Something to Answer For

by P. H. Newby

  The waiter came back with the drinks and Townrow released Leah from his strip of cloth but not before he wondered how the waiter would have reacted if he’d found them making love. It could have been. There was nobody else at this end of the verandah and there were deep shadows.

  “Tell me about—what did you say? Lydney?”

  The waiter was holding out his tray and Townrow had to ask Leah to lend him a pound.

  “Twenty-five scouts got drowned on a boating trip and the public raised £30,000. But the fishermen and the undertakers and the taxi drivers, they didn’t want any money, so it all went begging. The trustees of this fund wanted it to go to some scout good cause but the Charity Commissioners said no, and the High Court said no because, they said, the object of the fund had failed and the money would have to go back to the people who’d given it. Can you imagine it? A lot of this money came in five bob postal orders. There were collections at football matches. And some of the donors were dead, anyway. So, that’s how I live.”

  “What do you mean, that’s how you live?”

  “I work for the trustees, paying the money back. But I tell you it’s impossible to find these people. All the trustees want is for the money to go. All the solicitors want is for the money to go. The same applies to the Charity Commissioners and the High Court itself. So I have it, most of it, and they thank me with tears in their eyes for the devotion to duty I’m showing. They said they’d never believe anybody could be so zealous, particularly on the £1200 a year which is what I was getting. I forge the receipts. It’s easy. Do they know? Of course they know. They turn a blind eye. They’re busy men.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of getting caught?”

  “I’m not afraid of anything.”

  He told the waiter to keep the change. He could see by her grin that either she had not understood what he’d been talking about or she did not believe him. He was too tired to insist. Indeed, he went to sleep again as he watched her face. With his right hand clutching a glass, sitting upright in his chair, he felt the lids of his eyes pressed down and a great blanket of sleep cast over him. He woke up to find her still sitting there. It might have been hours later. She had not moved.

  “My right hand,” he said, “is still cold from touching the hand in that tomb.”

  “Must have been a Copt. The Moslems don’t go in for that sort of thing.”

  “I wonder if I’ve caught something.” He lifted his hand and looked at it. “Warm it, Leah.” He thrust it towards her abruptly. She took it without hesitation between both of hers and leaned forward so that she could press it to her breast. He was able to curl his fingers slightly and take a slight grip on the soft flesh above the top of her dress. “Some people would call me a crook. But they don’t understand. You see, what would happen to that money anyway? I’m doing the administration a good turn. You know that? But anyway, you’re only a crook if you feel crooked. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything wrong. I always feel good, you know. I’ve got a clear conscience. I’ve got a perfectly clear conscience.”

  “There’s Leonard,” she said, and released his hand.

  “Hallo,” said Stokes, coming up at a trot, “there’s a boat on fire at Kantara. That’s thirty kilometres down the Canal,” he added for Townrow’s benefit.

  “The conventional thing would be to say I was a crook,” Townrow went on, ignoring Stokes completely, “but as long as you don’t hurt anybody, all the rest is red tape, technicalities. Jobs for the lawyers. Take Mrs K’s property. If she doesn’t give it to me the Egyptians are going to confiscate it, aren’t they? There are two kinds of law, book law and real law. Breaking book law is like blood sports. What annoys people is not that you’re breaking it but that you’re doing a bit of good for yourself, enjoying yourself if you like. I never broke any real law. I was training to be a minister and gave it up. As a matter of fact they made me. But I know enough of the matter to know that the real law is God’s law. I’d never break that. I don’t think I could. It isn’t in my nature, except when I lose my temper.”

  “Feeling peckish?” Stokes was saying to Leah.

  “Bugger off, will you,” said Townrow. “Can’t you see I’m talking. I was just explaining that although I’m a crook I’m untouched by sin. Second thoughts, though. I’m your guest. If you know where there’s food lead me to it.”

  “When were you in a theological college?” Leah asked. He could tell he was surprising her.

  “I was expelled.”

  “Expelled?”

