The Mandelbaum Gate (40 page)

‘We’d
better get her out of here, then,’ Freddy said.

‘She
should rest in bed.’

‘I
wonder if her ex-fiancé could help? He’s working at Qumran.’

‘What
ex-fiancé?’

‘She
was engaged to an archaeologist there, but she broke it off. Went right off
him. So she said.’

‘Well,
she must have gone on him again. She says he’s in Rome just now. She’s going to
marry him, definite.’

‘Really?
She might have told me.’

‘She
had the scarlet fever too bad to tell you yesterday, Freddy. Were you hoping to
be the next fiancé?’

‘No,’
Freddy said. ‘I had no such aspirations.’

‘Well,
we can’t move her anywhere. So it means we stick around till my father goes
back to Jerusalem with his woman, in case he finds Barbara. I have told him she
is somebody else with scarlet fever, so I think he will keep away from my
section of this house.’

‘What
about the other Englishwoman who’s here?’

‘She
will take care of Barbara when we leave her. But I prefer to wait for my father
to leave first. No risks.’

‘I
ought to be back in Israel tonight,’ Freddy said.

‘No,
you wait tonight,’ she said.

He
said, ‘It’s a tempting thought.’

She
said, ‘If you mean what I think you mean, it’s not so easy with my father in
the house. He is the only one that’s permitted to sleep with anyone he likes.’

‘Well,
he wouldn’t be sleeping with Miss Rickward, if she’s the woman Barbara’s trying
to avoid. Miss Rickward is the head of an English girls’ school, if you know
what that means.’

‘Miss
Rickward is in the bed with my father this moment, if you know what that means,’
Suzi said.

‘How
remarkable!’ Freddy said, his coffee-cup so moving in his hand, without a pause
from the saucer to his lips, that he did not seem to think it very remarkable.

He was listening to the
bang of a car door outside, the engine starting up and the sound of its being
driven away from the house.

He
finished his coffee. He examined the tips of his right index finger and thumb and
rubbed them together.

‘That
was our other English guest that I told you of,’ Suzi said. ‘She has gone to
visit some friends in Amman, but she’ll be back tomorrow to look after Barbara.
She will be good to her all right, but to tell you the truth this lady is a
little bit mad.’

‘Oh,
really? What lady is that?’

‘Remember
I told you we have a woman staying here for a rest?’

‘Oh
yes, of course. Who is she, anyway?’

Suzi
said, ‘I shouldn’t tell you this. It is our secret, poor woman. I shouldn’t
tell you as it is a lady married to a government officer of the British. Her
name is Mrs Gardnor. She —’

‘Gardnor!’
Freddy said. ‘Why I know the Gardnors, of course. He’s stationed with me in
Israel. Awfully nice chap. I know Ruth too, of course. What’s wrong with her?’

He
thought Suzi looked relieved. He was sure she had been testing him to find his
response; but now she looked relieved, and he hoped he had passed the test.
But, he thought, this darling girl knows damn well — must know, ought to know,
maybe, though, isn’t quite sure — that the paper I burned last night was no
damn poem at all. He stopped himself fidgeting with the tips of his fingers and
thumb where they had been nipped by the little flame.

She
said, ‘Yes, you must,’ and then his ears caught up with the words she had
spoken a split second before: ‘You must promise to tell no one what I am going
to tell you.’ And now she said, ‘Yes, you must.’

‘Of
course,’ Freddy said. ‘What is it?’

‘Why
are you looking so much at me?’

‘Because
you’re so charming to look at with your fawn skin and those blue eyes.’

‘My
skin is not fawn, it is green this morning from never sleeping all the night.’

‘It isn’t
green, it’s lovely.’

‘No, it’s
like an ancient scroll is my skin.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘You
don’t say “it’s lovely” and “nonsense” when you make love talk to a lady in
Jericho. This is a place of the true Arabian civilization and if I say I look
like old hell, then it’s your place to say a speech about me, that I resemble
the winding River Jordan, when I turn from the shoulders to the hips, and that
my voice is the bleating of a thousand flocks, and my skin is smooth and
perfecter than the udder of the camel.’

