Iris and Ruby

by Rosie Thomas

  Deliberately we both laughed but it was anxious laughter with a note of wildness in it.

  ‘No, it’s not them,’ Xan said.

  I took hold of his hand and he slowly rubbed his thumb over the amethyst on my ring finger.

  ‘You will be careful, won’t you?’ Uttering the words made me feel weak and imploring, but I couldn’t help myself.

  ‘Yes,’ Xan promised, because there was nothing else he could say. I could hear the lazy plock of tennis balls and voices calling out the score, love-forty. The afternoon was mazy with heat, thick with the layered smells of Cairo, and stretched into tiny, crystalline, mineral-hard seconds and minutes of waiting. The war continued at sea and in the air but in the desert, where spring had briefly carpeted the wadis with gaudy flowers, there was a long lull in the fighting. The forces were drawn up on either side of the heavily reinforced Gazala Line. But the interlude could not last much longer. Rommel was getting ready. General Auchinleck, so the cocktail gossip went, was hoping for the best and expecting the worst.

  None of us really knew anything. Along with the Commander-in-Chief Middle East, no one could do anything other than hope for the best.

  Xan’s arms slid round me and he drew me down to lie beside him on the rug. Then he propped himself up so his face blocked out the sky and the feather foliage of the mimosa. He was braver than I was, and better at dealing with the slow drip of time and anxiety. But then, when the time came Xan would be with his men and Hassan, doing what he was trained to do while I was only waiting and imagining. Often enough in those airless, merciless African spring and early-summer days, I wished I were a man. I wished I could do something other than typing and filling in forms and answering telephones. I thought more about Daphne, and medicine.

  ‘Don’t worry too much,’ Xan said gently. He was smiling.

  ‘Worry? What about?’

  He kissed me and we rolled over, laughing at each other. Always laughing.

  A few days later, when Xan had gone away again with Colonel Wainwright, I woke up with a flat taste of metal in my mouth. As soon as I sat up I felt sick, and I perched on the edge of the bed for a moment and rested my feet on the cool floor tiles until I could contemplate getting dressed. Sarah was sitting at the dining table with a magazine and a cup of coffee, and the smell of the coffee immediately made me feel worse.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  I made a face. Food in Cairo was becoming scarcer and restaurant fish was not always reliably fresh. I had eaten shellfish the night before. Quickly, I left the room.

  I felt better once I had been sick. Sitting at the table with Sarah, I drank some weak tea and nibbled on a piece of toast, and we talked about what we should do once Faria was married. She would be living with Ali in his palatial apartment near the Gezira Club, and her parents would want to take possession of our flat again. Sarah and I agreed that we would have to find somewhere smaller and cheaper to share, and I wondered aloud if Daphne and Ruth might know somewhere near their place on the Heliopolis Road.

  Faria appeared, yawning, with her white silk robe trailing behind her. She looked irritable and, unusually, there was a faint sheen of perspiration on her forehead. She picked up the coffee pot and scowled. ‘There’s none left. Have you drunk every drop?’

  Sarah and I glanced at each other.

  ‘I’ll go and ask Mamdooh to make a fresh pot,’ Sarah said gently.

  Faria slumped down in a chair.

  ‘What are you doing today?’ I asked.

  ‘Fittings. Endless fittings, and making lists with my mother. I am only getting married. Why is one made to feel like a prize animal? With a couture ribbon tied round its neck, being led to the slaughter?’

  ‘Is that how it really feels?’ I asked.

  Faria shrugged impatiently. ‘Wait until it’s your turn and you’ll see.’

  The sickness continued into the next day and by the time a week had passed I was having to accept that there might be another explanation for it than a mild dose of shellfish poisoning.

  I mentioned my suspicion to Ruth and Daphne.

  Ruth raised one amused eyebrow and Daphne said, ‘I’m not a gynaecologist but it sounds like pregnancy to me. Weren’t you using anything?’

  ‘Not invariably.’ I coloured a little, remembering the urgency of some of the times.

  ‘Well, there you are. I can arrange a test for you, at the hospital.’

