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with; the only thing to do was to put it out of my mind and get on with the work.
    I had to go to Luxor next day, where a young fool of a pilot had run one of our Ansons into the tail of a Dakota of Transport Command. I had to clear up the accumulation of paper work on my desk before going off again in the morning; I worked on late that night. It was after ten o’clock when I had time for my own affairs and I was dead tired, but I had to write to Beryl because I should be away for another two or three days. I got the letters out and read them through, and I was bitterly angry once again that they should plague me so.
    I pulled a sheet of paper to me, and I wrote:
    Darling girl,
    I got your letter and your Dad’s together when I got back here after being away for a few days. I won’t say what I think because you probably know that, but I’ll say this. I think you must be bloody well daft, all the lot of you.
    First of all, I’ll bet you a hundred quid to a sausage that this Polish officer’s father isn’t a count and that he hasn’t got any estates and that the ring he gave you is either stolen or phony. For God’s sake snap out of it and act like a grown-up woman, and tell your Dad to do that too. You’ve been sucked in and fallen for the oldest story in the world, my girl. That’s what’s happened to you.
    Now about this divorce you want. I don’t know how in hell you expect me to get you a divorce from here even if I wanted to, and I’ve not made up my mind about
that
yet. What do you think this is—the Court of Chancery, with lawyers going round in wigs and gowns and that? I’ll tell you what it is. It’s a bloody hot, dirty, dusty aerodrome, no fans and blinding sun, and grit all over my desk. I’ve come five hundred miles from one just like it today, and I’m going off to another like it tomorrow. There’s no English lawyers here and no English law. If it’s a divorce you’re thinking of, you’ll have to wait till I get back to England in a year from now, and then I’ll see if I’m prepared to give it you. Some of you girls seem to think you can get a divorce just by putting a penny in the slot.
    You think this over a bit more, and then write and tell me how you’re going on. If I was in England now we’d soon find out if this Polish officer is a count or not, and you’d find out what the end of a strap feels like, my girl. I’m not at all sure that you’d find out what a divorce feels like. You can’t just pick up being married and put it down, like that. You think it over a bit more.
            Ever your loving husband,
    Tom.
    Considering this letter, it seems to me that I said everything that was in my mind, except that I still loved her. I didn’t think to tell her about that. Perhaps I thought she knew.
    Nothing much happened then. She didn’t write again, nor did I. I was very sore about this Polish officer, and till that was all cleaned up I hadn’t got much to say to her. If I’d been in England I’d have cleaned it up fast enough. I did sit down once or twice to write, but I never finished a letter. I could never think of anythingto say that wouldn’t be pleading with her for our marriage, and I was damned if I’d do that.
    I had an arrangement to send her money through the bank, deducted from my salary when it was paid in, and this went on as usual; she still took my fifteen pounds a month in spite of her Polish count with his large estates. I was content to leave the matter so. I was far too busy in those Cairo years of war to bother about any other girl. I used to wonder sometimes if I was married or not, and how it was all going on, and then I’d put it out of my mind. Time enough to start and sort out that one when I got home. I think I felt that so long as she went on taking my money there was nothing that couldn’t be ironed out when finally we got together.
    The end of the German war came, and the end of the Japanese war, but there was still a vast amount of