by John Wilcox
Simon began his systematic search upstairs. Apart from soiled towels in two of the rooms, and the bedclothes, no personal effects had been left. All drawers were empty, as were the rough cupboards. There were no curtains at the windows, but shutters had been bolted across them from the inside. Only dust lay under the beds. Simon’s sole company during the search was flies - and they were everywhere.
The rooms downstairs provided little more. The kitchen was comparatively well stocked with cutlery, crockery and pots and pans, but the other rooms were sparsely furnished. A few old bush hats and one or two items of harness hung from hooks in the dark vestibule at the front of the house, leading to the locked front door, but a sideboard, a bookcase and one further cupboard yielded nothing except old newspapers printed in Afrikaans and what appeared to be a Portuguese Bible. It was an empty house and one exuding masculinity. If Nandi had lived here, the only trace she had left was that dead flower in the smallest bedroom.
Simon returned to it in the hope that, somewhere, she had managed to leave a note. He tore out the newspapers lining the drawers under the washstand and examined them, and the wood of the drawers, with great care. But he found only spiders. He unfolded the layers of blankets on her bed and shook them out, repeating the exercise with her pillow and then the old sagging mattress. Nothing.
With a sigh, Simon sat on the bed and buried his head in his hands. The thought of that sweet young girl being forced to live in this foul place filled him with horror and then impotent rage. Why would diamond smugglers - and he was sure that was what they were - keep a young half-caste Zulu girl a semi-prisoner in this place? They could get housekeepers easily enough. As a sex slave? He breathed deeply and tried to rationalise. There were plenty of brothels in Kimberley, and de Witt thought there was a deeper motive. But what was it? And where the hell had they taken her?
He went down the creaky stairs and began his search anew, this time pulling back the worn scraps of cotton rugs to examine the floorboards for trap-doors or other cavities. Taking a deep breath, he even subjected the loathsome lavatory to a cursory but fruitless search. The house gave forth nothing. It was an empty shell.
A bang on the front door and a muted call from de Witt outside prompted him to stride to the forward vestibule, but there was no key on the inside of the lock this time. ‘Go round to the back,’ he shouted through the door. Then, as he looked again at the harness and the hats hanging from the hooks, he realised that one of the hats, a cracked and greasy typical Boer ‘wideawaker’, had been thrown on top of another. He snatched off the old hat and his heart missed a beat when he saw what lay beneath. It was headgear of a similar type to the others, although of better quality, and unusually for a Boer hat, it had leather thongs hanging down and tied in a loop so that the hat could be swung back to dangle down the wearer’s back. He was sure he had seen the thing before. He remembered a big man riding across the Zulu plain and, reining in, throwing back his hat as he talked to a party of Zulus.
But it was not the hat that excited him. Wrapped around the bottom of its crown was a bright orange bandanna. Surely this had been worn in that sun-dappled glade, and, indeed, in the courtroom where, on the last day of his court martial, Simon had been saved from the firing squad by the evidence of its wearer. Nandi’s scarf, of course - and wrapped around her father’s hat!
Carefully, as he heard de Witt and Jenkins enter the house from the back, he unwrapped the scarf and, momentarily, put it to his lips. As he did so, a scrap of paper folded within it fell to the ground. He picked it up and read, in that now-familiar schoolgirl handwriting: Simon. Steelport. Nandi. The scrap of paper was still quite crisp and not faded.
Containing his excitement, he went to meet the others. ‘What news?’ he asked.
Jenkins shook his head and made a wry face. ‘Nothing from me, bach sir. Nobody in for two doors, look you, and then, when I did find somebody, he only spoke this African lingo, see. But old Fanny ’ere ’as done better.’
De Witt nodded. ‘Five men and one girl lived here. Kept to themselves and the girl was hardly ever seen. But they left two nights ago - the day we all met. They went after dark in three Scotch carts but pulled by horses, not oxen, so that they could travel faster.’
‘Damn. My fault. I must have frightened them away. Where did they go?’
‘Don’t know, man. These men did not talk to anyone. Nobody really knew them.’
‘Was the big man with them?’
