Doom's Caravan

by Geoffrey Household

  I remember that I lay down and sobbed at that point. Hopelessly I went to work with my hands, and then found the job not at all impossible and even quick. Under the covering of earth the shattered pieces of rock were easy to lift out. I say, easy. But I could not have lifted any of the stones a few hours later when the muscles of back and shoulders had set solid. I was quite unable to make a neat grave. I did manage a rough hole into which Khalid could be fitted knees to chin, in neolithic style. I covered him up, smoothed back the earth and scattered the extra stones among the pile of spoil.

  Then this docile horse and I went back, down to the scene of the crime where I kicked pine needles over the blood and left it to the busy ants. The wheels of the bike still turned, so I was able to guide it through the trees to the lower zigzag of the path and free-wheel down to the road, hiding it behind a decaying shed. The last job was to walk back up the two twists of that damned hill for the damned horse, for I was nearly out on my feet and had no other way of getting clear.

  I set out on its back for the nearest camp to the west where I knew there were still a few Australians of 7th Division packing up. They never asked too many questions, taking what was offered to them and treating it kindly. Having telephoned Limpsfield that I had been in a nasty smash and that he was to run out to the rescue in the truck, I had another stroke of terrified genius. I told the provost sergeant, who was looking after me and worried at my condition, that we spy-catchers of the Intelligence Corps sometimes found ourselves in possession of property without an owner and that I had a horse standing in the woods if he had an empty lorry to put it in. Dogs, spare engines, comforts for the troops, tools and tyres—those dear Australians were always ready to collect them if they were not nailed down and just as generous in handing them out; they also had a remarkable gift for covering imports and exports by correct army forms. I warned him that the saddlery had better be dropped into the Mediterranean while his convoy was rolling down to Egypt, but the horse could safely be sold to a riding school or shipped to Australia.

  When Limpsfield and Flowers came out to fetch me, I accounted for the few patches of blood on my uniform by saying that I had pitched on my face and it was all from my nose; but I did not attempt to explain why the provost sergeant heaved two vast crates of beer into our truck and why the mark on the petrol tank of my bike was, according to Limpsfield, so very like a horse’s hoof. On arrival at the hotel I borrowed his greatcoat to cover the blood stains, collapsed into my room and spent the next two days groaning in bed.

  The town was buzzing with the news of Lieutenant Khalid’s disappearance when I returned to my office chair. General opinion was that he had ridden over to Turkey when some crime of his could no longer be concealed. Apparently there had been plenty of them, ranging from rape to blackmail. While he was alive nobody had mentioned anything of the sort, but as soon as a distinguished, sporting policeman is no more in command of admiring toughs it is possible to tell the truth and double the libels.

  It was not long afterwards that Oliver’s first attempt to contact me came through very unromantically by telephone. Why the devil I should have thought he would have to choose a more complicated method I cannot imagine, for there was no bugging of calls between civil and military exchanges without good reason. I must have been suffering from what we called the British Secret Service complex. He spoke in French, reminded me—in case I did not recognise his voice—that since it was Wednesday he had private business in my district and arranged to meet me at a point on the Besharra road at two o’clock. He was never a man to bother about interfering with anyone’s lunch.

  As soon as I saw him looking pious and contemplative by a wayside Moslem shrine I got out of the truck and told my driver to come back in a couple of hours. When he was out of sight and the road was empty, I disappeared into the thick cover of young, green pines where Oliver joined me. He reported that he had seen no movement between Hermel and Sir and that he was sure from discreet enquiries in Damascus and Baalbek that the track was unknown. He had no line at all on my supposed Circassian, Fatty or Yellow Socks.

  I then told him of Khalid’s attempt on me. I did not say that I had killed him. I would not have trusted or embarrassed anyone with a detailed description. I merely emphasised that Khalid had disappeared for good and that I hoped neither he nor his horse would ever be heard of again.

  ‘A horse,’ he said, ‘seems rather large.’

  ‘On the contrary. That was the easiest.’

  ‘You realise that if it ever came out…’

  ‘The Foreign Legion, I think. I was never any good at changing money.’

  He ignored that—beyond observing that in our trade violence was cruel and unnecessary. He asked what Khalid had against me.

  ‘Nothing. Somebody thinks I know something which I don’t.’

  ‘If you did, you would have already reported it, so it is not worth removing you. What’s left? Your very unsound methods. Your soldierly expedition which bagged me. Leading questions about horses and car numbers. All alarming and indicating that you had nothing certain but soon would have, and had better meet with an accident.’

  ‘Another one on the way, you think?’

  ‘No. They are up in the air. They can’t guess what happened to Khalid. He might have lost his nerve and bolted. And it must begin to look possible that your interest the whole time was in Valerie and nothing else. Leave it to me!’

  I was very content to do so, for I was helpless and out on my own—a literal outlaw with a couple of courts martial hanging over my head on one side and a threat of assassination on the other. At least I managed to keep a sense of proportion about the latter. As Oliver said, it was most risky for them—if it was a ‘them’—to try it again after the mysterious failure of the first attempt. For all they knew I had the full co-operation of I (b) and was stretching my claws and grinning.

