Shelter Rock

by MP Miles

  Angel was determined not to waste time. He would complete what he needed to do immediately, spend the night comfortably, and leave on the following day’s flight. With luck he would be back with Elanza in a little over forty-eight hours from leaving her. He wondered what local handicrafts they sold. He should take her something. Outside the terminal he paid fifty piastres for a car and driver and asked with difficulty for the steamer office, talking English to match his cover story but listening to fast-paced Arabic on the car radio with delight.

  At the far end of town, Angel’s silent driver pointed with a dirty finger to an abandoned office. A brochure in English told Angel what he needed to know. The Nile River ‘steamer’ run by the River Transport Corporation wasn’t a steamer at all, just a collection of half a dozen old barges roped together and pushed by a paddle boat. It was state owned to make sure there would be no competition, guaranteeing its continuing inefficiency. It left both Juba and Kosti terminals on a fortnightly schedule, the timetable complicated by the fact that the upstream journey to Juba could take anything between nine and twelve days depending on the current it had to push the barges against, whereas the downstream trip to Kosti running with the water was always a reliable eight days. The steamer left Juba at dawn on alternate Fridays but people boarded at will and staked a claim to deck space the evening before.

  Angel checked the date. It was 13th May, Thursday. The steamer left either the following day or in eight days’ time. He asked his driver the date that the last ferry had left Juba. The man nodded and smiled, answering repeatedly in accented Arabic to Angel’s English questioning, “Alssabie,” the seventh. Angel knew now that the next steamer would be Friday, 21st May.

  Angel thought back to his previous trip to Nairobi. Ralph had left down Aerodrome Road in the direction of Wilson airport followed by Nels’ hitmen. That must have been 4th May. He would have been in Juba at least by 5th May, a Wednesday. The conclusion was obvious. Ralph had caught the steamer on 7th May, nearly a week ago. He had already gone.

  *

  Ralph lay in bed at Juba’s Church of The Sacred Heart waiting for the singing to begin. The sisters checked him regularly but didn’t say very much. They watched his condition for signs of improvement so he feigned sleep. That part at least wasn’t difficult. Sister Barbara would peer around the door and scowl at the bed, while Sister Kathleen would stand for some time looking at the back of his head trying to determine his net worth. Only the mild Sister Brenda, who brought him chicken soup and sat on the edge of the bed gently spoon-feeding him, her hand at the back of his head, would talk to him. From her he learnt their routine.

  They woke at five in the morning to prepare for Morning Prayer, followed by an hour of reflection in their own chambers. At half past seven they took Mass, beginning every day with Jesus Christ in the forefront of their minds. At nine they began their daily work, teaching the children of their congregation, until Sext at midday. The house became busy thereafter in between None, Vespers and Compline, until they finished their day as it began, thinking of Christ. Ralph planned his escape.

  On the third day he rose again. It was early morning and he heard the nuns singing prayers in Latin. He put on clothes cleaned by Sisters Brenda and Hilary, threw his empty stained and rotten wallet onto the bed, and quietly slipped out of the house into the town. It had been easy. Much easier than digging a tunnel or building a glider, other options that, in his delirium, he had at times seriously considered.

  At the river, down from the Hotel Africa, the steamer had docked, the barges tied to the bank. Piles of fifty-gallon oil drums, old sacks and bales of thatching reeds, moved from one barge to another in an apparently uncoordinated but cheerful ballet. On the river, people crowded into narrow dugout canoes around the barges, while on the far bank thousands of egrets sat watching from the bushes. In the river, crocodile rested on floating papyrus rafts half in and half out of the water.

  Ralph had been advised to prepare for an unhurried cruise. The straight-line distance between Juba and Kosti measured 932 kilometres but the river meandered and dodged huge floating rafts of papyrus reeds for 1,436 sticky kilometres. For those who got on board at Juba the steamer made frequent stops at settlements along the way, but there was nothing to buy until Malakal at the far end of the swamp. People took their own food and something to cook it on outside the little camps they constructed on the deck of the barge from old pallets and plastic sheets. It was a long slow trip, made interesting only by the wildlife and remote tribal villages along the way.