The Boer shrugged. ‘Hard to tell. It was dark.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Ja. This place was often visited by Kaffirs. They would come in, probably straight from the mines because they were covered with dust and soil, and leave after about ten minutes.’
‘Of course.’ Jenkins’s beam lit up the gloomy room. ‘They came to spend a penny and left with ten quid.’
‘More like fifty.’ Simon was able to smile. ‘Look.’ He showed them the slip of paper. ‘This is from Nandi. She must have seen me when I came calling and left this as they cleared out on the same night. This means she’s still alive - or was. But where’s this Steelport place, Faan? Is it a town on the coast?’
‘No. It’s a river. Up in the north-east. It’s at the foot of the Lulu Mountains, which are really the end of the northern Drakensbergs. It fits together because that is where this bloody man has his farm.’
‘Do you know exactly where?’
‘Ach, no. That’s the problem. I never did know. It’s big territory up there, wild and mountainous. There are not many farms, so that’s one good thing. But there is one big problem.’
‘What’s that?’
De Witt gave his slow smile. ‘It’s bePedi country, man. They are a handful, I can tell you. They are always raiding the Boer farms in that territory and they are good fighters. They’ve got guts and, what’s more, they’ve got guns. It’s not the sort of territory anybody can just wander into right now.’
Jenkins’s huge grin cracked his face again and he directed it at the other two in turn. ‘That’s nice then, boyos,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t be better, could it? When do we start?’
‘Right now,’ said Simon. ‘Come on, let’s get out of this dung heap.’
Chapter 7
Pretoria was now strangely quiet, for Wolseley had decided to move his headquarters to Middelburg, some seventy-five miles to the east of the Transvaal capital, where he was building his Transvaal Field Force for the advance against Sekukuni. Alice had decided not to travel with her press colleagues in the wake of the General, at least not for the moment. She had persuaded herself that it was better to stay for a while where Joubert could reach her easily, in case the Boer leader felt able to reveal more of his intentions. There would be little hard news at Wolseley’s HQ, only colour pieces, and she had done enough of those and could afford to dally a little in Pretoria. Now, however, on the third day, she grew restive and faced up to the reality that her real reason for remaining behind was to collect news of John Dunn.
Alice’s first thought was to tell Simon that Dunn was in Pretoria, but how to find Simon? Where would he be on his quest to find Nandi - a search whose dedication raised a faint feeling of irritation in Alice? She recognised and felt ashamed of that feeling, for there could not possibly be any feeling of jealousy within her. After all, she did not love Simon and she was genuinely fond of Nandi. Dunn’s strange appearance in Pretoria could prove a key to solving the puzzle. Why had he abandoned his daughter and why had he turned up in the Boer capital? The man was obviously near to hand - but how to pin him down?
On realising the identity of the stranger who had accosted Joubert, she had rushed down to the street, but both the Boer and the Natalian had disappeared. Alice had then retraced her steps back to the hotel and beckoned to her new friend Charlie, the black concierge, pressing a crisp white five-pound note into his hand. Like all good journalists, Alice had developed on her travels a nose for sniffing out locals who could help her in a new environment. In Pretoria, Charl
ie had proved to be a revelation. It was he who had first told Alice of Wolseley’s threat to deprive the Middelburg farmers of ammunition, and he who had warned her of the imminent departure of the cavalry troop to Heidelberg. It was amazing how Charlie, who never seemed to leave his desk in the hotel, knew exactly what was happening - and about to happen - in Pretoria. So it was to Charlie that she had given the simple task, ‘Find John Dunn,’ and she knew that if anyone could locate the tall, bluff Natalian in this surly, teeming town it would be the little man with the Zambesi-wide smile and crinkled white hair. Yet she had been waiting now for two days for Charlie to deliver. She could not afford to delay too long. Sir Garnet had a reputation for speed. He would begin his advance any day now and she must not miss that, for all the Dunns in the world.
It was with relief, then, that, sitting in her bedroom, she saw a note pushed under her door. It contained only two lines: a name and an address in one of the Pretorian suburbs. She rang and gave instructions to have pony and trap waiting at the hotel entrance and dressed hurriedly in what she regarded as her working dress: cotton blouse, jodhpurs and riding boots. This interview might be difficult and she wanted to appear as professional as possible.
