the right things, and she didn’t pay much,
either. People were always saying: “How clever you are, Mrs Latimer”, and she used to say to me, “You wait, Felix, with all these things, we’ll have such a lovely home in England”. She had
boxes
of things. I wanted to keep them but the Shiptons sold them; they said I’d need the money for my education.’ After a pause, he asked her: ‘Did you have a lovely home in Cairo?’

‘Good Lord, no; we had no home at all. I had a job at G.H.Q. and I lived in the Pyramids
pension
. The Americans bought up all the flats in Cairo. We couldn’t compete. The best we ever had was a double bedroom at Shepheard’s, but that was luxury.’

The words ‘luxury’ and ‘Shepheard’s’ and ‘double bedroom’ filled Felix’s imagination with visions of such splendour and passion that he breathed fervently: ‘Oh, yes, like the films,’ and Mrs Ellis burst out laughing.

When Nikky arrived he came at once to their table, and he and Mrs Ellis discussed some scholarship to England he seemed to hope to receive. Indeed, though he would, if persuaded, repeat his stories about the ‘Ever-Readies’, Felix later found he was never as funny again. Felix became rather bored with Nikky’s scholarship and the question of where Nikky might or might not stay if he went to London. Felix did not know London. Places called Bloomsbury, Euston and Chelsea had no reality for him. He was not interested in them, because in England he would live in the country. They could not have had more for Nikky, but his interest in them seemed at times almost like a drunken excitement. He kept saying: ‘One thing I must see, it is Piccadilly . . .’ or ‘the Strand,’ or ‘Fleet Street.’

Felix was glad when other people began to arrive and they talked of something else. By nine o’clock six or seven
young men had arrived – Jews, Arabs and Poles – and a profound discussion followed about some people called . . . Felix got these names right because when he whispered to Mrs Ellis: ‘Who are they talking about?’ she broke up an empty cigarette carton and wrote on the inside: ‘Kafka, Palinurus, Sartre’. ‘But who
are
they?’ Felix whispered, desperate to penetrate the mysteries of this rapid, excited talk; but Mrs Ellis, on the point of saying something to the table, shushed Felix aside and years were to pass before he discovered.

During the following weeks, when Felix went to the Innsbruck as often as he dared, he became used to the curious names that came and went in everyone’s conversation, unquestioned as clichés and apparently pertinent to everyone except Felix. No one here – Jews and Arabs though they were – ever spoke of Palestine’s private war that was marking time now until the World War ended. Felix soon discovered that these young men were proud of the friendship that held them together and aloof from the political tension that kept Jews and Arabs apart. One or other of them would usually point out to Mrs Ellis during the evening: ‘Madam, you see here a most unique. What are we! Myself, an Arab, my friend a Jew; and so the others, Jews and Arabs, mixing in intellectual amity. Were all to act in such a way, the problems of Palestine would be solved. My friend here, Mr Finkelstein, is an intellectual, and as such his sympathies are naturally with us Arabs. He does not much like other Jews. To him, they are narrow, stupid, full of religious prejudice. Myself, I see the shortcomings of the Arabs – how are they educated? To recite the Koran, no more. Such is not enough in a world of this size where there
are paintings, so many literatures, the telephone, Professor Einstein, the radio, the films and Salvador Dali.’

Nikky, when he was away from them, would affect to find short-comings in the intellectuality of this circle, but Felix was completely dazzled by it. He had never before known people whose conversation was devoted exclusively to sex and the arts. The young Moslem Arabs were fervent in the support of the freedom of all Moslem women (except perhaps their own close relatives), and the young Jews deplored as embarrassingly vulgar the licence of the settlements, whose women drove the repressed and ignorant Arabs wild by the swing of their breasts and buttocks and the briefness of their shorts.

Mrs Ellis, who seldom did more than help the conversation with an occasional question, was regarded as the group’s chief ornament – a brilliant and beautiful woman; an Englishwoman who, unlike almost all other Englishwomen, was not stiff, narrow, proud, prudish and contemptuous of ‘the natives’. When she assured them that the young women in England were more often like her than like the wives of Government officials, they laughed uproariously and said: ‘You are making the propaganda, are you not?’ and they were all more or less in love with her originality.

