The Long Road to Baghdad (2011) Read online

  ‘Thank you. Would you like me to …?’

  ‘Just go.’

  Wrapping her robe around herself, she picked up her clothes and ran from the room. He lit another cigarette, listened to John’s snores, and wondered if his cousin had been sober enough to appreciate the doe-eyed beauty. Then he remembered the look in John’s eyes when he’d talked about Maud and doubted it.

  What was it about one woman that could sour all others for a man? Here he was, living in a brothel, and this was the first time he’d done more than look at one of the girls. All he wanted was Furja. Exhausted, pregnant, her magnificent eyes sunk in black shadow – he would have given everything he possessed simply to curl at her feet and watch over her while she slept.

  Walking to the window, he flung it wide. A queue of privates from the Dorsets was waiting in the street for their turn in the booths Abdul had set up for the ranks. They were shouting to the sepoys who waited at a door opposite. Being an officer had some advantages, if only in a whorehouse. Closing the window, he turned to the bed. The rumpled sheets stank of cheap perfume and the fishy odour of sex. He had to think of something other than Furja or he’d drive himself mad. Retrieving his letters, he turned up the oil lamp.

  Two were from Georgiana: one from his brother. He checked the dates and read them in the order they’d been written.

  London , Monday October 12th 1914

  Dear Harry,

  I’ve been married for two weeks, and as I was the only one in the family to extend congratulations on your nuptials, I expect, no, demand you reciprocate. You are no longer the only black sheep among the Downes. I have been shown the door, cut off with a shilling, or whatever it is that parents do when their offspring disgrace the family. My husband isn’t an Arab, only occasionally blacker than one. He’s Welsh, a coal-miner (which explains the colour), and this, in father’s eyes, is infinitely worse than being a native, so if you want to try to make amends for your misdeeds now is the time to do it, while I’m the one out of favour. I’m Mrs Gwilym Lewis, and we are, or rather were, blissfully happy.

  I met Gwilym at one of Millie Stroud’s Fabian evenings. He’s a socialist, as every right-thinking individual should be. Tall, handsome, dark, with black, curly hair. He’s self-educated and left Wales to join the Ambulance Corps. He disagrees with the war, as everyone should, but feels he has to do something to alleviate the suffering, so he volunteered. Last night he left for France and I feel lonelier than I’ve ever felt before.

  Harry, I never knew two people could be so happy together. Why didn’t you tell me what marriage was really like in that last ridiculous letter of yours? When this mess is over you must bring Furja to England, and we’ll all holiday in Wales. It is going to be over soon, isn’t it? So many broken bodies are brought into the hospital every day it’s obscene.

  I’m used to the old, the chronically sick, the crippled, but not this endless parade of smashed young men. Every morning we watch the new recruits march off to Victoria station. The bands play, people cheer, and all the while wagons are being unloaded at the back door of the hospital. No bands play for the wounded, Harry. They’re sneaked in secretly lest the sight deter anyone from volunteering. I spend hours trying to patch together boys who’ve had half their heads blown away, or their arms and legs hacked off by bayonets. If it all stopped tomorrow, there’d be thousands who’d find it impossible to rebuild their lives. I hope you manage to stay where you are. Believe me, you’re better off sitting out this war in peace and quiet as far away from the Western Front as possible.

  I can’t tell you how our parents are because we haven’t spoken since I drove Gwilym to the house. Father muttered something about the war throwing undesirables in the path of decent young girls and a complete moral decline. Mother cried and the door was closed in our faces.

  I ate a sandwich in Hyde Park the other day with Michael. He’s as miserable as I prophesied he’d be but the fool insists on blaming himself for Lucy’s failings.

  Please give our happiest and best wishes to your wife. Gwilym was thrilled when I told him he has a Bedouin sister-in-law. Perhaps we can take a belated honeymoon in an Arab tent when the world is sane again. You and Furja can stay in our shabby rooms around the corner from the hospital any time. Keep safe and well and don’t rush home until a truce has been declared.

  Your ever-loving sister Georgiana and brother-in-law Gwilym.

  Harry tried to imagine Georgiana in love. He had a Welsh coal-miner for a brother-in-law. Poor Michael; he was the only blue-eyed boy left in the parental fold. Quite a responsibility to shoulder. Neither he nor Georgiana had been fair to the lad. Laying his sister’s letter aside, he picked up Michael’s.

