The Levant Trilogy (30 page)

Apparently not relating this remark to himself,
Terry asked him: 'And what are you doing out here?'

'War correspondent.'

The Cherrypickers looked him over, noted his
expression of baleful belligerency, and realizing that picking on him would be
much like picking on a hedgehog, they shifted their attention on to Castlebar
who appeared less formidable.

'What do you do?'

'I-I-I'm a poet.'

The Cherrypickers collapsed together, clutching
each other in an agony of mirth, while Castlebar, his threatening eye-tooth
showing on his lower lip, watched them from behind lowered lids. He was
gathering himself to speak but Jackman got in first.

'I'm surprised two priceless specimens like you
haven't come under the protection of
bpha
.'
He ran the letters together with an explosive spit that stopped the
Cherrypickers in mid-laugh.

'Come again?' Terry said.

'b-p-h-a
: Bureau for the
Preservation of Hereditary Aristocracy. All the dukes, lords and
what-have-yous are being brought back to base for their own safety. Too many of
them wiped out in the First War. Can't let it happen again, can we?'

Terry looked perplexed: 'Is this true?'

'Of course it's true,' Jackman looked at
Harriet: 'Your friend Lisdoonvama's one of them.'

'Peter? He's moving heaven and earth to get back
to the front.'

'Well, he won't get back. He'll be preserved
whether he likes it or not.'

Having impressed everyone at the table, Jackman,
slapping his hand down on his knee, sang at the top of his voice:

'Queen
Farida, Queen Farida,

How
the boys would like to ride her...'

The song had only three traditional verses but
Jackman and Castlebar had added to them and as they increased in obscenity,
people at neighbouring tables moved their chairs to stare at the singer and his
companions. Then the Levantine manager, making a swift journey across the club
floor, put a bill down in front of Jackman who came to an indignant stop.

The manager said, 'You pay. You go.'

'Go? Go where?'

'You go away.
Iggri'

'Like hell I will.'

Angela, picking up the bill, said, 'Yes, I think
we will go.' As she took out her note-case, Jackman raged at her: 'Don't give
them a cent. We'll miss the belly dance. If they turn us out, they can't make
us pay ...'

Angela, speaking with unusual quiet, said, 'Shut
up. This isn't the first time we've been thrown out because of you. I'm getting
tired of your behaviour.'

Jackman was thunderstruck by her severity and
said nothing while she counted notes in a heap on to the bill. She let the
Cherrypickers pay their share but when Simon tried to contribute, she put a
hand over his and gently pushed the money away.

'Where now?' asked Castlebar.

Angela whispered in his ear. He grinned.
'Mystery tour,' she said. 'Come along,' and they all followed her out to the
road. A row of taxis waited at the club entrance and Angela signalled to the
first two. When they were seated, the others saw that Cookson had been left
standing on the pavement. Angela beckoned to him but he shook his head and
sadly wandered away.

She said: 'He's guessed where we're going. Not
his cuppa.'

'Where
are
we going?' Mortimer asked.

'Wait and see.'

Harriet, too, guessed where they were going and
had Simon showed any inclination to leave the party, she would have asked him
to see her home; but he seemed bemused by everything about him and she did not
wish to leave him alone among a crowd of indifferent strangers.

They seated themselves in the first taxi.
Jackman, pushing in beside Mortimer, eyed her with lewd amusement: 'So you run
around in a little lorry? And how do you spend your spare time?'

'We scrub out the ambulances that bring in the
dead and wounded.'

'Nice work, eh?'

'Not very nice. The other day one of the girls,
who had a cut in her hand, got gas gangrene.' Scenting a story, Jackman sat up:
'What happened to her?'

'She died.'

Jackman sniffed and pulled at his nose while
Harriet thought enviously: 'They belong to a world at war. They have a part in
it: they even die,' but Harriet had no part in anything. She asked Mortimer
which route they took to Iraq.

They tried to vary it, Mortimer said, but however
they went, they had to cross the Syrian desert. Sometimes they headed straight
for Damascus then turned east. Once they went to Horns so they could visit
Palmyra but it had been a rough trip and they had broken a spring. Another time
they went by the Allenby Bridge over the Jordan so they could see Krak de
Chevalier.

