When I Lived in Modern Times (21 page)

T
HE
streets were choked with cars. Women were crying, children were looking bewildered. The shopkeepers were standing on their doorsteps watching them go. They were wondering what it meant for their takings. A few of them were concluding sales at the wound-down window of a vehicle. A woman was buying food. “Will there be anything to eat on the airplane?” “I don’t know. I’ve never been in one.” Another woman was hugging her dog. “What’s going to happen to Yorkie?” she was whispering. “Please, will someone help me.” A Jewish woman ran over to her. “I’ll keep your little dog,” she said. “I love all animals. Give me your address in England. I’ll write to you and tell you how he’s getting on.” “I don’t have an address. I don’t know
where
I’m going. What’s going to happen to me?” Her husband appeared, in civilian dress. “Now, old girl,” he said to her. “There, there. Best not to cry.” He attempted to take the dog from her. “You’ll have him put down,” she suddenly shouted. “I know you will. You’ve never liked him. I’ve heard you. ‘Bloody mutt.’ You’ll hit him over the head with one of your precious golf clubs.”

Scenes like these were happening at intervals amidst much dignity and graciousness. Some women were saying a round of good-byes to neighbors and favorite Jewish shopkeepers.

“Palestine is my
home
you know,” a woman told a baker. “I’ve been here since I was a girl. My father was in Kenya before he came out. They’re sending me back to England. I hardly know it. I’m going into exile, but you people know all about that.”

The baker smiled sympathetically but after she had turned away he burst out laughing.

Others were kinder. I saw genuine affection there on Allenby Street. But let’s face it, we were delighted to see the back of them. All the Jews were whispering the same thing. “Can’t be long now.” “No.” “A few months.” “Maybe just weeks.” “Dr. Weizmann’s coming back. He’s on his way from London. He’s been negotiating with the British. There’s going
to be partition. We’ll have our country, the Arabs will have theirs. It’s the best way.” “The Arabs will never accept it.” “They’ll have to. The British will make them.” “That’s a laugh. The British can’t make anyone do anything anymore. They’re washed up. Look at them, fleeing for their lives.”

I stood on the corner of Allenby Street and Rehov Bailik and thought how that intersection marked the crossroads in our lives. One was the street named for the British general who had marched into Jerusalem in 1917, the other for the Zionist poet who had come from Budapest in the last century. The white city began there.

People had started to look into the sky, watching for planes. One passed overhead. Perhaps it was the first batch of women leaving, people said. They waved. I looked up too. Many of us were smiling. By and large there was a good feeling in the air. It was warm and there was a mild breeze blowing in from the sea a few streets away. The cafés were full. I wished I had some money so I could venture into one for a few minutes to have a piece of cake which I had not eaten for ages. Imagine a Palestinian without his daily pastry! It was inconceivable.

A fist grabbed my arm. I looked around. An arm was extending from the rolled-down window of a car. I got the fright of my life.

“Mrs. Jones, how pleasant. Need a lift to the airport?”

They were in a Rover. Bolton was wearing his belted mac. His wife was dressed in a navy costume, with a coat with a fox-fur collar resting lightly round her shoulders. It was her hand that was on me.

“No, thank you,” I said, “I can make my own arrangements.”

“I must say, Mrs. Jones, you look quite different. I would hardly have recognized you,” Bolton said.

“But
I
did,” said Mrs. Bolton. “Easy to fool a man, but another woman is a different matter. Personally I always thought the platinum blond suited you but everyone can do with a change now and again, though I must say you do seem to have let yourself go, rather.”

“Jump in,” Bolton said.

“As I say, I have my own arrangements.” People walked up and down and took no notice. A Yemenite woman was shaking a baby. Two men were consulting their watches. Someone with a mental illness who had probably been in a camp was crying and muttering. A kibbutz girl was running along the street in pursuit of something or other. An Arab led a camel through the traffic. The driver of a bus swore at him.

The two of them got out of the car and stood in front of me.

“We’ve missed you at the salon,” Mrs. Bolton said.

“Oh, I got fed up with waiting for Tony so I joined him in Tiberias.” My teeth were chattering.

“Yes, that’s what Mrs. Kulp said.” I felt a surge of warmth toward poor foolish Mrs. Kulp who nonetheless knew how to tell a lie with the best of us.

