Ghosts of the Past

by Tony Park

  ‘He is an enemy of the crown, who has pledged his allegiance to the Boers, and that is all you need to know, Sergeant.’

  Blake left his slouch hat with the blanket. The distinctive silhouette of the turned-up brim would give him away in an instant if they were spotted by a lookout. They moved forward, slowly, and paused behind a stable at the rear of the whitewashed pole and dagga house. Blake looked inside through an unglazed window and saw three horses, all unsaddled. He held up three fingers to Walters, who nodded in comprehension.

  Walters re-holstered his Webley revolver and reached into the polished brown leather map case that hung from his shoulder. He withdrew a silver cigarette case, popped a tailor-made cigarette into his mouth and lit it with a match.

  Blake shook his head. The bloke was a bloody upper-class idiot, but he did have style. He wondered again how he had landed this ridiculous caper.

  Walters replaced the cigarette case and matches and then withdrew a stick of dynamite from a canvas bag slung around his neck. ‘Shall we?’

  Walters’ accent and the aquiline features of his face marked him as a member of a caste and a country Blake would otherwise never have encountered. But the eyes were cold and hard. They could have been Blake’s eyes.

  ‘Ready when you are, old boy,’ Blake said, doing his best impersonation of a toff.

  Walters frowned at the impertinence, and drew his pistol again. They walked to the front of the trader’s house, crouching as they passed the shuttered windows, just in case.

  The Englishman raised the wick of the dynamite to the glowing tip of his cigarette. The fuse sputtered into life. He placed the explosive at the base of the solid black-painted wooden door of the farmhouse and he and Blake both retreated around the corner of the building.

  After the blast Blake was first in, kicking aside the shattered remnants of the door. Acrid smoke and a fog of dust filled the small house.

  Blake moved with the Mauser held high, his arm swinging as he entered the first room. A chair was on its back, fragments of a blue and white china vase littered the floor, along with a clutch of sodden wildflowers.

  He turned and entered the hallway. A tall thin man in the simple threadbare clothes and crossed bandoliers of a Boer emerged from a room into the hallway. He raised the shotgun in his hands to his shoulder and swung the barrel towards Blake.

  All Walters had told Blake about their quarry, Nathaniel Belvedere – other than his name and rank, the equivalent of a colonel in the British Army – was that the man had long, pale-blond hair and a beard. Blake fired twice, both shots hitting the dark-haired man in the chest. The Boer crashed into the doorframe and landed on his back on the floor. Blake followed the body through the door and saw that the room was empty. He returned to the hall, but Walters was in front of him now, charging towards the next doorway.

  Walters kicked the closed door and it flew open.

  ‘Get down!’ Blake yelled as a bullet whizzed past Walters’ head and smacked into the wall.

  Walters dropped to one knee. Both he and Blake now levelled their pistols at the stocky blond man who stood naked before them, a Mauser rifle clutched in his hands. He started to work the bolt, but realised he was cornered and dropped the weapon on the mattress of the four-poster bed that dominated the room.

  ‘At least let me cover myself up, partner?’ the man said, smiling at Walters.

  The man’s blond hair reached almost to his shoulders and he sported a goatee beard. The American smiled as he reached for the trousers hanging over the railing at the foot of the bed.

  ‘Slowly does it,’ Walters said. ‘Search the other building, Sergeant Blake.’

  ‘Where’s the woman?’ Blake asked the prisoner.

  ‘What woman?’ the man asked as he buttoned his moleskin trousers.

  ‘Indentations in both of the pillows, three horses in the stable.’

  The man shrugged. ‘You’re mistaken. There’s no one else in the house.’

  Blake noticed that the bedroom window was open. The calico curtain billowed as a chilly gust of wind caught it.

  ‘Hurry, Blake,’ Walters said, following his gaze. ‘Find her!’

  ‘We’ve got our prisoner. He’s the one you were after, isn’t he?’

