Fortunes of War

by Olivia Manning

  ‘Not so much. These amoebae are insidious animalcule. They move from organ to organ.’

  Guy stared and kept quiet while the doctor, supposing the matter to be of intense interest to him, described the dangers of amoebic infection: dangers comprehensible by a male brain but not, of course, by a female.

  ‘You must know that the amoebae can be carried in the portal stream to the liver and cause hepatitis and the liver abscess. If they reach the gall bladder that, too, can be bad. But I do not think she has the liver abscess.’

  ‘Oh, good!’ Guy, his dismay rapidly dispersed by this assurance, said, ‘Then she’s all right. There’s nothing to worry about?’

  ‘Sooner or later, she will be all right.’

  ‘Splendid!’ That decided, Guy was eager to return to the subject of social responsibility but Shafik seemed equally eager to evade it.

  ‘Such talk would bore a lady, and you and your wife must have much to say to one another.’ With an amused expression, lifting his hand in an adieu, the doctor made a swift departure.

  Guy gazed regretfully after him: ‘Why did he go off like that?’

  ‘Sister Metrebian says he is a busy man.’

  ‘I suppose he is.’

  Now that the chance to discuss social responsibility had been snatched from him, Guy looked tired. He, too, was a busy man and he seemed to have about him the oppression of the dusty, noisy Cairo streets. He sat down and, as he looked at Harriet, she felt he reproached her for remaining in a country that was destroying her health.

  ‘Dobson was telling me that before the war, anyone who contracted this sort of dysentery was shipped home. In England, the amoebae leave the system and you are not re-infected. Here, if you’re prone to it, you’re liable to get it again.’

  ‘So Dobson wants to ship me home? He’s absurdly self-important at times. He thinks he’s only to say the word and I’ll get straight on to the boat. Well, I won’t. It would simply mean you were alone here and I would be alone in England. A miserable arrangement!’

  ‘He’s only thinking of your good. He says when people are depleted by acute dysentery, they pick up other diseases and . . .’

  ‘And die? Well, let’s wait till I show more signs of dying.’

  He was about to say more when he noticed the rose-diamond brooch on the table beside her and he became animated: ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘Angela gave it to me. She bought it in the Muski.’

  He picked it up and laughed as he examined it: ‘It’s vulgar but it has a sort of panache. Let me have it. I’ll give it to Edwina to cheer her up.’

  ‘But it’s mine. It was given to me.’

  ‘Surely you don’t want it. You couldn’t be seen wearing a thing like that. It’s a theatrical prop: just right for Edwina when she sings, “We’ll meet again” or “Smoke gets in your eyes”.’

  ‘She doesn’t sing those sort of songs.’

  ‘She does in the show. It’s for troops and the troops will love this thing.’

  ‘It’s a valuable piece of jewellery. They’re real diamonds and cost a lot of money.’

  ‘Even so, it’s tawdry. It looks cheap.’

  Smiling his contempt, he held the brooch away from him and she saw it degraded from a treasure and a talisman into a worthless gewgaw. She could not defend it, yet she did not want to lose it.

  She said, ‘Give it back,’ unable to believe he would take it from her, but he slipped it into his pocket.

  ‘Darling, don’t be silly. You know you don’t want it. Let Edwina have it. Well, I must go.’

  She watched, silent in disbelief, as he left with the brooch, delighted that he had something to give away.

  ‘But what he gives, he takes from me!’ She went to sit on the balcony, feeling, as the first shock of the incident wore off, a sense of outrage that the brooch was gone. Gazing over the greensward where she sometimes saw men on polo ponies and other men swinging golf clubs, she asked herself, ‘What is there to keep me here?’

  When Angela came to see her again, she said, ‘I’ve been thinking about England. I could get a job there. I’d be of some use in the world.’

  ‘Do you mean you might come with me?’

  ‘Yes, I do mean that. I’ve been watching those men out there playing ridiculous games while other men are being killed, and I thought how futile our life is here. I felt I wanted to get away.’

  ‘If you’re serious, you’ll have to apply at once. There’s a rumour that the ship’s over-full already. Shall I speak to Dobson? Get him to use his influence?’

  ‘Yes, speak to Dobson.’ But though she agreed, Harriet was still half-hoping that the ship was too full to take her and she would have to stay.

