The Levant Trilogy (58 page)

Harriet replied firmly: 'No. You have been very
kind to me, Halal, but I cannot go out with you again. People will
misunderstand.'

Halal's face lengthened with an expression of
tragic melancholy and he slowly shook his head: 'It is true, they observe and
do not understand. And I know, you are afraid of your husband. Gossip will
reach him and he will be angry.'

Harriet laughed at the idea of Guy's anger.
'Nothing like that,' she assured Halal but he knew better.

'Believe me,' he said: 'I respect your
prudence.'

Harriet laughed again but left it like that.
Before they parted, she asked him: 'Please tell me, Halal, what do you keep in
your black case?'

He gravely answered: 'My diplomas.'

As the days passed without Halal, Harriet wished
she had not given him such a definite dismissal. Almost any company was better
than none. In her solitude, it seemed to her that Dr Beltado was ignoring her,
perhaps in disapproval of her separation from Halal. The women, once she had an
escort of her own, had relented somewhat and had even given her a glance or
two. Now all three seemed determined to stress her loneliness. But perhaps she
imagined this for one evening Dr Beltado, his coffee cup in his hand, came over
and sat in the chair beside her.

'Our friend Halal tells me you might like to
help me out with my book?'

'Why, yes, I would.'

'Say, that's fine. You know we have the big room
on the top floor? Every morning we work there together. Well, little lady, any
time you feel like it, come up and join us.'

Overwhelmed by this proposal, Harriet wished
Halal were there so she might show her gratitude.

The room that Beltado spoke of was very big; a
long, low attic with two dormer windows. It was as sparsely furnished as Harriet's
bedroom but the Beltados had brought in their own folding chairs and tables and
the floor was heaped with their books.

Dr Jolly who had her work space at one end of
the room, sat bent down in concentrated study and apparently deaf to her husband's
voice. Dr Beltado and Miss Dora held the centre of the room where there was
most light. Beltado dressed for breakfast and then apparently, undressed in
order to do battle with his enormous task of correlating all cultures. The bed
had been pulled forward to accommodate him and, resting on one elbow, he lay,
wearing a Chinese robe that exposed more of him than it covered. He was
dictating to Miss Dora when Harriet tapped on the door. He called to her to
come in, obviously irritated by the interruption. He stared at her, bemused for
some moments before he remembered why she was there.

Rather exasperated, he said: 'What are we going
to do with you?' He ordered Miss Dora to show Harriet her shorthand notes:
"Think you can make a rough typescript of that?'

The shorthand was unlike any Harriet had seen
before: 'I'm sorry, I can't.'

'You can't, eh? Sit down then and we'll find you
something else.'

Harriet sat and listened and learnt about
different cultures but she never learnt what she was employed to do. Or,
indeed, if she were employed at all for, from first to last, there was no
mention of a salary.

Forgetting Harriet, Dr Beltado dictated, waving
his arms about and letting his robe slip so all might view his white legs, his
belly and his large pudenda. Miss Dora, obviously used to this display, ignored
it and meekly scribbled on. Advocating the co-ordination of all cultural
disciplines, Dr Beltado said that the experts should work together like an
orchestra gathered under the baton of one supreme conductor.

'And who,' Beltado asked, 'should that conductor
be? I think I may, without undue conceit, suggest myself, a man widely
travelled and experienced, and not one to flinch from responsibility. If
invited to fill the role
...'
Gazing
round, he caught Harriet's eye and came to a stop.

'What are you doing here?'

'I'm waiting for a job.'

Miss Dora was told to find Harriet a job. She
produced a box of photographs that had to be sorted according to their
countries of origin. There were some five hundred photographs and sorting them
gave Harriet three days' work. That finished, she was set to making a fair copy
of Miss Dora's rough typescript. At the end of the first week, she hoped Dr
Beltado would mention money, but nothing was said. She spent the next week
typing each day from nine in the morning until six in the evening and once,
when Dr Beltado had gone to relieve himself, she spoke quietly to Miss Dora:
'Does Dr Beltado pay one weekly or monthly?'

'Pay?' Miss Dora seemed never to have heard of
pay. Her homely face with its small eyes and thin, red nose quivered in
embarrassment, but she asked: 'What did you arrange with him?'

