One

Simon Boulderstone, aged twenty, came to Egypt with the draft. For nearly two months, as the convoy slid down one side of Africa and up the other, he had been crowded about by other men. When he reached Cairo, he was alone.

He had two friends on board, Trench and Codley, who had been his family, his intimates, the people nearest to him in the world. The sense of belonging together had been deeper than love — then, at Suez, a terrible thing happened. He lost them.

As the three were disembarking, Simon had been ordered out of the lighter and put in charge of a detachment of men whose officer had gone down with jaundice. He shouted to Trench and Codley ‘See you on shore’ before joining the men who had been holed up in the corridor all morning. They were weary of waiting, and they had to wait longer. It was mid-afternoon before Simon reached the quay and discovered that his friends had gone. No one could tell him where. There was an emergency on and each truck, as it arrived, filled up with waiting men and went. Simon was not only alone, he had missed his transport. It seemed, too, that he had reached the most desolate and arid place on earth.

The sergeant to whom he spoke said Trench and Codley might have gone to Infantry Base Depot, or they might have gone to one of several transit camps that were in and around Cairo.

‘Wherever they are,’ said the sergeant, ‘they won’t be there long. Things are in a bloody mess. Just heard Tobruk’s fallen. What bloody next, I’d like to know?’ He gave Simon a travel warrant and directed him to take the afternoon train to Cairo and report to Abbasia barracks.

‘Anyone in particular?’: Simon hoped for the reassurance of a name.

‘See Major Perry in Movement Control. I’ll phone through to him. Good bloke, he’ll fit you up.’

Simon, waiting at the station, was numb with solitude. Everything about him — the small houses packed between dry, enclosing hills, the sparking glare of the oil tanks, the white dockside buildings that reflected the sky’s heat, the dusty earth on which he stood — increased his anguish of loss. He had never before seen such a wilderness or known such loneliness.

The train came in, a string of old carriages foetid with heat and human smells, and set out slowly through the Suez slums and came into desert. Simon saw a lake, astonishingly blue, with sand all around it, then there was only sand. The sand glowed when the sun set. The glow died, the darkness came down — not that it mattered for there was nothing to see. Simon tried to open the window but the two Egyptians in the carriage said ‘No.’ One, holding up his finger in an admonitory way, explained that sand would be blown into the carriage. As the journey dragged on, the heat grew and Simon felt that he was melting inside his clothes. He longed to leave the train, imagining the night air would be cool but when he reached Cairo, the outer air was as hot and heavy as the air of the carriage.

Waiting for a taxi, he breathed in the spicy, flaccid atmosphere of the city and felt the strangeness of things about him. The street lamps were painted blue. Figures in white robes, like night-shirts, flickered through the blue gloom, slippers flapping from heels. The women, bundled in black, were scarcely visible. The district looked seedy and was probably dirty but the barracks, he thought, would be familiar territory. He hoped Major Perry would be there to welcome him. When he was dropped at the main gate, he found he was just another young officer, another problem, adding to the overcrowded confusion of the place. He pronounced the name of Perry, to which he had clung as to a lifeline, and found there was no magic in it. He was told by the clerk in the Transit Office that the reporting point for his unit was Helwan. The barracks had been turned into a transit camp. And where was Major Perry? The clerk did not know. The major could be at Helwan or he could be at Heliopolis.

‘All sixes and sevens these days,’ the clerk pushed his handkerchief impatiently across his sweaty brow and Simon appealed to him:

‘But can you put me up?’

‘I’ll try,’ the man gave Simon a second glance and as an afterthought added ‘Sir.’

Simon expected no better treatment. He had been picked for an early commission on the strength of his OTC training but to the clerk, a corporal in his late thirties, he must have looked like a schoolboy.

He waited in the half-lit hall while men walked about him, knowing their way around. Fifteen minutes passed before a squaddie came to carry his kit to a room on an upper floor. The stark gloom of the passages reminded him of school and soon, he thought, he, too, would know his way around.

He was led to a room, furnished with a hanging-cupboard and three camp-beds, at the top of the barracks where the ceilings were low. A single lightbulb, grimy and yellow, hung over naked floorboards.

The squaddie said, ‘If you’re lucky, sir, you’ll get it to yourself.’

‘Not bad,’ said Simon, still with school in his mind, ‘but it smells strange.’ The smell was like some essential oil, almost a scent, but too strong to be pleasant, carrying in it a harshness that suggested evil and death.

As Simon sniffed inquiringly, the squaddie said, ‘They’ve been fumigating.’

‘Really? Why?’

‘Look, sir,’ the man went over to a wall that may have been white in the days of Cromer and Wolseley but was now cracked and grimy grey: ‘Take a shufti.’

Simon bent towards one of the cracks and saw, packed inside, objects the size of lentils, blood dark and motionless.

‘What on earth are they?’

‘Bugs. Live for centuries, they say. Can’t get rid of them. You ought to see the new chaps when they come here — they swell up, red, like jellies. And itch, cor! But you’ll be all right. This stuff keeps them down for a couple of months.’

Feeling the fumigant rough in his throat, Simon went to the open window and looked out on a parade ground surrounded by the flat-fronted barracks building. A long wooden balcony, an outlet of the lower floor, ran immediately under the window and he could see blankets folded at intervals, indicating an overflow from the dormitories.

‘There seems to be a lot of chaps on leave here.’

‘Not exactly leave, sir. Ex-leave you might call it. They’re stuck, waiting for transport ’cos trains’ve stopped running into the blue.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘It’s the emergency. The trains have wog drivers a’corse, and they’re scared. The war’s come too close and they think they’ll run into the fighting and get shot at. If you’re wanting a bite, I’d get down if I were you, sir. The mess shuts about nine.’

Simon was lucky — he had the room to himself, but when he woke in the middle of the night, he would have been glad of company. The murderous smell of the place reminded him why he had been brought here. He had fought mock battles on Salisbury Plain but now the battles would be real. The shot would be real and the bullets could kill a man. The desert itself was not so strange to him because his brother had been out here for nearly eighteen months. Hugo had sent home letters about brew-ups, desert chicken, bully splodge and flies. He was very funny about it all. He said as soon as you got your food you slapped a tin lid over it but even so you found that inside there were more flies than food.

Hugo had survived well enough and Simon did not expect to die. Yet men were dying out there; young men like Simon and Hugo.

Rising at daybreak, Simon was fortunate enough to find an army truck going to Helwan. While the civilian world was still asleep, he was driven out of Cairo into the desert again. In this country it seemed the desert was everywhere. The sun lifted itself above the houses and lit the streets with a pale, dry light. The truck driver, dropping him at the camp outside Helwan, told him if he did not get a lift back, he could take the train. He made his way among huts, over trampled, dirty sand, till he came on a large brown building like a misshapen mud pie. Here, in a small room, in front of a small table, he found Major Perry.

The major, with fat bronzed face and white moustache, was over-alert in manner and looked as though he belonged to an earlier war. Half rising, thrusting out his hand, he said at the top of his voice, ‘Got notice of your posting — got it here somewhere. The corporal’ll dig it out,’ and then began apologizing for being old and overweight. ‘Wish I had your chance. I’d like to be out there givin’ the hun a bloody nose. You’ll have to do it for me. Poor show — this latest! You heard? Tobruk’s fallen.’

‘Yes, sir. I suppose things are pretty bad, sir?

‘You’re damn right, they’re pretty bad. We’ve lost the whole garrison and we’ll be lucky if we don’t lose the whole Middle East. Still, we’re not beaten yet. It’s up to you, Boulderstone. Fresh blood and fresh equipment: that’s what we need. Give us both and we’ll manage somehow. They’ve got Hitler’s intuition and we’ve got Churchill’s interference: ’bout evens things up, wouldn’t you say?’

Simon said nothing. He was baffled by this equating Hitler and Churchill and he could only suppose the major was slightly mad. To divert him, Simon said he was out of touch. He had spent the last two months on the Queen Mary, dependent for news on the radio bulletins. The last one he remembered spoke of ‘strategic withdrawals’.

‘Strategic, my arse!’ Perry snuffled so forcefully that he gave out a strong smell of drink, so Simon realized he was not mad but drunk. He had probably gone to bed drunk and got out of bed still drunk, and the drinking was carrying him through a state of near panic. ‘This isn’t the old Sollum Handicap, y’know — it’s a bloody rout. Bloody jerries coming at us in our own bloody tanks. The stuff those bastards have picked up would have driven Rommel back to Benghazi.’

‘I heard there was a shortage of transport, sir.’

‘Shortage of transport! There’s a shortage of every bloody thing the army’s ever heard of. You name it: we haven’t got it. Except men. Plenty of men but no equipment for them. No rifles, no tanks, no field guns. And the men are exhausted. Damn well had it.’ Perry paused, blew out his lips so Simon saw the nicotine brown under-edge of his moustache, and deciding he had said too much, his tone dropped. ‘New blood, that’s what we want. Too many chaps have been out there too long, fart-arsing this way and that, till they don’t know if they’re back or tits forward. Now you, Boulderstone — in ordinary times, you’d have a month in camp, but these aren’t ordinary times. We need you out there. We’ve been refitting a lot of old trucks and there’ll be a convoy starting soon. I think we can get you out there at the double.’

‘That’s what I’d like, sir.’

‘Keen, eh? Good man. Might get you away by Tuesday.’

‘Till then, sir — am I on leave?’

‘On leave? Why not. Forty-eight hours. Give me a tinkle mid-way and I’ll let you know what’s doing. You can draw your pay and have a couple of nights on the town. How’s that, eh? Know anyone in Cairo?’

‘My brother has a friend, a girl. I could look her up.’ Simon had not thought of looking up Hugo’s girl but now, thinking of her, he blushed and grinned in spite of himself.

‘Ah-ha!’ Perry’s wet, blue eyes that had been sliding about in wet sockets, now fixed themselves on Simon’s young, pink face. ‘Good show. And if you get a bit of . . . I mean, if anyone offers you a shake-down, that’s all right so long as you ring Transit and release your billet. I know you chaps think Cairo’s the flesh-pots, but two things are in short supply here. One of ’em’s lebensraum.’

