School for Love (2 page)

Now, re-dreaming his dream in memory, a noise startled him awake again. Someone was moving in the room below. It was nearly dark. He switched on the light and looked about him and suddenly realised all over again that his mother was lost to him. She was dead. Whatever happened, he could never see her, never speak to her, never hear her voice. It was no good feeling sorry for himself. She would never come into this room. He would have to manage without her.

As he hung up his clothes, he thought he would not mind so much if it were even the Shiptons moving about downstairs. Anyone known to him, rather than the people of this house. Indeed, the Shiptons had been very kind. They had taken him to their home when his mother fell ill. She had been ill, with typhoid, a long time; everyone had said she would get better but, instead, she had died. He had to stay on in the Shiptons’ flat. They did not say anything about his going, but after the funeral he had felt
a change in their attitude. Before that he had been a temporary guest and every time they went to the American Hospital his mother had told Mrs Shipton how grateful she was; after her death there had been no one to appreciate their kindness except Felix and he obviously could not stay for ever. Mr Shipton wrote to Mrs Latimer’s brother in England and tried to get Felix a passage home, but it was at the worst possible time. The ships were full of troops being withdrawn from the Middle East, and the few civilian passages were reserved for important people. Felix was put on a waiting-list; the weeks passed and he heard nothing. The Shiptons were still quite kind, but more and more casual. Felix was moved out of his room into the box-room because another guest came; then he was moved out of the box-room because Mr Shipton had ’flu and was afraid of infecting his wife, but when Mr Shipton got better he stayed on in the box-room. Felix had no room, nowhere of his own at all. A camp-bed was put up for him each night in the hall. Sometimes the servant forgot, and it was always awkward when the Shiptons gave a party. Even in his frantic need to get away, knowing he was staying too long, knowing he was not wanted, Felix did not think of Miss Bohun. Mr Shipton must have found out about her and written without telling Felix. When her letter came offering to ‘take the poor boy for his expenses alone’, Felix could have wept with relief that there was, after all, a solution. The letter came on the 27th December; it came when Felix was near despair, for the Shiptons had been invited to spend Christmas with friends in Mosul and had had to leave him in the flat alone. When they returned and found Miss Bohun’s letter, they became quite nice again as though to make up for
the long weeks of indifference, but within two days they had got him a seat on the ’plane to Lydda and packed him off.

Well, now, at any rate, he had a room of his own. He need not be in anyone’s way. Except for its bareness and cold, the room was pleasant enough with its peaked Arab ceiling imitating a tent and its long, spear-shaped window let into a wall so thick that the sill made a window-seat. There was a small iron bedstead, a wardrobe, a table and chair, nothing else – but he could put up some of his mother’s embroideries as she had done whenever they moved to a new hotel or pension. ‘So dull, darling,’ she would say, ‘but wait till I put up some of my pretties and then these will really be our rooms.’

He wondered what he should do now he had unpacked. There had been no time for breakfast and no food on the plane. He was almost past feeling hungry. He peered from the window. The light outside was a pure, dark blue, as though he were seeing it through blue glass. Some sleet was falling and as he watched it, it began to turn to rain. From the room below came a chink of crockery. Oh, tea-time! It made Felix feel better and the house seem less strange. When he heard Miss Bohun going downstairs, he decided to go down, too.

Out on the landing, he heard something clatter in the sitting-room. Miss Bohun called peevishly from the stairs: ‘Oh, dear, Frau Leszno, what have you broken now?’

The German voice, twanging like a flat string, more peevish than Miss Bohun’s, replied: ‘Just such a little plate. It is nosing. In Jastrow we had a hundred such.’

‘Well, there aren’t a hundred such here.’

‘No,’ agreed Frau Leszno with sombre contempt.

Miss Bohun went on down, clicking her tongue and saying sadly: ‘Really, Frau Leszno, you might help me to save!’

‘So? For what should I help you to save? You have here mine dinner-table and mine six chairs, and mine horsehair sofa, and for me – what? Even my room is taken for sis spoilt boy while my Nikky sleeps in the kitchen.’

‘That will do.’ The change in Miss Bohun’s voice was impressive. Frau Leszno said nothing more, but the door slammed as she went. Felix turned the corner diffidently. Miss Bohun was sitting at the tea-table, her eyes hidden behind her hand. She sighed deeply as she heard Felix’s step and began to busy herself with the tea-cups. A single yellowish bulb of light hung over her head. He had felt sorry for her as she sat there, a little, worried old lady with her hand to her brow; he thought how silly he had been to distrust her, but now he could see her face, he was disturbed again. Her face was so narrow there seemed scarcely room between the cheeks for the long, bone-thin nose and the compressed mouth. It looked to Felix like the face of some sort of large insect. Her hair, fairish and greyish, was bound in thin plaits round her head. Her eyelids, thick and pale, hid her eyes. She did not look up or smile as Felix sat down.

