Rosie Thomas 2-Book Collection One: Iris and Ruby, Constance. Rosie Thomas

I remember cotton sundresses and shady hats, uniforms and cocktails and the plock of tennis balls, Xan waiting for me in the bar as I arrived from a day’s work at my desk in Roddy Boy’s outer office.

      Xan saying, ‘Darling, let’s have a drink. I’ve got to go away again tomorrow. It’s a bit of a bore, isn’t it?’

      ‘Yes, Madam?’

      The gatekeeper calls out to me, and a man in a dark business suit raises the electric window of his BMW as it glides through the gates. The next car in line rolls forward.

      ‘Yes, Madam?’

      ‘I … nothing. I’m sorry. A mistake.’

      What was I looking for? All the businessmen and chic women and obedient children in these cars are Egyptian. The enclave of empire that I knew, the shady mown-grass sanctuary of British assumptions and attitudes, vanished long ago. The people are all dead. I am still here but I am as much of an anachronism as tea dances and air raid warnings.

      I am still here.

      Instead of making me sad, the thought fills me with a sudden reckless appetite. Through the window of the taxi I can see the white oval of Ruby’s face, watching me.

      It’s getting dark. I pull off my sunglasses and settle myself back in my seat.

      ‘Let’s go to Groppi’s,’ I say, slapping my hands on the plastic dashboard so that everybody jumps.

      Nafouz asks, ‘Are you sure, Doctor?’

      I insist, very brightly, ‘Certainly I am sure.’

      So the four of us find ourselves sitting at a table in the little café garden of Groppi’s.

      Once, everyone in Cairo who could afford it came here. Vine tendrils smothering the walls and strings of coloured lights made it seem far removed from the city’s white glare. Ladies in furs sat at these little round tables drinking tea with men with silky moustaches, and officers ordered cream cakes for their girls.

      It’s dusty and neglected now, with an unswept floor and waiters in dirty jackets. The two boys are hungry and Ruby looks bored.

      ‘What would you all like? What shall we order?’ I say encouragingly, but no one seems to know. We make a strange foursome. ‘We must have ice cream.’ I remember the ice creams, mint-green and luscious pink with stripes of coffee-brown, all with tiny crystals of ice bedded in them. They were served in cut-glass coupes, decorated with furled wafers.

      Ruby is eyeing me. No one seems to want ice cream.

      ‘I’m sorry. It’s different.’ I can feel the suck and swirl of time past, rocking and pulling at my feet like a vicious current. I’m looking at the menu, a dreary plastic-laminated affair sticky with fingerprints. The two boys are smoking, giving each other looks out of the corners of their liquid eyes. Ruby leans forward to help herself from one of the packs on the table.

      ‘Does Lesley let you do that?’

      She gives a sharp cough of laughter and smoke pours from between her teeth. Her odd mixture of childishness and bravado tickles me, and I find myself laughing too. The atmosphere changes and we order toasted sandwiches, far too many, and coffees and pastries and bottles of Coca-Cola. It is after sundown so the boys break their Ramadan fast with gusto and the strange meal somehow becomes what I wanted, a celebration.

      ‘Go on,’ I urge them, over the plates of food that the waiters slap down on the table. ‘Go on, eat up.’

      They tell me about their family. Father dead, several younger siblings whom they must help their mother to support. Ruby’s beau is the clever one, the one they are banking on. He looks very young to carry such a weight of responsibility.

      ‘I learn to speak English, and also some computer studies. But it is not easy to pay for teaching.’

      And he meets my eyes. They have seen where I live and they probably think I am rich. In fact I am poor, certainly by European standards. I murmur in Arabic, a conventional piety. Ruby is looking away, thinking her own thoughts.

      The table top is pooled with coffee and there are still sandwiches and little cakes glistening with fat and sugar to be eaten but Nafouz is tapping his watch.

      ‘Time for work. We are both night shift.’

      Ash wraps a sandwich in a paper napkin and holds it out to me. ‘You have eaten nothing.’

      ‘I don’t want it. Take it with you, for later.’

      ‘I may?’

      ‘Of course.’

      I call for, and pay, the enormous bill. It is a long time since I have been to a café, much longer since I have paid for four people at once. Before everyone stands up I say, ‘Thank you for this evening, Nafouz. Thank you, Ash. I enjoyed it very much.’

      This is the truth. It has helped me to see the today versions of yesterday’s places. Memory is a little like découpage, I think, a harmless activity that I was encouraged to practise when I was ill as a child, involving pasting cut-out views and scenes to build up a picture in layers. The build-up creates a kind of depth. It adds perspective. Of course the base layers are fading and partially obscured. The old Groppi’s I knew, like Cairo itself, has been overlaid by the present version. Because I am here, seeing it as it is now, I realise that there is nothing mysterious or fearful in this. Of course I can’t catch and keep everything. I can only strive for what is important; my memories of Xan.

      Ruby is standing up, looking at me, a little perplexed. ‘Iris?’

      I collect myself. ‘Yes? What is it?’

      ‘We’ve got to go. Ash is late.’

      They are waiting in the doorway. On the way back to the taxi the boys take my arms, as if I am their own grandmother. I am glad of the support because I am very tired. On the way home, I look out at the lights and the thick crowds in the streets. Nafouz has yet another cigarette clenched between his teeth.

      Behind me, I can hear Ruby and Ash whispering on the back seat. When we reach the house they say goodbye to each other offhandedly, in the way that the young do, not making another arrangement because they don’t need to. It’s understood that they will meet again just as soon as possible. I feel a thin stab of envy, and then amusement at the nonsense of this.

      Mamdooh and Auntie seem actually to have been waiting in the hallway for our return. At any rate, they spring from nowhere as soon as Ruby and I come in.

      With the afternoon’s change of perspective I notice how we have become interdependent, the three of us, over the years. I need them and they need me to need them.

      ‘We have had an excellent outing. A drive, then Groppi’s.’

      An idea has just formed in my head and I keep it fixed there as I unpin my headscarf and hand it to Auntie. ‘We’ll have some tea later, upstairs. Ruby, Mamdooh, will you come with me?’

      Ruby shuffled in their wake back down the passageway to Iris’s study. Mamdooh was trying to insist that Mum-reese should rest, Iris sailed ahead with the absent but intent look on her face that Ruby was beginning to recognise.

      ‘I think there is a box in there.’ Iris pointed to a pair of cupboard doors painted with faded white birds and garlands of leaves.

      ‘A box?’ Mamdooh frowned.

      ‘Exactly. If you open the doors for me?’

      Ruby yawned. It had been OK, going out in the car with Iris, but now Ash had gone to work and she wouldn’t see him until tomorrow. She would have liked to spend a bit more time on her own with him.

      ‘There it is.’ Iris pointed.

      Mamdooh lifted a pile of dusty books, some sheaves of printed music and an old-fashioned clothes brush off the lid of a dark-green tin box. It had handles on the sides and he stooped and puffed a little as he hauled it off the shelf. The dust that rose when he