The Diamond Hunter

by Fiona McIntosh

  Joseph caught the gaze that James cut his way. The Zulu’s grin was full of knowing. He pointed across the water to the opposite riverbank. James understood but only believed it when he watched Joseph wade out into the wide river and begin to swim across. The African gripped a leather pouch between his teeth, no doubt keeping James’s money dry. Few others saw the African slip away from the crowd but a cry went up when a pair of wily Australians pointed him out.

  ‘Hey, look! That black bastard is making a run for it.’

  ‘His claim’s as good as any,’ James offered.

  ‘Yeah, and he’ll make it long before the rest of us. He can go cross-country. Have you seen those tribal blokes run?’

  James shook his head, glad Clementine wasn’t around, although she was probably used to hearing this sort of language around the camp.

  ‘You watch him, mate. He’ll be there before most of us can pack up and hit the road.’

  James grinned inwardly and for the first time in nearly a year felt the sense of anticipation and destiny that had urged him to leave their ship and abandon his well-paid job with a major engineering firm on the other side of the world. He had alighted with his child in his arms, holding his wife’s trembling hand. Louisa had been full of questions but also faith in their youth and love. ‘Go along with this,’ he’d pleaded, ignoring her look of disbelief that said, You promised Australia, not Africa. You promised a home, not a tent. You promised a real city with hotels and theatres and fashion, not the wilderness . . .

  ‘I will find my fortune here and you will be proud of us . . . and we shall make your family eat humble pie,’ he’d promised instead.

  So now this was it. His final chance to make good on his promise to beautiful, trusting Louisa.

  ‘I guess we shouldn’t waste any more time, then,’ he threw at the Aussie.

  Men were tripping over one another to get back to the tents, frothing with hope and greed. They looked like a shoal of fish as the water was stirred up, and they clambered over each other to get a yard ahead. James didn’t join the hysterical throng. He suspected fights would soon break out. The hottest part of the day was yet to punish them as they prepared the oxen for the wagons that would haul this vile-smelling, dust-ridden tent town away from the river diggings and onto the harsh veld.

  He would trust Joseph One-Shoe. He cast a glance across the distant landscape, where he could just make out the loping figure moving fast and fearlessly across country towards their fortune.

  As James Knight felt his spirit rise, Louisa Knight’s spirit left her. Her final breath sighed farewell as her daughter prattled on about finding a diamond the size of a conker.

  Part One

  1

  THE BIG HOLE, KIMBERLEY, CAPE COLONY

  March 1872

  They discussed the need to wear gloves to keep it true to the Queensberry Rules, although Joseph preferred what James called ‘fisticuffs’. His opponent – John ‘Mr Knuckles’ Rider – felt a similar kinship for the faster, bloodier version. There was no doubt that the shouting mob wanted the crunch and smash of bare knuckles against nose, jaw and ribs . . . preferably those belonging to Mr Knuckles.

  The yelling men had got plenty for their wagers. The resplendent moustache of Mr Knuckles had created a natural platform from which rivulets of blood could run freely from his stupendously damaged nose. Clem had learned this fighter had a pedigree for stunning knockouts and tended to leave his final winning blows for the later rounds.

  ‘You’ve got ’im, Knuckles. Look at ’im. He’s a goner,’ Clementine heard his minder say as he rubbed the man’s shoulders. Her adeptness at lip-reading had been honed above the relentless noise of the Big Hole, where she’d learned how to work out what her two men communicated from a distance. She took offence at the beating her best friend had taken tonight. Clementine tried to distance herself from the thick air in which the tang of men’s sweat combined with a variety of oils. The men in the audience wore a sickly sweet pomade slicked through their hair that gave off a lavender fragrance, while the ropes that mapped out the boxing ring smelled of animal fat, making her feel nauseous. The sweating bodies of the two boxers were both liberally oiled with a mineral-smelling grease to help deflect the blows as they tried to punch each other into unconsciousness. Oil lamps guttered and gave off a pungent, chemical aroma. Onlookers clinked pewter mugs of ale and laughed uproariously at jests and daring wagers. There was no single voice that could be picked out; it was simply a general roar of excitement. It occurred to Clem that she liked everything that was attractive in life – in this she showed every inclination her mother could ever hope for. She didn’t wear pretty dresses because they were not practical, but it didn’t mean she didn’t like them. She didn’t play with her two dolls because they got dirty so easily and could break. Her ragdoll could take all the punishment in the world – like Joseph – and still smile back at her no matter how ragged he became.

