The Long Road to Baghdad (2011) Page 16

  ‘We caught one of the natives responsible for this, sir.’ The sergeant indicated the corpses.

  ‘You have proof of this man’s guilt, Sergeant?’

  Harry tried to move. A pain shot through his chest, crippling him. He saw Peter pale when he recognised him, heard him murmur his name. Then he plunged into darkness.

  India , Friday November 27th 1914

  Geoffrey Brooke rode along the main thoroughfare. Swerving past Indian drays and European carriages, he arrived at The Star of the East, an Anglo-Indian hotel with a dubious reputation. Tossing the reins to the stable boy, he vaulted off the saddle, and ran into the faded red plush and gilt reception hall.

  ‘Sahib Brooke.’ The obsequious Indian who owned the place bowed. ‘Madam is here. We have given her all comforts. Shall I send up champagne, Sahib?’

  ‘A bottle of the best, Joseph. Chilled – and with better glasses than last time.’ Geoffrey exercised the confidence that came with his first sexual conquest.

  ‘My apologies. It was a bad servant. He is gone. It will not happen again.’

  ‘Tell the waiter to knock and leave it outside the door.’

  ‘Of course, Sahib, we …’

  Geoffrey didn’t wait. Taking the stairs two at a time, he halted outside a door on the first floor and knocked three times in quick succession. When the key turned, he walked in. The curtains had been drawn, closing out the glow of the sunset. A woman in an enveloping, shapeless dress and veiled hat stood before him. He locked the door behind him before lifting her veil and kissing her.

  ‘Maud. Darling, darling, little Maud.’

  ‘You, darling Geoffrey, are late,’ she complained. Extricating herself from his embrace, she removed her hat and veil.

  ‘I’ll explain why in a moment, sweetheart. That will be the champagne,’ he announced at a knock on the door.

  ‘You think of everything.’ She moved behind the dressing screen.

  He unlocked the door and carried in the tray. Pulling a table close to the bed, he set the champagne and glasses on it, then re-locked the door.

  ‘Help me with this dress.’

  Joining her behind the screen, he fumbled with the fastenings.

  ‘Why do men have such clumsy fingers?’

  ‘Because we weren’t meant for delicate work like lady’s maiding. There, that’s the last.’

  She slid the dress over her shoulders. It fell to the floor.

  ‘Maud!’

  ‘I thought it would save time.’ She enjoyed the shock on his face.

  ‘But if someone should see …’

  ‘You have. Isn’t it time you did something about it?’ Her hands roamed over his body, unbuttoning his uniform at speed. He began to tremble as he always did at the onset of their lovemaking. Her confidence, her demands, but most of all her hunger, terrified him. She expected so much and until the moment actually arrived, he was never certain he’d be able to satisfy her.

  ‘Was that all right?’ he whispered as she moved away from him in the bed.

  ‘It was a start.’ She poured two glasses of champagne. ‘Now, before we continue, what was it you wanted to tell me?’

  He sat up and put his arm around her, taking the champagne with his free hand. ‘I’m leaving for the Gulf tomorrow.’ He blanched at the look on her face. ‘I’m sorry, darling; I thought you’d be happy. We’ve taken Basra.’

  ‘I know. John writes to me. He’s there, remember.’

  ‘That’s what so marvellous. I shall be going in with the Indian police force Mr Gregson’s recruiting to oversee law and order in the Gulf. I’ll be settled in Basra. I can look up your husband, tell him about us and ask him to divorce you. I know it won’t be easy for us at first, darling. People can be awkward about these things but once I explain and he realises how much we love one another, it will be fine. He can’t blame us for falling in love. You were only married for a few short months …’ Oblivious to her silence, he rattled on. ‘I’ll arrange passage for you to Basra as soon as I reach there and find us somewhere to live. It’s perfectly safe now the Turks have been pushed back. We’ll live quietly until the divorce is settled, then marry. It won’t be a grand affair, but that won’t matter. The minute this war is over, I’ll resign my commission and we’ll go wherever you want. Don’t you see, darling, we’ll be together. We won’t have to meet like this – Maud?’ He called after her as she left the bed.

  ‘I forbid you to say a single word to John about us or anything else.’

  Abandoning his drawers, he heaved on his trousers and followed her behind the screen. ‘I thought you’d want me to tell him. You can hardly face him on your own.’

