Apple Blossom Time (5 page)

‘At least we get to see the world. All you see is a stuffy office with bars on the window, poor old girl.’

But it was the girls of the Mechanized Transport Corps (MTC) – pistol-packing Mary Newall’s private army, débutantes to a woman in Savile Row tailored uniforms – who got all the plum driving jobs, according to Grace.

‘It’s those rather natty blue chiffon scarves they wear round their necks,’ she complained. ‘Frightfully flattering compared to a khaki collar and tie. And silk stockings – why can’t we wear silk stockings? So they get the ambulances and the staff cars. We get the ration trucks!’

‘Important things, rations,’ said Pansy, solemnly. ‘More important than generals in staff cars. An army marches on its stomach.’

‘Who said that?’ teased Vee. ‘Your dad again? He’s a card, your dad!’

*   *   *

Pansy came in, took off her shoes, fell backwards on her bed, still in her cook’s whites, and groaned, ‘What a so-and-so of a day!’ (the worst language she ever allowed herself).

‘What’s up, love?’ Vee asked, looking up from polishing her buttons. She slotted the brass button stick around the next one and began again. ‘Been made to whitewash the potatoes this time?’

‘I don’t think I can stand this country much longer.’

We all looked up then. The tremor in Pansy’s voice was real and so unlike her that it caught our attention. Cheerful, willing Pansy, always ready to take on someone’s work or to make someone’s life easier. Complaining is part of army life – where would we have been without a good moan? – but if she sounded like that, we knew she must be pretty miserable.

‘They say it’s the hottest summer here for fifty years. It’s a beast of a country,’ Grace agreed in a cheerful tone. Stripped to her khaki undies – hilariously military – she was squinting into a scrap of mirror, trying to put her long, blond hair in pin curls. ‘Has it taken all of one week for you to discover that?’

‘I can’t stand the flies … I can’t stand them. Really. The kitchen is full of them. The flypapers are black with them. There are flies licking the sugar, flies drowning in the milk if you leave it out for just a moment – and the milk is watered down, anyway, before we get it. All the milk is boiled. All the water is boiled. It’s so hot in the kitchen, they might as well boil me – I wouldn’t notice! The cockroaches are as big as mice…’

‘I hope you don’t dangle your feet out of bed like that at night,’ warned Vee solemnly. ‘The cockroaches’ll eat the hard skin off your toes – quick as you like.’

Pansy screamed and pulled her feet on to the bed as though she’d been bitten.

‘Saves you having to bend down to cut your toenails, though,’ laughed Grace. ‘Pansy – love – we’re only teasing. We didn’t mean it.’

We all sat down on her bed. The springs creaked.

‘Come on, Pansy, cheer up.’

‘It’s not that bad.’

‘Worse things happen at sea.’

Pansy gave a sniff that turned into a weak giggle. ‘My father says that.’

‘Sensible man, the Rev,’ declared Grace. ‘The trouble with us is that we don’t get about enough. How long have we been here – a week? All we’ve had is a trip to the Museum of Hygiene and that’s given me nightmares every night – I never knew men’s bits and pieces could look like that! We haven’t so much as toured a Pyramid yet. Honestly, you’d think we were in a nunnery. It’s time we made up for lost time. So get your glad rags on, girls…’

She opened her cupboard and whisked out the kind of evening dress I’d always longed for and would never have been allowed at home – slinky, bias cut, slithery – of the four of us, only Grace could possibly have worn it (or afforded it).

‘I don’t believe it,’ gasped Vee. ‘Are you telling us you brought that all the way from England in your kitbag?’

‘Why not? I hear one of the MTC girls has arrived with a wedding dress, veil and all. Now all she needs is a man!’ Grace held the dress against herself and twirled round. ‘I haven’t been dancing in ages. We deserve some fun.’

Pansy had sat up and was beginning to look interested. ‘But we’re only allowed out in uniform,’ she protested weakly.

‘Good heavens! What difference does that make?’ exclaimed Grace, foxtrotting down the length of the hut, oyster-coloured satin swirling around khaki cotton stockings. ‘We owe it to the boys to look our best. Don’t you know there’s a war on?’

*   *   *

Giggling, suspiciously bulky, with uniform tunics and skirts dragged over our frocks and caps perched on freshly washed hair, we went off to catch a tram into Cairo. Two stopped for us, but we waved them on. The inside of each was packed and passengers hung on to every possible outside projection, as it lurched and clanged along. The conductor swung along the outside to collect his fares. Then we were lucky enough to hitch a lift into town with a cheerful New Zealander who was only too pleased to give us a leg up into the back of the Bedford.

