Winds of Eden (20 page)

Chapter Twenty

Kut al Amara, night, Thursday 6th January 1916

‘Good to see you, Mitkhal. It's been a long time. How have you been keeping?' Crabbe offered Mitkhal his hand.

Mitkhal shook it. The situation was peculiarly British. No one other than an English officer would ignore his wet, dripping, bleeding state and offer to touch him with bare hands when he'd just crawled out of a fouled, freezing, and filthy river.

‘You remember Lieutenant Bowditch?' Crabbe indicated his companion.

Mitkhal nodded to the naval officer.

‘Put Lieutenant Colonel Downe's friend's mount in the Dorsets' stable,' Crabbe ordered a sapper. ‘See it gets a good rub down and as much feed as we can afford to give it. And warn the duty orderly that no one, absolutely no one, is to take the horse from the stable unless I or Captain Smythe is present.'

‘Sir.' The sapper reached for the rope Mitkhal was holding.

Devon stubbornly held her ground.

‘Go with him, Devon,' Mitkhal handed the sapper the rope and patted the mare's rump. Slowly, somewhat reluctantly, Devon walked off with the private.

‘This way.' Crabbe led Mitkhal down a narrow alley away from the river. ‘HQ woke me when they received a radio message from Grace on the
Sumana
. I sent my bearer to wake Mason and Smythe and told them to meet us in the officers' hospital. Not because I expected you to be wounded, but the stove there is kept lit day and night and I thought you'd be cold after a ducking.'

‘Mitkhal, good to see you.' John left the dressing room to meet them when he heard Crabbe open the door of the building. ‘Dira, bring coffee for five, please, and any food you can forage.'

Dira disappeared. John handed Mitkhal a clean pair of Indian cotton pyjamas, a towel, and a woollen robe. ‘There's a bathroom through there stocked with soap and antiseptic. I'd use both if I were you after a ducking in the Tigris. The Turks built their latrines upstream with the intention of contaminating our water supply. Fortunately, we have access to a small reservoir in the town for drinking purposes. I'll get bandages and dress your wound as soon as you're clean. Leave your wet clothes in the bathroom. Dira will see to them. We'll be in here when you're through.' John pushed open the door to the dressing room.

The bathroom was basic but there was a tub large enough for Mitkhal to stand in and plenty of jugs of water. He stripped off his sodden clothes and untied the headdress from his arm. The wound was still bleeding and the raw flesh stung as if mosquitoes were banqueting on his muscle. He washed and cleaned the wound as best he could. After drying himself, he put on the cotton trousers. Wary of getting blood on the robe and pyjama shirt he carried them into the dressing room.

It was warm, stiflingly so, after the cold night air and icy river but Mitkhal was grateful for the heat. Peter, John, Crabbe, and David Knight were sitting around the stove, drinking coffee. John pulled out a chair for Mitkhal and examined his arm.

‘That gash is deep. It needs stitching. How did it happen?'

‘I fell on a Bedouin knife.'

‘That sounds suspiciously like one of Harry's excuses. I suggest you learn to tread more carefully around tribesmen.' John probed the wound, pulled a trolley towards him, and prepared a syringe.

Mitkhal eyed it suspiciously. ‘If that's to numb the pain I'd prefer brandy.'

‘Take mine.' Peter handed over his flask.

‘How many Arab irregulars are with the Turks?' Crabbe asked.

Mitkhal drank from the flask ‘Four, maybe five thousand.'

‘Are they all prepared to fight on the Turkish side?' Peter asked.

‘You should know the Arab by now, Captain Smythe. The only side they fight on is their own. Your generals call their technique hit and run. Harry translated it to pose and retreat. The Arabs pose with weapons where they can be seen to greatest effect, but only in areas where there's no danger of meeting armed opposition. The retreat begins the moment they sniff a blade or a bullet.' Mitkhal eyed Peter. None of the men looked well. All were pale and thin but Peter had a hacking cough and there was a wild, haunted look in his eyes that suggested more was troubling him than physical ill-health.

‘Sorry,' John apologised when Mitkhal winced. ‘Are you sure you won't change your mind about the anaesthetic? This cut needs at least another twelve stitches.'

‘I'm fine.' Mitkhal's assertion didn't prevent him from taking Peter's flask when he offered it a second time.

