by Guy Butler
He caught up with his guide on the edge of a ridge. The old chap had switched off the engine and was standing beside the AJS, dead still in the dusk. Charlie dismounted beside him. The only sound seemed to be the panting of the horse.
‘See these big black boulders against the sky – and that twisted gwarrieboom?’
There was a flash of lightning, followed by a distant growl of thunder. Old Prince jerked violently to get free and be off. The old man had to help Charlie control him.
‘We’d better keep going. Tell you later. Change mounts!’
It was with great relief that Charlie handed over the reins. The horse seemed to be terrified of that gwarrieboom – or was it something behind it, or in it? Charlie kicked the starter, and got away from there as fast as he could.
Isaac Bowker was a bachelor who never let the rituals of his meals decline from those in his father’s time. He was carving a joint of cold venison at the head of the large mahogany table, with his young guest at his right. The glass and cutlery sparkled under the fine acetylene lamps; the mantles hissed very quietly under porcelain shades, handpainted with Redouté roses copied by Isaac’s artistic aunt Ethel. Behind him, and a little to the right, stood Jafta, the third of that name to serve an Isaac Bowker in the capacity of butler-cum-valet.
The phone rang, and Isaac left to answer. He stayed away a long time. Charlie, finding the silence intolerable, turned to the immobile butler.
‘Have you been on this farm for a long time?’
‘All my life. And my father before me. And before that. Before there was a white man or black man in this country we was here.’
There was a long pause.
‘Do you know a story about a policeman and a piano?’
‘Not a story, master; the truth!’ came the reply from a face lit with a grin of unqualified delight, which disappeared into a mask of immobility on the re-entry of his master.
‘It’s Danby Long. He’s got his sister into hospital, and she seems safe for the present. But he doesn’t think he’ll come. There’s a cloudburst over the City of Saints like as if the day of Judgement has come. It’s no time to travel on a motorbike. You’d better spend the night here. Jafta, get the spare bed ready. You won’t mind sleeping in the old school room?’
Charlie was about to say he’d prefer to take a chance on the bad weather, when a loud crack of thunder made him change his mind. His nerves told him they wouldn’t stand up well to a barrage of cloudy gunfire.
‘Not at all’ he said.
‘It was in the school room that my father gave a little wedding dance for the governess and young Sephton. The Musical Policeman and Jafta’s father provided the music – they often played together. There was a touching little scene at the end ... a quarrel over the piano! The Policeman wanted to give his share of the piano to Maisie as a wedding present, and she wanted to give her share to him as a goodbye present. The matter was settled by Sephton, who had consented to play it while the ex-lovers had a last dance together. ‘There’s something weird about that piano’, he said. ‘It makes me play its way, not my own. I think it’s got used to those strange rhythms Charlie uses when he’s trying to imitate Hottentot music.’ And Maisie added, ‘You must keep it, Charlie, please.’ And the young couple got into the buggy amid cheers. A few rifle shots of sheer joy were fired into the night over their heads. When I turned round, Charlie was still at the piano with his hands on the keys, and his head on his hands.’
The old man had put his hands gently on the table’s edge, and almost lowered his forehead on to them. Then he straightened up.
‘A few days later we took the instrument up to the Third Outspan and put it in the hut. The governess and the piano having gone from Williston Heights, Charlie seldom came this way again – memories too painful, maybe. But his musical parties – on the outspan with that piano’s help – became famous. Some thought infamous. He never hit the bottle himself; but others had the stuff; and brandy and music can dissolve all kinds of proper barriers, you know. When the railway to Kimberley got as far as Noupoort and De Aar, wagon traffic on the Old North Road dwindled rapidly. And with it the music on the outspan got less and less. He filled in time by composing strange pieces, using local instruments like kudu horns, gorahs and heaven knows what. It became very quiet and lonely up there. The need for a constable was gone. But there was some delay in de-scheduling the post and transferring him. The last entry in his diary tells the rest. You read it, while I fetch something else that’ll interest you.’
And he slid the diary across the mahogany, with a marker at the place.
Jan 21 1881
As instructed, I reported to my Commanding Officer this morning at 8.30 am. He told me that there were vacancies at the police posts at Sidbury, and at Cuylerville, but that the big farmers there had expressed reluctance at having a musical policeman.
‘Why?’
‘A piano seems to be incompatible with their ideas of a policeman.’
‘Have there been complaints?’
‘Not exactly. A policeman off duty may attend parties. He should not, however, become a permanent instigator and focus of them. Particularly when they become – well – excessively successful?’
‘I know of nothing in regulations –’
‘There is nothing in the regulations against your behaviour. But, Macleod, there are conventions. A policeman must not be overly familiar with members of the poorer classes from whose ranks most of the petty criminals come. For instance –’
And the cold-eyed old devil spelt out the great offence I’d given, by having Jafta play the fiddle while I played the piano – and while Susan, his light-skinned daughter, sang. And his puritanical mind held me responsible for things that were supposed to be happening under the trees and behind the bushes on the outspan. He ended, standing up to say it:
‘Your piano and a career in the Force are not compatible. Get rid of it, Macleod, or resign .’
