The Burning Sky

by Jack Ludlow

  ‘A touch of bitters is all I need,’ insisted the navy man, a rather vacuous-looking fellow. ‘Be thought a pansy if I asked for ice in the wardroom, what?’

  It was interesting to see Peydon react to that: for some reason the captain was angry with his naval chum. Red of face already, and with pronounced cheeks, he went a sort of scarlet shade that was as near as damn it to the colour of his army mess jacket and his voice was a growl.

  ‘Each to his own, I say.’

  ‘You would be better off not drinking it at all,’ insisted Miss Littleton.

  She was young, slim, quite tall for a woman and looked slightly mannish with her bobbed blonde hair. Added to that she had the kind of cracked voice that sounded like a permanent bad throat.

  ‘It is bad for your body and your brain, indeed it is nothing but a social ill which—’

  ‘More lemonade?’ asked Mason, her words and his gesture underlining the fact that she was a teetotaller, the interjection seeming to spare them a lecture on temperance. Her voice had a strangely orotund accent too, seemingly elongating each word in what sounded like a parody of the King’s English.

  Her host indicated to one of his houseboys and a jug was brought forward. ‘And you, Jardine, what will you have, old chap?’

  ‘I think a pink gin would be the ticket, with, if Mr Alverson can spare it, some of his ice.’

  ‘What do we have here,’ drawled the American, his face amused, ‘a cultured Englishman?’

  ‘Scotsman, Mr Alverson, which removes any hope of my being civilised.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ cackled M, who then suddenly realised she was praising the wrong thing. ‘Oh dear, most dreadfully sorry.’

  Mason was mixing his drink, throwing the Angostura Bitters around the glass before tipping it out, then pouring the gin. ‘Mr Jardine is here on a little errand for HMG, to pick our brains about the ice cream vendors next door.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Alverson, with a slightly arch look.

  ‘Yes, I am going to closet him with our military might for a bit so they can brief him.’

  ‘Can I sit in?’

  ‘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 disappoi
nted 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.

  The similarity was from the shoulders down: expressive arms and hands, a fluid upper body in a shirt through which her pert breasts were visible, given she did not seem to be wearing a brassiere – Lieutenant Grace could barely take his eyes off them – and a tight backside that seemed to have minimal contact with her chair when pressing home an argument.

  Alverson was a man who could sit bolt upright and appear to be lounging, his drawling voice hiding the speed of thought and observation that allowed him to amuse. It was as if, to him, human life was moving at the wrong pace, slightly too quickly, and was in need of a gentle application of the brakes. He wore his knowledge of the world lightly and he seemed to have been witness to quite a deal of it – Manchuria was mentioned, as well as Japan and the Balkans – and he clearly had some knowledge of South America, a knowledge Jardine shared but decided to keep to himself.

  Captain Archie Peydon was a type Jardine had messed with often: bluff, opinionated with a small ‘o’ and Conservative with a large ‘C’, a career soldier in a peacetime army going nowhere fast. Aside from his views he had half a dozen well-worn anecdotes which, judging by the flash of boredom on the face of his host, he trotted out at every dinner he attended.

  His naval counterpart was young and strikingly naive for a seagoing man who must surely, in his service life, have visited a few steamy fleshpots around the globe: Jardine’s memories of Portsmouth were alone quite hairy. If he had, it had not coloured him with sophistication, and, of course, Margery Mason kept putting her foot in it, and large feet they were.

  They were well attended to by four servants, all young and handsome Somalis, and it was while watching them go about their tasks that something became evident, that provided by Conrad Mason. While ever the attentive host, seemingly listening to his guests with focus, his eyes kept flicking away to the moving boys as they silently flitted around on their bare feet with that grace Jardine had already noted.

  It was not just the look in the eye in these rapid inspections, but the slight parting and wetting of the lips which told Jardine that to Mason these youngsters were possibly more than houseboys, which made clear the reaction to a couple of earlier remarks made by the disingenuous naval lieutenant.

  ‘The women of Sparta were not like the supine creatures who we have around us today,’ Corrie Littleton insisted. ‘At the beck and call of their menfolk; they ran their own lives—’

  ‘You know,’ Jardine gently interrupted, ‘I’ve never understood the use of the word “platonic” just to mean a non-carnal human relationship.’

  ‘Golly gosh,’ exclaimed M, while Peydon harrumphed and Grace blushed, but only after several seconds, when he had figured out what was being alluded to.

  ‘Sure,’ Alverson said, ‘the guy wrote a blueprint for the likes of Mussolini and Hitler.’

  ‘Not when it comes to the rights of women, he didn’t.’

