Four

Dobson had been right. There was going to be a scramble for the special train. To make matters worse, the train was late and those packed together on the platform were in a state of agitated anxiety, expecting tumult.

Cairo had become the clearing house of Eastern Europe. Kings and princes, heads of state, their followers and hangers-on, free governments with all their officials, everyone who saw himself committed to the allied cause, had come to live here off the charity of the British government. Hotels, restaurants and cafés were loud with the squabbles, rivalries, scandals, exhibitions of importance and hurt feelings that occupied the refugees while they waited for the war to end and the old order to return.

Now they were all on the move again. Those free to go, or of such eminence their persons were regarded as sacrosanct, had taken themselves off days before. It was said that the officers of General Headquarters had left in staff cars but, whether that was true or not, there were still officers at Groppi’s. Now it was the turn of the English women and children who had obstinately remained in spite of warnings. The warnings had become urgent, and most of them had decided to leave.

Harriet was not among them but she was not far from them. Where she stood, awaiting the Alexandria train, she could look across the rail at the vast concourse packed on the platform opposite. She saw people she knew. She saw Pinkrose, hanging on to his traps and pushing first this way, then that, trying to find a position that would give him an advantage over the others. In his determined search and frequent mind changes, he thrust women from him and tripped over children, and so enraged the volatile Greeks, Free French, Poles and German Jews that they shouted abuse at him and blamed him for their fears. Hearing none of this, aware of nothing but himself, he struggled back and forth, losing his hat, regaining it, clucking in his agitation.

The train was sighted and a groan went through the crowd. The train came at a snail’s pace towards the platform. The groan died out and a tense silence came down on the passengers who, gripping bags and babies, prepared for the battle to come. As the first carriages drew abreast of the platform, hysteria set in. The men who had been castigating Pinkrose for loutish behaviour, now flung themselves forward, regardless of women and children, and began tugging at the carriage doors. The women, suffering the usual disadvantage of having to protect families as well as themselves, were shrill in protest, but the protest soon became general. The carriages were locked. The train, slow and inexorable as time, slid on till it touched the buffers at the end of the line.

The scene was now hidden from Harriet by the arrival of her own train. Hardly anyone was risking the move to Alexandria and choosing among the empty compartments, she heard the clamour as the special train was opened up. She also heard the gleeful yells of the porters throwing luggage aboard. ‘You go. Germans come. You go. Germans come.’

Iqal might have his doubts about the German promises but the fellahin had heard there were great times ahead. The wonder was, Harriet thought, that they were all so tolerant of the losers. Even when poor, diseased and hungry, they maintained their gaiety, speeding the old conquerors off without malice. No doubt they would welcome the new in the same way.

Harriet’s train moved gently out. The uproar died behind her and she passed into the almost silent lushness of the Delta. Here was a region of dilatory peace that lived its own life, unaware of war and invaders. All over the Delta that stretched north for a hundred miles, black earth put out crops so green the foliage was like green light. Now, in high summer, this vibrancy of green was exactly as it had been when the Pringles first arrived. Then it had been Easter. Greece was aflower with spring but in Egypt there was neither spring nor autumn, only the heat of summer and the winter’s soft warmth.

Flat, oblong fields were divided from each other by water channels, and each produced crops without respite. Vegetables, flax, beans, barley, tobacco, cotton: all lifted their rich verdure repeatedly out of the same blackness for which Egypt had once been called the Black Land. Between the crops there were fruit trees: mangoes, pomegranates, banana palms, date palms, and sometimes a whitewashed tomb, like a miniature mosque, or a white house with woodwork fretted like a child’s toy.

Men, women and children went on working without looking at the train. Their persistence was leisurely and the train, too, was leisurely. Harriet was able to watch a water buffalo trudge a full circle, turning a water wheel that had outworn generations of buffaloes.

When, a year ago, she first saw the Delta, it was evening. The refugee ship had arrived early in the morning but people were not allowed ashore. They had to be questioned and given clearance. They were hungry. They had been told to bring their own food but in Athens the shops were empty of food, and there was none to be found. Harriet had brought some oranges on the quay and these had kept the Pringles and their circle of friends going for three days. Oranges had been the main diet in Athens for some weeks before the end and that was how they had existed; on oranges, wine and the exaltation of the Greek spring.

Berthed by the quayside at Alexandria, the passengers saw nothing but cases of guns and ammunition. No food. Then two soldiers had come to stare up at them and the passengers shouted at them in all the languages of Europe. The soldiers came to the edge of the quay, asking what it was the refugees wanted. ‘Food,’ shouted Harriet.

The men went into a shed and came back with a whole branch of bananas. They broke off the fruits and threw them up over the ship’s rail and everybody scrambled for them. Harriet caught one and took it to share with Guy who sat where he had sat for most of the voyage, placidly reading the sonnets of Shakespeare.

‘Half each,’ she said and he smiled as she peeled off the green skin and broke the pink flesh, then watched as she bit into it.

Allowed to land, they were taken to an army canteen for bacon and eggs and strong tea. ‘Tea you could trot a mouse on,’ said Guy. The sun was low when they boarded the train and they journeyed into a country stranger than any other, yet suffocatingly familiar. The heat, the airless quiet, the rich oily colours reminded Harriet of old biblical oleographs seen at Sunday school. It was the ‘Land of the Pharaohs’, a land she had known since childhood.

‘Look, a camel,’ someone shouted and they all crowded to the window to see their first camel of Egypt lifting its proud, world-weary head and planting its soft, splayed feet into the sandy road. The workers were leaving the fields. A string of them wandered along the road, slowly, as though it did not matter whether they went home or not.

