The Guns of El Kebir (Simon Fonthill Series)

by John Wilcox

  HMS Monarch, the ship carrying the press corps, was allocated the task of leading the attack on Port Said. This was done at three in the morning, under the eager gaze of the correspondents. A small detachment of marines were landed as the town slept and quickly overpowered the Egyptian sentries. Then seamen from Monarch and Iris strung a cordon across the neck of land on which the town was situated to prevent any escape, and two further companies of marines surrounded the barracks and captured the Egyptian troops in their beds. Very soon after, in response to a request from Captain Fitzroy, a detachment of the Royal West Kent was dispatched by torpedo boat and gunboat down the Canal to Ismailia to secure the railway out in the desert as far as possible.

  It was all done, Alice had to admit (and report), with commendable alacrity and efficiency, and with no casualties on either side. Wolseley, of course, at his best.

  Monarch was forced to delay her voyage down the Canal as the great convoy of warships and transports mustered at the port and each ship was allocated her own navigating officer for the difficult passage between the narrow, high banks. Alice took advantage of the hiatus to slip ashore. It was still early morning, for the occupation had taken less than three hours, and she was anxious to see how quickly normal life would be restored to Port Said. Would the shopkeepers and street traders in the bazaar huddle indoors, fearful of the invading troops? Would there be, perhaps, residual sniping at the occupying marines from rooftops and high windows? Such early signs could be portents of the way in which the ordinary people of Egypt would regard this invasion, and would make good copy.

  In fact, she found what she could only presume to be a healthy normality everywhere. Despite the early hour, the bazaars were a delight of vivid colour and exotic odours, overlaid on a base of humming, burbling noise. As she pushed between the stalls, delighted at the strangeness of it all, she was offered saffron fabrics that sang of the dyers’ skills and sweetmeats that made her swallow in anticipation, aggravating her still sore throat. Two patrolling marines, bargaining for curved daggers in elaborate sheaths, started guiltily when they saw her, but she gave them a bright smile and a wave of absolution. She stopped and handled some of the hand-woven rugs and munched a tiny, delicious custard in pastry that was given to her with no demand for payment. She lingered at a silverware stall and eventually bought a delicate filigree bracelet, too entranced to bother with the boring business of bargaining about the price. It was as though she was on holiday.

  Then she saw him. Mr George stood behind a stall on the far side of the narrow street, watching her. He seemed to be wearing Arab outer dress, but a glimpse of the familiar celluloid collar, the small, square moustache and the hard eyes behind the spectacles immediately identified him. He was carrying a bag from the top of which a large golden tureen peaked out and gleamed dully in the sun. As she caught his eye, he gave her a little nod of recognition and his eyes seemed to glint behind his glasses.

  A sob came to Alice’s throat and she immediately swung round to find the marines, but they had gone. Involuntarily, she put her hand to her throat and spun back again, but George had disappeared. She twisted the bracelet around her fist in a pathetic attempt to create a weapon and swept her gaze over the surrounding stalls, but there was no sign of the little clerk. It was as though he had never existed.

  Alice realised that she was trembling, but she took a deep breath and forced herself to approach the stall at which George had been standing. ‘Do you speak English?’ she whispered to the stallholder.

  ‘Leetle bit, missie.’

  ‘That man, the one carrying the dish in the bag, do you know him?’

  ‘What man? I seed no man.’

  ‘He was short and . . . oh, never mind.’

  She turned away and began walking, very erect, back the way she had come, keeping her stride long and balanced. But she could not maintain her calm and she soon broke into a frantic run, forcing her way through the crowds until, panting, she eventually reached the boat that thankfully was still waiting for her at the harbour wall. It was not until the boatman had pulled halfway out to HMS Monarch, that she was able to relax.

  She was still trembling, however, when she lay down on her bunk in her little cabin and began to think. It was George, there was no doubt about it – the flash of recognition behind the round spectacles, the almost lascivious half-smile, the tiny bow of the head. Oh, it was him, all right! But what to do about it?

