by Peter Rimmer
“Poor Mildred. The war killed more than the dead.”
“You don’t love her? Isn’t that why you came?”
“I came to find a new life… I never gave her any ideas about love. She was my cousin and in trouble.”
“She knows that. People hope. Like me. I hope to marry your sister. Get a farm of my own. This year I get a bonus. Three per cent of the crop. The government will give me land if I prove I can farm and show them enough money in the bank to grow the first crop. There’s so much empty land in Rhodesia. Three more years, I can make it… I think Jenny’s going to marry a Belgian. He’s rich, charming and flies aeroplanes. He showed me how to build our airstrip. Mr Brigandshaw has a plane being assembled in Cape Town… There is a family of kudu on the next ridge. Stay where you are, Len.”
Len heard the shot five minutes later. All the time he was thinking of Cousin Mildred. The thought of marriage and responsibility had been the last thing on his mind. From the fevered body of Mildred Len’s mind went to Teresa in the bar in Cape Town. There was blood all over her front. For a second Len thought the gunshot that killed the kudu was the gunshot that killed Willie McNam.
Breaking cover, Len went forward to help his friend with the carcass of the kudu. They were going to cut a pole and hang the carcass so they could carry it on their shoulders.
When they got back to the family compound with the dead buck, Harry Brigandshaw was waiting for Len. They left for Salisbury with Harry driving the Austin. Len was going to report to Salisbury central police station. Deliberately, Harry had not told him the man was clean-shaven and dressed like a gentleman.
At the police station, the police said the man had not been found even though a thorough search had been made.
When they got back to Elephant Walk, Mildred and her son Johnny were gone. Jim Bowman had taken them back to a farm outside Salisbury in the horse and trap.
“Are you going to get a farm, Jim?” Jenny asked when Jim came back alone after tea. The horse was spent having come back at a spanking trot all the way.
“That’s the idea.”
“I’d like that.”
“What about Le Jeune?”
“He’s old enough to be my father. Poor Mildred. She was hoping so much from Len… Does Len have to go to Cape Town?”
“They haven’t found the man. Probably never will… Do we have an understanding, Jenny?”
“Why not, Jim? You’re my class. It’s better that way. We know what to expect… I have to be back at the hospital on Monday… Roast venison for supper.”
“I know, I shot the buck this morning.”
They were arm in arm, comfortable with each other. ‘Jenny is such a practical girl,’ Jim thought to himself with satisfaction.
Mildred had cried all the way to Salisbury.
Only the first letter from Len to his sister Jenny had given her hope. The letter had asked after her. Len was coming to Africa. Her hopes had risen. Her life had had a future.
Were it not for little Johnny she told herself, she wanted to die. She had been so silly. Who would ever want to marry a woman who had earned her living as a prostitute?
Soon after the Salvation Army had taught her the rudiments of reading and writing she had written to her cousin Jenny Merryl in Rhodesia. The old woman who taught her lessons had helped put the words onto a sheet of paper. The woman had addressed the letter so the post office could read where to send it. Her own writing was not very good. She had heard from her mother that Jenny worked at the main hospital in Salisbury. Mildred had hoped that address would be enough. Jenny was the only tenuous contact Mildred had with Len. After all, Len was Jenny’s sister. Once Len had sailed from Woolwich docks he had vanished from her life. The vicar at Neston had replied on behalf of her mother. Mildred had wanted to show her mother she could now write. However badly. The bit about Jenny in the vicar’s letter had just been her luck.
A patient of Jenny’s had been in the Salisbury hospital for six months. He had lost both his legs and his wife when his car hit an elephant on the road between Salisbury and Bulawayo. The man had only gone thirty miles out of Salisbury. He had three young children on a farm. The children had been looked after by friends. When Mildred’s barely readable letter arrived for Jenny at the hospital, the man was about to go home. The doctors had done the best they could.
