Fortunes of War

by Olivia Manning

  ‘Yes, I’ve a berth booked . . .’

  ‘Then I’ll walk with you.’ As he rose, Guy remembered he was Edwina’s escort and he said: ‘Sorry, I must go. I want to talk to Aidan. Jake will see you home.’

  ‘Look here,’ Jake put in quickly: ‘I’ve come out without cash. I’ll need something for a taxi.’

  Guy paid the bill and handed Jackman a pound note then went off with Aidan.

  ‘A disastrous evening,’ Jake said.

  For Edwina, too, it had been a disastrous evening. Hiding her resentment, she said: ‘Yes, poor Harriet!’ but her mind was on the treatment she had received. She added: ‘And poor Guy! I suppose that actor not knowing brought it all back.’ At the same time she was telling herself that Guy and the company he kept would not do for her.

  Seven

  Guy was surprised by Aidan’s reaction to Harriet’s death and at the same time felt grateful to him. That others grieved for her in some way lightened his own burden and the debt he owed her. Out in the street, he said: ‘I didn’t realize you felt any special affection for her.’

  ‘We had become friends.’

  That also surprised Guy. Though he rewarded him by going with him to the station, Guy was bored by Aidan and could not imagine he would have had much attraction for Harriet.

  ‘She used to tease me,’ Aidan said: ‘I deserved it, of course. I know I’m a bit of a stick. You remember, I came on her in Luxor and we saw some of the sights together.’

  Guy said, ‘Yes,’ though he had forgotten Harriet’s trip to Luxor. Thinking about it and about her association with Aidan, he began to imagine her with a whole world of interests about which he knew nothing. He did not begrudge them but had a disquieting sense of things having happened behind his back. Not that anything much could have happened. He had taken her away from her friends in England and, abroad, she had had few opportunities to make more. For the first time, it occurred to him that while he had kept himself occupied morning, noon and night, she had been often alone.

  He said: ‘She was on that boat the Queen of Sparta. I thought she ought to go — this climate was killing her.’

  ‘When we were in Luxor, she didn’t look well, but she didn’t look happy, either. I would say the unhappiness was more destructive than the climate.’

  ‘Unhappiness? Did she say she was unhappy?’

  ‘No. There was no mention of such a thing, but she seemed lonely down there. I wondered why you didn’t go with her.’

  ‘Go with her?’ Guy disliked this hint of criticism: ‘She did not suggest it. The whole thing was fixed up by that woman Angela Hooper. She took Harriet to Luxor then went off and left her there. It was typical of the woman. She’s unbalanced. I couldn’t have gone, anyway. I had much too much to do.’

  ‘You do too much, you know.’ Aidan spoke gently but his tone expressed more censure than sympathy and Guy felt annoyed. He was not used to criticism and he said:

  ‘I suppose you are blaming me because she’s gone. Well, there’s no point in it. Anyway, the past is past. We have to manage the present, even if it is unmanageable. We can’t stay becalmed in memories.’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’

  Aidan’s agreement was not wholehearted and Guy walked in silence until they reached the station then, saying a curt, ‘Goodbye,’ he swung round and walked back to Garden City. Aidan, he told himself, was not only a stick but a prig. He put him out of his mind but for all that, he felt the need to make some amends to Harriet. He began to look about him for an image to adopt in her place. The only one that presented itself at that time was the young lieutenant, Simon Boulderstone. Harriet was beyond his help but the injured youth had to remake his whole life.

  Now that he showed signs of recovery, Simon ceased to be the helpless object of everyone’s devotion. He was expected to contribute towards his own progress but the progress seemed to him depressingly slow.

  As soon as he could flex the muscles of his hips and lift his knees a few inches off the mattress, parallel bars were brought to his bedside and Ross said: ‘Come on now, sir, we’ve got to get you out of bed.’

  Ross and the orderly lifted him into place between the bars and told him to grip them with his hands. He was expected to hold himself upright and swing his body between them. This was agony. His arm muscles were so wasted, he could scarcely support his torso but, encouraged by Ross, he found he could move himself by swinging his pelvis from side to side.

  Ross said: ‘You’re doing fine, sir. Keep it up. A bit more effort and you’ll get to the end of the bars.’

