Dreamers of the Day Page 11

  “Arnold,” Miss Bell was telling Colonel Wilson, “when we have made Mesopotamia a model state, there won’t be an Arab in Syria or Palestine who won’t want to be part of it, but they will never accept direct rule. You saw that last year.”

  “Gertrude,” he countered, “you cannot simply draw a line around Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra and declare everything inside it a nation! It won’t matter whom you use as the figurehead.”

  “Well, of course,” Miss Bell said airily, “we’ll have to take Kurdish sentiments into account.”

  “I rather like our Gertrude’s idea,” Mr. Churchill declared. “Saves the expense of administration in triplicate.”

  “It will cost more in the long run,” Colonel Wilson insisted. “What do you propose to do about the Shi’a in Karbala and Najaf ? The level of religious bigotry in those regions is staggering! The Persian clergy spends half its time fostering hatred—”

  “And what age of child do you teach, Miss Shanklin?” Mrs. Churchill asked, trying to draw me back into the ladies’ conversation.

  “Fifth grade,” I said. “That would be ten-year-olds, for the most part.”

  “Tikrit!” Colonel Wilson cried. “Don’t talk to me about Tikrit— that city is home to the most brutal, boorish, savage—”

  “Ten? Why, that’s just my Randolph’s age,” Mrs. Churchill said, raising her voice slightly as Colonel Wilson’s grew louder.

  “You must miss him very much,” I offered, hoping to send her off on a maternal soliloquy so I could hear what Miss Bell would say in reply.

  “I simply do not understand that child,” Mrs. Churchill confessed. “His sister Diana is high-spirited, but Randolph!” She lifted her eyes heavenward, and I saw the look of exasperated incomprehension that my own mother so often wore in my childhood.

  Half-listening to Mrs. Churchill’s complaints about her son, I thought it obvious that the boy was doing everything he could think of to get his peripatetic parents to stay home for a change and pay some attention to him. With no children of my own, I had no right to voice an opinion, so I confined myself to mute courtesy during her despairing account of the governesses her son had driven away with a dismaying series of insurrections.

  “Yes, like the one last summer,” said her husband. I thought he was referring to his young son’s rebellion, but Mr. Churchill went on, “And not just in Mesopotamia. We’ll be lucky to hold off the Bolsheviks in Persia—there’s no shifting them from Russia now. There’s trouble in Ireland, and India. And Egypt! And Palestine! And why our esteemed prime minister has decided to back the Greeks against the Turks in Cyprus simply passeth understanding.”

  To my astonishment, the cadaverous Lord Cox turned unblinking eyes toward me and growled, “We have your President Wilson to thank for these rebellions. All that talk about the end of colonial rule—”

  “The Great Promiser,” Mr. Churchill sighed. “Freedom and democracy for all!”

  “Arab nationalism is a fraud. Their loyalty is to their tribe,” Lord Cox declared, glaring at me. “They have no concept of democracy,” he said, making the word sound as though it were a synonym for “turd.” “They believe freedom is an object that can be delivered, like a parcel that arrives in the post.”

  “They must surely know what freedom isn’t,” I said. “It isn’t having British troops all over their land. It isn’t taxation without representation.”

  At the sound of that ringing phrase, Miss Bell informed me tartly that the taxes we Americans had protested were incurred when the Plymouth colonists started a war with the Wampanoag and wiped out the buffer tribes that had shielded them from the Iroquois Confederacy. “You needed troops and we taxed you to pay for them,” she told me, and then addressed the table: “Our American cousins … often ignorant, but never without opinions.”

  “Well, perhaps if you’d asked our opinion about the troops and the taxes, you might have avoided a war,” I replied. Lawrence giggled happily, and thus encouraged, I went on, even though the others began to look uncomfortable. “It appears to me that Britain proposes to follow American footsteps in the Philippines,” I said, “and I don’t recommend it. We helped the Filipinos overthrow the Spanish, but did we allow them then to choose their own form of government? No! We annexed the islands. We installed a colonial administrator, and for the next fourteen years, we had one hundred and twenty thousand American troops there! Four thousand of our boys were killed—fighting the very same guerrillas we encouraged to rebel against the Spanish. Who knows how many natives died? Is that what you want in the Middle East?”

