The Long Road to Baghdad (2011) Read online

  She’d insisted it was his duty to spread the word that women didn’t have to be slaves to their bodies. That they had the right to control the size of their families and, above all, that he should preach the message that lovemaking should be a carefree and pleasant occupation for both sexes. He’d packed the devices and pamphlets and taken them to India. And his subtle, probing questioning of some of the hysterical officers’ wives who frequented his surgery had led him to dispense Helen’s offerings with gratifying results.

  Incidents of miscarriages, maternal deaths, and unwanted pregnancies dropped sharply after his arrival at regimental headquarters. Although his superiors raised their eyebrows at the additions he made to their requisition lists when he needed to replenish the stock he’d brought to India, they didn’t block his orders. Possibly because their own wives had been among the beneficiaries of his revolutionary prescriptions.

  He intended to apply the knowledge Helen had taught him to his own marriage. He wanted children, but not at the expense of Maud’s health and not until they were settled in England. Before then he would show her the contents of his valise and explain their uses. But not tonight. He walked over to the fountain and watched the water trickling down into the small pond. Tonight he’d lie beside her and wait patiently while she slept off the effects of the laudanum.

  A movement on the roof caught his attention. He glanced up, glimpsing Harry and Furja behind a stone trellis. In silhouette, they resembled an illustration from a Hindu sexual manual. He stared, mesmerised, as they slowly explored one another’s bodies with hands, lips, tongues …

  ‘Captain Mason?’ Harriet emerged from the suite he and Maud had been allocated. He rose to meet her. Ashamed of his voyeurism, he glanced up again, hoping Harry and Furja hadn’t realised he’d been watching them. The new angle of the stonework trellis closed off the roof as solidly as if it had been a wall.

  ‘Miss Maud is in bed, sir. If you don’t want me for anything else, I’ll go to my own room.’ Harriet pointed to a door set further back than theirs beneath the veranda. ‘You only have to shout, sir, and I’ll be with Miss Maud in a trice.’

  ‘Thank you, but I don’t think Miss Maud will need you again tonight. Is your room comfortable?’

  ‘Very, sir. Not as nice as yours and Miss Maud’s,’ she said, wary of giving offence. ‘But Lieutenant Downe’s done me proud. What time would you like your breakfast in the morning, sir?’

  ‘Sleep in, Harriet. We could all do with a rest.’

  ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but how long will we be here? Not that it’s not a nice house, and the people – they’re lovely. Ever so kind, but I can’t understand a word they’re saying, and they’re all heathens.’

  John tried not to smile at Harriet’s summation of their situation. ‘We’ll leave as soon as I can get passage out of the Gulf for all of us, Harriet. Goodnight, sleep well.’

  ‘You too, sir.’ A blushing consciousness came to her that it was his wedding night.

  Thrusting his cold cigar into his pocket, John entered his bedroom. Emily’s death had cast a long shadow. He consoled himself with the thought that this time next year he’d be climbing the stairs to the bedroom of his house in England.

  An oil lamp shed a subdued yellow light over a divan bed, the only item of furniture in the room. Their trunks stood open but unpacked in the corner. Someone, probably Harriet, had found one of the nightshirts his mother had insisted he take to India although he’d slept naked since adolescence, and laid it over his valise.

  Maud was awake beneath an embroidered black silk coverlet.

  He smiled. ‘The lace on your gown is very pretty.’

  ‘Mother picked it out. Where have you been?’

  ‘Smoking in the garden. I thought you’d like some time alone with Harriet.’

  ‘She asked if she could become my maid now.’

  ‘Would you like that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Tears trickled down her cheeks.

  ‘I’m sorry, darling.’ Leaning over, he kissed her gently. ‘This isn’t the honeymoon I planned for us.’

  She flung her arms around his neck and sobbed. He held her until his arms grew numb. Stepping behind the bed, he undressed. For Maud’s sake, he put on the nightshirt. Sliding into bed, he moved beside her. He pulled her head down onto his chest, wrapped his arm around her, and waited for sleep.

