by John Wilcox
And so it proved. The air was crisp, dry and refreshing and it took them little more than an hour of easier riding to come upon the first Boer homestead. It was a simple wooden shack, with outlying rocky kraals to house sheep and cattle, although no animals were to be seen. As Wolseley had predicted, their welcome was not particularly warm, but for four shillings and sixpence (‘Bit steep that, bach,’ murmured Jenkins) they were given soup and mutton and allowed to lay their blankets on straw in a dry-stone barn.
The experience was repeated six times as they followed Simon’s compass bearing towards the west, and these encounters provided Simon with his first real opportunity of studying the Boers. He had met them in Natal, of course, but those who were attached to the army there were horse wranglers, adventurers acting as scouts, and other dropouts from the mainstream of the Dutch pastoral economy. But it was here, in the Free State, that the voortrekkers had first outspanned their waggons in the course of their 1830s exodus from the English in the south. Others had gone north to create the Transvaal and some had peeled off north-east and then south again, down the Drakensberg passes, to keep their awful appointment with Dingane’s impalement stakes. But the Free Staters were the first settlers of the plateau country. Here for Simon were the real Boers, the surly, fundamentalist farmers who considered that God had given them the land and who wanted no interference in their freedom to farm it how they liked and to treat the indigenous black people as their inferiors, created to provide them with cheap labour.
As they neared the interior of the state, the farms became more numerous, perhaps twenty to thirty miles apart, and most of them almost primitive. The homestead was usually a square building with a stoep or veranda on one side, on to which the great room - usually twenty-five feet square and some twelve feet high - opened, with small rooms about ten foot square on each side. Rough boards provided the ceiling to the main room and in these was set a hole, reached by an unfixed ladder. On these boards were kept the farm produce and stores: forage, mealies and the like. From farm to farm the inhabitants were remarkably similar. The men wore old corduroy suits with wide battered hats, and they punctuated their few words with a gob of saliva, spat outdoors and in. The women were dressed in shapeless black dresses and, as the sun went down and the temperature fell, shawls across their shoulders. Hands were soiled and the farmhouse usually bore a disagreeable odour of sour milk.
The ritual of arrival rarely changed. The visitors were welcomed to the family table, where, with plates turned bottom upwards, the patriarch would put his hand to his forehead and say grace. The women of the family served the food and grace would be repeated after the meal, which bore a remarkable sameness from house to house: fat mutton washed down with milk, sometimes with bread but rarely with vegetables. Occasionally, pumpkin was served, and there was always a tureen of fresh milk on the table. Wines or spirits were never offered, although this did not stop Jenkins from scanning each new room, as they entered it, in case a blessed miracle had occurred.
Their arrival was never met with enthusiasm, but the travellers began to realise that this represented no lack of hospitality, basic though it always was, but more an initial distrust of intruders - an attitude that usually relaxed once the price for the accommodation had been established. Conversation, at first stilted, monosyllabic and offered by the hosts in strongly accented English, always became easier when coffee was offered from a metal pot after the meal. The Boers seemed remarkably uninquisitive about their visitors (no comment was made on that first morning when Jenkins washed his bloodstained shirt and dried it before saddling up) but were quick to express their distrust of the British Government in London and its colonial representatives in Cape Town. Simon realised that, to these simple people, living in isolated family groups, the Great Trek to escape the British was as yesterday, although it had happened nearly fifty years before. Nevertheless, this prejudice never prevented care being taken to see that the guests were as well fed and made as comfortable as possible, given the spartan conditions under which they all lived. Simon was uneasy at their stubborn insularity, but he liked the Boers’ bluff courtesy and, once established within the house, Jenkins’s huge smile never failed to break down whatever barriers remained.
The pair made their way by compass bearing to the west, over the open veldt. It was not difficult riding through the karoo bush, picking their way between the white ant heaps and glorying in the keen, fresh air that made their cheeks tingle. Jenkins’s robust constitution soon made his shoulder dressing redundant and he returned to his self-appointed, if unwelcome, role as Simon’s riding master: ‘No, no, bach sir, grip with your knees a bit more, see, an’ don’t slouch, ’cos that will make your back ache . . .’
