Arabesque

by Geoffrey Household

  His passion was the section transport. An N.C.O. could be smart as any regular soldier or clever as a book detective, but the sergeant-major never really approved of him until he could lie on his back in a pool of oil and take down his gearbox.

  “I know a chap at Army Headquarters,” said Furney doubtfully.

  Wyne came to his rescue. It was useless to bother Furney for transport; he was completely unfamiliar with the channels, usual and unusual, by which motorcycles were extracted from a reluctant staff. What Furney did possess, however, was information—and Wyne’s section were continually complaining that they were not in the picture.

  “But you don’t look after us properly, you know,” said Wyne. “We’ll make you a member of the bar, Guy, if you’ll spill the beans on the Middle East.”

  “What? All of it?”

  “As seen by an important officer of M.I.5.”

  “And no bull,” added Sergeant Prayle.

  “I’ve had too much gin.”

  “It’s your round, so you’ll have to have another.”

  “Oh, God! Well, half of you will have commissions in a year, and none of you talk.”

  Major Furney hoisted himself on to the bar, a stout and primitive construction of planks laid across packing cases, and covered with gay green linoleum. Prayle, remaining among the bottles and glasses, found himself, as it were, upon the platform. He felt impelled to say a few words to introduce the lecturer, opened his mouth and shut it again. If Furney were really in a mood to talk, any interruption might wreck his spontaneity; and, in any case, what Prayle wanted to say couldn’t be said. It was the purest alcoholic sentimentalism.

  He was suddenly full of overwhelming affection for the faces which were turned towards Furney and himself. They varied greatly in age, in refinement, in experience, yet all had a common denominator of humorous cynicism. If these journalists, schoolmasters, clerks and commercial travellers had been dressed to fit their civilian trades—Prayle’s imagination vividly clothed them in solemn array of striped ties, umbrellas and bowler hats—he would never have noticed, he thought, any collective quality to be loved; but when faces were framed alike in the sweat-stained collars of battle dress …

  “The Middle East,” said Furney, “may be divided into two parts. There is the Western Desert where an unpleasant war is being skilfully fought. Most of you have seen it for yourselves, and know as much as I do. It is an unconventional war which suits British troops but frightens British generals out of their wits. Since we cannot change our troops, but can change our generals, we shall win.

  “Then there is the Base—the huge base from Turkey to East Africa. We haven’t any troops to keep it quiet by force. Chaps like you and me have to keep it quiet watching every move and thought of the local inhabitants, and giving warning of trouble in good time.

  “First of all there is Egypt. It is full of officers who issue orders and other ranks who type them (I need not remind you that in the British Army an officer is considered incapable of using a typewriter). All ranks, when they think of the local inhabitants at all, think of women. This is due to (a) climate and (b) the provocative appearance and diaphanous dresses of the European colony.

  “Gentlemen,” said Furney, slipping into the normal address of his university lectures, “do not let that bother you. Fortunately the diplomats can handle Egypt. The Egyptians are a kindly people, but in such a continual state of panic and excitement that their opinions are negligible. That was also so under the Roman Empire. I would much rather talk to you about it. But really there is little difference. Their secret police had just the same troubles as we have.

  “We pass up the coast road, the only road, I remind you, connecting one half of the Mohammedan world with the other, to Palestine. Palestine is normally inhabited by Arabs, Jews, government officials and the British Army.

  “The Arab, contrary to what most of you believe, is not a fanatic. He is equally willing to accept British or German rule, whichever is the stronger.

  “The Jews are wholeheartedly in the war. It is not always easy, however, to know which war. They have one against the Germans and one—just political warfare—against us. The first is for freedom, internationalism and racial equality; the second is for dictatorship, nationalism and domination of the fellow Semite. They keep both wars entirely separate in their minds. In time you will learn to do so too. Our own policy in wartime is to defeat the enemy. And that is all. All. A paradise for the intelligent man. He can …”

  “Guy, your duty clerk is on the telephone, and says it’s urgent,” interrupted Captain Wyne. “I’m awfully sorry.”

