Chapter Eight Hannah
October 1951
Cairo, Egypt
For some reason, Alistair wanted to travel to Ismailia to see the Suez Canal.
Lucien thought it was a stupid idea, to say nothing of dangerous. “It’s not a bloody spa,” he said in English, then switched to French. “Has he no idea what’s happening in the canal zone at the moment? Have you?”
Hannah blew out some smoke from her cigarette. “The native workers are striking,” she said.
“Yes, they’re striking. Do you know why?”
“Because they hate the British. They want them out of the canal. Out of Egypt altogether. So they strike. And they attack the shipping. And the Egyptian police do nothing to stop them, because they want the same thing the workers want.”
“You should explain all this to your husband.”
“He doesn’t care. The Egyptian people are just masses to him. Like livestock. No, that’s not fair.” She took another drag on the cigarette and handed it to him. “Livestock is the wrong word. Whatever is the human equivalent of livestock.”
“That doesn’t exist. You’re one or the other, man or livestock.”
A pair of horses thundered by. They were at the Gezira polo grounds, watching a match under the usual blaze of sun. The ponies shone with sweat. The white shirts stuck to the backs of the riders. At some point during the third chukka, Hannah had managed to detach herself from Alistair—roaring with laughter over some joke—and maneuver to this spot along the rail that guarded the spectator stand. A moment later, Lucien appeared by her side. What a charming surprise, Mrs. Ainsworth, he’d said blandly, and lit this cigarette they now passed between them, by all appearances a pair of acquaintances catching up on conversation amid the atmosphere of hot green grass, the hooves rattling the earth, the sighs and groans of spectators.
Hannah’s eyes followed the line of the ball but she was really watching Lucien’s hand, clasping the cigarette that was still warm from her lips. He lifted it to his mouth, inhaled, handed it back to her. Their fingertips brushed.
“But you know what I mean,” she said. “Masses. Races. Crowds, not individuals.”
“Well, the masses in Ismailia don’t give a damn what he thinks of them. And the Egyptian police don’t give a damn either, not to protect some stupid English tourists who wander into trouble. Your husband can risk his own neck if he wants, but he can’t risk yours.”
Hannah returned the cigarette. “Are you saying you forbid me to go?”
“As if I could forbid you to do anything.”
A pair of riders thundered toward them, mallets swinging. Lucien took her by the elbow and drew her back a step or two. The horses thundered harmlessly past. The smell of hot, torn grass and sweat. The stir of the crowd.
“I mean I’m going with you,” he said.
They were on the road at dawn two days later, driving into the sun that rose as a ball of furious orange.
Alistair had invited along the Beverleys. Hannah had gotten to know the two of them pretty well over the last couple of months. Bertie Beverley was some old Foreign Office protégé of her husband, now a press attaché or something, about fifty years old, who sat up front with Lucien. Alistair sat in back with the women, Hannah in the middle, Lillian behind her husband in a white linen dress that strained at the seams. Round face, sloping shoulders. Fair, florid English skin that must be shielded from the sun at all times. She looked about the same age as her husband but she was probably far younger, Hannah thought. Though of course one didn’t ask.
Beverley leaned across the seat. “Ahoy, there! Driver! About how long?”
“His name is Beck,” Hannah muttered.
“What? What?”
“Goodness, dear,” said Lillian. “Don’t you know Monsieur Beck? From Shepheard’s?”
“Should I?”
Hannah called forward in English. “Monsieur Beck, could you tell us how many hours to our destination?”
Lucien met her eyes in the mirror. Green sparks. She couldn’t breathe.
“About three hours, if the traffic is fair,” he said.
Hannah stripped her gaze away. Shit, she thought. This would be harder than she’d thought.
They reached Ismailia suddenly—one moment open desert, then you turned your head back to the window to find streets arranged in a European grid, rimmed with palms at orderly intervals.
It’s a company town, Lucien informed them, like a tour guide. Built from scratch on wasteland, halfway between Port Said and Suez, for one purpose—to oversee the canal traffic. He turned the car off the main road and rattled down a lane, past a line of vegetation, where he stopped the car. Ahead, the desert sand ended in a line of flat, green-brown water.
“The canal at last,” said Alistair.
“Lake Timsah, to be pedantic,” said Lucien. “The canal follows the eastern shore.”
