Sicilian Carousel Read Free

floor at his feet.… Had he appeared in a quiz I would have had no hesitation in writing out his curriculum vitae . Colonel Deeds, D.S.O., late Indian Army, later still,Desert Rat. Nowadays I suppose they have broken the mould of that most recognizable of species, the Eighth Army veteran. The clipped moustache, the short back and sides haircut.… “I see you are on this jaunt,” he said mildly, to break the ice. And I said I was. His blue eyes had a pleasant twinkle. He said, “I have just come down from Austria. I don’t suppose there’ll be many of us on this flight.” It was at Catania that we were to join the rest of the Carousel group—though the very word “group” gave me a twinge of resigned horror. If they were all like the two Microscopes in the corner I could just imagine the level of the conversation.
    But Deeds was quite a find. He had, he said (somewhat apologetically), managed to secure one of the “plum” jobs on the Allied Graves Commission which entitled him to have a regular “swan” every two years, notably in Sicily his favorite island. (“You can have the whole Med, but leave me Sicily.”) The jargon was heart warmingly familiar—it was Cairo 1940. It was the lingo of El Alamein, of the Long Range Desert Group. We had done everything together, it seemed, except meet; and, I might add, fight, for I had spent those years safely in the Embassy at Cairo and later on in Alexandria. But it was a mystery how we had not contrived to meet. We were both, for example, at the fateful party given by Baron the photographer in a tethered Nile houseboat where he lived. Our chief entertainment was provided by a huge belly dancer like a humming top who, as she rotated, kept alteringthe axis of the overcrowded boat; once, twice, it shivered and righted itself again. But just as the orchestra swept into a climax the whole thing suddenly turned over with its hundred guests and we were all of us in the Nile. Deeds like myself had waded ashore, but a shadow was cast over what was a hilarious evening by the death of one of the guests, who had grabbed the landline of electric wire which fed the lights on the houseboat. He was instantly electrocuted. We remembered many other occasions at which we had both been present, both in Cairo and then later in Cyprus. Yet we had never met! It was bizarre. He even remembered Martine, “Rich society girl wasn’t she? Good dancer.” But I did not feature in these memories. Where had I been, he wanted to know?
    As for Martine he remembered her, indeed had known old Sir Felix, her father. “A good-looking blonde? Yes, I do remember. She looked rather spoiled.” Martine would not have forgiven him the description, for when I first met her it was only too true; and curiously enough when first we found ourselves alone on the deserted beaches beyond Famagusta, it was roughly her own estimate of herself. She had just come back from a trip to Indonesia and Bali and proposed to try her hand at a travel book about the experience. “I found,” she said somewhat disarmingly, “that I was becoming hopelessly spoiled by money, birth, and upbringing. I decided to stop being a society fashion plate and start trying to realize myself. But how, whenyou haven’t much talent? I started with this journey, which I did entirely by bus and train. I avoided all the Embassies and all my compatriots. Now I want to settle in this island and live quite alone. But I’d like to write.”
    She was forthright and without vainglory and consequently very touching. I was terribly glad that chance had made us friends as I too had decided to settle in the island and was experiencing numberless difficulties in shaping up my little house in Bellapais, in the shadow of the Tree of Idleness which was for two marvelous summers our point of rendezvous.…
    The Catania lounge had filled up now and I delayed expatiating on