‘Okay,’ said Harold. ‘Give it to me.’
He ripped the envelope open rather officiously. It was all quite absurd, of course. The envelope had been stuck down only a few minutes before, less than twenty-five yards away from where he was sitting. And, in any case, the Signals Officer knew exactly what the message contained.
It was a snub; a Top Priority official snub, ‘URGENTEST FROM THE ACTING CHIEF SECRETARY,’ IT READ, ‘CONFIRM INSTANTLY SUBSTANCE TELEGRAM SIGNED QUOTE STEBBS UNQUOTE STOP ESSENTIAL RECEIVE CONFIRMATION BY PROPER CHANNEL STOP AWAITING IMMEDIATE REPEAT IMMEDIATE REPLY.’ It was signed ‘Frith’.
Captain Webber got up, and pushed his chair back neatly against the table.
‘Think I’d better go across to see him,’ he said. ‘Bad business if you’re an A.D.C. and this sort of thing happens.’
He was entirely unhurried.
‘Then I’ll have a look at that eye of yours. Needs re-bandaging.’
Chapter 29
‘I’d rather have burnt the whole lot. They’ll only be fighting over it when we’ve gone. There’s practically nothing of value in any of these villages.’
Major Mills was standing in front of the heap of camp stores while he was speaking. It made a quite considerable pyramid. There were chairs, tables, spare bedding, tins of food, cooking utensils. It represented a substantial write-off of sound Government equipment.
But it was inevitable. With one thirty-hundredweight truck converted into an ambulance for Lady Anne, and the other brought into commission as a hearse, there was now a critical shortage of transport. Even Old Moses, under armed escort, was taking up valuable space in the South Staff’s own regimental vehicle.
It was not the best of journeys. And they could not speed it up because of Lady Anne. Before they left Amimbo the rear springs of the thirty-hundredweight truck had been fitted with another leaf to strengthen them for the extra load; and now, lightened as the truck was, it bounced about like a ping-pong ball at anything much above twelve miles an hour. Making up time on the flatter stretches was out of the question. And, because they were always behind schedule, there was no mid-day break when the sun was really at its worst. They simply drew up for a moment, changed drivers and got going again.
With nightfall, any thought of further travel was impossible. Captain Webber was insistent, too, that Lady Anne could not stand any more of it. Or Sybil Prosser for that matter: only thirty-six hours earlier it was she who had been the camp invalid. When she climbed down out of the truck, she seemed ready to collapse on top of them.
Harold went up to her.
‘How is she?’ he asked.
Sybil Prosser was still straightening up her back: she was a tall woman, and for the past eight hours she had been sitting folded and upright on a two-foot medicine case in the ambulance truck.
‘We’ll be lucky if she makes it,’ she said. ‘Captain Webber tells me it’s all your idea.’
There was no particular bitterness in the remark: it was just an observation that she was making.
‘Can I see her?’
Sybil Prosser shook her head.
‘It wouldn’t do any good,’ she replied. ‘They’re not letting her come round. And I don’t wonder. I only hope her heart stands up to it. She’s not strong, you know. She never has been.’
Her voice was as flat and expressionless as ever. It might have been a stranger they were discussing.
‘And she’s been in a fever, I can tell you. There’s no proper laundry. I’ve burnt most of her things: I had to.’
‘Damn rotten business,’ the Signals Officer had just observed. ‘Finding that you haven’t got the job, I mean, and then having this happen to you.’
It was the second day of the journey; and, with darkness, real darkness, on them any moment now, they had decided to laager where they were.
The differential of the two-tonner, which had been giving trouble ever since they had started up, was now in pieces on the ground, and Transport was conducting its own closed conference among the debris. Captain Webber had just emerged from the ambulance-truck, thoughtful looking and announcing that there was no change. And Major Mills and the Signals Officer, rather nervously double-checking each other, had got off the evening message to Amimbo, pin-pointing their position.
There was nothing, for the time being, but to sit around drinking, and wait—and go on waiting—for the substitute cooks to get the meal ready.
