Daphne du Maurier - Not After Midnight & Other Stories

Pleased with his deduction, Robin turned to the right out of the Jaffa Gate and walked along the main road until he judged that he was the right distance from the long-vanished tower of Psephinus. He found that he had reached a junction, with main roads going in all directions and traffic roaring by, and the great building across the other side of the central square was the town hall, according to his modern map.

'So this is it,' he thought. 'This is scrubby ground, with fields where the town hall stands, and the farm-labourer is sweating, and so are Jesus and the others. And the sun is overhead in a blazing sky, as it is now, and when the crosses are set up the men nailed on them won't see the fields behind them, they'll be looking at the city.'

He shut his eyes a moment, and turned, and looked back at the city and the walls, and they were a golden colour, very fine and splendid. For Jesus, who had spent most of his life wandering about the hills and lakes and villages, it would have seemed the finest and most splendid city in the world. But after staring at it for three hours, in pain, it would not seem so splendid-in fact, it would be a relief to die.

A horn blared, and he stepped out of the way of the incoming traffic. If he didn't watch out he would die too, and there wouldn't be much sense in that.

He decided to walk back to the city through the New Gate, which was just along to the right. Some men were repairing a place in the road, and they looked up as Robin approached. They shouted, pointing to the traffic, and although Robin got the message, and skipped to safety beside them, he couldn't understand what they were saying. It could be Yiddish, or possibly Hebrew, but he wished it could have been Aramaic. He waited until the man with the drill ceased his ear-splitting probe, and then he called to them.

'Does anyone speak English?' he asked.

The man with the drill smiled and shook his head, then called out to one of his companions, who was bending over a piece of piping. The man looked up. He was young, like the rest, and had very white teeth and black curly hair.

'I speak English, yes,' he said.

Robin peered down into the pit beneath. 'Can you tell me, then,' he asked, 'if you have found anything interesting down there?'

The young man laughed, and picked up a small animal by its tail. It looked like a dead rat.

'Tourist souvenir?' he suggested.

'No skulls? No bones?' Robin asked hopefully.

'No,' smiled the labourer. 'For that we have to drill very deep, below the rock. Here, you can catch?' He threw a small piece of rock up to Robin from the pit in which he stood. 'Keep it,' he said. 'The rock of Jerusalem. It will bring you luck.'

'Thank you very much,' said Robin.

He wondered whether he should tell them that they were standing within a hundred yards or so, perhaps, of a place where three men had been crucified two thousand years ago, and then he decided they would not believe him; or, if they did, it would not impress them very much. For Jesus was not important to them, not like Abraham or David, and, anyway, so many men had been tortured and killed around Jerusalem since then that the young man might very well say, with justice, so what? It would be more tactful to wish them a happy holiday instead. It was the 14th day of Nisan, and at sundown all work would cease. He put the small piece of rock in his pocket.

'I hope you have a very pleasant Pesach,' he said.

The young man stared. 'You Jewish?'

'No,' answered Robin, uncertain whether the question related to his nationality or to his religion. If the latter, he would have to reply that his father was an atheist, and his mother went to church once a year on Christmas Day. 'No, I come from Little Bletford in England, but I do know that today is the 14th day of Nisan and that you have a public holiday tomorrow.'

This, in fact, was the reason for so much traffic, he supposed, and the reason why the city itself had been so crowded. He hoped the young man was suitably impressed by his knowledge.

'It's your Feast of Unleavened Bread,' he told him.

The young man smiled again, showing his row of white teeth, and, laughing, he called something over his shoulder to his companion with the drill, who shouted in reply, before applying his drill to the surface of the road again. The ear-splitting sound began once more, and the young man cupped his hands to his mouth and called up to Robin, 'It is also the Festival of our Freedom,' he shouted. 'You are young, like us. Enjoy it too.'

Robin waved his hand and began walking towards the New Gate, his hand clenched tightly round the piece of rock in his pocket. The Festival of our Freedom… It sounded better than the Passover. More modern, more up to date. More suitable for, as his grandmother would say, this day and age. And whether it meant freedom from bondage, as it did in the Old Testament, or freedom from the rule of the Roman Empire, which the Jews hoped for at the time of the crucifixion, or freedom from hunger and poverty and homelessness, which the young men digging in the road had won for themselves today, it was all one and the same thing. Everyone, everywhere, wanted freedom from something, and Robin decided that it would be a good idea if Pesach and Easter could be combined throughout the world, and then all of us, he thought, could join in celebrating the Festival of our Freedom.

The bus took the road north from the Mount of Olives before sundown. There had been no further drama. Bob and Jill Smith, having searched the precincts of the Holy Sepulchre in vain, had turned their steps in the direction of the New Gate and had come across Robin, perfectly composed, entering the city behind a group of singing pilgrims from the coast. The bus had been late departing because of Miss Dean. The ambulance had taken her to hospital, where she had been detained for a number of hours suffering from shock, but luckily with no external or internal injuries. She had been given an injection and a sedative, and then the doctor had pronounced her fit to travel, with strict injunctions that she should be put straight to bed directly they were back in Haifa. Kate Foster had become nurse in charge of the patient.

'It is so kind of you,' Miss Dean had murmured, 'so very kind.'

It was decided by all not to mention her unfortunate accident. Nor did Miss Dean allude to it herself. She sat silently, with a rug over her knees, between the Fosters. Lady Althea was silent too. Her blue chiffon scarf masked the lower part of her face, giving her the appearance of a Moslem woman who had not relinquished the veil. If anything, it added to her dignity and grace. She too had a rug over her knees, and the Colonel held her hand beneath it.

The young Smiths held hands more openly, Jill sporting a new bangle, an inexpensive one that Bob had bought for her as they passed near one of the suks on their return earlier in the day after finding Robin.

Babcock sat beside Robin. Like Miss Dean, he also wore a change of clothing-a pair of trousers borrowed from Jim Foster which were a shade too large for him. No one passed any remarks, and for this he was unspeakably thankful. No one looked back at the city of Jerusalem as the bus skirted Mount Scopus-that is to say, no one but Robin. The ninth hour of the 14th day of Nisan had come and gone, and the thieves, or the insurrectionists, whichever they were, had been taken down from their crosses. Jesus too, his body perhaps in a grave deep in the rock below where the young labourers had been drilling. Now the young men could go home, and wash, and meet their families, and look forward to the public holiday. Robin turned to the Rev. Babcock at his side.

'It's rather a shame,' he said, 'that we couldn't have stayed two more days.'

Babcock, who wished for nothing more than to be safely back on board ship so that he could shut himself in his cabin and try to forget his shame in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, marvelled at the resilience of the young. The boy had been dragging round the city all day, and had nearly lost himself into the bargain.