The Mandelbaum Gate (20 page)

‘I
feel,’ Freddy said, ‘that if I concentrate on other things, the memory will
return in due time.’ And he thought desperately of some other thing to talk
about to Gardnor, there and then. He could only think of a successful bet he
had once laid with his fellow officers at sea during the war, already having
tried it successfully in a forfeit game with his nephews and nieces at a
Christmas gathering. ‘I bet you a round of drinks,’ Freddy now said, ‘that you
can’t spell desiccated.’

Gardnor
took him on, and spelt it ‘d-e-s-s-i-c-a-t-e-d’.

‘Wrong,’
said Freddy.

Gardnor
tried again, for another round, spelling it ‘d-e-s-i-c-a-t-e-d’.

‘There
are two c’s,’ said Freddy.

‘Well,
I never knew that before.’

‘No one
does,’ Freddy said.

‘You
could make a living out of it.’

‘So I
shall, if I lose my job.’

Well, I
hope it won’t come to that.’ Gardnor spoke with such a trace of seriousness
that Freddy looked to see what expression he wore. But he seemed cheerful
enough.

‘We’ve
got a new man coming from London next week,’ Gardnor said. ‘I’ve no idea who
he is.’

‘Really?
‘What’s his job?’

‘I don’t
know. I only heard about him late this afternoon. But I suppose he’s from “Q”.’

‘Q’ was
the Foreign Office Internal Security department. Gardnor spoke softly. Two or
three other tables on the terrace were occupied.

‘Why d’you
suppose that? Has anything new been going on?’ Gardnor looked round casually
and beckoned to a waiter who was hovering in the vine-framed doorway that led
from the terrace to the hall. He ordered some drinks to be served indoors.
When they had moved indoors and got their whiskies-and-soda in a quiet corner
of the big room, Gardnor said, ‘There’s been a leakage about the agreement with
Kuwait. The Jews don’t think it comes from any of their men, they think it’s
us.’

‘Well,
that’s the Embassy’s affair,’ Freddy said. ‘It’s nothing to do with us here in
Jerusalem. Whitehall should send its snooper to Tel Aviv, that’s where he
should go.’

‘Oh, we
can’t pretend to know nothing of Kuwait,’ Gardnor said.

‘No,
that’s true. Well, we’ll discuss it another time.’

‘Everyone
feels you should have treatment, Freddy. But I disagree — I mean, for your own
sake. You look jolly fit to me.’

When
Barbara Vaughan turns up, if she does turn up safely, she may throw some light
on the mystery. I don’t know, of course; but she did disappear from the convent
on the same day that I disappeared from myself, so to speak.’

‘We’re
more or less certain she’s gone away. Her boy-friend left Jordan about that
time. They’ve gone off together.’

‘I hope
so,’ Freddy said.

The
following week Joanna met him at the Jordan end of the Gate and drove him to
the house. She said, ‘I’ve made inquiries of anyone who might have recognized
you on those days last week-end, Freddy, but no one saw a sign of you. I’ve
asked Ramdez, I’ve asked Alexandros and all the shops, even the barber. No one
saw you at all. Of course, they always deny everything, on principle. Where can
you have been?’

‘I must
go over everything carefully from the beginning. Perhaps here in Jordan it
will come back to me.’

It was now ten days since
Barbara Vaughan’s disappearance. She had not, been seen since she left the
Cartwrights’ house on that Saturday afternoon of her visit, when Freddy had
unaccountably turned on the Cartwrights: ‘The whole trouble with you is, you
blow neither hot nor cold….’ Of course, the row had blown over. The Cartwrights
had apologized effusively for their tactlessness and for blowing neither hot
nor cold. ‘Yes, it is true, Matt,’ Joanna had said to her husband. ‘There are
some things too serious … poor Freddy is right. Poor Barbara …’ All that
fuss had blown over. Barbara had returned to the convent-hostel where she was
staying; at least she had been driven to the door by Matt and Joanna; at least
that was what Joanna and Matt said. Freddy found himself in an uncomfortable
state of suspecting absolutely everybody’s testimony and this, in turn, made
him feel guilty. But he was certain, now, where at first he had only begun to
notice, that small silences occurred in the course of conversations with
visitors and friends from the legation. They were keeping something back from
him, he was sure. When at last he had agreed to come across to Jordan to stay
for a while with the Cartwrights, there again he noticed the hesitation, the
silences.

