by William Boyd
“Of course. What do you think I’ve been talking about?” Wheech-Browning looked angry.
“Who with?”
“Good Lord, man, who do you think? Our German neighbours over there.” He waved at the Pare hills. “The huns, jerries, square-heads. The bloody wa-Germani, that’s who with. With whom,” he corrected himself.
“Why?”
“Oh God. Um…” Wheech-Browning looked puzzled.
“They didn’t actually spell that out in the message.” He drummed his fingers on his chin. “Something to do with mobilizing and declaring war on France, I think. Anyway, whatever it was it was nothing we could possibly ignore.”
“I see. Damn.” Temple was thinking that this state of affairs might make it difficult getting reimbursement for the coffee seedlings from the Chef der Abteilung in Dar.
“How’s that going to affect us?” Temple asked. “I guess they’ll close the border for a while. But wait, aren’t the colonies staying neutral?”
Wheech-Browning gave a harsh ironic laugh. “Good God, Smith, what do you think’s going on here? We’re at war with Germany. And that includes those swine across the border.” He looked scornfully at Temple.
“We’re expecting an invasion any day. Taveta’s bound to be the first object of an attack. I’ve come here to tell you to evacuate your farm. Same as I’ve been telling everybody close to the border—”
“Hold on one second,” Temple said forcefully. “Just hold on. There’s going to be no evacuation here. I’ve got my sisal harvest to process. What am I going to do with no Decorticator?”
“Look here, Smith,” Wheech-Browning began.
“No, you look here,” Temple said. “You British have declared war on Germany. It’s got nothing to do with me. I’m an American. Neutral. I’ve got no quarrel with the Germans.”
“Well you’re a damn fool American,” Wheech-Browning replied angrily, his face getting redder. “My God, if you’d heard the stories going round. Think of your wife and children for God’s sake. Your wife’s English. If you get a company of German askaris in here they won’t stop to check your nationality.”
Temple pursed his lips. “What about the British Army?” he asked. “Where are the troops?”
“We’ve got three battalions of the King’s African Rifles, that’s all. Half of them are up in Jubaland, the other half will have their work cut out defending the railway. You can’t expect them to go running after every crackpot American—”
“Now, just a minute—”
But Wheech-Browning was in full flight, clearly rattled by the prospect of Taveta being overrun by thousands of bloodthirsty native troops. “I’ve got my orders to pull back to the railway at Voi at the first sign of attack. That’s my advice to you. I’m staying with my police askaris at Taveta, but…” Wheech-Browning controlled himself. “Smith, believe me, this is official advice. It’s just not safe.”
“I’ll be fine,” Temple said easily. “Don’t you worry.”
Wheech-Browning made a despairing grabbing motion at the air. “Very well.” He closed his eyes for two seconds. “I’ve told you. I can’t order you. Anyway, I’ve got to get on. Think it over, Smith. It’s not some kind of a game.” He came closer. “There are stories going round. When they attacked the line at Tsavo—yes, already—it seems they caught one of the Indian station managers.” He blanched. “Cut off his…you know. Horribly mutilated, by all accounts. They’re savages.” He paused. “Look, it’ll only be for a few months at the most. They say there are troops coming from India. Once they’re here they’ll tie everything up in no time. But just at the moment we’re a bit stretched.”
Temple patted Wheech-Browning’s thin shoulder. “I’ll give it some thought,” he said deciding on conciliation. “Let me think it over.”
He walked back up the hill and saw the ADC off on his mule, before returning to the Decorticator and his sisal harvest.
Temple did take Wheech-Browning’s advice seriously enough to inform Saleh and his boys and told them to keep their eyes open. He also firmly locked the doors and windows of the house at night and took his guns down from the wall. He told Matilda everything Wheech-Browning had said, adding that he thought it was unreasonable panic. Matilda’s sanguineness remained as constant as ever. She felt sure that no one would want to bother them at Smithville.
