by John Harris
Pentecost stared at him. ‘I shouldn’t, Mr Beebe,’ he said gravely.
He so sincerely meant what he said, Beebe found he was embarrassed. ‘Yeah—’ he grinned foolishly ‘—why not? I’m not a soldier. I can’t even shoot. Hell, you’d never miss me.’
Pentecost smiled. ‘You did remarkably well when you destroyed the mine. Nevertheless—’ he shook his head ‘—I’m as responsible for you as I am for all those civilian drivers and clerks and store-keepers and their women and children.’
‘For God’s sake!’ Beebe exploded.
‘I can’t let you go.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because they’d pick you up at once.’ Pentecost frowned. ‘You saw what happened to Lack. I’d need much more convincing that you couldn’t be recognised.’
Beebe left the office not certain whether to be angry or humiliated; then, going back to the radio room, he saw the strip of red cotton cloth he had thrown over the receiver to protect it from the drip of water when the rain had driven against the cracked wall in the wind.
He stared at it for a moment, then he grabbed it and threw it on his bed and, pulling a roll of Khaliti money from his case, he went outside again to the cellar where the women and the civilians sheltered. An hour later, he returned with heavy sandals, a pair of the baggy cotton trousers the clerks wore, a yellow shirt, the blood-stained woollen cloak in henna-dyed wool that had been worn by the prisoner he’d brought from the stables, a brown girdle and a length of dirty grey-black cloth for a turban. Inside the prison he had occupied, the ammunition belt, dagger and battered Lee-Enfield of the man they’d captured at the gates still rested on the bed. The stock of the rifle was scarred and pitted, as though it had been used for a hundred and one domestic chores from breaking firewood to knocking in nails. Picking it up, Beebe carried it back to his room, and that evening, after dark, he smeared his face, hands and feet with shoe polish and began to dress himself in the garments he’d bought. It was some time before he felt satisfied with the result then, putting the ammunition belt over his chest and the dagger at his waist, he picked up the ancient Lee-Enfield and went along the corridor to where Pentecost lived.
Pentecost was on the walls and he waited nervously for him to return. After a while he heard footsteps on the stairs and straightened. Unfortunately, it wasn’t Pentecost. It was Sergeant Chestnut and, as soon as he saw Beebe, his mad eyes flared and he reached for his revolver.
‘For Christ’s sake, Chestnut!’ Beebe howled. ‘Don’t shoot! It’s me! Luke Beebe!’
Uncertainly, the gun already in his hand, Chestnut stared at the shabby figure cowering against the wall, its hands clawing at the air.
‘Beebe,’ he said suspiciously, ‘what are ye doin’ in yon get-up?’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake—’ Beebe almost fainted with relief as Chestnut thrust the gun back in the holster ‘—I’m going to try to get down to Wintle! Somebody’s got to go.’
‘Does wee Billy know?’
‘Not yet. He said I had to convince him I’d got a good disguise. Hell, I think I convinced you.’
Chestnut’s crazy covenanter face stared at him with disapproval then it broke into a frosty smile. ‘Ye sure as hell almost got a bullet in y’r guts,’ he said. ‘Ah reckon if ye can fool me ye can fool oor Billy. Ye might even convince Aziz.’
He stared at Beebe more closely, frowning heavily. ‘Yon girdle’s wrong, though,’ he said. ‘The Deleimi dinnae wear ’em like that. They twist ’em before they tie ’em, and they wear their daggers underneath. The murdering bastards dinnae like ye tae see what they’re aboot tae stick in ye. An’ mon, y’r headdress’s a’ wrong. Yon’s an Indian turban. They wear ’em different here.’
Beebe grinned. ‘Sergeant, can you fix it for me? And how about the colour?’
Chestnut grinned. ‘Ye’re a wee bit on the purple side,’ he said.
3
Pentecost was reading the casualty figures with Minto when Chestnut appeared on the flimsy excuse of asking his advice about the Martinis. They were still talking when the door opened again and Beebe appeared.
Minto immediately reached for Pentecost’s revolver which was lying on the desk near him and Chestnut had to jump forward.
‘For Christ’s sake, no, sorr!’
