Authors: Geoffrey Household

Arabesque (35 page)

“No. Laurence of course popped straight across to his tame Zionist. Man he called Josh. I never got hold of his other name. He nearly broke down when he came out. All starry-eyed. He said
they weren’t quite sure what to believe. They weren’t quite sure. The poor devils! God, what distrust of the world! That Irgun man was about right when he said they would believe
anything. But our own people haven’t their excuse.”

“What do you mean, Dion?” she asked, shocked.

There had been a faint smell of perfidy in the whole chain of official reaction ever since Furney’s coolness.

“We were the cat’s whiskers to start with. After all we were successful, and all hush-hush. And there was nothing on earth we could have done to save Abu Tisein. Then G.H.Q. began to
give Palestine hell. There’s a little egg called Rains at G.H.Q. You wouldn’t know him. He’s a brigadier now. He said Abu Tisein had been invaluable, and the Field Security had
sacrificed him. He didn’t like the gunplay at all. He thought we started it. But Palestine backed us to the limit. They insisted that what we said had happened, had happened. They told them
where they could put their
presumed.
So we were just sacked and promoted. Laurence is going to Sicily as an economic expert. Oranges and lemons, you see. Had ’em in Palestine, and
they have ’em there. Me, I’m liaising with Algiers. I said I wanted a job with lots of coloured pencils. So it had to be G.H.Q. And here we are together in the dream city by the Nile.
Gin, horse dung, and the idle military.”

“Tell me, darling,” she said, ignoring his light-heartedness, “am I to blame for all this? Am I?”

“You? Why? Most of it falls on Abu Tisein. Some on me. A bit for Furney. And a fine slimy lump for Mr. Bloody Brigadier Rains. Not much left for you, my soul.”

“I’ll never get mixed up in it again,” she said with a shiver of her shoulders. “We stink, as Laurence Fairfather once said.”

“Only a little. There are lots of us to keep it nice and shiny.”

“But I’m not … I don’t belong. What shall I do. Dion What use am I?”

“Simple, darling—like everything you make the biggest fuss about. Join the A.T.S. They’re over here in thousands now and busy recruiting.”

“What about the black list?”

“Oh Lord! I’d forgotten that. Well, be a W.A.A.F. You’d look a pippin in their comic lid.”

“Can I?”

“Don’t worry. The R.A.F. have never been known to read a black list. They haven’t time.”

“And you won’t go far away from me?”

“Not till you are certain of yourself. That won’t be long. It’s fulfillment for you.”

“Yes,” she answered slowly. “Fulfillment for me. I think it would be. To lose myself in the mass—all of myself that isn’t you. Not to be ashamed and proud and all
without reason. Just to serve. I will do that, Dion.”

“Then cheer up, my sweet. There’s a fortnight’s leave ahead.”

Armande clung to him, and shook off the past by a long silence in his arms.

“You’ll stay here,” she said. “All the fortnight.”

“Here?” asked Dion, heaven in one eye and doubt in the other. “Wouldn’t His Majesty object?”

“I’m his representative till the end of the month.”

“Scandal?”

“I’m below scandal, darling.”

“I wish,” he said, “that you had written to your husband.”

“I have. So there!”

“Good girl! What did you say?”

“This and that. Enough.”

“An Armande letter, I suppose.”

“What’s that?”

“Beautiful feelings. No facts.”

“They weren’t at all beautiful,” she said, distressed.

Dion Prayle moved his valise and suitcase into the flat. Armande had determined not only to lose herself in love, but to guide it towards permanence. Within a week she had forgotten tact and
management, since she had no occasion for either. There was only ease. Her Dion was gentle, even at his most eccentric, and never a bore. As spectators of the world, they saw the same; as
participants their minor tastes differed. He would not learn to dance. He avoided the fashionable. In compensation, he could extract from the simplicity of man or woman, of restaurant or public
place, riches of amusement for both.

They had lived together for ten days when John’s answer arrived. Armande opened it in privacy. She found herself in such a turmoil of annoyance and modesty that she said nothing.

She drank two stiff Martinis before lunch and sulked.

“Planning Committee still hard at it?” asked Dion, having given his mixture time to work.

“Yes.”

“Top Secret or just Confidential?”

“Neither,” Armande snapped. “I’ve heard from John.”

“Ah! Got a girl, I suppose?”

“Yes. How on earth did you know? I think he might have tried to be faithful. I did.”

“That little loaf,” he said, “is stuffed so full of hypocrisy that—”

“Hypocrisy? Me?” she asked indignantly. “Read it, Dion!”

She handed him the letter. Dion composed his face into a serious expression, fixed it, and read.

John was glad that she had given him an opening. It was, he said, just like her. John hoped she would not be hurt. He had wanted to tell her long ago, but felt that while she was serving her
country in the Middle East it was his duty not to let her be upset. He was in love. An American girl in their naval service. He was sure that Armande would adore her. There had never been anyone
quite like her …

“Well, well!” said Dion cautiously.

“But you don’t understand,” Armande insisted. “A little American isn’t at all the right woman for John. She’d be exasperated by him in a week.”

“I can just imagine John,” he said, “if he knew you were going to marry a primitive sergeant with vulgar tastes.”

“I’m not going to marry a sergeant.”

“Promotion of the body, not the spirit.”

“Marriage, Dion? For us?”

“You know. It’s in the prayer book. For the satisfaction of lust and the procreation of children. Or I may have got it wrong somewhere. Don’t tell me you haven’t been
thinking about it!”

“Yes. I have,” she admitted. “All day and all night when you were not here. Dion darling, yes, I think so—but can’t we go on as we are till the war ends?”

“We’ll have to—considering the queue for the divorce courts.”

“And then? Oh Dion, I should love life with you! But what sort of life?”

“What we can make of ourselves. We don’t know. 1944. 1945. Victory, they say. But we don’t know what it will be like. We shall be out on our feet, and the other fellow on the
slab. Then we get handed back to the politicians. Gutting here and patching there. You and I—two living, unimportant cells. Chuck us in the hospital ash can? Use us to make a bit of healthy
tissue. We shan’t know. We can’t choose. But at least there will be two of us.”

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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978-1-5040-0729-0

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