  “A girl reckoned she was pregnant and I believed her. The Baptists said they wouldn’t have that sort of thing and I’d better go. She wasn’t pregnant, though. She was a liar. I need never have said anything about her. Cut me off from my vocation, she did, the bitch. But you never know what is going to turn out for the best, do you? I still have dreams the bloody Baptists come and drag me back.”

  “They’re serving ham and eggs in the restaurant,” said Stokes.

  Townrow was following them along a passage when he saw a door with the word Coiffeur painted on it. It was unlikely the fellow would be on hand that time of night but he tried the handle and found the door opening. He put his hand up for the light switch. If he could find a razor he would give himself a shave. But heavy snoring told him someone was on hand and when he looked behind a screen he found a man with long, black greasy hair asleep on a truckle bed. He had to shake him to wake him up.

  “You the barber?” he demanded.

  The man looked straight up at the ceiling. His tongue was busy inside his open mouth and Townrow looked around. An earthenware pitcher sweated in one corner. He carried it over to the bed and poured a jet of water into the man’s open mouth. It filled up and Townrow went on pouring.

  “Wake up! I want a haircut and shave,” he said. “Here!” He held a bank note in front of the man’s face.

  When the barber sat up and reached for a towel tow ipe his face Townrow could see he was not much more than a boy. He was wide-awake now. For an Egyptian he had delicate features and a clear skin. He had big eyes like a woman. After staring at Townrow for a while he stood up and said in a thick voice, “Sit down in my chair, sir. I’ll boil water.”

  The floor trembled because at the other end of this sprawling wooden building they were dancing to a record player. Any minute you expected to hear the whistle and pop of exploding fireworks. To judge by the thumping of feet and the screams of laughter the pilots and their women were celebrating a victory. Townrow closed his eyes when the barber tucked a sheet under his chin.

  The barber was pressing an open razor against his throat.

  “I sleep. Why you wake me? No work in the night.”

  Townrow could have tried to grab his wrist but before he succeeded the barber would have cut his throat. He had only to press a little harder. Townrow knew that blood was already beginning to flow from a point about three inches below his left ear.

  “Get on with it, Sweeney Todd.”

  Townrow relaxed. He settled back more comfortably in the chair and lifted his chin. “Go on! Slice away,” he said. The barber was in a foul temper. Even now he might not be properly awake. He was crazy enough to gouge Townrow’s neck apart and to hell with the consequences. He was shaking with rage and excitement. Townrow knew this but went on taunting the man. He stretched out his legs and said, “You cut off my head mate and I’ll haunt you for the rest of your days.” This was more than the barber could understand but the defiance was obvious enough.

  The truth was, Townrow felt nobody could hurt him. Defiance was the word. He defied the barber, he defied Leah, Stokes, Port Said, the Canal and the planets.

  The barber hesitated, put down the razor and picked up his comb and scissors.

  “That’s better,” said Townrow. “I like the sideburns down to the lobe of the ear. But keep it clean round the neck, will you? And thin it out on top.”

  When the kettle boiled on the primus stove the barber lathered his face and gave him a cool,
refreshing shave. In the mirror Townrow could see his neck bleeding where the barber had pressed the razor ino his flesh. He kept dashing the blood away with cold water but it did not stem the flow, so he went to work with some cotton wool. He touched the wound up with a block of alum.

  “That’ll do.” Townrow stood up and took the towel out of the barber’s hand. “Now, clear out will you?” He pushed the man out and locked the door behind him. Within a matter of minutes he was asleep in the barber’s bed in spite of the noise of celebrations and when he woke the sun was shining through the uncurtained window.

  *

  The Egyptians had managed to line up the convoy due to sail south through the Canal that morning. By going to the edge of the lawn the crowd at the Yacht Club could see the first tanker in line flying the Norwegian flag and behind her a couple of Panamanian vessels. Everything was in order. But there was no movement. The sun was already very hot and the light off the water, when they looked south, unbearably brilliant. North, where the convoy lay it was so calm as to be invisible. The tankers balanced on their own reflections and not much else, it seemed.

