The Mule on the Minaret (25 page)

He shrugged. ‘In Paris they talked about the
dr
ô
le de guerre.
We've got one here all right.'

On the following morning the examination results were out. Aziz had passed. The news reached the office through Abdul Hamid. Reid promptly rang up Madame Amin.

‘I suppose you have heard the news.'

‘Indeed I have.'

‘ Congratulations.'

‘We are so happy and so proud.'

‘Do you know how soon Aziz will be back?'

‘The new term starts in ten days' time.'

‘It must be wonderful for you to know that you'll have him back.'

‘Wonderful. Wonderful. He'll be so happy, too. We are going to have a welcome home party for him. We are getting out the invitations now. Of course, there'll be one for you, and Captain Farrar. I'm so grateful to you for the sympathy and kindness that you've shown him. I attribute his success to you, in part. You gave him confidence. You restored his faith in himself. He always speaks most highly of you.'

Reid was glad that she could not see his expression at that moment. ‘I suppose,' he thought, ‘I'll learn to play my role: to smile, and smile and be a villain.'

A week later, in the early afternoon, Eve waited impatiently for Aziz. He was catching the train that evening. On the morning before she had picked up a message at the Perapalas. Would she telephone him at his home that afternoon? She found herself trembling when she heard his voice. Its foreign accent was more marked over the wire. It had a rhythm, a lilt she had forgotten, or had not been conscious of when he had been here in person, when she had been more aware of his looks, his manners.

‘I've found that kind of cigarette that you were looking for,' she told him.

‘What cigarettes?' He sounded puzzled.

She chuckled. He was not used to the security trick of calling everything by a different name.

‘You remember; you must. You can't get them in the Lebanon. A special German make.'

‘Of course, of course,' and his voice lightened eagerly. ‘I'll call for them tomorrow.'

‘Come early, so that we can have some music'

The following morning she returned from her office with a large bunch of roses. As the flat was centrally heated they rarely used the fireplace, but today she laid a fire; she tidied the writing-desk and bookshelves. She arranged low round cushions by the settee. Though twilight had not yet fallen she drew the curtains and switched on the two small reading lamps. It looked very cosy. ‘I'll light the fire at three. I'll have a record playing.' She had no idea what would happen this afternoon. But she felt something would, something decisive. Anyhow, the stage must be set as though it would.

In the hall there was a bare hard light. He started when he came out of the hall into the softly-lit warm room, with the firelight
flickering on the ceiling, on the roses and on the polished woodwork of the bookcase. He checked, looking round him. ‘It all looks different today,' he said.

She smiled. ‘It's the same flat. But perhaps its seems different to you because it isn't strange to you any more; you feel at home here. Let me take your coat.' She took it into her bedroom. He followed her.

‘Is this where you sleep?'

She nodded. It was a bed-sitting-room rather than a bedroom, with a divan pushed into the corner. There was a writing-desk and two easy chairs. On the walls were reproductions of English painters: a Constable, a Morland and a Turner. There was no wash-basin. It looked like a schoolgirl's room. On the desk there was a picture of a man in uniform. He went across and looked at it.

‘My father in the First War,' she said. ‘He was wounded at the Dardanelles.'

‘My uncle was killed at the Dardanelles, and my father fought there.'

They looked at one another thoughtfully, then smiled. It seemed a bond rather than a cause for enmity. The music was swelling to its climax. ‘Do you know this?' she asked.

He shook his head. She told him what it was.

‘I wish you could have heard it from the start,' she said. ‘Another time. Look, before I forget. Here's this list for you.'

His eyes widened. It was a long list. He read it slowly. ‘This is more than I could have got from Ahmed. Are you sure that this is accurate?'

‘Quite sure. I got it from the Consulate.'

‘But isn't it classified material?'

She shook her head. ‘It's a publicity handout. Our office was trying to prove to the Turks that we were more important to them than the Germans by showing how much more was imported from Britain than from Germany.'

