Indecent Exposure Page 18
‘Yes. Well,’ said the Kommandant uncertainly but still sounding as though he were interrogating a suspect.
Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon subsided onto the bed where she sat staring at her shoes.
‘It’s all my fault,’ she said finally, ‘I should never have asked you to come.’ She glanced round the horrid room to which her offer of hospitality had condemned the Kommandant and sighed. ‘I should have known better than to imagine Henry would behave decently. He’s got this thing about foreigners, you see.’
The Kommandant could see it. It explained for one thing the presence of La Marquise. A French Lesbian would appeal unnaturally to a transvestite Colonel.
‘And then there’s that wretched club of his,’ Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon continued. ‘It’s not so much a club as a secret society. Oh I know you think it’s all terribly innocent and harmless but you don’t have to live with it. You don’t understand how vicious it all is. The disguise, the pretence, the shame of it all.’
‘You mean it’s not real?’ the Kommandant asked trying to understand the full import of Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon’s outburst.
Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon looked up at him in amazement.
‘Don’t tell me they fooled you too,’ she said. ‘Of course it’s not real. Don’t you see? We’re none of us what we pretend to be. Henry’s not a Colonel. Boy’s not a Major. He’s not even a boy, come to that and I’m not a lady. We’re all playing parts, all terrible phonies.’ She sat on the edge of the bed and her eyes filled with tears.
‘What are you then?’ the Kommandant demanded.
‘Oh God,’ moaned Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon, ‘need you ask?’
She sat there crying while the Kommandant fetched a glass of water from one of the many washbasins.
‘Here, take some of this,’ he said proffering the glass. ‘It will do you good.’
Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon took a sip and stared at the Kommandant frantically.
‘No wonder you’re constipated,’ she said finally, putting the glass down on the bedside table. ‘What must you think of us, letting you stay in this awful place?’
The Kommandant, for whom the day seemed to have become one long confessional, thought it better not to say what he thought though he had to agree that Weezen Spa wasn’t very nice.
‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘if the Colonel isn’t a Colonel, what is he?’
‘I can’t tell you,’ said Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon, ‘I’ve promised never to tell anyone what he did in the war. He’d kill me if he thought I’d told you.’ She looked up at him imploringly. ‘Please just forget what I’ve said. I’ve done enough damage already.’
‘I see,’ said the Kommandant drawing his own conclusions from the Colonel’s threat to kill her if she let his secret out. Whatever Henry had done during the war it was evidently hush-hush.
Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon, judging that her tears and the admission she had just made sufficiently atoned for the discomfort of the Kommandant’s accommodation, dried her eyes and stood up.
‘You’re so understanding,’ she murmured.
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said the Kommandant truthfully.
Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon went over to the mirror and began to repair the calculated ravages to her make-up.
‘And now,’ she said with a gaiety that surprised the Kommandant, ‘I’m going to drive you over to the Sani Pass for tea. It’ll do us both good to get out and you could do with a change of water.’
That afternoon was one the Kommandant would never forget. As the great car slid noiselessly over the foothills of the mountains leaving a great plume of dust to eddy over the fields and kaffir huts they passed, the Kommandant resumed something of the good nature he had so recently lost. He was sitting in a car that had once belonged to a Governor-General and in which the Prince of Wales had twice ridden during his triumphal tour of South Africa in 1925 and beside him there sat if not, evidently, a proper lady at least a woman who possessed all the apparent attributes of one. Certainly the way she handled the car excited the Kommandant’s admiration and he was particularly impressed by the perfect timing she displayed in allowing the car to steal up behind a black woman with a basket on her head before squeezing the bulb of the horn and causing the woman to leap into the ditch.
‘I was in the Army during the war and I learnt to drive then,’ she said when the Kommandant complimented her on her skill. ‘Used to drive a thirty hundredweight truck.’ She laughed at the memory. ‘You know everyone says the war was absolutely awful but actually I enjoyed it enormously. Never had so much fun in my life.’