  He was worried at the thought of making love to her for the first time. Something Helen had said came to mind.

  ‘The first time is vital to a woman. Treat your virginal bride gently. Kiss and caress her until she is as aroused as you. If you can, hold back and see to her pleasure before your own; she’ll be passionately grateful to you for the rest of your married life.’

  He even remembered his response. ‘There’ll be no virgin brides for me.’

  ‘Oh yes there will, John. You’re the type.’

  He ran his fingers over Maud’s arm, to her lace-clad breast. Her nipple hardened beneath his touch. She clutched him fiercely, digging her nails into his back through the thin cambric of his shirt as she kissed him wildly, inexpertly. He moved away. Opening her eyes, she looked at him and he stared silently back. He’d found it easy to talk to Helen, even about sensitive subjects. Now he had to build the same relationship with Maud.

  ‘How much did your mother tell you?’ he asked.

  ‘Only what I told you on the Egra. That love between a man and a woman can be wonderful.’

  ‘I want it to be that way between us, Maud.’

  ‘Now,’ she demanded.

  ‘Now might not be the best time. We’re both tired …’

  ‘Now,’ she repeated, moving closer to him.

  He no longer had the self-control to resist her. Flinging back the bedclothes, he kissed her face, her throat. Unbuttoning her bodice, he exposed her breasts. His body burned for her, but Helen’s warning rang through his mind. He pulled at the hem of her nightdress. ‘Do you mind, darling?’

  Maud shook her head, conscious that, unlike in the cabin, this time she’d removed her drawers. Lifting her in his arms, he pulled the gown over her head. She gasped as he slid his hand between her legs. She tensed, expecting him to withdraw, but instead he began to stroke her, first with his fingers then with his lips and tongue. She was horrified, shocked, and embarrassed at what he was doing to her, yet a strange excitement coursed through her veins.

  Taking her hand, he pushed aside his nightshirt and pressed it between his thighs. ‘What did your mother tell you about this?’ His voice was hoarse with passion.

  ‘Nothing.’ She opened her legs wider, not wanting him to stop.

  He felt with his free hand in his valise and pulled out one of the pessaries he’d packed. ‘I’m going to put something inside you; it won’t hurt. Tomorrow we’ll discuss having a family.’ He slipped the pessary between her legs. She was moist. It should have slid in easily, but her hymen was intact. Using every technique Helen had taught him, he brought her to a climax, thrusting his fingers and the pessary into her at the final moment. She moaned, but her cry was short lived. ‘I’m sorry, darling; I didn’t mean to hurt you.’

  He continued to tease her, waiting until she responded to his touch once more. Gradually, taking his time, he replaced his hand with his penis. Her moans grew louder, only this time they were cries of pleasure, not pain.

  Harriet heard Maud cry out. Then she heard whispers and a woman’s laughter somewhere above her. She wrapped her arms around her thin, dry, spinster’s body and turned her face to the wall. Clutching a cushion to her breasts, she failed to block out her loneliness. She had never felt so isolated or unwanted. The house was positively reverberating with love.

  Lieutenant Downe and that shameless native girl who’d wrapped herself around him, kissing him, not caring who was there to see it. Miss Maud and Captain Mason sharing a bed the other side of the wall. For all that they were married, it didn’t seem right. Not on the day of her mother’s death.

  And
her – she hadn’t shared a bed with anyone since the day she’d left home and her younger sisters. Her 35 years lay heavy on her. Life had passed her by and she hadn’t even noticed.

  Chapter Eight

  Basra , Saturday 8th August 1914

  Maud burrowed beneath the coverlet as John slid sideways out of the bed. He watched her fumble for him in her sleep before relaxing back into unconsciousness. Only then did he reach for the uniform that had been folded away for so many weeks. The khaki felt rough against his skin. The coat constricted his arms, the leather belt bit into his waist. Just when he thought he could leave the army behind him, Germany had declared war on half of Europe, leaving Britain no alternative but to pitch in with her allies, call up the reservists, and ruin the plans he’d made for himself and Maud. The minute they’d become used to living with one another he had to leave her to join a shooting match on the fields of Belgium.

