by Peter Rimmer
“Now try and tell me he’s a fraud,” said Simon. Solly was now standing on the platform next to him surrounded by the crowd.
A man came out of the crowd, pushing through the throng. The Preacher saw the man and smiled. The two men moved towards each other and embraced. The Preacher, taking the man off his feet and turning him round in a bear hug. Simon thought the Preacher had seen something in the crowd. The man’s eyes had grown big with sudden understanding. A shot rang out, followed by a second and a third. The Preacher’s head exploded from the front onto the man he had protected. Both men collapsed on the platform. Everyone was screaming.
Simon looked to see where the shots had come from. By the sound of them he thought the shots had been fired from a pistol. The sound of the fourth shot came from another direction. Simon knew the sound this time for certain. A .303 army issue rifle. People were running in all directions. Simon could no longer see anything of the Preacher on the ground. The crowd was dispersing from the platform quickly. People were staring from the stationary train, too frightened to get out.
When the crowds dispersed a little, Simon could see the Preacher was lying on the platform. He was lying on top of the other man. Simon was sure both were dead. Over towards the ticket office a man with black hair was lying on his back on the ground. Simon could see he had been shot through the right eye. Without being told, Simon knew the man was dead.
“Get photographs, Solly,” he said grimly, “someone may have killed my book.”
While Solly held up the flashgun with the shiny metal bowl towards the bloody corpses on the platform, Simon looked around. No one in authority had yet come forward. A black man was standing in the doorway of the station waiting room, a bolt-action rifle in his hand. Simon smiled grimly to himself. He had been right. The last shot had come from a .303 fired by the black man. Simon was not sure whether to interview the black man or look at the corpses. He had never seen a dead man before.
The pretty girl from Mafeking was running down the platform screaming the name ‘Harry’. Simon understood. The man under the Preacher was Harry Brigandshaw, the Preacher’s brother-in-law. He wondered what the girl had to do with Harry Brigandshaw.
The girl had reached the dead men and was down on her knees, the cloche hat falling off her head onto the Preacher’s back. A crowd was again forming, ringing the Preacher. Another crowd of people were gathering around the dead man with the black hair. People were getting off the train to have a look, leaving the carriage doors open in their hurry.
A policeman in a starched, sleeveless khaki shirt and leather Sam Browne across his chest was striding down the platform. Even in the African heat he wore leather puttees and brown leather boots. All the leather was highly polished. The policeman wore a peaked hat on his head. Simon doubted the man was nineteen years old. Doubted if he shaved. His face was still pink from the English climate.
With surprising authority the policeman bent down and gently pulled the Preacher off Harry Brigandshaw. Underneath, Harry Brigandshaw’s face was covered in blood. The girl from the Mafeking railway platform screamed. The policeman was looking at the Preacher for any sign of life.
The man’s whole forehead had exploded outwards. Simon who was five yards away understood. Somewhere he had read about soft-nosed bullets that shattered on impact causing a massive hole to the body. Simon thought someone in Geneva had tried to ban soft-nosed bullets during the war. No one would have recognised the Preacher.
To Simon’s surprise, Harry Brigandshaw brought up his arm and clutched the girl who was kneeling over him. They held each other for a long time. Then they got to their feet.
Having got up Harry Brigandshaw wiped some of the Preacher’s blood from his face. He was taking control of the situation despite the efforts of the young policeman. Harry Brigandshaw was waving back a younger girl who was trying to push her way through from the back of the crowd.
“Stay where you are, Madge! Don’t let the children see him! Take them away for God’s sake!… TEMBO! TEMBO! IS HE DEAD?”
“Yes, baas,” said the man in the doorway without shouting. “One shot through the eye.”
“Ask someone to get an ambulance.”
“I’ll do that, sir,” said the policeman.
“Tina, you’re covered in blood.”
“Who would do this, Harry?”
“Mervyn Braithwaite. My old CO. His target was me not Barend. Barend saw him just before he fired and put himself between me and the gun.”
