by Peter Rimmer
Anthony hoped they had found something suitable. Beth had said it wasn’t her fault. His mother had stopped shouting at Beth, giving up when she ignored the curfew and stayed with her friends. Some nights she didn’t come home. Beth was turning sixteen in January which wasn’t far away. The boys liked Beth. All of them. It was better not to think of Beth when you were the older brother. Anthony doubted Beth would pass her matric when it came to her turn. She never studied at night. Never talked about schoolwork. Only boys. Her school was co-ed, her second school in South Africa after a classic yelling match with their mother. The first school had been a convent.
Frank was with him at Bishops. Dorian was coming next year when Anthony would not be able to help. Frank had his own gang at Bishops, already making money. It was similar to a protection racket. No more sophisticated. The priests at the school, most of them teachers rather than practising priests, could not believe what Frank and his fellow bullies were up to and turned a blind eye.
Most of the boys were day boys or weekly boarders going home for the weekends. Frank had demanded he be a full-time boarder which made no sense to Anthony, the house being so close to school. There were no shouting matches with Frank. Total silence was his weapon when he wanted his own way. Silence with menace. The whole house suffered. Frank became a full-time boarder so he could run his gang and make sure no one was cheating him out of money. It was all stupid to Anthony. If Frank needed more pocket money he only had to write to their father in London. For some reason Frank would not write.
Anthony had left him and his bully friends alone. He was too senior in the school to have anything to do with his younger brother. They did not like each other. No one said so. Anthony feared for Dorian when he went to the big school. He was going to be a day boy so Frank would have less chance to bully his younger brother. Kim had the right idea. Kim was ten years old. Kim sailed through life not noticing the rough and tumble, his head in the clouds. Kim said he was going to be a poet, or a vet, or he was going to the moon. Anthony had asked him once how he was going to the moon.
“On the front of a rocket, stupid.”
The boy had given him such a nice smile, Anthony had not felt quite so stupid. Kim was good at maths. There were still many years for him to decide what to do.
Putting his bicycle in the wooden shed at the end of the garden, putting on the padlock to make sure Frank did not go off with the bike, a habit that wasn’t necessary with Frank boarding at school, Anthony had gone to look for his mother in the flower garden. In the evenings his mother liked to walk round looking at the different flowers, so many of them she had not seen growing in the gardens of England. She missed their father. With five children and a house full of servants Anthony’s mother was lonely.
“Did you meet anyone, darling?”
“I did as a matter of fact. I fell asleep on my back in the sun and a girl woke me up before I burned. We’re meeting again tomorrow. I gave her one of my sandwiches.”
“Supper is nearly ready. Just look at all these flowers. They’re so beautiful.”
“Why’s Beth home so early?”
“Had a fight with her boyfriend.”
“Which one?”
“Don’t ask me. Let’s go and walk round the garden together. I had a phone call from your father. Cut us off after three minutes. The bombing’s got terrible. The docks. He’s sleeping on the platform in the underground at night. Charing Cross Tube station. The German bombs can’t penetrate that far. I told him to come out to South Africa. Then they cut us off.”
“If I pass my school certificate, I’m going up to the farm.”
“Which farm?”
“Elephant Walk.”
“You’ve never been there.”
“Oh yes I have. I was born there.”
“You were still in the pram when we went to England.”
“What’s for supper?”
“Kingklip.”
“My favourite.”
“Every food is your favourite, Anthony Brigandshaw. Are you going to bicycle to Rhodesia?”
“I thought I’d take the train. Two and a half days. See the countryside. See the rest of Africa. The train goes through the Bechuanaland. Real elephant country.”
A month later, after spending every day on the beach with Eleanor Botha, Anthony arrived in Salisbury on the train. Ralph Madgwick met him at the station. Ralph was the manager of Elephant Walk, having run away with Rebecca Rosenzweig. Anthony’s father had told Anthony the whole story.
