The Doomed Oasis (15 page)

“And this was in Saraifa?” I asked.

“
Oui
. Saraifa. With David it is always Saraifa. He has a—a
folie
for that place.” She said it almost sadly, and she added: “He wish to prove something there, but what I do not know—'imself per'aps.” For a while she sat quite still and silent, and then she said very softly: “He was a man with a dream.” She looked up at me suddenly. “And dreams don' die, do they? Or are men's dreams like the seed in a place like this—all barren?”

I didn't know what to answer. “You loved him, did you?” I asked gently.

“Loved?” She shrugged. “You want everything black and white. What is love between man and woman—and in a place like this?” Her shoulders moved again, slight and impatient. “Per'aps. But sometimes he could be cruel. He had a vein of cruelty in him—like the Arab. At other times …” She smiled. “He showed me a glimpse, of what life could be. And when he talked about his dreams, then he is near to God. You see,” she added, her voice suddenly tense, “he is important to me. The most important thing in my whole life. That is why I cannot believe he is dead.”

I asked her when she had last seen him and she laughed in my face. “You don' see a man when is lying in your arms. You feel—feel … if you are a woman.” She stared at me and then she giggled like a girl. “You look so shocked. Have you never been with a woman like me before? But no, of course, you are English. I forget. You see, I am Algérienne, from Afrique Nord. All my life I am accustomed to Frenchmen—and Arabs.” She spat the word “Arabs” out as though she hated them. “I should have been still in Algerie, but when the Indo-China war is on, they send us out to Saigon, a whole planeful of women like me. We come down at Sharjah because of engine trouble and we are there in the Fort for two weeks. There I met a merchant from Bahrain, so I don' go to Saigon, but come 'ere to Bahrain, and later I am put into the al-Menza Club as hostess. That is 'ow I come to meet David.”

“Yes, but when did you last see him?” I asked again.

“In July of las' year. And it was not 'ere, but at the place where I live.”

“That was just before he sailed for Dubai?”

“
Oui
.” Her eyes were searching my face. “He was—how you say?” She hesitated, searching for a word. But then she shrugged. “Vair sad, I think. He say that there is only one man in the 'ole world that 'e can really trust and that this friend is in England.”

“Didn't he trust his father?” I asked.

“
Le Colonel?
” She moved her shoulders, an expressive shrug that seemed to indicate doubt. “When I see him that las' time he trust nobody out here—only this friend in England. You are from England and yesterday you are at the Company's offices enquiring about David.” She leaned forward so that the deep line between her full breasts was a black shadow. “Tell me now, are you this friend?”

“Didn't he tell you his friend's name?”

“No, he don' say his name—or if he do, I 'ave forgot.”

“Well, I'm his lawyer. Does that help?”

“A man of business?”

“Yes. His executor, in fact. That means that I carry out his instructions when he is dead.”

“And now you carry them out? That is why you are 'ere in Bahrain?”

“Yes.”

“Are you never his friend—before?”

“Once,” I said. “Four years ago.” And I told her how I'd helped him to get away in the
Emerald Isle
. Evidently she knew this story, for she nodded her head several times and her eyes were bright with the memory of his telling of it.

“Yes,” she said when I had finished. “Now I know you are the man.” And then she leaned forward and gripped my hand. “Where you go now—after Bahrain?” she asked. “You go to find him, yes?” And she added: “You will give him a message, pleez? It is important.”

I stared at her. Her dark face was so intense, her belief in his immunity from death so tragic.

“Pleez.” Her voice was urgent, pleading. “It is vair important.”

“He's dead,” I reminded her gently.

She dropped my hand as though she had hold of a snake. “His truck is found abandoned in the desert. That is all.” She glared at me as though challenging me to destroy her belief. “That is all, you 'ear me? Pleez.” She touched my hand again, a gesture of supplication. “Find 'im for me,
monsieur
. There is trouble coming in the desert and he is in danger. Warn him, pleez.”

There was no point in telling her again that he was dead. “What sort of trouble?” I asked.

