The Levant Trilogy (56 page)

'No, I cannot say well. He has been here twice
before, working on his book.'

'The book about comparative cultures? He seems
to have been working on it a long time.'

'Yes, a long time.' Halal spoke respectfully and
there was an interval of silence before he next said: 'Mrs Harriet, you were
displeased, were you not, when I offered my protection. I meant no discourtesy.
I am myself a Christian and I know that among Moslems one must be circumspect.'

'Was I not circumspect? You mean my standing up
on the stone? I'm sorry if I sounded ungrateful.'

'No, not much ungrateful. It is only, I would
not wish to be misunderstood. Now, let me tell you where we are going. We are
going to a khan. Do you know what a khan is? No? It is a private souk owned all
by one man. This one is owned by Jamil's father who rents out the shops and is
very rich. Jamil is my friend. He is very handsome because his grandmother was
a Circassian. He tells me his wife, too, is very handsome but, of course, I
have not seen her. They are Moslems. Yes, Jamil, a Moslem, was my great friend
at Beirut. We went together to the American University so, you see, you will be
with an advanced circle.'

'Is it so remarkable for a Moslem and a Christian
to be friends?'

'Here, yes, it is remarkable. In the past the
Christians suffered much persecution and hid their houses behind high walls.
But Jamil and I are advanced. We mix together as our parents would not dream of
doing.'

'I look forward to meeting him.'

'Yes, you will like him. He is a superior
person. I am fortunate in knowing him.'

Halal spoke modestly but Harriet understood
that, as proved by his association with Jamil, Halal, too, was a superior
person.

Glancing aside at him, seeing he still carried
his black leather case, Harriet asked him: 'What did you study at the
university?'

'I studied law.'

'So you are a lawyer? You work in an office?'

'I am a lawyer but I do not work in an office.
My father owns a silk factory and I conduct his legal affairs. That gives me
more time than working in an office.'

They had reached the Souk el Tawill, deserted
now and half-lit, at the end of which was the khan, walled and protected by
decorated iron gates. Halal pulled a bell-rope, a shutter was opened and an
ancient eye observed them before the gates were opened. Inside, a spacious
quadrangle, under a domed roof, was lit by glass oil-lamps.

'See, is it not fine?' Halal pointed to the
tessellated floor and the Moorish balcony that ran above the locked shops: 'If
it were summer, Jamil would entertain out here, but now too cold.'

Halal was so eager for Harriet to appreciate the
splendours of the khan that he kept her for several minutes in the cold before
taking her to a door in the farther wall. Passing through a courtyard, they
entered the family house. In the reception room, a plump young man came
bounding towards them with outstretched arms: 'Ha, ha, so you found the lady,
eh?'

Halal said reprovingly: 'I went as you requested
to invite Dr Beltado
...'

'Who could not come but sent this lady instead?
That is good. See,' Jamil shouted joyfully to the other men in the room, 'we
have a young lady.'

Jamil was a much more ebullient character than
Halal. He had the rounded, rose-pink cheeks and light colouring of the Circassians
and an air of genial self-indulgence. He took Harriet like a prize round the
room. The guests, all men, were Moslems, Christians and Jews.

'A mixed lot, are we not?' Jamil asked, taking a
particular pride in the presence of the Jews whom he introduced simply as
Ephraim and Solomon. Before Harriet could speak to them, she was hurried over
to a large central table where there was food enough to feed a multitude.

Jamil tried to persuade her to take some pressed
meats or cakes or sweets but she had already had supper.

'Then you must drink,' he said.

There were jugs of lime juice and bottles of
Cyprus brandy, Palestine vodka, wines and liqueurs.

Harriet took lime juice and Halal, under
pressure, accepted a small brandy but protested: 'Why, Jamil, are you drinking
nothing? You are not so abstemious when you come to visit me.'

'Shush, shush!' Jamil, giggling wildly, covered
his face with his plump hands. 'Do not speak of such things. I know I can be a
little devilish at times, but in my own house I consider the servants. If they
saw me drink brandy, I could never lift my head among my people.'

