The Lion at Sea (31 page)

‘The road on the right, Rumbelo,’ Kelly said quietly. ‘If there’s shooting, that’s where we go. Without hesitation. Pass the word.’

‘What about His Nibs? If there’s shooting, he’s going to be the first to cop it.’

‘Those are our instructions. We’re expected to do as we’re told.’

Rumbelo frowned. ‘I don’t like leaving people in the lurch, sir, when they’re making sacrifices to help us.’

Kelly scowled, his own thoughts mixed and angry. ‘What’s the good of them making sacrifices if we don’t take advantage of them? If there’s trouble, we go at once. Pass it on to the others.’

They waited as a noisy argument full of shrill voices started. The day was cold and the wind blew a gritty dust in their faces. The horses fidgeted restlessly and Rumbelo shifted uncomfortably in the saddle. Up ahead the voices were growing louder and the Turkish officer was pointing to the rear of the column where they waited.

‘We’ve been spotted,’ Rumbelo whispered.

A shot rang out, the echo clattering across the valley. Immediately, as though they’d been instructed what to do, the Arabs in front of them flung themselves from their saddles and dived among the rocks, their rifles pointing towards the Turkish outpost. The Turkish officer was lying on his face in the road and the horses were curvetting and struggling as their heads were dragged round in an attempt to escape. More shots came and one of the horsemen fell off to hit the road in a puff of dust, and Kelly saw the slim white-clad figure in the middle of the skirmish sway, then there was a whole fusillade of shots and the Turks ran for the hut and the drainage ditch at the side of the road. Jemil was wrenching his horse’s head round and, as they kicked their heels into their mounts and bolted down the road to the right, Kelly saw he was gripping the reins of the grey pony and that the white-clad figure was clinging to its neck.

The road dropped away so steeply Kelly was convinced they were about to come a cropper, but they clattered downwards, hidden almost at once by cypresses and lemon groves. Above them, on their left, they could hear the rattle of firing and, glancing back, Kelly saw Jemil’s big mount thundering after them, followed by the grey.

As they halted among the houses, wondering which way to go, Jemil crashed through them, still leading the grey. Ayesha was clinging to the horse’s mane, her head-cloth still in place across her features. Dragging their horses’ heads round, they followed Jemil through the narrow streets, raising the dust and sending children and chickens flying. Eventually, in a small square, Jemil halted and dismounted. Speaking quickly to a group of Arab loafers, who appeared to be waiting for them, he gestured to Kelly and they followed him through a doorway with a pointed arch. The loafers snatched at the reins and the horses were spirited away. Within a minute the square was empty and the dust was settling.

As Kelly pushed into the dark house, he saw the big Arab had snatched Ayesha into his arms. Her head-cloth had fallen from her features and he saw a slim hand come up and lift it back into place, then their ears were filled with the sound of running feet as a Turkish patrol hurried past in search of them.

For a moment they held their breath, waiting for the thunder of rifle butts on the door, but nothing happened and eventually the owner of the house appeared, his face worried. Jemil barked at him and Kelly caught the name Jellal el Arar. The owner bobbed his head and gestured. As Jemil disappeared down a corridor, the rest of them were about to follow but Jemil reappeared and pushed them away, gesturing that they should wait. Then the owner of the house returned, calling softly, and two or three women arrived.

‘What’s happened?’ Kelly demanded and Jemil shook his head, barking a few words at him that he didn’t understand.

For a long time, they waited in the shadows, the whole lot of them crammed into a large room with a tiled porch, then the owner appeared and called Jemil. When Jemil returned he pointed at Kelly and led the way down the corridor.

Inside a shadowed room, Ayesha was stretched out on an Arab bed. She had been hit in the shoulder by a heavy lead bullet which had struck bone and spread, leaving a terrible wound the women were trying without much success to bandage. They had torn away her robes and he could see her small breasts, streaked with blood, as they fought to staunch the bleeding. Her black hair was spread across the pillow and in the pallor of her face her eyes looked enormous and tremendously, feverishly, bright.

‘Can’t we give her something to ease the pain?’ Kelly whispered.

The owner of the house shrugged. ‘Where do we get such drugs, effendi? We have none. What there were the Turks took.’

