GHQ. Very humble.’
‘Oh, well. You must get asked out a lot, all those officers. Look, your friend’s coming.’
Xan was walking towards us along the ward.
‘Fiancé.’ The word was out before I considered it, with all the pride and satisfaction that I should have kept to myself.
Ruth’s glance flicked over me. She was amused. ‘Really? Congratulations. When’s the wedding?’
‘Oh, we haven’t fixed that yet. We … we only decided today. Let me introduce you. This is Captain Xan Molyneux. Xan, Ruth Macnamara.’
They shook hands as a rigid-looking senior nurse in a dark-blue uniform appeared in a doorway.
‘Oh God, here’s the old battleaxe. Look, where do you live?’
I told her and Ruth smiled briefly.
‘What about you?’
‘Out on the Heliopolis road. It’s cheap. I’ve got to get a move on now. Leave me your phone number?’
‘I’ll come in again. Won’t we, Xan?’
We. Would I ever get used to the luxury of using one little word?
‘Good. ’Bye, then.’ Ruth fled away down the ward.
‘You’ve made a friend,’ Xan said.
‘I hope so.’ I wanted to know Ruth Macnamara better. And although the hospital was a sad and fearful place it drew me back. It was full of people who were doing what they could, certain in the knowledge that what they did made a difference.
We did go out to celebrate our engagement. We started with cocktails at Shepheard’s and then dinner on a boat moored on the Nile, where Jessie proposed a toast and a circle of faces glimmered at us over the rims of champagne glasses. Faria was there, with the poet who was looking more mournful and whose clothes were even more crumpled and dusted in cigarette ash than usual. Sarah was still not back from her trip, but there were some of the Cherry Pickers and Xan’s friend the mysterious Major David, and Betty Hopwood in a new dress of some iridescent greeny-black material that Faria whispered made her look like a giant beetle.
‘How heavenly for you both,’ Betty shrieked. ‘When’s the wedding?’
Everything did happen very quickly in Cairo. There was no reason to put anything off even until tomorrow or indeed to deny ourselves any of life’s pleasures, because there was always the likelihood that the war would intervene, but I murmured that we hadn’t decided yet. I wanted to tell my mother, and Xan’s parents would need to hear the news. It was odd to think that there were all the relatives on both sides, and the lives we had lived in other places and our separate histories, as well as just Xan and me and the immediate chaotic present and the way we had fallen in love. But the war and Egypt made a separate realm, and for the time being the world outside was a shadowy place.
There was another reason too why Xan and I had not talked about a wedding day. He was going back to the desert and we both knew it would be very soon. Perhaps in only a few hours’ time.
‘I’ll be in Cairo again by Christmas, darling, at the latest.’
‘Promise?’
‘Cross my heart. We’re going to drive Rommel all the way out of Africa, I know we are. And after that you and I can make our plans.’ He was optimistic for my sake and I tried to believe him.
Betty leaned across now and tapped my arm.
‘Don’t leave it too long.’ She fluffed up her cottonball hair and winked at me. She had already told me the story of one of her MTC colleagues who carried a crumpled white satin wedding dress at the bottom of her kitbag, so as to be ready as soon as a husband came into sight.
‘James? Where’s that bloody Jessie?’ one of the Cherry Pickers shouted. ‘Some of us haven’t found ourselves a girl yet. Where are we going now?’
To begin with Jessie obligingly orchestrated the evening, but as the hours went by our party gathered momentum until it rolled under its own impetus through the Cairo nightspots. By two in the morning we were at Zazie’s again. Xan and I danced and I felt the heat of him through my satin dress, but drink and exhilaration distorted the normal sequence of minutes and hours, and we both convinced ourselves that the night was endless. There was time to laugh with our friends and time to dance, and there would still be time and time for one another. Leaving for the desert was no more than a little dark unwinking eye at the vanishing point of a long avenue of happiness.
Elvira Mursi came on and blew us both a kiss at the end of her spot.
Sandy Allardyce materialised. He held my hand, rather damply, and sat close to me on one of the little gold seats in a velvet alcove. His round red face was very serious and I realised only belatedly that he was making a confession of love.
‘… a good man. Reckless, if you like, but a fine field officer. Yes. Choice. Of course. ‘S what every woman has as her privilege. But, you know, wish it could have been different. Iris. Just wanted to tell you, you know?’
I shook my head, confusion and sympathy and a shaming desire to laugh mounting in my throat.
‘Sandy. I didn’t know, honestly. Had no idea. I never … let you believe anything I shouldn’t have done, did I?’
‘No. Never a single thing. Perfect lady, always.’
I couldn’t speak now. It was the idea of myself as a perfect lady. Sandy took my hand as if it were the Koh-i-noor diamond and pressed his mouth to the knuckles.
‘Never a word. Ssssh. Won’t speak of it again. Rest of my life. Promise you, on my honour.’
From her front-row table Mrs Kimmig-Gertsch glowered at us.
The night did end, at last, with Xan and me in a taxi going back to his flat. The sun was up and the street sweepers were working, and donkey carts loaded with vegetables plodded to the markets. I was beyond being drunk and I wasn’t tired, and the light had a hard, white, absolute brightness to it that suggested that this day was a crystallisation of everything that had gone before. I already knew that it was one of the days I would remember all my life.
Try to remember. Holding it, cupping my hands to mould the shape of it.
There was a cavalry officer in boots complete with spurs asleep on the dingy sofa.
The kitchen was a swamp of bottles and spilled drink.
The door to one of the bathrooms was jammed. I squeezed into the other, regarded my face for an instant in the clouded mirror, then hastily brushed my teeth with Xan’s toothbrush. He was already unfastening the satin-covered buttons and loops down the back of my dress.
It is the memory of making love on that airless Cairo morning, when we had drunk and danced ourselves sober again, that I hold most close. We were so sweet and shameless, and so powerful in our innocence.
Even now, when I am eighty-two and losing my mind, the recollection of it can catch me unawares and turn my limbs to water.
Xan
