The Baghdad Railway Club(20)

‘Take the bottle and thank him!’

I took the bottle from the Arab, nodding briefly at him.

‘Oh God!’ said the man at the camera, who’d left off winding the thing, and was standing next to it with hands on hips, the better to let me see the great patches of sweat underneath his arms. All the Arabs at his end of the street were looking at him, and I could tell he liked that no end. ‘Look, do you know how scarce fresh water is in this town? We’re all drawing it from wells, and putting lime in it, and boiling it and doing God knows what, and here’s this chap giving you his last bottle in recognition of his liberation from the bloody Turk . . . Respond appropriately, please.’

I eyed the bloke, shading my eyes against the low sun. ‘It’s not his last bottle!’ I called back to him. ‘He’s got a bloody shopful!’

The Arab with the bottle was smiling at me, and nodding.

‘Look,’ said the cameraman, ‘can you just take the bottle again, but with a bit of enthusiasm this time?’

The Arab seemed dead set on offering the bottle again – fancied himself an actor no doubt. Had he been put up to the whole business by the cameraman?

‘Look,’ that bloke was now saying, ‘don’t bother. There’s no light anyway.’

And slinging his camera over his shoulder, he turned on his heel, and walked the other way down the street, with his little fan club of Arabs in tow.

I turned around, and another bloody camel was loping by, and giving off such a rancid smell that I was put on the edge of a swoon, what with the persistent heat, and the strangeness of it all. I took the stopper off the bottle and drank down the water. I saw Jarvis sitting on a doorstep. He was looking down at his dusty boots.

‘Jarvis,’ I said, and I could see he was in a bath of sweat. All of a sudden, a great strain seemed to have been thrown upon him. He too had got hold of a bottle of water, but his was full. As I looked on, he set it down in the gutter, and I did likewise with my empty one.

‘Drunk the water, did you‚ sir?’ he enquired, rising to his feet.

I nodded.

‘You said it was fresh,’ I said.

‘I was just trying out the word really, sir,’ he said. Suddenly, he looked all-in. And now a man leading a train of white donkeys was coming between us, trapping Jarvis against the wall.

‘Who was that bloke with the camera?’ I asked Jarvis over the top of a donkey.

‘Wallace King that is, sir,’ he said, and he seemed to know the man of old, and to be bored by the idea of him. ‘Famous back home, he is – in the music halls. I mean the picture houses – made dozens of films. He’s out here making newsreels. I should think every Tommy in the place has been filmed by him – most of the sepoys too.’

Night was dropping rapidly. The air had a green-orange sort of tint to it; the temperature seemed if anything to be climbing. I put this to Jarvis, who said, ‘It is a bit cooler at night, but it’s more humid because the moisture’s not burnt off. Directly we arrive at base, I’ll fix you up with a glass of something cold sir, how about that?’

I said, ‘The Arabs don’t drink, do they? Alcohol, I mean.’

‘Not really, sir, no. They do smoke though,’ he added, as if that made up for it. ‘Do you know what you’ll be wanting after a week or so, sir? Tea in a cup. Tea comes in glasses here, and very small ones at that, but my advice, sir . . . get used to it.’

The street widened into a square, and there was the hotel – the front of it (the rear I had already seen, overhanging the river). It had a golden dome; palm trees criss-crossed in a series of Xs in gravel beds to either side of the main entrance, two parked phaetons, two sentries looking very casual. New telegraph poles marched across the square, spoiling its appearance, and carrying wires to the top of the Hotel. Jarvis showed his identity card, muttering something about ‘Escorting Captain Stringer, seconded to Corps HQ.’ I myself was not required to show my papers. I might have been a parcel the sentries were taking delivery of.

‘. . . And raspberry jam,’ Jarvis was saying as we entered the Hotel, ‘there’s no raspberry jam in the whole of Baghdad, and once you know that, sir, you really want it. But forget about it. Forget all about it. Honey, that’s the big thing here.’

The lobby was dark and it took me a while to accustom myself to the gloom. A giant notice-board headed ‘PART ONE ORDERS’ had been fixed to one of the wood-panelled walls. The floor was black and white tiles, with palms in wicker baskets, wicker chairs and tables about the place. The reception desk was not in use. Before it stood a row of smaller desks, and behind each sat a political officer of the British Indian Army.