The Male Response

He was still strapped in his seat. He was lying on his back, for the plane had come to rest with its nose high in the air, standing like a tower among a tangle of branches.

All Soames could do for some while was stare stupidly straight above him at the pilot’s door, some feet over his head. He was exceedingly cold. It occurred to him that the grey light was the light of early dawn. They had crashed at about six, or perhaps an hour before sunset; he had been unconscious for some twelve hours. He was too numb to attempt to check this observation by lifting his arm and looking at his wrist watch.

Instead, he turned his attention to the other passengers. Over to his right lay Wally Brewer, in a position much like Soames’ own, except that his head was twisted backwards in such a ghastly fashion as to make it obvious even to Soames – a tyro in such matters – that his neck was broken and he was dead. The grey light, filtering through the leaves, pressed against the windows, lingered complacently on Wally’s staring eyes.

There was no sign of Ted Timpleton.

Twisting himself round with an effort, Soames looked backwards and down to where Deal Jimpo Landor had sat. There was no sign of him either.

He wondered how the pilot and the Birmingham man had fared, but there seemed no possible way of getting up to them in the forward compartment. As he stared rather dreamily upwards, the communicating door opened slightly and a head was poked into the cabin; it wore the flamboyant bushwacker hat the Birmingham man had deemed appropriate for the journey.

Soames was about to shout out to him when he recalled he did not know the man’s name (Duncan? Dobson? Hobson? Hobhouse?); again absurd inhibitions overcame him and silenced him. And now the head turned, allowing Soames a glimpse of gleaming teeth and a hairy shoulder.

Just for a startled second, horror invaded Soames. Was the Birmingham man a werewolf? Had the crash released lycanthropic tendencies in him?

Then a grinning chimpanzee, still wearing the bushwacker hat, launched itself into the cabin, swinging down from seat to seat with all the trained abandon of a Palladium act.

‘Shoo!’ Soames said with appropriate force.

Startled, the chimpanzee shed its headgear and beat a retreat back into the pilot’s compartment.

Thoroughly roused, Soames undid his safety belt and set about climbing out of the wrecked plane.

He swung down the seats in a clumsy imitation of the chimpanzee and reached the door, which had been broken open by the force of the crash. Looking out, he found himself some forty feet above ground level. The plane was standing on its tail against a giant tree whose damaged branches seemed to extend like broken tusks all round the fuselage, piercing it in some places.

Unexpected elation coursed through Soames. He was alive! He was romantically in the mysterious heart of Africa. Life was suddenly something worth a hearty cheer. He took a grateful breath of morning air, and found it smelt much like eggs and bacon.

There was no exit for him this way. He jumped down on to what had been the rear wall of the cabin and lowered himself through the door, now hanging open, into the rear of the plane.

Passing the little galley and toilets, he climbed down through another open door into the cargo hold. Here, all the crates containing the component parts of the Apostle Mk II looked still to be in position and unharmed; thanks to careful packing, they had not budged an inch. Working his way carefully down them, Soames reached the cargo hatch. It gaped open, and a steel ladder extended from it down some fifteen feet to the ground.

Descending the ladder, pushing through twigs and leaves, Soames could see that the crumpled expanse of tail plane acted as a pedestal for the wreck. He reached ground and there, a few feet away, Ted Timpleton, sleeves rolled up, was frying eggs and bacon over a stove.

Directly he saw Soames, he came running up, throwing out his arms and clutching Soames’ hands.

‘Oh, Soames,’ he exclaimed. ‘Oh, how good it is to see you! Oh, what a ruddy relief; I quite thought you had had your lot. You’ve not a clue how terrible it felt here – the only white man …’

With Soames’ anger that this little man should have crept out of the plane without, apparently, attempting to help any of his fellows, went a detached interest in the sudden use of his own Christian name, with all the camaraderie in the face of danger it implied; then these sensations were banished by a more urgent one which rose conquering from the pit of the stomach.

‘Is breakfast ready?’ Soames asked.

In the frying pan, deliciously, joyously, six eggs sparkled and wallowed like suns in the lively fat; close by, waiting to welcome them when they were cooked, stood two plates already loaded with crisp bacon and gleaming rounds of potatoes. A groan escaped Soames’ lips.

