by Peter Rimmer
“Did either of you know Mervyn Braithwaite?” asked Sara.
“Fishy Braithwaite,” they both said together in chorus.
“He’s my fiancé,” she said.
Mrs Brigandshaw, Harry’s mother, seeing the debacle, smiled. “I’m sure he’s very nice,” she said.
“His father was very rich,” said Robert, his normal flair for saying the right thing at a loss.
“I wish he wasn’t,” said Sara.
“But why?” said Robert with genuine astonishment.
“Because then I would not have to marry him.”
The day after the hunting party returned empty-handed, Elephant Walk became almost crowded. For months, especially during the rains when the roads were often impassable, the family lived alone, going about their daily routine without a visitor.
Peregrine the Ninth arrived in his old wagon and was taken away by Henry Manderville for a hot bath before he was invited to sit down even for a cup of tea. And, as usual, he smelt like a herd of buffalo. Henry had the water in the bath changed twice before he offered the old man a clean towel with which to dry himself.
The smell of paraffin drifted from the house to the lawn and Madge, reading a book under a tree. She wrinkled her nose. Madge had known Peregrine the Ninth all her life. She put down the book, smiling to herself. The paraffin her grandfather administered to the old man’s nest of hair was meant to kill off any parasites that lived in the thick growth of white facial hair and beard, or the long head hair that dropped down his back. Few in the family had any faith in the remedy. Peregrine the Ninth had never, to her knowledge, been offered a bed in one of the family compound houses. The old man, older than Methuselah, retreated at night to his four-wheeled wagon that everyone thought was crawling in vermin waiting their turn to get into the old man’s nest of hair.
An hour after being escorted from his wagon to the bathtub, the old man reappeared in an old shirt and an old pair of trousers that belonged to her grandfather. One of the servants was feeding the clothes the old man had arrived in, into the furnace that heated a drum that fed hot water into her grandfather’s bathroom. It was said that outside of the capital Salisbury, her grandfather was the only man in Rhodesia who boasted hot and cold running water plus a pull-and-let-go on the design invented by Mister Crapper. People had come from far and wide just to look at the system that started with metal windmills down at the river and ended with the water pumped up the long slope to a holding tank the size of a swimming pool. Another windmill pump pushed water up into a header tank high behind her grandfather’s house that produced the water pressure to flush the toilet and run water into the house and feed the outside boiler under which were burning the old man’s clothes.
The most remarkable of remarkable things for Madge about Peregrine the Ninth was the very plumby, upper-class British accent that emanated from the small, round, fleshy mouth exactly the size of a small ripe plum.
No one had ever heard the old man’s last name, though many had asked, to be told one name was good enough for anyone. And no one had any idea how long the old man had been in Africa or whether he was ever going home.
Peregrine the Ninth was an itinerant storyteller, a modern-day minstrel without his lute, who went from a lonely farm to lonely mine bringing news and the only entertainment anywhere to be found in the bush. He was fond of modern gossip mixed with the tales of years gone by, and no one ever knew how much was true and how much the old man’s imagination. So far as Madge knew, it was the way the old man made his living. The two old donkeys, long immune to the bite of the tsetse fly, were the same two she always remembered. The one was Clary, and the other was Jeff, though no one was ever told which was which. How the lions hadn’t eaten the lot of them had been a mystery to Madge most of her life.
Going to his wagon in his fresh shirt and trousers, barefoot, as usual, he came back with the family’s mail that he had picked up in Salisbury the day before. Even the post office knew enough to release the Elephant Walk mail if the old man said he was going that way.
With a flourish and a bow, he presented the small pile of tied up envelopes to Madge under her tree.
“You bloom more beautiful every time we meet.”
“Thank you, Uncle Peregrine.” The small blue eyes twinkled at her out of the sprouting face hair, both eyebrows going high in tangles, the only dark colour in the whole of the old man’s face. At that point, he gave her a kiss. Surprisingly, his breath was always sweet, his kiss light as a feather.
