by Alec Waugh
Farrar’s other notional character was very different. ‘A young Alsatian lieutenant, who had been in England in hospital when the Vichy Government had signed the armistice. He had been acting as a liaison officer with Gort’s staff at Arras, had been wounded in the first bombardment on the night of 10th May, had been sent to the base at Boulogne and had been evacuated with the early sections of G.H.Q. He was still in hospital when he had been offered the opportunity of returning to France on his recovery. Like Dupré, he had been in a quandary, though of a very different kind. He thought of himself as an Alsatian first. He wanted to be a part of whichever country owned Alsace-Lorraine. His greatgrandfather had been a Frenchman. His grandfather had started as a Frenchman then been forced to change his nationality and become a German. His father had been brought up as a German and had fought in the German Army against the French; then in 1919 he had been informed that he was now a Frenchman. He had shrugged. He had said to his son, then aged eight, “My dear son. We have been born into a difficult age. Remember that you are Alsatian first, and French or German second.” ’
‘He had never forgotten that. Because Alsace was French he had tried to be a loyal Frenchman, and had fought under the tricolour. But when, as he lay in hospital, he learnt that France had lost the war and that Alsace had been returned to Germany, his loyalty to France ebbed. He had no wish to return to a France that did not own Alsace. In Metropolitan France he would no longer feel himself a part of her; on the other hand, if he rallied to de Gaulle though he would be fighting against Alsatians, he would be joined to a party that was resolved to restore Alsace to France. He finally decided that since he was wounded and in hospital, it would be simplest to stay where he was.
‘But his heart was not in his new assignment; “a plague on both your parties”; he wanted the war to stop; he did not particularly care who won, he wanted the French and Germans to cease their century-long squabble and let him, an Alsatian, live peacefully in the valleys of his fathers. He was a discontented man; he had done his best to be a good soldier in the Free French Forces. He had fought gallantly against the Vichy Forces. But when the campaign was over, and the attempt was made to recruit members of the Vichy Forces to de Gaulle, he had felt envious of those Frenchmen who had the opportunity of returning to Metropolitan France. How would he choose now if he had the opportunity of going back? He did not know. It was a pointless question for him to ask himself, because he no longer had the choice. But when the ship drew outwards with the band playing on the quay he was not at all sure that he did not envy those on board. He did not know how the war would end; if it ended in a stalemate, as well it might, with Alsace left in German hands—after all, Germany had as much right to it as France in terms of history—might he not be better off as a Vichy Frenchman than as a de Gaulle rebel? The Germans would have friendly feelings for the Vichy soldiers who had honoured the armistice; he would find it easy to cross a frontier and become an Alsatian again. When he had made that snap decision in a London hospital he had not had the time to weigh all the alternatives; he was weak and in pain and wanted to be left alone. He wished he could have that choice again; but he hadn’t and that was all there was to it. He was disgruntled, apathetic. He was not in a mood to place a check upon his tongue. He would talk against the Allies, in the privacy of a neutral home; he might easily let slip a secret.’
Reid took the material back to Farrar. ‘You’ve gone into much greater length than I have,’ he said.
‘I know, and your characters are easier material than mine; yours can be sent up to Turkey almost as they stand. I’ll have to make a précis out of mine. But I find that I only make these nominal characters real to myself by writing about them at length; it’s surprising how real nominal characters can become, sometimes you can’t believe that they don’t actually exist. They’re more real to you than the people you’re seeing every day. In a month or two I’ll be wanting to take that wretched Alsatian down to the St. Georges bar, give him a lagoon-sized Martini and tell him to cheer up.’
‘That’s rather the way a novelist feels about his characters.’
‘You’d know more about that than I would; but this I know: if these notional characters aren’t real to me they won’t be to the Germans. We’re going to have fun with this, and it’s a relief to feel that what’s real fun for us is helping do the Germans down.’
* * *
A fortnight later, Farrar paused at the end of a long conference. ‘Prof. I’m wondering if you don’t need a holiday.’
‘Do you think so? Have I been missing points?’
‘Lord, no, but if I were you, I could do with a change of air; you are much more tied to the office than I am. I’m always getting away for a night or two, and much of my work is outside this office. There’s another point, too. I’ve seen a great deal more of the country than you have. Before the war I covered the whole of Lebanon and a lot of Syria. It’s useful in our job to have seen the country. It’s hard to tell what difference it makes, but these characters that we are dealing with cease to be real, or never become real if we only see them as folios on a file.’
‘How are you suggesting I should set about it?’
‘That’s what I’m coming to. You know about this wheat scheme Spears is running.’
‘Roughly.’
‘That’s about all you need to know. They’re short of officers to run it and they’re borrowing, on a short lease, from neighbouring units. It won’t be more than three weeks to a month. How does that strike you? It won’t be hard work. It amounts to a leave.’
‘It sounds fine, but I don’t know anything about wheat.’