  Her memories of Woodingdene were few but vivid, and someone who had made an impression on her was an old man who worked for her grandfather. He was Scottish and seemed to be in charge of all the fishing and hunting around the property. Everyone called him ‘the Ghillie’. She never did know his name, but he once made her a doll from rags when she’d become bored with the grown-ups’ conversation and had wandered a few yards away to explore the boating sheds. She’d found the ghillie winding fishing line and neatening up the rods. They’d struck up a conversation of their own and before long he’d begun fashioning some of the clean rags he had in a basket.

  ‘I used to make these dolls for my Meggie when she was a wee lass.’

  ‘Who is Meggie?’

  ‘My beautiful daughter.’ She had noted his eyes became misty and, sensing sadness, held back the obvious question.

  ‘Would you like a lad or a lassie?’

  ‘A boy please,’ she’d replied.

  ‘Why’s that then?’

  ‘Because I’d like a brother. Girls are a bit soppy. The ones who come to play don’t want to go climbing or exploring with me. They just want to play with the doll’s house and have tea parties.’

  She remembered him grinning as he worked. ‘I’ll give your ragdoll trousers then. You’ll have to name him.’

  ‘I’m going to call him Gillie, after you.’

  ‘I’m honoured, Miss Clementine.’

  Gillie, made predominantly from calico, still grinned back at her each day from his pencilled-on smile that her mother replenished regularly so it never faded.

  A roar went up in the crowd. It no longer mattered to her that Joseph One-Shoe had become a boxing hero for the Kimberley mob and remained unbeaten to this day. ‘No more, Daddy,’ she tried, forcing her father’s attention back from Joseph’s face, which was slick with blood.

  ‘He can take him, Clem.’

  ‘Mr Knuckles feels the same way,’ she insisted, watching the opponent spit again into the pail.

  ‘That Englishman doesn’t have much more but Joseph does, don’t you?’ Their man nodded through his deep breaths. Silent as always. ‘Besides, there’s a haul of roughs up for grabs with this final.’

  ‘We’ve got plenty of those,’ she countered.

  ‘And soon we’ll have the big one, I promise, and we can go home.’

  Go home. Two words her father used as a persuasive phrase whenever he needed her to cooperate. Except England was not home to her. Home was here. And her father’s home meant leaving her mother alone in Africa, lying in her grave. No more weekly visits, no more wildflowers gathered to make her cold bed look pretty, no more whispered prayers or long, one-sided conversations about why she had stopped wearing petticoats and was only washing her hair once a fortnight now. Oh, yes, and that she was sorry she was playing truant from school because she preferred to watch Daddy and Joseph try to dig up ‘the conker’, which was how they referred to the elusive massive rough diamond her father was certain was in their path. Going home also meant leaving Joseph One-Shoe.

 
She leaned in, not at all self-conscious that she was in a place where no other little girls dared to tread. ‘Joseph?’

  His large head, round as a football, turned towards her. One eyelid was swollen, slanting across his vision, while a deep cut above the other brow bled gleefully despite the grease her father kept slathering over it. ‘Yes, lioness?’ He sounded weary.

  ‘Did you feel his bone break below his chest?’

  He nodded. ‘I see him leaning into it.’

  ‘His rib’s gone,’ she murmured knowingly. ‘And his eye is fully closed.’

  Her father laughed. ‘No one would believe me if I said my fighter was discussing strategy with my seven-year-old. So we go for the ribs.’

  ‘No,’ they said together.

