Four

The next day, while the conferences at Machingo were drawing to a close and while the politicians in England were manoeuvring for their next move, the troops from the base at Pepul went on board their transports for the practice shake-down that had been ordered by General Hodges before his departure for the capital. Rumour had it that it had been insisted on by senior naval and air force officers in charge of the arrangements who were troubled by all the things that seemed to persist in going wrong.

The base at Pepul had filled too quickly with troops. Four companies of Guards had arrived, hacking down trees when they had been given a wooded strip to camp on, so that not one tent should be out of line; and a squadron of tanks, which had immediately been instructed not to move because of the damage they were doing to the frail roads round Pepul. Water was short, the firing ranges were full, a great deal of ammunition and stores had been misdirected to the Far East, and because of the increased traffic, the Malalan accident rate had gone up alarmingly.

Hodgeforce had been gathered together with a great deal too much haste and too much barrel-scraping, and had then been allowed to wait too long without orders, so that the erosive effect of inaction was already beginning to show. Reservists had begun to demand to be sent home while the National Servicemen did not show the care their older comrades did. There had been a nasty accident on the airfield next door when one of the Kestrel bombers, which had arrived from England carrying the bombs they would have to use if it came to a shooting war, had disappeared into fragments, together with her crew and ground staff, because of an error during a practice bombing up. It was said to have been caused by insufficient training and was only one of a series of accidents which had started when one of the great transport petrol dumps had gone up, killing seven men and destroying a dozen tankers, and stripping trees and flattening all the native houses along the perimeter.

While the sabre-rattling had continued in the capitals of the United Kingdom, Malala and Khanzi, therefore, and in an attempt to iron out a few of the snags that troubled the command, the people who were most concerned with the crisis – the men who in the event of fighting were to fire the shots and carry the loads – left their comfortless and overcrowded billets for a rehearsal.

The movement was carried out with a fair amount of efficiency, but to Captain Richard White, of Number 5 Air Contact Team, attached with his men to the 17th/105th Assault Battalion, it stuck out a mile that all was far from well with Hodgeforce.

A National Serviceman in the days of the first National Service Act, White had stayed on in the Army after the Act had been rescinded and had managed to work himself up to the rank of captain; and it was while he was secretly hoping he might even make major that, by a Government edict, the British Army had been cut by fifteen thousand men on the grounds of economy and White had been among those to go.

He had, in fact, just been in the process of fixing himself up with a job he was sure he wouldn’t enjoy when the crisis had blown up and, before he knew where he was, like several hundred other Reservist officers, he had found himself reporting, as instructed in his papers, back to the depot he had just left.

There he had learned that, to give Hodgeforce the weight of a little experience, every officer who had ever heard a shot fired in anger was being flown in from the few remaining British bases about the world – Hong Kong, Germany, the Pacific; and that the transport belonging to his unit – over-age lorries, obsolescent tanks and even amphibious vehicles that had been scraped off every beach in England – one even with a notice board still attached to the side: ‘Saucy Sue. Trips across the bay’ – was still in process of being made to work.

The commander of the Air Contact Group had turned out to be completely in the dark about what was going on as he tried to expand his unit to three times its normal size. The wireless sets that White was expected to use turned out to be old-fashioned and heavy, and the fact that he himself, earlier in his service, had added modifications to the best of them and written an instructional pamphlet on its use, had rather knocked the bottom out of the harangue of the warrant officer who was explaining its advantage to him.

Six weeks later, in a charter aircraft that had recently been carrying holidaymakers to Spain and still bore the route maps in the pockets, he had flown to Malala where he learned he had been attached to a training battalion recently out from England that was composed entirely of National Servicemen and was commanded by a colonel who, only a week before, had held a command in Hong Kong.

 

From a point above where White was standing, Colonel Leggo watched the operation from his Landrover. He had flown up to Pepul the night before, jammed uncomfortably into the wireless operator’s seat of a V31 bomber; and he now waited alongside the sea wall in Victoria Street, staring down at the sun-bright water and the beaches where the mammies normally operated the market around the fruit boats that came down from the creeks towards Machingo.

He was not alone. Since this beach where the troops now waited in patient lines was the only available strip of sand that fitted their purpose and was smack in front of Africa Town, the market quarter of Pepul, half the population had turned out to see the fun. Porters, screaming small boys in ragged shorts, and mammies in gaudy lappas and Mother Hubbards lined the wall with Leggo, watching what was going on and cheering and turning somersaults at every new hold-up.

