1982 - An Ice-Cream War (31 page)

“Well, Smith,” Pughe said cheerfully. “Looks like you’re wrong. Thanks anyway.”

“Yes, sir,” Temple said. He put on his sun helmet and saluted.

“By the way,” Pughe said. “Curious accent you’ve got. Where are you from? Devon? Cornwall?”

“No sir. I’m from New York City. United States of America.”

“I see,” Pughe looked at his drink. “Smith. Seems an unusual name for an American. Long way from home, eh?”

“No, sir,” Temple said pointing to Smithville on the map. “My home’s there.”

Pughe shot a glance at his brigade major. “Yes. Mmmm. Right you are. Well, jolly good to have you chaps alongside us. Good luck.”

Temple stepped out from the porch into the sun, adjusted his sun helmet and sighed audibly. The British. He shook his head in a mixture of rage and admiration. A general who was an alcoholic, an army resembling the tribes of Babel, and everyone milling around on this and plain without the slightest idea of what they were meant to be doing…

He walked slowly up the road towards the area of the huge camp where his tent was pitched. He undid the top buttons of his tunic and, with a gasp of relief, unbuckled his Sam Browne. Happily, uniform regulations in this theatre of war were lax, to say the least. Shirtsleeves and shorts had become the order of the day.

Temple skirted a company of drilling sepoys and moved down behind an immense open stable of mules and donkeys. The rich smell of manure was carried to him on a slight breeze. The air above the tethered animals juddered with a million flies. He watched some sweating, half-naked syces drag away a dead pony. The death toll among the horses and mules was staggering, tsetse fly claiming dozens of victims each day, but there seemed to be an inexhaustible source of pack animals; fresh trainloads were constantly arriving.

Beyond the lines of tethered mules lay the sprawling, tatter-demalion encampment of what were euphemistically called support troops, meaning all the thousands of bearers, coolies and servants and their wives and families required to keep this swelling army in anything like working order. Temple imagined that this must have been how the Israelites appeared after wandering around the Sinai desert for forty years. A huge, heterodox mass of people, a sizeable township, without houses, institutions or sanitation but with all the mundane dramas—births, deaths, marriages, adulteries—that any town contained. He had never been into the bearer camp. Initially some soldier had attempted to impose a semblance of militaristic neatness and order on the mob, making them erect their shambas, shanties, thorn shelters and rag tents in neat rows, but it disappeared without trace in days. Looking down on the bearer camp from a slight rise the original grid plan could just be made out, like medieval strip fields since covered by a layer of scrubby vegetation. But from ground level it merely appeared a swarming, pestilential mess.

Temple crossed a flimsy wooden bridge that had been laid across a wide gully. Facing him was a sizeable open space, recently cleared of its thorn bushes and boulders and trampled flat by the feet of thousands of coolies, which now did duty as Voi’s aerodrome. On a spindly varicose pole a windsock hung like an empty sleeve. Over to the right were temporary hangars, little more than canvas awnings, that provided some shade for the two frail biplanes—BE2 Cs—which at the moment constituted the presence of the Royal Flying Corps in East Africa.

As he watched Temple saw one of the machines being pushed out onto the strip. Curious, he walked over to get a better look. He had seen aeroplanes twice before. Once in Nairobi and once—a seaplane—at Dar-es-Salaam. It wasn’t the fact that such machines could fly that astonished him so much as their fragile delicate construction. He-was an engineer and the mechanical contraptions he had dealt with—locomotives, Bessemer converters, threshers, the Decorticator—were robust powerful artefacts, somehow asserting their right to function well through the very strength and size of their components. Forged iron, steel plate, gliding pistons. When you saw the Decorticator at full steam, you saw a symbol of the potential in human ingenuity. No task, however fantastical, seemed impossible when this kind of strength could be created, this kind of energy generated, harnessed and controlled. But the aeroplanes…? Patched canvas, broken struts, loose rigging wires. Temple felt he could pull one apart with his bare hands, punch it into rags and kindling.

