In July, while Cairo wearied under its blanket of heat, the British and American forces left North Africa and crossed the sea to Sicily. So far as the Egyptians were concerned, the war was over. But the British, bored and restless, with no hope of going home till hostilities ceased, knew it was not over.
Guy, who now took a much more favourable view of the future, told Harriet it might be over in year or eighteen months, then what were they going to do?
That was something to be thought out. Harriet said to Angela: ‘What will you and Bill do when the war ends?’
Angela smiled and said: ‘Humph!’ as though the end of the war were a remote and fantastic concept. Still, she was willing to consider it.
‘Bill ought to start work again. They’ve kept his job open here but I doubt if he’ll go back. He’d be willing to live like this for ever but is it good for him? I’d like him to apply for a lectureship in England. Of course he’d only get one in a minor university but what fun to settle down in a provincial town and act the professor’s wife: make friends with the vicar and the local nobs, have a nice, old house and cultivate one’s garden! Would you come and see us?’
‘Of course. We might even come and live near you.’ Harriet, too, could see herself settling down in a provincial town. ‘Make it a cathedral town,’ she said. ‘What about Salisbury?’
‘You goose, Salisbury has no university. I’m afraid we’ll all end up in somewhere grimmer than that.’
Harriet was the only visitor admitted to the Royal Suite. News that the runaways had returned, bringing Harriet with them, had been spread by the wedding guests. When it was known that Angela and Castlebar were living in opulent seclusion at the top of the Semiramis, Angela’s old friends called at the hotel but were turned away.
Angela said: ‘One of them might prove to be Bill’s wife in disguise. She’d do anything to get in here. Even dress up as a man.’
‘With her figure,’ said Harriet, ‘she’d look extremely odd.’
‘Still, I’m not risking it. I’ve got Bill in safe-keeping and that’s where he’s going to stay.’
‘For how long?’
‘As long as need be. If she gets in here, it’ll be over my dead body.’
The suite was air-conditioned and during the fiery days of summer, while the British and American forces occupied Sicily, Angela and Castlebar scarcely moved from their retreat. The windows were fitted with jalousies in the far-eastern manner. During the day, while the city shimmered in a glare of sunlight, the rooms were shaded and the occupants as cool as sea-creatures in a rock pool.
The hotel servants, heavily tipped, would allow no intruder to reach the suite. Harriet they saw as belonging to it and she came and went as she pleased. She need no longer spend her evenings alone in Garden City. When the sun began to sink, she could take the riverside walk to the hotel and join her friends on the top floor for a drink, for supper, for as long as she cared to stay. As the heat slackened, a safragi came to pull back the jalousies and they could watch for the pyramids on the western horizon. When it became dark, the safragi returned to open the windows and admit the evening air.
It was a pleasant routine but on the night that Italy surrendered, there was a disturbing break. When Harriet arrived, Castlebar was not in the long chair with his drink and cigarettes, but sprawled on the bed with Angela pouring iced water for him and persuading him to take two aspirin.
‘What is wrong with Bill?’
‘He has a headache. I think we’ve been shut in here too long. He needs a change of scene. Why don’t we all go out for a drive?’ Angela, looking anxiously at him, put her hand to his brow: ‘Better?’
He gave her a languid smile: ‘A little better.’ He had taken the aspirin and after a while said: ‘The pain’s lifting. We’ll go out if you like.’
A gharry was sent for and they drove by the river beneath the glowing sky. As they turned on to Bulacq Bridge, boys jumped on to the gharry steps and offered them necklaces made of jasmin flowers. Begging and laughing, they swung the heavily scented necklaces into Castlebar’s face and Castlebar, usually amused by this sort of play, shuddered back: ‘Tell them to go away.’
Angela paid off the boys then asked: ‘Where shall we go?’ When Castlebar said he did not care, she turned to Harriet who remembered an excavated village she had seen during her first days in Cairo. She said: ‘If we drive to the pyramids, I’ll show you something you’ve never seen before.’
They passed through the delicate evening scent of the bean fields out to Mena where the pyramids stood and beyond them to the desert that stretched away to the horizon. Angela said: ‘Surely there’s nothing to see here?’
