by John Harris
A Toweida near the tamarisk which at noon gave the only scrap of shade to the courtyard that existed started singing to a one-stringed guitar which made a noise like a tortured cat. Pentecost frowned at its barbarity, then he breathed deeply, catching the snuff-dry air in his nostrils, wondering how his wife would have regarded him walking out alone towards a line of tribesmen armed to the teeth. He had described the affair in a letter to her, then thought better of it and torn it up and written again without making any mention of it. Living in the uncertain atmosphere of Khaswe was enough. Already, he knew, his older son was going to infant school in a bus with windows grilled against grenades, and there’d been more than one shooting in Victoria Street, the main shopping centre. It seemed months now since he had shared his wife’s bed, and a long time since she had told him frankly that it was time they did something about increasing their family.
He stared again through the window, noticing how the shadows of the few scattered trees near the fortress striped the dusty yellow earth. The trees were unexpected in the bare Toweida Plain and he found himself wondering why they had never been cut down. In all the past assaults on the place they must have been a perfect haven for snipers. Probably some earlier commander, considerate of creature comforts, had planted them there to break the monotony of the view or to give himself a little shade where he could enjoy a picnic during the more peaceable periods.
Thrusting the thought from his mind, he sat down at the desk and lit a cigarette. He was a young man of precise and regular habits and he allowed himself only five a day. Enjoying the first puffs, he considered the situation.
Despite the quietness, he knew it would still be wise to take every care with the evacuation.
He paused, thinking of Aziz. The great curved scimitar hanging on the wall opposite him was a reminder of their friendship. Beneath it now there were a ceremonial dagger and a muzzle-loading musket, its stock inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl, its powder horn decorated with filigree gold and silver. Aziz’s gifts had been mostly warlike, though lately – as though sensing that they were entering a new period of peace – he had produced brassware and a carpet. His own gifts in return had all been peaceable because you didn’t give teeth to a wolf and because the weapons he held weren’t his to give. But his lighter had gone – at a later meeting Aziz had complained it had not worked – and so had the silver photograph frame which had once held a picture of his wife. It was probably now in a tent in Addowara or in the hills, holding the photograph of Aziz and Pentecost that Minto, who had also taken a photographic course, had taken of them.
The whole business was becoming rather expensive, in fact, because while Aziz could doubtless take what he wanted from whoever he wanted – merely by issuing a threat or using his strong right arm – it cost Pentecost a lot of money and he didn’t have much. Though the first Pentecost, by fighting on the right side at Hastings, had set the family up for generations, a later one had decided for the wrong side at Marston Moor and beggared them and he had had to buy Minto’s Japanese tape-recorder and Lack’s transistor – even the New English Bible Fox’s mother had given her son on his departure overseas, which he’d explained to Aziz as the Englishman’s Koran. It hadn’t been easy to persuade them to part with things they preferred to keep and only the feeling that they were contributing to their future safety had encouraged them to let them go.
Aziz, he felt, would give no trouble under the circumstances but he hoped that when Tafas finally got round to putting pen to paper the officials in Khaswe would not expect them to get out at such speed so that they would not only lose their dignity but probably also their pants.
Lack appeared in the doorway. ‘Beebe sent this,’ he said. ‘It’s not calculated to bring roses to your checks.’
Pentecost took the sheet of paper he offered. Ever since he had arrived, Beebe had been keeping a bulletin on the BBC news he picked up on the big receiver in his lorry with which he contacted his office in Khaswe. He taped it then typed it out and hung it in the little mess they shared, deriving a certain amount of wry humour from presenting them with a running commentary on their own end.
Pentecost glanced down at what he’d written.
Despite the British Government’s wishes, the Sultan of Khalit is now insisting that the treaty cannot be repudiated. Conditions have changed, he claims, and while a provisional date has been fixed for the British withdrawal, he now says that under the terms of the treaty he still has the right to insist on a British presence in Khalit.
Pentecost looked up. ‘Makes a change to be asked to stay,’ he observed mildly.
