Into Suez

by Stevie Davies

  *

  Shy as hell Joe felt, standing on the quay in his KDs, arms folded, wearing a jaunty look. He’d have his two darlings safe in his arms within the hour. The chaos of the quay frazzled his nerves as the towering ship inched in and the ropes were thrown and secured. Petty officials in self-important fezes scuffled among themselves, apparently disputing points of procedure; traders of all sorts swarmed round the ship jabbering; a man in a robe called him Johnnie and wheedled Joe to buy genuine Ancient Egyptian scarabs, straight from the Pharaohs’ tombs. In this mess and din and reek, it seemed as if the shore were doing its best to push the Empire Glory back out to sea.

  Gyppos couldn’t organise a trip to the Pyramids, so Dusty Miller was complaining. But Joe smiled and said good-naturedly to the scarab-man, ‘Not today, my boy, thanks all the same,’ gentle as to a child. He didn’t abuse or scoff at the Egyptians to their faces and disliked it that others did. They were childlike, as far as Joe could see, incapable of discipline and reason. Their smarmy ways he didn’t much care for but they had a living to get and he bet he’d have toadied in their position. They lived in squalor and owned nothing. And though he’d lived rather too near to the bottom of the heap back home, the Gyppos’ scavenging pauperdom made Joe and Chalkie seem like lords.

  So he grinned at the scarab-man as he waved him away and was somewhat unsettled when the chap laughed and said, ‘OK, right you are, Taffy-Effendi.’ Antennae they had like nobody’s business, some of them. Hardly ten words of English to call their own but they could nail an accent. Geordie, Mick, Jock: you name it, they mimed it like parrots.

  The other blokes awaiting their families had fallen silent and, in the midst of the furore, they took on the attitude of men at prayer, all gazing upwards.

  ‘Not so long now, Taf.’ Chalkie was that rare thing, an old friend. The two of them had been together in the Western Desert during the war, slept together, messed together. Joe relished Chalkie’s quiet presence, his modesty and funny faces. Slightly built but wiry and strong, Roy White was blessed with an understated sense of humour, a frizz of corkscrew curls close to his head and wire-rimmed specs always at an angle. ‘Poor things,’ said Chalkie. ‘They’ll be worn out.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Joe, ‘bless them.’ His hands shook as he handed Chalkie a cigarette. Women’s faces peered over the rails. The gangways were lowered. An eternal pause. Then he glimpsed, not Ailsa but Nia, a pale sun rising above the railing by the gangway, only to set instantly.

  ‘My daughter! My little girl!’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘There.’

  ‘Ah! The wee gingernut!’

  Here they came, shuffling down the gangway, the tall, elegant mother holding the hand of the pale child with her golly in one hand. But Nia suddenly stopped. Stuck fast. Holding up the queue behind her. One of the women, seeing the difficulty, reached back and hoisted her up, carrying her down. Joe tussled forward against the hurly-burly of husbands.

  ‘Ailsa,’ he said. ‘Cariad.’

  Home.

  Nia stuck her thumb in her mouth and thus plugged it, so as to remain neutral. The man plunging at her mother had a great and convincing likeness to her Daddy, but was he the same? She felt Mami rip away from her like sticky tape. This man was crying and so was Mami crying. Nia wanted nothing to do with that. Looking up, she saw them disappear into a knot made of both of them. Only Auntie Mona was left faithfully holding her by one hand, with Golly under one arm. Darling Mona who’d suddenly appeared on the quay in her red dress with a wide-brimmed sun hat, grinning down in reassurance. Quietly, Nia gave herself up to imagining a glass of ice-cold Lucozade, seeing in her mind’s eye the rustling yellow paper wrapped around the bottle. She did not look at the Daddy-man but instead secretly uncurled her hand to check that Little Yellow Man was still there and had not changed in any way. Yes, he was the same, exactly, with bite-marks all round his faded face. Having checked, she again mounted vigil, tightening hot, wet fingers around his friendly woodenness.

  ‘Well well, my beauty?’ He crouched and gentled her with a well-remembered voice – and seemed to want to sweep her up and perch her on his shoulders, where she’d be able to bang on his head with her fists, like a drum. But his close-up face didn’t seem quite right. The one inside her head didn’t have such sunburnt skin, as dark nearly as Auntie Mona’s. The fleck of bloody toilet paper on a shaving nick under his ear and the chin-stubble were not quite right. Only his blue-blue eyes were the same.