The sun set and twilight merged and darkened the fields. Half-way between Cairo and Alexandria, the train stopped at Tanta. A Greek girl called out, ‘My God, look at Tanta!’ They looked and experienced the first shock of Egyptian poverty. Tanta station was in a culvert overhung by the balconies of gimcrack flats where washing was strung on lines and rubbish was heaped for the wind to blow away. Fat men in pyjamas lay in hammocks or stood up sweating and scratching and leering down on the women in the train. Many of the refugees were Athenians, used to a city of marble. In Alexandria, where it rained, the bricks had been baked but there was no rain in the Delta. Tanta was the dun colour of unbaked clay.

Beggar children whined up at the train, banging on it to demand attention. As the train pulled out, they ran beside it, their bare dirty feet slapping the ground until they were lost in the twilight. Then darkness came down and there was nothing to see but the palm fronds black against the afterglow of sunset.

Here was Harriet at Tanta again. The same fat men sprawled on the balconies, the same children whined at her, the same smell of spice, dung and death hung in the air, but none of it disturbed Harriet now. Tanta was a part of Egypt. It was the nature of things, and her only thought was to get the journey over. If asked, she would have said she did not dislike Tanta as much as she disliked Alexandria. Though she deplored her mid-week separation from Guy, she dreaded the time when her job would end and she would have to move from Cairo. Built on a narrow strip of land between a salt lake and the sea, Alexandria, she felt, was depressing and claustrophobic. Castlebar, who went each week to tutor the son of an Alexandrian Greek banker, had said to Guy, ‘You’ll enjoy it. The fashionables are quite amusing,’ but Guy was not among ‘the fashionables’. His college was not even in Alexandria. It was beyond the eastern end of the long Corniche that ran from the Pharos, all round the old port, and stretched in an endless concrete promenade, until it was lost in desert. Guy was in the desert. He taught English at a business college where the sons of tobacco and cotton barons wanted to learn a commercial language. When Guy organized a series of lectures on English literature, a deputation of students came to tell him that they did not need to know about literature. They did not want English, as Guy understood it. They wanted something called ‘commercial English’.

Alexandria was famous for its sea-breeze but the breeze could often bring in a summer mist. When Harriet left the train, she found the sun hidden by a moisture film that increased the greyness of the streets. The townspeople were queuing up outside banks or hurrying from shop to shop, buying as though against a siege. There was unease in the air, the same unease that Harriet had felt in Athens when the Germans reached Thermopylae. In Cairo people were saying that the rich business community of Alexandria had appointed a reception committee to prepare a welcome for Rommel. That was probably true but the rich were stocking up before the invaders came to empty the shops. Cars, packed with supplies like the cars outside the American Embassy, stood ready for those who thought it wiser to flee. Some of them were lagged with mattresses as a protection against aerial bombardment.

Harriet took a bus along the Corniche. There was a drabness about the streets and she felt that some bright constituent was missing. She realized that the young naval men, who went about in white duck, as light-hearted as children, were missing from among the people on the pavements. She supposed that shore-leave had been stopped.

That day no one had time to lie on the beach. The long grey sea edge, usually full of bathers, was deserted except for a few small boys. The vacuous greyness of the town depressed her. She realized she had become acclimatized to Cairo’s perpetual sunshine and rumbustious vitality. Here the long sea-facing cliff of hotels and blocks of flats had a winter bleakness as though all life had moved away.

In Cairo, the German occupation was still merely possible: here, apparently, it was a certainty. She decided she would stand none of Guy’s heroics. She would take him back to Cairo that very night.

In normal times, Guy would have been on leave. The college had shut for the summer but, feeling he had no right to take leave, he had remained to conduct a summer course in English. Only a few students, eager to excel or to gain his favour, had enrolled but they were enough to give him a sense of purpose. He would argue that the school was part of the college curriculum and he could not abandon it. She would argue that it was not and he very well could.

Again calamity presented itself as a solution. I would deliver Guy from Alexandria and from his wretched lodgings. If she had to come here, they would live not in one of these expensive Corniche flats but in the same sleazy hinterland where he was living at the moment. Not much caring where he lived, he had taken a room in a Levantine pension of the poorest kind, a place so dark and neglected, everything seemed coated with grime. One day, watching him as he talked to the landlord, she had seen him rub his hand on the knob of a bannister then pass the same hand over his forehead. She had berated him, telling him he might pick up leprosy, smallpox, plague or any of the killer diseases of Egypt. Guy, who believed all disease was a sickness of the psyche, said, ‘Don’t be silly. You only catch what you fear to catch,’ and, fearing nothing, he saw himself immune.

When she left the bus at the end of the Corniche, she had still to walk half a mile to where the college stood isolated in a scrubby area of near desert that was now being built up. The building had once been a quarantine station for seamen. Staring out to sea, grim faced, lacking any hint of ornament, it might have been a penitentiary. And for Guy it was, in a way, a penitentiary. He had been exiled here for his song, ‘Gracey of Gezira’ — or so Harriet believed. He had brought his exile upon himself.

No one, not even a boab, was in the hall. She walked unchecked down to the half-glazed door of the lecture hall and, looking in, saw Guy at a desk, bent over a book. The shutters had been closed against the sun and had not been opened when mist covered the sky. The amber colour of the electric light made his face sallow and he looked very drawn. He had lost weight and his cheeks, that had been smooth with youth when they married, only two years before, now showed a line from nostrils to chin. Time and the Egyptian climate had told on them both.

