Into Suez (29 page)

‘Oh, never mind, sorry. You’re not up to singing. Just a whim.’ She got up and came to him. ‘We used to listen to you singing. It was quite a joke between us. I think you must have been in your bath. Whoever heard you first would call the other:
loofah concert!
We’d stand by the open window and listen. It choked Roy up.’

Joe stood to his full height, took a deep breath and plunged into
Bryn Calfaria
. He followed it with
Iesu Mawr
. She asked if he would sing
Myfanwy
. Of course he would but it was not a sacred song, he said. Wasn’t it a love-song? Yes, he said. Then it was a sacred song, Irene replied; she thought so anyway. Love between man and wife was sacred. It was a sacrament.

By the time he was singing
Myfanwy
, Nia had crept over and taken Joe’s hand. Pitying tenderness for Irene welled up in him. He put his arm around her shoulder and did not take it away. They all three stood in the ringing silence that followed the music, their bodies casting a slant, single shadow.

He would not reproach her. She was his wife. She was Ailsa. Decent through and through. Of course she was. That would never alter. He had begun to feel and know this after he’d sung to Chalkie in Fayid Cemetery.

Myfanwy
was a sacred song. If it wasn’t, what was?

Who had laid Ailsa down on that carpet to love her? Her husband. Who had she shown herself to? Joe. Who had sworn to be faithful to her, to have faith in her? Joe. He remembered how shy they’d been when first together. She had hardly seemed to enjoy the sexual act at all. He’d felt her body cringe when he entered it. They had learned together.

She had needs. Yes, Joe thought, a decent woman can have needs. When they got home to England, he’d buy a piano. Mam would store it for them when they were posted abroad. And the girlie could learn to play. She’d have a teacher. Nia would grow up with advantages. It was Egypt that had put things out of joint between himself and Ailsa. Once they were home, there would be balance and harmony. He would send Ailsa and Nia home as soon as possible. The Jacobs pair had done the damage. Them and Egypt. Not safe to keep his family here where mounting tensions made it clear that there would be an armed uprising.

Because after all, he thought, sitting forward with his forearms on his knees, pinching the stub of a cigarette between finger and thumb, Ailsa was not Irene. This seemed to explain everything. Ailsa had her passions and they were a bit less commonplace than recipes for toad in the hole, which Irene had animatedly proclaimed she’d be cooking for supper, if he felt he could fancy it. Ailsa would have turned up her nose at such a vulgar dish. In that respect Ailsa was not unlikeMam, who took his wife’s part, because she saw and valued that hint of the remarkable in Ailsa.
Diamond in a coal tip
, she’d called her. But Ailsa, unlike Mam, he thought, stubbing out the fag, was a quiet one.
Still waters. She kept her thoughts and feelings to herself. She said,
I wish I were more spontaneous, darling, but believe me, it is all in there
, covering her left breast with her hand.

Upstairs, he knelt by their bed and pulled out the box where she kept the Jacobs woman’s gifts. Here it was, cradled in tissue paper like a pair of new shoes, though it smelt of age and decay. Sitting on the bed, he opened the book at the frontispiece where a librarian had stamped, ‘Property of HM Navy. SS
Empire Glory’
. Light-fingered Mrs Jacobs had lifted it from the troopship. He whistled through his teeth. It wasn’t something he did or condoned. Officers did what the hell they felt like, riding roughshod over the decencies. Even a pencil or roll of tape from the office Joe would scrupulously return. That was how he had been brought up.

The book was in Gothic script and looked to his eye vaguely Nazi. Joe sat for a while turning the pages.

On the dressing table lay another book, open with a scribbled sheet of paper and a pencil lying on top of it. Dante, he read,
The Inferno
. Italian or Latin, with a facing translation. He read a few lines in English. Beautiful they were. The scribbles on the sheet of paper were lists of words with ticks or question marks beside them. You sat in a person’s private space and you read the clues to her life.

And what did all this say about Ailsa?
Her hunger. To know more.

He felt now as if he were defending his wife against a voice that spoke with his dad’s snarling suspicion of educated folk. Of those who wished to make something of themselves. He understood why Dad sneered in that way. But this was not Joe’s way. He replaced the Nazi book in its box and slid it under the bed.

