The Empire Glory seemed another world. Passing the signpost to the officers’ exclusive bungalows at Masurah near the Bois des Fontaines in Ish, she’d peer down the boulevard: no Mona. But they might bump into one another. Leave it to chance.
Ailsa tapped on the window for Nia to see that she had nearly, oh so nearly, got the peel off whole!
Nia turned her head, busy palms still patting the fortress under construction, and grinned approval. Ailsa finished the potato, halved it and dropped it in the saucepan, then picked up the twin tails of peel and held them either side of her head as ear rings, bouncing up and down like springs. Nia and Christopher ran to the window and stood craning and giggling through the wire netting. In they rushed to claim the peelings and out they ran again.
And in the wood at the Wrekin with Archie, Ailsa, a girl of sixteen, had sauntered through green gloom over the spongy give of beach mast and held his hand as rain pattered through the branches. Would Archie ever marry? She thought of him working the family farm under the Long Mynd. Drops had fallen coldly on their heads as they kissed. It was odd how, separated from her cousin by a continent, Ailsa thought of him more than she’d ever done at home. For ‘home’ was what Archie represented. She turned on the Baby Belling and crowded the saucepans on to its single hot plate. ‘Miracle-worker, you,’ Joe always said in wonderment. Today they had fresh cauliflower from the Egyptian market; she had the knack of simmering it till it was just this side of soft. Not the king himself feasted on better meat and three veg, Joe said: that was for sure. Well,
Ailsa had replied, it is not likely we’ll find out. She would not say that the Primus was her enemy, though it smoked and stank and exerted a senseless will of its own. Knowing its temperamental ways, she kept a lookout for a tongue of flame to flare up and scorch her eyebrows. The creature’s square head accumulated soot. Ailsa had to pull this off and clean the clogged hole in its black neck with a pipe cleaner. But she made little of all this and spoke back to the treacherous Primus with hilarity. She rigged up a grill for Welsh rarebit by upturning a two-bar electric fire on a row of bricks.
Genius! Ein Meisterstück, Ailsa! Hedwig in nearby Palmerston Row had scurried off to build her own grill. Now they all boasted upside down electric fires. Pregnancy and her husband’s doting love suited Hedwig. Ailsa was glad to brush up her German and, now that the Englishwoman was the one mangling a foreign tongue, the poor soul didn’t put her back up half as much. There was a little German community in Ish, men who’d stayed on after the prisoner of war camps had closed. Why would they want to go back to their ruined, starving homeland? Nazis, Joe called them. But he took his watch to the German watchmaker’s shop off the avenue Impératrice, knowing Fritz would do a good job of mending it, and was not disappointed.
Ailsa glanced out to check on Nia. And, oh dear, she was burying Christopher. With his permission, no doubt, the goose. If Irene came round to collect him, only to find him buried in his best red shorts, there’d be frosty looks, possibly words between them, which Ailsa very much didn’t want. Irene was a good enough soul: kept herself to herself and wouldn’t be seen dead with a headful of curlers in the NAAFI. Irene never came wheedling to ‘borrow’ a cup of sugar, in order to bore you to the teeth with inane gossip. She took her boys to the library and read to them at night. And Chalkie, Joe’s pal, was the salt of the earth.
Checking the Primus, Ailsa went out to the children: ‘What are you doing, Nia?’
‘Mami!’ In rapture Nia left her prey in his temporary grave and launched herself at Ailsa, embracing her thighs with abandon, as if she hadn’t seen her for a week.
‘Got sand in my eyes,’ Christopher lamented. ‘Mrs Roberts!’
‘Don’t bury Topher again, Nia,’ she said as severely as she could. Disentangling herself from her daughter, she released the lad, who was only covered in a thin layer of sand. Nia’s powers of excavation didn’t stretch much further. Ailsa dusted him down and ran her hands through his white-blond mop. His eyes were dark brown, creating an odd effect in the albino face.
‘Can Topher stay for tea, Mami?’
‘No, I don’t think so, Nia. His mummy wants him, doesn’t she? Play nicely for another fifteen minutes and then come in and wash your hands because Daddy will be home for tea, and Christopher’s daddy too.’
‘My dad’s on guard duty,’ Christopher said in a lugubrious voice.