  Walters turned red in the face as he turned to Blake. ‘I said find the fucking woman, Sergeant!’

  Blake was surprised at how quickly the officer’s demeanour had changed, not to mention his profanity. He nodded and strode out of the bedroom and back up the hallway.

  From the front porch of the farmhouse – the Boers called it the stoep – Blake could see Bert galloping over the crest of the hill, their two other horses trailing behind him.

  He looked to the whitewashed stables and a horse burst through the open door.

  Blake raised his pistol and fired two snap shots. One missed completely, and the other plucked at the rider’s grey woollen overcoat.

  The rider wore trousers and a wide-brimmed Boer hat. The rider held a revolver in one hand, and half turned in the saddle to fire a wild shot in reply. The horse galloped away. Blake cursed himself for hesitating and arguing with the officer. There had obviously been a third man hiding nearby and he had slipped into the stables while they were searching the house.

  Blake holstered his pistol and unslung his Lee Enfield. He raised the butt of the rifle to his shoulder, leaned into the weapon, anticipating the familiar kick, and wrapped his finger around the trigger. The horse and rider were about a hundred yards off. He aimed for the centre of the rider’s back.

  He started to squeeze.

  As the horse reached full stride the rush of passing air snatched the hat from the rider’s head. A shock of bright red hair tumbled out in a streaming wake.

  ‘Shit,’ said Blake. It was the woman.

  He lowered the barrel of the rifle.

  The sound of another shot rolled across the hills. Blake turned and saw Bert working the bolt of his rifle, chambering a fresh round.

  ‘Cease fire!’ Blake called.

  Bert’s bullet caught the stallion in his left rear leg and the sleek black animal faltered. The rider was pitched forward as her mount fell. She landed hard on the rocky ground.

  Blake ran towards the motionless rider. He cursed out loud. He hated seeing horses injured, but at least Bert had not shot a fleeing woman in the back.

  ‘Get up,’ he said as he approached the woman. She was lying face down.

  The horse whinnied as it fought repeatedly to stand. Blake brought his rifle back up into his shoulder and fired once. The horse’s agony was over.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ he said.

  ‘Get up,’ he said again to the woman. He was angry about the death of the animal. He kept the rifle hard against his shoulder. The pistol she had been carrying, an American Colt .45, was lying in the grass a few feet from her, where she had dropped it.

  The woman rolled over, as fast as a startled leopard, and her arm flashed up. Blake instinctively dodged to one side and dropped to his knee when he saw another weapon, a tiny pistol, in her hand.

  She fired and he felt his left upper arm burn with pain.

  The rifle spun in his hands as he brought it down from his shoulder and reversed it in one fluid motion. He struck down hard on the woman’s right arm with the butt of the rifle.

  ‘Ow!’ the woman said as she dropped the one-shot pocket Derringer in the dirt and clasped her injured arm with her good hand. ‘That hurt. You might have broken my bloody arm.’

  ‘Get up or I’ll shoot you.’ Keeping her covered, Blake stooped to pick up first the Derringer, then the Colt. The words and her accent didn’t sound Afrikaner to him.

  He glanced at his own arm. The bullet had only nicked the skin, but he would need to patch the tunic and undershirt again.

  ‘Go to hell, you goddamned murdering baby-killing British
bastard,’ the woman said.

  ‘I resent that. I’m an Australian.’ He reached down, grabbed her forearm and pulled the woman to her feet. She struggled against him.

  ‘Quite a looker you’ve found yourself there, Sarge,’ Bert said as Blake marched the woman at gunpoint back to the front of the farmhouse.

  The woman cradled her bruised forearm with her left hand. Blake grabbed her shoulder and turned her around. Looking at her again face-on he saw that Bert was right. She had smooth fair skin and her green eyes were flecked with gold. The eyes were ablaze with pure hatred, and her cheeks were as pink as twin African sunsets. Her long red hair cascaded nearly down to her waist.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Blake asked.