  ‘What do you want to do?’ Ruth asked.

  Before I could formulate the answer, I knew without any whisper of doubt what I wanted to do. I wanted to have Xan’s child. Xan’s son.

  ‘Xan said he wanted babies, dozens of them. I’m going to have the child, of course.’

  My face split into a smile and I felt my limbs lighten, my head lifting on my shoulders as if it might float away. The nausea was concentrated inside me, a heavy, welcome, yawning weight beneath my ribcage.

  ‘Ah. Then there’s no problem, is there?’ Daphne tilted her head towards me and pressed her clean hand over mine. She looked pleased and slightly sad at the same time, and Ruth stood up at once and rested her hands on her shoulders, holding her in her place.

  I was babbling now and grinning at them both. ‘None. It’s a bit early and it’ll mean my mother probably won’t get the big wedding she’s been dreaming of, but Xan will be relieved about that, I should think, and I don’t want to feel like some sacrificial beast either, the way Faria seems to. We’ll just get married, with our friends around us, and I want you two to be godparents. Will you?’

  Daphne and Ruth glanced at each other, and I couldn’t read what was in their eyes.

  Ruth spoke for them both in the end. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We’d be proud to, if that’s what you and Xan both want.’

  ‘I think you should come in and see my colleague Esther Reisen,’ Daphne said briskly. ‘She is a gynaecologist. It might be a good idea to be positive before you actually appoint the godparents, don’t you think?’

  ‘I will. Then I can tell Xan it’s definite.’

  A few days after that I had the confirmation from Doctor Reisen. I was pregnant.

  I had no idea how to contact Xan; in the past I had just watched and waited for him to materialise. Now I called in at the Zamalek flat, pretending that it was just a spur-of-the-moment social visit, and surprised two exhausted-looking officers who had apparently been sound asleep at eight o’clock in the evening. They didn’t know anything about Xan’s present whereabouts.

  ‘He’ll turn up in a few days, always does,’ one of them promised. ‘Would you like a drink?’

  Roddy Boy did not respond to my casual enquiries about the present movements of the various Tellforce patrols.

  ‘I cannot discuss that with you, Miss Black, as you know full well. Like all the other service mothers, wives and fiancées you will simply have to wait for whatever happens.’ His plump mouth tightened and he looked slightly hunted.

  There was nothing in the Intelligence traffic – at least, none that I was party to – that gave me any clues either. In the end I wrote a brief note, saying in the most anonymous and general language that Xan should contact me as soon as he was able. I sealed it in an envelope and addressed it to Captain A. N. Molyneux, and walked from HQ to the run-down street across from el Rhoda. I picked out the house near where Hassan had been waiting when Xan and I came back from choosing my amethyst, and I strolled up and knocked on the door. It was opened by a smart-looking Indian NCO.

  ‘Yes, Madam?’

  ‘I have a message I would like to deliver.’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘I have a message. For a Tellforce officer.’

  ‘What is this Tellforce?’

  I looked rapidly up and down the deserted street, then stepped quickly past the NCO and into the house. It was quiet, and the interior was as featureless as the exterior. I produced my envelope and held it out to the soldier.

  ‘This letter is for my friend, and fiancé. See, it’s addressed
to him? It’s a personal matter, but it is urgent. I am going to give it to you, here …’ I held it out and reluctantly he took it from my hand. ‘… and I hope very much that you’ll be able to help. If there’s a way of getting it to Captain Molyneux I will be very grateful, and so will he.’

  I turned back to the door.

  ‘I don’t know, Madam’, he said, but I thought his nod contradicted his words.

  ‘Thank you, Corporal.’ I went back out into the street, trying to look – in case anyone should happen to wonder what I was doing – as if I had mistaken the house of my dressmaker.

  I told Faria and Sarah that I was going to have a baby.

  Faria was dieting before the wedding in order to fit into the wedding dress that had already been made and stitched with thousands of seed pearls. She put down her cup of hot water in which floated a slice of lemon, the only aperitif she was allowed in place of the usual large gin and tonic, and sympathetically blinked at me.

