'I was here one evening, around six,' he began. 'Your mother was out. I had come to borrow a book from your,father. You were in your bath. Your father got a phone call from France, I can't remember why. While he was talking you began to cry. I went upstairs, took you out of the bath, dried you and put you into your nightdress. You must have been four or five years old.'
Suza laughed. She had a sudden vision of Dickstein in a steamy bathroom, reaching down and effortlessly lifting her out of a hot bath full of soap bubbles. In the vision she was not a child but a grown woman with wet breasts and foam between her thighs, and his hands were strong and sure as he drew her against his chest. Then the kitchen door opened and her father came in and the dream vanished, leaving only a sense of intrigue and a trace of guilt.
Nat Dickstein thought Professor Ashford had aged wen. He was now bald except for a monkish fringe of white hair. He had put on a little weight and his movements were slower, but he still had the spark of intellectual curiosity in his eyes. Suza said, 'A surprise guest, Daddy.' Ashford looked at him and, without hesitation, said, 'Young Dicksteinl Well, I'm blessedl My dear fellow.' Dickstein shook his hand. ne grip was firm. 'How are you, professorr, 'In the Pink, dear boy, especially when my daughter's here to look after me. You remember Suza?' 'Weve spent the morrung remmiscing,' Dickstein said. 'I see shes put you In an apron already. That's fast even for her. I've told her shell never get a husband this way. Take it off, dear boy, and come and have a drink.' - With a rueful grin at Suza, Dickstein did as he was told and followed Ashford Into the drawingroom. 'Sherryr Ashford asked. ''Ibank you, a small one.' Dickstein suddenly remembered he was here for a purpose. He had to get information out of Ashford without the old.man realizing it. He-had been, as it were, off-duty, for a couple of hours, and now he had to turn his mind back to work. But softly, softly, he thought Ashford handed him a small glass of pale sherry. 'Now tell me, what have you been up to all these years?' Dickstein sipped the sherry. It was very dry, the way they liked it at Oxford. He told the professor the story he had given to Hassan and to Suza, about finding export markets for Israeli wine. Ashford asked informed questions. Were Young People leaving the kibbutzim for the cities? Had time and Prosperity eroded the communalist ideas of the kibbutzaiks? Did European Jews mix and intermarry with African and Levantine Jews? Dickstein's answers were yes, no, and not much. Ashford courteously avoided the question of their opposing views on the political moralit~ of Israel, but nevertheless there was, underlying his detached inquiries about Israeli problems, a detectable trace of eagerness for bad news. Suza called them to the kitchen for lunch before Dickstein had an opportunity to ask his own questions. Her French sandwiches were vast and delicious. She had opened a bottle of red wine to go with them. Dickstein could see why Ashford had put on weight Over coffee Dickstein said, 'I ran into a contemporary of mine a couple of weeks ago-in Luxembourg, of all places:' Ashford said, 'Yasif Hassan?' 'How did you knowT' 'We've kept in touch. I know he lives In Luxembourg.' 'Have you seen him muchr' Dickstein asked, thinking: Softly, Softly. 'Several times, over the years.' Ashford paused. 'It needs to be said, Dickstein, that the wars which have given You everything took everything away from him. His family lost all their money and went into a refugee camp. Res understandably bitter about Israel.' 'Dickstein nodded. He was now almost certain that Hassan was in the game. 'I had very little time with him-I was on my way to catch a plane. How is he otherwise?' Ashford frowned. 'I find him a bit - . . distrait,' he finished, unable to find the right English word. 'Sudden errands he has to run, canceled appointments, odd phone calls at all times, mysterious absences. Perhaps it's the behavior of a dispossessed aristocrat.' 'Perhaps,' Dickstein said. In fact it was the typical behavior of an agent, and he was now one hundred percent sure that the meeting with Hassan had blown him. He said, 'DO you see anyone else from my year?' 'Only old Toby. He's on the Conservative Front Bench now.' 'Perfectf' Dickstein said delightedly. 'He always did talk Me an opposition spokesman-pompous and defensive at the same time. I'm glad he's found his niche.' Suza said, 'More coffee, Nat?' 'No, thank you.' He stood up. 'Ill help you clear away, then I must get back to London. I'm so glad I dropped in on you.