‘Wait.’ Harriet stopped the gharry and Angela descended with her, but Castlebar shook his head. Smiling slightly, he put his face against the grimy padding at the back of the seat and closed his eyes.
The two women crossed the flat, stony mardam and reached a depression that was invisible from the road. Below they could see a whole village of narrow streets and empty, roofless houses that had been excavated from the sand.
Angela jumped down at once and said: ‘Let’s explore.’ Watching her, Harriet felt an odd apprehension. She and the others had been shown this village on the day Angela’s child had died. Putting this from her, she followed Angela. They wandered about the lanes and looked into small rooms, amazed that lives had once been lived here in these confined quarters. They asked each other why this isolated village should exist at all, without water or any reason for being there.
‘But, of course,’ Angela said, ‘before the dam was built, the Nile would have come very near. There could have been cultivated land here. Or, more likely, the people who lived here built the pyramids. You know they were not slaves as scholars once thought. They were peasants, ordinary workmen, doing a job for a daily wage. And they were fed on onions and radishes — not much of a diet, if you had to lug blocks of stone about.’
The twilight had begun to fall between the houses and as the women returned to the road, a wind sprang up and sand hit their faces. They started to run as the storm roared upon them, the sand grains striking into their flesh and blinding them. Clinging together, lost in the dark enveloping sand, they heard the gharry driver shouting to them above the noise of the wind.
They found Castlebar still lying back, eyes closed, unaware of sand and wind, while the driver gestured wildly, warning them that they must get back before the road was covered. Castlebar did not move and Angela, sitting close to him, lifting his limp hand, said: ‘The aspirin have made him sleepy.’ At Mena, she said they must go into the cloakroom and tidy themselves before facing the guests in the Semiramis foyer. In the cloakroom, the women looked at each other, seeing their faces coated with a grey mask of sand. Angela threw back her head with a howl of laughter and it was to be a very long time before Harriet heard her laugh again.
At the Semiramis, Castlebar said he did not want supper. He would go straight to bed.
‘But you’ll have a whisky, won’t you?’
‘No, I don’t fancy it. I might take a drop of vodka.’
‘Oh well, so long as you have something!’ Angela was relieved.
Food for Harriet and Angela was sent up to the living-room. As they ate, Angela said: ‘It’s probably just a touch of gyppy. What should he take, do you think?’
Harriet recalled all the remedies that were part of the mythology of the Middle East. She recommended that great comforter Dr Collis Browne’s Chlorodyne, but it was not easy to find. One cure was to eat only apples and bananas and drink a mixture of port and brandy. Then there was kaolin, intended to block the gut, but a more rapid cure, in Harriet’s opinion, was a spoonful of Dettol taken neat.
‘Neat?’
‘Yes. It’s not difficult to swallow, and it’s nice and warming.’
‘I’d never get Bill to swallow it.’ Angela sent down for apples, bananas, port and brandy and when they arrived, said: ‘Let’s go and look at him and see what he’ll take.’
Castlebar, in bed, his throat visible above his pyjama jacket, looked gaunt and tired but not seriously ill. Harriet left early and Angela, walking with her to the lift, said: ‘Do you think it might be jaundice? A lot of officers have had it. He might have picked it up in one of these low bars.’
‘Good heavens, does he go to bars?’
‘I know he sneaks out when I’m in the bath. Poor old thing, he wants a drink with the boys. I don’t say anything.’
Harriet agreed with Angela that Castlebar would be all right in a day or two, but two days passed and his condition was unchanged. He was indifferent to food, and nauseated by the things that had once pleased him most. And there were other symptoms.
Castlebar did not want company so Angela now came down to sit with Harriet in the foyer or the dining-room. She said: ‘His temperature goes up and down; up in the evening and down in the morning. He says his turn is sore. He doesn’t like me to touch it. I want him to see a doctor but he says “No”.’
‘Gyppy is painful, you know.’
‘His stomach is not so much painful as tender, and it’s swollen — or, rather, it’s puffy.’
‘It could be food poisoning.’
‘I thought of that. He sometimes slips into a place that sells shell-fish. I’ve told him not to touch it but he doesn’t always do what he’s told.’
