The Levant Trilogy (18 page)

'Who the devil
are you?'

'Don't you
recognize me? I'm Simon Boulderstone. Where've you been? We've been waiting for
you.'

Trench's fair
hair had bleached white under the Egyptian sun. With his fine, regular features
and military moustache, he could have posed for a portrait of the ideal young
officer, but at that moment he lacked the calm assurance for the part. Instead,
disconcerted,
he
looked Simon over to make sure he had not lost officer
rank then, smiling sheepishly, he gave a halting account of his movements since
leaving the ship at Suez. He and Codley had been taken to Infantry Base Depot
to await a posting. Giving Simon a reproving glance, he muttered, 'How is it
you're doing what you're not supposed to do?'

'What do you
mean?'

'You're
loading a truck.'

Simon laughed. In
that moment it was revealed to him that Trench was an ass. His friend, whom he
had admired beyond all other men, was one of those asses who thought
familiarity with the men was 'bad for discipline'. He was a 'spit and polish'
officer, a sort of man Simon despised.

'You need to get
some service in,' Simon said. 'When you've been out in the blue for a bit,
you'll be glad to do anything to break the monotony.' He turned to Arnold and
winked at him. 'OK, Arnold, carry on. Don't forget oranges and cheese. Try and
bag some fresh meat this time. If they offer you pilchards again, tell them
where they can stuff them.'

Arnold saluted
with uncustomary smartness. 'Sir. We could do with some Cruft's Specials, sir.'

'They'll let you
have plenty of those.'

'And it's our
turn for jam, sir.'

'Good show.'

Arnold's manner
was deferential and Simon, seeing him off, gave him every possible attention,
apparently forgetting that Trench was waiting to be led to Major Hardy. The
truck went off. Simon, turning away from it, saw Trench with surprise. 'You
still there? Come along then, I'll take you to the HQ truck.'

They walked
together in silence, both knowing that the old intimacy was lost to them. Some
time passed before they thought about it again or understood how, or why, it
had ever existed.

The Column,
completed, was ordered to prepare for a move and Hardy made an inspection of
weapons. As he walked with Martin between the ranks, Ridley asked in the
obsequious whine he reserved for senior officers, Think we'll get a scrap,
sir?'

'Could be. Could
be.'

'Make a nice
change, sir.'

Hardy was giving
nothing away but Simon felt his apprehensions revive. Bored during the waiting
days, he would have wished for action. Now action threatened, he thought
longingly of boredom. Doing his best to appear calm, he asked Ridley, 'What's
it like, being under fire?'

'You don't feel
so much at the time. It's the thinking about it, is worst.'

'You mean, you
get your blood up?'

'That's right.
Couldn't've put it better m'self. Back here you think you don't hate jerry, but
when you go in, it's different. P'raps you see a pal cop it - a decent bloke,
p'raps, what's done you a favour. You think "Right you bastards, I'll get
you for that" and so you go in fighting mad. You get to hate them like
hell. You got to, y'see, you wouldn't be no use if you didn't.'

The thought of
being injected with hate, as with a drug, did nothing to reassure Simon. Hate
could make you reckless but recklessness did not make you safe. During the
night before the dawn departure he woke several times. Hearing the other men
stirring and muttering, he knew they were as tense as he was.

Next morning
delay would have been welcome, but this time they started as the first cherry
red strip of light appeared between the black earth and the black sky. Simon
felt no inclination to talk. He was beside Arnold in the leading truck and the
leading truck was the one that copped it if they struck an uncharted minefield.
As the strip widened, the desert was flushed with red. Simon had been provided
with a compass for this journey which took them over sand flats as featureless
as mid-ocean. The sun rose and the hours passed. Soon enough they were in the
dusty glare of noon, the most painful hour of day, with mirage stretching like
water over the track. A hill appeared in the distance, not high but unique in
this part of the desert.

Simon stirred
himself to ask what it was. Arnold said, 'It's the Ridge, sir.'

The Ridge, as
they drew near it, could be seen in detail, a long, narrow outcrop of rock, its
flanks fluted as though innumerable rivulets had run down it for centuries.
Simon had been told that they were going south of the Ridge so he imagined the
journey would soon be over. As they came level with the rock, a wind sprang up
and ran along the rock base lifting the sand like the edge of a carpet.