Below them, against a wide stretch of new concrete slipway, two or three landing craft had dropped their ramps, and beyond them, the resurrected destroyer, Banff, lay by the end of the mole, along which a thin stream of khaki-clad men were filing, loaded down like pack animals with their radios, weapons and personal equipment.

It was quite clear already to Leggo that the slipway would have to be re-laid. It had been put down at Hodges’ insistence by a Malalan contractor named by President Braka and, while it had been done quickly, with the labourers chanting their rhythmic deep-throated tribal songs as they had swung their picks in unison, it was quite clear now that it had been done too hurriedly and that the concrete was of indifferent quality. Rumour had it that a fair proportion of the purchase price for it had found its way past the contractor to Alois Braka himself, and already the concrete was crumbling under the heavy vehicles so that Leggo shuddered to think what would happen when the Senator tanks appeared.

He wrote a few words in his notebook, then took off his cap and ran his handkerchief round the leather band inside. It was already hot, with the breath-catching bite of an oven as the flaring rays of the sun glanced violently off the surrounding mountains. In spite of the early hour, Pepul harbour wore a jaded look, red with dust and drained of energy and, as the sun rose over the hills, the heat began to rebound from the smudged grey walls near the sea.

The port rose, white and red and glaring green from the Spanish steps to Hastings Hill, from Saba Town to Africa Town, from the flat Mohammedan area beyond Passy past the worn stone statue of Queen Victoria that still survived after twenty years of independence, for no other reason than that no one seemed to be able to raise the money or the energy to remove it. Farther to the east and west among the tall, tufted palms and the thick-leaved banana plants were the unpainted houses that abutted, dry and sun-drenched, like heaps of kindling wood, on the town centre. Beyond them, the dwellings of the poor, of hammered tin or mud, clung to the water’s edge, their rusting roofs and their air of old junk making nonsense of all the boastful speeches of Alois Braka in Machingo.

Leggo watched the men filing past him from the open space where the lorries had deposited them, their shirts drenched with sweat, their faces gaunt with exhaustion. There was an air about them of sullenness and dislike that worried him and he was just making a mental note to take the matter up with Hodges when he returned, when a shout behind him, startling in its familiarity, made him swing round in his seat in surprise.

‘Stuart Leggo! What in hell are you doing here?’

 

Leggo’s head jerked round, startled by the feminine voice which, even after six years, he still knew as well as his own.

Accompanied by an under-age interpreter in a pair of torn shorts through which his shining black bottom showed, the woman who spoke was standing in the doorway of the harbour police office and was staring at him as if he were a ghost. She was no longer a girl, but was still good-looking, in spite of the absence of any make-up and the fact that the heat had made her hair moist with perspiration.

‘Davey,’ he said. ‘Good God! Fancy bumping into you! What are you doing here?’

She frowned. ‘At the moment I’m making myself a pain in the ay-double-ess to the harbour police about my camera.’ She indicated the slender young Malalan with two pips on his shoulder who was standing behind her. ‘This guy’s trying to take it away from me.’

Leggo lifted his long legs out of the Landrover and crossed to the police post.

‘Sir!’ The young Malalan clicked to attention and saluted as he saw Leggo’s rank. ‘My orders say no cameras. I must follow my instructions. Miss Davies must not claim exemption.’

The woman bridled. ‘I represent Now,’ she said sharply. ‘One of the most influential magazines in the United States. Stuart, tell this guy…’

Leggo took her arm and pulled her to one side. ‘Let’s just talk for a moment first, old love,’ he said gently.

Across the road he could see a bar, a small dark place with a few Africans sitting at the counter, and he pulled her towards it. Normally, his rank would almost have precluded him from entering, but the moment was urgent, and he didn’t quibble. He pushed her gently into the shadows and pulled a stool forward.

‘What’ll you have? Whisky?’

‘Beer. You know I never drink anything else but beer. I haven’t changed. I’m still the same Stella Davies.’

Neither of them said anything as they waited for the drinks, though she lit a cigarette and puffed at it quickly, her eyes on Leggo, and when the beer was pushed across to them, she picked up her glass and took a deep draught of it. Leggo watched her, his eyes amused.

‘You haven’t changed,’ he said. ‘You still drink like a horse at a trough.’

Her angry face softened and he grinned.

‘It’s nice to see you again, Davey,’ he said warmly.

Her expression melted once more. ‘Honest?’

‘Honest.’