Not for the first time, Kommandant van Heerden considered the strange habit of the English of finding enjoyment in the oddest places.
‘What about the … er … Colonel? Did he have fun too?’ asked the Kommandant, for whom the Colonel’s wartime occupation had become a matter of intense curiosity.
‘What? On the Underground? I should think not,’ said Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon before realizing what she had just done. She pulled the car into the side of the road and stopped before turning to the Kommandant.
‘That was a dirty trick,’ she said, ‘getting me to talk like that and then asking me what Henry did during the war. I suppose that’s a professional trick of the police. Well, it’s out now,’ she continued in spite of the Kommandant’s protestations. ‘Henry was a guard on the Underground. The Inner Circle as a matter of fact. But for God’s sake promise me never to mention it.’
‘Of course I won’t mention it,’ said the Kommandant whose respect for the Colonel had gone up enormously now that he knew he’d belonged to the inner circle of the underground.
‘What about the Major? Was he in the underground too?’
Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon laughed.
‘Dear me no,’ she said. ‘He was some sort of barman at the Savoy. Where do you think he learnt to make those lethal concoctions of his?’
The Kommandant nodded appreciatively. He’d never thought of Major Bloxham as being a legal type but he supposed it was possible.
They drove on and had tea at the Sani Pass Hotel before returning to Weezen. It was only as they were approaching the town that the Kommandant brought up the question that had been bothering him all day.
‘Do you know anyone called Els?’ he asked. Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon shook her head.
‘No one,’ she said.
‘Are you quite sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure,’ she said, ‘I’d hardly be likely to forget anyone with a name like Else.’
‘I don’t suppose you would,’ said the Kommandant thinking that anyone who knew Els under any name was hardly likely to forget the brute. ‘He’s a thin man with little eyes and he has a flat sort of head, at the back as if someone has hit him with a blunt instrument several times.’
Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon smiled. ‘That’s Harbinger to the life,’ she said. ‘Funny you should mention him. You’re the second person to ask about him today. La Marquise said something odd about him at lunch when his name came up. She said, ‘I could a tale unfold.’ A funny sort of thing to say about Harbinger. I mean he’s not exactly cultured, is he?’
‘No, he’s not,’ said the Kommandant emphatically and with a shrewd understanding of La Marquise’s remark.
‘Henry got him from the Weezen jail, you know. They hire out prisoners for a few cents a day and we’ve kept him ever since. He’s our odd-job man.’
‘Yes, well, I daresay he is,’ said the Kommandant, ‘but I’d keep an eye on him all the same. He’s not the sort of fellow I’d want hanging about the place.’
‘Funny you should say that,’ said Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon yet again. ‘He told me once that he had been a hangman before he took to a life of crime.’
‘Before?’ said the Kommandant in astonishment but Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon was too busy manoeuvring the car through the gates of Weezen Spa to hear him.
‘You will come out with the hunt tomorrow?’ she said as the Kommandant climbed out. ‘I know it’s an awful lot to ask after w
hat you have had to put up with already but I would like you to come.’
The Kommandant looked at her and wondered what to say. He had enjoyed the afternoon drive and he didn’t want to offend her.
‘What would you like me to wear?’ he asked cautiously.
‘That’s a point,’ Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon said. ‘Look why don’t you come over now and we’ll see if you can get into Henry’s togs.’
‘Togs?’ said the Kommandant wondering what obscure feminine garment a tog was.
‘Riding things,’ said Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon.
‘What sort of things does Henry ride in?’
‘Ordinary breeches, riding breeches.’
‘Ordinary ones?’
‘Of course, what on earth do you think he wears? I know he’s pretty odd but he doesn’t ride around in the raw or anything.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked the Kommandant.
Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon looked at him hard.
‘Of course I’m sure,’ she said. ‘What on earth makes you think otherwise.’
‘Nothing,’ said the Kommandant, meaning to have a chat with Major Bloxham at the earliest opportunity. He climbed into the car again and Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon drove back to White Ladies.
