Over to You Read online

  The Stag was very old and wise; he never rushed any fences. He was twenty-seven, much older than anyone else in the squadron, including the C.O., and his judgement was much respected by the others.

  ‘Let’s do a little shopping first,’ he said.

  ‘Then what?’ said the voice from the bathroom.

  ‘Then we can consider the other situation.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Stag?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know any women here?’

  ‘I used to. I used to know a Turkish girl with very white skin called Wenka, and a Yugoslav girl who was six inches taller than I, called Kiki, and another who I think was Syrian. I can’t remember her name.’

  ‘Ring them up,’ said Stuffy.

  ‘I’ve done it. I did it while you were getting the whisky. They’ve all gone. It isn’t any good.’

  ‘It’s never any good,’ Stuffy said.

  The Stag said, ‘We’ll go shopping first. There is plenty of time.’

  In an hour Stuffy got out of the bath. They both dressed themselves in clean khaki shorts and shirts and wandered downstairs, through the lobby of the hotel and out into the bright hot street. The Stag put on his sunglasses.

  Stuffy said, ‘I know. I want a pair of sunglasses.’

  ‘All right. We’ll go and buy some.’

  They stopped a gharry, got in and told the driver to go to Cicurel’s. Stuffy bought his sunglasses and the Stag bought some poker dice, then they wandered out again on to the hot crowded street.

  ‘Did you see that girl?’ said Stuffy.

  ‘The one that sold us the sunglasses?’

  ‘Yes. That dark one.’

  ‘Probably Turkish,’ said Stag.

  Stuffy said, ‘I don’t care what she was. She was terrific. Didn’t you think she was terrific?’

  They were walking along the Sharia Kasr-el-Nil with their hands in their pockets, and Stuffy was wearing the sunglasses which he had just bought. It was a hot dusty afternoon, and the sidewalk was crowded with Egyptians and Arabs and small boys with bare feet. The flies followed the small boys and buzzed around their eyes, trying to get at the inflammation which was in them, which was there because their mothers had done something terrible to those eyes when the boys were young, so that they would not be eligible for military conscription when they grew older. The small boys pattered along beside the Stag and Stuffy shouting, ‘Baksheesh, baksheesh,’ in shrill insistent voices, and the flies followed the small boys. There was the smell of Cairo, which is not like the smell of any other city. It comes not from any one thing or from any one place; it comes from everything everywhere; from the gutters and the sidewalks, from the houses and the shops and the things in the shops and the food cooking in the shops, from the horses and the dung of the horses in the streets and from the drains; it comes from the people and the way the sun bears down upon the people and from the way the sun bears down upon the gutters and the drains and the horses and the food and the refuse in the streets. It is a rare, pungent smell, like something which is sweet and rotting and hot and salty and bitter all at the same time, and it is never absent, even in the cool of the early morning.

  The two pilots walked along slowly among the crowd.

  ‘Didn’t you think she was terrific?’ said Stuffy. He wanted to know what the Stag thought.

  ‘She was all right.’

  ‘Certainly she was all right. You know what, Stag?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I would like to take that girl out tonight.’

  They crossed over a street and walked on a little farther.

  The Stag said, ‘Well, why don’t you? Why don’t you ring up Rosette?’

  ‘Who in the hell’s Rosette?’

  ‘Madame Rosette,’ said the Stag. ‘She is a great woman.’

  They were passing a place called Tim’s Bar. It was run by an Englishman called Tim Gilfillan who had been a quartermaster sergeant in the last war and who had somehow managed to get left behind in Cairo when the army went home.

  ‘Tim’s,’ said the Stag. ‘Let’s go in.’

  There was no one inside except for Tim, who was arranging his bottles on shelves behind the bar.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ he said, turning around. ‘Where you boys been all this time?’

  ‘Hello, Tim.’

  He did not remember them, but he knew by their looks that they were in from the desert.

  ‘How’s my old friend Graziani?’ he said, leaning his elbows on the counter.

  ‘He’s bloody close,’ said the Stag. ‘He’s outside Mersah.’

  ‘What you flying now?’

  ‘Gladiators.’

  ‘Hell, they had those here eight years ago.’

  ‘Same ones still here,’ said the Stag. ‘They’re clapped out.’ They got their whisky and carried the glasses over to a table in the corner.

  Stuffy said, ‘Who’s this Rosette?’

  The Stag took a long drink and put down the glass.

  ‘She’s a great woman,’ he said.

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘She’s a filthy old Syrian Jewess.’

  ‘All right,’ said Stuffy, ‘all right, but what about her’

  ‘Well,’ said Stag, ‘I’ll tell you. Madame Rosette runs the biggest brothel in the world. It is said that she can get you any girl that you want in the whole of Cairo.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘No, it’s true. You just ring her up and tell her where you saw the woman, where she was working, what shop and at which counter, together with an accurate description, and she will do the rest.’

  ‘Don’t be such a bloody fool,’ said Stuffy.

  ‘It’s true. It’s absolutely true. Thirty-three squadron told me about her.’

  ‘They were pulling your leg.’

  ‘All right. You go and look her up in the phone book.’

  ‘She wouldn’t be in the phone book under that name.’

  ‘I’m telling you she is,’ said Stag. ‘Go and look her up under Rosette. You’ll see I’m right’

  Stuffy did not believe him, but he went over to Tim and asked him for a telephone directory and brought it back to the table. He opened it and turned the pages until he came to R-o-s. He ran his finger down the column. Roseppi… Rosery… Rosette. There it was, Rosette, Madame and the address and number, clearly printed in the book. The Stag was watching him.

  ‘Got it?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, here it is. Madame Rosette.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you go and ring her up?’

  ‘What shall I say?’

  The Stag looked down into his glass and poked the ice with his finger.

  ‘Tell her you are a Colonel,’ he said. ‘Colonel Higgins; she mistrusts pilot officers. And tell her that you have seen a beautiful dark girl selling sunglasses at Cicurel’s and that you would like, as you put it, to take her out to dinner.’

  ‘There isn’t a telephone here.’

  ‘Oh yes there is. There’s one over there.’

  Stuffy looked around and saw the telephone on the wall at the end of the bar.

  ‘I haven’t got a piastre piece.’

  ‘Well, I have,’ said Stag. He fished in his pocket and put a piastre on the table.

  ‘Tim will hear everything I say.’

  ‘What the hell does that matter? He probably rings her up himself. You’re windy,’ he added.

  ‘You’re a shit,’ said Stuffy.

  Stuffy was just a child. He was nineteen; seven whole years younger than the Stag. He was fairly tall and he was thin, with a lot of black hair and a handsome wide-mouthed face which was coffee brown from the sun of the desert. He was unquestionably the finest pilot in the squadron, and already in these early days, his score was fourteen Italians confirmed destroyed. On the ground he moved slowly and lazily like a tired person and he thought slowly and lazily like a sleepy child, but when he was up in the air his mind was quick and his movements were quick, so quick that