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

would not be good news. Hassan stepped back again, briefly inclining his head towards me.

      I could already tell from Xan’s face what was coming.

      ‘I have to go,’ he said.

      ‘When?’

      ‘Now. I’ve got to be in place beside the road out of el Agheila with my patrol, tonight.’

      By my half-informed reckoning this was about four hundred miles west behind the enemy front line, which was then on the Libyan border.

      ‘Tonight? How? Isn’t it … a long way?’

      ‘Wainwright’s here with the WACO.’

      Tellforce had a small two-seater aircraft, usually piloted by the Tellforce commander himself, Lieutenant-Colonel Gus Wainwright.

      ‘He’s waiting at the airfield.’ Xan took my face between his hands. Hassan had turned away and stood like a stone statue, guarding the steps and the dingy house and – I saw – Xan himself. I also saw that a glitter of excited anticipation had kindled behind Xan’s eyes. Now it was here he was ready to go. He wanted to go, he was already rushing towards the adventure, whatever was waiting for him. I felt cold, even with the afternoon’s humid weight pressing against the nape of my neck. But somehow I smiled, my mouth curling against his as he kissed me.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured.

      Against all the impulses, which were to cling to him like an importunate child and beg him to stay, I pressed the flat of my hands against his shirt. Somehow, as the kiss ended I stepped out of his arms and put a tiny distance between us. Hassan edged closer by the same amount. First and most importantly it was the two of them now, and Xan’s Yeomanry patrol, and the desert; not Xan and me. I would have plenty of time in the coming weeks to get used to that order of priority, before he came back to Cairo again.

      ‘Come back when you can,’ I whispered. ‘Go on, go now.’

      Hassan was already moving towards the Tellforce staff car that I saw parked under the shade of a tree. Xan turned away, then swung back and roughly pulled me into his arms again, and there was the raw bite of his mouth against mine and a blur of his black hair, and the buttons of his shirt gouged into my skin.

      ‘I love you,’ he said.

      ‘I know.’ The smile that I had forced into existence was real now, breaking out of me like a flower from a bud. ‘And I love you. I’ll be here. Just go.’

      Hassan reached the car and slid into the driver’s seat. Xan sprinted after him, then slowed again and shouted back over his shoulder, ‘Will you go and visit Noake for me?’

      I had already decided that I must do this. ‘Of course I will.’

      He wrenched open the passenger door and sketched a salute. With one hand I shaded my eyes against the sun, and I touched the fingers of the other to my lips and blew him a kiss. The skidding car tyres raised little puffs of dust that hung in the air like a whitish mist for long seconds after the car itself had vanished.

      When I reached the hospital I went first to ask after Private Ridley. I was directed to a voluntary aid supervisor in an unventilated ground-floor office that reminded me of my own slice of working corridor. The woman was French but she explained in neutral English that the soldier had died early that morning without regaining consciousness.

      ‘I’m sorry. Was he a relative? Or a friend, perhaps?’ She was looking at me curiously.

      ‘Neither. A friend of mine is, was, his commanding officer.’

      ‘I see.’ She gathered together several sheets of paper closely typed with names, and patted them so their edges were aligned. She had well-manicured nails, a plain gold wedding band. Private Ridley had died probably while Xan and I were lying in each other’s arms. Their loss running parallel with our happiness, somewhere in England there was a mother, a family waiting, perhaps a fiancée or a wife who didn’t yet know that he was dead. I frowned, trying to line up these separate unwieldy facts like the supervisor’s sheets of paper, and failing. Xan and I were alive, today, with blood thrilling in our veins. Another man was dead, and others had lost half a face, two strong legs. These particular known individuals suddenly seemed to stand at the head of an immense army.

      As they marched in my head the living were outnumbered and overpowered by the slaughtered and the maimed, and the hollow skulls and shattered limbs snuffed out hope and happiness: not just Xan’s and mine, perhaps, and that of Private Ridley’s family and Ruth Macnamara’s patient who couldn’t dance any more, but all the world’s. Zazie’s and Shepheard’s and the Gezira Club were dark, and crowded to the doors with dead men.

      I sat in silence, shivering a little.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ the Frenchwoman said again. ‘Can I help you with any other thing, maybe?’ She had work to do, perhaps the same news to convey about dozens more men.

      I managed to say, ‘No. Thank you.’

      I left the office and found my way up to the ward.

      Noake was lying propped against his pillows, the lower half of his face masked with fresh dressings, but when he saw me he lifted his hand in a little flourish of greeting. I sat down in Xan’s place, intending to talk cheerfully to him in the same way that Xan had done. I wouldn’t tell him about Ridley’s death, not yet.

      ‘Hello, there. How do you feel? You’ve only got me tonight, Mr Noake, I’m afraid. Captain Molyneux’s been whisked back to the desert, by air. Colonel Wainwright flew in today to get him, what d’you think of that?’

      I could see what he thought of it. Beneath the bruised and puffy lids his eyes glimmered with interest and amusement, but there was also the ghost of a cheeky wink that acknowledged that officers and commanders flew. Everyone in Tellforce sweated in trucks across the endless dunes, digging out embedded vehicles and dragging the heavy steel channels that were laid under the wheels to give them purchase, but other ranks didn’t get many variations to this routine. But I thought that it must also have been a welcome sight for patrols buried deep in the desert when the little single-engined plane came humming out of the sky and touched down on an impromptu runway levelled in the sand.

      ‘I don’t know when he’ll be back,’ I blurted out.

      To my surprise, Noake’s hand crawled across the sheet, found mine and grasped it tightly. I looked down at our linked fingers, and the tubes running into his arm through which they must be feeding him.

      Noake had seen Xan and me together. He couldn’t speak, his shattered mouth couldn’t form the words, but he was letting me know that he sympathised with the lucky anguish that I suffered on parting from my lover.

      For a moment, I had to keep my head bent.

      Corporal Noake’s hand was large and heavy. The nails were torn and blackened, and there were deep fissures round the nail margins and across the knuckles. Xan had told me that he was a mechanic, gifted at coaxing new leases of life out of their battered trucks.

      ‘Back for Christmas, that’s what he said,’ I murmured.

      I didn’t know how much I was supposed to know, or how much Noake should know that I knew. But he wasn’t going to be able to tell anyone and I longed to talk about Xan.

      ‘I’ve no idea what the real chances of that are. I don’t suppose anyone does, do you? But there’s a big push coming, everyone’s talking about it, aren’t they? I’m concerned for him, because I know a bit about what Tellforce does. But Xan’s got to do his job like everyone else, like you did, Mr Noake.’

      And like Private Ridley did. I sat up straighter and looked into the injured man’s eyes, remembering the involuntary kindling of excitement I had seen in Xan. ‘It must be hard for you, to miss what’s going to happen.’

      Noake nodded, his fingers still tight over mine.

      ‘We’ll have to keep each other company,’ I said.