by Peter Rimmer
Sitting at the piano on Thursday nights when open house was the order of the day, she played Bach and Chopin and smiled to herself. In the nursery her son was being tended by a nanny, the kitchen was run by the cook, the house by the butler and Fran was left to do what she had always wanted to do most, play the piano. It had taken her a big wide circle to come back home but here she was, she told herself, right in the heart of things. Only sometimes alone did she think of Gregory who had made it all possible and given her the son asleep upstairs.
Lord Edward Holland, being a younger son, had never been forced to marry to protect the family title. Edward, Teddy to his friends, was now fourteenth in line to the title of Marquis of Surrey, his brothers’ sons having produced their own sons… The title, so far as Teddy was concerned, was quite safe. If he had married, they would have made him move from the family estate but as a bachelor, he could stay where he was until he died. Everyone liked Teddy Holland. He was good at a dinner party, drinking enough to be part of the fun but never too much. Never, ever, in his life had he told anyone what he really thought of them. Always and with premeditated charm, he told everyone what they wanted to hear about themselves. Even the generation of his nieces and nephews came to the sympathetic shoulder of Uncle Teddy where anything that was said never went one step further. Unbeknown to him, playing his own fiddle in life he played a vital part in the harmony of the sprawling family.
Teddy had reached the age when there was more to look back on than to look forward to, a time to recognise his mortality when friends from the old days at school were dying off, a time to ask himself what it was all about, to think of God, to realise how little he really knew. Only then, in the black, dark hours in his bedroom in the old family home, surrounded by the product of twenty generations, when he could not sleep and blamed the food and drink instead of age, he began to understand the greater probability, that his only chance of immortality, his only purpose, was to have children. He could then die, but the species of well-bred Englishmen would live after him to the end of time. There was no point in guessing anymore. He had to know. For the sake of his soul, he had to know once and for all.
Ethel saw the toff step down the hansom cab and heard him tell the driver to wait. The horse and dray had stopped outside the Duke of Clarence and old Stan Conway was unloading barrels of beer with the help of young Ben, the landlord’s son. The smell of fresh horse manure was strong and comfortingly pleasant. The toff was obviously lost and was looking for directions. The man’s beard was cut sharply to a point; the sideburns and the beard were almost white.
The noise of the door knocker banged through the house and Ethel left her window and walked through the passage to open the front door.
“Hello, Ethel. My name is Edward Holland. You probably don’t remember me but I received a postcard some many years back reading Jeremiah Shank. Is he our son?”
She stared at him, unable to reconcile the old man standing at her front door and the dashing young aristocrat in her memory who had seduced her in the gazebo at Bramley Park.
“Yes. Now, will you go away?”
For the first time in his life, a door was closed in his face. Stunned by the swift conclusion, Teddy stood looking at the knocker. From the other side, he could hear the woman crying.
“Ethel! Do you want some money?”
Slowly the door opened.
“Money. You people only think of money. Please don’t tell ’im. Anyone. My Fred’s a good man. It’ll kill ’im. Just don’t tell Jeremiah and ’ave ’im bustin’ in ’ere and ruining the lives of all of us.”
“He’d have less reason if he knew I was his father.”
“That boy’s evil. He’d use it to torment us. He’d enjoy making us all miserable. See what happens when you do something wrong. Evil, he is. I feel sorry for his wife.”
“So you know about his son?”
“In the paper… What they call ’im?”
“Edward.”
“So he knows?”
“No. I’m his mentor. Gave him a start in business. Ethel, you have my word as a gentleman. Only you and I will ever know. You see, all the way along I couldn’t see what I could do for you without making it worse. I’ll go now before the neighbours talk. I wanted to be certain. He’s the only child I ever had.”
When he had gone, instead of crying, Ethel burst out laughing.
“Gentleman, my arse. More man and less gentleman and you wouldn’t ’ave seduced me in the first place. I’ll take Fred the coalman any day.” Then she thought for a moment, “Poor bugger don’t ’ave no kids he can call his own. That’ll teach ’im.”