  ‘Say hallo to your daddy, Nia,’ Ailsa urged her.

  ‘She needs to get used to me, bless her,’ said Joe, with his crooked little smile, as if he knew a joke. He straightened up and took a step back. He was saying that he had some presents for the girlie in his kit bag. Should he give them to her on the train?

  ‘Oh but Mona – I haven’t introduced you! What am I thinking of? This is Mona, Joe – my good friend – she’s been so sweet to me and Nia. Mona – my husband.’

  Joe shook hands cordially. How glad he was, he said, that Ailsa had made a pal on a voyage that cannot have been much fun for anyone. He was grateful to her. Half-caste? Dark as weak coffee and not with sunburn, that was for sure. Seemed a decent type though. And well-spoken. An educated, superior voice if ever Joe heard one. With this thought, all ease and naturalness drained away: he was the tinplate apprentice, son of a furnaceman, the lowest of the low at the South Wales Canister Company.

  Joe gripped Ailsa beneath the elbow, to move her on. But the crush of jubilation made movement impossible and the Military Police were nowhere to be seen. Chalkie jounced both his boys in his arms, whilst kissing his wife. The children’s hair was white as wheat and their cheeks flushed with heat and over-excitement. Joe was introduced to Chalkie’s ladylike wife, Irene, and spoke to a tearful foreigner who could not find her husband. Corporal Webster, RAF Fanara, she said, did he know him? had he seen him? My friend Ailsa will help me, she said desperately, gripping Ailsa’s arm. My good friend. Who wouldn’t panic in these circumstances: just off the ship and no husband? With her baby-blonde hair and pale complexion, she looked ready to faint with anxiety.

  ‘Stick with us, Mrs Webster,’ Joe said, ‘until we find him. Don’t worry: he’ll be here.’

  A moon-faced bloke Joe recognised by sight shouldered his way through the crush: Hedda! he was calling, over people’s shoulders. You’re all right, I’m here, you’re safe now.

  As the crowd parted, he barged though and, taking his wife in his arms, lifted her clean off her feet, both of them laughing and weeping, swung her round, kissed her. ‘Thanks, mate,’ he said to Joe. ‘Norman Webster. And this is my darling Hedwig.’

  The Military Police directed the passengers through customs. The crowd thinned. As Joe was about to pick up Nia and follow them, Ailsa said, ‘You must meet Ben, Joe, Mona’s husband. And Alex.’

  As the senior officer and his companion arrived, Joe stood smartly to attention and saluted.

  *

  A bad moment, terrible, Ailsa thought afterwards in the train. Joe’s hand had shot up, a barrier that put them all in their places. With this signal, all possibility of conversation had died.

  The Royal Air Force had semaphored to them through the language of Joe’s salute a reminder that fraternisation between officers and Other Ranks could never be countenanced. Fraternisation, Joe’s ramrod arm had said, would undo the proper and natural order of things; it would soften military discipline, the foundation of the Empire. Joe had held his arm rigid, quivering, far longer than was called for, blank-faced, eyes staring forward at the officers’ shoulders, as if for parade ground inspection. It is a sad day for the RAF, his mute stance had said, when a sergeant has to instruct a senior officer in King’s regulations.

  ‘No need for that, old chap…’

  Habibi, thrown into confusion, had been left with his hand held out for a handshake. Ailsa saw his sloppy uniform and springy curls as if through her husband’s eyes. Alex had had the presence of mind to return Joe�
��s salute, as regulations required, just touching his temple in greeting, a superior kind of Wotcher, mate. But Joe, a statue, had remained at attention. Face brick-red; not blinking.

  Unbelievably, Joe had carried on saluting, despite his pal Roy White’s humorous nudge. Before the barrier of his hand could fall to separate them, Mona had reached for Ailsa and hugged her, pulling her under the brim of her hat, into its dusky, patterned red shade. She’d kissed her on the mouth, while Ailsa pulled back because of Joe – poor Joe, caught in this trap. She wasn’t saying goodbye, Mona had whispered, not now, not ever.

  ‘Be happy, chérie, liebste, habiba.’

