Fortunes of War

by Olivia Manning

  Seeing nothing that resembled the Cairo HQ, she took a taxi and was driven to the British Pay Office. This was a requisitioned hotel where the walls had become scuffed and the furniture replaced by trestle tables. Here, among her own countrymen, she felt at ease. The worst was over. She had only to find Aidan Pratt and he would take care of her.

  When she asked for him, a corporal said: ‘Sorry, miss. He’s been transferred.’

  ‘Can you tell me where he’s gone?’

  ‘Sorry, miss, can’t help you. Not allowed to reveal movements of army personnel.’

  ‘But I’m a friend. Surely, under the circumstances . . . At least, tell me, is he in Syria?’

  The corporal conceded that he was not in Syria but beyond that would disclose nothing. He said apologetically: ‘Security, you know, miss.’

  She said: ‘Do you know anywhere I can stay? A hotel or guesthouse?’

  The corporal shook his head: ‘Haven’t heard of one. Sorry.’

  Harriet returned to sunlight that was beginning to fade. Clouds were drifting over the snow-covered mountains and fog dimmed the towers and minarets. She said aloud: ‘So you really are on your own!’ and as the first drops of rain hit her face, she started back to the hostel, hoping for breakfast in the canteen.

  Six

  Guy was going through a period of stress unlike anything he had known in his life before. There had been only one death in his family and that was in his childhood. When told his grannie had gone to a much nicer place, he had said, ‘She’ll come back, won’t she?’ She did not come back and he had forgotten her. But after his outburst in Simon’s ward, he could not forget Harriet. He was haunted by her loss and the haunting bewildered him. He was like a man who, taking for granted his right to perfect health, is struck down by disease. But the loss was only one aspect of his perplexity. He had to consider the fact that going, she had gone unwillingly. He refused to blame himself for that. He had suggested she go for her own good. He told himself it had been a sensible suggestion to which she had sensibly agreed. In fact, in the end, she had chosen to go.

  But however much he argued against it, he knew he had instigated her departure. He could not cope with her physical malaise and air of discontent. There were too many other demands upon him. He simply hadn’t the time to deal with her. So he had persuaded her to return to her native air where, sooner or later, she would regain her health. No one could blame him either for her illness or her deep-seated discontent. She needed employment and in England she would find it. He had expected, when he eventually joined her at home, that once again she would be the quick-witted, capable, lively young woman he had married.

  Her going, too, was to have been a prelude to their post-war life. She was to be the advance guard of their return. With her particular gift for doing such things, she was to find them a house or flat and settle all those problems of everyday life which he found baffling and tedious.

  Now it was not simply that Harriet would not be there when he returned, she would never be there.

  Faced with the finality of death, he could not accept it. In the past, he had had many an easy laugh at those gravestone wishes: ‘She shall not come to me but I shall go to her,’ ‘Not lost but gone before . . .’ and so on. As a materialist, he still had to see the absurdity of belief in an after-life. He could not tell himself that Harriet had gone to a ‘much nicer place’ but, in his confusion of grief and guilt, he almost convinced himself she had not gone at all. Perhaps, at the last, she had decided against the journey to England and had come back to Cairo. She had hidden herself from him but when he turned the next corner, he would find her coming towards him. Then, not finding her there, he went on expectantly to the next corner, and the next.

  If he had no extra classes, he would spend his afternoon walking about the streets of Cairo in search of someone who was not there. When people stopped to condole with him, he listened impatiently, imagining they had been misinformed, and that she was somewhere, in some distant street, if only he could find her.

  One day, coming into the lecture hall, he was shocked to see an immense wreath of flowers and laurel propped up against the lectern. Refusing to acknowledge it, he took his place as though it were not there. But, of course, his students could not let him escape like that. They all rose and their elected spokesman stepped to the front of the class.

  ‘Professor Pringle, sir, it is our wish that I express our sorrow. Our sorrow and our deep regret that Mrs Pringle is no more.’

