The Levant Trilogy (20 page)

Edwina had
brought out the grocery lists which she made for the senior safragi, Hassan,
and showing them to Harriet, said,
'
You can take a turn at the
housekeeping if you like, but you have to keep an eye on Hassan. He expects to
make a bit here and there, but it mustn't be too much. Also, he's inclined to
pay more than he need at the market to show what a great house he works for, so
you have to keep a check on prices. They all take advantage any way they can
and Hassan's no worse than most.'

'There are just
the four of us: you, Dobbie, Guy and me?'

'No, there's one
more: Percy Gibbon,' Edwina seemed to regret the addition of this fifth person
but said no more about him. 'I do look forward to meeting Guy,' she sighed. 'I
wish I had a nice husband like that. Dobbie says he's a pet.
'

Harriet,
flattered, wondered if, among the young, expugnable officers who took her out,
Edwina could ever find one she would wish to marry. Lulled into a sense of
well-being by Edwina's amiable chatter about food and market prices, Harriet
forgot that her companion was going out and felt a sense of shocked deprivation
when Hassan came out to announce, 'Captain come, sa'ida,' and Edwina jumped to
her feet. Again she
lamented that she must go,
but she was eager for the evening's entertainment. Standing a moment against
the light of the room, she gathered together her sequinned scarf and her
little, glittering evening bag, then smiled and went away, leaving behind her
scent of gardenias.

The snake charmer
did not return for several days but Harriet, coming back from the office one
afternoon, heard a more complex and powerful music filling the flat.

Dobson's room led
off the living-room, the door stood ajar and as she paused near it, Dobson
looked out and said, 'You haven't seen my gramophone, have you?' He invited her
into a room that was larger than the other bedrooms but as sparsely furnished.
The only thing remarkable in it was an old-fashioned box gramophone with a horn
of immense size. The horn, made of papier maché, lifted itself towards the
ceiling, opening in a mouth that was more than four foot wide.

'I've never seen
anything like it'

Dobson was
delighted by her astonishment 'Magnificent, isn't it? It must be the only one
of its kind in the Middle East I bought it from Beaker who got it before the
war, when you could get anything sent out. He didn't want the bother of transporting
it to Baghdad so I was happy to take it from him. It's hand made. The needle is
amethyst so it will never wear out.'

The record had
ended and lifting it, holding it delicately by the edges, Dobson turned it
over, saying, 'I'll put it on again so you can hear the quality of the sound.'

The gramophone
had to be cranked up by hand. Dobson, in his siesta garb of a towel round the
middle - worn not from modesty but to ward off stomach chills - turned the
handle so his fat little belly protruding above the towel edge, his narrow soft
shoulders and his soft pale arms, all quivered with the effort. He looked,
Harriet thought, as plump and bosomed as a woman but he was quite unabashed by
the fact. Placing the needle to the moving record, he stood back and the music
unrolled like velvet about the room.

Harriet, not
knowledgeable about music, guessed it was Mozart.

'Yes. The
Clarinet Quintet Exquisite, isn't it?'

All through the
late afternoons and evenings of mid-summer the questing notes of the clarinet
filled the flat as Dobson played and replayed his new record.

Harriet's job
might end any day now. It ended, as things were liable to do these days,
without warning. Harriet was at the map, advancing the black pins across the
Kuban river at Krasnodar when Iqal came up behind her and said in a hurried
whisper, 'Important gentlemen have come from America. I warn you, one is about
to enter.'

She turned and
said, 'I think he's entered already.'

The man, as neat
looking as Mr Buschman but younger, seemed oddly pale and composed among the
hot, sunburnt people in the basement. He was dressed as Mr Buschman dressed in
a dark poplin suit of elegant cut, a white silk shirt and a narrow black tie.
Mr Buschman had not returned from golf and the new arrival came straight to
Harriet with hand outstretched. 'As you see, we are here at last. We touched
down half an hour ago.' Unmoved by the ancient world, unmoved by war, he smiled
with sublime self-assurance, showing perfect teeth. Seeing the map, he asked,
'How's it going?'

'On and on and
on.'

'It'll go better
now.'

'You're going to
blow them right out of the water?'

He was much
amused. 'You've said it, mem.'

Harriet put the
pins down. The Germans have crossed the Kuban river. You might like to mark it
up.'

