‘Darling, you know I can’t abandon my students like that.’
‘What students? Did those two turn up this afternoon?’
‘No, but that doesn’t mean . . .’
‘It means they’ve abandoned you. I bet they’re taking German lessons.’
Guy laughed. ‘If the worst happens, I’ll jump on a jeep. The army will take me out.’
‘The army won’t get out. It’ll be surrounded, too.’
‘Then it’ll be another Dunkirk. The navy will rescue us.’
Dobson had said the same thing and Harriet, for the moment let the matter drop. Guy asked Aidan if he had met Catroux who was, according to gossip, the illegitimate son of a royal personage. Did Aidan think this was the truth? Aidan discussed Catroux with avid interest, as though the general were his own achievement or an important part of his own life. Harriet could imagine that the name of Catroux dominated Syria as other names dominated Egypt. There had been Cunningham, Ritchie (the troops sang ‘Ritchie, his arse is getting itchy’), Freyberg, Gott. Now there was Auchinleck. She saw them as larger than life, archetypal heroes, who had power over other men, and over civilians, too. When they decreed that Egypt should be evacuated, everyone must pack and go. The war had deprived people of free will. They must do what they were told.
Aidan, while talking, came to a sudden stop and gazed with unbelieving displeasure as yet another intruder arrived to claim Guy’s attention. Castlebar had come to the table. Harriet could feel, almost like a physical force, Aidan’s will to remove Castlebar but Castlebar was not to be moved. Confident of Guy’s welcome and not unwelcomed by Harriet, he sniggered a greeting and sidled round the table to seat himself on a chair with his back to the wall. Guy, happy in the belief that Aidan and Castlebar would be drawn to each other, introduced the one as ‘the famous actor’ and the other as ‘the famous poet’. Ducking his head, Castlebar gave Aidan a sidelong stare of dislike which Aidan, more directly, returned.
As Guy went to the bar to buy drinks, Castlebar put a packet of Camels on the table in his usual manner. The packet was placed central to his person, the open end facing him, a cigarette pulled out and propped up so it could be taken and lighted from the one in his mouth. Thus, there was no wasted interval between smokes. His thick, pale eyelids hid his eyes but all the time, he was observing Aidan as he might an enemy.
The two men were physically alike. They had the same heavy good looks but Castlebar was some ten years older. His sallow skin was falling into lines, his hair was greying and his full, loose mouth sagged as though pulled down by his perpetual cigarette. His lips were mauve and had the soft, swollen look of decay. Harriet, sensing their distaste of each other, supposed that Castlebar resented Aidan’s youth while Aidan saw in Castlebar a debased analogue of himself.
Guy, certain that his friends were enjoying each other as much as he enjoyed them, began to plan a whole evening for them all: a few drinks here, then to Pastroudi’s for a bite and on to Zonar’s for coffee and drinks then, if they wanted to go on drinking and talking, they could come back to the Cecil where Aidan was a resident. Neither man interrupted this exuberant programme but at the end, Castlebar said, ‘Sorry. Nothing I’d like better but I’m going back on the early train.’
‘Take the later train.’
Castlebar shook his head, stared down for some moments then stammered, seeming to force his voice through impeding teeth, ‘Don’t want to hang about here. Not even for love of you, dear old boy. My Greeks were in a panic. They had packed and would leave at the first sound of the guns. They thought I was mad to come up here but they owed me a bit — a whole quarter’s tuition in fact. Thought I’d better make sure of it’
Harriet fervently said, ‘Thank God someone’s got some sense.’ She gave an ironical laugh as she looked at Guy. ‘Castlebar may drink too much and smoke too much, but he’s not taking silly risks.’ She turned to Castlebar, ‘Can’t you persuade Guy to come to Cairo. He thinks the navy will rescue him.’
‘The navy?’ Castlebar lifted his eyelids and gave Guy a startled stare. ‘Don’t you know the navy’s gone?’
‘Gone?’ Harriet was alarmed. ‘Gone where?’
‘No one knows. The Red Sea, I’d imagine. My Greeks were in a state about that. They say the whole Fleet upped anchor this morning and deserted the town.’
‘Good heavens, that shows you . . .’ Harriet turned on Guy but Guy, adept at dodging her anxieties, jumped to his feet and the others watched him as he went to make much of a big, stooping, paunchy fellow who had just entered the bar.
