Iris and Ruby (22 page)

‘Come back when you can,’ I whispered. ‘Go on, go now.’

Hassan was already moving towards the Tellforce staff car that I saw parked under the shade of a tree. Xan turned away, then swung back and roughly pulled me into his arms again, and there was the raw bite of his mouth against mine and a blur of his black hair, and the buttons of his shirt gouged into my skin.

‘I love you,’ he said.

‘I know.’ The smile that I had forced into existence was real now, breaking out of me like a flower from a bud. ‘And I love you. I’ll be here. Just go.’

Hassan reached the car and slid into the driver’s seat. Xan sprinted after him, then slowed again and shouted back over his shoulder, ‘Will you go and visit Noake for me?’

I had already decided that I must do this. ‘Of course I will.’

He wrenched open the passenger door and sketched a salute. With one hand I shaded my eyes against the sun, and I touched the fingers of the other to my lips and blew him a kiss. The skidding car tyres raised little puffs of dust that hung in the air like a whitish mist for long seconds after the car itself had vanished.

When I reached the hospital I went first to ask after Private Ridley. I was directed to a voluntary aid supervisor in an
unventilated ground-floor office that reminded me of my own slice of working corridor. The woman was French but she explained in neutral English that the soldier had died early that morning without regaining consciousness.

‘I’m sorry. Was he a relative? Or a friend, perhaps?’ She was looking at me curiously.

‘Neither. A friend of mine is, was, his commanding officer.’

‘I see.’ She gathered together several sheets of paper closely typed with names, and patted them so their edges were aligned. She had well-manicured nails, a plain gold wedding band. Private Ridley had died probably while Xan and I were lying in each other’s arms. Their loss running parallel with our happiness, somewhere in England there was a mother, a family waiting, perhaps a fiancée or a wife who didn’t yet know that he was dead. I frowned, trying to line up these separate unwieldy facts like the supervisor’s sheets of paper, and failing. Xan and I were alive, today, with blood thrilling in our veins. Another man was dead, and others had lost half a face, two strong legs. These particular known individuals suddenly seemed to stand at the head of an immense army.

As they marched in my head the living were outnumbered and overpowered by the slaughtered and the maimed, and the hollow skulls and shattered limbs snuffed out hope and happiness: not just Xan’s and mine, perhaps, and that of Private Ridley’s family and Ruth Macnamara’s patient who couldn’t dance any more, but all the world’s. Zazie’s and Shepheard’s and the Gezira Club were dark, and crowded to the doors with dead men.

I sat in silence, shivering a little.

‘I’m sorry,’ the Frenchwoman said again. ‘Can I help you with any other thing, maybe?’ She had work to do, perhaps the same news to convey about dozens more men.

I managed to say, ‘No. Thank you.’

I left the office and found my way up to the ward.

Noake was lying propped against his pillows, the lower half of his face masked with fresh dressings, but when he saw me he lifted his hand in a little flourish of greeting. I sat down in Xan’s place, intending to talk cheerfully to him in the same way that Xan had done. I wouldn’t tell him about Ridley’s death, not yet.

‘Hello, there. How do you feel? You’ve only got me tonight, Mr Noake, I’m afraid. Captain Molyneux’s been whisked back to the desert, by
air
. Colonel Wainwright flew in today to get him, what d’you think of that?’

I could see what he thought of it. Beneath the bruised and puffy lids his eyes glimmered with interest and amusement, but there was also the ghost of a cheeky wink that acknowledged that officers and commanders flew. Everyone in Tellforce sweated in trucks across the endless dunes, digging out embedded vehicles and dragging the heavy steel channels that were laid under the wheels to give them purchase, but other ranks didn’t get many variations to this routine. But I thought that it must also have been a welcome sight for patrols buried deep in the desert when the little single-engined plane came humming out of the sky and touched down on an impromptu runway levelled in the sand.

‘I don’t know when he’ll be back,’ I blurted out.

To my surprise, Noake’s hand crawled across the sheet, found mine and grasped it tightly. I looked down at our linked fingers, and the tubes running into his arm through which they must be feeding him.

Noake had seen Xan and me together. He couldn’t speak, his shattered mouth couldn’t form the words, but he was letting me know that he sympathised with the lucky anguish that I suffered on parting from my lover.

