Harkaway's Sixth Column

by John Harris

  Tully looked at Gooch; Gooch looked at Grobelaar, who looked faintly embarrassed.

  ‘Leave me out, man,’ he said.

  Yussuf indicated a group of girls. They were all slim, their robes tight over their hips and breasts, their dark headcloths shading exquisitely moulded faces and black spaniel eyes.

  ‘Somali woman always obey her man,’ he said. ‘Make good wife.’

  They drove back up the hill, all of them satisfied with the morning’s work.

  ‘That was a good idea about the eye, Kom-Kom,’ Harkaway said.

  ‘I’ve done it before,’ Grobelaar explained. ‘It always works. They know there’s a trick somewhere but they’re never prepared to chance it.’

  Gooch was eyeing the leather bag full of trinkets. ‘Them bracelets’ll fetch a bit in Mombasa,’ he commented.

  ‘If you sell ’em in Mombasa,’ Harkaway said, ‘you’ll be a damn fool. They’d bring only beer money there. Save ’em and sell them in London when you go home. The society girls will go for that sort of thing in a big way.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Harkaway gave him a cold look. ‘I haven’t always been a bloody soldier.’

  ‘Gentleman ranker out on the spree.’ Gooch grinned. ‘Damned from here to eternity.’

  Three days later, a party of Habr Odessi herders from Eil Dif came on a party of Illas, a clan belonging to the Harari Kibal group, using the waterhole at Daraba they called El Wak, the Wells of God, which they considered belonged to the Habr Odessi. They were well aware that the previous year when the rains were slow to come and the country was drying up into a drought, the Harari had been selling their water. Which was fine for the Harari but, when there was no money, hard for the Habr Odessi whose herds died. Stumbling on the Illas, therefore, the Habr Odessi from Eil Dif were in no mood to be forgiving. They had been seeking game and were hungry, and across the back of one of their camels a dead gerenuk was slung, its head swaying to the camel’s movement. Like all Somalis, the herdsmen were avaricious and saw no reason to share the facilities they considered their own with anyone else, least of all the Harari. They were armed with spears and were quite ready to use them, and the discovery of Harari at their waterhole was a challenge to them. There were more of the Harari than there were of the Habr Odessi, but the Habr Odessi were highly-strung, stoic over pain, treacherous when necessary and, with a contempt for death, were cunning and patient, with fierce eyes that burned like fires with the suggestion of unrest.

  For a while they talked quietly together then they meekly offered salaams and went on their way. The next morning, however, they returned with ten others, appearing out of the greyness of the early morning. With them was Abdillahi, the young man Harkaway had taught to use the ancient Martini. While the others watched, he moved quietly away with his camel. The rest waited, while the Illas eyed them warily, expecting a rush.

  No rush came. The young man lay down on the sand in the eye of the appearing sun, as he had learned when stalking a foe. He was difficult to see and the Illas could not make out what he was up to. Then his rifle cracked and one of the Illas standing by his camel fell backwards, a glittering red fountain pulsing from his chest as the heavy lead bullet from the Martini struck him. Immediately, two more rifles fired. One of the bullets went winging over the desert but the other struck one of the Illas in the leg, smashing the bone and bringing him down. Immediately, the other Habr Odessi rushed forward, wielding their spears. When they had finished, there were two more dead Illas, one of them a boy of thirteen.

  The surviving Illas, who had scattered into the surrounding desert, came together as the sun lifted higher to cast its glittering white light over everything, and swore vengeance. They had no need to find the Habr Odessi at one of their waterholes. Illa men had been killed and Illa women had been left to die, and that was sufficient excuse. The Harari tribe, of which they were a sept, were as vain, cruel and vengeful as the Habr Odessi and they had not failed to hear of the white men who were selling rifles.

  A fortnight later, near the Tug Wirir, Gooch and Tully, scouting unwillingly towards the road to watch the Italian lorries, were stopped by an old man who indicated that he wished to talk business.

  Suspicious like all old soldiers, they put him off but arranged to meet again. Two days later, armed with Lee Enfield rifles, they stared down from the slopes. The old man was waiting on his own. Leaving Tully and Gooch to cover him, Harkaway went to meet the old man. For a long time they talked. When he returned he was smiling.