  ‘John’s working in a field hospital.’ She tried to recall letters she’d barely scanned since she’d begun sleeping with Geoffrey. ‘If he found out about us when he’s in the thick of it, and something happened to him …’

  ‘Darling.’ He wrapped his arms around her. ‘The Turks are on the run; the war’s practically over.’

  ‘The war’s not over. If it was, they’d be sending John home.’

  ‘We’re simply consolidating the positions we’ve taken. It can’t last much longer.’

  ‘I don’t want him to find out. If – if – I couldn’t live with myself.’

  He led her back to the bed, and cursed himself for being insensitive. Maud was a delicate, considerate woman. She couldn’t ride roughshod over anyone’s feelings, not even those of the husband she no longer loved. ‘We’ll wait, if that’s what you want, darling. It will only be for a little while. The minute the peace treaty’s signed we’ll face –’ he forced himself to say the name ‘– John Mason together.’

  Maud didn’t hear a word. All she could think of was that tomorrow she’d be alone again. Without a man to hold, comfort, and love her through her blackest moments.

  Base Hospital, Basra, Sunday November 29th 1914

  John walked down the avenue of convalescent beds into the curtained cubicle that had been Harry’s home for five humiliating, painful days. His cousin was sitting on the edge of his cot, his teeth clenched as he struggled to push his arms through the sleeves of his uniform shirt.

  ‘Need help?’ John offered.

  ‘If I was proud, I’d say no,’ Harry grimaced. ‘But I’m too damned sore to be proud.’

  ‘Five days isn’t long enough to heal six cracked ribs, massive bruising and a fairly serious concussion. I’d be happier if you stayed.’

  Harry winced as John lifted the shirt over his shoulder. ‘Duty calls.’

  ‘Duty, my eye. You’re going to look for Furja.’

  ‘I hope I find her.’

  ‘You will, and when you do, I guarantee she’ll be in better shape than you.’ John watched Harry button his shirt over his bandages. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any point in asking you to apply for a transfer out of your crazy job.’

  ‘The brass wouldn’t be amused if I did.’

  ‘Damn the brass. You would have been killed by that sadistic maniac if Smythe hadn’t happened along that quay.’

  ‘And Perry wouldn’t have lifted a finger.’

  ‘Harry, we’ve been through that.’

  ‘I wasn’t hallucinating,’ Harry insisted. ‘He just stood by and watched me being hammered. Mark my words, you’ll be next.’

  ‘If you won’t think of yourself, consider the people who care for you.’

  ‘I am. I’m thinking of Furja. And working as a political officer and dressed as an Arab, I have a legitimate excuse to go into the desert. Journeys take weeks out there; occasionally I’ll be able to steal time out of the war and no one will be any the wiser. So, as usual, I’m looking after number one. I’ll be taking my ease with my wife, while you –’ he grinned at John

  ‘– work yourself to a skeleton here.’

  ‘And if you meet the Turks? Or another mad sergeant?’

  ‘I’ll be more careful next time.’

  ‘You won’t survive a next time, Harry.’

&n
bsp; ‘If Maud was up the road and you were offered a post that gave you the opportunity to visit her now and again, what would you do?’

  ‘Your ribs are wrecked, your lungs damaged, and don’t ask about your head.’ John avoided Harry’s question.

  ‘According to my nearest, if not dearest, my head was never right.’

  ‘Rumour has it we’re advancing soon; that means another show. I know you and shows. You’ll be in the thick of it. I’m warning you, Harry, one more blow to your chest and it’ll be me who has to look for Furja. I don’t want to have to do that.’

  ‘You will, if you have to.’ Harry struggled to his feet.

  ‘If I have to,’ John reiterated.

  Evening, Saturday November 28th 1914

  Robed, leaning on a stick, Harry hobbled through the lattice of lanes that pierced the Arab quarter. He frequently stopped to rest while the pains in his chest subsided, and, while he waited, he looked around. The change of government had altered nothing. The usual odours of roasting meat, baking bread, spices, and effluent assailed his nostrils as he limped along, trying not to think of what he would find at journey’s end. He’d dreamed so constantly of his reunion with Furja he was beginning to feel as though he’d already lived it.