  Alice shook her head in frustration. She could not reach Ralph, and in any case, what could he do? George would be lost in the Port Said melting pot by now and she could not exactly demand that a search party be landed to comb the town for a small man with a celluloid collar. Wolseley knew about George, of course, and she had been told that he had sworn to smoke him out after the invasion was over. But, again, she could hardly ask that he put aside his march on Cairo to look for the little swine. Simon . . . Simon would do it. But where was he? And he was no longer her protector, her knight in shining armour, her love . . . Damn! That was enough of that!

  She sat upright and tipped a little water – lukewarm, of course – on to her face flannel, then wiped her face and, more gingerly, her neck and throat. George was obviously still in business, presumably trying to acquire bargains or trade his own illicit wares illegally. She tried to remember what he had said in that awful house about his dealings. He exported to Greece, wasn’t it? Yes. Presumably he had had difficulty in finding a ship in Alexandria and was now trying his hand in Port Said. The man seemed to have no problem at all in moving around the country, even in time of war. Well, let him be for the moment. He could wait until after the war. In the meantime, though, she resolved that she would buy a revolver. She nodded to herself in the little mirror. No more fear, dammit!

  Alice had not long returned to the ship when the great propellers began to revolve and the vessel began to tremble as she made way to fall in line with the convoy setting off down the Canal. A quick dash down the waterway was out of the question because of the absence of trained pilots and the consequent danger of grounding and so blocking the passage completely for the following ships. This danger soon became a reality, and several times the larger ships, Catalonia and Bavaria among them, ran aground and had to be eased off while the convoy behind waited in the heat and the mosquitoes.

  Progress, then, was stately and Alice’s mind turned back to the woodcuts she had seen as a child of the great procession down Ismail Pasha’s Canal thirteen years earlier, when it had been opened by the Empress Eugenie of France, her steamer leading a line of vessels dressed fore and aft in gay bunting and carrying the royals of Europe. Not quite all of them, though, she reflected with a smile. Queen Victoria had declined the invitation and refused to allow the Prince of Wales and Princess Alex to attend (although Prince ‘Tum Tum’ and his pretty wife had had their own viewing as Ismail’s guests two months before). Standing at the bow rail of Monarch watching the high banks slip by, however, Alice’s smile soon turned to a frown as she remembered that forty thousand fellaheen had been torn from their homes and forced to dig out the ninety-seven million cubic yards of sand, mud, silt and rocks to form the Canal. And how many had died? She shook her head. There were some statistics that even her radical mind forbore to retain.

  The landing at Ismailia was chaotic, with vessels queuing to take turns at the solitary landing stage. Alice learned that the transport carrying the two steam locomotives brought to carry much of Sir Garnet’s supplies and many of his troops up the line towards Cairo had been forced to sail on to Suez and off-load its cargo there, because the landing pier at Ismailia could not take them. The great engines would have to steam their way north, back up the railway that followed the banks of the maritime canal. She looked behind her at the transports waiting to unload and then forward to the slings laboriously swinging one mule at a time on to the pier. Why on earth, she wondered, did not Arabi attack? It would take days to sort out the embarkation and the priorities of unloading. During this confusion, Ismailia woul
d surely be virtually defenceless?

  Then she learned that the marines in the advance party and the guns of Orion had seen off the Egyptian garrison just outside the town, and that a clever ruse had been used to telegraph Cairo and mislead Arabi about the speed and strength of the occupation of Ismailia. It made good copy. In the meantime, the only attack on the bustling little town came from the ever-present mosquitoes.