She said: ‘I’m afraid Frau Leszno is being rather difficult – not for the first time, I may say; but she’ll get over it. It’s the war coming to an end. The Lesznos had some money and a house in Eastern Germany – actually they’re Polish Jews but they fled to Germany during some pogrom or other – and now she thinks the Allies are going to send her back to spend the rest of her days in luxury. Dear me, if all . . .’ Miss Bohun broke off abruptly as Frau
Leszno pushed the front door open and came in, her black coat tight and damp-looking on her stout, little body, her boots trailing water, her round, red, commonplace face set in a brooding look of grievance. She wore black mittens, but her fingers stuck out cracked and red like a row of beef sausages. She pushed a plate of bread on to the table.

Felix moved uncomfortably under her stare. When the door slammed again, he said: ‘Is she cross with me?’

‘Take no notice of her.’ Miss Bohun suddenly gave a decided movement of her shoulders that seemed to throw off Frau Leszno and everything to do with her. She lifted the bread-plate: ‘Have a slice. I’m afraid there’s nothing to put on to it but margarine. No doubt you fed very well in Baghdad. You’ll find a difference here; none of the best people live much above starvation level here to-day. They have the satisfaction of knowing they are doing the right thing. I buy what I can afford and we always have something nourishing, even if it’s plain, but I
won’t
buy on the black market. That brings us to the question of your keep.’ For the first time her eyelids rose and she fixed Felix with small, critical, reddish-brown eyes, then her glance fell again. She continued: ‘I do not wish to make a profit on you, Felix, but I’m a working-woman and, of course, running this house takes valuable time. I can’t be expected to do it for nothing: but there! after tea we’ll try and worry it out. Do you feel cold? You can put the fire on for a bit.’

Felix, who felt very cold, bent and snapped on the switch of a small electric fire.

Miss Bohun said: ‘I know no one can take the place of your mother, Felix, but I’m a sort of relative – the only
relative of any sort that you have out here – and I want to do what I can for you. It’s my duty, anyway.’

Felix said: ‘Thank you,’ and tried out of gratitude to feel responsive, but the space between them seemed to echo with emptiness. Miss Bohun was so unlike his mother, and, for some reason, he felt sure that when she had raised her eyes and looked at him she had somehow expressed disappointment in him. Perhaps she had imagined he would be older, or younger, or better-looking, or a more unusual sort of boy. Anyway, she retired now into her own thoughts, eyes hidden, and he gave his attention to the meal of grey, gritty bread and tasteless tea. Then he heard a slight movement beside him. He looked down and cried out involuntarily in delight. As the bars of the fire had grown red, a Siamese cat had come out from somewhere and was moving towards the warmth. It looked a sad little cat, as lost as himself, and his heart seemed to swell with relief at the sight of something – something he could love.

Miss Bohun looked up, startled by his cry, then, seeing the cat, she sniffed and said: ‘Oh, Faro. She was given to me. An army officer and his wife going back to England. The thoughtless way people take on animals here! They know they’ve got to leave them behind. I didn’t want a fancy cat. I just wanted an ordinary backyard animal to catch rats.’

‘Doesn’t he catch rats?’ asked Felix.

‘“She”,’ Miss Bohun corrected him, ‘it’s a “she”. That’s another nuisance. Yes, she catches them – I’ll say that for her – but she won’t eat them. I have to go to the Old City and buy camel meat for her.’

‘She’s very quiet.’

‘She’s learnt to be quiet. When she first came she was a spoilt thing. The Peppers had spoilt her. They had no children, you know. She wanted to sit on my knee and get into my bed at night. “Oh, no, young woman,” I said, “you’re here to catch rats. Out into the garden you go, the wood-shed’s full of them.” Then she tried to make up to the Lesznos. Well, they’d no time for her, either, so she stopped asking to be made a fuss of, but she still screams when she’s hungry. They’re selfish creatures.’

‘I could get her camel meat if it would help,’ said Felix.

Miss Bohun reflected a moment, as though about to accept this offer, then she shook her head: ‘They’d cheat you. I know how to deal with them. I’ve been in this country twenty years.’

