The Long Road to Baghdad (2011) Read online

  Nearly all had limbs missing. Trunks ended in flat beds where legs should have been. Shoulders had been carefully bandaged to conceal the stumps of arms. Arms finished in dressed wedges that left no room for hands.

  Her brother and Colonel Allan had told her about the boats that had taken almost two weeks to journey downstream from Ctesiphon and Kut. How the men on board hadn’t had their injuries cleaned or tended in all that time. How gangrene had set into almost every wound, giving the surgeons no option other than to amputate. But their descriptions hadn’t prepared her for the reality of the shattered bodies. She forced herself to walk on, smiling, greeting those officers she knew.

  ‘Mrs Smythe.’ An orderly stopped her. ‘Major Reid is in the end cubicle. Colonel Allan told him you were coming. He is expecting you.’

  Charles was sitting up in bed. He was pale, but intact. Angela sat on the chair the orderly placed for her. She’d been closer to John and Harry. John had been kind and gentle and Harry was Harry, but Charles Reid, with his immaculate uniform and correct military bearing, had intimidated her. Unintentionally or not, on the few occasions they’d met he’d made her feel like the gauche colonial most of the English officers believed her to be.

  ‘It’s good of you to visit, Mrs Smythe.’

  ‘I brought some Christmas cake and biscuits.’ She laid them on his locker. ‘I wasn’t sure what else to bring. If you need anything, I’d be only too happy to get it.’

  ‘Thank you. But Colonel Allan has been very kind since I sent my bearer upstream. He brings me everything I need.’

  ‘I would have thought you’d need a bearer now more than ever.’

  ‘They’re short of men in Amara.’ A cold silence had fallen between Chatta Ram and himself after Cleck-Heaton’s revelations. He’d written to his father demanding the truth. In the meantime, the bearer had been a reminder of ties he’d have died rather than own.

  ‘Maud sends her regards. We didn’t find out you were here until Colonel Allan told us on Christmas Day, and by then she’d had her baby. The colonel and Theo won’t allow her near this place because of the risk of carrying infection to her child.’

  ‘In that case, Mrs Smythe, you’d best make this visit a brief one.’

  She wondered if he’d meant to sound sarcastic. ‘Please, don’t concern yourself about me, Major; I’ve given up teaching to work in the Lansing. I’m immune to infection.’

  ‘It’s good of you to spare the time to come here. Colonel Allan told me the Lansing is packed.’

  ‘We’re very grateful to Colonel Allan. I dread to think what would have happened to Maud if he hadn’t called on Christmas Eve.’

  ‘She might not have gone into premature labour,’ Charles commented uncharitably.

  ‘The colonel didn’t know she was pregnant. And it was the colonel who told us you’d survived. We all thought …’

  ‘I’d died alongside John and Harry.’

  ‘Harry is posted missing.’

  ‘Missing presumed dead. A staff officer from HQ called in. He told me Harry was sent behind Turkish lines to estimate the strength of their forces. A ghulam who went out with him returned with his robe. It was covered in blood. Apparently, Harry was killed by the first shot.’

  ‘Maud is devastated.’

  ‘I bet she is,’ he lashed out viciously.

  Angela pitied Charles because he had lost his two closest friends. She could understand his bitterness; she’d wanted to hit out at the world when her parents had died. But understanding didn’t make it any easier to talk to him. ‘As soon as Maud is able, she’ll call and see you,’ she ventured, believing that as Maud had seen more of Charles than her, she had to be closer to him.

  ‘I’ll be out of here before Maud is able to leave her bed.’

  ‘Then perhaps you’ll stay with us at the mission. You can share my brother’s room. He practically lives at the hospital now, so he won’t disturb you.’

  ‘Thank you, but accommodation isn’t a problem in Basra any more. And, as soon as I’m fit, I’ll be returning upstream. Someone has to bail the force out of Kut.’

  ‘You didn’t happen to see anything of Peter while you were upstream?’

  He felt a pang of remorse. She’d visited him in a ward full of mutilated men. She’d brought him food and he’d been infernally rude. He recalled Peter as he’d last seen him, going over the top, fighting long after any normal man would have given up.

