The Levant Trilogy (27 page)

A sense of
disaster came down on Simon and he got to his feet. They should be coming back
soon. I'll go and meet them.'

'With respect
sir, you'd do better to stay. The wind's rising and there could be a storm
brewing.'

Simon refused to
wait. He wanted to move, as though by moving he could hasten Hugo's return to
the camp. He had sent Hugman to the canteen and decided to let him stay there.
The corporal told him that there was a gap in the mine fields where the track
ran through the forward positions into no-man's-land and continued on to the
enemy positions at El Mierir and Mitediriya. As Simon went to the car, the
corporal followed him.

'You're not going
alone, sir?'

'Yes.'

The car, its
steering wheel almost too hot to handle, stood beside the Operations truck. The
corporal said, 'Like me to come with you, sir? Only take a tick to get
permission.' Thank you, no. I'll be all right'

Even a tick was
too long to wait while he had hope of meeting Hugo. The sand was lifting along
the banks between
the gun pits. Small sand
devils were whirling across the track, breaking up, dropping and regathering
with every change in the wind. The sky was growing dark and before he could
reach the forward position, his view was blotted out. He had driven into the
storm and there was nothing to do but pull to the side, stop and stare into the
sand fog, watching for the batman's truck to come through it Nothing came. He
got out of the car and tried to walk down the track but the wind was furious,
driving the searing particles of sand into his eyes and skin, forcing him back
to shut himself in the car. He was trapped and would remain trapped until the
storm blew itself out.

At sunset the
sand-clogged air turned crimson. When the colour died, there was an immediate
darkness and in darkness he would have to remain. He could see nothing. He
could hear nothing but the roar of the wind. He opened the car door an inch
expecting a light to switch on but the sand blew in and there was no light. He
switched on the headlamps that showed him a wall of sand. Realizing that no one
was likely to see them, he switched them off to save the battery. Then, aware
there was nothing more to be done, he subsided into blackness that was like
nonexistence. The luminous hands of his watch showed that it was nearly nine
o'clock. He climbed over to the back seat and put his head down and slept.

He awoke to
silence and the pellucid silver of first light. He was nearer the perimeter
than he realized. Before him was a flat expanse of desert where the light was
rolling out like a wave across the sand. Two tanks stood in the middle distance
and imagining they had stopped for a morning brew-up, he decided to cross to
them and ask if they had seen anything of the patrol or the batman's truck. It
was too far to walk so he went by car, following the track till he was level
with the tanks, then walking across the mardam. A man was standing in one of
the turrets, motionless, as though unaware of Simon's approach. Simon stopped
at a few yards' distance to observe the figure, then saw it was not a man. It
was a man-shaped cinder that faced him with white and perfect teeth set in a
charred black skull. He could make out the eye-sockets and the triangle that
had once supported a nose then, returning at a run, he swung the car round and
drove back between the batteries, so stunned that for a little while his own
private anxiety was forgotten.

The major was
waiting for him at the Operations truck, his long grave face more grave as
though to warn Simon that Hugo had been found. He had been alive, but not for
long. All the major could do was try and soften the news by speaking highly of
Hugo, telling Simon that Hugo had been a favourite with everyone, officers and
men. His batman, Peters, was so attached to him, he was willing to risk his own
life to find him. And he was alive when Peters came on him, but both legs had
been shot away. The sand around him was soaked with blood. He didn't stand a
chance.

'And the rest of
the patrol? Couldn't they have done something?'

'All dead. Young
Boulderstone just had to lie there with his life-blood running out till someone
found him.'

The major sent
for Peters so Simon could be told all that remained to be told. Peters was a
thin youth who choked on his words. 'When I found him, he said, quite
cheerfully, "Hello, Peters old chap, I knew you'd come."' Tears
filled Peters's eyes and Simon felt surprise that this stranger could weep
while he himself felt nothing.

Peters, regaining
himself, explained that the patrol had been returning to the camp at sunset
when it was attacked by German mortars. The ambulance moving against the red
of the sky must have been an irresistible target. They knew what it was, the
bastards. And they went on firing till they'd got the lot.'

Peters, having
found Hugo, could not move him because movement would increase the haemorrhage.
He intended to return to the camp for help but the storm blew up, so he had to
spend the night with the wounded man. 'He told you what happened?'

'He did, sir. His
speech was quite clear, right to the end. About two a.m., he said, "I
think I'm going, Peters. Just as well. A chap's not much use with two wooden
pins." I said, "You hold on, sir. They can do wonders these days with
pins," and he laughed. He didn't speak again.' Thank you, Peters.'

Peters had
brought in the body. The burial party had already set out. There was nothing
for Simon to see and he felt Thank God for that. Knowing that his presence was
an embarrassment in the camp, he held out his hand to the major and said he
would be on his way. Hugman, who had been waiting for him, eyed him with
furtive sympathy and muttered, 'Sorry to hear what happened, sir.'

