The Last Cut

‘I’m glad you didn’t,’ said Zeinab. ‘I wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on anything.’

Zeinab was the second reason why it was a mistake to raise the subject. She wasn’t very interested in circumcision but she was interested in Labiba Latifa. Modern in spirit, although not quite in the way that Mahmoud was, Nuri had raised his daughter to be independent. That was a very difficult position for women to be in in Egypt at that time and Zeinab was eager to hear about others in the same position.

‘Do you think she would like some help?’ she asked suddenly.

‘No,’ said Owen.

It was Greek day in the Gardens. There was a festival of some sort and they were doing their national dances. The women were in traditional costumes, in which a fine lawn chemisette seemed to play a great part, and danced in a group, with much spirited skipping and rhythmic stamping of feet. The men were dressed more drably, in shiny black clothes and black wideawake hats. They took off their coats and waistcoats to dance, but were less stripped down than the Levantines, some of whom came in singlets, as for the gymnasium. Their women, too, appeared to be feeling the heat, for they had removed their dresses and were sitting in their petticoats, retaining, however, the white wreaths round their heads.

A pretty young woman danced across to Owen.

‘He’s in the shade,’ she said, ‘with the beer.’

She took Owen in among the bamboos to where a rug had been spread for a picnic. There was a hamper but no beer. Rosa, who knew her husband’s habits, led Owen further into the shade. Georgiades was standing beside a gadwal talking to the gardener. He was embracing an armful of bottles.

‘I was asking him if he could let some water into the gadwal,’ he explained.

‘And I was telling him I couldn’t,’ said the gardener. ‘This isn’t the right day.’

‘I was just wondering if you could make an exception,’ said Georgiades, fishing in his pocket.

The gardener looked at the coins.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t. Look, there’s a stream just over there. Why don’t you put the bottles in that?’

‘It’s too far.’

‘For God’s sake,’ said Rosa. ‘Why don’t you dance, like the other men?’

‘Yes,’ said Owen, eyeing the Greek’s bulk. ‘Why don’t you dance, like the other men?’

‘Besides,’ said Georgiades, ignoring all these remarks, ‘there are always thieves about in a place like this. I’ll bet you’ve had some trouble –’

‘Well,’ said the gardener, ‘as a matter of fact –’

Owen walked back with Rosa to the picnic place.

‘I suppose you wouldn’t like to dance?’

‘I’m not familiar with the Greek dances,’ Owen excused himself.

‘Perhaps there wouldn’t be much point,’ Rosa conceded.

She had always had a soft spot for Owen, especially since that business of the ransom. Indeed, if ever Zeinab should fall by the wayside, and if, by any unfortunate chance her husband, too, should be struck down, then – She brushed aside the possibility that Owen might have his own views. Rosa believed that whoever her mate was, she and he would be of one mind; hers.

She offered him some tsatsiki. While he was eating it, she squatted down beside him and asked about the regulator.

‘You know,’ she said, looking in her husband’s direction, ‘he’s not really the man for this. Water is not a liquid he’s had much to do with. And he knows nothing, absolutely nothing, about gardens. I’m the only flower he’s heard of.’

‘I know,’ said Owen, ‘but he’s a wonderful man at getting people to talk to him.’

Georgiades and the gardener were coming back through the bushes.

‘Yes, well, I could put them in the stream, I suppose,’ Georgiades was conceding, ‘but I’m not happy about it. Not with all these thieves about. Now if there was a ghaffir around –’

‘Him?’ said the gardener. ‘He’d be the first to take them!’

At the regulator all was calm. The water winked placidly in the sun. Some papyrus heads which had crept through the main barrage circled slowly up to the breach and then spun away again. The workmen were sitting up on the bank. Macrae and Ferguson stood on top of the regulator looking down into the breach and conferring.

‘We’ve stopped it up,’ said Macrae. ‘Now we’ve got to find a way of letting the water through again.’

‘But controlled,’ said Ferguson.

‘We’re thinking of using the undamaged gate. It’s the other one that’s the problem.’

