Gleeson went back to sleep, but Gabriel felt agitated. He wandered over to one of the perimeter trenches. The sepoys guarding it looked edgy and fearful. He noticed that there were no English officers. Suddenly about a dozen African potters bolted out of the trees and raced past the outpost guards, whimpering and gibbering with fear. Gabriel turned and watched them disappear over the rise and down on to the beach. Everyone looked at each other in astonishment, then a murmur of alarm spread through the men in the trenches. Some loud arguments ensued and Gabriel saw some native officers raising their swagger sticks to restore order.
“Who were those men running away?” Gabriel asked a jemadar with a fierce moustache.
“Machine-gun bearers, sir. From the Rajputs.”
Gabriel swallowed. Where were the machine guns in that case? A commotion further up the line attracted his attention. It was the first of the stretcher parties returning from the fighting. He ran over. There were four stretcher cases, all white men. Orderlies and doctors fussed over their bodies. Three of the men were very still, their mouths open and their eyes starting. The man on the fourth stretcher was groaning and trying to say something.
“My God,” Gabriel said to no one in particular. “They’re all officers.” He noticed that the groaning man was a Lt Colonel.
“Who’s that?” Gabriel asked one of the doctors leaning over him.
“Lieutenant-Colonel Codrington, 13th Rajputs.”
Gabriel turned away and walked back towards the red house. He felt alarmed and confused at the sight of the wounded men. What was going on? If Bilderbeck were here, he thought, he’d be able to tell me. He took away with him a jumbled hazy impression of the men on the stretchers: he hadn’t noticed any blood, he’d been looking at their faces, their bare heads with once neatly brushed hair now mussed and tousled.
Gabriel rejoined Gleeson and they watched another half battalion, fresh from the beach, march off at once into the coconut groves. Runners arrived at and departed from the red house in ever increasing numbers. A heliograph was set up and soon messages were being flashed from shore to ship.
It grew hotter. By nine a.m. the sun was sufficiently powerful to force Gabriel into the shade. He looked at his company of men, all of whom had now claimed their rifles and packs and were sitting in small silent groups in whatever patch of shade they could find. Gabriel wondered if he should have reported to Brigade HQ in the red house but decided that the last thing they’d want to deal with now was his errant company.
At about half past nine the report of heavy guns could be heard from somewhere in the bay. About six salvos were fired.
“Probably the Fox,” Gleeson said, exposing his yellow teeth in a wide grin. “Shelling Tanga,” he said. “That’ll show ‘em.”
Shortly after, they heard bugle calls and a distant yelling. The sound of firing, which hadn’t stopped since Gleeson had woken him at six, seemed to be drawing closer.
“Are those our bugles?” Gabriel asked.
“Think so,” Gleeson said.
“They don’t sound like them, though.”
Gleeson cocked his head. “No they don’t, do they?”
A staff captain came out of the red house, looking around, and loped over.
“Are you ‘A’ company, 69th Palamcottahs?” he said languidly to Gabriel. Gabriel said they were. “Good. We’ve had a message about you. Seems you’re to stay put for the time being.”
“Stay put? What? Here?”
“That seems to be the idea.” The staff captain removed his sun helmet to reveal a bald and shiny pate which he mopped with a handkerchief. “Filthy hot,” he said.
“How are things?” Gabriel asked. “I mean, what’s the picture?” There were more bugle calls as he spoke.
“Stiffish resistance at the railway cutting,” the staff captain said. “We’re retiring. In good order,” he added hastily. “We’ll wait for the main landing today…Look, I must dash.”
Gabriel watched him bound back to the red house. He went back to Gleeson.
“They’ve had a message about us,” he said authoritatively. “Seems we’re to stay put.”
♦
Gabriel and Gleeson kept their distance as the Rajputs and Pioneers straggled back into camp. The men were either talking with hysterical excitement or else were cowed and dejected. They watched dozens of wounded being carried and helped down to the beach. Soon the area around the red house was thick with exhausted troops.
“Doesn’t look so good,” Gleeson said. “Does it?” At lunch time Gabriel went up to the red house to see if he could get any more information. It seemed that the landing of the main force on beaches ‘B’ and ‘C’ round the headland was proceeding as normal, but the beaches were so congested with men and equipment that the Palamcottahs were still on the Homayun and probably wouldn’t be disembarked until the next day.
“Seems we’re still to stay put,” Gabriel reported back to Gleeson.
♦
In the afternoon it rained for two hours and everyone was soaked again. Normally the men of the Palamcottahs had regimental bearers and servants to cook and care for them, but as these hadn’t been landed with them they had to fend for themselves. Gabriel found that he still wasn’t hungry though he drank some fresh coconut milk — of which there was a plentiful supply — with some relish. Unfortunately, an hour later, this brought on a severe attack of diarrhoea. As a result, as evening approached at the end of his first day on enemy soil, Gabriel was feeling weak and rather seedy as well as damp and dirty. He did, however, manage to have a shave before he went back to the red house to inquire if there had been any further news for ‘A’ company.
“My Christ! Are you all right?” Bilderbeck asked him. “You look dreadful.”
“Tummy upset,” Gabriel confessed. “But listen, what happened today?”
“A bloody shambles, that’s what,” Bilderbeck said fiercely. “A bloody shambles.”
“What have you got there? If you don’t mind my asking,” Gabriel said. Bilderbeck was standing halfway down the stairs that led to the upper floor of the red house. His arms were full of what looked, to Gabriel, like ladies’ underclothes.
“Ladies’ underclothes,” Bilderbeck said. “Courtesy of our absent hostess. They’re going to provide me with a soft bed tonight. You won’t believe this,” he glanced right and left to make sure he wasn’t overheard, “but I’ve lost my pillow.” He gave a great shout of laughter. Gabriel responded nervously. “Help yourself,” Bilderbeck offered, unloading half his bundle. “No sense in sleeping on the ground.”
Gabriel followed him out to the patch of piebald lawn that was on the landward side of the house and watched him construct a bed of palm fronds and petticoats.
“What happened today?” Gabriel asked again. “It didn’t look as if things went as planned.”
“To put it mildly,” Bilderbeck said, adjusting his makeshift couch with the toe of his boot. “Bloody damn fool Navy, that’s what,” he said. “This idiotic truce business. When the Fox sailed into Tanga harbour yesterday morning to abrogate the thing they gave the Germans twenty-four hours warning of our attack. Just enough time for von Lettow-Vorbeck to get his troops down from Moshi by rail.”
“So Tanga was deserted.”
“It was.”
“And now it’s well defended.”
“Getting stronger by the hour.” Bilderbeck’s face was lit up for an instant by a seraphic smile. He dug his tobacco pouch out of his pocket and offered it to Gabriel.