from one of the waiters, then sat back in our wicker chairs without immediate expectation. The service at Shepheard’s was even slower than the bureaucratic processes at GHQ.
From two tables away Martin Frobisher lifted his hand to us in an ironic greeting. Xan gave him a nod and I studied Xan’s face from behind the shield of my sunglasses. He had shaved this morning, but he had missed several patches and the stubble glinted in the sun. I imagined him in the dawn light, somewhere between here and the wire, with a tin bowl of warm water and a tiny mirror balanced on the bonnet of a truck. The faint white rims of old sweat stains marked his khaki shirt and dust caked in the eyelets of his boots. When he took off his socks and underclothes, a miniature sand shower would patter round his feet. I had seen that happen.
It felt strange to be sitting on the veranda at Shepheard’s with him, patiently waiting for our beer, when only an hour ago I had no way of knowing even if he was alive or dead.
And if it was strange for me, I reflected, how much more disorientating must it be for him?
I said quietly, ‘Am I allowed to ask where you have been?’
He jumped, as if his thoughts had been a long way off. He did smile at me, then rubbed his jaw with one hand. ‘On a patrol.’
‘Was it bad?’
‘I have had better experiences.’ He spoke lightly but the taut muscles round his mouth revealed his distress.
Surprisingly, the waiter was back with us. He put the beers down and Xan’s had hardly touched the table before he swept it up and finished it in two long gulps. The desert left your mouth parched and your skin so leached of moisture that it felt as stiff as paper. And yet here was Xan now, surrounded by chic French and Egyptian women, and the pink-faced, well-fed officers from GHQ who directed the background to war operations from behind their desks.
I couldn’t know what he had seen in the course of the last seventeen days but the likely images gnawed at me, jarring with the cosmopolitan scenes on the veranda.
‘Sorry,’ Xan said after a moment. ‘I promise I’ll liven up once I’ve had something to eat.’
I leaned forward and touched his hand. ‘It’s all right.’
He did revive when he had eaten his sandwich and most of mine. He sat back again in his chair and grinned at me. ‘Now all I need is a bath and some sleep, and you.’
‘All three shall be yours. Xan, it wasn’t a social call you were paying on Roddy Boy this morning, was it?’
In the weeks that I had known him I had tried not to press Xan with too many questions. Up until now we had done our best to live in the present, and the present was always parties and joking and a blind determination to have fun. But today I found it very hard to accept that I should know so little. I also knew that he wasn’t volunteering any more information because he didn’t want to make me afraid for him.
He looked around at the nearest tables before answering. Everyone was talking and gesticulating or trying to catch the attention of the waiters. No one was taking any notice of us.
‘No, it wasn’t.’ And then, after a pause, ‘How much do you actually know about what he does?’
In theory, I was only supposed to handle routine typing, filing and administration. All confidential signals and memos were dealt with by army personnel, and collected and delivered by me in sealed folders marked Secret. But Roddy had long ago decided that I was trustworthy and he also liked to impress me by letting drop how key his role was. Quite often, he asked me to collect or deliver signals in clear to the cipher clerks because the junior staff officer whose job it should have been was inclined to be too busy for this menial task.
I had lately started reading everything that passed through my hands, greedy for the smallest crumb of information, good or bad, that might have anything to do with Xan. So I now knew the names and quite often the general whereabouts of most of the commando forces who supplied us with intelligence from deep behind enemy lines. I was almost certain that he was with one of these highly secret groups, criss-crossing the remote desert in order to pick up information on enemy troop and supply movements.
‘A fair amount,’ I said cautiously.
‘And so you have heard of Tellforce.’
The sun struck splinters of light off Xan’s empty glass and cast hard shadows over the white field of the tablecloth.
A child with sores all over his scalp had been leaning against the steps and grasping imploringly at the legs that went up and down in front of his eyes, but now one of the waiters went over and pushed him roughly aside. A thick wash of panic and dismay and revulsion rose in my throat, against Egypt and against the war.
‘Iris?’
‘Yes. Yes, I have heard of Tellforce.’
Another shadow fell across the table. We both looked up and there was Jessie James.
The two men exchanged a glance that excluded me.
‘I didn’t know you were back,’ Jessie murmured.
‘I got in a couple of hours ago.’
Then Xan was on his feet and they exchanged a brief handshake. Jessie hauled over a chair and sat down beside me, telling me that I shouldn’t hide myself away just because Xan was always off fooling around in the desert.
The sombre mood that had descended on Xan and me lifted again. Xan and Jessie drank more beer and I ordered a tiny thimbleful of thick, sweet coffee. Jessie was full of the latest gossip and funny stories about people we knew. One of his fellow Cherry Pickers had won a mule in a poker game with a group of Egyptian traders. He had ridden the mule home from the card game and installed it in the garden of his rented house, and now insisted that the mule thought it was a human being and therefore he had to humour it. He had bought it a straw hat with a hatband in the regimental colours, and he took the animal and its hat with him to polo games and race meetings at the Gezira Club. Whenever he smoked one of his Sobranie cigarettes he lit another for the mule and blew the smoke up the animal’s nostrils.
‘No,’ I protested.
Xan laughed and Jessie blinked at me. ‘D’you think he should make the mule smoke Woodbines? The two of them are very happy together. I’d call it a marriage made in heaven.’
I finished my coffee and looked at my watch. Roddy might have gone off for one of his prolonged lunches, but he might equally be sitting at his desk and waiting for me to reappear.
‘I’d better go,’ I said reluctantly.
Xan lightly touched my wrist. ‘What time will you be free?’
‘About eight.’
The two men stood up and Jessie drew back my chair. I kissed them both on the cheek and left them.
I walked slowly back to GHQ through the stale mid-afternoon heat. Dogs lay beneath carpets of flies in the bands of slate-grey shade at the foot of high walls, and beggars slept with their galabiyehs tucked between their scrawny legs. I was remembering what I knew about Tellforce.
Later that day, after we had made love, Xan and I lay in my bed. My head rested on his chest and I listened to
