The Baghdad Railway Club(7)

‘Coffee?’ he said, ‘cigarettes . . . from the Biblical lands?’

I was about to decline, but he pressed the matter.

‘For after dinner, perhaps? I trust you are enjoying your stay, sir?’

There was nothing of the East about his actual voice, as far as I could make out, but in the form of words there may have been.

I shook my head. ‘Thanks awfully, but . . .’ He half bowed at me, and we walked on.

‘I don’t think there are many cigarettes smoked in the Bible,’ said the wife, as we began to climb the stairs. ‘But then again, that man is a Mohammedan.’

‘Not a real one,’ I said.

‘I think he is,’ she said; ‘I was wandering about on the top floor this morning, and I saw him.’

The top floor was where most of the staff had their rooms.

‘What were you doing up there?’

‘Wandering about – I told you. He was kneeling on the floor and facing that direction,’ she said, pointing.

‘King’s Cross station,’ I said.

‘Mecca, you idiot.’

‘I know,’ I said, ‘I know.’

The drink did its work, and we had our tumble on the bed. It was a very good bed, being well sprung, and the fire had been banked up while we’d been downstairs. The goods yard had not gone away though (I had glanced down and seen that they were now moving great quantities of beer barrels) and the pilot engine, which seemed to be very badly fired, would repeatedly blow off its excess steam. I’d thought, or hoped, that I had so transported the wife that she hadn’t noticed the racket, but at the moment we concluded the business, she said, ‘What is going on down there, Jim?’

She got off to sleep pretty quickly even so, whereas I could not. The comfort of the room only brought to mind its opposite: the Western Front . . . or maybe the noise of the goods yard had stirred something up. Anyhow I kept imagining what a five-nine crump might do to the spires and pinnacles of the hotel.

I lay awake for the best part of an hour before deciding to return downstairs.

*

The clock gave a single chime as I put on my suit. There were still a fair few on the staircase, but now they were all coming up – men and women in beautiful clothes, smiling and walking with a sleepy trudge. I went against the tide, with my right hand on the banister. (With memories of the front, my right hand had begun to shake, and I held the banister to steady it.)

At the foot of the staircase, I turned and saw the Eastern gentleman – the real Mohammedan – standing outside his tent-like quarters. He held a looped cord on which hung a couple of dozen small metal coffee cups, and he was speaking to the man who had been at the Railway Club, the man with the weird brand of smokes, which I now saw must have been purchased from the Mohammedan, with whom he seemed on the best of terms. He – the Mohammedan – was smiling, and he seemed to say, ‘You are right, my shepherd, you are perfectly right,’ and the other – who still held his magazine – was nodding and colouring up, as though embarrassed at being in the right.

I observed this from across the lobby, in which only one or two of the islands were now populated. The man from the Railway Club happened to glance my way, and I knew that he now did recognise me, and at this for some reason he coloured deeper. It may have been just shyness, but he seemed somehow helpless at that moment. I felt it would be impossible to walk away from him, even though I also knew he would not necessarily welcome an approach. But I did approach, at which the coffee-and-cigarette man said something in a low voice to my quarry, and moved away.

‘Shepherd,’ he said, extending his hand. ‘We were at the Railway Club earlier.’

He was a handsome fellow in the later thirties or early forties, slightly built, with crinkly dark hair. I gave him my own first name, but ‘James’ instead of Jim. He gave every indication of being a high-ranking officer. I had him down as a major at least, but it didn’t do to ask.

‘Thanks for the cigarette,’ I said. ‘A very decent smoke . . . It came from there, I suppose?’ I said, indicating the Eastern tent.

Shepherd nodded, but said nothing. Was it a social mistake for a fellow to show knowledge of where another fellow bought his cigarettes? Shepherd was perhaps on the point of utterance when the man who’d occupied the kiosk swept across the lobby towards the front door, having collected his coat from somewhere. (It was a blue greatcoat – nothing in the least Mohammedan about either it or his grey felt hat.)

Seeing me looking at the man, Shepherd said, smiling, ‘His name isn’t . . . Abdullah, you know?’

I thought: I never said it was.