Doom's Caravan

by Geoffrey Household

  ‘Nor mine. But I don’t want you to ask questions. Use your eyes.’

  ‘Looking for the watch you dropped?’

  Not a bad suggestion, but it would confine him to one part of the hills.

  ‘You are making a count of grasshoppers for Locust Control. Ours not to reason why. Take some bottles of coloured water and papers of tooth powder. Mix one with the other, drop it on the grasshopper and write the result in a notebook. Wear a General Service cap badge. When can you get the mule?’

  ‘Any time. Off of an Indian Mule Company. They thinks very ’ighly of me, sir.’

  I heard no more of Holloway till two evenings later when the billet behind my office resounded with the stamping of boots and blasts of indignant language.

  ‘Bloody great grasshoppers all over the blankets, sir,’ Limpsfield reported. ‘And Lance-Corporal Holloway has the nerve to tell me it’s on your orders. I’ve a mind to put him on a charge.’

  ‘Send him in, sergeant-major.’

  Limpsfield marched him in, left-right, left-right, to show his feelings. Two grasshoppers followed, hopping nearly in step. They were three inches long with jaws to match. One dived into the waste-paper basket for its supper; the other jumped the length of the office and landed on my head. Holloway reached for it and flung it out of the window

  ‘No tact, sir,’ he said. ‘And such a lovely green they are.’

  ‘But why the hell did you bring them home?’

  ‘Put ’em in my pack. Thought they’d be all right, but they ate their way out.’

  Holloway had covered miles of stony hillside on his mule. He had seen no one but Moslem peasants working scraps of land and occasional shepherds. None of the goat paths led to d’Aulnoy’s valley. It was only possible to scramble down on foot—or hands and knees, more likely.

  On the first day he had stopped at intervals to fiddle with his powder and bottles, but got tired of it when he could find no one to take an interest in him. During the second day he amused himself by collecting grasshoppers whenever he saw an outsize specimen. After returning the mule, he was walking back to Tripoli when a wog offered him a lift. A wog in army language was any kind of Arab, poor or well-dressed, Christian or Moslem. I never could see how they distinguished a Lebanese from, say, a Greek or a Jew.

  This one was well-dressed in dark European clothes with muddy, yellow socks. He had observed Holloway on the hillside—which suggested that he had also followed him back to the Mule Company—and wanted to know what he was doing. Holloway replied that he was collecting grasshoppers and opened his knapsack to prove it. Years of undetected crime in the Indian Army had taught him the value of a good cover story, so he let himself go.

  ‘Test for top secret gas, sir. Teach the troops to keep an eye on the grass’oppers. If they turns brown, scarper like ’ell! If they stays green, all clear! I couldn’t turn ’em loose in the street in case he was watching, so I had to bring ’em back.’

  Limpsfield and I asked simultaneously whether the wog had driven him all the way to the billet.

  ‘No, sir. Made him drop me at the Australian Military Police, and went in there.’

  ‘Car number?’

  ‘Grey Peugeot, 1461.’

  I was sure that the questioning was innocent. Yes, what a lot of your time and mine was wasted by the persistent and amiable curiosity of the Levantine! But I’ll anticipate my story a little and tell you now that Yellow Socks was the real goods, the object of our existence, the enemy agent. As a result of Holloway’s guileless face and power of invention, it’s more than probable that in some Berlin laboratory a research chemist was at once assigned to the job of finding out what gas turned grasshoppers brown.

  On my next visit to Ninth Army Headquarters I dropped into the I (a) office and told them about the hard track from Hermel to Sir. They said my information would have been invaluable but didn’t matter now, and doubtless I knew why. I did. The Australians were leaving for home. We had not and never would have the troops to defend the Tripoli-Baalbek line. We were going to stand on the Palestine frontier, and God only knew whether we should be facing north or south.

  Tight security was more essential than ever, and I was still vaguely worried about the Ronson-Bolbecs’ mail. Ma was certain to go in for voluminous correspondence, let alone Valerie’s letters to and from old admirers. With this in mind I made my routine call on I (b) and mentioned the ladies and the possibilities of leaks. My bosses were not impressed. They admitted that the Deuxième Bureau very probably read the mail, but who cared if they did? Better them than anyone else.

