by John Harris
Against the bleached empty light they all had a faded dun look like blurred images on an old photograph, and they seemed, somehow, to be waiting for something to happen. I glanced at Morena and saw him staring aggressively back at them, his square body brown under the sun, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his shorts, his feet wide apart, the dusty stockings rolled down round his ankles over his scuffed boots. His eyes were narrow and puzzled and his face was expressionless, and I knew that he’d noticed it, too, and that it was worrying him under the surface as much as it was me.
As we watched, Ghad Ahmed closed the file he was working on and walked across to supervise the unloading of the water. He was still hostile and even almost rude.
‘What’s the matter, Ahmed?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you like us?’
‘This is a young state,’ he said sullenly. ‘We are no longer an Italian colony, and we are inspired by strong feelings of nationhood.’
I put him down as an Arab Nationalist and decided to warn the others that when we came to find what we were looking for it might he a good idea to keep it quiet. A man with Ghad Ahmed’s feelings might well consider it belonged to him.
‘We are striving to build up the country,’ he was saying arrogantly. ‘Assisted by specialists from Egypt and Italy and Germany.’
‘No British?’
He shook his head. ‘No British.’
I was aware of humiliation and I began to wonder just why all those hundreds of men had died at El Alamein and Tobruk and Knightsbridge.
‘One day,’ he went on stiffly, ‘we shall not need even these people either. Recent finds of oil promise well for the future. We are opening schools everywhere. You must have noticed at Qalam. For girls as well as boys. Trees are being constantly planted to improve the climate, and dams built to provide water. All the farms of the former Italian colonists are being cultivated again.’
He directed the stacking of the last of the jerricans and walked away, his whole body stiff with unrelenting pride. I stared after him for a while with Morena, then Morena shook his head. ‘Funny, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘When we were here before I always used to feel it was the Arabs who were the intruders.’
When we reached the tent Nimmo was sitting in the shade of the lorry, his transistor to his ear, and the most he could do when we greeted him was nod. Leach and Houston were stretched in their underpants on the air mattresses in the tent, gasping for breath.
Morena stared round at them as he entered behind me, his eyes cold. ‘You lot still here?’ he asked, sounding exactly like a sergeant again, doing his rounds at Reveille.
We ate our meal in silence and, afterwards, with Morena sitting a little to one side reading an old magazine he’d borrowed, I wandered off to where Crabourne’s group was working.
The limestone of the cliffs had been worn away by the winter winds that swirled round the floor of the Depression, to make deep erosions and caves, and outside one of them Crabourne’s pantechnicon truck was standing, running on an advanced throttle, wires stretching from the battery into the cave.
Lights had been rigged inside and I found Phil Garvey balancing like an acrobat on a rickety stepladder, taking tracings on a cellophane sheet with a felt pen. She wore brief shorts and a frayed straw hat and her face was serious and absorbed. There was a clip block of smaller sketches alongside her, and an array of colours and pens.
She looked down and smiled quickly as she saw me.
‘Ghad Ahmed always insists on proper hours and union rules for his people,’ she said. ‘Except when it suits him to work extra. But not us. Sloan gets all he can out of us.’
She glanced at me curiously. ‘I thought it might be your young screwball Nimmo,’ she said. ‘He’s been here once. He seems to like watching me work.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ I said, my eyes on her figure.
She climbed down and drank from the chatti that hung against the rock. The painting she was working on showed shapes which seemed to represent gods looking down on groups of women crushing corn in stone mortars, and men on oxen with children riding pillion behind them, and great herds of cattle covering the whole wall of the cave from top to bottom. Part of it was even on the roof, fifteen feet high, and another part was so low that to copy it she must have been on her knees – as though through the centuries the floor of the cave had risen.
‘It’s always cramped like this,’ she said, enjoying the curiosity in my face. ‘We have to wash the walls first because of the layers of dust over the paintings. That’s why we need the water.’