Simon nodded,
'Rotten luck', then there was silence between them until they reached the coast
road and he said, 'Don't wait, Hugman. The car's due back. You might tell
Ridley what happened. He'll understand.'

A truck appeared
on the road before Hugman was out of sight. The squaddie beside the driver
offered Simon his seat but Simon refused and said he would ride in the rear.
The back flap was let down for him. He threw his kit aboard, jumped after it,
and the truck went on again.

Simon, sitting
with his back to the cabin, looked out over the desert that had become as
familiar to him as his childhood streets. He was reconciled to its neutral
colour, its gritty wind, the endless stretches of arid stone and sand, but now
a darkness hung over it all. He felt death as though he and Hugo had been one
flesh and he was possessed by the certainty that if he returned here, he, too,
would be killed.

'Both of us. They
would lose both of us.'

He thought of his
mother going into the greenhouse to read the wire, imagining perhaps that one
of her sons was coming home on leave. He found a pad in his rucksack and began
to write.

'Dear Mum and
Dad, By the time you get this you will have heard about Hugo. I was there in
the NZ camp when he didn't come in. His batman found him, legs blown off ...' Simon
stopped, not knowing if he should tell them that, and started on another page.

'Dear Mum and
Dad, By the time you get this, you'll know that Hugo is ...' but he could not
write the word 'dead', and what else could he say?

Hugo was dead.
The reality of Hugo's death came down on him and his unfeeling calm collapsed.
He gulped and put his hands over his face. Tears ran through his fingers. There
was
no one to see him and the men
in front would not hear his sobs above the engine noise. He gave himself up to
grief. He wept for Hugo - but Hugo was safely out of it. He wept for his
parents who must live with their sorrow, perhaps for years.

In the end,
having stupefied himself with weeping, he lay on the floor of the truck and
slept. He was wakened by passing traffic and, sitting up, he read what he had
written and knew that neither letter would do.

There was nothing
to be said. He tore the pages into fragments and threw them to the desert
wind.

Olivia Manning

The Levant Trilogy

To Parvin and Michael Laurence

Simon Boulderstone, coming into Cairo on leave,
passed the pyramids at Giza when they were hazed over by mid-day heat. The
first time he had seen them, he had been struck with wonder, but now there was
no wonder left in the world. His brother, Hugo, had been killed. That very
morning, in the dark, early hours, Hugo had bled to death in no-man's-land.

Simon had stopped a lorry on the coast road east
of Alamein and, alone in the back, had cried himself to sleep. Now that he
would have to face the two men in front, he tried to wipe away the marks of
tears but did not do it very well. The lorry stopped outside Mena House. The
driver, coming round to speak to Simon, stared at him, then said, 'You've
caught the sun, sir,' as though they had not, all of them, been broiled by sun
during the long summer months.

'You want anywhere in particular, sir?'

'A cheap hotel, if you know of one.'

The driver suggested the International and Simon
said, 'Glad if you'd drop me there.' They drove on through the suburbs into the
centre of Cairo where the lorry stopped again. They were at a modern Midan, a
meeting place of three small streets where the old houses were being pulled
down and replaced by concrete blocks. One of the blocks was the International
and it had the unadorned air of cheapness.

Throwing down his kit, Simon thanked the two men
then jumped down himself. Standing on the pavement, in the dazzling light, he
seemed to be in a trance, and the driver asked him: 'You all right, sir?'

Simon nodded and the lorry went on. Left alone
in the middle of the Midan, he stared at a palm tree that rose from a bed of
ashy sand. As he observed it, he began to feel an extraordinary poignancy about
it so for a few minutes he could not move but, forgetting Hugo, he centred his
misery on this solitary palm. From its height and the length of its fronds, he
could guess it was an old tree that had grown in other, more spacious days.
Now, seeing it hemmed in by buildings like a bird in too small a cage, he ached
with pity for it though the tree itself conveyed no sense of deprivation. A
human being in similar case would have been bemoaning his misfortune but the
tree, swaying in the hot wind, spread itself as though rejoicing in such air
and light as came to it.

Feeling near to weeping again, he said aloud,
'Am I going crazy or something?' and picked up his kit.

The hotel, its windows shuttered against the
sun, looked empty but there was a clerk in the hall, staring in boredom at the
glass entrance doors. The sight of Simon brought him to life: 'Yes, please? You
wan' room? You wan' bather?'

Simon, sun-parched, sweat-soaked, unshaven, sand
in hair and eyes, needed a bath though he was too deep in grief to feel the
want of anything. He was taken upstairs to a small room with a bathroom so
narrow, the bath fitted into it like a foot into a shoe. Filling the bath, he
lay comatose in luke-warm water until he heard the hotel waking up.

