The Baghdad Railway Club(78)

‘I mean, I take it there is ice?’

‘In the restaurant car,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Fine. And where’s that?’

Silence for a space. He eyed the one carriage and the flat-bed wagon.

‘Are you taking the mickey?’ he said.

I regained the footplate a moment later. A Royal Engineer who was acting as platform guard came up and said, ‘You can take it I’ve blown my whistle.’

As I pulled the regulator, The Elephant seemed to go down as well as forwards. I watched my fireman breaking up the coal; I watched him shovelling coal. I could not have done that, and I found that I was clinging on to the regulator for support. As we cleared Baghdad, I looked to the right: more activity at the earthworks by the Tigris. Steam cranes and steam shovels were now in view, but still the scene looked Biblical.

And then we were into the desert proper.

The regulator was too hot for my hand already. I turned about to fetch a rag from the locker, and my fireman said, ‘Are you all right there?’

I nodded.

‘She’s a good steamer,’ said my fireman.

I nodded again.

Our black smoke seemed an affront to the desert. We ought not to be bringing smoke into a place like this. I leant out. Presently, the flame-like shimmer that would turn into Mushahida station was ignited on the horizon. It was a bigger shimmer than before, since the population had swelled: same number of Arabs but more Tommies. On our previous run I hadn’t needed the regulator rag until after Mushahida, but we were now in June, the hottest month in Mesopotamia, as I had learnt from someone or other. I drank down half a bottle of tonic water, pitched the bottle into the desert. It annoyed me that it did not smash; I turned back to look at it as we raced away, thinking it might smash later. I took out my Woodbines. My colleague didn’t smoke, and once I’d lit my own, I couldn’t face it, so I pitched that away as well. Then I recommenced shivering. As I peered forward through the spectacle glass, it was important for me not to see the swoop and rise of the telegraph wires, for they made me sick, just as though I’d been swooping and rising.

My fireman said, ‘Are you quite sure you’re all right?’ and this time he answered his own question, saying, ‘I don’t think you’re in any fit condition to drive.’

So he sat me down on the sandbox, and applied the brakes, bringing the engine to a perfect stop, right in the middle of nowhere. He held my arm as I climbed down, just as though I’d been about a hundred years old. Some of our party had climbed out of the carriage. Others leant out of the windows. They wanted to know why we’d stopped. My fireman provided the explanation.

In the carriage were a series of couches and armchairs. The armchairs at one end (where Ferry sat alone) were arranged in regular train-carriage formation, but at the other end of the carriage, the seats were jumbled anyhow. I was told to lie down on a dusty couch. A pillow was made of a groundsheet. Shepherd sat before me. He was reaching into his pack. He passed me a bottle of water and a biggish tablet.

‘Take this,’ he said. ‘Just bite it once before swallowing.’

I did so, and he gave a half smile.

‘It’s bitter,’ he said.

It was so bitter that I couldn’t untwist my face after swallowing.

‘Quinine,’ said Shepherd. ‘Only a precaution.’

Quinine meant I had malaria. Of the dozens of mosquitoes that must have bitten me since my arrival, I had a fixed idea of the culprit: the one that had done me on the wrist while I was sitting before the campfire on the previous run. I indicated the mark to Shepherd, and we exchanged weak smiles. There were faces all around him. Bob Ferry looked on, calmly smoking. I thought: you should put that fucking thing out in the presence of an invalid. Major Findlay was saying, ‘Quinine . . . that’s the ticket.’ Wallace King’s assistant frowned alongside Findlay, with arms folded. He seemed on the point of speech when his master called to him from the opposite end of the carriage, saying, ‘We might as well take advantage of this delay.’ He already had the camera pointed through the window. He said, ‘I thought I saw something on the horizon just now. If they turn out to be Bedouins, we might try and get them to wave or something.’

I slept. But I was somehow aware that Shepherd had gone forward to fire The Elephant while the Royal Engineer who’d been my mate was promoted to driver. I heard Major Findlay saying to one of the Royal Engineers, ‘Care for a barley sugar?’ I couldn’t make out the reply. Findlay said, ‘I like to see the telegraph poles. They’re reassuring, somehow. But we don’t have any signals, do we?’ Again, I couldn’t hear the answer. A little while later, I heard a sigh from Major Findlay. Was that the sigh of a killer? It was the sigh of a man in love, at any rate.