In any case, I had definitely made up my mind that I wanted to marry her and the sooner the better. I see no point in long engagements, particularly when there is a war on, so I intended to tell her that night that there was nothing whatever to be frightened of, and that I meant to come round on the following morning to call formally on her mother and father and ask her hand in marriage before I returned to Cairo.
Had she been an English girl I might have been a little worried about my past, and the effect that its disclosure, which I could not have decently avoided, would have had upon her and my prospective parents-in-law. But I felt that I could produce the grim skeleton which I kept so carefully locked in my cupboard to Daphnis without fear when the first suitable opportunity offered, and it did not seem to me that I was bound to go into the matter at all with the parents of a girl who knew no English people, and with whom I had not the faintest intention of settling down in England to live.
Apart from that I saw no reason why a father of any nationality should consider me as an unsuitable husband for his daughter. I was young, sound in wind and limb, and had no previous encumbrances, either wives, children, or troublesome ex-mistresses. I had a comfortable fortune, carefully invested, and when my elderly uncle, the old Major-General, died, however much he might dislike me, he could not prevent me coming into the baronetcy.
With these thoughts in my mind I set off from my hotel that night, arriving outside the little door in the garden wall well before midnight, which had been the hour agreed on. As I stood there I puffed hard upon a cigarette, my nerves all keyed up with the anticipation that the next hour would prove a milestone in my life, giving again that solidity which would come from having someone besides myself to care for.
The moon was now in its last quarter and the sky was cloudy again, so that not a glimmer of moon, or even starlight, came through, and it was very dark, so dark that more than once I examined the door with my lighter to make quite certain that I was waiting outside the right one.
At last there came the sound of the turning key and a crack of greyness showed. Unable to wait a second longer, my heart thumping in my chest, I pushed the door open and stepped inside. Subconsciously I noticed a row of pale yellow squares on the ground floor of the distant house, where lights were still on behind drawn curtains, but my whole attention was fixed on Daphnis, whose figure showed only a faint whitish blur on the darkness. I stretched out my arms and a moment later she was in them.
I had hardly touched her when I realised that there was something wrong. She didn’t feel right. She didn’t smell right. Her kiss was different and her lips were thin and hard. In a second it flashed upon me that this was not Daphnis that I was holding but some other woman, and I thrust her from me.
Out of the heavy gloom there came a stupid infuriating giggle, then Alcis’ voice:
“I’m afraid you took me for Daphnis, didn’t you? Are you very disappointed?”
The giggle and the voice clearly implied that she had not minded being kissed, and had purposely let me take her for Daphnis. Evidently she had been sent to let me in, but she could quite easily have stepped back instead of deliberately allowing me to take her in my arms. I was absolutely furious.
“Where—where’s Daphnis?” I managed to stammer.
“She couldn’t come, so she sent me to entertain you instead.”
This brazen offer to act as a substitute for Daphnis was so blatant and unwelcome that I’m afraid I did not scruple about hurting Alcis’ feelings as I replied curtly:
“Thanks, I don’t want entertainment, and you’re telling a lie when you say that she sent you for that purpose. Why couldn’t she come? What’s gone wrong?”
“All right, then,” Alcis suddenly flared. “You shall have the truth if you prefer it. Paolo arrived unexpectedly from Cairo this afternoon, so my aunt arranged a dinner-party. The guests are still here and naturally, now Paolo has come back, Daphnis hasn’t any more time to give to a stray Englishman like you.”
“Who the hell’s Paolo?” I demanded angrily.
In reply I got the final blow.
“He’s a Secretary at the Italian Legation and he is Daphnis’ fiancé.”
Chapter IV
The Sinister Major
Alcis’ explanation of Daphnis’ non-appearance was so totally unexpected, the news that she was engaged to be married so shattering, that for a few moments my brain went completely blank. Without consciously parting from Alcis I found that the door had closed behind me and that I was standing in the street.
Anyone who has read the earlier part of this journal may say that it served me darn’ well right, and that having dallied amorously without serious intentions in the past, Fate was evening up the balance now that I really had fallen for somebody by placing her out of my reach. Yet I can honestly declare that I have never deliberately led a girl up the garden path with the idea of just amusing myself and then throwing her over.
Of course it would not be fair to imply that Daphnis had promised to marry me while already engaged to somebody else, but she had led me up the garden path to the extent of believing that she cared for me as much as I did for her, and she had never even hinted that I had a rival who already had a definite claim upon her.
I suppose, in view of the voice that I had heard on the first night I entered the garden, I should have been prepared for something of this kind; but silly as it may seem now, in the past week I had really come to believe that I had fallen asleep for a few moments behind the bushes, and only dreamed that Daphnis had been in the garden with another man before coming down to meet me.
Now I knew quite definitely that I had not been dreaming. Alcis had said that Paolo was a Secretary at the Italian Legation, and both Daphnis and the man had spoken in Italian. Then there was her sympathy with the Italians and admiration for Mussolini’s achievements—sentiments which could hardly be wondered at if she was engaged to a prominent Fascist.
