Iris and Ruby: A gripping, exotic historical novel. Rosie Thomas

lilies, gardenias and tuberoses. I buried my face in the cool blooms. The intense perfume brought back last night even more vividly, candlelight and music and cigars and Xan’s face. Mamdooh beamed. He was pleased for me; usually the bouquets were for Sarah.

      I sat down awkwardly and opened the envelope that came with them. There was a plain white card with the words I hope your ankle will mend soon. It was signed simply X. That was all.

      Mamdooh was still standing there in his white galabiyeh, waiting for more. Faria complained that he was too familiar and that what time she came in at night was none of his business, but I liked the big man and his broad smiles that were always accompanied by a shrewd glance. Mamdooh missed nothing. Faria’s mother was probably aware of that too.

      ‘Just from a friend,’ I said.

      ‘Of course, Miss. I will put in water for you.’

      The flat often looked like a florist’s shop. Sarah and Faria didn’t even ask who my bouquet was from.

      I admired my flowers and waited, but a week and then another went by. The whole month of June 1941 crawled past and I heard nothing more from Xan.

      In my outer office at GHQ I typed reports and delivered signals for Roddy Boy, and chatted to the staff officers who hurried in and out to see him. As a civilian I was on the lowest level of clearance, but because of my family I was judged to be safe and many of the secret plans that flew in and out of Roddy Boy’s office crossed my desk first.

      The Allied troops, except for those besieged in Tobruk, had withdrawn into Egypt and the Germans were at the Libyan border. In an attempt to dislodge them, in a brief flurry of GHQ activity during which Roddy Boy didn’t withdraw for his usual long afternoon at the Turf Club, Operation Battleaxe was launched.

      ‘We can’t match their bloody firepower,’ Roddy groaned from behind his desk.

      Almost one hundred of our armoured tanks were lost to German anti-tank guns, their smouldering wrecks lying abandoned in a thick pall of dust and smoke. Many of their crews were dead or wounded.

      As July approached I began accepting every invitation that came my way. I went to cocktail parties and tennis tournaments, fancy dress balls, and poetry readings at the British Council, scanning the crowds for a glimpse of Xan. I sat beside the pool at the Gezira Club every lunchtime, always in the hope of hearing news of him.

      Just once, I met one of the other officers who had been at his table at Lady Gibson Pasha’s party.

      ‘Xan?’ he said vaguely. ‘I don’t know. Doesn’t seem to be around, does he?’

      He had simply vanished, and Jessie James with him. My certainty about us ebbed away. Maybe he had been posted elsewhere. Maybe he was married. Maybe – could that be possible? – he really did prefer other diversions.

      Maybe he was dead.

      I kept my fears to myself. What I felt seemed too significant and also too equivocal, too fragile, to share with Faria and Sarah.

      ‘You’re very sociable these days,’ Faria said with a raised eyebrow.

      ‘It’s as easy to go out as to stay in.’ I shrugged.

      Then, at the end of the first week of July, on an evening when the heat made it an effort to dress to go out, even to move, the telephone rang in the hallway and I heard Mamdooh answer it. His big round head appeared in the doorway.

      ‘For you, Miss.’

      ‘Hello?’ I said into the receiver.

      ‘This is Xan,’ he said. ‘May I come and see you?’

      I laid my head against the door frame, electric shocks of relief and delight chasing up my spine. I managed to answer, ‘Yes. Now?’

      ‘Right now.’

      ‘Yes,’ I said again. ‘Yes, please come.’

      That was how it was.

      I open my eyes on the dim, silent room. There is spilt tea on the cushions, some sticky drops dark on my front. I am overwhelmed with sleep now, too tired to sit up and tidy myself. It doesn’t matter. Who will see, except Mamdooh and Auntie?

      Sleep. Dream. Always the dreams.

      Shit. Double shit and fuck, Ruby said to herself as she caught a glimpse of what lay beyond the doors. Is this what it’s like?

      It was dark outside. Beyond a barrier there was a heaving wall of heads and waving arms and shouting faces, harshly lit and shadowed by sickly overhead neon lights. The airport was clammily air-conditioned, but she could already feel the heat rolling towards her through the doors as they slid open and hissed shut again. The crowd of arriving passengers pushed her forward, catching her rucksack with the protruberances of their own baggage, jerking her from side to side. The doors opened once more and this time she was part of the gout of humanity they disgorged.

      Hot, humid air rushed into her lungs. Sweat immediately prickled under her arms and in her hairline.

      A chorus of yelling rose around her. Hands grabbed at her arms, tried to hoist the pack off her back.

      ‘Lady! Taxi, very good, cheap.’

      ‘Hotel, lady. Nice hotel.’

      ‘Stop it,’ Ruby shouted. ‘Leave me alone.’ She hadn’t bargained for this onslaught. Alarmed, she wrenched herself free of the clutching hands but another dozen pairs replaced them, tried to propel her in different directions.

      ‘Taxi here! Lady, I show you.’

      She became aware of a stream of honking cars beyond the immediate crowd, a fringe of palm trees with ragged leaves outlined against a sky dimly peppered with stars, a snake of headlights along an elevated road. The noise and the heat were overwhelming. Ruby glared into the boiling sea of dark faces, moustaches, open mouths. At the back of the throng was a younger face, imploringly watching her.

      She dragged an arm free, pointed at him.

      ‘You. Taxi?’

      Instantly he dived through the scrum of bodies, grabbed her wrist with one hand and snatched her rucksack with the other. Ruby kept her smaller nylon sack tightly pressed to her side. They scuttled through the mass together and emerged into a clearer space beyond.

      ‘Come,’ the man shouted, pointing over the roofs of a hundred hooting black-and-white taxis. A packed bus roared in front of them, missing them by inches.

      The driver’s taxi was parked under one of the palm trees. Two ragged children were sitting propped against it. The driver gave them a coin, threw her rucksack into the boot and opened the passenger door. With relief Ruby sank into the back seat. The springs had collapsed and stained foam padding bulged through a split in the brown plastic seat cover. The interior of the car smelled strongly of cigarettes and cheap air freshener.

      The driver thrust the car into gear and they roared forward, then jerked to an almost immediate halt in a queue for the exit road. Even though it was dark, the heat was intense. Ruby had never encountered this phenomenon before. She closed her eyes, noticing that even her eyelids were sticky with sweat, then forced them open again. She mustn’t switch off, not yet. The driver flashed her a smile over his shoulder. His teeth were cartoon-white in his brown face. He did look young, not much older than herself.

      ‘Where you go?’

      She unfolded the sheet of paper that she had kept in her jeans pocket all through the flight and read out the address.

      ‘Why you go there? I know nice hotel, very clean, cheap. I take you there instead.’

      ‘We’re going where I told you,’ Ruby insisted. ‘No arguing. Got that?’

      This amused him. He laughed and slapped his hands on the steering wheel.

      The traffic began to move. There were roads everywhere, the sodium-lit elevated sections crazily perched over complex intersections,