At the end of a week Castlebar had developed a rash that covered his chest and belly and Angela, now agitated, rang Harriet and said he must see a doctor whether he liked it or not.
She shouted into the telephone: ‘It could be smallpox.’
‘No. Believe me, he’d be much more ill. He’d have high fever and be delirious; and he’d be vomiting. I know because I read it up when I was in quarantine.’
‘He has been vomiting. Oh God, Harriet, what am I to do?’
‘Is he well enough to walk? Could we get him into a taxi?’
‘Yes, he goes to the bathroom. He even took a few bites of chicken at lunch time.’ Angela’s voice shook with the attempt to reassure herself: ‘He says he’s not ill, only not well.’
‘Then let’s take him to Shafik at the American Hospital. Shafik is a good doctor; he’ll set your mind at rest.’
‘You’ll come with me?’
‘Of course I’ll come with you. Get him dressed and I’ll be round by the time you’re ready to go.’
Harriet was uneasy, less for Castlebar who might not be very ill, than for Angela who had known despair and could not face it again. Harriet had seen her in a state of anxiety that was near frenzy and knew that at such moments she was, as Guy maintained, crazy. It was important to get Castlebar’s illness diagnosed before Angela again lost control of her reason.
She took a taxi to the hotel and waited in the hall. As Castlebar came from the lift, she was shocked by the sight of him. He could walk, but with the shuffle of an old man, leaning on Angela who was maintaining a precarious calm. He looked weary beyond endurance. The sweat of exhaustion beaded his face and when Harriet spoke to him, he could scarcely lift the lids from his sunken eyes. He smiled at her but it was a weak and frightened smile.
The porter took his arm and helped him to the taxi. Angela, following behind, whispered to Harriet: ‘His temperature’s up again. It’s 102°.’
Harriet said: ‘That’s not bad,’ but she knew it was bad enough.
The white hospital building and the avenue of gum trees glimmering in the afternoon sun gave them the sense that all would now be well. There would be no more doubts and confusion of hope and dread. Help was at hand. Castlebar’s ailment, whatever it was, would be treated and cured.
The hospital porter, opening the taxi door, insisted that the patient must stay where he was till a wheel-chair was brought for him. Then, with the sympathy that the Egyptian poor show to the sick, three male nurses came out to lift him into the chair. Castlebar tried to grin, suggesting that all this attention was a joke, and inside the hospital, took out his cigarettes but did not try to light one.
Harriet sent her name up to Dr Shafik. Shafik came down at once, his handsome face beaming with astonished delight: ‘How is it you are here, Mrs Pringle? Have you been so quickly to England and back again? Or did you decide you could not leave your Dr Shafik after all?’ He was eager to renew their past flirtatious relationship but Harriet was too worried to respond to him. She said: ‘Dr Shafik, I’ve brought my friends to you because they need your help.’
Shafik turned to observe Harriet’s friends and his manner changed at once. He crossed to Castlebar, stared at him and asked: ‘How long has he been like this?’
Angela said: ‘About ten days.’
‘He should have been brought here sooner.’
‘What is it?’ Angela’s voice was shrill with alarm: ‘What is the matter? What can you do for him?’
‘That, madam, I do not know.’ Shafik had reverted to the ironical formality that was his professional manner. ‘We must make tests. May I ask: are you his wife? No? I understand. Well, it is necessary that he remain here and when his malady is known, we will do what we can.’
‘May I stay with him?’
‘No, no. Impossible. He must be alone. He needs rest and quiet.’
Castlebar, languishing in his chair, showed no awareness of what was being said. He did not open his eyes or move as Angela clung to him for some moments before he was wheeled away. The chair was put into a lift. Angela stood so long, staring as the lift rose up out of sight, that Harriet put an arm round her shoulder: ‘Angela dear, I think we should go.’
‘Go? Go where?’
‘We could have tea at Groppi’s and then come back and ask if there’s any news!’
‘No, I can’t leave here. I must stay until I know what is wrong with him.’ She looked round for Shafik but Shafik had left them.
‘Stay with me,’ she said to Harriet.
