Fortunes of War

by Olivia Manning

  He took a step forward. He was about to begin but before he could say anything, there was a report and he stood, looking astonished, saying nothing. The noise had not been very great and some people, thinking he was waiting for silence, shusshed at each other. Then they saw that he had a hand pressed to his side and his body was slowly folding towards the floor. As he collapsed, Guy hurried to him and pulling the shawl away, revealed Pinkrose’s dress shirt soaked in blood. There was hubbub in the auditorium.

  Harriet, going towards the stage, saw Guy’s face creased with amazed concern. An army doctor ran up the steps to join him. Guy shook his head and the doctor, putting an ear to Pinkrose’s chest, said, ‘He’s dead.’

  This statement reached the people in the front row and was quickly passed back. A crowd of students leapt up and began bawling in triumph. One of them shouted: ‘So die all enemies of Egypt’s freedom.’ The others, excited by the possibility of a political demonstration, repeated this cry while more sober members of the audience began pushing their way out before trouble should begin.

  Harriet, standing below the stage, felt someone touch her arm and, looking round, saw a young woman who said, ‘Remember me?’

  ‘Yes, you’re Mortimer.’

  ‘Tell me, why are they saying Lord Pinkrose was an enemy of Egyptian freedom?’

  Harriet could only shake her head but the student nearest to her answered: ‘Not Lord Pinkrose. Lord Pinkerton. Minister of State. Very bad man.’

  Another corrected him: ‘Not Minister of State. Minister of War.’

  Harriet said, ‘Pinkrose isn’t any sort of minister. You’ve killed the wrong man.’

  Taking this as an accusation, the students began a clamour of protest: ‘We did not kill any man.’ ‘Who is wrong man?’ ‘What’s it matter, all British lords bad men. All enemies of Egypt,’ and having found an excuse for a riot, they began tugging at the theatre seats in an effort to get them away from the floor.

  The stage was empty now. Guy and the doctor had carried Pinkrose into the wings. Mortimer, holding to Harriet’s arm, said: ‘You don’t look well.’

  ‘It’s the shock, and I’ve just come out of hospital.’

  ‘Better get away from this rampage. No knowing what they’ll do next.’ Capable and strong, Mortimer put her arms about Harriet and led her out to the street. They stood in the cool, night air, listening to the uproar inside the theatre and waiting for Guy to emerge. He did not come but the students, defeated by the clamped-down seats, came running out, bawling every and any political slogan that came into their heads. Two of the young men, recognizing Harriet, stopped, becoming suddenly cautious and polite. She asked them if they knew who fired the shot.

  Speaking together, showing now vehement disapproval of what had happened, they told her that Egyptians were good people: ‘Believe me, Mrs Pringle, we do not kill. We talk but killing is not in our nature.’

  ‘Then who do you think did it?’

  They looked at each other, hesitant yet unable to keep their knowledge to themselves. One said, ‘They are saying a gun was seen. They are saying that Mr Hertz and Mr Allain were beside the door. When the shot came, they at once went out.’

  ‘But who fired the shot?’

  ‘Ah, who can say?’

  An ambulance pulled up at the kerb. The watchers became silent, waiting to see what would happen next. Men went inside with a stretcher and when they came out, Guy was walking in front of them. The body, even more protected in death than in life, was muffled up like a mummy with Pinkrose’s old, brown, sweat-stained trilby lying, like a tribute, on the chest. The body was put into the ambulance and Guy got in with it. Harriet moved to speak to him but he was driven away.

  ‘So that’s that,’ Mortimer said: ‘I could do with a drink. How about you? Shepherd’s is too crowded. Let’s get a taxi and go to Groppi’s.’

  Harriet, exhausted, was happy to let Mortimer find a taxi and help her into it. They found Groppi’s garden nearly empty. The Egyptians were nervous of the winter air at night and the staff officers were thinning out as the desert war moved westwards. Cairo was no longer a base town though the townspeople, especially those who lived off the army, daily expected the British back again.

  The two women sat in a secluded corner and Mortimer, attentive and concerned for Harriet, recommended Cyprus brandy as a restorative for them both. They talked about Pink-rose and the manner of his death.