The air was good but the countryside now was dreary: endless plains broken here and there by small, flat-topped hills. There were no cornfields, no terraces or vineyards. Some thorny mimosa and wild jessamine poked through the thin, sandy soil but the travellers passed no ruins or other vestiges of the past. It was as though no one had ever lived there. It was country underdeveloped in every way.
Simon had set their course too far north, and they realised that they had crossed the unmarked border between the Free State and Griqualand West when they saw the first evidence of diamond diggings near the Vaal River: scratchings on the river bank, some hollowed down to five feet and long since deserted in favour of the greater riches to be found from the vertical-shaft mining in Kimberley itself.
Despite his original ignorance of the whereabouts or even the existence of Kimberley, Simon, like the rest of the readers of the British press, possessed vague background knowledge of the discovery of diamonds in this area years ago: the finding by the boy Erasmus Jacob of ‘a large shiny pebble’ - a stone which became the Eureka Diamond. And then, forty years later and only ten years ago now, the discovery of the great 83.50 carat Star of South Africa, ‘big enough to have choked an ostrich’, which sold for 55,000 dollars and prompted the beginning of the great South African diamond rush. He had expanded this knowledge on the ride through the Free State by gentle questioning of the farmers with whom they had lodged. One of these Boers, in fact, had previously farmed land by the Orange and Vaal Rivers and even, further south, in Kimberley itself, but, disgusted by the diggers’ greedy ways - their clumsy, noisy waggons, their shanty towns of portable iron houses brought from the coast, their mixtures of languages and currencies, their drinking and blasphemy and their tendency to swarm like ants and erode the earth - he had sold up and moved out on to the veldt. Kimberley, he grunted, had become a town of sin and degradation, its downward path marked since the de Beer brothers had been forced to sell their land, outside the town, when the first dry mines - diamondiferous ‘pipes’ leading down into the earth - had been established on it. Five years ago, ten thousand diggers had moved into Kimberley itself and begun working a patchwork of small diggings each only thirty-one feet square. Some of them had gone down a hundred feet, leaving only narrow tracks on the surface to act as roads. The farmer believed that God had shown his disapproval by allowing many of these to cave in, killing the blacks and whites working below. Only He knew how many mines and diggers there were there now, further corrupting the town and its people. Local farmers wouldn’t go near the place, except to buy basic necessities once a month. Then they were into and out of the town within an hour.
Simon had been told of the original rough community along the river beds, of tents under the willow trees lit by candles, where food was taken quickly - even a glance away from the ceaselessly rocking cradle sieves, the diggers’ ‘babies’, might mean the loss of a diamond. Of how when the second rush came in, lured by the promise of the ‘dry’ mining, the prospectors had been met by a hurricane with hail and wind that had torn through the tents and smashed the sieves. And of how they had all begun again, building a hotel made of mud, and even organising a ball for President Pretorius of the Transvaal, where the music was an accordion, a fiddle and a bass drum and the costumes ranged from tai
ls to overalls.
Then the indigenous Griquas had tried to reclaim their land and been met by the rifles of the diggers and the support of the Transvaal administration, so that they appealed to the British, who set up a board of enquiry - ‘Typical,’ spat the Boer - which decided that the Griquas did indeed own the land and promptly bought it for them. Now, Simon was warned, the British Government at the Cape was in the process of annexing Griqualand West and administered the diamond fields, but it was only concerned with making money on custom duty and there was little law and order. The diamond rush was over - but the place remained a den of iniquity.
Hearing all this, Simon had become even more concerned about Nandi’s safety. What sort of hell’s kitchen had she stumbled into? How could this gentle creature, conditioned by the ordered environment of a family home, have survived in such a barbaric environment? He and Jenkins exchanged anxious glances, but they had no choice but to contain their frustration and dig in their spurs to hurry on - now to the south-west - as fast as their tired horses could take them.