‘Has
Barbara Vaughan been found?’

‘No,
Freddy, you know we’d tell you if she had. Personally, I think she’s left the
country.’

‘If you
hear that she’s been found, be sure to tell me. I was privately informed that
she is safe so far. I can’t tell you more than that, and I can only tell you
that much in confidence. But if you should hear that she is dead, killed, by
whatever means, be sure to tell me.’

A
little silence. Then, ‘Freddy, dear, you’re being morbid.’

‘I
know, Joanna, but one must face the —’

‘Freddy,
you know that Clegg had gone on leave just before she disappeared. It’s only
reasonable to suppose they’ve eloped.’

‘I don’t
believe it, Matt.’

‘But he
went away, just as she did, without telling anyone where he was going. She must
have got out of the country somehow. There’s a Dutch line from Amman.
Goodness, it would be easy. She was just another tourist with a passport; how
could they remember her face? It’s such an ordinary face.’

‘Well,
Joanna, there’s no record of the name Vaughan on any of the airlines. I don’t —’

‘Oh, it’s
easy to move about and pass these border posts, Freddy. A little money goes a
long way out here. Everyone’s bribable.’

‘Well,
I’m not convinced, that’s all. She had changed towards Clegg, you remember.’

‘Well
she must have changed back again.’

Freddy
said, ‘If one wasn’t involved, it would be awfully funny. In fact, it is funny.
The woman disappears, then it turns out that Clegg has disappeared; and at the
same time I disappeared for a few days. It’ll make a jolly good story one day
if Barbara Vaughan gets out of it alive.’

The
small particle of silence flickered in the air between Freddy and the
Cartwrights again. Then Joanna said, gaily, ‘It will all blow over, Freddy.’

‘Time
for drinks,’ said Matt. ‘What will you drink, Freddy?’

‘Promise
me one thing, Joanna,’ Freddy said.

‘What?’

‘That
you’ll be careful when you go clambering about the hills up here looking for
wild flowers. That short-cut to the Potter’s Field, you know it’s dangerous. It
borders on Israel. In fact, it’s disputable whose territory it is.’

‘Oh,
Freddy, I’ve done it dozen of times. Why do you say this?’

‘I’ve
got a premonition of bloodshed,’ Freddy said. ‘Which isn’t like me at all. But
somebody — I can’t help feeling — is in danger of bloodshed.’ He was thinking,
wildly, as he had done all week, it might be Abdul on his smuggling trip, if he’s
to be believed … It might be Barbara … Joanna, gathering wild flowers … Somebody
I know.

‘Freddy,
that’s an odd thing for you to say,’ said Matt, suspiciously.

‘He’s
not in the brightest of spirits, dear,’ Joanna said, angry at her husband’s
tone.

‘Not in
character,’ Matt said. ‘Freddy, tell us honestly. Have you really lost your
memory? Is it true? Or is it a matter of expediency? I think you’ll be frank
with us.’

‘We’re
on your side, either way,’ Joanna said.

‘Then
is that what the Foreign Office suspects?’ Freddy said. ‘Is that what they’re
thinking?’

‘In
fact, I did hear a rumour that they’re anxious about something,’ Matt said. ‘Something
in the security line.’

‘I lost
my memory all right,’ Freddy said. ‘I haven’t a due what happened to me. Matt,
you old humbug, what a question to ask me.’

Joanna
hugged Freddy. ‘We’re on your side, anyway,’ she said. ‘You should let the
doctors question you and try to bring back the events. They do it by a process
of association.’

‘I can
wait a while,’ Freddy said. ‘What actually happened is bound to come back.’

What actually happened to
Freddy between the late Saturday afternoon when he lost his memory in Jordan
and the early Tuesday afternoon when he regained it in Israel was to come back
to him a little later — the outlines of his movements forcing themselves back
to him, at first, in a series of meaningless threads. The details followed
gradually, throughout the days and into the years ahead and occurred, then, in
those fragments, more or less distorted, which are the normal formations and
decor of human memory.