It was the second whisky that the Signals Officer had poured himself and, after his spell of practically unbroken duty, it had relaxed him.
‘You don’t know the number he sent off,’ the Signals Officer went on. ‘Didn’t let up for a single moment. Not even out here on safari. He was on edge, all right, I can tell you. Wouldn’t believe it when the news did come through. Made me go back twice for confirmation.’
He took another sip of his whisky.
‘Don’t really know though,’ he added. ‘May be a blessing in disguise, that stabbing. He’d have been broken-hearted if he’d lived. India was all he wanted.’
The Signals Officer wasn’t really very much above the level of a village postmistress who gossips about telephone calls, Harold decided. He tried to shift the way the talk was going, make it less personal somehow.
‘Who did get it?’ he asked.
But it was the wrong question: it set the man going again.
‘The one he didn’t like,’ he said. ‘Lord Eldred. Hadn’t got any use for him at all. You should have seen some of the things he said. All en clair, too, so that the clerks could read it.’
Dinner ended up as a quiet sort of meal because the Signals Officer left them before the coffee. He went back over to his radio-van, saying rather importantly that he thought that it might be better if he were standing by.
Harold stretched himself, felt stiffer for doing so, and said that he’d take a stroll. It was one of those moments when Africa had subdued itself and become peaceful. Even the ground had cooled off, and the breeze that came lapping over the little crest in front of him was no more than luke-warm. He walked on slowly, savouring the quiet, the moonlight, the brush of air against his face. And it was then that he came upon the A.D.C.
The young man was sitting by himself, sprawled out in a hollow, staring out apparently at nothing. He had not heard Harold approach him. When he looked up and saw who it was, he did not seem to resent him. Or be pleased either, for that matter. He gave the impression of not caring very much either way.
‘Didn’t see you at dinner,’ Harold remarked.
‘Wasn’t there,’ he replied. ‘Didn’t want any.’
‘But you’ve got to eat…’ Harold began, before the A.D.C. interrupted him.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ he said.
Harold took a chance on it, and squatted down on the grass beside him.
‘Cigarette?’ he asked.
The A.D.C. shook his head, and shifted over onto one elbow
‘I suppose you realise that I’ve had it,’ he said. ‘Really had it, I mean. I’m finished.’
He was prodding with his heel at the tuft of grass. It was an obstinate tuft, firm and well-rooted. When he had finally managed to dislodge it, he bent down and threw it away from him. Then he started speaking again.
‘I suppose it means a court-martial,’ he added. ‘Looks like it, anyway.’
Harold wasn’t quite sure what kind of reply was expected.
‘They’ll give you someone to defend you, won’t they?’
It was the best, in the circumstances, that Harold could manage. And, when he heard it, the A.D.C. tilted his head on one side and gave his rather charming social smile again.
‘I’d rather be the one to prosecute,’ he said.
It was certainly what all the others had been saying. But the young man was too obviously disconsolate for Harold simply to agree with him.
‘You don’t know yet,’ he replied. ‘I’d stop worrying.’
The A.D.C. was sitting bolt uprigh
t now.
‘It’s not me I’m worried about,’ he said. ‘It’s Rikki.’
‘Rikki?’
‘That’s his name,’ the A.D.C. told him, as though it explained everything.
Harold was not impressed.
‘Oh him,’ he said. ‘But he’s done a bunk, hasn’t he?’
The A.D.C. screwed up his hand and rubbed the back of his fist across his forehead as if he were trying to polish it.
‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘He’s just an innocent. A poor, frightened innocent. And they’re hunting him. He’ll be terrified. Absolutely terrified. He may try to kill himself.’
The A.D.C. turned and faced him.
‘Look at it your way,’ he said. ‘Think how you’d be feeling if it was some girl they were after.’
Harold rather liked the A.D.C. for saying that. At least it showed that he was being honest with himself, being honest with both of them, in fact.
‘He’ll be all right,’ he told him, not very convincingly. ‘After all, he’s at home here. It’s his country.’
