The Levant Trilogy (7 page)

'Oh,' the driver,
called Arnold, decked his head in a deprecating way, 'not bad, sir. You get
browned off, a'course, but it's got its moments.'

Arnold had been
one of those stranded in Cairo and had to find his battalion. He had no
certainty he would do so. 'Never know what's happened when you're away. Don't
want to start with a fresh mob, not when you're used to your own lot.'

This statement
conveyed a sense of confusion ahead and Simon asked, 'How do you find your way
around in the desert?'

The corporal
laughed. 'You get a feel for it, sir.' The sun rose above the cab roof and
mirage hid the sand. The sky, if anyone could bear to look at it, had the
molten whiteness of mid-day. They touched on the edge of a town. It was like a
holiday scene with small, white villas, date palms and walls hung with purple
bougainvillaea, then came the white dazzle of sand and a sea, in bands of green,
blue and violet, that seemed more light than water. They passed abandoned camping
sites where regimental flags hung over emptiness, then drove between two
shallow lakes, one of them green, the other raspberry pink, both dotted with
floating chunks of soda. Simon could not hide his astonishment 'What a weird
place!"

'It's only Alex,
sir.'

Outside the town,
Arnold tentatively asked, 'Time to brew up, sir?"

'Good heavens,
yes. I should have thought of it, shouldn't I?'

'That's all
right, sir.'

The red flag was
hoisted and the convoy drew into the side of the road. Numbers of army trucks
and cars were going east. It seemed that that day only the convoy was going
west. Looking down its length, Simon saw Major Hardy getting out of his car.
The major was merely a passenger to the front but Simon, with no great
confidence in his own power to command, felt it would be politic to treat him
as if he were in charge. As Simon strolled down to the car, the major, spreading
a large-scale map out over the bonnet, lifted a dark, lined face with a bar of
black hair on the upper lip and gave him a stare of acute irritation. Simon
started to introduce himself but Hardy interrupted him. 'Your section's brewing
up. Better get back to see fair play.'

The sergeant,
whose glum, folded face was kippered by the sun, was demonstrating, with an air
of long-suffering, how to make a fire and boil water for the brew. The new men
looked on as two large stones were set up to form a hob for the brew can, which
was a cut-down petrol can. The water came from the convoy's reserves but the
sergeant said sternly, 'You don't use it, see, if you can get it from anywhere
else.' He packed scrubwood between the stones and set it alight. Down the convoy,
other fires were being started for other sections. At intervals, at the
roadside, groups of men stood and watched for water to boil.

'Now,' said the
sergeant, 'y'puts in yer tea, see.' He broke open a case of tea and threw two
large handfuls on to the boiling water. 'Right. Now y'lifts it off, see.' He
lifted the can as though his dry, brown hands were insulated against heat.
'Right. And now - where's yer mugs?'

The mugs stood
together on the sand, a concourse of mugs, one for each man in the section and
a couple over. Vincent trailed condensed milk from mug to mug, giving an inch
or more of milk, and then the sergeant splashed the brew can over them. The
men, picking up their tea mugs, moved into groups as though each had sorted out
the companions natural to his kind. Already, Simon thought, they had ceased to
be a collection of strangers and soon they would be wedded into twos and threes
of which each member belonged to the others as he had belonged to Trench and
Codley. Feeling himself solitary and apart, he looked for Arnold but Arnold had
his own friends, men who had been with him, stranded, in Cairo. The sergeant
brought over one of the spare mugs and two bully beef sandwiches. 'Spot of
char, sir?', then remained beside Simon who, deeply gratified, asked him where
he had been before he went on leave. 'Mersa. The jerries were just outside.'

'Where do you
think they are now?'

The sergeant
snorted. 'A few yards up the road, I reckon.'

Simon saw that he
was not, as he had thought, sullen or remote. He was dejected by defeat. 'We
had Gazala. We had Tobruk. It was hunkey-dorey. Looked like in no time we'd be
back in Benghazi, then this happened.'

'What
did
happen?'

'Came down on us
like a bat out'a hell.'

Arnold called,
'Blue flag, sir?'

'Oh, yes. Yes.
Blue flag.' Looking towards the horizon where the heat was thickening into a
pall, Simon could imagine the German tanks appearing like monstrous bats,
advancing with such speed and fury, the convoy could be wiped out before it had
time to turn round. But the horizon was empty and even the eastbound traffic
had stopped. 'Quiet, isn't it!'

