The Mule on the Minaret (4 page)

Reid smiled. It was his role in life, after all, to listen while his juniors talked. He would lecture for an hour without interruption. Then there would be the tutorial, when he tried to be a receptive stimulant to young men and women, uncertain of themselves in one way, desperately self-assertive in another, desperately self-conscious, testing themselves against his response; he had to make it easy for them, yet he had to be critical. He had to be a kind of
sage-femme,
bringing their ideas to birth. In conversation he did not attempt to force his ideas on other people. He wanted to know what they thought. He preferred to hear Farrar talk. Besides he could learn far more from Farrar than Farrar could from him.

‘Let's start with oysters,' Farrar said. For seven weeks Reid had eaten three meals a day in the Belgian ship s.s.
Leopoldville;
for the first three days he had been enchanted by her Continental cuisine, but by the end of the first week he had come to find the same range of meals monotonous. In Cairo he had been restricted in his choice of restaurants by the limited means at his disposal. This was the first real dinner that he had eaten since he left England.

He concentrated upon its excellence—so exclusively that he had little time to look round the room. It was not till the end of the meal that he noticed three tables away the tall blue-eyed young woman who had welcomed the missionaries on their arrival. She was with a group, of which she was the only one not in uniform. One of the women was a nursing sister, with grey skirt and blouse, red collar and wide white cap; the other wore the grey-blue of the Motor Transport Corps. The three men were army officers. She herself in a burgundy dress had an exotic air in the varied conformity of her group. Reid called Farrar's attention to her.

‘Who's that? The one in red?'

‘Diana Benson.'

‘What does she do in the Mission?'

‘The same as I do.'

‘Cloak-and-dagger?'

‘More or less.'

‘She looks rather striking.'

‘She is striking. Her father's a retired general: East Kent, very county. She's a rebel: drove an ambulance in Spain during the Civil War.'

‘For the loyalists, I suppose.'

‘No, that's the funny thing; for Franco.'

‘She's a Catholic then.'

‘No, she did it to be different. She's got a minority complex. All her friends were for the left, so she went with the right. I don't suppose she cared much either way, but she wanted to be where things were happening.'

‘There's no ring on her left hand.'

‘There are a lot of men here who'd be delighted to put one there; she's popular with chaps.'

‘Is she wild?'

‘I wouldn't say so, but she's twenty-five. Something must have happened. You might find her interesting. I'll see what they're doing afterwards.'

Farrar walked over to their table; as he leant over it he saw Diana Benson raise her head and look in his own direction. Her face lit up. He saw her nod her head.

‘That's O.K.,' said Farrar on his return. ‘The nursing sister has to be back early and the other girl is tired, but Diana'll bring two of the men to the “Chat Rouge” afterwards.'

The ‘Chat Rouge' was a small underground
bo
î
te
opposite the St. Georges, run by a Russian refugee, who strummed mournful songs on a guitar. It was ill lit, heavy with smoke, with low divans round the walls. It was reminiscent of Paris in the ‘20s.

‘Ten minutes of this and I'll fall asleep,' said Reid.

But within five minutes Diana Benson had arrived. Seeing her on the stairs he had realized that she was tall but he had not realized how tall she was till she came into the small low room. She had to bend to get through the doorway; she was taller than both her escorts, and they were not short. Yet she did not seem large or cumbersome when she was curled up beside him among the cushions.

‘You won't believe it, but I've been looking forward to this for seven years,' she said.

‘Looking forward to what?'

‘To meeting you.'

‘How did you ever come to hear of me?'

‘Does the name Margaret Spencer convey anything?'

‘Margaret Spencer?'

‘One of your pupils.'

‘Margaret Spencer.' Yes, the name returned; and vaguely the
face and the appearance that went with it. But she was one of many, very many. She had not been remarkable in looks or in achievement. He could not even place her year. He had not thought of her once since she went down. ‘Was she a friend of yours?' he asked.