‘What’s the other, sir?’

‘Ah-ha, ah-ha, ah-ha!’ Perry snuffled wildly then held his hand out again. ‘You don’t have to worry. Not with your looks, you don’t. So good luck. Enjoy yourself while you’ve still got the chance.’

Hugo’s girl lived in Garden City. Simon, leaving the shabby purlieus of the Cairo station for the shabby splendours of the city’s centre, thought he could find it for himself. He would probably see it written up somewhere.

The main streets impressed and unnerved him. The pavements were crowded and cars hooted for any reason, or no reason at all. Here the Egyptians wore European dress, the women as well as the men, but among them there were those other Egyptians whom he had seen flapping their slippers round the station. The men came here to sell, the women to beg. And everywhere there were British troops, the marooned men who had nothing to do but wander the streets, shuffling and grumbling, with no money and nowhere to go.

It was Sunday. Some of the shops were open but there was a lethargic, holiday atmosphere about the streets. Simon had once gone on a school trip to Paris and here, it seemed to him, was another Paris, not quite real, put up too quickly and left to moulder and gather dust. There was nothing that looked like a garden or a Garden City. He would have to ask his way but was nervous of approaching people who might not know his language, and he was shy of the soldiers who never knew more than they needed to know. He looked out for an officer to whom he could speak with ease. He saw officers of every allied country — Poles, Free French, Indians, New Zealanders — but the sort he wanted, English, young, of low rank like himself, did not come along.

Something about Simon, his air of newness, perhaps, or his uncertainty, attracted the beggars and street vendors. The women plucked at him, holding up babies whose eyes were ringed in black that he mistook for make-up, but, looking closer, he saw were flies. Swagger sticks, fly-whisks, fountain pens were thrust at him as if he had a duty to buy. ‘Stolen,’ whispered the fountain-pen man, ‘Stolen!’ The sherbet seller clashed his brass discs in Simon’s face. Boys with nothing to sell shouted at him, ‘Hey, George, you want, I get. I get all.’

At first he was amused by these attentions then, as the sun rose in the sky, he grew weary of them. A hot and gritty wind blew through the streets and sweat ran down his face. A man pushed a basket of apricots under his nose and he dodged away, shaking his head. Abandoning Simon, the man swept the basket round and pressed it upon a squaddie who spat on it. It was a pretty gilt basket full of amber fruit and the seller was proud of it. He persisted, ‘Abbicots, George, mush quies. Today very cheap’, and the squaddie, putting his hand under the basket, knocked it into the air. The apricots rolled under the feet of the passers-by and the seller scrambled after them, lamenting, almost sobbing as he gathered them up from the filthy pavement. The squaddie gave Simon an oblique stare, aggressive yet guilty, and hurried into the crowd. Simon wondered if he should go after him, remonstrate, take his name and number, but how to recognize one British private among so many? They looked alike, as though they had all come from the same English village; not tall, skin red and moist, hair, shorts and shirts bleached to a yellow-buff, slouching despondently, ‘browned off’.

Simon’s self-reliance weakening as the heat grew, he stopped a taxi and asked to be driven to Garden City.

The girl was called Edwina Little and Hugo, writing to Simon, described her as ‘the most gorgeous popsie in Cairo’. The phrase had stirred Simon even though he was about to marry his own girl, Anne. Hugo had instructed him to draw five pounds from his bank account and buy a bottle of scent from a shop in the West End. The scent, monstrously expensive it seemed to him, was called Gardenia and it was to travel to Egypt in the diplomatic bag. Simon scarcely knew how to explain his intrusion into the Foreign Office but the man in charge of the bag took his request lightly.

‘Another votive offering for Miss Little?’

‘You don’t mind, do you? I mean — is it really all right?’

‘Perfectly. Perfectly. We’ll slip it in somewhere.’

Because of this romantic mission, Edwina had remained in his mind as a sublime creature, luxurious and desirable, but more suited to an older brother than to a minor like himself. Letters between England and Egypt were so slow on the way that Hugo knew nothing of Simon’s posting and had had no chance to offer him an introduction to Edwina. In going un-introduced, Simon felt a sense of daring that added to his excitement.

The road sloped down to the river and on the embankment the driver shouted: ‘Where you go now?’

‘Garden City.’

‘This am Garden City.’ The driver, a big, black fellow, had a Sudanese belligerence: ‘What number he wanting?’

The taxi slowed and they spent a long time driving round curving roads, looking for one house among a great many others, all giving the sense of a rich past and present disrepair. The driver stopped from boredom and Simon protested, ‘This isn’t the right number.’

The Sudanese swung round, his face working with rage, ‘This am right number. You pay or me clock you.’

Simon laughed, ‘Oh, all right.’ Walking noiselessly down the sandy road in the comatose air of mid-day, beneath the heavy foliage of palms and trees, he was startled by a banging of car doors and a forceful English voice giving orders. Making towards this uproar, he turned a corner and saw a tall man in khaki shorts and shirt, with a wide-brimmed khaki hat, directing passengers into two cars. His commanding shouts of, ‘Move up. Now you get in there. That’ll do for that one,’ led Simon to suppose he was approaching a military operation. Instead, he found the first car held two women and an old man with a toy dog on his knee. The tall man was now intent on filling the second car. Both cars, Simon saw, stood in front of the house he was seeking. Hoping to avoid the man’s eye, Simon edged in through the garden gate but was detected.

‘You looking for someone?’

‘Miss Edwina Little.’

The man frowned and though not more than thirty years of age, spoke like an angry father. ‘Friend of yours?’

Simon would have resented the tone had he not heard in it a plea for reassurance. He answered mildly, ‘Friend of my brother.’

From the balcony above him, someone whispered, ‘Hello.’ Jerking his head up, he saw a girl who had placed her arm along the balcony rail and her cheek on her arm. Looking down, smiling, she begged of him, ‘Do tell me who you are.’

Her hair, brown in its depths, golden where it had caught the sun, hid most of her face and her bath robe, of white towelling that enhanced the warm shade of her skin, hid her body except for the arm and the rising curve of her breast, yet the impression she gave was one of extraordinary beauty. He could scarcely find breath to say, ‘My name’s Simon Boulderstone. I’m Hugo’s brother.’

‘Are you?’ She spoke with wonder, bending closer to him, while he, lifting himself on his toes, could smell, or thought he could smell, the rich gardenia scent which had come to her in the diplomatic bag. He started to tell her that he had arrived only the day before but the tall man, his voice now pained and querulous, broke in on him.

‘Really, Edwina, you said you were ill.’

‘Oh, I am ill,’ she pushed her hair back to smile at Simon. ‘You see, I have a headache and can’t go on Clifford’s trip but I’ll be better when I’ve had a rest. So do come back later. Promise me you’ll come back later.’

‘Of course, I will.’

Gathering her wrap close to her neck, Edwina stood upright, calling to Clifford, ‘Take him with you, darling.’

‘We’re pretty crowded . . .’

‘And bring him back safely.’ Edwina waved to everyone in sight, gave a special smile to Simon, and went into the darkened room behind the balcony.

Clifford grumbled, ‘If she wants you to come, I suppose we’ll have to manage it somehow.’ Returning to the command, he ordered the man with the dog to get in beside the women. Seeing the old fellow meekly giving up the front seat, Simon said, ‘Oh, no . . .’ but Clifford, placing himself behind the wheel, ordered him sharply, ‘Get in. Get in. We’re late in starting as it is.’

Feeling at fault, Simon was silent as the cars set out but he looked covertly at Clifford, wondering who and what he was. With his wide khaki hat, he appeared, at first glance, to be an officer in one of the colonial forces but Simon now noticed that he had no insignia. He was a civilian. His looks, too, deteriorated on examination. His thin, regular features sank towards a mouth that was small, hard and narrow as the edge of a coin.

Feeling Simon’s regard, Clifford said, ‘Always happy to have you chaps along. No point in coming out here and not seeing the sights.’

Simon, with no idea where he was being taken, agreed, though the main object of the trip for him was the return to Garden City.

‘Interested in Egyptology?’

Simon, thinking of his local cinema with its Tutankhamün décor, said, ‘I think so.’

‘That’s right. Learn what you can, while you can. This is the Nile.’

Simon looked out on the wide, grey-silver river moving with the slow lurch and swell of a snake between banks of grey and yellow mud.

Pointing with his thumb at some small boats that were going by as indolently as driftwood, Clifford said, ‘Feluccas.’ Simon watched the white triangular sails of the feluccas tilting in the wind. The same wind blew through the car like the breath off a molten ingot.

‘Over there, at sunset, you can see The Pyramids.’

Simon looked but saw only the bleary haze of the heat. They had crossed the river into suburbs where life was coming to a standstill. It was an area of large modern houses and avenues where trees held out, like inviting hands, patellas of flame-red flowers. A few cars were still making their way homewards but the homeless — vagrants, beggars and dogs — had thrown themselves down under the trees to sleep the afternoon away.

Clifford gave Simon a sharp, accusing glance. ‘What’s happening out there?’

‘Where?’

‘The desert, of course. Where else? What the hell are you chaps up to? Not long ago we were at Benghazi — now, where are we? There’s a rumour we’ve even lost Mersa. That right?’

Simon said he knew nothing, he had just arrived with the draft, a fact that seemed to cheer Clifford who relaxed in his seat and laughed, ‘Thought you looked a young ’un.’

The passengers in the back seat had not spoken during the drive out of Cairo. Looking round at them, Simon noticed that one of the women — a pale, dark-haired girl — was not much older than he was. Too thin, he thought, but he was attracted by the glowing darkness of her eyes and smiled at her.

‘I’m Simon Boulderstone.’

‘Hugo’s brother?’

‘You know Hugo?’

Simon turned in his seat, expecting to hear more from someone who knew Hugo, but the point of contact seemed merely to disconcert her and she spoke as though avoiding it, ‘I’m Harriet Pringle. This is Mr Clifford’s secretary, Miss Brown-all.’

Miss Brownall, a wan-faced, elderly virgin, bent forward as her name was mentioned and watched his eagerly, waiting for him to speak, but he could think of nothing to say, and giving her a smile, he turned away again.

