The Baghdad Railway Club

by Andrew Martin

  Shepherd came in through the door. He looked flushed. I knew what he’d been up to – he’d been in the vicinity of the square chasing Arabs. I heard him muttering something to the brigadier by way of explanation. Something about ‘Bit of trouble . . . Setting a few fires . . . Tried to roust them out . . .’

  When Brigadier Barnes had done with Shepherd, Stevens moved in, and the two of them began a quiet conflab. How thick were they with each other? Perhaps they were just discussing the practicalities of the run up to Samarrah.

  I watched the faces moving under the soft, coloured illumination. They were mostly young people – in the late twenties or early thirties – but made to look older by the sun, by being the conquerors of a nation; or by worry they were not up to the mark. I watched Harriet Bailey sipping wine under the gaze of Findlay. Strange that she was Shepherd’s guest of honour. She was pro-Arab, after all. She spoke the language fluently and called Mesopotamia ‘Iraq’. Well, perhaps Shepherd agreed with her. What made me think he was pro-Turkish? He had seemed to defend the Turks when at the London Railway Club; he smoked Turkish-looking cigarettes, and according to the report of Captain Boyd, he was in league with the Turks as a result of the deal supposedly done at the railway station. In addition, he seemed quite thick with Stevens, who was certainly anti-Arab.

  But what did it all amount to?

  I turned around and saw Bob Ferry. He inclined his head somewhat, but he’d been eyeing me carefully, no question of it.

  *

  Entering the main room of my quarters, I found the oil lamp lit, and the single sheet on my bed turned down. There were four flies in the room; the flytrap – restored to its place under the bed – clicked, but there was also another sound. I walked quickly through to the scullery where I saw Ahmad setting a pitcher of water into what I thought of as the pantry – a half-underground cupboard, like a clean coal hole. One oil lamp burned. He turned and contemplated me for a while. He walked over to the stone sink.

  I asked him what he was doing. He took out of the sink one of the metal cups with which the scullery was equipped. He dipped the cup into the pitcher, handed me the cup.

  ‘You drink,’ he ordered.

  ‘You put . . . lime?’ I said. There was chloride of lime about the place. It was to be added to all drinking water for purification.

  ‘It is really clean,’ he said.

  ‘Not without lime it isn’t.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Where is the lime?’

  He turned away from me. He was readjusting the linen curtain on the pantry, and I believed he said, ‘I chucked it,’ but that can’t have been right. I sipped the water, then drank it all off in an instant.

  ‘Give,’ said Ahmad. I handed back the cup. He dipped it again, and I drank again.

  ‘It is late,’ I said, taking a third cupful from him.

  ‘So what?’ he said. There was a swift, bitter outburst of laughter from him, as though he was amused by my inability to answer his question. ‘At night,’ he said, ‘very nice and cold.’

  ‘You must be bloody joking,’ I said.

  ‘I must?’ he said, and he frowned – it seemed a genuine question.

  ‘There was trouble in the town tonight,’ I said.

  ‘Trouble,’ he said, ‘yes,’ and he took the cup again, and put it in the sink, saying something very like ‘We boot you out.’

  Chapter Ten

  On Monday morning, I woke from my half doze at six when the flytrap cylinder turned over with a click. The one sheet was soaked in sweat, and located somewhere about my ankles, just as it had been on Sunday morning. That had been a day of unbearable heat, and idleness on my part. This day promised the same weather combined with hectic activity.

  I kicked off the sheet, and lay in the rising heat and light until six thirty, when I heard the roar of a motor. Jarvis. He had spent the night at the Hotel, having been on driving duties until late. He would now run me to the station – ‘An easy motor ride’, he’d called it. I heard the sound of him entering the scullery. He’d left the van motor running. Presently he came through with dates, bread, coffee, and a letter for me. It had been delivered to the Hotel. I saw from the writing that it was from the wife. It must have been posted very shortly after I’d left Britain.

  ‘Morning, sir,’ said Jarvis. ‘A hundred and twenty, they say it’ll be today. I’ve a spare pack for you in the van: tonic water, mineral water, quinine, two hundred rounds of ammunition.’ He was in one of his chirpy phases. ‘No hurry with the food,’ he added.