Minto’s hand dropped. ‘What the hell’s he doing in here?’ he demanded. ‘Who is he? Some bloody spy from Aziz?’
‘Yon’s Mr Beebe, sir,’ Chestnut pointed out, and Beebe saw their faces fall.
‘I guess I’ve maybe convinced you I couldn’t be recognised,’ he said, and Pentecost came round the table to pear more closely at him.
‘You look uglier than normal, Mr Beebe,’ he said with a hint of a smile and Beebe’s brown-stained face split in a grin.
Pentecost stared at him for a moment, frowning, then he raised a hand and adjusted the headdress, drawing the ends down to hang over Beebe’s ear, and gave a twitch to the woollen cloak.
‘Deleimi,’ he said. ‘You look like one of Thawab’s men.’
‘You reckon I’ll do?’
Pentecost permitted himself the ghost of a smile. ‘I think perhaps you might, Mr Beebe. You’ve produced a perfect complexion from somewhere.’
‘Officers’ boot polish, sorr, mixed wi’ other ranks’,’ Chestnut said.
Pentecost stared again at Beebe, then he picked up the revolver from the table, and looked again at Beebe. ‘I think it might be a good idea if you wore one of these under your night-gown,’ he said.
‘I can go?’ Beebe asked.
‘What happens if you’re stopped?’
Beebe grinned. ‘I grunt. I’m a bad-tempered Deleimi.’
Pentecost frowned. ‘The Deleimi are a suspicious people,’ he said. ‘What’s more, they like boasting. It’s plain to them not to. I think we ought to work out something better than that. You couldn’t have been wounded in the face, for instance?’
Minto grinned. ‘I’ve got some rags I took off one of the Dharwas,’ he said. ‘They haven’t been washed yet. If you don’t object to dried blood and a few other things to go with the stains on that cloak. I could arrange for you to have been shot through the face.’
‘I can take my teeth out,’ Beebe said. ‘I’ve got a plate. I got my front incisors kicked out playing football.’
Pentecost nodded. ‘And let’s get Ali to write him a letter,’ he said. ‘To indicate he’s on his way to relatives near the Sufeiya to recover. From one of Thawab’s minor chiefs – Taif el Heiridhin or Yasin or Abu Mauliyi. Something nice and florid. If anyone argues, you can point to your face and produce your piece of paper.’
Beebe was grinning now. ‘I’m going then?’
Pentecost smiled. ‘I don’t think I could stop you, Mr Beebe.’
They were still laughing when Ali appeared with the laissez-passer he’d written. He’d borrowed a sheet of cheap notepaper from one of the civilian workers who’d bought it in Hahdhdhah village. The Arabic scrawl indicated that the bearer was Khallaf, a Deleimi rifleman shot through the face in the attack on the gate. Because he had lost teeth and part of his tongue, he was permitted to go to relatives to recuperate. ‘Let no man call him coward,’ it ended. It was signed Abu Mauliyi. With it, Pentecost handed over another folded paper.
‘What’s this?’ Beebe demanded.
Pentecost smiled. ‘You might call it instructions – to leave.’
‘I don’t need a written order, for Christ’s sake!’
‘You might,’ Pentecost said gravely. ‘There’ll always be someone who’ll try to suggest you slipped out because things were becoming unpleasant.’
‘They wouldn’t say that!’
‘The world’s full of grocers, Mr Beebe.’
They were studying him carefully now in a final check-up, adjusting his headdress and the bandages round his face, and rearranging his clothing. One of the few remaining goats had just been slaughtered for the following day’s meal and the grinning Fauzan brought some of the blood
in a clay bowl.
‘I hope you haven’t got a queasy stomach, old boy,’ Minto said. Beebe grimaced. ‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘It’s in a good cause, I guess.’
Minto splashed the blood literally over his clothes and bandages and head so that his beard and moustache dried stiffly and his hair stuck out in spikes under his headcloth.
‘Hold your head up, Mr Beebe,’ Pentecost said as he practised walking. ‘A wound’s something to be proud of. You’re a Deleimi warrior and you’ve been well and truly blooded.’
They were still studying his appearance for mistakes when Fox appeared to tell them that the timbers and rocks had been removed from behind the gate.
