City of Gold

by Len Deighton

  ‘I imagine they pray in the morning and evening. She keeps her head scarf on in class. He probably goes to the Mosque on Fridays and avoids sausages in the canteen.’ She smjled again. It was accepted by all foreigners that eating any kind of Egyptian sausage was suicidal.

  ‘You can be very cynical at times, Alice.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to be,’ she said, her regret genuine. ‘I wonder how I would cope with such a situation. It’s almost impossible to combine being a middle class Egyptian with being a devout Muslim.’

  ‘And he plays bridge with our bogus Russian prince every week? Is he a good bridge player? Do they play for money?’

  ‘Not very good: average. But you don’t have to be good to beat Prince Piotr. They play for tiny stakes: five piasters; nothing.’

  ‘Five piasters is a day’s wage for local labourers working for the army.’

  Alice disregarded this rebuke. ‘Is he a bogus prince? Or a bogus Russian? There were about two million titled Russian aristocrats until the revolution. He seems genuine, and moves with the smart set. I asked Mummy more about him. Mummy says he’s from a grand old Tsarist family and has lived here for ages.’

  ‘Your Mother –? I hope –’

  ‘Calm down, Bert. I never tell Mummy anything that could possibly make trouble for you.’

  He looked at her. He would like to meet her mother. They said she was a typical member of Egypt’s stuffy British community. In her waterfront apartment in Alexandria she sat surrounded by the priceless antiques and Oriental artifacts that officials like her husband so easily obtained in the old days. From there she kept in touch with her friends, gossiping and pulling strings and giving advice when no advice was needed. He couldn’t imagine Alice ever becoming like that. He said, ‘Are they really brother and sister?’

  She laughed. ‘You’re so suspicious, Bert.’ She wondered if this man would ever realise that she was desperately in love with him. Everyone who had seen her with him in the last few days seemed to guess. No matter how hard she tried, Alice could not keep it a secret from anyone except from him. He gave no sign of noticing her when she was close or of missing her when she was away. Did her voice betray her? Her mother’s sudden pleas for Alice to come back to live with her in Alexandria might be a sign that Mummy had guessed too. ‘Yes, they are brother and sister. Is that why you are so keen to take a closer look at them?’

  ‘I’m curious about them … curious about them both, in fact. There are some damned funny students at that American University.’

  ‘It’s a mixed bag,’ said Alice. ‘That’s the idea of a university, isn’t it?’

  He drank some tea. ‘Did you say Captain Darymple works in Grey Pillars?’ It was the popular name for GHQ Middle East.

  ‘Not for much longer. He’s telling everyone he’s been selected for one of these cloak-and-dagger shows. He’ll be off soon.’

  ‘I thought he was unfit.’

  She looked at him, wondering if he felt he should be away fighting instead of behind a desk in Cairo. There was nothing in his face to tell her. ‘During the advance last year, Darymple and two of his pals drank water from a poisoned well. One nearly died. Darymple had chronic dysentery. He’s more or less cured now and hoping to be passed A-one.’

  ‘There must be something wrong with the German poisons,’ he said.

  ‘What an awful thing to say, Bert.’ She grinned in spite of that. ‘Using poison is against the Geneva Treaty, or something. They just make the water bad and undrinkable.’

  ‘But Darymple survived. Good for him,’ he said without emotion. He looked at her trying to read the concern that he recognised in her face. She was a complicated woman. ‘Shush! What’s that?’ Over the bustle of the tearoom they could hear the chanting of a big crowd, a very big crowd. It wasn’t like the noise of university students making themselves a nuisance; this was different. The sound was low and almost musical, like the throbbing of some huge steam engine.

  ‘The protests are getting bigger and bigger,’ said Alice. ‘Can you hear what they are shouting?’

  ‘It will be the same as yesterday: “Hail to Rommel! We are Rommel’s soldiers! British get out!”’

  ‘Sounds as if they are coming along Sharia Ibrahim Pasha,’ she said, her head cocked as she tried to locate the noise. The people in the garden – largely British – had quieted. He had chosen a table that was just inside a room which opened out onto the garden. It was dark and cool in here but they could see everything: the umbrellas making circles of shadow and the tea drinkers silhouetted against the sun-bleached garden and the bright green vegetation. ‘A very big crowd by the sound of it.’

