The Mule on the Minaret (36 page)

‘I think we'll have plenty to keep you busy with when you get back. By the way, are you doing anything tonight?'

‘Dining with Diana.'

‘Of course, yes, well—'

There seemed no more to say. He had meant to ask to read the files, but he felt, suddenly, that he wanted to get out of the office altogether; to sit on the terrace of the St. Georges for this last, loveliest hour, and drink a cool glass of imported beer.

Diana called out as he walked down the passage, ‘Could we make it five past instead of half past eight?'

That means, he thought, that she's not going back to her flat first.

She arrived punctually; in the same clothes that she had been wearing at the office. She was, as always, neat and tidy; but she was very definitely not dressed for a date.

‘What would you like?' he asked.

‘A double pink gin.'

His spirits sank. He knew what that meant. ‘I'm going to have beer,' he said. ‘That sounds stupid, but beer is something you can't get in Deraa.'

‘How is it in Deraa?' It was said in the same tone of voice with which Royalty, going round a military hospital, will ask, ‘And where were you wounded, my poor man?'

Reid felt his irritation rise. Two could play at that game. ‘It has its points. I've come to realize why nearly all Englishmen who come to the Middle East feel a warm kinship for the Arabs.'

‘And why is that?'

‘Their manners in the first place. Their recognition of the bonds of guest and host.' He enlarged upon the subject. He recounted his experiences. He might have been lecturing to a group of pupils.

She listened attentively. ‘How interesting. I always thought the
English felt a kinship with the Arabs because they loved horses and were homosexual.'

The waiter laid a menu on the table. ‘The food in my Mess is drearily British and I'm tired of Arab food. I'm going to have something French,' said Reid.

‘Then why did you come here? You should have chosen the Lucullus.'

She ordered curdled milk, to be followed by minced lamb mixed with chopped onion and parsley and broiled on a skewer over charcoal. He ordered a fish soup, a
vol-au-vent
and a bottle of Lebanese red wine. ‘You'll have to drink most of that yourself,' she said. ‘I don't feel like wine tonight.'

‘Would you like a pink gin instead?'

‘As a matter of fact, I would.'

His temper was mounting fast, but he was resolved not to show it. If he had to make conversation, it was something he was well qualified to do.

‘There's always,' he said, ‘a snag to every scheme no matter how carefully it's been worked out. Have you heard what the snag was in the wheat scheme?'

‘No, I have not.'

‘A most unlikely one. A shortage of cash; no, not currency, but of paper money. No notes have been printed since the war began. They were flimsy notes and they have started to disintegrate; since the British Occupation the amount of money in circulation has been quadrupled. We had plenty of gold in the banks, but when we had to pay out every week several thousands of Syrian pounds in small denominations there simply weren't enough notes available. We've cabled England for some more; but that takes time. One of my chief jobs every morning is the provision of enough notes to meet the demands of all the depots. That's funny, isn't it?'

‘Hilarious.'

He could have smacked her across the face. But he maintained the same brisk tone of party conversation.

‘There's a lot of money in the Hauran now. When a Haurani is in the black, he does one of three things. Can you guess what they are?'

‘You tell me.'

‘He kills an enemy, marries a maiden or runs off with a friend's wife. In each case the recompense to the family is about the same.'

‘I think that's cute.'

‘I thought you would.'

It went on like that. He had never seen her in this mood before. He was so angry that he did not ask himself why she was in this mood. She had drunk her second gin quickly. He did not offer her a third. He poured her out a glass of wine. She barely sipped it. The waiter presented the sizzling skewer. Its aroma was rich and pungent. The pastry of his
vol-au-vent
was starchy.

‘Have you heard any good Arab proverbs recently?' he asked.

‘Have you?'

‘I like this one:

‘ “My enemies have done me much good:
May Allah keep for me mine enemies.
They found out my faults. I avoided them.
They competed with me. I reached higher places.” '

‘That's excellent. I must remember that.'

