The Secret War

21

The flowering of the passion vine

Lovelace had warned the others that Blatta Ingida Yohannes would probably call for them at some godless hour next morning to take them sight seeing. They were not surprised, therefore, to be knocked up at half past five, but, when they met an hour later at breakfast, Valerie complained bitterly.

`Yes, filthy practice, isn't it?' Lovelace agreed. `But early rising is the custom here. The Emperor always holds his first Cabinet Meeting of the day at five o'clock, except when he has to propitiate his fanatical priesthood by being in church.'

`We've got such a lot to do, and such a devil of a long way to go, we need every moment,' Christopher said shortly. `These extra hours may prove invaluable.'

`You mean to tackle Yohannes about a pass as soon as he turns up?' Lovelace asked.

`Yes, and if he can't give us one I'll bribe my way up from him to the fellow who can. Will you see about getting the lorries and staff for the journey? Don't spare money. I've got plenty. I brought it in case of just such an emergency as this.'

`Here comes the young man,' cut in Valerie.

Lovelace glanced over his shoulder. `By Jove ! you're right, and he's only half an hour late. That's the height of punctuality for an Abyssinian.'

The young, Europeanized native came hurrying towards them across the dinning room, a happy smile on his coffee coloured countenance. He seemed bubbling over with some secret excitement which he found it hard to contain.

After greetings had been exchanged, Christopher came out with his request at once. `Look here, I understand we have to get a pass to motor out towards Dessye; but I want one, Can you fix it for us?'

Yohannes gave him a quick furtive look. 'Why should you wish to go there?'

'To see something of the front.'

The Abyssinian shook his head. 'That is impossible. It is forbidden.'

Christopher hedged cleverly. `Well, it's not exactly the front we're interested in, but the Emperor. We're all tremendous admirers of the Emperor, and I'd pay a very high price indeed for the privilege of being allowed to offer him my sympathy in his troubles.'

'Behold, then! your wish shall be granted.' Blatta Ingida Yohannes spread out his thin hands and began to laugh uproariously. `I have just come from the Emperor. He returned last night from the front.'

The reason for the young man's suppressed excitement was immediately apparent. Lovelace thanked his gods that they were to be spared the journey. For Christopher it was something of an anti climax, but he was quick to realise the reason of the Emperor's return; he had come back to keep his appointment with Zirrif on the first of May. That meant that Zirrif was in Addis after all, or would certainly be there by the following day. Valerie, with the same thought in her mind, asked; `Why has the Emperor returned so unexpectedly?'

'Because the rains, which are expected so soon now, will put a stop to the fighting. He has summoned a council of his Rases for the day after tomorrow, doubtless to make arrangements for securing further supplies of munitions and training new bodies of troops through the rainy season. Directly he has a moment he will receive you. He has said so. In the meantime it is his wish that I should show you everything. Come! let us go,

They set off at once in Blatta Ingida Yohannes' car, which pulled up at the first filling station. The Abyssinian explained regretfully that he had forgotten to bring out any money, so Christopher, suppressing a smile at what Henrick Heiderstam had told them the day before of this Abyssinian custom, paid a pound for the usual four and a half gallon tonika of petrol. They then proceeded on their way through the hilly, well wooded town, which had far more the appearance of an ill planned suburb than of a capital city.

The War Office, when they passed it, proved to be, not as they might have expected a hive of activity, but a small, tumble down, almost deserted building, and on Valerie remarking that it hardly looked as if a war was in progress at the moment, Blatta Ingida Yohannes shrugged indifferently.

`All power is centralized in the person of the Emperor, and he is so remarkable a man that he can dictate three letters to different secretaries at the same time. Each ministry has its office, but only for a few clerks; the Ministers are in constant attendance at the Palace, and it is there that every decision on even the most minor matters is taken. See, there it is upon the hill. That is Gibbi, where the Emperor lives and works when he is in Addis Ababa.'

