The Levant Trilogy (17 page)

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.

Guy appealed to
Aidan, 'What's to be done?'

'Nothing, I'm
afraid.'

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?'

'No, not
tomorrow. I
'
ll come at the weekend.
'

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.

The Column did
not form itself as rapidly as had been expected. The infantry was there but
the guns and gunners had not arrived. Hardy was also expecting another
lieutenant. Simon, who for the moment was in charge of both platoons, told
Ridley that he had heard there was a serious shortage of artillery. Ridley
mournfully agreed. 'We could be hanging about here till Christmas.'

Simon oversaw the
digging of slit trenches and he envied the men because they had this
occupation, but the digging was easy and the job quickly done. After that,
boredom was general. They were occasionally strafed by a passing Messerschmidt
but they were too far back to rate serious attention by the enemy. There were
no diversions and nothing to do but camp chores. The day's events were the
visits from the mobile canteen and the Naafi truck that sold cigarettes and
beer.

Early in the
morning, the men kicked a ball about - there was a belief that the enemy never
attacked men at play - but as the heat increased, activity lost its pleasure
and the players flagged. After the mid-day meal, the old soldiers would fit up
a ground sheet or blanket to form a bivouac and the newcomers
soon copied them. Everyone in camp slept through the afternoon. Simon, who had
regarded sleep as a time-wasting necessity, now discovered it could be bliss.
Whenever he had nothing better to do, he would get into his sleeping-bag, which
protected as much against heat as against cold, and hiding his face from the
light, would sink into sleep. Sleep devoured boredom. Sleep devoured time.
Here, he thought, they were all like the Cairo beggars who at noon gave
themselves thankfully to oblivion.

But there were
enemies that could deprive one of sleep. The flies were the worst. The
newcomers became, after a while, inured to the bite of mosquitos and
sand-flies, but nothing could repel the tormenting flies that buzzed and hit
one's face and dragged their feet over sweaty flesh. Simon told Ridley of the
black blanket of breeding flies he had seen on the Red Sea shore and Ridley
described the fly traps that the men constructed from wire. 'At Mersa,' he
said, 'we caught the buggers by the million.' When the traps were full, there
would be a mass burning of flies but the flies lived off the dead and the
stench of the pyre would linger about the camp for days. For this reason fly
burnings were now forbidden.

After sleep came
the evening and the men longed for evening as a parched man longs for water.
When the sun touched the horizon, the pressure of heat lifted and the flies
disappeared.

At the end of
their first day at the new camping site, Hardy's driver put a folding table and
chair outside the HQ truck and Hardy sat down with his radio to listen to the
news. When Simon came within hearing distance, Hardy said, 'You can get
yourself a chair from the truck, Boulderstone,' and so, each evening, Simon
joined Hardy beside the radio set. After a while, attracted by the sound of the
radio, the men began to collect at a distance, at first respectfully standing
but, as the entertainment became a habit, seating themselves in groups, smoking
and even occasionally making a comment which Hardy ignored. He sometimes
grunted or gave, when a news item disturbed him, a bitter, coughing laugh, but
he said nothing to Simon who, isolated at the table, would have preferred to
be with the men.

The Column was
joined by a gunner officer called Martin and a third chair was put out at
sunset. Martin was a sandy Scot with an inflamed skin and a bristling red
moustache. As he was a captain, Hardy could not ignore him altogether but
neither man had much to say. On his second evening, Martin brought a bottle of
whisky to the table and sent the driver to find glasses. When he poured drinks
for himself and Hardy, he made a grudging movement in Simon's direction but
Simon said he only drank beer. That was Martin's first and only gesture
towards Simon who was then ignored by both officers. With them, but apart from
them, Simon wondered if there was any creature in the army more wretched than a
subaltern who had no contact with his seniors and was not allowed to consort
with his men.

Talking to Ridley
about the non-arrival of the guns, he said,
'
We might have been living it
up in Cairo all this tune. Why were they in such a hurry to get us out here.'

