The Levant Trilogy (41 page)

He swept off and went at a furious pace back to
the river's edge but there had to stop. The ferry had returned to Luxor.

The nurse, dismayed by his departure, said to
the others, 'Oh dear! I didn't mean to hurt his feelings. Should I go and tell
him I'm sorry? I might persuade him to come back.'

Before anyone else could speak, Aidan, assuming
an ironical air of authority, said, 'Certainly not. He doesn't know his arse
from his elbow. We're better off without him,' and the others, impressed by the
act, let themselves be conducted to where some donkeys and old taxis stood ready
to take them into the Valley of the Kings. The drivers, seeing the dragoman
dismissed, were jubilant while the dragoman himself, realizing what was happening,
came running back, bawling at the top of his voice, 'You no go without guide.
Law says no one go without guide,' but the tourists were already in the taxis
and the drivers, gleefully starting up, were away before he reached them.
While he raged behind them, they went bumping and swaying up the rocky track to
the valley where the kings and queens of Upper and Lower Egypt had left their
earthly remains.

On the quay, when they returned there, Aidan
asked Harriet if she would have dinner with him that evening. It was arranged
that she should go to his hotel by gharry but the evening was so pleasant, she decided
to walk. The sun was setting in a lustre of crimson and gold and the Nile,
small compared with the great river of Cairo, ran in loops of coloured light
under the brilliant sky. She paused to look down into the walled hollow that
held the Temple of Luxor. There was a mosque among the jumble of remains and a
man, probably the attendant, looked up, grinning, and said, 'Ghost, ghost.' He
seemed to expect her to run and was disconcerted when she leant over the wall
and asked,' Is there
really
a ghost?' but he could only repeat,' Ghost,
ghost,' and she laughed and went down to the quayside to walk under the palms.

The terrace of Aidan's hotel was built out over
the water and served as a dining-room. It was roofed with greenery but closely
netted against flying creatures and insects. One end was open to reveal the
evening colours of the river but the inner area was shadowed and candles, their
flames motionless inside tulip shades of engraved glass, were on the, tables.
There were less than a dozen diners, senior officers and their women, but the
menu that Aidan held in front of his face was of a size that might have catered
for a hundred. Hearing Harriet arrive beside him, he looked suspiciously round
it, then reassured by the sight of her, he put it down. He had placed a lily
beside her plate, a white blaze bigger than the evening star, its central
petals tied into a cone with thread. She knew he was trying to be gallant, but
it was not easy for him. Yet they were oddly in sympathy, both wanting the same
person and wishing he were here.

Aidan said, 'How about lobster? The waiter tells
me it was flown in this morning from Aqaba.'

The lobster, when it came, was cold under a
mayonnaise sauce and Harriet thought it delicious until she realized the danger
of eating it. She put her fork down, her appetite gone, and Aidan asked with
concern, 'Are you all right? I thought you looked strained, and you've lost
weight, haven't you? How do you feel?'

'Not well. In fact, I gave up feeling well when
I came to this country. Guy eats anything and everything, and he's never ill. I
am careful with food and yet my inside's always upset.'

'Egypt is unpredictable. You never know what it
will do to you. I hated it at first, then it grew on me. It's like a mother you
detest, yet are tied to in spite of yourself. I think it's the place where we
all began. It's here where we were born first and lived out the infancy of the
soul.'

Harriet was surprised, not by what he had said
but the fact he had said it, then she laughed: 'So you believe in reincarnation?
Which pharaoh were you?'

Aidan did not laugh. He seemed affronted for a
moment, then, remembering she was Guy's wife, he did his best to smile. Because
she was Guy's wife, he had been happy to find her in Luxor, he had invited her
to dinner and now he permitted her to laugh at him.

She responded by asking seriously: 'Is that why
you are drawn to Egypt? Would you stay on here after the war?'

'Oh, no, it's too far from the centre of things.
If you're an actor, you have to live in the world.'

'And this isn't the world?'

