Alligator Playground

Holiday

DANIEL HAD WORKED through Christmas to New Year so as to wangle a fortnight’s holiday in January with Jean to Egypt. On the all-night run down to London the A1 was awash with rain, and the Dartford Tunnel no picnic, but they made Gatwick car park with an hour to spare at half-past six.

The booking halls were calm and they were soon through passports and security. Daniel bought whisky, vodka, and four cartons of fags at the duty-free before taking that funny little internal train to the final departure room. Jean bagged a seat and read the Sun, looking after his big tranny radio which he couldn’t be without because he wanted music and football results at all hours and wherever he was. He even carried a coil of aerial wire to get stations loud and clear. She smiled at him striding around the shaver and watch showcases like a security guard trying to pass himself off as an ordinary passenger.

Rain beaded the windows as the Boeing built up revs and began its run. ‘I hope it don’t skid’ — at which he could only laugh. The packed plane lifted straight into grey-belly cloud, juddering a few moments before breaking through and leaving the miserable weather below. She had noticed no dawn in the lounges but now the sun was brilliant in an upturned basin of blue.

‘God’s kitchens must be up here,’ she said. Such a picture didn’t help the jitters, which she didn’t mention in case Daniel got rattled. He was never nervous, because every year before they were married he’d flown to Benidorm with his mates. Safety belts unclicked, she released his hand. ‘I hope the kids’ll be all right.’

‘They will, don’t worry.’ He passed a cigarette, and held the lighted match. ‘Your mother’s good with ’em.’ She talked as if there were ten, instead of only two as yet. ‘She’ll keep the house warm as well.’

‘How long before we get there?’

‘Five bloody hours.’ He pulled out the airline magazine to see where they were going. ‘They’ll give us summat to eat soon. A bucket to drink as well, I hope.’

The yellow-orange sunball just above the tops of the palms was sinking while they looked at it. ‘I never thought I’d see this.’

‘It’s marvellous.’ She held his arm. The first room they had been shown to had a double bed, but they wanted twins because otherwise why would you come to such a posh hotel? Then the twin-bedded room looked out over a lot of sheds so Daniel went downstairs and gave ’em what-for at the desk. An hour later they were able to change to one with a view over the river.

‘I’ve always wanted to come to Egypt.’ He looked towards the far bank wooded with palm trees, a slender minaret pointing like a biro about to write on the pale slate of the sky above a dimming line of hills.

‘It’s the Nile,’ she said. A solitary mop-headed palm above the rest looked as if it would rub out any message it didn’t agree with.

‘If we go down to them bulrushes we might find little Baby Moses!’

A sandbank seemed to get bigger and greener in the dusk, as if waiting for someone to scatter seeds and grow something good before the flood came. Tucked by the side of the hotel the blue patch of swimming pool was deserted. Pennants on moored boats waved in the breeze. ‘Must be cool as well outside,’ she said.

An hour before supper she went into the bathroom, and came out in underwear bought specially for the trip. She was thirty, her skin clear, eyes open and blue, hair so buffoned up she looked about twenty. ‘Hotels always mek me feel sexy.’

She went up to him, and he needed no second telling.

They walked hand in hand along the avenue of recumbent rams at Luxor temple. Some had heads missing, paws gone, horns and tails snapped off as if, he thought, a football coach had stopped and the lads had got to work, though they’d had to give up and leave most unscathed because the stone was too tough, even for Randall’s Vandals — as the gang used to call themselves. ‘How old did that book say it was?’

‘About three thousand years.’

‘Looks it.’ He hadn’t fancied the salad at last night’s buffet, so the grub had stodged his guts. You couldn’t even clean you teeth in the tap water in case you got the screaming ab-dabs.

The temple was a place for hide-and-seek, with so many columns and back ways. ‘It’s a bomb site, really,’ he laughed. ‘Lovely to see, but just like a bomb site.’ Among the ruins, as if to encourage his opinion, an aerial photo was displayed behind the glass of a notice board, which indeed looked like a picture of Dresden after it had cooled down.

