by Peter Rimmer
There was a long paragraph that talked about the injustice of hanging a prisoner of war who just happened to be a British subject as well as an Afrikaner. It was clear where the journalist stood on General Oosthuizen. The man wrote in English under the byline of Viljoen. The Viljoens were Afrikaners.
Harry smiled bitterly where he sat on the bench. At least Tinus Oosthuizen was no longer referred to as a traitor by an English newspaper. There was nothing else to read of the mine disaster after Harry read the editorial that called for more stringent safety regulations. Harry smiled again. Newspapers always called for regulations after the event, not before.
“Is the manager in his office?” he said getting up, leaving the paper on the bench.
“I’ll have to see,” said the receptionist snootily.
“Tell him Harry Brigandshaw would like a moment of his time.”
The middle-aged woman shot out from behind the reception desk and ran towards the office marked ‘Manager’.
“There’s no hurry,” said Harry to her back.
He felt weary. His friend was dead. He wondered if his sister Madge on Elephant Walk knew anything about the mine disaster. Whether the mine management even knew Barend had a wife and three children.
The manager came out of his office looking like he was prepared to be more deferential than at any time before in his life. Inwardly Harry sighed at the man’s behaviour. There was nothing he could do to change it.
Harry saw he was a bald man of fifty with a moon face and rimless glasses. There were only four staff in the East London office of Colonial Shipping. More for processing cargo than passengers. Harry had not found time to ask the captain the man’s name. He doubted if the captain of the SS Corfe Castle would have even known the man’s name. The manager’s office was a cubicle in the one small open-plan office.
“Have there been any more survivors?”
“No. Not that we’ve heard of. Terrible. Nearly one hundred men buried alive. Better the perils of the sea than the depth of the mineshaft.”
“You were at sea?”
“Before I was sent ashore. I have served your family for over thirty years.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know your name.”
“Barrow. Harold Barrow. My grandfather arrived in the Eastern Cape with the 1820 settlers. It is a great honour to meet you, sir. I have a cable addressed to you personally. I was about to send it on board. We all knew you were sailing with us. Just not that you would pay us a visit. A great honour indeed. May I present my staff?”
With great formality, the man introduced his staff to Harry one at a time. The receptionist gave Harry a curtsy which Harry thought was taking it all too far. The manager Barrow beamed at the woman. Harry tried to shake her hand but was unable to attract the woman’s eyes which were downcast in the direction of the floor.
“You have the cable for me?” Harry said to the manager.
The cable from the post office in a brown envelope had not been opened. Harry read the content and put it in his pocket. Then he smiled at them all and left. He had done his duty. In the strange manifestation of human nature, Harry knew they would cherish his visit. People liked to know the human face of the company.
The cable from Brett was simple.
FLOWERS FROM EVERYONE BUT HARRY. YOUR DARLING BRETT.
Harry knew he was not going to reply. There was nothing to say. They had both come to the same decision. Brett wanted to be an actress. Harry wished to live in Africa. There never could be a compromise between the two of them. Soon she would start another affair. It was the nature of Brett. They both understood each other. The cables were part of Brett’s thirst for drama. The reason why she had gone on the stage. Where everything changed and changed constantly. Great big statements one after the other.
He had time for a long walk on his own. Then they would go up the Buffalo River to look for the buffalo or anything else besides the river.
“Go well, Barend,” he said out loud. Rarely did they find anyone alive after so long. The torment for his brother-in-law was over. Hopefully, he thought, he was killed when the rocks fell down with no time to contemplate his life.
As Harry walked away from the docks, deep in his own thoughts, he wondered if, in the end, he would die a rich, lonely man. He was thirty-six years old. Halfway through his allotted threescore years and ten. It had just been an affair. An affair he would remember for the rest of his life. In his memory, best of all, Brett would never grow old. Never fall out with him over the trivial hurdles of life. They would never be bored with each other. What they had would live forever without being destroyed by the human nature which Harry suspected had a tendency to destroy all good things in the end.
