I propped myself up on the camp bed, and he handed me a bottle of Stella. He always seemed to have a supply. We clinked bottles. ‘Thanks. What time is it?’
‘Past eleven. Time you got up anyway – you’ve slept fourteen hours.’
‘Christ! Has Watson been asking for me?’
‘He knows better. The desert really takes it out of you until you’re used to it. Anyway he’ll give you a few days’ leave after you’ve reported. A week in the blue always gets you time off. Tell me about the snow.’
‘It was crisp and new: the sort that moulds together for great snowballs and snowmen.’
‘I remember that. I was in Blighty in 1949 and I joined a party of volunteers digging trains out of snowdrifts up in the Pennines.’ He looked around with a rueful smile. The cheap thermometer hanging from the tent post had already hit 130 degrees, but I didn’t know if it was to be trusted. ‘Seems supremely surreal to be sitting in this bloody oven talking about snow, doesn’t it?’
I noticed that although he had hoisted the sides of the tent to allow whatever breeze there was to cool us, he’d left the side alongside my bed down to shield me sleeping. Considerate that, and not what I’d expected. There was a half-wing, not unlike my own, on the shirt he had dangling on a hanger in the tent eave, but it bore an ‘O’ for Observer. Mine was an ‘S’ for air signaller – which always conjured up the ridiculous image of some bod trying to communicate between aircraft by waving semaphore flags.
‘What do you do for Watson?’ I asked him.
‘Photographs mostly. I take pictures of rock formations, wadis, desert crossroads and way points.’
‘Can’t the Army do that?’
‘They tried, but they always came back with the wrong things. The RAF needs things they can identify from the air, not when they’re looking up at it.’
‘Do you do some of your stuff from the air, then?’
‘Most of it. You can expect to go up there as well, from time to time.’ He must have seen my grimace, because he asked, ‘What’s the matter? Gone off flying?’
‘Not entirely. I’ve just gone off flying the way the RAF does it – far too fucking uncomfortable.’
As I finished the beer, and put the bottle in the box of empties under the table he observed, ‘Very good time of day for taking a shower, if you don’t mind me saying it: you won’t need to queue. But you’ll have to break out a change. I gave the clothes you came back in to the dhobi man.’ For a moment I was startled. That wasn’t a familiar word, and I wondered if he meant something like a rag-and-bone merchant. Again he picked this up from just my expression, because he added, ‘No, don’t worry. You’ll get them back later, washed and pressed better than you’ve ever seen them before . . . and it’ll only cost you an acker.’
‘Are you telling me that I stink?’
‘The scent of the desert, old son. It was just a hint.’
‘And one I’ll take. Thanks.’
I’ll tell you something. It was in Egypt I learned to love the simple act of taking a shower; I still think of it as a luxury I haven’t really earned.
Watson offered me tea. That was a first. It came thin and boiling hot, with a sprig of mint floating on the surface.
‘Good trip?’
‘I feel I’ve learned a lot in a hurry, sir . . . if that makes sense.’
‘Egypt does that to you. I completely understand. Did you get anything?’
I handed him the small notebook of radio traffic. He scrutinized the numbered pages. I had used eight in all. He tore those out neatly against the edge of a ruler, and then took the next two blank sheets as well, explaining. ‘You can recover your last message as an impression from the pages that follow it. Better safe than sorry.’ Then he signed for the pages he’d removed on the inside cover, before handing the notebook back to me.
‘Thank you, Charlie.’
I knew him well enough not to ask what he would do with them. He’d tell me if I needed to know. That might sound like a bit of a cop-out to your modern ear, but it was actually strangely comforting.
‘Is this what I’m going to be doing out here, sir? Going out with small expeditions and monitoring hostile radio signals?’
‘. . . and providing their comms when they need it. Yes, you’ll often be doing that. The average scheme from here is five or six days long.’
‘And what will my other duties be?’
