The exchange girls, unable to reach Guy, told Harriet: ‘It’s the business men. They ring all the time because they are nervous. And they’re already talking to each other in German.’
Harriet decided to appeal to Dobson. When she left her work, other people were returning to theirs. It was the rush hour and the most oppressive time of the day. Heat, compacted between the buildings, stuck to the skin like cotton wool. The roads were noisy with traffic and the workers, unwillingly roused out of their siestas, were rough and irritable. Bunches of men hung like swarming bees at the tram-car doors, clinging to rails and to each other. When a car swerved round a corner, several were thrown off but falling lightly, they picked themselves up and waited to get a handhold on the next. The richer men, to avoid this rabble, fought for taxis and Harriet, knowing she could not compete, decided to walk down to the river.
The pavements were more crowded than usual. Some of the men were so new to commerce that they still wore the galabiah but most of them had managed to fit themselves out with trousers and jackets. Some had even taken to wearing the fez. Many were pock-marked or had only one seeing eye, the other being white and sightless from trachoma; many were enervated by bilharzia, but they were all rising in the world, leaving behind the peasants and the back street balani from whom they derived.
Harriet stopped to look in the windows of a closed-down tourist agency. She saw, dusty and cracking with heat, the posters that used to draw the rich to Egypt: the face of the Sphinx, the lotus columns of Karnac, the beautiful and tranquil Nile with the feluccas dipping in the wind. She sadly thought, ‘Good-bye, Egypt,’ but at that moment a familiar sensation came into her middle and she knew she was in for another attack of ‘Gyppy tummy’. The sensation, that was not altogether pain, appeared in her mind as a large pin — not an ordinary pin but, for some reason, an open safety pin — which turned slowly and jabbed her at intervals. She thought over what she had had for luncheon. In this country one ate sickness. She could not blame Madame Wilk who was always telling the cook to wash his hands. The cook would reply, ‘Saida, we wash our hands all the time. It is our religion to wash our hands.’ And so it was. Harriet had seen the men at the mosque putting a finger or two into the pool and giving a token splash inside their galabiahs. Madame Wilk said, ‘What am I to do? I can’t follow them when they go places.’ Nor could she. So Egypt was not only the Sphinx, the lotus columns, the soft flow of the Nile, it was also the deadening discomfort and sickness that blurred these sights so, in the end, one cared for none of them.
Harriet reached the Embassy’s wrought-iron gates as the sun was dropping behind Gezira and a mist like smoke hung over the river. Passing into the mist, she realized it really was smoke. The atmosphere was heavy with burning. Inside the Embassy gardens, she saw a bonfire and the Embassy men and women, Dobson and Edwina among them, bringing out trays and bags of papers. Servants were feeding the papers to the fire and the gardeners were poking them about with rakes to keep them alight. This activity was solemn, yet not quite solemn. Edwina was making some remark and everyone laughed. They had their immunity, after all. Whatever happened, they would get away alive.
Dobson looked towards her and she waved to him. He crossed to the gate with a smiling amiability as though the paper burning was a social ceremony and Harriet might be welcomed in. Instead, as she was about to speak, he came out to join her and suggested they stroll along the embankment. ‘My eyes are watering from the smoke. Let’s get out of it.’
Dobson’s air was, as it always was, insouciant and she said, ‘Just now I was thinking of the pre-war tourists who seemed to be immune to bacillary dysentery. And you, you’re immune to the enemy.’
Dobson laughed. ‘One of the perks of the profession.’
‘Well, I want your help. Guy’s not immune, as you know, and he’s on the outskirts of Alexandria where he’ll have little idea of what’s going on. I can’t get through to him on the phone. What are we supposed to do?’
Dobson came to a stop and stood with his back to the embankment wall. At this end of the river walk a group of banyans had grown from the path and, dropping their branches down, had rooted themselves on all sides. There was a whole complicated cage of banyans, their silvery, tuberous trunks looking immensely old. The intertwining of branches to roots and roots to branches had left a central cage and Dobson stepped into it, looking up at the knotted roof as though seeing the banyans for the first time. While he stood there, apparently reflecting on Guy’s position, a rain of charred paper fragments came floating down and with half his attention on the paper, he said, ‘I suppose Gracey’s in touch with him?’