Within twenty minutes she was standing before a small wooden boarding house so near the edge of the town that she could see the brown flatness of the veldt stretching away from the end of the street. The woman who answered the door was careworn and harassed - taking in boarders was obviously her lifeline, and she looked in consternation at the trim figure before her: polished boots, crisp blouse and fair hair tied back with a soft bow. Alice seemed like an apparition blown into her leaden world from another, golden planet.
Alice quickly stole a look at the name on her scrap of paper. ‘May I see Mr John Robinson, please?’ she enquired.
‘ ’E’s in ’is room.’ The accent was nasal Essex.
‘Oh good. I will go on up, then. What number is it?’
‘We don’t ’ave numbers. First on right at top o’ the stairs.’
‘Thank you.’
Alice climbed up the stairs and, taking a deep breath, knocked on the first door on the narrow landing. Lord, she hoped Charlie had got it right!
Her eyes brightened, then, when the figure she had seen from her bedroom window opened the door. Dunn had aged since the last time she had seen him closely, drinking a gourd of Zulu beer after the victory at Ulundi. She had been surprised to see, looking down on him three days ago, how unkempt this fine man’s appearance had become. Face to face now, however, she looked into eyes that were tired and a mouth, once firm, that was now dragged down with care. Yet there was something more: from above his right ear a half-healed, jagged wound crept into the tousled hair, there were signs of old contusions on his face, and he held his right arm stiffly across his chest, the thumb hooked into his shirt opening as though for support.
‘Hello, Mr Dunn,’ she said.
Dunn stood looking at her, frowning. Then, ‘You’ve got the wrong man,’ he said. ‘Name’s Robinson.’
‘No it isn’t, you’re John Dunn, formerly Chief of Intelligence for the Eshowe column in Zululand, and, more important to me at the moment, Nandi’s father.’
Dunn’s eyebrows went up, and at the mention of Nandi’s name, a look of intense apprehension came into his sad eyes.
‘What do you mean? Who are you? What’s my daughter got to do with you?’
Alice gave him the benefit of one of her most appealing smiles. ‘My name is Alice Griffith, Mr Dunn, of the London Morning Post, and we have met before, albeit briefly.’
Dunn’s frown returned. ‘I can’t talk to any newspaper people,’ he said, and began to close the door.
Alice inserted a boot. ‘Mr Dunn, I am not here professionally, but as a friend. I believe that Nandi is in danger and I want to help if I can.’
Again that hunted look came into his eyes. ‘You’d better come in.’
He limped as he led her into the room, which matched his own dishevelment. The narrow bed was unmade and dirty water remained in the washbowl on its stand. The only chair, stuffing protruding from its back, sat under a window which had not been cleaned for weeks. Alice remembered with an inward sigh how Simon had described the forceful character of Dunn and the high style - champagne, running hot water for showers, fine linen - in which he had lived as one of Cetswayo’s indunas in Zululand. She sat gingerly on the edge of the chair while Dunn perched on the bed.
‘I don’t know you,’ he said, ‘but if you have news of Nandi I want to hear it.’
A touch of truculence had now crept into his tone, and Alice noted the large revolver and belt of cartridges that hung behind the door. How much to tell him? This would have to be a trade-off of information. But to what extent was he to be trusted? She decided to be open with the man. Simon had always said that he had integrity.
‘I am sorry to walk in on you like this, Mr Dunn,’ she said. ‘I have to say that you don’t look well. Have you been hurt?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘We met after Ulundi. I am a friend - an old friend - of Simon Fonthill, and I got to know your daughter well at Simon’s court martial.’
Recognition dawned in Dunn’s eyes. He relaxed perceptibly.
‘Ah yes, Miss Griffith. Now I know who you are. Nandi spoke highly of you. And of course I remember Fonthill. We served together scouting for the Eshowe column during the Zulu War after his . . . trouble. Good man. Any friend of his is a friend of mine.’ He looked round the room sadly. ‘I am sorry I cannot offer you refreshment, but as you see, I am temporarily living rather rough.’
‘Oh, please do not concern yourself about that.’
