The Mandelbaum Gate (36 page)

Freddy
gave himself up to the pleasure of talking about Abdul, as far as he could. He
felt it was just bad luck that he could not derive the total experience of Suzi
that was available to him, so like she was to Abdul and so vivid. He thought it
was just bad luck that this one excitement should be surrounded and vitiated by
another: the question of Gardnor’s wife. And although he told himself, there at
Suzi’s table, that his duty in life came first, pleasure second, and that he
would not wish it any other way, and that he would keep his wits about him, in
reality there was not much to choose between the excitement of possibly
exposing Gardnor and the excitement of Suzi’s potentialities; and as the
evening proceeded these combined possibilities were highly erotic in their
effect. Gardnor, he thought, is our wanted man. Gardnor, in his glittering
confidence, a dispenser of sympathy and understanding to absolutely everyone;
Gardnor, living it high with an attitude to debt that belongs to the eighteenth
century; Gardnor in that very smart and expensive workman’s cottage in Chelsea,
with a Bonnard lit up over the mantelpiece and a Picasso in the lavatory;
Gardnor and his wife and other superior women; Gardnor, Freddy thought, is our
man. Gardnor. Freddy reflected, has too frequently made a point of his atheism;
if a man can’t hold religious convictions, well he can’t, but it’s a private
and secret thing, and if a man can’t keep his own top secrets how can he be
expected to keep his country’s? The unmarried fellows, Gardnor had said,
half-jokingly in Freddy’s presence, are our big security risk. And he had given
Freddy an emancipated smile, then glanced at his wife before glancing at the
clock; the Gardnors, in London, always had to go on somewhere else. Gardnor,
Freddy thought, is the man we’ve been looking for; and this is Nasser’s Post
Office. The pieces fitted together as he watched Suzi’s blue eyes and brown
hands; and the disquietude that came over him at Gardnor’s subsequent trial,
the pity for Gardnor which he expressed when sentence had been passed and it
was all over, were perfectly sincere since he could not help recalling with
shame the sensual joy that had gone into the discovery. He told Suzi she was
the most extraordinary woman he had ever met, and told himself it was just his
hard luck that he could not be wholeheartedly her man, but needs must probe
for Ruth Gardnor. He said, ‘Who else is in this house at the moment besides
Latifa and ourselves?’

‘Perhaps
a tourist or a paying guest. Nobody permanent but Latifa and the servants. A
few girls perhaps; my father brings them to train for the night-club, they come
from Aden, Tangiers, sometimes Europe. This is a big secret I’m telling you,
about these girls. Can you keep a secret?’

‘Of
course.’

‘Can
you keep secrets if it would help your country to know them?’

‘Those
sort of secrets never come my way,’ Freddy said. It was just hard luck finding
himself on duty like this. He added, ‘But I would always keep a beautiful woman’s
secrets.’

She
said, ‘I wouldn’t trust you if I had any secrets.’

He
said, ‘Abdul trusts me. I know about his trips across the border. You see,
Abdul trusts me more than you do.’

She
said, ‘What a stupid boy he is to trust you, and you’ve done nothing for him,
not even have you given him your life insurance. You know, Freddy, I like your
lovely smile. When Abdul was in hospital in the Lebanon, I visited that place
to see him and I met with a French officer….’

Suzi’s clock struck
midnight. So ended Sunday the 13th of August. She showed him to a small room
largely filled with a broad divan bed and hung with fine rugs; Freddy sensed
the hand and style of Alexandros. Suzi, in her speech-making way, made the
following announcement: ‘I have to go and attend to duties and many other
dutiful affairs, including Barbara and her great safety in this house. Then,
one hour’s time or more, I wait a message from Alexandros as we don’t talk
this business by telephone which is unsafe from the government eavesdroppers
and press officers. So we do all business by night messengers, and all this
business takes maybe two hours. Now you sleep. Maybe I wake you up later on to
say good night.’

