by P. H. Newby
Townrow kept his eye on the gun. “I’m a friend of Christou. I’ve just been in jail with him. What’s wrong with looking for a woman anyway? What’s so absurd about that? I’d rather be looking for a woman than shooting a man down in cold blood when there’s a war on. I’d have thought you had other things on your mind. It seems a bit obsessed to me, shooting a man for some private reason in a war. The chances are we’ll both be dead in a few hours anyway. So, you’re absurd with your gun and your Greek patriotism and your moneymaking. Though you don’t look as though you make a hell of a lot out of arms smuggling, not judging by the state of those shoes.”
True, they were cracked, both of them, across the toe and bright blue socks could be seen shining through. Both men studied these shoes. Aristides allowed the gun to hang slackly in his hand.
“What did Christou say?”
“He made out to the Egyptians I was a Jew.”
“Are you a Jew?”
“No.”
Aristides laughed violently. “Did Christou really think you were a Jew?”
“Of course not. It was his sense of humour.”
Aristides frowned suddenly. “During the past six months I have exported a hundred and twenty thousand pounds worth of Czech rifles and automatics and grenades. How much have I made? Nothing! I am not a merchant. I am not Elie Khoury.”
“What did he die of?”
“Fright.”
“I can believe that.” Townrow did not think Aristides would bother to shoot him now, but he was so disappointed at not finding Leah that it seemed to matter less than he would have expected. “But was he frightened of you or was he frightened of his wife?”
“Both.” Aristides began laughing again. “That was the truth. He wasn’t such a rich man. He was just a money grabber but he wasn’t so rich. And it didn’t matter whether he lived or died. He was old. Now you? You are an English investigator?”
“I was his friend.”
This impressed Aristides unfavourably. More creases appeared on his face. “You think I do not understand what friendship means? I too would do anything for my friend. You, for example.”
“Am I your friend?”
“Of course you are my friend. Let me tell you what I mean. Have you heard the English radio? The English will be in occupation of Port Said tomorrow. Assume you are still alive. Assume I am still alive. You then go to the English and say,’ Here is Aristides who smuggled arms into Cyprus’, and then they arrest me.”
“If they know where you are.”
“I shall keep in touch. Of course they will know where I am. All that is required is word from you. Will you give that word?”
“No.”
“You see, we are friends and there is honour between friends, and that is why I did not shoot you two minutes ago. Do you know what I was typing? I will show you. It is an account of the export of arms to Cyprus, with names, prices and dates. It is complete. I sew it into my shirt. We are friends and of course I believe you when you say you will not speak. But it is possible I am arrested? Yes. What do I do? I show this document.”
“You mean you’d turn in this evidence so that you get let off?”
“Let off? They would pay me. Of course the information is not accurate. It is plausible, but it is not accurate. It makes no trouble for my friends but it pleases the English.”
This was the moment Aristides tucked away his gun. He flexed his shoulders, shot out his chin, rolled his eyes and generally put as many face muscles into movement as possible. He looked as though he was having some kind of fit. But it was only his way of effecting a transition from patriot and assassin to joking friend. “I wouldn’t tell you this if I didn’t trust you. Look, read this paper. It is addressed to the Commander-in-Chief, British Expeditionary Force, United Arab Republic. That is right, yes?”
Townrow sat down to read this document and Aristides peered over his shoulder. The typing was single spacing, both sides of the paper, the English was grotesque, and it took Townrow some time to work through.
“Nothing about Elie’s funeral,” he commented.
“What about it?”
“You know, the boat going out to sea, the coffin and the rifles.”
Aristides moved round to sit opposite. He looked puzzled. “Coffin and rifles? No, I do not know this story. What is this story?”
So Townrow told him more or less as he remembered Christou rehearsing it back in the jail but Aristides only laughed and shook his head. “The police would not let you move a body out of the basins in this way. And it would be too complicated. There is no need for such stratagems. The Egyptians don’t mind guns going to Cyprus. We send them in big boats. How else?”
“Christou’s a bit of a comedian.”
“Yes?”
“He’s got imagination.”
“Christou got himself into jail because he knew it would be the safest place in the bombing. When the British troops are back he will make lots of money from his bar.”
“And you?”
“When the British come there will be plenty of guns and ammunition. We really will have to smuggle them then. Maybe Christou was telling what would happen in the future.”
“Not the way he talked.”
“It is in the future.”
The two battles, one to the south and one to the west, seemed simultaneously to re-engage. After dropping a load far on the other side of the lighthouse but dead in line with it planes bellied up overhead and flashed in the sun. They winked in the cobalt sky and vanished like stars shooting and scattering in the high, steady brilliance. The bombs burst with a hollow grating as though vast casks partly filled with pebbles were being hammered and rolled. Bursts of fire came from Port Said itself. Perhaps this was the odd tank crew just clearing their guns.
Aristides was talking in this extraordinary unbuttoned way because he was alarmed and confused. When you were with Christou you believed him. When you were with Aristides he was convincing too. On the whole, more convincing. He might even be right about the boat trip with the coffin being still in the future.