‘You know Harry's dead?' Crabbe asked the question uppermost in all the officers' minds.

Mitkhal stared down at the cracked tiles on the floor. They were blue and red with an abstract pattern that resembled the ancient one that floored the mosque in Basra. He was an accomplished liar but these men loved and valued Harry as much as he did. It wasn't easy to sit in front of them, knowing how much they were suffering at the thought of Harry's brutalised and tortured corpse being thrown into an unmarked grave alongside other nameless victims of the Turks.

‘I know about Harry,' Mitkhal found his voice unaccountably hoarse.

‘You weren't with him when he was captured?' Crabbe asked.

‘No.'

‘Why? You two went everywhere together,' Crabbe persisted.

‘Harry asked me to take care of his wife and children. We expected him to join us. When he didn't, I went to look for him and discovered the Turks had captured him.'

John fastened one stitch and reached for another. ‘Harry told me his father-in-law forced him to divorce his wife.'

‘He did, shortly after war broke out,' Mitkhal acknowledged. ‘Sheikh Ibn Shalan knew, as did everyone within the tribe, that Harry and Furja's marriage would be seen as an alliance between the tribe and the British. It put the tribe at risk of an attack by the Turks. The only way to protect the tribe, Furja and her daughters, not only from the Turks, but would-be assassins sympathetic to the Turks within the tribe, was for Harry to divorce her.'

‘I can't imagine Harry doing anything he didn't want to.' Peter was incredulous.

‘Harry had no choice,' Mitkhal explained. ‘He was a British officer. His life was at the disposal of his superiors. He could hardly take his native wife and children into battle with him. Ibn Shalan promised Harry that after the divorce he'd do his best to protect Furja and their children. After Harry left, Ibn Shalan decided the best way to care for his daughter and grandchildren was to marry her to one of his tribesmen.'

‘Furja agreed?' John, who knew Furja, was shocked.

‘Only to protect her children. If she'd refused, her father and the tribe would have cast her and her daughters out into the desert. They wouldn't have lasted long without food or water.'

‘Did Harry know she'd remarried?'

‘Why do you think he asked me to take care of them?' Mitkhal met John's probing gaze.

‘You took her from her husband?'

‘She wasn't happy with him. It didn't help that she was carrying Harry's child. She was terrified the child would be born fair and her husband would take his anger out on all three of her children. So, yes, I helped her and her children to leave her husband's tent.'

‘Did her husband follow you?'

‘He was killed in a fight.' Mitkhal felt that at least that wasn't a lie.

‘Are Furja and Harry's children safe now?' John looked intently at Mitkhal.

‘They are safe.' Mitkhal repeated.

‘Where?'

‘The fewer people who know that the better, Major Mason.' Mitkhal watched John insert another stitch into his muscle.

Crabbe broke the silence that had fallen over the room. ‘To get back to our situation here. We have aerial photographs from our planes. But anything you can tell us about the Turkish positions might be helpful.'

‘I can give you a rough estimate of the number and deployment of Turkish troops. But I didn't have time to make a study. I only arrived here a few hours ago.'

‘What's it like in Ali Gharbi? Is the relief column ready to move out and break the siege?' Crabbe opened a pack of Camel cigarettes and offered them around.

‘I've no idea. I travelled up the Shatt al-Hai.'

‘Through the marshes?' Knight spoke for the first time. ‘I'm amazed you lived to tell the tale.'

‘The Marsh Arabs are human – just,' Mitkhal qualified. ‘They're friendly enough if you offer them coins. They prefer gold to silver.'

‘You risked a great deal to come here,' Crabbe observed suspiciously.

‘I came for Harry's horses. I was too late to help Harry but I know what he thought of them. They'd make fine breeding stock for Harry's wife and children. Are they here?'

‘They're here,' Crabbe made a wry face.

‘Are they all right?' Mitkhal enquired anxiously.

‘Thin, like the rest of us,' John declared. ‘Colonel Perry has them shut up in the Norfolks' stables. Animal feed is as short as ours.'

‘Good job you came now, we're almost out of mules and donkeys. If we're not relieved in the next week or two we'll have to start on the horses,' Knight observed.

