The Levant Trilogy (26 page)

'Frightened of
what?'

'Losing out, I
suppose. She's set her heart on this fellow, Lisdoonvarna, God knows why. Come
on, darling, don't look so black. Little monkey's paws, come to bed ...' He
tried to take her hand but Harriet, remembering Guy's hold on Edwina's hand,
moved away. He tried to coax her to return to him but she remained on the other
side of the room, and looked at the window where there was no tree to befriend
her.

The sense of
chill and distance between them so bewildered Guy that he started to get out of
bed. She said angrily, 'Leave me alone,' and he remained where he was, watching
her as though by watching he could divine what was wrong with her. He found it
difficult to accept that his own behaviour could
be at fault. And if it were, he did not see how it could be
changed. It was, as it always had been, rational, so, if she were troubled,
then some agency beyond them - sickness, the summer heat, the distance from
England - must be affecting her. For his part, he was reasonable, charitable,
honest, hard-working, as generous as his means allowed, and he had been
tolerant when she picked up with some young officer in Greece. What more could
be expected of him? Yet, seeing her afresh, he realized how fragile she had
become. She was thin by nature but now her loss of weight made her look ill.
Worse than that, he felt about her the malaise of a deep-seated discontent.
That she was unhappy concerned him, yet what could he do about it? He had more
than enough to do as it was, and he tried to appeal to her good sense.
'Darling, don't be so grumpy!'

She turned on
him. 'I
am
grumpy, and with reason. I'm sick of your solicitude for others
- it's just showing off. You don't show off to me. I'm part of you, as you say,
so I can put up with anything. You don't come to the Union, as you promised,
and where do I find you? I couldn't believe my eyes. It was ... it was
incredible.'

'The girl needed
help.'

'Everyone needs
help. Except me, of course. I can go round alone. I can look after myself. Here
I'm usually more ill than well, but that doesn't worry you, does it?'

'It does worry
me. This place doesn't agree with you. You're too thin, you look peaky. I've
noticed it. I've been thinking about it,' Guy said, thinking about it for the
first time. 'You know, darling, there's a plan to send some of the women and
children home. Why don't you apply for a passage.'

'Me? Go back
without you?' She was dumbfounded and, sinking down on to a chair, she stared
at him in disbelief. 'You want me to leave you?'

Made uneasy by
her expression, he looked away from her. 'Of course I don't, but you said
yourself that you're usually more ill than well. And you're nervous.'

'I'm no more
nervous than anyone else. It's a nervous time.'

'That's true. No
one knows what will happen when the Germans get their reinforcements. That
could be any day. You
said yourself, they could
arrive almost without warning. If we ended up in a prison camp, I really don't
think you'd survive.'

'At least we'd be
together.'

'We wouldn't be
together. We'd be in different camps. We might even be in different countries.
If you were in England, at least I'd know where you were. And you would have
war work - that would take your mind off things. You'd be happier, and your
health would pick up there. All those bugs just die in a northern climate. Now,
darling, be sensible. Think about it.'

'I don't intend
to think about it.' She went to the chest of drawers that served as
dressing-table and put cleansing cream on her face. 'We came here together.
When we leave, we'll leave together.'

She was dilatory
in preparing for bed, feeling pained and suspicious. He had never before
suggested that she return to England to face life alone; why suggest it now? It
came to her, with dismay, that he wished to clear the way for a possible
pursuit of Edwina. Was it possible? Everything was possible. If the affair with
Peter broke up as it very well might, Guy would be at hand, again the comforter
and perhaps, in the end, more than comforter. She had seen many marriages fail
in this place, and men whose wives were sent out of harm's way were quick to
find consolation.

When she got into
bed, Guy put his arms round her, imagining he could conciliate her with
physical love, but her response was cool. The fact he could think of their
separation, even for her own good, was not so easily forgotten.

