The Mule on the Minaret (46 page)

It rarely did. Either the saucer spluttered like an inferior firework or it emitted a raging furnace, that converted the room into an oven. It depended on the wind, the temperature, or the extent to which the pipe and saucer had been cleaned. It was very difficult to adjust the flow of oil. It stopped or poured and when it poured, it would seep through the brickwork and ooze in a thick black stream across the floor. From the balcony offices it would, as often as not, drip into the rooms below.

There was a school of thought that considered that water should be mixed with the oil and in some offices a second petrol tin was arranged through which water dripped simultaneously with the oil into the saucer. The flame under this treatment was often more consistent, but it produced its effect through a series of small explosions that were not only noisily disturbing but emitted a volume of malodorous smoke.

Reid spent quite a little time during the week looking at this contraption. It served as a corrective to his files. It reminded him of how backward a country this was in many ways.

The orderly straightened up. His fingers were covered with grease. He rinsed them at a tap. Then dried them in his hair.

‘I must get back to my desk,' Reid thought. But he knew that he could not concentrate upon his report, as long as that airgraph was unanswered. An idea occurred to him. He went back into his room, picked up the telephone directory, and looked for the number of the Advocate-General's office. He had not a branch telephone in his room. He went into the main office. The telephone was in an annexe where he could not be overheard. He knew one of the A.G.'s captains. ‘One of my men has a problem,' he explained. ‘His wife is carrying on with a Pole. She wants a divorce. And he's more or less agreed to give her one. He does not have to go back to get it, does he?'

‘Good heavens, no; if he had, half the army would be applying for repatriation on compassionate grounds.'

‘Is it a difficult procedure?'

‘Not particularly.' He explained what it was.

‘Does it take very long?'

‘It can do sometimes. Papers get lost. Enemy action. All that kind of thing. It's safer to send everything in duplicate by different mails. One doesn't always know if the papers have arrived. We ask
them to acknowledge the receipt by airgraph. But the airgraphs themselves get lost. Sometimes the people forget to send receipts.'

‘Would you say it would take a year?'

‘On the average, yes. It can take longer.'

‘Thank you very much.'

He took an airgraph from his drawer. ‘Dear Rachel,' he wrote. ‘I have just received your letter. I am writing to Jenks. He will get in touch with you.' He paused. Jenks was his lawyer, an old family friend, he was the godfather of their second boy. Jenks could see how the land lay. He would be the go-between. There was no point in his starting with Rachel a long correspondence that might well become acrimonious. Jenks could argue his case better than he himself could. Rachel would listen to him. He concluded the letter briefly. ‘I send you my love and my best wishes, now and always.' And now he thought, the rough draft of that appreciation.

The half of it was finished by one o'clock and he was able to mingle with the straggling group of officers that was on its way to a preprandial session. There were some twenty officers in the centre, half of them R.A.F. in view of the preponderant position occupied by the air force in Iraq. The mess consisted of a series of two-storied balconied houses, each one set about a garden. There was a broad terrace above the river, where the centre dined in summer and met for aperitifs in winter. Through its various links with the Intelligence units of other areas, the Mess was enabled to enjoy a variety of aperitifs denied to other messes. Vodka from Iran, arak from Syria. The centre had a monastic air, and it is traditional for monks who are denied the pleasure of the bed to enjoy the pleasures of the table. In Iraq there was a complete unavailability of female company. The shuffling, veiled Moslem women were strictly chaperoned by their menfolk. The climate was considered too fierce for A.T.S. units to be stationed there. There were a few female secretaries, the wives of oilmen, for the most part; but the proportion of men to women was a hundred or so to one. Reid, before he left for Paiforce, had been told: ‘The wise man recognizes that as far as he is concerned, that side of life is finished for the duration.'

‘That's all right by me,' said Reid. ‘I'm in the middle forties, and I'm married.'