He was bored with aimless circuiting, and they wanted some coffee. ‘They’re trying to tell us that people lived four thousand years ago. I could ’ave told ’em that. I don’t think I’d have lived very well in them days. I’d have been a slave, I expect, building these bloody temples for people like us to come and gawp at.’ He was sweating under his straw hat. ‘The sun’s getting hot.’

‘Even for January,’ she said. They walked down the riverbank road and into the Old Palace Hotel. He led her to the cool arcade by the swimming pool. ‘There’s no music here,’ she said. ‘I hate it when it’s too noisy.’

They sat in the silence till midday, when the ululations of the male faithful sounded like a nation of sheep going to the slaughter. ‘Just listen to ’em.’

‘It’s their way,’ she said.

‘They can have it.’ He ordered another coffee. ‘Karnak they call it,’ he said, ‘and I’m karknackered already!’

‘It’s only the first day.’

‘Don’t worry, love, we’ll have a good holiday. I’m enjoying it, anyway.’

‘So am I.’

‘We’ll go into that tourist office after we’ve had some dinner. Maybe they’ll give us a pamphlet and a map.’

The drivers of taxis and horse-drawn carriages called at them to get in and ride, but they preferred walking the streets. A fly crawled up a beggar’s nose as if to get its elevenses, he quipped. The Mar-haba Restaurant was only half full but it took twenty minutes to get served.

‘It’s a go-slow,’ she said.

At least there was pitta bread and two beers on the table already. ‘Like being at home, at Akbar’s Snack Bar. I wonder how the lads are managing without me. It gets hotter in that boiler-room though than it does out here.’

‘Somebody at the hotel was saying it’s like an oven in summer.’ They had asked for kebabs but got koffta — whatever that was — but it sounded all right. ‘I wanted kebab,’ Daniel said to the waiter.

The waiter shrugged. ‘No more kebabs.’

Ten minutes later kebabs were taken to the next table. Daniel stood when the waiter came. ‘What’s that?’

‘Kebabs,’ the waiter said.

‘You told me you’d got none left.’

‘New ones come in.’

Daniel sat. ‘I should throw him to the fucking crocodiles.’

‘Eat your dinner, duck.’

‘The croc would choke. Let’s have some more of this delicious beer.’ He stirred at his plate, rice instead of chips. ‘I like the Egyptians, but I wouldn’t like to be one.’

‘Well, you’re not used to it.’

‘I never would be, I’ll tell you that.’

She finished her food. ‘That was delicious. I wouldn’t like to wear one o’ them veils, though.’

‘If you did I might fancy you even more!’ He gave the waiter a twenty note to meet the bill, and waited for the change. ‘He’s forgotten,’ she said. ‘We’ve still got to finish our smoke and coffee, so don’t fret.’

‘I won’t,’ but when the waiter passed he called: ‘What about my change?’

‘Two minutes.’

Daniel read the bill: several kinds of service already deducted, it seemed. The small denomination bank notes were so worn he thought the whole population played a game of passing them around before they fell to pieces. He left some for a tip. ‘It’s more than he deserves.’

‘They’ve got to live,’ she said.

‘Let’s go, then.’

The man in the tourist information office stood as they came in. Daniel asked if he had any gen on the area. They wanted to cross the river but didn’t know what was what on the other side, though what they could see looked beautiful. He was dressed in a fawn suit with waistcoat, a young man who, Jean thought, was very handsome, especially since he seemed to be giving her the eye all the time they were there. But I suppose he’d even do the same for a woman of sixty. He produced a booklet, and a rough kind of map, pointing to the places with the tip of a real pen.

Jean spread out her best smile. ‘Can we have these?’

‘All yours,’ he smiled back. ‘But before you go, I would like to invite you to have tea with me.’

Daniel wasn’t much interested in a friend for life. ‘We’ll be stuck for an hour.’

‘I’d be honoured if you’d accept.’ The man still looked at Jean, she was sure, as if he wanted to strip her there and then. ‘Just a glass of tea,’ he said.