Clifford waved at the windscreen and said, ‘There you are!’ and Simon, seeing the blunt, battered face of the Sphinx, gasped in amazement. Then came The Pyramids. He had been told he would see them at sunset but not that he would see them that very afternoon. And there they were, taking shape like shadows out of the haze — or, rather, one was taking shape, then another, smaller, pyramid sifted out from behind its neighbour and there were two, growing substantial and standing four-square on the sandy rock. To see them better, Simon put his head out of the window then, blinded by the dazzle of the outside air, drew it in again.

The sun was overhead now and, with every inch it rose, the heat increased. The car, Simon felt, was a baking-tin, baked by the furnace outside. The roof pressed like a weight on its occupants and Simon envied Edwina who could sleep off her headache in bed. If he had stayed in Cairo he, too, might have been sleeping — but where could he sleep? Not in that barracks room with its smell of death. His head nodded and hit the side of the car. He sat up and heard Clifford speaking to the other three.

‘They say Wavell’s made plans for the evacuation of Cairo but, plans or no plans, it’ll be plain, ruddy murder. It’s already started. Every foreigner in Cairo’s piling into the trains, going while the going’s good. I don’t mean the British, of course. The real foreigners. The crowd that came here from Europe.’

Harriet Pringle said, ‘We came here from Europe.’

‘I mean the foreign foreigners. Dagos. The gyppo porters are having a high old time at the station. I was there yesterday, saw them chucking the luggage about, roaring with laughter, bawling, “Hitler come”. It’s all fun now but wait till the hun really gets here.’

The old man with the dog said, ‘I don’t know. Not a bad fellow, your gyppo. He may laugh at us but there’s no taking advantage. No insults, no rude words. I don’t think they will harm us.’

Clifford let this pass but said after some minutes, ‘You’re not taking yourself off then, Liversage? Some of us, with jobs and homes here, will have to stay put, but you’re free to go any time.’

Liversage cheerfully agreed, ‘Yes, I’m free to go, but I won’t unless they make me. I was pushed out of Sofia and pushed out of Greece, but now I’ll stay where I am. I don’t think they’ll bother about an old codger like me,’ and dismissing the matter, he leant into his corner of the car and closed his eyes.

Simon, surprised by this talk of flight, said, ‘I heard there was an emergency but I didn’t know things were so bad. I mean, if it’s like that, it’s a bit odd, isn’t it, going on a sightseeing trip?’

‘Not really. No point in moping about in town. The trouble is, they’re keeping us in ignorance of the true situation. Bad policy, that, in my opinion. Ignorance breeds fear. I’d say, “Tell people the truth. Trust them to keep their heads.” By people, of course, I mean us. Not the wog. I wouldn’t tell the wog the time o’day.’

Liversage mumbled through his sleep, ‘Merry fellow, your wog. Can’t help liking him.’

Ignoring this, Clifford said, ‘First, we’ll take a look at the Saccara pyramids. That over there’s the step pyramid. Dangerous. No one’s allowed inside. But there’s another one . . .’

Miss Brownall squeaked her alarm, ‘Not the one with the bats?’

Clifford, with his air of authority, in his uniform that was not a uniform, asked sternly, ‘And why not the one with the bats?’

‘Oh dear!’

The car turned left on to a track in the sand and shapes could be seen through the limitless fog of the distance. Approached, they were revealed as heaps of unbaked bricks that had once been pyramids. Now they stood like patient, waiting animals as Clifford made a dashing swerve in front of them and braked to a stop. The following car, trying to imitate the swerve, skidded and nearly rammed Clifford’s car. His expression fierce, he threw open his door but finding all well, he contented himself with the voice of leadership, ‘All out. All out.’ His followers, struggling from beneath the heat of each other’s elbows, emerged to a more spacious area of heat.

Fly-whisk in one hand, torch in the other, Clifford pointed both objects at the largest and best preserved of the pyramids, ‘We’re going in this one,’ then realized that Mr Liversage was still in the car. Going smartly to it, he looked at the old man, saw he was asleep and let him remain. The rest he led to a hole in the pyramid’s flank.

Harriet Pringle, loitering, last in the queue, seemed reluctant to enter. Simon paused so she could precede him into the dark, ragged opening in the bricks, but she shook her head, ‘I don’t like the look of it.’ The pyramid’s outer casing of stone had been looted away and the inner structure had sunk on itself like a ruined plum-pudding. ‘I don’t think it’s safe and I’m afraid of bats.’

Simon laughed, ‘I’ll go ahead and scare them.’

For a few yards they were able to walk upright, then the roof sagged and they had to bend to get under it. Ahead of them Miss Brownall was giggling and from the scuffling, scraping and grunting, it was clear that the others had been forced down on to hands and knees. Harriet stopped, then something caught in her hair and she turned and ran back to the daylight.

Simon went on until he could feel space about him and heard people breathing. The air was cold. Clifford had switched off his torch to heighten the drama of arrival in the central chamber and the party stood in darkness until the stragglers arrived. As Simon joined them, Clifford relit the torch and shone it upon him: ‘All here?’ Then he saw that Harriet was not there and said with displeasure, ‘Where’s she gone?’

‘Mrs Pringle turned back.’

‘Oh, did she!’

Wisely, too, Simon thought as he looked about him. The chamber was empty except for a stone sarcophagus of immense size. Everything else had been looted, even the sarcophagus lid. Not only was there nothing to see but Simon realized that to enter the place was foolhardy. The apex of the pyramid was breaking through the roof plaster and poised over their heads were several tons of bricks that could be brought down by the slightest earth tremor. Clifford, moving imperturbably beneath this peril, flashed his torch on to the decayed walls, saying, ‘Wonderfully fresh, these colours. Book of the Dead, y’know!’

The others stood as though not daring to move and their murmurs sounded to Simon more apprehensive than admiring. Miss Brownall was slapping her bare arms and one of the men from the second car, feeling the chill, had wrapped a scarf under his chin and up over his trilby hat.

‘Well, Miss Brownall,’ Clifford humorously asked, ‘who do you think was buried here?’

Miss Brownall said she could not say but the man with the scarf answered for her, ‘I would presume, yes . . . yes, I would presume it was Ozymandias, King of Kings.’ His precise enunciation did not suggest a joke but Clifford looked suspiciously at him.

‘Didn’t know there was an Ozymandias.’ To prevent further discussion Clifford made a quick move to an entrance in the further wall. ‘Now, this is interesting. Another passage. Let’s see where this leads.’

As the others filed after him, Simon made his escape and came thankfully out to where Harriet was sitting on the ground, her back to the pyramid, sifting sand through her fingers. She had collected a small pile of blue beads and scraps of mummy cloth. ‘Look what I’ve found.’

Simon sat down beside her and took the opportunity to ask, ‘Who is Mr Clifford? Is he very important?’

‘In a way, I suppose he is. He’s an agent for an oil company, but he’s not as grand as he’d like to be. He doesn’t belong to the set that plays polo and gives gambling parties so, to show his superiority, he’s taken to Ancient Egypt in a big way.’

‘I suppose he is English? Which part does he come from?’

‘You mean his accent? It’s a Clifford accent. He’s English but doesn’t come from England. The Cliffords have lived here for generations. The men go home to find English wives so the family maintains its Englishness. Their traditions are English, but their money is not. I wonder, if the gyppos turned on us, which side he’d be on?’

‘Turned on us? You don’t really think they’d turn on us after all we’ve done for them?’

Harriet laughed at him, ‘What have we done for them?’

‘We’ve brought them justice and prosperity, haven’t we? We’ve shown them how people ought to live.’

With his face close to her, seeing his clear skin, the clear whites of his eyes, the defined dark blue of the iris, she thought, ‘How young he is!’ Until now she had taken it for granted that her generation was the youngest of the adults but she realized that in the two years of her marriage, a yet younger generation had come into the war. They arrived in Egypt, fresh and innocent, imbued with the creed in which they had been brought up. They believed that the British Empire was the greatest force for good the world had ever known. They expected gratitude from the Egyptians and were pained to find themselves barely tolerated.

‘What have we done here, except make money? I suppose a few rich Egyptians have got richer by supporting us, but the real people of the country, the peasants and the backstreet poor, are just as diseased, underfed and wretched as they ever were.’

Aware of his own ignorance, Simon did not argue but changed course. ‘Surely they’re glad to have us here to protect them?’

‘They don’t think we’re protecting them. They think we’re making a use of them. And so we are. We’re protecting the Suez Canal and the route to India and Clifford’s oil company.’ Disturbed by Simon’s troubled eyes, Harriet stood up asking, ‘And where is Clifford? What are they doing in there?’

‘Exploring another passage. I must say, he’s pretty brave. The roof’s so shaky, it could come down any minute.’

‘He’s showing off. He’s challenged by you.’

‘Me? Why me?’

‘Because you’re a fighting man and he ought to be, but isn’t.’

‘Oh, he needn’t worry about me. If he wants to keep out of it, all I can say is good luck to him.’

They could hear Clifford’s voice as the party returned. Harriet opened her hand, full of tiny blue beads, and scattered the beads over the sand: ‘They’ve been here for two thousand years. Now they can stay for another two thousand.’

Clifford, coming out frowning and blinking in the brilliant light, looked sardonically at her. ‘So, young lady, you were afraid to come with us?’

‘Yes.’

Nonplussed by this admission, Clifford turned on the others. ‘Right. Back to the cars. I’ll show you a very remarkable tomb.’

‘The funny one?’ asked Miss Brownall.

‘Yes, the funny one.’

Clifford spoke sternly and he looked stern as he swung the car away from the dark mounds that had once been pyramids and headed them into the dazzling, swimming nothingness of the desert horizon. Silver mirage now hid the sand and, from it, oddly elongated rocks and stones stood up like wading birds. Everyone except Clifford was silent, stupefied by the atmosphere inside the car. Simon imagined them cooking, their flesh softening and melting into fat, while Clifford talked away. Apparently unaffected by the heat, he described the tomb he said he had discovered. It was — and here Miss Brownall gave eager agreement — unlike any other tomb anyone had discovered before. Absorbed by his own discovery, he ran the car off the track and Harriet, clutching at a metal handhold, cried out that her fingers were burnt.

