‘He told you what happened?’
‘He did, sir. His speech was quite clear, right to the end. About two a.m., he said, “I think I’m going, Peters. Just as well. A chap’s not much use with two wooden pins.” I said, “You hold on, sir. They can do wonders these days with pins,” and he laughed. He didn’t speak again.’
‘Thank you, Peters.’
Peters had brought in the body. The burial party had already set out. There was nothing for Simon to see and he felt Thank God for that. Knowing that his presence was an embarrassment in the camp, he held out his hand to the major and said he would be on his way. Hugman, who had been waiting for him, eyed him with furtive sympathy and muttered, ‘Sorry to hear what happened, sir.’
Simon nodded, ‘Rotten luck’, then there was silence between them until they reached the coast road and he said, ‘Don’t wait, Hugman. The car’s due back. You might tell Ridley what happened. He’ll understand.’
A truck appeared on the road before Hugman was out of sight. The squaddie beside the driver offered Simon his seat but Simon refused and said he would ride in the rear. The back flap was let down for him. He threw his kit aboard, jumped after it, and the truck went on again.
Simon, sitting with his back to the cabin, looked out over the desert that had become as familiar to him as his childhood streets. He was reconciled to its neutral colour, its gritty wind, the endless stretches of arid stone and sand, but now a darkness hung over it all. He felt death as though he and Hugo had been one flesh and he was possessed by the certainty that if he returned here, he, too, would be killed.
‘Both of us. They would lose both of us.’
He thought of his mother going into the greenhouse to read the wire, imagining perhaps that one of her sons was coming home on leave. He found a pad in his rucksack and began to write.
‘Dear Mum and Dad, By the time you get this you will have heard about Hugo. I was there in the NZ camp when he didn’t come in. His batman found him, legs blown off . . .’ Simon stopped, not knowing if he should tell them that, and started on another page.
‘Dear Mum and Dad, By the time you get this, you’ll know that Hugo is . . .’ but he could not write the word ‘dead’, and what else could he say?
Hugo was dead. The reality of Hugo’s death came down on him and his unfeeling calm collapsed. He gulped and put his hands over his face. Tears ran through his fingers. There was no one to see him and the men in front would not hear his sobs above the engine noise. He gave himself up to grief. He wept for Hugo — but Hugo was safely out of it. He wept for his parents who must live with their sorrow, perhaps for years.
In the end, having stupefied himself with weeping, he lay on the floor of the truck and slept. He was wakened by passing traffic and, sitting up, he read what he had written and knew that neither letter would do.
There was nothing to be said. He tore the pages into fragments and threw them to the desert wind.
Volume Two
THE BATTLE LOST AND WON
To Parvin and Michael Laurence
One
Simon Boulderstone, coming into Cairo on leave, passed the pyramids at Giza when they were hazed over by mid-day heat. The first time he had seen them, he had been struck with wonder, but now there was no wonder left in the world. His brother, Hugo, had been killed. That very morning, in the dark, early hours, Hugo had bled to death in no-man’s-land.
Simon had stopped a lorry on the coast road east of Alamein and, alone on the back, had cried himself to sleep. Now that he would have to face the two men in front; he tried to wipe away the marks of tears but did not do it very well. The lorry stopped outside Mena House. The driver, coming round to speak to Simon, stared at him, then said, ‘You’ve caught the sun, sir,’ as though they had not, all of them, been broiled by sun during the long summer months.
‘You want anywhere in particular, sir?’
‘A cheap hotel, if you know of one.’
The driver suggested the International and Simon said, ‘Glad if you’d drop me there.’ They drove on through the suburbs into the centre of Cairo where the lorry stopped again. They were at a modern Midan, a meeting place of three small streets where the old houses were being pulled down and replaced by concrete blocks. One of the blocks was the International and it had the unadorned air of cheapness.
Throwing down his kit, Simon thanked the two men then jumped down himself. Standing on the pavement, in the dazzling light, he seemed to be in a trance, and the driver asked him: ‘You all right, sir?’
