Fortunes of War

by Olivia Manning

  Again calamity presented itself as a solution. I would deliver Guy from Alexandria and from his wretched lodgings. If she had to come here, they would live not in one of these expensive Corniche flats but in the same sleazy hinterland where he was living at the moment. Not much caring where he lived, he had taken a room in a Levantine pension of the poorest kind, a place so dark and neglected, everything seemed coated with grime. One day, watching him as he talked to the landlord, she had seen him rub his hand on the knob of a bannister then pass the same hand over his forehead. She had berated him, telling him he might pick up leprosy, smallpox, plague or any of the killer diseases of Egypt. Guy, who believed all disease was a sickness of the psyche, said, ‘Don’t be silly. You only catch what you fear to catch,’ and, fearing nothing, he saw himself immune.

  When she left the bus at the end of the Corniche, she had still to walk half a mile to where the college stood isolated in a scrubby area of near desert that was now being built up. The building had once been a quarantine station for seamen. Staring out to sea, grim faced, lacking any hint of ornament, it might have been a penitentiary. And for Guy it was, in a way, a penitentiary. He had been exiled here for his song, ‘Gracey of Gezira’ — or so Harriet believed. He had brought his exile upon himself.

  No one, not even a boab, was in the hall. She walked unchecked down to the half-glazed door of the lecture hall and, looking in, saw Guy at a desk, bent over a book. The shutters had been closed against the sun and had not been opened when mist covered the sky. The amber colour of the electric light made his face sallow and he looked very drawn. He had lost weight and his cheeks, that had been smooth with youth when they married, only two years before, now showed a line from nostrils to chin. Time and the Egyptian climate had told on them both.

  From the silence, she guessed they were alone in the building and she was reminded of another time of danger when Guy, who had been the beloved mentor, waited in vain for his students. During their last days in Bucharest, with the Iron Guard on the march, the students were wise to stay away.

  As she opened the door, he turned his head and at once he was young again. He jumped to his feet, animated by surprise and pleasure. ‘Well, this is the nicest thing that’s happened to me for a long time.’

  ‘I’ve come to take you back to Cairo.’

  He laughed, treating her statement as a joke. She looked at the book on his desk. It was one she had given him for his last birthday and she said, ‘Good heavens, you’re not trying to lecture them on Finnegans Wake?’

  ‘Not all of them, but I have two exceptionally brilliant chaps who are interested in English for its own sake. Pretty rare in this place. I promised them a seminar on Joyce. I’m certain that Joyce got a lot of his funnier pieces from students at the Berlitz School. I get the same sort of things here. Look,’ he pulled some students’ papers out of his desk and read, “‘D. H. Lawrence was theoretically wrong” — Joyce would have loved that. And here,

  Thou wast not meant for death immoral bird . . .

  ‘Darling, you’ve got to come to Cairo, at least for a few days.’

  ‘You know that’s impossible. I have my summer school and . . .’

  ‘Which you’re keeping open for only two students?’

  ‘Well, I had ten to begin with. They thought if they humoured me by joining the class, I’d repay them by marking up their exam papers. When they found it didn’t work, they faded away. But there are two left and they’re exceptional.’

  ‘Well, exceptional or not, the fact is you’re keeping this place open for a couple of students? Here you are, at a time like this, waiting to discuss Finnegans Wake?’

  ‘Why not? What do you expect me to do?’

  ‘I expect you to have some sense. Don’t you realize the Germans are less than fifty miles from Alex?’

  ‘Oh, darling,’ he took her hands and squeezed them. ‘Little monkey’s paws! You aren’t frightened, are you? You weren’t frightened in Greece when we had nothing in front of us but the sea. Here we have the whole of Africa.’

  ‘I’m frightened for you. A lot of good having the whole of Africa if you’re cut off here. If you’re waiting for orders, you’ll wait for ever. There’s no one to give orders. Gracey’s bolted, as usual. So, for that matter, have Toby Lush, Dubedat and several thousand others. I saw Pinkrose going off on the special train this morning. The least you can do is come to Cairo. If you hang on here, you’ll end up in Dachau. In Cairo, we stand a fair chance of getting away.’