  Alice and the other correspondents landed and were housed in a small tented encampment near the Khedive’s winter palace, which Wolseley had taken – with the Khedive’s permission, it was emphasised – as his headquarters. A reconnaissance force had been sent along the railway out into the desert, but no fighting had been reported and the journalists were not allowed to accompany it. Alice had to fill her time with reporting on the difficulties experienced in mustering the army and supplying it. Already the heat was taking its toll, for the temperature at midday often exceeded 95 degrees, and Alice made it her business to visit the sickness tents, discovering them full of victims of sunstroke and stomach problems. She learned that medical supplies were proving to be inadequate, with no chloroform, castor oil or carbolic acid and, even worse, precious little rice, the best treatment for the diarrhoea that was sweeping through the camp. She duly wrote about this, but mindful of the censors, modified the implied criticism by reporting that these shortages were thought to be only temporary problems, caused by the difficulties of unloading. To her surprise, these references remained uncensored. Either Wolseley was too busy to be bothered with this sort of detail, or he was becoming more relaxed about press coverage.

  Shortly after landing, Alice visited the Khedive’s palace to find her husband. She had determined to display more affection to him and astonished Covington by kissing him warmly on the lips. He responded awkwardly – she sensed that his old injuries were causing him discomfort in the heat – and walked her outside into the well-watered gardens, towards the shade of a leaning palm.

  ‘How is your throat, my darling?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, very well, thank you, my dear. Look, no scar, the bruises have gone and I can swallow perfectly well again.’

  ‘Good. I am so sorry, but I can’t ask you to mess with us because it wouldn’t be right to single out one of the correspondents for this favour.’ He smiled. ‘Even though she is the wife of a staff colonel.’

  ‘Oh no. I quite understand. Why don’t you come to my tent this evening and I will show you how well I can cook over an open fire? It will be rough and ready but quite wholesome, I assure you.’ Then she added quickly, ‘I am afraid that you cannot stay, for the tent is extremely small.’

  He raised her hand to his lips in that well-remembered way and his eye twinkled. ‘What a pity, but never mind. I accept and I shall bring champagne, so that we can make the best of it. But you mustn’t milk me for information. I don’t want to get the sack.’

  The meal was a success. Alice had managed to buy a chicken and even find some rice to boil, and with the smoke from the fire keeping away all but the most persistent mosquitoes, they ate adequately and drank well, with the champagne staying reasonably cool in a water-filled leather bucket.

  Of course Alice tried to extract as much information as possible from her husband about Wolseley’s intentions, but he remained good-humouredly guarded. He did allow, however, that the General had been told that Arabi had about sixty thousand troops at his disposal, plus some six thousand tribesmen, and that Wolseley’s bluff had worked, with more than half of that force still deployed along the north coast. Nevertheless, he believed that troops were now being shifted south and that the main confrontation would take place at Tel el Kebir, where the Egyptian cannon would be the main problem.

  ‘He doesn’t care whether Arabi has a mob of thirty thousand or a hundred thousand,’ Covington confided. ‘It’s the guns of el Kebir that will be the biggest problem to solve. But he will do it, of course. He has two divisions here and the Indian contingent now being safely disembarked at Suez in the south. He is very confident.’

  ‘Was he ever anything but?’ Alice smiled. Despite her dislike of his inbred jingoism, she had a great admiration for the little General, who had been kind to her on the Mozambique border, where Covington had been so severely wounded, and who always knew exactly what he wanted to do and how to do it. She wondered if the intelligence on which he based his confidence had come from Simon. How to ask?

  ‘My dear,’ she began hesitantly, ‘I know that you dislike Simon Fonthill, but I am concerned about him, for he saved my life in Alexandria and I have no idea where he is. Do you happen to know if he is still working for the General and what he is doing?’

  Covington smoothed his moustaches, gave her a quick glance then frowned and gestured over his shoulder with his hook. ‘He’s out there somewhere, with his little Welshman and this Egyptian he has in tow. Wolseley’s sent him out into the desert ahead of Major General Graham’s force, to see what’s afoot around Tel el Maskhuta and beyond, to Kassassin.’

  Involuntarily, Alice drew in her breath. She attempted to conceal her anxiety with a smile. ‘Ah well, that means the General should receive reliable intelligence. Whatever you think of him, Simon Fonthill and his Welshman are marvellous scouts, you must agree.’