That evening when Fred came home from delivering sacks of coal she sat him down in the parlour with a cup of tea. The kids were out playing in the street and down the alleys. The window was open to their backyard. She could smell the stocks Fred had planted in the spring. It was better to face a problem straight on, she always told the kids.
“There’s somethin’ I’ve never told you, Fred. Should ’ave done, likely. I was young and frightened. But I owe you the truth before someone else whispers in your ear. Our Jeremiah is not your son.”
“Eth. You think we could break the rule and go down the Duke of Clarence? Then I can celebrate. I’d hoped you’d tell me that ever since he opened his mouth. I knew, Eth. Even a coalman can count up to nine months. I’m goin’ to ’ave five pints and get drunk first time in my life. Yous goin’ to ’ave two port and lemon. He may still be your son but it’s my house. So ever ’e comes round ’ere looking for trouble I’ll throw the little squirt down the front stairs into the street. Your mother told me she thought you were up the pole from young Teddy Holland, up at the big ’ouse. But it didn’t matter. We loved each other. Now, come on. In all them years you never saw Fred Shank drunk… Tonight’s the night!”
Sitting next to his wife at the piano not four miles away as the crow flies, Jeremiah Shank gave a sudden shiver and Fran stopped playing the piano.
“What’s the matter?”
“Someone walked over my grave.”
The townhouse in Hyde Park with twelve bedrooms and a reception room larger than three houses in Pudding Lane might have been as far away as the moon from the Duke of Clarence.
“Better we go back to Africa,” he said.
“Why? This house is such fun and Africa so boring. You frightened one of my admirers will seduce me?”
“Even you know which side your bread’s buttered. There’s one thing I have learnt in life. You can fool other people but you can’t fool yourself.”
“What are you talking about?”
“They’re laughing at us, Fran.”
“They may be laughing at you, Jeremiah Shank, but they are certainly not laughing at me. Anyway, who cares?”
“I do.”
“Then you’re a bigger fool than I thought you were.”
“You married me for my money.”
“And you married me for my class. Everyone trades, Jeremiah. It’s what makes the world go round. If everyone had what they wanted, life would be boring… Anyway, they don’t laugh at you. They envy you.”
“You think so?”
“I’m sure.” Then she went back to playing the piano, satisfied with the new look in his eyes… She had perfectly stroked the feathers of his vanity.
Further south at Hastings Court, Lady Mathilda Brigandshaw watched a man in uniform ride up the driveway through the avenue of trees. She could only see him intermittently as the horse and rider passed between the oak trees that had been planted by Sir Henry Manderville’s ancestors. She had first heard the clip of the horse’s hooves and turned in her seat in the bower that overlooked the artificial lake, landscaped into the countryside by Sir Henry’s great-grandfather. She was sixty-one and felt every year in the joints of her fingers, the joints of her knees and ankles. The warm evening sun reflected from the water; all around insects were busy in the drowsy summer’s day. Annoyed at being disturbed in the one place she found pe
ace, Mathilda placed the thick stick on the ground in front of the old wooden bench and hoisted herself up. After a moment the pain subsided in her knees and she began the slow walk back to the house.
The butler met her halfway up to the big house. She hated servants. Could see no reason why they were needed. She could make a bed and cook a meal. And they were always around, watching what you did. ‘Gives me the creeps,’ she told herself while racking her brain for the name of the new butler. There had been so many since The Captain had bought Hastings Court and tried to tie himself into the Manderville ancestry. She was no good with servants, she knew that and they knew she was no better than them… Her Cheshire accent as strong as when she had been a child. And The Captain bellowed at them, forgetting he was no longer at sea, the all-powerful captain of a ship.
The man in uniform had been shown into the high-ceilinged library; the French doors open to the wide veranda that overlooked the park her husband had extended by buying surrounding farms. Flowers grew in profusion, tumbling out of the giant pots that marched along the front of the veranda protecting the ten-foot drop to the gravel driveway. There were seven gardeners and not a weed showed among the flowerbeds or in the driveway.
