City of Gold

‘Where is she?’

‘She went to see her mother in Alexandria.’

‘Is she sick?’

‘Her mother? No. No, not as far as I know.’

‘Why isn’t she at work then?’

Marker hesitated. It was difficult to explain about Alice Stanhope. ‘Her mother … that is to say her family are good friends with the brigadier. That’s really how she came to be working here.’

‘I see.’

‘Oh, don’t get me wrong, sir. Alice Stanhope is a highly intelligent young woman. She speaks several languages and knows more about this wretched country than any other European I’ve met.’

‘But?’

‘Well, her mother knows everyone. I mean everyone.’ He went to the door and looked over the balcony. Then he came back. ‘Yes, I thought that was her car. It’s an MG sports car, I recognised the sound of the engine.’

‘Do you mean to say she parks her car on the parade ground?’ said Ross incredulously.

‘Her mother arranged it with the brigadier,’ said Marker. In a way Marker enjoyed explaining the situation to his boss, just to watch his face.

‘I can’t wait to meet her,’ said Ross.

‘You won’t be disappointed,’ said Captain Marker.

He guessed of course that the big surprise was yet to come, so he was watching very carefully when Alice Stanhope came down the exterior balcony and swung in through the door. ‘I’m so sorry I’m late, sir,’ she said. Then, remembering she should have saluted, she came to attention and put her hat back on.

‘That’s quite all right,’ said Ross. Until that moment he’d firmly intended to leave his quarters that evening and disappear, thanking his lucky stars for preserving him. Now his plans, and indeed his life, changed. He would have to come back to the office tomorrow.

Alice Stanhope was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. He must see her again, if only just once.

2

The region called El Birkeh, where so many of Cairo’s brothels were found, stretched from the railway station almost to Ezbekiya Gardens. This forbidden area – marked OUT OF BOUNDS by means of circular signs bearing a black cross – was constantly patrolled by red-capped military policemen. Its main streets were Clot Bey – named after a physician who did notable work on venereal disease, and Wagh El Birkeh, after which the whole ‘Birkeh’ district was named. For centuries this pleasure district had been spoken of with wonder throughout the Arab world, from Casablanca to Zanzibar.

The extreme western edge of El Birkeh was a maze of narrow alleys, twisting and turning between low mud-brick buildings. Day and night it was always populous, rowdy and predatory. Once musicians, magicians, soothsayers and dancers had plied their trades along with the whores. Now, in January 1942, the cabarets, peep shows and whores predominated. Women of all colours, all sizes, all shapes and all nationalities were to be had here. There were women for the rich and women for the poor. They sat on their tiny balconies calling down to men in the streets below. They were available in accommodations that varied from curtained alcoves in mud-wall huts to ornate rooms in palatial houses.

One of the more expensive establishments in El Birkeh was the brothel the soldiers called Lady Fitzherbert’s after the heroine in a ribald army song. The woman they called Lady Fitz was a fifty-year-old Greek dentist who’d arrived in Cairo penniless in 1939. The war, and the buildup of the army, was making her rich. She had already become one of the most influential people in Cairo. Lady Fitz ran her establishment with all the managerial skills of a Swiss hotelier. She sent gold coins to the ministers, provided the choicest young women for the Cairo police inspectors and gallons of whisky for the British red caps.

It was a cardinal rule with Lady Fitz that she did business only with those she knew. She knew the two soldiers who were using one of her best upstairs rooms. They came regularly. She knew them as Sergeant Smith and Sergeant Percy. What their real names were she did not care; the money they paid was genuine and they never gave her any trouble. She looked at her watch. The expensive Longines wristwatch was one of her few concessions to luxury, for her hair was simply combed, her makeup minimal, her dark blue cotton dress was simple and her flat-heeled shoes purchased in the souk. It was almost time; she made a signal to one of her girls.

