The Baghdad Railway Club

by Andrew Martin

  Findlay looked along the platform and saw me. After a moment’s hesitation on either side we saluted, and he climbed up into the carriage. I would have to confront him before long. As far as I could recall, I had not yet spoken a word to the man. From the other end of the platform, Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd had watched Findlay climb up. He came towards me.

  ‘Did you speak to him about the picture, sir?’ I said, indicating the carriage and Findlay within it.

  Shepherd smiled, shook his head, in his bashful sort of way. ‘But we’ll force the issue one way or another,’ he said. So perhaps Shepherd would do the confronting. He carried his pack, wore his haversack over his shoulder. There didn’t seem to be anything much in the haversack, but his Colt revolver was in his holster, and he carried a spare Sam Browne belt with spare ammo pouch.

  Shepherd was evidently convinced that Findlay had put Captain Boyd’s lights out. That would be enough to set him against Findlay, but I had fanned the flames by speaking of the ‘rumour’ of Shepherd’s treachery, and raising the possibility that Findlay had known of it. Shepherd climbed up, and I watched through the dusty window as he and Findlay saluted one another. The smiles that followed were somewhat reserved, but cordial relations were being preserved for the moment. I heard a loud chuffing, and was for a moment back in the marshalling yards of York station, where I would wander on quiet days in the police office, just to watch the engines working. As a result of whatever ailed me, I found I was inclined to float in and out of myself.

  The chuffing came from the tank engine that did duty as the Baghdad shunter, and it was bringing up a flat-bed wagon on which sat two radio cars held down by strong ropes. Captain Bob Ferry walked along the platform with his pack on his back, keeping pace with the wagon in a proprietorial sort of way, for they were his radio cars that sat upon it. My understanding was that he would be taking them to Samarrah and staying there a while with them, demonstrating their use to the men of the garrison – that he would not be entering the no man’s land, in other words. Ferry wore shorts, and they had recently been ironed. His whole person had been ironed, it seemed to me, and he’d polished his Sam Browne belt. You were supposed to polish the belt, but nobody did. His revolver was a Webley, like my own. It too was highly polished, and looked deadlier as a result. We watched as the wagon was coupled up.

  Ferry said, ‘When’s the . . . off?’

  ‘Five minutes,’ I said.

  The radio cars looked like grocers’ delivery vans with the rear sliced away, and wooden boxes covered with switches and dials stuffed in. Long wires stuck up from them, but the wonder of it was that these wires weren’t connected to anything. It was all wireless. I said, ‘It’s the latest thing in field communications, I believe.’

  ‘In their present state of development,’ said Ferry, ‘machines such as these are less efficient than . . .’

  I waited. On the opposite platform, an Arab in a fez was staring at me: the bloody Baghdad station master. I had to get out of his line of sight, which meant I had to get away from Ferry. I would have to hurry him. ‘Less efficient than the telegraph?’

  ‘Than the . . .’

  ‘Telephone?’

  ‘. . . carrier pigeon.’

  I moved along the platform, so as to put the carriage between me and the station master. Ferry came with me. He climbed up, and I watched through the window as he took his seat at the opposite end of the saloon to Shepherd and Findlay. There was a small plaque fixed to the window where he sat. It might have read whatever was Turkish-Arabic for ‘No Smoking’, or it might have read ‘Smoking’. Either way, Ferry took from his pack the leathern wallet that held his pipes.

  I walked forwards to the engine, and climbed on to the footplate where my fireman, a Royal Engineer, was fettling the fire. He was a pleasant sort; he’d said he was ‘rotten at firing’ but he knew his way around an engine all right.

  I was about to start oiling round when I heard a voice from along the platform. ‘Where can I put Mr King’s champagne?’

  I jumped down, and the whole station reeled. I shouldn’t have done that. Wallace King’s assistant was on the platform with the cine camera over his shoulder, a pack on his back, and a canvas bag in his hand. He was addressing an R.E., who leant from the carriage window. King himself was bringing up the rear, and carrying nothing. He overtook his assistant and came up to me, saying, ‘Can’t seem to get any sense from anyone about how to keep the champagne chilled in the desert.’

  ‘No?’ I said. I had still not stabilised after my leap.

