Fortunes of War

by Olivia Manning

  Castlebar put out a hand for another cigarette and could scarcely lift it from the box. He poured himself the last of the whisky and his wife said, ‘You’ve had about enough,’ then added as one demanding her due: ‘If anyone’s buying another round, mine’s a strong ale.’

  ‘Now, Lambkin, you won’t get strong ale here — you know that. Have this,’ Castlebar pushed his glass across to her: ‘Come on. Tell us how you got here.’ His wheedling tone suggested a hope that somehow an explanation would send her back where she came from.

  ‘You do want to know, don’t you, Wolfie?’

  He nodded and Harriet realized that ‘Wolfie’ was a reference to the tooth that overhung his lip when he was angry or when, as now, he was hopelessly at a loss.

  Provokingly, she went on, ‘Hmmm,’ as though about to tell but taking her time and then, apparently revealing something too precious to be lightly given away, she said: ‘ENSA. They sent me out with a party.’

  Neither Angela nor Castlebar had ever thought of ENSA. Angela glanced at him but he was careful not to glance at her.

  Harriet asked, ‘You sing, do you?’

  ‘Of course. I’m a pro. Hasn’t Bill told you about me?’

  Evading the question, Harriet turned to Angela: ‘Mrs Castlebar ought to meet Edwina as they’re both singers. Perhaps we could arrange an evening?’

  Angela did not reply. Castlebar nervously asked: ‘Where are you staying, Lambkin?’

  ‘With you, I hope.’

  ‘Yes. Oh, yes. I just thought ENSA might be putting you up in style.’

  ‘They probably would if I wanted it, but I don’t intend having much truck with them.’

  ‘Surely, if they brought you out . . .’

  ‘Don’t be soft, Wolfie. Now I’m here, they can’t do anything. They can’t send me back. I’ve got the laugh on them. Anyway, you know I’ve a sensitive larynx. Anything can upset it, so if I can’t sing, I can’t.’ Mona emptied the glass as though to say, ‘That’s final,’ then, fixing her yellow-brown eyes upon him, gave an order: ‘Better get a move on, Wolfie. I left my bags at the ENSA office. We must pick them up, and I want to buy a few things. So come along.’

  Castlebar rose, promptly but shakily, holding to the edge of the table. Instinctively, Angela rose with him and made to steady him, then drew her hand away, realizing she had been displaced. Observing this movement, Mona stared at Angela with narrowed eyes. Angela had betrayed herself.

  As the Castlebars went ahead, the others followed, having nothing else to do. Jackman, who had not spoken since Mona’s appearance, stared at her back view and gave a snigger of contempt. Her short dress was made shorter by being stretched over her massive backside.

  ‘Look at that woman’s legs,’ he said. ‘They’re solid wood. Not even a slit between them.’

  Angela tried to smile but her misery was apparent. She walked with head hanging and Harriet took hold of her hand. They left the Union and went across the bridge to the taxi rank outside the Extase. Mona was already seated inside a taxi when they arrived and Castlebar, peremptory in his agitation and guilt, said to Angela, ‘Got to call it a day. Have to collect the luggage . . . s-s-s-see her to the flat. She looks all in.’

  ‘Does she?’ Angela’s tone was sullen but in spite of herself, she put a hand on Castlebar’s arm and looked appealingly at him.

  From inside the taxi came a warning call: ‘Wolfie!’

  ‘M-m-m-must go.’ Castlebar sped from the company, fearing to be detained, and struggled into the taxi. Angela watched after it as it drove away.

  Jackman, tittering, said to her: ‘Think of it! There’s only one bed at his place. He’ll have to sleep with her.’ When Angela did not reply, he asked: ‘Where are we going now?’

  She turned abruptly from him and put out her hand to Harriet: ‘Nowhere. I’m tired. I want an early night.’

  Abandoning Jackman, the two women walked slowly under the riverside trees towards Garden City.

  ‘He won’t stay with her long,’ Harriet said.

  ‘Perhaps not, but they’ve been married for twenty years. If he can’t bear her (as he says) why didn’t he leave her long ago?’

  ‘He had no incentive. It’s different now.’ Harriet took the rose-diamond heart from her bag: ‘Here’s the brooch. At least, she didn’t get that.’

  ‘I gave it to you.’