Ridley, solemn
with the consciousness of his own wisdom, said, 'We've got to be here. That's
the point, see.'

'Even if we're
doing nothing?'

'Lots of chaps
out here are doing nothing, but they've got to be here. What'd happen if they
wasn't?'

Simon laughed. 'I
see what you mean.'

'After all sir,
it's experience.'

'Pretty dreary
experience, sarge.' Simon's early apprehension had begun to fade. So little
had happened that he began to think that nothing ever would happen and he wrote
home to say what an odd business it was, living here in the desert, like
nomads, with nothing to do. In his opinion, they were worse off than the nomad
Arabs who sometimes passed the camp. The Arabs had tents, and tents were homes
of a sort, but the army men slept under an open sky. For several nights Simon
was worried not only by the lack of cover but the intrusive magnificence of
the Egyptian night. The stars were too many and too bright. They were like
eyes: waking in mid-sleep, finding them staring down on him, he was unnerved,
imagining they questioned what he was doing there. And there was the vast
emptiness of the desert itself. The leaguered trucks formed a protective pale
but as there were only four trucks,
they could not
join up. Between them could be seen dark distances that stretched for ever -
and what might not come out of the distance while they slept? Some men found
the space about them so threatening, they would seek refuge under the lorries.
This was a fool thing to do, Ridley told them. There were freak rain storms,
even in summer, and lorries had been known to sink into the wet sand and
smother the men while they slept.

But in spite of
their fears, the dawn came too soon for them. The guards, whose watch had been
spent in the last bitter hours of the night, had the job of rousing the camp.
Their shouts of 'Wakey, wakey' sounded a note of heartless relish for the men
dragged out of sleep. Getting themselves up in the steel-cold daybreak, they
could see no reason in their lives.

The first warmth
of sunlight lifted the spirits. For a while the sand was the colour of a
lightly cooked biscuit, stones threw shadows as long as sword blades and the
whole desert was as airy and exhilarating as an endless seashore. Simon
thought, 'If only the sun would stand still ...' but the sun inched up and up
till its heat was an affront to the human body. The water ration those days was
a gallon per man and this had to serve for washing, shaving, washing of
clothes, cooking and drinking. Simon was tempted at times to drink the lot and
leave himself unwashed.

Hardy, speaking
as though he had given the matter long thought, told Simon to find himself a
batman. 'Got any preference, Boulderstone?'

'I'd like to have
Arnold, sir.'

'Arnold?' The
choice seemed to surprise Hardy. 'You think he could cope?'

'I've found him
very capable, sir.'

'Indeed? I don't
know much about him but Ridley thinks he's a bit of a wet.'

Simon said, 'He's
all right, sir,' and Arnold was granted him. He understood Ridley's doubts
about Arnold but he also understood Arnold. What he knew of him, he had
discovered by direct questioning. Unquestioned, Arnold was not one to reveal
himself. Simon had several times found him gazing at some desert creature - a
spider or lizard or a beetle rolling a
ball of dung
before it - and realized that his interest went beyond curiosity. On the last
occasion, Simon asked, 'What did you do in civvy street, Arnold?'

'Student, sir.'

Simon had to ask
three more questions before he discovered that Arnold had studied Natural
History at Durham. He had taken his degree a week before the outbreak of war.
He not only observed the desert creatures, he was forced to observe the games
the men played with them. The men would catch a couple of spiders - not
tarantulas that were dangerous to handle, but the big white spiders, of fearful
appearance but harmless - and goad the creatures into fighting each other. Or,
a more popular and spectacular sport, they would pour petrol round a scorpion
and light it so the creature was ringed with fire. They would then gleefully
watch its attempt to break out until, in the end, unable to endure the heat,
its sting would droop slowly and penetrate the scales on its back. While the
other men whooped with joy, Arnold would watch as though he shared the
creature's agony.