‘Who’s he found now?’ Castlebar spoke with indulgent exasperation. ‘Your husband’s crazy. Here he is sitting with friends who hang on his every word, but he’s not satisfied. As soon as he sees someone else, he rushes over to them.’
‘It’s Lister. I met him at Groppi’s. His job’s in Jerusalem but he comes here all the time to fill up with food.’
Aidan, his face contracted as though with pain as he saw Guy bringing Lister to the table, said to Harriet, ‘He gathers people as he goes.’
Lister, limping on a stick, smiled as he joined the company, his round blue eyes giving an impression of innocent, almost infantile, amiability, but Harriet knew he was more complex than he seemed. In the midst of his fat, pink, glossy face there was a cherub’s nose and a very small mouth covered by a fluffy moustache. He was wearing a pair of old brown corduroy trousers and a shirt that had faded to yellow, and only his cap and the crown on his shoulder indicated that he was not a civilian but an army officer. He sank into a chair as though the few steps from bar to table had exhausted him, and pushed his right leg under the table, out of the way of harm. Getting his breath back, he lifted Harriet’s hand, brushed it wetly with his moustache and asked, ‘How is my lovely girl?’
‘Not too happy. We’ve just heard that the navy’s left Alex.’
‘Good God!’ Lister’s little mouth fell open. ‘What next? You’d scarcely believe it, I didn’t know till I got here that there’s a flap on. No one tells us anything in Palestine. I’m in Intelligence but there hasn’t been a signal from GHQ ME, for a week.’
Harriet said, ‘The rumour is that GHQ ME has left Egypt. They’ve been too busy evacuating themselves to send you a signal.’
‘That’s probably it. Jerusalem’s packed out with evacuees, but it’s always like that when the Germans cross into Egypt. To tell you the truth, you’re safer here. Palestine’s a cul-de-sac and if we move on to Syria, we’ll meet the German 6th army on its way down from Russia. Where do you go then? Better off here, I say. You can always go down the Nile.’
Castlebar sniggered. ‘You mean, up the Nile.’
‘Yes. This must be the only country in the world where south is up.’ Lister’s big, shapeless body quivered as though he had made an enormous joke.
Guy, putting out his hands to Lister and Castlebar, urged them to tell some limericks. Between them, he said, they had the best collection he knew. ‘Come on, let’s have a flyting.’
‘Oh!’ Lister, choked by his own laughter, flapped a hand in protest. ‘I’m too far gone. Been at it all day. I can’t remember anything.’ His nose, that was still the nose of infancy, glowed with the drink he had taken. ‘Took a taxi from the station to Groppi’s, rang Harriet (I’d’ve given you a fine repast, m’girl), had lunch at the Hermitage, went back to Groppi’s for a few cream cakes, then I thought why not pop up and see old Pringle? Knew I’d find you in the bar.’
Aidan, pushing his chair back from the table, looked at Lister in frowning distaste. Castlebar, as he noted this, gave Harriet a sly grin and said to Lister, ‘Bet you intend a visit to Mary’s House?’
‘Oh, oh, oh!’ Lister averted his eyes as though deeply offended but his laughter overtook him, his body collapsed in on itself and tears ran down his cheeks. When he had recovered enough, he said, ‘Did you know: when they got a direct hit, all the chaps taken to hospital said, one after the other, “I got mine at Mary’s House,” and a li
ttle sweetie of a nurse said to the doctor, “Mary must’ve been giving a very big party.’”
It was an old story but they all laughed except Aidan, whose frown grew darker. The drinks were renewed and Castlebar was persuaded to speak a few limericks. His poetry was a mild mixture of nostalgia and regrets but his limericks had a dexterity and obscene wit that convulsed Lister, who soon attempted to rival them. Lister’s humour was scatological and Harriet, bored, said as soon as there was a pause, ‘Darling, don’t you think we should eat?’
‘Yes,’ Guy had a couple of inches in his glass, ‘when I’ve finished this,’ but he made no attempt to finish it. Washing it slowly round and round, he gained time by leaving it unfinished.
