Winds of Eden (5 page)

Peter tripped as they left the forward line to enter the fort to be greeted by, ‘I'm not a bloody football.'

He crouched down, slid back the shutter that concealed the flame of his oil lamp, and saw a hump of soldier swathed in full uniform, blankets, muffler, mittens, balaclava, and boots stretched on the ground.

‘And we're not bloody privates, private!' Crabbe snarled.

‘Sorry, sirs.' The man recognised Crabbe's voice and jumped up. ‘I wasn't expecting anyone to come along here.'

‘Not on picket duty, are you, corporal?' Crabbe questioned.

Sleeping on duty was a capital offence, punishment to be carried out immediately.

‘No, sir. Just finished duty in a forward redoubt, sir. It's taking in water so I thought I'd find somewhere drier to kip.'

Crabbe gave the man a pack of cigarettes and a bar of chocolate. ‘There's brandy up the line. Glad to see you kept your boots on.'

To the medics' annoyance a command had been passed down on Christmas Eve ordering the ranks to keep their boots on day and night, and not to remove them under any circumstances and penalty of court martial. The doctors had warned that adherence could lead to crippling infections, but the staff had ignored the advice.

Peter glanced over his shoulder at the corporal as the man rolled himself, chocolate, and cigarettes back into the blanket and returned to his spot in the leeward side of the trench.

‘That order about keeping our boots on?'

‘You on the doctors' side?' Crabbe asked.

‘Not on anyone's side, just wondering if it was it passed down because HQ is expecting Johnny Turk to attack any minute and don't want us to lose any time dressing before fighting them off. Or do they want us to keep them on so we can run away the instant we hear them coming.'

‘With the Turks in front of a loop of the Tigris that covers our back and both flanks where the hell do you think we can we run to except the guns in Johnny Turk's front line?' Crabbe demanded.

‘To join the fishes.'

‘I don't think the brass has mass suicide in mind for Force D.'

‘Too quick and painless? And before you take me to task again about morale that was a joke.' Peter took the last of the cigarettes from his kitbag. ‘After giving this lot away we'd better be relieved soon. If we're not, the price of these is going to rocket sky high. Always supposing we have any left at all.'

‘I was in the wireless room this morning. Relief Force is assembling at Ali Gharbi. That's only 56 miles away. The weather is fine …'

‘And cold.'

‘Thank you for that. I would never have guessed. According to HQ Basra there's absolutely no reason why the Relief Force shouldn't arrive here early in January.'

‘You believe that?' Peter sought reassurance.

‘I do, and if you don't want to drive yourself mad, you should too,' Crabbe advised.

Chapter Five

Furja's house, Basra, morning, Thursday 30th December 1915

Hasan Mahmoud was lying on a divan, his pain evident in the creases of what could be seen of his face below the bandages that covered his right eye.

‘You feel like company?' Mitkhal whispered from the doorway, reluctant to disturb his friend if he was close to sleep.

‘If it's yours.'

Mitkhal sank down on the cushions opposite the divan. He unscrewed the top of a metal flask and passed it over. Hasan took it from him with his left hand. The stump – all that remained of his right – was swathed in linen.

‘Furja said you slept most of yesterday afternoon and evening.'

‘I did.' Hasan took a draught of brandy and handed the flask back to Mitkhal. ‘Which is probably why I didn't sleep last night.'

‘Drink enough of this, and you'll sleep tonight.' Mitkhal returned the flask.

‘When I sleep I dream …'

‘Of what?' Mitkhal was cautious. He'd discussed Hasan's dreams with Furja. She was adamant. Other than the life he'd lived with her, their children and Mitkhal, her husband's past was best left forgotten. He'd agreed, but he'd also voiced reservations, doubting that it was possible for a man to truly forget the major part of his life.

‘The desert. Always the desert,' Hasan murmured through cracked lips. ‘I feel at home there.'

‘Not surprising, given the number of times we've ridden across it.' Mitkhal reached for his tobacco pouch.

‘Where were we going?'

‘Travelling out of and into Ibn Shalan's camp. Looking for hostile Bakhtairi Khans and Bani Lam who wished the tribe ill. Watching soldiers …'

‘Turkish or British?'

‘As you've discovered, both enjoy torturing Arabs and Bedawi in particular.'

‘I was riding a horse in my dream. A magnificent grey. It had a strange name – Dorset.' Hasan's remaining eye shone, light grey, probing into Mitkhal's.

‘That was your mount's name.'

‘What does it mean?'

Mitkhal shrugged. ‘Who knows, you acquired the name along with the mare. You won it gambling with British officers.'

‘I remember another, almost as good called Somerset. Do I still own them?'

‘You left them up river before the Turks took you.'

‘I remember being captured. I was riding a camel.'

‘A poor beast that is all the poorer now for being in the care of the Turkish bastards.' Mitkhal finished rolling the cigarette, and handed it to Hasan.

‘My horses? Are they with the Turk or the British?'

‘Who knows?'