‘There you are,’ she said half an hour later as they stood in the Colonel’s dressing-room. ‘They fit you perfectly.’
The Kommandant looked at himself in the mirror and had to admit that the breeches looked rather splendid on him.
‘You even dress the same side,’ continued Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon with a professional eye.
The Kommandant looked round the room curiously.
‘Which side do you dress?’ he asked and was amazed at the laughter his remark produced.
‘Naughty man,’ said Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon finally, and much to the Kommandant’s surprise kissed him lightly on the cheek.
*
In Piemburg the question of naughty men was one that was beginning to bother Luitenant Verkramp. The dispatch of his eleven remaining secret agents had not, after all, seen the end of his problems. Arriving at the police station the morning after their departure he found Sergeant Breitenbach in a state of unusual agitation.
‘A fine mess you’ve got us into now,’ he said when Verkramp asked him what was wrong.
‘You mean those ostriches?’ Verkramp enquired.
‘No, I don’t,’ said the Sergeant, ‘I mean the konstabels you’ve been giving shock treatment to. They’re queer.’
‘I thought those ostriches were pretty queer,’ said Verkramp who still hadn’t got over the sight of one blowing up almost under his nose.
‘Well you haven’t seen the konstabels,’ Sergeant Breitenbach told him and went to the door. ‘Konstabel Botha,’ he shouted.
Konstabel Botha came into the office.
‘There you are,’ said Sergeant Breitenbach grimly. ‘That’s what your bloody aversion thereapy’s been and done. And he used to play rugby for Zululand.’
At his desk Luitenant Verkramp knew now that he was going mad. He’d felt bad enough faced with exploding ostriches but they were as nothing to the insanity he felt now confronted with the famous footballer. Konstabel Botha, hooker for Zululand, six foot four and sixteen stone, minced into the room wearing a yellow wig and with his mouth smudged hideously with lipstick.
‘You lovely man,’ he simpered to Verkramp, sauntering like some modish elephant about the office.
‘Keep your hands off me, you bastard,’ snarled the Sergeant but Luitenant Verkramp wasn’t listening. The inner voices were there again and this time there was no stopping them. With his face livid and his eyes staring Verkramp collapsed screaming in his chair. He was still screaming and babbling about being God, when the ambulance arrived from Fort Rapier and he was carried downstairs struggling furiously.
Sergeant Breitenbach sat beside him in the ambulance and was there when they arrived at the hospital. Dr von Blimenstein, radiant in a white coat, was waiting.
‘It’s all right now. You’re quite safe with me,’ she said and with one swift movement had pinned Verkramp’s arm between his shoulderblades and was frogmarching him into the ward.
‘Poor bastard,’ thought Sergeant Breitenbach gazing with alarm at her broad shoulders and heavy buttocks, ‘you’ve got it coming to you.’
He went back to the police station and tried to think what to do. With a wave of sabotage on his hands, thirty-six irate citizens in prison and two hundred and ten queer konstabels out of a total force of five hundred, he knew he couldn’t cope. Half an hour later urgent messages were going out to all police stations in the area asking them to contact Kommandant van Heerden. In the meantime, as a method of isolating the disaffected konstabels, he gave orders that they should be put through their paces on the parade ground and sent Sergeant de Kok down there to give them drill. It was not a particularly happy choice, as Sergeant Breitenbach found when he went down to see how things were going. The two hundred konstabels minced and pirouetted across the parade ground alarmingly.
‘If you can’t stop them marching like that, you’d better get them out of sight,’ he told the Sergeant. ‘It’s that sort of thing gives the South African Police a bad name.’
*
‘You’ve done what?’ Colonel Heathcote-Kilkoon shouted when his wife told him she had invited the Kommandant to the hunt. ‘A man who shoots foxes? In my breeches? By God, I’ll see about that.’
‘Now, Henry,’ said Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon, but the Colonel had already left the room and was hurrying to the stables where Harbinger was grooming a chestnut mare.
