seemed to explode out of her mouth. âNo, better it is like this, God rest his poor soul.â
Appalled, I hurried past her, out into the fresh evening air. The starsâwhat a thing to be believing in at a time like this. Poor woman!
But as I drove away, it was the father I was thinking about, a sense of uneasiness growing in my mind, fostered by the violence of her strange reaction. Going back to that house, to that poor woman driven half out of her senses by an old love she couldnât discard; it was all suddenly fresh in my memoryâher fears and the way heâd sworn to kill his father. What had happened between those two in the intervening years? Or was this just an accidentâone of those things that can happen to any young man prospecting out there in the remote deserts of Arabia?
Back at the office I got out the Whitaker file and read that postscript to Davidâs letter again. But there was nothing in it to give me a clue as to how his father had reacted. The words might have been written by any youngster plunged into new and strange surroundings, except that he had described his father as though he were looking at him with the eyes of a complete stranger. But then that was what he was. Right at the bottom of the file was the dossier Andrews had produced from press-cuttings in the library of the Welsh edition of a popular daily, and I read it through again:
Charles Stanley Whitaker, born Llanfihangel Hall near Usk, 1899. Joined the cavalry as a trooper in 1915, served with Allenby in the offensive against the Turks, and rose to the rank of major. After the war, he stayed on in the Middle East. Policeman, trader, dhow-owner; he adopted the Moslem religion, made the pilgrimage to Mecca, has lived with the Bedouin. His book on his crossing of the Rub al Khali desert was published in 1936. By then he had already become something of a legend. Following publication of his book, he went back to the Middle East, and after three years with Gulfoman Oilfields Development, he joined Wavellâs staff on the outbreak of war with the rank of colonel. Awarded the V.C. for gallantry, wounded twice, served with Wingate and later with Wilson. Was still a colonel at the end of the war. He then rejoined Gulfoman Oilfields Development as political representative.
There was a picture pinned to the dossier which showed him in Arab dress standing beside a Land Rover on a desert airstrip. The black patch over the right eye was plainly visible; so, too, was the prominent, beaklike nose. He was slightly stooped, as though conscious of his height; he was a head taller than the other two men in the picture. This and the beard and the black patch over the eye gave him a very formidable appearance, and, though the picture wasnât a very clear one, looking at it again, I couldnât help feeling that he was a man capable of anything, and I could appreciate the impression he had made on a Welsh servant girl all those years ago. He would have been thirty-six then, a good deal younger, and I suppose he had taken her the way he would have taken a slave girl in a Bedouin encampment; but for her it had been something different, an experience so out of the ordinary that she had thought of nothing else for the last twenty-five years.
I wondered whether she still possessed that album full of press-cuttings. I would have liked to look through it and also through the letters from her son, but I couldnât face the thought of going back to the house. I returned the file to its place and wrote to Susan advising her to make the journey to Bahrain and see Erkhard. Nothing can be done, it appears, at this end , I told her. Erkhard seems to be the only man who has the authority to order the search to be resumed .
Two days later the news of Davidâs death was in The Times âa rather guarded account, it seemed to me. It was clearly based on a Company handout, but it did include a brief description by one of the RAF
Appalled, I hurried past her, out into the fresh evening air. The starsâwhat a thing to be believing in at a time like this. Poor woman!
But as I drove away, it was the father I was thinking about, a sense of uneasiness growing in my mind, fostered by the violence of her strange reaction. Going back to that house, to that poor woman driven half out of her senses by an old love she couldnât discard; it was all suddenly fresh in my memoryâher fears and the way heâd sworn to kill his father. What had happened between those two in the intervening years? Or was this just an accidentâone of those things that can happen to any young man prospecting out there in the remote deserts of Arabia?
Back at the office I got out the Whitaker file and read that postscript to Davidâs letter again. But there was nothing in it to give me a clue as to how his father had reacted. The words might have been written by any youngster plunged into new and strange surroundings, except that he had described his father as though he were looking at him with the eyes of a complete stranger. But then that was what he was. Right at the bottom of the file was the dossier Andrews had produced from press-cuttings in the library of the Welsh edition of a popular daily, and I read it through again:
Charles Stanley Whitaker, born Llanfihangel Hall near Usk, 1899. Joined the cavalry as a trooper in 1915, served with Allenby in the offensive against the Turks, and rose to the rank of major. After the war, he stayed on in the Middle East. Policeman, trader, dhow-owner; he adopted the Moslem religion, made the pilgrimage to Mecca, has lived with the Bedouin. His book on his crossing of the Rub al Khali desert was published in 1936. By then he had already become something of a legend. Following publication of his book, he went back to the Middle East, and after three years with Gulfoman Oilfields Development, he joined Wavellâs staff on the outbreak of war with the rank of colonel. Awarded the V.C. for gallantry, wounded twice, served with Wingate and later with Wilson. Was still a colonel at the end of the war. He then rejoined Gulfoman Oilfields Development as political representative.
There was a picture pinned to the dossier which showed him in Arab dress standing beside a Land Rover on a desert airstrip. The black patch over the right eye was plainly visible; so, too, was the prominent, beaklike nose. He was slightly stooped, as though conscious of his height; he was a head taller than the other two men in the picture. This and the beard and the black patch over the eye gave him a very formidable appearance, and, though the picture wasnât a very clear one, looking at it again, I couldnât help feeling that he was a man capable of anything, and I could appreciate the impression he had made on a Welsh servant girl all those years ago. He would have been thirty-six then, a good deal younger, and I suppose he had taken her the way he would have taken a slave girl in a Bedouin encampment; but for her it had been something different, an experience so out of the ordinary that she had thought of nothing else for the last twenty-five years.
I wondered whether she still possessed that album full of press-cuttings. I would have liked to look through it and also through the letters from her son, but I couldnât face the thought of going back to the house. I returned the file to its place and wrote to Susan advising her to make the journey to Bahrain and see Erkhard. Nothing can be done, it appears, at this end , I told her. Erkhard seems to be the only man who has the authority to order the search to be resumed .
Two days later the news of Davidâs death was in The Times âa rather guarded account, it seemed to me. It was clearly based on a Company handout, but it did include a brief description by one of the RAF
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