'The Levant sounds wonderful. I'd love to go to
Damascus.'

'We'd give you a lift. We're not supposed to, of
course, but we often pick up people on the roads. The matron says it's
dangerous but women alone are safer here than they are in England. We can thank
Lady Hester Stanhope for that. She impressed the Arab world so every
Englishwoman has a special status in those parts.'

'I wish I could go with you.'

Mortimer smiled at her enthusiasm: 'Any time.'

The taxis had taken them past the Esbekiyah into
Clot Bey where women stood in the shadows beneath the Italianate arches. From
there they passed into streets so narrow that the pedestrians moved to the
walls to enable the taxis to pass. No one, it seemed, needed sleep in this part
of the city. Women looked out from every doorway. It was here that the
squaddies came in search of entertainment and every cafe was alight to entice
them in. Loudspeakers, hung over entrances, gave out the endless sagas relayed
by Egyptian radio, while from indoors came the blare of nikolodeons or player
pianos thumping out popular songs.

As the taxis slowed down in the crowded lanes,
beggars thrust their hands into the windows and small boys, leaping up and
clinging to the framework, shouted: 'You wan' my sister? My sister very good,
very cheap.'

Jake, putting his face close to them and
mimicking their infant voices, shouted back: 'My sister all pink inside like
white lady,' and the boys screamed with laughter.

The taxis reached a wider street where the women
put their heads out of upper windows to importune the new arrivals. Some of
them, leaning out too far, betrayed the fact that, richly dressed and
bejewelled from the waist up, they were naked below. Jake began to sing: 'Greek
bints and gyppo bints, all around I see, Singing "Young artillery man
abide with me".' He gave Simon a sharp slap on the knee: 'You a young
artillery man?'

Simon, bewildered, shook his head.

Angela asked him: 'Do you know where you are?'

Simon, who had been startled by the blow, looked
out and asked, 'Is it the Berka?'

She laughed. 'The very place!' The taxis came to
a stop in front of a house that looked like a small old-fashioned cinema. 'If
there's anything to be seen, we'll see it here.'

The house front was bright with red and yellow
neon and there was the usual uproar of Oriental and western music from inside
and out; it suggested pleasure, but the pleasure-seekers, queuing outside, were
an abject and seedy lot. A doorman controlled the queue and Castlebar was
summoned from the second taxi by Angela to negotiate with him.

The English visitors watched as Castlebar and
the doorman went down the line, the doorman speaking to each man in turn.
Whatever he was trying to arrange did not meet with much response. At last a
young man in trousers and crumpled cotton jacket, offered himself and was led
away, downcast and down-at-heel, as though to his execution. Castlebar,
returning, opened the door of Angela's taxi: 'All fixed up,' he said with
satisfaction.

'What are they going to do with him?' Mortimer
asked.

'He's the performer. In return, he'll get it for
nothing.'

Holding to Simon as though fearing he would run
away, Angela pushed him towards the door: 'Now, Sugar, out you get. What lots
you'll have to tell the boys back in the desert.' She led the way into the
house and the rest of the party, too befuddled to ask what was about to happen,
followed. Harriet, knowing she would be safer inside than alone in the street
with pimps, prostitutes and beggars, went with them. They were shown by a
safragi into a downstair room where they stood close together, not speaking,
transfixed by nervous curiosity. The room was hot and a smell of carbolic
overlaid the resident smells of garlic and ancient sweat.

A half-negro woman, in a dirty pink wrapper,
came in through a side door. Fat, elderly, bored and indifferent to the
audience, she threw off the wrapper and lay on a bunk, legs apart.

One of the Cherrypickers whispered hoarsely:
'God, let's get out of here,' but he did not move.

The young man from the queue entered, wearing
his shirt. He held his trousers in his hand and, giving the audience a sheepish
glance, stood as though he did not know what to do next. The woman, having no
time to waste, muttered, 'Tala hinna,' and held up her arms in a caricature of
amorous invitation. The young man looked at her, then fell upon her. The union
was brief. As he sank down, spent, she pushed him aside and, throwing the
wrapper round her shoulders, made off on flat, grimy feet.

'Is that all?' Angela asked. She sounded
defrauded but Simon felt they had more reason to feel ashamed.

