The Baghdad Railway Club Read Online Free

burst out laughing, and looked all around the coffee lounge; then she burst out laughing again, at the end of which she was rather red. After our drink, we took another turn through the entrance hall, and the islands of seats were more populated now.
    ‘Shall we go back up?’ said the wife, which was a promising remark.
    We closed once again on the foot of the staircase, and I noticed a strange little set-up that didn’t seem to have been there before. It was a wooden replica of an Arab’s tent, or something of the kind. It was brightly coloured, with a fairground look to it, and a dome on the top that finished in a point. The signs announced ‘Cigarettes from the East’, and ‘Coffee from the East’. A man stood inside the wooden tent. He wore a stripy tunic shirt that came down to his knees, with perfectly normal trousers and boots beneath. He was quite dark-skinned. Well, he was ‘from the East’ (I supposed).
    ‘Coffee?’ he said, ‘cigarettes . . . from the Biblical lands?’
    I was about to decline, but he pressed the matter.
    ‘For after dinner, perhaps? I trust you are enjoying your stay, sir?’
    There was nothing of the East about his actual voice, as far as I could make out, but in the form of words there may have been.
    I shook my head. ‘Thanks awfully, but . . .’ He half bowed at me, and we walked on.
    ‘I don’t think there are many cigarettes smoked in the Bible,’ said the wife, as we began to climb the stairs. ‘But then again, that man is a Mohammedan.’
    ‘Not a real one,’ I said.
    ‘I think he is,’ she said; ‘I was wandering about on the top floor this morning, and I saw him.’
    The top floor was where most of the staff had their rooms.
    ‘What were you doing up there?’
    ‘Wandering about – I told you. He was kneeling on the floor and facing that direction,’ she said, pointing.
    ‘King’s Cross station,’ I said.
    ‘Mecca, you idiot.’
    ‘I know,’ I said, ‘I know.’
    The drink did its work, and we had our tumble on the bed. It was a very good bed, being well sprung, and the fire had been banked up while we’d been downstairs. The goods yard had not gone away though (I had glanced down and seen that they were now moving great quantities of beer barrels) and the pilot engine, which seemed to be very badly fired, would repeatedly blow off its excess steam. I’d thought, or hoped, that I had so transported the wife that she hadn’t noticed the racket, but at the moment we concluded the business, she said, ‘What is going on down there, Jim?’
    She got off to sleep pretty quickly even so, whereas I could not. The comfort of the room only brought to mind its opposite: the Western Front . . . or maybe the noise of the goods yard had stirred something up. Anyhow I kept imagining what a five-nine crump might do to the spires and pinnacles of the hotel.
    I lay awake for the best part of an hour before deciding to return downstairs.
    *
    The clock gave a single chime as I put on my suit. There were still a fair few on the staircase, but now they were all coming up – men and women in beautiful clothes, smiling and walking with a sleepy trudge. I went against the tide, with my right hand on the banister. (With memories of the front, my right hand had begun to shake, and I held the banister to steady it.)
    At the foot of the staircase, I turned and saw the Eastern gentleman – the real Mohammedan – standing outside his tent-like quarters. He held a looped cord on which hung a couple of dozen small metal coffee cups, and he was speaking to the man who had been at the Railway Club, the man with the weird brand of smokes, which I now saw must have been purchased from the Mohammedan, with whom he seemed on the best of terms. He – the Mohammedan – was smiling, and he seemed to say, ‘You are right, my shepherd, you are perfectly right,’ and the other – who still held his magazine – was nodding and colouring up, as though embarrassed at being in the