The man in uniform had walked out from the library to look at the view. Hearing the old woman’s stick on the wooden floor he composed his face and turned back to the library. The woman was carrying his calling card in her left hand, the right fully occupied with the stick.
“I am Lady Brigandshaw. To what do we owe the pleasure, Captain Tanner?”
“No pleasure, madam. I bring bad news from the war office. Your son…”
“James is dead?”
“James, madam?” Discreetly the officer looked at the piece of paper he had been handed at the army training camp three miles from Hastings Court. “It says here, your son’s name is Sebastian. I am so sorry. There must be a mistake.”
“Sebastian! But he’s not in the army.”
“So you do have a son by the name of Sebastian?”
“Of course I do. How would I know he was not in the army?”
“There’s no rank, admittedly, but he’s lying in our military hospital in Cape Town.”
“What’s he lying there for?”
“He’s very badly wounded. I regret to inform you, the doctors fear for his life.”
“Why didn’t you inform his wife?” bellowed The Captain who had been taking his afternoon nap and had told the butler not to disturb him on pain of dismissal.
“He doesn’t have a wife, according to army records, sir. You would be Sir Archibald Brigandshaw, I presume? Captain Tanner, Royal Artillery. You and Lady Brigandshaw are listed as his next of kin.”
“What’s the reprobate done now? Hasn’t he caused enough trouble? Never married her, I suppose. All the children are bastards. Now, if you have something important to say…”
“Your son Sebastian is dying of wounds, sir. I would have thought…”
“I don’t give a damn. That boy’s name is never to be mentioned in this house even if he is dying. Good day, sir.”
They both listened in silence, the butler having made his escape earlier. The library door banged behind him.
“There is something else, Lady Brigandshaw. The army will give you passage to Cape Town. With the new steamships, the journey can be made in eighteen days, weather permitting. The army thought the funeral…”
“He’s not dead yet.”
“I’m to inform you there’s a ship sailing from Southampton the day after tomorrow.”
“I think we have our own transport, thank you. My husband owns Colonial Shipping. Will you take a glass of sherry, Captain Tanner? Then you can tell me how Sebastian came to be lying in a military hospital. Has anyone in the army told poor Emily?”
“Who is Emily, madam?”
“The mother of his children. The woman who should have been his wife. And with Arthur dead and buried I’ll have a word with him about that… What is your name?” she said to the butler who had appeared soon after eavesdropping the word ‘sherry’.
2
August 1901
In the middle of August, the Indian Queen (the second of the same name) steamed into Table Bay. For Captain Doyle standing alone on the foredeck, it was déjà vu, only last time the prisoner was Sebastian. What he was going to do to help a situation already out of control was beyond his thinking mind. Enough, he was looking at Table Mountain and hopefully Tinus Oosthuizen was still alive.
When the ship docked Captain Doyle was the first ashore. The sky was clear but the wind cold and he was glad the Cape Town manager of African Shipping had recognised the Indian Queen coming into the harbour. Inside the company carriage with the doors closed he ignored the rug meant for the passengers’ knees.
Half an hour later, Sebastian saw the man who had been more loyal than a father, walk purposefully down the ward.
“Is Tinus still alive?” asked Doyle. “How are you?”
“Yes, he’s still alive. The trial is two weeks from yesterday. A military trial. They moved him last week into military custody. Gore-Bilham has him in the Castle. And thank you, the hip’s mending well but the pain is still there. The bullet through the shoulder was clean… Have you got any influence that can help Tinus?”
“No. I can give him moral support but no one can influence a British military court.”
“Emily’s father thinks the same. An Irish newsman has tried his best. All it did was make Milner hand Tinus to the military. The British High Commissioner is a modern Pontius Pilate. Washed his hands of what he now says is a military problem. Alison has appointed a solicitor who has been able to do nothing. Can you go and see Milner? Gore-Bilham?”
“And say he was my partner? That his money came from an English partnership, an English shipping line? Better to go and see Smuts or de Wet and plead they stop the war to save Tinus’s life. He’s a hostage to make the Boers stop fighting. This is politics, not justice. Where in history have the English tried their prisoners? What would happen if everyone started hanging their prisoners-of-war?”