'I didn't arrange anything but I need to earn
some money.'

'If I get a chance, I'll mention it to Dr
Jolly.' Miss Dora turned away as though the subject were distasteful and
nothing more was said for the next three days. Then Harriet managed to trap her
in the passage.

'Miss Dora, please! Have you asked Dr Jolly about
my salary?'

'You're to send in your account.' Miss Dora
dodged round Harriet and was gone. Harriet, used to a system of wages paid
weekly for work done, had no idea what to charge or for how long. She bought
some ruled paper and spent Friday evening in her room, concocting an account so
modest no one could question it but when, on Saturday morning, she went up to
the Beltado work-room, she found no one there.

Dr Beltado, Dr Jolly and Miss Dora, folding
chairs and tables, books and papers - all had gone. The bed was back against
the wall. The whole place had the abject nullity of a body from which life had
departed. And Harriet, on the floor below, had not heard a sound.

She hurried down to ask Madame Vigo where Dr
Beltado had gone? He and his ladies had departed the pension soon after daybreak,
leaving no forwarding address.

'And when are they corning back?'

'One year, two year. I not know.'

'They did not pay me for my work.'

'They forgot?'

Perhaps they did forget; and Harriet felt the
more disconsolate to think herself forgotten.

The news reached Cairo that British and American
forces had made contact in North Africa. At the same time Guy received official
confirmation of Harriet's death. The letter stated that the name of Harriet
Pringle was on a list of 530 persons granted passage on the evacuation ship,
the
Queen of Sparta,
that sailed from Suez on 28 December 1942. The
Queen
of Sparta
had been sunk by enemy action while in the Indian Ocean. Harriet
Pringle, together with 528 other passengers, had been declared missing,
believed drowned. One passenger and two members of the crew had survived. The
passenger's name was given as Caroline Rutter.

Guy took the letter to Dobson who was still in his
bedroom. 'It's been a long time coming.'

Dobson, quick to defend authority, said: 'There
could be no absolute certainty about the ship's fate till it failed to turn up
at Cape Town.'

'What about the survivors? Wouldn't they be
conclusive proof?'

'No. We've had a longer report. The crewmen were
lascars who scarcely knew what ship it was. The woman was too ill for weeks to
tell anyone anything. Until there was proof, the rumours had to be treated as -
well, rumours.'

'I see.' Guy put the letter into his pocket.

That morning, at breakfast, Edwina said she was
thinking of marrying Tony Brody.

'Good heavens,' said Dobson; 'not Tony Brody!'

'Why not? He's a major and a nice man.'

'I should have thought you could do better than
Brody.'

Edwina, sniffing behind her curtain of hair,
said dismally: 'There's not much choice these days. The most exciting men have
all gone to Tunisia and I don't think they're coming back.'

'Even so. Be sensible and wait. Someone will
come along.'

'I have waited, perhaps too long. I'm not
getting younger.'

Dobson observed her with a critical smile:
'True. The bees aren't buzzing around as they used to.'

'Oh, Dobbie, really! How beastly you are!'
Edwina gave a sob and Dobson patted her hand.

"There, there, pet, your Uncle Dobbie was
joking. You're still as beautiful as a dream and you don't want to marry
Brody.'

'Oh, I might as well. If you can't marry the man
you want, does it matter who you marry?'

'Why not stay peacefully unmarried, like me?'

'Because I don't want to spend the rest of my
life working in a dreary office.'

While this conversation skirted his
consciousness, Guy was thinking of Harriet missing, believed drowned. At an age
when other girls were thinking of marriage, she was lying at the bottom of the
Indian Ocean.

The letter, though it told him nothing he did
not already know, hung over him during his morning classes. It was as though a
final shutter had come down on his memories of his wife and he realized that
all this time some irrational, tenuous hope had lingered in his mind.

He thought of another ill-fated ship, the ship
on which Aidan Pratt had served as a steward when he was a conscientious
objector. On its way to Canada, with evacuees, it was torpedoed and Aidan had
shared a life-boat packed with children in their night clothes. They had died
off one by one from cold and thirst and when thrown overboard, the little
bodies had floated after the boat because they were too light to sink. Harriet
had weighed scarcely more than a teenage girl and Guy could imagine her body
floating and following the boat as though afraid of being left alone on that
immense sea.