  It was impossible to make a breakfast with the motor running outside, so I just downed the coffee and walked to the van while chewing on bread. The letter I’d put in my tunic pocket to read later.

  ‘You’ll be all right on the trip, sir,’ said Jarvis as we climbed up. ‘Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd’s a pretty high class of soldier.’

  ‘Did you speak to him over the week-end?’

  ‘Me, sir?’ he said, as the van, shaking like buggery, made for the gates of Rose Court. ‘Why would I speak to him?’

  ‘Well, you were speaking to him the day before.’

  He appeared to have forgotten, or did a good job of seeming to. Five minutes more in the sun, and the passenger seat would have been too hot to sit on. It was a good job I wasn’t in shorts.

  ‘I tell you who I did speak to yesterday, sir,’ said Jarvis, ‘and that was the police team at the Hotel.’

  ‘Have they got any further with their investigation? Regarding Captain Boyd, I mean.’

  ‘Nowhere at all, sir.’

  That was good. It surely meant that the station master had not provided a description of me. Or perhaps that his description had not been understood. We were waiting at the gates of Rose Court. A wagon loaded with furniture approached along Park Road, the Arab driver smoking thoughtfully. ‘All we need now’, Jarvis said, ‘is a camel.’ And he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘After speaking to the police, sir, I went to Captain Boyd’s billet to see what I could find out for myself.’

  ‘Where’s that?’ I said.

  The Arab had smoked his way past and the road was clear, yet we hadn’t pulled out. Jarvis was revolving some idea. ‘Tell you what‚ sir, we’ve got a few minutes in hand, I’ll take you there.’

  So instead of turning left, which led to the river, he turned right, then quickly right again, taking us, with much revving of the engine, into the heart of the labyrinth. Numerous Arabs in numerous alleys had to press themselves practically flat up against the walls for us to pass, and one poor fellow had to dismantle the whole front of his shop in half a minute flat. Our motor creaked like an old bed on the broken cobbles. As he drove, Jarvis told me he’d ‘bumped into’ Captain Boyd twice in the fortnight before he died.

  ‘And how did he seem?’

  ‘He seemed a bit down if you ask me‚ sir, but I’d got to know him a little and that was his nature – a rather melancholic sort. The second time I saw him he was walking alone by the river, and that did bother me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I didn’t know what he might do.’

  ‘You mean he might chuck himself in?’

  ‘He was a man who came into his own on the battlefield; the rest of the time he was up or down really, not much in between.’

  We’d come to a square with a mosque in it. Market stalls were being set up, with canopies of brightly coloured stripes. Jarvis indicated a gate in a wall, with a low building behind palms. This had been Boyd’s digs. Jarvis stopped the van but once again kept the engine running.

  Jarvis said, ‘I talked to his man—’

  ‘You mean his batman?’ I cut in, ‘the one who took over from you?’

  Jarvis shook his head. ‘He didn’t have another batman. He said he didn’t want one in Baghdad.’

  (Well, an officer could choose to go without, and probably would do, if he had secrets to keep. I did not believe that either Shepherd or Stevens had one either.)

  ‘Whe
n I say his “man”,’ Jarvis continued, ‘I mean his boy – the Arab servant. He has hardly a word of English. Got nothing out of him at all – not even using the dictionary in this.’ So saying, he half lifted a book from his tunic pocket: City of the Khalifs.

  ‘We’ll come back later,’ I said, and Jarvis looked surprised at me. It was the first time I’d indicated that I had an interest in finding out about Boyd. ‘We’ll bring Ahmad with us.’

  ‘That’s a clever notion is that, sir,’ said Jarvis.

  I couldn’t tell what he really thought, however, for he was now making a great deal of a palaver about reversing in the square, to the amusement of some Arabs and the irritation of others. Two minutes later we were running along the river – a smoother road, where the engine ran cleaner so that the petrol smell that had filled the cab began to fade. But it was replaced by another: a penetrating, sweet smell coming from Jarvis.

  ‘Samarrah,’ he said. ‘It means a joy for all to see.’

  ‘Mmm . . .’ I said.