‘I’m not sure I believe you,’ she said. ‘You bolted like a rat up a drain last time.’

He laughed. ‘I was scared. You scared me.’

She was silent for a moment, looking at her cigarette. ‘I guess I was a bit younger then,’ she said slowly. ‘And growing a bit desperate. I’m not so young now and I’m not desperate any longer. I’ve gone past all that. It’s much nicer.’

He wiped the perspiration from the back of his neck as he looked at her. ‘Married yet?’ he asked.

‘Uhuh.’ She shook her head. ‘You?’

‘Uhuh.’

They laughed together, then her face became serious and she leaned forward.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

He shrugged, hedging. ‘Duty,’ he said.

‘Was it duty that took you away from Hong Kong?’

‘Yes. But I was glad to go. I was scared.’

‘Are you still scared?’

‘No. You’re different.’

She stared at him for a second, a faint hurt look in her eyes, then she stubbed out her cigarette abruptly with a nervous gesture and changed the subject.

‘Stuart, that camera: I was only taking a few pictures. Nothing to sweat bullets about.’

‘I don’t believe you, Davey. Once a newshound, always a newshound.’

She paused, staring at him, then her eyes fell again, and she reached for her glass. She took another gulp at it before she spoke, and he noticed that she deliberately avoided looking at him and used her head to indicate the ships and the furious, sweating soldiers.

‘What gives, Stuart?’ she asked.

He studied her, his eyes shrewd, then he smiled. ‘It’s an exercise,’ he said evasively. ‘British and Malalan armies putting on a show together. First of its kind.’

Her voice showed her disbelief. ‘Can’t your country find anyone bigger than Malala to play soldiers with?’

He shrugged. ‘We’re rather keen on the Malalans at the moment. What are you doing here?’

‘I was in Machingo. Story on Braka. Arranged months ago. Then I heard things were jumping up here. Thought I’d take a look.’

He smiled at her, urbane, handsome and calm. ‘You were never a good liar, Davey,’ he said.

She lifted her eyes to him and smiled. ‘No, I never was,’ she admitted. ‘I’m interested in what’s going on. What’s your angle?’

‘I’m Chief-of-Staff these days to the General Officer in Command here.’

She lifted her eyebrows. ‘You’ve got on,’ she said.

‘Sheer ability.’

‘What do you do?’

‘Make sure everything goes smoothly with the exercise.’

‘Exercise?’ She looked sideways at him.

‘Exercise,’ he said firmly.

‘You were never a good liar either, Stuart,’ she said soberly. ‘I knew it that time in Hong Kong.’

‘I’m a better liar now than I was then.’

‘OK.’ It was her turn to shrug. ‘I’ll try not to pump you. I thought you might be just the guy I was looking for. It isn’t an exercise, of course, is it?’

‘It’s an exercise.’

Her brows came down in a frown. ‘Stuart, for God’s sake, come clean! Nobody else will. Neither in London nor New York. That’s why I’m here. I’ve come to this place from King Boffa Port and I know what’s going on. Down there, they’re talking of war.’

He raised his eyebrows and smiled. ‘We’re going on exercise, Davey,’ he insisted.

‘Oh, God,’ she gestured, ‘you were always a stubborn bastard, Stuart! Perhaps that’s why…’ She paused and went on more slowly. ‘All the other guys I knew were always willing to come running.’

‘That’s because you tended to dominate them, old love.’

‘I couldn’t dominate you if I tried. And you goddam well know it.’

He smiled and she tore her eyes away from him.

‘What is going on, Stuart? Put it on the line for me. I’ll give you my word I won’t use a word of it. You can trust me, can’t you?’

His smile faded and his face became grave. ‘Davey,’ he pointed out, ‘officers can be broken for talking when they shouldn’t. I’m in a position to tell you everything I know, but I’m not going to. Let’s just say you can’t have your camera back with the film in. You’ve got to get away from this harbour, and you’ve got to mind your own business.’

‘This is my business.’

‘You shouldn’t be here. They had instructions to watch all immigration – both here and at the airport.’

She made a faint gesture of contempt. ‘I didn’t come this way or through the airport,’ she said. ‘I flew from King Boffa Port to Freetown, and a charter company there landed me up-country. I came here by road.’

He looked uncomfortable as old loyalties took hold of him. ‘I wish you weren’t here, Davey,’ he said shortly.

She frowned. ‘Stuart, don’t kid yourself,’ she urged. ‘I’m only the first. Any day now you’re going to have all the news-hawks in the world descending on this place. You’ve got to face the fact.’

