Читать книгу Rosie Thomas 2-Book Collection One: Iris and Ruby, Constance - Rosie Thomas - Страница 15

‘Will you?’ Xan repeated.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to answer, just that happiness momentarily flooded my throat and turned me mute. White light swelled behind my eyes, spilling inside my skull and half blinding me.

We were reclining on a rug in the shade of a tree, and the high sun shining through the chinks in the leaves made them black as carved ebony. We had been watching a polo match. As well as Xan’s low voice I could hear shouting and ponies’ hooves drumming on the turf and then the sharp crack of a stick on the ball.

I turned my dazzled face to his. His head was propped on one hand and he leaned over me, waiting.

‘Yes,’ I managed to say. ‘Yes, yes, yes. I will. More than anything. For ever and ever.’

So, incoherently, I promised to marry Xan Molyneux. The leaves and the chinks of light and all the rest of the world were blotted out as he lowered his head and kissed me.

Jessie James was the first person we told. He came to meet us still in his white breeches and shirt soaked with sweat from the match, stalking over the grass with his face flushed with exertion and success.

‘Did you see that?’ he called.

‘No,’ Xan said bluntly.

‘But it was the very best goal I’ve ever scored. What kind of friend are you, Molyneux?’

‘A very happy one, you oaf. Iris says she’ll marry me. Can you believe that?’

Jessie stopped in his tracks. A smile split his face, but he pretended to be dismayed. ‘Oh, no. This is a mistake. Iris is going to marry me, once she’s realised what a hopeless apology you are. Tell him that’s so, Iris, won’t you?’

I put my hands out and grasped his. He was hot and our palms glued together as I danced around him. ‘Wish us luck, Jessie.’

His smile faded into seriousness then. ‘I do. I wish you both all the happiness and all the good luck in the world.’ There was a tiny beat of silence as he kissed my cheek. ‘You’re a lucky man, Molyneux.’

‘D’you think I don’t know it?’

But I knew that I was the lucky one.

Later that afternoon Jessie took a photograph of us, using a camera airily borrowed from a man called Gordon Foxbridge who had been watching and taking pictures of the polo match. Major Foxbridge was a staff officer I saw from time to time in the rabbit-warren corridors of GHQ, and he was an enthusiastic amateur photographer. His sombre pictures of Arab tribesmen in the desert were later published as a book.

‘Gordon, old chap, I want to record a momentous day,’ Jessie insisted.

Major Foxbridge offered to take the photograph himself, but Jessie wanted to do it and so the Major obligingly handed over his Leica, and Xan and I stood at the edge of the Gezira Club polo ground where the baked earth had been scraped and scored by ponies’ hooves. With Xan’s arms wrapped round my waist I let my head fall back against his shoulder and laughed into the lens.

‘Watch the birdie!’ Jessie sang.

It was Gordon Foxbridge, though, who developed the picture in his own darkroom and then delivered it to my desk in a brown manila envelope marked ‘The engagement of Miss Iris Black and Captain Molyneux’ as if we were in the Tatler.

It showed the two of us exactly as we were but it also enlarged us. That day, Xan’s glamour obliterated his assumed anonymity and my dazed happiness lent me a beauty I didn’t really possess.

Wherever I have travelled since, through all the years, the photograph has come with me.

And this is the picture that Ruby asked me about.

What answer did I give? I can’t remember.

How can I find the words to tell her, my grandchild, all this history? I can’t even catch hold of it myself. If I try to stalk it, it floats away out of reach and leaves me with the featureless sand, the empty place on the shelf. So I have to be patient and let the memories and the dreams come, then try to distinguish them.

But I have never been a patient woman.

Ruby’s quaint offer touched me, and so did the way she set it out with assurances about her shells and beetles. I can imagine her as a smaller child, dark-browed and serious, walled up in a bedroom decorated by Lesley and poring over her collections. Lining up objects, probably in an attempt to fix an unwieldy universe.

She is an unusual creature. Her coming is an unlooked-for blessing.

* * *

That same evening we went back to the Scottish Military Hospital to see Corporal Noake once more. Jessie James wanted us all to go out to dinner, he wanted to set in train one of the long evenings of Cairo celebration, but Xan insisted that first he must go to see his men.

