thoughtfully and we fought carefully, and we never damn well won anything. He went home. Gaafar had prepared lamb and rice. Vandam had another drink with his dinner. Billy talked to him while he ate. Today’s geography lesson had been about wheat farming in Canada. Vandam would have liked the school to teach the boy something about the country in which he lived. After Billy went to bed Vandarn sat alone in the drawing room, smoking, thinking about Joan Abuthnot and Alex Wolff and Erwin Rommel. In their different ways they all threatened him. As night fell outside, the room came to seem claustrophobic. Vandarn filled his cigarette case and went out. The city was as much alive now as ;)t any time during the day. There were a lot of soldiers on the streets, some of them very drunk. These were hard men who had seen action in the desert, had suffered the sand and the beat and the bombing and the shelling, and they often found the wogs less grateful than they should be. When a shopkeeper gave short change or a restaurant owner overcharged or a barman refused to serve drunks, the soldiers would remember seeing their friends blown up in the defense of Egypt, and they would start fighting and break windows and smash the place up. Vandam. understood why the Egyptians were ungratefulthey did not much care whether it was the British or the Germans who oppressed them-but still he had little sympathy for the Cairo shopkeepers, who were making a fortune out of the war. He walked slowly, cigarette in band, enjoying the cool -ei*4.46ir, looking into the tiny open-fronted shops, refusing to buy a cotton shirt made-to-measure-while-you-wait, a leather handbag for the lady or a secondhand copy of a magazine called Saucy Snips. He was amused by a street vendor who had filthy pictures in the left-hand side of his jacket and cru- cifixes in the right. He saw a bunch of soldiers collapse with laughter at the sight of two Egyptian policemen patrolling the street hand in hand. He went into a bar. Outside of the British clubs it was wise to avoid the gin, so he ordered zibib, the aniseed drink which turned cloudy with water. At ten o’clock the bar closed, by mutual consent of the Muslim Wafd government and the THE KEY TO REBECCA 57
kill-joy provost marshal. Vandam’s vision was a little blurred when he left. He headed for the Old City. Passing a sign saying ouT OF BOUNDS TO TROOPS he entered the Birka. In the narrow streets and alleys the women sat on steps and leaned from windows, smoking and waiting for customers, chatting to the military police. Some of them spoke to Vandam, offering their bodies in English, French and Italian. He turned into a little lane, crossed a deserted courtyard and entered an unmarked open doorway. He climbed the staircase and knocked at a door on the first floor. A middle-aged Egyptian woman opened it. He paid her five pounds :;nd went in. In a large, dimly lit inner room furnished with faded luxury, he sat on a cushion and unbuttoned his sbirt collar. A young woman in baggy trousers passed him the nargileh. He took several deep lungfuls of hashish smoke. Soon a pleasant feeling of lethargy came over him. He leaned back on his elbows and looked around. In the shadows of the room there were four other men. Two were pashas-wealthy Arab landowners-sitt~ng together on a divan and talking in low, desultory tones. A third, who seemed almost to have been sent to sleep by the hashish, looked English and was probably an officer like Vandam. ne fourth sat in the comer talking to one of the girls. Vandam heard snatches of conversation and gathered that the man wanted to take the girl home, and they were discussing a price. The man was vaguely familiar, but Vandam, drunk and now doped too, could not get his memory in gear to recall who he was. One of the girls came over and took Vandam’s hand. She led him into an alcove and drew the curtain. She took off her halter. She had small brown breasts. Vandam stroked her cheek. In the candlelight her face changed constantly, seeming old, then very young, then predatory, then loving. At one point she looked like Joan Abuthnot. But finally, as he entered her, she looked Ue Elene.