by Peter Corris
I spent some time with Maureen. Slept with her platonically. It was one of the happiest periods of my life. For Basil, I had no fears. Although he spent more freely than I, he had resources and, like our father, he had a magic ability to conjure loans, advances, honorariums out of thin air.
Then, in an instant, my almost idyllic world of a few short weeks fell apart. Maureen vanished from the room I had rented for her. I made enquiries of her few friends and acquaintances but learned nothing. The doctor who had been attending her reported that she was in superb health the last time he had seen her.
'I never saw a female better equipped for the job of bearing children,' he said.
His tone and attitude reminded me too much of Basil's and I hurried away in greater distress of mind than at any time since the news broke of my brother's disgrace. I could glean only one fragment of information—that Maureen had received a letter the day before her departure. The landlady put it on a table for Maureen to collect. All she could say was that it was not 'official-like'. I begged her to recall the postmark or the handwriting but she could not do so. At the Towpath Inn where, as well as waiting on tables, Maureen sang bargee songs in the public bar, nothing had been heard of her.
'One thing, Mr Craft,' the landlord said to me, 'if you plan to hire a detective or the like.'
The though had not occurred to me but I nodded as if it had been my very next move. 'Yes?'
'I wouldn't put him to looking for Maudie Darcy?'
'I don't understand.'
' 'er true name be Sarah Austen and she be as English as you 'n me, sir, if I may presume. The blarney and the brogue be just a fancy of hers. To go with the singin', you understand.'
'She's not Irish?'
He shook his head. 'Daughter o' Tom and Rose Austen. Tom was a bargee right enough and taught the lass the songs. Happen 'e could blarney along with the best of them, but 'im and 'is lady was English and nothing but.'
So Maudie, as most people called her, had practised a deception followed by a betrayal. I feared for her, but I never saw her again or heard anything of her fate.
I graduated with a solid, but not starred, first in 1934 and took up a position as a schoolmaster in Devon. Frobisher was one of those schools which certain pupils later write about with a mixture of affection and horror. It was an austere establishment, mainly devoted to training boys for a naval career but with an odd tradition of intellectual independence and religious scepticism. These features of the school's approach attracted me, but the main allurement was its setting.
Frobisher was a collection of buildings of various styles and vintages located on a rocky promontory south of Trevose Head. The climate was mild for much of the year but occasional wild and severe. I began a study of the geology of the coastline almost as soon as I arrived and spent every spare hour wandering the headlands, bluffs and beaches, taking samples and piecing together the history of the relationship between the land and the sea. My teaching and supervisory duties were light and not unpleasant. The salary was small but my needs were few; I spent money on tobacco, books and the occasional convivial evening in the local pub. I had plans to travel but not immediately and I was confident that the residue of my patrimony plus my modest savings would provide the funds when the time came.
I was on good, though not intimate, terms with several of the other masters and with my work, studies, reading, occasional trips to London for theatre and opera, the time passed agreeably. In London I visited my mother, who remained as mysterious and withdrawn as ever. She said she had heard nothing from Basil. I eyed the whores in Covent Garden but of course took no action. Suppressed homosexuality was an element of life at Frobisher. Senior and junior boys pursued passionate friendships which at times took physical form. School policy was to ignore such associations unless they became, as the Head put it, 'horse-frightening'. In this event one warning was issued and further indiscretion resulted in expulsion. No expulsions occurred in my time but several warnings were issued. At times, in my celibate, sexually indifferent state, I wondered whether homosexual love might offer me an escape, but I experienced no frissons, no desires. I also wondered whether, if Basil took a male lover, I would deviate in the same way. But such a thing was unthinkable.
