would not in short have become what I am. Not even the most maverick historian – myself, perhaps – would deny that the past rests upon certain central and indisputable facts. So does life; it has its core, its centre.
We reach, now, this core.
I arrived in Egypt alone in 1940; I was alone when I left in 1944. When I look at those years I look at them alone. What happened there happens now only inside my head – no one else sees the same landscape, hears the same sounds, knows the sequence of events. There is another voice, but it is one that only I hear. Mine – ours – is the only evidence.
The only private evidence, that is. So far as public matters go – history – there is plenty. Most of it is in print now; all those accounts of which general comes out of it best, who had how many tanks, who advanced where at which point and why. I’ve read them all; they seem to have little to do with anything I remember. From time to time I quarrel with a fact – a name or a date; mostly they just don’t seem relevant. Which of course is an odd comment from one who has written that kind of book herself. I was interested enough in relevance at the time – I had to get a story to file. If I didn’t pursue events and find out what was going on and get myself in a position to witness what was going on if possible I had no story to file. A tart cable from London would have ended my justification for being in the Middle East. But none of that seems important; it has melted away like the language of then or like the baroque balconied buildings of old Cairo supplanted by office blocks and skyscrapers for tourists.
Gordon had said I would never make it as a war correspondent. All the more reason, of course, why I had to. As he pointed out, I was not, on the face of it, qualified. I had to push as I’d never pushed before. I pulled every string I knew of, trailed around to see everyone I’d ever known who might be able to help, and eventually got myself taken on as stringer for a Sunday newspaper and correspondent for one of theweeklies. I had to fight for it, and neither of them would pay me enough. I dipped into capital – the nest-egg I had from a grandmother – to have enough to live on in Cairo. And I was always on sufferance – both with the editors back in London and with my male colleagues in the Press Corps. I was as good as my last despatch. But the despatches were good. Of course, I made a point of sending them to Gordon; to say – see, I told you so… They used to reach him months late, training on some Scottish moor and then afterwards out in India and he used to write back, also months later, as though one were carrying on a conversation with a time-lag, correcting what he considered infelicities of style. We continued to quarrel – amiably enough – across continents. I didn’t see him for over four years and by the time I did we had both been jolted into another incarnation of ourselves. We met on a platform at Victoria and he said, ‘Christ! You’ve had your hair dyed! I had no idea it was so red. I’d been thinking of it as a sort of brown colour.’ We didn’t kiss; we stood there staring at each other. I said, ‘Why have you got that mark on your cheek?’ ‘I had some disgusting skin disease in Delhi. My war wound. Where are yours?’ I didn’t answer.
Gordon was in Intelligence. Naturally. He spent most of his war in an office with occasional sorties to more insalubrious places. We both told each other what we saw fit about those years. Once Gordon said, ‘I ran across a bloke who knew you in Egypt. He remembers meeting you in a hotel in Luxor. He had a drink with you and some uniformed boyfriend of yours.’ I said, ‘That would have been the Winter Palace, I imagine.’ ‘Who was the boyfriend?’ ‘There were two or three hundred thousand members of the armed forces stationed in and around Cairo at that point,’ I said. ‘You can take your pick.’
It certainly was the Winter
We reach, now, this core.
I arrived in Egypt alone in 1940; I was alone when I left in 1944. When I look at those years I look at them alone. What happened there happens now only inside my head – no one else sees the same landscape, hears the same sounds, knows the sequence of events. There is another voice, but it is one that only I hear. Mine – ours – is the only evidence.
The only private evidence, that is. So far as public matters go – history – there is plenty. Most of it is in print now; all those accounts of which general comes out of it best, who had how many tanks, who advanced where at which point and why. I’ve read them all; they seem to have little to do with anything I remember. From time to time I quarrel with a fact – a name or a date; mostly they just don’t seem relevant. Which of course is an odd comment from one who has written that kind of book herself. I was interested enough in relevance at the time – I had to get a story to file. If I didn’t pursue events and find out what was going on and get myself in a position to witness what was going on if possible I had no story to file. A tart cable from London would have ended my justification for being in the Middle East. But none of that seems important; it has melted away like the language of then or like the baroque balconied buildings of old Cairo supplanted by office blocks and skyscrapers for tourists.
Gordon had said I would never make it as a war correspondent. All the more reason, of course, why I had to. As he pointed out, I was not, on the face of it, qualified. I had to push as I’d never pushed before. I pulled every string I knew of, trailed around to see everyone I’d ever known who might be able to help, and eventually got myself taken on as stringer for a Sunday newspaper and correspondent for one of theweeklies. I had to fight for it, and neither of them would pay me enough. I dipped into capital – the nest-egg I had from a grandmother – to have enough to live on in Cairo. And I was always on sufferance – both with the editors back in London and with my male colleagues in the Press Corps. I was as good as my last despatch. But the despatches were good. Of course, I made a point of sending them to Gordon; to say – see, I told you so… They used to reach him months late, training on some Scottish moor and then afterwards out in India and he used to write back, also months later, as though one were carrying on a conversation with a time-lag, correcting what he considered infelicities of style. We continued to quarrel – amiably enough – across continents. I didn’t see him for over four years and by the time I did we had both been jolted into another incarnation of ourselves. We met on a platform at Victoria and he said, ‘Christ! You’ve had your hair dyed! I had no idea it was so red. I’d been thinking of it as a sort of brown colour.’ We didn’t kiss; we stood there staring at each other. I said, ‘Why have you got that mark on your cheek?’ ‘I had some disgusting skin disease in Delhi. My war wound. Where are yours?’ I didn’t answer.
Gordon was in Intelligence. Naturally. He spent most of his war in an office with occasional sorties to more insalubrious places. We both told each other what we saw fit about those years. Once Gordon said, ‘I ran across a bloke who knew you in Egypt. He remembers meeting you in a hotel in Luxor. He had a drink with you and some uniformed boyfriend of yours.’ I said, ‘That would have been the Winter Palace, I imagine.’ ‘Who was the boyfriend?’ ‘There were two or three hundred thousand members of the armed forces stationed in and around Cairo at that point,’ I said. ‘You can take your pick.’
It certainly was the Winter
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