What was Mona thinking and feeling? Lonely probably. But why should the queen of such a castle and courtiers be lonely? Ailsa shrank back into herself, buried in her own anguish and the cynicism it brought with it.
Habibi’s military uniform was a disguise. He’d kept it on after the War because Mona wished to go east. It didn’t suit him, he didn’t suit it and he was wrong to wear it. Cadging a lift to the Orient, the Jacobs had said on the Empire Glory. Now he bent over Mona at the piano, reading her disturbance; stroked her hair. Mona turned her head, looked up. The two exchanged a look so private and nakedly intimate that Ailsa had to turn her head away. A door closed softly in her face. Good, let it close. That’s that then, she thought, standing as far outside their home as if she’d been in the desert.
It struck Ailsa that the Jacobs always seemed to have a third party in tow, whether Alex or herself. What was it all about? For a long while, mesmerised by Mona’s spell, Ailsa had been content that nothing be labelled. She’d never made much of Alex, so quiet and (was this the word?) insipid. An echo or shadow to Habibi. Arms draped round one another’s shoulders; private jokes; a conspiracy of rueful smiles and intent looks. Had it all been some sordid game between them, stemming from the romantic goings on at the Old Brewery, a game which she, in her naïveté, had not understood – but which her husband, in his coarser way, had smelt out? Had she, Ailsa, been brought in for the purposes of symmetry?
She’s led you wrong, that woman. You don’t want to live like that, Ailsa. You’re too good for the likes of her.
Ailsa could go to her husband and confess that she’d seen through Mona. She had never intended to blow their family apart. It was not too late. She pulled herself together and began to gather up handbag and cardigan. Joe would take her back. Or at least patch up some practical solution. As she got to her feet, the doorbell sounded. Alex went off to answer it. Ailsa heard his heels clicking over the floor; the front door opening; an exclamation, then a wild cry of pain or of joy. A whirlwind of a child was entering the house.
Ailsa raced barefoot out of the living room. Through the hall, Nia in her green bonnet and velvet suit, cheeks fiery red, came hurtling towards her mother. Ailsa snatched her up. Nia clamped both legs round Ailsa’s thighs. The child’s cheek and forehead burned against her mother’s face.
‘It was wrong,’ Irene said. ‘Nia knew it was wrong. Even he knew it was wrong.’
‘But is she all right, Irene? Is she ill?’
‘No. No, don’t worry,’ Irene stroked the back of the limpet child who was silently glued to Ailsa so that they formed one creature. ‘Bless her, she couldn’t eat much – or drink, that was the thing that worried me. Perhaps if you have some fruit juice, Mrs Jacobs?’
Somehow Ailsa managed to prise the limpet off to the degree that Nia could drink. She sat on her mother’s lap and fished out the ice cubes with her fingers.
‘You’re not thinking of taking her away again, are you, Irene? Because she is going nowhere,’ Ailsa said. ‘Nowhere without me. Do you understand? How dare you take her away? Does Joe know you’ve brought her round?’
Irene shook her head. Never for one moment had she intended to keep Ailsa’s daughter from her mother, or so she said. But Joe had been beside himself. He’d arrived at her flat with Nia, wanting Irene to babysit her in her own flat. She’d agreed to take the child for a night.
‘I don’t regard that as an excuse, Irene. You should be ashamed,’ Ailsa hissed.
In stalked the cat, Isis. With a cry of joy, Nia greeted her, cuddling the heavy body in both arms, nuzzling Isis’s head and looking into the green lamps of her eyes. The two of them curled up together on the sofa and fell asleep. Irene explained in whispers that Joe had forced Nia on her. It had been no picnic. Irene had taken her into her own bed but Nia had just sat bolt upright, sucking at her sheet, and all she’d say was, What are you wearing a hair net for in bed, Missus? Did you knit it? Where’s Topher? Where’s Uncle Archie?
‘Eventually she dropped off,’ said Irene. ‘Oh, thanks, Mrs Jacobs, I’d love a cup of tea. Do you mind – English tea, real tea? I think we need to speak to Joe. And, Ailsa, I know I’ve been impossible. I came back here and plonked myself on you… But when I saw Joe like that…’
‘Like what?’
