‘I cried,’ Ailsa said.
‘So did I,’ said Irene. ‘I came out of the back door when I heard the singing. Thinking it must be a broadcast. I’m afraid I listened in to the whole concert, Joe.’
Joe was touched at the thought of their neighbour listening in the cool stillness, arms folded, midges swarming like fireflies in the pool of light.
‘Joe, you ought to be flattered,’ Ailsa said.
‘Oh I am. Really I am. Blushing actually.’
‘You’re not,’ Ailsa said.
‘You just can’t see it through my handsome tan.’
‘Where did you learn to sing like that?’ Irene wanted to know.
‘No learning involved, to speak of. Everybody sings in a choir where I come from.’
‘I heard you and Nia clapping,’ said Irene. ‘And I clapped too. I hope you don’t mind.’
It seemed a cue. Chalkie and Irene must come in of an evening for a drink, he suggested. Ailsa’s smile looked brittle. Irene retreated into her shell. She didn’t tend to go out in the evening, she said, because she found she got worried about her quarter. In case it wasn’t safe to leave her babes in it, even with a babysitter.
Ailsa said simply, ‘I’m sure we’re very safe. It sometimes takes a while to feel safe though. Everything’s so strange at first. I thought I was going to be plagued by migraine. But, touch wood, I’ve not had it again.’ She tapped Joe’s head with her knuckle. ‘Or, I should say, insh’alla, shouldn’t I? Arabic. If God wills. By the way, Irene,’ she went on, ‘Joe and I have been putting our heads together about that motor bike. I wonder if you would allow us to buy it from you – perhaps at half price? – and then the two boys can go on using it to go to work? Having their own transport is an advantage – and Joe has faithfully promised me to ride safely. Of course you wouldn’t get the socks thrown in if we did it this way.’
Irene looked fit to cry. It was not the money, she said. Of course not! She didn’t begrudge Roy anything. And it was certainly not the socks. If the Air Force would just allow the men to wear other socks than Air Force issue, there would be no problem at all. She was perfectly willing to knit Roy’s socks. Irene’s mouth turned down; her face twisted. The thing was, it was not safe at all for men to ride alone. She was sure Joe was a careful driver and would take care of Roy. But the Egyptians were so dangerous. They hated us, she said with a tremble in her voice. They were blowing men up, a few here, a few there. Opportunists. Terrorists. The men who were murdered were people’s husbands and fathers and sons.
‘Do you know what their slogan is? Evacuation with Blood. They come up behind with knives,’ Irene said, ‘and cut your throat. I know they do. No one tell me they don’t, because they do.’
‘Well now, dear,’ said Joe in a gentle voice, ‘I can’t deny it has happened in the past. But it is not a regular thing. If it were, and if we were really in danger, you know, the Forces would never allow the women and children out here in the first place. Would they?’
‘Wouldn’t they?’
How did Chalkie put up with this perpetual bleating? It got on his wick. After half an hour of the sorrows of Irene, Joe was glad to leave her to Ailsa and go and call the children for a siesta in the hive. He did feel for her, of course he did, and she was an excellent sort of woman. Look at how she’d admired his music. But what a misery-guts. He felt damn sorry for Chalkie. The bloke should put his foot down. And wouldn’t that be more reassuring for Irene in the long run?
The water of Timsah lapped around his ankles, tranquil and homely. The green woodlands that fringed the shore could easily have been growing in the Gower. Arms crossed, fists in armpits, he waited for Chalkie to hire a skiff and bring it round. He glanced down at what Ailsa called his pelt, the forest of dark fur that covered his chest and arms, which he had once been afraid (knowing nothing of women) would revolt her smoothness. For Esau thy brother is an hairy man! she’d said, taking delight in what he deplored as crude. Even now it was sometimes hard to believe she could love the physical specimen he was, child of steelmen and miners, and looking and sounding every bit the part.
In the beehive, the kiddies were now in their shorts. He watched Nia wind her arms round Ailsa’s neck and give her cheek a tender kiss. Then, not to leave Irene out, she did the same for her, and Christopher followed suit because he would always do what Nia did, even act like a girl. Although Ailsa always said, Ah Joe, she gets these winning ways from you.
Chalkie paddled the skiff in close to shore and leaned over to balance Joe as he climbed on. Joe settled behind him, holding one of the double paddles.
Chalkie asked, ‘Did you bring it up about the Tiger?’
