Into Suez

by Stevie Davies

  ‘Never! I don’t believe you!’

  ‘We did.’

  He uncurled her fingers and laid them over the back of one of his hard hands: ‘Artist’s hands,’ he said, admiring the shape and length of her fingers.

  Ailsa called them to the table. Braised chops, very tender, with carrots and onions cooked in the gravy, cauliflower and peas. As he poured a pyramid of salt on the edge of his plate, Joe told her all about the poor old Shufty Bint corporal, skipped the Wing Co and the riotous dancing and went on, when they got to the pears and custard, to the sock saga and the sale of the Tiger. He made the tale extravagantly comic, inflating it like a balloon, playing all the parts including the Tiger’s, giving over only when Ailsa begged him to: she had a stitch from laughing.

  Joe tempted Nia’s slender appetite with teaspoonfuls of Daddy Bear’s custard. He poured a hill of salt on to the table cloth for her and, with intense concentration, she created a world of tiny dunes and lanes. Foreigners the size of pinheads would wander down its sculpted lanes admiring the peaks and slopes of her white invented world. Watching their quiet daughter, while Ailsa removed the pudding plates and made tea, Joe wondered if he could ever bear to have another child and dispossess Nia of the unrivalled love that embraced her.

  ‘I say, Aily!’ He leaned his chair back on two legs and called into the kitchen.

  ‘Hallo!’

  ‘Whatever happened to that package the woman – the lady, beg pardon – on the ship gave you? Did you open it? What was in it?’

  *

  Nia got out before the trouble broke. She picked up Little Yellow Man and removed herself from the unease that might or might not give way to hurt silence, raised voices, a burst of tears.

  ‘Oh, you never said,’ her father had said to her mother.

  ‘Didn’t I?’

  The buzzing in the air was not caused by flies: there were no flies in the room.

  Standing on her bed, Nia looked out of the window, her vision criss-crossed by wire netting. Behind her the voices ebbed, then eddied again. No one was shouting, in fact there was laughter, but still the sound was not quite right. Now one of them was turning on the wireless, saying the dreadful word ‘News’, which preluded shushings and ‘Keep still’. Probably they had switched it on to hide their row because it was clear that they were not listening. Nia wriggled. The wireless came down on her like a net, trapping her boredom in her head. She ignored it until it was nothing but a humming, tuneless murmur.

  An Arab was walking, on his own, out and out into the desert. In a straight line. No camel. Wearing a pink headdress.

  Today she and Topher had buried a doll. Hester had yellow hair and eyes that opened and shut. Joe had paid the earth for her. A baby for you, Nia! A merch fach of your very own to look after! Nia had no heart to explain how much Hester disgusted her; how she wanted to spit on her. Each night when her parents left the bedroom, after the story had been told and the Lovely Words had been spoken, she’d shoved Hester under the bed. But she’d wake in the night, disquiet. Smeary shadows roved the walls. A body under the bed.

  Today Topher and she had dug a pit and buried Hester with all her grave-goods: feeding bottle, change of clothes. They’d erected a complex fortress on the site.

  Nia’s Arab man was still walking with measured pace, on and on, in a straight line. She closed her eyes. Each time she peeped through her lashes he was tinier. Who was the Arab? Who? Where could he be going? As she stared, the dazzling heat-haze troubled her obscurely. Her mind swung and her tummy felt sicky. She was surrounded by something huge of which she could only say that it was not herself.

  Later they would enquire about Hester’s whereabouts. They’d never guess and she wouldn’t tell. One day Nia knew she would forget. The forgetting went on always, and you had to hold on to anything you wanted to be sure of, in your hands where you could see it, like Little Yellow Man and her rag of cot-sheet: that she knew. She could already feel forgetfulness nudging in towards the doll.

  Nia jumped down, opened the door a few inches and listened.

  ‘Thought is free!’ she heard her mother exclaim, apparently in fun but with an undercurrent of unease.

  The Arab was now as big and small as one segment of Nia’s thumb. As she pondered him, flies batted against the grid of thin wire mesh and fell back. Fat they were and well-fed. Flies fed on donkey-turds and dog-turds and every kind of Egyptian filth. Then they flew to English houses to try to make you blind like Egyptian children. Mami chased them with a swatter in a frenzy of hygiene. Flies’ graveyards hung from the window: sticky ribbons blobbed with black. And yet you could see them altogether differently. Nia watched a bluebottle, perched on the sill to soak in sun. A visitor like a jewel, its surfaces emerald and sapphire. A creature of jet-black light.

