by Alec Waugh
‘When are you going back?’
‘Now that’s the question,’ he paused. A mischievous look came into his eyes. ‘I tell you what,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to ask me just that question, in just that tone of voice, tomorrow, at the cocktail party, when Annabelle’s around: do it dramatically. You know how I mean, in a pause.’
‘I’ll do just that.’
‘Ah, Prof., you’re wonderful. And I’d never thought of it till this very minute. You solve all my troubles.’ He paused. He grinned. ‘I shouldn’t get worked up like this. It’s only because you’re here. I can talk to you. You’re older and you’re wiser and you amount to something; yet in the military machine we’re opposite numbers. We are contemporaries; that’s rather special. Why should I grumble because I’ve had the good luck to have an easy war? But damn it, I’ve worked hard; even if I’ve had a lot of fun. Why shouldn’t one have fun in wartime, providing one’s not shirking? And it has been fun, hasn’t it? A lot of it?’
Farrar was once again the laughing congenial companion who had welcomed him to Beirut all that while ago. The angry, self defensive, aggressive mood of the last conference had vanished. Mallet had probably diagnosed that mood correctly. It was good to have got back to that old comradeship; it was not very likely that they would meet again, other than casually. But this evening together set his whole time in the Middle East within a frame.
He looked round the room. It had not changed in the least degree. It did not even look any shabbier. The tables were as crowded with the same mingling of French and British uniforms, with the same sprinkling of female dresses. There were even a couple of nursing sisters with four male escorts at the table where Diana had been sitting. What a lot had started on that evening. But for her he would never have been posted to the Centre.
‘What’s happening to Diana?’ he asked Farrar.
‘In London still, as far as I know. Don’t you hear from her?’
‘She’s not the letter writing kind.’
‘Isn’t she? I wouldn’t know.’ He paused. ‘Have you got over that all right?’
‘On the surface.’
‘Isn’t that all one ever can do when a thing goes deep?’
The cocktail party the next afternoon was very much the same in spirit, as the very first ones that he had known there. Annabelle had put on a little weight, but she was radiantly good looking. She was gay and happy. And there was between herself and Nigel Farrar none of the asperity that there had been on that last occasion; they were back to their old easy eighteenth-century badinage. ‘When the party quietens down,’ Reid thought, ‘I’ll fulfil my commission.’
There were about twenty guests. He felt that he should know some of them; they looked familiar, but in point of fact there was scarcely one that he knew. ‘I’d expected to see Jane Lester here,’ he said.
‘She’s gone back to England,’ she said. ‘She needed a change of air.’
‘Have you any idea how she’s making out?’
‘I’ve no idea. When people leave, they leave. There are no postmortems.’
Reid looked round him; he should not be surprised, he supposed, that the guests at a Centre party should seem familiar, even if they were not. Farrar was drawing on the same material now in 1945 as he had been in 1941. Still there might . . . yes, there at last . . . there was. A large, florid, youthful figure in a pearl grey cotton suit; the brisk, self confident Armenian whom he had interviewed in that discreet apartment with the independent entrance. The world seemed to be treating him all right. He walked across to him. There was no sign of recognition in Belorian’s eyes. ‘Don’t you remember me?’ he asked.
‘I didn’t think I was supposed to recognize you.’
‘I see that Farrar’s acquired an apt pupil.’
‘I do my best.’
‘I gather that it’s been a very good best.’
Reid told Belorian that he was going home.
‘That’s what you all are doing. I’m going to be very lonely. I shouldn’t say it, I suppose, but I’m not enthusing about this war ending. I was having fun and being paid very nicely.’
‘I don’t think a man of your capacities will fail to do very nicely in the peace. Beirut is going to boom.’
They gossiped for a moment or two. Then he moved away. Nigel and Annabelle were standing side by side. It was time he fulfilled his promise. He moved across to them. ‘There was one thing you never told me last night,’ he said. ‘You’ve been out here longer than any of us. When are you due for repatriation?’