We're in for a
bit of a storm, sir,' Arnold said. Think we should call a halt?'

Simon was
uncertain but as they rounded the eastern end of the Ridge, the sand had
thickened like a fog in the air and Arnold advised him, 'If we brew up now,
sir, it could be all over by the time we're finished.' He put up the flag and
the Column was halted. Simon, running back to consult with Hardy, was thankful
to find they had done the right thing.

They drank their
tea, bunched together with backs to the wind, waiting for the storm to die
down. Instead, it grew worse and Ridley said morosely, 'Could go on for days.'

Breathing sand,
eating sand, blinded and deafened by sand, the men crouched by the trucks for
shelter and picked sand from their noses and the interstices of their ears.
Ridley became more gloomy. 'Known this go on for
weeks'
but at sunset,
when the air glowed as though the sand had become incandescent, the wind
dropped and the world became visible again. In the slanting light the Ridge
with its fluted sides looked like a monstrous millipede. Beneath it, there was
a large encampment and Simon would have been glad to leaguer to its rear but
Hardy decreed that they make another mile before darkness fell. As they moved
off, guns opened up behind them and Simon, his stomach muscles contracting,
felt he should have written home before leaving camp. He thought of his mother
first, then remembered his wife. He should have sent letters to both of them,
preparing them for whatever happened to him, but in terms that made light of it
all. He tried to think of his wife but the few days of their honeymoon had
disappeared into the past. He made an effort to recall her face and saw instead
the long, fair, drooping hair of Edwina Little. Troubled by his infidelity, he
took out his wallet and gazed at the photograph of Anne and all he could feel
was that her face was not the right face. He wanted to see the laughing,
sunburnt face that had leant towards him from the balcony in Garden City but
the truth was, no face could distract him now. The whole of the pleasurable
world had dwindled out of sight, leaving him with nothing but a sense of loss
and an awareness of the danger he was in.

The Column
leaguered in a service area where supply dumps and transports were camouflaged
with nets. It looked safe enough, rather like a vast workshop, but the trucks
had just drawn up when the guns started again and hammered their senses as they
sat round Hardy's radio waiting for the news. The newsreader announced that
later in the evening there would be a commentary on 'The Alamein Line'. Simon
asked Hardy, 'What's that, sir?' and Hardy, who would not admit ignorance,
said, 'If you pay attention and listen, Boulderstone, you'll find out.' This
admonition was so familiar to Simon, it occurred to him that Hardy had been a
schoolmaster in his civilian days. The commentator told them that the Alamein
Line stretched from the coastal salt lakes to a mysterious hole in the desert
called the Qattara Depression and his description suggested that there were
bodies of well-armoured troops in close formation for forty miles. None of the
officers questioned this but Simon, who had seen nothing of such a line, spoke
to Ridley before going to his sleeping-bag. 'I say, sarge, you heard that about
the Alamein Line. Where exactly is it?'

Ridley, as much
at a loss as he was, gave the matter thought and said, 'This is it, I reckon.
There's the South Africans up north and a couple of Indian divs down south, and
the Kiwis are under the Ridge, and our chaps are in between. They're a bit thin
on the ground but it's a line all right.'

Ridley seemed
satisfied but Simon, who had pictured the front as a carnage of gun-fire,
bursting shells and barbed wire hung with the dead and dying, felt
disappointment as well as relief. 'It's not much of a line, sarge.'

'It's all we've
got. Still, it's not what we've got but what they haven't got that'll make the
difference. It said on the intercom today that the Auk's trying to make an
army out of remnants. That's it - remnants. The Auk's a great bloke but I don't
fancy his chances.'

'Do you fancy
anyone's chances, sarge?'

'Ah, now, sir!' Ridley
pulled himself up and spoke with confidence, 'Well do for them, yet - you wait
and see.'

Driving next
morning into open desert, the guns booming behind, the Column was as exposed as
a fly on a window-pane. Arnold, peering out for markers, also kept an eye on
the sky
but it was not till
mid-morning, when they had stopped to brew up, that enemy aircraft observed
them. Ridley was carrying tea mugs over to the officers when three Italian
Macchis buzzed the trucks. Before any of the men could drop to the ground,
bullets were spitting about them. The officers sprang back and Hardy, the
eldest of them and the most alarmed, lost his balance and fell, his voice
rising in a thin, protesting cry, 'Oh, my wife and kids!'