‘Is it always as hot as this?’ Simon asked.

‘This is only the beginning. Next month will be worse. They used to think Englishwomen and children could not endure such heat but now we have to stay here, we find we endure it quite well.’

An outcrop of rock was appearing in the distance and Clifford said ‘This is it. Now you’ll see something.’

The cars stopped and the passengers struggled out again. They were immediately assailed by flies that settled with sticky feet on to sticky hands and faces. Clifford, flapping his whisk about, said, ‘Don’t know what God was thinking about when he created flies.’

Miss Brownall, modest in her knowledge, asked, ‘Weren’t they created to plague the Egyptians?’

Harriet agreed. ‘The plagues came and never went away again.’

Simon began to describe the millions of flies he had seen, a black blanket of flies, all heaving together on the banks of the Red Sea, but Clifford, having no interest in this talk, ordered the party to follow him into the rock tomb.

Simon remained a moment to observe a fly motionless on the back of his hand, its mottled grey and black body covered by transparent wings that gave it a greasy look. It seemed too large, like a fly seen through a magnifying glass. He tried to shake it off but it remained, heat-struck, and having no heart to kill it, he brushed it away.

‘Don’t lag behind, chaps,’ Clifford shouted. ‘Come on. Stick together—’

They passed through an opening into the semi-darkness of a large cave. The masons had squared it up and plastered the walls, then the artists had marked in the areas to be decorated but they had done no more. Some of the spaces had been roughly brushed in with red or white. Clifford, pointing to them, said, ‘Have you ever seen anything like this? Isn’t it extraordinary?’

There was a questioning silence then Harriet said, ‘Not really. It’s merely unfinished. They started to decorate it then, for some reason, the work came to a stop.’

Miss Brownall drew in her breath as though she feared for Harriet’s safety and Clifford did indeed look angry. ‘Why should they stop?’

‘The usual reasons. Demand falling off. New religions taking over. New ideas. Or prices going up and the tomb-makers going out of business. It’s interesting to see that in ancient Egypt things ended just as they have always done.’

‘Perhaps. Perhaps not.’ Clifford was discouraging but one of the men from the second car said, ‘I think Mrs Pringle is right. It’s just an unfinished tomb.’

Clifford grunted, ‘That’s merely supposition. Anyway, there’s more to see.’ He led the way down some rough steps into a small, lower cave where shelves had been cut in the rock. Here the walls were unplastered and there were no painted guidelines or panels. Looking about the empty tomb where no soul had sought instruction and no instructions were given, Harriet felt sorry for the builders who had been forced to abandon their work. While Clifford flashed his torch about, trying to whip up interest in a place that had ceased to be interesting, Harriet looked up and saw they were all crowded together beneath a gigantic stone that was poised, ready to be lowered on to the hole when all the shelves had been filled. She murmured in horror and sped up the steps and into the safety of the open air.

Simon, hurrying after her, asked, ‘What’s the matter? Are you all right?’

‘Yes. It was that stone. If it had suddenly slipped, we would have been buried alive down there.’ At the thought of their death in the darkness and heat of that underground hole, she was convulsed with fear. ‘No one would ever have known what had happened to us.’

Clifford, his followers behind him, approached Harriet with a satisfied smile. ‘You’re very jittery, aren’t you? That stone’s been propped up there for over a thousand years. Did you think it was waiting to come down on you?’

She knew she was jittery. She had come jittery out of Rumania and then out of Greece, and now she lived in expectation of being driven out of Egypt. She said, ‘I’m sorry. I was silly. I’m inclined to be claustrophobic.’

Appeased by her admission of weakness, Clifford smiled benignly and said they would go to the Fayoum and have their picnic under the trees. The promise of picnic and trees pleased everyone and the oasis, when they came to it, gave them an illusion of relief. There was shade from the massed foliage of palms, sycamores, banyans and mangoes, but it was heavy rather than cool. The sunlight, falling in shafts through the branches, lit dust motes in the air. Dust veiled everything, the dust of the road silenced their feet. Women, walking bare footed with pots on their heads, moved with a dream-like quiet, their black draperies grey with dust. Small houses stood by the road, simple cubes of whitewashed clay, with unglazed windows from which came the smoke of burning cow-cake. The warm, dry smell of the cow-cake smoke hung everywhere on the air.

Where the road opened into a Midan there was a sphinx, its nose rubbed off by time, and here the cars stopped under the trees. Car rugs were spread out on the sand, packets of cakes and sandwiches were taken from the boot of Clifford’s car and everyone sat down, waiting for Miss Brownall to make tea on a spirit-stove. Sitting in the steamy shades, they watched camels plash by, grunting morosely, heads held high in contempt of the creatures they were forced to serve.

No one was hungry except Simon who had had nothing since his canteen breakfast, but he was reluctant to eat food to which he had not contributed.

‘Tuck in. Tuck in,’ Clifford shouted at him, and everyone who had brought food urged it upon him. Simon tucked in.

The heat now had a leaden weight so even the flies were stilled. The sun had passed its meridian and the light was taking on an ochre tinge that gave to the trees and the sandy air an antique richness. They all sat bowed, drowsy, and Harriet felt they had lost the present and were in some era of the remote past. Then Miss Brownall came round with cups of tea. They roused themselves and began to talk. The man who had spoken of Ozymandias, unwound his scarf from his hat and, sipping his tea, watched Harriet from the corners of his eyes. After some moments, he began fidgeting across the rug towards her, making an introductory mumbling and creaking in his throat that at last became words.

‘This . . . yes, this is the young person who knows things. She can tell us what’s going on. She’s in the American information office.’

The man to whom he spoke was the one who had backed Harriet’s opinion of the cave. He was thin and elderly and his raw, pink hands, tightly clenched, were nervously pressed into the ground at his sides. He smiled on Harriet, saying, ‘Oh, I know. I know she’s in information.’

The two of them gazed expectantly at her and she introduced them to Simon. The man with the scarf was Professor Lord Pinkrose; the other was called Major Cookson. The major was so absurdly unlike a professional soldier that Harriet laughed slightly as she spoke his name. As for information, she had no more than anyone else.

Pinkrose’s face went glum. A pear-shaped, elderly man, he was wearing an old-fashioned tussore suit that buttoned up to his chin. His nose, that rested on top of his scarf, was blunt and grey like the snout of a lizard. His eyes, too, were grey — grey as rainwater, Simon thought — and looked coldly on Harriet when he realized she had nothing to tell. He was about to turn from her when he remembered he had another question to ask. ‘Have you any news of Gracey? . . . any news? Every time I ring the office, I get a girl saying, “Mr Gracey is not available,” and that’s all she says. It’s exasperating. Over and over. “Mr Gracey is not available.” It’s like a machine.’

Gracey was the head of the organization which employed Harriet’s husband, Guy Pringle. She said, ‘It is a machine; an answering machine. There’s no one in the office. The place is locked up. I’ve tried to contact them, too. Guy’s in Alexandria in an out-of-the-way place and if the advance goes on, he could be cut off there.’ Harriet, her anxiety renewing itself, spoke with feeling. ‘It’s Gracey’s job to order him to leave but Gracey’s not here. He’s taken himself to a safe place as he always does when things look bad. I went to the office and found the porter. He told me Gracey’s gone to Palestine.’

‘Gone to Palestine! Gone to Palestine!’ Pinkrose seemed baffled by the news and then became agitated. ‘You hear that, Cookson? You hear that? Gracey’s gone to Palestine.’

‘So have a lot of other people.’

‘But he said nothing to me. Nothing. Not a word. This is disgraceful, Cookson. To go off without a word to me. Did you know he had gone?’

Cookson shook his head. ‘I never see Gracey these days. Now I’m on my uppers, most of my old friends have faded away.’

Pinkrose, caring nothing for Cookson’s lost friends, interrupted him. ‘I’d no idea the situation was so serious. No idea. No idea. No idea at all.’

Harriet watched Pinkrose with a smile, quizzical and mildly scornful, while Pinkrose’s small, stony eyes quivered with self-concern. She had known him first in Bucharest where, sent out to give a lecture, he had arrived as the Germans were infiltrating the country and had been abandoned then just as he was abandoned now. He was, she thought, like some heavy object, a suitcase or parcel, an impediment that his friends put down when they wanted to cut and run. Looking beyond him to Cookson, she mischievously asked, ‘And what are your getaway plans this time, Major Cookson?’

Cookson gave a wry, sheepish smile, not resenting the question. In Greece, where he had had money invested in property, his house had been a centre of hospitality. When the Germans came down on Athens, he had chartered two freighters, intending to take his friends to safety. Pinkrose had been among those invited. They had kept their plans secret but had been discovered and Cookson was ordered by the military to include anyone who chose to leave.

Now, having spent the money he had in Egypt, he existed on a dole from the British Embassy. He had been brought by Clifford merely as a driver of the second car. His clothes were becoming shabby, he looked underfed and Pinkrose, who had been his guest in the past, treated him as an inferior. For a time those who knew Cookson’s story had no wish to speak to him but now, seeing him so reduced in the world, Harriet looked on him with pitying amusement. He answered humbly, ‘I have no plans, and if I had any, I’ve no money to carry them out. Those freighters cost me a fortune and I didn’t get a penny of compensation from the army.’

‘Still you got away with all your possessions while we were allowed only a small suitcase. You even had your car on board.’

‘My poor old car,’ Cookson sighed and smiled. ‘The Egyptian customs’ve still got hold of it. They refuse to release it — not that it matters. I couldn’t afford to run it.’

Harriet, having decided the past was past, smiled with him, realizing that now they were almost old friends, while Pinkrose went on with his fretful mumblings, the more angry because he had been left in the lurch for a second time.