  ‘He wants to buy rifles,’ he said.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Same as last time. I think we’re in business.’

  Four

  ‘I make it–’ Tully peered into the leather bag where he stored the silver trinkets he had acquired ‘–seventy-three more shopping days to Christmas.’ He grinned. ‘That is, of course, taking out Sundays and half-days.’

  They were lounging outside the cave at Shimber Addi, each holding a can of beer, enjoying the cool of the evening. Below them the desert of greys and browns was fading into blues, with fierce bronze scarves of fire lighting the sky. A hot wind was still blowing across the hills, rattling the scrub and thorn bushes and lifting into little whorls the shale that lay between the rocks. The land had come alive after the day’s heat, all pinks and purples and exuding a soft warmth.

  As usual, Grobelaar was sitting alone staring over the plain, playing his mouth organ. It was a quiet, slow tune they’d heard him play before and it made them feel lonely. The life they were living was crude but not spartan, and they spent their time now between the cave on the Bur Yi Hills and the old buildings in Eil Dif which the villagers claimed were haunted by shaitans. They had taken up residence in a tumbledown mausoleum of a house round which stood other crumbled brown-yellow houses long since desecrated by wildlife. Blue flowers and ancient trees grew among the rubbish, and geckos, tiny and transparent as gelatine, clutched the ceiling, displaying their palpitating innards and staring with cold eyes on the human beings who had begun to inhabit the long-empty rooms. It was a bat-infested ruin, which had been built by a British official for his Somali mistress during the war against the Mad Mullah, and the doors, white as old bones, creaked horribly when the wind blew, while there was always the rustle of small unseen creatures on the verandas.

  One of the Habr Odessi women from Eil Dif cooked for them and occasionally girls came for Gooch and Tully. But they would never stay after dark and, every now and then, when the relentless heat defeated them, they were glad to go back up to Shimber Addi.

  They were not short of food and they used the truck to fetch water. Being cut off was no great hardship because at some time or another they had all served in out-of-the-way spots, sitting over a gun or a radio, or standing guard on a bridge as one of a party of three or four under a sergeant. This wasn’t a lot different and even Grobelaar, born and brought up on a farm in the Karroo Desert in South Africa, was used to emptiness and the absence of people. The only thing that bothered them was that there seemed little prospect of relief, little opportunity of regaining the company of their fellows. Gregarious like all soldiers, Gooch and Tully at least missed the noise of the barrack room.

  But the war now seemed to have entered a sort of stalemate when both sides were poised for the next swing at each other. They were well aware that it hadn’t finished, however, because they had heard through Yussuf in Eil Dif, who picked up the information from God alone knew where, that the RAF and the South African Air Force were raiding Italian targets, which didn’t seem to indicate that they considered themselves defeated.

  By this time, they also knew something about the opposition. Their immediate enemy was a general called Ettore Guidotti, based on Bidiyu, the man who was repairing the road to Berbera and setting up concrete kilometre markers along the route. His immediate superior was a General Barracca, who had his headquarters just outside Berbera, where a naval officer by the name of Scaroni held sway, and they were both of t
hem under the command of a General Forsci in Jijiga. Some of the information had come from Yussuf and some had been brought in by traders moving between Eil Dif, Bidiyu, Hargeisa and Burao. Guidotti, they knew, was a small man with small feet who liked shining top boots. ‘Twinkletoes himself,’ Harkaway said and the name had stuck. He was, they learned, a straightforward, honest man who permitted no corruption and was popular with the people of Bidiyu.

  But this was parochial stuff and they were desperate for news from further afield. With the damaged radio, Tully picked up a dance band from Nairobi, even a station in India with high-pitched nervous music, and once the thudding drums of Morocco and snatches of simple flute phrases from the north. Then they learned that the Battle of Britain had been won, and Britain, though not now in danger of invasion, was nevertheless under siege, its cities bombed day and night; and that the Italians had advanced into Egypt and invaded Greece. There was little to cheer them up – save news of bombing raids on the Italian cities of Massawa, Zeila, Diredawa, Agordat, Neghelli and Asmara – until they heard the exhilarating reports of the battle of Taranto and the smashing of the Italian fleet in its own harbour by aircraft of the Royal Navy.