The Macchis,
having strafed the Column from end to end, flew off. No one had been hit.
Ridley helped Hardy to his feet and everyone behaved as though the fall had
been an unfortunate trip-up and said, 'Bad luck, sir.' Simon, thinking he alone
had heard Hardy's cry, decided it must never be mentioned, not even to Arnold.

Driving on, they
came into a region where rocky outcrops, miniatures of the great Ridge, rose,
one after the other, out of the flat mardam. These outcrops changed in colour,
the usual Sahara yellow taking on a tinge of pink and the pink growing and
deepening until the rocks and sand had the faded rose colour of old red
sandstone. Hardy called a halt between the rock ridges and the Column leaguered
in a wide, flat area, like a rose pink ballroom aglow with sunset In the
distance, when evening cleared the air, a dramatic range of high ridges could
be seen on the horizon. Hardy, consulting his maps, told the officers that the
range marked the terminal of the line. Beyond it was the Depression and the
Depression, it seemed, could not be crossed. So the Column need go no further.
Tomorrow,' he said, 'the men'll make slit trenches and dig in the vehicles.'

They had arrived.

Rumour came to
Cairo of a battle fought inside Egypt at a railway halt called El Alamein but,
it seemed, nothing had been settled. The Germans were still a day's tank drive
away and their broadcasts claimed they were merely awaiting fresh
supplies. Any day now the advance would begin again. Egypt would
be liberated and Rommel and his men would keep their assignation with the
ladies of Alexandria.

Though the
situation had not changed, the panic had died. Those who were, or believed
themselves to be, at risk, had gone. Those who remained felt a sense of respite
but were warned they might have to leave at short notice. They were advised to
keep a bag packed.

When Harriet,
returning for luncheon, found a note at the pension to say Dobson had rung her,
she supposed the evacuation order had gone out. She took out the small
suitcase, the only luggage she had brought out of Greece, and put together a
few toilet articles. The suitcase was already packed. She could leave in
minutes, but she did not intend to leave without Guy. She thought of a dozen
arguments to bring down on Dobson when he telephoned again and his voice, when
she heard it, startled her. His tone was jocular. Instead of ordering her to
the station, he invited her to meet him for drinks at Groppi's: 'Come about
five-thirty.'

'You sound as
though you had good news?'

'Perhaps I have,'
he spoke teasingly. 'I'll tell you when I see you.'

Back at the
office, she looked through the news sheets, but they gave no cause for
rejoicing. Whatever Dobson would tell her, it could have nothing to do with the
war.

That morning she
had heard that her job at the Embassy would not last much longer. The promised
team from the States was about to fly to Egypt. Mr Buschman. not caring to tell
her himself, had sent her a typed note. Dispirited, she went to the wall map
where the black pins converged upon the Middle East.

She had taken it
over during the great days of the Russian counter-offensive when everyone was
saying that the Russian winter would defeat Hitler as it had defeated Napoleon.
Marking the Russian advances, she rejoiced as though pushing the enemy back
with her own hands. Guy had picked up a new song from one of his left-wing
friends and repeatedly sang it to what was, more or less, the tune of
The
Lincolnshire Poacher:

To
say that Hitler can't be beat

Is
just a lot of cock,

For
Marshal Timoshenko's men

Are
pissing through von Bock.

The
Führer makes the bloomers and his generals take the rap,

But
Joe, he smokes his pipe and wears a taxi-driver's cap.

In the desert,
too, the Germans had been in retreat. The British troops, who had been making a
hero of Rommel, now turned their admiration on to Stalin and the Russian
generals. But that had all passed. Harriet, bringing the black pins closer to
the Kuban river, thought, 'A few more miles and they'll have the whole
Caucasus.'

Inside Egypt, the
black pins stretched from the coast to a hatched-in area of the desert named on
the map 'Qattara Depression.' When Mr Buschman wandered over to see who was
where, she asked him what this Depression was. He stood for some moments,
rubbing his small, plump hand over the back of his neck, and then gave up: 'All
I know is, it's the end of the line.'

'But why is it
the end of the line? Why don't they come round that way? If they did, they
could surround the whole British army.'

