The Mule on the Minaret Read online

  There had been many times during the autumn of 1940 and the spring of 1941 when, in terms of mathematics, it had seemed inconceivable that England could win the war. The most that could be hoped for was a stalemate. Defeatism was not admitted. Officious persons would report to the police those who spread apathy and despair. His colonel in the Ministry of Mines was careful to say, not ‘when the war is over’ but ‘when we have won the war’. At the intelligence course at Matlock when they had been working out exercises in their halls of study, the problem would be set with the exordium: ‘It is the year 1942. We have invaded the Continent.’ He would think to himself: ‘What with?’

  At times in 1940 as he listened to the complacent, contemptuous B.B.C. announcers reporting, in their fluted voices, this or that minor set-back that the Axis had experienced, he had felt as though he were listening to a broadcast of a Test Match in which England, following on 300 runs behind, had lost their best five wickets for 43, but at the end of the fourth day were offering some resistance with a sixth wicket partnership that had lasted eighty minutes. ‘Ah, yes, there it goes. Sims has glided Wall to long-leg for another single. There’s no doubt about it, Wall is getting tired. That first tornado is spent. He’ll have to be given a rest. He’s a fast bowler. It’s a heavy sun. Yes, what did I say? It’s the end of the over. Bradman has gone across to him. Just as I said: he’s taking his sweater from the umpire. The fast man relieved. Bradman had hoped to get at least one other wicket before he rested Wall. Well done, Sims and Allen. You’ve foiled Bradman.’

  And no doubt it was a minor set-back. But England were over 200 runs behind. Only five wickets were standing There was no chance of England’s winning. There was not even a chance of being saved by rain. In England a Test Match was limited to five days, to thirty hours. But there was no time-limit to a Test Match in Australia, nor was there any time-limit to a war with Hitler.

  How should a Briton feel tonight in view of the immense disaster that had befallen civilization and the incalculable consequences of that disaster? How was the world’s greatest Englishman, who was himself half American, feeling at this moment? Was there any doubt that it must be dinnertime in London—he was raising a glass in a spirit of thankfulness to heaven? It was a new war now, even in this little oubliette, where the war had loitered for a while and to which war might return if the Germans struck southwards in the spring.

  * * *

  Diana Benson was already in the lounge of the St. Georges when Reid arrived. She was at a desk, writing a letter. ‘I won’t be four minutes,’ she said. ‘I hate writing letters in offices when I’m likely to be interrupted.’ He watched her as she wrote, bent low over the paper, intensely concentrated. To whom was she writing? What was her life, in that way? As Farrar had said, a girl such as she, didn’t reach the age of twenty-five without having had something happen. When he had made that remark on the telephone about her voice, she had said, ‘I’ve had that said to me before.’ The inflection in her voice told him that it was a man who had said that. What kind of man, he wondered? To what kind of man did she, a rebel, turn?

  She rose from her table and came over.

  ‘Shall we have a drink here first?’ he said.

  She shook her head. ‘There’s bound to be someone in the bar we know who’ll insist on standing us a round. We’ll never get away. That’s the worst of this town, everyone knows everyone.’

  Outside the hotel a trio of little boys came forward with a shout of ‘Taxi?’ She shook her head. ‘Let’s walk. I can do with exercise: that’s another of the troubles of this place, you don’t get nearly enough of it in the winter. There’s swimming in the summer. But it’s a problem now.’

  ‘What do you do for exercise in England?’

  ‘Sailing, riding, ski-ing.’

  ‘You can get ski-ing here, can’t you, at the Cedars?’

  ‘It’s difficult to arrange and it is tantalizing too: only for a few hours and every other week. It reminds me of things I can’t do any longer. I suppose it’ll all come back. I wonder.’

  The Lucullus was along the waterfront, past the night club section. You reached it by a flight of stairs. It was simply furnished, with straight-backed chairs and rectangular wooden tables. It had a broad window facing on the sea, the kind of place of which you would say in France, ‘It must be either very bad, or very good, since it can afford to be so unpretentious.’ The room was half-full, mainly with civilians. Diana looked round her, then sighed with relief.

