Ghosts of the Past

by Tony Park

  ‘That’s one of the things I’m trying to find out. It could be that he was sympathetic to their cause, or had some reason to dislike the Germans. It certainly wasn’t Blake’s war. However, he also seems to have had a business interest in all this.’

  ‘Business?’

  She sipped her wine and nodded. ‘Blake was a horse trader. Horses were in very short supply on both sides, and there’s evidence Blake sold horses to the Nama people. There was apparently a lot of cross-border trade going on between the British-controlled Cape Colony, part of what’s now known as South Africa, and German South West Africa.’

  Nick was mildly intrigued, both by the story and by Susan. She was maybe ten years younger than him so she was not some wide-eyed cadet reporter straight out of university chasing her first feature story. He glanced at her left hand; there was no wedding ring. Nick had a vision of Jill in her floral headscarf, forcing a smile, and telling him he should find someone new when she was gone. She had tried to make a joke out of it, telling him to wait at least a year, and had laughed. Still he felt guilty, checking Susan out.

  He cleared his throat. ‘So, how did you find me – searching online?’

  ‘Yes and no. I knew the name of your great-great-uncle through some other historical research and was able to find his enlistment papers for the Boer War, via the Australian national archives online. His papers listed his mother as his next of kin. I looked her up and later found birth certificates for your great-great-uncle’s two brothers through her.’

  ‘I do remember my aunt once telling me about three brothers on her side of the family – my mother’s side – who had gone to war. One died in France in the First World War and the other’s my great-grandfather, who served in Palestine with the light horse. The third one must have been Cyril.’

  Susan nodded. ‘I found the marriage record for your great-grandfather and great-grandmother through the New South Wales Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, online. I then found the birth record for your grandmother and her marriage certificate.’

  ‘Impressive,’ Nick said.

  Susan smiled and took a sip of her wine, then held up a palm. ‘It gets better – well, harder, after that. Because of privacy laws you can’t find birth records online for people born in New South Wales less than a hundred years ago or marriage records within the last fifty years. So, I searched Trove, which is in the process of scanning old Australian newspapers using optical character recognition. I found a mention there of your grandparents, a marriage notice that listed them as the parents of the bride, your mother, Ruth.’

  ‘Amazing.’

  ‘It seemed you, or some other descendent of Blake’s, were getting harder to find. I searched for other clues and found a website called the Ryerson Index, set up by the Sydney Dead Person’s Society . . .’

  ‘You’re not serious.’

  Susan nodded. ‘I am. They list death notices from the Daily Telegraph and the Sydney Morning Herald, going way back. I found a death notice for your father, Denis Eatwell. I’m sorry for your loss.’

  ‘He had a good long life.’ Unlike Jill. He couldn’t shake the feeling of guilt, being in a pub with Susan, but he was impressed with the lengths she had gone to in order to find him. ‘So that’s how you found me, all via the internet?’

  She shook her head. ‘Actually, no. This is where fate lent a hand. The Ryerson Index just lists the name and date of the notice, not the text, and Trove hasn’t got up to scanning the newspapers from the time your father died. I had to actually go in person to the State Library of New South Wales and look up the Sydney Morning Herald edition with your father’s death notice on microfilm.’

  He leaned back in his chair. ‘You flew to Sydney just to do that?’

  She laughed. ‘No, but I had been meaning to come over to visit friends, and as my queries were leading me to Sydney it seemed like it was, I don’t know, pre-ordained or something. The death notice, when I found it a couple of days ago, listed you as Denis’s sole survivor and after that the sleuthing was less intriguing – I turned to good old Facebook. There aren’t many Australian Nick Eatwells, and when I worked out you weren’t a guy in Western Australia, I emailed you, and here we are.’

  ‘That’s quite a story in itself, but, forgive me, do you really think it was worth all the effort you went to – given I still don’t know much about this guy? And is anyone actually going to run an historical feature about all of this?’