'Too right, mem.
They surely could.'

Harriet asked
Iqal about the Depression but he had never heard of it.

'How is your
German these days?'

He smiled an arch
smile, the runnels of his face quivering so he looked like coffee cream on the
boil. 'I brush it up now and then, but I don't know! These Germans should make
more haste.'

'I told you they
wouldn't get here.'

'That is true,
Mrs Pringle, and perhaps you spoke right. But on the other hand, perhaps not.
It says in the broadcasts they regather their forces and then they come - zoom!
So what is one to think? See here, Mrs Pringle, they exhort us, "Rise
against your oppressors," they say, 'Kill them and be free."'

'You  don't 
think the English  are oppressors, do you?'

Iqal raised his
great shoulders. 'Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, no. When they break through the
palace gates and tell my king
what to do, what
would you call them? Are they not oppressors?'

'We're fighting a
war, Iqal. If the Egyptians really felt oppressed, they would turn on us,
wouldn't they?'

'Ah, Mrs Pringle,
we are not fools. My friends say, "Time enough when the Germans are at the
gate -
then
we cut the English throats."'

'Oh, come now,
Iqal, you wouldn't cut my throat?'

Iqal giggled.
'Believe me, Mrs Pringle, if I would cut your throat, I do it in a kind and
considerate manner.'

'You wouldn't
hurt me?'

'No, no, Mrs
Pringle, indeed I would not.'

Harriet reached
Groppi's when the sun was low in the sky. She passed through the bead curtain
into the brown, chocolate-scented cake and sweet shop as the great round golden
chocolate boxes were reflecting the golden sky. The garden cafe, surrounded by
high walls, was already in shadow. It was a large café, sunk like a well among
the houses, with a floor-covering of small stones and it disappointed people
who saw it for the first time. A young officer had said to Harriet, 'The chaps
in the desert think Groppi's is the Garden of Sensual Delights - but, good
grief, it isn't even a garden!'

It was, she said,
a desert garden, the best anyone could hope for so far from the river. It was a
garden of indulgences where the Levantine ladies came to eye the staff officers
who treated it as a home from home.

The ground was
planted, not with trees, but with tables and chairs and coloured umbrellas. But
under one wall, where there was a strip of imported earth, zinnias grew and an
old, hardy creeping plant spread out and up and covered lattices and stretched
as far as the enclosure that stood at one end of the café site. This creeper
sometimes put out a few copper-coloured, trumpet-shaped flowers that enhanced
the garden idea. But this display, and there was not much of it, would have
died in an hour without the water that seeped continually through the holes in
a canvas hose. In spite of the water, the mat of leaves hung dry and loose,
shifting and rustling in the hot wind. Only the tough, thick-petalled zinnias
thrived in this heat.

When Harriet
entered, the safragis were taking down the umbrellas, leaving the tables open
to the evening air. At this hour people were crowding in, searching for friends
or somewhere to sit. Dobson must have arrived early for Harriet found him at a
vantage point, in front of the zinnias. He had seen her before she saw him and
was on his feet, beckoning to her, his smile so genial she wondered if he had
news of a victory.

She asked, 'Has
anything happened?' He did not answer but waved her to a chair. Whatever he had
to tell, he was in no hurry to tell it.

A safragi, his
white galabiah given distinction by a red sash and the fez that denotes the
effendi's servant, wheeled over a gilded trolley laden with cream cakes.
Harriet asked for a glass of white wine. Dobson urged her to choose a cake,
saying, 'Do join me. I think I'll have a
mille feuille.
Good for you.
You've lost weight since you came here.'

'I really hadn't
much weight to lose.'

Dobson put his
fork into his
mille feuille
and said as the cream and jam oozed out,
'Yum, yum,' and put a large piece into his mouth then asked, as he sometimes
did, about her work at the American Embassy.

'Coming to an
end, I fear.' Harriet gave a wry laugh. 'Perhaps we're all coming to an end.
Iqal was joking about cutting our throats - perhaps not just joking. He seemed
to resent that occasion when the ambassador drove a tank through the palace
gates.'

