The Baghdad Railway Club(87)

On top of these grievances, Manners’s tone of amusement also went against him. And he certainly seemed to find York station highly amusing, as he stood waiting for us with the train finally drawing away behind him. Whisking off his bowler, thus shamelessly revealing the entirety of his long, shining head, he said, ‘Lunch, gentlemen?’

Well, it had apparently all been pre-arranged with the Chief, and we wheeled about and headed for platform seven, on which stood a side entrance to the Station Hotel.

‘I believe the new offensive has begun brilliantly,’ said Manners as we entered the hotel.

‘Has it bollocks,’ said the Chief. (In London, the Chief had been rather quelled by Manners, but here he was on his own turf.)

‘You think it’s propaganda, Saul?’

‘If you read it in the paper,’ said the Chief, ‘then it’s propaganda. Or is it something you know in an official capacity?’

‘Unfortunately not,’ Manners said cheerfully. His amusement at the world was out in the open now, whereas in London it had been kept somewhat it check.

The York Station Hotel was a red-padded, silent world, but the war had made a few intrusions. A sign on the reception desk, which we were now passing in front of, read, ‘Guests are reminded to close their room curtains at or before 8.30 p.m.’ Manners had stopped at the desk, where he was now buying postcards of York. ‘I always do this when I come to a new town,’ he said. ‘It saves me walking around the place.’ He seemed to be in holiday mood.

A waitress came up, and even before we’d been seated the Chief had ordered beer.

‘Don’t you select the food first, Saul?’ said Manners. ‘I mean, you order the drink that goes with the food.’

‘I find that beer goes with any food, Peter,’ said the Chief.

This business of ‘Saul’ and ‘Peter’ – I didn’t care for it.

(I did not myself drink any beer. On my return from Baghdad, I’d told the wife all my adventures, adding that since being put on a course of quinine, which was very bitter, I had quite lost my taste for bitter beer, to which she had said simply, ‘Good. Because you drank far too much of it before.’)

The waitress gave out the menus.

‘Any war restrictions, dear?’ enquired the Chief, in a resigned sort of way.

‘No potatoes except Wednesday and Friday, and no meat on Wednesday,’ she said, speaking like an automaton.

‘But today’, said Manners, with happy realisation dawning, ‘is Thursday. We could have meat and potatoes. Cottage pie!’

And that’s what we did order, just because we could. The waitress said, ‘Shall I send over the sommelier?’

‘The bloody what?’ said the Chief.

‘Yes do,’ said Manners.

It was a jolly enough lunch, and over the second bottle of good claret, a few ‘Jim’s began to be floated amongst the Sauls and Peters. Manners asked whether I had heard from the Medical Board (I had not), and there was some speculation about my future. The Chief said he wanted me back in the police office; that I had more than ‘done my bit’. We then talked over the case. It appeared from what Manners said that Shepherd had always been a loose cannon, prone to getting into scrapes whether at school, university or in the army. As a young man, he had travelled in Turkey, and formed an affection for the place. ‘And an affection’, Manners added, ‘for its gold and silver.’ The court martial, he said, would be held in conditions of the utmost secrecy. It would be held ‘in camera’.

Manners paid for the meal, and I said, ‘I’m obliged to you. I was promised a royal time, and that certainly fitted the bill.’

‘Your treat is still to come, lad,’ said the Chief, and he looked at his watch and grinned at Manners.

‘Really?’ I said.

*

We crossed Ouse Bridge under a blue sky and a light rain. The Chief was in the lead, and he was telling Manners how, the night before, he’d attended a party at the Railway Institute, a leave-taking for the timekeeper of the carriage works who’d finally got round to joining the army – the West Yorkshire Regiment. There were speeches, and the fellow had been given a present. Manners asked what it was. ‘A clock of course,’ said the Chief, and that tickled Manners no end. Well, he had at least a pint of claret inside him.

We walked along Lendal, coming to St Helen’s Square, where we passed Pearson and Sons, Gold and Silversmiths. I looked in the window as we went by. It was a small shop, pretty like a jewellery box, only with bars on the window. (And a guard sat in it all night.) I wondered whether they’d got around to looking at the package I’d given in.