she wished to join us, or to eat on her own. Someone must-have lent her a sewing kit for the rip in her habit had been neatly mended.
'I'll join you, if I might. You're very kind. And you'll all be wanting to hear what I have to say,' she said rather dryly.
I noticed that she said a short, private grace before actually coming to the table, and appreciated her courtesy: doing it publicly might well have embarrassed some of the men. She sat between Kemp and me and I quickly filled her in on our names and business, of which she said she had heard a little on the radio, in the far-off days of last week before the war broke out. We didn't bother her while she was eating but as soon as was decent I asked the first question. It was a pretty all-embracing one.
'What happened?'
'It was an air raid,' she said. 'Surely you know.'
'We weren't here. We were still further south. But we guessed.'
'It was about midday. There had been some unrest, lots of rumours, but that isn't uncommon. Then we heard that there were tanks and soldiers coming through the town, so Doctor Katabisirua suggested that someone should go and see what was happening.'
'Who is he?' Kemp asked.
'Our chief at the hospital.' There was an indrawing of breath at the table as we hung on her words. Kemp shot me a look almost of triumph.
'Sister Mary sent me. It wasn't very far, only a short drive into town. When I got there I saw a lot of tanks moving through the town, far too quickly, I thought. They were heading north, towards Ngingwe.'
Ngingwe was the first village north of Kodowa, which showed that Sadiq had probably been right when he said that Hussein's lot would go northwards to join forces with his superior.
'They got through the town but some soldiers stayed back to keep the road clear. We heard that there were more tanks still coming from the south of the town.' Those would be the tanks that we had seen shot up. There were still a lot of people in the town square when the planes came. They came in very' fast, very low. Nobody was scared at first. We've seen them often, coming and going from the Air Force base out there.' She pointed vaguely westward.
'How many planes, Sister?' Kemp asked.
'I saw seven. There may have been more. Then things happened very quickly. There was a lot of noise – shooting and explosions. Then the sound of bombs exploding, and fires started everywhere. It was so sudden, you see. I took shelter in Mister Ithanga's shop but then it started to fall to pieces and something must have hit me on the head.'
In fact she had no head wound, and I think she was felled by the concussion blast of a missile. She couldn't have been unconscious long because when I saw the shop next day it was a fire-gutted wreck. She said that she found herself coming to in the street, but didn't know how she got there. She said very little about her own part in the affair after that, but we gathered that eventually she got back to the hospital with a load of patients, her little car having escaped major damage, to find it already besieged by wailing, bleeding victims.
But they were not able to do much to help. With a very small staff, some of whom were local and only semi- trained, and limited supplies of bedding, food and medicines they were soon out of their depth and struggling. Adding to their problems were two major disasters: their water supply and their power had both failed. They got their water from a well which ran sweet and plentiful normally, but was itself connected to other local wells, and somewhere along the line pipes must have cracked, because suddenly the well ran dry except for buckets of sludgy muck. And horrifyingly, shortly after the town's own electricity failed, the hospital's little emergency generator also died. Without it they had no supply of hot water, no cooking facilities bar a small backup camping gas arrangement, and worst of all, no refrigeration or facilities for sterilizing. In short, they were thrown back upon only the most basic and primitive forms of medication, amounting to little more than practical first aid., It was late afternoon and they were already floundering when the hospital was visited by Captain Sadiq. He spent quite a time in discussion with the doctor and Sisters Mary and Ursula, the leading nuns of the small colony, and it was finally decided that one of them should come back with him to the convoy, to speak to us and find out if our technical skills could be of any use. Sister Ursula came as the doctor couldn't be spared and Sister Mary was elderly.
Kemp asked why Captain Sadiq hadn't personally escorted her to the camp and seen her safe. He was fairly indignant and so was I at this dereliction.
'Ah, he's so busy, that man. I told him to drop me at the military camp and I walked over. There's nothing wrong with me now, and walking's no new thing to us, you know.'
'It could have been damned dangerous.'
'I didn't think so. There were a score of people wishing to speak to the Captain, and no vehicles to spare. And here I am, safe enough.'
'That you are, Sister. You'll stay here tonight? I'm sure you could do with a night's sleep. In the morning we'll take you back to the hospital, and see what we can do to help.'
Kemp had changed quite a lot in a short time. While not inhumane, I'm fairly sure that as little as three days ago he would not have been quite so ready to ditch his transportation job at the drop of a hat to go to the rescue of a local mission hospital. But the oncome of the war, the sight of the burnt out town with its hapless population, and perhaps most of all the injury to one of his own, our pilot, had altered his narrow outlook.
Now he added, 'One of our men is badly hurt, Sister. He was in a plane crash and he needs help. Would you look at him tonight?'
'Of course,' she said with ready concern.
Ben Hammond had left the table, and now came back to join us with a stack of six-packs of beer in his arms.
'We've relaxed the rationing for tonight,' he said. 'Everybody deserves it. Sister, you wouldn't take a second shot of whisky, but maybe you'll settle for this instead?' He handed her a can from the pack.
She tightened her fist around the can.
'Why, it's ice cold!'
Hammond smiled. 'It just came out of the fridge.'
'You have a refrigerator? But that's marvellous. We can preserve our drugs then, praise be to God!'
Kemp and Hammond exchanged the briefest of glances, but I could guess what they were thinking. There was no way that refrigerator could be left at the hospital, urgent though its need might be; it was run by the generator that was solidly attached to the rig, and without which nothing could function.
Things looked better the next morning, but not much. No smoke wreathed up from the distant town but I suspected that this was because there was nothing left there to burn. We were greatly cheered when Sam Wilson told us that he had located a source of clean water, a well at a nearby village which hadn't been affected by the bombing, arid which seemed to have a healthy supply. He intended to fill the water tanker and top up drinking containers. When he learned about the water shortage at the hospital he said that there should be enough for them too, assuming they had some sort of tank in which to store it. Geoff Wingstead joined us for breakfast and met Sister Ursula for the first time. She had been to see Otterman but wanted him taken to the hospital for the doctor to see, and now looked professionally at Wingstead's gash and bruises and approved of what had been done for them. Wingstead insisted that he was now perfectly well and was eager to see the town and the hospital for himself. In spite of his heavy financial commitment, he seemed far less anxious about the rig and Wyvern Transport's future than Kemp did. Perhaps it was just that he was younger and more adventurous.
I drove back to the town in the Land Rover with Kemp, Wingstead, Sister Ursula, and Hammond. Sadiq came over just before we left and said that he would see us at the hospital a little later. He looked drawn and harassed. The lack of communication from his superiors and the consequent responsibility was taking its toll, but even so he was bearing up pretty well. Kemp and I still had a nagging doubt as to his loyalty, but we'd seen nothing to prove the case one way or the other, except that he was still with us, which probably counted for something. As for the shooting down of our plane, nothing whatever had been said about it and I was content to let the question lie.
The fires had burnt themselves out and the heavy pall of smoke of yesterday was replaced by a light haze fed by ash and still smouldering embers. Kodowa had nothing left worth destroying. A few isolated buildings still stood, but most of the centre was gone, and it was by no means sure that when we cleared the rubble we would find an intact road surface beneath it.
People wandered about still, but very few of them. Many had simply melted back into the bush, others had gone
