Winds of Eden (18 page)

‘They haven't been returned because I haven't received them, Major Brooke.'

‘I suspected there might be a mix-up. HQ has been at sixes and sevens since Nasiriyeh. I've brought a set with me. If you can spare the time, Mrs Mason, I could assist you to fill them in now.' He turned to Mrs Butler. ‘We will require a witness to Mrs Mason's signature.'

‘Of course, Major Brooke.' Mrs Butler watched a maid bring in a fresh tray of tea. ‘Reverend Butler always says it's as well to settle business matters as quickly as possible. I'll just fetch my spectacles.'

Reginald Brooke opened his attaché case and removed a file. He waited until Mrs Butler's back was turned before winking at Maud. He then proceeded to caress her fingers under the pretence of giving her the forms. It was a suggestive touch she remembered only too well.

He was more self-assured and less diffident than his brother Geoffrey, but his designs and intentions were exactly the same.

Chapter Eighteen

Qurna, Tuesday 4th January 1916

‘Qurna!'

The cry resounded around the steamer, waking Michael. The sound was accompanied by a cacophony of raised voices in languages he couldn't even begin to understand. Stiff, cramped, he stretched out in his berth, only to graze his knuckles on the board above his head and bruise his toes when his feet hit the bottom.

‘Good morning, Sahib.' Adjabi swam into view beside him, cup of tea in hand. ‘I have bread and fruit for breakfast. Shall I bring a tray here or will you eat on deck?'

Michael breathed in the stale cabin air, rank with male perspiration and night odours. ‘On deck please, Adjabi.' He curled himself as small as he could. By resting his chin on his chest he managed to roll out of the bunk without hitting his head, unlike Richard, who landed on his knees and elbows on the floor with the aplomb of an unexploded shell.

‘There's sand grouse on the river bank. Hundreds of them.' Martin Heal burst in, dressed and looking more awake than any man had a right to be after the beer and wine he'd downed the night before. ‘I've sent my bearer into the hold to rummage for my hunting rifles. You two coming?'

‘How long will we be berthed here?' Richard made a face as he rubbed his elbows.

‘A while,' Martin hedged.

‘You sure about that?' Michael checked. ‘I'd hate to be left behind.'

‘A party from the ranks have left for the bazaar and the padre's organising a sightseeing trip on shore. Apparently Qurna is, or rather was, the Garden of Eden, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is still to be seen.'

‘What about Eve?' Michael questioned.

‘Unless she's draped in a black tent she isn't around, and before you ask I haven't checked the place for serpents. Although we've been advised to hang on to our wallets and anything else we're carrying that can be easily lifted.'

‘I was stationed here for a couple of months last year. Believe me, Michael, there's nothing left of the Garden of Eden. Although I can vouch for the pickpockets. They're here in abundance.' Richard felt under his berth for his shoes.

‘If you want to borrow my camera, you can have your picture taken at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates.' Martin held it up. ‘Padre just took mine.'

‘I think I'll give everything a miss except breakfast, but if you bag a sand grouse for me, I'll join you for dinner.' Richard finally found his shoes and rummaged for his washing kit.

‘Wonderful,' Martin complained. ‘I do all the work …'

‘I'll supply the wine. Two bottles if you bag one for Downe as well.'

‘In that case I forgive you. Coming shooting?' Martin invited Michael.

‘Not before breakfast,' Michael picked up his towel.

‘Neither of you have a sense of adventure.'

‘We'll get adventure enough when we reach Ali Gharbi. For the moment I'll settle for ablutions and breakfast on deck, if it's all the same to you, Martin.' Richard walked to the door.

‘I'll be with you shortly.' Michael pulled his shirt on over his trousers and without stopping to fasten the buttons or put on a collar he walked out on to the lower deck.

The quayside was teeming with natives ferrying and offering wares. He felt as though a coloured illustration from the Bible had been brought to life. Rain was falling in a steady, light veil that coated him and everything in sight. The atmosphere was as humid as a Turkish bath, the overwhelming stench one of sewage laced with a whiff of exotic spices that proffered the promise of pleasant surroundings – if you could find them.

The river bank was lined with palm trees and bushes, beyond them were mile after endless mile of date groves. He looked inland over the rooftops of the mud brick houses. Some had open-sided tents pitched on top to keep out the rain and beneath their shades rudimentary tables were set with bowls and pitchers, presumably in preparation for breakfast.