He was serious, but Daniel didn’t want to give in, or insult him, since he was pleasant and friendly enough. ‘Thanks very much, but we’ve got to go to the bank. We’ll come back tomorrow.’

He wasn’t put out by the refusal, and offered his little blue and scented card, which Jean took. ‘Have a nice time over the river.’

‘He was a lovely chap,’ Jean said. They walked along the river side of the road on their way to the ferry, the pavement bumpy and sand showing underneath. She could have fallen in love with him, and that was a fact. He was something to dream about, but there’d be no reason to see him again and that, she told herself, was a pity.

‘We could have gone on that conducted tour from the hotel,’ Daniel said, ‘but it’ll be a lot better doing it on our own.’

They went down the wide flight of crumbling steps to the river, stopping for a ticket on the way. Among so many people he kept a fist over the money in his trouser pocket, and walked half-left behind Jean, watching her handbag and camera. He would have done the same anywhere. ‘Let’s get on the top deck, and see the view.’

A large square of seats faced inwards, young men in long garb and white pillbox hats sitting or standing to talk. A bootblack and a couple of peanut vendors touted for a bit of trade. ‘I didn’t like the looks some of ’em gave me as I walked up the stairs,’ she said.

‘Don’t worry. They won’t say owt.’

‘What would you do if they did?’

‘Tell ’em to fuck off.’

She laughed. ‘There’s not one woman up here.’

‘They’re stowed in the lower deck. I saw ’em as we came up. Don’t you want to go down and sit with ’em?’

‘If you come with me.’

‘I’d definitely get a knife in my back,’ he laughed.

A sailing boat left a wake in the water shaped like a scimitar. Milky blue turned the sun pale. A rusty barge with impeccable white superstructure headed south. ‘Put your hat on, duck. It’s hot.’

He looked around. ‘Where is it, though?’

They’d bought it in Nottingham for fifteen quid, a real straw Panama. ‘You must have left it somewhere.’

‘In that restaurant, I expect.’

‘You had it on there. It must have been in that tourist information office. We can call for it tomorrow. I’m sure that nice young man will put it by for you.’

The crossing was short, water eddying inshore towards jungly banks, a narrow beach either side of the quay. Low cliff, palms and fields beyond, went the whole length of the river. He drew fingers through thick fair hair. ‘The sun won’t penetrate this bit o’ thatch.’

‘Still, you need your hat.’

From the gangway it looked impossible to get through the ranks of taxis to the road beyond. ‘Just follow me,’ he said, ‘and stick close.’ He felt sorry for them, all desperate to earn a bob or two in a country where there were so many people that life was a struggle from crib to coffin. He wanted to stroll with Jean, however, to another ferryhead half-a-mile upriver, as shown on the map. Weaving between bonnets and wing mirrors, he ignored shouts to get them to the Tombs and back — for nothing if they liked.

A few hundred yards, and they were out of chaos. ‘This is heaven’ — she aimed her camera across a meadow against a background of sugar cane. Goats chewed head down at the herbage, a gaggle of dazzle-skirted bright faced girls minding them. Behind the dense palm groves rose a line of purple hills.

‘Better than a picture,’ he said.

She kissed him, quickly, adoring his enthusiasm. The girls came towards them in a colourful line halloa-ing and hands waving for baksheesh. ‘We’d better go. I got two or three snaps and I’m sure they’ll come out. They’re lovely kids, though.’

On the trip back there were hardly any passengers, and an amiable old ruffian came around asking for a tip for the captain. ‘The captain?’ Daniel laughed. ‘Piss off!’

‘Let’s have some more of this Coptic plonk.’ He read the wine list at dinner. ‘It’s dry and red, good enough for me. Maybe it’ll melt some of this oily grub.’

‘It’s delicious.’ At the buffet they heaped chicken, rice, string beans and peas onto their plates. New groups had arrived, German tables easy to pick out because they were crowded with bottles of beer. The French tables had wine, and the Egyptians mostly water, while the British had scatterings of everything. He shovelled the food in. ‘I’ll burn my gutache out with the whisky later.’

