Alligator Playground

by Alan Sillitoe

‘Don’t worry. They won’t say owt.’

  ‘What would you do if they did?’

  ‘Tell ’em to fuck off.’

  She laughed. ‘There’s not one woman up here.’

  ‘They’re stowed in the lower deck. I saw ’em as we came up. Don’t you want to go down and sit with ’em?’

  ‘If you come with me.’

  ‘I’d definitely get a knife in my back,’ he laughed.

  A sailing boat left a wake in the water shaped like a scimitar. Milky blue turned the sun pale. A rusty barge with impeccable white superstructure headed south. ‘Put your hat on, duck. It’s hot.’

  He looked around. ‘Where is it, though?’

  They’d bought it in Nottingham for fifteen quid, a real straw Panama. ‘You must have left it somewhere.’

  ‘In that restaurant, I expect.’

  ‘You had it on there. It must have been in that tourist information office. We can call for it tomorrow. I’m sure that nice young man will put it by for you.’

  The crossing was short, water eddying inshore towards jungly banks, a narrow beach either side of the quay. Low cliff, palms and fields beyond, went the whole length of the river. He drew fingers through thick fair hair. ‘The sun won’t penetrate this bit o’ thatch.’

  ‘Still, you need your hat.’

  From the gangway it looked impossible to get through the ranks of taxis to the road beyond. ‘Just follow me,’ he said, ‘and stick close.’ He felt sorry for them, all desperate to earn a bob or two in a country where there were so many people that life was a struggle from crib to coffin. He wanted to stroll with Jean, however, to another ferryhead half-a-mile upriver, as shown on the map. Weaving between bonnets and wing mirrors, he ignored shouts to get them to the Tombs and back – for nothing if they liked.

  A few hundred yards, and they were out of chaos. ‘This is heaven’ – she aimed her camera across a meadow against a background of sugar cane. Goats chewed head down at the herbage, a gaggle of dazzle-skirted bright faced girls minding them. Behind the dense palm groves rose a line of purple hills.

  ‘Better than a picture,’ he said.

  She kissed him, quickly, adoring his enthusiasm. The girls came towards them in a colourful line halloa-ing and hands waving for baksheesh. ‘We’d better go. I got two or three snaps and I’m sure they’ll come out. They’re lovely kids, though.’

  On the trip back there were hardly any passengers, and an amiable old ruffian came around asking for a tip for the captain. ‘The captain?’ Daniel laughed. ‘Piss off!’

  ‘Let’s have some more of this Coptic plonk.’ He read the wine list at dinner. ‘It’s dry and red, good enough for me. Maybe it’ll melt some of this oily grub.’

  ‘It’s delicious.’ At the buffet they heaped chicken, rice, string beans and peas onto their plates. New groups had arrived, German tables easy to pick out because they were crowded with bottles of beer. The French tables had wine, and the Egyptians mostly water, while the British had scatterings of everything. He shovelled the food in. ‘I’ll burn my gutache out with the whisky later.’

  ‘Take it easy, love.’

  ‘I feel hungry, seeing this marvellous spread.’

  White sun melted into the haze, still some way above the horizon. They strolled by the swimming pool, by day surrounded with what he saw as cooking flesh, a pleasure he didn’t want to sample. Dark came quickly, monochrome grey over rippling water, the far bank vivid green. Then everything suddenly dark. He wasn’t feeling well. ‘Let’s go up.’

  ‘You must have a cold.’

  He switched the air conditioning full on. ‘The noise meks it sound like it’s time to fasten our safety belts,’ she said.

  ‘I’m kay-lied. Or pole-axed. I can’t tell which. Wake me when the plane’s ready to go.’

  She came up from breakfast with a boiled egg, a roll and a bottle of water. He finished it off. ‘What’s the difference between a cold and the flu?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve got one or the other, and can’t decide. I’ve never been in bed as long as this in my life.’

  It must be a cold or the flu, because he wasn’t poisoned, and that was a fact. As long as he could belch he wouldn’t throw up; and as long as he could cough he wouldn’t choke; and as long as he could fart he wouldn’t shit himself. All he could do was lounge around and take it easy. Funnily enough he wanted Jean to come to bed, but knew he wouldn’t be able to get it up even if he swallowed a cup of starch.

