at Le Petit Coin de France or Fleurent’s. Um … then you say something about maybe looking in afterwards at the Kit Kat Club.’
‘Of course. Out in the desert, one forgets these essentials.’
‘So we might have a drink here first, while I try to make up my mind. I’ll probably decide to change my outfit at least once before we leave.’
Xan grinned. ‘I am at your service.’
I mixed gin and tonics from the tray Mamdooh always left ready for the three of us and our dates. We sat down together on the sofa and I raised my glass.
‘To wherever it is you have been, and to having come back.’
His face clouded for a moment and he took a long swallow of the gin.
‘I will tell you about it, but not this evening. Do you mind?’
‘No, don’t let’s talk about the war this evening.’
I knew nothing, then, about what he had seen or had to do, but even in my naïveté I understood that what Xan needed tonight was to forget, to be made to laugh, to put down the weight of wartime.
I said, ‘So. What will happen is that by the time I am dressed, and have decided on Fleurent’s, and we have got there in a taxi, they will have given our table away to a brigadier. Of course it’s now the only place at which I can bear to think of eating, but in any case there will be at least two tables packed with people we know, and so we will squeeze up with them. There will be a lot of laughing and even more drinking, and then we will all decide that we are having so much fun that we must go on somewhere else. We will pile into taxis with all sorts of people, losing half of the party and joining up with half of another, and in the confusion you will be in the taxi behind. When we arrive at wherever it is we are going we will be unable to find each other for at least an hour. By which time I shall be very tired and will probably insist on being taken straight home as soon as we do stumble across each other.’
Xan laughed. ‘You lead a rackety life, Miss Black. It’s not a very convincing plan of action in any case. I shall not let you get into a taxi without me, and I will not let you out of my sight for one minute, let alone a whole hour. And we are not going to Fleurent’s, or anywhere near the bloody Kit Kat Club. Why should I share you with every soldier in Cairo?’
‘Then where are we going?’
He took the glass out of my hand and set it on the red and black marble table top. ‘Wait and see.’
Mamdooh brought my Indian shawl and wished us a very good evening as we went out together.
The sky was almost dark, a heavy velvet blue with the first stars showing. I stood on the familiar Garden City street, under the thick canopy of dusty rubber leaves, and let Xan lead me. There was a car waiting a few steps away, with a driver who got out quickly and opened the door for us. He was tall and hawk-faced, dressed in Western clothes but still looking like one of the Bedouin tribesmen who lived in the desert.
‘This is my friend Hassan,’ Xan said quietly.
‘Good evening, Hassan.’
The man nodded at me.
We sat in the back of the car and I watched the shuttered streets gliding by. Excitement and anticipation chased through me and I found that I had to remind myself to breathe. But it was easy to be with Xan; he didn’t talk for the sake of it and he didn’t make me feel that I should chatter and gossip in an attempt to be entertaining.
‘I live there,’ Xan said, pointing up at some balconied windows.
I craned my neck in an effort to see more. ‘Alone?’ I asked.
He laughed. ‘With some other men. You never know quite who’s going to be there. When someone comes back from a picnic in the desert it’s a matter of taking a look around to see if there’s a bed that looks more or less unoccupied. You dump your kitbag and hope for the best. It’s pretty empty at the moment, actually. Not all that surprising, if you know what I mean.’
I knew what he meant by a picnic. We were both quiet as we thought about the recent Allied defeats in Crete and Greece as well as Cyrenaica.
‘Does Jessie James live there too?’
I had liked Captain James and wanted to know what was happening to him.
‘Jess? Yes, when he’s in town. But the Cherry Pickers are away now.’
Jessie’s famous cavalry regiment had charged with the Light Brigade at Balaclava. Now, with armoured vehicles instead of horses and cannon, they were in the line east of Tobruk.
I nodded.
Xan glanced at me as we crossed the English Bridge. We were heading towards Giza and the desert.
‘You’re at GHQ, aren’t you? Who do you work for?’
‘Lieutenant-Colonel Boyce.’
Xan’s smile broadened. ‘Small world, the army. May I drop in and see you in the office one of these days?’
‘I’ll make you a cup of HQ tea. It’s a treat not to be missed.’
His finger rested on my wrist for a second. ‘I’ll hold you to that.’
We were passing through the fields and scrubby mud-brick settlements and lines of palms that marked the western edge of the delta. There was almost no traffic out here, and ahead lay the flat pans and low wind-blown dunes of the desert’s margin. Even at the height of summer the desert nights are bitterly cold, and thinking about it made me draw my shawl closer round my shoulders.
‘Don’t worry,’ Xan said.
I had thought perhaps we were heading for the Mena House Hotel, a popular destination near the Pyramids, but then the car turned in an unfamiliar direction down a narrow unmade track. There were no lights here at all and we drove with only the headlights slicing through the soft darkness. I gave up trying to work out what our destination might be and sat back instead, watching Xan’s dark head outlined against the darkness outside and letting the currents of happiness wash through me.
After a while Xan leaned forward and murmured something in Arabic to Hassan. I was surprised that he knew the language, and yet not surprised.
‘We’re nearly there.’
Directly ahead of us I could make out the smoky glow of a fire, and the black silhouettes of a handful of palm trees. There were some tents and a few people moving between us and the fire. Camels were tethered in a line. We were coming to a tiny oasis.
Hassan brought the car to a halt. Xan and I stepped out where the shingle-and-sand camel track petered out in a sea of fine, soft ripples.
‘Welcome,’ Hassan said to me. ‘Mahubbah. These are my people.’
A circle of men sat close to the fire on upturned oil drums. Through the smoke I could smell the rich scent of food and realised that I was hungrier than I had ever been on arriving at Fleurent’s. One of the men stood up and came towards us. He was old and had a white beard. He was wrapped in a coarse woven blanket.
‘Mahubbah,’