From the silence, she guessed they were alone in the building and she was reminded of another time of danger when Guy, who had been the beloved mentor, waited in vain for his students. During their last days in Bucharest, with the Iron Guard on the march, the students were wise to stay away.

As she opened the door, he turned his head and at once he was young again. He jumped to his feet, animated by surprise and pleasure. ‘Well, this is the nicest thing that’s happened to me for a long time.’

He laughed, treating her statement as a joke. She looked at the book on his desk. It was one she had given him for his last birthday and she said, ‘Good heavens, you’re not trying to lecture them on Finnegans Wake?’

‘Not all of them, but I have two exceptionally brilliant chaps who are interested in English for its own sake. Pretty rare in this place. I promised them a seminar on Joyce. I’m certain that Joyce got a lot of his funnier pieces from students at the Berlitz School. I get the same sort of things here. Look,’ he pulled some students’ papers out of his desk and read, “‘D. H. Lawrence was theoretically wrong” — Joyce would have loved that. And here,

‘Well, I had ten to begin with. They thought if they humoured me by joining the class, I’d repay them by marking up their exam papers. When they found it didn’t work, they faded away. But there are two left and they’re exceptional.’

‘Well, exceptional or not, the fact is you’re keeping this place open for a couple of students? Here you are, at a time like this, waiting to discuss Finnegans Wake?’

‘I expect you to have some sense. Don’t you realize the Germans are less than fifty miles from Alex?’

‘Oh, darling,’ he took her hands and squeezed them. ‘Little monkey’s paws! You aren’t frightened, are you? You weren’t frightened in Greece when we had nothing in front of us but the sea. Here we have the whole of Africa.’

‘I’m frightened for you. A lot of good having the whole of Africa if you’re cut off here. If you’re waiting for orders, you’ll wait for ever. There’s no one to give orders. Gracey’s bolted, as usual. So, for that matter, have Toby Lush, Dubedat and several thousand others. I saw Pinkrose going off on the special train this morning. The least you can do is come to Cairo. If you hang on here, you’ll end up in Dachau. In Cairo, we stand a fair chance of getting away.’

‘That’s the trouble. You’re overconfident. We’ve got away twice — but it could be third time unlucky. They move so fast, you could be caught before you knew they had reached Alex.’

‘I can’t argue now, darling.’ Guy put an arm round her shoulder and led her to the door. ‘The students are due any minute. You get back to Alex. Get yourself something to eat and I’ll see you later. I’m going to the Cecil to meet some men.’

‘Six o’clock. You’ll find Castlebar there. And I’m having supper with a chap you don’t know. Called Aidan Pratt. If you get there before I do, introduce yourself. Be nice to the poor fellow. He’s very shy.’

The sun was breaking through the mist and the promenade was in sunlight when she reached the bus stop. Guy had said, ‘I can’t argue now,’ implying, she hoped, that he would argue later, but later there would be Castlebar and this man she did not know and Guy, always high-spirited in company, would be too volatile to discuss unwelcome reality. He had an impulse to take risks, and then there were the two students, the ambitious swots who roused his old obstinate loyalty and could detain him there until it was too late.

‘Bloody students!’ She saw them as voracious creatures who would devour him if they could. And, in time, he would be devoured. She felt rage that he should be wasting his learning on this wretched place.

As there was no bus in sight, she decided to walk the length of the Corniche and so pass the dead centre of the day. Walking, that in Cairo meant bathing in sweat, was pleasant enough here where the sea wind tempered the heat, but the walk was monotonous. It was a dull shore with rocks that were rotting like cheese. At one point where the sea washed under the cheesey, crumbling rock shelf, holes had been cut so the waves, beating through them, made a booming sound. Or so it was said. Harriet had never heard it. The holes were very ancient and were no longer a diversion. Today the water splashed through them with a half-hearted plip-plop that she thought a fitting comment on the wartime world. The sun was dropping and the light deepening. This was the evening when the conquerors of the Afrika Korps were to force their pent-up ardour on the ladies of Alexandria.

The conquerors had not yet arrived but there was a British soldier leaning against the sea wall. He looked like a man with all the time in the world but his baggage showed he was waiting for transport.

She stopped to lean beside him, staring with him at the flat, almost motionless sea where no ships sailed, and said, ‘You off to the desert?’

He muttered, ‘Ya.’ He was older than the soldier she had met in Cairo and he did not marvel at meeting a young English-woman.

‘He’ll get here if he can, won’t he? If not, not. There’s no knowing, is there?’ He spoke dully, sodden with boredom, so, knowing she would get no response from him she walked on. The barrage balloons were beginning to rise over the town. By the time she reached the harbour, there were a dozen or more kidney shapes hanging in mid-sky. She had an hour to get through before going to the hotel so walked on till she was opposite the Pharos, then she sat on the wall, her legs hanging above the sand, and watched the pleatings of ruby cloud that were forming round the horizon. The Pharos, newly painted, reflected the sky. The scene absorbed her so it was some minutes before she realized she was an object of prurient excitement among the boys on the shore below. They were dodging about in their ragged galabiahs, the eldest not more than ten or eleven, bending down, sniggering, as they tried to see up her skirt. She shouted ‘Yallah’ but they would not be driven off. She lifted her legs over the wall and sat the other way but the boys ran up the steps to stare at her from the road. At last, sick of their antics, she jumped down and went to the Cecil.