“Jews marry Jews. Especially rich Jews. The Rosenzweigs have been bankers across Europe for two centuries. The Rothschilds and the Rosenzweigs. Sir Jacob now lives in New York where he can’t use his title but can hold on to his money. The Germans confiscated the bank’s assets in Germany. The bank started in Berlin, I think the story goes. Berlin, Paris and London. Now New York. A real love match, Rebecca and Ralph. His family lost most of their money in the ’29 crash. When you get to Africa and find a chance, go up to the farm. You were born on the farm. They’ve three children Sir Jacob has never seen. I suggested to her father when I was in New York with Tinus that he should go to the farm for a holiday. Too many business problems. Once they leave the tribe of Israel they don’t get asked back. Ralph does a good job. You’ll like him. He’s trying to complete the dam on the Mazoe River with a local contractor whose biggest construction so far is the strip road out of Salisbury. Five miles of tarred strips twice the width of a car’s tyre. Now that’s driving. Makes Tembo keep his eye on the road. If you let the car fall off the strip it gets exciting.”
Ralph Madgwick was wearing a brown bush hat the size of a Stetson. A bush hat, shorts, khaki shirt, long socks and a grin on his face. He was tanned the colour of mahogany.
Ralph proposed they have lunch in the dining room of Meikles Hotel.
“We all have lunch at the Meikles. Farming tradition. Get to know what the other chaps are up to. Very colonial I’m afraid. Punkahs on the ceiling. The old Zulu on the door has been there longer than anyone remembers. Your grandmother would have come to the station, Anthony, but Tembo drove her off the strip nearly into the ditch so she stays at home now. Your Aunt Madge has her hands full. They call me the manager and pay me a manager’s bonus but Madge is the real boss. Not really, I suppose. When it comes to the labour force, Tembo rules the roost. Princess rules Tembo. Bit of a circle really. Works well enough, which is all that matters. We live in our compound. The blacks live in theirs on the river. They like it that way. If I want to go into the black compound I have to ask Tembo. We all keep our privacy. I hope you don’t mind roast beef in ninety degree temperature. It’s Thursday. Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Welcome to Rhodesia, Anthony. They’ll all want to meet you. Brigandshaws are a bit of a legend in these parts. Your grandfather and old Tinus Oosthuizen hunted elephant under Lobengula. Had to go to Bulawayo every trip up from the south and ask the Matabele King’s permission to hunt elephant. With the money they gave him for the hunting concession the wily old bugger bought guns to keep himself at the top of the pile, so to speak. Robbed and raped the Shona for decades. The Shona are the main tribe in Rhodesia. Came up from Zululand did Lobengula’s father. Africa is always changing. Tribes moving in on each other. So much space and so few people so it doesn't matter, provided you don’t get in the way. Here we are, Meikles. Sort of a club, really. In the rains when it’s bad and the rivers come up between here and Elephant Walk I spend the night in the hotel. Two or three nights sometimes, if the rivers don’t go down. Pussy cat streams turn into raging torrents. You’ll see. The main rains are about due. How long are you staying with us?”
“I begin medical school in February.”
“Plenty of time. Your grandmother will love having you for Christmas.”
They drank beer in the lounge, the punkahs going round and round over their heads, moving the limp air, cooling the sweat running down inside Anthony’s open shirt. There were only Europeans sitting at the round tables, African waiters wi
th round trays and red fez hats serving them. All the women seemed to be dressed in print frocks, the men in khaki shirts and shorts like Ralph Madgwick. Ralph seemed to know everyone. People came to their table for the odd word or two before going back to their drinks and wives. There were no young girls of Anthony’s age. Tinus had said something about the lack of girls when he came back to England and joined the RAF.
