The Unquiet heart

TWENTY EIGHT

Winter laid siege to the capital and turned us all into hoarders. We hoarded coal and tins of Spam. We hoarded blankets and we hoarded our emotions. We each became an island of shivering humanity, too cold to talk, to meet, to reach out to each other. I filled another foot of shelf with bright orange Penguins, wondering, with each acquisition, if she would have liked it. I could afford more, now I’d given up the fags.

Surprisingly, business ticked over. I had a nice line in advising companies on security in their warehouses. Tommy Chandler had spread the word. It was enough to keep me in scotch and food. I’d cut down on beer too. I’d stopped going in to the George every night. It had got harder to keep up the banter with the lads after leaving Wilson to the hyenas. Even Stan looked like his conscience troubled him, or maybe he regretted giving up the blowlamp to someone else.

New Year came and went and there was no softening of winter’s grip. They began to cut rations again. Disillusion set in with Attlee and co. Fine promises but none of them kept. It was as though we were tipping back into the gloom of the war years. But this time – apart from winter itself – we had no common enemy.

Just each other.

I was sitting in my bedroom, a quilt pulled round my shoulders and the heat from two sullen briquettes cooking my shins. One hand peeked out to hold the latest book. The other nursed a scotch. It was early evening and sleet was falling past my window. The wet flakes sparkled briefly in the light from the street lamp and were gone.

The door was closed to my office but I heard footsteps on the stairs and then the landing. My outer office door was tried and opened. Someone entered. The steps were hesitant and soon came to a halt. I put down my book and shrugged off my quilt. I got up and opened the dividing door.

She was standing there, hands deep in her pockets, the scarf round her head dripping with melting snow.

“Can I come in?”

I inspected my glass.

“One too many.”

“Not like you, Danny.” Eve smiled and walked towards me.

“I’ve done with ghosts.”

“Oh, I’m real all right.” On cue the cat slid round the door and mewed. It ran forward waving its stumpy tail and wrapped itself round her legs. Eve bent and picked it up. She walked up close to me and dropped it on my chest. The cat hissed, sank its claws in me and leapt off.

“You’re real all right.” I rubbed at my wounds. “Are you staying? Dump your coat and come in. There’s a bit of a fire in here.”

She hesitated.

“Oh come on, Eve. You’re back from the dead. We can celebrate. A wee bit.”

She pulled off her coat and hung it on the hat-stand by the office door. She took off the scarf and shook it and hung it on top. She walked back to me. She looked good, but different somehow. It wasn’t till she came into the light that I realised her russet mop had grown back. It was also now a dark brown.

“Suits you. The hair.”

She fluffed it in embarrassment. I poured her a whisky and topped up mine. We sat, me on the edge of my bed, she on my chair.

“Cheers,” I said. We sipped.

“I’m not staying, you know.”

I nodded and waited.

“Danny, I’m sorry. So sorry.”

“For which bit exactly?”

“My vanishing act. Again.”

“Houdini’s got nothing on you. You could have told me.”

“It wasn’t planned. Not by me. Menachem arranged it. He sent two men.”

I remembered a voice from a radio transmitter in a big house in Berlin.

“How is Mr Begin? Bombed any good hotels lately?”

“Danny! That’s not fair!”

“Neither’s this, Eve! I loved you, you stupid woman. I would have died for you.

And what did you do?”

Her face twisted and tears started. A woman’s trick.

“Don’t you see? I loved you too, Danny.”

“I note we’re using past tense.”

“It was the wrong time.”

“And the wrong place. They should write a song about us. Why did you run away from me?”

“You fool! I didn’t want you hurt. I had to do this.”

“Didn’t want to hurt! Not a letter. Not a word. You could have been dead!”

“You would have known!” She drew herself up. “A long time ago I told you that there was a boy in my life. Before all this. He was big and blond, the perfect German. But he was a Jew. He was going to follow me, here. He never made it. He vanished in the round-ups of 1942. I pleaded with Mulder to find him, to let him go. But I knew he was gone. I knew.”

She shook her head. We were quiet for a long minute.

“Why are you here? They’ll be looking for you. The Americans. The CIA. They want your hide. You had one of their men killed in a pub. You killed their top turncoat.”

“They can’t touch me. I have immunity. I’m here for discussions. Confidential.

When Menachem’s men came for me they took me back to Palestine. Now I’m part of their negotiation team. We’re giving evidence to the UN Special Committee on Palestine.”

“Eretz Israel? You think they’ll let you have your own place?”

“The UN might. And the British are fed up being policemen.”

“Remind me. Why did we want to stop you?”

She smiled. “I told you before; the Arabs have the oil.”

“What about the Arabs who live there already? Won’t they mind?”

She shrugged. “They weren’t born there. It’s not their home. We made the desert green, and they started pouring in from all the other Arab states.”

“So you’ll boot them out. They become the refugees. A new Diaspora?”

She shook her head. “No. They’ll have their own state. All we ask is that they let us live in peace. The world owes us this. It’s time.”

We made small talk then. So small that I don’t remember a word of it. I kept looking at her and wondering what she’d do if I got up and kissed her. She was probably reading my mind for she never gave me that chance.

“I have to go. I shouldn’t be here. I slipped away. One of the men is looking out for me. He’ll be frozen.”

She got up and I followed her out into my office. I helped her on with her coat and she tucked her hair under her scarf. We stood looking at each other like it was the end of the world. It might as well have been.

“Eve? It doesn’t have to be like this. We could forget the past. I used to be good at that. A hard tap here -” I touched my skull “- and it’s gone. We could start again. I could… Hell, I could come to Israel.”

Her smile softened her face. “Oh, my darling, you’d hate it. All that sand. And the flies and the heat. Your Scottish skin…”

“Heat sounds good right now.” But I nodded and smiled back at her. She stepped towards me and we embraced. I smelt her hair and skin again and was lost forever.

“Goodbye, Danny.”

The winter of the new year of 1947 turned out the worst in memory. It dragged on till April. When spring finally hit, it happened fast. The mornings were filled with bird noise and the trees looked fresh minted. It was more a miracle than ever.

I read in the papers that the UN Resolution is likely to pass, even though the Arab countries are opposed. Sabre rattling; they wouldn’t attack Israel, would they? What have they got to fear?

I think of her often and hope that she finds peace. She took the hard road. She could have merged into the shadows here and continued as a journalist. She could have had me. But that wasn’t enough. She had to be creating the news, not reporting it.

She once told me that the battle between good and evil was never-ending and no one could be a bystander. You had to take a stance, one side of the line or the other. She got more lyrical, the journalist coming out: a lone voice gets swallowed up in the roar of history, but a chorus can be heard. I understand that. I’d even like to be part of something like that. Trouble is – and she knew this all along – I’ve forgotten where the line is.