‘Who are they?’ asked Abdul-Malik, squinting for a better
look.
‘Ya allah! Has God
decided today to flood Arabia with Englishmen?’
‘Maybe they’re Germans?’
They didn’t look like prisoners, though, riding casually
along beside Aurens. The older of the pair was chatting with him casually.
Others spotted them. The raiders and their looted Ottoman wardrobes were forgotten. By the time Aurens and his companions arrived at the camp, a small crowd had gathered.
Now that they were closer, Abdul-Malik saw that the newcomers were a man in his middle years, white-haired and craggy-faced – a nose made for peering haughtily down – and a fair-haired girl of around Abdul-Malik’s age. He stared at her, everyone did. There couldn’t be many men in the camp who had ever seen a European girl. She, for her part, didn’t seem to have noticed the attention yet. All her concentration was spent trying to stay in the saddle of her camel. Even after riding all the way from the railway, she clearly hadn’t got the hang of the animal.
As she passed Abdul-Malik she slipped. Lost her balance and pitched sideways in the saddle with a hapless shout.
Abdul-Malik reached up instinctively and caught her as she slid, gently shoving her back upright before she could fall properly.
She flashed him a smile of rueful embarrassment and rolled her eyes at her own foolishness. There was something endearingly childish about the gesture. ‘Thanks!’
She spoke Arabic!
From what Abdul-Malik heard, even at Allied headquarters at Cairo, most of the Europeans barely knew enough of the language to complain that their drinks weren’t sufficiently chilled. El-Aurens was a strange creature in that respect and was regarded with suspicion by his comrades, as if the occasional shukran or min fadlak were a sign that he was already most of the way towards betraying his nature and going native.
So what on Earth was a blonde-haired European girl who could
speak Arabic with only the barest hint of an accent doing on an Ottoman train
in the middle of the Hejaz? Abdul-Malik’s head immediately filled with fanciful
notions, most of them the kind of outlandish fantasies his grandfather used to
spin when pressed into keeping the little ones out of their mother’s hair. Was
she an odalisque in some Ottoman harem? He’d heard about the Turks and their
appetites. It was said they often had a special predilection for well-educated
European girls. And boys.
But no, this girl didn’t have the look of a harem slave. For all the casual insouciance with which she had addressed a man, there was an almost childlike innocence about her.
Besides, no odalisque would dress so demurely. Her clothes were brightly-coloured and well made from finely-patterned silks in the Ottoman style, but she showed little skin apart from her face and hands; her head was properly covered.
‘My name’s Jo,’ she told him. ‘Jo Grant.’
Seemed a strange sort of name. ‘Abdul-Malik al-Belawi,’ he replied.
‘Come on, Jo!’ her companion called back. Engrossed in their conversation, he and Aurens had managed to get a little way ahead before they’d noticed Jo wasn’t with them. ‘Don’t dawdle!’
In his way, the white-haired man was easily as striking as Jo. He had the look of importance about him but Abdul-Malik couldn’t decide whether he was a sharif or a sheikh. His costume was bizarre. Snug black trousers that seemed to be made of velvet, of all things; a loose, pale-blue shirt that was a cascade of frills and ruffles. He wore it open at the neck to reveal just a hint of greying but virile chest-hair. Abdul-Malik could only assume this was what was fashionable in London, Paris and Berlin at the moment, though he’d never witnessed Lawrence wearing anything of the kind. He wasn’t sure what it did for his mental image of King George and the Kaiser.
Jo Grant smiled apologetically. ‘Duty calls,’ she said, and gamely tried to encourage her camel in the general direction of the others.
As Abdul-Malik watched her go he felt Najid’s firm hands on his shoulders.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ the older man chuckled. ‘What did I say? You’re a hopeless optimist.’
~~~
‘Well I have to say, this is a deuced coincidence, you two and him both showing up on the same afternoon.’
One of the Arab leaders – a young, serious-looking man who, the Doctor whispered in Jo’s ear, was called Sharif Ali – had met Lawrence at his tent when they arrived with news of the Englishman from the desert. Lawrence had wasted no time in going to visit the fellow. The Doctor seemed happy enough to accompany him, so the question of their status never arose. They weren’t exactly being treated as prisoners, but some of the Arabs looked distinctly suspicious of them. Jo didn’t much like the way they stared at her. Maybe this is what travelling with the Doctor does to you: you get so used to being attacked and captured and locked up left, right and centre that even when you’re greeted politely you end up just kind of assuming you’re some sort of captive by default.
Lawrence looked at his unconscious fellow-countryman thoughtfully. ‘You say he’ll be all right?’ he eventually asked the Arab who seemed to have been charged with looking after him.
The Doctor stepped forward before the man could answer. ‘I’m a Doctor,’ he said. ‘May I?’
Lawrence considered a moment, then nodded.