  ‘You’ll feel better tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I’m going into town now, to get your hat. You must have a touch of the sun.’

  The woman at the counter didn’t know anything about it. ‘A man served us yesterday.’ Jean was about to describe him but thought she had better not: dark and handsome, and I fancied him no end.

  The woman came back from the rear office. She was good-looking as well: dark haired and olive skinned, with a rich figure. Daniel would have fancied her. ‘No hat has been left here. I’m sorry.’

  Daniel felt awful nearly all day. Whenever he thought he might be getting better, the gripes came back. Even so, he had an appetite and enjoyed his cigarettes, so maybe it was only a cold. With the flu he’d never been able to eat or even look at a fag. The dentist had given him a bottle of antibiotics last year for an abscessed tooth, so he went into the bathroom and swallowed a dozen pills with a tumbler of half toothwater, and the rest whisky. His head zinged a bit, but he felt better straightaway.

  He tuned in the radio hoping for news or sports talk, but the aerial didn’t work because the room was fairly well sealed. Attaching the coil of wire to the short-wave screw with his Swiss army knife he threw it out of the window, bringing in London loud and clear.

  Jean called at the restaurant but nobody had seen the hat. He would have to get another. Sweating so much, she got into a horse-drawn carriage following along the kerb, and told the man to drive her to the hotel. Sitting on the high seat, a breeze coming from somewhere, she saw white knife-pointed sails on the river, and felt like a queen, dreaming she had the handsome man of the tourist office by her side as the scrawny old nag trotted along the road.

  Daniel in the bar had two bottles of beer on his table. He was looking at the map in the brochure. ‘I feel better. Let’s go over the river this afternoon and see the Temples. It says here there’s lots of paintings in the Tombs.’

  Across at the quay they got into a taxi, and the driver said his name was Mahmoud, a youngish man with a piratical look, but they liked him. ‘Tombs first,’ he said, ‘then Temples. OK Johnny?’

  Daniel set his new khaki cap at the proper angle. ‘Drive on, Macduff!’

  ‘You look just like a swaddie in that hat,’ she laughed, the tattoo of snake and sword showing below the short sleeves of his shirt.

  ‘I know good guide,’ Mahmoud told them.

  ‘He means his brother,’ Daniel said. ‘Don’t need one,’ he shouted. ‘We walk on our own.’ He waved the pamphlet. ‘This’ll tell us all about it.’

  Tombs? More like foxholes and cellars among the ashpits of the scorching plain. Some had regular entrances, a guardian at each, hand high for baksheesh, which was never enough. When they came into daylight the way was pointed to the next guardian. ‘It’s a game of ‘‘Pass the Tourist’’,’ Jean said. ‘I liked them paintings, though the ceiling was a bit bumpy.’

  ‘Beautiful.’ Daniel noted some Tombs closed off as being restored. ‘They’re doing the paintings up in them. I suppose they get a new coat every few months. We’ll have to send a postcard to your mother.’

  Next on the list was the Temple of Seth the First, by a crumbling village of mud houses. They thought they had seen everything, but Mahmoud said that if they came tomorrow he would take them to other Temples. ‘I’ll be waiting with my taxi,’ he said at the pier, and didn’t grumble at the tip.

  Jean couldn’t stand. ‘Feels like it’s my turn now. I wonder what it is?’

  ‘Same as what
I’d got, I expect.’ What he still had, in fact, but two couldn’t be badly at the same time. They’d look a bit daft, both in bed with aches and pains. He felt guilty because she hadn’t wanted to have dinner last night and he’d persuaded her. He had ordered a bottle of Omar Khayyam red to go with the mutton when they should have stuck to bread and sherbet. I’ll never learn, he thought. They’d finished off the whisky upstairs beforehand, which had maybe softened his brain, though he sometimes knew it was soft enough already.

  He sat at the desk and wrote a postcard of the bomb site at Karnak to his mate Harry. ‘We’re at this health resort on the River Nile. Sick as a dog, weak as a kitten, but everything going well. See you soon, I hope. Dan.’

