Keepers of the House

by JH Fletcher

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I want to be home again.’

  ‘You are home again.’

  ‘Not quite.’ Again he ran his hands through her hair and over her body, and it was like coming back from a far place so that he could not tell which was real, this or what had gone before. She lifted her face to kiss him and he touched her again, very gently, and little by little Deneys and Elizabeth Wolmarans came home again together at last.

  A month later, trudging on broken boots, there arrived at Oudekraal’s front door the Irishman Dominic Riordan, who had been with Deneys on the long journey into the scorched devastation of the Eastern Transvaal.

  Deneys was not pleased to see him. Dominic had been a good comrade — turbulent and undisciplined, it was true, too much inclined to go his own way — but they had fought side by side for two years and in those circumstances a man forgives much. His reservations came from a different source. He wanted nothing in his life to remind him of the horrors of the past three years and Dominic brought with him the stench of the war that Deneys had sworn to forget.

  Dominic was trouble; from what he had told him during the long nights when they had been on commando together, he had been so all his life. It ran in the family, apparently.

  ‘It’s why I’m here at all,’ Dominic said. ‘In 1849 my grandfather, God save him, killed an Englishman in County Clare and got away with my grandmother to Australia. My father was born on the journey, so I was the first member of my family to be born there, on the opposite side of the world from Ireland which still holds my heart and always will, although I have never seen it.’

  When Dominic was grown, his father — a wild and harsh man, seemingly, of whom Dominic spoke with great affection and respect — went into the horse-breeding business. As soon as Dominic was old enough, he joined him.

  ‘Times were hard; indeed, when weren’t they hard for penniless Irish immigrants? From time to time there were ill-wishers willing to swear that some of the beasts in our yard had no business to be there at all.’

  Dominic had laughed uproariously until hushed by the others, afraid he would be heard by the English patrols who were thick on the ground in those parts.

  ‘And what of that? If a horse strays, I’d regard it as an act of Christian kindness to give him a home and some of the fences in our part of the country were purely terrible.’

  All the same, horse-stealing was a grave offence, so the Riordans had to watch their step. The police never managed to catch them, although Dominic spoke of nights when he lay out in the timber high above their selection — ‘it means farm,’ he explained to the others — with half a dozen horses in tow, while all hell was breaking loose in the valley below him. In the end things got too hot for them so they moved up into the high country. When they got there they found their reputation had preceded them. After that it was a case of moving on to survive at all. Survive they did, by the skin of their teeth, with one or two days of excitement thrown in but, as Dominic said, a bit of excitement never harmed a man, did it now?

  Eventually Dominic’s Da picked a site just below a ridge at the top of the range. They built a wooden house and lived there like eagles above the timbered valley — his parents, sister and himself — until 1899. In that year, when Dominic was twenty-two, word came that there was a war for the asking over the sea in a place they called South Africa. They were calling for volunteers to go to fight for Queen and Empire, and several of the Riordans’ neighbours were hot to join.

  Once again Dominic laughed. ‘I’d as soon stick a bayonet up my arse as fight for an English queen, but I was mortal sick of living the way we were, hand to mouth with the squatters and the police down on us at every turn, so when I heard there were one or two fellows being sponsored secretly by the Feinian Society to fight for the other side — and how else could it have been but secretly? — I let it be known I might be interested.’

  He went to Sydney where he met a fellow who said he could arrange things for him. Dominic knew his Da wouldn’t like it, and him with the business to take care of, but his mind was made up. Next thing he knew, he had a ticket in his pocket and was off to fight for Johnny Boer.

  They suspected him to begin with, wondering what an Irishman from Australia was doing fighting against the Empire, but they saw soon enough that he was as hot for the fight as the best of them. Things were all right after that.

  Dominic grew up in that war, like everyone else who survived. He saw things he would never forget or talk of, things that he knew would haunt his dreams for the rest of his life. The journey he made with Deneys in 1901 to the Eastern Transvaal was one of the worst. It marked a turning point in his life. He had been brought up to hate the English but, in fact, had never known what real hatred was. Until he went to Lydenburg the war had been no more than a game, a scrap with himself on the receiving end more often than not, but nothing to take too seriously. On that journey he learned the real meaning of hatred.

  In the last days of the fighting, he took a fool bullet in his shoulder. He was in the hospital in Middelburg when word of the surrender came through. There were several there who could have blown their brains out at the news. But didn’t, of course.

  After he was discharged from the hospital, Dominic had to decide what he wanted to do. The Transvaal had nothing for him now, red-coats everywhere he looked, but he had no wish to go back to Australia either. He even thought of Ireland, but no one was handing out free tickets to go there so that was out.

  In the end he headed south-west, to the Cape. Deneys had told him a lot about that part of the country and to Dominic it had sounded a wonderful place, all lush and green and as different from the Transvaal as could be. There had been no fighting there, either, and after three years of nothing else he thought he could do with a break from fighting.

  The Cape was a thousand miles from Middelburg so it took a while, but he made it in the end. He found his old comrade, sure enough, and a little after that certain other things happened and Dominic found that he had not managed to put the war behind him, after all.

