Fortunes of War

by Olivia Manning

  Her mother, becoming anxious, had put a hand on her forehead and said to someone in the room, ‘She has a fever.’ That, too, was part of luxury for her mother was not given to tenderness. She sometimes said, as though describing a curious and interesting facet of herself: ‘I don’t like being touched. Even when the children put their arms round me, I don’t really like it.’

  But Harriet was different and as sleep came down on her, she told herself, ‘I want more love than I am given — but where am I to find it?’

  Her first visitor next morning was Angela who arrived with an arm full of tuberoses that scented the room. She asked with intense concern, ‘What is it? What is the matter with you?’

  ‘Apparently nothing serious.’

  ‘Oh, Harriet, what a fool I was dashing back to Cairo and leaving you on your own.’

  ‘I was all right. I met a friend and saw the sights. But what came of your dash? — did you find Bill alive?’

  ‘Need you ask? I went to the Union and there he was: smirking, with his bloody Mona smirking at his side. I realized then he’d never leave her. He dare not. He hasn’t the guts. Harriet! I’ve decided, I’m going on that boat for women and children. I may go to England, or I may get off at Cape Town, but whatever I do, I’m going.’

  Harriet could not take this declaration seriously: ‘You can’t go. You couldn’t leave me without a friend.’

  ‘I am going. I’ve already applied for a passage. I have to get away from Bill and I won’t get away unless I do something drastic. So, to hell with him and his God-awful wife. Let him sit there and smirk. I have my own life to lead and I intend to have a rattling good time.’

  ‘If you go to England, you’ll be conscripted.’

  ‘Not me. I know what to do about that. When they call you up, you just say, “I’m a tart.” Tarts are exempt (God knows why). They say, “Oh, come now, Lady Hooper, you don’t want us to think you’re a common prostitute, do you?” and you say, “Think what you like. That’s what I am: a tart,” and if you stick to it, there’s not a thing they can do about it.’

  ‘But you’re not a tart. You couldn’t keep it up.’

  ‘I could and, if necessary, I shall.’

  ‘So you really mean to go?’ Harriet became dejected as she saw Angela lost to her. ‘You’ve made me feel miserable.’

  ‘Then come with me.’

  Harriet smiled. ‘Perhaps I will,’ she said.

  No one was in a hurry at the American Hospital. Once there, Harriet was expected to stay there and when she asked Sister Metrebian if she could soon go home, the nurse shook her head vaguely: ‘How can I say? First, they must examine the specimens.’

  ‘And when will we get the verdict?’

  ‘Tomorrow, perhaps. The day after, perhaps.’

  But the result of the tests was slow in coming and when Harriet enquired about it, Sister Metrebian became distressed: ‘How can I say? You must wait for Dr Shafik.’

  ‘When will he be back?’

  Sister Metrebian shrugged: ‘He is a busy man.’

  That was not Harriet’s impression of Dr Shafik. Sometimes, from boredom, she went out in her dressing-gown and wandered about the passages of the hospital, seeing no one and hearing nothing until, passing through a gate marked ‘No Entry’, she came into a cul-de-sac where there was only one door. Behind the door a man was shouting in delirium, expressing a terror that seemed to her more terrible because it was in a language she did not understand. As she hurried back to her own room, she met Sister Metrebian and asked her what was wrong with the man.

  Sister Metrebian shook her head in sombre disapproval: ‘You should not go near. He is very ill. He is a Polish officer from Haifa where they have plague.’

  ‘Plague? He has got plague?’

  ‘How can I say? He is not my patient. I can say only: you must not go near.’

  Trembling, Harriet sat on her balcony, gulping in fresh air as though it were a prophylactic, and she thought of England where there was no plague, no cholera, no smallpox, and the food was not contaminated. If she went with Angela, she would regain her health — but how could she leave Guy here alone?

  She had said to Angela, ‘You know what happens when wives go home? We’ve seen it often enough.’

  Angela took this lightly: ‘You know you can trust Guy. He’s not the sort to go off the rails.’