She shrugged. “War. Fighting. What other trouble do men make?” And when I asked her where the fighting was going to break out, she said: “In Saraifa, I think. That is the rumour in the bazaar. And that boy who bring you 'ere, Akhmed; he is the son of a famous pearl-diver. He know the
naukhudas
of all the dhows, and there is talk of
sambuqs
with arms coming across the sea from Persia. I don' know whether it is true or not, but that is the talk. And 'ere in Bahrain we hear all the talk. That is why I ask to see you, to tell you that you must warn him. He is in great danger because of 'is father.”

“What's Colonel Whitaker got to do with it?” I asked.

“He is drilling an oil well in Saraifa. Oh,” she said angrily, “the greed of you men! Money, money, money—you think of nothing else and you must cut each other's throats to get more and more. But with David it is different. He don' want money. He want something … I don' know. I don' know what he want. But not money. He don' care about money.”

It was extraordinary, this girl telling me what Colonel Whitaker was doing, confirming what I had already guessed. “How do you know Colonel Whitaker is drilling for oil?” I asked.

“How? I tell you, this place is for oil men. They 'ave their intelligence, and because they are 'omesick and half dead with ennui, they talk.” She gave a little laugh. “There is so much talk in this 'ouse that I can almost tell you what each oil man eat for breakfast from Doha right down the Gulf to Ras al Khaima.”

I sat for a moment thinking about the rumours she'd heard, remembering what Ruffini had said out there on the Jufair jetty.

“You will tell him what I say. You will warn him?”

“Of course.” What else could I say?

“Do you go to Saraifa? If you go there, pleez, you should talk with Khalid. He is the sheikh's eldest son. He and David hunted together when he is first in the desert. They are like brothers, he always say.”

I gave a little shrug. How would Khalid know? How would anybody know what had happened? The boy was dead. “I'll see his father,” I said. “If I can.”

“
Non, non
.” There was urgency, a sense almost of fear; in her voice.

I stared at her hard. “Why not?” But if she knew anything, she wasn't saying. And because I didn't like the way my thoughts were running, I asked her where David had been going that last time she had seen him.

“To Dubai,” she answered. “By ship.”

“The
Emerald Isle?
”

She nodded.

“And after that—after Dubai?”

Again that slight, impatient movement of the shoulders. “He don' say. He don' tell me where he go.”

“Was it Saraifa?”

“Perhaps. I don' know.”

“There's some suggestion that he was on loan to his father, that he was doing a survey for Colonel—”

“
Non, non
.” Again the urgency, the leap of something stark in the wide dark eyes. “
C'est impossible
.” She shook her head emphatically.

“Why is it impossible?”

“Because …” She shook her head again. “He cannot go to work with him. I know that now.” And she added under her breath: “
Que le bon Dieu le protégé!
” I felt I had to know the reason, but when I pressed her for it, she shied away from the subject. “I must go now.” She got to her feet in one easy, balanced motion. It was as though my questions had started an ugly train of thought—as though to admit that he'd gone to Saraifa to join his father was to admit the fact of his death. And as I stood up I was remembering again the nagging suspicion that had been in my mind that day Griffiths had come to see me in Cardiff.

“
Au revoir
.” She held out her hand and I was conscious again of the steel grip of those thin fingers. “You are his friend. I know that now. And when you find him you will warn him?” I nodded, not saying anything. “And you can give him my love also,” she said with a sudden flash of gaiety. And then serious again: “The boy Akhmed will be waiting each morning for you at the 'otel. I have arranged it. He knows many people and he can help you if you wish. And remember, please,” she added, “this is an island very close to the great deserts of Arabia—much closer than Algerie is to the Sahara. And the desert is Arab. Your Eenglish officials and the oil men, they know only what 'appen on the surface. They can see the bees swarm, but they do not know when the old queen die. You understand?” And with that she pulled back the bead curtain and I was out in the passage again, where the dance music sounded faintly. She took me as far as the alleyway, where the boy was waiting, and then with a final touch of those fingers, a flash of white teeth, she was gone.