  Simon laughed and struggled on, but in all these exercises there was a sense of fantasy. Without ability to walk, he seemed to be acting the part of a man who could walk. It was a hopeless attempt. He was troubled by the illusion that he had only half a body and was holding it suspended in air. Yet he had legs. He could see them hanging there, and he lost patience with them, and shouted: ‘When on earth will they start moving themselves?’

  ‘Don’t you worry, sir. They’ll come all right in time.’

  His feet, from lack of use, had become absurdly white and delicate. ‘Look at them,’ he said to Ross: ‘They’re like a girl’s feet. I don’t believe I’ll ever stand on them again.’

  Ross laughed and running his pencil along Simon’s left sole, asked: ‘Feel that?’

  ‘Nope.’ He was disgusted with himself; with his legs, his knees, his feet, every insensate part of himself.

  Guy, who visited him two or three times a week, decided that he needed mental stimulation and told him that to recover, he had only to decide to recover. Guy believed in the mind’s power over the body. He said he had been ill only once in his life and that was the result of Harriet’s interference. His father, an admirer of George Bernard Shaw, had refused to have his children vaccinated in infancy. Coming to the Middle East where smallpox was endemic, Harriet had insisted that Guy must be vaccinated. He had reacted violently to the serum. He had spent two days in bed with a high temperature and a swollen, aching arm, whimpering that he, who had never known a day’s illness before, had had illness forced upon him. He had been injected with a foreign substance and would lose his arm. He was amazed when he woke up next morning with his temperature down and his arm intact.

  ‘You see, I was a fool. I allowed Harriet to influence me against my better judgement and, as a result, became ill.’

  Simon protested: ‘But I’m not ill. I was injured when we ran into a booby trap — that was something different.’

  ‘Not so very different. There are no such things as accidents. We are responsible for everything that happens to us.’

  Simon was puzzled yet, reflecting on all Guy said, he remembered how he had been attracted to the palm tree where the trap was laid. The tree had seemed to him a familiar and loved object and he had said to Crosbie: ‘A good place to eat our grub.’ Guy could be right; perhaps, somehow or other, one did bring catastrophe upon oneself.

  ‘What should I do?’

  ‘Make up your mind that having got yourself into this fix, you’re going to get yourself out of it.’

  Whether because of this conversation or not, he became aware of his feet in a curious, almost supernatural, way. They had entered his consciousness. He could almost feel them. When he spoke of this to the sister, she said: ‘Oh? What do they feel like?’

  ‘Not exactly pleasant. Funny, rather!’

  She threw back the blanket and put her hand on them: ‘Cold, eh?’

  ‘No, I don’t think it’s cold.’

  ‘Yes, it is. You’ve forgotten what cold feels like.’

  Simon waited for Ross, intending to say nothing of this development until Ross said: ‘Feel that, sir?’ then he would say: ‘Yes, my feet feel cold.’

  But it did not happen like that. That day, when Ross ran the pencil along his sole, an electrical thrill flashed up the inside of his leg into his sexual organs and he felt his penis become erect. He turned his buttocks to hide himself and pressing his
cheek into the pillow, did not know whether he was relieved or ashamed.

  Ross, seeing him flush, threw the blanket over him, saying: ‘You’re going to be all right, sir.’ He laughed and Simon laughed back at him, and from that time a new intimacy grew up between them. Ross, losing his restraint, ceased to look upon Simon as a dependant and began to treat him as a young man like himself. He took to lingering at the end of each session and talking about small events in the hospital. This gossip led him on to a subject near to his heart: his disapproval of the ‘Aussies’. He felt the need to impress Simon with the respectability of New Zealanders that contrasted with the wild goings-on of the Australians.

  ‘A rough lot, sir,’ he said. ‘Some of ’em never seen a town till they were taken through Sydney to the troopship. And take that Crete job? The Aussies blamed us and the Brits for lack of air-cover. Well, you can’t have air-cover if you haven’t got aircraft, now can you, sir? They just couldn’t see it. They weren’t reasonable. When they got back, they took to throwing things out of windows. In Clot Bey they threw a piano out. And they threw out a British airman and told him: “Now fly, you bastard!” From a top floor window, that was. Not nice behaviour, sir.’