  Perhaps not, but it was Guy who had first suggested she ask for a passage on the boat and she was suspicious of the fact he wanted her to go. She thought, ‘Everything has gone wrong since we came here.’ The climate changed people: it preserved ancient remains but it disrupted the living. She had seen common-place English couples who, at home, would have tolerated each other for a lifetime, here turning into self-dramatizing figures of tragedy, bored, lax, unmoral, complaining and, in the end, abandoning the partner in hand for another who was neither better nor worse than the first. Inconstancy was so much the rule among the British residents in Cairo, the place, she thought, was like a bureau of sexual exchange.

  So, how could she be sure of Guy? When she married him, she scarcely knew him and, now, did she know him any better? How rash she had been, rushing into marriage, and how absurd to imagine it, on no evidence at all, a perfect, indestructible marriage! Every marriage was imperfect and the destroying agents, the imperfections, were there, unseen, from the start. How did she know that Guy, under the easy-going, well-disposed exterior, was not secretive and sly, suggesting she return to England for his own ends, whatever they might be?

  It was noon, the most brilliant hour of the day, when the Gezira playing-fields looked as dry as the desert. The sky was colourless with heat yet to her it seemed to be netted over with darkness. The world seemed sinister and she felt she could put no trust into it. Aidan Pratt had said of life: ‘If it has to end, does it matter when it ends?’ The same could be said of life’s relationships. If Guy were a deceiver, then the sooner she found out, the better.

  Later that afternoon, when she had returned to bed, Dr Shafik entered with a springing step and, standing over her, looking satisfied with himself, he said, ‘Well, madame, we have discovered your trouble. You have amoebic dysentery. Not good, no, but not so bad because there is a new drug for this condition. The American Embassy has sent it to us and you will be the first to benefit by it.’

  ‘And I will be cured?’

  ‘Why, certainly. Did you come here to die?’ Tall and handsome in his white coat, Dr Shafik smiled an ironical smile: ‘Could we let a member of your great empire die here, in our poor country?’

  ‘A great many members of the empire are dying here. You forget there is a war on.’

  Harriet could see from his face that Dr Shafik had forgotten but he hid his forgetfulness under a tone of teasing scorn: ‘Call that a war? Two armies going backwards and forwards in the desert, chasing each other like fools!’

  ‘It’s a war for those who fight it. And may I ask, Dr Shafik, why you have to be so unpleasant to me?’

  Surprised by the question, he stared at her then his smile became mischievous: ‘Are you aware, Mrs Pringle, that we have here another English lady?’

  ‘No.’ Harriet had not heard of an Englishwoman being in hospital but there were a great many English people not known to her in Cairo. Some lived half-way between the Orient and the Occident, avoiding the temporary residents brought here by war. Some had adopted the Moslem religion and its ways. Some had married Egyptians and others, though they went to England to find marriage partners, had lived here so long, they had become a race on their own.

  ‘Is she very ill?’

  ‘She was, but now she is recovering. Would you wish her to come and talk to you?’

  Harriet knew that he meant to play some trick on her but asked from curiosity, ‘What is her name?’

  Shafik was not telling: ‘Perhaps when you see her, you will know who she is.’

  He went, promising that the lady would visit her, and an hour later a very old woman came sidli
ng into the room, wearing a hospital bath-robe and a pair of old camel-leather slippers that flapped from her heels. She crept towards the bed and Harriet, seeing who she was, said, ‘Why, Miss Copeland, what are you doing here?’

  She had last seen Miss Copeland in the pension where the Pringles lived before moving to Dobson’s flat. She came in once a week to lay out a little shop of haberdashery which, to help her, the inmates bought, whether they needed the goods or not. She had not changed; her skin, stretched over frail, prominent bones, still had the milky blueness of extreme age. At some time during her long sojourn in Cairo, she had become deaf and had shut herself into silence, seldom speaking.

  Though she knew the old woman could not hear her, Harriet said to encourage her: ‘Why are you here? You look quite well.’

  Miss Copeland sat on the edge of the chair. Her pale, milky eyes observed the things about her and when they came to Harriet, she whispered: ‘They found me in bed. I couldn’t get up.’

  ‘What was the matter?’

  ‘I was riddled with it.’