  “Oh, damn duty clerks! Have any of you realised that if there were no duty clerks there could be no war? Get the women’s clubs to take it up. Hell!” said Furney, descending from the bar.

  He dropped his neat and unmilitary pince-nez to the end of his nose, grimaced at his audience and went out to the section office.

  “Balmy!” the sergeant-major pronounced. “And we could do with a few more like him.”

  “A pity he’s going,” said Prayle.

  “Going? How do you know?”

  There was a chorus of regret and disbelief. The F.S. were usually well-informed, but nothing had been heard on the grapevine of Furney’s departure.

  “Because I use the loaf, bo. Would he talk to us like that if he wasn’t going?”

  The section disgested and considered Prayle’s latest bit of fortune-telling in silence.

  “How do you spell diaphanous?” asked an earnest young lance-corporal.

  “I shouldn’t bother to take notes,” said Bill Wyne kindly.

  Furney returned to the bar. His step was jaunty as that of a city clerk leaving the office for lunch. The professional lecturer, annoyed at interruptions, had evidently given place to the industrious officer with a new problem.

  “Anybody know where Beit Chabab is?” he asked.

  “At the back of beyond, off the Damascus road,” Wyne answered.

  “Have you got a detachment anywhere near?”

  “No.”

  “Little doings was there in September,” Prayle remarked. “Holiday with an old wog.”

  “Little doings being?”

  “Armande Herne.”

  “And wog?”

  “Wadiah Ghoraib.”

  “Well, you’d better come along. Are we reasonably sober, Sergeant?”

  “Duke of Wellington, sir.”

  “What stage is that?”

  “Sober enough to beat the enemy.”

  “May I take him with me, Bill?” Furney asked. “Montagne is at my office in a flap A flap rampant, when the French start sending signals to London.”

  Prayle changed into the section’s civilian suit. His natural and courteous instinct was to avoid disturbing the illusions of others; as Montagne took him for Furney’s âme damnée, he preferred to look the part.

  He dipped his head in a basin of cold water and towelled it vigorously. The skin no longer came off in patches. His face had become a uniform red. He observed, with a resigned thankfulness for very minor mercies, that it even showed signs of tanning to a pleasant shade of chestnut. Prayle never quite forgave his face for its appearance; since he only saw it goggling at him from a mirror, he had no idea of the lovable liveliness it could take on when twisted by humour or lit by generosity.

  They found Montagne waiting in Furney’s office and watched suspiciously by his duty clerk. Prayle gave him a sinister nod as from one conspirator to another, for he rejoiced in Montagne. Those preposterous boots, the bush shirt, the very short (and somewhat ragged) shorts were so entirely right; if Montagne’s gaunt figure had to be clothed in uniform, though built for the shabby tie and jacket of the agitator, then the uniform should have, as it did, the irregularity of the barricades.

  “Mon vieux, you do not look as if you had enjoyed your dinner,” said Furney.

  “Eating,” Montagne answered, “is an unwelcome interlude when there is no opportunity to sm
oke.”

  He detached from his lower lip a yellow scrap of paper, and helped himself to another cigarette from the box which Furney offered.

  “Otherwise, ça va?”

  “It would if not for the rats. They are worse than Loujon.”

  “Which rats?”

  “Nibbling away our sacred movement—all these damned Catholic, royalist, fascist sons of bitches. The poor general!”

  “Well, he’s a Catholic himself,” Furney remarked.

  “An exception, my dear man! God, it’s the dictatorship of the Church and the Families over again! But you must not make me talk politics, Guy, when I have come with a very serious complaint.”

  “Official?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Thank God! Well, let’s have it.”

  “I tell you, it is serious,” said Montagne severely. “Was it not agreed that the French should collect all the arms in the Lebanon? We need them, you know.”

  “That was the arrangement,” Furney admitted. “We don’t like your methods, but it’s your funeral.”