  Two men had arrived in the dormitory of the Hotel Africa and, respecting his undisturbed rucksack, had separated to either end of the room. They looked at Ralph with concern and kept their distance. He now looked completely yellow.

  Surprisingly, while struggling with his rucksack, both had graciously helped him on to the steamer. One had a beard and had once been very fat, carrying loose skin in folds like a rare and valuable oriental dog. Ralph guessed he might be an oil worker as he planned to get off the boat at Adok, two and a half days downstream, close to Chevron’s field at Bentiu. As he carried Ralph’s rucksack he had proudly and wordlessly shown him a letter in English, a company logo at the head, detailing his joining instructions. Ralph never found out where he came from or understood a single word he said.

  The other, a lean Japanese student, supported Ralph around the shoulder. Together they found a space near the front of a barge and pitched camp. Ralph sat watching them as they disappeared ashore, relieved to see them return laden with metal poles and large closely woven nylon bags. With no common language between the three of them they mimed and grunted to each other like cavemen as they made a home for three.

  The bearded man went ashore again, returning with pasta and tins of sardines and a low collapsible camping chair without legs that reclined almost to a bed. Together they lifted him and tenderly placed him in the chair which they positioned in the shade of the tent they had constructed, looking forward and to the side so that Ralph could see the river ahead and the reeds that defined its edge. The two of them toasted their achievement with aragi, a whisky distilled from cassava.

  Ralph remembered Sister Barbara’s threatening words about alcohol and declined. He expected at any moment her hand would land on his shoulder, that the four nuns were presently scouring the town and the steamer dock, hunting him down. He pulled a large wide-brimmed safari hat, loaned by the bearded man, further forward to conceal his face.

  *

  Angel had asked his driver to take him to the market. It had been a difficult conversation. In the end, forsaking his cover story, he’d used Arabic but the Arabic the driver spoke sounded unlike anything Angel had heard before.

  He browsed happily for a gift for Elanza, his work done, unable to decide between a crocheted rug or hand-embroidered linens. In the end he found a Toposa tribeswoman, her body covered in parallel lines of welts, and bargained without commitment for some bead work and two hanging calabash baskets.

  To the driver he said simply, “Hotel,” without knowing where he’d end up. It had been back towards the airport, within walking distance, handy for his flight home.

  The Juba Hotel was a relic from a different age when Imperial flying boats had landed on the calm waters of the Nile and ladies in dresses that covered the ankle had drunk tea while men in pith helmets enjoyed whisky and sodas in The Long Bar before the flight continued the following day to Mwanza on Lake Victoria. The years had not been kind to the Juba Hotel but The Long Bar had survived, and two white men sat huddled over a bottle of Scotch that had been nowhere near Scotland.

  Angel went to the bar and smiled at a man in a tight white turban.

  “Gin and tonic, please,” he asked in English. It felt the right thing to ask for in The Long Bar.

  “No tonic, sir,” he replied.

  “Never mind.”

  “No gin, sir.”

  “Okay. I’ll hav
e what those gentlemen are drinking.” Angel tilted his head in the direction of the two men.

  The barman smiled a wide smile and touched his forehead.

  “Whiky, sir.”

  He put a dark brown liquid in a glass bottle with no label on the bar top. Angel had thought in terms of a glass, not the whole bottle.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Whiky,” he repeated.

  Angel examined the bottle warily.

  “Ah. You mean whisky. Thank you.”

  “It’ll kill you,” said one of the two men. Angel hadn’t seen which one. He’d spoken in English, but softly and sleepily as though already drunk.

  “Are you British?” he asked.

  “Yes, that’s right. London.”

  “Lundun,” the man said, mimicking Angel’s Cockney accent. “I’m British too. Well, sort of. Northern Ireland. Like British but better.”

  Angel nodded to him.

  “And Jean here, he’s a Canuck, from Canuckland.”

  Angel laughed.

  “I see.”

  The man took a long pull from the brown bottle.