  Much shocked, Harriet could think of nothing to say. Seeing that her lips did not move, Miss Copeland leant towards her and enquired: ‘What did you die of?’

  Before Harriet need answer, Miss Copeland jumped down from the chair: ‘It must be time for lunch. It’s nice being dead, they give you so much to eat.’ She was gone in a moment, her slippers flapping behind her.

  Almost at once, Dr Shafik came in to discover how Harriet had taken the visit: ‘So, you have seen the lady? You know her, I think?’

  ‘I know who she is. Has she really got cancer?’

  ‘No. That is her little fantasy. But is she not charming? An old, harmless lady, living here among other ladies of her own country — and yet she nearly starved to death. She lay in bed, too ill to move, and no one called to see how she was. It was a poor shop-keeper, where she bought bread, who asked himself, “Where is the old English lady? Can she need help?” — and so she was found.’

  Discomforted, as Dr Shafik intended her to be, Harriet said, ‘We knew nothing about her. She made some money by selling little things: tapes, cottons, needles, things like that. She was independent. She lived her own life and did not seem to want anyone to call on her . . .’ Harriet’s defence faded out because, in fact, no one knew how or where Miss Copeland lived, and she wondered whether anyone cared.

  Shafik nodded his understanding of the situation: ‘So you left her alone and it was an Egyptian peasant who showed pity! You see, here in Egypt, we live together. We look after our old people.’

  ‘Miss Copeland didn’t want to live with anyone. She wanted to be alone so, when she needed help, there was no one at hand to give it.’

  Shafik gave a scoffing laugh: ‘Now you know she needs help, will you, with your large house and many servants, take her in?’

  ‘I might, if I had a large house and servants, but I haven’t. My husband and I have one room in someone else’s flat.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘You did not answer my question, Dr Shafik. I asked why you are so unpleasant to me?’

  He again left the question unanswered but later in the day, when Edwina came to see her, she had an answer of sorts.

  Edwina, her tear-reddened eyes hidden behind dark glasses, said, ‘Oh, Harriet, I couldn’t come before. I couldn’t . . .’ She put her head down and sobbed again and it was some minutes before she could continue; ‘Peter’s gone back to the desert. I’ll never see him again . . . I’ll never . . .’

  ‘Don’t worry, you will see him again. The next thing will be a counter-offensive and they’ll all be belting back to Sollum and coming to Cairo on leave.’

  ‘That’s not what he thought. He said, “This time we’ve got them on the run.” ’

  ‘They say that every time.’

  Harriet brought out a bottle of whisky, given her by Angela, and said, ‘Let’s have a drink. It’ll do us both good.’ As Edwina sniffed and drank her whisky, Harriet said, ‘Even if he doesn’t come back, there are other men in the world.’

  ‘That’s true. Guy’s been terribly kind to me.’

  ‘He’s kind to everyone,’ said Harriet who had no intention of offering Guy as one of the ‘other men’.

  But Edwina was not to be discouraged: ‘You know, I think Guy arranged this whole entertainment just to take my mind off Peter.’

  ‘He arranged it long before Peter became troublesome.’

  A number of people, Aidan Pratt among them, had imagined they were the sole recipients of Guy’s regard. And yet . . . And yet . . . It was Edwina’s singing voice that had induced him to plan a troops’ entertainment.

  Warned by Harriet’s silence, Edwina said no more about Guy but diverted her by giggling: ‘I see you’ve got that gorgeous Dr Shafik! How romantic, lying here pale and interesting, with Dr Shafik taking your pulse!’

  ‘Amoebic dysentery is not a romantic condition.’

  ‘Condition du pays. I bet he’s had it himself.’

  ‘And he’s not gorgeous to me. He’s downright disagreeable.’

  ‘Oh, he’s disagreeable to all of us. He’s violently anti-British. He belongs to the Nationalist Party and that’s worse than the Wafd. They’d cut our throats tomorrow if they had the chance.’

  ‘Good heavens, Dr Shafik has every chance in the world here. I hope Sister Metrebian will protect me from him.’

  Edwina, having finished her whisky, became wildly amused by this but her laughter changed in a moment and she choked with sobs: ‘Oh, Peter, Peter, Peter! I long to have him back!’ She was desolate but not to the point of admitting that Peter was married to someone else.