  ‘Yes, I saw Peter.’ He smiled and his face muscles ached. How long had it been since he’d smiled? ‘Peter’s company held the Roman Arch at Ctesiphon for over 24 hours, and the whole time they were dug in, they were under tremendous pressure.’

  ‘You mean they were under fire.’

  ‘Yes, but don’t worry; the last I saw of Peter he was fit and healthy. His name’s not on any of the casualty lists. I checked.’

  ‘So have I. But I haven’t heard anything. Maud received John’s last letters, but there was no mention of Peter in them.’

  ‘John wrote to Maud?’ He was surprised.

  ‘He said he knew he was dying, but he wasn’t in pain and she wasn’t to grieve for him. He told her to name the child after him if it would bring her any comfort. But John was always kind, thinking of others, never himself.’

  ‘That’s John.’ Charles turned away from her. His leg was throbbing painfully. Would Harry and John have taken their commissions if it hadn’t been for his determination to follow in his father’s footsteps? He could almost hear Harry’s voice raised in drunken glee. ‘Just like school. All for one and one for all.’

  ‘We’re going to miss them dreadfully.’ Angela was having difficulty keeping her emotions in check. ‘I can’t believe I won’t see them again. It must be much, much harder for you. Peter told me the three of you grew up together.’

  Silence fell between them again, but this time it was a silence devoid of strain.

  ‘Will you be writing to Harry’s family?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Please tell them how much he meant to us at the mission and to Peter. I’ve written to John’s parents, brother, and sister, but Maud didn’t have Harry’s family’s address.’

  ‘I can give you the address of Harry’s parents and his twin sister.’

  ‘I didn’t know he had a twin. Is she like him?’

  ‘Georgiana? Good lord no. Nothing like. That’s not to say she didn’t get on with Harry; she adored him. She’s a doctor. Works in a general hospital in London. The news will hit her hard. She lost her husband early in the war. He was in the ambulance brigade on the Western Front.’

  ‘I’m lucky to still have Peter.’

  ‘And he’ll come back.’ Opening the drawer on his locker, he pulled out a clean handkerchief and handed it to her. She wiped her eyes.

  ‘Thank you, Major Reid.’

  ‘Could you bring yourself to call me Charles? There’s hardly anyone left in Basra who does. And don’t worry, we’ll go up there and get Peter and the others out before the Turks get them.’ He smiled again; she saw life returning to his eyes. ‘Although God help the Turks if they do capture him. Would you believe he’s a tiger under pressure?’

  She remembered the night in Amara. ‘I would, Major Reid.’

  ‘Mrs Smythe, how nice to see you.’ Edward Allan walked into the cubicle.

  ‘Thank you, Colonel Allan.’ She held up Charles’s handkerchief when she left her chair. ‘I’ll return this clean.’

  ‘I’ll look forward to your next visit.’ Charles was surprised to find he meant it. It had been good to talk about Harry and John with someone who’d known them.

  ‘I’ll write those letters; perhaps you could find the addresses for me by next time, Charles. Goodbye, Colonel Allan.’

  ‘Quite a lady,’ Allan commented after she left. ‘She puts in 14-hour days at the Lansing, helps Mrs Butler run the mission, and finds time to visit you. Smythe is a lucky man.’

  ‘Have you met Peter?’

/>   ‘No. Right sort, is he?’

  Charles recalled Harry’s introduction to Basra. “You’re bunking with a chap called Peter Smythe; he’s definitely one of the right sort.”

  ‘Yes, he’s one of the right sort.’

  ‘Glad to hear it. Right, old man, let’s take a look at this leg of yours.’

  Chapter Forty

  Turkish camp outside Kut

  Hasan fought consciousness. Consciousness brought agony and humiliation. But pain forced him to the surface. Someone was lifting him from the ground.

  ‘Lieutenant-Colonel Downe.’

  ‘I am Hasan Mahmoud …’

  ‘There is no time to lose.’ It was Arabic, but strangely accented.

  Shooting pains prevented Hasan from opening his eyes. His whole body burned, his skin was raw. He mumbled, ‘Let me die.’

  ‘Take him.’