The young man, left alone, was concerned to get
back into his trousers. This done, he crossed to Castlebar, smiling his relief
that the show was over. He said: 'Professor, sir, you do not know me, but I
know you. At times I am attending your lectures.'

Castlebar began to stammer his consternation but
unable to get a word out, offered the young man a cigarette.

Everyone, from a sense of chivalry, waited while
cigarettes were smoked, then Angela, having given undue praise for the young
man's performance, offered him a thousand piastre note.

'Oh, no, no,' he took a step back: 'I do not
want. If it pleased you, that is enough.'

Castlebar, at last able to speak, asked him. 'Do
you often give these performances?'

'No.' The young man looked dismayed by the
question then, fearing he might seem impolite, excused himself: 'You see, we
Egyptians are not like you Europeans. We are liking to do such things in
private.'

'I think it's time to go,' Angela said. As they
filed out, they each took the young man by the hand and murmured congratulations
in an attempt to compensate him for the humiliation they had put upon him.

The taxis, taking them back, stopped first
outside Shepherd's where the Cherrypickers alighted, and Simon said: 'This will
do for me, too.' As he thanked Angela and said his goodnights, Harriet asked if
he would come to supper before his leave was up. He agreed to telephone her but
it was a long time before she heard from him again.

The Cherrypickers were standing in front of the
hotel. Imagining they would have no use for him he was turning to cross the
road when Terry said, 'Come and have a last one.'

Surprised, taking it more as an order than an
invitation, he went with them towards the hotel steps. Even at that hour, the
life of the Esbekiyah went on. Dragomen, in important dark robes, carrying
heavy sticks, pursued the three officers, offering them: 'Special for you, many
delights.'

"Thanks, we've just had them,' Terry said,
raising a laugh among the people still sitting out at the terrace tables.

Inside, Simon saw by the hotel clock that it was
past midnight and he felt himself delivered from the day that had passed. No
other day, ever, at any time, could be as black as that day had been. He even
felt reconciled to the Cherrypickers, realizing they were not, as he had
supposed, insufferably arrogant. Despite their splendid regiment and the
advantage it gave them, they had, in fact, been challenged by the civilians and
now, alone with him, they became simple and friendly.

He said to Terry, 'What did you think of the
show, sir?'

'You mean that poor devil with the tart? I
thought it pretty poor.'

Tony and Simon joined in agreeing with him and
the three were united in their dislike for the exhibition. Simon was also
reassured by the hotel interior which reminded him of the Putney Odeon. It was,
no doubt, beyond his pocket but was not, as he had feared, beyond his dreams.
The atmosphere, however, was disturbed, as though some catastrophe had taken
place. Senior officers stood in the hall amid heaps of military baggage, drinking,
but with an air of waiting expectancy.

Terry whispered to Tony, 'D'you think the
balloon's going up? I'll mingle - see what's cooking.'

Simon watched respectfully as Terry moved among
the officers looking for one of his own rank. He, himself, would not have dared
to speak to any of them.

Returning, Terry said quietly, his face
expressionless: 'Something's happening, all right, but they don't know what it
is. Reconnaissance planes've seen preparations in the southern sector. Feeling
is, jerry's all set for the big breakthrough.'

Tony permitted himself a little excitement:
'Then we'll be in at the kill?'

Simon, stuck in Cairo for a week, wondered if he
would ever be in on anything. He had reached Suez during an emergency and been
sent straight to the front amid the turmoil of an army that had been routed, or
nearly routed. An army of remnants, someone called it.

He said, 'I suppose they had to break through
sooner or later. I could see how thin our line was. I asked my CO why they
didn't come on and he thought they just needed a rest.'

'Needed a rest? Like hell they needed a rest,'
Terry said. 'I don't know how much action you've seen, old chap, but in our
area we fought back and stopped the blighters in their tracks. That's why they
didn't come on. We wouldn't give them another inch.'

'I see.' Simon spoke meekly, aware he had seen
too little action to be any sort of judge of events. His sector, the great open
tract south of the Ruweisat Ridge, was patrolled by mobile columns ordered to
'sting the jerries wherever and whenever they got the chance'. Simon, a junior
officer in the dullest part of the line, had only once had a chance to sting
anyone.