He climbed out of the car and helped Alistair to his feet, then went around the back to open the door for Hannah and Lillian. Outside, the air was dry, the wind hot. Hannah staggered across the sand toward the water. Behind her, Alistair was saying something pompous about the engineering of the canal, connecting the Bitter Lakes—as if he knew anything about engineering, Hannah thought. When had he become so tiresome? Or had it grown on him gradually, like the drinking? Her shoes stuck and filled with grit, so she stopped and took them off, then dragged off her stockings from beneath her trousers and continued toward the edge of the lake.
To the right, the water spread over a few flat acres that ended in salt marsh, in docks and warehouses. To the left, maybe half a mile away, a couple of ships glided southward. A horn groaned across the water. Like toys, she thought, toys in a bathtub. Except there was something massive about them, even from this distance.
A new flavor crept over Hannah’s palate—salt and metal and smoke, the scorch of oil.
“There you are.” (Lucien’s voice.) “The reason for all these rattling swords.”
“What’s that?” she whispered.
“Fifty years ago it was India. Now it’s oil. Half the world’s supply, and most of Britain’s. They’ll fight for this damned stretch of water to the last man. My God, are you all right?”
She gathered herself. “What do you mean?”
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Hannah turned. He stood a few feet away, wind ruffling the fringe of his dark hair under his hat. His green eyes were large and watchful in his tanned face.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Lucien said.
“I can’t stand this. You shouldn’t have come.”
“Why not?” Lillian caught up breathlessly and lifted one hand to pin her hat to her head in the breeze off the canal. Her cheeks were pink and bright from the effort of wallowing across the beach. Unlike Hannah, she’d kept her shoes and stockings on. She looked cheerfully back and forth between them. “Why shouldn’t poor Monsieur Beck have come with us? A nice outing, I should think.”
“Mrs. Ainsworth doesn’t like to trouble others,” said Lucien.
“Oh! But we are paying you, aren’t we?” Lillian sounded bemused.
Alistair huffed up, supported by his walking stick. Beverley attentive at his side. “Paying him? I should say so.”
Lucien looked at Hannah. “You see? You are not to worry, Mrs. Ainsworth. I’m bought and paid for.”
Hannah turned her head eastward. Past the canal, the horizon stretched in a flat dun line. “How strange, we’re looking at Asia.”
“It looks just the same as Africa,” Lillian announced.
“It’s an arbitrary distinction, from a geographical standpoint,” said Alistair, leaning with both hands on his walking stick, “but one must draw a line somewhere, I suppose.”
Beverley twirled his hat on his hand. “I imagine it will all be part of Israel, before long.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t bet against old Farouk,” Alistair said. “Crafty devil.”
“I wouldn’t bet against Ben-Gurion, either. Eh, Mr. Beck?” Beverley turned to Lucien. “What do you think, Beck? Who wins the Sinai? Do the Arabs hold it against the dirty Jews?”
Lucien removed his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the face of his watch. “Shall we perhaps move on and see the city?” he said.
Like the rest of Egypt, Ismailia was defiantly French where it wasn’t Arab. After an hour or two touring the wide avenues, the elegant buildings, they found a decent restaurant near the canal and ordered the bouillabaisse and the mussels and a nice sole meunière, washed down with a couple of bottles of cold champagne. Lucien waited by the car, smoking a cigarette. Hannah could just see the side of his head through the window when she stretched her neck. He leaned against the bonnet, legs crossed, smoking a cigarette. He’d pulled his hat down low on his forehead and rolled up his sleeves. She was transfixed by his forearms, by the curve of tendon and muscle as he smoked.
“My dear, is something wrong with your neck?” asked Lillian.
“A little stiff. I must have slept on it.”
“You ought to try the Oriental massage. I understand it works wonders.”
The men were talking about the Free Officers movement. Beverley thought there was going to be a coup, sooner or later. He thought the king was finished and these army officers were the only men who could pull Egypt into the twentieth century. Modernize the economy, fend off the religious fanatics.
“They said the same about Hitler,” says Alistair. “Take your pan-Arabic nationalism and substitute German for Arabic. All these new laws against the Jews.”
“It all goes back to this damned business of Israel. Kicking up a hornet’s nest. If there’s one way to unite the Arabs, why, just hand the bloody Jews a slice of prime real estate on the Med.”