Felix, who lived in the same house as Mrs Ellis and had seen her first, felt he must be much more in love than anyone. Now he listened like a dog for her comings and goings and could scarcely bear to let her go out without him, yet beneath his adoration there remained like a bruise the fact she had gone to the Holy Fire, taking Nikky and not him. Something within him was shaken and ready to fall.

At the first opportunity he asked her to tell him the story she had told Nikky about the shipwreck. ‘I couldn’t hear it,’ he said. ‘I kept going to sleep.’

‘Not now; you must never ask anyone to repeat cold a story he’s told when warmed up.’

‘But couldn’t you get warmed up again?’

‘Perhaps. But I’m not warmed up now.’

Several times later he tried to get the story from her, but she would not tell it. Whenever he thought of it he was jealous that she should tell it to Nikky and not to him. Sometimes he would hurry through his work in the afternoon so he would be free to go out with her on the following morning and walk in the sunlight, on the pavements crowded with shoppers.

Everything she said and did delighted him. Although she did not use much slang herself, she occasionally approved of something with the words ‘smashing’ and ‘bang on’, or disapproved by describing them as ‘foul’ or ‘bloody’. These terms entranced Felix and soon displaced his own ‘super’ and ‘beastly’.

It seemed to him that the smallest of incidents experienced in Mrs Ellis’s company could help change his view of life. He had accepted without question his mother’s philosophy which described everyone as ‘rather sweet’ or ‘fundamentally really rather nice’. If his mother came into contact with anger, rudeness or dishonesty, she somehow shook those things off with a little movement of the shoulders, a little lift of the head, that placed her above them. ‘Poor darling,’ she would say, ‘no doubt something’s worrying him (or her). Always remember, Felix darling, that everyone has his troubles.’ This attitude carried her through life with the minimum of hurt and anxiety, but
Felix felt that even if he could convey it to Mrs Ellis, it would not work with her. Life itself seemed to change within her aura. People in contact with her were not always at their best. He began to wonder if those ‘rather sweet’ and ‘fundamentally nice’ people who had peopled his mother’s world had a real existence anywhere at all.

One morning, walking in the Jaffa Road, they were stopped by a little English couple – the wife plain and badly dressed; the husband a junior and never likely to be much more. As they spoke, their four eyes were fixed on Mrs Ellis as though they wanted to hypnotise her. They had a perambulator for sale and Miss Bohun had told them Mrs Ellis might be interested.

‘Well, I might,’ she agreed cautiously, ‘how much do you want for it?’

‘Twenty-five pounds,’ said the husband promptly.

Mrs Ellis smiled without friendliness; ‘I was thinking of buying a pram, not a small car.’

Their faces fell as they realised this was a refusal. Felix’s mother would probably have said: ‘Poor things, no doubt they need the money’; and now the wonderful chance of making money out of someone – not another official, just an outsider – had faded. The wife was explaining how her husband had improved the perambulator, perhaps it hadn’t been worth much when they got it, but now—

‘Oh, I only want an ordinary pram,’ said Mrs Ellis and as they moved off she said without lowering her voice: ‘Bloody little scroungers! You could see their eyes fairly popping with avarice!’ and Felix thrilled, realising that that indeed was the truer comment.

She said: ‘Of course all the dumbest types end up in the Colonial Service – people without sparkle, poise,
depth, intellect, or anything but that smug mediocrity that makes them think themselves the salt of the earth. God, no wonder the Arabs and Jews despise them. And the nearer the top you go, the more frightful they are. Take the Radletts . . .’

‘The Radletts!’ breathed Felix, awed that she criticised these important people.

‘What a charming couple! They’re notorious, of course – as mean as cat’s meat. He’s a sour little fellow who drinks whisky in front of his guests and only offers them beer. She’s the quintessence of suburbia. She looks like a charwoman and has the manners of a butcher’s wife to whom rationing has given the upper hand. . . .’

Felix squawked with delight, elated by Mrs Ellis’s candour. Miss Bohun had spoken of the Radletts with respect, telling Felix that the fact she was, once a year or so, invited to their house showed she ranked in their view with persons of senior grade. When Mrs Ellis spoke he suddenly, with the instinct of youth, of a creature with unblemished eyes, recognised truth, truth, truth, and he knew that truth was the thing he wanted.

Gazing at her, adoring her, he said: ‘You’re smashing. You’re the most smashing person I know. I wish you’d marry me.’