  He said briefly, ‘Thank you,’ angry that they had blundered in to confirm a fear he had rejected. The student spokesman, respecting his reticence, retired and nothing more was said, but in the library he found the librarian, Miss Pedler, waiting for him.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mr Pringle. I’ve only just heard.’

  Guy nodded and turned away but she followed him to an alcove where the poetry was stacked: ‘I wanted to say, Mr Pringle, I know how you feel. I lost my fiancé soon after the war started. He contracted TB. If he could’ve got home, he would have been cured, but there was no transport. It was the war killed him just as it killed your wife. I know it’s terrible but in the end you get over it. The first three years are the worst.’

  Aghast, he murmured, ‘Three years!’ and hurried away from her. Back in the lecture hall, he found the wreath still propped against the lectern. What was he supposed to do with it? He thought of Gamal Sarwar, one of his students, who had been killed in a car accident and buried in the City of the Dead. He could take the wreath up for Gamal, but he knew he would never find the Sarwar mausoleum among all the other mausoleums. And the cemetery, though at night it took on a certain macabre beauty, was in daytime a desolate, cinderous place he could not visit alone. The thought of it reminded him of the afternoon when he and Harriet had attended Gamal’s arba’in and the Sarwar men had made much of him. Harriet had waited for him, and then, as the moon rose, she had asked him to go with her to see the Khalifa tombs. It had meant only a short drive in a gharry but he had refused. When he said she could go with someone else, she had pleaded: ‘But I want to go with you.’

  Angry again, he said to himself: ‘I hate death and everything to do with death,’ and picking up the wreath, he threw it into the stationery cupboard and shut the door on it.

  Guy felt betrayed by life. His good nature, his readiness to respond to others and his appreciation of them had gained him friends and made life easy for him. Now, suddenly and cruelly, he had become the victim of reality. He had not deserved it but there it was: his wife, who might have lived another fifty or sixty years, had gone down with the evacuation ship and he would not see her again.

  Edwina, thinking that Guy was becoming resigned to Harriet’s death, said to Dobson: ‘He can’t go moping around for ever. I think I should try and take his mind off it.’

  ‘If I were you, I’d leave it a bit longer.’

  ‘Really, Dobbie, anyone would think I had designs on him. I only want to help him.’

  That was true but Edwina, too, felt betrayed by life. She had had a lingering hope that she would see Peter Lisdoonvarna when he came on leave but the British army was now so far away, the men no longer took their leave in Cairo. Guy was a prize that had come to hand just when she had begun to fear her first youth was passing. Before she became obsessed with Peter, she had taken life lightly, receiving the rewards of beauty. But what good had they done her? She had been offered only futureless young men like Hugo and Simon Boulderstone, or men like Peter who would not leave their wives. Now, just when she needed him most, here was Guy bereft and available and much too young to remain unmarried.

  ‘You know, Dobbie dear, I was very fond of Harriet, but she’s dead and the rest of us have to go on living.’

  ‘I still think you’d be wise to leave it for a bit.’

  ‘And have some Levantine floosie snap him up?’

  Dobson laughed: ‘I agree, that could happen. They’re great at getting their hooks into a man, especially when he’s f
eeling low.’

  ‘There you are, then! I’m not risking it.’

  On Saturday, Guy’s free day, Edwina said in a small, seductive voice: ‘Don’t forget, Guy dear, you promised to take me out.’

  ‘Did I promise?’

  ‘Oh, darling, you know you did! I’m not doing anything tonight so wouldn’t it be nice if we had a little supper?’

  Guy, who would have refused Harriet without a thought, felt it would be discourteous to refuse Edwina. Edwina, unlike Harriet, was the outside world that called for consideration.

  He said: ‘All right. I’ll be back for you about seven.’

  Edwina’s voice rose in joyful anticipation: ‘Oh, darling, darling! Where shall we go?’

  ‘I’ll think of somewhere. See you later, then.’