Sick with rage, mortification and disappointment, I made my way slowly back to the hotel. On my arrival I ordered a bottle of brandy and a syphon to be sent up to my room with a vague idea of trying to drown my misery. Of the three emotions I think disappointment was uppermost. I wanted so frightfully the feel of Daphnis’ hands and lips; the caress of her whispers and the magic of her laughter. Anyone who has really been in love will know that it is no joking matter, and that when things don’t go right one can hunger for the touch of one’s beloved as desperately as any dope addict ever craved for drugs.
That night I drank far more brandy than was good for me as I sat, hour after hour, engaged in a morbid inquest on what seemed the death of my one genuine love affair. I had to admit to myself that I had done my best to force myself on Daphnis, and therefore was at least partly to blame. Apparently she had been physically attracted for the moment, and as her fiancé was in Cairo had given way to the temptation to amuse herself, knowing that I should be leaving Alex at the end of the week and that if she played her cards skilfully it was most unlikely that any unpleasant complications would result. Doubtless that was why she had been so insistent that I should not call or write to her. She was evidently anxious to keep her parents entirely in the dark about me.
Only one thing remained seemingly inexplicable. If she was openly engaged to this fellow Paolo, which could hardly be questioned in view of the fact that her mother had thrown a dinner-party for him that night in their house, why in the world had he come secretly to see her in the garden during the previous week; and how could one account for that curious snatch of conversation I had overheard in which she had said how much she hated the subterfuge necessary to these secret meetings, and he had replied to the effect that it was quite impossible for him to see her openly as her stepfather would never permit it? Puzzle as I would, I could make no sense at all out of that part of the business, and eventually, dead tired, muzzy but not tight and maudlin with unheroic self-pity, I fell asleep.
Next morning I had a shocking head, but after my bath I
felt a bit better, although still incredibly depressed. As there was no hope of seeing Daphnis again, even the sight of Alexandria had now become irksome to me, so I set off much earlier than I need have done and was back in the camp near Cairo by mid-afternoon.
Among the New Zealanders I had made some splendid friends, two particularly: Jack Benham, who was rather a serious type and a young schoolmaster from Dunedin, and Toby Spiers, a tall good-looking boy with one of those open sunny natures which win the hearts of men and women alike. I found my brother officers anything but cheerful as the only thing they had to talk of for some days was the beating that the Nazis were giving us in Norway, and it seemed that Mr. Chamberlain’s remark about having missed the bus had been a bit premature.
In the days that followed I nursed a bitter grievance; yet, in spite of what I had magnified into a criminal betrayal, I could not prevent myself craving for Daphnis to an extent that at times became a positively physical ache. Then, just a fortnight after I had last seen her, Hitler went into Holland and Belgium, and as the news of the German successes trickled through in broadcasts and press, we all had something to think about in addition to our private worries.
Two days later it was decided to reinforce our outposts in the Western Desert, and the battalion to which I was attached was among those selected for the task. Periodically, for a long time past, Mussolini had been banging his little drum and this was one of his more bellicose periods, although few of us thought then that he would be fool enough to plunge Italy into war for the sake of obliging Hitler. It seemed so clear that he had everything to lose and nothing to gain. Abyssinia and the Italian East African Colonies would automatically be cut off from their homeland, so it could be only a matter of time before their garrisons were compelled to surrender. Libya lay naked in the breeze between the British in Egypt and the infinitely more powerful French Armies of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. We only had to squeeze and the wretched Italians, caught between two fires and cut off from succour by our Mediterranean Fleet, would be in a hopeless mess. That would be the end of the New Roman Empire. However, more, I think, with a view to reassuring the Egyptians than anything else, certain of the Australian and New Zealand troops were despatched to the Libyan border.
Mid-May was for us a period of intense activity, as the preparations for the move had to be carried out with the least possible delay, and within a few days we were converted from what had virtually been a training to a fighting unit; then there was the three-hundred-mile trek via Alex up to Mersa Matruh. The frontier was another hundred miles, but that was covered by outposts and flying columns of regulars. Mersa Matruh had better supplies of water than Sollum, Buq Buq or Sidi Barrani, and although it was hardly more than a large village it offered better harbour facilities, too, so for these reasons it had been selected as the main concentration point of the Imperial Forces in the Western Desert, and we were set to what then seemed the quite pointless task of strengthening its defences.
Actually, most of the work had to be done at night as one could not even lift a finger without sweating in the daytime. Sometimes the heat was so fierce that the men fainted from comparatively trifling exertions, and the temperature often went as high as 120 degrees in the shade. Owing to the extraordinary clarity of the atmosphere, however, one could see quite well for all ordinary purposes by starlight, and the moonlight was so bright that one could easily read or write letters by it.