Chapter 4
At last, after their days in the saddle crossing the dreary plain, they topped a rise and looked down on the beginnings of surprisingly orderly rows of shacks which formed the outskirts of Kimberley. Before them were spread single-storeyed box-homes of timber and corrugated iron, with sad veranda stoeps and overhanging roofs held up by slender poles, stretching out in disciplined rows with, here and there, a few red-brick constructions standing out by virtue of their second storeys. The dirt roads seemed wide and virtually empty, although dust rose in the hazy distance from what appeared to be the centre of the town.
‘Phew.’ Jenkins blew out his cheeks. ‘Quite a big place, look you.’
‘Hmm. Bigger than I expected.’
They urged their horses down the incline and began to amble along the track ahead of them. In these suburbs, Kimberley appeared to be quiet and bourgeois - almost disappointing. They passed a church, shops and, later, even a two-storeyed theatre. The white people now strolling by on the narrow wooden sidewalks seemed to be formally dressed, mainly in black. As they approached the centre of the town, however, its character changed. Simon realised that many of the shops were, in fact, bars and gaming saloons advertising baccarat and chemin de fer. He counted five bars with evocative names: The Digger’s Rest, The Hard Times, The Scarlet Bar, The Old Cock, and The Perfect Cure. The keen eye of Jenkins noted that, on their windows and sometimes on boards hanging by the swing doors, were advertised their wares: Cape Brandy at 7s. 6d. a gallon, 17s. 6d. for a dozen quarter-bottles of Bass Ale, one glass of beer for 6d.
‘Bloody ’ell,’ he murmured. ‘They’re not exactly givin’ it away, are they?’
And there was hardly a woman to be seen on the sidewalks. Instead, the passage of the two travellers was observed by loafers who leaned back against the wooden walls, their thumbs hitched into their trouser belts, their eyes narrow beneath their slouch hats. Shoeless black men in tattered overalls loped along, their heads down, on journeys that seemed to carry no urgency. Then, as the pair passed a dance hall, they caught a glimpse of gaudily dressed women and heard the artificial tinkle of a pianola. Next door a ‘private bar’ offered its services.
‘Lively, then, isn’t it,’ observed Jenkins, his tongue moistening his lips. ‘I’d love a beer,’ he ventured, ‘but I think we ought to find Nandi right away, don’t you?’
Simon nodded. ‘No question about it. We’ve come too far to waste time now.’ He asked directions for Currey Street, and within five minutes they were discreetly inspecting, from the other side of the street, a simple wooden building, detached and set between two alleyways - a house that seemed no different from the others in this quiet, though broad, side street. From behind a tree set at forty-five degrees to the house they examined the building more closely. The single door remained closed and the windows shuttered. There was no sign of life, or, indeed, any indication that the place was occupied at all.
‘Strange,’ muttered Simon. ‘It’s a damned warm day but all the windows are closed.’
‘Gone away, then. Oh bugger it. What do we do now?’
‘There must be a back door.’ Simon pushed back his broad-brimmed hat and wiped his forehead. ‘We can’t be sure it’s empty. Look. I don’t want to put Nandi in more danger than she’s in already, so we should make a proper reconnaissance of the place before we decide how or when to intervene. You stay here and I will see if I can find a back entrance. Don’t reveal yourself or make yourself conspicuous while I’m gone. Right?’
‘Right.’
Simon walked back the way they had come and took the first turning to his left and then left again, counting his paces to where he estimated he was level with the Currey Street house. Another house confronted him, one with children playing in the front yard. It obviously backed on to the silent house - and there was an alleyway to the side. Simon did not wish to appear conspicuous, so he waited a few moments until someone turned into the alley and then followed a few paces behind. Sure enough, number 5 Currey Street did have a back entrance but it was hidden behind a rough fence. The windows at the back of the house were open, although cheap cotton curtains prevented him from seeing inside. With only a sidelong glance or two from under his hat brim, he walked back and, circuitously, rejoined Jenkins.
