I understood the problem as soon as I began to spread the pictures out on my bed. Nancy had a wonderful eye for his subject, no doubt about that. Very talented. Tired and ill-equipped British soldiers had never looked nobler, nor so tired or ill-equipped. Drunken matelots smashing up a bar in Port Said looked just as unpleasant as we truly know them to be. A Red Cap clubbing an Arab child looked just like a copper clubbing a child. Nansen had created an invaluable historical record of Brits at large in the Canal Zone, but not one the British War Office would ever want to come to light. But that wasn’t really a problem, because I knew I would eventually figure out what to do with them.
The real problem was that he’d photographed half the British women in the Canal Zone, as well – and most of them had taken their clothes off. Even a good number of Egyptian girls had fallen under the spell of his fancy Leica camera. In ten minutes I saw seven people I thought I’d met. Haye with an e was one of them, and so was the corvette skipper’s wife. I guessed that, if I persevered, I’d find Daisy in there somewhere. I shoved them quickly back into the case, and stuck it under my pillow. Christ!
I walked around with it for half a day, not daring to let it out of my sight. Who else knew they existed? What I had on the end of my arm was nothing less than a case full of dynamite, and Mrs Bassett’s son was bright enough to realize it. If I had been Nansen, I might have come back from the dead myself; just to find out what happened next.
I could have destroyed them all immediately, which might have been the clever thing to do . . . or I could think before I acted, for once. I needed to buy time, and that meant stashing them where no other bugger could get their hands on them. And I had nowhere safe to hide them. Pat would have a key to my allegedly safe locker. If I asked Daisy to lock them away, she’d quickly cotton on to what they were. I went to see my friendly SWO. I reckoned he owed me one. He looked tired.
‘Out last night, SWO?’
‘A couple of wogs came through the wire, sir, and broke into the pharmacy. We still don’t know all that they got away with. What can I do for you, Mr Bassett? Come to volunteer again? Almost nobody does, you know.’
‘I’ve a couple of days’ leave coming; I’ll give you a night after that, if you like. No, I came to see if you could think of a solution to a little problem I have. I’ve got a pile of personal documents I don’t want to fall into anyone else’s hands when I’m away. I need to leave them safe and secure. I’m afraid they’d be nicked from my tent or my locker.’
‘What about your CO?’
‘I’ve thought about that. People are going in and out of his safe all of the time. I wouldn’t rest happy . . .’
‘Would they fit in a large dispatch envelope?’
‘Yes, they would.’
‘Put them inside a sealed envelope, inside a sealed dispatch envelope, and mail them to yourself “addressee only”. They’ll be kept at Base PO until you collect them.’
Now why didn’t I think of that?
I sifted through the shots, and took out a few. Then I did as he’d said.
I trundled north on the RAF bus. The Regiment corporal was on the gate again, and recognized me through the window. He started what began as a salute, so I quickly grinned and waved back, and his salute turned into a waved hand. No hard feelings then.
I got off in the square at Ismailia and hoofed it to the Kettle. It was closed again, so I would have to use the back way in. A hurdy-gurdy man was grinding out Arabic tunes on a wind-up box in the street outside, and an ice-cream seller stood alongside him. I ate an ice cream, and listened to the monotonous musical howls before I nipped down the side alley. They watched me go with expressionless faces.
Yassine was seated at one of the round tables. One of the small bands was practising, and one of the girls danced sinuously around them for fun. The laughter was infectious – nothing like when they were doing it for clients. The noise was overwhelming, so David and I had to shout over it. The dust the dancer raised sparkled in the shafts of light pouring in from small high windows.
I slid into the seat opposite him. ‘They are tremendous.’
‘When they perform for themselves, yes. They used to be the old King’s favourites.’
‘Can you put me up for a couple of days?’
‘Of course, but we’ll have to be careful: the British authorities won’t like it if they find out. Times are tense again, and I am closed down. Maybe for good this time.’
