The Mule on the Minaret (49 page)

The bell at his side rang. ‘Mrs. Reid. Please show her in.' He had not seen Rachel since the war began. He was astonished at the change in her. She looked ten years younger. There was a glow about her, a kind of incandescence.

‘You're looking wonderful,' he said.

‘That's how I'm feeling. Love works miracles, I'm told. Everyone's saying that to me. I'm starting to believe it.' She sat down and crossed her legs jauntily.

‘If I were to tell you how smart you looked, you'd tell me that you'd had that frock of yours six years.'

‘Not a bad guess. Seven. I was wise to store up well during those safe years. Were you wise too? How's your cellar?'

‘Empty. I wasn't wise enough.'

‘Too bad. When this case is through, I'll give you some of ours; don't they call that a “refresher”? Or is that only where barristers are concerned?'

‘Only where barristers are concerned. And you do realize, don't you, that I'm Ned's solicitor, not yours? I can't work for you both. You'll have to get a solicitor of your own.'

‘I know, I know; when I walk out of that door in half-an-hour's time, I'll walk out of your life for ever.' She was bubbling over with high spirits. He had never seen her in a mood like this. She had always been quiet and reserved.

‘You've realized, I suppose, all the complications that are involved,' he said.

‘I hadn't thought there were any. It seems so straightforward. Don't tell me he's going to make difficulties.'

‘I didn't say he was; but . . . he isn't happy about this, you know.'

‘I didn't think he would be.'

‘He doesn't want a divorce; he instructed me to tell you that.'

‘Naturally, it'll take him a little while to get used to the idea. It must have been a shock. It was quite unexpected. It surprised me as a matter of fact, and I'd had a chance to see it coming. What else did he say in his letter?'

‘Not very much.'

‘He wasn't angry; he wasn't indignant. It must have hurt his vanity.'

‘Do you think vanity rates very high with Ned?'

‘Do I? . . . well, no, you're right, it doesn't. He's got less vanity than any man I know. Perhaps that's his trouble; or rather what makes him difficult for other people. Anyhow that's neither here nor there. Of course, it was a shock; but he'll get used to it.'

‘He doesn't want to break up his marriage.'

‘He never set much store by it.'

‘How can you say that?'

‘If he had, he wouldn't have gone off and left us.'

‘He did not leave you. He was a serving officer. He was posted overseas.'

‘Oh come now, come now. That's a First War argument. He wasn't in his twenties, he was too old for combat stuff. He need never have gone back into the army. He could have got exemption. They told me that at Winchborough. And even if he joined the army, he could have found a post in England. He'd have been much more use to his country in the Army Education Corps, in his own field.'

She talked with an assurance, with an authority that surprised him. Young though she looked, she was talking to him as though he was her junior.

‘What about the children?' he asked.

‘He can see them whenever he wants. I shan't raise any difficulties.'

‘Don't you think that children need their own father to look after them?'

‘It's better if they have, but that's another thing. He didn't only leave his marriage. He left his children. During the very years when they most needed him. He hadn't got to go. I don't feel that he has any reason to complain.'

‘Have you told the children?'

‘Not yet. There isn't any need to worry them. They've got used to their father being away. For the first two holidays after he went away, they'd say, “When's Daddy coming back?” They don't any longer. They say, “When we go back to the farm.” That's what they're dreaming of. They love their home.'

‘And what about their home?'

‘They'll be going back to it. It's my home, remember. I hold the title deeds.'

‘Won't you be settling in America?'

‘We don't know yet. We'll wait and see. Charles has a good many irons in the fire. He's what they call well-heeled. That's another lucky point. There won't be any difficulties over money. Ned won't have to worry about alimony. I really don't see any difficulties. I'm sure Ned won't be tiresome. He's not that kind of person. And I want you to see Charles. I've brought him round. That's why I was late. He's waiting in the office. I wanted you to be able to tell Ned what a fine chap he is; that he won't have to worry about the boys with a wrong kind of step-father. Is there anything more you want to ask me before I bring him in?'