  She’d be spinning wool or weaving a rug in the garden. She’d look up, smile – he’d take half a dozen steps across the room …

  Lost in musings, he walked past the familiar studded door. Turning back, he knocked, quietly at first, then louder. His bangs echoed with an ominous hollow sound before a bolt grated. A grill opened at face level. Dark eyes and a smooth, round face peered at him.

  ‘Ubbatan.’ Farik gasped the Arabic for captain. ‘Allah be praised.’

  The door creaked wide on protesting hinges. Harry stepped inside, and while Farik refastened the bolts, he looked around. Where he remembered flowers, shrivelled heads swayed in the cold wind that rattled even in this enclosed space.

  ‘My wife?’

  ‘Is in the desert, Ubbatan.’

  ‘What has happened here?’

  ‘Nothing.’ The slave answered. ‘The Turks have gone, the British come. We remained within the house and no one bothered us.’

  ‘Have you received news from the desert?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Is there anyone here beside you?’

  ‘Mansour and three women. Are you well? You are trembling, Ubbatan.’ Farik looked at Harry’s stick.

  ‘I am well now.’

  ‘Would you like coffee, food? Will you be staying here, Ubbatan?’

  Frustrated by a blanketing sense of anti-climax, Harry sank down on the edge of the fountain. The water trickled sluggishly behind him. He’d deluded himself. Nothing was the same. Nothing. He felt sick to the pit of his stomach.

  ‘Yes, please, Farik, coffee, strong and black.’ Setting his back to the shuttered room he’d shared with Furja, he cleared his mind. He could glean all the information Lieutenant-Colonel Cox wanted, albeit late after his hospitalisation, at Abdul’s. If any of the desert Sheikhs were here in Basra, they would be gambling in the back rooms. Abdul would give him an introduction to the game. He’d enough sovereigns to buy his own stake, but it might be as well to ask the brass to finance future ventures.

  If he satisfied Cox, and the advance John had spoken about wasn’t imminent, he’d be able to leave for the desert tomorrow. He’d ride Dorset. She was so well schooled she’d carry him no matter what state he was in. The sooner he discovered exactly how, and where, Furja was, the sooner he could stop running from his own nightmares.

  The Mission, Basra, evening, Saturday November 28th 1914

  Angela faced Peter. ‘Did you volunteer for this?’

  ‘I’m a soldier. Soldiers obey orders, and I’ve been ordered up river to Qurna. I have no choice.’

  ‘But you want to go,’ Angela complained. ‘That’s what I find difficult to understand. You can’t wait to leave.’

  ‘If I don’t go I’ll be court-martialled for desertion.’ The wind gusted outside, hammering needles of rain on the windows. The classroom stove had burned out hours before and the temperature was close to freezing. ‘The stable boy will have brought my horse around by now.’ He picked up his overcoat.

  She flung her arms around him. ‘You will take care of yourself?’

  He smiled, and her anger abated. ‘The Turks didn’t give me any trouble when we took Sahil and Basra. I’ll return from Qurna in one piece.’

  ‘I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.’

  ‘I’ll be back, if I’m lucky with my captaincy.’ He picked her up and sat her on a desk. ‘Then, Miss Wallace, I’ll make you Mrs Peter Smythe so fast your head will spin.’ Shrugging his arms into his overcoat, he kissed her and left.

  She went to the window and watched him walk down the garden. The stable boy was waiting. Peter mounted, turned, and took a last look at her through the window. She forced a smile; hoping the raindrops on the glass would camouflage her tears. Digging his heels into his horse’s flanks, Peter rode away. She held her hand to the window, ready to wave, but he didn’t look back.

  Chapter Twelve

  Qurna, Thursday December 10th 1914

  A freezing gale whipped Harry’s greatcoat against his shins as he stood at the side of a shell-spattered street watching Turkish POWs march past. Both the Turks and the British troops who shepherded them along at gunpoint were blue with cold, but the Turks looked infinitely more miserable.

  Smythe fell out, standing alongside him. ‘I thought you’d still be in sick bay.’

  ‘Someone has to keep an eye on you.’

  ‘You’re incorrigible, indestructible, and blessed by God or the Devil. I’m not sure which.’

  ‘Which is responsible for that?’ Harry pointed at the column.