  ‘He was advertised as Professor Lord Pinkrose,’ Mortimer said: ‘What was he doing here? Was he sent out to do some sort of undercover work?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Harriet described Pinkrose’s arrival to lecture in Bucharest, his move to Athens and then on to Egypt: ‘I don’t think he dabbled in anything. I imagine, like Polonius, he was mistaken for his better. The students mentioned a Lord Pinkerton. That may have been the one the assassins were after. But how was it you were at the lecture?’

  ‘Oh, I’m addicted to lectures. I was a student myself when war broke out. I was at Lady Margaret Hall. Seeing that a Cambridge professor was to talk on Eng. Lit., I thought, “This will be quite like old times.” I went in with some idea of taking notes. Keeping in training, as it were. I’ll go back to study when the war’s over. Strange to think of it, though.’

  ‘Did you know that Angela and I are leaving Egypt? We’ve got berths on the ship going round the Cape to England.’

  ‘Really, you’re going? Both of you. Soon there’ll be no one left here. You sound sad. Do you mind leaving?’

  ‘I do, strangely enough. When I first came here, I hated the place. Now I feel miserable about leaving it. And, of course, I’m leaving Guy. I won’t see him again till the war’s over — that is, if it ever is over.’

  ‘If you feel like that, why are you going?’

  ‘I don’t know. Out of pique, as much as anything.’ Harriet told Mortimer how Guy had taken the rose-diamond brooch and Mortimer shook with laughter.

  ‘You couldn’t go because of that. It’s too silly.’

  ‘Not as silly as you think. He took the brooch to give to a girl who’s had an unhappy love affair. He thought it would comfort her.’

  ‘But it’s not serious? — with the girl, I mean?’

  ‘Perhaps not — but that detonated my feelings. I wanted to change my life and did not know how to do it. This will be a change. We know nothing about war-time England. I want to go back and see for myself. I want to be in the midst of it.’

  Mortimer ordered more brandy and they drank sombrely, Mortimer despondent at the departure of Angela, and Harriet despondent at having to depart. Buttoning her cardigan against the wind that rustled the creepers and shook the coloured lights, Harriet pictured England as a cold and sunless place, no longer familiar to her and so far away, it had become an alien country.

  Mortimer said, ‘I’m off to Damascus tomorrow. We leave at first light.’

  ‘And when do you get back?’

  ‘We never know for sure. We thought, this time, we’d go as far north as Aleppo.’

  ‘Aleppo!’ Harriet’s fancy expanded through the Levant and hovered over a vision of Aleppo. She had come so far and seen so little: and, in spite of Dr Shafik’s entreaty, she was not likely to return. But it was too late for regrets. She finished her brandy and said she had better go home to bed.

  Walking with her down to the river, Mortimer said, ‘I suppose you haven’t been told the sailing date?’

  ‘No. That’ll be kept dark, for security reasons. We’ll just have to wait till we receive a summons.’

  ‘You’ll go from Suez, of course. When you hear, give me a ring. Angela has my number. Leave a message if I’m not there; I’ll ring you back. We often take the lorry to Suez to pick up supplies so, if we can, we’ll come and wave you both goodbye.’

  Thirteen

  The German rearguards fought a delaying action outside Gazala and Dawson said, ‘I think we’ve got him now.’ The British infantry broke through but Rommel had already gone.

/>   Simon, sent forward to check fuel supplies, drove into the refuse of war, seeing among the seaside rocks upturned rusting vehicles. On the other side of the road, where the desert ran towards Knightsbridge and Sidi Rezegh, the abandoned hardware dotted the sand like herds of grazing cattle. Except for an old Lysander that chugged, slow and harmless, like a big daddy-longlegs, in the sky, the whole field of past battles was silent.

  Simon was content as he drove with Crosbie who, sitting beside him, had for him the wordless but companionable presence of a cat or dog. The familiar ordinariness of Crosbie was a comfort as the camp moved again and again, following the action as it went westwards into country Simon did not know.

  On this quiet coast, with the sea lapping at their elbow, it seemed the war was as good as over. He said, ‘We might be home for Christmas. D’you want to go back to fishmongering?’