‘Just this. It's the chief point Ned made and it's the point that has counted most with me. Why be in all this hurry, in wartime, when everything is so uncertain? Nobody knows how long the war will last. The end of the beginning. That's only as far as we have got. After three and a half years. Nobody knows what kind of a world it'll be when the war is over. Ned is in the Middle East. He won't be repatriated for at least three years. Your American is a soldier. As soon as the Second Front is open, he'll be overseas. He may be overseas a lot. There'll be steady fighting somewhere from now on till the war is over. At this moment you and he are free. You can see as much of each other as you want. No one's interfering. Think of all the people before the war who fell in love outside marriage. Wouldn't they have envied a couple in your position. What do you stand to gain? Nobody considers appearances in wartime. Why be in such a hurry to get married?'

‘Because he wants it so.' She was smiling and once again he had the feeling that she was giving a lesson in psychology and behaviour to someone who was barely adult; who had to have everything explained to him.

‘Why?' he asked. ‘Is he afraid of losing you?'

She shook her head. ‘No, it isn't that. It's his conscience. He genuinely thinks all this is wrong, and that it's only justified because it's going to end up in marriage. As he pictures it, we are an engaged couple who can't get married right away and have anticipated the church ceremony. He thinks it all right for fiancés to make love.'

‘And he thinks it all right to break up a marriage?'

‘Divorce doesn't carry any stigma in America. Wives go off to Reno and plead mental cruelty. And no one thinks any the worse of it. But affairs are frowned upon, I gather.'

‘Not by you though.'

She shrugged. ‘Does it matter how I feel? If he had been a different kind of man, if he'd been a Frenchman or a Pole or even an Englishman, I'd have followed your advice. I'd have lived in the moment and thanked God for it. I'm in love and the whole thing's fine. But he's not that kind of man, he has got this conscience, perhaps it's a national way of seeing things. I'm crazy over him. I'll do anything he wants. I don't want to lose him and I'm afraid that if I hedge, if I make delays, he won't think as well of me. He'll think I'm light. This may seem strange to you, but it's a tremendous thing to him that I should, well, go on weekends with him. I fancy he's not had very much experience. He feels that I wouldn't be going on week-ends with him unless I'd been bowled over. I want him to go on thinking of me that way. I find it rather sweet. Look here, you'd better see him, then you'll understand. Can you ring for him?'

He was tall, broad shouldered, trim. He was handsome in a clean, straight-cut way. He had a broad friendly grin, but what struck the lawyer first and most powerfully was his air of healthiness. He was vibrant with vitality. Rachel had risen to her feet as he came in. She moved into the centre of the room. He stood beside her, put his arm around her shoulder and she snuggled against him, looking up at him. They smiled at one another. There might have been no one in the room beside themselves. The whole thing was touchingly spontaneous. Then the American turned to face the lawyer. ‘I'm lucky. I sure am. And don't I know it,' he began. ‘What have I done to deserve this, I ask myself. You've known Rachel all these years. Maybe you've got used to her. I reckon I never shall. Every time I see her it's a shock, right along my nerves. We're sitting in a restaurant. I look down at my plate, cut off a piece of meat. Then I look up and there she is across the table; and I'm transfixed, frozen with that piece of meat suspended in mid-air.'

‘It's true. He really does. And people stare at him. They must think he's mad.'

‘And so I am. Crazy. That's what being in love is. Being crazy. I'm in the clouds. She is so wonderful. I can't wait to have my mother meet her. I've sent her photo over. But photos aren't the same thing. I'll say they're not. I know, Mr. Jenkins, that you must be a bit suspicious of me. An American taking away one of your girls. But don't think of it that way. No, sir. I'm not taking her away, not unless she wants it that way. We can make our
home as easily here as in America. Where she is, my home is. Whatever way she wants it. My firm has a London office; I could transfer to it; nothing simpler. And as for those boys of hers, what fine chaps they are. I reckon they should finish their education here. The beginning of it anyhow; but they might do worse than go to Harvard later. Two strings to one's bow, you know. But that's a long time off. We've got to get this war won first. I want you to realize, Mr. Jenkins, that I'm going into this campaign with an open mind. What's best for Rachel's best for me. And it's for Rachel herself to decide what's best.'

