The Levant Trilogy (13 page)

'Were you on
leave in Cairo?'

'Not leave,
exactly,' Arnold had developed amoebic dysentery in the desert and had been
sent back to base hospital. While he was away, his company had been whacked up
giving covering fire during the evacuation of Gazala.

'Suppose I was
lucky, really. A lot of my mates copped it'

'What do you
think happened to the rest?'

Arnold shook his
head. 'Could have been sent to join other battalions. That happens when a
company's badly whacked up. Anyway no one knew where they were.' And so Arnold
was displaced and, like Simon, uncertain what lay ahead for them.

When they stopped
to brew up, Simon drank his tea standing
beside Arnold,
feeling not only that their uncertainty was a bond but that there was sympathy
between them. But he feared their attachment could not last. They could be
separated by circumstances; even if they had the luck to remain in the same
unit, they would be divided by rank.

He asked, 'What
about Ridley? - How did he lose his outfit?'

Simon learnt that
Ridley had been wounded during the retreat from Mersa Matruh. Discharged from
hospital, he found his company had been broken up so, like the other men left in
the convoy, he belonged nowhere.

As they started
again, the staff car pulled out from its position between trucks and Hardy,
his head out of the window, shouted that he was taking the lead. He turned
inland and they drove for an hour before being signalled to stop. When the
convoy came to a standstill, Ridley jumped down from his truck and, coming to
Simon, whispered fiercely, 'Christ, if we leaguer here, we're sitting ducks.'

Simon thought
Ridley was right. The flat, bare mardam offered no protection and there was
nothing in sight but a group of trucks some distance south. There was nothing
to mark this stretch of desert, but Simon supposed it had some meaning for
Hardy. Feeling that Ridley expected him to act, he went to the major and asked,
'Are we to camp here, sir?'

'No. Tell the men
to stand to. I've something to tell you all.'

Papers in hand,
the men drawn up in front of him, Hardy did his best to convey amiable
authority. 'I've called a halt so I can put you in the picture. We're a mixed
lot, as you know, and some of you are new to the desert. Others are not at
their best, having returned from sick leave, but I think we can make ourselves
useful. Orders are that we join with another detachment to form a mobile
column. There's a number of such columns down south - Jock columns they are
called, after Colonel Jock Campbell, VC, who thought them up. Clever man. As I
said, we'll be at the southern end of the line - away from the big dogfight,
I'm afraid, but with a job to do. We're to swan about and sting the jerries
whenever and wherever we get the chance.'

'Sounds exciting,
sir,' Simon said.

'Could be. Could
be.' Not wanting to overdo the amiability,
Hardy jerked up
his head and asked, 'Any questions?'

'I'll say there
are,' Ridley whispered to Simon then, raising his voice, he adopted an
obsequious whine quite different from his usual sardonic tone. 'Do we go south
straight away, sir?'

'No, we'll stick
around here for a few days and wait for supplies. We need extra officers and,
of course, artillery.'

'This stinging
the jerries, sir: how're we to set about it?'

'Ah!
'
Hardy examined his papers and seemed
relieved when he found the answer. 'It'll be a matter of swift raids and
counter-attacks.'

'I
see,
sir,'
Ridley respectfully said though, in fact, the answer did not tell them much.
There was an uneasy silence then everyone listened, awed, as Ridley managed to
bring out another question. 'Sir, how'll the column be made up? Number of
trucks, guns and the like, sir?'

'I think I can
answer that,' Hardy, his manner stern and competent, consulted his papers again
but this time the answer was not at hand. Giving up, frowning his annoyance, he
made a blustering attempt to extemporize. 'There'll be gunners, naturally.
Artillery officer, of course. Enough infantry for close protection. Four
lorries, I'd say - could be six. And ... and so on.'

'What about
hardware, sir?'

'Hardware? I
suppose we'll have to take what we can get.'

'Plenty lying
about, sir.' Ridley, with satisfaction in his own knowledge, began to advise on
things they might find useful, but Hardy would have none of this. Cutting
through Ridley, he said, 'Carry on, Boulderstone.'

