Haye with an e shared with a sheila named Sheila. I had difficulty with that myself at first. Like most Aussies she was a giantess, had big feet and a big laugh. She’d been contracted to the RAF from an oil company, and worked in a laboratory at El Firdan, testing aircraft fuels before they were pumped. She said there had been a problem with the water content of some of the stuff bought in from the Americans. It froze at high altitudes, and blocked the injectors. She also made gin: gallons of the bloody stuff. So we had a gay old evening.
After an hour or so of drinking I walked out to a public telephone box on one of the streets of married quarters. It was identical to a phone box you can find on any London street. A woman in her forties had beaten me to it, and I had to spend ten minutes trying not to hear her arguing with her mother back in Blighty. When she left she gave me a nice smile, and raised her eyes briefly to the stars: she must have guessed my call wasn’t going to be an easy one either. Life wasn’t so bad.
Watson was in mild mode. ‘Where are you, Charlie?’
‘El Kirsh.’
‘Seeing that nurse again? Anything going on between you two?’
‘That’s our business, sir, but no. And I am almost pleased to report it.’
‘Good. Don’t catch anything. We need you. When are you coming back?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Good.’ Again. ‘. . . and don’t lose that car: I can’t afford another one. Change the date on your warrant, initial the change and overstamp it with the hospital stamp. I’m sure the girl you’re with knows what to do. I don’t want the MPs picking on you.’
‘Fine.’ I seemed to have lost all my words. Does that ever happen to you?
Watson had to make all the running. ‘What’s she like, this nurse of yours?’
‘She can quote Oscar Wilde.’
‘Don’t tell anyone: they’d probably send her home.’
Maybe that was a tip to pass on. I offered to sleep on the veranda, but they said I’d be eaten alive by the creatures of the night, so I agreed to a bed made up from their sitting-room sofa. They showered and washed before they retired, and I followed them through the small bathroom. The feminine smells it contained made me almost as homesick as the memory of my boys.
After I had washed I braved the veranda for a last smoke. My tobacco was getting too dry; I’d have to find a way of keeping it moist. I was sure the old buggers out here had already solved that problem. The girls’ small quarter was positioned midway between two street lamps, and as I smoked my eye was drawn to a tawny, dark shape sliding through the shadows cast by the houses opposite. Low and long, and completely silent. She paused to look at me, and then moved on. Eye contact. We’d have to stop meeting like this.
In the middle of the night Haye with an e tiptoed out of her bedroom, and woke me. I sat up and yawned. She squeezed in alongside. I put my arm around her, and pulled a blanket around both of us. During that season the days were hot, but the nights cool.
She said, ‘I remembered something else that Oscar’s supposed to have said.’
‘What was it?’
‘Who, being loved, is poor? Are you poor, Charlie?’
‘No; not at the moment. I’m feeling a bit rich.’
‘So am I.’
We didn’t have to do or say anything else, so we didn’t.
We went back to sleep like the Babes in the Wood. Susan slept still leaning against me. Sometimes life deals you very pleasant cards.
I was quite proud of myself for resisting the urge to drop into the Blue Kettle on the way back. I didn’t even stop at Ismailia, thundered along the edge of Lake Timsah, heading south, but it was one of those days when the gods had it in for me, because I picked up a flat halfway between Gebel Maryam and Deversoir.
The road was dead straight before and behind me; the few palms shimmered in the heat haze. No water, unless you counted a bleeding great canal alongside me. One of those times when you realize that you could be in real trouble. I’d heard stories of Gyppoes spreading tacks on the road, and then gunning down the poor innocent who gets out to change his wheel. I scanned my surroundings from up close, right out to the horizons. No tacks. No Gyppoes. No anything for sodding miles. Not even a six-year-old stone thrower on the back of a camel, but if I wasn’t worth their killing, I wasn’t going to complain.
Just when you think things can’t get worse, they always bloody do. When I opened the car boot there was no jack: so I had nothing to lift the bugger off the tarmac with. Half an hour later, when my depression was notching itself up into a nasty bit of panic, a three-tonner full of singing Brown Jobs came trundling down from the north.
They hadn’t a jack small enough for the car, but they stood around and simply lifted it up and held it, until I had one wheel off and the spare on. One of the things the Army has always been exceptionally good at is training small groups of men to cooperate to achieve feats of strength beyond that possible by one on his own. The second lieutenant with them was sarky of course.
‘Always pleased to help the junior service when it’s in trouble, old son.’
‘And I shall remember to buy a beer for the next soldier I see in the next bar I visit. Thanks for getting me out of a spot.’
‘ . . .told you: my pleasure. I’ll be getting along now. Why don’t you follow me, and stay out of trouble? If you’re going