  ‘Don’t know that I do,’ Crosbie said.

  Thinking of his return to a wife he had almost forgotten, Simon wondered how he would fit into a world without war. He would have to begin again, decide on an occupation, accept responsibility for his own actions. What on earth would he do for a living? He had been trained for nothing but war.

  Outside Gazala, near the remains of a walled house, a tall palm marked the site of a water-tank. The palm attracted him, though he did not know why. Then he remembered the single palm he had seen and pitied in Cairo. This similar palm, swaying in the wind, was like something known and loved.

  ‘A good place to eat our grub,’ he said.

  ‘Stop here, sir?’

  ‘Yes. Get into the shade.’

  As Crosbie ran the jeep under the palm, the ground rose about them and he rose with it. Simon, watching Crosbie’s grotesque ascent, scarcely heard the explosion. He shouted, ‘Bloody booby trap!’ expecting Crosbie to shout back, then he was struck himself. Part of the mine’s metal casing cut across his side and he was flung from the jeep.

  This, he thought, was death, but it was not his death. Dragging himself round the jeep, seeing Crosbie sprawled a dozen yards away, he called to him: ‘Crosbie. Hey, Crosbie!’ but the man’s loose straggle of limbs remained inert.

  Simon tried to lift himself, with some idea of dragging Crosbie into the shade, but the lower part of his body would not move. And there was no shade. The palm, cracked through the stem, had broken in half and its fine head of plumes hung like a dead chicken. The jeep, too, was smashed and Simon’s first thought was, ‘How are we going to get back?’ Oddly detached from his condition, he put his hand to his side and felt the wet warmth of blood. He said to himself, as though to another person: ‘You were afraid to die like Hugo, and now this is it!’ For some minutes death seemed like a fantasy then he realized it could be a reality. The action had moved so far forward, he was very likely to bleed to death before help came.

  Putting his head in his hands, waiting for unconsciousness, he heard the sound of a vehicle and looked up. A Bren was lumbering and swaying out of the rubble, having collected the Gazala wounded, and he watched with little more than curiosity as it stopped beside Crosbie. Closing his eyes again, he heard a voice coming as from the other side of sleep: ‘Let’s take a shufti at that one over there.’

  As they were lifting him into the Bren, Simon whispered, ‘Never thought you’d come in time.’

  The driver laughed good humouredly: ‘Oh, we like to be in time, sir. That’s our job.’

  Inside the Bren with the wounded, Simon called out: ‘What about my driver?’

  ‘That chap over there? Mungaree for the kites, that one.’

  ‘Can’t we take him?’

  ‘No, sir, can’t take him. Got to get you and the others back to the dressing station.’

  The Bren started up. Propped on his elbow, Simon stared out through the open flap at Crosbie’s body till it became no more than a spot on the sand and then was lost to sight.

  Fourteen

  Only the English language papers reported the murder of Pinkrose. The Egyptian Mail, reputedly pro-British, published a leader entitled ‘A Mystery’. Who, the editor asked, would wish to kill this great and good lord who was giving his lecture ‘free and for no payment but love of his confrères?’

  ‘Who, indeed?’ asked Dobson when he read the article at the breakfast table, and he turned on Guy with an expression of ironical enquiry.

  Everyone knew that Hertz and Allain had left the Opera House immediately after the shooting and had not been seen since.

  Guy, seldom confused, was confused now. He could not believe that Hertz and Allain were guilty; he could not believe that anyone was guilty, yet he could not deny that someone had killed Pinkrose. He could only say that Hertz and Allain were the two best teachers he had ever employed.

  ‘And, anyway, it was a mistake,’ Harriet said: ‘The students were talking about a British minister with a similar name.’

  Dobson sniffed, trying to contain his laughter: ‘Is there a minister with a similar name? I don’t think so. But a fellow did pass through Cairo a few days ago, on his way to Palestine. He was called Pinkerton.’

  ‘Yes, the students mentioned Pinkerton. Who was he?’