‘My daddy’s in the sky,’ said Nia. They both looked up.
Ailsa went in and turned the control on the Primus down just a touch. Expecting Joe home so soon gave her heart a lurch, a pang of joy. It was still the first time ever. Because he’d gone away to the war and come back, and gone on ahead to Fayid and she’d followed, and because their life would be a rhythm of such absences and reunions, their love had the quality of – what would you call it? – perpetual romance? A weak word for the passion that moved her when she opened the door to Joe. A word too secular for her repeated sense of homecoming, her rush to the magnet of her husband. And her knowledge that he was the same. The raw emotion on his face. His ability to laugh and dance, so light on his feet, it was a scream, with her in his arms, all round the flat; his brimming tears at the height of their lovemaking. His skin was thin. He was transparent.
She went to lay the table. They had no easy chairs at all. The great brown Marconi wireless stood on a box, beside a lamp, serving the purpose of a hearth. They grouped themselves around it. But their life was luxurious in comparison with the austerity they’d left behind. To see tinned pears stacked on the NAAFI shelves along with the delicious cubed fruit salad with cherries for Nia still made Ailsa dizzy. Not even rationed! Ailsa had put on weight and was more rounded (which she was glad of at the French Beach) with all the good eating. But where were her wedding and engagement rings? A short tizzy. Ah, good, there on the sudsy side of the sink. Naked without them.
*
Joe itched to be home. Just to check: is this really you? My Ailsa with me in this wilderness? Her milky skin that mustn’t burn. The straps of the petticoat which she had informed him was ‘ivory, not grey, Joe, if you don’t mind’. The silky texture running over her flat stomach and hips. Something sizzling in the oven, scenting the kitchen with an overpowering sense of home. On the table, as soon as he had washed, as much as he could eat.
Instead of this, he and Chalkie found themselves detained at the offices of Fayid Hospital waiting for a document to be typed by the sand-happy corporal who acted as head clerk in the general office. As he touch-typed, the clerk murmured to himself, ‘Shufty bint! Shufty bint, oh aye!’ A harmless, superficially unflappable bloke, he could type at a phenomenal rate and talk to himself at the same time. Should have been sent home a long while back but somehow had got stuck here in the sand like a Jeep with its wheels spinning. Been in Wogland, he said, since the beginning of the war.
Chalkie said he knew how to put Joe in the way of half a ton of spare socks if Joe was interested. Interested? said Joe. I’d kill for them and so would Ailsa. She spent her whole time purifying his appalling socks. They stink, she said, in the nostrils of the Almighty. Fallen off the back of a lorry, had they? Call them liberated, said Chalkie with a grin. He’d done a bit of bartering with one of the stores-wallahs, ending up with several gross – more than even he could use with his sweaty feet. And Irene was worried about having such a mountain of liberated socks in the house.
‘What are you asking for them?’ Joe asked cautiously. Socks, a unit of exchange, were worth a fortune. In the furnace heat underwear turned to damp rags and disintegrated, steeped in sweat and fungal rot. The Air Ministry judged sock-rations by temperatures at Whitehall.
‘Free to you, Taf. I’ll sell the bulk of the stuff, of course.’
‘You sure, Chalkie?’
‘Course I am.’
‘What did they sting you for?’
‘Oh well.’ He coloured up and picked at a hangnail. All his fingernails were bitten down to the quick. ‘The Tiger. And fifty in cash th
ey’re paying.’
‘No. You’d never give up your bike, boy. I don’t believe you.’
‘Well, you know, I couldn’t get the petrol.’ Chalkie paused. ‘And of course my Irene isn’t keen.’ He blinked and looked away: the bloke was prepared to give up his pride and joy for his wife’s peace of mind. Petrol could be found, if you wanted it enough. It wasn’t that.
A heap of rusty tin the Tiger had been when they’d first got hold of it. More like a bomb waiting to explode than a vehicle. Chalkie had ridden it with the seam of the petrol tank leaking petrol. One spark and up she goes! Joe had helped him knock, weld and polish it into shape. By the time they’d finished, the Tiger was a beauty. They’d rigged up a garage from a packing case and Joe had designed a makeshift alarm. Now the 350 cc Matchless was to be turned into socks.
