Michael Pearce - The Last Cut

In this heat you needed to take fluid frequently and some time later Owen found himself pouring out another glass of water. As he raised it to his lips his conversation with Yussef came back into his mind. He put the glass down again.

‘Yussef,’ he said, ‘where does this water come from?’

‘The river, Effendi. Right from the middle. It’s the best.’

‘But how did it get here? Here, to the Bab-el-Khalk?’

Yussef shifted his turban to the back of his head and scratched. ‘How did it get here? In a water-cart, I suppose.’

‘Water-cart?’ said the man from the Water Board indignantly. ‘No it doesn’t! You’re one of the buildings on the pipes!’

‘I’ve never seen them.’

‘Well, you wouldn’t, would you? They’re underground. Look, there are two sorts of pipes and they bring two sorts of water.’

‘From the river?’

‘From our pumping station on the river. One sort of water is filtered and that’s for drinking. That’s the stuff, I hope, that Yussef gives you. The other sort is unfiltered-it comes straight out of the river-and that is for irrigation. It’s the sort of stuff you see in the parks and gardens on watering days. We turn the cocks on and flood the place. And then it all seeps down into the ground and comes back again, into the river. Water-carts? Look, water-carts are a health hazard, about as big a danger to health as that bloody old canal they’re about to fill in. It’s all right when they’re carrying water to damp down the dust in the streets but what some of the buggers do is sell water from the cart for drinking. And that’s not the worst of it!’

‘No?’

‘No. They even tap our pipes-the ones we use to carry water for irrigation in-and sell that for drinking!’

‘Did I hear someone say the magic word?’ said Macrae, coming towards them with a bottle.

‘Water?’

‘No. Drinking.’

He poured them both a generous dram. It was the rehearsal for Burns Night that Macrae had invited him to. Scotsmen were there in abundance. So, too, were many whom Owen had hitherto never suspected to be Scottish. Paul, for example. ‘Mother’s side,’ he claimed.

He was talking to the man from the Khedive’s Office.

‘But, just a minute,’ the man was saying, ‘there he is!’

They looked across the room and saw the pink young man who had been responsible for despoiling the Khedive’s Summer Palace.

‘I thought he was in the Glass House?’ said the man from the Khedive’s Office. ‘Being tortured?’

‘Oh, he is, he is!’ Paul assured him. ‘He’s just been let out for this special occasion.’

‘He doesn’t look as if he is being tortured,’ said the Khedive’s man.

‘I should hope not!’ said Paul indignantly. ‘We British are trained to keep a stiff upper lip!’

‘Even so-’

‘Besides,’ said Paul, ‘the whole point is that it should be lingering.’

‘Perhaps you are starting too gently?’ suggested the man from the Khedive’s Office.

‘You think so?’ Paul inspected the pink man critically. ‘Of course, it would be underneath his kilt,’ he said.

‘You mean-?’

Paul nodded.

‘Well, that’s the place to start,’ said the Khedive’s man, impressed. ‘The genitals.’

‘He bears it well, don’t you think?’ said Paul.

‘Well, he does. And yes, perhaps you’re right. You don’t want them to die too quickly. It’s a fine judgement. Well, I’m sure the British know what they’re doing.’

Cairns-Grant was there, also kilted. Owen asked him if he carried a surgical knife in his stocking instead of a skean dhu.

‘Nae,’ said Cairns-Grant. ‘I keep a wee bottle of Islay there. In case the other runs out.’

‘Now, look,’ said Owen, ‘have you been talking to the Nationalists lately?’

‘Are you accusing me of being subversive?’

‘I’m just wondering where all these ideas on health are coming from.’

‘Well. They’re not all coming from me, I can tell you. That lassie, Labiba-’

‘On circumcision, I grant you.’

‘Well, she’s got something there. In the case of pharaonic circumcision-you know, where all the girl’s genital organs are excised-we estimate that complications occur in over fifty per cent of the cases. And where they occur we estimate that death results in over fifty per cent of cases.’

‘Okay, she’s beginning to persuade me. Not that I can do much about it.’

‘Ah, well, there you are, you see. That’s what we all say. And it’s true, you see, not just of circumcision but of a lot of other mortality too. And not just mortality, disease. A lot of it could be avoided. That’s why I’ve been talking to the Nationalists.’

‘And that applies to water-borne illnesses, too?’

‘It does,’ Cairns-Grant looked across the room to where Macrae and Ferguson, bottles in hand, were welcoming new arrivals. ‘Now you see those two laddies; if anyone told them that what they were doing was not for the benefit of the public, they’d laugh at you. And a lot of what they do does benefit the public. Egypt would be a great deal worse than it is if it weren’t for them. They’re grand laddies. But I’m beginning to wonder if they’ve not got it wrong.’

Macrae came bustling across.

‘Are you talking to that auld resurrectionist?’ he said to Owen. ‘I’ll bet he’s touting for business again. “Bring me the bodies, Owen! As long as you keep them coming, I’m all right for a job!”’

Cairns-Grant threw back his head and laughed.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘there’s no doubt I’m in the right place. Egypt’s a great country-for pathologists.’

Later in the evening the reeling began. The dancing, that is. Owen reeled too; and as the evening wore on and the supply of whisky continued, he reeled more and more.

At one point he was sure he could hear Cairns-Grant talking about lizards.

‘Aye,’ he was saying to the pink young man, ‘they shed their tails. Drop them, when they’re startled. When I was on the wards in Alexandria they used to play a game. There were always lizards skittering over the walls, you understand. Well, the game was to clap your hands when a lizard was just above the man in the bed opposite you so that it would drop its tail on him.’

‘Really?’ said the pink young man.

‘What was that?’ said the man from the Khedive’s Office. ‘He’s telling him about the next torture,’ said Paul. ‘We keep these special lizards, and-’

‘Really?’ said the man from the Khedive’s Office, looking thoughtful.

And it was just about then that the orderly came in to fetch Owen.

McPhee was waiting for him outside.

‘Owen, there’s been an attack at the Cut.’

‘What on?’

‘The dam, I think.’

Any idea who by?’

McPhee hesitated.

‘The Lizard Man, they say.’

He and Owen left at once. They found an arabeah in the Place Bab-el-Khalk with its driver sleeping beneath it, woke him and set out through the moonlit empty streets, with the domes and minarets mysterious against the velvety sky. It was about three in the morning and in another hour the city would be waking. Or, at least, some of it would. At the moment, however, there was nothing to impede them as the driver urged his horse along.

At the Cut men were stirring in the darkness but there were not the great crowds that Owen had feared. Selim came running excitedly towards them.

‘Effendi, I have done it! I have killed the Lizard Man!’

‘But, Selim-’ began one of the other constables hesitantly. ‘While these poofters were sleeping!’ said Selim, dismissively. ‘A Lizard Man has but a back like everyone else! That is what I said, didn’t I, Abdul?’