For a moment, I had to keep my head bent.

Corporal Noake’s hand was large and heavy. The nails
were torn and blackened, and there were deep fissures round the nail margins and across the knuckles. Xan had told me that he was a mechanic, gifted at coaxing new leases of life out of their battered trucks.

‘Back for Christmas, that’s what he said,’ I murmured.

I didn’t know how much I was supposed to know, or how much Noake should know that I knew. But he wasn’t going to be able to tell anyone and I longed to talk about Xan.

‘I’ve no idea what the real chances of that are. I don’t suppose anyone does, do you? But there’s a big push coming, everyone’s talking about it, aren’t they? I’m concerned for him, because I know a bit about what Tellforce does. But Xan’s got to do his job like everyone else, like
you
did, Mr Noake.’

And like Private Ridley did. I sat up straighter and looked into the injured man’s eyes, remembering the involuntary kindling of excitement I had seen in Xan. ‘It must be hard for you, to miss what’s going to happen.’

Noake nodded, his fingers still tight over mine.

‘We’ll have to keep each other company,’ I said. ‘And you will have to get better quickly.’

A starched apron came into view on the other side of the bed. Ruth was standing there with an armful of fresh bedding.

‘Here you are again. Can’t stay away from us, Albie, can she?’

I was glad to know his first name. ‘Albie? May I call you that, too? I’m Iris, d’you remember?’

He blinked his agreement.

Ruth asked me, ‘Where’s your friend tonight?
Fiancé
, I mean.’

‘I was just telling Albie. Gone. Called back to the desert in a hurry.’

‘Oh. Oh, look, d’you want to have a cup of coffee or something after I finish work? I’m off shift in half an hour.’

‘Yes, let’s do that.’

She hurried away and I went on talking to Albie Noake. I had no idea what he wanted to hear but I told him about Faria and Sarah and the apartment in Garden City, and about Mamdooh and his son who followed him to work and sat on a stool in the corner of Mamdooh’s cubbyhole near the front door, sucking on the bon-bons that Faria insisted on feeding him. I talked about Zazie’s and Elvira Mursi and Mrs Kimmig-Gertsch’s house, and Roddy Boy and my segment of corridor at GHQ, and what I remembered of Cairo in the days long before the war when my father was at the embassy. I held on to Albie’s hand, smoothing it between my own. Once or twice his eyelids closed and I thought he had fallen asleep, but as soon as my murmuring stopped they snapped open again.

‘She can talk enough for both of you, can’t she?’ Ruth demanded when she came back.

I disengaged my hand gently from Albie’s and stood up.

‘Shall I come back another day?’ I asked him. As well as a nod there was a sound in his throat, part gargle and part rising groan. It was meant as a yes.

‘You can always tell me to go away.’ I smiled. ‘Good night, Albie.’

I followed Ruth out of the ward and down some stone steps. Outside a door marked ‘Nursing Staff’ she said briskly, ‘Wait here.’

Three or four minutes later she re-emerged and I blinked at her. The nurse’s starched cap had always hidden her hair, and now I saw for the first time that it was a rich, dark red. It turned her pale skin translucent and took the slightly pinched severity out of her face. Ruth looked as if she was not much more than a year or so older than me. She had taken off her apron and wore a thin coat on over her uniform dress. Without the starched outer layer she didn’t rustle or
crackle when she walked. We nodded at each other, with a touch of wariness now that we were on neutral ground.

When I was driving with Xan I had noticed a small café on a street corner, within walking distance but far enough away not to be crowded with people from the hospital. I suggested that we might go there and Ruth nodded briefly.

‘Anywhere we can get something to eat. I’m pretty hungry.’

The café had split and cracked clay tiles for a floor, and a tall mirror suspended at an angle above the counter that reflected the tops of our heads and foreshortened bodies. There were only a handful of other customers, but there was a good scent of coffee and spicy cooking.

Ruth ordered eggs and
fuul
, and I asked for a plate of fruit. We drank mint tea while we waited for our food and as soon as a basket of ‘
aish baladi
was placed in front of us Ruth tore off a chunk of the warm, coarse bread and chewed ravenously.