  ‘It shows they haven’t thrown their hand in at home,’ Gooch observed.

  It was a warming, welcome item of news but it was barely enough. In their small oasis in the vast desert of Italian possessions they felt lonely and a little afraid, and totally cut off, especially in the evenings when the desert cooled, the sky went into a riot of crazy colours and everything became silent.

  ‘My old lady’s in Liverpool,’ Tully pointed out. ‘And they’re bombing it.’

  ‘Mine’s in London,’ Gooch said. ‘Where’s yours, Squire?’

  Harkaway shrugged. It would have offended them to know his mother lived in a bloody great house in the Derbyshire dales, safely away from bombs, with a farm to draw on for food when everybody else was being rationed, even a horse and trap for when petrol was rationed. He even wondered if they could imagine it.

  When Harkaway didn’t answer, they turned to Grobelaar. ‘Where’s your home, Kom-Kom?’

  Grobelaar shrugged. With his glass eye standing guard for them, he had taken to wearing an eyepatch he’d made from a scrap of soft leather. It ought to have given him a piratical look but somehow it only enhanced his defeated appearance.

  ‘Anywhere, jong,’ he said. ‘Anywhere I happen to be.’

  ‘No folks?’ Tully said.

  ‘Not now. They’re dead, I reckon.’ Grobelaar smiled his tired shadowy smile. ‘I ran away to sea. Jumped ship in Durban and stayed there. Went to the mines in Jo’burg. Then down to the Cape. Then Rhodesia. Then Sierra Leone. Then Kenya. Just drifting, man. Ended up here with the Public Works Department. Not much to boast about.’

  Tully, who had been about to commiserate, looked at Gooch and finally said nothing. For a long time, he brooded, then he stirred restlessly.

  ‘With the Italians in Greece, Libya and Cyrenaica,’ he said uneasily, ‘we get cut off a bit more every day.’

  ‘I’m glad I wasn’t at the Tug Argan,’ Gooch pointed out.

  ‘You’d have been in Aden now if you had been.’

  ‘He might have been dead,’ Harkaway reminded them bluntly. ‘A few are.’

  There was silence as they thought this one over. ‘Well,’ Gooch said, ‘we’re safe enough here until we decide to move. Plenty of food. Even booze. And we’re making money. The country’s so empty, the Eyeties’ll never think of this place.’ He looked at Harkaway. ‘What do you think, Squire?’

  Harkaway said nothing. His mind was busy. Possessing more intelligence than either of the other two, he was well aware that the war could last for two or three more years and that by that time the stores in the cave would long have disappeared and they would have to give themselves up. He didn’t relish being a prisoner of war. Being a ranker in the army was bad enough, especially when you’d been used to going the pace in Civvy Street.

  He shifted restlessly, wondering why he hadn’t bought himself out while he’d had the chance, because there’d be no buying himself out now the war was on. Then he gave a grim little smile to himself. Perhaps it was all for the best, though, because, if he had bought himself out in 1939, as he’d thought of doing, he’d have wasted his money, because by now he’d have been back in again as a reservist.

  When they went down to Eil Dif two days later, they found Chief Abduruman coldly angry.

  ‘Our young men have been killed by the Harari,’ Yussuf explained, his crippled foot shifting uneasily in the dust. ‘They had guns.’

  ‘Oh?’ The first thing that crossed Harkaway’s mind was that somebody else had acquired a supply from the Tug Argan and was stealing their business. ‘Who’re the Harari?’

  ‘They are our enemies,’ Yussuf said. ‘Our young men disturbed Illas at our waterhole at El Wak. There was a fight. Abdillahi killed one. With the gun you sold. Later the Harari came and killed one of our young men. To be killed for Illas!’ Yussuf sounded full of contempt. ‘All men know Illas are sorcerers and can call up djinns and shaitans. Like the Yibirs, they make clay figures and stick pins in them. No one has ever seen the grave of an Illa. They don’t die. They vanish.’

  Harkaway pulled a face. ‘I can see you’ve got a problem,’ he admitted. ‘Where did the Harari get the guns?’

  ‘From you, effendi.’

  Harkaway’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Who says that?’

  Yussuf stared accusingly at him. ‘They talked. They said they acquired them from you in the Wirir Gorge.’