Even as he wondered if Timpleton had been intending to eat all this glorious food himself, Soames caught sight of Deal Jimpo propped with his back against the bole of a tree a few feet away. The young negro was covered by a rug; his eyes were closed, he breathed heavily.

‘I had a dickens of a job getting His Highness out of the plane,’ Timpleton said. ‘Nearly broke my back. Of course, it was dark when I came to, and that didn’t make things any easier. He was already conscious and groaning like a boat. I got to him and brought him down here somehow. Then I fixed his leg up in splints. He’s broken it badly. Funny a big chap like that should get his leg smashed up and here’s these eggs with their shells not even cracked.’

‘You did jolly well, Ted,’ Soames said warmly.

‘I don’t know. I was in the Navy in the war.’ The word of praise embarrassed him. He gestured awkwardly at the sleeping man and said, ‘We’ll wake old Jimpo up now and give him a plate of grub. He’ll feel twice the man. I got some coffee out the galley, too.’

He squatted by the stove, slightly smiling, a little wiry Londoner turning grey above the ears, conscious of Soames’ eager looks. Producing a third plate he put the eggs, now done to a turn, two on each plate and shovelled bacon and potato beside them until the plates were equally loaded. He produced knives and forks from a box and handed a pair to Soames.

‘Eating irons coming up,’ he exclaimed. ‘Blast! Forgot the salt! We’ll have to rough it this time. I can’t climb back up there again till I’ve had my grub.’

‘Quite,’ agreed Soames, and before Timpleton could get over to the sleeping man he had begun the attack on his plate.

After coffee, all three of them felt much better. Jimpo, as both the white men had instinctively dropped into the habit of calling him, bore the pain in his leg stoically and assumed command of the party, to Soames’ secret relief.

For the first time, Soames had an inclination to look round. They were at the bottom of a thickly forested slope, among whose branches monkeys chattered. The open ground before them was churned by the crash landing and littered with small branches. Two hundred yards away, forlorn and innocent now, lay the culprit length of wing.

‘One of you must climb to the nose of the aeroplane and see if the two men there are alive,’ Jimpo said. ‘That is first essential.’

‘I will go,’ Soames offered, eager to show his readiness to do anything, for he wanted his two companions to realise as quickly as possible that he was a good chap.

It was not an especially hard climb. Soames took it stage by stage up through the aircraft and, with a final jerk that it would have done his old scoutmaster good to behold, hauled himself up into the pilot’s cabin.

The chimpanzee had vanished. Silence reigned here now. A mighty bough had crashed through the small compartment, shattering the instrument boards and pinning both the pilot and the Birmingham engineer, who had taken the spare second pilot’s seat, beneath it. The Birmingham man’s torso had completely caved in; he lay with his profile turned from Soames, glass frosting his hair. His tongue had been forced out of his mouth like a length of tie. When Soames pulled back the leafy branches, so incongruous in this little, man-made shell, it was to find that the pilot’s skull had been shattered. His face was indistinguishable; a few large blow-flies were inspecting the damage.

Sickened, Soames let the branches sweep back into position. He could do nothing here. Yet he stood there, silent, the air heavy with petrol fumes and sunlight coming in horizontally through the wound in the hull. He was regretting he had not been more genial with the Birmingham man while a chance for geniality existed.

Looking up through the shattered glass, he perceived a face watching him from a branch outside. It was a thin, eroded face, lined with despair, from which peered two hanging-judge eyes; its beak was like a tarnished blade. Even as Soames and the vulture regarded each other, another great bird in its funeral garb came clattering down to take up its perch beside the first. Then they both stared down at the living man without comment. By the time he had disappeared back into the body of the plane, two more friends had joined them; the leader stepped forward and flubbed heavily down into the cabin.

‘This is our best plan,’ Jimpo told them, leaning back against the tree. ‘We cannot be many leagues from my country. That is a fortunate chance, for my leg will allow me to proceed only slowly. Just now I have observed a herd of topi, and from their movements, I suspect there may be water in that direction, through the bushes. We will walk to that water. If it should be a river, it is good for us to make camp there and wait for men to come by in boats. They will take us to my father’s republic.’

