by William Boyd
“But this is ridiculous!” von Bishop said, waving his arms about. “Stay here!” He ran back to the red house, past the long lines of stretcher cases that were now being taken down to lighters on the beach. Von Bishop reported the matter to Bilderbeck, who rolled his eyes in exasperation and accompanied him back down to the beach.
“Quite extraordinary,” von Bishop explained to Hammerstein who’d strolled down to join them. “The man was just walking around, calmly making notes.”
Bilderbeck apologized to Hammerstein and ordered Dobbs to get off the beach and back to the fleet at once.
Hammerstein shook his finger at the very red-faced Dobbs. “No flag of truce,” he chided. “By rights you should be taken prisoner.” Dobbs hung his head and meekly went to board one of the lighters.
Hammerstein took out some cheroots and passed them around. They stood smoking on the beach watching the wounded being loaded on board the lighters. This job was nearly complete when Hammerstein spotted two lifeboats full of men rowing into shore from one of the transports. The boats grounded a little way down the beach and the men on board took off their clothes and jumped into the shallows and began to swim and splash about in the surf. Some of them had cakes of soap and began to wash themselves.
“Look, I’m dreadfully sorry,” Bilderbeck said. “I don’t know what they think they’re playing at.” He ran down to the boats. “Who’s in charge here?” he called angrily.
A very white naked man sloshed out of the water and saluted. “Sergeant Althorpe, sir. Loyal North Lancs. Ablutions detail, sir.”
Hammerstein and von Bishop joined the group. “I really must protest, Bilderbeck,” Hammerstein said suavely, flicking his cheroot stub into the sea. “If they don’t go back at once I shall have to order my men to open fire. Really, you know, this is a war. It’s not some kind of sporting event.”
Bilderbeck, looking—von Bishop thought—extremely ashamed, ordered the men back to the transports. The naked men complied, but with extreme reluctance. There was much resentful muttering, and, as the two lifeboats pulled away from the shore, von Bishop heard foul insults being shouted at them.
Once the last of the wounded men had been taken offshore, Hammerstein invited Bilderbeck for breakfast at the German hospital. They rode back through the hot and steamy forest to the large white building of the hospital. The fighting had raged around this building during the battle on the fourth and for most of the day it had been behind British lines, tending wounded from both sides. The imposing stone building was set in its own beautifully laid-out park of gravel pathways and low clipped hedges. Wooden benches were set in the shade cast by two huge baobab trees.
On the ground floor was a wide verandah where a long linen-covered table was laid and where they all enjoyed breakfast in the company of Dr Deppe, the senior physician, and some other Schutztruppe officers. They had iced beer, eggs, cream and asparagus, and talked amicably about the previous days’ battles trying to work out if Bilderbeck had been opposite .any of them during the fighting. Von Bishop remained silent; he wasn’t entirely sure if he approved of this sort of fraternization. After all, wasn’t it exactly the sort of thing Hammerstein was criticizing on the beach? Von Bishop had his reservations about Hammerstein too, even more so when he saw him exchanging addresses with Bilderbeck, promising to get in touch after the war.
Hammerstein eventually took his leave and asked von Bishop to see Bilderbeck to his boat (moored by the shore just below the hospital) when he was ready. Von Bishop didn’t hear at first as he had his little fingers thrust down both ear-holes in an attempt to alter the pressure in his inner ear. A whispered consultation with Dr Deppe had produced this as a possible diagnosis of the irritating whine.
Bilderbeck, however, didn’t want to leave before seeing those British officers and soldiers in the hospital who were too seriously wounded to be moved.
“Come up to the wards,” Deppe invited. “You too, Captain von Bishop. I can have a look in your ear.”
“What’s wrong with your ear?” Bilderbeck inquired, with a wide smile.
“I’ve got a whine. Eeeeeeeee. You know, going on all the time in my ears.” He found the man’s mannerisms most strange. It was nothing to smile about.
“Pour some oil down them,” Bilderbeck advised, now narrowing his eyes suspiciously, as if he suspected von Bishop of malingering.