The din escalated. He looked down. Swarms of men and boys were clamouring below the steamer, hands outstretched as they scrambled for coppers being thrown by the ranks.

‘Make the most of the greenery here, Downe.' Damp, smelling of carbolic soap, Richard joined him at the rail. ‘Beyond those date groves is a treeless waste of swamp and desert.'

‘Will we reach Ali Gharbi tomorrow?'

Richard gave him a pitying look. ‘Only if this vessel grows wings? The captain was bathing alongside me. He hopes to berth at Ezra's Tomb tonight. If we make good speed he's hoping we'll reach Amara by mid-afternoon tomorrow. He's expecting a long slow haul from there to Ali Gharbi because we'll have to take on supplies and tow lighters.'

‘So two to three more days?' Michael failed to hide his disappointment.

‘More like five or six, but if Martin shoots a tenth as well as he boasts we'll dine well every night on sand grouse.'

‘And if he's unlucky?'

‘My bearer's a whizz with bully beef.'

Kut, Tuesday 4th January 1916

John stood in the doorway of the General Hospital, which catered for non-commissioned officers and ranks, and peered out at the rain-soaked street. He'd spent the morning in surgery, prising bullets from heads, shoulders, necks and upper arms. Not all the operations had been successful. Trying to blot images of the cold dead eyes and grey flaccid bodies of his failures from mind, he cradled a tin mug of tea and watched a dozen or so boys kick a battered empty biscuit tin around the muddy street.

A neatly moulded dome of mud halfway down the street faced a similar moulded dome at the Tigris end, and, as approximately half the boys yelled in delight whenever the tin collided with one or the other, he presumed they were makeshift goals.

He looked towards the river. Thirty yards away the heads of sentries poked above the parapet of the trenches that had been dug alongside the bank, and he had to suppress the urge to run to them and order them to keep down. The intermittent crack of rifle shots rang out peppering the air as the Turkish snipers sought targets.

Engrossed in their game, the boys swerved and kicked. They were oblivious to the shots as they were to the rain that soaked through their thin cotton shirts and mixed with the dirt, turning it into a glutinous mess that coated their bare feet as thickly as woollen socks.

‘Hardy blighters, these native kids.' Knight joined John in the doorway.

‘I envy their capacity to ignore their surroundings. I wish I could forget mine for a couple of hours.'

‘Perhaps you should take up foot, or should I say tin, ball,' Knight suggested.

‘They're too good to let me play. I was always useless at team games.'

A shot whistled towards them. It embedded itself in the wall, next to Knight's head.

John shouted to attract the boys' attention and pointed further up the street. One of them walked over and held out his hand.

‘Cheeky, hardy blighters,' Knight amended.

John dug his hand in his pocket and pulled out a rupee. The boy shook his head and lifted his hand higher. John dug deeper and added another rupee. He held up both coins in front of the boy.

The boy continued to stand looking at them.

John pointed away from the river and although he knew the boy couldn't understand him, said, ‘you won't get them until you move further up the street.'

The boy smiled and shook his head to signify he hadn't understood.

Knight added another rupee to the two in John's hand.

The boy snatched them, smiled his thanks, turned, and fell face downwards into the mud. His friends raced over.

John kneeled and examined the back of the boy's head. He turned him gently. The boy's dark eyes, wide, lifeless, stared up at him.

John looked up at the boys. ‘Someone should fetch his mother.'

The boys didn't move.

‘Mother? Mama?'

Two boys raced off. John picked the corpse up out of the mud. ‘Matthews?'

‘Sir.' John's orderly appeared in the doorway. He summed up the situation at a glance.

‘Wash the boy and see that he's laid out properly. I think his people will be along shortly.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Damn and blast, what's going on up there?' Knight unbuckled his revolver and ducked into the building as another volley of shots echoed from the river end of the street.

John slammed open the door of the hospital and shouted to the remaining boys. He waved them inside the building.

Perry, who'd been visiting Cleck-Heaton, was on the stairs. He stared as the urchins flooded in and at Knight's suggestion huddled beneath the staircase.

‘What the hell do you think you're doing, Mason, Knight?'

‘Saving the lives of local children, sir,' John replied unabashed.

‘You can't bring the filthy animals in here!'

‘You'd rather they were shot by snipers and left in the street?'

‘Frankly, yes. God knows what diseases they're carrying. This is a hospital …'

‘I'm aware of that, Colonel Perry. I'm also aware of the directive from HQ that good relations are to be fostered with the locals.'

