Fortunes of War

by Olivia Manning

  Edwina had brought out the grocery lists which she made for the senior safragi, Hassan, and showing them to Harriet, said, ‘You can take a turn at the housekeeping if you like, but you have to keep an eye on Hassan. He expects to make a bit here and there, but it mustn’t be too much. Also, he’s inclined to pay more than he need at the market to show what a great house he works for, so you have to keep a check on prices. They all take advantage any way they can and Hassan’s no worse than most.’

  ‘There are just the four of us: you, Dobbie, Guy and me?’

  ‘No, there’s one more: Percy Gibbon,’ Edwina seemed to regret the addition of this fifth person but said no more about him. ‘I do look forward to meeting Guy,’ she sighed. ‘I wish I had a nice husband like that. Dobbie says he’s a pet.’

  Harriet, flattered, wondered if, among the young, expugnable officers who took her out, Edwina could ever find one she would wish to marry. Lulled into a sense of well-being by Edwina’s amiable chatter about food and market prices, Harriet forgot that her companion was going out and felt a sense of shocked deprivation when Hassan came out to announce, ‘Captain come, sa’ida,’ and Edwina jumped to her feet Again she lamented that she must go, but she was eager for the evening’s entertainment. Standing a moment against the light of the room, she gathered together her sequinned scarf and her little, glittering evening bag, then smiled and went away, leaving behind her scent of gardenias.

  The snake charmer did not return for several days but Harriet, coming back from the office one afternoon, heard a more complex and powerful music filling the flat.

  Dobson’s room led off the living-room, the door stood ajar and as she paused near it, Dobson looked out and said, ‘You haven’t seen my gramophone, have you?’ He invited her into a room that was larger than the other bedrooms but as sparsely furnished. The only thing remarkable in it was an old-fashioned box gramophone with a horn of immense size. The horn, made of papier mâché, lifted itself towards the ceiling, opening in a mouth that was more than four foot wide.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  Dobson was delighted by her astonishment. ‘Magnificent, isn’t it? It must be the only one of its kind in the Middle East. I bought it from Beaker who got it before the war, when you could get anything sent out. He didn’t want the bother of transporting it to Baghdad so I was happy to take it from him. It’s hand made. The needle is amethyst so it will never wear out.’

  The record had ended and lifting it, holding it delicately by the edges, Dobson turned it over, saying, ‘I’ll put it on again so you can hear the quality of the sound.’

  The gramophone had to be cranked up by hand. Dobson, in his siesta garb of a towel round the middle — worn not from modesty but to ward off stomach chills — turned the handle so his fat little belly protruding above the towel edge, his narrow soft shoulders and his soft pale arms, all quivered with the effort. He looked, Harriet thought, as plump and bosomed as a woman but he was quite unabashed by the fact. Placing the needle to the moving record, he stood back and the music unrolled like velvet about the room.

  Harriet, not knowledgeable about music, guessed it was Mozart.

  ‘Yes. The Clarinet Quintet. Exquisite, isn’t it?’

  All through the late afternoons and evenings of mid-summer the questing notes of the clarinet filled the flat as Dobson played and replayed his new record.

  Harriet’s job might end any day now. It ended, as things were liable to do these days, without warning. Harriet was at the map, advancing the black pins across the Kuban river at Krasnodar when Iqal came up behind her and said in a hurried whisper, ‘Important gentlemen have come from America. I warn you, one is about to enter.’

  She turned and said, ‘I think he’s entered already.’

  The man, as neat looking as Mr Buschman but younger, seemed oddly pale and composed among the hot, sunburnt people in the basement. He was dressed as Mr Buschman dressed in a dark poplin suit of elegant cut, a white silk shirt and a narrow black tie. Mr Buschman had not returned from golf and the new arrival came straight to Harriet with hand outstretched. ‘As you see, we are here at last. We touched down half an hour ago.’ Unmoved by the ancient world, unmoved by war, he smiled with sublime self-assurance, showing perfect teeth. Seeing the map, he asked, ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘On and on and on.’

