The unease was general, but only at first. My former superior, Charlie Fahnstock, a rather stout and dour fellow who had grown up in Kenya before studying statistics at the London School of Economics — to His Majesty’s Forces, statistics was close enough to mathematics — introduced me into my new setting. Like most of the Bletchley Park crew, I was protective of Charlie: he was hardly, as the code-breakers liked to rhyme, a “deft-tenant,” and probably should not have been in the armed forces at all; he had no leadership abilities whatsoever. But he did speak Swahili — and he meant well.
“G-gentlemen,” he said with the stammer that young men of good family affected in those days, “th-this is Ferrin. Newly c-c-atapulted from the sergeantry to the off-off-officerial c-class. Unlike y-yours truly, c-clearly a case of m-m-merit.” Exhausted by his expedition into public speaking, he fell upon his seafood bisque as though he had not eaten for days.
After this, the others were quite welcoming. The prospect of sex might have had something to do with it: officers were discouraged from social intercourse with other ranks and, unlike in Nairobi, there were few unattached European women on the coast. After a few minutes, it was quite as though I had been an officer forever.
Certainly the African servants could not have known otherwise: our waiter trotted off to the kitchen for a replacement when he noticed I did not touch my soup. Though as a Jewish family in Alberta we had not been particularly rigid regarding the dietary laws, neither shellfish nor pork had ever appeared in our kitchen, and the very idea of eating them turned my stomach.
“Don’t fancy the bisque, Ferrin?” The speaker was a terribly good-looking young squadron leader named Trent-Smith — he could not have been more than twenty-two.
“Allergic to shellfish, I’m afraid,” I said, smiling.
“Damn shame,” he said. “It’s not the best thing about the local fodder, it’s the only good thing. I haven’t had a decent chop in months.”
Had he been compelled to eat at Sergeants Mess, poor Trent-Smith might have felt better. I was not so blasé. Officers Mess at Kilindini was at the level of the prewar Savoy in London — I had dined there with my visiting parents when I was at Cambridge — or the Ritz-Carlton in Montreal, where my dear lost brother had once treated me to an expensive spread. One could get used to Officers Mess: real butter on the table, salad so crisp it crackled, starched linen, servants so well-trained one hardly finished one’s plate before it was smoothly replaced with the next, and somehow or other no flies. Probably they were all at Sergeants Mess.
At the evening meal, just as I was seated, the brisk adjutant, who had shown me to the veranda only days before and abruptly vanished, now reappeared. “Vice Admiral Lord Braithwaite requests your presence at table,” he said. “Lieutenant.”
Every eye in the vast hall was upon me as I followed him, threading my way through the sea of ensigns and lieutenants, a lake of captains and majors, a puddle of colonels and commanders, and a sprinkling of brigadiers and rear admirals until, by windows overlooking the harbor — Braithwaite seemed to prefer a clear avenue of escape — I found myself at a table once again set for three. I saluted.
“Do sit, Ferkin,” Braithwaite said. He had an enormous prawn in his right hand, with which he tossed off what passed for a salute. “Improvement on Sergeants Mess, what?”
“Yes, your lordship.” He continued to work on the prawn. “Shikamoo, Mr. Albright.” It was the way one greeted an elder — I had just learned this refinement. “Always good to see you.”
Unlike the vice admiral’s, his plate was untouched: on one side, three slices of tomato; on the other, a bed of lettuce. I had the feeling Albright rarely ate, like some reptile who waited patiently in ambush to swallow something bigger than himself. “Marahaba,” he said, speaking as an elder. “Hupendi samakigamba? It is my understanding you don’t care for shellfish.”
“We share that.”
“At least Albright has a decent reason, Ferkin.”
“Allergic, actually,” the civilian said. “Animal protein. It makes me ill.”
I nearly laughed: so my excuse actually made sense in the real world.
“You know, Ferkin,” the vice admiral grunted cheerily, wiping his gray mustache with a linen napkin bearing his crest, “your religion has got you people into quite a mess, hasn’t it?”
“My religion, sir?”
“Chinjo la wayahudi.”
“I don’t know the first word, Mr. Albright.”
“Massacre, chinjo. Plural, machinjo.”
“Bloody foolishness, holding onto these rituals. Cuts you off from the mass of men. I daresay you people wouldn’t be in the state you’re in, Nahzees and all that, were it not for the fact you do keep yourselves apart.”
“I was at school with a Jewish fellow,” Albright said, as though mining the past. “Gold something.”
An African servant came up just in the nick of time — I don’t know where the conversation might have led — with a plate of curried chicken, green salad, and, for some reason, a little tent of six leaning gherkins. Clearly the plate had been put together especially for me.
“I’ve seen the horses, sir,” I said brightly, not waiting to be asked — anything to get the vice admiral and his civilian flunky off their talk of crustaceans and Nahzees. Another moment and I might have said something. If Braithwaite wanted to send me back to Sergeants Mess — where no one ever noticed what I ate or did not eat or, if they did, had the courtesy not to comment — so much the better.
“You have?”
“Yes, sir. They’re splendid.”
“Splendid,” Braithwaite said, his mustache once again surrounding a prawn. “Or merely unusual?”
I popped a gherkin into my mouth. The remaining five tumbled into a ragged pile on the plate. “Both, sir.” I chewed on the gherkin — nothing had tasted so delicious since I’d left home — while Braithwaite gnawed on a fresh prawn with what I supposed was impatience.
Albright broke the silence. “Come, come, lieutenant, there’s a war on. We haven’t got ages.”
“Very well,” I said, once again avoiding direct response. Instead I turned physically to the vice admiral. “There are seven — two stallions, the rest mares. There may be more but that is all I saw. They are Marwari, sir. I suppose you know that.”
Braithwaite picked up his glass, South African hock, the chilled green bottle shining in a silver ice bucket glistening with rivulets of sweat. He swallowed down a considerable amount. “Yes, Marwari. Tell me what I don’t know.”
It occurred to me to tell him that he did not know I felt closer to Abraham Talal than ever I could to his lordship, but I dared not. “Just over fifteen hands, the stallions, the mares about fourteen. As you are probably aware, the breed is distinguished for its long, pointed ears that taper gracefully and turn in toward each other as if in conversation. Looked at head-on, they form a lyre shape. From the side the head is long and aquiline, straight as this table, sir, with large flaring nostrils and gentle lips.”
“Go on.”
“They are a beautiful horse, sir. Straight back, strong vertical limbs. Extremely tough hooves. A farrier’s nightmare — they run unshod. Mr. Talal was kind enough to explain — ”
“Kind enough, my left foot,” Braithwaite said suddenly, so loudly that officers several tables away looked up. “The man is keen on selling his livestock. Kind enough, indeed. He’s playing at this damned… eastern game. Arabs, Jews, Indians — an infernal bad habit is all it is. Lieutenant, I am more than familiar with the Marwari strain, at least from books. There are, unfortunately, very few of them these days outside of books, what with the coming of motor transport and our policy of defanging the maharajas. Before the Great War you might find any odd Indian ruler with a small cavalry, 200–500 horses, sometimes a 1000. But there are precious few now. Frankly, I think the damned Indians ate them. Regardless, our Mr. Talal certainly has the only purebred Marwaris in Africa. For all I know, he has the only purebred Marwaris anywhere.