Michael Pearce - The Face in the Cemetery

Fricker asked how his colleagues were managing in his absence.

Owen said that they were, of course, below establishment now, which inevitably made a difference.

Fricker shook his head and said that it was very regrettable.

‘And unnecessary,’ he said. ‘For, surely, here in Egypt there is no war. German and Englishman are on the same side. We work together. We are both servants of the Khedive.’

Owen was not without sympathy for this point of view. All the same, it was pretty naïve. And it made it all the more unlikely that Fricker was engaged in the kind of deep plotting that McPhee had supposed. No, Fricker was just an ordinary chap: hard-working, a little narrow, perhaps a bit rigid – even unimaginative.

Which certainly could not be said of McPhee.

‘Yes, I know,’ said the camp commandant defensively, when Owen gave him Fricker’s paper. ‘It’s not satisfactory. We’re working damned hard, but we’re not keeping up. That’s because you’re sending us so many people. At least it’s dry, though. When it rains, the place will turn into a morass, and that’s when disease will start. I’ve been in places like this before. In South Africa.

‘But it’s not because they’re prisoners. Go five miles in that direction –’ he pointed with his hand – ‘and you’ll find another camp like this. It, too, is full of people. Only they happen to be soldiers. Our soldiers. That’s war for you. Now please get out of my way.’

Zeinab wasn’t speaking to him. But she wasn’t moving out, either. He took this as a good sign, although he suspected that it merely meant war hadn’t been opened on that front yet.

In any case, he still hadn’t really made up his mind about volunteering. When he had been with John and the other officers he had been conscious of old fellow-feeling; but now he was remembering that he had left the Army in India precisely because he had thought he didn’t have enough fellow-feeling with the officers he met there. Would it be any different in France? Or in Mesopotamia?

But that wasn’t really the point, was it?

The war seemed to come closer that lunch-time in the bar of the Sporting Club. Paul was there with two men freshly arrived in Cairo, both of whom Owen knew. One was a man named Cavendish, from the British Embassy in Constantinople, whose role there Owen was not quite sure of but who seemed to feel that he had something in common with Owen.

The other person was a little fair-headed archaeologist, a bit of a know-all, whom Owen hadn’t got on with when they had previously met.

‘You see,’ Cavendish was saying, ‘if they play the “holy war” card, it could really cause trouble for us.’

‘I don’t think it would,’ said the archaeologist. ‘Not in the Peninsula, at any rate. Tribal rivalries are stronger than religion.’

‘How about Egypt, Owen?’ said Cavendish, turning towards him.

‘Too early to say. In any case, it would be a difficult card to play, wouldn’t it? For the Germans.’

‘Yes, but not for the Turks.’

‘Will they definitely come in?’

‘Any day, now. That’s why I left Constantinople,’ said Cavendish.

‘It might be a difficult card even for them. At least, as far as Egypt is concerned. All right, they’ve got religion in common, but there’s as much Nationalist feeling here against the Turks as there is against the British. Almost.’

‘If you’re really worried about the “holy war” card,’ said the little archaeologist, ‘you want to get talking to the Sherif.’

‘Yes, but he’s at Mecca.’

‘Go there.’

‘I can’t,’ said Paul. ‘Not with Kitchener away.’

‘I could,’ said the archaeologist.

Both Paul and Cavendish seemed rather taken aback.

‘It ought to be someone more senior,’ said Cavendish.

‘Ought it?’ said the archaeologist. ‘I could sound him out and then, if he seemed at all responsive, you could send someone more senior.’

Neither Cavendish nor Paul seemed to like the idea.

‘We’d better hold it,’ said Paul, ‘until Kitchener gets back.’

‘Is he coming back?’

Paul seemed surprised.

‘Well, isn’t he?’

‘Britain’s leading soldier. A war on. They might have something else in mind for him.’

It had never occurred to Owen that Kitchener might not return to Egypt. That would certainly alter things. He had a sudden feeling of elation.

The other three put down their glasses and turned to go, obviously off to some meeting or other.

Cavendish nodded to him.

‘We’ll be seeing quite a lot of each other,’ he said, ‘now that I’m here permanently. We’ll probably be setting up some kind of committee, or even a Bureau. I’d like you to be on it.’

‘Owen’s internal,’ said the archaeologist, dissenting.

‘That might come in handy,’ said Cavendish.

‘The war isn’t going to be fought in Egypt,’ said the archaeologist.

He always rubbed Owen up the wrong way and now something about his tone made Owen take exception.

‘There’ll be more going on in Egypt than there will be in Mecca,’ he retorted.

‘Come on, Lawrence,’ said Paul impatiently, from the doorway.

He was thinking about it later that afternoon as he drove back over the Kasr-en-Nil Bridge. Below him he could see feluccas shimmering across the water, their graceful lateen sails bowing under the weight of the wind, and at the edge of the river water-sellers wading into the water with their black goatskin bags to fill up for another load.

He asked himself why he took against the man so. They had only met about three times and each time they had rubbed each other up the wrong way.

The first time, Lawrence had made some remark, which Owen had taken to be disparaging, about Owen’s ignorance of the world of Oxford colleges that both Lawrence and Paul had once inhabited. Why Owen had taken umbrage at this he couldn’t now think. There were plenty of worlds he was on the outside of and usually it didn’t bother him.

He decided it must have been the affectation of superiority. Owen didn’t take kindly to other people thinking they were superior to him; and Lawrence seemed hardly able to speak without implying that he knew more than the person he was addressing.

He couldn’t see them working together on that committee, or Bureau, of Cavendish’s. Cavendish himself he didn’t exactly warm to, but at least he could get along with him for five minutes without quarrelling. Whereas Lawrence –

And what the hell was the committee all about anyway? It sounded to him like Intelligence work, and he was not sure that he wanted to get involved in that sort of thing. Everything at the moment seemed to be taking him away from his real work. First, all this damned internment stuff, and now, it appeared, Intelligence work of some kind. It was the war, of course. It was affecting everything. He didn’t have to go to it. It would come to him, whether he went or stayed, whether he liked it or not.

‘And then there’s another one,’ said the man from the Swiss Consulate, glancing at his list. ‘A Mrs Aziz Hanafi.’

‘Are you sure she’s German?’

The Swiss Consulate had taken over responsibility for looking after the interests of German nationals when the German Consulate had been withdrawn. Problems had come up in the cases of some of the people interned and they were going through them now.

‘Yes. Hanafi is her married name. She married an Egyptian. Her original name was Langer. Hilde Langer.’

‘Langer?’

The name rang a bell.

‘Yes. Actually our concerns here are different from those in the case of the others. This one is deceased.’

‘Was she down in Minya?’

‘That’s right. You know her?’