  ‘It’ll go better now.’

  ‘You’re going to blow them right out of the water?’

  He was much amused. ‘You’ve said it, mem.’

  Harriet put the pins down. ‘The Germans have crossed the Kuban river. You might like to mark it up.’

  ‘Oh, give them to my secretary. She’s in the john at the moment. She’ll just love playing with those little pins.’

  Harriet said good-bye to everyone and turned her back on the map as she would, if she could, have turned her back on the whole weary conflict.

  Guy, when he entered the Institute as Director, found in the hall a notice that said Professor Dubedat and Professor Lush would, on alternate evenings, give lectures on Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth and other outstanding figures of English literature. Apart from this promise, little remained of the cultural activities that had once filled the six rooms and lecture hall of the building in the centre of Cairo. The place had a run-down appearance. Three Egyptian teachers remained to take dwindling classes and these, when they heard that a new Director had arrived, came to Guy with complaints and questions.

  ‘Where, may I ask, sir,’ one of them asked, ‘are these professors called Dubedat and Lush? Of their lectures we have not heard one word.’

  Guy did not know. He called a meeting of all the remaining staff — a Coptic secretary, the two Greek women who looked after the library and the three teachers — and gave them a talk, impressing on them the importance of the work he required them to do.

  Harriet, sitting at the back of the hall, wondered again at Guy’s ability to stimulate enthusiasm and make possible what before had seemed impossible. She had felt the same wonder when, producing Troilus and Cressida in Bucharest, he had overcome the apathy of the stage-hands and infused the cast with his own energy. And that had been simply for one evening’s entertainment. Now he had a task much more worthy of his spirit. He told the staff that he was working on a new curriculum for the autumn term when there would be not only classes in English but lectures by such notables as Professor Lord Pinkrose, the famous poet William Castlebar, Professor Beaker from Baghdad and half a dozen of the English professors at Fuad al Awal University.

  As Guy brought out these names, Harriet was astounded to realize he knew them all and had already approached them. Even Pinkrose had written from the King David Hotel, Jerusalem, to say that when it was safe for him to return to Egypt, he would be pleased to repeat the lecture that he had given at Phaleron before a brilliant audience on the day Germany declared war on Greece. Guy read this letter aloud with such emphasis that the audience, deeply impressed, broke into applause. Then, the library! Up till now the librarians had followed the out-of-date procedure of keeping the books guarded behind a counter and handing them out on request. All that would change. The library shelves would be thrown open to borrowers to pick and choose and browse at will. Guy was making a list of a thousand recently published books which he intended to order and which, sooner or later, would turn up. He laughed and said, ‘Later rather than sooner, I imagine,’ and the audience applauded again.

  The English librarian, a Miss Pedler, was among those who had gone to Palestine, and the library had been kept open by the Greek women, both married to Egyptians, who now began calling out the names of books that the library needed.

  ‘Write them down. I’ll see we get them.’

  Guy said he intended setting up a library of gramophone records which would be lent to musical groups in the forces as well as the Institute. He planned a weekly Institute evening when there would be music, poetry-readings and plays.

  ‘And dancing?’ one of the teacher
s excitedly asked.

  ‘And dancing. One very important thing — we will need more teachers. Put it among your English-speaking friends. Tell them the work is regular and the pay good.’

  The Egyptian teachers laughed, throwing themselves about in their chairs and shouting, ‘Professor Pringle, sir, we have had no pay since Professor Gracey went away.’

  Guy said that would be put right. No one mentioned the German advance or questioned his certainty that the Institute would remain and the British remain with it. Harriet, who might once have feared that Guy promised more than he could perform, was now confident that what he said he would do, he would do.

  Walking back to Garden City, he asked her, ‘Was I all right?’

  ‘You were splendid.’

