The Fatal Gift

by Alec Waugh

  She kept her word. Every three weeks or so a blue airmail letter card addressed in her neat, back-sloping script lay upon my desk. I was very grateful for them. One lived for air mail in the Middle East. And the new air letter card was the perfect medium for correspondence. It dictated its own length, in the way that a sonnet does. You had to concentrate to get said all you wanted to, yet there was room for some discursiveness. I hoped it would survive the war.

  She hardly ever heard from Whistler. When she did, his letters contained no news; a mere bulletin of trivial facts. It was three years since she had seen him. ‘I find it hard to remember that I was even married to him. He seems like someone I had an affair with. Which is really all it ever was. I sometimes wonder why he was so anxious to get married. Does he wonder that himself? Well, anyhow, he’s got someone to come back to now, poor chap. I’ll do my best to make him feel that I was worth it.’

  Some of her information I passed on to Raymond; in particular the references to Timothy Alexander. I presumed that he had links with Charminster, with lawyers, with his father and perhaps through Margaret. They had been good friends. But I welcomed the excuse to keep in touch with him. He was unlikely to come to Baghdad. I was unlikely to go to Cairo. I preferred to take my annual leave in Beirut. As far as I could gather he was enjoying his existence. He was now a major; and was continuing to interest himself in Arab politics. Occasionally a friend of his would present a letter of introduction. Such letters would be preceded by a personal and private letter: ‘I have given a chit to an old friend, whom I can best describe as a boulevadier. His interests are social and alcoholic. You can accommodate those tastes. I gather that females are in short supply on the banks of the Tigris. Don’t worry about that. There is no shortage of that here for anyone with funds, which he is,’ or again ‘I’m not sure if you will like the chap to whom I have given a letter of introduction. But he has a fantastic fervour for your brother and wants to tell you that E is the greatest writer in the world. I know you happen to agree with him but at the same time it’s boring, I presume, for a writer to listen to someone’s ravings about another writer, particularly if it’s one’s younger brother, but do be patient; he happens to be my GI and could make life uncomfortable for me if he chose.’ Two or three such letters reached me, then in the spring of 1944 a rather different approach was made.

  ‘I have given a chit,’ he wrote, ‘to an English journalist, a female, a Miss Susan Irving. Perhaps you have heard of her. She works for a Northern Syndicate. She has got a war correspondent’s sponsoring. Her bosses in England are responsible for her finances. She is solvent, as far as I can gather—at any rate she has made no trouble here and if she were not solvent, I fancy that I should have heard. She wants to do what she calls “personality articles” about troops in Paiforce. She feels, and I think she is right in feeling, that troops in your command—which has ceased to be an active centre of operations—are getting disgruntled because they suspect that their families in England feel that they are having what you called in 1914-18 “a cushy war”, with a good climate, plenty of food and no danger. She wants to write some articles that would present them to the home front as heroic though at the moment unbelligerent warriors. Isn’t that what your command needs ? At any rate, I’ll be grateful if you can help her. She may need permits to get to certain areas. Do help her.’

  He was right in thinking that the men of Paiforce were in a disgruntled mood. Two batteries of artillery and at least one infantry battalion that had never been in action, suspected that now they never would be. They were afraid that when eventually they returned to England they would not be welcomed as heroes, but sniffed at as scrimshankers who had had a lucky war. Susan Irving could be doing a very valuable public relations job for Paiforce.

  Her name was not familiar to me. Raymond had not told me her age nor described her attractions. Recently the Middle East had been enlivened by the presence of that now widely acclaimed journalist Claire Holingworth. I could scarcely hope that she would be as attractive as Claire Holingworth, but I had a feeling that no female who was not young and reasonably nice to look at would have been posted to an area so deprived of feminine attractions. I greatly looked forward to her visit.

  I was not to be disappointed. To say that Susan Irving was as attractive as Claire would be to say a lot, but she was definitely pretty. She was blonde, with one of those appealing pushed-in faces. She had a neat, trim figure. She was petite, but she looked resolute and competent. I would have guessed her to be in her later twenties.

  Raymond was unaware of the exact nature of my security activities. Passes for visiting journalists did not come within my parish. But Baghdad—as a military fortress—was a small place. I could be of use to her. Or rather, I could introduce her to the top brass who could be useful to her. I planned a small dinner party in her honour. But I thought that I would first ask her to a meal a deux, so that I could find out what was on her mind.

  I invited her to lunch at the Alwiyah, the Baghdad country club of which resident officers were honorary members. We could bring over and pay corkage on wine that we had purchased at the Naafi. We were issued with chits, on which the club profited by issuing us with ninety dinars’ worth at the cost of a hundred dinars. It was very useful. To entertain in one of the town hotels was beyond my means.

  The Alwiyah was at its most charming in April. Winter was over, but summer had not begun: the swimming pool was not yet open. But it was neither too hot nor too cool to lunch out of doors. I looked forward to my lunch. By now I had been there twenty months and this was only die third time that I had had a meal there alone in feminine company. She looked very lush and appetising in a light cotton frock.