“None of whom gave a damn about the Palestinians until now, mind you.” Alistair crushed his cigarette into the ashtray.
“I was in Cairo during the war, you know,” said Beverley. “I was there when our man Lampson forced his way into the palace and made the king install Nahhas Pasha as prime minister. Damned high-handed. Now, I said to him at the time, I said, ‘Lampson, old man—’?”
Alistair banged his fist on the table. “No choice! No bloody choice at all. That ass Farouk—”
“Farouk’s an ass, all right, but you can’t go around installing ministers. The shame of it. Puts their backs up, especially the Egyptian officers.” Beverley pointed two fingers at Alistair, the ones holding the stub of his cigarette. “I’ll tell you what I think, Ainsie. That’s the day we created this Free Officers movement. That’s the day we signed off Egypt.”
Alistair shrugged and lit himself another cigarette. They were on the last course, dessert and coffee, cognac for the gentlemen. The ceiling fans stirred the hot air. Outside the window, Lucien levered himself away from the car and moved out of Hannah’s sight.
Lillian asked her a question.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention,” she said.
A look of irritation flattened Lillian’s eyebrows. But she was a diplomat’s wife—it was gone in an instant. “You see what you’ve done, Bertie? All this political talk. You’ve bored poor Hannah into a stupor.”
“I beg your pardon, Hannah,” said Beverley. “I’m afraid we got carried away.”
Alistair looked at her fondly. “Hannah’s never had much interest in politics.”
“Why, none at all?” asked Lillian.
“None whatsoever. I remember we were in Nuremberg—she was my translator, you know, that’s how we fell in love—long hours, endless ghastly testimony to transcribe and translate. I used to watch her in the middle of the night, at her typewriter, bloody beautiful—come now, you see how beautiful she is, my wife—and I remember I asked her once, it was the middle of the night, naturally I jolly well wanted to go to bed with her instead—”
“Oh, Alistair, really—”
“It’s only the truth, darling, as you know. I was absolutely mad for her, this little translator of mine, this delectable girl in her dressing gown, charming tits all tucked away—”
Lillian made a faint noise. Beverley stifled a chuckle. Hannah looked at the empty glass next to her husband’s plate, the empty wine bottle still in its silver bucket.
Alistair carried on. “So at one point, two o’clock in the morning in my wretched billets, damned shabby room, both of us in our dressing gowns by now, I asked her whether she wanted to perhaps stop for the night, whether the substance of this testimony had become altogether too dire, bloody Nazis ratting each other out to save their own skins, wouldn’t she fancy a nice glass of sherry on the sofa, sit together for a bit, and she looked up at me—I’ll never forget it, oil lamp, damned electricity was out again, oil lamp casting this delectable glow on her face, she tells me—damnedest thing—she tells me she doesn’t pay any attention to the words, she just translates, doesn’t give a damn about these chaps and what they’ve done. The damnedest thing I ever heard. Now, where’s that damned waiter with the cognac?”
“Cognac’s finished, old man,” said Beverley.
Hannah reached to cover her husband’s hand. “Alistair. Darling. Perhaps we’d better settle the bill, don’t you think? We’ve a long drive ahead.”
“Damn it all, so we do. I’d almost forgot we must drive all the way back to bloody Cairo. Thank goodness we have Beck, eh? Hannah? What would we do without old Beck at our beck and call, ha ha? Sees to our every need, that chap.”
Beverley signaled the waiter. Hannah didn’t dare look at Lillian. My God, the pity of another woman—was there anything worse? Hannah opened her pocketbook, rummaged out her compact and lipstick, and fixed her lips. Beverley offered a cigarette and lit it for her. She kept her eyes cast down as she murmured some thanks.
Outside, the sun was high in the west, white and lurid. Now Hannah saw where Lucien had gone—leaning against the other side of the car, facing the street, eyes narrowed, arms crossed.
Alistair called out. “Beck! Beck, I say!”
Lucien straightened and dropped his cigarette on the pavement. “Enjoyed your lunch, I hope?”
“Damned lackadaisical, these fellows,” muttered Alistair.
Beverley turned to Alistair. “I say, old boy. What do you say to a stroll and a smoke before we bugger on back to Cairo? Beck can keep an eye on the women.”
“Yes, do go,” said Lillian. “You’ll feel ever so refreshed.”