As the days went by and nothing occurred to disturb the normal routine of their lives, Temple’s little apprehensions disappeared. One night he thought he heard an explosion in the distance. On another he made out a noise which just might have been taken for gunfire. But it was impossible for him to verify this. He sent Saleh into Taveta, and he reported that, although O’Shaugnessy’s shop was closed, Wheech-Browning was still there with his company of police. The Indian bazaar was trading as normal, nobody had heard of any trouble, of any massing of troops along the border.
Temple busied himself with work on the sisal harvest. The Decorticator clattered and belched smoke most of the day as Saleh and his workers hacked the leaves from the plants in the fields, trundled them up the trolley lines to the ‘factory’ and fed them into the voracious machine. Steadily the mounds of dried fibre grew higher. They spent a day roping them into loose bales, enough to fill two large waggon loads which Temple would eventually take down the road to Voi, where the Afro-American Fibre Company was based. There they had a scutching machine and hydraulic balers. The general manager, Ward, was an American too, but he and Temple did not get on. Ward’s charges for scutching and baling were too high, Temple considered, especially for a fellow country-man. However, he quite enjoyed his trips to the company’s factory at Voi. He got good ideas for the future expansion of Smithville from looking at the way Ward ran the place. He’d bought the Decorticator from Ward, and had his eye on a scutching drum. On this coming trip he intended to buy another two hundred yards of trolley line; he was going to extend the sisal plantations in 1915.
As he worked on in this way and considered his plans for the future, the slight feelings of alarm generated by Wheech-Browning’s words disappeared. The price he was getting for his sisal seeds, let alone the fibre, guaranteed him a prosperous year. If he planted another four acres he would have doubled his turnover in three years. It was unfortunate about the coffee seedlings; he had thought that particular idea was a master-stroke. He wondered vaguely about the possibility of rubber. There was a German at Kibwezi, near Voi, with six hundred acres planted. But rubber took even longer to grow than sisal, and however much Temple liked the image of Smithville surrounded by profitable acres of rubber trees, he wanted to move faster than that.
On the morning of the eighteenth of August, just before he left for Voi with the sisal fibre, he had his brainwave. He sat across the breakfast table from Matilda. Glenway was crying because he claimed he didn’t like his porridge. Matilda, to Temple’s annoyance, was ignoring the boy. She was reading a book, a cup of warm tea pressed to her cheek. She seemed to be growing more oblivious to the demands of her family. Temple reached for the butler tin. There was only a smear of the oily orange butler left.
“Matilda,” Temple said. “Do we have no butter?”
“What, dear?”
“Butter, it’s finished.” He put down his knife. “Would you see what the boy wants?” he added crossly.
Matilda put her book face down on the table. “What is it, Glennie?”
“It’s not sweet,” Glenway said, telling porridge plop from his spoon on the enamel plate.
“Joseph,” Matilda called lo the cook. “Did you remember lo put vanilla essence in the porridge?”
Vanilla. That was it, Temple suddenly realized. The cash crop of the future…Someone had planted an acre near Voi. No machinery, no processing plant, just pods to pick. His mind began lo work. He’d plough up the abortive coffee plantation, yes. Perhaps he could even get seedlings on this trip to Voi.
“No vanilla,” Joseph announced from the kitchen doorway.
“No vanilla and no butter,�
� Matilda reported. “Can you get some in Taveta on your way back?”
“What?” Temple said, his mind preoccupied with visions of vanilla fields, the brittle pods rattling soothingly in the breeze off Lake Jipe. “Sure; oh no, I can’t. I’ll get them at Voi. O’Shaugnessy’s left. Shut up shop.”
“Of course,” Matilda said, picking up her book. “It’s the war. I forgot.”
Saleh appeared at the dining room. He looked worried.
Temple stood up. “All ready?” he asked. Saleh had been hitching the oxen to the heavily laden waggons.
Saleh leant against the door frame. Temple realized it wasn’t worry distorting his features, but fear.
“Askari.” Saleh gestured feebly down the hill towards the factory buildings. “Askari are here.”
Temple ran to the door, a sudden feeling of pressure building up in his chest. Matilda followed close behind. Sure enough, drawn up in a ragged line in front of the Decorticator shed was a column of black soldiers. For a moment Temple thought they were British. They wore the same khaki tunics and shorts, the same felt fezzes as the King’s African Rifles he’d seen. But then he caught sight of two Europeans who, just at that moment, were walking out of the Decorticator shed. They wore the thick drilljodhpurs and knee-length leggings, the long-sleeved jacket buttoned to the neck, of Schutztruppe officers. The leading man looked up the hill to the house and waved.