They arrived at the ward. It was on the first floor, very high-ceilinged with large French windows giving on to a generous balcony. Everyone in the beds was lying ominously still. Many bandaged limbs were in evidence and nobody spoke except in whispers.
Deppe handed Bilderbeck a list of names which Bilderbeck began to copy down.
“Let me look in your ears,” Deppe said to von Bishop and shoved the cold snout of an ophthalmoscope into the nearest moaning orifice. Von Bishop winced.
“Ah,” said Deppe. “Um. Ah-ha. Yes, I can see nothing.”
Bilderbeck interrupted. “Captain Cobb,” he said to Dr Deppe, pointing to a name on the list. “How is he?”
Deppe looked at the list. “Captain Cobb. Oh, yes. Very bad. Two bayonet wounds in the lower abdomen. And a severely injured leg. In that bed over there.”
Deppe inserted his instrument in the other ear. Out of the corner of his eye von Bishop watched Bilderbeck go over to a bed and speak to the injured man lying in it.
“See anything?” von Bishop asked Deppe, who was now making clicking noises with his longue.
“Your ears are full of wax,” Deppe said. “I can’t see anything. Come back tomorrow and I’ll clean them out. Maybe I can get a better view.”
Von Bishop walked with Bilderbeck down to the small launch that was moored at the jetty below the hospital. Four very bored naval ratings were sitting in the stern smoking, oblivious of the two German askaris that stood guard over them.
“Goodbye,” Bilderbeck said, and shook hands. He grinned.
“Goodbye,” said von Bishop, annoyed to find that he’d smiled back. He watched the launch pull away. He tugged at his right ear lobe. That fool Deppe’s probing seemed to have made the whine go up a tone or two. He had no intention of allowing the man to clean out his ears. He would ask Liesl to have a look; after all, he thought, she used to be a nurse, she might as well put her training to some use.
He walked thoughtfully back to Tanga thinking of his wife. The trip to Europe had been a great mistake. She had changed utterly, in almost every respect, and, what was worse, she seemed to be in a permanent bad mood. She was getting so fat, too. All she wanted to do was eat. As he had boarded the train in Moshi, rally armed, off to repel an enemy invasion, she had kissed him briefly good-bye and made him promise to buy her some Turkish Delight in Tanga.
“Tanga!” He had forced a laugh, extremely irritated. “It may be a smoking ruin for all we know. And you want me to buy you sweets.”
“Promise,” she said. “Try to get some.”
He had eyed her broadening figure, the well-padded shoulders, the horizontal creases in her neck, the freckled creaminess of her cheeks. He found it almost impossible to imagine her as she had been before: tall and lean from the hard work they put in on the farm.
“Don’t you think you had…?” he began, then thought better of it. “As you wish, my dear,” he said.
Now he shrugged his shoulders in resignation as he strolled through the mined town, kicking at a stone, trying to ignore the noise in his head. Where would he get Turkish Delight in Tanga?
Chapter 8
16 March 1915,
Oxford, England
The first thing Felix remembered when he woke up was that he’d failed Pass Moderations in History. He turned over in his narrow bed and looked at the gap of sky he could see between his badly drawn curtains. Dark. And the pattering on the window told him that Oxford was experiencing its fifth day of continuous rain. He turned on his side and looked up at his de Reske poster, which he’d framed and now hung on the wall in his bedder.
“Morning
, darling,” he said as he had done on waking each day of his two terms at Oxford. Holland didn’t approve of the de Reske poster. Well, that was one thing he was not going to abandon for Holland.
“Morning, darling,” he said again, stretching. “Tipping down as usual.”
“Morning, sir,” came an unexpected reply from his sitter, the sitting room that made up his quarters in college. The voice was loud and possessed of a rich Oxfordshire burr. It belonged to Sproat, his scout. Felix heard the rattle of cutlery as Sproat laid out his breakfast on the table. He heard the sitting room door open and there was a dull watery clang as his tin bath, containing two inches of water and lugged up three flights of stairs by Sproat’s boy Algy, was set down.
“Get that foyr lit, Algy,” Felix heard Sproat say, then louder “Foyr blazin’ in a minute or two, sir. Eight o’clock now. First chapel at half past the hour. If you’ve a mind, that is.”
