by P. H. Newby
They were sitting in the boat near enough one of the concrete moles to hear the clatter of the sentry’s boots. He was an Egyptian soldier with a khaki-coloured flap hanging down from the back of his Foreign-Legion style hat. For some time he was content to stand and watch them. Then he took it into his head to start shouting. Leah said he was telling them to clear off. The air over the mole wobbled, the sun was so hot. The legs and the lower part of the sentry trembled. He might have been standing in very clear running water. Behind him the sky was colourless and a long way off. If he toppled backwards he would fall across Asia. But he didn’t. He lifted his rifle and fired. The bullet entered the water about a foot from where Townrow was dangling his hand. The crack of the rifle and the abrupt gobble of the water were simultaneous. Townrow was so surprised he did not move.
“He says it’s disgusting for a woman to show herself naked like I’m doing,” said Leah.
“You mean he doesn’t think we’re spies?”
“What’s biting him isn’t national defence. It’s sex.”
“Me too,” said Townrow. They had changed in the boat. She was wearing an old-fashioned black swim suit so tight her thighs escaped with slight, raised circles of flesh. She had a very little waist and no belly to speak of but at any moment her breasts would break through and stick out, he judged, as firm as marrows. She wore no cap. Her hair was tied at the back with a strip of black nylon.
Before coming out Townrow had taken his temperature and found it was 102. His cheek had healed. There was no infection and it was marvellous to be free of that bandage. But he ought to be in bed nursing his virus. When Leah said she wanted to talk to him he had felt too ill even to listen and he was not much better now. He seemed to be in a never-ending daze.
He slipped over the stern more to get his white body out of the sting of the sun than anything else. At the same time Leah was pulling on a rope to hoist sail. He watched the boat veer off towards the main channel. She wasn’t exactly brown, he thought, but she wasn’t pink and bleached white like him either. When her skin was wet it was golden. The salt water had crystallised across her back and shoulders.
Townrow swam under water towards the mole. Twenty feet or so down tin cans lay on the white sand. He was a good swimmer. He’d won medals. At Kantara you could swim the Suez Canal and claim you’d swum from Africa to Asia. It was a race he used to win. Townrow first, Staff-Sergeant Andrews second. But he tried to keep his mind off the past. In the cool water his brain was handling memory a damn sight better than of late. With a bit of concentration he could have cleared up the question of his nationality. He needed his energy to reach the mole, though, and grab that soldier by the ankle. Being shot at casually, contemptuously, made him choke. He was so enraged he felt any other shot would bounce off him. Not that he was afraid of being hit. He was a couple of feet below the surface, but what the hell, he was going to get that soldier and his gun in the water with him, the dirty sex-starved rat. Townrow was so mad that although he knew the sentry had him at his mercy he nevertheless went on. He saw himself rearing out of the water and howling with temper.
He surfaced and shook the water out of his eyes. The sentry was gone, though. The mole was enormously high, six feet or so of smooth concrete, and you would have needed a kick like a salmon to get that high.
“Hey!” He was aware, in the same moment that Leah had so manoeuvred the boat that she was able to grab him by the hair, and that the sentry had reappeared, about eight yards tall. Townrow floated on his back, thrashing with his legs. He was trying to soak the sentry and he certainly raised a lot of iridescent water. Through these tinted veils he could see the fellow with his rifle up to his cheek. Leah was screaming and dragging on his hair. More soldiers appeared on the mole. One of them was an officer in a peaked cap and white gloves like a traffic policeman.
Perhaps it was this officer who calmed everybody down. No more shots were fired though Leah went on shouting at the soldiers in Arabic. Later she told Townrow she had made a great fuss about being an American citizen but it was touch and go because they could see she was Jewish (the Egyptians never make a mistake about that kind of identification) and they might have shot her on the chance of her being an Israeli agent. They would have had to shoot her, she said, because it was easier than trying to jump into the boat. They had been very shocked indeed to learn that Townrow was not her husband. No doubt the unpleasant whiteness of his body made the shock all the greater. He looked abnormal and it could fairly be supposed, Leah said, that he went in for unnatural practices. The soldiers were left on the mole struggling with their suppressions.
Townrow lay in the bottom of the boat watching her steer. He felt he had swallowed a pint of iced water and even the hot sun could not warm him. It burned his skin but left him cold inside. Leah thought the escapade had been hilarious and Townrow too tried to look at it in her way. This was not difficult. As he lay there watching her through half-closed eyes he was even ready to think her old man was a dear who needed protecting. Townrow recognised this feeling and took the recognition as further evidence of the better functioning of his brain. The moment he saw the world through any woman’s eyes he knew he was falling in love with her and there would be no limit to the crazy, contemptible notions he’d have to take over. If she was in love with her husband he’d have to fall in love with him too. The salt, the sun, the rage, the chill in the belly let him know pretty clearly there was no chance he would turn out to be her husband himself; and now, because she was distressed about the guy he’d get distressed as well. Townrow wasn’t content with loving people. He wanted to be them. It was why he always ended up trying to marry the women he fell in love with, instead of just having a good time.