‘Take it easy, love.’

‘I feel hungry, seeing this marvellous spread.’

White sun melted into the haze, still some way above the horizon. They strolled by the swimming pool, by day surrounded with what he saw as cooking flesh, a pleasure he didn’t want to sample. Dark came quickly, monochrome grey over rippling water, the far bank vivid green. Then everything suddenly dark. He wasn’t feeling well. ‘Let’s go up.’

‘You must have a cold.’

He switched the air conditioning full on. ‘The noise meks it sound like it’s time to fasten our safety belts,’ she said.

‘I’m kay-lied. Or pole-axed. I can’t tell which. Wake me when the plane’s ready to go.’

She came up from breakfast with a boiled egg, a roll and a bottle of water. He finished it off. ‘What’s the difference between a cold and the flu?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘I’ve got one or the other, and can’t decide. I’ve never been in bed as long as this in my life.’

It must be a cold or the flu, because he wasn’t poisoned, and that was a fact. As long as he could belch he wouldn’t throw up; and as long as he could cough he wouldn’t choke; and as long as he could fart he wouldn’t shit himself. All he could do was lounge around and take it easy. Funnily enough he wanted Jean to come to bed, but knew he wouldn’t be able to get it up even if he swallowed a cup of starch.

‘You’ll feel better tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I’m going into town now, to get your hat. You must have a touch of the sun.’

The woman at the counter didn’t know anything about it. ‘A man served us yesterday.’ Jean was about to describe him but thought she had better not: dark and handsome, and I fancied him no end.

The woman came back from the rear office. She was good-looking as well: dark haired and olive skinned, with a rich figure. Daniel would have fancied her. ‘No hat has been left here. I’m sorry.’

Daniel felt awful nearly all day. Whenever he thought he might be getting better, the gripes came back. Even so, he had an appetite and enjoyed his cigarettes, so maybe it was only a cold. With the flu he’d never been able to eat or even look at a fag. The dentist had given him a bottle of antibiotics last year for an abscessed tooth, so he went into the bathroom and swallowed a dozen pills with a tumbler of half toothwater, and the rest whisky. His head zinged a bit, but he felt better straightaway.

He tuned in the radio hoping for news or sports talk, but the aerial didn’t work because the room was fairly well sealed. Attaching the coil of wire to the short-wave screw with his Swiss army knife he threw it out of the window, bringing in London loud and clear.

Jean called at the restaurant but nobody had seen the hat. He would have to get another. Sweating so much, she got into a horse-drawn carriage following along the kerb, and told the man to drive her to the hotel. Sitting on the high seat, a breeze coming from somewhere, she saw white knife-pointed sails on the river, and felt like a queen, dreaming she had the handsome man of the tourist office by her side as the scrawny old nag trotted along the road.

Daniel in the bar had two bottles of beer on his table. He was looking at the map in the brochure. ‘I feel better. Let’s go over the river this afternoon and see the Temples. It says here there’s lots of paintings in the Tombs.’

Across at the quay they got into a taxi, and the driver said his name was Mahmoud, a youngish man with a piratical look, but they liked him. ‘Tombs first,’ he said, ‘then Temples. OK Johnny?’

Daniel set his new khaki cap at the proper angle. ‘Drive on, Macduff!’

‘You look just like a swaddie in that hat,’ she laughed, the tattoo of snake and sword showing below the short sleeves of his shirt.

‘I know good guide,’ Mahmoud told them.

‘He means his brother,’ Daniel said. ‘Don’t need one,’ he shouted. ‘We walk on our own.’ He waved the pamphlet. ‘This’ll tell us all about it.’

Tombs? More like foxholes and cellars among the ashpits of the scorching plain. Some had regular entrances, a guardian at each, hand high for baksheesh, which was never enough. When they came into daylight the way was pointed to the next guardian. ‘It’s a game of ‘‘Pass the Tourist’’,’ Jean said. ‘I liked them paintings, though the ceiling was a bit bumpy.’