He rummaged in the drawer with Ailsa’s nighties. Her green diary seemed to be missing. That proved nothing. Mooching into Nia’s room, he woke her from her nap. But he let Irene sleep on. She was quite honestly rather hard work.

Together Nia and Joe cleared away the clutter of toys. Her methodical fingers lined up her bricks in their box. She’d grown, Joe thought, since they’d come out here. Tall and thin she was for her age, like a long-legged foal. Chattering away to her golliwog and teddy. Not too long till she’d be off to school, and presumably some day there’d be a brother or sister for her to play with, making her less of an odd little bod. Perhaps that was what Ailsa really needed, to stabilise and fulfil her.

He began to sort a wicker basket full of screwed up papers, blue papers that had once contained the salt in a bag of crisps, hair slides and whatnot, which magpie Nia insisted were important treasures. A thimble of Ailsa’s, a teaspoon smuggled from the cutlery drawer.

A rubber johnny in an unopened packet.

‘What the hell’s this, Nia?’

‘I don’t know. What is it?’

‘Where did you get it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well bloody well think about it!’ he barked. Had she picked it up in the street? It could not be his because it was not the sort he used.

‘No need to shout, you Welshman,’ she reproved him, clapping her hands over her ears.

‘I
will
shout, unless I get an answer. Great Scott, you can’t go playing with things like this.’

‘Why, what is it? Is it electric?’

‘No, it’s not elecric. Where did you get it though, girlie? I do need to know.’

‘I got it off of Mona,’ she told him, darting him a guilty look, which said she knew something naughty, which she ought to keep to herself.

‘From
, not
off of
, Nia. Only common people say
off of.’

‘Yes, but I didn’t steal it or nothing.’

‘You found it?’

She nodded.

‘Where? I’m not cross, don’t worry.’

‘On
Habibi’
s
side of the bed.’

His heart was hammering. It all came out. His wife and daughter had stayed the night – how many nights? – in the Jacobs’ house at Masurah.

‘Which bed was that then?’

‘The big bed. I had a little baby bed through the wall.’

‘Did anyone tell you not to tell me?’

‘No, they didn’t.’

‘Who didn’t?’

‘Not anyone didn’t.’

There were lots of bedrooms, Nia confided, in Mona’s house. Not
poky
like here.

I will kill him,
Joe thought.

Nia yawned. She squirmed and said she had to do a wee-wee. Then she began to grizzle and babyishly to repeat over and over that she wanted a strawberry and vanilla ice cream.

Joe put the foreign johnny in his pocket, where his fingers could take avid note of it.

How big was the bastard’s cock? She liked kissing cock. Oh aye, he knew. He had been amazed to discover the things she liked doing. He knew her thoroughly. He
knew what grossness she was capable of. She had shown him.

A fire of fear consumed him. The smooth, hairless body of his lean, slim, public school rival knelt above Ailsa, fitting the johnny to his cock with one practised hand. And Ailsa waiting in silence, lying in her beauty for the taking. Ailsa who pretended to love Joe’s squat, hairy body that had laboured in the steel mill, which was all he was fit for.

‘I’m off down the mess,’ he called to Irene.

‘Right-oh, dear. When will you be back?’

‘Late. Don’t wait up.’

‘What about – ? Never mind.’

‘What about what?’

‘I was going to say, the toad in the hole.’

They were out in the front. Joe had the tarpaulin off the Tiger and was revving it up.

‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to miss out on the toad in the hole.’

‘Joe. Dear. Please take care on the motor bike. Please.’

‘Don’t worry, Irene.’

She came and placed both hands on the handlebars.

‘I’m bound to worry. I can see how upset you are.’

He denied it. He was not upset. As the Tiger took off, Joe let rip but his heart was ice. The roaring speed, the wind whipping past his temples and the belly of the beast throbbing between his legs killed the hurt stone dead.