‘What you say goes, of course,’ Timpleton said, scratching his neck. ‘It’s your country. But I thought the usual stunt in these situations, from what I’ve read, was to walk to safety. Even if we have to take it slowly, it’s better than just sitting spinelessly by the river waiting for someone to show up.’

‘You have read too many adventure stories, Ted,’ Jimpo said. ‘These jungles are bad and we become quickly lost. We are not Biggles & Co. Best to wait by the river! I will teach you to trap crocodile.’

‘If we set fire to the plane, someone would be bound to see it and come and investigate,’ Soames suggested. ‘We could get all the food out first.’

Something like bad temper flitted across Jimpo’s face.

‘You think I get the computer so near to home and then burn it?’ he asked. ‘That is a silly notion, Soames. Help me to my feet and we will walk to the water.’

They trudged slowly through the waist-high grass. While Soames was in the plane, Timpleton had fashioned a sturdy crutch for Jimpo, with which he was able to proceed without too much discomfort.

The sun was high in the sky and they were sweating profusely by the time they reached the water; by English standards, it was a fair-sized river. The approach to it lay through a thicket of head-high bushes, but on the other bank rose true jungle, dense and unwelcoming. The river itself was deep and flowed so sluggishly it had the appearance of being semi-congealed.

‘This is ideal place,’ Jimpo said. ‘Now I will light fires to scare away the snakes and one of you will go back to the plane to collect the equipment I shall name. It can be dragged back here on the rug with maximum comfort. Which of you likes to go?’

‘Toss you, Soames,’ Timpleton said promptly, producing a coin and laying it on the back of his fist with his other hand over it.

‘I always lose these things,’ said Soames hopelessly. ‘Heads, I suppose,’ and lost. Thus it was he who had the surprise, when he got back, sweating, to the plane wreck, of finding a green bicycle with four-speed, propped against the crumpled tailplane and gleaming in the still sunshine.

‘Who’s there?’ Soames called nervously and then recollecting that this might well be what was French Equatorial Africa, ‘Er – qui est là?’

No answer came to him except the superbly contemptuous twittering of an insect in the long grass. He walked quietly about the wreck and saw nobody. The owner of the bicycle must have climbed up the ladder and entered the cargo hatch.

Slightly nonplussed, Soames was staring up this ladder when a black face appeared at the top and a negro wearing khaki shorts and bearing a spear shinned down like lightning to confront him. They faced each other with rather similar silly smiles before the negro began to talk volubly, pointing to the plane.

‘Sorry, I don’t understand a word,’ Soames said, commencing an elaborate pantomime with swooping hands and explosive sounds to depict the whole drama of a plane crash in which all but three passengers, two white and one black, were killed, the other two being by the river about a mile distant, and would you kindly follow there now bringing your bicycle if needs must …

All this the negro watched politely before shrugging his shoulders in a gesture of bafflement.

When Soames, after taking a refreshing swig from the water container Timpleton had left under the tree, began to head back for the river, he beckoned industriously to the negro and saw him seize up his bike, swing it over one shoulder by the crossbar, and follow. ‘Good boy … that’s it … someone who’ll be able to make you savvy when we get there … yes, come on … he’ll make it worth your while … good,’ Soames muttered in a kind of dreary undertone of encouragement as they proceeded.

The negro fell in beside him, cutting off the mumble with a long account of his own which he interspersed with frequent laughter, rather to Soames’ irritation.

‘What’s the good of going on, old boy, when you know I don’t understand a word?’ he enquired, but the negro was still laughing and talking when they reached the river bank. Pushing his way forward, keeping his bicycle miraculously free from entanglements with bushes, he came to where Deal Jimpo was lying.

The latter uttered a few curt sentences, evidently announcing who he was, for at once the newcomer lay down beside him and clutched his hand; he broke into what sounded like an incoherent address of welcome to Jimpo. While they were talking together, Timpleton reappeared, grimy and hot, having set fire to the grass according to Jimpo’s instructions. Soames rapidly explained to him what had happened.

‘We have fortune in some things at least,’ Jimpo said, rising with the newcomer’s aid and leaning on his crutch. ‘This good man, Tanuana Motijala, tells us we are less than a day’s journey – even with my slow progress – from Umbalathorp itself. He will escort us along the trail and we can leave at once.’

