The Levant Trilogy (53 page)

'Oh no, this usually goes on at night. It's a
demonstration against the Free French but it's harmless.'

Harriet was not so sure. She remembered Aidan
Pratt telling her that his friend had been killed by a stray bullet during one
of these demonstrations. She appealed to Mortimer: 'Couldn't you stay here just
for one night?'

Mort and Phil shook their heads. Standing
together, smiling their farewells, they said they must press on to Aleppo where
they planned to stay at the Armenian hospital. For a moment she thought of
asking them to take her with them, but wherever she went she had to leave them
sometime. Here at least she had Aidan Pratt.

Seeing her trying to lift her heavy case,
Mortimer took it from her and carried it easily into the hotel hallway. There
was a small night-light on the desk but no one behind the desk.

Mortimer said: 'The clerk will come when you
ring. You'll be all right here, won't you?'

Eager to be back on the road, she took a quick
step forward and kissed Harriet's cheek: 'You're not staying here long, are
you? We'll meet again back in Cairo. Take care of yourself.'

Harriet watched through the glass of the door
till the lorry was out of sight, then she struck the bell on the desk. There
was a long interval before the clerk appeared, looking aggrieved as though the
bell were not there for use. He seemed disconcerted by the sight of a solitary
young woman with a suitcase and he shook his head: 'You wan' hotel? This not
hotel.' He pointed to a notice in French that said the building had been
requisitioned by the occupying force. It was now a hostel for French officers.

Dismayed, Harriet asked: 'But where can I go?
It's late. Where else is there?'

The clerk looked sympathetic but unhelpful:
'Things very bad. Army take everything.'

Having nothing to offer, he waited for her to go
and she, having nowhere to go, went out and stood on the pavement. There must
be someone, somewhere, who could direct her to an hotel. Eventually a British
soldier sauntered by with the appearance of abstracted boredom she had seen
often enough in Cairo. She stopped him and asked if he knew where she could
stay. He gave a laugh, as though he could scarcely believe his luck, and
lifting her bag, said, 'You a service woman?'

'More or less.'

'That's all right then. There's a hostel over
here.'

He led her across the square and into a side
street. There was more rifle fire and she asked what the trouble was.

'Just the wogs. They're always ticking.'

'What's it like here in Damascus?'

'Same as everywhere else. Lot of bloody
foreigners.'

They came to another shabby, flat-fronted
building, this one distinguished by a Union Jack hanging over the main door.

When Harriet thanked him, the soldier said:
'Don't thank me. It's a treat seeing an English bint.'

Harriet thought she had found a refuge until she
was stopped in the hall by an Englishwoman with scrappy red hair and foxy red
eyes. She looked Harriet up and down before she said accusingly: 'This
hostel's for ORs.'

'Does it matter? I've come a long way and I'm
very tired.'

'I don't know. Suppose it doesn't matter if you
aren't staying long. I've got to keep my beds for them as they're meant for.'

Harriet followed the woman through a canteen, a
stark place shut for the night, to a large dormitory with some thirty narrow,
iron bedsteads.

'Which can I have?'

'Any one you like. There's a shower in there if
you care to use it.'

The beds had no sheets but a thin army blanket
was folded on each. The shower was cold, but at least she had the place to herself;
or so it seemed until the early hours of the morning when she was wakened by a
party of
ATS,
all drunk, who kept up
a ribald criticism of the men who had taken them out. They finally subsided
into sleep but at six a.m. a loudspeaker was switched on in the canteen.

Raucous music bellowed through the dormitory.
Harriet, giving up hope of sleep, rose and went to the shower. As she passed
the
ATS
, one of them lifted a
bleared, blood-shot eye over the edge of the blanket, and observed her
reproachfully.

The person in the canteen was a half-Negro
sweeper who seemed as baleful as the red-haired woman. When Harriet asked about
breakfast, he mumbled, 'Blekfest eight o'clock,' and went on sweeping.

With an hour and a half in which to do nothing,
Harriet set out to look at Damascus. Independence had not begun well for her
and she was inclined to blame herself. If she had taken the woman into her
confidence, charmed her, flattered her, she might have been set up as the
hostel's favourite inmate. But she had no gift for ingratiating herself with
strangers. And she was sure that if she tried it, it would not work.