“Thank you, Sproat,” Felix shouted. He and Sproat hated each other, a feeling no less intense on Sproat’s side than Felix’s. What he couldn’t understand was the way Sproat contrived to see as much of him as possible. He had a whole staircase of rooms to attend to but somehow he seemed to organize his rota so as to spend most of his time with Felix.
Felix got out of bed, put on his slippers and pulled on his dressing gown. He went over to the window. It was still dark, the rising sun making little impact on the thick, pewtery clouds. His bedder window looked onto the kitchen of a neighbouring college. He saw a kitchen skivvy dash out and empty a pail of slops into a dustbin. Felix drew the curtains closed. Time to face Sproat. He went into his sitter.
“Morning, sir,” said Sproat again, smiling broadly. His servility was his most effective goad. He was a thin, balding man with wispy gingery hair. He had very large teeth, like a horse’s, with prodigious gaps. These were now on display between parted lips. From some reason the sight of Sproat’s teeth each morning removed Felix’s appetite for breakfast. He looked out of the sitter window at the sodden college quad. He saw a dressing-gowned figure holding an umbrella dash across from a stairway entrance towards the college lavatories.
“Morning,” Felix said. “Morning Algy,” he added automatically. Algy was crouched in front of the recently made-up fire, holding a sheet of newspaper over the chimney in an attempt to get the fire to take. He was reputed to be Sproat’s son, a spindly taciturn lad of about twelve years old with a permanent cold. He never spoke in Felix’s hearing, and Felix suspected that Algy had sent him to Coventry. The boy had only uttered one question in Felix’s two terms. One morning he’d said, in Sproat’s absence, “Woi in’t you fightig, zur?” and received a cuff about the ears for his insolence. On the chimney-piece Felix had a small vase, pointedly displaying the five white feathers the good ladies of Oxford had seen fit to present him with over the weeks. Holland had only been handed two and professed himself extremely jealous.
Sproat, however, had no such qualms about conversing. “Doesn’t seem much better this morning, sir,” he said.
Felix glanced out of the window. “Typical March weather,” he said.
“Oh no. I wasn’t talking about the weather, sir. I was meaning your sore, sir.”
Felix’s hand leapt up to the corner of his mouth. He winced. He had a large cold sore on his bottom lip, about the size of a sixpence. It had started off on the bottom left hand corner of his lower lip. An itch, then a blister, then a crop of blisters that soon spread onto the skin below. These had burst, crusted and formed a scab which never seemed to heal. He’d had it for over two months. It had sprang up within days of the news of Gabriel’s capture. No matter how dutifully he applied lotions and ointments and resisted the urge to pick at it, it refused to disappear.
“Seems to ‘ve had some kind of suppurations in the night,” Sproat observed, rising on his toes and leaning forward to get a closer look. “Some sort of transparent oozings, I would say.”
“Would you, Sproat,” Felix said, and went immediately back to his bedder to confirm this diagnosis in his looking glass. Sproat was right. Felix now recalled that he’d spent a troubled, restless night after drinking a great deal of whisky punch in Holland’s rooms.
The dark crust had broken and now gleamed with fissures of fresh blood. The furze of bristles that surrounded it—Felix had to be careful while shaving—made it seem even more of a disfigurement.
“I’ve got a friend who swears by this lotion, sir,” Sproat called through the door. “Says he could get it for me cheap, like. Round about two shillings for a small bot—”
“No thank you, Sproat,” Felix interrupted firmly. The man had persistently cheated him since the day Felix had arrived in Oxford—hence their enmity, though it was now fuelled by every potential disagreement. Sproat had sold him a commoner’s cap and gown, ‘new’ curtains, fire irons, a dozen sporting prints and a kettle within ten minutes of showing a nervous Felix up to his rooms, and all at vastly inflated prices. Furthermore, he claimed to be on especially good terms with certain Oxford tradesmen who would grant Felix a discount if he did all his ordering through Sproat. Felix bought a thousand cigarettes, a case of claret and one of hock, tea, jam, tobacco and half a dozen pipes before he’d grown wise. The ensuing row, bitter accusations and wounded protestations of innocence had soured things irreparably. Felix’s Fabian leanings would not allow him to prosecute Sproat any further but he counted it sufficient punishment to let Sproat—a devout Tory—know that in future he would be supplying himself from the new co-operative stores in the High Street. Sproat, though, had ardently sustained the feud and derived great satisfaction from any discomforts that came Felix’s way—gatings, JCR fines, poor academic performance and the like. The cold sore had been like a gift from the Gods.
