He looked round at the faces of his two companions: Wheech-Browning sleepy and stupid; Felix tense and expectant. They made a strange group, he thought.
“You said this von Bishop man was the same one who commandeered your farm, didn’t you?” Wheech-Browning asked.
“That’s right.”
“I thought he was your neighbour. Did you have some kind of feud going, or something?”
“No,” Temple said. “Not until he destroyed my farm.” Temple looked grim. “What kind of man is it, I ask you, who one day can talk to you about sisal farming — in a perfectly interested and friendly way — and then, the next moment, steal away your livelihood?” Temple looked to Felix for a reassuring reply but he clearly wasn’t listening.
“Sounds like a shrewd businessman to me,” Wheech-Browning said with a squawk of laughter.
“Just what do you mean by that?” Temple said in a steely voice. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sorry, I’m sure,” Wheech-Browning said huffily. “But you did ask.”
Their argument was interrupted by a shout from one of the askari scouts. The man stood at the base of a stone kopje a little way to the right. They wheeled their mules and rode over. In a hollow between two spurs of rock were the remains of a camp fire. Temple dismounted and ran his fingers through the ashes.
“Ouch,” he said. “Still hot. They can’t be more than an hour away.” He picked something out of the ashes. “Looks like a piece of leather binding from a book. What do you make of that?”
Felix held up a sack. “Empty. Is this von Bishop’s camp? Or Gabriel’s?”
Temple looked around. There was a pile of droppings from a mule. “Von Bishop’s,” he said. There was also a small rough mound of freshly dug earth. “I don’t think your brother would bother to bury his rubbish.”
“Who left the sack then?”
There was a shout from Wheech-Browning who hadn’t dismounted.
“About half a mile away,” he called. “Masses of birds wheeling around.”
Temple and Felix remounted and trotted after Wheech-Browning. True enough, a dozen kites and vultures circled and flapped above something in the grass. They saw Wheech-Browning get off his horse and run forward, windmilling his arms and shouting. Five or six birds shrugged themselves awkwardly into the air. Temple and Felix dismounted a few yards off and walked through the grass towards Wheech-Browning. A subdued droning noise filled the air from thousands of flies. The grass sterns all around them were blackened and weighed down with a fruit of shiny bluebottles and duller blowflies. Each step raised a temporary cloud, like a thick animated dust.
Wheech-Browning stumbled towards them, his face white.
“Good Lord,” he said. “Christ. It’s a body.” He put his hand on his throat. “No head.”
“No head?” Felix said with alarm.
“Bloody flies!” Wheech-Browning said. “Where do they all come from? A huge empty plain. That’s what I want to know.”
Temple walked forward with Felix. He looked across at him. His face was slightly screwed up, as if he were walking through a cloud of smoke or gas.
The body lay on its belly in a wide clearing of violently torn and trampled grass. The birds had already pecked away both calves and the porcelain gleam of exposed ribs shone beneath the tattered shirt.
“Army boots,” Temple said, not wanting to speculate further.
“Looks too small for Gabriel,” Felix said bravely. “He was a big chap, Gabriel.”
Wheech-Browning rejoined them. By now they were all covered with flies, flies crawling all over their faces, oblivious to their waving hands. Temple took some paces to one side.
“It’s been chopped off,” he said. “That wasn’t an animal.”
“My Christ,” said Wheech-Browning. He suddenly leant forward from the waist and vomited. He straightened up unsteadily, wiping his mouth. “Phew,” he said. “There goes breakfast.”
As if on some unspoken order they withdrew to the mules.
“What the hell is going on?” Temple said. “Who chops off a man’s head in the middle of the veldt?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s not Gabriel,” Felix said. He swallowed heavily. “I think. I mean you can’t tell. Without…”
“Who is it, then?” Temple said. “Von Bishop?”
“Where’s the head, though?” Wheech-Browning asked. “Why carry off the head? I don’t understand.”
Temple suddenly recalled the mound of earth at the camp. “You stay here,” he said to Wheech-Browning. “Keep the birds off. We’re going back to the camp-site.”
“Scarecrow,” Wheech-Browning said, holding his hands out from his side. “That’s what the chaps called me at school.”
Temple and Felix rode back to the camp-site.
“What is it?” Felix asked.
“I think they’ve buried the head there,” Temple indicated the mound.
“Oh God.”
“Shall I do it or will you?”
“I think you should.”
Temple got down on his knees and began digging away the loosely tamped earth with his hands. Six inches down his fingers struck something soft. He felt his mouth swim with saliva. He dug some more. The head was wrapped in a square of blanket.
He turned round. “It’s here,” he called to Felix, who was standing some yards away. Felix came over. Temple could see his jaw muscles were clenched with effort. His top lip and growth of beard were dewed with sweat. He looked down at the blanket-wrapped head. He took a long quivering breath.
“Could you…please.”
Temple reached down into the hole and carefully un-wrapped the head. He saw a squarish handsome face, very white and thin, with open eyes and mouth. He wiped away some of the larger ants. The hair was pale brown and tousled. Something about it made it looKARtificial.
He looked round and saw Felix crying silently, his hands over his face, his shoulders shaking.
“Poor Gabe,” he heard him say.
Temple wrapped up the head again. Then he stood up and walked over to Felix. He put his hand on his shoulder for a second. He didn’t know what to say. He felt an inexpressible sorrow for the young man. He walked away from him, past the two scouts who tended their mules, kicking savagely at the grass as he went. He took some deep breaths, looked up at the sky, beat some dust from his trousers. Off in the distance he could see Wheech-Browning capering madly around the corpse, waving his long arms at the wheeling birds as if he were putting on a performance for them. His yells and whoops carried faintly across the grass.
Temple walked back to Felix.
“What made him do that?” Felix asked hoarsely. “Why did he need to do that?”
“I don’t know,” Temple said. “I don’t have any idea.”
“What’s his name?”
“Von Bishop.”
“I just don’t understand,” Felix said softly, a tremor distorting his voice. “What would make anyone do a thing like that?”
“I don’t know,” Temple said with some vehemence. “It just doesn’t make any kind of sense at all.”
PART FOUR: After the War
1: 15 May 1918, Boma Durio, Portuguese East Africa
“Snap!”
“Eh?”
“Snap. I win,” Felix said. “Ganhador. Me.”