  Guy had been so absorbed by his new authority that Harriet had had no chance to ask him what he thought of the move to Dobson’s flat. When she spoke of it now, he said, ‘The room’s all right but that tree is a nuisance. It cuts off the light.’

  ‘I love the tree. What do you think of Edwina?’

  ‘She seems a nice girl. A bit of a glamour puss.’ Guy laughed at the thought of Edwina and Harriet felt she could be thankful that glamour was an abstraction which did not much affect him.

  ‘What do you think of Percy Gibbon?’

  ‘That fellow who sits at the table and never speaks?’

  ‘Yes. I feel he resents our being there.’

  Guy laughed again, unable to believe that anyone could resent his being anywhere. ‘I suppose he’s shy, that’s all.’

  Guy was too busy to observe the life of the flat. There was scarcely time in the day for all the tasks he had set himself. He had a trestle-table sent from the Institute so he could work at home. The table was put up in the Pringle’s bedroom where it was very much in the way. Guy, whose sight was poor, could not bear the room’s penumbra and, looking round, found the room next to them was empty. He asked Dobson if he might put the table in there. The room was so small that Dobson had not thought it tenable for long, and said, ‘Use it by all means, my dear fellow.’

  Spreading out his papers in the spare room, Guy heard the door open and, looking round, found Percy Gibbon regarding him with malign disapproval. ‘This is where I do my exercises,’ Gibbon said.

  Guy genially replied, ‘Carry on. You won’t disturb me.’

  Percy did not carry on but slammed the door violently as he went.

  During the time they had been in the flat, he had once spoken to Harriet. When she had said at the breakfast-table, ‘I heard a rumour that we’ve lost the Canberra,’ he lifted a face taut with reproof and said, ‘If you heard that, you should keep it to yourself.’

  Later, Harriet said to Dobson, ‘I don’t think Percy Gibbon likes us. He seems to feel we have no right to be here.’

  ‘He’s the one who has no right to be here. He asked me to let him stay for a few days while he found a place of his own. That was a year ago, and I can’t get rid of him. He complains about his room, about the servants, about everybody and everything. I’ve suggested, very tactfully of course, that he’d be happier elsewhere, but he says he hasn’t time to look for another place.’

  ‘He’s pathetic, really. He’s in love with Edwina.’

  ‘Surely you’re joking?’ Dobson laughed aloud at the thought of Percy in love but Harriet, who had seen him looking at Edwina with desperate longing, could only pity him.

  Seven

  Simon first felt the Column had taken on identity when he heard one of the men refer to it as Hardy’s. Soon Ridley and Arnold and all the rest of them were calling themselves Hardy’s Lot, speaking of Hardy as though he were another Popski and they his private army.

  If Hardy himself had had any qualities on which to hang reverence, they would have made a hero of him, but everything about the major discouraged worship. He had little contact with the men and his remote manner suggested a self-sufficiency in which they had no faith. Simon had been right in suspecting that Hardy had been a schoolmaster before the war. According to Ridley, he had been the headmaster of a small prep school in Surrey. Simon, who had had a form-master not unlike the major, realized that Hardy was a timid man whose silence and withdrawn manner hid nothing but inefficiency. The form-master, Bishop, kept his distance with the boys and they did not know what to make of him. Some of them were ready to believe he was a superior person but when he left after only one term, the school porter told them, ‘Poor chap, he wasn’t up to it.’

  Having known Bishop, whom he did not like, Simon felt he already knew Hardy and oddly enough, for that reason, did not dislike him. Instead, remembering the lost papers and the shuffling hands, Simon felt protective towards him. He could imagine Bishop in the same position and felt that Hardy, a middle-aged man, uprooted from a regular job, was worse off than any of them.

  The day after they had leaguered among the pink rocks at the southern end of the line, Simon supervised the digging of slit trenches. One of the men called Brookman, a big, heavy fellow who had told Simon that before the war he had been in ‘the fruit’, was giving out his usual street-trader’s patter. Throwing a rock to his butty, he shouted, ‘’Ere y’are, gran, you can eat ’em with no teeth.’ The butty pitched the rock back and Brookman, leaping into the air, let out a thin, anguished howl: ‘Oh, my wife and kids.’