  He had no idea how long the war would last, but he knew army red tape. Lack of transport could keep him in Europe and Maud in India for a lot longer than it would take governments to sign peace treaties. Why had he ever taken a commission? He could have taken his pick of the posts in the London hospitals. If he had, he’d be home now working with his father, well out of it.

  Anger smouldering, he walked out, under the shade of the veranda into the walled garden. Turning his back on the pile of trunks heaped close to the river entrance, he went to the fountain. He’d come to love this small part of Mesopotamia. He’d whiled away many happy hours here with Harry and Furja or Maud.

  He took the tiny cup of Turkish coffee a slave handed him and stared despondently at the goldfish swimming beneath the water lilies in the pool.

  ‘Good morning, cousin.’ Furja joined him, smiling and, as usual indoors, unveiled.

  ‘Good morning, Furja.’

  ‘Harry left for the barracks. He hoped to hear news from Europe but he will return before it’s time for you and Maud to take the steamer.’

  ‘I will be sorry to leave.’ John sat next to Furja on the edge of the fountain. He’d grown fond of Harry’s wife, admired her vitality, sense of humour, and occasionally brutal honesty, and was grateful for the happiness she’d brought Harry.

  ‘It’s kind of you to say so. I hope you will now tell your countrymen that we Bedouin are not entirely ignorant of the more gracious arts of living.’

  ‘Of course.’ He was embarrassed by what he took to be a reference to Maud’s coolness towards all things Islamic. The idyll of the past few weeks had been marred by her attitude. Unlike him, Maud found it difficult to converse with the Arabs, or come to terms with Harry’s marriage. He’d made excuses for her; the only natives she’d met had been servants. No allowances had been made in her upbringing for the introduction of a highborn social hybrid like Furja. But his excuses couldn’t compensate for Maud’s lack of warmth towards the Bedouin girl and, despite his and Harry’s best efforts; the atmosphere between the women had remained frosty, strained, and polite. Always polite. Excruciatingly so.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ve made you unhappy on your last morning in my father’s house.’

  ‘We British tend to think we have a monopoly on good manners and culture,’ he conceded.

  ‘As do we Bedouin. I will forgive your race their failings, if you will forgive mine.’

  ‘Done.’

  They sat in companionable silence while he fixed the scene in his mind, sensing it was a memory he might be glad to conjure during the times ahead. ‘Sometimes it feels as though we only arrived here last night, and at other times it seems as though we have been here for ever. A happy for ever. You made it possible for Maud and I to have a honeymoon, Furja.’

  ‘You are kind.’

  ‘It is you who is kind. Harry told me you took us in against your father’s wishes.’

  ‘My father’s commands referred to Ferenghis. In your heart you are no more Ferenghi than Harry.’

  ‘Would to God none of us were. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t have to go to war.’

  ‘You don’t want to fight?’ she asked.

  ‘Like every other sane, normal man I want to stay with my wife.’

  ‘Harry doesn’t.’

  ‘Harry doesn’t want to leave you any more than I want to leave Maud,’ he protested.

  ‘Oh, if Harry could be sure of not missing anything by staying with me he would. But when Mitkhal returned from the compound last night and told him the British soldiers expect to be sent to India, and from there to the war in Europe, he started jumping like a goat on a sun-baked rock.’

  ‘You’re wrong, Harry …’

  ‘Needs excitement and likes playing the warrior.’ She shrugged. ‘I accept him as he is. What else can a wife do?’

  ‘You misunderstand Harry’s position. He holds the King’s commission. He has no choice. He has to go.’

  ‘It is you who misunderstand Harry. He is not like you, John. There is much of the little boy in him.’

  ‘On that we agree.’ He smiled.

  ‘In time you will agree with everything I’ve said.’

  ‘In my country we say women are always right.’

  ‘Here too.’ She laughed.

  ‘What will you do when Harry leaves?’

  ‘Return to the desert and my father’s tent.’

  ‘Should you decide to go to England …?’

  ‘No. Thank you, cousin, but no. I will return to my tribe; it is where I belong.’