The square, ill-lit and sinister the previous
night, was at peace now in the early sunlight. The ominous buildings were no
longer ominous. There were towers and domes and minarets, sights to be seen, a
new city to be explored. She could imagine Aidan escorting her round and
helping her to find employment and lodgings. She would warn him to keep her
presence a secret. She could not have Guy coming here out of pity to rescue her
and take her back to Cairo. Later, perhaps, she would contact him but while the
evacuation ship was at sea - the voyage around the Cape would take at least two
months - no one would expect to hear from her.

She sat for a while in a garden beside a mosque,
watching the traffic increase and the day's work beginning. The city was set
among hills as in the hollow of a crown. The highest range, to the west, was
covered in snow and a cold wind blew towards her. She was not dressed for this
climate. Shivering, she rose and found a café where she could drink coffee at a
counter among businessmen to whom she was an object of curiosity. Cairo had
become conditioned to the self-sufficiency of western women but she was now in
Syria, a country dominated by Moslem prejudice. In spite of the bold gaze of
the men, she remained on her café stool until the military offices were likely
to start work.

Seeing nothing that resembled the Cairo
HQ,
she took a taxi and was driven to the
British Pay Office. This was a requisitioned hotel where the walls had become
scuffed and the furniture replaced by trestle tables. Here, among her own
countrymen, she felt at ease. The worst was over. She had only to find Aidan
Pratt and he would take care of her.

When she asked for him, a corporal said: 'Sorry,
miss. He's been transferred.'

'Can you tell me where he's gone?'

'Sorry, miss, can't help you. Not allowed to
reveal movements of army personnel.'

'But I'm a friend. Surely, under the
circumstances
...
At least, tell me,
is he in Syria?'

The corporal conceded that he was not in Syria
but beyond that would disclose nothing. He said apologetically: 'Security, you
know, miss.'

She said: 'Do you know anywhere I can stay? A
hotel or guesthouse?'

The corporal shook his head: 'Haven't heard of
one. Sorry.'

Harriet returned to sunlight that was beginning
to fade. Clouds were drifting over the snow-covered mountains and fog dimmed
the towers and minarets. She said aloud: 'So you really are on your own!' and
as the first drops of rain hit her face, she started back to the hostel, hoping
for breakfast in the canteen.

Guy was going through a period of stress unlike
anything he had known in his life before. There had been only one death in his
family and that was in his childhood. When told his grannie had gone to a much
nicer place, he had said, 'She'll come back, won't she?' She did not come back
and he had forgotten her. But after his outburst in Simon's ward, he could not
forget Harriet. He was haunted by her loss and the haunting bewildered him. He
was like a man who, taking for granted his right to perfect health, is struck
down by disease. But the loss was only one aspect of his perplexity. He had to
consider the fact that going, she had gone unwillingly. He refused to blame
himself for that. He had suggested she go for her own good. He told himself it
had been a sensible suggestion to which she had sensibly agreed. In fact, in
the end, she had
chosen
to go.

But however much he argued against it, he knew
he had instigated her departure. He could not cope with her physical malaise
and air of discontent. There were too many other demands upon him. He simply
hadn't the time to deal with her. So he had persuaded her to return to her
native air where, sooner or later, she would regain her health. No one could
blame him either for her illness or her deep-seated discontent. She needed
employment and in England she would find it. He had expected, when he
eventually joined her at home, that once again she would be the quick-witted,
capable, lively young woman he had married.

Her going, too, was to have been a prelude to
their post-war life. She was to be the advance guard of their return. With her
particular gift for doing such things, she was to find them a house or flat and
settle all those problems of everyday life which he found baffling and tedious.

Now it was not simply that Harriet would not be
there when he returned, she would never be there.

Faced with the finality of death, he could not
accept it. In the past, he had had many an easy laugh at those gravestone
wishes: 'She shall not come to me but I shall go to her,'

'Not lost but gone before
...'
and so on. As a materialist, he still had to see the
absurdity of belief in an after-life. He could not tell himself that Harriet
had gone to a 'much nicer place' but, in his confusion of grief and guilt, he
almost convinced himself she had not gone at all. Perhaps, at the last, she had
decided against the journey to England and had come back to Cairo. She had
hidden herself from him but when he turned the next corner, he would find her
coming towards him. Then, not finding her there, he went on expectantly to the
next corner, and the next.

If he had no extra classes, he would spend his
afternoon walking about the streets of Cairo in search of someone who was not
there. When people stopped to condole with him, he listened impatiently,
imagining they had been misinformed, and that she was somewhere, in some
distant street, if only he could find her.

