“I’d rather not say, sir.”
“You’ll bloody well say if I order you to, Ferrin. I order you to. What is the name of this man? Are you aware that intimate relations with other ranks is contrary to — ” He stopped. “It isn’t other ranks, is it?”
“No, sir.”
“Oh my God,” Braithwaite said. “Albright?”
“Gombezeka, sir.”
“Speak English!”
“Reprehensible, sir.”
“I know that, Cyril. Of course it is. The question is, what must be done about it?”
“It is a military affair, sir,” Albright said.
“It is a military-civilian affair, Cyril. And I do believe that is the right word — affair. Is it not, Ferrin?”
“It’s over, sir.”
“Jolly good,” Braithwaite said. “Of course it’s over. You’re over, Ferrin. I shall have you out of here when your tour is done. I’m ashamed of having you on my staff. Even were I Canadian I would be ashamed. When is your tour done?”
“In six months’ time, sir.”
“Time enough for court martial.”
“On what charges, sir?” I asked. For some reason I was no longer afraid. What could Vice Admiral Sir Hoddings Lord Braithwaite CBE do to me that Abraham had not?
“I don’t care what charges, lieutenant. There will be charges. Fraternizing with the enemy, for one thing.”
“Mr. Talal is not the enemy, sir.” I don’t know where I got the nerve. “He is a British subject.”
“Fraternizing with a British subject then. Fraternizing with someone. Dereliction of duty. Refusing to obey an order. Absence from post without leave. Don’t you worry, Ferrin. Charges there will be if I have personally to rewrite the Admiralty Code.”
“Begging your lordship’s pardon,” Albright said in his quiet way. “You were quite right, sir. There are certain delicate civilian aspects to this matter.”
“Go on.”
“Firstly, we have the question of timing. There are specific, ah, biological manifestations — ”
“I’ll be showing, sir.”
“Indeed, your lordship. So it might be best, to avoid embarrassment all around, for Lieutenant Ferrin to return to the RCAF for reassignment. Her work here is, I understand, done.” Albright looked at me oddly, his face almost softening. Later I would understand. “Work done rather well, by all accounts, wouldn’t you agree, sir?”
“I am no longer concerned with ciphers,” Braithwaite said. Then, in another tone: “What am I not understanding here? You said firstly.”
“This is a conservative society, your lordship. It’s bad enough when we have white members of the military engaging in uhusinano wa ngono… sexual relations, as it were — ”
“As it were?” Braithwaite exploded. “Cyril, the girl is pregnant!”
“Yes, of course, sir. But when it is a European woman and a non-white person, a Muhindi — ”
“Would that not be Seti, in this case, Mr. Albright?” I said.
Albright reflected. “Yes, of course, lieutenant. Seti indeed.” He beamed as though I were his student and had caught him out. As if I were his success.
The vice admiral clearly had had enough. “What are you people going on about?”
“Muhindi, sir,” I said. “It’s broadly Indian, Hindu to be precise, though Mr. Talal is not in fact a — ”
“Talal be damned,” Braithwaite said. “This is not about Talal, or his infernal horses. It is, it is — what is it about, Cyril? Be so good as to cease your dithering. Come out with it!”
“Seti designates a wealthy Indian, sir,” Albright said. “Lieutenant Ferrin has put her finger right on it. The Indian community would be extremely upset. A.S. Talal is a pillar of that community and, as I say, it is a conservative community. We rather need their cooperation. They would be — ”
“Ubabaifu,” I said. “Upset, sir.”
“How uba-whatever?”
“Over the short term, unpleasantly sticky, your lordship. Perhaps worse, over time the political situation — ”
“What political situation? Do we have a political situation in Kenya on which I’ve not been briefed?”
“Not so much in Kenya just at the moment, sir. But the Indian community here maintains strong ties with the sub-continent. As you know, there are currents in India — ”
“Cyril, are you telling me that something which happens between two persons in the middle of the night — good Lord, I hope it was in the middle of the night — can possibly inspire rebellion in an entire country? That is patently absurd.”
Albright seemed to grow taller. He was, after all, a don. And this was his field. “Vice admiral, stranger things have happened. Just at the moment the Indian community, which supplies us with almost all our requirements for food, lodging, tropical clothing, even beer — a good deal of this is in the hands of the very Mr. Talal who — ”
“I know who Mr. Talal is, Cyril. I also know I have the power to commandeer all the food and lodging and beer — even beer — we require. Have you forgotten I am God here? I’ll have him thrown in Fort Jesus before you can say — what is that word for beans?”
“Maharagwe, sir.”
“Maharagwe, then. And I’ll have his horses in the bargain.”
Albright coughed gently. “No, sir. I don’t think that will do anything but upset the Indian community, which does control commerce in Kenya, in East Africa in fact. This is not a situation which calls for main strength. It calls, sir, for tact.”
“I am a vice admiral in His Majesty’s Navy, Cyril. We are in a war. What will not be sold us, I will take.”
Albright grew taller still, and instead of approaching Braithwaite’s desk stepped backward and away, as though to distance himself not only from the vice admiral but from his thinking. “Your lordship, should you choose to punish Lieutenant Ferrin for what can only be considered a human failure, and I think an understandable one in wartime especially, I shall report to the Foreign Office that you are a bumbler and a brute, and if you should go so far as to place in jeopardy British interests by undermining our already sensitive relations with the Indian community of East Africa by pursuing a punitive policy toward one or more of that community for what I can only think of as personal reasons, I shall resign my post forthwith and go directly to Downing Street, with which I have excellent relations, and — should that fail — to the press. You may govern here, vice admiral, but you do not rule. Those days, sir, are over.”
IX
Montreal was mild that winter, mild for Montreal, but sub-Arctic compared with the coolest nights in Kilindini, even on Abraham’s dhow, when he would wrap his jacket around my shoulders as the wind whipped the normally placid waters of the harbor into miniature whitecaps crisp and pale as meringue.
My teaching schedule was light and spread out over four days in the mornings — the head of the Faculty of Mathematics had been my professor as an undergraduate, and was accommodating in the extreme, perhaps also because most of the good male teachers were called up — and I had a Québécoise nanny who came in those days until 2 PM, so that even when a student kept me after class I was able to walk from the campus to our flat on Prince Albert Street and still have time for lunch before she left.
I was not the only one of the old Bletchley Park contingent who had moved on. By the time the baby came, my former colleagues had been redistributed, redeployed, scattered. The tide of war had turned. Some were removed back to Bletchley Park as our code-breaking activities were more and more integrated with the Americans’. Some followed the return of the Eastern Fleet to the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, where listening stations were again established in Ceylon and China. I was receiving kind, chatty notes from places I had never been.