She
left abruptly with a business-like something on her mind. Freddy was suddenly
and blindly enraged. Wild-bloodedly he was convinced he had been deliberately
tricked by her; and that she had known far more about him than he had himself;
and that she had realized, where he had not, the lack of hope and fun in his
life up to this evening, and had held out hope and snatched it away. Freddy
cursed her in his mind for the miserable unspeakable Arab girl that she was.
Then he sat on his bed for about ten minutes, and started to reflect that she
probably couldn’t help going about her business, and that she probably could
not guess how fugitive his sexual feelings were and how hopeless, to him, was a
lingering lapse of two hours between the idea and the execution. He thought, I’ll
be damned if I’ll sleep with her now. And this way of putting it consoled him.
He decided to find out, if he could, what Suzi was up to, and out of his mind
faded the cloudy drama that must have begun to form earlier in the evening:
the notion that he would gain her confidence, through making love to her, on
the question of Ruth Gardnor’s presence in the house.

He
opened his door into stillness. Very soon he heard some movements from a far
wing of the building; whether these sounds were voices he could not tell. He
decided to go out for a walk in the night air, and well-mannered emotions
returned to his heart.

He went
out for a normal walk in the night air. Three weeks later, when his lost memory
crushed back upon him, the most elusive part of all was that night and the two
days that followed.

‘Take it easy, Freddy.’

‘Gardnor’s
wife was in that house.’

‘Yes,
we’ve got all that, Freddy. We’ve got Gardnor, too.’

‘You’ve
got Gardnor?’ Freddy said to his questioner; but he had already been told this
several times.

‘Yes,
thanks to you, Freddy, we’ve picked up the lot.’

‘It was
Nasser’s Post Office,’ Freddy said. ‘I knew it the moment I saw … You’re sure
of the place? I could draw a sketch.’

‘Yes,
we got it this morning, half an hour after you told me. Take it easy, Freddy.
You ought to be in bed, you know.’

‘I knew
there was going to be bloodshed,’ Freddy said. ‘I’ve had a feeling of bloodshed
ever since I lost my memory. But I thought it would be here, out here in
Palestine. I didn’t think it was going to happen in Harrogate.’

‘Freddy,
you must rest.’

‘If I’d
posted the letters I wrote,’ Freddy said, quite lucidly, ‘this wouldn’t have
happened. But I didn’t post the letters. I put them down the lavatory.’

There’s
absolutely nothing you can do about it, Freddy. Believe me, absolutely nothing
you could have done.’

‘I’ll
have to get back to England and see about Benny. If she’s tried for murder —’

‘She
going to be found unfit to plead. They’ll put her away somewhere safe. Now,
Freddy, the point is that you’ve got to take it easy. Don’t try to think about
everything, and when anything occurs to you, jot it down. The whole business
will come back to you eventually. No hurry. We want you to get a rest.’

‘You’ve
got Gardnor?’

‘Yes,
we’ve got Gardnor. They’re getting a statement.’

‘One
thing you can do,’ Freddy said. ‘You can get me a booking on a plane tomorrow —’Not
tomorrow, Freddy. Honestly, doctors’ orders. In a few days … Joanna and Matt
can take care of you, and anything you want, we’re here, you know.’

‘Poor
Gardnor,’ Freddy said. ‘I’m sorry for Gardnor, you know. ‘Well we all feel
that, Freddy. But he hadn’t any pity for you, remember.’

‘He
tried to pin it on me,’ Freddy said.

‘Oh
yes, but we had our own ideas about that. You know what we knew.’

‘I wish
I could remember exactly what happened after I went out for a walk after dinner
that night.’

‘It’ll
come back, Freddy. You’ve done enough talking for today. Very useful talking,
believe me.’

Freddy
looked at the two telegrams on the table and at the three memorandum papers
which placed the long-distance calls on record. Had they been lying there since
early morning? ‘I knew there would be bloodshed,’ he said, ‘but I thought it
would be here in this dangerous place, not Harrogate.’ The telegrams, and the
records of long-distance calls between Jerusalem and Harrogate had, he was
sure, been on the table since early morning. Joanna had not moved them. The
doctor had left. Freddy had refused to go to bed. He sat with the others to
eat lunch on the veranda, while the chap from Whitehall kept jumping up to
answer the telephone.

The
doctor had said he would return later. ‘I don’t need him,’ Freddy said.

