The Levant Trilogy (6 page)

'Did she? I'm
sorry, but she has gone out to dinner. She's usually out at this time.'

Apologizing,
Simon began to back from the room but the man said, 'Do stay. I'm Paul Beaker,
one of the inmates. If Edwina's expecting you, I'm sure she'll be back quite
early. Why not have supper with me!'

Supper with Paul
Beaker offered a bleak alternative to Edwina and Simon hesitated, considering
refusal, reflecting on the possibility of her return. There was a snuffle
behind him and he realized the safragi had waited to observe his reception. He
said, 'Your man thinks I'm some sort of joke.'

Beaker, looking
over Simon's shoulder, ordered the safragi away and explained to Simon, 'This
is an Embassy flat and we live here in a sort of family freedom that is
incomprehensible to the Moslem mind. Hassan can no more understand the innocence
of our proximity than you can understand his grins and giggles.'

Beaker, a fat man
with a broad red face, raised the glass he was holding and said, 'Have a drink.
Do
have one. It will give me an excuse to have another.'

Simon was handed
a tumbler of whisky. Pouring in a little water, Beaker asked. 'That all right?'

Simon, who had
never before drunk anything stronger than beer, supposed it was all right as
Beaker was drinking the same thing. Beaker, before he had even reseated
himself, started to drink with avid satisfaction.

The room was
sparsely furnished with sofa, two armchairs, a table and not much else. 'Rather
a makeshift place,' Beaker said as Simon placed himself on the edge of an
armchair, intending to leave when his drink was finished. The chap who holds
the lease, one Dobbie Dobson, does not want to lash out on furniture. It's
expensive and hard to get and who knows how long we'll all be here! I, myself,
am leaving in a few weeks. I've been appointed to the university of Baghdad.
I'm not a diplomat. I'm a professor of romance languages.' Doing his best to
keep Simon entertained, the professor ruminated about the flat 'Not a bad flat,
really. It's designed for a Moslem family. This would be the audience room,
then there's another room behind here, the hall's there and you see that baize
door? It leads to the gynaeceum, the women's quarters. It's all arranged so the
women of the house could pass from one end of the flat to the other without
being seen by the visitors in here.'

Simon, uncertain
whether Beaker was speaking of past or present, thought of the women moving
secretly- in the hidden rooms, then thought of Edwina and his cheeks grew pink.
'Do you mean Edwina is kept behind the baize door?'

Beaker laughed.
'Oh no, no indeed. Would one dare? No, I mean that it was in accordance with
Moslem custom. Edwina
does
have her sleeping-quarters behind the baize
door but no restrictions are placed upon her. She comes and goes as she likes.'

At the mention of
Edwina's sleeping-quarters, Simon's blush deepened. He lowered his head to hide
it while Beaker refilled the glasses and asked, 'You been out of England
before?'

'Oh, yes. I once
had a week in Paris.'

'Paris, eh?'
Beaker laughed as though the name had some peculiar connotation for him. 'And
now you're going into the desert, is that it?'

Simon, who was
listening for Edwina's return, realized he must explain himself. He told of his
journey round the Cape then asked if the professor had ever met his brother,
Hugo.

'Yes, I seem to
remember a young fellow called Hugo, one of Edwina's swains. So he's your
brother! And you're joining him at the front. Bit worrying for your people to
have two sons out there, isn't it? Are you their only children?'

'Yes, just the
two of us,' Simon was suffused by the memory of his home and said, 'We live in
Putney - not really Putney, more Roehampton.' He saw the street of small
Edwardian terrace houses, all alike except that the Boulderstone home had a
conservatory leading from the living-room. Mr Boulderstone had built it himself
and said it added to the value of the house. Warmed and activated by the
whisky, he told Professor Beaker about the conservatory that was filled with
his mother's geraniums and a very old sofa. In the summer she would sit among
her plants, mending clothes and knitting and listening to talks on the radio.
The clouded glass, the scents, the summer warmth of the conservatory came back
to him so vividly that he described them to Beaker as though they were
important in the scheme of things. There was one remarkable thing in the conservatory.
When the local mansion was being demolished to make way for a housing estate,
Mr Boulderstone had acquired an old vine which he planted against the wall
outside, bringing the main stem in to spread under the glass roof. He told his
family that the vine was a Black Hamburg, like the vine at Hampton Court that
produced great bunches of purple grapes, but, whatever Mr Boulderstone did, his
vine had nothing but small green grapes like bunches of peas. He bought the
vine buckets of blood from the abattoir. He puffed sulphur over the bunches but
they never got bigger. Sometimes a sour flush of mauve would come over the
grapes but they tasted as bitter as aloes.