“We’ll tie up at the Greek club. I’ll send a boy round to pick the boat up later.”
“The Harbour Police will do that,” said Townrow. “You don’t think those squaddies are going to take that lark lying down.”
He was able to put out his hand and seize her ankle, to find that when she ignored the gesture he was extraordinarily happy. She could easily have kicked his hand away. He was as ready to laugh as she was now. He seemed to drift up on a great thermal of happiness, shouting about the sentry with the gun and how the concrete had been so high he could not get at him. The brute might have shot him, and he would have gone down in the water like that corporal off Sicily with blood spraying out into the clear water. Perks was the name. If he could remember Perks he could remember anything and he began to shout with laughter and rub his stomach with his free hand, hoping to move the chill.
“My father is ready to tell you something. That is if you promise never to pass it on to anyone.”
“That’s a big promise.”
She shrugged. “I don’t suppose it’s too extraordinary, what he has to tell you. He’s got to imagining things.”
“Is this what you wanted to say to me?”
“That’s it. You’d have to promise to me not to pass on what he tells you.”
“Then what does he want to tell me for? Is it something for my own good, as the saying goes? Meaning, something you don’t want to know.”
“He’s mad,” she said. “He’s crazy. Do I know what goes on in his mind? Let go of my foot, will you? If the Harbour Police come round it’s me they’ll pick up, you know that? For promiscuity. Hey, I don’t like the prospect of that. Let’s get off at the Greek Club and change. I’m a sort of member and we can get one of the stewards swear we’ve been here all afternoon, or something. Or I’ve not been here at all and you have.”
The concrete landing-stage rasped them with heat and light. Townrow followed Leah towards the boatshed trying to walk on the sides of his feet, hopping and moaning. Other humans, mainly in swim suits and dark glasses were to be detected through the white flames. But once inside the boatshed he was washed in gloom and the smell of linseed. All around were racing skiffs, polished like violins, dinghies, oars, coils of rope, a brass bell, a miniature cannon and a couple of
red marker buoys. Townrow rubbed at his forearms and the salt came off in scales. He was going to rub the salt off Leah’s shoulders but when he touched her she cried out and he grabbed her. He held her from behind, one arm across her belly, kissing the nape of her cool neck. She was extraordinarily cool. She was even shivering and he pressed against her for coolness.
A rattle of wood and metal came from the other end of the shed. A man was watching them from a work-bench. Leah freed herself by bending Townrow’s fingers back and said she was going to take a shower and change before the Harbour Police arrived. He had better do the same. Townrow was dazed and elated. Just letting Leah’s firm, cool, rounded body recede into the darkness was pleasant torture. He supposed he could not rush after her. There was no knowing the lengths these Egyptian police were prepared to go. He guessed his presence in the women’s showers would irritate them a sight more than flinging somebody off a sixth-floor balcony had done, and they would have the man at the work-bench to give evidence.
The state he was in though, with his temperature and jumpy memory, there was no knowing the damage she had done. Her buttocks had deliberately thrust back at him. As the realisation bubbled up from Townrow’s loins and belly he had to rush out into the furnace where all those mad, strange, staring creatures in human form trembled like salamanders in the flames, and plunge into the water again.
Compared with the Outer Harbour the water was dirty. He tried to fight his way down to the bottom but he could not so much as see it. He exploded into the sunlight and floated on his back with his eyes shut, thinking, “She attacked me for wanting to take over Mrs K’s property, then she came swimming with me and stuck her buttocks out. And she didn’t like that bluff about her husband being called.” He guessed she was infatuated with him, and that meant, probably, she would go along with him and persuade her old man to use his influence over Mrs K too. If Abravanel said it was a good idea to put everything in Townrow’s name the old woman would probably give way, even if it meant a lot of argument. Abravanel and his daughter and he would keep on at the old girl and wear her down.
Leah had taken a fancy to him but he was not vain about it. Newly hatched ducks attached themselves to the first living creature they saw; there was this bearded bird expert whose ducks thought he was their mother. Leah might not have looked at him in London or Baltimore, or wherever it was she lived, but at the precise moment she was coming out of some sort of shell, her eye had caught movement in the undergrowth and there he was, Townrow, for her to fix on. She might have done worse. He was well built and not frightened of anything in particular.
Compared with the European boats moored at the jetty, the local built craft Townrow had hired looked as though it had been cut out of orange boxes with a chopper. A Berber youth with a white headcloth stepped into it and began hoisting the sail. He moved off south of the island and Townrow guessed Leah had given him instructions. Sure enough, a few minutes later a blue and white police launch turned up with a couple of officers in cream-coloured caps like ice-cream salesmen. They cruised along studying the moored craft in a bored sort of way and made off in the direction of the ferry. Townrow swam to the jetty steps and crawled up into the sun.
