Silent War Read online

‘Which is?’

  ‘Probably the most heavily protected camp we have: we’ve married quarters here – although a woman would have to feel really desperate to follow her husband to Ismailia, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘A satellite base hospital – meaning us: mainly for the dependants, and a few other small units, including a motor unit . . . and a load of very unpleasant regimental policemen who are supposed to look after us. Do you know anyone here?’

  I probably smiled. ‘Not quite. The wife of the skipper of the ship that brought me here promised me tiffin, whatever that is, because I got him a weekend off with her. Captain Holroyd – first name Neville or Nev. She lives around here somewhere.’

  ‘I’ll ask. Anything you need?’

  ‘Something to read when you have a minute.’

  ‘OK. Why don’t you lie back for a few minutes; you’re beginning to look a bit seedy again.’

  ‘And I feel it, too.’

  ‘This is going to happen a lot to you in the next few days. You’re going to feel suddenly very tired – bone-weary.’

  ‘What should I do?’

  ‘Why fight it? Your body knows what it’s doing.’

  She was right. My eyes were closed before she was out of sight. The last thing I noticed before my eyes closed was a poster on the wall. The ward had been decorated with BOAC posters to cheer everyone up. This one showed a girl in colourful clothes dancing a samba at the Carnival at Rio. It was where I would have rather been.

  When I awoke, there was a Bible on the bedside cabinet. It wasn’t exactly the reading I’d had in mind. Maybe they were trying to tell me something.

  PART TWO

  Into the Blue

  Chapter Nine

  Am I blue?

  Her name was Susan Haye, ‘Hay with an e’ . . . and within two days I was soft on her. She told me that men always get soft on their nurses, as long as they’re not other men. She was the first paid-up member of the Grey Mafia I had exchanged more than a dance with. In case you’re wondering, both their uniforms and berets are grey; there’s nothing more to the nickname than that. Mind you, whenever you see one walking towards you with a syringe big enough for an elephant in her tray, and two hefty male orderlies to hold you down, you are reminded of the phrase that bloke used a few years ago – ‘an offer you cannot refuse’.

  In a ward that could take twenty there were only five others beside myself, and I think they all had the terminal trots. I only seemed to meet them hurrying to and from the bogs, and at night it wasn’t unusual for one of them to shit in his sleep. That resulted in the usual ring of white screens, ‘tut-tuts’, and the inevitable noisy morning blanket bath. Whatever they had I wanted none of it. Staff Nurse Susan told me not to worry – they were well past the infectious stage.

  The food was good, but not as good as the paper bag of homemade ginger biscuits I found on my bed one afternoon: crisp on the outside but soft and peppery once you bit into them. I asked Saucy Susan (who was anything but, of course) where they’d come from, and she pretended not to know. I wanted them to be from her, but perhaps I had a secret admirer. Who knows? There’s a first time for everything.

  There was a small, deep veranda at one end of the ward, and I was the only one who used it. It was too far from the bogs for the others. I sat there smoking gifted cigarettes because I’d run out of pipe tobacco, and sometimes I read the Bible for something to do. I loved the rolling language of the Book of Revelation, but it had a sad ending. Come to think of it, almost everything in the Bible has a sad ending: it’s a handbook for manic depressives, and I don’t know why so many folk are keen on it. There was room on the veranda for just two cane chairs; Susan came and sat in the other, lit a cigarette and we smoked in companionable silence. Smokers do that, you know. Smoking together is what the words companionable and silence were coined for.

  Then I moaned, ‘A fag never lasts long enough.’ – I know that wouldn’t mean the same thing today, but I assure you that in 1953 we were only talking about cigarettes – ‘I miss my pipe.’

  ‘Was it stolen with your other things?’

  ‘No, I’ve only run out of tobacco.’

  ‘I smoked de Reszkes back home, but I learned to like Turkish cigarettes out here; now I smoke Abdullahs: would you like one?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Half a fag later she bent to pick up the Bible which I had dropped by the chair. ‘Would you like to come to church on Sunday?’

  ‘God’s not all that keen on me.’ The last time I had been to church was with Dolly, in Chelsea in 1947. We had gone home afterwards, and straight to bed. I’d often suspected that God has had it in for me since then.

