by Peter Rimmer
“They will.”
The cabbie stopped the horse at the great door. He opened the cab door and pulled down the steps. The big house was silent, no one in sight. A large dog watched them from the veranda that swept from both sides of the steps that led up to the front door. The dog rolled on its side and went to sleep. The driver was about to unload the trunks when Mrs Barker stopped him. She walked up the steps and rang the outside bell. Immediately the door swung open to reveal a large black man who blinked at them. He was dressed in some kind of uniform neither Mrs Barker nor Sallie had seen before.
“Mrs Barker of England, calling on Mrs Flugelhorne,” she said stentoriously. Mrs Barker was not afraid of servants. The man continued to blink, adding a half-smile. Mrs Barker repeated herself. The black man blinked twice.
“No English,” said the cab driver from the gravel driveway. In Afrikaans, he told the man in the fancy suit to call the madam. The women heard him go off into the house. The dog was still asleep on its side. They waited as the tension came back to them.
“We can’t stand here forever,” said Sallie.
“We must,” said her mother.
Finally, a small woman with a beaked nose and eyes close together came down the winding stairs. Sallie thought many years ago she had probably been pretty. Ernest also had eyes close together. The woman saw them standing at the front door and hesitated.
“I’m Ernest Gilchrist’s cousin,” said Sallie, moving into the house. “You must be Ernest’s aunt. The resemblance is quite clear. This is my mother, Mrs Barker. I am Sallie Barker. We have just landed in Cape Town from England.”
“We thought to call straight away,” said Mrs Barker. “To find from you the name of a good hotel. What a most beautiful home you have.”
“You are from England?” said the woman almost hugging herself. “Oh, how wonderful, how wonderful. I never even speak English now. German, yes. My husband is German. The servants only speak in Afrikaans. Dutch really. Oh, please come in. Shall we have some tea? You must stay here, of course. I’m sure my husband won’t mind. He’s away at the moment. On business. I get very lonely, you must understand. Dear Ernest. He wrote so well of you… From England. That is wonderful. Come along into the sunroom. My servants will pay the cab driver and bring in your trunks. You do have trunks?… Oh, good. From England. This is so wonderful… You see, we don’t have any children. Call me Violet please.”
“Please call me Doris,” said Mrs Barker.
Behind, the dog got up and walked away down the long veranda to plonk itself in the sun at the far end. From the aviary, the birds were singing their hearts out.
With an inward sigh of relief, Sallie moved into the great house.
The conservatory was full of potted plants and smelt of sweet damp earth. Most of the plants were strange to her. From the glassed-in room with its sloping glass roof, Sallie looked out at the buildings: sheds, stables, and servants’ quarters. There was another high building that dominated the sheds with a tall ‘winery’ sign over the front door. People, all black, came and went from the buildings.
The tray of tea was brought to them by a fat black woman with the largest bottom Sallie had ever seen in her life. Her mother and Mrs Flugelhorne were talking nineteen to the dozen, neither listening to the other. Sallie thought Mrs Flugelhorne must have been alone for a long time. On a low, cushioned seat at the foot of the glass window, a large white cat was fast asleep. Sallie got up and went to the cat. After a moment, the cat began to purr. Well, they don’t have any sons, she said to herself. Concentrating on stroking the cat, she put all thought of the future out of her mind. Even with all the people outside, the house felt empty. It was very large for two people, and Sallie wondered why people lived in houses that were far too big for them. Then, for some unaccountable reason, she shivered, even though the glassed-in room was warm from the rays of the winter sun.
Ten days later, Albert Pringle was walking down Adderley Street in the centre of Cape Town, wearing a small green bowler hat tilted slightly to the right. He was very chipper. Along with his new green hat, he wore a new green suit and twirled a dark cane with a silver handle. All presents from Lily White.
Having come from a family and village that supported its own, Albert had never known how people could find themselves cast off with no one to turn to.