  ‘No one that I know here; or at least no one that I know well enough to have him come across for coffee. That’s another of the troubles of this place: there’re not enough women to go round, not enough that speak English anyhow; and every officer thinks he has the right to attach himself to a table at which there’s a female whom he knows: “the freemasonry of wartime living” is their name for it. No respect for privacy. It’s terrible where there’s dancing. You go out with someone presumably because you want to be with him, and man after man comes up and asks you if you’ll dance. One doesn’t want to be rude, one’s sorry for him. He’s an exile; and any moment, if he’s young, he may be posted to the Western Desert. But it is a bore, a crashing, crashing bore. It’s so exhausting, too, dancing every dance. I’m glad you picked on the Lucullus.’

  There was an undertone of irritation in her voice. Yet at the same time she was smiling. She had a sense of humour. She could laugh at herself. She could be a formidable person, he suspected, when the indignation deepened and there was no corrective smile to balance that fierce undertone.

  He handed her the menu. ‘Have you any views about the kind of meal you’d like?’ he asked.

  ‘Something as the main dish that I could drink red wine with.’

  Leaning across the table on her elbows she held her glass between both hands and raised it to her lips as though she were a priestess officiating at a pagan altar.

  ‘You told me a little about your father; you didn’t tell me anything about your mother,’ he was saying.

  She shrugged. ‘She’s the kind of woman that men like my father marry. It worked out very well.’

  ‘What am I to take that to mean?’

  ‘They can speak in shorthand to each other. They don’t need to explain themselves. They were brought up in the same world. They think the same things important. They have the same loyalties, the same dislikes. When my father sees someone whom he wants to see again, he knows instinctively whether it’s the kind of man he can have down for the week-end or whether he should take him to his club. He never asks himself whether or not my mother’d like him. He knows at once. It’s very restful, and on the whole it makes for a much fuller life than you’d expect. They both like quite a lot of people, and worth-while people too, which doesn’t always happen in a marriage. Husbands and wives are so afraid of bringing to the house someone of whom the other will disapprove that they play for safety, they ask guests of whom no one could disapprove and the people of whom you can say that, are negative; the life of the house is reduced to a lowest common multiple excluding all that was most alive and individual in both wife and husband. Each leads a narrower instead of a fuller life after marriage. That didn’t happen with my parents. For them life didn’t contract with marriage; it got a longer radius because there were two, working on the same plan together.’

  ‘It was a happy household?’

  ‘I’d say so, yes. There was a constant going and coming. I make fun of huntin’, shootin’, fishin’; but a lot of fun goes with them: the parties, the dressing up, and hunting itself is a fine outdoor business. There’s a thrill to it; you feel so well afterwards.’

  ‘Yet it’s exactly against that kind of thing that you rebelled.’

  ‘I rebelled against the worship of it. Why on earth should they think they are the salt of earth because they like fox hunting; why should blood sports be sacrosanct? It’s fun; gorgeous fun. Why can’t they accept it as fun, without making a religion of it?’

  ‘Because of
that puritan streak that prevents the English from enjoying anything for its own sake. There must be some justification: it’s good for one’s health; it helps to build an Empire; Waterloo and the playing fields of Eton.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right. But it made me mad. It was all so complacent.’

  ‘Did you have rows with your parents?’

  ‘Arguments, rather than rows, I’d say.’

  ‘With your mother or your father, or with both?’