  Harriet, knowing what she did know, said, hoping to pull her together, ‘I’m sorry, Edwina dear, but I think you’re well out of it. He’d make a terrible husband. All that fooling about! What a bore!’

  ‘You’re probably right. Yes, I know you’re right. There were times when I could have murdered him. Although he’s got a title, he’s a brute, really.’

  Edwina dabbed her eyes, then murmured, ‘Still. . .’

  A brute, but, still, no ordinary brute! He was a catch — alas, already caught! Edwina sighed. Her golden beauty drawn with disappointment, she saw herself setting out again to find another ‘catch’. There were a great many lonely men in Cairo but few who matched up to Edwina’s aspirations.

  Her regimen of emetine capsules and a bland diet seemed so simple, Harriet thought she could treat herself at home but Sister Metrebian would not hear of it: ‘We have to carefully watch you. Emetine is very dangerous. A toxic drug. You take too much and you kill yourself. Do you understand?’

  And, Harriet thought, how easily Dr Shafik could kill her! When she had been in hospital a week, he entered the room in a businesslike way and said he needed a sample of her blood. Sister Metrebian was at his heels, carrying a knife in a kidney dish. He lifted the knife and Harriet was startled to see it was sharp-pointed like a kitchen knife.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked: ‘We have here an edge like a consumptive’s temperature chart!’ He threw the knife back with elaborate disgust and she realized it had been another joke. He did not mean to use it, yet, in her distrust of everyone and everything, she felt a particular distrust of Shafik. She thought, ‘The smiler with the knife’, and asked: ‘Why do you want a sample of blood?’

  ‘For a little test, that is all. You are afraid?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  She expected him to draw off the blood with a syringe but he had found another instrument which he wished to try. She felt he was experimenting on her. He pressed the point of a metal scoop into the artery of her inner arm. As the blood flowed down the scoop to a test-tube, she felt she could bear no more. Tears ran down her cheeks and Dr Shafik spoke with surprising kindliness: ‘There, there, Mrs Pringle, don’t cry. You are a very brave girl.’

  Knowing she was not a brave girl, Harriet laughed but he did not laugh with her. The blood taken and the small wound
covered, he pressed his long, strong fingers into the region round her liver and asked, ‘Does that hurt?’

  ‘Yes, but it would, anyway, you’re pressing so hard. Why? What else is wrong with me?’

  ‘That is a thing I must find out.’

  When doctor and sister had gone, Harriet asked herself how it was she had sunk so low, she wept at the sight of her own blood? She despised herself and yet she wept again. Hunting round for a handkerchief, she found among the detritus at the bottom of her handbag, the heart made of rose-diamonds. She had forgotten it and now, holding it above her head, she was entranced by the radiance of the diamonds and was amazed that they were not merely in her keeping, like Aidan’s votive cat, but were her property. The heart had been given to her: an object from a richer, grander, altogether more opulent world than any she had inhabited. She put it on the bedside table where it lit the air, a talisman and a preserver of life.

  When Guy came in that evening, Dr Shafik was in the room, making a routine visit. He was about to rush away when it apparently occurred to him who Guy was. He came to a stop, held out his hand and said with awe: ‘But, of course, you are the Professor Pringle that people speak of. You are a lover of Egypt, are you not? You are one who would urge us towards freedom and social responsibility?’

  The revelation of his breadth of vision surprised even Guy but, pink with pleasure, he seized on Shafik’s hand and admitted that he was indeed that Professor Pringle, saying, ‘Yes, Egypt must have freedom. But social responsibility? That, I imagine, can come only through a Marxist revolution.’

  Whether the doctor agreed or not, he moved closer to Guy and said in a quiet voice: ‘You know, there are many of us?’

  ‘Of course. I’ve talked to students . . .’

  ‘Oh, students! They act and so are useful, but they do not think, and so are dangerous. But enough for now. We will talk another time, eh? Meanwhile, I have this case of your wife. She is not well.’

  Guy, forced to revert to the discouraging subject of Harriet’s health, asked: ‘Aren’t you satisfied with her progress?’