  ‘Don’t worry, darling. We’ve always got away before.’

  ‘That’s the trouble. You’re overconfident. We’ve got away twice — but it could be third time unlucky. They move so fast, you could be caught before you knew they had reached Alex.’

  ‘I can’t argue now, darling.’ Guy put an arm round her shoulder and led her to the door. ‘The students are due any minute. You get back to Alex. Get yourself something to eat and I’ll see you later. I’m going to the Cecil to meet some men.’

  She asked suspiciously, ‘What men? What time?’

  ‘Six o’clock. You’ll find Castlebar there. And I’m having supper with a chap you don’t know. Called Aidan Pratt. If you get there before I do, introduce yourself. Be nice to the poor fellow. He’s very shy.’

  ‘All right. Six o’clock. And be prepared to come back with me.’

  Guy laughed and shut the door on her.

  The sun was breaking through the mist and the promenade was in sunlight when she reached the bus stop. Guy had said, ‘I can’t argue now,’ implying, she hoped, that he would argue later, but later there would be Castlebar and this man she did not know and Guy, always high-spirited in company, would be too volatile to discuss unwelcome reality. He had an impulse to take risks, and then there were the two students, the ambitious swots who roused his old obstinate loyalty and could detain him there until it was too late.

  ‘Bloody students!’ She saw them as voracious creatures who would devour him if they could. And, in time, he would be devoured. She felt rage that he should be wasting his learning on this wretched place.

  As there was no bus in sight, she decided to walk the length of the Corniche and so pass the dead centre of the day. Walking, that in Cairo meant bathing in sweat, was pleasant enough here where the sea wind tempered the heat, but the walk was monotonous. It was a dull shore with rocks that were rotting like cheese. At one point where the sea washed under the cheesey, crumbling rock shelf, holes had been cut so the waves, beating through them, made a booming sound. Or so it was said. Harriet had never heard it. The holes were very ancient and were no longer a diversion. Today the water splashed through them with a half-hearted plip-plop that she thought a fitting comment on the wartime world. The sun was dropping and the light deepening. This was the evening when the conquerors of the Afrika Korps were to force their pent-up ardour on the ladies of Alexandria.

  The conquerors had not yet arrived but there was a British soldier leaning against the sea wall. He looked like a man with all the time in the world but his baggage showed he was waiting for transport.

  She stopped to lean beside him, staring with him at the flat, almost motionless sea where no ships sailed, and said, ‘You off to the desert?’

  He muttered, ‘Ya.’ He was older than the soldier she had met in Cairo and he did not marvel at meeting a young English-woman.

  ‘I suppose you’ve no idea what’s happening out there?’

  ‘Nope. Heard nothing for days.’

  ‘Do you think Rommel will get here?’

  ‘He’ll get here if he can, won’t he? If not, not. There’s no knowing, is there?’ He spoke dully, sodden with boredom, so, knowing she would get no response from him she walked on. The barrage balloons were beginning to rise over the town. By the time she reached the harbour, there were a dozen or more kidney shapes hanging in mid-sky. She had an hour to get through before going to the hotel so walked on till she was opposite the Pharos, then she sat on the wall, her legs hanging above
the sand, and watched the pleatings of ruby cloud that were forming round the horizon. The Pharos, newly painted, reflected the sky. The scene absorbed her so it was some minutes before she realized she was an object of prurient excitement among the boys on the shore below. They were dodging about in their ragged galabiahs, the eldest not more than ten or eleven, bending down, sniggering, as they tried to see up her skirt. She shouted ‘Yallah’ but they would not be driven off. She lifted her legs over the wall and sat the other way but the boys ran up the steps to stare at her from the road. At last, sick of their antics, she jumped down and went to the Cecil.