  ‘Oh, no. Poor darling. But you know, there are things you can do, I can tell you someone …’

  ‘I’m pleased. I want the baby, I should think Xan and I will just get married a bit sooner.’

  Faria looked doubtful. ‘Are you sure?’

  I thought her uncertainty was much more to do with the prospect of her own imminent marriage than with mine.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Sarah didn’t say much. Once she understood that it was a welcome pregnancy, she murmured a word of congratulation, and jumped up and left the room. Faria shrugged and lit another Turkish cigarette, then went back to flicking through a magazine. When I went to look for her I found Sarah in her room, sitting at her dressing table and staring at her reflection in the vast greenish mirror. I thought she might have been crying, but she denied it.

  ‘Don’t be silly. It’s so heavenly for you both. A baby, just imagine.’

  It wasn’t so easy to imagine what it would really mean. I had no idea what being a mother might entail; all I wanted was to see Xan and tell him the news.

  Two nights later I lay awake in my bed. Faria was with Ali at some pre-marriage formal celebration and Sarah was out with the middle-aged French diplomat with whom she had recently started a half-hearted affair. It was a hot night and the ceiling fan stirred the air without cooling it. I heard a small click, and then what might have been the lightest footstep in the corridor outside. The hair prickled on my head and my eyes snapped wide open. As I held my breath the door silently cracked open and I saw a black profile against the blackness beyond. It was Xan.

  ‘You’re here,’ I whispered exultantly and held out my arms. The bed springs creaked as he slid down beside me and his mouth was warm on my neck.

  ‘I stink, darling, forgive me. Doesn’t Mamdooh lock the door when he goes home at night?’

  ‘Yes. No, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Did you get my message?’

  ‘I did, this morning. Therefore I am here, but only for a couple of hours. Tell me.’

  He did smell, of sweat and tobacco and oil and dust, and I buried my face against his battledress. In the darkness he seemed bigger and more solid than I remembered, full of recent events and escapades that I could only guess at, and keyed up in a way that made his arms and legs minutely vibrate with anticipation. He was ready to jump or shoot or run, and knowing this made me want to hold on to him even more tightly.

  ‘I am going to have a baby.’

  There was a small gasp of indrawn breath, a silence, then a whoosh of exhalation that swelled into a shout. It was a shout of pure happiness and my face creased into a quiet, relieved smile.

  ‘Are you? Are you certain?’

  I told him about Daphne’s colleague, the methodical Doctor Esther Reisen at the Queen Mary.

  His hand came to rest on my belly. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Not bad. Sick, some of the time, but that won’t last more than another three or four weeks. Are you really pleased?’

  He kissed my hands and my neck and my mouth.

  ‘I can’t believe it. Yes, I’m more pleased than you can imagine. Will it be a boy or a girl?’

  ‘A boy,’ I told him with absolute certainty.

  ‘Let’s get married. Straightaway. As soon as we can arrange it. Never mind the cathedral and the dress and the guard of honour and all that rubbish. I’ll ask the colonel for two days.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Yes, yes. Now, put your arms round me. Here. Touch me. Take this off. Wait. I’ll undo it …’

  There was a tangle of his clothing and my nightgown, and the creak of his Sam Browne belt and a shocking clatter as his service revolver fell onto the floor, and then we were naked and enveloped in each other.

  Afterwards he lay with his fingers tangled in my hair, holding my head against his heart.

  ‘Do you have to go?’ I whispered.

  ‘In a minute or two, yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Back.’

  ‘Can’t you tell me anything?’

  ‘Rommel’s rearmed, he’s going to strike for Tobruk and beyond. He’ll be trying to push the Eighth Army right back, back as far as the frontier and into Egypt.’

  This much I knew.

  ‘Have you heard of the Qattara Depression?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s a huge hollow, thousands of square miles of it, scooped out of the desert floor about forty miles south of the coast and the railhead at a place called el Alamein. The northern sides of it are too steep for tanks to descend and the bed is treacherous soft sand. If Rommel advances that far, he’ll be caught in a natural bottleneck between the sea and the Qattara and this will be the last, best place to try and hold him before the frontier.’