When he returned to the ship, they were already waiting for him to take them on the trip upriver. Justine Voss and Philip Neville looked most happy standing next to each other.
“You lot ready to go?” said Harry cheerfully. There was no point in spreading his melancholy to anyone else. Underneath the outward façade, he knew they all had their own problems. He hoped Brett’s problems with him would soon be over, swept aside by something far more exciting. The new affair.
They had three more ports of call after East London: Durban, Lourenço Marques and Beira. Then the train would climb up from the coast to the highveld and home. Rhodesia. The place where he really belonged on a farm. By now the baby giraffes would be tall with small knobbly horns. The first time since knowing about the mine disaster, Harry felt excitement.
They sailed up the Wild Coast in sight of land all the next day to dock in Durban in the evening.
No one else had been found alive. The proto-team still said they heard the sound of the tin can being faintly beaten in the one tunnel and were making progress moving forward. None of their shouts was answered. The proto-team were going to go to the end of the tunnel, pulling out the rockfall rock by rock, and only then give up the search for anyone alive. The gruesome business of digging out the dead bodies would take weeks. Some of the men would most likely never be found and be left in the bowels of the earth.
In Johannesburg, Tina Pringle was lying naked in a hot tub with her knees up and her legs open. The half empty gin bottle was standing on a stool next to the bath. The water was as hot as she could bear and had been since she started drinking the gin straight out of the bottle. She was overdue and frightened out of her wits. The storm in the South Atlantic had come in the middle of her cycle. It was a storm that knocked the sense out of her head. The storm and Harry Brigandshaw.
As she lay in the bath half drunk she had no idea what she was going to do. In London, she might have found a doctor to give her an abortion. In Johannesburg, she had no idea which way to turn. Her brother Albert was now quite the rand baron. Far too aware of his position in society. Sallie, her sister-in-law, was remote, which was why she had moved into the cottage in the garden that had been built for Miss Pinforth her tutor so long ago. But Miss Pinforth was now dead. She had nowhere to turn. If word got out she was pregnant and unmarried, her brother would kick her out of his house. Self-made men were like that, it seemed to Tina. Bigger snobs than the rest of them put together.
She took a long swig out of the neck of the bottle and began to cry. She was finished. It was over. Finally, she was finished once and for all. Little bastards were not welcome anywhere in the world. Africa or England.
When they finally got Barend Oosthuizen to the surface eight days after he was buried alive, the police arrested him for the murder of Johan Potgieter. The press was at the top of the mineshaft. Dozens of them. Every newspaper in the region, including the Rhodesia Herald, had a reporter on hand.
The filth and exhaustion of the man were photographed by nine newspaper cameras. Solly Goldman of the Rhodesia Herald had travelled down in the train with Simon Haller four days earlier.
“Do you have anything to say?” shouted Simon Haller to the newly made prisoner.
“It is the will of God. Everything is the will of God. S
inners repent. I am a sinner. Repent all ye sinners or you shall go to hell. To eternal damnation. The road to perdition awaits all those sinners who do not repent. I go with God on my side. In the bowels of the earth, I found God. God saved me. Whatever the police wish to do cannot change the will of God. I repent my sins. God forgive me… All of you go with God.”
To Simon Haller’s astonishment, the man managed to break free from the police, standing his ground, and delivered the same sermon in Afrikaans.
The ministry of Barend Oosthuizen had begun.
“Isn’t he related to Harry Brigandshaw of Elephant Walk?” asked Solly, who was the only one of the two who had understood the Afrikaans.
“It’s his brother-in-law. What a story,” said Simon Haller.
“Will they hang him like his father?”
“You assume he’s guilty?”
“Potgieter is dead.”
“So will Oosthuizen be soon. Did you see the colour of his right hand? It was black. Gangrene. If they don’t cut it off now, he’ll be dead in the morning, all God’s effort gone to waste.”
