Desert Queen (76 page)

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-
SIX

To Sleep

I
n the autumn of 1924, after recuperating from her bout of depression, Gertrude was invited by the King to his new estate near Khanaqin. Only a short while before, with Ken still away, she and Faisal had spent an evening together at the theater in Baghdad. The occasion had perked up their spirits. “The King laughed and laughed,” she reported, “and as we motored back (incidentally with the King’s arm tightly enfolding my waist!) he observed that it had been like spending an evening in London.”

Now, taking the overnight train, she arrived in the country early on Saturday morning and immediately joined the King for a partridge shoot; by noon it was too hot to do anything else but rest. She retired to her tent (his country house was not yet built), opened two of the side flaps and, undressing as much as she decently could, lay on her bed reading Thackeray’s
Pendennis
. They were light years away from London’s literary life, but after tea, riding with Faisal across miles of his empty land overlooking the Persian hills, hearing his dreams for the future, she felt part of an even more special world.

In the evening she dressed to dine with the King, and as they sat at the table under the stars, Faisal, a doleful look in his eyes, confessed that he was still unhappy. Baghdad could never replace Damascus, and though he left it unsaid, it was there, in that flowering desert capital of Greater Syria, that he yearned to rule. Patient and quiet, he kept his thoughts well hidden from most people and rarely exposed his emotions. But on this intimate evening he complained again to Gertrude of how lonely he felt; he had looked forward to coming up to this country place to escape the dull round of palace and office which was all that Baghdad offered. She realized how alone he would have been if she had not come. “He wanted someone to talk to about his plans, to say what fun it would be and how they would all come shooting with him and be keenly interested in what he was doing. I was glad I had come,” she wrote. “Besides, I enjoyed it enormously; I too felt like a prisoner escaped.”

T
he following day they celebrated together as the city turned out to welcome the King’s only son to Baghdad. Twelve-year-old Ghazi had arrived, the first of Faisal’s family to flee from Mecca, where Ibn Saud and his Wahhabi warriors were about to attack on the way to conquering the Hejaz; even more people lined the streets than when Faisal had appeared in 1921. The boy seemed a miniature replica of his father, small and shy, with a long, sensitive face and a dignified air. Gertrude warmed to him at once. Taking him under her wing, she rushed to the palace to choose his clothes; suits and shirts had to be made, and she flitted around selecting stripes and tweeds from an English tailor called from Bombay, while, she said, the tailor behaved like a character in Thackeray, skipping about, pointing his toe, handing her patterns “with one hand on his heart.” When Ghazi came in to be measured, he was “half shy and half pleased.” The boy had been raised in the desert, barely educated but bright, and under her supervision, she had no doubt, he would learn fast. She found him a governess and a tutor to teach him English, and for Christmas she ordered a set of toy trains from Harrods. “He has been very much neglected in a household of slaves and ignorant women,” she clucked. Still, she confessed, she could not do as much as she liked. She did not have the authority and would have to wait for Ken to come back.

Only recently Cornwallis had sent her a letter from England describing his divorce. The picture he gave of his wife and his in-laws revealed a painful relationship. “They must be inhuman people,” she remarked. “He will be much better when he gets back to his work and to us who know him and love him.” She could do a far better job of taking care of him than his wife had done, she felt sure, and in the deepest corner of her heart she hoped that she would become the new Mrs. Cornwallis.

For the moment, however, Gertrude had the company of her sister and brother-in-law. In November, Elsa and her husband, on their way to Ceylon, had stopped in Baghdad, but Gertrude was too ill with bronchitis to shower them with attention. Nevertheless, she begged her family not to bother about her health. The doctor had told her she had “the most surprising power of sudden recovery,” and, indeed, by the time that Cornwallis returned at the end of the month, she was up and about, pronouncing herself “perfectly well again.” Now it was Ken who needed attention.

The divorce had been a messy affair, with trumped-up charges for evidence and a decree that barred his legal rights to his children. “I’m dreadfully sorry for my dear Ken,” she wrote; “[he] has been through a hell of a time and is miserable.” Nevertheless, she was sure that he would soon be feeling better, now that he had returned to his work, his colleagues and his devoted friends, “of whom I am the chief. I do love and admire his salient, his almost aggressive integrity and I prize more than I can say the trust and affection he gives me in such full measure.”