  ‘Usually,’ I said, ‘one shouldn’t talk business till the coffee’s reached. Let’s break the rules and get our business settled right away. Then we can gossip.’

  She laughed. ‘I really haven’t any business to discuss. What litde I have is managing itself. I wanted to meet you. Let’s gossip right away.’

  We did. We soon found that we had a number of mutual Fleet Street friends, but I very soon realised that it was not to talk about them that she had asked Raymond to give her a note to me. She wanted to gossip about him.

  ‘He tells me that you’re his oldest friend,’ she said. ‘I’d have given anything to have known him when he was an undergraduate.’

  ‘He wasn’t so very different.’

  ‘He wasn’t? No? I can understand that. How old is he? Forty-one? He doesn’t look that old.’

  ‘He hasn’t lost his hair. He hasn’t put on weight.’ I might have added, but I did not, that time and trouble and adversity had not drawn on his face the lines that both age and give character to a man of forty.

  ‘When did you meet him first?’

  ‘Autumn 1922.’

  ‘When I was four years old. When I could scarcely speak. Now I’ve caught him up. To think of all the things that were happening to him when I was in a nursery, when I was a kid at school. To think of all the women he’s been in love with. Twenty years … at the rate of one a year . . . at least one a year.’

  ‘He was married part of that time, remember.’

  ‘That wouldn’t have hindered him, would it?’

  ‘I’ve an idea it might have done.’

  ‘But his marriage didn’t last that long. And half of that time he was away.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘What was his wife like?’

  I did my best to describe Eileen. She listened attentively. ‘She sounds good fun. I’d like to meet her one day.’

  ‘That shouldn’t be difficult. You could say you wanted to interview the mother of the future Baron.’

  ‘Could I? Yes, I suppose I could. It’s useful to be a journalist. You can manage to meet anyone you want. Was he very much in love with her?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say so, no.’

  ‘How come then? How did she trap him?’

  I explained to her what had happe
ned.

  ‘I see. It doesn’t sound too romantic. Tell me about the others. Was one of them like me? I think I should tell you, by the way, I’m having an affair with him.’

  ‘I was beginning to suspect you were.’

  ‘Were you? Am I that obvious? Well, I suppose I am. There’s a glow about one, isn’t there, when one’s in love. That’s one of the nice things about being in love. One’s like a honey pot; all the men stare at one. Tell me about the others.’

  ‘I’ve only met one or two.’

  Three to be exact, I reminded myself, apart from that Carib girl. ‘But he must have talked about the others.’

  I shook my head. ‘He doesn’t talk about that kind of thing.’

  ‘Doesn’t he? I’m rather glad he doesn’t. Some men do, don’t they? Another scalp upon a belt. I wouldn’t like that; no, not at all. I don’t want to be bragged about. Yet at the same time, I’d like him to be proud of me. Do you know what I’d really like?’

  ‘You tell me what you’d really like.’

  ‘To be able to think that twenty years from now, you and he should sit over dinner in one of your clubs and reminisce about the past and wonder which was the most satisfactory of all your love affairs, and for him to say “You know, by and large the best times I ever had were with Susan Irving.” ’

  ‘I don’t see why he shouldn’t be saying that.’

  ‘You don’t ? That’s dear of you. Now I don’t need to ask you about those girls. If you think that in twenty years he might put me at the head of the list that does mean, doesn’t it, that there hasn’t been anyone up to now so glamorous as to consign me to a second place, and if that is so, then I’ve got a right to hope that there won’t be anyone in the future to outshine me. After all, he’s forty now. When would you say a man was at his prime ?’

  ‘Do you mean physically?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then he’s just past his prime.’

  ‘In one sense, yes.’

  ‘What do you mean, “in one sense” ?’

  ‘That a man can have the grand passion of his life when he’s past his prime, a desperate recovering of youth—a last time feeling. Doesn’t history tell us that? What’s your experience ?’

  ‘I’m forty-five—nearly forty-six. I’ll give you my answer to that in ten years’ time.’

  ‘I see.’

  It was a side of the subject that she was not anxious to explore. She tried another tack: ‘Would you agree that in an affair there’s nothing more important than the setting?’

  ‘What do you mean by setting?’

  ‘The opportunities to meet: the background; the chances of privacy. How much you can be together; the places, the times you can be together. Is there anything worse than the sandwiching of someone into odd half-hours; having to make the most of stolen moments. Did you ever read Maupassant’s Notre Cœur?’

  ‘It’s one of my favourite novels.’

  ‘Do you remember how exasperated the heroine felt at having to be available on fixed days of the week, at fixed times, of how unromantic it all became. Wouldn’t you say that nothing can kill love faster than all that?’

  ‘I would.’

  ‘You’d say, wouldn’t you, that there are times when the first excitement has worn off, that the whole thing becomes more bother than it’s worth.’

  ‘I’d go further than that. I’d say that women who have had that happen to them are reluctant to go into an affair that’ll be a repetition of that same situation.’

