The Baghdad Railway Club(22)

‘I’ll just take a sluice-down,’ I said, which was Jarvis’s cue to quit the room.

Ten minutes later, feeling better in some ways but worse in others, I looked into the officers’ mess on my way out of the Hotel.

It was a luxurious room of many sofas and many carpets, but not enough electrical fans – only two of them doing their strange bowing dance. All the men in there were staff officers or political officers. The individual battalions and regiments that made up the corps would have their own quarters and their own messes around Baghdad. I couldn’t see Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd in the room. I heard one man saying, ‘Ought we to retribute?’ as though he wasn’t much bothered either way. Another was saying, ‘Well, it’s a kind of an opera.’ I knew I was out of my league, and was about to quit the room when a man came up and introduced himself.

I told him I had come out to work for the Political Officer (Railways). ‘That’s Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd,’ I added, and the fellow looked blank for a minute before leading me over to a notice-board, where he indicated, next to something about a smoking concert, and beneath something about a cricket match, a paper headed: TALKS ON RAILWAY TOPICS.

The fellow returned to the conversation from which he’d broken off a minute before, leaving me to read:

The Baghdad Railway Club. Meetings every Saturday, 7.30 p.m. prompt at The Restaurant, Quiet Square (behind The Church of the Saviour’s Mother). Good food and drink supplied. For further particulars contact Lieutenant Colonel Shepherd, Room 226 Corps HQ.

As I quit the mess, I heard a voice saying, ‘We have more railway people than would seem to be justified.’





Chapter Four


I went down to the river by a different crowded lane. A new boat was on the quay where the Mantis had lately been: a cranky-looking old packet, laden with boxes marked ‘Bully Beef’, and quite unattended. It bumped and scraped against the quay, and I saw a man in a much smaller boat – a blue wooden canoe of sorts, but with decorative mouldings – who floated just beyond the stern of the bigger one, bumping and swaying in rhythm with it, occasionally extending an arm to keep himself from clashing against it. He was grinning up at me.

‘You sail!’ he said.

I was looking along to my right – towards the pontoon bridge at about a quarter of a mile’s distance. I counted the number of black barges that made it up: twenty exactly.

‘Ingilhiz!’ he shouted, and it wasn’t a question. ‘Ingilhiz, go over. Cross river. You sail.’

He was paddling towards an iron ladder that went down into the water amid floating rubbish. I climbed down the ladder, and into his boat. It was like one of the swinging boats of a fairground detached from its chains.

‘What’s on the other side?’ I said, just for something to say.

‘Same town,’ he said, smiling but paddling hard against the current.

A white launch was bearing down on us, a group of uniformed and un-uniformed white men standing on the prow.

As it went by, and we bounced on its backwash, my companion nodded at me, saying, ‘Kokus,’ and then, trying again, ‘. . . Coxus.’

I frowned at him.

‘Coxus,’ he repeated, grinning. ‘Your friend! Coxus!’

It broke in on me that he was referring to the Chief Political Officer.

‘You mean Cox?’ I said. ‘Sir Percy Cox?’

He nodded briefly, having already lost interest in the matter. He was fighting the current, the sound of which was now loud in my ears. Gas lights of a pale blue glimmered on the bank we’d left behind, whereas the bank we were making towards was half enclosed in darkness. I could not tell whether its buildings were newly made and barely finished, or so old that they were crumbling away. Having passed the middle of the river, my pilot was now resting, letting the current carry us, and smiling as it did so. But a minute later, he was all action again, using his oar to steer as we ran up fast on to the opposite bank. We were on a narrow beach, lying beyond the main run of buildings. There were palm trees, two long wicker benches with shades built over.

‘Baksheesh,’ said my pilot.

I had dreaded this moment. I fished in my pocket and handed over a single rupee, which my pilot began examining closely. Say it was worth 9d. That would be a decent, if irregular, sum to tip a station porter in London or York. But this fellow was not a station porter, and we were not in London or York. On the contrary, I was on a ghostly river-beach of black and orange sand, in rapidly fading light but with the heat still like a weight upon me. My companion was now looking at me slightly sidelong. He had found the coin acceptable, and secreted it somewhere in his robe. I was free to go.