‘Other side, fool. Jump in.’
Off she drove, darting between camels and trams and cabs and tanks, down the Rue Sultan, spinning left at the Nebi Daniel, stopping abruptly in the centre of the crossing and saying: ‘Just look. The Soma. In the days of Cleopatra the streets ran from the Gate of the Moon to the Gate of the Sun and from the lake harbour to the sea harbour with colonnades all the way. White marble and green silk awnings. Perhaps you knew.’
‘I didn’t.’
She stood up in the car and pointed. ‘Alexander’s tomb,’ she said. ‘Somewhere under that monstrosity.’
Motor-horns competed with police whistles and loud human voices in half a dozen tongues. A uniformed Egyptian armed with a little trumpet performed a ritual dance of rage before her. A gallant RASC driver drew up beside her.
‘Stalled has she, lady?’
Two guides attempted to enter the car beside them.
‘I show you mosky. I show you all moskies.’
‘Forster says the marble was so bright that you could thread a needle at midnight. Why are they making such a fuss? There is all the time in the world. No one here ever lunches before two.’
Mrs Stitch, Guy reflected, did not seem to require much conversation from him. He sat silent, quite soaked up by her.
‘I’d never set foot in Egypt until now. It’s been a great disappointment. I can’t get to like the people,’ she said sadly, drenching the rabble in her great eyes. ‘Except the King – and it’s not policy to like him much. Well, we must get on. I’ve got to find some shoes.’
She sat down, sounded her horn, and thrust the little car relentlessly forward.
Soon she turned off into a side street marked OUT OF BOUNDS TO ALL RANKS OF H.M. FORCES.
‘Two Australians were picked up dead here the other morning,’ Guy explained.
Mrs Stitch had many interests but only one interest at a time. That morning it was Alexandrian history.
‘Hypatia,’ she said, turning into an alley. ‘I’ll tell you an odd thing about Hypatia. I was brought up to believe she was murdered with oyster shells, weren’t you? Forster says tiles.’
‘Are you sure we can get down this street?’
‘Not sure. I’ve never been here before. Someone told me about a little man.’
The way narrowed until both mudguards grated against the walls.
‘We’ll have to walk the last bit,’ said Mrs Stitch, climbing over the windscreen and sliding down the hot bonnet.
Contrary to Guy’s expectation they found the shop. The ‘little man’ was enormous, bulging over a small stool at his doorway, smoking a hubble-bubble. He rose affably and Mrs Stitch immediately sat in the place he vacated.
‘Hot sit-upon,’ she remarked.
Shoes of various shapes and colours hung on strings all about them. When Mrs Stitch did not see what she wanted, she took a pad and pencil from her basket and drew, while the shoemaker teamed and breathed down her neck. He bowed and nodded and produced a pair of crimson slippers which were both fine and funny, with high curling toes.
‘Bang right,’ said Mrs Stitch. ‘Got it in one.’
She removed her white leather shoes and put them in her basket, her toe nails were pale pink and brilliantly polished. She donned the slippers, paid and made off. Guy followed at her side. After three steps she stopped and leaned on him, light and balmy, while she again changed shoes.
‘Not for street wear,’ she said.
When they reached the car they found it covered with children who greeted them by sounding the horn.
‘Can you drive?’ asked Mrs Stitch.
‘Not awfully well.’
‘Can you back out from here?’
Guy gazed over the little car down the dusty populous ravine.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Neither can I. We’ll have to send someone to collect it. Algie doesn’t like my driving myself anyhow. What’s the time?’
‘Quarter to two.’
‘Damn. We’ll have to take a taxi. A tram might have been fun. Something for another day.’
The villa provided for the Stitches lay beyond Ramleh, beyond Sidi Bishr, among stone-pine and bougainvillaea. The white-robed, red-sashed Berber servants alone were African. All else smacked of the Alpes Maritimes. The party assembled on the veranda was small but heterogeneous. Algernon Stitch lurked in the background; in front were two little local millionairesses, sisters, who darted towards Mrs Stitch a-tiptoe with adulation.
‘Ah, chère madame, ce que vous avez l’air star, aujourd’hui.’