It was only after I was back in the car that I realized I didn't know her name. I got it from the boy—Tessa; a very European name for a girl of her mixed parentage. Later I learned that it was a shortened form of Tebessa, the town on the Algerian-Tunisian border where she had been born.

I lay awake a long time that night wondering about David, about what had really happened. Three women—his mother, his sister, and now this girl Tessa—all convinced he was alive. And the picture she had sketched of him, the warning of trouble brewing … I went to sleep with the unpleasant feeling that I was being caught up in the march of events. And in the morning Mahommed Ali drove me to the airport.

3.

The Empty Quarter

We took off shortly after ten, skimming low over sand flats that ran out into the shallows where fish stakes stood in broad arrows. The white coral buildings of Muharraq vanished behind us, and after that the waters of the Gulf stretched away on either side, a flat sea mirror shimmering in the heat, and the colours were all pastel shades.

The plane was piloted by the Canadian I had swum with the previous day—Otto Smith. He had joined me on the apron just before take-off and, realizing that I'd never seen what he called “this Godforsaken country” before, he had offered to make it a low-level flight. We flew, in fact, at less than a thousand feet. A white-winged dhow swam like a child's toy on the sheet-steel surface below, and where the water shallowed to islands banked with sand it was translucent green, the sand-banks sugar white.

We crossed the Qatar Peninsula: a glimpse of an oil camp, the airstrip marked out with oil drums, the camp a wheel of concentric buildings and the rig a single lonely tower. A sheikh's palace standing on an empty beach, square like a military fort, the mud of its walls barely discernible against desert sand. The palm-frond shacks of a
barasti
fishing village, and then the sea again, until the white of gypsum appeared on the starboard side and miniature buttes of sand standing out of the water marked the mainland coast of Arabia.

The plane was full of equipment and stores bound for an oil camp along the coast towards Ras al Khaima, beyond Sharjah. There were only three passengers besides myself—an officer of the Trucial Oman Scouts and two oil men who were straight out from England and could tell me nothing. I sat in silence, in a mood of strange elation, for the sight of the desert so close below the plane gave me the illusion at least that Saraifa was within my reach.

We followed the coast all the way. Shallow sand dunes replaced the glare of gypsum flats, the coast became dotted with palms, and here and there a pattern of nets spread out on the shore to dry marked a fishing village. About an hour and a half out Otto Smith called me for'ard to look at Dubai. “The Venice of Arabia,” he shouted to me above the roar of the engines. A broad estuary dog-legged through the sand-banks, dwindling amongst the town's buildings, which crowded down to the waterfront, capped by innumerable towers, slender like
campanili
—the wind-towers that Tessa had talked of, a simple system of air-conditioning brought from Persia by the pirates and smugglers of the past.

Ten minutes later we reached Sharjah: another estuary, but smaller and with a sandbar across the entrance, and the mud town crumbling to ruin. We came in low over a camel train headed south into the desert, the glint of silver on guns, the flash of white teeth in dark faces, and a woman, black like a crow, with a black mask covering her face, riding the last camel. Watchtowers stood lone sentinels against the dunes, and far away to the east and southeast the mountains of the Jebel were a hazy, dust-red wall. We came to rest close by the white glare of the Fort, and behind it lay the camp of the Trucial Oman Scouts.

Sharjah Fort was like any desert fort, only now it was an airlines transit hotel. Two rusty iron cannon lay in the sand on either side of the arched entrance, and all the interior was an open rectangular space with rooms built against the walls. Otto took me to the lounge and bought me a beer. The room was large, the walls enlivened with maps and coloured posters, the tiled floor gritty with blown sand. “How long are you going to stay here?” he asked me. And when I said I was waiting for Gorde, he looked surprised. “Well, you're going to have a darn long wait,” he said.

“How do you mean?”

“Didn't they tell you? He sent a radio message through yesterday to say he'd changed his plans. He's being flown back to Bahrain tomorrow.”

So that was it … that was why Erkhard had changed his mind. A free ride in a Company plane and I'd be in Sharjah by the time Gorde got back to Bahrain. “Thank God you told me in time,” I said.