Fortunes of War

by Olivia Manning

  But at the hotel, the porter told them that bar and restaurant were full and they would have to wait. Harriet suggested they go and look at the matrix of the Ship of the Sun, the ship that daily crossed the heavens and at night sank down into the underworld.

  Peter laughed, ‘I’ve had enough of the bloody sun. I’m going to powder m’nose,’ and left the women to go alone and look down into the concave cradle which had once held the sacred ship.

  When they entered the hotel vestibule, Peter was standing with three other officers, his brows drawn blackly together. Edwina whispered, ‘What do you think they’re telling him?’ but both women knew that the talk could only be about the desert conflict.

  He was still frowning when he joined them and Edwina, trying to catch hold of his hand, asked, ‘What’s the matter, darling?’

  Avoiding her grasp, he said, ‘I’m missing the whole damned shooting match. That’s all. Let’s go and eat.’

  Luncheon, which was to have been a pleasure, was no pleasure at all. Peter, silent in discontent, ignored Edwina who stared helplessly at him then turned to Harriet with an expression that said, ‘See what I have to put up with!’ Harriet, no longer excluded by their love-making, now felt an intruder upon a situation which she could do nothing to help.

  Driving back between the bean fields into the Cairo suburbs, Edwina whispered, ‘Honestly, Teddy-bear, do you really want to go back to the desert?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘But what would poor Edwina do without her Teddy-bear?’

  ‘Find another Teddy-bear.’

  ‘I only want you.’

  The sweet scent of the bean fields filled the air but it meant nothing to Edwina who, in anguish, moved from one desperate manoeuvre to another. In a wheedling whisper she said: ‘If we were married, or even engaged, it would not be so bad.’

  ‘Why? What difference would that make?’

  ‘All the difference in the world. We’d belong. I’d have a right to know if anything happened to you.’

  ‘The old next-of-kin, eh?’ Peter gave an ironical chuckle.

  ‘Darling, I’m serious.’

  ‘Don’t be serious, old girl. I’m not worth it. Not good enough for you . . .’

  Could there, Harriet wondered, be a more discouraging rejection than that? But Edwina refused to be discouraged. She protested that Peter was all she wanted. Half weeping, she pleaded her love for him while he stared at the road as though hearing nothing. At last, as her voice dissolved in tears, he said: ‘Look here, old thing. The truth is, I’m all tied up.’

  ‘You . . . you mean you’re engaged?’

  ‘Something like that.’ He gave a laugh and Edwina thought he might be teasing.

  ‘Who bothers about engagements these days? The war could go on for years. I bet, by the time you get back, she’ll have married someone else.’ When Peter laughed again, Edwina persisted: ‘Perhaps she has married someone else already.’

  ‘Not very likely.’

  ‘You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?’

  ‘Who could resist it?’ he patted her knee: ‘Such a nice, long leg!’

  They were crossing the river and among the noise of the Bulaq traffic Edwina let the matter drop for the moment, but she could not resist a last triumphant shot: ‘Still, you can’t get back to the desert, can you?’

  Peter glumly agreed: ‘Doesn’t look like it.’

  Smiling to herself, Edwina took out her compact and looked at her pretty face. The war was on her side. It kept Peter in Egypt and the authorities kept him in Cairo. He was with her and while he was with her, she had reason to hope. The conversation, that had disturbed Harriet, seemed to have had little effect on Edwina. She powdered her face and moved close to Peter again. They were reconciled and when the women left the car in Garden City, he said, ‘What are you doing tonight, old girl?’

  ‘Nothing in particular.’

  ‘Call for you around eight, then?’

  ‘Oh, lovely, darling. See you soon.’

  And Edwina went joyfully up the steps to the flat confident, it seemed, she would win him in the end.

  Eight

  On the fourth day of battle, relays of exhausted men came into the camp to be replaced by reserve troops. These men, most of them from tanks, had been lucky to get three hours sleep in a night and Simon, when he heard this, felt ashamed of his own nervous fatigue. Unable to excuse himself, he told himself that he would have done better to remain under fire and become conditioned to it. The rest periods between his sorties into action, and the fact he was liable to be wakened at any hour of the night, had demoralized him.

