William Boyd - An Ice-Cream War

“Gabriel,” she said. “Is this enough for you?”

“Oh. Yes, thanks.”

And yet she knew nothing of his feelings. She had left to see her husband without a word of goodbye. It had been Frau Ledebur who had told him of her departure. His clenched fist drummed gently on his knee. As Liesl grew plumper and sleeker, he seemed to be falling apart. He was thinner than ever, his leg wound was healed but it still ached, he walked with a limp and now there was this nervous tremor in his hand.

He watched her spoon some honey onto the two slices of bread she had cut and spread it thickly over the surfaces. She handed his piece over and, not waiting for him to begin, took a huge bite out of her own. Honey spilled off the crust and ran slowly down her chin.

“ Verdammt ,” she swore, collecting the dribble with a fore-finger and licking it clean. She shut her eyes, chewing slowly, a dreamy look crossing her face as she savoured the taste.

Unaccountably, Gabriel felt tears brim in his eyes and a sob form in his throat. He was literally helpless, he knew. The tears flowed silently down his cheeks and his features trembled in a crying grimace.

Liesl opened her eyes. “Gabriel,” she exclaimed in alarm. “You haven’t eaten. What’s wrong?”

Gabriel hung his head. “I’m sorry,” he tried to explain. “It sounds stupid, I know, but it’s just that — suddenly I felt very happy. I have been very happy here. It’s ridiculous, I know, but I have.”

Liesl tried to stop herself smiling. “Gabriel, you fool.” She laughed, throwing back her head. “You can’t be happy here .” Her breasts shook as she gave a great hooting laugh. “You stupid!” Her eyes were shut, the room was filled with the unrestrained noise of her mirth.

Gabriel didn’t care. He had declared himself.

She was calming down. “Oh. Oh that’s sore. Oh grosser Gott . Oh Gabriel, don’t do that to me. Did you say something?”

“Me?” Gabriel said. “No, nothing.” He took a mouthful of banana bread. “Mmm,” he mumbled. “This is superb.”

♦

As Liesl predicted the hospital at Nanda soon filled up with wounded men from the fighting around Kilwa. One of the wounded was a Captain von Steinkeller who appeared to be an officer of some importance, judging from the high-ranking visitors he received. He had been very badly injured in the hip. Liesl patched it up as best she could, but it was agreed that he would have to be moved to Chitawa where Deppe could examine it. Shortly before he was transferred he was visited by von Lettow’s adjutant himself, another captain called Rutke.

Gabriel was standing in the dispensary when two askaris carried von Steinkeller out to a waiting waggon.

“Don’t worry,” Rutke shouted. Then he spoke some phrases too quickly for Gabriel to translate. “November,” Rutke then said. “Wait until November. We have das chinesische Geschaft .” A ragged cheer went up from the men in the ward. After Rutke left, Gabriel heard the phrase being used again as the men referred to it. Das chinesische Geschaft . He asked Liesl for a translation.

“What would you say? ‘The Chinese Exhibition’? Perhaps. ‘The China Show’? It’s curious. What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Gabriel said. “I heard the men saying it in the ward.”

Liesl shrugged. They left it at that. Gabriel wondered if it was important.

In October 1917 the third battle of Ypres — Passchendaele — was well on its way to its half-million casualties. Between the fourteenth and sixteenth of October the most savagely fought battle on African soil took place at Mahiwa. British columns, advancing south from the Rufiji and inland from the ports of Kilwa and Lindi, were fiercely attacked by the supposedly retreating Germans at some innocuous hills near a bend in the Mahiwa river. Out of five thousand African, Indian, British and South African troops, two thousand seven hundred were killed or wounded.

Fifty per cent casualties in a single battle. Three battalions of the Nigerian Brigade were at the forefront of the fighting and suffered heavy losses. Among those not taking part, though, was Twelve company of the 5th Battalion. On the days of the battle of Mahiwa Felix’s platoon was digging latrine trenches at the brigade’s headquarters at Redhill Camp, Lindi. Gent’s and Loveday’s platoons were escorting supply wagons up to the front line.

After their privations at Kibongo it was recognized that Frearson’s company had endured more than most, and as a reward they received three weeks’ leave in Zanzibar. Fully recovered, Twelve company rejoined the battalion at Moro-goro where they spent the next few months training new recruits, making roads and strengthening culverts and embankments.

As the polyglot British Army marched south the Nigerian Brigade was involved in many of the small actions that took place whenever the Germans’ rearguard was encountered. It soon became clear to Felix that Frearson’s company was unlikely ever to be with them. They guarded supply dumps, provided escorts for labour battalions and assisted District Commissioners to establish administrative authority in the newly conquered territory. Felix’s platoon personally flattened a small hill for an extension to an aerodrome’s runway; built, with mud bricks, a new wing for a field hospital; escorted without incident one hundred tons of rice from Kilwa to Mikesse — a distance of eighty miles — and, for the last three weeks, had been responsible for looking after the brigade’s sizeable baggage train.

At first Felix found nothing to object to. His months at Kibongo seemed a sufficient ordeal for anyone to have gone through, and life at the rear, though agonizingly dull, was tolerably comfortable. Loveday occasionally made warlike noises (“ Aux armes, mes braves! ”) but Frearson was insistent that there was nothing he could do. The word was that morale had been laid so low at Kibongo that Twelve company was unlikely ever to regain its full fighting capacity. Furthermore, its ranks had been depleted with sickness and the calibre of the new recruits was only suitable for depot duties.

It wasn’t until a German field ambulance was captured near Mahiwa that Felix sensed any alarm over his lack of activity. He stood at the gate of Redhill Camp and watched the Provost Marshal and his men escort the prisoners in. There was one surgeon, three German nurses and some native dressers. The Germans looked rugged and bush-hardened but seemed quite pleased to be captured. Among the wounded they had been tending when they were overrun were three British officers who had been captured a month previously. They were loudly cheered as they were stretchered into the base hospital. Since then more and more German civilians had been interned as the advancing British columns occupied the small villages and mission stations around the Lindi area. The south eastern corner of the country had become the supply centre for the Schütztruppe in the last year and was fairly heavily populated. As the hard-pressed German army retreated towards the Rovuma and the border with Portuguese East, more and more prisoners and wounded men were abandoned by them in the interests of swifter progress.

It was the sight of these liberated English POW’s that most forcefully reminded Felix of his neglected ‘quest’ and stirred him out of his shameful complacency. He asked and was given permission to go to Kilwa to see if the headquarters staff intelligence department could provide him with any information about his brother.

♦

Kilwa was like any number of East African coastal towns. A palm-tree-fringed beach, a prominent old fort, barracks, a whitewashed church and narrow dirt streets lined with single-storey, mudwalled shops and houses. On the sea front were large imposing residences once owned by the richer merchants and the colonial administrators. He was directed to one of these, which, he was told, housed the offices of GSO II (Intelligence). Inside the hall of this particular building — sturdy, two-storeyed and pillared on the ground floor — was a list of the offices it contained. Opposite the title GSO II (Intelligence) was the name of the incumbent: Major R. St J. Bilderbeck. The name rang a bell. Bilderbeck: Felix suddenly remembered that it was from one Bilderbeck that they had heard the full details of Gabriel’s capture. He felt a sudden excitement. This was surely some sort of omen. He walked up the wooden stairs. At the top there was a capacious landing off which there were half a dozen doors. On a board were numerous typed orders. Loose telephone wires were looped haphazardly across the walls. From the rooms came a sustained rattle of typewriters. Every now and then an orderly clutching a sheaf of papers would appear from one room and go into another. None of the doors had any notices on them.