He smiled again. ‘Let’s say that at the moment we’ve just got one or two – all British and well under control – and you. That’ll do for now. But you can’t take photographs round the docks, Davey. Nobody can. You can’t talk to the troops. And you can’t talk to me – except about old times.’

She stared at her drink. ‘Stuart, you’re a bastard. But, OK, your job and mine don’t fit together.’

‘They never did.’

‘I was always prepared to give mine up.’

He frowned. ‘Let’s not talk about that now,’ he said quickly. ‘I’m supposed to be out there now, working. Suppose we have a meal somewhere.’

‘I’m not coming to your goddam mess again. Last time all I did was fight off your general.’

‘My general’s in Machingo this time and he’s a nice old boy.’

‘Let’s eat at my hotel.’

‘Very well. I’ve got to fly down to Machingo tonight. When I come back?’

‘OK.’ She seemed suddenly nervous.

‘Now let me get you a receipt for that camera.’

She shrugged. ‘Oh, tell the guy to keep it! I’ll pick it up later. I guess–’ she paused – ‘I guess it shook me up a bit seeing you, Stuart.’

He followed her out into the sunshine and they found a patch of shade near her jeep, close to the fruit vendors and the white walls where lizards seemed to hang in the glare of the sun. As she climbed in, he waited beside her until she had started the engine. She sat for a moment in silence then she turned to him abruptly.

‘Stuart, I wish I could…’ She stopped again, ill at ease. ‘Oh God, I know so much more about what’s going on here than you think!’

He grinned, unperturbed. ‘I haven’t the slightest doubt about that, Davey. I hope none of it came from our chaps.’

‘Your – chaps – aren’t the only source of information in the world.’

‘I guessed not.’

‘At the hotel then. Ring me when you get back.’

 

As Colonel Leggo returned to his Landrover, below him, on the slipway, Captain White was conferring with another Reservist, Sergeant Frensham, on the things that had already gone wrong, with their own particular part of the embarkation.

His first days at Pepul had been spent licking his signallers into shape under the eagle eye of Frensham and, though the men were mostly newcomers, he had been relieved to find they weren’t quite so bad as the men of the 17th/105th who, until a few days before, had been without a commanding officer. Between them, he and Frensham had taught them a little of how to behave in the event of being fired on, while Frensham had actually brought them up to some sort of pitch of efficiency as wireless operators, making them work blindfold and in traffic where, among unsuppressed vehicles and power cables and screened by tall buildings, they had had to slave merely to keep in touch with each other.

It had not taken White long, however, to find out that, thanks to the interference from London and the changed plans, whenever they disembarked wherever they were going – and White had long since hazarded a guess where that was – they were going to have to offload tools and personal equipment before they could get at the wireless cable that was so essential for them to maintain contact between the forward troops and the aircraft that were supporting them.

What was more, it was clear that brigade and battalion commanders had been told not to communicate their instructions to anyone, with the result that only hints and nods were coming across, and junior officers were having to make up their minds on the merest suggestions. If such secrecy were kept up to the last minute, White realised, the less intuitive would find they were short of things when they badly needed them because they’d not been told in as many words what to expect.

He frowned, hoping to God the problems would be ironed out before too late, and glanced at a group of men of the 17th/105th Assault Battalion who were unloading a lorry alongside him. They weren’t enjoying it and there was a certain amount of bad language flying about in the heat of the day.

Their officer, Lieutenant Jinkinson, was a very young man with over-long hair who had already had one or two brisk passages of arms with White, and, with Sergeant Frensham’s loud and acid comments on the hamfistedness of the infantrymen adding a little more to the tension, he now waved to the NCO in charge of the group and moved thankfully to the water’s edge for a smoke.

It was still a matter of surprise to Jinkinson that one of his best men should be a pure Negro whose father had come originally from a village not more than a hundred miles to the south of where he now stood. Acting Lance-Corporal (Unpaid) Jesus-Joseph Malaki had grown up in England and, although his father had probably not had more than a few days of mission schooling in his life, Jesus-Joseph himself had gone to a modern comprehensive school, was intelligent and quick-witted and possessed a surprising dignity which none of the good-humoured jibes to which he was sometimes subjected could even begin to shake.

There was, however, still a vague unspoken doubt at the back of Jinkinson’s mind because of an indefinable unsureness about him, as though he seemed unable to grasp the fact that he was accepted by the other men and felt the need always to prove himself.