It was a torment to watch the agony in Ayesha’s face. As Kelly went to her she looked up at him. ‘You will be all right now,’ she said in a voice that was only a half-whisper but was still commanding. ‘These are friends of ours. They will find a guide for you as soon as it is dark.’ She stiffened in a sudden spasm of pain and Kelly bent closer.

‘We’ve got to get you away from here,’ he said.

She managed a weak smile. ‘That would be nice but I would only be a burden. My friends will care for me. I hope you do not blame me for making your escape more risky.’

Lifting her good arm, she reached up and touched his cheek with the back of her hand. ‘Perhaps one day you will come back here as a tourist and we shall meet again and drink coffee decorously as old friends.’

‘We’re more than friends.’

She didn’t seem to hear. ‘Or perhaps you’ll arrive leading a victorious army on Damascus and Constantinople.’ She smiled again. ‘But, of course not. You could never do that. You are a sailor.’

Crowded uncomfortably, they waited all afternoon as the shadows grew longer and the muezzins started their evening chant. No one came near the house, though over the wailing from the towers they occasionally heard scattered shots coming across the town. In the dusk, a small figure appeared. He was a hunchback, grinning and deformed, and Jemil pointed to Kelly.

‘I must say goodbye to her,’ Kelly said.

Jemil looked angry but he disappeared into the other room. After a while he returned and nodded.

The change in Ayesha was horrifying. Her face had sunk and the muscles of her neck were drawn taut. She tried to speak and, unable to, he saw tears roll down her cheek. Her throat worked but nothing would come and her eyes, fever-bright in the deathly-white face burned in their sockets.

As he moved forward, Jemil tried to hold him back. From Ayesha’s frantic eyes, he knew she wanted him nearer and he pushed the old man aside with a violent shove and knelt by the bed.

‘I’ll come back,’ he said. ‘I’ll find you again.’

He spoke cheerfully but he knew only too well that she could never recover from that ghastly wound which had torn away half her shoulder and back. Her breast was moving quickly up and down in little fluttering gasps and, feeling as if tears were falling on his heart one by one in small, icy drops, Kelly bent over and kissed her forehead. For a second the eyelids opened and a rational look came into the eyes through the pain, then the curtain of darkness came swiftly down once more. Jemil turned and roughly pushed Kelly from the room.

‘How’s His Nibs?’ Rumbelo asked.

Kelly swallowed, unable to speak. At last the words came, stumbling and awkward, his voice dry and harsh and sticking in his throat. ‘His Nibs,’ he said, ‘is dying.’

A week later they stepped ashore in Alexandria. They had been met outside the harbour by a destroyer and Kelly had stood in the bows of the felucca and shouted up to the spruce figure in white staring coldly down at the ragged figures on the scruffy vessel’s decks.

‘Lieutenant Maguire, of the submarine
E19
,’ he yelled. ‘With survivors and ex-prisoners of war.’

The officer leaning over the rail stared in surprise. ‘Good God,’ he said. ‘You’d better come aboard.’

Three hours later, still in their rags, they were in the presence of the admiral. An army colonel was with him to claim the Australians.

‘Well, what the devil do we do with you?’ the admiral asked. ‘There’s no longer any fleet at Mudros. Do you want to stay in the Med?’

‘Not particularly, sir,’ Kelly said. The Middle East could start up too many memories.

‘Well, it’s always been the policy for escaped prisoners to be sent home. They don’t like to chance them being captured again in case they suffer from it. There’s a destroyer heading for Gibraltar at the end of the week. You’d better be aboard her.’

Kelly moved restlessly. ‘There’s one thing I must do first, sir,’ he said. ‘I believe there’s an Arab Bureau in Egypt.’

‘That’s right,’ the admiral agreed. ‘Down in Cairo. Doesn’t do much.’

‘I have messages for them from the Arab leaders. They’re anxious to start a national rebellion, and they think it would not only help them but also help us.’

‘That’s interesting.’ The admiral looked at the Australian colonel. ‘You’d better give your story to the Intelligence boys and when I’ve heard from them we’ll see if there’s anything we can do about it. You’d better get out of those rags, though. You look like a wog.’

‘We lived with the wogs for a while, sir,’ Kelly said stiffly, thinking of the dying girl in Tripoli. ‘We owe a great deal to – wogs.’

The admiral glanced again at the colonel then he gestured to the flag lieutenant. ‘Very well. Fix it, Flags.’ He looked up at Kelly. ‘You any relation of Admiral Maguire?’