‘Not when it endangers the health of our sick and wounded.'

‘With due respect, sir … Quiet!' John heard the sound of boots squelching. He opened the door a crack and saw Crabbe leading a squad from the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. They were marching close to the wall of the building opposite, heading towards the river.

‘If you've your medical bag and revolver, Mason, we've no medic with us.' Crabbe shouted.

‘Knight, take care of the boys and bolt this door after us. Dira,' John called in direction of the ward, ‘bring my medical bag.' He unbuckled his holster and palmed his revolver.

Sergeant Greening took the bag from Dira and slipped out into the street joining John as he caught up with Crabbe.

‘I shouted to Dira …'

‘Escort to be with prisoner at all times.' Greening patted his rifle. ‘Orderlies aren't armed, sir.'

‘Glad to have you with us, sergeant. Sepoys are trying to desert,' Crabbe informed John.

‘It's becoming a habit with them,' John muttered.

‘Not en masse it isn't. Runner came into HQ from the dugout at the end of this avenue. More than twenty were spotted trying to make their way across the wreck of a mahaila in the river to the Turkish lines. Johnny Turk snipers haven't realised what they're up to. They're trying to pick them off.'

‘The idiots just blew out the brains of an innocent local boy who was playing outside the hospital.'

‘War doesn't recognise bystanders.' Crabbe ducked as two bullets scudded past. He waited a few seconds, when there was no follow up he signalled to his squad. ‘Take cover in the trenches.'

Crabbe leapt down over the parapet only when the last man was in. John and Greening tumbled alongside him. They looked up to see Philip Ashman, revolver in hand, standing on a firing step sandbag, peering over the edge of the trench.

‘Good of you gentlemen to join us.'

John crouched beside a sapper with a scalp wound.

‘My mate's worse, sir.' The man pointed to a lance corporal with blood pouring from his neck.

Greening handed John the medical bag.

Crabbe climbed on the firing step beside Ashman and borrowed his field glasses.

‘I counted seventeen sepoys on the wreck of the mahaila and four in the river. One's floating face down so I think we can discount him,' Ashman reported.

‘We court-martialled six this morning for trying to break through the lines last night.' Crabbe returned Ashman's glasses. ‘Bloody fools.'

‘You defended them?' John asked.

‘Sat in judgement.'

‘Couldn't you get out of it?'

‘No chance. Have you any idea how many are being held in the glasshouse waiting to be processed? It's as much as HQ can do to keep up with the “would-be” deserters and mutineers. Looters, “conduct unbecoming”, and fighting on duty have been sitting in the cells since we moved into the town. Be grateful you're a doctor, or you too would be sentencing sepoys to be shot at sunset.'

‘How many?' John asked.

‘With the ones we sentenced this morning, eight tonight, that's if the sun sets behind this bloody rain.'

‘I thought miscreants were shot at dawn.' Philip angled his field glasses on the parapet again.

‘Sunset saves a meal and in our present situation every ounce of food counts.' Crabbe took a last look at the sepoys clambering over the mahaila that had been sunk on General Townshend's orders when they'd dug into the town. ‘A gun would shift those blighters from that wreck, Ashman. Where's the nearest, or failing that, a howitzer?'

‘Captain Smythe's gone to find out, sir.'

A deafening blast rent the air. Crabbe joined Ashman. ‘Looks like Smythe found a gun.'

‘Any casualties?' John placed a last stitch in the neck wound.

‘Three are moving in this direction. Wouldn't it be kinder and less time consuming to shoot them or let them drown?' Crabbe looked down at John.

‘Not if you're a doctor who's taken the Hippocratic Oath. Sergeant Greening, round up stretcher-bearers to take these to the hospital.'

Turkish lines outside Kut, Thursday 6th January 1916

‘Yakasub village,' Habid pointed in the direction of the liquorice factory.

Mitkhal noticed the village was the only area outside of the loop of the Tigris to be flying the British flag. Surrounded by a plethora of Turkish flags, the whole of its perimeter on the landward side was encircled by heavily manned Turkish defences, piquets, posts, and lines.

‘You want to get into Kut, Mitkhal, that's your best option. There's a boat bridge in front of the village that spans the river.'

‘I'd have to breach the Turkish lines to get into the village and the British gunship
Sumana
has its sights trained on the bridge. I doubt they'd allow me to stand on it long enough to explain my peaceful intention,' Mitkhal observed.