The Mule on the Minaret (12 page)

Pleasantly, placidly, the morning passed. Shortly before eleven there was a tap upon his door. Gustave responded to his ‘Come in.' Gustave's eyes were bright and his cheeks were flushed.

‘That chap you share a flat with, Farrar; is he bogus?'

‘What do you mean by that?'

‘Well, you should know. Mutual friends and all that, isn't it?'

‘We have friends in common.'

‘So I deduced. You know my methods, Watson, but what's his racket?'

‘I didn't know he had one.'

‘Ah, come now, listen. How could anyone without a racket be living in the style he does on a captain's pay?'

‘Some people have private means; he was out here before the war, with I.P.C. He hasn't told me anything, but I daresay they make up the difference between his pre-war salary and his army pay.'

‘I see.' Gustave hesitated.

‘Why do you ask?'

‘I want to know what's cooking.'

‘What's cooking where?'

‘Oh, come now, you know that.'

‘I've not the least idea what you are talking about.'

‘You haven't, honest?'

‘I assure you, honest.'

‘Oh.' His face clouded. ‘I thought it was something you'd fixed up between you.'

‘I'm still in the dark.'

‘If you are then, Prof., there's no more to be said. I came to thank you. If it hadn't been for you, asking me up to have that
drink, I wouldn't have met Farrar and this wouldn't have happened.'

‘What's happened?'

‘My going to Cairo for an interview; if things work out, and Farrar says they should, I'll be working in his outfit there, and as a captain.'

‘Which is exactly what you wanted, isn't it?'

‘I'll say it is.'

‘Congratulations, then. Good luck.'

‘Thanks; and it really is all due to you. Even if you didn't wangle it. You're a good guy, Prof.'

So that was another of the missionaries settled. By now they had most of them found employment, as Cartwright had prophesied, all except Johnson and himself: the two First War veterans.

There was a tap upon the door. A corporal with the mail. ‘Three for you, sir.'

They were all on the new airgraphs by which a large sheet of paper was reduced by photography to the size of a small postcard. They were the first of these that he had received. One was from Rachel, one from his father, the third, in large printed capitals, was from his younger son. He opened his son's first:

‘Dear Daddy,

‘Happy Christmas. I am excited. What will Santa bring. No prize for me this term. Much love, Mark.'

He opened his father's next. His father, a widower and treasury official, had retired a few years before the outbreak of war. He lived in Hampstead and had been given half-time employment as a censor. He left his home every morning at half past nine, lunched at the Athenaeum, and was home by half past four. He missed the discomfort of crowded tubes and buses and did not have to travel in the blackout. He wrote on a cheerful note:

‘It seems rather shocking for me to admit it, but I am actually having a more entertaining existence than I had three years ago. The hours are not long. The work makes no great demands on me; it is routine work, but it is not uninteresting. I am in the Italian section, and there is something a little special about everyone who is writing or being written to in Italian. I feel I am in the swim, and when I lunch at the Athenaeum, I have something to contribute to the conversation—without, I hasten to assure you, indulging in careless talk; moreover I don't have to hurry over my lunch, as the important
figures in Whitehall have to. In fact the war came at a lucky time for me. If it had come eight years ago, when I was head of my section, I should have been putting in a nine to ten hours day, six days of the week. I might have finished up with a Knighthood, but I don't fancy that I should have lived to enjoy it very long.'

Timing, his son thought, everything was timing, and it probably was true that his father, at the age of seventy-two, was leading, because of the war, a more satisfactory life than he could have anticipated for himself when he was fifty. He made a point of writing cheerfully, but in actual fact he was relatively cheerful. He had a sunny nature, and he had good health.

‘I had a telephone talk with Rachel the other day,' [his letter ended]. ‘She is having, I suspect, a rather dreary time, poor dear, but she is being very brave about it. I am hoping that after Christmas she will bring the boys up to London for a day and that I shall have a chance of seeing them. Children forget so quickly. I want them to have a real memory of their old Poppa.'