  This gave rise to so much laughter, Simon could see how the story had gone around. Ridley, of course, was the culprit. To Brookman, Simon spoke sharply. ‘Cut it out, Brookman, anyone can be caught off balance. You’re a married man yourself, aren’t you?’

  Brookman, startled by Simon’s unwonted severity, mumbled, ‘’Speck you’re right, guv,’ and there were no more jokes about Hardy’s wife and kids.

  They were supposed to be in the front line but the only thing out in no-man’s-land, apart from the junk yard litter left by earlier fighting, was a small hill in the middle distance. At night, yellow flashes of fire and Very lights marked the German positions to the north, but there was no sight of the enemy during the day.

  Simon’s nerves had subsided but, at the same time, he felt a sense of let-down at the thought of returning to the sleepy boredom of the earlier camp.

  Seeing Hardy with his field glasses up, he asked him, ‘Why don’t they come on, sir?’

  Hardy continued to stare towards the German lines as though he might find the answer out there, then he said, ‘I suppose they had to stop some time. Jerry’s only flesh and blood, after all.’

  ‘But if they could get this far in less than a month, why not finish the job?’

  ‘My guess is, they made it too fast. If they’ve outrun supplies, they could be stuck for some time to come.’

  A few mornings later, while the dew still hung on the camel thorn, half a dozen enemy trucks were sighted, travelling slowly and cautiously round the base of the hill. They were first seen by Ridley, who ran to Martin. Martin gave the order to open fire and Ridley, coming over to Simon grinning his self-satisfaction, said, ‘This is it, sir. Get your head down and cover your ears.’

  Simon followed Ridley into a slit trench and, bending his head against the sand, protected his ears. The sound that came to him through his hands was the most fearsome he had ever heard. The gunners, who had had little to do till then, made up for their inactivity. As the firing persisted, Simon felt physically pummelled by the uproar but imagined he was taking it well until, the action over, he found to his consternation that his cheeks were wet. While he was scrubbing away his tears, someone put a hand on his shoulder. He swung round, angry and ashamed, but it was only Arnold.

  ‘It’s all right, sir. It takes you like that first time.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We got one truck and the others made off double quick.’

  Climbing up from the trench, Simon could see the solitary German truck smouldering at the foot of the hill. Three bodies were sprawled about it and he said to Arnold, ‘What about those chaps? Shouldn’t we do something to help them?’<
br />
  ‘Nothing we can do, sir. The others hauled the wounded on board before they scarpered. Those chaps have had it.’

  Simon, sent out to investigate, took Arnold and three men with him. This was his first venture on foot into open desert and though the area ahead was much like the area of the camp, he had a disturbing sense of offering himself as a target. He could imagine all the guns of the Afrika Korps trained on his party and he said to Arnold, ‘Walking ducks, aren’t we?’

  ‘On a job like this, sir, they usually leave you alone.’

  Whether this was true or not, the burial party went unmolested to the truck and examined the bodies. The Germans, though newly dead, were already stiffening in the heat Simon looked at them with awe. They were not simply the first dead Germans he had seen, they were the first Germans: and, more than that, they were the first dead men he had seen in the whole of his life. One lay face down and when turned over, Simon saw he was a youth very like Arnold. Going through the uniform pockets, he found the usual things: identity papers, letters, snapshots of mum and dad, but no girl friend or wife. Too young for that, Simon thought and said to the men, ‘All right, get on with it.’

  The graves were not deep. No point in remaining longer than need be out here, yet, because it was customary, the men tied some sticks together to form crosses and placed one at each head. And, Simon thought, what a fool business that was! You killed men and marked the spot with the symbol of eternal life. Walking back, he said something like that to Arnold who replied, ‘They’d have killed us, given the chance.’