The piece of string around the letters was tight. Her fingers tried to loosen the knot where the string had furred. Her grandfather leaned over with his small red penknife and cut the string. Quickly, she searched the pile for Barend’s handwriting and came up empty-handed. As the next best thing there was a letter from Aunty Alison addressed to her mother. She gave the rest of the pile to her grandfather as most were addressed to Sir Henry Manderville Bart. To everyone’s surprise on Elephant Walk, there were people all over the world who collected dead butterflies and dead bugs. And they all seemed to write to Grandfather Manderville in search of more bugs and butterflies. And he was writing a book that would be very nice if he could find an illustrator, someone who could accurately draw the poor things stuck forever through the back in glass-topped boxes, the produce of grandfather’s years of tramping through the bush. Madge also thought it surprising a lion or a leopard had not eaten her grandfather. On his hunt for bugs in the bush, he was oblivious to everything other than his quest. Madge thought maybe the lions felt sorry for him searching for so small a prey. There had to be some honour among predators.
She took the letter into the main house, as the servant, dressed in a starched white long shirt and shorts to his knobbly knees, put a large tea tray down on the table under the msasa tree. Lucky for Uncle Peregrine there was a large chocolate cake she had baked that morning. She left her grandfather and Peregrine talking nineteen to the dozen between messy bites of chocolate cake.
Her mother put the letter aside unopened while they both watched the cake demolition from the veranda that ran the length of the house. Madge was itching for her mother to open the letter but knew from experience that nagging would prolong the agony. She had not heard one word from Barend since he left Elephant Walk, having long refused to speak English to anyone. The grief for his father had turned to a bitter hatred of the British.
“But your mother is English. I am English,” she had pleaded with him.
“Then I shall go.”
Why Uncle Tinus being hanged by the British for treason should have ruined her life and Barend’s, made no sense whatsoever. She was equally and hysterically furious with the British but, as her father had said, no war had ever been petty, that in the stupidity of war people killed each other, even friends killed each other.
When she looked up her mother was crying again, tears silently falling down her face, her eyes not even seeing the two old men crouched around the chocolate cake. For a moment, she forgot her own pain and went to give her mother a hug. There was so much more to learn of life and none of the new experiences was proving pleasant.
The world of Madge Brigandshaw had been turned upside down.
The others came back from their ride around the farm as the sun was going down behind the small hill on the other side of the Mazoe River. Peregrine the Ninth and Grandfather Manderville had moved onto the veranda, where the servants were putting the fly screens in place, before lighting the four lamps that hung along the back wall between the heads and antlers of long-dead animals.
The tea tray had gone back into the kitchen with the cake dish cleared of every morsel of chocolate cake.
A servant was putting glasses on the sideboard at the far end of the veranda that Tinus Oosthuizen would have called the stoep. There were sherry glasses, glasses for the bottles of beer that were protruding from a large zinc bucket, and small, fluted wine glasses. Separate were two cut crystal whisky glasses. Comfortable chairs and low tables littered the
length of the veranda. The daily ritual of sundowners was about to begin.
Jared Wentworth, always curious, looked in the zinc bucket and was astonished to see large chunks of ice floating on water in between the bottles of beer. There was a separate bucket full of ice chunks.
“My grandfather,” said Harry, seeing what Jared was looking at. “He gets magazines from all over the world. Says just because we live in the bush doesn’t mean we can’t be civilised. Had the paraffin-fired refrigerator imported from America. There’s a new type that works from electricity but it will be a long, long time before Elephant Walk has electric lights… Fresh clean water from the Mazoe River and a chunk of ice in your whisky. Or a cold beer in the heat of the day. Now that’s civilisation. That’s living. Help yourself to a beer. One of the rules in this house. We don’t like the servants kept up just to serve us food and drinks after six o’clock at night. They need their time to relax as much as we do. Sara, what are you going to drink? Jared, please take a glass of sherry to my mother. That bottle over there. Jack, after that ride I expect you’ll go for a beer. Help yourself… Oh dear, Uncle Peregrine has filled his whisky glass to the top so if we want the best of his stories we had better gather round him now.”