From the medical staff we learned that the news of the other soldier, Private Ridley, wasn’t good. As a result of his injuries a severe infection had set in and he was in a deeper coma, but Xan didn’t tell Noake about this. He just sat there on the edge of the bed, talking cheerfully about going to the pictures and drinking beer, then laughing about the desert and some place they had been to where the flies swarmed so thickly that they couldn’t put food in their mouths without swallowing dozens of them. Noake’s response was to grasp Xan’s wrist and give the ghost of a nod.

I saw Ruth Macnamara moving screens and bending over the inanimate men. She didn’t appear to hurry but everything she did looked quick and deft. I wanted to talk to her again so I left Xan to his monologue and followed her the length of the ward.

At the opposite end from the sluice room was a kind of loggia, open to the air on one long side. Two or three men sat in chairs and there were two beds parked against the wall. Ruth was bending over one of the beds, examining the occupant.

‘Hullo, Miss,’ a young man in one of the chairs called out. ‘Looking for me?’

It was a relief to hear a strong voice.

‘Not exactly. But now I’m here, is there anything I can do for you?’

The man grinned. ‘How about a dance?’

I was going to say something about finding a gramophone or maybe he could sing, but then my eyes travelled downwards and I saw that the folds of blanket below the humps of his knees were flat and empty.

The young soldier added softly, ‘Well, perhaps not. Another time, eh?’

Ruth straightened up. ‘Come on, Doug. They’ll fix you up with some falsies and you’ll be dancing like Fred Astaire. Hello again, Iris.’

‘She’s right,’ I said to Doug.

‘Medical, are you?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I admitted. I wished I were. I wished I could do something – anything – for these maimed men and for the prone, silent ones who lay in their rows in the ward. I wished I could do anything useful at all, instead of just typing Roddy Boy’s memoranda and placing two custard cream biscuits in his china saucer at precisely eleven every morning.

‘Ah. Well, you’re pretty enough just to stand there and be admired.’

Ruth swung round. ‘That’s enough of that. Iris, can you give me a hand here? Round the other side of the bed.’

I stood opposite her, with the wounded man’s body between us.

‘He needs turning,’ she said. The man’s eyes fixed on her face, then on mine. His chest was heavily bandaged, and curled edges of antiseptic yellow dressing protruded. I concentrated on not imagining the shattered muscle and bone within.

‘Sorry about this,’ he gasped.

‘It’s all right,’ Ruth said briskly and I wasn’t sure whether she was talking to the soldier or me. We slid our forearms under the man’s body and grasped each other’s wrists.

‘Now, one two three, lift.’

He was hot, and quite light. Ruth and I shuffled our arms and as we hoisted him I saw the shadow trapped in the vulnerable hollow beside the crest of his pelvic bone. Gently, we let him down again in a slightly different position.

‘Better. Thanks,’ he said.

‘Is your assistant coming again tomorrow, Nurse Mac?’ one of Doug’s companions called out.

‘I’ll try to,’ I said.

Ruth raised an eyebrow. ‘Volunteering, are you?’ She was moving on and I was sharply aware that she had a lot to do. She made me feel superfluous and rather clumsy.

‘I’ve got a job already.’

‘What do you do?’

‘Typist. GHQ. Very humble.’

‘Oh, well. You must get asked out a lot, all those officers. Look, your friend’s coming.’

Xan was walking towards us along the ward.

‘Fiancé.’ The word was out before I considered it, with all the pride and satisfaction that I should have kept to myself.

Ruth’s glance flicked over me. She was amused. ‘Really? Congratulations. When’s the wedding?’

‘Oh, we haven’t fixed that yet. We … we only decided today. Let me introduce you. This is Captain Xan Molyneux. Xan, Ruth Macnamara.’

They shook hands as a rigid-looking senior nurse in a dark-blue uniform appeared in a doorway.

‘Oh God, here’s the old battleaxe. Look, where do you live?’

I told her and Ruth smiled briefly.

‘What about you?’

‘Out on the Heliopolis road. It’s cheap. I’ve got to get a move on now. Leave me your phone number?’

‘I’ll come in again. Won’t we, Xan?’

We. Would I ever get used to the luxury of using one little word?

‘Good. ’Bye, then.’ Ruth fled away down the ward.

‘You’ve made a friend,’ Xan said.

‘I hope so.’ I wanted to know Ruth Macnamara better. And although the hospital was a sad and fearful place it drew me back. It was full of people who were doing what they could, certain in the knowledge that what they did made a difference.

