Apple Blossom Time Read Online Free PDF

anything as our truck rolled through the gates, but their expressions told us that this was a real cushy billet for a regular soldier!
    A genteel, distracted second subaltern with a millboard met us and introduced herself as Miss Carstairs. Her gingery-fair skin was red and blistered and I wondered how she could still burn, considering how long we’d been on voyage round the Cape. We stood in the sun while she briefed us quickly on life in Cairo, which seemed to be a succession of things we weren’t allowed to do: no sunbathing – sunburn would be treated as a self-inflicted wound and punished accordingly (one law for us and another law for them); no travelling through the City of the Dead except on duty and in military transport (as if we would!); no going out in the evening, even off duty, except in uniform; no going to the men’s quarters, even in the day, in any circumstances – or vice versa (from what I’d seen so far, that wouldn’t be a hardship!); no crossing boundaries marked by a round white sign with a black X, which meant Out of Bounds to All Ranks; and no – absolutely no – going to the Berka.
    ‘It’s not a desirable area,’ she explained and, if anything, turned even redder. We ought to have taken pity on her. She couldn’t have been much more than nineteen, but we were young too and the young are pitiless. We stared as blankly as though we had no idea what she was talking about (and I’m not sure that Pansy was pretending). ‘It seems to be a traditional haunt of … of members of the oldest profession, if you take my meaning. Yes, well…’ She looked down at the notes on her millboard. ‘Well, anyway … Corporal Gibson will show you to the stores, where you can collect your bedding. Tea is at 1800 hours. Now – are there any questions?’
    Beside me, Vee took a deep breath and I knew what she was going to ask. ‘Don’t you dare!’ I hissed and gave her a nudge with my foot.
    ‘No? Jolly good. Well, off you go, then,’ said Miss Carstairs, sounding more like a nursery school teacher than a soldier. ‘Duty begins tomorrow morning and there will be a tour of the Museum of Hygiene at 1400.’
    Dismissed, we tossed down our packs in one of the huts and took stock of our new home.
    ‘Well, what on earth did we come all this way for? We might as well be in Aldershot!’ Vee said in amazement. ‘Same old row of iron beds, same old pile of mattress biscuits…’
    ‘Same old blankets, grey, woollen. Same old cupboards, green, metal, c/w shelves…’
    ‘Same old view of the Pyramids? Look out here, girls,’ called Grace. ‘Perhaps it’s a little bit different from Aldershot, after all.’
    In one direction we could see the minarets of Cairo citadel, needle sharp, and there, to the west and across the Nile, were the tops of the tallest Pyramids. We trooped out onto the veranda. Beyond the water towers, beyond the NAAFI hut, the ablution blocks and the latrines, two triangles stood black against a huge sun that dropped out of sight, sudden as a theatrical lighting effect, while we watched. None of us spoke for a while.
    ‘Well…’ said Vee at last. ‘That certainly knocks Piccadilly Circus into a cocked hat.’
    The last thing that I saw before lights out was Pansy in her blue-and-white striped regulation pyjamas, buttoned carefully up to the neck, kneeling by her bed to say her prayers. Ansty Parva or Maadi, she would never miss them. It was oddly comforting.
    For a while that first night I’d lain awake, listening to the noises around me. I’d grown used to the small sounds of sleeping women, particularly these women. For eleven weeks the four of us had been crammed into a cabin designed for two. The captain’s diversionary tactics had taken us from Liverpool, north-west towards Greenland – were we really going to Egypt or was it just another SNAFU – Situation Normal All Fucked Up? We heaved around on the Atlantic and pretty soon none of us cared where we were going, so