The Postcard (16 page)

‘You told me they were important clients,’ Callie said. ‘I went to so much trouble and expense. I might as well have just put two whisky bottles in their hands.’

‘They’ve had a good night. I paid for everything and now they’ve met you they know we are a kosher couple.’

‘What were they expecting, a harem?’ she snapped, tired and desperately disappointed. ‘Even I know about those houseboats on the river front.’

‘Look, it’s all part of the game. You set the scene, charm the snake out of the basket . . . they’re looking for a warehouse site for their import-export business. I know one
coming up cheap. It’s slowly, slowly, catchee monkey in this game. I’ll have their signatures on paper by the end of the week and we’ll be quids in, just you see. It’ll all
have been worth it.’

Only they didn’t sign and Toby stormed round the bungalow in a foul mood, slamming doors, sulking like a spoiled child, while Callie worried how she would make her budget stretch to see
them through the week. Everything was complicated in the grown-up world of finance. Married women were expected to spend hours alone, which challenged her own endurance to its limit. She must find
something to do or she’d go mad in this tiny place in this heat. Toby still hadn’t taken her to any British clubs and she wondered if there was a problem. Had he not paid his fees
there? She berated herself for the disloyal thought but she felt let down.

Where was all the romance she’d been promised? All she saw were streets full of flies and rubbish, dirt and poverty, barefoot children astride the shoulders of their veiled mothers,
beggars, tired donkeys, smelly camels and horses worn out with overwork. How could she keep sending cheery postcards about a pretend life she wasn’t living?

Nothing was as she dreamed it would be and, worst of all, the more she lived with Toby, the less she found she really knew about him. What was truth and what were exaggerations? Did he lie to
her too? That was what frightened her most of all. She wondered just who she had married.

Just as she began to despair, Toby redeemed his thoughtlessness with an act of contrition. He arrived home with a corsage of orchids and told her to put on her new outfit. ‘We’re
going to the Gezira Club for dinner. Don’t say I don’t keep my promises. Hassan can have the night off, we’ll drive over the Lion bridge and park ourselves in the Country Club,
and just in case you’d thought I’d forgotten, here . . .’ he smiled, pushing a box into her hand.

Inside was another box, leather, containing a beautiful antique gold ring with large blue stones. ‘They’re only zircons but they match your eyes, and I know it will fit
you.’

Callie gasped with surprise. ‘It’s so unusual. I can wear it tonight, Oh, thank you.’ She kissed him on the lips. ‘Can we afford it?’

‘Got some commission today . . . Can’t have you turning up there with no jewellery, so go and make yourself beautiful. I intend to show you off tonight and I’m feeling lucky .
. .’

The Gezira was everything she imagined, set in a park alongside a racecourse and gardens with a golf course and tennis courts, a turquoise-tiled swimming pool and a veranda terrace where ex-pats
clinked their glasses by candlelight. The women looked so elegant in their shimmering evening dresses, diamonds at their necks and wrists. There were others in shorter frocks and cocktail hats, and
army officers in dress uniform. Waiters weaved their way silently, carrying trays of sparkling crystal glasses.

Callie could not help but be overawed by such a smart ensemble of compatriots. Toby worked the room with slick confidence. ‘You must meet my new wife, Caroline, straight off the ship and
knowing no one yet.’ The women eyed her up and down with interest, smiled and then went back to their conversations, leaving her stranded.

‘Don’t worry, plenty more to go at. They can be a bit cliquey. You have to understand there’s a pecking order in the British community, according to rank, wealth and
connections. We have to work our way up, get noticed, play a good hand at bridge or do the church flowers. Everyone knows their place but there are, thank God, a few rebels who don’t mind
welcoming strangers into their midst. We’ll find them by the bar.’

Callie stayed out on the balcony to breathe the night air, admiring the manicured gardens, walls covered with white jasmine and pink oleander, banks of huge orange lilies and blue plumbago
flowers dripping from the walls, shimming in the late sun. Some of the groups outside wore funny tubes of gauze on their arms and legs. So that was how they stopped the insects incessantly feasting
on their limbs. And this was the famous Club – she sighed – a cloistered cocoon of elegance and comfort, an oasis for the rich and important from the dirty cluttered city. Here
foreigners could forget what they passed each day in their taxis. Once through the guarded gates they entered a more familiar world, with safety in numbers.