'Oh, give them to
my secretary. She's in the John at the moment She'll just love playing with
those little pins.'

Harriet said
good-bye to everyone and turned her back on the map as she would, if she could,
have turned her back on the whole weary conflict.

Guy, when he
entered the Institute as Director, found in the hall a notice that said
Professor Dubedat and Professor Lush would, on alternate evenings, give
lectures on Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth and other outstanding figures of
English literature. Apart from this promise, little remained of the cultural
activities that had once filled the six rooms and lecture
hall of the building in the centre of Cairo. The place had a
run-down appearance. Three Egyptian teachers remained to take dwindling classes
and these, when they heard that a new Director had arrived, came to Guy with
complaints and questions.

'Where, may I
ask, sir,' one of them asked, 'are these professors called Dubedat and Lush?
Of their lectures we have not heard one word.'

Guy did not know.
He called a meeting of all the remaining staff - a Coptic secretary, the two
Greek women who looked after the library and the three teachers - and gave them
a talk, impressing on them the importance of the work he required them to do.

Harriet, sitting
at the back of the hall, wondered again at Guy's ability to stimulate
enthusiasm and make possible what before had seemed impossible. She had felt
the same wonder when, producing
Troilus and Cressida
in Bucharest, he
had overcome the apathy of the stage-hands and infused the cast with his own
energy. And that had been simply for one evening's entertainment. Now he had a
task much more worthy of his spirit. He told the staff that he was working on a
new curriculum for the autumn term when there would be not only classes in
English but lectures by such notables as Professor Lord Pinkrose, the famous
poet William Castlebar, Professor Beaker from Baghdad and half a dozen of the
English professors at Fuad al Awal University.

As Guy brought
out these names, Harriet was astounded to realize he knew them all and had
already approached them. Even Pinkrose had written from the King David Hotel,
Jerusalem, to say that when it was safe for him to return to Egypt, he would
be pleased to repeat the lecture that he had given at Phaleron before a
brilliant audience on the day Germany declared war on Greece. Guy read this
letter aloud with such emphasis that the audience, deeply impressed, broke into
applause. Then, the library! Up till now the librarians had followed the
out-of-date procedure of keeping the books guarded behind a counter and
handing them out on request. All that would change. The library shelves would
be thrown open to borrowers to pick and choose and browse at will. Guy was
making a list of
a thousand recently published books which he intended to order and which,
sooner or later, would turn up. He laughed and said, 'Later rather than sooner,
I imagine,' and the audience applauded again.

The English
librarian, a Miss Pedler, was among those who had gone to Palestine, and the
library had been kept open by the Greek women, both married to Egyptians, who
now began calling out the names of books that the library needed.

'Write them down.
I'll see we get them.'

Guy said he
intended setting up a library of gramophone records which would be lent to musical
groups in the forces as well as the Institute. He planned a weekly Institute
evening when there would be music, poetry-readings and plays.

'And dancing?'
one of the teachers excitedly asked.

'And
dancing. One very important
thing - we will need more teachers. Put it among your English-speaking friends.
Tell them the work is regular and the pay good.'

The Egyptian
teachers laughed, throwing themselves about in their chairs and shouting,
'Professor Pringle, sir, we have had no pay since Professor Gracey went away.'

Guy said that
would be put right. No one mentioned the German advance or questioned his
certainty that the Institute would remain and the British remain with it.
Harriet, who might once have feared that Guy promised more than he could
perform, was now confident that what he said he would do, he would do.

Walking back to
Garden City, he asked her, 'Was I all right?'

'You were
splendid.'

Guy had been so
absorbed by his new authority that Harriet had had no chance to ask him what he
thought of the move to Dobson's flat. When she spoke of it now, he said. The
room's all right but that tree is a nuisance. It cuts off the light'

'I love the tree.
What do you think of Edwina?'

'She seems a nice
girl. A bit of a glamour puss.' Guy laughed at the thought of Edwina and
Harriet felt she could be thankful that glamour was an abstraction which did
not much affect him.

'What do you
think of Percy Gibbon?'

'That fellow who
sits at the table and never speaks?'

'Yes. I feel he
resents our being there.'

Guy laughed
again, unable to believe that anyone could resent his being anywhere. 'I
suppose he's shy, that's all.'