Like so often after a debilitating war, South Africa was in a financial depression, the commerce generated by the war gone with the peace of Vereeniging. Large numbers of blacks and whites were out of jobs, and there was no welfare system in place to provide them with the basics of life. The ones that had left their parishes in England to seek a fortune were not even able to turn to their church for support. In ten days Albert had found five young and pretty girls and moved them into the rented house in lower Strand Street, close to where the harbour joined the city. They were sleeping two to a room, and happy to have a roof over their heads, even though they knew why they were there. None of them had the fare back to Europe.
“Any business has to be honest, especially to its staff,” Lily had said the day they moved into the house having told the landlord they only wanted it for a month. Lily had only managed to pry one month’s rent back from the pre-paid three. “The girls, right from the start, must know what they are in for. They will have our protection, and will never have to leave the establishment if they fulfil their contracts, but however you look at it, they are whores. They will be poked by fat, old, drunk men, like many a wife, but they will be paid a king’s ransom in comparison to what lies ahead of a young woman in a strange country with no money and no support. Stress the support, Albert, but if they don’t want to join us let it be. Everyone in my business has to be willing. Also, anytime they wish, they can go.”
Walking on the side of the road in the sunshine, his only regret was having to let down Jack Merryweather, who had never treated him like a servant, more like a friend.
Lily had gone on when Albert voiced his worry. “The man doesn’t own you anymore than he owns me which he would were I his wife. We are going to give him notice. If he didn’t want us he’d give us the same notice. I’m not his first or last mistress. Valets are ten a penny in London.”
“But he’s a good man.”
“Then we’ll both write that in the letters telling him so.”
As Albert turned up left into Strand Street, he still felt uncomfortable deceiving Jack Merryweather. ‘Can’t go around letting people down,’ he said to himself.
A girl with a small hat and side feather was standing at the steps of the three-storey townhouse. She had her back to Albert, but he knew who she was by the black ringlets that hung down by her ears. She was just standing looking up at the front door. By the time Albert walked the hundred yards up Strand Street to the steps, the girl had still not knocked on the door.
“Miss Barker,” he said. “It is Sallie Barker?”
Before he could mount the steps the girl ran down into his arms, sobbing.
“I just didn’t know who to turn to,” she kept repeating.
One of the new girls answered the door and they went through to the small sitting room with the open fire burning softly in the grate.
“It’ll be all right, dearie,” said the girl, patting Sallie on the back. “Being a whore is no worse than being a wife, and I know. How about a nice cup of tea?”
After tea, Sallie composed herself and told Albert the story.
For three days they had been alone in the house. No one came to visit. Only the house servants were allowed in the house and none of them could speak English. Outside the big house, the business of the wine estate went on before her eyes, the comings and goings of drays bringing empty wine barrels two at a time and going back with the new ones full. There were two white overseers who never came to the house or even glanced its way. Ernest Gilchrist’s aunt had given her a small, pretty room to herself, with light blue curtains and big windows that felt as if no one had lived in it for years. Even after leaving
open the big windows the room was dead and lifeless. Not even the smell of flowers or mown grass penetrated the second-floor room that looked out far to the distant mountains that for Sallie had no name.
There was never the mention of the present, except for the needs of food and sleep. All the two women talked about was England, and England twenty years ago, before she was born. They were fast becoming bosom friends, Mrs Flugelhorne and Mrs Barker. Never once was there a mention of neighbours. Never once was there talk of what was to be done. Both of them, her mother and Mrs Flugelhorne, were reliving their happy childhoods, where Sallie had no part. Finally, for Sallie, there was boredom, mixed with the regret of wasting time. She wanted to be out and doing something, enjoying her life instead of being locked up in the house of strangers.
Then Mr Flugelhorne came home and at the first sight of Sallie, he literally licked his lips.