‘You OK?’ A very English voice startled her from this reverie. Callie turned to see a striking woman much older than herself, smiling at her. She was wearing a peacock-blue silk
dress, which fitted round her full figure, and a gauzy silk stole over her shoulders. Around her neck hung a geometric chunk of gold necklace glinting in the candlelight. ‘You look like I did
when I first arrived. I’m Monica . . . Monica Battersby.’ She held out her hand.

‘Caroline, Callie Lloyd-Jones, Toby’s wife.’

‘Ah, dear Toby, he tries very hard to fit in. How on earth did he persuade you to leave England’s green and pleasant land to jump into this pool of piranhas?’

‘You don’t like the Club?’

‘It’s fine if you want to ride, or swim, but the women here can be prize bitches. You have to be invited into their circle. Take my advice, keep clear of their coven. It’s
pathetic seeing them all sucking up to the Ambassador’s wife like fifth formers to their Head Girl.’

Callie laughed. ‘I don’t know anyone yet. It’s all a bit daunting.’ She sensed Monica was the sort of women who was used to confidences.

‘You poor thing. I expect Toby’s out all day and night building his empire . . . Kenneth is just as bad. I shall have to take you under my wing. Do you paint?’

Callie shook her head. ‘I don’t seem to do much – it’s too hot – but I love riding.’

‘You’ll get used to it. You do need to build your own life and interests here or you’ll go mad. It’s a wonderful world out here, full of life and colour. Perhaps I might
help and show you some places? I’m keen on photography and the light here is amazing. Let’s meet up again. Have you sampled the delights of Groppi’s tearoom yet?’

A tall man was hovering behind her new-found friend. ‘Darling, I want you to meet the Padmores . . . Good evening.’ He smiled at Callie.

‘This is Caroline and she needs some assistance. I’ll ring you . . .’

Callie quickly wrote their number down on Monica’s calling card before her husband whisked her away.

‘Who was that?’ Toby arrived late on the scene, staring at the departing couple.

‘Monica Battersby, wife of Kenneth Battersby.’

‘Not wife, darling, Ken Bromwell’s bit on the side, so I’ve heard. He’s got a cheek, but being chief executive of an oil company . . . a useful chap to know. She’s
quite a looker for her age. You can see the attraction. She must have the hide of a rhinoceros to turn up in this lot.’

‘Where’s Mrs Bromwell?’

‘I forget, you’re an innocent about these arrangements. She’s in London with the children. It’s what happens here if the wives go home . . . only natural.’ Toby lit
them each a cigarette and smiled. The evening was going well.

‘But if a wife goes astray, what then?’ Callie was curious.

‘That’s another matter. There are rules, unwritten, of course. Discretion is one of them. What happens in a marriage is always private. Any peculiar out-of-hours arrangements are
never discussed, and unless you are very rich and powerful, you hide your little sidelines out of the public eye.’

A gong rang and they were called into the ballroom for a formal dinner, finding themselves sitting almost out the door with an odd couple in shabby dinner jacket and crumpled dress, who were
either very deaf or rude because they ignored them all evening. Callie smiled as Monica waved to her from a discreet corner table. Hers was the only friendly face in the room. How many years did it
take to make top table? How many thousand voluntary acts and ingratiations did the acolytes have to submit to before they were honoured with an invitation? I don’t care, she thought, feeling
smug. I’m young and I have Toby, and that’s all that matters. But Monica was right, it was time to take up something for herself. It would fill the empty hours when there was nothing
but a bottle of gin for company.

Monica was true to her word and rang her, inviting her to lunch at the Mena House Hotel, horrified that she’d not yet seen the pyramids. ‘Pick you up and we’ll have a shufti
round the tombs. Bring your swimming costume, there’s a good pool at the hotel.

They drove out of the city suburbs towards the desert, to the hotel, which sat opposite the world-famous site. It was a strange mixture of Moorish and English architecture but their lunch was
super. Monica made Callie pose on the back of a camel to have her photo taken before choosing the best horses to ride over the paths and out into the desert. Callie was struck by the magnificence
of the golden slabs pointing to the dusty pink sky, but at her feet all she could see was rubble, rubbish, dung and litter. They bought postcards of the majestic sphinx lying in its pit, its carved
features softened by the desert winds.