‘We tried to get Dorset and Somerset moved into the Dorsets' stable,' Peter explained. ‘Problem is, Perry outranks us.'

‘Harry always did wind up Perry the wrong way, but this time the colonel's being stubborn to annoy me.' John took the blame on himself.

‘Hardly. Bastard decided to have it in for the pair of you.' Crabbe topped up their cups from the coffee pot and added tots of whisky from his flask.

Dira knocked, and handed Mitkhal a bowl of bully beef stew. ‘I'm sorry, I could not find anything better for your guest, Sahib,' he apologised to John.

Mitkhal took the bowl with his free hand and set it on the table. ‘This is fine and very welcome after what I've been eating for the past few days, thank you.'

‘You've put a cot up in my room for my guest?' John asked.

‘I have, Sahib. And found extra blankets.'

‘Thank you, Dira. You can go to bed now. We'll clear up here.'

‘Yes, Sahib.'

‘So,' Crabbe asked the questions no one else wanted to, ‘are you still fighting for the British, Mitkhal?'

‘When it won't interfere with my responsibilities.' Mitkhal dug a spoon into the stew.

‘Harry's wife and daughters?'

‘And my own wife and son.'

‘A boy. Congratulations.' Peter smiled.

‘Harry has a son too.'

‘Did he see him before he died?' John asked.

Mitkhal shook his head.

‘He is Harry's son?' John pressed.

‘No doubt about it. Blond hair, blue eyes that are beginning to turn grey. He looks just like his twin sisters. Furja was right to leave the husband her father found for her. He would have killed her and the baby if he'd seen him.'

‘Hard to imagine Harry with three children.' Peter rose to his feet,

‘Harder to imagine him dead.' Knight left his chair and picked up their mugs and the coffee pot. ‘I'll clear up here, John. Mitkhal's sleeping on his feet. It's late, and I doubt the Turkish snipers will allow us poor overworked doctors to lie in tomorrow morning so I suggest we all head for bed.'

‘The brigadier will want to see you in morning, Mitkhal,' Crabbe said.

‘After I've seen Harry's horses.'

‘It'll be impossible to prise them away from Perry,' Peter warned.

‘Impossible is a word I, like Harry, refuse to recognise, Captain Smythe.' He glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘In a few hours it will be light. Perhaps it might be better to visit them now.'

‘I'll come with you,' Peter volunteered.

‘Neither of you are going. I'll have a word with the brigadier in the morning. If anyone can get Harry's horses away from Perry, he can.' Crabbe joined Peter at the door.

John bandaged Mitkhal's arm and secured the dressings. He handed him the shirt and dressing gown. ‘I'd wear both in bed if I were you. It's cold here at night.'

‘Cold everywhere, not just Kut, Captain Mason.'

‘Could you call me John?' John led the way into the hall and up the stairs. He opened the door of his room. Dira had made his bed and laid a cot out for Mitkhal. ‘Basic but clean.'

‘Thank you.' Mitkhal put on the shirt and dressing gown and lay on bed. ‘This is soft after the boards I've been sleeping on for the past few nights. It's kind of you to put me up in your room. But any corner would have done. I know how officers look down on your kind for hobnobbing with the natives.'

‘No one looked down on Harry and he “hobnobbed” with more natives than any officer.'

‘Harry could get away with it.'

‘Harry could get away with anything,' John agreed. ‘I asked you to share my room because I wanted to talk to you in private. Have you seen my wife or Mrs Smythe?'

‘No. I haven't visited the mission since last February.'

‘You haven't been in Basra?'

‘I've been looking after Harry's and my own family.'

John sat on his bed. Seeing Mitkhal grimace in pain he unscrewed the top of his brandy flask and handed it to him. ‘My wife believes I'm dead.'

‘Do you want me to visit her and tell her you're alive?'

‘Good God, no! To cut a long story short, I was court-martialled and found guilty of killing an officer and refusing to obey orders while under fire.'

‘Perry accused you?'

‘You know us better than we know ourselves, Mitkhal. Crabbe managed to get the sentence postponed and a review of my case to be held after we're relieved or surrender. My wife received notification of my death from fever after the court martial. It's how the army explains the deaths of those they sentence to be shot. The brass believes it best to keep the truth from the family concerned.'