by Peter Rimmer
“Why couldn’t you have left me alone?”
“Oh, I do so wish I could,” Jim Bowman had sighed.
The sense of something going to happen had started early that morning when Tembo brought the car round to the main house. Tembo had spent two hours washing and cleaning the big Austin saloon that Harry had sent out from England for his mother. It had taken Emily a month to pluck up enough courage to get in the thing let alone learn how to drive what she saw as a metal monster.
A man from the new garage in Salisbury had come out to Elephant Walk for a weekend and taught Tembo how to drive. He had taken to the task like a duck to water. To all four of his wives, he had admitted the shiny black car was the most exciting thing that had happened in his life. So far the longest journey had been to Salisbury and back to Elephant Walk. Now the baas was due from England on the boat train that afternoon, Tembo imagined journeys of vast dimensions. Suddenly, his horizon had no limits.
As instructed, none of the family were to ride to Salisbury to meet the baas off the train and Tembo started the engine and made it roar like a lion. Everything stopped in its tracks. The bitch even stood on three legs to listen to the new sound. After a moment’s pause, the three children rushed at the car to get in. Colonel Voss looked out of his prison window to have a look. Madge rushed out of the main house to try to grab the children.
Tembo, anticipating the problem, had locked all the doors from the inside. Making sure there were no children in front or under the car he let out the clutch and began the twenty-mile journey to the station. His control of clutch and brake was perfect. The car moved forward smoothly and down the drive towards the curing barns and the farm buildings.
The two old horses in the field to the right had trotted over to have a look for themselves. The two tame giraffes, almost as tall as they would grow, turned inquisitive heads but did not move. The giraffes shared the field with the horses.
In the rear-view mirror, Tembo saw the children had stopped running after the car. The dogs were again chasing the bitch for all they were worth. Tembo felt very important in his chauffeur’s uniform with the large peaked hat perched cheekily on his head. Most of all he was looking forward to seeing Harry Brigandshaw. They had known each other for most of their lives. Tembo was thinking what the baas would say about his new uniform.
Looking up at the sky through the windscreen by leaning forward in the driver’s seat, Tembo thought it was going to rain later in the afternoon. The rains were late. The bush on both sides of the track was tinder dry. The smallest spark would cause a raging bushfire.
As Tembo drove the car up the winding path through the low hills, he could see herds of wild animals to his left down on the plain, on either side of the Mazoe River. The view was very beautiful and gave him comfort. He was at home in his own country and, though he had been to nowhere else, he knew what he drove through was the most beautiful country in the world.
Tembo reached Salisbury railway station two hours before the train from Beira was due to arrive. No one ever knew if the train would arrive on time. To Tembo, an early train was as likely as a late train. He parked away from the long building and walked inside.
No one knew the time the train would arrive. There were people already waiting. People coming from England made the Rhodesians feel less isolated. The boat train was a big event.
A man standing at the end of the building in the shade looked familiar. Tembo walked cautiously down the platform to have a better look. The man turned his back when he saw Tembo and walked away. Out in the sun, Tembo saw the man had black hair. It was not the same man. Tembo thought the railway station had made him think of the man who had shot Lucinda Brigandshaw in front of him. Tembo had tackled the man to the ground to stop him firing the gun again. The man who had killed the baas’s new wife was blond.
Tembo walked back to the car. It was too hot to sit inside. There was no shade in which to park it.
More cars and people began to arrive. The car park filled up with all kinds of transport. There was a strong smell of horse dung. The horses stood in the sun without seeming to mind. One of the means of transport was an ox wagon. The black driver was sitting up on the box behind the span of oxen. There were six oxen in the span. Tembo thought the wagon must have come a long way to meet the train. He greeted the man up on the box. The round hood of the wagon gave the man shade from the sun.
Far away, Tembo heard the thunder and smelled the lightning. It was going to be a wet, muddy ride back to the farm. If the skies opened to start the rains they could stay in the hotel. The spruits that had been dry on his way in would be raging rivers. Once they had stayed in Salisbury for a week before going home.
A pretty girl in a nurse’s uniform stood next to him while he waited in the shade of the platform half an hour later. The girl had long, blonde hair. She had big hips like an African woman; the young girl would have many children. The girl’s brown eyes smiled at Tembo and he smiled back. Waiting with her was another girl of the same age. The other girl seemed agitated. Next to her, clutching her long skirt, was a small boy. The girl was frail with a thin, pinched face. She avoided Tembo’s eyes. In a strange way for two so different girls, they had a similar look. The way they spoke English was the same way the baas spoke, the man they called Jim Bowman. Then he remembered why the blonde girl had smiled at him. He had seen her before on Elephant Walk. She had come to visit Jim Bowman.
The platform had filled up with people. The man with the black hair Tembo thought he had seen before was standing at the back of the crowd. Tembo tried to catch his eye without success. People were beginning to push from the back of the crowd making the ones in front close to the railway line uncomfortable. The small boy was crying. The frail woman picked him up, and the boy stopped crying. There was no sign of the boy’s father.
