by P. H. Newby
“I don’t know Greece,” said Townrow. “Maybe you have got crooked government there. Maybe the French have too. And all the others. I don’t think they’re all honest men in Westminster, either.”
“When our friend accused the British Government of being partly responsible for the death of his father you rejected the possibility. An American would have considered the possibility. And I as a Greek, would have considered the possibility. Here is the great difference between the English and the rest of the world. You live very smug.”
“Snug?”
“Smug. You are smug, like owls.”
“Owls?”
“Or missionaries.”
“I tell you,” said the Israeli, “the British Government carry responsibility for the death of my father.”
“Crap.”
“Don’t say that.”
Townrow thought the fellow was going to punch him. So he stood up with the intention of clearing off before a fight started.
“You’re sick,” he said. “But everybody’s not sick. You want to remember that. We’re not all like you.”
This amounted to a claim that he, personally, lived in a glow of spiritual well-being. He had not always. Until he got used to the idea of being a snake he used to punish himself. Those binges, those long walks, all that talking about himself whenever he found somebody who would listen! He liked to explain he had a misfortune in his life. A little, vital spring was broken. He was a mal-functioning machine and he liked kicking himself to see whether that made him go any better.
It was a phase. He had been able to snap out of it. So far from punishing himself, most people would say he did himself rather well these days. He liked nice things: food, clothes, drink, women. The main thing was to be honest about yourself, be yourself, accept yourself as a crook, if that’s what you were, enjoy yourself.
Townrow became aware that he and the Israeli had been standing and looking into each other’s eyes for some time now.
Unexpectedly the Israeli put a hand on Townrow’s shoulder and said, “Just because you’re a nice guy yourself, it doesn’t mean you’ve got a nice government.” He even smiled.
*
The Immigration Officer was asking him questions in the airless heat of a summer night. Why was he visiting the United Arab Republic? How long did he plan to stay?
“A friend of mine died and I’m here to marry his rich widow.”
Townrow was at once marched off by a couple of soldiers to a small room furnished only with a couple of canvas seated chairs and a trestle table. There was a small barred window high up against the ceiling. Half an hour later one of the soldiers brought him coffee but refused to talk. Light had faded from the small window and a single electric bulb had been switched on before the door opened again and Townrow was escorted down the corridor by the same two soldiers. He stepped into an office and saw two civilians sitting behind a table with his passport open before them.
“What was the name of the friend who died?” They were the leanest Egyptians Townrow had ever seen inside good suits and he assumed they were the New Men of the country, army officers. They were not smoking and they did not ask him to sit down.
“I was making a joke. She’s sixty at least. She’s got a moustache.”
“But if she is very rich?”
“Colonel,” said Townrow to the man who had spoke, “if you were thirty-two next birthday would you marry a woman of sixty-odd?”
“What is a Fund Distributor?” asked the other man who was now studying the passport.
Townrow had thought this a real joke when he had filled in the application for his new passport; but now he was not so sure.
“I distribute a fund which cannot be spent for the charitable purpose it was collected.”
“Is this a profession, a Fund Distributor?”
“Certainly.”
“For what was the money collected?”
“A lot of people were drowned. It is a complicated legal issue.”
“Where does this rich woman live you are going to marry?”
“I am not going to marry her.”
“Why not, if she’s really rich? If I were not married already, I would marry a rich old woman,” said the Colonel, “but I have a good wife already, thank God. This widow lives in Cairo?”
“Port Said.”
“Ah!” The two officers spoke together. They were silent. “So, you wish to visit the Canal Zone.” The younger of the two had sorted this out for himself and the elder became excited. He threw a lot of questions. Was the widow still living in the house of the deceased? If Mr Townrow was not offering marriage to her what was the purpose of his visit? How did he come to meet the Khoury family in the first place?
“So you are a soldier! You were stationed how long at Port Said?”
He was marched back to his cell and spent another hour, in darkness this time, listening to the breathing of the soldier on the other side of the door. The interrogation had made him sweat. He slackened his tie, undid his collar and was trying to find a dry bit of handkerchief to dab his face with when the light went on, the door opened and the Colonel walked in with his passport.
