by Peter Rimmer
“Yes, Em. He loves that horse. In his excitement, he just wasn’t thinking. Ever since the start of recorded time men have been excited at the start of a war and disgusted by the end.”
The sinking sun was shooting red fingers of fire up the sides of the giant cumulus. The wild geese had come back from the river for their evening feed of corn. The dogs were chasing the children, and the children were chasing the dogs, the fox terriers barking with renewed excitement. On the fly-screened veranda in a comfortable chair, Henry Manderville had his legs spread out straight in front of him and Seb was pouring a glass of claret. Emily had put out the cold supper and the one servant had gone back to his hut for the night. The sound of drums was coming from the huts of the Africans down by the river and the smell of woodsmoke drifted up from the cooking fires. The thunder had gone away but not the oppressive heat that sapped everyone’s energy except the children’s. Their laughter was pleasant in the moment of sundown. Nobody spoke. Seb poured his wife a glass from the bottle. They waited, no one touching their drinks. One of the ridgebacks scratched at the screen door and Seb got up to let her in. The dog’s water-bowl was on the veranda and the dog was thirsty.
When he got back to his chair and turned to sit down, a figure was standing outside the screen door silhouetted by the glow of the sinking sun. The man was in uniform. He placed his hat under his right arm as he entered the room. For a moment Seb was unsure who had come to visit until the man moved into the light and the kerosene lamp showed him the face of Gregory Shaw. The uniform was blue with a wide white stripe down the length of the trouser. The tunic of the uniform was buttoned to the throat, and the cloth stretched ominously under the armpit that cradled the hat. From the knee down the light exposed the yellowing of age of the white strip. The leather cavalry boots were immaculate. Atop the stiff neck of the pale blue uniform with the red piping, Gregory gave them a wan smile. Fran came into the veranda, letting the rest of the dogs and Harry follow.
Seb was about to say something when he caught the pleading look in Gregory’s eyes. Instead, he poured two more glasses of claret and proposed a toast.
“The Queen, God bless her.” Everyone including Harry got up and repeated the toast.
Gregory refused to sit down and Seb understood why, the old stitching having enough trouble under the armpit.
“What’s the uniform, Greg?” asked Seb.
“Ninth Bengal Lancers.” He looked about the veranda in the half-light, the profile of his face caught and lost by the kerosene lamp. “Plumer’s sending reinforcements to the Transvaal border tomorrow and I’m riding in early to offer my services. Luckily my number two uniform has a little more stretch.” He tried a stride with only small success. “Put on weight, old boy. You know, it’s eleven years since I wore this uniform… You think they’ll need me, Henry?”
“Quite sure they will. Every man in a war. Damned impressive, Gregory, if you’ll excuse the expression, Em. That one ribbon’s for bravery, what?”
“Northwest Frontier in ’79… This one’ll be all over by Christmas. Why I’m in a hurry.”
“Makes sense. Bit of exercise do you good. Sebastian, be a good chap and give the captain another glass of claret. He’s finished that one.”
Later on, Gregory took his food standing, and no one laughed.
Far away in the cold of the Franschhoek Valley, the sun had not set but the yellow light of late evening had turned the colour of the surrounding hills to soft purple. The news of war had reached the valley an hour earlier. A servant was busy lighting the big fire in the smoking room that led off from the long central room of the Cape Dutch house. The children were across the valley with friends and ever since the news had reached them, brought by a jubilant neighbour shouting obscenities in the Taal, Alison had wanted to be sick. Across the room, her man was standing silently looking at her. Tinus was forty-two, almost three years younger than Gregory. The big beard was streaked with grey and the belly that stretched his shirt was soft with good living. After the years in the bush, domestic life had been good to Tinus Oosthuizen and even one day away from his children was too long. Though he was looking at his wife, he was thinking of his brother and nephews in the Transvaal.
“What does this mean to us?” asked Alison into the silence. They could hear the tick of the grandfather clock in the dining room despite the door being closed. The fire flared for a moment and the look on her husband’s face came back from its faraway place. She had fed the new baby half an hour before and the boy was fast asleep. He was called Christo, and the easiest of all her children.
“It means my people are at war with your people. The boundaries of the Boer people do not stop in the Transvaal or the Orange Free State. We are a nation wherever we are. The Cape, Natal, Rhodesia.”
“Your mother was a Scot.”
“My father was a Boer, and that is what counts.”
“What will you do?”
“I don’t know, Alison. I am a Boer living in a British colony under British rule and my people are at war with them. My people will expect my help.”
“Will you give it to them? What about our children? They are more English than they are Boer.”
“That’s why they are with the du Plessises. To learn they are Boer. That is their heritage.”
“But why does it matter so much?”
“Because man is tribal. Would you like to be German?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then why must my children be English when they are Boers?”
“But how can President Kruger give the British an ultimatum? The British Empire controls the world.”
“And that’s the point, my wife. Kruger does not want them to control the Transvaal and put all his gold in the Bank of England.”
“It’s about gold?”
