The Long Road to Baghdad (2011) Read online

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I can’t see. The flies …’ The stench of rotting blood assailed his nostrils. He managed to turn his head aside before he heaved up his morning coffee.

  John vaulted the rail and did what Harry had baulked at. Pushing his hands through the crawling mass, he uncovered a head. Harry watched John’s fingers – black, swollen with flies – lift a strand of ash-blonde hair. Ash-blonde, not light.

  ‘Emily,’ Harry breathed.

  ‘Help me get her inside.’ John assumed command. ‘There’s a weak pulse at her neck. She’s alive.’

  Maud woke to the sound of weeping. She stretched, revelling in the feel of cool sheets against her skin. The sobbing continued; an even drone. Typical of Harriet’s sentimentality. She hoped the maid wasn’t going to cry all day. A few tears at a wedding were permissible, but not a dam burst. It was John she was marrying, not an ogre. She smiled, recalling the time they’d spent together in her cabin. Marjorie Harrap had been right. John was gentle, and very, very loving. The temptation to savour the moment was too great. Keeping her eyes closed, she slipped further beneath the bedclothes.

  ‘Maud?’

  She opened her eyes and wondered if she were dreaming. John sat beside her bed in full uniform, a serious look hardening his handsome features.

  ‘Don’t you know it’s unlucky for the groom to see the bride before the wedding?’ she murmured.

  He reached for her hand. ‘It’s your mother. Darling, I’m so very sorry.’

  She stared at him dazed, uncomprehending.

  ‘She died early this morning. Harry found her after he’d taken Charles to the wharf.’ He closed his mind to the ghoulish image of Harry’s Arab servant hacking the blood-soaked, maggot-infested earth from the ground in front of Harry’s bungalow. He and Harry had discussed the situation. Harry had agreed there was no point in precipitating a scandal. No one’s interests would be served by publicising the gruesome details of the Perrys’ married life. Aside from Emily and Maud, there was Charles. If it should get out that Emily had died running from her husband, Charles would be the centre of a furore that would shake Indian military society. A few white lies were necessary. He’d impressed that on Harry, and white lies were what he was going to tell Maud.

  ‘Your mother left her bedroom last night – perhaps she couldn’t sleep, perhaps she wanted some air. She walked out onto your veranda and trod on a scorpion, a small yellow one. We discovered its body beneath hers. Darling, even if we’d found her right away, she would have died. There was nothing I or any doctor could have done.’

  ‘No!’ The scream was bestial in its intensity. ‘Not Mother. Not my mother.’ Maud rose to her knees and beat her fists against John’s chest. ‘No.’ The scream dulled and thickened to a sob.

  John folded his arms around her as she shuddered in paroxysms that cut deeper than grief. Fighting his own tears, he prayed she’d never discover the truth. That Harry had found Emily torn, bleeding, but alive. That she’d continued to live through 20 agonising minutes, despite the morphine he’d poured into her. He’d never witnessed a death so ugly or lacking in dignity. Emily had deserved better than he’d been able to give her.

  ‘I’m sorry, Maud.’

  She lifted her tear-stained face to his. Read the truth in his eyes. John held her against his chest until her sobs grew weaker, less violent, then he fed her a glass of laudanum and wine. When the drug took effect, he laid her back into the bed and opened the door. Harriet was slumped outside on the hall sofa, Angela Wallace next to her.

  ‘My sincerest condolences, Captain Mason,’ Angela sympathised. ‘Mrs Butler and I came as soon as we heard. She’s with the padre but she’ll be along shortly. Is there anything I can do?’

  ‘I’d appreciate it if you would sit with Maud.’

  ‘Poor, poor Miss Maud, and on her wedding day,’ Harriet sobbed.

  ‘Come along, Harriet.’ Angela patted the maid’s work-roughened hand. ‘You have to be brave for Miss Maud. She needs you, and you’ll be no use if you carry on like this.’

  John was amazed by the young girl’s strength and practical attitude. ‘I’ve given Maud something to make her sleep,’ he said when Angela ushered Harriet into Maud’s bedroom. ‘If there’s any change you’ll let me know.’