  Clyneswood, Tuesday 3rd November.

  Dear Harry,

  I’m sorry I haven’t written for so long. Georgiana told me she’d written to you about my marriage to Lucy. I hope you don’t mind. I know how much Lucy meant to you, and how upset you were when she broke off your engagement …

  Broke off their engagement! She – furious, Harry continued reading.

  Lucy and I have set up home in London in a mews cottage. We try to spend most weekends at Clyneswood, but Lucy sits on several committees, and is extremely busy organising fund-raising activities for the war effort. We are both well …

  But are you happy, little brother? Harry wondered.

  I would like to join up, but as Lucy says, someone has to stay at home and see the country runs smoothly. Besides, even if I did join up, there’s no guarantee I’d be sent to the front. I could end up in a backwater like you. I miss you, Harry. I miss Georgiana too. She’s so busy these days, I hardly see her. Lucy sends her regards. I think of you often.

  Your brother, Michael.

  P.S. Georgiana is married. Lucy doesn’t approve but I rather like him.

  Harry crumpled the letter. Disillusionment and loneliness were etched in every line but it was Michael’s own fault. He wasn’t a child. He was a man who’d made the mistake of marrying a selfish, manipulating, stupid … No, not stupid – whatever else Lucy was she wasn’t stupid. She’d set her sights on becoming mistress of Clyneswood and Michael had been her means to that end. He hadn’t stood a chance. Lucy had sunk her claws into him once, and he was more astute than his brother.

  He didn’t doubt Lucy was enjoying every minute of his and Georgiana’s disgrace. She’d never be critical; she’d simply look soulfully sympathetic whenever their names were mentioned. She was probably already presiding behind the ceremonial teapot when social pressures prevented their mother from attending county functions. He visualised her engraved calling cards.

  Mr and Mrs Michael Downe, of London and Clyneswood.

  Could almost hear her whispered confidence. ‘Heirs to Colonel and Mrs Downe.’ He didn’t know whether to hope his brother would live on in blissful ignorance of his wife’s calculated scheming, or to pray for an early, and brutal revelation of Lucy’s character so he could run as far, and as fast, from her as possible. But perhaps Michael already knew.

  Lucy doesn’t approve but I rather like him.

  If he’d been there, he could have – what? He clenched his fists in frustration. How could Uncle John and Aunt Elizabeth have produced reasonable beings like John and Tom and then a creature like Lucy? Seething, he picked up the third letter. It was shorter than the first he’d received from his twin.

  London , Monday November 16th

  Dear Harry,

  Gwilym is dead. He was shot trying to retrieve wounded from the battlefield. An officer wrote to me. He couldn’t possibly have known Gwilym. The letter was full of platitudes Gwilym would have hated like “dying for King and Country”. I wish I knew why he had to die. The next post brought a kind letter from a man called Ianto Hopkins who was with him when it happened. Gwilym wasn’t alone; I have to be grateful for that. It was a single bullet. Clean, instantaneous. Gwilym didn’t suffer.

  Harry flinched. In Qurna, he’d witnessed the clean and instantaneous deaths that
were detailed in the final letters home. He’d watched a man drown in his own blood and agony, too far gone to warrant attention from the medic who was trying to save those who still had a chance. In the reality of battle, the dying were counted already dead; there was no time – or morphine – to waste on easing anyone out of life.

  Poor, poor Georgie. Poor, poor Gwilym.

  Before Gwilym left, he told me that he believed death brings whatever we expect of it. If we believe in a heaven of pink and grey clouds, and God sitting on a throne, then it will be so. If we believe in nothing … I can’t believe that, Harry – I can’t. We’ll be together again. I couldn’t bear it if it were otherwise …

  It’s mayhem at the hospital. I’ve been doing double shifts for the past month, but when this is over, I want to go to the front so I can see where Gwilym died. We had so little time together. We had to keep our marriage a secret from everyone except close friends and family in case the hospital authorities sacked me. Even now, in the middle of this foul mess, they won’t allow female doctors to marry. God, I want to go out and kill someone, and it’s not a Hun I want to shoot.

  Harry, write to me, please. You’re all I have left. Don’t die. When this is over I want someone to come back to this insane country and make it right again.