N
ew Year’s Eve came on the heels of a heavy snow, the first in fourteen years, and the holiday was one of the “nastiest” she could remember, followed by rains that mired the ground in mud and ice. As Gertrude made her way to the palace, she hardly felt cheered that she was about to meet the Queen. The arrival of Hazaima was as pleasing to her as the weather, but Gertrude slid across the slippery mush to see the royal consort and at once pronounced her “charming.” Hazaima’s two eldest girls, around eighteen years old, were just like their mother, she noted, “rather shy but eager to be outgoing,” and within a matter of days she assigned Ghazi’s governess, Miss Fairley, to teach them English, tennis and “European behavior.” As for the Queen, Gertrude had few further comments; she was soon discovered to be a coarse, uneducated woman.

When, in the first week of January, it was decided that the Queen would hold her first tea, Gertrude drew up an A list, and invitations were sent to the most important Arab and British women. A few days before the event, she was called to the palace to arrange the tables for the King, and for the first time saw him interact with his family. “The girls were on very good terms with him but the Queen was mute in his presence,” she observed, having noted that Faisal was none too pleased by Hazaima’s arrival.

Gertrude had asked the wife of Ali Jawdat, chief of the royal household, to take on the job of Mistress of Ceremonies, but it was an uncomfortable role for the inexperienced young woman, and with the Arab ladies too intimidated to talk and the British ladies unable to speak in Arabic, a circle of silence surrounded the Queen. But, as always, Gertrude took things in hand, and, plumping down one guest after another, she managed to draw out the consort. She cringed, however, at the sight of the Queen and the two princesses, “abominably dressed,” and announced she would “have to take their clothes in hand.”

Her own wardrobe, despite its share of Worths and Molyneux, was suffering from a lack of financial underpinnings: the company with which her father had merged was holding back its dividends, and she was scrimping to save. “I have been very economical and I haven’t had a new gown for eighteen months,” she commended herself. “I am feeling a little dingy this winter but I hope my bankbook looks brighter.” She had spent five hundred and sixty pounds above her salary for the year, much of that on housing, servants and food; the rest had gone for books and papers, seeds and bulbs, accessories, and fabrics for Marie to make into clothes. “On the whole I don’t think it has been an extravagant year,” she wrote to her father. “Do you?”

T
he Frontier Commission, sent by the League of Nations to determine the borders between Iraq and Turkey, arrived in the middle of January 1925. Although the Turks still claimed the Mosul
vilayet
for themselves, the area was of vital strategic interest to Britain: the mountainous region provided defense against a Turkish invasion; the northern air bases offered protection for the oil fields in Persia and the refineries at Abadan; and the oil fields near Kirkuk not only would yield vast supplies of petroleum for Britain but they would fuel the Iraqi ecomony.

It was essential to present a show of Iraqi solidarity to the commission, and Gertrude was given the task of organizing the Arabs. There could be no sign of dissension within the Iraqi camp. Dobbs sent her to advise the King on his speech to the Commissioners, and a few days later she called on the Prime Minister to hear what he had told the Commission. She spent hours at the palace arranging the seating for the fifty-eight guests—all male except for her—and was decidedly pleased when, as a show of protest against the Turks, the Iraqis appeared, to a man, without a fez. “The Baghdadis are standing to their guns, Ministers, officials of all sorts, notables, all are testifying to the indivisibility of Iraq. Men of all parties have dropped their differences,” she reported victoriously. Now all they needed was for those from Mosul to do the same and speak with one voice. “At any rate,” she noted, “the Commission has realised that it’s a struggle for life on the part of Iraq, not an effort on the part of the British Government to expand its dominions.”

By early March, when the Commission announced its decision to give Mosul to Iraq, she busied herself in the negotiations over oil. The Turkish Petroleum Concession, a consortium of British, French and American interests, was the only group big enough and rich enough, she believed, to be able to build the pipelines from Iraq to the Mediterranean, but the local politicians were scurrying to support small local investment groups, and progress was being stymied. “If only the Iraq Cabinet wouldn’t be so asinine,” she complained. “I think there are better prospects before us than we have had for a long time.… The great thing from our point of view is that the development of the country should begin and foreign capital developed.” On March 14, 1925 a seventy-five-year accord was granted to the Turkish Petroleum Concession.