The political officer offered no reaction to Mitkhal’s demands other than to carry on writing. He finished, read what he’d written, and signed his name at the foot of the page with a flourish. He handed the paper to Mitkhal.
‘This is an order for everything you asked for. Four hundred new rifles with a corresponding amount of ammunition, fifty horses – and frankly you’ll be lucky to get those – and sixteen herds of goats, to be given to you on production of this note. No further confirmation needed or to be asked for. Present this at Basra HQ and you should have the goods within twenty-four hours.’
Mitkhal tried not to look surprised as he took the paper and folded it into his saddlebag. ‘Thank you, sir.’
‘No need to thank me. With all that’s going on here we can’t afford to risk an insurrection at our back. If Ibn Shalan can keep the peace in Ahwaz, the Karun Valley, and the area around the Kerkha river, in return for livestock and guns, it will be a cheaper price to pay than British and Indian blood. I take it you will need assistance to convey the goods from Basra to the Karun Valley?’
‘No, sir. Ibn Shalan is waiting for me in Basra. He and his men will arrange the transportation.’
‘You’ll be travelling with them?’
‘I will be returning to the Karun Valley with my wife, our son, and Lieutenant Colonel Downe’s wife and children.’
‘You’ve had enough of war?’
‘Ibn Shalan will keep the Karun Valley peaceful. It’s time for me settle down with my family.’
‘I wish you well, Mitkhal, but should we fail to relieve the garrison in Kut in the next two weeks there is one last thing that I would ask you to do for the sake of Harry’s friends besieged there.’
‘Which is?’ Mitkhal asked warily.
‘If the food runs out completely, we will attempt to send a ship through the Turkish lines with supplies to buy more time for the Relief Force to reach the town. Captain Smythe told me you captained the mahaila you sailed out of Kut.’
‘I did.’
‘Do you think you could sail back in?’
‘The Turkish defences are formidable, Lieutenant Colonel Cox.’
‘Having you on board whichever vessel is chosen to break the blockade could mean the difference between success and failure.’
‘When will the attempt be made?’
‘When supplies in Kut are close to running out and the last attempt to break through by land has failed.’
Mitkhal looked down at the table momentarily before meeting Cox’s eye. ‘I will do what I can to help navigate your boat.’
‘Before then …’
‘Yes,’ Mitkhal prompted.
‘There are a few errands you could run between here, the Turkish lines and Kut. Do it before you pick up the goods in Basra and I'll pay you a fee, as well as Ibn Shalan. That’s if you’d care to volunteer.’
Mitkhal met Cox's steady gaze. 'How much?
British Military Hospital, Amara, Tuesday 29th February 1916
Clarissa carried a box of patients’ files into the surgical ward in preparation for the doctors’ ward round. To her annoyance Major Chalmers had left his bed – yet again – in direct contradiction of his doctor’s orders. Balancing precariously on crutches he’d ‘borrowed’ from another patient he was heading for the stove where his fellow patients had congregated.
‘Major Chalmers! What do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded in her most authoritative matron imitation.
He gave her a wry smile. ‘Racing to the teapot before it’s emptied.’
‘If Matron sees you “racing” it will be my head, not yours, on the chopping block. Clarissa saw Richard sway and slipped her arm around his waist. She walked him back to his bed.
‘How am I ever going to get fighting fit and back to the Relief Force if you keep me in bed? I’m as weak as a baby.’
‘Your weakness has everything to do with your wound and the infection that set in on your voyage down here. Your fever only abated yesterday and your temperature was still higher than normal this morning.’ Clarissa folded back the bedclothes and Richard slumped down on the mattress, accidentally dropping his purloined crutches. Clarissa lifted his legs up on to the bed and pulled off his slippers.
‘You make me feel like a two-year-old,’ Richard complained.
‘You behave like a two-year-old.’ She ignored the laughter of the men gathered around the stove.
She placed his hospital issue slippers in his locker, pulled up the sheet and blanket and tucked them firmly around him.
