He smiled. When he smiled his face changed shape: became squarer. His beard and moustache framed his mouth like pubic hair.
‘Thank you for thinking of me . . . but no, I would not be at risk. What would they be punished for; these two theoretical officers? What is their theoretical sin?’
‘Using a woman as if she was their own; when in fact she wasn’t. Not asking her permission.’
‘Has the woman been damaged?’ I realized that he was thinking in terms of commodity. I’d met men like that before.
‘Not on the outside. But inside her head? Yes; I think possibly she has . . . and she is a friend. It pains me.’
‘But that cannot be allowed.’ It was something to do with the finality of those five words, and the way his decision related to me rather than to Daisy. It gave me a glimpse of what Susan and the rest of them might be up against. ‘You have their names, and their stations – these men?’
‘Not yet, but I think I can get them.’
It was another landmark on the road that led to the making of a proper Charlie out of me. Eight years ago on the squadron I’d met some real chancers. Before that I’d been wet behind the ears. Now, although they weren’t going to get killed for it, I’d just called down a hit on a couple of guys. How the hell had I come to this?
Yassine shifted in his chair, and looked around the bar. There were a few more people in it now, mainly rich Egyptians with uniformly beautiful, Westernized Arab women half their age. He said, ‘Are we finished now? Our beer is. We could sit up at the bar . . . one of the girls is going to dance soon.’
It was Mariam of course, and I was entranced again: so were all of the other guys in the bar. When she came and perched on a stool between us, after the show, they were probably jealous. What had I said to Susan about it feeling like a transaction? I gave Mariam a few Egyptian pounds for her dance, and hoped she felt a little sad when I left at 1800. I wanted to catch Haye with an e coming off duty.
As I stood to leave, David Yassine asked me one question. His eyes were twinkling, and his little mouth wore a mischievous little smile. ‘These men who might be punished, Charlie: is it possible that they are the same two officers who Mr Watson has suggested might be punished?’ Ah.
‘Did he give you their names?’
‘Yes he did.’ Bloody Watson! Whenever you thought butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, you forgot the knife up his sleeve.
‘Then leave it with me for the moment; I’ll get back to you.’
‘Come back and see me when you get back from the desert; some time next week.’
‘How did you know I was going out?’
He shrugged, smiled and splayed his hands out. I knew exactly what he was going to say.
‘There was one particular woman,’ I told Haye with an e. ‘Yes, darling?’ She leaned forward, and I lit her cigarette for her. She was pretending we were sitting in a club in Happy Valley in the 1930s.
‘I think we’d been madly attracted to each other for weeks, and as a result ended up irritating each other beyond belief . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘So she came to my billet on the squadron one day, when there was no one else around, and just said Well, you’d better have me then, or something like that, and began to take her clothes off. It sounded flat; the way she said it. As if she didn’t want to do it but didn’t see that she had a choice.’
‘Did you . . . sleep together, I mean?’
‘Of course we did.’
‘More than once?’
‘Yes. She came back a couple of times. She was a bit of a tiger actually.’ Jennifer. Another Jenny. I smiled at the memory of her. She was one of those women you could have married if they weren’t married to someone else.
‘Was she married?’
‘Yes, how did you guess?’
‘Ah . . .’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that there are some situations to which your father’s rules don’t apply, Charlie. When that happens you can only do your best. Now, are you going to get me another drink?’
‘OK.’
‘Then you can walk me to the bus, and make a pass at me on the way.’
‘So that you can say no again?’
‘Of course, darling.’
When I got back to Deversoir the base was shut down, and the bus I was in had to shuffle forward in a queue. An Egyptian copper rode the last few yards with us, and a burly sergeant checked us in one by one. A lot of nervous guys with Stens or Stirlings were hanging about.
When I got back to the tent I asked Nancy, ‘What’s all the fuss?’
‘Red alert, old son. A couple of fellas went down to the Bitter Lake for a swim, and got grabbed by the Gyppoes.’ He made the throat-cutting gesture.
‘Are they dead?’
‘For their sake I almost hope so.’
Chapter Fourteen
Wild man blues
Unusually, the terrorists returned the two swimmers alive. But in a terrible state. That was two days later. They were dumped at the main gate during the morning rush when the Egyptian trusties who worked for us were allowed inside. When the noisy, djellabaed, chitty-waving crowd had dispersed to their work areas, there were two bloodied bundles left in the road by the gate. No one saw where they came from.
They had been caned on their arses with barbed-wire whips, until their buttocks were literally flayed. Unconscious; probably through loss of blood. Nansen was down there, and saw it all – he’d been waiting for a laundry parcel from the dhobi woman. By the time he returned the
