School for Love (23 page)

Madame Babayannis was a small, thin woman, without charm. She replied: ‘Yes – it is here on her tickets and now I fix mine for the same. If you can sell tickets for me, I will send them gladly.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

As Madame Babayannis stumped off out of the garden, Miss Bohun called on a high and pleasant note from the sitting-room door: ‘Oh, Mrs Ellis, I wonder if you could spare a moment.’

Inside the room, Miss Bohun spoke quietly to Mrs Ellis, so Felix, straining his ears, could catch only the operative words, ‘disloyalty’, and ‘Lady Evelina Lundy’. Mrs Ellis’s reply, when it came, was in her normal voice:

‘Oh no, Miss Bohun, I’m afraid I cannot move back to the King David. I can’t afford it, but in any case I have no intention of moving from here or of giving up the chance of getting this house in the autumn. Also, I know Evelina Lundy. She’s a thoroughly decent person. If she heard you’d turned me out to accommodate her, she would refuse to come here. You’d be left without anyone.’

Miss Bohun, replying, spoke now with less restraint: ‘I am not turning you out for Lady Evelina Lundy, Mrs Ellis. There is no question of such a thing. I simply consider you an unsuitable tenant. When I took you in, you did not let me know you were going to have a baby. I have this young relative here – a boy, little more than a child. Really, you must see how unsuitable it is! And then, to add to it all, you take him off to . . . to low drinking dens where he listens to the most improper conversations. All this behind my back! I feel I’m deceived on all sides. I’ve always been a judge of people; I have an instinct about them – I am a genius in a rather unimportant and
unobtrusive way; anyone who can handle people as I do, must be – but I would not have
dreamt
you could be capable of such depravity. The corruption of youth, Mrs Ellis, is a dreadful thing. Depravity is the only word I can find for it,’ she paused in her growing excitement, then repeated: ‘Depravity,’ as though only a special emphasis could give it the meaning she had in mind.

‘This is all nonsense . . .’ Mrs Ellis was half-laughing, half out of patience, but Miss Bohun broke in, not listening:

‘You’ll
have
to find another lodging. I won’t have this sort of thing going on under my roof.’

‘What sort of thing?’ demanded Mrs Ellis, but Miss Bohun in a mounting hysteria of annoyance still continued as though she heard nothing: ‘Felix is only a boy. He’s my dead foster-brother’s child. It’s my duty to protect him . . . I just won’t have you here . . .’ she broke off as she suddenly noticed Felix now standing in the doorway: ‘Please go away, Felix,’ she said irritably, ‘this is a private conversation.’

But Felix was not to be dismissed. He was filled with an exalted sense of purpose that gave him rights in the grown-up world: he spoke with the dramatic force he had so often heard issue from the cinema screen: ‘If Mrs Ellis goes, I go.’

Unfortunately, however, he got no more than a moment’s attention, then Mrs Ellis gave his shoulder a push so that he stumbled back off the step on to the gravel: ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, ‘I’m not going. If Miss Bohun wants another lodger, she can let the front room.’

‘How dare you mention . . .’ began Miss Bohun, but now it was her turn to be over-ridden. Mrs Ellis, continued,
completely out of patience: ‘All this nonsense about the Second Coming. True religion should give practical results. “I was naked and ye fed me; I was hungry and ye took me in.” Here I am a widow. I’m pregnant, and I look it. If Miss Bohun turns me out, I shall jolly well see that the whole of Jerusalem . . .’

Mrs Ellis stopped as Miss Bohun’s face began to work tragically before collapsing in tears: ‘This is the return I get! I throw open my doors . . . I . . . I . . . And you, Felix.
You
of all people!’ Unable to say more, she turned and felt her way towards the stairs. As she went she sobbed so loudly, the others knew that to speak themselves would be a waste of effort.

When Felix next set out to see Mr Jewel, his mind was full of the state of affairs at the house. They depressed him deeply and yet there was no one with whom he could discuss them. Mrs Ellis was so clearly avoiding him that he had not the courage to go to the Innsbruck. As for Miss Bohun, she behaved as though he did not exist. She took her meals in complete silence and when he discovered that anything he said was ignored, he sat bored and miserable, isolated in bleak consciousness that he had somehow got himself into the wrong with everyone. When he had announced: ‘If Mrs Ellis goes, I go,’ he thought he was being very impressive, but no one had been impressed, and he had done no good at all.

