by Rosie Thomas
‘Bed,’ I answered composedly. I would never have guessed, nor would the boys I had briefly encountered in London, that I could ever like sex as much as I did with Xan.
As she had promised, Daphne Erdall found me volunteer work at her hospital. It wasn’t nursing, which was what I had naïvely hoped for, but at least it was something. For three evening sessions a week I sat at a desk in the almoner’s office and filled in forms with the details of British casualties; name, number, rank, regiment, injuries, date of arrival, supervising MO, ward, notification of next of kin. I typed letters addressed to wives in the Home Counties and mothers in the Midlands and Yorkshire and Scotland, and passed them on to the proper authority for signature. My boss was Christina Tsatsas, a good-natured Greek woman whose forearms and upper lip were shadowed with soft dark hair. When I took my short break we would stand on the small concrete terrace outside the window and smoke a cigarette, looking down into the dark of the hospital garden.
‘You want to be a nurse?’ Christina asked.
‘Yes.’
‘You have to train.’
‘Of course.’
But I couldn’t afford to give up my job at GHQ and if I embarked on part-time training I would see even less of Xan than I did now.
‘After the war,’ I said, giving voice to an intention that had hardly begun to form itself in my mind. I could tell that Christina thought I lacked the proper degree of determination ever to make a useful nurse.
I saw Daphne sometimes, and although at first I was a little in awe of her we slowly began to be friends. When I met her around the hospital, by accident or by arrangement, she was usually alone but she trailed a distinct glamour in her wake. She was always pressed for time but she never seemed too busy to speak to whoever stopped her in a corridor, giving them her full, serious attention. She was friendly with her all-male surgical team, but it was an arm’s-length friendliness that fell well short of intimacy. People glanced after her as she passed them, either wondering who she was or, like me when we first met, acknowledging that here was Someone. Daphne herself was quite unaware of the effect she created.
If I was early for work and she was finishing a shift, we would have a cup of tea together in the medical staff canteen. Daphne would tell me about her day’s list of operations and if they had lost a badly wounded soldier on the table her eyes would darken with sadness and frustration. Once or twice we talked about Ruth. Daphne was affectionate, but I suspected that she might be too self-contained to acknowledge – perhaps even experience – love in the frank way that Ruth did.
I tried inviting them both to some of the parties we all went to that Christmas, but they were rarely off duty at the same time and when they were they preferred to be alone together.
But then, oddly enough, they appeared at Mrs Kimmig-Gertsch’s New Year’s Eve party.
The lovely panelled hall where we had once played cards was decorated with a pine tree that must have been fifteen feet tall. I have no idea where it came from; as we waited in a line to greet out hostess, Xan and I amused ourselves by imagining the tortuous route that it would have followed from a Swiss mountainside, across occupied Europe to some eastern Mediterranean seaport, and through the German naval blockades to the docks at Alexandria.
‘Or maybe she just had it flown in. Perhaps Sandy arranged a convenient airdrop with the RAF,’ Xan suggested.
The tree blazed with dozens of real wax candles and its sharp, resinous scent perfumed the whole house. Mrs Kimmig-Gertsch herself stood in front of it, shaking hands with an impressive turn-out of Cairo society. The ambassador and his lady were in Luxor for their Christmas break, but everyone else seemed to be present. Sir Guy and Lady Gibson Pasha were in the crowd of arrivals just ahead of Xan and me, and there was even a rumour that the King himself might put in an appearance.
Mrs Kimmig-Gertsch inclined her head to us when we reached her. She was wearing a white Grecian-style evening dress swathed and draped across her stately bosom, and a diamond and sapphire cross rather larger than the Star of the Garter. ‘Have you planned a wedding day?’ she demanded, her eyes on my amethyst. She liked to know everything.
‘Not yet,’ we murmured.
‘Don’t leave it too long,’ she ordered, echoing Faria’s advice. Xan bowed just a shade too theatrically and I concentrated very hard on not giggling, at least until her unwinking stare moved on to the people behind us.