We had ample water to drink but little to spare for other purposes, so permission was given to the men to grow beards, and we soon looked very different from the smartly-turned-out crowd that we had been in the days when we were stationed near Cairo. The sandfleas were an absolute pest, and before we had been in our new camp for a week I counted fifty-seven bites on one of my arms. Very soon we all grew to hate the very sight of the desert; but to remain there was our war for the time being, so there was nothing to be done about it.
All through those long hot days we watched with growing concern the collapse of Holland, the penetrations of France, the cutting-off of the northern French, British and Belgian Armies, the over-running of Belgium and the evacuation from Dunkirk.
It was hardly to be expected that, however bravely the Dutch fought, they would be able to stand up to the full weight of the German attack for long, and the German break-through at Sedan appeared at first to us onlookers as no more than a local disaster such as must be expected from time to time in the hazards of war. But, as we followed that extraordinary campaign and saw the Nazis thrusting through St. Quentin, Cambrai, Arras, Amiens and Abbeville, right to the coast of Boulogne and so on to Calais, we began to wonder when the French would really make a stand and bring this nightmare to an end. In the mess we could talk of little else, and it was perhaps that uneasy expectancy and anxious waiting for each fresh bulletin, day after day right through the latter half of May and early June, which, to some extent, kept my thoughts off Daphnis.
Looking back on that brief affair, which for me seemed to have ended so disastrously, I could not help admitting to myself that I had read much more into Daphnis’ attitude towards me than was really justified. After all, at our first meeting I had not been conscious for more than ten minutes, on the two early-morning rides Alcis had been with us for a good part of the time, and during my first visit to the garden Daphnis and I had hardly done more than look at each other while we sat almost in silence for a quarter of an hour; so the whole affair really boiled down to that second night in the garden.
In those fleeting and now unreal hours we had exchanged many kisses and our feelings for each other seemed to me, at least, to be beyond doubt; but that was the one and only time when Daphnis had let herself go, and that might almost be accounted for by a touch of midnight moon madness.
If I had been strong-minded I suppose I should have forced myself to put her right out of my thoughts, but instead I was lamentably weak about it, and whenever I was not occupied with routine duties or speculation as to the latest developments in the Battle for France, I tortured myself with memories of Daphnis; dwelling upon her evident complete lack of real feeling for me and the extreme unlikelihood of my ever again being able to take her in my arms with her willing consent.
Gradually my attitude changed. I began to think that there must be some favourable explanation for her strange conduct. The brutal shock of that last night in Alex became dulled, but the glowing picture of her beauty and her sweetness when we had been together in the moonlight remained and became more glamorous in retrospect. Slowly the resolution formed that by hook or by crook I had positively got to find a means of seeing her again.
For a few days I contemplated writing to her, but on consideration it did not seem to me that would do much good. It was getting on for five weeks since I had seen her, and it was utterly impossible for me to judge what sort of mood she would be in. Moreover, it was always possible that, if I wrote, I might really cause trouble for her with her parents or her fiancé.
It then occurred to me that if I wanted to marry her I was going about the business in an entirely wrong manner. That may have been because, for several years, I had been living a life of a social outcast. Otherwise I should probably have realised sooner that the most sensible line of attack was, in some way or other, to secure an introduction to her people in order that I might cultivate them socially and in due course become accepted as a friend of the family.
Owing to the exclusiveness of the wealthy Greeks in Alex I knew that getting an introduction to the Diamopholi would be no easy business, but it seemed that the old man at least must have some English friends, if only business and official acquaintances, so I sat down and wrote half a dozen letters to the various friends I had made at the English club during the first week of my leave in Alex, asking each of them if they happened to know any members of the Diamopholi family.
All the replies were disappointing except that from Barbara Wishart, one of the sisters that I had been going out to Ramleh to play tennis with on the afternoon of my accid
ent. Barbara wrote that the Diamopholi were very pro-British and that Madame had been to the house several times recently to sit on a Red Cross Committee of which Mrs. Wishart was chairman. She went on to say that if I could get down to Alex on the following Saturday, an excellent opportunity would present itself for a meeting, as a big Red Cross fête was being held on that day at which Madame Diamopholus would be present.
On the receipt of this good news I decided to ask for a week’s special leave. In the ordinary way I was not due for leave again for another seven or eight weeks, but my job as interpreter put me in rather a different category from the other officers. As long as the battalion was in an inhabited area I had quite a bit of work to do in keeping smooth the relations of my unit with Egyptian officials and Arab landowners and traders, but out here in the Western Desert there was nobody for me to interpret to, and of course I had no troops directly under me, so almost my sole occupation at the moment was running the H.Q. Mess and helping the Padre to organise games and sing-songs.
I found the Colonel, a lanky New Zealander with a pleasant grin, whom we had nicknamed ‘Long Willie’, sitting in his office tent, employed upon the uncongenial task of making out a Report.
“Come in, Day,” he called, as soon as the orderly who was on duty outside had poked his head through the flap of the tent to say that I was there. “Come in and sit down. What’s the trouble?”
The Sword of Fate Page 5