  He had little or no idea what had been gained by the fighting and Fitzwilliams, though he questioned the returning men, could not tell him much. The general belief was that in the northern sector British armour had driven a wedge into the German defences but no sooner had this news gone round, than the commander in the sector radioed to say that his whole brigade was ringed by enemy anti-tank guns.

  Fitzwilliams, like the officers Simon had approached on the road, was critical of the strategy of the battle: ‘Bad show, I call it. Suppose the brass hats know what they’re doing, but I’ve never heard of tanks being sent into a breach. Could lose the whole damn lot.’

  For a while it seemed that, if not lost, the battle was petering out. There were a couple of empty days for Simon who had become used to action and felt the need for excitement. He hung around the command vehicle in a state of restless boredom; then a fresh offensive began. Given a signal to deliver, he ran gleefully to the jeep shouting, ‘Come on, Crosbie, wake up. This is the life.’ Crosbie, baffled as usual by Simon’s moods, grunted and muttered, ‘Sir.’

  At the end of October, the division to which Simon belonged was withdrawn from the line. The tank crews, decimated by continuous fighting, were ordered back to reserve positions and Simon was assigned a new sector. He had to report to a coastal area where a fresh division was being prepared for an attack.

  When he set out, November was beginning with dramatic splendour. The sky, that had dazzled the sight with its brazen emptiness, was filling with immense cumulous clouds. They were rising out of the sea and stretching, as though each was trying to over-top the other, until by mid-day they had reached the zenith. They were of different colours: one was a dark purple, its neighbour, swelling up behind, was azure, while on either side of them billowing curves of wool white, catching the sun on outer rims, gleamed like mother-of-pearl.

  Simon, amazed by this display, said to Crosbie, ‘What do you make of it?’

  Raising his eyes without lifting his head, Crosbie muttered, ‘Looks like trouble to me.’

  The dark cloud grew until it dominated the sky. The wind strengthened in the unusual gloom and the sand lifted, but the storm did not break until the men were in sight of the camp. The rain came at them like a slanting curtain, as hard and rough as emery paper, and clattered against the jeep. The road was blotted out. Crosbie braked and flung himself round to find ground-sheets in the back of the jeep. They wrapped themselves up and waited for the deluge to slacken. The rain stopped within minutes but the camp, when they reached it, was under water.

  Dawson, in the command vehicle, told Simon they were preparing to move forward. The new arrivals would be lucky if they could find themselves tea and bully.

  The men, splashing through puddles, were shifting equipment. Though the water sank rapidly, the ground was left muddy and a wetness hung in the air. Dawson had been right about food. Crosbie, sent to forage, came back with mugs of tea and a couple of bully-beef sandwiches. They would have to spend the night in the jeep. Crosbie took up his favourite position, sprawled over the wheel and Simon climbed into the back seat. He wakened, cramped and chilly, at midnight when the petrol replenishing lorries went out. Then the barrage started up again, and turning on his back, staring up at the starless sky, he felt the war would never end. This, he told himself, could be his whole life and it might be a short life. He was as liable as
any man in the field to be killed by the enemy. He turned towards the jeep back and tried to lose his old, abiding fear in sleep but just as he was drifting off, a messenger shook him and ordered him to report to his CO.

  Dawson had gone off duty and a stranger was in charge of the command truck. He sounded as disconsolate as Simon felt. ‘’Fraid I’ve got to send you up front. The Kiwis are supposed to be advancing on Fuka but they’ve hit a snag. They say there’s an unmapped mine field in their path. Well, here . . .’ he spread out a hand-drawn sketch of the field; ‘ . . . it’s marked as a dummy, put down by our chaps last June. The commander won’t take my word for it. Says it’s too risky. Says he’ll dig in till he gets further orders. You’ll have to take this along to show him. Let him see for himself. Right?’

  ‘Sir. Which route, sir?’

  ‘God knows. All the routes are in a mess. Sheer, bloody shambles between here and Tel el Eisa. Try “Star”, it’s no worse than the others. If you can’t find it, you’ll have to ask as you go.’

