by John Harris
3
As Sergeant Fox blew his whistle, the Toweida Levies trooped off the dusty field below the fort, followed by the triumphant Dharwa Scouts who, as usual, had won.
There was a lot of cheerful boasting from the Dharwas and sullen responses from the Toweidas, who somehow never seemed able to produce either the energy or the skill to beat the aggressive little hillmen. The Dharwas could knock them into a cocked hat at everything, whether it was weapon-handling or sport or merely knocking back their liquor and chasing the women.
‘Toweidas play football like camels in rut,’ one of the Dharwas said loudly, and Sergeant Fox, scenting trouble, manoeuvred himself to a position between them and started shoving the cocky hillmen back into the fort while Zaid Fauzan’s heavy fists thudded on the heads and shoulders of the Toweidas.
Several groups of villagers had turned up from Hahdhdhah to watch the match, with the civilian clerks and drivers and a few of the wives and children from the fort. They enjoyed football and went berserk when a goal was scored, turning somersaults and loudly offering from the touchline to fight the losing side. As the surly Toweidas trailed back, the drivers and clerks started a game of their own with the Hahdhdhahi, kicking the ball about with more enthusiasm than skill with their bare leathery feet, then Fox noticed that one of the men from the village approached the Hahdhdhahi who was playing in goal, who immediately shouted something to his full-back and set off towards the village at a trot. Soon afterwards, the full-back left, too, and before long most of the villagers had disappeared, only a few of the young boys remaining. The match never got beyond the stage of a kick-about and, eventually, even the boys cut it short and disappeared abruptly, leaving the clerks and drivers angry, hot-eyed and frustrated.
It was a curious incident because the Hahdhdhahi liked the game and many of them fancied themselves at it enough to get hold of European football magazines. Fox stared after them, a referee without a match, wondering how much it was connected with the political events in Khaswe. Rather to their surprise the cancellation of all the instructions for departure they had received had not yet arrived; and they were beginning, tremulously at first but gradually with increasing confidence, to feel that the powers in Khaswe had decided, with the outbreak of violence in the capital, that British officers would be of more use on the coast and were prepared to consolidate by withdrawing from the frontier.
Day after day had gone by yet still the expected order to stay had not arrived, though Fox had long since become aware of the growing tension north of the Dharwas and that the word Istiqlal – Independence – had begun to turn up on the walls of Hahdhdhah village. In addition, a man had been found by one of the Civil Guards, the tough village policemen of the frontier, with a stick of gelignite in a highly volatile state and circular metal discs drilled in the centre which could well have been the base plates of grenades. Fox knew very well what that meant and as the clerks and drivers trailed away to their quarters, he spoke quietly to one of the Dharwa storekeepers who nodded and set off after them.
Not long afterwards, Fox presented himself at Pentecost’s office, still in football shorts but wearing his uniform jacket and cap to make the visit official. He slammed up a salute that shook him from head to foot. He believed in saluting.
‘Hello, Jim,’ Pentecost said, using Fox’s first name as he sometimes did in the privacy of his office. ‘Have a cigarette.’
Fox accepted the cigarette and sat down at Pentecost’s suggestion.
‘I think you ought to know, sir,’ he began. ‘I have a feeling there’s something funny in the wind.’
‘Such as what?’
‘You watched the football match, sir?’
‘Yes. From the tower. It’s a pity the Dharwas always win. It doesn’t help the Toweidas’ confidence.’
‘Notice what happened afterwards, sir?’
Pentecost frowned. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I didn’t. I saw the drivers and the storemen start a match with the villagers but I expected it to be the usual shambles of bad temper and sulks, and decided to let it go.’
‘It never finished, sir.’
‘It didn’t?’
‘No, sir. The villagers broke it off. They went home.’
Pentecost frowned. ‘Something wrong?’ he asked.