‘Beautiful.’ Daniel noted some Tombs closed off as being restored. ‘They’re doing the paintings up in them. I suppose they get a new coat every few months. We’ll have to send a postcard to your mother.’

Next on the list was the Temple of Seth the First, by a crumbling village of mud houses. They thought they had seen everything, but Mahmoud said that if they came tomorrow he would take them to other Temples. ‘I’ll be waiting with my taxi,’ he said at the pier, and didn’t grumble at the tip.

Jean couldn’t stand. ‘Feels like it’s my turn now. I wonder what it is?’

‘Same as what I’d got, I expect.’ What he still had, in fact, but two couldn’t be badly at the same time. They’d look a bit daft, both in bed with aches and pains. He felt guilty because she hadn’t wanted to have dinner last night and he’d persuaded her. He had ordered a bottle of Omar Khayyam red to go with the mutton when they should have stuck to bread and sherbet. I’ll never learn, he thought. They’d finished off the whisky upstairs beforehand, which had maybe softened his brain, though he sometimes knew it was soft enough already.

He sat at the desk and wrote a postcard of the bomb site at Karnak to his mate Harry. ‘We’re at this health resort on the River Nile. Sick as a dog, weak as a kitten, but everything going well. See you soon, I hope. Dan.’

Jean stayed in bed, sweating and feverish. She enjoyed being languid, in and out of dozing, mollified by stark dreams she couldn’t remember the second they’d gone. A drum and tambourine played softly outside, a real holiday, no cares at all.

So as not to disturb her Daniel sat in the lounge watching the talent, a few interested looks from the occasional passing woman. The tea was like piss, so he read about the Temples over and over till the pamphlet was like a rag and he put it in a waste bin. He went up every hour to see that Jean hadn’t died.

‘It’s only malaria, love, so don’t worry. If you’d been for a swim in the river it could be worse. It’d be Bill-something or other. I’ve often wondered what would happen if the river flooded and came into the hotel. You’d have crocodiles swimming up the corridors snapping people up in their jaws. Can you imagine the headlines in the Sun?’

He picked fussily at the buffet for lunch, then phoned for a roll, butter, jam, and a bottle of cold water from room service, which Jean enjoyed. ‘The best cure for a gutache is to eat — something, anyway — to give it a bit of nourishment to chew on.’

He should have added on the postcard that he was bored to death, but only when he didn’t know what to do with himself. He stood the tranny upright thinking to have a listen but there wasn’t much beyond mush. He kissed Jean on the forehead to be sure she was asleep, then opened the window and slung out the length of aerial. The people in the room below would think a gremlin was on the end coming in to burgle them.

The connecting screw must have been loose, because the pale coated wire free-floated onto a terrace two floors below. He hoped his effing and blinding hadn’t wakened her, but that was that, he wouldn’t hear a peep out of London now. The wire melted into the paving so that he couldn’t even see where it lay, though maybe he needed a drink to clear his eyes.

Both felt wobbly walking through the museum, and there were no seats to sit on. They’d had to queue to get in, and found the cafeteria closed. Peering through the crowds, they saw as much as they could, then sat outside on a low wall in the sun, hungry because they’d eaten nothing but a few biscuits at breakfast. An American woman was telling her daughter how Betty had had a wonderful time in wherever it was — swimming, sunbathing, eating everything, all with no effect whatever. Two days after she got home she felt funny. The doctor told her not to worry, just rest. But she got worse and was rushed into hospital. Polio. A week later she was dead. ‘So you have to be careful, no matter how good you feel.’

‘That cheered me up no end,’ Daniel said. ‘If we go sick when we get back maybe the doctor will send us South to recover.’

‘On the NHS.’ She took his hand. ‘Let’s go and have a snack somewhere.’

It was strange to be so up and down, but the next day both said they had never felt healthier. Mahmoud picked them out as they came off the ferry at Thebes. ‘I’ve got very good Temples for you,’ he called, as if they might want to buy one.

