by Peter Rimmer
During his philosophy studies at Cambridge, a phrase in the Old Testament had been drawn to his attention which he never forgot; ‘it is better to live on the roof than inside with a nagging wife’. The professor had explained that even in those days wives had the habit of nagging their husbands and the Jews were lucky to have good weather and roof gardens to get away from the wives that nagged. Every time he was on the brink of proposing to a nice young girl, he inspected the girl’s mother in his mind and every time decided that when it came to the mother, he would have found himself living on the roof. The professor of philosophy had correctly pointed out to his students that most girls came looking and behaving like their mothers, a phenomenon that had gone on down through all the years of the human race. Nature decided the future whatever people tried to do about it.
Glancing at the letters, Teddy picked up the Telegraph and as was his habit turned to the financial page to check the value of his stock. Satisfied at the rise of his chartered shares, he glanced at the page opposite and was caught by the words Kimberley and South Africa. He had made good money from his South African shares and began to read the prospectus. When he reached the list of directors and read the name of the chairman, Jeremiah Shank, he wondered why the name gave him such a jolt. After pondering for a long time he remembered. Twenty-five odd years earlier a card had come to him in the post with a London postmark. An uneducated hand had written his address on one side and the two words ‘Jeremiah Shank’ on the other. For the fun of it and the strange coincidence, Teddy decided to buy shares in the Kimberley Diamond Corporation. By the time he had finished his breakfast and phoned his stockbroker in London, his friends had arrived for the morning game of tennis. It really was a very pleasant way of life, he told himself.
Cecil Rhodes was aware that a diamond had no value other than its scarcity. The diamond was a token of a man’s respect and the more money he spent on the jewel, the greater his respect. If Rhodes could ensure the gift not only retained its value but appreciated, and if Rhodes controlled all the diamonds out of the ground, he would have a product that would last for centuries. The intention was a total monopoly with his company carefully controlling the supply of rough diamonds to the cutters, always slightly less than the public demand. In times of depression Rhodes would stockpile rough diamonds; in times of boom, unload his stockpile. In Kimberley, where he began, the only major company not in his possession was the Kimberley Diamond Corporation. He had made an offer before the public listing which had been rudely turned down. Now he was going to gain control of the company through the open market. Aware that Baring Brothers owned twenty per cent, their usual fee for underwriting the risk of a mining company, Rhodes knew that if he dropped the value of the shares below the listing price, he would force Barings to sell at a loss and further depress the value of Kimberley shares. When he thought buying would not increase the value of the shares, Rhodes would buy and force Shank to buy his own shares to prevent a catastrophe. Rhodes had more money than Shank or anyone else in the diamond trade, which was why in a financial fight he always won. With Barney Barnato’s membership of the Kimberley Club had gone the takeover of Barnato’s mining company as Rhodes knew every man had his price: a minor son of a minor English vicar had made one of the empire’s two great fortunes.
The day the public was offered five million one-shilling shares at one shilling and fourpence each, Rhodes sold two million shares he did not own, expecting the shares to drop from the selling pressure so he could buy the shares for less than the price he had sold them. Only a spattering of spectators from the public bought shares and Rhodes would have had his way if Teddy Holland had not come into the market on the second day with a buying order for one million shares, his stockbroker having advised him to wait. As a result, Teddy paid sixpence a share. Barings, seeing a major buyer in the market, bought instead of sold. The shares rose to tenpence, still well below the listing price, so Teddy bought another million and the price rose to one and six. When Rhodes was forced to buy his two million shares so he could deliver the scrip, he paid Teddy Holland three shillings a share, which made the mining magnate shrug his shoulders.
Teddy had made a fortune on his hunch and decided to follow it through. He wanted to meet this Jeremiah Shank whose name was such a coincidence. Jeremiah, knowing the name of the buyer who had saved his financial life, was only too happy to meet his benefactor and find out why the man had bought the shares but before he met the man for lunch, they sold all his and Barings shares to Rhodes at half a crown. Jeremiah personally walked away with a little under half a million pounds, enough to turn his Rhodesian estate into paradise. At last, Jeremiah Shank was a true country gentleman.
The luncheon at Bramley Park was the highlight of Jeremiah Shank’s brief life, and spoke of a position in society he had never dreamed. A coach, emblazoned with the crest of the Marquis of Surrey, met him at Godalming station. The summer weather had turned mild and wet and the lunch was served in a conservatory that looked out over the country estate of the Marquis of Surrey. Politely, Jeremiah with his best accent, enquired the acreage of the great estate and was told there were nine thousand. A flutter of pride surged through Jeremiah’s stomach when he mentioned his twenty thousand, take a few here and there. Having made so much money out of each other the remark went unnoticed, or so Jeremiah thought.
“What is the value of your African estate?” asked Teddy politely a while later.
Jeremiah gave him a figure.
“That’s the difference, of course,” said Teddy.
Realising he had been put in his place, Jeremiah changed the subject and at half-past two the coach was announced and off he went on his travels.