He invited Lister to Pastroudi’s but Lister, shaking his head, tittered mysteriously and left them to guess where he was going. When it seemed the ‘flyting’ would end, Castlebar insisted that Guy must contribute to it. ‘Do Yakimov,’ he urged and Lister agreed. ‘Oh, oh, must have Yakimov.’
Yakimov, dead and turned to dust in the dry Greek earth, led a post mortem life in Guy’s repertoire of comic characters. Harriet, hungry but resigned, listened with fear that the performance might fail and pride that it did not. She was the only other one of the party who had known Yakimov in life and so the only one who, watching Guy’s rounded, sunburnt features take on Yakimov’s slavonic mask, marvelled at the impersonation. The change, for her, verged on the supernatural. For the others, there was a funny story. Guy imitated Yakimov’s delicate, fluting voice, but the voice was not as exact as the face. ‘Ee-a knew a lay-dee who played a most unfair game of . . . cro-o-o-quet. She would put her skirt over her balls and move them about with her foot, just wherever she liked . . .’
Here the laughter began. Harriet had heard the story so often, both from Guy and Yakimov himself, she could have reproduced every intonation. She ceased to listen but, instead, watched the two inches of beer going round and round as Guy spoke. If in a hurry, he could open a throttle in his throat and put down a pint without pausing for breath. If he wanted to linger, no one could make his beer last longer.
When he recovered from his mirth, Lister bent forward to say in a half-whisper, ‘Heard a strange story at Groppi’s this morning. You know Hooper, the one that married a rich girl who paints a bit? Well, she took that boy of theirs into the desert and she was so busy with her painting, she didn’t notice the kid had picked up a live hand-grenade.’
Harriet sat up, realizing she was about to hear of the tragedy she had witnessed — when? With all that had happened since, it seemed an age ago. She said, ‘I was there. I saw her bring the boy in. We all realized he was dead, but the Hoopers couldn’t believe it.’
Lister opened his eyes, amazed. ‘So — is it true? — Did they really try and feed him . . .’ He circled a finger over his cheek ‘. . .through some hole in his face?’
‘Yes.’
‘A weird story!’
Castlebar sniggered. ‘Egypt’s a weird place. Feeding the dead’s an ancient custom, but it still goes on.’
‘Goes on, does it?’ Lister asked with awe.
‘Oh yes, they all go up to the City of the Dead, taking food to share with the corpse under the floor. They set up house there and stay till the dead relative’s got used to the strangeness of the afterlife. I like it.’
‘Yes.’ Lister, too, liked it but he could not keep his laughter back. He and Castlebar laughed together while Aidan, who had been shocked by the feeding of the dead boy, regarded them with horror. Guy was putting down his beer. The party had to break up. Castlebar was catching his train. Lister, with his secret intention in mind, began determinedly to get himself to his feet. He could scarcely put his right foot to the ground. ‘Gout,’ he explained and bending unsteadily over Harriet, he kissed her hand again. ‘Look me up when you come to Jerusalem. You don’t need to stay in that ghastly refugee camp. I’ll use m’influence and get you a room at the YMCA. We’ll have some fun. I’m the life and soul of the YMCA smart set. I’m always in trouble because I keep a few bottles in the wardrobe.’
Castlebar and Lister left the bar together and Guy, reluctant to part from them, went with them as far as the foyer.
Aidan said in disgust to Harriet, ‘What extraordinary people! Why does Guy waste his time with fellows like that? And repeating limericks to each other! An odd occupation!’
‘The English do become odd here. Ordinary couples who’d remain happily together in Ealing or Pinner, here take on a different character. They think themselves Don Juans or tragedy queens, and throw fits of wild passion and make scenes in public . . .’ At Aidan’s movement of inquiry, Harriet laughed. ‘No, not Guy and me. We’re only apart from circumstances. We’re thought to be an exemplary pair.’
‘But Guy? With those people, he was not himself. He was acting the fool, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes, in a way. But what’s he to do? He’s stuck at that commercial college, wasting his talents. He’s not allowed to leave the Organization and Gracey can’t, or won’t, give him a job worthy of him. Other men are at war, so he must take what comes to him. He cannot protest, except that his behaviour is protest. He must either howl against his life or treat it as a joke.’ As she spoke, protest rose in her, too. ‘This is what they’ve done to him — Gracey, Pinkrose and the rest of them. He believes that right and virtue, if persisted in, must prevail, yet he knows he’s been defeated by people for whom the whole of life is a dishonest game.’