  ‘The story’s got more currency than you probably think,’ she said. ‘Even though the uprising happened more than a hundred years ago it still has implications for Africa and Germany today. For a long time there have been calls from Namibia for the German government to pay compensation. As well as defeating the Herero and the Nama in battle, the Germans set up a network of concentration camps where tens of thousands of people died through overwork, starvation and disease. The worst camp was at Shark Island, on the Atlantic Coast, where terrible things were done. Inmates from the island were also used to build a railway line from the port of Lüderitz to the town of Keetmanshoop and they were literally worked to death. The Germans have gone part of the way, issuing an expression of regret – not quite an apology – but they’ve stopped short of promising compensation.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  Susan shrugged. ‘I don’t necessarily believe that people today from a progressive, liberal country like Germany should be held accountable for the actions of the Kaiser’s regime a century ago, but I can see the local people’s point. In either case, a hard-hitting story that shows how abominably the Germans acted will be of interest in both countries, and it’ll be newsy as well as a feature.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Nick said, not quite convinced. ‘The fact that an Aussie fought in this war is hardly going to cause any great ructions in Germany.’

  ‘It might if people here in Australia and in Germany found out that Cyril Blake was murdered on the orders of the German government in 1906.’

  Nick felt it. His fingertips twitched the way they sometimes did – not for a good many years now – when he was on to a good story. By good he meant one that sold papers, that got people talking in the streets and pissed off politicians and big businesses. He saw the sparkle in those blue eyes across the table from him and he knew that Susan felt it as well, and it was what had brought her here to a pub in North Sydney.

  ‘The Germans must have been threatened by this bloke.’

  Susan nodded. ‘There’s precious little about him in the archives. Trust me, I’ve looked in Cape Town, online in Berlin, and even here in Australia. There’s not a lot, on paper, that tells us much about who Cyril Blake was and why he did what he did. We know more about his death than we do his life.’

  ‘Really?’ Nick said.

  ‘The German military entrapped him. That book on the history of Namibia mentions he was set up by a couple of Afrikaner spies who lured your great-great-uncle into German South West Africa on the promise of a cattle deal. They ambushed him, wounded him, and left him to die in the desert. That’s how much they hated the idea of this foreign white man riding with the rebels.’

  Nick exhaled. ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘The Germans sent out a military patrol the next day to check on him. Reports from the time suggest your ancestor was still alive, having survived a night in the desert, but he was then executed in cold blood by a German officer.’

  ‘That’s a lot to take in.’ Nick took a moment to process the shocking revelation. It was one thing to learn of an ancestor who had died in war, in combat, but another altogether to think of someone being murdered. He could see how the German government might not want such a deed resurrected, even today. ‘So what do you want from me?’

  Susan shrugged. ‘I was wondering if there was anything you or your family might have, some sort of papers or letters from or about him?’

  Nick frowned. ‘I’d never h
eard of him until just now.’ He thought about what he knew of his own ancestry. It didn’t take him more than half a minute to work out it was not very much.

  Susan reached down to the large brown leather handbag she had brought with her. She pulled out a manila folder, which she slid across the table. ‘How about I get us another drink while you have a look through this stuff, Nick.’

  ‘OK.’ He took the folder. The journalist in him was interested, but he couldn’t help but feel a little weird that a stranger had been picking through his family tree and possibly knew more about where he came from than he did. ‘Thanks.’

  Susan got up and went to the bar, and Nick opened the folder. There were family trees and printouts from online genealogical research sites, more than one by the look of it. She had obviously spent some time piecing all this together. Stapled to the inside front cover of the folder was a printout of a document which seemed to summarise her findings.

  This Cyril Blake, it seemed, was his maternal great-grandfather’s brother, his great-great-uncle. Blake had never married and that side of the family had produced very few offspring. Nick himself had no siblings and no cousins from his mother’s side of the family. His mother, who had passed away three years earlier, had one sister, his aunt. He looked up from the piece of paper.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Susan set a beer down in front of him and another glass of wine for herself and took her seat again.