  ‘Were they Harari?’ Gooch said. ‘We thought they were just black fellers like you.’

  ‘They are the sons of whores, effendi. Their mothers are camels crossed with djinns. They murdered our young men. With your guns.’

  There was a hint of danger in the air. The dark eyes, which watched them from the circle of lean robed figures, smouldered with anger. Gooch glanced at them sideways then turned on Yussuf.

  ‘You’re not one of them,’ he accused. ‘You’re a bloody Abyssinian-Arab. What’s it to you?’

  Yussuf’s face didn’t change. ‘I married an Odessi woman, effendi.’

  Harkaway spoke quietly. ‘Your young men killed first,’ he pointed out. ‘I didn’t sell you those rifles to kill men. That wasn’t why I taught Abdillahi.’

  Yussuf sneered. ‘If you put a rifle in the hands of an Odessi and he finds a Harari at his waterhole, he will shoot the Harari.’

  ‘Can’t you share them?’

  ‘Odessi and Harari have never shared. There has been a blood feud for many generations. Fifty ramazans have passed since I was born. There was always a blood feud.’

  There was a deep feeling of anxiety about the white men as they headed out of Eil Dif.

  ‘We could start a war,’ Harkaway said, his brows down in a worried frown.

  ‘They’re only wogs,’ Gooch said.

  Harkaway wasn’t satisfied. ‘I was in that patrol that went out to the waterhole at Gudubi. That time the Dolbahanta set about the Bura. Same sort of quarrel. They caught a bunch of Bura at their waterhole and chopped ’em up into little bits. There were legs and arms all over the shop, a few dead camels and goats, and the dried-up bodies of a few old women they hadn’t bothered to carry off.’

  ‘They’re only wogs,’ Gooch said again.

  Harkaway turned angrily. ‘Is that the only thing you can say, you bloody oaf?’ he snapped. ‘Use your brains! This sort of thing’s dangerous. In this country every male over sixteen’s a warrior and if it spreads it’ll involve the Italians and they’ll start trying to find out where they’re getting all their guns.’ He stared round at the others, his eyes hot. ‘And that,’ he ended, ‘will be bloody marvellous won’t it, if they discover they’re coming from us?’

  Five

  Their biggest headache had always been water and now, with the Odessi watching them coldly as they lowered the waterskins into their well, it began to seem a good idea to f
ind another waterhole.

  Using the lorry, they began to go to the well at Dubi. But the water was bitter and the men there were Harari and there was more muttering as they appeared. It was clear the Harari considered them as guilty of the death of their young warrior as the Odessi did of theirs, and it seemed wiser to find a waterhole belonging to neither tribe. Unfortunately, the next nearest was a long way away at Boram, and Grobelaar began to worry about their petrol supply.

  Harkaway was thoughtful for a while then he spoke with an air of cheerful confidence. ‘Why,’ he asked unexpectedly, ‘don’t we ambush an Italian lorry? They’re going past all the time, carrying petrol from Jijiga to the coast.’

  There was a long silence before Tully spoke. ‘Petrol lorries are well guarded,’ he warned. ‘And there are only four of us. One a civvy.’

  Grobelaar jeered. ‘I was brought up on a farm on the edge of the Karroo, man. I can shoot as well as you can.’

  ‘You’ve got a dud eye.’

  ‘’S macht nicht. It’s the left one. I don’t have to shut it when I aim.’

  Three days later, in Eil Dif to buy a sheep for meat, they were met by Yussuf. He looked angry.

  ‘The Harari are raiding again,’ he said. ‘We need more of your guns.’

  ‘You’re welcome to buy them.’

  ‘Perhaps we come and take what we want. I’m not a savage, effendi. I know that when the white men lose their eyes, they replace them with glass ones. I can persuade our young men.’

  Harkaway studied the ex-stoker for a moment before he spoke. ‘You try it,’ he threatened, ‘and we’ll come down here with machine guns. You know machine guns?’

  ‘I know machine guns, effendi.’

  ‘Much dying. You understand? If you want guns, you pay for ’em. Remember, we’re better at war than you are.’

  Yussuf’s face was expressionless. ‘You are not better than the Italians, I think, effendi,’ he said calmly. ‘Your people are gone and they have come.’