The men crowded around Harriet, treating her
with ostentatious courtesy so all might see how enlightened was their attitude
towards the female sex.

Conducted to a place of honour on the main
divan, she unwisely asked: 'Is your wife not coming to the party?'

Jamil, disconcerted, said: 'I think not. She is
a little shy, you understand! But if you will come to meet her, she would be
very much honoured.'

Harriet would have preferred to stay with her
group of admiring men but Jamil, taking for granted that a woman would prefer
to be with women, helped her to her feet and led her through a passage to
another large room where she was left to sit while Jamil found his wife. The
room was empty except for a number of small gilt chairs closely ranged round
the walls.

Jamil returned. 'This is Farah,' he said and
hurried back to his friends.

Farah was not, as Halal said, very handsome but
she looked amiable and was very richly dressed. As she spoke little English and
could not understand Harriet's Arabic, she could say nothing at first. The two
women sat side by side on the gilt chairs and smiled at each other. After some
minutes, Farah touched Harriet's skirt and gave a long, lilting,
'Oo-oo-oo-oo,' of admiration. Harriet, with more reason, returned admiration
for Farah's kaftan of turquoise silk encrusted with gold. Even if too shy to
attend the party, she seemed to be dressed for it.

A servant brought in Turkish coffee and dishes
of silver-coated sugared almonds. They drank coffee, still marooned in smiling
silence. Several more minutes passed, then Farah, gesturing

gracefully in the direction of the Anti-Lebanon,
said: 'Snow.' Harriet nodded: 'Yes, snow.'

'In England snow every day?'

'Not every day, no.'

Farah regretfully shook her head and sighed.

When an hour, or what seemed like an hour, had
passed, Harriet rose to say 'Goodbye'. Farah gave a moan of disappointment,
then smiled bravely and went with Harriet to the door of the room. There she
held out her hand and said slowly: 'Please come again.'

The party was over when Harriet returned to the
reception room. Halal, waiting for her, stood with Jamil beside the table where
the food and drink had hardly been touched.

Jamil, escorting his last guests across the khan
to the gate, insisted that Harriet must return 'many times'. 'It is a great
treat for my wife to talk with an English lady.'

'I'm afraid we could not talk much. We have no
common language.'

'What does that matter? Ladies do not need
language. They look at each other and they understand.'

Walking back through the souk, Halal eagerly
asked: 'Was she beautiful, Jamil's wife?'

Harriet replied: 'She was very nice,' and Halal
was satisfied.

Reaching the lane that led to the pension, Halal
stopped and said: 'I wish to show you something,' and led her to a cul-de-sac
at the side of the souk: 'Come. Look in here.'

Harriet peered into an area of darkness that
might have been the interior of a great cathedral. There was light only in one
corner where three Arabs sat with their camels round a charcoal brazier.

'What is it?' she asked.

'The greatest caravanserai in the world. Once,
at this time of night, it would have been filled with camel trains settled in
round their fires, all eating, all talking, then lying down to sleep. Here
every route converged and it was called the Hub of the World. But now, you see:
only the one small caravan, and soon no more. Perhaps that is the last to come
here. It is sad, is it not?'

'Yes.' Harriet gazed into the vast darkness with
its one corner of light and felt the sadness of things passing.

Halal said: 'Mohammed must have slept on this
ground many times. His caravan went from Mecca to Aqaba and back to Mecca.
When he conquered Damascus, he called it Bab Allah, the Gate of God, because
from here the road runs straight to Mecca.'

'No doubt you have seen many things in
Damascus?' Halal asked as they went towards the pension. When Harriet had to
admit that as a woman and alone, she had been nervous of entering the Moslem
sites, he said: 'If you would permit, I could be your escort. There is, I
assure you, much to see.'

Harriet, not wanting to encourage Halal, said:
'Thank you,' and was glad that a distant burst of rifle fire interrupted him
when he started to speak again.