  The pub was filling up and getting noisier. ‘I have an aunt who is really into all this family history stuff, possibly because there are so few of us on her side of the family.’

  ‘I noticed that,’ Susan said. ‘Do you think your aunt might know something about Cyril?’

  Nick exhaled. ‘Well, if anyone did it would be her. She’s obsessed by our history.’

  Susan looked at her watch. ‘I don’t want to keep you, Nick, if you have to get home to the family or whatever.’

  He leaned back in his seat. ‘There’s no one at home waiting for me. My wife died of cancer eight months ago.’

  Susan’s face fell and she reached out and put her hand on his. ‘Oh, no, Nick, I’m so sorry.’

  He nodded. At least he didn’t cry any more when he said the words. He looked up at her. ‘I’ll call my aunt for you.’

  ‘Thank you, I really appreciate it.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘What about me?’ she asked back.

  ‘Does anyone have dinner in the oven waiting for you, here or in South Africa?’

  ‘No.’ She sipped her wine. ‘I’m travelling solo and I’m divorced.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Nick said.

  ‘Don’t be. I’m not,’ Susan said. ‘Are you hungry? Maybe we can get something together?’

  ‘Sure.’ After the day he’d had, Nick couldn’t think of anywhere else he would rather be than across the table from a pretty, slightly intriguing woman. All he had waiting for him was an empty apartment and a television and he felt sure Jill wouldn’t mind him having dinner with someone, even if it hadn’t been a year yet. ‘Sounds like a great idea. If you like Spanish food, there’s a nice tapas place down Blues Point Road.’

  ‘Love it. I can tell you more about what I’m writing. I think there might even be a book in it. There’s even a leading lady in this story, I think.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I’m not sure of what exactly happened between them, but there’s a half-German, half-Irish woman whose name has popped up a few times in my research, Claire Martin. She was born in Germany, but moved to German South West Africa in the late 1890s. Looks like she and Cyril crossed paths.’

  ‘Sounds like there might even be a movie in it.’

  She smiled. ‘If you have a look in the folder there’s a photocopy of a report from a British Army intelligence officer, a Captain Llewellyn Walters, who served with your ancestor during the Boer War. They were on a raid that was aimed at capturing a Boer leader, an American.’

  Nick leafed through the pages until he found the report, written in a neat copperplate. It had been prepared by Captain The Honourable Llewellyn Walters in 1902.

  Sergeant Blake and I took up position on a hill overlooking the trading post on the Sabie River where the Boer colonel, Nathaniel Belvedere, and the German spy, Claire Martin, were believed to have conducted their rendezvous. Our intention was to mount a pre-dawn raid while the occupants were asleep. Sergeant Blake seemed unsettled and nervous, his attitude bordering on insubordinate . . .

  Chapter 5

  Sabie River, eastern Transvaal, South Africa, 1902

  Too many things were not right for Blake’s liking, and when things weren’t right, the wrong people died.

  Blake had never mastered a trade back home in Australia, but three years in South Africa had taught him how to kill and, more importantly, how to survive. He was skilled at his work; he was still alive.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ he said to the English officer.

  ‘When I want your opinion, Sergeant Blake, I’ll ask for it,’ Captain Walters replied in a whisper. The binoculars were fixed to his eyes now that the first glimmer of pale orange light was peeking from behind the stark, treeless hills.

  Blake was cold, and wet from the dew. The thin horse blanket draped over his back and shoulders had kept his Lee Enfield rifle dry and helped disguise his silhouette, but it had not kept him warm. His sodden khaki uniform and damp undershirt clung to his skin.

  Blake had inherited the rifle from a dead English comrade and he considered the protection of his weapon more important than his personal comfort. The Lee Enfield had a smoother, faster bolt action than the older-model Lee-Metford he had been issued with when he first came to South Africa. In Blake’s line of work a split second less spent chambering a round could mean the difference between life and death.

