The Diamond Hunter

by Fiona McIntosh

  ‘Have you heard the story of the Peculiar Pebble, Joseph?’

  ‘No, sir, Mr Knight.’

  ‘Well, it’s one of the reasons we all find ourselves here.’

  Joseph One-Shoe nodded but kept his back bent working, and James began as he stirred his pan for that all-important glint in the wet earth. ‘A Boer farmer’s son found a stone while he was resting beneath a tree not two hundred yards from the banks of the Orange River. According to him, it “blinked”.’

  ‘His name is Erasmus,’ Clementine said to Joseph.

  James grinned. ‘And he took it home for his little sister to play with.’

  ‘I wish I had a little sister.’

  ‘Maybe one day you will.’

  ‘Nothing in here, Daddy.’

  He gave a sad nod. And there’d been nothing for nearly a month, despite the dozens of trayloads he had shaken in hope. He began to pan a small load, and as muddied water dropped back to its source and splattered their clothes, he returned to his tale for her amusement.

  ‘The children in the family had long ago cast the gleaming pebble aside when a neighbour, enchanted by it, offered to buy it, thinking it was topaz. The family said it was just a pebble that their children no longer wanted and made it a gift for him.’

  ‘Why?’ Clem asked, clearly for Joseph’s benefit.

  ‘Because they are generous.’

  ‘Didn’t they want the money? I thought that they were poor farmers.’

  ‘Poor is relative.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Well, we pay the Boer farmers so we can mine their land.’

  ‘So we are poorer than them,’ she said.

  You’re too smart for six brief years, Clem, he thought. ‘Anyway, the neighbour gave it to an Irish pedlar.’

  ‘For how much?’

  ‘Well, I can’t be sure. Either way, people at the time said O’Reilly – that was the pedlar’s name – knew he had a diamond after he used it to cut his name into a windowpane.’

  Clementine turned to their neighbour. ‘Did you know you can cut glass with a diamond, Joseph?’

  Joseph paused from his panning and used his kerchief to wipe the damp from his skin, his large teeth laughing back at her. ‘I do now, Miss Clementine.’

  She returned his smile as her father finished the tale.

  ‘O’Reilly ended up showing it to a mineral specialist – that’s someone who understands things from the earth, Clem – who confirmed, after also scratching it on glass and blunting a knife with it, that it was indeed that rare gem known as a diamond. He guessed its worth at five hundred pounds. The Irish pedlar exchanged the stone for money with glee, selling it to the governor of the Cape, who in turn sent it to the 1867 Great Exhibition in Paris. The people were stunned by the twenty-one and one-quarter carats of perfection.’

  ‘And it was yellow.’ She frowned. ‘You forgot that bit.’

  ‘Yes, a brownish-yellow, like Vickery’s Darjeeling tea not long brewed.’ He winked at Joseph and then explained what he had meant by that remark.

  ‘Anyway, it was named “Eureka” and it was, by all accounts, wondrous – it had been cut and polished into a superb cushion-cut diamond of near eleven carats – enough to take anyone’s breath away. I swear we are going to find our own Eureka to make us richer than anyone can imagine.’

  ‘And much bigger than twenty-one and one-quarter carats, Daddy.’

  ‘Fifty, you think?’ He grinned.

  ‘One hundred,’ she said, jumping into the air.

  Joseph One-Shoe laughed and James knew that he’d caught their meaning. ‘That’s it, Clem. I think you should let your petticoats dry out before your mother finds you.’

  ‘I don’t think she’ll get up today to notice,’ she said, sounding far older than she should.

  His conscience pricked; he should go and check on Louisa. ‘You go back. I’m right behind you, darlin’.’

  He watched her wade through the shallows to the bank. ‘Bye, Joseph.’

  ‘Goodbye, Miss Clementine.’