‘Lady Steetch, Lady Steetch, your hat. Je crois bien que vous n’avez pas trouvé cela en Egypte.’
‘Chère madame, quel drôle depanier. I find it original.’
‘Lady Steetch, your shoes.’
‘Five piastres in the bazaar,’ said Mrs Stitch (she had changed again in the taxi), leading Guy on.
‘Ça, madame, c’est génial.’
‘Algie, you remember the underground cow?’
Algernon Stitch looked at Guy with blank benevolence. His wife’s introductions were more often allusive than definitive, ‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘Very glad to see you again. You know the Commander-in-Chief, I expect.’
The rich sisters looked at one another, on the spot yet all at sea. Who was this officer of such undistinguished rank? Son amant, sans doute. How had their hostess described him? La vache souterraiue? Ou la vache au Métro? This, then, was the new chic euphemism. They would remember and employ it with effect else-where. ‘… My dear, I believe her chauffeur is her underground cow…’ It had the tang of the great world.
Besides the Commander-in-Chief there were in the party a young Maharaja in the uniform of the Red Cross, a roving English cabinet minister, and an urbane pasha. Mrs Stitch, never the slave of etiquette, put Guy on her right at table, but thereafter talked beyond him at large. She started a topic.
‘Mahmoud Pasha, explain Cavafy to us.’
Mahmoud Pasha, a sad exile from Monte Carlo and Biarritz, replied with complete composure:
‘Such questions I leave to His Excellency.’
‘Who is Cavafy? What is he?’ passed from dark eye to dark eye of the sisters as they sat on either side of their host, but they held their little scarlet tongues.
The roving minister, it appeared, had read the complete works in the Greek. He expounded. The lady on Guy’s right said:
‘Do they perhaps speak of Constantine Cavafis?’ pronouncing the name quite differently from Mrs Stitch. ‘We are not greatly admiring him nowadays in Alexandria. He is of the past, you understand.’
The Commander-in-Chief was despondent as he had good reason to be. Everything was out of his control and everything was going wrong. He ate in silence. At length he said:
‘I’ll tell you the best poem ever written in Alexandria.’
‘Recitation,’ said Mrs Stitch.
‘“They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead…”’
‘I find it so sympathetic,’ said the Greek lady. ‘How all your men of affairs are poetic. And they are not socialist, I believe?’
‘Hush,’ said Mrs Stitch.
‘“… For death he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.”’
‘Very prettily spoken,’ said Mrs Stitch.
‘I can do it in Greek,’ said the cabinet minister.
‘To be Greek, at this moment,’ said the lady next to Guy, ‘is to live in mourning. My country is being murdered. I come here because I love our hostess. I do not love parties now. My heart is with my people in my own country. My son is there, my two brothers, my nephew. My husband is too old. He has given up cards. I have given up cigarettes. It is not much. It is all we can do. It is – would you say emblematic?’
‘Symbolic?’
‘It is symbolic. It does not help my country. It helps us a little here.’ She laid her jewelled hand upon her heart.
The Commander-in-Chief listened in silence. His heart, too, was in the passes of Thessal
y.
The Maharaja spoke of racing. He had two horses running next week at Cairo.
Presently they all left the table. The Commander-in-Chief moved across the veranda to Guy.
‘Second Halberdiers?’
‘Not now, sir. Hookforce.’
‘Oh, yes. Bad business about your Brigadier. I’m afraid you fellows have got rather left out of things. Shipping is the trouble. Always is. Well, I’m supposed to be on my way to Cairo. Where are you going?’
‘Sidi Bishr.’
‘Right on my way. Want a lift?’
The ADC was put in front with the driver. Guy sat in the back with the Commander-in-Chief. They very quickly reached the gates of the camp. Guy made to get out.
‘I’ll take you in,’ said the Commander-in-Chief.
The Catalan refugees were duty-troop that day. They crowded round the Commander-in-Chief’s great car with furious, unshaven faces. They poked tommy-guns through the open windows. Then, satisfied that these were temporary allies, they fell back, opened the gates and raised their clenched fists in salutation.