'What are these demonstrations about?'

'Oh, it is just doleur. Food is scarce, prices
keep rising and they blame the military, the Free French or the British. They
do not harm. It is nothing to worry you. But, Mrs Harriet, you have not said
"Yes" or "No". So tell me, may I call tomorrow and take you
to see the Azem palace?'

'Well, not tomorrow. Perhaps another day.'
Harriet knew she should be thankful for his company but leaving him, she hoped
he would understand that that 'another day' was meant as a refusal.

Ross was the first to tell Simon that he would
be transferred to the 15th Scottish hospital. 'But why?'

'Can't say, sir. Not exactly. I believe they've
got a rehabilitation unit there where you'll get proper treatment.'

Simon, heartsick over Edwina's defection, felt
this move was another blow. He was so despondent that Ross tried to coax him
into a better humour: 'You wouldn't want to stay here for ever, now, would you,
sir?'

'No, but I don't want to go anywhere else. I
want to stay with the people I know. I thought they'd keep me here till I was
back on my feet.'

Of the people he knew - the doctor, the sister,
the nurses -Ross was the one who meant most to him. Ross had become a friend,
more than a friend. He was like a faithful lover whom he might hope to keep
about him for the foreseeable future. Now, for no reasonable reason, he would
be taken from him, not by enemy action, against which there were no arguments,
but on the orders of some administrator who had never seen Simon or Ross, and
cared nothing for either of them.

But it was not only the separation from Ross
that vexed him. Here, in his small area of Plegics, he was an important
patient. The doctor, nurses and Ross were all concerned for his recovery and so
closely related to his needs, emotions, fears and uncertainties, they were
like members of his own family. To break with them would cause him anguish.

Simon took his appeal to the doctor: 'Surely,
sir, I could stay till I'm better? It shouldn't take long.'

The doctor agreed that Simon was 'on the mend'.
He could now get around on crutches. 'But when you can walk without them, I
just cannot say. You need exercises and there's a proper unit at the 15th
Scottish. There you'll get better faster, you wait and see.'

Simon's next appeal was to the sister who was
brisker and blunter than Ross or the doctor: 'You've got to go, young man. We
need your bed. This is a New Zealand hospital and we must put our own lads
first. We've had a signal warning us to prepare for casualties. Our lads have
taken a beating on the Mareth Line and they'll be coming in soon from the dressing-stations.
So, there's nothing for it. We have to accommodate them.'

'The Mareth Line? Where is it? I've never heard
of it.'

'Somewhere in Tunisia. That's where the Kiwis
are now.'

Simon had to realize that while he had been
lying there disabled, the fighting had moved a long way west. He felt
resentful that he had been left behind and he was eager to be back in the
desert. He asked Ross: 'How long before I'm fit again for active service?'

'That depends, sir. It's what the doc said. The
thing you need now is exercise. If you keep at it, you'll be fit sooner than
you think.'

Simon still hoped that the move, if it must
come, would be delayed so he was shocked when Ross told him the ambulance was
waiting for him. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he put on his clothes and
fitted his few possessions into the box that held his dress uniform. Then he
swung himself on to his crutches and made his way out of Plegics. The other
men, though his officer status had kept him separate from them, said goodbye to
him. One even said: 'Sorry to see you go, sir.'

Simon could only nod, too affected to speak.

The ambulance men helped him up the steps and
sat him on a bunk. There, looking out at Ross, he said: 'You'll come and see
me, won't you, Ross?'

'You bet, sir.' Ross smiled and saluted, then
turned away. He did not look back as the ambulance was started up.
Instinctively, Simon knew that Ross had finished with him. The physio had other
work to do. New patients were due and there would be another special case in
Simon's cubicle. So far as Ross was concerned, Simon had ceased to exist.