  ‘At once, Captain Mason.’ Smoothing her grey linen dress, Angela sat on the chair he’d vacated while Harriet hovered in front of the dresser. ‘Miss Maud will need mourning clothes, Harriet,’ Angela prompted. ‘She will be grateful if you lay them out.’

  ‘Miss Wallace.’ John removed the glass from beside Maud’s bed. ‘Thank you for coming.’

  ‘Please, call me Angela; I’m not used to Miss Wallace.’ She spoke without any of the primping or flirting he’d come to expect from Indian Army ladies.

  ‘Thank you, Angela, we appreciate your help.’

  ‘I wanted to stop living when my parents died, Captain Mason, so I know exactly how desolate Maud feels. Strangers showed me the solace God can give to the bereaved. I pray I’ll be given the privilege of doing as much for Maud.’

  John wasn’t a religious man. If he thought of God at all, it was the God of church parade who existed only on Sundays. Angela’s matter-of-fact referral to the deity made him feel faintly uneasy. He left the room. Harry’s servant was in the hall.

  ‘Everything is cleared outside, sir.’ The “sir” sounded like an afterthought.

  ‘Mitkhal, isn’t it?’ John asked.

  ‘Yes.’ No “sir” this time, John noted.

  ‘Could you find someone to clean this bungalow? Particularly the bathroom and carpets.’ John indicated the heap of bloodstained rugs he and Harry had taken up from the hall and drawing room floors.

  ‘Harry didn’t think it wise to ask the bearers. They talk. He sent into town for a man he trusts. He’ll be here soon.’

  John was taken aback by the familiarity with which Mitkhal treated Harry. His cousin had always been hopeless with servants, making friends of everyone from the stable boy to the butler. But this man was a native. John glanced warily at Mitkhal. The Arab stared coolly back.

  ‘I’ll see if the coffin’s ready.’ Mitkhal left John with the feeling he was the one being dismissed.

  John knocked on Colonel Perry’s bedroom door. Harry opened it. The smell almost sent John reeling back into the hall. A fetid, animal-lair stench of blood and sweat. The windows were closed, the blinds pulled, shading the light to the yellowy brown of old-fashioned staged photographs. The scene added to his impression of a tableau. He even thought of a title for it. Remorse, or the Morning After. It wouldn’t have looked out of place in a gallery.

  Perry, in breeches and collarless shirt sat hunched on the bare mattress, his face buried in his hands. Harry stood opposite, a bundle of sheets at his feet.

  ‘How’s Maud?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Sleeping. I gave her a sedative.’ John struggled with the foul air. ‘Miss Wallace is with her, she said she’d call if there’s any change.’

  ‘She will. She’s a capable young lady.’

  ‘I noticed.’

  ‘The colonel has ordered a grave to be dug in the European cemetery.’ Harry gave Perry credit for his own initiative. ‘He would like the funeral to be held as soon as possible.’

  John tripped over something protruding from beneath the bed. He picked up a bullwhip. Streaks of bloodstained, dried flesh clung to its plaited thongs. He hadn’t lied when he’d told Maud he could do nothing to save her mother. The sting of the yellow scorpion was invariably fatal, or so Mitkhal had assured him, but the thrashing Emily had received before her death hadn’t helped. He assumed Perry had found out about Emily and Charles. But what kind of a man would flay the skin off his wife’s back for falling in love with another man?

  Harry saw the whip and paled. His reaction gave John the impetus he needed to pull himself together. Tossing the whip aside, John gripped his cousin’s arm and walked him to the door.

  ‘If you’ll
excuse us, Colonel Perry, we’ll check the padre has everything in hand.’ Pushing Harry into the hall, John closed the door. ‘Emily’s dead. We agreed; there’s nothing we can do to alter that.’

  ‘Damn it …’

  ‘What’s done is done,’ John interrupted. ‘Perry didn’t kill her, the scorpion did.’

  ‘You saw that whip.’

  ‘The beating didn’t cause Emily’s death. What happens between a man and his wife is private.’

  ‘And Charles?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Is best out of it.’

  ‘You know as well as I do Emily was trying to reach him.’

  ‘We can’t be sure of that.’

  ‘I am,’ Harry countered. ‘If Emily had lived she would have left this morning with Charles.’

  ‘No, she wouldn’t have, because she reached the bungalow after Charles left.’