One day, coming into the lecture hall, he was
shocked to see an immense wreath of flowers and laurel propped up against the
lectern. Refusing to acknowledge it, he took his place as though it were not
there. But, of course, his students could not let him escape like that. They
all rose and their elected spokesman stepped to the front of the class.

'Professor Pringle, sir, it is our wish that I
express our sorrow. Our sorrow and our deep regret that Mrs Pringle is no
more.'

He said briefly, 'Thank you,' angry that they
had blundered in to confirm a fear he had rejected. The student spokesman,
respecting his reticence, retired and nothing more was said, but in the library
he found the librarian, Miss Pedler, waiting for him.

'I'm so sorry, Mr Pringle. I've only just
heard.'

Guy nodded and turned away but she followed him
to an alcove where the poetry was stacked: 'I wanted to say, Mr Pringle, I
know how you feel. I lost my fiancé soon after the war started. He contracted
TB.
If he could've got home, he would have
been cured, but there was no transport. It was the war killed him just as it
killed your wife. I know it's terrible but in the end you get over it. The first
three years are the worst.'

Aghast, he murmured, 'Three years!' and hurried
away from her. Back in the lecture hall, he found the wreath still propped
against the lectern. What was he supposed to do with it? He thought of Gamal
Sarwar, one of his students, who had been killed in a car accident and buried
in the City of the Dead. He could take the wreath up for Gamal, but he knew he
would never find the Sarwar mausoleum among all the other mausoleums. And the
cemetery, though at night it took on a certain macabre beauty, was in daytime a
desolate, cinderous place he could not visit alone. The thought of it reminded
him of the afternoon when he and Harriet had attended Gamal's
arba'in
and the Sarwar men had made
much of him. Harriet had waited for him, and then, as the moon rose, she had
asked him to go with her to see the Khalifa tombs. It had meant only a short
drive in a gharry but he had refused. When he said she could go with someone
else, she had pleaded: 'But I want to go with you.'

Angry again, he said to himself: 'I hate death
and everything to do with death,' and picking up the wreath, he threw it into
the stationery cupboard and shut the door on it.

Guy felt betrayed by life. His good nature, his
readiness to respond to others and his appreciation of them had gained him
friends and made life easy for him. Now, suddenly and cruelly, he had become
the victim of reality. He had not deserved it but there it was: his wife, who
might have lived another fifty or sixty years, had gone down with the evacuation
ship and he would not see her again.

Edwina, thinking that Guy was becoming resigned
to Harriet's death, said to Dobson: 'He can't go moping around for ever. I
think I should try and take his mind off it.'

'If I were you, I'd leave it a bit longer.'

'Really, Dobbie, anyone would think I had
designs on him. I only want to help him.'

That was true but Edwina, too, felt betrayed by
life. She had had a lingering hope that she would see Peter Lisdoonvarna when
he came on leave but the British army was now so far away, the men no longer
took their leave in Cairo. Guy was a prize that had come to hand just when she
had begun to fear her first youth was passing. Before she became obsessed with
Peter, she had taken life lightly, receiving the rewards of beauty. But what
good had they done her? She had been offered only futureless young men like
Hugo and Simon Boulderstone, or men like Peter who would not leave their wives.
Now, just when she needed him most, here was Guy bereft and available and much
too young to remain unmarried.

'You know, Dobbie dear, I was very fond of
Harriet, but she's dead and the rest of us have to go on living.'

'I still think you'd be wise to leave it for a
bit.'

'And have some Levantine floosie snap him up?'

Dobson laughed: 'I agree, that could happen.
They're great at getting their hooks into a man, especially when he's feeling
low.'

'There you are, then! I'm not risking it.'

On Saturday, Guy's free day, Edwina said in a
small, seductive voice: 'Don't forget, Guy dear, you promised to take me out.'

'Did I promise?'

'Oh, darling, you know you did! I'm not doing
anything tonight so wouldn't it be nice if we had a little supper?'

Guy, who would have refused Harriet without a
thought, felt it would be discourteous to refuse Edwina. Edwina, unlike
Harriet, was the outside world that called for consideration.

He said: 'All right. I'll be back for you about
seven.'

Edwina's voice rose in joyful anticipation: 'Oh,
darling, darling! Where shall we go?'

'I'll think of somewhere. See you later, then.'

Returning at a time nearer eight o'clock than
seven, Guy found Edwina waiting for him in the living-room. She was wearing one
of her white evening dresses and a fur jacket against the winter chill. Both
seemed to him unsuitable for a simple dinner but worse was the jewel on her
breast: a large, heart-shaped brooch set with diamonds. He frowned at it.