‘Shufty binties!’ the head clerk broke out. ‘Not long now, lads,’ he told the men. ‘I wouldn’t mind seeing them, I can tell youse that,’ he said to himself. The office fan was placed on his desk, as if for brain-calming purposes. No one mocked him or took notice of his monologue. Wants his mam, thought Joe. Needs a wife.
The loss of the Matchless got to Joe somehow. He hadn’t given it a thought since his family had joined him but now it reared up in his imagination. He could feel it between his legs, the engine he’d tuned vibrating against his thighs. The snarl as he or Chalkie accelerated away, ploughing up dust. The roaring thrill of it. Been to the Pyramids together they had, on the Tiger. Climbed the Lesser Pyramid at sunset and drank a Stella at the top.
‘Give it her, boy, give it her good.’ The clerk pulled out another page, separated the carbon copies and inserted new paper. ‘Oh, I will, matey, don’t you worry, I surely will,’ he replied to himself. ‘Good and proper.’
‘Is that nearly ready?’ Chalkie asked him. ‘I don’t want to mither you but we’re officially off-duty.’
‘Coming up to the boil she is,’ said the corporal. ‘Wait your turn. As the Bishop said.’
Joe shrugged, raised his eyes to the ceiling, where flies roved round naked light bulbs. ‘Knock down the price, Chalkie, and I’ll buy her. We can still run around on her the same.’
Chalkie’s eyes behind the thick panes of his specs looked as round as the glasses. He licked his lips nervously. ‘Well, but how could you afford it, Taf, with your family and all?’
Joe wondered at his own rashness in making the suggestion without OK-ing it at home. As a married man, he ought to be beyond such irresponsibility. The root of his dependence on Ailsa twinged as he tugged on it.
‘In any case,’ said Chalkie. ‘Wouldn’t the missus object?’
‘A few beers, a laugh, the odd game of football, a bike ride – a man’s got to have the right to that. Why does Irene mind so much?’
‘Tell you the truth, Taf, she’s afraid of everything pretty much. She’s afraid of the poor old char wallah. Thinks he wants to kill her. I have to search the bed for spiders and snakes every night. Pity to add to the list if I can avoid it.’
Joe thought with pride of Ailsa’s strength of mind, her plucky refusal to be daunted by smells, cockroaches, dirt, whatever Egypt could throw at her, and her interest in what she called the real Egypt, beyond the confines of camp life. At the same time, he was visited by a quick, poignant view of Irene, so dignified and pleasant, walking with her sons to the bus stop, in a creamy pleated skirt that swayed this way and that, and white high-heeled shoes. She’d never be good-looking, though he supposed she was to Chalkie. But Irene was well-groomed and held her head high, all the while fearing a trip-rope.
‘Brave she is, boy, to cope. No one would ever guess she felt like that. Her bearing it is.’
‘Look through there,’ said Chalkie. ‘Hey, take a shufty. For Pete’s sake!’
The sand-happy corporal twisted his head and peered through the open partition into the neighbouring office, where laughter had broken out. He grinned and the grin widened into a beam, the first smile Joe had seen on his poker face. ‘Oh, that’s nothing!’ he said. ‘Just Wing Co Jacobs from NDivision. Habibi we call him. Bringing light relief sorely needed.’
‘NDivision?’
‘Neurotics as opposed to Psychotics.’
‘Habibi?’
‘Arabic, mate. For Sweetheart. He calls us Habibi. And we call him Habibi.’
A growing audience clapped and sang along. The tall, gangling Wing Commander waltzed a bluff staff sergeant from Burnley round the office. The officer’s mop of black curly hair flapped up and down as he whirled his partner. The waltz turned into a tango, the men clapping. The stout sergeant, playing the lady’s part for all he was worth, allowed himself to be bent back, pouting and smouldering.
Oh yes, I know you, Joe thought with a smarting pang. The Jewboy whose wife had latched on to Ailsa on the voyage out, with the blond poufter hanging on his every word, smarmy, charming. Joe listened in disgusted fascination to the joshing as the laughter peaked in the office next door. Everyone was dancing now. A broad-shouldered clerk took up the tune of ‘Making Whoopee!’ on a paper and comb. Habibi! caterwauled the men. Ya Habibi!
