CHAPTER FOURTEEN: DISHING THE DERVISHES

This latest duty for Queen, Country and the Brotherhood, did at least get off to rather a good start. For the umpteenth time in my life I found myself at Brindisi waiting for two days, with Fahran, for the Royal Navy steam sloop that was whisk us to Alexandria from where we were to take Kitchener’s new railway all the way to the front. How times had changed since I’d first set foot in the land of the Pharaohs all those years ago: the Canal, the railway… but I digress.

Instead, I need to record an encounter I had with a certain Mrs Holland, who was the sole adornment of the run-down Pensione Putana where we were staying at the Admiralty’s (scant) expense. She and her great oaf of husband, a City stockjobber called Lionel, were on the last leg of their Italian honeymoon prior to embarking on a steamer to take them home via Gibraltar and the Bay of Biscay.

The Hollands and I (plus Fahran, of course) were the only English people in the run-down hotel so, in the way that one does, we rather fell into each other’s company. I’d met them in the hall on my arrival – they were trundling off to look at churches - but Mrs Holland, a tiny woman with large eyes, a throaty voice and a ‘come hither’ look, was seated in the saloon on her own when, on the first night, I came down for a pre-dinner glass of the local infuriator: the hotel didn’t run to fizz, which gives a good indication of the dump in which I’d been lodged by the parsimonious Lords of the Admiralty. From the bored expression on her pretty phiz, the religious sites – and probably the honeymoon - appeared to have disappointed her.

“Good evenin’, Mrs Holland. How did you find the Roman Church and the Cathedral?”

“Oh,” she said, “if I have to see one more Adoration of the Blessed Virgin Mary I will scream – and my knees ache from an excess of genuflecting.”

“That bad, eh?”

“Not bad, Colonel: awful. We’ve been in Italy for a month now and all I’ve seen are churches: Milan, Venice, Florence, Pisa, Rome, Naples and now here. Churches, churches, churches! And I was so looking forward to browsing in the Italian shops. Why don’t you join me? Lionel won’t be down for ages.”

“My sympathies, ma’am – about the churches, I mean,” I said as I lowered myself into an armchair opposite her. “Personally, I find that church visits should be restricted to weddin’s, baptisms and funerals. M’wife, on the other hand, has her own chapel in the house.”

“Good heavens why, Colonel?”

“Some years ago she succumbed to the teachin’s of the Russian Church.”

“How very unorthodox of her.”

“That’s a fair understatement with which her family would agree: they’re all staunch Protestants despite bein’ descended from Charles II and one of his Frog mistresses. She, of course, must have been a Left Footer - and I think the Merry Monarch converted on his death bed. Anyway, I got back from an extended trip to Egypt and the Soudan, where I’d been dealin’ with The Mahdi, y’know,”135 Mrs Holland let out a low gasp and looked suitably impressed, “to find that Lady Charlotte-Georgina had kicked over the Church of England’s traces and that my dressin’ room had been filled with icons and converted into a Russian Orthodox chapel. I soon put a stop to that, but she simply commandeered one of the smaller guest bedrooms.”

“Given her name, is your wife by any chance a FitzCharles, Colonel?”

“Yes – she’s the sister of the present Duke, as a matter of fact. Why do you ask?” This time, instead of looking impressed, Mrs Holland looked at me curiously.

“What an extraordinary coincidence: my older brother Graham’s closest childhood friend – and mine - is related to the FitzCharles’.”

“Who’s that?”

“Charles Hadfield.”

“Never heard of him – he must be a very distant relation.”

“Actually,” said Mrs Holland, “if I’ve got this right, I think that Mr Hadfield is your wife’s nephew.”

I was about to say that was impossible when I remembered that Charlotte-Georgina had had an older sister, Charlotte-Elizabeth,136 who’d produced a son some years before she was squashed flat by a Fulham omnibus; he would be somewhat older than Mrs Holland, probably in his late twenties. Then it all started to come back to me: I remembered that Charlotte-Elizabeth’s husband had, indeed, been called Hadfield and her son was inevitably called Charles. He’d made a big fuss over the family’s refusal to allow Charlotte-Elizabeth to be buried in the family vault in St Paul’s. He’d then oiled his way into the employment of Lord Charles-Stephen FitzCharles, the banker. And – but I couldn’t remember the details – he’d had something to do with General Lord Charles-Rupert’s demise from experimental surgery to restore his manhood.