  “Bah! These Arabs only understand force. What I want to know is: why the devil are you collecting arms yourselves?”

  “We are not,” Furney replied positively. “Have our Australians been up to something?”

  “Nothing! They are brave children, your Australians, and more honest than you.” Montagne drew a sheet of typed paper from his wallet. “No, it’s the R.A.O.C.”

  “Ordnance? Well, they would be the right people to receive any arms, but only on orders. May I see?”

  Montagne handed him the sheet. It read:

  This is to certify that Sheikh WADIAH GHORAIB of BEIT CHABAB has delivered to me for surrender to the proper authorities:

  French Army Marks

  Furney passed the receipt over to Prayle.

  “First impression—quick!” he demanded.

  It was signed by a major with the usual illegible and fairly cultured scrawl. The orderly room stamp was genuine. The paper, in size and texture, was a Stationery issue; the typewriter, an army Oliver. The descriptions of the arms did not seem to have quite the professional exactitude of the Ordnance at leisure, but then the whole transaction was unprofessional.

  “Stage property,” said Prayle.

  “Why?”

  Sergeant Prayle hated to take the sense out of his own remarks by explanations.

  “Just in the noggin.”

  “How did you make Sheikh Wadiah give up his receipt?” Furney asked Montagne.

  “He replaced it in his pocket a little carelessly.”

  “But who on earth and … how much was he paid?”

  “He said that a detachment of British soldiers took the arms away in a truck and that the British Secret Service knew all about it,” answered Montagne primly.

  “How many times shall I have the honour to point out to you, mon viex,” asked Furney, exasperated, “that there is no such thing? There are various departments of Intelligence with various jobs to do, just as in your army or any other, and some of their work is naturally secret. But anyone who blathers about the British Secret Service is immediately suspicious. I permit myself to advise you to concentrate on facts.”

  “Mon cher,” said Montagne, unconcerned, “you are not now lecturing little bourgeois in your damned school.”

  “It’s not a damned school. It’s Cambridge University.”

  “Je m’en fous! If you want the facts, you must listen instead of interrupting. Are you listening?”

  “Yes,” said Furney sulkily.

  “Good! I went up to see that old fraud, Wadiah. I assessed him at a hundred rifles and told him they must be delivered. I made no threats. He has heard how we collected arms in the south. He knows I would billet twenty men and horses on him and make him feed them until he coughed up his arms. Well, I should have accepted fifty rifles. And to think he had all that merchandise! I am not surprised the English tricked me.”

  “Ah, shut your suspicious trap!” exclaimed Furney genially. “Who do you think tricked you? Me?”

  “I think it was your damned Field Security.”

  “Bah!”

  “You do not know them,” answered Montagne very seriously. “It is sure that they obey the Foreign Office and no one else.”

  “I doubt whether the Foreign Office interests itself in the collection of arms from Beit Chabab,” Furney replied. “I admit the Field Security sometimes exceed their instructions, but honestly, there’s no mystery about them.”

  “That is what you have to say,” Montagne insisted, glancing meaningly at Prayle.

  “The major looks after me,” muttered Prayle with a leer from his larger eye. “I make no reports to my government.”

  “Both of you disgust me,” Furney laughed, seeing that further argument was hopeless. “But what did Sheikh Wadiah say?”

  “Well, he gave me an excellent lunch, and after swearing all day that he had no arms at all, he told me at last to go and ask the British. I was not too polite about my allies. I told him that it was with France he had to deal, as always. And then he had the insolence to exchange some remarks with me. When I thought he was about to spit in my face, he produced this paper. There are times, you know, when Albion is really perfidious.”

  “There are times,” Furney retorted, “when some damned idiot in Albion thinks he’s being clever.”

  “Any bad characters been in Beit Chabab?” asked Prayle innocently.

  “There are two harmless Rumanians. We know all about them.”

  Wadiah, then, had not mentioned Armande’s visit. That fact was in itself suspicious. Prayle stored it away to be worried later.