Lack shrugged. ‘They’d never let him off the hook,’ he said. ‘Not now. A joint statement was issued.’
‘Funnier things happen these days,’ Pentecost said. ‘Diplomacy takes some funny turns.’ He pushed the sheet of paper aside and sat for a moment deep in thought. ‘What’s your opinion of the Toweidas?’ he asked unexpectedly.
Lack smiled. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘they were never up-and-at-’em boys but, apart from a tendency to lose their heads when they’re excited, they’re in fine shape.’
‘That’s gratifying at least.’ Pentecost sat back and, without any further explanation, tossed a file across the desk. ‘Stores,’ he said. ‘I think we’ll have to itemise a bit further those we’re leaving. That pentolite for blasting, for instance – separate it from the rest of the explosives. It looks prettier and quartermasters like things pretty. Those two old inch-and-a-half Martinis. Shove ’em down. The politicians like to appear generous. Timber, biscuits, grain, kerosene’ – he leaned across the desk, his eyes travelling down the list – ‘sheets, plastic.’ His finger jabbed. ‘They’re different strengths, aren’t they? And sheets, iron, corrugated. They’re different sizes.’
Lack laughed. ‘When we’ve gone,’ he said, ‘the whole bloody Hejri nation’ll have corrugated iron loos with plastic windows.’
4
As Pentecost left the office, the Dharwa on guard outside slammed to attention and he returned the salute precisely because his polite mind told him a mere casual acknowledgement was not enough. He was a believer in God, the Queen, the realm of England, and good manners.
Crossing to his quarters, he took a shower, then, dressing in fresh clothes devoid of dust and the stains of sweat, he lit a cigarette, picked up a folding chair and a book of verse and marched in his precise narrow stride to the ramparts. Five minutes later, Talaal, the officers’ mess steward, appeared with a bottle of beer and followed him.
If they had done nothing else, the Khaliti engineers had managed to build the fortress over a well, and just inside, on a shelf where it was cool, Talaal always kept two or three bottles of beer for Pentecost. From time to time Lack tried to persuade him that there should be one for George Gould Lack, but nothing – neither persuasion nor outright bribery – had ever persuaded the Toweida to grant him the same privilege, and bitterly he watched as Pentecost climbed the steps and put down his chair. Lack thought he was a little mad, the way he performed the same ceremony at the same time every day, carrying his little seat up to the ramparts to watch the sun go down. Pentecost was opening his chair now and Lack looked round as he settled himself, to see Talaal just emerging from the mess with a tray, moving with as much decorum as if he were head waiter at the Savoy. Lack would have given his right arm for the same treatment, but without fail he got his beer warm and slapped in front of him with as little ceremony as if he were a new-joined lance-jack in the corporals’ mess.
The fact that he was observed by everyone in the fort and that Fox liked to set his watch by his movements completely escaped Pentecost. He was aware that he had the makings of an eccentric, but it didn’t worry him greatly. All Pentecosts were eccentrics. His great-grandfather had ridden into battle at the Alma eating raisins because he considered the army rations of the day bad for the health. His grandfather had worn a cotton kilt and sandals through the East African campaign in 1916 because he considered stockings and shor
ts the worst thing possible for prickly heat and jungle sores. And in the desert in 1942, his father had always been among the more outrageously dressed officers in an army noted for its outrageous dress. They’d always got away with it, whatever their rank – because there’d been Pentecosts in the Army List ever since there’d been an Army List.
As he took the beer from Talaal, he opened his book of verse and stared at the hills. One or two of the Toweidas were kicking a ball around on the square, then, deciding they were hungry, they disappeared abruptly, and the fort became silent. The sentry on the tower moved and Pentecost heard the clink of his equipment, but otherwise everything was still. For a moment, he caught the sound of high-pitched morse from where Beebe was toying in the back of his lorry, some brief harsh words in Arabic – probably from Cairo or Baghdad – then they were cut off sharply and the place was silent again, in a silence that held a great deal of menace.