‘Ailsa did. Leave it to her, I would, she’s clever like that. She used to ride a bike herself, you know. Courier in the war.’
They paddled sleekly out towards the centre of the lake, taking it easy, leaving the shore chatter and activity behind. Chalkie had had a bit of a turn on guards last night. Dusty Miller going on about shooting a Gyppo. Sick of the velvet gloves approach to the wogs.
‘Shoot me a wog! Is what I want!’ A moderate dose of Dusty went a fair old way. Joe privately thought it was the wartime desk job that had left the chip on his shoulder. But, fair play, Dusty was an uproarious drinking companion.
Chalkie lamented the weary work of sharing a duty with a bloke like Dusty, when you just wanted a smoke and a brew. ‘And he’s looking out for wogs the way normal blokes sniff for skirt. Come three in the morning, Dusty hears a suspicious noise behind the wire and a sort of cracking sound – and he’s up with his revolver – fires two or three times and we both hear a snort and a thump – dead body falling, Dusty’s first kill. Nothing else. So we both spend the rest of the night three feet from a corpse – and Dusty’s ecstatic, died and gone to heaven: I’ve got my first wog! Going on about being blooded. Kissing his revolver. At first light we see the body lying just beyond the fence, and Dusty’s going, A donkey! I’ve shot a fucking donkey!’
‘Jesus Christ!’
Chalkie stopped paddling and turned to Joe. The boat rocked slightly in the water. Odd look on his face.
‘Taf, he was inconsolable. Oh my God, mate, what am I going to do, I’ve killed a poor donkey! Yes, and he’s over there with the donkey, and the donkey’s throwing this whacking great shadow, and, you know, the flies are out in squadrons, and there’s already a stink, and Dusty’s got his head down with the donkey’s head … and blood all over his hands … and he’s on his feet and throwing up.’
‘Not told Irene about it, have you, Chalkie?’
‘Best not, eh?’
‘Best not.’
Joe wondered if Dusty would have thrown up if the donkey had turned out to be an Arab after all. You didn’t know how people would react when it came down to it. Thinking of bullnecked, loudmouthed Dusty, he smelt fear, the kind of fear that screws itself up into aggression, aggression that must get a climax somehow, and the moment it does, turns to a shambles of squeamishness. Death is real then? Half-baked, slow-witted recognition. Oh, I never imagined.
*
If there was another moaning, drivelling word out of Irene, Ailsa would grab her knitting needles and plunge them into her heart. There was no excuse for it. Someone should tell her. Instead of that, the husbands were polite – and then sloped off, down to the boats and the inviting water. She got to her feet and brushed the sand off her shorts, slapping it away.
Looking down at Irene’s nest of light brown curls, Ailsa thought: oh but she’s a good sort, she really is. She has been keeping it all in and now she’s allowing herself to let it out.
But what am I: a sick-bag? Was this all her life amounted to? Torpor of tedium in a horror of heat?
The water gave a shout. It called.
Nia and the boys had attached themselves to a vast Irish family that had taken over two of the neighbouring beehives. The kiddies played leapfrog. Nia was joining in beautifully, nobody could say: spoilt only child. Nia went flying over t
he back of a big bendy boy. She was taking very little notice of Ailsa. The vaulting girl, in mid-air, seemed the picture of happiness.
Irene had turned the topic of conversation to the difference between shortcrust and flaky pastry.
‘Sorry, but I want to go in,’ Ailsa interrupted her.
‘In?’
‘In the water. You don’t mind just keeping your eye on Nia for a few minutes?’
Irene’s mouth gaped. Ailsa skedaddled without waiting for the answer. Had Irene cast a veto, she’d have slapped her, hard, across the anxious mask of her face that refused life, refused life itself! Ailsa ran down the searing sand, glimpsing her daughter look up as her mother mutinied. Inwardly Ailsa begged Nia to let her be, let her go, just this once let her hop, skip and jump into her own world. I can’t stand it. Don’t ask me to. This is me now. Cheerio!
Not a bleat out of Nia. Oh good girl.
Ailsa waded past squealing small fry in the shallows. Past men in boats. She freestyled out beyond the reach of all but the strongest swimmers. Timsah grew colder as its depth increased beneath her; she couldn’t tell exactly where she’d come from. The lake, spinning on its axis, had come to rest in a new alignment with the woods and sky. Matchstick folk along the sands were indistinguishable: which was the officers’, which the men’s beach?