  Captain The Honourable Llewellyn Walters lay on a waxed cloak with black silk lining and wore a tailored overcoat – the same colour as the Australian sergeant’s uniform, but that was where the similarity ended. Walters’ shirt was new and starched; his tie done in a perfect Windsor knot; his tunic freshly laundered and ironed; his riding breeches spotless and his boots buffed. Blake’s clothes were patched and worn and the leather soles on his boots would soon need replacing. Steinaecker’s Horse didn’t go in for full dress inspections and it was more important how a man shot and acted in the bush than what he wore.

  ‘Where are the sentries?’ Blake whispered.

  ‘Just thank the Lord there aren’t any, Sergeant,’ Walters replied.

  A British sergeant would not have questioned his commander and would have addressed him properly, as sir, but Blake knew Walters had not picked him for this job because of his manners or his deference to superiors. There was very little of that military bullshit carry-on in Steinaecker’s Horse, the unit Blake had wound up in after two years of fighting the Boer. The war had changed over the past three years and so had British tactics, thankfully. Walters seemed to belong to the time when ramrod-straight Tommies marched in neat columns towards what they thought were going to be set-piece battles, only to be shot to hell by cunning Boers, lying in ambush in the koppies or running circles around them on their hardy ponies. Steinaecker’s, and many other irregular horse units, had been set up to play the Boers at their own game and the war had become one of mobile patrols, hunting the enemy and ferreting him out. Blake’s unit was slightly more sedentary, its mission to patrol the border of neutral Portuguese East Africa to stop arms and ammunition and other supplies reaching the increasingly isolated Boers from the outside world via the Indian Ocean sea ports to the east.

  Blake had seen a good deal of death in his time in South Africa, but the experience had not hardened his heart towards the Boers. If anything, he viewed them more as fellow human beings now than when he had first arrived on this blood-soaked continent.

  In the beginning he had belie
ved the tales of the Boers as merciless villains who fired on ambulances and executed prisoners – greedy Dutchmen out to fleece the empire of the gold that rightfully belonged to the mother country. Now, he saw them for what they were: simple farmers in the main, fighting for their right to self-determination. He didn’t necessarily agree that the country should split from the empire, but nor did he see his enemy as devils incarnate. Yet, as his understanding of his foes grew, so did his skills at dispatching them.

  ‘If this bloke is such a senior Boer officer you’d expect him to have an escort, and to post sentries,’ Blake said, softly but firmly voicing his concerns. ‘It’s wrong. Maybe an ambush.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have brought you along if I’d known you were a coward, Sergeant Blake.’ Walters stared straight ahead through the field glasses.

  ‘All right. Let’s get on with it then,’ Blake said. He rolled to one side, slung the Lee Enfield over his shoulder and withdrew the Mauser C96 pistol from the holster at his waist. The Mauser, nicknamed the Broomhandle because of its long wooden handgrip, was a semi-automatic pistol sold by the Germans to the Boers. The officer who had originally owned it didn’t need it any more – he was in a grave near Bloemfontein. Blake liked the Broomhandle for close-quarter fighting, such as clearing buildings, because it had a ten-round magazine – four more bullets than a Webley revolver – and if he needed to use it in open country it had a longer effective range than the standard British service pistol. Despite his misgivings about the raid he was buggered if he would let some Pommy officer show him up.

  ‘Remember, I want the colonel alive.’ Walters stood and brushed a stalk of grass from his immaculate cavalry breeches. ‘I have information the American may be keeping company with a woman. She is to be taken into custody as well.’

  Bert Hughes, another Australian Blake had picked to come on the mission, had their three horses on the other side of the hill and knew to come as soon as he heard firing.

  Blake would have preferred at least half-a-dozen more men, but Walters had insisted that the Boer colonel would be alone. Just what the colonel was doing galloping around the bushveld virtually on his own, and maybe with some female company, Walters had refused to reveal. These days, encounters with Boer commandos were rare for Steinaecker’s Horse and their biggest threats usually came from the tough country – riddled with fever and inhabited by man-eating lions, unpredictable buffalos and cunning crocodile – but there had been no sightings of the enemy along this part of the river for months.