‘No,’ Harriet spoke sharply to regain Dobson’s whole attention. ‘Gracey’s gone, probably to Palestine. Anyway, we’ve no means of contacting him. The office is shut.’
‘Oh!’
Smoke darkened the sunset but the smoky air was rich with the rose colours of evening and through it, wavering like a child’s kite, a half sheet of headed paper sank and settled, just out of reach, in the banyan branches. Peering up at it, Dobson said, ‘Oh, dear!’
‘Is it a fact that Rommel is only one day’s drive from Alex?’
‘So it seems, but there’s no immediate cause for anxiety. If Alex is evacuated, the military will bring the English civilians out, I’m pretty sure.’
‘But there may not be time to evacuate the civilians. And if the town is cut off, no one will get away.’
Dobson smiled. ‘We’ve got a navy, you know.’
Harriet was not sure whether he was laughing at her or not. Probably in the face of the fall of Alexandria, Guy’s fate seemed to him, as it would to most people, a minor matter. But it was not minor to her and Dobson, all in all, was a kindly man. After a moment’s reflection, he said, ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If I can get the Embassy line cleared this evening, I’ll give him a tinkle and advise him to be on the alert.’
‘Thank you. But much better to tell him to come to Cairo.’
‘I can’t very well do that. Not my territory, you know, but I’ll warn him that the situation’s serious.’
And that, she realized, was as much as she could hope for from Dobson, who now had to get back to his bonfire. But the bonfire was dying in the twilight and the girls were going home. Dobson paused inside the gate to say, ‘Though there’s no cause for panic, I really think you’d do well to leave Cairo. Most of the women and children are being packed off. There’s a special train taking anyone who wants to go. It leaves about nine tomorrow morning.’
‘But if there’s no cause for panic . . .’
‘No immediate cause. No one’s being forced to go at the moment, but there could be a God-almighty flap if and when they are. If you leave in good time, you’ll be spared the turmoil. We just want to clear the decks, in case . . . Then, if the situation rights itself, you’ll have had a free holiday in the Holy Land.’
Harriet said nothing.
‘I’d get to the station early, if I were you. Bound to be a bit of a crush.’ Dobson smiled, taking her silence for acquiescence. Good-natured though he was, he could be self-important in office and now, satisfied that he had disposed of her, he nodded her away. ‘Good-bye. And perhaps we’ll meet at Philippi.’
Three
It took a couple of days for the convoy to disperse. It had arrived during a lull in the fighting. When they leaguered, the gunfire had stopped but next day, at first light, the men were awakened by a thudding uproar that seemed to be less than a mile away. Simon, sitting up in alarm, was taut with protest: the noise was too close and he was not prepared for it. Surely he should have been given time to brace himself against an onslaught like this? He got out of his sleeping-bag to see what was to be seen and there was nothing but rising billows of smoke on the horizon. The guns must be three or four miles away.
Realizing this, his nerves subsided but he was dispirited by the arid desolation around him and suffered, like everyone else, from fear of what would happen next. Those who could
locate their units were the lucky ones. They were packed into trucks to be delivered to friends, in places where they knew the routine of life. They went cheerfully and the other men said to each other, ‘Lucky buggers!’ Half the trucks went with them so the remaining men, with gaps in their leaguer, felt exposed to the unknown.
At mid-morning, having nothing much to do, they were distracted by signs of activity near by. Traffic today was mostly driving westward. Different sorts of transport trucks were bringing up supplies and waiting to deliver on to an area a hundred yards west of the convoy’s camp. Simon, asking the sergeant what was going on, discovered that this area was to form a service depot for the battle a few miles up the road. Engineers took over the area and put down oil barrels that marked tracks for the lorries. The lorries then moved on to the mardam to deliver their goods. Service lorries came next. Gradually, as though the positioning of the black barrels gave meaning to the desert, the enclosed sand was occupied by vehicle workshops, tank repair units, dressing stations and supply dumps.