'Daddy will clear up,' Suza said. She grinned. 'We have an agreement.' 'I'm afraid it is so,' Ashford confessed. 'She won't be anybody's drudge, least of all mine.' The remark surprised Dickstein because it was so obviously untrue. Perhaps Suza didn't wait on him hand and foot, but she seemed to look after him the way a working wife wouldL 'niwalkinto town with you,' &=a said. 'Let me get my
Ashford shook Dickstein's hand. 'A real pleasure to see you, dear boy, a real pleasure.' Suza came back wearing a velvet jacket. Ashford saw them to the door and waved, smiling. As they walked along the street Dickstein talked just to have an excuse to keep looking at her. The jacket matched her black velvet trousers, and she wore a loose cream-colored shirt that looked like silk. Like her mother, she knew how to dress to make the most of her shining dark hair and perfect tan skin. Dickstein gave her his arm, feeling rather old-fashioned, just to have her touching him. There was no doubt that she had the same physical magnetism as her mother: there was that something about her which filled men with the desire to possess her, a desire not so much like lust as greed; the need to own such a beautiful object, so that it would never be taken away. Dickstein was old enough now to know how false such desires were, and to know that Eila Ashford would not have made him happy. But the daughter seemed to have something the. mother had lacked, and that was warmth. Dickstein was sorry he would never see Suza again. Given time, he might ... Well. It was not to be. When they reached the station he asked her, 'Do you ever go to London?' 'Of course,' she said. 'rm going tomorrow.' 'What forTI .'To have dinner with you,' she said.
When Suza's mother died, her father was wonderful. She was eleven years of age: old enough to understand death, but too young to cope with it. Daddy had been calm and comforting. He had known when to leave her to weep alone and when to make her dress up and go out to lunch.
Quite unembarrassed, he had talked to her about menstruation and gone with her cheerfully to buy new brassieres. He gave her a new role in life: she became the woman of the house, giving instructions to the cleaner, writing the laundry list, handing out sherry, on Sunday mornings. At the age of fourteen she was in charge of the household finances. She took care of her father better than Eila ever had. She would throw away worn shirts and replace them with identical new ones without daddy ever knowing. She learned that it was possible to be alive and secure and loved even without a mother. Daddy gave her a role, just as he had her mother; and, like her mother, she had rebelled against the role while continuing to play it. He wanted her to stay at Oxford, to be first an undergraduate, then a graduate student, then a teacher. It would have meant that she was always around to take care of him. She said she was not smart enough, with an uneasy feeling that this was an excuse for something else, and took a job that obliged her to be away from home and unable to look after Daddy for weeks at a time. High in the air and thousands of miles from Oxford, she served drinks and meals to middleaged men, and wondered if she really had changed anything. Walking home from the railway station, she thought about the groove she was in and whether she would ever get out of it She was At the end of a love affair which, like the rest of her life, had wearily followed a familiar pattern. Julian was in his late thirties, a philosophy lecturer specializing in the pre-Socratic Greeks: brilliant, dedicated and helpless. He took drugs for everything-cannabis to make love, amphetamine to work, Mogadon to sleep. He was divorced, without children. At first she had found him interesting, charming and sexy. When they were in bed he liked her to get on top. He took her to fringe theaters in London and bizarre student parties. But it all wore off: she realized that he wasn't really very interested in sex, that he took her out because she looked good on his arm. that he liked her company just because she was so impressed by his intellect. One day she found herself ironing his clothes while he took a tutorial-, and then it was as good as over. Sometimes she went to bed with men her own age or younger, mostly because she was consumed with lust for their bodies. She was usually disappointed and they all bored her eventually. She was already regretting the impulse which had led her to &ake a date with Nat Dickstein. He was depressingly true to type: a generation older than she and patently in need of care and attention. Worst of all, he had been in love with her mother. At first sight he was a father-figure like all the rest But he was different in some ways, she told herself. He was a faimer, not an academic--he would probably be the least well-read person she had ever dated. He had gone to Palestine instead of sitting In Oxford coffee shops talking about it He could pick up one end of the freezer with his right hand. In the time they had spent together he had more than once sur. prised her by not conforming to her expectations. Maybe Nat Dickstein will breA the pattern, she thought. And maybe rin. kidding myself, - Nat Dickstein called the Israeli Embassy from a phone booth at Paddington Station. When he got through he asked for the Commercial Credit Office. There was no such department: this was a code for the Mossad message center. He was answered by a young man with a Hebrew accent. This pleased Dickstein, for ft was good to know there were people for whom Hebrew was a native tongue and not a dead language. He knew the conversation would automatically be tape-recorded, so he went straight into his message: 'Rush to Bill, Sale jeopardized by presence of opposition team. Henry~' He hung up without waiting for an acknowledgment. He walked to his hotel from the station, thinking about Suza Ashford. He was to meet her at Paddington tomorrow evening. She would spend the night at the flat of a friend. Dickstein did
