Scorpion Sunset Read online

  ‘Food,’ Peter beamed as the waiters carried in trays of appetizers.

  ‘I’ve never seen anyone eat as much as Peter has since he came downstream from Kut,’ Angela teased.

  ‘I’m looking forward to a good dinner after all those months cooped up with only a slice of mule to look forward to for supper.’

  ‘I’ll second that,’ David, who’d been sent downstream from Kut with the sick and wounded after Townshend’s surrender, added. ‘I never want to eat mule …’

  ‘Or horse,’ Peter added.

  ‘Or strange-looking weeds …’

  ‘Weeds?’ Angela interrupted David.

  ‘The Turks surrounded the entire town. We had no access to fields so we couldn’t grow anything and the farmers in the area couldn’t break the siege to bring their vegetables to market,’ Peter explained.

  ‘Even if we’d been able to get into the fields they were all full of mud and Turks,’ David explained. ‘So on medical advice …’

  ‘Yours?’ Georgiana checked.

  ‘I believe your cousin John’s. He ordered the cooks to forage and cook anything that was remotely green.’

  ‘With the proviso that the green wasn’t down to mildew or mould,’ Peter qualified. ‘I’ve never been so hungry.’

  David fell serious. ‘I hope the Turks are feeding our men. You know what John’s like, he’d give a man his last mouthful if he thought he needed it more than him.’

  ‘That’s my brother.’ Tom emptied an open bottle of Chianti between their glasses. ‘To John and all the British taken at Kut. May they live and eat well in Turkish captivity until the end of the war.’

  ‘To John and all the POWs,’ Michael echoed.

  ‘What have you done with Maud?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Left her at her father’s bungalow, but she’ll be moving out tomorrow.’

  ‘Where will she go?’ Angela asked.

  ‘As long as neither I nor John will see her again I couldn’t give a damn.’ Even as Tom spoke, he had a feeling he and his brother hadn’t seen the last of Maud. He preferred not to think about her but knew his brother. Wherever John was, he’d be feeling unaccountably guilty over the end of his marriage. Even though he was entirely blameless.

  ‘Another toast, to the bride and groom and a safe and pleasant journey back to England.’ Michael refilled their glasses.

  Their food arrived and while everyone was passing plates and condiments Georgiana laid her hand on Tom’s. ‘Don’t forget to give everyone at home our love.’

  ‘Even your parents after what they said about Gwilym?’ Tom questioned.

  ‘Water under the bridge.’

  ‘I wish I could be as forgiving as you.’

  ‘If you’re thinking about Maud, it’s for John to forgive her, not you.’

  ‘I suppose it is.’

  ‘You’ll be home by August, in time for a summer that will feel freezing cold after the heat here, and then you’ll have a beautiful cool, mosquito-free autumn to look forward to.’

  ‘My father would love to have you work with him in his clinic, Georgie, you do know that.’

  ‘Perhaps I will when the war is over.’

  ‘That could be years, and in the meantime …’

  ‘Michael is here.’

  Tom glanced at David. ‘And so is David.’

  ‘He amuses me, and at the moment I amuse him,’ she smiled. ‘It’s not serious on either side.’

  ‘You haven’t given up on looking for Harry, have you?’

  ‘Let’s just say I feel closer to him here than I did when I was in London.’ She kissed his cheek. ‘Be happy with Clary, Tom. For all our family. Me and Gwilym, John and Maud, Harry and Furja, Michael and your sister Lucy …’

  ‘That was a marriage made in hell. I tried telling both of them that they weren’t suited to one another.’

  ‘As did we all.’

  Tom slipped his arm around Clarissa’s shoulders. ‘We’ll be happy, Georgie. I promise you.’

  Smythes’ Bungalow, British Compound, Basra

  June 1916

  ‘That was a lovely evening. One to remember.’ Angela sat at her dressing table, removed the clips from her hair and dropped them on to a pin tray.

  ‘It was.’ Peter sat on the bed behind her and unbuttoned his tunic.

  ‘As Tom said, “a good way to celebrate a wedding and the promotion of a good man”.’

