The Nigel Balchin novel Charlie found himself reading was The Small Back Room – one of the best novels about the condition of war (beginning with the finest opening sentence) ever written. There are plenty of copies around, so if you haven’t read it yet, get down to your library or bookshop right away, because you have missed a rare treat.
I have always looked with suspicion on the uncritical support for the state of Israel offered by the United States, and cannot believe that it stems alone from the strength of a local Jewish lobby. There must be more to it than that . . . and that nagging suspicion informed part of this story. Contrast that unwavering support with the way the Americans turned on their old British ally when we attempted to annex the Suez Canal Zone in 1956. The British, French and Israeli conspiracy to seize the Canal was illegal and improper, of course – but if recent Iraqi history has taught us anything, it is that when the USA wants to illegally and improperly invade a Middle Eastern country it isn’t slow to claim our support, and participation. Oh how I wish our prime minister had stuck out his chin this last time, asked, ‘What about Suez in 1956 then?’ and left them to get on with it. Quid pro quo.
I have never met a man whose testicles were saved by his possession of a ‘goolie chit’, although goolie chits of various types were issued in different theatres of war, and you can still see them in museums today. Goolie is said to be the Hindustani word for testicle . . . although I can’t find it in my Hindustani Self-Instructor (written by Abdul Hamid Khan – ‘Army Language Teacher, Sialkot’ – in 1936, and published for 3/8d: one of my favourite books). Goolie chits were multilingual notices issued to flyers after it was alleged that Afghani, Northern Indian . . . and maybe, later, Kurdistani . . . insurgents passed captured European men to their women, who would geld them, and turn them into house eunuchs. I’m tempted to speculate that the house eunuch was only a forerunner of the role of the young middle-class British male in the twenty-first century anyway. The chits promised a reward for the safe return of their carriers. What this has in common with the mislaid Comet tank is that I can’t find anyone in print claiming to have had first-hand experience of involuntary gelding: not surprising, when you think about it.
The fact that Brits arriving in Egypt in the 1950s were still being terrorized by old sweats with tales of ‘wogs with goolie knives’ tells us more about ourselves than the Arabs in question. The goolie phrase definitely derived from the Northern Frontier provinces at the time of the Raj – and yet a hundred years later we were still not distinguishing between Afghanis, Indians and Pakistanis . . . and the many tribes of the Arab nations. Am I being unkind to remember that to the average Englishman abroad in the 1950s they were still all ‘wogs’? No wonder it’s now difficult to find a country in the old empire where a Briton is looked on with love, gratitude or admiration.
. . . but Charlie’s past is, of course, an invented one. I have written before about how I stand before memories – my own, and other people’s – like a child in front of a pick ’n’ mix counter at what was once Woolworths, and take a few from here, and a few from there to mix into the world of Charlie Bassett. The Blue Kettle Club in Ismailia is an example of a memory that belongs to others. It did exist: but I’ve never been there. I have an old photograph of the art-decoish building, and the street on which it stood: a Fordson van stands outside the Blue Kettle’s door . . . although it may have been permanently closed by 1953. It can be found in several of the Canal Zone memoirs. Some have written of it as notorious, or dangerous . . . one as louche and friendly. It was obviously one of those establishments that become mental landmarks – somewhere not to forget in a hurry. Although I have that photograph of the outside of the Blue Kettle, I have been unable to find anyone to tell me what it was actually like behind the front door – so the scenes I set there are necessarily a fiction. If I am so far wide of the mark that I offend anyone’s actual recollections, they must write and put me right – readers do it all the time.
There is a Turkish restaurant the size of a large bus shelter on a small back street in the Old Town of Edinburgh. It is named Empires, sits opposite my local, The Waverley, and is one of Edinburgh’s hidden treasures. I could commend it to my readers for its cuisine alone – artichoke hearts and meat balls to die for – but it is on Friday and Saturday nights that it comes into its own; when the belly dancer arrives. Liquid beauty made flesh. Dining out is easier these days: many eating houses offer a menu to remember . . . but Empires on a Saturday offers you a dining experience never to be forgotten. You have to take your own wine . . . I rather like that . . . but any Edinburgh reader who hasn’t eaten there should take the opportunity while they can. The ladies from Empires danced effortlessly into this book: it is where the girls of the Blue Kettle crossed the boundary from the page and into life. If you have ever wanted to come face to face with someone from Charlie’s
