by Peter Rimmer
When he turned his head, von Stratten was looking straight into his eyes, and to stop the man seeing what he was thinking, he smiled. Apart from his father, there had been no one in his life he had been able to trust. People generally were after something, emotional like Madge, or material like the German. There was no doubt in Barend’s mind the man wanted something. He let his booted feet run out to within three feet of the fire, and leaned his left elbow on the sand, leaving his right hand with the wine glass free to find his mouth. A small drop of fat fell from the diminished leg of venison and sizzled in the fire. The men on the other side of the fire were lying on their backs as close to the fire as possible. Barend rather thought one of them was asleep.
“And what brings the German army into this desolate spot?” he asked into the fog-shrouded night. Their meeting, he was sure, had been an accident. How could there be premeditation when no one knew where he was or who he was? He had spoken to no one for weeks.
“Can I ask you the same?”
“I am going north to follow the Kunene River into Central Africa. If I can find it. Or, more importantly, I can recognise the right river.”
“Won’t the Ovambo tell you?”
“They may. They may also cut my throat. No one likes strangers. After strangers come invaders. The black man found that out to his detriment when he made the missionaries welcome. There is an old joke in Rhodesia: when the missionaries told the blacks to kneel down, shut their eyes and pray to God, they did. When they opened their eyes the Union Jack was flying over their heads.”
“You were once strangers in Africa. Your people.”
They both lapsed into silence without the German answering his first question. Barend sat up straight. His left arm was going to sleep. One of the Germans began to snore. He turned the meat using the forked stick to prop the carcass where he wanted it to cook.
After a minute of silence, the German spoke again. He had taken something from his pocket and was offering it to Barend on the palm of his hand.
“You walked the beach, you say. Ever seen anything like this washed up on the shore?”
The small rock was the size of a pea, about a tenth of the size of the largest rock in the leather bag he had pushed under the fodder in his wagon the moment he thought no one was looking, at the same time he had put on his sheepskin coat. The German had his palm stretched taught, pushing the stone up on his pink skin. The stone was between Barend’s eyes and the light of the fire. The stone burnt with an inner fire as hot as the coals of the fire only more beautiful. Quickly hooding his eyes he hoped the German had not seen his instant recognition.
“What is it?” he asked innocently. “I’ve never seen anything like it before,” he lied. The lie was instinctive, as was the choking of his words when he saw again what he had found only hours before on the beach. Even before the German spoke the word diamond, Barend knew what he had in his bag and his stomach lurched at the realisation and its implications.
“It’s a pure white gem diamond. If there are more than this one in German South West Africa the Kaiser will be pleased. Very pleased. He will make me a captain, I think. But one swallow does not make a summer, as they say.”
“Did you find it yourself?”
“Yes, I did. This morning along this stretch of the beach. You were further north. Do you comb the beach with your eyes?”
“Always. Like walking in the bush. Even if my mind is not consciously looking, it will jolt my thoughts if something is unusual on the ground or in the surrounds. Is your diamond worth anything?”
“I think so.”
“Are you sure it is a diamond? I know there is fool’s gold. Maybe there are fool’s diamonds, stones that sparkle in the fire but fall to pieces with the slightest tap. Have you tried tapping your find?”
“I have. Hard. Many times.”
“And it did not shatter?”
“No, and nothing chipped either. I made a cut down the side of the glass wine bottles. It’s a diamond.”
“Lucky you. Why not make it into a ring for your wife? A lucky omen. Finding something of value. Picking it up off the beach. I can’t believe the Kaiser would be interested in one diamond the size of a garden pea. I rather think he has many more, and much bigger. Are your men asleep?”
“They are drunk. Drunks sleep when they have had enough. It is another way of leaving their world.”
“Let us have one more cut at the meat and then I will retire to my wagon.”
“We will finish the wine.”
“If you insist. It is very good.”
“So is the meat.”
“Then we are not obliged to each other.”
Von Stratten had closed the palm of his hand and put the diamond in his pocket.
Barend’s mind was screaming. ‘If he’s so excited by one the size of a pea, what must the ones in his wagon be worth?’ he thought.
When he went to sleep that night he had the long leather strap of the bag wrapped around his right arm. In his excitement, he had forgotten to ask the German what he had meant by going to war with the English.
When he woke in the morning the fog had rolled far out to sea and the sun was sparkling on the calm water. It reminded him of the diamond on the man’s hand as the firelight had brought it alive. Quickly he felt in the soft leather bag. They were there, all four of them. His stomach was so tight it made him feel sick.
With a sigh of relief, the bag in his hand, and his stomach still churning, he climbed out of his wagon and looked around. The Germans, their horses, and their wagon had gone. Barend shivered in the cold light of the morning. Down the beach ten yards away a black-backed gull put its head forward and squawked at him, its beak wide open as it screamed. His horses had eaten all the German fodder and were looking at him with large brown liquid accusing eyes.
“I’m not the German army,” he said to them in Afrikaans.