The two soldiers had been upstairs for almost an hour. It was time that Lady Fitz sent the girl up to them. She was a beautiful half-Tunisian child who didn’t know the date of her own birth. She knew only that all her family had been killed during the fighting in Sidi Barrani in December 1940. From there she had walked about 350 miles to Cairo. Lady Fitz had found her begging outside the great al Azhar mosque. She’d looked after her well, and was saving her for someone special, which meant someone who could pay.

Sergeant Percy always paid for everything well in advance, and without argument or complaint. Sergeant Percy was different from all the others. He wore South African badges, but she was not convinced that he was from South Africa. She didn’t inquire. The important thing to her was that he was quiet, sober and polite. He seldom smiled, never made a joke and always wanted a different girl. It was the sort of behaviour that Lady Fitz expected of men, and she liked him. The other one, Smith, was sober too but fat, flashy and arrogant and too ready with sarcastic jokes. He ordered everyone around as though they were his subordinates, but for Lady Fitz his worst fault was in showing a complete indifference to her girls. Sometimes she wondered whether he was a homosexual. She could have offered him boys, men, anything he wanted, but he showed no interest in her offerings. She’d never fathomed him.

‘Get ready now,’ she told the girl. ‘Prepare the tea. It will soon be time to go to them. Do exactly as I told you.’

The girl had that earnest expression with which many children face the world of grown-ups. She looked at Lady Fitz and nodded solemnly.

The rough surfaces of the khaki uniforms the two soldiers wore, and even their tanned flesh, was made into gold by the light of the oil lamp. The big brass bedstead glinted like gold, and across it a lace shawl had been draped. The polished metal fittings on the chest of drawers glittered, and the flame of the oil lamp was seen again in the swivelled vanity mirror that reflected the room. To a casual observer they could have been old friends getting drunk together, but a closer look might have revealed the sort of tension that came from arguing and bargaining, for when the two men met here it was for business, not for pleasure. A brothel provides a discreet rendezvous for men who want their meetings to remain secret.

Sergeant Smith was on the bed. At first his feet had been resting on the large oriental carpet but, having stubbed out his cigarette, he untied his laces, eased off his boots, and swung his stockinged feet up onto the bed. ‘Ahh!’ he said wriggling his toes and delighting in the feeling of resting full-length upon the freshly laundered bedding.

Smith was thirty-three years old. His cheerful face was made memorable by a waxed moustache, its ends twisted into sharp points. The Grenadier Guards drill sergeant who had taught him, and his recruit intake, to march had had a moustache like that, and Smith had immediately decided to grow one for the duration of the war.

Smith glanced at the mirror to see himself and the big bed reflected there, and then he sipped at his glass of lemonade. On his eighteenth birthday he had promised his father that he would never touch alcohol, and he had kept his promise. Even at his wedding he’d stuck to soft drinks. That was long ago. Now his wife and two daughters lived in the upstairs part of his mother-in-law’s house near the big railway depot at Crewe in Cheshire, England. Although he missed his family, Smith did not brood about things he could not change. Before the war he’d worked for the railway as a senior storeroom clerk, and they were holding his job open for him. Meanwhile he was making a great deal of money, and his work did not entail exposure to enemy bombs, bullets or shells. As Smith repeatedly said in his letters home, he was a very lucky man.

The other soldier, Percy, was sitting in a large wicker armchair. He was younger, twenty-seven years old, and exceptionally neat and tidy. He’d sewed on the buttons, the South African shoulder flashes, and the white, coiled-snake unit badges, with the same meticulous care that he serviced the engine of his truck and oiled the guns he used. The tight webbing belt he wore was perfectly brushed and its brass-work was fastidiously polished so as to leave no stains on the webbing. The only jarring note in Percy’s uniformed appearance was the dagger attached to his belt. It was a German army trench knife. Some people said that Percy had killed its previous owner.