Later
I have walked round the outspan very slowly, looking at the familiar things. At sunset the cock ostrich took over his shift of sitting on the eggs. The jackhanger chuntered away to himself. I have scratched the last bars, duly orchestrated, of my ‘Dance of the Ostrich Hunter’ into the plaster. I went outside again for a last look. W ith the sun setting in its metal circle, I knocked out the rhythm of the coda on my wagon tyre gong, using the horseshoe. I must now revise the final stroke in the final bar, and change the title of the piece.’
Isaac Bowker returned, bringing in both hands a thin ledger with a similar binding to the diary ‘s, and sat down.
‘His music book. Look at it before you go to sleep. Sad ending, not so? His fellow policemen came and buried him. His family in Britain could not be traced, so we kept his few effects – including these two books. Shortly after that the police post was abolished, and my father put in a bid for the old outspan. We told old Jafta, who was shepherd up there, he could move into the cottage.’
He turned to the butler.
‘Jafta, what did your father say to that?’
This seemed the moment for which the impassive man had been waiting.
‘My father said, “Never, not while the piano is in there. The piano must go first. It plays to itself for a long time when the moon is full.” So the master’s father sent the wagon to bring the piano down here, to put it in the school room. But the wagon broke down by those boulders; next to the gwarrieboom. We were there, working in the half-dark to get it right, when my brother took my arm and whispered, “Look”. And I looked: and the lid of the piano was opening, master, slowly. And then the music started. Master, I like music, but I didn’t wait to listen, I ran like a hare to the house and I told the old master.’
Isaac Bowker took over. ‘According to my father, he saddled his horse and rode up there alone. None of the Hottentots would accompany him. He heard the piano quite a long way off. He could not get too close to it because his horse kept shying, and trying to turn round and make for the
stable. So he stood still, with the boulders and gwarrieboom just visible against the stars, and the square outline of the piano on top of the wagon; and the music pouring out of it like he’d never heard before. He said it wasn’t like English music or like German music. And it wasn’t Xhosa or Hottentot music. But something of all of them.’
‘So you’ve got the very piano that he composed on?’
Bowker nodded.
‘And the odd instruments he collected?’
‘All in the schoolroom. We’ve often thought of throwing them out. Take a close look at it all.’
With the storm rising in force outside, Jafta, with kerosene lamp in hand, led Charlie down the long passage into the school room. The brass bed was at one end, near a large casement window, and the piano opposite. Hung on the wall above it was a variety of African musical instruments. Charlie put the diary and the policeman’s music book on the top of the piano. Old Jafta, having handed him a towel and a pair of pyjamas, said: ‘Master must not worry – if he hears things.’
‘The piano?’
He nodded. And Charlie thought, ‘If the piano doesn’t play itself, will I play it?’
Jafta went to the wall and removed the gorah, and said: ‘This is the tune the Policeman likes’ and, placing the string near the calabash to his mouth, played the tune very quietly. That blend of string and wind sounds seemed to be the signal for a terrific flash of lightning, followed by a thunder clap. The casement jerked open with a gust of wind. Then, very slowly, the lid of the keyboard opened up; next the music book moved from the top, opened itself near the last page, and placed itself on the rest. Then nothing moved at all. Motionless stillness filled the room. Even the storm outside seemed to have suspended its brawl to listen. Charlie asked:
‘Why doesn’t he play?’
‘He wants you to play. Sit. Sit, master.’
Jafta now spoke with the authority of Uncle Danby. So Charlie sat, and leant forward, and examined the score. The original title – ‘Dance of the Ostrich Hunters’ had been scratched out and ‘The Surprise Suicide’ written above it. He turned to the last page and found that the final note of the final bar had been scratched out, and, in a very neat hand ‘Pistol shot’ written in. But this in turn had been cancelled for ‘Performer’s Cadenza’.
So Charles Hamish Macleod started playing the piano part, which that other Chares Hamish had composed, imagining the other instruments coming in – the gorah, the chopi piano, the drums, the kudu horn.
Outside, in the labourers’ huts, old people pricked up their ears, and listened. A black child started beating out the time on an empty gogog.
With great anguish Charlie approached the ‘performer’s cadenza’. He clenched his jaws, and simply repeated the whole coda in the major, and, imagining a back-up of trombones in addition to kudu horns, crashed through and beyond the no-longer suicidal bar. He did not notice the departure of Jafta. Elated, he repeated the piece, over and over, until he was quite exhausted, and happy.
Over breakfast, Isaac Bowker asked how he had slept.
‘Not for long, but very deep.’
The old man chuckled.
‘Yes. But his music. Marvellous stuff. A musical pioneer. I wonder if I could borrow his notes?’
‘Of course. And the instruments. I suppose I should give them to a music department somewhere.’
10
SAR & H
I don’t usually travel by train; but now I’m retired and over sixty I can get a big cut in the price of tickets; and anyway, I’ve got this old man’s hopeless hankering to recapture the past.