  James bent back over his work, chafing at the hard-won realisation that this parched, scorched land belonged to the hunters, gatherers and warriors who had endured here for centuries. The Boers farmed but to him all they seemed to do was exist, not live. There was so little joy in the expressions of those he had met: serious, hard Dutch folk who struggled for survival on an unforgiving land where almost every creature that roamed was capable of killing them . . . if the summers didn’t get them. It should never have been the domain of the Britisher or any of the other struggling, fortune-hunting whites who had previously only known a couple of months of testing warmth each summer. Yet here he was, part of the greedy mob in one of the most dangerous and challenging places of Her Majesty’s Empire in pursuit of hidden treasure.

  James Knight, his mouth grimly set, began agitating the pan of mud, trying to convince himself that it was a mild morning by African standards. But he was at the mercy of the elements no matter the season, always ankle-deep in water and so bone-weary and hungry that the mere thought of the approaching African summer depressed him. This was not his normal state of mind; his brother-in-law, Reggie, had once accused him of being an insufferably cheerful individual. But Africa was taking its toll. Was the price too high?

  You made your bed, so lie in it, spoke a voice in his mind, using his father’s gruff tone. It was true. But what was the point of life without risks? Meanwhile, the person who suffered the most at his decisions was Louisa. He didn’t deserve her loyalty, or such faith, for he was yet to reap any dividend for his family.

  Should he accept her money to book a berth home and confront the painful disdain of her relatives? It was while he was thinking of Reggie’s scorn that the cry went up. It carried across the wilderness towards the river and into the quiet where hot, tired men were unhappily engrossed in their riverside labour. All were hungry, most were likely looking forward to the watery beer or the release of a few shots of liquor in the jumped-up pub once the sun went down.

  James, by chance, was the closest white digger to the area of the bank the man was hurtling towards; closer still was Joseph One-Shoe with whom he shared a curious, mostly silent, yet easy relationship at Klipdrift alluvial diggings.

  The running man, still quite a distance from them, yelled again. The clarity of his words was lost, yet the hideously still air did not blur their intensity. James pulled off his hat with its jaunty feather and straightened his back, easing the protest of pain his body gave. His shirt clung uncomfortably like a moist flannel to his back, and his trousers were soaked to the knee from standing in the clear shallows of the glittering Vaal River. Louisa had called for him. Clem was waiting for him. But he needed to see what this fuss was about, he reasoned, and let his curiosity win.

  The excited man was leaping over small mounds of rough ground as he approached, not looking where he ran, risking a fall that could mean days of difficult work with a twisted, swollen ankle, or potential death from snakebite. He wore the motley attire of the diggers: trousers likely held up with string, boots likely in poor repair. In the early days James had tried to stay neat, mostly for Louisa’s sake, yet it was impossible in this environment and with the work he did here, and week by week he had begun to look as ragged and clownish as his fellow workers. Being clean-shaven was no longer practical; nor were white shirts and polished boots. The kerchief soaked up the sweat and the silver-grey raptor feather his daughter had found was his identification. Clementine said their surname suggested his ancestors had worn armour, so he too should wear something silvery. Anything to please Clementine. Nevertheless, James was glad there was no tall mirror in his family’s tent to show him just how forsaken he now appeared.

  The summoner yelled again, waving his arms to catch more attention. It was clear he was joyously stirred-up and not simply alarmed. More men stood from their toil at the riverbed to make sense of the commotion, but James would surely hear the news first.

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nbsp; He looked to his right where his companion, built like the steam engines James had once designed, worked his claim with relentless energy. Joseph’s interest had been captured too and he returned James’s glance.

  ‘What he say?’ The man’s modest but adequate English impressed James, who knew not a single word in Joseph’s language – had not even got his tongue around some of the pidgin language the Boers spoke with the locals. He knew the Zulu was a warrior because he wore a leopard-skin headband, which spoke of his courage. He had adapted a pair of baggy, patched trousers, cutting them short to come halfway up his shins, and he would wear a shirt if he was in the presence of women after sundown. Although the African could move effortlessly across the harshest ground, one of his feet was clad with a tattered boot; it was too small, so he’d cut out the toe.

  ‘Can’t make it out yet,’ James replied, wiping his sleeve across his face, and regretted causing the dirty smudge that Louisa would insist on cleaning.