  He was handed to another pair of hands. A robe was wrapped around him. He felt its warmth and increased pain where it touched his burns. He tried to open his eye. He saw only a faint blur of blond hair in front of him.

  ‘I am Meyer. You saved a woman and children in the Kerkha, Lieutenant-Colonel Downe. Thank you for my family’s life.’

  The words meant nothing.

  ‘You’ll carry him to the British?’

  ‘I promise to do so, Effendi.’ Hasan knew the voice. He struggled to remember.

  ‘Meyer, what are you doing?’ The language was Turkish, the voice Murad’s. He couldn’t understand it, but the man who had given him up could.

  ‘If he had any information to give, it would be useless now. The British are dug in.’

  ‘We have orders to kill him.’

  ‘Murad, you’re a decent fellow. We’ll gain nothing from killing him.’

  ‘But we could lose a great deal by sending him back. The British will mark us down as barbarians. Have you any idea what they’ll do to our POWs after seeing that?’

  ‘Go.’

  The man who was carrying him walked forward. Hasan heard blows. Men were fighting. A cold wind brushed over his face. Then Murad spoke in Arabic.

  ‘Take him to the outskirts of the camp and kill him. As mercifully as you can.’ There was the clink of coins. ‘You do not have to tell Herr Meyer.’

  ‘I won’t, Effendi.’ That voice again.

  He was thrown roughly over a horse. Head one side, feet the other. Artillery and gunfire crashed in the distance. Furja would never know what had happened to him, but then she had Ali Mansur …

  His pain grew more intense at each footfall. He whispered they’d gone far enough, but the horse kept moving. He longed for death so his pain would end. But it didn’t come.

  Outside the Turkish camp, the Tigris.

  ‘Harry! Harry!’

  ‘I am Hasan Mahmoud. I am a …’ Water was on his lips. Freezing, like the air.

  ‘Drink.’

  He did not want to make the effort.

  ‘Drink, Hasan. Furja needs you.’

  ‘I have no wife. Ali Mansur …’

  ‘Ali Mansur has no wife. Furja is waiting for you. Drink.’

  He forced himself to open his jaws and swallow.

  The Tigris Valley, below Kut

  Once he was clear of the Turkish lines, Mitkhal exchanged his horses for dhow passage for himself and Harry to Basra. He’d chosen their mounts from among the best in the Turkish stable. They were worth more than the cost of the passage, but he felt he’d struck a fair bargain. The dhow was owned by a Sheikh who was harrying the retreating British cavalry so it would remain unmolested by Arabs. The Turks and the British were too busy killing each other to concern themselves with native boats. He had hopes of a safe journey.

  He lay Harry under a canvas shelter at the stern and waited for the sun to rise. For two days, he had sat on the fringes of the Turkish camp offering his services as a scout, using information about British troop movements within Kut as an incentive to the sergeant responsible for recruiting Arab irregulars. Unfortunately, his information was based on the same observations the Turks could make any time they trained their field glasses on the British lines. But his patience and perseverance won through.

  The sergeant gave him odd jobs. Nothing requiring intelligence or capabilities beyond brute strength, but gradually the sergeant and, more important still, the German had come to trust him. He’d dug graves, covered latrines, and cultivated the German, speaking in his best Turkish, intertwined with a few German phrases Harry had taught him. And while he’d worked, he’d heard bestial screams from a tent closed to everyone except the sergeant, Turkish officers, and the German.

  He heard the name Hasan Mahmoud repeated in the screams, and when his suspicions hardened, he’d not known whether to wish life or death for Harry.

  When the sun rose high enough to shed light under the canvas, he sank a skin into the river, tore a strip of cotton from his gumbaz, and peeled back Harry’s blanket. He sat rocking on his heels, tears blurring his vision, not knowing where to start.

  Every inch of Harry’s skin bore burn marks and bruising. In many places, including his chest and genitals, the skin had been torn away and raw flesh dripped gobs of dark blood onto the boards of the boat. In other areas, scabs had formed, some oozing yellow and green pus. The stump, all that remained of Harry’s right hand, had failed to heal but the blood that flowed from it was as yet untainted. The right side of Harry’s face was swollen, an encrusted burn running from nose to temple covering his right eye socket.