  ‘Just think if a day dawned like this in Scarborough,’ he went on, as we contemplated the boats of the river. ‘You’d be overjoyed, wouldn’t you, sir?’

  ‘I think I’d be quite alarmed,’ I said.

  ‘Think on, sir,’ said Jarvis, ‘old Giordano, who has the ice-cream concession on the South Bay . . . He moved house from a little tumbledown cottage in the Old Town to a big place near the station on the strength of one scorching hot summer – 1911, sir, as you’ll remember. But a summer like this . . . why, he’d be on the Esplanade: one of those white mansions up from the Spa! And he’d have Tom Jackson, who does the donkey rides, for a neighbour!’

  Yes, I thought, and after three months of 120-degree heat, the town undertakers would be up there with them. We came to the bridge of boats, and showed our papers to a sentry. There was now a proper guard post with barrier. The van bounced crazily on the bridge.

  ‘Have you heard of Harriet Bailey, Jarvis?’ I said.

  He said brightly‚ ‘She’s about the only white woman here, apart from a few of the officers’ wives.’

  ‘She was at this meeting I went to on Saturday,’ I said.

  ‘I believe she came up here about the same time as me.’

  ‘Where from?’

  ‘Basrah.’

  ‘So she didn’t come up directly after the city fell?’

  ‘No, no, a few weeks after. She’s just the ticket isn’t she, sir? Very pretty – and clever with it. Terrifying combination in a woman really, sir. She’s quoted a lot in here,’ he said, indicating again The City of the Khalifs. ‘A lot of letters after her name. By the way‚ sir, did you see those shades on the market stall? Green, red and white stripes. Before I came here, sir, I thought all the Arabs would be togged up like that, and all with the shoes curled up at the toes.’

  I merely gave a grunt, and Jarvis fell silent on the rubble roads leading to the station. On the tracks round about there now stood a fair quantity of locos, some animal wagons, flat-bed wagons, a steam crane. The Elephant had been shunted into the station, and pointed in the direction of Samarrah – and she was in steam. This I discovered when Jarvis put me out by the tracks at the station mouth. As I climbed down from the van, he looked me over.

  ‘Revolver, sir?’ he said.

  ‘It’s in here,’ I said, and I took it out of the haversack.

  ‘The Webley,’ he said, studying it. ‘Captain Boyd favoured the Colt – the single-action.’

  I said, ‘That’s rather old-fashioned – and slow.’

  (With a single-action piece, you’d to cock the gun manually before firing.)

  ‘He liked the balance of it,’ said Jarvis. ‘And for rapid firing . . . well, he had his machine guns.’

  To test Jarvis out, I said, ‘Do you want to come and look at the station? We could try and see where Boyd was found?’

  ‘No fear,’ he said, ‘I’m going to have a jolly day today. Good luck in the desert, sir. They say a pint of water every half hour.’

  As he saluted from the driver’s seat, and roared off in the van, I thought: that bloke’s been on a large quantity of some liquid himself, and it’s not water.

  In the station, a number of Royal Engineers were making the engine ready, one touring the lubrication points with an oil can. They were at the far end of the platform. Immediately before me, squatting on his haunches on the platform and stroking a thin cat, was the station master. He held out his long thin fingers, and the cat would move through them back and forth, like a little bull charging the cape of the bullfighter.

  ‘Hello‚ my dear,’ he said to me.

  I nodded and looked away. Did his greeting mean he’d recognised me? It was hard to tell. The Salon de Thé was on the opposite platform, and I could not help but glance over. The door of the place now stood open, and it looked in worse order than before, sunk in dust and dirt.

  ‘Bad,’ said the station master, seeing where I was looking. He then pointed up, and repeated the word. I saw a great hole in the station roof.

  A voice said, ‘Just as well it’s not raining,’ and Shepherd was alongside me, also looking up.

  Setting down two huge brown canvas bags, he glanced sidelong at me and smiled. He appeared calm, but my own thoughts were racing in a circus. Where had he come slinking up from? What was in the bags? The station master was still sitting six feet away, playing with the bloody cat. He looked between me and Shepherd, apparently revolving a further remark. What was the Arabic for ‘Go away’? Stevens had known. But a few seconds later, the fellow did it of his own accord.