In the distance the Palace appeared little more than a rambling mass of buildings clustered upon a high mound which dominated the whole town. As they approached it, Blatta Ingida Yohannes pointed out the dome of the old Emperor Menelik's tomb, the long roof of the Audience Hall, and, between them, the present Emperor's Observation Tower; below these spread a higgledy piggledy collection of roofs and courtyards sufficient to accommodate the population of a good sized town. Thousands of white robed or khaki clad figures were in constant movement behind the palings which separated the first great court from the street. Here was the explanation of the deserted War Office;

all the brain power and nervous force of Abyssinia was concentrated in Gibbi.

A little further on they met a strange procession. It was headed by a big, black bearded man, riding on a mule, and beneath an open umbrella which an attendant held over his head. His helmet, shoulders, knees and elbows were decorated with great tufts of lions' fur so that in the distance he had the appearance of some kind of animal. A nearer view, however, showed that the fur was sewn on to a frock coat of rich brocade, laced with tarnished gold embroidery. Several sinister looking necklaces dangled on his chest, and altogether he was an amazing spectacle of barbaric valour. Behind him there rode several hundred warriors, somewhat less spectacularly clad, then, in a ragged column, marched at least a thousand men and children, some of whom carried rifles, but most armed only with spears and cutlasses, slung, as in the Abyssinian fashion, at their right hips.

`That was the Dedjazmatch Maskassa,' Blatta Ingida Yohannes remarked, as he steered his car round the tail end of the column,

`Is he off to harass the Italians during the rains?' Lovelace asked, thinking of the contrast between this ill equipped rabble, which must be a fair sample of the bulk of the Abyssinian forces, and a detachment of the smart European trained Imperial Guard they had just passed outside the Palace.

`Oh, no. The Emperor would like him to go, but cannot compel him, as he is one of our great feudal chieftains, and, for some reason of his own, he does not wish to take part in the war for the moment.'

`What on earth was he doing with all those armed followers, then?' Christopher inquired.

Blatta Ingida Yohannes shrugged. `He had been to visit a friend, I expect, or is going to do a little shopping in the town. Whether you have five men or five thousand, it is still the custom here for your entire retinue to accompany you wherever you go. Only the younger members of good families who have been educated, like myself, have given up the practice as yet.

I am hoping that you will lunch at my house today,' he went on after a moment. `We go now to inspect the Menelik and Ras Makonnen Schools, but we will drive out there afterwards.'

As he was virtually their host on behalf of the Emperor, no other course was open to them but to accept his invitation, and for the next four hours they had to hold their frayed nerves in check as well as possible while they visited the two schools which are the pride of the small progressive element in Abyssinia.

In the first all lessons were given in English, and in the second in French. The young pupils spoke these languages quite fluently, and asked a thousand questions of the visitors. The class rooms, dormitories and kitchens were clean and orderly, the curriculums carefully thought out and on a par with the highest standards of modern European education. Christopher felt that these bright, happy, knowledgeable boys and girls were the living proof of what the Emperor could do if only he were given time, money, and peace; but Lovelace saw these schools for the children of the Abyssinian aristocracy in more correct proportion, as only two oases of civilisation in a vast wilderness of barbarism.

Each time they had to leave the car to walk round or mount flights of stairs they felt the strain on their hearts which ensued from the least effort at this great altitude. Ordinarily Valerie would have taken immense interest in all that she was seeing, but her acute anxiety about the immediate future was too great. Half the time she felt that she was talking sheer nonsense, through inability to concentrate her thoughts on anything but the terrible events that the next few hours might have in store for her, and the other half she was fighting to control her laboured breathing. Christopher, too, talked only in nervy, spasmodic bursts, being almost entirely occupied with his secret thoughts. Lovelace alone managed to maintain at least an outward appearance of calm, polite interest in the things they were being shown.

Afterwards, on their way to another quarter of the town, they passed several of the Legations: clusters of buildings like good sized villages set in spacious, walled parks that the Emperor had presented to the foreign governments.