Joe could hardly help grinning and tapping his feet. He was sorely tempted to whisk Chalkie in and play the fool with the rest. It was something he did at the drop of a hat, childish excitement welling up, his pals egging him on. But for God’s sake. No. Officers did not, could not, behave like this. Only once a year, at Christmas, did they descend from their high horses, to serve the men their dinner, a one-off ritual that confirmed the order of things. This loosened it. These bad eggs, public schoolboys left over from the war, Commies, with no more than a month’s training at Cranwell, knew that very well.
The sergeant from Burnley, after a final canter round the desk, was whirled into a flat-footed arabesque and released. Applause. They called for more. That’s it for now, lads! But I shall return. Now, what the dickens did I come in for? The officer scratched his head. The laughter waned and the men dispersed. Someone handed the Wing Commander a sheaf of papers, speaking with respect. Joe heard him enquiring kindly about someone’s wife and kiddies.
He remembered the way his own wife had looked up at the fellow, meltingly. The courteously familiar way the Wing Commander had spoken to Ailsa. He’d have kissed her goodbye if Joe had not been there.
And yet at the same time Joe thought – knew even – that the officer was queer as a coot. There was something effeminate about him: soft gestures, affected talk. The jag of jealousy persisted. Joe turned away before he could be buttonholed. Sweat prickled in his armpits, for all that he’d been standing in the stiff breeze of the fan.
As they left the building, they talked of the terrorist taken last night just inside the perimeter with a can of petrol. Of course Irene was afraid. She was right to be afraid. With the war over, the RAF was marshmallow at the centre. Handling the wogs with velvet gloves. A new breed of cut-throat terrorist was cutting railway lines, stealing the blankets off the camp beds of sleeping soldiers in their tents, setting tripwires on the Treaty Road. The soft types in high places would not allow the Forces to retaliate in the measure required.
‘You’re right about the Tiger,’ he told Chalkie. ‘Dead right. It wants getting rid of. Heap of old scrap.’
‘Oh well, I don’t know, Taf. You almost had me convinced.’
Perhaps Ailsa is afraid too, Joe thought. Terrified all the time and too proud to show it. He was ashamed at his wish to have something of his own that he did not share with her. Anxiety stirred in case she had the same impulse. There’d been boyfriends before him, he knew. He’d seen the adoring way her cousin Archie looked at her. And perhaps memories of Archie and the rest of them still stole through her mind, the very thought of which was intolerable. Share Ailsa he couldn’t.
Chalkie was urging a weekend outing to Lake Timsah. The kiddies got along like a house on fire. For Christopher it was always Nia this and Nia that. They had a little playworld, he said. It was sweet to see.
‘Right you a
re. Let’s do that. Ailsa and Irene should see more of each other. Good pals they could be. Well, I’m off home, boy,’ Joe said and laughed, ‘to shufty bint.’
‘Right behind you, mate. Whoa, no. Guard duty.’
*
The thought of Ailsa doing or thinking things behind his back had stuck in Joe’s mind at an angle. He was discomposed but kept forgetting, as he made his way home, what the heck he was nettled about. He thought of Habibi kicking up his heels. This led back to the memory of the wife passing Joe’s wife a package at Port Said, amid all that extravagant hugging and kissing and swearing eternal faith: where had Ailsa put that? What was in it? Why would she have hidden it? Looked like a box of some kind or a book.
But when he saw her at the window, the whole question was closed: Ailsa waved and jumped up and down, pleased to see him. Joe admired Nia’s castles and bridges in the yard. Works of engineering they were, so careful and precise. Clever little hands.
‘Oh,’ sighed Ailsa. ‘I’ve missed you.’
He held her delicate waist contained between his hands. Her solid, honourable and reassuring self. ‘Tell me you love me,’ he said.
‘I do love you. All and entirely and, oh, stop it, your tea’s so nearly cooked, Joe.’
Calamine-anointed Nia sat with her golly at the laid table, humming to herself. He stole up and placed his hands over her eyes: ‘Guess who?’
‘It’s you, it’s you, naughty!’
‘Come and see something, Nia.’
‘What?’ She scrambled down from her seat and put her hand in his. He drew her to the window.
‘Nia, someone’s been building fairy castles in our front yard! Who can it be? Was it Mami? What do you think, girlie?’
‘Me and Topher did it.’
Into Suez Page 10