'You can't wear that thing. It's ridiculous.'

'You gave it to me.'

He was puzzled then, looking more closely at it,
he remembered he had indeed given it to her to wear at his troops' entertainment.
He had no idea where it came from.

He said: 'It's vulgar. It's just a theatrical
prop.'

'It's not a theatrical prop. They're real
diamonds. It's a valuable piece of jewellery.'

This protest recalled for him another protest
and he realized the brooch had belonged to Harriet. She had said: 'It's mine.
It was given to me,' but that had meant nothing to him. He had taken the brooch
from her because it was exactly right for the show. He recalled, too, her
expression of disbelief when he pocketed the absurd object. And soon after
that she told him she would go on the evacuation ship.

He said to Edwina: 'Please take it off.'

'Oh, very well!' She unpinned it with an
expression of wry resignation and offered it to him: 'I suppose you want it
back?'

'It belonged to Harriet.'

Deciding that nothing must spoil their evening,
she smiled a forgiving smile: 'Then, of course, you must have it back.'

He did not want the thing yet did not want
Edwina to have it. He wished it would disappear off the face of the earth.
Edwina, still smiling, slipped it into his pocket and not knowing what else to
do with it, he let it remain there.

A taxi took them to Bulacq Bridge and Edwina
supposed they were going to the Extase night club. Instead, they stopped at one
of the broken-down houses on the other side of the road.

'What is this?'

'The fish restaurant,' Guy said as though she
ought to know.

They went down into a damp, dimly-lit basement
where there were long deal tables and benches in place of chairs. The other
diners, minor clerks and students, stared at Edwina's white dress and white fur
jacket, and she asked nervously: 'Do Europeans come here?'

'My friends do. The food is good.'

'Is it? It's very interesting of course. Quite a
change for me.' Edwina, trying to suffer it all with a good grace, looked about
her: 'I didn't even know there was a fish restaurant.'

Before she could say more, Guy's friends began
to appear. The first was Jake Jackman. When he came to the table, Edwina
thought he only wanted a word with Guy but he sat down, intending to eat with
them. She had not expected anything like this. Her evening with Guy was to be
an intimate exchange of sympathy that would lead to   well, there was no
knowing!

Still, Jackman being there and meaning to stay,
she would have to put up with him. She had never liked him. She supposed he
was, in his thin-faced fashion, attractive, but her instinct was against him.
She knew that in a sexual relationship, the only sort that interested her, he
would be unscrupulous. But there he was: a challenge! She acknowledged his
presence with a sidelong, provocative smile that had no effect upon him. He
was intent on Guy to whom he at once confided his discovery of a 'bloody
scandal'. The western Allies were uniting themselves against Russia and he had
inside information to prove it. 'What sort of information?'

Sniffing and pulling at his nose, Jake leant
towards Guy, lifting his shoulder to exclude Edwina: 'This "Aid to
Russia" frolic -it's all my eye. The stuff they're sending is obsolete and
most of it's useless. They don't want the Russkies to advance on that front.
They want them wiped out. They want the Panzers to paralyse the whole damn
Soviet fighting force.'

'I can't believe that. It would mean German
troops pouring down through the Ukraine and taking our oil.'

'Don't be daft. We'd have made peace long before
that. Or the Hun would've exhausted himself. It's the old policy of killing two
birds with one stone. It was the policy before Hitler invaded Russia and it's
still the policy
...'
Jake dropped his
voice so Edwina could not hear what he said and she felt not only excluded but
despised.

Guy had forgotten they were there to eat and the
waiter, leaning against the kitchen door, was quite content to let the men
talk. Hungry and neglected on her comfortless wooden seat, Edwina sighed so
loudly that Guy was reminded of her presence. He turned but at that moment
there was another arrival at the table. This was Major Cookson, a thin little
man without income, growing more shabby every day, who followed after anyone
who might buy him a drink.

He said to Jackman: 'I've been looking for you
everywhere.'

Since his friend Castlebar had disappeared from
Cairo, Jack-man had admitted Cookson as a minor member of his entourage. He
looked at him now without enthusiasm and said: 'Sit down. Sit down.'

Hearing him called 'major', Edwina gave him a
second glance, but he did not relate to the free-spending young officers she
had known in the past. As he sat beside her, he enveloped her in a stench of
ancient sweat and she felt more affronted by him than by Jackman.