This was indeed good news. Both Soames and Timpleton had had private dreams of spending a week by the surly river, beating off crocodiles, rhinoceros and water snakes with fragments of girder from the plane.

‘Thank him very much indeed and ask him where the hell he got his push bike,’ Timpleton said.

A brief exchange between the two black men followed and then Jimpo explained, ‘He won it in a raffle.’

Once more they did the journey to the plane under the blazing sun. Jimpo assured them that directly he reached the capital of Goya an expedition would be despatched to bring back everything from the wreck, including their luggage, and on this understanding they set off light-handed, Timpleton and Soames bearing haversacks containing water and food.

Tanuana’s trail lay some distance beyond the plane. It was a relief to find themselves in the shadow of the jungle, but this benefit was short-lived, for soon the trail was winding uphill fairly steeply. Both white men began to blow hard, and Jimpo’s face was grim with effort; Tanuana, noticing nothing, chattered and laughed in the same cheery way he had done when Soames first met him.

‘Whatever is he talking about?’ Soames enquired irritably at last, when the trail momentarily levelled out.

‘Saying he explore wreck of flying plane before you appear,’ Jimpo said. ‘Saying he kill four vulture birds in nose of flying plane. Saying they eat too much, too fat to get out hole they come in by. Saying he got four good beaks in saddle-bag.’

Thereafter they lapsed into silence. Gloom rose in Soames. He disliked the way Jimpo’s English was growing worse; it might be only the pain he was suffering; or it might be that the eighteen-year-old ex-Etonian was reverting to type. Now that Umbalathorp actually lay ahead, it no longer seemed the inviting haven it had a few hours earlier. Obviously the first thing to be done was to get a radio message through to Unilateral, asking for rescue at once. Primitivism cast no spell over Soames; he was a Guardian man.

Gradually the distances between the figures grew. Ahead was Tanuana, sometimes uttering a brief snatch of song. A short way behind him came Jimpo, with Soames following close and Timpleton much in the rear. The jungle, moody and fascinating at first, soon became, like an expanse of moody and fascinating contemporary wallpaper, something to pass with averted eyes.

The morning drew on, the trail widened, every step became a burden. After a long time, when there was no sign of Tanuana ahead, nor had been for some while, Jimpo halted, leaning against a tree until Soames caught up with him.

‘You look bad, Jimpo,’ Soames exclaimed, seeing his haggard look and grey face. Sweat sprayed from both their foreheads.

‘Is nothing. We will stop here for rest. Bloody man Tanuana go too fast for me. Wait for Ted to bring us water.’

They both lay down and rested. Ten minutes later, Timpleton appeared, trudging with his head down, his thumbs hooked into his haversack straps.

‘Don’t they have any ruddy buses on this route?’ he asked, sitting down beside them and swinging his haversack off his back. His morale was so good that Soames’ also improved.

As they ate canned peaches and cheese biscuits, Jimpo announced that they were near a village; he ‘could tell’, he explained. He thought that Tanuana might soon return with villagers to help them.

‘What, a lift?’ Timpleton asked. ‘Litters or elephants?’

‘Possibly a handcart,’ Jimpo said. ‘Now we will press on again. We must remain on our legs.’

‘If you will stay here with Ted, I will go on and hurry them up,’ Soames said. ‘I don’t think you are in a fit state to walk any further.’

‘It will not be fit state for my father’s people to find me lying down,’ Jimpo said. ‘Help me to stand.’

They had been on the move again only another ten minutes when they came into a clearing. From the other side of it, a reception committee was approaching. Ten men, among whom were Tanuana with his green bicycle, several women, and a flock of naked children, jostled round a large barrow loaded with flowers. The three from the plane were rapidly surrounded by people and voices.

With a splendid show of patience, Soames and Timpleton stood for a long while listening to speeches all round.

‘What’s it all about?’ Soames asked.

Jimpo eyed him rather superciliously.

‘They made delay to decorate my triumphal cart appropriately,’ he said, as willing hands bore him up on to the bed of flowers. The procession then gradually moved off, the two white men following behind the main crowd.