‘Dark as the inside of a cow, sir,’ he said. ‘They’ll never see anything.’
‘You know your way, Mr Beebe?’
‘Hell, you can see the lights in Hahdhdhah. After that all I have to do is follow the road down to the Sufeiya.’
They shook hands all round, then while the sergeants went to the wall, Pentecost accompanied Beebe to the gate. Zaid Fauzan stood there, uneasy with the rocks and sandbags and timbers pulled away.
‘Nothing moving, Abassi,’ he whispered.
Beebe turned to Pentecost, suddenly terribly frightened by the silence and the darkness. Until that moment, he had never realised how much security he had found inside the crumbling stone walls.
‘Hell,’ he said, hesitating. ‘I didn’t realise it would be as scary as this.’
As he slipped outside, Beebe felt rather than saw the gate close behind him, and heard the low shuffling sounds of the rocks and timbers being replaced. It was then that he realised he was alone and that there was no longer an eight-foot-thick wall between him and the Deleimi murderers who had flayed Lack alive and exhibited Stone’s remains.
For a moment, he found his knees refusing to bend and his limbs refusing the demands of his brain, then he heard a rustling sound among the brushwood on his right, and half-expecting to see one of the green banners that haunted his sleep appearing from a fold of ground, he dived away from the wall to where he knew the rocks huddled. It might have been only a small animal but it was enough to stir his paralysed limbs and he lay panting and shuddering for a while in the darkness until he could find his courage again, and moved away from the fortress in a low crouching shuffle in the direction of Hahdhdhah village.
4
After a quarter of an hour’s stumbling in the shadows, barking his knees and skinning his elbows on rocks, Beebe stopped dead, suddenly aware how much more difficult movement was at night. Then, as his eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness, he saw the road on his right and made his way towards it. As he reached it he glanced towards the fort and realised that for the first time he was looking at it from the outside. He’d been half asleep when he’d arrived and hadn’t even bothered to look up, and now he saw how low the walls were, how fragile the whole thing seemed.
After a while he heard voices ahead of him and, before he was aware of it, he had almost stumbled on to a low fire hidden behind a cluster of rocks. There were half a dozen Hejri warriors round it, and for a moment, Beebe stood motionless, staring at the men who had risen slowly to their feet as he emerged from the darkness, their hands reaching out for their weapons. His heart pounded in his chest and his limbs felt paralysed with fright.
One of the men approached, his rifle in his hand, and Beebe realised he would have to do something. As the man spoke, he made a grunting noise and pointed to the bloody bandages about his face and the matted hair of his moustache and beard. The Hejri peered at him in the dim glow of the fire, then he said something which Beebe failed to understand and turned his back on him indifferently.
The gesture was a tremendous boost to Beebe’s morale. They were cruel men used to pain and wounds in their daily life and they weren’t prepared to waste much sympathy on him. As they turned away and squatted again by the fire, Beebe stood for a moment, then he shuffled out of the glow of the flames, one hand to the bloodstained bandages as though the pain troubled him.
From that point on, he passed several groups of men carrying flags, and realised he was passing through the Hejri lines. The first groups all challenged him, reaching for their rifles as they spoke, and he realised they must be the outposts, but later he was ignored, and he saw he was in the middle of the Hejri encampment where it sprawled across the road to the village.
Here the men were bent over wounded friends, and a donkey with an injured man astride its back was heading out of camp. Almost without thinking, Beebe began to follow it. More wounded attached themselves to them and soon a straggling group had formed, heading across the plain.
Hahdhdhah village was a hive of activity. Men lounged in doorways and, through the openings, by the dim light of oil lamps, Beebe could see interiors with more men in groups, arguing loudly. Some of them wore bandages but they all carried weapons, and the women shuffled between them silently, while children stood in little clusters staring wide-eyed at the activity. There were a few horsemen trotting about and in the square he saw the remains of Lack’s lorry. The houses alongside were black with smoke.
The shuffling group of wounded came to a halt. Beebe stopped with them, then he became aware that they were all excited. He couldn’t make out what was agitating them so much, until he saw a man drawing on the walls of one of the houses. The crude picture he was forming with a stick of charcoal from a fire appeared to be a gun.