“My name is Simon Haller from the Rhodesia Herald.”
“I don’t care who you are.”
“Can I talk to you?”
“No, you bloody well can’t. That’s my best friend dead on the floor.”
“Can I quote that?”
“You’re a leech.”
The young policeman had to stop Harry throwing a punch.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said Simon.
“Then stop that damn man taking pictures or I’ll smash his camera. To hell with all wars. The British killed this man by hanging his father for treason. The Germans killed that man over there by turning an unstable man into a killer. I hope God now lets both of them rest in peace.”
“Can I quote that, Brigandshaw?”
“Yes, that you can… How’d you know my name?”
“It’s my business…”
“Are you all right, Tembo?” Harry called.
“No, baas. I don’t kill no one before. He trying to kill you, baas. Same man kill your wife.”
“I’ll want a full statement from both of you,” said the policeman.
“I’m sure you will,” said Harry, grimly. “Tina, take the car to Meikles. I’ll come to you later… How are you?” he was trying to smile.
“I’m fine. I’m pregnant, Harry.”
“God indeed does work in strange ways.”
“I’m sorry, Harry.”
“I’m not… Go and find Madge, her mother and the children. Tembo will help you with your luggage… Your hat is covered in blood.”
“Leave it, Harry. I imagined everything when we met. Except this. What are you going to do?”
“Marry you for one thing… Now go and help my sister and her mother, Alison. That bastard just killed her husband, her son, instead of me.”
“WHERE’S my daddy? WHERE is my daddy?” It was Tinus from behind the crowd.
“Please, Tina. Get the children away. They must never remember him like this or it will sear their minds for the rest of their lives… I’ll have to be a father to them. Yes, that will be it. Father. I’ve never been a father before. No. I’ve never been that. Go Tina, now!”
“Are you all right, sir?” asked the policeman.
“What do you think, sonny… No. That’s rude. I’m sorry.”
Harry Brigandshaw was unashamedly crying when Solly Goldman got his last photograph. Then he and Simon Haller quickly melted away into the crowd. Simon was still writing in his notebook in his bad shorthand as they walked.
“What a story,” he said when they found a taxi. He still had his overnight bag slung over his left shoulder.
“Do you know something, Simon, you are one callous bastard,” said Solly.
“You were not thinking the rights and wrongs of it when you got that last photograph. So stop being a hypocrite. A story is a story. You know that as well as anyone… We might even get a smile out of our charming editor… Come on. We have a deadline to meet. The story will definitely syndicate… There’s a whole story about Brigandshaw and his old CO from the war. A cover-up in England… I have vague memories of that story. They put the man in a lunatic asylum. Must have escaped or they let him out.”
By the time they were in the taxi, Solly Goldman had stopped listening. If he knew any way else to make a living, he would change his job. They fed off other people’s tragedy, and it wasn’t right. He didn’t like himself all of a sudden. He decided he was as bad as the rest of them. A hypocrite.
When they reached the offices o
f the Rhodesia Herald, he was hoping the last photograph would come out well. By the time they had dinner together in the dining room of Meikles Hotel, he and Simon, neither of them felt any guilt. The photographs had come out perfectly. Solly had developed them himself.
They took Barend to New Kleinfontein where they buried him. He was the first to lie in the Oosthuizen family cemetery. Harry was numb. The shock of near death had reached him the following morning. They had all stayed the night at Meikles Hotel. That afternoon Len Merryl had been brought in by the police from Elephant Walk to identify the man with the black hair shot through the right eye. Len Merryl signed a statement saying the man was the same man who killed Willie McNam, splashing blood over Teresa. The fact Len stated the man then with a full beard had shouted ‘I’m not a wet fish and you’re dead’ was final confirmation. Three people had stated they heard the man scream the same words when he shot the Preacher. There were no charges brought against Tembo. The police said it was his right to defend his baas against a killer. That if Tembo had not fired his rifle Harry Brigandshaw would also have died.