He had indeed found the complete sexlessness of Baghdad a relief after the restless atmosphere of Beirut, where women were accessible, but where the ratio was fifteen to one; and nearly every serving soldier was basically dissatisfied because he was within the
range of temptations that he could not assuage. Reid was grateful for that atmosphere today. Problems such as his present one, had no status here.

That afternoon, just as though it had been any other day, he took a ‘bellum' across the river for a round of golf on the nine-hole Course that ran round the Casuals cricket ground; and by his own low standard he played rather well, although all the time he was phrasing and rephrasing the letter that he would write to Jenks.

The office reopened at half past four; and he set himself to the drafting of his appreciation.

‘An F.S.P. corporal,' he wrote, ‘usually travels on the Taurus. Chessman will give him the number of the agent's compartment. It is customary for that corporal to search the kit of any suspected passenger. He will, on this occasion, be on his guard against waking the suspicions of the agent. Another F.S.P. corporal will join the train at Mosul and pay particular attention to any Iraqi who is waiting on the platform. These two N.C.O.s should between them be able to identify the agent and point him out to a detective who will be waiting for him at Baghdad station. This detective will be chosen by our own city representative; or if it is intended to take the Baghdad police into our confidence, we can borrow one of their detectives. Once we have found who the agent is, we should have no difficulty in spreading our net wide.'

He took the draft to the staff-sergeant. ‘If you can get that done for me by ten o'clock tomorrow, I'll be grateful.' It was now quarter to six; at half past, the office closed and the clerks went back to their evening meal. But the officers did not dine till half past eight, and most of them stayed on at their desks, tidying up the remains of the day's work. It was, Reid had found, the most productive hour of the day. Then would be the time to write to Jenks.

‘Dear Jenks,' he wrote. ‘Rachel has told me that she is in love with an American, a Colonel and a lawyer in civil life, and wants to marry him. She has asked me to give her a divorce as soon as possible. I have acknowledged her letter, telling her that I am writing to you about it and asking you to get in touch with her. Will you do so, please? Rachel has given me very few details except that he is a few years younger than she and that he is, as we used to say, “well connected”.

‘In my opinion, the idea of a divorce is most unwise. Things are bound to seem different in peacetime, for both of them. Whatever he may think now, he will surely want to get back to America as
soon as the war is over; and will he want to shackle himself with the responsibility of another man's children, foreign children? I think we should do nothing. I rang up the advocate-general's office to ask what the procedure was for soldiers serving overseas applying for a divorce. You have probably had cases of this kind already, but in case you haven't, this is the procedure.' He repeated what the A.G. had told him. ‘It is quite a straightforward process, but it can take time. Papers get lost. Enemy action, that kind of thing. He said a year on the average. I suggest that we should be dilatory.

“Thou shalt not kill yet need not strive
Officiously to keep alive.”

Give them time to get over it. He'll probably be posted overseas as soon as the second front is opened. I leave the tactics to you, but that's the strategy I should suggest. I very definitely don't want a divorce myself. And I don't think it would be fair to the children. What a long time I shall have to wait, damn it, before I can get an answer to this letter.'

‘I think that covers everything,' he thought, which was precisely what he had thought an hour earlier when he had read over his appreciation before taking it to the staff-sergeant to be typed. He could wish that he felt as certain of the outcome of the letter as he did of the appreciation.

His appreciation reached Istanbul six days later. Copies had also been sent to Beirut, Cairo and Jerusalem. Sedgwick rang for Eve. ‘Operation Radio,' he said. ‘Baghdad's in first again. You might as well take it round to the Embassy and let them have a look at it. Read it yourself first. I'd like to know how you feel.'

