She was sitting in a corner at a table on the lawn, waiting for him. The rosy cone of light shed by the table lamp with its red shade set off her shining eyes and hair. What surprised him most was the expression of calm on her face — a strange new relaxed expression of maturity which he had not seen before, and which he diagnosed as being relief after strain. It was in his mind to ask her what news, if any, she had received from her visitor earlier in the evening, but a native shyness made him hesitate and smile instead at her in a tongue-tied fashion.
“Hello,” he said simply, awkwardly.
“Hello,” she replied.
A momentary awkwardness sprang up between them. It was as if all the contingencies of the world which were about to separate them had, in some way, made them strangers to each other. Perhaps it was to shake off his depression that she reached forward and put her hand on his. She felt how deeply the warmth of her touch affected him.
“I must tell you my news,” she said, “since you’re too tactful to ask about it.”
“It was not tact,” he said. “I was afraid for you. Did the priest have anything useful to say?”
“He told me everything I wanted to know,” she said. “Coming all in a lump like that, it roared through me like a north wind, knocked me sideways a bit. Otto is dead, for example. I keep repeating the phrase aloud to myself, astonished to find it means nothing. Or if it does mean something, I haven’t grasped what it can be. And yet, I’m not dazed… I’m perfectly calm. It puzzles me terribly. I don’t know whether to accuse myself of callousness, or what.”
In the long silence that followed, he looked at her keenly, intently.
“I am dreadfully anxious for you,” he said at last. “This country is going to blow up. I wish you had let me take you away before the balloon goes up, as it must. My poor Grete,” he added under his breath.
She was silent and he knew why. The shadow of David rose between them. Then he said:
“Why don’t you go back to Ras Shamir?”
“I’ve asked myself that question,” she said, “more than once. I wanted to and yet something held me back. Perhaps that something was the mystery of my husband and… you know. Now my way seems much clearer. Yet suddenly I feel as if I’d lost the impulse to long very deeply for anything anymore. I wonder if you see.”
He pressed her hand sympathetically and nodded.
“Come,” he said, “let’s not spoil our last evening with gloomy questions. Everything will resolve itself sooner or later. Shall we dance?”
They moved softly and lightly into the throng of fox-trotting officers and their womenfolk. Donaldson of the Hussars showed some disposition to cut in, but Lawton pleaded with him successfully, saying that he was leaving in the morning and the young man acceded to his request with a lordly and slightly tipsy air.
“Have you heard the news?” he said. “We’re packing up. Marching orders came in this evening. Now it’ll be dog-eat-dog, or rather, Arab-eat-Jew.”
“It might be Jew-eat-Arab,” said Lawton under his breath as they circled the dance floor and then left it to continue their slow revolutions on the green grass by the swimming pool. He had never seen her looking so radiant, nor found her so tender, so accommodating. Dancing cheek to cheek, as they were, one might pardonably have mistaken her for a lover or his wife. The subaltern at the bar looked openly envious and Donaldson expressed his own view of the matter by ordering another Scotch whisky and toasting the distant Lawton, muttering, “Here’s to a lucky dog,” as he raised his glass.
It was long after midnight when they walked arm in arm across Jerusalem through the deserted streets. The fireworks had stopped now, but great clouds of red smoke still hung in the night sky, while a late thin moon cast its frail light across the domes and minarets of the city. The only noises from the Arab quarter were the withering snarls and yelps of the Arab radio, calling for death to the Jews and vowing vengeance on all who helped them.
At the end of the long line of cypresses, Lawton stopped suddenly.
“I’m going no further,” he said. “Goodbye, Grete.”
They looked at each other for a long moment, then impetuously, youthfully she embraced him… so quickly indeed that he had hardly time to respond.
“We shall meet again,” she said.
And in some strange way both of them believed that this was the truth — that this parting was not a final one. She turned and walked on down the long street towards her house, while he stood and watched her until she reached the safety of her front door. Then he sighed and turned about, lighting a cigarette as he walked slowly and thoughtfully homeward. There would not be much sleep for him tonight. Already the eastern sky was beginning to pale.
Later, sitting in the awkward bucket seats of the Dakota as it circled Lydda before heading eastward into the rising sun, Lawton looked out upon the city as if upon a relief map, tracing every feature of it from memory. He was surprised to find that he had fallen in love not only with Grete but with Jerusalem itself.
23. New Dispositions
Lawton’s departure weighed heavily upon Grete, though she did not feel its impact until the day when she found a successor occupying his desk. It was something more than a blow to her social life. It was as if it had set in motion a train of other events which were now going to alter the whole circumstances of her life in the city. The office, for example, was closing. Its technical personnel were being transferred to England, while all the local staff, including Grete, were faced with a month’s notice and the gratuity of six months’ pay.
The political tension was mounting daily, too, and public disorders had now come to mark their everyday lives — the Jews fighting the Arabs, the Arabs fighting the Jews, while the unfortunate police attempted, without any success, to hold the ring. It became dangerous to walk in the streets. Shootings, burnings and lootings became the order of the day. The occupiers of Palestine, relieved at last of the burden they found so onerous, owing to their inability to tell the truth to either of the chief factions, or to honour the pledges given to both, now became almost deliberately slack in the execution of their duties.
The general attitude was well voiced by Duff when he exclaimed to a visiting rabbi, who had come to complain about lack of protection of property and person in the Jewish sectors of the town:
“You wanted us out, old chap. And you’re going to have us out.”
Peace had become a precarious matter, public safety in the life of the open street a question of sheer hazard; all day long the columns of motorized troops poured down the dust-choked roads towards the harbours. All night now one heard the crash of grenades in the narrow streets around the Jaffa Gate, or the rapid breathless stammer of pistols. By the time the police patrols had reached the spot, even the sound of running feet had died away, and only the victim of the attack lay there on the pavement, crumpled and silent. More often than not he or she proved to be an innocent victim of terrorism, someone belonging to neither side. Night-curfews came down like a lid upon their lives; all the innocent pleasures, such as dining out, dancing, going for midnight swims, became part of the pattern of their loss.
Such restraints sowed resentment in everyone. It was obvious that the British were packing up and pulling out, yet no official announcement to this effect was made, and this increased the fear and uncertainty. One day they would awake to find Palestine evacuated, left defenceless, and with no armed soldier on hand to prevent the entry of the Arab armies which surrounded this pathetic strip of coastal land. It seemed as if all the gloomy predictions of the Haganah Jews were to be fulfilled.