“I was looking for somebody.” Townrow stood up and began to move off. “You sure you haven’t seen her? Straight nose, sort of slightly rounded at the end and a lot of blackish-red hair flounced up and coming untidy. Moves her elbows when she walks. When she’s old and fat she’ll waddle. I just reckoned she’d be here.”
“Give me back my paper.” Aristides stretched out his hand.
Townrow looked at the paper once more, then tore it into strips and scattered them on the ground. He walked back under the loofah vine and turned right into a rose garden where the beds were marked out in red brick. The rose bushes were mostly dead and leafless. A spray of water revolved over a small brown lawn.
The fishing boat, the open coffin, and the wooden crucifix were so powerfully rooted in his mind he guessed Aristides was right; and that if it was not an event he was moving away from it was an event he was moving towards. If he jumped across this garden of dead roses and looked behind those flowering bushes who would he see? Leah? Elie? His father? His mother? The tangled garden was weird to him. On the other side of a cactus he might meet himself walking with Leah and carrying on that conversation about the mad husband while the husband himself, a shadow in the air, followed closely with a grin. So Townrow did in fact jump across the garden of dead roses and look behind the flowering bushes. An empty beer crate, a dead cat and orange peel. It made him wonder just whose would be the beaked face in that open coffin. And the woman standing up, dressed as a man. Or was it a man dressed as a woman?
*
By mid-afternoon Townrow had decided Leah was nowhere in Port Fouad. He had been to the Yacht Club, the Plage des Enfants and eaten a bowl of rice, black beans and chopped meat in a dive where servants gathered when off-duty. Troops were everywhere but they took no notice of Townrow who shambled about with a strip of cloth tied round his head now—he had picked it up in the Greek Sailing Club—like some perfunctory turba
n. It covered his forehead and stopped the sweat from running into his eyes. At the Plage he washed his feet in the sea. An Egyptian sentry here gave him bread and cheese.
The French planes came over at 3.30 and Townrow realised he was caught in another drop, this time by the Paras. He had surprisingly little trouble making off with a dinghy from the Sailing Club jetty, rowing out into the middle of the Basin and watching the French take Port Fouad while he rested on his oars. Anti-aircraft fire came from the Eastern Mole, from Port Said itself, from Navy House and other emplacements on the other side of Port Fouad, no doubt near the salt beds. It was entirely ineffective. The Paras came out of the low-flying planes so quickly they seemed linked by a thread. It looked like the plane losing its entrails. Then the chutes opened and the men could be seen rocking over the red roof tops apparently using their automatics while they were still in the air, spraying the ground. One man, whose parachute failed to open, fell smack into the water about half a mile from where Townrow was resting. When Townrow arrived at the spot there was no sign of him.
He expected the fishermen’s quay to be crawling with troops but it was unguarded and even the gate was wide open. Egyptian tanks patrolled in front of the Casino Palace. He cut along a sidestreet past the old Italian Consulate and struck a square where men in gallabiehs were handing out weapons from a truck to all and sundry. Townrow saw a boy of about sixteen go off with a Bren gun and was tempted to grab a weapon himself. You never knew when you might need a bit of self protection. But he was genuinely scared what he might do if he had a weapon and a French para came round the corner letting fly with one of those neat collapsible guns. You could shout at a British soldier. But a Frenchman? If he had a gun he might shoot this Frenchman down, so he thought he had better not have one.
At the Abravanel flat the door was opened by Leah herself and he was so surprised he just stared at her. The first thing he noticed was that she was wearing trousers, navy blue pants. He had never seen her in this getup before. They were men’s trousers. She might have taken them off a British bobby. She wore a collar, tie, and a grey woollen cardigan. As if this was not enough she had her hair drawn back tightly. This had the effect of throwing the lines of her face into prominence. It was bonier than he thought. She had large cheekbones; and, by God, she looked tired. She was pale and there were patches under her eyes. The coldness was what struck him. She did not seem surprised to see him, nor particularly pleased.
“They released you?”
“Of course they released me. They had nothing against me. Anyway, they were afraid because of my American passport.”
She stood aside so that he could enter. “They released you too?”
“I rang your father. He said I wasn’t to come.”
“Oh!” She made an impatient sort of grunt. “Well, he’s right. You can’t stay.”
“Oh no?” He tried to put an arm round her waist but she pushed it away. “I’m going home. I’m getting out of this dreadful country. If my father won’t come that’s his affair. I am going back to my husband.”
“Are you now?” He had thought he was so marshy inside that nothing could churn him up again. Coming through the streets he had felt his guts to be so cold and set they were probably past normal functioning. Inside, he had solidified. No currents flowed. Just seeing her so unexpectedly was enough to show him how wrong he had been. And now when she started talking about her husband the palms of his hands began to sweat.
“Do you mind if I sit down? I had a court martial, you know.”
“What happened?”
He gave her the outline until he reached the point where Amin was shot.
“Go on,” she said. By this time she was sitting down too. They were both drinking vermouth. Abravanel had shuffled in. They both ignored him so he shuffled out again.
“What are you dressed like that for?” Townrow asked.