Blatta Ingida Yohannes pointed out a number of them and, driving on, arrived twenty minutes later at his house. It was a square bungalow with the usual array of huts and lean to’s about it; all enclosed by a high wall and separated from its neighbours by patches of partially cultivated ground shaded in places by blue gums.

The house possessed only one reception room, but this its owner showed them with some pride. It was furnished with fumed oak of the variety obtainable from the cheaper shops in the Tottenham Court Road, but probably imported at very considerable expense. There were two long shelves of well thumbed books, a relic of their host's student days, and a porcelain stove fitted in one corner as a gallant attempt to carry a French atmosphere into this benighted corner of Africa.

The effort was interesting but pathetic, for these European furnishings looked completely out of place, lacking, as they did, a natural background.

Two white robed servants produced a meal, the principal course of which was vod with intshera, and Blatta Ingida Yohannes gave his visitors their first lesson in eating this staple Abyssinian dish. The vod was a highly seasoned stew and the intshera a kind of biscuity unleavened bread. The process consisted of breaking off a piece of intshera, then pouring some of the vod upon it and getting the resultant mess into one's mouth while spilling as little as possible.

Valerie was surprised that an apparently cultured man should think it amusing to teach his visitors to feed in such a disgusting manner, but Lovelace knew that if it had been their misfortune to have had to accept the hospitality of one of the old school Abyssinian nobility they would have had to eat raw meat and show their appreciation afterwards by loud, and to Europeans offensive, noises.

The meal suffered an unexpected interruption. Bugles blew and klaxons suddenly sounded. It was an air raid warning.

Everybody abandoned their food and ran out into the street. Six great, silver planes were sailing high above the town. They circled slowly, keeping perfect formation, divided, each turning in its own track, and then flew round again.

A few anti aircraft guns opened up and did a little ineffective shooting. The scene was enlivened by a small company of ragged warriors evidently on their way to the front. They had dyed their shaman a pinkish brown in the muddy streams of the mountains through which they had passed, so as not to provide such an easy target for the Italian snipers, and each carried a small sack containing enough grain and dried meat to last him a month. The sight of the planes seemed to drive them into a frenzy. They waved their long sabres round and round their heads, screamed all the things they would do to the Italians when they got them, foamed at the mouth, and those who had guns let off their ancient pieces.

An officer on a bicycle dashed up to the leader of the rabble and began to expostulate angrily with him. As Yohannes informed his charges, the Emperor had given strict orders that ammunition was not to be wasted in such a senseless manner.

No bombs fell. The Italians flew off again towards Dessye, evidently content with photographing any new concentration of troops which might be forming in the area of the city,

'When shall we be able to see the Emperor?' Christopher asked when the meal was resumed. He liked the young Abyssinian; preferred him in many ways to the quick witted, debonair Italian officers he had met at Assab, because he preferred simple to complex personalities and happened to be completely free of all colour prejudice, but they had not yet discovered where Zirrif was, and time was slipping by. Any excuse to break up this sight seeing party must be utilized.

'Ishe naga ishe naga.' Yohannes shrugged, snapping his strong white teeth into a raw paprika, which flamed red among the dessert. 'Tomorrow the day after. What does it matter now that he has returned? He will be very occupied for a little, but he forgets nothing and will send for you in due time. Let us sit for a while in the garden, then I will take you to see the broadcasting station and our beautiful prison.'

The garden proved to be a stockaded quadrangle boasting a dozen fruit trees, but completely devoid of flowers or grass. It was, in fact, a chicken run with the unusual addition of a family of goats, one of which was tethered to the trunk of each tree.

With the skinny fowls pecking the bare earth about their feet they lounged there, in faded deck chairs, for an hour. Yohannes kept up a happy monologue about the Emperor's plans for civilizing his people; the others, while appearing to give polite attention, were fretting to get away but quite unable to think of any plausible reason that they could give for their presence being instantly required elsewhere in Addis.

In due course, still inwardly fuming, they were driven to see the broadcasting station. It was a fine building but quite deserted. Those treacherous Italians had built it, Yohannes explained, with a view to jamming the Abyssinian Government's own station when the trouble came. Naturally they had to be dispossessed, but they had taken certain vital parts of the mechanism with them, so no one could use it, and the Abyssinians had to remain content with their own less powerful station.

