Fortunes of War Page 2

  ‘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 cr
owded 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.

&nb
sp; 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.