He was a man of fifty, florid from good food and wine, his body all the time trying to burst out of his clothes, his belly protruding so he could only see his feet with a mirror. The servants were plainly frightened of him, inside and outside the house. Mrs Flugelhorne was petrified of the man and stammered her introductions. To what seemed Mrs Flugelhorne’s surprise and greater relief, the master of the house gave his guests a handsome welcome, and listened to every word of Mrs Barker’s flattery, the few questions he asked her were pertinent and to the point. By the end of the first evening, he knew their predicament without having to be told, his eyes taking the clothes off Sallie piece by piece. Somewhere she had read the word ‘lecher’ and the following day, briefly alone with her mother in the garden, she had explained her fears.
“Don’t be silly, Sallie. You young girls imagine these things. He’s a gentleman, a rich gentleman, and old enough to be your father.”
“And a lecher; watch the way he looks at me. Mother, I want to go.”
“We can’t go, Sallie. This is our opportunity. To find so much wealth in the family when we are so poor. Now, Sallie, don’t be silly.”
“The way he looks at my bosom says he knows that we are poor as church mice.”
“How can he? You are looking a gift horse in the mouth.”
“I’m looking at a dirty old man and I certainly have no wish to look in his mouth.”
“Sallie! Now you behave yourself. It’s difficult enough as it is. He hasn’t done anything has he?”
“No, Mother,” she had said wearily. Arguing was obviously pointless.
“Then don’t be ungrateful.”
There was no key to the small room with the blue curtains even if Sallie had wished to lock the door. She avoided the master of the house as best she could, finding a bench among some trees on the far side of the duck pond. Once she heard the white overseer and his white assistant talking to each other. They were speaking in English. The one man spoke with a Worcester accent, the other she rather thought was German. The conversation was brief. She would have liked to know which one of them was English but they were hidden by the trees and shrubbery. When she walked out to catch a glimpse they were gone. Twice Mr Flugelhorne ordered a horse and trap from his stables and was driven into Cape Town. One night he did not come home. Her mother and Mrs Flugelhorne chatted in their element whenever the master was out of the house. Mrs Flugelhorne spoke nothing but trivia and Sallie doubted if the woman had a brain in her head.
Mr Flugelhorne came home drunk late the following afternoon and didn’t even bother to hide the way he leered at Sallie. Passing a message through the house servant, she excused herself from supper on the grounds of not feeling well, most of the conversation with the servant conducted in sign language. In the end, when the maid gave a big smile, Sallie was not sure what message would be delivered to Mrs Flugelhorne. Her mother, even though she saw the man was drunk, had not even furrowed her brow.
Sallie leaned the back of the only chair under the doorknob and tried to go to sleep. She had shut the window, even though there was no way a drunk, a fat drunk, could climb up the outside trellis work into her bedroom. She had never felt more alone or vulnerable in her life. She tried praying to God and finally fell asleep.
When Sallie woke, the moon was shining full into her room, the chair was no longer up against the doorknob but lying on the carpet on its back on top of a sheet of plywood that had not been in the room when she went to sleep.
The man was fatter and even more repulsive with his clothes off, and sickly white in the light of the moon, his bald head glowing with its reflection. There was something over her face. She felt the bedclothes being ripped off from on top of her body as her mind drifted. She had felt the nightdress being pulled over her head. The hand that cupped her firm, hard breast was ice-cold. Her legs were forced apart, crushed by the weight of the man on top of her. Mr Flugelhorne farted before entering her, tearing parts of her flesh with the hard rod he thrust into her body. The chloroform had been enough to stop her fight but not enough to stop his pleasure. When she screamed he laughed at her and went about his business with greater pleasure.
In the morning the bed sheets were covered in blood and Sallie could still smell the man. The piece of plywood that had pushed back the legs of the chair was gone.
She had waited in her bedroom all morning, waiting to speak to her mother. There was no sign of the master of the house who had raped her. When she saw her mother in the garden next to the aviary she flew out of the house to hysterically recount what had happened. Her mother coldly refused to believe her and dismissed her hysterics. Sobbing, Sallie returned to her room.