The atmosphere inside the hotel was forlorn. The cosmopolitan patrons had gone with the rest and even the bar, the venue of British naval officers, was empty except for three army captains who stood together, constrained and sober, and another who sat by himself. This last was near the door, watching for someone, and she guessed from his vulnerable air, his expectation and his disappointment when she came in, that he was waiting for Guy. He must be the shy Aidan Pratt. From her experience of Guy’s acquaintances, she guessed that this man had asked Guy to dinner not simply for the pleasure of his company. He had a need of his own. He wanted to confide in Guy, or ask his advice, or get something from him. Guy had probably promised him the evening and he, supposing he would have Guy’s company to himself, had not bargained for her, or for Castlebar. Guy was, as usual, double-booked, and not only from forgetfulness. His engagements crowded upon each other because he brought down on himself more dependence than any normal person could support.

Knowing the man would not welcome her company, she wandered back to the foyer and sat there as the lights came on inside and the twilight deepened outside. Guy did not appear and, feeling solitary and exposed, she returned to the bar and approached Aidan Pratt. When she spoke, his surprise was almost an affront.

He stared with animosity until she explained that she was Guy’s wife, then he stumbled to his feet, attempting to recoup his discourtesy with a smile. He was a heavy, handsome young man with limp and oily black hair. He was still in his early twenties, but his eyes were contained in hollows of brownish skin that aged him. They were large eyes, very dark, and his smile did not dispel their desolation. His aura of depression repelled her. She, too, had hoped to have Guy to herself. He was, she realized, another victim of Guy’s reassuring warmth. Each one imagined himself the sole recipient Guy would remake the world for him, and for him alone. They clung to him and, in the end, he evaded them or asked her to protect him from them. ‘You answer the telephone, darling . . .’ Deeply buried, there was in him an instinct for preservation and the instinct might save him in the end.

Aidan Pratt asked her what she would drink. From the bar, he looked intently back at her, perhaps wondering if he could confide in her, treat her as a surrogate for Guy, and she realized she had seen him before. When he brought back her drink, she asked if they had met somewhere. He shook his head but his smile took on vitality as though her question had pleased him.

When he sat opposite her, she felt his whole personality on edge. His face was moist, not from heat, because the bar was air-conditioned, but from nervousness. His uniform of fine gaberdine was expensively tailored but he fidgeted inside it as though troubled by its fit. She asked where he was stationed. He was on leave from Damascus.

‘Doesn’t everyone know Guy?’ he gave a laugh. ‘Last time I was here someone told me a story: two men were wrecked on a desert island. Neither knew the other but they both knew Guy Pringle.’

‘I met him here, in this bar, on my last leave. Next day I went out to the college and we walked to Ramleh, talking all the way there and back. A memorable day. We arranged to meet here again the following evening. I waited three hours before I discovered he wasn’t even in Alex. He’d gone to Cairo for the weekend.’ As Harriet showed no surprise, he asked, ‘Does that sort of thing often happen?’

‘You remember the bread-and-butter fly that lived on weak tea and cream? If it couldn’t find any, it died. Alice said, “But that must happen very often,” and the gnat said, “It always happens.’”

‘He doesn’t mean to let them down. He takes on too much. People persuade him to do what he hasn’t time to do so, inevitably, someone is let down.’

Aidan’s mouth tightened and he said with slight hauteur, ‘As you are here, I suppose we can depend on him tonight?’

‘Yes, he’ll turn up sooner or later. I want to take him back to Cairo.’ She thought it an odd time for anyone to come here on leave and said, ‘Things are pretty bad, you know.’

‘You mean, worse than usual? Isn’t it the same old romp as last time? They reach Sollum and then they’re driven back?’

‘Obviously you didn’t believe them or you wouldn’t be in Alex yourself. Still, you’re right. He oughtn’t to stay out where he is. A lot could happen before he got wind of it.’

‘Oh, Damascus isn’t all that safe. We have our troubles. The Free French are in control but a good many Syrians don’t want them. We often hear pistol shots. People get killed,’ he paused and dropped his voice. ‘Friends get killed. A friend of mine looked out to see what was happening and a bullet went through his head.’

He glanced at her to see how this information affected her, and quickly glanced away. The loss of a friend and, she would guess, no ordinary friend! So this was the tragedy he was nursing within himself! She said, ‘I’m sorry,’ but of course it was Guy he wanted. Only Guy would hear the whole story because only Guy could give the true, consoling word. She added, ‘Very sorry,’ and as she spoke, he made a gesture, so poignantly conveying his loneliness and heartbreak that she knew she had, indeed, seen him before.

She was puzzled by the familiarity of that gesture. He stared down at the floor. There was nothing more to be said but then, at the most opportune moment, Guy entered the bar.

His glasses pushed into his hair, his arms stretched over an insecure burden of books and papers, he hurried to them, saying delightedly, ‘So you found each other all right!’ He bent to kiss Harriet. ‘I didn’t tell you who he was. I knew you’d recognize him and I wanted to surprise you.’

Looking again at Aidan, Harriet did recognize him. ‘Of course, I knew I’d seen you before. You’re the actor, Aidan Sheridan.’

Aidan, revivified by the arrival of Guy, made a denigratory movement of the hand. ‘I was Aidan Sheridan. Now I’m Captain Pratt of the Pay Corps.’

He could not suppress Harriet’s admiring memory of him. ‘I saw you play Konstantin in The Sea Gull. I went with a friend to the gallery and we sat on a narrow plank of wood and gazed down at you, spellbound. It was all new to me — I’d never seen Chekhov before. I was very young and at the end I went out crying.’

Aidan flushed darkly and caught his breath. He was moved by her memory and several moments passed before he could say, ‘I was young, too. It was my first big role. At that age it is bliss to have a dressing-room to oneself. On my first night, sitting in front of the mirror I said to myself, “Now it’s all beginning!’”