‘He’s my father, sir.’

‘Is he, by God?’ The admiral seemed surprised that anyone whom Admiral Maguire had sired could be so enterprising as to get himself not only captured by Turks but could also escape. ‘Then you’d better see him while you’re in Cairo. He’s on the mission staff down there.’

Riding to Cairo in the train in the sweltering heat, Kelly’s mind was a blur. Dressed in a civilian suit the admiral’s flag lieutenant had lent him until the Egyptian tailor could fling together a white drill uniform, all he could see as the track followed the Nile were small haggard features and two feverishly bright eyes in a ghastly caricature of the face that had once looked at him with longing. It appeared in the clumps of palms and the waves of shimmering heat and among the slow-moving dhows. Every group of women he saw stirred his memory and every light voice he heard made him turn his head.

Cairo was full of troops, all listless in the enervating lassitude that lay over the city. Rising out of its steamy soil, the heat intensified in a pall of dust and filth that lay over the streets. The dirt was everywhere. Cairo, corrupt, lackadaisical, easy-going and romantic at night when you couldn’t see the dirt, was always a city of beggars and fabulously rich families. Troops marched in squads among the teeming thousands in their white jellabas, with military cars and dozens of army mules. There were British and Indians and Gurkhas and troops from West and East Africa, and no sign of the war anywhere.

Faintly disgusted with the scene, Kelly went into a bar where staff officers in immaculately pressed uniforms looked down their noses at his shabby figure in the rumpled linen suit. The man on the next table kept staring at him and eventually he realised there was a cold curiosity in the glance.

As he turned the man spoke. He was a middle-aged major, red-faced, balding, with cold eyes and a face like a meat axe.

‘You British?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Kelly said. ‘I am.’

‘Likely-looking young feller.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Pity you don’t volunteer.’

‘What for?’

‘What for? The army, man! The army!’

The major had a loud voice and looked as though he’d arrived in uniform from some Middle East business venture. Several eyes turned in Kelly’s direction, most of them also cold and disapproving.

Kelly stared back at the major, a hot flush of anger filling his cheeks. ‘I don’t see the need,’ he said, and the major’s face darkened.

‘Don’t see the need?’ he snorted. ‘Back home, boy, they’re bringing in conscription!’

‘Won’t affect me.’

‘Why not? Got something wrong with you?’

‘No.’

The blustering voice rose. ‘Then you could bloody well volunteer, couldn’t you? Out here, we’re in need of everybody we can get. Others have. Businessmen like me. Even the bloody archaeologists digging up the desert. There are any amount of wogs, of course, but
they
were never any bloody good to anybody and never will be.’

Black rage filled Kelly, and he finished his beer and rose. Everyone had stopped drinking and he was conscious that they were all hanging on to his words. He glared round at the immaculate khaki figures, deciding that he loathed the lot of them.

‘They won’t want me,’ he said loudly, ‘because I happen to be already in the Navy. I’m a submariner, as a matter of fact, and I was sunk in the Dardanelles and I’ve just escaped after being a prisoner of the Turks.’

The hard red face sagged. ‘Oh, my God,’ its owner said. ‘I didn’t realise. Look here, boy, may I shake your hand and buy you a drink?’

‘You can choke on your bloody drink!’ Kelly snorted. ‘And it might interest you to know that, but for a few of those bloody wogs you dislike so much dying to save me, I’d
still
be a prisoner of the Turks!’

His father’s office was in a block of flats, and the admiral, dressed in white, seemed to be very comfortably established with a woman secretary who looked as though she’d been chosen for her looks rather than for any ability she might have.

‘My boy!’ Admiral Maguire jumped to his feet as Kelly appeared. ‘I got a signal from the C-in-C to say you’d turned up. My God, what a shock! Have you informed your mother?’

‘I sent her a telegram,’ Kelly said.

His father had grown fatter, as though the fleshpots of Cairo suited him, and Kelly wondered bitterly how often he, too, used the bar he’d just left.

Admiral Maguire sat down. ‘I couldn’t believe it. What a war you’re having, eh? You won’t have heard of your Uncle Paddy, of course?’

‘No, Father. What about him?’

‘Did rather a good job at Ypres and they gave him a battalion. He was killed at Neuve Chapelle.’