“Hello, Smith,” he called cheerily. “How nice to see you again. May we come up?” It was von Bishop.
“Look it’s von Bishop,” Temple said to Matilda as the two men walked up the hill. “You know, Erich von Bishop. I met him and his wife when I was in Dar. Very pleasant man.”
“What happens now?” Temple asked as he watched his empty trek waggons being driven off towards Taveta. The large heap of deposited sisal bales was already beginning to crackle and smoke. Sixteen hundredweight, he thought. Two months’ work gone. He saw his vanilla plantation swept from the land as though by a blast from a hurricane.
“I am sorry about all this,” von Bishop said equably. “We have to commandeer any transport and destroy all crops.”
“What? Even those in the fields?”
Von Bishop shrugged. “Orders, I’m afraid.” Then he laughed…“Don’t worry, Smith, I won’t try too hard in your case. After all, we are almost next-door neighbours.”
He seemed quite unconcerned, Temple thought. He tried to summon up a rage or a sense of injustice, but von Bishop’s easygoing manner made it appear somehow inappropriate, an overreaction, even a discourtesy. He looked away and saw his two boys dancing merrily around the pyre of sisal fibres.
“GET AWAY FROM THERE!” he bellowed, taking out his frustration on them. “Go and help your mother pack.” They ran off obediently. Von Bishop had obligingly left them an old buggy and two mules in which they were to travel to Voi. Von Bishop said that, theoretically, he should have interned them, but as Temple was an American citizen he’d let them go. Matilda and Joseph were hastily getting their personal possessions together and a squad of farm boys were relaying them from the house to the buggy.
Von Bishop told Temple about the capture of Taveta. The invading Germans, about four companies strong, had crossed the border and had sent a note to Wheech-Browning and his police askaris telling them that they intended to occupy the town and that he had one hour to evacuate. In fact they waited overnight, and in the morning marched down the road into Taveta. Wheech-Browning’s men opened fire and the Germans reassembled for a frontal attack. But when they cautiously advanced they discovered that Wheech-Browning and his men had disappeared.
Temple thought this highly characteristic of Wheech-Browning and was about to tell von Bishop a few home truths about his adversary, when a loud clanging noise came from the Decorticator shed.
“My God!” Temple cried and ran forward. Von Bishop made no attempt to restrain him. Inside the shed he found the other German officer banging experimentally at the Decorticator and some of the steel girders supporting the roof with a hammer.
“Hey! Stop it!” Temple shouted, snatching the hammer away. “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?” But the man didn’t speak English. Von Bishop said something to him in German and he shrugged and wandered off.
“Nobody touches that machine, Erich,” Temple said warningly to von Bishop. “Everything is tied up in that machine, one way or another. Burn the crops if you must, but leave this alone.”
Von Bishop looked around the shed. “So this is the factory you told me about. Very impressive I must say. Is it economically viable, though? With such a small acreage?” For a few minutes they talked about the pros and cons of independently producing your own sisal fibre, Temple searching his machine for any dents and scratches caused by the hammering. They were interrupted by Saleh who told them that everyone was ready and the buggy was loaded.
Von Bishop and Temple left the shed, Temple taking a final fond look at the Decorticator. Outside he saw his wife and children gathered in a small group curiously watching the German askaris ripping up his trolley lines supervised and directed by the other European officer.
“For God’s sake!” Temple exclaimed. “What’s wrong with that man? Is he some kind of vandal? Got this urge to destroy?”
This time von Bishop did place a restraining hand on Temple’s arm. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Trolley lines are required. So is fencing wire. You’re lucky, I see you have no wire fences.”
“Oh yes,” Temple said sardonically. “I’m a lucky man.”
“Well,” von Bishop said, his breeziness returning. “Fortunes of war and all that.”
