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“I asked you to come and see me,” said Macdonald with the faintest tinge of a Scots burr in his voice, “because… well, because we are pulling out.”

“And we are going to be attacked.”

“Exactly. I see you’ve been fixing up a perimeter down there and I wondered what defences, if any, you had; also what your intelligence was like. Naturally you need not answer any questions, as my duty would be to disarm you. I shall presume you have no arms, eh?”

He got up and walked once round the room before reseating himself, as a dog settles itself down in a basket; it was clear that he was uncomfortable.

“When do you pull out?” asked Aaron cautiously.

Macdonald hesitated. “Day after tomorrow at four ack emma; from then on the road is wide open to be cut, and as for you…

He crossed to the wall map of the area, which depicted the long appendix of the valley with its two converging gorges through which the river had carved a way. Macdonald stabbed at Ras Shamir with his pipe-stem.

“You are an obvious target — and if you cave in, the whole valley goes. Now I can tell you privately that Daud the Prince is lying back here ready for a push. He’s well armed and trained by us. But he will have to come through the pass with the river. No other way. Have you any chance of sealing the pass?”

Aaron shook his head. “I can’t spare the men or the rifles.”

“Rifles!” said Macdonald with a commiserating air. “What the devil do you propose to do in such a case?”

Aaron took up the pencil and indicated the dotted settlements along the two scarps.

“The kibbutzim will reinforce me at a signal but… it will be mostly men with pitchforks, thanks to your policy of forbidding us arms.”

Macdonald made another circle of the room and came back to rest once more at his desk.

“Look,” he said at last, after carefully clearing his throat. “You must get the women and children away. I could provide you with transport. What do you say?”

“No,” said Aaron stubbornly. “We stay.”

“Well, I can but make the offer; if you refuse it, that is your affair. But I trust you will let me at least send the trucks down to the kibbutz. Your committee may think differently.”

“The decision is not mine only; everyone is agreed.”

Macdonald scratched his head. “Well I see that you are perhaps a little slow to take my point. It’s a pity when you are so short of materials and faced with a possible attack.”

He rose and took Aaron’s arm. “Come with me and have a look at the transport,” he said. “I have to do my morning inspection in any case.”

Aaron looked extremely surprised at this unheard-of departure from military practice, but something in the Scotsman’s quizzical glance intrigued him, and he followed him out into the compound where his transport lay, drawn up in rows.

“You see,” said Macdonald, “I’ve told HQ that I’m setting my MT at your disposal today; it’s up to you to reject the offer and send it back to me. In that way my conscience will be clear.”

As he spoke, he whipped one of the flaps of a lorry and disclosed a load of Teller mines, signal wire, barbed wire, pistols and signal flares. Aaron stared at him aghast. He could not speak. The Scotsman winked at him laboriously and patted his arm. At the next lorry and the next he repeated the performance. Aaron gaped after him like an idiot, looking up hesitantly into his face as each new gesture revealed a load of valuable military equipment.

“All this stuff,” said Macdonald sotto voce, “has been written off as stolen by marauders. I need say no more.”

They walked back in silence to the perimeter, where the guard saluted with a clash and thump of heels. “Very well then,” said Macdonald. “I shall send the column down to you in one hour under a colour sergeant. He will know what to do. I hope you will too.” Again he winked.

Aaron’s handclasp was eloquent. He started his engine and leaned back to wave to the Scotsman. “Thank you,” he cried.

And so the defensive plans of Ras Shamir were entirely reshaped throughout that afternoon and evening, thanks to the lucky gift of arms. They could now afford to think in terms of the small shallow minefield; they could mount machine guns on their tractors; they could even afford to envisage a small corps of well-armed grenadiers using Mills bombs…

All the rest of that day they worked, unloading the lorries and sending them back to Macdonald; regrouping their stocks of munitions; digging and plotting and wiring, while Pete sat in her room with head bent to the little radio, listening to the floods of incoherent threats and ravings pouring in on them from the countries surrounding the pathetic little state which had just been born. No one could guess whether this step-child of persecution and intolerance would survive.

David stood in the doorway. “Is it true she has arrived back?”

Pete switched off and nodded. “Yes. By the way, I’ve told the mountain boys — Brisbane and Brooklyn and Manchester — that we now have flares to signal them for reinforcements.”

“Good,” he said. “Where is she?”

“On a washing fatigue, as far as I know,” said Pete.

David turned aside and slipped down the long staircase into the compound; he set off with long strides towards the river, whence he could hear the clear voices of women singing as they washed the camp clothes by the river and hung them on the bushes to dry.

25. Lovers’ Meeting

She saw him from a longish way off and rose quickly, drying her hands; she set off to meet him, feeling shy and uneasy. She did not want to greet him before the other women. They walked smiling towards each other now, their own reflections riding in the waters below them; and as he came closer she saw that it was a different David, for he had changed immensely. Was it simply that men flourish on danger and anxiety? His moustache had gone, and with it the sombre impression of weight, of inner concealed sadness, a well of moroseness. He had become thinner, too, and his features were purer and more clear-cut. He still wore the old jackboots with the ends of his trousers tucked into them. But now he wore a close-fitting jacket and a scarf at his throat. Last but not least, for the first time he openly wore a pistol at his hip. His bearing too was new — purposeful and self-confident; he had lost the old diffidence. He walked swiftly across the tracks between the meadows and muddy pools, with their giant water lilies floating in eddies, moving as if they were alive — taking long, rapid strides towards her.

“Well, you have picked your time,” he said and, before she knew where she was, his arms were around her. He embraced her with complete certainty now, and firmly, expecting her response to be as warm. It was. All the inner barriers seemed to have subsided, freeing her. They kissed each other as if all at once they had gone mad. She tried to speak, but even a simple sentence was breathlessly swept away by the chaotic punctuation of their embraces.

“I tried… so much wanted… but I wanted so much…

He paused only to say “Hush” in a whisper, and again “Hush”; and slowly sinking to their knees, they lay at last in the long grass by the river, helplessly at peace though their bodies still struggled for expression. For a long time after making love they lay like effigies. Then David turned on a sleepy elbow and plucked a bit of grass to put between her teeth.