The Brigade Major was smoking in a deck-chair at the flap of his tent when he recognized the flag on the passing car. He leaped to his looking-glass, buckled himself up, pulled himself together crowned himself with a sun helmet, armed himself with a cane and broke into a double as he approached the sandy space where Guy had that morning drilled his section. The big car was driving away, Guy strolled towards him holding his guide-book.
‘Oh, it’s you back at last, Crouchback. Thought for a moment that was the C-in-C’s car?’
‘Yes. It was.’
‘What was it doing here?’
‘Gave me a lift.’
‘The driver had no business to fly the C-in-C’s flag without the C-in-C being inside. You should know that.’
‘He was inside.’
Hound looked hard at Guy.
‘You aren’t by any chance trying to pull my leg, are you, Crouchback?’
‘I should never dare. The C-in-C asked me to apologize to the Colonel. He would have liked to stop but he had to get on to Cairo.’
‘Who’s mounting guard today?’
‘The Spaniards.’
‘Oh, God. Did they turn out properly?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, God.’
Hound stood suspended, anguished by conflicting pride and curiosity. Curiosity won.
‘What did he say?’
‘He recited poetry.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘We spoke of the problems of shipping,’ said Guy. ‘They plague him.’ The Brigade Major turned away. ‘By the way,’ Guy added, ‘I think I detected an enemy agent in church today.’
‘Most amusing,’ said Hound over his shoulder.
Holy Saturday in Matchet; Mr Crouchback broke his Lenten fast. He had given up, as he always did, wine and tobacco. During the preceding weeks two parcels had come from his wine merchant, badly pilfered on the railway, but still with a few bottles intact. At luncheon Mr Crouchback drank a pint of burgundy. It was what his merchant cared to send him, not what he would have ordered, but he took it gratefully. After luncheon he filled his pipe. Now that he had no sitting-room, he was obliged to smoke downstairs. That afternoon seemed warm enough for sitting out. In a sheltered seat above the beaches, he lit the first pipe of Easter, thinking of that morning’s new fire.
2
NO. 6 Transit Camp, London District, was a camp in name only. It had been a large, unfashionable, entirely respectable hotel. The air was one of easy well-being. No bomb had yet broken a window-pane. Here Movement Control sent lost detachments. Here occasionally was brought a chaplain under close arrest. In this green pasture Trimmer and his section for a time lay down. Here Kerstie Kilbannock elected to do her war-work.
Kerstie was a good wife to Ian, personable, faithful, even-tempered and economical. All the pretty objects in their house had been bargains. Her clothes were cleverly contrived. She was sometimes suspected of fabricating the luncheon vin rosé by mixing the red and white wines left over from dinner; no more damaging charge was ever brought against her. There were nuances in her way with men which suggested she had once worked with them and competed on equal terms. Point by point she was the antithesis of her friend Virginia Troy.
On his going into uniform Ian’s income fell by £1,500. Kerstie did not complain. She packed her sons off to their grandmother in Ayrshire and took two friends named Brenda and Zita into her house as paying guests. She took them also, unpaid, into her canteen at No. 6 Transit Camp, London District. Kerstie was paid, not much but enough. The remuneration was negative; wearing overalls, eating free, working all day, weary at night, she spent nothing. When Virginia Troy, casually met during an air-raid at the Dorchester Hotel, confided that she was hard up and homeless – though still trailing clouds of former wealth and male subservience – Kerstie took her into Eaton Terrace – ‘Darling, don’t breathe to Brenda and Zita that you aren’t paying’, and into her canteen – ‘Not a word, darling, that you’re being paid.’
Working as waitresses these ladies, so well brought up, giggled and gossiped about their customers like real waitresses. Before she began work Virginia was initiated into some of their many jokes. Chief of these, by reason of his long stay, was the officer they called ‘Scottie’. Scottie’s diverse forms of utter awfulness filled them with delight.
‘Wait till you see him, darling. Just wait.’
Virginia waited a week. All the ladies preferred the ‘other ranks’ canteen by reason of the superior manners which prevailed there. It was Easter Monday, after Virginia had been there a week, that she took her turn beside Kerstie at the officers’ bar.
