With a horrible scraping of his chair, Stevens rose.
‘Sorry about that,’ he said. From beyond the window, the call to prayer was starting up. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘there they go again.’ While fiddling with his tunic sleeves, as though trying to perform some delicate operation with his cuff buttons that his thick fingers were not quite equal to, he said, ‘I could talk about how I won the silver cup in Bulmer’s Boxing Academy at the Penzance Fair in 1910. I knocked out Dan Patterson who went on to become the West Britain Light Heavyweight Champion, but I was only a kid then. That’s why I was only a light heavyweight, but it’s not really anything to do with railways, is it? No. So I thought I’d talk about something that . . . Well, there’s nothing to it really, nothing to it at all . . .’
Shepherd indicated to the waiter that another glass of wine be brought for Stevens. He drank it off in one, and embarked on a description of the Liskeard and Looe railway, which unfortunately did not do anything as simple as run from Liskeard to Looe, but rambled about over half of Cornwall, so that in Stevens’s speech ‘Coombe Junction’, ‘Moorswater’ and ‘Bodmin Moor’ were all confusingly mixed up with the evening call to prayer floating through the windows. Having set out the route of the line – as he thought – Stevens then described how he’d been given footplate rides on some of its tank engines in the school holidays, and how this had led him to learn the ‘rude implements’ of firing. By that, he might have meant ‘rudiments’ – it was shocking to think how much money had been wasted on his education. The brigadier was half asleep, what with the suffocating heat, and the droning of Stevens and the prayer call.
But then our speaker took a more promising turn.
‘. . . Now, see,’ he said, ‘the fellow who principally taught me the skills of a fireman was an old Cornish chap called Kit Bassett, and he’d spent most of his life running up and down the Cornish main line on goods. Old Kit collected all the sheep from the halts that served the big farms, my dad’s included, and he took them to the slaughterhouse at Truro. Well, the knackers’ yard, not to be too polite about it. How many sheep that man carted to their deaths, it’s beyond counting, beyond imagining. Thousands and thousands, and . . .’
The door opened, and the guest of honour entered – a much more decorative individual than I had expected, and of an altogether different sex. Everyone stood up, but she wouldn’t have any formality, and motioned us to sit down as she moved rapidly towards the spare seat. It was the sureness of her movements that gave her away. She was the woman who had ridden through the public garden or park. As she took her place – in between Stevens and myself – she removed a wide-brimmed hat to reveal a mass of auburn curls. In the course of this, she and Ferry exchanged nods. I believed that he had not been surprised at her arrival. She also nodded at Shepherd, who grinned at her while blushing. Her arrival had certainly not surprised him; the lady was, after all, his guest. Her hair had perhaps once been held in place by a small ebony comb buried in it. After an expert bit of business with curls and comb, she was perfectly meek and still, waiting for our pink-faced speaker to continue.
‘. . . Thousands’, Stevens resumed, ‘and thousands . . . So when Kit Bassett turned sixty-five or so, and was coming up to his superannuation, the company took him off the main line, and he worked a link that kept him always on the branch.’
‘The Liskeard–Looe,’ put in Shepherd.
‘Correct, sir. He was put out to grass, so to say, working a stopping goods through all the villages there – well, I won’t name them all again – sometimes with yours truly standing in for the fireman.’
One of the Royal Engineers put his hand up like a schoolboy: ‘Wasn’t that against regulations?’
‘Oh tosh,’ said Shepherd, grinning and colouring up.
I glanced sidelong at the lady. She was looking down, still – what was the word? – demure.
‘Well now,’ said Stevens, ‘picture old Kit on his very last run before he goes off to be given a gold Albert or carriage clock or whatever it might be, and listening to a lot of fellows saying what a grand chap he is at the railwaymen’s institute at Truro, and clapping him on the back, telling him now it’s time to take that garden in hand. It’s Saturday early evening, and he’s riding up with Timmy Rice – that’s his regular fireman,’ Stevens added, with a half turn to the lady, as though the detail might have been of particular interest to her. ‘It’s about five o’clock sort of time, and he’s coming up to the little station at Coombe where he books off, do you see?’
