A Matter of Time

by Alex Capus

  launches barely twelve metres long, with cozy little cabins up for’ard and pink curtains over the portholes.

  ‘They’re no warships, sir’ he said, turning away in disgust. ‘Craft like that are fine for picnics and outings on the Thames with pretty girls, but not for the Navy. If I didn’t know it was impossible, I’d think the Admiralty was having a joke at my expense.’

  ‘We’ve nothing else immediately available at present,’ said the admiral. ‘These boats should have been delivered to Greece. They’re stuck here because of the war, that’s why they’re to hand. They’re brand new - not even named. And they’re fast, Commander: twenty knots - four times faster than the Wissmann’

  ‘Steam-driven?’

  ‘Petrol. Twin engines, 220 horsepower. You’ll be able to cross the lake in ’em, sink the Germans, and be back before they know what’s hit them.’

  Spicer-Simson eyed the boats thoughtfully. ‘They’ll need modifying.’

  ‘Of course, the boats are yours. Modify them.’

  ‘The cabins’ll have to be removed and the fuel tanks protected with steel plates. We’ll mount a Maxim in the stern and a three-pounder in the bow.’

  ‘The yard is awaiting your orders, Commander. Another thing: when you’ve a minute to spare, think of some names’

  ‘For these two tubs?’

  ‘Yes, if you would.’

  ‘How about Cat and Dog?’

  ‘Really, Commander!’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘In that case, Mimi and Toutou.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘French, sir. Equivalent of Pussycat and Bow-wow.’

  ‘You don’t say,’ said Admiral Davis, who spoke excellent French himself. ‘Oh well, have it your way, I won’t argue with you. Not a soul will know, anyway, and it’s pretty safe to assume that no vessels of that name have ever been listed in the annals of the Royal Navy.’

  The modifications took a week to complete. To ensure that everything

  was in working order, Spicer-Simson requested Admiral Davis’s permission to conduct a test run on the Thames with both boats and fire an experimental shot at a derelict warehouse with the three-pounder. Although the admiral had some misgivings about allowing SpicerSimson, of all people, to carry out gunnery practice on the outskirts of London, he saw the necessity and agreed.

  The test firing took place at nine a.m. on 8 June 1915. Spicer-Simson summoned a photographer to the Thorneycroft yard to take a picture of Mimi and Toutou travelling at full throttle. This photograph, which is preserved in the archives of the Imperial War Museum, shows Mimi hugging the bank with Toutou in midstream some thirty metres behind her. Seated in the stern of Mimi is Amy Spicer-Simson, wearing a white summer frock and a broad-brimmed straw hat. Ignoring the machine gun on her right, she has her hands on her lap and her face turned towards the morning sun. Commander Spicer-Simson is standing on her left in his brand-new khaki uniform. Further for’ard the yards two owners, John and Thomas Thorneycroft, are casually seated on the gunwales to port and starboard. An unknown civilian, possibly a mechanic from the yard, is standing at the wheel with Admiral Davis beside him. Finally, stationed at the three-pounder in the bow is a young naval engineer lieutenant named Cross. All on board appear to be in the best of spirits. A faint breeze is ruffling the surface, the morning sun is casting crisp shadows. Mimi is just about to go out of shot, followed by Toutou. As far as is known, no photograph recorded the moment when Lieutenant Cross fired his test round at the derelict warehouse - a great shame, for that, too, struck a bizarre note typical of all Spicer-Simson’s doings. However, there are written accounts according to which he scored a direct hit. The shell found its target and the ramshackle building went up in flames, but the recoil propelled Lieutenant Cross in the opposite direction and pitched him overboard, gun and all. It turned out that the brass locking ring on the base of the mounting had not been properly secured. The Thames was not very deep at that point, fortunately, so the gunlayer and his three-pounder were recovered without much difficulty, both unscathed.

  12

  Oh, Rudi...

  the day when Rudolf Tellmann stopped talking was 7 October 1914. He had been working on the Gotzen since early that morning, all by himself. He had riveted a row of iron stanchions to the main deck and screwed a mahogany handrail to them, and Veronika, his young cheetah, had watched him. At noon shed sat beside him and eaten her share of the ox the Masai had roasted on the shore for the workforce, and shed spent the afternoon dozing in the shade of the ships hull. Now and then shed woken up, blinking in the sunlight, licked her speckled fur and tried to catch flies with her pink-upholstered forepaws.