‘Come on, then, Mahmoud. Let’s have a look.’ The car swayed in the middle of the road, and they waved at two cyclists who had Union Jacks and GB signs on their back mudguards.

By the fallen colossal statue at Rhamesseum Jean pulled him close, to listen to a dark haired woman with glasses reading a poem called Ozy-something or other. Everyone clapped after it, and one old man in a Panama hat had tears in his eyes. ‘I think I heard that poem at school,’ she said.

‘I remember it, as well.’

At the Medinat Habu, a building in fairly good nick, he thought, an Egyptologist was giving a scholarly rundown on its history. ‘I love to listen,’ Jean said. He was tall, dark and thin; she found the men very good-looking in Egypt.

Daniel’s mind drifted off after a while, but he was brought back on hearing the man say: ‘The hereafter is a cul-de-sac.’ Couldn’t have been, if you think of all them mummies, but that’s what it sounded like, unless my ears are melting in the heat.

They sat on the steps to eat cheese rolls and bananas from Daniel’s haversack. After the great breakfast — first an English one, and then a continental — he couldn’t face much more. He passed the bottle of water. ‘I expect Mahmoud’s eating his grub in a tomb.’

‘He’ll have a siesta as well. It’s cooler there.’

‘That’s what we want,’ giving her a look she knew well.

She kissed him on the lips. ‘Any time.’

A man of about sixty stood lower down the steps with a vacant and exhausted look. Must be English, because he’s studying a map as well. Wispy grey hair straggled at the neck, though his receding chin was well shaven. He looked as if he’d had a comfortable life, so it didn’t matter that his chin gave him a weak look. He put his pale straw hat on and lifted a little pair of binoculars from around his neck to look at the view.

‘I think I’ve seen him somewhere before.’

‘Probably on telly.’ Daniel put the banana skins in a plastic bag. ‘We’ll have one more turn around the temple, then whistle up Mahmoud to take us to the boat.’

Opening the curtains at half-past seven, he felt rid of all his ills and miseries. The large island sandbank in the middle of the river seemed to get bigger and greener every day. ‘You wouldn’t guess it was only a few miles wide if you didn’t know.’

A haze above the palm trees and fields lining the opposite bank suggested that the cultivable area went on into infinity. She yawned. ‘I suppose we’d better get our breakfast. Hey, though, I enjoyed that vodka last night.’

‘Me as well. Booze is allus good medicine. We’ll get some more on the way back.’ Maybe the light was different from a few days ago, but the length of his aerial wire lay clearly on the terrace where it had fallen. Unless he had some grappling irons, to scale up from outside, the only way onto the place was through one of the rooms on the first floor, but if he went down to a door, knocked on it and said: ‘Do you mind if I go through your room and get over the balcony onto that terrace so that I can fetch my aerial wire back?’ they would either think he was loony and tell him to fuck off, or call the security guards, in which case he would end up working in a quarry for ten years. ‘Let’s walk around the bomb site again. I liked it there.’

A white bird swam on water eddying inshore. ‘I want to go over the river,’ she said. ‘I love being on that boat.’

‘All right. Tombs today, bomb site tomorrow.’

But in the morning she was down again. Whatever it was came back full strength. The trouble was, he thought, that when you’re with somebody who’s badly it’s easy to feel the same way yourself. He fought it off, and fed her the antibiotics she had refused at the last bout. He came up from lunch with choice pieces in a serviette, but at the sight of them she turned to the wall. She took a glass of water dashed with vodka and went to sleep. He laid a hand on her forehead, but there was no fever.

The area between the hotel and town was squalid and crumbly, in no way like neat rows of houses at home, so he turned back when halfway there. You need someone with you when walking in a foreign place. A tubby little tanker lorry laid black smoke along the road before turning into a petrol depot. Even when only two hundred yards from the hotel a horse-drawn carriage slowed in the hope of a fare. He wanted to throw a tip without taking a ride, but that would be insulting. Back in the busy lobby he went to the counter and changed another fifty pounds. While signing for them he remembered the aerial of his radio.