He showed no trace of guilt. He talked as though he were rescuing a damsel in distress, not as though he were breaking up a marriage, as though he were stealing a man's wife. Yet he was a man with a strong conscience. Consciences worked on different wave-lengths, Jenks supposed. ‘You do realize, don't you,' he said, ‘that I'm working on behalf of Major Reid; that Rachel will have to have a lawyer of her own?'

‘Of course, of course. It's the same practice on our side; but before we start, I did want you to know what kind of man you're dealing with. I'm going to be the step-father of your godson, after all. I hope when it's all over we shall be meeting often. Very often And there is one point I did want to raise with you; between ourselves. Rachel honey, I wonder if you could leave us alone for just a little. I won't be five minutes. I promise you.' As the door closed behind Rachel, a puzzled frown displaced the broad grin on the American's face. It made him look boyish.

‘One thing I'm not quite happy over; the actual procedure in this divorce,' he said. ‘It's different over here from the way it is with us. And frankly Rachel does not see eye to eye with me on this point. I haven't thrashed it out with her. But you as a lawyer will see my point. You know in the States it's very rare for a husband to divorce a wife. It's almost always the other way about it.'

‘It's more usual here.'

‘Then surely can't we...?'

Jenkins shook his head. ‘In this case it isn't practicable. The judges are very down on trumped up cases, in which a husband goes away to Brighton with a prostitute for the week-end. They want to be convinced that the husband is serious about another woman. That could not happen in this case.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because there is no woman in Baghdad in whom Major Reid is interested. It would be possible for a British officer serving abroad to fall in love with an A.T.S. girl or a nursing sister or an Egyptian lady or a Lebanese. He might want to marry her and his wife could divorce him on her account, but there are by all accounts very few available females in Baghdad. It would be impossible, under the present conditions, for Rachel's husband to provide evidence that would satisfy a British judge.'

‘In the United States . . .'

‘In your country the laws are very different and much more sensible. Rachel would take a train to Reno and plead mental cruelty, but over here, even if Major Reid were to provide evidence from Baghdad, you and Rachel would have to ask for “the discretion of the Courts”. You'd have to put your cards upon the table.'

Charles shook his head despondently. ‘I know it's very awkward. My mother isn't going to like this at all. Adultery's not a pretty word.'

‘Adultery isn't a very pretty thing.'

‘And it's not a word that I can associate with Rachel and myself. It does not seem to apply. It all seems so different in our case.'

‘That's how the things we do ourselves usually do appear to us.'

‘And in Rachel's case one needs to be particularly chivalrous.'

‘Why in Rachel's case?'

‘All those terrible things that have happened to her co-religionists in Germany.'

‘But...' Jenks checked. He was too astonished to complete a comment. He did not know what to say. It was a point that would never have occurred to him. Oddly enough he was rather touched. This American of Rachel's was a damn decent fellow. He tried to be consoling. ‘I wouldn't worry too much about all that,' he said. ‘When so much else is happening elsewhere, nobody is going to worry about the exact whys and wherefores. People have short memories. In a year's time, you and Rachel will be married and no one will be bothering about how it all came about. Good luck to you.'

‘And now,' he thought, ‘that letter to old Ned.' Half-an-hour earlier, waiting at his desk for Rachel, tired, listless, recriminatory, he had felt that he could not care less what happened to any of the three. Everything about it had seemed trivial and pointless; all this fuss about an emotion that subsided as quickly as it sprang into
action. In three years' time Rachel and her American would be wondering what it had been all about. Then he had seen that look that they exchanged; it had carried him back twenty years. A curtain had been suddenly drawn back, giving him a glimpse of an enchanted countryside from which he had long lived in exile. It might be all over in three years' time, but that did not minimize the intensity, the heartbreaking absorption of those first weeks and months. He had been moved; he had felt sorry for them; he wished them well.