While Jinkinson puffed energetically at his cigarette Captain White – since he felt he needed to know something about them – kept a quiet eye on his men. The efforts to get aboard Banff had become an unmitigated shambles and Sergeant Frensham’s disapproval became more marked as he stood beside White and watched the attempts further down the mole to sort out the tangle.

A Malalan lorry driver, objecting to the presence of white troops on his doorstep, had placed his vehicle in the midst of the stream of tanks, guns, armoured cars, bulldozers, jeeps and trucks that was heading for the waterfront and left it there, and it had become obvious at once that the Malalan roads were far too narrow for the military traffic of Stabledoor.

There were a few Malalan soldiers from Korno lounging about as the move on board halted, built up, and finally became chaos, but none of them made any move to help. They wore jungle green with American-made weapons hanging off their shoulders, and grenades fastened to the pockets of their blouses. They looked inefficient and remarkably dangerous, and most of the British officers considered it fortunate that for the most part they were confined to the other end of the town.

Frensham scowled as the Military Policemen moved in, shouting and waving their arms, and turned his attention to the shipping.

‘Don’t think much of the task force,’ he said. ‘LSTs that have been carrying civilian cargoes in the Middle East, obsolete army craft and all that remains of the mothball fleet.’ He indicated Banff, her grey anti-radiation paint scarred and scabrous with rust along the water line. ‘There’s probably a notice on the stern,’ he said sourly. ‘Advertising trips round the bay.’

White studied Frensham for a moment. There was a question he wished to ask, and it was a delicate one.

‘Sergeant,’ he said, at last. ‘How do the men regard all this?’ Frensham hesitated, because the question had taken him unawares and he needed a little time to think about it. He was no happier about Operation Stabledoor than White but he’d been a soldier long enough to keep his own counsel about his likes and dislikes.

‘How do the men regard it?’ he repeated, sounding faintly shocked.

White subdued a smile. He knew Frensham was trying the old soldier’s trick of denying everything until he could come up with a good answer.

‘Yes,’ he said slowly, to give him more time. ‘What’s the chaps’ reaction to this operation?’

Frensham had recovered a little by this time and felt he could say what had to be said. ‘Well,’ he observed, ‘they don’t talk to me a lot, sir.’

‘Nor to me, Sergeant,’ White pointed out. ‘But at least you’re in a position to hear the comments they make to each other, and I’m not. You must have formed an opinion.’

‘Yes, sir, I have, sir.’ Frensham saw it now as a fair enough question, and he tried to answer it honestly.

‘I suppose, sir,’ he said, ‘most of ’em don’t think much at all. Most soldiers don’t. On the other hand, I suppose we’ve got more than our fair share of talkers – like everybody else in this operation.’

‘Talkers, Sergeant?’

‘Sir, the Army’s so small these days that when they wanted to mount this operation, they just couldn’t move units about. They had to make new ones. They scraped the depots a bit. Asked COs for ten per cent of all effectives. You know that, sir.’

‘Yes, I know that.’

‘What would you have done, sir, if you’d been asked to supply ten per cent of your effectives? With no names mentioned.’

White grinned and Frensham went on: ‘If you’d had ten wireless operators, sir,’ he said, ‘you’d have sent the one who could never manage to get to the shack in time to take his watch. If you’d had ten electrical mechs., sir, you’d have sent the one least likely to repair a pranged set. If you’d had ten of anything, sir, you’d have sent the worst. And you know, sir, as well as I do, who’re always the worst ones.’

White’s smile had vanished again. ‘Yes, Sergeant,’ he said soberly, ‘I know who’re the worst ones.’

‘The troublemakers, sir. That’s who. The sort who ought to be slung out and would be if it weren’t so bloody hard these days to get recruits.’

White was frowning now. Frensham’s difficulties were only an extension of his own.

‘These talkers,’ he said reflectively. ‘What are they talking about?’

Frensham flicked a piece of fluff from his immaculate uniform. ‘Cuts in pay chiefly, sir,’ he said. ‘Bad move that. Especially as it don’t hit people like me and you.’

White nodded. ‘You’re being very helpful, Sergeant. But, actually, this isn’t quite what I asked you. I asked how they regarded this operation. There’s been a lot written in the newspapers. There’s been a lot argued on the radio and the television. They must have seen and heard it. They must have formed their opinions. A lot of people are against it. Are they?’

Frensham frowned, pinned down on something he’d hoped to avoid. ‘Well, sir,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t say they were for it.’