The prison, like many other hastily begun buildings in Addis, was still unfinished. It would be very fine and beautifully sanitary when it was done, no doubt, the visitors agreed. In the meantime, Yohannes declared angrily, all the workmen who were engaged upon it had had to go off to this wicked war.

Valerie and Christopher were duly sympathetic, but Lovelace knew that the whole thing was a deliberate deception got up to pander to the sympathies of the League of Nations. Five years before he had managed to get into one of the real prisons, a courtyard surrounded with rows of cages where the wretched malefactors, often only imprisoned for debt, lived in an unbelievable state of filth and horror. Chained in pairs, or sometimes singly, with just enough loose chain to enable them to crawl out into the main courtyard, they were entirely dependent for food on what their relatives chose to bring, and were dying by the score of typhus. That the same thing was still going on he had little doubt, as Yohannes refused his request to take them to see some of the prisoners who would occupy these delightful premises when completed.

At last they got back to the hotel, but still they could not shake off Blatta Ingida Yohannes. He proposed to dine with them and take them to see something of the night life of Addis later,

while Lovelace and Valerie entertained the pleasant, but unwelcome, guest to drinks. Christopher telephoned to the American Legation.

On his return he told Lovelace, in an aside, that Connolly had no definite news but that some white guests were believed to be staying in Ras Desoum's palace. He was having the place watched and would report further late that evening or early the following morning. It seemed that there was nothing more they could do for the moment.

Christopher engaged Blatta Ingida Yohannes for a few moments during which Lovelace was able to pass on the news to Valerie.

`All right,' she said. 'If we've got a respite in this hellish business, let's enjoy ourselves. Our host's a terribly nice little man in his way. After we've had dinner we'll go round the town with him and try to forget what we're here for.'

Lovelace shook his head. `I don't think you'll like it. The films at the cinemas are six reel melodramas, and the two bars are the sort of places I think you'd find it rather embarrassing to be in. The native quarter's ruled out, anyway, as quite impossible for you to visit at any time.'

`Did you see most of these places when you were here before?' she asked.

'Yes. I went round with a few friends and I've rarely spent a more boring evening. The few French jazz dance bars are more dreary than anything you could find in provincial England, and the native high spots are terrible. There's nothing to drink except fetch, that sickly kind of honey wine we had for lunch, or talla, which tastes like bad beer; nothing to listen to except tuneless native music; and nothing to look at, as, from some strange prudery, the Abyssinian women remain sedate and clothed up to their necks even in these haunts of vice and squalor.'

`In that case I'd much rather not go,' Valerie agreed. 'We'll wriggle out of it somehow.'

Valerie now occupied the attention of Yohannes for a little, while Lovelace held a brief consultation with Christopher.

`If it's as you say, she'd best not go,' Christopher said at once. `But I'm worried; worried out of my wits. We've lost a day a whole day doing nothing. If I stay here all evening I'll go crazy. Besides if none of us goes the boy friend will think it funny. Someone's got to stand by the wire in case a message comes through from the Legation. Will you do that, and keep Valerie company, while I go round the town with him? There's just a chance I might near something of Zirrif in one of these places.'

As they went in to dinner Yohannes suddenly remembered the servants he had engaged for them but these were found to be still squatting patiently upon the steps of the hotel, where they had been waiting for the last twelve hours. The troop consisted of two Dallas, a hunchbacked Shoan, and a gentle eyed Mohammedan Harari who was to act as their interpreter.. Lovelace gave them some money, as an earnest of good faith, and dismissed them all until the following morning.

For dinner they ate mutton again but the excellent coffee made up somewhat for the poorness of the meal. Afterwards Christopher went off as arranged with Yohannes while Lovelace and Valerie returned to their private sitting rooms.

