The Baghdad Railway Club(37)

‘What happened then?’

‘They came out.’

‘In what order?’

‘Captain Boyd first, then the other chap, as far as I recall . . . There was a lot of smoke floating about, sir, some pretty hard scrapping in the vicinity of the station . . . and the train was pulling out. It was a confused situation, sir, and there was a hell of a din.’

‘Two minutes!’ called the bloody instructor. Then, to me, ‘He’s a southpaw, keep left!’ (Having observed my performance, he’d dropped the ‘sir’.)

Irwin was immediately dancing again. Talk about ‘passed A1’; he was as fit as a flea. He walloped me a few times, and I suddenly found I hardly had the energy to lift my arms, let alone take a shot at him. We went into some close stuff, tangled arms, and I wasn’t so much sweating as melting. I’d been scrapping for a little over two minutes, yet I was practically asleep on Irwin’s shoulder.

‘What did the other officer do when he came out?’ I asked, drowsily. ‘Was he carrying anything?’

‘Lead!’ the instructor was calling, ‘Lead!’ but it was a lost cause, and he knew it.

‘He was,’ said Irwin.

He was at me again with fists flying.

‘What?’ I said, reeling back.

‘Don’t know. A package; a box. He held it under his arm.’

I put a pretty good right on Irwin’s ear.

‘And what did Boyd do?’ I said.

Irwin was dancing again. ‘He told us we were to stand by. And then . . .’

‘Yes?’

The instructor was shouting again: ‘Time! Time!’ which, thank Christ, brought an end to the bout, leaving the two of us standing in the middle of the ring at rather a loose end. My head burned though. I would have to take the protector off in a minute.

‘Some more artillery came up, and it was all back to – you know – confusion,’ said Irwin. He walked over to his corner, picked up a towel; I followed him. New fighters were climbing into the ring. I nodded at Irwin, and we touched gloves.

I asked, ‘What was the expression on Boyd’s face when he came out of the station?’

‘The expression?’ said Irwin, evidently appalled by the question. ‘Well, it was the middle of a battle. So I suppose he looked worried. We all did.’

I nodded. ‘The other chap?’

Irwin hesitated, and a slow grin came over his face: ‘Winked at me, he did, just as he was walking by. It was very fast so it might not have been a wink. But I believe it was.’

Luckily, Irwin did not follow me to the changing room, where I pitched away the cursed protector, had a dunk in the water, and put on my uniform. With head down, I headed back through the gym towards the door, where the faint voice piped up again: ‘You’ve to sign out, sir, if you would be so kind as to do so. And I don’t believe you signed in.’

A young sepoy sat by the door, with a ledger, a pen, blotting paper and a watch on a little table before him. The kid couldn’t have been more than sixteen. He spread his beautiful thin fingers over the paper, showing me where I should have signed in, giving my unit and the time, and where I ought to sign out, putting the time again. He gave me a pen, and I did what every other man did – wrote scrawl, which was a shame, everything being so beautifully presented by the boy.

‘Your time in was nine twenty-five,’ said the boy as I scribbled. ‘Your time out is ten fifteen.’

If you did P.T. or sports you could cut certain fatigues, and that was the reason for the ledger. My eye roved over the list of names, and the one I didn’t want to see came towards the end: ‘Captain W. P. D. Stevens’ of ‘Corps HQ’. He had booked in at eight ten, left at nine fifty-five. In other words, he’d been in the place when I’d arrived, and left at about the time I’d completed my bout with Irwin. Well, it would only signify if (a) he was in league with Shepherd, (b) he’d seen me, and (c) he worked out that I was quizzing Irwin, and why I was quizzing him. But I had a pretty good notion that he must have seen me.

I stepped back into Clean Street hoping for cooler air, and not finding it. I turned into Dead Camel Street thinking hard, only faintly aware of the drone of a petrol motor. I’d not gone ten yards before I was blinded by a horrible glare. I raised my arm to shield my eyes, and turned away.

‘That’s no bloody good,’ said a voice.

‘He’s blinded, Mr King,’ said another. ‘Dazzled, he is.’

The light swung away from me, so that it illuminated the camels’ heads on one side of the street only, and I was able to see its source: a great searchlight attached to a generator, an entire field searchlight company standing around it, together with Wallace’s King’s bloody camera, Wallace King’s assistant (who also wore a uniform without badges, only his was a private’s) and Wallace King himself. He held a loudhailer by his side.