Guy beamed on his wife and friend, letting them discuss Chekhov for a while, but eager to have a part in the felicitations, he soon took over to compliment Aidan on other parts he had played: Henry V, Romeo, Oswald . . .

Guy, knowing he had asked the wrong question, hurried on to another subject: his own production of Troilus and Cressida. Describing it, he longed to be in the theatre again and said, ‘I must produce another Shakespeare play.’

‘If it’s for the troops, he couldn’t very well refuse. Or why not a Chekhov play? Why not The Sea Gull?’

‘Well, why not? The men get sick of those concert parties. One of them told me they’d welcome a real play. They’re not fools. They want something to think about. The Sea Gull is about wasted youth. It would have meaning for them.’

Aidan sombrely agreed and Guy turned excitedly to him. ‘You would play Konstantin, wouldn’t you?’

Startled by the suggestion, Aidan gave an ironical sniff. ‘My first youth is passed. Trigorin would be more up my street these days.’

The statement had a finality that shocked Guy into silence. Harriet laughed and Aidan again blushed darkly, this time with shame, realizing that his vanity had betrayed him.

‘But you are an amateur,’ Harriet spoke with friendly reasonableness, not wishing further to deflate his unhappy ego. ‘You are an amateur soldier among professionals, aren’t you?’

Guy, having made a rapid recovery, said, ‘But you would help and advise, wouldn’t you?’

‘Willingly, if I’m around. But I can’t get here as often as I would wish.’

Harriet, wanting to put a stop to this talk of productions said, ‘And quite probably Guy won’t be here, either.’ She looked at Guy, insisting that he listen to her. ‘Be sensible. Jackman says Alexandria will be cut off. Rommel will simply march round behind it and it will fall of itself. They could be here tomorrow. Come back to Cairo, just till we know what’s going to happen here.’

‘It means they’ve abandoned you. I bet they’re taking German lessons.’

Guy laughed. ‘If the worst happens, I’ll jump on a jeep. The army will take me out.’

Dobson had said the same thing and Harriet, for the moment let the matter drop. Guy asked Aidan if he had met Catroux who was, according to gossip, the illegitimate son of a royal personage. Did Aidan think this was the truth? Aidan discussed Catroux with avid interest, as though the general were his own achievement or an important part of his own life. Harriet could imagine that the name of Catroux dominated Syria as other names dominated Egypt. There had been Cunningham, Ritchie (the troops sang ‘Ritchie, his arse is getting itchy’), Freyberg, Gott. Now there was Auchinleck. She saw them as larger than life, archetypal heroes, who had power over other men, and over civilians, too. When they decreed that Egypt should be evacuated, everyone must pack and go. The war had deprived people of free will. They must do what they were told.

Aidan, while talking, came to a sudden stop and gazed with unbelieving displeasure as yet another intruder arrived to claim Guy’s attention. Castlebar had come to the table. Harriet could feel, almost like a physical force, Aidan’s will to remove Castlebar but Castlebar was not to be moved. Confident of Guy’s welcome and not unwelcomed by Harriet, he sniggered a greeting and sidled round the table to seat himself on a chair with his back to the wall. Guy, happy in the belief that Aidan and Castlebar would be drawn to each other, introduced the one as ‘the famous actor’ and the other as ‘the famous poet’. Ducking his head, Castlebar gave Aidan a sidelong stare of dislike which Aidan, more directly, returned.

As Guy went to the bar to buy drinks, Castlebar put a packet of Camels on the table in his usual manner. The packet was placed central to his person, the open end facing him, a cigarette pulled out and propped up so it could be taken and lighted from the one in his mouth. Thus, there was no wasted interval between smokes. His thick, pale eyelids hid his eyes but all the time, he was observing Aidan as he might an enemy.

The two men were physically alike. They had the same heavy good looks but Castlebar was some ten years older. His sallow skin was falling into lines, his hair was greying and his full, loose mouth sagged as though pulled down by his perpetual cigarette. His lips were mauve and had the soft, swollen look of decay. Harriet, sensing their distaste of each other, supposed that Castlebar resented Aidan’s youth while Aidan saw in Castlebar a debased analogue of himself.

Guy, certain that his friends were enjoying each other as much as he enjoyed them, began to plan a whole evening for them all: a few drinks here, then to Pastroudi’s for a bite and on to Zonar’s for coffee and drinks then, if they wanted to go on drinking and talking, they could come back to the Cecil where Aidan was a resident. Neither man interrupted this exuberant programme but at the end, Castlebar said, ‘Sorry. Nothing I’d like better but I’m going back on the early train.’

Castlebar shook his head, stared down for some moments then stammered, seeming to force his voice through impeding teeth, ‘Don’t want to hang about here. Not even for love of you, dear old boy. My Greeks were in a panic. They had packed and would leave at the first sound of the guns. They thought I was mad to come up here but they owed me a bit — a whole quarter’s tuition in fact. Thought I’d better make sure of it’

Harriet fervently said, ‘Thank God someone’s got some sense.’ She gave an ironical laugh as she looked at Guy. ‘Castlebar may drink too much and smoke too much, but he’s not taking silly risks.’ She turned to Castlebar, ‘Can’t you persuade Guy to come to Cairo. He thinks the navy will rescue him.’

‘The navy?’ Castlebar lifted his eyelids and gave Guy a startled stare. ‘Don’t you know the navy’s gone?’

‘No one knows. The Red Sea, I’d imagine. My Greeks were in a state about that. They say the whole Fleet upped anchor this morning and deserted the town.’

