Arabesque (20 page)

“French. Montagne’s French.”

“Who told you that?”

“David Nachmias.”

“When?”

“When Sergeant Prayle was here asking about it.”

“And what did he tell you when you took on the job?”

“That British would collect them.”

“Any witnesses?”

“No.”

“Did he say why on earth we should waste men and money collecting arms in the Lebanon?”

Armande repeated the explanation that David Nachmias had given her on the terrace of the Hotel St. Georges, and the shocking tale of intrigue that he had told her later in her flat.

“Detailed, and to you convincing,” said Fairfather. “I don’t wonder. But when one knows the general layout, it’s tosh! We have enough to do in Syria without
bothering about the armament of an old Christian coot in the middle of nowhere. As for David’s second story, we should never encourage these divisions of the French. We would give anything to
prevent them. No, Armande, it’s as plain as can be that what you did was to acquire some much wanted Hotchkiss guns for the National Home.

“Now, suppose you had your inquiry. It’s your word against David Nachmias, and whatever half-evidenced and innuendo he can bring to bear. How would you come out? Exactly as you are.
That is: probably innocent, but not a good risk. And David Nachmias? Quite certainly guilty, but no legal proof. And still very useful to us in bigger things. You see?”

“But it’s the most horrible treachery!” she cried. “I didn’t know people really did such things.”

“They do. In my job I have seen men’s lives and, worse, men’s honour mercilessly sacrificed. This is war. Everything goes. To myself I stink. But my excuse is that anything is
better than the destruction of my country. Is it surprising that the Zionists feel the same? I doubt if to themselves they stink—they are too self-righteous—but their excuse is that
anything is better than a world where Jews haven’t a home of their own.”

“But to use me!” she cried. “To make me a common little crook!”

“There is one comfort, Armande. A poor one—but there it is. You needn’t feel ashamed of your own country any longer. We have so much cleaner hands than you believed. Such a
policy towards the French as Abu Tisein described for you is utterly unthinkable.”

“Is it? Is anything unthinkable? Even you said that you’d sacrifice honour rather than see your country destroyed.”

“Personal, not national. I meant that I am prepared to stink, so long as my country does not. All this is really a backhanded defence of David Nachmias. He has made a mistake, and he is
saving his country’s honour at the expense of his own—and yours. He has to obey orders, but he would much rather be a quiet Turkish gentleman.”

“He said so. And I believed it,” replied Armande bitterly.

“Oh, it’s true. Abu Tisein loathes all these Central Europeans as much as an Arab. He has no personal ambition, but he is convinced—I think rightly—that he is essential
to his people.”

When Armande left Laurence Fairfather’s office, Jerusalem was in utter darkness. The heavy clouds of winter made absolute the blackout. The masses of clear masonry which had faintly
reflected the brilliant starlight of summer and autumn were not even shapes against the sky or before the outstretched hand. Here and there, under the doorways, were faint blue lamps. Puddles of
light appeared and disappeared on the ground as pedestrians flashed their torches and groped their way round the blast walls that obstructed the narrow pavements. In the shuffling silence she could
hear the jackals hooting, like little breathless factory sirens, from the valley of Kiriat Shemuel.

Armande walked slowly towards Qatamon, then turned back into the centre of the town. There was nothing any longer at home to welcome her; her room was no more a refuge from the ever-present,
ever-insistent society of the garrison. That society did not require her. She ached for comfort, for an older man, a father or an uncle, to whom she could leave, for a time, all the arrangement of
her life. She wanted a sort of Laurence Fairfather, but without his unhelpful habit of seeing two sides to every problem, her own included. Two sides? Ten! And believing none of them. Someone wise,
to whom she would always be right. Prayle might be like that, if only … but he was crazy, anyway. He was no giver of comfort; he needed mothering. All the same, it would do her good to hear
that restful voice, with its odd, jerky rhythms, which she had so liked when she first heard it on the telephone.

What a conceited little fool she had been! That morning when she had found him teaching the page boy to make a catapult—if only then, instead of fussing over his explanation of the
nickname, she had told him what Abu Tisein had asked her to do! Too discreet. Can a person be too discreet? No, darling, but she can be on her dignity with sergeants.