‘That is what we are all asking ourselves,’ said Annabelle. ‘And oh, with what concern and trepidation.’
Farrar took a long slow breath and drew himself to his full height. ‘My poor, my most dear Annabelle,’ he said, ‘you are now about to be robbed, you are now robbing yourself of the greatest moment in a woman’s life.’
‘And what is that that I am going to lose, my Captain?’
‘My Colonel, please.’
‘Ah, but to me you will always be my Captain, my dissolute and misguided Captain. Tell me what is this greatest moment in a woman’s life of which I am for ever to be deprived.’
‘It is the moment, my most sweet Annabelle, when a man who has been long courting her, but in a devious guise, says: “I have things to say to you that I must say alone. Will you let me take you for a drive?” And it is a warm, bland summer evening such as this; and he will drive her out of town to a high point on the cliffs; and there will be a gentle breeze blowing from the mountains, and the lights of the town will be twinkling along the harbour; he will switch off his engine; he will place his hand over hers. “My dear one,” he will say, “for a long time now I have been courting you; and at the start, I cannot deny it, it was a rather casual courtship; I was a foreigner, here for a brief interval. I hoped to decorate that interval with a little dalliance. But you resisted. You had no use for that kind of decoration. I was disappointed, but I persisted. And the weeks went by, and disappointment became despair. And I tried to leave Beirut. I asked for a posting to Alexandria. But it was not granted. My duty kept me here. And then you began to flirt with a scruffy little Frenchman.” ’
‘He was not scruffy.’
‘Please do not interrupt. A scruffy little Frenchman whose intentions you said were honourable because he wanted a husband’s right to your inheritance.’
‘That is not at all the way it was.’
‘That is how this poor Captain thought it was. He was in a prison from which he could not escape. He longed for the war to end. But when it did end, when he realized that he was soon to go back to England, that he would never see you again, it was more than he could face. Where else should he find anyone so beautiful, so adorable, with such eyes, with a voice that takes on so many tones, with so smooth a way of walking, and with such wit? When he realized what he should have to lose, he knew that there was only one thing in the world he wanted: to stay on here for ever as your husband. And his hand would press firmly over yours. There would be a glow in his eyes; and your eyes too would widen and grow tender. You would lean towards him and his arm would go round your shoulders, drawing you close, close, closer to him. And that is the greatest moment in a woman’s life, but that is a moment that you can never know because a respectable young lady of the Lebanon does not go out unchaperoned for a drive with a young man.’
‘And if permission had been given for a young lady of the Lebanon to make such a hazardous excursion, is that what he would have said to her, my persuasive Captain?’
‘That is what he would have said to her; but because it is not permissible, he has had to make her this little speech here in a crowded smoke-filled room.’
‘And is that what you have in fact said to me? That you want to stay on here in Lebanon for ever and be my husband?’
‘That is what I have said.’
‘Ah, but my silly and long-longed-for Captain, do you not think that I am much happier to have it said here and before so irreproachab
le a witness as our dear Professor?’
Her eyes were twinkling but they were very fond. She raised her hand. She rested it on his arm, above his elbow, pressing it. ‘Ah, but how grateful you are going to be in two years’ time that all this has happened in my way, not yours.’
Reid had a three days’ wait in Alexandria, in a transit camp, before he was due to sail. He had sent Gustave a signal from Beirut, and when he reached the depot, there was a message saying that Colonel Sargent would call for him on the following evening at seven o’clock. It took him a minute to realize who Colonel Sargent was. With his First War regard for rank, he found it hard to think of Gustave as a Colonel.
Gustave arrived in a staff car, punctually, in full regimentals.
‘This is on me,’ he said. ‘You did me very well at the Turf Club when I needed doing well. Let’s call it quits. Home James and don’t spare the horses.’
