The Mandelbaum Gate (48 page)

Barbara
said, ‘Where shall I put it? I’ll throw it all out.’

‘It
goes for the chickens.’

She
investigated for herself and found a covered tin box in the yard with a few
crusts at the bottom. She tipped all the mouse-eaten food into it.

She
came back to the kitchen and said, ‘It’s all gone, Abdul. Just in case we
should reach the point of starvation and be tempted to eat it.’ He was fully
smiling again. He said, ‘I’m going for food. I have good friends. Now I need to
use your money also for another plan if I find one. So good-bye also to your
traveller’s cheques. Maybe I give you back a few in Israel.’

He
already had her bank-notes in his pocket, where he had put them for safety
before starting off with the cart. He had said at the time, ‘We are safe. But in
case we have to run we have to throw away all money and cheques, for always a
captive with money is killed on the spot to shut him up.’

He said
now, counting the cheque money, ‘This is a great lot, many pounds, but Suzi
will cash some as I do not deal in cheques with my friends. Suzi will have to
cash, as these cheques may be traced. She’ll keep them till we’re out of it
safely. Maybe I give you a little bit back, Barbara, if you marry me instead of
your husband.’

Oh now I go and sing the
plainchant

And bring to prayer the
people of Abdul

Who are stealing now his
sandals and headier goods in the field

We dance and sing although
our servant has gone away

All the time past there was
a servant in this house

But he died and the old monk
has no man left

But I get from him a chicken
to cook

And I will bring those
grapes and lovely cheeses

And the coffee from Abdul’s
orange groves.

He
said, ‘It sounds better in the original language, but it’s not too bad in
English. With a guitar it’s very excellent.’

She
went upstairs to the camp-bed to sleep it off, and was still sleeping when he
returned. And he woke her up, coming into the room with a bundle of clothes
over his arm. He sat down in the horse-hair arm-chair and spread out his legs.
He said, ‘I got a lift in a very grand car, but I had to crouch not to be seen.
I will one day be seen grand.’

She
said, ‘What are these clothes? They look like disguises.’ She said, ‘I don’t
think I want another disguise, Abdul.’

‘It’s
all planned for four o’clock this afternoon. Come and eat a lot of food, and I
tell you. This time is safe, because I smell this fact.’

This time the plan worked
and they got into Israel safely. It was simpler and yet more terrifying than
the attempted trek with the cart.

At half
past three a car, driven by an Arab, arrived at the house. Barbara, drugged
into a euphoristic near-trance by a very effective tablet that Abdul had given
her, was dressed in a black nun’s habit with a starchy white coif, the skirt
slightly too short; she carried a black shopping-bag. She entered the car.
Abdul followed, an Arab Franciscan friar in a brown habit, very handsome.
They sat boldly in the back. Barbara examined once more the contents of the
shopping-bag. A bottle of eau-de-cologne. A passport bearing a nun’s photograph
with an anonymous nun-like face slightly fatter and older than Barbara’s — the
name Sister Marie-Joseph Minton of the Holy Ghost Sisters, Paxton, Monmouthshire,
England, the date of birth, 1920, and a pilgrim’s visa. She had the passport by
heart, and hoped she wouldn’t need to put it to the test. Also in the bag were
a rosary, four white linen handkerchiefs, a purse containing some English and
some Jordanian coins, a missal, a book of religious offices, a small roll of
cotton wool, a black cotton reel with a needle stuck through it, a yellow
plastic thimble, a small tin box of blackcurrant throat pastilles, a pair of
black woollen stockings, a small paper bag containing pictures of the Christian
shrines in Jordan, an empty spectacles-case, a ball-point pen, and, for some
reason, an empty soda-water bottle. In the cheerfulness of Abdul’s drug Barbara
examined these objects with great joy, marvelling at the genius of the
collection. ‘The only things that are wrong,’ she said, ‘are the absence of
glasses to put in the case, and the absence of a sponge-bag and tooth-brush.
Otherwise it’s a perfect nun’s outfit, and whoever did it is absolutely
brilliant.’