“What gave him gangrene?”
“A man’s teeth. The most poisonous thing on earth. He used his right hand to kill Potgieter. Now Potgieter’s going to kill him… Quick, Solly, get a close-up shot of the killer’s hand. What a story. This one will syndicate. Mark my words. Better than the girl finding her war hero. Did you ever hear again from Jim Bowman or Jenny Merryl?”
“Your imagination will be the end of you, Simon.”
“Do as you are told! Get the photograph. Now!”
“Yes, sir.”
The prisoner stood with his back to the van that was standing ready to take him away.
“Atone! Atone! Atone!” shouted Barend Oosthuizen over the heads of the crowd.
His right hand, black to the wrist, was held high. The man stank of excrement. He was smiling, his eyes full of hope. Alive. Joyous.
“He’s nuts,” said Solly.
“I don’t think so… We’re going to hear a lot from that man in the future.”
“If they don’t hang him first.”
“Not this time. He has the press on his side. And God… That man has seen the light. Look at him. He’s come out of hell and he’s radiant. May God be praised. Can you imagine being alone in a hole for a week in your own shit? God truly does have strange ways. Don’t you feel the presence of God looking at the man? I’m going to make this the biggest story of my life. I’m going to make that man famous.”
“You’d better get a doctor to him or the story will be dead before it starts.”
“You are cynical, Solly.”
“You’re a predator, Simon.”
Harry Brigandshaw gave the Durban branch manager a cable to send to his mother on Elephant Walk telling her not to meet the boat train in Salisbury. Tembo was to bring the car on his own. There was not going to be a second chance for Mervyn Braithwaite to kill a member of his family.
In a moment of loneliness, he had written a short letter to Tina Pringle at her brother’s address in Parktown, Johannesburg. It was the least he could do for the girl to restore her sense of pride. Harry was sure she would go back to Barnaby St Clair. He and Tina had done what man and woman had done since the start of time even if the Bible and society forbade fornication.
He gave the branch manager the letter to be posted with the rest of the mail from the office at the end of the day. She was Barnaby’s girl. Harry just hoped Barnaby would not find out. When it came to jealous men in his life, Mervyn Braithwaite was quite enough. Mervyn, unlike Barnaby, had no reason for his jealousy. Maybe the girl had used him. To get back at Barnaby for not marrying her. It had happened before.
As an afterthought at the end of the letter, Harry had suggested Tina come up to Elephant Walk for a holiday. It was a gesture of goodwill. A thank you. An invitation he was sure would not be accepted. Like Brett in London, Tina by now would have better fish to fry in Johannesburg. Like Brett, he was too old for her. The trouble for Harry with women was his age. The women he liked of his own age were married. And unmarried girls of thirty-five mostly had a problem with men. A widow was the only chance left, and they found it difficult to fall in love all over again. All the widows Harry knew had lost their husbands in the war. Trying to compete for love with a dead man was impossible. Anything they did not like was compared to the dead man who was now perfect.
Harry had done the usual rounds of the office. Shaking everyone’s hand. The billboard on West Street outside the office had been short. ‘No Survivors.’ This time Harry had not bought the newspaper to read. The ship was spending the night and following day in the harbour and Harry had agreed to take the Voss family and Philip Neville to dinner at the Durban Club. The club was famous for the best Indian curry in Africa. The Salisbury Club in Rhodesia gave him reciprocity to the Durban Club. It was something to do. With Brett in London and Tina in Johannesburg, Harry felt at a loose end. There was no one else on the ship that had caught his eye. He was ready for a life of celibacy on the farm. There were said to be six eligible men in Rhodesia for every eligible girl. And he was too old. That part of life had finally passed on by. The bush and the animals would make up for his loss. He hoped. You couldn’t have everything in life.
Harry was in the throes of leaving the office when a cable was delivered to the manager from the post office.
