I asked for a plate of fruit. We drank mint tea while we waited for our food and as soon as a basket of ‘aish baladi was placed in front of us Ruth tore off a chunk of the warm, coarse bread and chewed ravenously.
‘Sorry. I don’t get much time to eat during the day. Usually I like to get the bus straight home from work and have a meal. The person I live with cooks, or if I’m on my own I throw a few ingredients together.’ She made a self-deprecating face, and then laughed. ‘I’d like to be able to cook, but it’s not exactly one of my gifts.’
Sarah, Faria and I didn’t cook either. Mamdooh left covered dishes for us, or we might boil an egg or carve up a sandwich. But mostly we were taken out for dinner.
I felt the width of a divide between Ruth Macnamara and me, and I knew that she was just as aware of it. Ruth wouldn’t miss anything, I guessed.
‘Do you share with another nurse?’
‘A doctor.’
‘Where does he work?’
Ruth lifted an eyebrow. ‘She.’
Then she named one of the other military hospitals.
I was blushing crimson at my own assumption. ‘That was stupid,’ I said.
‘No, it wasn’t. How many female surgical anaesthetists do any of us know? But Daphne is one. She’s pretty good.’ Ruth was proud of her friend, I could tell that much.
‘I’d like to meet her.’
Ruth didn’t say anything to that. A hot pan full of eggs and chopped peppers arrived and she dug her fork into it. I ate slices of melon and mango and watched her eat. When rather more than half of Ruth’s plate was empty, she finally looked up again.
‘That’s better. So. Your fiancé is Albie Noake’s commanding officer, is that right?’
‘You don’t have to keep calling him my fiancé. Just say Xan.’
She laughed then. ‘OK. Xan.’
‘Yes, he is. And when he was called back to his … unit, this afternoon, I said I’d go on visiting Albie instead of him.’
‘That’s good. The men get medical attention, of course, the best we can provide, but they don’t get many of the other things that they need. Company, especially women’s company, and non-medical encouragement, and diversion, and anything, really, that’s outside hospital routine. Although the VADs and the other voluntary organisations do what they can. Albie’s lucky.’
I understood what she meant. The ward was so big, and so overcrowded with suffering, it would be hard to provide individual support or even as little as a few minutes’ unhurried talk for each of them. And they were all so far from their own families and friends.
‘What will happen to him?’
‘Short term, or longer?’
‘Both.’
‘Mine is an acute trauma ward. He’ll stay there until he is stable and his recovery is predictable. Then he’ll be moved to a longer-stay ward, where I should think they’ll start trying to repair his mouth and reconstruct his jaw. Or maybe that will be too complicated and he’ll be sent by ship back to England for the work to be done there.’
‘Will he be able to speak again?’
Ruth’s own lips twisted a little. ‘In a way. It will be a manner of speaking.’ He was perhaps twenty-eight years old.
‘Poor Albie.’
She went on eating. ‘At least he’s alive.’
Ruth was unsentimental and I could see how the work she did would absolutely require that, or else it would be unbearable. And as well as being distressing I could also guess how fascinating and even noble it must be, compared with what I did. I envied her.
‘Xan brought in another of his men who was badly injured at the same time. He died this morning, but I didn’t tell Albie. Maybe I should have done, though.’
The way that Ruth talked – everything about her, her matter-of-fact dry manner and her precise way of moving as well as speaking – was changing my perspectives. The truth was the truth. There was no point in trying to hide or to soften it, perhaps especially from men who had been so severely wounded. I suddenly thought that to do so might be to belittle them.
‘Yes, I think you should,’ Ruth agreed. Her glance flicked over me. ‘Would you like me to do it, as your Xan isn’t here? What was the man’s name?’
‘Private Ridley. No, thank you. I’ll tell Albie myself when I visit him tomorrow.’
The food was finished. Ruth and I sat facing each other across the rickety wooden table. ‘So I’ll see you then,’ she said.
‘Do you ever get a day off?’
‘Three full days and two halves out of fourteen. Subject to cancellation if we’re busy.’
If the hospital trains and ambulances brought extra cargoes of men from the front. Uncomfortably I thought of my long lunches spent lazing beside the swimming pool at the Gezira Club, and my games of tennis with Sarah, and all the cocktails I had drunk and rich dinners I had eaten since coming to Cairo.
‘I’d like to do some work in the hospital. Anything useful. I’ve got plenty of spare time.’
‘There are women who come in with library books and magazines for the men, and they read to them. One lady has been teaching the convalescents to sew and knit.’
Ruth must have seen my face because she added, ‘And there are the VADs, of course.’
The Voluntary Aid Detachment provided nursing auxiliaries. I knew two or three of them; they were mostly young women from backgrounds similar to mine, and they were nothing like Ruth. Again, she followed my thoughts.
‘I am a trained nurse’, she said, quite patiently.
‘Where did you train?’
‘Glasgow Royal Infirmary.’
‘And your friend Daphne?’ The doctor. The surgical anaesthetist. I imagined Ruth’s slightly older sister.
‘Yes, she studied at Glasgow University and did her medical training at the Infirmary.’
I took a piece of paper out of my handbag and scribbled my telephone number on it, then passed the slip across to Ruth. She took the pen out of my hand, folded my slip of paper and tore it very neatly along the fold line, then wrote her number in return.
‘Maybe if Daphne and I ever get the same day off, you could come and have something to eat with us,’ she said, without sounding convinced of either likelihood.
‘I’d love to,’ I said, my response sounding much too enthusiastic. But I was drawn to Ruth Macnamara. I hadn’t met anyone quite like her before.
‘I’d better go.’
I