Simon nodded and the lorry went on. Left alone in the middle of the Midan, he stared at a palm tree that rose from a bed of ashy sand. As he observed it, he began to feel an extraordinary poignancy about it so for a few minutes he could not move but, forgetting Hugo, he centred his misery on this solitary palm. From its height and the length of its fronds, he could guess it was an old tree that had grown in other, more spacious days. Now, seeing it hemmed in by buildings like a bird in too small a cage, he ached with pity for it though the tree itself conveyed no sense of deprivation. A human being in similar case would have been bemoaning his misfortune but the tree, swaying in the hot wind, spread itself as though rejoicing in such air and light as came to it.
Feeling near to weeping again, he said aloud, ‘Am I going crazy or something?’ and picked up his kit.
The hotel, its windows shuttered against the sun, looked empty but there was a clerk in the hall, staring in boredom at the glass entrance doors. The sight of Simon brought him to life: ‘Yes, please? You wan’ room? You wan’ bather?’
Simon, sun-parched, sweat-soaked, unshaven, sand in hair and eyes, needed a bath though he was too deep in grief to feel the want of anything. He was taken upstairs to a small room with a bathroom so narrow, the bath fitted into it like a foot into a shoe. Filling the bath, he lay comatose in luke-warm water until he heard the hotel waking up.
He could see through his bedroom window that the dusty saffron colour of the afternoon had deepened into the ochre of early evening. Time had extended itself in his desolation, yet it was still the day on which Hugo had died. At this pace, how was he to endure the rest of his life? How, as a mere beginning, was he to get through the week ahead?
He looked at himself in his shaving mirror, expecting to see himself ravaged by his emotion but the face that looked back at him was still a very young face, burnt by the sun, a little dried by the desert wind, but untouched by the sorrow of that day.
He was twenty years of age. Hugo had been his senior by a year and they were as alike as twins. Imagining Hugo’s body disintegrating in the sand, he felt a spasm of raging indignation against this early death, and then he thought of those who must suffer with him: his parents, his relatives and the girl Edwina whom he thought of as Hugo’s girl. He had seen Edwina when he first came to Cairo and he realized, with a slight lift of spirit, that he now had good reason to see her again.
Having somewhere to go, something to do, he shaved and dressed carefully and went out to streets that were stale with the hot and dusty end of summer.
The office workers were returning to work after the siesta. They crowded the tram-cars, hanging in bunches at every entrance, while the superior officials had taken all the taxis. Simon managed to find an empty gharry but this made so little progress among the traffic that he could have walked more quickly.
Heat hung like a fog in the air, a coppery fog coloured by the light of the sinking sun. As they came down to the embankment, the river, slowly turning and lifting the feluccas towards the sea, was a fiery gold. On the western side, the pyramids had come into view, triangles of black no bigger than a thumb-nail.
In among the ramshackle houses of Garden City, Simon breathed the evening smell of jasmin and, in spite of himself, felt the excitement of being there. Before he left England, he had received a letter from Hugo telling him to buy scent for Edwina at a West End shop. The scent was to travel in the diplomatic bag and Simon, overawed, had taken it to the Foreign Office
where the young man who accepted it said, ‘Another votive offering for Miss Little?’ The scent was called Gardenia but gardenias and jasmin were all one to Simon and the whole of Garden City was for him permeated by the delicious sweetness of Edwina Little.
When the gharry reached his destination, he looked up at the balcony of the upper flat, half-expecting to find Edwina still standing there as she had stood that day, his second day in Egypt. He thought, ‘Poor Edwina, poor girl!’ and there was a sort of morose comfort in the fact she too would suffer their loss.
Several people lived in the flat. One of them, a young woman called Harriet Pringle, was in the living-room when he entered it. She started up, saying, ‘Hugo?’ but knowing it could not be Hugo.
‘No, it’s Simon. . .’ Simon’s voice broke and Harriet, giving him time to control himself, said: ‘Yes, of course it’s Simon. Do you remember me? We climbed the Great Pyramid together.’
He still could not speak and Harriet, sensing the reason for his grief, took his arm and led him to a chair. He sat down, blinking to keep back his tears that came in a slow, painful trickle, nothing like the fierce bout of weeping that had overwhelmed him in the back of the lorry. He scrubbed his handkerchief over his cheeks and apologized for his weakness.