  ‘Oh, Mona … and you.’ Ailsa had had to bite back the words that had so lacerated Mona, Keep in touch.

  ‘See you soon. And here’s a little something for you, don’t lose it. Our address is on it and a note. And something from Habibi. I’ll wait for you to contact me, OK?’

  ‘You shouldn’t have. I’ve nothing for you.’

  ‘Aha. Wait till you see it. Stolen goods.’

  Ailsa had crammed the brown paper package tied with string and sealed with wax into her canvas bag: a book, obviously. She doubted whether they would let her see Mona again. Already as they boarded the train, with its shining carriages painted silver to reflect the heat, she could see this friendship going into the past. The Empire Glory had been an interlude. Joe was everything to her, Joe and Nia. Of course they were.

  Joe said nothing whatever to disparage her friends. The men had maintained their formal smiles at one another across the corridor of rank. Correctly but also with goodwill. The dock had bellowed around them. Alex had slackened the tension with that public school drawl. Ailsa, reading Joe’s face, could see immediately what Joe had thought of him. Smoothie, nancy-boy, poufter, was the gist of it. Which had taken her aback, for it hadn’t dawned on her before that Alex was effeminate. Perhaps he was. She’d seen it in Joe’s eyes.

  Nia, squirming and whining for Auntie Mona to pick her up, had confided, ‘Auntie Mona, my botty’s itching!’

  Frantic embarrassment and hilarity had reigned. Even Joe had laughed and relaxed. Habibi, shaking hands with Ailsa, had wished her well, thanking her for her true friendship to his wife. Ailsa read Joe’s appraisal of Ben: short back and sides, she read, as clearly as if he had spoken the words. Joker from Civvie Street, scarecrow in uniform. Next to Ailsa’s impeccable husband, the slouching Wing Commander did look like a ragbag. Nia’s fingers had had to be prised one by one from Mona’s, to the chorus of Babs Brean, who paused to say, ‘She’ll have to turn over a new leaf now she’s with her daddy, the scamp!’

  And here, oh dear, Babs was on the train with her husband, whose arms were round both of his daughters. They sucked sherbet through licorice straws and gazed up at him through eyes silly and beautiful with love. But everyone’s eyes wore the same expression. Shy too, as if on a first date.

  ‘Not long now,’ said Ailsa to Nia.

  ‘No.’

  ‘And then we’ll be home together. The three of us.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What an adventure for us, darling,’ Ailsa said. ‘Aren’t you pleased to see Daddy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you tired, lovey?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Put your head down on Mami’s lap if you want to

  drowse.’

  She patted her lap, smoothing the creases of her skirt for Nia to lay her head on the intimate place, hers only, where Mami’s soft legs and secret body joined. And Mami’s hand stroked her hair, quelling the qualms in her head, by holding it still and calm. Nia kept her eyes and ears open, viewing the skewed world from beneath.

  As the train drew out, Nia considered the Brean girls’ sherbet dabs. She watched the father remove his arms from his daughters to light up a fag. Then he put his arms back round them and dangled the fag from the corner of his mouth, growing a worm of ash that hung and hung. He could talk like that, hardly moving his lips. The girls sucked the licorice, leaving a moist gloss of black on their lower lips.

  And his worm fell. It collapsed on to his knees, where the breeze from the open window winnowed it away.

  The carriage filled with smoke and chat. Joe and Ailsa lit up. Nia watched from the corner of her eye as Joe struck the match and offered it to Ailsa, who bent to take the light. She saw his hand move from cupping the flame to brushing her mother’s cheek. Nia registered the consciousness between her parents that trembled like the plumes of blue smoke the sun revealed as it beat on the glass. She saw that this quivering and pluming had nothing to do with her. She saw the same hand flap the smoke away from her and push the train window further down so that she didn’t have to breathe it. But the smoke would not go away and she had no sherbet dab.

  She looked over at Topher and Timothy White, fast asleep in their parents’ arms, one to each parent. Tim’s mouth was open and he was dribbling, his cheeks flushed. The parents were talking to one another with their eyes.

  ‘Don’t whatever you do put your heads out of the window, or your hands and arms, even when we’re moving.’ Babs’ voice dominated the carriage as it had the cabin.

  ‘Oh really,’ grumbled Ailsa under her breath.

  ‘Why shouldn’t we lean out of the window?’ asked one of the wives.