Xan put his hand under my arm as we turned into the room. ‘Look at this,’ he whispered. There were jewels and furs, pale or sun-flayed European faces and haughty, sallow Levantine ones, medals and moustaches and feathers and coiffures mixing with the dress uniforms of a dozen armies. ‘And we are in the middle of a war.’
It was hard to believe.
Sandy Allardyce stood a little further on, smoking a cigarette in a jade holder and narrowly watching the servants as they circulated with trays of drinks. He was wearing new evening clothes of a slightly florid, non-European cut. We waved to him through the throng.
‘How will he fit in at his London club in those?’ Xan wondered.
‘I shouldn’t think he’ll need to. His club would seem very faded after all this.’
It was then that I saw Ruth and Daphne. The screens of the upper gallery had all been opened up for the party and they were leaning side by side over the carved partition and looking down on the heads of the crowd.
I pointed them out to Xan. ‘I’m surprised. I’d no idea they knew Mrs Kimmig-Gertsch. Would you like to come and meet them?’
‘Yes, very much.’
We found the stairway that led up to the gallery and made our way towards them.
‘Ruth? Daphne? May I introduce my fiancé, Xan Molyneux?’
We all laughed. Xan said, ‘I’ve heard a lot about you both.’
‘Likewise,’ Ruth agreed.
‘I wanted to say thank you for nursing Albie Noake. I heard from Iris how expertly.’
‘It’s my job,’ Ruth said, but a faint blush on her pale skin betrayed her pleasure.
Two by two, we made a slow circuit of the gallery, Xan with Daphne and me with Ruth.
‘How do you know her?’ I asked, as we watched our hostess sketch a curtsy to an Egyptian royal princess.
‘Not me, Daphne. There’s a lot of money, as you know, and before the war she was involved in a charity that was considering a major donation to Daph’s village medical project. The money never quite materialised, actually, but we seem to have made it onto the guest list anyway. What about you?’
I told her about Sandy.
‘Anyway, it’s all very decadent,’ Ruth said in her crisp Scottish voice. Below us a group of young men in distinctive red trousers were dancing a noisy conga line through the crowd. It was the Cherry Pickers. At the head of the line was a conjurer dressed in an Arabian Nights costume topped with a sequinned turban. He was pulling silk handkerchiefs and posies of flowers out of the fronts of women’s dresses, and from behind Mrs Kimmig-Gertsch’s head he magicked a live white dove. The Cherry Pickers whooped and clapped, and the bird flew up out of the conjurer’s hand and landed on the gallery partition a few feet away from us.
‘Is Jessie here?’ I asked Xan.
‘Of course he is. I think he’s marking the mule’s dance card.’
My new friends and Xan liked each other at once. He could talk as fluently as Daphne did about the war and about bread rationing and the predicament of Cairo’s poor but he also teased her, and Ruth, about their serious-mindedness.
‘It’s New Year’s Eve. No irrigation project can be got under way tonight, can it?’ He hoisted two glasses off a passing tray and put them into their hands. ‘Let’s concentrate on irrigating ourselves. Here’s to 1942,’ he said.
They echoed the toast and I looked at their bright faces outlined against the swirl of party guests. I was pleased and excited to be with the three of them and I drank to celebrate, keeping pace with Xan and feeling the hot gas of the party singeing my cheeks.
‘Come on, darling. Don’t be coy, come and greet your public.’
The Cherry Pickers all cheered. The mule was wearing a sable wrap with the tails hanging round its fore-quarters and an orchid corsage was tucked into the bridle’s headpiece. The mule lifted one hoof, stepped delicately forward and crossed the cobbles to the door that led into the house. The rest of us formed a ragged column behind it.
‘What’s happening?’ I mumbled to Xan.
‘He wants them to see in the New Year together.’