We did go out to celebrate our engagement. We started with cocktails at Shepheard’s and then dinner on a boat moored on the Nile, where Jessie proposed a toast and a circle of faces glimmered at us over the rims of champagne glasses. Faria was there, with the poet who was looking more mournful and whose clothes were even more crumpled and dusted in cigarette ash than usual. Sarah was still not back from her trip, but there were some of the Cherry Pickers and Xan’s friend the mysterious Major David, and Betty Hopwood in a new dress of some iridescent greeny-black material that Faria whispered made her look like a giant beetle.

‘How heavenly for you both,’ Betty shrieked. ‘When’s the wedding?’

Everything did happen very quickly in Cairo. There was no reason to put anything off even until tomorrow or indeed to deny ourselves any of life’s pleasures, because there was always the likelihood that the war would intervene, but I murmured that we hadn’t decided yet. I wanted to tell my mother, and Xan’s parents would need to hear the news. It was odd to think that there were all the relatives on both sides, and the lives we had lived in other places and our separate histories, as well as just Xan and me and the immediate chaotic present and the way we had fallen in love. But the war and Egypt made a separate realm, and for the time being the world outside was a shadowy place.

There was another reason too why Xan and I had not talked about a wedding day. He was going back to the desert and we both knew it would be very soon. Perhaps in only a few hours’ time.

‘I’ll be in Cairo again by Christmas, darling, at the latest.’

‘Promise?’

‘Cross my heart. We’re going to drive Rommel all the way out of Africa, I know we are. And after that you and I can make our plans.’ He was optimistic for my sake and I tried to believe him.

Betty leaned across now and tapped my arm.

‘Don’t leave it too long.’ She fluffed up her cottonball hair and winked at me. She had already told me the story of one of her MTC colleagues who carried a crumpled white satin wedding dress at the bottom of her kitbag, so as to be ready as soon as a husband came into sight.

‘James? Where’s that bloody Jessie?’ one of the Cherry Pickers shouted. ‘Some of us haven’t found ourselves a girl yet. Where are we going now?’

To begin with Jessie obligingly orchestrated the evening, but as the hours went by our party gathered momentum until it rolled under its own impetus through the Cairo nightspots. By two in the morning we were at Zazie’s again. Xan and I danced and I felt the heat of him through my satin dress, but drink and exhilaration distorted the normal sequence of minutes and hours, and we both convinced ourselves that the night was endless. There was time to laugh with our friends and time to dance, and there would still be time and time for one another. Leaving for the desert was no more than a little dark unwinking eye at the vanishing point of a long avenue of happiness.

Elvira Mursi came on and blew us both a kiss at the end of her spot.

Sandy Allardyce materialised. He held my hand, rather damply, and sat close to me on one of the little gold seats in a velvet alcove. His round red face was very serious and I realised only belatedly that he was making a confession of love.

‘… a good man. Reckless, if you like, but a fine field officer. Yes. Choice. Of course. ‘S what every woman has as her privilege. But, you know, wish it could have been different. Iris. Just wanted to tell you, you know?’

I shook my head, confusion and sympathy and a shaming desire to laugh mounting in my throat.

‘Sandy. I didn’t know, honestly. Had no idea. I never … let you believe anything I shouldn’t have done, did I?’

‘No. Never a single thing. Perfect lady, always.’

I couldn’t speak now. It was the idea of myself as a perfect lady. Sandy took my hand as if it were the Koh-i-noor diamond and pressed his mouth to the knuckles.

‘Never a word. Ssssh. Won’t speak of it again. Rest of my life. Promise you, on my honour.’

From her front-row table Mrs Kimmig-Gertsch glowered at us.

The night did end, at last, with Xan and me in a taxi going back to his flat. The sun was up and the street sweepers were working, and donkey carts loaded with vegetables plodded to the markets. I was beyond being drunk and I wasn’t tired, and the light had a hard, white, absolute brightness to it that suggested that this day was a crystallisation of everything that had gone before. I already knew that it was one of the days I would remember all my life.

Try to remember. Holding it, cupping my hands to mould the shape of it.

There was a cavalry officer in boots complete with spurs asleep on the dingy sofa.

The kitchen was a swamp of bottles and spilled drink.