  Deneys had been home for six months when Sarel Henning and his family moved into the district. He bought the little store from Isaak Kok’s widow and in no time was making a good thing out of it. He was a good-looking man, thirty years old perhaps, tall and well-set, with a neat cap of curly brown hair and an open, smiling face. Always neat, always polite, and his young wife and two little girls were the same.

  They did not say where they were from. Nobody asked; there were too many tragedies in people’s lives to ask questions like that, but the Hennings had the accent of the Transvaal so everyone assumed they came from there. At least they hadn’t been burnt out; those people had nothing and the Hennings had money enough to buy the store and stock it, too. Not that it mattered. Only Dominic Riordan looked at him and then again, frowning.

  ‘I know that face from somewhere,’ he said.

  It was a cold, wet year. Rain fell for days on end, and on the high ground snow lay from June right through until late spring. Everywhere was mud and water. The rain found holes in the roofs where no one had known they existed and inside the houses the air was dank. Even the biggest fires did little to keep the damp out, and clothes went mouldy in the cupboards. Torrents poured from the mountain and the river rose until it was a sinuous mass of brown water heavy with silt and tree branches and drowned animals. Silent except for the occasional slip and slide of clay falling from the banks, it powered its way through the valley, a distant stranger to the chuckling stream of summer.

  In mid-August, after it had rained non-stop for a whole week, the river burst its banks and spread far and wide through the valley. The bare branches of the vines stuck imploringly above the flood like the arms of drowning men. The footbridge that had spanned the river as long as anyone could remember was washed away. The drifs had been impassable for weeks and now, with the bridge gone, there was no communication between the east side of the valley and the west.

  And st
ill it rained.

  High up the valley on the far side of the river was a tongue of land with a cottage housing Avril Hendricks, his wife and child. The land was too high for grapes so the owners ran sheep instead, and Avril Hendricks was a shepherd. He was up the mountain with the flock and his wife and baby were alone in the cottage when the river came over the tongue of land. The next thing they knew, it was inside the house and still rising.

  It happened at night and nobody knew anything about it until early next morning, when cries were heard by some labourers. It was barely light when Deneys was told that Mrs Hendricks and the child were marooned on the roof of their house with the water halfway up the walls. He rode up there at once. Early though he was, a few others had beaten him to it, Sarel Henning and Dominic Riordan among them.

  They looked at the raging river, a hundred yards wide now, then at each other. With neither bridge nor boats, they could do nothing.

  The cottage was still there but, as they watched, one of the walls started to go. The roof settled wearily into the water and the next thing was rushing away down river, the woman still on it, the child in her arms. She did not cry or call out as the water swept her away; perhaps she was too wet and cold for that.

  ‘Is there a rope? A long rope?’ Sarel Henning with his hard Transvaal accent.

  Several of the men had ropes with them. ‘What do you want with them?’

  ‘The big pool,’ he said.

  They understood him at once. In normal conditions the river formed a deep pool a little below his store. Here the water slowed before hurtling down the valley to the rapids at the far end. Assuming it had not already fallen to pieces, there was a chance that when it reached the pool the roof might be pushed out of the main flow of the current — in which case it might be possible to save them after all.

  ‘Come,’ Sarel urged and come they did, riding pell-mell down the bank. They reached the pool and reined in, staring at the floodwaters. It was not an encouraging sight. The river gnashed its teeth as it rushed between the branches of the trees that lined what had been its banks. What was left of the roof was indeed floating in the pool, but on the far side of the stream where no one could get at it. In mid-channel the current cut a sinewy line as it headed for the rapids. The roof lay low in the water, turning lazily as it drifted inexorably back towards the stream. Once the current had it, the disintegrating roof would be swept into the rapids. If that happened, God himself would be unable to save them.

  Sarel Henning turned in his saddle, gesturing. ‘Give me the rope.’ With one end secured to his saddle horn and the rest of them paying it out behind him, he rode into the water.

  At first the horse made good progress but, in midstream, things became difficult. Although Sarel had aimed well up-river, the current carried them down so fast that it looked as though they would never be able to cross at all.

  To make things easier, he slipped off the horse’s back and swam alongside it, one foot in the stirrup and his hands clasping the saddle horn. All the men could see were the two heads straining above the brown flood as horse and man swam on, the rope like a drawn bow behind them. On the far side of the channel, the roof was sinking lower and lower in the water while the rain continued to pour down. No one could see how Sarel Henning could hope to make it but eventually he did. The two heads appeared beyond the line of the stream and, in no time after that, they had reached the roof.

  As soon as he had secured the rope to one of the roof trusses, the watchers on the bank lashed their end to a team of horses and set them in motion. Snorting, necks arched, they began to haul. The rope came clear of the water, droplets of water springing from it as it drew taut. Slowly the thatch began to move. As it reached the current it tried to get away down river but somehow, slipping and blowing, the horses held it. The rope was wire-tight, its thin shriek like a needle in the ear. Still the horses hauled, moving step by step away from the bank. Around the roof a lick of dirty foam showed where the current continued to fight it, yet still it came on.

  The song of the rope grew higher until, when the roof was two-thirds of the way to safety, the roof truss pulled out.