“They found one alive,” shouted the manager, waving the cable from the Johannesburg office of Colonial Shipping.
“Who?” said Harry, walking back into the office.
“The general’s son.”
“Barend Oosthuizen?”
“The police have arrested him for murder though they don’t think he’ll live. His right hand has gangrene. The doctors have had to cut it off.” The cable had run to three sheets.
Harry was grinning all over his face. He went out of the office without saying a word and walked down West Street smiling at everyone. At last, he had a real use for his money. He would buy Barend Oosthuizen the best lawyer in Johannesburg. Bar brawls could go any which way. Potgieter could have killed Barend. They were in a fight. There would be witnesses to mutual abuse. Bar fights in the mining camp that was Johannesburg were the way men without women let off their frustration. Whores and fights went together. Barend had told him that while they rode the Skeleton Coast looking for the pipe of diamonds that both of them were certain was somewhere to be found. The original seven diamonds on the seashore had had to come from somewhere. There had to be a mother lode. Harry could hear Barend’s voice in his mind: ‘On the mines, Harry, you work up a thirst, go to a bar, look for a whore, and, if you can’t find one, look for a fight. It’s the only entertainment. What else does a man do on his own? If the one I fight is English, the pleasure of hurting him is all the more.’
‘Why have you never tried a fight with me, Barend? I’m English.’
‘I don’t want to hurt you, Harry. Never have. Growing up with you much older, you are like a god to me… Those were good times on the farm before my father was murdered.’
Harry stopped in his tracks in the street. The man behind bumped into him. Harry had gone back the same way before the man could apologise.
Back in the office of Colonial Shipping, Harry gave his instructions.
“You get this wrong and you never work for me again,” he said to the manager, only half threatening in his excitement.
“I don’t understand, sir.”
“Barend Oosthuizen is my brother-in-law. The father of my nieces and nephew. I want the best doctor. The best lawyer. We are going to bring him home… Were it not for my guests on the SS Corfe Castle I would go to Johannesburg myself… Get on with it, man! Get on with it!”
“Right away, sir.”
“Now we are getting somewhere.”
Harry was still grinning with relief when he left the office to go back to the ship.
The press corps was camped in the Johannesburg hospital. Every reporter wanted t
o interview Barend Oosthuizen. Eyewitnesses to the bar fight in Jeppestown could be found for the price of a drink. The stories of ones who said Potgieter had started the fight were printed. The combination of the Boer general who had been hanged by the British and the son who had found God in the bowels of the earth resonated around the country. They wanted the son to be a hero. They wanted God to forgive him his sins. The loss of the right hand was God’s punishment. The police ran into an orchestrated campaign and gave up. The policeman at the door to Barend’s hospital room was withdrawn. The police withdrew the murder charge. The public shouted their approval. The newspapers trumpeted the news. Potgieter’s wife was a lone voice of dissent. She had three children. The papers mentioned none of them.
By the time Harry Brigandshaw’s lawyer and doctor were ready to move it was all over. Along with the rest of them, Simon Haller was allowed into the patient’s room. It was a circus with Barend Oosthuizen lying back on the pillows at the centre of everyone’s attention. Flashbulbs exploded. They all shouted questions, shorthand notebooks at the ready.
The nurses had cleaned him up. The bandaged stump of the arm was lying on top of pure white sheets. The long blond hair was washed and lay on the pillow down both sides of the man’s head. The full beard had been washed and combed onto the man’s chest. At the centre, slate-green eyes stared straight ahead, looking at something none of them could see. Everything about the man lying on the bed was calm in complete contrast to the rest of them.
When Barend Oosthuizen raised his one good hand, he was asking for silence. As if to each one of them, he smiled. Then Barend began to speak. Quietly, gently and only about God.
At the end of the sermon, Simon Haller crossed himself before leaving the hospital room.
Neither of them had said a word to each other until they reached their taxi in the hospital driveway.
