Iris and Ruby

by Rosie Thomas

  Try to remember. Holding it, cupping my hands to mould the shape of it.

  There was a cavalry officer in boots complete with spurs asleep on the dingy sofa.

  The kitchen was a swamp of bottles and spilled drink.

  The door to one of the bathrooms was jammed. I squeezed into the other, regarded my face for an instant in the clouded mirror, then hastily brushed my teeth with Xan’s toothbrush. He was already unfastening the satin-covered buttons and loops down the back of my dress.

  It is the memory of making love on that airless Cairo morning, when we had drunk and danced ourselves sober again, that I hold most close. We were so sweet and shameless, and so powerful in our innocence.

  Even now, when I am eighty-two and losing my mind, the recollection of it can catch me unawares and turn my limbs to water.

  Xan fell asleep in the end, and I lay and watched the impression of his dreams. He twitched and winced a little and to soothe him I put my hand over the bony place where his ribs fused, feeling the slow rise and fall of his breath.

  I didn’t go to work. I called Roddy Boy and told him I had Gyppy tummy, and bore the sarcastic slice in his voice when he told me that he hoped I would feel very much better before too long, and that he also hoped Captain Molyneux was taking good care of me.

  In the afternoon, after we had eaten some recuperative pastries and drunk coffee in the shady garden at Groppi’s, Xan took me to a jeweller’s in the old quarter to buy a ring.

  ‘There is a rather pompous family diamond, actually, that belongs to my mother. I’m the only son so she’ll want you to wear it. D’you think you can bear that? But I want you to have something in the meantime. What would you like?’

  We wandered hand in hand past the tiny doorways of the gem merchants. Copts and Jews called out to us, trying to urge us inside their shops. We reached an angle of a cobbled street where the way was too narrow for us to walk abreast, and Xan glanced up at a sign.

  ‘This is the place.’

  ‘I don’t need a ring, Xan. I’ve got you.’

  ‘It’s only a symbol, darling. But I want you to wear it.’

  The merchant unlocked the safe and brought out his velvet trays for us and we let the raw stones trickle in cold droplets through our fingers. In the end, under duress, I chose a smoky purple amethyst and ordered a plain claw setting for it. Xan led me out of the shop again and tucked my hand under his arm.

  ‘There. Now, what would you like to do?’

  ‘Where is Hassan?’

  ‘At home with his family, I should think. Why?’

  We hadn’t spoken of it but we both suspected that this might be our last day and night together before Xan was called away again. In our Garden City apartment Mamdooh would be performing some domestic routine with polishing cloths or caustic soda and at Xan’s there would be hung-over officers and the same debris of hard living that we had escaped three hours ago. We could have tried to find a hotel room, but with the endless flux of visitors and diplomats and officers washing through Cairo these were hard to come by. And I thought how perfect it would be to go out to the Pyramids again, and watch the sun setting behind Hassan’s hidden oasis.

  As soon as I told Xan he smiled at me.

  ‘You have only to command. But I’ll have to go and beg for a car.’

  We walked back towards GHQ through baked afternoon streets. We passed a crowd of Australian soldiers with huge thighs and meaty fists, sweating under full packs, and a smaller band of British squaddies who looked undersized and pale in comparison with their Antipodean counterparts. They were all recently arrived because they gazed in bewilderment at the tide of refuse and dung in the gutters, and the unreadable street signs, and the old men in rags sleeping in the shade of peeling walls. The city was full of men in transit, on their way to camps in advance of the big battle. I only knew that it was coming, I had no idea where or when. Xan almost certainly knew much more.

  We came to a tall, anonymous house in a neglected street that ran westwards towards el Rhoda. I was just reaching the conclusion that this must be a headquarters of some kind for Tellforce when a figure detached itself from the shadow of the broken buildings opposite and ran towards Xan. A brown hand caught Xan’s khaki shirtsleeve and some quick words of Arabic followed. It was Hassan.

  Xan gave me a glance and then moved a little to one side, listening to what Hassan had to tell him. I waited, feeling the sun burning the top of my head, knowing that whatever was to come would not be good news. Hassan stepped back again, briefly inclining his head towards me.