Fox gestured with his cigarette. ‘Nothing I saw, sir, but I got Jemal Zeidkha to make a few enquiries. It seemed the villagers had been warned to get home because there was trouble brewing.’
‘Trouble?’
‘That’s what they said, sir.’
That night, as usual, Pentecost took up his position on the rampart and stared uneasily towards the hills. Fox’s report didn’t surprise him. He had noticed that the daily cart of fresh vegetables from the village had been growing later each day and that day hadn’t arrived at all. He’d already decided that that was ominous in itself and somehow it seemed more ominous still with the incident Fox had reported.
As he considered the situation, Lack appeared behind him and leaned alongside him in the embrasure.
‘Something worrying you?’ he asked.
‘Here and there,’ Pentecost said mildly. ‘Talaal tells me no vegetables found their way here today. Perhaps the Hahdhdhahi have been listening to the radio, too.’
‘If they haven’t, the Hejri have.’ Lack frowned. ‘They’ve been down in Hahdhdhah threatening the villagers. Beebe picked that one up this morning on his way back. He stopped to buy fruit.’
‘I’d rather Beebe didn’t wander around Hahdhdhah alone,’ Pentecost said. ‘Tell him, will you?’
‘You know what he’ll say: I’m a civilian. I’m an American citizen. I can do as I please.’
Pentecost stared at the hills again, almost as though he’d forgotten Lack.
‘I’ve decided to call in the Civil Guard,’ he said suddenly.
Lack’s eyebrows rose. ‘Oh? Why?’
Pentecost gave a little smile. ‘Let’s say I want to inspect them.’
Lack thought of the tough scruffy policemen of the Hahdhdhah Command who kept the villages in order with the weight of their fists and the threat of their weapons. ‘They’ve never been inspected before,’ he pointed out.
‘Then it’s time they were.’
Lack frowned, never quite able to understand the working of Pentecost’s mind. ‘You mean you want them all?’
‘All! – And while we’re at it, I think we should do something about those vegetables that didn’t appear. I thought we might send someone down to round them up.’ He paused, then gave Lack a radiant small boy’s smile. ‘You, for instance.’
Lack looked shocked at the idea of someone of his rank performing such a menial task.
‘Can’t one of the sergeants do it?’ he suggested.
Pentecost shook his head. ‘I’d rather you went.’
Lack shrugged. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Don’t think I’m dodging it – if that’s what you want. Suppose the bastards don’t want to sell?’
‘I suggest that you take Sergeant Stone down there with Int-Zaid Mohamed and twenty men to encourage them. Leave Mohamed outside with the men – we don’t want him visiting his wife and getting himself knocked off down an alley.’
‘Wouldn’t it be better to take Hussein? He hasn’t got a wife down there to visit.’
Pentecost smiled. ‘It won’t worry Mohamed. I’ve noticed that when he’s parked outside, his wife always nips out and visits him.’
Lack frowned, wondering how it was that Pentecost seemed to know everything worth knowing about everyone. He’d never noticed the movements of Mohamed’s wife when he’d visited the village. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Mohamed it is.’
‘Take Stone in with you to do the arguing,’ Pentecost went on. ‘If the excuses are genuine, make sure the supplies come back with you. If they aren’t genuine, get Stone on the job.’
Lack was inclined to make light of the missing vegetables. ‘Won’t they turn up tomorrow?’ he asked.
‘They might not.’
>
Lack frowned. ‘Billy,’ he said, ‘are you gathering stores in case we have to stay here?’
‘I’m just fussing perhaps,’ Pentecost conceded mildly. ‘But it’s a great thing in a soldier – fussing. All the best soldiers are born fussers.’
‘Do you think something’ll go wrong and they’ll make us stay?’
‘We’ve been given no indication that they’re thinking that way,’ Pentecost said. ‘Our orders are still to leave on the twenty-first.’
Lack nodded. ‘You’d expect some sort of provisional instruction if they were going to change it, wouldn’t you?’ he said.
‘You would indeed.’
