A Good Clean Fight

by Derek Robinson

  In Cairo, that prestige had already taken several hard knocks. Three months earlier, in January 1942, the new and exciting German general, Rommel, had surprised the British with a sudden assault that sent them scrambling back through Libya until they had lost two-thirds of all the land gained in their previous offensive. Rommel was now at the Gazala Line, getting his breath back, but nobody expected him to stay there long. Egypt was his goal; Egypt and the Canal. Britain would fight, of course, but Britain’s recent record was not encouraging.

  In 1941 British forces had failed to save Greece—their withdrawal was another Dunkirk—and then failed to hold Crete. The Royal Navy had lost command of the Mediterranean. Italian frogmen sank two battleships in Alexandria harbor and German U-boats sank the carrier Ark Royal and the battleship Barham. Malta was under siege, battered daily by the Luftwaffe.

  Meanwhile, there were no lessons to be learned from the poor bloody Russians. At the start of 1942 their generals had launched several counter-offensives. Stalin knew no flexibility; his orders were to advance at all costs. The attacks failed disastrously. This left the German army dominant. It besieged Leningrad in the north, it was poised to take Moscow in the center—at one stage German troops reached the tram terminus and actually saw the golden domes of the Kremlin—and it threatened the oilfields of the Caucasus in the south. A glance at the map showed that, once he had the Caucasus, Hitler could swing south through Persia to Iraq and deprive Britain of an enormous amount of oil. It was no daydream. Iraq had rebelled against British control in the summer of 1941, and British forces had had to be sent from Egypt to put down the revolt.

  All these developments were watched with great interest by those Egyptians who could spare the time from toil (probably no more than one in a hundred). Egypt was neutral. The British were there strictly according to treaty agreements. Thanks to the war, some Egyptians were making fat profits, but that didn’t mean the British were especially welcome and they certainly weren’t universally popular. It even happened that when street demonstrations took place, the name of Rommel got shouted.

  In these troubled times there was not a lot the British embassy could do to enhance prestige, but it did what it could. It held a reception to show the world that, contrary to rumor, everything was business as usual. Black tie and decorations.

  Mr. and Mrs. Henry Lester got an invitation. He was in a foul temper and didn’t want to go. She did. They went, and when they arrived at the embassy gates he had forgotten to bring the invitation.

  “Bonehead,” Mrs. Lester said, and didn’t care who heard.

  The embassy official was polite but unshakeable and, with some Royal Marines behind him, certainly immovable. Entry was by printed invitation only. No exceptions. A matter of security, you understand.

  They stood aside and watched a stream of guests go in while Lester hunted through pockets he had already hunted through. “Why didn’t you ask me if I had it when we left?” he complained.

  “Same reason I didn’t brush your hair and take you to the bathroom.”

  He gave up. “It’s no damn good.”

  “Pure Freud. You never wanted to come, and now you’ve got your wish.”

  “Shut up and let me think.”

  “News flash: Henry Lester thinks. The world holds its breath.”

  A white Bentley pulled up with no more sound than the purring of a well-fed tiger and the chauffeur went around to open the rear door. Lester hustled forward. The man who got out was about forty, sleek as a shark in a white dinner jacket, but with a chubby face, cheeks like polished apples and wide-awake eyes. He wore a discreet row of medal ribbons. Lester said: “Listen, you don’t know me, I’m Henry Lester, special correspondent, Chicago News, but I wonder—”

  “How do you do? How do you do. What an enormous pleasure and privilege to meet one of our American chums.” They were shaking hands and the chauffeur was getting back in the car. “Ralph Malplacket. You must come and have a drink. Is that your wife? Delightful—”

  “Sure, but I was wondering, you see I forgot the goddamn invitation so if you could lend me your car for ten minutes just to—” The Bentley purred away. “Oh, forget it,” Lester said.

  Malplacket had a large and impressive nose, hooked like an eagle’s, which buttressed the rest of his face. He tipped his head back and looked at Lester as if trying to get him in clear focus. “Stay there,” he said. He strode over to the embassy official and in a high, clear voice, said: “You haven’t let Chubichov through, have you?”