‘Bugger-all most of the time, my boy. The Army and the national service contingent will probably be very jealous, and may give you a hard time. I might ask you to do a bit of training, if the RAF Regiment has anyone promising, and occasionally you’ll pull a bit of stag. You won’t mind that, will you?’ It was a rhetorical question of course. I sipped my tea and waited for the next barrel. ‘. . . and you can have a week off. You could learn to swim. We’re good at that over here.’ Only the British would think of waiting until you were surrounded by desert before teaching you to swim. I definitely was having none of that.
‘Didn’t I tell you already, sir? I can swim. My school was famous for it. Most of my class were medallists, although I was never that good.’
‘OK. Take a ninety-six then, and take care of your bloody self. Keep your eyes on the alerts wherever you go.’ He wrote out and handed me the ticket, and said, ‘. . . and keep this in your bloody pocket; if the SPs pick you up without one they’ll think you’re a deserter, and with your reputation I don’t think you’ll be able to talk yourself out of twenty-one days at Moascar. Toddle along now.’
I walked around his pavilion to find Pat Tobin – I needed a decent set of KDs and a couple of spare shirts out of my secure storage. Between the MT Section’s tent and the pavilion was a small square area screened off on three sides by striped wind-breakers – the kind you see on the beach at Southend. Concealed in it lay a woman under a sunshade, face-down on a cheap sunbed. She wore a white swimsuit with the shoulder straps pulled down and a floppy white hat.
She lifted her head and looked over her shoulder when she heard me. ‘Hello, Charlie.’
I loved her body, but it took me a minute to recognize it. I’d never seen her with her clothes off.
Then, ‘Hello, Daisy. Day off?’
‘Half-day. He worked me hard last night.’
‘There are a thousand bored men confined behind the wire here . . . and most of them probably have their binoculars trained on you. What you’re doing is either dangerous, or cruel.’
‘. . . probably cruel.’
I wouldn’t bet on it, love, were the words that went through my mind, but all I said was, ‘. . . see you.’ Light touch, Charlie: if she was playing silly buggers it was her own fault, wasn’t it?
‘What would you do with your first ninety-six?’ I asked Nansen, as I threw what I needed into a small canvas crew bag someone had given me at RAF Waddington years before.
‘I’d ask my outrageous tent mate if he would like to join me.’
‘Would you?’
‘Love to, but I’m flying over the Delta tomorrow photographing Gyppo installations.’ Military installations, that is. There had been a few incidents reported in the papers. The Egyptian Army was getting very touchy about our reconnaissance flights.
‘What then?’
‘Ismailia, I suppose; but draw a pick handle from the guards before you go – it’s either a red-amber or an amber alert again, but the Arabs still hate us, and will stuff you if they can. Personally I always feel safer in Port Said. There’s a lot more of us about because of the port and the transit camps, and hence a lot more of our coppers on the street . . . and it’s more cosmopolitan in many ways. More of the locals speak English, and there are more clubs and restaurants, old-fashioned hotels and even an art gallery.’
‘I know some people in Ismailia. From when I was in hospital there.’
‘Well, then; pay your money, and take your choice . . . and don’t forget to wave as you see me flying over.’
‘Could you get away after your job?’
‘Mm . . . Charlie. Maybe. That sounds suspiciously like a date.’ Then he laughed, turned away and picked up an old copy of Picture Post. The girl in a swimming suit on the cover looked like Daisy. I noticed he had reverted to shorts of a more or less standard pattern, and wondered if that was because his streamliners were in the wash, or was it because of me?
I paid a visit I had been putting off. The SWO at Deversoir was surprisingly difficult to find. He was in an office behind an office behind an office behind an office, and everyone I asked had a different way of getting there. I found him in a large room at the end of a corridor in a long wooden hut. A big bald man with a hanging black moustache. He looked like the walrus’s father, and twice as fierce. A notice facing me on his desk top read SWO Cox. I’ve always distrusted people who need their own name on their desk: I suspect it is there because they are in danger of forgetting it, and therefore shouldn’t have been trusted with a desk of their own in the first place – I’m sure you’ve met the type. An aircraftman typed at a table behind him, and a relentless fan stirred the air slowly above them. Overweight flies rode on it like kids at a fairground. I wondered where the Arabs were. Then I caught my own thought – bloody well all around us, of course.
