Rosie Thomas 2-Book Collection One: Iris and Ruby, Constance. Rosie Thomas
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again. Can’t stay away from us, Albie, can she?’
I was glad to know his first name. ‘Albie? May I call you that, too? I’m Iris, d’you remember?’
He blinked his agreement.
Ruth asked me, ‘Where’s your friend tonight? Fiancé, I mean.’
‘I was just telling Albie. Gone. Called back to the desert in a hurry.’
‘Oh. Oh, look, d’you want to have a cup of coffee or something after I finish work? I’m off shift in half an hour.’
‘Yes, let’s do that.’
She hurried away and I went on talking to Albie Noake. I had no idea what he wanted to hear but I told him about Faria and Sarah and the apartment in Garden City, and about Mamdooh and his son who followed him to work and sat on a stool in the corner of Mamdooh’s cubbyhole near the front door, sucking on the bon-bons that Faria insisted on feeding him. I talked about Zazie’s and Elvira Mursi and Mrs Kimmig-Gertsch’s house, and Roddy Boy and my segment of corridor at GHQ, and what I remembered of Cairo in the days long before the war when my father was at the embassy. I held on to Albie’s hand, smoothing it between my own. Once or twice his eyelids closed and I thought he had fallen asleep, but as soon as my murmuring stopped they snapped open again.
‘She can talk enough for both of you, can’t she?’ Ruth demanded when she came back.
I disengaged my hand gently from Albie’s and stood up.
‘Shall I come back another day?’ I asked him. As well as a nod there was a sound in his throat, part gargle and part rising groan. It was meant as a yes.
‘You can always tell me to go away.’ I smiled. ‘Good night, Albie.’
I followed Ruth out of the ward and down some stone steps. Outside a door marked ‘Nursing Staff’ she said briskly, ‘Wait here.’
Three or four minutes later she re-emerged and I blinked at her. The nurse’s starched cap had always hidden her hair, and now I saw for the first time that it was a rich, dark red. It turned her pale skin translucent and took the slightly pinched severity out of her face. Ruth looked as if she was not much more than a year or so older than me. She had taken off her apron and wore a thin coat on over her uniform dress. Without the starched outer layer she didn’t rustle or crackle when she walked. We nodded at each other, with a touch of wariness now that we were on neutral ground.
When I was driving with Xan I had noticed a small café on a street corner, within walking distance but far enough away not to be crowded with people from the hospital. I suggested that we might go there and Ruth nodded briefly.
‘Anywhere we can get something to eat. I’m pretty hungry.’
The café had split and cracked clay tiles for a floor, and a tall mirror suspended at an angle above the counter that reflected the tops of our heads and foreshortened bodies. There were only a handful of other customers, but there was a good scent of coffee and spicy cooking.
Ruth ordered eggs and fuul, and I asked for a plate of fruit. We drank mint tea while we waited for our food and as soon as a basket of ‘aish baladi was placed in front of us Ruth tore off a chunk of the warm, coarse bread and chewed ravenously.
‘Sorry. I don’t get much time to eat during the day. Usually I like to get the bus straight home from work and have a meal. The person I live with cooks, or if I’m on my own I throw a few ingredients together.’ She made a self-deprecating face, and then laughed. ‘I’d like to be able to cook, but it’s not exactly one of my gifts.’
Sarah, Faria and I didn’t cook either. Mamdooh left covered dishes for us, or we might boil an egg or carve up a sandwich. But mostly we were taken out for dinner.
I felt the width of a divide between Ruth Macnamara and me, and I knew that she was just as aware of it. Ruth wouldn’t miss anything, I guessed.
‘Do you share with another nurse?’
‘A doctor.’
‘Where does he work?’
Ruth lifted an eyebrow. ‘She.’
Then she named one of the other military hospitals.
I was blushing crimson at my own assumption. ‘That was stupid,’ I said.
‘No, it wasn’t. How many female surgical anaesthetists do any of us know? But Daphne is one. She’s pretty good.’ Ruth was proud of her friend, I could tell that much.
‘I’d like to meet her.’
Ruth didn’t say anything to that. A hot pan full of eggs and chopped peppers arrived and she dug her fork into it. I ate slices of melon and mango and watched her eat. When rather more than half of Ruth’s plate was empty, she finally looked up again.
‘That’s better. So. Your fiancé is Albie Noake’s commanding officer, is that right?’
‘You don’t have to keep calling him my fiancé. Just say Xan.’
She laughed then. ‘OK. Xan.’
‘Yes, he is. And when he was called back to his … unit, this afternoon, I said I’d go on visiting Albie instead of him.’
‘That’s good. The men get medical attention, of course, the best we can provide, but they don’t get many of the other things that they need. Company, especially women’s company, and non-medical encouragement, and diversion, and anything, really, that’s outside hospital routine. Although the VADs and the other voluntary organisations do what they can. Albie’s lucky.’
I understood what she meant. The ward was so big, and so overcrowded with suffering, it would be hard to provide individual support or even as little as a few minutes’ unhurried talk for each of them. And they were all so far from their own families and friends.
‘What will happen to him?’
‘Short term, or longer?’
‘Both.’
‘Mine is an acute trauma ward. He’ll stay there until he is stable and his recovery is predictable. Then he’ll be moved to a longer-stay ward, where I should think they’ll start trying to repair his mouth and reconstruct his jaw. Or maybe that will be too complicated and he’ll be sent by ship back to England for the work to be done there.’
‘Will he be able to speak again?’
Ruth’s own lips twisted a little. ‘In a way. It will be a manner of speaking.’ He was perhaps twenty-eight years old.
‘Poor Albie.’
She went on eating. ‘At least he’s alive.’
Ruth was unsentimental and I could see how the work she did would absolutely require that, or else it would be unbearable. And as well as being distressing I could also guess how fascinating and even noble it must be, compared with what I did. I envied her.
‘Xan brought in another of his men who was badly injured at the same time. He died this morning, but I didn’t tell Albie. Maybe I should have done, though.’
The way that Ruth talked – everything about her, her matter-of-fact dry manner and her precise way of moving as well as speaking – was changing my perspectives. The truth was the truth. There was no point in trying to hide or to soften it, perhaps especially from men who had been so severely wounded. I suddenly thought that to do so might be to belittle them.
‘Yes, I think you should,’ Ruth agreed. Her glance flicked over me. ‘Would you like me to do it, as your Xan isn’t here? What was the man’s name?’
‘Private Ridley. No, thank you. I’ll tell Albie myself when I visit him tomorrow.’
The food was finished. Ruth and I sat facing each other across the rickety wooden table. ‘So I’ll see you then,’ she said.
‘Do