Free Winds of Eden by Catrin Collier Page B

soul there.’
    â€˜India?’
    â€˜The gossip is bad here; it would be unbearable there. I’d be totally ostracised. Here at least I have you and the Butlers.’
    â€˜You should talk to Reverend and Mrs Butler,’ Angela advised. ‘They found your services in running the mission invaluable before the baby was born, so please don’t make any decisions without consulting them.’
    â€˜After all they’ve done for me and the baby, it would ill-mannered not to. Has Charles heard anything from Kut?’
    Maud’s father, Colonel George Perry, was with the beleaguered force and Angela assumed Maud was hoping for news of him. ‘Charles received a letter from Major Crabbe that was smuggled out, but the major only mentioned Harry. He wrote that a ghulam witnessed Harry’s death and there was no hope.’
    â€˜Poor Harry. I can’t bear to think how many more will pay the ultimate price.’
    â€˜Neither can I.’ Angela shivered at the thought of Peter marooned in Kut. ‘Can I get you anything?’
    â€˜No, thank you, Angela.’ Maud left the chair and hugged her. ‘You’ve been very kind.’
    Angela opened the door and hesitated. ‘Promise me you won’t take any notice of the gossips, Maud?’
    â€˜I can’t promise that, Angela. I wouldn’t mind if their poison was only directed at me, but their vicious tongues are hurting the Butlers, the mission, you, Theo, and Dr Picard, and that’s hard to take.’
    Angela had never been a good liar and she’d run out of comforting things to say. ‘See you in the morning, Maud. Sleep well.’
    â€˜You too, Angela, and thank you.’
    â€˜For what?’
    â€˜Being a friend when I desperately need one.’
    Basra, early morning, Friday 31st December 1915

    The ranking Transport Officer, Major Perkins, faced Tom square on, blocking his exit from the gangplank. ‘I don’t care how many brothers you have stationed with the Indian Expeditionary Force, Captain Mason. You have twelve hours. If you are on this wharf any later than six o’clock this evening you will be declared AWOL. Do I make myself clear?’
    â€˜Perfectly, sir.’ Tom paused just long enough after the ‘perfectly’ and before the ‘sir’ to let the officer know what he thought of him.
    â€˜Do we know our destination, sir?’ Michael enquired from behind Tom.
    Major Perkins eyed Michael’s civilian clothes. ‘And you are?’
    â€˜War correspondent, sir.’
    â€˜Which paper?’
    â€˜ Daily Mirror , sir.
    â€˜Never read it. On a need-to-know basis, your destination is “upstream”.’
    â€˜Thank you, sir.’ Michael didn’t pause between his words but he knew, from Harry’s tutoring, the exact inflection to transform ‘sir’ into an insult.
    Distracted by a sepoy who’d unloaded officers’ kits on to a cart destined for other use, Major Perkins left them.
    â€˜Ten guineas says he was a civil servant in peacetime.’ Tom stepped down from the gangplank of the shallow-draught vessel that had brought them up from the Shatt-al-Arab, where they’d had to leave the deep draught Royal George .
    â€˜You’ll get no takers.’ A slim one-armed man joined them on the quayside. Tom and Michael had enjoyed the company of Edmund Candler, the official eye-witness and Times and Manchester Guardian correspondent on the voyage.
    â€˜Do you think Major Perkins knows our destination any more than we do?’ Tom enquired.
    â€˜Upstream,’ Candler repeated with a smile.
    Michael looked along the wharf. A few clumps of palm broke the line of unprepossessing, low-built, mud brick buildings.
    â€˜Dear God, Harry called Basra the Piccadilly of Mesopotamia. What the hell have we let ourselves in for?’ He swatted ineffectually at a swarm of flies.
    â€˜You know Harry’s sense of