At the farther end of the hall there was a waiting area where french windows opened on to the hospital grounds. The grounds joined up with the Gezira polo fields and they sat and stared out at the great vista of grassland that floated and wavered in the haze of heat. Angela, by nature a restless woman, was so still that no creak came from the basket chair in which she sat.
Harriet, remembering how long she had had to wait for the result of her own tests, said: ‘You probably won’t hear anything until tomorrow or even the day after.’
Angela turned her head slowly and looked at Harriet, her eyes glazed and uncomprehending. So they sat on. Sister Metrebian, who had nursed Harriet through amoebic dysentery, came down to speak with her: ‘But you are looking very well!’
Harriet, rising and leading the nurse away from Angela, whispered: ‘The new patient — is he as ill as he looks?’
‘Yes, he is ill, but it is for Dr Shafik to say. He must first make the diagnosis.’
‘What do you think yourself?’
Sister Metrebian shook her head and was soon gone, unwilling to talk. Angela and Harriet sat in silence until six o’clock when the porter told Angela she might go to Castlebar’s room. While she was away, Shafik came and spoke to Harriet in a subdued voice: ‘Mrs Pringle, you must look after your friend. She is, I think, of an hysterical temperament and will need support. I have allowed her to see the patient but I cannot let you go up. You have been ill too recently. You must not risk an infection.’
‘What infection? What is wrong with him?’
‘I cannot say yet. He has what is called the “typhoid” state. That is: he has a fever, rapid pulse, low blood pressure and other symptoms we will, not speak of.’
Harriet could guess that the other symptoms were, in Shafik’s opinion, either too distasteful or too profound for the female mind. Cutting through his constraint, she said: ‘So he has typhoid?’
‘I did not say so. He has been ill only ten days. It is the second week which is critical.’
‘Poor Angela, what can I do for her? She will be beside herself.’
‘I will prescribe sedatives. I have told her nothing but if she suspects, you can say that typhoid is endemic here and we know how to treat it. Tell me, do you know, has Mr Castlebar been injected against typhoid?’
‘He probably was when he first came out. We’re supposed to have a booster each year but I’m afraid most of us forget.’
‘So I feared. Mrs Pringle, you and your friend must go today to the Out Patients’ Department and be given an anti-typhoid injection. You, please, go now and I will send your friend to join you.’
Angela, sedated, remained as though benumbed until the end of the second week when she telephoned Harriet and begged her in a frantic whisper: ‘Come, Harriet, come at once.’
It was nine in the morning and Harriet asked: ‘Come where?’
‘To the hospital.’
‘What has happened?’
‘You will see when you come.’
Harriet, her taxi delayed again and again by the early morning traffic, was taut with apprehension. Shafik had said the second week was critical but typhoid, notorious for its long fever, was not necessarily fatal. In spite of Angela’s entreating tone, she could not believe that Castlebar was dead. As she entered the main hospital door, Angela rushed at her and said hoarsely: ‘That woman! That terrible woman!’ She pointed to the waiting area where a woman was sitting, upright and purposeful, her massive, tubular legs planted so she could rise in an instant.
Harriet recognized the red hair that accentuated the clammy pallor of the face: ‘Mona Castlebar! How long has she been here?’
‘She was here when I came this morning. As soon as she saw me, she bawled: “Clear out, you bitch, you’re nothing better than a whore.” She tried to push me out through the door but I fought back and the porter went to fetch Shafik. Shafik ordered us both out. She said she’d fetch the consul to prove that she’s Bill’s legal wife and Shafik said he didn’t care what she was, she must go. But she wouldn’t go and I wouldn’t go, either. Bill needs me. He’s mine. I can’t be kept from him. Harriet, Shafik’s your friend. He’ll listen to you. Please, Harriet, please go and explain that Bill left that woman months ago. She has no right to claim him. He never wants to see her again.’
‘But is he well enough to see anyone?’
‘The sister says he’s a bit better today. I know if that woman forces her way in on him, he’ll have a relapse. Oh, Harriet, please go.’
Harriet found Shafik still indignant at the uproar caused by the two women. Before she could speak, he shouted at her: ‘So Mr Castlebar has two wives! That is nothing to me. He can have three. If he is rich enough, he can have all the prophet allows, but he is a sick man. I will not allow these ladies to come and disturb him.’
