Scorpion Sunset Page 20

  Peter recognised the signs of clinical shock and laid his hands on David’s shoulders. He shouted at the top of his voice.

  ‘Stretcher-bearers!’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Internal Ottoman Empire border between Mesopotamia and Turkey

  September 1916

  ‘You, Private Evans, have the constitution of an ox.’

  John took the corners of the blanket beneath Evans’s head and shoulders, Baker the corners below his feet, and they lifted him and his blanket out of the hospital tent and carried him to the cart.

  ‘I’m not going to die, am I, sir?’ Evans asked when Mitkhal tucked a saddlebag beneath his head.

  ‘You have my permission to live, Evans, but I can’t answer for the feelings of our colleagues if you continue to makes the kind of jokes you have been inflicting on us of late.’ John had to force a smile. Only ten minutes before he’d read the burial service over five men. One who’d died in their hospital tent and four sun-dried corpses Greening had found in a ditch, recognisable as British troops only by the ID tags that identified them as privates of the Norfolks. The collection of tags he’d accumulated was now so large, he’d emptied a dead man’s kit bag to store them in.

  ‘Comfortable, Evans?’ Baker asked.

  ‘No. The bottom of this cart is hard.’

  ‘Then get out and bloody walk.’

  ‘Give me your legs, corporal, and I will.’

  John ignored the banter and watched the Turkish captain and his men walk out of their makeshift camp to greet a border patrol that was approaching on horseback.

  ‘Leave the hospital tent until last, and let me know when the Turks return,’ he ordered Jones and Williams who’d harnessed the mules to the second cart and brought it up ready to load the tents.

  He ducked inside the hospital tent, Mitkhal followed.

  ‘You’ll be crossing into Turkey in less than an hour. This is where I and my men leave you.’ Mitkhal lifted John in a bear hug.

  ‘I’d hug you back if I had any breath left. You’ll remember me to Hasan and Furja. Tell them I’d like to meet them again.’

  ‘I will tell them. Perhaps when this war is over we’ll all sit in the garden of Ibn Shalan’s house in Basra and drink iced sherbet.’

  ‘That garden was beautiful. I’ve never forgotten the time I spent there with Maud, Harry, and Furja. Will you go there from here?’

  ‘No, as all your men want to stay with you I will return to Baghdad. It will be good to see my wife and son and Hasan again. Don’t let the Turks lift the bag from under Private Evans’s head. It’s stuffed with sovereigns. Knowing the Turks you’ll need to buy food and possibly even water.’

  ‘Thank you, Mitkhal.’ John returned Mitkhal’s embrace.

  Jones’s voice echoed in from outside the tent. ‘Captain coming, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Jones.’ John picked up his medical bag. Mitkhal gathered together the spare mosquito nets and carried them out. He dropped them into the back of the cart they used to ferry their equipment.

  ‘Your men will have to work harder from this point on, Major Mason. We are losing our Arab auxiliaries,’ the captain warned.

  ‘Do we have far to go?’ John asked.

  ‘A week, maybe two, of hard travelling.’

  ‘We have transport?’ John asked.

  ‘You have your carts.’

  ‘I was hoping we would complete our journey by train or failing that be supplied with fresh mules and horses.’

  ‘The Ottoman government has more pressing and important concerns to consider than the fate of a few prisoners of war, Major Mason.’

  ‘Can you at least tell me where we’ll be taken in Turkey?’

  ‘You are asking too many questions, Major Mason. Besides, if I gave you the name of the place it would mean nothing to you.’

  ‘I have a fair knowledge of Turkish geography.’

  ‘You will be east of Istanbul. Is that knowledge enough for you?’

  ‘How far east?’

  ‘Does it matter when you won’t be allowed to leave the confines of the POW camp?’

  ‘I need to know if there will be proper facilities for our sick.’ John reined in his exasperation.

  ‘There will be facilities, Major Mason. You will be in charge of them.’ The captain walked away and John joined the privates, the women, and the child, who’d already lined up behind the carts.

  The last tent was loaded. Greening urged the mules forward. Baker lifted the child on to his cart and followed. John turned to take a last look at Mesopotamia before they entered Turkey.