  Georgiana

  The ink was blotched. It took a while for Harry to realise the paper was wet. His tears, not Georgiana’s, stained the page. Georgiana wouldn’t have cried. She’d have sat bolt upright, stony-faced, dry-eyed, while she wrote.

  Rising from the chair, he walked to the table, sat down, and picked up his pen.

  Chapter Seventeen

  British camp, Karun River, Nasiriyeh/Ahwaz, Saturday 6th February 1914

  Harry fingered his cards with mittened hands before dipping into the pile of coins on the camp table in front of him. Taking three sovereigns, he dropped them into the pot.

  ‘This is heading too steep for me.’ Knight slapped his cards down.

  ‘Not for me.’ Geoffrey Brooke picked four sovereigns from his stack and threw them on top of Harry’s.

  ‘You don’t have to match every bid, Lieutenant Brooke,’ John admonished him, in an attempt to save a little of Geoffrey Brooke’s money.

  ‘I do know how to play cards, Captain Mason.’

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting you didn’t.’ John picked up the only full bottle of brandy among an array of empties. ‘War’s getting serious; there’s hardly any alcohol left, even medicinal.’

  ‘The Rajputs will be here tomorrow.’ Harry matched Brooke’s four sovereigns and added an extra one. ‘The Indian Army always marches with plenty of liquid reserves.’

  ‘How can you be sure they’ll arrive tomorrow?’ Geoffrey snapped.

  ‘I saw them today. Less than a day’s march from here.’

  ‘You must have a good horse, Major Downe.’

  ‘I do.’ Harry ignored Brooke’s scepticism. ‘Your call?’

  ‘The best man wins.’ Geoffrey matched Harry’s stake and laid down his cards.

  Harry topped Geoffrey’s hand. ‘Are you sure you can afford to lose this much?’

  ‘Are you insulting me, Major?’

  John intervened. ‘We’ve all had enough for one night.’ He took the cards and shuffled them together. ‘If the Rajputs arrive tomorrow we could find ourselves in a show. Frankly, gentlemen, I doubt we’ll be up to it if we don’t get some sleep.’

  ‘Goodnight, sir. Sir,’ Brooke muttered mutinously, nodding to Harry before following Knight out.

  ‘I wish you’d stop goading that boy, Harry,’ John reproached. ‘You must have won six months’ pay from him in a week.’

  ‘Anyone who plays cards as badly as he does deserves all he gets.’

  ‘It’s not his fault you and Reggie Brooke hated one another at school.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you feel sorry for the blighter. He’s every bit as obnoxious as his ghastly prig of a brother.’

  ‘This isn’t school, Harry.’ John uncorked the brandy.

  ‘It feels like it. The brass are as pompous and impervious to common sense as the staff ever were.’

  ‘We didn’t live on this knife edge at school.’ John held out the brandy. ‘Want me to fill your flask?’

  ‘Can you spare it?’

  ‘No, but I will. Did you see the Rajputs today?’

  ‘They weren’t a mirage.’ Harry scooped the sovereigns on the table into a leather bag. ‘But the force won’t be the saviour little boy Brooke’s hoping for. There were at least a thousand Arabs marching with them. Sheikh Muhammerah’s men. According to Mitkhal, that breed doesn’t care for us, any more than they do for Johnny Turk.’

  ‘Then why are they marching with the Rajputs?’

  ‘Bounty. After we’ve been slaughtered, our rifles and supplies will be lying around waiting to be picked up. The first passer-by will be the Arab rear-guard.’

  ‘Harry …’

  ‘I’m not joking.’ Harry fell serious. ‘I know the natives. I wish HQ would read the reports I write. If they did, they might stop believing the Arabs hold the same cricket-playing morality as us.’

  ‘You think we’re being set up?’ John handed him the flask he’d filled.

  ‘Led by the nose like calves to a slaughterhouse.’

  John sat on his cot. The unrelenting rain, mud, filthy, freezing conditions and uncertainty had pushed everyone in Ahwaz close to breaking point. But Harry had more reason to break than most. He spent his days dressed as a native, scouting the desert with Mitkhal; spent his nights drinking, playing cards, and tormenting Geoffrey Brooke. It wasn’t a regime to make for sanity.