It was cold now. The temperature had fallen at least forty degrees;. as it does each night in the Abyssinian highlands. They were glad of the bottle of fake Chartreuse which stood on, the table before them, , even if it was poor stuff it at least sent a fresh glow of warmth through their bodies.

For half an hour they talked of trivialities and he had been speaking of the first Journey East of Suez that he had ever made when she said

'Tell me more about yourself, Anthony. You've visited so many strange places yet it doesn't seem to have altered you a little bit.'

'From what?' he asked curiously.

'Oh, I don't know, somehow you seem as though you must always have been lean and brown and tall and very attractive, but rather silent, and a little cynical; as though nothing had ever touched you very deeply.'

`No,' he smiled. `You were thinking I hadn't changed much from that time I can't remember when we met years ago.'

`Nonsense,' she said airily. `I've already told you that was in some previous existence, although you won't believe me. I want you to tell me what you've been doing in this one.'

He stared at her hard for a moment, shrugged, and began to tell her of his past. Usually he was rather reticent about his adventures but with her he talked easily and well; just as though they had been intimate friends for many years.

Outside, the Abyssinian night grew blacker. Below, the watchmen, who were there to drive off the hyenas, sang their tuneless chorus. Time drifted on, the clock struck nine, ten, eleven without their noticing it. All thought of the strange and dangerous adventure into which they had bean drawn had left them. They were completely happy in each other's company.

It was Lovelace who, at last, suggested it was time

for her to get to bed because Blatta Ingida Yohannes would probably be calling for them at the same ungodly hour again next morning.

`I'm not in the least tired,' she said as she stood up reluctantly. `This evening's been a little oasis of delight. Anthony, in a desert of dread and distress. I suppose we must think of tomorrow though, so I'll go to bed now, although my brain is much too active for sleep yet. I'll read for a bit I think,'

As she spoke she picked up a magazine which someone had left on a side table. It was a nine months old copy of Country Life.

He stood beside her as she flicked carelessly through the pages. For a second she paused at an article on Mazes in famous English gardens; then she made a move to pass on but he exclaimed: `One moment!' and seized her hand.

His eye had caught a photograph of the maze at his own home, Fronds Court in Yorkshire. In his mind's eye he saw it again as he had seen it so often with all its yew hedges trim and orderly but he saw something else as well. He knew now where he had met Valerie before.

She glanced up at him and the change in his expression must have given him away, for she said softly; 'You've guessed at last haven't you?'

'Yes,' he said slowly, and in a fraction of time he lived again that long past moment of a summer afternoon. The gardens at Fronds had been thrown open for a charity. That was why, wanting to be alone, he had found a little girl of fourteen or fifteen, with great, grey eyes and chestnut hair done up in pigtails. She had come racing towards him near tears with distress at not being able to find her way out, He had told her it was a two hundred year old custom that anyone lost in the maze should pay a forfeit if they wished to be led out of it and, upon her agreeing, laughingly demanded a kiss.. At first she had refused but, when he had insisted, instead of the childish peck on the cheek he had expected, to his immense surprise the little girl had solemnly reached up her arms, placed them about his neck and kissed him full and hard upon. the mouth. As he had led her outward along the green walled twisting paths she had told him shyly that she had never kissed anyone like that before and that those sort of kisses were sacred things. He had felt a little bewildered, and a little ashamed, but he had found her parents for her and they had all driven away in a big Rolls Royce to York, where they were spending the week end while doing a motoring tour of England.

The episode of that serious child had troubled him a little for a few days before it had slipped from his memory; to return now as clearly as if it had occurred only the day before.

His brown eyes met Valerie's grey ones. She raised her arms and, after a dozen years, he felt them around his neck again. Before he realised what he was doing he had clasped her to him and her soft lips had melted into his,

Suddenly she threw back her head and sobbed `Oh, we're a couple of beastly rotten cads but we can't help it, darling can we?'

`No,' he said, `no. I've never loved anyone before, but I love you, Valerie and it's hell that it should happen like this yet I can't help it.' With all the pent up passion of years he pressed his lips on hers again just as Christopher entered the room.