Temple shook his head and kicked angrily at a stone. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. Fortunes of war, he thought. It didn’t feel in the least bit like a war, yet there were enemy soldiers with loaded weapons forcibly ejecting him from his property. Von Bishop was behaving like a man who’d come round to reclaim a book he’d once lent. Temple watched sections of his trolley line being prized from the dusty and unyielding ground. Then he had an idea. Reparations, he thought, I can demand reparations. He started doing quick sums in his head. Often this sort of disaster could be turned to your advantage. It should be seen as an opportunity for a fresh start: a chance to re-think and re-plan. He’d always regretted not laying the trolley lines closer to Lake Jipe…now, with his reparations, was the ideal time to redirect them. He turned back to von Bishop.
“You’re right, Erich. Fortunes of war. Could you provide me with a…I don’t know, an affidavit or something? Just so I can prove things have been commandeered.”
“Yes, of course,” von Bishop said. “With pleasure.” He called the other officer over and told him to make out a careful note of everything that had been taken or destroyed.
“What about the house?” Temple asked.
“I suppose I might billet some men here,” von Bishop said. “It commands a good position on the hill. We can’t pay you rent,” he laughed. “Doubtless there’ll be some minor breakages, wear and tear. Who knows, we might even finish building it for you.”
Temple smiled, even the sight of a thin plume of smoke rising from the linseed fields didn’t give him pause. Von Bishop signed the piece of paper and tore it out of the officer’s notebook. Temple looked it over.
“Imperial German…Erich von Bishop, Major. That’s excellent, Erich. Excellent.” He patted him on the shoulder. “Just don’t touch the Decorticator that’s all. My future’s in that machine. I’ll come all the way to Dar to get you otherwise.”
The two men laughed heartily.
“We have our own decorticators, Smith,” von Bishop said. “We don’t need yours. Krupps Decorticators. Very efficient. One hundredweight of fibre an hour. Much better than your American machines.”
They were walking back to the buggy which now contained his family as well as their possessions.
“I don’t know about that,” Temple said. “Finnegan and Zabriskie are renowned”—he paused. “Krupps, di
d you say? Is there an agent in Mombasa, do you know?”
Saleh and the farm. boys were ranged beside the buggy. They all wore uniform expressions of deep misery, glancing uneasily about them at the armed askaris.
“Don’t worry, Saleh,” Temple said quietly, confident that he wouldn’t. “Keep an eye on the place. Look after the farm and the Decorticator. We’ll be back in two months.” He gave the man an encouraging slap on the back and climbed up on to the buggy. Matilda sat beside him, still reading her book. The children nestled in the back among the trunks and bundies of clothes and bedding, protected from the sun by a makeshift canvas shelter. The ayah sat on the back, her feet hanging down, crying piteously. She was the only one who seemed obviously affected by the occasion.
“Well goodbye, Smith,” von Bishop said. “Mrs Smith. I’m so sorry we had to meet under these circumstances.” He touched the brim of his sun helmet in a casual salute.
Temple shook the reins and the mules moved forward. “Remember,” Temple called back to von Bishop, “look after the machine. I’m holding you responsible.”
Von Bishop laughed again and waved. Seeing him do this all the farm boys laughed politely and waved too. This is most strange, thought Temple, it’s as if we’re being seen off on holiday.
At the top of the rise, just before Smithville was lost to sight, Temple looked back. Smoke still rose from the sisal bonfire and at least half his linseed fields seemed ablaze. The gang of askaris had uprooted some fifty yards of trolley line and were piling the rails in neat bundies. Von Bishop was leading half a dozen soldiers up the hill to the house.
Temple felt suddenly disorientated and confused. Von Bishop’s matter-of-fact behaviour, his genial appropriation of his goods and chattels, the total absence of threat hardly made it seem like a criminal act.
“Criminals,” Temple said experimentally, more out of a sense of duty than outrage. He felt the same. “Criminals!” he repeated more fiercely.
“What’s that, my dear?” Matilda asked, raising her eyes from her book. If she was going to read all the way to Voi, Temple said to himself, he would get very angry. He shook the reins viciously and the buggy moved forward with a lurch. The ayah gave a squeal of alarm as she fell off the back. Temple reined in.