‘Eat
something, Freddy,’ Joanna was crying very desperately, unable to stop. She
wasn’t wearing her red dress today.

‘Freddy,
eat something. Oh, there’s the telephone….’ The chap from the office went to
answer it.

‘Didn’t
I say there would be bloodshed?’ Freddy said.

‘Yes,
Freddy, you have been saying so. Don’t talk of it any more.’ Freddy said, ‘I
once heard a story of a man who went on a holiday and forgot that he’d left his
dog chained up. When he’d been away a fortnight he remembered the dog and was
afraid to go back in case of what he’d find. If I hadn’t destroyed those
letters —’

‘Here’s
Matt,’ said Joanna. ‘Matt, come and sit by Freddy and don’t let him talk too
much.’

‘What
did that damned doctor give me?’

‘A
sedative — nothing — something like aspirin.’

‘Did my
mother linger? She must have lain a long time before —’

‘No, it
was instantaneous, Freddy.’

‘How do
you know? That’s what they always say.’

‘It’s
absolutely plain,’ Matt said in a firm voice, ‘that death was instantaneous.’

Freddy’s
colleague returned.

‘I didn’t
think it would be Harrogate.’

‘Everyone
from the office sends no end of good wishes and we all want you to rest,
Freddy.’

‘You’ve
got Gardnor?’

‘Yes,
we’ve got Gardnor.’

Miss Rickward, when it
thankfully dawned on her that the travel agency in Jerusalem to which she had
been recommended would be open on Sunday like other Arab places of business,
had walked into the Ramdez place and found the proprietor, Joe Ramdez, alone
and in charge.

Joe
Ramdez was at that moment totalling up last quarter’s sum of insults and
injuries received from his enemies, and it so happened that the balance
outweighed the injuries and other deeds of justice inflicted. This sometimes
occurred within one quarter’s accounting, but never before to so large an
extent that the balance could not foreseeably right itself in Joe’s favour
within a short time. But at this moment of a Sunday in the summer of 1961, Joe
sat with his elbows resting on his desk and his head on his hands, attempting
to assemble into a process of thought the cracking explosions of anger that
were going off in his brain-particles; this was difficult, because the only
thought that could possibly emerge from his calculations was that he was losing
ground on all sides; business, government, home, he was losing. It was then
that a tourist, whom he did not immediately consider to be a woman of moral
force, great courage, beautiful strength, substantial means and stout sympathy,
entered the door; he was to perceive Miss Rickward in this light within a short
time. Meanwhile he looked up and saw only a tourist, and did not know what to
do with his exasperation since the tourist trade was a mere apparatus for his
affairs, and being a genius within the limits of his environment, Joe Ramdez
held the superficial in contempt. He inwardly placed on his wife and Suzi the
respective curses of husband and father for not being on duty, and the curses
of a brother-Arab on his three worst enemies, Sadok Abboud, Abdullah el Sabah
and Ismah-Azhari for putting him into a mood of anger and grief; then he
turned his attention to boring Miss Rickward.

She
made herself interesting before long. A Miss Vaughan, she said. She had come to
look for a Miss Vaughan. The convent was closed to visitors on account of an
epidemic, and the address she had been directed to was not really suitable; it
did not look clean. ‘I must find somewhere to stay,’ Miss Rickward informed Joe
Ramdez, ‘and I must find Barbara Vaughan.’

That
morning when Joe had received from his government contact that information was
required concerning a British Jewess, under the name of Barbara Vaughan, who
had arrived in Jordan from Israel last Friday, he had questioned his family as
to whether they knew of her. His wife had no recollection of the name. Suzi, in
a hurry to leave on some profitable trip with a British Embassy man, a friend
of Alexandros, treated the question with impatience. ‘How should she come to
our agency if she’s an Israeli spy?’ Joe Ramdez was intimidated by his daughter’s
vigorous reactions to most of his suggestions, and had inquired only in a
casual manner if she had come across a Miss Vaughan. He had found no record of
her name when he looked for it on his arrival at the office; this, of course,
meant very little, since the putting down of anything in black and white,
except when absolutely necessary, was discouraged by Joe.