Hammond Innes - The Doomed Oasis

‘But he was a dreamer, too?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, he was a dreamer, too. He was always a rebel in the world he knew. When we were kids … he’d escape into a world of his own. A m-mental world, you see.

It was always much larger than life. He’d invent games — just for the two of us. And then, later — well, the gang life attracted him for the same reason. It was a form of escape.’

‘And you think his father’s world — Saraifa — was an escape?’

She shrugged. ‘Escape or reality — what does it matter? It was real to him. I remember the second time he came to see me. He took me to dinner at the Fort at Sharjah and he was full of plans, bubbling over with them. He was going to take over from a man called Entwhistle who was sick. And after that he was going on a month’s leave — to Saraifa. A busman’s holiday; he was going to run a survey for his father. He was so full of it,’ she said a little sadly. ‘And so bloody optimistic,’ she added, almost savagely.

‘Where exactly in Saraifa was he going to try for oil?’

‘I don’t know. What does it matter?’

‘Was this in July of last year?’

She nodded, a glance of surprise. ‘He had his own ideas; something he’d unearthed in some old geological report. I couldn’t follow it all. When he’s excited he talks nineteen-to-the-dozen and I’m never certain what is fact and what he’s made up. He seemed to think he could do in a month what GODCO had failed to do the whole time they’d had the concession. He was always like that. He could build a whole kingdom in five minutes — in his mind.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘Once, you know, he ran a tramp shipping line out of Cardiff. It got so big that every ship that came into the docks belonged to him. That was the first time he got into trouble. He beat up a night watchman for telling him to get off the bridge of an old laid-up Victory ship.’ She sighed. ‘That was the sort of boy he was.’

‘And after he’d been to Saraifa?’ I asked. ‘Did he come and see you?’

‘No, he flew straight back to Bahrain. I didn’t see him until December.’

She didn’t seem to want to talk about it, for I had to drag it out of her. Yes, he had been going to Saraifa again. She I

admitted it reluctantly. He’d been loaned to his father.

‘Are you sure?’ I asked.

‘I can’t be sure about anything, but that’s what I understood.’

So The Times Correspondent had been right. And I remembered how Erkhard had skated round the question.

‘It was all so strange,’ she muttered. ‘I thought it was what he’d been wanting all along. Instead he seemed — I don’t know how to put it — almost appalled at the prospect. He was in a most extraordinary state of nervous tension-’

‘Had he seen Erkhard?’ I asked. ‘Was it Erkhard who had loaned him to his father?’

‘I don’t know. He wouldn’t talk about it. He just came to tell me where he was going and what he was doing. He didn’t stay long. In fact,’ she added, ‘it was a rather awkward meeting and I had the feeling he’d only come because he’d felt it was his duty.’

But I was barely listening to her, my mind on Erkhard and this extraordinary arrangement. If it was true, then it could only mean one thing — that Erkhard and Whitaker had some sort of an arrangement … an improbable combination if Otto was to be believed. ‘And this was in December?’

She nodded.

‘You said you’d seen him four times,’ I said. ‘When was the fourth?’

The fourth?’ She stared at me and her face looked very pale. ‘It was in February.’ She couldn’t remember the date, but it was early in February. I knew then that he’d come to her after he had boarded the Emerald Isle, probably that same night, because she said she was called out well after midnight by an Arab boy and had found him sitting alone on the sand. ‘Somewhere near here,’ she said, looking about her.

‘Did he talk about his father?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Though-’ She hesitated. ‘I think they’d had a row. I can’t be sure. It wasn’t anything he said.’ And she added, ‘He wasn’t very communicative, you see.’

I asked her how he’d behaved. ‘Was he scared at all? Did he behave as though he was in fear of his life?’

She looked at me quickly, her eyes searching my face. ‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘No, I don’t think he was scared. More-’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t explain. He just behaved strangely, that’s all-very strangely.’ In fact, most of the time he’d been with her he’d sat in absolute silence. ‘David could do that. As a kid I got used to those silences. But … I don’t know. This seemed deeper, somehow, as though-’ But she couldn’t put it into words. ‘He didn’t talk much,’ she reiterated. ‘There was a moon and I remember his eyes riveted on my face. It was as though he couldn’t look at me enough. I felt… it was as though he wanted to capture an impression, take a sort of mental picture with him. It was a very strange, uncomfortable feeling — and he looked so like his father in the Arab clothes he was wearing.’

‘Did he tell you what he was doing?’

‘No. He wouldn’t tell me anything, but I had the feeling that it was dangerous. He was terribly thin, nothing but skin and bone, and his eyes, staring at me, looked enormous and very pale in the moonlight. When he left he kissed me, not with warmth, but as though he were kissing a priestess who held the key to the future in her hands. And just before he left me, he said a strange thing. He said, “Whatever you hear of me, Sue, don’t believe it.” And he added that if anything happened to him, I was to write to you. And then he left me, walking quickly across the sand without looking back.’

We were sitting on a little rise and the sand fell away from us, sloping gently to a barasti settlement, the dark shapes of the palm-frond huts barely visible, for the moon was new and only just risen. Nothing stirred and the only sound was the bleat of a goat. ‘I can’t believe he’s dead,’ she said. ‘I won’t believe it.’

And because it was what she wanted to believe I told her about the girl in Bahrain and about her mother’s reaction. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Mum did everything she could to discourage his interest in Arabia. But too late. When we were small she shared her thoughts with us, and her thoughts were of the man she called our “Uncle Charles”. That album of press-cuttings — they were almost the first pictures I ever remember looking at. And now here we are, the two of us, in Arabia.’

‘And your father?’ I asked. ‘Did he talk to you about Saraifa?’

‘To me?’ She smiled and shook her head. ‘I’m only a girl. He wouldn’t talk to me about what he was doing.’

‘You say David was loaned to him by GODCO,’ I prompted.

She nodded and when I pressed her for the reason, she said almost sharply, ‘Oh, his father is doing what he’s always done out here — dabbling in oil.’ And then almost gently: ‘It’s rather sad really. One by one the concessions he negotiated for GODCO have been abandoned. He was once a great figure out here — a sort of Lawrence.’ She had pity for him, even if she had no love.

‘And now?’ I asked.

‘Now?’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. David wouldn’t talk about him, not that last time. But there are all these rumours. He had this theory, you know. Some say it’s crazy, but I’ve met others who believed he was right.’

I asked her whether she’d met Entwhistle. I thought perhaps he might have been to see her. But she shook her head.

‘What about these rumours?’ I said.

‘They’re just rumours.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know whether they’re true or not. Nobody I’ve met has ever been to Saraifa. With the border in dispute nobody is allowed to go there. It’s just… well, the desert is like the sea used to be, you know — exaggerated stories are passed on by word of mouth.’