where his ribs fused, feeling the slow rise and fall of his breath.
I didn’t go to work. I called Roddy Boy and told him I had Gyppy tummy, and bore the sarcastic slice in his voice when he told me that he hoped I would feel very much better before too long, and that he also hoped Captain Molyneux was taking good care of me.
In the afternoon, after we had eaten some recuperative pastries and drunk coffee in the shady garden at Groppi’s, Xan took me to a jeweller’s in the old quarter to buy a ring.
‘There is a rather pompous family diamond, actually, that belongs to my mother. I’m the only son so she’ll want you to wear it. D’you think you can bear that? But I want you to have something in the meantime. What would you like?’
We wandered hand in hand past the tiny doorways of the gem merchants. Copts and Jews called out to us, trying to urge us inside their shops. We reached an angle of a cobbled street where the way was too narrow for us to walk abreast, and Xan glanced up at a sign.
‘This is the place.’
‘I don’t need a ring, Xan. I’ve got you.’
‘It’s only a symbol, darling. But I want you to wear it.’
The merchant unlocked the safe and brought out his velvet trays for us and we let the raw stones trickle in cold droplets through our fingers. In the end, under duress, I chose a smoky purple amethyst and ordered a plain claw setting for it. Xan led me out of the shop again and tucked my hand under his arm.
‘There. Now, what would you like to do?’
‘Where is Hassan?’
‘At home with his family, I should think. Why?’
We hadn’t spoken of it but we both suspected that this might be our last day and night together before Xan was called away again. In our Garden City apartment Mamdooh would be performing some domestic routine with polishing cloths or caustic soda and at Xan’s there would be hung-over officers and the same debris of hard living that we had escaped three hours ago. We could have tried to find a hotel room, but with the endless flux of visitors and diplomats and officers washing through Cairo these were hard to come by. And I thought how perfect it would be to go out to the Pyramids again, and watch the sun setting behind Hassan’s hidden oasis.
As soon as I told Xan he smiled at me.
‘You have only to command. But I’ll have to go and beg for a car.’
We walked back towards GHQ through baked afternoon streets. We passed a crowd of Australian soldiers with huge thighs and meaty fists, sweating under full packs, and a smaller band of British squaddies who looked undersized and pale in comparison with their Antipodean counterparts. They were all recently arrived because they gazed in bewilderment at the tide of refuse and dung in the gutters, and the unreadable street signs, and the old men in rags sleeping in the shade of peeling walls. The city was full of men in transit, on their way to camps in advance of the big battle. I only knew that it was coming, I had no idea where or when. Xan almost certainly knew much more.
We came to a tall, anonymous house in a neglected street that ran westwards towards el Rhoda. I was just reaching the conclusion that this must be a headquarters of some kind for Tellforce when a figure detached itself from the shadow of the broken buildings opposite and ran towards Xan. A brown hand caught Xan’s khaki shirtsleeve and some quick words of Arabic followed. It was Hassan.
Xan gave me a glance and then moved a little to one side, listening to what Hassan had to tell him. I waited, feeling the sun burning the top of my head, knowing that whatever was to come would not be good news. Hassan stepped back again, briefly inclining his head towards me.
I could already tell from Xan’s face what was coming.
‘I have to go,’ he said.
‘When?’
‘Now. I’ve got to be in place beside the road out of el Agheila with my patrol, tonight.’
By my half-informed reckoning this was about four hundred miles west behind the enemy front line, which was then on the Libyan border.
‘Tonight? How? Isn’t it … a long way?’
‘Wainwright’s here with the WACO.’
Tellforce had a small two-seater aircraft, usually piloted by the Tellforce commander himself, Lieutenant-Colonel Gus Wainwright.
‘He’s waiting at the airfield.’ Xan took my face between his hands. Hassan had turned away and stood like a stone statue, guarding the steps and the dingy house and – I saw – Xan himself. I also saw that a glitter of excited anticipation had kindled behind Xan’s eyes. Now it was here he was ready to go. He wanted to go, he was already rushing towards the adventure, whatever was waiting for him. I felt cold, even with the afternoon’s humid weight pressing against the nape of my neck. But somehow I smiled, my mouth curling against his as he kissed me.
‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured.
Against all the impulses, which were to cling to him like an importunate child and beg him to stay, I pressed the flat of my hands against his shirt. Somehow, as the kiss ended I stepped out of his arms and put a tiny distance between us. Hassan edged closer by the same amount. First and most importantly it was the two of them now, and Xan’s Yeomanry patrol, and the desert; not Xan and me. I would have plenty of time in the coming weeks to get used to that order of priority, before he came back to Cairo again.
‘Come back when you can,’ I whispered. ‘Go on, go now.’
Hassan was already moving towards the Tellforce staff car that I saw parked under the shade of a tree. Xan turned away, then swung back and roughly pulled me into his arms again, and there was the raw bite of his mouth against mine and a blur of his black hair, and the buttons of his shirt gouged into my skin.
‘I love you,’ he said.
‘I know.’ The smile that I had forced into existence was real now, breaking out of me like a flower from a bud. ‘And I love you. I’ll be here. Just go.’
Hassan reached the car and slid into the driver’s seat. Xan sprinted after him, then slowed again and shouted back over his shoulder, ‘Will you go and visit Noake for me?’
I had already decided that I must do this. ‘Of course I will.’
He wrenched open the passenger door and sketched a salute. With one hand I shaded my eyes against the sun, and I touched the fingers of the other to my lips and blew him a kiss. The skidding car tyres raised little puffs of dust that hung in the air like a whitish mist for long seconds after the car itself had vanished.
When I reached the hospital I went first to ask after Private Ridley. I was directed to a voluntary aid supervisor in an unventilated ground-floor office that reminded me of my own slice of working corridor. The woman was French but she explained in neutral English that the soldier had died early that morning without regaining consciousness.
‘I’m sorry. Was he a relative? Or a friend, perhaps?’ She was looking at me curiously.
‘Neither. A friend of mine is, was, his commanding officer.’
‘I see.’ She gathered together several sheets of paper