‘Good heavens, that shows you . . .’ Harriet turned on Guy but Guy, adept at dodging her anxieties, jumped to his feet and the others watched him as he went to make much of a big, stooping, paunchy fellow who had just entered the bar.

‘Who’s he found now?’ Castlebar spoke with indulgent exasperation. ‘Your husband’s crazy. Here he is sitting with friends who hang on his every word, but he’s not satisfied. As soon as he sees someone else, he rushes over to them.’

‘It’s Lister. I met him at Groppi’s. His job’s in Jerusalem but he comes here all the time to fill up with food.’

Aidan, his face contracted as though with pain as he saw Guy bringing Lister to the table, said to Harriet, ‘He gathers people as he goes.’

Lister, limping on a stick, smiled as he joined the company, his round blue eyes giving an impression of innocent, almost infantile, amiability, but Harriet knew he was more complex than he seemed. In the midst of his fat, pink, glossy face there was a cherub’s nose and a very small mouth covered by a fluffy moustache. He was wearing a pair of old brown corduroy trousers and a shirt that had faded to yellow, and only his cap and the crown on his shoulder indicated that he was not a civilian but an army officer. He sank into a chair as though the few steps from bar to table had exhausted him, and pushed his right leg under the table, out of the way of harm. Getting his breath back, he lifted Harriet’s hand, brushed it wetly with his moustache and asked, ‘How is my lovely girl?’

‘Good God!’ Lister’s little mouth fell open. ‘What next? You’d scarcely believe it, I didn’t know till I got here that there’s a flap on. No one tells us anything in Palestine. I’m in Intelligence but there hasn’t been a signal from GHQ ME, for a week.’

Harriet said, ‘The rumour is that GHQ ME has left Egypt. They’ve been too busy evacuating themselves to send you a signal.’

‘That’s probably it. Jerusalem’s packed out with evacuees, but it’s always like that when the Germans cross into Egypt. To tell you the truth, you’re safer here. Palestine’s a cul-de-sac and if we move on to Syria, we’ll meet the German 6th army on its way down from Russia. Where do you go then? Better off here, I say. You can always go down the Nile.’

‘Yes. This must be the only country in the world where south is up.’ Lister’s big, shapeless body quivered as though he had made an enormous joke.

Guy, putting out his hands to Lister and Castlebar, urged them to tell some limericks. Between them, he said, they had the best collection he knew. ‘Come on, let’s have a flyting.’

‘Oh!’ Lister, choked by his own laughter, flapped a hand in protest. ‘I’m too far gone. Been at it all day. I can’t remember anything.’ His nose, that was still the nose of infancy, glowed with the drink he had taken. ‘Took a taxi from the station to Groppi’s, rang Harriet (I’d’ve given you a fine repast, m’girl), had lunch at the Hermitage, went back to Groppi’s for a few cream cakes, then I thought why not pop up and see old Pringle? Knew I’d find you in the bar.’

Aidan, pushing his chair back from the table, looked at Lister in frowning distaste. Castlebar, as he noted this, gave Harriet a sly grin and said to Lister, ‘Bet you intend a visit to Mary’s House?’

‘Oh, oh, oh!’ Lister averted his eyes as though deeply offended but his laughter overtook him, his body collapsed in on itself and tears ran down his cheeks. When he had recovered enough, he said, ‘Did you know: when they got a direct hit, all the chaps taken to hospital said, one after the other, “I got mine at Mary’s House,” and a little sweetie of a nurse said to the doctor, “Mary must’ve been giving a very big party.’”

It was an old story but they all laughed except Aidan, whose frown grew darker. The drinks were renewed and Castlebar was persuaded to speak a few limericks. His poetry was a mild mixture of nostalgia and regrets but his limericks had a dexterity and obscene wit that convulsed Lister, who soon attempted to rival them. Lister’s humour was scatological and Harriet, bored, said as soon as there was a pause, ‘Darling, don’t you think we should eat?’

‘Yes,’ Guy had a couple of inches in his glass, ‘when I’ve finished this,’ but he made no attempt to finish it. Washing it slowly round and round, he gained time by leaving it unfinished.

He invited Lister to Pastroudi’s but Lister, shaking his head, tittered mysteriously and left them to guess where he was going. When it seemed the ‘flyting’ would end, Castlebar insisted that Guy must contribute to it. ‘Do Yakimov,’ he urged and Lister agreed. ‘Oh, oh, must have Yakimov.’

Yakimov, dead and turned to dust in the dry Greek earth, led a post mortem life in Guy’s repertoire of comic characters. Harriet, hungry but resigned, listened with fear that the performance might fail and pride that it did not. She was the only other one of the party who had known Yakimov in life and so the only one who, watching Guy’s rounded, sunburnt features take on Yakimov’s slavonic mask, marvelled at the impersonation. The change, for her, verged on the supernatural. For the others, there was a funny story. Guy imitated Yakimov’s delicate, fluting voice, but the voice was not as exact as the face. ‘Ee-a knew a lay-dee who played a most unfair game of . . . cro-o-o-quet. She would put her skirt over her balls and move them about with her foot, just wherever she liked . . .’

Here the laughter began. Harriet had heard the story so often, both from Guy and Yakimov himself, she could have reproduced every intonation. She ceased to listen but, instead, watched the two inches of beer going round and round as Guy spoke. If in a hurry, he could open a throttle in his throat and put down a pint without pausing for breath. If he wanted to linger, no one could make his beer last longer.