  Jean stayed in bed, sweating and feverish. She enjoyed being languid, in and out of dozing, mollified by stark dreams she couldn’t remember the second they’d gone. A drum and tambourine played softly outside, a real holiday, no cares at all.

  So as not to disturb her Daniel sat in the lounge watching the talent, a few interested looks from the occasional passing woman. The tea was like piss, so he read about the Temples over and over till the pamphlet was like a rag and he put it in a waste bin. He went up every hour to see that Jean hadn’t died.

  ‘It’s only malaria, love, so don’t worry. If you’d been for a swim in the river it could be worse. It’d be Bill-something or other. I’ve often wondered what would happen if the river flooded and came into the hotel. You’d have crocodiles swimming up the corridors snapping people up in their jaws. Can you imagine the headlines in the Sun?’

  He picked fussily at the buffet for lunch, then phoned for a roll, butter, jam, and a bottle of cold water from room service, which Jean enjoyed. ‘The best cure for a gutache is to eat – something, anyway – to give it a bit of nourishment to chew on.’

  He should have added on the postcard that he was bored to death, but only when he didn’t know what to do with himself. He stood the tranny upright thinking to have a listen but there wasn’t much beyond mush. He kissed Jean on the forehead to be sure she was asleep, then opened the window and slung out the length of aerial. The people in the room below would think a gremlin was on the end coming in to burgle them.

  The connecting screw must have been loose, because the pale coated wire free-floated onto a terrace two floors below. He hoped his effing and blinding hadn’t wakened her, but that was that, he wouldn’t hear a peep out of London now. The wire melted into the paving so that he couldn’t even see where it lay, though maybe he needed a drink to clear his eyes.

  Both felt wobbly walking through the museum, and there were no seats to sit on. They’d had to queue to get in, and found the cafeteria closed. Peering through the crowds, they saw as much as they could, then sat outside on a low wall in the sun, hungry because they’d eaten nothing but a few biscuits at breakfast. An American woman was telling her daughter how Betty had had a wonderful time in wherever it was – swimming, sunbathing, eating everything, all with no effect whatever. Two days after she got home she felt funny. The doctor told her not to worry, just rest. But she got worse and was rushed into hospital. Polio. A week later she was dead. ‘So you have to be careful, no matter how good you feel.’

  ‘That cheered me up no end,’ Daniel said. ‘If we go sick when we get back maybe the doctor will send us South to recover.’

  ‘On the NHS.’ She took his hand. ‘Let’s go and have a snack somewhere.’

  It was strange to be so up and down, but the next day both said they had never felt healthier. Mahmoud picked them out as they came off the ferry at Thebes. ‘I’ve got very good Temples for you,’ he called, as if they might want to buy one.

  ‘Come on, then, Mahmoud. Let’s have a look.’ The car swayed in the middle of the road, and they waved at two cyclists who had Union Jacks and GB signs on their back mudguards.

  By the fallen colossal statue at Rhamesseum Jean pulled him close, to listen to a dark haired woman with glasses reading a poem called Ozy-something or other. Everyone clapped after it, and one old man in a Panama hat had tears in his eyes. ‘I think I heard that poem at school,’ she said.

  ‘I remember it, as well.’

  At the Medinat Habu, a building in fairly good nick, he thought, an Egyptologist was giving a scholarly rundown on its history. ‘I love to listen,’ Jean said. He was tall, dark and thin; she found the men very good-looking in Egypt.

  Daniel’s mind drifted off after a while, but he was brought back on hearing the man say: ‘The hereafter is a cul-de-sac.’ Couldn’t have been, if you think of all them mummies, but that’s what it sounded like, unless my ears are melting in the heat.

  They sat on the steps to eat cheese rolls and bananas from Daniel’s haversack. After the great breakfast – first an English one, and then a continental – he couldn’t face much more. He passed the bottle of water. ‘I expect Mahmoud’s eating his grub in a tomb.’

  ‘He’ll have a siesta as well. It’s cooler there.’

  ‘That’s what we want,’ giving her a look she knew well.

  She kissed him on the lips. ‘Any time.’

  A man of about sixty stood lower down the steps with a vacant and exhausted look. Must be English, because he’s studying a map as well. Wispy grey hair straggled at the neck, though his receding chin was well shaven. He looked as if he’d had a comfortable life, so it didn’t matter that his chin gave him a weak look. He put his pale straw hat on and lifted a little pair of binoculars from around his neck to look at the view.