Beaker, gazing
intently at Simon's glowing face, seemed deeply interested in all this,
encouraging Simon to talk so by the third whisky he was as far back in memory as
his infants' school. When Beaker made to refill his glass Simon said, 'Oh no,
I'd better not. I've got to find my way back to Abbasia barracks somehow.'

'Why not stay
here,' said Beaker. 'We often put you chaps up. There's a small spare room.'

Thinking of
Edwina, thinking of the abominable, death-smelling room at the barracks, Simon
said, 'Oh, I say, thanks. But I've got to ring Transit.' When he rang Transit,
he found a message had come for him from Major Perry. He was to be at Kasr el
Nil barracks at six the next morning.

He said to
Beaker, 'I'm afraid, sir, I've got to make an early start.'

'Don't worry.
I'll give you the alarm clock. We're used to chaps making early starts.'

Simon settled
thankfully back into the armchair and let Beaker give him another drink. But
that, he knew, was enough. Hassan came in to set the table and Simon now was
happy to accept Beaker's invitation to supper. Four places were laid but only
Beaker and Simon sat down. Beaker asked him about the long voyage out to Egypt
and Simon tried to describe the wonderful communion that had existed between
him and his two friends, but already the deathless friendship, the
understanding, the intense sympathy, the very smell of the ship itself, were
fading from his mind like illusions that could not survive on dry land.

While he was
talking, the front door opened and shut and Simon's voice dried in his throat.
Paused in expectation, he realized that Beaker, too, was listening for Edwina's
return. Then a male voice shouted, 'Hassan', and Beaker twitched nervously.
'Dear me, that's Percy Gibbon. I didn't know he would be in. He
will
be
cross that we started without him.'

Percy Gibbon
could be heard talking in Arabic to the safragi while Beaker, awaiting him,
made an effort to appear sober. When Gibbon entered, Beaker began in a confused
and fussy manner, 'So sorry, I really thought... I really did ...' Gibbon held
up an imperious hand and Beaker's apology limped to a halt. Gibbon said, 'There
are more important things to worry about.'

'Oh, really, are
there? You've heard something?'

'Nothing that I'm
free to impart.'

A very subdued
Hassan put down Gibbon's soup and Gibbon bent to it, his nose just above the
plate. It was a very large nose, the cheeks falling back so sharply that, from
the front, Gibbon's face looked all nose. His mouth was small and his weak,
pinkish eyes seemed colourless behind brass-rimmed glasses. Having downed his
soup, he blinked at Simon. 'One of Edwina's, I suppose?'

Simon said, 'Not
really. I only arrived yesterday. I came out on the
Queen Mary
with the
draft.'

Gibbon frowned
down in disapproval. 'That's something you should keep to yourself.'

Beaker, having
incited information from Simon, now sided with Gibbon. 'Dear me, yes. Quite
right. People are on edge. Rumours and so on. Unwise, I agree, to tell anyone
anything.' Gibbon said nothing. A dish of sliced lamb with carrots and sweet
potatoes had been put on the table and he shovelled nearly half of the lamb on
to his plate. He ate briskly, repeatedly sniffing as though he had a cold in
the head. He took no more notice of Simon and as soon as the meal was over, he
jumped up and took himself out through the baize door. Simon asked in a low
voice, 'What does he do?'

Beaker, too,
spoke quietly as though fearing a reprimand. 'Don't know. Whatever it is, it's
very hush-hush. I've been told he breaks codes.'

'He must be very
clever.'

Beaker laughed
and let his voice rise. 'He certainly thinks he is. My theory is that he's
modelled himself on one of those Byron heroes. You know: "Vital scorn of
all", "Chilling mystery of mien", "Haughty and reserved
manner" - that sort of thing.'

Simon nodded, too
sleepy to speak, and Beaker suggested that having to make such an early start,
Simon might be wise to go to bed. He was put in a room behind the baize door.
It was as bare as the barracks' room but for Simon, it was another thing. It
was a room in a household and what was more, it was near Edwina's room. The
whole corridor behind the baize door had been redolent of flowers.

