Cupid in Africa Part 31

CHAPTER XIX _Of a Pudding_

There was a sound of revelry by night, at the Bristol Bar. A Plum Pudding had arrived. Into that lonely outpost, where men languished and yearned for potatoes, cabbage, milk, cake, onions, beer, steaks, chocolate, eggs, cigarettes, bacon, fruit, coffee, bread, fish, jam, sausages, honey, sugar, ham, tobacco, pastry, toast, cheese, wine and other things of which they had almost forgotten the taste, a Plum Pudding had drifted. When it had begun to seem that food began and ended with coco-nut, maize, bully-beef and dog-biscuit-a Plum Pudding rose up to rebuke error.

At least, it was going to do so. At present it lay, encased in a stout wooden box and a soldered sarcophagus of tin, at the feet of the habitues of the Bristol Bar, what time they looked upon the box and found it good in their sight. . . .

"You'll dine with us and sample it, I hope, Wavell?" said the Major, eyeing the box ecstatically.

"Thanks," was the reply. "Delighted. . . . May I bring over some brandy to burn round it?"

"Stout fella," said the Major warmly.

"Do we eat it as it is-or fry it, or something, or what?" he added. "I fancy you bake 'em. . . ."

"I believe puddings are boiled, sir," remarked Bertram.

"Yes-I b'lieve you're right, Greene," agreed Major Mallery. . . . "I seem to know the expression, 'boiled plum-pudding.' . . . Yes-boiled plum-pudding. . . ."

"Better tell the cook to boil the bird at once, hadn't we?" suggested Captain Macke.

"Yes," agreed Vereker. "I fancy I've heard our housekeeper at home talk about boiling 'em for _hours_. Hours and hours. . . . Sure of it."

"But s'pose the beastly thing's _bin_ boiled already-what then?" asked Augustus. "Bally thing'd _dissolve_, I tell you. . . . Have to drink it. . . ."

"Very nice, too," declared Halke.

"I'd sooner eat pudding and drink brandy, than drink pudding and burn brandy," stated Augustus firmly. "What would we boil it in, anyhow?" he added. "It wouldn't go in a kettle, an' if you let it loose in a dam'

great _dekchi_ or something, it'd all go to bits. . . ."

"Tie it up in a shirt or something," said Forbes. . . . "What's your idea, Greene-as a man of intellect and education?"

"I'd say boil it," replied Bertram. "I don't believe they _can_ be boiled too much. . . . I fancy it ought to be tied up, though, as Clarence suggests, or it might disintegrate, I suppose."

"Who's got a clean shirt or vest or pants or something?" asked the Major.

"Or could we ram it into a helmet and tie it down?"

It appeared that no one had a _very_ clean shirt, and it happened that n.o.body spoke up with military prompt.i.tude and smart alacrity when Lieutenant Bupendranath Chatterji offered to lend his pillow-case.

"I know," said the Major, in a tone of decision and finality. "I'll send for the cook, tell him there's a plum-pudding, an' he can dam' well serve it hot for dinner as a plum-pudding _ought_ to be served-or G.o.d have mercy on him, for we will have none. . . ."

And so it was. Although at first the cook protested that the hour being seven and dinner due at seven-thirty, there was not time for the just and proper cooking of a big plum-pudding. But, "To h.e.l.l with that for a Tale," said the Major, and waved pudding and cook away, with instructions to serve the pudding steaming hot, in half an hour, with a blaze of brandy round it, a sprig of holly stuck in it, and a bunch of mistletoe hung above it.

"And write '_G.o.d Bless Our Home_' on the _banda_ wall," he added, as a happy after-thought. The cook grinned. He was a Goanese, and a good Christian cheat and liar.

The Bristol Bar settled down again to talk of Home, hunting, theatres, clubs, bars, sport, hotels, and everything else-except religion, women and war. . . .

"Heard about the new lad, Major?" asked Forbes. "Real fuzzy-wuzzy dervish Soudanese. Lord knows how he comes to be in these parts. Smelt war like a camel smells water, I suppose. . . . Got confused ideas about medals though. . . . Tell the tale, Wavell."

"Why-old Isa ibn Yakub, my Sergeant-Major-you know Isa, six-feet-six and nine medals, face like black satin"-began Wavell, "brought me a stout lad-with grey hair-who looked like his twin brother. Wanted to join my Arab Company. He'd come from Berbera to Mombasa in a dhow, and then strolled down here through the jungle. . . . Conversation ran somewhat thus:

"'You want to enlist in my Arab Company, do you? Why?'

"'I want to fight.'

"'Against the _Germanis_?'

"'Anybody.'

"'You know what the pay is?'

"'Yes. It is enough. But I also want my Omdurman medal-like that worn by Isa ibn Yakub.'

"'Oh-you have fought before? And at Omdurman.'

"'Yes. And I want my medal.'

"'You are sure you fought at Omdurman?'

"'Yes. Was I not wounded there and left for dead? Look at this hole through my side, below my arm. I want my medal-like that of Isa ibn Yakub.'

"'How is it that you have not got it, if you fought there as you say?'

"'They would not give it to me. I want you to get it for me.'

"'I do not believe you fought at Omdurman at all.'

"'I did. Was I not shot there?'

"'Were you in a Soudanese Regiment?'

"'No.'

"'What then?'

"'In the army of Our Lord the Mahdi. And I was shot in front of the line of British soldiers who wear petticoats! . . .'"

"Did you take him?" asked the Major, as the laugh subsided.

"Rather!" was the reply. "A lad who fought against us and expects us to give him a medal for it, evidently thinks we are sportsmen, and probably is one himself. I fancy he's done a lot of mixed fighting at different times. . . . Says he knew Gordon. . . ."

The cook, Mess butler, and a deputation of servants approached, salaamed as one man, and held their peace.

"What's up?" asked the Major. "Anyone dead?"

"The Pudding, sah," said the cook, and all the congregation said, "The Pudding."

A painful brooding silence settled upon the Bristol Bar.