  The French and the British were not impressed by this. Any fool could line up a convoy. The test would come at nine o’clock when the first convoy from the south was due. This would be the first run by the Egyptians themselves. On the other side of the water from the Yacht Club —the harbour was about two hundred wards wide at that point—was the resthouse where the Egyptians were. Townrow heard a man with some binoculars say he could see old Mahmoud Bakri sitting in the resthouse drinking tea.

  Thompson came up to Townrow and said, “That’s a nasty cut on your face there. Lucky not to lose your eye. You a member? With Stokes? D’you know, there was an extraordinary chap here during the night, said he was with Stokes. D’you know him? Beard. Smell of swamp. Wore a turban. No time to ask questions, of course. I have no wish to unmask one of Her Majesty’s intelligence agents. Have one of these cigarettes? Syrian tobacco. I don’t go along with all this talk about the Egyptians necessarily making a balls of running the Canal. What’s difficult about it anyway? You’re not supposed to say it but half these merchant skippers could take their own boats through if they were allowed to. I’m not claiming the Gyppos could do it straight away. It’s a matter of health. They’re all sick men. You ever notice their eyes? Defective vision. Once they’ve got a real health service going things’ll be better. But that’ll take years. I don’t believe in the natural inferiority of one race to another. It’s a matter of physical well-being. Statistically, every inhabitant of the Nile valley has three chronic diseases. They didn’t have schistosomiasis in Ancient Egypt. Nor bilharzia. Nor malaria. They had a different irrigation system and it just used to sweep all the bugs away. Take the Pyramids. Wonderful edifices. The Great Pyramid was built before the discovery of the wheel. But it’s laid down so accurately you can use it to check true north against the magnetic north of your compass. I’ve done it. After all, I understand navigation. You can use the orientation of the Great Pyramid to check a modern compass.”

  There were up to fifty people in the Club, men mostly, some in the bar drinking but the majority out on the lawn, looking south. They had sunglasses but they still needed to shade their eyes. Townrow had not seen Leah for some time. He could not see Stokes either. Wherever they were they were probably together and Townrow wondered why he did not feel more jealous.

  “They haven’t sent for you?” Townrow said to Thompson.

  “What d’you mean?”

  “The Egyptians haven’t sent you an S.O.S.?”

  “They will, all right. Bad coordination of hand and eye. Funny thing, though, they make very good squash-players.”

  “So there you are! You’ve had a shave.” Townrow looked up to see it was Leah, rather faded in the morning light. Her evening get-up looked vulgar. She was amazed by what the shave had done for him. “We couldn’t find you so we went round to Leonard’s house. He’s been showing me pictures of his family.”

  “Yes,” said Townrow, “but he’s English. It’s pretty much what I’d expect of him. Don’t get any false confidence. I’m Irish, remember. Now what’s going on?” he asked as a little burst of cheering was heard. She had blue on her eyelids and he hated it.

  “It’s nine o’clock,” said Thompson.

  “You look thin,” said Leah. “You look very thin and yellow and ill.”

  Townrow got up and went down to the edge of the water. Some of the pilots were so delighted they were hopping about like fleas. They ought to know. They were the experts. If the convoy did not show up by nine o’clock that must mean it was not coming at all. If that was not a safe assumption these men would not be celebrating. They could not afford to look silly. Some of them were waving across the water and shouting, trying to attract the attention of the Egyptians in the resthouse. Townrow could see these Egypians very clearly. They were not waving or dancing. They were just looking into the sun.

  Leah followed Townrow and said, “It looks as though something’s gone wrong.”

  This maddened Townrow. Perhaps he had been more jealous than he supposed. “I’d like to see those bloody boats come up. I’d like to see the grins turn glassy on those faces. Self-satisfied bastards!”

  Leah shrugged. “Nobody likes to think just anybody can do his job.”

  “Particularly when he’s been paid a hundred quid a week for it. Shows him up for the fraud he is.”

  “How can you talk of fraud?”

  “I know what it feels like, all right. I know it from the inside. This is different. Fraud on this scale makes me want to throw up. This is international fraud. This is politics.”

  “I don’t see the difference.”

