Free School for Love by Olivia Manning Page B

to tell it. How could he tell anyone who looked as German as did Frau Wagner that the rising in which his father had been killed was a German-inspired rising? His restraint communicated itself to the others and even Frau Wagner gave up trying.
    At last the clock struck a quarter to eight. Mr Jewel was smoking at his pipe as though it were the most engrossing thing in the room. Frau Wagner sat upright with her clasped hands on her knees. When she caught Felix’s glance she made one last attempt and, smiling, she pursed up her mouth and told him the spring would soon be coming. ‘You will like that, Felix.’
    After that the silence went on as though no one had the strength to stop it.
    There was something about the two of them sitting there apart on the sofa that touched Felix painfully. He fidgeted in his chair. Because Miss Bohun had said it would be wrong to leave them, he was obsessed by the sense that they wanted him to go; he felt it like a physical force impelling him to bolt from the room. He would not have minded could he have been sure, as Miss Bohun was, of their wickedness. The trouble was that he wasn’t at all sure, and on top of his uncertainty he was beset by something he could not bear. He did not know what it was. Suddenly he jumped up and said: ‘I’m going to the pictures.’
    Frau Wagner let her breath out as though it had been pent up for some time.
    Felix, without another word, ran upstairs for his coat. When he returned, he said good-bye and shook Frau Wagner’s hand with the enthusiasm of relief. Frau Wagner seemed relieved, too, and said happily: ‘Ah, at the Zion there is a so funny film.’
    Out in the courtyard, Felix felt like a genie that had been let out of a bottle. He started to laugh at the idea, then, almost at once, remembered he had broken his promise to Miss Bohun. He stood still, wretchedly uncertain what to do, but knowing that whatever he did, he could not go back to the sitting-room. As he stood, he stared through the dirty lace curtains that covered Frau Leszno’s little window and saw Frau Leszno lying in bed. She had her back to him – her backside made a large curve in the bedclothes, her shoulders a smaller one, and at the top was the greasy knot of her hair. She held abook in one hand and was reading by the light of an oil-lamp. Above the bed a heart made of pink sugar dangled from a ribbon. The room had been meant for an Arab servant and was no more than a whitewashed cell to hold a mattress. Frau Leszno had somehow got into it not only her bed and chair, but a large wardrobe. This furniture was stuck together like objects packed into a box. When he realised he was doing a quite inexcusable thing – staring into a lady’s bedroom – Felix made off at once.
    In the street, he again did not know what to do. It was near the end of the month and he had no money for the cinema. His mother, who had lived on an allowance that died with her, had left a few hundred pounds that the British Consul in Baghdad, acting as executor, was doling out to Felix at the rate of £22 a month.
    When the Consul heard that Miss Bohun was charging Felix £21 a month, he wrote to someone he knew at the Y.M.C.A. and discovered that Felix could live there for £4 less. He then wrote to Felix: ‘You would have your own room, with central heating and hot running water and I’m told the food is excellent. I advise you to put your name down at once.’
    Felix tore up this letter in small pieces and burnt each separately, afraid Miss Bohun might see it and think that, after all her kindness, he was planning to leave for the sake of £4. But now he could not help thinking that an extra £4 a month would be jolly useful.
    At Herod’s Gate he turned right and went uphill beside the long, dark city wall to the Jaffa Road. The Jaffa Road was the centre of life in Jerusalem, but after dark it looked like everywhere else, shut and deserted. A strict black-out was imposed on everything, except, of course,