In spite of her
resolution, the thought of England had come into her mind and she recalled the
vision of England that had overwhelmed her once in a Cairo street. It returned
in her memory, a scene of ploughed fields and elm trees with a wind smelling of
the earth; she thought if she were there, she would be well again. Here she was
not only unwell, but at risk from all the diseases known to mankind. She
remembered how she had danced at the Turf Club with an officer who was feverish
and complained of a headache, and who went away to be sick.

Next day they
heard he had gone down with smallpox and
everyone who had
been at the party, had to be revaccinated and kept under surveillance for a fortnight.

She whispered to
herself, That was a narrow escape.' Guy, half-asleep asked, 'What was? What are
you thinking about?'

'I'm thinking
about England,' she said.

Trench was
replaced by a man called Fielding. Fielding, a little older than Simon, had a
plain, pleasant face and hair bleached like Trench's hair. He and Simon, being
concomitants, should have been friends but Simon was becoming wary of
friendship. His instinct was to avoid any relationship that could again inflict
on him the desolation of loss. The only person whose company he sought was
Ridley. Ridley had known Arnold and Trench and he let Simon talk about them so,
for short periods, memory could overcome their nonexistence.

Not much was
happening at that time. The Column went on sorties carrying out small shelling
raids, but there was no more close action. Even the main positions were quiet
so it seemed the fight itself had sunk beneath the load of August heat.

Ridley still
brought gossip and news, but there was not much of it In the middle of the
month, when Auchinleck lost his command, the officers asked each other why this
had happened. Ridley, who had once seen the deposed general standing, very tall
up through a hole in a station-wagon, spoke of him regretfully as though, like
Arnold and Trench, he had gone down among the dead. 'He was a big chap, big in
every way, they say. He slept on the ground, just like the rest of us. No side
about him, they say. A real soldier.'

'What about the
new chap?'

'Don't know.
Could be a good bloke but we all felt the Auk was one of us.'

Later in the
month, the Column, on patrol in a lonely region
near the Depression, came upon three skeletons, two together and a
third lying some distance from them. The sand here was a very dark red and the
skeletons, white and clean, were conspicuous on the red ground. The nomad
Arabs had stripped them of everything: not only clothing but identity discs,
papers, even letters and photographs, for these things could be sold to German
agents to authenticate the disguises of undercover men.

The staff car
stopped and Hardy and Martin got out to look them over. Simon, following from
curiosity, was startled when Martin said that the skeletons were of men
recently dead. Had they lain there long the sand would have blown over them.
They might have been the crew of a Boston that had come down in an unfrequented
part of the desert and managed, in spite of injuries, to crawl this far before
giving up. He touched the bones with his toe and said: The kites have picked
them clean.'

Simon, shocked
that flesh could be so quickly dispersed, remembered his friends, dead and
buried, and stood in thought until Hardy called to him, 'Get a move on,
Boulderstone.'

Simon turned to
him with an expression of suffering that prompted Hardy to put a hand on the
young man's shoulder and say with humorous sympathy, 'You won't bring them to
life by staring at them.'

That evening
there was no mention of the Middle East in the radio news. 'A dead calm, eh?'
Martin said. 'Wonder how long it'll last?' When he went to fetch his whisky
bottle, Hardy spoke to Simon. 'I remember you mentioning your brother,
Boulderstone. I couldn't let you take leave at that time but I understood how
you felt. Have you any idea where he is?'

'Yes, sir. Ridley
says there's a Boulderstone with the New Zealanders, near the Ridge.'

'Right. I'll give
you a few days and you can take the staff car and look him up.'

When Simon began
to express his gratitude. Hardy enlarged his concession. 'I don't see why you
shouldn't take a week as there's nothing doing. But check up on his position.
You could waste a lot of time scouting round the different camps.'

As soon as he
could get away, Simon went to tell Ridley
of his good
fortune but Ridley merely grumbled, 'What's he think he's doing, giving blokes
leave at this time?'

'Why? Is anything
about to happen?'

'Chaps down the
line think so. Then there's old Rommel. He's not moving forward but he's not
exactly dropping back, neither. If his reinforcements arrive, he'd be through
us like a dose of salts.'

'That's not
likely to happen in one week.'