He said, 'When I was given leave, things seemed,
to be at a standstill.' He had imagined the whole line becalmed forever in the
treacle heat of summer and now, it seemed, he had only to leave the desert for
the war to come to life. Despondently, he said, 'My sector's south. Wish I was
going with you.'

But why should he not go with them? His stay in
Cairo, short though it was, had been a disaster. He wanted no more of it. At
the thought of returning to the front, he rose for the first time since Hugo's
death out of total desolation. To be in at the kill! To kill the killers!
Everything else - Edwina's perfidy, the wretched party at the night club, the
exhibition in the brothel -went from his mind and he eagerly asked: 'Can I come
with you? I suppose you've got transport?'

'Yep, we managed to scrounge a pick-up. We could
squeeze you in, but supposing it's only a twitch? You'd lose your leave for
nothing.' Terry looked to Tony and laughed: 'If I had another week, I'd take
it.'

Tony laughed, too: 'Leave doesn't come all that
often!'

Simon did not explain his urgent desire to
return to the desert but said, 'I'd be grateful for a lift.'

'OK. We're making an early start, so let's get
that drink and call it a day.'

The Cherrypickers called for Simon at 06.30
hours next morning. Conditioned to rising at dawn, he was ready, waiting on the
hotel steps. The pick-up, an eight-hundred-weight truck, was roomy enough. The
three could travel in comfort.

The Cherrypickers had nothing to say that
morning. Terry was at the wheel with Tony beside him. Neither had a word for
Simon as he settled into the back with the baggage. He, for his part, knew he
should speak only when spoken to, so they drove in silence through the empty
streets in the pale morning sunlight.

The road out of Cairo was already a commonplace
to Simon: the mud brick villas, the roadside trees holding out discs of
flame-coloured florets, the scented bean fields, then the pyramids and the
staring, blunted face of the sphinx. None of it stirred him now. He sank into a
doze but outside Mena, where they ran into open desert, he was jerked awake as
Terry braked to a stop. A man had been killed on the road. The body lay on the
verge, wrapped in white cloth, and other men, workmen in galabiahs, seeing the
truck approach, had run in front of it and held up their hands.

Terry shouted down to them, 'How'd it happen?'

The men, crowding round the truck, did not look
very dangerous. Unable to understand the question, they glanced at each other
then one said, 'Poor man dead', and from a habit of courtesy, grinned and put a
hand over his mouth.

Saying, 'Oh, lord!' Terry put his fingers into
his shirt pocket and pulled out some folded notes. Giving the man a pound, he
said, 'For the wife and kids.' The spokesman, accepting it and touching his
brow and breast in gratitude, waved to the others to let the truck through.
Driving on, Terry asked, 'What did you make of that?' Tony laughed. 'Willing to
wound and yet afraid to strike. They're easily bought off.'

'Fellow killed by an army lorry, I'd guess.'
Simon returned to sleep. Outside Alexandria, on the shore road near the soda
lakes, Tony shook him awake, saying, 'How about brekker?'

The Cherrypickers had a picnic basket with them,
packed by their hotel. The three men sat on the seaside rocks in the warm sea
breeze. The food - portions of cold roast duck, fresh rolls, butter, coffee in
a thermos flask - was far above the army fare to which Simon was used, but he
was too self-conscious to express any opinion.

Terry asked, rather irritably, 'This all right
for you?'

'I'll say. It's super.'

'Good. Thought perhaps you were tired of roast
duck.'

'Never tasted it before.'

Simon was left to eat his fill while Terry and
Tony discussed duck-shooting, a sport that was, they decided, carried to excess
in diplomatic circles.

'Soon won't be a damned duck left,' Terry
grumbled as he cleaned off a drumstick and started on a wing.

Tony gave him a sly, sidelong smile: 'Jolly
nice, though, to have a bird in the fridge to pick at when you come in late.'

The meal finished, the Cherrypickers lay, eyes
closed, in the sun while Simon, awaiting the order to move, threw stones into
the slowly moving sea. At the eastern end of the shore road the traffic was
light and the three men rested in a quiet that was almost peace. But the heat
was growing and Terry, rousing himself, said, 'Better get underway.' For twenty
miles or so he was able to keep a steady sixty miles an hour but reaching the
forward area, they were slowed not only by trucks and cars but by infantry
moving west.