'Sir. Where are
we making for, sir?'

The major had
marked his command by putting on an impressive pair of field glasses. He now
raised them to look at the only trucks in sight and after long contemplation
said, 'Yes, those are our chaps.'

He pointed into
the south-west and as the men looked with him, their faces shone red with the
setting sun.

Hardy seemed pleased
with himself and shouted, 'Get a move on, Boulderstone. No time to waste.'

The trucks
filled. Simon was in the lead again. They set out to find company and cover
before the night came down on them.

Dobson had been
right. There was going to be a scramble for the special train. To make matters
worse, the train was late and those packed together on the platform were in a
state of agitated anxiety, expecting tumult.

Cairo had become
the clearing house of Eastern Europe. Kings and princes, heads of state, their
followers and hangers-on, free governments with all their officials, everyone
who saw himself committed to the allied cause, had come to live here off the
charity of the British government. Hotels, restaurants and cafés were loud with
the squabbles, rivalries, scandals, exhibitions of importance and hurt
feelings that occupied the refugees while they waited for the war to end and
the old order to return.

Now they were all
on the move again. Those free to go, or of such eminence their persons were
regarded as sacrosanct, had taken themselves off days before. It was said that
the officers of General Headquarters had left in staff cars but, whether that
was true or not, there were still officers at Groppi's. Now it was the turn of
the English women and children who had obstinately remained in spite of
warnings. The warnings had become urgent, and most of them had decided to
leave.

Harriet was not
among them but she was not far from them. Where she stood, awaiting the
Alexandria train, she could look across the rail at the vast concourse packed
on the platform opposite. She saw people she knew. She saw Pinkrose, hanging on
to his traps and pushing first this way, then that, trying to find a position
that would give him an advantage over the others. In his determined search and
frequent mind changes, he thrust women from him and tripped over children, and
so enraged the volatile Greeks, Free French, Poles and German Jews that they
shouted abuse at him and blamed him for their fears. Hearing none of this,
aware of nothing but himself, he struggled back and forth, losing his hat,
regaining it, clucking in his agitation.

The train was
sighted and a groan went through the crowd. The train came at a snail's pace
towards the platform. The groan died out and a tense silence came down on the
passengers who, gripping bags and babies, prepared for the battle to come. As
the first carriages drew abreast of the platform, hysteria set in. The men who
had been castigating Pinkrose for loutish behaviour, now flung themselves
forward, regardless of women and children, and began tugging at the carriage
doors. The women, suffering the usual disadvantage of having to protect
families as well as themselves, were shrill in protest, but the protest soon
became general. The carriages were locked. The train, slow and inexorable as
time, slid on till it touched the buffers at the end of the line.

The scene was now
hidden from Harriet by the arrival of her own train. Hardly anyone was risking
the move to Alexandria and choosing among the empty compartments, she heard
the clamour as the special train was opened up. She also heard the gleeful
yells of the porters throwing luggage aboard. 'You go. Germans come. You go.
Germans come.'

Iqal might have
his doubts about the German promises but the fellahin had heard there were
great times ahead. The wonder was, Harriet thought, that they were all so
tolerant of the losers. Even when poor, diseased and hungry, they maintained
their gaiety, speeding the old conquerors off without malice. No doubt they
would welcome the new in the same way.

Harriet's train
moved gently out. The uproar died behind her and she passed into the almost
silent lushness of the Delta. Here was a region of dilatory peace that lived
its own life, unaware of war and invaders. All over the Delta that stretched
north for a hundred miles, black earth put out crops so green the foliage was
like green light Now, in high summer, this vibrancy of green was exactly as it
had been when the Pringles first arrived. Then it had been Easter. Greece was
aflower with spring but in Egypt there was neither spring nor autumn, only the
heat of summer and the winter's soft warmth.

Flat, oblong
fields were divided from each other by water channels, and each produced crops
without respite. Vegetables, flax, beans, barley, tobacco, cotton: all lifted
their rich verdure repeatedly out of the same blackness for which Egypt
had once been called the Black Land. Between the crops there were
fruit trees: mangoes, pomegranates, banana palms, date palms, and sometimes a
whitewashed tomb, like a miniature mosque, or a white house with woodwork
fretted like a child's toy.

