Later again, I heard the voice of Wallace King’s assistant. ‘Mr King wants to start making features.’
A voice I didn’t recognise said, ‘How do you mean?’
‘Feature films,’ said the assistant, ‘story films. He wants to make a film of the Battle of Trafalgar.’
‘Wouldn’t that require a lot of . . .’
It was Ferry who had spoken.
‘Money?’ said the assistant, at length.
‘. . . ships?’ said Ferry.
‘You’d need one,’ said the assistant.
‘There were a lot more ships at the Battle of Trafalgar than . . . one,’ said Ferry.
‘The rest would be models,’ said the assistant. ‘He thinks he can bring it in for less than five hundred pounds. History, that’s what people want to see in the picture halls. Just look at Tyrone Gould. He really hit the jackpot with The Charge of the Light Brigade, and it wasn’t up to all that much.’
‘It was quite shocking, Wilson,’ said the voice of Wallace King, ‘and don’t you forget it.’
So I had finally learnt the name of the assistant. He might lead a dog’s life at the hands of King, but I was jealous of him since he did not have malaria.
I was aware that we were making short stops – the Royal Engineers inspecting the line. When I awoke properly, we seemed to have been stopped for a longer time. I sat up. I was soaked in sweat, but felt better for my sleep. In the carriage, dazzle and gloom did battle. Every window was open. I heard voices from beyond. We were at Samarrah station, and I was the only man left in the carriage; the saddles were gone too. Shepherd was speaking to the clever, bespectacled major who was the head of the Samarrah garrison. I believed that Shepherd was saying something about me, for the major said, ‘Do you want to leave him here? Collect him on your way back? The devil of it is that our doctor’s flat on his back with something.’ He then said, ‘Nothing for it but quinine. It usually works.’
That was a relief, but not to any great degree. Everything was out of my hands, and I wanted to go to beyond Samarrah, where everything was out of everyone’s hands, and we would all be on an equal footing. There, Shepherd would confront Findlay, and the truth would finally emerge.
Shepherd and Findlay walked into the station shack. At the far end of the platform, Captain Bob Ferry was talking to some Royal Engineers. Presently, they left him on his own, looking at the radio cars. I called to him: ‘Are we setting those down here?’ There was a siding all ready and waiting for them.
Ferry turned and contemplated me. ‘We’re . . . not,’ he said.
‘You’re staying with us then?’
‘. . . Yes,’ he said at length.
I had been rather hoping we would get rid of him.
*
We had made camp perhaps ten miles beyond the spot at which Stevens, Shepherd and I had come under attack. Viewing the desert glare from the carriage, I believe I had identified the remains of the fire we had lit, but of our single-fly tent and folding chairs there had been no sign. They must have been taken as booty by the Arabs. We had stopped a little while before passing that place – near the siding that held the motor launches. Shepherd and some of the Royal Engineers had walked to the wagons and looked them over for a second time, and once again no move was made to couple them up. I had been travelling in the carriage, feeling . . . what was the word? A sort of continuous oscillation.
Our camp was at a ring of palms. They ought to have enclosed a beautiful lagoon. In fact, only our campfire burned in the middle of them, with cooking things and water bottles nearby – also canvas chairs and King’s crate of champagne which, since it had practically boiled and was undrinkable, he had made generally available. We had chosen a spot near a feature of interest, namely some sand-coloured rocks, and the Royal Engineers had been walking about on them as if they’d never seen rocks before. They all had on keffiyahs, rather fancying themselves in them, and Wallace King and his assistant had been filming and photographing them. King had kept shouting to the man on the topmost rock: ‘Scan the horizon!’ but the fellow couldn’t do it for laughing. King had explained, ‘This footage is to be preceded by a placard reading, “A forward patrol reconnoitres”,’ at which one of the Engineers had shouted back, ‘Why not change the bally placard? “A forward patrol larks about on some rocks.”’ That hadn’t gone down well.
As for Shepherd: he and a couple of spare Engineers had walked a quarter mile along the line in order to inspect a second branch going off at a wide angle. The branch had been in a bad state; had apparently petered out in the desert, but three further Turkish wagons had been berthed upon it, and these held wooden crates that had contained, strange to say, an aeroplane, or parts thereof. It was not thought possible to run The Elephant along the branch in order to collect this booty. I had viewed the wagons myself, through binoculars borrowed by the campfire.