Simon thought it
wretched sport but he recognized the men's need for some sort of diversion in
this God-forsaken wilderness. Arnold, helplessly shifting his feet or twisting
his hands together, felt only for the animal world. Usually he was silent but
once he burst out, 'Why do you do it? Why do you do it?'

The men laughed
at him and said, 'Look what he'd do to us if he got the chance!'

'And why not? We
don't belong here. This is his habitat -his home, I mean. We've no right here.
He has to defend himself against us. Why not leave the poor things alone?'

Arnold was a joke.
The men said, 'Poor old Arn, he's sand-happy,' but the officers were less
tolerant. The outburst had been talked about and Martin said to Simon, 'I don't
know why you want that squit as a batman. You can't trust those quiet types and
that one, he's nothing but an old woman.'

Ridley was held
to be the most knowledgeable man in camp. He was in Signals and so had the
means of picking up information. At work in the HQ truck, he gossiped with
other transmitters, picking up and purveying all the rumours, scandals and
jokes of the line. When not at work, he talked to the drivers of
the supply trucks that visited the camp and if they had nothing to tell him, he
usually had something to tell them.

Simon, for some
reason, was a favourite with Ridley who would come to him first with any news
worth passing on. Ridley was ready to help Simon because Simon accepted help
and advice with gratitude and humility. Ridley could sort out the noises that
came from the forward position and could tell Simon which was the sound of a
field gun and which a medium or ack-ack. He warned Simon about minefields and
uncharted areas where a jerry can or an old baked beans tin might be a booby
trap, set to blow your head off.

Simon was
troubled by this information and not understanding why, he brooded on it until
suddenly, like a returning dream, he remembered the dead boy in the Fayoum
house. All the incidents of that day had become remote for him and the people
he had met seemed to him beings of an unreal world. He now knew the real world
was the fighting world where his companions had a substance and significance
that set them apart from the rest of mankind. Only Edwina had circumstance in
his world because she was Hugo's girl and Hugo was constantly in his mind. One
day, feeling he now knew Ridley well enough, he asked him, 'Could you discover the
whereabouts of a Captain Hugo Boulderstone?'

'With respect,
sir - a relation of yours?'

'My brother.'

'Ah!' Regard for
this near relationship lengthened Ridley's long face. 'Shouldn't be difficult.
Not what you'd call a
common
name.'

Soon after, Ridley
discovered that there was a Captain Hugo Boulderstone attached to the 6th New
Zealand Brigade at Bab el Qattara. Simon eagerly asked, 'What chance of getting
a lift down there?'

'Couldn't say,
sir. You'd have to bring it up with the major.'

Simon brought it
up that evening, beginning, 'Do you think, sir,
I
could get a lift down
to Bab el Qattara? I'd like . . .'

'Don't be a fool,
Boulderstone,' Hardy interrupted him, You can't get a lift anywhere. You're not
out here on a sightseeing trip.'

Next day Ridley
had word that the Bab el Qattara box had been evacuated and German forces had
moved in.

'That doesn't
sound too good, does it?' said Simon.

'There's no
knowing. Chaps think the Auk could be up to something.'

Two field guns
and two anti-tank guns and their gunners joined the Column which was now
complete except for the lieutenant due to take over the second platoon. He
arrived next day when Simon was helping Arnold, whose job it was to collect
rations from platoon headquarters. Simon and Arnold were both on-loading the
section's water-cans and sacks for supplies when a staff car drew up a few
yards from the truck. Simon had thrown off his sweat-soaked shirt: his shorts
needed a wash and his desert boots were covered with sand. Arnold looked no
better than he did and the lieutenant, fresh from the discipline of base camp,
eyed the pair of them with acute distaste. Wearing his best gabardine, carrying
gloves and cane, he had obviously got himself up to present himself to the
officers of the Column. Extruding his superiority, he shouted, 'I say, you
fellows, is Major Hardy about?'

Recognizing the
voice rather than the man, Simon said, 'Good God, it's Trench,' and would have
embraced him, had not the new arrival taken a disgusted step back.