The Mule on the Minaret (7 page)

He enlarged his thesis: ‘To keep Russia in the war we have to promise her what she wants; the Kurds are the cream in her coffee.'

Reid let him talk, but afterwards at lunch in the Cercle he remonstrated. ‘I never said that the Arabs were better off under the Turks. I don't believe it for a moment.'

‘I'm sure you don't. I was using you as a decoy. I wanted to lead up to that corollary about the Kurds.'

‘Yes, and what about that now? Is it true?'

‘Of course it isn't.'

‘Then why on earth?'

‘The oldest trick in counter-espionage. Didn't they tell you about it during that course at Matlock? If you want to find out if someone is indiscreet you tell him under a vow of secrecy something that isn't true. If you then hear the story from another source you know that that person broke his vow of secrecy. My Kurdish nonsense is a variation on that gimmick. If that story crops up in the Turkish press or in any of the confidential summaries from Istanbul—we're on very good terms with one section of their foreign Ministry—I shall know what Madame Amin is about.'

‘Do you know that she is in contact with someone there?'

‘I suspect she is. We're censoring her correspondence but we've found nothing yet. She probably sends her messages, if she sends them, through someone here.'

‘What'll you do if you find that she is sending messages?'

‘Nothing, for the moment. I'll have to decide—or rather other people will have to decide for me—what is the best use for her. When a policeman is chasing a murderer, the moment he has his man, he claps the handcuffs on. It's different in our game. We could use Madame Amin as a broadcasting station. We could send up to Turkey—and Turkey is neutral don't forget—the kind of information that we want the Germans to have, true, half true, altogether false. If we were to find some excuse for arresting Madame Amin, we might frighten and send underground a number of people whom we want to watch. We rarely arrest small fry. They are more useful at liberty. They may lead us to something; and, of course, as I said, I've no idea whether she is passing on information; or, if she is, whether she is passing it on innocently. She can be useful that way too. She's a push-over from our point of view. Born in Turkey, married to a Lebanese, all her family in Turkey—somebody must be using her. I want to know where and how. . . . What did you make of the boy, by the way?'

‘I hadn't any chance of making anything. He didn't say a word.'

‘Is he queer?'

‘How on earth should I know?'

‘Schoolmasters have a nose for that kind of thing.'

‘I'm not a schoolmaster.'

‘I know you aren't, but you know that world. What would your guess be?'

‘I'd say “no”.'

‘You would. I was afraid you would.'

‘Afraid?'

‘Forget it. If he had been, it would have been more simple. But in this world things don't always work out simply. And when they do, there's usually a snag. One waits and bides one's time. I've all the time there is. Now about this afternoon. This is your range-taking day. What about the racecourse?'

There was racing every Sunday. If it had been difficult that morning on the terrace of the St. Georges to believe that a war was being fought, a few hundred miles away, it was even harder that afternoon when the same elegant creatures whom he had seen that morning at the St. Georges were sauntering now in different frocks under the fir-trees, past the paddock. At the far end of the racecourse was the low yellow
Résidence
where General Catroux lived, with its Circassian guard in comic opera uniform at the gateway. It was like a film-set. And after the races there was a
thé dansant
at the St. Georges, with the same smart officers, the same smart women, again in different dresses.

‘This is their big day of the week and this is how they spend it,' Farrar said. ‘And this is our one free day a week and this is how we spend it. There's really no alternative, with petrol scarce. There's a nine hole golf course but one loses balls so fast that one can't afford to play often enough to strike any kind of form. But it's a good life even so. Now, what about that flat of mine?'

‘I'd like to move in very much.'

‘Fine. Give me a couple of days, to get in some more furniture, and we are fixed.'

To be living in a semi-luxury flat in this frivolous little beach resort was certainly an odd footnote to last year's
drôle de guerre.

*   *   *

Reid moved in on the Wednesday. There was now in the spare room, a double bed, a wardrobe and a desk; there were a couple of rugs on the floor.

‘We'll get some pictures soon; but that's a start. You've your own entrance to the bathroom, which has two doors so that you can lock me out, and you've got a private key to the flat, so that you've all the privacy you could need if you want to entertain a flousy.'

‘I don't fancy that I'm likely to.'

‘You never know; and remember this: shortage of females is the central problem of the Middle East. But it isn't here. Make the most of Beirut while you can. You might be posted to Baghdad one day.'

That night Reid dined with Cartwright. Cartwright had a bungalow five minutes' drive from the Legation, which before the war had been owned by an Englishman in the I.P.C. It was furnished in the English style: with heavy club armchairs, photographs of school groups, and an oar over the mantelpiece.

‘This should make you home sick for college life,' said Cartwright.

There was no other guest. ‘I thought it would be more pleasant just ourselves,' he said. ‘I have to do so much official entertaining and being entertained; it becomes an effort, always trying to find what interests the other so that that I can keep the conversation moving. Always the search for a common multiple; usually it's a very low one. I'm sure we'll find that we have a good deal in common.'

Cartwright was three years older, but they were contemporaries in this, that they had had no adult life before August 1914. Cartwright was to have gone up to Oxford that October. They had grown up quickly in wartime, and over half of their contemporaries were dead.

‘I was looking at the old Fernhurst register the other day,' said Reid. ‘Of the forty-four boys who went to school with me in September 1911 only nineteen are alive, and I suppose in your case there'd be even fewer: your generation was in France in time for the Somme; mine didn't get there till Passchendaele. The survivors of the Somme came back for a second dose of medicine. For the most part, the survivors of Passchendaele hadn't recovered in time for the victory campaign.'

‘The lost generation, in fact.'

‘Weren't there a number of lost generations, each different in a very definite way?'