Packing everything she owned into a small suitcase, she had watched and waited, trying all the time to ignore the dull, aching pain between her legs. When the white overseer went to the stables she let herself out of her room and she ran down the wide flight of stairs and out of the house through the sunroom.
She told the overseer that Mr Flugelhorne had told her to take the trap into Cape Town. The man leered as if he understood one way or the other and put the small leather suitcase in the trap. In the Dutch she did not understand, the overseer told the driver something. Then she was in the trap and going down the driveway between the oaks and through the pillars onto the main road. She was relieved when the driver took the road back the way they had come out from Cape Town harbour ten days before.
At that moment she was completely alone in the world. Halfway there she found the card in her purse with Jack Merryweather’s name and address in Cape Town. In case the driver reported back to her mother, she got off in the middle of town and stood on the kerb with her small suitcase until the trap was out of sight.
Then she had picked up the case and walked slowly to the house in Strand Street. People were very kind when she asked for directions.
At the time Sallie was telling her story in the Strand Street house next to the small wood fire crackling in the grate, Jack Merryweather was riding through tall grass that came up to his knees. He was hotter than he had ever been before in his life, and the rifle he had been assured would kill an elephant was banging against his knee in its bucket holster. On either side, thickly wooded msasa trees stopped any vision further than twenty yards. The hat band of his broad-brimmed brown felt hat was soaked with sweat and the tsetse fly was beginning to attack as the sun went down, blood-reddening the western sky, leaving patches of turquoise blue. They had been riding since dawn, the four of them, Jack, Harry Brigandshaw, and two big black men that worked at Elephant Walk.
They had found not a trace of the Great Elephant that had killed Harry’s father. They had been riding for a week, searching the vast open bush for one elephant that had last been sighted by Tinus Oosthuizen thirty years before – before, that is, it was wounded by an American hunter and Sebastian Brigandshaw had gone out to put the animal out of its pain. It was thought the elephant was seventy years old, the biggest in Central Africa, and had roamed all its life between the Congo and Limpopo rivers, some said as far as the sea. Before being wounded by the American, the Great Elephant had b
een a legend that nobody believed.
The train had arrived at Salisbury Station in Southern Rhodesia three days after the SS King Emperor had docked in Cape Town harbour. Jack Merryweather had had no problem booking a sleeper for himself, as Harry and Robert St Clair were again sharing together, the three of them eating their meals at the same table in the dining car. The Great Karoo, the semi-desert of Bechuanaland, had been dry, and dotted with patches of mopane forest, tall, thin-trunked trees, some of which had been pushed over by the vast herds of elephant roaming out from the Okavango Delta, the wetland at the heart of the British Protectorate that teemed with every species of game known to Southern and Central Africa. On the third day of their journey north, they crossed the border into Southern Rhodesia and rode the steel rails through the mopane forests of Matabeleland to Bulawayo. Early the next morning they stepped down from the train at Salisbury, the capital of Southern Rhodesia. After a good breakfast at Meikles Hotel, they had taken the hired trap out on the Mazoe Road and arrived at Elephant Walk just before lunch. The eldest son had returned home, this time as head of the family.
Robert St Clair, thinking of a good lunch to follow his good breakfast, had forgotten the reason for Harry’s return home.
“Leave them alone, Robert,” Jack Merryweather had said after the brief introductions. “This is family. There’s a river down past the lawn. Let us leave them to console each other.”
Madge and her mother were crying. Young George was hugging his elder brother for comfort. The old man that had been introduced as Harry’s maternal grandfather stood back holding what looked like a butterfly net. Aunt Alison and her daughter Katinka were somewhere at a place Jack Merryweather could not pronounce. It was a sad homecoming, and Jack, with Robert in tow, left them alone and waited on the rocks overlooking the river, shaded by a tall acacia tree where Harry found them two hours later.
“Thank you,” he had said. “Mother’s in a state and young George is hysterical. Not a good thing to lose your father when you are only eleven years old.” They stayed silent for a long time looking at the flow of the river.
