Wait, whispered Joe. I'm not making fun here and I'm not taking matters lightly and I'm not saying that spyglass didn't do its unkind work years ago, because it did. We both know it did. But I knew Colly, you have to remember that. Not only Our Colly but the one behind that. When we were young we worked our days together with fishing nets, and there were also long nights when we lay in bed and talked of what was to come for us, the wind howling and the rain beating down as if it would never stop, back before he became Ours, everybody's. Just him back then, scrawny and undersized, the way it was, that's all. And when I see what's behind that mask of yours, I know the two of you have a lot in common deep down where it counts. The little things on the surface aside.
I wear a beard so I scratch it sometimes. And you wear an eye patch so you carry on as you do sometimes. But that's on the surface of things and it's not important. Founding the Friends of Ahmad, as you did, that's important. And doing for Anna what I gather you're doing on the quiet, from what Maud says, that's important. And as for Liffy, well, it's not even necessary for us to talk about him. His voice will always be inside us and his sorrowing smile will always be there, and all we have to do with him is just listen, listen, and get to know him a little better as time goes on.
So those things are important, and maybe the most important thing of all is that worn old key you're holding in your hand. Just holding and turning it and quietly polishing it with the oils of your skin. That little thing you intend to pass on someday . . . if it works out that way.
Meant for sending messages in code. Once upon a time anyway, seemingly so. Meant for tapping out secret messages in all the codes of the race. But not so secret in the end, and not so hard to understand either. Strongbow came across it once in his travels and he took it along with him, and then Stern had it for a time, and now you do. And although its messages may seem complicated in the speaking of them, they're cryptic only at first glance, only on the face of it, for there's a flow to all of this as sure as a river flowing away to the sea. Things sensed in the heart and always known, and I'm glad you have that key now. I'm glad it's in your hand and you're keeping it and taking it with you . . . for a time. Until someday, if things work out. . .
Joe nodded at Bletchley. He smiled and stretched, raising his hands to the sky.
So that's all I wanted to say, and there's a finish to our moment by the river and an end of sorts.
That felucca out there is coming around into the wind now and we can be leaving for the airport if it's time, a few things resolved but mostly not. The Nile still doing what it's always been doing and that felucca trying to make its way as we do, and a terrible war upon the world and too many of those we love gone now, not here with us where they should be . . . t here with us too in a way.
Echoes within us, always to be so. . . . like Colly, who came along and turned up in your heart tonight to save my life. He never knew he was going to do that, did he? But he has, and he did it just by being what he was. Because what he was got inside you a long time ago and gave a cast to your mind and your feelings over the years, and not only him but all the others who are here with us as well. Just here in the shadows in the strong quiet sounds of their being. . . . Nile shadows after all, the shadows of a world raging. But those strong quiet echoes of the river are within us too, thank God, going right on and never to be still. . . .
They stood. Joe smiled and picked up a pebble.
Three weeks I've been in Cairo, he said, just think of that. It only goes to show there's no shape to time at all but what we give it. . . .
He turned and scaled the pebble out over the water and for an instant they saw it glitter, a reflection from the river set free in the moonlight.
***
Neither of them spoke more than a few words on the way to the airport. Bletchley was concentrating on the driving and Joe gazed out the window trying to absorb it all, filling himself with the sights and sounds and smells he was leaving, the vastness of the desert and the even greater vastness of the desert sky.
At the airport Bletchley led Joe through a few quiet offices and then they were standing together on the runway, off by themselves under the stars. A wind had come and was blowing strongly.
Bletchley handed Joe an envelope with some documents and money, and Joe put it away.
That's your plane over there, said Bletchley, pointing.
He turned to Joe and reached out, stiffly shaking Joe's hand. Then he stood with his arms hanging awkwardly by his sides, the wind fluttering his shapeless old khakis, his eye immensely large and round, waiting.
Joe laughed.
Here now, that's not going to make it at all.
What?
What, you say? Just a shake of the hand, is it, after what's gone on here?
Joe threw back his head and laughed again. He took a step forward and put his hand on Bletchley's shoulder, smiling.
Don't you know it yet, man? Don't you know we're on the same side in this world? And I don't mean just the British side or the Allied side with their Whatleys.
Joe leaned forward into the wind, his eyes bright, shadows darkening the deep lines in his face.
Listen to me. I mean the only side there is. And you've been in the Mediterranean long enough to know you have to press flesh when the important moments come, because it's all we have in the end, all we can ever give someone we care for. And anyway, you're not a regimental commander out in front of your troops on parade. You were never that and now you're just another anonymous member of that motley crowd known as the Friends of Ahmad, a scarred and tattered little band of irregulars that carries on behind the lines with nothing much in the way of success, and nothing at all in the way of dash. Just passing through, we are, in transit. So open your arms and give me a hug, man. Just give me a hug to help keep out the cold when those nights come, as they surely will. It's not much and it lasts but a moment, but on the other hand, good hand or bad, it's everything and it's all we'll ever really know.
Bletchley laughed and they embraced, warmly.
There that's better, said Joe. And now it is time, and as a man we both know used to say at moments like this, God bless. Mysterious presence that he always was, so much so I could never even figure out in the end whether he was a Moslem or a Christian or a Jew.
Curious man, really. Just large and awkward and there and no shape to him particularly, yet reassuring somehow, strangely so. And an odd smile on his face and a certain clumsiness about him sometimes, last seen in these parts as a beggar, a dignified man and poor, surveying his limitless kingdom in the deep of the night. . . . Stern. I wonder how he ever got a name like that?
Because he was always anything but that. Everything else probably, but not that.
Yes. God bless now. . . .
Joe turned and waved and began walking across the runway, a slight figure in a collarless shirt and shabby clothes that looked too big for him, his head down as he bent forward against the wind . . . a small man.
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Document ID: 3bf996c2-f824-4408-8751-a2336ccf1b61
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Document creation date: 25.9.2012
Created using: calibre 0.8.70, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
Document authors :
Edward Whittemore
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Edward Whittemore, Nile Shadows jq-3
Nile Shadows jq-3 Page 51