‘I’ve come to see Edwina and tell her . . . Hugo has been killed.’
Hassan, the safragi, looking for drama, was peering round the door. Harriet, who had taken over the housekeeping, told him to bring in the drinks trolley. Wheeling it in, he observed Simon with furtive curiosity and Harriet ordered him away.
She gave Simon a half-glass of whisky and as he sipped it, he spoke more easily: ‘He was out with a patrol, picking up the wounded. They were all killed. Hugo’s legs were blown off and he bled to death. His batman found him and sat beside him till he died. There was a sandstorm, so it wasn’t possible to get him back. Too late, anyway. He just lay there and bled to death.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Harriet was deeply sorry but not shocked. When she said goodbye to Hugo, on his last leave, a voice in her head had said, ‘He won’t come back. He is going to die.’
‘I have to tell Edwina. It’s terrible for her.’
‘And for everyone who knew him.’
‘But she was special. I mean: she was Hugo’s girl.’
Harriet made no reply but remained silent for a while then, standing up, said, ‘I’ll go and find her.’ As she went through the baize door that led to the bedroom corridor, Edwina was coming out of the bathroom with a white bath-robe round her shoulders. She worked at the British Embassy but that day she had stayed at home with a hang-over that she called a migraine.
‘Are you better?’
‘Oh, much better.’ Edwina smiled at Harriet, an amused, conniving smile because, however bad her headache, she was always well enough to go out in the evening. As she hurried into her room, she said, ‘Come and talk to me while I dress. Peter will be here any minute.’
She stood naked, tall and shapely, her skin glistening from the bath, and slapped herself dry with a swansdown puff. Harriet, watching her as she prepared for her night with Peter Lisdoonvarna, said, ‘Edwina’ with a warning emphasis that brought Edwina to a stop. She stared at Harriet, puzzled.
‘What is it, Harriet?’
‘Simon Boulderstone is here.’
‘You mean Hugo, don’t you?’
‘No, it’s the younger one: Simon. Edwina, he’s brought bad news. Hugo has been killed.’
‘Oh, no. Not Hugo? What a pity! I am sorry.’ Edwina stood, reflectively still a moment, then, shaking her head regretfully, went to her chest of drawers and putting her hand in among her satin, crêpe-de-Chine and lace underclothes, said again, ‘I am sorry,’ but her mind was on other things. She had been fond of Hugo but she could not mourn him just then.
‘Edwina, listen! Simon’s under the impression that you were Hugo’s girl. He expects you to be terribly upset.’
‘But of course I’m upset. Hugo was one of the nicest boys I knew — gentle, sweet, generous. We got on well and we had a wonderful time when he came on leave. I was really fond of him.’
‘Simon thinks you were in love. Don’t disillusion him. Don’t. . .’ Harriet was going to say ‘Don’t hurt him’ but said instead: ‘Don’t disappoint him.’
Edwina sighed and put a slip over her head then, crossing to Harriet, she took Harriet’s hands into her own and said in a small, persuasive voice: ‘Darling, I can’t see him now with Peter coming any minute. Be a dear. Tell him I’m at the office. Ask him to come back tomorrow.’
‘He knows you’re here.’
Edwina sighed again: ‘What can I do?’ She dropped Harriet’s hands and went to the wardrobe and took out a draped, white evening gown. Hanging it on the door in readiness, she looked in the glass: ‘M’face — how awful!’
She touched in her eyes and lips, stepped into the dress, then returning to the chest of drawers, chose one of a long row of large, ornamental scent bottles and said, ‘I think he gave me this.’ She caught her breath and held her head back, trying to contain her tears. Dabbing the scent on her skin, enhancing the gardenia scent of the room, she murmured, ‘These poor boys! You meet them . . . you. . .’ She paused, catching her breath.
‘You give them your heart?’
‘Yes. And then they go back and get killed.’ Edwina, putting her forefingers under her lashes to lift the wetness away, said, ‘Oh, dear!’ and, sniffing, gave Harriet a rueful smile that was a comment both on the futility of grief and her own incorrigible frivolity: ‘What’s to be done about it? Cry oneself sick? What good would that do?’