Gustave had acquired a new vernacular since Reid had seen him last. It seemed to be a Victorian style of humour, put between inverted commas. Gustave took him to the kind of unostentatious restaurant that a man of the world recognized at a glance to be certainly very expensive and probably very good. The equivalent of the Maison Basque in London in the ‘20s.
Gustave waved away the table d’hôte menu that he was offered. ‘No, à la carte,’ he said. ‘I know what’s good here, Prof. If you will allow me to make suggestions. They don’t mind our sharing a single dish between us, so why not divide a sole lucullus? What would you like first, a consommé? A fruit cocktail?’
That’s how it started. That was how it went on.
‘Do you realize, Prof., it’s nearly four years since we caught that Leopoldville at Glasgow? I was a Lieutenant and you a Captain. Not done so badly for ourselves since, have we? Level pegging up the ladder. Three rungs apiece. What’ll we take with this, a carafe of “the widow” . . .?’
Gustave had certainly created a persona.
Reid let him talk, then later in the evening started asking questions.
‘What are your immediate plans? When are you coming back to England?’
Gustave winked, knowingly. ‘Not for a long time if I can help it. I’ve learnt a lot since I’ve been in this racket. I know my way around, and I haven’t wasted my nights as Duty Officer. I’ve nosed around the files. I don’t only know what is what, but who is who. There’ll be a lot of funny business going on out here after the war. And I, with my Alexandrian mother, sit both sides of the fence. Fishing in troubled waters; that’s Gustave’s line. And the first come are the first served.’
Reid relaxed to this expansive entertainment.
Gustave did not seem to have a trouble in the world, but Reid had not forgotten his promise to Farrar.
‘I suppose that that star is the reward for your mission to Ankara,’ he said.
‘I suppose it is.’
‘You wouldn’t like to tell me about it, would you?’
A crafty look came into Gustave’s eyes.
‘You wouldn’t want me to break the Official Secrets Act, now would you?’
Reid laughed.
‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t know if Farrar does.’
‘Can you be sure that Farrar knows everything?’
‘If he doesn’t, who does?’
‘Perhaps there’s a man in Ankara who knows more than Farrar does. Haven’t you yourself told me that in intelligence you only tell a man as much as he needs to know, to carry out the immediate job in hand?’
Gustave’s eyes were twinkling. He was in the stronger position. He was enjoying it. ‘Two can play this game,’ thought Reid. He said:
‘You think that Ankara and Cairo know something that Farrar doesn’t.’
‘It might be.’
‘Farrar is very pleased with the way it all turned out.’
‘I am glad to hear that.’
‘And Cairo must be as well, otherwise you wouldn’t have that star.’
‘It looks rather like that, doesn’t it?’
‘Let’s hope that Ankara is too.’
Gustave’s expression changed.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘What do I mean by what?’
‘Saying that you hoped Ankara was pleased.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘Of course, naturally, but still . . .’ He checked, there was a belligerent but at the same time a furtive expression on his face, as though he was afraid of something. ‘Have you heard anything to make you suspect that Ankara’s not pleased?’
‘How could I have? I don’t know what went on.’
‘I know you don’t, but at the same time, you might have heard . . . suppose my name had come up in conversation and some one from the Turkish section had . . . well you know how it is . . . the way a man looks knowingly and shrugs and says, “Oh, Gustave.” You know that old Latin tag “Even though they are silent, they say enough.”’
‘Whatever makes you think they have?’
‘Nothing.... Only it was a funny thing for you to say, “Let’s hope that Ankara is too.” If you had heard anything, I’d be most grateful if you’d tell me.’
‘I can assure you that I haven’t.’
‘Because if you had . . .’ he paused. ‘It would make a lot of difference if you had.’
Gustave checked again. Reid waited, inquisitive, alert. Gustave wanted to ask him, Gustave wanted to tell him something. Gustave was anxious, apprehensive. ‘It’s coming,’ Reid thought, ‘It’s coming.’