The strong scents of oranges and cooking spices called her back to the outer realities. She was approaching the Jaffa Gate. The carelessly hooded head lamps of two Arab taxis and the chinks of
light from the windows of Arab café s revealed, alongside the black pavement, masses of a deeper black which, at a distance of five yards, could be distinguished as sacks of oranges, donkeys
and a couched camel. Across the road was the dim outline of the gate. There must, she thought penitently, be some wisdom in this administration if now a woman could grope her way in peace through a
city of such burning passions. Three years earlier that darkness would have been the gift of Allah the All-Merciful to raving little mobs of Arabs.

Armande passed under the gate into the Old City, brushing the robes of unseen passers-by, and turned left into the Christian Quarter with the vague impulse of seeking a temporary peace in some
church or monastery courtyard; but the heels of the shoes that she had worn for Captain Fairfather, while low enough to suit her tweeds, were far too high for cobble stones in darkness. She sought
more earthly but immediate rest in a small Greek restaurant. As soon as she had entered she realised that it was primitive, but also that she was very hungry. She hesitated, and then went boldly to
a table.

The place was full of Christian Arabs and a party of young and well-dressed Moslem effendis, who were tasting, with gestures of exaggerated pleasure, the forbidden wine. What a lot of fun they
get, she thought with weary envy, these Moslems with their wine, these Jews with a dish of bacon! And to me nothing is forbidden except what I forbid myself.

The customers stared at her with friendly interest as she sat down before a tablecloth matted with oil and egg. One of the younger Moslems spat an obviously insolent remark in Arabic, of which
she only understood the word for Jew. He was instantly rebuked by two older members of the party, who bowed and smiled to her an aplolgy, and looked away as if to assure her that their courtesy was
wholly disinterested. Did they she wondered, recognise her as an alien Englishwoman or didn’t they care? She decided that her religion was not in the least apparent—with her black hair
and big grey eyes she was sometimes mistaken for a Jewess—but that her class was. Arabs seemed to have a strong sense of class, perhaps because they could afford without jealousy, within so
true a democracy as Islam, to pay homage to wealth and education.

Wealth? Well, she looked smart.
Tatler,
damn him! But actually she wouldn’t have much left by the time she had paid her fare to Egypt. An income of five pounds a week had been
very useful, though she hadn’t really attempted to live on it. One couldn’t with Palestine prices soaring upwards. Invitation from the military had accounted for a shameful number of
her solid meals.

The Greek proprietor, who kept his belly in a sort of box formed by the cash desk, wine barrels and crates of bottles, moved to her with surprising speed, and whisked from a shelf a less
revolting tablecloth. She left the menu to his care. Armande could never understand why people made such a to-do over ordering, eating, paying and tipping. As a child of the trade, it was all
familiar to her; and something in her manner seemed to proclaim to any purveyor of food that she was aware of routine, circumstance and what there might be on the ice.

The proprietor brought to her crisp fried fish from the Sea of Galilee. Odd, she thought, while enjoying its excellence, how all the good fish in Palestine was Arab, and all the large and
tasteless fishes Jewish! Odd that in this filthy little joint—or, for that matter, in Beit Chabab—she felt at home. The frank and kindly stares, the interest of customers and
proprietor, were they not more in the ancient European tradition than the neat indifference of Jewish restaurants? All these Palestine British who preferred the Arab to the Jew—was the reason
wholly, as the Jews said, that the British liked to be among natives whom they could dominate rather than fellow Europeans whom they could not? The conservative English always disliked the
artificial; and Jewish civilisation in Palestine did seem, compared with the true Levantine, unsure if itself and brittle.

That’s right, she accused herself, blame the Jews just because you have been let down by one of them! A lovely child you are—becoming an anti-Semite and a pest to men busy with a war
and a snob to sergeants! Oh God, I wish I were out of this!

She lifted tear-filled eyes to meet, with foolish, unexpected impact, those of the proprietor. With silent sympathy he brought her coffee and a sweet of incredible stickiness.

“War no good,” he murmured. “No good for business. No good for Greeks. Most, no good for women.”