‘I bet it was quite a job,’ I said, staring upwards into the shadows.
‘It gets so hot in here sometimes,’ she agreed. ‘That’s the chief trouble. We had to bring huge stocks of paper and drawing materials, and paint and tables. A lot of the ladders were made at Qalam.’
I gestured at the paintings. ‘They’re quite something, aren’t they?’
She nodded enthusiastically. ‘There’s one wonderful fresco in one of the other caves that we haven’t even started on yet,’ she said. ‘A hundred feet square and no relation to any of the other paintings. It’s probably the earliest example of Negro art known, and a record of the prehistoric population of the Sahara.’
She led me along the walls, directing the light against the cave’s surface, and I saw women working in fields and men seated by huts, and horses and chariots.
‘Herodotus refers to chasing Troglodyte Ethiopians in chariots,’ she said. ‘And he died in 425 BC, so at the latest these paintings date from then. Further down there are some of horses going at full gallop, similar to Cretan pictures, and the Cretans landed here in 1200 BC to use the country as a base to attack Egypt, so the paintings might even date from then.’
‘There are a hell of a lot of them,’ I said. ‘Will you come again next season?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s not really a woman’s job, is it? You have to be such an acrobat and I’ve already lived too long on macaroni and spam.’
‘What will you do?’
‘Go home,’ she said with a laugh. ‘Look round for a man and get married. I’m the domesticated type, really. Sloan says I’d be much happier here if I could just hang up a few chintz curtains and go round with a feather duster.’
Her mood seemed to change, as though the warmth had gone out of her abruptly. She had become uneasy and uncertain again and I remembered her worried look the night before in the moonlight.
‘Have you found anything yet?’ she asked.
I thought of Leach and Houston stretched out on their beds, and of Nimmo quiet and uncommunicative outside the tent, and the strange atmosphere of remoteness about them all that excluded Morena and myself, and I shook my head.
‘Do you think you will?’
‘I’m beginning to doubt it,’ I said.
‘Your young friend, Jimmy Nimmo, seems hopeful enough,’ she pointed out.
I stared at her, remembering Nimmo’s apparent indifference. ‘What makes you say that?’ I asked.
‘I saw him. This morning early. It was light enough, but only just. We start early, as you know, and I’d just gotten up.’
‘Where was he?’
‘About a hundred yards away from here. There’s a rock fall and a patch of broken rock up there and a cave with an entrance shaped like a pear. He was walking up and down, kicking at the ground and staring at it.’
‘Why?’
‘Perhaps it covers something he’s interested in. Old bones. Hidden plans. Buried treasure. Take your pick.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘That’s worth knowing.’
‘That’s OK,’ She gave me an odd look. ‘I hope I haven’t brought any disruptive influences to bear on your expedition.’
I shrugged. ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ I reassured her. ‘None that weren’t there before.’
She watched me light a cigarette, then began to climb back up the ladder on slim brown legs.
I stayed for a while watching her work as she reproduc
ed the blacks and whites and the faded reds and blues, then I walked slowly out into the sunshine.
As I came out into the heat I glanced instinctively down the Depression towards the rocks she’d mentioned. Without surprise, I saw a figure moving slowly in the glare, and as I watched I saw it stop nervously and stand, staring at the cliff face, its feet scuffing the dusty earth. It was Tiny Leach, and right opposite him was a cave whose entrance was shaped like a pear.
The Arabs had gone from the top of the spoil-mound now and it seemed to be empty of life, then, briefly, as I stared down the Depression, I caught a movement against the sky and realised there was still a figure up there, sitting down, half hidden, as though he didn’t wish to he seen.
I saw a glint of sun-glasses and realised it was Ghad Ahmed, and all that Morena had said and tried to say as we’d waited for the lorry to be loaded by the well at Biq Qalam came back to me. Suddenly the desert seemed more hostile, and the bare rocks and bloodless earth of the Depression seemed to hide a whole host of enemies.
