1982 - An Ice-Cream War (45 page)

He lay down and pillowed his arms beneath his head. I must rest, he told himself. I’ll set out again in the afternoon, when the heat’s gone from the sun. He’d look for a flint later and try and sharpen some kind of point on the pencil, so he could write down the details of his escape. At least the facts would be there, if his body were found. He tried to replace this grim thought by something more agreeable. He made an effort to conjure up a picture of Charis’s face, something he hadn’t done for many, many months, thinking uneasily of the few days they had spent together as man and wife. He screwed up his eyes in concentration but he found he was thinking only of Liesl. Liesl in the bath, her heavy breasts dripping with water, the maid pouring it over her shoulders, rivulets sluicing over her body, dampening the pale coppery triangle of hairs between her thighs…

He sat up. A problem suddenly became obvious to him. How could he write of Liesl’s part in the escape? How would it look to anyone—Charis—reading about it? He decided to wait to think about it later.

He set off again in the middle of the afternoon. The day was still hot but he found the slope he was moving up well-provided with shady trees. His leg had stiffened up considerably and he didn’t make the good progress he had in the morning. Skirting some fields on the edge of a native village some children shouted at him and some stones were thrown, but he kept on going. It took him two laborious hours to break out of the trees and reach the edge of the plateau.

The sun was lower in the sky, the air was dusty and soft. Ahead stretched a vast grassy plain dotted with small stone hills—kopjes—occasional brakes of trees and bushes and delicately beautiful flat-topped acacias.

He set off across the grass plain. He would walk as far as he could before night fell. Then he would make a fire at the base of one of the kopjes. In the morning he would change course and march into the rising sun. By the end of that day, or perhaps the next, he would meet the advancing columns of the British army.

22 November 1917,
Near Nambindinga, German East Africa

The 5
th
Battalion of the Nigerian Brigade plodded along the dirt road to Nambindinga, Twelve company in the vanguard. Felix walked beside Gilzean in the stifling, late afternoon heat. He looked back at his platoon, green fezzes bobbing in an untidy column, the slap of their bare feet on the hard earth of the road. Frearson was somewhere behind. Gent’s platoon was pushed out on the right wing. Young Waller, Parrott’s replacement, was slogging up and down the crumpled foothills and gullies of the plateau on the left. Loveday’s platoon was fanned out across the road several hundred yards ahead.

“
Sacré bleu!
” Loveday had exclaimed on being told his position. “Advance guard, my, my.”

They had been making slow progress all day without meeting any opposition. This was their first occasion at the head of the column of troops pushing inland from Lindi, ‘Linforce’ as it was known. To the north was another column, from Kilwa, and imaginatively dubbed, in true army fashion, ‘Kil-force’. It was these two columns that were driving the remains of von Lettow’s army out of German East Africa.

Felix looked at Gilzean. His khaki shirt was soaked with sweat. In the shade cast by his sun helmet he looked pallid and drawn, his chin and jaws blue-black against his white cheeks.

“Are you all right, sergeant?” Felix asked.

“Oh aye. It’s just unco heat.”

Frearson came puffing up from the rear at this point.

“Didn’t you hear the bugle?” he demanded angrily. He seemed furious.

“No. Sorry. What for?”

“We’re pulling back. Lines of communication too extended. Bivouac by the side of the road then march back to camp tomorrow. Pass the word to Loveday and the others, and keep your ears open in future.”

Just then, beyond the curve in the road ahead, there was a loud explosion. A column of smoke and dust shot up high in the air, followed by the rattle of falling stones and gouts of earth. There were shouts and cries of alarm from Loveday’s platoon. Everyone fell to the ground.

“My God! Artillery?” Frearson gasped, alarm tensing his putty features.

“Scairdy gowk,” Felix heard Gilzean mutter behind him.

There were no more explosions. They got to their feet and ran round the corner. In the middle of the road was a crater surrounded by Loveday’s excited platoon. By its side lay Loveday, or rather his top half. There was no sign of his legs or much of anything below his waist. None of his platoon seemed hurt, beyond a few cuts and bruises. They were voluble with nervous excitement over their narrow escape. Half a dozen men must have walked over the mine before Loveday’s boot set it off. What would Loveday have said? Felix found himself wondering. ‘
Nom de nom’, ‘zut alor’?