  The Gotzen was three-quarters finished. It was just on eleven months since the naming ceremony at Papenburg and eight months since her components had reached Lake Tanganyika. Now that the major operations had been completed, the ship reposed on the stocks in all her former splendour. What remained to be done - the superstructure, the technical installations, the interior fittings - would take another two months, three at most. Nothing had got broken, no one had been injured and nothing had been stolen. Anton Riiter was three or four months behindhand with his original schedule, but at home in Papenburg he couldn’t have known that a working day on the equator lasted nine hours at most, not twelve; that it was light for only twelve hours, and that the heat of the midday sun compelled even the most hard-working Papenburg shipwright to take a two- or three-hour siesta; that it was pointless even to set foot outside the door during the rainstorms, which often lasted for days; and, last but not least, that a pretty time-consuming world war would break out long before the ship was launched.

  When Tellmann stopped work just before six p.m. on 7 October and got down off the ship, Veronika wasn’t there any more.

  She’d gone. Disappeared.

  He was puzzled for a moment, then worried, then highly perturbed. Veronika had never strayed out of his sight before, still less run away. He called her name, he whistled and shouted and clapped his hands. He circled the ship’s hull, went back on board and searched all the cabins, looked in the chain locker, the crew’s quarters, the bunkers, the engine room and cable tier. He asked Wendt and Ruter whether they had seen Veronika, then questioned the two askaris guarding the Wissmann nearby. Filled with foreboding, he scanned the deep, clear waters of the harbour basin. He walked along the shore calling her, ran up to the village calling her, then down to the station calling her, then over to the barracks, calling her again and again.

  At nightfall Tellmann turned up at Wendt’s beer garden alone for the first time for many months. At supper he sat there in silence, kneading his hands together and staring at his plate, and afterwards, when the others were lolling on their mats, singing in subdued voices or discussing the events of the day, he didn’t address a word to anyone, just gazed fixedly at the gap in the thorn-bush hedge in the hope that Veronika would finally show up, or went out into the darkness every few minutes and called her.

  ‘Give it a rest,’ Wendt told him. ‘Sit down and have a drink. Your pussycat’ll come home sooner or later.’

  Tellmann didn’t reply, but he obediently sat down.

  ‘She’s a wild animal, Rudi,’ said Riiter. ‘Nature calls sometimes, and not only in springtime. You must know that, being a hunter. When she’s hungry she’ll come home of her own accord.’

  Tellmann’s eyes brightened and a faint smile appeared on his lips.

  Young Wendt laughed, perhaps a little too loudly. ‘You’re acting as if your daughter’s virginity was in danger! Have another drink, then we’ll go to bed.’

  no

  Veronika was found eight hours later. The faint glow above the mountains was heralding a new day. Roosters were crowing in the village, plumes of smoke rising from the huts, dogs and pigs roaming the streets. Running excitedly along the path that led out on to the headland came two shadowy figures, one tall and one short. The taller figure was Kahigi, one of the Bantu who spent thei
r evenings in Wendts beer garden; the shorter was an eight-year-old boy from the village. They made a wide detour round Tellmann’s hut, trotted straight past Anton Riiter’s and hammered on Wendts door.

  ‘Quick, Hermann!’ said Kahiki. ‘This boy found Tellmann’s cat when he was driving his goats to pasture. She was in that wood beyond the barracks!’

  ‘Veronika? Why didn’t you bring her here?’

  ‘Come and see. Quick, before the others wake up.’

  Veronika’s skin was lying in the middle of a clearing, stretched out to dry between four pegs. Her skull lay some distance away, stripped and bloody and black with ants. Her beautiful tawny eyes were staring into space. The rest of her had probably been carried off by hyenas, Wendt knelt down and stroked her fur. Then he uprooted the pegs, rolled up the skin and handed it to Kahigi. ‘Get rid of that, would you?’ he said softly. ‘Please take it away and get rid of it.’ He went over to Veronika’s skull and dug a small hole in the ground with one of the pegs. Just as he was about to deposit the skull in the hole and fill it in, he heard footsteps coming up behind him. It was Rudolf Tellmann.

  ‘Oh Rudi,’ he said, ‘what a rotten business!’

  Tellmann saw the skin under Kahigi’s arm. He also saw the skull and the golden-brown eyes. Turning on his heel, he strode stiffly back through the wood. Wendt, Kahigi and the village lad followed at a distance. They didn’t dare catch him up.