‘Is he very sick?’
‘Yes, he is very sick. He is now entering the third week and any day there will come the crisis. There could be perforation, peritonitis, pneumonia, cardiac failure — all such things are brought on by shock. These ladies must be kept from him.’
‘But his wife! Can she be kept out — legally, I mean? She has threatened to call the British Consul to establish her rights.’
Dr Shafik, angry that the consul or anyone else might try to broach his authority, brought his hand down on his desk: ‘In a case of life or death, the doctor’s decision is final.’
‘Dr Shafik, I’d be grateful if you’d let Lady Hooper just look in on him. She will be quiet, I promise you. They love one another. The sight of her will help him.’
Shafik, placated as Arabs usually were by a suggestion of romance, reflected for a moment then said: ‘Very well. If you take her to the back entrance, I will send the porter to show her to his room. She will have five minutes, no more.’
Returning to the hall, Harriet said: ‘Come, Angela, there is no point in staying here.’ Angela, realizing that this summons meant more than was said, followed Harriet out to the porch and gazed hopefully at her.
‘Back entrance. He’s letting you see Bill for five minutes.’
Angela held on to Harriet’s hand as they went up the staff staircase and were led to the door of Castlebar’s room. As the door opened, Harriet had a glimpse of the patient propped up with pillows, ice bags on his head and brow, his eyes shut, his skin yellow, his face drawn. A low muttering was coming from his lips that hung open, swollen, cracked and dark with fever.
The door was shut behind Angela and Sister Metrebian stood guard before it.
Harriet said: ‘Lady Hooper told me he is a little better today.’
‘Not much better. His temperature will not come down. That is bad.’
‘Is he in pain?’
Sister Metrebian put her thin little hand on to her abdomen: ‘He is . . .pouf!’ She moved her hand out to show how Castlebar’s middle was distended: ‘Here is discomfort.’
‘Poor Bill!’ Harriet said, thinking of his gentle compliance with Angela’s demands, his kindness and his sympathy: ‘Will he recover?’
‘I cannot say.’
Angela came out, too perturbed to weep, and Harriet led her down to the taxi. Put to bed in the Royal Suite, she lay so long silent that Harriet thought she was asleep and began to leave. Alert at once, she said: ‘Don’t go, Harriet, don’t go.’ She rang down for smoked salmon and a bottle of white wine. When it was brought up, she refused to eat.
‘No, Harriet, it is for you.’
She lay as before until late in the afternoon when the telephone rang. The hospital porter had promised to keep in touch with her. After a few words, she replaced the receiver with a sigh.
‘How is he, Angela?’
‘No change.’ After another period of silence, she raised herself on her elbow and said in a firm, clear voice: ‘He will get better. I have faith. They say if you have faith, you can move mountains. I have profound faith.’
Angela was not allowed in to see Castlebar again. The porter, who rang two or three times a day, told her that Mrs Castlebar was always at the hospital but excluded from the sick room. Three days after Angela’s profession of faith, it seemed that faith had prevailed. The porter told Angela that the patient’s temperature had fallen at last. It was under 100°.
Angela, in a state of euphoria, telephoned Harriet, who was at breakfast, and told her to come at once to the hotel. She was to bring a taxi and together they would enter the hospital by the back door and, unknown to Shafik and unseen by Mona, make their way to Castlebar’s room.
As soon as she saw Harriet, Angela began to talk at manic speed, and went on talking all the way to the hospital, planning Castlebar’s convalescence. They would go back to Cyprus and stay at Kyrenia in the Dome, or perhaps he would prefer to remain in Famagusta where the sands were perfect and white lilies grew on the dunes. Or they might go to Paphos where Venus rose from the sea.
When they reached the corridor that led to Castlebar’s room, Angela came to a stop. Mona Castlebar was stationed outside the door. Angela, pulling Harriet round a corner, out of sight, said: ‘Get her away somehow. Tell her Shafik wants her in his office.’
‘Wouldn’t she wonder what I was doing here?’
‘You can tell her you were a patient here once. You’ve come in for a check-up. Go on, do!’
‘She wouldn’t believe me.’
‘She would. Oh, Harriet, get rid of her. Flatter her, charm her, fool her for my sake.’