Part Two
The Empty Desert
One
Somehow, from the moment we’d reached the Depression I’d been sure that trouble was coming. I hadn’t known what shape it would take, but I was as sure of it as I was of day following night.
The sense of expectancy grew during that evening. Ghad Ahmed’s camp seemed oddly quiet, as though they were listening, and the breeze was shifting the grit so that I could hear a tent canvas flap-flapping in a flat monotonous beating. Ghad Ahmed’s men were squatting by their fires, but I had the impression that they were still watching us, with opaque black eyes that were entirely hostile. The Depression seemed to be full of phantoms in the fading light, a terrible vacant space where no life stirred, where there was not even a bird to break the silence, or a wild animal to bring movement to the stillness. Soon the stars would be moving silently above with the moon on its cold remote course, and all at once I was stiff with fear at the emptiness, a sudden unexplained panic I’d experienced more than once in the desert, a feeling of minuteness in the infinite vastness, a sense of vulnerability and weakness.
I could hear Morena humming softly to himself as he tinkered, stripped to the waist, with the engine of the lorry, but somehow the normality of it failed to break through the thin skin of apprehension. Leach and Houston seemed as much on edge as I was, and ready for a fight. They’d been bickering in the tent with Nimmo for some time, arguing as usual across the straight bright flame of the lamp.
It had started off with a few tasteless comments on Phil Garvey by Houston, and it had suddenly dawned on me that, far from being the lady-killer he liked people to believe he was, Houston was a sad little man whom no woman ever took seriously, and his frustration took the form of tall stories about his conquests and lewd remarks about every woman he saw.
But it hadn’t been me who’d turned on him, but Nimmo, who’d offered to knock his head off if he didn’t shut up and, when Houston had taken refuge in sarcastic suggestions that Nimmo was anxious to get her into a corner himself, they’d set about each other in a noisy series of threats that could have been heard a hundred yards away. It was over now, but things were still a bit strained and to escape the tension I walked down the Depression for a while then went across to Crabourne’s camp. My excuse was that I was interested in the paintings, but in my heart of hearts I knew it was Phil Garvey who drew me there.
There’d been only one other woman who’d ever drawn me like this – the girl I’d married towards the end of the war and lost in the bitter days of the disappointing peace, and, although it was years since now, I could still only think of her as she’d been then, as if my mind were the camera that had caught the colour of her eyes, the way the wind had blown her summer dress; as though, after she’d gone, I’d become her immortality. Since then there’d never been anyone else, and because I’d long since given up hope of finding another woman who could attract me as much again, I found it disturbing that Phil Garvey could, particularly as she was as young as my wife had been years before, as young as I still saw her in the secret rendezvous of my mind.
I was annoyed to find Nimmo had got there before me and was hanging around her, but she seemed to shrug him off neatly as I arrived and before he knew where he was he was inside the hut staring unwillingly at Crabourne’s pictures.
We drank coffee together sitting outside the hut in canvas chairs, while Crabourne muttered to Nimmo inside over the files of drawings. Phil was in an odd mood, however, and the liveliness that had first drawn me to her had given way to a strange sort of nervousness that was heightened by my own feelings of uneasiness.
‘There is something about this place, isn’t there?’ she said, and I nodded, pleased and warmed to find she had the same awareness of things that I had.
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘There is.’
She gave a little shudder of apprehension. ‘Something happened here in this Depression,’ she said. ‘Something between when your patrol arrived and now. I don’t know what it was, but this place has got a secret that isn’t just a set of paintings on a cave wall. It’s something I’ve been trying to tell Sloan all along. But I guess he’s too much of a scientist and, because there aren’t definite signs in the sand, he doesn’t believe me.’
We were still there, talking to Crabourne and Nimmo, who had joined us with mugs of coffee, when I heard cries from beyond Ghad Ahmed’s tents, and I felt no sensation of surprise because I’d been waiting for hours for it to come.