  “So, what brings you to this shithole from Old Lundun Town?”

  “Oh, work,” said Angel. He didn’t elaborate, keen to change the subject. “Were you two working on the Dak’s port engine this morning?”

  Both men looked up from the table at him with interest.

  “I saw you on the apron working from a trestle when I came in.”

  “What do you know about a Dak?” the Irishman asked accusingly.

  “Only what I learnt from riding in one, before they pushed me out.”

  The Irishman laughed until he spluttered and coughed.

  Canuk Jean stood from the table.

  “Come and join Jim and me for a drink,” he said, then quietly while nodding at Jim; “Leave the bottle. We’ve had enough already.”

  Jim’s forehead rested on the table. He looked up as Angel sat beside him and looked at him quizzically.

  “We fly the Dak,” Jean said.

  “Except Jean’s bust it,” Jim said. “Been stuck here over a week trying to fix it.”

  Jean looked away. Angel felt that it sounded like an argument Jean was familiar with and wanted to avoid.

  “Valve seats burnt right out. Too lean, you see. Got too hot. Reduced power take-offs. Ha.”

  “So, were you in the Army?” Jean asked Angel quickly.

  “Yes.”

  “Which war?” asked Jim. “The big one?”

  “No. How about you? Were you in the RAF?”

  “Never. Spent the whole war a civilian,” said Jim.

  “Which war?” Angel asked him.

  “The big one.”

  Jean leaned forward.

  “You were talking about that the other night in Loki. When you talked to the boy about Phillips.”

  “That’s what I learnt to fly in. A Phillips aircraft. Shorts had a hangar at Long Kesh making wings for Stirling Bombers, and Phillips & Powis were assembling Messengers for VIP transport. It was easy to get to learn to fly there if you were keen and helped out.”

  Jean looked at Angel and winked.

  “So, what did you do in the war, Dad?” he asked mischievously.

  “Not much.”

  “But you would have been the right age, I guess. Born in ’22?”

  Jim had drunk a long way down the whisky bottle, his head rolling forward then springing back as he spoke.

  “I worked at Shorts, begged for rides to learn to fly, ended up delivering all sorts of things for the ATA. They’d take anyone with two arms. In fact, they took people with one arm.”

  Angel looked around the room. The barman had his chin in one hand listening to them.

  “What’s the ATA?” he asked.

  “Air Transport Auxiliary. Old men, battered pilots, women, kids like me – all of us ferrying aircraft from factories to the squadrons. The pilots came from all over the world. Quite a few Yanks, bless ’em. It was a civilian organisation based at White Waltham, sort of attached to BOAC. Which is how I ended up with the airline flying Mosquitoes.”

  Jean laughed.

  “BOAC had Mosquitoes?”

  Jim drank. He wiped a dribble with the palm of his hand.

  “Leuchars to Stockholm. Every night. Sweden remained neutral; we had to be civilians in civilian aircraft. Our Mossies had Golf registrations and a Speedbird on the tail.”

  “Why?”

  Jim was getting confused. There were two people with him but he found it difficult to hold his eyes open and didn’t see who’d spoken.

  “Why what?”

  “Why Mosquitoes? Why Sweden?”

  “We needed something fast to outrun the Germans. They called it the ‘Ball Bearing Run’. Load of rubbish. We did that a few times but it wasn’t that important. The Americans didn’t need Swedish ball bearings so why would we? We carried cash and gold on the way out. Don’t know where it went.”

  He looked at the bottle.

  “Russia probably. And to bribe the Swedes not to supply Hitler. And we brought home downed pilots who’d made it to Sweden through Denmark.”

  Jim’s eyes closed.

  “And VIPs. We lined out the bomb bay with felt for them, put a seat in it with a little reading light and a thermos. One of our pilots brought back a Danish nuclear physicist. Stupid man didn’t put his oxygen mask on. He only lived because the pilot worried about him and did the whole trip at ten thousand feet.”

  Jim was back at Leuchars in Scotland. The de Havilland Mosquito, the ‘Wooden Wonder’, the fear of being caught by enemy aircraft in the long dark nights.