‘For your sake, then . . .’
Harriet approached Mona with a smiling attempt at friendliness: ‘I hear Bill is improving. I’m so glad.’
‘I don’t know who told you that.’ There was cold aggression in Mona’s tone but before anything more could be said, Sister Metrebian came from the room.
Harriet asked her: ‘How is Mr Castlebar?’
Sister Metrebian answered gravely: ‘He is in the operating theatre. The bowel perforated. He was in much pain. I heard him cry out and went at once to Dr Shafik. Now they perform the laparotomy.’
‘So he has a chance?’
‘A chance, yes. There was no delay.’
Mona, asserting her position as Castlebar’s wife, said: ‘I was allowed in for a minute but he did not recognize me.’
Which was as well, Harriet thought. Aloud she said for the sake of saying something: ‘Do you think he’ll get better?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine.’ Mona’s manner was suitably serious but she could not suppress a hint of triumph, a twitch of satisfaction that Angela should lose out in this way.
Harriet returned to Angela who was avid for news of her lover: ‘He’s not in his room.’
‘Why? Where is he? He’s not dead, is he?’
‘No. We can’t talk here. Mona is full of suspicion. I’ll tell you outside.’
Standing under the gum trees that shivered and glistened in the early sunlight, Harriet said: ‘They’re having to operate. There was no delay — Sister Metrebian says he stands a chance . . .’ As Angela’s lips trembled, Harriet added: ‘A good chance.’
‘What shall I do? What can I do?’
‘Angela dear, you can’t do anything. Only wait.’
‘Stay with me, Harriet.’
‘Of course I will stay,’ Harriet said.
Castlebar died just after three a.m. the following morning.
The porter, when he telephoned Angela the previous evening, said: ‘Mis’ Castlebar not so well,’ and Angela, going at once to the hospital, was told that Mona had been admitted to the sick room. Angela herself was refused entry. Prepared for any contingency, Mona had obtained from the consul written confirmation that she was Castlebar’s legal wife. She must be permitted to visit him and in the event of his death, she alone had the right to dispose of his remains. Angela, having no rights at all, walked back to her hotel.
Dobson, as usual the first to hear whatever news there was, received from the consul an entertaining account of ‘the whole damn fool imbroglio — two women squabbling over a dying man. And one of them no less a person than Lady Hooper. Now that he’s gone, he’s eluded both of them but Mrs C will be awarded the cadaver.’
Harriet felt it unlikely that the porter, with the Arab dislike of conveying bad news, had told Angela that Castlebar was dead. Harriet went at once to the Royal Suite and found Angela lying, fully dressed and awake, on the bed.
‘What have you come to tell me, Harriet?’
‘I’m afraid you’ve guessed right.’
‘He’s dead?’
Harriet nodded. Angela stared at her with an expression of distraught vacancy bereft, it seemed, of anything that made life possible. Knowing there could be no comfort in anything she might say, Harriet sat on the edge of the bed and held out her arms. Angela collapsed against her.
Harriet remained with her till late in the evening. For most of the time Angela lay as though in a stupor but twice she started to talk, rapidly, almost vivaciously, going over the details of Castlebar’s illness and its possible cause.
‘The shellfish! If I had been with him, he would be alive now. But, who knows, it may not have been the shellfish. Yet I’m sure it was the shellfish . . .’
When she lapsed into silence the second time, Harriet persuaded her to undress and take her sedative tablets. Leaving her sleeping, Harriet walked to Garden City by the river and was astonished to find Mona Castlebar with Dobson in the living-room. She had a drink in her hand and from her manner, seemed to see it as a gala occasion. Having no one else on whom to impose herself, she had come to the flat, ostensibly seeking advice about the funeral.
Had Castlebar died anywhere but in the American Hospital, he would have been already buried. The hospital, with all its modern equipment, had a refrigerated mortuary cabinet and there the dead man could stay till Mona claimed him.
This, she said, was very satisfactory. She would have time to arrange a funeral befitting a well-known poet and university lecturer.