Guy was too busy
to observe the life of the flat. There was scarcely time in the day for all the
tasks he had set himself. He had a trestle-table sent from the Institute so he
could work at home. The table was put up in the Pringle's bedroom where it was
very much in the way. Guy, whose sight was poor, could not bear the room's
penumbra and, looking round, found the room next to them was empty. He asked
Dobson if he might put the table in there. The room was so small that Dobson
had not thought it tenable for long, and said, 'Use it by all means, my dear
fellow.'

Spreading out his
papers in the spare room, Guy heard the door open and, looking round, found
Percy Gibbon regarding him with malign disapproval. This is where I do my exercises,'
Gibbon said.

Guy genially
replied, 'Carry on. You won't disturb me.'

Percy did not
carry on but slammed the door violently as he went.

During the time
they had been in the flat, he had once spoken to Harriet. When she had said at
the breakfast-table, 'I heard a rumour that we've lost the Canberra,' he lifted
a face taut with reproof and said, 'If you heard that, you should keep it to
yourself.'

Later, Harriet
said to Dobson,
I
don't think Percy Gibbon likes us. He seems to feel we
have no right to be here.'

'He's the one who
has no right to be here. He asked me to let him stay for a few days while he
found a place of his own. That was a year ago, and I can't get rid of him. He
complains about his room, about the servants, about everybody and everything.
I've suggested, very tactfully of course, that he'd be happier elsewhere, but
he says he hasn't time to look for another place.'

'He's pathetic,
really. He's in love with Edwina.'

'Surely you're
joking?' Dobson laughed aloud at the thought of Percy in love but Harriet, who
had seen him looking at Edwina with desperate longing, could only pity him.

Simon first felt
the Column had taken on identity when he heard one of the men refer to it as
Hardy's. Soon Ridley and Arnold and all the rest of them were calling
themselves Hardy's Lot, speaking of Hardy as though he were another Popski and
they his private army.

If Hardy himself
had had any qualities on which to hang reverence, they would have made a hero
of him, but everything about the major discouraged worship. He had little
contact with the men and his remote manner suggested a self-sufficiency in
which they had no faith. Simon had been right in suspecting that Hardy had
been a schoolmaster before the war. According to Ridley, he had been the
headmaster of a small prep school in Surrey. Simon, who had had a form-master
not unlike the major, realized that Hardy was a timid man whose silence and
withdrawn manner hid nothing but inefficiency. The form-master, Bishop, kept
his distance with the boys and they did not know what to make of him. Some of
them were ready to believe he was a superior person but when he left after only
one term, the school porter told them, 'Poor chap, he wasn't up to it.'

Having known
Bishop, whom he did not like, Simon felt he already knew Hardy and oddly
enough, for that reason, did not dislike him. Instead, remembering the lost
papers and the shuffling hands, Simon felt protective towards him. He could
imagine Bishop in the same position and felt that Hardy, a middle-aged man,
uprooted from a regular job, was worse off than any of them.

The day after
they had leaguered among the pink rocks at the southern end of the line, Simon
supervised the digging of slit trenches. One of the men called Brookman, a big,
heavy fellow who had told Simon that before the war he had been in 'the fruit',
was giving out his usual street-trader's patter. Throwing a rock to his butty,
he shouted, "Ere y'are, gran, you can eat 'em with no teeth.' The butty
pitched the rock back and
Brookman, leaping into the
air, let out a thin, anguished howl: 'Oh, my wife and kids.'

This gave rise to
so much laughter, Simon could see how the story had gone around. Ridley, of
course, was the culprit. To Brookman, Simon spoke sharply. 'Cut it out,
Brookman, anyone can be caught off balance. You're a married man yourself,
aren't you?'

Brookman,
startled by Simon's unwonted severity, mumbled, "Speck you're right, guv,'
and there were no more jokes about Hardy's wife and kids.

They were
supposed to be in the front line but the only thing out in no-man's-land, apart
from the junk yard litter left by earlier fighting, was a small hill in the
middle distance. At night, yellow flashes of fire and Very lights marked the
German positions to the north, but there was no sight of the enemy during the
day.

Simon's nerves
had subsided but, at the same time, he felt a sense of let-down at the thought
of returning to the sleepy boredom of the earlier camp.

Seeing Hardy with
his field glasses up, he asked him, 'Why don't they come on, sir?'

Hardy continued
to stare towards the German lines as though he might find the answer out there,
then he said, 'I suppose they had to stop some time. Jerry's only flesh and
blood, after all.'