  *

  Oh how tedious, he’s in one of his moods, Ailsa thought. Unless I’m very careful, we are going to have a blow-up.

  She was parched. ‘Let’s top our carburettors up!’ she said playfully, pouring glasses of water for herself and for him. ‘There you are, my lovely.’ He didn’t drink. He looked, she thought, using words not in Joe’s vocabulary, lugubrious, lachrymose. Ailsa turned her mind away. Once at the Wrekin after rainfall she and Archie had drunk rain from a leaf. She thought of grass blades bent back and beaded with pearls. She drank off a whole glass of water but it failed to slake her thirst. And still Joe was maundering. Telling her about how wretched poor Irene was in the desert. What had that feeble-minded female to do with Ailsa Birch?

  ‘But, darling,’ she broke in, ‘I don’t feel lonely. I honestly don’t. I’m very self-contained.’

  He met that with silence. Did not know what to make of it. She watched him swallow the word ‘self-contained’ and have trouble digesting it. I should not think of myself as Ailsa Birch, she thought. Why did I think that?

  ‘Don’t you miss me then?’

  ‘Of course. But I know you’ll be back at a certain time and I suppose I look forward to it rather than lamenting. Frankly, that’s not my way.’

  She spoke coolly and robustly, and made herself think of starch. Petticoats that stood up like a white tent that didn’t need tent-poles. That crackled when you tried to sit down. But I don’t want to turn into a starched petticoat, Ailsa thought. She made herself speak more lightly and tenderly. ‘Joe, sweetheart, you wouldn’t want me to be unhappy in my little corner of the world, would you?’

  ‘Of course not. But. Doesn’t the day seem long? Do you find it frightening to be here on your own?’

  ‘Frightening? There is Nia to look after and the cockroaches to whack with a broom. And, well, masses to think about.’

  ‘Like what? What are you thinking?’

  ‘For goodness’ sake! I mean: thought is free!’

  ‘What the dickens do you mean by that, woman?’

  She rounded on him. ‘Nothing. Stop being childish. And don’t call me woman. I won’t be called that. Don’t you think things and then forget what it was you thought? Do you tell me absolutely everything that goes through your mind?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t,’ she flashed. ‘Everyone needs to call his soul his own.’

  Joe flinched as if struck. His face darkened. He got like this and it was so silly: he had to be jealous of someone and, if she did not see anyone outside the family and the NAAFI girls for a whole day, he had to be jealous of her own relationship with herself, for heaven’s sake. What did he want her to be: a puppet?

  ‘I can only be me. Can’t I?’ she pressed.

  He swallowed. Ailsa quite clearly saw the moment when whatever switch it was that turned on this mood flicked it off again. She observed it every time but could never predict the moment or locate the form of words that would do the trick.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes. Oh heck, Ailsa, what a bloody ass I am.’

  And the best of it was, Joe soon got over it. Sorries and kisses. A walk, arms round one another’s waist, into
the yard, to see the stars hanging like lamps near to the earth. Or, contrite, he’d go out to bring in the washing, stiff with sand and sun.

  It was true, she’d kept Mona’s precious book to herself, feeling she had the right to open it, in her own time, when he’d gone off to work and Nia was lying down for a nap. It was a volume of Goethe’s poetry stolen from the library of the Empire Glory, with an italic inscription on the title page. Ach, du warst in abgelebten Zeiten / Meine Schwester oder meine Frau. In some other world, you were my sister or my wife. Light-fingered Mona had pinched it from the Allies, who’d commandeered it from the German Navy, who’d thieved it from the world. Hardly a legacy to share with Joe.

  In it Mona had enclosed the final version of Habibi’s poem: Her hands on the keys, your hands on her hands … The poem unlocked his heart for Ailsa: his love for Mona was infinitely tender, unassuageably needy. He identified with Mona as a mother with her child. A strange comparison, Ailsa knew, but, yes, that must be it. Habibi’s need to cherish was more powerful than his desire to be cherished. He’d willingly share Mona with anyone able to bring her peace. He loves me, Ailsa thought. But such love conferred a burden. Only if his wife was happy could he be happy and how, in such a world as the one in which Mona Serafin had grown up, could that ever be the case? Once she had the poem by heart, Ailsa had ripped the draft into confetti scraps and thrown it away.

  Well, Joe’s rages were only ever hiccups. Over now. Ailsa heard Nia speed from her room, telling Joe off, saying that he must be spanked, driving him before her into the sitting room with a rolled up newspaper.