Richard would never have admitted it but the only emotion he felt was relief as he sank back on his thin mattress. The pieces of shrapnel embedded in his thigh and pelvis were causing him excruciating pain. The doctors had warned it might not be possible to remove all of them and they wouldn’t even attempt to until he’d built up his strength, which was why they’d ordered complete bed rest. Bored, furious at his weakness, he sneaked out of bed whenever the nurses’ backs were turned to test his walking ability.
Clarissa pulled up the sheet and blanket covered him to the chin and tucked him firmly in.
‘I can’t move,’ he protested.
‘That’s the idea. Leave your bed again and I’ll look for shackles. I believe the Turks may have left some behind.’
‘The doctors wouldn’t allow you to use them.’
‘This doctor would.’ Dr Evans, a short, round, middle-aged Welshman said from the doorway. ‘Another batch of wounded are coming down from upriver, Nurse Amey. Matron has ordered all doctors and nurses to meet the convoy.’
‘On my way, Dr Evans.’
‘Not before you’ve set the largest orderly available to guard Major Chalmers, I hope.’
Clarissa instructed the orderlies to watch the ward, went to the nurses’ cloakroom and slipped on an all-enveloping canvas overall that completely covered her uniform. She’d only been working in Amara a few days but this would be her fourth hospital ship, and if it was anything like as grim and unsanitary as the others she’d need protection.
‘You ready, Amey?’ Molly Gallivan called from the hallway.
‘Coming.’ She pushed open the ward door one last time. Richard Chalmers was still lying almost to attention in his bed, just as she’d left him.
‘Make sure no patient does anything he’s not supposed to,’ she warned the Indian orderlies. ‘If Major Chalmers tries to move, there’s a set of surgical restraining straps in the supplies’ cupboard. You have my permission to use them.’
‘I pity your husband, Nurse Amey, whoever he’ll be,’ Richard shouted as she closed the door.
Clarissa lined up with the other nurses and they walked alongside the carts that had been harnessed the moment the hospital ship had been sighted.
‘Holy Mary, mother of God.’ Molly Gallivan, Clarissa’s cubicle mate in the nurses’ quarters crossed herself as a ship drew close to the wharf. ‘The smell is enough to knock out a hogman. This is going to be every bit as bad as the last ship.’
Clarissa reached out and grabbed Molly’s hand as the engine cut and the gangplank was dropped.
The decks and sides were festooned with a thick dense brown layer of faeces.
‘Damn them, why don’t they put the dysentery cases on the lower decks?’ Dr Evans demanded.
‘We do, sir.’ An exhausted medic stumbled down the gangplank. ‘Dysentery only started spreading on our second day out.’
‘Cut off the field dressings and soiled clothes; leave them on deck to be burned.’ Dr Evans ran on board the ship. ‘Nurses! Stretcher-bearers! Orderlies.’
Clarissa followed him. He handed her a soft-leaded pencil.
‘You know what to do?’
‘Place a cross on the forehead of those most likely to survive, sir.’
‘Good girl.’
‘Major?’ A man slumped against the door of a cabin called weakly to Major Evans. ‘Captain Price, Indian Medical Service, sir. We’re just the first.’
‘The first wha
t?’
‘The first boat, sir. There are three behind us.’
Chapter Thirty-seven
Furja’s house, Basra, Thursday 2nd March 1916
‘All down! I did it!’ Hari jumped up in excitement as her lemon ‘ball’ knocked down the tower she and Aza had built out of wooden food bowls and utensils they’d sneaked out of the kitchen.
‘I think it’s time to give the bowls and everything else back to Bantu before you break them.’ Furja stroked her daughters’ hair.
‘One more,’ Hari begged.
‘Only if you let Aza take two turns to your last one.’
Hari reluctantly handed Aza the bruised lemon.
Furja picked up the dolls Hari and Aza had left on a stool and looked through the open arches of the covered terrace that ran the entire length of the house. On summer evenings and early mornings it was a cool and pleasant place to sit. Halfway between living area and courtyard garden it was everyone’s preferred place. In winter and during the rainy season it was grey and miserable.