“You know, I think you’re right,” I said, “but I’ve never met the fellow.”

“Oh, he’s absolutely charming – and so attractive. Dark in a rather Italian sort of way you know,” she said with a deep sigh that made her tiny udders quiver. “In fact, I should really have married him, but Lionel asked me first.”

Ho, ho, I thought; unless I was much mistaken it sounded as though Lionel had not ploughed a virgin field. Well, if that was her view of pre- and post-marital fidelity, then maybe I could put my enforced sojourn in Brindisi to good use.

“How long are you stayin’ here, Mrs Holland?” I asked her as innocently as I could.

“Until the day after tomorrow – and you?”

“The same, providin’ the Navy keep to their schedule.”

“Why the Navy, Colonel?”

“Because I’m on my way to join Kitchener for the advance on Khartoum - and the boys in blue are ferryin’ me to Alexandria.”

“How simply thrilling,” she purred in her deep voice. “You must have already seen a lot of action in those parts if you were engaged in combat with the dreadful Mahdi.”

I took my cue and gave her a potted account of my various exploits in the land of sand including, for it was obvious she was a snob, a sanitised version of my intimacy with the Khedival Family. “Oh, it’s all so romantic!” she sighed when I’d finished. “Virile Arab Sheiks galloping across the sands of Arabia…”

Clearly the silly bint hadn’t a clue where I’d been, but it was also obvious from what she’d said that she had a hankering for muscled, dusky flesh. That gave me an idea.

“Yes,” I lied, “and you know I now employ one as my man servant.”

“An Arab Sheik?”

“Actually, he’s from Afghanistan which is practically next door to Arabia, at least his father was – his mother’s American.” I certainly wasn’t about to say that Prissy was an ex-slave.

“I should so love to meet him.” I bet you would, I thought.

“That’s easily arranged: after dinner, perhaps?”

However, before I could progress this proposal, the wretched Lionel entered the saloon, collapsed in a chair which groaned alarmingly under his enormous bulk and grunted a curt good evening. I think it was that grunt which determined me, despite all my years, to put a cuckold’s horns on the blighter. It remained to be seen if this could be achieved with the application of generous quantities of the local rot gut, which might induce a slumber profound enough to create an opportunity for Mrs H to slump to her knees in something other than prayer.

I rang the bell and, after a short delay, a greasy wop servitor appeared. Using my limited command of the local lingo, I ordered a magnum of the best wine the pensione’s cellar possessed and told him to ask Fahran to attend upon me.

“Subito, signore Colonello,” he murmured.

Fahran appeared almost immediately and I couldn’t help noticing that Mrs Holland gave him a deeply appraising look.

“You sent for me, huzoor,” he said from the doorway.

“Would you excuse me a moment?” I said to the Hollands, “I need to give my man some instructions for the mornin’.” I indicated to Fahran that we would speak in the hall behind him.

“Fahran,” I said once I was out of earshot of the Hollands, “did your father ever tell you about our adventures together?”

“He did indeed, huzoor: all of them.” he said with a knowing and rather Searcy-like grin.

“Good. Now here’s what I want you to do…”

A couple of minutes later I re-joined the Hollands and, once Lionel had consumed most of the wine, we staggered into the dining room which we had to ourselves. Two hours, another magnum and the best part of a bottle of the local brandy later, Lionel was snoring in the saloon and Mrs Holland – ‘please call me Sibella, Colonel’ – had, as I expected, eased the conversation back to Afghanistan and her highly romanticised (and geographically inaccurate) view of its male inhabitants.

“If you would like to meet Sheik Khazi,” I said, once I was sure that her husband was completely comatose and unlikely to stir before the cocks crowed, “it can be arranged.”