'How do you know?
I got a feeling it could happen any day. If it hots up, it'll hot up sudden
like.'

Simon begged
Ridley to keep his premonitions to himself, saying, This may be my only chance
to see my brother,' and Ridley relented enough to admit that his 'feeling'
could be 'just a twitch'. It occurred to Simon that Ridley's annoyance might
come from envy of Simon's luck, or perhaps simply an unwillingness to have
Simon out of his sight. Whatever it was, he began to take an interest in the
vacation, saying, 'If you got a week, you could nip back to Alex. Or Cairo,
even. Which'd you rather - Cairo or Alex?'

Simon did not
know. He was enticed by the thought of the seaside town, but he knew people in
Cairo. Had he been granted leave during his first days in the desert, he would
have wanted only one thing; to return to Garden City. Now, though he sometimes
thought of Edwina, she had lost substance in his mind and her beauty was like
the beauty of a statue. It related to a desire he had ceased to feel.

Here in the
desert, either from lack of stimulus or some quality in the air, the men were
not much troubled by sex. The need to survive was their chief preoccupation -
and they did survive. In spite of the heat of the day, the cold of night, the
flies, the mosquitoes, the sand-flies, the stench of death that came on the
wind, the sand blowing into the body's interstices and gritting in everything
one ate, the human animal not only survived but flourished. Simon felt well and
vigorous and he thought of women, if he thought of them at all, with a benign
indifference. He belonged now to a world of men; a contained, self-sufficient
world where life was organized from dawn till sunset. It had so complete a hold
on him, he could see only one flaw in it: his friends died young.

The staff car,
assigned to him for twenty-four hours, would take him first to the Ridge where
he hoped to track down Hugo, then to the coast road where he could stop a
military vehicle and get a lift into the Delta. His new driver and batman, a
young red-haired, freckled squaddie called Hugman, had little contact with
Simon. He did not expect Simon to speak to him and Simon did not wish to speak.
He was wary of Hugman, as he was of Fielding, and sat in the back seat of the
car, holding himself aloof. Hugman very likely thought him one of the 'spit and
polish' officers that he despised, but Hugman could think what he liked. Simon
was risking no more emotional attachments, no more emotional upsets. To excuse
his silence, he sprawled in the corner of the car, propping his head against
the side and keeping his eyes shut. They had started out early. Simon, anxious
to be off before Hardy could change his mind, almost ran from Ridley who came
towards him with a look of doom. There, what did I say, sir? The gen is that
the jerries are preparing a push on Alam Haifa.'

'Christ!' Simon
threw himself into the car and ordered Hugman to move with all speed. They
were out of sight of the Column before he remembered he had not reported his departure
to Hardy.

As the sun rose,
he did not need to simulate sleep but sank into a half-doze which brought him
images of the civilized world he was soon to re-enter. He no longer could, nor
did he need to, exclude women from his dreams. Now that he was due for a week
of normal life, he could afford to indulge his senses a little. He remembered
not only Edwina but the dark-haired girl who raced him up the pyramid, and even
poor forgotten Anne returned to him become, with his change of circumstances,
more real than Arnold. His attention reverted to Edwina. She was the supreme
beauty although he had been too dazzled to know whether she was beautiful or
not. Another face edged into his mind, a woman older than the others, with a
dismayed expression that puzzled him. He could not immediately recall the dead
boy in the Fayoum house, but when he did he dismissed both woman and boy as
intruders on his reverie. Wasn't it enough that he had lost his friends?

When he opened
his eyes, the Ridge was in sight. They were driving through a rear maintenance
and supply area where petrol dumps, food dumps, canteen trucks, concentrations
of jeeps and ambulances, a medical unit and a repair depot were all planted in
sand and filmed with sand that covered the green and fawn camouflage patches.
It was a skeleton town with netted wire instead of house-walls and sand tracks
instead of streets. The noon sun glared overhead and men, given an hour's
respite, lay with faces hidden, bivouacked in any shade they could find.
Unwilling to disturb them, Simon told Hugman to drive until he found the Camp
Commandant's truck. Both men were drenched with sweat and when Simon left the
car, the wind plastered the wet stuff of his shirt and shorts to his limbs. It
was a hot wind yet he shivered in the heat.