Of course I was disappointed in the train. The coaches are now made of metal and plastic, not varnished teak and green leather with beautiful old sepia photographs on the walls – of Maselspoort for instance, with a smart Tmodel Ford to set off the weeping willows. OK, electricity is clean and steam is dirty. OK, the cinders and sulphur do get into your eyes and sandwiches, not improving vision or gastronomic pleasure, but it is worth it.
We were three in the compartment. One was just about my age, maybe a bit younger, Martin Dobson, a multi-millionaire angora farmer from Steytlerville. He couldn’t make up his mind whether he should give up trying to revive the United Party, or just cut a corner and join the Progs. Or the Nats? That was the problem for most staunch old bloedsappe in the Karoo. Anyway, his heart was in the right place. Sometimes he looked at me – I’m a Prog – as though I was a member of the ANC.
The other was a youngster in army uniform. You couldn’t tell if he was English or Afrikaans. Maybe he was half and half. Andrew Murray or maybe Andries Marais. He’d had one stint on the border, and was now going back for another. He was very quiet. I don’t think he wanted to go back to the border. He was soon bored by the company of two old crocks who talked about their war as if it were the only war worth talking about. He was very quiet about his war. His kit was utterly different from the stuff we’d been issued with. Both of us put historical footnotes into our talk for the benefit of his ignorance. It wasn’t his fault that he was born so late in time, about 1964 I guess.
We’d all brought something to read – newspapers and magazines and paperbacks.
‘Did you see this paragraph on the bombs in Umtata?’ I asked.
‘Jaaa …’ said Dobson.
‘I see President Sebe’s building himself another palace. How many presidents have we got in RSA now?’
‘Lost count’, said Dobson.
‘Talk about the border, the long border between South West Africa and Angola – this humourist in Letters to the Editor says we didn’t make that Namibian border. Leave it alone for them who made it to patrol. We must look after the brand-new borders we have made – all round each of our homelands. How many homelands now? Nine?’
‘I haven’t a clue’, said Dobson. Then he added: ‘Our own internal borders are twice as long as the border of the Namibians.’
‘Jaaa’, I said.
‘My cousin in Fort Beaufort says it’s quite like Old Times down there’, continued Dobson.
‘Old Times?’ I asked.
‘Man, the Frontier Wars. In the Old Times the Xhosa used to come across the Great Fish River at night and lift your cattle. Now they come across at night and lift your TV set and electrical appliances, the lot. In the Old Times there was a Spoor Law. You could get on your horses, and follow the spoor of your cattle to a kraal and recover them. Well, sometimes. But now? A TV or a microwave cooker doesn’t leave a spoor, man.’
‘Besides’, I said, ‘the Fish River is now an international frontier. Big deal, hey? Smuggling has diplomatic dimensions. You have to go through the proper channels. And all the proper channels go through Pretoria. You have to lay your complaint before the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Pik Botha, who will phone his opposite number in Bisho, Ciskei, in no time at all. Polite, man, so polite. But it doesn’t help a damn.’
‘Jaaa …’, said Dobson.
‘Hell man, to think how things have changed in our lifetime. There are people who think there’s always been a border and always been homelands. They have no memories of a time before these things.’
The soldier looked up.
‘Yes’, I said, nodding at him, ‘there was a time when everyone who was in the army was there because that’s where he wanted to be.’
At last he spoke. ‘You mean you volunteered? For the army?’
We both nodded, modestly. He rolled his eyes.
‘You see, there was Hitler in Germany and Mussolini in Italy …’
I’ve noticed before how the younger generation switch off when I get on to the most interesting topics.
His attention returned to the back page girl of the Sunday Times.And who could blame him?
Dobson and I drifted on to our war. We’d both been with the Sixth Division in Italy. We remembered a nasty action near Radda. While the action was in progress, units not engaged had to get smartened up and line the road along the route which our King, George VI, took when he visited us
. I was lucky, I had a bit of shade from a poplar tree.
‘Do you remember how it was?’ I said. ‘A couple of red-capped MPs on Harley Davidson motor bikes, and then a jeep with our Brigadier, Bobby Palmer, bolt upright in it.’
‘Now, there was a man for you’, said Dobson. ‘Ugly as sin, but what a grin!’
‘And then, in an open staff car, the King, handsome and neat. Nice chap he was.’
‘With our General, Everard Poole, also handsome and neat’, said Dobson.
‘Jaa’, I said. ‘Our King!’
The soldier looked up.
‘You mean the King of England?’
‘He used to be our king too. You see, there used to be a thing called the British Empire, which then became the Commonwealth of Nations – a club of nations with members all over the world. On which the sun never set. Anyway, George was king of both, and South Africa was part of both. You see, South Africa was still part of the world. We were in all the Commonwealth Games and the Olympics; you name it, we South Africans were in it.’
‘Why did they kick us out?’
‘They didn’t kick us out, man. We left of our own accord. It was against Dr Verwoerd’s principles to mix on equal terms with black prime ministers of other nations.’
The soldier frowned, pulled his feet up on to the bunk, and the back page of the Sunday Times over his face and tried to sleep. Then, suddenly, he sat up.
‘This King, who visited you in Italy – what’s he to this chap Charles, that’s marrying this Di that the whole world’s crazy about?’