‘I’m sorry about that. I didn’t check the alert before I left. That’s going to kill me one day.’
‘You should have noticed all the brave British soldiers carrying their wooden clubs . . . but, God willing, you will have a long life, Charlie Bassett.’
One of his boys had brought us beers. I lifted mine and said, ‘. . . and you, David. Long life.’ We toasted each other. The music, singing and dance built in a noisy crescendo, then stopped abruptly. The girl collapsed in front of the band, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. ‘Will my things be safe here?’
‘Of course not, but they will be safer than on any of your British bases.’ It was the third time in minutes he had used the word British with a curled lip.
‘You’re not all that keen on the Brits at the moment?’
‘You keep closing me down. Soon it will be impossible to trade.’
‘I am sorry about that.’
He shrugged and muttered, ‘Inshallah.’ He was becoming an Arab again. Arabs were becoming Arabs again all over the Middle East, and that was going to be a problem for us one day. I know I’ve said it before, but Lawrence of sodding Arabia has a lot to answer for.
Yassine gave me an airy room along the top corridor. The door looked a hundred years old, and closed with a sliding wooden bar on the inside. There was an old, upright fretted cupboard and a bed large enough for six, covered by carpets. A creaky fan revolved overhead. It would do.
The music filtered up, a slower number with a lot of hand clapping. I asked him, ‘What’s that called?’
‘ “Mnishebak” – it means The view from my window; it’s very romantic. You like it?’
A male tenor voice suddenly weaved through it, sounding like the muezzin calling his people to prayer.
‘Very much. If we listened to each other’s music more often, we wouldn’t fight as much, would we?’
He put his arm around my shoulders. It was like being hugged by a gorilla.
‘Maybe we make a good Arab of you yet, Charlie Bassett.’ Why did so many people want to turn me into something else?
‘No fear, my foreskin’s staying exactly where it’s supposed to be.’
We could both laugh at that. Next he called me a cab to get me out to the compound at El Kirsh, but warned me not to get into any cab not arranged by him.
‘But this guy’s safe?’
‘Anything happens to you, I cut his throat. He understands.’
‘Thank you, David. I owe you a lot.’
‘You will pay me back a lot as well, never fear.’
Haye with an e was on duty, so I said I’d see her later, and walked up to see if Mrs Holroyd was in. She was in, and in a fine bleached cotton frock. Her fine gold ankle chain glinted in the sunlight when she stepped out onto the veranda. I suddenly wanted her. Why hadn’t that happened before?
She said, ‘Oh, it’s you!’
‘I’m afraid so. I can go away if you’re expecting anyone else.’
She laughed, ‘Here? Come on in.’ She had been listening to soft, steady jazz on the radio, and had left it on. Not long after that we began to call it ‘modern jazz’, which seems incongruous nearly sixty years later. She had been drinking something like a Martini from one of those parasol-shaped Martini glasses, and offered me one.
When I was sitting opposite her, glass in hand, she asked me, ‘Passing visit, or deliberate?’
‘Deliberate.’ I sipped the drink. The gin and vermouth mix seemed the authentic thing.
‘To what end?’
‘I wanted
you.’
She crossed her legs, and tugged the dress over her knees. Her skin was a kind of golden-brown colour.
‘Didn’t we try that a few weeks ago and decide it wouldn’t work? What’s changed?’
‘When I saw the hair on your belly look so fine and soft I knew I had to touch it.’ I didn’t actually mean belly, but it seemed the politer option. Not bad for a conversation stopper, Charlie, but make sure you’re not close enough to cop a slap in the moosh. Her mouth popped open. A nice little round o with just a trace of pastel-pink lipstick.
‘But you’ve never seen me . . . !’
‘Not until a day ago. Now I want to see you again.’
I fumbled in my small pack until I found the envelope I was looking for. Prints and negs. I handed it to her, and she studied the three photographs for a long while before saying anything.
Then, quietly: ‘Where did you get these?’