  Mitkhal was riding his camel behind those of his men. He saw John and raised his arm in salute. John risked returning the wave.

  Sheikh Saad

  September 1916

  Peter woke to a shaft of blinding light when his tent flap was flung back. Keeping his eyes screwed tightly shut, he groped into consciousness. A tide of nausea was creeping up his throat and blasts of deafening snores resounded from the floor beside his cot.

  He moved his head to the side of his pillow and looked down. Boris Bell and David Knight were lying on a blanket that had been flung over the groundsheet. Both were flat on their backs, their mouths open to the flies that were swarming outside of the mosquito tent that hung above his bed.

  He tried to lift his head and a blinding pain shot through his skull. He slumped back on to his pillow and remembered – Charles was dead. The knowledge cut through his consciousness like a knife.

  ‘The funeral will be in half an hour, sahib.’

  Charles’s bearer was standing at the foot of his cot watching him.

  ‘Thank you. Chatta Ram, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, sahib.’

  ‘Send my bearer in and Major Knight’s and Bell’s to their tents.’

  ‘Major Bell and Knight’s bearers are already in their tents, sahib.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll wake them.’

  ‘Yes, sahib.’

  ‘We need to talk about Major Reid’s effects and your future, Chatta Ram. After the funeral?’

  ‘Yes, sahib.’

  Peter rolled from his cot and knelt on the floor. He reached out and shook first Boris, then David.

  David opened an eye and glared at him.

  ‘Funeral will be held in half an hour. Your bearer is in your tent.’

  David struggled to his feet and left without a word.

  Boris looked at him. ‘I hoped it was a bad dream.’

  ‘Don’t we all,’ Peter said feelingly.

  A shadow loomed in Boris’s wake and Michael ducked inside.

  ‘You look rough.’

  Peter squinted at him. ‘I feel rough and you look healthier than any man should after what we drank last night.’

  ‘Sobered up hours ago. I couldn’t sleep.’ Michael perched on the only stool in the tent. ‘I can’t believe Charles has gone. Yesterday he was walking around, talking, living then – nothing!’

  ‘We old Gulf hands are used to death but …’ Peter took a moment to compose himself. ‘When it happens to someone you’re close to … Harry … Amey … now Charles … I’m sorry, I’m being selfish, you knew him before all this. You grew up with him, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I counted Charles amongst my closest friends, simply because he was friends with Harry and John, but outside of what we shared here I don’t know the first thing about him.’

  ‘There’s not much to know,’ Michael took a flask from his pocket and offered it to Peter. ‘Hair of the dog?’

  ‘Thanks.’ Peter took the flask and opened it.

  ‘Charles’s father was – is again since the war started – a general. He works in the War Office in London. Charles’s mother died when he was young so Charles’s father sent him from India to my parents to be brought up alongside Harry, Georgie, and me, but because he was more Harry’s and Georgie’s age, he was closer to them and John than Tom and me. He went to school with Harry and John and spe
nt every holiday with us but I only really got to know Charles after I came here.’

  ‘Charles has no brothers and sisters?’

  ‘None, although he, Harry, and John were closer than most brothers. I can’t even remember Charles having a girlfriend until he met Kitty. Not one he brought back to my parents’ house. There must have been girls, but straight after school he went to Sandhurst and then he was posted to India. He wrote, of course. To my parents and Georgie and even on occasions me, but they were the usual sort of letters from siblings, accounts of parties, rides, sorties, and training with his command.’

  ‘Kitty was so fond of Charles I think she’ll take his death as hard as any wife.’ Peter clambered awkwardly to his feet and held his head. ‘There are ten little drummers inside my brain, thumping with sticks trying to get out.’

  Peter’s bearer entered and set jugs of hot and cold water on the travelling washstand. He handed Peter a mug.

  Peter stared down at it. ‘Hangover remedy?’

  ‘With raw egg beaten into it, sir.’