A little group of musicians had been playing on the low dais facing the giant Christmas tree. Sandy Allardyce was giving them instructions and now the leader stood up, tucked his violin under one arm and made a little bow. A noisy group led by Betty Hopwood was counting down the seconds to midnight. Twelve, eleven, ten … As the mule made its entry through the tall doors it was stricken by the bright lights and the surging crowd. Its legs splayed and its head reared back, setting the sable tails jiggling.
Five, four, three …
Everyone was shouting now. The bandleader sounded a long chord on his violin and the mule gave a terrified snort.
Two, one, hooray …
There was a popping of corks like gunfire. With Sandy conducting, the band scraped into an approximation of the first bars and the crowd swayed dangerously as everyone crossed arms in imitation of the Cherry Pickers and the British diplomats, and stumbled to link hands with their neighbours. Ruth and Daphne were singing, I could hear their voices through all the clamour.
Xan’s arm was round my waist, holding me upright.
We’ll take a cup of kindness yet, for … auld lang syne.
The mule broke free and dashed through the room, scattering women in satin and diamonds, and sending chairs crashing over. His owner chased behind and cornered it beside the Christmas tree.
‘Dash it,’ he cried ‘don’t you know the words?’
‘Happy New Year, Iris, darling.’ Xan laughed as his hands cupped my face. ‘1942 will be our year. We’ll make it our year.’
The mule cowered against the panelling, shaking its poor head in terror as its owner patted its nose and murmured reassurance into its hairy ear.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a wave of nameless, formless, ice-cold fear mounted and crashed over me. I shivered under the shock of it, my stomach heaving so that I was sure I would be sick. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead and the palms of my hands turned sticky.
‘Xan.’ He was right there, solid and familiar, his breath on my face. ‘Xan, I’m frightened.’ My lips felt frozen, I could hardly get the words out.
‘Darling.’
The hall was a hubbub of kissing and shouting. The mule had lifted its tail and defecated on one of Mrs Kimmig-Gertsch’s Persian rugs and Sandy was furiously ordering the Cherry Pickers to drag it outside. The band started to play another number.
Xan helped me away from the thick of the crowd. In the ante-room he sat me in a high-backed chair, gave me a glass of water and rubbed my hands. My teeth were chattering. The foreboding was still there, a dark poisonous fog of it, sweeping towards us.
‘It’s all right. It’s just the drink, darling. You’ve had a lot to drink.’
‘Yes.’
I wanted that to be it. I wished I were drunk, but I knew I wasn’t.
‘There’s a cab waiting,’ Jessie said at Xan’s shoulder. ‘Shall we get her into it?’
They each took one of my arms and they helped me out into the blue-black night.
That was the beginning of 1942.
CHAPTER TWELVE
As we leave the city behind the darkness thins.
There is never a precise moment in the desert when you can say now it is dawn, but the day comes swiftly and without drama. Suddenly the single-storey mud villages and irrigation canals stand out on either side of the road in the flat grey light, and rigid black silhouettes of date palms subdivide monochrome fields of crops. We overtake a buffalo cart, and an old man riding a donkey with empty paniers dragging at its haunches.
We are going to see the sun rise at the Pyramids, I remember that much, but now that we are on the road I’m afraid of the coming daylight and the threatening flat space of the delta with the desert so close at hand. I want to be back in my house, inside the familiar place. If we go on, the harsh sun and the wind over the dunes will obliterate me.
I turn to the driver. ‘Daphne, stop.’
Ruby noticed a scruffy little café at the side of the road where the owner was putting out tin tables and his wife was sweeping dust off the concrete standing with a palm leaf brush. A cup of coffee might help, she thought. This excursion was already turning out to be a crap idea.
‘I know. Let’s stop here, shall we?’ she said to Iris.
It was light, although the sun wasn’t up yet. The driver of a white minibus full of tourists hooted as she braked in front of him, the blast of his horn changing pitch as the bus roared by. Iris nodded in apparent relief.