I had been at the school for three years, had had successes and failures in my teaching and made considerable progress in my study of the Devon coast, when I ventured out one Sunday afternoon to investigate a blowhole which only operated when certain tidal conditions prevailed. It was a fine, warm day and it was with an untroubled mind that I tramped several miles to the spot. I took up a position near the edge of a crevasse at the bottom of which the water rushed and frothed before being sucked into the hole and expelled in a roaring plume. The phenomenon only occurred at half-hour intervals. I had heard the sound as I approached and I settled down now to wait the next manifestation. I remember the feeling of peace I experienced—a sensation of oneness between myself and nature. It was a harmony I was never to enjoy again.
Just as the sound mounted and the thin jets of water began to appear, I heard a voice behind me. 'A pretty enough thing, Dick. But the world holds more exciting sights.'
'Basil!'
I sprang up, lost my balance and would have fallen into the crevasse if he had not held me. He was suntanned and bare-headed. He looked older than I would have expected for the passing of three years, but his grip was stronger than ever. 'You're a disgrace, Dick.' Basil said. 'Mooning over farting holes.'
Just then the sun burst from behind a cloud and the blowhole erupted. The plume of water shot into the air and descended in a roaring deluge that soaked us both instantly to the skin. We stood in the middle of the downpour, clasped together, blinded by the sun. I was glad of the water because it masked the tears that broke from me as I felt my brother's arms and the only human love I had ever known wrapped around me.
We stripped off our clothes and sat, completely naked, on the rocks in the bright sunshine, sharing my packed lunch and a bottle of wine Basil had in his knapsack. My account of how I had spent the past few years took very little time; Basil's story was altogether richer. He said that he had completed his medical studies in Austria and then travelled extensively through Europe, Asia and the United States.
'You were right, Dick,' Basil said at last. 'I have to admit it.'
This was a startling admission, very welcome, but I did not know how to take it. 'About what, Basil?'
'Don't be obtuse. About what lies buried. About rocks and sand. About the importance of the earth's crust. I remember how you used to bore me with your geology at Walsingham.'
I said nothing but I suppose I looked hurt. Basil clapped me on the shoulder and passed me the bottle. 'Come on, brother mine. I've admitted I was wrong. Ever heard such a thing before?'
I swigged the wine and, defiantly, rummaged in my wet clothes for my pipe. 'No,' I said. 'I haven't. And to celebrate I'm going to smoke a pipe if you have no objection, and even if you do.'
Basil's head went back and he emitted that harsh, animalistic laugh. 'Go ahead. It's still the nastiest habit I've seen in my travels, but go ahead if you must.'
'Not must,' I said. 'Want.' I sensed that Basil needed something from me. It was an intoxicating feeling and carried me past any disapproval he might express about my smoking. It was a new element in our relationship and one I resolved to explore.
'How would you like to travel in Africa, Asia, America and Australia?' Basil said.
I puffed hard at the slightly damp pipe. 'Very much. To what purpose?'
Basil leaned closer to me, ignoring the smoke. 'For all the purposes that matter—for adventure, for knowledge, for wealth, power and fame.'
He explained to me that he had met a great many very important people in the course of his travels. He had become, he said, a kind of secret agent. 'Not of another government, Dick. I'm too much of a patriot for that. But of a group drawn from many countries, almost all the countries that matter in fact.'
I
winced at this. I was an avid reader of the better newspapers published in Britain and Europe and I had acquired a strong distaste for Nazism. 'Including Germany?'
'Of course. But don't worry, Dick.' Here Basil laid his hand on my shoulder. 'I'm convinced that there will be another war and that it will a mighty struggle. Many of the things Germany stands for I believe in, but I do not expect her to win.'
'Why not?'
He shook his head. 'There is corruption at the top levels. Also, possibly, madness. The people I deal with are concerned for the economic order, not the political.'
'And the moral order, Basil?'
He smiled. 'Hadn't you noticed, Dick? The one follows the other.'
'You sound like a socialist.'
'Never. But I have learned a lot in the past few years about how the world really works. It's controlled by money but money itself has no brains or courage. These have to be hired. Note I say hired, not bought.'
'Noted. I think I'll put my clothes on.'