A crowd of children had gathered to watch the strangers. Mr Liversage, enlivened by his tea, went over to them and trailed his dog backwards and forwards in front of them, his manner gleeful, expectant of applause. The children stared, confounded by the laughing old man and the old, bald toy dog which was a money-box in which he collected for charity. At first they were silent then one of them opened his mouth to jeer and the others took up his contempt with derisive yells and shouts of ‘Majnoon’. Stones were thrown at man and dog and Clifford rushed in, wielding his fly-whisk like a flail, and scattered the miscreants. That done he ordered his party to rise. ‘Wakey, wakey. We’ve a long drive back.’

As they moved and dusted themselves down, a passenger from the second car, a university professor called Bowen, said, ‘Isn’t this where that chap Hooper lives? He took over a Turkish fortress and spent a mint of money on it.’

‘Hooper?’ The name brought Clifford to a stop. ‘Sir Desmond Hooper? Now he’s the one who could tell us what’s happening out there. He’s always wining and dining the army big shots.’

Bowen, a small, gentle fellow, nodded. ‘Well, yes. He might know more than most people.’

‘Then why don’t we look him up? Call in for an early sun-downer?’

‘Oh, no,’ Bowen, aghast at the idea, had the support of Cookson and Mr Liversage, when he realized what was being argued, said firmly, ‘Can’t do that, my dear fellow. Too many of us. Can’t march an army into a chap’s house, don’t you know! Simply not done.’ Pinkrose, however, eager for news and concerned for his own safety, felt differently. ‘Why not call in? Why not? These aren’t ordinary times, no need to stand on ceremony these days. It’s disgraceful the way we’re kept in ignorance. If Sir Desmond Hooper knows what’s going on, it’s his duty to tell us. Yes, yes, his duty . . . it’s his duty, I say.’ Pinkrose spoke indignantly, carrying his anger with Gracey over on to the innocent Hooper.

The others — Simon, Harriet, Miss Brownall and a girl from the second car who was also one of Clifford’s employees — took no part in the discussion but waited for Clifford’s decision. Harriet, entertained by it, was not unwilling to see the Hooper fortress in the anonymity of so much company.

Pinkrose’s agreement settled the matter for Clifford. ‘We’ll go,’ he said. Bowen begged, ‘At least ring him up first.’

‘Ring him up? Where from? We’ll get more out of him if we take him unawares.’

Clifford spoke to one of the camel drivers and was directed towards the river. The fortress was soon evident. Larger and more complex than most desert fortresses, it stood up above the trees, a white-painted, crenellated square of stone behind a crenellated white wall. The wall enclosed a row of palms from which hung massive bunches of red dates. A boab, looking out through the wrought-iron gates, seemed doubtful of the party but Clifford’s masterful manner impressed him and he let them in. They drove between extensive, sandy lawns to an iron-studded main door where three safragis lolled half-asleep. One of them, rousing himself with an air of long-suffering, came to the first car and inquired, ‘What do you want?’

‘Lady Hooper.’

‘Not here. Layey Hooper.’ The safragi made to walk away but Clifford shouted, ‘Sir Desmond, then.’ The safragi had to admit that Sir Desmond was at home.

Mr Liversage refused to leave the car but the others — even Bowen’s curiosity was stronger than his discretion — followed the servant into a vast hall where the parquet was as deep and dark as the waters of a well. The house was air-conditioned. Enlivened by the drop in temperature, they seemed all to realize suddenly the enormity of their intrusion into the Hooper household. Harriet had an impulse to run back to the car but the safragi had opened the door of a living-room and, feeling it was too late to retreat, she went in with the rest. The room was as large as a ballroom and made larger by its prevailing whiteness. Walls, carpets, curtains and furniture were white. The white leather and the white-painted surfaces had been toned down with some sort of ‘antiquing’ mixture which Harriet noted with interest. The only colour in the room came from half a dozen paintings so startling in quality that she took it for granted that they were reproductions. Moving to them she saw they were originals.

She said to Clifford in wonder, ‘They’re real.’

‘I don’t like that modern stuff.’

‘They were painted before you were born.’

‘I don’t like them any the better for that.’

Clifford, disconcerted by his surroundings, was in a bad temper.

Sir Desmond entered and looked at his uninvited guests with bewildered diffidence. Deciding they were friends of his wife, he said, ‘I’m afraid Angela’s not here. She’s out on a painting expedition.’ Then he noticed Bowen, ‘Ah, Bowen, I did not know you were here.’

Bowen, identified, blushed and tried to excuse himself, ‘I’m sorry. So wrong of us to interrupt your Sunday peace. It’s just . . . we . . .’ Struggling to find an excuse, he twisted about in anguish.

‘Not at all. Sit down, do. Won’t the ladies sit here!’

Harriet, Miss Brownall and the other girl were put into the seat of honour, a vast ottoman so deep they almost sank out of sight. The men found themselves chairs and Sir Desmond, placing himself among them, asked if they would take tea.

Clifford said they had had tea and his manner left the occasion open for a more stimulating offer, but Sir Desmond merely said, ‘Ah!’ He was a tall, narrow man with a regular, narrow face, dressed in a suit of silver-grey silk. His hair was the same silver as the silk and his appearance, elegant, desiccated yet authoritative, was that of an upper-class Englishman prepared to deal with any situation. He looked over the visitors who, dusty, sweaty, depleted by their travels, were all uneasy, except Clifford. Clifford’s assurance was such that Sir Desmond dropped Bowen and addressed the younger man: ‘Well, major, what brings you into the Fayoum?’

Clifford blinked at the title but did not repudiate it. ‘We’re just exploring a bit. Voyage of discovery, you might call it.’

‘Is there anything left to discover in this much-pillaged country?’ As he spoke Sir Desmond noticed that Clifford had on his shoulder not a crown but a plain gold button and his voice sharpened as he inquired, ‘What are you? Press? Radio? Something like that?’

‘Certainly not. I’m in oil. The name’s Clifford. The fact is, Sir Desmond, rumours are going round Cairo and we don’t like the look of things. And we don’t like being kept in ignorance. The station’s in an uproar with foreigners trying to get away and I heard even GHQ’s packing up. What we want to know is: what the hell’s happening in the desert?’

‘I don’t think I can answer that question, Mr Clifford.’

Rancour came into Clifford’s voice. ‘If you can’t, who can?’

The telephone rang at Sir Desmond’s elbow. He answered it, said urgently, ‘Yes, yes, hold on,’ and, excusing himself, went to take the call in another room. A scratch of voices came from the receiver on the table. Clifford tiptoed to it, bent to listen but before he could hear anything, a safragi entered to replace it on its stand.

Bowen was indignant. ‘Really, Clifford, what a thing to do! And I think we’ve stayed long enough. Let’s slip away.’

‘No, no.’ Pinkrose was impressively impatient, ‘This may be the very news we’re waiting for.’

‘It may indeed,’ said Clifford.

The light was deepening towards sunset. The safragi who had attended to the telephone, opened the windows and the long chiffon curtains blew like ghosts into the room.

Bowen complained, ‘It’s getting late . . .’ but Clifford silenced him with a lift of the hand. Before anyone else could speak, a car, driven at reckless speed, came up the drive and braked with a shriek outside the house. They heard the heavy front door crash open and from the hall came the sound of a stumbling entry that conveyed a sense of catastrophe. A woman entered the room shouting, ‘Desmond. Desmond,’ and seeing the company, stopped and shook her head.

The men got to their feet. Bowen said, ‘Lady Hooper, is anything the matter?’ She shook her head again, standing in the middle of the room, her distracted appearance made more wild by her disarranged black hair and the torn, paint-covered overall that protected her dress. Lady Hooper was younger than her husband. She was some age between thirty and forty, a delicately built woman with a delicate, regular face. She looked at each of the strangers in turn and when she came to Simon, she smiled and said, ‘I think he’ll be all right.’

Two safragis carried in the inert body of a boy. The three women hastily struggled out of the ottoman and the boy was put down. He lay prone and motionless, a thin, small boy of eight or nine with the same delicate features as his mother: only something had happened to them. One eye Was missing. There was a hole in the left cheek that extended into the torn wound which had been his mouth. Blood had poured down his chin and was caked on the collar of his open-necked shirt. The other eye, which was open, was lacklustre and blind like the eye of a dead rabbit.

Sir Desmond entered and anxiously asked, ‘My dear, what has happened?’

‘We were in the desert. I was sketching and didn’t see . . . He picked up something. It exploded — but he’ll be all right.’

Harriet could scarcely bear to look at Sir Desmond but he answered calmly enough, ‘My dear, of course. I expect he’s suffering from shock.’

‘Do you think we should rouse him? Perhaps if we gave him something to eat . . .’

‘Yes, a little nourishment, light and easy to swallow.’

‘Gruel, or an egg beaten up. What do you think?’

Sir Desmond spoke to the safragis who glanced at each other with the expression of those who have long accepted the fact that all foreigners are mad.

There was an interval in which Sir Desmond telephoned a doctor in Cairo and Lady Hooper, sitting on the sofa edge, held the boy’s hand. Sir Desmond, finishing his call, spoke reassuringly to her, ‘He’s coming out straight away. He says Richard must have an anti-tetanus injection.’

‘There was Dettol in the car. I bathed his face.’

One of the safragis returned, bringing a bowl of gruel and the visitors watched with awe and amazement as Sir Desmond, bending tenderly over the boy, attempted to feed him. The mouth was too clogged with congealed blood to permit entry so the father poured a spoonful of gruel into the hole in the cheek. The gruel poured out again. This happened three times before Sir Desmond gave up and, gathering the child into his arms, said, ‘He wants to sleep. I’ll take him to his room.’ Lady Hooper followed her husband and Clifford, knowing he was defeated, was willing to depart.

Outside, beneath the palms and the roseate sky, he gave a long whistle. ‘Now I’ve seen everything.’

‘They couldn’t face the truth,’ Bowen sighed in pity. ‘They couldn’t accept it.’

‘They’ll be forced to accept it pretty soon. And we never heard what that phone call was all about.’

Mr Liversage lay asleep in the car. Bowen elected to move him over and sat beside him while Miss Brownall joined her friend in the second car. Remembering the boy, no one spoke as they drove through the Fayoum. The trees merged, dark in the misty evening. Lights were flickering inside the box-shaped houses. It would soon be night. As the oasis was left behind, the boy’s death lost its immediacy and Harriet thought of all the other boys who were dying in the desert before they had had a chance to live. And yet, though there was so much death at hand, she felt the boy’s death was a death apart.

