by Alec Waugh
His walk took him along the waterfront. Much of his life had been spent on the French Riviera. Most summers he had gone to Villefranche, in April between the winter and the summer rushes, to work upon a novel. It seemed very much a part of his old life to be taking, morning after morning, just this walk. There were the large luxury hotels to remind him of the Croisée. There were small sailors’ cafés to remind him of Antibes. Past the Normandie there was a Juan-les-Pins-ish night club corner. Underneath the St. George’s was a fashionable plage. Within two hundred yards of it a most unfashionable one, like the stretch of shingle under the railway between Villefranche and Cap Ferrat. There was a cemetery like Mougins with tall cypresses. And there were palm trees and bougainvillea and the sky was blue and at the back of it all, a perpetual backcloth like the Esterelles, were the high, snowcapped mountains of the Lebanon. It was as if the whole run of the coast from Cannes to Monte Carlo had been telescoped in essence into the limits of this ten minutes’ stroll. Every morning for six months he was to take the same walk from his flat to Spears Mission building. He was never to weary of it.
81
OFFICERS IN OFFICES
Peace-time soldiering is fun: a healthy, varied and a human life. And training for war in war-time is healthy, varied and amusing too. But soldiering in an operational area is ninetenths boredom; for the staff officer as for the fighting man. The time will come when for a week on end he will be working at full stretch, a twenty-hour day each day. The rest of the time he is preparing for that week. One of an officer’s chief jobs in a forward area is keeping the men from getting “browned off” during a waiting period.
For Ninth Army and the staff that served it, that winter of 1941-42 was a waiting period. The Syrian campaign was over. But an attack on Syria might well be a part of the German spring offensive. In every office in the Spears Mission building was a printed notice: “Think, act and plan in terms of March 1942.”
82
SUNDAY IN BEIRUT
Winter and summer the drill of it is the same. You take a cocktail between twelve and one on the terrace of the St. George’s. And it is all very Mediterranean and French with tables set out under striped umbrellas and smart French officers clicking their heels and bowing from the waist to smartly-dressed women—French and Lebanese. The sun is shining and the sky is blue. The snowdrifts on the mountains glisten. And this is the last playground in the world, you tell yourself.
And afterwards at the Cercle they serve a special luncheon with extra dishes of hors d’œuvres and, instead of drinking the ordinary vin de table, you order a bottle of Velours, which in France you would rate as one of those casual wines to be served pour la soif with fish. It is clean and dry and light and it does not make you feel drowsy afterwards, at the races where you will find all the people whom you had seen that morning at the St. George’s, sauntering in different frocks under the fir trees, past the paddock. At the far end of the race course is the low yellow Residence, with its Circassian guard, in comic-opera uniform, at the gateway. And it is all like something in a film. It is hard to realize that not so many miles away there is a war in progress, that not so many weeks ago there was fighting here.
And after the races there is a thé dansant at the St. George’s or Normandie, with the same smart officers, the same smart women, again in different dresses. This is their big day of the week and this is how they spend it. And it is your one free afternoon in the week and there is no other way to spend it. It is hard without petrol to get out into the country and on the nine-hole golf course one loses balls so fast that one cannot afford to play often enough to strike any kind of form. And it is a relief, a relaxation, even so, it imagine oneself back in a playground world.
And later, one goes on to the night club quarter, to the Kitcat or to the Lido. There will be the same cabaret show that one has seen twenty times. The cast never changes nor the dances, only the dresses sometimes. There is a Syrian ingénue, chaperoned by a watchful mother who sees in her daughter’s charms her own one chance of self-establishment, a daughter who cannot dance at all, but whose youth and freshness provide a contrast that some find “excitante” to the tall negro in white silk evening-dress who is her partner. And there is a surly Egyptian girl, in brown and gold, who performs a slow, funereal dirge-like dance, whose steps look like the succession of poses on a vase. And there is the negro, disguised as a woman, who is introduced as “La plus belle femme de Cuba.” He has a high-pitched voice. At the finale of a series of indecent posturings he draws his skirts high above his knees, showing the line of skin, dark below the white of a bathing slip. Newcomers to the cabaret do not realize that he is not a woman.
There is dancing in between the turns, and the Lebanese stare curiously at the nursing sisters with their grey skirts and blouses, their red collars and wide white caps.
83
“BIEN SUR”
Lazy, lackadaisical, and Lebanese, she shuffled about the hospital in heel-less slippers, carrying trays, making beds, filling water bottles—neither sister, nor nurse, nor kitchenmaid—a general factotum, always occupied but never busy; always on the move but never hurrying; friendly, good-natured, willing; almost but not quite competent.
She was short and plump. Her hair was black, worn low upon the shoulders as the fashion was. A grey-green apron was knotted about her waist, her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows. She had a pale, almond-coloured skin. Her chin was a little heavy. When she was not smiling, she gave the impression that she was scowling. But even when she was not smiling you were conscious of her eyes. They were dark and long-lashed and lustrous. They made all those similes of pools seem reasonable. She was eighteen years old.