  ‘With my father mainly. I enjoyed arguing with him; with my mother I felt there wasn’t any point. She didn’t talk my language. I puzzled and depressed her. She gave me up as a bad job. She couldn’t understand how she had produced me. But with my father it was different. I was a challenge to him. And he enjoyed a challenge. He was a fighter. He wanted a foe he could respect. “Honour as you strike him down”, and I’ve an idea I represented that side of him that never had been released. I was the equivalent of the man that he took to dinner at the Rag instead of having down to Hatch for the week-end, and maybe he preferred the men he didn’t ask down to Hatch. Then, again, in terms of marriage, he wouldn’t have wanted to marry anyone except my mother, but there was one side of his nature that was precluded by that marriage; only a part of himself was in it—the major part I’ll admit—and I fancy that I was the expression of that part of him that was left out. How do I know what his life has been? There must have been someone in his life. I’ve always wondered who she was. An Anglo-Indian perhaps, someone impossible, someone opposed to all he stood for. But he’d always remember her. He’d ask himself what would have happened had he married her? He’d have prejudiced his future, his career. In those days you had to marry wisely. He had no doubt that he had chosen wisely. But he must have asked himself: “Suppose I had?” Something in him died, but yet it hadn’t really died. It was reborn in me. So he had to fight me to prove to himself that he had been right in stamping down that side of himself . . .’ She checked. Again her eyes were bright. But this time behind her warmth there was no undertone of indignation; there was a welcoming receptiveness. Just as earlier he had thought how formidable she would be without that balancing sense of humour, now he thought how devastating a man would find it if this wealth, this depth of feeling, was turned on him, in love. Who could resist her? Who would want to resist her?

  She sighed. ‘It’s just the way Margaret said.’

  ‘Margaret?’

  ‘Margaret Spencer. That pupil of yours. You’ve forgotten her; but you meant so much to her. And it’s just the way she said. How you made it easy for her to talk about herself; she hadn’t realized before the kind of person that she was. It was the same with me just now. I hadn’t realized until this very moment that what my father loved in me was that side of himself he’d never dared become. . . . Why haven’t I seen that before?... Why have I seen it now? It’s the way Margaret said.’

  She checked again; her eyes were glowing. ‘I don’t believe I’ve ever envied anyone as much as I envy Margaret this minute. Even though she never had the chance of meeting you the way I am, she heard you lecture. I’ve missed that. I’ve only seen one side of you. I haven’t had, probably never will, the chance of comparing the two “yous”: the one that stands upon a platform, that expounds, explains, with everyone seated round you, with you their master and you leading them. Then two days later in a tutorial the roles are changed: it’s the pupils who are expounding to you; yet they couldn’t expound unless they had heard you lecture first. This life out here must be very strange to you after all those years as a professor.’

  ‘I find it very strange.’

  ‘And the work so very different. Does it interest you at all?’

  He hesitated. Interesting? It had the attraction of novelty. As he studied the Mission files he had had the fascination of being taken behind the scenes, but it was a quarter-time employment.

  ‘Don’t you sometimes feel that you are wasted there?’ she said. ‘Isn’t there something more useful you could do?’

  ‘For the last twenty months I’ve felt that I wasn’t doing anything that couldn’t have been done just as well by a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl.’

  ‘You’d be glad to change then if you were offered genuine whole time work.’

  ‘Of course I would.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. I’ve an idea . . . No, I won’t tell you what it is. Don’t count chickens before they’re hatched. But if it does work, it would be fun for all of us.’

  They made an early evening of it. He was back at the flat before half past ten. He let himself in by the independent entrance. A light shone under the door leading into the flat. He could overhear voices. He turned the handle of the sitting-room door gently, pressed and there was no resistance.

  There were two guests: a plump, greasy-looking Levantine, and the young student whom he had met two Sundays ago on the St. Georges terrace. Farrar welcomed him warmly.

  ‘I was hoping that you would be back before we broke the evening up. Of course, you remember Aziz, and this is Abdul Hamid Aral. I don’t quite know how I should explain Abdul Hamid. How should I explain you, my good friend?’

  The Levantine chuckled. He rubbed his hands together. They were podgy hands, with long pointed polished nails. He wore a ruby ring on the little finger of his left hand, and a sapphire on the fourth finger of his right. ‘I have many irons in many fires. My ruby is ignorant of my sapphire. There is an Arab proverb: “The man is wise whose acquaintances are numerous but whose friends are few.” ’

  ‘I hope that I am one of your friends, Abdul Hamid.’