  ‘Daddy!’ He turned to regard his child, back at the bank downriver. Since the day of her birth, he had felt sure that she alone challenged every reason Louisa’s family had for hating her choice of useless husband. As graceful in movement as her mother, with similar dark blonde hair and a serious gaze reminiscent of her Uncle Reggie, Clementine was blessed with the Knight analytical mind. To James his daughter was frighteningly precocious for her six years. Full of curiosity, she stored knowledge like a vault. Always talking, forever engaging people with her serious manner and the irresistible charm she’d surely inherited from her mother. Before the child’s arrival he couldn’t have imagined loving any girl more than Louisa . . . and yet he alone knew that he did. His daughter was the reason he bent his back each morning and clung to the hope that this would be the day he would make them rich and secure her future on his terms. He would return them to England triumphant; his two girls would be lavished with fine clothes, a magnificent home or even two, and invitations to all the best society events. They would be regarded as the couple upon whom the heavens smiled.

  His child called again, small hands cupped either side of her mouth so her voice would carry. Her mother had stopped curling her hair into ringlets, letting the child’s hair flow free to reflect the sunlight in rich golden glints. No getting away from the satin ribbon, though, that her mother insisted be tied daily atop her daughter’s head. Today it matched the colour of the clear dome of sky that was unbroken by cloud or differing hues. A single rich cobalt, like her eyes, like the common blue butterfly of his native Scotland.

  He yelled so she could hear him easily. ‘Don’t come back in the water, Clem. Has your mother woken?’ He looked back towards the higgledy-piggledy tented city they called home and tried not to think about the monstrous Woodingdene Estate that his wife had given up in order to be with him.

  What had started out as separate straggly communities of little more than canvas stretched over sticks had expanded until the tents were forced to cluster close together, the boundaries lost definition and became covered over with a circus of humanity from all walks of life. So many nationalities were living side by side, eking out just enough to feed themselves. His child was not eating well, she was becoming lean having arrived chubby, her skin browned instead of rosy, her legs skinny like a new calf’s. She was not unhappy, though – of this he was sure.

  ‘What?’ he called.

  She had edged closer to him. ‘I said she’s very sick. She doesn’t want to move.’

  He looked over his shoulder at the running man. Joseph had stopped all toil to await him too. He yelled back to his child, ‘Just sit with her. I’ll be there in a blink.’ He blew her a kiss.

  She smacked one in return and skipped away once again into the maze of tents. Clementine knew her way around the tent city as well as he did; they both carried a map of it in their minds. But the old question burned like a belly ulcer: what sort of life was this for a child who should be thinking about schooling and pretty petticoats? It was a redundant question. For the time being they were stuck here in the Cape Colony until he could earn their passage back. Success could be today, tomorrow, next week. As it was, he was getting his rights to dig cheaply. Diamonds had been emerging regularly in this river region and syndicates were beginning to acquire farms outright. No doubt this farm would be bought up soon.

  ‘Diamonds?’ The African’s smooth forehead creased. He stood straight to his full height and shielded his eyes from the slant of the sun. His biceps, outlined by the glimmer of his perspiration, bulged with the action. Joseph made James feel short and runty, even though he was proud to be the tallest in his family at five feet ten inches. Most of the Westerners had little time for the black Africans, interacting more easily with the Indians and Malays known as the Cape Coloureds. It was Clementine who had befriended this man simply because he worked a claim alongside her father’s. They shared equipment, looked out for their respective diggings and belongings, and had been known to share food from time to time. Louisa felt safe around him.

  ‘I can’t say his name so he let me choose one. I’ve called him Joseph One-Shoe,’ Clementine had explained to her parents one night.

  James had laughed. ‘That’s an odd name. Joseph after your pet rabbit?’

  ‘I suppose. I was going to call him Joseph Tuppence.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he told me that’s all he has in savings.’

  ‘He probably can’t speak our language.’

  ‘He can, Daddy. He was taught in a . . . a . . . special school run by a vicar.’