Dobson, putting
more pastry into his mouth, swayed his head knowingly, swallowed and said,
'We're always having trouble with Farouk. He's a fat, spoilt baby, but he's a
clever baby. The other day H.E. waited over an hour for an audience. He thought
the king was with his ministers but instead he had a girl with him. She put her
head out of the door and seeing H.E. there in all his regalia, she went off
into screams of laughter and slammed the door on him. When he eventually got
in, he found Farouk sprawled on a sofa, languid and irritable - post coitum, no
doubt. He thought, with the hun so close, he could tell us to clear out. H.E.
explained why we must hold Egypt at all cost. Farouk scarcely bothered to
listen and at the end, he
sighed and said, "Oh,
very well. Stay if you must But when your war's over, for God's sake, put down
the white man's burden and
go."'

Dobson, having
told his story, looked over the garden as though expecting another guest.
Harriet hoped she would now hear why he had invited her here, but before
anything more could be said, two Egyptian women stopped to speak to him. He
jumped up, became at once diplomatically effusive, and they talked together in
French. The women, dressed in an embellished version of Parisian fashion, wore
black dresses to which they had added brooches, necklaces and sprays of
flowers. Their skirts ended an inch above the knee but their sleeves, as
required by the prophet, came down to their wrists. They flirted with Dobson,
their eyes enhanced by eye-veils, and moved their heads, giving small, rapid
turns this way and that so their earrings danced. Harriet had heard that
Dobson, the only bachelor among the senior diplomats, was regarded in Cairo as 'quite
a catch
'
. One of the women invited him to a cocktail party and he accepted
as though overwhelmed by the thought of it, but when the women moved away, he
fell back in his chair with a long, exhausted sigh. 'My policy is to accept
everything and go to nothing. Where's that husband of yours?'

'Are you
expecting him?'

'Certainly I'm
expecting him. I rang him first thing this morning and asked him to be here at
five-thirty. It's now nearly six and I ought to be back in my office.'

'You want to see
him about something? Is it important?'

'It is for him.'
Dobson laughed, making light of Guy's non-appearance, but it was an aggravated
laugh. Harriet looked anxiously towards the entrance, fearing that Dobson would
go and the important matter be nullified, all because Guy could never turn up
on time. She said to excuse him, 'People make too many claims on him so he ends
up with more engagements than the day will hold. The result is, he's late for
everything and made later by all the telephone calls he makes to explain why
he
'
ll be late.'

Dobson thought
this very funny. 'How does he get away with it?'

'If he didn't get
away with it, he'd have to learn not to be late. People spoil him and make him
worse than he need be.'

The afterglow of
sunset was taking on the green of dusk. The evening star appeared as from
nowhere, radiating long rays of white light, and the coloured electric bulbs
were lit among the creepers. All about, in the high house walls, windows were
thrown open and people looked down on the brilliant garden.

Harriet said,
'When we first came here from Greece, those lighted windows frightened me. I
thought, "What a target we are!'"

But at that
moment, the lights meant nothing but the passing of time, and her fear was the
fear that Guy would not turn up at all.

Dobson said, 'Ho,
there he is!' forgiving Guy on sight for being three-quarters of an hour late.

Guy, lost between
the tables, was dishevelled as ever. He had broken his glasses and mended them
roughly with adhesive tape. At least, Harriet consoled herself, he hasn't
brought anyone with him.

When Dobson waved
to him, he came over at a hurried trot, breathlessly explained how someone or
something had detained him. Dobson, all irritation gone, said, 'Don't worry.
Don't worry at all. What are you going to drink?' When at last the table was
resettled, he said impressively, 'Now, then!' They were going to hear what this
meeting was all about.

'I've received a
telegram from Bevington.'

'Our chairman?'

'Lord Bevington
himself.' Dobson started to laugh so that his body was shaken by a sort of
nervous hiccups. 'I remember when Bevington came here on a visit. It was my
night on duty at the Embassy and I'd just got my head down when the boab looked
in - huge, coal-black fellow - and croaked at me, "De lord am come!"
Dear me, I said to myself, it's the day of judgement ... Well, now! first
things first. Colin Gracey has been given the push.'

'He's leaving the
Organization?'

'You needn't be
surprised. Pinkrose cabled the London office and accused him of neglect of
duty, incompetence, cowardice in the face of the enemy and, most heinous crime
of all, going
to Palestine without letting
Pinkrose know. He also, as a make-weight, said he had evidence of immoral
practices.'