‘I rescued them. Nancy copped it in that Meteor crash last week. I recovered his photographs because someone suggested that it would be a kind thing to do.’ It wasn’t quite a lie, but I wasn’t sure she would believe the truth.
‘I wondered if that had been him.’
‘I’m sorry.’
She didn’t say any more for a few minutes. She turned the photographs around and looked at them from different angles, but I don’t think she was seeing anything. Maybe memories.
Then she asked me, ‘Are there any more prints or negatives?’
‘Of course not. Not as far as I know, anyway. It’s up to you what you do with them.’
‘. . . and you wanted to see me like that?’
‘I’ve thought of precious little else since I saw them. You can slap me if you like.’
She looked down with a small smile, and shook her head. The gesture was so slight I almost missed it, and I went on, ‘Look, seeing you in those photos was an accident, but one that I’ll never regret as long as I live.’
I followed her out of the room, along a short corridor and into a shady bedroom.
What she said as we began to undress was, ‘Only once.’
We stayed there for the rest of the afternoon. Eventually we lay smoking a cigarette between us, and allowing the sweat to dry on our bodies. From the radio a pianist was steering out ‘On Green Dolphin Street’ – I’ve probably already told you it is one of my favourites.
Jill asked me again, ‘Do you have any more photos?’
‘Of you? No, I told you.’
‘I meant of anyone else.’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you give theirs back, too?’
‘If I can.’
‘. . . and use the same line on them, as you’ve used on me? Carry on where Oliver left off?’ That was interesting.
‘I hope not. But if I do, it won’t mean the same as it did with you.’
‘I didn’t disappoint you then? Sometimes the reality doesn’t match up to the dream.’
I bent to tickle the point of one of her breasts with my tongue . . .
‘. . . and sometimes it exceeds all expectations. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.’
‘Oliver never said that.’
I did it again. ‘Then let me say it for him.’
Later we spoke again. I started with, ‘Can I ask you why you did it? Let Oliver photograph you like that, I mean?’
‘I’ve been asking myself that ever since you produced them. It seemed very natural at the time. Oliver had a way of looking at you that made you want to take your clothes off.’
‘X-ray eyes? Is that what you mean?’
‘No, almost exactly the opposite. Some men strip you naked with their eyes as they look at you. That’s mostly pretty horrid. Oliver just looked at you, and you knew he loved what he saw: it made you want to take your clothes off, and show him the rest. Afterwards he would get his cameras out. I wonder how he did that.’
‘I wonder if he did know he was doing it?’
She snuggled into my shoulder and said, ‘You know? That was a very perceptive thing to say, Charlie.’ Minutes later her breathing became deep and even, just like the snow on the Feast of Stephen . . . and she went to sleep. All men value different characteristics in women, but, if you think about it, a woman can pay you no greater compliment than the simple act of being willing to go to sleep alongside you. Whatever you do, in whatever walk of life, no one ever shows more confidence in you than that. I slept too, and it was later in the evening I left her, and slipped up the road.
Haye with an e laughed when I gave her her photographs.
‘Oh God: that was such a lovely night. Oliver was a very bony man, you know. After you’d made love with him, you were somehow bruised all over.’
‘You don’t mind me having seen them, then?’
‘Of course not.’
‘. . . and it won’t ever help you decide to sleep with me?’
‘Of course not, again. Why should I want to do that? You’re much more fun at arm’s length. Some men are, you know.’
‘Every time I look at you, it will be difficult to see you other than as naked as in those photographs.’
‘Wizard! I know. I’ll sit there, and watch you squirming. I told you you’re much more fun at arm’s length. Coffee or tea?’
We drank tea and toasted hot cross buns that somebody’s maid had made too many of. Then we drank gin with limes. It wasn’t the make-believe rough stuff, so maybe a stock had come in from somewhere. When it was late she lit the fire in their small sitting room. Not because it was cold, but to make us cosy. I said, ‘Another woman told me that Oliver only had to look at you for you to want to take your clothes off for him.’