  ‘God’s keen on everyone, silly.’

  ‘Going to church is like getting married. I only go to church with women I’m going to sleep with.’

  She breathed out the last of the smoke from her cigarette, dropped it under a foot and extinguished it. Then she gave a low laugh. ‘Nice try, Charlie, but my boyfriend wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘Is he out here?’

  ‘Yes. He’s out in the blue; due back next week.’

  It was the first time I’d really paid attention to that phrase. It means far away, out deep in the desert.

  ‘He’s a lucky man.’ They are the words we men use to signal that we won’t try it on again. Not until the next time, anyway.

  ‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘I wonder about that . . .’ and sounded wistful. I added the only word that fitted: ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Time I went back to work.’

  ‘. . . I’ve bums to jab, and floors to sweep, and bedpans to wash before I sleep . . .’

  ‘That’s from a poem.’

  ‘Not quite,’ I said.

  The next day when I came in from my afternoon smoke, and a slow perambulation around the outside of the hut, a two-ounce tin of RN Navy Cut tobacco was on my bed, along with three paperback books. Two were by an American I’d never read. It was that guy Mickey Spillane, and if the girls on the cover were anything to go by, I was going to enjoy them. The third was by a maniac named Charles Hoy Fort – The Book of the Damned. Things were looking up. I still have that last one.

  The day before David Watson came to see me I woke up from my afternoon nap to find a woman standing alongside my bed. Her back was to me. It was a nice back. She was leaning out of the window making smoke. We were quite good at smoking in the Fifties; pity the next lot made such a mess of it. Like I said, I liked her back. Most of it was clad in a summer frock, but the skin above her plunging backline, arms and calves was tanned, with a faint golden fuzz of hair. What I could see of the hair on her head was also blonde, and pulled back into a pony tail with an elastic band. Most amazing of all was the finest of gold chains around her right ankle.

  I yawned, sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. ‘Sorry. Was I snoring?’

  ‘No. You looked as peaceful as a baby. I didn’t want to wake you.’ Her front looked just as good as her back. It must be one of God’s tricks. I tried two no trumps.

  ‘Are you Mrs Holroyd?’

  ‘No: I’m one of Mrs Holroyd’s neighbours. She told me there was an RAF boy stuck up in the hospital, who didn’t know anyone in Egypt.’

  ‘I’m trying.’

  ‘I know. Nurse Haye told me. She said that you were obviously recovering, and for me to stay out of reach. I brought you a book: I know you men like war stories.’ It was about Navy frogmen.

  ‘That was a kind thought. Thank you. I do get very bored. All the other men here have got the shits. I think they get to talk to each other in the lavatory. So I get to talk to no one except the nurses and the orderlies. Then I say the wrong things.’

  ‘I thought that you would be younger.’

  ‘So did I. It’s what I think every morning when I wake up . . . and then I look in the mirror. Disappointed?’

  She didn’t answer immediately; then, ‘Not yet.’ So far she’d stood up to me like one of th
ose dames in a Hank Janson book. She hadn’t disappointed me either.

  ‘I’m Charlie. Charlie Bassett: last in a long line of liquorice allsorts jokes. I’m also an optimist.’

  ‘Jill Paul. Pessimist.’

  There were several ways on from there. ‘Married lady or unmarried lady?’

  ‘Both.’ That was interesting.

  ‘It’s kind of you to visit someone you don’t know.’

  ‘Service tradition. Don’t think about it; it’s expected of us.’

  ‘Is it too early to say that the chain around your ankle is driving me wonderfully insane?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘When can I say it?’

  ‘After you’ve had tea with me. Tomorrow afternoon, OK?’ I probably gave her the dumb-show nod. ‘This is my address. In the married lines; you’ll find it easily.’ She handed me a small white card on which she had written an address with that kind of small, clear handwriting that always makes you jealous.

  ‘Thank you. When?’

  ‘Say fifteen hundred.’ She picked up a small white purse from my bed. I hadn’t noticed it. ‘I’ll be off, then . . .’

  ‘OK.’

