by Evelyn Waugh
Then, when she had proved herself worthy of it, came the instruction. Intimate details of health and hygiene, things every young girl should know, the general dangers of sex and its particular dangers in the Tropics; the proper treatment of the other inhabitants of Matodi, etiquette towards ladies of higher rank, the leaving of cards….. “Never shake hands with natives, however well educated they think themselves. Arabs are quite different, many of them very like gentlemen… no worse than a great many Italians, really… Indians, luckily, you won’t have to meet… never allow native servants to see you in your dressing gown… and be very careful about curtains in the bathroom—natives peep … never walk in the side streets alone—in fact you have no business in them at all… never ride outside the compound alone. There have been several cases of bandits… an American missionary only last year, but he was some kind of non-Conformist… We owe it to our menfolk to take no unnecessary risks… a band of brigands commanded by a Sakuya called Joab… the Major will soon clean him up when he gets the levy into better shape… they find their boots very uncomfortable at present… meanwhile it is a very safe rule to take a man with you everywhere…..”
III
And Prunella was never short of male escort. As the weeks passed it became clear to the watching colony that her choice had narrowed down to two—Mr. Kentish, assistant native commissioner, and Mr. Benson, second lieutenant in the native levy; not that she was not consistently charming to everyone else—even to the shady remittance man and the repulsive Mr. Jagger—but by various little acts of preference she made it known that Kentish and Benson were her favourites. And the study of their innocent romances gave a sudden new interest to the social life of the town. Until now there had been plenty of entertaining certainly—gymkhanas and tennis tournaments, dances and dinner parties, calling and gossiping, amateur opera and church bazaars—but it had been a joyless and dutiful affair. They knew what was expected of Englishmen abroad; they had to keep up appearances before the natives and their co-protectionists; they had to have something to write home about; so they sturdily went through the recurring recreations due to their station. But with Prunella’s coming a new lightness was in the air; there were more parties and more dances and a point to everything. Mr. Brooks, who had never dined out before, found himself suddenly popular, and as his former exclusion had not worried him, he took his present vogue as a natural result of his daughter’s charm, was pleased by it and mildly embarrassed. He realized that she would soon want to get married and faced with equanimity the prospect of his inevitable return to solitude.
Meanwhile Benson and Kentish ran neck and neck through the crowded Azanian spring and no one could say with confidence which was leading—betting was slightly in favour of Benson, who had supper dances with her at the Caledonian and the Polo Club Balls—when there occurred the incident which shocked Azanian feeling to its core. Prunella Brooks was kidnapped.
The circumstances were obscure and a little shady. Prunella, who had never been known to infringe one jot or tittle of the local code, had been out riding alone in the hills. That was apparent from the first, and later, under cross-examination, her syce revealed that this had for some time been her practice, two or three times a week. The shock of her infidelity to rule was almost as great as the shock of her disappearance.
But worse was to follow. One evening at the Club, since Mr. Brooks was absent (his popularity had waned in the last few days and his presence made a painful restraint) the question of Prunella’s secret rides was being freely debated, when a slightly fuddled voice broke into the conversation.
“It’s bound to come out,” said the remittance man from Kenya, “so I may as well tell you right away. Prunella used to ride with me. She didn’t want us to get talked about, so we met on the Debra Dowa road by the Moslem Tombs. I shall miss those afternoons very much indeed,” said the remittance man, a slight, alcoholic quaver in his voice, “and I blame myself to a great extent for all that has happened. You see, I must have had a little more to drink than was good for me that morning and it was very hot, so with one thing and another, when I went to change into riding breeches I fell asleep and did not wake up until after dinnertime. And perhaps that is the last we shall ever see of her…” and two vast tears rolled down his cheeks.
This unmanly spectacle preserved the peace, for Benson and Kentish had already begun to advance upon the remittance man with a menacing air. But there is little satisfaction in castigating one who is already in the profound depths of self-pity and the stern tones of Major Lepperidge called them sharply to order. “Benson, Kentish, I don’t say I don’t sympathize with you boys and I know exactly what I’d do myself under the circumstances. The story we have just heard may or may not be the truth. In either case I think I know what we all feel about the teller. But that can wait. You’ll have plenty of time to settle up when we’ve got Miss Brooks safe. That is our first duty.”
Thus exhorted, public opinion again rallied to Prunella, and the urgency of her case was dramatically emphasized two days later by the arrival at the American Consulate of the Baptist missionary’s right ear loosely done up in newspaper and string. The men of the colony—excluding, of course, the remittance man—got together in the Lepperidge bungalow and formed a committee of defence, first to protect the women who were still left to them and then to rescue Miss Brooks at whatever personal inconvenience or risk.
IV
The first demand for ransom came through the agency of Mr. Youkoumian. The little Armenian was already well known and, on the whole, well liked by the English community; it did them good to find a foreigner who so completely fulfilled their ideal of all that a foreigner should be. Two days after the foundation of the British Womanhood Protection Committee, he appeared at the Major’s orderly room asking for a private audience, a cheerful, rotund, self-abasing figure, in a shiny alpaca suit, skull cap and yellow, elastic-sided boots.
