Page 44 of The Storyteller of Krakow

I understood him now and radioed to say that an English officer was going to take me to get a tyre. I expected the voice on the other end to tell me to wait with the empty truck, but they seemed not to care at all what I did.

‘Hop in!’ He opened the door for me, then climbed in himself.

‘Arthur’s the name. Arthur B. Montgomery. Now don’t go asking me what the B stands for.’

I nodded. ‘Lena.’

‘Lena, pretty name,’ he said, putting the car into gear and roaring away on the dusty, uneven road.

‘Polish driver, eh. Seen a lot of you gals about. Here and there. You look young, though – although everybody looks young to me these days. How old are you?’

‘Nineteen,’ I said. ‘Almost twenty.’

‘Ah, well, that makes sense then. You are young. Me, I’m fifty, would you believe it!’

I looked at his face, at his pencil-thin black moustache and the peppered hair that peeked out from under his cap. Yes, he looked fifty.

‘I was thinking you were young,’ I said confidently.

‘That’s very kind of you, m’dear. But I think something has got lost in translation. For I said I was fifty, and you think I look young!’

He laughed again, flicked his cigarette bud into the wind, then rolled up the window.

‘You like it here, eh?’ he asked.

I shrugged.

‘Pretty damned boring if you ask me. You must miss Poland.’

‘I do, yes.’

‘Family?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Gulag.’

‘Ah. Yes.’ He swallowed and gripped the steering wheel a little tighter so that I could see how his knuckles turned white. ‘Bad lot, those chaps. On our side now. But can’t trust them. I can see it, you know. All those deaths, too, and then just hop on over to the winning side. War is like a game, though. That’s what I see. All these pieces moving about. Bloody bad job, the whole lot of it. I’d get out if I could. Awful business.’

I liked the way he talked, even if I didn’t quite grasp what he was getting at. I liked how his moustache twitched, how his Adam’s apple bobbed in his neck and how he would suddenly laugh at something he had said but not try to explain it to me nor look at me to see if I would laugh along with him.

‘Where is tyre?’ I asked as I saw the outskirts of Cairo loom on the horizon.

‘In the city, m’dear. But I’ll have to drop you at the Palm’s Hotel. You’ll be fine there. Grab yourself a drink, some food and whack it on my tab. Arthur B. Montgomery, remember that because there is an Arthur C. Montgomery knocking about and he’s an awful chap and you don’t want to go putting drinks on his tab! Goodness no. Who would know what the outcome would be of that. He’s a bad sort, too, you know. I suppose you find them everywhere, bad sorts.’ He sighed.

‘Is this far from the hotel?’ I asked, pulling out the address of Noor from my pocket that Anka had given me.

‘Now then.’ He eyed the scrap of paper. ‘A friend of yours?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s not far, I suppose. Nice view of the ole pyramids there. Not the best neighbourhood though if you’re on your own. Lots of street hawkers and such. They’ll sell you anything, or at least make you buy anything.’

‘Please,’ I said.

‘I shall do as you ask, m’dear. But I will make sure I cut my meeting short and get back to you lickety-split with the tyre. Don’t want you there on your own for too long now.’

I liked the word lickety-split, and asked him to explain it to me. As soon as he had, he then went on to explain other British idioms: ‘khaki-wacky’ to describe women who liked men in uniform, ‘up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire’, to say you were going to bed, and my favourite, ‘Bob’s your uncle’.

‘Bob’s your uncle means “and there you have it”, or “it’s that easy”,’ he explained, weaving through bustling streets.