His first instinct was to flee the place in case they came back and took away the rocks in his bag. Greed overcame the first instinct; caution then greed. Carefully he checked the direction of the Germans’ wagon wheels for more than a mile on foot. It seemed they were going back to the German port of Swakopmund. The enclave of Walvis Bay next door belonged to South Africa. He would have to watch the Germans did not circle round and come back at him. If von Stratten had seen his flash of recognition he could be setting him a trap, sending him out to find more of the stones, and confiscating them in the name of the Kaiser. His hope was the three glasses of good German wine had dulled the man’s wits. Had von Stratten been looking at the diamond on the palm of his hand or Barend’s eyes when he asked the question? As hard as he replayed the scene in his mind, Barend was not sure. To look as innocent as possible in case he was being watched somewhere from the rolling dunes that flowed on into the Namib Desert from the coastal rock line, he went fishing, throwing his line with great expertise over the kelp and into the calm, grey-blue water beyond the coastal reef with its mussels and oysters. He fished all day long, looking for the tell-tale glint of sun on binocular lenses, chewing at the leftover cold venison that tasted just as good cold as hot. During the day the sun was warm. He caught two large fish but his mind was elsewhere, up the beach, combing the sand and rock pools for diamonds the size of pigeon eggs.
He waited a week, curbing his impatience. Then he went north up the beach, on foot, leading the one horse in the shaft, the other following behind on the long rein. All the time his trained eyes were glued to the sand. The first morning he found three more stones and then nothing. He surmised correctly there was a diamond pipe out to sea in front of where he camped and met the Germans. He rather thought if he was going to find any more of the stones he would have to dig; he would have to dig up the whole beach and sift through the sand.
Three weeks after Christmas in the new year of 1913, he struck the Kunene River where it flowed into the sea. The one thing he had done was take a careful compass bearing of the beach where he had picked up his diamonds. If, as he to
ld himself, they really were diamonds. Maybe one day he would come back and make himself rich, should someone buy the seven stones now in his soft leather bag. To be certain he found the right place again he had chiselled his initials in the black rock that had protected them and their fire on the night he had cooked them the leg of venison. He had done this after the fishing when it was dark.
During his slow trek north through German South West Africa, Barend’s ignorance proved his greatest protection. A man frightened by a lion is liable to be eaten by the lion unless he kills the lion first.
Barend’s only schooling had been at the hands of his mother. She had taught her son to read and write, to add, subtract and multiply, but his mother, who had once been Harry Brigandshaw’s nurse in the house of his grandfather, the Pirate, in England, knew nothing of African history. The only history Barend had learned was from the evenings around the campfire with his father when he was not yet ten years old. He knew about the Voortrekkers fleeing the rules, regulations and taxes of the British. He knew about the battles the Afrikaners fought with the black tribes of Africa, but no one had known to tell him the German army had massacred the Herero people eleven years before he found his stones and not many miles away. The Herero, despite all the potential benefits of European civilisation, had rebelled against German rule. And no one had told him the Germans had never confronted the Ovambo because they were frightened of the warlike tribe that straddled the Kunene River that cut through German and Portuguese West Africa. And it was just as well as when, on the rare occasion he came across the indigenous people, he was not afraid and, like the lion, when a man is not afraid of them, they feared the man was powerful, would do them harm, and in their own fear they gave him a wide berth.
At the mouth of the big river there was not even a footprint left by man, and by then he had given up looking for diamonds on the beach. The desert had turned to scrub right up to the river and the Portuguese border, where he turned inland to follow the life-giving water. His father had talked about the great swamps far inland that were more beautiful than anything his father had seen, and what his father had seen and cherished, the son wished to experience to feel the presence of his dead father. In the Okavango swamps, he told himself he would be nearer to his father.
Some two hundred miles from the Atlantic coast the land became fertile, and the first strands of maize struggled out of the poor soil to give the Ovambo a permanence, a place where they could stay year after year without searching for grazing. Not till then was he sure the river he followed was the right river. A small boy herding cattle with his brother, nodded his head when Barend said ‘Kunene’ and pointed at the river, not knowing Kunene was an Ovambo word and head nodding as universal as the life of man. Without fear or thought of fear, he rode on through Ovamboland, passing village and tilled field, smiling and waving at the people who, dumbstruck, had never in their lives seen anything like the combination of a wagon, horse, and white man. It was beautiful country, even if the mosquitoes were deadly to most white men who had not built up an immunity to malaria. Barend did sleep under a net at night in his wagon but round the campfire at night, he was constantly bitten by mosquitoes. If he had known, he would have thanked generations of Oosthuizens who had gone before him in Africa as, even when he reached the great delta of the Okavango River, he had not once come down with the fever, nor had his horses gone sick from the bite of the tsetse fly and the sleeping sickness that killed unsalted animals.
The gods were good to him. Except for one thing: by the time he reached the magnificent beauty of the Okavango Delta, where the great African river, instead of flowing into the sea, disappeared into the desert creating an animal kingdom unsurpassed on earth, Barend had convinced himself the seven stones were not diamonds but pretty rocks he had picked up on the beach.