  ‘But you didn’t mean me to keep it.’

  ‘Yes. Why not? You like those stones. What good is it to me?’

  ‘Thank you.’ Harriet paused and holding the brooch cupped in her hand looked at the diamonds catching the embankment lights: ‘Thank you, Angela. I love it.’

  A week passed without news of Castlebar. He may have gone to the Union but Angela would not go in search of him. She said to Harriet, ‘He knows where I am. If he wants to see me, he can ring me,’ but he did not ring.

  Harriet, aware of Angela’s disquiet, suggested they invite the Castlebars in: ‘We said she should meet Edwina. So let’s fix an evening!’

  Angela, sprawled on the sofa, shrugged, as though indifferent, but, looking up, her expression brightened and she at once gave Harriet Castlebar’s telephone number. ‘If you want to ask them, it’s all right with me.’

  Harriet rang Castlebar’s flat but there was no reply. She decided to settle the matter by going to the Union.

  ‘Why not come with me? You’ve no reason to stay away.’

  ‘No. I couldn’t bear seeing him there with her.’

  Harriet disliked appearing alone in public places, but, feeling that any action was better than the dejection that kept Angela inactive, she sent Hassan out for a gharry. It was early in the evening and she expected to find Castlebar at the snooker table with Jackman, but there was no sign of Jackman. Castlebar was seated at a table with Mona beside him.

  So there they were: Wolfie and Lambkin: the lamb and the wolf! Harriet went straight to them.

  At the sight of her, Castlebar grinned and his grin was both feeble and defiant. He knew she condemned him for his neglect of Angela, but what could he do? His wife had whistled him back and now held him helpless in their old relationship. He looked trapped and ashamed of himself but prepared to bluster it out. Mona, in possession, was smugly conscious of the legality of her own position.

  They seemed to expect Harriet to accuse them but Harriet was not there to make accusations. Uninvolved and apparently friendly, she offered them the invitation.

  Mona, not expecting it, bridled slightly as though unsure how to deal with it, then answered in a lofty tone: ‘I’m not sure. What are we doing that night, Wolfie? I think we’re engaged.’

  ‘Oh, Lambkin, of course we’re not. Why shouldn’t we go?’

  ‘Very well, if you’re so keen.’

  Harriet said, ‘Then you accept?’

  Mona nodded a graceless, ‘All right.’

  Harriet, having come only for Angela’s sake, refused the offer of a drink and left at once. Although she knew Angela would be on edge until she heard the result of her approach to the Castlebars, she walked back to Garden City. Having seen him in the grasp of his wife, she felt she had been unwise to foster Angela’s infatuation with anyone so futile.

  Angela was still lying on the sofa, her head buried in her arms. She jerked herself up as Harriet entered and demanded, ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s all right. They’ve accepted.’

  ‘So they were there? What are they doing?’

  ‘Nothing much. Just sitting, drinking beer.’

  ‘How did he look?’

  ‘Not happy. I would say he was trapped.’

  ‘Trapped? Ah!’ Angela gave a long sigh of agonized relief then, throwing her arms into the air, she shrieked with a laughter that was very near hysteria.

  Guy, when he heard that Mona Castlebar was a singer, became interested in the supper party and said, ‘I’d like to ask Hertz and Allain.’

  ‘Oh, darling, they wouldn’t fit in.’

  ‘Of course they’l
l fit in. They’re well-mannered and agreeable and help out whenever needed. Everyone likes them. You couldn’t find a nicer couple of guests.’

  Dobson said, ‘Wouldn’t it be better to ask them on their own?’

  ‘No, they’ll get on with Castlebar. They’ll have a lot in common.’

  ‘Oh, well, if they’re as charming as you say, I look forward to meeting them.’

  Edwina agreed to be in to meet Mona but when the evening came, she said she was sorry, ‘terribly, terribly sorry,’ but Peter was taking her to supper at the Kit-Kat. As a result of this defection, Harriet felt more inclined to welcome Hertz and Allain.

  They and Guy, having evening classes, were expected to arrive late. The Castlebars, with nothing to detain them, would probably be first. Angela, awaiting them, moved restlessly between the living-room and her bedroom, looking as though she might, at the sound of the doorbell, disappear altogether. Harriet said, ‘Do sit down, Angela. Keep calm. When they come, don’t let them see you’re worried.’