‘Well?’ The little Welshman was sweating profusely and frowning. The waiting game was not for him.
‘I believe that the house is occupied. There are open windows at the back, and no one would go away and leave windows open in this place. And the fact that everything is shut up facing the street in heat like this is suspicious.’
‘So what’s the plan?’
‘We ought to mount a watch on the place.’ Simon frowned and looked down the street to where they had tethered their horses to a rail. ‘But we can’t leave the horses for much longer in this sun and I am inclined to try just one careful frontal approach. After all, if Nandi and this Big Man have left, then we mustn’t waste time here.’ He made up his mind. ‘You stay here and I will go calling. But keep out of sight because I don’t want to reveal that there are two of us.’
Jenkins nodded, but his sweat-streaked face looked anxious. ‘Careful, then, bach sir. I’ll be watchin’. If you go in and nothin’s ’appened after a quarter of an hour, then I’ll come in after you, see.’
Simon crossed the road and approached the house openly, carefully looking at each number as though he was a stranger. Then he knocked loudly at number 5. Surprisingly, it was opened straight away. Had they been observed from the interior? He doubted it, for they had been very careful. From the darkness within a huge man emerged. He was all of six foot four inches tall, so that he stooped under the lintel, and was so wide that his shoulders almost touched the door frames either side of him. His clothes were those of a working Afrikaner but his face was unlike those of the Boer farmers Simon had met. It was seamed and sullen in expression and pock-marked and almost yellow in colour. His long black hair was tightly waved, as though curling irons had been applied. The eyes were black and they regarded Simon without expression.
‘Ja?’
‘Sorry to disturb, mate,’ said Simon, doing his best to sound working class. ‘Do yer speak English?’
The big man did not speak but nodded his head in affirmation.
‘Aw right. I’m lookin’ for an old mucker o’ mine. Bloke called John Dunn. Thought ’e could ’elp me get work ’ere. Last I ’eard ’e was livin’ at this address.’
‘No.’ The man swung the door to close it but Simon inserted his foot.
‘ ’Alf a mo’, mate. John’s missus back in Natal told me ’e was ’ere. Do yer know where ’e’s gone to?’
For a moment a flash of something - recognition, awareness, even fear? - came into the man’s eyes. Then he shook his head again. ‘No. Nod ’ere. Mus’ be some mistake.’ He spoke with the guttural accent of the Boer but with a strange inflexion that Simon could not place. Then he swung the do
or to with a firmness that removed Simon’s foot. A bolt scraped home.
Simon stood looking at the door for a moment and then shrugged his shoulders and walked away, turning a corner before slipping back to rejoin Jenkins. He related what had happened.
‘So,’ asked the Welshman, ‘is ’e tellin’ the truth then?’
‘No. Nandi wrote about a big man. He’s the biggest I’ve seen for years and it’s too much of a coincidence that he’s living there. When I mentioned John Dunn he looked shifty and he was in too much of a hurry to get rid of me. No. We’ve found where she was all right.’ He pulled on his lip. ‘But is she still in there?’
Jenkins’s face darkened. ‘Look, if they’ve done anything to that little girl, I’ll personally take that big dark bugger apart, see if I don’t.’
Simon regarded his indignant friend with affection. After a moment he said, ‘352, you really do care for Nandi, don’t you?’
The Welshman dropped his gaze and looked at the floor. ‘Ah no, bach sir. Not like that, see. It’s just that . . .’ He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and looked around, as though seeking some way out of his embarrassment. ‘After what she did for us in that Zululand place we owe ’er, now don’t we?’ He looked up again at Simon, almost pleadingly.
‘Of course we do.’
‘Right then. You go knockin’ again, see, and keep ’im talkin’ on the doorstep, and I’ll go round the back and break in while you’ve got ’im at the front.’