‘The service will be in the cathedral, of course. Fully choral. I’m having invitations printed but these will only go out to a select few. If other people want to attend, they can sit at the back. Now, as to timing, I suggest we have the coffin carried in about mid-day then allow an interval of, say, fifteen minutes, after which I’ll walk slowly up the aisle. There should be someone for me to lean on,’ Mona glanced at Harriet, ‘Guy would do.’
Harriet did not speak. Dobson, who had maintained a decorous face until then, could scarcely keep from laughing: ‘My dear lady, this is a funeral, not a wedding. If you must make an entrance, you should come in immediately after the coffin.’
Mona’s face fell. She tried to argue but had in the end to agree that Dobson, an authority on protocol, probably knew best.
Angela, to Harriet’s surprise, wanted to attend the funeral service. ‘I must go. Of course I must. What would Bill think if he didn’t see me there? You’ll come and call for me, won’t you? We’ll go together.’
Harriet, calling for Angela, found her in a short dress that looked too fashionably chic for a funeral.
She said: ‘It’s my only black. I know it’s not suitable, but what does it matter? I suppose I’ll have to wear a hat!’ She pulled a milliner’s box from the wardrobe and brought out a wide-brimmed hat of black lace trimmed with pink roses: ‘This will do, won’t it?’ She sat it on her head without looking in her glass. ‘Is it all right?’ she turned to Harriet, her face red, swollen and dejected beneath the pretty hat.
‘It will do,’ Harriet said.
In the cathedral, the three front rows of pews were filled by Mona’s selected guests: a few members of the embassy staff and some senior lecturers from the university.
Guy, though he had received an invitation, had chosen to sit at the back and Harriet and Angela sat beside him. Almost at once the congregation rose. There was a shuffle of feet in the porch, then the coffin began its journey down the aisle. Mona’s invitations had said ‘No flowers by request’ but did not state whose request. Her own wreath, a large cross of red carnations, was conspicuous on the coffin lid. As Dobson had directed, she followed the coffin in, walking slowly, her head bowed, her legs hidden by a black velvet evening skirt that crawled like a snake on the ground behind her. Her corsage revealed to advantage her broad, heavily powdered shoulders and full bosom.
Guy, his face taut with distaste, whispered: ‘If she were a better actress, she’d manage to squeeze out a tear.’
Angela remained calm until the cortège reached her then, looking askance, seeing the coffin a few inches from her, she broke into agonized sobs that could be heard beneath the thumping and grinding of the organ. There was some furtive glancing back by the distinguished guests in the front row. Aware of nothing but her own grief, Angela sank down to her seat and buried her face in her hands, abandoning herself to heart-broken weeping that went on throughout the service.
The service over, Mona left the cathedral in front of the coffin, her head now raised to denote a ceremony completed. As the seats emptied, Guy and Harriet remained with Angela, making no move until it seemed likely that the hearse would have set out for the English cemetery. But Mona was in no hurry to curtail her advantage as hostess. When Guy supported Angela out to the porch, the hearse still stood by the kerb while Mona moved about among her select guests. She had found no one to escort her behind the coffin but there were several prepared to companion her for an evening’s drinking. She gave a quick, elated glance at Angela’s bedraggled hat and defeated figure, then she seized Guy by the arm: ‘You’re coming to Mahdi, aren’t you?’
Guy excused himself, saying he had an appointment at the Institute.
She still held to him: ‘You know there’s to be an evening reception, don’t you? I’ve arranged for a tent to be put up behind Suleiman Pasha. I thought we’d get our first at the Britannia Bar then move on to Groppi’s and the George V, and reach the reception about six o’clock. You can pick us up somewhere, can’t you?’
Though Harriet and Angela were standing on either side of him, Mona made it clear that the invitation was for Guy alone. He muttered discouragingly: ‘I’ll come if I can.’
The hearse was an old Rolls-Royce decorated with black ostrich plumes and black cherubs holding aloft black candles. Angela kept her eyes on the coffin with its great carnation wreath and as the equipage moved off, stared after it as though by staring she could bring Castlebar back alive.
Watching the string of cars that took Mona and her guests away, Harriet said: ‘She’s spending a lot of money, isn’t she?’
Guy told her: ‘It’s all on the university. She’s not only getting her widow’s pension but a large grant from funds. She’s had to put up some sort of show, and she thinks Bill would have wanted it.’