When he recovered from his mirth, Lister bent forward to say in a half-whisper, ‘Heard a strange story at Groppi’s this morning. You know Hooper, the one that married a rich girl who paints a bit? Well, she took that boy of theirs into the desert and she was so busy with her painting, she didn’t notice the kid had picked up a live hand-grenade.’

Harriet sat up, realizing she was about to hear of the tragedy she had witnessed — when? With all that had happened since, it seemed an age ago. She said, ‘I was there. I saw her bring the boy in. We all realized he was dead, but the Hoopers couldn’t believe it.’

Lister opened his eyes, amazed. ‘So — is it true? — Did they really try and feed him . . .’ He circled a finger over his cheek ‘. . .through some hole in his face?’

Castlebar sniggered. ‘Egypt’s a weird place. Feeding the dead’s an ancient custom, but it still goes on.’

‘Oh yes, they all go up to the City of the Dead, taking food to share with the corpse under the floor. They set up house there and stay till the dead relative’s got used to the strangeness of the afterlife. I like it.’

‘Yes.’ Lister, too, liked it but he could not keep his laughter back. He and Castlebar laughed together while Aidan, who had been shocked by the feeding of the dead boy, regarded them with horror. Guy was putting down his beer. The party had to break up. Castlebar was catching his train. Lister, with his secret intention in mind, began determinedly to get himself to his feet. He could scarcely put his right foot to the ground. ‘Gout,’ he explained and bending unsteadily over Harriet, he kissed her hand again. ‘Look me up when you come to Jerusalem. You don’t need to stay in that ghastly refugee camp. I’ll use m’influence and get you a room at the YMCA. We’ll have some fun. I’m the life and soul of the YMCA smart set. I’m always in trouble because I keep a few bottles in the wardrobe.’

Castlebar and Lister left the bar together and Guy, reluctant to part from them, went with them as far as the foyer.

Aidan said in disgust to Harriet, ‘What extraordinary people! Why does Guy waste his time with fellows like that? And repeating limericks to each other! An odd occupation!’

‘The English do become odd here. Ordinary couples who’d remain happily together in Ealing or Pinner, here take on a different character. They think themselves Don Juans or tragedy queens, and throw fits of wild passion and make scenes in public . . .’ At Aidan’s movement of inquiry, Harriet laughed. ‘No, not Guy and me. We’re only apart from circumstances. We’re thought to be an exemplary pair.’

‘But Guy? With those people, he was not himself. He was acting the fool, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes, in a way. But what’s he to do? He’s stuck at that commercial college, wasting his talents. He’s not allowed to leave the Organization and Gracey can’t, or won’t, give him a job worthy of him. Other men are at war, so he must take what comes to him. He cannot protest, except that his behaviour is protest. He must either howl against his life or treat it as a joke.’ As she spoke, protest rose in her, too. ‘This is what they’ve done to him — Gracey, Pinkrose and the rest of them. He believes that right and virtue, if persisted in, must prevail, yet he knows he’s been defeated by people for whom the whole of life is a dishonest game.’

Aidan looked at her with new interest. ‘He’s not happy, and I don’t think you are, either.’

‘No. We have no right . . . no right even to think of happiness,’ Aidan sighed and looked to the door for Guy’s return, and Harriet began to feel curious about him, wondering what she would make of him if she knew him better.

The three of them set out for Pastroudi’s restaurant. Alexandria had been blacked out by the military and the darkness enhanced the disturbing emptiness of the streets. A shudder passed through the air and the ground seemed to move beneath their feet. Harriet, unable to account for this phenomenon, came to a stop and said, ‘Is it an earthquake?’ She had experienced one in Bucharest but this, she realized, was something different. The shudder and vibration were repeated and went on as though a distant steam-hammer was pounding the earth. The two men, walking indifferently through it, made no comment until Harriet asked, ‘What is it?’

Guy spoke as though the vibration was a commonplace. ‘I’d guess twenty-five pounders, wouldn’t you?’ He looked to Aidan who said, ‘And the new six pounders. I’d say, 5.5 inch howitzers, too.’

Harriet, surprised that Guy should have heard of a twenty-five pounder, asked how far the barrage was from them.

Guy laughed. ‘At least forty miles. I don’t think Rommel will make it tonight.’

Aidan said seriously, ‘If they break through, they could make it before daybreak.’

‘But they won’t break through. I must say, I’d like to take a troops’ entertainment out to our chaps.’

Harriet said, ‘Darling, really, you’re mad!’ She did not know whether Guy’s courage came from his refusal to recognize reality, or a refusal to run from it, but the idea of taking an entertainment to men engaged in a desperate delaying action seemed to her typical of his mental processes.

The moon was pushing up between sea and sky, throwing a long channel of light across the water. The promenade was a spectral grey in the moon glimmer. Not a soul, it seemed, had come out to enjoy the cool of evening, but when they pushed through the heavy curtains into Pastroudi’s, they found the restaurant crowded, noisy and brilliantly lit. The Alexandrians were eating while there was still something to eat. Uncertainty and fear raised the tempo of chatter into an uproar. Aidan had booked a table but they had stayed so long at the Cecil, the table was lost to them. They had to wait in a queue and while they waited, the air-raid warning rose. As the wailing persisted, people shouted to each other that it must be a false alarm. The Luftwaffe would never bomb a town that was about to fall into German hands. The warning added a sort of hilarity to the noise. No one took it seriously until the manager strode through the room shouting, ‘What do you do? You know the regulations. Downstairs, everyone. M’sieurs, m’dams, into the kitchens, I beg you.’