  While we waited for the truck to return, Oliver remarked:

  ‘By the way, is it true that we are expecting four armoured divisions at El Mina?’

  ‘You heard that in Damascus?’

  ‘No, last night. From Mrs. Ronson-Bolbec via Valerie.’

  I believe you knew my Corporal Davila—a man with all the fertile imagination and silky charm of a Sephardic Jew. M.I.6 stole him from us in the end and made him a major; I hope he worked out some tricks of their trade which had the Gestapo screaming with nerves and frustration. Well, I (b) ordered us to start a rumour that reinforcements were arriving to take the place of the Australians. We did not think their suggestions very convincing, so Davila invented a beauty: that special cranes and a floating jetty were being installed at El Mina for the disembarkation of four armoured divisions. Since the Navy happened to be repairing a fleet of barges, dredging alongside the quay and putting down lines for a big crane to run on, there was good evidence to back up the story.

  Davila’s idea was approved enthusiastically, and it was only three days since he and Zappa had let it leak—after allowing the master of a very dubious Ruad caique to soak them in araq.

  ‘Who has she been talking to since the day before yesterday?’

  ‘I’ll find out. Why?’

  ‘She got the information very quickly.’

  ‘It’s true then?’

  I did not answer him directly. There was a difference between secrets which were mine to give away and those which were the property of the Army.

  ‘You know they never tell Field Security anything,’ I replied. ‘Supposing it’s a fact, did she get it in a letter from Cairo or from Ahmed or where?’

  ‘I shall be passing their house again tonight,’ he said, as if it were just round the corner in Acacia Avenue with some handy laurels at the bottom of the garden, ‘so I can let you know at once. Business telegram. No takers means no visitors. If I put in any name, I’ll make it easy for you to guess what I mean. But it will all have to be in Arabic.’


  I told him that was all right, since I had Boutagy as interpreter. He was distressed to hear that Boutagy had been eased out of Nazareth and thanked me warmly for taking him on.

  ‘A dear fellow!’ he exclaimed. ‘But I always found him so comic. The British Raj, and all that!’

  Driving back to Tripoli I considered his remark. I always suspected that Oliver had no passionate respect for his country. It did not matter. Nobody could feel hatred for Hitler with such white heat as a good internationalist. Yet he did not care in the least whether or not I was an old-fashioned patriot serving the Empire in the old-fashioned way. One could understand how it was that he was called ‘wet’ by men who were not altogether fools.

  His wire reached me on the Friday. Roughly translated, it ran:

  NO TAKERS PALESTINE POUNDS YOUR PRICE STOP AHMED NOT IN THE MARKET THIS WEEK.

  So there were no visitors to the valley, and Ahmed had not been down to Tripoli. There was no alternative left but to put Mrs. Ronson-Bolbec through the hoops and find out how the planted rumour had reached her. Cairo and Brigadier Paunce could post me to sanitary engineering in Madagascar if they liked, but this was my duty and I was damned well going to see where it led. It wasn’t my duty? Well, certainly I could have sent a report upstairs and let the brass do the dirty work. But you’ll agree that His Majesty was graciously paying us to indulge our curiosity.

  I was now growing accustomed to the rally drive up from Sir and actually dared to entrust a bunch of lilies to the back of the bike. The section, those of them who were in, kept stern, straight faces at this further evidence of the skipper’s romance—all except Holloway who remarked mournfully:

  ‘We do ’ope it’s not a close relation, sir.’

  Ahmed greeted me with a most cordial and extensive Arab salutation. I imagined a new, profound respect, which was natural enough if he knew of Khalid’s attempt on me. Mashallah, what an example to all the Faithful—a murderer who could vanish his victims!

  Mrs. Ronson-Bolbec joined the act, and metaphorically let loose a flight of cooing pigeons from the deep dovecot of her bosom. They had not seen me for so long. How like me to bring both flowers and more gin! And what a lovely lunch I had given little Valerie! I replied that I was delighted she had come round to tolerating me.

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t have kept looking at her in the way you did,’ Ma said.

  ‘What way?’

  ‘As if you were out shopping and trying to choose between a joint of beef or mutton.’

  A devastating revelation! There was no possible comeback except to ask her if she expected me to go any further.

  ‘At least you might seem to want to.’

  ‘Is she out?’

  ‘She’s collecting those lovely little irises from the hillside.’

  And no doubt prospecting for an easier route when scrambling up on Tuesday nights.

  It was warm spring at last with all the wide windows of the house open and the scent of the orchard blossom drifting through the rooms—a most unpromising set for relentless interrogation. One feels so much more on top of the poor devils across a desk, or in a cell where four blank walls exclude humanity and close in upon the importance of some wretched fact.

  I need not have worried how I was to begin. She jumped straight at it. There were going to be gallant officers—heaps of them drawn from the wood of smart cavalry regiments and now bottled into tanks. Tea parties! Châteaux galore!

  ‘I hear there are four armoured divisions on the way,’ she said. ‘What fun we shall all have!’

  ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘In a letter from Cairo. Last week.’