  Still, she had put the matter into Angela’s hands and before they could say anything more about it, she was visited by Major Cookson. He had not come alone. His companion, whose function had probably been to pay for the long taxi drive to the hospital, did not follow him to the bed but stood just inside the room as though bewildered at finding himself there.

  Cookson sat on the bed edge and whispered to Harriet and Angela: ‘I’ve brought an old friend, very distinguished. I knew you’d be pleased to meet him.’ He turned and summoned the friend in a commanding tone: ‘Humphrey, come over here.’ Then returning to the women, he whispered again: ‘It’s Humphrey Taupin, the archaeologist. You were in Greece, Harriet. You must have heard of him.’

  They all looked at Humphrey Taupin as he managed to make his way to the bedside where he stood, swaying, as though about to crumple to the floor.

  Cookson brought a chair for him, saying, ‘Sit down, Humphrey, do!’ but Taupin remained on his feet, looking at Harriet, a smile reaching his face as though from a great distance.

  Harriet had heard of him. He had been a famous name around the cafés in Athens. When he was very young, on his first dig, he had come upon a stone sarcophagus that contained a death-mask of beaten gold. The mask, thought to be of a king of Corinth, was in the museum and Harriet had seen it there. This find, that for some would have been the beginning, was for him the end. She could imagine that such an achievement at twenty might leave one wondering what to do for the next fifty years. Anyway, confounded by his own success, he had retired to the most remote of the Sporades; and no one had thought of him when the Germans came.

  But he had escaped somehow and here he was, in Cairo, standing beside her bed. When she smiled back at him, he moved a little closer to her and a smell of the grave came from his clothes. His light alpaca suit hung on him as on a skeleton. He was in early middle-age but his hair was already white and his face was crumpled and coloured like the crust on old custard.

  She asked him how he had escaped from Greece. When it occurred to him that she was speaking to him, he did not reply but bent towards her and offered her his hand. She took it but not willingly. She had heard that he had been cured of syphilis, but perhaps he was not cured. Feeling his hand in hers, dry and fragile, like the skeleton of a small bird, she remembered the courteous crusader who took the hand of a leper and became a leper himself. When Taupin’s hand slipped away, she felt she, too, was at risk.

  Cookson plucked at his jacket, telling him again to sit down but his senses seemed too distant to be contacted He smiled then, turning, wandered back across the floor and out of the room.

  Cookson tutted and said, ‘He really is a most unaccountable fellow. I’m sorry. I thought he would amuse you.’

  Harriet, still feeling on her palm the rasp of Humphrey Taupin’s hand, asked, ‘How did he get here?’

  ‘He’s just arrived from Turkey. His Greek boys managed to get him to Lesbos in a caique in the middle of the night. He went on to Istanbul and he hung around there till the Turks threw him out.’

  ‘Why did they do that?’

  ‘Hashish, y’know. They’re sticky about that.’

  Angela asked: ‘Is that why he’s so vague?’

  ‘Oh, my dear, yes. I went to that island of his once
. Quite an ordeal, getting there and even more of an ordeal staying there. He kept you sitting up, talking, all night and if you got any sleep, it was during the day. Only one meal was served and not very good either. He called it breakfast. It arrived about ten in the evening and then the talk began.’

  ‘I suppose he was more compos mentis in those days?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘Much more. He was quite the tyrant before he got on to hashish. He had three subjects: sex, literature and religion. You discussed one a night and then you were told the boys would row you back to Skiros. There was no knowing how long you would have to wait for the boat back to Athens.’

  ‘And that was the routine?’

  ‘Yes. Invariable. Everyone who went, talked about it.’

  ‘But they did go?’

  ‘Yes. Out of curiosity, as much as anything. We formed quite a little élite, those of us who’d braved the island. We felt we’d done something remarkable.’

  ‘Yet when the Germans were coming, you all forgot about him?’

  ‘Oh!’ Major Cookson’s mouth fell open, then he tried to excuse himself: ‘It was so sudden, the German breakthrough. They came so quickly.’

  ‘Still you had time to prepare your get-away.’

  Major Cookson hung his head, knowing that the manner of his departure from Greece might be forgiven, but it would never be forgotten.