‘Set the scene for us, Mike,’ said Shepherd, ‘paint the picture.’
He sat back, and the lady eyed him, and smiled. Meanwhile the red-faced, blond-haired man smiled at her – a hopeless kind of smile.
‘Well, I wasn’t there,’ said Stevens, ‘but y’know . . . a late summer’s evening in Cornwall. Not much in the way of . . . A few swallows zinging about . . . Thresher rattling away in the fields probably, and the chaps working on it waving to Kit as he goes by; the haze all around the machine, the sun going down, and the whole thing sort of golden.’
I believed that everyone around the table could figure the scene, the late sunshine of Baghdad leaking in through the window seeming not so different from the gentler sunshine of Cornwall. And Stevens was still at it: ‘. . . The sheep grazing by the tracks running away a little as Bassett comes along, but only a little jog, because I mean they knew him just as well as everyone else . . . All save this one sheep, you see, and he doesn’t run away, but he walks – calm as you like – up the embankment, and he turns, and he faces the engine head-on. By all accounts, old Kit was put into a sort of daze by the sight of it. Well, it wasn’t natural. Hypnotised, was old Kit, leaning out, staring at the beast, and the bloody thing . . .’
Stevens turned to the lady, saying, ‘Sorry, Miss Bailey.’
So he appeared to know her, too.
‘The . . . well, the flipping thing is staring right back at Bassett, and he’s sort of entranced by it as I say, and he makes no move for the brake. It’s his mate, Timmy Rice, who claps it on, and Bassett goes flying forward, and . . . he only crowns himself on the fire-door handle doesn’t he? Knocked his lights out, and that was the end of old Kit Bassett.’
A beat of silence.
‘The revenge’, said one of the R.E. men after a while, ‘of the sheep.’
‘That’s just about the size of it,’ said Stevens. ‘Well, that’s my story . . . Bit of railway in it anyhow.’
He collapsed into his seat, as the assembled party broke into applause, a sound that began to mingle with shouts and running feet from beyond the square. I heard the raised voice of a Tommy: ‘You fucking . . .’ But the whole incident was mobile, and faded away fast.
Stevens was breathing deeply and clasping and unclasping his fists. His blue glass was empty. After his great effort, he needed another drink. I reached for the wine jug, but of course I would have to offer the lady first, since she sat between us.
‘Would you care for . . .’
She turned and saw me for the first time. And she held my gaze for longer than was needful, frowning the while.
‘. . . wine?’ I said.
She shook her head briskly, and I poured for Stevens. A moment later, she put her hand on my wrist.
‘Is there water?’ she said.
I reached for the other jug, and poured.
‘That’s very kind,’ she said, turning and facing me directly. ‘I’ve been in the desert all day.’
‘I’m Captain Stringer,’ I said. ‘I’m in the Railway Office, assisting Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd.’
Again, she eyed me. Then she said, ‘Naturally . . . I know nothing of railways, and nor does Major Findlay.’
She nodded towards the other end of the table, where Shepherd was introducing our next speaker: the fair-haired, sunburned major: Findlay by name, evidently. As he stood, I saw from his uniform that he was a cavalry officer. It was the lower half that gave it away. He would be addressing us on �
�Some Notes from the Indian Railways’, which – he hoped we’d agree – was ‘a very fitting subject for an officer of the British Indian Army’.
As he spoke, the lady lit a cigarette – a Woodbine, I was astonished to see – with the same practised speed as she’d employed in the arrangement of her hair. She looked sidelong at me, saying, ‘Where’s your gun?’
‘It’s in my haversack,’ I said, shocked at the question, ‘under my chair.’ I mumbled something about webbing being too uncomfortable in the heat.
The lady sat back blowing smoke as Major Findlay began his speech. Very dull it was, too, and all directed at the lady, who after a while lowered her gaze and began looking down at her lap as Findlay droned: ‘The South Indian railway is pre-eminently a Third Class passenger-carrying line. The Third Class contributes eighty-two per cent of the numbers . . . The gross receipts of the Assam–Bengal Railway . . .’
