School for Love by Olivia Manning Page A

watched him through the passage window. Although the old man was cautious on the stairs, he walked briskly enough on level ground. He straightened his shoulders, shot his wrists out of his sleeves, and went off with the alert air of an old soldier. As soon as he was through the garden gate, Felix made his way silently up the attic stair. He held his breath as he went. At the top the sudden, under-roof chill made him sneeze. He paused, heard the tea-things chink below, then edged round the torn, heavy, dusty curtain and entered the attic. Insidethere was the smell of an oil-stove but no warmth. Under the oil-stove was the smell of Mr Jewel – a combination of strong, stale tobacco and the odour of ear-wax. The room was no more than a space under the roof. There was a dormer window and six square foot of floor-boards with a surround of bare rafters. On the island of floor there was a camp-bed, neatly made, a kitchen table and a chair. On the table were little pots of household paint and a bunch of brushes stuck into a jam-jar. Again holding his breath, Felix moved over a pathway of boards to the table and looked at the pieces of cardboard and plywood on which Mr Jewel worked.
    There were only three pictures on the table, but there were dozens more stacked under it.
    ‘Pictures of flowers,’ Felix said aloud. He bent over them while Faro, who had come up with him, sniffed at Mr Jewel’s spare pair of boots, then passed to the slop-bucket. Mr Jewel had painted, no doubt from memory, primroses and violets, a large pink rose, primroses and moss surrounding a nest in which lay three speckled blue eggs.
    ‘How wonderful,’ thought Felix, who could not draw anything himself. His admiration for Mr Jewel quite transcended Miss Bohun’s disapproval of the old man. To think that Mr Jewel, working up here alone in the cold, was an artist! Perhaps a
great
artist!
    He was startled from his thoughts by Miss Bohun’s singing from below: ‘F-e-e-l-iks!’
    Felix slid round the curtain and got down the stairs in a flash, Faro, infected by his panic, close at his heels. He gathered her up and got her into his room, then shouted: ‘Coming.’ He washed his hands. When he reached the sitting-room he had regained his breath.
    Miss Bohun was sitting at the table. Felix’s tea looked as though it had been poured out some time, but she did not ask what had kept him. She seemed preoccupied. He felt that some new confidence was behind her silence and as soon as he had taken a piece of bread, she said in an aggrieved way:
    ‘Mr Jewel wants to bring a visitor in to dinner to-night. He knows it’s unfair on the servants, and I get the backwash. Frau Leszno is so bad-tempered when she has to cook an extra meal.’ After she had sipped her tea for a while, she said: ‘Heigh-ho!’ (Felix had never before heard anyone say the words exactly as they were written) then brightened as she often did: ‘But I suppose it’s my own fault. I said when he came first: “I want you to regard this as your own home, Mr Jewel, and if you ever want to invite a friend in for a meal, you have only to let me know.” You see, I used to let the officers bring in a friend occasionally, but then they often went out for meals themselves and they were most generous about getting food from the Naafi. All that made up for the trouble. With Mr Jewel, of course, I was unwise. I said it on an impulse; out of kindness. It never entered my head he knew anyone to ask. Besides, Frau Leszno can’t bear her.’
    ‘Is Mr Jewel’s friend a lady, then?’
    ‘Of sorts,’ Miss Bohun replied with a twist of the mouth, but suddenly she lifted her eyes, looked at Felix and smiled: ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I’m not in the habit of judging people. No doubt Frau Wagner is a very nice sort of person. I don’t know her well enough to say – but there is something about her. For one thing, she’s Austrian! They say the German Jews are the worst of the lot – very rude and pushing