The Levant Trilogy (37 page)

Edwina, folded against Peter, murmured: 'Oh,
Peter, you know you don't want to leave me!'

'Perhaps not, but I'm a soldier, not a ruddy
pen-pusher.' They reached the hummocked site that had once been the great city
of Memphis. Colossal statues lay among the palm groves but these held no
interest for Peter who drove on rapidly, seeing no cause to stop until the
track ended at Mariette's house.

It was mid-day when, even in winter, the
temperature was high. Rubbing the sweat from his broad nose, Peter said, 'Let's
get under cover,' and pulling Edwina with him, he made for the Serapeum, the
enclosure of the sacred bulls.

Harriet, walking round, looked for the miniature
flowers but they had scarcely had time to open before the sun sucked up their
moisture and now nothing remained but dry stalks, like matchsticks stuck in the
sand. But there were other tokens of the rain. Fragments of fallen temples had
been washed to the surface and she came on a stone lotus, half of which had
been buried until now. The exposed half was pitted by time but the other, newly
revealed, was as smooth as flesh. The wet wind had set the sand into long,
sculpted folds, washed to a salty whiteness, and Harriet felt well rewarded for
her journey in the back seat.

When she first went into the Serapeum, she could
see no sign of Peter and Edwina, but then she came on them, obscure in the
shadows, their bodies pressed together as though each sought to merge into the
other. Hearing her, they parted for an instant then at once rejoined and she
moved away, feeling the solitude of those who are outside the circle of
ecstasy. She wandered to the other end of the gallery and waited till the
others tired of their dalliance. Edwina, giving a scream, broke away from Peter
and he pursued her round the huge sarcophagi then, seizing her, he pushed her
down onto a slab of black granite and threw himself on top of her. She cried
out, almost smothered by his weight: 'Peter, oh Peter, you're killing me.' He
let her go and she sprang up, laughing provocatively, and the pursuit began
again.

Harriet, turning her back on them as they
embraced, reflected that this burial place of bulls that had become lords of
the western world, might well inspire Peter who was a bull himself and a lord,
though of a different kind. She did not know whether the frenzy had a climax
but she heard Peter say, finality in his voice: 'All right, let's go. We'll
trundle back to Mena for lunch.'

They had not seen much but it did not occur to
Peter that there was anything to see. As for luncheon, he took it for granted
that Mena would please the women and he was right. Edwina smiled on Harriet as
though she were bestowing a gift on her and Harriet smiled back, acknowledging
the benefaction.

But at the hotel, the porter told them that bar
and restaurant were full and they would have to wait. Harriet suggested they go
and look at the matrix of the Ship of the Sun, the ship that daily crossed the
heavens and at night sank down into the underworld.

Peter laughed, 'I've had enough of the bloody
sun. I'm going to powder m'nose,' and left the women to go alone and look down
into the concave cradle which had once held the sacred ship.

When they entered the hotel vestibule, Peter was
standing with three other officers, his brows drawn blackly together. Edwina
whispered, 'What do you think they're telling him?' but both women knew that
the talk could only be about the desert conflict.

He was still frowning when he joined them and
Edwina, trying to catch hold of his hand, asked, 'What's the matter, darling?'

Avoiding her grasp, he said, 'I'm missing the
whole damned shooting match. That's all. Let's go and eat,'

Luncheon, which was to have been a pleasure, was
no pleasure at all. Peter, silent in discontent, ignored Edwina who stared
helplessly at him then turned to Harriet with an expression that said, 'See
what I have to put up with!' Harriet, no longer excluded by their love-making,
now felt an intruder upon a situation which she could do nothing to help.

Driving back between the bean fields into the
Cairo suburbs, Edwina whispered, 'Honestly, Teddy-bear, do you really want to
go back to the desert?'

'Yep.'

'But what would poor Edwina do without her
Teddy-bear?'

'Find another Teddy-bear.'

'I only want you.'

The sweet scent of the bean fields filled the
air but it meant nothing to Edwina who, in anguish, moved from one desperate
manoeuvre to another. In a wheedling whisper she said: 'If we were married, or
even engaged, it would not be so bad.'

'Why? What difference would that make?'

'All the difference in the world. We'd belong.
I'd have a right to know if anything happened to you.'

'The old next-of-kin, eh?' Peter gave an
ironical chuckle.

'Darling, I'm serious.'

'Don't be serious, old girl. I'm not worth it.
Not good enough for you...'

