“Are you all right, sergeant?” Felix asked.
“Oh aye. It’s just unco heat.”
Frearson came puffing up from the rear at this point.
“Didn’t you hear the bugle?” he demanded angrily. He seemed furious.
“No. Sorry. What for?”
“We’re pulling back. Lines of communication too extended. Bivouac by the side of the road then march back to camp tomorrow. Pass the word to Loveday and the others, and keep your ears open in future.”
Just then, beyond the curve in the road ahead, there was a loud explosion. A column of smoke and dust shot up high in the air, followed by the rattle of falling stones and gouts of earth. There were shouts and cries of alarm from Loveday’s platoon. Everyone fell to the ground.
“My God! Artillery?” Frearson gasped, alarm tensing his putty features.
“Scairdy gowk,” Felix heard Gilzean mutter behind him.
There were no more explosions. They got to their feet and ran round the corner. In the middle of the road was a crater surrounded by Loveday’s excited platoon. By its side lay Loveday, or rather his top half. There was no sign of his legs or much of anything below his waist. None of his platoon seemed hurt, beyond a few cuts and bruises. They were voluble with nervous excitement over their narrow escape. Half a dozen men must have walked over the mine before Loveday’s boot set it off. What would Loveday have said? Felix found himself wondering. ‘Nom de nom’, ‘zut alor’?
Felix turned away and looked at the landscape. The road sloped down slightly at this point, affording a panorama of the countryside. The burnt grass plains, the thorn scrub, undulating hills fading out into the evening haze in the south, the lusher green of the Rovuma basin away in the distance. No sign of a German anywhere.
♦
They spent the next morning and afternoon laboriously retracing their steps to the camp they’d left the day before. After a quiet night they buried Loveday at the foot of a baobab tree in the morning. After the burial service Felix returned to his tent for a breakfast of corned beef, mashed sweet potato and a local variety of bean which an ever efficient Human had ready for him. He was half-way through his meal when Gilzean approached with a tin can in his hand.
“What is it, Gilzean?” Felix asked.
“Could you take a peek at this, please sir?”
Felix looked. It contained a thick albuminous dark liquid.
“What’s this, coffee?”
“No. It’s aidle from my cullage.”
“Oh yes?”
“I’ve been passin’ this drumlie loppert water for a week. I just get a mitchkin, ye ken. A jaup.”
Felix frowned. He was about to ask Gilzean to repeat himself when he saw a vaguely familiar lanky figure sauntering over.
“I say, Cobb?” it shouted. “Captain Frearson said I’d find you here. Got some interesting news. It’s me, Wheech-Browning, Kilwa, GSO II (Intelligence). Remember?”
“Oh yes. Have a seat. I won’t be a minute.” He turned to Gilzean, and handed him back his tin.
“Let me get this straight,” he said. “Is this something to do with your health?” He wondered what Wheech-Browning wanted.
“Aye. I’m fair doited with worry. This grugous stuff…”
“How are you feeling?” He wanted to dismiss Gilzean, but the man was persistent.
“A bit tired. But it’s oorie. It could be a clyre in my culls.”
“Yes?” Wheech-Browning was staring curiously at Gilzean.
“Or my moniplies. My jag. Yes my jag even.”
Felix felt confused; by now he’d come almost to understand Gilzean, but when the man was upset his language retreated into the obscurities of his arcane Celtic vocabulary. He knew suddenly that Wheech-Browning had news of Gabriel.
“I shouldn’t worry,” he told Gilzean, “If you’re not feeling too bad otherwise. I’m sure it’ll clear up, um, whatever it is. See the MO if any complications arise.” That seemed to cover everything.
“Thank you very much indeed, sir,” Gilzean said gratefully, saluted and walked off with his curious tin.
“That’s remarkable,” Wheech-Browning said. “What language was that man speaking?”
“English.”
“Never! Quite incomprehensible.”
“A Scottish version, anyway.”
“Can you understand him?”
“It took a while, but I can catch the basic drift now.” He paused. “You said you had some news.”
“Yes,” said Wheech-Browning. “About your brother. We’ve come across some traces of him. You remember that American chap, Smith? He telephoned yesterday from a place called Nanda.”
Felix felt a sinking feeling in his body, as if all its vital fluids were being dragged towards his feet.
“Have you found him?”
“Not exactly. But we do know where he was up to a few days ago. I’ve cleared it with your captain. You can come along with me.”
♦
Wheech-Browning explained what had happened as they bounced down the road towards Nanda in his Ford. ‘Kilforce’, moving parallel to but faster than ‘Linforce’, had captured Nambindinga the day before, found it deserted and had advanced on to the next village down the road, Nanda, where they had discovered a small POW camp. The prisoners had passed on information about Gabriel. How he had escaped just two days previously.
Felix and Wheech-Browning drove past columns of ‘Lin-force’ troops marching briskly down the road. Loveday’s mine crater had already been filled in by the pioneers. Felix wondered if anyone really knew what was going on in this war. Why had ‘Kilforce’ been halted and ‘Linforce’ advanced? He could have marched into Nanda…He felt a spine-snapping tension in his body. He was buoyant with a kind of nervous expectation and yet couldn’t ignore the forebodings that nagged at him. What would happen when he met Gabriel again? Could he tell him his fateful news?
Wheech-Browning was in a chatty mood.
“Remember that Zeppelin I told you about? Well, it set off all right a few days ago. The twenty-first, I think. Crossed the Med. and headed down over the desert in Sudan. Just as it got to Khartoum, our chaps in signals sent it a message in code, German code, saying: “German forces in East Africa have surrendered.” We’ve got the jerry codes, you see. We captured them in 1915. Bilderbeck’s work again. Great loss, that man.” His face looked solemn for an instant. “What do you think happened?”
Felix wasn’t really listening. “What? Oh, um, no idea.”
“Turned right round and went straight back home, that’s what. Bloody marvellous, don’t you think?”
♦
Nanda was full of King’s African Rifles. Felix looked about him as he drove into the little town. He saw the row of cramped mud-walled, tin-roofed buildings lining the main street; the shade trees planted here and there; the tin and wood bungalows of the planters’ families; the long stone buildings of the former agricultural research station; the wire enclosure of the small POW stockade.
Wheech-Browning reported to battalion headquarters, which had taken over one of the larger bungalows. They were told where they might find Temple Smith and walked down the main street in search of him.
Behind the hospital, sitting in the shade of a large mango tree, were a disconsolate group of German women and children. Some little way off Temple was talking to one of them. Felix and Wheech-Browning approached. Temple broke off his interrogation and greeted Felix with some enthusiasm and Wheech-Browning with less.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded of Wheech-Browning suspiciously.
“I’m GSO II (Intelligence), for Heaven’s sake,” Wheech-Browning protested. “This is a matter for my department.”