Apple Blossom Time (6 page)

I was beginning to be able to tell the young men apart now. This one was Andrew – at least I was fairly certain he was. He held me very close, closer than I’d ever danced with a man before. It was comforting and exciting at the same time, to be held in strong arms under a tropical sky.

We made a fancy turn and I found myself staring straight at Miss Carstairs, who was dancing with a tiny man in a kilt. She looked at me as one looks at someone whose face is familiar but won’t quite fit into place. I gave her a dazzling smile – a smile of equals. She’d never, never know me once I was back in khaki again. For some reason, that gave me such a silly sense of freedom. For the first time, I returned Andrew’s rather vacuous smile. We were young and the moon was full – or if it wasn’t it ought to be – and the band was playing a sentimental tune.

‘“Here we are, out of cigarettes,”’ Andrew half-sang, half-whispered.

‘Pom, pom, pom, pom, pom-pom, “Look how late it gets.

Two sleepy people, by dawn’s early light,

And too much in love to say ‘Good Night’.”’

I relaxed and rested my head on his chest. His top button pressed into my cheek. His warm breath stirred my hair. It felt so nice.

‘It’s awfully noisy up here, isn’t it?’ he murmured in my ear. ‘Shall we take a breather outside?’

I didn’t say anything, but I may have nodded. Andrew took my hand and led me from the dance floor. We avoided the lift and began to walk downstairs.

The corridors were very quiet, and dimly lit.

‘This way,’ said Andrew, leading me by the hand.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course.’

At the end of a corridor, he opened a door with one hand, keeping the other firmly round my wrist. I pulled back.

‘Where are we going?’

‘It’s all right,’ he said, but that wasn’t really an answer.

It was dark, quite dark. With the door closed behind us, I could only hear and feel him. He pushed me back until I could go no further. I could smell starch and feel the line of a shelf pressing into my back. My hand touched a pile of towels. A linen cupboard, then. Just one more door at the end of a silent corridor of doors.

Stupid. Stupid. How could I have let myself get into this situation? Above the wholesome scent of freshly ironed sheets, I could smell his sweat. He was breathing in short, shallow gasps.

He began to nuzzle round my neck. His breath smelt of all the things we had eaten and they weren’t delicious any longer, they were disgusting. I slid away from him, along the shelf, until I was in a corner. But that was even worse. He wedged me firmly in with his weight. I’d never known what a man felt like before. He was nudging, nudging at the tops of my thighs, a pressure that demanded what I wouldn’t give and I couldn’t squirm away any longer.

‘Be nice,’ he whispered, ‘be nice to me.’

My heart started to hammer. This was all he had wanted, all evening. The wine and the music and the laughter, all to lead to this. A cheap little ATS girl, that was all I meant to him, I wasn’t a person at all. I was useful, necessary, expendable.

It was stifling in the cupboard. I was afraid that I might faint. Bright sparks flashed in front of my eyes. Would he hurt me? Would he hit me?

‘Don’t … please don’t…’ I begged.

And suddenly I was angry. The sound of my own voice, pleading and submissive, a victim’s voice, made me angry enough to fight back with any weapon I could lay my hands on. With the surge of fury, I felt strong again.

No, no, no. Not here. Not now. Not with him. Stupid. Stupid. This wasn’t what I meant by war effort. I hadn’t come all this way to be treated like this. It wasn’t going to end like this. Pathetic, sweaty little boy. How dare he? How
dare
he?

I stopped struggling – it only seemed to excite him further – and clenched my fists down by my sides. I summoned up from memory the frigid voice that Grandmother Ansty might have used to a parlour-maid caught sweeping dust under the carpet.

‘
What
do you think you’re doing?’ I demanded.

‘Just let me … you’ll like it…’ His hand was on my breast, careless of how I felt, squeezing, hurting. ‘I won’t hurt you … please … please…’

His other hand was scrabbling at my skirt, trying to pull it up. His mouth was seeking mine. I turned my head, this way and that. His lips left wet prints on my cheeks.

‘You’ll like it,’ he whispered hoarsely again. ‘Please…’

I raised both hands and got hold of his hair. I tugged hard, harder, pulling his head backwards. Then – right, left, right, left, I slapped his face.

‘Take your hands off me, you smutty little schoolboy,’ I hissed. ‘Or I promise you I’ll see you court-martialled.’

‘You don’t mean that.’ But his hands had gone smartly to his sides.

