The Mandelbaum Gate (34 page)

‘The
Admiral
Graf
Spee, my dear,’ Freddy said.

And it
was plain to Barbara that he hadn’t lost his carefree mood on account of her
scarlet fever. She felt weak and hot, but was no longer in misery. She kept
realizing, with a shudder of gladness, the fact that she had a real sickness;
it was a respite from responsibility for herself, and that felt good.

‘We
come to another police post,’ Suzi said. Barbara curled up, with her head down,
an old sleeping bundle.

‘Now
look up,’ said Suzi at last, ‘they are all gone by. I raise my brown arm and
wave at these police. We are coming now to the terrible plains, the pressure is
terrible, they are the lowest spot on earth, thirteen hundred feet below sea
level where were the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah which God destroyed.’

Within
a few minutes they were in the desert plains. For some reason never explained,
in the middle of the wilderness by the roadside, an advertisement board was set
up, stating ‘Boutay for Pianos’ and nothing else. ‘Whether or not this is the
plain of Sodom and Gomorrah,’ Freddy said, ‘by God, it feels like it. Are you
all right, Barbara?’

‘I feel
drowsy and heavy. I may expire,’ she murmured. She closed her eyes and felt she
could just about cope.

‘We
stop to get a drink at the Dead Sea Hotel,’ Suzi said. ‘We shall buy drinks and
take them to the car.’

Freddy
was rustling something, the road-map, muttering something. Barbara opened her
eyes. Freddy said, ‘We don’t need to go all this way to Jericho. The road —’

‘A
police truck is coming. Keep down, Barbara,’ she said, and when the rattle of
the motor had passed into the distance behind them, Suzi said, ‘I need to be
seen on this route with my tourist in case they check up already for Barbara.
We need to drink something from the Dead Sea Hotel, but we buy it quick.’

Freddy
said to Barbara, ‘Did Alexandros show you that piece in the Israeli newspaper?’

‘No. I
don’t think so. What piece?’

‘About
your meeting your cousin in Israel; and it published the fact that you were
coming to Jordan.’

‘I knew
it,’ said Barbara. ‘I just knew that would happen. A frightfully resentful
woman came to interview my cousin Michael, and I got mixed up with her. What
did she say?’

‘This
piece said you were a Jewish convert Catholic very keen on Israel — something
like that; anyhow, enough to set off an alarm over here. I thought it was as
well to tell you, so you’ll know where you stand just now. But don’t worry. I’ll
get something else put in the Israeli paper tomorrow when I get back — something
about you deciding not to go to Jordan after all, but spending the rest of
your time in Israel instead. We’ll have to cook up some story to hang it on,
but don’t worry. I know the editor of one of the papers. A very decent old
chap, we’re on good terms with them at the office. I’ll see to it the moment I
get back. I’ll be there before the next bag goes. Don’t worry.’

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 thus
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.