Then a youth, probably hoping to strut and swagger among the girls, tried to take the battered rifle from him and Beebe was so startled he almost let it go. Remembering just in time that he was supposed to be a warrior, to whom his weapon was another limb, he hung on to it, grunting fiercely and reaching for his dagger, and the youth released the rifle and fled. A little shaken, he hurried through the village and was marching head down when a horseman suddenly clattered across his path and halted his mount. The rifle in his hands was pointed at Beebe and a harsh voice snarled at him. His heart pounding, Beebe gestured at his bandages. The man snapped something else at him and Beebe continued to gesture. Still the man snarled and, still grunting, Beebe pulled away a corner of the bandage and showed the matted blood on his moustache and opened his mouth to show the gaps where he had taken out his dental plate.
Still the man stared at him suspiciously and, finally remembering the paper Pentecost had given him, Beebe fished it from his robes and handed it over. The horseman stared at it then he called to another younger man lounging in a doorway, dressed in trousers and shirt and draped with ammunition belts.
The newcomer stared at the blood-stiffened hair hanging over Beebe’s eyes, then he thrust the paper back at him and spoke quickly to the man on the horse. Beebe caught the name, Abu Mauliyi, once or twice. The horseman growled something and gestured with his rifle that he was free to go. Almost sick with fear, Beebe grasped the old Lee-Enfield and marched past, his head up as he had been told, conscious of the horseman’s eyes on him all the way out of the village, his back tingling at the prospect of a bullet in the spine.
It was growing daylight as he put the village behind him and headed across the dusty plain. There were still horsemen about, trotting towards the north or driving cattle before them, but he was ignored. There were one or two curious glances at the dried blood on his face and beard and on the bandages, and occasionally a sympathetic question to which he answered with a gesture at his mouth.
After a while, he came to a check-point, probably set up to guard against deserters, where he was challenged again. This time, however, the paper brought no comment. The sentry was smoking a cigarette and Beebe stared at it desperately, aware that he had not smoked for three weeks. The man saw the look in his eyes and offered it to him. For a moment, Beebe hesitated, then he nodded, took the cigarette and put it to his mouth awkwardly, as though it were difficult to get it between his lips.
The first puff gave him new life and the sentry grinned at his expression, slapped his shoulder and waved him on.
> He began to feel he was safe at last. Horsemen still clattered past, the trappings of their mounts jingling, and occasionally a camel, its bells clonking softly, to mingle with the babel of voices. At every house there appeared to be roistering Hejris, some of them taking to prostitutes with henna-dyed fingers and toes.
Now that he was growing used to freedom it was a wonderful feeling to be out of the fortress, to be able to see beyond the wood-and-stone walls to the distance and know that nothing held him in. Occasionally, he caught the scent of blossom from the withered bushes, a harsh scent but, after the odours of Hahdhdhah, inexpressibly moving. He had no idea how far he had travelled. Soon he would have to cross the river and since his pass took him only to the village on the banks, anywhere beyond he would be regarded with suspicion.
In the early morning light, he met a boy with a herd of scraggy goats and, by signs and gestures, managed to convey that he wanted milk. The boy had a tin bowl out of which he appeared to eat his meals and he filled it with milk from one of the nannies and passed it over. Turning away, Beebe affected difficulty in drinking, and, because of the bandages, spilt a lot of it down his clothing. Then, giving the boy a coin, he marched on, weary now and moving more slowly.
He still met horsemen or riflemen, but there were not so many now and he realised he would have to be more careful. A single individual would rouse more suspicion than a straggling crowd.
During the day, growing tired, he decided to sleep and, finding a place among the rocks, curled up in as much shade as he could find. He awoke late in the afternoon, having slept far longer than he expected. He still had a long way to go and he was growing hungry now, so he ate one of the withered oranges he’d brought with him and gnawed at a hard biscuit, and drank from a thin sliver of sullen water moving between the stones.
As he followed the stream south, he realised it was growing broader, and he knew he must be approaching the Sufeiya and that this stream was one of the feeders from the mountains. Finally, he saw a gleam of water and a cluster of brown-yellow buildings in the distance and realised he had reached his second obstacle. Now there was only the river. Hahdhdhah was as good as saved.
