The Doomed Oasis (14 page)

Over lunch he told me why he was in Bahrain. He worked for a newspaper group in Milan and he'd had a tip-off from one of Italy's leading oil men. “I think he is right,” he said. “There is trouble. But where?” He had been up since six, talking in the bazaar, to Indians chiefly. A squadron of bren-gun carriers of the RAF regiment was rumoured to have been sent to Sharjah, and two RAF reconnaissance planes had been fitted with long-range tanks. There was talk, too, of additional transport allocated to the Trucial Oman Scouts, and the G.O.C. Persian Gulf was known to be on a tour of inspection. “If there is trouble 'ere,” he said, “then it mean only one thing—oil.” And suddenly, without warning, he said: “What about this David Whitaker, eh?” He smiled at me. “Now you are surprised. But that little girl knew him and you told her your business is about this boy who is missing.” He stared at me. “But you don't want to talk about it, eh?”

“There's nothing to talk about,” I said. “I'm his executor, that's all.”

“An' you 'ave to see Sir Philip Gorde, who is four years ago one of the most important men in the Gulf, but not any more—who is also the life-long friend of Colonel Whitaker, the boy's father. An' you 'ave nothing to tell me, eh?” He shook his head sadly. “Per'aps you do not know it, my friend—but I think maybe you are sitting on the story I want.” He stared at me a moment, and then very seriously: “You will think I am being very stupid now, but walk with care. I like you. I like men who 'ave a sense of duty. That is why I am warning you.”

“You sound very serious.” I wanted to laugh it off. But he said: “I am very serious. Oil is big money. And in a country like this it is also political dynamite.” Probably he read the shock his choice of words gave me, for he added quickly: “You don't believe that, eh? Well, I will take a bet with you. You will not get to Abu Dhabi or to Sharjah. Saraifa is closed anyway. You will, in fact, not be allowed out of Bahrain. And you will be got out of 'ere somehow before Sir Philip Gorde returns. Have you got your visas yet?”

“I have to go back to Jufair this afternoon.”

“Okay,” he said. “You can come with me. But you will not get any visa.”

He was right there. They were very apologetic about it down at Jufair, but the only man who could deal with my application had unfortunately been called away on urgent business. Perhaps if I came back tomorrow. There was no point in arguing. The brick wall of officialdom can't be battered down unless you have the right contacts, and I'd no contacts at all. I went for a walk along the naval jetty. There was a wind blowing off the anchorage, but it was a hot wind and did nothing to refresh me.

Half an hour later Ruffini joined me. “Do you get your visas?” He gave me a wicked smile. He knew I hadn't got them.

“Did you get the low-down on the political situation?” I asked him.

He gave a fat chuckle and shook his head. “The same thing. Nobody is saying anything. What is more,” he added, “you and me, we are in the same boat. No visas for Ruffini also. He is to stay 'ere and mind his bloody business.” He hoisted himself on to the sea wall. “Officials can be very stupid. If I have to stay on in Bahrain and write my story from 'ere, then I have to guess at what goes on, and maybe I guess wrong.” He was staring out across the anchorage, his eyes screwed up against the dazzle of the water. “That gunboat, for instance …” He nodded towards the frigate, which was slowly fetching up to her anchor, the clatter of her winch coming to us very clear across the water. “An exercise, they tell me. Routine. Maybe that is all it is and they are speaking the truth. But 'ow do I know?”

We stayed and watched her steam out of the anchorage, and then Ruffini heaved himself down off the wall. “Do you ever 'ear of the Emir of Hadd?” he asked as we walked back to the taxi. “The Emir Abdul-Zaid bin Sultan? Well, no matter.” He wiped the perspiration from his face. “But try shooting that name at the political people 'ere and see 'ow their faces go blank. I tell you,” he added, “this country is worse than a Sicilian village, full of old vendettas and not a clear boundary anywhere to mark the finish of one sheikh's piece of sand and the beginning of the next.”

He took me back to the hotel and I lay and sweated on my bed till dinnertime, wondering how I was to contact Gorde and thinking about Ruffini. Was there really trouble brewing? But it all seemed remote—as remote as Colonel Whitaker out there in Saraifa and utterly inaccessible. And next day, after a full morning's work, I was no nearer either of my objectives.