  The air cooled suddenly here. When Ailsa went out into the back yard, her arms came over all gooseflesh. The quarrel had left her, as always, off kilter, with a sense of being obscurely in the wrong. Yet how had she offended? She knew Joe couldn’t condone any relationship with the Jacobs family. The humiliation of watching him salute his superiors on the dock at Port Said stayed with her, making her own cheeks burn when she thought of it. Knowing his sensitivity, she shared the quick of his embarrassment, and in the moment of seeing how … what was it? … small he looked, she’d broken the tie with Mona like a zip wrenched undone.

  Now that he’d raised the whole thing, Mona rushed vividly to mind, rousing a wistful sense of loss. And a stir of impatience with the narrowness, the strait limits of this so-called married quarter. Never having a proper conversation with anyone. Ailsa knew where the toffs’ bungalows were at Masurah. She’d bloody well go and see Mona, if he went on like this. Why not? Ring the doorbell. Here I am, Mona. Remember me? If Joe only knew how he provoked her to do the thing he feared. Standing in the lozenge of light outside the kitchen, Ailsa became conscious of silence around her. It rang in her ears like the tacit messages in phone lines strung from pylon to pylon. So quiet that the barking of wild dogs and the roar of planes hardly impinged. The stars hung large and close, like lanterns.

  Joe came and mantled her shoulders with a cardigan, reminding her of the mosquitoes. He’d rolled down his sleeves and buttoned them, to set her a good example.

  ‘Listen, Joe. You can’t hear a thing, can you? It’s totally silent. Haunting really, isn’t it? So lovely. And the moon.’

  They listened together to the silence of the desert. Then they sauntered to the end of their yard. He’d wondered, he said, whether it was very selfish of him to have wanted them out here, where life was not easy. And his mam would gladly have kept them with her.

  ‘I’d have died, Joe, died, if you’d left me behind.’

  His jealousy was appeased. As she spoke these words, which were nothing less than the truth, Ailsa was aware of yielding her husband total reassurance. At some level she knew quite well that Joe’s jealousy somehow preempted hers. Sensual love exposed the quivering heart of you. She could have been jealous of every woman on the camp, except that he, the more openly emotional character, got in first and made it unnecessary.

  ‘Joe,’ she said. ‘I ought have shown you. I’m at fault. Mona Jacobs gave me a book of German poetry. I just put it away. Would you like to see it?’

  ‘Oh God, no. Please. Stupid fuss I made.’

  ‘Don’t you miss wet weather, Joe? A nice bit of drizzle. Cool and pleasant. Your body having a drink. We’ve got cooked minds out here. What wouldn’t I give for a deluge and no brolly.’

  8

  ‘Culture!’ exclaimed Hedwig, pushing forward to join Ailsa and Irene in the NAAFI queue in Ish. The wives were not pleased with the German woman’s contempt for the decencies of Saturday queuing; they stared and muttered. Ailsa heard the word Kraut. Hedwig, oblivious, went on, ‘Hochkultur! At last we get a chance to hear some real music! Believe it or not! Beethoven in the desert!’ Her voice pronouncing the word Beethoven took on a note of reverence. She handed Ailsa a leaflet advertising a concert at the De Lesseps House. Under the auspices of the Anglo-Egyptian Friendship Society, she read. In aid of refugees. Hedwig had been given it by her countryman, Erich Stolz the watchmaker. ‘And look who’s playing!’ She pointed at the name that had already leapt out at Ailsa. ‘You remember her, don’t you? From the Empire Glory?’

  Ailsa blushed scarlet. She wanted to cry.

  Hedwig was saying they must wear evening dress to the concert. Pearls and gloves. Unfortunately she had no pearls and, alas, no decent gloves any longer, for her lilac evening gloves had gone astray in a previous move, no idea how, since she’d wrapped them in tissue paper. Her evening gown she had made herself in pink silk, hoping that no one could tell it was home-made. Bigwigs would attend the concert. High-ranking Egyptian ladies wearing gem-encrusted dresses. Cultivated, educated people would attend, Hedwig said. She pointed to the name above that of Mona Serafin-Jacobs: Oum Koulsoum. An Egyptian lady who would be singing classical songs. Erich had described her as the most famous woman in Egypt, a national hero. Erich had been interned as a prisoner of war from Rommel’s first desert campaign. Now he’d learned Arabic and lived and worked among the Egyptians. A highly civilised man, Hedwig said, and no mean violinist.