Bowen murmured, ‘A tragedy. An only child.’

‘And the last shot in the old locker,’ said Clifford. ‘They’re not likely to have another.’

The sun had almost set when they approached Mena and the last, long rays enriched the sand. It glowed saffron and orange then, in a moment, the colour was gone and a violet twilight came down. The passengers were sunk together with weariness but Clifford had still not had enough. A few hundred yards before the road turned towards Mena, he drew up and said, ‘There’s an ancient village about here. Let’s take a shufti.’

‘Is it really worth the effort?’ Bowen asked.

‘Oh, come on!’ Clifford rallied the party, insisting that if there was anything to see, it must be seen. They wandered about on the stony mardam and found the village which was sunk like an intaglio in the sand. Jumping down, they walked through narrow streets between small, roofless houses. The dig must have been a students’ exercise for the dwellings were too poor to yield more than a few broken pots and it was hard to understand why anyone had chosen to live in this waterless spot. In the deepening twilight, it was so forlorn that even Clifford was glad to move on to the Mena House bar.

While Bowen and Simon were buying the drinks, Clifford moved eagerly round the officers in the bar until he found a group known to him. Putting his head among them, he said, ‘Just come from the Hooper house. Their kid’s been killed by a hand grenade he picked up. You won’t believe this, but old Hooper tried to spoonfeed the boy through a hole in his face.’ Tomorrow the story would be all over Cairo.

When their drinks were finished, Harriet said to Simon, ‘Shall we climb the great pyramid?’

‘Is it possible? Goodness, I’d love to, but can you manage it?’

‘I’ve done it twice before. The last time, I was wearing a black velvet evening dress which hasn’t been the same since.’

They went out to the road that was lit only by the lights of the hotel. The pyramids were no more than a greater darkness in an area of darkness. Harriet led Simon to the noted corner from which the ascent was easiest and as they climbed on to the first ledge, the local Bedu sighted them and came running and shouting, ‘Not allowed. No one go up without guide. Law says you have guide.’

Simon paused but Harriet waved him on. As they scrambled upwards the Bedu shook their fists and wailed, ‘Come back. Come back,’ and Harriet laughed and waved down at them. Standing on one ledge, she jumped her backside on to the one above then swung her legs up after her. She was very light and moved at such speed, she passed Simon and was first at the top. There she waved again to the guides who were still making half-hearted complaints before they drifted away.

The apex of the pyramid was missing, purloined to provide stone for other buildings, and now there was a plateau some twelve yards square. Harriet, seeing it as a dancing-ground, held out her arms to Simon as he reached it and they circled together for a few minutes, singing ‘Run rabbit’ until they were overcome by laughter. They went to the edge of the square and sat, looking into the darkness of the desert. The sky was fogged and there was nothing visible but the blue quilt of lights that was Cairo. Speaking as a soldier, Simon said sternly, ‘There ought to be a proper black-out.’

‘You could never enforce it. It would take the whole British army to get the Cairenes to black their windows. Besides, it would be no use. A pilot told me that the Nile is always visible. They’d just have to follow it. The lights frightened me when we first came here but nothing happened and I got used to them.’

‘You mentioned my brother. You didn’t say much about him. Didn’t you like him?’

‘Hugo? Of course I liked him. I liked him very much. We met him in Alex. He was in the Cecil bar and he looked so young and alone that we went over and spoke to him. He talked about the desert. He said he was sick of it but he had to go back next day. He asked us to have dinner with him because it was his twenty-first birthday.’

‘Really!’ Simon was entranced by this information. ‘You were with him on his twenty-first?’

‘Yes, we went to Pastroudi’s and had a great time.’

‘How splendid!’ Simon waited, expecting to hear more about this momentous dinner-party, but Harriet had said all she meant to say. The numinous sequel to that dinner was not for Simon. It had been the night of full moon. Passing through the black-out curtains at the door, they had entered the startling brilliance of the night and stood together to say good-bye. Hugo, his handsome, smiling, gentle face white in the moonlight, thanked them for giving him their company on his birthday. Guy wrote down a telephone number saying, ‘When you come back on leave, let’s meet again,’ and a voice inside Harriet’s head said, ‘But he won’t come back. He is going to die.’ She felt neither surprise nor shock at this foreknowledge, only the certainty that it was true.

Simon broke into her memory, saying, ‘I must try to find him but I’m not sure if I can. I don’t know what it’s like out there.’

‘I don’t know either. It’s strange, living here on the edge of a battlefield. It’s like living beside Pluto’s underworld.’

Simon, knowing nothing about Pluto’s underworld, moved to a more desirable subject. ‘You know Edwina’s Hugo’s girl. She’s really something, isn’t she. She’s very beautiful.’

Harriet laughed, saying only, ‘I hardly know her. She’s an archivist at the Embassy.’

‘I say, is she?’ Simon could not have said what an archivist did but the word impressed him. He wanted to hear more about Edwina but felt the need to curb his interest. ‘Actually, I’m married. My wife’s called Anne. We were only together for a week and then I had to go to Liverpool and join the draft. She came to the station to see me off and she couldn’t speak. She just stood there, crying and crying, I said, “Cheer up, the war can’t go on for ever,” but she only cried. Poor little thing!’

Simon’s voice faltered so Harriet feared that he, too, would cry. She wanted to agree that the war could not go on for ever but she had no certainty. She stood up and said, ‘The others will wonder where we are. Having come up at top speed, there’s nothing to do but go down again.’

The cars no longer stood outside Mena House. Harriet sent Simon to the hotel desk, expecting a message had been left, but there was no message. Clifford’s party had gone and she and Simon were left behind.

Abashed, Simon said, ‘But Edwina told Clifford to take me back to her. She made me promise to return.’

‘I see.’ Harriet could imagine Clifford seizing the chance to decant a rival, even such a young and temporary rival as Simon. If Edwina asked where Simon was Clifford could say, ‘He went off with a girl,’ and that would be the end of Simon.

‘It was my fault. I shouldn’t have taken you away like that.’

‘It was an experience. I’ve been hearing about the pyramids since I was a kid but I never expected to go up one.’ Simon smiled to show he did not blame her but it was a dejected smile. Harriet. thinking how few experiences might be left for him in this world, felt enraged that Clifford, so much concerned for his own safety, could abandon Simon who would soon be risking his life. She said, ‘Don’t worry. We’ll find a taxi and I’ll drop you off in Garden City.’

‘But can I just barge in like that?’

‘Of course. If Edwina invited you . . .’

‘Yes, she did invite me.’

They waited outside the hotel until a taxi, coming from Cairo, was willing to take them back. Harriet was relieved to see a light in the living-room of the flat where Edwina lodged. Simon, too, looked up, delighted, never doubting that Edwina was there.

He said, ‘I say, I’m terribly grateful. We’ll meet again, won’t we?’

‘I expect we will.’

The safragi who opened the door of the flat seemed to confirm Simon’s expectations. Inviting him in, the man grinned in an intimate, insolent manner as though conniving at some act of indecency. He said, ‘Mis’ Likkle here,’ but Simon found the person in the living-room was not Edwina. It was a man in late middle age who rose and gazed on him in courteous inquiry.

‘Miss Little invited me here.’

‘Did she? I’m sorry, but she has gone out to dinner. She’s usually out at this time.’

Apologizing, Simon began to back from the room but the man said, ‘Do stay. I’m Paul Beaker, one of the inmates. If Edwina’s expecting you, I’m sure she’ll be back quite early. Why not have supper with me!’

Supper with Paul Beaker offered a bleak alternative to Edwina and Simon hesitated, considering refusal, reflecting on the possibility of her return. There was a snuffle behind him and he realized the safragi had waited to observe his reception. He said, ‘Your man thinks I’m some sort of joke.’

Beaker, looking over Simon’s shoulder, ordered the safragi away and explained to Simon, ‘This is an Embassy flat and we live here in a sort of family freedom that is incomprehensible to the Moslem mind. Hassan can no more understand the innocence of our proximity than you can understand his grins and giggles.’

Beaker, a fat man with a broad red face, raised the glass he was holding and said, ‘Have a drink. Do have one. It will give me an excuse to have another.’

Simon was handed a tumbler of whisky. Pouring in a little water, Beaker asked, ‘That all right?’

Simon, who had never before drunk anything stronger than beer, supposed it was all right as Beaker was drinking the same thing. Beaker, before he had even reseated himself, started to drink with avid satisfaction.

The room was sparsely furnished with sofa, two armchairs, a table and not much else. ‘Rather a makeshift place,’ Beaker said as Simon placed himself on the edge of an armchair, intending to leave when his drink was finished. ‘The chap who holds the lease, one Dobbie Dobson, does not want to lash out on furniture. It’s expensive and hard to get and who knows how long we’ll all be here! I, myself, am leaving in a few weeks. I’ve been appointed to the university of Baghdad. I’m not a diplomat. I’m a professor of romance languages.’ Doing his best to keep Simon entertained, the professor ruminated about the flat. ‘Not a bad flat, really. It’s designed for a Moslem family. This would be the audience room, then there’s another room behind here, the hall’s there and you see that baize door? It leads to the gynaeceum, the women’s quarters. It’s all arranged so the women of the house could pass from one end of the flat to the other without being seen by the visitors in here.’

Simon, uncertain whether Beaker was speaking of past or present, thought of the women moving secretly in the hidden rooms, then thought of Edwina and his cheeks grew pink. ‘Do you mean Edwina is kept behind the baize door?’

Beaker laughed. ‘Oh no, no indeed. Would one dare? No, I mean that it was in accordance with Moslem custom. Edwina does have her sleeping-quarters behind the baize door but no restrictions are placed upon her. She comes and goes as she likes.’

At the mention of Edwina’s sleeping-quarters, Simon’s blush deepened. He lowered his head to hide it while Beaker refilled the glasses and asked, ‘You been out of England before?’

‘Oh, yes. I once had a week in Paris.’