‘Mmm, she was probably right. It didn’t seem to take long before I was in the buff.’
‘What can I do to achieve the same effect? It would make life much easier for me.’
‘I don’t think you can, Charlie. Anyway, you have a very different effect on women; hasn’t anyone told you?’
‘No, and if it’s nasty, don’t you tell me either.’
‘It’s not. It’s rather sweet.’
‘Well, then?’
‘The way you look at me sometimes makes me want to make love: desperately, violently and quickly; sometimes you actually make my stomach churn – funny isn’t it? If I was married to someone else, I suspect I’d want you even more.’
‘So why don’t we for heaven’s sake? I’m here, aren’t I?’
‘I don’t know, but speaking for my sex as it were, our response to you scares us; so we back off. Then, having escaped your evil clutches we inevitably jump straight into the arms of the next man who asks. Maybe for a kind of emotional safety.’
‘Are you saying that not long ago you wanted me so badly you went to bed with someone else?’
‘Precisely.’
I stood up, and probably pouted like Brigitte Bardot.
‘I’m bloody well going home,’ I told her.
‘Don’t be silly. You’ve missed the last bus, so there’s no safe way of getting back to AS. Anyway, you’ve already made love today . . . so don’t be greedy.’
‘How can you possibly tell that?’ I asked grumpily.
‘Because your eyelids are still blue. Everyone’s eyelids are blue afterwards, haven’t you noticed? It makes me want to kiss them.’
That’s what she did. I loved the soft pressure of her lips against my eyes, but it didn’t make much difference: I slept on the settee. Her Aussie pal came off duty at three, and woke me up coming in. I got up and wrapped a sheet around my body.
She said, ‘Sorry. I didn’t know anyone was here.’
‘That’s all right. I wasn’t sleeping deeply. Are you going to have a cuppa before you go to bed?’
‘Yes. Do you fancy sitting up for half an hour and letting me natter? I’ve had a terrible day.’
I’d had rather a good one, so a bit of payback wouldn’t be all that out of order,
‘OK,’ I said.
Susan did somet
hing I hadn’t seen before. She heated milk in a pan on the stove and poured it over our breakfast cornflakes. They immediately went soggy, but the creamy yellow smell that lifted from them was sublime.
‘Good?’ she asked: mouth full.
‘Very good.’ Mouth even fuller.
‘Did I rather brutally turn down a request to sleep with you last night? Sorry; those words came out mixed up a bit, but you know what I mean.’
‘Yeah. You didn’t give the suggestion much thought.’
‘Never say die, Charlie. There’s always a next time!’
‘You’re a cow.’
‘God, and don’t I know it; but I enjoy it so much.’ Big, big wicked smile. I believed her. Maybe she was a mornings person after all.
‘Can we talk about something serious?’ I still had something on my mind.
‘If you must . . .’
‘Do you remember us once talking about the things you could do, and couldn’t do to get someone into bed? If you were staying honest, that is.’
‘I remember you wanting to talk about it. What of it?’
‘If one of the women who I returned Oliver’s photographs to took me to bed as a finder’s reward, which side of the moral border would that lie on?’
‘I should say . . .’ She paused, and gave it a thought. ‘I should say that it sat exactly on the border, Charlie. Could be OK; could be pretty bad. It would all depend what you thought of each other afterwards. Any good?’
‘It will have to be, won’t it?’
‘Is that what happened?’
‘I’m not going to tell you.’
I turned down her offer of lazing around for the morning, and walked back down to the main gate for a secure bus. Outside the Holroyds’ bungalow I dropped a step, and Jill stepped out on to the veranda. She was dressed the same as the day before, and smiled. That was a relief.
She said, ‘No point you coming in: this is the maid’s day.’
I grinned, ‘You warned me “only once”, anyway.’
‘Would it be OK to change our minds occasionally?’ Of course it bloody would.
‘It would make me the happiest guy out here. I’d sign on again!’
Silent War Page 34