  ‘No, indeed. What happened to the airman?’

  ‘I never heard.’ Ross shook his head in disgust at his own story.

  Simon sympathized with Ross but, secretly, he envied the Aussies their uninhibited ‘goings-on’. They had frequently to be confined to barracks for the sake of public safety. And at Tobruk, ordered to advance in total silence, they had wrecked a surprise attack by bursting out of the slitties bawling, ‘We’re going to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz’. He had to put in a word for such lawless men.

  ‘After all, Ross, they needn’t have fought at all. We started the war and they could have told us to get on with it.’

  ‘Oh, no. With respect, you’re wrong there, sir. It’s our war as much as yours.’

  To the sister, Simon said: ‘You know that young lady who came here, the one I said I didn’t want to see? Did she come back?’

  The sister answered coldly: ‘How do I know? I’m not on duty every day and all day, am I?’

  ‘Sister, if she does come, you won’t stop her, will you? I want to see her.’

  ‘If she does come, I’ll bring her along myself.’

  A few days later, having had no visitor but Guy, Simon appealed to him: ‘Could you ask Edwina to come and see me?’

  ‘Of course,’ Guy cheerfully agreed: ‘I’ll speak to her. I expect she’ll come tomorrow or the day after.’

  But Edwina, when he spoke to her, blinked her one visible eye at him and seemed on the point of tears: ‘Oh, Guy, I really can’t go to Helwan again. It’s so embarrassing. Simon’s got it into his head that I was his brother’s girlfriend and I find it such a strain, playing up to him.’

  ‘Why play up? Just tell him the truth.’

  ‘Oh, that would be unkind. Besides, the place upsets me. When I went last time, I had a migraine next day. I do so hate hospitals.’ Edwina gave a little sob and Guy, afraid of upsetting her further, said no more but he decided there would be a meeting somewhere other than the hospital.

  He arranged to hire a car and asked the sister for permission to take Simon for a drive. They would go to the Gezira gardens. He asked Edwina to meet him there, telling her that he would see there was no distressing talk about Simon’s brother. Edwina said: ‘Of course, I’ll come, Guy dear. How sweet you are to everyone.’

  Much satisfied, Guy put his plan to Simon who was upset by it. Closeted in his cubicle, he had become like a forest-bred creature that is afraid to venture out on to the plain. Even Edwina’s promise to join them in the gardens had its element of disappointment.

  ‘So she won’t come here?’

  ‘She says hospitals have an unfortunate effect on her.’

  ‘I’d rather not go to the gardens, Guy. I don’t think she wants to see me.’

  ‘Oh, yes, she agreed at once,’ Guy persuaded Simon as he had persuaded Edwina and a day was fixed. By the time the car was outside the Plegics, Simon had worked himself into a state of restless anticipation. He several times asked Guy: ‘Do you really think she’ll be there?’

  ‘She’s probably there already. So, come along!’

  Simon’s chair, brake-locked, stood beside his bed and Guy and Ross watched while he manoeuvred himself into it. He shifted to the edge of the bed and pushed his legs over the side then, gripping the chair’s farther arm, he swung himself into the seat. Comfortably settled, he looked at his audience and grinned: ‘How’s that?’

  Both watchers said together: ‘Splendid.’

  Ross came to the car where Simon, depending on the strength of his arms, lifted himself into the back seat. His movements were ungainly and Guy and Ross were pained by the effort involved but they smiled their satisfaction. Simon was progressing well.

  Heat was returning to the Cairo noonday. The drive over the desert was pleasant and Simon, looking out of one window or the other, said: ‘Funny to be out again. Makes me feel I’m getting better.’

  The gardens, that curved round the north-eastern end of the island, were narrow, a fringe of sandy ground planted with trees. Constantly hosed down with river water, the trees had grown immensely tall but their branches were sparse and their leaves few. They were hung with creepers that here and there let down a thread-fine stem that held a single pale flower, upright like an alabaster vase. Nothing much grew in the sandy soil but it was sprayed to keep down the dust and the air was filled with a heavy, earthy smell.