‘Paris, eh?’ Beaker laughed as though the name had some peculiar connotation for him. ‘And now you’re going into the desert, is that it?’

Simon, who was listening for Edwina’s return, realized he must explain himself. He told of his journey round the Cape then asked if the professor had ever met his brother, Hugo.

‘Yes, I seem to remember a young fellow called Hugo, one of Edwina’s swains. So he’s your brother! And you’re joining him at the front. Bit worrying for your people to have two sons out there, isn’t it? Are you their only children?’

‘Yes, just the two of us,’ Simon was suffused by the memory of his home and said, ‘We live in Putney — not really Putney, more Roehampton.’ He saw the street of small Edwardian terrace houses, all alike except that the Boulderstone home had a conservatory leading from the living-room. Mr Boulderstone had built it himself and said it added to the value of the house. Warmed and activated by the whisky, he told Professor Beaker about the conservatory that was filled with his mother’s geraniums and a very old sofa. In the summer she would sit among her plants, mending clothes and knitting and listening to talks on the radio. The clouded glass, the scents, the summer warmth of the conservatory came back to him so vividly that he described them to Beaker as though they were important in the scheme of things. There was one remarkable thing in the conservatory. When the local mansion was being demolished to make way for a housing estate, Mr Boulderstone had acquired an old vine which he planted against the wall outside, bringing the main stem in to spread under the glass roof. He told his family that the vine was a Black Hamburg, like the vine at Hampton Court that produced great bunches of purple grapes, but, whatever Mr Boulderstone did, his vine had nothing but small green grapes like bunches of peas. He bought the vine buckets of blood from the abattoir. He puffed sulphur over the bunches but they never got bigger. Sometimes a sour flush of mauve would come over the grapes but they tasted as bitter as aloes.

Beaker, gazing intently at Simon’s glowing face, seemed deeply interested in all this, encouraging Simon to talk so by the third whisky he was as far back in memory as his infants’ school. When Beaker made to refill his glass Simon said, ‘Oh no, I’d better not. I’ve got to find my way back to Abbasia barracks somehow.’

‘Why not stay here,’ said Beaker. ‘We often put you chaps up. There’s a small spare room.’

Thinking of Edwina, thinking of the abominable, death-smelling room at the barracks, Simon said, ‘Oh, I say, thanks. But I’ve got to ring Transit.’ When he rang Transit, he found a message had come for him from Major Perry. He was to be at Kasr el Nil barracks at six the next morning.

He said to Beaker, ‘I’m afraid, sir, I’ve got to make an early start.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll give you the alarm clock. We’re used to chaps making early starts.’

Simon settled thankfully back into the armchair and let Beaker give him another drink. But that, he knew, was enough. Hassan came in to set the table and Simon now was happy to accept Beaker’s invitation to supper. Four places were laid but only Beaker and Simon sat down. Beaker asked him about the long voyage out to Egypt and Simon tried to describe the wonderful communion that had existed between him and his two friends, but already the deathless friendship, the understanding, the intense sympathy, the very smell of the ship itself, were fading from his mind like illusions that could not survive on dry land.

While he was talking, the front door opened and shut and Simon’s voice dried in his throat. Paused in expectation, he realized that Beaker, too, was listening for Edwina’s return. Then a male voice shouted, ‘Hassan’, and Beaker twitched nervously. ‘Dear me, that’s Percy Gibbon. I didn’t know he would be in. He will be cross that we started without him.’

Percy Gibbon could be heard talking in Arabic to the safragi while Beaker, awaiting him, made an effort to appear sober. When Gibbon entered, Beaker began in a confused and fussy manner, ‘So sorry, I really thought . . .I really did . . .’ Gibbon held up an imperious hand and Beaker’s apology limped to a halt.

Gibbon said, ‘There are more important things to worry about.’

‘Oh, really, are there? You’ve heard something?’

‘Nothing that I’m free to impart.’

A very subdued Hassan put down Gibbon’s soup and Gibbon bent to it, his nose just above the plate. It was a very large nose, the cheeks falling back so sharply that, from the front, Gibbon’s face looked all nose. His mouth was small and his weak, pinkish eyes seemed colourless behind brass-rimmed glasses. Having downed his soup, he blinked at Simon. ‘One of Edwina’s, I suppose?’

Simon said, ‘Not really. I only arrived yesterday. I came out on the Queen Mary with the draft.’

Gibbon frowned down in disapproval. ‘That’s something you should keep to yourself.’

Beaker, having incited information from Simon, now sided with Gibbon. ‘Dear me, yes. Quite right. People are on edge. Rumours and so on. Unwise, I agree, to tell anyone anything.’

Gibbon said nothing. A dish of sliced lamb with carrots and sweet potatoes had been put on the table and he shovelled nearly half of the lamb on to his plate. He ate briskly, repeatedly sniffing as though he had a cold in the head. He took no more notice of Simon and as soon as the meal was over, he jumped up and took himself out through the baize door.

Simon asked in a low voice, ‘What does he do?’

Beaker, too, spoke quietly as though fearing a reprimand. ‘Don’t know. Whatever it is, it’s very hush-hush. I’ve been told he breaks codes.’

‘He must be very clever.’

Beaker laughed and let his voice rise. ‘He certainly thinks he is. My theory is that he’s modelled himself on one of those Byron heroes. You know: “Vital scorn of all”, “Chilling mystery of mien”, “Haughty and reserved manner” — that sort of thing.’

Simon nodded, too sleepy to speak, and Beaker suggested that having to make such an early start, Simon might be wise to go to bed. He was put in a room behind the baize door. It was as bare as the barracks’ room but for Simon, it was another thing. It was a room in a household and what was more, it was near Edwina’s room. The whole corridor behind the baize door had been redolent of flowers.

He was roused some time after midnight by the noise in the living-room. Several people were talking and laughing, then came the plink-plink of a guitar and a voice rose high, pure and dulcet, singing in a language Simon did not know. From the long, melancholy notes, he guessed it was a sad song of love and he murmured to himself, ‘Poor little thing.’ Then the voice warmed into impetuous emotion and he knew the singer was Edwina. The song tantalized him with the memories of young women he had known in England and the women he had met that day. He saw in his mind not only Edwina, but the dark girl called Harriet and the woman with the dead boy in the Fayoum House. Even Miss Brownall entered his thoughts with a certain seductive pathos because she was a woman and tomorrow he must go where there were no women.

While he lay listening, in a state of ardent anguish, a door was flung open in the corridor and Gibbon bawled out, ‘Shut up. I do an important job, not like you bastards.’

The guitar stopped. The song devolved into giggles and Simon returned to sleep. Professor Beaker’s alarm clock wakened him to darkness and silence. He had no idea how he was to find his way through the unknown, sleeping city but down by the river a taxi was parked with the driver curled up on the back seat. He reached Kasr el Nil barracks as the first red of dawn broke across the sky, and saw the convoy strung out along the embankment.

There was no sign of movement. He had had to go first to Abbasia for his kit and was relieved to find himself in time. He wondered if he looked a fool, turning up in a taxi but, reaching the lorries, he realized no one knew or cared how he had got there.

The lorries were a mixed lot, made up from one unit or another, but on most of them the jerboa, the desert rat, could be discerned through the grime. They had arrived sand-choked from the desert and were returning sand-choked, but here and there a glint of new metal showed where a make-do-and-mend job had been done. Among the men packed on board them, he recognized faces he had seen on the Queen Mary and he felt less dejected. Finding the sergeant in charge, he said, to show he was not a complete novice, ‘I suppose a lot of your chaps were on leave when the trains stopped?’

‘That’s right . . .’ there was the usual pause before the ‘sir’ was added.

It was up to Simon to take over now. He counted the lorries and said, ‘Thirty. That’s the lot then, sergeant?’

‘That’s the koulou . . . sir.’

The sergeant strolled off with the blank remoteness of a man to whom war was an everyday affair. Simon, with no idea of what lay ahead, looked about him as though seeing everything for the last time. There was an island in mid-river, one end of it directly opposite the barracks. In the uncertain light it looked like a great schooner decked out with greenery. The light was growing. The island, touched by the pink of the sky, was taking shape, its buildings quivering as though forming themselves out of liquid pearl. Palms and tall, tenuous trees grew from the shadows at the water’s edge. Nothing moved. The island hung on the air like a mirage or an uninhabited place.

A wind, cool enough to be pleasurable, blew into Simon’s face and he said to himself, ‘Why, it’s beautiful!’ The whole city was beautiful and for a few minutes the beauty remained, then the pearl hardened and lost its lustre. The sun had topped the horizon. The air was already warm. The terrible crescendo of the day had begun.

Major Hardy, arriving at the barracks square, chose to place his staff car half-way down the column. Simon, given no order to join him, climbed in beside the driver of the leading lorry. Trying to sound knowledgeable, he asked, ‘How are we going out, corporal?’

The corporal, whose round, sunburnt face was even younger than his own, replied, ‘Oh, the usual way, sir,’ and Simon waited to see what way that was. It proved to be familiar. They went, as Clifford’s party had done, past Mena House and the pyramids. The corporal did not give the pyramids a look and Simon, seeing for the second time the small one sliding out from behind the greater, felt less wonder and said nothing. When they passed the excavated village, only Simon noticed it. They were travelling slowly so the lorries would keep together. At first the pace — it seldom exceeded ten miles an hour — was tolerable but when they faced the open desert, with the sun rising and shining into the cab window, tedium came down on them. Until then, Simon had still been attached to the known world but now it was disappearing behind him. He felt apprehensive, disconnected and rootless, and asked himself what on earth he was doing, going off like this into the unknown? Then, it came to him that, though he was vulnerable, he was not alone. He was a man among other men who, if they had to act, would act together. Yet the apprehension, fixed in his stomach, could not be moved. To reassure himself, he asked the driver, ‘What’s it like out there?’

‘Oh,’ the driver, called Arnold, ducked his head in a deprecating way, ‘not bad, sir. You get browned off, a’course, but it’s got its moments.’