The rain poured down in sheets almost as dense as the black cloth of the Bedouin tent she’d been raised in. She carried the toys into the sitting room and opened the door to her bedroom.
Hasan was sleeping again. But his face was no longer flushed with fever and his breathing was soft, regular, without nightmarish thrashings. Three days ago the doctor had told her that he was certain that her husband would recover as much as anyone with his serious injuries could. She was still finding it difficult to believe him.
A knock at the door separating her house from Zabba’s interrupted her reverie. She closed the bedroom door, and placed the dolls in the girls’ toy box. Farik opened an umbrella, and darted out of the shelter of the terrace to the courtyard door. Furja watched him open it and smiled, ready to welcome Zabba. Her father stood framed in the doorway.
They stared at one another as a full minute ticked past. Shalan was the first to break the silence.
‘Isn’t my daughter going to invite me into her house?’
Furja steeled herself. ‘Of course, Father. Will you honour me by entering and drinking tea?’
He walked through the door and into the terrace.
She turned to her daughters. Hari had fallen unnaturally silent and Aza was hiding behind her sister’s skirts – as she always did whenever she felt unsure of a situation – or a stranger.
‘Hari, take your sister to Aunt Gutne. You can play in her room.’
Hari craned her neck and gave Ibn Shalan a tentative shy look before grasping Aza’s hand and leading her away. Furja called to Farik to bring refreshments and showed her father into the sitting room.
‘Please sit down.’ She waited until her father had taken his seat before curling on a cushion at his feet.
Farik brought in a tray of coffee and almond and date cakes. He set them on a low table. Furja poured her father coffee, sweetened it to his taste, handed him the cup, and set a selection of the cakes on a plate which she placed before him.
‘I’ve brought Dorset and Somerset back to you. They are in Zabba’s stable.’
Furja’s blood ran cold. ‘Mitkhal …’
‘Is well, Furja.’
‘You’ve seen him?’
‘When he gave me the horses. I sent him upstream to the British.’
‘Why?’ she asked suspiciously.
‘I needed an ambassador.’
‘And as you no longer have Harry to call on you decided to send Mitkhal. Into a British camp when they are in the middle of fighting the Turks.’
Shalan bit into an almond cake. ‘This is very good. Did you make it?’
‘Gutne, who’s worried sick about Mitkhal, did,’ Furja replied.
‘Why? Mitkhal can look after himself.’
‘Why did he “give” you the horses?’ Furja didn’t attempt to hide her scepticism.
‘They were an encumbrance. Mitkhal had brought them out of Kut but he had Norfolk as well and when I asked him to contact the British on behalf of the tribe I offered to bring them here.’
‘Mitkhal had Norfolk … but Ali Mansur …’ Furja fell silent. The last person she wanted to discuss with her father was the husband he’d foisted on her against her will.
‘Ali Mansur is dead, Furja.’
She looked her father in the eye.
‘No tears?’
‘I didn’t wish him ill.’
‘You didn’t wish to remain with him.’
‘I already had a husband.’
‘How is he?’
‘Dead.’
‘Don’t lie to me, Furja.’
‘It’s not a lie, Father. My English husband is dead. He was tortured to death by the Turks.’
‘You believe Hasan no longer remembers his past.’
‘You can see for yourself.’ She left the cushion and opened the bedroom door.
British Military Hospital, Amara, Thursday 2nd March 1916
Clarissa picked up the leg Doctor Evans had just amputated, wrapped it in brown paper and carried it out of the operating theatre. She set it on a trolley that was already loaded with a motley collection of bloody covered body parts.
‘You look about done in, Sister, if you don’t mind me saying so.’ An orderly dumped a zinc bucket of blood- and pus-soaked dressings on the lower shelf of the trolley.
‘It’s the end of a double shift. I haven’t stopped since the last ship docked.’
‘Which one was that, Sister?’
‘First thing yesterday morning – I think. It all seems rather blurry.’ She frowned. ‘Another ship’s docked?’
