The car bumped crazily across the desert, threatening at every moment to throw them out.
‘Damned exciting, isn’t it?’ said Malik, teeth gleaming.
They came up with the horsemen. An old man in ragged Bedouin dress and with a rifle slung on his back rode over to them and gesticulated angrily.
Malik took no notice.
‘By God, there it is!’ he shouted.
For out in the desert in front of them a solitary ostrich wheeled and scudded.
‘Tally ho!’ cried Malik, leading the car in its direction.
The horsemen scattered. Owen just had time to see the old Bedouin unslinging his gun and then he had to cling on for dear life.
‘Load the gun, Ahmed!’ shouted Malik.
‘Which one?’
‘Any one!’
The ostrich, startled, ran before them.
‘You’re gaining, Malik!’
‘Got the gun?’
But just at that moment the front wheels of the car ran into a deep drift. They all pitched forward. Owen suddenly found himself sprawling across the bonnet.
‘Give me the gun!’ shouted Malik.
Owen hauled himself back.
There was a loud explosion.
Ahead, the ostrich checked, veered and then ran off at right angles.
‘Try another one, Malik!’
But the distance was now too great. Malik, disgustedly, climbed out of the car. Across the desert Owen saw groups of horsemen converging on the ostrich.
It took them nearly an hour to dig themselves out of the drift and to get going again. The car bumped across to where, now, the horsemen seemed to have the ostrich secured.
It was lying on the ground trapped in a huge net. The men had tied its feet together. It lay there, sides heaving. Men were holding its neck. From time to time it reached round and tried to peck at their hands.
Malik sighed.
‘Damned difficult shot!’ he said. ‘It would have been a beauty if I’d brought it off. How about a drink?’
‘Vermin!’ said the man at the bar of the Racing Club. ‘That’s what they are!’
‘Heard my idea?’ said Malik happily. ‘Turn the damned farm into a game reserve. Sell shooting rights. It would be a big attraction.’
‘Ostriches and horses don’t mix,’ said the first man. ‘The ostriches frighten the horses and the horses frighten the ostriches. You’ve got to keep them apart. That farm’s too close to the racetrack.’
‘It’s three miles away!’ objected someone.
‘That’s not far if they’re going to break out. And what about the training gallops?’
‘They’re not going to be breaking out all the time!’
‘I should hope not. They’re damned dangerous beasts. Break a horse’s leg in no time.’
‘Dangerous, are they?’ said one of the Belgians uneasily. ‘We’ll have to watch that. An ostrich farm is one thing-in fact, it could be quite attractive, couldn’t it? An unusual feature-but if they’re dangerous, it’s quite another.’
‘Could you pay the old man to put them down?’
‘How many are there?’
‘Several hundred.’
‘Cost too much. And he might not be willing.’
‘My idea’s better,’ said Malik. ‘Get people to pay to put them down.’
‘I say, Malik, there’s a woman!’
They all scurried across to the window.
‘It’s Salah-el-Din’s girl.’
‘A bit bold, isn’t she?’
‘I’m going over,’ said Malik, making for the door. ‘You coming?’ he said over his shoulder to Owen.
‘I don’t think so. In fact’-he glanced at his watch-‘I ought to be making a move.’
‘Don’t go yet,’ said one of the Belgians. ‘We’d like to have a word with you.’
They led him away into a corner of the barroom and ordered more drinks. From where he was sitting he could see out through the window. Beside the racetrack was a strip of newly planted grass and on it a girl was walking. A servant held a parasol over her head.
‘A little forward, yes?’ said one of the Belgians.
‘All right on the boulevards,’ said Raoul, the one he’d played tennis with. ‘But here?’
‘She’s very young,’ said Owen.
‘Their tastes are different here.’
As he watched, he saw Salah-el-Din come up and join her and then, a moment after, Malik at the run.
‘An ambitious man, Salah,’ said one of the Belgians. ‘He has big plans.’
‘It’s not always a good idea for a district mamur to have big plans,’ said Owen.
‘No. And you yourself: do you have big plans?’
‘It’s not always a good idea for British officials to have big plans, either.’
‘Not in the sense you mean, no. But you must make plans of some sort. You have to retire so early. Then what?’
‘Good question,’ said Owen.
‘Unless your government is very different from ours, the pension is piffling.’
‘I’m some way off drawing a pension yet,’ said Owen.
‘That’s the time to make plans.’
Owen, used to such approaches, was not bothered. The conversation turned to other things. The Belgians said the project was going quite well. Building, with plenty of space and cheap labour, was no problem. The only difficulty, if there was one, was in matching development to cash-income flow.
‘Any building project is a long-term one,’ said Raoul. ‘The trouble is, if it’s too long-term, the people financing it start getting bothered. So what you try to do is get something going quite early on that yields a cash flow.’
‘Like a gambling house?’ said Owen.
Raoul laughed.
‘It would help. But the hotel’s the main thing. Once you start attracting people in, they’ll start spending money.’
‘Building houses and selling them isn’t enough?’
‘It’s all right. In the long run. But in the short run we want more spend. That’s why the racetrack is important. If it’s attractive enough, people will come here even if they don’t live here.’
‘Provided they can get here.’
‘Yes,’ said Raoul, ‘that’s the key. Roads, rail, even trams. We intend to get the tramway system extended out to here.’
‘Out to here?’ said Owen incredulously. ‘That’ll be the day!’
‘You see space,’ said Raoul. ‘We see buildings.’
‘What a horrifying thought!’
‘It’s the future,’ said Raoul.
Down below, Amina came to the end of her perambulating and set off in the direction of home, accompanied by her father, and Malik.
‘And meanwhile,’ said Owen, ‘until the houses get built and the tramway system is extended, how are you getting on with the new railway?’
‘It’s coming along,’ said Raoul. He frowned. ‘But too slowly.’
‘You need it for the cash flow?’
‘We need it for the cash flow. Now that the racecourse has been built, we can’t afford not to have it coming. We were thinking,’ he said, looking at Owen, ‘of getting the men to work on Fridays.’
‘Fridays! But that’s the Muslim Sabbath!’
‘We work on Sundays already, you know.’
‘Yes, but that’s different. This is a Muslim country.’
‘How religious is Egypt?’
‘When it comes to working on the Sabbath, you’ll find it’s pretty religious,’ said Owen.
‘Blasphemy! Sacrilege! Desecration!’ shouted Sheikh Isa.
There was a larger crowd around the tabernacle than usual, including this time a number of younger men, some of whom Owen thought he remembered from the railway.
‘Ordinarily I wouldn’t agree with him,’ said Ja’affar, ‘but this time I think he’s got a point.’
‘It’s all right for you, Ja’affar,’ said one of the men whom Owen thought he remembered from the railway-Abdul was his name? ‘It doesn’t apply to those working at the ostrich farm.’
‘Yet,’ said one of the other labourers.
Ja’affar, shocked, turned on him.
‘You don’t think old man Zaghlul-?’
‘He’s a mean old skinflint. Doesn’t miss a trick. If they get away with it on the railway, he’ll start asking why he can’t introduce it on the farm.’
‘You’re all right for the moment anyway, Ja’affar,’ said the barber. ‘You can’t work with that arm.’