The big man leaned forward, wincing as he did so. ‘I am worried out of my mind about Nandi. What do you know of her?’
‘Mr Dunn, if I tell you all I know about your daughter - and, I fear, it is not a great deal - will you reciprocate by telling me what has happened to you? Together, perhaps, we can help Nandi - and Simon.’
Dunn looked up sharply at the name. ‘How is he involved here? I thought he was in Afghanistan.’
‘He was. Now listen.’ Alice relayed all that she knew: of Nandi’s letter, the diversion to South Africa of Simon and Jenkins, and of how the two of them had set off from Durban across country to find Nandi.
Her story did not take long, and Dunn did not take his eyes off her for a moment as she told it. ‘Have you heard from Fonthill and Jenkins?’ His tone was urgent. ‘When would they have arrived in Kimberley?’
‘I’ve heard nothing.’ Alice shook her head. ‘But they would have reached Kimberley perhaps a week ago. They had an address to go to.’
‘Hellfire!’ Dunn threw back his head in anguish. ‘If they’ve gone blundering into that damned hole, they could have caused all sorts of trouble. They don’t know what kind of people they are dealing with. Ach . . . she could be dead by now.’ He bowed his head and put a hand to his eyes.
Alice rose immediately and laid her hand on his shoulder. ‘No, Mr Dunn, I think you are underestimating Simon. He would never blunder blindly into anything.’
The big man held up his head and she could see tears in his eyes, but there was a half-smile on his mouth. ‘Well, the fool - the brave fool - walked into Cetswayo’s kraal on his own on the eve of the war. He wasn’t too clever about that. Oh God! What the hell should I do now?’
Alice resumed her seat. ‘I think, Mr Dunn, that you had better tell me everything.’
Dunn regarded her from under lowered brows. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘but you must keep what I tell you to yourself. I want your word. I have been a bit of an ass and I could end up in a British jail - mind you, I don’t care much about that if I can get my daughter back.’
‘You have my word.’
‘Very well.’ He took a deep breath. ‘After the Zulu war, I went back into Zululand to try and rebuild my life on my farm. But the new general - Wolseley, the one that’s up here now - took over and p
romptly broke up the whole damned structure of the country. He divided the kingdom into petty little chieftainships, so that there could be no unity in the country and no more Zulu army. No more threat from the assegais, he said.’ Dunn’s face grew hard. ‘There was never any threat in the first place. It was the bloody rednecks - the British - who caused the war by invading. But that’s by the by.’
He swept a fly off his beard. ‘The trouble is that my farm, my land, got divided too, and I lost all my best grazing. I was left with patches of veldt that a mountain goat couldn’t live on. All of this after I had helped the blasted British to beat the King.’ He looked hard at Alice. ‘There’s injustice for you.’
Alice lowered her gaze. ‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘I really am.’
‘Not your fault, miss. Anyway, I had to do something to rebuild. So I left Catherine and the few of my other wives who had stayed with me and decided to take a chance and push off to the new diamond fields up at Kimberley to see if I could get lucky. Once there, I found a room to rent cheaply and looked around to see where I could start digging, so to speak. But it wasn’t as easy as that. I soon realised that the days when you could stake a claim for tuppence-halfpenny had long since gone. I was about to give up and return home when I met this man - a Portuguese-Mozambiquan, name of Mendoza - in a bar. We got talking and the whisky flowed. Maybe he had done this before, I don’t know, but it wasn’t long before he offered to let me have a half-share in his own mine on the edge of the Big Hole in Kimberley.’
Dunn pulled on his beard. ‘I wasn’t that much of a fool that I was going to part with my money then and there over the glasses, so I went to look the place over with him the next day. It seemed reasonable: a patch right on the edge of the hole, not deep at all, but he had two Kaffirs working on it, digging away. He explained that he paid the Kaffirs but he rarely worked on the mine himself, only overseeing it, so to speak, because he had other business interests in the town. He said if I would work on the diggin’ and pay his price for my share he would continue to pay the Kaffirs. He showed me a few diamonds that he said had come from the claim in the last week and promised me half of what was to come. The money he wanted would clean me out, but I liked the look of the stones he showed me and I fell for it.’