  ‘I hope you haven’t believed a word David, Tom, or Michael said. I’m no better than any other man in this man’s army.’

  ‘Yes, you are,’ she smiled at him in the mirror. ‘You escaped from Kut for a start.’

  ‘I did not escape. I was sent out of Kut by command because they needed a messenger boy to carry dispatches, and I wouldn’t have made it more than a foot through the Turkish lines if I hadn’t been with Harry’s orderly, Mitkhal. He’s the hero, not me.’

  She took the last pin from her hair, ran her fingers over her scalp to make sure she hadn’t missed any, and picked up her hairbrush. She didn’t stop looking at him in the mirror, while she counted out the strokes.

  ‘You like watching men undress.’ He hung his tunic on the back of a chair.

  ‘Not men, just you. It’s wonderful to have you home, and even more wonderful to have a home to call our own.’

  ‘You were tired of living in the mission?’

  ‘Reverend and Mrs Butler were very kind, and it was good to be in the same house as Theo, not that anyone saw much of him, Dr Picard, or Georgie Downe. All of them practically live in the hospital. But I much prefer living with you.’

  He wrapped his arms around her, looked at her in the mirror, and kissed her neck. ‘Unbutton my dress, please.’ She rose from the stool and turned her back to him.

  As he slipped the line of pearls from their loops, he considered how far they’d come since his first fumbling attempts to make love to her on their wedding night.

  ‘Do you think you’ll be sent upstream soon?’ She tried to sound casual but she knew he’d picked up on the tremor in her voice.

  ‘There are whispers in HQ that we’ll be making a move next month, but no one really knows when it will happen. My guess is after our failure to relieve Kut command will be cautious and won’t advance until we’ve consolidated and strengthened both our supply lines and the Relief Force with all the men we’ll need to take us to Baghdad.’

  ‘Including you?’

  ‘According to Charles Reid, who’s more in the know than me, I’ll be sent because I’m one of the few who has enough first-hand knowledge of conditions upstream to brief command on what’s needed.’

  ‘Will I have you for the rest of this month?’

  ‘And possibly a week or two of next.’ He unfastened the last button and she stepped out of her dress. ‘Disappointed I’ll be here for a few more weeks?’

  ‘I wish you could stay here with me forever.’ She wrapped her arms around his neck and stood on tiptoe, but he still had to bend his head to kiss her.

  ‘You’d soon be bored with me if I was under your feet all day.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t.’ She slipped out of her underclothes, turned the sheets back and climbed, naked, into bed.

  He lay beside her, pressed the length of his body against hers, and breathed in her scent, lemon from her hair and rosewater tinged with cinnamon from her skin. Imprinting the scents and sensations, together with the texture of her beneath his fingertips, storing the impressions against a future when he sensed he’d need memories.

  They made love slowly, tenderly, without haste. Afterwards he lay on his back and pulled her towards him, wrapping his arm around her and cupping her breast. ‘Have I told you how much I love you today?’

  ‘Not today.’

  ‘I love you.’

  She spread her fingers through the hairs on his chest. ‘Is it true you’re on your way to colonelcy?’

  Peter laughed. ‘I know it’s a wife’s duty to boost her husband’s morale but I’ve only just made
major and I didn’t deserve that promotion. David and Charles were just making jokes at my expense.’

  ‘David said you’ll be one before the end of the year.’

  ‘David knows nothing about how regiments and promotion work. The Indian medical service is full of doctors like him and Tom who are naïve to the point of believing that the world is fair and the army efficiently run.’

  She frowned. ‘I wish Tom wasn’t so angry with Maud.’

  ‘When you consider what Maud did to John, Tom has every right to be angry with her. No man likes the thought of his brother’s wife being unfaithful. Especially when the result is an illegitimate child.’

  ‘But Maud was …’

  ‘Raped,’ Peter interrupted. ‘I know she told you that, but do you really believe her, sweetheart?’

  ‘I do.’

  He dropped a kiss on to her forehead. ‘I love you all the more for wanting to think the best of everyone.’

  ‘You don’t believe Maud?’