Arnold said,
'Jerry's too busy to bother us,' and as he spoke, a Heinkel, returning from a
reconnaissance flight, dived over the convoy. He braked sharply. The Heinkel,
returning, sprayed the sand like a gesture of contempt. The bullets winged
harmlessly into the sand. The plane flew off.

As the sun began
to sink, Simon was concerned about the routine for the night. At some place and
point in time he should give the order to make camp but before the need became
an anxiety Arnold said, 'Think we should leaguer here, sir?'

There was a
glimmer of white on the coast. The glimmer grew into a village of pleasant
holiday homes with a bay, like a long white bone, that curved into the desert's
cinderous buffs and browns.

'Who lives out
here?' Simon asked. 'No one, now. They all moved away long ago.' The lorries
were positioned into a close-rank formation that served as camp and defence.
Arnold, smiling as though he had begun to feel a protective affection for
Simon, asked him, 'Permission to bathe, sir.'

Simon followed as
the men, running between the dunes, shouting at each other, pulling off their
shirts and shorts, went naked into a sea as warm and clinging as milk. Lying on
the sea, in the haze of evening, he looked back at the village and was surprise
to find it was still there. Had he been asked as they covered mile after mile
of sand, 'Where would you choose to be?' he might well have chosen this oasis
beside the white shore, with its villas under a shelter of palm trees. He
raised his head to look westwards into the foggy distance of the desert coast
and seeing nothing, he had an illusion of safety. The enemy must be further
away than the sergeant imagined. Content filled him and he smiled at the man
nearest to him. 'We didn't expect this, did we?'

The man laughed
and twisted his head in a movement of appreciation. 'Dead cushy,' he said.

That night,
startled out of sleep by the rising moon, Simon felt the earth vibrating
beneath him. He sat up, uncertain where he was, and saw the brilliant whiteness
of the houses patterned over by the palm fronds. There was a booming in the
air, distant but heavy, and he knew it must be artillery. Pulling himself
down into his sleeping-bag, he put his hands over his ears and sank back into
sleep.

For most of the
next day the convoy seemed alone in the desert Occasionally a dispatch rider
passed on a motorcycle and once a staff car came up-behind them and went by
with the speed of a police car. Then, in mid-morning, a pinkish smudge appeared
on the horizon. Simon asked Arnold what he thought it was. 'Could be a
sandstorm.'

The smudge, pale
and indefinite at first, deepened in colour and expanded, swelling towards the
convoy until, less than a mile away, it revealed itself as a sand cloud, rising
so thickly into the heat fuzz of the upper air that the sun was almost occluded.
Inside the cloud, the dark shapes of vehicles were visible. The first of them
was a supply truck, lurching, top-heavy with mess equipment. The procession
that followed stretched away to the horizon. Like the convoy, it moved slowly,
creaking and clanking amid the stench of its own exhausts and petrol fumes. As
they reached and passed it, Simon felt the heat from the vehicles that followed
one after the other on the other side of the road.

Transports
carried tanks that had lost their treads. Trucks towed broken-down aircraft or
other trucks. Troop carriers were piled with men who slept, one on top of the
other, a sleep of exhaustion. Guns, RAF wagons, recovery vehicles, armoured
cars, loads of Naafi stores and equipment, went past, mile after mile of them,
their yellow paint coated with sand, all unsteady, all, it seemed, on the point
of collapse. As they moved nose to tail, they gave an impression of scrapyard
confusion yet somehow maintained a semblance of order.

A staff car. that
had pulled on to the wrong side of the road, brought the convoy to a halt.
Major Hardy, striding towards it, shouted, 'What's going on? Is the whole
damned army in retreat?'

Another major looked
out of the disabled car, his face creased with weariness, and shouted back,
'No, it damn well isn't. The line's holding a few miles up the road. The Aussie
9th Division is rumoured to be on its way - and it better be. They're a mixed
bunch back there: 8th Army, Kiwis, South Africans, a few Indians. How long they
can hold out is anybody's guess.'

'But where's this
lot going?'

'Ordered to
prepare defences further east.'

'Where? The back
gardens of Abou Kir?'

'Likely enough,'
the major wiped the sweat from his face and gave a grin. 'We'll fight on the
beaches.'

This convoy's to
report to 7th Motor Brigade. Any idea where that is?'

'Search me. Could
be anywhere. It's hell and plain bloody murder where we came from.'

The obstructing
car was pushed off the road to await a mechanic and the convoy went on, moving
westward when it seemed that everything else in the world was going east. The
breakdowns become more frequent. Every few hundred yards there was a halt and
men were sent to push some vehicle away while Major Hardy questioned anyone he
could find to question. He became more flustered, finding no one who knew or
cared where the convoy might find its divisional headquarters. He shouted at
Simon, 'Don't dog my heels, Boulderstone. Get a move on or we'll have another
night on the road.'