“The pretty ones get snapped up quickly, Ant. If you want a varied love life don’t go live in Rhodesia. Girls from England from good homes with no money go out to find husbands. Pretty ones are married in six weeks, pregnant in seven and never go home again. Live in the middle of nowhere like your grandmother for the rest of their lives. Some like it. Most don’t. Suburban girls from Epsom used to typing in offices and chatting all day. Can’t speak a word of Shona. Staff can’t speak a word of English. Husband in the lands all day. They have lots of children. Not much else to get up to, the next farm an hour away over a terrible dirt road. Most of them take to drinking by the time they’re thirty. Sundowners. Oh well, better than a thirty-year mortgage on a semi-detached if they were lucky, or a dried-up old spinster more likely. After the war there were too few men in England, the ones they might have met and married buried in France. So they go to the colonies to find a life, dreaming of a great country estate, not a thatched bungalow in the back of beyond.”
“I thought you liked living in Rhodesia, Ralph?”
“Of course I do. It’s a great life if you like a farm, one wife and six children. And a liking for whisky and soda. Life’s never boring in Rhodesia. You make of life what you want. Hunting trips in the bush and up the rivers. Carving a bit of civilisation out of the bush. Sometimes I think the blacks look at us as nuts. ‘What are they doing here?’ Every black man I’ve known with a missionary education has gone to Salisbury or better still Johannesburg. To get out of the bush. Some of the smart ones like Tembo dream about a second chimurenga.”
“What’s a chimurenga?”
“War of liberation.”
“Doesn’t Tembo like working for us?”
“All men like to rule. You’ll see. Of course he likes working for us. He’d just prefer to be the local chief with the real prestige and power that goes with it. Who likes to be told what to do by foreigners? Especially when the foreigner knows what he’s doing and makes everyone money.”
“Then he’s jealous.”
“Not Tembo. He just wants to be the king. Why I like him so much. A proud man.”
“All sounds too complicated.”
To Anthony, looking round the big room with the high ceiling and sash windows along the courtyard side from the floor to the roof and remembering his conversation with Cousin Tinus, the women in their summer frocks looked happy. Most of them were laughing and smiling. One woman was having trouble with her brood of children.
Two tables away a young man was holding the hand of a young girl. Neither of them were talking. The man wore a blue uniform with a single thick ring of a flying officer at the bottom of the sleeves. On the shoulder, at the top of the uniform arm, was the word Rhodesia in a slight curve. Anthony guessed the man was on his way overseas, the girl seeing him off. She was not what Tinus would have called pretty. The look she was giving her man forgave any outward appearance. Anthony could see the look of love in her eyes, eyes on the brink of tears, already pining her loss. On the man’s chest, white and new, shone the wings of a recently commissioned pilot. The girl’s look and the man’s stoicism made Anthony feel guilty he was not taking the same journey. Then the two of them got up, still holding hands, neither prepared to let go. They turned round their table in the direction of the hotel dining room at the end of the long room opposite the hotel’s entrance, the man’s eyes catching Anthony looking at him. In the girl’s eyes he had seen love. In the man’s was stark fear. The man was only physically in the room, his mind already fighting the distant battle. Without thinking, Anthony gave the man a salute, making the man in the Royal Rhodesian Air Force uniform smile. They both smiled at each other while the pair went off to lunch, Ralph Madgwick following the interchange.
Both Ralph and Anthony were silent, thinking the same thoughts.
“Is the Handley-Page still in the hangar?” asked Anthony.
“Better ask Tembo. He was the last to fly in the plane with Tinus Oosthuizen. The tyres will be flat. I take it you fly? That chap was scared.”
“So would I be.”
“Is Tinus all right?”
“I hope so. I’ll have a look at the Handley-Page.”
“You’re wise to keep out of the RAF.”
“You never know. February is a long way away.”
“Are you hungry?”
“I’m always hungry. Mum says I have worms.”
“The RAF has a flying training school at Gwelo. Some of the chaps training there want to come back to Rhodesia after the war. It’s a bit hot right now but generally the highveld climate is perfect. When the rains finally break it will cool down.”
“That was thunder outside.”
