Scorpion Sunset (6 page)

Chapter Four

The desert south of Baghdad

May 1916

John was on a ship. The sky was blue, the breeze fresh. He was surrounded by light. It danced and shimmered, clear, beautiful, and blinding above and around him. Below the sea glistened with reflected sunbeams that tipped the surface of the waves with winking gold and silver flashes. The wind carried the taste of fresh salt air. The vessel moved out from the land, gliding slow and stately past the anchored boats in the harbour.

A woman stood next to him, a child in her arms. She looked ahead towards the horizon. A shawl covered her hair. He felt an overwhelming love for her and the child. He lifted his arm intending to embrace her …

He woke with a jerk. Momentarily disorientated, it was a few seconds before he realised he'd been sunk deep in a recurring, disturbingly realistic dream that had first surfaced in Kut.

He opened his eyes, rubbed the desert grit from them, and blinked. He was encased in darkness. There was no salt breeze. The air was as cold as only desert air can be in the hour before dawn. A few sticks smouldered weakly at his feet, barely glowing in the embers of what would have been a cook fire if they'd had anything to cook.

He stretched, rose, and walked over to the tent Greening and Dira had erected. Behind it under the watchful eye of Baker and Roberts, lay the bodies of four men who'd died during the night.

‘Have you been on duty long?' John asked Baker.

‘Relieved Sergeant Greening ten minutes ago, sir. The natives have been creeping out and about under cover of night. The sergeant was concerned they might try to steal the clothes and boots from the dead.'

‘We need to dig a grave.'

‘Already done, sir. Jones and Williams finished it before they turned in. Sergeant Greening told us to hold off putting the bodies in it until this morning.'

John nodded. He'd expected six, not four deaths in the night. He ducked into the tent. Greening was sitting bolt upright, his back against a tent pole, but his eyes were closed and judging by the noise he was making, he was sound asleep. Dira was watching over the four men lying on ground mats.

John examined them. All four had dysentery and two were so dehydrated he hadn't expected them to last the night but they still clung to life. The other two were burning with fever. He opened a water bottle and moistened their lips.

‘Private Jones caught a couple of fish last night, sir,' Dira volunteered,

‘Edible ones?'

‘We'll find out at breakfast, sir. About the burial party …'

‘We'll leave it until the sun is up, Dira.'

John left the tent and looked out over the desert. Touched by the first rays of sun the gravel was turning gold. Soon the sun would blister the air until it wavered in mirages. The air temperature would rise from cool, to warm and before the hour was out reach unbearably hot where it would remain until sunset.

He wished he'd slept longer, remaining in that other wonderful world that had begun to haunt him. A world where he was sailing … to where?

Home? With a woman who loved him. He thought of Maud, the way she'd looked at him whenever they'd been alone together. A secret look he'd believed she'd kept just for him … then he remembered her baby.

Baghdad

May 1916

The house was no different from any of the others that lined the street opposite the bazaar, except in size. It was treble the width of its neighbours. The outside was plain, with nothing to indicate the inner life lived behind the four-storey walls. The front was studded with massive heavily carved double doors that looked as they would withstand a battering ram. High above them a roof terrace capped the building. Thatched by swathes of palm matting, it afforded some shade from the glare of the sun.

A tall slim Arab dressed in a gumbaz and abba, his head covered by a kafieh and plain black agal, stood behind the balustrade. Coffee cup in hand, he watched a procession of ragged, sick British troops being whipped and bullied by Turkish soldiers and Arab irregulars as they were driven along the street and through the entrance to the bazaar. A few had tabs on the collars of the remnants of their tunics. Tabs that identified them as British officers, but officer or rank, all were clothed in rags and most were doubled over by the pain of dysentery or cholera.

The natives lining the streets shouted, screamed, and jeered at the men, spitting in their faces and throwing slops at them whenever they passed within range. But most of the Jews and Christians in the crowd stood back in sombre silence, to the annoyance of the guards who frequently lashed out at them as well as their prisoners.