‘Severe dehydration,’ the Doctor announced after a brief examination. ‘Heatstroke, a touch of sunburn. So long as you give him plenty to drink, he should be fine.’
‘As we said,’ Sharif Ali said, a little stiffly. Poor chap. The Doctor never does realise when he’s stepping on someone’s toes. Or maybe he realises and just enjoys it.
‘And you say he had no papers on him?’ Lawrence asked Ali. ‘No identification?’
‘It seems not.’
‘How odd. What the devil’s he doing out here?’
‘Perhaps Allenby sent him?’
‘I should say that’s a certainty. But for what? What’s Allenby’s game?’
‘You’re English. Surely you know?’
Lawrence smiled. ‘I’m English to you, my friend. As far as the chaps back at HQ are concerned, the jury’s still out.’ To the attendant he said, ‘It seems to me there’s nothing we can do until this fellow regains consciousness. Look after him, see that he gets all the water he needs, and let me know the moment there’s any change. Doctor, Miss Grant, if you’d accompany me? I’d like a word with you in my tent.’
He nodded farewell to Ali and swept from the tent, his white robes billowing behind him.
~~~
Lawrence’s tent wasn’t far. He and the Doctor continued to ponder the unconscious Englishman on the way, advancing cautious theories about how he might have got there. Each thought the other knew more than he was saying, Jo realised. She had to smile; the Doctor never could resist a sniff of a mystery. Mind you, it’d be hard to resist a sniff of anything with his nose…
She was content to let them stride on ahead and natter away. She hoped the poor fellow from the desert would be all right, of course, but it wasn’t exactly ‘plesiosaur in the 1920s’ or ‘invisible man in a glam shag-pile’ levels of intrigue. Besides, it was all she could do to vaguely keep up with them as she hobbled along. Her legs and back and bum ached like she’s gone five rounds with an Ogron.
They reached Lawrence’s big white bell-tent and the Doctor held the flap open for her.
‘Feeling tender?’ he asked gently.
‘I think I’ll be sore for a week!’
‘You’re not used to riding a camel, that’s all.’
‘Yes, well guilty as charged. There weren’t exactly a lot of them about in Surrey. Just ponies mostly.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he told her. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ the Doctor assured her.
‘That’s easy for you to say. I noticed you didn’t seem to be having any problems.’
‘Well, I’ve had a little more experience, that’s all,’ he admitted. ‘King Antiochus dragooned me into his dromedarii for the Battle of Magnesia.’
‘Huh.’
The tent at least was comfortable as these things went. The white linen did something to keep the heat of the sun off and the floor was covered with admittedly rather threadbare Ottoman rugs and a couple of cushions. A British army uniform hung neatly washed and pressed from a hanger suspended from one of the tentpoles, while an assortment of various bits of Arab dress were scattered around the place.
‘I say,’ said Lawrence, slightly embarrassed as he rounded up his laundry and bundled it out of the way, ‘sorry about the mess. Wasn’t exactly expecting civilised company.’
Jo had to laugh. Typical young bachelor. Lawrence of Arabia. The name wasn’t a man, it was a legend. It was distant times and far-off places. It was heroism and adventure. It was Peter O’Toole and a sweeping Hollywood score.
It was a skinny young man with a big chin and slight sunburn, who didn’t clear up his dirty clothes if he thought he could get away with it and wore his Bedouin robes with the unselfconscious enthusiasm of a little boy raiding a dressing-up box.
A space cleared, he gestured for them to sit down on the cushions. The Doctor passed his cushion to Jo. She accepted it gratefully.
Lawrence considered for a moment before he spoke. He was a cautious, thoughtful man. There was a slight feyness about him that put Jo a little in mind of Mike. As he pondered how to approach their discussion, he reminded Jo of the teachers back at school. One of those trendy teachers who’d much rather try and be your mate and then got uncomfortable and hesitant when there was a telling-off that needed to be administered. Not that Jo had ever been in trouble at school. No, sir! Pure as the driven snow, she was.
‘You’re a long way from England, Doctor,’ Lawrence said eventually. He said it lightly enough, almost tentatively, but there was an edge to his curiosity. He wanted to think well of them, but he clearly hadn’t quite made up his mind.
The Doctor parried the remark imperiously. ‘Yes, well we like to travel.’
‘When there’s a war on?’ A slight raised eyebrow.
‘The war hasn’t been on for ever, you know. Things were all rather quiet when we set off.'
He was having a whale of a time. No wonder he'd got so ansty during his exile. When your greatest pleasure in life is bandying words and showing off to authority figures, the endless cavalcade of gry civil servants Whitehall kept sending their way must have been such a drag.
Lawrence looked as if he was about to say something to take issue, perhaps with the idea that a man and a girl might blithely set off on a jaunt on the eve of war and somehow fail to beat a hasty retreat home when Europe erupted into a bloodbath. Whatever had been on his lips, it went unsaid.