Dozens of doors lined either side of the corridor but he knew roughly which one the terrace was level with, and as luck would have it a door near enough was wide open. Wearing plimsolls, he went noiselessly in. The bed was made up, a suitcase by the table as if somebody was about to leave or had just come. No other sign, He stepped quickly across and lifted the handle of the window-door. So far, all clear. In seconds he was over the balcony and down six feet onto the terrace. The sun made liver-red streaks over the palm trees across the river.

Now that he was down he couldn’t see the aerial. Eyes in every room must be riveted on what I’m doing, bent double and staring at the concrete. Let ’em stare. He wanted to be in contact with the world, and nobody was going to stop him. He grabbed an end of the thin wire, wrapped it around his fist, and joyously put the neat ball into his pocket.

Four small sailing boats were moored within the left-hook of the hotel harbour. Feeling triumphant, he looked around and waved at the great facade of windows. All he had to do now was get back into the corridor, but on reaching the balcony he didn’t know, to half a dozen windows, which one he had come through.

Sweat made patches on his shirt, ran into his eyes as he went back and forth like, he thought, a panther trying to get back into its cage. One room he looked in showed as near as damn it a man and woman having it off on the bed — at least that’s what he would tell Jean, a blow-by-blow tale to get her randy.

The next room was empty, as untidy as if thieves had rifled it. A lock kept him out, but just as he told himself he would be here forever, or get caught as a prowling Tom, he found a window on the catch. Edging a finger inside, he pushed and stepped in. Somebody was there but, with banging heart, he had to get back upstairs and see how Jean was.

A young woman writing a letter at the desk looked a bit shocked, he had to admit. ‘Maintenance,’ he said.

‘Maintenance?’

His wire uncoiled, touched the floor. ‘A wireless aerial fell on your terrace, and I was told to come through and get it back.’

Her accent was American, and she was thirty if she was a day, dark haired, and slightly sallow as if she’d had the odd bilious bout since her arrival. ‘They should have informed me from the desk.’

‘I thought they had. They’re very forgetful.’

She was cool, and gave a half smile. ‘You’re really a guest, aren’t you?’

He nodded. ‘I can’t get the BBC without the wire, and it fell out of my window.’ He told her the rest of his difficulties, which set her laughing: ‘I sure won’t forget that.’

The little plump bosom behind her red top moved when she stood, her smile showing the white and even teeth of a well cared for woman. He didn’t want to go. ‘Are you staying long in Egypt?’

‘Only a week. My husband’s ordered a boat to take us to Aswan. Then we’ll go back down the river to Cairo.’

The little red guidebook to Egypt on her table was so thick it must tell you everything. ‘Sounds good. We’re having a fortnight.’

She sat down again, enjoying their chat, and turned her chair to face this tall brush-haired thinnish man with his tattooed arm more squarely. ‘Are you a mercenary?’

‘Mercenary?’

‘A hired soldier.’

He would be, if he could, and thought he’d say yes. ‘When I can get the work. I’m running a boiler-room at the moment, where I come from, in a factory.’

‘You must have a few good stories.’

‘I have. I’d like to tell you ’em sometime’ — if I could get you where you’d like to listen. All women were different, but she was another world, though not so far out that after a while they couldn’t get used to each other. ‘I must go, though. My wife’s not well. It’s been nice meeting you.’

She came to show him the door, and shake hands. He was sure the pressure he put on was mutual. ‘I hope you get your radio to work,’ she said.

‘Sure to. I know all about ’em.’ He waved as he went down the corridor.

‘Have a nice day!’ she called.

‘What do you think?’ he told Jean. ‘In two minutes she was on her back naked with legs wide open and I was kneeling, bare as well, with the biggest hard on in my life. In three minutes she came, and in four I did. In five minutes her husband barged in, and we had a fight, so in six minutes I knocked him over the balcony, and in seven I grabbed my things and ran. I got dressed in the lift between two floors.’