2
April 1913
For Harry Brigandshaw, the best period in his life was when nothing really happened. He got up in the morning after a good night’s sleep, looked out of the window at the beautiful African morning with the sun shining, went down to breakfast where the smell of bacon, toast and coffee mingled, and everyone in the family was pleased to be part of the new day.
He then went out to work in the lands wearing a wide-brimmed hat to keep off the sun and did the jobs on the farm that were mostly a pleasure. At lunchtime, the houseboy on a bicycle found him in the lands and brought his lunch as Harry had no wish to waste time going back to the family compound in the middle of the day. The labourers went off at three o’clock most afternoons when they had finished their set tasks. The ones who worked at a fever pitch went back to their own compound at one o’clock. Each family had half an acre of ground next to the Mazoe River to grow what they wanted, which was where the energetic worked in the afternoons, alongside their wives and the older children.
Half an hour before the sun went down, Harry began his ride home, his horse having grazed all day on a long lead. He took a shower and a shave, and dumped his khaki in the wash basket, soiled with the day’s sweat. The drinks tray was set out on the veranda, fly screens slotted into place by a servant. Putting ice in crystal glasses, he poured his mother and Madge the evening drink and sat down in a wicker chair. His grandfather most evenings stayed in his own house, where he liked to be alone but still able to hear their voices. Those were the rules, and Harry, five years after coming back from England and Oxford, had found them pleasant to live with.
George was at school at Bishops in the Cape, where Harry had spent his secondary school years before going up to Oxford. Everyone thought George would do the same. He would most probably take a degree in English literature.
Madge spent her days thinking about the wonderful life she would have been having with Barend and did very little; in a house with servants, there wasn’t very much to do anyway. She and her mother produced tapestries that were dutifully placed over the seats of the dining room chairs, so the family could sit on colourful birds in flight when they were taking their meals. No one in the house brought up the Oosthuizen family, though everyone was aware of the unspoken presence. Madge was twenty years old without a suitor insight: everyone, including Madge, had long discounted Robert St Clair as a delightful man but one who took more than he would ever be able to give, a financial tax on everyone who took an interest in his welfare. Madge was convinced that being the son of Lord St Clair of ancient lineage, Robert thought the world owed him a living. The fact that he was empty-headed with no aptitude for work never crossed her mind.
“Charming but expensive,” she said after his second uninvited visit. “He should find a rich girl in England, marry and settle down.”
Twice he had invited Madge to Purbeck Manor in England and twice she had declined. She had the crazy notion that the moment she left Elephant Walk, Barend would arrive looking for her and if she weren’t there waiting he would never come back for her again.
The one thing Harry wanted to ask his mother he kept to himself, as each time the opportunity seemed to arrive his mother got up and left the room, using an excuse. Grandfather Manderville was no better.
“Ask your mother,” he said when Harry was only halfway to asking the question about his parents’ marriage.
After the short reply Grandfather Manderville was usually grumpy for the rest of the day.
On the surface, everything looked very nearly perfect. They were all very good at keeping up appearances.
In London, Jack Merryweather had long since replaced Albert Pringle with another impeccable manservant so that life at 27 Baker Street had returned to normal. Jack got up, ate his breakfast downstairs, went for his constitutional if weather permitted, ate his lunch in the Pall Mall Club after reading the newspapers, took a snooze in one of the large, black leather club chairs and, after a cup of tea, thought about what he was going to do for the evening. He was thirty-two years old and past the stage of boredom, having sunk into a rut so deep there was no way on his own he could climb from the hole. He had not bothered to
look for another mistress. It was too much trouble. If he ever admitted anything to himself, he would have said his pride had been hurt, Lily walking out on him, vanishing. There were strangers in the house he had rented when he called, full of expectation after his hunting trip that had seen him shoot a number of big-tusked wild pigs and deer with sweeping horns that would have been far better left on their own. The bright idea of farming in Africa had come and gone with the dying animals. If London was boring, he concluded, it was better than going off thousands of miles to tramp through long dry grass and the heat of the day to shoot poor, unsuspecting animals. Jack rather thought that Africa would be better off as it was, without sending proselytes from a dozen different churches to save the black man from damnation: the few black villages Jack saw on the banks of rivers were happy enough without a new God to worry their heads about; talking to heaven through the medium of their ancestors had a logic of its own if there was any truth in a life after death, something Jack found frightening to talk about.
Having heard not a word from Lily White and Albert Pringle in more than five years he had put them from his mind; there was no point in thinking about something to which he would likely never know the answer.
The showgirls were quite fun to take out to supper, and sometimes, even shower with gifts. And when they went their own way it was little or no pain. Ships in the night. Many of them. Blurring into one another in his mind… And the idea of getting married and having children had never entered his thoughts.
On an afternoon when Harry Brigandshaw was visiting the family grave on Elephant Walk to put flowers on his father’s grave, Jack, walking down Pall Mall from his club, was accosted in the street by a well-dressed man in a business suit, high stiff collar and the new fashion must, a bowler hat.