‘Aye,’ said Ferguson.

They took Owen back to their little office and produced coffee. Then Macrae sat back.

‘We’ve talked to the men,’ he said.

Talked to the men?’

‘Aye. About the dynamite. We’ve told them it won’t do. Now I don’t mind the odd spot of pilfering. But dynamite is different.’

‘Yes, but –’

‘Y’see, that hole in the shed was clean cut. It was done with proper tools. Now we reckon that whoever did it must have brought his tools with him. And there’s a chance that the other men might have seen them. Of course, there’s also a chance that he brought them some other time and kept them hidden. But they keep close together and there’s a possibility that one of the others may have seen something. So we put it to them.’

‘Put it to them?’

‘Aye. We said now was the time to speak up. This wasn’t a private thing, this was a matter for everyone. Everyone suffered from a thing like this and if it happened again they would suffer more, their own villages, their own people.’

‘And what did they say?’

‘They didn’t say anything. But they will.’

‘They’ve got to talk it over first, you see,’ Ferguson explained.

‘And you think it will work?’

‘Aye,’ said Macrae.

4

In the Gardens the dancing was continuing furiously. The women had formed into a long line, their hands on the hips of the one in front of them, and were snaking about all over the place. The men had dropped back into a stationary row and were clapping the rhythm. The women danced up to them teasingly and then withdrew. Owen could see Rosa about half way down the line, plainly enjoying herself.

The dancers’ families had turned out in support. He recognized Rosa’s parents and formidable grandmother surrounded by lots of little children, themselves dressed for dancing, who must be cousins. Rosa belonged to a large extended family and to marry her was to marry the whole Greek community. Georgiades, a communal backslider, had had little choice in the matter. The marriage had been arranged; by Rosa.

Georgiades himself was nowhere to be seen. Owen began to walk round the group to greet Rosa’s family but then spotted him, beyond the dancers, among the bougainvillea, sitting on the edge of a gadwal talking to the ghaffir.

‘Lizard men!’ he was saying in appalled tones as Owen came up. ‘I wouldn’t meddle with them if I were you!’

‘Don’t worry!’ said the ghaffir fervently. ‘I won’t!’

Owen stepped back behind a bush.

‘Mind you,’ said Georgiades, ‘it could already be too late.’

‘Too late!’

‘Yes. I mean, you saw him, didn’t you?’

‘No! All I saw was his trail. I mean, I knew at once that it was a lizard man, you can tell by the marks, it’s their tail. But that’s not the same thing. I didn’t actually see him, not him himself –’

‘Well, then, you were a lucky man!’

‘I know, I know!’

‘I mean, you could so easily have seen him. It must have taken him some time to make that hole –’

‘Ah, no, it wasn’t like that. I mean, they don’t work like that. Not lizard men.’

‘They don’t?’

‘No. They don’t do it themselves, they get men to do it for them. That’s why you don’t see them. And that’s the way it was here. The wood wasn’t gnawed, was it? It was cut. If a lizard man had done it himself, it would have been gnawed. You don’t see lizard men with tools, do you?’

‘Well, no –’

‘No. He got someone to do it for him. Someone who had the tools. Then he came along afterwards, wriggled through the hole, took what he wanted and then was on his way.’

‘Well. I still think you were lucky. Because you could so easily have seen him at that point, couldn’t you?’

‘Yes, but I try to take care. I mean, that’s always the risk in a job like mine. You’ve got to be careful you don’t see too much. If you just go blundering around, you can easily walk into something, and then, bang! The next minute you’re in trouble.’

‘So what do you do?’

‘I creep. Then if you come across something, if you see something, or, more likely, hear something, like that night –’

‘So you did see him?’

‘No, no. like I said, you don’t see them. They get someone to do it for them.’

‘Ah, so that was the one you saw?’

‘I didn’t see anyone. But –’ the ghaffir lowered his voice – ‘I knew he’d been there.’

‘Well, the hole, of course –’

‘No, no, not that.’

‘How, then?’

The ghaffir laid his finger along his nose.

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