The men who were still in the camp stood and watched as the empty sand flats filled with men and materials. The service units seemed aware of an audience and moved about like stage hands, displaying their efficiency. Simon and the others, grouped together to hide the embarrassment at their enforced idleness, saw the supply base grow before them.
The Spitfires and Hurricanes went unheeded until a plane of a different kind dived over the camp and spattered the ground with bullets. The men threw themselves down, trying to dig themselves in, for the first time aware that here, idle and useless though they were, they could die as easily as the men at the front. Simon, being the only officer among them, ordered them to get spades from the lorries and dig slit trenches. They did this with enthusiasm. The sand digging was easy enough, the trenches were completed in an hour and their occupants, again with nothing to do, stood deep in them, resting their arms on the sand, bored by their own inactivity and envious of the activity of others.
The traffic changed direction again. Trucks that had gone up to the front were returning with wounded and taking on supplies. Smoke and dust hung in the growing heat. Seeing the orderlies and stretcher-bearers moving, as grey as ghosts in the dusty distance, the men of the convoy grumbled resentfully. Couldn’t they go and offer a hand? Simon consulted with the sergeant but the men were untrained in the work in progress and the trained men would have no use for them.
The gunfire was an unending reverberation against the senses. The distant smoke clouds rose so thickly that the sun was a white transparent circle behind haze, but the loss of light did not bring any diminution of heat. By mid-afternoon most of the men had lost interest in the service depot and, prodding down into the trenches, slept until sunset when the canteen truck came round. The sound of the guns was dying out. The trucks, leaving the depot, were going eastwards again and the men of the convoy relaxed into a new friendliness, feeling they had survived an ordeal.
The sergeant came over to Simon and said in a sociable way, ‘In case you don’t know, sir, my name’s Ridley.’ The fact they were among the remnants left in the camp had brought them together and Ridley, become confiding, said he had seen Major Hardy leaving the camp soon after daybreak. According to Ridley, the major had driven off to divisional headquarters on a ploy of his own.
‘Been sick, see,’ Ridley said. ‘Jaundice. The brass-hats all get it, comes from all the whisky they put down. Well, he was in hospital a long time and when he came out, he found he’s been replaced, which doesn’t surprise anyone. What he wants, if you ask me, is to get on to staff but he’s a toffee-nosed old bumbler and I bet they don’t want him.’
‘What do you think will happen to the rest of us?’
‘Can’t tell you that, sir, but let’s hope we stick together.’
At dawn next day, the guns started up again and the service units were out sweeping and tidying their areas as though attempting to make a habitat of a bit of desert. The men of the convoy, expecting another day of tedium, watched disgruntled till the canteen truck came round. While they were eating their sandwiches, Major Hardy’s staff car came into the leaguer. This was indeed a diversion. The sergeant, who knew everything, had said to Simon. ‘We won’t see his nibs again.’ They all stood and watched Hardy’s legs come out of the car as though his emergence were a special entertainment laid on for them. Standing beside the car, he called Simon to him. He was a changed man. Until then, keeping his distance, he had had the ruffled atmosphere of one who nursed a grievance.
‘Boulderstone,’ he said, addressing Simon with easy confidence. ‘This area will be evacuated at six a.m. tomorrow. The trucks are to move to another camping site a few miles back. Any questions?’
‘Yes, sir. Are you coming with us, sir?’
‘I am. I am now your commanding officer.’
Before Simon could make any comment, Hardy dismissed him and returned to the car where he sat examining papers for most of the daylight hours.
Next morning, taking his place in the leading lorry, Simon found Arnold at the wheel. He was surprised that Arnold was still with the remnants left in camp. He said, ‘I thought you went with the trucks.’ Arnold had gone with the trucks but his unit had moved. No one could tell him where it was and so, after dark, when the men were asleep, Arnold had made an unobtrusive return to the camp.