The document was signed by the Colonel, but Eve knew that it would be the Prof.'s handiwork. There had been a change in the Baghdad summaries since his posting there. The style was more concise, less colloquial; with a pruning of adjectives and adverbs, coupled occasionally with the use of an unusual word that she had had to look up in the dictionary; always to find that it conveyed an exact shade of meaning. There was a change, too, in the summaries that came from Beirut; there was a certain jocularity about them. She wondered if they were Nigel Farrar's work. She did not know, except by name, the man who had taken the Prof.'s place. She wondered sometimes about the Prof. How was he liking it in Baghdad? And Diana, in Cairo. What was happening to her? She had heard hardly any gossip for a long time from there. She had expected some from Martin Ransom. But he had been transferred to Ankara a few days after his return. He had rung her up to say ‘Good-bye' but he had clearly been in a great hurry. She had no time to ask whether he had met Jane Lester. She wondered what they had made of one another. There were times when she felt very out of things in this neutral country, surrounded by pro-Axis nationals. She wished she were more in the centre of things; in an area that was at war, and where British troops were stationed.
There were times when she wondered whether she hadn't had enough of Turkey. She had been here for three years. That was a long time. Last summer Sedgwick had offered her a transfer. She had refused it then because she was on the brink of her romance with Aziz; that was nine months ago. A good deal could happen in nine months. She was as excited as ever about his visits. He was, too, she fancied. Yet at the same time, in retrospect, now that the first ridges had been scaled, one visit was like another. She was not headed anywhere. Nothing could come of it. He was due up in May and then there was his long vacation in the summer. Perhaps that should be the end. October would be a good month to leave. It was time she got back to England, to her real life. She did not want to become an expatriate. October would be a good time to go.

She re-read the Baghdad appreciation; then put on her hat and coat. It was a bleak, chill day. She still enjoyed her visits to the Embassy, but they had lost much of their savour. Life generally indeed had lost a good deal of its savour since Martin had left. It was not till he had gone away that she had realized how much he had meant to her, their infrequent dinners and the chance meetings that they had at cocktail parties and in office corridors. She had always been given a sense of anticipation on starting out for an Embassy occasion by the knowledge that he might be there.

Although it was cold, she did not hurry down the Rue de Pera. She enjoyed looking at the shabby figures who shuffled or strode past her, with the uneven walk that they had acquired through a lifetime of stumbling over cobblestones. Most of them wore long black overcoats with dilapidated dark hats pulled low over their eyes; their hands were often clasped behind their backs, fingering at their yellow beads. Their faces were stolid and unsmiling. Turks rarely laughed. They despised men who laughed. They thought them frivolous. They set high store by dignity. They must have been very impressive in their imperial days when they had worn tarbooshes, coloured trousers and bright sashes.

She turned right by the flower market, following the dark alley's course past its succession of restaurants and beerhalls to the fish market. She lingered there, then turned into the narrow high arcade, with its little statues set in niches under the roof. She walked slowly down it, looking into the windows; at the pictures, the ornaments, the jewellery that were on offer. In one there was a display of leather necklaces. ‘You could make a whip out of one of those,' she thought. A look of mischief came into her eyes. She
hesitated, started to walk on, then stopped. ‘It might be fun at that. Why not?' She pushed open the door.

She returned to her flat to find a message on her desk. ‘Please ring Kitty Lang at once.' Kitty was in a bubbling mood. ‘I've been talking to a friend of yours,' she said, ‘a foreign friend. He was most anxious to get in touch with you. He was convinced that you were working with the Council. He couldn't be persuaded that you weren't. He was so persistent that the telephone girl put him on to me.'

‘What's his name?'

‘I don't know. He kept on trying to spell it and I couldn't get it. An Armenian name. It started with a P. He met you in Beirut, he said.'

‘I know. Belorian. Alexis Belorian.'

‘That would be it. P's sound like B's.'

‘I hope you didn't give him my address.'

‘As a matter of fact, I did.'

‘Oh, why?'

‘He sounded fun.'

‘He did?'

‘And really he was so persuasive. I thought he deserved a break.'

‘I see.'

‘So I asked him round for a drink this evening.'

‘In that case you'd better be a chaperone.'

‘But it's you that he wants to see.'

‘It may be, but I don't want to be alone with him. He's a champion wolf.'