‘Off his rocker really, Ailsa. When he arrived at my flat with Nia, he was crying his eyes out. Quite incoherent. He seemed to be saying that there was something wrong with you, you couldn’t look after Nia, would I babysit in my own flat? At first I took it that you must be ill. But then I thought: he’s drunk. It seemed best to take her for a night. No idea where you were, to telephone. Actually, Nia was terribly well-behaved, bless her. She sat and played with my jewel box and we went through my photo album of Roy and the boys. It was very unsettling. Nia was so polite. Not like her at all. Then yesterday Joe arrived again and I’m afraid he’d had more than a few, Ailsa, he was tight.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Oh – he wasn’t all that nice.’
Whatever had gone on, Irene was not saying, except that she’d had to order him off. She blushed and patted the back of her hair, fingering rapidly round the edges of it to make sure that every strand was tucked in. She didn’t meet Ailsa’s eyes.
‘The fact is, I’m in a false position out here. The scales have just fallen from my eyes. As it says in the Bible. Sounds jolly melodramatic, I know, but that was how it was. I came back here to be close to Roy.’
She frowned; her fingers twisted a handkerchief in her lap.
‘But I had left everything I had of Roy in Britain. Timothy and Christopher. What was I thinking of? There is nothing of Roy here. Nothing. But Joe, you know, is a lovely warm man. He is, really. At heart. I’m afraid I rather – fell for him, Ailsa. Very wrong of me.’
‘Irene,’ Ailsa reached across to take Irene’s hand, thinking, You are not the enemy, you never have been. ‘I knew that.’
‘You did?’ Irene cringed into herself, blushing profusely.
‘Joe reminds you of Roy, that’s all.’
‘Do you forgive me then, Ailsa?’
There was nothing to forgive, Ailsa said. They understood one another. Irene would work out notice at the NAAFI and then go home to England and try to make a life for the boys. Years it would take, she said, decades, finally to believe that there was no Roy on this earth. But she had begun to believe it. She would never see him again. But so it was. There was no replacement. And she might as well get used to it.
‘You will marry again perhaps,’ Ailsa said. ‘I think you will. When the time is right.’
‘Who would want to marry me?’
‘Plenty of men. They’ll be queuing up.’
‘Well, he would have to be a very special man.’
‘Of course.’
Irene smiled. ‘Will you come back with me, Ailsa? Oh, thank you, Mrs Jacobs. What lovely looking biscuits, so unusual. Are they foreign?’
This was the answer: to move in with Irene until something could be sorted out. Ailsa put her belongings together; lifted the sleeping Nia on to her shoulder. She allowed herself to meet Mona’s eyes only at the last minute. They were red and swollen with crying. How did you say goodbye to someone for whom you felt opposite extremes of emotion? Did you promise to keep in touch? Or not acknowledge the moment? They would not see one another again, not if Ailsa had any say in the matter.
‘Toodle-oo,’ said Irene as they climbed into the taxi. Mona and Habibi turned together on the dark drive and went back into the yellow light of the bungalow. No parting kiss; Ailsa was glad Mona had made no motion to kiss her.
*
Dusty, propping up the bar in the Mess at Fayid, had reached the maudlin stage. He was off on his hobbyhorse about how the A-rabs maltreated their animals because they were subhuman. The A-rabs, not the animals. Animals were superior to humans any day. Sacred bleeding trust, he kept saying, his language slurred, that’s what it is, mate. He’d beat up any A-rab he saw hitting or
kicking his donkey. He repeated the story Chalkie had told Joe about how, on guard duty with Roy White, Dusty had fired to kill a marauding wog, only to find when the sun came up that he’d assassinated a poor old Eeyore.
‘Oh aye?’ said Joe. He wished Chalkie had not been mentioned. It was like a hellish toothache you’d temporarily forgotten about. Then someone mentions teeth and the evil that sleeps in your mouth wakes up, screaming blue murder.
Dusty said that the Ancient Egyptians were a far cry from the modern Gyppos. They were a different race, see. Superior. The Pharaohs worshipped animals. Their gods were hawks and cows and jackals, even dung beetles.
‘Oh aye? Another?’ Joe was pissed and his head muzzy, except for the memory of his pal, clear as day, which he tried to deaden by drowning it in another beer. But Chalkie would not be chased away. Joe saw his friend’s light, wiry frame. His ready grin. Five foot four in his socks but like the miners in the pits at home, Chalkie had as much strength in him as many broad-chested six footers. No side. Boy of few words. The genuine article.