I thought: India’s a big place. This could go on all night. It was nothing you couldn’t have got from an article in The Railway Magazine, and I believed Findlay had cribbed it all from some such paper. Why? More men came into the room at intervals as he spoke, and stood against the walls. The waiter offered them drinks, and as he did so there was another round of shouts and commotion from the square, which drew some of the new men over to the window – and caused the brigadier to ask no one in particular, ‘What’s the bally racket?’
Half to herself and without looking up, the lady uttered a single word: ‘Insurgency.’
Findlay was saying, ‘. . . the stock being subscribed about two and a half times over by the railway’s own stockholders,’ and sat down. Apparently, he had finished. There was a small round of applause, and it was safe for the lady to raise her head. Shepherd was saying that the formal business of the evening was concluded, and we were to help ourselves to supper. Captain Ferry remained in his seat, smoking steadily, but most others were beginning to circulate, and the atmosphere of the mess room took over. The lady turned towards me, and began a close inspection of my face, breaking off when the waiter came past. She spoke to him in fast Arabic, and he brought a couple of small plates over. One held bits of meat in a thick sauce.
‘Dhansak,’ she said to me, ‘it’s very good.’
Most people were moving towards the table by the window for their grub. But not only did the food come to the lady, so did half the men in the room, some addressing her respectfully by name: Miss Bailey. A sort of queue was forming at her chair, with the boring major – Findlay – at the head of it. It did not include Shepherd, however. He was being charming to the brigadier, was evidently stuck with him. He had been ‘landed’ as they say in Yorkshire.
Major Findlay had now got close to Miss Bailey. He said, ‘Well, I daresay you’ve heard enough about the railways of India to keep you going for a while.’ She made some enquiry of him, and he said, ‘Oh, pretty fed up.’ I thought: he’s trying to appeal to her feminine concern, but she turned away from him, and he was drawn into a conversation with a fellow officer, enquiring, ‘My dear chap, are you being attended to? We don’t have quite the waiting staff we need.’
‘What were you doing in the desert?’ I asked Miss Bailey.
‘I went to see Fahad Bey ibn Hadhdhal, chief of the Anazeh tribe.’
‘Why?’
‘To get his support in the western desert.’
She spoke in a low tone, requiring me to lean close to her.
I said, ‘Is he in with the Turks at present?’
‘How do you mean “in with”? You might say he was used to the Turks.’
‘And what did he decide?’
She laughed. ‘He’s thinking it over, working out his price.’
‘He’s very powerful, is he?’
‘About five thousand rifles.’
The sound of another fleeting commotion rose up from the square. I heard the blond major, Findlay, say, ‘Quiet Square, that’s supposed to be.’ One of the Royal Engineers near to Miss Bailey asked her: ‘What’s he like? As a man.’
‘Fahad Bey? Well, he’s rather beautiful,’ and at this she glanced over to Major Findlay, who was looking pained. ‘He’s a quite superb horseman,’ Miss Bailey was saying, now addressing all the men around her. ‘He’s also very shrewd, and fascinated by the antics of white women. I feel like a music-hall turn every time I see him. I climb on a horse, he practically applauds. I light a cigarette; I remove my hat; I request wine.’ She leant closer to me. ‘I do try to shock him, I admit. I will contradict him . . . contradict him openly, before his men. Then there is an intake of breath – a rather sharp one, mark you, but he rallies quickly. He extends his arm, commending me to his fellows. “The women of the Anglez!”, as if to say, “What freaks they are, but damned amusing with it!”’
She liked the sound of her own voice, but then I liked the sound of it, too.
‘You’ve obviously won him over,’ someone said.
‘Perhaps I have, perhaps I will. All the sheikhs know that I love the desert; that I speak to them as a student of their history and culture, and that I have their best interests at heart.’ She turned directly to me, saying, ‘That’s pompous, isn’t it? Patronising too.’
From beyond the window came more fast-moving shouts. Some of our party stepped out on to the veranda, but Miss Bailey seemed unconcerned.
‘Unfortunately,’ she said, taking another piece of meat, ‘the Cairo people have promised most of Iraq to Faisal.’