At the open graveside at New Kleinfontein, with Barend deep down in the damp red earth of Africa from where he had sprung, Harry could only see the small boy, the companion of his youth. In the way a man loved another man Harry knew he had loved Barend Oosthuizen. That he would miss him for the rest of his life. That he would always remember their lives together with joy and happiness.
Alison, Barend’s mother, went back to the lonely house at New Kleinfontein and locked the doors. Harry said he would write to Katinka in the Cape. He was going to ask her to come up to Rhodesia and take her mother back with her. There were too many bad memories of New Kleinfontein. Harry would not allow his childhood nurse to become a recluse hiding with her memories. It was because of Harry she had come out to Africa in the first place. Harry thought Katinka would know what to do. There was a special bond between mothers and daughters. Alison was only fifty-five years old. Too young to end her life alone.
Three days later they buried Mervyn Braithwaite in the cemetery next to the new church in Avondale. The bishop had refused to bury a murderer next to Salisbury Cathedral. The Reverend Rex Walsh had been a padre in the trenches during the war. At the graveyard Harry was dressed in his old Royal Flying Corps uniform. It seemed the most appropriate. He had placed his own Military Cross on top of the coffin not knowing where to find the medal that had been awarded to Mervyn Braithwaite for bravery in France. Harry had arranged a military funeral. When the lone soldier from the Rhodesian army played the Last Post, Harry stood to attention and saluted. Harry knew then he hated war more than anything else. War corrupted all who it touched. ‘Thou shall not kill’ God had said, but they did. Harry gave up a silent prayer for forgiveness to the Germans he had killed during the war in France. To their families still mourning their deaths. Other than his brother George being killed by the Germans he had no idea what the war had been about. What had made England and Germany go to war with each other. He silently prayed in front of his old CO’s grave that it would never happen again. That young men would never go to war again to kill each other.
Harry had told Tina and the rest of his family to stay on Elephant Walk. When he reached home, he saddled his horse and rode off into the bush without a word. He knew there were no answers to be found, but he hoped. By thinking, he hoped and prayed he would find an answer to the cruelties that seemed to have no point in life.
Harry stayed in the bush for three days despite the rain. He had ridden far from Elephant Walk. Once he thought he saw a glimmer of hope but it slipped out of his mind.
He rode back wet, cold and shivering. They put him into bed delirious. He had malaria again and for days had no idea what was happening. When the fever broke he woke to find Tina sitting by his bedside. He was in his old and familiar bedroom. The picture of the teddy bears’ picnic was still on the wall. The family of teddy bears was sitting in an English wood, the picnic spread out on the soft green moss beneath a surrounding oak tree.
“So you’re not a dream,” he said to her.
“No I’m not, Harry.”
“Did the others really die?”
“Yes they did.”
“Tell my mother I’d like some chicken soup. I’m hungry.”
Tina went to the closed door to the bedroom and put her hand out to the white round doorknob to open the door.
“Are you still pregnant?”
“I’m still pregnant.”
“That’s very good.”
When Tina brought the hot soup back ten minutes later Harry was fast asleep. The ginger cat was sitting on the windowsill fast asleep with his eyes open. Outside the dogs were chasing each other. The children had been told their daddy had gone away again. They were shouting at each other, too young to comprehend. Madge was sitting on a wooden bench under a msasa tree trying to read a book. She had the look of a person far away. Tina watched her for a while. Madge smiled, her whole face lighting up. Then she began to cry, sobbing her heart out.
Tina sat down in the chair next to the peacefully sleeping Harry and began to eat his chicken soup. When he woke she would go and get him some more from the kitchen. Everything was going to be all right. She was sure of it. When she looked across, the cat had gone. The window was wide open. She got up and stood in front of the teddy bears’ picnic to have a better look. It was difficult to imagine Harry as a small boy when she supposed his mother or father had put the picture on the wall. One day soon their own son would be looking at the bears drinking tea and eating sandwiches, the red-breasted robin in the corner waiting for the crumbs. The picture to Tina was very beautiful. The gentle, more beautiful side of life. She found herself crying silently for all of them.