Tony said, ' Certainly seems things are moving.'

When the sound of gunfire could be heard, Simon
felt a familiar fear, yet, seeing about him the equipment of war, he had a
sense of returning to the known world.

The petrol cans, set at intervals beside the
road, indicated the direction of the different corps and divisions. None of
this had relevance for the three men whose units were a good way south.
Observing tanks in the distance, Terry raised his brows: 'Wonder what they're
up to? Looks like training exercises.' A mile farther on, he drew up by a
supply dump and gave Simon a casual order: 'Care to go in and ask if they'll
fill us up? Might get some gen while you're there.'

Dropping down off the back of the truck, Simon
crossed to the wire enclosure. It was mid-day, the time of burning heat, and
the smell of the dump hit him while he was several yards from it. The Column's
signalman, Ridley, purveyor of scandals and rumours, had told him that food
intended for the British civilians in Palestine was usually seized by the
ordnance officers at Kantara: 'They take their whack and the rest goes into the
blue to rot. Dead waste, I call it.' Ridley had no love for British officials
but he had an acute dislike for ordnance officers who, he said, 'grow fat on
what we don't get - which is proper grub.'

Admitted into the compound, Simon was directed
to the command truck where he found the officer in charge at a desk beneath a
lean-to. The stench trapped under the canvas was sickening but the officer,
flushed and flustered, had other things to worry about. Hearing Simon approach,
he said over his shoulder, 'What the hell do you want?'

'Petrol, sir.'

'Ah!' Simon's inoffensive request caused the
officer to relax for the moment. Pushing back from the desk and wiping his
face, he took out a cigarette: 'First today. Bloody circus here since that new
chap took over.'

'We could see tanks in training. We wondered
what was up.'

'It's the new chap, Monty they call him. He
wants everyone fighting fit. Says he'll put 8th Army on its toes, so it seems
things are hotting up.'

'There was a belief in Cairo that the show had
started.'

'Not up here, it hasn't.'

'In the southern sector perhaps?'

'Could be. Nobody tells me anything.' The
officer, not telling anything himself, took one more puff at his cigarette then
squashed it into a tin where half-smoked cigarettes were twisted together like
a nest of caterpillars. He stared about him, fearing some other demand would be
made on him, but seeing only Simon, he lit another cigarette.

'Right. I'll give you a chitty then bring her in
and fill her up. There'll be a Naafi truck round shortly if you feel like a
snack.'

In mid-afternoon Ruweisat Ridge appeared like a
shadow through the fog of heat with immense clouds of dust rising and turning
into the sky behind it. Tony said, 'Someone's getting it over there.'

Formations of Wellingtons were going south and
Terry said with delight, 'We'll drive straight into it,' but a mile further on,
when they had begun to feel the vibrations of heavy artillery, a military
police car blocked the route and a policeman directed them to take a barrel
track that ran eastwards, away from the battle.

Terry put up an angry protest: 'That's no good
to us. We're not going that way. The 11th Hussars are down in Himeimat and
we've got to join them.'

'No, sir, you must get on the track and stay on
it. Himeimat's under heavy fire. Doubt if any of your chaps are left there now.
You follow the track and you'll get to Samaket - if Samaket's still there.'

'If there's a barney on, we ought to be in it.
If the Hussars are not at Himeimat, where are they?'

'Your guess is as good as mine, sir.'

Forced to turn eastwards, the three men grumbled
at each other, disappointed yet excited. Terry said, 'We were almost in it -
and now where are we going? It's like being chucked out of the theatre half-way
through the show.'

In late afternoon the track, which had dropped
south, brought them into a flat stretch of sand marked out with barrels to form
enclosures for tank repair units, supply dumps, vehicle workshops, dressing
stations and mortuary huts. Simon had seen something similar in his early
desert days and knew it was a depot for the battle in progress. They stopped at
the command vehicle where a captain hurried towards them with the excited air
of a man who brings good news. The enemy, he said, had attempted a breakthrough
just north of Himeimat.

Terry struck the wheel in a rage: 'We've missed
it. We've ruddy well missed it.'