  “I simply cannot imagine who authorised this,” said Furney. “The only people it could possibly be are some of those new commando lads who take their orders direct from Cairo. I promise you I will get on to Jerusalem in the morning and find out.”

  “My dear Guy,” Montagne exclaimed with a sudden rush of emotion, “it is extraordinary how I trust you. You know, there is not another person in Beirut whom I trust.”

  “That’s good to hear. But a great pity.”

  “You think so? Do you know I am being followed?”

  “By the Field Security?” asked Furney ironically.

  “It is quite possible—but I shouldn’t worry about that. After all, we are allies. No, I am being followed by my own countrymen.”

  “You exaggerate!”

  “Look out of the window then.”

  Furney got up. In the blazing moonlight Beirut was a black and white chessboard, upon which the cypress trees stood up like giant pawns.

  “There is a Palestine policeman in plain clothes,” said Furney. “There is a girl talking to one of the batman drivers—who looks very shy about it. There is your own orderly. And there is snot-nose.”

  “And this good snot-nose, who is he?”

  “He is a retired Lebanese gendarme to whom, I fear, you pay small and quite unnecessary sums for reports on any prominent Arabs who visit this office,” Furney replied.

  “You are crazy, Guy! I know who comes to see you without employing a type to stand in your filthy street. But you are right that he is paid—to watch you and me.”

  “That is puerile.”

  “I think so too. But imagine! I, who fought for the republic in Spain, I, who was in prison at the outbreak of war. I have the power here. Do you think that is agreeable for the rats? Do you think I do not report their intrigues? They keep me under surveillance, and they are right. But they have no money to do it properly. That is why they employ the animal you have so rightly christened snot-nose.”

  “Leave them alone then, and get on with the war.”

  “Leave them alone? These rats who put politics before their country? Never! But they will have me out soon. I know it. And you will not find them so friendly.”

  “I am going myself this week.”

  “Going!” exclaimed Montagne regretfully. “Where?”

  “Ab
yssinia.”

  “My congratulations! It is full of little passionate Italians without their husbands. But we shall miss you. Who is taking over from you?”

  “Rains.”

  “Rains? He understands nothing, that type.”

  “But sound, as they say. A harmless palace eunuch.”

  “I should like to go with you, Guy. If I stay here, I shall be found with a knife in my back one of these days. You will see.”

  “If you really believe that,” Furney protested, “you will have deserved it.”

  “You will see,” repeated Montagne, his deep eyes burning with a sombre delight at being persecuted for his creed. “Well, you will not forget to let me know about Sheikh Wadiah?”

  He looked again out of the window, then picked up his kepi and sprang cautiously into the outer office, glancing, birdlike, to right and left.

  “And now. Sergeant Prayle,” said Furney, threatening him with his pince-nez held between finger and thumb, “will you kindly have the blasted goodness to tell me what you meant by stage property.”

  “Just that,” Prayle answered. “You know.”

  “I do not know. Explain.”

  The sergeant resentfully devoted his brain to analysis.

  “Arms,” he said at last. “How would you collect them yourself? Hush-hush coves of some sort—security or special service. But Ordnance wouldn’t collect them. Not from source, I mean. Ordnance would collect them from the blokes who collected them, if you see what I’m after.”

  “I do. Yes. Well, it must have been one of G.H.Q.’s private armies which visited Beit Chabab. They never have the sense to tell us what they are doing. They are so bloody amateur that they don’t know whom to trust. I’ll talk to Jerusalem and Cairo in the morning and find out if there’s a simple explanation.”

  “There isn’t,” said Prayle.

  “Why?”

  “It smells.”

  “What of?”

  “Flag days in Kensington High Street. Little doings winning the war with a nice, new brassière and a tray of poppycock.”

  “If necessary,” said Furney thoughtfully, “could you go and interview little doings, as you call her? It’s out of our territory, but I suppose no one would object.”