“Better have lunch and go back to the farm. Don’t want to be caught between two rivers. Rebecca still worries about me. Took to Africa like a duck to water. Misses her father. Had her mother out. What a disaster. Mrs Rosenzweig and Mrs Brigandshaw both trying to rule the roost at the same time. We were married on the farm. Did I tell you that? Becky ran off from her father’s apartment in New York to find me in England. I’d gone to Rhodesia so she followed. Apart from my odd forced night in this hotel we have never been parted. The cynics say you can’t love someone all your life. We have. Hope you have the same luck. Come on. I’m starving.”
“Why don’t they serve cold roast beef?”
“Don’t be silly. Cold Yorkshire pudding is soggy and horrible. The kids are looking forward to meeting you. Be prepared for a million questions.”
The only English thing missing with the lunch was a foot of snow on the ground outside the dining room window. The dining room was full. They ate the food and went home. When they left the man and his girl were still holding hands across their table. They both only had eyes for each other.
“Came in the truck. Hope you don’t mind. Transport is expensive to Elephant Walk so I always fill the back of the truck up when I come into Salisbury. Despite the lunch we all hate coming into town. Once you’ve found your own peace and quiet you don’t need people. Let’s go. I have a surprise for you. For you and your father. Isn’t he worried about the Blitz? Every night they are saying on the radio London docks are burning, every night. How do people live? Get used to it? Go about their ordinary lives?”
“Dad sleeps on the platform of Charing Cross Tube station. Some sleep in between the rails. They turn the electricity off on the rails at night. The Germans only bomb at night. When you’ve been through what dad’s been through in his life, what’s a few German bombs? The night fighters don’t do any good. Why the Germans have switched to coming over at night. When they tried hitting Fighter Command’s airfields and radar stations during the day they were massacred. The Messerschmitt is no match for a Spitfire or a Hurricane in a dogfight. Some say it was Churchill bombing Berlin that changed Hitler’s mind. The Cape Times thinks the Luftwaffe were losing too many pilots they couldn’t afford. Some in the South African papers are saying the peak of the Battle of Britain is over. That Germany will not gain air supremacy over England. That trying to land the German Army on British soil will be impossible. London can take it. They’ll have to if we want to win the war. The Royal Navy hasn’t been touched. Why we were able to evacuate the British Army from Dunkirk. The Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy and every small boat that would float. A friend of Dad’s went down in a small boat on his fourteenth trip. He’d spent Christmas with us. Flew with us to Romanshorn before the war. Phillip Crookshank was the only one on board the Seagull when it took a direct hit from a German dive-bomber. Dad wrote to me when he found out. The family are still on the Isle of Wight. A wife and two small boys. I do
n’t know what I’d do if anything happened to Dad. His wife’s name is Mavis. Frank had a fist fight with the eldest boy when they spent last Christmas with us at Hastings Court. It doesn’t seem possible to me that Mr Crookshank is dead. He was so alive at Christmas.”
“I’m sorry, Anthony. Even out here the war gets real and close. I was eighteen when the last war ended. Lost my small finger.”
“I’m seventeen. By the look of it this one has just started. It’s wrong being able to fly an aeroplane. I’ll be eighteen in May. What the hell am I going to do? Did you see the look in that chap’s eyes?”
“Just don’t talk about it in front of your grandmother. Her son George was killed in the last war. What triggered your father to go to England in 1915 and join the Royal Flying Corps. Revenge. Keep the war out of it. Aunty Madge expects a cable every moment of the day. We may be six thousand miles away but the war sits right with us on Elephant Walk. My wife’s Jewish. Just about her whole race has been rounded up in occupied Europe. Stories filter through the Jews are being systematically slaughtered. What makes people do things like that?”
“I’ll avoid the war, Mr Madgwick.”
“Call me Ralph, we’re not so formal in Rhodesia.”
For half an hour they were silent, thinking their own deep thoughts. Anthony had never known his Uncle George. There was no point in worrying about his father or Tinus. But, always, they were in his thoughts.
“There it is. What do you think of that, Anthony?”
“What’s all the water?”
“The Mazoe dam.”