Guy conducted the women to the Semiramis and left them there. Harriet sat in the shuttered gloom of the Royal Suite, keeping watch over Angela, imagining she had no consciousness of time, but at exactly six o’clock, she sat up: ‘Let’s go and look at the reception tent.’
Still in her black dress but without a hat, Angela held to Harriet’s hand as they went in a gharry through the crowded streets. The fog of heat still hung in the air. The faded pink of the evening sky was streaked with violet. It was the time when windows, unnoticed during the day, were lighted up, revealing a world of mysterious life behind the dusty, gimcrack façades of buildings. For Angela none of this existed. There were no crowds, no sky, no windows, no life of any kind. She sat limp, waiting to see the tent, the last vestige of the lover she had lost.
The tent was not easy to find. There were a number of small midans behind Suleiman Pasha and the gharry wandered around, up one lane and down another, until at last they came on it: a very large, square, canvas tent appliquéd all over with geometrical designs and flowers cut from coloured cloth. The flap was tied back to catch what air there was and the two women could see something of the interior. Carpets overlapped each other on the ground and there were a great many small gilt chairs. The scene was lit by the greenish glow of butane gas. The guests were near the open flap. There were not many of them and those that Harriet recognized were the hardened remnants of Mona’s drinking acquaintances. She could see Cookson with his hangers-on Tootsie and Taupin. Then, to her surprise, an unlikely figure moved into sight.
‘Look who’s there — Jake Jackman!’
Angela did not care who was there. She stared at the tent and beyond the tent into emptiness, her face a mask of hopeless longing.
When Mona came near the entrance, her black hem still snaking after her, Harriet felt they had better go. They drove back to the hotel where Angela refused to eat but, worn out by despair, went willingly to bed.
Harriet, walking home, met Major Cookson and Tootsie. Cookson was in a nervous state and very eager to talk: ‘My dear, the funeral! It began so well but ended, I fear, on an unpleasant note.’ He told her that Mona, finding she was entertaining not the select few but Jake Jackman and others like him, became bored and resentful. She allowed them a couple of drinks each then told them if they wanted any more, they would have to pay for them.
‘Dear me!’ said Cookson. ‘What a scene! Just imagine how Jake reacted to such an announcement! I am afraid there was a bit of a fracas. Tootsie and I felt it better to leave.’
‘What was Jake Jackman doing there? Is he back for good?’
‘Well, no. To tell you the truth, he’s being sent to England under open arrest. He’s to go on the next troopship.’
‘What do you think will happen to him there?’
‘I don’t know. Probably nothing very much.’
Returning to the Royal Suite next morning, Harriet found Angela surrounded by all her sumptuous luggage and clothing. She was attempting to pack and said: ‘I can’t stand this room a moment longer. It’s so . . .so vacant. I haven’t slept all night. The place depresses me. I really hate it. Look at that beastly view. I’m sick of the sight of it.’
‘Where will you go?’
‘God knows. Nobody needs me now.’
‘Angela, I need you.’
Angela shook her head, not believing her, and Harriet said: ‘Come back to Garden City with me. Your room is just as you left it. There’s only Guy and Dobson now and if you don’t come, I’ll be alone most evenings. So, you see, I need you. Will you come?’
‘Would Dobson have me back?’
‘You know he would. Will you come?’
Angela dropped the clothes she was holding and sighed. Like a lost and trusting child, she put out her hand, ‘Yes, if you want me. You know, this is the end of my life. No one will ever love me again.’
‘I love you.’ Feeling that enough had been said, Harriet stuffed the clothes into the gilt-bound crocodile and pigskin cases then rang down to the porter and ordered two gharries. When Angela first arrived in Garden City she had brought two gharries, one to take her excess luggage, and she would return with two gharries.
Awad spent the morning piling the cases under the window in Angela’s old room that looked out on the great, round head of a mango tree. The air was very hot and filled with the scent of drying grass.
‘Home again,’ Harriet said.
Angela smiled and, putting her head down on the pillow she had so often shared with Castlebar, she said: ‘I think I can sleep now,’ and closed her eyes and slept.