  “It’s O.K. to lie and cheat in a good cause, isn’t it? That’s what I say. But if it’s a bad cause you’re fighting for, it’s sod-all in the reckoning you’ve got some of the minor virtues, like being kind to animals.”

  “You’ve got to do both, I think. You’ve got to have a good cause and you’ve got to be good in yourself.”

  “It’s not that easy,” said Townrow. “At least, not to me it isn’t. But I start out with a low opinion of what I’m capable of.”

  Stokes had approached without being noticed. “These Egyptian pilots must have been on duty for sixteen hours. They’d have come aboard at Port Tewfik about four yesterday afternoon. When they got to Ismailia there was nobody to take over, so they came on. No wonder they grounded ’em.”

  “That definite?” asked Townrow. “You’ve got that definite? They’ve run ’em aground?”

  “Look for yourself. They’ve been running the Canal for nine hours and they’ve made a mess of it already.”

  “They seem to be stunned,” said the man with the binoculars trained on the Egyptians in the resthouse. “Not a flicker of movement.”

  Townrow looked around for a boat. He had the idea of going across to the resthouse and shaking these incompetent Egyptians by the hand. There were no small craft in sight. If he tried to get into one of the sailing craft no doubt he would be stopped before he got very far. Yet it would take half an hour to travel round via the ferry. He wanted to stop the Egyptians telephoning for help from these gloating pilots. The phone began ringing indoors and he had already turned to rush and intercept the call when a strange, protracted gasp, a sigh almost, went up from the crowd on the lawn and Townrow looked south to see a tanker coming out of the Canal. Behind was another tanker. And another. They came out of the brilliant morning like dummies, a line of stage props wheeled forward with no sort of up and down motion, just a steady, unbelievable glide. Townrow began to laugh and this was the only sound except for the telephone which went on ringing.

  “Qu’est-ce qu’ils vont faire pour le voyage de re tour? C’est un question, non? Us doivent être rendus.” The speaker was a little moustachioed man with pink, moist lips.

  The pilots cheered up at the thought this was only the beginning of the Egyptians’ troubles. On the balcony
of the resthouse there was no obvious rejoicing. The man with the binoculars said Mahmoud Bakri was patting his face as though to wake himself up. People were coming and going. So much was obvious without the help of glasses. No doubt they were pleased the convoy was so nearly on time. Ten minutes late was nothing. The Egyptians knew it. The French and British knew it.

  Townrow first realised something odd was happening to him when he found he could not focus his eyes properly. They were still fixed on a point a mile away. He could see quite clearly the particular tanker that happened to be coming out of the Canal but when he tried to look at the leaders of the convoy they were vague shapes. At the same time he could feel his excitement growing. Leah was standing near enough for him to grab her by the hand. At first he thought it was sexual excitement. He knew how that particular rage of happiness could begin. ‘O.K.’ a voice would seem to say, ‘Let’s drop the pretence for a while. Your silly, boring life isn’t the real thing. This is the real thing.’ When he had kissed Leah in the gharry there had been just a little take-off. But this was tremendous. It almost had him screaming.

  “What is it?” said Leah.

  He could not say a word. His jaw was set. He was grinning into the sun like an idiot. She put an arm around his waist and steered him towards an empty chair. His legs must have functioned because he made the chair and sat down, still looking fixedly south and grinning. His scorched and pitted face erupted sweat.

  “You feel sick?” said Leah.

  He sat, hands on the arms of his chair, heels together, unable to move or talk but crackling with happiness. This was the way to live. By God, this was truth. If he stayed there for ever, that was all right by him. The sun would roar over him by day and the moon baste him at night. He remembered a number of naked men with long tubes in their mouths. That was the glass factory in Arab Town years ago, when he was in the army, where the workers kept going on hashish and water. Townrow had one of the pellets and a swig of water before going home and this was why he now thought of the naked glassblowers, because he had the same joy and excitement now as then. There was the same clear awareness of the possibility he could run about inside his own body. He could course between feet, bowels, breast and brain, singing, laughing, making great speeches. The difference was this time he had taken nothing. All that had happened was the arrival of the convoy more or less on the dot.