Still disconsolate when he reached the hospital,
he found Simon in a mood very different from his own. That morning, Simon had
managed to walk a few yards without a crutch. He had walked awkwardly but he
had done it - he had walked on his own.

'You see what that means?'

Guy laughed, trying to lift his own spirits up
to Simon's level: 'No wonder you're so cheerful.'

Simon, lying in a deck-chair on the veranda of
his small ward, was cheerful to the point of light-headedness. Delighted with
himself, he said: 'I was like this once before, when I first went into Plegics
- but more so. In fact, I was pretty nearly bonkers and for no reason. But now
I have a reason, haven't I? I
know
I'm
going to walk like a normal man. I told you about those dreams I get, when I'm
running for miles over green fields? Well, one day, after the war, I'm going to
do that! I'll go into the country and run for miles, like a maniac'

'Just to show you're as good as the rest of
them? You could run in the desert just as well.'

'No, it has to be over fields. I want that green
grass, that green English grass.'

'So it's England now, not India or Cyprus?'

Simon laughed wildly. He was in a state where
everything amused him but he was particularly pleased by a joke he had heard
the previous evening. There had been a lecture in the main hall of the
hospital, intended for patients who were near recovery. They were told they
would leave the hospital in perfect health and the army had expected them to
stay in perfect health. They were to avoid brothels and street women and to
keep themselves clean and fit.

'Just like a school pi-jaw,' Simon said, 'Except
that the chap was funny. Oh, he was funny! What do you think he said at the
end? He said: "Remember - flies spread disease.
Keep yours shut!"'

Simon threw his head back in riotous enjoyment
of this statement and Guy, smiling and frowning at the same time, thought:
'What a boy he is! Little more than a schoolboy in spite of all he's seen.' Guy
himself was not yet twenty-five but, suffering the after-effects of
bereavement, he felt a whole generation or more older than Simon. It occurred
to him, too, that Simon returning to normal vitality, was a different person
from the disabled youth whom he had adopted as a charge. Simon, helpless and
dependent, had had the appeal of a child or a young animal but now, growing
into independence, he had qualities that set him apart from his protector. Guy
remembered his own boredom at the Gezira pool while Simon felt only envy of an
activity in which he could not join. Even now Simon, with his carefree ambition
to run over green fields, was growing away from him and Guy, with the letter in
his pocket, wondered what consolation he would find when Simon was gone
altogether.

For some weeks now he had been avoiding public
gatherings and the condolences of friends but that evening, feeling a need to
talk to someone who had known Harriet, he went to the Anglo-Egyptian Union
where he found Jake Jackman practising shots at the billiard table. They played
a game of snooker then went into the club-room for drinks. Sitting with Jake at
a table, Guy took out the letter and said casually: 'This came this morning.'

Jackman, as he read, grunted his sympathy until
coming to the name of Caroline Rutter, he burst out: 'So that old crow Rutter's
still alive!'

'Who is this Caroline Rutter?'

'Why, the impertinent old bloody bitch who had
the cheek to ask me why I wasn't in uniform. To think of it! A nice-looking
girl like Harriet dead and that old trout survives! She probably lived off her
fat. The rich are like camels. They grow two stomachs and spend their time
filling them so they've always got one to fall back on in case of emergencies.'

Jackman, drinking steadily, spent the evening
dwelling on this fantasy and enlarging it until Castlebar's wife came to the
table. He was now in a rage against the perversity of chance and he looked at
Mona Castlebar with hatred. Not disconcerted, she sat down beside Guy. She had
sung in his troop's entertainment and felt she had as good a right as anyone to
his company. Having no quarrel with her, he bought her a drink.

She said: 'I suppose you've heard nothing from
Bill?'

'I'm afraid, not a word.'

'Neither have I, and I haven't had a penny from
him since he went. He neither knows nor cares how I'm managing.' Jackman asked
with gleeful malice: 'How
are
you
managing?'

'That's my business.'

Both men knew that the university was allowing
Mona to draw Castlebar's salary so Guy did not speak but Jackman, who had been
eyeing her breasts and legs as though unable to credit their bulk, said:
'You're not starving, that's obvious.'