“War is always about gold. Gold in one form or the other. Gold and power and usually they go together. Part of life’s mosaic and the pattern never changes.”
“I’m pregnant again.”
“I am pleased for us.”
James Brigandshaw had been listening to his colleagues in the British Intelligence service for half an hour, never taking his stare away from the pig eyes of Cecil Rhodes, the most influential of the rand barons who through his diverse and interlocking shareholdings controlled a major portion of the gold on the Witwatersrand. The man’s eyes were bloodshot and he wheezed with a chest complaint, but never once did he return the stare. It was an hour past midnight and Kruger’s ultimatum had not been met, with British reinforcements reaching the borders of the Transvaal instead of withdrawing as Kruger demanded. The small, landlocked state of the Transvaal with its armed militia of farmers was at war with Great Britain, the most powerful nation on earth. Outside on the streets of Johannesburg, everything was quiet. The foreigners, mostly British, Uitlanders in Kruger’s terms, were inside their houses doing nothing as they had done when Doctor Jameson tried to precipitate an uprising in 1896.
James, like his colleagues, was dressed in civilian clothes and had yet to enter the conversation. Rhodes had not spoken a word. In the stable next to the two-storey building on Sauer Street where the meeting was taking place, well-fed and rested horses were waiting to take the British officers out of enemy territory. All but James were going south to the Cape Colony.
The argument had been going round in circles ever since it had begun.
“You’ll excuse my interruption, gentlemen, but you are all missing the point,” said James. “This war has nothing to do with voting rights, though if those other than Boers were permitted to vote, this war would be unnecessary as we British would be in the majority if you exclude the blacks, an interesting point in a discussion on rights but best leave that one alone. Please, do not let us be beguiled by our own propaganda. What a politician says to gain his point is rarely the reason for that point. The British government has cried eloquently that there can be no taxation without representation. Sounds rather nice, doesn’t it? Very righteous.
“He will use the gold to buy arms and kill Englishmen,” said a British captain.
“Probably. Then we must hurry the army to Johannesburg.”
“It may take months.”
“It may take years. Remember the battle of Majuba, old chap. All I’m saying is, there’s no point in blowing up one way or another the very thing we are fighting for. To fall into the trap of believing our own political claptrap would be foolish. Tell the press what you like but gentlemen, please, let us be honest with ourselves.”
“You really think this war is about gold?” asked the same man.
“You tell me what else it is about, old chap.”
“The mines stay open,” said Rhodes standing up. “And if any man says I was in Johannesburg tonight, I will deny my presence. I never left Kimberley. Good night to you all.” At the turn, Rhodes turned back to the men seated around the table. “Mr Brigandshaw, are you related to The Captain?”
“He is my father.”
“I see. I really do see. Maybe you too, sir, have a double agenda.”
“The result is always the same, Mr Rhodes. You said so yourself. At the end of everything it all comes back to money.”
“And vanity, Major. Never forget vanity. A man’s price can also be his vanity.”
The door closed on the richest man in the empire and they all listened to his footfalls receding down the stairs.
“What did he mean by your double agenda, Major Brigandshaw?” asked the colonel in charge of the meeting.
“My father owns Colonial Shipping as you know, sir. Mr Rhodes thinks my father will make a great deal of money when the demand for shipping space exceeds supply as a result of this war and shipping rates spiral. And he is probably right. Politicians send the army to fight their wars to extend their political power but men of business, men in trade, reap the real profits. But how silly of me, gentlemen. I am sure you are just as aware of the machinations of men. President Kruger would have been left on his stoep in Pretoria for all eternity, obscure and happy, were it not for the gold under his ground. With respect, Colonel, but I sometimes find life a trifle indigestible but then maybe we should get to the horses before the burghers make a meal of us.”
“This meeting is closed,” said the colonel.
The Boer pony stood patiently waiting for James. The lieutenant-colonel and the two captains had let themselves out of the stable into the night ten minutes earlier. They had all shaken hands solemnly and then been wished a cheery toodle-oo by James. He was alone and took from his jacket two lumps of sugar and offered them to the pony. The velvet muzzle pulled the cubes from the palm of his hand while man and horse looked at each other with genuine affection. James had bought the small horse from Jeremiah Shank six months earlier to everyone’s surprise. The animal was too small for most Englishmen’s taste but James knew the Boers favoured the strong mountain ponies that foraged for themselves from the veld. A pony, a bag of dried meat, a Mauser rifle, two bandoliers of ammunition and a Boer could trek for months without looking for supplies.
The soft brown eyes of the horse watched carefully as James changed his clothes. Finally, he covered his face and cheeks with theatrical glue and affixed the beard in place. Placing the small saddle with the short stirrups over the pony, he checked the Mauser rifle and slid it down into the well-worn saddle holster. The first and second bandoliers were crossed over the dirty, well-washed shirt and half covered by a long jacket of homespun. The trousers were long and tough, like the leather boots, to fend off the thorn bush of the highveld. James hung the double saddlebag over the horse’s rump and mounted. When he rode the horse down Sauer Street into the night, he was like any other burgher headed home to the farm after a visit to the sprawling mining camp of Johannesburg. If challenged he had learnt enough words of the Taal to pass as a Boer. There was nothing on James or the pony, including James’s underwear, to suggest he was British. The nice touch, he thought, was the old bush hat with a wide rim he had stolen from a Boer who had trekked up to Rhodesia in the never-ending search for a pot of gold. The man had left the hat on Annie’s bar while he went out to relieve himself, too drunk to notice the theft.