The road to Cairo led through the mausoleums and tombs of the City of the Dead. Here whole communities, caretakers and their children and their children’s children, lived in tombs like miniature houses, the spare rooms of the dead, without water, without sanitation. Families took up residence for forty days to ease their loved one into the spirit world with food and drink and worldly goods. Naked children played in the dust. Disturbed by the draught of our passing, flies rose in a hideous swarm, a black, crawling blanket, from the carcass of a dog. Vee was looking over the other side of the truck. She didn’t see the bloated horror underneath.

Pansy saw and didn’t look away. Her shoulders heaved. ‘“And the houses of the Egyptians shall be full of swarms of flies and also the ground whereon they are,”’ she whispered.

‘What’s that?’ shouted our driver.

We’d picked up a bit of speed when Vee, sitting up in front, screamed and grabbed the driver’s arm. ‘Stop! Stop! There’s a child…’

The emergency stop threw us into a huddle of arms and legs. Suddenly, there were children everywhere, swarming up over the sides of the vehicle, grabbing everything they could lay their hands on. Spare wheel, tool kit, two jerry cans of fuel and one of water, tow rope – all gone in less than the time it took to sort ourselves out. The body in the road disappeared, too.

‘Shit,’ the Kiwi shouted, banging his hands on the steering wheel. ‘I should’ve known. They’ll cut off my balls and use them for conkers! Begging your pardon, ladies. Next time I’ll run over the little bugger, no questions asked.’

The truck was going to Kasr-el-Nil Barracks, source, they said, of all the bedbugs in Egypt, and to avoid questions we were dropped off around the corner, on the far side of the Semiramis Hotel, which was HQ British Troops in Egypt, the peacetime garrison.

‘First things first,’ said Grace, who seemed to have put herself in charge of our outing. ‘Let’s drop off these frightful togs. We can whip into the Victory Club and leave them there. And then … well, let’s see, shall we?’

Having dropped off our uniforms, Grace hailed a gharry and told the driver to take us to Groppi’s Garden. The driver flourished his whip and the skeletal horse took off in the extraordinary two-legs-on-the-same-side trot that covers the ground so fast.

‘You seem to know where you’re going, all right,’ remarked Vee.

‘Oh, I have a cousin here, with HQ BTE. He’s been here for years. In fact, he said he’d meet us at Groppi’s tonight.’

‘He what?’ I started to laugh. ‘Oh, you’re a cool customer, Grace. No wonder our spontaneous outing is so well organized. You had it all planned.’

‘Of course. You can’t leave these things to chance, you know. I may be a new woman, but the thought of four girls wandering on their own in Cairo looking for company is a bit too dicey, even for me. We’d find plenty of company all right, but whether we’d want it is another matter. Now George has promised to dig out another three chums and we can have some fun.’

‘Oh, I’m not sure…’ Pansy hesitated. ‘We don’t really know them…’

‘Oh, Pansy, just enjoy yourself. It’ll help you forget about the flies!’

*   *   *

By the time we reached Groppi’s Garden in Sharia Adly Pasha, the sudden Egyptian sunset was over and the garden was lit by tiny, twinkling lights. Greedily I sucked in the colours of flowers and of dresses, so exotic after our monochrome life in camp. The air was heavy with the scent of stephanotis and jasmine, overlaid, even more enticingly, by coffee and chocolate. It was hard to believe we were even in the same world as dust-coloured Maadi Camp.

We walked into the garden in a shy triangle, with Grace striding at its apex. Little tables and chairs were set out on a sandy floor, far enough apart to ensure that whispered intimacies were not overheard. From one table, a tall man in uniform came forward.

‘Georgie, darling.’ Grace turned her cheeks one after the other to receive his kisses.

‘Beautiful as ever, Grace,’ her cousin replied. ‘Changing tyres seems to suit you. Now – allow me to introduce…’

Andrew. Bob. James. It was difficult to tell them apart at first. All young. All tanned. All dressed in freshly starched uniform, with self-consciously new single pips on each shoulder, distinguished only by their cap badges – two hussars and a gunner. All with the slightly gawky, endearing mannerisms of the well-brought-up young Englishman. Nineteen? Twenty? Boys only and – thank God – far away from any real fighting, so far. Only Grace’s cousin George was different: older, more confident.