He had met her for the first time in the hall when he came up to visit a brother officer. “I’ve come to see Captain Boot,” he said. She nodded.
“He is here?” he asked. Again she nodded.
“Perhaps you could direct me to him?”
“Bien sur,” she said.
She was a person of few words, or at least she was a person with a limited French vocabulary and he knew little Arabic. But even among her friends she was for the most part silent.
It was fun, though, talking to her. It was fun trying to see how often one could take that scowl away and make her smile. It was a kind of game, an amusing game—a game that grew on him, a game that he found himself playing with increasing frequency; twice a week to begin with, then every other day, finally every day. A visit to the hospital, with its twenty minutes’ walk, filled in conveniently the slack ninety minutes between the end of lunch and the opening of his office. And she could usually be persuaded to dawdle over the tray of tea with which hospital visitors were entertained.
One afternoon he arrived late. His step and his heart were light. He had lunched at the French Club in congenial company. They served no half-bottles at the Club. A bottle was put before you. When you had reached what you judged to be the half you would, if you were strong minded, call the waiter and tell him to remove it. There was invariably a point when you wondered whether you had reached the half or not. There was a point half a minute later when you wondered whether you could honourably call what was left in the bottle half a litre: a thought to which every so often came the inevitable corollary: “Would it not be better to retain one’s honour and finish the bottle where it stood?” At this particular lunch, however, he had not reached the punt of the bottle by any such process of deliberation. He had ordered a whole bottle right away. It was in an anapæstic mood that he crossed the mile between the Club and the hospital in fifteen minutes.
She was crossing the hall as he arrived. She was carrying a tray of tea, for which someone presumably was waiting. She was never too busy, however, to stop and talk. She paused, resting the tray upon her hip. It looked a very heavy tray. Too heavy a tray, he thought, for a young girl, when the carrying of that tray was not just one excursion, when that tray was but one of many. It couldn’t be much of a life for her, he thought. He wondered what
her home was like. He wondered how much fun she had. “What about our going to a cinema?” he asked.
“Bien sur,” she said.
They dined at Saad’s—a restaurant that had a feel of London: that was a single narrow room with a balcony at the far end of it; a restaurant where there was no table d’hôte, where you could order Arab dishes—kibbé and curries and curdled milk; a restaurant that was out of bounds to other ranks, that was expensive and quiet, that the majority of British officers considered dull, that was patronized by the Lebanese rather than by the military.
She was there within five minutes of his arrival. Her hair and eyebrows glistened with Brylcream. She was wearing white network gloves and a white muslin blouse. She had a black, long-sleeved woollen jumper that she pulled off the moment she was seated. She looked round her, caught the waiter’s eye, and smiled. From the manner of their greeting, they seemed old friends.
What would she like to eat, he asked.
“Quelque chose de bon.”
She did not listen, though, to what he ordered. She had begun to introduce herself. She was, she said, the eldest of a family of six. She and her eldest sister had been born in Brazil, where her parents, like so many other Lebanese, had hoped to make a speedy fortune. But her father could never have made a fortune anywhere. He drank. Brandy had absorbed the dot he had taken out with him. Back in Beirut, Arak had consumed the capital that his parents left him. Nothing was left now except the house; which was her mother’s and which he could not touch. It was lucky, she explained, that he had six children. If he had not so many to look after him now that he was getting old, heaven knew how he would have managed.
She shook her head when she spoke about him. He was very difficult, very ill-tempered, always about the house, ill half the time. So difficult, so ill-tempered, that she had never dared to tell him about her marriage. Oh, yes, she had been married. The day after her sixteenth birthday. It hadn’t worked—gambling was all he cared about. She had stood it for five months, then she had got divorced. It was quite easy in the Greek Church to get divorced. You just went and asked. Her parents had never guessed. She had gone on living at home all through it. There had been the afternoons. And now she was half-engaged, she told him, to a young French sailor, who had been wounded in the July campaign, whom she had nursed in hospital. His right shoulder and arm were shattered. No, she did not think she was in love with him, but she just did not see how he was going to manage without someone to look after him.
She told her story with her habitual phlegmatic calm; cheerfully, but casually, as though there was nothing remarkable about this record. She finished her story and was silent. It was his turn to talk. He was uncertain of what to say. It was the first time he had been alone with her. He had no idea what her tastes or interests were. He began to talk about Beirut. About its cinemas and cabarets, about the brother officer who was sick in hospital, about … but she was not listening. He soon realized that she had something on her mind. Was it the food? Wasn’t this fish mayonnaise her idea of “quelque chose de bon,” or the wine? Would she rather have had beer or Arak. Were they really all right, he asked her.
“Bien sur,” she said, and indeed she was making steady progress with the course.
“I wonder which film you’d like to see?” he said. “There’s the French film at the Rialto.”
She seemed, however, to take little interest in her choice.