  It was so important, Irene remarked, ignoring questions of high culture, to include the right amount of onion in mince, chopped up nice and fine, as on its own mince was so bland. Didn’t they think so? And plenty of seasoning. That had been how Irene’s mother had cooked mince. Also one must be careful not to over-cook.

  ‘But, Irene,’ Hedwig said, ‘minced animals are not what we should put in our mouths, so I feel.’

  ‘Well, they are not precisely animals …’

  ‘What in heaven are they then?’

  Irene began halfheartedly to distinguish pig from pork. Common assumption was with her but reason had deserted her and she faltered.

  ‘Oy – why are you pushing in, you?’ one of the women in the queue demanded of Hedwig. She’d covered her curlers with a floral scarf for a do at the airmen’s mess. The faces of the sergeants’ wives all said, Vulgar, and the woman read the message. She prodded Hedwig. ‘Wait your turn like we all have to.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Hedwig rounded on her. ‘I am not here for these sausages but to talk with my friends. I would never queue-jump in my born days. Could you kill a cow?’ she asked Irene. ‘You yourself? Bludgeon her with a mallet or slice her throat? Are you happy to employ illiterate men to do this for you?’

  Ailsa turned away, leaving them to wrangle. She steadied herself against the counter. Whatever it was that had sparked between herself and the Arab woman belonged in another world. A shipboard romance. Without the romance. So she’d told herself. But the name on the leaflet – the prestige of the name – brought their friendship out of hiding. Mona seemed to turn and look Ailsa straight in the eye, saying, See what you have enabled me to do, habiba. And what you have turned your back on. That characterful oval face, the changing weather of its moods; her hands. Hands that had been paralysed since Mona left her teacher but whose music Ailsa had somehow, by luck or grace, wakened.

  Would there be Forces people at the concert? How would she broach it
to Joe? For certainly, without the shadow of a doubt, Ailsa would attend.

  Still parrying arguments about the legitimacy of mince, Irene told the woman in the queue, ‘She’s with me actually and she’s not in your way,’ and to Hedwig, ‘You have your ideas, I have mine. Let’s agree to differ. Oh look, there’s my Roy. Roy! Coo-ee!’

  Roy – Ailsa had to be careful not to call him Chalkie in front of his wife – appeared, beaming, and took his wife’s basket as if it were an honour she bestowed. He escorted the three women out. As they emerged into the Place de la Gare, the heat seemed to Ailsa stifling, the street clamour deafening. She looked round the square.

  A tall woman was walking away. A dark head wearing a red beret at an angle.

  ‘Sorry,’ Ailsa said. ‘Go on without me.’ Chasing full pelt after Mona, she ducked and wove through squaddies and black-gowned women. Stumbling into a portly Egyptian in a tarbush, she hurried down Empress Avenue, past the Voyageurs Hotel and the Bon Goût restaurant, where the person in the red beret crossed the street with long strides. But as the woman twisted her head to check the traffic, Ailsa realised it wasn’t Mona. Nothing like.

  Pace slackening, she stopped, awash with sweat. Men in gallabiyyas flowed in all directions and a stately, whiskered official in an elegant suit carrying a fly whisk was forced to step out of her path, flashing the bare-armed white woman a glance of intrigued rebuke. Men’s faces leered. Clapped-out cars and an army Jeep rushed past; bells rang on bicycle rickshaws and a donkey bearing the deep red stripes of many beatings was dragged past her on a rope, a boy lashing its rump with a cane. Ailsa stared. She smelled the donkey’s stink as it gargled and foamed at the mouth. The eyes were huge and melting, but sticky with pus and beset by flies. Ailsa stood near enough to hear its harsh breathing as if its lungs were full of death.

  And then came the boy.

  ‘Death to the British!’ the youth shouted. Burly military policemen bore down on him.

  ‘Evacuation with Blood!’ He bawled this slogan in English straight into Ailsa’s face. For a shocked moment, she thought of menstrual blood. His mouth seemed to come at her; she smelt garlic breath; saw milk-white teeth, the pink interior of an open mouth. The whole face seemed to rear at her, a colt stampeded (for he was young, in his teens). She saw the whites of his eyes. And then he was taken. One towering military policeman at either side lifted the lad sheer off his feet. At once he went limp in their hands, still close to Ailsa on the surging pavement, where a new pandemonium had ensued, one he took no part in. She saw that his eyes were beautiful. Dark brown pools of sudden serenity, with long, curling lashes. His lips moved silently, as if praying, and this quiet at the eye of the storm seemed to go on for an age, which in reality could only have been the seconds it took for Ailsa to step back.