On the third day of his journey, James could smell himself. The Great North Road, a misnomer for a bush track deeply rutted by the wheels of heavy carts, was empty of people, but either side the open veld was teeming with springbok, gnu, elephant and giraffe. Never before had James been so content with himself and on the fifth day they rested beside a river, he and his pony. Beneath a tall acacia tree, the war that he had been part of provoking was as far away as the moon he could still see in the morning sky, and he wondered sadly why so many men and women could never be content with themselves. The long brown grass, broken by animals and heat, stretched away to hills far distant in the haze of summer and the white clouds placed in the blue sky never moved, patterning the bush with shadows and darkening patches of the great hills.
Alone in the wilderness of Africa, he made himself a fire and boiled a pot of water for his morning tea and drank it without sugar or milk while the pony, free of saddle and rifle, drank at the river.
On the second day, they reached the Limpopo River, brown and muddy, more pools than a river, waiting for the new rains to send it flowing smoothly to the east. The crossing was easy and James was back on British soil.
For Sir Henry Manderville, there were more important things than politicians arguing with each other to protect their political turf. The crate containing Mr Crapper’s invention had arrived three months earlier and mysteriously sat alone in the centre of the vacated rondavel that had once been his home. Young Harry had looked at the wooden crate many times, asked many questions, and received but one reply, ‘Wait and see’. Soon after the arrival of the crate, a hole had appeared in the back of the bathroom wall, in the house that had once belonged to Tinus Oosthuizen, and then for some time nothing further had happened. Three weeks before the Boers moved into Natal and the Northern Cape, a trench had appeared behind the hole in the wall that led to a deep pit, oblong in shape, that was filled with large rocks. Next to the trench, a wooden tower grew to the height of the thatch with a platform and on top of the platform, after considerable effort and with the help of every black man on the farm, Harry’s grandfather had plonked a tin tank. For the first time, Harry was told a secret.
“That tank’s going to contain five hundred gallons of water.”
“But how, Grandfather, are you going to get the water into the tank?”
“Wait and see.”
The scene of the action for Harry then moved down to the river where a hand pump had been installed as long ago as Harry could remember to pump water to the compound, five hundred yards away up through the bush, the stockade and between the msasa trees ringed by the flowerbeds, a laborious process but better than carrying up buckets of water. Down by the river, another wooden tower had taken shape and on top of this one, again with great difficulty, Harry watched his grandfather plonk a contraption that went round and round for no purpose every time the wind blew. ‘Wait and see,’ was all he got. A series of cogs and chains, this time Harry judged with extreme difficulty, were built up the tower and down to the water pump. Many strong arms had worn the wooden handle smooth by pushing the long piece of wood from right to left for two hours each day to give the households water. T
he chains were attached to a cog that protruded from the centre of the contraption, going round and round another cog at the bottom of the tower, just above the pipe. At the same time as the chains were going round in sympathy, James Brigandshaw was removing his false beard with difficulty, having had a swim in the Baby River without being eaten by a crocodile. Then Harry’s grandfather connected the last chain to a new piece of machinery he had joined to the pump instead of the handle.
“Come and see young Harry, come and see.”
Together they strode up the path while the wind squeaked the cogs and chains behind them and when they got to the ground-level water reservoir, centre of the three main houses and to the right of the rondavel, water was spilling in spurts into the tank.
“But who’s pumping the water?” asked Harry.
“The windmill,” said his grandfather, gazing up at the tank behind his house with satisfaction. “Today we are going to open the crate.”
“Wow,” said Harry. “Can I go and tell Mummy?”
“Of course you can.”
It was obvious to Harry that his grandfather felt very pleased with himself.
Everyone had been invited to the opening of the crate that had now been brought out onto the lawn from the rondavel. Harry looked around, bursting with excitement. His eight-year-old sister Madge was trying to look bored with her plump arms folded in front of her chest while George was running after the fox terriers, one of which had lifted a leg against the crate when it was first put on the lawn. The dog had then lost interest. The ridgebacks were lying down in the mottled shade of a msasa tree, only their eyes moving to catch everything that was going on. Two of the cats had gone up a tree to keep out of harm’s way. Aunty Fran was looking vaguely interested but distracted as Uncle Gregory had still not come back from Fort Salisbury. Harry wished he was six years older so he could go off to the war with Uncle Gregory, still not sure which army he wished to join. Harry’s father was watching the proceedings with mild amusement and his mother was more concerned with three-year-old George running off with the dogs. Looking at his mother, Harry was sure he was soon going to have another brother or sister but no one had told him anything as usual.