  Setting out, Simon had no more zest for the journey than Crosbie had. The battle had gone on too long and all he could feel now was a racking weariness.

  The track, churned up by vehicles, had dried and hardened to the consistency of concrete and the jeep rocked on ridges and skidded through slime left by puddles. The sky had cleared and the waning moon gave a bleak, dispirited light.

  The track was soon lost and they made their way guided by staccato flashes on the western horizon. They had covered little more than a mile when Simon realized the division had driven straight through an enemy position. The tanks standing idle about them were German tanks; the bodies propped in slit trenches wore German headgear and the black-clad figures that trudged past the jeep, avoiding it with blundering steps, were unarmed Germans who had given themselves up. The tank commanders, with no room or time for prisoners, had sent them back and now they were making their own way into captivity. Thankfully, Simon imagined. Once they reached the camp, they would throw themselves down to sleep and Simon wished he could do the same.

  Crosbie had other thoughts. Looking askance at the burnt-out tanks, he at last reached the point of speech, ‘You seen inside these ruddy Marks? God, what a sight!’

  ‘Don’t look, then. Keep your eyes on the road.’

  Beyond the German positions, the first reserves of tanks waited, hidden among sand bunkers. Ahead of them was the confusion that Simon now knew and expected. The forward tanks had thrown up a screen of dust, blinding the drivers of vehicles in the rear. Lorries had bogged down in the soft sand and commanders were trying to guide their tanks round each obstruction as they came to it. They were lit by blazing vehicles that glowed through the dust like a stage effect. None of it was new to Simon. Seeing petrol leaking from a burning truck, he shouted to Crosbie: ‘Make a dash for it before the whole show goes up and takes us with it.’

  When they drove out of the dust belt, they found the moon had set and the overhanging face of the Fuka escarpment was just visible, darker than the prevailing darkness. Beneath it there was a gathering of torches where the tank commanders conferred. Simon, going forward on foot, reached the command tank as the sky grew pallid with first light.

  The CO greeted him with little patience, saying as Simon handed him the map: ‘What’ve you got there? Let’s hope it makes sense because nothing else does. They call us a corps de chasse but how the hell can we chase anything with supply trucks littering the ground and now a ruddy mine field in the way.’

  ‘It’s a dummy, sir.’

  ‘So they think, but I want to know more about it. We’ve lost seventeen tanks already, mostly on mines.’

  ‘You can see it here, sir. Our chaps laid it in June when the retreat was on.’

  ‘Damn fool thing to do.’ The commander, in a fury, turned his back on Simon and Simon, in no better humour, went to the jeep, saying to himself, ‘They might have let me sleep.’

  He had only been gone ten minutes but Crosbie was unconscious over the wheel and Simon, with scarcely the heart to wake him, thought, ‘Don’t blame him, either,’ then shouted ‘Come on, Crosbie, lazy bastard. For God’s sake, let’s get back to camp.’

  Nine

  Winter enlivened not only the human occupants of Garden City but the cockroaches that scuttled, as big as rats, round the skirting. A green praying mantis, four inches high, was found clinging to a curtain. Bats, delighting in their new vitality, began to visit the flat. One night three of them flew together through the open balcony door and out through the window at the other end of the room. Before anyone had recovered from his surprise, they were back through the window and out at the door, giving a playful skip in mid-flight as though they were playing a game.

  Dobson thought they must be attracted by the light but Angela and Harriet said bats avoided light. No one expected to see them again but next evening, while the sky still held the glow of sunset, the bats returned. This time five came in a close line and at one point each did a little caracole that seemed a salute to the humans in the room.

  For the next two nights there were no bats then three — perhaps the original three — darted in and out again. Bats came at intervals for nearly a fortnight. Harriet, who used to fear them, began to see them as guardian spirits and feel affection for them. Then, just when it seemed they had adopted the place, the visits ceased. Harriet could not believe they had gone for good and waited in to see them. When they did not come, she said to Angela, ‘We are bereft.’

  ‘We can go bat watching at the Union.’