He was roused
some time after midnight by the noise in the living-room. Several people were
talking and laughing, then came the plink-plink of a guitar and a voice rose
high, pure and dulcet, singing in a language Simon did not know. From the long,
melancholy notes, he guessed it was a sad song of love and he murmured to
himself, 'Poor little thing.' Then the voice warmed into impetuous emotion and
he knew the singer was Edwina. The song tantalized him with the memories of
young women he had known in England and the women he had met that day. He saw
in his mind not only Edwina, but the dark girl called Harriet and the woman
with the dead boy in the Fayoum House. Even Miss Brownall entered his thoughts
with a certain seductive pathos because she was a woman and tomorrow he must go
where there were no women.

While he lay
listening, in a state of ardent anguish, a door was flung open in the corridor
and Gibbon bawled out, 'Shut up. I do an important job, not like you bastards.'

The guitar
stopped. The song devolved into giggles and Simon returned to sleep. Professor
Beaker's alarm clock wakened him to darkness and silence. He had no idea how
he was to find his way through the unknown, sleeping city but down by the river
a taxi was parked with the driver curled up on the back seat. He reached Kasr
el Nil barracks as the first red of dawn broke across the sky, and saw the
convoy strung out along the embankment.

There was no sign
of movement. He had had to go first to Abbasia for his kit and was relieved to
find himself in time. He wondered if he looked a fool, turning up in a taxi
but, reaching the lorries, he realized no one knew or cared how he had got
there.

The lorries were
a mixed lot, made up from one unit or another, but on most of them the jerboa,
the desert rat, could be discerned through the grime. They had arrived
sand-choked from the desert and were returning sand-choked, but here and there
a glint of new metal showed where a make-do-and-mend job had been done. Among
the men packed on board them, he recognized faces he had seen on the
Queen
Mary
and he felt less dejected. Finding the sergeant in charge, he said, to
show he was not a complete novice, 'I suppose a lot of your chaps were on leave
when the trains stopped?'

That's right ...'
there was the usual pause before the 'sir' was added.

It was up to
Simon to take over now. He counted the lorries and said, 'Thirty. That's the
lot then, sergeant?'

That's the koulou
... sir.'

The sergeant
strolled off with the blank remoteness of a man to whom war was an everyday
affair. Simon, with no idea of what lay ahead, looked about him as though
seeing everything for the last time. There was an island in mid-river, one end
of it directly opposite the barracks. In the uncertain light it looked like a
great schooner decked out with greenery. The light was growing. The island,
touched by the pink of the sky, was taking shape, its buildings quivering as
though forming themselves out of liquid pearl. Palms and tall, tenuous trees
grew from the shadows at the water's edge. Nothing moved. The island hung on
the air like a mirage or an uninhabited place.

A wind, cool
enough to be pleasurable, blew into Simon's face and he said to himself, 'Why,
it's beautiful!' The whole city was beautiful and for a few minutes the beauty
remained, then the pearl hardened and lost its lustre. The sun had topped the
horizon. The air was already warm. The terrible crescendo of the day had begun.

Major Hardy,
arriving at the barracks square, chose to place his staff car half-way down the
column. Simon, given no order to join him, climbed in beside the driver of the
leading lorry. Trying to sound knowledgeable, he asked, 'How are we going out,
corporal?'

The corporal,
whose round, sunburnt face was even younger than his own, replied, 'Oh, the
usual way, sir,' and Simon waited to see what way that was. It proved to be
familiar. They went, as Clifford's party had done, past Mena House and the
pyramids. The corporal did not give the pyramids a look and Simon, seeing for
the second time the small one sliding out from behind the greater, felt less
wonder and said nothing. When they passed the excavated village, only Simon
noticed it. They were travelling slowly so the lorries would keep together. At
first the pace - it seldom exceeded ten miles an hour - was tolerable but when
they faced the open desert, with the sun rising and shining into the cab
window, tedium came down on them. Until then, Simon had still been attached to
the known world but now it was disappearing behind him. He felt apprehensive,
disconnected and rootless, and asked himself what on earth he was doing, going
off like this into the unknown? Then, it came to him that, though he was
vulnerable, he was not alone. He was a man among other men who, if they had to
act, would act together. Yet the apprehension, fixed in his stomach, could not
be moved. To reassure himself, he asked the driver, 'What's it like out there?'