‘Half an hour ago. We’ve orders to leave everyone on board while we load one that’s just come up from Basra with our walking wounded. Hospital’s ready to burst at the seams and the doctors are refusing to look at another case.’
‘That’s hard on the men on the boat.’
‘If it’s like the last one, there won’t be many fit enough to save.’
‘I hope you’re wrong.’ She pulled down her surgical mask. ‘I’d better get to the ward and see how many beds we can clear.’
She went to the nurses’ cloakroom, peeled off her surgical gown, gloves and mask, dumped them in the linen bin and scrubbed her hands with antiseptic. They were red raw. She surveyed the cracked skin around her nails and wondered if she’d ever manage to restore them to their pre-war glory.
‘You know another’s ship come in,’ Molly said when she returned to the ward.
‘An orderly just told me.’
‘Given the number of men who have passed through here in the last few days I don’t believe there can be anyone left in the Relief Force to fight the Turks.’ Molly helped a patient into a wheelchair.
‘Basra for Blighty,’ he smiled hopefully.
‘Never know your luck, lieutenant. War could be over before your wounds have healed.’
‘If my return to Blighty is dependent on the peace treaties being signed, I’ll be here for the next decade,’ he prophesied gloomily.
Clarissa fixed a smile to her face. She was finding it harder to remain cheerful in the sight of so much suffering. Richard Chalmers was sitting in a wheelchair next to his bed playing cards with three other men. They’d all pulled chairs around Richard’s empty locker and were using it as a table.
‘You’re leaving us, Major Chalmers?’ she said in surprise.
‘Told you I was fitter than you thought. I’ll be back upstream fighting fit at the beginning of next month.’
‘I don’t know about fighting fit, but you might well be back upstream if you give the nursing staff in Basra as much trouble as you’ve given us. I can’t honestly say I’m sorry to see you go.’
Richard adopted a theatrical pose worthy of a melodrama. Hand on heart, he declaimed, ‘If the doctors weren’t tossing me out of this place, like an unwanted rodent, I would never dream of leaving you, Sister Amey.’
An orderly walked in and shouted, ‘Everyone for downstream bound for Basra to the harbour.�
��
Despite her weariness and mood, Clarissa couldn’t help laughing. ‘I’ll power your chariot, Major Chalmers, as soon as I’ve put on my overall. Come on, everyone, the sooner you leave the sooner we can unload another vessel.’
The orderlies did their best to cover both the nurses and the patients with umbrellas as they navigated the chaos of the dockside. An orderly took Richard Chalmers’s wheelchair from Clarissa as they approached the downstream vessel.
‘This is as far as I go, Major Chalmers,’ Clarissa shouted to make herself heard above the crowd and the rain.
‘Kiss goodbye?’ he demanded.
Clarissa looked around. Major Evans and two of the junior doctors were already boarding the vessel that had come down from upstream. It was just as foul as the others and she could feel her stomach churning, revolting at the thought of having to board it. She placed her fingers on her lips and placed them on Richard’s cheek.
‘That’s no good, Sister. I want a proper kiss to remember you by.’ He grabbed her arm, pulled her down with a strength she wasn’t expecting, and kissed her firmly on the mouth, to the amusement and catcalls of his fellow officers.
‘If you were fit, I’d slap your face for that, Major Chalmers,’ she said when he finally released her.
‘If I was fit I’d carry you aboard and marry you in Basra, Sister Amey.’
‘Sister Amey,’ Major Evans called to her, ‘when you’ve quite finished flirting we need your assistance here.’
‘On my way, Major.’ She took a deep breath before boarding the upstream vessel. After ruining one pair of shoes on the first boat she trod carefully in an effort to avoid the worst of the mess.
The major handed her the inevitable soft-leaded pencils. She slipped them into her pocket turned and looked down on Tom. She froze. His skin was translucent, as dry as parchment. She crouched next to him and held her own breath until she could be certain he was still breathing.
‘Is he dead, Sister Amey?’ Familiarity with death had blunted all their sensibilities, Major Evans’s more than most.
‘No, sir. Not yet.’
He looked more closely at her. ‘Do you know this man?’
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