‘Then what’s with all this about the vegetables?’
‘I just like my greens,’ Pentecost said evasively. ‘That’s all. But while you’re at it, you might to-and-fro a bit and see if you can spot anything.’
Lack was looking uneasy now. ‘You think there’s something in the wind, Billy, don’t you?’ he said.
Pentecost was still non-committal. ‘Got to keep the Hahdhdhahi up to snuff, haven’t we?’ he said. ‘Got to let ’em know we’re not relaxing or they might be encouraged to do something naughty on the twenty-first.’
4
Lack was not the only unwilling one. Despite his wife’s presence, Int-Zaid Mohamed seemed to show no enthusiasm for the job either – any more than the Toweida Levies who were usually cheerful enough about a chance to see women. They marched out briskly, however, making a good show, and Pentecost watched them from the rampart above the gate. He turned to Fox. ‘Let’s have the sentries doubled, Sergeant,’ he suggested. ‘And tell ’em to keep their eyes open.’
Fox gave him a curious look, then he saluted and turned away.
‘Billy’s worried,’ he observed to Sergeant Chestnut as they passed on the parade ground a moment later. ‘He thinks there’s trouble in the offing.’
‘Och, charming,’ Sergeant Chestnut said sourly. ‘Bluidy charming! Yon’s all we want.’
Lack didn’t enjoy his stay in the village. The headmen were polite, even effusive, and as usual offered him coffee and a seat on their carpets. He refused, though he knew quite well that Pentecost would have accepted and, perched primly on a dusty cushion under the fretted woodwork of the coffee house, would have remained chatting cheerfully, drinking coffee or mint tea off the charcoal barriers and nibbling sweetmeats while still managing somehow to conduct the search that Stone was undertaking at that moment. Pentecost had the gift of being polite even to a murderous-looking Hahdhdhahi and completely in touch with his job at the same time. Lack decided he wasn’t cut out for searching hostile villages.
Behind him, the women were beating their washing by the stream and the labourers and farmers were tending the meagre earth beyond the houses, where their withered oranges and olives and dates grew. But he had also noticed strangers standing in doorways and in the shade of the few dusty trees, and he suspected they were tribesmen who had filtered down in the night from the hills to stir up the trouble he was encountering now. He even suspected they had guns with them and, as his back tingled at the thought, he wished to God he was within the safety of the fort.
He decided he’d been a damned fool to volunteer for this duty with the Khaliti army. He’d been growing bored with Germany at the time and had felt that Khalit might be a good place to get in a little not very dangerous active service that would enable him to lord it over the newcomers in the mess when he returned to civilisation. He hadn’t allowed for a dangerous switch in policy and he certainly hadn’t expected to be posted to a God-forsaken spot like Hahdhdhah.
He heard the crash of Sergeant Stone’s boots behind him and turned. Stone was always the most militaristic of the sergeants. He was a short thickset man with a stiff blond thatch and he always conducted himself as though he were on parade with the Guards outside Buckingham Palace.
‘All ready, sir,’ he announced.
‘What have we raised?’ Lack demanded.
‘All three carts of vegetables and grain.’
‘Much trouble?’
‘No, sir. But it’s my opinion the bastards didn’t want to let us have ’em.’ Stone looked at Lack curiously. ‘What’s Mr Pentecost up to, sir? Why are we getting so fussy? We’re still leaving on the twenty-first and we’ve got enough tinned stuff to keep us till then.’
‘Major Pentecost,’ Lack said glumly, ‘like God, moves in a mysterious way.’ He slapped his boot with his cane. ‘Mohamed seen his wife?’
Stone grinned. ‘Yessir. Vanished into one of the Toweida huts for ten minutes. I reckon it was long enough.’
Lack shrugged. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘let’s go. And, since there was some difficulty in getting the bloody stuff, let’s have the Toweidas under Mohamed behind us, between the carts and the village, and you and I in front in the car so that the bastards can’t bolt. We don’t want any twisted knickers this trip.’