He took a shower, dressed, and roamed around looking for Leah but there was no sign of her. He sat on a bench outside the partition masking the entrance to the women’s showers. He could hear none of the showers in action and no splashing about. He shouted her name. If she was there she would certainly have answered. No woman he could ask. No attendant. He would have gone into the showers himself and looked round, just in case she was having a fit or had passed out, but he felt dizzy himself. He lay, belly and cheek against the bench, hanging on to it like a plank in a rough sea.
Even after the shower there was enough salt on his skin for him to taste it when he licked his wrist. Or perhaps his tongue was so dry it drew the salt blood. The air was as hot as his blood, no more, no less. He saw himself lying on an immense strand, half in and half out of the water. Instead of legs he had scaly flippers. The white waterfall hung in the air, collapsed and ran up the beach to cover his flippers. The air dazzled.
All this time a plane had been hissing over clean wood and Townrow realised that the man was still at his workbench. He had enough crude Arabic to ask where the lady was. The workman grinned and pretended not to understand. Townrow sat up, put his feet to the ground and unsteadily walked the length of the boat house and out into the sun.
“Anybody speak English?” he said to the men playing cards under the trees.
“Sure,” said the one with the rolls of fat bursting out of blue swimming trunks. He was a fiery, coppery, brown, with beads of sweat on his forehead and his skin glistening everywhere, on his chest and arms, it wasn’t covered with black hair. He took the cigar out of his mouth and examined Townrow. “Can I help, please?”
“I am looking for someone. You seen a lady?”
“No, no. All ladies go to sleep in the afternoon. There is no lady. We have seen no lady.” He spoke to the three other men in Greek. They laughed and looked at Townrow over their cards. They were all sweating like seals with little medallions gleaming against their naked chests. On the table were glasses and beer bottles.
“You must have seen us come ashore.”
The fat man shrugged and turned his attention to the cards. The Greek Club had quite a garden. Townrow noticed that his body went exploring. It was as though he remained where he was and his body disappeared behind the great banana tree. It went out to the car park and back to the landing stage without finding any sign of her. So he returned to the boat house. He supported himself by hanging on to a trestle or upturned skiff. To cross the clear spaces he had to let go and hope for the best. He was still on his feet by the time he reached the entrance to the women’s showers.
“Hey! Leah! Are you there?”
No answer. He floated inside. The three shower cubicles, the three lavatories, and the changing room with its rows of lockers and a cracked mirror, were empty.
Townrow was too preoccupied with the way his body was behaving to be puzzled by Leah’s disappearance. At any moment he might go slithering to the floor. At the same time he was not too sure he was not already lying down somewhere in the hot sun with salt water rushing up now and again to splash over him. Perhaps he was dead. Some soldier had taken a shot at him with a rifle. Well, maybe that soldier hadn’t missed. Townrow certainly saw a man tumbling under water with blood coming out of him in a spray. This preoccupation with the body was the most you could expect to know about a death like that. Perhaps it was all very sad. Perhaps he ought to be crying.
The men were still playing cards under the tree.
“Hey!” said Townrow, standing in the shade of the boat shed. “I’m looking for a lady. Do you speak English? Anyone understand me? Have you seen a lady? Can you hear me? Hey!” Because the men went on playing and talking exactly as though they could neither hear nor see him.
There was one empty chair and Townrow went over and sat in it. In the ice bucket were bottles of beer. He helped himself, prised the cap off with an opener one of the men silently handed him, and put the bottle to his lips. He drank enough of the cold beer to start the sweat running down his face and throat. Already he had been there for hours watching them play this incomprehensible game. It wasn’t one he recognised. He could not understand what they were saying. It was some sort of gambling game, of course, but there was no money about. Nobody kept the score but the fat man was obviously winning. Townrow got the mad idea he was the prize they were playing for.
“Look, you saw me get out of a boat with a woman some time back?”
The fat man was about to put down a card. At the last moment he changed it for another. “You’re an Englishman, eh?”
“I’m Irish.”
“You’re British, then?”
“What the hell’s that got to do with it? Did you see this woman?”
“No,” said the fat man. “We saw you step ashore.
You were alone. One thing I must tell you. You are not a member of this club. Not one of us has seen you before but you look British to us so we don’t sling you in the water. You are our guest. O.K. It is a privilege. But there was no woman.”
“She came on ahead of me. She went in to have a shower.”
“No woman.” The fat man must have won another round because he had dropped his cards and was leaning back. One of his cronies picked the cards up and shuffled. “You look a pretty sick crazy sort of man to me. There was no woman. See for yourself. Where is she now? You off boat? One of these men row you back.”
The men went on playing and by this time Townrow knew it was his body they were playing for. He saw it helplessly stretched on the ground and nationalised. These men could not run his body though. They hadn’t the know-how. The United Arab Republic was a primitive country that lacked the technical knowledge to run his body efficiently for more than ten minutes.
He thanked them for the beer, got up and said he would walk to the ferry.