  ‘I’m Claire Martin and I’m an American citizen. You have no right to assault me or hold me captive.’

  ‘What do you reckon, Bert?’ Blake asked.

  ‘She put that hole in your tunic?’ Bert asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Then she’s a Boer,’ Bert said. ‘Just like that one the Queenslanders captured last month. She was dressed like a man and all. Swedes, Irish, the German Brigade, men or women, matters not to me, Sarge. They’re all Boers and they’d all fucking kill us as soon as look at us.’

  ‘There’s no need for profanity in front of a lady, Bert, even if she was trying to kill us,’ Blake said. ‘We’re taking you into custody, Mrs Martin.’

  ‘It’s Miss Martin, you British lackey.’ She spat on the ground in front of him. ‘And you can kiss my arse.’

  Chapter 6

  North Sydney, Australia, the present day

  Nick noticed that while his beer was half empty, Susan had nearly finished her drink and was watching him read.

  ‘Take your time,’ she said.

  ‘Almost done.’ He turned to the last page of the copied document, written by Captain Walters.

  I emerged from the stables, where I had restrained the prisoner, Colonel Belvedere. Sergeant Blake and Trooper Hughes were rudely interrogating Miss Martin. While she was suspected of espionage, the colonials were unnecessarily impugning her honour under the guise of questioning her. I told them to desist, whereupon Blake told me in profane and insolent terms to mind my own business.

  Blake walked past me and into the stables. I tried to calm the lady, who was most distressed, and while talking to her, in the company of Trooper Hughes, I heard a scream from inside the stables and then a single gunshot.

  When I entered the building I found the American, Colonel Belvedere, lying dead on the ground with a bullet wound between his eyes.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Nick said.

  ‘I know, right?’ Susan finished her wine.

  Nick thought about what he had read, about this man related to him by blood. Nick had gone through a hard day, losing his job, but, he reflected, apart from Jill’s death his had been a life free of pain and trauma. He had never served in the military, and while his family had been touched by war in generations past the casual references in this document to combat and, it seemed, cold-blooded killing, shocked him.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Susan asked.

  He realised he had been miles away. ‘Um. Yes. I guess so.’

  ‘Hey,’ Susan said, smiling, as if trying to lift the mood, ‘I’m hungry. Shall we get some dinner now?’

  ‘Sure,’ Nick said, even though his stomach had just churned.

  The sun was setting as they left the Commodore and walked down Blues Point Road, past sandstone cottages with views of the harbour. At the time of the Boer War this had been a working-class suburb, but not any more. There were cafes and boutiques and the office crowd was giving way to locals out for a stroll or a meal.

  Nick took Susan to a Spanish delicatessen and cafe called Delicado. The waitress, who knew him by sight, greeted him and escorted them to a table upstairs.

  ‘This is nice,’ Susan said as she looked through the menu.

  ‘Yeah. The tapas is good. So, my ancestor killed a man in cold blood?’ He was finding it hard to let go of the climactic end to the report he had read at the pub.

  Susan looked up. ‘We don’t know for sure. There are gaps in his personal story and I can’t find anything that was written by Cyril Blake himself in his defence, or about what he did during the Boer War and afterwards, in South West Africa, when he fought against the Germans. What’s good on the menu? I’m happy if you want to order for us.’

  Nick signalled to the waitress and ordered a selection of tapas dishes and a bottle of pinot gris.

  ‘You’re going to get me drunk,’ Susan said.

  ‘Is that a problem?’

  She laughed. ‘No.’

  Nick was intrigued now by the story that Susan had brought with her. ‘So, we don’t know if this Cyril Blake was a war criminal or a hero freedom fighter?’

  Susan spread her hands. ‘Maybe both? We know he never returned to Australia, that he stayed on in Africa after the Boer War ended. There’s also a record of him having been charged but not convicted for being in possession of stolen cattle at Upington, in South Africa, in 1906.’

  ‘Great, so he’s a rustler as well?’ Nick said.