The man would be able to propel himself around in a wheelchair. He would not be able to look after himself, let alone three children. With no crop planted on his farm that year and the bills from the hospital still to be paid he was almost broke. Jenny felt sorry for the man. Cousin Mildred’s letter might well be a godsend.
Jenny had told the man the story of Johnny Lake killed in the war leaving her cousin Mildred with an illegitimate child. She had proposed Cousin Mildred come to Rhodesia and care for the man’s family. The man could instruct his labourers on the farm from his wheelchair.
There was still enough money to bring Mildred to Rhodesia third class. The man thought any cousin of Jenny Merryl would be wonderful. Jenny had not told the man Mildred had been a whore.
When Jim Bowman dropped Mildred at the farm with her dreams of marrying Len Merryl shattered, she had been working for Cedric Bland for six months without pay. Only when the crop came in would she receive some money.
She was in such a state when Jim Bowman left that he got it all out of her. He was a patient man from sitting so long in a wheelchair. The story of Len holding her body in bed to keep her warm made him cry without shame. He had been through so much in a year he knew the meaning of pain, mental and physical. Cedric Bland understood desperation and why Mildred had become a whore.
Johnny Lake, the son of the soldier killed in the Western Front, now four years old, had gone to play with the other children the moment he was home on the farm. Little Johnny was always happy. When Mildred was sobbing in Cedric Bland’s arms draped over the wheelchair he was smiling to himself over the top of her shoulder. For Cedric, Mildred was indeed a godsend.
Ten minutes after Tembo had recognised Mervyn Braithwaite, alias the Honourable Peyton Fitzgerald, alias John Perry, he was back in his room at Meikles Hotel packing his bags. He kept a taxi waiting outside the station for a quick escape once he had killed Harry Brigandshaw and any of his women on the platform. The part of his brain that hated Harry for calling him Fishy Braithwaite at Oxford and stealing the affection of his fiancée Sara Wentworth was as clear as crystal. As a precaution he had rented a bolthole in a private house on the wrong side of the railway track in the name of his first alias John Perry. He still had the forged passport in the name of John Perry. Coming down to a low-class accent was simple. Mrs Hill was as common as dirt.
Before anyone could begin checking the hotel registers with his description, he had paid his bill and been dropped at Mrs Hill’s door.
“Thought you got lost, Mr Perry. Want a cup of tea?”
The last thing on Mervyn Braithwaite’s mind was a cup of tea and conversation with Mrs Hill. He paid off the taxi and with a bag in each hand sought the refuge of the room he had yet to use. He had paid Mrs Hill in advance. He just smiled at her on the way into the wooden house.
“Pretty smart luggage for a bloke like you,” said Mrs Hill before he could close the door to his room. She had followed him. Obviously his new landlady thought she had a chance of getting more than a lodger. “Did you steal them suitcases?” she giggled in what she thought was intimate laughter. To Mervyn it sounded like a cackle. “How long you staying?”
His good clothes though were the problem.
“What you up to? Don’t want no criminals, I don’t. A woman on her own has to be careful.”
“In England,” Mervyn said in his best cockney accent, “I was a gentleman’s gentleman.”
“Can you speak posh?”
“Of course I can,” said Mervyn breaking into his normal speech.
“Oh you are a card… Sure you don’t want that cup of tea, Mr Perry?”
“When I
come back from shopping.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Mervyn bought enough food for three days so he would not have to go out of the house. He also bought the Rhodesia Herald as was his habit. The story of Barend Oosthuizen, the Preacher, returning to Rhodesia on the train, was headline news. Mervyn read the article without interest until the paper said the Preacher was Harry Brigandshaw’s brother-in-law.
“Got you, you bastard. This time I got you. You’ll meet him at the station and I’ll be waiting.”
His whole body was as calm as a snake lying out in the winter sun. He checked the small leather case in his bag for the gun. Then he went and took tea with Mrs Hill. Nothing was going to stop his revenge.
He was smiling all over his face when Mrs Hill poured the tea.