A rather dreary time; poor Rachel. And it was his fault that she was having it.

The telephone rang beside him. A female voice was at the other end. ‘Is that Captain Reid? Will you please hold on a second for Mr. Cartwright?'

Reid's spirits lifted. Was this the call that he expected daily? The news that an appointment had been found for him? ‘Is that you, Reid? Cartwright here. It's very short notice, but I wondered if you were free for lunch today?'

‘I'm afraid I'm Duty Officer.'

‘Too bad. I have a friend from London. I think you'd have interested one another. Well, it can't be helped. Another time. He's going to be here two weeks. There may be another chance; when I know his plans I'll let you know.'

There was a tap on the door. It was Johnson, his eyes narrowed and his cheeks flushed.

‘Busy?' Johnson asked.

‘Not particularly.'

‘Mind if I sit down?'

‘Of course not.'

Johnson took out a cigarette and lit it. He drew the smoke deep into his lungs, breathing it slowly out. ‘Nothing came out of that fellow in Ninth Army,' he said at length.

‘I'm sorry to hear that.'

‘So am I. I was banking on it; thought I had the thing sewn up. They said I wasn't young enough. That means that I'm not fit enough; out of training; well, so I am. I don't know what's going to happen to me.'

He checked. Reid said nothing. What was there he could say?

‘The British Council are looking for men,' said Johnson. ‘One or two of our group have got in on that. But then they're scholars. The British Council wants men who can teach something. What could I teach? All I can do is look after troops; and I'm too old for that. I've led the wrong kind of life for office work. You, of course . . .' He paused; he looked at the heap of files in Reid's in-tray. ‘You're trained for this kind of work; I'm not. It's a continuation of your peacetime life. But me . . .'

Reid made no reply. They all say the same thing, he thought, that it's different for me. They all imagine I've no problems because I've an established position in peacetime England, because I've a job waiting for me. Well, let them go on thinking it. It was hard to enter imaginatively into lives alien to one's own. That was one of the historian's functions, to explain to the public why men and women of whom their taste, training, instincts disapproved, acted in the way they did.

He waited. Johnson stubbed out his cigarette, stood up, moved towards the door, hesitated. ‘I suppose you haven't any whisky, have you?'

‘As a matter of fact, I have.'

It was the custom for Mission officers, during the last half-hour of the day, to take a drink in their offices before going out to dinner, but it was the first time that a morning drink had been suggested. He took a bottle of whisky from his deep bottom drawer.

‘You don't mind, do you, if I don't join you?'

‘Not in the least, not in the very least.'

Reid handed him the bottle and a tumbler. ‘Help yourself.'

The tumbler was squat, wide and solid. Johnson poured himself out a half-inch shot, checked, then poured another quarter-inch. He sat down again. ‘You're sure you're not in any hurry?'

‘Dead sure. This is only half-time employment.'

‘But you're on the establishment.'

‘Yes.'

‘That's all that matters. As long as a man's on the establishment and doesn't put up a black, and you're not the kind of man who
does put up a black, there's nothing to worry over. Half-time employment; think how fresh you'll feel when you get back to your university.'

Johnson did not mix any water with his whisky. He lifted his glass and took a quick, deep gulp. He blinked and shook his head.

‘I needed that. One good thing about being out here is getting whisky at a reasonable rate. It's in very short supply in London.'

Four more gulps and the glass was empty. ‘Thanks, I'm better now. I fell among friends last night.' He rose; walked briskly to the door. He certainly did look better.

Reid picked up the last letter. Rachel's; it was strange to see her handwriting reduced to such minute proportions.