  ‘Not sure I’m up to it.’ Peter tore off his clothes and washed while his bearer laid out his clothes. When he’d finished washing, he pulled on his underclothes and trousers. After lathering his face with shaving soap he reached for his cut-throat razor. ‘Someone will have to go through Charles’s kit, and arrange to auction off his uniform and anything else his family will have no use for. After that’s done, his papers and documents will have to be sorted, his will read, and his personal stuff packed and sent down to Basra so it can be shipped home.’

  ‘As I’m the civilian with time to spare, I’ll do it,’ Michael volunteered.

  ‘Thank you, that’s good of you. I’ve had to do it for so many good men in Kut I’ve come to hate the job, and I would find it doubly difficult to go through Charles’s things. He was such a private man. I’d feel I was prying.’ Peter finished shaving and splashed water on his face.

  ‘Ready?’ Boris’s voice echoed outside the tent. Peter reached for his tunic, buttoned it on and picked up his belt and sword. When he’d finished dressing Michael handed him his hat.

  They walked out into a silent and subdued camp. Men had lined up behind the officers. Peter stepped behind the padre. David, Boris, and Michael followed to the edge of the camp where the sepoys had dug a grave.

  They stood at the side of the mass grave that held a row of blanket-wrapped corpses and waited for the padre to begin.

  Peter glanced at David and saw him watching him. He knew what David was thinking. How many more funerals would they have to attend before the war was over, and would their bodies be witnessing their last one from the bottom of the pit?

  Sheikh Saad

  September 1916

  ‘You know we’re averaging half a dozen deaths here a day from fever and dysentery,’ David grumbled as they walked back to camp.

  ‘Have you been posted to the hospital here or are they sending you upstream?’ Boris asked. Like David he felt the need to break the suffocating silence that had fallen over the group after seeing earth shovelled over the shrouded corpses in the grave.

  ‘I haven’t a clue.’

  ‘You still haven’t reported for duty?’ Peter questioned.

  ‘There’s time enough for that. Do you know what was so bloody awful? I didn’t even know which one of those bodies was Charles.’

  ‘None of us did,’ Michael pointed out.

  ‘Does it matter?’ Peter questioned. ‘Charles is not in that pit.’

  ‘Please don’t give us the “He lives on in our memory” lecture.’ David snapped.

  Peter stopped outside his tent. ‘I frequently dream that the war hasn’t broken out and I’m throwing a punch at Stephen Amey in the Basra mess because he’s insulted Angela for being American. At that moment, I could swear that Stephen Amey is alive.’

  ‘But you’d be asleep and you can’t swear to anything if you’re asleep,’ David argued.

  ‘Major Smythe, Major Bell,’ A sub lieutenant ran up to them, stood to attention and saluted. ‘Brigadier’s called a conference, Major Smythe, Major Bell. He requests your presence.’

  ‘Not mine,’ David questioned.

  ‘No, sir,’ the lieutenant answered.

  ‘Don’t suppose you like to help me pack up Charles’s personal effects?’ Michael asked.

  ‘Why not?’ David shrugged. ‘Anything to delay reporting to the senior medic. And, if I didn’t help you, I’d only drink myself into another stupor. Lead the way, scribe.’

  ‘I’ve packed Major Reid’s uniform into his trunk, Mr Downe.’ Chatta Ram lifted the lid and showed Michael. ‘I’ve spoken to the brigadier. He suggested sending the chest downstream so the contents could be auctioned among the new recruits coming in. No one who’s already here will want kit.’

  ‘That sounds sensible, Chatta Ram,’ Michael agreed.

  ‘That only leaves Major Reid’s desk and papers, sir.’

  ‘Did Major Reid leave much in Basra, Chatta Ram?’ David asked.

  ‘A trunk, sir. Larger than this one.’

  ‘Did he leave a will?’ Michael asked.

  ‘I believe there are copies of his personal papers in this desk and the trunk in Basra as well as personal possession like photographs. I put his watch, wallet, whistle, pencil, revolver, and notebook in the desk. I locked it. This is the key.’ Chatta Ram placed the desk on the table, the key on the top and pulled up two camp chairs. ‘Can I get either of you gentlemen anything?’