As he approached Temple recognized, to his dismay, a familiar lanky figure. Wheech-Browning. He wore a faded khaki shirt, loose knee length shorts and plimsolls without socks. On his head he had a tweed cap—reversed—and aviator’s goggles pulled down over his eyes. Wheech-Browning was the last person Temple wanted to see. He couldn’t stand the man. It was Wheech-Browning who had recommended his posting to the 3
rd
KAR at Voi, for which action Temple bore him a potent grudge. But the sad demise of Mr Essanjee had, as far as Wheech-Browning was concerned, established a bond between them which Wheech-Browning felt was now impossible to sunder. He treated Temple as a dear friend, a comrade-in-arms whose shared exposure to enemy fire had brought about an indissoluble union. This amity might just have been tolerable if Wheech-Browning had not at the same time pursued the matter of the unpaid duty on his coffee seedlings with the same vigour as he sought Temple’s friendship. Temporarily relieved of his duties through military service, Wheech-Browning had put the matter in the hands of the District Commissioner—one Mulberry-at Voi. The latest meeting with Mulberry had ended with Temple being threatened with prosecution for non-payment of debts. Temple turned on his heel and began walking in the other direction.

“Smith! I say, come and have a look.”

Reluctantly Temple returned to the aeroplane, now being fussed over by mechanics. Wheech-Browning stood by the side of a very young, blond-haired pilot who looked, to Temple’s eyes, to be about twelve years old.

“Do you know flying officer Drewes? He’s going to fly me over to Salaita. See what Jerry’s up to. Good idea, yes?”

Temple thought. “Say, could you fly over to Smithville? It’s not far. You could—”

“Sorry, old boy,” Wheech-Browning smiled. “Fuel problems. That’s right, Drewes, isn’t it? But I’ll tell you what, I’ll have a squint through the old binocs. See if the place is still standing.” Wheech-Browning tapped the stretched canvas side of the aeroplane. “Amazing machines. Wonderful sensation when you’re up in the sky. Feel like a god. You should try it, Smith.”

“You’ve been up before?” Temple asked.

“Who me? No, No. First time for everything, eh Drewes? No, I read about it in some magazine. Drewes here was going up on a flight so I asked if he’d take—”

There was a farting sound as a mechanic swung the wooden propeller and the engine caught. The aeroplane began to shake and shudder.

“All aboard the Skylark,” piped Drewes in a high voice.

Wheech-Browning pushed his goggled face up to Temple’s. “See Mulberry?” he bellowed above the noise. Temple nodded. “Jolly good,” Wheech-Browning shouted. “He seemed in a bit of a wax about this customs duty business.” It never ceased to astonish Temple how Wheech-Browning failed to see that the customs-duty business might jeopardize their ‘friendship’.

Wheech-Browning gave him a thumbs up sign, pulled his cap down and clambered with difficulty into the small observer’s cockpit behind the pilot. Drewes revved up the engine, throwing up a towering plume of dust behind the aeroplane. Two mechanics at either wing tip pushed and heaved the plane into position for take off.

Temple suppressed his irritation at the news of Mulberry’s ‘wax’ and moved to a sheltered position at the side of a hangar where he could get a good view without being blinded by dust. He saw Drewes look at the limp windsock, then he saw Wheech-Browning stand up in his seat, lick his forefinger and attempt to hold it above the propeller’s back draught. Some decision must have been reached because the biplane then moved very slowly over the uneven ground to the other end of the runway. Wheech-Browning leapt out of his seat, grabbed a wing and dug his heels into the ground to allow Drewes some purchase to pivot the plane round so it was facing the way it had come.

Wheech-Browning resumed his seat in the cockpit and the tinny note of the engine grew angrier as it was accelerated. Then the plane began to run forward, imperceptibly picking up speed, dust billowing behind it, the tail skid kicking up stones and gravel. As it passed the hangars, Temple saw Wheech-Browning give a cheery wave. Suddenly the tail lifted, and with a bump or two the little plane was in the air, three feet, six feet, twenty feet. It climbed with agonizing slowness.

“Too hot,” somebody said in the watching group. “It’s too hot today. They’ll never get up.”

As if in response to his words the plane began to descend, even though the engine seemed to be straining harder. Ten feet, eight feet, two feet. There was a cloud of dust as the trolley undercarriage hit the ground.

“Told you,” the knowledgeable voice said. “They’ll have to wait till the evening.” Nobody seemed concerned.

“Oh my Christ,” someone gasped. “The gully!”

The aeroplane sped merrily along the ground, the tail cheekily lifted until it seemed suddenly to stand on its nose and plunge beneath the level of the earth. There was a crumpling sound, as of a flimsy chair giving way. For an instant the tail plane pointed vertically in the air, then it slowly keeled over.