  ‘Look here!’ they said to me. ‘This pair seem to be Cairo’s blue-eyed girls. If you think they are a security risk, go and talk to Brigadier Paunce about them. He knows them better than anybody.’

  Having gone so far, I couldn’t get out of it. All I knew of Paunce was that he was a paper soldier whose clerks were never at rest. Physical training. Care of transport. Indignant surprise that officers were doing something in contravention of General Orders which all of them had been doing since 1939. As Security never dove-tailed neatly into rules and regulations he considered us a nuisance—with little justification since most of us were models of correctitude in order to remain unnoticed.

  He looked at me wearily over his ginger moustache as if he was always removing members of the Intelligence Corps which the cat would bring in, and asked me to state my business shortly. I replied that it was long and perhaps delicate, but he did not ask me to sit down. Under the circumstances I could only clear my throat and open the ball.

  He went very red in the face. Professional fury, I thought at the time. Afterwards I realised that it was embarrassment and that he was corresponding with one of the two himself. Limpsfield said he was a bachelor with a private income and that the Warrant Officers of the Greys had thrown a party when he left the regiment for the staff.

  ‘I can quite understand your interest in Miss Ronson-Bolbec,’ he said. ‘But I will not have you reading her letters under the pretence of Security.’

  I tried to calculate what would happen if I threw the ash tray at him and somehow managed to refrain.

  ‘No, sir. May I say it was her mother’s correspondence which I feared might be of interest to enemy agents.’

  ‘That has already been taken care of in high places. I have noticed that Field Security is often inclined to exceed its powers.’

  ‘I am sorry about that, sir.’

  ‘You’re not the Gestapo, you know. I suppose you’ll tell me next that you have the power to tinker with my correspondence?’

  ‘No, sir. I could merely recommend to I (b) that it should be done, giving my reasons.’

  He lost his temper at that and told me to get out. The only satisfaction I had was to put my head into the I (b) office before leaving and tell them what I thought of them. They were most unsympathetic. They asked me what the hell I imagined the French were for if not to hold the hot potatoes.

  And that wasn’t the end of it either. Paunce slammed in a letter to Cairo saying that I had threatened to have his private letters read. My commandant managed to squash that nonsense and wrote to me privately that if I was genuinely worried about Mrs. Ronson-Bolbec the right game was to use my undoubted charm and keep on good terms with her until she gave herself away.

  So, you see, I was now out on my own in a world which had no interest in my obstinate and misplaced curiosity. Even you, as an old hand, may think I was off my loaf bothering about a mother and daughter who could be vouched for by half the regular army and had every right to be where they were. But one would have expected the place to be full of young officers fluttering round the honey-pot, or at least somebody sitting in the hay and writing a sonnet, whereas the only fascinating visitor was a pro-British Circassian smuggler who thought his life might be in danger.

  I decided to take my commandant’s always wise advice
and call again on the Ronson-Bolbecs. The two bottles of gin which I brought with me survived the journey. Ma insisted on paying for them, but had unfortunately no change. Nor had Valerie. Wasn’t it silly of them? They always ran right out of money just before Ahmed went down to the bank.

  My undoubted charm must have been working overtime, for after quarter of an hour Mrs. Ronson-Bolbec strolled out to the orchard with me where we sat on a white bench in the spring sun and pretended we were in England or Kashmir or somewhere. Ahmed reinforced the illusion with a silver tray on which were ice, fresh orange juice and the gin.

  I told her more of my duties: that I was entirely concerned with troops, not civilians, but that I could not help feeling responsible for two lonely and enchanting women in my district and that I was worried about their unprotected position up there in the wilds.

  ‘The first time I met you, you mentioned local society,’ I said. ‘Who exactly did you mean?’

  ‘Oh, people do come to see us, you know.’