  “Chubichov?”

  “No, no. Chubichov. Chubichov with an f, not a v. Or he may call himself Bulstrode. You know who I mean?”

  “Um . . .” The embassy official glanced at a Marine, who held all the invitation cards of guests so far admitted. “Actually, I’m not sure—”

  “Good God, man.” Malplacket gazed down his craggy nose. “You mean you don’t know? You know me, I hope. My father’s Lord Blanchtower, I’m seconded to MI at MEHQ.” He took a document like a miniature passport from his breast pocket, half-opened it and then thrust it back. “Chubichov? Yes or no?”

  More guests were arriving. The official felt the pressure of Malplacket’s fog-lamp stare. He pointed to a Marine. “This man has a record of all the guests who’ve been admitted, sir,” he said hurriedly. “Good evening madam, good evening sir . . .”

  Malplacket waved away the Marine’s clipboard with its typed lists of names, some ticked, some not. “Give me the actual invitations,” he said. “I am in no mood to be trifled with . . . Thank you.” He took the large bundle of cards and turned aside. For half a minute he flicked through them, occasionally selecting and scrutinizing, once or twice holding a card up to the light. He returned the bundle. “Very lucky,” he told the embassy official. “Very lucky. But you will not forget that name?” He cocked his head.

  “Um . . .” The man had to think. “Chubichov.”

  “Chubichov. With an f. And now if you will be so kind as to admit my good friends Mr. and Mrs. Victor Stanhope of the Standard Oil Corporation . . .” He took an invitation card from his pocket and waved the Lesters forward. The official’s eyebrows went up. “I thought . . .” he began. “Misunderstanding, dear boy,” Malplacket said. “Not doing terribly well today, are you? Try and pull yourself together and I’ll say nothing to the ambassador. Bul-strode. Have you made a note of that?”

  Strolling about the embassy gardens were the brightest and the best of Cairo society, plus quite a few of the worst if they were powerful enough (this was no time to be nitpicking about your friends; the big thing was to make it look as if you had lots of them). A regimental band played Gilbert and Sullivan. (Rommel? Who’s he?) Malplacket signaled a waiter and distributed champagne. “Well, we certainly have to thank you, Mr. Malplacket,” Mrs. Lester said.

  “Not a bit. My pleasure. Hands across the ocean.”

  They drank to that. “May I ask you a question?” Lester said. “Who is Chubichov, pronounced Chubichof?”

  “My tutor at Oxford.”

  “Oh. Is he dangerous?”

  “If he were here now, you would find him absolutely terrifying. He died in 1935. I say: there’s Evelyn Waugh. I need him for my cricket team. Excuse me.”

  They watched him stride away, foxtrotting between the clusters of guests and delicately waving a silk handkerchief at someone out of their sight. “The English nobility,” Lester said. “Ten centuries of inbreeding. Perfect manners and scrambled brains.”

  “Is that so? Your brains weren’t winning any prizes five minutes ago.”

  “Okay, so I made a mistake. You never made a mistake?”

  She gave him a short, hard stare and turned her back on him. He realized what a mistake that question had been. The day itself had been depressing, long and sweaty and full of failure, and now he was ready to hit someone. “Cricket is a man’s game,” he said, speaking to her back as if it were a dartboard, “and Evelyn is a woman’s name. Dumb I may be, but in any language that doesn�
�t add up. Right?”

  “It’s a man’s name too, in England. Evelyn Waugh happens to be a famous English novelist. Why don’t you go and interview him?”

  “Oh, sure.” He turned and stared at the bandstand. “He can tell me how the British got onto this sticky wicket. That’s gonna fascinate them in Chicago, isn’t it? A pansy foreign novelist with a fountain-pen bigger than his dingaling, lecturing the American people on cricket.” Lester found himself talking to a passing brigadier and his wife. “Don’t blame me,” he told them. “It was her idea.” He gestured toward his wife, but when they looked where he gestured, nobody was there.

  “Can we be of any help?” the brigadier’s lady asked.

  “My wife just ran off with the ambassador’s cook,” Lester said. “Little runty Arab, black teeth, no hair, bad squint, drags his right leg. You seen him hanging around?”