'Not yet, Dick. Please not yet. This is the most serious conversation we have ever had. We don't need barriers between us of any kind. I am on the brink of a mighty undertaking and I need your help.'
He was weatherbeaten, older, stronger and yet somehow changed. I was intrigued. It seemed to me that there was a chink in his armour, a weakness possibly. This excited me in two ways. Could I help my brother, he who had never needed my help before, and could I escape from the hold he had over me? 'Tell me, Basil,' I said. 'There's nothing to hold me here. In truth, I think I've been waiting for you these past few years. I never doubted that you would come.'
He then spoke rapidly and with great coherence, as if he had rehearsed every word. He told me that a cartel of international financiers and industrialists had approached him through a series of intermediaries to conduct a number of explorations in remote parts of the world. These expeditions were designed to locate significant deposits of minerals which would prove valuable in the second half of the century.
'Oil,' I said.
'Amongst others. Our predictions are that the exploitation and marketing of oil will fall under a great measure of international control. It is anticipated that independent Arab states will one day hold the whip hand.'
I stared at him. 'Fantasy, surely.'
'I am persuaded that it is not. When I heard this my first impulse as an Englishman was to offer my services as a mercenary to prevent this disaster. The offer was appreciated but rejected. You must understand that we are dealing with long-term projections here.'
Basil told me that the cartel wanted him to discover locations in Asia, Africa, the Americas and Australia where oil, coal, uranium and other sources of energy could not only be extracted but stored. He spoke compellingly. My pipe went out and I had no wish to relight it.
'Stored?' I said.
'Yes. Not only the resources extracted on the sites but reserves from elsewhere. The expression, I fancy it has not yet gained currency, is stockpiled.'
'Why?'
Basil shook his head. Evidently the serious part of his explanation was over; he reached for his shirt which was spread out on a rock. 'I don't know,' he said, 'and I don't care. All I know is that we will be paid a great deal of money for carrying out these investigations and making certain arrangements. We will receive high-level help and protection. There are certain conditions.'
I began to pull on my clothes. 'They are?'
'A low level of public interest in our activities,' Basil said. 'Not a complete embargo. That would be foolish. But an appearance of eccentricity as well as a veneer of scientific dullness.'
'Is that what you need me for?'
Basil reached out and gripped both my shoulders. 'No, Dick! I need you for the technical work, and for your talent at diplomacy and as a counterbalance to my enthusiasms.'
I wanted to embrace him but simply smiled and lifted his hands from my shoulders so that I could pull on my shirt. 'Do you retain all your old enthusiams, Basil?'
'Oh, yes.' he said. 'Oh, yes. I do not refer to those. I mean my impetuosity with people and tendency to expect too much of myself and others. I still believe in the perfectibility of individuals, Dick. Given the right genetic and social ingredients. I expect to earn enough money from this project to finance investigations and experiments I have dreamed about for years.'
I dressed hurriedly, as if the day had turned cold although the sun still shone brightly. I could see that Basil needed me more than he realised.
He is raving and thrashing now as I write. I am reluctant to stop. The words are flowing from me at a rate which almost alarms me. I know precisely what I want to say and the words and phrases are to hand. It is exhilarating . . . Basil. I have to consider whether to give him water now and risk it spilling as he struggles, or to wait . . .
33
ENTRY THREE
I have no intention of retracing the courses of our three expeditions. The articles I contributed to several learned journals are accurate accounts as far as they go. Basil's version, recorded in his book Walking Across the World (of which more later) contains much that is truthful and much invention. However, the book's greatest sins are those of omission. I will attempt to atone for them in this journal.
The Sahara expedition in late 1938 was an exercise in endurance and courage worthy of Basil at his best. Quite simply, we crossed mountains and desert in a way no party of Europeans had ever done before or is likely to do again. Basil's leadership was superb, his judgment excellent. Human and animal resources were stretched to the limit but not exhausted. Many thought Basil cruel and I suppose he was, but he asked nothing of anyone that he was not willing to give himself and the question has to be asked: What is the more cruel—to lose several beasts and flog several men and bring the party through safely, or to allow the desert to swallow each and every living thing? For that was the choice as Basil saw it, and our surviving of sandstorms, bandit attacks, disease and treachery disposes me to think that he was right.