  ‘I don’t know her well enough to know what to believe. But even if she was, what do you think John should do? Accept another man’s child as his? That’s hardly fair, is it?’

  ‘How would you react if it was me who had another man’s child?’

  ‘I’d rather not think about it.’

  ‘I mean if I was raped.’

  ‘That is a question I hope I never have to face.’ Peter sat up and left the bed.

  Angela gripped his hand. ‘Please don’t go.’

  ‘You know I have to.’ He pulled his hand free.

  ‘Please, Peter. Just this once. I’d give anything to wake up next to you in the morning.’

  He shook his head and reached for his robe. ‘I’ll never forget what I did to you in Amara.’

  ‘That was my fault. I shouldn’t have visited you so soon after you fought a battle.’

  ‘I damn near killed you. The sight of those bruises on your face will haunt me until the day I die. Knowing that I put them there …’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault. You were asleep. You’d been fighting the Turks. You had a nightmare, you lashed out.’

  ‘I lashed out and if it wasn’t for John and Crabbe I would have killed you. I’ll never risk anything like that happening again. I’m going into the dressing room. I’ll bolt the door on the inside, but please turn the key in the lock on this side in case I open the bolts in my sleep.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Please, Angela. The only way I can sleep is if I know there’s a solid door between us.’

  ‘Am I never going to sleep next to you again?’ Tears fell from her eyes as she sat up on the pillows.

  He wiped her tears away with his thumbs. ‘I’m sorry, darling, but after Amara, it has to be this way.’ He walked into the dressing room and closed the door. She heard the bolts being pulled across the inside.

  ‘Angela?’

  ‘I’m doing it.’ She left the bed and turned the key in the lock.

  Colonel Perry’s Bungalow, British Compound, Basra

  June 1916

  Maud carried the last of her gowns from the wardrobe and dumped them in her trunk, on top of the clothes she’d already piled into it. She squashed the contents down. There was an inch or two of space free.

  She sat on the bed and looked around the room for something else to pack. All the drawers in the chest and dresser were open and empty. The wardrobe, tallboy, and cupboard doors yawned, revealing bare shelves and hanging spaces. She’d packed everything she owned except the clothes she was wearing. The only things remaining were a travelling desk, two jewellery boxes, and a flat black case on the dressing table.

  She unpinned her watch and opened the smallest jewellery box with a key threaded on the chain. She’d given her wedding ring to Harry to return to John last November, and she had no way of knowing if Harry had even seen John before he’d been killed. Her engagement ring, a four-carat solitaire diamond set in a platinum band, winked up at her in the lamplight. She touched one of the matching earrings John had bought to complement it as a wedding gift. Next to them was a pearl necklace Mrs Hale, the widow of John’s commanding officer, had given her before she’d sailed back to England.

  In a drawer below the diamonds she kept the jewellery her parents had given her. A gold ring and locket which she’d worn as a child and set aside in the hope that one day she’d have a daughter to pass them on to. A larger, more ornate locket that held a photograph of her mother and a heavy gold link bracelet her parents had given her on her eighteenth birthday.

  She removed the diamond earrings and engagement ring, stowed them in their original boxes, and placed them in an envelope. Then she locked the box. Other than the pearls there was nothing left inside that would bring much money even if she was inclined to sell any of the pieces her mother had given her. It had been her mother. She doubted her father had ever chosen a Christmas or birthday present for her in his life.

  She opened her mother’s jewellery case which she’d found packed away with the furniture from the house. She was familiar with every piece. She’d been allowed to play with them as a child. She knew exactly which rings, bracelets, and necklaces had been inherited by her mother from her grandmothers and great-grandmothers, and which pieces her father had bought her mother.

  There were strings of pearls, pearl rings, and pearl bracelets, the staple of every officer’s wife’s jewellery collection. Below them on a separate tray were the ornate gold bracelets, necklaces, and earrings, some studded with sapphires and rubies, that her father had bought for her mother when he’d been stationed in India. She closed the box and left it on the dresser. It had been her mother’s and she felt she had no claim to anything her mother had owned, not after the way she’d behaved.