  ‘I mean, I take it there is ice?’

  ‘In the restaurant car,’ I said.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Fine. And where’s that?’

  Silence for a space. He eyed the one carriage and the flat-bed wagon.

  ‘Are you taking the mickey?’ he said.

  I regained the footplate a moment later. A Royal Engineer who was acting as platform guard came up and said, ‘You can take it I’ve blown my whistle.’

  As I pulled the regulator, The Elephant seemed to go down as well as forwards. I watched my fireman breaking up the coal; I watched him shovelling coal. I could not have done that, and I found that I was clinging on to the regulator for support. As we cleared Baghdad, I looked to the right: more activity at the earthworks by the Tigris. Steam cranes and steam shovels were now in view, but still the scene looked Biblical.

  And then we were into the desert proper.

  The regulator was too hot for my hand already. I turned about to fetch a rag from the locker, and my fireman said, ‘Are you all right there?’

  I nodded.

  ‘She’s a good steamer,’ said my fireman.

  I nodded again.

  Our black smoke seemed an affront to the desert. We ought not to be bringing smoke into a place like this. I leant out. Presently, the flame-like shimmer that would turn into Mushahida station was ignited on the horizon. It was a bigger shimmer than before, since the population had swelled: same number of Arabs but more Tommies. On our previous run I hadn’t needed the regulator rag until after Mushahida, but we were now in June, the hottest month in Mesopotamia, as I had learnt from someone or other. I drank down half a bottle of tonic water, pitched the bottle into the desert. It annoyed me that it did not smash; I turned back to look at it as we raced away, thinking it might smash later. I took out my Woodbines. My colleague didn’t smoke, and once I’d lit my own, I couldn’t face it, so I pitched that away as well. Then I recommenced shivering. As I peered forward through the spectacle glass, it was important for me not to see the swoop and rise of the telegraph wires, for they made me sick, just as though I’d been swooping and rising.

  My fireman said, ‘Are you quite sure you’re all right?’ and this time he answered his own question, saying, ‘I don’t think you’re in any fit condition to drive.’

  So he sat me down on the sandbox, and applied the brakes, bringing the engine to a perfect stop, right in the middle of nowhere. He held my arm as I climbed down, just as though I’d been about a hundred years old. Some of our party had climbed out of the carriage. Others leant out of the windows. They wanted to know why we’d stopped. My fireman provided the explanation.

  In the carriage were a series of couches and armchairs. The armchairs at one end (where Ferry sat alone) were arranged in regular train-carriage formation, but at the other end of the carriage, the seats were jumbled anyhow. I was told to lie down on a dusty couch. A pillow was made of a groundsheet. Shepherd sat before me. He was reaching into his pack. He passed me a bottle of water and a biggish tablet.

  ‘Take this,’ he said. ‘Just bite it once before swallowing.’

  I did so, and he gave a half smile.

  ‘It’s bitter,’ he said.

  It was so bitter that I couldn’t untwist my face after swallowing.

  ‘Quinine,’ said Shepherd. ‘Only a precaution.’

  Quinine meant I had malaria. Of the dozens of mosquitoes that must have bitten me since my arrival, I ha
d a fixed idea of the culprit: the one that had done me on the wrist while I was sitting before the campfire on the previous run. I indicated the mark to Shepherd, and we exchanged weak smiles. There were faces all around him. Bob Ferry looked on, calmly smoking. I thought: you should put that fucking thing out in the presence of an invalid. Major Findlay was saying, ‘Quinine . . . that’s the ticket.’ Wallace King’s assistant frowned alongside Findlay, with arms folded. He seemed on the point of speech when his master called to him from the opposite end of the carriage, saying, ‘We might as well take advantage of this delay.’ He already had the camera pointed through the window. He said, ‘I thought I saw something on the horizon just now. If they turn out to be Bedouins, we might try and get them to wave or something.’

  I slept. But I was somehow aware that Shepherd had gone forward to fire The Elephant while the Royal Engineer who’d been my mate was promoted to driver. I heard Major Findlay saying to one of the Royal Engineers, ‘Care for a barley sugar?’ I couldn’t make out the reply. Findlay said, ‘I like to see the telegraph poles. They’re reassuring, somehow. But we don’t have any signals, do we?’ Again, I couldn’t hear the answer. A little while later, I heard a sigh from Major Findlay. Was that the sigh of a killer? It was the sigh of a man in love, at any rate.

