The Levant Trilogy (9 page)

'It's his job to
know what to do with me.'

'Oh darling,
don't quarrel with him. He's probably not as bad as we think.'

Guy shrugged,
bemused by the fact that Harriet, more critical of the human race than he was,
was also, in her way, more tolerant If he lost faith, he lost it completely.
Harriet had not much faith to lose.

Returning to
their dismal quarters, Harriet knew the thing they most needed was a place of
their own. She spent the week going round small hotels and pensions, finding
them filled by army personnel. She was near despair when she was offered a room
in the Pension Wilk. Madame Wilk, however, required a months' rent in advance
and the Pringles, handing over most of their money, faced a period of anxious
penury. The pension provided meals, of a sort, but between meals, if you had
no money to spend, there was little enough to do. A general evacuation still
threatened and Harriet, fearing they might leave Egypt with all its sights
unseen, persuaded Guy to take the tram-car out to Mena House. Guy would
scarcely give the pyramids a glance. He found them neither beautiful nor useful
and said he did not like them.

Harriet, becoming
cross in the heat and glare, asked: 'What
do
you like?'

They had wandered
into a 'dig' left idle by war and Guy, tripping on the uneven ground, gave a
disgusted glance about him and pointed to some small trucks used for
transporting rubble. 'I like those. They remind me of the tips on the road to
Dudley.'

The pyramids
observed, not much remained. The museum was shut for the duration. Someone told
them about the City of the Dead, a favourite gharry trip by moonlight, but Guy
rejected it as 'a morbid show'.

When he returned
to the Organization office, he was told
that Gracey had
left Cairo. He had, in fact, left Egypt. Only one of the girls remained in the
outer office and she looked embarrassed as Guy faced her, dumbfounded by
Gracey's defection. He had gone to the office in hope of employment to fill
his empty days, and now what was he to do? Where had Gracey gone? Gracey had
gone to Palestine. As Palestine did not come under the authority of the Cairo
office, Guy asked, 'Has he gone on holiday?'

'He say "on
a tour of inspection".'

'What does that
mean?' The girl shook her head. 'How long will he be away?'

'I do not know
how long. Perhaps a long time. It depends.'

'On what?'

'On what is
happening. The war, you know. If the Germans come too close, people go to
Palestine.'

'I see. And who
is doing his work while he is away?'

The girl shook
her head again. Guy, at a loss, asked for a piece of paper and wrote the
address and telephone number of the Pension Wilk. He asked her to let him know
when she had news of Gracey's return. She looked sadly at the paper and said in
her small, mournful voice, 'I am so sorry but after tomorrow I shall not be
here. The office is closed when Mr Gracey is away.'

Until then the
Pringles had scarcely given a thought to the emergency. The English residents
in Cairo were flustered but to the refugees, still caught up in the tensions of
the Greek defeat, the desert war seemed a trivial matter. Calamity for them was
the German occupation of Athens and many of them wept as they heard the final
broadcast from the Greek radio station: 'Closing down for the last time, hoping
for happier days. God be with you and for you.'

The silence that
followed was, for them, the silence of the civilized world.

Most of the
refugees had no wish to stay in Egypt. Most of them went to Palestine and from
there managed to make their way to India, Persia or South Africa. Some, it was
rumoured, even managed to get back to England. Those who could not afford to
travel on their own, began to talk about a possible official evacuation, seeing
it as a solution of a vacuous
life spent
mostly in small underground bars, the only places they could afford where they
were out of the appalling sun.

The bars, that
had adopted names like the
Britannia
or the
George
to entice in
the troops, sold Stella beer for which Guy acquired a taste. His closest friend
in those dire days was Ben Phipps who had been a freelance journalist in
Athens. Now, having reached a major war zone, he decided to offer himself to
the London papers as a correspondent. He sent out eight cables to Fleet Street,
claiming to be an expert on Middle East affairs, but replies were slow in
coming.

Resentful of his
own displacement, Ben Phipps was scornful of the English who lived richly in
Egypt. 'A bloody good thing if the whole lot are given the boot. Let them know
what it's like to live out of a suitcase.'

'What good will
that do us?' Harriet asked.

Ben's small,
black eyes jumped angrily behind pebble glasses. 'We'd all be in the same boat.
That's what.'

Harriet had to
agree that calamity had its uses. If they ended up together in Iraq or the
Sudan, Gracey would have no more power over Guy.

Two days later a
London evening paper cabled, appointing Ben Phipps its Middle East
correspondent. A dramatic change came over him. He no longer despised the
English who had done well in Egypt. He no longer hoped for a general evacuation.
Though the Middle East situation had had for all of them as much structure and
relevance as a cage full of flies, Ben now talked knowingly of desert strategy
and the need to hold the Levant as bulwark against the loss of the Persian Gulf
oil.

He left Cairo
kitted out in khaki shorts and shirt and carrying the old portable typewriter
he had brought from Greece. Guy and Harriet went with him to the train. 'Off
into the blue, eh?' he said with relish, looking pityingly at the Pringles who
would be left behind.

Guy, unable to
believe his friend had gone, said he was sure he would be back in no time. But
not only Ben Phipps had gone. One by one the remaining refugees found means to
go elsewhere. Soon no one known to the Pringles was left in the bars. There was
no one with whom to talk through the slow, dispiriting hours between meals. No
one with whom to discuss the tricks by which the penurious supported life in
Cairo. No one to ask for news.

This idle and
purposeless life disturbed Guy and Harriet in different ways. Harriet longed for
a home more spacious than the small, cluttered room at the pension but Guy, who
had often in his youth had no home at all, only wanted employment and friends.
Perhaps he wanted employment most. He was ashamed to be idle while other men
were at war. He tried to outwit his workless state by planning lectures,
concerts for troops, productions of Shaw or Shakespeare, but could do none of
these things. He was without status, acquaintances and the means to carry out
his plans.