Alistair swung his walking stick in a little arc. “Very well. I shouldn’t mind having a look about, after all. It’s why we came.”
The men struck off, lighting their cigarettes, in the direction of the canal. Alistair had lost the stiffness in his gait but he swung heavily on the walking stick. His voice roared confidently back to them—The trouble with foreign postings, ha ha, is the bloody foreigners—followed by Beverley’s soothing murmur.
“Had we better sit in the car, do you think?” asked Lilian, a little too bright.
“What, in this hot sun? We’d roast. It’s all right, nobody’s here. Let’s take a stroll down that arcade.” Hannah nodded to the building on their right. “Mr. Beck?”
“Yes, Mrs. Ainsworth?”
“Just walking down the arcade.”
“Of course, Mrs. Ainsworth.”
In the shade, the air was cooler. Lillian linked her arm. “The way he looks at you, my dear!” she said, in a low conspiratorial voice.
“What? Who?”
“Mr. Beck. You do know, don’t you? About him and Helen?”
Hannah’s throat stuck, like she had swallowed something too large. She forced out some words. “Helen Hill?”
“They were lovers. People say. I don’t mean to gossip.”
Hannah wanted to look back over her shoulder. In her mind she saw him—dressed in white, hat cocked a little to one side, leaning against one of the pillars, watchful. “How do you know?” she asked.
“Nancy told me. They’re awfully close. She said Helen’s still mad for him.”
Hannah thought of the tea salon, when she had first seen Lucien Beck make his rounds from table to table, and how Helen Hill’s cheeks had turned the color of a ripe persimmon.
“Are they lovers still?” she asked, in a careless voice.
“Oh, I haven’t the faintest. I don’t especially care for Helen, do you? One doesn’t feel one can properly trust her. Shall we sit?”
They had come almost to the end of the arcade. A bench sat at the edge of the shade, such as you might find lining a path in a European garden, and Hannah and Lillian lowered themselves onto it and crossed their legs.
“When I first came to Egypt,” said Lillian, “I was expecting something more…oh, I don’t know. Primitive? But look at these buildings. You might be in Paris.”
Hannah braided her hands in her lap and frowned at the beautiful apartment building across the street. Lillian was right, you might be in Paris. The mansards, the iron railings. But then again, not quite. The colonial whiff. The hot, lazy balconies.
“The snakebite,” said Lillian. “Was it awful?”
Hannah dropped her gaze to her hand and the two gleaming pink spots. “I don’t remember much about it, really. They tell me it could have been much worse.”
“I have a terror of snakes. Bertie teases me. I don’t know what I should do if I came face-to-face with one. Faint, probably. It would be the end of me.”
“Do you think so?” said Hannah. “I would say it’s impossible to know what a person will do when his worst fear looks him in the eye.”
Probably she invested a little too much meaning in her voice, because Lillian fell silent. Together they contemplated the Parisian apartment building opposite them.
Lillian re-crossed her legs. “In London, toward the end of the war,” she said, “one of those rockets hit the house across the street. The V-2, I expect you’ve heard of it. Awful. The family there had brought their children back from the country by then, thinking it was safe enough. A little girl and boy, about the age of my own children. They used to play together. There wasn’t any warning, not like during the Blitz when you heard the airplanes coming. Just this awful whine, a few seconds before it hit. I felt the blast. Dreadful. I knew something was hit, that it was bad. I could hear them screaming. I always thought I should faint at the sight of blood—injuries like that, I mean, such awful wounds. But I didn’t. I was rather proud of that afterward, I must say. I just got on with it. Dug them out and first aid and so on. Until the ambulance came to take them away.”
“Did they live?”
“I’m afraid not.” Lillian smoothed her dress, picked at an imaginary speck. “Didn’t Alistair say you met at the war trials? How fascinating.”
“Actually,” said Hannah, “we met before that. At a displaced persons camp outside Vienna. I had lost everything to the Soviet army. Everybody I loved. I walked from Hungary over the border into Austria on my bare feet. I was starving and mad with grief. When I saw the chance to leave these things behind me, as the wife of a wealthy Englishman, I was happy to do it, believe me.”
Lillian turned to Hannah. Her eyes widened and her mouth formed a saucer, rimmed with white teeth. Before she could reply, some shouting drew their attention to the top of the street, where it crossed the main boulevard leading to the canal. A couple of men jostled around the corner.
