Into Suez (28 page)

‘If it’s all right,’ she said. ‘If you’re sure, Ailsa. I’ll try not to be a nuisance. It will only be for a limited time.’

‘Honestly, Mona, what could I do?’ her mami said. ‘I could hardly turn her away. It’s all terribly sad. Still, she’s cheered up amazingly. Does all sorts of sweet things with Nia. She brought her out some beads to thread. Now she’s gone off to the NAAFI to enquire about a job, and blithely offered to save me the chore of shopping, saying it’s quite like old times. Old times! She loathed it here. I don’t think she’s at all well. She had this funny sort of innocent pash, you know, on Joe. I don’t think it meant anything to him. She doesn’t bear him the slightest malice, not in the least, for Chalkie – you know. She helps me round the house, till I could scream. I got up yesterday and found her with her head in a turban, down on her knees and scrubbing the kitchen floor – which is perfectly clean, and when I said,
Oh Irene, there is no need for that
, she looked up with this light in her eyes and I could see it was
Joe’s floor she was scrubbing.’

Nia watched Isis in Mona’s garden playing with the crickets before she killed them. Cuffing them with her paws, sending them leaping in the grass, then crunching them in her jaws, though she didn’t want to eat them.

‘And it adds a layer of complication. As if things weren’t complicated enough.’

Isis came creeping up to Nia to be stroked; laid back her head and yawned, and you could see the legs of the crickets inside her mouth, in a mouthful of sunshine from the low sun, turning the inside gleaming pink. Nia’s tummy tickled with a nasty kind of pleasure to spy that cruel place.

‘As well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb,’ she heard Ailsa say doubtfully.

Next day the Girl Guides were practising parades beneath the flag in Mrs Wintergreen’s back garden. They fell in and they fell out. Whistles were blown and they sang the National Anthem. Mona got fed up with the racket. She leaned out of the bedroom window and barked
‘Dis-miss!’

Irene came back early from the NAAFI. She said she was pleased to meet Mona again. She did indeed remember her:
all too well
, her face said. She seemed inclined to stand to attention while the officer’s lady was in the room.

‘Do make yourselves at home, everyone,’ Ailsa repeated. But Irene wouldn’t. The most she could do was to stand at ease, near the door. So Mona felt she oughtn’t to sit down and neither could Ailsa. Nia propped her backside against a chair-arm and allowed herself to topple slowly backwards into the seat, lying with her legs in the air. She watched from upside-down.

Irene said she would make the coffee, not Ailsa, who should sit down and entertain her guest.

‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’ Ailsa coloured up. ‘The idea. You are my guest, Irene.’ She slid past Irene out of the door, returning with a tray.

‘How do you like yours, Irene?’

‘Oh – however it comes out of the pot. No sugar though. I have to watch my figure, well, we all do, don’t we? I was asking dear little Nia when her daddy is expected home. It is so hard for kiddies when the daddies go away. Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh no!’ Her coffee cup wobbled on the saucer. ‘Excuse me.’ She bolted out of the room.

‘Oh
dear
,’ said Ailsa. She bolted after Irene.

When they returned, Nia fetched Irene’s gift of beadwork. Standing at Irene’s knee, she offered it, bestowing herself on the sad lady, because ladies liked it when children did that. Irene’s face cleared. Her deft fingers began to thread ruby beads at one end, and she smiled through watery eyes, while Nia threaded emerald ones at the other.

‘Do you have children yourself, Mrs Jacobs?’ Irene asked.

‘Please call me Mona. No. I’ve no children. But I’m very fond of Nia. You have two little boys?’

‘Christopher and Timothy.’

‘You must miss them frightfully.’

‘Oh, I do. But as soon as I’m settled – they’ll be sent for, of course. And Ailsa has been so very patient, though I’m afraid I’ve rather thrown myself upon her hospitality…’

‘Not at all, Irene. We’re only too glad to have you.’

‘Mona – that’s not an English name, I fancy?’

‘Well, it can be. Not in this instance.’

‘I do so like foreign names. They are so unusual.’

‘My mami and Auntie Mona want to go to Palestine,’ Nia confided to Irene.

‘To Israel?’

‘No, the correct name is Palestine. Except to Zionists,’ Mona said.

‘Oh yes?’ Irene seemed to gasp for air. She fetched a deep breath. ‘What about the
situation
?’

‘The situation?’

‘Politically. The tension. It was on the wireless all the time at home, Ailsa. So
dangerous
. Everywhere. Even in Ish. The Egyptians are going to tear up the Treaty, aren’t they? What’s the word?’

‘Abrogate?’

‘That’s it.’

‘We’ve had very little trouble here,’ Ailsa said. ‘Mona’s family is from Jerusalem, as you know.’

