arms. Their loss running parallel with our happiness, somewhere in England there was a mother, a family waiting, perhaps a fiancée or a wife who didn’t yet know that he was dead. I frowned, trying to line up these separate unwieldy facts like the supervisor’s sheets of paper, and failing. Xan and I were alive, today, with blood thrilling in our veins. Another man was dead, and others had lost half a face, two strong legs. These particular known individuals suddenly seemed to stand at the head of an immense army.
As they marched in my head the living were outnumbered and overpowered by the slaughtered and the maimed, and the hollow skulls and shattered limbs snuffed out hope and happiness: not just Xan’s and mine, perhaps, and that of Private Ridley’s family and Ruth Macnamara’s patient who couldn’t dance any more, but all the world’s. Zazie’s and Shepheard’s and the Gezira Club were dark, and crowded to the doors with dead men.
I sat in silence, shivering a little.
‘I’m sorry,’ the Frenchwoman said again. ‘Can I help you with any other thing, maybe?’ She had work to do, perhaps the same news to convey about dozens more men.
I managed to say, ‘No. Thank you.’
I left the office and found my way up to the ward.
Noake was lying propped against his pillows, the lower half of his face masked with fresh dressings, but when he saw me he lifted his hand in a little flourish of greeting. I sat down in Xan’s place, intending to talk cheerfully to him in the same way that Xan had done. I wouldn’t tell him about Ridley’s death, not yet.
‘Hello, there. How do you feel? You’ve only got me tonight, Mr Noake, I’m afraid. Captain Molyneux’s been whisked back to the desert, by air. Colonel Wainwright flew in today to get him, what d’you think of that?’
I could see what he thought of it. Beneath the bruised and puffy lids his eyes glimmered with interest and amusement, but there was also the ghost of a cheeky wink that acknowledged that officers and commanders flew. Everyone in Tellforce sweated in trucks across the endless dunes, digging out embedded vehicles and dragging the heavy steel channels that were laid under the wheels to give them purchase, but other ranks didn’t get many variations to this routine. But I thought that it must also have been a welcome sight for patrols buried deep in the desert when the little single-engined plane came humming out of the sky and touched down on an impromptu runway levelled in the sand.
‘I don’t know when he’ll be back,’ I blurted out.
To my surprise, Noake’s hand crawled across the sheet, found mine and grasped it tightly. I looked down at our linked fingers, and the tubes running into his arm through which they must be feeding him.
Noake had seen Xan and me together. He couldn’t speak, his shattered mouth couldn’t form the words, but he was letting me know that he sympathised with the lucky anguish that I suffered on parting from my lover.
For a moment, I had to keep my head bent.
Corporal Noake’s hand was large and heavy. The nails were torn and blackened, and there were deep fissures round the nail margins and across the knuckles. Xan had told me that he was a mechanic, gifted at coaxing new leases of life out of their battered trucks.
‘Back for Christmas, that’s what he said,’ I murmured.
I didn’t know how much I was supposed to know, or how much Noake should know that I knew. But he wasn’t going to be able to tell anyone and I longed to talk about Xan.
‘I’ve no idea what the real chances of that are. I don’t suppose anyone does, do you? But there’s a big push coming, everyone’s talking about it, aren’t they? I’m concerned for him, because I know a bit about what Tellforce does. But Xan’s got to do his job like everyone else, like you did, Mr Noake.’
And like Private Ridley did. I sat up straighter and looked into the injured man’s eyes, remembering the involuntary kindling of excitement I had seen in Xan. ‘It must be hard for you, to miss what’s going to happen.’
Noake nodded, his fingers still tight over mine.
‘We’ll have to keep each other company,’ I said. ‘And you will have to get better quickly.’
A starched apron came into view on the other side of the bed. Ruth was standing there with an armful of fresh bedding.
‘Here you are again. Can’t stay away from us, Albie, can she?’
I was glad to know his first name. ‘Albie? May I call you that, too? I’m Iris, d’you remember?’
He blinked his agreement.
Ruth asked me, ‘Where’s your friend tonight? Fiancé, I mean.’
‘I was just telling Albie. Gone. Called back to the desert in a hurry.’
‘Oh. Oh, look, d’you want to have a cup of coffee or something after I finish work? I’m off shift in half an hour.’
‘Yes, let’s do that.’
She hurried away and I went on talking to Albie Noake. I had no idea what he wanted to hear but I told him about Faria and Sarah and the apartment in Garden City, and about Mamdooh and his son who followed him to work and sat on a stool in the corner of Mamdooh’s cubbyhole near the front door, sucking on the bon-bons that Faria insisted on feeding him. I talked about Zazie’s and Elvira Mursi and Mrs Kimmig-Gertsch’s house, and Roddy Boy and my segment of corridor at GHQ, and what I remembered of Cairo in the days long before the war when my father was at the embassy. I held on to Albie’s hand, smoothing it between my own. Once or twice his eyelids closed and I thought he had fallen asleep, but as soon as my murmuring stopped they snapped open again.
‘She can talk enough for both of you, can’t she?’ Ruth demanded when she came back.
I disengaged my hand gently from Albie’s and stood up.
‘Shall I come back another day?’ I asked him. As well as a nod there was a sound in his throat, part gargle and part rising groan. It was meant as a yes.
‘You can always tell me to go away.’ I smiled. ‘Good night, Albie.’
I followed Ruth out of the ward and down some stone steps. Outside a door marked ‘Nursing Staff’ she said briskly, ‘Wait here.’
Three or four minutes later she re-emerged and I blinked at her. The nurse’s starched cap had always hidden her hair, and now I saw for the first time that it was a rich, dark red. It turned her pale skin translucent and took the slightly pinched severity out of her face. Ruth looked as if she was not much more than a year or so older than me. She had taken off her apron and wore a thin coat on over her uniform dress. Without the starched outer layer she didn’t rustle or crackle when she walked. We nodded at each other, with a touch of wariness now that we were on neutral ground.
When I was driving with Xan I had noticed a small café on a street corner, within walking distance but far enough away not to be crowded with people from the hospital. I suggested that we might go there and Ruth nodded briefly.
‘Anywhere we can get something to eat. I’m pretty hungry.’
The café had split and cracked clay tiles for a floor, and a tall mirror suspended at an angle above the counter that reflected the tops