  Later again, I heard the voice of Wallace King’s assistant. ‘Mr King wants to start making features.’

  A voice I didn’t recognise said, ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Feature films,’ said the assistant, ‘story films. He wants to make a film of the Battle of Trafalgar.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that require a lot of . . .’

  It was Ferry who had spoken.

  ‘Money?’ said the assistant, at length.

  ‘. . . ships?’ said Ferry.

  ‘You’d need one,’ said the assistant.

  ‘There were a lot more ships at the Battle of Trafalgar than . . . one,’ said Ferry.

  ‘The rest would be models,’ said the assistant. ‘He thinks he can bring it in for less than five hundred pounds. History, that’s what people want to see in the picture halls. Just look at Tyrone Gould. He really hit the jackpot with The Charge of the Light Brigade, and it wasn’t up to all that much.’

  ‘It was quite shocking, Wilson,’ said the voice of Wallace King, ‘and don’t you forget it.’

  So I had finally learnt the name of the assistant. He might lead a dog’s life at the hands of King, but I was jealous of him since he did not have malaria.

  I was aware that we were making short stops – the Royal Engineers inspecting the line. When I awoke properly, we seemed to have been stopped for a longer time. I sat up. I was soaked in sweat, but felt better for my sleep. In the carriage, dazzle and gloom did battle. Every window was open. I heard voices from beyond. We were at Samarrah station, and I was the only man left in the carriage; the saddles were gone too. Shepherd was speaking to the clever, bespectacled major who was the head of the Samarrah garrison. I believed that Shepherd was saying something about me, for the major said, ‘Do you want to leave him here? Collect him on your way back? The devil of it is that our doctor’s flat on his back with something.’ He then said, ‘Nothing for it but quinine. It usually works.’

  That was a relief, but not to any great degree. Everything was out of my hands, and I wanted to go to beyond Samarrah, where everything was out of everyone’s hands, and we would all be on an equal footing. There, Shepherd would confront Findlay, and the truth would finally emerge.

  Shepherd and Findlay walked into the station shack. At the far end of the platform, Captain Bob Ferry was talking to some Royal Engineers. Presently, they left him on his own, looking at the radio cars. I called to him: ‘Are we setting those down here?’ There was a siding all ready and waiting for them.

  Ferry turned and contemplated me. ‘We’re . . . not,’ he said.

  ‘You’re staying with us then?’

  ‘. . . Yes,’ he said at length.

  I had been rather hoping we would get rid of him.

  *

  We had made camp perhaps ten miles beyond the spot at which Stevens, Shepherd and I had come under attack. Viewing the desert glare from the carriage, I believe I had identified the remains of the fire we had lit, but of our single-fly tent and folding chairs there had been no sign. They must have been taken as booty by the Arabs. We had stopped a little while before passing that place – near the siding that held the motor launches. Shepherd and some of the Royal Engineers had walked to the wagons and looked them over for a second time, and once again no move was made to couple them up. I had been travelling in the carriage, feeling . . . what was the word? A sort of continuous oscillation.

  Our camp was at a ring of palms. They ought to have enclosed a beautiful lagoon. In fact, only our campfire burned in the middle of them, with cooking things and water bottles nearby – also canvas chairs and King’s crate of champagne which, since it had practically boiled and was undrinkable, he had made generally available. We had chosen a spot near a feature of interest, namely some sand-coloured rocks, and the Royal Engineers had been walking about on them as if they’d never seen rocks before. They all had on keffiyahs, rather fancying themselves in them, and Wallace King and his assistant had been filming and photographing them. King had kept shouting to the man on the topmost rock: ‘Scan the horizon!’ but the fellow couldn’t do it for laughing. King had explained, ‘This footage is to be preceded by a placard reading, “A forward patrol reconnoitres”,’ at which one of the Engineers had shouted back, ‘Why not change the bally placard? “A forward patrol larks about on some rocks.”’ That hadn’t gone down well.