‘Oh, really. How interesting. I hadn’t realised.’ Irene ceased threading the beads but she kept hold of the end so that Nia could carry on threading hers. ‘Such an historical place. Well – now I’m here,’ she said slowly, ‘there’s no reason not to go. I’ll take care of little Nia. You’d be happy to stay with your Auntie Irene, won’t you, darling, and keep her company?’

‘No,’ said Nia.

Oh no, said Ailsa, they couldn’t possibly presume on her. Nia saw her mother looking over her own head to Mona. A nasty tricksiness in her eyes. They were playing piggie in the middle. Nia was piggie. It was only a sort of whimsy, really, Ailsa went on. Just a dream. Anyway Joe wouldn’t like it, not one bit.

‘How would he know?’ asked Irene, an extraordinary expression of guile darting over her face.

The side door was unlocked. Joe dumped his kit bag by the kitchen table. Quiet. Putting his head through the hatch between the kitchen and sitting room, he locked eyes with a startled mouse of a woman in Ailsa’s chair, her head twisting round, hand clutching the chair-arm, half raising her body. Some terrible thing had happened, then, to his wife and daughter. The thing he had always knew would happen.

‘Good Lord alive, Irene. You’re back. Whatever’s happened? Where’s Ailsa?’

The woman was babysitting apparently. But how did she get there? She babbled that Ailsa was
away
, she was taking
a little trip
. He’d been sent home sick, he told her, a week early. The other airmen had envied him his chitty from the MO, but they wouldn’t have done if they’d had his gut.

As soon as she twigged that he was ill, Irene calmed right down. Joe swayed where he stood. She guided him to his chair and he leaned his head back, child-feeble.
Irene’s palm on his forehead was cool. Could he keep water down, she asked? She would help him up to bed and very soon he’d be as right as rain. He hadn’t the foggiest where Irene had sprung from. Gave up trying to work it out. Apparently she was staying with them.

‘Come on, Joe. Don’t worry about anything. It will be all right now,’ she soothed. ‘Let me get you to bed.’

‘In a minute.’ Drained and afraid to risk the journey upstairs in case he lost control of his bowels, he rested his head and looked at her. ‘Bit of a bad do,’ he explained. ‘Gyppo cooks.
Eggza-brayed!
Dirty hands. I don’t even want a fag,’ he lamented. ‘The living end.’

‘Never mind all that, dear. Don’t think about food. As long as you keep drinking. Here you are. Just a teeny sip.
That’s
the way.’

‘Irene?’

‘Joe.’

‘What the hell are you doing here? Where has she
gone
?’

Nia appeared in the doorway and silently stared. She’d been dressed up in a pink satin frock with puff sleeves and a big bow of pink ribbon in her hair. The colour clashed astoundingly with her red hair. Round her neck she wore a long bead necklace, with blue and green beads. She looked as if she were on her way to a party.

‘Don’t come anywhere near to Daddy,’ Joe warned her. ‘He might have some nasty germs. Don’t want you to get them, do we?’

‘Are you home now, Daddy?’ Nia asked from the doorway.

‘Aye. Home now.’

‘Mami’s gone to Palestine with Auntie Mona,’ Nia said. ‘And they wouldn’t take me.’

‘What?’

‘Never mind that now, Nia,’ Irene cut in. ‘Daddy needs to rest up. He got a tummy ache in the desert and he’s had to come home early. Ailsa will soon be back, Joe, don’t you fret.’

‘She’s where?’

‘A trip to Jordan. They call it Palestine but I think they mean Transjordan. Just for a couple of days.’

‘In
Jordan
? Ailsa? With the Jacobs woman? And
him
?’

‘Who? Oh, no one else, Joe. Just the two of them, of course. No men involved. They went the day before yesterday. Apparently they are going to see for themselves what has happened to the Arabs Israel didn’t want. Back on Saturday. I’ll explain when you’re better.’

She helped Joe upstairs and put him to bed. Then she fended for him.

Caught short.
Duw, duw
. Joe looked down at his unwashed, hairy body. An ape of a man. He should have cleaned himself. Or Ailsa should have done it. Chalkie’s widow bundled up the soiled linen and whisked it away. Her fingers fastened the drawstring of his pyjamas and her capable arms laid him down in fresh sheets. Supporting his head, she offered water. When Joe fumbled with words of apology and thanks, she said, ‘Oh Joe, I’m a mother of two boys. Nothing here I haven’t dealt with before, I can assure you.’

‘Disinfect everything, Irene. Taps and so on.’

‘I know the drill.’

Joe sank down into a lake of coolness. Later, having slept, he hoisted himself on one elbow and craned to see out of the window. Chalkie’s widow was pegging pyjamas and towels on the line.

