Temple felt suddenly disorientated and confused. Von Bishop’s matter-of-fact behaviour, his genial appropriation of his goods and chattels, the total absence of threat hardly made it seem like a criminal act.
“Criminals,” Temple said experimentally, more out of a sense of duty than outrage. He felt the same. “Criminals!” he repeated more fiercely.
“What’s that, my dear?” Matilda asked, raising her eyes from her book. If she was going to read all the way to Voi, Temple said to himself, he would get very angry. He shook the reins viciously and the buggy moved forward with a lurch. The ayah gave a squeal of alarm as she fell off the back. Temple reined in.
“When are we coming back?” Glenway called out as the whimpering ayah clambered back on board.
“Soon,” Temple said with grim confidence. “Very soon indeed.”
♦
It was about a forty-mile journey from Smithville to Voi along an old caravan track which led through particularly and and dusty scrubland. The Smith family in their buggy made slow but steady progress without seeing any further signs of the Germans. Temple briefly savoured the cruel irony of the fact that he had intended to make this journey today anyway — but with two valuable loads of sisal, instead of his placid wife and increasingly fractious children. For the first time and for a brief moment he experienced a feeling of rage and frustration which seemed to do some justice to his new refugee status, but it didn’t last long. The track was too bumpy and the waggon jolted too much for Matilda to read, he noted with selfish pleasure. But she seemed as unperturbed as always, gazing out over the thorny scrub, which shimmered and vibrated in the haze, at the distant hills and mountain ranges, fanning herself with her book. She also, in an effort to amuse the children, played interminable word games which seemed to consist of building ever-longer lists of groceries and vegetables, repeated ad nauseam, and which drove Temple wild with a kind of rampaging boredom, until he ordered them to cease forthwith. They stopped once to water the mules, for an hour and a half, at midday, and ate some sandwiches which Joseph had prepared before they left. Temple looked back up the road to Taveta, squinting into the glare, wondering if he could see the smoke from his burning fields.
It was nearly dark as they approached the small village of Bura, still some eight miles from Voi. The mules were plodding very slowly, the children and Matilda were asleep, curled up in the back, and Temple himself nodded dozily over the reins.
“Halt!” came a sudden shout. “Who goes there?” followed immediately by a ragged volley of shots. Temple saw the flash of the muzzles, but as far as he could make out no bullet came anywhere near.
“Get down!” he yelled at his screaming terrified family, and then bellowed “Friends!” up the road in the direction the shots had come from.
“Cease fire! Cease fire, you bloody fools!” came a familiar voice. A lantern came bobbing down the track towards them, casting its glow on long thin legs protruding from flapping shorts, and improbably shod in black socks and very large tennis shoes.
“Thought I recognized your accent, Smith,” said Wheech-Browning. “Sorry my men were a bit premature. ‘Trigger-happy’ is the expression in your part of the world, I believe. Gave the children a fright I expect.” He held up the lantern. “Evening Mrs Smith. Sorry about all this fuss. Wheech-Browning here, late of Taveta. Ha-ha!”
“You stupid…stupid dumb idiot!” Temple seethed. “You could have killed us.”
“Steady on, old chap. You could have been the wa-Germani for all we knew. No harm done anyway, thank goodness, that’s the main thing.” He gave a nervous smile. “Come across any Huns by any chance?”
“Yes,” Temple said, too exhausted to remonstrate further. “They threw us off the farm this morning. Set fire to the crops.”
“My God, the swine,” Wheech-Browning said, his voice hoarse with loathing. Temple wondered where the man got his antagonism from. “Can’t say I didn’t warn you,” Wheech-Browning added, a little smugly. “They didn’t take you prisoner, though, that’s a bonus. We clapped old Heuber in irons for the duration, p.d.q. You know Heuber? Chap with the rubber at Kibwezi. He was most put out. Listen, are you going on to Voi? Can I get a lift back with you?”
On the way to Voi Wheech-Browning gave him his version of the attack on Taveta. He claimed he’d received no message from the Germans to surrender and was extremely surprised one morning to see about three hundred of them marching down the road ‘bold as brass’. It would be too undignified to leave without firing a shot, he thought, so he ordered his men to open fire. Nobody, he was sure, had been hit, but he was extremely surprised at the way in which the German askaris had scattered and had proceeded to lay down a furious fire on Taveta’s flimsy defences. Wheech-Browning and his men wasted no time in setting off down the road to Voi. Luckily, Wheech-Browning said, considering the amount of bullets shot in their direction, they had suffered only one casualty.
“Unfortunately he was my bearer,” Wheech-Browning said. “Got a round in the throat. I was standing right beside him. Fountains of blood, you wouldn’t believe it. I was covered, head to tail — dripping. Of course the fellow had been carrying all my personal gear. I had to leave everything behind in the retreat, everyone was hot-footing it out of town, I can tell you. Which explains,” he pointed to his footwear, “this unorthodox regalia.”
Temple was glad enough to have Wheech-Browning beside him as an escort. He felt it was only his due anyway, considering he’d had his farm seized and his crops burned in the cause of an Anglo-German war. Wheech-Browning could see them all right, he reasoned, make sure the authorities cared for them properly.
He was surprised when, as they reached the outskirts of Voi, Wheech-Browning leapt off the buggy saying he’d better report to the KAR officer who was in command.
“But hey,” Temple called. “What about us?”
“What about you, old man?”
“What are we meant to do?”
“I should put up at the dak bungalow at the station,” Wheech-Browning advised. “Pretty reasonable rates, and jolly good breakfasts.”
♦
The next morning, foregoing his jolly good breakfast, Temple went in search of the KAR officer to see what the British Army’s plans were for transporting the Smith family to Nairobi. He found the man in the Voi post office which was being used as a temporary command headquarters.
“My dear fellow,” said the KAR officer. “No can do.” He was smoking a pipe which he didn’t bother to remove from his mouth. As a result all his words were delivered through clenched teeth which made them sound, to Temple’s ears, even more heartless.
“But I’m a refugee,” Temple protested. “I’m a victim…of, of German war crimes. Surely there’s something in your rulebook about care of refugees?”
The man took his pipe out of his mouth, pointed its saliva-shiny stem in Temple’s direction and closed one eye as if taking aim.
“Ah. Ah-ha. But, you see, I’m not so sure you are a refugee. According to Reggie Wheech-Browning you were warned to evacuate your farm over a week ago. I’m afraid you can hardly expect us to take the consequences of your”—he stuck his pipe in his mouth again—“what shall we say? Your recalcitrance.”
Temple marched back to the dak bungalow viciously cursing the British Army in general and ‘Reggie’ Wheech-Browning in particular. He felt more irate and hard done-by now than when he’d been watching von Bishop destroying his livelihood. At the dak bungalow he discovered that the train from Mombasa to Nairobi, which had spent the night at Voi, had departed half an hour previously. The Smith family would have to wait until the next morning before their journey could continue.