  The atmosphere inside the hotel was forlorn. The cosmopolitan patrons had gone with the rest and even the bar, the venue of British naval officers, was empty except for three army captains who stood together, constrained and sober, and another who sat by himself. This last was near the door, watching for someone, and she guessed from his vulnerable air, his expectation and his disappointment when she came in, that he was waiting for Guy. He must be the shy Aidan Pratt. From her experience of Guy’s acquaintances, she guessed that this man had asked Guy to dinner not simply for the pleasure of his company. He had a need of his own. He wanted to confide in Guy, or ask his advice, or get something from him. Guy had probably promised him the evening and he, supposing he would have Guy’s company to himself, had not bargained for her, or for Castlebar. Guy was, as usual, double-booked, and not only from forgetfulness. His engagements crowded upon each other because he brought down on himself more dependence than any normal person could support.

  Knowing the man would not welcome her company, she wandered back to the foyer and sat there as the lights came on inside and the twilight deepened outside. Guy did not appear and, feeling solitary and exposed, she returned to the bar and approached Aidan Pratt. When she spoke, his surprise was almost an affront.

  ‘Guy Pringle suggested I join you here.’

  He stared with animosity until she explained that she was Guy’s wife, then he stumbled to his feet, attempting to recoup his discourtesy with a smile. He was a heavy, handsome young man with limp and oily black hair. He was still in his early twenties, but his eyes were contained in hollows of brownish skin that aged him. They were large eyes, very dark, and his smile did not dispel their desolation. His aura of depression repelled her. She, too, had hoped to have Guy to herself. He was, she realized, another victim of Guy’s reassuring warmth. Each one imagined himself the sole recipient Guy would remake the world for him, and for him alone. They clung to him and, in the end, he evaded them or asked her to protect him from them. ‘You answer the telephone, darling . . .’ Deeply buried, there was in him an instinct for preservation and the instinct might save him in the end.

  Aidan Pratt asked her what she would drink. From the bar, he looked intently back at her, perhaps wondering if he could confide in her, treat her as a surrogate for Guy, and she realized she had seen him before. When he brought back her drink, she asked if they had met somewhere. He shook his head but his smile took on vitality as though her question had pleased him.

  When he sat opposite her, she felt his whole personality on edge. His face was moist, not from heat, because the bar was air-conditioned, but from nervousness. His uniform of fine gaberdine was expensively tailored but he fidgeted inside it as though troubled by its fit. She asked where he was stationed. He was on leave from Damascus.

  ‘Damascus? Then how did you come to know Guy?’

  ‘Doesn’t everyone know Guy?’ he gave a laugh. ‘Last time I was here someone told me a story: two men were wrecked on a desert island. Neither knew the other but they both knew Guy Pringle.’

  ‘Yes, I heard that story in Cairo.’

  ‘I met him here, in this bar, on my last leave. Next day I went out to the college and we walked to Ramleh, talking all the way there and back. A memorable day. We arranged to meet here again the following evening. I waited three hours before I discovered he wasn’t even in Alex. He’d gone to Cairo for the weekend.’ As Harriet showed no surprise, he asked, ‘Does that sort of thing often happen?’

  ‘You remember the bread-and-butter fly that lived on weak tea and cream? If it couldn’t find any, it died. Alice said, “But that must happen very often,” and the gnat said, “It always happens.’”

  ‘Always? He makes a habit of letting people down?’

  ‘He doesn’t mean to let them down. He takes on too much. People persuade him to do what he hasn’t time to do so, inevitably, someone is let down.’

  Aidan’s mouth tightened and he said with slight hauteur, ‘As you are here, I suppose we can depend on him tonight?’

  ‘Yes, he’ll turn up sooner or later. I want to take him back to Cairo.’ She thought it an odd time for anyone to come here on leave and said, ‘Things are pretty bad, you know.’

  ‘You mean, worse than usual? Isn’t it the same old romp as last time? They reach Sollum and then they’re driven back?’

  ‘They’re much nearer than that. They said they’d reach Alex tonight.’

  ‘Obviously you didn’t believe them or you wouldn’t be in Alex yourself. Still, you’re right. He oughtn’t to stay out where he is. A lot could happen before he got wind of it.’

  ‘I’m glad you agree with me. How long are you staying here?’

  ‘Not long. I could only get forty-eight hours so I return tomorrow.’

  ‘I envy you. I wish we were safely in Damascus.’