“Major Lepperidge,” he said, “you know me; all the gentlemen in Matodi know me. The English are my favourite gentlemen and the natural protectors of the under races all same as the League of Nations. Listen, Major Lepperidge, I ear things. Everyone trusts me. It is a no good thing for these black men to abduct English ladies. I fix it O.K.”
To the Major’s questions, with infinite evasions and circumlocutions, Youkoumian explained that by the agency of various cousins of his wife he had formed contact with an Arab, one of whose wives was the sister of a Sakuya in Joab’s band; that Miss Brooks was at present safe and that Joab was disposed to talk business. “Joab make very stiff price,” he said. “He want one undred thousand dollars, an armoured car, two machine guns, a undred rifles, five thousand rounds of ammunition, fifty orses, fifty gold wrist watches, a wireless set, fifty cases of whisky, free pardon and the rank of honorary colonel in the Azanian levy.”
“That, of course, is out of the question.”
The little Armenian shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, well, then he cut off Miss Brooks’s ears all same as the American clergyman. Listen, Major, this is one damn awful no good country. I live ere forty years, I know. I been little man and I been big man in this country, all same rule for big and little. If native want anything you give it im quick, then work ell out of im and get it back later. Natives all damn fool men but very savage all same as animals. Listen, Major, I make best whisky in Matodi—Scotch, Irish, all brands I make im; I got very fine watches in my shop all same as gold, I got wireless set—armoured car, orses, machine guns is for you to do. Then we clean up tidy bit fifty-fifty, no?”
V
Two days later Mr. Youkoumian appeared at Mr. Brooks’s bungalow. “A letter from Miss Brooks,” he said. “A Sakuya fellow brought it in. I give im a rupee.”
It was an untidy scrawl on the back of an envelope.
Dearest Dad,
I am safe at present and fairly well. On no account attempt to follow the messenger. Joab and the bandits would torture me to death. Please send gramophone and records. Do come to terms or I
don’t know what will happen.
Prunella.
It was the first of a series of notes which, from now on, arrived every two or three days through the agency of Mr. Youkoumian. They mostly contained requests for small personal possessions…
Dearest Dad,
Not those records. The dance ones….. Please send face cream in pot in bathroom, also illustrated papers… the green silk pajamas… Lucky Strike cigarettes… two light drill skirts and the sleeveless silk shirts…
The letters were all brought to the Club and read aloud, and as the days passed the sense of tension became less acute, giving way to a general feeling that the drama had become prosaic.
“They are bound to reduce their price. Meanwhile the girl is safe enough,” pronounced Major Lepperidge, voicing authoritatively what had long been unspoken in the minds of the community.
The life of the town began to resume its normal aspect—administration, athletics, gossip; the American missionary’s second ear arrived and attracted little notice, except from Mr. Youkoumian, who produced an ear trumpet which he attempted to sell to the mission headquarters. The ladies of the colony abandoned the cloistered life which they had adopted during the first scare; the men became less protective and stayed out late at the Club as heretofore.
Then something happened to revive interest in the captive. Sam Stebbing discovered the cypher.
He was a delicate young man of high academic distinction, lately arrived from Cambridge to work with Grainger in the immigration office. From the first he had shown a keener interest than most of his colleagues in the situation. For a fortnight of oppressive heat he had sat up late studying the texts of Prunella’s messages; then he emerged with the startling assertion that there was a cypher. The system by which he had solved it was far from simple. He was ready enough to explain it, but his hearers invariably lost hold of the argument and contented themselves with the solution.
“… you see you translate it into Latin, you make an anagram of the first and last words of the first message, the second and last but one of the third when you start counting from the centre onwards. I bet that puzzled the bandits…”
“Yes, old boy. Besides, none of them can read anyway…”
“Then in the fourth message you go back to the original system, taking the fourth word and the last but three…”
“Yes, yes, I see. Don’t bother to explain any more. Just tell us what the message really says.”
“It says, ‘DAILY THREATENED WORSE THAN BREATH.’
“Her system’s at fault there, must mean ‘death’; then there’s a word I can’t understand—PLZGF, no doubt the poor child was in great agitation when she wrote it, and after that TRUST IN MY KING.”
This was generally voted a triumph. The husbands brought back the news to their wives.
“… Jolly ingenious the way old Stebbing worked it out. I won’t bother to explain it to you. You wouldn’t understand. Anyway, the result is clear enough. Miss Brooks is in terrible danger. We must all do something.”
“But who would have thought of little Prunella being so clever…”
“Ah, I always said that girl had brains.”
VI
News of the discovery was circulated by the Press agencies throughout the civilized world. At first the affair had received wide attention. It had been front page, with portrait, for two days, then middle page with portrait, then middle page halfway down without portrait, and finally page three of the Excess as the story became daily less alarming. The cypher gave the story a new lease on life. Stebbing, with portrait, appeared on the front page. Ten thousand pounds was offered by the paper towards the ransom, and a star journalist appeared from the skies in an aeroplane to conduct and report the negotiations.