Back at the fort, Pentecost eyed the vegetables with approval. ‘What was it like in the village?’ he asked.
‘Bloody nasty,’ Lack replied feelingly. ‘You could feel it. There were a bunch of bods down there who were never Toweida. They had Khusar stamped all over them.’
‘Armed?’
‘Nothing I could see. Though my back was tingling all the time. I reckon they’ve been intimidating the headmen. I heard a few snide remarks.’
‘They know about the Sultan’s new attitude?’
‘Oh they know all right.’
Pentecost nodded. ‘You might be good enough to ask Beebe if he’ll drop in on me when he’s a moment.’
Beebe didn’t have a moment just then and he made no effort to provide one. It didn’t really suit him to take orders from a young man who looked as though he ought still to be in diapers, and he finished what he was doing before strolling over to Pentecost’s office. Outside the door he met Minto emerging.
‘How’s Billy?’ he asked.
Minto grinned. ‘Navel still central,’ he said.
Beebe paused and lit a cigarette deliberately because he knew that Lack and Minto always made a point of putting out their own cigarettes before entering. One always did put out one’s cigarettes before entering the commanding officer’s sanctum sanctorum and one continued to do it even when the commanding officer was only a jumped-up captain with a face like a Botticelli cherub.
The action gave him surprisingly little pleasure, however. Pentecost had always been scrupulously polite and friendly towards him. His manner always made Beebe feel more important than he was and he realised that it sprang from a gilt for making each of them feel he was their only friend. It was charm, Beebe knew, but but he also knew that it wasn’t a false or superficial charm; but something very real that came with breeding, something Lack would never have, for all his boisterous bonhomie, and he guessed it came through his family, from centuries of caring for other people.
As it happened, Pentecost didn’t even notice he was smoking. He simply waved him to a chair, pushed a packet of cigarettes across the desk to him, and finished signing two or three papers before looking up.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr Beebe,’ he said with a disarming smile.
Beebe moved uncomfortably in the chair, to his own surprise keeping the cigarette below the desk where it couldn’t be seen. ‘Understand you want to see me,’ he said.
‘That’s right.’ Pentecost paused, rubbing his peeling nose before he spoke. ‘Like a drink? I have a little left.’
‘No thanks. Not for me.’
Pentecost didn’t press him, and leaned back in his chair.
‘You’ll be fully aware of the Government’s new policy towards Khalit, Mr Beebe,’ he said. ‘In fact, it was you who drew our attention to it.’
‘Sure, I heard it on the radio.’ Beebe was conscious of the studied formality of Pentecost’s address. Lack and Minto seemed to have got over their surprise at having an American among them and gave him his Christian name but Pentecost still stuck to the st
iffer title.
He eyed Pentecost warily. He was fidgeting with a book on the table and Beebe caught the title. The Cavalier Poets, for Christ’s sake. The idea startled him at first then somehow he realised it went with Pentecost.
‘Have they told you you’ve got to stay?’ he asked.
Pentecost smiled. ‘Not yet, Mr Beebe. Not yet. I still have my fingers crossed.’
‘Will they?’
‘So far we have no reason to think they will. For some reason that’s beyond our ken, the Khaliti Command seems to be giving up the frontier.’
‘Either way it’s a lousy deal they’ve handed you.’
‘It’s nothing new,’ Pentecost replied. ‘We have to earn our keep.’ He seemed a little shy, as though his sense of duty were something to be ashamed of in front of others. ‘However, I do agree with you and I’m making a point of putting it all down on paper. Just in case something goes wrong and they start blaming us.’
Beebe stared at him. He seemed to have a strange solid belief in his own ability, as though his family traditions made sure of that. It was an odd self-satisfied attitude which was also, at the same time, self-effacing, because he seemed to feel that, with his background, it wasn’t necessary for anyone else to appreciate his worth.