Arnold had been one of those stranded in Cairo and had to find his battalion. He had no certainty he would do so. ‘Never know what’s happened when you’re away. Don’t want to start with a fresh mob, not when you’re used to your own lot.’

This statement conveyed a sense of confusion ahead and Simon asked, ‘How do you find your way around in the desert?’

The corporal laughed. ‘You get a feel for it, sir.’

The sun rose above the cab roof and mirage hid the sand. The sky, if anyone could bear to look at it, had the molten whiteness of mid-day. They touched on the edge of a town. It was like a holiday scene with small, white villas, date palms and walls hung with purple bougainvillaea, then came the white dazzle of sand and a sea, in bands of green, blue and violet, that seemed more light than water. They passed abandoned camping sites where regimental flags hung over emptiness, then drove between two shallow lakes, one of them green, the other raspberry pink, both dotted with floating chunks of soda. Simon could not hide his astonishment.

‘What a weird place!’

‘It’s only Alex, sir.’ Outside the town, Arnold tentatively asked, ‘Time to brew up, sir?’

‘Good heavens, yes. I should have thought of it, shouldn’t I?’

‘That’s all right, sir.’

The red flag was hoisted and the convoy drew into the side of the road. Numbers of army trucks and cars were going east. It seemed that that day only the convoy was going west. Looking down its length, Simon saw Major Hardy getting out of his car. The major was merely a passenger to the front but Simon, with no great confidence in his own power to command, felt it would be politic to treat him as if he were in charge. As Simon strolled down to the car, the major, spreading a large-scale map out over the bonnet, lifted a dark, lined face with a bar of black hair on the upper lip and gave him a stare of acute irritation. Simon started to introduce himself but Hardy interrupted him. ‘Your section’s brewing up. Better get back to see fair play.’

The sergeant, whose glum, folded face was kippered by the sun, was demonstrating, with an air of long-suffering, how to make a fire and boil water for the brew. The new men looked on as two large stones were set up to form a hob for the brew can, which was a cut-down petrol can. The water came from the convoy’s reserves but the sergeant said sternly, ‘You don’t use it, see, if you can get it from anywhere else.’ He packed scrubwood between the stones and set it alight. Down the convoy, other fires were being started for other sections. At intervals, at the roadside, groups of men stood and watched for water to boil.

‘Now,’ said the sergeant, ‘y’puts in yer tea, see.’ He broke open a case of tea and threw two large handfuls on to the boiling water. ‘Right. Now y’lifts it off, see.’ He lifted the can as though his dry, brown hands were insulated against heat. ‘Right. And now — where’s yer mugs?’

The mugs stood together on the sand, a concourse of mugs, one for each man in the section and a couple over. Vincent trailed condensed milk from mug to mug, giving an inch or more of milk, and then the sergeant splashed the brew can over them. The men, picking up their tea mugs, moved into groups as though each had sorted out the companions natural to his kind. Already, Simon thought, they had ceased to be a collection of strangers and soon they would be wedded into twos and threes of which each member belonged to the others as he had belonged to Trench and Codley. Feeling himself solitary and apart, he looked for Arnold but Arnold had his own friends, men who had been with him, stranded, in Cairo. The sergeant brought over one of the spare mugs and two bully beef sandwiches. ‘Spot of char, sir?’, then remained beside Simon who, deeply gratified, asked him where he had been before he went on leave.

‘Mersa. The jerries were just outside.’

‘Where do you think they are now?’

The sergeant snorted. ‘A few yards up the road, I reckon.’

Simon saw that he was not, as he had thought, sullen or remote. He was dejected by defeat. ‘We had Gazala. We had Tobruk. It was hunkey-dorey. Looked like in no time we’d be back in Benghazi, then this happened.’

‘What did happen?’

‘Came down on us like a bat out’a hell.’

Arnold called, ‘Blue flag, sir?’

‘Oh, yes. Yes. Blue flag.’

Looking towards the horizon where the heat was thickening into a pall, Simon could imagine the German tanks appearing like monstrous bats, advancing with such speed and fury, the convoy could be wiped out before it had time to turn round. But the horizon was empty and even the eastbound traffic had stopped.

‘Quiet, isn’t it!’

Arnold said, ‘Jerry’s too busy to bother us,’ and as he spoke, a Heinkel, returning from a reconnaissance flight, dived over the convoy. He braked sharply. The Heinkel, returning, sprayed the sand like a gesture of contempt. The bullets winged harmlessly into the sand. The plane flew off.

As the sun began to sink, Simon was concerned about the routine for the night. At some place and point in time he should give the order to make camp but before the need became an anxiety Arnold said, ‘Think we should leaguer here, sir?’

There was a glimmer of white on the coast. The glimmer grew into a village of pleasant holiday homes with a bay, like a long white bone, that curved into the desert’s cinderous buffs and browns.

‘Who lives out here?’ Simon asked.

‘No one, now. They all moved away long ago.’

The lorries were positioned into a close-rank formation that served as camp and defence. Arnold, smiling as though he had begun to feel a protective affection for Simon, asked him, ‘Permission to bathe, sir.’

Simon followed as the men, running between the dunes, shouting at each other, pulling off their shirts and shorts, went naked into a sea as warm and clinging as milk. Lying on the sea, in the haze of evening, he looked back at the village and was surprise to find it was still there. Had he been asked as they covered mile after mile of sand, ‘Where would you choose to be?’ he might well have chosen this oasis beside the white shore, with its villas under a shelter of palm trees. He raised his head to look westwards into the foggy distance of the desert coast and seeing nothing, he had an illusion of safety. The enemy must be further away than the sergeant imagined. Content filled him and he smiled at the man nearest to him. ‘We didn’t expect this, did we?’

The man laughed and twisted his head in a movement of appreciation. ‘Dead cushy,’ he said.

That night, startled out of sleep by the rising moon, Simon felt the earth vibrating beneath him. He sat up, uncertain where he was, and saw the brilliant whiteness of the houses patterned over by the palm fronds. There was a booming in the air, distant but heavy, and he knew it must be artillery. Pulling himself down into his sleeping-bag, he put his hands over his ears and sank back into sleep.

For most of the next day the convoy seemed alone in the desert. Occasionally a dispatch rider passed on a motorcycle and once a staff car came up behind them and went by with the speed of a police car. Then, in mid-morning, a pinkish smudge appeared on the horizon. Simon asked Arnold what he thought it was.

‘Could be a sandstorm.’

The smudge, pale and indefinite at first, deepened in colour and expanded, swelling towards the convoy until, less than a mile away, it revealed itself as a sand cloud, rising so thickly into the heat fuzz of the upper air that the sun was almost occluded. Inside the cloud, the dark shapes of vehicles were visible. The first of them was a supply truck, lurching, top-heavy with mess equipment. The procession that followed stretched away to the horizon. Like the convoy, it moved slowly, creaking and clanking amid the stench of its own exhausts and petrol fumes. As they reached and passed it, Simon felt the heat from the vehicles that followed one after the other on the other side of the road.

Transports carried tanks that had lost their treads. Trucks towed broken-down aircraft or other trucks. Troop carriers were piled with men who slept, one on top of the other, a sleep of exhaustion. Guns, RAF wagons, recovery vehicles, armoured cars, loads of Naafi stores and equipment, went past, mile after mile of them, their yellow paint coated with sand, all unsteady, all, it seemed, on the point of collapse. As they moved nose to tail, they gave an impression of scrapyard confusion yet somehow maintained a semblance of order.

A staff car, that had pulled on to the wrong side of the road, brought the convoy to a halt. Major Hardy, striding towards it, shouted, ‘What’s going on? Is the whole damned army in retreat?’

Another major looked out of the disabled car, his face creased with weariness, and shouted back, ‘No, it damn well isn’t. The line’s holding a few miles up the road. The Aussie 9th Division is rumoured to be on its way — and it better be. They’re a mixed bunch back there: 8th Army, Kiwis, South Africans, a few Indians. How long they can hold out is anybody’s guess.’

‘But where’s this lot going?’

‘Ordered to prepare defences further east.’

‘Where? The back gardens of Abou Kir?’

‘Likely enough,’ the major wiped the sweat from his face and gave a grin. ‘We’ll fight on the beaches.’

‘This convoy’s to report to 7th Motor Brigade. Any idea where that is?’

‘Search me. Could be anywhere. It’s hell and plain bloody murder where we came from.’

The obstructing car was pushed off the road to await a mechanic and the convoy went on, moving westward when it seemed that everything else in the world was going east. The breakdowns become more frequent. Every few hundred yards there was a halt and men were sent to push some vehicle away while Major Hardy questioned anyone he could find to question. He became more flustered, finding no one who knew or cared where the convoy might find its divisional headquarters. He shouted at Simon, ‘Don’t dog my heels, Boulderstone. Get a move on or we’ll have another night on the road.’

They made what progress they could. Structures appeared beside the road, temporary and flimsy but suggesting that at last, among the muddle of wire and piled up stones, the tired newcomers might find their destination. Some sappers were at work on a crack in the tarmac and Simon, seeing them before Hardy had a chance to get to them, ran to make the usual inquiries. From their manner, he was uncertain whether they were telling him the truth or not. One sapper said, ‘The Auk’s down the road. Been standing there all day without his hat, just watching this ruddy circus go by. He’ll tell you where to go.’

Simon doubted that but asked, ‘What does he look like?’

‘The Auk? Great man, ruddy hero. Big. Big chap. You can’t miss ’im.’

The sappers, still laughing, stood back to let the convoy bump its way across the broken surface and drive on towards a red blur where the sun was beginning to set. The booming that had disturbed Simon the night before, now started again; a much more ponderous sound. Stars of red and green were rising into the sunset and Simon asked Arnold: ‘Is that the front line?’

‘No, the front’s a good ten miles on.’ They drove another mile. ‘Think we’d better get down, sir?’

It was time to leaguer. The men sprang from the trucks, shaking the cramp from their legs, cheerfully congratulating each other as though they had reached home. The westbound traffic had been stopped by its own congestion and the dust had begun to settle. The air cleared but there was not much to see; only a vast plain, crimsoned by sunset, from which two columns of smoke, black as soot, rose into the blood-red brilliance of the sky.