“I would be so interested to do that,” she purred.

“I have to warn you, Sibella, that his religion forbids him from consorting in public with a woman unless she is a member of his family or one of his wives.” In the case of Fahran this was pure tosh, of course, but it was a necessary part of my plan. “So you will have to meet with him in the privacy of my room.”

“I quite understand that, Colonel.”

“Well, in that case, he should be there now layin’ out my night clothes. I’m in room twelve on the first floor, at the end of the corridor. Knock and he’ll let you in. Once you’ve satisfied your curiosity meet me back down here.”

With the fire of about-to-be-satisfied lust burning in her eyes, she rose and left the room without another word. That we both understood what was to happen was absolutely clear, but I had the good grace to wish her an enjoyable conversation. I pulled out my fob, clicked open the case and watched the time. After fifteen minutes Mrs H had not reappeared, so I got up, rather creakily climbed the stairs and made my way to my room. Without knocking I entered it as quietly as I could.

The light from the oil lamp beside my bed illuminated the scene. Standing facing the door was Fahran, his britches round his ankles and his midriff concealed behind Sibella Holland’s elaborate hair. She was still fully dressed and so fully engaged that she didn’t notice my presence. Fahran had his eyes shut but he was expecting me. I waited in the shadows until she’d brought him to a shuddering conclusion – I am, after all, a considerate employer - at which point I let out a low cough. Thank God Sibella had disengaged, otherwise she might have done Fahran a serious injury. As it was she spun around on her knees and let out a shriek.

“Colonel Speedicut! What are you…” I didn’t let her finish the sentence. As Fahran hauled up his britches, gave me a nod of thanks, palmed the sovereign I handed him, left the room and closed the door behind him, I scooped her up – thank heaven she didn’t weigh much - and tossed her onto the bed. Her skirt and petticoats flew up over her head displaying stocking tops and nothing else, other than a modest bush covering her principal asset.

“My turn, Sibella – unless you want me to wake your husband.” As I’d already guessed they would, her legs parted immediately in answer.

The sight of Fahran, in all his Afro-Afghan glory, had already alerted my nether regions to the task in hand, so it was only a matter of disengaging my own outer garments before I buckled to. I’ll say this for Sibella, she may have been in an unsatisfactory marriage with a drunken oaf, but someone had clearly given her an advanced course in the carnal arts, for she displayed skills that I’d last experienced several years before in an expensive establishment in Paris, or it may have been Port Said.

The job done – I could at my age only manage a single session, which was a damned sight more than most of my contemporaries - she rolled off the bed, gave me a sweet smile, smoothed down her dress, adjusted her hair in a glass on the back of the wardrobe door and headed for the door. As she opened it, she turned.

“I think we should repeat all of that tomorrow night, Colonel – although perhaps you and your man servant would exchange roles. Variety is, after all, the spice of life.” With that she was gone, leaving me speechless at her brazenness.

Thirty-six hours later, Fahran and I crawled onto HMS Alacrity with smiles the width of the Straits of Messina – and if any of my readers should think this whole tale is implausible, I would just remind them of the opening lines of Mrs Morris’ seminal work, Pricks & Perversions: ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a randy woman in possession of a dull husband, is always in want of a good rogering…’ And Sibella Holland certainly got more than one.

Whilst Fahran and I were giving of our best in Brindisi, Kitchener was plodding his way south - via the railway and the Nile - towards a dump called Omdurman, a walled shanty town slightly to the north-west of Khartoum. Here, The Mahdi’s lice-infested successor, the Khalifa,137 was holed up with the Dervish Army. To be perfectly honest, I hadn’t given the Soudan a second thought - well, why would I? - since I’d last shaken the sand of the wretched place out of my boots back in ’85.138 So, as we chugged our way across the Med, I decided to bone up on thirteen years of events in the region. In this I was greatly assisted by a handsome Navy wallah called David Beatty,139 who was on his way back to the Soudan haste-post-haste to take command of a Nile tugboat that was to provide supporting fire for Kitchener’s mixed force of Gyppos, Soudanese and Brits. Actually, I’m not being fair to Mr Beatty for, earlier in the campaign during the successful capture of Dongola, he’d taken over command of the River Flotilla when his boss was wounded and been awarded a DSO for his pains. He’d recently been back in England on leave, but had been recalled at Kitchener’s specific request to command the three 1896 armoured screw gunboats that formed part of the River Flotilla for the advance on Omdurman. But, of course, my readers won’t know what the hell I’m talking about so let me give you – thanks to Beatty – a potted resumé of the events to date.

