The Doomed Oasis

by Innes, Hammond;

  I hurried through the rest of the business, and as soon as Andrews had gone I phoned Dr. Harvey’s surgery. “George Grant here,” I said when he came on the line. “Any news of Thomas?”

  “Yes,” he said, “and it’s bad, I’m afraid. I’ve just had a call from the matron. He died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.”

  “I see.”

  “Did the police pick that boy up?”

  “Yes.” It could well mean a charge of manslaughter. “Has anybody thought of notifying Mrs. Thomas that her husband is dead?”

  “The matron is telephoning her right away.”

  “About time, too,” I said. Incredible how soulless an institution can be. But, in fact, it was the boy I was worrying about more than the mother. “They’ve taken David Thomas into custody,” I said.

  “Good.”

  His comment angered me. “Why did you consider it your duty to notify the police? Did you know the man was going to die?”

  “I thought it likely.” And then, after a pause, he added: “He was a bookie, you know. Greyhounds, mostly. Heavy drinker, heavy smoker, immoderate in everything, if you get me. That type goes quick. But I couldn’t be certain, of course.” And he added: “Frankly, I wouldn’t have expected the boy to stay there till the police arrived. I’d have thought he’d clear out. Probably would have done if you hadn’t been there.”

  “I wasn’t there,” I told him. “I’d left before they arrived.”

  “Oh, well, doesn’t make any odds. He’s no good, that boy.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Oddly enough,” he said on a note of asperity, “I don’t hold with boys hitting their fathers. Far too much licence allowed this new generation. He’s a street Arab, that boy—dock Arab, rather.” He gave a quick, awkward laugh. “It’s the war, of course, but that doesn’t excuse them entirely.”

  I asked him then to tell me what he knew about the boy. But he couldn’t tell me much. The Thomases had only been going to him since the start of the National Health Service, and he hadn’t set eyes on the boy more than once or twice. He’d grown up with the dock gangs, he said, mixing too much with the Arabs, had been in and out of a number of jobs, and had finally been sentenced for his part in the beating up of a rival gang leader. “I imagine he’s only just been released from Borstal,” he said. “Dockside toughs like that are the devil in my parish.”

  “And that’s why you called the police?”

  “Well, he killed his father, didn’t he?” His voice sounded on the defensive.

  “You don’t make much allowance for human nature,” I said.

  “No. Not with boys like that. You try stitching a few flick-knife wounds and bicycle-chain gashes; you’d soon see it my way.”

  “All right,” I said, and left it at that. He didn’t know Thomas wasn’t the boy’s father or what had caused the row between them. “Life’s not all as straightforward as you chaps see it in your clinics,” I said and put the phone down.

  By then it was five thirty and Captain Griffiths had arrived. He was a small man with a pointed beard and a high, cackling laugh, and he wore a tweed suit which was a little too large for him. This and his scrawny, wrinkled skin gave him a shrivelled look. But though he was not an impressive figure, long years of command had given him the knack of making his displeasure felt. “You promised me the documents before I sailed, man.” He thrust his beard at me accusingly.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “You’ll get them. When are you sailing?”

  “Nine thirty on the tide.”

  “I’ll bring them down myself.”

  That seemed to satisfy him, and since he showed an inclination to chat, I asked him about Whitaker. “Colonel Charles Stanley Whitaker,” I said. “Do you know him, by any chance?”

  “Yes, indeed. The Bedouin, that’s what they call him out there. Or the Bloody Bedouin in the case of those that hate his guts and all his Arab affectations. That’s the whites, you know. The Arabs call him Al Arif—the Wise One—or Haji. Yes, I know Colonel Whitaker. You can’t trade in and out of the Gulf ports without meeting him periodically.”

  “He’s still out there, then?”