  I could already tell from Xan’s face what was coming.

  ‘I have to go,’ he said.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now. I’ve got to be in place beside the road out of el Agheila with my patrol, tonight.’

  By my half-informed reckoning this was about four hundred miles west behind the enemy front line, which was then on the Libyan border.

  ‘Tonight? How? Isn’t it … a long way?’

  ‘Wainwright’s here with the WACO.’

  Tellforce had a small two-seater aircraft, usually piloted by the Tellforce commander himself, Lieutenant-Colonel Gus Wainwright.

  ‘He’s waiting at the airfield.’ Xan took my face between his hands. Hassan had turned away and stood like a stone statue, guarding the steps and the dingy house and – I saw – Xan himself. I also saw that a glitter of excited anticipation had kindled behind Xan’s eyes. Now it was here he was ready to go. He wanted to go, he was already rushing towards the adventure, whatever was waiting for him. I felt cold, even with the afternoon’s humid weight pressing against the nape of my neck. But somehow I smiled, my mouth curling against his as he kissed me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured.

  Against all the impulses, which were to cling to him like an importunate child and beg him to stay, I pressed the flat of my hands against his shirt. Somehow, as the kiss ended I stepped out of his arms and put a tiny distance between us. Hassan edged closer by the same amount. First and most importantly it was the two of them now, and Xan’s Yeomanry patrol, and the desert; not Xan and me. I would have plenty of time in the coming weeks to get used to that order of priority, before he came back to Cairo again.

  ‘Come back when you can,’ I whispered. ‘Go on, go now.’

  Hassan was already moving towards the Tellforce staff car that I saw parked under the shade of a tree. Xan turned away, then swung back and roughly pulled me into his arms again, and there was the raw bite of his mouth against mine and a blur of his black hair, and the buttons of his shirt gouged into my skin.

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’ The smile that I had forced into existence was real now, breaking out of me like a flower from a bud. ‘And I love you. I’ll be here. Just go.’

  Hassan reached the car and slid into the driver’s seat. Xan sprinted after him, then slowed again and shouted back over his shoulder, ‘Will you go and visit Noake for me?’

  I had already decided that I must do this. ‘Of course I will.’

  He wrenched open the passenger door and sketched a salute. With one hand I shaded my eyes against the sun, and I touched the fingers of the other to my lips and blew him a kiss. The skidding car tyres raised little puffs of dust that hung in the air like a whitish mist for long seconds after the car itself had vanished.

  When I reached the hospital I went first to ask after Private Ridley. I was directed to a voluntary aid supervisor in an unventilated ground-floor office that reminded me of my own slice of working corridor. The woman was French but she explained in neutral English that the soldier had died early that morning without regaining consciousness.

  ‘I’m sorry. Was he a relative? Or a friend, perhaps?’ She was looking at me curiously.

  ‘Neither. A friend of mine is, was, his commanding officer.’

  ‘I see.’ She gathered together several sheets of paper closely typed with names, and patted them so their edges were aligned. She had well-manicure
d nails, a plain gold wedding band. Private Ridley had died probably while Xan and I were lying in each other’s arms. Their loss running parallel with our happiness, somewhere in England there was a mother, a family waiting, perhaps a fiancée or a wife who didn’t yet know that he was dead. I frowned, trying to line up these separate unwieldy facts like the supervisor’s sheets of paper, and failing. Xan and I were alive, today, with blood thrilling in our veins. Another man was dead, and others had lost half a face, two strong legs. These particular known individuals suddenly seemed to stand at the head of an immense army.

  As they marched in my head the living were outnumbered and overpowered by the slaughtered and the maimed, and the hollow skulls and shattered limbs snuffed out hope and happiness: not just Xan’s and mine, perhaps, and that of Private Ridley’s family and Ruth Macnamara’s patient who couldn’t dance any more, but all the world’s. Zazie’s and Shepheard’s and the Gezira Club were dark, and crowded to the doors with dead men.