  Having discovered that Harriet was the wife of a professor who was a lover of Egypt, Dr Shafik changed towards Harriet. Whenever he had nothing else to do, he would stroll into her room and entertain her with flippant and flirtatious talk. He did not suppose her capable of discussing an abstruse problem but he would gaze at her thoughtfully, even tenderly, and accord her his especial care. Harriet knew that Arabs, when not laughing at the female sex as a ridiculous aberration in nature, were romantic and generous, but she became bored by his levity. She broke into it to ask, ‘Is your plague patient still alive?’

  ‘Yes, he is alive. How did you know I have such a patient?’

  ‘I heard him crying out in delirium. It was frightening. And he’s still alive! Is there a new drug with which to treat bubonic plague?’

  ‘Yes.’ He was rather sulky at being forced into this conversation and she had to question him before he would tell her: ‘There is a serum which is effective, sometimes. But his heart will be weak.’

  ‘You are not afraid for yourself?’

  ‘Naturally I have been inoculated. We wear special clothing and so on. The danger is not great.’

  ‘The man is a Polish officer, isn’t he? Why was he brought to a civilian hospital?’

  ‘He had to be isolated, and the military have no suitable place. You know, on this spot, a long time ago, there was the old quarantine station and hospital. The island was only half formed then, and it was desert.’

  Harriet’s interest, arising out of her horror of contagion, led Shafik to talk in spite of himself. He told her it was there that patients were brought during the plague epidemic of 1836. ‘There was a Dr Brulard. He wanted so much to know how plague was transmitted, he took the shirt from a dead man and wore it himself. Was he not brave?’

  ‘My goodness, yes. And did he catch plague?’

  ‘No, nor did he solve the mystery of how it was transmitted. And there was typhus — now, how did they catch typhus?’

  Harriet laughed nervously and Shafik refused to tell her any more about plague and typhus, but, leaning towards her, said, ‘You are getting better. Are you glad you did not die and go to heaven?’

  ‘I thought there was no heaven for women in your religion.’

  ‘Wrong, madame, wrong. The ladies have a nice heaven of their own. They are without men but there is a consolation: they are beautiful for ever.’

  ‘If there are no men, would it matter whether they were beautiful or not?’

  ‘Ha!’ Dr Shafik threw back his head and shouted with laughter: ‘Mrs Pringle, I am much relieved. You are, after all, a true woman.’

  ‘Why “after all”?’

  ‘I wondered. I thought you were too clever for your sex.’

  ‘And you’re not as clever as you think you are.’

  ‘Oh, oh, oh!’ Shafik shook his hand as though it had been burnt: ‘How ungrateful, after I have so cleverly cured you!’

  ‘Perhaps you didn’t cure me. Perhaps I cured myself. You see, I have given in. I’m going back to England.’

  ‘You are going to England?’ he stared with concern and dismay: ‘Just when we have become friends! And Professor Pringle? — he, too, is going to England?’

  ‘No. He has to stay here till the war ends.’

  ‘But does he want you to go?’

  ‘He thinks I will never be well while I remain here.’

  ‘I’m sorry you are going.’

  ‘I’m sorry, too.’

  Before she left the hospital, Harriet asked if she might see Miss Copeland again, but Miss Copeland was no longer there. When he suggested that the Pringles should give her a home, Dr Shafik had been making fun of Harriet. A home already had been provided by the Convent of the Holy Family and there Miss Copeland could stay for the rest of her life.

  Shafik, saying goodbye to Harriet, held her hand between his two strong, slender hands and said, ‘One day you will come back to Egypt and then you will come to see me. Yes?’

  Harriet promised that she would. Looking into his large, dark, emotional eyes, she almost wished she had an Oriental husband, especially one who looked like Dr Shafik.

  Twelve

  For a fortnight before the lecture, Pinkrose telephoned Guy several times a day, demanding to know what progress had been made in finding a hall that would reflect his importance. He rejected the assembly rooms of the American University, the cathedral, Cairo University and the Agricultural Museum. None of these was grand enough for the occasion he had in mind. He wanted a large and ornate hall, one suited for the entertainment of royalty and the Egyptian aristocracy.

