The Realms of Gold by Margaret Drabble

with the wine flowing, and with delightful little morsels of shell fish and salad and mayonnaise and so forth following one another quickly upon her plate—it seemed to be her favourite kind of meal, a meal of endless hors d’oeuvres, or would she suddenly be called upon to tackle a huge steak or a whole chicken?—at the moment she didn’t much care, and even launched upon her own description of that famous illness. It was a real break-through in human relations for me, she said, for after all, after that, what worse could life hold, in what worse a light could one possibly appear? If people can take that, they can take anything. Derek was
wonderful
, she said warmly, absolutely
wonderful
, he held my hand right through and never once looked disgusted, and I kept explaining that we couldn’t stop because we were behind schedule and had to get there before the sun came up, but oh lord, I thought I was dying.
    But it was a good trip, after that, said Hunter.
    Yes, it had been a good trip. She’d recovered the next day—it hadn’t been typhoid at all, that time. I’m incredibly resilient, she said; yes, so Derek said, said Hunter. They had started work on good terms, her momentary illnesS had reinforced her authority, and they had become close, the four of them, sharing everything, sleeping in the same tent, hiding nothing. It had been companionable. Karel would have hated it, for he was a modest man; she sometimes wondered how he could ever have liked an immodest person like herself. She had become more and more immodest over the years; perhaps it was something to do with tent life and the curious kind of non-sexual group feeling that always evolved in a shared enterprise of that nature. She’d often argued with Karel (who inclined to be jealous, even of the past) that there was no sex at all in her feelings for Derek and John and Bruce, though there was evidently something that was physical—it’s friendship, or comradeliness, she would say lamely, but she’d never been able to make it sound very convincing, there weren’t any good words for what she was trying to describe—companionship, comradeship, fellowship, the very words made one wince, as did the stupid word ‘dig,’ which she avoided whenever possible. It wasn’t always possible. A friend of her who had read Classics with her at University, and who was possessed of an even greater semantic squeamishness, had abandoned a career in archaeology because of this problem, and had stuck to book-bound Ancient History instead. Frances herself was not such an extremist. Unlike pedantic Karel, she recognized the existence of things that lacked good words to describe them. And she was not easily deterred.
    Hunter was very interested in her, no doubt about it. Or perhaps he was more interested in second-hand stories about Derek. She really must be very careful what she said, as it would clearly get around in no time, and she had lived to regret many an indiscretion: on the other hand, she couldn’t resist telling him about Derek and the camel and the syphilis. (She could see Andersson looking at her more in sorrow than in anger. Galletti, on the other hand, was much entertained, though distracted slightly by the attentions he was having to pay to some unexplained and indeed inexplicable young lady on his other side. Who the hell could she be? She was far too young to be anyone’s wife, and too well dressed to be a student. Someone’s daughter, maybe? Anyway, she was old enough to hear echoes of the camel story.) Hunter enjoyed the story, she could see, though it was impossible to evoke all it had meant to them, huddled together in their small oasis, playing poker, playing Scrabble, drinking, recounting the whole of their past histories to one another night after night, laughing hysterically whenever the camel was mentioned, childishly referring to it, making Derek expose, night after night, the