Temple and the others sprinted over towards the site of the crash, coughing and choking as they ran through the clouds of dust that hung in the air. Because of his girth Temple was soon outpaced by the others. By the time he arrived Drewes’ broken body had already been lifted from the splintered and torn remains of the aircraft, and he had been lain on the floor of the gully. Wheech-Browning, Temple assumed, must be trapped in the mangled wreckage. It served the stupid bastard right! Temple swore. The damned fool. But then he saw a plimsolled foot stamp its way through the canvas side of the fuselage. Willing hands soon tore a larger gap and Wheech-Browning slithered and eeled his long frame out onto the ground. His cap was missing but he still wore his goggles, one lens starred crazily where the glaze had been shattered. A trickle of blood ran down the side of his face from a cut.

“Good God,” he said. “That was hairy. Forgot about the damned gully. Thought we’d made it.”

“Are you all right?” Temple asked.

Wheech-Browning gave an experimental wriggle, as if a cold penny had been dropped down his back. “No bones broken,” he said. “Bit wobbly though. Drewes kept shouting something about it being too hot. How is he, anyway?”

“He’s dead.”

“Oh.” Wheech-Browning took off his goggles and rubbed his eyes. “Oh dear. I am sorry. Great shame.” He looked directly at Temple. “What is it about us, Smith?” he said, with a kind of mystified sadness. “Every time you and I get near a machine it seems some poor so-and-so dies.”

Temple looked at him in blank amazement. He was too astonished to reply.

10 December 1915,
The King’s Arms, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire

Charis watched Felix swing himself to the side of the bed. The pale expanse of his pyjama jacket glowed in the dark room. She felt the bed vibrate as he shivered. She reached out and pressed the palm of her left hand against his back.

“You’re awake,” he said. “Sorry.” He leant back and kissed her on the cheek. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t.” She heard him fumbling for his glasses on the bedside table.

“It’s early,” he said. “Just gone six.” He stood up and put on his dressing gown. He smiled at her. “It’s hardly worth going back to sleep, is it? We have to be at the station in a couple of hours. I’ll just be a minute.” He left the room.

Charis got out of bed and walked over to the window. A pale silvery light shone on the boring winter fields in the distance. Tasteless colours, she thought. Dark brown and green. Like the chocolate sauce and pistachio ice-cream she and Gabriel had one afternoon in Trouville. She noted, with mixed feelings, that the thought of Gabriel made her feel as guilty as ever. She wasn’t any more accustomed to betrayal. Was that good or bad? She tried a hard, grim smile but it felt affected and wrong for her, like too much red lip-salve. She rubbed her arms through her night dress, beginning to sense the chill in the hotel room. She crouched before the ashy fire and poked at the remains of the charred logs with the fire tongs. No embers left.

She went to the dressing table and took some things from her Gladstone bag and placed them on the top. A saucer, a small bottle with a clear liquid inside it, and a tiny piece of sponge—slightly larger than a lump of sugar—to which an eighteen inch length of cotton thread was securely tied.

With a little grunt she lifted up the ewer of water from its basin and splashed a few drops in the saucer. Then she added a little fluid from the bottle. She mixed the two together with her finger, wishing the water was warm. Then she dipped the sponge in the solution, letting it soak there for a while.

She pulled up her night dress and put one foot on the chair, then, wincing from the cold, she pushed the little piece of sponge into her vagina as far as it would go. The thread dangled between her thighs. Felix, she was sure, had never noticed it in the eight times their ‘bodies had mingled’ since that first evening in August.

She replaced the saucer and bottle in her bag and offered up a silent prayer of thanks to Aunt Bedelia with her little handbooks and pamphlets and their commonsensical advice. Did Felix ever think of taking precautions, she wondered? Was it something that ever crossed his mind? Did he ever wonder what would happen if—?

But this train of thought made her feel suddenly weak—almost faint—at the risks they were taking. She shut her eyes and breathed in deeply through her nose. Why was she so weak? Why couldn’t she obey the dictates of her reason? She saw everything with utter clarity and understood with no ambiguity the absolute wrongness of what she was doing. That should have been sufficient, she told herself. If these things were so evident, self-restraint should be automatic. But even as she ran through the catalogue of her sins, in her mind some perverse illogic exerted a more powerful impulse. The answer was simple. She wasn’t deluded, she wasn’t out of control: in some sort of way she must
want
to do what she did.