“I really think there’s no time to lose,” Bolton said. “Do get in.”

“As you see, I have nothing with me. No suitcase. No passport. And Tony will worry.”

“Is he still in Tiberias?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Funny,” Bolton said. “Because I’d heard on the grapevine that he’d been transferred to Acre and I thought, dear me, Mrs. Jones won’t like Acre much. Nothing for her there. Nothing at all.”

“I do think you should come with us.”

I was trying not to cry.

“Yes. It’s for the best.”

“I don’t think you really belong here.”

“Perhaps none of us do.” My eyes were filling with tears.

“You’re quite right. But you know you’re really out of your depth.”

“I’ve managed to conclude some unfinished business,” Bolton said. “That makes me quite chuffed. I’m not a vengeful man. I’ll be off myself, quite soon, I expect.”

“We thought we’d start a nursery growing fuchsias in Kent,” Mrs. Bolton added. “We like fuchsias.”

“It’s a restful occupation. We’re looking forward to a rest.”

“I’d rather stay if you don’t mind,” I whispered.

“No,” Bolton said. “I think that’s pretty much out of the question. I don’t know what might happen to Jones. He’s a resourceful man. He might just manage to get a transfer out of Acre or there again he might end his days there. The last one’s no good for you. The first one is no good for me. And it certainly won’t do you any good in the long run, either. So do get in, Mrs. Jones.” He was holding the car door open.

“I don’t have any things.”

“I can lend you something,” Mrs. Bolton said.

“I don’t have my passport.”

“I’ll smooth things over when we get there,” Bolton said. “Leave it up to me.”

They gently began to shove me into the car, like a slow-motion abduction. I turned to the people milling on the streets. They weren’t paying any attention. HELP ME, I mouthed, soundlessly. But no one saw, no one came.

Mrs. Bolton was in the back seat, next to me. Her arm was resting on mine. Bolton started the engine. I turned my head and saw the American couple sitting in a café. She had on a necklace which looked like a string of silver pebbles. They caught sight of me and waved and smiled. HELP ME. The woman put her hand to her ear then smiled and spread her hands in resignation. She put them to her lips to make a megaphone. I could just make out what she was saying. “Catch you later.” Her husband took her hand. They sat in the sunshine smiling. They looked very happy together and happy with the general situation of mayhem on the streets and why wouldn’t they be? They were watching one of the minor incidents in the collapse of the British Empire. They must have thought much the same as I had: it would be something to tell the grandchildren. Hot tears were coursing down my cheeks. The woman held a finger to her eye and made a sad face, then a gesture with her hands to ask, “Why?”

But Bolton was accelerating down the street. I turned my head and saw the last of them, smiling and perplexed.

“In case you’re not quite up to date with the details of the evacuation,” Mrs. Bolton was saying, “Mrs. Gutch, the wife of the undersecretary, has already left and Mrs. Wilson-Brown whose husband is director of public works and their three children. Oh, and Lady Astley, of the British Council.
They
had armored cars accompanying
them.
“

“Assassination risk,” Bolton said. “We’re lower down the pecking order. No one’s interested in us.”

We drove beyond the borders of the white city. We were in those orchards and orange groves that I had always known existed.

“What sort of place is Lydda, George?” Mrs. Bolton asked.

“Lydda?” I asked startled. I was thinking we were going to Haifa, to the docks. I had just that moment thought that I could give them the slip there, maybe make my way north to the kibbutz where they would surely hide me and keep me safe.

“Yes. The RAF is taking us as far as Cairo and then it’s BOAC from there to London,” Mrs. Bolton said.

“Arab town. Not much Jewish about it. Big trade-union feeling. We paid the Yids more than the Arab workers and there was a strike there in the 1930s I believe. We brought in Jewish strike-breakers. Did the trick.”

“Isn’t that fascinating, Mrs. Jones?”

I said nothing because I was feeling sick. I had never been to an airport. I didn’t know how they worked. We drove on in silence for a while. Mrs. Bolton reached into a hold-all and took out a week-old edition of
The Times.
She started doing the crossword. “Are you good at puzzles, Mrs. Jones?”

“No.”