He gulped at rather than sipped his wine. It had a pleasant flavour, but he might have been drinking Coca-Cola for all the effect it had on him. She said, ‘The Duke of Gloucester was here last week. The Mission gave a tea-party for him. The women were very perturbed as to whether to wear gloves or not.'

‘What did you do?'

‘I hadn't any gloves.'

She isn't the same person, he told himself. Her voice had a different tone. Her eyes were bright and cold. An alien spirit had taken possession of her form and features.

‘What would you like as a dessert?' he asked.

‘Just coffee.'

‘I'll have some cheese to finish off my wine with.'

‘Do that.'

‘You haven't finished your first glass of wine yet.'

‘I warned you, didn't I?'

‘I'm not complaining.'

The waiter brought an imported American cheese.

‘Black market, from the American PX?' said Reid.

‘That's what I'd suppose.'

It was a Cheddar with a clear, sharp tang. But he did not linger over his wine. He signalled to the waiter. ‘My bill, please.'

He had drunk five-sixths of the bottle, yet he was completely sober. He looked at his watch. Usually when he dined with Diana
the time passed so quickly that they would be astonished at the lateness of the hour. ‘It can't be; twenty past eleven!' But it was now barely quarter past nine.

‘I've had a long day,' he said. ‘I'll be turning in.'

‘Me, too.'

They drove back to her flat in silence, sitting in opposite corners of the Arabana. ‘Don't go away,' he told the driver. They stood on the pavement, facing one another. In the dusk of the partial blackout, with her eyes veiled and her features shadowed, she became for an instant the Diana he had known. His anger fell away and a thudding surging wave of love came back. She held out her hand, as she would have to an acquaintance. ‘Thank you for my good dinner,' she said.

‘Thank
you.
See you in two weeks.'

‘Yes, see you in two weeks.'

He watched her turn her key. She waved from the doorway. The door closed behind her. ‘No, I'll walk,' he told the driver. It was a warm, still night. The sound of dance music jangled from the night-club quarter. It was very early for Beirut. He was very far from drowsy. He wished he were in London now, with all the alternatives that London offered. He had recently been elected to a supper club off St. James's that was housed in what had been the kitchen quarters of a small Mayfair house. Its membership contained a number of young politicians, mainly Conservative; there would be officers from the Brigade, and White's. The long table in the dining-room had room for only a dozen diners. But there would be a group of members gossiping over their port or preprandial sherry, clustered in the warmth of the large kitchen fire-place. He would be certain to hear some interesting ‘behind-the-scenes' talk there; or he could look in at the Athenaeum, planning to sit in the long drawing-room, turning over magazines; but almost certainly he would meet there unexpectedly someone he had not seen for half a dozen years. In London, there was no such thing as an empty evening: but here there were only nightclubs and bars and the empty lounges of hotels. The St. Georges was probably the least unsatisfactory.

As he came through the main doorway a figure in uniform at the far end of the lounge left his chair and came across. Johnson. ‘Ah, there you are,' he said. ‘I was thinking that you'd be looking in here before long.'

Reid was glad to see him. Johnson would take his mind off his
own problems. He still felt dazed. He did not yet realize what had happened and he did not want to know.

‘How did it go?' he asked.

‘Not too well. At least, I don't think it went too well. You can't tell with these Legation people. They are so smooth. When I was a subaltern and my captain had me on that mat, I knew exactly where I was. He tore me off a strip, and then it was all over. On parade, on parade, off parade, off parade. No bad feelings afterwards. But these damned fellows are so polite. They tell you to take a chair, they offer you a cigarette; they ask you about old So-and-So, and then about some Frenchmen in the Jebel Druse and before you know where you are you're being cross-examined. I'm tired, let's have a night-cap in the bar.'

Again Reid ordered himself a beer. ‘What did they want to see you for?' he asked.

‘That's what I'd like to know: to get themselves in the picture was what they said; to learn who was who, and what was what. But I think they wanted to have another look at me, to size me up. I'd put up a black, and they wanted to know if I was the kind of chap who'd put up another one. That's how it seemed to me.'

‘Who was there?'