“You would never think we are in the middle of nowhere,” said Sara.
“We’re not,” said Madge, taking a small glass of sherry. “We’re on Elephant Walk. That’s not nowhere.”
“To Sara and Jared Wentworth and Uncle Peregrine,” said Harry. “Welcome to Elephant Walk.”
By the end of the second tumbler of whisky, Peregrine the Ninth was in full flight about a cave to the north he had heard about that had once been inhabited by the most powerful witch of the nineteenth century. He even claimed the woman had instigated the Shona uprising in 1896. Peregrine told the story second-hand, only saying what he had heard from an old Shona he had befriended years ago on his travels. In the witch’s cave was a beam of light that shone into the bowels of the earth and anyone who found the beam of light would find the hidden hoard of gold, the gold of Lobengula, King of the Matabele. Whoever found the gold would rule Rhodesia.
Harry was half listening, more interested in the light falling from the nearest paraffin lamp on Sara Wentworth’s long hair, bringing out the lovely streaks of red. The dogs, exhausted by following the horses all day, were spread out around the reed mat-covered floor, flat on their sides and fast asleep. He was coming to terms with being on Elephant Walk without the sound of his father’s voice. He was gone, Harry thought, but would live on in the minds of his friends and family. The elephant had gone too. Maybe one day someone would find the great tusks. Uncle Peregrine had said, before launching into his story of the witch, that some in the villages doubted the reports of the Great Elephant. That the isolated attacks on villagers by elephants had been going on for as long as anyone could remember. That evoking of the Great Elephant had brought the white men to chase away the elephants that were eating the villagers’ crops of maize. The old people were saying the Great Elephant was dead, dead of its terrible wound.
Then Harry heard Uncle Peregrine talk about a man who had helped the witch and the uprising. For some unknown reason, this great right hand of the witch could speak the language of the conquerors, the only black man in the north of the country who could speak English.
“What was his name?” asked Harry, humouring Uncle Peregrine and to keep the story flowing. The guests were enjoying their first taste of the myths and legends of Africa.
“Tatenda.”
“What did you say, Uncle Peregrine?” asked Harry, every one of his senses brought into focus.
“His name was Tatenda. And he hated the English.”
“Is he alive?”
“Probably. Why?”
“Because I think we know him, we taught him English, we saved his life from the Matabele. Elephant Walk was his home until he ran away. And soon after that, we had the rebellion. Uncle Peregrine, could you take me to your friend who knows Tatenda?”
“Probably. Can I have another whisky?”
So far as Peregrine the Ninth was concerned, a good story deserved its reward. He kept his gnarled fist firmly around the cut crystal glass, holding it out to Harry to fill from the bottle. Only when the glass was full to the brim did he go on with the story. The old man had never been a one for ice or water in his whisky; there was only so much room in a glass.
He made them all wait while he took a long, welcome sip. Then, with everyone still hanging on his words, he continued the story. And like all good actors, he played to the audience. Using his imagination to brighten the brief facts he had heard about the young man they had called Tatenda, he made him the centre of the story. The evil witch took a step backwards. If young Harry wanted to find his old friend Tatenda, he could lead him around the bush for weeks drinking whisky every night. With a smile of deep satisfaction, he went on and on with the story, stopping twice for a refill until he lost his train of thought in the whisky.
By the time everyone went in for supper, the temperature had dropped near to freezing. The sky above Elephant Walk was crystal clear, the night sky littered with millions of twinkling stars, layer after layer going back into the black void of the universe.
A big log fire had been lit in the lounge where they carried their plates of cold supper from the dining room.