Now there was only Mr Jewel to whom he could talk. The sunshine and regular meals had so improved Mr Jewel that Felix felt he could now risk his discovery that the attic was no longer empty. Mr Jewel had put on some weight; he was sunburnt; he moved with briskness and decision, and he looked ten years younger than he had done in the summer. He enjoyed being looked after; he enjoyed the fuss the nurses made of him and he enjoyed having his leg pulled by the young policemen, but he had moments of gloom, knowing he could not stay there for
ever. Sometimes he complained to Felix that a chap needed a roof of his own. He himself needed somewhere where he could do a bit of painting when he felt like it.

Felix had offered to bring his paint-pot, brushes and pieces of board to the hospital, but Mr Jewel said: No, he liked to feel they were there to go back to. It was as though he imagined they were keeping his place for him.

Felix wondered why Mr Jewel did not take the short walk down the hill to Herod’s Gate and tackle Miss Bohun on the subject of his attic and his return. He did go out sometimes, to buy a paper or his weekly ounce of tobacco, and Felix had seen him once gazing into the window of a small shop that still had some artists’ materials at scarcity prices, but it was as though an invisible barrier kept him from approaching the house. Once Felix had mentioned to Miss Bohun that he had seen Mr Jewel walking in the Jaffa Road and Miss Bohun had said with an air of self-congratulation: ‘No one whom I befriend ever has cause for complaint. There’s Mr Jewel living at the hospital as though it were an hotel, free to come and go, paying almost nothing, I’m told; and there’s Frau Leszno in a splendid job. And neither of them ever comes near me to say “thank you”.’

‘Shall I ask Mr Jewel to come and see you?’ Felix asked mischievously. Miss Bohun replied with composure: ‘There’s no need. He knows he will be very welcome any time he cares to drop in.’

To-day Felix found Mr Jewel sitting out on a wooden seat in the paved, tree-planted square that was overlooked on three sides by hospital windows. The sun felt very strong here, but Mr Jewel, in an old shrunken tussore suit, sat blinking contentedly in the hottest corner of the yard.
As soon as Felix arrived he started talking. Nowadays he was always full of the gossip of his companions in the ward, the young policemen, suffering from dysentery or bullet wounds, who came and went. This usually related to the growing tension in Palestine and the belief that one day soon there would be a special shot, a special bomb explosion – not the sort of thing that happened every day, but something significant – and, as Mr Jewel put it, ‘all hell’ud be let loose.’ He often swore he had heard shots at night out in the dark spaces of the Russian Compound. Last night in the silent sleeping hours there had suddenly been the ringing of a telephone and then footsteps hurrying along the stone corridors. Just when everyone was half asleep again, the ambulance had swung into the courtyard. ‘What happened last night?’ he had asked the nurses in the morning. They told him a Government official driving up late from Tel-Aviv had been caught in an ambush.

‘Shot through the shoulder,’ said Mr Jewel with sombre relish. ‘If they get many more of ’em, they’ll be turning me out. They’ll want my bed; it stands to reason. Anyway I can’t stay here for ever.’

‘Where will you go?’ Felix put a test question.

‘Dunno,’ said Mr Jewel and Felix was certain he knew he could not return to Miss Bohun’s.

Felix said suddenly: ‘There’s another lady in the house now.’

‘What!’ said Mr Jewel loudly, ‘not in my attic?’

It was as though the attic had become a joke they both understood, but Felix was glad to evade a reply that told him more than: ‘Oh, no; she’s not in the attic.’

Mr Jewel gave a shout of laughter: ‘So she’s let the front room, has she?’

Felix said: ‘Well, Miss Bohun wants her to leave, and she says she won’t.’

‘She won’t, eh? Good for her.’ Mr Jewel seemed to think the matter a tremendous joke, but Felix remained serious.

‘This lady’s called Mrs Ellis and she’s very nice. She’s a widow. Her husband was a rear-gunner and he was killed and she’s going to have a baby. Miss Bohun promised to let her have the whole house in the autumn. Now Miss Bohun wants her to go so she can get in another lady. But it’s not funny, Mr Jewel, it’s not fair. I said: “If Mrs Ellis goes, I go.”’

‘Did you!’ Mr Jewel sobered at once, the first person to take this declaration as it was meant to be taken.

‘Yes, but Mrs Ellis just pushed me out of the door and now Miss Bohun won’t speak to me.’

‘Don’t let it worry you,’ said Mr Jewel comfortingly.

‘But why is she like this? Why is she so beastly to Mrs Ellis?’

Mr Jewel shook his head: ‘Ah, she’ll get over it.’

‘She made Frau Leszno go and . . .’ but Felix had to pause unable to make the further point that she had made Mr Jewel go, too.