  ‘I can’t say. Something very hush-hush, apparently. He said he was an official in the Ministry of Food. The only thing the British have to eat in Palestine are sausages, made by an English grocery shop called Spinney’s. Very good they are. But this chap has been sent out to teach Mr Spinney how to make them out of bread instead of meat. To think of it! Poor old gourmandizing Pinkers bumped off in place of a sausage-maker.’

  Disliking Dobson’s jocosity, Guy asked: ‘Why should anyone want to murder a sausage-maker?’

  ‘Who knows? Perhaps he wasn’t a sausage-maker. He may have been an MI6 man in disguise’.

  ‘This is all nonsense. I don’t believe Pinkrose was mistaken for anyone. He was on the platform, a target, and some fellow with a gun couldn’t resist taking a pot at him.’

  Dobson, becoming serious, nodded agreement: ‘That’s possible. Now the heat’s off here, all the killers will be coming out of their holes.’

  Guy and Major Cookson were the only people to follow Pinkrose’s coffin to the English cemetery and neither could be described as a mourner. Guy went from a sense of duty and Cookson because he had known Pinkrose in better days. For Cookson even the dull ride into the desert outside Mahdi was a diversion. Coming back together into Cairo, Guy, who could not maintain enmity for long, decided that the major was not, after all, a bad fellow and stood him several drinks.

  Harriet, thinking she might have died herself, asked what the English cemetery was like.

  Guy said, ‘A dreary place behind a heap of rubble. Poor old Pinkrose, with all his pretensions, would have demanded something better.’

  In mid-December, the prospective passengers were informed that the ship — it was still known merely as ‘the ship’ — would sail early in January. English women and children from neighbouring countries began to congregate in Cairo, awaiting the exact date which would be announced twenty-four hours before the sailing.

  A diplomat called Dixon wrote from Baghdad, asking Dobson to put his wife up during this waiting period. The flat being an Embassy flat, Dobson felt bound to comply and it so happened that a room was temporarily vacant. Its occupant, Percy Gibbon, had been sent on loan to the ‘secret’ radio station at Sharq al Adna, so Dobson wrote back saying he would welcome Mrs Dixon as his guest.

  Without further notice, Mrs Dixon arrived as Hassan was setting the breakfast table. Six months pregnant, with a year-old son, a folding perambulator, a high chair, a tricycle, a rocking-horse and ten pieces of luggage, she stumbled into the living-room, exhausted by a long train journey, and sank on to the sofa. Dobson, called to attend her, went to look at Percy’s room. It was only then that he realized it was locked and there was no spare key. He was ordering Hassan to go out and find a locksmith when Percy Gibbon let himself in through the front door. Percy stopped in the living-room to stare at the strange wom
an and her impedimenta then, sniffing his disgust, went to his room, unlocked it and shut himself inside it.

  Dobson said, ‘Good God, who was that?’

  Guy, who had seated himself beside Mrs Dixon in an attempt to cheer and comfort her, told him: ‘It was Percy Gibbon.’

  Dobson stood for a moment in helpless perplexity, then beckoned Guy into the bedroom. He whispered, ‘You know, this is very awkward for me. I agreed to put her up, but where can I put her? Her husband’s a colleague, so I can’t tell her to go, but you, my dear chap, with your charm — you could, in the nicest possible way, of course, explain things to her. Tell her she’ll have to find a room in an hotel.’

  Guy was aghast at this request: ‘I couldn’t possibly. I’ve been talking to her, saying how pleased we all are to have her here. It would be such a shock for her if I told her to go. You see, everyone likes me. I’m not the person to do it. Ask Harriet. She’s better at things like that.’

  Harriet, appealed to, came from her room, thinking she could deal with the situation. Then she saw Mrs Dixon. Limp and near tears, trying to soothe her fretful child, she was a frail, little woman, her thin arms and legs incongruously burdened with her heavy belly, her fair prettiness fading, her apprehensions heightened by the awful appearance of Percy Gibbon.

  She gazed at Harriet with anxious eyes and Harriet, saying ‘Don’t worry. We’ll manage somehow,’ went to speak to Dobson. ‘Someone has to be sacrificed and it must be Percy Gibbon. Your room is big enough for two. You’ll have to get a camp-bed in here and share with him.’