The rafts were nearer at hand than the shore. Using the wet ropes strung round the base, she dragged herself to the edge of the nearest, kneeing and squirming her way up. The raft rocked slightly and a shrimp-pink young man who’d been sunbathing took fright and, mumbling an apology, slid off the side into the water. Ailsa sat down on the edge. The bone-dry, bleached boards took no more than a second to absorb footprints. The salt water drying on Ailsa’s skin in the suspicion of a breeze gave cool sensuality beneath a veil of godsent cloud.
A mile across the water, near the eastern shore, ocean liners and trading vessels paused in patient convoy, waiting to pass north from Africa, India, the Far East. The queue would stretch back through the Bitter Lakes, until the pilots allowed passage into the canal’s last leg before the Mediterranean. Great silver birds. She watched in fascination. Their stillness, power, direction. Behind the picturesque serenity lay the endless, disputed deserts. Sinai, bleached yellow, the prettiest honey-colour, stretched into shimmering distances towards Nazareth and Galilee. Places where Jesus’s feet once trod; places now of murder. O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie, Nia had lisped last Christmas. No village or town in Israel remained untouched by the slaughter and evictions. Over there, across the canal and the picturesque sands. Ailsa saw in imagination Mona’s violated home at Qatamon. The abandoned apricot and orange trees in the garden of Mona’s childhood, our cat with her kittens basking abandoned in the shadow forever. Mona had belonged to an earlier wave of refugees, Christian Arabs caught up in the so-called Arab Rebellion of the 1930s. If she were to venture back now, she’d find a Jewish family in her home.
Ailsa hadn’t understood, hadn’t wanted to understand, what Mona was telling her about the crime against her people. Jewish suffering; Zionist crimes: the mind staggered before the twistedness and treacheries of the postwar world. How did you gain a true perspective? Ailsa had spent her life so far cocooned in the sticky threads of received opinion whilst flattering herself she was free.
Invisible guns ensured the dreamlike passage of ships through Suez – guns held by us, the folk larking on the western shore of Timsah. The leading vessel had evidently been given the go-ahead. It slid forward slow-motion towards Ish, where it would carefully penetrate the narrow opening of the canal. Smoke poured from the funnels; from this distance one could not hear the engines. Its gliding motion was soft as a swan’s.
After the concert Joe had not raised the subject of Mona and Ailsa hadn’t pushed him. But he’d been so moved by the piano music that she’d been half expecting him to withdraw his objections. They were balanced, the two of them, in a loving equanimity she shrank from disturbing.
Joe wasn’t going to budge though, was he? Ailsa swished her feet in the water. The silver forms of fish basked below in the clear green depths, water-ghosts.
*
Ailsa lumbered up from the lake, thigh muscles gone to jelly. And there they loitered, Nia, Christopher and Timothy, with Irene under a pink parasol, held by a tall black man in a pure white gallabiyya and a red cummerbund.
‘Oh you’re here. Thank heaven,’ Irene said. She waved the black man away. He bowed slightly and withdrew, shutting the parasol. Irene looked fit to faint. ‘Don’t worry, I shan’t say a word,’ she whispered.
‘Pardon?’
‘I won’t mention it. But I can’t keep doing this.’
‘Mention what? To whom?’ Ailsa, bridling, scooped Nia up and held the little body tight, feeling through the cotton the pit-a-pat of heart against heart. The woman was a policeman, a spy.
‘Mami, did you have a nice swim?’ Nia asked.
‘I did, lovely. I went for miles! I’m fit to drop. Thanks for keeping an eye on Nia for me, Irene. Perhaps you’d like a dip now and I’ll take care of the little ones?’
‘Oh no.’ Irene jumped back as if she’d seen a nasty stinging insect.
‘Fine but, if you change your mind, just say the word.’
‘Topher, your mami can’t swim, can she?’ Nia observed, looking down at him from Ailsa’s arms.
‘No.’
‘Mine can.’
‘Well, mine can if she wanted to,’ said Christopher, crestfallen. ‘But she doesn’t want to.’
‘Are you scared of water, Mrs White?’ asked Nia directly.
‘No, dear. Not as such.’
As the child turned her face back towards her mother, Ailsa saw with relief that she had rejected the impulse to call Topher’s mami a scaredy-cat. Her mind and Nia’s mind seemed to braid, beneath the level of words. Irene marched them all back to the beehives with such a glower on her face that Ailsa thought, Poor soul, her day is wrecked. Irene had thought she’d found a pal, but no such thing.