From far away, Tembo heard a whistle. It was the train from Beira. Tembo stood up to his full height and waited for the steam train to come into view. Again they all heard the whistle from far away. Everyone smiled. The frail girl put the small boy up onto her shoulders to see over the crowd. The boy was holding onto his mother’s hand for dear life.
“Be careful, Johnny,” said the blonde girl. She looked excited to Tembo. The frail girl with the boy on her shoulders was getting more agitated now they could hear the powerful puffing sound made by the train as it slowly made its majestic way into the railway station. Everyone was craning their necks to have a better look. Tembo began looking for Harry Brigandshaw. Most of the passengers were leaning out of the windows of the train.
There were many shouts and greetings. Tembo craned his neck and stood on tiptoe like the rest of them. Passengers were recognising friends on the platform. People went off down to the guard’s van to collect their heavy luggage. Porters with two-wheeled trolleys that worked like barrows followed the passengers. People went off to the car park with their luggage stacked up to the arms of the barrows. The crowd thinned out. Still there was no sign of Harry Brigandshaw.
The blonde girl greeted a man off the train. Tembo gathered it was her brother. Tembo gave her a last smile of recognition as the four of them went off.
The man with the black hair was still on the station. He had his right hand inside his coat. No one else was wearing a coat in the heat. Tembo looked hard at the man and was sure. Their eyes locked. The man abruptly turned and quickly pushed his way into the back of the crowd and was swallowed up before Tembo could thrust his way through and give chase.
When Tembo looked back the platform was empty of passengers.
“Over here, Tembo,” came a familiar voice.
Tembo’s smile lit up his face. With the baas was a young girl, a woman and a young man. As the two men smiled at each other with mutual pleasure, the rain began in earnest.
“Nice uniform… Come on or we’ll all get wet. Better take us all to Meikles till we see what the rain does. How’s the farm, Tembo?”
“Everything is good.”
Only when they
were near the car did Tembo mention the man with the black hair.
“Why we got off last. Why I wrote my mother to send you alone. Did you bring the gun as I asked?”
“Yes, baas. It’s in the boot of the car.”
“Get it, please.”
“What’s going on, Harry?” asked Felicity Voss.
“Wild animals on the road,” lied Harry. “In the African bush, I always like to carry a gun. Now just look at that. It’s raining cats and dogs.”
Tembo got back in the driver’s seat, rain pouring from his peaked hat. His new uniform was wet through and began to steam. Even with the rain, it was still hot.
Harry kept the Webley pistol on his lap as they drove slowly into the town. He was looking out the window for a man with black hair and a familiar face. The rain was too hard to see more than twenty yards.
The big Zulu was waiting in the rain under a large umbrella when they drove up to the entrance of Meikles Hotel. Harry greeted the big man with the monkey tail shirt and leopard skin over his shoulder in Zulu. Harry only knew a few words in Zulu which he kept for such occasions. The man’s spear and black hide shield had been left just inside the main entrance to the big hotel out of the rain.
Everyone got out of the car and went inside. The Zulu kept the umbrella over their heads in turn. They were all laughing when they got together inside.
Tembo took the car around the back of the hotel to the servants’ quarters where he had friends. It was still raining hard. They would not go to the farm that night. Even for a few days. Tembo was happy. There would be much time to drink beer with his friends, the thick white beer made from fermented maize in the way his people had been brewing beer for centuries. It was always better to drink beer a long way from his wives. All his wives complained together when he got drunk.
He was laughing after he parked the car and went looking for his friends. It was what friends were for. Drinking beer. One of the best pleasures he knew to be taken from life was drinking beer with old friends.
He had forgotten his uniform was wet. He had forgotten the man with the black hair.
Five days later when the rivers had gone down and Harry made the last leg of his journey home, Tina Pringle received his letter. She read it three times, still not sure how to take the words. Was Harry just being polite or did he want to see her again? Well-bred men were difficult to understand. What she might think was the truth was to them good manners. They wrote polite little letters when they had spent a night with friends as guests in their homes. Even if they hated the time spent. The day spent out of duty. The right thing to do… Was Harry doing the right thing after bedding her solidly for days or did he mean what he said at the end of the letter? The letter ended ‘Love from Harry’. ‘Yours sincerely’ would have been plain rude. Was the invitation to visit Elephant Walk again a way of atoning for the sin of fornication? To make her feel better with herself? Not meant to be accepted. Polite words of ‘thank you’ for mutual satisfaction in bed.
“To hell with it,” she said to herself. “If I don’t go, I’ll never know. If I don’t go, he’ll never know he’s going to be a father.”
Excited at the prospect, Tina walked up to the main house from the cottage to tell her brother. The thought of making love to Harry again in a few days’ time made her knees feel weak. She knew she was wet without having had a pee. The morning sickness in her stomach left along with the butterflies. Tina smiled to herself. It was all in the mind.