  ‘She could have followed him.’

  ‘And that would have given Perry cause to go after them and shoot them both. As it is, he only managed to lay his hands on Emily. Her death was an accident, Harry. Charles will have to get over it as best he can. Consider Maud,’ John begged. ‘Don’t do anything to jeopardise the chances of our wedding going ahead. She’s under age; I need Perry’s consent.’

  ‘You can’t possibly marry Maud today!’ Harry was horror-struck at the thought.

  ‘I have to get her away from here and I can only do that if we’re married. If I can’t get berths for England out of the Gulf in the next couple of days, we’ll return to India, and sail home from there. You haven’t said anything to Perry, have you?’ John questioned urgently.

  ‘Only what we agreed. That I found Emily and she died of a scorpion bite. When I pointed out that the sheets on the bed were blood-stained, he left the bed and helped me strip the mattress.’

  ‘I doubt he remembers much about last night. He downed a bucketful of brandy in the mess.’

  ‘And that excuses what he did?’ Harry retorted.

  ‘No. But who knows what a man who whipped his wife to shreds would do to his daughter if she stayed with him and he started drinking again. Do me a favour, Harry, find the padre and tell him I want the wedding to go ahead this evening?’

  ‘I’ll see if he’s in the mess.’ Harry looked at his cousin. ‘You always were the one to think things out and weigh up the consequences.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s as well someone in the family does.’

  The shaft hit home. Harry picked up his topee and left.

  John returned to the bedroom.

  ‘Did Harry explain that Mrs Perry died of a scorpion bite? One of the Arabs thought it might have been carried in with the wood. There was a pile of cut thorn against your veranda.’

  Perry lifted his head and dropped his hands. He stared at John out of bloodshot, expressionless eyes.

  ‘There was nothing I could do.’ John was gentle with Perry in spite of his revulsion.

  ‘I ordered Crabbe to clear the wood yesterday.’ Perry’s voice was high-pitched, remote. Suddenly it snapped to life. ‘I’ll kill the bastard. Kill him for disobeying orders. Mark my words, captain. I’ll kill him.’

  John had studied shock; he knew about guilt transference and the illogical, misdirected anger it could give rise to, but this wasn’t a textbook case. He’d loved Emily for her own, Maud, and Charles’s sake, and the sight of this arrogant, dishevelled officer railing against some hapless minion for causing Emily’s death disgusted him. He fought to keep his emotions in check because, as he’d told Harry, he had Maud’s welfare to consider. He interrupted the colonel’s flow of invectives against Crabbe.

  ‘We have to bury Mrs Perry.’

  Perry stared blankly at him.

  ‘As soon as possible. You know army regulations on burying the dead in this climate.’

  ‘Army regulations,’ Perry repeated. ‘I’m a colonel. Of course I bloody know army regulations …’

  ‘Afterwards, I’ll go ahead with the wedding. It will be a quiet one: Maud, myself, and two witnesses. It won’t be necessary for you to give her away.’ John deliberately left the question of Perry’s attendance open. Of preference, he never wanted to see the wretched man again.

  ‘You can’t rush Maud into this. Her mother’s not in her grave …’

  ‘The sooner I marry Maud and get her away from here, the better. Maud was close to Emily. She loved her, and after …’ He faltered at the sight of the bloodied whip on the bare mattress. The colonel saw what he was looking at.

  ‘I understand, Mason. You’ve decided to marry Maud come hell or high water. Well, if she’s content to let a bloody civilian make her decisions for her, then go ahead. Marry and be damned.’

  At that moment, John hated the colonel more than he’d ever hated anyone in his life. It took all his powers of self-control to recall the advice he’d given Harry. Maud had told him her father was wooden. “Grade one British Army Officer material, for the use of.” She was wrong. Her father wasn’t wooden. He was petty-minded and vicious, with the meanness that blighted the small-brained who remained in India too long. Poor Emily; little wonder she’d fallen in love with Charles.

  John left the room. A great deal remained unsaid but a quarrel between him and Perry would only hurt Maud. A few weeks from now, he and Maud would be half a world away, building a new life in England. His only consolation lay in Perry’s devotion to the army. The colonel would stay in India with the regiment until he retired. And if he had a single shred of humanity or consideration for Maud, he’d stay on after that.