‘We had
no time to look inside,’ Abdul said. ‘My friend that helped me, took this bag
exactly as it stood.’

Barbara
decided to leave the spectacles-case behind in the car. She felt very happy.
Alexandros, at his shop door, did not recognize them. Abdul stared directly at
the shop and she did too, but Alexandros observed nothing. Meantime, Barbara
had noticed Abdul’s head as he turned towards the car window. She said, ‘What
have you done to your head, Abdul?’

‘It is
shaved for tonsure of Franciscan friar,’ he said heroically.

‘I
think you’re a hero,’ she said.

He
said, ‘It looks quite good, matter of fact. A few weeks, if I wear this tonsure
around the place, many youths wear it also.’

They
came to the Mandelbaum Gate, where a large crowd was gathered.

There
she was very much afraid. Abdul was quiet, she was not sure whether from
circumspection or anxiety. She remembered she was a nun, and must not show
excitement. She rather regretted taking the drug, although she quite saw,
later, that it had helped her through. The large crowd was not so large as it
had seemed at first. As she pulled herself together she saw it was a
pilgrim-group of about forty, attended by two priests. A separate group of five
women seemed to be in a sensational buzz. Barbara looked hard at every head in
the vicinity in case it should be Ricky’s, and, nodding courteously to Abdul,
moved aside to hear what the five women were discussing in such exclamatory
tones. She perceived that they came from the north of England.

‘Perhaps
I should wait for her.’ … ‘Poor soul, the poor soul! ‘… ‘No, she said, no,
definitely to go on without her; it’s die Lord’s will, she said, it’s the Lord’s
good will.’ … ‘Margaret, would you and I wait with her till she gets her
things back?’ … ‘Poor woman, she was only two minutes having a shower-bath,
and then she comes out of the cubicle and all her things gone.’ … ‘Not a
mortal stitch to put on.’ … ‘The passport too.’ … ‘The police surely will
get them back. Who’d want a nun’s clothing, for the Lord’s sake?’

Barbara
moved back to Abdul, who stood politely behind the hubbub of the large group. ‘What
time is it now?’

‘Five
minutes to four.’

‘And
the pilgrimage doesn’t go through till four.’

‘Don’t
get excited.’

‘But
the police will be checking the passports. I’ve heard some women talking over
there, about the nun whose clothing was stolen. Where did you get the stuff?’

‘From a
room in a convent where some Englishwomen were staying. My friend is the
porter, which is a very fine post to hold. These clothes cost a great price.’

The
crowd began to move forward. Barbara was in a hurry. Abdul touched her arm and
shook his head. She held back humbly. ‘It’s two minutes to four,’ Abdul said, ‘so
we are well ahead of time.’

‘What
time?’ She thought he meant the time when the police could be expected to
arrive.

‘We are
well ahead of four o’clock.’ He was an admirable Franciscan. This gave her
courage.

She saw
one of the priests who attended the large group of pilgrims walk back from the
front of the moving crowd, to help it to get in order. ‘Have the bags gone
through, Father Colin?’ said a woman’s voice.

‘Yes,
they’ve all gone ahead, don’t worry.’

He
looked for a moment at Abdul and Barbara, newcomers to him. Barbara now
recognized him as the priest who had said Mass at the Holy Sepulchre while she
endured the agonizing onslaught of her sickness. Barbara smiled cheerily at him
and he gave her an unquestioning smile in return, including Abdul in it. Abdul
nodded once or twice, severely, as befitted a Franciscan of the Holy Land. Then
the priest was busy with his people again. As they came near to the Gate,
Barbara, waiting her turn, was aware that some of the faithful were making way
for her and for Abdul, and she remembered that they were objects of reverence
and accepted the courtesies.