They made what
progress they could. Structures appeared beside the road, temporary and flimsy
but suggesting that at last, among the muddle of wire and piled up stones, the
tired newcomers might find their destination. Some sappers were at work on a
crack in the tarmac and Simon, seeing them before Hardy had a chance to get to
them, ran to make the usual inquiries.  From  their  manner,  he  was 
uncertain  whether they were telling him the truth or not. One sapper said, 'The
Auk's down the road. Been standing there all day without his hat, just watching
this ruddy circus go by. He'll tell you where to go.'

Simon doubted
that but asked, 'What does be look like?' The Auk? Great man, ruddy hero. Big.
Big chap. You can't miss 'im.'

The sappers,
still laughing, stood back to let the convoy bump its way across the broken
surface and drive on towards a red blur where the sun was beginning to set. The
booming that had disturbed Simon the night before, now started again; a much
more ponderous sound. Stars of red and green were rising into the sunset and
Simon asked Arnold: 'Is that the front line?'

'No, the front's
a good ten miles on.' They drove another mile. 'Think we'd better get down,
sir?'

It was time to
leaguer. The men sprang from the trucks, shaking the cramp from their legs,
cheerfully congratulating each other as though they had reached home. The
westbound traffic had been stopped by its own congestion and the dust had begun
to settle. The air cleared but there was not much to see; only a vast plain,
crimsoned by sunset, from which two columns of smoke, black as soot, rose into
the blood-red brilliance of the sky.

At eight a.m., the
hour when the Egyptian sun exploded in at the edges of shutters and curtains,
Harriet Pringle heard an uproar outside her bedroom door. The noise was only
one woman's voice - the voice of Madame Wilk, the proprietor of the pension -
but so heightened was it by panic and outrage that Harriet jumped out of bed,
certain that calamity was upon them.

Madame Wilk was
shouting into the telephone, 'They were seen. How do I know who saw them? It is
known everywhere. I am telling you - thousands of them, all broken and useless,
the men dead to the world. I have friends in Heliopolis and they rang me. They
said, "They're still coming. A terrible sight, a whole army in
retreat."' Madame Wilk, her indignation growing, began to thump the door
beside her, Harriet's door. 'Get up. Get up. You're finished, you British. The
Germans are here already. Oh, oh, oh, what shall I do?' The voice rose into a
funereal wail of such agony that Harriet opened the door.

Outside, Madame
Wilk stood with the receiver in her hand, a shrunken little monkey of a woman
with large brown eyes, faded and swimming with tears. She was a Copt, married
during the first war to a British officer who had gone home leaving her with
nothing but a British passport. Now she realized that if the British were
finished, she, too, was finished, and the tears overflowed from her wrinkled
eyelids and trickled down her withered cheeks. 'All my shares is gone. What
have I? What is to happen to me?'

'What will happen
to any of us? ' Harriet asked.

'You? - you will run
away, but me! What can I live on? Here I have worked, I have saved for my old
age. I bought my pension, I bought shares because of my good sense, and now
what are they worth? Nothing. They're worth nothing.'

Major Perry,
putting his head out of the room opposite, said 'They'll recover. The exchange
goes up and down like a bally yo-yo.'

'What good my
shares recover and me not here where my shares are?'

Major Perry's
laughter distracted Madame Wilk so Harriet was able to close her door. She
hurried to take her shower and dress so she could find the truth of this
latest, frightful, rumour of retreat, then went out to the long hallway that
was the heart and centre of the Pension Wilk. The hall served as dining-room
and sitting-room (not that anyone would sit there for long), and the tables and
chairs, lined along one wall, almost blocked the passage. Guest-rooms opened
off on either side. They were small but each had a shower-room attached and
this enabled Madame Wilk to claim for the pension 'luxury' status.