He was a tough young man of Australian origin and from the moment of his arrival everything went with a swing. The colony sunk its habitual hostility to the Press, elected him to the Club, and filled his leisure with cocktail parties and tennis tournaments. He even usurped Lepperidge’s position as authority on world topics.
But his stay was brief. On the first day he interviewed Mr. Brooks and everyone of importance in the town, and cabled back a moving “human” story of Prunella’s position in the heart of the colony. From now onwards to three millions or so of readers Miss Brooks became Prunella. (There was only one local celebrity whom he was unable to meet. Poor Mr. Stebbing had “gone under” with the heat and had been shipped back to England on sick leave in a highly deranged condition of nerves and mind.)
On the second day he interviewed Mr. Youkoumian. They sat down together with a bottle of mastika at a little round table behind Mr. Youkoumian’s counter at ten in the morning. It was three in the afternoon before the reporter stepped out into the white-dust heat, but he had won his way. Mr. Youkoumian had promised to conduct him to the bandits’ camp. Both of them were pledged to secrecy. By sundown the whole of Matodi was discussing the coming expedition, but the journalist was not embarrassed by any inquiries; he was alone that evening, typing out an account of what he expected would happen next day.
He described the start at dawn… “grey light breaking over the bereaved township of Matodi… the camels snorting and straining at their reins… the many sorrowing Englishmen to whom the sun meant only the termination of one more night of hopeless watching… silver dawn breaking in the little room where Prunella’s bed stood, the coverlet turned down as she had left it on the fatal afternoon…” He described the ascent into the hills—“… luxuriant tropical vegetation giving place to barren scrub and bare rock…” He described how the bandits’ messenger blindfolded him and how he rode, swaying on his camel through darkness, into the unknown. Then, after what seemed an eternity, the halt; the bandage removed from his eyes… the bandits’ camp. “… twenty pairs of remorseless eastern eyes glinting behind ugly-looking rifles…” here he took the paper from his machine and made a correction; the bandits’ lair was to be in a cave “… littered with bone and skins.”… Joab, the bandit chief, squatting in barbaric splendour, a jewelled sword across his knees. Then the climax of the story; Prunella bound. For some time he toyed with the idea of stripping her, and began to hammer out a vivid word-picture of her girlish frame shrinking in the shadows, Andromeda-like. But caution restrained him and he contented himself with “… her lovely, slim body marked by the hempen ropes that cut into her young limbs…” The concluding paragraphs related how despair suddenly melted to hope in her eyes as he stepped forward, handing over the ransom to the bandit chief and “in the name of the Daily Excess and the People of Great Britain restored her to her heritage of freedom.”
It was late before he had finished, but he retired to bed with a sense of high accomplishment, and next morning deposited his manuscript with the Eastern Exchange Telegraph Company before setting out with Mr. Youkoumian for the hills.
The journey was in all respects totally unlike his narrative. They started, after a comfortable breakfast, surrounded by the well wishes of most of the British and many of the French colony, and instead of riding on camels they drove in Mr. Kentish’s baby Austin. Nor did they even reach Joab’s lair. They had not gone more than ten miles before a girl appeared walking alone on the track towards them. She was not very tidy, particularly about the hair, but, apart from this, showed every sign of robust well-being.
“Miss Brooks, I presume,” said the journalist, unconsciously following a famous precedent. “But where are the bandits?”
Prunella looked inquiringly towards Mr. Youkoumian who, a few steps in the rear, was shaking his head with vigour. “This British newspaper writing gentleman,” he explained, “e know all same Matodi gentlemen. E got the thousand pounds for Joab.”
“Well, he’d better take care,” said Miss Brooks, “the bandits are all round you. Oh you wouldn’t see them, of course, but I don’t mind betting that there are fifty rifles covering us at this moment from behind the boulders and bush and so on.” She waved a bare, suntanned arm expansively
towards the innocent-looking landscape. “I hope you’ve brought the money in gold.”
“It’s all here, in the back of the car, Miss Brooks.”
“Splendid. Well, I’m afraid Joab won’t allow you into his lair, so you and I will wait here, and Youkoumian shall drive into the hills and deliver it.”
“But listen, Miss Brooks, my paper has put a lot of money into this story. I got to see that lair.”
“I’ll tell you all about it,” said Prunella, and she did.
“There were three huts,” she began, her eyes downcast, her hands folded, her voice precise and gentle as though she were repeating a lesson, “the smallest and the darkest was used as my dungeon.”
The journalist shifted uncomfortably. “Huts,” he said. “I had formed the impression that they were caves.”
“So they were,” said Prunella. “Hut is a local word for cave. Two lions were chained beside me night and day. Their eyes glared and I felt their foetid breath. The chains were of a length so that if I lay perfectly still I was out of their reach. If I had moved hand or foot…” She broke off with a little shudder…
By the time that Youkoumian returned, the journalist had material for another magnificent front-page splash.
“Joab has given orders to withdraw the snipers,” Prunella announced, after a whispered consultation with the Armenian. “It is safe for us to go.”