They sat down on metal chairs with the battered table shielding them from the road. The café owner swabbed the table top with a gritty cloth.
‘I would like some hot coffee,’ Iris said. She looked pale but calmer.
Ruby was hungry. She ordered bread and eggs and a dish of fruit while the man yawned and scraped his jaw with the back of his hand. It was still very early.
‘Iris? Who’s Daphne?’
Iris sat quite still, gazing along the road that led away from Cairo. At first, Ruby thought she hadn’t heard the question. A tin pot of coffee and two thick white cups were banged down on the table in front of them, followed by a bowl containing slices of greyish bread. Ruby poured coffee and pushed one of the cups close to where Iris’s clasped hands rested on the table top.
‘Daphne Erdall,’ Iris said clearly.
‘Go on.’
There was no answer this time, but this was the technique, Ruby had learned, when Iris drifted into one of the lost places.
You kept prodding her with questions and disjointed answers were doled out in response. Then – not always, but sometimes – the fragments of response ran together and occasionally coalesced into whole chunks of intelligible narrative.
Only two days ago, when Ruby was following the advice of Doctor Nicolas Grosseteste and taking Iris out for a slow walk in the sunshine, the sight of a mule outside in the street with a small boy patiently holding up its nosebag had made her stop short and give a little laugh that turned into a gasp and then a cough. She wouldn’t say what was funny or painful, but she had clasped Ruby’s hand more tightly as they made their slow turn to the end of the street and back.
But then, when they were inside the house once more, Iris had suddenly come out with a story about a mule being led into this hall because its owner wanted it to sing Auld Lang Syne at a New Year’s party, and the animal had rewarded him by lifting its tail and doing its business on the Persian carpet.
‘Were you living here then?’ Ruby asked, puzzled.
‘Oh no. That was the beginning of 1942. The house belonged to Gerti Kimmig-Gertsch in those days.’
‘So did you buy it from her?’
Iris only smiled, tipping her nose upwards in a way that was almost flirtatious.
‘Of course not. How could I have done? It’s a much more interesting story than that.’
‘
I’m all ears,’ Ruby said, but Iris only complained that she was tired and would Ruby please send Auntie upstairs to her.
Later, Mamdooh said, ‘Mum-reese very tired, I think. It is not good, going out walking in afternoon sun.’
Ruby met his eye. ‘It wasn’t all that hot.’ This was true. In late November the sun was often no more than a whitish disc riding behind a thin layer of cloud. When the sky was clear, the heat built up slowly towards the middle of the day and then quickly soaked away as the sun sank again.
‘You are strong, young woman, miss.’
‘The doctor told me that it is good for Mum-reese to get out of the house. We’re going to be making a few more excursions, actually. Now we’ve, like, got the car going again.’
Mamdooh wrinkled his forehead. The moles and warts edged closer together, as if seeking each other’s company. ‘I think not a good idea.’
OK, Ruby thought to herself. I won’t come asking for your permission.
Then yesterday afternoon Iris had suddenly had the idea that they should make a dawn excursion to the Pyramids.
‘The museum, and the Pyramids. Essential for all visitors to Cairo. What would your mother say if I didn’t take you out there?’
Ruby shrugged and said she had already been out there with Ash and Giza had been crowded with a million tourists and touts and taxis, but Iris dismissed her with an impatient wave of the hand. They would get up very early and go out to see the sun rise. Iris kept repeating this and in the end Ruby said, ‘Whatever.’ When Iris had an idea in her head there was no deflecting her.
Yesterday evening, out walking with Ash, she told him about the plan for the morning.
‘No difference, early or late. Always many people.’
‘Yeah. But my grandmother is thinking of sixty years ago, you know? She mixes things up.’
‘You will take good care, Ruby. I would be coming with you, but I must go to work.’
Ash was working a midnight shift at the hospital switchboard. He came home at 9 a.m. and slept for two or three hours.