  Perry picked up the whip and cringed at the sight of the strips of dried skin caught in the thongs. He couldn’t bear to think of Emily, but he could think of Mason. The pompous young ass who wasn’t even army any more. Who the hell did Mason think he was, threatening him? And he’d got his own way. Telling him that he was marrying Maud on the day of her mother’s death without so much as a “by your leave”.

  He threw the whip into the wastebasket, went to the window, and pulled up the blind. Mason was on the veranda with his back turned towards him. He was close, so close, that if it hadn’t been for the glass he could have touched him; or – his mouth curled maliciously at the thought – pushed a knife between the captain’s ribs.

  As his anger escalated, he failed to realise that it wasn’t John but the memory of the night he wanted to expunge. Emily was dead. John lived. He despised the man for knowing too much. It was a situation he abhorred and didn’t want to live with.

  European Cemetery, Basra, Saturday 4th July 1914

  ‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live …’ Padre Powell’s voice droned into the suffocating, sun-blinded atmosphere. Harry heard the voice, but the words resounded like the cadence of an alien ritual. Bored, miserable, he looked past the padre and encountered the disapproving glare of Crabbe. He obviously wasn’t behaving in the manner proscribed for a military funeral bearer. Ignoring Crabbe, he turned to Perry. The colonel was swaying on his feet at the head of the open grave, his eyes bloodshot and his breath brandy-stale as it wafted towards the mourners.

  Harry saw a few matrons exchange tight-lipped, knowing nods beneath their wide-brimmed, black hats. The gossip generated by Emily’s sudden death would keep the post going for months and the news had yet to break that Maud’s wedding had only been postponed until evening. It was as well he’d found time to write out the formal notification of his leave and place it on Perry’s desk. If he stayed, he’d be hunted by every gossipmonger in the quarter as a source of titivating tales.

  The padre deepened his voice to heighten dramatic effect. John moved his arm protectively around Maud’s shoulders and closed his free hand over her black-gloved fingers. She remained upright, silent and dry-eyed, as she had since the beginning of the service. She and John stood together at the head of the grave, separated from Perry by the robed figure of the padre; but for all her stoicism, Maud looked pathetic.

  Her small figure was swamped by the voluminous folds of the old-fa
shioned black silk dress Harriet had unearthed from the recesses of Emily’s wardrobe. Her eyes were clouded, lifeless, and the unnatural pallor of her face was visible through the chequered mesh of her black veil. Harry wondered how much laudanum John had fed her – and Harriet. The maid who stood at Maud’s elbow was as remote and leaden as her new mistress.

  ‘Ashes to ashes …’ The padre poignantly flung his hands over the gaping hole.

  Harry lowered his eyes to the coffin, covered by a profusion of flowers Mitkhal had scavenged from God only knew what green corners of the town.

  ‘Dust to dust …’ Bending his knees, the padre scooped a handful of dry soil.

  Concerned for Maud, Harry tried to catch John’s eye, but his cousin was already trying to lead Maud away.

  Freeing herself from John’s supporting hold, Maud took one last look at her mother’s coffin before throwing the single white flower she’d clutched throughout the service into the grave.

  The padre emptied his hand. Harry braced himself for the rattle of dry earth spattering on dead wood. He’d been to enough funerals both there and in India to come to dread the hollow, finite sound of parched earth falling on polished coffins.

  He saw Perry stare at the retreating figure of his daughter. Without warning, the colonel swung round and stepped forward. Harry moved quickly. Perry’s sway had become a stagger; one slip and he’d be on top of his wife, but before Harry could reach him, Perry lurched drunkenly and vomited into the grave.

  An angry murmur arose from the mourners. Harry could neither do nor take any more. He fell out and followed John and Maud back to his bungalow.

  Chapter Seven

  Basra , Saturday 4th July 1914

  Dressed in the black gown she’d worn to her mother’s funeral, Maud became Mrs John Mason in the barrack chapel at sunset. Harry doubled as best man and witness. Peter Smythe, Harriet, and Padre Powell were the only others present and, for the first time in his career, the padre cut a ceremony. The marriage lasted a scant, humane ten minutes.