The door to one of the bathrooms was jammed. I squeezed into the other, regarded my face for an instant in the clouded mirror, then hastily brushed my teeth with Xan’s toothbrush. He was already unfastening the satin-covered buttons and loops down the back of my dress.

It is the memory of making love on that airless Cairo morning, when we had drunk and danced ourselves sober again, that I hold most close. We were so sweet and shameless, and so powerful in our innocence.

Even now, when I am eighty-two and losing my mind, the recollection of it can catch me unawares and turn my limbs to water.

Xan fell asleep in the end, and I lay and watched the impression of his dreams. He twitched and winced a little and to soothe him I put my hand over the bony place where his ribs fused, feeling the slow rise and fall of his breath.

I didn’t go to work. I called Roddy Boy and told him I had Gyppy tummy, and bore the sarcastic slice in his voice when he told me that he hoped I would feel very much better before too long, and that he also hoped Captain Molyneux was taking good care of me.

In the afternoon, after we had eaten some recuperative pastries and drunk coffee in the shady garden at Groppi’s, Xan took me to a jeweller’s in the old quarter to buy a ring.

‘There is a rather pompous family diamond, actually, that belongs to my mother. I’m the only son so she’ll want you to wear it. D’you think you can bear that? But I want you to have something in the meantime. What would you like?’

We wandered hand in hand past the tiny doorways of the gem merchants. Copts and Jews called out to us, trying to urge us inside their shops. We reached an angle of a cobbled street where the way was too narrow for us to walk abreast, and Xan glanced up at a sign.

‘This is the place.’

‘I don’t need a ring, Xan. I’ve got you.’

‘It’s only a symbol, darling. But I want you to wear it.’

The merchant unlocked the safe and brought out his velvet trays for us and we let the raw stones trickle in cold droplets through our fingers. In the end, under duress, I chose a smoky purple amethyst and ordered a plain claw setting for it. Xan led me out of the shop again and tucked my hand under his arm.

‘There. Now, what would you like to do?’

‘Where is Hassan?’

‘At home with his family, I should think. Why?’

We hadn’t spoken of it but we both suspected that this might be our last day and night together before Xan was called away again. In our Garden City apartment Mamdooh would be performing some domestic routine with polishing cloths or caustic soda and at Xan’s there would be hung-over officers and the same debris of hard living that we had escaped three hours ago. We could have tried to find a hotel room, but with the endless flux of visitors and diplomats and officers washing through Cairo these were hard to come by. And I thought how perfect it would be to go out to the Pyramids again, and watch the sun setting behind Hassan’s hidden oasis.

As soon as I told Xan he smiled at me.

‘You have only to command. But I’ll have to go and beg for a car.’

We walked back towards GHQ through baked afternoon streets. We passed a crowd of Australian soldiers with huge thighs and meaty fists, sweating under full packs, and a smaller band of British squaddies who looked undersized and pale in comparison with their Antipodean counterparts. They were all recently arrived because they gazed in bewilderment at the tide of refuse and dung in the gutters, and the unreadable street signs, and the old men in rags sleeping in the shade of peeling walls. The city was full of men in transit, on their way to camps in advance of the big battle. I only knew that it was coming, I had no idea where or when. Xan almost certainly knew much more.

We came to a tall, anonymous house in a neglected street that ran westwards towards el Rhoda. I was just reaching the conclusion that this must be a headquarters of some kind for Tellforce when a figure detached itself from the shadow of the broken buildings opposite and ran towards Xan. A brown hand caught Xan’s khaki shirtsleeve and some quick words of Arabic followed. It was Hassan.

Xan gave me a glance and then moved a little to one side, listening to what Hassan had to tell him. I waited, feeling the sun burning the top of my head, knowing that whatever was to come would not be good news. Hassan stepped back again, briefly inclining his head towards me.

I could already tell from Xan’s face what was coming.

‘I have to go,’ he said.

‘When?’

‘Now. I’ve got to be in place beside the road out of el Agheila with my patrol, tonight.’

By my half-informed reckoning this was about four hundred miles west behind the enemy front line, which was then on the Libyan border.

‘Tonight? How? Isn’t it … a long way?’

‘Wainwright’s here with the WACO.’

Tellforce had a small two-seater aircraft, usually piloted by the Tellforce commander himself, Lieutenant-Colonel Gus Wainwright.

