“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 Schütztruppe 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.