  The chanting was louder and more purposeful than was usual in such demonstrations. What had been good-natured protests in early 1941 had changed since Rommel and his Panzer army had come to Africa and scored victory after victory. When cotton prices jumped, many landowners began to plant it, which caused continuous rises in the price of bread. This had added a new dimension to the discontent. King Farouk’s government was overtly pro-German, and now that Rommel was getting nearer, Egyptian protests were organised, bitter and determined.

  The angry crowds were close now. Ashraf’s was a popular gathering place for the British, and the mob knew it. Although the garden wall obscured the street, the demonstrators were screaming to make sure they were heard. ‘I’ll make sure nothing happens to you, Alice,’ he promised softly. ‘You’ll not be in danger. I don’t want you to worry.’ Her eyes went to him. Was there some flicker of affection in those words?

  Even as he said it there was a disturbance at the entrance to the tea gardens. Insults were shouted and then there was a venomous exchange that soon became violent punches, as demonstrators pushed past the doorman. Right there amid the tea drinkers, a mêlée started and the shouts in the doorway became an angry clamour. After struggling with doorman and waiters, two especially violent men forced their way to the little ornamental well in the middle of the garden and climbed up on it. A waiter was sprawled back against the wall clutching his stomach. Two more figures – skinny teenagers – stumbled through the doorway and picked themselves up to look around. They were wide-eyed and sweating, dressed in old and torn short-sleeve shirts and rumpled khaki trousers. For a moment they stood there surprised at the ease with which they had forced their way into this forbidden British sanctum. For a moment they did nothing but stare. Then they screamed slogans. Their cries were in Arabic. Few of the British properly understood the words, but Bissama Allah, fialard Hitler got some heads shaking. This chant – In Heaven Allah, and on earth Hitler – had become a war cry of the militant nationalists and revolutionaries. The intruders did not wait to be ousted. They threw handfuls of leaflets into the air and ran out through the gate with loud whoops of triumph. Gleeful acclamations greeted them as they escaped out to the street. Perhaps there would have been renewed intrusions, but at that moment there came the sound of horses as the mounted police came charging down to clear the street. There was a low roar of fear and then the shrill cries of a mad scramble to get away. The horses clattered past, and more came behind them. In the distance the chanting voices persisted as the crowd continued along the road towards the palace.

  No one spoke. The British were stunned by the incident. There was something shocking about the speed with which it had happened. The whole point of coming here for tea was to forget for a few minutes that they were surrounded by millions of dirty and diseased Egyptians. Now the tea drinkers felt threatened; worse, they felt vulnerable.

  It was the Egyptian waiters who knew what to do. One of them quickly gathered up the anti-British leaflets, while others came hurrying from the kitchen with big pots of freshly brewed tea. Their big smiles and cheerful solicitude was reassuring, and little by little they restored the atmosphere to something like normal again. Alice looked at Ross and smiled. He didn’t smile back.

  ‘So! I find two conspirators! Sitting in the shadows! What a surprise,’ said a female voice behind th
em. ‘What’s it to be tonight, gunrunning or hashish?’

  They looked up, wide-eyed, wondering to what extent their earlier conversation had been overheard. It was Peggy West.

  ‘Hello, Peggy,’ said Alice. Jimmy Ross got to his feet. Peggy was looking distressed. Her blue straw hat was dented and her face flushed.

  ‘I don’t want to interrupt a tête-à-tête,’ she said breathlessly. Despite this declaration she seemed very upset. She put down her shopping and lingered long enough for Ross to invite her to sit with them.

  Peggy sat down and opened the menu. Her hands were shaking. She put it aside again without reading it. ‘There are thousands more of them coming along Ibrahim Pasha,’ she said. ‘I suppose they’ll all demonstrate in Abdin Square again.’ Peggy, like all the regulars, knew Ashraf’s menu by heart. ‘That will stop the number seventeen trams, and there is no other tram for people going to Gezira or Garden City.’ She smiled because those two destinations were ones the British needed. They were always the first to be cancelled; some people said it was done simply to punish the British.