They swam in the hotel pool then lay on loungers and ate apricot ice creams. The heat was making Callie sleepy. Monica lay in a beautiful multicoloured sarong, her body shaded from the sun.
‘Never put your face in the sun or you’ll end up with crocodile hide,’ she cautioned.

‘How long have you been here?’ Callie asked.

‘Do you mean how did I end up unmarried and someone’s mistress? Long enough to fall in love with this mysterious place and become bored. Long enough to find a decent chap. We have an
understanding.’ She looked up, pulling down her sunglasses to study Callie’s reaction. ‘You’re not shocked?’

‘Why should I be? I eloped with Tony after only a few months. We married on board ship.’

‘British or foreign?’

‘Does it matter? French, I think,’ Callie replied, smiling.

‘It does if you want it to be legal. Still, I see you’ve got spark. Is it working out?’

‘What do you mean?’ Callie went on the defensive.

‘Love’s young dream in a bungalow in the garden suburbs. How are you coping?’

‘We’re fine,’ Callie said, wafting away the flies, her cheeks flushing. How dare she suggest there might be problems?

‘It’s just that you don’t strike me as the average company wife. Tell me about yourself. How old are you . . .?’ Somehow Monica elicited everything without giving much
away about herself. ‘And you speak Flemish and Belgian French. Good for you. Are you serious about finding something to do? What about the patter of tiny feet?’

‘Toby’s not keen . . . not yet. Plenty of time. Do you have children?’

‘Too late for me now. Ken has a family, almost grown up. My fiancé was killed in the war. I was nursing and found myself out here. When it ended, I couldn’t settle. I took a
post as a nanny here. That’s when I met Ken. It was awkward, of course, but we have an amicable arrangement that works, I hope.’

They swam and then changed for dinner. For once Toby came on time to join them, but Ken was delayed so they drove back to the bungalow for a snifter instead, and Monica promised to return the
compliment in her apartment on the island of Zamelek.

‘She’s a strange one, very bright but a bit closed. Couldn’t get anything much out of her,’ Toby said.

‘I like Monica. She’s from Manchester. She’s confident in herself and a bit lonely too.’

‘Well, what do you expect when the nanny steals the master?’ Toby shouted from the bathroom. ‘Come to bed, darling.’

‘In a minute,’ she called, wanting to stretch out her limbs in the cool night air. Monica was kind and interesting, but there was a shell around her that was hard to penetrate, a
reserve that protected her from all the social rejection she must receive here. Here was a single woman, a mistress, independent, brittle but not shallow. There was something enigmatic about Monica
Battersby that Callie couldn’t help admiring. It was so good to have found a friend.

Phoebe looked forward to the postcards from Cairo. She had quite a collection now: the pyramids of Giza, Memphis, sail boats on the Nile, the Tombs of the Caliphs, and the
beaches of Alexandria where Caroline decamped in the hot summers with her friend Monica, who, judging by the photo snaps, was not much younger than Phoebe herself.

They were cheery updates, saying little but giving her a picture of her daughter having a gay old time with her husband. Primrose sent a Christmas card saying she received Callie’s
letters, and so did Marthe in Brussels. Kitty received a lovely letter of condolence about Maisie apologizing for her absence and trying to explain how an elopement saved all the fuss of a
wedding.

The incident at the Cavendish Hotel had shocked Phoebe when she found out in a roundabout way through the dance studio. It was Pamela Carluke who’d hinted that Toby had defaulted on his
bill. Phoebe felt she must return to the place where she’d known only happiness with Arthur to pay Toby’s dues. How could she forget that wonderful little room with the wall mirrors
where they had dined after the show and where her own child was conceived? How could she forget the joy of being in Arthur’s arms, thinking they had a whole future ahead of them? How strange
that it was the very place where Caroline had . . . But she mustn’t dwell on such a coincidence. Toby’s deceptions had soiled this sacred place for her and she went to meet Rosa Lewis
to make amends.

‘Let me reimburse you.’

Rose waved her offer away. ‘There’s no point now, but he’ll never cross my door again. Some you win and some you lose. I think his poor wife will find out one of these days. He
who is faithful in little is faithful in much, I once read, and I don’t think that is this rogue’s philosophy, do you? Tell her to watch her bank balance with that chancer.’