Some hours later, when shadows lengthened over patchily cultivated land, they entered, the capital of Goya, and an old man of benevolent aspect came forward with pineapple ice cream, smearing it ceremoniously over their faces and hands.

Chapter Three

‘… And full-grown lambs loud bleat …’

Without putting too philosophical a shine on the matter, we may say that cities are places where men gather. It follows therefore that, as no man is perfect, no city he builds is without fault. Hong Kong has its overcrowding, Peking its interminable walls, London its traffic, New York its pavements, Bombay its hideous buildings, Paris its foreigners, Buenos Aires its residents. Umbalathorp has its biting things. It was a peevish Soames Noyes who climbed from his rush bed next morning and cursed all the nocturnally feeding species who had banquetted upon him.

‘We’d have done better to stay in the plane,’ Timpleton said, running a thumb-sized bug to earth in his arm pit.

‘Jimpo said we’d be moved to the palace today. It should be slightly less inhabited there.’

‘Soames … Do you reckon those black women’ll come and bath us again like they did last night? That was a queer stunt, if you like.’

Soames emitted a giggle. He had yet to orient his feelings with regard to that ceremony.

‘They did you all over,’ Timpleton said musing. ‘Christ, I ask you, Soames, if they’ll wash your crutch what else won’t they do?!’

‘The same thought occurred to me, Ted,’ Soames admitted solemnly and was surprised when Timpleton burst into laughter.

The bathing ceremony had occurred at dusk last night, shortly after the weary travellers had arrived. By then, Jimpo had already left them to be carried to his father, informing them they would be well looked after. That they certainly had been, and the three girls apiece who scrubbed Timpleton and Soames, despite their coy protests, in ceremonial concrete baths, had not lacked ardour. Soames had to admit that the only offensive note in this covertly erotic ceremony had been the emptying of an entire carton of detergent into their water.

While they were still being dried by their handmaids with wads of cotton waste, an English-speaking native appeared. He escorted them, when they were ready, to a brick building where an excellent meal was served. Then he took them through the strange-smelling darkness to this beehive-shaped hut in which they had served as nourishment all night.

‘All Umbalathorp men make to you much apologise for this dead-end-kid mansion,’ he told Soames and Timpleton. ‘Better you to sleep here one night while room for you in President palace not sweep. Tomorrow room in palace be much sweep for you. Be nice for you. Be clean like England hospital tomorrow. Only tonight not sweep.’

‘I suppose it never occurred to the blighter that this place wasn’t sweep either,’ Soames grumbled, when the man had gone, after producing – or so it had seemed – a lighted candle for them from his pocket.

‘This must be where they usually keep the palace tigers,’ Timpleton said, sniffing suspiciously.

‘Subtle effluence of cat,’ agreed Soames.

‘Subtle? Have you got cotton wool up your nose?’

Now Soames emerged into the open air, nervously rubbing his hands together. He wore, with an uneasy air, the European clothes the handmaids had given him the night before, in exchange for his own sweat-stained garments. The clothes did not fit properly, hence his nervousness; to a casual observer he might have been taken for a repentant amateur clothes thief, or an ex-jailbird without the strength of his previous convictions.

Directly Timpleton joined him, similarly disguised, their guide of the night before appeared and escorted them to breakfast.

‘After this foregoing meal you are have a shave in the barber’s and next then go to palace,’ he told them.

When they left the barber’s shop, a large hut with a number of smelly charms for sale on the walls, a rickshaw was waiting to take them to the palace. This ride gave them their first good chance of seeing Umbalathorp. The capital, although small, was dispersed over uneven ground broken by several streams and bounded on the one side by a hill they later knew as Stranger’s Hill and on the other by the Uiui River, whose opposite bank rose in places to become almost unscaleable cliff. In the town itself, streets and roads, with few exceptions, were sketchily marked, huts, bungalows and larger buildings facing this way or that according to the whim of their owners. Patches of cultivation or strips of jungle stood even in the heart of the town, giving Umbalathorp a desultory air. The total effect was as if Bideford had suddenly been elected capital of England, whereupon everyone’s garden had grown eaves high, and the town council, to celebrate, had planted thousands of giant straw beehives in the streets as far as Northam and Buckland Brewer.