But he could hardly go to the mess, he realised, slowing. If anyone in authority saw how well he’d recovered, it would be straight back to the fucking desert with a black mark against his name. Into Ish, then. Get plastered in the Hollywood Bar. As Joe reached the outskirts of Wogtown,
he came upon a football match in the middle of the road, and swerved to one side, where he paused. The blokes were playing football with melons, the produce of an elderly Gyppo in a
gallabiyya
, who stood by his handcart, wringing his hands and pleading in gibberish. The fellaheen’s whole crop had been dumped in the road. The blokes were rowdy and pretty squiffy by the looks of things. One lumbering squaddie had a whistle and was pretending to referee. Another was commentating.

When the melon in play had burst, a winger would grab another from the pile, the old Gyppo meanwhile weeping, tears in full flow.

‘
And
it’s McConnachie now, passes to Smith who dribbles the ball – but
oh
! he’s lost it to Jack Black, who –
oh
! yes! he
scores
! – Jack Black scores up a date palm!’

The poor old Gyppo had had it coming. But Joe could not look into his face; he looked at his robe, at halfmast, for he was six foot tall if he was an inch, and his white skirt rode up his skinny legs like a surplice without a cassock. They’d calm down in a minute.

But now the footballers were playing with four or five melons all at once. They were getting bored, he saw, but were unwilling to give up until the game had finished according to the rules. Joe had seen troops kicking over market stalls and shooting holes in a rowing boat as it crossed the canal. Fledgling officers liked to play a game of whipping the tarbushes off natives’ heads as they sped by in their cars. Kickabouts happened only when the peasant resisted the legitimate desire of thirsty lads for a fruit or two from a stall or when the bastards had cocked a snook at the Empire.

Now the squaddies were applauding their goals. The
game was all but over. Several melons were left intact on the road and the old man, aided by a half-naked small boy, crept forward to pick these up. One had rolled near to the Tiger, perfectly positioned for Joe’s tyre. He could hear it now:
splat
! Tempted, he revved the engine. His blood was up; it seemed to storm through his heart. This fucking hellhole. The bastards that widowed Irene. You looked into their melting eyes and saw betrayal.

The boy ran directly into the path of the bike. The look he gave Joe was ghastly with desolation. Too late, Joe switched off the ignition and started to dismount, meaning to pick up the melon himself and pass it to the child. But the boy already embraced the damaged globe in his arms and was off on his bare feet, to put it in the nearly empty barrow.

The noise of the larking blokes drew off. Joe rested the Tiger on its prop and went to help pick up the last fruits, damaged but perhaps still worth something to the Gyppo they’d beggared. The old man looked at him and nodded. His face registered no expression.

Joe took off for Ish, a sour taste in his mouth. Into the Hollywood Bar. Ordered his first Stella, which came on a silver platter, accompanied by three little bowls containing peanuts, olives and onions. The olives and onions he could not look at, but the salted peanuts went down nicely. He sat with the frosted Stella between his wrists. The windmill on the ceiling turned its blades slowly, creating a gentle draught. The cheerful hubbub of off-duty airmen and soldiers comparing tattoos at the next two tables would have been soothing, had his heart not been spasming.

Several Stellas on and Joe had forgotten the sources of
his trouble. Or rather the trouble had retreated behind him and leapt on his back like a monkey, clinging while he sang along with the blokes, with Geordie Abel at the keyboard, to the tune of
Abide With Me
:

The singsong swallowed him up; he raised his glass with the rest. The men swayed as they sang, filling their glasses with frosted Stella betweenwhiles.

They discussed the one-legged purveyor of pleasure at the Moascar Garrison. Joe had never seen her and suspected she was a legend. Peg-Leg was reputed to operate in a pitch against a wall at the edge of Moascar, supporting herself with a crutch on one side and the shoulder of her next customer on the other. On payday the queue was said to go all round the block, one bloke beavering away, while she haggled over prices with the next in line.

‘How’d she lose the leg?’

‘Run over by a bleeding British truck.’

‘Get away.’

‘True. She gets a fucking British Army pension.’

‘Place of a thousand claps.’

‘They’ll stone her to death one day, the Gyppos.’

‘You had a go, mate?’

‘Nah. Gyppo-Bints have razors in their privates. True.’

‘Give her a medal. Good service to the Crown.’

‘Come on, Taf.’

‘Not me, boy,’ said Joe.

‘Come on.’

‘I said,
no
!’ he bellowed, getting to his feet, red with rage, his chair toppling back behind him.