  ‘Was it Captain Magnat or Ahmed who brought up the post?’

  ‘Ahmed, of course. He always does.’

  ‘When?’

  She gave me a date before the rumour had even been started. So I became official, for even she must realise that her fictitious Cairo correspondent had committed an outrageous breach of Security.

  ‘I have to ask who wrote the letter.’

  ‘You must not behave like a policeman,’ she said patronisingly. ‘In India I knew several officers in the secret service, and they were all gentlemen.’

  ‘I am not in any secret service and not a gentleman this afternoon. I am a security officer with the right and duty to bully you.’

  ‘I shall complain about you to London. I won’t have you interfering.’

  ‘The name of your correspondent, please.’

  ‘You won’t get it.’

  ‘Then I shall ask for all your mail to be censored.’

  ‘Oh, please, no!’ she cried. ‘Not again! Not from you!’

  That was an eye-opener. Clearly it was not wholly a privilege that her correspondence with her distinguished relatives went through the diplomatic bag. She had already been warned, and probably made a fuss which was exasperating for everyone; so some tactful colonel on the staff of the Director of Military Intelligence had ensured security by routing all her mail through the bag.

  ‘I had better tell you that I am already in touch with Cairo about you.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘The report was private and not very favourable.’

  ‘Oh, God! How did they describe us? That bloody woman and her daughter?’

  I have seldom been so shocked. I could not tell you why. The change in her voice, perhaps. I was used to her smooth, superior, slightly artificial tone, and then this hot spurt of shame burst out from the bottom of her.

  My guess, for what it’s worth, is that at some time she had been listening at a door and heard an opinion—very possibly a consensus of opinion—which she did not expect. I would not be surprised if it had a lot to do with their sudden, approved departure for the Lebanon.

  For the moment I kept on the ice the vital question of who told her the rumour. I liked to let confessions come out as they chose. Amateur stuff, of course; but after the war I found that the real professionals in London did the same. No beatings-up, racks or needles. Just the nice, friendly atmosphere of the psychiatrist’s consulting-room—though one might go so far as hanging a few depressing chromium-plated instruments on the wall.

  ‘Blaise d’Aulnoy understood,’ she said.

  ‘But you can’t sit out the whole war here.’

  ‘You told us that already. How long will it go on?’

  ‘I don’t see any end. Why on earth don’t you go home?’

  ‘That’s the second time you’ve asked me. No money, you beast! That’s the answer.’

  It stuck out a mile as the truth, and for the moment I found myself on her side. She seemed to have expected contempt. At any rate she was so surprised at my reaction that she burst into floods of tears. Owing to her cinematic anatomy it was difficult to give her a shoulder to cry on, but I did my best. I shouldn’t like you to think that the collapse was all due to the ‘undoubted charm’. I had mixed her three drinks and I had not economised with the gin.

  I did not ask her why she had not taken a job in Cairo, for I could answer that question myself. Secretary at some British Government commercial agency? But it was certain she could not type. Running a canteen for the troops or similar welfare activity? But those were not paid jobs. Helping in the Embassy? Not on your life, with her indiscretions! And it was unthinkable that a colonel’s widow who knew everyone should work in vulgar trade for a Greek or a wog.

  Yes, I could see her trouble. The Army had no authority to pay her passage home; it was not until Rommel was outside Alexandria that we began to evacuate women. As for her cousins in the corridors of power who could certainly get her a passage and fork out the money, they turned, I suspect, a blind eye, relieved that she was out of cadging distance and among dear, old friends who would look after her.

  ‘It was all for Valerie,’ she sobbed.

  I was aware that,
very likely, she was mopping away with a monogrammed handkerchief in order to keep me off that mythical Cairo correspondent. But so often a woman’s tears are more tragically genuine than she herself knows.

  However, pity for her personally was not going to stop me. While her mind was occupied by the mess she had made of her finances and the sneers of former friends, I edged towards the probable explanation of where she heard the rumour.

  ‘You’ll be all right here for a long time,’ I assured her. ‘And I hear you are doing a lot of good in the village.’

  ‘I wish I could talk to them more.’

  ‘Does Valerie go with you?’

  ‘No. She doesn’t like the smells. But she takes an interest. She arranged with Ahmed that he and I should go over and talk to the women every Tuesday night.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘The usual missionary stuff. Baby care and first aid and so on. I’d like to be more intimate, but I can’t with Ahmed there. Blaise d’Aulnoy asked me to look after them. That was part of the bargain.’

  ‘And to entertain his friends?’

  ‘Well, to be nice to them. He knew I couldn’t do much.’

  ‘And they go back to Sir the same day like Fatty and Socks?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Brigadier Paunce, too?’

  ‘Reggie Paunce? What’s he got to do with it?’

  ‘An old friend who is used to sleeping rough but wouldn’t come to the house for Valerie’s sake?’

  ‘You do have a dirty mind! I never heard such nonsense.’

  ‘Your informant must have been someone in the know.’

  ‘But it’s only a rumour.’

  ‘Unfortunately it is true and top secret.’

  ‘Well, go ahead and tackle Reggie Paunce and see what happens to you!’