'Not my world, though I am, as you say, drawn to
it. I intend to see what I can of it while I'm out here. Tomorrow I'm going to
Assuan to visit the gardens of Elephantine. They're so ancient, they were there
when Alexander came to Egypt three hundred years before Christ.'

'What is Elephantine? An oasis?'

'No, an island in the river. It's called
Elephantine because some king or other sacrificed an elephant there.'

'Sacrificed an elephant? How abominable!'

'It would be dead by now, anyway. It was a long
time ago.' He laughed to show her he was being humorous and when she smiled, he
said, 'Why don't you come to Assuan tomorrow?'

'I can't,' Harriet's money did not allow for a
visit to Assuan. Angela, with her usual belief that the dearest thing was the
cheapest in the end, had chosen one of the most expensive hotels in Luxor.
Harriet said, 'I can't stay long.'

Aidan sighed enviously: 'I suppose Guy wants you
back.'

Not sure what to say to that, Harriet smiled and
Aidan, sympathizing with her uncertainty, said he would walk with her to her
hotel They stopped by a row of small riverside shops that sold Egyptian
antiquities and African curios. Although it was nearly midnight and there were
few customers these days, the windows were lit and the owners still inside.
Aidan bent down, intently examining objects made of ebony or of ivory trimmed
with gold. Harriet wondered if he were thinking of a gift for his mother and
reminded him: 'You know, I still have that little cat you bought in the Muski!'

'A cat? Yes, I did buy a cat, but what did I do
with it?'

'You gave it to me to keep till you asked for
it.'

'So I did. Yes, so I did.'

They left the shops and came to the Temple of
Luxor. Harriet said, 'A man told me there is a ghost here.' They leant against
the wall and peered down into darkness but no ghost moved through it. She said,
'You said you had lost the sense that anything was worth keeping. You said that
one day you would tell me what caused it. Suppose you tell me here and now,
while it's dark and I can't see your face!'

'I don't know ... I don't think I can tell you.'
He hung his head over the temple site that was like a pit of darkness where
nothing could be discerned except a faint star-glimmer on one of the colossi of
Ramses II. When it seemed he had nothing more to say, she urged him:

'Whatever it was: if you keep it to yourself,
you'll never get over it.'

'I don't expect to get over it. But what
happened has no bearing on life as we know it. The dead are dead. There's
nothing to be done about it now.'

'You mean, you don't want to tell me?'

'There's no reason why I shouldn't tell you.
It's not a secret. It's only that I feel... I feel it's unjust to burden
another person with the story.'

'Enough has happened to me. I don't need to be
protected. And you promised.'

'Yes, that's true. I did promise,' he considered
this fact for some minutes before saying,' It's not what happened to me: that
wasn't important. It's what happened to other people, most of them children.'

'That made it more terrible, of course.'

'More terrible, yes. And yet I don't know. As we
have to die sooner or later, does it matter when we die?'

Leaving that question to answer itself, Harriet
waited and eventually he went on: 'It was early in the war and I had declared
myself a conscientious objector. I thought, being an actor, they might let me
go on with my own work but, instead, I was directed on to a ship going to
Canada. I had to act as a steward and waiter. I suppose the idea was to
humiliate me. The other stewards were lascars, but we got on all right. In
fact, I was rather enjoying the trip. There was a crowd of kids on board, being
evacuated to Canada...'

'I think I can guess which ship that was. You
were torpedoed?'

'Yes, just when we thought we were out of range
of the U-boats. Our escorts had turned back. We took that to mean we were safe
but the truth was, they turned back because they had used their quota of fuel.
As soon as we were hit, the convoy scattered. That was according to orders.
Whatever happened, the other ships had to save themselves and we were left to
sink or swim. We were holed in the side and there was no hope for the ship
itself. We had to get the kids into the boats and quick about it. We were going
down fast. We tried to be cheerful - told the kids it was an adventure and we'd
be picked up in no time. But there was no one to pick us up. It was a miserable
night, cold, blowing a gale, pouring with rain. When daylight came, the convoy
had vanished and there was no sign of the other boats. We were alone on the
Atlantic. Nothing to be seen but the grey, empty sea. Absolutely alone.' Aidan
paused to swallow in his throat, then he asked,' Do you want to hear any more?'