‘Oh, I
can think of more suitable things to say than that. Much more romantic. I’ll
write another poem for you. In chant royal, which is a romantic verse form, or
haiku
might be more right for you, as it’s Oriental.’

‘You
know
Omar?’

‘Why
yes, of course. The translation, I mean. It’s —’

‘All
the English are crazy for Omar. Abdul learned it at school, he could say it all
in English, not Persian, which we don’t speak. Then Abdul got sick with T.B.
and was in hospital, and there he said to me,
Omar Khayydm
is all olive
oil poured over the troubled waters. Too much oil, and you don’t see the truth.
So don’t copy
Omar
for a poem for me, I would make you put it on fire
and burn your fingers. You have a lovely smile.’

‘I
would say you were a pomegranate,’ Freddy said, ‘only you taste sharper and
sweeter. Pomegranates look good but they taste insipid.’ And all this
conversation was soon to be gone from his memory for many months, suddenly
returning on a day when the sun was a crimson disc between the bare branches of
Kensington Gardens, and the skaters on the Round Pond were all splashed over
the heads and arms with red light, as they beat their mittens together and
skimmed the dark white ice under the sky. So it was to be throughout the years;
it was always unexpectedly, like a thief in the night, that the sweetest
experiences of his madness returned; he was amazed at his irresponsibility for
a space, then he marvelled that he could have been so light-hearted, and sooner
or later he was overwhelmed with an image, here and there, of beauty and
delight, as in occasional memories of childhood.

But he
did remember almost immediately, when, three weeks later he remembered anything
at all, the promise he had made to Suzi Ramdez that Monday morning at
breakfast.

‘Promise
me that you won’t speak of Mrs Gardnor’s breakdown in your office. We have
taken her as our guest, and there would be great distress for us to betray this
poor woman’s sickness, so that they laugh at her in her husband’s office in
Israel.’

‘We
wouldn’t dream of laughing at —’

‘Promise.
Never speak of her. Promise, and I shall explain how she is mad.’

‘Yes,
of course, I promise. I won’t say a word.’

‘She
imagines that she is being spied upon and is mixed up in political things to
spy upon the Arabs, maybe. I don’t know. She writes stupid letters in code and
hides them places, to find them again and say “Look what I find!” So we make
her well again soon and let her rest as we have promised her husband who
brought her to us.’

‘Doesn’t
she see a doctor?’

‘Oh
yes, many doctors. Two times a week she goes to visit a psychiatrist, very
clever, in Amman.’

‘Poor
woman.’

‘She
will take great care of Barbara. It will do good for herself to have this job,
and she is so kind. Never will she betray Barbara if we tell her so. You say
nothing of this to your government friends, please, as you promised. Then we
count on her to be good to Barbara and keep her secret.’

Freddy
said, ‘I see.’ At that time he was not sure how much Suzi expected him to
believe. He said, ‘I see. Oh, well. if she’ll keep an eye on Barbara, that’s
all right.’

‘I
shall come myself many times while she is sick. Maybe she gets up in ten days.
This morning she’s O.K. already. No temperature or nothing. And the infection
is past, so you could sleep with her, even.’

‘I don’t
want to,’ Freddy said. ‘I want to sleep with you. But I’ll go and see her now,
I think. Does she know your father and Miss Rickward are in the house?’

‘Oh no.
It would only make her a fever perhaps. She knows only that some people are
here and she must keep quiet in the room.’

On that
day when the two young consuls brought and broke the news to Freddy that his mother
was dead, murdered by Benny, knifed by Benny insane, killed in violent blood,
and the memory of his absent days in Jordan first flooded upon him and was
half-lost again, it was then some hours before detailed scenes, one by one,
began to seep back. There was Benny’s letter — Bloodshed, Mr Freddy … She …
I hear those voices again … There will be Blood come from it….