He could see through his bedroom window that the
dusty saffron colour of the afternoon had deepened into the ochre of early
evening. Time had extended itself in his desolation, yet it was still the day
on which Hugo had died. At this pace, how was he to endure the rest of his life?
How, as a mere beginning, was he to get through the week ahead?

He looked at himself in his shaving mirror,
expecting to see himself ravaged by his emotion but the face that looked back
at him was still a very young face, burnt by the sun, a little dried by the
desert wind, but untouched by the sorrow of that day.

He was twenty years of age. Hugo had been his
senior by a year and they were as alike as twins. Imagining Hugo's body
disintegrating in the sand, he felt a spasm of raging indignation against this
early death, and then he thought of those who must suffer with him: his
parents, his relatives and the girl Edwina whom he thought of as Hugo's girl.
He had seen Edwina when he first came to Cairo and he realized, with a slight
lift of spirit, that he now had good reason to see her again.

Having somewhere to go, something to do, he
shaved and dressed carefully and went out to streets that were stale with the
hot and dusty end of summer.

The office workers were returning to work after
the siesta. They crowded the tram-cars, hanging in bunches at every entrance,
while the superior officials had taken all the taxis. Simon managed to find an
empty gharry but this made so little progress among the traffic that he could
have walked more quickly.

Heat hung like a fog in the air, a coppery fog
coloured by the light of the sinking sun. As they came down to the embankment,
the river, slowly turning and lifting the feluccas towards the sea, was a fiery
gold. On the western side, the pyramids had come into view, triangles of black
no bigger than a thumb-nail.

In among the ramshackle houses of Garden City,
Simon breathed the evening smell of jasmin and, in spite of himself, felt the
excitement of being there. Before he left England, he had received a letter
from Hugo telling him to buy scent for Edwina at a West End shop. The scent was
to travel in the diplomatic bag and Simon, overawed, had taken it to the Foreign
Office where the young man who accepted it said, 'Another votive offering for
Miss Little?' The scent was called
Gardenia
but gardenias and jasmin
were all one to Simon and the whole of Garden City was for him permeated by the
delicious sweetness of Edwina Little.

When the gharry reached his destination, he
looked up at the balcony of the upper flat, half-expecting to find Edwina still
standing there as she had stood that day, his second day in Egypt. He thought,
'Poor Edwina, poor girl!' and there was a sort of morose comfort in the fact
she too would suffer their loss.

Several people lived in the flat. One of them, a
young woman called Harriet Pringle, was in the living-room when he entered it.
She started up, saying, 'Hugo?' but knowing it could not be Hugo.

'No, it's Simon ...' Simon's voice broke and
Harriet, giving him time to control himself, said: 'Yes, of course it's Simon.
Do you remember me? We climbed the Great Pyramid together.'

He still could not speak and Harriet, sensing
the reason for his grief, took his arm and led him to a chair. He sat down,
blinking to keep back his tears that came in a slow, painful trickle, nothing
like the fierce bout of weeping that had overwhelmed him in the back of the
lorry. He scrubbed his handkerchief over his cheeks and apologized for his
weakness.

'I've come to see Edwina and tell her ... Hugo
has been killed.'

Hassan, the safragi, looking for drama, was
peering round the door. Harriet, who had taken over the housekeeping, told him
to bring in the drinks trolley. Wheeling it in, he observed Simon with furtive
curiosity and Harriet ordered him away.

She gave Simon a half-glass of whisky and as he
sipped it, he spoke more easily: 'He was out with a patrol, picking up the
wounded. They were all killed. Hugo's legs were blown off and he bled to death.
His batman found him and sat beside him till he died. There was a sandstorm, so
it wasn't possible to get him back. Too late, anyway. He just lay there and
bled to death.'

'I'm sorry.' Harriet was deeply sorry but not
shocked. When she said goodbye to Hugo, on his last leave, a voice in her head
had said, 'He won't come back. He is going to die.'

'I have to tell Edwina. It's terrible for her.'

'And for everyone who knew him.'

'But she was special. I mean: she was Hugo's
girl.'

Harriet made no reply but remained silent for a
while then, standing up, said, 'I'll go and find her.' As she went through the
baize door that led to the bedroom corridor, Edwina was coming out of the
bathroom with a white bath-robe round her shoulders. She worked at the British
Embassy but that day she had stayed at home with a hang-over that she called a
migraine.

'Are you better?'

'Oh, much better.' Edwina smiled at Harriet, an
amused, conniving smile because, however bad her headache, she was always well
enough to go out in the evening. As she hurried into her room, she said, 'Come
and talk to me while I dress. Peter will be here any minute.'