  Guy brought home the two men, both young and good-looking, with a muscular grace, like athletes in training, and Harriet hoped they would distract Angela, but Angela seemed scarcely aware of them. As time passed and no one else arrived, her vacant stare became more vacant. She had nothing to say.

  The young men, refusing alcohol, drank iced lime-juice. Dobson, entertaining them with diplomatic ease, congratulated Guy on finding two such employees at such a time.

  ‘You must be very fond of teaching,’ he said to them.

  Hertz and Allain appeared gratified by Dobson’s attention. Carefully enunciating each word, Allain told him: ‘Yes, we are very fond of teaching.’

  ‘You see it as a vocation, no doubt?’

  ‘A vocation, certainly. We see it as a vocation,’ Allain looked to Hertz for confirmation and Hertz, as though eager to please, smiled and vigorously nodded his head.

  Guy, delighted with both of them, would have been content to sit drinking and talking for the rest of the evening, but it was nearly nine o’clock. The food was ready and Hassan was lurking, aggrieved, in the doorway.

  Harriet said, ‘I think we’ll have to eat.’

  As they moved to the table, the front-door bell rang and Angela paused, paralysed by anticipation. Hassan, answering the door, came back with a telegram addressed to Harriet.

  She read: ‘Please excuse. Mona not too well, Bill’ and handed it to Angela who gave it a glance, dropped it on the floor and made for the baize door to the bedroom. Harriet called after her: ‘Won’t you have supper?’

  ‘No, I’m not hungry.’

  Guy, talking at the table, expressed his enthusiasm for a Jewish National Home in Palestine. He was particularly impressed by the idea of kibbutzim, based he believed on the Russian soviets, and the possibility of turning the Negev into arable land. The teachers, although Jews themselves, smiled politely but had, it seemed, no great interest in these ambitious schemes.

  Dobson, who knew more than Guy did, discussed them from a practical viewpoint: ‘It all sounds fine,’ he said. ‘But these things can’t be carried out without money, a great deal of money. Well, the Jews have money — much of it comes from the States — and they can buy tractors and fertilizers and combined harvesters, while the wretched Arabs are still scraping the ground with the same ploughs they used in biblical times. They’d go on doing this, quite happily, if they weren’t made envious by the equipment the Jews have got. As it is, they ate resentful and likely to make trouble, so, to keep them sweet, HMG has to fork out to give them tractors and pedigree bulls and other rich gifts . . .’

  ‘But this is magnificent,’ Guy broke in. ‘Thanks to the Jews, the Arabs are being provided for.’

  ‘My dear fellow, it has to be paid for. And who pays? The poor, old British tax-payer. As per usual.’

  ‘Oh, come, Dobbie! You surely don’t object to a rich country like Britain helping the poor Palestinians?’

  Dobson laughed: ‘I don’t object, but your Jewish friends do.’

  Reminded of his guests, Guy was quick to defend the Jews: ‘I don’t believe it. I’m sure they don’t object. It’s up to all of us to share the sum of human knowledge and advance the underdeveloped peoples of the world.’ His eyes glowing with faith in all-pervading human goodness, he looked to Hertz and Allain for support, and they both solemnly nodded their agreement with his sentiments. It looked like dispassionate agreement but Harriet, who had watched them while they were listening to Guy, had seen on their faces an intent expression that did not accord with their apparent detachment from the subject in hand.

  Guy pursued it, fervently postulating ethics that Dobson good-humouredly amended, while Harriet, not much interested in polemics, waited for a chance to go to Angela. When she went to the room, she found her lying in darkness, made more dark by a large mango tree that blotted out most of the sky.

  Harriet said, ‘Shall I put on the light?’

  ‘No.’

  Harriet sat on the edge of the bed: ‘This is Mona’s doing, of course.’

  ‘Yes, but he let her do it,’ Angela raised herself on her elbow. ‘He’s frightened of her and she despises him. She despises him, yet she’ll keep her hold on him simply to prevent anyone else getting him. Her “Wolfie”! — God help us! Harriet, what’s the cure for love?’

  ‘Another love.’

  ‘Not so easy. You want one person, not another. I must get away for a while. I don’t want to go to the Union — which I will, sooner or later, if I stay here. So I must go where he isn’t. I want to be out of sight. I want to get away from him. The truth is: he’s a dead loss.’