  ‘Your country doesn’t seem to mind lionising people with a colourful past, Nick. Take Ned Kelly for instance – he’s a local hero from what I understand, and then there’s Breaker Morant, who shot Boer prisoners of war.’

  ‘Acting under orders, so the story goes,’ Nick said.

  Susan rolled her eyes. ‘One thing for sure is that the German government can’t ignore the stain on their history that the war in South West Africa left. They killed thousands of Herero and Nama people. We do know that whatever your great-great-uncle did in South Africa he ended up joining the uprising against the Germans. To the people whose cause he took up he might have been a hero.’

  ‘Or just an ordinary bloke in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ The fact was that Nick found himself being drawn in, both by the story and by this attractive woman. He’d almost forgotten that he had just lost his job. ‘I can’t believe our family never knew about this. It’s so . . . wild. I wonder what made him sign up for a war in Africa in the first place.’

  ‘Like a lot of Brits and their allies Cyril Blake would have gone to South Africa full of patriotic fervour. His enlistment papers showed he served with the New South Wales Lancers originally. I checked them out. Their unit had been to London to take part in a military parade celebrating the anniversary of the coronation of Queen Victoria and when they were on their way back to Australia war was declared against the Boers and the Lancers jumped ship in Cape Town to join the fight instead of sailing home.’

  ‘So Blake was there for most of the war?’

  ‘Yes, and something in Africa, or maybe someone, kept him there.’

  ‘Maybe he was in disgrace and felt he couldn’t go home, or he was on the run?’ Nick said.

  Susan shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It was a long shot, but I was hoping you might have something that could tell me a bit more about Blake. Upington, where Cyril faced court, is on the edge of the Kalahari Desert, just across the border from the old German colony, which is now Namibia. So we know he was close to where the insurrection against the Germans was happening in 1906, but not how or why he got involved with it, four years after the Anglo-Boer War ended.’

  Their first courses arrived and their conversation fell away as they ate. Nick was hungry and Susan seemed to be enjoying the food.

  ‘What about the woman?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘Claire Martin. Yes, her name starts popping up again in the southern part of modern Namibia, not far from where Blake is on the other side of the border in South Africa, once the Nama uprising begins. Claire and her second husband, a Dr Peter Kohl, had a stud farm near Keetmanshoop where they bred horses. They were well off – horses were in high demand then and they also had a couple o
f cattle farms in the same area. It could be that Cyril Blake was part of a thriving cross-border trade that was going on at that time.’

  ‘This is a lot to get my head around,’ Nick said. ‘Particularly today, of all days.’

  ‘How come?’ Susan asked.

  He told her what had happened at work.

  ‘You should take a holiday,’ she said, ‘come to South Africa and learn some more about Cyril Blake.’

  Nick laughed. ‘I’ve never thought about visiting Africa. What I will do is contact my aunt, tomorrow, and see if she knows anything about him.’

  ‘Good.’ Susan raised her glass. ‘Here’s to hoping your aunt comes up with something.’

  They clinked glasses and drank a toast.

  ‘How long are you in Australia for?’ he asked.

  ‘Another week. I was visiting a couple of old schoolfriends who moved here – along with half of white South Africa. I fly back to Johannesburg on Thursday.’

  He nodded. The beers and wine had relaxed him and the thought of going back to his flat alone was not appealing. Nick was in no hurry, but it seemed like no time before the waitress returned with the rest of their food and tipped the last of the pinot gris into each of their glasses. Soon they were finished.

  ‘That was great,’ Susan said. ‘Good suggestion.’

  The candlelight caught her eyes and he was momentarily transfixed with possibilities. ‘Tell me, what’s Africa like?’

  She grinned. ‘Dangerous.’

  ‘That’s what everyone says, with crime and all.’

  ‘What I mean,’ she leaned across the table, closing the distance between them once again, ‘is that if you come to Africa then you might get hooked, and you’ll end up spending a lot of time and money coming back, again and again. It might change your life.’