  Rudolf Tellmann’s door remained shut that morning. It remained shut when Anton Riiter knocked, and it also remained shut when young Wendt begged him to open up. So Riiter and Wendt set off for work, assuming that he would sooner or later turn up at the yard of his own accord.

  He didn’t. Midday came, then afternoon and evening, and still

  Tellmann failed to appear. When Riiter and Wendt looked in after work his door was open. The hut was empty, the floor neatly swept. It was as if no one had ever lived there, and the beds in the vegetable garden had been freshly raked flat. They looked around to see if Tellmann was roosting on his baggage somewhere. They scanned the headland and looked up at the mountains. They even looked out across the lake as if they thought him capable of heading for the Congolese shore in a canoe. No sign of him. Instead, a white-uniformed figure loomed up in the gathering dusk. It was Kapitanleutnant von Zimmer.

  ‘Have you seen Rudi Tellmann?’ asked Wendt.

  ‘That’s why I’m here. And kindly address me correctly, Private Wendt.’

  ‘Yes, Herr Kapitanleutnant. Have you seen Tellmann?’

  ‘I came to tell you that Private Tellmann has joined our ranks and will be living in barracks from now on. He came marching up at noon and dumped his gun and equipment in the other ranks’ quarters’

  ‘Why would he do that?’ Riiter looked dumbfounded.

  ‘He doesn’t utter a word to anyone, just nods or shakes his head. Without being ordered to, he took a broom and swept the whole of the parade ground - very thoroughly, I might add. A rum customer, but very useful.’

  ‘I need Tellmann at the yard,’ said Riiter. ‘We can’t get the Gotzen finished without him.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll get her finished all right.’ Von Zimmer gave a nasty laugh. ‘Very soon, what’s more, you can depend on that.’

  ‘I appreciate your faith in me, Herr Kapitanleutnant, but without Tellmann...’

  ‘I’ve no faith in you, Riiter - in fact I don’t trust you, but you’ll get the Gotzen finished because that’s what I want, and because I’ll see to it personally if I have to. If you need Tellmann I’ll send him down to the yard by the day. The rest of the time he’ll undergo basic training in barracks. And so, before long, will you two. Foot drill, arms drill, marching at attention, saluting, knees-bends with rifles at the port, firing at moving targets, night route marches in full battle order. As soon as the Gotzen is finished. And when will that be? Two weeks? Three?’

  ‘Herr Kapitanleutnant,’ said Wendt, stepping forward. ‘Somebody killed Tellmann’s cheetah.'

  ‘The cat, you mean? Your mascot?’

  ‘They slaughtered her.’

  ‘Too bad,’ said von Zimmer. ‘A handsome beast. It does men good to have a mascot when they’re deprived of female companionship for long periods. We’ve got one at the barracks: a little white goat - Leutnant Junge acquired it a couple of months ago. The men are absolutely besotted with the creature.’

  ‘We found the cheetah’s remains in the wood behind the barracks. In the clearing where your men like to play football. Know anything about it, Herr Kapitanleutnant?’

  ‘Don’t take that tone with me, Wendt! I’m not under interrogation!’

  ‘I’d like an answer.’

  ‘Now listen to me, you young pup,’ von Zimmer said quietly, stepping forward likewise. The two men were now within spitting distance. ‘We’re at war, in case you still haven’t hoisted that in. You and your friends have been getting on my nerves for ages with your private quarters, your native women, your Masai cronies and your special rations. Your civilian goings-on are bad for my men’s morale, so spare me your love of animals and act like soldiers. I ask the questions around here and you answer yes or no or very good, Herr Kapitanleutnant. Is that clear?’

  Wendt and Riiter remained silent.

  ‘Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes, Herr Kapitanleutnant.’

  ‘Yes, Herr Kapitanleutnant.’

  ‘Otherwise I’ll stick you in the guardroom. It’s a trifle less comfortable than your beer garden.’

  ‘Very good, Herr Kapitanleutnant.’

  ‘That’s all right, then. We won’t quarrel about a dead cat. Simply take note that Private Tellmann has decided to join our ranks. If the pair of you would also like to move into barracks before the Gotzen is finished, you’re welcome to do so at any time.’

  ‘Thank you, Herr Kapitanleutnant.’

  ‘See you later, Herr Kapitanleutnant..