When tea was finished Felix knelt down beside Faro and stroked her. She scarcely looked at him. He whispered: ‘Dear little cat, dear little cat,’ and as though stirred by the affection in his voice, she looked up, her eyes intelligent, and blue as flowers. She let Felix lift her and take her on to his knee while Miss Bohun went into the question of his keep.

‘Now,’ said Miss Bohun, ‘my idea is that we should share everything equally. I’ve made a list of household expenses.’ She sat down at her writing-desk and found among the muddle in her drawer a piece of paper on which she had written things like: Rent, Light, Heating, Telephone, Wages, Kerosene, Food, Upkeep of Garden, Wear and Tear of Furniture &c. She did not hand him the paper but, peering at it over her arm, he noticed she had put Telephone and Kerosene down twice. He did not like to mention this. He noticed that the rent was only £5 a month and the wages of Frau Leszno, her son Nikky
and the gardener together only £9 – but somehow, with one thing and another, the total in large figures at the bottom was £35. Miss Bohun ticked through the items quickly, read the total aloud, wrote it again and halved it: ‘There! Now, shall we call your share £21 – that’s £21 a month, of course. Actually, that’s the controlled price here, and it makes a nice round figure and helps me to cover expenses.’

Felix nodded, a little stunned. He had not dreamt that life with Miss Bohun would cost so much. His mother’s pension had died with her: obviously the Shiptons were right when they told him the lump sum left for his education and keep would not last long.

Miss Bohun smiled briefly and put the paper way. Then, hearing Faro’s purring rising like a dynamo, she said quickly and brightly: ‘Dear me, listen to that cat. I’ve never heard her purr like that before.’

‘She only wants to be loved,’ said Felix.

Miss Bohun frowned slightly, something odd in her expression: then, raising her eyelids again, she glanced at the boy and the cat and said: ‘Oh, well, if you’ve got the time to waste. I’m afraid I’ve a pupil coming, so, if you wouldn’t mind going up to your room, Felix. . . .’

‘Can I take Faro?’

‘Yes. Yes, I suppose so.’

He wanted to add: ‘And can I have an oil-stove?’ but Miss Bohun seemed so occupied by the papers on her desk that he hesitated too long to be able to speak. He went upstairs, holding Faro to his throat for warmth. At the top he noticed another flight, no more than a ladder between walls, that led up to what must be an attic; a curtain hung at the top in place of a door and through
the holes in the fabric sparkled stars of light. So there was already someone else in the house! Well, perhaps things were not as bad as he had feared. Anyway, he had Faro. He went to his room and began to put up his mother’s favourite things. She had been a great collector of bazaar objects and had often said to people: ‘I ought to have been an interior decorator. It’s a gift, you know; I’d make a fortune if I were in Mayfair.’ He had brought the little hammer and packet of nails which she always carried in her luggage, and now he hung over his bed a large Turkish embroidery, a repeating pattern of birds in gold thread on rose-pink silk. Over the desk he put a Persian painting of a gazelle-eyed girl holding a rose and, opposite it, a late Phanariot ikon almost entirely covered with brass. He went round hammering happily, imitating in his mind his mother’s pleasure in these things, until, suddenly, his door burst open and Miss Bohun stood there looking very sour. Even so, she kept her eyelids down. This made her look strange, as though she were blind, when she raised her face to speak:

‘What is this noise? Where did you get that hammer?’

‘It’s mine,’ Felix breathed nervously.

‘You should have asked me before doing this sort of thing. I don’t want the walls spoilt.’ That was all she said before she lifted her eye-lids and saw Faro curled on the thin Arab carpet that formed a bed-cover. She crossed the room and slapped her off indignantly, saying: ‘I won’t have cats on beds,’ and went out, closing the door on Felix’s apology.

When the dinner-bell rang and Felix went downstairs again, he saw with a lift of his spirits that three places were laid at the table.

‘Does someone else live here?’ he asked.

Miss Bohun glanced at the third place as though unable to account for it herself, then she said: ‘Oh yes, old Mr Jewel. He’s up in the attic.’ Her tone implied that there was something rather unpleasant about Mr Jewel. She clicked her tongue and murmured: ‘Really, he’s late again for dinner. I suppose one must excuse him, he knows no better.’ She picked up the dinner-bell that stood at her right hand, gave it a sharp ring, then went on murmuring: ‘. . . and when he uses the bathroom! People have to grow old, of course, I’m not denying it, but . . . oh dear, I don’t know!’ As she ladled out the soup, she sighed, making Felix feel uneasy as though with guilt.