Like a djinn, Lucien appeared at her side. “Get in the car, please,” he said.
His face was narrow and weary. He looked not at her and Lillian but at the two men at the top of the street. Hannah rose from the bench and said to him, “I have a pistol in my pocketbook.”
His eyes shifted to hers. “Whatever you do, don’t use it.”
“Why not, if I have to?”
“If an Englishwoman kills an Egyptian, it will start a revolution. I’ll handle it. Get in the car.”
They spoke in low, muttered tones. Lillian stood by uncertainly. Hannah studied the green of his eyes and flicked her glance to the two men on the corner, who had stopped at the sight of them and now stood as if waiting.
She nodded at Lucien, took Lillian’s arm, and started for the car. Lillian walked in stiff, quick, nervous strides. As they reached the chrome grille, the swooping wheel well, a voice sailed around the corner behind them.
“Heigh ho!”
“Merde,” said Lucien.
Lillian called out, “Bertie! There you are.”
The two men came to a stop next to the car. Alistair pointed his walking stick toward the men and called to Lucien, “What’s this, old man? Trouble with the natives?”
“I wouldn’t say that. Only a couple of canal workers, passing the time.”
“On strike, I presume,” Beverley said.
Alistair muttered, “Bloody wogs.” Just loud enough.
Whether or not the men spoke English, they knew the word wog. One of them shot a look toward Alistair and banged his elbow into the ribs of the other man. Lucien said something under his breath.
“What was that?” Alistair snapped.
“I said, I think we ought to move along now, sir,” said Lucien. “We don’t want to start any trouble.”
“They wouldn’t dare attack a British subject,” said Alistair. “In any case, you’ve got your pistol, I believe.”
“I don’t wish to be forced to use it.”
“There are policemen, for God’s sake. The rule of law still prevails, does it not?”
“Egyptian policemen,” said Lucien.
“Oh, I see. So the wog policemen protect the bloody wogs—”
Beverley grabbed his elbow. “Don’t be a fool, Ainsie,” he hissed.
Hannah glanced toward the Egyptian men. One of them wore a thick black beard, the other a clipped mustache. They were dressed alike, in short-sleeved shirts and creased pants the color of sand. Wide black belts.
Alistair stamped his walking stick on the paving stones. “Damn it all, Beverley. Where the devil would Egypt be without us, all these years? Corrupt, bankrupt, barbaric.”
“Come, now,” said Beverley.
“Look around you, for God’s sake. Ismailia. Everything here was built with European money. European engineering. The damned democracy they’re employing to kick us out is only in place because we bloody well gave it to them.”
Had the men edged closer? They didn’t seem to be paying attention and yet they must have heard Alistair’s words—you couldn’t help but hear that carrying voice. One of the men had turned his back but looked over his shoulder at the exact instant of Hannah’s attention and caught her gaze. The venom shocked her. She turned back swiftly.
“Alistair, really. If Mr. Beck thinks it isn’t wise—”
“Hang Beck. He’s been paid to do as he’s told.”
Hannah looked at Lucien, whose face was grim underneath the brim of his hat. For a second or two his eyes met hers. Then he shook his head and opened the passenger door.
“It’s getting late, my friends. Back in Cairo before the sun sets, no?”
Hannah started toward the door. Lillian followed her by an instant. “But it’s my turn to sit in the middle,” she said cheerfully, nudging Hannah back.
Then Alistair’s roar.
“What the devil?”
Hannah spun around.
Later, she would remember what happened next as a series of tableaus, a little blurry and not always in order. She would remember Alistair, puce, striding down the arcade. Say that again, you bloody wog!
Then Lucien, dropping Lillian’s hand to run after Alistair. Beverley puffing behind. The Egyptians shouting back.
Panic.
She would remember running after Lucien. Alistair swinging his walking stick at the man with the mustache.
She would remember how Lucien dove between them and took a blow to the jaw. The walking stick or somebody’s fist? She couldn’t say.
Nor could she say how she dropped her pocketbook—probably when she reached for Lucien as he staggered back. Whether the pistol fell out of the pocketbook or whether Alistair found the pistol inside when he bent to pick it up—well, did it really matter?
She would remember his cry of triumph.
How she turned just in time to see her husband lift the pistol, cock, aim, shoot.