‘I dreamed of a house, upriver where the land is fertile. It was surrounded by grazing, lush enough for horses. I was breeding greys, beautiful animals that my children – and yours – could ride …'

‘That really is a dream, Hasan. Perhaps a dream of the future, but still a dream,' Mitkhal interrupted. ‘This is the only house you live in, and it's your wife's.'

‘We have no other?'

‘You had a black tent in Shalan's camp in the desert until Shalan forced you to divorce Furja so she could marry Ali Mansur.'

‘Why did Shalan make me divorce Furja?'

‘Desert politics. Ali Mansur had more guns than you and Shalan wanted to marry Ali Mansur's sister.' Lying came easily to Mitkhal. He'd done it all his life. But his heart always quickened when Hasan was the recipient of his fabrications.

‘Shalan would kill us if we tried to return to his camp?' Hasan asked.

‘Without a doubt. Me for helping Furja leave his camp and her husband Ali Mansur, you for disobeying his orders not to attempt to see her.'

‘And the children and Furja and Gutne?'

‘Would be sent out into the desert without food and water to die. We cannot return to Shalan's camp, Hasan. Or allow anyone to know other than a few trusted friends like Zabba that Furja bought this house for us to hide in. There is no foretelling what Shalan would do if he discovers us in Basra.'

Hasan finished his cigarette and stubbed it on a clay tile. ‘The Turks asked me questions about the British defences in Kut. Did I leave my horses in the town?'

‘I was here with Furja and Gutne when you rode out of Kut on your camel so I don't know for certain, but if I had to guess, I'd say you left your horses in the town.'

‘If they are half as magnificent as they appear in my dreams I need to go up river and find them.'

‘The Turks are fighting the British upriver.'

‘All the more reason to find my horses before they are shot or injured in the shelling.'

‘In all probability they are already dead, my husband.' Furja entered the room.

Hasan lifted his head to look at her. ‘I have to be sure.'

‘You are not going anywhere until you are well again.'

‘I will go.' Mitkhal rose to his feet.

Furja laid a hand on Mitkhal's arm. ‘No one is leaving this house. It is too dangerous. Between the war, the Turks, the British and my father …'

Mitkhal interrupted. ‘Your father won't be looking for me on the river, Furja.'

‘My father will be looking for you, me and Hasan everywhere, Mitkhal. He knows it was you who helped me flee Ali Mansur. I will not allow you to leave Gutne, your son and the safety of this house to search for horses that are most likely stolen or dead.'

‘Furja is right.' Hasan moved restlessly on the divan. ‘Horses like the ones in my dreams will be stolen and long gone.'

Gutne joined them, ‘The doctor is here, Hasan.'

‘Good, he can give you a draught that will enable to sleep through the night and then perhaps you will stop turning day into night and night into day, my husband.' Furja rearranged the cushions Mitkhal had sat on.

Mitkhal followed Gutne out of the door.

‘You're not really thinking of going upriver to look for Hasan's horses, are you?' Gutne asked as soon as they were out of earshot.

‘I was made to roam the open desert not sit behind the walls of a town.'

‘We're safe here,' she reminded.

‘We're imprisoned. I can't bear to sit back doing nothing except watch Hasan suffer. He's getting no better and he knows it. If only I'd managed to get him out of that Turkish camp sooner …'

‘You did well to get him out at all.'

‘I rescued a shell, not a man.'

‘Mitkhal …'

He ignored her and walked into the courtyard. Gutne stayed on the terrace and watched him sit on one of the benches. He pulled the flask from his robes and drank. She heard the doctor talking to Furja in the room behind her.

The doctor left, and a few moments later Furja joined her.

‘Hasan has a fever.'

‘He will fight it as he has fought everything else,' Gutne assured her.

‘And if he recovers? We can't keep our men locked up forever, Gutne.' There was resignation as well as sadness in Furja's voice.

‘Aren't you afraid that if Hasan leaves, he'll remember he was a British officer?'

‘Terrified,' Furja conceded. ‘But I have him for now, and for a while longer. The doctor has forbidden him to exert himself until all signs of fever have abated and he is completely well. That won't be for months.'

‘Pity the doctor cannot forbid Mitkhal to leave.'

‘I'll remind Mitkhal of his duty to you and his son, Gutne.' Furja moved to the door.

‘Save your breath, Furja,' Gutne advised. ‘You'd have more success caging a lion.'

The Basra Club, Thursday 30th December 1915

Charles Reid waved to Angela Smythe when he saw her walk through the door into the club. He didn't rise to meet her. Despite the best efforts of the medics in Basra's military hospital, his leg wound hadn't healed. Crippling pains shot from his ankle to his thigh every time he tried to stand, which was why he'd been rolled into the club in a wheelchair, and given strict instructions not to leave it.

‘You look very elegant,' he complimented her, when Angela joined him at the prime table he'd commandeered next to the stove.

‘As elegant as a Basra Jewish tailor's idea of Paris fashion allows. Sorry I'm late. I returned to the mission to disinfect myself and change after my stint in the Lansing so I'd be safe to touch.' She kissed his cheek.