She might have given herself up to weeping were she not expecting Peter. Instead, she said anxiously, ‘Can’t let him see me like this,’ and began to mend her make-up.
Harriet, feeling her anxiety, thought how precarious must be her hold on Peter Lisdoonvarna if she dared not betray pity for a young man’s death. And it was not that Peter was prone to jealousy. She knew that any hint of affection for another man would be used by him as excuse for his own philanderings.
‘How do I look?’
A current of air, bringing into the scented room the fresh smell of the tamarisks, stirred the white dress that hung like a peplos from Edwina’s wide, brown shoulders.
‘You look like the statue of Athena.’
‘Oh, Harriet!’ Edwina, a beauty but not a classical beauty, laughed at this praise. Then, hearing Peter’s footsteps in the corridor, turned in expectation, putting her hands together. He was a broad, heavy man and the dry wooden floor cracked under his weight. Throwing open the door without knocking, he asked loudly: ‘What’s going on out there? Chap blubbing in the living-room!’
Harriet said, ‘His brother’s just been killed.’
‘Oh, I say!’ Peter, contrite, lowered his voice: ‘Tough luck!’ His big face with its saddle nose and black moustache, expressed as much concern as any soldier could feel after three years of desert warfare: ‘Poor blighter’s taking it hard, eh? Should have said a few words of sympathy.’
Peter’s tone made evident his belief that his sympathy would give more than usual comfort to an inferior for he was, as everyone knew or pretended not to know, an Irish peer. Titles were out for the duration, to the annoyance of Levantine hostesses who greatly loved them, and Peter called himself Colonel Lisdoonvarna.
Now, having given a thought to Simon’s condition, he looked up cheerfully: ‘You ready, old girl? I’ve booked at the Continental roof garden. You like that?’
‘You know I do.’
Peter led the two women back to the living-room where Simon disconsolately sat alone. At the sight of Edwina, he jumped up, looking at her with admiration that, for the moment, transcended grief.
Crossing to him, Edwina said quietly: ‘Oh, Simon, I’m so sorry,’ and Simon, longing to touch her, raised his hands. He seemed about to hold her in an embrace of commiseration but Peter, stepping forward and putting her on one side, took over the situation, domina
ting it as a right.
He spoke briskly to Simon: ‘Sorry to hear what happened, old chap. I know how you feel. Knocks you sideways for a time, but we all have to face up to these things. Fortunes of war, y’know. You in for a spot of leave?’
‘I’ve got seven days.’
‘Good for you. Splendid. I’ve a table booked for supper so we have to be on our way, but see you again, I hope.’
Swinging round, Peter put a possessive hand on Edwina’s shoulder and said, ‘Come along, old girl.’
Simon, realizing Peter’s ascendancy over her, turned on Edwina with a dazed and questioning expression that disturbed her. She said, ‘I’ve forgotten my handkerchief,’ and ran back to her room.
Peter returned his attention to Simon: ‘Envy you, y’know. Long to be back at the front m’self. Can’t stand the “Armchair” set-up.’
Simon stared at him for a moment then did his best to respond: ‘You wouldn’t want to be where I am, sir.’ He explained that his unit was a ‘Jock’ column that patrolled the southern sector of the line: ‘The fighting’s always somewhere else.’
‘Still, you’re not in a damned silly office. You’re leading a man’s life.’
Simon agreed. He said the life suited him. If the patrols were uneventful he was compensated by the comradeship of the men.
Harriet, watching them as they talked, saw Peter avoiding a direct glance at Simon whose eyes were still red, while Simon was regaining his vitality. The worst, the most immediate, pain of loss was over and, soon enough, Hugo, for all of them, would be no more than a sad memory at the back of the mind.
Simon was saying there was one thing he enjoyed in the desert. He enjoyed finding his way around. ‘I’ve got a sense of the place, somehow. I feel I belong there.’ That morning, in despair, he would have been glad never to see the desert again. Now, envied and infected by Peter’s approval of desert life, he said, ‘To tell you the truth, I’ll be glad to get back there. I’d like to have a real go at the bastards. They killed my brother when he was with an ambulance, bringing in the wounded. They shot them up. They knew what they were doing. I feel I owe them one.’
Fortunes of War Page 24