Men, women and
children went on working without looking at the train. Their persistence was
leisurely and the train, too, was leisurely. Harriet was able to watch a water
buffalo trudge a full circle, turning a water wheel that had outworn generations
of buffaloes.

When, a year ago,
she first saw the Delta, it was evening. The refugee ship had arrived early in
the morning but people were not allowed ashore. They had to be questioned and
given clearance. They were hungry. They had been told to bring their own food
but in Athens the shops were empty of food, and there was none to be found.
Harriet had brought some oranges on the quay and these had kept the Pringles
and their circle of friends going for three days. Oranges had been the main
diet in Athens for some weeks before the end and that was how they had existed;
on oranges, wine and the exaltation of the Greek spring.

Berthed by the
quayside at Alexandria, the passengers saw nothing but cases of guns and
ammunition. No food. Then two soldiers had come to stare up at them and the
passengers shouted at them in all the languages of Europe. The soldiers came to
the edge of the quay, asking what it was the refugees wanted. 'Food,' shouted
Harriet.

Food? - was that
all?

The men went into
a shed and came back with a whole branch of bananas. They broke off the fruits
and threw them up over the ship's rail and everybody scrambled for them. Harriet
caught one and took it to share with Guy who sat where he had sat for most of
the voyage, placidly reading the sonnets of Shakespeare.

'Half each,' she
said and he smiled as she peeled off the green skin and broke the pink flesh,
then watched as she bit into it.

'What does it
taste like?'

'Honey,' she said
and the sweetness brought tears into her eyes.

Allowed to land,
they were taken to an army canteen for bacon and eggs and strong tea. 'Tea you
could trot a mouse on,' said Guy. The sun was low when they boarded the train
and they journeyed into a country stranger than any other, yet suffocatingly
familiar. The heat, the airless quiet, the rich oily colours reminded Harriet
of old biblical oleographs seen at Sunday school. It was the 'Land of the
Pharaohs', a land she had known since childhood.

'Look, a camel,'
someone shouted and they all crowded to the window to see their first camel of
Egypt lifting its proud, world-weary head and planting its soft, splayed feet
into the sandy road. The workers were leaving the fields. A string of them
wandered along the road, slowly, as though it did not matter whether they went
home or not.

The sun set and
twilight merged and darkened the fields. Half-way between Cairo and Alexandria,
the train stopped at Tanta. A Greek girl called out, 'My God, look at Tanta!'
They looked and experienced the first shock of Egyptian poverty. Tanta station
was in a culvert overhung by the balconies of gimcrack flats where washing was
strung on lines and rubbish was heaped for the wind to blow away. Fat men in
pyjamas lay in hammocks or stood up sweating and scratching and leering down
on the women in the train. Many of the refugees were Athenians, used to a city
of marble. In Alexandria, where it rained, the bricks had been baked but there
was no rain in the Delta. Tanta was the dun colour of unbaked clay.

Beggar children
whined up at the train, banging on it to demand attention. As the train pulled
out, they ran beside it, their bare dirty feet slapping the ground until they
were lost in the twilight. Then darkness came down and there was nothing to see
but the palm fronds black against the afterglow of sunset.

Here was Harriet
at Tanta again. The same fat men sprawled on the balconies, the same children
whined at her, the same smell of spice, dung and death hung in the air, but
none of it disturbed Harriet now. Tanta was a part of Egypt. It was the nature
of things, and her only thought was to get the journey over. If asked, she
would have said she did not dislike Tanta
as much as she
disliked Alexandria. Though she deplored her mid-week separation from Guy, she
dreaded the time when her job would end and she would have to move from Cairo.
Built on a narrow strip of land between a salt lake and the sea, Alexandria,
she felt, was depressing and claustrophobic. Castlebar, who went each week to
tutor the son of an Alexandrian Greek banker, had said to Guy, 'You'll enjoy
it. The fashionables are quite amusing,' but Guy was not among 'the fashionables'.
His college was not even in Alexandria. It was beyond the eastern end of the
long Corniche that ran from the Pharos, all round the old port, and stretched
in an endless concrete promenade, until it was lost in desert. Guy was in the
desert. He taught English at a business college where the sons of tobacco and
cotton barons wanted to learn a commercial language. When Guy organized a
series of lectures on English literature, a deputation of students came to tell
him that they did not need to know about literature. They did not want English,
as Guy understood it. They wanted something called 'commercial English'.

