Arabesque (25 page)

Seen through Carry’s eyes, two at least of her fellow performers were engaging; but Carry, she knew, would only laugh if Miss Fatima ended in jail and Mlle. Joliette were pulled in for
compulsory medical examination. They were objects for pity and sympathy, not for laughter. Yet, if one were thrown into their society, were, in fact, to the outer world their equal and colleague,
an understanding laughter was the only possible working attitude.

Miss Fatima was a pure Egyptian with the morals of the Old Testament. Her ambition was to become the concubine of the highest in the land, in order to gain power for herself and security for her
relatives. Yet she—with the possible exception of Floarea—was the only sincere artist of the Casino. Fatima spent hours every day in a practice of muscle control that would have done
credit to a Yogi disciple. Her object was to move breasts, stomach and abdomen in ever-increasing circles, sometimes clockwise below and anticlockwise above, while reducing the movement of her feet
to a mere suggestion of action as delicate as a Chinese poem. Armande realised that it was art of the highest standard, but to European eyes it did not seem sufficiently integrated. It was so hard
to watch the exquisite nuances of emotion expressed by Miss Fatima’s ankles and toes, while appalled by the gyrations of her torso.

Mlle. Joliette’s technique, on the stage or at a table, was wholly Western. The base for her attack was not the Moslem promise of curious and amatory acrobatics, but the Christian appeal
of innocence to chivalry. She was a blonde little angel, largely French, who had lived the first fifteen years of her life in Tunis and the last five in artistes’ hotels. Joliette was utterly
indifferent to men and to sentiment; she did not care whether a client had known her an hour or whether he had been buying her champagne for a week, whether he was moderately white or definitely
brown; her price was 3,000 pre-war francs, neither more nor less, and before yielding, with a delicious simulation of shyness and terror, to romance in any currency she would work out the exchange
to insure that she had really been offered the magic sum. Had Joliette delivered her will-o’-the-wisp beauty for 2,800 francs she would have considered herself both dishonoured and a bad
mathematician.

As a result of Carry’s humanising or demoralising influence—Armande called it one or the other according to her mood—she began to make a few acquaintances among the less boring
of the regular clients and, if so disposed, to sit with them. She needed evening frocks which would not depart too far from the showy fashions of the Casino, and would yet be bearable. Carry helped
her to chose them, and also named them.

There was Churching of Women, a pious little thing in black and white which gave her the bosom of a nursing mother. Well of Loneliness was a tube of twilit green and grey, easy to get into and
the devil of a job to get out of. Public Bar, so called because the customers were inclined to lean over it, was of deep crimson velvet with no straps. Fate Worse than Death was an Empire frock of
pleated white marocain, which suggested a half-ravished vestal virgin. That was the only purchase which made Floarea jealous; she complained that when Armande in Fate Worse than Death descended
from the dressing rooms down the wide steps to the trees and soft lights of the garden, all her favourite clients became wistful and melancholy.

Floarea was happily excited. After the war would come an engagement at Budapest, where the Eastern and Western circuits met, and then the night clubs of London, Paris and Berlin. To her, war was
merely a temporary nuisance. She was a neutral spectator, without any love for her country’s allies, and certainly without hatred for its enemies.

She could congratulate herself on reaching the top of her profession in her own territory. Only visiting artistes from the Western circuit and of international competence ever obtained the
privilege exacted by Armande: that they were not bound to sit at tables or to dance with clients. Floarea’s contract was a useful advertisement, and evidence for any management that she was a
serious performer. That was its only value to her, for in fact she spent nearly as much time at the tables as she had in days when attendance was compulsory. She liked to dance; she liked to be
complimented; and she hoped to find a sympathetic protector to whom to be faithful for the duration of her stay in Egypt.

Armande, however, decided that Floarea could not be allowed any of her half-mercenary, half-sentimental attachments. The Romanova, whose wants were amply supplied by the Casino contract, agreed.
It was really Carry who had the most influence. She raked Floarea’s half-dozen candidates—who ranged from a solid detective of the Military Police to an Egyptian newspaper
proprietor—with devastating ridicule. Floarea worshipped Carry’s aristocratic mixture of honesty and eccentricity, and took her for a model, even copying Carry’s graceful stride.
This intrigued Armande, who perceived that in truth Floarea was imitating Floarea. The unconventional good manners and casual acceptance of anything that life might send up from the basement, which
in the Rumanian were genuine, Carry had always cultivated as a pose.