  ‘Corrie, honey, you have such an unbiased world view.’

  ‘But that’s you men all over, able to read a classical text and only take out the bits that suit you.’

  ‘Like the Bible, really,’ said Mason, ‘full of stoning and damning and striking down dead for things we think nothing of today.’

  ‘Which your local episcopalian guy still preaches to the savages, I hear.’

  ‘They are not savages, Tyler!’

  ‘They don’t do irony in Boston,’ Alverson responded, as an aside to the whole table. ‘But it is still permissible, I believe, to call an Irishman a barbarian. Your holy man is not too fond of you, Mr Mason.’

  ‘Thinks I don’t give him the support he needs to turn all the Somalis into good Anglicans.’

  ‘Shall we be toasting the king?’ Peydon interjected, in a crude attempt to change the subject.

  Mason nodded and made a sign his servants obviously understood, since they came to fill up the wine glasses. Corrie Littleton, still on lemonade, was about to protest, her bottom well off her chair, when Alverson cut her off. ‘When in Rome, honey.’

  ‘Shoot Mussolini,’ Grace responded, adding a silly grin.

  ‘You gotta appreciate, Mr Mason,’ Alverson said, with a lopsided grin, ‘that having kicked out one King George we are not too keen on toasting another.’

  The response was dry and came with a wry smile. ‘We are drinking to his health, Mr Alverson, not to his territorial ambitions. Captain Peydon?’

  ‘The king,’ he croaked as he rose, everyone doing likewise.

  ‘I do not see you passing your wine over the water, Mr Jardine.’

  ‘I’m Scottish, but not rabidly so.’

  ‘What the hell are you two talking about?’ Corrie Littleton demanded.

  ‘You tell her, Mr Alverson.’

  ‘Well, way back, the Limeys … sorry, force of habit … the Brits fell out over who should have the keys to the palace and they got rid of the guys called Stuarts.’

  ‘Kings of Scotland and England,’ Mason added, getting for his trouble an arch look from someone who had studied history.

  ‘So, for some Scots folk, their king is exiled across the water. Caused quite a stir in 1745. Bonnie Prince Charlie …’

  ‘I know all this, especially that particular guy. Kinda romantic, don’t you think?’

  ‘Odd, Miss Littleton,’ Jardine said. ‘Everyone has that opinion and everyone sees a romantic loser. No one ever asks what would have happened if he had won.’

  ‘Inclined to the bottle by all account, Bonnie Prince Charlie,’ grumbled Peydon.

  Jardine held up his glass, smiling. ‘A national affliction, perhaps.’

  ‘An international curse,’ Corrie Littleton snapped, taking a deep drink of lemonade as if that proved her point.

  ‘A worldwide one, Corrie,’ Alverson replied, for once in serious mien. ‘We drink bourbon,
the Japs drink sake and the Chinese glug rice wine. Getting drunk for most folk sure beats the hell out of a clear view of this lousy world.’

  ‘I say, Mr Alverson!’ M exclaimed.

  Alverson reverted to his amused drawl. ‘Sorry, Mrs Mason, we colonials are a little short on sophistication.’

  ‘Of course you are, poor dears,’ she replied, her cut-glass voice full of sympathetic understanding.

  ‘Speak for yourself, buster,’ came the Bostonian response, given with such gusto that Grace’s eyes were glued to the front of her dress.

  ‘A perfect example of my point,’ drawled her fellow American.

  About to protest, Corrie Littleton was cut off by Mason. ‘You have been in Japan, Mr Alverson?’

  ‘I have, and to go back several conversations, they have definitely taken Plato to heart.’

  The talk became general on the subject of racial superiority, which was, according to the American, innate in the Japanese, while the Chinese could never comprehend the inability of others to acknowledge their vastly superior civilisation. Hitler and his master race theories were derided, while Mussolini’s posturing provided much amusement.

  ‘Racial superiority is not something,’ Jardine proffered, ‘to which we British are immune.’

  Peydon, more red-faced than previously, due to alcohol, looked deeply offended: he was a mother-of-parliaments, British-fair-play sort of chap, who would not hesitate to stick his polished size tens up the backside of one of his Somali recruits, nor think twice about slipping in some extra leave and a bit of a money present to one who had family problems, unable to see the difference between paternalism and equality.

  ‘And it is a stance I fear we Americans are only too ready to share,’ Alverson said.

  ‘Did you not kill off all your own savages, Mr Alverson?’ asked M, in her cawing voice.

  ‘Not personally, ma’am.’

  ‘I was not accusing you,’ she insisted, quite missing the irony.

  ‘We’re pretty damn overbearing in our own backyard.’