  ‘Then that’s where we are so very lucky, Raymond and I. We’ve got the perfect set-up. Cairo in the first place. If you know of a more glamorous place, well, is there one? And Raymond has that delightful flat in Gezira. He doesn’t share it; he has it to himself. I’m in a hotel, but it’s a discreet, no question-asked hotel with a well-tipped night staff. Then I’ve my car; you can guess what a difference that makes.

  ‘We don’t have to worry about money. Our schedules can be made to dovetail easily. He has a fixed routine: 8 a.m. to i p.m. and 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. six days of the week. About once in a blue moon he’s duty officer. I always know where to find him. I, on the other hand, am at an editor’s beck and call. I have to go where the hot story is. But Cairo is my base, I can never be away for long. And those separations give the affair the kick that an affair needs. I may be sent to Alexandria or to Tripoli. “I’ll be away five days,” I tell him. But I’ll work like blazes so that I can telescope those five days into four. Then he’ll be sitting at his desk at half past six and suddenly his telephone will ring and it’s my voices “Are you doing anything this evening?” “Nothing that I can’t cancel if you’re around,” he’ll say. “Then expect me at your flat at half past nine. And have a lively bottle on ice.” I have a key to his flat. Sometimes I play pranks on him. He has a dinner that he can’t avoid—he has that sometimes—not too often, once every three weeks or so, then maybe I’ll let myself into his flat during the evening and when he comes back, he’ll find me in a kimono, curled up on his sofa, reading and there’ll be a bottle cooling in a bucket. Sometimes I’ll get back from an assignment early in the morning. I’ll go back to my hotel, I’ll shower, change my things, then hurry over to Gezira. I’ll let myself in very . quietly; undress like a mouse, slide into bed beside him. He’s got a heavenly great double bed, and quite likely he won’t wake until his usual waking time, you can guess what kind of a laugh we have when he wakes up and finds me there. I’ll bet he’s not had that kind of fun with any other girl.’

  ‘I certainly haven’t.’

  ‘Then there’s another thing, about having an affair in wartime. You can’t look ahead. You can’t make plans. You have to live in the moment. You know how it is in peacetime. When the first excitement of a new thing has passed, you begin to wonder where it’s headed; what’s it all leading to. You feel that everything ought to be leading somewhere. You may not want to be married, but you want marriage to be discussed. You want him to want to marry you.’

  I set myself a mental sum. Peacetime was four and a half years ago. She had been barely twenty then. Out of how much experience was she speaking? I remember how Judy had discussed the problems of an affair when she was relatively inexperienced. I guessed that Susan now, as Judy then, was talking to impress herself.

  ‘One knows an affair can’t last,’ she was continuing. ‘Just as one knows that love itself dies down, that you can’t five at that high peak forever, but in marriage, because you expect the marriage itself to last, you can pretend that the love that started it will last. That’s how it is in marriage, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s supposed to be.’

  ‘But in an affair you know that it can’t go on forever and that can’t help spoiling it, just a litde. There’s a niggling feeling that you should be doing something to preserve it, but in wartime there’s nothing to be done. You can say to one another “When it’s all over, we can start wondering if there’s anything we can do.” ’

  ‘Have you actually said that to Raymond?’

  ‘Not actually, but it’s been inferred.’

  I smiled. ‘You’ve the perfect setting for an affair,’ I said, ‘I’m pretty sure that twenty years from now Raymond will be saying “the peak of everything was those months with Susan”.’

  ‘You believe that; you really do? Oh, I’m so glad, that’s what I wanted to hear you say. You’ve made my day for me. You’ve made my whole visit to Baghdad. You know him better than anyone else knows him and if you can say that … Oh, I’m so happy, happy, happy.’ Her voice glowed. Her eyes shone. I envied Raymond.

  ‘When are you coming to Cairo ?’ she was asking me.

  ‘That depends upon my Lords and Masters.’

  ‘Couldn’t you pull strings ? Everyone has some strings to pull. Come to Cairo and we’ll have a party, such a party. When you see us together, you’ll recognise how right we are for one another.’

  I would have enjoyed that party, but it was not till the following February that the
chance to pull that right string came my way, and by then it was too late for the party she had envisaged. Early in June, the second front had opened, the Middle East was a back number. Susan had been recalled to England, on her way to France for stories about the D-day landings, and both Raymond and I were visualising an early return to civilian life.

  The Germans were on the run, and the formula for demobilisation had been announced. As soon as Germany had surrendered, the process would begin. We were arranged in groups according to our age and length of service; I was nearly forty-seven, I had been in the army since the start. I was listed in the second group to be sent home. Raymond, who was five years younger, and had not managed to get into the army until Christmas 1939, would not arrive in England until three months after me at least. We talked a little about Susan, but most of the time we discussed our own immediate plans.

  ‘What are you planning?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve made no plans. I’m waiting to see how things are. I want to see how my father is. He’s eighty but his health is sound. He may well last another ten years; you’ve heard Iris’ news, I suppose.’