  “Goodness, you are quite well informed, Miss Shanklin,” said Mrs. Churchill, her voice sweet. “And what do you think of your new president? Mr. Harding is from Ohio, I understand. That’s near Cleveland, isn’t it?”

  “I passed through Cleveland on the way to Niagara Falls from Chicago,” said Miss Bell. “Dreadful. Did you vote for Harding?” she asked me, her brows arched. “Many women did, of course. Handsome man, if vacuous. So much for suffrage.”

  “ ‘O! Why did God, Creator wise, that peopled highest Heaven with Spirits masculine, create at last this novelty on Earth, this fair defect of Nature?’ ” Mr. Churchill declaimed, his fork stirring the air. “Be careful, Miss Shanklin. Our Gertrude has as low an opinion of her sex as the immortal Milton. She lent her considerable energies to the Anti-Suffrage League when she was at home before the war.”

  I was, I must tell you, stunned speechless. Karl had warned me that Miss Bell was hardly a believer in female solidarity, but to oppose votes for women actively? Well, the shock must have shown on my face.

  “The role of women in society is fundamentally different from that of men,” Miss Bell said firmly. “They have no business meddling in the affairs of state—”

  “Never stopped you, Gert,” Colonel Lawrence remarked, to general amusement.

  “But then, I am hardly representative, am I, dear boy? The intelligence and experience of a few do not argue for giving the vote to masses of illiterate and exhausted women surrounded by screaming toddlers and infants wailing for milk.”

  “Perhaps if they had the vote,” I said, “they could choose representatives who’d protect their interests. What they need is education—”

  “Spoken like a teacher,” Lawrence said.

  “I, for one, welcome the opportunity to vote,” Mrs. Churchill said, taking my side.

  “But surely you’re not old enough, my dear,” said her husband.

  “Women must be over thirty to vote in England,” the elderly Lady Cox informed me with another pat.

  “That alone will keep most of them from the ballot box until they’re fifty,” Miss Bell added.

  “I am quite old enough to vote, thank you,” said Mrs. Churchill primly, “and not too vain to admit it.”

  “Clementine, don’t tell me you were a suffragette!” Lady Cox cried.

  “Heavens, no! I supported votes for women, but not like that awful Mrs. Pankhurst and the harridans who followed her,” said Mrs. Churchill bitterly. “One of those women tried to push Winston in front of a train, Miss Shanklin. They threatened to kidnap our children! We had to hire armed guards.”

  “Well, I suppose they felt forced to such extremes,” I said recklessly. “In America, women asked courteously for the vote for sixty years. We collected hundreds of thousands of signatures and rolled up miles of petitions. We met with politicians again and again. They reneged on every promise—and when we howled at their lies, they told us we were too emotional to vote!” I said, infuriated by the memory. “Well! When six decades of nice manners fail to produce a result, you have to become a nuisance or you’ll never get justice.”

  “I doubt the Arabs will wait sixty years before becoming a nuisance,” said Colonel Lawrence softly. “I’m curious, Miss Shanklin. The Marquis de Lafayette. Generals Kosciuszko and Pulaski … they all came from Europe to aid the American colonists’ fight for independence from the British Empire. What do you suppose would have ha
ppened if they’d proposed afterward to divide North America between France and Poland?”

  The notion was startling. I thought a moment, imagining the betrayal we’d have felt if such heroes had turned on us after the Revolution. “We certainly wouldn’t have named cities and parks after them,” I said. “After all, if British rule was obnoxious to us—”

  “With a shared language, shared laws, centuries of shared history,” Lawrence murmured.

  “—we wouldn’t have accepted rule by a different colonial power. We’d have fought Poland and France just as the Filipinos fought us. Five years, fifteen … we’d never give up! Never, never, never.”

  Across the room, someone finished telling a joke and laughter erupted, but a withering quiet had settled around our table. Miss Bell sat still, her hands in her lap, shrewd eyes on Lawrence, who grinned gnomishly back. The Cox corpse tossed a linen napkin onto the table in disgust, and Colonel Wilson’s face was stiff.