'Of course.'

'The children were in their night clothes. We'd
got them into life-jackets but when we realized how bad things were, there was
no time to go down for blankets. The storm went on, the sea slapping up on us
so there was a foot of bilge water in the boat. The kids were seasick but
everyone was packed together so they couldn't get to the side. No one could
move. There were nineteen children in our boat and two women helpers,
volunteers.

Then there were the lascars, fourteen of them .
. . And there was an elderly man who was joining his wife in Canada. We had one
of the officers with us, a retired navy man who'd been recalled to active
service. Kirkbride. He was splendid. Without him, we'd all have died. He knew
how to propel the boat, which no one else did. There were no oars. Instead,
there were handles like beer-pulls that had to be worked backwards and
forwards. We tried to put the lascars on to that job but all they would do was
pray and beseech Allah to rescue them. Not that it mattered. There was nowhere
to go. We had no idea where we were. Kirkbride said he could navigate by the
stars, but there were no stars. Only the black sky and the sea and the wind
howling round us. God, the cold! It was bitterly cold. I'll never forget it.'

'Did you have any special job?'

'I doled out the food, what there was of it.
There were iron rations in the boat: some tinned stuff and water. Not enough
water. By the fourth day the ration was one mouthful of water and a sardine or
a bit of bully on a ship's biscuit. The women did what they could to keep the kids
amused - played games: "Animal, vegetable and mineral", that sort of thing,
and got them to sing "Run rabbit" and "Roll out the
barrel". The old man told them stories. Then one night one of the women
disappeared; no one knew what happened to her. The water ran out and the kids
couldn't swallow the biscuits because their throats were dry. I'd saved some
condensed milk to the last but that wouldn't go down, either: it was too thick.
After we'd been in the boat a week, the lascars gave up and began to die...'

Aidan stopped again and startled Harriet by
laughing. She said 'Yes?'

'The storm got worse. We threw the dead lascars
overboard and the waves threw them back again. We pretended this was funny but
the kids had lost interest. They were dying, too. We always knew when a boy or
girl was about to die, the kid would start having visions. One of them
described an island covered with trees and kept pointing and saying,
"Look, it's just over there. Why don't we go there?" Several times
one of them would think he saw a ship coming to rescue us and the others would
say they saw it, too.'

'I suppose they died of thirst?'

'Thirst and exposure. Their feet would go numb,
then they'd sink into a coma and that was the end. Each morning, we'd find two
or three of them dead. We used the tins to collect rainwater but it wasn't
enough. After about ten days - I'd lost count by then - the second woman died.
She'd wrapped her coat round one of the dying girls and she died herself.
Hypothermia. Next day the last two children died. There was no one left but
Kirkbride, the old man, three of the lascars and me. We'd had nothing to eat
for a week. The rain stopped so we hadn't even rainwater. We decided we'd had
it and Kirkbride began to wonder where the boat would be cast up. He thought
Iceland or the Faroes, but we knew it would probably just break up and no one
would know what had happened to any of us. We'd rigged up a shelter for the
smallest children and when there were no children left, we took it in turns to
sleep there. The last time I crawled in, I said to myself "Thank God, I
needn't wake up again!"'

Aidan's voice broke and Harriet, seeing the
outline of the Ramses statue, wondered what it was doing there out in the dark
Atlantic After a long pause, she said, 'But that wasn't the end of the story?'

'Not quite, no. Kirkbride didn't go to sleep. He
stayed on watch and he was awake when a Sunderland flew over us and dived to
see what we were. He stood up and waved his shirt and they dropped us a tin of
peaches. He woke me up ... forced me back from another world by pouring peach
juice down my throat. The Sunderland radioed all the ships anywhere near - I
think the nearest was two hundred miles away - and the first one that reached
us, picked us up.'