‘A kind of friend. We come from the same part of Kent; she used to rave about your lectures, the way you humanized history and philosophy, so that they weren't cold and abstract, so that they were alive, a part of living. Then your tutorials: she said it was wonderful reading out her essays to you. The way you would listen and nod, and then ask one or two questions: somehow those questions managed to be personal. “There I was supposed to be talking about Kant,” she'd say, “and I
was
talking about Kant, yet at the same time I was talking about myself, about my own problems. It's wonderful to have someone to whom you can really talk about yourself.” That's what struck me so. To have someone to whom you could really talk; not to a contemporary. That isn't the same thing: someone older, wiser, who can explain one to oneself. “If only I had someone like that in my life,” I used to think. I was so excited when I heard you were coming here. It's too late now, of course. You're a soldier, not a professor, and . . .' She paused, breathless. Her eyes were shining and there was a glow in her contralto voice.

He looked at her through the dusk. She was not actually pretty but in flashes she had beauty; she had it now, in the aftermath of her eager outpouring.

‘Didn't you go to a University?' he asked.

She shook her head.

‘Why not?'

‘My father was too anxious that I should.'

‘Did you make it a rule always to do the opposite of what your father wanted?'

‘There have to be exceptions to every rule.'

‘And that's why you drove an ambulance for Franco?'

‘Oh no, that was part of the same project. My father would have so enjoyed being able to say in the Rag: “There's my daughter now, joined up with the Spanish Bolshies, got guts, of course, I'll give her that; but to think of my daughter among all that riff-raff.” I robbed him of a grievance. That's a hard thing to forgive. But how did you know I'd driven an ambulance for Franco?'

‘Farrar told me.'

‘He did. And what else did he tell you about me?'

‘That your father was a general; that you came from East Kent. Huntin', shootin', fishin.' That you were a rebel.'

‘That's true enough.'

‘What were you rebelling against?'

‘Everything. The general complacence. Do you know East Kent?'

‘Scarcely.'

‘It's lovely country. I'll give it that. The oast-houses and the hop gardens. The Garden of England; and Canterbury itself—with all that English history: but don't they know it, these Men of Kent, so self-assured, so circumscribed. Unless you were born in Kent you don't exist. The Band of Brothers; that's typical of Kent. In any other cricket-playing county it would be Gentlemen of Kent and any resident could join; but not in Kent, you have to have been born there to belong: either a Kentish man or a man of Kent. It's fine, all that tradition, but it's stifling.'

Once again her rich voice glowed; this time with anger. She was like a panther.

‘I don't suppose that you're the only child,' he said.

‘Oh no, there are five of us. I came fourth.'

‘They're not like you?'

‘Only my youngest brother. At least he could have been. There was one side of him that would like to have worn long hair and corduroys and listened to jazz music, but he let the other side have its way. He went into the Navy though: not the Army; the Navy's freer.'

‘Your other two brothers are in the Army?'

‘I'll say they are; both of them with red flannel on their tunics and my sister's married to a captain in the Blues. I'm the one apostate. Oh, listen to that thing he's playing. Austria in February ‘39. That's what it takes me back to. Kitzbühel and the skiing. That's another thing that drove my father mad. My being friends with Austrians. “We'll be at war with them within a year,” he'd say. “All the more reason to be friends with them now,” I'd answer. To think that it was only thirty-three months ago. It seems another century . . . oh well . . .'

‘Yes?' She looked up quickly. One of her escorts was asking her to dance. ‘Yes? Oh, well, yes, thank you.'

She slid on to her feet. He watched her as she danced. She managed her great height gracefully. It was awkward, always, for
a man to dance with a woman taller than himself. But Diana had evolved her own technique. She danced at a right angle to him, his right hand against her waist, her left hand on his shoulder, her right arm hanging free. They looked very natural, and at ease on that minute floor. Reid wondered whether they meant anything to one another. On the man's face was a yearning look. But she seemed simply to be someone who liked dancing. He sat back among the cushions. One of the escorts was on his other side turning away from him, gossiping with Farrar; he started to listen and then ceased to listen; the music thudded softly and he felt drowsy. He looked at his watch. Ten to twelve. And he had woken that morning at six o'clock in Haifa. Eighteen hours and he was tired. He leant across to Farrar. ‘I'm through. I'm packing up. Thank you for a wonderful evening, and I'll let you know very soon about that offer. I'm pretty certain it will be “yes”.'