Percy was not his real name. He’d adopted the name Percy on the battlefield when he deserted. That’s why he liked to call it his nom de guerre. He was very adaptable. He told anyone interested that he had made the transition from civilian to soldier by the same sort of effort that he’d devoted to getting good exam results at university. Percy’s whole life had been marked by his willingness to accept his new circumstances and adapt to them. One of Percy’s lecturers had said that Homo sapiens survived, and came to control the planet, only because he’d adapted more completely and more quickly than had other species to changing climates and environments. Percy took that lesson to heart.

Now he looked at Sergeant Smith without admiration. Smith’s hair was dark, wavy and somewhat dishevelled; Percy’s hair was fair, bleached by the sun, and cut short in military style. The sergeant was at least ten pounds over-weight; Percy was slim and athletic. Percy’s khaki shirt was starched and ironed; Smith’s shirt was marked by a few drips of lemonade. For Smith the abundance of native labour meant that he could change his shirt as many times as he liked, and such marks and stains were of no importance. But Percy was fussy about his clothes and often ironed them himself.

There had been a long silence. Sergeant Smith said, ‘All good things come to an end, Percy.’ And as if savouring his own keen wit he gave a brief smile.

‘It is your loss,’ said Percy. His voice was throaty and his English had that hard accent that was not unlike the one that distinguished many of the South Africans, especially the ones from the farms. ‘I thought a family man like you would want a nest egg for after the war.’ He drank some beer. It was local beer, little more than chilled coloured water, but that suited him. He had to keep a clear head.

‘Who told you I was a family man?’ said Smith, as though a dark secret had been unearthed.

‘It was a manner of speaking,’ said Percy. He was unruffled and his cane armchair creaked as he sat well back in it, his legs extended in front of him as if he had not a care in the world.

‘You don’t mind, then?’

Percy put his hand into his shirt. After unbuttoning a secret pocket, which he’d sewn there, he brandished a bundle of paper money. ‘What is it we owe you, nine hundred Egyptian? I have it written down somewhere.’

‘What’s it matter how much money?’ said Smith, and a note of anxiety came into his voice. ‘I can’t get the bloody stuff back to England. I’m up to my ears in Egyptian money. The sergeant in the cashier’s office promised to fix it, but suddenly he’s scared shitless.’

‘Is that the problem? Getting the money back to England?’ Percy leaned forward and passed the money to Smith.

Smith took it. ‘I told you. I don’t want any more deals. We’ve got a new young officer. Instead of just signing the inventory on the dotted line, he wants to see everything he’s signing for.’ Smith shuffled the money in his hands, as though counting it. Then he slipped it inside his paybook, but he didn’t put it away. He shuffled the money around in the pages of his paybook as if comparing the two, weighing the bundle of money as if still trying to make up his mind.

‘Because I might be able to get your money to England.’

Smith looked up suddenly. ‘Are you listening to me, you prick? Every item! My officer wants to see every item before he signs. If he goes raking through all my stores, he’ll soon discover that half the stuff is missing.’

‘But that is no trouble. You can write it off as damaged, or lost to enemy action or beyond local repair or whatever.’

Smith was angry now. ‘Not tons and tons and bloody tons of “warlike stores” … not in the week or so I’ve got before he signs the inventory.’

‘Pull yourself together, Smith!’

‘Don’t tell me to pull myself together, you ugly little bastard. I just don’t want to do business with you people, that’s at the root of it. I don’t trust you. Where is all this stuff going? Who are you selling it to?’ He sniffed and pushed out his legs on the bed. ‘South African, are you? You sound like a bloody German to me.’ He still held the money on his lap, holding it tightly enough to reveal that he was not as indifferent to it as he pretended.

Percy said nothing.

Percy’s silence made Smith more angry. He thought he saw a look of amused contempt on the younger man’s face. For two pins he’d pick up this fellow bodily and shake the life out of him. Although Smith’s affluence had encouraged him to put on weight, it was not so long since he’d been a heavyweight on the railway boxing team. On one memorable occasion he’d knocked out the reigning champion from the locomotive works. The loco men were big brawny fellows, and this one had weighed in seven pounds heavier than Smith.