Felix turned away and looked at the landscape. The road sloped down slightly at this point, affording a panorama of the countryside. The burnt grass plains, the thorn scrub, undulating hills fading out into the evening haze in the south, the lusher green of the Rovuma basin away in the distance. No sign of a German anywhere.

They spent the next morning and afternoon laboriously retracing their steps to the camp they’d left the day before. After a quiet night they buried Loveday at the foot of a baobab tree in the morning. After the burial service Felix returned to his tent for a breakfast of corned beef, mashed sweet potato and a local variety of bean which an ever efficient Human had ready for him. He was half-way through his meal when Gilzean approached with a tin can in his hand.

“What is it, Gilzean?” Felix asked.

“Could you take a peek at this, please sir?”

Felix looked. It contained a thick albuminous dark liquid.

“What’s this, coffee?”

“No. It’s aidle from my cullage.”

“Oh yes?”

“I’ve been passin’ this drumlie loppert water for a week. I just get a mitchkin, ye ken. A jaup.”

Felix frowned. He was about to ask Gilzean to repeat himself when he saw a vaguely familiar lanky figure sauntering over.

“I say, Cobb?” it shouted. “Captain Frearson said I’d find you here. Got some interesting news. It’s me, Wheech-Browning, Kilwa, GSO II (Intelligence). Remember?”

“Oh yes. Have a seat. I won’t be a minute.” He turned to Gilzean, and handed him back his tin.

“Let me get this straight,” he said. “Is this something to do with your health?” He wondered what Wheech-Browning wanted.

“Aye. I’m fair doited with worry. This grugous stuff…”

“How are you feeling?” He wanted to dismiss Gilzean, but the man was persistent.

“A bit tired. But it’s oorie. It could be a clyre in my culls.”

“Yes?” Wheech-Browning was staring curiously at Gilzean.

“Or my moniplies. My jag. Yes my jag even.”

Felix felt confused; by now he’d come almost to understand Gilzean, but when the man was upset his language retreated into the obscurities of his arcane Celtic vocabulary. He knew suddenly that Wheech-Browning had news of Gabriel.

“I shouldn’t worry,” he told Gilzean, “If you’re not feeling too bad otherwise. I’m sure it’ll clear up, um, whatever it is. See the MO if any complications arise.” That seemed to cover everything.

“Thank you
very
much indeed, sir,” Gilzean said gratefully, saluted and walked off with his curious tin.

“That’s remarkable,” Wheech-Browning said. “What language was that man speaking?”

“English.”

“Never! Quite incomprehensible.”

“A Scottish version, anyway.”

“Can you understand him?”

“It took a while, but I can catch the basic drift now.” He paused. “You said you had some news.”

“Yes,” said Wheech-Browning. “About your brother. We’ve come across some traces of him. You remember that American chap, Smith? He telephoned yesterday from a place called Nanda.”

Felix felt a sinking feeling in his body, as if all its vital fluids were being dragged towards his feet.

“Have you found him?”

“Not exactly. But we do know where he was up to a few days ago. I’ve cleared it with your captain. You can come along with me.”

Wheech-Browning explained what had happened as they bounced down the road towards Nanda in his Ford. ‘Kilforce’, moving parallel to but faster than ‘Linforce’, had captured Nambindinga the day before, found it deserted and had advanced on to the next village down the road, Nanda, where they had discovered a small POW camp. The prisoners had passed on information about Gabriel. How he had escaped just two days previously.

Felix and Wheech-Browning drove past columns of ‘Lin-force’ troops marching briskly down the road. Loveday’s mine crater had already been filled in by the pioneers. Felix wondered if anyone really knew what was going on in this war. Why had ‘Kilforce’ been halted and ‘Linforce’ advanced?
He
could have marched into Nanda…He felt a spine-snapping tension in his body. He was buoyant with a kind of nervous expectation and yet couldn’t ignore the forebodings that nagged at him. What would happen when he met Gabriel again? Could he tell him his fateful news?

Wheech-Browning was in a chatty mood.

“Remember that Zeppelin I told you about? Well, it set off all right a few days ago. The twenty-first, I think. Crossed the Med. and headed down over the desert in Sudan. Just as it got to Khartoum, our chaps in signals sent it a message in code, German code, saying: “German forces in East Africa have surrendered.” We’ve got the jerry codes, you see. We captured them in 1915. Bilderbeck’s work again. Great loss, that man.” His face looked solemn for an instant. “What do you think happened?”