  Returning at a time nearer eight o’clock than seven, Guy found Edwina waiting for him in the living-room. She was wearing one of her white evening dresses and a fur jacket against the winter chill. Both seemed to him unsuitable for a simple dinner but worse was the jewel on her breast: a large, heart-shaped brooch set with diamonds. He frowned at it.

  ‘You can’t wear that thing. It’s ridiculous.’

  ‘You gave it to me.’

  He was puzzled then, looking more closely at it, he remembered he had indeed given it to her to wear at his troops’ entertainment. He had no idea where it came from.

  He said: ‘It’s vulgar. It’s just a theatrical prop.’

  ‘It’s not a theatrical prop. They’re real diamonds. It’s a valuable piece of jewellery.’

  This protest recalled for him another protest and he realized the brooch had belonged to Harriet. She had said: ‘It’s mine. It was given to me,’ but that had meant nothing to him. He had taken the brooch from her because it was exactly right for the show. He recalled, too, her expression of disbelief when he pocketed the absurd object. And soon after that she told him she would go on the evacuation ship.

  He said to Edwina: ‘Please take it off.’

  ‘Oh, very well!’ She unpinned it with an expression of wry resignation and offered it to him: ‘I suppose you want it back?’

  ‘It belonged to Harriet.’

  Deciding that nothing must spoil their evening, she smiled a forgiving smile: ‘Then, of course, you must have it back.’

  He did not want the thing yet did not want Edwina to have it. He wished it would disappear off the face of the earth. Edwina, still smiling, slipped it into his pocket and not knowing what else to do with it, he let it remain there.

  A taxi took them to Bulacq Bridge and Edwina supposed they were going to the Extase night club. Instead, they stopped at one of the broken-down houses on the other side of the road.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘The fish restaurant,’ Guy said as though she ought to know.

  They went down into a damp, dimly-lit basement where there were long deal tables and benches in place of chairs. The other diners, minor clerks and students, stared at Edwina’s white dress and white fur jacket, and she asked nervously: ‘Do Europeans come here?’

  ‘My friends do. The food is good.’

  ‘Is it? It’s very interesting of course. Quite a change for me.’ Edwina, trying to suffer it all with a good grace, looked about her: ‘I didn’t even know there was a fish restaurant.’

  Before she could say more, Guy’s friends began to appear. The first was Jake Jackman. When he came to the table, Edwina thought he only wanted a word with Guy but he sat down, intending to eat with them. She had not expected anything like this. Her evening with Guy was to be an intimate exchange of sympathy that would lead to well, there was no knowing!

  Still, Jackman being there and meaning to stay, she would have to put up with him. She had never liked him. She supposed he was, in his thin-faced fashion, attractive, but her instinct was against him. She knew that in a sexual relationship, the only sort that interested her, he would be unscrupulous. But there he was: a challenge! She acknowledged his presence with a sidelong, provocative smile that had no effect upon him. He was intent on Guy to whom he at once confided his discovery of a ‘bloody scandal’. The western Allies were uniting themselves against Russia and he had inside information to prove it.

  ‘What sort of information?’

  Sniffing and pulling at his nose, Jake leant towards Guy, lifting his shoulder to exclude Edwina: ‘This “Aid to Russia” frolic — it’s all my eye. The stuff they’re sending is obsolete and most of it’s useless. They don’t want the Russkies to advance on that front. They want them wiped out. They want the Panzers to paralyse the whole damn Soviet fighting force.’

  ‘I can’t believe that. It would mean German troops pouring down through the Ukraine and taking our oil.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. We’d have made peace long before that. Or the Hun would’ve exhausted himself. It’s the old policy of killing two birds with one stone. It was the policy before Hitler invaded Russia and it’s still the policy . . .’ Jake dropped his voice so Edwina could not hear what he said and she felt not only excluded but despised.

  Guy had forgotten they were there to eat and the waiter, leaning against the kitchen door, was quite content to let the men talk. Hungry and neglected on her comfortless wooden seat, Edwina sighed so loudly that Guy was reminded of her presence. He turned but at that moment there was another arrival at the table. This was Major Cookson, a thin little man without income, growing more shabby every day, who followed after anyone who might buy him a drink.