In brief, after Gordon went to join the heavenly choir boys - courtesy of The Mahdi and with some inadvertent help from me - the Egyptian government (for that read Evelyn Baring) decided that the Soudan was no longer worth the candle.140 So a British-led Egyptian Frontier Force was set up whose job it was to keep the fuzzy-wuzzies from expanding their appalling Moslem-fundamentalist empire any further north. This policy of containment was helped when, on the unexpected death of Gordon’s Nemesis, the swivel-eyed leadership of the Dervishes was replaced by the less religiously fervent but equally brutal Khalifa.

Not much then happened, providing you discount almost constant cross-border raiding and a major dust up at a place called Tushki, until three years ago when that turn-coated Austrian bugger, Rudi Slatin,141 appeared out of the desert after more than a decade in Dervish captivity thanks to the help of our Military Intelligence in the shape of a Gunner called Wingate.142 During his time with the Dervishes, Slatin had converted to Islam and, after an extended time in bed with the late Harry Faversham and a short time in chains with me, had gone on to act as a military adviser to the Khalifa. It was somewhat surprising, therefore, said Beatty, that the schnitzel-eating renegade was treated as a hero-returned, promoted to Pasha by the Khedive, made a Companion of the Bath (apparently he really needed one when he presented himself at the frontier) by Salisbury, a Member of the Royal Victorian Order by Vicky, and given an Audience by Franz-Josef. Even more unbelievably, given his track record of hauling up the white flag and then hauling down his britches for the other side, he had been attached to Kitchener’s Staff as an adviser on the Dervish Army: you know, I really couldn’t make up this stuff and no one would believe me if I did. Anyway, back to the story. The status quo might have lasted indefinitely had it not been for the Eyeties and the Frogs.

“Do you know anything about the Battle of Adowa, Colonel?” asked Beatty, as the good ship Alactrity bounded through the waves and I tried not to throw up the worst dinner I’d had since the boat train.

“Adowa? Give me a clue?”

“Abyssinia, March 1896…” I thought for a moment.

“I was a bit south of there at that time and in no position to read a newspaper. So you’d better remind me.”

“An Italian Army of eighteen thousand men was wiped out by an Ethiopian General called Menelik.143 A couple of weeks later the Italian government pleaded with Lord Salisbury to create a diversion in the Soudan in order to take the pressure of what remained of their empire in the Horn of Africa. Salisbury saw this as a perfect opportunity to please a friendly European power, albeit a totally ineffective one, and at the same time - in Gordon’s memory – to strike a domestically popular blow at the Dervishes. Accordingly, he – or rather the Khedive on Baring’s instructions - gave the job of capturing Dongola Province to Kitchener as Sirdar of the Egyptian Army.”

“Only Dongola?”

“Those were his orders, but I think you know Kitchener.” I certainly did. “After he’d captured Dongola, he put it about that it was risky to hold the border province without defeating the Dervishes main power base further south. Unfortunately, the Khedive said that his Treasury was empty.

“However, many in power thought that Kitchener was right, including The Queen whom he caught at a good moment – she was knighting him – and she told old Cambridge to support the invasion plans. Kitchener might still not have squeezed the cash out of the British Exchequer, which was his only credible source of funding, had not the French done him a huge favour by authorising one of their men to trek across Africa from Brazzaville and stake a claim to the Upper Nile.”

I repeat what I’ve just said about ‘making it up’.