Basra's military medical resources had been overwhelmed by the tide of British casualties that had flooded downstream after the Battle of Ctesiphon, so the Turkish POW and native wounded had been diverted to the Lansing Memorial Hospital, a charitable institution financed and run by an American Baptist mission. Angela's brother, Dr Theodore Wallace, worked there under the direction of Dr Picard. As inundated as the British Military facilities, every available pair of hands in the mission had been roped in to help at the Lansing. Even Angela's, although she usually taught in the mission school.

‘Disinfect – fever's broken out?' Charles signalled to the waiter.

‘No, thank heaven. Since the cold weather began we haven't had a single fever case that wasn't rooted in wound infection. But a Turkish POW has developed gas gangrene.'

‘Poor man, and poor you having to quarantine him and scrub out the ward.'

‘When I left, Sister Margaret was barking orders louder than any sergeant major and Theo and Dr Picard were cowering at their desks in their office. Neither is brave enough to stand up to her.' She frowned. ‘I was amazed when I received your invitation.'

‘Colonel Allan prescribed the outing. He thought it would “cheer me up”.'

‘Doesn't he realise that everyone who knew Harry and John Mason has been devastated by their deaths?'

‘Yes, but sending me here will brighten the atmosphere in the ward for the other patients.'

‘Are you sure you should be walking about?' She was concerned by the pain lines etched deep around Charles's eyes and the way his hand shook when he offered her a cigarette.

‘I'm not walking, I'm wheeling. A man can't lie in bed for ever. Colonel Allan gave me a three-hour pass as a test as well as a treat. If I – or rather my leg – behaves he intends to discharge me at the beginning of next week.'

‘To convalesce in India?'

He shook his head. ‘My wound isn't severe enough to warrant a spell of leave.'

‘Rubbish! You sure you're not playing truant?'

‘Absolutely. Ask Colonel Allan if you don't believe me.'

‘I will the next time I see him,' she asserted. ‘You're obviously sick. I bet he only let you come here as an experiment because he needs your bed for an officer who's freezing in one of the ancillary tents outside the hospital. If you don't survive he gets your bed, if you do, he still gets the bed early next week. You're a kill or cure venture.'

‘I love the way you Americans murder the English language. I am no longer “sick” as you so quaintly put it. If I'm discharged next week, I won't even be a convalescent but officially fit for duty.'

‘That I don't believe.'

‘Provided they let me keep this chair, I'm quite capable of sitting behind a desk and pushing papers from one side to another. It might not be interesting or even constructive, but it's all the brass has been doing in Basra HQ since Ctesiphon.'

‘Have you found somewhere to stay if you're discharged from the hospital?'

‘Major Chalmers offered me a room in his bungalow.' The waiter appeared. ‘Whisky, sherry, brandy, gin?' Charles asked her.

‘A gin and tonic would be lovely, thank you. It's been a long foul day.'

‘A double gin and tonic for the lady and I'll have another brandy and soda please on my account.'

The waiter went to the bar.

‘Two brandy and sodas after your last bout of fever?' Angela admonished him.

‘Three brandies, to be mathematically exact. They brought me here early.'

‘You're yellow.'

‘When Harry saw me before Ctesiphon he said if it was spring he could lose me in the daffodil meadow in Clyneswood.'

‘That sounds so like Harry.' She smiled at a memory she didn't voice. ‘Clyneswood – is that the house where Harry grew up?'

‘It's beautiful.' Charles's eyes misted. ‘As is John's family home, Stouthall. Harry's family home is Tudor. It dates back to the Elizabethan age. John's is newer, only two hundred years old. I envied both of them their family history and their lives occupying the same rooms their ancestors had done for centuries.'

‘Every family has a history.'

‘My father's, his father's, and so on back to caveman days is army camps and soldiering. My father bought a house close to Clyneswood when he retired from the Indian army. It's nice enough from the outside. Inside it's military quarters. There's nothing there that couldn't have come out of a kitbag apart from the furniture and that's good-quality, dull, and unimaginative. Replicas of the pieces in every officers' mess in the Empire. But enough of me, John, and Harry. You look exhausted,' Charles moved so the waiter could set down their drinks. ‘I know Sister Margaret's a slave driver and your brother and Dr Picard exacting, but surely you can stop working in the hospital now? All the Turkish casualties who are still breathing are down from Ctesiphon and there won't be any more fighting until we go upstream to relieve Kut. Your pupils must be missing you.'

‘Not in the Christmas and New Year holidays, they're not. But Theo did say at the end of my shift that I can return to teaching when the spring term starts next week.'

Charles held his finger to his lips.

A middle-aged major wearing the insignia of the 6th Poona Division was booming loud enough to be heard above an artillery barrage. ‘I don't know why we put up with civilians in this club. Treating the place as if it's their own …'

‘You brave enough to tell him this is a civilian club whose members graciously allow officers to use the facilities?'