But soon I had grown melancholy thinking of those wonderful monsters waiting for the engines that would never come. French imperial politics and the Pasha’s failure to control his own emotions meant my beautiful machines must now become museum pieces. I still, however, had a number of my expensive catalogues, though, sadly, only the Arabic version, not the French. I thought of my Desert Liner and what wealth it might have created for the whole region. I would have made their desert green. Now they would have to wait, perhaps for ever. El Glaoui’s loss would be Il Duce’s gain. Within a couple of weeks I would be dining with my old friends at The Wasp. I told Mr Mix he would fall in love with the city. It was the crucible of our finest institutions.
Across the truck, as the train speeded up, I saw his great amiable African face grinning through the flickering stripes of our temporary prison giving our reality the effect of an early kinema film. I remarked on this. The rattle of the bogies might almost have been the clatter of a projector. It was the strangest illusion.
I fumed at those who had conspired to ruin both our careers and condemn us to such unjust humiliation. I was not even sure, I said, if I had enough money to get a decent passage on the ship to Italy, let alone buy some reasonable clothes. Already I was smelling of cow-dung. ‘I hear Rome is very fashion-conscious, these days.’ We could not be expected to parade through the Holy City like evil-smelling extras from The Desert Song. Besides, I did not expect our djellabahs to last the journey.
‘Look at the stitching on this garment,’ I said. ‘It’s of the cheapest quality. Not a double seam on the whole thing. Scarcely a fair exchange for a bag of English gold!’
Slap-happy as ever, the big black suddenly began to roar with laughter. I could not understand this at all. I thought at first he had given in to the hysteria to which his race is prone, but then it seemed he was doing nothing more than trumpet his considerable relief at being free of the Pasha’s torture-chamber. I told him I was proud to see he was taking his hardships so well. Not all his race were so resilient. He need not fear in Europe, I assured him. I would be there to help. If anyone insulted him in the Eternal City they must answer to me!
At this he uttered a further wild burst of mirth, declaring that knowing me made a man believe in miracles. ‘Max, you are the luckiest bastard in the whole damned universe. I never heard of anybody with your kind of luck. From now until we get back to civilisation I’m going to stick to you like a fly to fresh paint.’
I was a little baffled. ‘What “luck” are you talking about, Mr Mix? I think you mean “judgement”, surely! If I hadn’t had the presence of mind to mention the name of one of England’s most powerful and least-known men we should still be languishing in the Glaoui jail, or writhing at the first tender touch of St Paul’s Pincers.’ I felt sick. I could almost smell our burning flesh. ‘Is that “luck”?’ I pulled my Georgian pistols from my bag to make sure no harm had come to them.
He did his best to control himself. He turned his head and let his chin settle upon his chest. But it was clear he had not really understood me.
‘Luck?’ I was still incredulous. From what sort of skewed illusion could the schwartze be suffering? ‘Haven’t you noticed, Mr Mix, that we are once again reduced to the discomforts of a cattle car?’
Clearly the terrors of the past few days had taken their toll. The poor fellow’s mind had snapped. His head flung up, his scarlet mouth gaping, he shook with feverish mirth, and as the locomotive pulled us relentlessly into the High Atlas I became miserably reconciled to the certainty that he would still be roaring even when we passed at last through the golden gates of Rome.
APPENDIX
(The following transcript is taken from material not supplied by Colonel Pyat but given by him to Miss Christine Brunner who kindly gave permission to reproduce it here.
- M.M.)
If T’hami had aided Abd el-Krim in 1925, there would have been no foreign protector still in Morocco. Instead the tribes and the political rivals and the religious rivals and the blood rivals and the trade rivals would have returned to their time-honoured custom of dog eat foolish dog, and T’hami, almost reluctantly no doubt, would have emerged at last, encrusted with the blood of a hundred thousand innocents, as Tyrant of Morocco, the first true Islamic Dictator, to shake hands with his brothers in Europe. And with T’hami as an ally, would Christendom any longer have to fear Carthage? I think T’hami would have extended his Empire eastwards, yet never losing friendship with the West, gradually building a single nation from Casablanca to Suez, which would have formed a bulwark of Islamic chivalry against the savagery of the East and of Africa. If the French had allowed him his own air force rather than taking an active part in dissuading him from this policy, for one moment in history Carthage might have chosen to become the ally of Christ rather than the right hand of the Anti-Christ. It would not, in the end, be dreaming Carthage who was responsible for our defeat, but sleeping Christendom, ever ready to pacify the common enemy who had already devoured Russia, was about to devour half Europe and the mightiest nation of the East. Fromental was right to be suspicious of Islam but wrong to suspect T’hami. Now Carthage is Bolshevism’s puppy-dog just as Britain is America’s. These are the years of greed, the years of warring for the sake of war, for the sake of power alone. These are the terrible years of regression, before the final battle, when brute shall belabour brute back into the mud from which so many millions of years before we emerged. Is this to be our story? Shall this unchecked power, this irresponsible power, this profoundly pagan power, rise and rise until Christ Himself is crushed? What must we do to warn them of their folly? What can we say to them that will remind them of God’s will at the moment they see their little child’s head split like an egg under some devil’s panga? We have a duty to our religion. It brought us our wealth and our security. We have a duty to practise that religion in the name of the Son of God; a duty to live lives of maximum value to God and Man. This I have tried to do personally and I continue, in God’s name, to shoulder my responsibilities, to warn the world of what they must face if they fail to take up the Christian burden, to make that Pilgrimage of the soul through the Valley of Dread and into the light of Heaven. Each pilgrimage is personal, each private as prayer, as we ready ourselves for the perfection our Redeemer has promised. But even if we follow His path there are many who would lead us astray. I will admit I was lured into temptation during the twenties and thirties, but they were confusing times and I blame no one for what happened then, least of all myself. The Jew and the Moslem will do this, if they can. It is an instinct with them, to gnaw like Satan’s rats at the very roots of our Faith!