  ‘There is another Arab proverb: “The friendship is strong that has not been tested.” ’

  Reid laughed. ‘The Arabs have another saying: “There are only seven plots in the world. And every story that has ever been told is a variation upon one of those seven plots.” ’

  ‘That doesn’t sound very pertinent,’ said Farrar.

  The Lebanese chuckled. ‘All truths are pertinent. All truths are reflections of Allah’s wisdom.’

  He looked roguishly at Reid. There was a conspiratorial gleam in his eye that Reid did not particularly fancy. Reid turned to Aziz. ‘How are the studies going?’

  Aziz flushed. ‘How can I tell? I do my best’.

  ‘What does the tutor say?’

  ‘He’s preparing a thesis. He’s only interested in himself.’

  ‘That’s why I said he should try Alexandria,’ said Farrar.

  ‘Why did you come to Beirut in the first place?’ Reid asked.

  ‘It was an excuse to travel. I felt shut in in Turkey. When my father was young, Turkey was so large; Turkey is so little now.’

  He seemed resentful. There was an aggressive tone to his voice. Yet there was no suggestion of a whine in it. He was a type with which Reid was familiar. Was there all that difference between a Turk and an Englishman? One assumed that there was because of the difference in religion. But possibly many Turks accepted the teachings of Mohammed as casually as many Englishmen accepted the implications of the catechism they had learnt at school.

  ‘Is this your first visit to the Lebanon?’ he asked.

  The young man nodded.

  ‘You might have chosen a better time. It can’t be at its best in wartime.’

  ‘No country is at its best in wartime. In Turkey too there are restrictions. We cannot tell how long we shall be at peace.’

  ‘What do you plan to do when the war is over?’

  Aziz shrugged. ‘I do not look ahead so far. I cannot guess what kind of a place the world will have become.’

  ‘But you know that whatever kind of a place it does become, it will be useful to have a good degree.’

  ‘That is what my instructors tell me.’

  ‘And that,’ Farrar interrupted, ‘is why I suggest Alexandria. You’d find more stimulus.’

  Later, after Aziz and the Lebanese had left, Reid asked Farrar why he was so insistent about the young man’s going to Alexandria. ‘There
really isn’t anything to choose between the two universities.’

  ‘I daresay not, but it might be useful to have him under our supervision for a little. Eventually he’ll go back to Turkey. We need Turks who’ll be helpful to us. He’s the kind of chap who is likely to get into mischief. He might be lured into the kind of mischief that might put him into our power.’

  ‘You certainly have a lot of irons in the fire.’

  ‘Only a very few of them are hot, as yet.’

  ‘What about Abdul Hamid?’

  ‘My contact with my cut-out.’

  ‘What’s a cut-out?’

  ‘What did they teach you in that course at Matlock?’

  ‘Nothing that has any bearing on what you seem to be about. What is a cut-out?’

  ‘The point in intelligence beyond which you don’t know the sources of your information. Abdul Hamid brings me information. I accept most of it as accurate. He gets that information from a man whose name I know, but whom I’ve never met. That man is the cut-out. What happens after him I’ve no idea. If there’s anything shady to be done, he fixes it. I rely on Abdul Hamid to choose me a reliable cut-out.’

  ‘What an extraordinary amount of things go on beneath this roof, of which I’ve no idea.’

  ‘That’s why you’re so useful to me, old boy; you’re so transparently honest that nobody can believe that I’m not, too. How did Abdul Hamid strike you?’

  ‘He seemed intelligent.’

  ‘He’s that all right. Did he strike you as being devious?’

  ‘A number of Lebanese strike me as being devious. He didn’t seem any more devious than the rest. But I did think him sinister.’

  ‘Sinister? Yes, perhaps that’s the word, “sinister”, and that’s what he should be in this racket.’