CHAPTER TWELVE
The main port city of British Somaliland was a bloody awful place to get to and no charming spot when you did, the only blessing being that, sitting on the Gulf of Aden, there was a wind slightly less hot than the normal air temperature, which could rise in the high summer to over fifty degrees.
Jardine had departed the ship at Istanbul, taking a train to Athens to pick up an Imperial Airways flight that went via Aden to Rhodesia and South Africa, then the regular boat across from Aden, having sent a telegram ahead to alert the man from the Colonial Office of his impending arrival.
To call Berbera a port in the modern sense was risible: it had a tiny harbour, and any ship of size calling would have been obliged to anchor offshore, while behind that the buildings were sparse, low, mostly mud-built and painted white. That, combined with the sandy nature of the soil, made the landscape blinding to the eye.
The hat Jardine now wore was a white panama; the man waiting to meet him on the quayside was in the ubiquitous pith helmet and shorts of the cartoons, and he had a clipped tone to his voice that made him sound, as well as look, like the archetypal district officer.
‘Conrad Mason, Mr Jardine,’ a greeting that came with a rather feeble handshake. ‘Welcome to British Somaliland.’
Behind Jardine the boat, more a sort of ferry, was being loaded with live animals, cattle, sheep and goats destined for the dinner tables of Aden; being herded by irate owners, that was a noisy affair. Not far from where Mason stood was a dust-covered grey Hillman with a local driver, tall, slim, barefoot, in crisp whites and a red fez, which made Jardine wonder, for he was sweating profusely, how the native managed to look so smart and dry.
‘We are up in the hills at this time of year,’ Mason said. ‘It’s too hot in this place, so if you give your luggage to my driver we will be off.’
‘Cooler, is it, in the hills?’ he asked, instructing by sign language the porter who had brought ashore his luggage to hand over his one suitcase.
Mason grinned. ‘Only marginally so, but any relief is welcome.’
The inside of the car was hotter than the exterior till they got moving, while the breeze through the open windows was baking when they did, the two passengers engaging in the kind of small talk which seemed so out of place. ‘Did you have a pleasant journey?’; ‘How were the India Office wallahs in Aden, helpful I hope?’; ‘How was London the last time you were there?’ The questions were banal, but then so were Jardine’s replies.
Hat off, Mason was a rather bland-looking fellow, sandy-haired, that cut very short for obvious reasons, his unlined face tanned in that way which comes from reflected sunlight rather than direct exposure, a sort of pale-beige colour, in contrast to his forearms and legs, which were a deep-brown hue. Jardine guessed him to be about thirty years of age, and given his location, not very well connected in the service: whoever was governor, British Somaliland was not a top posting, and flyblown Berbera was below that in the Colonial Office pecking order.
General chat, as they bounced along a far-from-perfect road, explained that not much happened in this part of Africa, which Jardine took to mean it was seen as unimportant. It was one of those places Britannia occupied as much to prevent others from doing so as against any strategic imperative.
There was the control of the slave trade to Arabia, still active, and the fertility of the grazing land, which, thanks to biannual rains, fed Aden and removed the need for that enclave to rely on its own hostile Yemeni hinterlands. Added to that was the protection of the ancient caravan routes to the interior, carried out by the British-led Somali Camel Corps, based in Hargeisa.
The hill settlement was not large, a series of scattered bungalows, each with a servant on the veranda pulling a string to move the interior punkah, for the air was still hot, though not as baking as the coast. To be under the sun was to be broiled, so it was a relief just to get to the indoor shade, where he was introduced to Mason’s wife. There was nothing soft about her handshake: it was both firm and energetic, backed up by a very toothy grin, which could not be called a smile, the teeth were too large, and to that was added a sort of endless bobbing of the body.
Margery Mason, ‘M’ for short, was a big woman, much more so than her husband, and that was in her bones, as well as a head topped by a mass of tight curls. The voice, when she spoke, had that hearty tone Jardine associated with fox-hunting folk, and she was dressed in a shapeless, floral garment that did nothing to delineate a figure, if indeed she had one. When she asked him if he wanted something cool to drink, it was following by a sort of braying sound.
‘Cool is relative, is it not, M?’
‘Golly, yes, Conrad,’ she replied. ‘No ice here, I’m afraid. Our refrigerator is on the coast and there’s no power up here; the contents are fetched up in a box every morning by Sulli, our driver. The ice melts almost as soon as it is opened. Still, the lemonade will be refreshing.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Do you wish a shower and to change into a fresh shirt?’
‘That would be nice.’
‘Banda,’ she cried, unnecessary since the servant was only a few feet away. ‘Show Mr Jardine to his room.’
The person who came forward was young, with the even features and mid-brown face of the local Somalis, while he moved with a lithe grace that seemed common to the people. Idly looking out of the car window on the way, Jardine had seen women with baskets on their heads walking, their slender hips swaying in the most alluring way. Yet there was also something in the look the Banda gave this new guest, direct, enquiring, that seemed somewhat out of place: it was too bold.
‘When you are changed,’ Mason said, ‘you can join me in my study.’
‘Man talk,’ brayed his wife, making a sort of chuffing sound as amusement set her large teeth playing a tattoo on her lower lip.
If the lemonade was not chilled it did still manage to be refreshing, though Jardine had made sure there was enough left over: it would be poor manners to drink them out of house and home when everything had to be fetched up from the coast.
‘Fear not, Sulli has to make another journey to get the food for supper. Can’t keep it up here, rots in no time. Now, Mr Jardine, to business.’ Mason sat forward in his basket-weave chair and joined his hands before his knees. ‘While I will do everything in my power to facilitate your endeavours, my actual participation has to be limited. I cannot have them finding out in Hargeisa what you are up to.’
‘I understand, Mr Mason, and I will try to do nothing which jeopardises your position here, which I appreciate is delicate.’
‘Good, it’s not much of one, but I like it.’
Jardine had to stop himself expressing surprise: if he had been stuck here, he would be lobbying hard for a move and asking his guest if he knew of anyone who could help him get a better posting. He was also tempted to ask what motivated Mason to go against the official line of non-intervention, but that was a given: the man had his own reasons and would probably be embarrassed if asked to enumerate them.
‘We will have some guests tonight to dinner, and a couple of our military chaps who will fill you in on what the Eyeties are up to, and pretty comprehensive it will be. I am obliged also to entertain a pair of American visitors whom the Governor General stopped from entering Ethiopia through Hargeisa.’
‘The military, they have good intelligence?’
‘They do. We are not much loved here, but compared to the Italians, our neighbours to the south, we are considered saintly. Most of what you will hear comes from their capital of Mogadishu and the waters off Massawa, reports of the build-up of supplies in both Eritrea and Italian Somaliland.’
‘Why are the Italians so hated?’
‘Usual thing: brutal repression in the past, settlements — a surprising number of people have come from Italy to make their homes here, and naturally they want the best land to grow crops or as pasture for their animals. Forced eviction has been common in the past, with the odd poor native slung from the nearest tree if he dared to protest.’