Scorpion Sunset (11 page)

‘I'd rather not ask for anything from the army.'

‘I understand your reluctance.'

‘I have no idea what I'll do if there's no ship carrying civilian passengers leaving Basra soon.'

‘Would you like me to look for rooms for you?' Michael offered.

‘I doubt anyone respectable would take me in.'

‘Perhaps not in British military quarters,' he conceded, ‘but I have friends in the French consulate. One them asked me today if I was interested in renting his house as he's been recalled to France. I'll call in to see him on my way back to Abdul's tonight.'

‘Please don't go to any trouble on my account.'

‘No trouble.'

‘Thank you. We're here.' She leaned forward and spoke to the driver. ‘Stop, please.'

‘Five o'clock tomorrow morning. Will you have much luggage?'

‘Not much.'

‘A trunk?'

‘And baby things.'

‘I'll bring a couple of men to move everything. You'll be packed.'

She nodded.

‘Think of where you'd like to go?'

‘I will. Thank you, Mr Downe.'

‘If you called my brother Harry, you must call me Michael. I'll wait until you wave.'

She ran up the path and entered the house through the veranda door. She reappeared a few moments later waved and returned inside, closing the door behind her.

Michael continued to wait. When he saw the drapes close in a room at the end of the building he spoke to the driver.

‘Back to the Basra Club, please.'

‘Yes, sir.'

Michael reached into the inside pocket of his coat for his cigar case. He lit one and drew on it. He had no doubt that Maud had treated John abysmally, but she was being punished for her actions and a small part of him couldn't help feeling sorry for her. In fact, when he considered the situation he felt more sympathy for Maud than he did for his own estranged wife. Perhaps picking the wrong woman to marry ran in the family. He only hoped his cousin Tom would fare better with Clary.

Chapter Seven

Basra Club

June 1916

‘And a pilaff for Mr Downe.' Tom Mason closed the menu and returned it to the waiter. ‘Everyone ordered?'

‘More food than the Kut garrison consumed in four months,' Peter Smythe answered.

‘More wine, sir?' the waiter asked Tom.

Tom looked around the table. ‘At least three more bottles, please. We've a wedding and the promotion of a good man to celebrate.'

‘A well-deserved promotion.' David raised his glass to Peter who was sitting across the table from him with his wife Angela. ‘To Major Peter Smythe, who will soon be a colonel.'

‘Put a sock in it, David,' Peter retorted. ‘My promotion to this dizzy height highlights how desperate the force is for officers – any officers.'

‘To the very good health of Mrs Angela Smythe,' Georgiana lifted her glass to Angela. ‘Where would officers be without their ladies?'

‘Miserable.' David locked his fingers into Georgiana's and lifted her hand to his lips.

Oblivious to David's romantic gesture, Georgiana stared at the door. ‘Michael's taking his time.'

‘Not if he escorted Maud back to the British compound.' Charles pointed out. He and Kitty had arrived at the club after Maud had left, but Tom hadn't wasted any time in updating them on Maud's unwelcome appearance at his wedding breakfast.

‘I didn't like the look of that bruise on Maud's face,' Georgiana frowned.

‘Some women deserve to suffer. When I think of the way Maud behaved and treated my brother …'

‘No one, woman, child, or man, deserves physical punishment. John would never hit anyone weaker than him no matter what they did,' Georgie admonished Tom.

‘More the pity. If he had hit his wife, maybe she wouldn't have had another man's bastard.' Tom glanced at Angela. ‘And don't try telling me Maud was raped. I refuse to believe it after hearing the rumours flying around Basra.'

Charles's colour heightened. He dropped his napkin to the floor and bent down to retrieve it.

‘Rumours aren't necessarily true, Tom,' Angela reminded gently.

‘Most have a germ of truth in them. Especially the one that suggests you're far too nice and forgiving, Angela.'

‘She is,' Peter was tired of talking about Maud. ‘Thank you for this invitation, Tom. You've no idea how marvellous it feels to be sitting here celebrating your wedding. Especially after the rough time you've been having. Three bouts of fever in two months are no joke.'