  ‘Well, for your sake I want a check on them, so do be an angel and correct my not-very-secret files. There are Captain Magnat and our flashy, young gendarme, Lieutenant Khalid. Then Sheikh Anton from Zghorta and our dear old Captain of the Port. Both are very kind and can be useful friends if you have patience with them. And of course the Headman of Sir, eager to know what he can do for you and only interested in what you can do for him. Anyone else?’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ she said impatiently, annoyed with me because her visitors were so few and so very ordinary. ‘There were Fatty and Socks.’

  ‘Who were they?’

  ‘Two old friends of dear Blaise. One was from Iraq and very large. He was quite laid up by the ride and complained to Socks that he would never do it again. And Socks was a Syrian. He wore yellow socks with black shoes. Have you noticed that when it’s cold they never know how to dress? Anything goes. It was just the same in India.’

  I did not mention my rider, but I did ask if the only horses which came up were the chestnut and grey stabled in the village.

  ‘I don’t know. Ahmed might. Shall we ask him?’

  I said quickly that it didn’t matter and got her talking about old days in India. She patted my hand and told me how much I would have enjoyed myself. She was sure that any good regiment would have jumped at me.

  Her mood seemed promising, so I told her, as if it were half a joke, that she was likely to get me fired from my job.

  ‘Good heavens! Why is that?’

  ‘Because I have been making impertinent enquiries about you. I can’t see why you two should be living up here in the middle of nowhere.’

  ‘Imagine that it’s a cottage in the Welsh mountains!’

  ‘But why isn’t it?’

  ‘That is not your business. Brigadier Paunce at Ninth Army knows us very well.’

  I refused to be Paunced at, and replied that a woman of her taste couldn’t possibly endure him for more than ten minutes.

  ‘One forgives a lot to old friends,’ she said. ‘When I first knew him he was a shy boy of twenty.’

  Touching, but he should not have gone into the regular army. These very shy men put on a mask of ferocity to protect themselves which becomes a habit.

  ‘So you’re staying here indefinitely?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t you want us to?’

  ‘I was thinking of the next man and what I should tell him. I might be posted anywhere next week.’

  ‘Oh, I do hope not!’

  ‘Valerie must be bored to tears,’ I said, trying again.

  ‘She is a very sensible girl who knows she must have patience.’

  It was no good. I had got more than I expected out of her, but nothing personal. So I said good-bye to the abstracted Valerie and returned to Tripoli. On my way back I made enquiries at Sir about Fatty and Socks. I was told that when they collected the two horses they claimed to be acting for d’Aulnoy and riding up to the valley and back just to see that his tenants lacked for nothing. They were in a hurry and had given no exact names—which was credible since Fatty had a decisive air of authority.

  After Holloway’s first encounter with Yellow Socks I had asked Lieutenant Khalid, who commanded the local detachment of the Lebanese Gendarmerie, to make enquiries about the man. Khalid, always fulsomely helpful, came along with the information that grey Peugeot 1461 belonged to a respectable insurance broker of Aleppo. I was content with that. But now that Yellow Socks had turned up twice I wrote to my Aleppo colleague for confirmation of Khalid’s report.

  His reply was puzzling. The insurance broker did indeed own a grey Peugeot, but its number was 1491, not 1461. 1461 had belonged to a French doctor and had not been re-issued.

  Holloway was dead certain that he had not made a mistake and showed me his notebook. He had even written down the Arabic numerals as well as the French. Whether he was wrong or not, it was curious that Khalid should have omitted to tell me that 1461 did not exist. It looked as if he had deliberately muddled the numbers to discourage further enquiries.

  That was enough to open a file on Lieutenant Khalid, though so far the only note in it was: who is Yellow Socks, and why is Khalid protecting him? Both questions would have remained unanswered if Limpsfield, one evening, had not suddenly remarked:

  ‘By the way, sir, ever seen a horse box in the Lebanon?’

  We were having a leisurely drink in my office—Field Security in my section, and yours too if I remember, was a partnership not a bloody barracks—and he was telling me of some Lincolnshire farmer who used to shoot from horseback because gout wouldn’t let him put foot to the ground.

  ‘Beirut racecourse, but nowhere else. Why?’

  ‘That roan with a star is in Khalid’s stables.’

