The Levant Trilogy (54 page)

Giving up his revelations of Allied intrigues,
Jake said: 'I suppose we're going to eat some time?' imposing on Guy the
position of host.

'Good heavens, yes.' Guy, becoming alert, called
the waiter and gave Edwina the menu. .

It was a dirty, handwritten menu that listed
three kinds of river fish. Guy recommended them all but advised Edwina to
choose the
mahseer
which, he
said, was a speciality of the house. Edwina did not like fish but concurred
from a habit of concurring with the male sex.

Jackman had now become the joker. Giving Edwina
a smile full of malice, he said: 'Something funny happened today. Was passing
Abdin Palace and saw a squaddie, drunk as arseholes, his cock sticking out of
his flies. He'd got hold of an old pair of steel-rimmed specs and having
perched them on the said cock, was saying, "Look around, cocky boy, and if
you see anything you like, I'll buy it for you.'"

Knowing he meant to offend her, Edwina ignored
Jackman's laughter and gave her attention to the plate in front of her. The
fish, if it tasted of anything, tasted of mud.

'Which,' Jackman went on, 'reminds me of
lover-boy Castlebar. But he's not bought anything, has he? He's been bought.'

Guy shrugged: 'If they're happy, why worry?'

'Happy? You think Bill's happy acting the
gigolo? I bet he's sick to his stomach.' Jackman turned to Cookson for
agreement and Cookson, giggling weakly, said:

'Live and let live.'

'What a bloody amoral lot you are!' Jackman
sulked for a while then began another story but was interrupted by yet another
arrival at the table.

The newcomer was a dark, gloomy-eyed man who
incongruously wore the uniform of an army captain. Guy introduced him as,
'Aidan Sheridan, the actor. He's now in the Pay Corps and calls himself Pratt.'

Edwina caught her breath: 'Oh, Aidan Sheridan!'
she said, and widened her eyes at him.

Aidan viewed her with distaste then turned
accusingly on Guy: 'Where's Harriet?'

There was dismay at the table. Edwina and
Jackman glanced at Guy who did not speak.

'What's the matter? You haven't split up, have
you?'

Guy shook his head and said: 'I would have
written but I didn't know where you were.'

'I've been transferred to Jerusalem. But where
is she?'

'I should have told everyone who knew her. I
didn't think…'

'Whatever it is, tell me now. Where is she?'

'She's dead. She was on an evacuation ship that
was sunk
..
.
She's dead. Drowned.' Unable to say more, Guy shook his head
again.

Aidan sank down to the bench and after a moment
said: 'You're sure? There are so many false reports going round.'

Guy could only shake his head and Edwina,
speaking for him, said: 'I'm afraid it was confirmed. I'm at the Embassy and I
saw the report. The ship was torpedoed off the coast of Africa. Poor Harriet,
it was terrible, wasn't it? Three people were saved but she
...'

Guy broke in, frowning: 'What's the good of
going over it again! She's lost. Nothing will bring her back, so let's talk of
something else.' He looked at Aidan who stared down at the table as though not
hearing what was being said: 'You'll have something to eat?'

The others were trying to talk of something else
but for Aidan the news was too sudden to be put aside: 'No, I can't eat. I'll
go... I'll walk to the station.'

'You're going back tonight?'

'Yes, I've a berth booked
...'

'Then I'll walk with you.' As he rose, Guy
remembered he was Edwina's escort and he said: 'Sorry, I must go. I want to
talk to Aidan. Jake will see you home.'

'Look here,' Jake put in quickly: 'I've come out
without cash. I'll need something for a taxi.'

Guy paid the bill and handed Jackman a pound
note then went off with Aidan.

'A disastrous evening,' Jake said.

For Edwina, too, it had been a disastrous
evening. Hiding her resentment, she said: 'Yes, poor Harriet!' but her mind was
on the treatment she had received. She added: 'And poor Guy! I suppose that
actor not knowing brought it all back.'
At
the same time she was telling herself that Guy and the company he kept would
not do for her.

Guy was surprised by Aidan's reaction to
Harriet's death and at the same time felt grateful to him. That others grieved
for her in some way lightened his own burden and the debt he owed her. Out in
the street, he said: 'I didn't realize you felt any special affection for her.'

'We had become friends.'

That also surprised Guy. Though he rewarded him
by going with him to the station, Guy was bored by Aidan and could not imagine
he would have had much attraction for Harriet.

'She used to tease me,' Aidan said: 'I deserved
it, of course. I know I'm a bit of a suck. You remember, I came on her in Luxor
and we saw some of the sights together.'

Guy said, 'Yes,' though he had forgotten
Harriet's trip to Luxor. Thinking about it and about her association with
Aidan, he began to imagine her with a whole world of interests about which he
knew nothing. He did not begrudge them but had a disquieting sense of things
having happened behind his back. Not that anything much could have happened. He
had taken her away from her friends in England and, abroad, she had had few
opportunities to make more. For the first time, it occurred to him that while
he had kept himself occupied morning, noon and night, she had been often alone.

He said: 'She was on that boat the
Queen
of
Sparta.
I thought she ought to go
- this climate was killing her.'