  ‘Are you all right, Peggy?’ Alice asked not knowing whether to remark on Peggy’s obvious distress. Since seeing Peggy in her position of undisputed authority at the hospital, Alice had looked on her as a mentor and something of a surrogate for the elder sister Alice never had. Now this was a new side of Peggy. Who would have guessed that she’d be so upset by a demonstration in the street?

  ‘Just footsore and weary,’ said Peggy with a smile. Peggy had been jostled in the thick of the anti-British crowd. Under her cheeriness she was very disturbed. For the first time in Cairo she’d felt frightened by a mob. One of them had spit at her; she’d never forget his face: wrinkled with age, darkened by the sun and tense with spiteful hatred. Only the intervention of a mounted Cairo policeman, who’d seen her predicament and come riding at full gallop into the crowd wielding his baton, had saved her from being hurt. Now she understood some of the horror stories she’d heard about riots in the old days. She needed to be with her own kind. She needed reassurance. She needed a cup of tea. But she didn’t say any of this. She forced a smile. ‘I just couldn’t walk another step, and I’m getting too old to join in the late-afternoon scrimmage around the trams.’

  ‘Have an ice-cream,’ said Alice, to show Peggy that she was really welcome. ‘The coffee flavour is delicious.’

  Peggy shook her head. ‘Just tea, please.’ Ross made a sign to the waiter, who had heard Peggy’s order. ‘What will the king do, Corporal Cutler. He’s between the devil and the deep blue sea, isn’t he?’

  ‘We can’t have some pro-German chap running the government,’ he replied. It wasn’t something he was keen to discuss in detail.

  ‘We are waiting for Sayed and Zeinab,’ explained Alice. ‘The American university has a holiday too. They said they’d take tea with us but they are late. Perhaps the demonstration has delayed them. Bert will have to go soon. They have a very short siesta in his office.’

  ‘What a shame,’ said Peggy.

  ‘Or his sergeant will kick his behind,’ said Alice and grinned at her secret joke. He smiled ruefully and signalled the waiter and ordered cakes. It was better to order them now, before their guests arrived. The best cakes disappeared quickly now because of the flour shortage.

  ‘They are naughty like that: the Shazlis. Being late, I mean,’ explained Peggy. ‘The Egyptians have no sense of time. My husband used to say they have rubber watches.’ She laughed sadly.

  ‘How long have you lived in the Magnifico?’ he said.

  ‘I could tell you some stories about that place,’ said Peggy. But she seemed to reconsider that as she looked around the café. ‘It’s weeks and weeks since I was in here,’ she said. ‘Last year – when Greece went down the pan – it became a place for the Greek high-ups to gather. I saw King George’s mistress in here one day. She looked miserable, poor soul. She’s English, you know. I almost went over and spoke with her, but I lost my nerve at the last minute. At another table, studiously ignoring the poor woman, was half the Greek government: a rude, noisy crowd. I didn’t think much of them, to tell you the truth. Before that, this place had been a meeting place for Poles. I wonder what it will be next.’ Realising that it might sound as if she thought it could become a rendezvous for Rommel’s victorious Germans, she smiled nervously and studied the garden to examine the flowers and the climbing plants that covered the walls.

  Peggy felt better now that she was here with people she knew. The familiarity comforted her. She fidgeted with the cruet and looked again at the menu, noteworthy for its amazing grammar and misspellings, and at the brass jar of flowers that had wilted in the heat of the day. Now it was afternoon. As the siesta ended and the town cooled, people went back to their offices, while others went to the cafés and tearooms. Ashraf’s was regarded as something of a private club for the few remaining British civilian old-timers. The front entrance was small and drab, its Arabic signs unwelcoming to the bulk of the men who passed it going in and out of the Tipperary Club a few doors away.

  ‘I never thanked you properly,’ Alice told her. ‘For everything: the room and for the job at the hospital.’

  ‘Getting you the room wasn’t so easy. But at the hospital I knew the Hoch would jump at the chance. He retired back before the war, but he’s the best surgeon we have. He must be over seventy, but the army have turned a blind eye to that.’

  ‘Everyone is very friendly,’ said Alice.