Alexandria was
famous for its sea-breeze but the breeze could often bring in a summer mist.
When Harriet left the train, she found the sun hidden by a moisture film that
increased the greyness of the streets. The townspeople were queuing up
outside banks or hurrying from shop to shop, buying as though against a siege.
There was unease in the air, the same unease that Harriet had felt in Athens when
the Germans reached Thermopylae. In Cairo people were saying that the rich
business community of Alexandria had appointed a reception committee to
prepare a welcome for Rommel. That was probably true but the rich were stocking
up before the invaders came to empty the shops. Cars, packed with supplies like
the cars outside the American Embassy, stood ready for those who thought it
wiser to flee. Some of them were lagged with mattresses as a protection against
aerial bombardment.

Harriet took a
bus along the Corniche. There was a drab-ness about the streets and she felt
that some bright constituent was missing. She realized that the young naval
men, who went about in white duck, as light-hearted as children, were missing
from among the people on the pavements. She supposed that
shore-leave had been stopped.

That day no one
had time to lie on the beach. The long grey sea edge, usually full of bathers,
was deserted except for a few small boys. The vacuous greyness of the town
depressed her. She realized she had become acclimatized to Cairo's perpetual
sunshine and rumbustious vitality. Here the long sea-facing cliff of hotels and
blocks of flats had a winter bleakness as though all life had moved away.

In Cairo, the
German occupation was still merely possible: here, apparently, it was a
certainty. She decided she would stand none of Guy's heroics. She would take
him back to Cairo that very night.

In normal times,
Guy would have been on leave. The college had shut for the summer but, feeling
he had no right to take leave, he had remained to conduct a summer course in
English. Only a few students, eager to excel or to gain his favour, had
enrolled but they were enough to give him a sense of purpose. He would argue
that the school was part of the college curriculum and he could not abandon
it. She would argue that it was not and he very well could.

Again calamity
presented itself as a solution. It would deliver Guy from Alexandria and from
his wretched lodgings. If she had to come here, they would live not in one of
these expensive Corniche flats but in the same sleazy hinterland where he was
living at the moment. Not much caring where he lived, he had taken a room in a
Levantine pension of the poorest kind, a place so dark and neglected,
everything seemed coated with grime. One day, watching him as he talked to the
landlord, she had seen him rub his hand on the knob of a bannister then pass
the same hand over his forehead. She had berated him, telling him he might pick
up leprosy, smallpox, plague or any of the killer diseases of Egypt. Guy, who
believed all disease was a sickness of the psyche, said, 'Don't be silly. You
only catch what you fear to catch,' and, fearing nothing, he saw himself
immune.

When she left the
bus at the end of the Corniche, she had still to walk half a mile to where the
college stood isolated in a scrubby area of near desert that was now being
built up. The
building
had once been a quarantine station for seamen. Staring out to sea, grim faced,
lacking any hint of ornament, it might have been a penitentiary. And for Guy it
was, in a way, a penitentiary. He had been exiled here for his song, 'Gracey of
Gezira' - or so Harriet believed. He had brought his exile upon himself.

No one, not even
a boab, was in the hall. She walked unchecked down to the half-glazed door of
the lecture hall and, looking in, saw Guy at a desk, bent over a book. The
shutters had been closed against the sun and had not been opened when mist
covered the sky. The amber colour of the electric light made his face sallow
and he looked very drawn. He had lost weight and his cheeks, that had been smooth
with youth when they married, only two years before, now showed a line from
nostrils to chin. Time and the Egyptian climate had told on them both.