‘I
thought it would be here,’ Freddy said. ‘Somewhere in my mind I knew there was
to be bloodshed, but I thought the danger was here, I didn’t think it was in
Harrogate.’

And he
recalled his answers to the letters. There was something urgent he had to
remember. He had answered the letters, but hadn’t posted them, hadn’t posted
them. Where had he left them? Yes, but he had set them on fire. That was so. He
had burnt his finger and thumb. And presently, the image came to him of that
moonlit wait outside Barbara’s convent, while Alexandros went to bribe the
janitor, and he heard again the chanting voices from minaret to minaret calling
the faithful to prayer under the stars.

‘Where
is Barbara Vaughan?’ Freddy said.

‘Oh,
her? Well, apparently she got back to Israel yesterday. We only heard this
morning. We’d assumed, you know, that she’d gone to Rome, but it seems she’s
been hiding in Jordan. Her family are awfully relieved to know definitely that
she’s safe and so are we, of course. Silly woman.’

‘Did
she ask for me?’ Freddy said.

‘No,
she didn’t mention you. Look, Freddy, you should lie down, you know.’

‘I must
get back to London,’ Freddy said. There was something urgent to remember. His
head was in his hands, and it was then he saw, once more, that walk of Ruth
Gardnor’s across the forecourt to the palm-tree in Jericho.

The
consuls did not leave after that. They stayed on for lunch, which Joanna
herself served to them in a room alone, in compliance with their request,
withdrawing as silently as their Arab boys when she had done so. One of the
young men then left abruptly, returning at half past five in the afternoon. He
announced: ‘We’ve got Gardnor.’

And
meanwhile Freddy had given every other part of the story he could then heave to
mind. There was the Arab woman, you see, a daughter of Ramdez. Now, I know for
a fact that she suspected I’d got this message from the tree that night, so
next morning she went into a long rigmarole about Ruth Gardnor having had a
nervous breakdown — a great secret, and Gardnor didn’t wish it to be known to
us.’

‘Understandably,’
said Freddy’s colleague, with a bit of a smile.

‘Yes,
according to Miss Ramdez, Gardnor didn’t wish anything to be known to us. This
Arab girl’s yarn was that Ruth was mad as a hatter, and was sending herself
messages, believing herself to be a spy. I listened to it all, of course … Well,
I can only say I’m sorry I didn’t get this news to you immediately. I could
easily have dropped into our embassy at Amman, but to be quite honest I’m sure
I would have been followed and then Gardnor would probably have been alerted.
And of course the telephones are all tapped. Spies everywhere over there. I
waited over till Tuesday, hoping to get some more evidence, you know, and then,
don’t you see, it all went. It all went out of my mind. I just lost my memory,
that’s all. God knows what else I did all that time.’

Then he
worked over the story again.

‘Freddy,
take it easy. I’ll get Joanna. She’ll —’

‘You’re
sure you’ve got Gardnor?’

‘Oh
yes, we’ve got him. He isn’t giving much trouble.’

‘He’s
talking?’

‘Well,
he’s begun.’

‘I must
get back to London.’

‘You
must get to bed.’

‘Gardnor,
of course, has been anxious to implicate me,’ Freddy said. He was not sure, but
he felt fairly certain he had been under unofficial house arrest at the
Cartwrights during the past few days of his amnesia.

‘Oh
goodness, Freddy. Gardnor’s report would never have stood up. One needs
evidence, you know.’

Yes,
one needed evidence. And while investigating the sources of evidence, suspicion
must have lingered. How long had his mother lain dead in a mess of blood?
Freddy wanted to know the details. He said, ‘Are you sure you’ve got Gardnor?
Really got him? Was there any difficulty getting into the house at Jericho?’

‘No,
they say from Amman that the Jordan police were quite helpful. There were a few
things there — cameras and a transmitter — the usual. Ruth Gardnor had gone,
of course. She must have got wind of something from the police or someone.’

‘Well,
if you’ve got Gardnor, that’s the main thing.’