  I watched her walk down the ward. She didn’t look back. Her hips swayed from side to side under the floral print. Even one of the squitter merchants hauled himself upright to speak to her. Then he ducked, because she’d scooped something from a medical trolley, and shied it at him. Then I realized that she hadn’t smiled much. Yes; interesting, and at least I knew where the ginger biscuits had come from. All that, and she could cook too?

  Later in the day – in the early evening – I sat on the veranda with Nurse Haye-with-an-e: she was about to go off duty. The smoke from her cigarette mingled with smoke from my pipe. I thought that was very romantic. I asked her, ‘Who was that woman?’

  ‘Just one of the wives. They visit from time to time; to keep morale up.’

  ‘She was friendlier than I expected, that’s all.’

  Long pause and intro . . . Tommy’s ‘Smoke gets in your eyes’.

  Then she asked, ‘Have you ever heard that phrase the Yanks use about long-term prisoners, Charlie? They say they go stir-crazy.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard that. Someone used it on me not long ago. I forget who.’

  ‘Well.’ Deep breath. ‘One way or another, we’re all stir-crazy down here, Charlie. You shouldn’t forget that.’

  Watson sat with me on the same veranda, and we both smoked. The morning sun was so bright that the dirt of the parade ground looked almost white. I hadn’t realized how quickly you could fixate on a woman who replenished your tobacco stock.

  ‘Am I shallow, sir?’ I asked him.

  ‘Exceptionally, old fruit.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really and truly. You are about the shallowest person I’ve ever met.’

  ‘So why do some people like me?’

  ‘Because they know exactly where they are with you, Charlie. It’s very easy to have low expectations of you, at a personal level.’

  I thought that was unfair. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever let you down, sir.’ He was already beginning to piss me off.

  ‘That’s because my expectations were always low. Can we now talk about when you’re coming back to work?’

  ‘They haven’t told me yet, but I’m feeling almost a hundred per cent, and I’m bored beyond belief. Why don’t you ask them?’

  ‘I have done, actually. I’ve arranged for you to get a medical in two days’ time if that’s not inconvenient. If they say yes you’ll be ready to come out to play again.’

  ‘I lost all my kit.’

  ‘I know. But Daisy got your measurements from the records, and re-indented for you: a lot of it’s already arrived.’

  ‘Is she over here with you? If so, she must be madder than you are.’

  ‘You said that before, Charlie, and it annoyed me then. Say it again, and I’ll lend you to the Brown Jobs for permanent guard duty, and painting coal. They have vays of making you squawk.’ In his part of England they would have found that very witty. I made a job of refilling and relighting my pipe – you tend to make a bit of a pig of yourself if you’ve been without it for a couple of days – and kept my head down.

  ‘Where will my permanent station be, sir?’

  ‘Probably Deversoir, down on the Great Bitter Lake. But some of the time you’ll be not far from here, at Abu Sueir . . . it depends which direction I’m sending you in.’ I didn’t respond, just raised an eyebrow. He waved a hand to show it didn’t matter. ‘Out into the blue, old boy, out into the blue – just up your street; you’ll love it!’

  Then he leaned over, and poked a nice flat quarter-bottle into my KD jacket pocket. I liked the old soak really.

  He asked, ‘This really is a cushy number: any worries?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I have one. I’m wondering if I’m allergic to anything else. I don’t know exactly what happened a few days ago, but I think it could have killed me.’

  ‘I asked them that too: I thought you’d want to know.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘That they’d think about it. Rum bunch these doctors. Cheers.’ He’d pulled another quarter-bottle from another pocket. Neither of the bottles had a label on it. He took a swig, and then offered me one. Over-proof rum. God bless the Navy!

  I know you’ll find this difficult to believe, but I know what you’re thinking now . . . and it simply didn’t happen. I brassed myself up for my afternoon tea. Haye checked me out before I left, looked me up and down and gave me a small nod of approval. Going over to the semi-detached bungalows on the Married Lines was the furthest I’d walked since I’d moved in to the hospital, and it was no problem. Jill Paul wasn’t a problem either: dressed as I’d seen her the day before, maybe a bit more relaxed and smiley. Barefoot too. She handed me a clear drink in one of those flat cocktail glasses. A few bubbles drifted up to the surface.

