Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“That’s King Farouk.…” For the first time all evening her voice dropped a bit. “Isn’t it?”

Peter looked. “Yes,” he said.

“Isn’t he attractive? What an original beard!”

Peter looked at King Farouk. “He looks like a fat, self-satisfied young man,” Peter said, the first full sentence he had got out all evening. “And I understand he grew the beard because he has a terrible case of acne.”

“Dance around the edge of the dance floor,” Joyce whispered. “I’d like people to see me.”

Dutifully and heavily Peter danced around the edge of the floor until the music stopped. He followed Joyce to the table. Joyce smiled vivaciously at seven or eight officers seated at various tables throughout the establishment.

“It’s amazing,” she said, brightly and loudly, “how many men I know in Cairo.” They sat down. There was an awful silence while Peter wondered where in the name of God Mac was, and his girl, and Joyce smiled prettily first at one table, then another.

“Are you married?” Peter heard his voice, crooked and rasping, asking inexplicably. For the first time that evening Joyce gave him her undivided attention.

“Why,” she said, looking at him queerly and coldly, “what a strange question!”

“It’s just that there’s a girl around my office,” Peter said, almost dazedly. “Married to a lieutenant in India. Marrying an American major in London …” The expression on Joyce’s face became more and more strained. “I don’t know what made me think of her,” Peter said lamely.

“No,” Joyce said coldly, “I’m not married.”

“I am,” Peter said, despairingly.

“Really.” Joyce smiled automatically at a colonel four tables away.

“My wife,” said Peter, not knowing why he was talking, feeling his tongue too loose from the drinking that had been continuous since six that evening, “my wife is a woman of admirable character, although I can’t remember what she looks like. Her name is Anne. She works for the Air Ministry in Manchester. After Dunkirk, I was stationed on the beach at Dover for five months. I used to manage to get away week ends. We’d just stay in one room and just look at each other. After France … I felt as though my wife had healed me of a dreadful disease. She healed me of mud and death and friends dying on all sides. She’s most beautiful, but I don’t remember what she looks like. She’s very calm and simple and her voice is low, although I don’t remember that, either. I sent her my photograph today. Six years is too long for a man to expect a woman to remember him. Someone ought to tell Parliament that.… Don’t you think?”

Joyce was staring at him, her mouth frozen to one side. “Yes,” she said.

“If I could only see her for two nights …” Well, finally, the thought crossed his consciousness, the lady from Jerusalem is listening to me. “Right before I came out here, I was moved to another beach. It was raining. Autumn and miserable and barbed wire at the high-tide marks and mines all over the beaches. I called her long-distance and she told me she had a week and asked me if she should come down. I told her no. It was so miserable. Cheap little shacks waiting for the Germans in the rain. I knew we were leaving for Africa and I didn’t want our last days together to be dreary, in that abominable place. I told her no, but she said, ‘You wait right there. I’m coming down tonight.’” Suddenly, above the dance music in the Valley of the Nile, Peter remembered what his wife’s voice had sounded like, merry and sensual and confidently commanding over the faulty wires on that autumn night on a wet beach on the English Channel. “She came down and we had the week together, and the rain and the barbed wire made no difference at all. I’ve never been so gay, and it was early in the war, and we always had a coal fire and hot rum and lovely heavy breakfasts, with the curtains still drawn. And never a tear when she left. And I started for Africa singing in my heart.” He was talking straight ahead to the Pyramids in the ancient desert darkness new, not to the silly, bare-shouldered girl across the table. “I haven’t heard from her in two months. Not a letter in two months.” He shrugged. “After the war,” he said, “I’m going to go in for politics. I’m going to stand for Parliament. There must be somebody in Parliament who knows what a war is like, who knows that one war is enough, six years is too much …”

“Why, Joyce, how nice!” It was the colonel, standing gallantly at the table. “Dance?”

Joyce looked doubtfully at Peter. Peter stood up, a little unsteadily. “Delighted,” he said ambiguously. Without looking at Peter, Joyce went off with the colonel, smiling impartially at dozens of officers in Sam Browne belts as she danced on the edge of the floor.

Peter hazily watched the flashing plump white dress among the brave khaki and brass pips. He passed his hand over his eyes, thinking, as he remembered his outburst, God, I must be going crazy.

He saw a captain step in and dance with Joyce, then an American major. “The world,” he said softly to himself, “is full of American majors.” He laughed gently to himself, stood up, walked slowly out of the night club. Outside, with the music thin and distant in his ears, the Pyramids loomed, crumbling in the darkness, in memory of the unremembered dead.

He got into a cab and started for Cairo.

When the cab got to Gezira Island, he tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Sporting Club,” he said.

The old, wheezing taxi laboriously turned. “I need a drink,” Peter told himself seriously. “I need a drink very badly.” He thought of old Mac caught there with two girls and the tremendous bill. He felt bad about it, but he’d pay his share, although it would mean considerably less drinking for the rest of the month. But he couldn’t stay with that damned girl. The truth was he couldn’t stay with any girl. Anne, unphotographed, in Manchester … Still, she should write more often than once every two months.…

The bar at Gezira was still open. There were some South Africans and some American fliers lounging against it. One of the American fliers was singing, in a soft Southern voice, “Oh, Susannah, don’t you cry for me …”

“Scotch,” Peter said to the bartender, feeling for the first time that evening a cessation of loneliness, his constant climate.

“Fo’ Ah’m gawn’ t’ Alabama, with mah banjo on mah knee …” the American pilot sang sweetly and happily.

“Gin and lime,” said one of the South Africans, a gigantic captain with huge, bare arms, whom the others called Lee. “Gin and lime all around.” He turned to Peter. “What’re you drinking, Captain?”

“I’ve ordered, thanks.” Peter smiled at him.

“Man says he’s ordered,” the American pilot sang. “What do you know about that? British captain says he’s ordered. Order again and order again, oh, Captain, order again.…”

The bartender put two Scotches in front of Peter, grinning. The huge South African captain poured it all into one glass. They lifted their glasses.

“To South Africa,” one of the Americans said.

They drank.

“To sergeants.” The American who had been singing grinned at a large South African lieutenant with a mustache. The lieutenant looked around him uneasily. “Quiet, please,” he said. “I’ll be in jail five years.”

“This gentleman looks like a gentleman.” Lee put his arm around the lieutenant with the mustache. “Doesn’t he?”

“Yes,” said Peter.

“Jail,” said the lieutenant with the mustache.

“He’s not a gentleman. He is a sergeant. He is my bloody sergeant from my bloody company.”

“Ten years,” said the lieutenant with the mustache.