  ‘Mmmm, though a most unreliable fellow, with a strange streak in him. But I don’t want to talk of him. Are you sure I can’t stay?’ He leaned across and took her hand.

  Alice shook her head. ‘I am sorry, Ralph, but it really wouldn’t do.’ She gestured. ‘I am surrounded by men, as you can see, and I do think it would be invidious for me to be seen, er, co-habitating with you, even though you are my husband.’ She smiled and lifted his hand to her lips. ‘Anyway, my dear, there isn’t any damned room.’

  ‘Don’t need much, as a matter of fact.’ He sighed. ‘But if you insist, I shall limp away. Sleep well, my love. And thank you.’

  Alice cleaned her pots and plates and put them away. So refreshing to be forced to do things for oneself! To comfort herself, she replenished the fire with another precious piece of dried camel dung as she looked around at the darkened tents. She felt again a little tremble of fear at the thought that George might have followed her down the Canal and could be out there, somewhere, with a noose in his hand, with only the thin canvas of her tent to protect her . . . She shuddered and took the longest of her kitchen knives with her as she crawled under the canvas, into her bedroll, and turned her face to the west on the pillow. Somewhere, out there for certain, was Simon. But she mustn’t think of him.

  The next morning, she received a call from a sergeant armourer whom she had befriended. ‘’Ere you are, miss,’ he said, pressing a small parcel into her hand. ‘It’s the best I could do. All our stuff would be too big for you, and anyway, it would be a court-martial offence to get you an army revolver. This is actually a French job. A little beauty. Short barrel and small enough to fit into yer bag, but it’s eleven-millimetre calibre and can kill at short range. Can’t pronounce it, but it’s written down ’ere, see.’

  Alice took the slip of paper and read ‘Chamelot-Delvigne’.

  ‘It’s general issue for French officers now,’ he continued. ‘There’s a dozen cartridges with it. Sorry, but I couldn’t get more. Don’t ask me ’ow I got it, miss, but that’ll be ten pounds, please.’

  ‘Thank you, Sergeant. It sounds ideal.’ She paid him the money, and back in her tent unwrapped the parcel and weighed the revolver in her hand. It was small and stubby but felt good. She sighed and put it in her bag. Now she would never have to run from danger again.

  Chapter 14

  Simon, Jenkins and Ahmed rose well before dawn, as was their practice in the desert, and were in the saddle long before the sun came up. Its early rays showed nothing before them as usual but the unrelenting line of the rail track on their right and, on their left, the humped ridges that marked the course of the Sweetwater Canal. A morning breeze, however, had sprung up, though far from being a welcome respite from the ear
ly heat, it raised the fine particles of surface sand, causing the grit to penetrate their nostrils and find its way between the squinting slits of their eyes. It blurred their view so that the rare patches of scrub seemed to rise from the surface of a yellow fog rather than solid ground, eerily warranting their Arab name of ‘devil plant’. Simon raised his hand and pointed his finger to the left, gently pulling the head of his camel round. The others followed, heads bowed against the swirling sand.

  At the canal bank, Simon turned with his back to the wind to enable him to look down at the water level. ‘It’s gone down,’ he shouted. ‘They must have erected a dam further up. We’d better locate it quickly and tell General Graham, otherwise the whole canal will dry up downstream and ruin the advance. Top up the water bottles while we can.’

  Ahmed scrambled down the bank and filled their bottles from the green water. Then they plodded on, staying close to the line of the canal. Luckily, the sandstorm abated as quickly as it had arisen and visibility was restored to the trio so that, from about a mile away on the flat terrain, they could see the mound of rock and sand that had been piled across the Sweetwater at – as Simon had feared from their earlier reconnaissance – the hamlet of Magfar, where the banks of the canal were low and facilitated the building of the dam. Simon knelt awkwardly on one knee on his saddle and focused his field glasses on the dam. It seemed to be completely unguarded.