  ‘A mission?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the word he used. Mission. He understands everything we say but he speaks slowly because he doesn’t have all our words . . . besides, he told me that he only speaks when he has something to say.’

  James remembered how he’d laughed at this remark because his daughter never ran out of things to say. ‘You make a good pair.’

  ‘I like Joseph – as much as my ragdoll, maybe more.’

  ‘Because he talks back?’

  ‘No, because he’s wise.’

  ‘Wise.’ He’d grinned. ‘Do you even know what that means?’

  ‘It means clever.’

  ‘It’s a special sort of clever.’

  ‘Are you wise?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘I am thinking he shouts of a new diamond find,’ Joseph said, interrupting James’s memories.

  James turned his head. ‘You’re right!’ he replied, his pulse leaping. ‘It’s a fresh dry strike!’

  Without further discussion both men waded out of the shallow waters.

  ‘Where?’ Joseph asked.

  ‘He’s saying the De Beers farm. That’s got to be nearly 20 miles from here.’ He glanced at his companion. ‘If it’s a new rush and he seems excited, I’ll have to get to my family and move across to that farm. We’ll need to tear down the tent, pack up our belongings.’ He groaned. ‘A sick wife and a young child move slow. I’ll have to grab passage for us on a wagon.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll never make it. I’ll not have the opportunity to peg out a claim.’

  ‘I will make it,’ Joseph said. ‘I have no packing. I will buy your claim.’ He held out his hand.

  James stared at the upturned pink palm with its deep network of lines. Wise lines, according to Clem. ‘Why would you do that?’

  ‘Your child is kind to me. She has learned me some new English. Today I can count past twenty. I can work money out better. No one will cheat me now. She is going to teach me all the way to one hundred and lots more words.’

  ‘You’ll do this for us?’

  ‘If you trust me.’

  ‘I trust my child’s heart.’ He touched his chest. ‘She calls you her friend. She has no others.’

  The man nodded. ‘I am Zenzele . . .’ he said, adding several other names James could not pronounce, and including a click that confounded his listener.

  ‘I am James, but I can’t speak your name easily. Clementine —’
he pointed to the riverbank — ‘she calls you Joseph One-Shoe.’

  Joseph nodded with a smile. ‘I like this name.’ James felt convinced that his companion could make a roomful of glum people smile too when he grinned so brightly.

  He shook the man’s hand, pointing to his feet. ‘Why do you wear only one shoe, by the way? I am sure we can organise another boot.’

  Joseph looked thoughtful, pausing to find the right words. ‘I am a diamond digger like you, Mr James, but I am a warrior from my tribe. I don’t want to forget that.’ He lifted his foot – it was the one without the shoe. ‘This means I never forget that I ran across miles to kill a lion that killed my friend, that I have fought for my tribe, and that I am here because my chief sent me. It tells me I am Zulu, not a white man.’ He tugged at his cut-off trousers to make his point.

  James whistled. ‘You killed a lion.’

  ‘It is why I keep watch at night. They watch us.’

  ‘We have guns.’

  ‘That is, how you say, for the not-so-brave. A warrior must fight the lion with only his spear and his . . .’ He couldn’t find the right word so he tapped his temple.

  James nodded, smiling with understanding. He dug into his pockets and withdrew a few mangled notes. ‘That’s the last of my money. It should be enough. If you get there in time, buy the biggest claim you can – we’ll work it together. We’ll be partners.’

  Joseph frowned as he tested the word. ‘Partners.’

  ‘You and I.’ James pointed to each of their chests. And shook the pan that Joseph held. ‘Together.’

  ‘Ah, partner?’ he repeated, as if storing the new word away. James gave an encouraging grin. ‘Then I will get there in time, Mr James. I leave now. No one will catch me.’

  The runner arrived, breathing so hard he could no longer speak. He bent over, hands on his knees to haul in the air. The shallows surged with men arriving from around the diggings and the tents to hear the news. ‘It’s a new rush!’ he ground out. ‘They’ve found diamonds just lying about on the veld at the De Beers farm. Claims are being registered hand over fist. I’ve just come back for my equipment.’