  “I didn’t like the Swedes. They were very clever though. They stayed neutral and made money. Hitler needed fifteen million tons of iron ore a year during the war. He bought eleven million tons of it from Sweden. The Swedes sold Hitler the iron ore that the Nazis needed to make bombs and tanks and guns and warships. It was just business, the commerce of free trade, and sixty million dead people didn’t need to appear as a liability on any balance sheet.”

  Jean couldn’t disguise his curiosity. He’d always respected Jim for his flying at least.

  “What was the Mossie like to fly?”

  “Quick. Two thumping great Merlin engines but in an airframe made of a sandwich of balsa wood and Canadian birch. Twenty per cent lighter than Betsy but with getting on for fifty per cent more power. Now that was a tail dragger.”

  Angel wished he hadn’t joined them. Something troubled him that he couldn’t identify.

  “I’ll tell you what Göring said about the Mosquito. He said the British could afford aluminium better than Germany and yet they knocked together a beautiful wooden aeroplane that any piano factory could make. They have geniuses he said.”

  Jim smiled to himself.

  “Of course, Germany had geniuses too but they thought in straight lines. What’s always set us apart is that British geniuses think back to front and inside out while drinking cold tea upside down.”

  Jean laughed.

  “I stayed with BOAC after the war. Came to Africa with them. Flew Avro Yorks through Nairobi on the Cairo to Durban route until ’48, then for years after that with only freight. They were just Lancasters really. Unpressurised.”

  Jim took a final swig from the bottle.

  “And then I trained BOAC pilots in tropical flying techniques.”

  “Where was that?”

  “Soroti in Uganda.”

  Jim said nothing for a long time. Angel thought he was nearly asleep, his breathing quiet and steady.

  “Lettice was there, an ATA girl from White Waltham. Brilliant pilot. BOAC was happy to use her through the war but afterwards they dumped her. ‘Not the done thing, old chap. Can’t have a woman driving the aeropl
ane. What would the customers think?’ She was Australian. Told them where to go. Threatened to make all sorts of fuss, so they sent her to Soroti out of the way.”

  Angel stirred in his seat and Jim opened his eyes and talked to him.

  “Lettice had a friend in the war called Diana Ramsey, known to all as Wamsey because she couldn’t pronounce her Rs. Wamsey force-landed a Hawker Tempest, a brutal thing to fly. The throttle had stuck wide open so she shut it down but landed at a hell of a speed. Went across a field into a wood. Clean through every tree. Wings came off but the fuselage stayed in one piece. When people got to her she didn’t have a scratch. She was sitting on top of the cockpit canopy and wouldn’t come down. She was scared of the cows milling around.”

  Jim laughed and shook the empty bottle.

  “Women are wonderful things. Complicated, wonderful things. I love one but she’s less than half my age.”

  Jean wasn’t sure who he was talking about. He didn’t know any women who would go for an old drunk like Jim.

  “I’m old enough to be her father.”

  Angel slipped away to bed quietly, mouthing ‘thank you’ to Jean Canuck. He lay in bed troubled, thinking of the pilots, sure there was something he’d missed. Eventually he slept but awoke before the dawn unsure of himself. It was something Jean had said. Angel sat up, suddenly alert. Jean had said two unconnected words in a sentence. He’d said ‘the boy’ and ‘Phillips’ but without linking one word to the other. The boy and Phillips. The boy Ralph Phillips.

  Angel jumped out of bed. It all made sense. Ralph had flown with them over a week ago. More importantly, he now remembered the barman saying whiky instead of whisky and he suddenly realised that the accent of his driver had been so unusual that he’d misunderstood his Arabic. Angel thought he’d said ‘alssabie’, the seventh. He’d actually said ‘alrrabie’, the fourteenth. The steamer office had been deserted because the entire staff had all been down at the river, tending to the arriving steamer, preparing for its departure the next day. Ralph hadn’t left on 7th May. There had been no ferry that week. It was a fortnightly service. The steamer left today, 14th May, at dawn. Ralph must still be here.