  Cairo offered nothing to suit him. The Egyptians themselves when gathering for a wedding or the funeral of a notable, employed a tent-maker to erect a tent in a Midan or some other open area. These tents, large, square and appliquéd all over with coloured designs, had appealed to Harriet and she suggested that one be hired for the lecture.

  Pinkrose was appalled by the idea: ‘Lecture in a tent, Pringle! Lecture in a tent! Certainly not. What do you think I am! — Barnum’s Circus?’ He insisted that the Embassy be again approached and asked to open up the ballroom.

  To please him, Guy had another word with Dobson who only laughed: ‘The place is under dust sheets. It would take an army of servants to get it ready.’

  In the end, Guy approached the management of the Opera House and found it was available if the sum offered were large enough. But even the Opera House did not please Pinkrose. Forced to accept it, he frowned at the bare stage and said, ‘I expect you to pretty it up, Pringle.’

  ‘We’ll surround the podium with flowers and ferns.’

  ‘Fair enough, Pringle; see to that. Now, about the reception. You know I’ve invited the king and court? Well, we can’t ask them to sit on kitchen chairs, can we?’

  The reception was to be in the Green Room which looked well enough to Guy but did not satisfy Pinkrose who went off on his own and found a shop that hired out theatrical furniture. He chose crimson plush curtains with gilt tassels and a large gilt and plush-seated chair that looked like a throne. These, together with two dozen gilt reception chairs, were delivered to the Opera House. When the curtains were hung and the chairs crowded into the room, Pinkrose called Guy in to admire the effect: ‘What do you think of it, eh, Pringle? What do you think of it?’

  ‘I think it’s tawdry and ridiculous.’

  ‘No, Pringle, it’s regal. His majesty will think he’s in a corner of Abdin Palace.’

  ‘You know we’ve had no acceptances from the palace?’

  ‘Oh, they’ll come. They’ll come.’

  Guy had promised
to call for Harriet when she left hospital but was too busy. He telephoned her at the flat to excuse his defection: ‘By the time this lecture’s over, I’ll be as loony as Pinkrose.’

  Losing patience, Harriet said, ‘Why do you pander to the old egoist? Who cares whether he lectures or not?’

  ‘You’d be surprised. The whole university staff is coming. And you’ll come, too, won’t you?’

  Still toxic from the drugs that had killed the amoebae, Harriet had been thinking of going to bed. Persuaded to dress and attend the reception, she asked Angela to go with her.

  ‘Oh, no, darling, I can’t bear lectures. I forget to listen and I start talking and people around get shirty . . .’

  ‘Do come, Angela, we’ll sit at the back and laugh.’

  ‘No, darling, no.’

  Angela was firm in her refusal and suspecting she had some other engagement, Harriet went to the Opera House alone.

  The Green Room was filled with gilt chairs but the guests, edged in among them, were neither numerous nor very distinguished. Pinkrose, ignoring the university staff and the government officials, waited, in a state of peevish anxiety, for someone worthy of his attention. He was wearing an old, greenish dinner suit with a grey knitted shawl over his shoulders. Usually he kept the shawl up to his mouth but now he had pulled it down in readiness for a royal welcome and his lips opened and shut in agitation.

  Guy came to say the lecture should begin. Pinkrose, refusing to listen, shook his head: ‘You must telephone the king’s chamberlain, Pringle. I insist. I insist. Make it clear that this is no ordinary lecture. I’m not just a don, I’m a peer of the realm. The palace owes me the courtesy of royal patronage.’

  Guy, mild in manner but determined, refused to telephone the palace while the guests listened, transfixed by Pinkrose’s behaviour.

  ‘If you don’t ring the palace, I won’t go on. I won’t. I won’t. I won’t.’

  ‘Very well, I’ll give the lecture myself.’

  Pinkrose did not reply but stared at his script which shook in his shaking hands. When Guy asked the guests to follow him into the theatre, Pinkrose made a rush and pushed ahead of him. Trotting at a furious pace, he went down the aisle and up some side steps to the stage. Guy was to take the chair but before he could reach it, Pinkrose had positioned himself at the forefront of the stage. An oval figure, narrow at the shoulders and broad at the hips, he stared at the audience, his eyes stony with contempt. A stage light, shining down on his dog-brown hair, lit the ring on which his hat usually fitted.