  Well, Agnes, Mumma said, I think you’ve had quite enough to say for one evening.

  Evidently Mrs. Churchill agreed. For the rest of the meal, she gracefully steered the talk toward topics unlikely to elicit American commentary. Decisively exiled from polite conversation, I finished my meal in silence, trying not to blush. I meant what I’d said, of course, and I’d only been answering Lawrence’s question. Even so, dessert came as a relief. Grateful for a sign that the evening was nearly over, I spooned at something custardy, only vaguely aware of the others until Colonel Wilson leaned over the table and addressed Colonel Lawrence with such venom that we all took notice, one by one, around the room.

  “You were in Basra for two weeks! And on the basis of that vast experience, you presumed to lecture those who’ve given years to the region!” Wilson said, punctuating his accusations with a blunt index finger that thumped the table again and again. “You did immense harm to Great Britain at Versailles. Our difficulties with the French in Syria I lay at your doorstep.”

  Astonished, I shifted in my seat to look at Lawrence, and so did everyone else in the room. He was smiling slightly, the corners of his wide mouth turned up in a curious, predatory curve, while he watched Wilson with lazy, heavy-lidded eyes. The snickering schoolboy, the Oxford scholar, the teasing gadfly—all these had disappeared; in their flashing, prismatic place was a strong, slim figure of intensely male beauty.

  It was like seeing an opal turn to diamond.

  Massive and austere, Colonel Wilson continued to pile denunciation upon indictment with a measured cadence that revealed how often he had rehearsed this litany in his mind. Miss Bell, who had no love for Wilson, grew increasingly agitated and seemed to blame Lawrence for provoking the assault. Certainly his lack of response was driving Colonel Wilson to barely contained fury. Finally, Wilson seemed to remember that they were equals in military rank and changed his tack. “If you commanded an army of Arabs and I had so much as a division of Gurkhas—”

  Lawrence spoke at last. “You would be my prisoner,” he said simply, “within three days.”

  This was evidently the last straw for Miss Bell. “Lawrence!” she hissed through unmoving lips. “You little imp!”

  Lawrence blanched, then flushed, the sudden pink startling against his yellow hair. You cannot imagine how ruthlessly insulting the remark was, especially in that company. It was the sort of thing a kindergarten teacher might say to a naughty child, and the patronizing scorn with which it was delivered silenced even Colonel Wilson.

  An instant later, Lawrence had mastered his reaction. Fixing Miss Bell with a steady blue gaze beneath raised eyebrows and above a small skewed smile, he sat still, letting the silent awkwardness gain weight and solidity.

  “It’s getting late,” he observed at last, “and if this is the best we can do for political discourse …” He shrugged as if to say, There’s no point waiting around for brandy and cigars.

  With that, he stood. Inclined his head to our dinner companions. Bowed slightly to the other guests in a general sort of way. Then he put his hands in his pockets, and sauntered out of the room.

  I was there at Colonel Lawrence’s invitation and, in any case, I had no wish to remain at that table. Without apology or farewell, I picked up my handbag and followed him out of the dining room, through the lobby, and into the midnight moonlight beyond.

  By the time I caught up to him, he’d come to rest across the street and stood with one hand against the thick cylindrical trunk of a palm tree, talking to himself and looking almost nauseated by anger. “The sheer arrogance of the lies!” he was snarling, evidently halfway into a topic. “The relentless concealment! The British public were tricked into this adventure in Mesopotamia by a steady withholding of information,” he told me when I arrived at his side. “They have no idea how bloody and inefficient the occupation has been, or how many have been killed. The whole business is a disgrace to our imperial record. And those people”—he jabbed a finger in the direction of the hotel—“those people are determined to make it all worse!”

  Too agitated to keep still, he set off along the boulevard. I hurried to keep up as he went on vilifying the bureaucrats and diplomats he had to work with here and back in London. Like Wilson’s, this diatribe seemed to have been accumulating for some time, and I felt honored to be of use to him, if only as a sounding board. For a while I simply listened, but I knew something about self-consciousness and injured pride, and waited to address that which I suspected had truly wounded him. Little imp …

  When Lawrence’s anger began to circle toward the personal, I saw my opening. “Wilson and Cox are the worst kind of India Office bureaucrats,” he muttered as he strode along. “And Gertrude—sitting there with Cox, agreeing with his nonsense. That’s her flaw—she always gravitates to the man in power!”