“O.K. Mr Townrow,” he said, “You can go and I hope you have a pleasant stay in the U.A.R.”
“Go? Where to, now I’ve missed my train?”
“There’ll be a train in the morning. There are plenty of hotels.”
“I’ve no money for hotel bills.”
The Colonel shrugged. They had already left the Immigration block and were walking over to the Customs where Townrow’s luggage presumably still was.
“This fund,” said the Colonel, “when you have distributed it will you distribute another? If not, it does not seem to me a real career.”
“There were anonymous contributions and collections and the papers were lost. It’s a big Fund. This is a life work.”
“The money can’t be spent on the families of all these drowned persons?”
“No.”
“This is the law in England?”
“Yes.”
The Colonel thought about this. His mouth was bunched so that his moustache stood out aggressively. “There must be opportunities to put some of this money in your own pocket, then. After a time people get tired. They forget.”
“What are you accusing me of?”
“I should be very tempted if I were a Fund Distributor.” The Colonel shrugged. “It is human nature. When everybody has forgotten about this fund who would miss a thousand pounds, two thousand pounds? But I expect you are a very honest man.”
“Do I have to answer that question?”
“Good luck with the old woman,” said the Colonel when finally he handed Townrow over to a Customs officer. He marched off, probably thinking of rich old women and large charitable funds having no legal outlet. Patches of sweat that looked quite black in the arclights sprouted from the armpits of his silvery jacket.
*
Townrow’s only plan, once arrived in Port Said, was to go straight to Mrs K’s but the heat and smells of early afternoon struck him as soon as he walked out of the station. Foreign parts. These were foreign and stinking and overlaid with his own private military recollections. The army was all right. He’d never been very regimental but he’d enjoyed it. Better than life in the suburbs fiddling the accounts. He knew how to stalk and shoot a man. There must be some way of using skills like that. In a bar off the Edgware Road a man who said he was Major Bray tried to recruit him to guard a pipeline in South America for a hundred quid a week all found. He told Major Bray this sounded too soft and respectable. Bray said there were plenty of jobs for trained soldiers. Why couldn’t they keep in touch? Nothing had come of it but from time to time Townrow had fancied himself as a mercenary shooting it out in a tropical forest. He was fancying himself now but the only fight he found himself in was with a couple of porters. They wanted his two bags.
A hot wind blew from the west, straight out of Arab Town. Townrow put on his d
ark glasses, fought off the two porters and climbed into a Ford cab of the early nineteen-thirties, with seats of cracked leather, smelling of hay and goat and petrol and jasmine. He decided he would not go straight to the old girl’s. She’d be asleep anyway. He would go to one of those places out of bounds to other ranks when last he had been in town. He would check in at the Eastern Exchange and show he was independent. Whatever happened Mrs K was to understand he was independent.
While his bags were being taken up he had a double scotch in the bar. Off duty he used to come into this place in his civvies in spite of the “officers only” rule and it hadn’t changed. The three great fans twirled against the dun ceiling. The bar-tender was new but Townrow recognised the grey-headed man with one eye who had his gallabieh tucked up around his waist and walked around with a mop and pail of water. He almost greeted him. The room was up on the third floor, overlooking a courtyard. He took a shower and stretched out naked on the bed. The phone might be ringing for him at that very minute in the Hampstead flat but on the whole he thought it pretty unlikely. Liz wouldn’t ring him. The bloody office wouldn’t ring him because they thought he was on holiday. Well, he was on holiday, wasn’t he? He was on a month’s holiday. It wouldn’t matter if he took five weeks, six weeks. One good thing about the office, they let him run the fund how he liked. After a couple of months they might start something. It wasn’t exactly a nice feeling that was brought on by the realisation that even when he’d been away three months the only people to care would be the office. It was enough to make him think of Major Bray and wonder whether he was in the telephone book. What was wrong with being hired to kill? There was a chance of getting bumped off yourself, and that was good too, wasn’t it?