‘Here comes our Scottie,’ said Kerstie and, nosy and knowing, Trimmer sauntered across the room towards them. He was aware that his approach always created tension and barely suppressed risibility and took this as a tribute to his charm.
‘Good evening, beautiful,’ he said in his fine, free manner.’ How about a packet of Players from under the counter?’ and then, seeing Virginia, he fell suddenly silent, out of it, not up to it, on this evening of all evenings.
Fine and free, nosy and knowing, Trimmer had seemed, but it was all a brave show, for that afternoon the tortoise of total war had at last overtaken him. A telephone message bade him report next day at HOO HQ at a certain time, to a certain room. It boded only ill. He had come to the bar for stimulus, for a spot of pleasantry with ‘les girls’ and here, at his grand climacteric, in this most improbable of places, stood a portent, something beyond daily calculation. For in his empty days he had given much thought to his escapade with Virginia in Glasgow. So far as such a conception was feasible to Trimmer, she was a hallowed memory. He wished now Virginia were alone. He wished he were wearing his kilt. This was not the lovers’ meeting he had sometimes adumbrated at his journey’s end.
On this moment of silence and uncertainty Virginia struck swiftly with a long, cool and cautionary glance.
‘Good evening, Trimmer,’ she said.
‘You two know each other?’ asked Kerstie.
‘Oh, yes. Well. Since before the war,’ said Virginia.
‘How very odd.’
‘Not really, is it, Trimmer?’
Virginia, as near as is humanly possible, was incapable of shame, but she had a firm residual sense of the appropriate. Alone, far away, curtained in fog – certain things had been natural in Glasgow in November which had no existence in London, in spring, amongst Kerstie and Brenda and Zita.
Trimmer recovered his self-possession and sharply followed the line.
‘I used to do Mrs Troy’s hair,’ he said, ‘on the Aquitania.’
‘Really? I crossed in her once. I don’t remember you.’
‘I was rather particular in those days what customers I took.’
‘That puts you in your place, Kerstie,’ said Virginia. ‘He was always an angel to me. He used to call himself Gustave then. His real name’s Trimmer.?
??
‘I think that’s rather sweet. Here are your cigarettes, Trimmer.’
‘Ta. Have one?’
‘Not on duty.’
‘Well, I’ll be seeing you.’
Without another glance he sauntered off, disconcerted, perplexed but carrying himself with an air. He wished he had been wearing his kilt.
‘You know,’ said Kerstie, ‘I think that rather spoils our joke. I mean there’s nothing very funny about his being what he is when one knows what he is – is there? – if you see what I mean.’
‘I see what you mean,’ said Virginia.
‘In fact, it’s all rather sweet of him.’
‘Yes.’
‘I must tell Brenda and Zita. He won’t mind, will he? I mean he won’t disappear from our lives now we know his secret?’
‘Not Trimmer,’ said Virginia.
Next morning at 1000 hours General Whale looked sadly at Trimmer and asked:
‘McTavish, what is your state of readiness?’
‘How d’you mean, sir?’
‘Is your section all present and prepared to move immediately?’
‘Yes, sir, I suppose so.’
‘Suppose so?’ said GSO II (Planning). ‘When did you last inspect them?’
‘Well, we haven’t exactly had any actual inspection.’
‘All right, Charles,’ interposed General Whale, ‘I don’t think we need go into that. McTavish, I’ve some good news for you. Keep it under your hat. I’m sending you on a little operation.’
‘Now, sir? Today?’
‘Just as soon as it takes the navy to lay on a submarine. They won’t keep you hanging about long, I hope. Move to Portsmouth tonight. Make out your own list of demolition stores and check it with Ordnance there. Tell your men it’s routine training. All right?’
‘Yes, sir. I suppose so, sir.’
‘Good. Well, go with Major Albright to the planning-room and he’ll put you in the picture. Kilbannock will be with you, but purely as an observer, you understand. You are in command of the operation. Right?’
‘Yes, I think so, sir, thank you.’
‘Well, in case I don’t see you again, good luck.’