‘He’s waiting at the airfield.’ Xan took my face between his hands. Hassan had turned away and stood like a stone statue, guarding the steps and the dingy house and – I saw – Xan himself. I also saw that a glitter of excited anticipation had kindled behind Xan’s eyes. Now it was here he was ready to go. He wanted to go, he was already rushing towards the adventure, whatever was waiting for him. I felt cold, even with the afternoon’s humid weight pressing against the nape of my neck. But somehow I smiled, my mouth curling against his as he kissed me.

‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured.

Against all the impulses, which were to cling to him like an importunate child and beg him to stay, I pressed the flat of my hands against his shirt. Somehow, as the kiss ended I stepped out of his arms and put a tiny distance between us. Hassan edged closer by the same amount. First and most importantly it was the two of them now, and Xan’s Yeomanry patrol, and the desert; not Xan and me. I would have plenty of time in the coming weeks to get used to that order of priority, before he came back to Cairo again.

‘Come back when you can,’ I whispered. ‘Go on, go now.’

Hassan was already moving towards the Tellforce staff car that I saw parked under the shade of a tree. Xan turned away, then swung back and roughly pulled me into his arms again, and there was the raw bite of his mouth against mine and a blur of his black hair, and the buttons of his shirt gouged into my skin.

‘I love you,’ he said.

‘I know.’ The smile that I had forced into existence was real now, breaking out of me like a flower from a bud. ‘And I love you. I’ll be here. Just go.’

Hassan reached the car and slid into the driver’s seat. Xan sprinted after him, then slowed again and shouted back over his shoulder, ‘Will you go and visit Noake for me?’

I had already decided that I must do this. ‘Of course I will.’

He wrenched open the passenger door and sketched a salute. With one hand I shaded my eyes against the sun, and I touched the fingers of the other to my lips and blew him a kiss. The skidding car tyres raised little puffs of dust that hung in the air like a whitish mist for long seconds after the car itself had vanished.

When I reached the hospital I went first to ask after Private Ridley. I was directed to a voluntary aid supervisor in an unventilated ground-floor office that reminded me of my own slice of working corridor. The woman was French but she explained in neutral English that the soldier had died early that morning without regaining consciousness.

‘I’m sorry. Was he a relative? Or a friend, perhaps?’ She was looking at me curiously.

‘Neither. A friend of mine is, was, his commanding officer.’

‘I see.’ She gathered together several sheets of paper closely typed with names, and patted them so their edges were aligned. She had well-manicured nails, a plain gold wedding band. Private Ridley had died probably while Xan and I were lying in each other’s arms. Their loss running parallel with our happiness, somewhere in England there was a mother, a family waiting, perhaps a fiancée or a wife who didn’t yet know that he was dead. I frowned, trying to line up these separate unwieldy facts like the supervisor’s sheets of paper, and failing. Xan and I were alive, today, with blood thrilling in our veins. Another man was dead, and others had lost half a face, two strong legs. These particular known individuals suddenly seemed to stand at the head of an immense army.

As they marched in my head the living were outnumbered and overpowered by the slaughtered and the maimed, and the hollow skulls and shattered limbs snuffed out hope and happiness: not just Xan’s and mine, perhaps, and that of Private Ridley’s family and Ruth Macnamara’s patient who couldn’t dance any more, but all the world’s. Zazie’s and Shepheard’s and the Gezira Club were dark, and crowded to the doors with dead men.

I sat in silence, shivering a little.

‘I’m sorry,’ the Frenchwoman said again. ‘Can I help you with any other thing, maybe?’ She had work to do, perhaps the same news to convey about dozens more men.

I managed to say, ‘No. Thank you.’

I left the office and found my way up to the ward.

Noake was lying propped against his pillows, the lower half of his face masked with fresh dressings, but when he saw me he lifted his hand in a little flourish of greeting. I sat down in Xan’s place, intending to talk cheerfully to him in the same way that Xan had done. I wouldn’t tell him about Ridley’s death, not yet.

‘Hello, there. How do you feel? You’ve only got me tonight, Mr Noake, I’m afraid. Captain Molyneux’s been whisked back to the desert, by air. Colonel Wainwright flew in today to get him, what d’you think of that?’

