Read Online Winds of Eden by Catrin Collier - Free Book Online Page B

asked me to write to Harry’s family because he didn’t want them to cling to false hope.’
    â€˜Did he mention Captain Mason?’ Angela asked.
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Don’t you think that’s odd?’
    â€˜The letter took some time to get to me. It was dated the second week of December. John died of fever. It’s possible he hadn’t even been taken ill when Crabbe wrote.’
    â€˜In which case you think Captain Mason would have written to you about Harry, not Major Crabbe.’
    â€˜John wouldn’t have had time to breathe. No doctor would, once the wounded reached the aid stations inside Kut.’
    She stared into her glass. ‘I can’t believe I’ll never see Harry or Captain Mason again.’
    Charles downed his brandy in silence.
    â€˜Reverend Butler asked me to enquire if you’d like him to organise a memorial service for Harry. He had so many friends in the town.’
    Charles smiled at the thought of the gamblers and whores in Abdul’s piling into the austere confines of the mission chapel. ‘Most of Harry’s friends are too scurrilous for the Reverend and Mrs Butler to want in their chapel.’
    â€˜Reverend Butler is broad-minded.’
    â€˜Broad-minded enough to allow Mohammedans, Jews, Bedouin, and ladies of the night into his pews?’
    â€˜Perhaps not,’ Angela allowed. ‘But that was Harry. He made friends with everyone he met. Have you heard anything from his wife or his bearer, Mitkhal? The handsome Arab who looks like a bandit?’
    â€˜I haven’t heard from him. You know about Harry’s wife?’ Charles was surprised.
    â€˜I know he married a Bedouin.’
    â€˜He told you?’
    â€˜Maud did. She said she and John honeymooned in Harry’s father-in-law’s house, here in Basra before the war. If you know where she is, Charles, I’d like to call on her.’
    â€˜I’ve never met her but the fact that Harry kept her separate from the rest of the people in his life suggests he knows we wouldn’t have mixed.’
    â€˜Maud said she was a sheikh’s daughter and her father made Harry promise he’d never ask her to live among Europeans. Harry had no choice but to keep her away from us.’
    â€˜But not John and Maud, at least not after Maud’s mother’s death.’ Charles had always sensed that Harry and John had not been entirely truthful about the death of Emily Perry.
    Emily had died the night she, Maud, he, and John had arrived in Basra from India. They’d shared a wonderful and memorable summer. Emily and Maud had been sent to visit friends there by Maud’s father, in the hope that Maud would find a suitable officer husband. John had fallen in love with Maud the first time he’d caught sight of her. He’d shocked John by falling in love with Maud’s mother, Emily.
    His love had been reciprocated but Emily had insisted on keeping their affair secret and returning to her husband in Basra. Having no choice but to comply with Emily’s wishes, he’d left Basra for England the morning before John’s wedding . When he’d heard that Emily had died from a scorpion bite shortly after his departure, he’d been suspicious. Especially when he’d discovered Emily’s body had been found outside Harry’s bungalow barely an hour after he’d left it.
    Angela disturbed his train of thought. ‘Personally I can’t understand this segregation between races. We’re born equal …’
    â€˜According to the American Declaration of Independence,’ Charles broke in, ‘but the truth is some races don’t want to mix. There’s more animosity between the Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs than between Indian and Anglo-Saxon.’ He felt uncomfortable even as he said it. His life had been saved after Ctesiphon by his Indian bearer. A bearer he’d since discovered was his