  The last box was different. If it was possible for a woman to earn a gift of jewellery, she’d certainly earned that one. When John had left her in India she’d missed him to the point of insanity. Not just him, but his male presence in her life and especially her bed. Within weeks she’d found solace in the arms of a young lieutenant, and after he’d been posted to Basra other lovers had followed. The jewellery had been given to her by a Portuguese, Miguel D’Arbez, and it had been their liaison that had given rise to the gossip that had destroyed her reputation in India.

  She opened the box. It contained magnificent pieces more suited to Indian royalty than an Englishwoman. A massive ruby and heavy diamond-studded tiara, a multi-strand necklace with a thick chain, and four bracelets to be worn above and below the elbow. There were also long pendant earrings and a nose ring, like the tiara all encrusted with enormous rubies and diamonds. The set was far too ostentatious for European taste. When John told her he intended to divorce her, she’d given it to Harry to sell. He’d paid her for it but the set had been returned to her on Harry’s death, which suggested either he hadn’t found a buyer, or hadn’t looked for one.

  Like the ancient mariner who’d shot an albatross and had been forced to carry its corpse around his neck as punishment, the set had become a permanent and humiliating reminder of her bitterly regretted infidelity. If only she could turn the clock back to the day of John’s departure from India. If only she’d concentrated on immersing herself in the charity garden parties and afternoon teas that the other officers’ wives spent their days organising. If only she hadn’t succumbed to temptation …

  She glanced at her watch. Two o’clock. Not much time and she still had a great deal to do.

  She opened her travelling desk and removed a sheet of notepaper and an envelope. After spending a few moments trying to compose what she wanted to say she picked up her pen and wrote quickly, instinctively, without putting too much thought into her words.

  Dear Mrs Butler,

  Thank you for everything that you have done for me. I regret having to impose on you further, but circumstances dictate that I have to leave Basra. Lack of funds and friends has made my current situation precarious and you and the trustees of the Lansing Memorial are th
e only people I can think of to entrust with the upbringing of my son.

  You are aware of his antecedents. My father has disowned me and my child. Both of us are now reliant on the charity and goodwill of strangers.

  It would be too much to ask or expect you to bring Robin up personally but I hope you will find a sympathetically run orphanage, here or in America, willing to take my son and if possible his nursemaid as he is accustomed to her.

  I have paid her one year’s salary and I have sent a box of jewellery with her that I hope the trustees will be able to sell to recover some of the cost of rearing Robin.

  I am so sorry to have to appeal to your goodwill again, Mrs Butler. Thank you for your many kindnesses towards me, and please accept my apologies for this, my largest imposition, which I assure you will be my last.

  Yours very sincerely,

  Maud Perry

  Maud folded the notepaper and placed it in a large box together with the jewellery case that contained the ruby and diamond set. She closed the box, tied it with string, and wrote Mrs Butler’s name and address on the outside.

  She addressed a second envelope to Charles Reid, and again wrote quickly without putting too much thought into her words.

  Dear Charles,

  My father, quite understandably, has ordered me to leave his bungalow. As the army has rescinded my widow and dependent’s allowance on the perfectly reasonable grounds that John is alive, your son and I have been left destitute.

  By the time you get this I will have already left my father’s house. I will send my son and his nursemaid to the American mission and ask Mrs Butler to place him one of the orphanages run by the Lansing Memorial. I have also sent Mrs Butler the ruby and diamond jewellery I asked Harry to sell, that you retrieved from Harry’s strongbox and insisted on returning to me. I hope the jewellery can be sold, and the money used to defray the cost of Robin’s keep.

  I regret I cannot love my son the way a mother should, but as I have no idea what the future holds, or even where I’m going, Robin will be better cared for by the Lansing Memorial than me.

  I am more sorry than you can ever know for what happened between us, Charles. I regret even more the way I betrayed John. He loved me. I didn’t realise how valuable that love was until I’d thrown it away. I’m not expecting you to do anything other than tell John, if you see him again, that I don’t expect him to forgive me but I hope in time that he can forget me and find a woman more worthy of his love.