The 15th Scottish was bigger and better equipped
than the New Zealand hutments but Simon disliked it from the start. The place
seemed to him impersonal. The new team attendant on him had no great interest
in him. They had had no part in his recovery. To them he was merely another
wounded man half-way to health.

As the hospital was only a tram-ride from the
Institute, Guy could visit Simon more often now. He found him peevish and
resentful of his changed life. He was passing through a difficult stage of
convalescence when he was expected to do more for himself and make an effort
to adjust to the normal world. He longed for Ross to take responsibility for
him and knowing he would never see Ross again, he turned to Guy, looking to him
as to a much older man on whom he could lean. Guy could not have this. Simon
had to face his own independence and his own future. He had too much time in
which to feel sorry for himself and Guy urged him to spend it in study of some
sort.

'What was your job before you were called up?'

'I didn't have a job. I'd just left school when
the war started. My dad was keen for me to become a teacher. I was entered for
a teachers' training college but I never got there.'

Guy said: 'Splendid!' He would have encouraged
Simon to prepare for any profession but none seemed to him as worthy as
teaching. He said with enthusiasm: 'I'll apply for the preliminary examination
papers and you can begin work here and now. What were your best subjects at
school?'

Simon shook his head vaguely: 'I was all right
at some things, I think.' Looking back at his last days in the sixth form, he
could remember only the excitement of waiting for the war to break out. He had
excelled in the officers' training course and he had come to see warfare as his
natural occupation.

He said: 'I was never keen on mugging up school
books. I liked games. I liked the
OTC

'Well, now's your chance to train your mind.
There's a well-stocked library at the Institute and I've a collection of books
on teaching methods. I'll give you all the help I can.'

'What's the point?' Simon was dismayed by Guy's
plans for his further education: 'It may be years before I'm demobbed. I'd
forget everything I'd learnt. It would just be a waste of time.'

'Learning is never a waste of time. Even if the
war does drag on, you should keep your mind active so when you return to
civilian life
...'

'But I don't want to return to civilian life.
The army's my life. All I want now is to get back into the fight. Out there no
one thinks of the future because, well, there may not be any future.'

Guy argued but all Simon would say was: 'Let's
leave it, Guy. Just now I've got to concentrate on getting better.'

And he was getting better, but not as fast as
his new physio wished. Though he now had every sort of exercising device, his
feet would not support him on the floor. The physio, Greening, had him fitted
with callipers and ordered him to take his hands off the parallel bars. The result
was he toppled forward and struck his chest on a bar. Greening, barely
suppressing his anger, knelt down and savagely pulled Simon's feet forward, one
after the other, requiring him to place them firmly on the ground.

Simon was out of sympathy with Greening who had
been a sergeant drill-instructor in the regular army. Middle-aged, more
experienced than Ross, he had a habit of command rather than persuasion. He was
irascible, even brutal, and had little patience. 'It's up to you,' he told
Simon: 'You've got to work at it.' As Simon strained to keep himself upright,
his hands would return to the bars and Greening would bawl: 'Take your hand
off.' His face distorted with the effort, Simon managed at last to shift his
right foot forward but the left refused to follow.

Greening, relenting, said more amicably: 'All
you have to do is forget you can't do it. You can feel your feet, can't you?'

'Yes. I know they're there but they're sort of
ghostly.'

'Well, you think of them as solid flesh and
blood, and tell them to get on with it.'

That night he again had the dream of running
across fields unbroken except for some giant trees that rose out of the ground
and quivered in front of him. As he ran, he could see the flash of his feet but
not the feet themselves. Suddenly fearful, he slowed down to look and seeing
them there, solid flesh and blood, he sped on in sheer delight of being whole
again. He shouted out and waking himself, realizing his condition, he gave a
cry that brought the night nurse running to him.

Now that he was regaining energy, he was bored
by the claustrophobic routine of hospital life. Details of his time in the
desert came back to him and he felt an intense nostalgia for events that had
once meant nothing to him: brewing-up, making a fire of scrubwood between
stones, boiling the brew can and throwing tea in by the handful; the whiplash
crack of bursting shells, even the sandstorms and the pre-dawn awakening.

