‘Why ever would you want to do that?’ cawed M. ‘Dreadful bore.’
That got raised eyebrows from the servicemen, with Mason adding, ‘Really, my dear, you can be so tactless.’
M looked a touch broken by that, her voice for once small and meek. ‘I can, can’t I?’
At least she got female support. ‘Well, I agree with you, Mrs Mason, it’s boys talk and … well, war and all that.’
Alverson spoke up with a tone of deep irony. ‘And you, Corrie Littleton, you must be the only admirer of Sparta who does not like war.’
‘I am an admirer of the women of Sparta, Tyler. As for the men of Sparta, well we know all about them.’
Peydon nearly choked on his drink and he began coughing, Mason went pink under his tan and Alverson said, ‘Well, being a newspaperman, I am interested.’
‘Sorry,’ Mason responded. ‘No can do, can’t have you spilling the beans on what we know.’
‘Might queer our pitch,’ said Lieutenant Grace.
That had the captain barking at him. ‘Shall we go to the study?’
Mason addressed their backs. ‘Call the boys if you want any more to drink.’
‘Damned odd,’ Peydon said quietly, as he closed the door behind Grace, ‘Mason inviting a reporter like that.’
‘Odd the chap is here at all,’ Grace added.
‘Gentlemen, to business, I think. Mr Mason’s guest list is his affair.’
‘Quite right, Mr Jardine,’ Peydon said, pulling out from his pocket a tightly folded paper. Opening it showed it was a rough-drawn map outlining, in very neat but tiny handwriting, the position of the Italian forces, which consisted of one division, the 29th Peloritana — their numbers, seven thousand effectives, and equipment, three thousand mules and sixty light trucks — the extent of their supply dumps, and even the names of the senior officers serving under their commander, General Graziani.
‘This, I have to say, Captain, is damned good.’
That made the soldier’s chest expand, an act which pushed out a pair of not-very-special medals. ‘Thank you, sir, we try our best.’
‘There’s nothing in the naval line that matches this,’ cut in Grace gloomily. ‘Although my proper area of operations is the Gulf of Aden, I can and do patrol up the Red Sea. We talk to the dhows coming out of Massawa and they are only too happy to pass on snippets of information. Eyeties have been at it for so long we have had a chance to list the whole kit and caboodle up there too.’
The soldier then added, with not a little pride, ‘We sneak across the border on our camels and get chapter and verse about what’s happening on the Italian part of the Abyssinian border.’ Now he looked sly, if still pleased with himself. ‘They are not much on patrolling, the Eyeties, so I usually take a few of my boys right forward and get a dekko of what they are up to through my binoculars.’
‘No sign of movement?’
Peydon made a dismissive snuffling sound not too dissimilar to Mason’s wife. ‘Plenty signs of frustration, more like, and Grace and I pick up the same stuff. Apparently all the talk in the bars is of the need to replace their commanding officer, De Bono. They were ready to go before the small rains came, but they sat on their arses because he insisted they lacked enough equipment.’
There was a dual purpose to this short meeting: first, of course, a briefing on what these two knew, but more importantly to get them out of his way so he could operate with safety. Mason wanted no part of seeking to keep them occupied, for if anything went wrong, like Jardine being intercepted, he would take the blame. Grace had the only naval vessel, an armed patrol boat, this side of the Gulf of Aden, his official task to guard the coastline, look out for smugglers and slavers, while protecting the fishermen and local traders from piracy.
Peydon had two British NCOs and a clerk, but his soldiers were askaris, locally recruited camel-riding Somalis, and, if he was doing his job properly, he would be out on the caravan routes that led to the interior preventing robbery and slaving, the very places Jardine needed him to be kept clear of. Mason had given him the public puff of being sent specially from London and implied, without actually saying so, that he had the power to request them to act at his instructions.
‘I don’t want to go back to London without the most up-to-date picture.’
‘Are we going to intervene, sir?’
‘Not up to me, Lieutenant Grace, but I do know that it would be folly to even consider it on a false premise.’ He waved Peydon’s map. ‘I just need to know if this is still accurate.’
‘I can go up the Red Sea anytime I like, almost to the end of the Suez Canal, if I wish, but I would need to refuel in Aden before I did so and my superior officer there could kybosh the trip.’
Jardine was close to saying ‘damn’ then: if that naval officer had any brains he would ask who the hell he was. Peydon saved the day by a bit of inter-service scoffing. ‘Well, I shall do as I damn well please and say nothing to Hargeisa. Those buggers in Aden are Indian army and I am not, so I will not tell them a damn thing either.’
‘The navy is of a piece, Archie, there’s no division between India and home, and quite apart from the base commander, there is the Captain of HMS Enterprise to consider, as well as officers from vessels other than the cruiser.’
‘Yes, but if you go blabbing they will poke their oar in, Charlie. This is a colony and it is not run from Delhi, but London. In defending it, that is where your instructions should come from. Your bloody superior spends all his time drinking with those sepoy-bashers and he is bound to let slip anything you tell him. You don’t need his approval anyway, do you?’
‘Strictly speaking, no.’
‘Next thing you know you’ll be asking for ice in your drink.’
‘Steady on, Archie!’ Grace exclaimed, a mite too excessively to Jardine’s mind.
‘Well!’ Peydon replied, like a disappointed parent.
Jardine suspected that, stuck in this hole of a posting, Peydon enjoyed his little excursions to spy on the Italians and he was being a bit disingenuous about not needing permission to do so. When he was engaged in such escapades he was not carrying out his proper duties, and it did not matter how news of that got back to the powers that be, he would get at least a rap across the knuckles if it was exposed, and quite possibly, given the fear in Whitehall of upsetting Mussolini, be subject to a severe reprimand.
‘I have to refuel anyway,’ Grace conceded, ‘and the Aden command has no idea of where I go and what I do. I doubt my superior ever reads my logs.’
‘Stout fellow,’ cried Peydon.
‘Shall we rejoin the others?’ Jardine said. ‘I think we have been absent long enough.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was interesting to monitor the undercurrents of the Masons’ dinner, in particular the fact that the two Americans did not conform to what was expected at such a board by Jardine’s fellow Britons. It was an observation he had made many times in his life, that the further you got away from the core of Empire, the more rigid became the adherence to what was considered good form: dressing properly for dinner, eating and drinking, at least in public, with circumspection and, most of all, never saying anything contentious.
Most voluble was Corrie Littleton — dressed in shirt and slacks — who had a trenchant opinion on everything, the more relaxed, loose-suited and middle-aged Alverson being quietly funny with sharp observations that ran counter to the way the conversation was going, which Jardine put down to their occupations: she an academic historian and he a newspaperman. It was only much later he realised they represented two strands of a complex nation, strident East Coast versus laconic West.
Thinking of how to describe her, and she was attractive, Jardine took refuge in the expression ‘rangy’. In some senses she shared the loose body movements of the locals, that is if you excepted her face in argument, which was rigid of jaw when listening — usually in disagreement and impatience to counter — while being highly animated in making her points which, right now, were on her speciality subject, classical Greece, and quite specifically, Sparta.