Could there, Harriet wondered, be a more
discouraging rejection than that? But Edwina refused to be discouraged. She
protested that Peter was all she wanted. Half weeping, she pleaded her love for
him while he stared at the road as though hearing nothing. At last, as her
voice dissolved in tears, he said: 'Look here, old thing. The truth is, I'm all
tied up.'

'You... you mean you're engaged?'

'Something like that.' He gave a laugh and
Edwina thought he might be teasing.

'Who bothers about engagements these days? The
war could go on for years. I bet, by the time you get back, she'll have married
someone else.' When Peter laughed again, Edwina persisted: 'Perhaps she
has
married
someone else already.'

'Not very likely.'

'You're pulling my leg, aren't you?'

'Who could resist it?' he patted her knee: 'Such
a nice, long leg!'

They were crossing the river and among the noise
of the Bulaq traffic Edwina let the matter drop for the moment, but she could
not resist a last triumphant shot: 'Still, you can't get back to the desert,
can you?'

Peter glumly agreed: 'Doesn't look like it.'

Smiling to herself, Edwina took out her compact
and looked at her pretty face. The war was on her side. It kept Peter in Egypt
and the authorities kept him in Cairo. He was with her and while he was with
her, she had reason to hope. The conversation, that had disturbed Harriet,
seemed to have had little effect on Edwina. She powdered her face and moved
close to Peter again. They were reconciled and when the women left the car in
Garden City, he said, 'What are you doing tonight, old girl?'

'Nothing in particular.'

'Call for you around eight, then?'

'Oh, lovely, darling. See you soon.'

And Edwina went joyfully up the steps to the
flat confident, it seemed, she would win him in the end.

On the fourth day of battle, relays of exhausted
men came into the camp to be replaced by reserve troops. These men, most of
them from tanks, had been lucky to get three hours sleep in a night and Simon,
when he heard this, felt ashamed of his own nervous fatigue. Unable to excuse
himself, he told himself that he would have done better to remain under fire
and become conditioned to it. The rest periods between his sorties into action,
and the fact he was liable to be wakened at any hour of the night, had
demoralized him.

He had little or no idea what had been gained by
the fighting and Fitzwilliams, though he questioned the returning men, could
not tell him much. The general belief was- that in the northern sector British
armour had driven a wedge into the German defences but no sooner had this news
gone round, than the commander in the sector radioed to say that his whole
brigade was ringed by enemy anti-tank guns.

Fitzwilliams, like the officers Simon had
approached on the road, was critical of the strategy of the battle: 'Bad show,
I call it. Suppose the brass hats know what they're doing, but I've never heard
of tanks being sent into a breach. Could lose the whole damn lot,'

For a while it seemed that, if not lost, the
battle was petering out. There were a couple of empty days for Simon who had become
used to action and felt the need for excitement. He hung around the command
vehicle in a state of restless boredom; then a fresh offensive began. Given a
signal to deliver, he ran gleefully to the jeep shouting, 'Come on, Crosbie,
wake up. This is the life.' Crosbie, baffled as usual by Simon's moods, grunted
and muttered,' Sir.'

At the end of October, the division to which
Simon belonged was withdrawn from the line. The tank crews, decimated by
continuous fighting, were ordered back to reserve positions and Simon was
assigned a new sector. He had to report to a coastal area where a fresh
division was being prepared for an attack.

When he set out, November was beginning with
dramatic splendour. The sky, that had dazzled the sight with its brazen
emptiness, was filling with immense cumulous clouds. They were rising out of
the sea and stretching, as though each was trying to over-top the other, until
by mid-day they had reached the zenith. They were of different colours: one was
a dark purple, its neighbour, swelling up behind, was azure, while on either
side of them billowing curves of wool white, catching the sun on outer rims,
gleamed like mother-of-pearl.

Simon, amazed by this display, said to Crosbie,
'What do you make of it?'

Raising his eyes without lifting his head,
Crosbie muttered, 'Looks like trouble to me.'

The dark cloud grew until it dominated the sky.
The wind strengthened in the unusual gloom and the sand lifted, but the storm
did not break until the men were in sight of the camp. The rain came at them
like a slanting curtain, as hard and rough as emery paper, and clattered
against the jeep. The road was blotted out. Crosbie braked and flung himself
round to find ground-sheets in the back of the jeep. They wrapped themselves up
and waited for the deluge to slacken. The rain stopped within minutes but the
camp, when they reached it, was under water.

Dawson, in the command vehicle, told Simon they
were preparing to move forward. The new arrivals would be lucky if they could
find themselves tea and bully.