  ‘On that cheerful note, I’ll take to my bed.’ Harry drank from his flask. ‘To King and Empire but, much as I love my country, I see the Bedouin with their flocks and tents travelling this land a century from now just as they’ve done for the last few thousand years, not a line of British troops marching with a Union Jack. Unless we’re fighting the Arabs instead of the Turks by then. If that’s sedition, so be it.’

  ‘You think we’re going to lose this war?’ John asked.

  ‘I think that ultimately we’re going to leave this muddy, fly-ridden hell hole to the only people mad enough to want it.’ Harry kicked off his boots and rolled himself into his blanket.

  John continued to sit on the edge of his cot after Harry fell asleep. For the first time he saw the war as more than just an irritation that kept him from Maud and the idyllic English village of his dreams. Harry’s predictions brought a sharp consciousness of his own mortality.

  He pictured the camp overrun. Bodies piled high, his own blood-soaked carcass among them. An icy emptiness, a portent of nothingness, gnawed at his stomach; a few days, perhaps only a few hours from now, he’d cease to exist. He forgot the letters Maud had sent him and remembered their honeymoon.

  He imagined her arms outstretched towards him, her glittering dress shimmering with a light that dimmed the lamp. His body ached for her, but even as he returned her smile, the lamp flickered. There was no Maud, only a cold, littered tent that stank of male sweat and cheap brandy. It was bloody cruel. He’d never see her – never make love with her again – and for what?

  Pushing his fingers through his hair, he looked around. Somewhere he had a few cigarettes. Did he have writing paper? He had to draft a will, make his father and Tom executors, send it downstream to Basra and pray it reached home. He had to ensure that whatever happened, Maud would be looked after. She was so beautiful, so fragile, and so very helpless.

  British camp, Karun River, Ahwaz, Tuesday 2nd March 1915

  Geoffrey sat astride a canvas stool inside his tent, razor in hand, a canvas bowl of murky water on a stand in front of him. The flap was open but Geoffrey didn’t hear the bustle and noise of the force preparing for action. He was remembering Maud. Maud eyeing him across Marjorie Harrap’s dinner table, Maud naked apart from her stockings … A shadow blocked out the light.

  ‘Your uniform, Sahib.’
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  ‘Leave it on the cot,’ he ordered.

  ‘Will that be all, Sahib?’

  ‘No, it damn well won’t. This water is filthy. I need clean water to wash in.’

  ‘But, Sahib, that’s all we have. The river …’

  ‘I’ll have no damned “buts”.’

  ‘Sahib.’ The sepoy picked up a tinned enamel jug and ran off.

  Geoffrey cursed the man and rinsed the lather from his blade. Bloody sepoys. They never obeyed an order unless you stood over them. He grasped his right wrist with his left hand but failed to stop his fingers shaking. For Christ’s sake, he was only going out on patrol. A morning patrol like any other. There were rumours of action but rumours didn’t guarantee fighting. And what if there was?

  For months, he’d told everyone who’d listen that he wanted to fight. He was a damned coward to funk it. Besides, it would be worth getting shot at to brag to Downe at the card table.

  ‘Brooke, can I come in?’ Mason was at his tent flap, brandy bottle in hand.

  ‘Please yourself.’ Geoffrey ran his razor over his chin.

  ‘If you’ve a flask, I’ll fill it for you.’

  ‘It’s on the bed.’

  John ignored Geoffrey’s nervousness. ‘I try to fill all the officers’ flasks before a show. Never know beforehand how long these things will last, and if any of your men are wounded, it’s as well you have something to give them. The terrain here is hell for stretcher-bearers. They can’t always move as fast as we’d like.’

  ‘I suppose you’re staying here with the hospital?’

  ‘Knight drew that straw. I’m going out with the field ambulance.’ John found Geoffrey’s flask and filled it.

  Geoffrey cut himself again, and cursed.

  ‘We all feel the way you’re feeling right now, Brooke.’

  ‘What do you know about the way I feel?’ Brooke countered. ‘All a doctor has to do is hold a fighting man’s hand when he’s been hit.’

  John glanced at Geoffrey. The man hated him, and he couldn’t fathom why.

  Ashamed of his outburst, Geoffrey retreated into politeness. ‘Thank you for the brandy, Captain.’