  The brigadier shrugged. “Cairo’s full of chaps like that, isn’t it?” he said.

  Lester didn’t look for his wife; he knew she would be with the people from the American embassy, probably talking about the latest Hollywood movies. Instead he found the bar. Amazingly they had bourbon. At last something had gone right on this day. It was only a small thing, so he made it as big as the glass would hold and settled down to drink the evening to death.

  Meanwhile, in another part of the forest of guests, Lieutenant-General Saxon was strolling with Brigadier Munroe. They found a couple of chairs under a shady tree and relaxed.

  “What a grisly mob,” Munroe said. “Half of them are racketeering crooks and the other half are the more degenerate, backstabbing relatives of King Farouk.”

  “And that’s only the women,” Saxon said.

  “I find this sort of thing very heavy going. Sooner be out in the desert making enemies than stuck here making friends.”

  Saxon grunted agreement. They sprawled, in an officerlike way, and watched the chattering guests. “My God!” Saxon said. “See that chap? There . . . Waving his arm. Nose like a parrot.”

  “Parrots don’t have noses,” Munroe said.

  “He was a priest at Dunkirk.”

  Saxon got up and walked across to Ralph Malplacket. “Excuse me, Father,” he said. “My friend over there is feeling a little run-down. I wonder if you could bless him.”

  “For fifty guineas I’ll sanctify him.” Malplacket stared at Saxon’s face, and then looked away. “You were on the beaches, weren’t you? You shared your omelet with me.”

  “Half an omelet, actually. Stone-cold, too.”

  “But quite delicious. How did you get home?”

  “Destroyer. And you?”

  “I didn’t. Oh dear . . . Forget I said that. I wasn’t really there, you see.”

  Saxon introduced him to Brigadier Munroe. “This isn’t Father Oliver,” he said, “and he wasn’t at Dunkirk giving supreme unction or whatever it’s called to a lot of dying soldiers.”

  They shook hands and sat down. “I’m Ralph Malplacket. Actually it was rifle oil,” he said. “I flatter myself that those who were still conscious died a little happier for my imposture.”

  “You certainly knew the script,” Saxon said.

  “I drew on my old college grace a good deal. Ten seconds of Latin is enough for anyone, isn’t it?”

  “If you weren’t a priest,” Munroe said, “what were you?”

  “Can’t say, I’m afraid. Deathly secret.”

  “Ah.” Connections formed in Saxon’s brain: tiny electrical circuits responded to demands he did not know he was making: memory raced through ten million images and discarded all but one, enlarged it, sharpened it, offered it. “Of course,” he said. “You’re Lord Blanchtower’s son.”

  “I believe there was some debate about that, at the time. But yes, I shall inherit. If I’m not shot first.”

  “He’s in the government, isn’t he? Your father,” said Saxon.

  “Blanchtower is Minister for Enthusiasm. Not really. His proper title is Minister for Public Affairs, but that is generally thought to be one of Winston’s little jokes. Anyway, his task is boosting the enthusiasm of the British people. Good news would help. The War Cabinet believes there is always good news somewhere, if you look hard enough.”

  “Rubbish,” Munroe said.

  Malplacket nodded. They were near a tree. He got up and reached into its branches and brought out a bottle of champagne, half-full. “I knew the ambassador’s drink would run out early,” he said.

  “Desert war isn’t like any other war,” Munroe said. “London hasn’t got the foggiest idea. They think it’s all golden sands up the blue. Precious little golden sand in the Western Desert, I can assure you. Mainly dust, grit and flies.”

  “Also heat,” Saxon said. “The heat can be quite hot.”

  “Dust, grit, flies, heat, sweat and bits of dead soldier,” Munroe said. His face was completely expressionless.

  “You’ve forgotten the wind,” Saxon said.

  “I’ll never forget the bloody wind. It’s the bloody wind that blows the dust and the grit and the flies and—”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Malplacket said briskly. “Nobody in London understands. All they see is two armies each on the end of a piece of elastic.”

  “Rather like a yo-yo, would you say?” Saxon asked.