What about going on the town? someone suggested. A couple of other boys joined them. Merry they were. Looking for a bit of fun, a bint or a spot of trouble. Target practice! someone yelled. The bastard wogs had torn up the Treaty. That made them fair game.
They spilled out on to the forecourt, ready for anything. Somehow or other the four airmen fetched up at the ammo dump. Fancy that, look where we are! Well, now that we’re here… They helped themselves to Service revolvers and ammunition. In civvies rather than uniform they were but the sergeant, seeming a bit skew-whiff himself or perhaps just a simpleton, didn’t turn a hair. He signed out the firearms just like that. Then they borrowed a Land Rover for transportation. Singing at the tops of their voices.
And sang all the way to Ish, Joe yodelling a descant. He’d been drinking steadily all day. Now he bellowed: ‘We’ll keep a welcome in the hillside!’
Far, far gone he was. Not a care in the world.
They staggered out of the Vic. The fucking Jeep had been stolen by a fucking arse of a wog. Which was the kind of underhand thing fucking wogs did. No scruples, see? That meant the boys had the fucking obligation to steal a fucking wog’s car in reprisal. Smashing the window of a battered old Austin, they broke in and shot off racing round Wogtown, tyres squealing, hands on hooter, driving at anything that stepped into the road.
Dusty in the driving seat was fired up and blasting on all cylinders. Get the golliwogs, get them, get them, he repeated.
Joe saw where they were. He remembered, with a black, sick qualm, the wrong that had been done to him. His wife had been seduced. His child had had to be farmed out to another woman, and that woman not the brightest button in the box. The pervert Wing Co who’d blown a bloody great hole in Joe’s life lived just down here in Masurah. He knew the house; had reconnoitred.
‘Turn right, boy,’ he told Dusty. ‘By there, go on. Now right again. Straight ahead. Left! – I said left! Now stop.’
All the windows of the bungalow were lit up, none of the blinds or shutters being closed. Its whiteness was as milky as the three-quarters moon that hung above the roof. They piled out of the car into the chilly air; mounted the steps to the veranda. Stealing to the window, they peered through. Some kind of concert. All the faces were turned to the source of the singing, just out of Joe’s vision. If you could call it music – a tuneless dirge that took Joe back to the caterwauling of the Great Oom at the De Lesseps House, to which he’d been treated. The mooing of a passionate cow. He scanned the profiles of the audience, standing round with drinks in their hands. White, brown and black faces. He was sure he could see Black Sambo, the Ethiopian golliwog saffragi who’d been at the bus stop with Nobby Bowen and claimed to be a prince in his own country. And Bowen was here too, with his tart of a Gyppo wife. Bowen who’d recognised Joe’s wife that Saturday morning as they got off the Liberty bus, causing Ailsa to skip off sharpish before she was caught in her deceit. So: not just Jacobs but Bowen. They’d all had her. They’d educated her. To kneel on hands and knees like a bitch on the carpet, to be taken from behind. Joe retched. He felt sick to his stomach. His view tilted, righted itself and swooped sideways: he propped himself against Dusty’s back, chin hooked over his pal’s shoulder.
‘Fucking A-rabs,’ whispered Dusty. ‘And niggers. In with bleeding RAF officers. Would you believe it, Taf?’
‘Oh aye. I’d believe anything. Roomful of fucking degenerates.’
There was a cat in the window. A huge creature like a lynx. It sat back on its fat haunches; bared its teeth and snarled.
‘Puss! Puss!’ cried Dusty, making a chirruping sound between his lips. ‘Come on now, nice pussy!’
The cat poured itself away from the window sill. The song seemed to be over in there. They could hear clapping. Some geezer laughed, a peal of laughter. Want to share the joke? Come out here and share the joke. A record was put on the turntable: some wailing nonsensical female wog-noise without a fucking tune. Joe was paralytic. He swayed where he stood. Passing out. Dots in front of his eyes. Everything he saw was a seething mass of dots. It made him livid. Shoving his mate out of the way, Joe craned at the window to try and spot his wife among the crowd. He saw the hind quarters of some lanky bastard in a cream polo neck sweater with lah-de-fucking-dah swept-back hair, holding forth on some subject with camp hand gestures. No way to see if he was talking to Joe’s lawful wedded wife. But the lady of the house was there, wearing a low-cut blue gown, bending to light a fag from a lighter offered by a bald bloke in a grey suit. Even in full evening dress, she was untidily put together, strands of hair escaping from a pearly slide. Straightening up, Mrs Jacobs caught sight of him; locked on to his gaze.