I could see what he thought of it. Beneath the bruised and puffy lids his eyes glimmered with interest and amusement, but there was also the ghost of a cheeky wink that acknowledged that officers and commanders flew. Everyone in Tellforce sweated in trucks across the endless dunes, digging out embedded vehicles and dragging the heavy steel channels that were laid under the wheels to give them purchase, but other ranks didn’t get many variations to this routine. But I thought that it must also have been a welcome sight for patrols buried deep in the desert when the little single-engined plane came humming out of the sky and touched down on an impromptu runway levelled in the sand.

‘I don’t know when he’ll be back,’ I blurted out.

To my surprise, Noake’s hand crawled across the sheet, found mine and grasped it tightly. I looked down at our linked fingers, and the tubes running into his arm through which they must be feeding him.

Noake had seen Xan and me together. He couldn’t speak, his shattered mouth couldn’t form the words, but he was letting me know that he sympathised with the lucky anguish that I suffered on parting from my lover.

For a moment, I had to keep my head bent.

Corporal Noake’s hand was large and heavy. The nails were torn and blackened, and there were deep fissures round the nail margins and across the knuckles. Xan had told me that he was a mechanic, gifted at coaxing new leases of life out of their battered trucks.

‘Back for Christmas, that’s what he said,’ I murmured.

I didn’t know how much I was supposed to know, or how much Noake should know that I knew. But he wasn’t going to be able to tell anyone and I longed to talk about Xan.

‘I’ve no idea what the real chances of that are. I don’t suppose anyone does, do you? But there’s a big push coming, everyone’s talking about it, aren’t they? I’m concerned for him, because I know a bit about what Tellforce does. But Xan’s got to do his job like everyone else, like you did, Mr Noake.’

And like Private Ridley did. I sat up straighter and looked into the injured man’s eyes, remembering the involuntary kindling of excitement I had seen in Xan. ‘It must be hard for you, to miss what’s going to happen.’

Noake nodded, his fingers still tight over mine.

‘We’ll have to keep each other company,’ I said. ‘And you will have to get better quickly.’

A starched apron came into view on the other side of the bed. Ruth was standing there with an armful of fresh bedding.

‘Here you are again. Can’t stay away from us, Albie, can she?’

I was glad to know his first name. ‘Albie? May I call you that, too? I’m Iris, d’you remember?’

He blinked his agreement.

Ruth asked me, ‘Where’s your friend tonight? Fiancé, I mean.’

‘I was just telling Albie. Gone. Called back to the desert in a hurry.’

‘Oh. Oh, look, d’you want to have a cup of coffee or something after I finish work? I’m off shift in half an hour.’

‘Yes, let’s do that.’

She hurried away and I went on talking to Albie Noake. I had no idea what he wanted to hear but I told him about Faria and Sarah and the apartment in Garden City, and about Mamdooh and his son who followed him to work and sat on a stool in the corner of Mamdooh’s cubbyhole near the front door, sucking on the bon-bons that Faria insisted on feeding him. I talked about Zazie’s and Elvira Mursi and Mrs Kimmig-Gertsch’s house, and Roddy Boy and my segment of corridor at GHQ, and what I remembered of Cairo in the days long before the war when my father was at the embassy. I held on to Albie’s hand, smoothing it between my own. Once or twice his eyelids closed and I thought he had fallen asleep, but as soon as my murmuring stopped they snapped open again.

‘She can talk enough for both of you, can’t she?’ Ruth demanded when she came back.

I disengaged my hand gently from Albie’s and stood up.

‘Shall I come back another day?’ I asked him. As well as a nod there was a sound in his throat, part gargle and part rising groan. It was meant as a yes.

‘You can always tell me to go away.’ I smiled. ‘Good night, Albie.’

I followed Ruth out of the ward and down some stone steps. Outside a door marked ‘Nursing Staff’ she said briskly, ‘Wait here.’

Three or four minutes later she re-emerged and I blinked at her. The nurse’s starched cap had always hidden her hair, and now I saw for the first time that it was a rich, dark red. It turned her pale skin translucent and took the slightly pinched severity out of her face. Ruth looked as if she was not much more than a year or so older than me. She had taken off her apron and wore a thin coat on over her uniform dress. Without the starched outer layer she didn’t rustle or crackle when she walked. We nodded at each other, with a touch of wariness now that we were on neutral ground.