When he woke again, it was evening; a lamp glowed in
the corner. Downstairs the wireless purred and he could hear a friendly chinking of cups and saucers. Everything was normal except that Sergeant
Roberts’
wife was in
Jordan
with Wing Commander
Jacobs’
wife, and
who-knew
-who-else, leaving his daughter to the late Sergeant
White’s
wife, a lady who had apparently come all the way from Birmingham for this exchange. But perhaps it had just been one of those Toc-H excursions, all above board, and perhaps all the wives had gone, and perhaps the darkie woman was there in a supervisory capacity, and her Jewboy husband and that public school queerboy his pal were not there with them, and Irene had got the wrong end of the stick.

Irene was standing at the bedside when he opened his eyes again. Nia and she had gone out when the van came round, and stocked up with Lucozade. She wondered if he could fancy it yet?

‘How come you’re here and my wife isn’t, Irene?’ he asked, as she poured a small measure for him.

‘I’ll explain, if you drink.’

He sipped. The taste was impossibly delicious. Must be on the mend.

Irene had flown out to be near Roy, she told him, to find a position in the NAAFI (which she had done) and to consult him as Roy’s most valued friend. This she had undertaken on an impulse and perhaps (if she was frank with herself) it had not been a well-judged action, but she had not been thinking straight at all and who did she have to turn to? And of course Christopher – well, Christopher had been a handful.

‘It’s his grief for his daddy,’ said Joe. ‘Bound to feel it, Irene.’

‘I know. Don’t drink any more now, Joe. Whoa there!’ She captured the glass and set it down where he couldn’t reach without stretching. ‘Take it slowly, I should. But to be so naughty!’ she went on. ‘Like a little devil. Kicking me. My shins were black and blue.’

‘Give him time, eh?’

‘Yes. Of course you’re right. I can see it now.’ She looked shamefaced. ‘Why couldn’t I see it before, Joe, before you said it? It seems so obvious now.’

‘Lovely little chap he is. He’ll make you proud of him. Just a little patience.’

‘Oh, Joe –
don’t
. You’ll make me so sad. I seem to get on better if I don’t feel anything.’

He made her go on about the flight. She’d taken the last seat in a battered old sardine can stuffed with small schoolchildren with plummy accents – prep school pupils, apparently, coming to visit their lah-de-dah mummies and daddies in Suez. Joe lay still and listened to how paralysingly cold it had been for Irene on the plane, jammed in between these children. She’d sat there, holding a paper bag of inedible food, and thought
What am I doing? What?
At that moment she thought she’d gone off her rocker, truly. The loneliness was worse than at any time since Roy had died. She’d have been glad to jump out of the plane without a parachute.

‘Now now,’ said Joe, and patted the back of her hand with his fingertips.

‘Oh, bless you, I don’t feel like that
now,
’ Irene said, withdrawing the hand but looking at it with a pleased expression. ‘I’m just telling you how it was.’

Ailsa had been terribly kind and taken her in.

‘So that’s my silly story,’ she said brightly. ‘Now you
can have another sip, if you want one.’

‘I’ll get up tomorrow morning.’

‘We’ll see.’

‘Tell me about this … thing with Mrs Jacobs.’

‘Joe, ask Ailsa yourself when she gets back, I should.’

Her fingers plucked nervously at a small embroidered hanky. Embarrassed she was. For Ailsa, he realised. Defending him from his own wife; or her from him.

‘But just to clear off. Clear off just like that,’ he complained. ‘Don’t tell me it wasn’t planned. Planned well beforehand. As soon as she knew I was going away.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so.’ Yet he could see that she looked gratified at the thought of the hot water Ailsa had got herself into. Irene was on his side.

‘Come
on
,’ he said.

‘That wasn’t my impression. Oh no. They’d just bumped into one another and got talking – and the idea was – mooted. And you know how tremendously intellectual Ailsa is. So interested in historical things. Not like me – a home bird, me, a bit of a feather brain. You know, it’s only a four day trip. No more than a jaunt really.’

‘Intellectuals,’
he sneered. Irene had hit upon the word guaranteed to inflame Joe. ‘Don’t give me intellectuals. Ineffectuals. The rot of civilisation. I won’t have any damned intellectuals in my house.’

She can go west, he thought. Ailsa can damn well go west, as far as I’m concerned.

Later he came down to the kitchen, weakly relaxed from the bath, wet hair flat to his head, spruced up in a clean white shirt. The plain, homely woman at the Primus, Chalkie’s widow, turned to greet him, flushed with nervous pleasure.

‘One brown egg coming up! One slice of toast cut into soldiers! Cup of tea! You could fancy a cup of tea, Joe?’