Windows were
shuttered during the daylight hours and meals had to be taken by artificial
light. Harriet found this oppressive but had to accept that in Egypt the sun
was an enemy. If it were not excluded, the indoor heat would be intolerable.
Still, she felt a sense almost of triumph when she found that a door in the
hall had been left open and daylight shone on the breakfast tables. The door,
propped open at dawn for the
sake of
ventilation, had to be closed, locked and bolted before the guests were up. Harriet
had often heard Madame Wilk's voice raised when a safragi had forgotten to shut
it, but this morning, with other things to scream about, Madame herself had
forgotten the door. Walking through it for the first time, Harriet could see
why she was so concerned to keep it shut. It led on to a flat roof. The Pension
Wilk was at the top of a tall block of flats and Harriet, going to the edge of
the roof, found that only a single rail ran between her and the drop down to
the street. Conscious of daring, she stood by the rail and looked towards Giza,
half expecting to see the defeated army wandering in past Mena House. But
there was no army. She saw nothing but the pyramids, that were visible only in
early morning and at sunset, looking as small as the little metal pyramids that
were used as pencil sharpeners.

The morning was
so still, it did not relate to war. The traffic had not started up and she
could hear, from a hundred yards below her, the bell of a camel and the slap of
the camel-driver's bare feet.

She moved round
the roof, astonished by the extent and clarity of the view in this early
sunlight. Soon the town would be hidden under heat but now she could see the
small houses washing, like a sea of curdled foam, up to the cliff-face of the
Mokattam Hills. Above them Mohammad Ali's alabaster mosque, uniquely white in
this sand-coloured city, sat with minarets pricked, like a fat, white, watchful
cat.

Once, before
history began, a real sea had filled the basin and beaten up against the cliff.
It drained away and then the ancient Egyptians had come to give to the human
spirit beauty and dignity. As she reflected on those first Egyptians, cries
came from the minaret nearest to her and at once all the air was filled with
the long, wailing notes of the muezzins calling the faithful to prayer. The
kites, roused from sleep, floated up from the buildings in unhurried flight and
began to glide with gentle, dilatory grace just above the roof tops. Harriet
looking down on them, saw they were not as they seemed from below, a muddy
brown but, catching the sun on their feathers, they gleamed like birds cast
from bronze. She was startled by another voice that joined with the muezzins,
the voice of Madame Wilk. 'Come in, Mrs Pringle, it is forbidden to be on the
roof.'

‘I’m quite safe,
Madame Wilk.'

'It is not for
you to be safe, Madame Pringle. If you fall and are killed, the police will
make trouble for me. So, at once, come in.'

Harriet went
in
and Madame Wilk banged the bolts into place, saying, 'Ah, I have too many
worries.'

Harriet sat down
to partake of a breakfast that was always the same. It began with six large,
soft, oversweet dates served in a little green glass dish. The next course
would be a small egg that might be boiled, fried or poached but always had the
same taste of damp and decay.

Harriet was, like
most of the pension guests, on the lookout for somewhere to live, yet as she
thought of having to leave Egypt, of having to move once again to an unknown
country, even the Pension Wilk seemed a desirable resting place.

On her way out,
Harriet stopped beside Major Perry's table to ask, 'How did Madame Wilk get the
idea we are in retreat?'

Perry, whose face
had been drooping, reacted to the question like a bad actor. Puffing out a
stench of stale alcohol, he laughed, 'Ha, ha, ha. You know what Cairo's like!
Some surplus equipment was returned to the depot at Heliopolis and the locals
got the wind up. Just the usual scare and rushing to the telephone."

'I didn't know we
had any surplus equipment.'

'Stuff to be
broken up for spares. The desert's littered with it.'

'So there's
nothing to worry about?'

'Nothing, girlie,
nothing. When we get reinforcements, it'll be as right as rain.'

Harriet laughed.
That's fine, only it doesn't rain here, does it?'

Guy and Harriet
had arrived in Egypt during another 'Emergency', almost exactly a year before
the present one. Then, as now, the Germans had reached Sollum and were likely
to come further, but the fact did not mean much to the refugees who had
suffered a much more acute loss. They reached Alexandria still mourning for
Greece and their memories of Greece, and Egypt evoked in them disgust and a
fear of its strangeness.

Their train had
drawn into the Cairo station at midnight and those who had money in Egypt found
themselves taxis and went to hotels. The rest, having nothing but useless
drachma, waited about, bemused, not knowing where to go or what to do.
Eventually an army sergeant took charge of them. Telling them that quarters had
been requisitioned for them, he had led them a long way through back streets to
a building as discouraging as a poor law institution. Here they were shown one
dormitory for the women, another for the men and a single cold shower to be
used by both. The dormitories with their iron bedsteads, army blankets, dismal
lighting and smell of carbolic, had a prison atmosphere but no one complained.
The refugees felt they had to put a good face on things and look grateful,
imagining, until the manager brought round the bills, that they were the guests
of the military. They learned later that the place had been a brothel until
closed down by the army medical corps and the brothel-keeper, put out of business,
was free to recoup his losses at the expense of the refugees. They would have
paid no more at a first-class hotel and Guy, trying to make light of things,
said, 'Now we know what it means to be "gypped".'