  ‘By the way, the Wissmann is going back into action tomorrow. I’ll be in command this time. Oberleutnant Horn will command the landing party. I’ll be needing a ship’s engineer again, of course. One never knows when the old engine will pack up. Which of you would like to come along? You, Corporal Riiter? You, Private Wendt? Never mind. I’ll take Tellmann. He’s a pretty good shot, isn’t he?’

  ‘Not a bit of it,’ said Wendt. ‘He may be able to aim, but he never pulls the trigger.’

  ‘Excellent. Better that than the other way round. Aiming is essential, pulling the trigger is just a matter of willpower. We’ll soon drum that into him. Anyway, I’ll assign him to Oberleutnant Horn as a sniper. Goodnight, gentlemen.’

  Since Rudolf Tellmann scarcely uttered a word for months thereafter, no one knows how he fared on his first patrol. All we do know is that on 7 October 1914 Kapitanleutnant von Zimmer had been informed by native spies that the Belgians had hauled the Alexandre Delcommune further up the beach for repairs - a proceeding von Zimmer was determined to prevent at all costs. We also know that, on the morning of 8 October, Rudolf Tellmann donned a brand-new uniform and marched with fifty other soldiers from the barracks to the Wissmann as if he had done nothing else all his life, and that he didn’t spare a glance for Riiter and Wendt, who were standing on the quayside looking saddened and ashamed. Once the askaris had cast off and the ship steamed out into the lake, however, we lose sight of him. For an idea of what happened the following night, we are dependent on Kapitanleutnant von Zimmer’s official report, which may be consulted in the military archives at Freiburg im Breisgau:

  I decided to proceed forthwith in the Hedwig von Wissmann and tow the steamer away or blow her up before she was mobile again. The Alexandre Delcommune was blown up on the beach at Albertville on the night of 8/9 October 1914.1 had delayed reaching the offshore islands until an hour when our boats could not be seen from the land. At about 20.00 hours I

  sent a landing party of thirty men commanded by Oberleutnant zur See Horn ashore in the Hedwigs steam pinnace and tug. Their orders were to advance from the la
nding place to the Delcommunes berth and ascertain whether there was any prospect of towing her away. If no such prospect existed, the party was to blow the steamer up.

  The Belgian company stationed in Albertville had pitched camp in a semicircle round the Delcommune. Oberleutnant z. S. Horn managed to sneak all his men through the ring of sentries and steal up to the steamer before he was discovered. The moment the enemy sounded the alarm, Horn pushed forward to the steamer. The latter was lying grounded with her fo’csle on the shore, protected from the breakers by a wall of sand or other material. There being no possibility of towing her away, therefore, she had to be blown up. Engineer Matuschek and Lance-Sergeant Knaak threw two boxes of dynamite into the boiler room and lit the fuses. The rest of the charges could not be laid because the numerically far superior enemy, having recovered from their surprise, were threatening to wipe out the landing party and pressing so hard that rapid disengagement and reembarkation became imperative. Both were successfully effected without loss under cover of darkness. After the explosion I returned to Kigoma.

  13

  Black Spiders on His Face

  a few days after Rudolf Tellmann’s first patrol the so-called short rains descended on Lake Tanganyika. Rain started to fall during the night of 25 October, light and intermittent at first, then more and more heavily and loudly. A lukewarm rain that came down in big fat drops, it was destined to go on for several weeks, and it enveloped the world like a pallid curtain. Heavy black clouds hovered in the windless sky, refusing to move on for days at a time, and everything on the earth below was limp and dank. Sheet lightning flickered incessantly over the lake, thunder rumbled in the distance. Twilight prevailed throughout the day. The leaves on the trees were fat and heavy. Small animals took refuge in their burrows, big ones sheltered beneath the trees with their ears drooping. Wendts beer garden subsided into the mud. Landslides occurred on the bare, treeless slopes above Kigoma. Yawning cracks opened in the fields, loudly snapping the roots of trees that had been felled for railway sleepers. People were seldom to be seen. The muggy, treacly air was scarcely breathable and filled with swarms of mosquitoes, even during the day. Now and then a figure would flit from one hut to the next. Occasionally, someone would clamber on to a roof to patch a hole in the palm-leaf thatch or drive his herd of cattle from one enclosure to another. Paths and roads became boggy and impassable. No one knew what was happening in the wide world beyond the mountains because the telegraph wires were down. The railway was out of action too, probably because of some landslide or fallen tree. The Germans continued to patrol Lake Tanganyika in the Hedwig von Wissmann, but that was all.