Nevertheless, the true purposes of the expedition were concealed from everyone, including me, although I became aware of them by necessity. Wadi Djoul was an area rich in minerals and in potential as a hiding place for men and materials. I reported on it in these terms to Basil after conducting a reconnoitre with Omar Oufkir, the goumier whom Basil seemed to trust above all others.
I do not know what transpired at the wadi when Basil ventured there as I continued on to Timbuktu with the main body of the expedition, but I can guess on the basis of knowledge acquired later. Basil's brief from his employers was to clear a promising area of its traditional inhabitants and to impose upon it a curse, a hex, a malediction. This cleared the way for its later exploitation and development by the shadowy, though wealthy, interests Basil served.
Those interests knew nothing of his private obsessions and it was these that concerned me most. Typically, the lands we travelled through were barren and hostile. Although I knew the natives found these environments inhabitable, even congenial, I was constrained by my upbringing and education to think of them as places to be subdued, controlled. I had a sense of history. Force ruled in these places. Basil, as conqueror, was no new phenomenon. What overrode any lingering moral and legal objections I might have had, what obsessed me and bound me to Basil more strongly than the ties of blood, money or reputation was the women.
Basil took three women from Wadi Djoul—two Arabs and a negress, the former daughters of a sheik, the latter a slave.
'Aren't they magnificent?' he said to me when he presented me to them in Timbuktu.
'Yes,' I said. After years of celibacy, I lusted powerfully after all. The Arabs were small, exquisitely made with huge lustrous eyes visible above their blue veils. The negress was a strapping, muscular creature with an animal grace. I waited his invitation feverishly but he laughed and had them escorted away by Omar Oukfir.
That night Basil took me to the street of the prostitutes beside the Djingerber mosque. Here he introduced me to the woman kn
own as Little Syrie, a fat Syrian whore who stood less than five feet tall who Basil said he had greatly enjoyed. She was garishly painted and naked under a filmy robe. She had a ruby in her navel and the nipples of her huge breasts and her private parts were smeared with a mixture of honey and hashish oil. Basil paid her price and gave her to me. I threw myself on her and slaked the longings and frustrations of years in every orifice of her body.
I stayed with Little Syrie for a week or more, exploring every possible sexual position and perversion. I dressed in her clothes and anointed my body as she anointed hers. I exhausted myself, was revived with coffee and cloying sweet food and lost all sense of time and place. When Little Syrie eventually told me that my credit had run out I returned to the house Basil had rented near the Senkore mosque.
Basil's greeting was concerned but mocking. 'Well, Dick, you've certainly sowed some oats. What's that around your eyes, kohl? I hope you're not going to turn pervert on me. You can set your mind at rest on one score, not that I think it crossed your besotted mind. She's clean, Syrie. Absolutely clean. I made sure of that.'
I was too tired to respond. 'I have to sleep, Basil. We'll talk tomorrow.'
'I'll be off to Marrakech tomorrow, old son. Will you be fit to travel with us?'
'Us?' It was then that I noticed the Arabs and the negress sitting quietly in a corner of the room. The negress was combing the hair of one of the Arabs. The heads of all three were turned away from me. I stumbled across towards them, expecting to feel the powerful attraction, the aching need. But there was no mistaking my reaction. Sated as I was, I knew at once what my feelings betokened as I looked into their eyes. They gazed up at me and I felt a surge of protectiveness and concern. Each was carrying my brother's child. I fell to the floor in a swoon and the last thing I heard was Basil's braying laugh.
We left by river for Marrakech the next day. I appointed myself the guardian of the young women. I fetched and carried for them on the whole journey while Basil exercised, relaxed with the aid of arak and hashish, and discoursed about the success of the expedition.
