Hammond Innes: The Doomed Oasis

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘You’ll get them. When are you sailing?’

‘Nine-thirty on the tide.’

‘I’ll bring them down myself.’

That seemed to satisfy him and since he showed an inclination to chat, I asked him about Whitaker. ‘Colonel Charles Stanley Whitaker,’ I said. ‘Do you know him by any chance?’

‘Yes, indeed. The Bedouin, that’s what they call him out there. Or the Bloody Bedouin in the case of those that hate his guts and all his Arab affectations. That’s the whites, you know. The Arabs call him Al Arif — the Wise One — or Haji. Yes, I know Colonel Whitaker. You can’t trade in and out of the Gulf ports without meeting him periodically.’

‘He’s still out there then?’

‘Oh lord, yes. A man like that would never be happy retiring to a cottage in the Gower.’ His small blue eyes creased with silent laughter. ‘He’s a Moslem, you know. He’s been on the Haj to Mecca, and they say he keeps a harem, and when it isn’t a harem, there’s talk of boys…. But there.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s just gossip. If I took account of all the gossip I heard on my ship there wouldn’t be anyone with a shred of reputation left. Too much time, you see. Everybody’s got too much time, and the damned humidity…. ‘ He gave that high-pitched cackling laugh. ‘But dear me,’ he went on, ‘there’s a real character for you. You don’t find men like Whitaker back here in Britain — not any more. One-eyed and a patch, and a great beak of a nose that makes him look like a bloody bird of prey.’

‘And you’ve met him?’

‘Yes, indeed. I’ve had him on board my ship, too — often and often. I’ve had him on board in all his flowing Bedouin robes with the silver of his great curved khanjar knife gleaming at his girdle and the black agal of Arabia round the kaffyah that covered his head; yes, and holding court on my own boat deck with the prayer mats out and his bodyguard all round him, armed to the teeth.’

‘A sort of Lawrence?’ I suggested. ‘Well …’ He sounded doubtful. ‘He hasn’t quite that standing with the political crowd. Too much of an Arab.

Changing his religion like that, it made a difference, you see. But the oil boys all treat him like God, of course — or used to. But for him the Gulfoman Oilfields Development Company wouldn’t have had a single concession out there. And then there was his theory — the Whitaker Theory, they called it. He believed that the proved oil-bearing country that runs down from Iraq through Kuwait, Dahran, Bahrain and Qattar would be found to continue, swinging south-east along the line of the Jebel mountains, through Buraimi and into the independent sheikhdom of Saraifa.

Well, there’s no knowing whether a man’s right about a thing like that, except by prospecting and drilling. And there was Holmes, you see — he’d had the same sort of bee-in-his-bonnet about Bahrain and he’d been proved right.’ ‘And Whitaker wasn’t?’ I prompted, for he had paused, his mind engrossed in the past.

‘No. It cost the Company a lot of money and nothing but dry wells for their trouble. And now things are changing out there.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘There’s a new type of man coming to the top of these Middle East oil companies, technical men who understand oil, but not the Arab. Whitaker and the world he represents — it’s doomed, you know; finished. You can’t lord it in the deserts of Arabia, not now, with the oil flowing and half the world trying to grab a stake in it. And he’s the manner of a ruling prince, you know. He might have been descended from the Prophet himself the way he behaved at times.’

It was an extraordinary picture that Griffiths had drawn for me. When he left to go back to his ship I felt that my drab office was the brighter for the colour his musical tongue had brought into it. I put some more coal on the fire and settled down to finish the day’s work.

It was about half an hour later that I was interrupted by the sound of the street door bell. It startled me, for I very seldom have a caller after office hours except by appointment and a glance at my diary confirmed that I’d no appointment for that evening.

My visitor proved to be a girl, and as she stood there in the driving sleet, clutching her bicycle, she seemed vaguely familiar. She had the sort of face that comes together around the nose and mouth, a face that was attractive, rather than pretty, its composition based on the essential of bone formation. She smiled, a little nervously, a flash of white teeth, the bright gleam of pale eyes. I remember that it was her eyes that attracted me at the time. She was just a kid and she was brimming over with health and vitality. ‘Mr Grant? I’m Susan Thomas. Can I speak to you a moment, please?’ The words came in a quick rush, breathless with hurrying.

‘Of course.’ I held the door open for her. ‘Come in.’

‘May I put my b-bike inside?’ There was a natural hesitancy in her voice that was oddly attractive. ‘I had one stolen a few weeks back.’ She wheeled it in and as I took her through to my office, she said, ‘I was so afraid you’d have left and I didn’t know where you lived.’

In the hard glare of my office lighting I was able to see her clearly. The beaky nose, the strong jaw, they were both there, recognizable now. But in her these facial characteristics were softened to femininity. Unlike her brother, I could see no resemblance to the mother. ‘It’s about your brother, I suppose?’

She nodded, shaking the sleet from her blonde hair whilst her long, quick fingers loosened the old fawn coat she wore. ‘I only just got back from the Infirmary. Mother’s beside herself. I had great difficulty-’ She hesitated, a moment of uncertainty as her clear wide eyes stared and she made up her mind about me. ‘She — she’s reached an odd age, if you know what I mean. This is just too much for her.’

Nineteen years old, and she knew everything about life, all the hard, unpleasant facts. ‘Are you a nurse?’ I asked her.

Training to be.’ She said it with a touch of pride. And then: ‘You’ve got to do something about him, Mr Grant. find him, stop him from trying to kill his — from killing somebody else.’

I stared at her, appalled. ‘What are you talking about?’ I said. She was over-dramatizing, of course. ‘You’ve heard about your-’ I stopped there, uncertain what to call him. ‘About Mr Thomas?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded, her face as withdrawn as her Brother’s had been, set and white. ‘Mother told me.’

The hospital phoned her then?’

‘About half an hour ago. He died in the ambulance they said.’ There was no emotion in her voice, but then her lip trembled slightly. ‘It’s David I’m worried about.’

‘I was just going down to the police station,’ I said. ‘It was an accident, of course, but there’s always the chance that the police may view it differently.’

‘He’s got a bad record, you know. And they never got an together. Of course,” she added, ‘I knew he wasn’t my rather — my real father, that is.’

‘Your mother told you, did she?’ I was thinking that it was odd she should have told her daughter and not her son. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘She never told me. But it’s something you know, by instinct, sort of.’

Then why in heaven’s name didn’t your brother know?’ I said.

‘Oh well, boys are so slow, you know. And it’s not something you can just blurt out, is it, Mr Grant? I mean, it’s something you feel, deep inside, and it’s sort of secret.’ And then she said, ‘What will he do, do you think? Was he serious when he said he’d kill him? I wasn’t there, you see. But Mother is convinced he meant it.’