The rain had stopped when the man took his leave and the coach went off down the long driveway on its way to the railway station. Teddy took his thinking walk to the copse behind the ornamental lake. Next to the lake, an ancestor had built a gazebo where Teddy took refuge when the rain came down in earnest.
The mild shock of finding such a young man as his lunch companion was quickly overcome by a strong desire to punch the man on the nose. It was the look of him. Nothing he said, the idea of African acres soon squashed by the price. The nose had a twist to it and the drooping right eye was surly. Teddy had asked the young man if any in his family had any connection to Bramley Park and received a blunt no. Teddy put it all down to a fortuitous coincidence. When Shank had asked him why the interest in Kimberley Diamonds, he had been frank. If he had not thrown it away, he would have shown him the postcard.
When the rain stopped, he walked back to the house. Three of his friends were coming down from London for the weekend to play tennis and bridge and Teddy put the matter out of his mind. A pair of pigeons were making a wonderful noise in the elm trees, cooing at each other.
The following Monday shares in African Shipping were offered to the public with Jeremiah buying as many as possible.
With Fran on his mind, he booked a passage back to Africa, this time travelling on a ship he partly owned.
The two boys on the steps and their mother banging the front door stayed in his mind all the way to Cape Town. If he claimed his mother after so many years, he would jeopardise any chance of Fran and buying a house in the West End of London. His money would be no good to him. If he sent them money anonymously, there was still a chance of being found out. Finally, he rationalised they were better off as they were with Fred Shank humping his coal to the houses and emptying the sacks into the scuttles. He could still see his father with the blackened face and the old sack on his shoulders to rest the hundredweight loads. The man was a worker, there was no doubt about that. On Fridays, Fred had one pint of beer in the Boar and Bear and the rest went to Jeremiah’s mother. They were a strong family; Fred had his pride and Jeremiah’s mother kept the house clean as a new pin. There was a board school around the corner for the boys and the girls if any of them wanted to learn. The community in the East End looked after their own. Being born within the sound of
the bells from Bow Church, and therefore being a Cockney, had a ring of pride. No one mucked around with a Cockney.
By the time he took the train north, Jeremiah had convinced himself the family he had run away from to go to sea when he was fourteen, were better off as they were. He could still smell the roasting chestnuts and taste the jellied eels. Nothing he had ever eaten since could touch old Mary’s jellied eels. They were all right. His family were all right.
2
December 1897
Fran Shaw had reached the stage of boredom where she did not care anymore. Jack Slater had not been confirmed as administrator of Rhodesia and it was rumoured that their affair was the reason he had been sent to Kimberley as a manager of De Beers Diamond Corporation, Rhodes’s main source of income. Gentlemen did not have affairs with other gentlemen’s wives as it set a bad example for the rank and file. Even her brief sexual gratifications had been taken away and Gregory was still impotent with her. There was a rumour a girl in the secretarial pool in Salisbury had reversed the problem and that a second girl had shown the problem was cured, but the more Fran tried to show interest, the more her husband shrank away. It was all so unfair. She was labelled a whore for sleeping with Jack Slater while her husband had become a folk hero among the white community for overcoming his impotence in trying circumstances. The men sleeping around were rather good chaps unless they violated another man’s property. If she had any money of her own, she would have gone back to England a long time ago, but like everything else in a marriage, the woman had to ask for everything she wanted, and husbands were disinclined to give their wives a fare home when for the sake of their pride they wanted them to stay. Everything and everything came back to what the man wanted. She might as well have been a sack of flour.
Envy had never been part of her make-up but when she watched Emily and Sebastian with their three children, George having been born three months before the Mashona rebellion, she was violently jealous followed by remorse and sadness. Why could she not have a man in her life, one man that was all she would ever want in her life, a man and children, children who loved each other and showed both love and respect to their parents? Just like the family in the house next to hers. And Alison and Tinus were close enough behind in their serenity. Never once had Seb or Tinus looked at her, as a woman, though she had to admit to herself she had tried to make them look.
Down by the river on her own, she began to cry her tears of self-pity… There was something wrong with her. There had always been something wrong with her. She was a horrible person and no one in the whole wide world cared whether she was alive or dead. In the middle of the river, a fish jumped in the mist of her tears while the river never stopped flowing.
The train that brought Jeremiah Shank back to Rhodesia carried a large wooden trunk addressed to Sir Henry Manderville, Bart, Elephant Walk, Mazoe District, near Fort Salisbury, Rhodesia. When the railwaymen moved it from the goods wagon to the dirt strip that ran along the railway line opposite the single-storey goods shed, it was so heavy they thought it contained lead. The wooden trunk, strongly bound with iron hoops, was moved to the goods shed where it waited for a week. Secretly and for months, Sir Henry had been enquiring at the hatch on the roadside of the goods shed and when he was shown the big trunk sent all the way from England, he was as excited as the day he married Emily’s mother. With help, the trunk was lifted up onto the farm wagon and off they went on the long road back to Elephant Walk. The ridgeback dogs had come into town to guard the farm purchases in the open wagon and stood guard on either side of the trunk. Having sniffed for smell they lost interest and put their paws up on the side of the open wagon to check everything passing by. Regularly they crossed from one side of the wagon to the other to make sure nothing was missed, neither trusting the other. The drought had taken a grip on the countryside and where it should have been green in December, the grass was brown and short, beaten to the ground by the endless beat of the sun.