Pentecost sipped his beer and stared around him between glances at his book of verse. The light was changing, and the shadows on the hills were changing rapidly from violet to purple. Over in the west, there was a faint pinky glow where the last of the sun still stained the sky.
Nalk Owdi was sounding off near the gate, and down near the MT park Sergeant Stone, talking to himself in a monotonous exasperated fury, was struggling to sort out the plug leads on a lorry which one of the Khaliti drivers had managed to connect in the wrong order. By the living quarters Sergeant Chestnut’s clipped Scottish voice lifted in a piercing shriek of disgust. ‘You – MacFadyen! Come here! No’ tomorrow – the noo!’
Only Chestnut could make a Scottish Highlander out of a Toweida called Mufaddhin but everyone knew that years in the sun had made Chestnut a little mad and the sound of his crazy screech belonged to the background – familiar, safe and secure.
‘Yon bastard’s no’ pullin’ his weight,’ he was saying bitterly to Stone. ‘He’ll nae do a bluidy thing I tell him. He can understand but he pretends not to.’
Stone’s laugh came up to Pentecost. ‘Go on, man! Even I can’t understand you.’
Pentecost smiled, then he became aware that the sound of frogs in a gully that led down to the river had stopped suddenly, as though something had moved down there and the alarm had been sounded. The silence seemed to envelop him, and, suddenly restless, he stood up, the glass still in his hand, and crossed to an embrasure.
There was a burst of chattering from a group of Toweidas under the solitary tamarisk then everything was quiet again. His eyes narrowed, he stared at the hills and, somehow, he was troubled in a way he couldn’t explain. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a light go on in one of the windows overlooking the courtyard and he felt almost as if he wanted to say, ‘No, not just now.’
He’d heard rumours, some of them brought to him by Fox who picked them up from God alone knew where, some of them by Zaid Fauzan who’d spent his whole leathery life on the frontier and knew the place like the back of his hand. They’d heard that Thawab abu Tegeiga was due to arrive in the hills to the north, with his Hawassi and Dayi and Tayur reims, and that the trouble-makers down in Khaswe had been suborning the Jezowi, the Khadari, the Muleimat and the Shukri, who were supposed to guard the Dharwa passes for the Sultan. If the agitators from Khaswe stirred up trouble there, it might be difficult getting through to Dhafran when the time came.
Pentecost glanced at the hills again. An army could hide itself in the folds up there, and he found himself looking for small things that might show where they were – a layer of floating dust over one of the ridges, a flock of birds disturbed from their roosting. Nothing moved and he told himself he was being unnecessarily edgy. There was no need to be afraid – not while he and Aziz were on their present good terms. Briefly, he saw a flicker of light, which burned and died almost as suddenly as it had come. Then another, and away over on his left another. Aziz was still there with his Hejris. If Pentecost was taking no chances, neither was Aziz. The mere fact that contact had been made didn’t break down the distrust of centuries, and both he and Aziz still sought proof that the other was honest. He wanted to be certain that when they walked out of Hahdhdhah, Aziz would permit them to go in peace. And Aziz would never be certain they were leaving till the last man had left.
Pentecost forced himself to sit down again, a priggish young man troubled by his own thoughts. He knew that Hejris were moving about in the market place in Hahdhdhah village, had probably even been to the gates of the fort with the Toweida traders. Never in a hundred years had anyone ever been able to stop that. All Toweidas were Hejris, even if all Hejris weren’t Toweidas, and it was impossible to tell the difference unless they wore their traditional headbands and girdles and the beads that decorated the fronts of their robes.
His eye roved over the land in front of the fort, resting on a clump of rocks fifty yards away, the mud-hut that had been a Toweida brothel, the little bazaar and stables, the patch of trees and long grass where the stream ran down to the river, all places he might have to fortify or clear if things went wrong…
He stopped dead as he saw himself once more nervously thinking of strong points and defences. For God’s sake, he told himself, it won’t come to that!
Then he noticed that the sound from Beebe’s receiver had changed suddenly, and heard a heavy voice blare out, iron-sounding with too much volume, only to die abruptly so that he could just still hear the voice without being able to catch the words.