‘I hate being invalided out. When I think of John …'

‘John would be the first to tell you to get on that boat at midnight with Clary,' Charles insisted. ‘It's bad enough the rest of us are stuck here. Believe you me, I'll be headed home first chance I get.'

‘What about you two?' Tom looked to Georgie and Michael who'd just walked through the door. ‘Civilians can go home any time they want.'

‘I'd hate to have to face my editor if I returned to London before the cessation of hostilities, after hearing his insistence that correspondents are always the last to leave a theatre of war. I believe I even promised to pull the curtains after me,' Michael reclaimed his chair.

‘I'm doing work at the Lansing I could only dream of in London. There, they mock female surgeons here, they hand me the theatre and experienced surgical nurses.'

‘Food,' Peter beamed as the waiters carried in trays of appetizers.

‘I've never seen anyone eat as much as Peter has since he came downstream from Kut,' Angela teased.

‘I'm looking forward to a good dinner after all those months cooped up with only a slice of mule to look forward to for supper.'

‘I'll second that,' David, who'd been sent downstream from Kut with the sick and wounded after Townshend's surrender, added. ‘I never want to eat mule …'

‘Or horse,' Peter added.

‘Or strange-looking weeds …'

‘Weeds?' Angela interrupted David.

‘The Turks surrounded the entire town. We had no access to fields so we couldn't grow anything and the farmers in the area couldn't break the siege to bring their vegetables to market,' Peter explained.

‘Even if we'd been able to get into the fields they were all full of mud and Turks,' David explained. ‘So on medical advice …'

‘Yours?' Georgiana checked.

‘I believe your cousin John's. He ordered the cooks to forage and cook anything that was remotely green.'

‘With the proviso that the green wasn't down to mildew or mould,' Peter qualified. ‘I've never been so hungry.'

David fell serious. ‘I hope the Turks are feeding our men. You know what John's like, he'd give a man his last mouthful if he thought he needed it more than him.'

‘That's my brother.' Tom emptied an open bottle of Chianti between their glasses. ‘To John and all the British taken at Kut. May they live and eat well in Turkish captivity until the end of the war.'

‘To John and all the POWs,' Michael echoed.

‘What have you done with Maud?' Tom asked.

‘Left her at her father's bungalow, but she'll be moving out tomorrow.'

‘Where will she go?' Angela asked.

‘As long as neither I nor John will see her again I couldn't give a damn.' Even as Tom spoke, he had a feeling he and his brother hadn't seen the last of Maud. He preferred not to think about her but knew his brother. Wherever John was, he'd be feeling unaccountably guilty over the end of his marriage. Even though he was entirely blameless.

‘Another toast, to the bride and groom and a safe and pleasant journey back to England.' Michael refilled their glasses.

Their food arrived and while everyone was passing plates and condiments Georgiana laid her hand on Tom's. ‘Don't forget to give everyone at home our love.'

‘Even your parents after what they said about Gwilym?' Tom questioned.

‘Water under the bridge.'

‘I wish I could be as forgiving as you.'

‘If you're thinking about Maud, it's for John to forgive her, not you.'

‘I suppose it is.'

‘You'll be home by August, in time for a summer that will feel freezing cold after the heat here, and then you'll have a beautiful cool, mosquito-free autumn to look forward to.'

‘My father would love to have you work with him in his clinic, Georgie, you do know that.'

‘Perhaps I will when the war is over.'

‘That could be years, and in the meantime …'

‘Michael is here.'

Tom glanced at David. ‘And so is David.'

‘He amuses me, and at the moment I amuse him,' she smiled. ‘It's not serious on either side.'

‘You haven't given up on looking for Harry, have you?'

‘Let's just say I feel closer to him here than I did when I was in London.' She kissed his cheek. ‘Be happy with Clary, Tom. For all our family. Me and Gwilym, John and Maud, Harry and Furja, Michael and your sister Lucy …'

‘That was a marriage made in hell. I tried telling both of them that they weren't suited to one another.'

‘As did we all.'