  ‘Joseph only pretends to,’ Clementine assured. ‘Mr Knuckles will protect himself because he can’t help it.’ Her voice was drowned out as a man rang the bell and Joseph hauled himself to his feet. ‘You have to knock him down this round,’ she yelled, unable to hide her fear. She mouthed a word in Zulu that only Joseph could understand; it meant ‘rising’ but they both knew it referred to his upper cut.

  ‘There’s a cache of six riding on this final,’ he warned Joseph.

  ‘He knows, Daddy.’ Her words galloped alongside an accusatory glare.

  At her full height Clementine could still only look Joseph One-Shoe in the eye providing he sat cross-legged on the ground, as he did now inside their tiny shanty hut. The roar of the bloodthirsty mob was behind them and the sawdust from the boxing ring would be swept up and used again for a future fight.

  Clem was cleaning Joseph’s face of the blood from his fight. Her father had paused just long enough to stitch the cut near his eye and had then taken off to claim their prize and mark its handover with one or two – or six – shots of whisky at one of the local pubs.

  ‘Am I hurting you?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Are you the strongest man in the world, Joseph?’

  He winced as his lip, recently sealed, broke open again as he smiled. ‘Maybe.’

  She gave him a wad of lint. ‘Hold that against it.’

  ‘Your mother would not like to see you doing this.’

  ‘Mummy’s dead. She can’t stop me.’

  ‘You sound like an old lady talking.’

  ‘And you now sound like an Englishman.’

  Joseph shrugged. ‘You have taught me well.’

  She smiled. ‘You can go home to your people and teach them my language. You can go back to your real name of Zenzele and all its other bits and the click.’

  ‘I’m happy with Joseph for now.’

  ‘Will the chief still be angry?’

  ‘Probably. I was only meant to leave the tribe until intwasahlobo.’ He frowned. ‘I sorry.’ He winced as his grin cracked his lip again. ‘What is the word for when the leaves appear?’

  ‘Spring.’

  He nodded. ‘Two springs have been born and I am still here.’

  ‘Do you miss them?’

  ‘Yes.’ He was glad now he hadn’t confirmed to Thandiwe that they would be man and wife. He had been preparing to sit down with her family to pay the bride price but then the chief had sent him on his important mission. He had told her he would be gone until the next rains. He hadn’t known then that he was lying to her. Thandiwe would have taken his friend, Lungani, for her husband by now, he imagined. He wished them prosperity and many children but he rarely let himself dwell on the woman he loved . . . another one much younger needed him here.

  ‘I would hate you to leave.’ Clementine suddenly hugged him. ‘Please don’t ever leave me, Joseph.’

  The Zulu was cautious. He was popular with the white folk but the women would not take kindly to seeing him showing affection to this child.

  He pulled her gently away. ‘You will have to leave me before I leave you,’ he assured her.

  ‘I will have to be dragged away, then,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t dirty your shirt with blood,’ he added as an excuse to fully break her embrace.

  ‘Too late. Mrs Carruthers said I should be wearing petticoats like a proper girl and she’s going to speak to Daddy about it.’ He nodded and made no comment. ‘But skirts and petticoats just get in the way,’ she continued, sounding vexed. ‘Daddy says I’ll have to wear them when we go back to England but I’m never going back.’ He watched her carefully. She was leading somewhere, he could tell. ‘Mrs Carruthers says I’ll be sent home soon so I can be properly schooled. She says my mother tried but my father is hopeless and that teaching me about Greek myths and astronomy or the geography of the world is no help to a girl. Sarah Carruthers says her mother thinks I run wild and shouldn’t spend so much time with you.’

  He nodded, unsurprised. Their conversation was interrupted by drunken singing and Clementine, in spite of her soured mood, giggled.

  ‘Let me get your father before he has a bucket of something nasty thrown at him,’ Joseph said, sighing as he hauled himself to standing, yet still slightly bent. He was far too tall for the shanty in which the Knights lived.

  Clementine stood at the makeshift door as her companion stepped gingerly out into the night. His slight stoop suggested he was mindful of the cracked rib her father had explained about, as well as his bruising, and she hoped he wouldn’t begin bleeding again.