The
Jordanian official said he hoped she had enjoyed her visit to Jordan ‘where is
many Christian faith’. Barbara said softly that it had been a great experience,
and in the meantime the official looked at her visa, closed the passport and
handed it back. She walked on with the crowd, not looking round for Abdul until
she had to halt with the rest at the Israeli immigration hut. She saw him
talking to the Jordanian official, explaining something. She looked away.

The
Israeli official looked at her passport photograph and said, as he stamped her
visa. ‘The photographer might have done you better justice than that, Sister.’

‘It’s a
matter of luck,’ she said. She opened her shopping-bag for the customs clerk
and he peered into it, jokingly. Through the door she saw Abdul joining the
crowd, and as she left the hut he said, ‘Wait for me.’

She waited,
and again it seemed he was explaining something. At last he got through.

They
followed the crowd, most of whom were now climbing into a waiting motor-coach.
Abdul said, ‘My visa wasn’t quite right for the date, but I explained in Arabic
to the Jordanian and in Hebrew to the Jew, that I am here for one day only and
have now no time to get the correct visa. They are always impressed when a monk
speaks their language.’

‘Where
are we now?’ said Barbara.

‘In
Jerusalem. In Israel.’

‘Already?’
The drug carried her off. She started to run for it, all along the narrow
streets of the Orthodox Jews. Abdul ran after her, and caught her. ‘Wait, we’ll
get a taxi. Wait, please, we’ll be arrested.’ She wanted to run along the
pavements of the sweet, rational streets. All the people in the shops had come
to the doorways and the passers-by had stopped to stare at the astonishing
thing, a running nun with a monk in pursuit. A small shrivelled man shouted up
the street to a taxi which was passing diagonally. It turned towards them and
they entered in with all their skirts bundling with them. ‘I get you clothes to
put on very soon,’ said Abdul, cool and proud.

Three days after her
return, when she had come back to the hotel after a long afternoon’s shopping
for some clothes in which to travel back to London, she found an envelope had
been slipped under the door of her room. She had not been expecting any letter
by this means, for Harry was already here with her, in the hotel.

It was
a letter from Ricky, enclosing a photographed copy of Harry’s birth
certificate. The letter was headed ‘Ramdez Travel Agency, Jerusalem, Jordan’.
It read:

DEAR BARBARA,

I have tried to locate you, but evidently
you purposely eluded me. I mow find you are returned to Occupied Palestine and
the people of your origin.

Your defection from your school commitments
has forced me to sell the establishment as a going concern. I cannot carry on
without reliable assistance.

I wished to see you for a reason. This was
to hand to you the enclosed photographic copy of a document which I located in
Coventry after much search in parish registers. etc. It is a copy of the
baptismal certificate of Mr Clegg, whom you say you had decided to marry. You
will see from this that not only is he illegitimate (bearing the ‘mother’s name’
without entry under ‘father’s name’ is the significant point here), but he is
also R.C. by birth, as you will see from an examination of the enclosed.
Therefore, as the Romans do not allow divorce, I am sure you would wish to know
in time that a marriage with Clegg would not be consonant with your Church,
which, I am bound to say, compares unfavourably with other religions (e.g.
Moslem) in this respect.

As you would not wish to act out of
consonance with your principles, as you have frequently indicated, I am
convinced you would wish to have this document, for Clegg’s information as well
as your own.

I trust I have done my duty and that you
will find a man, as you appear to wish this after all these years. I trust a
fuller and more grateful life awaits me after I have wound up the school.

Yours in
anticipation of acknowledgement,

E. RICKWARD

Barbara
saw immediately what Harry’s birth certificate signified. She went along to
Harry’s room with it. He, educated in these matters by his recent experience in
Rome, saw it too. ‘But I never knew my mother was a Catholic,’ he said. ‘My
aunts didn’t tell me that. Of course, they weren’t actually aunts at all.
Perhaps they didn’t know.’ Manuscript-man that he was, he held the paper up to
the light to see the water-mark. There was none. It was just a photographed
copy.

She
said, ‘It’s marvellous.’

He
smiled. But he smiled more at Ricky’s letter.