  Shepherd wore shorts, and carried a thin haversack, but there was an identity between the tanned, skinny man before me now and the reserved figure in a good suit that I’d first seen in London, a sort of enviable style to the man. I heard the bark of an engine, which then became a rhythmical snuffling and chuffing. A filthy carriage was being shunted towards us. It was a period piece all right, with verandas at front and rear.

  ‘Is it German, sir?’ I enquired.

  ‘Turkish,’ said Shepherd, and it seemed to me that he said it proudly. The thing was greenish in colour, with faded white scribble of Turkish Arabic on the side. What did it say? First Class? Third Class? There were curtains at the dusty windows.

  The tank engine smashed it up hard against our engine’s tender, and a private of the Royal Engineers began coupling up.

  ‘Doesn’t look much, does it?’ said Shepherd.

  I had to agree.

  ‘. . . But it was the personal saloon of General von der Goltz.’

  I’d heard of him; he was commander of the German forces in Mespot. I’d seen a photograph of the fellow. Being German, he was fat and wore a monocle.

  ‘Where’s he these days, sir?’

  ‘Dead,’ said Shepherd. ‘. . . Cholera.’

  If a general could die of it, then anybody could. We wandered forwards towards the engine. It was a big beast was The Elephant. And the tender was nearly as long again. Well, it had to be for desert running. I mentioned this.

  ‘Four thousand gallons,’ said Shepherd, and I thought: If it comes to it, we can drink it. The stuff would come ready-boiled, too.

  I suddenly realised: the engine had got its side rods back; and I recalled that Shepherd had been asked about this at the Club meeting. Indicating them, I asked Shepherd: ‘Where did you find them, sir?’

  ‘Oh‚ they were buried nearby,’ he said, and he coloured slightly, but for once didn’t follow up with additional data.

  Stevens now approached, wearing pack, haversack and rifle. He too wore shorts, and as he stood by the locomotive I thought: You’re the real elephant. With a nod of apology to me, Shepherd walked forward to meet Stevens, and they began speaking out of my earshot. They would keep doing that.

  Shading my eyes, I put my face towards the window of the green carriage. All I could make out in the gloom was a sort of old-fashioned-looking sofa with a bundle of rifles laid on it, all strapped together with webb
ing. Why so many? And who would they be aimed at?

  The Elephant was blowing off, impatient to be away. Royal Engineers who’d been attending to the engine were now flowing towards the carriage and boarding it by the veranda at the engine end. Hold on . . . It seemed they would be riding with us! I would not be alone with Shepherd, the possible traitor, and Stevens, his partner in crime as might well be. One of the R.E. men made to take my pack and haversack, saying, ‘You’re at the sharp end, aren’t you? You won’t want these if so.’ I let him have the pack, but kept hold of the haversack, for that held the soda water, cigarettes and the Webley. (The Webley was heavier than the Colts with which most men were issued. In the heat of Baghdad, it was easier to carry it and the ammo pouch in the haversack than the holster – and it was just about within regulations to do so.)

  I mounted the footplate of The Elephant. Stevens and Shepherd – and Shepherd’s two brown canvas bags – were already up there.

  I asked Stevens, ‘Who’s going to drive and who’s going to fire?’

  ‘Toss you for it, if you like.’

  He took out a coin of some kind and made ready to toss it, but it was evidently foreign, perhaps one of the Turkish ones still acceptable in Baghdad. He turned it over, frowning. ‘It’s got tails on both sides,’ he said.

  ‘Then I’ll drive,’ I said.

  ‘Good man,’ Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd put in. He evidently thought little of the fact that I’d never stood on a foreign footplate before, but that was the public-school product all over. He’d have confidence in himself and confidence in others, often misplaced in both cases. The driver’s controls were all on the right-hand side, which was the wrong side, but the steam injectors looked familiar, as did the braking system: steam brake for the engine, vacuum for the train. I turned to Stevens, saying, ‘Let’s have a look at the fire, Mike,’ and he casually pushed the handle of the fire door with the blade of his shovel, which looked a very flimsy thing in his hands. The fire was thin, but the colour was right: namely a dazzling white. Its own heat, added to the heat of the day, meant I couldn’t breathe as I stood exposed to it.