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine. Johnny Turk lost over 2,000 dead, and wounded besides. Not a bad catch for 1,000 British and 4,000 Indian troops.’

  ‘Looks like you caught too many for the quartermaster’s liking. Where are they going?’

  ‘India. Our supply situation’s not too clever.’

  ‘We advancing?’ Harry pulled out his cigarettes and offered Peter one.

  ‘Consolidating.’

  ‘We’ve reached our objective?’ Harry fished.

  ‘The brass don’t know or aren’t saying, at least not to underlings. See you tonight. There’s a bar with …’

  ‘Smythe!’

  ‘See you around, Harry.’ With that, Peter rejoined the column.

  ‘Not tonight, and when you do, it’ll be your round,’ Harry called after him. Dodging through a break in the line, he headed for the town hall. A Red Cross flag whirled crazily on the roof, proclaiming its new status as hospital. Inside was chaos. Stepping over stretchers of wounded waiting to be carried downstream, he dodged orderlies dispensing water and bedpans. Judging by the cries of their patients, nowhere near quickly enough.

  ‘Captain Mason.’ Harry buttonholed an orderly, shouting to make himself heard above the prayers of the Indian casualties.

  The sepoy pointed to a door. The smell of raw blood, unwashed bodies, and stale urine intensified when Harry ventured deeper into the building.

  ‘Medical school never prepared us for this,’ he observed when he finally found John.

  ‘It did, but only after the first year, and by then you’d cut and run.’ John didn’t look up from the soldier’s arm he was examining. ‘Corporal, I’m sorry, but this hand has to come off.’

  ‘Please, Captain …’

  ‘If we leave it you’re going to lose your arm. Orderly?’

  Harry looked at the soldier. A raw-boned, fair-skinned, farmhand type from the Dorsets. He’d seen him before, here – or India?

  ‘Could be worse.’ He tried to sound cheerful. ‘You’ll be going home with one hand still attached to your body.’

  ‘Will I really, sir?’ the boy asked eagerly. ‘Be going home, I mean?’

  ‘I guarantee it.’
John handed the boy over to an orderly. ‘Now, Harry, let’s look at you.’ Ignoring the men around him, John unbuttoned Harry’s shirt and probed beneath the bandages that sheathed his chest. ‘Any difficulty breathing?’

  ‘No, and if I’d realised a doctor’s licence would turn you into an officious bully, I would have sabotaged your medical career along with my own.’

  ‘Have you seen Furja?’

  ‘No. I didn’t come here to be examined. I came to give you this.’ Harry handed John a package before fastening his tunic. ‘It’s your wedding present. I thought you could send it to Maud. Give her something to think about, besides you. And before you ask, I won it, gambling. The letters are to be sent home. I can’t find a clerk to see to them.’

  ‘That’s hardly surprising, we’ve just fought …’

  ‘I was with Frazer on the Espiegle.’

  ‘You promised to take it easy,’ John reproached.

  ‘I tried, but someone decided to take another slice of this miserable country.’

  ‘No one’s indispensable, Harry. The rest of us can run this war without you.’

  ‘You’re going to have to. I’m leaving before some idiot decides Baghdad Captured by Dorsets would make a good headline for civilians to read over their breakfasts in London.’

  ‘There’s no point in taking Baghdad,’ John said.

  ‘There was no point in taking Qurna. The oilfields were the objective, then Basra. Now it’s this forsaken hole. Where next?’

  ‘This is it. Our frontline buffer to Basra.’

  ‘I hope you’re right.’ Harry buttoned his greatcoat.

  ‘Dare I ask where you’re going?’

  Harry tapped his nose.

  ‘Try to stay out of trouble,’ John cautioned. ‘There won’t always be someone around to bail you out.’

  ‘I’ll be fine. You take care. I’d hate to see you returned to Maud in fragments. A woman like that deserves a man in one piece.’

  ‘So does Furja.’ John offered Harry his hand.

  An orderly clamped the arm of the boy who was waiting to have his hand amputated. He screamed. Glad to leave the building, Harry left the building and headed for the river. British gunboats surrounded by armed launches blocked the Tigris from bank to bank. Passing landing stages filled with British and Indian wounded, Harry went to a small pier. A native dhow was waiting, canvas stretched over hoops looped across its bows.