  Arms crossed, I stood my ground, as though I myself were furious. “And all three of them are entirely too tall!” I declared, matching his emotion but trying to make him see the funny side of the situation. “It’s very disagreeable, and really quite unnecessary.”

  Lawrence turned to stare at me. For an uncomfortable moment, I wondered if he understood that he was being joshed and worried that I’d misread him. Then he slumped, and laughed a little, and nodded. Some of the tension went out of him, and we walked on, though not quite as quickly.

  “It’s the condescension I can’t abide,” he continued, calmer now but still needing to talk it out. “The self-satisfied presumption of supremacy! ‘Silly wogs,’ ” he said, mimicking Colonel Wilson’s clotted tones. “ ‘How improvident not to be born into the British aristocracy and how perverse to stay that way! We’ll soon sort them out. White man’s burden, don’t you know!’ Who, exactly, is carrying that burden? Arnold Wilson never lifted anything heavier than a polo mallet in India. I just wanted him to say it all aloud, to reveal it for what it is—”

  “So you did provoke him.” I had stopped again, and he looked back. “And you knew I was going to say all that about the Philippines as well.”

  Caught out, he let a guilty giggle escape. “I certainly hoped so,” he admitted, and we walked on.

  “You let me make a complete fool of myself,” I accused, “and in front of all those lords and ladies.”

  “The toffs at that table needed to hear what you told them. I’ve said the same, but …” He grew serious once more. “Perhaps it will carry more weight coming from a citizen of a former colony—” He looked down and came to a halt so suddenly that my own momentum carried me a few steps beyond him. “Your poor feet!” he cried. “I’m sorry! Would you like a taxi? I should have thought!”

  My buckle shoes were going to punish me, but it was too late to change that now. “It’s not far,” I said. “After a meal like that, the exercise will do us good.”

  As we approached the Nile, the air was rippled by fluttering bats swooping through invisible clouds of insects. What at first seemed silence was actually filled with the rhythmic trilling of crickets and cicadas—surprising, there in the middle of th
e city. A large, pale bird swept past us on powerful wings, passing so near that I clearly saw its heart-shaped face and bright brown eyes. “A barn owl,” I said, amazed. “We have them in Ohio, too.”

  Standing on the Gazirah Bridge, we paused to watch the majestic bird gliding out along the riverbank, head cocked, searching for rodents.

  “How,” I asked, “could you be sure that I would say what you wanted the ‘toffs’ to hear? What if I’d been what Miss Bell assumed I was? Some superannuated flapper, too featherbrained to vote.”

  “I knew your sister,” Lawrence reminded me, resting his forearms on the stone balustrade. “She knew your politics. You were intelligent and argumentative, she said. You’d follow an idea and get lost in the journey. And when you forgot yourself and spoke your mind, it was … wonderful,” he whispered with Lillie’s own dear emphasis. “She admired that in you.”

  I turned away, pretending to study the black water moving sluggishly beneath the bridge. With quiet kindness Lawrence asked, “Would you like to visit Jebail, Miss Shanklin? To see where Lillie and Douglas lived? I could arrange it. After the conference.”

  I cleared my throat and blinked into the darkness. “Yes. I would like that very much. That would be lovely. If it’s no trouble.”

  We started again toward Gazirah. “So!” I said briskly. “Miss Bell wants to rule the Arabs, but sneakily. Colonel Wilson wants to rule right out in the open. Mr. Churchill wants to save money and rule on the cheap. What do you want, Colonel Lawrence?”

  He took a deep breath and let it out, glancing at the moon riding low over the deep blue geometry of Cairo’s cityscape. “A state for the Kurds,” he said, “and one for the Armenians. Separate kingdoms for Basra and Baghdad. A national home for the Jews in Palestine. And biff the French out of Syria!” Embarrassed, he sniggered in recognition of the absurdity: big ambitions, little me.