  ‘The wogs snatch your rings and watches. Just like that. Gone. Don’t they, John? They travel on top of the carriage, and snatch your valuables if you put your hand out.’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Well, don’t blame me if you get caught out, that’s all. They have blades to slice through watchstraps. They pull off rings. Before you can say Jack Robinson. Never trust them.’

  ‘All the way from Southampton I had that,’ Ailsa said to Joe. ‘Wretched bossy booming.’

  The Brean children looked fearfully at the windows. Their quiet dad grinned at them and took the empty yellow cylinders that had contained the sherbet.

  ‘All gone?’ he said. ‘Never mind. Snuggle down. Oh look! Look out of the window! Soon you’ll see a sight! A real treat!’

  Nia scrambled up to see a sight. She imagined a circus or a fair like the ones that came summer by summer to Abertawe. The sight turned out to be nothing but a long ribbon of road on one side and, on the other, a procession of ships sailing through the desert.

  *

  The Suez Canal. So that was what all the fuss was about. The Pharaohs had dug canals to link the Mediterranean with the Red Sea; Napoleon and his engineers, finding traces of these ancient workings, dreamed the same dream, which Ferdinand de Lesseps realized. How many Arab slave labourers had died to dig … this ditch the Roberts family was arriving to defend as – somehow – British, as British as the Manchester Ship Canal? From the train window, overcome by heat and light, Ailsa was seeing for the first time the artery of Britain’s Empire. She dripped with sweat; her head pulsed. The train slowed and stopped. It slid back to universal groans, and stopped again. Heat. Searing heat. Godforsaken salt marshes stretched away as far as the eye could see. Ailsa saw a lunar landscape flat as Suffolk and sterile as death. No shadows and no people. A silver liner glided in slow motion towards Port Said, the water of the canal invisible. Light overwhelmed the camera of Ailsa’s eye, bleaching out the mineral sands around the stationary train, as heat muscled in to the exposed carriages. Someone spoke the word terrorist. Those jokers have cut the line. The loco crept forward and stopped dead at a station at the end of the world.

  As Ailsa stepped out on to the platform, light intensified into a form of darkness; one eye broke up and spun zigzag shards on a central hub. Shot, shot, she cried out, stumbling down on to the sweltering platform. She vomited. The passengers pulled away.

  Was there a Medical Officer on the train? The request was shouted along the platform and a medic came running. Migraine headache, he said, like as not. Move her into the shade and let her lie still on a bench. Don’t fuss there. Cover her eyes. He’d inject ergot: half a tick. Not pregnant, was she? Ailsa heard it a
ll, magnified to blaring dissonance, like a sheet of tin being shaken with great force. While the medic rummaged in his bag, the wives clustered round. Quietly unlacing her hand from her husband’s, Hedwig took Ailsa’s head on her lap, stroking her hair. The Brean children were appointed by their father to fan the ill lady, which they did gently and patiently to a chorus of ‘Good girls!’

  You showed me kindness, Hedwig whispered. Now I take care of you.

  Nia’s shot Mami lay still. She might be dead. Although there was no blood, that did not mean anything. There was a pool of sick, smelling and black with flies, already drying. Nia felt blank. She would not tell anyone her suspicion, leaving the way open for Mami to come back to life. This closed the path to a darkness as vast as the world.

  Reluctantly Joe surrendered his wife to the womenfolk, for according to Ailsa Nia was a demon for running off and had spent the whole fortnight on the Empire Glory devising stratagems of escape. She was Napoleon on Elba, Ailsa had said – though where she thought she could run to on a ship was beyond her.

  Chip off the old block, you rascal, Joe thought. He hunkered with the child, with whom he felt gauche, uncertain – and halved, for his eyes were on Ailsa even as he calmed Nia. Father and daughter hid with the rest from the deranging sun under an awning. Some device had been detected on the line and was being made safe by Bomb Disposal. It was one of the tricks the wogs constantly played, never realising how dependent on us they were for their very bread. Egypt had gone to war against Israel last year. Now that they’d been trounced by Israel, they denounced the treaty they’d been happy enough to sign with Britain in ’36; set their sights on driving us out. So they cut the lines; went off with copper; chucked their grenades and ran: kindergarten terrorism. You couldn‘t take them seriously.