Three hours later she was being driven to the Johannesburg railway station by Bill Hardcastle, her brother’s man. Bill and his wife Molly had worked first for Sallie when she was Sallie Barker before she became Tina’s sister-in-law. Tina had never felt so happy in her life. It would take two days in the train to get to Salisbury via Mafeking and the railway line through Bechuanaland. She had sent Harry a cable she was arriving but not the reason why. Harry had once said cables were delivered to Elephant Walk by the Salisbury post office. There was no telephone yet on the farm. Tina hoped someone would be at the station to meet her and take her to Elephant Walk. If not she would stay at the Meikles Hotel. Her brother had been so happy at the prospect of Harry Brigandshaw becoming his brother-in-law he had given her five hundred pounds for the journey which was far too much. If nothing else the trip to see Harry had given her the money to go home to Dorset if Harry laughed in her face. The butterflies in her stomach were back again. Tina was a realist. Men were mostly bastards in every sense of the word. She only had to think of Barnaby St Clair. She just hoped Barnaby had heard of her affair with Harry by now. She hoped the jealousy cut his stomach in half. He deserved any pain she could inflict on him. If Barnaby had behaved as he should have behaved all those years ago none of her present dilemmas would have happened. Inwardly she cursed Barnaby as Bill Hardcastle drove the Rolls-Royce Phantom that belonged to Serendipity Mining into Johannesburg railway station. Serendipity Mining and Explosives Company belonged to Albert and Sallie. Both her brother and sister-in-law were at the office. Nothing ever came in the way of their work.
To Tina’s surprise, there was a crowd on platform three. People everywhere. Men with large cameras and flashguns held above the heads of the crowd. Her sleeping compartment had been booked earlier by Bill Hardcastle. They pushed their way through to the train with Bill Hardcastle carrying her one small case. She did not want Harry to get a wrong first impression, that she had come to marry him, hell or high water. He had to want her and the baby or she would go right back to England and make the best of the rest of her life.
On the platform surrounded by the crowd and the newspapermen was a big, blond man with long hair down to his shoulders and a full beard. He was the centre of everyone’s attention, dressed in a long white robe that came down to his ankles. He was talking in a British accent to the crowd. He was talking about God and redemption.
How God had saved him from the pit of hell to do His work. The man had slate-green eyes that seemed to look into another world as he spoke. The man had Tina stopping to listen. She was following Bill Hardcastle and her suitcases up into the train. The man was mesmerising. He reminded her of Jesus Christ as she had been taught he looked like in Sunday school at Corfe Castle church, the church where so many of the St Clairs had been buried so long ago in history.
She found her compartment with Bill Hardcastle’s help and leaned out of the window to listen to the man. Bill Hardcastle said goodbye and got off the train. The man in the long white robe got onto the train and turned back to the crowd. He stood in the door looking down on the people from his new height. The man blessed the crowd three times. He had hanging from his neck the biggest iron cross Tina had ever seen. It was on a long chain. The man held up the cross in his left hand when he blessed them. The man’s right hand was missing.
Someone blew a whistle, and the train began to move. There was a big engine at the front of the train puffing up white smoke. Tina put her head back into the compartment and closed the window. Acrid smoke from the engine was blowing down over the length of the train.
The people on the platform began to blur as the train puffed up speed. Houses appeared outside the window. Tina hoped some of the man’s blessing had fallen upon her, her baby and Harry Brigandshaw.
She had a bar of chocolate in her handbag which she ate. She had a craving for anything sweet. The butterflies were back in her stomach with a vengeance.
Three carriages away, Simon Haller was reading back the notes he had made in his bad shorthand. Solly Goldman was putting away his camera equipment.
“I think there’s a book in it,” said Simon.
“You’re not serious?”
“Don’t you think so?”
“He’s just so wonderful,” said a woman who was sitting in the corner with a faraway smile on her face.
They were all travelling second class, eight to a compartment. The newspaper did not run to first-class travel for reporters and photographers. Their compartment was full of fellow passengers. The luggag
e racks above them were also crowded full.
“Is there a dining car?” asked a man.
“You have to pay,” said another woman.
“No,” said Solly Goldman, “the ticket says free lunch, dinner and supper. Mine does anyway. The food will be lousy. Get something to eat in Mafeking when we stop for half an hour.”
“What do we do after that?” said the woman.
“Eat lousy food… Is the Preacher travelling second class?”
“No,” said Simon. “Our charming editor gave him a first-class ticket.”
“That’s not fair on us… Are you going to interview him on the train?”
“I’m going to try. This time he can’t run away. Captive audience. That’s my big idea.”
“Then why aren’t we travelling first class?”
“Solly, you know the editor. Anyway, what’s a walk down the corridor? Stretch my legs… You think he’ll talk to me?”
“He would in the first-class dining car but they won’t let you in.”
“Not if I pay?”
“Not even if you pay. It’s part of the snobbery. Part of the class system.”
“You talk rubbish.”
“I got some good photographs of Mr Barend Oosthuizen.”
“The Preacher. From now on he is only called the Preacher. He is famous already.”
“He’s wonderful,” said the woman in the corner with the faraway smile on her face.
It was going to be the biggest story in Simon Haller’s life. Bigger than the story of the war hero and the nurse that syndicated around the world under Simon Haller’s byline. He was sure he could find a publisher for the book on the Preacher. The people in England and America now knew his name. It was all about being known, getting published. Just as important as writing a good book. Anyone famous could find a publisher. He owed that much to the story of Jim Bowman and Jenny Merryl.