  ‘Where can you go?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking. When I was with Desmond, we used to spend every winter in Luxor. I could go back there. Would you come with me?’

  ‘I don’t know, I’ll have to see what we have in the bank.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, it’s my treat.’

  ‘No. It can’t always be your treat.’

  ‘Well, it is this time. And what the hell does it matter? I can afford it. If you come to please me, why shouldn’t it be my treat?’

  They argued it out and agreed that Angela should pay for the train journey but Harriet would settle her own hotel bill. By now it was taken for granted that they would go to Luxor and Angela, seeing herself escaping from an obsession, became excited and putting her arms about Harriet, she promised her, ‘We’ll have a riotous time. We’ll see everything there is to see down there. We’ll go to a hotel with the best food in Egypt. We’ll live it up, and to hell with bloody Bill Castlebar and his even bloodier wife.’

  Angela’s euphoria remained with her on the train to Luxor. When they were in the dining-car, she ordered a bottle of whisky although she would be the only one to drink it. In flight from Castlebar, she could talk of nothing but Castlebar — and Castlebar’s wife. She had heard at Groppi’s, where she sometimes took tea with friends from her married days, that Mona Castlebar was already a subject for gossip. She had been invited to a musical evening arranged by the American University in aid of the Red Cross. Edwina was also invited and both women were expected to sing for the cause. Edwina complied willingly, singing song after song, until she became aware of Mona’s critical stare, at which she broke off and turning to Mona, said, ‘But I’m being selfish. I must stop. It’s your turn now.’

  ‘And what do you think?’ Angela squealed with delight: ‘Mona refused to sing. She seemed to think she was being tricked into performing and she said “I only do it for money”.’

  ‘Did she really say that?’

  ‘Well, no.’ In the face of Harriet’s disbelief, Angela moderated her story: ‘What she actually said was “I don’t give my services free”. Her services! Heaven help us!’

  As Angela paused in her laughter to wipe her eyes, Harriet asked: ‘Was Bill there?’

  ‘Yes. And they say he was horribly embarrassed and begged her to sing “just one little Lieder” — Lieder’s her thing — but
she wouldn’t, and there she sat on her big bottom, in a long green dress, with that mantelpiece of a bosom sticking out of it, her face grim, as obstinate as a pig. No one could get a squeak out of her.’

  ‘How did Bill come to marry such a woman in the first place?’

  ‘Oh, he’s a simple soul. She paraded the bosom and kept the legs out of sight. He told me he thought she was “the Great Earth Mother”, now he says she’s a lout. Yet she’s only got to turn up and he’s at her heels. It makes me sick.’

  ‘He’ll rebel sooner or later.’

  ‘Too late for me. I’ve finished with him.’ Angela emptied her glass and put the cap back on the bottle. ‘This’ll do for tomorrow.’ Her merriment had started to flag — and a desperate merriment it was, Harriet thought. She looked haggard and weary and said, ‘Let’s go to bed.’

  They had first-class sleepers and slept well, but next morning the excursion took on a different aspect. At breakfast in the dining-car, Angela would take nothing but coffee and had little to say. They looked out of the window at the disturbing sight of graves beside the track, dozens of them, each one a mound of sand with a palm leaf stuck at the head. The train was running through a cemetery and at stations, where a lively crowd usually gathered to gape at the tourists, the platforms were deserted except for a few forlorn villagers who stood about listlessly with dejected eyes.

  Angela, to whom Upper Egypt was well known, could make nothing of this desolation. And the graves continued: new graves, not simply dozens of them but hundreds. She called a waiter and spoke to him in Arabic then translated his reply: ‘He says there’s been an epidemic and many people have died.’

  ‘But of what?’

  ‘He doesn’t know. He just says “a bad sickness”.’

  ‘Why weren’t we told about this? There was nothing in the papers. Ask him why it was kept secret.’

  The waiter, a small, light-coloured man with a gentle face, was unable to answer this question. He knew nothing of newspapers and the deceits of governments, but his expression as he looked from the window was uneasy and Harriet, seeing the other waiters gathered at the end of the car, said, ‘They’re all frightened.’ The visitors came here in ignorance but the waiters came because they could not afford to refuse.