‘Would you do something for me?’ the A.D.C. asked suddenly.
‘What is it?’
‘If they do arrest him,’ he said, ‘and I’m not around’—it was characteristic of the A.D.C. that he should put his own predicament so delicately—’would you look after him for me? See that he’s properly represented, and all that.’
Harold did not reply directly.
‘They’ll never catch him,’ was all he said.
‘Oh, but they will,’ he replied. ‘They’re bound to. After all, it was the Governor, you know. They can’t just let it drop. They’ll get the Army out. And when they get him, he’s so simple he’ll say whatever they tell him to. He’s such a child he wouldn’t know what was happening to him. That’s his whole trouble. He trusts people.’
Because Harold did not say anything, the A.D.C. repeated his question.
‘You will do it, won’t you?’ he said. ‘You’re the only one I can ask.’
Again, Harold kept him waiting for his reply.
‘Oh, all right. I’ll see that he isn’t persecuted, if that’s what you want.’
The A.D.C. seemed to relax a little.
‘Because it’s so frightfully important,’ he explained. ‘For him, I mean. He’s only eighteen, and terribly impressionable. If he took a wrong turning now, he could so easily go to the bad. I’m the only real friend he’s got.’
Harold did not attempt to prolong the conversation. And, as the A.D.C. showed no signs of wanting to return—seemed, in fact, to prefer simply sitting there gazing out at nothingness—Harold got up and left him.
‘Well, if that isn’t bloody well marvellous,’ he kept telling himself as he went back towards the trucks. ‘And to think that I walked right into it. Of all things: I’ve got a teenage queer for a godson; a six-foot, coffee-coloured queer. As though I hadn’t got enough on my hands, without that one.’
It was Captain Webber who interrupted his thoughts. The man had his sleeves rolled up, and was carrying his medical bag. He was already halfway inside his tent when he saw Harold.
‘I’d like to take another look at that eye of yours,’ he called across to him. ‘Just let me get cleaned up first.’
Harold did not like the look of the rolled sleeves and the medical bag. They had the air of an emergency about them.
‘Nothing’s gone wrong, has it?’ he asked. ‘She’s not worse or anything?’
Captain Webber dropped the towelling, and pushed it away from him with his foot.
‘I’ll tell you if there’s any change,’ he said.
He paused.
‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ he added. ‘It was your plan, remember? About the Governor, I mean. Had to get him back to Amimbo at all costs, you said. Well, I’m a doctor, not an undertaker. I’ve got Lady Anne to consider.’
He glanced up for a moment at Harold’s bandaged eye.
‘Try not to rub it,’ he said. ‘Only makes it worse.’
Chapter 30
Considering the nature of the track and the reinforced springs in the converted ambulance, they had kept up a remarkably good average over the whole journey: 11.9 m.p.h. was what Major Mills made it and, in the circumstances, he regarded it as nothing less than a keen personal triumph.
By starting at first light and cutting down the meal-breaks to a strict twenty minutes, including brewing-up time, they had, in fact, lopped one complete day off the return trip.
If Major Mills was pleased with himself, the Signals Officer was nothing less than delighted. It was the outward journey that had been torment. While Sir Gardnor and the rest had just taken him for granted, he had been battling professionally with fading, surge, static, heterodyne whistles, cracked accumulator plates, the lot.
Every night, too, it had got worse. By the time they reached Kitu, even the Amimbo call-sign had come through so faint that the ticking of the big second-hand on the chronometer in the radio-van had been enough to drown it.
Whereas now, it was pure apprentice stuff. Last night, for instance, they hadn’t even bothered to erect the full aerial: with their wire slung across to the nearest tree, Amimbo had come roaring in, loud and clear, and the Signals Officer had enjoyed one of the few entirely carefree evenings in his whole Service career.
The messages had mostly been about funeral arrangements and mental specialists. The grave in the cathedral cemetery was all ready, a return signal had said; there was a later one, too, that informed them that the Bishop and Sexton were standing by on all-night duty at the Cathedral, and that they could call in there first if that would be better.