The Commandant, fetched
from his mid-day meal in the officers' mess, had no welcome for Simon. 'How the
hell did you get leave at a time like this?'

Simon, more wily
than he used to be, said, 'Only a few days, sir.'

'A few days!' The
Commandant blew out his cheeks in comment on Hardy's folly, but the folly was
no business of his. He advised Simon to find the New Zealand division HQ.
'About a mile down the road. Can't miss it Youll see the white fern leaf on a
board.'

The car, driven
out of the maintenance area into open desert, rocked in the rutted track,
throwing up sand clouds that forced the two men to close the windows and stifle
in enclosed heat.

The board
appeared, the fern leaf scarcely visible beneath its coating of sand, and
beyond, on either side of the track, guns and trucks, dug into pits, were
protected by sand-bags and camouflage nets. Simon realized they were very near
the front line.

At the Operations
truck, a New Zealand major, a tall, thin, grave-faced man, listened with
lowered head as Simon explained that he was looking for a Captain
Boulderstone. The major, jerking his head up, smiled on him. 'You think he's
your brother, do you? Well, son, I think maybe he is. You're as like as two
peas. But I don't know where he's got to - someone will have to look around for
him. If you have a snack in the mess, we'll let you know as soon as we find
him. OK?'

'OK, and thank
you, sir.'

The mess was a
fifteen hundred-weight truck from which an awning stretched to cover a few
fold-up tables and chairs. Simon seated himself in shade that had the colour
and smell of stewed tea. The truck itself served as a cook-house and Simon said
to the man inside, 'Lot of flies about here.'

'Yes, they been a
right plague this month. Our CO said something got to be done about them, but
he didn't say what I sprays flit around and the damn things laugh at it'

The flies were
lethargic with the heat Simon, having eaten his bully-beef sandwich and drunk
his tea, had nothing better to do than watch them sinking down on to the
plastic table-tops. He remembered what Harriet Pringle had said about the
plagues coming to Egypt and staying there. The flies had been the third plague,
'a grievous swarm', and here they still were, crawling before him so slowly
they seemed to be pulling themselves through treacle. The first excitement of
arrival had left him and he could not understand why Hugo was so long in
coming. Boredom and irritation came over him and seeing a fly swat on the truck
counter, he borrowed it in order to attack the flies.

A dozen or so crawled
on his table and no matter how many he killed, the numbers never grew less.
When the swat hit the table, the surviving flies would lift themselves slowly
and drift a little before sinking down again. He pushed the dead flies off the
table and they dropped to the tarpaulin which covered the ground. When he
looked down to count his bag of flies, he found they had all disappeared. He
killed one more and watched to see what became of it It had scarcely touched
the floor when a procession of ants veered purposefully to it, surrounded it
and, manoeuvring the large body between them, bore it away.

Simon laughed out
loud. The ants did not pause to ask where the manna came from, they simply took
it. The sky rained food and Simon, godlike, could send down an endless supply
of it. He looked forward to telling Hugo about the flies and ants. He killed
till teatime and the flies were as numerous as ever,
then, all in a moment, the killing disgusted him. He had tea and,
still waiting, he thought of the German youth he had killed on the hill. Away
from the heat of battle, that killing, too, disgusted him, and he would have
sworn, had the situation permitted, never to kill again.

The mess filled
with officers but none of them was Hugo. About five o'clock a corporal came to
tell him that Captain Boulderstone had gone out with a patrol to bring in
wounded. 'Has there been a scrap, then?'

The corporal did
not look directly at Simon as he said, 'There was a bit of a scrap at the
Mierir Depression two days ago. Last night we heard shelling. Could be, sir,
the patrol's holed up there.'

'You mean, he's
been gone some time?' The man gave Simon a quick, uneasy glance before letting
him know that the patrol had left camp the previous morning. Hugo had, in fact,
been away so long, his batman had gone out in the evening to look for him.