Yoo hoo! He waved. Décolletage was the word they used, wasn’t it? That was the word. Yoo hoo, slut!
This was the woman who had prostituted Joe’s wife to her own husband. Ailsa must be in there with her. Under her wing. Not really her fault. Sleeping beauty.
Joe was round at the side of the bungalow before he knew what he was about to do. He laid his shoulder to the door but it was on the latch and he tumbled in, striking his forehead a ringing blow on the wall opposite. Stunned, he stood still a moment. Where was she? He was taking Ailsa home. She’d come with him if he had to drag her. It was not anger that he felt for her, he had no wish to punish her, although she must be taken, by force if necessary.
Joe lurched into a room where the bastard party was going on. The room froze and all at once unreality set in as if Joe had stumbled on to a theatre stage. Faces gazed at Joe’s hands in horror. Or at his genitals. Flies undone? He glanced down: no. In looking down, he realised the revolver was pointed straight at them.
He at once lowered it to his side. His stomach gave a violent heave and he was aware that he might throw up any minute. Serve the wankers right if he puked up all over them.
Dusty was not far behind him. He came cannoning into Joe. Joe stumbled forward. Stopping dead, he gaped round at the wogs in the officers’ quarters.
‘Fucking bastard niggerloving traitors!’ he yelled. ‘What have you done with her?’
It all happened at once. The fair-haired nancy who followed Psycho Jacobs around like a bitch on heat stepped forward with a smile on his face, offering a hand to Joe. ‘Come on, Mr Roberts, have a drink, you don’t need that, do you?’
‘Sergeant to you!’
Joe brought the gun up and motioned the pansy back. He looked round for his wife. She was not apparent.
The room suddenly seemed to explode. Joe’s head exploded with it, and the main light went out.
Dusty had fired his revolver into the chandelier and splinters of glass were raining down on their heads. Screams.
The queerboy was coming forward again, very slowly.
‘Let me have it, Joe, come on.’
Let him have it, thought Joe.
The queerboy yelped the moment before the gun went off. The shot went wide, as it had been intended to
do. But some other man at his shoulder gave a gargling, rasping shout and a body slumped. Frothing blood leapt out of the skull of that man who was falling, falling, behind the queer boy.
Something launched itself slithering at Joe’s legs. Something nightmarishly soft and fleshy. That cunt of a cat, of course. He wheeled and shot down towards it.
The pandemonium of screaming and the woman singing her dirge on the gramophone went on and on.
Joe reeled round and shot the gramophone to pieces with an ear-splitting report. The cat appeared on the window sill, outside the pane.
Dusty looked down, shrieked like a woman and ran, whimpering.
Joe did not run. He looked down where Dusty had been looking.
It was a child. He hadn’t known there was a child in the room. Mother and daughter had been sitting behind the door. Joe looked down and saw the child’s scarlet hand, held out in bewilderment. Blood leapt from the hand to saturate the woman’s turquoise head scarf.
23
A vast crowd in the square roared and surged. The noise was deafening.
It woke Ailsa up, half dreaming she was at a rugby match at St Helen’s and all the Welsh boys roaring in ecstasy over the genius of Haydn Tanner or Bleddyn Williams. For a moment she was foxed: but oh yes, of course, they were at Irene’s flat in Ish. Dainty and dinky, Irene had said it was, just the job. They needed to be nearer to Joe, Ailsa had brusquely told Mona, unable to look her in the face. Punishing her friend. But for what? Mona would cry; she’d cried already. How beastly Ailsa had been. But it couldn’t be helped, it had to be done. Ailsa marvelled at her own ruthlessness and at the way her tender feeling had turned round into animosity. She remembered Nia thrusting Mona out of the door when they’d returned from Palestine, butting her in the stomach, her head a weapon. Children registered everything. Babes and sucklings. Nia knew Mona was death.
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