  The horses were down on their knees. Still lashed to the wooden truss, the rope catapulted towards the bank. It crashed with the force of an artillery shell into the trees.

  The roof disintegrated. Bits and pieces of thatch were snatched away by the current. The woman was hanging onto the bridle of the horse with one hand, the other desperately clasping the child. With agonising slowness Sarel shoved her up on the horse’s back. The watchers on the bank, less than thirty yards away now, could see that both he and the horse were exhausted after struggling so long in the icy water. The woman’s head drooped against the horse’s neck. It was quite possible that the lot of them would drown before they could reach the bank.

  Then they heard Sarel Henning shout hoarsely at the beast, urging it on. Miraculously, the horse gathered its muscles again, fighting its way through the water until at last its hooves touched bottom. It gave a heave and shudder and dragged itself and its human cargo into the shallows.

  The child slipped from the woman’s grasp and fell into the river.

  She screamed. The baby gave one mewling cry, and the muddy water covered it. Sarel slapped the horse’s flank with all his might and, as the animal staggered, swaying and shivering up the bank, dived beneath the water.

  He could see nothing. It was futile. He knew it, was furious at the river, the stupid bitch of a woman, at himself. He gave up, returned gasping to the surface.

  You’re a fool, he told himself. And dived.

  Came up again, just avoiding the branches of a tree as it swept past.

  Give it up, he thought. The brat is gone. And dived.

  The air like daggers in his lungs now. Are you trying to drown yourself? Dived, for one last time. Again, for one last time. Again, the cold and lack of air deadly now. And found the child.

  It was chance, a blind groping of the hands in water that was too thick for sight. He brushed against something, felt the roughness of clothing, lost it. Dived deeper, lungs screaming, blood pounding in his head, and found it. Brought it up to the light.

  It is certain to be dead, he thought. So long underwater. It will be dead.

  He brought it to the bank. Hands snatched it from him. He lay in the shallows, too exhausted to move. Willing arms hauled him out. He lay on his back in the mud, heart thundering, breath surging in his chest, his whole body shaking fit to break.

  ‘We must get him into a bath of hot water,’ Deneys said. ‘And quickly, too, or he will die on us.’

  At Deneys’s voice, Henning’s eyes opened. He tried to speak but was shaking so badly that no one could understand his words. He tried again. ‘The … the child?’

  ‘Will be fine.’

  And so, incredibly, it was. Half the night in freezing rain, dragged through the icy river on the back of a horse, underwater for what had seemed hours. Now fit and well, screaming fit to burst. Not six months old. Some children, Deneys thought, are born to be indestructible.

  The woman came to Henning’s side as he lay there. She knelt in the mud beside him and took his cold hands and chafed them between her own, while the tears ran down her brown face. ‘Thank you for my child, meneer,’ she said.

  ‘He needs the hospital,’ Deneys said to Dominic Riordan.

  And Dominic stared at him with sudden awareness. He clicked his fingers. ‘Hospital,’ he said. A wild beast looked out of his eyes. ‘That’s where it was.’

  The next day Dominic Riordan rode over to Oudekraal. Deneys saw him coming and his heart sank. Instinctively he knew that the gaunt figure was bringing trouble but smiled, hiding his feelings as Riordan dismounted.

  ‘Morning, Dominic.’

  The Irishman’s eyes were hard, lines like razor slashes in the hungry-looking face. ‘I’ll be having a word with you, Deneys, if it’s not an intrusion.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Sarel Henning.’<
br />
  ‘Better, thank God. And the woman and child.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking where I saw him before. It was when you said he should be in the hospital that I remembered. You mind I was in hospital myself, at the end?’

  ‘Yes.’ Watching.

  ‘That’s where I saw him. In uniform.’

  Deneys frowned. The Boers had never worn uniform, unless it was bits and pieces of English uniforms to cover their nakedness when their own clothes fell to pieces. ‘What uniform was that?’

  Dominic’s breath hissed like a snake in his throat. ‘Cronje’s Scouts.’

  The arch-traitors, the hensoppers who had not merely given up but fought for the English against their own flesh and blood.

  Deneys had known it must be something of the sort. He had seen how Riordan had smiled, with teeth, when he had finally remembered where he had seen Sarel Henning before. Yet now felt only weariness that even here, far from the fighting, the war had once again laid its blight upon them.

  ‘The war is over,’ he said, knowing it was not.

  Pale fire in Riordan’s eyes, then. ‘Your brother-in-law is dead. His children are dead. Your sister is lost, perhaps dead with all the rest. And you tell me the war is over?’

  ‘We took the oath. Both of us.’

  ‘So I could keep my rifle. So I could fight them again the first chance I got!’ Dominic’s eyes blazed. ‘Your niece and nephew dead because of people like Henning. That means so little to you?’

  ‘The war is over,’ Deneys repeated heavily. ‘We all fought as our consciences told us. Some on our side, some on theirs. Now it is finished. Let us have no more killing.’

  Riordan spat. ‘Of course, you have an English wife.’

  One stride and Deneys had his hands in Dominic’s shirt below his chin. He lifted him on his toes. ‘Meaning what?’