I rang the Passport Office, but nothing had been decided. And when I checked on transportation I found that even if I were willing to charter a plane, there was none available with sufficient range to fly direct to Saraifa, and in any case flights there were prohibited. I went to the bank then and settled David's affairs as far as I was able. It was the same bank that his father dealt with, and the manager was helpful. He confirmed that Colonel Whitaker was living in Saraifa, this contrary to his very strict instructions. But he could tell me little else, and I went back to the hotel and had a drink with two RAF officers and a civilian pilot, a Canadian named Otto Smith. After lunch we all went down to the Sailing Club for a bathe.

Half the English colony was there, for it was Saturday, and amongst them was the girl from the GODOC reception desk sprawled half naked on the cement of the old seaplane jetty. “So you're off to Sharjah, Mr. Grant?” And when I told her I was having visa trouble, she smiled and said: “I think you'll find it's all right.”

“How do you know?”

“Oh, I know everything.” She laughed. “No, I happened to see your name on the flight list for tomorrow's plane.”

She was perfectly right. When I got back to the hotel that evening I found my passport waiting for me, stamped with visas for Sharjah and Dubai. There was also a message, signed by Erkhard's secretary, informing me that “owing to the Company's desire to help you in every possible way” free passage was being granted to me in a Company plane leaving for Sharjah at 1030 hours the following morning, Sunday. The message added that accommodation would be available at the Fort and it was not anticipated that I should have to wait long before Sir Philip arrived from Abu Dhabi.

There was no doubt in my mind that Erkhard had intervened to get me the necessary visas. But why? The day before, he had made it clear that he didn't intend to help me. And after the way I had cross-examined him I hadn't expected it. And yet here he was giving me a free ride on a Company plane. I sat on my bed and smoked a cigarette whilst the hot evening breeze blew in through the open window, and the only conclusion I came to was that they had sent my note to Gorde and he had given the necessary instructions. Whatever the reasons, it was a great relief to me, and I got up and started to pack.

I had just closed the larger of my two suitcases when there was a knock at the door. It was one of the house-boys to say there was a young Arab asking for me at the desk. “It is a boy from the bazaar, sir. From the al-Menza Club.” And he grinned at me.

I had a wash and then dressed. The boy was still there when I got down quarter of an hour later. He was little more than an urchin and none too clean, and when he realized I didn't speak Arabic, he seized hold of my wrist, pulling at me and hissing the words “al-Menza” and “girl-want.” Girl-want seemed to be the sum total of his English, and I told him to go to hell. He understood that, for he grinned and shook his head. “Girl-spik. Spik, sahib.”

I got hold of the houseboy then and he said the boy had been sent by one of the girls at the al-Menza Club. “She wishes to speak with you, sir.” This time he didn't grin. And he added with a puzzled frown: “It is a personal request. This boy is from the house where she lives.”

I didn't like it. “Tell him no,” I said and I went over to an empty table and ordered a beer. It took two houseboys and a lot of argument to get rid of the boy. I drank my beer and then went in to dinner, a solitary, dreary meal. I had just finished when the waiter came to tell me a taxi-driver was waiting outside for me. It was Mahommed Ali. “There is a boy in my taxi,” he said. “Is wishing you to go to the al-Menza to meet a girl.”

“I've already told him I'm not interested.”

“You should go, sir. She 'as something to tell you.”

I hesitated. But, after all, the man was a taxi-driver attached to the hotel. “You'll drive me there, will you?”

“Okay, sir.”

It wasn't far to the bazaar area and we finished up in a side street that was barely wide enough for the car. The al-Menza was sandwiched between a cobbler's shop and a narrow alley, the door guarded by a turbaned Sudanese. I told the driver to wait, and the boy took me by the hand and hurried me down the alley and through the black gap of a doorway into a dark passage. He left me there and a moment later footsteps sounded, high-heeled and sharp, and then a girl's voice, low, with a peculiarly resonant quality, almost husky. “
Monsieur
.” She took my hand, her fingers hard, not caressing. “Through 'ere, pleez.”