  She said, ‘I should wear shoes in here, but I can’t bear to. So I have to watch out for the scorpions.’

  No one had told me about the scorpions, ‘I didn’t know there were any.’

  ‘One rule of Wives’ Club: anything with more than four legs is likely to be a scorpion, and anything that looks like a boot lace or piece of rope is more likely to be a snake. Another rule of Wives’ Club: avoid both because they’re poisonous.’

  ‘Really. What’s Wives’ Club?’

  ‘It’s really the Lost Wives’ Club. It’s what we women do to avoid being driven round the bend by life in a prison cage on the edge of a desert.’

  ‘Does it work?’

  ‘No, not really.’ She took the glass from me before I had a chance to try it. ‘Would you like to dance?’ She turned on a big old Bakelite box radio. Billie Holiday came from the speaker. She was doing ‘Am I blue?’ I’ve had the record for years: Grant Clarke and Harry Akst. Do they still write them like that? We danced slowly, and very close . . . for about a minute. Her back was cool against my hand. Then she stopped abruptly – there might have been the real thing glistening in the corners of her eyes – and said, ‘This isn’t going to work, is it?’

  I understood her completely, although I wouldn’t have had that sort of courage, ‘No. Sorry . . . I don’t know why.’

  She walked away from me, turned the radio off, and gave me my drink back.

  I said, ‘Thanks. What is it?’

  ‘Absolute alcohol from the hospital, with tonic and a slice of lime. It’s a make-believe gin-and-tonic. Ethanol and tonic: the old expats call it E and T. Don’t worry – we dilute the alcohol before we pour it.’ Then she smiled the first genuine smile I had seen from her. Perhaps it was from relief. ‘What shall we do now?’

  ‘Seeing as I haven’t been in here long enough to misbehave, why don’t we sit on your veranda and sip our drinks in full view of your neighbours. That way they’ll know you haven’t anything to hide. You never know; the curtains may even stop twitching, they’ll get curious, come o
ver and join us.’

  We sat out in the shade. I wondered if it ever rained on this caustic earth.

  She said, ‘I get the feeling you’ve done this before.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘But I haven’t. I don’t know why I came on like that.’

  ‘I realized that. We’re all a bit crazy when our lives get too dull to bear – it’s the most endearing and stupid thing about people. Tell me about Mr Paul.’

  ‘Neville, you mean.’

  ‘Neville Holroyd?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You told me . . .’

  ‘Jill Paul: my maiden name . . . sorry. I suddenly didn’t feel very married. I never know when he’s coming back.’

  ‘In that case you’ve entertained me just as you promised him, and nothing bad happened . . . although it was a close-run thing.’

  Then she grinned at me, and I rather began to like her. She said, ‘No; it wasn’t.’ When a woman looks you in the eye and tells you that you never stood a chance, it can actually be quite a liberating experience.

  Twenty minutes later one of her neighbours crossed the street to give me the once-over, and then Haye dropped in on her way off-duty. We drank their pretend gin, and the stories they told me of the other wives in the compound made the place sound like a Shanghai cat-house. I don’t think now that one hundredth of it was true; just desperate people and wishful thinking. In return I told them everything that had happened to me since my call-up, making it sound as silly as possible. We laughed a lot.

  Before I left them I asked, ‘My boss told me he’ll send me up here from time to time to work out of Abu-somewhere-or-other. Would you mind if I dropped in?’

  ‘I’d like that, Charlie,’ Mrs Holroyd said.

  ‘We all would,’ Haye said firmly. I think she was marking my card.

  The third woman was named Evelyn, and the others deferred to her. I’d known an Eve in a previous life. This one looked like a well-marinated Lauren Bacall, had a raucous laugh and a ribald sense of humour. Her skin had tanned as dark as a gypsy’s. Lord knows how long she’d been in Egypt. She had two children at the Base School, and a maid who came from Asmara. She left us for ten minutes, and when she came back brought me a Navy kitbag – dirty white with a couple of blue bands around it. An old spare of her husband’s, she told me he’d never miss it. Something to start again with. By the time I left them I felt as if I had been initiated into a secret society.