He woke in the dark to find the mosquitoes biting him. The office didn’t know where he was, neither did Bray, and neither did Mrs K for that matter. He had not told her he was on his way. She might at that very moment be sitting down to write another letter to him. She might have deteriorated to the point she was actually handing in a cable. Or phoning.
Somewhere at the back of the Eastern Exchange was a little park with rough grass and palm trees. You took the street leading north out of the north-east corner, once left into a much narrower street where the houses had huge wooden doors, grilles on the downstairs windows and verandahs on the first floor with a lot of fancy ironwork. Townrow put on his linen suit and made off in this direction.
During the war-time black-out the only sure way of locating the Cyprus Bar was by remembering it was opposite the great white-washed portico of what looked like some religious institution, a convent maybe. It stood out in moonlight, starlight, or even the mild phosphorescence that seemed to hang in even the darkest summer night. If Christou still ran the place he might not remember Townrow after all that time.
But he did. Townrow parted the fish-netting and stepped into the familiar den, lined with barrels, lit by a 50-watt electric bulb that swung inside a protecting cage. The light was so bad the place seemed larger than it was. The corners were pocked with deep shadows. There was the peculiar pickled-walnut reek of vatted alcohol. Christou rated friendliness pretty high so there was no bar-counter to separate him from his customers. They stood, or sat around on chairs, Maltese, Cypriots and Greeks mainly, drinking arrack or ouzo or Cyprus brandy, talking, smoking and spitting into a great china pot decorated with a green dragon that swallowed its own tail. Christou was drawing a measure from one of the sherry casks when Townrow came in. He looked up.
The man had aged. His thin white hair looked almost lemon in that light. The rather heavy face had dropped. Instead of being hidden behind a lot of fat his eyes stood out like a bull’s. He had real dewlaps. Perhaps he’d been ill. He’d lost a good couple of stone but he looked as smart as ever in his white silk shirt and blue slacks.
“You got any Greek brandy?”
Christou spoke English with a good accent. Townrow remembered that he’d been a schoolmaster in Limassol before knocking somebody off (“It was a feud. Nothing dishonourable,”) and having to run for it. “I’ve got Greek brandy, certainly. But it’s just scented piss.”
“Double Camba.”
“Have this Cyprus brandy. It’s on me. British and best.”
He drew a quarter of a pint into a tumbler, handed it to Townrow and disappeared through a door to come back a few moments later smoking a little cigar and carrying a garland of jasmine which he hung round Townrow’s neck. “The last Englishman I served with Cyprus brandy dropped dead in the street and I’d like you to have your flowers now.” He was busy for some time serving and wisecracking, in Greek mainly but a certain amount of English for Townrow’s benefit. From time to time he took a swig from a blue jug. Men ducked through the fish-netting and asked for arrack or wine and a glass of water.
“You ought to have a fan,” said Townrow. “Either that or take the roof off.”
Christou stopped and looked at him. “I know you.” Sweat dropped from the end of his nose and collected like oil on the point of his chin. “I knew you the moment you came in. You’re Sergeant Townrow.”
“My name’s Bray, Major Bray. Have one yourself.”
“No thanks, major. I got a liver and two kidneys to support.” He took another swig out of his blue jug. “The last time I thought of you was when the British Army sailed out.”
“But that was nine whole months ago!”
“Well, I thought you’d abandoned me, sergeant. No letters, no perfume, no flowers. I had to exercise a real effort of will. I looked at all those Gyppo brass bands and said my farewell to Sergeant Townrow and the British Empire. You heard about the bands? They had the Salvation Army, the fifes and drums of the Camel Corps and the Zagazig Zither Band lined up to give the big musical raspberry as the troop ships sailed out. But for once the British got their information right. They’d sailed the night before. I looked at those frustrated Gyppo mugs and felt proud to be a British Protected citizen with permission to enter the U.K. without let or hindrance. What brings you back to Port Said, sergeant? It can’t be a cruise. You’d never have the money, you soak. So you’re either one of the advance party or spying.”
“My name’s Bray,” said Townrow. “Major Bray.”