‘How’s Chaka?’ he asked. As if in answer a horse in one of the stalls gave his door a resounding kick.
The Colonel peered cautiously into the darkened interior and studied an enormous black horse that stirred restlessly inside.
‘Saddle him up,’ said the Colonel vindictively and left Harbinger wondering how the hell he was ever going to get a saddle on the beast.
‘You can’t possibly ask the Kommandant to ride Chaka,’ Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon told the Colonel when he said what he had done.
‘I’m not asking a man who shoots foxes to ride any of my damned horses,’ said the Colonel, ‘but if he chooses to he can take his chance on Chaka and good luck to him.’
A dreadful banging and the sound of curses from the direction of the stables suggested that Harbinger was not having an easy job saddling Chaka.
‘Be it on your own head if the Kommandant gets killed,’ said Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon but the Colonel was unimpressed.
‘Any man who shoots foxes deserves to die,’ was all he said.
When Kommandant van Heerden arrived it was to find Major Bloxham resplendent in a scarlet coat standing on the steps.
‘I thought you said you always wore pink,’ said the Kommandant with a touch of annoyance.
‘So I do, old boy, so I do. Can’t you see?’ He turned and went into the house followed by the Kommandant, who wondered if he was colour-blind. In the main room people were standing about drinking and the Kommandant was relieved to note that they were all dressed appropriately for their sex. Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon in a long black skirt was looking quite lovely if a little pale while the Colonel’s complexion matched that of his coat.
‘I suppose you’ll be wanting another green chartreuse,’ he said, ‘or perhaps yellow would suit you better this morning.’
The Kommandant said the green would suit him fine and Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon presently drew him into a corner.
‘Henry’s got it into his head you go around shooting foxes,’ she said, ‘and he’s absolutely furious. I think you ought to know he’s given you the most awful horse.’
‘I’ve never even seen a fox,’ said the Kommandant with simple honesty. ‘I wonder where he got that idea from.’
‘Well, it doesn’t much matter. He’s got it and you’ve got Chaka. You can ride, can’t you? I mean really ride.’
Kommandant van Heerden drew himself up proudly.
‘Well I do hope you’re right. Chaka’s a dreadful brute. Don’t for goodness sake, let him get away from you.’
The Kommandant said he certainly wouldn’t and a few minutes later everyone trooped out to the yard where the hounds were waiting. So was Chaka. Massive and black, he stood some way apart from the other horses and at his head there stood the figure of a man with small eyes and a nonexistent forehead.
It was difficult for Kommandant van Heerden, who in the excitement of going hunting had forgotten all about ex-Konstabel Els, to make up his mind which animal most dismayed him. Certainly the prospect of even mounting a horse as monstrous as Chaka was hardly pleasing but at least it offered a way of avoiding Els if very little, he was about to say, else. With a speed and vigour that quite took the Colonel by surprise, the Kommandant reached up and hauled himself into the saddle and from these commanding heights surveyed the throng. Below him hounds and horses milled about while the other riders mounted and then with Els on a nag vigorously blowing a horn the hunt moved off. Behind them the Kommandant urged Chaka forward tentatively. I am going fox-hunting like a real Englishman, he thought as he dug his heels in a second time. It was the last coherent thought he had for some time. With a demonic lurch the great black horse shot out of the yard and into the garden. As the Kommandant desperately clung to his seat it was apparent that wherever he was going it wasn’t hunting. The hounds had strung out in quite a different direction. As a rockery disappeared beneath him, as an ornamental bush loomed up and disintegrated, and as the Colonel’s roses shed both their labels and their petals in his wake the Kommandant was only aware that he was travelling at a great height and at a speed which seemed incredible. Ahead of him loomed the azalea bushes of which Colonel Heathcote-Kilkoon was so proud and beyond them the open veldt. Kommandant van Heerden shut his eyes. There was no time for prayer. The next moment he was airborne.