A shorter, slighter man wearing an eye patch joined the Arab on the terrace. He stood next to him watching the scene being played out far below for a few minutes before speaking in Arabic.

‘They could have marched the British along the river where there wouldn't have been so many people to throw filth at them. It's not enough that the bastards forced them to surrender, they have to expose them to insult.'

He took the coffee a servant handed him. ‘Have you seen anyone you know?'

‘Major Crabbe, Lieutenants Grace and Bowditch, and the brigadier.' Mitkhal continued to watch the stream of men being herded at gun and whip point into the bazaar.

‘John Mason?' Hasan's pronunciation of the English name sounded odd, as if his command of the language had grown rusty from disuse.

‘No.'

‘Peter Smythe?'

‘No, nor David Knight nor any of the other doctors. I've heard the Turks abandoned all the sick who weren't exchanged for Turkish prisoners. The doctors probably stayed with them.'

‘Do you know where they're taking these prisoners?'

‘They've fenced off an area on the river bank five miles upstream for the ranks.'

‘Some of those men look as though they can't walk five steps.' Hasan watched a man collapse. A guard kicked him. An officer behind the fallen man pushed the guard aside and tried to pick up his comrade, only to receive a blow from the guard's rifle.

‘I'm going down there …'

‘No, Hasan.'

An unveiled woman walked out of the door behind them. ‘You and Mitkhal can do nothing against so many. My father has returned. He says the Turks are sending the British into Turkey.'

‘You mean the ones that live to see the sun set,' Hasan muttered.

‘My father was told most will have to walk there.'

‘They'll die on the journey.'

‘The officers are being billeted in the old transport offices on the other side of town, close to the American Embassy. You and Mitkhal might be able to talk to some of them if you go there.'

‘There would be to no point in us speaking to them, Furja.' Mitkhal moved away from the wall. ‘We can't help so many and they need more than talk.'

‘You can give them money for the journey to buy food from the tribes. You know the Turks …'

‘They won't feed them.' Hasan shook his head. ‘I can't stand here and do nothing while …'

Furja looked anxiously at him. ‘You are Bedawi.'

‘A Bedawi who won't stand back and watch British soldiers being murdered, Furja.'

‘Not even to save your own life?'

‘Not even that, Furja.'

Bank of the Tigris

May 1916

John officiated at the funeral of his eight patients an hour after sunrise. The two men he'd expected to die of dehydration during the night had died shortly after dawn, the two who'd succumbed to fever, minutes later. It was almost as though the light had drawn what little strength remained from their bodies, taking with it their will to live.

The sun burned mercilessly overhead when he read the burial service. Afterwards, when he stared down at the blanket-wrapped corpses and sprinkled the parched sandy earth over the bodies, he found himself actually envying the dead. Their agony was over; his, never-ending. He wondered how many more mass graves like this lay ahead, waiting for him to preside over them.

Dira, Sergeant Greening, Corporal Baker, and the three privates joined him in reciting the Lord's Prayer. Their Turkish guards remained at a distance, smoking cigarettes, talking and laughing amongst themselves. If they had intended insult they'd succeeded, but John couldn't help thinking their behaviour was simply down to indifference as to whether their captives lived or died.

The orderlies filled in the grave. John was careful to note the exact position and coordinates against a future when it might be possible to retrieve the bodies and give them the burial they deserved, before ordering the carts brought up. He commanded Corporal Baker to drive them over the spot until the surface was indistinguishable from the rest of the desert, lest the Bedouin dig up the bodies in search of clothes or blankets.

Leaving the corporal to his task he joined Dira and Sergeant Greening and helped them dismantle and pack up the tent. It was hot, heavy work and John was exhausted by the time Baker brought the carts back for loading.

Their Turkish guards mounted their donkeys. Baker climbed on to the seat of one cart, Greening the other, and the rest, John and Dira included, walked behind. They'd been travelling for what seemed like days to John when Greening shouted.