  Simon moved his chair noiselessly along the path with Guy beside him. They were both watching for a sight of Edwina but they reached the end of the gardens without meeting anyone.

  Simon said in a strained voice: ‘She hasn’t come.’

  ‘She will. She will.’ Guy was confident she would. They turned back and mid-way between the garden gates found a seat where Guy could sit. He said it was four o’clock so she would probably come in on her way to the office. She would have to make a detour and cross by the bridge, all of which would take some time. An hour passed. The afternoon was changing to evening and Simon’s expectations began to fail. He could not respond to Guy’s talk and soon enough Guy, too, fell silent. They faced the opposite bank of the river where Kasr el Nil barracks stood, its red colour changing as the light changed until it was as dark as dried blood. The long, low building, so bug-ridden that only fire could disinfest it, was hazed by river mist and looked remote, a Victorian relic, a symbol of past glory.

  Gazing across at it, Simon remembered his first days in Egypt, when Tobruk had fallen. Ordered to join his convoy at dawn, he had taken a taxi to the barracks, fearing that the other men would laugh at him for his extravagance. He soon realized that no one knew or cared how he got there. Hugo had been alive then. Now, with Hugo dead and Edwina uncaring, he looked back on those early days as a time of youth and innocence he would never know again.

  He sighed and glanced at Guy who also seemed lost in some vision of the past. He said, perhaps unwisely: ‘You loved her very much, didn’t you?’

  Surprised and startled by the question, Guy said: ‘You mean Harriet? I suppose I did. Not that I’ve ever thought much about love. I’ve always had so many friends.’ He stood up to end this sort of talk: ‘You ought to be back at the hospital by now.’

  When they reached the main gate, two people were descending from a taxi: Edwina and an army officer.

  Looking round, seeing Simon in his chair, Edwina ran in through the gates, holding out her hands: ‘Oh, Simon! Simon darling, I was so afraid we’d be too late.’ She seized his hands and gazing warmly into his face, asked: ‘How are you? Dear Simon, you’re looking so much better!’

  Simon, glancing over her shoulder, could see her companion was a major, an old fellow, thirty-five or more; much too old for Edwina. But the major had two good legs and he came strolling after her with a possessive smile, conveying to the world
the fact that he and Edwina had spent the afternoon in intimate enjoyment.

  He was introduced as Tony Brody, recently appointed to GHQ, Cairo — a tall, narrow-shouldered man with a regular face that was too fine to seem effectual. Edwina, her eyes brilliant, her voice halted by a slight gasp, seemed elated by her new conquest.

  She kept saying: ‘Oh dear, I’m sorry I’m late,’ and even Simon could guess why she was late. He wanted to get away from her. Guy, meeting his appealing glance, said they had no time to talk. Simon was due back at Helwan. Cutting short Edwina’s excited chatter, he helped Simon back into the waiting car and took him away from her.

  Eight

  Harriet had settled into a pension recommended by the waiter behind the café bar. It was called the Anemonie, a large, draughty building, dark inside and, in wet weather, very dark. It had a garden where a mulberry tree spread its crinoline of branches over a long table and half-a-dozen rickety chairs. The rain lay in pools on the table-top but Harriet could imagine the tourists sitting out to dine in the long, indolent twilights of peace-time summers.

  The war had ended all that. The pension proprietors, Monsieur and Madame Vigo, were surprised when Harriet arrived at the door but they admitted her. They lived in an out-building and kept themselves to themselves, so Harriet had the whole pension to herself. Madame Vigo, who served her meals, spoke French and Arabic but she could make nothing of Harriet’s anglicized French or her Egyptian Arabic.

  Harriet knew the Vigos were curious about her and wondered what she was doing there, alone in Syria. Now that her escapade had lost impetus, she wondered herself.

  The dining-room, where she ate alone, could have accommodated fifty or sixty guests. At night a single bulb was lit behind her seat and the large room stretched from her into total darkness. She would have been glad to have her meals with the Vigos but they maintained their privacy and were not relenting for Harriet’s sake. The food, that was cooked by Monsieur Vigo, was served in a businesslike way by Madame Vigo who put the plates on the table and immediately made off.