A door was pushed open and there were soft lights and the faint beat of Western music, a jive record playing somewhere in the building. A beaded curtain rattled back and we were in a little room no bigger than a cell. The floor was bare earth with a rug and a few cushions. A naked light-bulb dangling from the ceiling showed me my companion.

I don't know quite how to describe that girl. She certainly wasn't beautiful, though I suppose that is a matter of taste, for she was obviously Arab; Arab mixed with something else—European, I thought, with a touch of the real African. She stood very straight with a lithe, almost animal grace. She was the sort of girl you could picture at the well drawing water and striding away across the sand with a pitcher on her head. She was that, and she was the other sort, too; the husky voice—dropped a shade, it would be totally erotic, a vicious invitation. No point in dramatizing; she was just a Middle Eastern tart, but I'd never met one before and it made an impression.

We sat cross-legged on the cushions, facing each other. She wore a queer sort of dress and I had a feeling that at the touch of a secret button she'd come gliding out of it like a butterfly out of a chrysalis. Her hands were pressed tight together and she leaned forward, her eyes, her lips devoid of invitation, hard almost and urgent.

“You know why I ask you to come 'ere?”

I shook my head.

“You do not guess?” There was the ghost of a smile on her half-open lips. But when I said “No,” she snapped them shut. “If you are not the man,” she blazed; “if you 'ave come 'ere because it is the sort of place …” At that moment she didn't look at all nice. “All right,” she said, biting on her teeth. “You tell me now—is it because of David you come to Bahrain or not?”

David! I stared at her, beginning to understand. “Did David come here, then?”

“Of course. He was an oil man and this place is for oil men. They 'ave the same devil in them as other men where the sun is 'ot—but David was nice, a vair nice boy.” She smiled then and the hardness went out of her face, leaving it for a moment like a picture of Madonna-with-child, despite the slightly flattened nose, the thickened lips. It was a queer face, changeable as a child's.

“How did you know I was here on account of David Whitaker?” I asked her. “It is David Whitaker you're talking about?”

She nodded. “One of the men from the GODCO office is 'ere las' night. He tol' me about you.” She didn't say anything after that, but sat staring at me with her big, dark eyes as though trying to make up her mind about me.” You like some coffee?” she asked at length.

“Please.” I needed time, and I think she'd guessed that. She was gone only a few moments, but it gave me a chance to collect myself and to realize that she was perhaps the one person in Bahrain who could tell me what sort of man David had become in the four years since I'd seen him. She put the coffee down between us, two small cups, black and sweet. I gave her a cigarette and sat smoking and drinking my coffee, waiting for her to start talking. I had that much sense. If I'd rushed her, she'd have closed up on me.

“Have you seen his sister?” she asked finally.

“Not yet.” It wasn't the question I'd expected.

“But you 'ave 'eard from her, no? Does she think he is dead?”

I sat there, quite still, staring at her. “What else could she think?” I said quietly.

“And you? Do you think he is dead?”

I hesitated, wondering what it was leading up to. “His truck was found abandoned in the desert. There was a ground and air search.” I left it at that.

“I ask you whether you think he is dead.”

“What else am I supposed to think?”

“I don' know.” She shook her head. “I jus' don' know. He is not the sort of boy to die. He believe too much, want too much of life.”

“What, for instance?”

She shook her head slowly. “I don' know what he want. Is a vair strange boy, David. He have moods; sometimes he sit for hours without saying nothing, without moving even. At such times he have a great sense of—of
tranquillité
. You understand? I have known him sit all night, cross-legged and in silence, without moving almost a muscle. At other times he talk and the words pour out of him and his eyes shine like there is a fever in him.”

“What did he talk about?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “So many words. I don' understand half of what he say. About the desert mostly, and the Bedou. Water, too; he loved water—much more than oil, I think. And the
falajes;
he often talk about the
falajes
and about Saraifa—how the desert is moving into the oasis.”

I asked her what the word
falaj
meant, but she couldn't explain it. “Is something to do with water; tunnels, I think, under the ground because he say it is vair hot there, like in a Turkish bath, and there are fishes. And when you look up you can see the stars.” She frowned. “I don' know what it is, but he say once it is like the wind-towers at Dubai—something brought from Persia. But I have never seen the wind-towers at Dubai,” she added.