  Munroe cheered up fractionally. “Or ping-pong? More like ping-pong, surely.”

  “You should meet Henry Lester, Mr. Malplacket,” Saxon said. “Henry Lester has tremendous enthusiasm for the desert war.”

  “Lester? I believe I’ve met him, here, tonight.”

  “Hank the Yank,” Munroe said. “He can split an infinitive from twenty yards with his eyes shut. Henry’s the man for you.”

  * * *

  Flight Lieutenant Patterson had never trusted Air Commodore Bletchley. He had never been required to trust him: when they first met, in France in 1939, Patterson was a mere pilot officer, saw Bletchley only on his occasional visits to the squadron and rarely spoke to him. But there was something too suave about Bletchley for Patterson’s comfort. Patterson came from a wealthy Glasgow family and he had had a privileged, protected childhood; nevertheless he was Scottish and the wealth came from coal mining, so he had no time for anyone who looked as if he might have a soft handshake. In France, Patterson had watched Bletchley take sherry with his squadron leader and had thought: smooth bastard, that one. But then Patterson had never really trusted anybody over the rank of group captain. He suspected that you had to be very suave to climb so high.

  In fact Bletchley had a firm, dry handshake. Patterson discovered this when he got invited to lunch at Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo. He also noticed that Bletchley had aged ten years in the past two. The smooth face was now cracked by sun and worry and the sleek brown hair now was cropped and showing gray. But the smile hadn’t changed.

  They ordered drinks. The table was set for three, but if Bletchley wasn’t going to explain then Patterson wasn’t going to ask. Instead he said: “This is extremely kind of you, sir.”

  “Not at all. Thank our well-beloved sovereign King George the Sixth, he’s paying for lunch. Perhaps I’ll provide the tip. D’you know, Patterson, my conscience has never been easy about you, ever since I lost a bet with a fellow called Roberts. Titch Roberts. That was during the Battle of Britain. Your lot were taking a bit of a pasting and Titch Roberts made some fatuous remark about how it was always darkest just before the dawn. Words to that effect. Anyway it annoyed me. I hadn’t had much sleep for days, chasing around trying to get blitzed airfields operational again, and I knew how bad things really were, so I bet him that come Michaelmas there wouldn’t be an original pilot left flying in your squadron. Bet him a tenner. Gruesome thing to do, wasn’t it? Makes me ashamed just to think of it.”

  “When’s Michaelmas?” Patterson asked. Their drinks arrived.

  “September 29th.”

  “You nearly won, then.”

  They touched glasses and drank.

  “I ne
ver got the chance to pay up,” Bletchley said. “Titch fell off his roof one night when he was trying to put out an incendiary bomb. Typical piece of incompetence. How that man got to be a group captain is beyond me. On the other hand, if he hadn’t been such a fathead he would have left the bomb to the fire brigade, so perhaps it all makes a kind of sense.”

  “Natural pruning, sir.”

  “Exactly. And here, from the land of the prune, comes Captain Hooper. Now we can eat.”

  The man who joined them was a pilot in the United States Air Force. This did not surprise Patterson: he had noticed several American airmen in Cairo and there were a lot of American aircraft, especially bombers, in Egypt. Hooper was a small, neat man whose exact age was hidden behind a broad and very black mustache that lay across his upper lip like a neatly clipped hedge. Patterson rather envied that mustache. Twice he had tried to grow a decent mustache, but the results made him look furtive rather than virile so he shaved them off. Hooper’s mustache made him look like a Western lawman. His expression was watchful and he had unusually clear eyes. Patterson noticed that he rarely blinked.

  After the introductions Bletchley said: “Captain Hooper is going to fly with us.”

  “Yes?” Patterson said politely.

  “I need desert combat experience,” Hooper explained. “Have you had any?”

  “A bit.” Evidently Hooper wanted to hear more, so Patterson said: “All I can tell you is the sun fills half the sky and it’s usually lousy with Huns.”

  “Ah.” Hooper seemed quite satisfied with that.

  During lunch Bletchley chatted about the latest war news until he suddenly said to Patterson: “I’m rather surprised you’re still a flight lieutenant after all this time and effort.”