“When that news got out, Salisbury told the Chancellor to open the till and Kitchener returned to Cairo last summer with half-a-million in gold and the promise of British Army units to bolster his Egyptian and Soudanese troops.”

“So why’s it takin’ him so long to get to Omdurman?” I asked. “When I got my marchin’ orders from the PM, I thought there was every chance that long before I arrived Kitchener would have won the final chukka and retired to the club house for a well-earned cup of tea and a peerage.”

“He’s a cautious cove,” Beatty replied, “and there was never to be a Wolseley-style mad cap dash across the desert for him, although that’s his chosen route. No, he’s advancing only as fast as he can secure his lines of communication and that’s involved constructing a railway across the Nubian Desert from Wadi Halfa to Abu Hamed.”

“You’re jokin’? I’d heard he’d rebuilt the old Egyptian railway to Wadi Halfa - but across the waterless Nubian Desert… it beggars belief.”

“Be that as it may, that’s what he’s done. We secured Abu Hamed last August, although I lost the El Teb navigating the Fourth Cataract, and by the end of the year the Soudan Military Railway was complete. Kitchener has spent the first half of this year consolidating his hold on the line and bringing up the force he needs to take on the Khalifa, who still has at least a two-to-one superiority in manpower although he’s got no field artillery.

“Kitchener’s now in summer quarters at Abadia, following a rather brisk encounter with one of the Khalifa’s Lieutenants at Atbara. He’s waiting at Abadia for the Nile to rise, which should happen in the next week or two, which will allow me to get my boats through the Sabaluka Gorge to support the Anglo-Egyptian Army on its march along the Nile to Omdurman.”

Despite the balmy evening, I felt a chill run down my spine at the mention of the gorge and my stomach churned uncomfortably – and that was not just as a result of the pitch of the sloop or the disgusting dinner we’d just consumed.144

“It’s a pity you can’t come with me; it’ll be a damned-sight more comfortable for you on the Fateh than camping with Kitchener.”

“That’s a very kind offer,” I replied, as I tried to keep my food down, “but my orders are clear: to get m’self to Kitchener’s HQ as fast as I can in order to get - and keep - a grip on the scribblers.”

“Well, Colonel, my offer stands if your circumstances change.”

Two days later, Beatty, Fahran and I were chuffing our way south to Atbara: he to join his gunboats and Fahran and me to meet up with the Sirdar at Abadia. My readers should know my views on the Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Army, the appointment Kitchener has held since ’92, so I won’t trouble you with them again beyond remarking that he was surrounded by a posse of young bachelor Aides de Camp, known to the rest of the Staff as ‘Kitchener’s Band of Boys’. I will say no more.

Anyway, as I quickly discovered on arrival at the Sirdar’s white tent above which fluttered the blood-red Egyptian flag, time and rapid promotion, which softens some men, had not improved Kitchener. His great height, wasp (and probably corseted) waist, unnaturally blond hair, white moustache and gotch eye were as I remembered them. His air of remoteness and superiority, however, had grown in proportion to his elevation from Major to Major General.

“Ah, Speedicut…” he flicked open a folder which he’d been handed by the good looking young ADC who’d ushered me into the presence. “… here to control the War Correspondents… and on Salisbury’s orders.”

“Actually, General,” I said with considerable firmness, “my appointment on your Staff is as Head of Propaganda, in which role I am empowered by the Prime Minister to vet all external communications emanatin’ from your command.” He gave me a positively poisonous look in reply but, whilst continuing to stare at me, said nothing for a moment or two.

“Very well. I will see to it that your position and your role is communicated to all my Staff, senior officers and the attached War Correspondents of whom, thank God, we are not over-burdened. You will travel with my Headquarters during the advance.

“However,” he looked down again at the folder, “as a highly experienced cavalry officer still on the Active List, and in order that you can ensure the correctness of reports when we close with the enemy I am deploying you with the 21st Lancers.”

What had he just said? This was supposed to be a desk job and I blurted out as much.

“Whatever the Prime Minister may have told you about your role, Colonel Speedicut,” he said with a nasty look in his eyes, “you are under my command now…”