  That meant they would have to go in early evening when the bats were most active and people could sit out for a little in the moist, mild air under the towering trees. In the officers’ club opposite, the Egyptian officers also sat out at sunset, wearing their winter uniforms, but as soon as the evening star showed in the copper green after-glow, they gathered themselves together and went indoors. As the cold came down, Angela said, ‘We should go in, too.’

  Harriet, who had been watching the short, darting flight of the bats among the trees, sadly agreed: ‘We might as well. They’re not our bats. They don’t know us.’

  Angela laughed at her and stood up, eager to go in search of Castlebar.

  Although the two women were not expected at that hour, Castlebar and Jackman reached the table almost as soon as the whisky bottle. Angela, laughing, pushed it towards them, pretending that that alone was the attraction.

  Having set up his cigarette pack and lit a cigarette, Castlebar put his hand in his pocket and brought out the heart of rose-diamonds. He smiled at Angela, saying, ‘Pin it on for me.’

  Angela gave a little scream of shocked delight: ‘You wouldn’t dare!’

  ‘Oh, wouldn’t I?’ Castlebar, his eye-tooth out to meet the challenge, glanced round to see who was watching him, and pinned the heart to his lapel then slid his hand under the table in search of Angela’s hand, and so they sat with the heart between them.

  Several people were watching them but Jackman looked the other way. Harriet thought he was showing disapproval but, following the direction of his gaze, she saw a short, heavy, square-built woman looking for someone among the tables. Her light clothing marked her as a newcomer, whose blood had not been conditioned by the Egyptian summer. Jackman made no sign but his expression, a slightly malicious expression, suggested to Harriet that he knew who she was.

  Catching sight of Castlebar, she came straight to him, watching him with a purposeful and sardonic smile. She called out, ‘Hello, Wolfie!’

  At the sound of her strong, carrying voice, Castlebar’s eyes opened. Seeing who had spoken, his startled stare changed to alarm. He grew pale. Dropping Angela’s hand as though he could not imagine what he was doing with it, he half lifted himself from the chair and tried to speak. His stammer increasing so he was barely intelligible, he began, ‘M-m-m-Mona . . . L-L-L-Lambkin!’ then too shocked to support himself, he fell back and tried again: ‘H-h-h-how . . .’

  ‘How did I get here?
’ Mona Castlebar’s eyebrows rose in triumph. She placed a chair firmly at the table and sat upon it: ‘By air, of course. Didn’t you get my cable?’

  ‘N-n-n-no.’

  The company was silent, looking at this weighty woman who had once been Castlebar’s Lambkin: then they saw the horror her arrival had roused in him. Of course there had been no cable. She had come without warning, intending to catch him in some misdeed, and she had caught him. With her sardonic smile fixed, she looked first at Harriet then at Angela, not sure which had been the lure. Returning to Castlebar, she said: ‘What a splendid decoration! Is it meant for me?’

  As she put out her hand to take the brooch, Angela, roused from her first dismay, spoke with spirit: ‘No, it’s not meant for you. It was a present for my friend Harriet here. Bill put it on for a joke.’

  ‘Y-y-yes . . . just a l-l-l-little joke.’ Castlebar’s fingers shook as he undid the brooch and handed it to Angela. Angela passed it to Harriet who put it into her handbag, then they all looked again at Mona Castlebar.

  ‘Well, well!’ she said and the rest were silent. She observed each in turn as though summing them up. She did not like them and she knew they did not like her. She met their antagonism with a bellicose smile.

  Harriet wondered how any woman, newly arrived after a long journey, could seem so confidently in control of a situation. Did her appearance, perhaps, mask her diffidence? Harriet thought not. But, of course, she was not in a strange place. She had lived in Cairo before the war and had known exactly where to come to find her husband.

  Her dress was cut to display her only attraction: fine shoulders and bosom. She was older than the others at the table, even older than Castlebar. Her square face with its short nose, small eyes and heavy chin, was already falling into lines. Newly arrived from a temperate climate, her pallor seemed ghastly to the others and it was accentuated by the unreal red of her hair.