“There you are, ducks.”
“Thank you, Mrs Hill.”
“What are you doing in Rhodesia?”
He spun Mrs Hill a story of which Philip Neville would have been proud of. Not only had the newspaper told him Harry Brigandshaw was the Preacher’s brother-in-law, it had told him the arrival time of the train from Johannesburg. The paper said there would be a big crowd at the station. The Preacher was going to preach. From the depths of hell a mile under the earth the paper said the Preacher had been saved. God had forgiven his sins and there were plenty of them. That part of the article made no impression on Mervyn Braithwaite.
He liked the idea of a big crowd. Of everyone being distracted. If Harry Brigandshaw was not at the railway station, he would have to go all the way to Elephant Walk to kill him. But he would be there. Mervyn felt it in his water. Brigandshaw’s time had finally come.
Mrs Hill, enthralled by his story that included a gold mine that had belonged to his late employer had not even questioned the tale being told in an upper-class British accent. Nor the fact that a man with a gold mine would stay in one of her rooms.
Across in London, while Tina Pringle was travelling through the arid bush of Bechuanaland in the same train carrying the Preacher, Barnaby St Clair heard of her affair with Harry Brigandshaw. The raging jealousy even frightened his brother Merlin.
They were in the Trocadero, London’s supper club, and had ordered a whisky each. Merlin had not been thinking straight when, as he thought a moment too late, he let the cat out of the bag. He should have known his brother. Some things were best kept away from conversation. For Merlin, who had also received a twist in the stomach at the news, his first words were spoken without malice or forethought.
“Did you hear Harry’s got a new girlfriend? Story last night I heard was they didn’t go to the ship’s dining room for days. Holed up in Harry’s cabin. The owner’s one is quite something my friend was telling me. Had a letter from his sister posted in Cape Town. His sister and mother are visiting relatives in South Africa.”
“Good for Harry,” Barnaby had said. “He deserves it after losing Lucinda. To be shot dead by a madman. I think of her often… Brett was far too young for Harry… The Golden Moth is still playing to packed houses. She’s been seen all over town with Oscar Fleming, the impresario. And he really is old enough to be her father.” Barnaby cackled nastily. “What makes good-looking gals go for old men? Such a waste of youth.”
“Harry’s new girl is not much older than Brett.”
“Anyone I know?”
“Tina. Tina Pringle.”
For a moment, Merlin thought his brother was going to pick up a chair and smash it over a dining table.
“I’m sorry, Barnaby. I thought.”
“Shut up!”
“Don’t be rude, Barnaby.”
“I said shut up! After marrying our sister, how dare Harry sleep with a member of the family that has been subservient to the St Clairs for generations.”
“You did.”
“Discreetly. As a mistress. Not out in the open in the owner’s suite for everyone to see… Who told you?”
Merlin ignored the question.
“He really is a bastard,” said Barnaby.
“Maybe he’ll make an honest woman out of her.”
“Don’t be bloody ridiculous. She’s mine. She’s my mistress. He’s damn well not going to have her. She’s always been mine.”
“But he has, Barnaby.”
After the first shock, Merlin was quietly smirking. For once he had something Barnaby did not have. A mistress. In a great flat. A daughter from the mistress quite devoted to him. Every time he went to see them his daughter said she loved him. The image of his daughter Genevieve floated into his mind. Contentment flowed with the thought. He was lying to himself a little. She did not say she loved him every visit.
By the time the drinks came, Barnaby was gone. To Merlin, there did not seem to be so much point to Barnaby’s wealth after all. Even with his own money there was still something Barnaby could not have. Tina Pringle had obviously refused to be his mistress.
Finishing his drink, Merlin decided to go and visit Esther in the flat he rented for them in Chelsea. Outside the Trocadero, it was raining hard. The doorman looked at Merlin’s back as Merlin went out the door without his overcoat. Merlin did not have an umbrella. The doorman shook his head at the strange ways of the gentry.