'When we were in Luxor, she didn't look well,
but she didn't look happy, either. I would say the unhappiness was more destructive
than the climate.'

'Unhappiness? Did she say she was unhappy?'

'No. There was no mention of such a thing, but
she seemed lonely down there. I wondered why you didn't go with her.'

'Go with her?' Guy disliked this hint of
criticism: 'She did not suggest it. The whole thing was fixed up by that woman
Angela Hooper. She took Harriet to Luxor then went off and left her there. It
was typical of the woman. She's unbalanced. I couldn't have gone, anyway. I had
much too much to do.'

'You do too much, you know.' Aidan spoke gently
but his tone expressed more censure than sympathy and Guy felt annoyed. He was
not used to criticism and he said: 'I suppose you are blaming me because she's
gone. Well, there's no point in it. Anyway, the past is past. We have to manage
the present, even if it is unmanageable. We can't stay becalmed in memories.'

'No, I suppose not.'

Aidan's agreement was not wholehearted and Guy
walked in silence until they reached the station then, saying a curt, 'Goodbye,'
he swung round and walked back to Garden City. Aidan, he told himself, was not
only a stick but a prig. He put him out of his mind but for all that, he felt
the need to make some amends to Harriet. He began to look about him for an
image to adopt in her place. The only one that presented itself at that time
was the young lieutenant, Simon Boulderstone. Harriet was beyond his help but
the injured youth had to remake his whole life.

Now that he showed signs of recovery, Simon
ceased to be the helpless object of everyone's devotion. He was expected to
contribute towards his own progress but the progress seemed to him
depressingly slow.

As soon as he could flex the muscles of his hips
and lift his knees a few inches off the mattress, parallel bars were brought to
his bedside and Ross said: 'Come on now, sir, we've got to get you out of bed.'

Ross and the orderly lifted him into place
between the bars and told him to grip them with his hands. He was expected to
hold himself upright and swing his body between them. This was agony. His arm
muscles were so wasted, he could scarcely support his torso but, encouraged by
Ross, he found he could move himself by swinging his pelvis from side to side.

Ross said: 'You're doing fine, sir. Keep it up.
A bit more effort and you'll get to the end of the bars.'

Simon laughed and struggled on, but in all these
exercises there was a sense of fantasy. Without ability to walk, he seemed to
be acting the part of a man who could walk. It was a hopeless attempt. He was
troubled by the illusion that he had only half a body and was holding it
suspended in air. Yet he had legs. He could see them hanging there, and he lost
patience with them, and shouted: 'When on earth will they start moving
themselves?'

'Don't you worry, sir. They'll come all right in
time.'

His feet, from lack of use, had become absurdly
white and delicate. 'Look at them,' he said to Ross: 'They're like a girl's
feet. I don't believe I'll ever stand on them again.'

Ross laughed and running his pencil along
Simon's left sole, asked: 'Feel that?'

'Nope.' He was disgusted with himself; with his
legs, his knees, his feet, every insensate part of himself.

Guy, who visited him two or three times a week,
decided that he needed mental stimulation and told him that to recover, he had
only to decide to recover. Guy believed in the mind's power over the body. He
said he had been ill only once in his life and that was the result of Harriet's
interference. His father, an admirer of George Bernard Shaw, had refused to
have his children vaccinated in infancy. Coming to the Middle East where
smallpox was endemic, Harriet had insisted that Guy must be vaccinated. He had
reacted violently to the serum. He had spent two days in bed with a high
temperature and a swollen, aching arm, whimpering that he, who had never known
a day's illness before, had had illness forced upon him. He had been injected
with a foreign substance and would lose his arm. He was amazed when he woke up
next morning with his temperature down and his arm intact.

'You see, I was a fool. I allowed Harriet to
influence me against my better judgement and, as a result, became ill.'

Simon protested: 'But I'm not ill. I was injured
when we ran into a booby trap - that was something different.'

'Not so very different. There are no such things
as accidents. We are responsible for everything that happens to us.'

Simon was puzzled yet, reflecting on all Guy
said, he remembered how he had been attracted to the palm tree where the trap
was laid. The tree had seemed to him a familiar and loved object and he had
said to Crosbie: 'A good place to eat our grub.' Guy could be right; perhaps,
somehow or other, one did bring catastrophe upon oneself. 'What should I do?'

'Make up your mind that having got yourself into
this fix, you're going to get yourself out of it.'

Whether because of this conversation or not, he
became aware of his feet in a curious, almost supernatural, way. They had entered
his consciousness. He could almost feel them. When he spoke of this to the
sister, she said: 'Oh? What do they feel like?'

'Not exactly pleasant. Funny, rather!'

She threw back the blanket and put her hand on
them: 'Cold, eh?'

'No, I don't think it's cold.'

'Yes, it is. You've forgotten what cold feels
like.'

Simon waited for Ross, intending to say nothing
of this development until Ross said: 'Feel that, sir?' then he would say: 'Yes,
my feet feel cold.'

But it did not happen like that. That day, when
Ross ran the pencil along his sole, an electrical thrill flashed up the inside
of his leg into his sexual organs and he felt his penis become erect. He turned
his buttocks to hide himself and pressing his cheek into the pillow, did not
know whether he was relieved or ashamed.