‘Men ahead, sir!'

John quickened his pace. Greening jumped down from his cart and handed the reins to Dira. He walked alongside John.

‘They looked close, sir.'

‘It's the mirage.' Breathless, John struggled to keep pace with the sergeant.

‘They are men?' Greening asked doubtfully.

‘We'll soon see.'

John walked until he was within a few feet of a row of a dozen naked men stretched on the ground. ‘They were men, Greening. But not any longer.'

‘Their throats have been slit and they've been stripped,' Greening said angrily. ‘Abandoned by the Turks for the Bedouin to finish.'

John knew he should be shocked, or at the very least feel anger at the sight of so much carnage, but he was too numb to feel anything.

‘Shall I order the men to start digging, sir?' Greening asked.

John straightened his back. Greening's prompt had reminded him that he was the senior officer.

‘Please, Greening, and unharness the carts to rest the mules, but hold off from erecting the tents. There's no point when we have no patients.'

Canal running from the Shatt al-Arab into Basra

June 1916

Sister Kitty Jones sat back on the cushions the boatman had arranged to cover the planking in the stern of the boat and leaned close to Charles Reid.

‘This has been a lovely afternoon, thank you for inviting me to spend it with you.'

Charles wrapped his arm around Kitty's shoulders. ‘And we have the entire evening ahead of us. You haven't forgotten Tom and Clary's wedding breakfast in the Basra Club with Georgie, David, Michael, Peter, and Angela?'

‘How could I?'

‘You have an elegant gown to wear?'

‘As elegant as Angela Smythe's Jewish dressmaker could patch together. Haven't you heard, Major Reid, there's a war on, and as Matron keeps telling all us poor nurses, we have to sacrifice fripperies.'

‘Surely women's gowns can't be classed as “fripperies”.'

‘Exactly that.'

‘Seems to me that that some people are expected to sacrifice more than others in this war. Women's gowns should never be counted among the casualties.' He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her fingertips. ‘When is your next afternoon off?'

‘Monday.'

‘Can you ride?'

‘Ride what?' she asked in her Welsh lilt.

‘A horse.'

‘Don't be silly, where would I learn to ride a horse? The only ones I saw when I was growing up in the Rhondda were pulling milk, brewery, or coal carts.'

‘I'm sorry, I didn't think. That was crass of me.'

‘There's no need to apologise, Charles. We're from very different worlds, you and I. As my mother would say, “there's more of a difference between a lump of coal and a diamond than a layer of dirt”.'

‘I take it you're describing yourself as the diamond.'

‘Hardly,' she laughed, a soft low chuckle he had come to love, ‘I'm coal, and definitely from the wrong side of town, even in the Rhondda. You're …'

‘A common soldier.'

‘An officer, a gentleman, and, I'm guessing, one who will inherit a house with more rooms than the entire street I grew up in.'

‘Officer, I agree, gentleman would be disputed, and not just by me.' He frowned as a memory he desperately wanted to forget surfaced. ‘House? There is a house, but it's the sort of solid square house a retired general buys because he lacks the imagination to look for anything different. It also happens to be on the edge of Clyneswood, the estate owned by Michael Downe's family. His father is a close friend of my father's.'

‘Which explains your friendship with Michael.'

‘I was closer to his older brother, Harry, just as I was with Tom Mason's older brother John. The Masons own Stouthall, the estate next to Clyneswood.'

‘Two landowners among your close friends! We would certainly never have met if it wasn't for the war.'

‘Of course we would have,' he countered.

‘I suppose it's possible I could have entered the servants' entrance of one of your friends' houses as a nurse, but if that were the case I would never have been allowed to speak to you.'

‘You have a peculiar idea of life on estates. Of course everyone speaks to everyone else, servants, family … we live together, why would we not speak to one another?'

‘Your father employs a parlour maid?'

‘Yes.'

‘And a cook and a butler?'

‘And a footman, and a valet who used to be my father's orderly before he retired from the army.'