  Lieutenant Khalid was a passionate horseman, whose team had twice won the dressage event in happier days at Beirut. He was a devotee of cavalry regiments, British and French, and had heard of the Greys. So Limpsfield had a standing invitation to look over the gendarmerie stables and to ride whenever he could find the time. Since he spoke nothing but English he used to take Boutagy along to interpret for him.

  ‘What’s it got to do with a horse box?’

  ‘That rider we saw. He would never have ridden the roan back to Tripoli over a hundred miles of road through Homs. So if he hadn’t a horse box he must have returned by the Hermel track.’

  ‘Did you ask any questions?’

  ‘No. I told him I had come across a horse very like it at Sir, just to see what he would answer. He said there were no riding horses at Sir except the two left by d’Aulnoy.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Well, sir, I didn’t want him to think it was the roan I was interested in, so I asked him how often his patrols visited Sir. “When I feel like it,” he answered. Or that was what Boutagy said.’

  No harm had been done, except that Khalid sounded sulky—perhaps because he assumed we were keeping a check on visitors to the valley and interfering with the business of the Gendarmerie, perhaps from a bad conscience.

  So more facts and queries went into his file:

  Khalid knows the mysterious rider of the roan and either lends him the horse or stables it for him.

  Therefore he also knows of the Hermel track. Any connection between the track and Yellow Socks?

  Does Khalid also know the fat Iraqi who visited the Ronson-Bolbecs?

  This Iraqi should not be hard to identify and may give key to whole set-up. Section to note his description and try to trace.I called up Magnat and asked him how far Khalid could be trusted, on the excuse that he often turned up at Australian camps and had contacts with their Military Police.

  ‘As far as you can see him, dear colleague. He is efficient. Nothing is known against him. And I warn you that if you start monkeying with his loyalty to France he will tell me about it. But one n
ever knows with these Lebanese. It is certain that he has some private rackets. The salaries of Police and Gendarmerie are what they were before the war, and the cost of living has doubled.’

  That made immediate sense. The hawk-nosed rider on the roan was deep in some mildly criminal activity with Khalid and Yellow Socks—smuggling gold or hashish probably. He did not want the existence of his route to be public knowledge but was well-disposed to the British and prepared to do what he could to help the defence of his country. There were holes in my theory, but it would do for the moment.

  It was time to take the Ronson-Bolbecs out to lunch and pretend more interest in Valerie than I felt. I wanted to get her alone and find out who her hawk-nosed friend was, if she knew, and what game he was playing. Mrs. Ronson-Bolbec made it easier than I expected. I was not in the château class, but I think she was impressed by that fictitious export business with enough capital to run itself during my absence. I had also mentioned that the firm had Influence and could always get shipping space to America. At any rate she said that poor, dear Val was getting so moody and it would cheer her up if I took her out. She herself would come another day, and then we could have a lovely tête à tête.

  I waited at Sir for Valerie with the section truck. She and Ahmed, as escort, came down on sturdy mounts from the valley, though not so good as the chestnut and grey which provided transport up from Sir. D’Aulnoy’s horses, as one would expect, were far superior to the usual undersized runts of the peasants—when they had any at all.

  She seemed to me absorbed by herself. No sort of ease between us. Embarrassing silences which both of us broke simultaneously with some inane remark about a passing donkey or the weather. El Mina, the port of Tripoli, made her a bit more lively though there was nothing much to see there except caiques discharging grain, a detachment of Australians loading warlike stores into trucks and Corporal Zappa on port control trying not to look startled at the piece his skipper had got hold of.

  I had a favourite waterside bar at El Mina. The proprietor had worked in Paris and could put on an outstanding French-Arab meal if I gave him notice. Valerie was a little reluctant to settle down in the private room, which contained a vulgar and inviting red velvet couch. At least it would have been inviting if one of the springs had not come through the cover. I pointed out that if we sat in the bar or on the street she would have to endure the stares of Australians and the boldest would certainly slap me on the back as an old acquaintance and ask us both to have a drink with him. As it was, she had only to scream and the whole damn lot would come rushing in to the rescue.