The two cousins seemed to have an enormous number of relatives to catch up on. They kept up a lively chatter that disguised the fact that the rest of us were sitting in shy silence. I sipped from a glass of chilled lemonade made from real lemons – when did we last see a lemon at home? – and looked round the garden.

Expensive-looking women in silks and veiled hats, with fur capes draped across the backs of chairs, broke apart cream cakes with miniature, pearl-handled forks, but never seemed to eat any. So how had they grown so plump? Stout men with slicked-back hair and too much jewellery sipped mint tea from tiny glasses and watched the women over the rims. The air was full of whispers and intrigue.

Vee saw me looking. ‘See that one over there,’ she whispered, nodding her head towards a far corner, where a ravishing Levantine woman was nibbling the ear of a British colonel, ‘the one with that dinky blue cocktail hat with the feather? She’s really a man! She’s a German spy sent by Goebbels to undermine British morals! Her bosoms are really a secret wireless transmitter. Only the colonel’s a German spy, too, and they don’t know each other!’

I spluttered into my lemonade and had to make an embarrassed apology.

Only Grace, in her oyster satin, looked as though she might possibly belong in this artificial place, that is, if you didn’t look too closely at her carefully painted nails and see that they were broken short and that she hadn’t been able to cream the oil stains from her hands, no matter how she tried. As for Vee, Pansy and me, we stood out in our cotton afternoon frocks and sensible, low-heeled sandals. We looked as though we’d got lost on the way to a tea party at the vicarage.

‘Well, now, where are you boys taking us?’ asked Grace coyly.

‘Where d’you fancy? Fleurent’s? The Deck Club? The Continental? It’s only just round the corner and you get a better dinner there than on the boats.’

‘There’s a bit of a problem – well, two, really,’ I said, the first time I’d spoken since acknowledging the introductions. ‘Grace looks wonderful, but we’re not properly dressed for evening…’

‘Good enough to eat,’ declared Andrew or Bob or James. ‘And…?’

‘… and the Continental’s out of bounds to ORs.’

George coughed slightly. ‘So’s just about everywhere else a chap can take a lady. Anyway, I’ll bet a fair sprinkling of the officers you see around, aren’t officers at all.’

‘Told you so,’ hissed Vee.

‘Whyever not?’ I queried.

‘Because the lads arrive on leave, with all the back pay they can’t spend in the desert burning a hole in their pockets, determined to have a good time. Their first visit is the barber and a bath. The second is a good tailor, who can run up an officer’s uniform overnight. Then – look out, Cairo! Sun, sand, sin and syphilis!’

‘Oh, dear,’ whispered Pansy.

‘Sorry, my dear, but that’s the way it is. D’you know, I actually found myself chatting with my own signaller on the terrace at Shepheard’s the other evening. Decent sort of chap. Very bright.’

‘Are you telling me that I’ve been wasting cracking good salutes on other ORs?’ Vee burst out indignantly.

‘Not all of them, no – some, probably. Anyway a good salute is never wasted, my dear. Keeps you in practice! So, there’s no problem,’ George went on. ‘I take it you’re not actually going to advertise your rank?’

‘Well, we’re not going to put our uniforms back on, if that’s what you mean, Georgie,’ teased Grace. ‘The Continental it is, then. Let’s go. I’m starving.’

We breezed into the Continental’s roof garden restaurant. The tables were packed with men in uniform and glamorous women – you’d hardly believe there was a war on, the lights blazed up into the sky, blanking out the stars – so we were quite lucky to be shown to a table by the dance floor, with only Pansy hanging back. ‘Come on, Pansy,’ Vee encouraged her. ‘You haven’t got your army number tattooed on your forehead!’

We’d forgotten what real food tasted like: fresh meat and butter and cream and cheese and vegetables not boiled away to a mush. I made an awful pig of myself and, with relief, I saw the others were too. George ordered champagne to begin with, then a claret like purple velvet.

‘Let’s have some more champagne – nothing like champagne with a sorbet to finish,’ George suggested.

‘Perfect. I once made a vow never to drink anything but champagne.’ Grace’s careful pin curls were relaxing and her hair curled round her face in a wicked sort of way. ‘But the vicar said I’d have to have wine at communion, like it or lump it!’

‘I say,’ giggled Vee, ‘are you trying to get us tiddly?’

‘Never!’

‘Just as well, because I could drink you chaps under the table any day!’

But Pansy couldn’t. Her thin face was flushed and she was smiling to herself as she watched the rather bad floor show of belly dancers and acrobats. When it was over and the blonde American hostess called Betty had left the stage, a band struck up a quickstep and the dance floor was quickly filled.