‘Pilot Officer Bassett,’ I told him. ‘I wanted to see you earlier, but they sent me out almost immediately.’
‘Good afternoon, sir.’ He was right. It was afternoon already. He was probably one of those sad types who always get that right. ‘I was wondering where you’d got to. Take a pew.’ My chair was rickety. I didn’t trust it.
‘What do I need to know?’
‘More than I can teach you, sir, but with a ha’p’orth of common sense you’ll get by. Would you like a glass of lemonade?’
‘Thank you.’
The AC brought two over without being asked.
‘In the first place keep your wits about you at night – and being inside the wire is no guarantee of safety. There are incidents every week . . . most of the wogs who break in are just stealing, but if you get between them and what they’re after they’ll slit your throat first, and call themselves a hero of the resistance afterwards. Don’t take any chances – OK?’
‘I understand.’
‘You might feel like a bit of a girl, but even if you’re going to the karzi after dark take someone with you. You’re one of Mr Watson’s staff, aren’t you?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Then my advice to you, sir, is to get in a bit of guard duty as soon as you can – get used to moving around the compound in the dark. Get used to what it looks like.’
‘OK. Tell me about the states of alert, SWO . . .’
‘They are levels of alert, sir . . . for that read danger – for British personnel in the Canal Zone. That is anywhere in the Canal Zone, got it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Red is danger – meaning you won’t leave camp until you’re ordered to, and when you do you carry a fully loaded side arm at all times. Please understand that the bastards out there will try to kill you. Usually mob-handed, so we can’t pin down the killers afterwards. Soldiers and airmen have been kicked to death, beaten and drowned, shot, carved up . . . you name it. Couple of months ago they kidnapped one of our bus drivers, and tossed his bits back over the wire later that night. They even raped and killed a nun for being a teacher in an English school. Your Egyptian is neither a stable nor a nice man, and never will be in my opinion . . . and this is serious stuff I’m telling you. Got it?’ I nodded. I wonder if he noticed my involuntary swallow. He probably did, as SWOs don’t miss much. ‘Red-Amber is only one notch down . . . you’re usually going to be OK outside the camp, but if anything happens to you I’d probably say it served you right for being out there. Amber is more or less OK . . . but you’re expected to carry a pickaxe handle with you outside the wire at all times, and if you see a British soldier in trouble, you’re expected to wade in with it. Got that? Green is OK. It means that some silly bugger has decided that the British serviceman will be safe out here, wherever he goes. If you believe that then you’re thicker than you look, sir.’
‘I’ve just been given a ninety-six, and had decided to see a bit of Egypt, Ismailia or Port Said. Now you’ve almost changed my mind.’
‘Good, that means you may be safe out there, sir, and I’ve done my duty.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Yes, sir. In Egypt you never ask a policeman, despite the old song. On-duty policemen are off-duty terrorists. They’ll direct you up a dark alley to get a good kicking or worse . . . and don’t follow a Gyppo offering you a young virgin, or cheap gold jewellery, as you’re bound to end up in the Sweet Water with a knife between your ribs.’
I leaned back in my chair. It creaked, reminding me of my earlier doubts.
‘Someone else told me that about the cops. You make it sound more dangerous down here on the Canal than out in the desert.’
‘I’m glad you’ve worked that out, sir, because it is. Lastly, keep your papers and your wallet buttoned into a pocket. The clubs are full of girls with long fingers, and while one hand’s in your fly the other will be robbing you blind. End of sermon – sorry.’
I grinned. Grinning is one of the things I’m good at, so I do it a lot. ‘No. It’s exactly what I needed. Are there areas of Ismailia or Port Said out of bounds?’
‘I’ll give you the street maps we’ve xeroxed; they’re clearly marked. I’ve made them up into a small booklet – with Cairo, Suez and Alex as well.’
‘OK. Thanks. Today’s alert is actually amber – it said so on your noticeboard outside: so where do I collect a pick handle?’
‘At the gate. And there’s a big box of johnnies there as well – make sure you take a pocketful.’