‘A chap on the economic side, a half-colonel; a civilian in uniform, you know the type. The
Chargé d' Affaires
looked in for half a minute, only time to say “Hullo”. I don't think that he was in on it. Then there was the vice consul from Damascus. Another civilian in uniform. He said that he happened to be in Beirut this week. I don't believe that for a moment. I bet he came down specially to report on me.'

‘How self-important some fellows are,' Reid thought, ‘imagining that busy people have nothing else to do but worry about their concerns.'

‘Was there anyone else there?' Reid asked.

‘One of the secretaries, I didn't catch his name. They were all so damned polite, asking me question after question; questions that seemed all right at the time, but didn't seem so good when I thought about them afterwards.'

‘What kinds of question?'

‘About the French and about France. Which parts of France I knew the best. Had I any personal friends in the wine country. If I found the Frenchmen I had met in France very different from the type of Frenchman I was meeting now in the Hauran. It couldn't
have been more affable, but when I thought it over afterwards I realized that they had been finding out that I knew practically nothing about France and the French beyond what I picked up in the First War in the trenches. Shall I tell you what they're saying now, right this very minute? “We've got to find a replacement for that man Johnson.” '

And maybe he's right, thought Reid. Maybe that's exactly what they were saying, right this minute. ‘How did you get the job in the first place?' he asked.

‘Influence, pulling strings. There was a chap in the M.S. office that I knew. They needed officers in a hurry. And I had the right qualifications, the right school, Sandhurst, India, “the Rag”. That's the trouble about me: on paper I look the kind of man they want; then they find out I'm not. Something breaks down somewhere. I can get jobs but I can't keep them. This isn't the army as I knew it. Regimental soldiering. That's the stuff I know: handling men, how to mix well in a Mess, sense of discipline, always properly turned out, respect for the King's uniform. This staff racket's not my game. This talk of a job: soldiers don't have jobs, they are posted to duty. They go where they are sent. Theirs not to reason why . . . I'm all at sea, old boy.'

He paused. He had looked old that afternoon, as he had slumped, snoring, in the corner of the car; he looked older now, leaning forward across the bar. He had reached the end of his tether, his short tether.

‘It's different for you,' he said. ‘You're used to files and reports, and monthly summaries. You know what they're talking about. I don't. You can read between the lines. I can't.'

‘That's what they all say, ‘Reid thought. ‘That it's different for me because I've led an academic life; because I'm used to paper work. Actually that very fact makes it the more difficult. They feel that there must be the right job for me somewhere, so they don't give me the job that is about half right, and that I could perform reasonably well. Men hard to place. I'm every bit as hard to place as Johnson. I'm lucky to be where I am.'

Johnson had not stopped talking. ‘Have you heard that there's a new general order coming out, by which officers of forty-five who aren't needed, can go back to civilian life? I'll be forty-five next year. Do I want to go back to civilian life? Damn it, I don't know. Bowler-hatted. I don't care for that, going back to England in wartime, with nothing to do; joining the Home Guard, doing
fire-watching. I don't fancy that. I must be on the look-out for something else. I see that. Is there any opening in your racket, on the administrative side?'

‘Not here in Beirut. Perhaps in Cairo.'

‘What about Baghdad?'

‘There might be, I don't know.'

‘Well, keep your eyes skinned; and I'll keep in touch. An adjutancy; someone who knows about allowances. Who can find his way through general orders. You'll think about it, old boy, won't you?'

‘I'll think about it.'

‘That's good of you. God, it's a relief to deal with someone who speaks the same basic language. What time do we start tomorrow?'

‘As early as you say.'

‘Directly after breakfast, then?'

‘Directly after breakfast.'

By nine o'clock they were on the road. The Bekaa valley looked as green and cool as it had the day before; and once again Damascus with its towers and minarets had a look of Oxford. Reid was still in a daze. He could not believe that that dinner had ever happened, that he had sat opposite Diana making conversation; that his blood had seethed with irritation, that he had wanted nothing more than to raise his hand and strike her across the face; when only four hours earlier his heart had been singing with exultation, when he had seen himself on the brink of the richest ten hours of his life.