  ‘Oh, Damascus isn’t all that safe. We have our troubles. The Free French are in control but a good many Syrians don’t want them. We often hear pistol shots. People get killed,’ he paused and dropped his voice. ‘Friends get killed. A friend of mine looked out to see what was happening and a bullet went through his head.’

  He glanced at her to see how this information affected her, and quickly glanced away. The loss of a friend and, she would guess, no ordinary friend! So this was the tragedy he was nursing within himself! She said, ‘I’m sorry,’ but of course it was Guy he wanted. Only Guy would hear the whole story because only Guy could give the true, consoling word. She added, ‘Very sorry,’ and as she spoke, he made a gesture, so poignantly conveying his loneliness and heartbreak that she knew she had, indeed, seen him before.

  She was puzzled by the familiarity of that gesture. He stared down at the floor. There was nothing more to be said but then, at the most opportune moment, Guy entered the bar.

  His glasses pushed into his hair, his arms stretched over an insecure burden of books and papers, he hurried to them, saying delightedly, ‘So you found each other all right!’ He bent to kiss Harriet. ‘I didn’t tell you who he was. I knew you’d recognize him and I wanted to surprise you.’

  Looking again at Aidan, Harriet did recognize him. ‘Of course, I knew I’d seen you before. You’re the actor, Aidan Sheridan.’

  Aidan, revivified by the arrival of Guy, made a denigratory movement of the hand. ‘I was Aidan Sheridan. Now I’m Captain Pratt of the Pay Corps.’

  He could not suppress Harriet’s admiring memory of him. ‘I saw you play Konstantin in The Sea Gull. I went with a friend to the gallery and we sat on a narrow plank of wood and gazed down at you, spellbound. It was all new to me — I’d never seen Chekhov before. I was very young and at the end I went out crying.’

  Aidan flushed darkly and caught his breath. He was moved by her memory and several moments passed before he could say, ‘I was young, too. It was my first big role. At that age it is bliss to have a dressing-room to oneself. On my first night, sitting in front of the mirror I said to myself, “Now it’s all beginning!’”

  Guy beamed on his wife and friend, letting them discuss Chekhov for a while, but eager to have a part in the felicitations, he soon took over to compliment Aidan on other parts he had played: Henry V, Romeo, Oswald . . .

  ‘Did you play Hamlet?’

  Aidan shook his head. ‘That was to come.’

  Guy, knowing he had asked the wrong question, hurried on to another subject: his own production
of Troilus and Cressida. Describing it, he longed to be in the theatre again and said, ‘I must produce another Shakespeare play.’

  ‘Gracey would never let you,’ said Harriet.

  ‘If it’s for the troops, he couldn’t very well refuse. Or why not a Chekhov play? Why not The Sea Gull?’

  ‘Really, darling, for troops?’

  ‘Well, why not? The men get sick of those concert parties. One of them told me they’d welcome a real play. They’re not fools. They want something to think about. The Sea Gull is about wasted youth. It would have meaning for them.’

  Aidan sombrely agreed and Guy turned excitedly to him. ‘You would play Konstantin, wouldn’t you?’

  Startled by the suggestion, Aidan gave an ironical sniff. ‘My first youth is passed. Trigorin would be more up my street these days.’

  ‘Then, would you play Trigorin?’

  ‘You’re not serious? I couldn’t act with amateurs.’

  The statement had a finality that shocked Guy into silence. Harriet laughed and Aidan again blushed darkly, this time with shame, realizing that his vanity had betrayed him.

  ‘But you are an amateur,’ Harriet spoke with friendly reasonableness, not wishing further to deflate his unhappy ego. ‘You are an amateur soldier among professionals, aren’t you?’

  ‘I suppose I am.’

  Guy, having made a rapid recovery, said, ‘But you would help and advise, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Willingly, if I’m around. But I can’t get here as often as I would wish.’

  Harriet, wanting to put a stop to this talk of productions said, ‘And quite probably Guy won’t be here, either.’ She looked at Guy, insisting that he listen to her. ‘Be sensible. Jackman says Alexandria will be cut off. Rommel will simply march round behind it and it will fall of itself. They could be here tomorrow. Come back to Cairo, just till we know what’s going to happen here.’