The Baghdad Railway Club(54)

As I turned away, I heard the crack of a gunshot.

I looked back, and saw Shepherd with his rifle raised. Was he firing, or being fired upon? Another crack – and this time I saw Shepherd firing.

I asked Stevens, ‘What’s he shooting at?’

Stevens, half turning towards the scene of the action, said, ‘Arabs, I suppose . . . Or Turks.’

If Shepherd was shooting at Turks, then surely he couldn’t be in the pay of the Turks. I took the Webley out of my haversack, and jumped down. Shepherd loosed off a third bullet, and this time I saw his mark: two gazelles running fast away.

*

Our whole camp came out of Shepherd’s two brown canvas bags: three collapsible beds and chairs. The single tent was just a blanket supported by sticks. Shepherd rigged it in a minute under a ring of palms close by the railway line while The Elephant fumed with a low fire. She was in good order. On climbing down, I’d had a feel around the axles, side rods and big ends – all stone-cold. We had nothing hooked up to the tender. Shepherd had decreed the boats – evidently six petrol motor launches built by the Mayer company of Dortmund – to be completely shot.

‘Why would they leave them in the middle of the desert?’ I’d asked him.

‘Abandoned on the way north?’ he’d replied. ‘Or I suppose they’re handily placed to be picked up and taken back to Baghdad. If they hadn’t been wrecked.’

The sun continued his descent, but too slowly for my liking, since the palms gave only about as much shade as an umbrella with the silk off. Stevens had started a campfire using a paraffined rag, our good Cardiff coal and the dead branches of a thornbush – he was better at making a fire out of a locomotive than in – and we had a meal of rusks, rice and roast sand grouse (bagged by Shepherd in lieu of gazelle).

Shepherd then passed out Turkish cigarettes. As I took one, a mosquito landed on my left wrist. It bit it. I then began picking away bits of what I believed to be cigarette paper from my lip, but which turned out to be bits of skin. Shepherd stood and went off to his canvas bags, returning with a jar of petroleum jelly. I thanked him and applied it, watched by Stevens. At length, he said, ‘Chuck it over, will you?’ He caught the jar, asking Shepherd, ‘Mind if I take it off over there?’

‘Not in the least,’ said Shepherd, with a half smile.

When Stevens had disappeared from view over what was not so much a dune – a dune I imagined to be beautiful – as a ridge of sand and stone, I asked Shepherd, ‘What’s he up to?’

‘Doesn’t bear thinking about,’ said Shepherd. ‘How did you like his talk at the Club?’

‘I thought he came up trumps after a shaky start.’

Shepherd nodded, smiling. ‘Next week we have the lady speaking on “The Railway at Babylon”.’

‘Knows a lot about it, does she?’

Shepherd shook his head. ‘I fancy there’ll be more about Nebuchadnezzar’s palace than there will about six-coupled side tanks. She’s bringing a man who’ll be showing a film.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of the railway at Babylon. And her, of course.’

‘Hold on‚ sir . . . Do you mean Wallace King?’

‘Correct – the King of the Bioscope, as I believe he’s known.’

It seemed the right moment to ask, ‘You were talking to my man, Jarvis, sir?’

No emotion was betrayed as he said, ‘He was telling me about the discovery of the body at the station. You heard about it, I suppose – Captain Boyd. He and I had been in a forward patrol on the night the city fell.’

Was he too modest to give the details? Or too guilty?

Stevens was descending from the dune, but instead of returning to our camp, he crossed to The Elephant, and heaved himself up on to the footplate. A moment later, I saw him illuminated there. He had the fire door open and was contemplating the flames. I couldn’t see why we hadn’t dropped the fire. Surely it couldn’t be the plan to keep the engine in steam all night? But Stevens was now shovelling, and black clouds rolled upwards from the chimney into the violet night. Turning towards Shepherd, I heard the juddering noise that told me Stevens was working the injector – and being very clumsy about it.

‘Are we taking off somewhere, sir?’ I asked Shepherd.

He shook his head, blowing smoke.

‘I want to keep steam up.’

I eyed him.

‘Precautionary measure,’ he said.

Stevens returned to his seat. After a while, he fell to clasping and unclasping the arms of it, in an agitated way. I pitched away the end of my cigarette. If the engine were to be kept in steam somebody would have to be at the fire and water every forty minutes or so.