Compared with our billet at the Indian boys’ school, and the functional squalor of Sergeants Mess, to say nothing of the inadequately ventilated room we worked in eleven hours each day — one of our crew, Lammings, who had grown up in East London, likened it to a sweatshop, with mathematicians in lieu of Cockney sewing-machine operators — anything decent for tea would have been a godsend. Lord Braithwaite’s official residence was more than decent. It was spectacular, a breathtaking white-marble cross between a stately home and a tea pavilion.
Apparently that is what it had been: the stately home of a principal tea grower, an Indian of some sort who had volunteered its use to His Majesty’s Forces. After innumerable entry halls and foyers, each leading into the next like a series of Chinese boxes, I was escorted through a set of double doors that opened to reveal the stage-set drama of a veranda looking out over Kilindini Harbour, a table set for three, and two very different gentlemen standing by the alabaster balustrade and conversing so closely they might have been hatching a plot.
The adjutant who had taken me this far, quite dashing in that vacant way of the British landed gentry, turned silently on his heel just as we passed through the carved teak doors, and disappeared.
Lord Braithwaite was a massive figure in khaki whose gray mustache covered a good quarter of his pink face. The other gentleman seemed by comparison even frailer than he actually was. Balding, and wearing the kind of pince-nez that university dons liked to affect so that they might stare over them and dress you down for some horrid academic fault, he was attired in seriously out-of-date civilian clothes, including a cravat, something rarely seen in the steam room that was Mombasa. As though a bell had rung, both looked up abruptly.
“And you are, eh, sergeant, is it?”
I snapped a salute and held it. “Ferrin, sir. Sergeant, Royal Canadian Air Force, late of Bletchley Park, seconded to His Majesty’s Navy, Kilindini. Sir!”
“Very good, Ferkin,” Braithwaite said, smiling graciously under the broad whiskers that plumed out over his yellow, rather crooked teeth. He returned my sharp salute with something like a wave; he seemed almost to be scratching his head. Behind him the sun descended toward the horizon and mainland Kenya — the residence was situated on a spit of land jutting west into the harbor like a thumb surrounded on three sides by water. In the gardens sloping to the sea, its bright blue-green now tinged with gold, Royal Marine sentries in full dress paced like clockwork figurines. On either side, guard towers framed the view. “Needn’t be so all-fired military, must we? Come and have a drink, sergeant. And do say hello to Mr. Albright. What are you these days, Cyril? Political adviser, what? Africa walla, that kind of thing.”
“Political adviser, sir, if you wish,” Albright said. Next to Braithwaite’s energetic beefiness, he looked the very image of academic inutility, his suit, drab brown or olive or gray, hanging on him like a shroud. “So nice to meet you, sergeant. Canadian, you say.” It was not a question. “Good people, the Canadians. The Frenchies amongst you can be a bit difficult, though. You’re not…?”
“No, sir,” I said. “From Alberta, really. Very few French there.”
“I’m told you’re something of an mswahili, is that true, sergeant?”
“Trying to learn it, sir. Out of a book. I’ve been practicing on the streets.”
“Siku hiyo alikuja afisa mmoja Mzungu.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Albright. I don’t — ”
“On that day a European officer came.”
“I meant to say — I did more-or-less understand the phrase — but wouldn’t it be sajini, sir? I’m not an officer.”
“Do they drink champagne at high tea in Alberta, Ferkin?” the vice admiral asked. He held out a flute already filled — I don’t think I had seen a glass so delicate in my life. “Do relax, sergeant. Come and have a drink, a bit of smoked salmon. You do eat smoked salmon, don’t you?”—he did not wait for a reply — “or there’s some of this goose-liver paste. With the Jerries in France, a bit hard to come by these days.”
“Unakula nyama ya nguruwe?” Albright asked.
“No, sir.” I said. “I don’t eat pork. But goose is fine.” Fine? After the unidentifiable meat of Sergeants Mess, it was paradise.
“That you are, in fact, of a certain persuasion — Myahudi?”
“I am, sir. But I don’t quite understand — ”
“The vice admiral thought you might not be comfortable with victuals that would place you in a sticky spot.”
“What do your people do?” Braithwaite said. “If you don’t mind my asking, Ferkin.”
Now I was thoroughly confused. Was he talking of my people, or my people? Never mind. I was to answer. “My father is a rancher, sir. Mum teaches. Mathematics, sir.”
“Brothers, sisters?”
“No sisters, sir. One brother. RCAF. Missing over Burma, sir.”
“Very sorry to hear,” Braithwaite said, clearly not. “Know something of horses, do you?”
“I’m sorry, sir?”
“Horses,” Albright jumped in, seeking to clarify by translating into a language I barely understood. “You know, farasi.”
“I grew up on a horse.” Consciously I omitted the sir. Instead I turned to the vice admiral, himself turned away to peer out over the bay. The lights of Mombasa were just coming on — how different from England, where under threat of German air raids the night brought only darkness and fear. “Vice Admiral Braithwaite, sir,” I said to his back. “I’m a bit confused. I’m RCAF on loan to His Majesty’s Navy for the purpose of assisting in code-breaking operations under supervision of Bletchley Park. I am a mathematician. I have no idea what my religion and, and… horses have to do with my work. Should I be offended, sir?”
That was the closest I could get to a complaint. There were two other Jews in our group — why was I being singled out? Was it because I was Canadian? That made no sense. And the horse business… I watched Braithwaite turn slowly to face me, his lips pursed beneath his mustache as though in consideration of some great question of naval strategy upon whose outcome hung the fate of the Empire.
“Sergeant, effective immediately, I am promoting you flight lieutenant. As such, you are hereby attached indirectly to my staff. You will be my principal adviser on matters equine and Judaic. As of tomorrow morning, I want you to begin work on securing for me a number of horses.”
“I’m a code-breaker, sir.”
“Code-breaker, horse-breaker, all the same, what. As I say, you will help me to secure at least two horses. If possible, seven.”
I could not stop myself. “Jewish horses, sir?”
Albright looked down at me over his pince-nez and tapped the champagne flute in his hand as though it were a school bell. “Not Jewish horses, Ferrin,” he said with a mixture of kindness and exasperation. “Horses from a Jew.”
This left me no more enlightened. “Sir, I’m afraid I — ”
“Afraid?” Braithwaite snorted, at once avuncular and all-powerful, as though he had adopted an orphan whom he would protect, but only so long as she behaved. “I don’t know about you, Ferkin, but I do get a bit peckish at this hour, and would so like to eat. Mr. Albright hardly ever appears hungry, expected from a vegetarian — I believe they teach them that at Oxford, from which he’s come to educate me on the native scene — but I’ll wager you could do with a change from Sergeants Mess.”
“Yes, sir. I think so, sir.”
“So there’s nothing to be of afraid of, really, is there? Now, come and sit, and we’ll tell you all about it.” He smiled more deeply as I stepped toward the table set with silver and china and Irish linen, all marked with the admiral’s crest. “Jewish horses. Very good, wouldn’t you say, Cyril? Imagine the circumcision. Jewish horses, indeed.”