Rosie Thomas 2-Book Collection One: Iris and Ruby, Constance. Rosie Thomas
glamour obliterated his assumed anonymity and my dazed happiness lent me a beauty I didn’t really possess.
Wherever I have travelled since, through all the years, the photograph has come with me.
And this is the picture that Ruby asked me about.
What answer did I give? I can’t remember.
How can I find the words to tell her, my grandchild, all this history? I can’t even catch hold of it myself. If I try to stalk it, it floats away out of reach and leaves me with the featureless sand, the empty place on the shelf. So I have to be patient and let the memories and the dreams come, then try to distinguish them.
But I have never been a patient woman.
Ruby’s quaint offer touched me, and so did the way she set it out with assurances about her shells and beetles. I can imagine her as a smaller child, dark-browed and serious, walled up in a bedroom decorated by Lesley and poring over her collections. Lining up objects, probably in an attempt to fix an unwieldy universe.
She is an unusual creature. Her coming is an unlooked-for blessing.
* * *
That same evening we went back to the Scottish Military Hospital to see Corporal Noake once more. Jessie James wanted us all to go out to dinner, he wanted to set in train one of the long evenings of Cairo celebration, but Xan insisted that first he must go to see his men.
From the medical staff we learned that the news of the other soldier, Private Ridley, wasn’t good. As a result of his injuries a severe infection had set in and he was in a deeper coma, but Xan didn’t tell Noake about this. He just sat there on the edge of the bed, talking cheerfully about going to the pictures and drinking beer, then laughing about the desert and some place they had been to where the flies swarmed so thickly that they couldn’t put food in their mouths without swallowing dozens of them. Noake’s response was to grasp Xan’s wrist and give the ghost of a nod.
I saw Ruth Macnamara moving screens and bending over the inanimate men. She didn’t appear to hurry but everything she did looked quick and deft. I wanted to talk to her again so I left Xan to his monologue and followed her the length of the ward.
At the opposite end from the sluice room was a kind of loggia, open to the air on one long side. Two or three men sat in chairs and there were two beds parked against the wall. Ruth was bending over one of the beds, examining the occupant.
‘Hullo, Miss,’ a young man in one of the chairs called out. ‘Looking for me?’
It was a relief to hear a strong voice.
‘Not exactly. But now I’m here, is there anything I can do for you?’
The man grinned. ‘How about a dance?’
I was going to say something about finding a gramophone or maybe he could sing, but then my eyes travelled downwards and I saw that the folds of blanket below the humps of his knees were flat and empty.
The young soldier added softly, ‘Well, perhaps not. Another time, eh?’
Ruth straightened up. ‘Come on, Doug. They’ll fix you up with some falsies and you’ll be dancing like Fred Astaire. Hello again, Iris.’
‘She’s right,’ I said to Doug.
‘Medical, are you?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I admitted. I wished I were. I wished I could do something – anything – for these maimed men and for the prone, silent ones who lay in their rows in the ward. I wished I could do anything useful at all, instead of just typing Roddy Boy’s memoranda and placing two custard cream biscuits in his china saucer at precisely eleven every morning.
‘Ah. Well, you’re pretty enough just to stand there and be admired.’
Ruth swung round. ‘That’s enough of that. Iris, can you give me a hand here? Round the other side of the bed.’
I stood opposite her, with the wounded man’s body between us.
‘He needs turning,’ she said. The man’s eyes fixed on her face, then on mine. His chest was heavily bandaged, and curled edges of antiseptic yellow dressing protruded. I concentrated on not imagining the shattered muscle and bone within.
‘Sorry about this,’ he gasped.
‘It’s all right,’ Ruth said briskly and I wasn’t sure whether she was talking to the soldier or me. We slid our forearms under the man’s body and grasped each other’s wrists.
‘Now, one two three, lift.’
He was hot, and quite light. Ruth and I shuffled our arms and as we hoisted him I saw the shadow trapped in the vulnerable hollow beside the crest of his pelvic bone. Gently, we let him down again in a slightly different position.
‘Better. Thanks,’ he said.
‘Is your assistant coming again tomorrow, Nurse Mac?’ one of Doug’s companions called out.
‘I’ll try to,’ I said.
Ruth raised an eyebrow. ‘Volunteering, are you?’ She was moving on and I was sharply aware that she had a lot to do. She made me feel superfluous and rather clumsy.
‘I’ve got a job already.’
‘What do you do?’
‘Typist. GHQ. Very humble.’
‘Oh, well. You must get asked out a lot, all those officers. Look, your friend’s coming.’
Xan was walking towards us along the ward.
‘Fiancé.’ The word was out before I considered it, with all the pride and satisfaction that I should have kept to myself.
Ruth’s glance flicked over me. She was amused. ‘Really? Congratulations. When’s the wedding?’
‘Oh, we haven’t fixed that yet. We … we only decided today. Let me introduce you. This is Captain Xan Molyneux. Xan, Ruth Macnamara.’
They shook hands as a rigid-looking senior nurse in a dark-blue uniform appeared in a doorway.
‘Oh God, here’s the old battleaxe. Look, where do you live?’
I told her and Ruth smiled briefly.
‘What about you?’
‘Out on the Heliopolis road. It’s cheap. I’ve got to get a move on now. Leave me your phone number?’
‘I’ll come in again. Won’t we, Xan?’
We. Would I ever get used to the luxury of using one little word?
‘Good. ’Bye, then.’ Ruth fled away down the ward.
‘You’ve made a friend,’ Xan said.
‘I hope so.’ I wanted to know Ruth Macnamara better. And although the hospital was a sad and fearful place it drew me back. It was full of people who were doing what they could, certain in the knowledge that what they did made a difference.
We did go out to celebrate our engagement. We started with cocktails at Shepheard’s and then dinner on a boat moored on the Nile, where Jessie proposed a toast and a circle of faces glimmered at us over the rims of champagne glasses. Faria was there, with the poet who was looking more mournful and whose clothes were even more crumpled and dusted in cigarette ash than usual. Sarah was still not back from her trip, but there were some of the Cherry Pickers and Xan’s friend the mysterious Major David, and Betty Hopwood in a new dress of some iridescent greeny-black material that Faria whispered made her look like a giant beetle.
‘How heavenly for you both,’ Betty shrieked. ‘When’s the wedding?’
Everything did happen very quickly in Cairo. There was no reason to put anything off even until tomorrow or indeed to deny ourselves any of life’s pleasures, because there was always the likelihood that the war would intervene, but I murmured that we hadn’t decided