The Levant Trilogy Read Online Free PDF Page A

contributed.
    'Tuck in. Tuck
in,' Clifford shouted at him, and everyone who had brought food urged it upon
him. Simon tucked in.
    The heat now had
a leaden weight so even the flies were stilled. The sun had passed its meridian
and the light was taking on an ochre tinge that gave to the trees and the
sandy air an antique richness. They all sat bowed, drowsy, and Harriet felt
they had lost the present and were in some era of the remote past. Then Miss
Brownall came round with cups of tea. They roused themselves and began to talk.
The man who had spoken of Ozymandias, unwound his scarf from his hat and,
sipping his tea, watched Harriet from the corners of his eyes. After some
moments, he began fidgeting across the rug towards her, making an introductory
mumbling and creaking in his throat that at last became words.
    'This ... yes,
this is the young person who knows things. She can tell us what's going on.
She's in the American information office.'
    The man to whom
he spoke was the one who had backed Harriet's opinion of the cave. He was thin
and elderly and his raw, pink hands, tightly clenched, were nervously pressed
into the ground at his sides. He smiled on Harriet, saying, 'Oh, I know. I know
she's in information.'
    The two of them
gazed expectantly at her and she introduced them to Simon. The man with the
scarf was Professor Lord Pinkrose; the other was called Major Cookson. The
major was so absurdly unlike a
professional soldier that Harriet laughed slightly as she spoke his name. As
for information, she had no more than anyone else.
    Pinkrose's face
went glum. A pear-shaped, elderly man, he was wearing an old-fashioned tussore
suit that buttoned up to his chin. His nose, that rested on top of his scarf,
was blunt and grey like the snout of a lizard. His eyes, too, were grey - grey
as rainwater, Simon thought - and looked coldly on Harriet when he realized she
had nothing to tell. He was about to turn from her when he remembered he had
another question to ask. 'Have you any news of Gracey? ... any news? Every time
I ring the office, I get a girl saying, "Mr Gracey is not available,"
and that's all she says. It's exasperating. Over and over. "Mr Gracey is
not available." It's like a machine.'
    Gracey was the
head of the organization which employed Harriet's husband, Guy Pringle. She
said, 'It is a machine; an answering machine. There's no one in the office. The
place is locked up. I've tried to contact them, too. Guy's in Alexandria in an
out-of-the-way place and if the advance goes on, he could be cut off there.'
Harriet, her anxiety renewing itself, spoke with feeling. 'It's Gracey's job to
order him to leave but Gracey's not here. He's taken himself to a safe place as
he always does when things look bad. I went to the office and found the
porter. He told me Gracey's gone to Palestine.'
    'Gone to
Palestine! Gone to Palestine!' Pinkrose seemed baffled by the news and then
became agitated. 'You hear that, Cookson? You hear that? Gracey's gone to
Palestine.'
    'So have a lot of
other people.'
    'But he said
nothing to me. Nothing. Not a word. This is disgraceful, Cookson. To go
off without a word to me. Did you know he had gone?'
    Cookson shook his
head. I never see Gracey these days. Now I'm on my uppers, most of my old
friends have faded away.'
    Pinkrose, caring
nothing for Cookson's lost friends, interrupted him. 'I'd no idea the
situation was so serious. No idea. No idea. No idea at all.'
    Harriet watched
Pinkrose with a smile, quizzical and mildly scornful, while Pinkrose's small,
stony eyes quivered with self-concern. She had known him first in Bucharest
where, sent out to give a lecture, he had arrived as the Germans were infiltrating
the country and had been abandoned then just as he was abandoned now. He was,
she thought, like some heavy object, a suitcase or parcel, an impediment that
his friends put down when they wanted to cut and run. Looking beyond him to
Cookson, she mischievously asked, 'And what are your