One of the workmen ran up, shouting and pointing, and stopped in front of Ghad Ahmed who was standing with Crabourne. He was staring in the direction of the thin gesturing brown hand and his expression seemed to change, as though a shadow had passed across his face.
‘He says it’s a motor vehicle,’ he pointed out to Crabourne. ‘Coming into the camp.’
We moved away from the hut and walked through the tents towards the dusty track that ran along the floor of the Depression to Qahait. Morena had left the lorry and was staring into the distance, his hands deep in the pockets of his khaki shorts, the white scars on his shoulders where he’d been wounded in Italy plain in the fading light. Just behind him were Leach and Houston, both staring towards the cloud of dust in the distance.
‘Jerry,’ Houston said with a grin. ‘Rommel.’
‘Dry up,’ Morena said without turning his head, just as if he were a sergeant again and Houston were a flippant private who was interrupting his thoughts.
After a while it was possible to distinguish a jeep in the yellow cloud and Crabourne’s eyebrows came down.
‘That’s Selinski,’ he said. ‘What in hell’s he doing here? He ought to be keeping an eye on things at Qahait.’
The jeep drew nearer and slid to a stop in the soft sand, the dust drifting past it as it halted, then Selinski came towards us in a stumbling run. His high parrot crest of hair was rumpled and matted with sweat, and he looked strained and scared under the mask of dirt that lay on his face and eyelashes.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Crabourne demanded.
‘They’ve gone.’ Selinski stopped in front of him and jerked his hand backwards into the empty Depression.
‘Who’ve gone?’
‘The workmen!’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘There’s nothing left!’
Selinski’s face looked thin and drawn and his features were taut under the pall of dust.
‘For God’s sake, man,’ Crabourne said quickly, ‘pull your-self together. What are you trying to tell me?’
Selinski gestured again, uneasily, jerking his hand nervously once more. ‘There’s nothing left,’ he said his voice high-pitched and uneasy. ‘They’ve all gone. I was on my own just outside the camp, working on a drawing, and when I turned round I realised they’d all disappeared.’
‘Disappeared? They can’t have disappeared.’
‘They have, I tell you. I was entirely alone. The whole place
was empty and silent. It’s enough to put you in a panic. Have you ever been alone in this goddam Depression?’ Selinski had obviously been badly scared. ‘There’d been half a dozen of them with me, with the rest of them further back towards the camp. I called out for help to move a ladder and when nobody came I realised I was on my own. I went to look for them because I thought they were skulking somewhere – you know how they do – but there was no one about. Then I thought they must have lit out back to camp, so I got into the jeep and went to look. But there was nothing. Their goddam tents had disappeared, too. And the camels. And all the drawings were blowing about the desert like so many leaves.’
Crabourne’s face was set now and uneasy. He glanced quickly at Phil and then at Ghad Ahmed.
‘Ahmed,’ he said. ‘What’s all this about? You must go over there and get them back to work.’
Ahmed shrugged. ‘They have gone back to their villages,’ he said.
‘Then you must get them back.’
‘They’ll not come. They have had enough. They have been there five weeks already.’
‘But, God damn it, Ahmed, we made an agreement! In Qalam. There’s work here for months.’
‘There will be no more work done at Qahait,’ Ahmed said calmly. ‘When a Qalam decides there are ghosts in the Depression there is nothing I can do about it.’
Crabourne stared at him silently. The Arabs had moved up from their camp and had formed their usual semicircle behind us, ragged, watchful, reflecting somehow the whole mood of the camp.
Selinski was unloading a big file from the jeep now. ‘I collected all the drawings,’ he said. ‘They’re all here, though a few of them’ll have to be done again. The lousy s.o.b.s had walked over them.’
Crabourne drew a deep breath and let it out noisily. ‘You’d better put them in the hut with the others,’ he suggested, his face defeated and tired. ‘We’ll have to abandon Qahait for the time being and concentrate on this place. We’ll get over there tomorrow and see what we can do.’