Tom slipped his arm around Clarissa's shoulders. ‘We'll be happy, Georgie. I promise you.'

Smythes' Bungalow, British Compound, Basra

June 1916

‘That was a lovely evening. One to remember.' Angela sat at her dressing table, removed the clips from her hair and dropped them on to a pin tray.

‘It was.' Peter sat on the bed behind her and unbuttoned his tunic.

‘As Tom said, “a good way to celebrate a wedding and the promotion of a good man”.'

‘I hope you haven't believed a word David, Tom, or Michael said. I'm no better than any other man in this man's army.'

‘Yes, you are,' she smiled at him in the mirror. ‘You escaped from Kut for a start.'

‘I did not escape. I was sent out of Kut by command because they needed a messenger boy to carry dispatches, and I wouldn't have made it more than a foot through the Turkish lines if I hadn't been with Harry's orderly, Mitkhal. He's the hero, not me.'

She took the last pin from her hair, ran her fingers over her scalp to make sure she hadn't missed any, and picked up her hairbrush. She didn't stop looking at him in the mirror, while she counted out the strokes.

‘You like watching men undress.' He hung his tunic on the back of a chair.

‘Not men, just you. It's wonderful to have you home, and even more wonderful to have a home to call our own.'

‘You were tired of living in the mission?'

‘Reverend and Mrs Butler were very kind, and it was good to be in the same house as Theo, not that anyone saw much of him, Dr Picard, or Georgie Downe. All of them practically live in the hospital. But I much prefer living with you.'

He wrapped his arms around her, looked at her in the mirror, and kissed her neck. ‘Unbutton my dress, please.' She rose from the stool and turned her back to him.

As he slipped the line of pearls from their loops, he considered how far they'd come since his first fumbling attempts to make love to her on their wedding night.

‘Do you think you'll be sent upstream soon?' She tried to sound casual but she knew he'd picked up on the tremor in her voice.

‘There are whispers in HQ that we'll be making a move next month, but no one really knows when it will happen. My guess is after our failure to relieve Kut command will be cautious and won't advance until we've consolidated and strengthened both our supply lines and the Relief Force with all the men we'll need to take us to Baghdad.'

‘Including you?'

‘According to Charles Reid, who's more in the know than me, I'll be sent because I'm one of the few who has enough first-hand knowledge of conditions upstream to brief command on what's needed.'

‘Will I have you for the rest of this month?'

‘And possibly a week or two of next.' He unfastened the last button and she stepped out of her dress. ‘Disappointed I'll be here for a few more weeks?'

‘I wish you could stay here with me forever.' She wrapped her arms around his neck and stood on tiptoe, but he still had to bend his head to kiss her.

‘You'd soon be bored with me if I was under your feet all day.'

‘No, I wouldn't.' She slipped out of her underclothes, turned the sheets back and climbed, naked, into bed.

He lay beside her, pressed the length of his body against hers, and breathed in her scent, lemon from her hair and rosewater tinged with cinnamon from her skin. Imprinting the scents and sensations, together with the texture of her beneath his fingertips, storing the impressions against a future when he sensed he'd need memories.

They made love slowly, tenderly, without haste. Afterwards he lay on his back and pulled her towards him, wrapping his arm around her and cupping her breast. ‘Have I told you how much I love you today?'

‘Not today.'

‘I love you.'

She spread her fingers through the hairs on his chest. ‘Is it true you're on your way to colonelcy?'

Peter laughed. ‘I know it's a wife's duty to boost her husband's morale but I've only just made major and I didn't deserve that promotion. David and Charles were just making jokes at my expense.'

‘David said you'll be one before the end of the year.'

‘David knows nothing about how regiments and promotion work. The Indian medical service is full of doctors like him and Tom who are naïve to the point of believing that the world is fair and the army efficiently run.'

She frowned. ‘I wish Tom wasn't so angry with Maud.'

‘When you consider what Maud did to John, Tom has every right to be angry with her. No man likes the thought of his brother's wife being unfaithful. Especially when the result is an illegitimate child.'