In the middle of June the Casino was as packed as ever, but the character of the audience had changed. Armande found the place more tolerable. The regular habitues, young moneyed and idle sons
of Christian and Moslem business, were disappearing. The rich Greeks and Jews had gone. Joliette complained of hard times. Talk on the floor was of nothing but Rommel’s advance and the fall
of Tobruk.

The civilians comforted themselves by rumours. All the Arabian Nights imaginings about the course and object of the war, of which Armande had had her fill on the journey down to Egypt and daily
ever since, increased in fantasy. But there was little comfort in rumours. This was it—the dreaded end. The Germans and Italians were coming, and the café politicians realised in
sudden panic that they had no notion what the victors would do, and what they would not—it was generally admitted that there was nothing they would not.

The following morning Carry called on Armande at Mme. Ecaterina’s flat. She said that all British women, except essential workers, were to be immediately evacuated to Kenya, that she had
been ordered by the Consulate to round up any who could not readily be reached through husbands or employers, and that she and Armande would leave together and stay together.

“But what about Floarea and Mama?” asked Armande.

“Darling, they’ll be all right. Even Hitler doesn’t know whose side the Rumanians are on.”

“Yes,” said Armande doubtfully. “I suppose they will be all right.”

She had kept the secret that they were officially Jews. That was their business. She wondered whether there were any Egyptian police records from which the S.S., scavenging in the wake of the
Afrika Korps, could justifiably decide that Jews they were.

“I don’t know what to do, Carry.”

“Darling, you can’t dream of staying.”

“Have you talked to anybody? What do the generals say?”

“They smile confidently,” Carry replied, “and say that the situation is hopeless but not desperate.”

Armande hesitated. Was there anything in this defeatism except the rotted imaginations of all these planners and administrators living at ease in the scented heat of Cairo? Impatiently she
accused them of being as like soldiers as those sweetly calling kites were like curlews, and then accused herself of having the futile optimism of ignorance.

But was she ignorant? After all, she and Carry had talked in casual contacts to troops from divisions mauled in the recent fighting. They were no longer so spruce, no longer the gay and skilful
warriors of a private war far out in the desert, but their morale was unaffected. They felt that they had been outgeneralled, not outfought, and were confident of their power to defend any
reasonably sound position.

Perhaps this wretched, trembling giant of a G.H.Q. really thought the same. Perhaps the office officers were eager to defend the Canal, rifle in hand. That, in her experience, would be just what
they called their cup of tea. But in that case why in God’s name weren’t they private soldiers instead of colonels and brigadiers? The war couldn’t be won by grown-up boys, full
of courage but incapable of thought. What a country was this Britain in miniature at Cairo! It had no guts—beyond those necessary to die. Children! Anybody could die. To live and
win—that was what mattered.

“Carry, I’m not going to run away,” she said, utterly inconsistent with her own thoughts. “And what on earth would I do?”

“I suppose they’ll put us in camps. You know—stew for breakfast and the things they call latrines.”

“Distressed Englishwomen!” Armande exclaimed bitterly. “Like Xenia. What a kick the army will get out of being gallant and chivalrous!”

“Oh, darling, don’t be so morbid! We have to be sent away while there is still time. They say that if Rommel gets Cairo, he’ll go right through to Syria.”

“I don’t believe it, Carry. And even if the whole Middle East collapses, why should I go?”

“But if you stay, you’ll be interned.”

“I’ve been interned, Carry. It’s not so bad as all that.”

“What a soulful Armande! Be sensible and come with me!”

“Where to?”

“Kenya, darling,” answered Carry impatiently.

“Kenya? That’s internment too. Oh, me dear, it would be like committing suicide. Happier in heaven, and all that sort of thing. If the war is lost, what does it matter where I am or
what happens to me? Everything we care about will have ceased to exist. I will take it here if I must, but I won’t go off and become a useless spectator, and have to take it in the end
enyway. What’s the magic of Kenya? If Egypt goes, Kenya goes too, sooner or later. You might get Japanese instead of Germnas—that’s all.”