Soon after Ben's
departure, Guy picked up with Bill Castlebar who lectured at the Cairo
university. Castlebar occasionally went to the bars but preferred the
Anglo-Egyptian Union which he recommended to the Pringles. Because they had
once or twice mentioned Dobson, he was uncertain where they belonged in the
social hierarchy and gave his advice with a hint of irony. 'You may think
you're a cut above the Union, but there are worse places. The Sporting Club has
more to offer, of course - polo, racing, gambling, swimming. You'd meet the local
nobs there but it costs a lot of money to play with them. Perhaps you can
afford it?' Reassured on this point, he said, 'The Union's not smart but the
conversation's a great deal livelier.'

'Can one get beer
there?' Guy asked.

'Get beer! You
can not only get it, you can get it on tick.
They let you sign for it.'

Introduced into
the Union, the Pringles sat under the trees and knew they had found their
asylum. The Union, that shared the vast lawns of Gezira, existed to promote
friendship between the Egyptians and their British rulers, but few Egyptians
appeared there. The British scholastics, from the university lecturers who
were fairly well off to the PI teachers who lived just above the poverty line,
kept the place going. There was a club house and library and a belt of ancient
trees of immense height that shaded the outdoor tables and chairs. As Castlebar
pointed out, you could sit there all day and no one questioned your right. In a
country where the ruling caste was expected
to maintain aristocratic standards, the Union succoured the
English poor.

Here Guy found
company, the company usually being Castlebar and Castlebar's friend Jackman.
He was immediately at home with them and Harriet accepted them, realizing that
they were exactly the sort of dissidents Guy would pick up wherever he went.
He was entertained by Castlebar who wrote limericks, but had a much greater
respect for Jackman. This puzzled Harriet until she learnt that Jackman had
told Guy, in the greatest possible confidence, that he had fought in Spain in
the International Brigade. Harriet felt an instinctive doubt of this claim and
said, 'Why don't you ask Castlebar if it's true?'

'Castlebar knows
nothing about it. Of course it's true, but he has to keep it dark. It wouldn't
do him any good in a place like this if it got around.'

Six weeks passed
without news of Gracey and Guy, existing in a state of desperate suspension,
began to hate his director and so see Cairo as a centre of waste and
imprisonment. He discussed Gracey with Castlebar and Jackman and they encouraged
him in a revolt of ribaldry.

If they did not
know Gracey, they knew about him. In Cairo, he lived as the permanent house
guest of a rich Turk, Mustapha Quant (called by Jackman 'Mustapha Kunt') who
maintained him in decadent splendour in a houseboat on the Nile. Their stories
about Quant, Gracey and the parties given for male friends only were a delight
to Guy who felt justified in ridiculing his director to all comers.

Harriet, made
uneasy, said, 'Let's stop talking about Gracey,' but Guy had reached the point
of anxiety in which talk was the only release. It was terrible to Harriet to
see Guy's good sense overthrown. And if Gracey did not return, he might be held
here in a despairing limbo until the war ended.

He exploded out
of this condition one morning, coming from the shower, flapping his bath-towel
about in his excitement, shouting, 'Listen to this.'

There's
Wavell of the desert,

There's
Tedder of the planes,

But I'm
Gracey of Gezira,

I'm the man
that holds the reins.

I live in
style with Mustaph,

Our
houseboat it is fine,

But if
Rommel looks like coming here,

I move to
Palestine.

'Don't you think
it's funny?'

'Not very. And
for God's sake don't put it around.'

'Of course I
won't,' Guy assured her but when he composed another verse, he had to recite it
to Jackman.

They say
Christ walked on water

On the Sea
of Galilee,

But I'm Gracey
of Gezira,

No water
walks for me.

The song, for Guy
was now singing it to a music-hall tune of no originality, amused not only
Castlebar and Jackman but anyone sitting near them at the Union. Harriet, torn
between pride in Guy and fear of reprisals, begged those who heard the song
not to repeat it. 'If it got back to Gracey, Guy could be in real trouble.'

'Who would tell
Gracey anything?' said Jackman, pulling his long nose and shifting his thin
backside about as he sniggered, acting amusement without any amusement in his
eyes.

People who barely
knew Guy congratulated him on his temerity in composing the song. The word
'temerity' alerted Guy to his own rashness yet he remained defiant. Life was
precarious and he might not have any future to worry about.

Then the
atmosphere changed. The British had retaken Sollum and were chasing Rommel out
of Egypt. Though Cairo seemed to them as empty and crowded as a railway
junction, they would have to settle down there. Harriet started looking for a
job.

Guy learnt of
Gracey's return from Toby Lush. Toby, coming along the crowded pavement with
his trotting walk, saw Guy and was about to rush across the road when Guy
caught his arm. 'Where have you been?'

Toby sprang back,
pretending to ward off a blow. 'Hey, old cock, don't eat me.' His face slopping
about like bilge water in his attempt to appease Guy and also impress him, Toby
said that he, Dubedat and Pinkrose had gone on a sightseeing tour of upper Egypt.
'Pinkers hired a car and I did the driving. Amazing what we saw. Gracey joined
us two weeks ago and we all came back together.'

'Perhaps now
Gracey'll let me know what he has in mind for me.'

'He will, old
cock, but you've got to realize he's a lot on his plate. Trouble is, you said
you didn't want to work in Cairo.'

'I said nothing
of the sort.'

'Been a bit of
misunderstanding, then, but don't worry. I'll put in a word for you. And I
say,' Toby became alert and encouraging, 'what's that song you wrote:
"Gracey of Gezira"? The old soul roared when he heard it. He said
it'd be the institute's theme song.' The 'old soul' was Dubedat.