When I was driving with Xan I had noticed a small café on a street corner, within walking distance but far enough away not to be crowded with people from the hospital. I suggested that we might go there and Ruth nodded briefly.

‘Anywhere we can get something to eat. I’m pretty hungry.’

The café had split and cracked clay tiles for a floor, and a tall mirror suspended at an angle above the counter that reflected the tops of our heads and foreshortened bodies. There were only a handful of other customers, but there was a good scent of coffee and spicy cooking.

Ruth ordered eggs and fuul, and I asked for a plate of fruit. We drank mint tea while we waited for our food and as soon as a basket of ‘aish baladi was placed in front of us Ruth tore off a chunk of the warm, coarse bread and chewed ravenously.

‘Sorry. I don’t get much time to eat during the day. Usually I like to get the bus straight home from work and have a meal. The person I live with cooks, or if I’m on my own I throw a few ingredients together.’ She made a self-deprecating face, and then laughed. ‘I’d like to be able to cook, but it’s not exactly one of my gifts.’

Sarah, Faria and I didn’t cook either. Mamdooh left covered dishes for us, or we might boil an egg or carve up a sandwich. But mostly we were taken out for dinner.

I felt the width of a divide between Ruth Macnamara and me, and I knew that she was just as aware of it. Ruth wouldn’t miss anything, I guessed.

‘Do you share with another nurse?’

‘A doctor.’

‘Where does he work?’

Ruth lifted an eyebrow. ‘She.’

Then she named one of the other military hospitals.

I was blushing crimson at my own assumption. ‘That was stupid,’ I said.

‘No, it wasn’t. How many female surgical anaesthetists do any of us know? But Daphne is one. She’s pretty good.’ Ruth was proud of her friend, I could tell that much.

‘I’d like to meet her.’

Ruth didn’t say anything to that. A hot pan full of eggs and chopped peppers arrived and she dug her fork into it. I ate slices of melon and mango and watched her eat. When rather more than half of Ruth’s plate was empty, she finally looked up again.

‘That’s better. So. Your fiancé is Albie Noake’s commanding officer, is that right?’

‘You don’t have to keep calling him my fiancé. Just say Xan.’

She laughed then. ‘OK. Xan.’

‘Yes, he is. And when he was called back to his … unit, this afternoon, I said I’d go on visiting Albie instead of him.’

‘That’s good. The men get medical attention, of course, the best we can provide, but they don’t get many of the other things that they need. Company, especially women’s company, and non-medical encouragement, and diversion, and anything, really, that’s outside hospital routine. Although the VADs and the other voluntary organisations do what they can. Albie’s lucky.’

I understood what she meant. The ward was so big, and so overcrowded with suffering, it would be hard to provide individual support or even as little as a few minutes’ unhurried talk for each of them. And they were all so far from their own families and friends.

‘What will happen to him?’

‘Short term, or longer?’

‘Both.’

‘Mine is an acute trauma ward. He’ll stay there until he is stable and his recovery is predictable. Then he’ll be moved to a longer-stay ward, where I should think they’ll start trying to repair his mouth and reconstruct his jaw. Or maybe that will be too complicated and he’ll be sent by ship back to England for the work to be done there.’

‘Will he be able to speak again?’

Ruth’s own lips twisted a little. ‘In a way. It will be a manner of speaking.’ He was perhaps twenty-eight years old.

‘Poor Albie.’

She went on eating. ‘At least he’s alive.’

Ruth was unsentimental and I could see how the work she did would absolutely require that, or else it would be unbearable. And as well as being distressing I could also guess how fascinating and even noble it must be, compared with what I did. I envied her.

‘Xan brought in another of his men who was badly injured at the same time. He died this morning, but I didn’t tell Albie. Maybe I should have done, though.’

The way that Ruth talked – everything about her, her matter-of-fact dry manner and her precise way of moving as well as speaking – was changing my perspectives. The truth was the truth. There was no point in trying to hide or to soften it, perhaps especially from men who had been so severely wounded. I suddenly thought that to do so might be to belittle them.

‘Yes, I think you should,’ Ruth agreed. Her glance flicked over me. ‘Would you like me to do it, as your Xan isn’t here? What was the man’s name?’

‘Private Ridley. No, thank you. I’ll tell Albie myself when I visit him tomorrow.’

The food was finished. Ruth and I sat facing each other across the rickety wooden table. ‘So I’ll see you then,’ she said.