  ‘When two people love one another as much as you and Harry they belong with one another.’ He was thinking of himself and Maud as much as Harry and Furja.

  ‘Our marriage was not made for love, but politics. When it has served its purpose, we will divorce.’

  John stared at her incredulously. ‘You don’t love Harry?’

  ‘No more than he loves me.’

  ‘I thought you were happy.’

  ‘We are –’ her smile broadened ‘– but we are too busy living life to worry about details.’

  ‘Details?’ he questioned in bewilderment.

  ‘The relationship between a man and a woman should be simple. If it is good on the mattress, there is no need for useless talk. Now I have shocked you. I forgot that Fer … the British don’t like mentioning the active side of love.’

  ‘I’ll never understand the Bedouin.’ John turned his red face to the pool.

  ‘We are a simple people. We act rather than speak about important things. The unimportant things we talk to death in the coffee circle. You can talk about something until you kill it, you know.’ She started at the sound of bolts being drawn in the outside door. Her face lit up. ‘Harry.’

  ‘I wonder if he knows whether travelling orders have been issued to the Indian regiments. They’re bound to send us to the Western Front.’

  ‘So Harry tells me. Soon you will be gone, and I have said none of the things I intended, or given you this.’ She thrust a package wrapped in a scrap of blue silk at him. ‘It is an amulet, containing the sacred words of the prophet. We believe it affords the wearer protection from all evils, including bullets. You will wear it, John. For me?’

  ‘I will treasure it, but the protection will be wasted. A doctor sees little of the fighting, only the results.’

  ‘This war might be different, even for doctors.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ He buttoned the package into his top pocket.

  ‘John?’

  ‘Yes.’ He jumped up as Harry walked through the door, Mitkhal close on his heels, their robes billowing around their feet.

  ‘Send Maud to your mother. When you are away she will need the wisdom of an older woman to guide and protect her.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  John greeted Harry, wanting to hear the latest news from the barracks. But even as they spoke of the possible transfer of troops from India to the European Front, and Harry’s frustration at being left behind with the detachment detailed to protect the Basra consulate and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, he filed Furja’s wor
ds at the back of his mind.

  He didn’t think about what she’d said. Not then. Not until much later, when long, lonely months separated him from Maud. And Furja and the garden were no more than a beautiful memory to be cherished in the darkness of a world gone mad.

  Chapter Nine

  The Persian Gulf, Monday 19th October 1914

  Harry left his desk when the first rays of the sun touched the eastern horizon. He stood at the window and watched the sky turn from silver to gold above the silhouette of the oil refinery’s storage tanks.

  ‘Day’s broken, sir,’ the duty sergeant commented.

  ‘So I see.’ Harry turned from the window that had been let into the wall of the shack that served as both company and duty office. ‘Give the order for the changing of the guard.’

  ‘Sir.’ The sergeant’s boots thundered over the planking. The door, followed by the insect screen, banged behind him.

  Peter Smythe strolled in, the top button of his shirt undone, a yawn contorting his boyish features. ‘Anything?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing.’ Flinging himself into his chair, Harry propped his heels on a mess of paperwork on the desk. ‘Bloody nothing.’

  ‘We’re all fed up, Harry, but you’re wound like a clockwork toy about to spring. For Christ’s sake, calm down, before you have the rest of us as crazy as you.’

  ‘War breaks out. The Turks and Germans decide to hold hands. Turkish emissaries go to India to promote “holy war against the Imperialist British” among the Muslims. And what do we do?’ Harry demanded before answering his own question. ‘Retreat to Abadan, leaving Basra and the Shatt to the mercy of the bloody Ottomans. While Turkish troops mass around us, we sit like ducks in a coop waiting. Waiting for bloody what – that’s what I’d like to know.’

  ‘Orders?’

  ‘And if Johnny Turk attacks tomorrow? Do we wait for the Indian Office to give us the all clear to shoot back? It could be months before the damned politicians remember we’re here, and by then we could all be dead and, if I know anything about the Turks, not even buried.’