“Billy Clifford tried that angle and all he got back was traitors; people who are traitors to their own country are hanged.”
“But Tinus is not British.”
“Neither was Milner by birth. He’s a German. He’s a naturalised British subject and if he takes up arms against the Crown, they’ll hang him just the same. Tinus lived most of his life in British colonies under British law. He’s going to be made an example for any Cape Dutch who wants to join the Boers. I went to find Tinus in the bush to tell him to stop before it was too late. He even told me he knew the consequences. What he didn’t know, the lawyer tells me, is the British will confiscate Kleinfontein. Why I asked you to help, old friend, is I thought I was going to die. Or rather the doctors thought I was going to die. I want you to know Alison receives half my shares in African Shipping but they can’t be registered for fear of confiscation. Alison is proud. You must tell her the money was always his. She must never think it is charity. Which it isn’t. Without Tinus, I would not have a penny, more than likely. And you would be a retired captain of one of my father’s ships and eking out a living in some boarding house in Liverpool.”
“Will she sell the shares?”
“Probably. To buy back Kleinfontein. Half of my shares are worth more than all of his when he sold out.”
“Jeremiah Shank owns forty-one per cent of African Shipping, the public a mere six per cent. Every time a share came onto the market after the public listing, Shank was the buyer.”
“But we only floated thirty per cent.”
“Barings sold him the Tinus share and their sponsoring broker allocation. Quite legal. The man could have used a nominee to own the shares. When you go public, you always take the risk of losing control of your company.”
“Then why don’t we both sell our shares on the open market?”
“Original partners dump shares? The shares won’t be worth ten per
cent when the press finds out.”
“Then sell the company to Shank.”
“And let him win again? Don’t you remember he put a noose around your neck?”
“Sometimes you have to lose a little to get what you want.”
“And what do I do? I’m only sixty. Look older, yes, from all the years at sea. I’d be dead from boredom six months into retirement. I never had a wife. No children. I married ships and the sea. My ships are my children.”
“Then we will find another way for Alison.”
“Even military courts don’t hang prisoners with extenuating circumstances.”
“Not unless the general choosing the judges is biased. There won’t be a jury. Five army officers and I’ll bet Gore-Bilham himself will be the senior officer. In the army, if a senior officer gives you an order, you do what you’re told.”
“He won’t give them an order to find a man guilty before he’s tried.”
“He won’t have to. They all saw the news picture of Gore-Bilham without his trousers. He’ll pick four ambitious men. A man rises in a government, a corporation and certainly the army by doing what is rudely called ‘arse-creeping’. Those four men will be fighting for the privilege. Make a fool of a man and he will always be your enemy. Why I like living in the bush, far away from people. I have come to understand and respect the animals. I have never understood man.”
“Can’t we break him out of jail?”
“I’ve been thinking of that.”
“Don’t be bloody stupid,” said Henry Manderville. “And keep your voice down, Sebastian. The word sedition springs to mind followed quickly by treason. Anyway, he’s in a prison surrounded by a British garrison. I went to the Castle and did more harm than good. The man was polite. Offered me a glass of sherry. Listened carefully to every word I’d had to say, smiled with satisfaction and ordered himself another sherry. Told me what I had said confirmed what he already knew, that Tinus is a British subject. I tried the years north of the Limpopo before Rhodes hoisted the Union Jack. I pointed out Tinus had done nothing to become a British subject, that in those circumstances he was equally a subject of King Lobengula, that all the Englishmen hunting before the occupation were subjects of Lobengula and not Queen Victoria. The man went purple for a moment and then smiled. He explained the white hunters were visitors, not permanent residents, that when Tinus joined us, owning part of the farm, he automatically became a British subject as the farm was his permanent residence. The man had the cheek to thank me for being so helpful. And if you want to fight your way in and out of the Castle, you need an army. Forget the fact you can barely walk on crutches. You can’t get away from their rules and regulations, however far you run away. Just ask the Boers.”
