Arabesque (4 page)

Mme. Nachmias, implying her opinion that the conversation had become impolitely deep for the presence of two fashionable women, began to prattle trivialities. A French officer invited Armande to
dance; when she refused on the grounds of heat and headache, he showed a tendency to hang about the table in the hope of being invited to sit down. To Armande’s annoyance, Abu Tisein welcomed
him and Madame sparkled with conversation, playing the witty Frenchwoman of uncertain age. Such rapid fire would have overwhelmed Armande even if she had wished to compete.

As soon as Madame and her officer had, inevitably, reached the dance floor, David Nachmias said:

“I suppose that you will be going to Cairo soon?”

This was an obvious invitation to talk of her plans. Armande realised that she had watched unsuspectingly one of Madame’s disappearing acts, by which, without any collusion between husband
and wife, Abu Tisein was left alone with the person to whom he wanted to speak.

“Yes, I may go—though I don’t know what use I shall be when I get there.”

“Then why go, Mme. Herne?’

“I’m so tired of Beirut, and waiting and watching.”

“Waiting and watching is the occupation of half of the world,” said Abu Tisein. “Till the land in spring, gather the crop in summer, accept the fact that there is nothing to do
for the rest of the year. It is a full life.”

“I know, but for us it’s such a waste. And I do want to help. I was really useful in the first year of the war.”

“Not since?” he asked.

“Not to myself or anyone. My spirit was defeated with the French, I think.”

“You puzzle us all, you know.”

There was no hint of criticism in his slow voice, but Armande was disappointed. David Nachmias attracted her because she pictured herself as a feminine edition of him—a quiet creature,
minding her own business, in whose reserve of strength the world naturally confided. Abu Tisein, however, gave an impression of fine simplicity. Socially, he was not puzzling at all; he was
restful.

“It’s not my fault,” she protested.

“No, no. But—well, why not tell me about yourself?”

“Where shall I start?” she laughed, awkwardly concealing her reluctance.

“At Calinot, for example. I am aware, of course, that you came out to the Middle East with Calinot. How did you get to know him?”

“I’ve always known him. Before he started to make aeroplanes, he was a good little bourgeois manufacturer of racing bicycles and a friend of the family. He was only a tremendously
optimistic financier, you see—and when it came to international contracts and dealing with the Air Ministry and the Treasury he was lost. British officials terrified him. So he took me on as
his interpreter. I was a sort of elegant dragoman, really—explaining the ways of the natives and calming them down. In London I was quite important. And here too, at first. We flew out here
as soon as France was invaded—Cairo, Jerusalem, Cyprus, Bagdad, everywhere in three weeks. He was looking for possible factory sites abroad. But when the French surrendered, that was the end.
We had to stay in Beirut.

“M. Nachmias, I almost wanted England to make peace, just so that the two countries shouldn’t be separated. We couldn’t adjust ourselves. Nobody could think of France without
England. Then we saw that it wasn’t the end of the war at all, and Calinot went back to Paris. He paid me a year’s salary in cash, and asked me not to mention it. I never have. That
leaves me open to suspicion, but I can’t help it. Calinot had no right to pay a British subject so much, and he might have got into serious trouble.”

“Why didn’t you go to Palestine when he left?’ Abu Tisein asked.

“Well, his francs weren’t any use in Palestine. He was very French, and didn’t think of that. It was humiliating to have to wire home for money. So I just waited. I was certain
that the army would declare for Free France, and that then I could be in the war again. They let me wait. They were very good to me. I ought to have been arrested when the German and Italian
armistice commissions were here, but I was living quietly in my own flat, and my friends saw that I wasn’t bothered. Then when we fought each other in Syria, Loujon had to intern me. A
beastly army lorry at dawn, just for me, with an embarrassed sergeant and an Indo-Chinese driver. It seemed so impersonal, so useless, just like shipping that magnificent army off to
France—” She shuddered. “And now I am free, too free, with all my old world destroyed, and just beginning to long to make another. So, you see, there isn’t any mystery about
me at all.”