It didn’t though. Gustave blinked and shook himself.
‘Forget it,’ he said, ‘Forget it. All the same, it was a damned funny thing to say.’
‘Something damned funny must have happened in Ankara,’ Reid thought.
Part Three
The Minaret
Chapter One
A month later, on a grey dank afternoon, the convoy in which Reid had travelled home, anchored in the bay of Greenock. The process of disembarkation was swift and smooth. A customs officer came on board. ‘It seems unfair to take money off you chaps after all you’ve been through,’ he explained. ‘But H.M.’s excises feel that every ship that docks has to pay its way. As long as each ship covers our expenses, we don’t care. I don’t want to look at anything. Just tell me what you’ve brought and I’ll believe you. It’s reasonable to assume isn’t it, that each of you will have brought back something dutiable?’
Reid had four Persian carpets. He valued them at a pound apiece, and paid a duty of fifteen shillings on them. The officer was quite satisfied. Within seventy minutes, they were all off the ship in a train. Reid bought a copy of The Star. It was the first evening paper he had seen for over forty months. He was surprised both at how small it was, and how much news was compressed within its shortened columns. ‘Such concentrated writing must be very difficult,’ he thought.
Most of the paper was concerned with the Election. Polling day was the week after next. During the last month Paiforce had been placarded with posters exhorting the troops to ‘serve like a soldier’ and ‘vote like a citizen.’ He had registered his vote for the Conservatives, not out of any particular conviction but because he wanted to see Churchill still in the saddle when the war was finished. The Star was politically liberal. The liberal vote had ceased to be important. The Star’s reporting was detached and neutral. An editorial note reported that the betting was two to one on a Conservative majority of fifty seats.
Young women in A.T.S. uniforms came down the platform with cups of steaming tea. Reid had been warned against the flabbiness of wartime beer, but the tea was as good as ever, strong and hot and sweet. The girls also brought paper bags, containing, each one, a cheese sandwich, a hard-boiled egg and a bar of chocolate. Cheese and chocolate and eggs were in short supply. A special effort must have been made to provide this ‘welcome home.’ It was touching, and rather pathetic too, Reid thought.
They were bound for Carlisle, where they would spend the night in barracks. Next day there would be the h
anding over of equipment, the final filling in of forms. In the later afternoon, they would catch a train for London. Early on the following morning they would return to civilian life with the bonus of three months’ leave on full pay and allowances. Across the carriage, a major in the Greys was saying: ‘I can’t wait to get my hands on a telephone. I’ve been away five years. To hear my wife’s voice again after sixty months.’ It was only then that Reid realized that he did not know Rachel’s telephone number. She had changed flats a few weeks ago. It was a furnished flat. He did not know the name of the owner-tenant. He supposed that he could find the number through directory inquiries. But it would take time. Telephone girls were tired and short tempered. It would be easier to send a telegram. Moreover, did he really want their first meeting to be across a wire. It was not going to be an easy meeting. Four years was a long time, and four such years; with a break in them such as they had had.
On what terms would they be meeting now? Would they behave as though there had been no interval; as though that divorce application had not been filed? Would what the law courts described as ‘marital relations’ be resumed? Did she want them to be, did he want them to be? Would she seem, would she be a different person? Would he seem different to her? After all there had been Diana. In a sense there still was Diana.
The fortnightly letters that he and Rachel had exchanged over the last year had been cordial enough: they had still a great deal in common. Marriage was a partnership, even if love deserted it.
During the long journey across the Mediterranean, round Gibraltar, he had grown increasingly apprehensive. There was nothing he could do. He would have to await the inspiration of the moment. Balzac in his physiology of marriage had devoted an entire section to the single, trenchant statement. ‘Everything depends on the first night.’ That was, he was very sure, how it was to be, between himself and Rachel. Everything would depend upon the first few hours. And chance would decide upon their course. Yes, he was glad on the whole he did not know her number.