“No good for business?” asked Armande. “With all the troops?”

“Ham and eggs, George, beer? Beer, George, ham and eggs?” answered the proprietor, imitating the invariable inquiry of the British and Australians. “Make money—oh, yes!
But business not all money—business my life. No fun. You understand, yes, no? See him?” He pointed to a Greek major, alone and moodily sipping his coffee. “He cry every night. I
make plenty money, yes. But he cry. You cry. War no good. Ham and eggs.”

Armande paid her bill, which had been scaled reasonably upwards to suit her personal appearance, and went out. The clouds were dropping a wet snow into the blackness of Jerusalem; at the Jaffa
Gate she took a taxi. When she had settled back comfortably into the warmth of the cushions it occurred to her that in future she had better walk or wait for buses. Taxis are the most expensive
dishes—even in cheap restaurants—could no longer be unthinkingly commanded.

“There you are then,” said Laurence Fairfather, handing back her passport, “all fixed for this afternoon’s train. I couldn’t get you a
sleeper—they’re only for generals and contractors—but the train control will look after you, and you’ll be all right. Where will you stay in Cairo?”

“Oh, I’ll find a hotel and then look round,” answered Armande.

“Hotels are rather full, you know,” he said doubtfully. “Well, I’ve written a note about you—just saying I knew you in London—to a pal of mine, a Major
Honeymill. Here’s his telephone number. Give him a call if you’re in trouble. He’ll be delighted. He has nothing whatever to do except train a sort of Arab legion, and he knows
everybody in Cairo society and takes none of them seriously. Just the person to get you a job in—well, civilian life, if there’s any left.”

“Thank you. And you will do everything you can?”

“To clear it up? Of course. But, as I told you that depends on Beirut, not us. However, you have Sergeant Prayle there.”

“Give him my love.”

“I’ll make a point of it.”

The long train of white coaches, windows shuttered against dust and sand, drew in to Lydda station. Armande, piloted by one of Fairfather’s corporals through the milling mob of bulky,
rattling soldiers in full marching order, of porters, lemonade and orange sellers, of passengers and onlookers screaming Arabic in the hysterical excitement of the Middle East over anything
whatever that came and went at fixed times, reached the train and found a corner seat reserved for her.

The other five places in her compartment were occupied by an Egyptian businessman and his wife (after so long a stay in the Hotel St. Georges she knew the type), by an indeterminate Latin with
an alert, sensitive face, an insolent-looking young man dressed in a new checked suit of boardlike stiffness, and a Levantine whose silk scarves, cap, overcoat and baggage were all so smart and
appropriate that they suggested an advertisement of the perfect masculine traveller in an American magazine.

Except for the Latin who gave her a delightful half-smile and some assistance with her coats and baggage, they looked at her with curiosity and resentment, and then continued their conversation
in clipped and raucous Middle Eastern French. They talked war and war interminably, till the orange groves gave way to date palms, and the desert, the sea and the dusk closed down upon the
railway.

Armande curled in her corner with an unread book, wondered what each of them really believed, for what they said was so far from any conceivable reality. The Egyptian had it that the war in the
desert was a bluff. The man in the suit of checked upholstery material agreed, and informed the compartment that he was a Turkish officer and bound for G.H.Q. on a most secret mission to arrange
for the training of Turkish gunners. The well-outfitted traveller preserved a discreet and well-informed silence, at intervals approving or condemning monosyllabically. At last, having aroused the
respect of the others, he stated that he was the local Syrian correspondent of an American news agency and distributed a number of visiting cards to prove it.

The compartment’s blacked-out lamps gave just sufficient light to distinguish the faces of fellow travellers. The Syrian rose from his seat, and with a gold-handled penknife scraped the
blue paint off the bulb above his corner, thus creating a pool of light in which to read. The Egyptian wife yapped complaint and apprehension, protesting that he would attract all the enemy
aircraft from the Mediterranean. The Syrian assured her that neither Germans nor Italians had any intention of bombing the railway, since they expected to use it for evacuating their troops from
Egypt. He then selected from his bag an English novel, and settled down to enjoy the admiration of the compartment.