‘And we don’t do that?’
Mason grinned. ‘Britain imposes a very light touch in our part of Somalia now.’
‘Not always the case, Mr Mason.’
The colonial man nodded to acknowledge that. ‘That is what happens when you give the military its head, Mr Jardine.’
Mason was referring to the way this territory had been pacified. Britannia originally held the coast but not the interior: this was the homeland of what the British yellow press had named the ‘Mad Mullah’, really Abdullah Hassan, the leader of the Dervish State. He had held the colonisers at bay for two decades and had even defeated what was then called the Somali Camel Constabulary in a pitched battle before the Great War.
That conflict left him in peace, but as soon as it was over the army came in and now they had what Cal Jardine had so railed against in Iraq: aircraft and the ability to bomb civilians at will, and even then it took trickery to defeat the ‘Mad Mullah’. He had been lured by the military command into a promise of talks, assured of an official visit by some worthy from London, to discuss some kind of settlement.
What he got, having gathered his family and followers at his own capital city, was a massacre. Unopposed by anything other than rifle fire, British planes had bombed the mud-built city and indiscriminately killed hundreds of both warriors and civilians. Hassan had been forced to flee and his twenty-year fight for independence — the British press called it his rebellion — was over.
‘We civvies are very much in control now,’ Mason continued. ‘We let the people do very much what they want, as long as it’s legal, and few of our fellow countrymen seem to want to settle here. If they do, and seek to buy land, we make sure they pay a fair price — not something the Italians are prone to. Certainly they have sought to mend their ways with agriculture and recruitment in their armed forces. When they do invade Abyssinia, the colonial recruits will be at the forefront.’
‘They will invade?’
‘As soon as the weather cools, I fear.’
‘I was told in London arrangements had been made to transport what I am bringing overland.’
‘Tell me when your goods will be here, what they comprise of, and I will send a message at once.’
‘Where do I land them?’
‘Tell me, Mr Jardine, how much do you know about the slave trade and an old port called Ziela?’
By the time he changed for dinner Cal Jardine knew a great deal about slaving, the most telling fact that it still happened, despite the best efforts of the various colonial powers to stop it. All around in this part of the world there were people disinclined to work: they would much rather have someone else do it for them, and if such people could be unpaid slaves so much the better, very much so in the Arabian Peninsula.
He had seen the beauty of many of the Somalis for himself, and they were prized for that quality and often sold as wives or catamites. For the more menial tasks, no part of the interior — remote areas of Abyssinia and Southern Sudan — was safe from raids by bands of armed men who made their living from transporting those they kidnapped to the markets of Oman, Saudi Arabia and the various lands of the emirs along the Persian Gulf. But fearing interference from the British, they had stopped using a port that had, for centuries, provided their route out.
It was not just slavery that had declined: the port of Zeila, at one time bustling and important, was now a decaying backwater thanks to the rise of Djibouti, the capital of French Somaliland just to the north. Zeila had been a port for sailing boats; the French had made a proper harbour for large ships at Djibouti, just like the Italians had done further north at Massawa. The British, with the wonderful natural harbour of Aden so close, had no plans to improve Berbera.
His shirts had been washed, starched and ironed while he had been talking to Mason and his other clothing had been pressed. Now, with the sun gone and the heat of the day rising into a clear sky, the atmosphere was becoming tolerable and the time came to dress for dinner. As he put in his shirt studs he wondered at the progress of the Tarvita: where would she have got to now? Had that been managed without difficulty? Certainly they had got through the Bosphorus with ease, and by now they ought to be approaching the Suez Canal.
Jardine was hungry, having had little to eat since arriving, some dates and nuts brought in to the study by one of Mason’s many serving boys, it being the practice to wait till the sun went down to have a proper meal. The whole bungalow was now full of the smell of good cooking, of spices and roast meat which he had seen turning on a spit above glowing wood outdoors. Also he had heard vehicles arriving, he assumed the soldiers, as well as two American voices, one rather strident and female, the other a deep male one, both bouncing off the braying enthusiasm of M. Bow tie knotted, he put on his dinner jacket and made his way to meet them.
‘Ah, Jardine,’ cried Mason, ‘come and be introduced to my other guests. This is Miss Corrie Littleton, from Boston, and our other American guest, Tyler Alverson, who, I believe, hails originally from California. And, of course, our two defenders of this part of the colony, Captain Peydon and our naval representative, Lieutenant Grace, who has kindly brought with him some of his Plymouth Gin.’
‘My God, it packs a punch,’ said Alverson. ‘Even with ice.’
‘Hundred per cent proof,’ Grace replied, grabbing the lapel of his dark-blue dress mess jacket like a lawyer.
M brayed. ‘Our American friend has brought a load of ice up from Berbera, ha ha! Insists he can’t drink gin without it.’
‘A touch of bitters is all I need,’ insisted the navy man, a rather vacuous-looking fellow. ‘Be thought a pansy if I asked for ice in the wardroom, what?’
It was interesting to see Peydon react to that: for some reason the captain was angry with his naval chum. Red of face already, and with pronounced cheeks, he went a sort of scarlet shade that was as near as damn it to the colour of his army mess jacket and his voice was a growl.
‘Each to his own, I say.’
‘You would be better off not drinking it at all,’ insisted Miss Littleton.
She was young, slim, quite tall for a woman and looked slightly mannish with her bobbed blonde hair. Added to that she had the kind of cracked voice that sounded like a permanent bad throat.
‘It is bad for your body and your brain, indeed it is nothing but a social ill which-’
‘More lemonade?’ asked Mason, her words and his gesture underlining the fact that she was a teetotaller, the interjection seeming to spare them a lecture on temperance. Her voice had a strangely orotund accent too, seemingly elongating each word in what sounded like a parody of the King’s English.
Her host indicated to one of his houseboys and a jug was brought forward. ‘And you, Jardine, what will you have, old chap?’
‘I think a pink gin would be the ticket, with, if Mr Alverson can spare it, some of his ice.’
‘What do we have here,’ drawled the American, his face amused, ‘a cultured Englishman?’
‘Scotsman, Mr Alverson, which removes any hope of my being civilised.’
‘Hear, hear,’ cackled M, who then suddenly realised she was praising the wrong thing. ‘Oh dear, most dreadfully sorry.’
Mason was mixing his drink, throwing the Angostura Bitters around the glass before tipping it out, then pouring the gin. ‘Mr Jardine is here on a little errand for HMG, to pick our brains about the ice cream vendors next door.’
‘Really?’ asked Alverson, with a slightly arch look.
‘Yes, I am going to closet him with our military might for a bit so they can brief him.’
‘Can I sit in?’