‘I’m ever so sorry,’ she said to Irene. ‘I didn’t think you’d mind.’
‘I looked for you everywhere and I couldn’t see you at all. And the lake looked enormous. Like a sea. I wondered if I should report you missing. And what if Joe had come back?’
‘Irene – it was just a dip.’
‘And I was looking for Roy and Joe and I couldn’t see them either. The last I saw of them they were sculling out in one of those green boats. And there wasn’t anyone. Only this big black man who insisted on holding a pink umbrella over me. Where did he come from?’
‘The Sudan probably. Or from Nubia – in Upper Egypt.’
‘The point is, poor dear Nia got into a bit of a panic while you were away.’
‘I didn’t so.’
‘Well, darling, you did, a funny sort of turn. She looked at me and went all shivery.’
Caught a whiff of your anxiety, no doubt, thought Ailsa. Because she’s fine, look at her. She lay down, salt-crusted, sand-coated, in a semicircle round her daughter, with their heads on a towel, in the grateful shade. Spoons they were, she told Nia, one lovely darling spoon inside the other; and Little Yellow Man, Nia whispered to her, was also a spoon, the tiniest spoon of all in her hand, but who knows, Ailsa murmured, perhaps he has a minuscule spoon of his own which we can’t see, and within that spoon…
When they woke, Joe was back and Irene had been reunited with Roy. She kept her eyes on her husband, trailing his every move, and drinking reassurance from his presence. Roy was the kind of man who could not keep still. He busied himself building a sand crocodile for his boys, for Timsah, he said, meant ‘crocodile’, what about that then, lads? What if a daddy croc came waddling up out of the lake now this minute! Up and up the beach going Araagh! Araagh! looking for his dinner? Well, we’ll have a croc of our very own to defend us, won’t we?
And he tirelessly performed the drama of a croc-fight until a mob of kiddies had assembled, out of th
eir minds with laughter, stuffing their fists in their mouths, falling down in the sand and popping up with a gnashing roar, until even Irene allowed her face to mist over with a wan smile.
‘Oh Irene, he’s such a sweetheart, isn’t he, your husband,’ Ailsa said.
Irene gave her a hands-off look. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘And that’s why.’
She did not say why what, and Ailsa did not ask.
‘I swam out to one of the rafts,’ Ailsa mentioned to Joe, within earshot of Irene.
‘Oh aye?’
He had a cigarette stuck behind each ear.
‘Fun was it, my beauty?’
‘Oh aye,’ she said, parodying him. She felt kindled and aroused.
‘Cheeky.’
‘Parrot. Oh aye means you aren’t listening to me, are you, Joe Roberts? You want to be careful what you say. Never know what you’re agreeing with.’ She pulled out one of the fags from behind his ear, said ‘Finders keepers’ and hung it from her lips, pouting forwards for a light. He supplied the flame, chuckling.
So there, you see, Irene, spoilsport, she thought childishly, he doesn’t mind, not a bit. Ailsa stroked Joe’s furry back as he sat smoking contentedly, and thought how lovely his body was, his flanks and wrists, she would have liked to have caressed the place there, between his legs, which was hers and hers alone, and which no one else might see, at least no woman, and make it stand up tight and when it did so, the blue in his eyes would ache, ache, so that she would have the impulse to comfort him for this joy that was power and also loss of power, and the rage of hunger that was its own satisfaction.
‘Can you read my thoughts?’ she asked him.
12
They dragged the sacking off the Matchless, their pride and joy. The bike represented a friendship dearer to Joe’s heart than any since childhood, formed in the Desert War where they’d literally shared their last drop of water. Something so innocent and likeable about Chalkie, with just a dash of mischief that Joe delighted to bring out of him. They’d give the Tiger an overhaul, polish it up and ride off into the desert with the rest of the boys who’d managed a day’s leave. They’d imagine themselves back at Cyrenaica or on the never-to-be-forgotten coastal run from Tobruk to Alamein and Alexandria, the desert sand bone-white, the glimpsed Mediterranean bluer than any ocean he’d seen or imagined. Tomorrow would be Chalkie’s thirty-third birthday. After their jaunt they’d fetch up at the Victoria Bar in Ish to celebrate with a couple of drinks.
Into Suez Page 16