Iris and Ruby (44 page)

In my self-absorbed happiness I had been quite ready to accept the story that Sarah had had Gyppy tummy and had gone to Lebanon for a holiday in order to recover.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.

She looked at me. ‘Are you shocked? Disgusted?’

‘No. Surprised, that’s all, although I really shouldn’t be. I could have worked the whole thing out for myself, if I had bothered. I wish you’d felt that you could tell me. And I wish that I had been a better friend, when you needed one.’

‘I couldn’t tell a soul,’ Sarah whispered. ‘I am only saying this now because I can’t bear to see you so stricken and I’d admit to worse if I thought it might help. The truth is that I wasn’t loved and I didn’t even have the courage to keep my child. Now that it’s too late, I wish I had kept it. I dream that I’m cradling it, then I wake up and my arms are empty. That is what I did.

‘So I’d trade my place for yours, you know. You have no reason in the world to feel ashamed, at least.’

‘No,’ I said.

Sarah was right.

We held each other and cried, and I hoped that I was not only crying for myself. Then she sat upright in the chair and wiped her eyes.

‘That’s enough,’ she said. Her Anglo-Saxon stoicism made me think of my mother again. My mother, who didn’t yet know that she had lost a son-in-law and a grandchild before they had even existed.

‘What are you going to do?’ Sarah asked, taking a powder compact and a lipstick out of her handbag. She snapped open the compact and began to repair her face.

I might have replied that I didn’t know, or care, but I stopped myself. ‘I’m going to come home to the flat as soon as I can. Could you bring me some clean clothes, perhaps?’

‘Of course.’ Sarah liked to be given a defined job. ‘There’s a bit of a flap on, even more than usual, actually. Have you heard the BBC?’

Since my miscarriage I had almost forgotten about the war. I hadn’t heard the wireless news, but one of the sisters who spoke some English had told me that Alexandria was likely to fall to the enemy in a matter of hours. The threat of air raids on the harbour was so strong that British Navy ships moored there had been suddenly withdrawn to Haifa and Beirut, leaving the busy harbour deserted and causing panic in the city. Alexandrians were packing up their belongings and flooding out into the delta to avoid the coming enemy invasion.

‘Battle for Egypt, BBC is saying,’ the nun told me. Her long, pale face was calm and resigned under the folds of the coif.

‘Women and children are being evacuated. The embassy’s
in charge of allocating places on the Palestine train. People are pulling strings all over the shop, just to get a seat,’ Sarah went on. ‘It’s chaotic. What do you think you’ll do?’

I had no idea. I had no sense of purpose and I couldn’t think where I would go if I were to leave Cairo. Heavily I said, ‘Go back to work again, if Roddy Boy wants me, I suppose. What about you?’

‘I’d like to get out to Palestine. Why sit here and wait to be invaded? Mamdooh says half the shopkeepers in town have got German swastikas and bunting all ready, to welcome the troops when they arrive.’

‘They would do.’ I smiled, against the odds.

Sarah promised that she would bring in my clothes the next day. We clung briefly to each other before she left.

‘Thank you for coming.’

She patted my shoulder. ‘Got to stick together, eh?’

I suddenly wanted very much to be back at the Garden City flat, the nearest approximation I had to home, but if Sarah was leaving Cairo and Faria’s parents wanted us to move out in any case, I would have to look for somewhere else to live. The effort involved seemed insurmountable.

That evening, when Ruth visited me, she told me that I was looking much better.

‘I want to get out of here. Tomorrow, if I can.’

‘That can only be a good thing.’ The Hospital for Women and Children was a sepulchral place, scented with iodine and boiled vegetables.

We walked slowly down the corridor to the patients’ sitting room to listen to the BBC news together. Alexandria had been heavily bombed the night before and Cairo itself was reported to be braced for an aerial invasion. It was 30 June.

At the end of the bulletin Ruth switched off the wireless and we stood out on the veranda at the far end of the room.
The hot night was unnaturally quiet. A curfew had been imposed on all the troops, making the city out of bounds during the hours of darkness, and the streets were deserted. The cafés and nightclubs must all have been empty too. A horse-drawn gharry clopped beneath us, the driver’s whip trailing at an angle.