  Peggy smiled and wondered if Alice knew how much resentment she had stirred up in Blanche and Jeannie MacGregor. ‘We lost two really good typists when the army sent all the wives away. They didn’t want to go, of course. One of them sent a cheeky telegram to the commander in chief. A lot of good it did her. She’d only been married six months. Of course the commander in chief didn’t send his own wife away. Everyone resented that.’

  The tea arrived together with a plate of cakes. They were all English favourites: fruit cake complete with icing and marzipan – left from Christmas, no doubt – slices of seed cake and Swiss roll, lemon-curd tarts, maids of honour, cream éclairs and a rock cake. Peggy took the pot and poured the tea and said how good it smelled. She was a pretty woman, if not to say beautiful, and appreciative and emphatic about everything she liked. And she liked to make pouring tea into a ceremony. ‘How many lumps of sugar?’

  Alice took the opportunity of looking around at the women in the garden. At first glance they looked like the well-dressed women seen before the war in smart tearooms in Paris, Vienna or London. But on closer inspection the women were a mixed collection: Egyptians, Palestinians, Copts, Italians and Greeks. They were all so alluring, so well groomed, their hair and makeup so perfect. They were studied by the predatory staff officers and businessmen who lingered here regularly. Men were in abundance in this town, available women in short supply. Peggy always spoke of her marriage as if it were something past and finished with. Why didn’t she open her eyes? Any attractive European woman who couldn’t find a husband in this town now was just not trying. And Peggy West was very attractive and clever too.

  Alice looked back to see if the Shazlis were coming. Mirrors on the walls of the dark, empty interior rooms, reflected the lively activity of the sunlit garden like frantic movie screens.

  ‘The tea is good here,’ said Jimmy Ross, as if he felt it necessary to explain his presence here with Alice. ‘And they boil the milk.’

  He had no sooner said this than Sayed and Zeinab el-Shazli came through the entrance, looking across the garden for them. All conversation in the café stopped for a moment. They were like two film stars. Zeinab, in her early twenties, had smooth pale skin, large brown eyes and a perfect figure that her dress of cream-coloured silk did not conceal. Her brother Sayed was no less glamorous. He had broad square shoulders and dark shiny hair combed straight back. His skin was a shade darker than his sister’s, and he had a toothbrush moustache and very white teeth that lit up his face as he smiled. The only bl
emish to his perfect face was a slight darkening of the flesh under the eyes, and yet that too was an essential part of his foreign charm. He wore a white shirt with dark tie and dark trousers. He had a gold wristwatch with a leather strap – unsuited to hot weather but very English – and expensive two-tone shoes, which were carefully polished and the laces precisely knotted.

  Sayed, hurrying ahead, pulled out a chair for his sister as though she was some regal personage. Then he plucked at his trousers to ease them as he sat down. He gave no explanation or apology for being late. Neither did they express surprise at seeing Peggy there. They ordered mint tea from a waiter who had hurried to be at their side and waited patiently. Then they spent a moment waving and smiling to people they knew.

  ‘You have a lot of friends here,’ said Jimmy Ross.

  ‘Acquaintances,’ said Sayed. ‘Some of them are people with whom my father does business.’

  ‘What business is that?’ said Ross very casually.

  ‘He is a journalist,’ said Sayed, ‘but he does other things too.’ He looked at Peggy and Alice. ‘No work today?’

  ‘I’m on late shift,’ said Peggy.

  To Alice he said, ‘Answer in Arabic, Miss Stanhope.’

  Alice smiled. She had had two lessons with the Shazlis. They were very patient with her mispronunciations.

  ‘Your Arabic is coming along very well,’ he told her, ‘but you must practise.’

  Their tea came. It was in glasses with silver-plated holders, a big bunch of mint leaves in each. Sayed put a lot of sugar into his and stirred it furiously so that the mint leaves pirouetted. He watched it with evident pleasure.

  ‘How are you liking Cairo, Miss Stanhope?’ he said with grave formality. He offered the cakes to the ladies and then to Ross, who took a cream eclair. Peggy wondered why he would make such a point of going to a place where the milk was boiled and then eat a cream cake. But she didn’t remark on it.