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“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 ma
“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 happened 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 gri
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 ca
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 di
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 fu
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—”