  I sat in silence, shivering a little.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the Frenchwoman said again. ‘Can I help you with any other thing, maybe?’ She had work to do, perhaps the same news to convey about dozens more men.

  I managed to say, ‘No. Thank you.’

  I left the office and found my way up to the ward.

  Noake was lying propped against his pillows, the lower half of his face masked with fresh dressings, but when he saw me he lifted his hand in a little flourish of greeting. I sat down in Xan’s place, intending to talk cheerfully to him in the same way that Xan had done. I wouldn’t tell him about Ridley’s death, not yet.

  ‘Hello, there. How do you feel? You’ve only got me tonight, Mr Noake, I’m afraid. Captain Molyneux’s been whisked back to the desert, by air. Colonel Wainwright flew in today to get him, what d’you think of that?’

  I could see what he thought of it. Beneath the bruised and puffy lids his eyes glimmered with interest and amusement, but there was also the ghost of a cheeky wink that acknowledged that officers and commanders flew. Everyone in Tellforce sweated in trucks across the endless dunes, digging out embedded vehicles and dragging the heavy steel channels that were laid under the wheels to give them purchase, but other ranks didn’t get many variations to this routine. But I thought that it must also have been a welcome sight for patrols buried deep in the desert when the little single-engined plane came humming out of the sky and touched down on an impromptu runway levelled in the sand.

  ‘I don’t know when he’ll be back,’ I blurted out.

  To my surprise, Noake’s hand crawled across the sheet, found mine and grasped it tightly. I looked down at our linked fingers, and the tubes running into his arm through which they must be feeding him.

  Noake had seen Xan and me together. He couldn’t speak, his shattered mouth couldn’t form the words, but he was letting me know that he sympathised with the lucky anguish that I suffered on parting from my lover.

  For a moment, I had to keep my head bent.

  Corporal Noake’s hand was large and heavy. The nails were torn and blackened, and there were deep fissures round the nail margins and across the knuckles. Xan had told me that he was a mechanic, gifted at coaxing new leases of life out of their battered trucks.

  ‘Back for Christmas, that’s what he said,’ I murmured.

  I didn’t know how much I was supposed to know, or how much Noake should know that I knew. But he wasn’t going to be able to tell anyone and I longed to talk about Xan.

  ‘I’ve no idea what the real chances of that are. I don’t suppose anyone does, do you? But there’s a big push coming, everyone’s talking about it, aren’t they? I’m concerned for him, because I know a bit about what Tellforce does. But Xan’s got to do his job like everyone else, like you did, Mr Noake.’

  And like Private Ridley did. I sat up straighter and looked into the injured man’s eyes, remembering the involuntary kindling of excitement I had seen in Xan. ‘It must be hard for you, to miss what’s going to happen.’

  Noake nodded, his fingers still tight over mine.

  ‘We’ll have to keep each other company,’ I said. ‘And you will have to get better quickly.’

  A starched apron came into view on the other side of the bed. Ruth was standing there with an armful of fresh bedding.

  ‘Here you are again. Can’t stay away from us, Albie, can she?’

  I was glad to know his first name. ‘Albie? May I call you that, too? I’m Iris, d’you remember?’

  He blinked his agreement.

  Ruth asked me, ‘Where’s your friend tonight? Fiancé, I mean.’

  ‘I was just telling Albie. Gone. Called back to the desert in a hurry.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, look, d’you want to have a cup of coffee or something after I finish work? I’m off shift in half an hour.’

  ‘Yes, let’s do that.’

  She hurried away and I went on talking to Albie Noake. I had no idea what he wanted to hear but I told him about Faria and Sarah and the apartment in Garden City, and about Mamdooh and his son who followed him to work and sat on a stool in the corner of Mamdooh’s cubbyhole near the front door, sucking on the bon-bons that Faria insisted on feeding him. I talked about Zazie’s and Elvira Mursi and Mrs Kimmig-Gertsch’s house, and Roddy Boy and my segment of corridor at GHQ, and what I remembered of Cairo in the days long before the war when my father was at the embassy. I held on to Albie’s hand, smoothing it between my own. Once or twice his eyelids closed and I thought he had fallen asleep, but as soon as my murmuring stopped they snapped open again.