The replies about the mental specialist were less satisfactory. Apparently, Captain Webber’s first choice, a Dr. Colin Alexander, who sounded reliable enough, was away on boat-leave in England, but a Professor Jesus Fernandez, had at last been run to earth in a convent asylum in Nucca, and was at this very moment on the Coronation Flyer somewhere on his way to Amimbo. His exact time of arrival was naturally uncertain. The detachment of two senior nurses from the Royal Victoria Hospital, Amimbo, however, had—the telegram advised—all been safely taken care of.
It was significant that, for the last leg of the journey, Major Mills invited Harold to move in and share his truck with him. Nor was it for the company alone. The fact was that the Major was painfully in need of reassurance. And the nearer he got to Amimbo the more he needed it. He did not look forward to explaining things to his CO.
To keep his mind off the thoughts that were troubling him, Major Mills talked mainly about his prisoner. Old Moses was his key exhibit, and he knew it.
‘Just as well I acted promptly,’ he remarked, ‘otherwise he’d have disappeared like the butcher-boy. Very cunning lot, the Mimbo. Very. Never tell what’s going on inside their heads. That’s why I nailed him.’
It was, with only minor variations, what Major Mills had been saying more or less continuously ever since Harold had joined him. And there was more of it, the sentences coming up each time in slightly different order, like the phrases in a musical composition.
‘If I hadn’t grabbed him, he’d have been off, too,’ he went on. ‘Probably got his getaway all nicely planned. No good looking into their eyes to see what they’re thinking. Can’t tell. They’re Mimbo, remember.’
The moment had come to introduce a fresh theme, and Major Mills was off and away again.
‘Knows what he’s up to, of course, keeping his mouth shut. Doesn’t want to incriminate himself. Isn’t speaking a word to anyone. Just sitting there in the truck saying nothing. Got it all worked out. Mark my words, he’s cooking up something.’
The Major was cut short because the driver drew his breath in sharply and then let it out again in a long, grateful sigh. There, in front of them, was the highway. They were over the last foothill, and they could see the track stretching endlessly away, like a dried-up river-bed. Down the whole length of it, the dust-devils rose like elongated feath
er-dusters and twirled away into the distance.
Even though it was still loose sand and shingle beneath the wheels, the driver promptly put his foot down. Harold turned and looked back at the other trucks as they topped the summit. One by one, they had spurted up. The ambulance, sensing better times ahead, came over the crest, its rear wheels spinning.
It was Major Mills who flagged them down. They were on the dot, and he was sticking to his timetable. At the prescribed 12 m.p.h., which was hardly enough to blow a breeze into their faces, they toiled on towards Amimbo.
Perhaps because he was tired, perhaps because his eye was still hurting, Harold seemed, for the moment, to be detached from the rest of the party, entirely separate from everyone around him. And the feeling, absurd but inescapable, came over him that he had been on this journey before, had known precisely what it felt like to be there at that exact point in space and time, with Lady Anne being tossed about unconscious in the ambulance behind him, and with the dead body of Sir Gardnor, covered up in the Residency sheets, lying in state in the fourth truck in line.
At the same instant—and it was all in the span of a single flash that it occurred—he remembered how, for no reason and despite the heat, he had shivered when he had first looked down on the icing-cake architecture of Amimbo. It seemed now that he had known all this then.
Then the flash faded, and it was simply ordinary African sunshine all round him. He reached out towards the canvas bag that Major Mills had hung over the wiper knob below the windscreen.
‘Anything left in the bottle?’ he asked.
But Major Mills was preoccupied. The whole saucer of the plain was spread out before them—flat, brown and featureless. And he was peering at something. It was four or five miles away—distances were impossible to judge in the overhanging heat haze—and it was merely another cloud of dust. But it was not ordinary dust. It was approaching dust. A tight little cocoon of the stuff was advancing towards them, leaving a trail of its own unravelling in its rear, like the smoke plume of a steam locomotive.
Major Mills looked down at his watch and then out at the dust-cloud again.
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