“Not to you, perhaps,” he said. “But to the—what shall I say?—uniformed, you are a mysterious character. If you are ambitious, if you want to be used, that is the
quality to be used.”

“I do want to be used.”

“Even if distasteful to … you are charmingly fastidious, Madame.”

“Even if distasteful.”

“Do you think you could fascinate a very distinguished old gentleman? No more. Just fascinate.”

“Is he married?”

“No. He is wildly romantic, but most unwilling to permit any interference with his liberty. A wife would destroy too much of him. He is wise enough to know it.”

The music stopped. Mme. Nachmias did not return to the table. She led her officer to the bar.

“The high stools, you know,” said Abu Tisein apologetically.

“Yes?” laughed Armande.

“Madame is the most sociable of creatures, but she has, like all charming women, her little affectations. One of them is to sit on a high stool in a smart bar. She says always that it
reminds her of the Riviera. Myself, I seldom give her the pleasure, for I cannot endure high stools; they are too far from the floor where Allah in his wisdom intended us to sit. But I was telling
you about old Sheikh Wadiah.”

“Is he very old?”

“Verging on sixty, I think. I call him old from respect and affection. He is always young in heart. You will like him. Of course what I am going to tell you is in the strictest
confidence.”

Armande nodded, without protesting her discretion. She knew that if David Nachmias chose to add himself to the number of people who talked to her unwisely, he was already sure of her.

“In the Lebanon there are a few families,” he began, “who are the hereditary leaders of the Christians. They were the protectors of their people against the Moslem. They still
take their responsibilities seriously. The heads of these families are not rich, not politicians—just chieftains of clans, as you would say. None of them can put more than a hundred men into
the field, but that is quite enough to deal—in their own mountains—with an old-fashioned party of Moslem raiders.

“Sheikh Wadiah Ghoraib is one of these chieftains. He foresees trouble after the war—who does not?—and he has brought his armaments up to date. This little campaign against the
Vichy French was a godsend to him. His clansmen are strong in the hills above the coast road, where the fighting was hardest. They were crawling about the battlefields after dark, collecting
weapons.

“Wadiah has been buying, too. When fighting is over, soldiers must relax,” said Abu Tisein with patient understanding. “They have reached the limit of endurance. They become
careless of their arms. So there are plenty in the market. I have known an Arab enter a tent of tired men, and steal eight rifles from under their blankets without waking one of them.

“Sheikh Wadiah has not been content with rifles. He has acquired a number of Hotchkiss machine guns and Brens. They cannot be left with him, Mme. Herne. When an Arab has machine
guns—even if he is a Christian and educated in Paris—his one idea is to use them.

“We cannot force Wadiah to give them up. He will just swear that he has no arms, that it’s all a malicious rumour. But I think they might be obtained, quite unofficially—so
long, that is, as he got his money back. To put it bluntly, he might sell them. Not to Moslem or French or Jew, but to the British, yes—if the right person approached him.”

Abu Tisein paused.

“But why am I the right person?” asked Armande.

“Because he will know of your reputation. Everyone does. Weren’t you interned as a British agent? He is strongly pro-British and chivalrous. He will consider your arrival a most
delicate attention to him. No moral lectures. No violent methods. Just a charming, mysterious operator with a business offer. I know Sheikh Wadiah. If you cannot succeed, nobody can.”

“I’ll try, if you think I should be any use,” said Armande doubtfully. “But buying and selling arms seems to be the most awful crime. All these military lower their
voices when they talk about it—just as if arms trading were something supernatural. Won’t Sheikh Wadiah think I am just being used to trap him?”

“He will, at first. But when you have his confidence you can assure him, if you like, that the money will be paid by a British officer in uniform and that British soldiers will collect the
arms. That cannot be a crime.”

Abu Tisein spoke with a casual air of authority that was convincing. Armande saw that it was stupidity to ask him for his credentials. What would they be? And how in the world would she
recognise them? Perhaps there were signs and countersigns that would identify him, but not to her. All he could do, if questioned, would be to refer her to some third person; and, so far as that
was of value, she could find a third person of her own choosing.

