me, once she’s realised what a hopeless apology you are. Tell him that’s so, Iris, won’t you?’
I put my hands out and grasped his. He was hot and our palms glued together as I danced around him. ‘Wish us luck, Jessie.’
His smile faded into seriousness then. ‘I do. I wish you both all the happiness and all the good luck in the world.’ There was a tiny beat of silence as he kissed my cheek. ‘You’re a lucky man, Molyneux.’
‘D’you think I don’t know it?’
But I knew that I was the lucky one.
Later that afternoon Jessie took a photograph of us, using a camera airily borrowed from a man called Gordon Foxbridge who had been watching and taking pictures of the polo match. Major Foxbridge was a staff officer I saw from time to time in the rabbit-warren corridors of GHQ, and he was an enthusiastic amateur photographer. His sombre pictures of Arab tribesmen in the desert were later published as a book.
‘Gordon, old chap, I want to record a momentous day,’ Jessie insisted.
Major Foxbridge offered to take the photograph himself, but Jessie wanted to do it and so the Major obligingly handed over his Leica, and Xan and I stood at the edge of the Gezira Club polo ground where the baked earth had been scraped and scored by ponies’ hooves. With Xan’s arms wrapped round my waist I let my head fall back against his shoulder and laughed into the lens.
‘Watch the birdie!’ Jessie sang.
It was Gordon Foxbridge, though, who developed the picture in his own darkroom and then delivered it to my desk in a brown manila envelope marked ‘The engagement of Miss Iris Black and Captain Molyneux’ as if we were in the Tatler.
It showed the two of us exactly as we were but it also enlarged us. That day, Xan’s glamour obliterated his assumed anonymity and my dazed happiness lent me a beauty I didn’t really possess.
Wherever I have travelled since, through all the years, the photograph has come with me.
And this is the picture that Ruby asked me about.
What answer did I give? I can’t remember.
How can I find the words to tell her, my grandchild, all this history? I can’t even catch hold of it myself. If I try to stalk it, it floats away out of reach and leaves me with the featureless sand, the empty place on the shelf. So I have to be patient and let the memories and the dreams come, then try to distinguish them.
But I have never been a patient woman.
Ruby’s quaint offer touched me, and so did the way she set it out with assurances about her shells and beetles. I can imagine her as a smaller child, dark-browed and serious, walled up in a bedroom decorated by Lesley and poring over her collections. Lining up objects, probably in an attempt to fix an unwieldy universe.
She is an unusual creature. Her coming is an unlooked-for blessing.
* * *
That same evening we went back to the Scottish Military Hospital to see Corporal Noake once more. Jessie James wanted us all to go out to dinner, he wanted to set in train one of the long evenings of Cairo celebration, but Xan insisted that first he must go to see his men.
From the medical staff we learned that the news of the other soldier, Private Ridley, wasn’t good. As a result of his injuries a severe infection had set in and he was in a deeper coma, but Xan didn’t tell Noake about this. He just sat there on the edge of the bed, talking cheerfully about going to the pictures and drinking beer, then laughing about the desert and some place they had been to where the flies swarmed so thickly that they couldn’t put food in their mouths without swallowing dozens of them. Noake’s response was to grasp Xan’s wrist and give the ghost of a nod.
I saw Ruth Macnamara moving screens and bending over the inanimate men. She didn’t appear to hurry but everything she did looked quick and deft. I wanted to talk to her again so I left Xan to his monologue and followed her the length of the ward.
At the opposite end from the sluice room was a kind of loggia, open to the air on one long side. Two or three men sat in chairs and there were two beds parked against the wall. Ruth was bending over one of the beds, examining the occupant.
‘Hullo, Miss,’ a young man in one of the chairs called out. ‘Looking for me?’
It was a relief to hear a strong voice.
‘Not exactly. But now I’m here, is there anything I can do for you?’
The man grinned. ‘How about a dance?’
I was going to say something about finding a gramophone or maybe he could sing, but then my eyes travelled downwards and I saw that the folds of blanket below the humps of his knees were flat and empty.
The young soldier added softly, ‘Well, perhaps not. Another time, eh?’
Ruth straightened up. ‘Come on, Doug. They’ll fix you up with some falsies and you’ll be dancing like Fred Astaire. Hello again, Iris.’
‘She’s right,’ I said to Doug.
‘Medical, are you?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I admitted. I wished I were. I wished I could do something – anything – for these maimed men and for the prone, silent ones who lay in their rows in the ward. I wished I could do anything useful at all, instead of just typing Roddy Boy’s memoranda and placing two custard cream biscuits in his china saucer at precisely eleven every morning.
‘Ah. Well, you’re pretty enough just to stand there and be admired.’
Ruth swung round. ‘That’s enough of that. Iris, can you give me a hand here? Round the other side of the bed.’
I stood opposite her, with the wounded man’s body between us.
‘He needs turning,’ she said. The man’s eyes fixed on her face, then on mine. His chest was heavily bandaged, and curled edges of antiseptic yellow dressing protruded. I concentrated on not imagining the shattered muscle and bone within.
‘Sorry about this,’ he gasped.
‘It’s all right,’ Ruth said briskly and I wasn’t sure whether she was talking to the soldier or me. We slid our forearms under the man’s body and grasped each other’s wrists.
‘Now, one two three, lift.’
He was hot, and quite light. Ruth and I shuffled our arms and as we hoisted him I saw the shadow trapped in the vulnerable hollow beside the crest of his pelvic bone. Gently, we let him down again in a slightly different position.
‘Better. Thanks,’ he said.
‘Is your assistant coming again tomorrow, Nurse Mac?’ one of Doug’s companions called out.
‘I’ll try to,’ I said.
Ruth raised an eyebrow. ‘Volunteering, are you?’ She was moving on and I was sharply aware that she had a lot to do. She made me feel superfluous and rather clumsy.
‘I’ve got a job already.’