‘He’s probably thinking about how he’ll be taking some German staff officer to Shepheard’s in a couple of days’ time,’ I said.

Ruth laughed. ‘The service at Shepheard’s will slow Rommel down, if nothing else does.’

Ruth told me that Daphne intended to stay and work in Cairo for as long as she could be useful. ‘And where Daphne is, that’s where I want to be.’

I nodded. Ruth was devoted to Daphne, and Daphne was devoted to her work. Neither of them lacked a sense of purpose. I thought again about returning to London, after the war, to study medicine. I would not be Xan’s wife, but I could make myself useful somewhere.

After Ruth had gone I lay on my hospital cot, half expecting to hear air raid sirens, but no German bombers reached Cairo that night.

Sarah brought in my clothes, and offered to wait with me and see me back to the flat, but I told her to go off to work. I didn’t know how long it would be before the French doctor came to discharge me.

In the end, I was free to leave hospital by the middle of the morning. The doctor examined me once more and told me that I should rest, but that I was a strong young woman and he did not think there was any reason why I should not have a healthy baby in due course. I knew the reassurance was kindly intended, but I ignored it. I didn’t want another baby, or another lover to give me one. Only the ones I had lost.

As soon as I walked out through the hospital gates I understood that there was a flap on unlike any that had gone before. I had told Sarah that I would take a taxi back to Garden City, but Sharia Port Said was a solid, hooting mass of motionless traffic. The few taxis I could see were all taken, and in any case were going nowhere. Wedged into the jam I could see at least two dozen dust-caked lorries packed with troops. Their weary faces and dejected postures told the story of what had been happening in the desert. The nearest lorry was only a few feet away from where I stood. Several of the men were asleep, their heads lolling against the camouflage canvas. Others were wounded, and their field dressings were caked with blood and dust. All of them looked too exhausted and too dejected to move.

An Egyptian street vendor came along the pavement under the banyan trees, pushing a cart packed with ice and bottles of lemonade. As he drew level with the lorry he suddenly stopped, looking up at the rows of soldiers. Then he twisted the stopper out of a bottle and handed it up to the nearest man, who nudged the wounded soldier slumped next to him. The other man’s hands were bandaged, so his friend tilted the frosted bottle to his mouth for him.

The vendor went on unstoppering his bottles and the big, dirty hands reached down and gratefully took them, until the vendor’s cart was empty and the dust at his feet was spattered with melted ice.

‘Ta, mate,’ one of the men called. ‘Rommel ain’t getting anywhere near Cairo, don’t yer worry.’

Revived by the lemonade, the soldiers at the back of the lorry caught sight of me and waved.

‘Hello, Miss. Want a ride?’

‘Come on, hop up here with us.’

I waved back at them and smiled.

The column briefly shuddered and the lorry edged forward
in a cloud of exhaust fumes. I took some folded notes out of my purse and gave them to the street vendor, the money disappeared into the folds of his
galabiyeh
and I crossed the road through the stalled traffic. I decided that I would head for GHQ because it was nearer than the flat.

Apart from army lorries pouring in from the desert and staff cars with preoccupied brass fuming behind their drivers, most of the cars belonged to ordinary Egyptians. They were packed with people, families and grandmothers and tiny children, and laden with possessions of all kinds. Suitcases and furniture and baskets of provisions were strapped onto the roofs, and many of the people had tied mattresses on top of all that, to offer some protection against flying debris. It seemed that the whole of Cairo was flooding out into the delta before the war could reach it.

In the street before Qasr el Aini a thick line of people wound from the steps of the Bank of Egypt all the way back down to the next corner. The people who still remained in town wanted to withdraw their money while they could. I passed the queue and walked on to the entrance to GHQ, as automatically as if it were an ordinary day.

I didn’t have my entry pass, but the guard sergeant at the perimeter hut recognised me.

‘Morning, Miss. Business as usual for some of us, isn’t it?’

The dingy, rabbit-warren corridors smelled of burning. Staff officers were dashing up and down the stairs and telephones rang behind closed doors. I found Roddy sitting at his desk behind a pile of ‘Most Secret’ folders that were normally kept under lock and key in our filing cabinets. He got up as soon as he saw me, concern fighting embarrassment in his face.

‘Miss Black, what’s this? Are you well enough to be here?’