  As for Shepherd: he and a couple of spare Engineers had walked a quarter mile along the line in order to inspect a second branch going off at a wide angle. The branch had been in a bad state; had apparently petered out in the desert, but three further Turkish wagons had been berthed upon it, and these held wooden crates that had contained, strange to say, an aeroplane, or parts thereof. It was not thought possible to run The Elephant along the branch in order to collect this booty. I had viewed the wagons myself, through binoculars borrowed by the campfire.

  After his return from that jaunt, Shepherd had got hold of a rifle and shot a gazelle, parts of which were now roasting on the stones in the fire. The fat would spurt from the meat – it was very fatty – with red sparks. Otherwise the flames were invisible in the white light.

  Watching Shepherd slay the beautiful animal, I was reminded that he must still be a suspect in the case of the murdered Captain Boyd. His explanation of the Turkish ‘treasure’ might have held water (I was inclined to think so), but that didn’t mean he hadn’t become aware that Boyd thought him a traitor.

  Now, at the end of his exertions, Shepherd was taking a shower bath on the other side of The Elephant, which had been kept in steam as before. A Royal Engineer and one of the privates stood on top of the tender. They’d removed the cap off the water-filler hole, and were lowering into it at regular intervals a bucket on a rope. This they would then upend on to the man below. It was a service open to all comers.

  Major Findlay, looking one degree redder than he had that morning, sat opposite me, on the other side of the fire, looking at a back number of The Times. I read, ‘New British Thrust East of the Vimy Ridge’. Turning the page, he caught my eye. There was nothing for it: he would have to speak to me.

  ‘You feeling better?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘I was sorry to hear about your man – Jarvis, wasn’t it?’

  I nodded, gave a mumbled ‘Sir.’

  ‘He was demoralised by the heat, no doubt . . . Or was it the attack? I suppose he’d never been under fire before.’

  I felt the need to defend Jarvis. ‘He had been, sir. At Kut-al-Amara.’

  Shepherd was approaching, fresh from his shower bath, hair combed back. He might have been stepping into the cocktail lounge of the Midland Grand Hotel, except that he wore his gun.

  ‘Were you
there, sir?’ I asked Findlay.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Kut.’

  He shook his head. ‘Came up straight from Basrah. I’ve never eaten antelope before,’ he went on, looking at the spluttering meat. ‘I’m looking forward to it. Well, I think I am.’

  Shepherd took hold of one of the folding seats. He’d caught the drift of our earlier conversation, and he wouldn’t let Findlay change the course of it, for he asked, ‘Did you happen to see Jarvis after the meeting broke up?’

  ‘Did I see Jarvis?’ said Findlay. ‘I was attempting to protect the lady. Not that she takes kindly to any sort of chivalrous display,’ he added, with great regret.

  I spent the next little while revolving this answer, as no doubt did Shepherd. Findlay must have seen Jarvis, since Jarvis had taken the photograph from the club room and then we’d found it in Findlay’s pocket.

  Shepherd offered a cigarette to Findlay, who took it, and began to smoke it rather crossly, it seemed to me. I had not seen him smoke before; I myself could not face a cigarette.

  I looked up and saw a van speeding across the horizon. To my somewhat dazed mind it seemed to be towing behind it – sideways on – a gigantic cone. But it was only the sand that the wheels threw up. Captain Ferry was in that motor, I knew, together with a driver we’d picked up at Samarrah. It was one of the two radio vans. The other was also flying about in the vicinity. Sometimes the two would converge, and there would be a conference; then they’d roar off in opposite directions and attempt a wireless communication.

  Findlay was now pacing near the rocks, while Shepherd was turning over the antelope steaks. It would soon be supper time, and all the party seemed to know it. At any rate, the Royal Engineers were converging on the fire, and I now saw that the two radio cars were racing towards us, dragging half the desert with them. They gave us a wide berth, so as to spare us the dust cloud, and came to a stop near The Elephant, where the four men climbed out. As the dust around them subsided, it was Captain Bob Ferry that I had my eye on. He went behind the engine, whereas the other three stayed by the vans. Since a stalemate seemed to have set in between Shepherd and Findlay, and since I didn’t feel like eating, I walked somewhat unsteadily towards The Elephant. I knew that telegraphy was somehow important in the case of Captain Boyd, and I meant to draw Ferry out about who had sent what to whom.