When Guy again tried to interest him in a
teaching course, he said: 'I know teaching's fine. My dad thought the same, but
it's not for me. I want to be with the chaps. I'd like to join a regiment
stationed somewhere like India or Cyprus. I want to see the world.'

'But you'll want to settle down later. You'll
want to marry and have a home of your own.'

'Later, perhaps.' Simon had not told Guy that he
was already married because that marriage did not count, but another thought
came into his head and he said as lightly as he could: 'How's Edwina? Is she
still seeing Major Brody?'

'I expect so but she'll soon get tired of him.'

'Really? You think so?'

'Oh, yes. Edwina aspires towards a title. She's
looking for another Lord Lisdoonvarna.'

Simon laughed. He did not consider that Edwina's
aspirations lessened his own chances but was happy to think that Major Brody
would soon be out of the way.

Guy sometimes asked Greening about Simon's
progress and discussed what could be done to hasten his recovery. Greening said
he intended trying electrotherapy and thought it a pity there was no
swimming-pool at the hospital. Hydrotherapy often proved useful in these cases.

Giving this some thought, Guy decided to take
Simon to the Gezira pool, a place he would not visit on his own. Having grown
up far from the coast, he could not swim and saw water as an unreliable
element. He had first thought of taking Simon to Alexandria but realized the
dangers of the open sea. He applied to the Gezira Club for temporary membership
and when this was granted, he thought all difficulties were at an end.

Intending to surprise Simon, Guy did not say
where they were going. The winter was petering out and the afternoons were very
warm. When they reached the club garden, a sound of laughter and splashing came
from the pool and Simon looked alarmed. 'We're not going in there, are we?'

'Yes. We'll probably see Edwina. She's always in
the pool.'

Simon left the car unwillingly and
self-conscious on his crutches, let himself be led inside the enclosure. As he
feared, the pool was full of girls and able-bodied men and he would, if he
could, have fled, but Guy wanted him to be there and saying nothing, he sank
into the deck-chair that Guy placed for him.

Guy had imagined that the sight of Simon would
arouse sympathy and there would be willing helpers to induce him into the
water, but those who noticed the disabled man seemed discomforted and
embarrassed by his presence. And Guy realized he had not thought the plan
through. Before he could swim, Simon had to undress. Bathing trunks and towels
would have to be found for him and he would need a clear stretch of water in
which to try and propel himself. As it was, there were not two square feet of
it free of bodies.

Sitting beside Simon, Guy said: 'Later, when
they've gone into tea, there'll be more room for you
..;'

Realizing what was intended, Simon said
fiercely: 'Good heavens, I'm not going in there.'

'But some of them will help you.'

'I don't want their help. I'd only be a nuisance
among that crowd.'

That, Guy feared, was true. Simon, gazing with
sombre fixity at the merriment in the water, twitched as though in pain. Guy,
following his gaze, saw that Edwina had appeared on the diving-board. In a
white bathing-dress, her hair caught up in a white cap formed of rubber petals,
she stood, a tall, golden girl, poised to dive. Tony Brody was clearing a space
in the water, officiously asserting his claim on her. She dived, came up, saw
Guy and swam across to him: 'Hello. I haven't seen you here before.'

'I've never been before. I brought Simon for an
airing.'

What
a good idea!' Edwina,
startled to see Simon with his crutches, said: 'Oh Simon, how well you look!'

Simon knew that was not true. Thin and pallid
from his days in bed, he was also exhausted by his efforts under Greening. He
blushed, hung his head and did not reply.

Edwina cajoled him: 'It's great fun here, isn't
it?'

Guy began to say: 'Can't you persuade him to
join in?' But Edwina, whether she heard or not, pushed off from the side and
went to join Brody who was waiting for her, a medicine ball held above his
head. She jumped up to seize it and they scuffled together, churning the water
and shrieking in their excitement.