  They’d won convincingly with a knockout: a viciously fast upper cut that Joseph had taken a mighty amount of punishment for as he waited for the precise moment to deliver it. She’d seen it in the same moment that Joseph had. Now! she’d screamed in her mind.

  She’d watched as the boxing hero from England had had his feet lifted from the floor as Joseph’s fist, rounding upwards in a tight arc, connected with his chin. She’d heard his teeth crunch and then the crowd’s roaring cheer had nearly lifted the roof of the boxing den. Beer had been spilt in frenzied joy that ran as freely as the blood from Mr Knuckles’s mouth, and Clem realised he must have bitten through his tongue or lip. The celebrations had become wild.

  Clem glanced at her father, who was lifting an arm to empty the dregs of a bottle of liquor. She’d often heard him say he was looking for her mother at the bottom of the glass and she’d never fully grasped his meaning. It seemed to Clementine that he was using the same excuse to search for happiness at their win, and to look for the conker diamond.

  He appeared jolly enough when he was bellowing out a ballad, but she couldn’t remember the last time he had looked happy. She didn’t want him to pick her up and pretend, breathing his ugly whisky fumes over her. It was at times like these, when he’d got to the end of the bottle and hadn’t found her mother or his happiness, that he would cry while he hugged her and tell her how sorry he was to have brought such a terrible existence upon her. He would weep real tears, promise to make amends, and try for a few days and then his shadow – that’s what Joseph One-Shoe called it – would catch up with him again.

  She slipped out of their sparse, tiny dwelling, which was little more than a couple of cots and a series of hammered-together shelves. They’d lived through a desert winter in this so-called home and at night she had seen her breath steam before her. She had watched it in fascination, distracted from the chill, as she’d pondered that the mist was the breath of her life and as it dissolved to nothing, so would she . . . like her mother. Joseph One-Shoe had assured her that as long as she could see that steam escaping her mouth, it meant she was capable of achieving everything she set her heart on.

  Clementine wished her father would speak to her like that. He used to. Now he lived staring at a black hole of grief into which he had poured his vitality, his hope, his sense of future, his thrill of life. A hollow was what was left for Clementine. She tried to fill it with her chatter and fun, with love and affection, but it gobbled all she gave and didn’t return much. A slight twitch of a smile now and then, but she sensed it was only because he was remembering that he should – that he had a little girl who needed to see his face ex
press something other than his pain.

  The liquor helped veil the sorrow but he was a stranger to her when he was intoxicated, and these drunken nights were happening more often. She found herself tucking her father into his cot in a reversal of normal roles. Tonight Clem helped Joseph to lay him down on his side but not before he’d captured their attention and shaken a little canvas money pouch.

  ‘They’re yours,’ he said to his Zulu friend. ‘I think I’ve drunk mine.’ His head sank onto a pillow that was biscuit-like it was so flat.

  She chuckled again like a tolerant wife might. ‘He’ll sleep it away now.’

  By the light of the tin hut’s single candle Joseph took the sack and let five small rough stones tumble into his large palm. He glanced at Clem.

  She shrugged. ‘He wants you to have them. Tomorrow you’ll find the conker,’ she said, tapping her nose in the way her father did.

  ‘Aren’t you sleepy?’

  She shook her head. ‘Can I sit out with you for a while?’ Clem looked around their humble dwelling: not an item of decoration other than the tiny ink pot of wild daisies she herself had gathered. ‘I like looking at the stars.’

  He nodded and she followed him outside a few moments later, careful not to take his hand, as much as she wanted to . . . just in case.

  They edged away from the ramshackle town and strolled towards what was now known as the Big Hole.

  It was a cool night. Joseph carried only his tribal blanket, but she was glad she’d bothered to grab her cloak and woollen hat. ‘Daddy said this is the largest hole in the world that’s been dug by hand,’ she remarked.

  Sporadically placed lanterns formed a makeshift safety rail lighting its edge. No one was working – the only other people around were men drinking in the distance; they couldn’t hear each other’s conversations for the space was so vast. Someone plucked a lonely banjo and its haunting notes travelled through the cool night air to settle around them like a melancholy blanket.