‘Just try me! You’re a disgrace to your uniform. You ought to be horse-whipped and sent home. Now open the door and get out of my way.’

No-one in sight, thank God. Andrew came out after me, his tie askew, his hair everywhere and my fingermarks on each cheek. I looked up and down the corridor and stupidly thought how furtive we seemed. We couldn’t have looked more guilty if I’d actually surrendered to him.

‘Take me back to my friends, please,’ I commanded. I sounded terrifyingly formidable, even to my own ears. Just as well he’d never know I was scared enough to vomit.

We walked back up to the roof. Andrew tried to take my hand.

‘I say, you won’t … you won’t…’

‘Won’t what?’

‘I mean to say – it was only a bit of fun. I wouldn’t have hurt you. You won’t
say
anything, will you?’

‘What do you think?’ I snapped.

As we climbed the stairs, I wondered what I’d do if my friends weren’t there. Supposing they were in other, darkened rooms. Supposing …

But they were there, all of them. Vee was dancing with James (I think). Grace was catching up on the next generation of relatives and friends with her cousin. Pansy was sitting quietly by herself. She looked half-asleep and Bob was completely so. His cheek rested in an ashtray.

George hailed us before we were halfway to the table. ‘So there you are, you two. Just in time. We’re all off to the Deck Club. We’d given you up. Naughty, naughty!’

‘Grace,’ I said quietly, ‘I think it’s time we all went back to camp.’

‘You don’t mean it…’ Grace looked up at me, looked at Andrew and knew. ‘Whoops!’ she said, tipsily. ‘P’r’aps you’re right. Georgie darling, it’s been wonderful – we must do it again soon – but be an angel and grab us a taxi. It’s time for all good girls to go up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire.’

‘You never used to be a spoilsport, Grace. I hope you’re not getting a khaki mentality. Won’t you just have
wahed
for the
sharia,
girls? Just a little one for the road, eh? To please old Georgie?’ George asked, pompously, then he looked at me, too. ‘Oh, well. Perhaps not.’

*   *   *

We were all pretty subdued next morning. Grace stood at the next basin, as we cleaned our teeth. ‘All right?’ she asked quietly.

I nodded, took a sip of boiled water and spat out.

*   *   *

When I came off duty later, the duty NCO told me there was someone called Mr Kenton waiting to see me. From a distance, the young man standing by the gate could have been any one of the three – young, smart, hat at a non-regulation angle, khaki drill well pressed – but I was certain it would be Andrew and I didn’t want to see him. He had a nerve – more than I’d given him credit for. I didn’t want to have to listen to his pleas and his justification. I hoped he’d sweated all day in case I’d report him. Maybe I still would. Maybe the fear of that would be punishment enough. I hadn’t made up my mind. I felt vengeful enough for anything.

But it wasn’t him.

‘I … er … I came to say…’ James Kenton looked down at his suede desert boots and up at the sky. ‘I came to apologize.’

‘Do you have something to apologize for?’ I asked, acidly.

‘No … yes … well, we all have, really.’

‘And you drew the short straw? Bad luck.’

‘No, I … I just thought someone ought to say … you know – sorry.’

Poor lad. It must have taken some courage to come and face me. No-one had made him do it (at least, I hoped not). Maybe he wasn’t as bad as the others. Maybe they weren’t all carbon copies of each other, after all.

‘Thank you,’ I said, still crisply, but not quite so much the
grande dame.

‘It’s just that … we’re all off up the blue quite soon and it’s hard … Well, you don’t know quite what to expect out there, do you, and you don’t know how you’ll behave. You think about it quite a lot. You don’t want to go until you’ve been everywhere and done everything … oh, dear … that’s not what I meant to say. I’m sorry.’

‘What you’re trying to tell me is that you three hatched a plan to see who could roger an ATS girl last night. Did you have a bet on it? Was there a prize for the first one to prove he was a man? I hope you’re proud of yourselves.’

He blushed painfully. ‘It’s not meant to be an excuse. I’m just trying to explain.’

‘Well, you have, but I don’t think you’ve made it any better.’

‘I know. It’s just getting worse the more I say. It was inexcusable and I’m sorry.’

He looked at me and smiled. Under the shade of his hat peak, I could see that his eyes were very blue, long-lashed and innocent. His smile was heart-stoppingly sweet, without guile, open as a child’s. It took away all the arrogance that his uniform gave him. It turned him into an awkward young man who was trying to apologize for something someone else had done. I had to admire him for that. I could just see him at school – not that long ago, head of house, I guessed, but never dynamic enough to be head of school – stepping forward, owning up, playing the game. We weren’t officer and other rank any longer, simply two people who were trying to get back into step with each other.