'But if they
could get this far in less than a month, why not finish the job?'

'My guess is,
they made it too fast. If they've outrun supplies, they could be stuck for some
time to come.'

A few mornings
later, while the dew still hung on the camel thorn, half a dozen enemy trucks
were sighted, travelling slowly and cautiously round the base of the hill. They
were first seen by Ridley, who ran to Martin. Martin gave the order to open
fire and Ridley, coming over to Simon grinning his self-satisfaction, said,
'This is it, sir. Get your head down and cover your ears.'

Simon followed
Ridley into a slit trench and, bending his head against the sand, protected his
ears. The sound that came to him through his hands was the most fearsome he had
ever
heard. The gunners, who had
had little to do till then, made up for their inactivity. As the firing
persisted, Simon felt physically pummelled by the uproar but imagined he was
taking it well until, the action over, he found to his consternation that his cheeks
were wet. While he was scrubbing away his tears, someone put a hand on his
shoulder. He swung round, angry and ashamed, but it was only Arnold.

'It's all right,
sir. It takes you like that first time.'

'What happened?'

'We got one truck
and the others made off double quick.'

Climbing up from
the trench, Simon could see the solitary German truck smouldering at the foot
of the hill. Three bodies were sprawled about it and he said to Arnold, 'What
about those chaps? Shouldn't we do something to help them?'

'Nothing we can
do, sir. The others hauled the wounded on board before they scarpered. Those
chaps have had it'

Simon, sent out
to investigate, took Arnold and three men with him. This was his first venture
on foot into open desert and though the area ahead was much like the area of
the camp, he had a disturbing sense of offering himself as a target. He could
imagine all the guns of the Afrika Korps trained on his party and he said to
Arnold, 'Walking ducks, aren't we?'

'On a job like
this, sir, they usually leave you alone.'

Whether this was
true or not, the burial party went unmolested to the truck and examined the
bodies. The Germans, though newly dead, were already stiffening in the beat
Simon looked at them with awe. They were not simply the first dead Germans he
had seen, they were the first Germans: and, more than that, they were the first
dead men he had seen in the whole of his life. One lay face down and when
turned over, Simon saw he was a youth very like Arnold. Going through the
uniform pockets, he found the usual things: identity papers, letters, snapshots
of mum and dad, but no girl friend or wife. Too young for that, Simon thought
and said to the men, 'All right, get on with it.'

The graves were
not deep. No point in remaining longer than need be out here, yet, because it
was customary, the men tied
some sticks together to form
crosses and placed one at each head. And, Simon thought, what a fool business
that was! You killed men and marked the spot with the symbol of eternal life.
Walking back, he said something like that to Arnold who replied, 'They'd have
killed us, given the chance.'

'That's what they
said about the scorpion.'

'I know, sir, but
you don't have to kill scorpions. The other's different - it's what we're here
for.'

Following the
attack on the enemy trucks, there was a long period when no enemy was seen.
Ridley had discovered that the New Zealanders had been moved to an encampment
near the Ridge and Captain Hugo Boulderstone was still with them. As the days
passed vacuous with sun, heat and the drone of flies, Simon decided to make
another application for leave to visit his brother. The major, his glasses
trained, as usual, on nothing, turned fiercely at Simon's request.

'You mad,
Boulderstone, or something?'

'I just thought,
sir...'

It's not your job
to think. Your job is to stand by and await orders.'

Going back to his
bivouac, he murmured to Ridley, 'The major does great work with those field
glasses.'

Ridley, inflating
his cheeks, let the air break through closed lips but that was his only
comment. Now that Hardy was in command, Ridley did not openly criticize him and
Simon felt the need to justify his remark.

'I asked for
leave to visit my brother and he jumped down my throat.'

'Not surprising,
sir, if you don't mind me saying so. They say on the intercom the Kiwis are up
to something.'

'An attack?'

'Could be, but
don't worry, sir. Might be no more than a twitch.'

A few days later,
waking before dawn, Simon heard the nimble of distant artillery and the thud of
aerial bombardment, and knew this was the attack. He imagined Hugo in the midst
of it. He sat up on his elbow and saw Ridley, wearing nothing but his drawers,
peering between the leaguered lorries in the
direction of the hill. A waning moon, a big, lop-sided face, cast
a dismal half-light over the camping area. Going to Ridley, Simon whispered,
'What's up?'