He read it to the end, then grinned. ‘They'll be very pleased with this when I get back to Beirut.'

‘Ismail losing his nerve was really a piece of luck for you.'

‘A great piece of luck for me.'

This was, indeed, she thought, a fantastic double-take in dramatic irony. He believed that she had no idea that his second letter to Ahmed had been intercepted in censorship and that
through that interception he had become a German spy. He was reminding himself that he must be desperately careful not to reveal his true position, that he must play the role of the Lebanese student finding commercial information for a friend. He had no idea that she knew exactly what he was thinking; she knew all that he knew and a great deal more, because she knew that he was now a pawn not in the German machine but in the British. It was more than a double take, it was a treble take. And again there came over her that sense of pity and protective tenderness. He had no knowledge of his plight. Two weeks ago he had been relatively innocent. He had been trying to evade censorship, but now he was acting for a power that might one day find itself at war with his own countrymen. Aiding an enemy in time of war: He would get short shrift from the Turkish authorities.

‘But it won't happen,' she reassured herself. ‘I shall protect him I'll be in the background, watching, if danger threatens; I'll see he's warned. They shan't throw him to the wolves.' Sedgwick might be ruthless. But she was there. If he only guessed how dependent he was on her.

Her smile grew fond. ‘I've prepared an English tea for you this afternoon. You've probably never had one. Sit down. The kettle will be on the boil almost at once.'

She explained to him the ritual of English tea; how you first warm the teapot and the teacups with hot water; how the water must be brought to the boil only just before you make the tea otherwise you boiled all the good out of the water. How you put into the pot one teaspoonful of tea for each guest and then one extra one for the pot; how you let the tea draw for five minutes before you poured. ‘A great deal depends upon the water,' she explained. ‘There are special blends of tea for places with special water. Thomas Lipton once brought back a barrel of water from Hamburg to find the right blend for it. The Customs officials would not believe that the barrel contained only water. I don't suppose this tea was blended specially for Turkish water. Tea never tastes as well out of England.'

But it did taste very well, and she had prepared Marmite sandwiches and produced a plum and sultana cake as a contrast to the over-sweet, sticky almond and sugar cakes of the Levant. And the logs glowed in the grate and music played softly from the gramophone; their talk ceased; not for many months had she felt so at one with anyone. She shook herself. She stood up. ‘I'll clear
this away. No, don't you bother. I won't wash up. Choose some records while I tidy up. We'll have a little music, then a whisky. You aren't in any hurry, are you?'

‘I'm not in any hurry.'

Nor was she. She had asked Kitty not to return too early. She leant against the settee, her back propped with cushions. She watched the expression of his face change as the music ebbed and flowed. Once again under the impact of the music, a spiritual expression came into his face. He was not handsome, but he was beautiful at such a moment. It was just as it had been at the earlier meeting, except that the moment's magic was intensified by the change in his position. She had thought of him as her victim then; he was now her prisoner though he did not know it. That indeed was a large part of his fascination for her. He did not know what cords she had fastened round him, cords that would tighten in his absence. There was no escape for him, no escape from her.

The record finished. ‘I'll get your whisky now,' she said. On her return from the kitchen she sat beside him.

‘Are you excited about going back to Beirut?' she asked.

‘Not very.'

‘You'll be glad to see your girl-friend, won't you?'

‘I haven't a girl-friend.'

‘What, a young man like you? And I'm told that the girls in Beirut are very pretty. They are very pretty, aren't they?'

‘They are all right.'

‘No girl-friend, though?'

‘No girl-friend.'

‘Because you are faithful to your girl-friend here.'

‘I have no girl-friend here.'

‘Then where is your girl-friend?'

‘I have no girl-friend anywhere.'

She raised her eyebrows in mock astonishment. She was enjoying this teasing of him in the same way, so she suspected, that an experienced man would enjoy teasing an inexperienced girl. ‘He's actually blushing,' she thought. ‘Yes, he is.'