‘Sorry. I don’t get much time to eat during the day. Usually I like to get the bus straight home from work and have a meal. The person I live with cooks, or if I’m on my own I throw a few ingredients together.’ She made a self-deprecating face, and then laughed. ‘I’d
like
to be able to cook, but it’s not exactly one of my gifts.’

Sarah, Faria and I didn’t cook either. Mamdooh left covered dishes for us, or we might boil an egg or carve up a sandwich. But mostly we were taken out for dinner.

I felt the width of a divide between Ruth Macnamara and me, and I knew that she was just as aware of it. Ruth wouldn’t miss anything, I guessed.

‘Do you share with another nurse?’

‘A doctor.’

‘Where does he work?’

Ruth lifted an eyebrow. ‘She.’

Then she named one of the other military hospitals.

I was blushing crimson at my own assumption. ‘That was stupid,’ I said.

‘No, it wasn’t. How many female surgical anaesthetists do any of us know? But Daphne is one. She’s pretty good.’ Ruth was proud of her friend, I could tell that much.

‘I’d like to meet her.’

Ruth didn’t say anything to that. A hot pan full of eggs and chopped peppers arrived and she dug her fork into it. I ate slices of melon and mango and watched her eat. When rather more than half of Ruth’s plate was empty, she finally looked up again.

‘That’s better. So. Your
fiancé
is Albie Noake’s commanding officer, is that right?’

‘You don’t have to keep calling him my fiancé. Just say Xan.’

She laughed then. ‘OK. Xan.’

‘Yes, he is. And when he was called back to his … unit, this afternoon, I said I’d go on visiting Albie instead of him.’

‘That’s good. The men get medical attention, of course, the best we can provide, but they don’t get many of the other things that they need. Company, especially women’s company, and non-medical encouragement, and diversion, and anything, really, that’s outside hospital routine. Although the VADs and the other voluntary organisations do what they can. Albie’s lucky.’

I understood what she meant. The ward was so big, and so overcrowded with suffering, it would be hard to provide individual support or even as little as a few minutes’ unhurried talk for each of them. And they were all so far from their own families and friends.

‘What will happen to him?’

‘Short term, or longer?’

‘Both.’

‘Mine is an acute trauma ward. He’ll stay there until he
is stable and his recovery is predictable. Then he’ll be moved to a longer-stay ward, where I should think they’ll start trying to repair his mouth and reconstruct his jaw. Or maybe that will be too complicated and he’ll be sent by ship back to England for the work to be done there.’

‘Will he be able to speak again?’

Ruth’s own lips twisted a little. ‘In a way. It will be a manner of speaking.’ He was perhaps twenty-eight years old.

‘Poor Albie.’

She went on eating. ‘At least he’s alive.’

Ruth was unsentimental and I could see how the work she did would absolutely require that, or else it would be unbearable. And as well as being distressing I could also guess how fascinating and even noble it must be, compared with what I did. I envied her.

‘Xan brought in another of his men who was badly injured at the same time. He died this morning, but I didn’t tell Albie. Maybe I should have done, though.’

The way that Ruth talked – everything about her, her matter-of-fact dry manner and her precise way of moving as well as speaking – was changing my perspectives. The truth was the truth. There was no point in trying to hide or to soften it, perhaps especially from men who had been so severely wounded. I suddenly thought that to do so might be to belittle them.

‘Yes, I think you should,’ Ruth agreed. Her glance flicked over me. ‘Would you like me to do it, as your Xan isn’t here? What was the man’s name?’

‘Private Ridley. No, thank you. I’ll tell Albie myself when I visit him tomorrow.’

The food was finished. Ruth and I sat facing each other across the rickety wooden table. ‘So I’ll see you then,’ she said.

‘Do you ever get a day off?’

‘Three full days and two halves out of fourteen. Subject to cancellation if we’re busy.’

If the hospital trains and ambulances brought extra cargoes of men from the front. Uncomfortably I thought of my long lunches spent lazing beside the swimming pool at the Gezira Club, and my games of tennis with Sarah, and all the cocktails I had drunk and rich dinners I had eaten since coming to Cairo.

‘I’d like to do some work in the hospital. Anything useful. I’ve got plenty of spare time.’

‘There are women who come in with library books and magazines for the men, and they read to them. One lady has been teaching the convalescents to sew and knit.’

Ruth must have seen my face because she added, ‘And there are the VADs, of course.’