The
little heated fuss in the garden had blown over. That was definitely one of the
things he remembered on his return to Israel. ‘The trouble with you,’ Freddy
had heard himself tell his friends, ‘is you blow neither hot nor cold.’ Blow
cold, blow hot, it had all blown over. Matt drove Barbara back to the convent,
and Joanna, cheerfully breezing-down the recently inflamed atmosphere, left
the house with them, a bulky parcel of groceries in her arms. She was holding
it like a baby. The parcel was not tied with string; it was loosely bundled
together in brown paper; one could see portions of a sugar-package, a bag of
flour, and a tin of something sticking out of the upper end of the bundle, like
an infant’s head. Joanna had said that, while the car was out, it would be a
chance to take that stuff to someone or other, one of her poor Arab families.
Freddy had seen many such bundles of groceries being borne out of houses, at
home and abroad, by many such busy Englishwomen, killers of two birds to the
stone, all through his life. At home, the Welfare State had done nothing to
change their habits. The scene was all the more typical in that Matt had
already gone out to the car, thrusting past her, without any attempt to relieve
his wife of the bundle; there was no hint of expectation on her part that he
should do so. Freddy’s aunts and sisters, all their school friends and the
wives of Freddy’s school friends had been for ever dashing out of the house to
get a place in the car, with breathless parcels of groceries entwined in their
arms, while the husbands pushed past them to the driver’s seat.

This
had been the last scene to impress itself on Freddy’s mind before he mislaid
the records. He was on the road, his head bare under the hot sun. He waved
good-bye as the car drove off, with Barbara beside Matt in the front and Joanna
in the back.

After
that his actions and thoughts were as follows: He returned to the house and
felt it to be suddenly empty. He thought he had better go up and rest. As he
went towards the staircase he passed the letter tray. Two letters had arrived
for him by air mail from England. This was not unusual. Quite often his mail,
having arrived at his office in Israel after he had left on Friday afternoon,
would be put in the diplomatic bag and sent through the Gate to the Consulate
in Jordan; one of the consuls would then have it sent over to the Cartwrights
where they knew Freddy was staying. And so it was quite to be expected that
Freddy should find a letter or two lying on the tray addressed to him, at any
odd hour of the week-end.

He took
the two letters upstairs, glancing at the envelopes. He saw that one came from
his mother and the other from Benny, and when he reached his room he was
tempted to put them away out of sight, unopened. This feeling, too, was usual,
his habitual reaction to letters from Harrogate where his mother and Benny
resided at great expense, mistress and servant grown old together and living on
that vital substance of mutual reproaches and complaints against the hotel,
which formed the main themes of his mother’s letters to Freddy. Benny’s
less-frequent letters were equally tedious; her religious feeling, so jolly in
the hymn-singing nursery days, had become a mania and a great bore to Freddy:

‘Mr
Freddy, the Lord knows and only He knows what it is to live with her. I have
tried to bring home the Word of Jesus to her heart, but the Devil and his
Minions have got her in their bloody claws. Mr Desmond gave a sermon last week
that was your living Mother to a T. I have spoken to the girls, Mr Freddy, but
it is up to you —’

The ‘girls’
were Freddy’s elder sisters. They were quite capable of solving any of their
mother’s problems, and took some trouble to do so. But Freddy was aware that
his mother did not want a solution to her problems, she wanted a solver of
problems, and no one would suffice but Freddy himself. Benny was to some extent
a participant in the unspoken plot to get unattached Freddy to resign his job
and come and live with them. It was an old story to Freddy, who had no
intention of laying himself, a human sacrifice, on the altar at Harrogate. In
the course of the years he had sometimes become alarmed at Benny’s religiosity.
Her letters bore more and more graphic references to the Devil and his sulphurous
regions, and more and more exhortations to Freddy himself to come home from
his heathen posts to Christian Harrogate, and serve Christ rather than the
Foreign Secretary. And Freddy had duly sent off his weekly letters to his
mother, and to Benny from time to time, adapting their tone according to his
judgement. It was largely a matter of keeping them quiet.