  ‘She can talk enough for both of you, can’t she?’ Ruth demanded when she came back.

  I disengaged my hand gently from Albie’s and stood up.

  ‘Shall I come back another day?’ I asked him. As well as a nod there was a sound in his throat, part gargle and part rising groan. It was meant as a yes.

  ‘You can always tell me to go away.’ I smiled. ‘Good night, Albie.’

  I followed Ruth out of the ward and down some stone steps. Outside a door marked ‘Nursing Staff’ she said briskly, ‘Wait here.’

  Three or four minutes later she re-emerged and I blinked at her. The nurse’s starched cap had always hidden her hair, and now I saw for the first time that it was a rich, dark red. It turned her pale skin translucent and took the slightly pinched severity out of her face. Ruth looked as if she was not much more than a year or so older than me. She had taken off her apron and wore a thin coat on over her uniform dress. Without the starched outer layer she didn’t rustle or crackle when she walked. We nodded at each other, with a touch of wariness now that we were on neutral ground.

  When I was driving with Xan I had noticed a small café on a street corner, within walking distance but far enough away not to be crowded with people from the hospital. I suggested that we might go there and Ruth nodded briefly.

  ‘Anywhere we can get something to eat. I’m pretty hungry.’

  The café had split and cracked clay tiles for a floor, and a tall mirror suspended at an angle above the counter that reflected the tops of our heads and foreshortened bodies. There were only a handful of other customers, but there was a good scent of coffee and spicy cooking.

  Ruth ordered eggs and fuul, and I asked for a plate of fruit. We drank mint tea while we waited for our food and as soon as a basket of ‘aish baladi was placed in front of us Ruth tore off a chunk of the warm, coarse bread and chewed ravenously.

  ‘Sorry. I don’t get much time to eat during the day. Usually I like to get the bus straight home from work and have a meal. The person I live with cooks, or if I’m on my own I throw a few ingredients together.’ She made a self-deprecating face, and then laughed. ‘I’d like to be able to cook, but it’s not exactly one of my gifts.’

  Sarah, Faria and I didn’t cook either. Mamdooh left covered dishes for us, or we might boil an egg or carve up a sandwich. But mostly we were taken out for dinner.

  I felt the width of a divide between Ruth Macnamara and me,
and I knew that she was just as aware of it. Ruth wouldn’t miss anything, I guessed.

  ‘Do you share with another nurse?’

  ‘A doctor.’

  ‘Where does he work?’

  Ruth lifted an eyebrow. ‘She.’

  Then she named one of the other military hospitals.

  I was blushing crimson at my own assumption. ‘That was stupid,’ I said.

  ‘No, it wasn’t. How many female surgical anaesthetists do any of us know? But Daphne is one. She’s pretty good.’ Ruth was proud of her friend, I could tell that much.

  ‘I’d like to meet her.’

  Ruth didn’t say anything to that. A hot pan full of eggs and chopped peppers arrived and she dug her fork into it. I ate slices of melon and mango and watched her eat. When rather more than half of Ruth’s plate was empty, she finally looked up again.

  ‘That’s better. So. Your fiancé is Albie Noake’s commanding officer, is that right?’

  ‘You don’t have to keep calling him my fiancé. Just say Xan.’

  She laughed then. ‘OK. Xan.’

  ‘Yes, he is. And when he was called back to his … unit, this afternoon, I said I’d go on visiting Albie instead of him.’

  ‘That’s good. The men get medical attention, of course, the best we can provide, but they don’t get many of the other things that they need. Company, especially women’s company, and non-medical encouragement, and diversion, and anything, really, that’s outside hospital routine. Although the VADs and the other voluntary organisations do what they can. Albie’s lucky.’

  I understood what she meant. The ward was so big, and so overcrowded with suffering, it would be hard to provide individual support or even as little as a few minutes’ unhurried talk for each of them. And they were all so far from their own families and friends.

  ‘What will happen to him?’

  ‘Short term, or longer?’