‘I hope it will be. I'll be on the St. Georges terrace tomorrow before lunch. Let's meet there for a drink.'

‘Fine, I'll be there.'

Diana was still on the floor. He waved his hand to her. There was a bright, welcoming expression in her eyes.

Outside the air was cool and clean; the moon had set but the sky was starlit. The snow on the mountains glistened. The main rooms of the St. Georges were empty. His bed had been turned down. The fact that a nightmaid had been in his room emphasized the unreality of his presence in wartime in this luxury hotel. Quarter of a century ago, a subaltern in the line, he had read Siegfried Sassoon's
Base Details:

‘When I am old and bald and short of breath
I'll live with scarlet majors at the base . . .
Guzzling and gorging in the best hotel.'

He shrugged. Time's revenges.

On his dressing-table was the envelope that had been awaiting him at the Mission. He had not opened it during the ninety minutes when he had been getting himself settled into his new quarters. It wouldn't be the kind of letter to be read in a hurry, he had told himself. He would read it in solitude, at the end of the day, ‘when he had tidied all things for the night.' He picked up the envelope; he turned it over; he hesitated. Once again he thought, ‘Not now.
Later when I'm ready for it; in the morning, when I'm fresh.' He put down the envelope. He undressed slowly, savouring the peace of this luxurious bedroom after the confined conditions of a cabin shared with three other men. He opened the window. It was a relief to be able to open a window after seven hermetically sealed weeks of blackout restrictions. He turned off the main centre light, got into bed, opened the
Oxford Book of English Verse,
turned to Tennyson's
Lotus Eaters,
but he had not read seven lines before the print began to blur. He switched off his bedside light. ‘Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes,' he thought, and was asleep.

Reid slept late, waking to a room bright with sunlight. The air was cool and fresh. He rose and closed the window. He drew back the curtains. The Mediterranean was unruffled now. Craning his neck, he could see the long curve of the waterfront, the line of the low roofs, the cypresses by the cemetery, the snow-capped mountains at the back. He might have been in Nice. ‘I'll have my breakfast brought up here,' he thought.

He turned to pick up the telephone, but he saw the unopened envelope propped against the mirror. ‘No,' he thought, ‘I must read this first.'

As he slit the flap of the envelope he felt his nerves contract. The familiar handwriting, the familiar writing paper; elegant, from Smythson, browny grey, with the address, ‘Hirst Farm, Southwick,' in red, and in the left hand corner a drawing of a miniature telephone before the number, and a railway train beside the name ‘Hassocks S.R.R.' Then the date: Monday, 8th September; only three days after their last night in London.

‘Darling,' it began. ‘I've just got back here and I can't believe it. The house is so full of you. It doesn't seem credible that you won't be coming down here next week-end. How long is it going to be? How can it not last several years? We shan't stop until we've won; and we haven't begun yet to start winning it. James will be at Fernhurst then, and Mark, too, probably... They'll be strangers to you; and we, how shall
we
seem to one another? We'll look the same, won't we, unless you get very fat. I can't imagine myself getting fat, with these grim rations here. Will we have changed
underneath? You'll be leading such a different life, and I'll be leading so very much the same life . . . in the same house, with the same neighbours, going to the same shops, making an occasional trip to London, with the children's height-mark on the door going up each holiday. The same life except that you won't be here—and of course that is an immense “except”; while you'll be doing so much, seeing so many new places, meeting so many new people. When you come back you'll have so much to talk about that in a way there'll be no point in your talking because I shan't understand about them. I, who'll have the same silly gossip about the rector, and Mrs. Hawes, and Simon Long....