‘Darling
[the letter read],

‘They tell me that this kind of letter will get to you more quickly than an ordinary airmail letter, because it can be flown out to you direct, whereas an airmail letter goes part of the way by sea. Do tell me if that is so. Your airgraph reached me in ten days but I haven't had a real letter yet. I'm longing to hear what you are doing, if you are allowed to tell me, that's to say. It's wonderful for you to be out there and have a real use found for you at last. I know how exasperated you got at that Ministry of Mines, putting letters into envelopes. It was painful to watch you sometimes, you looked so frustrated. I'm sure that one gets more tired by things that bore one. I'm so glad for your sake that you are where you are. But it is dreary here without you. Those week-ends made such a difference, and then there were your telephone calls; even when you were in London you seemed very close. I didn't realize how much those calls meant until now, when I haven't got them. But I mustn't grumble. You're not to worry about me. I'm all right. I'll get used to it, but it is a change for me. We've been so very much together. It isn't as though you were one of those husbands whose work took him away from home. How quickly I've got to the end of the sheet. Have I written so small that it won't be clear? Do let me know, or better still send me back this airgraph so that I can see what it looks like. All my love, my darling.'

He stared at the small cramped script. Johnson and Gustave envied him his immunity. They thought he had no problems. Never in forty-three years of living had he felt less certain of himself.

As duty officer he was allowed to absent himself from the office between twelve and one. He strolled down the hill to the St. Georges. It was warm enough to sit out on the terrace; he allowed himself the indulgence of a bottle of canned American beer that in
New York would have cost ten cents but here cost two Syrian pounds. With the official rate at nine to the British pound, he could not afford one very often. What a cool, clean bite it had, and how good it was sitting out here by himself, without the usual throng of men in uniform. On the beach below a group of children, taking advantage of the unseasonable sunlight, were playing in the sand under the watchful guardianship of their nurses. A few tables away three Lebanese men in Western suits were talking slowly, seriously, over small cups of coffee. They would remain there over those same cups for an hour, talking in the same deliberate unhurried manner, settling, most likely, a deal in which very large sums of money were at stake. For two thousand years similar men had sat, under the shadow of Mount Hebron, weighing the ultimate value to themselves of the fratricidal strife of Greeks and Romans, Phoenicians and Carthaginians. The triremes passed and the percentage of profit stayed, and his heart warmed towards this astute, fickle, frivolous and charming people that had been true to itself, at the expense of interlopers. He could understand why so many Englishmen had been attracted to the Middle East.

Back in his office, in the silent deserted building, he busied himself with the reading of the Mission files. There was so much here for him to learn. It would be easy for him with his sense of history and of philosophy to yield to the fascination of this new world. He could justify himself in staying on. The Government had sent him here. He was the Government's responsibility. If the Government could not find adequate work for him, that was the Government's fault, not his. He could revivify, rejuvenate, recreate himself. He could enlarge himself. He would have more to give the world when the war was over. And in point of fact he soon would be able to find enough work to keep his days occupied. Already the half-time occupation that Cartwright had offered him had become three-quarter time. In another month it would have become full time. Give a conscientious man a desk and a telephone and he would soon find himself employment. That was the whole theory of increased establishments. A staff of five could easily cope with all the work required. Double the staff and within a month each member would somehow or other, by duplicating duties, have managed to be busy. That was bureaucracy. Taking in each other's washing. It might be one way to solve the white-collar class unemployment programme. But it wasn't good enough for him, in wartime. He could not postpone the issue any longer.

That evening as soon as the office closed and he had moved in to the duty officer's room, he spread out a sheet of writing paper. He addressed it to the Dean of Winchborough University.

‘Dear Gerald
[he wrote],

‘Thirty months ago when I told you that as a Reserve officer I was likely to be called up shortly, you strongly advised me to apply for a postponement. The University, you said, would support my application. Education was a first necessity and the authorities were not going to repeat the mistakes of 1914 and let all the young schoolmasters go to the front and leave education in the hands of the elderly and unfit. I argued in reply that if I had felt like that I should have resigned from the R.A.R.O. several years ago, that I had undertaken an obligation to be on call if I was required. Later, when my calling up papers came, you said, “Don't forget, if you ever feel that you would be of greater service here than in the army, you've only got to let me know and I'll start wheels moving.” Well, I think the time has come. Since May 1940, I haven't, except when I was on courses, done a single full day's work.'