Mona, her glass empty, was tilting it about in
her hand as though inviting a refill. Jackman said: 'I'll buy you a drink if
you buy me one.'

'I'm not buying you anything. You've had more
than enough as it is.'

'Oh!' Jackman straightened himself, his eyes
glinting for a fight: 'No wonder Bill went off with the first woman who asked
him. He always said you were a mean-natured lout.'

'He said you were a scrounging layabout.'

'That's good, coming from Lady Hooper's fancy
man.'

Guy said: 'Shut up, both of you,' and Jackman,
grumbling to himself, looked around as though seeking better company. Seeing
Major Cookson at another table, he said: 'If that cow's staying, I'm going.'

Guy felt he, too, had had enough of Mona. As a
taxi came in at the Union gates, he said he had to go home and correct
students' essays.

Taking the chance, Mona rose with him: 'As
you're going to Garden City, you can drop me off on the way.'

So it happened Guy missed an event that was long
to be a subject of gossip in Cairo. Or, rather, he did not miss it, for had he
remained it would never have occurred.

What Jake Jackman did after joining Major
Cookson was recounted by Cookson whenever he found himself an audience.

Cookson had not been alone at his table. He had
with him his two cronies: Tootsie and the ex-archaeologist Humphrey Taupin.
Shouting so all could hear, Jackson told this group that he would not spend
another minute with that 'grabby monstrosity' Mona Castlebar and continued to
vilify her till she and Guy were gone. Then, curving forward in his chair, his
right hand pulling at his nose, his left hanging between his knees, he subsided
into morose silence. Cookson, who was spending Taupin's money, asked what Jake
would drink.

'Whisky.'

Cookson called on Taupin to replenish funds but
Taupin said he had nothing left. Jackman losing patience, called a safragi and
ordered a double whisky: 'Put it down to Professor Pringle's account.'

'Not here Ploffesor Plingle.'

'He's coming back. And bring another for him.
Put them both down to his account.'

Still pervaded by grievances, Jackman drank both
whiskies rapidly and they brought him to the point of action. Leaning confidingly
towards Cookson, he said: 'You know that Mrs Rutter who lives down the road?'

'I don't think I do.'

'She owns a swell place. Big house and garden,
crowds of wogs to wait on her. Generous old girl, keeps open house. Told me to
drop in for a drink any time. "Bring your friends," she said,
"I'm always ready for a booze up."'

'Really!' Major Cookson's grey, peaked face lit
with interest. 'She sounds a charming woman.'

'Charming? She's charming, all right. Like to
come?'

'What, now? Oh, I don't think I can leave my
friends.'

'All come, why not?' Jackman slapped the table
to emphasize his magnanimity and jumped to his feet: 'It's no distance. We can
walk there in half a minute.'

Cookson and Tootsie, unusually animated, got to
their feet but Taupin was unable to move. He lay entranced, sliding out of his
chair, eyes shut, a smile on his crumpled, curd-white face.

'Leave him,' Jackman said and walked off. After
a moment's uncertainty, Tootsie and Cookson followed.

The house was, as Jake had said, no distance
away. It was one of the privileged mansions of Gezira that shared the great
central lawn with the Union, the Officers' Club and the Sporting Club. It stood
dark amid the clouding darkness of tall trees and Cookson, seeing no light in
any windows, said doubtfully: 'I don't think the lady's at home.'

'She's there all right. She's always home.
Probably in the back parlour. Come on.' Jake led them through the cool,
jasmine-scented garden to the front door where he gripped a large lion-headed
knocker and hammered violently on its plate. If the noise roused no one else,
it troubled Cookson who said: 'Oh dear, do you really think we should?'

They all peered through the coloured glass of
the front door and saw the outline of a staircase curving up from a spacious
hall. Jake hammered again and at last a light was switched on at the top of the
stair. A white-clad figure began to make an uncertain descent.

'I'm afraid we've got her out of bed,' Cookson
whispered. 'Nonsense. She's up till all hours.'

The figure, reaching the hall, paused half-way
to the door and a nervous female voice called out: 'Who is it? What do you
want?'

'We're friends. Open up.'

'If you want Mrs Rutter, she's not here. You can
leave a message at the servants' quarters - they're at the bottom of the
garden.'