Very few people had known that I was pregnant. As far as Roddy was concerned I had just had a stomach upset.

I was at a loss myself and I didn’t know where else to be.

‘I’m well enough. Can’t I do something for an hour or two?’ I begged.

I liked Roddy more than I had done. He had said nothing after Xan died except that he was sorry, but he had given me work to do and he hadn’t treated me as though bereavement made an outcast of me.

He rubbed his jaw now. He was pink and well-shaven, and his service dress was as impeccable as always. ‘Ah. Yes, yes, all right then, plenty to do. Today of all days.’

I made him his mid-morning cup of tea and put the two custard creams in his saucer.

‘What’s going to happen here?’ I asked.

‘If our lines hold at el Alamein, nothing. If not’ – he snapped a biscuit in two – ‘we had all better be ready to evacuate. Half of the GHQ sections and Special Operations are already moving to Jerusalem for safety. And General Corbett has ordered the most sensitive documents to be burned, in case they fall into enemy hands. If you are sure you are able, you could take this lot down for me now. Out to the back of the building, you’ll see when you get there.’

I took the pile of folders off his desk and went downstairs. Several of the offices I passed were empty of their colonels and brigadiers, dusty shelves swept bare, metal filing cabinets gaping open. The smell of burning had grown much stronger.

Out on a bare patch of ground stood a line of blazing forty-gallon oil drums. Sweating men, their faces blackened with smoke, were dashing up to them and tossing huge sheaves of classified documents into the flames. Captain Frobisher was supervising the operation.

‘Hullo, Martin.’

He greeted me respectfully. Since Xan’s death I had become
an awkward figure, no longer someone to be joked or flirted with.

‘This is a bit of a show, isn’t it?’ He took the folders out of my arms and consigned them to the waiting heap.

I stood beside him for a few minutes, watching the columns of black smoke rising over the rooftops of GHQ. The updraught carried flakes of singed paper with it and they swirled down again like gingery snow.

I went home to the flat that evening with my clothes reeking of smoke. Roddy and I had cleared our files of anything remotely sensitive and the oil drum fires were still burning brightly.

Mamdooh was full of the news. He told Sarah and me that shopkeepers had started putting up pictures of Mussolini in their windows. Indignantly he muttered, ‘British not so very bad in Egypt, whatever these ignorant people think, and Germans and Italians much worse, hear my words.’ His little boy sat on a stool, watching and listening.

Sarah’s job was in the embassy, and her contribution was that the ambassador had made a great show of normality all day and had now taken his lady out to dinner. But Sandy Allardyce, the embassy’s best German speaker, had been told that he would have to stay behind to liaise with the Germans once the ambassador and the rest of the staff had travelled to safety. Remembering the rumours about Sandy being a spy, we looked at each other and laughed.

It was bedtime, but I couldn’t sleep. The drama of the day had kept my mind busy but now that I was alone I felt empty and despairing. I stood at my window for a long time, staring at the outlines of my jacaranda tree. If the Germans came or if they did not, it seemed hardly to matter. At last I sat down at my table and wrote a letter to my mother and father, telling them the news about Xan and the baby.

* * *

As soon as they stepped out of the air-conditioned order of the airport, Lesley and Andrew were assaulted by Cairo. Taxi drivers and touts mobbed them and tried to yank the suitcases out of their hands. Andrew pulled away from the insistent grasp of one man, only to be seized from another direction and when Lesley shrank behind him for protection he trampled over her feet when he staggered backwards. They both almost fell over.

‘Sir! Lady! Coming with me, please!’

‘This way, with me, very good ride.’

When they finally reached the taxi park it turned out that they had somehow promised their custom to two different drivers and the two men were bitter enemies. A storm of threats and yelling broke out, with each driver seizing one suitcase and locking it into the boot of his taxi. In the end Andrew had to bribe one driver to leave them in the clutches of the other, and the loser drove away with a torrent of abuse and a volley of hooting. Sweating, they sank into the winner’s cab and he celebrated by accelerating at reckless speed across a swathe of oncoming traffic. Lesley gave a little yelp and covered her eyes.

‘It’s Cairo, isn’t it? This is what it’s going to be like,’ Andrew said through clenched teeth.