Ross, seeing him flush, threw the blanket over
him, saying: 'You're going to be all right, sir.' He laughed and Simon laughed
back at him, and from that time a new intimacy grew up between them. Ross,
losing his restraint, ceased to look upon Simon as a dependant and began to
treat him as a young man like himself. He took to lingering at the end of each
session and talking about small events in the hospital. This gossip led him on
to a subject near to his heart: his disapproval of the 'Aussies'. He felt the
need to impress Simon with the respectability of New Zealanders that contrasted
with the wild goings-on of the Australians.

'A rough lot, sir,' he said. 'Some of 'em never
seen a town till they were taken through Sydney to the troopship. And take that
Crete job? The Aussies blamed us and the Brits for lack of air-cover. Well, you
can't have air-cover if you haven't got aircraft, now can you, sir? They just
couldn't see it. They weren't reasonable. When they got back, they took to
throwing things out of windows. In Clot Bey they threw a piano out. And they
threw out a British airman and told him: "Now fly, you bastard!" From
a top floor window, that was. Not nice behaviour, sir.'

'No, indeed. What happened to the airman?'

'I never heard.' Ross shook his head in disgust
at his own story.

Simon sympathized with Ross but, secretly, he
envied the Aussies their uninhibited 'goings-on'. They had frequently to be
confined to barracks for the sake of public safety. And at Tobruk, ordered to
advance in total silence, they had wrecked a surprise attack by bursting out
of the slitties bawling, 'We're going to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard
of Oz'. He had to put in a word for such lawless men.

'After all, Ross, they needn't have fought at
all. We started the war and they could have told us to get on with it.'

'Oh, no. With respect, you're wrong there, sir.
It's our war as much as yours.'

To the sister, Simon said: 'You know that young
lady who came here, the one I said I didn't want to see? Did she come back?'

The sister answered coldly: 'How do I know? I'm
not on duty every day and all day, am I?'

'Sister, if she does come, you won't stop her,
will you? I want to see her.'

'
If
she does come, I'll bring her along
myself.'

A few days later, having had no visitor but Guy,
Simon appealed to him: 'Could you ask Edwina to come and see me?'

'Of course,' Guy cheerfully agreed: 'I'll speak
to her. I expect she'll come tomorrow or the day after.'

But Edwina, when he spoke to her, blinked her
one visible eye at him and seemed on the point of tears: 'Oh, Guy, I really
can't go to Helwan again. It's so embarrassing. Simon's got it into his head
that I was his brother's girlfriend and I find it such a strain, playing up to
him.'

'Why play up? Just tell him the truth.'

'Oh, that would be unkind. Besides, the place
upsets me. When I went last time, I had a migraine next day. I do so hate
hospitals.' Edwina gave a little sob and Guy, afraid of upsetting her further,
said no more but he decided there would be a meeting somewhere other than the
hospital.

He arranged to hire a car and asked the sister
for permission to take Simon for a drive. They would go to the Gezira gardens.
He asked Edwina to meet him there, telling her that he would see there was no
distressing talk about Simon's brother. Edwina said: 'Of course, I'll come, Guy
dear. How sweet you are to everyone.'

Much satisfied, Guy put his plan to Simon who
was upset by it. Closeted in his cubicle, he had become like a forest-bred creature
that is afraid to venture out on to the plain. Even Edwina's promise to join
them in the gardens had its element of disappointment.

'So she won't come here?'

'She says hospitals have an unfortunate effect
on her.'

'I'd rather not go to the gardens, Guy. I don't
think she wants to see me.'

'Oh, yes, she agreed at once,' Guy persuaded
Simon as he had persuaded Edwina and a day was fixed. By the time the car was
outside the Plegics, Simon had worked himself into a state of restless
anticipation. He several times asked Guy: 'Do you really think she'll be
there?'

'She's probably there already. So, come along!'

Simon's chair, brake-locked, stood beside his
bed and Guy and Ross watched while he manoeuvred himself into it. He shifted to
the edge of the bed and pushed his legs over the side then, gripping the
chair's farther arm, he swung himself into the seat. Comfortably settled, he
looked at his audience and grinned: 'How's that?'

Both watchers said together: 'Splendid.'

Ross came to the car where Simon, depending on
the strength of his arms, lifted himself into the back seat. His movements were
ungainly and Guy and Ross were pained by the effort involved but they smiled
their satisfaction. Simon was progressing well.

Heat was returning to the Cairo noonday. The
drive over the desert was pleasant and Simon, looking out of one window or the
other, said: 'Funny to be out again. Makes me feel I'm getting better.'

The gardens, that curved round the north-eastern
end of the island, were narrow, a fringe of sandy ground planted with trees.

Constantly hosed down with river water, the
trees had grown immensely tall but their branches were sparse and their leaves
few. They were hung with creepers that here and there let down a thread-fine
stem that held a single pale flower, upright like an alabaster vase. Nothing
much grew in the sandy soil but it was sprayed to keep down the dust and the
air was filled with a heavy, earthy smell.