In his excitement, Henry had quite forgotten to do the rest of the shopping.
The dogs were off the back of the wagon well before it reached the gate to Tinus’s stockade and raced down the track at full speed, ignored by the horse and Henry. Sitting on the high box of the wagon he watched for the fox terriers and smiled when they rushed out of the open gate, yapping to save their lives. The pairs of dogs crossed, ignoring each other, and the terriers tried to jump into the back of the wagon without success, barking all the time. Henry smiled, the comfortable smile of having just arrived home.
Harry, his eldest grandson, came out to see what all the noise was about. Inside the stockade, tame Egyptian geese were honking at each other. Having rushed inside, the ridgebacks rushed out again nearly knocking over Harry for the second time, and all four dogs raced off into the bush chasing each other, the fox terriers constantly barking. The men were in the fields, but Alison, heavy with her third child, came out of her house at the same time Emily pushed open her back door that led out from the kitchen.
Fran heard the noise but, having had her fourth stiff gin, stayed inside. There was never anything of interest so far as she was concerned. She let the book she was reading slide off her knees and took a long swig at the gin, slightly diluted with water and coloured pink with aromatic bitters. People sometimes asked her what the books were about, which at the end of the day she rarely knew. The one she was reading had the illustrious title of Clover Blossom, on the front the imprint of a Regency buck. When the dogs stopped barking she picked up the book from the floor, thought she found her place, and carried on reading, soon being no part of Elephant Walk.
Outside around the wagon, staring at the wooden trunk with the iron bands, were six-year-old Barend Oosthuizen, his two-year-old sister Tinka, Harry, his sister Madge who was the same age as Barend, and younger brother George, who had toddled precariously between the msasa trees that shaded the lawn.
“What’s in the chest, Grandfather?” asked Harry.
“Where’s the shopping, Father?” asked Emily, her arms crossed in front of her chest.
“Oh, dear. My word. Look, I forgot. I’ve waited a long time for my books and here they are.”
“Open the chest, Grandpa,” demanded Madge. “We want to see.”
“All right then. Everyone up in the wagon. We need lots of men to lift the box onto the ground so we’ll have to have a look where it is. Barend, come up here quickly and give me a hand. The stationmaster gave me two keys, one for either side of the trunk, and the wire cutters will soon have these iron bands out of the way.”
“What kind of books?” asked Harry losing interest.
“Let’s have a look, shall we?”
Emily helped George up onto the wagon as the dogs came tearing back into the compound, sending the geese running and honking for their lives, heads stretched down the end of their necks as far as possible. Ten minutes later the chest came open, the big lid pulling back to reveal the treasure while letting out the smell of old leather. All the children looked inside with puzzled curiosity.
“With these books,” said Henry proudly, “I will be able to identify all the butterflies and birds, putting them into their right categories, and the ones no one has seen before, we will give them names and my friend at Oxford who sent all this will register proper Latin names with the Royal Society. When I have finished, I will start with the insects.”
“It’ll take you a lifetime, Father.”
“That’s the idea, Emily. That’s just exactly the idea. A man needs something to do with his life. I did manage the post office, but the stores had to wait. Once I had the trunk nothing else entered my mind. Two letters there were. From England. Both the same, I would say. One for your husband, Emily, and one for Tinus. Now, who would be writing to them from England?”
“Are you going to read all those books, Father?”
“Of course I am. Now, children, I have a very good idea. Why don’t we empty the chest one by one and you can put the books into the centre of my room on
the floor and I can look at each one as it comes out of the trunk? Now, just look at this one. An encyclopaedia of the world’s butterflies with drawings. I bet they haven’t got half the ones I’ve collected. Children! Where are you going? Emily, my dear, it appears we are failing in their education. Hunting the bush, yes. Collecting specimens, no. And reading books is going to be right out of the question. I don’t believe my grandson can read.”
“George is a little young,” smiled Emily.
“I was referring to Harry, Emily.”
“I know you were, Father. Now give me the letters. When the others come back, they can lift the trunk into your rondavel and that way we won’t have a mess all over the place. Well, not immediately.”
Emily put the two letters in the front pocket of her apron and walked across to Alison.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Tired. Be glad when this one is out on its own in the world.”
“Letter from England for Tinus. One for Seb. I think they are both from Captain Doyle.”
“Shall we open them?”
“Better not. You go and lie down. I’ll shower the children.”
Alison looked at Emily walking back to her house and smiled. How things changed in life. She took the letter back to her house. Inside, the cat was eating a rat on the dining room table, purring loudly. Too tired to care, Alison put the letter next to the cat and the rat and went to lie down. To the sound of the children squealing under the cold shower in the little outside enclosures they had made of grass, she fell asleep, her hands clasped over her swollen belly. She was smiling.