18
Soldier of the Queen, December 1922
A week before Christmas Tembo drove Jim Bowman into town to do his Christmas shopping. At the top of the list was an engagement ring for Jenny Merryl. Jenny had taken the day off from the hospital and was to meet Jim at twelve o’clock in Meikles Hotel lounge. They would then go to the jeweller together. Harry Brigandshaw had given him a loan against next year’s bonus from the tobacco crop that was growing evenly with the good rains. They had had to only refill five per cent of the first planting where the seedlings had failed to take. In the maize lands small green spiked sentinels marched in straight lines down the lands. Jim knew the airstrip he had helped to build with Pierre Le Jeune had something to do with Harry’s generosity. With the damage to the Handley Page less than expected, Harry had found a South African pilot who had flown in the war over France, to fly the plane to Elephant Walk. The pilot would then return to Cape Town by train. The wedding to Tina Pringle was scheduled for Christmas Eve and Harry had no wish to make another long journey to collect the plane himself. By Christmas Eve the marriage banns would have been read in the missionary church built by Harry’s Uncle Nat, the Bishop of Westchester and hopeful future Archbishop of Canterbury. The uncle who had started what he considered his illustrious career by planting the tallest cross on a spire in southern Africa. A cross that at evening time threw a long shadow far over the virgin African bush.
After picking out a small diamond that had just surfaced deep in the big hole at Kimberley, Jim was going to take a longer way home after dropping Jenny at the hospital. The jeweller had measured her third finger and Jenny would pick up her engagement ring on the following day. Jim had paid the jeweller in cash before they left. With the rest of his purchases in the car he had two more visits to make before letting Tembo drive them back to Elephant Walk so they arrived home before dark. There were signs of no more rain and Jim had work to do early the next morning. To maximise the nutrients in the soil around the tobacco seedlings, the lands had to be constantly cleared of weeds. Jim rose six days a week with the sun and left the lands with the gang when the sun went down, both his breakfast and lunch brought to him in the lands by a young man who looked after Jim and the new house. The boy-man was teaching Jim
the Shona language, a painful process as neither of them spoke the other man’s language. The gang had two hours off in the midday heat to go back to their village on the farm for lunch prepared by their wives while Jim repaired any of the machinery that had broken. There was always something broken on a farm and Jim had proved his worth as a mechanic, sometimes studying the manual by candlelight deep into the night.
The first stop was at the offices of the Rhodesia Herald where the idea of marrying Jenny had begun. He was going to place an announcement of the engagement in the personal column of the paper, to run for three days. There was no point in saying their respective parents wished to announce anything as the people in Rhodesia did not know either Jim or Jenny’s mothers and both their fathers were dead. Nervous the whole thing would not take place, Jim had yet to write the news to his mother in Neston. Even if the mothers wanted to come to the wedding at the missionary church, there was no money to pay their passage. Not even Tina Pringle’s mother and father were coming out from England for her marriage to the rich Harry Brigandshaw as there was not enough time. Jim suspected the girl was pregnant, but it was none of his business and anyway Harry was his boss. He had heard the brother and his wife had been told the date and where the marriage was taking place. The brother lived in Johannesburg. Jim remembered his first meeting with the girl with a rueful smile. It was sad that amidst all the new happiness, Madge Oosthuizen was visibly a wreck. Jim imagined she had loved the Preacher very much. There was nothing that anyone in the family was able to do to comfort her. Time would heal Jim hoped but time often went slowly in adversity. At least the children thought their father had just gone away again and none of them seemed to have known him very well. Jim had learnt not to ask delicate questions. With Jenny moving into the cottage after their wedding they were going to do as much for the three children as possible.