  “Oh, Lord, yes. A man like that would never be happy retiring to a cottage in the Gower.” His small blue eyes creased with silent laughter. “He’s a Moslem, you know. He’s been on the Haj to Mecca, and they say he keeps a harem, and when it isn’t a harem, there’s talk of boys.… But there—” He shook his head. “It’s just gossip. If I took account of all the gossip I heard on my ship, there wouldn’t be anyone with a shred of reputation left. Too much time, you see. Everybody’s got too much time, and the damned humidity …” He gave that high-pitched, cackling laugh. “But, dear me,” he went on, “there’s a real character for you. You don’t find men like Whitaker back here in Britain—not any more. One-eyed and a patch, and a great beak of a nose that makes him look like a bloody bird of prey.”

  “And you’ve met him?”

  “Yes, indeed. I’ve had him on board my ship, too—often and often. I’ve had him on board in all his flowing Bedouin robes, with the silver of his great curved khanjar knife gleaming at his girdle and the black agal of Arabia round the kaffyah that covered his head; yes, and holding court on my own boat deck with the prayer mats out and his bodyguard all round him, armed to the teeth.”

  “A sort of Lawrence?” I suggested.

  “Well …” He sounded doubtful. “He hasn’t quite that standing with the political crowd. Too much of an Arab. Changing his religion like that, it made a difference, you see. But the oil boys all treat him like God, of course—or used to. But for him, the Gulfoman Oilfields Development Company wouldn’t have had a single concession out there. And then there was his theory—the Whitaker Theory, they called it. He believed that the proved oil-bearing country that runs down from Iraq through Kuwait, Dahran, Bahrain and Qatar would be found to continue, swinging southeast along the line of the Jebel Mountains, through Buraimi and into the independent sheikhdom of Saraifa. Well, there’s no knowing whether a man’s right about a thing like that except by prospecting and drilling. And there was Holmes, you see—he’d had the same sort of bee in his bonnet about Bahrain and he’d been proved right.”

  “And Whitaker wasn’t?” I prompted, for he had paused, his mind engrossed in the past.

  “No. It cost the Company a lot of money and nothing but dry wells for their trouble. And now things are changing out there.” He shook his head sadly. “There’s a new type of man coming to the top of these Middle East oil companies, technical men who understand oil, but not the Arab. Whitaker and the world he represents—it’s doomed, you know; finished. You can’t lord it in the deserts of Arabia, not now, with the oil flowing and half the world trying to grab a stake in it. And he’s the manner of a ruling prince, you know. He might have been descended from the Prophet himself, the way he behaved at times.”

  It was an extraordinary picture that Griffiths had drawn for me, and when he left to go back to his ship I felt that my drab office was the brighter for the colour his musical tongue had brought into it. I put some more coal on the fire and settled down to finish the day’s work.

  It was about half an hour later that I was interrupted by the sound of the street-door bell. It startled me, for I very seldom have a caller after office hours except by appointment, and a glance at my diary confirmed that I’d no appointment for that evening.

  My visitor proved to be a girl, and as she stood there in the driving sleet, clutching her bicycle, she seemed vaguely familiar. She had the sort of face that comes together around the nose and mouth, a face that was attractive, rather than pretty, its composition based on the essential of bone formation. She smiled, a little nervously, a flash of white teeth, the bright gleam of pale eyes. I remember that it was her eyes that attracted me at the time. She was just a kid and she was brimming over with health and vitality.

  “Mr. Grant? I’m Susan Thomas. Can I speak to you a moment,
please?” The words came in a quick rush, breathless with hurrying.

  “Of course.” I held the door open for her. “Come in.”

  “May I put my b-bike inside?” There was a natural hesitancy in her voice that was oddly attractive. “I had one stolen a few weeks back.” She wheeled it in, and as I took her through to my office, she said: “I was so afraid you’d have left, and I didn’t know where you lived.”

  In the hard glare of my office lighting I was able to see her clearly. The beaky nose, the strong jaw—they were both there, recognizable now. But in her these facial characteristics were softened to femininity. Unlike her brother, she had no resemblance to the mother that I could see. “It’s about your brother, I suppose?”

  She nodded, shaking the sleet from her blond hair whilst her long, quick fingers loosened the old fawn coat she wore. “I only just got back from the Infirmary. Mother’s beside herself. I had great difficulty …” She hesitated, a moment of uncertainty as her clear wide eyes stared and she made up her mind about me. “She—she’s reached an odd age, if you know what I mean. This is just too much for her.”

