Everything went without a hitch; the old sacristan bowed low before them and accepted the customary pourboire with joy. They crossed the cold flags of the echoing church and climbed the musty creaking stairs which led to the womens’ gallery. They were quite alone here, and with a swift silent step Eva crossed to the screened window, beckoning Grete to follow suit. With a strange sensation of breathlessness, a choking feeling which made her lips tremble, Grete followed her guide and found herself looking down, almost through the fronds of a palm tree, on to a green lawn covered with tables. She recognized their disposition easily from the diagram Horvatz had drawn. He had not been wrong about the siting, for immediately under her sat a man wearing dark glasses. He was drinking tea with lemon and eating a cream cake. As Grete focussed her glance on him and stared, he removed his dark glasses and — as if deliberately to oblige — looked up at the window. It was almost as if he was looking into her eyes. Instinctively she shrank back, forgetting that the ornamental window was screening her. Panic seized her as she stared down into those grey lustreless eyes of her husband, with their familiar expression of apathy and arrogance. He had changed, yes. He was stouter. He was very much greyer. But there could be no mistaking him. The cicatrices on his cheeks, for example, he had not been able to disguise those — ancient duelling scars of which he had always been so proud and which had always reminded her of the mutilations that African tribes inflict on their youth as marks of ornament. She was terrified of him for a moment, and almost cried out; then her fear left her and was replaced by a cold and scientific hate. How familiar it was — the arrogant set of the head, the small sharp cocksure nose, the circumflex of moustache with its waxed ends.
“Come,” she cried to Eva. “It is enough.”
They walked down the staircase and across the courtyard again.
“Please take my arm,” said Grete; she felt that she was reeling as she walked, drunkenly reeling down the street. But they reached the door without mishap, and climbed the stairs of the high balcony where the men waited for her. Behind them the sunny panorama of Cairo lay with the yellow-tawny line of the Makattam hills down into the desert sands. Traffic roared somewhere out of sight. The river curled green among the flame-touched foliage of the jacaranda. They did not speak, but stared at her in silence. She removed her yasmak and stood looking at them with a strange barbaric smile which was emphasized by the heavy kohl make-up around the lashes.
“Well, is it?” asked David at last in a low voice.
“Yes. Without a doubt.” She swayed as she spoke, but at once recovered herself.
David heaved a great sigh of relief. “Good girl,” he said.
But her eyes were full of tears a few moments later, as she wiped away the kohl in the great mirror which covered one whole wall of Eva’s bedroom.
“I thought,” she said, “I would feel gladder than I do.”
Eva smoked thoughtfully. She had changed back into European slacks and soft slippers. She said nothing, but kissed Grete’s cheek. There came a knock at the door. It was David.
“Grete,” he said. “Your job is done. I am sending you back tonight. The rest is up to us. There may be a bit of an alert when we kidnap him and I want you out of the way. Horvatz is taking you down by car. I expect we’ll be back in a day or three — but we must contact Jerusalem for instructions.”
“Can’t I stay?” she asked.
“No. It’s orders.”
Suddenly, without a word, and quite unexpectedly, since neither of them had premeditated such a gesture, specially before Eva, they embraced passionately. Then, almost shyly, they looked at each other.
“Remember,” she said, “that I want some time alone with him.”
“I promise,” he said. “But he will have to go back and face the War Crimes Commission in the final analysis.”
“Of course. David!”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
21. Schiller’s End
She walked into her office a couple of days before she was expected.
“What is this?” cried the duty janitor. “Are you trying to curry favour with someone? You were supposed to be at the Dead Sea.”
“I was. But it proved deader than dead. I began to pine for my little in-tray. Is the Major in this morning?”
Yes, Lawton was in; but he looked somehow changed, diminished. Yet his face lit up when she walked into his office.
“You are early,” he cried. “That is a piece of luck for me.” Then he added, with a new kind of lameness, a ruefulness, “Grete, I’ve been posted.”
She stopped dead, as if she had been nailed to the ground.
“When?” she asked in a low voice, full of concern.
He made a grimace and said: “I’m posted to India to a military mission. Another fortnight should see me out. For that matter it might see us all out. We’ve been told to prepare evacuation plans in case the UNO vote goes against us.”
“So soon?” she said sadly. It was like the end of a whole epoch; she could hardly envisage Palestine without the British. Lawton stood up.
“I want to take you with me, Grete,” he said. “I know you cannot marry for the time being, but perhaps… later when you are free. Would you come, I wonder? Look at me.”
She obeyed, looking sadly into his eyes with affection and regret.
“No,” she said at last, “I can’t. I feel I must stay here. Too many threads still to tie up; too many loose ends.” Lawton took a slow walk up and down the room.
“I know,” he said. “I know how you feel about that man… and the question of the child.”
“Yes,” she said.
“But if everything should settle itself finally,” he went on with an air of quiet desperation, “would you at least consider the prospect? Time means nothing in such a matter; I would be there always.”
“I can’t disappoint you for fear of wounding you.”
“What does that mean?”
“There is somebody else I care about.”
She turned away from him and gazed out of the window, rather than see the misery on his face.
“Very well,” he said at last.
A few days later, towards the end of the week, her phone rang and she heard the voice of David on the other end of the wire.
“I have some news for you,” he said.
Her nerves jumped. “Is everything alright?” she asked, anxiously, and was relieved when he chuckled and said:
“As right as right.”
“Come round as soon as you wish,” she said.
David hesitated for a moment. “Are you going to be free tonight for your interview?”
She felt her fingers squeeze the phone tightly as she answered in a changed register.
“Tonight? Yes… of course.” So the moment had come at last!
“Then I’ll be round this evening,” said David, and rang off abruptly. He was rather later than she had anticipated; indeed, it was already nine when he at last put in an appearance. It had been a rainy evening. A freak thunderstorm had burst over Jerusalem. David wore a plastic raincoat and a tweed cap. He accepted a whisky.
“It’s to be for eleven o’clock,” he said, looking at his watch. “I had some difficulty with the committee; I had to virtually tell them that, unless you could see him alone, you would refuse to sign any evidence against him.”