“I enjoy them. Mental gymnastics, eh? Sure you wouldn’t like to try a clue? Here’s one…”

“Oh, do shut up,” I said.

Mrs. Bolton drew in her breath. “I think we’ll ignore that, shall we, George? Mrs. Jones is a little upset and anxious which is hardly surprising under these rather trying circumstances. My husband is a great believer in calling a spade a spade but sometimes reticence is the best way.”

I looked at her beside me. She was imperturbable. What would you have to do to disturb her clever complacency? A bomb might be the only thing that could ever do it. What did they say when they were alone together? I would spend a long time thinking about the Boltons and what sort of creatures they might be. They were a complete cipher, like their crossword puzzles. What did they stand for? I have no idea. Did they think that standing for something was a kind of corruption? They had turned not believing in anything into a high art form. They had developed nuanced exchanges and made irony and double meanings a kind of empty, dazzling dance of the mind. In fact they were a premonition, a precursor of how things were going to turn out. They were the future of the Empire, but that, as they say, is another story and it isn’t mine.

On the outskirts of Lydda we ran into an army roadblock. Bolton got out of the car, asked for the most senior officer available and walked off a few yards with him. The soldier stood with his arms clasped behind his back, his head to one side, listening. Finally, he nodded.

Bolton came back to the car. “Everything’s hunky-dory,” he said.

“Oh good,” his wife said. “I am glad.”

We drove through various military patrols until we got to a kind of shed. Hundreds of women were milling about. Children were crying or looking excited. Outside, I could see airplanes on the tarmac. I’d never been so close to one before. “That’s what you call a runway,” a man was explaining to his son.

“We’ve sent a telegram to our chaps in Cairo,” Bolton said to me. “The situation has been explained. You’ll have papers waiting for you there.”

I nodded. There was a terrible lump in my throat. “What then?”

“Up to you. They’ll fly you on to London, of course, or you might want to try your luck somewhere else.”

“I’ll get back,” I said, defiantly.

“Not just yet. The border has been closed to all Britons. If you have a British passport you can’t get in at all.”

“How ironic,” said Mrs. Bolton, turning to me.

Behind me a woman was shouting. “Don’t you realize what you’ve done? You’ve turned us into bloody DPs.”

“Oh do calm down,” someone said. “You’re making a frightful impression.”

“I’m a DP,” I said.

“Not at all,” said Bolton. “You have a passport. People would kill for that.”

“You’ll need to attend to certain other irregularities in your situation, though.”

“What do you mean?”

Mrs. Bolton turned to me. She had light blue eyes. “I’m a great believer in the view that a woman needs a husband, a steady chap. Choose the right one and you can have all the freedom you want. It’s the formalities that count, everything else is a matter of negotiation. Pragmatically speaking, you need to get yourself sorted out. Quite quickly, I’d have thought.”

We boarded the airplane. Bolton clasped his wife’s hand for a moment then let it go. He winked at her. It was a very lascivious wink. For a second I tried to imagine their sex life. God knows what they got up to.

“Good-bye, Mrs. Jones,” he said, extending his hand. I didn’t take it. He shrugged and turned away. His shoulders heaved. I think he was laughing.

We sat on the runway for a long time. Behind me, a cross mother was saying to her daughter: “It’s all very well being natural when you are twenty-three, but at thirty-three it’s more difficult and at forty, impossible. How do you think you came by your femininity? Picked it up in the street? My dear, it’s an art, one you must work on all your life, through clothes, through cosmetics, through perfume. All artifice, I agree, but after all, this airplane—what is it but artificial? It’s an invention.”

The girl made a sulky noise.

Mrs. Bolton smiled. “How true.”

The machine we sat in was juddering. It began to move. The pilot drove us forward. We lifted off the ground. Some children began to cry and a woman stifled a little scream. I looked out of the window and saw the land beneath us. In a moment I saw the Mediterranean Sea. I saw the white city, laid out like a grid. I saw cars moving along the roads. It was a very blue day. In the streets of Tel Aviv people would be craning their necks to look at us. Beyond Tel Aviv were brown hills and other countries. Someone was explaining terminology that was new to me: taxiing, banking.

Beneath the roar of the engines Mrs. Bolton was saying something. “France. A very irregular sort of place. Would suit you down to the ground, I’d have thought.”