  Nineteen years old, and she knew everything about life, all the hard, unpleasant facts. “Are you a nurse?” I asked her.

  “Training to be.” She said it with a touch of pride. And then: “You’ve got to do something about him, Mr. Grant … find him, stop him from trying to kill his—from killing somebody else.”

  I stared at her, appalled. “What are you talking about?” I said. She was overdramatizing, of course. “You’ve heard about your—” I stopped there, uncertain what to call him. “About Mr. Thomas?”

  “Yes.” She nodded, her face as withdrawn as her brother’s had been, set and white. “Mother told me.”

  “The hospital phoned her, then?”

  “About half an hour ago. He died in the ambulance, they said.” There was no emotion in her voice, but then her lip trembled slightly. “It’s David I’m worried about.”

  “I was just going down to the police station,” I said. “It was an accident, of course, but there’s always the chance that the police may view it differently.”

  “He’s got a bad record, you know. And they never got on together. Of course,” she added, “I knew he wasn’t my father—my real father, that is.”

  “Your mother told you, did she?” I was thinking that it was odd she should have told her daughter and not her son.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “She never told me. But it’s something you know by instinct, sort of.”

  “Then why in heaven’s name didn’t your brother know?” I said.

  “Oh, well, boys are so slow, you know. And it’s not something you can just blurt out, is it, Mr. Grant? I mean, it’s something you feel, deep inside, and it’s sort of secret.” And then she said: “What will he do, do you think? Was he serious when he said he’d kill him? I wasn’t there, you see. But Mother is convinced he meant it.”

  “Kill who?” I said.

  “His—my father. Colonel Whitaker. He swore he’d kill him, didn’t he? That’s what Mother says. You were there. Did he say that?”

  “Well, yes.” I nodded. “But I didn’t take it very seriously. It had all come as a bit of a shock to him. Besides,” I added, “there’s not much he can do about it at the moment, even if he were serious. And by the time he’s released, he’ll have had a chance to get used to the idea.”

  She stared at me. “You haven’t heard, then?”

  “Heard what?”

  “David’s escaped.”

  “Escaped?” So that was why she was here. The stupid, crazy young fool! “How do you know he’s escaped?”

  “The police just phoned. They said he’d escaped from a police car and that it was our duty to inform them if he returned to the house. That’s why I came to see you. Mother’s almost out of her mind. You see, it isn’t only David she’s worrying about. It’s this Colonel Whitaker—my f-father. I don’t understand after the way he treated her, but I think she’s still in love with him … always has been, probably. And now she doesn’t know what to do for the best.” She came closer to me then, touched my arm in a gesture of entreaty. “Please, Mr. Grant, you’ve got to do something. You’ve got to help us. I’m scared to death Mother will go to the police and tell them what David said. That’s what she wanted to do, right away. She said it was her duty, but I knew it wasn’t that. She’s just about out of her mind as a result of what David’s done already. And he does have a bad record, you know. So I said I’d come to you, and she promised she wouldn’t do anything until I got home.” And she stood back, drained, her large eyes staring at me expectantly.

  I didn’t know what to say. There was nothing I could do. No point in my going out and searching the city for him. A filthy night like this the whole police force would have their work cut out to track him down. “Where was it he escaped?”

  “Somewhere along the Cowbridge Road, they said.”

  “And your father—have you any idea how I can get in touch with him?”

  Her eyes brightened for a moment. “Oh, if you could!” But then she shook her head. “I’ve no idea where he is now. Mother doesn’t know. Did she show you the book of press-cuttings?”

  “No.”

  “No, of course not, it was still lying there on the floor. The place was an awful mess.” And then she said: “I checked myself because I had the same idea. But the last cutting she got was three years ago. I don’t know whether he’s been in the papers since then. Dad found out, or maybe he knew all the time—anyway, he made her stop them. That last cutting was a picture taken in Basra. But he may have retired by now. He was getting on—over fifty. And if he’s retired, then he’d probably be in England somewhere, wouldn’t he? That’s what all these people who’ve lived all their lives abroad do when they retire. Do you think perhaps David knows where he is?”