  ‘I think I’ve seen him somewhere before.’

  ‘Probably on telly.’ Daniel put the banana skins in a plastic bag. ‘We’ll have one more turn around the temple, then whistle up Mahmoud to take us to the boat.’

  Opening the curtains at half-past seven, he felt rid of all his ills and miseries. The large island sandbank in the middle of the river seemed to get bigger and greener every day. ‘You wouldn’t guess it was only a few miles wide if you didn’t know.’

  A haze above the palm trees and fields lining the opposite bank suggested that the cultivable area went on into infinity. She yawned. ‘I suppose we’d better get our breakfast. Hey, though, I enjoyed that vodka last night.’

  ‘Me as well. Booze is allus good medicine. We’ll get some more on the way back.’ Maybe the light was different from a few days ago, but the length of his aerial wire lay clearly on the terrace where it had fallen. Unless he had some grappling irons, to scale up from outside, the only way onto the place was through one of the rooms on the first floor, but if he went down to a door, knocked on it and said: ‘Do you mind if I go through your room and get over the balcony onto that terrace so that I can fetch my aerial wire back?’ they would either think he was loony and tell him to fuck off, or call the security guards, in which case he would end up working in a quarry for ten years. ‘Let’s walk around the bomb site again. I liked it there.’

  A white bird swam on water eddying inshore. ‘I want to go over the river,’ she said. ‘I love being on that boat.’

  ‘All right. Tombs today, bomb site tomorrow.’

  But in the morning she was down again. Whatever it was came back full strength. The trouble was, he thought, that when you’re with somebody who’s badly it’s easy to feel the same way yourself. He fought it off, and fed her the antibiotics she had refused at the last bout. He came up from lunch with choice pieces in a serviette, but at the sight of them she turned to the wall. She took a glass of water dashed with vodka and went to sleep. He laid a hand on her forehead, but there was no fever.

  The area between the hotel and town was squalid and crumbly, in no way like neat rows of houses at home, so he turned back when halfway there. You need someone with you when walking in a foreign place. A tubby little tanker lorry laid black smoke along the road before turning into a petrol depot. Even when only two hundred yards from the hotel a horse-drawn carriage slowed in the hope of a fare. He wanted to throw a tip without taking a ride, but that would be insulting. Back in the busy l
obby he went to the counter and changed another fifty pounds. While signing for them he remembered the aerial of his radio.

  Dozens of doors lined either side of the corridor but he knew roughly which one the terrace was level with, and as luck would have it a door near enough was wide open. Wearing plimsolls, he went noiselessly in. The bed was made up, a suitcase by the table as if somebody was about to leave or had just come. No other sign, He stepped quickly across and lifted the handle of the window-door. So far, all clear. In seconds he was over the balcony and down six feet onto the terrace. The sun made liver-red streaks over the palm trees across the river.

  Now that he was down he couldn’t see the aerial. Eyes in every room must be riveted on what I’m doing, bent double and staring at the concrete. Let ’em stare. He wanted to be in contact with the world, and nobody was going to stop him. He grabbed an end of the thin wire, wrapped it around his fist, and joyously put the neat ball into his pocket.

  Four small sailing boats were moored within the left-hook of the hotel harbour. Feeling triumphant, he looked around and waved at the great facade of windows. All he had to do now was get back into the corridor, but on reaching the balcony he didn’t know, to half a dozen windows, which one he had come through.

  Sweat made patches on his shirt, ran into his eyes as he went back and forth like, he thought, a panther trying to get back into its cage. One room he looked in showed as near as damn it a man and woman having it off on the bed – at least that’s what he would tell Jean, a blow-by-blow tale to get her randy.

  The next room was empty, as untidy as if thieves had rifled it. A lock kept him out, but just as he told himself he would be here forever, or get caught as a prowling Tom, he found a window on the catch. Edging a finger inside, he pushed and stepped in. Somebody was there but, with banging heart, he had to get back upstairs and see how Jean was.

  A young woman writing a letter at the desk looked a bit shocked, he had to admit. ‘Maintenance,’ he said.