I frowned somewhat.
She said, ‘You disapprove?’
‘No, I just don’t know who he is.’
‘Third son of Sharif Hussein – of the Hashemite dynasty. It’s amazing how many people have been promised Iraq. The French think we’re going to split it with them.’
‘What gave them that idea?’
She shrugged – a secret smile.
I asked, ‘Who has Cox promised it to?’
Miss Bailey had now finished her dinner – about six bites – and was lighting another Woodbine. She offered me one, by way of an afterthought.
‘Coxus? He’s not in it really. Most of the promising’s done from Cairo. Cox wants to see Iraq annexed under India, and Ibn Saud made king.’
‘Faisal and Saud? They’re enemies, aren’t they?’
‘Rivals,’ she said, blowing smoke.
‘Who do the Turks support?’
‘Another man again. Ibn Rashid.’
At this she too stood, and went over to the window, and I tamely followed. All was once more quiet in Quiet Square: just a couple of sleeping palms, one stork wandering about aimlessly, criss-crossing the shadows of telegraph wires. I looked around the room. Of our host, Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd, there was no sign. The blond major – Findlay – was saying to a Royal Engineer, ‘You know, I don’t think anything’s struck me as more peculiar about this place than the women. Have you seen the ones with the thick black nets over their heads, like sort of walking corpses?’ The Royal Engineer made some reply, and Findlay said, ‘Yes but it only makes you more curious about what they look like. You see, what I don’t understand is . . .’ But Miss Bailey had moved next to him, at which he seemed to sigh with pleasure, not now feeling the need to say what he didn’t understand. She said to him, ‘I’m giving my address next week, if you can believe it. Honestly, first The Shepherd charms me into coming here, then he charms me into speaking.’
‘What’ll it be,’ asked Major Findlay, ‘the railways at Babylon?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Are there any railways at Babylon?’ he said.
Stevens was next to me. He’d lately been eating spiced meat – by the smell of his breath.
‘What’s the name of our brigadier general?’ I asked him.
‘Barney or Barnes or something. I think it’s Barnes.’
Of course: it was his assistant who’d written to me to confirm my engagement with Shepherd. All he’d done, perhaps, was sign the letter. Barnes worked in the office of Coxus himself, and he was most lik
ely the fellow who’d invited Shepherd out to Mespot in the first place.
‘And who exactly is she?’ I said, indicating the lady.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Harriet Bailey. She’s spoken for, by the way,’ he added, unexpectedly. ‘Married, I mean.’
‘But everyone calls her “Miss”.’
‘Even so.’
‘Who’s she married to?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Professor at Oxford. Or Cambridge.’
‘Is he out here?’
Stevens shook his head. ‘He’s in Oxford . . . Or Cambridge.’
‘Why does she talk to the Arabs?’
‘Search me,’ he said.
Ferry was alongside us. The pipe stem now protruded from his tunic pocket. He held a plate. With his long, clean fingers he was dabbing bread into a pink paste.
‘She’s an . . .’
I waited.
‘. . . archaeologist.’
‘Do you know her?’
‘Oh. She’s . . . famous.’
‘One thing,’ said Stevens, who’d found himself some more wine, ‘. . . she does speak Arabic, which is a big help if you’re – y’know – actually speaking to the bloody Arabs. I wouldn’t bother myself.’
‘Wouldn’t bother what?’ I said.
‘Speaking to them. I know imshi galla – go away – and igri or something – hurry up. Hurry up and go away. I don’t like them myself. Deceitful people. I like him though,’ he said, nodding to our Arab waiter. ‘He’s rather bold with the wine. I believe he thinks it’s strawberry juice.’
‘And what about Findlay?’ I said, indicating that blond-headed officer who was so obviously stuck on Harriet Bailey.
‘Cavalry,’ said Stevens. ‘If you want a horse ride in the park, he’s your man.’
I said, ‘Well he plainly doesn’t come here for his interest in railways.’
‘No,’ said Bob Ferry. He was cleaning the bowl of his pipe with a beautiful penknife with mother-of-pearl handle.
The Baghdad Railway Club Page 12