“N’importe,” she said and relapsed into cogitation. Really, but this was being rather a bore, he thought, as he returned to a dissertation on the resemblance between Beirut and a similar town on the Riviera. “The chief difference that I can see,” he started, but she interrupted him.
Where did he live, she asked.
“On the edge of Regent’s Park.”
“Regent’s Park.”
He began to explain about London’s parks. She shook her head. No, she hadn’t meant that: she hadn’t wanted to know where he lived in England, she wanted to know where he lived here….
“I’ve got a flat,” he said. “Just …” But she was not interested in knowing where it was. Her face brightened. Her preoccupation left her. The thing, whatever it was that had been worrying her, had ceased to be a problem. She could now enjoy her evening. She was prepared to discuss the film that they were going to. An American film, she said, with a lot of action.
They took an arabana, and she slipped her hand into his. “I’m glad you’ve got a flat,” she said. “A hotel or a pension—if my mother were to hear of my going into a hotel or a pension, she would never have forgiven me.”
Her eyes were bright, her expression animated, as they took their seats in the cinema. This was a great treat for her, she said. She was hardly ever taken to the picutres. Before the film had been running for five minutes, however, she was fast asleep. She slept right through the show, soundly and soundlessly. The moment the film stopped, however, she was awake, her eyes were bright, the animated expression was on her face. “What about coming back for a moment, for a drink,” he asked her.
“Bien sur,” she said. But she was not thirsty.
A dying moon was rising out of the sea as they walked back to her home. The streets were quiet and ghostly in the partial black-out. The snow on the mountains glistened. It was hard to believe that Beirut was in a forward area, that all down the coast guns were manned against invasion, that all that day he had been busy with the provisioning of those defences with ammunition.
“You will come back again?” he asked.
“Bien sur.”
The next night she dined with him. And twice in the next week. Then she broke a date. Her small brother, a boy of seven, was waiting outside Saad’s with a message that she could not come that night, but that she would next day. Next day at the last moment he found himself on duty. He went round to her house to tell her so. She lived, she and her family, on the ground floor of a house that could with little renovation have been converted into what is called a mansion in the Lebanon. It was a typical small house. A large, central living-room with doors opening off it. Her mother was sitting over an open charcoal fire puffing at a narghile. She received him graciously. Eva would be back in a few minutes, she explained. She wiped the mouthpiece of the narghile and offered it to him to smoke. A girl of about twelve brought out two cups of coffee. A small boy of six came in, was introduced, stared at him, then ran out of the hall and stood half-concealed behind a door peering at him. Behind another door there was another urchin watching.
They dined together on the following night. But when he went round to Saad’s two evenings later her brother was waiting with a note. She was busy and suggested Thursday. On Thursday, however, she was not there. She frowned when he called round on the following morning. Her mother, she explained, was not happy about his seeing her so often. She was afraid of her getting talked about.
But how otherwise, he asked, could they arrange? His friend was no longer in the hospital. He had no longer an excuse for calling there, and if he could not call for her at home … He paused, waiting for her solution. She pondered, the surly phlegmatic expression was on her face. Then her face brightened. It was difficult for her, she said, to fix things in advance. Sometimes she was kept at the hospital. Sometimes she was tired. Sometimes she was not in the mood. But if he would dine alone at Saad’s every Wednesday and every Friday she would join him whenever she was able.
Sometimes she came, sometimes she did not come. And whenever she did come he had the consoling knowledge that she had come because she wanted to. How often, he thought, in London and New York, had he not found himself taking out young women whose distant manner had shown him that they were only there because they had made a date six days earlier and that when the day had come they would have given anything to have stayed at home and written letters and washed their stockings—or gone out with someone else.
Eva’s was a very satisfactory arrangement. Whenever she came it was to the certainty of a happy evening. And when she did not
come … well, he was someone who had spent a good deal of his life alone, who liked dining by himself.
All through that winter and that spring every Wednesday and every Friday he dined at Saad’s at the same table underneath the gallery.
84
THE GENERAL’S RETURN
For days he had been expected back from England. Rumour after rumour had been started and contradicted. Harassed staff officers and Legation secretaries had rehearsed and re-rehearsed their parts. Something was certain to have been forgotten, something to have been overlooked. What though, and by whom?
Only on the very last day but one, when his arrival by the following afternoon was definitely confirmed, was it realized that there was no soldier-servant with brushes and button-stick to welcome him.
The Camp Commandant sighed softly. Thank heavens he had thought of it in time. “Staff-sergeant, get a list of volunteers,” he said.
There were no volunteers, however.
“No volunteers?”
The staff-sergeant shook his head. “There was a little trouble over the last one, sir. I think—well, sir—none of the chaps care to run the risk.”
“In that case we’ll have to detail one.”
“Yes, sir.”
It was a very unenthusiastic “yes, sir.”
“And right away, Staff, within the next ten minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
But it was a full half-hour before he returned.
“I’ve detailed Barnes, sir, but Barnes … Well, sir, could Barnes see you, sir?”