As I left him, I recognized a feeling I’d had since I’d landed. It was as if I was being watched all the time, and not by the Brits. It was a feeling that I’d met in Bremen at the end of the war, and I hadn’t liked it then either.
I went up to Ismailia in the back of a three-tonner which had come forward on a milk run from one of the Army bases. There was no cover on the wagon bed and we sat with our arses on the floor and our heads below the level of the cab so the wires couldn’t reach us.
Oh yeah, the guy I squeezed in alongside was Roy Rogers. He said, ‘Hello, sir. Off for a few days?’
‘Yeah, Roy. What about you?’
‘I drew a forty-eight after that little lot.’
‘They gave me ninety-six.’
‘Yer an officer. You need it.’ He had a wicked grin himself. ‘You meeting someone tonight?’
‘No, I thought I’d get a look at Ismailia or Port Said.’
‘I’m not doing anything; I’ll show you round Ish if you like?’
‘That would be great: get me started.’
The pickaxe handles carried by the Brown Jobs were bigger than mine. I resolved to swap one as soon as I could, and keep it. What made me laugh was that they all had a WD stamp and a painted number on them, and that upside-down arrow. Somewhere some poor clerk would be busy tallying them up. It was a smooth old road, and because I couldn’t see a horizon from my seat on the truck bed, the heat soon began to get to me. My head began to nod, and my eyes closed. When I opened them again we had stopped outside the Blue Kettle club.
Rogers said, ‘C’mon,’ and hopped over the tailboard. We handed our packs up to the driver, with an instruction for him to drop them off at a billet near the Families Club at Abu Sueir.
As we watched the truck drive off I asked Roy, ‘D’ye reckon it will be all right? Our bags won’t get knocked off?’
‘I knows that driver, Charlie, and he knows that I knows him. That’s all it takes to move things around safely in the British Army.’
‘So, what next?’
‘Seen yer first belly dancer yet?’
‘No.’
‘Time to complete yer education then.’
She was small, much smaller than I’d imagined, and I was entranced.
The two Egyptian pounds she cost me was worth every piastre. I was glad that I’d taken the SWO’s advice. This is the sort of encounter a soldier doesn’t tell his girl or wife about, or if he does, it’s not until after he’s an old man. I still have one of the filmy blue pieces of material she made me keep for a souvenir. I pull it out from time to time, and remember it low on her hips as she moved in the shadows, and the smell of limes from our drinks.
We took the last British night bus from Ismailia’s geometric government centre to the accommodation. Roy didn’t want to walk past the Arab quarter in the dark. Waiting for the transport with a noisy group from the Ordnance Depot up the road, I caught an unexpected rich seam of flower scent on the air. That was when colours and scents first began to overlap in my mind. These flower scents were blue, of course: a fine thin veil of aquamarine carried on the night air. There was the sound of a motorbike starting near the Army HQ, and a rowdy crowd of Kiwis being turned out of the NAAFI a block away. Somewhere a donkey brayed, and then another animal coughed. Camel. From where I stood I could look down a narrow boulevard overhung with trees. That was where the scent breezed in from. I distinctly saw a large shadowy lion cross from one line of trees to the other. She paused momentarily on the roadway, and looked directly at me. Eye contact. The hair stood up on my neck.
I told Roy but he only laughed. ‘They haven’t had any free lions in Egypt for over a hundred years.’
‘I saw it.’
‘Then you saw the past.’
I didn’t tell him that that had happened before, either.
I lay under an awning at the Abu Sueir swimming pool the next morning sweating off a hangover. I was getting good at being under sunshades in the sun. Susan Haye with an e lay within arm’s reach, but she would have torn mine off if I’d made a move, and I didn’t feel strong enough for that yet. She wore one of those new two-piece swimsuits that look like matching but substantial pieces of underwear. It was a dull pinky-red, with big white printed flowers. I could see the fine hairs on her stomach, and wanted to touch it.
She said, ‘I’m going to have a swim. Coming?’ There weren’t that many couples around at that time of the morning: mostly just families.
Silent War Page 19