No food was
served in the building and the new arrivals, gathered next morning in the hall,
expected the sergeant to return and lead them to an army canteen. He did not
come. No one offered them help of any kind. It came to them gradually that now
they must look after themselves.

The Pringles,
standing in the hall with the others, were surprised to see Professor Lord
Pinkrose near the door. He was reputed to be a rich man but, ever ready to
conserve his wealth, he had joined the penniless crew that looked to the army
for succour. And here he was, breakfastless like the rest, but having an air
of knowing what he was about. With him were two men whom Guy had employed as
teachers at the institute in Bucharest.

They were called
Toby Lush and Dubedat. Toby, in his usual get-up of old tweed jacket and baggy
'bags', was clicking his teeth impatiently on his pipe stem. He could not stay
still.

Seeing the
manager, he held to him, saying. 'We ordered a taxi for ten o'clock. Not here
yet. Keep an eye out for it, there's a good chap.' The other man, Dubedat, elevated
his thin hooked nose, his expression stern, disassociating himself from Toby's
restless shuffling and gasping while Pinkrose, gripping his trilby hat, looked
down at his feet. The hat, that was usually on his head, had left an
indentation upon his strange, dog-brown hair.

The manager
detached himself from Toby who said, 'I think he'll fix things for us.'

Pinkrose, lifting
his grey lizard face out of the folds of his scarf, sniffed. 'I sincerely hope
so. I made an appointment for ten-thirty and would not wish to be late. It is
impendent upon us ... yes, yes, impendent upon us to show respect for the man
who holds the reins.'

Harriet whispered
to Guy, 'What do you think they're up to?'

Guy, adjusting
his glasses to look at them, said, 'Why should they be up to anything?'

'Oh, they're up
to something, all right.'

Seeing Guy
beaming on them with such good will, she said, 'Have you forgotten that
Pinkrose reported you as unfit for Organization work?'

'Did he? Oh, yes,
I believe he did.'

'You know he did.
As for the other two clowns - they went out of their way to discredit you in
Athens.'

'They behaved
badly,' Guy agreed but his expression remained benign.

The brothel had
not been air-conditioned and the refugees were drowning in the indoor heat.
Guy's face glistened and his glasses kept sliding down his nose. A big, untidy
man with books in every pocket, he could not but be amiable. Cast up here
together in this wretched billet, he saw Pinkrose, Dubedat and Lush as
companions in misfortune and bore them no grudge.

Making a sudden
bolt out into the street, Toby Lush came back in a state of blustering
excitement. 'It's here. It's outside the next door house. It's been there all
the time.'

When the three
were gone, the Pringles began to realize that they could not stand for ever,
lost and purposeless, in the dismal hall. Others were beginning to venture out
into the dazzle and unnerving unfamiliarity of the Cairo street. They needed
money. They had eaten in the army canteen at Alexandria and that had been
their only meal in four days. They needed food but, even more, they needed
reassurance.

Guy said, 'I
ought to report to the Organization office, wherever that is.' Harriet thought
it would be easier to find the British Embassy. They set out. Reaching a
crowded main road, they felt hostility in the heat and tumult and became
reckless. They stopped a taxi and were grateful to the driver for taking them
in. He drove them to the Embassy where Harriet had to remain outside as hostage
while Guy went in and borrowed the fare. They had stopped beside an ornamental
wrought-iron gate but Guy was not allowed that way. A porter directed him to a
small side building which was the chancellery.

Harriet, gazing
through the gate at the dry lawns and flowerbeds, wondered how plant life
survived at all under this blaze of sun. In Athens, when they left, gardens and
parks had been massed with flowers. In the olive groves, under the trees, the
flowers stood as high as one's waist. Would she ever see the like again?

Guy, who had gone
nervously into the chancellery, came out waving an Egyptian pound note. 'We
have a friend here.'

'Who?'

'Old Dobbie
Dobson.'

They went
joyfully in to see Dobbie Dobson who greeted them just as joyfully. They had
not known him well but now it seemed wonderful that they had known him at all.
Taking both of Harriet's hands, he put her into a chair and smiled at her. The
greetings over, the Pringles seemed to come to a stop. They wanted nothing more
than to sit for a while in Dobson's air-conditioned office, among the
furnishings of Spanish mahogany, the polished brasswork, the sense of order and
richness, and regain themselves, but Dobson had to hear what had happened to
them.