To Reid that seemed a highly pertinent objection. In 1918, thousands had died in the Lebanon of starvation, in the streets and hedges. Vast fortunes were made by the Damascus merchants who hoarded the wheat and forced the prices up. Now, in 1942, the people were terrified lest the horrors of the last war should be repeated. The merchants were hoping to repeat their ‘coup.’ In the previous winter, the situation had been saved by the importation of Australian wheat. But the present situation in the Far East had made impossible the resumption of this remedy. The Spears Mission had therefore devised, initiated and sponsored a scheme by which all the wheat and barley in the country was to be bought by a central office—the O.C.P. (Office des Céréales Panifiables)—and distributed at a fixed price to the public; the produce of the entire country being registered, village by village, by a series of wheat commissioners. Reid felt that such work lay outside his province. But Farrar shook his head.
‘You’re the regular army officer, not me, but I sometimes believe that I’m much more familiar with the way the military machine works. Staff officers are always being posted to administrative branches of which they have no previous experience. A major, who has taken a six-months’ duty leave to learn Malay and study the terrain north of Singapore, is summoned back to the War Office. He believes he is going to be a G.2 in the Far East section. Not at all; he is in the department that deals with income tax. It is the army’s way of keeping juniors in their place, showing them how little they know, and how much there is for them to know. By the time the major is an expert on income tax, he is posted back to active service as a D.A.Q.M.G. You’ll do fine as a wheat commissioner; all they need is someone to show the flag. I frankly envy you.’
‘Where do I go?’
‘You are based on Damascus. You’re actually in Deraa: that’s where T. E. Lawrence pulled off many of his shows, blowing up the railway.’
‘When do I start?’
‘As soon as you can. Tomorrow if you like?’
‘You seem to have got it cut and dried.’
‘It’s an emergency. If there was a famine here now it would be fine for Hitler.’
‘All right, tomorrow, then.’
‘By the time you come back those notional characters should have come to life.’
Reid went down the corridor to Diana’s room. ‘Could you break any date you may have for toni
ght, and dine with me?’
‘I have no date, but if I had one I’d have broken it. What are we to celebrate?’
‘Nothing, except that I’m going to be away for a month.’
‘Ah, so that O.C.P. deal has come through.’
‘You knew about it?’
‘Nigel discussed it with me. He thought you needed a rest.’
‘Do I look washed out?’
‘No, but you’re over-conscientious. You feel that you must justify being in a warm climate, with plenty to eat, and no air-raid danger. Just in the way that civilians in the First War worked themselves to death in offices because they weren’t in the trenches. You work much harder than you need. So Nigel cooked up this plot. You’ll have an interesting time; you won’t be overworked. What’s more, it will be important work. You’ll come back with so much energy that we shan’t know how to rein you in. Certainly there’s something to celebrate tonight.’
For once they did not dine at Sa’ad’s. Instead they went to the Lucullus, where they had had their first meal together. ‘That’s only six months ago. What a lot’s happened since then,’ he said. ‘And do you realize that for the last four months we’ve seen each other every single day except for that one trip to Aleppo. We’ve seen more of one another than most married couples do in their first five years of marriage.’
‘I know we have.’
‘In a way, I’m rather happy about this separation.’
‘You are?’
‘It’ll give me a chance to think about you.’
‘What am I to take that to mean?’
‘It’s surely very simple. I’ve had no quiet time to sit and brood, recreating times together, remembering things you’ve said, and clothes you’ve worn; living it all over, day by day, and night by night, savouring the whole magic of it, the whole magic of you. You can see that, surely?’
‘Yes, I can see that.’
‘And there’s another thing. I can write you letters. Do you know that I’ve never written you a letter? I’ve never needed to.’
‘You’ve written me some very charming notes.’
‘That isn’t the same thing.’
‘Notes can be very dear.’
‘But a letter, with a whole hour before me, with nothing to interrupt me, to be able to tell you all I feel about you.’
‘Never seek to tell thy love, Love that never told can be.’
‘Aren’t letters different?’
‘Are they? I wouldn’t know. I never write them.’
‘But you’ll write to me when I’m in Deraa?’
‘Will I? I wonder.’
‘At least a note.’
She was smiling; never had he felt so understood before; understood so that there was no need for explanation, yet at the same time an overwhelming necessity to explain.
‘If I hadn’t met you, my life would have been half lived,’ he said.
‘Think that. Go on thinking that.’
They lingered late over the table. Only one couple remained, when they left the restaurant. It was hot, but a breeze was blowing off the sea.
‘I’d like to walk back,’ she said. ‘Oh, but no, there’s an arabana.’ It was a very ramshackle barouche. It rocked and jolted over the uneven roads, swinging them against each other. They were holding hands. She paused on the pavement outside his building. A waxing moon was sinking over the rooftops.
‘I’d like to stay the whole night,’ she said.