  The boatman took one look at the human wreckage and pronounced Harry dead. Mitkhal offered him gold if he would stop at Amara and find a doctor. That night they berthed. The boatman disappeared, and returned with a native physician who demanded payment before administering opium. The doctor waited until the narcotic took effect before covering Harry’s wounds with herbs, spices, and scraps of paper containing the words of the prophet. By the time he finished binding Harry with linen, nothing could be seen of his body except the tip of his nose, his mouth, and his left eye.

  Mitkhal bought enough opium to see Harry through the remainder of the journey and the boatman weighed anchor.

  Mitkhal neither ate nor slept for the next 48 hours. Crouching over Harry, he forced drops of water and opium between his cracked lips. He stroked Harry’s throat gently until he swallowed, nurturing the flicker of pulse in his wrist, willing him to live. The whole time Harry raved, repeating the name Hasan, and the cover the political office had manufactured for him, until Mitkhal thought he would go mad.

  Mitkhal dosed Harry heavily with opium an hour before they berthed in Basra. They reached the quay at midnight. Mitkhal paid the boatman a bonus and warned the man on threat of death to hold his tongue if anyone asked questions about his passengers.

  Under cover of darkness, he rolled Harry in a blanket and carried him off the dhow. Ignoring the carriages, he walked into the side streets, changing direction and halting several times. After half an hour, he crept to Zabba’s door. He knocked and gave the correct signal. The doorman opened the portal and stared at the bundle slung over his shoulder.

  ‘Quickly,’ Mitkhal hissed. He skirted the shadows in the courtyard. Ducking away from the brightly lit windows and sound of music and laughter, he headed for Zabba’s private quarters. A lamp burned in the living room. Setting Harry on a divan, he called for Gutne. His voice fell into ominous silence. He called again, opening doors that led to the bedrooms. They were empty. Fear beating a tattoo at his heels, he ran into the courtyard and Zabba. She held her finger to her lips and led him back to her quarters.

  ‘Where are my wife and Furja?’

  ‘Safe, your friend’s lady has sense. It was not easy to keep little ones cooped up in my rooms and your wife gave birth to your son.’

  ‘A son? Is he – are they –?’

  ‘Mother and son are well. When your friend’s lady discovered the house next door was empty, she gave me enough gold to buy it for her. Before she moved in with your wife and the chil
dren, she had the street entrance bricked up. You can enter only through the back courtyard to this house.’

  ‘Thank you, if there is anything more to pay …’

  ‘There is nothing more to pay,’ Zabba interrupted sharply. ‘You’ve always been quick to pay your debts, Mitkhal; let others pay theirs. I’ve not forgotten your mother, or all the things you did for me over the years. I’ll see no one disturbs you, or tells anyone that you, your family and friends are here.’

  He unwound the blanket and laid his hand over Harry’s left hand. It was warm. He could feel the pulse beating in the wrist. Zabba turned up the lamp.

  ‘Is this a disguise, or is he hurt?’

  ‘He was tortured by the Turks.’

  ‘I’ll send for a doctor. Don’t worry. He has no love for the Turks, or the British.’

  ‘It would be safer for him to come here than Furja’s house,’ Mitkhal agreed.

  ‘Leave your friend with me while you go to your wife. I’ll send for you when the doctor arrives.’

  Mitkhal hesitated.

  ‘Go to the back courtyard and you’ll see the new door. Knock twice and the servant Furja sent for will open it.’

  Mitkhal checked on Harry one last time before walking through the house to the back courtyard. As Zabba had said, there was only one door set in the wall. The cement around it gleamed new and white. He knocked and Farik called out. He answered with his name, and Farik pulled back the bolts.

  He found himself in a larger courtyard than the one he’d left. Farik pointed to a door set into the centre of the wall opposite. Light shone through glazed windows, illuminating a high-ceilinged living room, simply furnished with low tables, cushions, and brightly coloured rugs on the walls and floor.

  Bantu opened the door. She ran to Gutne’s room and Mitkhal followed. His wife was lying in bed, a small bundle under the bedclothes next to her. She looked up and smiled. The noise of the door opening woke Furja’s little girls. He could hear her trying to quieten them in the next room when he wrapped his arms around Gutne.