“Oh my God! How appalling!” Carry exclaimed. “You don’t really think so, do you?”

“I don’t know,” Armande replied. “I think I’d rather have them. The Germans would destroy our souls and their own for ever. But the Japanese, once they had
conquered, might be peaceful and polite. There’s nothing to be gained for me in Kenya, Carry. If the world is to be divided up between these brutes, I’d as soon accept my fate here as
anywhere. I’m sick of running away. It just isn’t worth my pride to go, darling.”

“Armande, but they’ll make you go! It’s an order.”

“Who’ll make me? Do you think anybody is going to bother about a cabaret girl?”

“My sweet, why are you so bitter?” asked Carry tenderly. “What beastly thing has somebody done to you?”

“Nothing.”

“I’ll never understand you. One moment you sound like Joan of Arc, and the next as if you hated us all.”

“Not you, dear Carry. You’ve no idea what a help you have been to me. I’d love to come with you to Kenya. But here I am free, and I want to stay free. And I don’t believe
a word of all this pessimism. I don’t believe Rommel will get Cairo. I don’t believe we are defeated. Don’t tell me we can’t beat the Boche when we’re on level terms.
It’s just these serious lumps of staff, who keep thinking of Dunkirk and Greece and want to take precautions.”

“Darling, they wouldn’t be right to take a chance of never getting the women away.”

“Wouldn’t they? Well, it’s a grand excuse,” said Armande. “They must be so sick of us hanging about and weeping and falling in love and getting drunk. But they
haven’t any rights over me, Carry. I won’t go.”

“Shall I stay with you then?”

“No, dearest. They would make any amount of trouble for you. As you say, it’s an order.”

“We may all get back to England,” Carry suggested.

“You won’t. No ships.”

“Armande, don’t be so absolute! Kenya will probably insist on getting rid of us. If we do go home, is there anything I can do for you?”

“I can’t think of anything. But if I do, I’ll write to you.”

“John?” Carry asked.

“If you ever run across him, don’t let him be worried.”

“Does he know what you are doing?”

“Of course not.”

“Men take letters so seriously,” Carry said.

“Yes. They don’t understand that if one is miserable, one wants to write, and that the next day it’s all over. Oh God!” Armande cried wearily. “Why do we have two
sexes?”

“Darling, I can’t leave you in this mood.”

“That’s what Toots said.”

“Did he? You’re not staying for Toots?” Carry asked suspiciously.

“No.”

“Tell him when you see him that … well, you’ll have it your own way.”

“I should if I wanted him. But I don’t, Carry.”

“Didn’t you ever?”

“I tried. Just tears and confessions. Typical Cairo.”

“Is it? Well, of course you aren’t Toots’ type.”

“No. Nor anybody’s.”

“Oh, darling!” exclaimed Carry repentantly. “I didn’t mean to be cruel.”

“You weren’t. Tomorrow I shall feel I’m everybody’s type—especially in Public Bar. And no you to laugh at it. Good-bye, my darling.”

“Armande!”

“My Carry!”

“And we’ll laugh at all this,” said Carry sobbing. “Lunch at Berkeley some time?”

“London and June and peace. Don’t make me cry, my sweet.”

As Armande closed the door and turned away, she was saved from breaking down by the assault of Mme. Ecaterina. A jelly-fish stranded on her own emotions, she babbled incoherently of Greeks and
Germans and forced labour.

“Ecaterina, why do you listen outside my room?” Armande protested gently.

“I must hear. I must know,” screamed Ecaterina. “The Germans are in Alexandria. The English are running. Oh, who would ever have thought it? The English! Mr. Gladstone! Lord
Byron! And to think that they are running!”

“You only hear half the story in a language you don’t really understand, Ecaterina,” said Armande severely. “The English are not running. They are in a very good position
with the navy on their right flank and some sort of depression or desert or something on their left. And Alexandria will not fall.”

“But the women? All the women are going!”

“Of course. We are useless.”

“Useless, you and I?” cried Ecaterina indignantly. “No! Never! Do I not knit for the Greeks? Do you not dance for the soldiers?”