In the taxi, Merlin gave the driver Esther’s address. He was dripping wet from all the rain and smiling to himself. He had now forgotten that once he too had mooned over Tina Pringle. He was happy. He was truly happy. He was going to visit his eight-year-old daughter who said she loved him.
17
The Teddy Bears’ Picnic, November 1922
The train cut a straight line through the arid, flat bushveld of Bechuanaland trailing white smoke back over the top of the long carriages. Outside the window, Simon Haller had watched the herds of game, hour after hour. Elephant. Buffalo. Black rhinoceros. Zebra. Giraffe, their tall heads above the sun-baked trees. Buck. All kinds of buck. Impala. Kudu in the mean shadow of the trees. Wildebeest. Packs of wild spotted dog. A pride of lions thirty yards from the safety of his passing window. Bush, game and sun. But no people. Not even a hut to show there had been man. As if God had taken man from the landscape.
They had stopped at Mafeking so the passengers could stretch their legs before the long, dry haul to Bulawayo, the Place of the Killings. Bulawayo was the first town in Rhodesia where they would stretch their legs for the last part of the journey across the country to Salisbury and Simon’s home.
He had tried to interview the Preacher on the platform at Mafeking station. People had gathered quickly to see the man with the flowing blonde hair, the white robe to the floor, the iron cross on his chest. Instead of an interview he and Solly Goldman the photographer had been subjected to a sermon full of passion. Solly had taken three photographs of the man with the burning slate green eyes. Simon had been unable, as he said to his editor afterwards, to get a word in edgeways. The crowd was spellbound. The railway man in the dark blue uniform and peaked hat had to go up to the Preacher and tell him to get back on the train. No one had taken any notice of the guard’s whistle which he had blown furiously. Once the Preacher disappeared into the train, the passengers clambered back on board. The great metal monster of an engine blew its steam whistle with final authority and the clanking iron wheels began to turn on the iron rails and the journey north continued. The Preacher had said nothing Simon had not heard before. It was the way he said it that kept the people spellbound.
The train passed over a dried-up riverbed. The bridge that spanned it was a hundred yards long. Once every five years the river was a raging torrent. Elephants dug the riverbed with their tusks, making deep holes. Muddy water seeped into the deep holes for the elephant to drink. There were three elephants below the railway bridge digging for water as they passed. Neither Simon nor Solly had spoken for hours, lost in their own thoughts. The four other passengers were either asleep or feigning sleep; they all had their eyes closed.
“Do you think he means what he says?” asked Solly. The rhythm of the train was constant. Clac
kety-clack. Clackety-clack.
“No man ever knows what is truly in another man’s head,” said Simon. “Preachers like Barend Oosthuizen and popular politicians tell us what we want to hear. We all want to live good lives and go to heaven. If we believe that during our life on earth, the reality of death doesn’t matter so much. We can face our own mortality with hope rather than fear… Did you ever listen to a popular politician who wasn’t committing fraud by promising to give the people what they want provided they vote for him? So they will give him that plum job in government? He knows better than the people he can never fulfil his promises. When he is in power, the people don’t matter to him until the next election. Sometimes they won’t give up power and turn nasty using the police and the army to further their private agenda of power and wealth.”
“ARE you saying there isn’t a God?”
“I don’t know, Solly. Without God there’s no point to anything. Why everyone was listening on the platform. They want to be reassured. They want someone to carry their burden. Provided they believe in God it will all be worthwhile in the end. People have to believe, Solly. Whether this preacher used the words of God to save his own neck from the hangman’s noose, only God knows.”
“So you think he’s a fraud?”
“We’re all frauds, Solly… One of those photographs is going on the front page of my book. The best photograph. The best one.”
“Are you going to call him a fraud in your book?”
“Don’t be silly. I want to sell thousands of copies. I’m going to tell my readers what they want to hear. Like the politicians. We scribes carry the burden of our own sins. Our selfish pursuits, however we dress them up for the public.”