He realised that he did not want to tell her about Amin dying. This was a happening he would only want to relate to someone who felt warm towards him. Leah was not warm. She was not exactly hostile but she had changed. He did not think he could tell her about Amin in a way she would understand. So he described the encounter with Aristides and how it had reminded him of the time they were in the Greek Sailing Club together, when he could not find her. And then he did find her only to forget he found her.
“Oh, that,” she said.
What had happened? Townrow looked at her, biting his lip. He had a feeling he would slap her face hard before long, simply to break this icy façade. Had she received news from her husband?
“You remember the time you told me he was in the loony bin because you kept cuckolding him?” Candidly, this was a fact about life he had not wanted to remember either. He could see this poor bastard’s head popping up through the slime and his boot pushing it back again. Nobody normal would want to remember a detail like that. Was it any wonder he forgot he found her? Christ! Now he had made her cry. It was like watching a man cry, the way she was dressed. It was awful. Amin was a man and he had cried.
Townrow thought that if only he had dropped on Amin the moment he left the train he would still be alive. He could talk to Amin. They understood one another. When one spoke the truth the other knew he was speaking the truth; when one lied the other knew he lied. You could not expect much more from a relationship than that. Whole societies could be built on it. Amin, in fact, always told the truth. Anyway, Townrow always believed him and it amounted to the same thing. How could he tell Leah about a man like that dying? He regretted that man. To his surprise Townrow found tears running down his own cheeks. That made three of them.
“Anyway,” she said, “I’m leaving this country. When the landings have been made there will be British and French troops here and I shall go. There will be boats.”
Townrow saw her standing at the prow. He had a good view of her from where he was lying in the coffin because, something he had not realised before, the coffin was not lying absolutely flat in the bottom of the boat. There must have been a block of wood under its head. He could see her, simply by looking down his nose.
“I am not afraid for my father any more. When there is a European army here the Jews will be all right. Did I tell you my husband was sick? He needs me more than my father. A woman has to choose.”
“Yes, you told me your husband was sick.” He could not understand her game but now that he realised she was going to stand up at the front of the boat wearing those policeman’s trousers he guessed she was going back to her husband because she knew he, Townrow, was a dead man anyway. If her husband was sane enough to understand rational communication she would be able to tell him about this man she slept with and buried at sea. That way she could put the poor bastard back a couple of cures. He saw the crystal head surfacing and her words hitting it. Momentarily, the head was entire but opaque because of the crackle and then it shattered. A crack and a groan.
It just made Townrow wonder how he would die. It would have to be accidentally. There was nothing he could do about the attack. Or was there? Maybe there was some way of arguing, and he would find it. Then the British would execute him for treason. But honestly no, he could not see himself sniping at British soldiers. The face in the coffin, as he remembered it, was that of an old man. It was old age he would die from. Time enough for Leah to return to the States, divorce her husband, come back to Port Said and marry him. There were years of life in both of them.
“I’m not going out of this flat. I don’t care what your old man says. It would be suicide.”
She shrugged. He went to the bathroom, took a shower, shaved and put on some clean clothes. Fatigue was what made his mind work in this way, he thought. He was so tired he thought he could foresee his own marine funeral, he was so tired he thought Leah had turned against him, when all the time she had been worrying herself sick what had happened to him. He stretched out on his old bed in the room where she had first put him when he came into the Abravanel household as a patient. Outside wa
s a view of the Italian Consulate and the Cathedral and the lighthouse. Fatigue did extraordinary things to a man’s mind. He could not remember why he had cried. He cry? No, that was incredible. He could actually remember the last time he had wept salt tears. His mother was saying, very bitterly, “It’s your birthday and he’s forgotten it. Remember at least you’re Irish on your mother’s side. That’s where the honour lies.” Or words to that effect. What made him cry was not this talk of honour, or the lack of it, or his father forgetting but being given a mouth organ for his birthday. His own mother ought to have known it was better to give him nothing at all than a sixpenny mouth organ. November 2nd was his birthday.
When he woke it was dark and he could tell by the silence something odd was afoot. Port Said was never silent. But he could hear nothing save his own breathing.
He rolled out of bed and went to the door. A low-powered bulb was burning in the hall and one of the servants, with a shawl completely covering his head, was asleep in front of the door so that it could not have been opened without disturbing him. Townrow went straight to Leah’s room. The door was not locked, as he half expected it to be. Closing it behind him he stood for some moments looking across the room to where she lay in bed. The shutters were thrown back. Searchlights played across the night and there was enough reflection for him to make out her form.
“It’s me,” he said softly. He bent down and touched her bare shoulder. Immediately the deep breathing stopped. “Don’t be afraid.”
“Who’s that?”
“It’s me, you fool. Who do you think it is? I’m coming in.”
He was already naked. She turned away from him as he slipped in by her side but he caught her in his arms and felt her body thaw his belly and thighs. That was all, just to lie there listening to the breathing and the silence and feel the warmth colour his belly and thighs and head. She never wore clothes in bed. They were naked and the warmth ran out of her. He wanted to laugh, because it was such a marvellous discovery to make, this warmth. She was hissing like a snake.
