Read Online Apple Blossom Time by Kathryn Haig - Free Book Online Page A

believed them. He wanted so badly to believe. He was young.
    I wished I could. I wished I could help him with brave words and kind lies. But I couldn’t think of any. I said nothing.
    With thin, brown fingers he picked off a flake of stone and let it bounce down the sides of the Pyramid, faster and faster, taking a little avalanche of dust with it.
    ‘It’s the new boys catch it, they say. If you survive six months, you’ll probably make it. Only I don’t want to let everyone down – the lads, you know. I’m afraid I’ll scream and shout for help and put people in danger to come and save me. That wouldn’t be right. But maybe I won’t be able to help it.’
    ‘You’ll be all right,’ I said softly, not knowing whether I believed it or not.
    ‘Will I?’
    But I couldn’t make a promise.
    *   *   *
    We woke our snoozing driver, who drove us back to Cairo faster than he brought us out. It was too dark to see the egrets roosting in the driftwood along the river banks, but we could smell the eucalyptus – winter in England, drops on a handkerchief to clear a stuffy nose, Vick spread on flannel and bound round a skinny chest – and hear the leaves rustle drily in the evening river breeze. The bridge was decked with coloured lights. There were houseboats, light-spangled, with music that blared and jangled. It was wartime, but the war had not touched us then.
    ‘I’m sorry. I’ve talked too much. Boring for you.’
    ‘That’s all right.’
    ‘No, really. It was very rude. I don’t usually. It must have been the tunnel and the dark. All that careful preparation for death. It made me feel – funny. What an awkward time to choose to bare my soul. Not very entertaining for you. Sorry.’
    ‘I didn’t mind. Really.’
    ‘When I come back, may I see you again, please?’
    ‘Yes. That would be nice.’
    I wouldn’t have let him kiss me. It hadn’t been that kind of day. But anyway, he didn’t try.
    *   *   *
    The war crept closer and still we went to ENSA concert parties, Hello Happiness and Spotlights, to the open air cinema, Shafto’s Shuftis, to see Gone with the Wind. At the end of the performance, as the Egyptian national anthem was played, the British soldiers leaped to their feet and began to sing to Verdi’s music:
    ‘King Farouk, King Farouk, you’re a dirty old crook
    As you walk down the street in your fifty-shilling suit
    Queen Farida’s very gay, ’cos she’s in the family way—’
    and it got a lot worse than that. It was the sort of happening when you don’t know whether to join in and snigger or walk out in indignation. Heaven knows how the Egyptians bore it. Pansy was scandalized.
    Vee was utterly captivated by Scarlett O’Hara. She went round for a week after that, tossing her head and flicking her skirts and trying to lift one quizzical eyebrow (but, no matter how she screwed up her face, the other one kept following it).
    ‘She had the right idea, that one. Always leave them wanting more. Oh, if only some man would carry me upstairs like Clark Gable and have his wicked way with me – but most of the blokes round here couldn’t even lift me, let alone carry me.’
    We went swimming at the Maadi club, where kind volunteer ladies served tea and sandwiches. We danced and danced, with no shortage of willing escorts. A girl could be out every night of the week with a different man and no-one would call her fast and loose, the way they might in England. Besides, there was safety in numbers. How could you get too serious about a man if you only saw him once? as Vee remarked.
    In the early morning, before the heat became too much, we drilled on the dusty square. With Grace now as right marker, so she couldn’t trip anyone up, we formed fours and went off at a cracking pace, convinced that our little platoon was the equal of the Brigade of Guards any day. Sergeant Gulliver bawled at us to slow down.
    ‘Westonbirt – bring that squad back here! What do you think you are –