She smiled as though he were joking.

‘But,’ he pursued her, ‘you’re only five or six years older than me. Lots of people marry people six years older. . . .’

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said vaguely, and no argument would persuade her to give the matter more consideration than that.

Now he suffered moments of desolation, thinking they would be sent home on separate ships, that when she was
in London and he in Somerset they would almost never meet, perhaps
never
meet—It was beyond thinking that a time could come when they would never meet again, but he had experienced her indifference. He knew she would make no effort to keep in touch with him. She would never stay anywhere for long. He felt the quality of her as something drifting, almost intangible so that he felt a need to keep close to her; when with her he would cling to her arm if she let him, but usually she shook him off. At times she showed her impatience with him or, half as a joke, half as a statement of fact, would describe him to the others as ‘my shadow’, or ‘the limpet’. He would have painful clairvoyant moments in which he knew that to Mrs Ellis he was rather more a nuisance than not, and when they separated she might feel relief. But those were only moments, for she treated him with tolerance and good nature and perhaps felt for his youth a certain pity. Whenever she went to the hospital he would go with her and, while waiting for her, he would visit Mr Jewel. One afternoon as they left he remembered to tell her about Mr Jewel’s paintings. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘Mr Jewel is an artist, and he’s terribly good!’

He was pleased to see he had surprised and interested her but she did not sound very convinced when she said: ‘Really! What does he paint?’

‘I’ll show you when we get back. I know where Miss Bohun put his things.’

At the house Felix, making sure Maria was occupied in the kitchen, slipped into the wood-shed and came out with Mr Jewel’s pictures under his arm. Mrs Ellis was waiting under the mulberry tree. She looked at the paintings one by one, but said nothing.

‘Don’t you think they’re wonderful?’ Felix asked. ‘Those are primroses. They grow in England.’

‘Very nice,’ said Mrs Ellis, handing the pictures back, but he knew from her tone that she did not think so.

‘Don’t you like them?’ Felix felt deflated.

‘I expect he enjoyed doing them,’ said Mrs Ellis and would say no more, but as Felix looked at the paintings a light seemed to go out of them. He knew suddenly that she was right; they were not good, but he was sorry. He would have liked Mr Jewel to be a good artist. His mother would have liked it, too; she would have said: ‘Oh, yes, darling, they are wonderful. To think of that poor old man making such wonderful pictures up in an attic, all by himself,’ but the story, hanging in the air romantic and golden, would not have been true. It would have belonged to the story-book world which his mother always somehow produced around her and which he knew he must leave now he was growing up. Venturing into reality, Mrs Ellis was the guide for him. Almost every time he was with her some incident widened his understanding of life, or of himself.

One morning, as they were out in Princess Mary Avenue among the shoppers, she took him into a shop to buy wool. She was unable to knit or sew herself, but she was employing Maria’s daughter-in-law to make baby clothes for her.

She examined some skeins of dark wool – for there were no pale colours left in the shops – and said: ‘But this is Botany wool. It washes badly. I must have real wool.’

The man behind the counter lifted the skeins close to his thick spectacles, and read the label in a German accent. ‘“Botany”,’ he became scornful, ‘that is the Mark. This
is, of course, wool like all wool – “Botany” they call it as a – a – what is it?’ He snapped his fingers irritably at his fat wife, who supplied the words he sought:

‘It is the Trade Mark.’

‘So,’ he threw down the wool, ‘the Trade Mark.’

‘No,’ said Mrs Ellis, ‘you’re wrong. “Botany” wool is not like sheep’s wool. It is made from plant fibres.’

‘Not so, not so,’ declared the shopkeeper and all in a moment he seemed to leap in a hysterical rage, shouting at Mrs Ellis and Felix: ‘Not so. Do you tell me that I do not know. I am selling wool since four years,’ and breaking off now and then to give little laughs of pure rage; sometimes swinging round to his wife, who shrugged her shoulders in ridicule of a customer who would profess to teach them their business. The man put his thick, square finger-tips on the table: ‘So – the
Mark
, you see . . . look for yourself. . . .’ He was now speaking slowly, with the infinite scorn and ridicule of an unbounding fury. ‘Here,’ he snatched another skein. ‘Here a “Sea-shell”, here a “Botany” – look for yourself!’ He pushed the Botany skein under their noses.