  He said to Jackman: ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

  Since his friend Castlebar had disappeared from Cairo, Jackman had admitted Cookson as a minor member of his entourage. He looked at him now without enthusiasm and said: ‘Sit down. Sit down.’

  Hearing him called ‘major’, Edwina gave him a second glance, but he did not relate to the free-spending young officers she had known in the past. As he sat beside her, he enveloped her in a stench of ancient sweat and she felt more affronted by him than by Jackman.

  Giving up his revelations of Allied intrigues, Jake said: ‘I suppose we’re going to eat some time?’ imposing on Guy the position of host.

  ‘Good heavens, yes.’ Guy, becoming alert, called the waiter and gave Edwina the menu.

  It was a dirty, handwritten menu that listed three kinds of river fish. Guy recommended them all but advised Edwina to choose the mahseer which, he said, was a speciality of the house. Edwina did not like fish but concurred from a habit of concurring with the male sex.

  Jackman had now become the joker. Giving Edwina a smile full of malice, he said: ‘Something funny happened today. Was passing Abdin Palace and saw a squaddie, drunk as arseholes, his cock sticking out of his flies. He’d got hold of an old pair of steel-rimmed specs and having perched them on the said cock, was saying, “Look around, cocky boy, and if you see anything you like, I’ll buy it for you.’”

  Knowing he meant to offend her, Edwina ignored Jackman’s laughter and gave her attention to the plate in front of her. The fish, if it tasted of anything, tasted of mud.

  ‘Which,’ Jackman went on, ‘reminds me of lover-boy Castlebar. But he’s not bought anything, has he? He’s been bought.’

  Guy shrugged: ‘If they’re happy, why worry?’

  ‘Happy? You think Bill’s happy acting the gigolo? I bet he’s sick to his stomach.’ Jackman turned to Cookson for agreement and Cookson, giggling weakly, said:

  ‘Live and let live.’

  ‘What a bloody amoral lot you are!’ Jackman sulked for a while then began another story but was interrupted by yet another arrival at the table.

  The newcomer was a dark, gloomy-eyed man who incongruously wore the uniform of an army captain. Guy introduced him as, ‘Aidan Sheridan, the actor. He’s now in the Pay Corps and calls himself Pratt.’

  Edwina caught her breath: ‘Oh, Aidan Sheridan!’ she said, and widened her eyes at him.

  Aidan viewed her with distaste then turned accusingly on Guy: ‘Where’s Harr
iet?’

  There was dismay at the table. Edwina and Jackman glanced at Guy who did not speak.

  ‘What’s the matter? You haven’t split up, have you?’

  Guy shook his head and said: ‘I would have written but I didn’t know where you were.’

  ‘I’ve been transferred to Jerusalem. But where is she?’

  ‘I should have told everyone who knew her. I didn’t think . . .’

  ‘Whatever it is, tell me now. Where is she?’

  ‘She’s dead. She was on an evacuation ship that was sunk . . . She’s dead. Drowned.’ Unable to say more, Guy shook his head again.

  Aidan sank down to the bench and after a moment said: ‘You’re sure? There are so many false reports going round.’

  Guy could only shake his head and Edwina, speaking for him, said: ‘I’m afraid it was confirmed. I’m at the Embassy and I saw the report. The ship was torpedoed off the coast of Africa. Poor Harriet, it was terrible, wasn’t it? Three people were saved but she . . .’

  Guy broke in, frowning: ‘What’s the good of going over it again! She’s lost. Nothing will bring her back, so let’s talk of something else.’ He looked at Aidan who stared down at the table as though not hearing what was being said: ‘You’ll have something to eat?’

  The others were trying to talk of something else but for Aidan the news was too sudden to be put aside: ‘No, I can’t eat. I’ll go . . . I’ll walk to the station.’

  ‘You’re going back tonight?’