As he listened it stopped abruptly, as though a switch had been thrown, and he saw Beebe jump down from his lorry and cross to the radio room. A moment later the voice started again, on Chestnut’s receiver, and he wondered what was going on.
5
The sardonic expression on Beebe’s face increased as the astonishment grew on Lack’s. He was almost enjoying himself as he watched his expression change.
‘You’d better get Billy,’ he said. ‘He’ll want to hear this.’
Lack was staring open-mouthed at the big receiver that Chestnut had tuned in, on Beebe’s encouragement, to London, his face slack, his eyes as round as marbles. On the table near his hand was an empty glass. Minto had a sickly grin on his face and looked like an overgrown schoolboy. Beebe watched them, amused. His heavy beard left him blue-jowled within a couple of hours of shaving, and his eyes, under his black eyebrows, were merry and restless as fleas. Chestnut’s thin Scots face looked frigid with rage.
Beebe’s big shoulders hunched. ‘Go on,’ he persisted. ‘Fetch Papa.’
Minto, who was almost too young to be certain of anything, knew that the insulting tone of Beebe’s remarks was really only a joke, but he had never quite been able to accept that his laughter was not unfriendly.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course.’
He turned on his heel and left the room. Crossing the square, he could see Pentecost leaning against the embrasure near the tower, a lonely figure against the darkening sky. He ran up the steps and stopped alongside him.
‘I think you ought to come,’ he suggested. ‘Special announcement coming up on the BBC.’
Beebe was bent with Chestnut over the set when Pentecost arrived, and he looked up as he entered.
Lack’s face still wore its stunned look. ‘They’ve ratted on us,’ he said at once.
Pentecost’s voice was suddenly surprisingly sharp and commanding. ‘Who’ve ratted on us?’
Lack gestured. ‘The Government.’
Pentecost frowned. ‘Would you mind telling me what’s happened?’ he said.
Lack seemed to shake his head, as though trying to force some sense into it. ‘The Government’s agreed with Tafas,’ he said. He seemed bewildered, as though someone had cheated him over something he failed to understand. ‘Or, in effect, they have, anyway.’
Pentecost’s eyes glinted. ‘I’ve still not been made aware of what’s happened,’ he pointed out frostily, and Beebe could see he was growing angry. ‘Surely, you learned to make a report more clearly than that.’
Lack seemed
to pull himself together at the rebuke. ‘Questions at UNO.’ He gestured heavy-handedly. ‘The whole pack of ’em on our necks. They had to admit Tafas’ right to invoke the treaty if an emergency still exists. While at the same time saying what a rotten lot we are to be here, anyway.’
‘And?’
‘Well, can’t you see what’s coming? He doesn’t have to sign now if he doesn’t want to!’ Lack’s face became thunderous. ‘It’s sheer bloody cowardice,’ he burst out. ‘The old bastard won’t face up to the fact that times are different.’
Minto was staring at him, puzzled. He was obviously not very clear on politics. ‘What difference does it make?’ he asked ‘We’ve had our instructions to leave.’
Lack’s rage exploded from him at last. ‘Don’t be a bloody fool, Freddy,’ he said. ‘Now that they’ve admitted Tafas’ rights, it’s kicked the underpinnings from the Government’s arguments. Tafas can demand that we stay. And if we do, we’ll be staying in Dhafran, too – and in Hahdhdhah!’
6
‘Her Majesty’s Government’ – the well-known voice sounded weary ‘—has been accused of failing to meet its responsibilities. It is not a matter of British prestige but of contractual commitments.’
‘It’s enough to poison the atmosphere of Eden,’ Lack growled. Pentecost gave him a quick look that Beebe caught, as though he found Lack’s comments pointless and irritating. As Lack became silent again, the heavy voice came through once more.
‘The Government has given a great deal of consideration to the Sultan’s claims,’ it droned on, ‘and we shall not be accused of going back on our promises. We cannot deny our commitments and we have been reminded that we have treaties…’