Her laughter meant she was on the mend. Bogger the radio, he thought, at the look in her eye when she asked him to tell it again, only slower and longer, before saying come on, get into bed with me.

He fixed the wire, and reception was still uncertain. No powerlight came on, but new batteries made it as clear as a bell with the built-in aerial alone.

Next day on the West Bank he was carrying the book seen on the woman’s desk, bought for fifteen quid. He’d read all that was said about the area, opening it at every tomb and temple, and now there was little more to be seen. Mahmoud asked them to visit his house on the way to the ferry and have a glass of tea. Jean said yes, hoping for one more memory to take back.

‘He doesn’t mean it. It’s only their way, to offer.’ Daniel didn’t much want to, but the invitation was repeated, almost insisted on: ‘You meet my wives, and we say goodbye.’

‘He likes us,’ Jean said.

Mahmoud drove beyond the village, turned sharp right and took them into a courtyard surrounded by a wall of mud bricks.

‘I don’t like forceputs,’ Daniel said.

‘Let’s do it.’

‘Ah, all right, duck. I’m not a hard man!’

The mint tea was delicious, and sweet cakes went down a treat. Mahmoud’s six kids stood in line, fascinated at Jean and Daniel seated on wooden boxes covered with cloths. Daniel thought the two rickety storeys would fall down if you blew hard enough. ‘Lovely kids,’ he said. ‘And you’ve got a nice house.’

Three aunts and an old mother surrounded Jean, touching her all over, and Daniel saw how she enjoyed it. An hour passed quickly in talking, and smoking fag after fag. Mahmoud liked English brands. Jean stood up to go. ‘We ought to give him a present. I’ll bet it’s the custom.’

‘What, though?’ He looked through his haversack, not wanting to let the side down, and picked out his prized Swiss army knife, almost brand new. ‘Why not this?’

‘Yes, we can get you another.’

He opened all sections, which stopped the talk from dying away. ‘Yours, now. From us to you. I hope he’s pleased.’

‘I’m sure he is,’ Jean said.

Mahmoud smiled. ‘Very happy!’ He admired an unbroached box of English matches seen in the haversack, and Daniel gave him that as well. They shook hands, Mahmoud saying they were friends for life, and accepting another cigarette.

‘Come back and stay with us for a long time,’ he called from the top of the steps at the ferry, a grand and solitary figure in his robe, saluting as the boat pulled away.

‘He’s had a good week,’ Daniel said.

‘He needs it, with all them kids. Fancy having two wives!’ She looked down the broad sleeve of green towards the south, wondering where the river went. ‘They’re nice people here, though.’

‘The guidebook says it goes right to the middle of Africa,’ he told her, ‘and it’s four thousand miles long. About twice the distance from here to London.’

‘Don’t you know a lot?’ she mocked.

She noticed a haze-ring around the moon. ‘Do you think it’s going to rain?’

‘I hope so — after we’ve left.’

‘What a nice holiday it’s been.’

He poured the last of the vodka into two glasses. ‘In a couple of years we’ll go to Turkey, or Israel.’ That American woman might be walking along a street. He would spot her, and they would get talking. She would be on holiday without her husband, and remember him finding his length of aerial wire.

The men might be dishier there, Jean thought, even more than Mahmoud, or the man explaining all about the tombs, or the dandy at the tourist information bureau whose card she took out and looked at when Daniel wasn’t close. ‘I wonder what happened to your hat?’

‘I expect that soft young man will be wearing it after we’ve gone.’

She liked to imagine that.

‘It’ll be funny, getting home,’ he said. ‘Back in overalls and lagging them crumbling pipes. Still, at least I’ve got a good job, and I’m never bored at it.’

She looked at the line of palm trees and distant cliffs, and moon rays laid on the glass-like stream. ‘It’s been a dream here.’

He finished his drink. Where would we be without ’em? ‘You can never have too many dreams,’ he said.