His alarm infected the diners and they began pushing their way down into the hot and clotted, greasy atmosphere of the basement. The kitchen staff and waiters, fitting themselves in between stoves and sinks, left the central space clear for the customers. The lights were switched off. The wailing ceased and there was an interval of attentive silence before people began to complain that the precautions were unnecessary. They had left their food for nothing. It was, as they had said, a false alarm. A man called them all to go back to their dinners but before the fret and grumbles could lead to action, a bomb fell. It was a distant bomb, but a bomb, nevertheless. The silence was the silence of fear, then a moan passed over the kitchen.

Ah, that explained the raid. And who cared what happened to the French ships that had lain there immobilized since the fall of France? Then a second bomb fell, much nearer, so close, in fact, that the pots and pans rattled and cries went up. People began struggling towards the stairs as though hoping to find some other, safer place, and Guy put his arms round Harriet to protect her and she pressed to him, less afraid of the bombs than of the fear around her.

A third bomb fell, further off, a fourth, so distant it could just be heard, and at once the panic died. The raiders had passed over. People relaxed and took on the gaiety of relief, telling each other that they could now go back and eat in peace. But the manager was on the stair and would not let anyone pass. They had to wait for the All Clear before the lights were switched on and they could return to their spoilt food.

Harriet was due back in her office next morning and had to catch the last train. Leaving the restaurant, Guy was intercepted by a man who wished to gain favour for a stout youth who came lagging after him. The son had to take a book-keeping examination and the father pleaded for him. ‘I feel, Mr Professor, sir, he should have an extra understanding of this subject.’ The subject was not part of Guy’s curriculum but he listened patiently and gave what advice he could. The conversation ended with an invitation to cakes and liqueurs. When could the professor come? Any day of that week or the next week or the week after would be suitable. The whole future was open to him so there was no excuse, no chance of escape. Harriet made off before the invitation could be extended to her.

In the hall she could hear the man shouting, ‘So, then, you come Thursday week, professor, sir?’

Passing out through the black curtains, they found the city adazzle with moonlight. Harriet was reminded of another night of full moon, the night of Hugo Boulderstone’s twenty-first birthday. Just as tonight, they had left the blacked-out restaurant and entered this startling light that cut the buildings into shapes of silver and black. Harriet remembered Hugo’s face white in the moonlight and the voice that told her they would never see him again.

Now Guy, his head full of productions and plays and all the theatre talk of the dinner-table, stopped to declaim, ‘On such a night as this . . .’ and pausing, turned expectantly to Aidan Pratt who took the lines up, speaking them in a voice so charged with emotion and melodic resonance that his two listeners marvelled:

In such a night

Troilus methinks mounted the Trojan walls

And sighed his soul out to the Grecian tents

Where Cressid lay that night . . .

Guy, in his rich, pleasant voice, said, ‘In such a night stood Dido with a willow in her hand . . .’ and broke off to add, ‘And on this very shore.’

‘Somewhere further west,’ Aidan gravely amended and Harriet turned to hide her laughter.

Walking towards the station, Guy persuaded Aidan to recite other speeches from other plays, adding others himself and so, quoting and counter-quoting, the thought of the invaders was lost in the poetic past. They left the sea behind and came into the gimcrack district near the station where a whole family might occupy a corner of a room. One of the last bombs had fallen here. Three houses had collapsed together on to the basement where people had been sheltering. Some of them had survived but were trapped inside. They were calling through cracks in the masonry, pleading to be released.

Neighbours, mostly of the balani poor, stood in the road before the ruin, grinning with embarrassment because the pleadings were in vain. No one had the means to move the vast mountain of rubble heaped on top of those who cried.

Guy, Harriet and Aidan, coming upon this scene, felt they should act or conduct action but realized they were as helpless as the rest. Seeing a policeman at the rear of the crowd, Guy asked what was being done for the prisoners. When would they be released? The man put on a show of official competence on hearing an English voice and said, ‘Bokra.’ Guy did not think this good enough. Something should be done there and then. The policeman said that the civil authorities had no rescue team and no machinery for lifting heavy material. They usually depended on the good will of British servicemen, but now the servicemen had gone away. The people in the base-bent would have to wait and see if help came. In an earlier raid, survivors were similarly trapped and had been still crying out a week later.

‘What happened in the end?’ Harriet asked but no one had the answer to her question.

The survivors, overhearing what was being said, set up a more furious wailing and the policeman, going to the rubble, shouted in to them to be patient. Very soon, perhaps that very night, the whole German army would be here to dig them out. At this, the prisoners began to curse the British for bringing the house down on their heads.

Guy said to Aidan, ‘If we organized these fellows into a gang, they could clear the site by passing the stuff from hand to hand.’ When the policeman returned, Guy repeated this plan in Arabic and the bystanders, realizing what he had in mind, wandered off in all directions.

Soon there was no one left to form a gang and the policeman, twisting his face into a grimace of pity, apologized. ‘Those very poor men, effendi. Those men not strong.’ Guy had to agree. The fellah, weakened by hunger and bilharzia, could not do much. The policeman said, to reassure him, ‘Bokra police come. Bokra all very nice.’

Harriet said, ‘Bokra fil mish-mish,’ and the policeman could not keep from laughing.

That being so, they had to go on, with the cries of the abandoned prisoners dying away behind them.

Harriet’s train was about to leave and she had no time to argue with Guy but, leaning out of the carriage window, she pressed him, ‘Darling, when will you come to Cairo? Tomorrow?’

Aidan was smiling with satisfaction that, at last, he had Guy to himself. The train began to move. Before it was under way, Harriet heard him beginning to tell Guy about his friend in Damascus who had gone out to see what was happening and died with a bullet in his head.