Early on the Monday morning, he resumed, Michel returned to London, but Charlie, who had no rehearsal till afternoon, remained behind, heartbroken, in the motel. He briskly described her grief.
"The day is dark as a funeral. The rain is still falling. Remember the weather. At first you are crying so much you cannot even stand. You lie in the bed that is still warm from his body, weeping your heart out. He has told you he will try to come to York next week, but you are convinced you will never see him again in your life. So what do you do?" He gave her no chance to answer. "You sit yourself at the cramped dressing-table in front of the mirror, you stare at the marks of his hands on your body, at your own tears as they continue falling. You open a drawer. Take out the motel folder. And, from the folder, motel stationery and a courtesy ballpoint pen. And you write to him as you sit there. Describing yourself. Your inmost thoughts. Five pages. The first of many, many letters which you send to him. You would do this? In your despair? You are an impulsive letter-writer, after all."
"If I had his address, I would."
"He has given you an address in Paris." He gave it to her himself, now. Care of a tobacconist's in Montparnasse. To Michel, please forward, no surname needed or supplied.
"The same night, from the misery of the Astral Commercial and Private Hotel, you write to him again. In the morning as soon as you wake, you once more write to him. On all sorts and scraps of stationery. At rehearsals, in the intervals, at all odd times, henceforth, you write to him passionately, unthinkingly, with total frankness." He glanced at her. "You would do that?" he insisted again. "You would really write such letters?"
How much reassurance does a man need? she wondered. But he was already away again. For, joy of joys--despite her pessimistic forecasts--Michel came not only to York, he came to Bristol and, better still, to London, where he spent a whole miraculous night in Charlie's flat in Camden, frenzy all the way. And it was there, said Joseph--as gratefully as if rounding off a complicated mathematical premise--"in your own bed, in your own flat, between protestations of eternal love, that we planned this very Greek holiday which we are here and now enjoying."
A long silence while she drove and thought. We are here at last. From Nottingham to Greece in one hour's driving.
"To join up with Michel after Mykonos," she said sceptically.
"Why not?"
"Mykonos with Al and the family, jump ship, meet Michel in the Athens restaurant, away we go?"
"Correct."
"No Al," she pronounced finally. "If I'd had you, I wouldn't have taken Al to Mykonos. I'd have chucked him. He wasn't invited by the sponsors. He tagged on. One at a time, that's me."
He dismissed her objection out of hand. "Michel does not ask for that type of loyalty; he does not give it and he does not receive it. He is a soldier and an enemy of your society, liable to be arrested at any time. It may be a week before you see him or six months. You think he wants you to live like a nun suddenly? Sit around pining, having tantrums, confiding your secret to your girlfriends? Nonsense. You would sleep with a whole army if he told you to." They passed a wayside chapel. "Slow down," he ordered, and again studied the map.
Slow down. Park here. March.
He had quickened his step. Their path led to a cluster of derelict sheds and past it to a disused stone quarry hacked like a volcanic crater into the summit of the hill. At the foot of the hewn face stood an old oil can. Without a word, Joseph weighted it with small pebbles while Charlie looked on mystified. Removing the red blazer, he folded it and laid it carefully on the ground. The gun was at his waist, dropped into a leather loop fastened to his belt, the butt tipped slightly forward on a line below his right armpit. He wore a second holster over his left shoulder but it was empty. Grasping her wrist, he drew her to the ground to squat, Arab-style, beside him.
"So then, Nottingham is in the past, so is York, so is Bristol, so is London. Today is today, the third of our great Greek honeymoon; we are where we are, we made love all night in our hotel in Delphi, rose early, and Michel supplied you with another memorable insight into the cradle of your civilisation. You drove the car and I confirmed what I had heard from you already, that you like to drive and for a woman you drive well. And now I have brought you here, to this hilltop, you do not know why. My mood, as you have noticed, is withdrawn. I am brooding--perhaps wrestling with a great decision. Your efforts to break in upon my thoughts only annoy me. What is happening? you wonder. Is our love advancing? Or have you done something which displeases me? And if advancing, how? I sit you here--beside me--so--and I draw the gun."
She watched in fascination how he slipped it nimbly from its holster and made it the natural extension of his hand.
"As a great and unique privilege, I am going to initiate you into the history of this gun, and for the first time"--his voice slowed down to make the emphasis--"I am going to mention to you my great brother, whose very existence is a military secret which only the most loyal few may share. I do this because I love you, and because--" He hesitated.
And because Michel likes telling secrets, she thought; but nothing on earth would have prompted her to spoil his act.
"Because today I intend to take the first step towards initiating you as a fighting comrade in our secret army. How often--in your many letters, in our lovemaking--have you begged for a chance to prove your loyalty in action? Today we are taking the first step along that path."
Once again, she was aware of his seemingly effortless ability to put on Arab clothes. As last night in the taverna, when at times she barely knew which of his conflicting spirits was speaking out of him, so now she listened entranced to his adoption of the ornate Arab style of narrative.
"All through my nomadic life as a victim of the Zionist usurpers, my great elder brother shone before me like a star. In the Jordan, in our first camp, when school was a tin hut filled with fleas. In Syria, where we fled after the Jordanian troops had driven us out with tanks. In the Lebanon, where the Zionists shelled us from the sea and bombed us from the air, and the Shiites helped them to do it. Still, in the midst of these deprivations, I unfailingly remind myself of the great absent hero, my brother, whose feats, reported to me in whispers by my beloved sister Fatmeh, I long more than anything to rival."
He no longer asked her whether she was listening.
"I see him seldom, and only in great secrecy. Now in Damascus. Now in Amman. A summons--come! Then, for a night, I am at his side, drinking in his words, his nobility of heart, his clear commander's mind, his courage. One night he orders me to Beirut. He has just returned from a mission of great daring of which I may know nothing except that it was a total victory over the Fascists. I am to go with him to hear a great political speaker, a Libyan, a man of wonderful rhetoric and persuasiveness. The most beautiful speech I ever heard in my life. To this day I can quote it to you. The oppressed peoples of the entire earth should have heard this great Libyan." The gun lay flat in his palm. He was holding it out for her, willing her to covet it. "With our hearts beating with excitement, we depart from the secret lecture place and walk back through the Beirut dawn. Arm in arm, after the Arab fashion. There are tears in my eyes. On an impulse, my brother stops and embraces me as we stand there on the pavement. I can feel now his wise face pressed against my own. He takes this gun from his pocket and presses it into my hand. So." Grasping Charlie's hand, he transferred the gun to it, but kept his own hand over hers while he pointed the barrel towards the quarry wall. " ‘A gift,' he says. To avenge. To set our people free. A gift from one fighter to another. With this gun I declared my oath upon the grave of my father.' I am speechless."