  ‘How is Tellforce involved in this?’

  Xan’s mouth came close to my ear, as if even here in my bed we might be overheard. ‘Hassan and I think there is a way through the Qattara. Not an easy way, but I believe it can be done. If we can somehow reconnoitre a route for the heavy armour, without the enemy knowing about it, we can hook around and come in at them from the south where they will never expect to be vulnerable. We’re based at Siwa now and we’re working on it. Solving the Qattara route.’ Against the thin skin beneath my ear his mouth curved in a smile of anticipation, and I shivered.

  ‘It’s time,’ he murmured now. Then he sat up and began to gather his clothes. I reached to turn on the light beside my bed and lay with my head propped on one hand, memorising the chain of bone that formed his spine, and the lean hips, and the shadow of his ribs showing through tanned skin. None of the men who fought in the desert carried any surplus flesh on them.

  When he was dressed, Xan sat down again beside me and picked up my left hand. He kissed the knuckles and pressed his lips to the amethyst, and smiled as he held my face between his hands.

  ‘’Bye, darling. Will you find out what it takes to get us married with indecent haste?’

  ‘I will.’

  He kissed me on the lips. ‘Look after yourself, and the baby. I love you both. I’ll be back again soon.’

  He knelt down and retrieved his revolver from under the bed, slid it back into its holster and stood up. The door opened, closed behind him with a swift click and he was gone.

  After numerous thwarted attempts, I finally managed to telephone my mother in Hampshire. She sounded tired, as if just repeating their number cost her an effort, but her voice turned sharp with anxiety when she realised it was me.

  ‘Iris? Iris, is that you? What’s wrong? Quick, tell me what’s happened …’

  They were primed for bad news at home in England; it seemed that it was the only kind. And a telephone call from Cairo was a reasonable cause for alarm.

  ‘Nothing’s wrong, Mummy, nothing at all, I’ve just got something I want to tell you that won’t wait for a letter.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m going to have a baby.’

  ‘Oh. Oh dear, are you quite sure?’

  I couldn’t help smiling.
<
br />   ‘Certain. And I’m very happy, and so is Xan. It means that we’ll get married right away. I’m just sorry that it will mean not having you and Daddy here, and no trousseau or ambassador or anything like that. Do you mind very much?’

  ‘Goodness me. Mind? I don’t know. I was so looking forward …’

  ‘I know you were. But it’s wartime, and Xan and I love each other, and after the war we’ll come home with a grandchild for you. We can’t be the only family in this position.’

  ‘No. It’s the war, I suppose. Everything is different these days. Evie was only saying last week that at least two of her friends, you know … It’s all quite different from my day. But you can’t think of having the baby in Cairo. You must come home as soon as possible. If you book a passage now …’

  ‘No, Mummy. I’m staying here with Xan. I have a very good doctor, everything will be arranged.’

  ‘Iris, really. You are very headstrong.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. I’m very happy. Shall I speak to Daddy?’

  ‘Oh, oh dear, I don’t think so. You’d better leave that to me.’

  ‘All right.’ I smiled again. ‘What about you? How are you?’

  ‘Darling, don’t worry about me. My chest has been bothering me again, but Doctor Harris has given me some new linctus. I’ll feel better as soon as the summer comes, it’s been so cold.’

  ‘It’s very hot here. Mummy, I love you.’

  My mother sounded so tired and frail.

  ‘I love you too. Please do take care, Iris.’

  We are heading into the desert and I am thinking about my mother. Even hearing her faltering voice, distorted by the long-distance telephone connection.

  She was only in her fifties, even though she seemed almost an old woman to me, and I realise that Lesley is now exactly the age that she was then.

  The road we are now travelling is unmade, it is a rough single track that draws us on into the dunes and the city seems a long way behind. The car tyres lose their purchase in the sand and the engine whines until they find a grip again.

  Xan loved the desert. He knew it and understood it, and in the end it kept him. I don’t know where he lies, but I feel as if this drive brings me closer to him. The hot, dry air sucks at my skin but I am happy. A snatch of an old song almost works its way out of me.