He woke earlier than she, woken by the voice of the Muezzin. It was not yet dawn. He could barely distinguish her features in the dusk. She was turned towards him, breathing gently, her hair ruffled on her forehead. He did not move, fearful of disturbing her. He wanted to wait, watching her features grow distinct minute by minute as the room lightened. What was that poem of Ezra Pound’s about life having nothing more exquisite to offer than the joy of waking together? Soon there would be the rattle of tramcars; and the two girls on the roof across the street in their long white dressing-gowns would hang their mattresses over the balcony and beat their carpets; and Diana would stir and stretch out and raise her arms above her head, and blink, and then smile and, turning, open her arms. Could life hold for him any lovelier moment?
Chapter Twelve
Deraa, whither Reid had been consigned, was the Hauran’s headquarters of the O.C.P. The Hauran was a long, broad undulating plain, sheltered by the mountains of the north that rose every so often into a protuberance on which a village stood. One of the chief granaries of the Roman Empire, the villages had been built on and over and out of the ruins of Roman houses. Everywhere there were signs of Rome; stones with Roman inscriptions supported the flimsy fabric of a mud-built cottage. Columns rose unexpectedly out of a dingy side street. Sometimes the head of a column showing a few feet above the ground would demonstrate to what extent succeeding generations had superimposed layer after layer of mud and rubble on the original Roman site.
There were five other depots to which the villagers could bring their wheat. It was the duty of a wheat commissioner to supervise at these depots the weighing and guarding of the wheat and barley, and to ensure that the villagers were paid their due, and that the wheat they brought was clean. It was also his task to publicize the scheme, to visit the various villages, interview the local headmen—the moukhtars—explain the scheme to them, convince them they were being squarely treated, show by his presence that the British were behind the scheme. He also had to move in close liaison and co-operation with the French Services Spéciaux officer for the district.
Reid’s main assignment, however, was to see that an agreement was reached between the chief notables, the mohaffez of the district, the French S.S. officer and himself, as to the amount of wheat and barley that the region was able to produce. The figure was intended as a minimum. No cereals could be sold except through the O.C.P. But the Damascus merchants were anxious to lay up large stocks as capital; the villagers were anxious to stock their cellars. The scene was set, therefore, for a black market. It was in the immediate personal interest, both of villagers and merchants, to fix the figure as low as possible. As long as their cellars were stocked they did not mind if the inhabitants of Damascus starved.
Before Reid had been in the area three days he realized that it was impossible for one new to the country to form any idea in the course of a few weeks as to the productive capacity of the region. Grounds were measured and assessed by a complicated system which was different in every village. The nomenclature was a mixture of Arabic, French and Turkish. It was impossible to tell on which system—old Turkish, older Arabic or modern French—the assessment was being made. The O.C.P. had given what it considered a fair estimate of the potentialities of the neighbourhood and the notables had given their bid which was less than half that figure. It was going to be, he recognized, a question of bargaining. The eternal bargaining of the Orient.
Reid had a car and an interpreter at his disposal. He drove round the area supervising the weighing and the payment, rechecking the wheat for impurities by taking a large handful between his hands, tossing it over and seeing how much sand lay between his palms. He knew that there was cheating and that the black market was being fed. Every day stories would be brought to him of someone having boasted in the coffee shops of the fortunes that he was making at the scales. He knew that there was no way of checking on these stories. Diana had told him that he was over conscientious; perhaps he was, but he had a sound store of common sense. He knew that he would go off his head if he made himself a rigid enforcer of the law. The most that he could hope was that by looking important, by making an occasional ‘scene’, the prestige of his uniform would deter a few of these malpractitioners. He would stand looking grim, then suddenly pounce and interrogate someone whose face he did not like and hope that he was performing a useful service.
He let himself relax, accepting his assignment in the spirit that Farrar had offered it. He was a privileged tourist, enabled to see the countryside and meet its inhab
itants in a way that no tourist could ever hope to do. He enjoyed the long drives into the country, over the flat boulder-strewn plain of the Hauran. For miles it would be the same, field after field of growing wheat and maize, the earth showing red between the stubble where the crops had been cut or the ground left fallow. There was the animated noise of harvest. Where the ground was barren, a group of Bedouins would sit idle, under and about their long, low tents. There were no trees, no gardens, nothing green. Along the road were stone shelters like sentry boxes to protect in winter the guardians of the fields. Camel trains laden with wheat, led by small boys on ponies, went by with a jingling of bells. There would be four to five camels in each train; their long necks seemed to move in and out of their loads. The villages were low, grey-black, one-storied buildings of mud and boulders, peaked by the spire of a minaret, surrounded hedgewise by a succession of low walls, some mud, some of brick. Inside these walls the wheat was being threshed. A pony or a mule was driven round in circles, drawing a broad, flat board on which stood the driver—a child or an old man. A fine yellow dust rose as the wheat was tossed into the air. Mile after mile, village after village, it was the same.