It was, when you came to think of it, obvious that a new civilian recruit for any form of Intelligence must be picked up very much as she had been—watched, tested in many little
conversations, and then told the minimum it was essential to know for the job in hand. The relationship was, in essence, intuitive and aesthetic. Character spoke to character. Vague,
certainly—but, after all, the way in which real confidence between two human beings, and especially between a man and a woman, was offered, was accepted and grew.

She had never asked Loujon by what right he interrogated and interned her. It was obvious by his manner and authority that he had such a right. Nevertheless it seemed an elementary precaution to
ask whether rumour was fact, and David Nachmias was indeed trusted by the British. She suspected that her hotel acquaintances would not know, but would never—least of all the senior
officers—admit to a woman that they did not know. Sergeant Prayle, for all the convulsive leaps of his mind, seemed a likely person to give her an honest answer.

For two days Armande failed to find him haunting, as was his custom, the hotel desk and vestibule. She discovered him one morning when, leaning far out over her balcony to see what had happened
to a pair of stockings hung out to dry and carried off by the wind, she caught sight of a corner of the service entrance. Sergeant Prayle was sitting on the steps, teaching the tiniest of the
Lebanese page boys how to make a catapult.

She went down, and walked around the lower terrace of the hotel. Screams of orders, of protest and of conversation issued from the kitchens, together with a powerful but appetising smell of
onions melting in a casserole. Sergeant Prayle and the page boy were discussing the treatment and use of elastic from the inside of an old golf ball. They spoke in soldier’s Arabic and
Sergeant Prayle’s French, and appeared to understand one another perfectly.

The page boy fled through the service entrance and was swallowed up by the chaos within. Sergeant Prayle remained seated on the greasy top step. With a wave of his hand he offered the remaining
length of it to Armande. She compromised by leaning against the balustrade where her head was level with his.

“You’ll get him sacked,” said Armande.

“Poor little devil!” he answered with a note of real pity and indignation in his voice.

“Why? He seems to enjoy himself.”

“That’s why. There he is—at his age!—always smiling just as the customers expect. Hell, I say! It isn’t right. One ping with that catapult on the headwaiter
carrying a pile of plates, and he’ll have a memory that will comfort him all his life.”

“You will, you mean. It’s not fair.”

“He will. An egg or a good squashy tomato—most people would feel better for the rest of their lives if they really did throw one. You would, too. In spite of Kensington.”

“I should always think of the person at the receiving end,” Armande retorted.

“Ah, but the target must be worthy. A social pest like a cinema organist, or a pest in his own right like a politician. But you have no indignation.”

“I have a great deal,” replied Armande warmly. “I hate injustice, and I do what I can.”

“All subscriptions to Mrs. Herne. Light refreshments at 10 p.m. Lord Tripe and Onions will say a few words—if sober. No, no! You need a barrel of eggs in the hall.”

“I wish you wouldn’t always put me on the defensive,” said Armande, smiling at him. “You’ll never get the best out of people that way.”

“I might get the worst. But you’ve forgotten what your worst is like. Whom are you looking for, Mrs. Herne, me or the page boy?”

“You.”

The sergeant’s expression returned to that kindliness with which he had regarded the Arab child in buttons. When his eyes were merry, they were so intelligent. Armande felt regret that she
could not like him. It was impossible—or not, perhaps, impossible, but he made it so coarsely and unnecessarily difficult.

“Any trouble?” he asked.

“I want some information. On a person—if you are allowed to give it to me.”

“We’ll stretch a point, anyway. Whom do you want to know about?”

“David Nachmias.”

“Old Abu Tisein? Thanked by generals. O.B.E. when there’s a handout. Why?”

“Is he really working for you?”

“For us? Good Lord, no!” he exclaimed. “We don’t deal in big bugs like him. But he has certainly worked for other departments. During the campaign he used to go in and
out of Syria just as he liked, and bring home the bacon every time. He’s trusted, and no secret about it. But—be careful, won’t you?”

“It’s just that he offered me some letters of introduction to Arabs,” Armande prevaricated.

“Then you’re in luck. They respect him. Let me know what you’re up to.”

“I will of course,” Armande answered conveniently. “Why do they call him Abu Tisein?”