The men, splashing through puddles, were shifting
equipment. Though the water sank rapidly, the ground was left muddy and a
wetness hung in the air. Dawson had been right about food. Crosbie, sent to
forage, came back with mugs of tea and a couple of bully-beef sandwiches. They
would have to spend the night in the jeep. Crosbie took up his favourite
position, sprawled over the wheel and Simon climbed into the back seat. He
wakened, cramped and chilly, at midnight when the petrol replenishing lorries
went out. Then the barrage started up again, and turning on his back, staring
up at the starless sky, he felt the war would never end. This, he told himself,
could be his whole life and it might be a short life. He was as liable as any
man in the field to be killed by the enemy. He turned towards the jeep back and
tried to lose his old, abiding fear in sleep but just as he was drifting off, a
messenger shook him and ordered him to report to his CO.

Dawson had gone off duty and a stranger was in
charge of the command truck. He sounded as disconsolate as Simon felt.
"Fraid I've got to send you up front. The Kiwis are supposed to be
advancing on Fuka but they've hit a snag. They say there's an unmapped mine
field in their path. Well, here...' he spread out a hand-drawn sketch of the
field;'. . . it's marked as a dummy, put down by our chaps last June. The
commander won't take my word for it. Says it's too risky. Says he'll dig in
till he gets further orders. You'll have to take this along to show him. Let
him see for himself. Right?'

'Sir. Which route, sir?'

'God knows. All the routes are in a mess. Sheer,
bloody shambles between here and Tel el Eisa. Try "Star", it's no
worse than the others. If you can't find it, you'll have to ask as you go.'

Setting out, Simon had no more zest for the
journey than Crosbie had. The battle had gone on too long and all he could feel
now was a racking weariness.

The track, churned up by vehicles, had dried and
hardened to the consistency of concrete and the jeep rocked on ridges and
skidded through slime left by puddles. The sky had cleared and the waning moon
gave a bleak, dispirited light.

The track was soon lost and they made their way
guided by staccato flashes on the western horizon. They had covered little more
than a mile when Simon realized the division had driven straight through an
enemy position. The tanks standing idle about them were German tanks; the
bodies propped in slit trenches wore German headgear and the black-clad figures
that trudged past the jeep, avoiding it with blundering steps, were unarmed
Germans who had given themselves up. The tank commanders, with no room or time
for prisoners, had sent them back and now they were making their own way into
captivity. Thankfully, Simon imagined. Once they reached the camp, they would
throw themselves down to sleep and Simon wished he could do the same.

Crosbie had other thoughts. Looking askance at
the burnt-out tanks, he at last reached the point of speech, 'You seen inside
these ruddy Marks? God, what a sight!'

'Don't look, then. Keep your eyes on the road.'

Beyond the German positions, the first reserves
of tanks waited, hidden among sand bunkers. Ahead of them was the confusion
that Simon now knew and expected. The forward tanks had thrown up a screen of
dust, blinding the drivers of vehicles in the rear. Lorries had bogged down in
the soft sand and commanders were trying to guide their tanks round each
obstruction as they came to it. They were lit by blazing vehicles that glowed
through the dust like a stage effect. None of it was new to Simon. Seeing
petrol leaking from a burning truck, he shouted to Crosbie: ' Make a dash for
it before the whole show goes up and takes us with it.'

When they drove out of the dust belt, they found
the moon had set and the overhanging face of the Fuka escarpment was just
visible, darker than the prevailing darkness. Beneath it there was a gathering
of torches where the tank commanders conferred. Simon, going forward on foot,
reached the command tank as the sky grew pallid with first light.

The CO greeted him with little patience, saying
as Simon handed him the map: 'What've you got there? Let's hope it makes sense
because nothing else does. They call us a
corps de chasse
but how the
hell can we chase anything with supply trucks littering the ground and now a
ruddy mine field in the way.'

'It's a dummy, sir.'

'So they think, but I want to know more about
it. We've lost seventeen tanks already, mostly on mines.'

'You can see it here, sir. Our chaps laid it in
June when the retreat was on.'

'Damn fool thing to do.' The commander, in a
fury, turned his back on Simon and Simon, in no better humour, went to the
jeep, saying to himself, 'They might have let me sleep.'

He had only been gone ten minutes but Crosbie
was unconscious over the wheel and Simon, with scarcely the heart to wake him,
thought, 'Don't blame him, either,' then shouted 'Come on, Crosbie, lazy
bastard. For God's sake, let's get back to camp.'