By this time there were only three customers left and Christou was enjoying himself so much he told them to help themselves. He sat with Townrow in a corner drinking out of his blue jug. He rolled about in the English language like a colt in a dust bowl, legs in the air, so to speak, and whinnying. “All these men are spies. They don’t come in here for drink. They are trying to trap me. I tell them I have suffered under British imperialism. I am an exile from my country, and I poison British troops daily. Or did when there were any about. Sergeant Townrow!” He fetched another tumbler of brandy. “When I have poisoned you and presented them with the corpse maybe they’ll leave me alone.”
“How did Elie Khoury die?” said Townrow.
Christou put down his jug and began shouting at his customers in Greek and kitchen Arabic. He allowed them time to drink up, refused to take their money and when the last of them had gone, shut and bolted the door behind him.
“Now we’re here,” he said to Townrow, “just the two of us with all this drink.” He produced a bottle of Votris out of a crate and set it on the table between them. “I had completely forgotten, dear sergeant, that Elie was a friend of yours. Well, here’s to him.” And they drank a couple of inches of Votris each.
“This is all right,” said Townrow.
“Specially imported from Athens.” The sweat stood out on Christou’s forehead like little pearly blisters. “Poor Elie. I’d have gone to his funeral if he’d had one. I could have gone too.” His eyebrows shot up. He spread out his hands. “What an Odyssey. That woman must have some Greek blood in her.”
“Why didn’t Elie have a funeral?”
“He did. It was in Beirut. I couldn’t go. Did you know there was a law against taking bodies out of Egypt? Neither did I. Neither did anyone else
. Maybe so many mummies got exported the Gyppos became neurotic about it. No, when your corpse is carried out of here, sergeant, they’ll bury you in the Protestant cemetery, down beyond the sewage farm. They told Madame her husband would have to be buried in Egypt. They were after his bones for ivory. You know what she did? She put the coffin in one of these little fishing boats and sailed out into the Med. In the middle of the day. The Harbour-Master saw her, and the Captain of the Coastguards saw her, and the Port Medical Officer, and the Inspector of Customs and the Garrison Commander and the Naval Officer-in-Charge and the Captain of the ferryboat. They all saw her. She was wearing a sheet tied round her head like a nurse. And she had big rubber boots. There were blankets and a crate of food and bottles. The coffin was in the bottom of the boat with nothing over it. The lieutenant in charge of the ack-ack battery near the De Lesseps statue saw the sun flashing on the handles of the coffin as she sailed past. I went on to the breakwater and waved. Maybe everybody thought she was going to drop him overboard once she got outside the harbour. That would be in territorial waters. It could be held the law was not mocked. But she sailed to Beirut. Alone! She took a week. Nearly three hundred miles! Then they wouldn’t let her ashore! There’s a law in Lebanon against bringing bodies into the country!”
Townrow guessed this was all lies. “You said he had a funeral.”
Christou put the empty bottle back in the crate and pulled out a full one. “If I spoke harshly about Greek brandy I want you to remember it’s just a matter of style. Sergeant! I am a Greek and I have never been to Athens. We Cypriots are purer Greeks than the Greeks of Athens. All this makes one bitter. You can pay for this bottle. I’ll pay for the next one. Elie had his funeral. But first of all I have to tell you that Madame was intercepted by the Israeli navy! They made her open the coffin. Can you imagine it? The deep, rolling, blue water all around them, a Jew gunboat, and this mad old English woman with the skin peeling off her nose. You can see the coffin with the lid off and Elie’s face and crossed hands in the midday sun. The Jews took their hats off while Madame swore at them. They all bobbed up and down. There was a dolphin. They even asked her how she knew her course. She had the salt dried on her face and hands, so much white powder. Her father was a sailor. By night she kept the North Star well on her port. By day she’d recognise any landfall. She’d know Carmel. Beyond that Naqura. The truth is, the set of the wind this time of year you wouldn’t go far wrong if you just sailed with it. There’s a dolphin I know, goes that way too in the middle of June. He may have had something to do with it. Thirty miles out at sea you can see snow on Lebanon. She came back by air. I asked her what she did with the boat. She said she’d burned it on the shore.”