‘I guess there were, but I'll tell you this. I believe that those of us who did survive are younger now than our immediate successors. We had no youth, no carefree period. But in recompense we got a delayed adolescence. Some of those bright young people are beginning to look middle-aged.'

They compared notes; they had many friends in common, although their lives had followed such separate streams.

‘I hear that you are going to live with Farrar,' Cartwright said. ‘I'm surprised at that.'

‘He's a lively fellow.'

‘He's that all right. I don't know what he's doing half the time, and I don't want to know. But he won't be able to go on doing it much longer in the Mission building.'

‘He's aware of that.'

‘I'm glad he is; he certainly keeps queer company. But you'll live well with him. And I don't suppose you'll be staying here very long.'

At that point Reid recalled his promises to his fellow missionaries. ‘Do you think it's going to be difficult to place us all?' he asked.

Cartwright shrugged. ‘I can't imagine that it will. This is a developing area. One has to have reserves in case of an emergency. You remember yourself in the last war when you were at the front how much of the time you spent doing absolutely nothing. It was part of an officer's job to see that his men did not get bored. It is not so very different with staff work. Someone like myself is working harder at this moment than he ever has done in his life, so are a large number of officers at M.E.F. in Cairo. Yet I know perfectly well that in the Mission building half of the officers, who have to spend eight hours a day beside a telephone because someone responsible has to be there to answer it, don't do six hours' real work a week. It is precisely the same in Cairo. There's waste and idleness in wartime. It can't be otherwise. Someone worked out once how many men were needed in back-areas to keep one man in the firing line, and how many bullets were fired for every casualty.'

‘So you don't think the fellows need to worry?'

‘Of course they don't. Something'll turn up. Every establishment is trying to enlarge itself so that the ones at the top can go up a rank; you can't have a major-general without twenty-eight lieutenants in the basement. You could work out a multiplication table: twenty-eight lieutenants rate fourteen captains, fourteen captains rate seven majors, seven majors rate four colonels, four colonels rate two brigadiers, two brigadiers rate one major-general.'

‘Some of these surplus missionaries are rather worried at the moment. They think that no one's worrying about them.'

‘They are dead right there: nobody is.'

That answer did startle Reid. He was not used to hearing men in
authority answer so unreservedly. Cartwright was lolling back in his chair, his feet raised upon an Arab cushion. He was wearing the pointed local slipper with the heel turned in. He had a cigar between his fingers. He was utterly relaxed. ‘Why should any of us be worrying about them?' he said. ‘We are extremely busy people. We've no spare time; as things are at the moment they can't help us; our work is distributed among the staff we need. If we try to make work for them we clog up our own machinery. We do our best to welcome them; we give them an office they can sit in. We report their presence here to the appropriate authorities. If we hear of anything that would be likely to suit them we'll, of course, put them on it. In the meantime they can look around on their own behalf. They are almost certain to find something soon.'

‘You don't feel any responsibility for them?'

‘Why should I? We're not an employment agency. It's not our fault they're here. It's London's.'

‘Isn't it rather bad luck on them?'

Cartwright shrugged. ‘Is it? I don't know. There are casualties of all kinds in wartime. These are not very serious casualties. At the most it only involves them in the loss of temporary rank for a few weeks. They'll soon recover that crown or extra star; they're not unemployed in the sense that a civilian is when a firm cuts down its staff. They are drawing their pay; they have their allowances. They are better off here than they'd be in England. It's not as though they were professional soldiers with careers at stake. A temporary soldier's war record does not count for much, three years after the war's over unless he's put up a terrific black or won the V.C. No one knows who was the subaltern and who the colonel in the long run. It doesn't really matter what happens to them, here. And from the short point of view they'll all of them be all right in six months' time.'

Had Cartwright's little speech been transcribed by a shorthand-typist it might have seemed arrogant and insensitive; but it did not sound that way, spoken in a quiet, sympathetic voice, accompanied by a smile.

‘This isn't quite the impression that you gave them in that welcoming address of yours; when you told them they were all hand-picked men.'

Cartwright laughed. ‘One has to cheer people up. By raising their morale, by telling them they're wanted here, they're much more likely to find themselves a job than if they went around with
a hangdog look thinking no one wants them. Hand-picked? Yes, I know, but in what cattle pen? Be honest now: was there in that whole consignment a single outstanding person, except yourself, of course; they are all of them sound, responsible, efficient—if they hadn't been, they wouldn't have been sent out here—but if they really had been outstanding they wouldn't have been sent: their colonels would have seen to that. Except, as I said, yourself. And you've special talents for which the service ought to be able to find some use. They didn't apparently find the right use in England. We must try to do better here. But, as I said, you're a hard man to place.'

Reid smiled ruefully. ‘You're not the first person who's said that.'

‘I guess that's true; let's hope that I'm the last. But even if I'm not . . . well, does it matter much? When it's all over, you'll go back to your old life, refreshed. It may be that you'll think in retrospect that this whole episode was a lucky break, a half-time breather; and you're bound to be enlarged by this, by becoming a part of the whole Moslem world. It may add a dimension to you. I'm not worrying about your enforced idleness on your own account; I'm simply feeling that from the service point of view, in terms of the war effort, it's a waste.'

Reid returned to his flat to see a line of light under the door of Farrar's sitting-room. It had been agreed that when Farrar did not want to be disturbed he would lock the door; and that Reid should retire quietly or remain in his own room till Farrar's visitor had left. Reid turned the handle, pressed and the door opened.

Farrar was seated at his desk, with an array of stamps spread out.

‘I did not know you were a philatelist.'

‘I'm not, and what a word to use. I'm an investor; a contrabandist; these are my blue chips. I don't trust currency. But stamps are like diamonds: they're easy to smuggle across frontiers. I'm laying in provisions for my old age. How was it? Did he do you well?'