  “No,” I said. “He tried to get the address out of me.” No point in telling her that he might have the same idea that I had and try to check the newspaper files. “In any case,” I told her, “he’ll have his work cut out to elude the police. I think you can set your mother’s mind at rest. The police will pick him up and … and time will do the rest. Your mother can see him in prison, talk to him; in no time at all he’ll have accepted the situation.”

  She thought that over for a moment and then nodded. “Yes. That makes sense.” And then she said: “Do you think that’s why he escaped? … I mean, did he really want to kill Colonel Whitaker, do you think? His own father?”

  “At the moment, perhaps.” There was no telling what the boy had in his mind. He might simply have been jealous of his mother’s affection for an old love. But I couldn’t tell her that. “In my opinion, it was the shock,” I said. “A perfectly natural reaction. When he’s had time to think it over, get used to the idea—”

  “But why did he escape? He’s never done that before. He’s been arrested twice, you see, but he never tried to escape.” And when I didn’t say anything, she gave a little shrug. “Oh, well, it’ll all come out in the wash, I expect.” She smiled briefly, but the smile didn’t extend to her eyes, which were sad and suddenly without lustre. “It was silly of me to come, really.” She started for the door, hugging her coat round her. “I should have known there was nothing you could do. It’s Mother I’m worried about. David’s in enough trouble.…” She moved her shoulders as though bracing herself. “I think perhaps I’ll go and see Dr. Harvey. Maybe he’d give her a sedative, something to make her sleep so she doesn’t keep going over it in her mind and getting silly ideas in her head.” She turned and held out her hand. “Goodbye, Mr. Grant. And thank you. I feel a bit better now anyway.”

  I took her back through the empty office to the street door, and as she wheeled her bicycle out she asked me to telephone her if I had any news. “During the day you can always get me at the Infirmary if it’s important. I’d rather you didn’t phone my mother. Promise?”

  “Of course,” I said.

>   Shortly after she’d gone Andrews came in with the map. By the time I had dealt with the conveyance and finished my other work, it was almost seven thirty. Time enough to call in at the police station on my way down to the docks. What the boy needed was to be given some purpose in life.

  I was thinking about this as I pulled on my coat, wondering at the chance of birth, how some people are born to parents happily married, and others … My own childhood hadn’t been all that happy. I shrugged my shoulders. Life was a battle anyway. Sex, money, happiness—it was all a struggle, like trying to build up this decrepit business. It took all the guts, all the energy you’d got sometimes just to make some sense out of life, and when things didn’t work out … I set the guard carefully in front of the dying fire, feeling sorry for the boy, sorry for myself.

  I suppose I was tired. It had been a frustrating week, and now it was Friday and the weekend stretching ahead. I was feeling the need of a drink. There was a pub I went to sometimes in the dock area, a rowdy place, but virile and full of masculinity and talk of far places, a seamen’s pub that always gave me the illusion of islands just beyond the horizon. With a few Scotches, imagination could soar, leaping the tawdry problems of money and piddling lawyer’s briefs.

  I went out, closing the door of my office behind me, following the white beam of my torch through the empty outer office with its clumsy mahogany counter and frosted-glass panels. I had reached the street door and my hand was on the latch when I remembered the package for Captain Griffiths. I had left it propped up on the mantelpiece so that I shouldn’t forget it.

  I went back to my office, my footsteps sounding hollow on the bare boards. He’d never forgive me if I let him sail without his dream of the future all set down in the mumbo-jumbo of legal phraseology. A man needed a dream, something to aim at. You couldn’t go through life without a goal. For him it was retirement and that little whitewashed cottage looking out over the sweep of Rhossilly Bay; for me it was just a solicitor’s office with new paint, new furniture, and clients tumbling over each other for my services. My hand reached out for the handle of the door, and then, suddenly, there was the tinkle of glass falling. The sound came from beyond the door, startlingly loud in the empty stillness.