Felix wasn’t really listening. “What? Oh, um, no idea.”

“Turned right round and went straight back home, that’s what. Bloody marvellous, don’t you think?”

Nanda was full of King’s African Rifles. Felix looked about him as he drove into the little town. He saw the row of cramped mud-walled, tin-roofed buildings lining the main street; the shade trees planted here and there; the tin and wood bungalows of the planters’ families; the long stone buildings of the former agricultural research station; the wire enclosure of the small POW stockade.

Wheech-Browning reported to battalion headquarters, which had taken over one of the larger bungalows. They were told where they might find Temple Smith and walked down the main street in search of him.

Behind the hospital, sitting in the shade of a large mango tree, were a disconsolate group of German women and children. Some little way off Temple was talking to one of them. Felix and Wheech-Browning approached. Temple broke off his interrogation and greeted Felix with some enthusiasm and Wheech-Browning with less.

“What are
you
doing here?” he demanded of Wheech-Browning suspiciously.

“I’m GSO II (Intelligence), for Heaven’s sake,” Wheech-Browning protested. “This is a matter for my department.”

Temple inclined his head in the direction of the German woman.

“That woman is the wife of the bastard I’m chasing,” he said. “But wait for this. He’s chasing your brother. Isn’t that extraordinary?”

Felix wasn’t interested in the American’s observations: what was coincidence to him was merely irrelevant to Felix.

“But why? Why is he chasing him?”

“Your brother escaped two days ago. It seems they think he was a spy.”

“A
spy?
” It didn’t make any sense. “Gabriel?”

“Yes. But Frau von Bishop says he wasn’t a spy.” Temple frowned, as if he too were having trouble comprehending everything. “Anyway,” he went on, “the Germans believe your brother is in possession of vital information, which is why they’re after him.”

“I wonder what it is?” Wheech-Browning said.

“Doesn’t she know?” Felix asked.

“No. Or at least she isn’t saying. She says she has no interest in the war at all.”

“But where’s he gone?” Felix said. It seemed the most malevolent cruelty to have allowed him to get so close.

“North,” Temple said. “That’s all she knows. She keeps saying not to worry. She says your brother will come back here any day. She says he’s just hiding out in the bush somewhere.”

“How does she know all this?”

“Your brother was in the hospital here for a long time as her patient. It seems she got to know him then.”

Felix felt lost. He couldn’t really grasp what was going on.

“Look,” Temple said. “I’m going after this von Bishop. They won’t be long off. If I catch him your brother might not be far away.”

“I’m coming too,” Felix said. “But I must ask this woman a question first.”

“Let’s get out of the damned sun first,” Wheech-Browning said, pushing open the door of an outhouse. “Cooler in here. I’ll just have a look.” He ducked inside. Ten seconds later he came out, red-faced, scrupulously wiping his hand with a handkerchief.

“Good God!” he seemed genuinely shocked. “Barbarians! The place is covered in…human ordure!”

“That’s right,” Temple said calmly. “I should have warned you.”

Felix walked over to the German woman, Temple and Wheech-Browning following. The woman was plump and strong-looking, with a pale freckly face. She had a mango leaf in her hands and was tearing it methodically into tiny pieces.

“
Guten Tag, gnadige Frau
,” Felix said, striving to remember his German.

“She speaks English,” Temple said.

“Oh good.” Felix started again. “I believe you know my brother, Gabriel Cobb. He escaped from here two days ago.”

The woman’s placid expression suddenly became curious. She stared at Felix’s face.

“You are Gabriel’s brother?” she said.

“Yes. I just want to ask you one question,” Felix said slowly. “Can you tell me if, during the time he was here, he ever received a letter? A letter from England.”

“A
letter?
”

“Yes.”

“No. No, I’m sure.”

“Sure he didn’t?”

“He never had any letter.”

Felix felt a delicious sensation momentarily envelop him. A feeling of supernatural release, a floating, an ecstatic removal of terrible worries and tormenting fears. Gabriel knew nothing. Now all he had to do was find him.

“Thank you,” he said with heartfelt sincerity to the woman, and rejoined Temple and Wheech-Browning.