“No thank you, Sproat,” Felix repeated as he walked back into the sitter, a false smile on his face. The fire was now lit and burning and a large brown kettle had been placed on the hob to boil up water for his bath and his tea pot. Felix lifted the tin cover from the plate that contained his breakfast and saw two gelid, rapidly cooling poached eggs on a piece of toast.
Sproat removed a copy of the Oxford Magazine from his jacket pocket. Felix pinched the bridge of his nose. Here was another Sproat torment: the ‘butcher’s bill’, as Holland termed it. Pointed reproach directed at Felix in the guise of pious reminiscence.
“Bad weeks, sir,” Sproat said, opening his magazine. “Harold Albert Talbot. Exhibitioner of the college. Nice chap. Quick, thoughtful sort of person. Died of wounds at a place called Neuve Chapelle.” Sproat shook his head sadly. There was nothing Felix could do: to interrupt the college roll of honour would be playing into Sproat’s hands, the ultimate sacrilege. He nodded in commiseration.
Sproat read on. “Noel Muschamp. Dear dear dear. Died in an accident at the aviation school. Fine man, fine man. Staircase six. Lord, here’s another. Thomas Percy Gruby. Rowed in the First Eight in 1904 if I’m not mistaken. Got a fourth in Literae Humaniores…”
Sproat continued. Felix sat and listened and felt the depression settle securely on him. Sproat closed his magazine.
“Well, sir,” he said, not bothering to conceal the note of triumph in his voice. “if that’ll be all?” He left.
Felix opened his coffee jar and found it empty, so contented himself with a pot of tea. He looked distastefully at the two inches of water in the tin hip bath and decided to forgo the dubious pleasures of a wash this morning. He stood at the window with his cup of tea and looked down on the deserted quad. In a normal term of a normal year it would have been full of bustling figures on their way to lectures or off to breakfasts with friends, but owing to the war the college was now half-empty, and even those numbers had been supplemented by men from other colleges which were being used as temporary barracks for various army units of yeomanry and territorials.
Felix sat down in front of his staring poached eggs and blinded one with an aggressive stab of his knife. The wound in the congealed yolk reminded him of his cold s
ore and he felt the familiar sensations of what he now termed his Oxford mood descend on him.
Oxford had been a terrible disappointment. It wasn’t so much Oxford’s fault, though, as the war’s. By the beginning of the first term two thousand undergraduates had volunteered for service. Felix and Holland—both turned down at the OTC recruiting office: Felix for his weak eyes, Holland for chronic myopia and a bronchitic chest—had arrived to find a university filled only with the very young, old or infirm. Life went on, lectures were taken, exams were sat, but there was no trace of the spirit they expected to find. It was made worse at the turn of the year when a black-out was imposed and all the bells in the clock towers were silenced after dark. Only a few dim red lights glowed at important junctions. If Holland hadn’t been there Felix was sure that he would have re-volunteered out of a sense of sheer self-pity and disillusionment.
Holland was disappointed with Oxford too, but it didn’t affect him so badly. The war would be over in a matter of months, he said. The European powers simply couldn’t afford to fight on any longer; economists had established this. They had done their duty in volunteering: it wasn’t their fault if they weren’t required. They should make the best of the opportunities Oxford presented. In the first term Holland had formed a group called Les Invalides, consisting of himself, Felix, Taubmann—another consumptive—and two of the more agreeable American Rhodes scholars. They met once a week to discuss anything that was unconnected with the war. But despite the energetic debates on futurism, emancipation of women, the Ballet Russe and Strindberg (Holland’s new idol) and the copious amounts of alcohol they consumed, it was clear that all their efforts amounted to little more than a despairing gesture.