‘Do you ever get a day off?’

‘Three full days and two halves out of fourteen. Subject to cancellation if we’re busy.’

If the hospital trains and ambulances brought extra cargoes of men from the front. Uncomfortably I thought of my long lunches spent lazing beside the swimming pool at the Gezira Club, and my games of tennis with Sarah, and all the cocktails I had drunk and rich dinners I had eaten since coming to Cairo.

‘I’d like to do some work in the hospital. Anything useful. I’ve got plenty of spare time.’

‘There are women who come in with library books and magazines for the men, and they read to them. One lady has been teaching the convalescents to sew and knit.’

Ruth must have seen my face because she added, ‘And there are the VADs, of course.’

The Voluntary Aid Detachment provided nursing auxiliaries. I knew two or three of them; they were mostly young women from backgrounds similar to mine, and they were nothing like Ruth. Again, she followed my thoughts.

‘I am a trained nurse’, she said, quite patiently.

‘Where did you train?’

‘Glasgow Royal Infirmary.’

‘And your friend Daphne?’ The doctor. The surgical anaesthetist. I imagined Ruth’s slightly older sister.

‘Yes, she studied at Glasgow University and did her medical training at the Infirmary.’

I took a piece of paper out of my handbag and scribbled my telephone number on it, then passed the slip across to Ruth. She took the pen out of my hand, folded my slip of paper and tore it very neatly along the fold line, then wrote her number in return.

‘Maybe if Daphne and I ever get the same day off, you could come and have something to eat with us,’ she said, without sounding convinced of either likelihood.

‘I’d love to,’ I said, my response sounding much too enthusiastic. But I was drawn to Ruth Macnamara. I hadn’t met anyone quite like her before.

‘I’d better go.’

I offered to pay for Ruth’s dinner but she wouldn’t let me. She took her own money out of a small brown leather purse and counted out a tidy heap of coins, the exact sum required. Then we walked out together into the twilight. I wondered if Xan was reunited with his patrol, and if they were already dug into a wadi within sight of the el Agheila road.

‘Here’s my bus.’ It was one of the ancient dirty-blue Cairene boneshakers, crowded to suffocation point with Egyptians heading home to the city outskirts. Ruth climbed onto the step and somehow melted into the solid mass of humanity within. A second later I saw her face pressed against the murky glass of the nearest window. She gave me a smile that seemed to hang in the air after the bus had trundled on its way.

I started to walk penitentially towards Garden City but the day had begun to seem like a very long tunnel. Riding home through the dawn with Xan felt like a week ago. A taxi loomed towards me and I flagged it down.

‘Yes, Madam, Shepheard’s Hotel?’

‘No.’ I gave the man the address, fell inside and dozed until we jerked to a stop outside the apartment.

As I came in I noticed for the first time in months how opulent Faria’s parents’ furniture was, and how overstuffed the rooms felt.

Sarah was sitting in a circle of lamplight, her knees drawn up and her bare feet on the crimson sofa cushions. She looked pale, but her hair was freshly washed and there was a slick of lipstick on her mouth.

‘Sarah! You’re back. Did you have a good time? You look much better.’

Sarah held out her arms to me. ‘Here I am. And you. Faria told me your news. I’m so happy for you, Iris. I’m really happy. Come on, give me a hug.’

I sat down beside her and we hugged and kissed each other. Sarah smelled of her favourite perfume but the bones in her shoulders and arms seemed much more prominent, and there was a veil of sadness in her face.

‘Are you really all right?’ I asked.

‘‘Course. And you’re going to be Mrs Alexander Molyneux. How exciting. Are you completely thrilled?’

‘I am.’

‘Can I be your bridesmaid?’

Thinking about Ruth Macnamara I said, ‘Of course. You and Faria.’

‘What heaven. Not pink, please don’t say pink. Maybe palest mint green, what do you think?’

‘Where is Faria?’

‘Oh, out.’

‘Ali?’

‘Jeremy, I think,’ Sarah said. She must have bitten her lips from inside because they went pale under the lipstick. Then she stretched out her legs and jumped up with a little laugh. ‘Let’s have a drink. A drink to you and Xan.’

She poured us a significant measure of gin apiece and tilted her glass.

‘To the two of you. Happy for ever,’ she called, and drank.