‘And you’re staying with us?’
‘Looks like it, sir.’
‘Splendid.’ Arnold was someone Simon knew. Arnold had given him help on the outward trip and could be relied on to help him now. Arnold, known and helpful, brought a sense of continuity to a disrupted world.
They sat together in comfortable silence, awaiting the order to move. It did not come. Time passed and the cool of daybreak took on the sting of morning. At last, Simon jumped down from the cabin, intending to approach Hardy but was stopped by the sight of the major, face drawn, hands shuffling through the paper that lay, disordered, on the car bonnet. He gave Simon a look of such rancour that Simon made off to where Ridley stood with a sardonic smile on his narrow, kippered face.
‘What’s the hold-up, sergeant?’
‘If you ask me, sir, the old fucker’s lost his notes of the route.’
Whatever Hardy had lost, he had now found and coming over to Simon and Ridley, fussily important, he ordered Ridley’s truck into the lead. Climbing back into his cabin, Simon found Arnold drooping under the heat from the roof. As they were about to start out, the canteen truck came round and the men, getting down for their tea and bully, could see Hardy haranguing the sergeant.
Everyone was eager to be off. The patch of desert where they had leaguered was like most of the desert elsewhere, yet it had become hateful to them. They seemed to imagine that, once on the move, their world would change. By the time they set out, the track was under mirage and the convoy went at a crawl. Heat fogged the distance so there was no horizon, nothing to separate the silver mirage fluid from the swimming, sparkling white heat of the sky. They might have been moving in space except that objects — petrol cans, scraps scattered from falling aircraft, abandoned metal parts — stood monstrous and distorted out of the mirage.
The wind, blowing hot into the cabin, roused Simon to painful awareness that here he was and here, for God knows how long, he would have to remain. Pushing the sweat streams back into his hair, he said, ‘It’s so bad, I suppose it can only get better.’
‘Oh, surprising how you get to like it, sir.’ Arnold, though he was no longer in the lead, peered from habit out of the windscreen for sight of the piles of stones, trig-point triangles or oil barrels with which the engineers marked the line of firm sand.
It was late afternoon before the mirage folded in on itself and dwindled away. Arnold gave a murmur of satisfaction, seeing them still on the track, and Simon said, ‘Good show, eh?’
Arnold smiled and Simon, wanting to know more about him, asked, ‘You came round the Cape? What was it like?’
‘Not bad. We didn’t s
ee much till we stopped at Freetown. Then at Cape Town, they took us a trip up Table Mountain. It was smashing.’
‘The scenery, you mean?’
‘The scenery wasn’t bad, either. But it was the flowers. Never saw anything like them.’
‘We weren’t allowed ashore. They’d had the British army by the time we arrived and we just had to stay on board. It was a big ship — the Queen Mary. A liner.’
Arnold, too, had come out on a liner but could not remember what it was called. The lower deck had been packed like a slave ship, the hammocks slung so close it was impossible to move without rocking the man on either side, but he had discovered there were splendours higher up. Sent to the saloon deck with a message, he had looked in through an open door and seen a real bed, gilt chairs with tapestry seats and a carpet on the floor.
He commented without envy. ‘The officers had it good.’
‘Only the brass hats. There wasn’t elbow room in our cabin. They’d put in extra bunks and your face nearly hit the one above. Did you have any special friends on the ship?’
Arnold nodded but paused before admitting their names. ‘Ted and Fred. Chaps I dossed down with.’
That, it seemed, was the most Arnold would give away for the moment. They drove a few miles in silence then Simon questioned him again, wondering if he had felt about Ted and Fred as Simon had felt about Trench and Codley. Arnold said, ‘Ted and Fred were all right,’ and another mile passed before he explained how the three had been drawn together. They had occupied three hammocks, in a cubby beside the engine. ‘You see, I had the middle place.’ Only that fact, he believed in his humility, had admitted him to the team. They had taken possession of two square yards of deck space and each morning, first thing, one of them would go to the space while the other two queued in the canteen.
Fortunes of War Page 10