She stood naked, tall and shapely, her skin
glistening from the bath, and slapped herself dry with a swansdown puff.
Harriet, watching her as she prepared for her night with Peter Lisdoonvarna,
said, 'Edwina' with a warning emphasis that brought Edwina to a stop. She
stared at Harriet, puzzled.

'What is it, Harriet?'

'Simon Boulderstone is here.'

'You mean Hugo, don't you?'

'No, it's the younger one: Simon. Edwina, he's
brought bad news. Hugo has been killed.'

'Oh, no. Not Hugo? What a pity! I
am
sorry.'
Edwina stood, reflectively still a moment, then, shaking her head regretfully,
went to her chest of drawers and putting her hand in among her satin,
crepe-de-Chine and lace underclothes, said again, 'I am sorry,' but her mind
was on other things. She had been fond of Hugo but she could not mourn him just
then.

'Edwina, listen! Simon's under the impression that
you were Hugo's girl. He expects you to be terribly upset.'

'But of course I'm upset. Hugo was one of the
nicest boys I knew - gentle, sweet, generous. We got on well and we had a
wonderful time when he came on leave. I was really fond of him.'

'Simon thinks you were in love. Don't
disillusion him. Don't ...' Harriet was going to say 'Don't hurt him' but said
instead: 'Don't disappoint him.'

Edwina sighed and put a slip over her head then,
crossing to Harriet, she took Harriet's hands into her own and said in a small,
persuasive voice: 'Darling, I can't see him now with Peter coming any minute.
Be a dear. Tell him I'm at the office. Ask him to come back tomorrow.'

'He knows you're here.'

Edwina sighed again: 'What
can
I do?' She
dropped Harriet's hands and went to the wardrobe and took out a draped, white
evening gown. Hanging it on the door in readiness, she looked in the glass:
'M'face - how awful!'

She touched in her eyes and lips, stepped into
the dress, then returning to the chest of drawers, chose one of a long row of
large, ornamental scent bottles and said, 'I think he gave me this.' She caught
her breath and held her head back, trying to contain her tears. Dabbing the
scent on her skin, enhancing the gardenia scent of the room, she murmured,
'These poor boys! You meet them ... you ...' She paused, catching her breath.

'You give them your heart?'

'Yes. And then they go back and get killed.'
Edwina, putting her forefingers under her lashes to lift the wetness away,
said, 'Oh, dear!' and, sniffing, gave Harriet a rueful smile that was a comment
both on the futility of grief and her own incorrigible frivolity: 'What's to be
done about it? Cry oneself sick? What good would that do?'

She might have given herself up to weeping were
she not expecting Peter. Instead, she said anxiously, 'Can't let him see me
like this,' and began to mend her make-up.

Harriet, feeling her anxiety, thought how
precarious must be her hold on Peter Lisdoonvarna if she dared not betray pity
for a young man's death. And it was not that Peter was prone to jealousy. She
knew that any hint of affection for another man would be used by him as excuse
for his own philanderings.

'How do I look?'

A current of air, bringing into the scented room
the fresh smell of the tamarisks, stirred the white dress that hung like a
peplos from Edwina's wide, brown shoulders.

'You look like the statue of Athena.'

'Oh, Harriet!' Edwina, a beauty but not a
classical beauty, laughed at this praise. Then, hearing Peter's footsteps in
the corridor, turned in expectation, putting her hands together. He was a
broad, heavy man and the dry wooden floor cracked under his weight. Throwing
open the door without knocking, he asked loudly: 'What's going on out there?
Chap blubbing in the living-room!'

Harriet said, 'His brother's just been killed.'

'Oh, I say!' Peter, contrite, lowered his voice:
'Tough luck!' His big face with its saddle nose and black moustache, expressed
as much concern as any soldier could feel after three years of desert warfare:
'Poor blighter's taking it hard, eh? Should have said a few words of sympathy.'

Peter's tone made evident his belief that his
sympathy would give more than usual comfort to an inferior for he was, as everyone
knew or pretended not to know, an Irish peer. Tides were out for the duration,
to the annoyance of Levantine hostesses who greatly loved them, and Peter
called himself Colonel Lisdoonvarna.

Now, having given a thought to Simon's
condition, he looked up cheerfully: 'You ready, old girl? I've booked at the
Continental roof garden. You like that?'

'You know I do.'

Peter led the two women back to the living-room
where Simon disconsolately sat alone. At the sight of Edwina, he jumped up,
looking at her with admiration that, for the moment, transcended grief.

Crossing to him, Edwina said quietly: 'Oh,
Simon, I'm so sorry,' and Simon, longing to touch her, raised his hands. He
seemed about to hold her in an embrace of commiseration but Peter, stepping
forward and putting her on one side, took over the situation, dominating it as
a right.