‘Oh aye. If it’s no trouble, Irene.’

Marmalade and Marmite stood on the table cloth and letters were stacked in the last compartment of the toast rack, as he had seen them on Chalkie’s breakfast table in that other world, when he’d pop his head round the door first thing:
Wotcher, both!
More often than not, poor old Chalkie was in the dog house and could only reply with a rueful half-grin. Joe perched himself awkwardly at his own table, not sure how to behave. Irene’s back was turned to him and she was humming. Glancing at the way the tiny pleats of her tartan skirt rippled over her hips as she moved, a qualm went through him as if some intimacy had taken place between them last night, which of course was not the case. She had been present as a nurse, that was all.

Now Irene bustled round, chatting to Nia, as Joe nibbled and read. Although he didn’t want to eat much, he knew he was on the mend. They sat over a second cup of tea, while a subdued Nia went out to play.

‘My Roy is here,’ Irene said. ‘That is why I must be here. It’s so silly, I know – when he was alive, I couldn’t wait to get out. I was afraid of everything, every fly, every Arab, even the chai wallah and the sweet little one-eyed bottle-collector. Now the fear is all gone, Joe. When I went back to Blighty, I saw there was no Blighty for me there any more. No place for me.’

‘Your Roy wouldn’t like to hear you talk like that.’

‘No, he would scold me.’

Joe couldn’t help but smile. Nobody could have imagined the mild Chalkie scolding Irene. Chalkie might
stand up to the nagging a bit more, he’d occasionally suggested to his pal, thinking, she wouldn’t nag
me
if I were in his shoes,
oh
no. He lit up two fags and handed one to Irene. Moving from table to armchair, Joe’s eye was caught by the sun staining a corner of the Gyppo carpet he’d got himself into debt for, before he’d left for manoeuvres. Only been able to pay half the sum they’d agreed and he’d given the wog a chitty for the rest.

The autumn colours were hypnotic. In his mind’s eye, Ailsa lay naked on the carpet, legs splayed wide open. Good God. And then, hunched into herself, grunting and rasping with an animal noise while his fingers slipped on the slick flesh, tick-tick-ticking
down there,
where it seemed to spasm in what must be – her climax.

He blushed beetroot red. What kind of woman behaved like that? With her innocent daughter in the house?

In his depleted state, Joe recoiled from the woman’s shamelessness. She should have resisted him. It was all very well to say,
But we are married, what’s wrong with that?
It could not be right. Some things were not natural. He could not imagineMam and Dad behaving like that on the parlour floor. Who had taught Ailsa these tricks, and when? Virgin when they married, he had been. She’d not actually said that she was. He would never have dreamed of asking.

How could you know? The blood on the sheets? Could have been the other woman’s thing. Joe had only glimpsed the bloodstain. It seemed to him now that, when she’d stripped the bed in the morning, she cleverly covered the bottom sheet with the top sheet and whipped them both up together. He’d helped by looking away. All he’d cared about that morning was that he should not have hurt her by his roughness.

The whole thing had seemed so coarse and crude, looked at from her angle. How could women possibly like or want that dark thick
thing
to be poked into their soft tissue?

‘Did I do very wrong to come out?’ Irene asked him. Her plaintive tone pleaded with Joe to take responsibility for her. It denied on his behalf the fact that, if it had not been for Joe, her husband would still be with her.

‘It was, well, a biggish sort of step. I’m not sure where you go from here.’

‘That’s what I need to find out.’

‘Aye. What about the boys?’

‘I shall find some path, I believe I shall. Whatever people think. The boys will come to me when the time is right. I want you to do something for me, my dear, when you are up to it, not before. Will you take me to visit Roy? Will you do that for me?’

Late afternoon. They walked together over immaculate turf, as green as England, an oasis of growth and order in the midst of the wilderness. Rows of white stone lozenges and wooden crosses quivered in Joe’s shaky gaze. He remembered bearing the body to the hole that had been dug for Chalkie. The light burden of his friend had weighed a ton in the lead coffin. Now he stood back, as Irene ran forward a few steps, with girlish eagerness, and crouched. She placed her hand flat to the turf and stroked it. She had put on lipstick and washed and set her hair. Joe had caught glimpses of her through the half-shut bedroom door in her hair net and slip, applying varnish to her nails.

She was not weeping. She turned and looked up to him: ‘Would you sing, Joe?’

‘Sing?’

‘Sing something for Roy.’

‘Well, oh, I don’t know about that, Irene
fach
. What should I sing?’

Reddening, he looked over his shoulder. There was only Nia practising cartwheels over by the stand of trees and a wog workman with a rake and a barrow, busy at the officers’ end of the cemetery.