‘Would you please allow me to make amends? I’d like to prove that we aren’t all animals. Would you let me take you somewhere when you’re next off duty?’

‘Certainly not,’ I snapped.

*   *   *

‘Of course you’ll go,’ said Vee. ‘You’d be mad not to. Stay in this dump for an evening, when you don’t have to? You want your bumps read, you do! What’s your excuse, then? Washing your hair – again?’

‘I must say, I did think he was rather sweet,’ said Grace. ‘Best of the bunch. The teeniest bit young, maybe – I’m not wild about bum fluff, myself – but beggars can’t be choosers.’

‘That’s a bit below the belt,’ I complained.

‘You know perfectly well what I mean, darling. This place is like a nunnery – and I should know. Six years in a Belgian convent school was quite long enough for me.’

‘And he was a perfect gentleman when we were dancing,’ Vee added, ‘which is more than I can say for your cousin, Grace.’

‘I expect you encouraged him.’ Grace gave a smile that robbed her remark of its bitchiness – almost. ‘He’s never been able to resist well-endowed women.’

‘Cheek!’ Vee flung a hairbrush that fell well short of its target.

‘What do you say, Pansy?’ I asked.

Pansy looked at me as though she’d just come back from a very long journey and was rather surprised to find that she’d come back at all. ‘Vee’s not that big – just … just a bit round.’

‘No, silly, I mean about tonight. Should I go or not?’

‘If you fly with the crows you’ll get shot with them.’

‘What on earth is she on about now?’ Vee demanded.

*   *   *

We took a gharry over the English Bridge, away from the teeming city, away from European Cairo. We left behind the stately buildings of Garden City, with their echoes of an imperial past, the stucco fronts, the balconies. We left the crumbling streets without names, without existence on the fine linen Ordnance Survey map of the city. And if they weren’t on the plan, they couldn’t possibly exist and couldn’t therefore be homes for thousands upon thousands of nameless people.

I saw James look out from the carriage upon the unmapped streets and recognized my own thoughts reflected on his smooth, troubled face.

Then we were passing through fields of potatoes, of beans, of onions, through mud-brick villages where dogs chased our carriage and women sat in the shade of their doorways, making fuel cakes of buffalo dung and straw, where children either ran after us with hands outstretched or threw stones. So many – beautiful children, children with goitre, children with milky, sightless eyes.

The worst heat of the day had passed, but the flies hadn’t gone to sleep. They clustered around our heads, buzzing about our lips but never quite alighting, trying to drink from the corners of our eyes. James seemed terribly troubled by them. He flicked his head in a constant, nervous twitch, but they came back every time. I wondered how he’d manage in the desert. I wondered how soon he’d find out.

There was already a crowd when we reached Giza – when was there not? The arrival of more than 100,000 servicemen, all of them keen to see a Pyramid at first hand and send a picture home to prove it, had been a gift to the hucksters and donkey men. As we got down from the gharry, we were jostled by sellers of beads and scarabs, of bits of pottery – very old, very genuine – and of scraps of papyrus – very rare, see, Pharaoh’s own writing. There were sellers of postcards and maps and fly whisks. We were offered camel rides and donkey rides on patient, fly-plagued animals. No-one seemed to mind when we waved them aside. Why not? There were plenty more where we had come from.

We walked out to the Sphinx, marvellously serene, in spite of the newly built blast wall between its paws and the sandbags propping up its chin. Its noseless face, scarred and abraded by desert winds, was horribly leprous, like the beggars who sit outside the mosques, stumpy hands held out. It seemed right that it should look that way. Two soldiers were walking along its spine, arms held out in a mock tightrope act, challenging history. I had the feeling that the creature only had to shrug its shoulders to send them tumbling down.

We went back to the Great Pyramid and the pedlars were still there.

The entrance was a grave-robbers’ tunnel, a crouch-high pathway into blackness, hot and moist near the entrance, then suddenly graveyard chill. Trustingly, we shuffled behind an embassy secretary, who was following a spinster of uncertain years, who was following two New Zealanders, who were following the guide’s pinprick candle. The air was still, solid, weighty. I could touch it, part it in front of me and feel it close again behind. Ahead, always just ahead of the candle, I could hear the leathery flutter of bats’ wings.