Ridley whispered
back at him, 'Don't know, sir, but it's my belief jerry's up to something over
there.' He nodded towards the hill where lights, faint, as from a dark lantern,
were moving on the upper slopes.

'Think I should
wake the major, sarge?'

'No point. Can't
do much before sparrow-fart'

But Simon, unable
to contain his information, went to where Hardy lay and finding him awake,
excitedly reported what had been seen.

'Who saw these
lights?'

Simon had to
admit that Ridley saw them first 'But I confirmed it, sir. I thought you'd
want to know at once, sir.'

'Quite right,
Boulderstone. When it's light we'll let them know we're here.'

Rising before
dawn, prepared for the noise of gunfire, Simon stood with the other officers
beside the HQ truck, seeing the hill appear in the sudden, startling whiteness
of first light. They could see black figures moving quickly as though to take
cover before day would reveal them.

Martin shouted an
order to the gunners: 'All right, give them half a dozen rounds.'

As the guns
opened up, the figures fell out of sight. Hardy, surveying the hill through his
glasses, said, 'No sign of life now. Probably only a patrol but I'll get
through to air reconnaissance and advise a check.'

Soon after, a
Leander, slow and sedate like an elderly mosquito, went over the Column and
several times circled the hills. Half an hour later the report came that the
hill was still occupied and there were signs that the enemy was turning it
into a miniature fortress. The ground before it on the east, had been disturbed
as though mines had been laid, and store puts for weapons had been dug on the
western side.

The guns started
again and continued their fire at intervals during the afternoon. After the
four o'clock brew-up, Simon and Trench were ordered to report to Hardy. The HQ
truck was dug into the shelter of a rock ridge and Hardy and Martin
were lying on top of the ridge, both training field glasses on the
hill.

Simon and Trench,
standing a couple of yards apart, did not look at each other as they waited.
Though circumstances forced them to associate, they did not do it willingly.
Each felt in the other an awareness that something was wrong, though neither
could have said what it was. Even now, sharing the anxiety of the summons,
antagonism was alive between them.

Hardy, turning
his head to look at them, gave a long sigh of dissatisfaction, saying, 'The enemy's
still in position. I hoped our fire would rout them but there's more of them
than we thought. The trouble is, we're short of ammunition.' He said something
to Martin then slid down from the ridge and spoke to his two lieutenants. 'There's
nothing for it, I'm afraid, but to send in the infantry. Make a direct attack,
give them a blow, a real knock-out, that'll drive them off the hill.'

Both young men
said, 'Yes, sir,' sounding as enthusiastic as they could. Simon, glancing
obliquely at Trench, saw him staring at his feet, his fine, long mouth half
open, obviously uncertain what was expected of him.

Hardy said.
'You'll lead your platoons into action tomorrow, starting out before dawn.'

Simon again
glanced at Trench and seeing his lips quiver, thought, 'He's more scared than I
am.' For a moment, he felt a gleeful sense of triumph, then his own fear came
over him. When they met later for the evening meal, Simon, for the first time
since Trench joined the Column, felt able to speak freely to him. 'Do you think
we should leave letters or write out cables, or something?'

'You mean, for
our people?'

'Yes. I've got a
wife, too. What do you think?'

They had heard of
men writing letters, letters that often enough proved to be letters of
farewell, and they self-consciously considered whether or not to do the same
thing. Trench decided, 'I don't think we should. It's a bit like asking for
it.'

'You're probably
right.'

Sharing the
immediacy of the attack, their antagonism seemed to have gathered itself
together and vanished like the mirage. They began reminding each other of
incidents during
their days on the
Queen
Mary
and almost at once their old sense of intimate understanding came
back. Remembering their laughter on board ship, they started to laugh again,
recalling Codley's jokes. Their excitement was like a renewal of love but it
was a febrile excitement. They could not put from their minds the fact that at
daybreak they would be under fire. Yet the laughter, like alcohol, gave them a
sort of courage and they were still together, scarcely able to bear the thought
of being separated, when Hardy came round the camp. He stopped beside them.
'Boulderstone? Trench? Try and get some sleep before the balloon goes up.' He
spoke kindly, as he might to his own children, and both men were emotional with
gratitude and a willingness to obey him to the end.