  Michael glanced at David who shook his head. ‘No, thank you. Chatta Ram, if you’re prepared to stay on with the Force, I could offer you a position as my bearer,’ Michael offered.

  ‘You have a syce and Daoud, sir as well as a cook.’

  ‘I think everyone knows Kalla is not my cook. But Daoud has enough to do without acting as my bearer. I will pay you whatever Major Reid and the army were paying. I know it won’t be the same as serving an officer but it might be safer.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Downe, it is a generous offer, but I must decline. It was a pleasure and a privilege to serve Major Reid. Now he is dead I will return home. My mother is a widow. I have younger brothers and sisters. It is my duty to care for them.’

  ‘I’ll have a word with the quartermaster and get you a berth on the next boat going downstream. I’ll ask him to ensure that you get a swift passage to India.’

  ‘Thank you, Major Knight. I will take Major Reid’s effects downstream with me. Please excuse me. I have my own kit to attend to.’

  David sat opposite Michael. He eyed him across the desk. ‘Are you going to open it?’

  ‘I feel as though I’m snooping. Perhaps we should ask Chatta Ram to take as it is, locked downstream.’

  ‘And give it to …?’ David reached for his cigarettes.

  ‘You’re right. There really isn’t anyone other than Angela and Kitty and it wouldn’t be fair to ask them to do this.’ Michael turned the key in the lock and lifted the lid on the desk. He took out Charles’s gold pocket watch. He’d seen Charles use it many times. He pressed the button and the back flew open to reveal the inscription.

  A gift to my son Lieutenant Charles Reid to mark the occasion of his twenty-first birthday. General G. Reid.

  Michael reflected that if ever anyone needed reminding of the Reids’ military background all they had to do was look at the watch. No mention of ‘affection’.

  He set it aside and removed Charles’s wallet. A buttoned compartment was heavy with sovereigns. He counted out ten, a couple of half-crowns and two shilling pieces. The pocket at the back held four five-pound notes and two cigarette card-sized photographs. One was of Kitty in her nurse’s uniform, the other of a beautiful woman in an evening gown who looked older than Charles. Although sepia it was obvious the women was fair.

  David picked up the photograph of Kitty and stared at it. ‘At this moment she believes Charles is alive. It seems unbelievably cruel to tell her otherwise.’ He glanced at the second photograph. �
�Another of Charles’s loves?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. She seems older than Charles. I’ve never seen a photograph of his mother, so I suppose it could be her, but as she died when Charles was a baby her dress seems too modern. What do you think?’ Michael handed it to David.

  David looked at it for a moment. ‘I know her, or rather I did. This is a photograph of Emily Perry, Perry’s wife. I met her in India when she and her daughter Maud spent the summer with the CO.’

  ‘Odd photograph for Charles to keep in his wallet,’ Michael commented.

  ‘Not when you consider it alongside the gossip that they were having an affair. There was some sort of scandal about her death. It happened here in Basra and I was in India at the time but I heard she died on your brother Harry’s veranda after being stung by a scorpion.’

  ‘So there were other women in Charles’s life.’

  ‘If he were here now, I rather think he’d want us to set that photograph aside where it couldn’t be seen by anyone else.’

  Michael took the photograph and placed it in his own wallet. He looked down at the contents of the desk. ‘I wish my travelling desk was as organised as this.’ He flicked through the envelopes and extracted one marked Last Will and Testament. ‘This seems the logical place to start.’

  The envelope wasn’t sealed. Michael removed the papers it contained. ‘This is interesting,’ he mused. ‘Georgie witnessed this but she never said anything to me.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have if she considered it Charles’s personal business.’

  Michael started reading. ‘Charles has left thirty thousand pounds to his bearer Chatta Ram.’

  ‘Charles is rich?’ David raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I’ve never thought about it, but I suppose he would be. He comes from a long line of military people, and most seemed to be generals. Several served in India and investments made there generally paid well.’ Michael continued to read.

  ‘Did he leave any bequests besides the one to his bearer?’

  ‘Twenty thousand pounds to Kitty.’

  ‘Dear Lord, if a bullet hits me tomorrow I’d be lucky to leave sixpence.’

  Michael looked sceptical.