Aidan looked at her with new interest. ‘He’s not happy, and I don’t think you are, either.’
‘Can one except to be happy in these times?’
‘No. We have no right . . . no right even to think of happiness,’ Aidan sighed and looked to the door for Guy’s return, and Harriet began to feel curious about him, wondering what she would make of him if she knew him better.
The three of them set out for Pastroudi’s restaurant. Alexandria had been blacked out by the military and the darkness enhanced the disturbing emptiness of the streets. A shudder passed through the air and the ground seemed to move beneath their feet. Harriet, unable to account for this phenomenon, came to a stop and said, ‘Is it an earthquake?’ She had experienced one in Bucharest but this, she realized, was something different. The shudder and vibration were repeated and went on as though a distant steam-hammer was pounding the earth. The two men, walking indifferently through it, made no comment until Harriet asked, ‘What is it?’
Aidan told her, ‘It’s a barrage. They’re preparing an attack.’
‘Who? Them or us?’
‘It’s very close. Probably us.’
Guy spoke as though the vibration was a commonplace. ‘I’d guess twenty-five pounders, wouldn’t you?’ He looked to Aidan who said, ‘And the new six pounders. I’d say, 5.5 inch howitzers, too.’
Harriet, surprised that Guy should have heard of a twenty-five pounder, asked how far the barrage was from them.
Guy laughed. ‘At least forty miles. I don’t think Rommel will make it tonight.’
Aidan said seriously, ‘If they break through, they could make it before daybreak.’
‘But they won’t break through. I must say, I’d like to take a troops’ entertainment out to our chaps.’
Harriet said, ‘Darling, really, you’re mad!’ She did not know whether Guy’s courage came from his refusal to recognize reality, or a refusal to run from it, but the idea of taking an entertainment to men engaged in a desperate delaying action seemed to her typical of his mental processes.
The moon was pushing up between sea and sky, throwing a long channel of light across the water. The promenade was a spectral grey in the moon glimmer. Not a soul, it seemed, had come out to enjoy the cool of evening, but when they pushed through the heavy curtains into Pastroudi’s, they found the restaurant crowded, noisy and brilliantly lit. The Alexandrians were eating while there was still something to eat. Uncertainty and fear raised the tempo of chatter into an uproar. Aidan had booked a table but they had sta
yed so long at the Cecil, the table was lost to them. They had to wait in a queue and while they waited, the air-raid warning rose. As the wailing persisted, people shouted to each other that it must be a false alarm. The Luftwaffe would never bomb a town that was about to fall into German hands. The warning added a sort of hilarity to the noise. No one took it seriously until the manager strode through the room shouting, ‘What do you do? You know the regulations. Downstairs, everyone. M’sieurs, m’dams, into the kitchens, I beg you.’
His alarm infected the diners and they began pushing their way down into the hot and clotted, greasy atmosphere of the basement. The kitchen staff and waiters, fitting themselves in between stoves and sinks, left the central space clear for the customers. The lights were switched off. The wailing ceased and there was an interval of attentive silence before people began to complain that the precautions were unnecessary. They had left their food for nothing. It was, as they had said, a false alarm. A man called them all to go back to their dinners but before the fret and grumbles could lead to action, a bomb fell. It was a distant bomb, but a bomb, nevertheless. The silence was the silence of fear, then a moan passed over the kitchen.
Guy said, ‘That was the harbour. They’re bombing the French warships.’
Ah, that explained the raid. And who cared what happened to the French ships that had lain there immobilized since the fall of France? Then a second bomb fell, much nearer, so close, in fact, that the pots and pans rattled and cries went up. People began struggling towards the stairs as though hoping to find some other, safer place, and Guy put his arms round Harriet to protect her and she pressed to him, less afraid of the bombs than of the fear around her.
A third bomb fell, further off, a fourth, so distant it could just be heard, and at once the panic died. The raiders had passed over. People relaxed and took on the gaiety of relief, telling each other that they could now go back and eat in peace. But the manager was on the stair and would not let anyone pass. They had to wait for the All Clear before the lights were switched on and they could return to their spoilt food.
Fortunes of War Page 13