‘Well, Frau Leszno was a mean-spirited creature, I’d’ve got rid of her myself. But Miss Bohun – she’s not a bad sort, you know. Not a bad sort.’

Felix remained silent. His feelings about Miss Bohun were changing – or, rather, not so much changing, he felt, as appearing out of a cloud of illusion. He could not agree that Miss Bohun was not a bad sort. He said:

‘If it weren’t silly to speak of people being wicked, I’d say she was wicked.’

‘Ar, no,’ Mr Jewel shook his head again, ‘to be wicked you’ve got to have wicked
intentions
. Now, can you say she’s got wicked intentions? Can you?’

Felix did not reply. He felt no confidence in Miss Bohun’s intentions. He wondered why Mr Jewel should condemn Frau Leszno and yet stand up so stoutly for Miss Bohun. Somewhere in his mind he found himself suspecting the single-mindedness of Mr Jewel’s loyalty. Miss Bohun had, after all, power to take him back or reject him. Felix put this suspicion aside almost at once, but he was left with the conviction that Mr Jewel was rather simple; perhaps he was simple because he was old. It seemed clear to Felix, from some of the things he had heard his mother and Mr Jewel say, that they had grown up in a simpler world; and, being simpler, a world in which hypocrisy had had things all its own way. But it didn’t have things all its own way with Mrs Ellis and Felix. Oh no! They were young and knowing; they saw through Miss Bohun. This satisfactory conclusion, now reached, was jolted rather askew by Mr Jewel’s next remark:

‘The trouble with her,’ he said, ‘is that no one’s ever loved her.’

‘Oh,’ said Felix; that was, of course, a new aspect of the case, but he could not consider it with much sympathy. ‘Probably her own fault,’ he said.

‘I don’t know. I don’t know as love always goes to the most deserving.’

‘Well, then, why hasn’t anyone loved her?’

‘I don’t know. Do you love her?’

‘No.’

‘Why don’t you?’

Felix opened his mouth to say: ‘Because she doesn’t
love me,’ but he thought that sounded childish: he wasn’t a baby that had to be loved, so he said: ‘She was kind to me; she gave me a home. Perhaps I would have – well, liked her, anyway – but I don’t think she wanted me to. I’m not sure that’s what she wants.’

‘What else could she want?’

Felix did not know. On reflection he had to admit that Miss Bohun was beyond the range of his understanding. ‘Perhaps she isn’t a hypocrite,’ he said. ‘Or, perhaps . . .’ and here he felt he was being really profound, ‘perhaps she is and she doesn’t know.’

Mr Jewel drew his eyebrows together and was about to make some comment when the luncheon bell rang and he got up hastily. ‘Mustn’t miss me grub,’ he said.

As Mr Jewel went into the hospital, Mrs Ellis came out and was unable to pretend she did not see Felix at the door. She said: ‘Hello,’ without enthusiasm.

‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

‘To get a meal somewhere.’

‘Can I come with you?’

‘I think you’d better not. Children nowadays seem to be so easily corrupted.’

‘I didn’t tell her anything . . .’

‘I didn’t know there was anything to tell.’ Mrs Ellis turned and started walking to the gate, but she did not prevent Felix from following her.

‘I didn’t say there was anything to tell.’ Felix was bewildered and wretched at this blame being put upon him. ‘Do let me come with you!’

‘Oh!’ she made a small, petulant movement that suddenly made him see her not as the experienced grownup he had always supposed her to be, but a girl; someone
not much more grown-up than he was himself. He realised that, under her confident manner, life was probably as difficult for her as for him. He felt sorry for her. ‘Please let me come,’ he said.

She replied crossly: ‘All right.’ He did not know whether she was cross with him or merely wrapped up in herself and her pregnancy. She looked ill and tired. As they walked down through the crowded, hot main road her face grew damp and strained.

He said anxiously: ‘You won’t leave the house, will you?’

‘I wouldn’t please the old bitch.’

After that neither of them spoke until they reached the restaurant door, then she said: ‘You can come in if you like.’

Another time Felix would have been delighted by this invitation, but now, feeling himself unwanted, he followed only because convinced that it was not his fault his friendship with Mrs Ellis had gone wrong: if he stayed with her long enough, the situation might be explained to her, he might justify himself, her anger might be dispelled and everything be as it had been before. But Mrs Ellis showed no sign of doing the one thing that might start the process – directly accusing him. She looked at the menu blankly: there was only the controlled-price meal with very little choice: she ordered, not consulting Felix. When the waiter went off, Felix tried to start a discussion that should have interested them both: ‘Mr Jewel says that no one loves Miss Bohun.’