‘Haven't you ever been in love?' she asked.

He shook his head.

‘But you find girls attractive?'

‘Oh, yes.'

‘What kinds of girl do you find attractive? Dark, fair, thin, plump?'

He laughed, a little nervously. ‘I have not thought about it.'

‘Are you sure you haven't?'

Again he laughed, that same nervous laugh.

‘If you haven't, they have,' she said.

‘They? Who do you mean?'

‘The girls.'

‘What girls?'

‘That's what I'm wondering. Which girls you attract. It's a curious thing, so I've been told, that very often very young girls don't like young men. They prefer older men, men of experience who can put them at their ease. It's vice versa, so they say; young men prefer women with experience. Is that true in your case? Do you like married women?'

Again he shook his head. He looked awkward, yet at the same time he seemed to be enjoying it as though he were being tickled.

‘I think I can guess the kind of girl you'd like, who'd be right for you; a girl about five years older who's had some experience. That's what you need. Shall I tell you what I'm going to do, when you come back. . .. You are coming back, aren't you?'

‘Yes, I'm coming back.'

‘I can be much more help to you than Ahmed could have ever been. But that's not the only reason, is it, that you'll be coming back?'

‘That's not the only reason.'

‘I wouldn't be at all happy if it were; I'd be very hurt. But you will come back. I know you will, and when you do I'll have a party and ask two or three of the kinds of girl I think you'd like, about twenty-three to twenty-six, who've been about. There are quite a number of them in the various Ministries; and then you can see which you'd prefer. The only trouble is,' she paused and her eyes were twinkling, ‘the trouble is that I might get jealous. I've a suspicion I could use you for myself.'

She saw, at that moment, a look in his eyes that was partly anticipation, partly fear: the kind of expression that a mature man might see in a young girl's eyes when he first approaches her; a girl who is terrified of what may transpire, but who will never forgive him now if he draws back.

‘Yes,' she repeated. ‘I'm very sure I should be jealous.' She swung round off the low, round cushion and knelt on it. She was higher than he was now, and she looked down on him. It gave her a heady sense of power. His eyes were shining. She lowered her
face slowly over his, let her mouth rest on his; gently at first, then with a strengthening, deepening pressure. She let her lips open slightly, let the tip of her tongue slide between them. She lingered, then drew back her head. ‘He'll never forget this,' she told herself. ‘Never, never, never.'

*   *   *

The party to welcome Aziz's return was fixed for seven o'clock. It would go on till ten to accommodate those who worked late in offices. Reid and Farrar agreed to go there early. Reid had a dinner date afterwards with Diana.

‘I'll be able to give you a first-hand report,' he told her.

‘Do that,' she said.

Reid was curious to see whether he would be able to detect any difference in Aziz. Surely there would be some signs of change. But to his surprise on the surface Aziz was unaltered. He was as silent and detached as ever. He made no effort to do more than acknowledge congratulations. The only obvious change in him was superficial; he had exchanged his usual heavy black winter suit for a light grey summer one. It did not suit him. Black went better with his mournful countenance. Reid waited till the press of guests had thinned.

‘Congratulations. It must be a relief,' he said.

‘It is.'

‘Are you glad to be back?'

‘In most ways, yes.'

‘Did it seem strange being in a country that was not at war?'

‘There's not all that difference. Istanbul is full of uniforms.'

‘But isn't there a different tension in the air? The men here who are in uniform may be in action any day.'

‘There's the same tension when you've a military dictator, and Turkey may be in the war at any moment.'

‘How do your friends there think the war is going?'

‘It will be a long war they say.'

‘But they have no doubt as to the result, I hope?'

Aziz shrugged. ‘They are not sure. They guessed wrong in the First War. Some of them think that Japan and America cancel each other out, that Russia might make a separate peace, which would leave Germany in control of Europe.'