From the grip of cold and silence of the bush outside came the snores of Peregrine the Ninth. Without his supper, but with half a bottle of whisky in his stomach, Harry and Jack had carried the old man to his covered wagon. They had got him up on the tailgate where he had stood for a moment before crumbling forward on his face.
Before opening the whisky bottle, Grandfather Manderville had gone across to make sure the mattress was in its place. It was part of the myth of the man that required him to fall flat on his face when sufficiently drunk. Somewhere behind the old man’s wagon, probably a mile away, Harry thought a lion roared as he covered the old man with the patchwork of skins that made do for a blanket.
As will happen after a long day in Africa, soon after they had eaten their fork supper the eyelids began to droop.
The double front gates and the two back gates to the stockade had been closed by the servants when they had gone off duty in the quickly falling dusk. The dogs had found a better place around the fire as it glowed less and less into the beginning of the night. Once more the lion roared and one of the half-tame ducks quacked in its sleep. In all directions, a man could have walked all night without likely seeing another human being.
When the moon rose at two in the morning it threw a colourless light through the stark bows of the msasa trees and shadowed the slopes of the houses across the lawn.
By the time they woke in the morning, the moon had gone. Only the big stars, the planets, could be seen in the chill clear air of morning. Peregrine the Ninth was still sleeping face down on his mattress. The dogs were the first to get up and look at the dawn, sending the geese into cackling flight up and over the stockade and down to the river. They were the first to splash the water, and then the buck and a wild pig came down to drink and the new day began, the cycle of life. Somewhere further downriver, a blood-curdling scream rent the dawn. For one life, the day would never be again.
By the time Harry got out of bed, the dawn was blood-reddening the sky and when he looked out of the window he was glad to be home. He hoped he would marry and have a son of his own to one day look out of the same window. Then he smelt the richness of cooking bacon and put on his clothes to hurry through for his breakfast. Robert St Clair was already seated at the breakfast table the servants had set up on the veranda. The screens had been taken away and the sun was licking through the trees. Even though the air was cold, the rays of the sun were warm and full of colour. Jack Merryweather came in next, rubbing his hands against the cold and wrinkling his nose with pleasure at the coffee pot. Within a minute of sitting down at the table, a plate of hot bacon, eggs, tomatoes, and sausage was put in front
of him. Even the toast was warm from the open fire in the kitchen.
Sir Henry Manderville preferred his breakfast alone in the privacy of his home.
A metal plough disc was being hit continuously in the native compound, bringing the farm workers out for their day. The ducks flew back over the stockade into the compound. Doves and pigeons called from the trees, sweet in their sounds. A grey heron landed slowly on the lawn on long gangly legs.
“I have never slept so well in my life,” said Sara, coming in for breakfast. She and Jared were staying in Alison Oosthuizen’s house while she was away looking for her son Barend. “A good bed beats the hell out of my bunk in the wagon. Where’s Madge?”
“She has something about her weight,” said Harry. “She’ll be over at grandfather’s later having her coffee. Mother has a little veranda off her bedroom where she likes to eat her breakfast alone and plan her day. It was a way for my father to have some peace in the morning without us children.”
“Where’s young George?” asked Robert. “Not like him to miss his breakfast.”
“He’s eating with Uncle Peregrine in the wagon I expect,” said Harry. “They kind of like each other. Mother will dunk him later in the bathtub and delouse his clothes. Now, who wants another cup of coffee?… Today, I have to plan this year’s ploughing for the maize and then we will be dipping the cattle. We should have ploughed at the end of the rainy season, the moisture would have stayed in the ground. But Father was dead and I was in England. Without careful management and pre-thought, farming in Africa quickly becomes a disaster. I wish my grandfather would take more interest in the farming aspect of Elephant Walk but he says it’s not his business. Can you all look after yourselves? I’ll take my lunch in the lands… It’s going to be another beautiful day.”
“So you’re going to be a farmer and not a geologist?” said Robert, still pleased that Sara had sat down next to him for her breakfast.
