The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Spark Read Free Book Online Page B

environment was half
wrong.’
    ‘Then
you’ve got something in common with Clegg,’ Michael said. ‘The outcast status.’
    ‘Yes,
quite, but we also have common intellectual interests. We’ve got a lot to talk
about.’ She had turned sharp and defensive, like Aunt Sadie.
    ‘That
sounds more like sense, I’ll admit. You’re the most sensible woman I know.’
    ‘I’m
not. He’s a married man.’
    ‘Any
chance of a divorce?’
    ‘He’s
got a divorce,’ Barbara said.
    ‘Oh,
Christ, yes, you’re a Catholic. What are you going to do?’
    ‘I
haven’t begun to think.’
    ‘Keep
me informed,’ Michael said, ‘when you do begin to think. Anyhow, I’m glad this
has happened. I thought you’d given men up.’
    ‘Well,
evidently not.’
    ‘I
know. Silly of me.’
    Down at
The Fighting Cocks, the public house that stood on the verge of the Roman area
of St Albans, small murmurs passed round concerning the midnight movements of a
couple of the current archaeologists (for the patrons thought Barbara was one
of the team). ‘You’re causing a scandal, Barbara — you and Harry Clegg.’ Yes,
but Miles and his social circle never got to hear of the small scandal at The Fighting
Cocks; nobody there knew the archaeologists by name, or cared. The local people
grinned as the lovers left the pub. ‘Free love on the old Roman road,’
commented a man, and it was left at that. Meanwhile, Barbara and Harry walked
along the ramparts of Watling Street by moonlight and bedded down in the hut.
    A year
later, on the summit of Mount Tabor, where the warrior poet, Deborah, once
mustered her troops against an enemy of the Lord named Sisera, Barbara turned
and gazed out towards the Dead Sea, where her lover now was working on the site
of Qumran. She recalled, the day she left St Albans, saying good-bye to Miles,
Kathy, and the children. Miles took her to the station, talking of his married
plans as married people do — the holiday abroad and the new garage — suspecting
her of no other passion than her recent one for botany and no deeper regret
than that she had given up playing the cello. She had felt then, how much more
of a sexual person she was than he. She could not remember when first she had
associated her Jewishness with her sexual instincts and distinguished herself
from her Gentile relatives by a half-guilty feeling that she was more afflicted
by sex than they were; so that, when she fell in love with Harry Clegg, she
felt more blessed by sex than they were, by virtue of her Jewish blood. This
basic error with an elusive vapour of truth in it persisted so far as she
continued to associate, without even questioning the proposition, her
Jewishness with sex, and to feel that she partook of the sexual virility of the
world in consequence. Miles had said, as he kissed her on the platform at St
Albans, ‘It’s been lovely having you.’
    She
smiled at this in the train. She was fond of Miles and his thin, but so
innocent, imagination. He would use that correct phrase, ‘It’s been lovely
having you,’ to departing visitors on platforms, without variation, till he was
too infirm to see people off at all. Kathy, at the door of the house, had said
the same thing. Kathy always had a full day, full of social activities and
routine. It took this sort of English couple, Barbara thought, to let a
love-affair ripen and come to flower under their roof without suspecting
anything. They would have been horrified to know about the spare bedroom
episodes. Barbara, who on later reflection was herself mildly shocked, was at
this moment amused. She was in love. A trite late-flowering. A very late one.
She didn’t care. She would not have cared if Miles or Kathy had discovered her
in the spare bed with Harry Clegg. What could they have said? ‘Oh! sorry —’ and
withdrawn. And later: ‘Look here, Barbara —’ And what would they have said?
That would have depended on the inspiration of the hour. She was merely amused
at the